Branding Does Not Correct For Incompetence

I love Bay City. Even now, in the dead of winter, there is nowhere else I'd rather live. I chose to move here from the world-class city of Denver—that's how much I love it here. That being said, once again I find myself feeling frustrated with the city leadership.

Remember a few months ago when I wrote about the money Bay City wasted on developing the new city brand? A few years ago, the city paid nearly $50,000 for a horrible logo—an absolute abomination. Along with the horrible logo there is a trite saying. VOILA! There's our brand.

No matter how many times I scream it, a logo is not a brand!

Anyway, we've got our logo so we're all set, right? Bay City is on the rise again. No bad decision making or bad publicity can affect us because, after all, we've got that crappy logo...er...brand.

Our first stop on the bad-PR train came in December when a Wall Street Journal article featured a mention of Bay City alongside one of their trademark stipple images of our mayor, Charles Brunner. The city couldn't afford to put up the annual Festival of Lights display for Christmas this year and the story was wrapped into a Journal piece on cities feeling the economic crunch at Christmas time. This was a good decision by the mayor, it was just a small bit of bad PR. No city wants to be painted as anti-Christmas, but there we were on the front cover of one of the most-read newspapers in the world.

Fast forward one month to a much uglier story.

Two weeks ago the body of a 93-year-old man was found dead in his home on Bay City's southwest side. The house is actually only a mile away from mine. The man, a veteran who received the purple heart as a medic in World War II, died of hypothermia in his home. You read that correctly, he froze to death in his home. Due to unpaid electric bills, the city electric department had placed a device to restrict the amount of electricity he could use. He apparently didn't know what the device was or how to reset it and died a very slow and painful death.

His death has received all sorts of national attention, once again turning the nation's eyes to Bay City. MSNBC is among the many national news sources who carried the story.

According to our city manager, he didn't think the city did anything wrong. I understand that actions have to be taken when bills aren't paid, but you'd think they'd be a little more careful when it comes to something like this. The new policy is to not use limiters, but don't you think we could have come to this sensible policy, say, before an old man died needlessly?

One time after another, this city keeps giving itself a black eye.

You know what I think might help? A new logo...some new branding idea that clearly states that we no longer kill our elderly for unpaid electric bills.

Pow! Right Between the Eyes!

As I wandered around the web earlier this weekend, I came across a blog by a guy named Andy Nulman. Andy has a new book out called Pow! Right Between the Eyes and it sounds like a great read. The premise of his book is the use of surprise in marketing.

He is currently running a promotion where if you mention his book and link to his blog, he will send out a copy of the book for free. He does say that he's sending them out to legitimate bloggers, though, so I guess we'll have to wait to see if I qualify as legitimate. I'm hoping that the hundreds...okay...hundred-and-fifty visitors per week to this blog will qualify me because I really want to read this book.

Anybody who is interested in keeping their business relevant in the current economic environment should check out Andy Nulman's website. I have only had ten minutes to look it over, but saw a few posts that I have bookmarked to go back and read. If you have a business and you aren't taking the time to scour the web for some of the great ideas that are out there, then I'm not sure you're really interested in being in business.

I keep saying that one of my biggest problems is that I don't have enough time to read everything that is out there. There isn't a secret formula to success and there aren't any shortcuts, but there are about a zillion sites out there with different ideas about business. Start going and reading what's available...you never know when you're going to find something that sparks your next big idea.

So take a few minutes to check out his site. There is some good stuff there and it's free—it's all free!

Who are the people in your neighborhood?

Okay...the photo above doesn't really look anything like Midland Street at the moment, but it's the only Midland Street photo I have on my MacBook (I'm out of the studio at the moment...care to guess where I am?).

I am asked pretty often about how I like having a studio out of my home. After working from home for six or seven years, it was a pretty big adjustment to get used to actually going to work. Getting up early was never an issue as I have always been an early riser, but the whole act of leaving the house to go to work was hard to get used to.

My answer is always an enthusiastic yes—I love my studio. I like that there is a distinct separation between work and home, even though at times it makes for long stretches without much at-home time.

One of my favorite things about the studio—and I may have written about this before—is that I really love being a part of the neighborhood. Working at home, you could go for long stretches where you didn't interact with other people and that could be a drag sometimes. What I love about Midland Street is that I enjoy working in an area where, even in winter, there is a lot of activity.

This morning I had to take my truck to the Smith's Auto Service—a mechanic just a few blocks up the street. When I walked in the door I was greeted by my friend Brian sitting there, also having work done to his car. We chat for a while in the garage and then then I had to get going.

I walked down a block or two to say hi to the guys at Sandlot Sports. We're working on a couple of projects together and haven't had a chance to talk this week. I hung out there and visited with Ryan and Adam for a few minutes before heading back toward the studio.

As I was walking, Randy the UPS driver waved me down from his truck. "I just left you a note on your door; I've got something for you," he said. He went into the back of the truck and pulled out a package of business cards. That was a huge help because I wanted to get the cards to the coffee shop this weekend.

