Help Your Organization Live Happily Ever After

By: Jenny Barish

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there was a non-profit organization that was in need of help. Although the organization’s leaders were passionate, and their cause was relevant, they faced great challenges, like developing new revenue streams, implementing a new marketing plan, and facing fire-breathing dragons. The economy was troubled, and the villagers showed little interest in their services. After dozens of presentations in front of board members, CEOs, and fairy godmothers, the non-profit organization had lost all hope and had no one to turn to for help…

Intrigued? Classic story frames such as these have stood the test of time. And there’s a reason for “Once upon a time’s” longevity. People love stories: they usually have relatable characters, vivid settings, clear themes, natural plot progressions, and a unique voice. And according to Pon Angara, principal at Barkada Creative LLC, a Chicago-based visual branding business, these characteristics are not limited to fairy tales.

In Angara’s recent presentation at the Chicago Philanthropy Club, I was brought back to my kindergarten story time circle, and was happy to learn that the basic principles of storytelling can be applied to the marketing, development, and strategic vision of an organization. As consultants at Davidoff Communications, we are dedicated to the most effective articulation of our clients’ goals, mission, and impact. The associations, non-profits, and corporate clients we work with each have a story to tell, and we engage in this artistic medium of communication to help each tell their own in the most compelling way possible.

With thousands of people trying to sell a new product, a brilliant social innovation, or a service, many organizations can get lost in the clutter. Using the classic components of storytelling to talk about your organization may forge a more personal or relatable bond with an audience. And according to Pon Angara, the best way to tell a story is through the “transformative power of the arts.” In Angara’s Philanthropy Club presentation, we closed our eyes and listened to music, and realized that a song has a powerful story to tell including all the essential elements. This idea was demonstrated through other mediums such theatre, art, and audiovisuals—engaging all human senses, connecting with people, and hopefully building rapport and support.

But how are all of these abstract ideas directly applicable to your organization? Strategically choosing music can communicate the mission or culture of a company at an office or at an event, a striking photo can say a lot in few words for an advertising campaign, and a video can bring an abstract idea, theme, or statement to life (Angara used this as an excellent example of theatrical storytelling).

As an avid lover of art, music, and culture, I think this concept is incredibly effective. As a learner, it’s hard to become passionate about the content in a flat PowerPoint presentation. But when I see the concepts illuminated through a painting, in a play, or with a song, I think longer and more deeply about the ideas presented. And as a consumer, I connect to the catchy melodies that I hear on the newest Apple commercial. It’s not necessarily the product that I fall so deeply in love with—it’s the story they are conveying through song, images, and characters. I can relate to the sounds, and I want not only to have the product or service, but to be a part of that company’s story.

Mr. Angara perfectly wrapped up his workshop with a quote from Maya Angelou,

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

People come in all shapes, sizes, and attitudes, but we all have a fundamental desire to feel, connect, and live happily every after.

Reviewing Your Social Media

By: Elyssa Cherney

Nowadays, social media is synonymous with tweets and Facebook likes.
Both play a crucial role in forging your online reputation.

Although I am one of those savvy youths responsible for this digital explosion, and consider myself Facebook and Twitter literate, I still have trouble grasping exactly what social media means and what strategies should be used to support it.

So when I attended a technology lecture at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce called “Is Social Media Making Your Business Anti-Social???” I expected to learn about muploads (that’s mobile uploads) and retweeting. However, what keynote speaker Steven Dimmitt spoke about shattered the strict borders I had imposed on the social media world.

As the CEO of abSRDdity, an online reputation management service, Dimmitt shared his insights about the shifting relationship between advertising and the current world.

Technological, economic, and psychological factors are all redrawing the lines in conventional marketing. What used to be a one-way dialogue, controlled by the business, has now morphed into a two-way communication that gives the consumer more power.

Because there are more options for just about everything today, the consumer controls more of this process. He chooses how to search or find businesses and, because of this, he doesn’t have to settle for anything less than a deal.

This has forced the business model to change, with an increased focus on engaging the consumer. Social media is one of the ways businesses can reach out to potential audiences and hold their attention.

So you’ve got your Facebook page, your Twitter, a LinkedIN profile, and maybe even a blog. With all those platforms, your SEO must be climbing the ranks. It should be that much closer to making it on the first page of a search.

But here’s the kicker: though you are creating all that content, 80 percent of search results are user-generated. Instead of exposing potential clients to the material you chose, they are seeing what others have written about you in reviews, blogs, and other posts.

And they’re listening.

About 84 percent of users say that consumer reviews influenced their purchasing.

The online review, a sector that completely escaped my thoughts before hearing from Dimmitt, is another huge component of your online identity.

