Welcome to Compositions, James DeKoven's column about brand communications. This time around:

- Why Healthy People Are Better Marketers
- The Jazz of Positioning
- Americans are Stupid
- Album of the month

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Why Healthy People are Better Marketers
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Out here on the west coast, over the past 4-5 months, just about everyone’s come down with a bad cold. The flu. “The thing that’s going around.” And then it happens: the people who eat bacon cheeseburgers twice a day and exercise once a year are suddenly pouring bottles of vitamin C and vats of chicken noodle soup down their throats.

As if being “healthy” one week per year will make a difference.

Ditto for marketing. Like eating well and being active, marketing is a full-time endeavor. But of course your mother already told you that.

However, she might not have told you what marketing activities to do. Where do the ideas come from? Turns out you already have them.

Share your expertise, the knowledge that informs your work, and deliver it as a downloadable report, a series of emails, a series of articles on your site, a direct mail piece. Tie the expertise to something timely, like the current recession.

For a Financial services firm: Share some money-saving and/or investment strategies.
For a PR firm: Explain how growing yet cash-strapped companies can effectively use the web for publicity.
For a clothing company: Create a guide on how to save money on dry cleaning.
For an Architectural firm: Produce a booklet about the do’s and don’ts of remodeling.

Providing practical advice not only shows that you’re the expert, it makes it easy for prospects to take a good first look at your company.

On a related note: Remember that marketing is even more important during a bad economy. By promoting your company when cash is tight, you can generate enough to keep the motor running and set yourself up for more work when good times come again.

Marketing - the veggies of business.

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The Jazz of Positioning
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There was a time when people bought new music based solely on the record label. Take Blue Note, the legendary jazz imprint started in 1939. The jacket design, the moody photography, that distinctive Blue Note sound - all of these elements conveyed a promise in every release, a promise no other label could match.

Blue Note wasn’t thinking about “positioning”, but that’s exactly what they did. They consistently created the same perception, which meant that jazz junkies consistently knew what to expect.

While every company needs this consistency, many fall short. The web site looks this way, the product catalog looks that way. Witty web copy, dry catalog copy. Mixed messages. Over time consumers get confused and eventually go away. The company loses sales without knowing why.

To get it right, first create a positioning statement, which is a verbal math equation:

The company + what you sell + your audience = The positioning statement

Example: “Rustic Lands is the preferred natural furniture for environmentally conscious homeowners.”

Every part of your communications - messaging, design, user experience, tone of voice - should map back to your positioning statement. So should product packaging, the types of services you offer, the agenda of your seminars, even how you design your contracts and letterhead. 

By consistently making - and delivering on - the same promise, you’ll see
clients coming back again and again. And that’s a good position to be in.

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Americans are Stupid
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The Princeton Review recently looked at the transcripts of four presidential debates and reviewed them using a standard vocabulary test. The test reflects the minimum educational standard needed to comprehend language. Here’s what they found:

- In 2000, George W. Bush spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.7) and Al Gore at a seventh-grade level (7.6)
- In 1992, Bill Clinton spoke at a seventh-grade level (7.6), and both George H.W. Bush and H. Ross Perot spoke at a sixth-grade level (6.8 and 6.3, respectively.)
- In 1960, John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon both spoke at a 10th-grade level.
- In 1858, Abraham Lincoln spoke at an 11th-grade level (11.2) and Stephen A. Douglas at a twelfth-grade level (12.0)

By looking at the erosion of vocabulary levels, I figure one of three things has happened:
1) Americans have progressively become less intelligent
2) Politicians have progressively become less intelligent
3) Politicians think we’re stupid

Let the social scientists answer that multiple-choice question. But marketers, branders and advertisers also have some answering to do. For years, many of them/us have been working on an assumption: people are really busy, they don’t have time to read or interpret or think, so make everything simple enough for the 4th-grader picking his nose on the playground to understand.

Intended or not, this mindset is a collective euphemism for “You’re stupid.” No wonder why a majority of people despise marketing - much of it insults their intelligence. That’s not doing anyone any good: consumers turn away from brands that assume they’re stupid, and the offending brands lose business. The remedy is simple. Be intelligent.

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Album of the Month
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A rarity in the jazz world, violinist Billy Bang has been pushing musical boundaries for over 40 years. In Vietnam: The Aftermath, he leads a septet through a searingly honest reflection of his experiences in the Vietnam War (Most of the line-up also served in Vietnam). Both haunting and hopeful, colored by Asian hues, this is music that will redefine what many of you think “jazz” can be. Beautiful.

Until next time,

James