After Randy gave me my package I continued on toward the studio, deciding to stop at Lucky's Pub to see what the lunch specials were. When Wayne told me that they had a meatball sandwich, my decision was made. I placed my order and then headed across the studio to kill 10 minutes until my lunch was ready. After checking e-mail and puttering around the studio for a few minutes, I headed back to Lucky's. When I got there my friend Bruce—one of the owners of Lucky's—was there along with another client of mine. We chatted for a few minutes and then I got my lunch and headed back to the studio.

In about 30 minutes I talked to about nine different people about everything ranging from work to family to playtime. This is the sort of thing you don't get when you work at home. I never got lonely or anything, but I would sometimes get a little desperate for human contact, you know? I'm pretty sure that I was so chatty that there were some telemarketers who put me on their NO CALL list to avoid having to talk to me again.

In summary, thanks for a great day Midland Street Historic District. And just think, when the warm weather gets here (in about eight to ten weeks), it will be even more fun. More people, patio beers, sunshine...I can hardly wait.

Keep your Utopia. Make mine Brewtopia. Brewtopia Coffee, that is.

About a month ago I was approached by Aaron Bolt, the new owner of (the former) Harvest Coffee House in Bay City to design a new logo for the coffee house. The new name is Brewtopia Coffee and Aaron wanted the new logo to have a classic look and to reflect the café’s downtown location.

At the top you can see the logo we came up with. We played with a few different versions of the type until we hit on something we were all happy with. As a backdrop for the logotype, I created a few generic buildings and some quick drawings of a few downtown Bay City landmarks—the fountain in Wenona Park, Delta College planetarium and City Hall. So far, we have received a lot of positive feedback on the logo which is really gratifying.

Brewtopia is not just a coffee house, it’s a community center. A place where people get together for meetings or to just relax and talk. I’m sitting in the café right now and there is a group of young guys working on something. I’m not sure if it’s homework or their fantasy baseball draft, but they are just hanging around and having a good time. Toward the back there are a couple of people working, a couple and their baby buying some fresh-roasted beans, and another couple who are really enjoying being together (don’t worry family folks, they’re not canoodling or anything, Brewtopia isn’t that kind of place).

It’s a little after 8PM on a Tuesday night and there are about 15 people here—that’s not too bad for a weeknight in Bay City.

Clearly, Brewtopia Coffee is the place to be. So the only questions is this: Where are you tonight and why aren’t you here?

They are staying open until 9 or 10 every night of the week (except Sunday, when they close at 6). There are always several different coffees fresh and waiting for you as well as a wide variety of specialty drinks, many of which exist here and nowhere else.

You know what else is great? They roast their own beans right here in the coffee shop. They aren’t buying beans that were roasted weeks or months ago, they are buying fresh beans and roasting them themselves to be sure that you are getting the best cup of coffee in Bay City.

If you are out and about in downtown Bay City, be sure to swing by and say hello to Aaron and the gang.

This has been an unpaid advertisement.

My All-Time Favorite New Media Campaign

The best new Facebook application I've seen in a long time was put to rest this past week.

The campaign was brilliant in its simplicity. Instead of Facebook applications' usual MO of "sign up and send it to as many friends as you want/can," the Whopper Sacrifice went the other direction. It urged people to delete friends in exchange for a free Whopper. Every Facebook user who deleted ten friends from their friends list was given a free Whopper.


The caption at the bottom of the Whopper Sacrifice page now reads that "your love for the Whopper sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships." Assuming ten ex-friends per person, that means that over twenty-three thousand people took part in the Whopper Sacrifice. In addition to the 23,000 active participants there were a LOT of press mentions of the program. Newspapers, magazines, online sources, television...everybody was talking about the Whopper Sacrifice.

And whose brain child was this? Not surprisingly, it was the work of Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I can't begin to tell you how much I admire some of the work that CPB does. If they were to call me and offer me a job in their Boulder office, I would have to think long and hard about moving back to Colorado just to have the opportunity to work in a shop of their caliber. Nothing against any agency I've ever worked with, but CPB is working on a whole different level than everybody else.

CPB has been handling the Burger King account for a while and their offbeat approach is working well for Burger King, who have long been notorious for their bipolar advertising efforts. Radical changes every couple of years...campaigns that were as boring as they were ineffective.

I think you are going to see a lot of people mimicking the Whopper Sacrifice app. Whopper Sacrifice helped change the way people think about advertising on Facebook. Instead of spending money on the little ads, put a little money into a unique application. Make it fun, make it funny, and the people will follow.

Hats off, Crispin Porter + Bogusky.

Contingency Plans are no Substitute for Little Brothers

I had grand plans of coming into work over the weekend and getting ahead on my work for the week. Those plans came to a grinding halt, however, when my beloved G5 wouldn't boot up. I spent hours trying to troubleshoot the problem and came to the conclusion that it was a major problem with either the power supply or the logic board.

The good news is that none of my work was in danger, but the bad news is that I had no way of getting to any of it because it was all stored on a pair of internal hard drives. I remembered that my brother had a near-identical G5 that he isn't using at the moment. I called him and he told me I was welcome to borrow it as long as I needed, while trying to repair my Mac.