Most business have a Google Place Page, a Yelp site, a Bing listing, or a City Search review where customers post their feelings about companies

Consumers are more likely to post their thoughts after an unpleasant experience, denouncing the business and the service in a public rant.

Dimmitt pointed out that one bad review can cost you up to 30 potential customers. For damage control, he recommends five good testimonials for every negative one.

But when you do your job correctly, and a person has a positive experience, they probably won’t feel as compelled to gush about you online. The challenge is getting them to do just that, though it might not be as hard as you thought.

Just ask. If you see a consumer who is satisfied, invite them to write a review in person and e-mail them the link to your review site. It’s that easy.

Don’t let social laziness cost you customers.

Dimmitt offered three steps to building the online brand of your dreams—Assess, repair, maintain.

Claim online venues, respond to current dialogue and be diligent about getting positive reviews.

Do not ignore negative reviews. If there is a bad post, digest it, respond, and e–mail your employees about what went wrong. Contact the author of the review, inquire about their experience, and personally apologize.

If there is a positive review, share it over your social media and propel it to reach as many people as possible.

While I admit I still don’t understand the inner workings of social media, I know enough to realize it can be one of the most powerful business tools of today.

If you don’t get it, hire someone who does. Dimmitt suggests assigning a full time role as social media manager to one of your employees.

At Davidoff Communications, we too are realizing the power of the online world and using our summer interns (that’s me!) to refresh and update our own social media efforts. Writing frequent blogs, such as this one, is one component of this much larger project, but we also have one intern manning our online board and getting our name out there through Twitter and Facebook.

And if that wasn’t enough, now we know to monitor our online reviews too.

Branding Basics: Go for the Tough Stuff

By: Elyssa Cherney

The Bloomingdale’s signature “brown bag” is tightly clasped. Ray-Ban sunglasses coolly rest upon the heads of these eager shoppers who are fearlessly guided by a pair of Nike sneakers.

Yes, a stroll around my local mall reveals all things typical of an upper-middle class shopping center. From head to toe, these patrons flaunt their designer labels.

But in this brand-eat-brand world, we needn’t travel outside our own homes to witness this phenomenon.

By simply gazing in a mirror, we can see the brand we invest in the most: ourselves.

As I sat in on an internal marketing meeting at Davidoff Communications, I realized that the idea of branding penetrates much further than surface level impressions, and delves into deeply rooted ontological questions—ones that lie at the cornerstone of our identity.

How we brand ourselves—the image we project to the world based on the clothing we wear, the phrases we say, and attitudes we adopt—creates a defining label of who we are as humans.

It comes down to several critical questions that we all must ask ourselves—Who do I want to be? How do I want others to perceive me? What are the types of things that I want associated with my name?

While this introspective process happens acutely on a personal level, it occurs even more furiously on a larger-scale, within the business sector.

The impact of branding is reflected by the exorbitant amount of money that corporations are willing to invest in marketing.

According to TheList.com, the internet’s largest relational database of marketing and advertising decision makers in North America, major companies like General Motors and AT&T spend over two billion dollars on advertisements to build their respective images.

Traditionally, businesses are advised to consider several factors when deciding which resources should be allocated to marketing. Some businesses set a flat dollar rate, others calculate a sales-revenue ratio, and many follow the plans of their competitors.

Still, some maintain that there should be no monetary cap on marketing.

“For startups and small businesses, branding can often take a backseat to other considerations, such as funding and product development,” reads a 2009 column from businessweek.com that appeared in The New York Times. “This is a mistake, as a company's brand can be key to its success. Dollar for dollar, it is as important and vital as any other early steps.”

But the marketing landscape is forever changing. First came the Internet and now it’s the dawn of the social media era.

More than half of businesses with marketing budgets under $1000 are adopting social media practices rooted in Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (in that order), reported a 2010 GrowBiz Media study called entitled “SMB Marketing Practices: Small to Midsized Business Survey Results, 2010.” The same report, which surveyed 751 small businesses of less than 1,000 employees from across the country, also found that nearly 40 percent of respondents are spending more than one fifth of their marketing budgets on websites.

In these tumultuous times, constantly being redrawn by technology, the effort to define the face of your business becomes increasingly difficult.

But there is one overarching constant: revisiting those tough questions. The challenge is to apply this process of self-questioning to our businesses.

The daily struggles and often-agonizing truths we must confront about ourselves act as a model for branding a company, a service, or a product.

We must maintain the same self-awareness and objectivity that serve as personal checks to evaluate the image our business presents to the rest of humanity.

Stagnancy is failure. If we simply accept our faults and do not try to change them, we will not build our moral and social character. Likewise, building a brand requires constant recalibration.

Change is not a sign of weakness; it is a mark of strength. We must have the courage to recognize when a problem exists and the creativity to find the best possible solution.

It will take time, but by remaining cognizant of these fundamentals, your business can furnish its own unique brand—one that is differentiated from the sea of your competitors and highlights the specific talents that only you offer.

Only then will your vision for your business match what the rest of the world sees, its reflection staring squarely back at you from that mirror.

Discovering Mission-Driven Marketing

By: Jenny Barish

Marketing has always played an integral role in my life. As a youngster, I was always receptive to television ads, and I was easily swayed by commercials, begging my mother for the newest Princess Barbie (much to my mother’s dismay) or Tamagachi (remember those?). In high school, I took a sports marketing course and found that the concepts came naturally. And for the Chicago Metro History Fair my junior year of high school, I chose to further explore the world of marketing—persuading my all- female project -mates to research Bill Veeck, the infamous manger of the Chicago White Sox who revolutionized promotional glitz and glamour. We made it all the way to the national competition, and my affinity to the marketing industry grew even stronger. Marketing seemed to be my niche. I loved the innovation, excitement, and psychology of it all, and at the young age of 17, there was no question that this was my calling.

When it came time to pick a college, I found my place at Ithaca College, a midsize private institution in central New York with killer views and an even more killer communications program. But as I studied business theories and the strategic model of communication alongside women’s studies and environmental destruction, I came to a quarter-life existential crisis. This all sounds very typical— the whole adolescent-coming-to-an-end-of-childhood-moment-and wants to fight against the system type of thing. But it was a real conundrum, and the more I learned about economic imbalance and over-consumption, the more I started to question the whole field of marketing. Was I just feeding the beast? I didn’t want to sell people more products and help contribute to more environmental crises or create more media-influenced perceptions about economic worth or gender norms (whew, as you can see this was quite the aha moment). Were all my childhood aspirations completely false and misinformed?

After my panic passed, I sat down and did what I do best: Facebook stalking. I came across an Alumni Group for Ithaca College, and I found that someone had responded to a posting I had made months ago about wishing to pursue a summer internship. It was John Davidoff, and he directed me to his company’s website, a “mission-driven marketing” firm based in Chicago that specialized in strategic non-profit/corporate partnership, sales consulting, and integrated marketing. I had no idea that this even existed, and as I further researched Davidoff Communications I was not only educated about an entire new sector of the communication industry, but I was reassured that I could be in marketing and not be a part of everything I had grown to hate. As I continue my work at Davidoff, my faith in cause marketing is constantly reaffirmed. I have seen how our work positively impacts the non-profit clients that work so hard to make a difference, and my hunger to use my research, rhetoric, and strategic thinking for good has grown even stronger.

A Marketing Awakening

By: Elyssa Cherney

As a journalism major, I didn’t think I was cut out for the harsh world of marketing.

Journalists seek truth; marketing executives distort it. While journalists spur progressive change, the marketing industry is too caught up in the glitz and glamour of their 401ks to genuinely care about improving society.

Or so I thought before starting a summer internship with Davidoff Communications.

While I expected to do my share of filing, I didn’t count on having an experience that revolutionized my way of thinking. It took only one week to shatter my prior perceptions of the marketing industry and the way it fits into the world.

I was warmly welcomed on my first day at Davidoff Communications and immediately became part of the team. Instead of doing mindless tasks, I was entrusted with real work and I was counted on to deliver results.

It became clear that my coworkers would not just be cold faces I pass in the office—they were people who genuinely cared about me and would make an effort to be involved in my life both professionally and personally.

After I discovered that real human beings worked in marketing, I soon realized what they were working for.

While Davidoff Communications helps for-profit companies develop strategic plans and strengthen their brand, they also do a great deal of work with nonprofits. After attending a retreat with one of their nonprofit clients, I realized the colossal significance of firms like this.

By helping nonprofits reorganize and run more effectively as a whole, Davidoff Communications spreads the good these groups devote themselves to. In bettering the internal structure and external image of nonprofits, the firm betters the way that nonprofits communicate with and interact in our world.

In this sense, they play a crucial role in our society. They give back by helping these nonprofits give back more efficiently.

What I originally thought of as a self-serving industry turned out to be extremely selfless—devoting its resources to and aligning itself with important causes.

While I realize this reflection may seem like an overt advertisement for Davidoff Communications, I want to make it clear that publicity is not my intention here.

As a journalist we are taught to share stories and I think the story of Davidoff Communications is one worth telling. Over the next three months I hope to document my experience as an intern—one who was a complete outsider to marketing just a few days ago.

Along the way I hope to share my insights about the marketing industry, nonprofit work, and maybe some occasional complaints about filing. So, with all seriousness, fasten your seatbelts and prepare for the ride.