He offered to bring the Mac and meet me halfway between Bay City and South Bend, so we settled on meeting up for lunch in Marshall (southwest of Lansing). We met up at Applebee's (it's the best sit-down restaurant near exit 36) and had a good time. Afterwards we loaded the G5 into my truck and I headed back to Bay City.

I spent the next two hours on the highway and the two hours after that stripping the hard drive and memory from his Mac and replacing it with the hard drives and memory from my Mac. For the most part, the transfer worked out perfectly. There were a couple of glitches, but they were minor and easily settled.

Once you add up the time I spent troubleshooting, driving, and repairing I probably lost about 8-10 hours out of a week when I could ill-afford the lost time. On the whole, though, I am grateful because were it not for my brother Kevin, my situation would have been much worse.

The moral of this story is that I need to have better contingencies in place for the future. I won't always be able to rely on help from Kevin because he would have to have a warehouse of unused Macs laying about and that's just not in the cards. I'm pretty good about backing up my data, but I need to be better about it. You'd think I would have learned my lesson when I lost a hard drive three months ago, but I am still lax in the backup department.

If you are the well-wishing sort, you might want to keep a good thought for my G5. I hope that the problem is the power source because that repair will only take a few hours of my time and about $150 for the replacement part. If it is the logic board, though, the machine is likely unsalvageable because the cost of a new logic board is only a little shy of what a new machine would cost.

One of these days, the blog will get back to the business of design. For now, though, I just want to send out a big thank you to my brother. Thanks, Kevin, you really came through for me. Maybe I'll name my next puppy after you or something. How does that sound?

The one about the in-laws...

Does anybody remember the mini-saga in Detroit involving Detroit News reporter Rob Parker and then-Detroit Lions head coach Rod Marinelli? In a very small nutshell, during a press conference after the Lions' 14th or 15th loss of the season, Parker asked Marinelli if he wished his (Marinelli's) daughter had married a better defensive coordinator (ex-Lions defensive coordinator Joe Barry is married to Marinelli's daughter). At the time Marinelli blew the remark off.

Some sports columnists and bloggers began vilifying Parker right away. And once a few people started it, everybody jumped on the hand-wringing bandwagon and the SS Rob Parker was taking water. The next day Marinelli was interviewed and he was pissed. I mean he was really pissed. "Anytime you bring my family into..." and blah blah blah. Thing is, I believe that he was pissed, but as the head coach of the worst football team in NFL history, I think he may have been channeling some other frustration at Parker.

I get that it was probably a stupid question, but let's not lose sight of something: it was funny. Rob Parker was right...if Marinelli's daughter was going to marry a defensive coordinator, she picked the worst available. Let's not sugar coat it—Joe Barry was a failure as a defensive coordinator in Detroit. Was it all his fault? No. Detroit is outmanned and outgunned in all aspects of professional football, with the possible exceptions of punter and kicker. But he was horrible. Detroit was at or near the bottom in almost every major defensive statistic.

And let's not forget something else...Rob Parker didn't bring Marinelli's family into it. Marinelli did by hiring his son-in-law in the first place. All he did was mention the daughter. He didn't call her a name or insult her. I suppose it is unprofessional to make a joke, but he didn't really make the joke about the daughter. It was a jab at Joe Barry who, as you may be aware, was horrible. The mere mention of Marinelli's daughter shouldn't have created so much drama. Many, many columnists have made a career out of being wise asses (check out Woody Paige with the Denver Post--he's one of the best).

In the end, the forces of political correctness won. Rob Parker resigned his position with the Detroit News after having been demoted to general reporter or something like that (a clear case of jumping before you are pushed). It's really too bad because all the guy did was make a joke. It wasn't even a bad joke—it was funny. Lighten up, Francis.

I really hate kowtowing to the politically correct police. Remember, if you outlaw jokes than only outlaws will have jokes. Hmmm...I guess that stupid statment only works with guns.

So Parker resigns, Marinelli and Barry are both fired, and the Lions are searching for the next puppet they can hire and the next wide receiver they can draft.

Parker, Marinelli and Barry are all unemployed, but they're probably all better off.

Wherever you end up, Rob Parker, I wish you well. You, too, Rod Marinelli. I think you overreacted to the joke, but I still liked the way you handled yourself under the worst set of circumstances any head coach has ever had to endure. And Joe Barry, please believe that when I say you were horrible, I only mean with the hand you were dealt. I am sure that you will find a new gig and you will excel.

So let's try to tie this into branding, just so you don't feel like you've wasted your time. Think about what the Detroit Lions brand is worth? This whole dog-and-pony show must have made William Clay Ford (Darth Fordius) gleeful because it pulled a little more attention away from the fact that the Lions are a Division-II team in the NFL. Can the Lions brand be tarnished any more? Or have we finally reached the limit?

You know what, this gives me an idea. I think I am going to do a little column about the Lions brand and what impact the winless season had. And what it could mean for the future of the franchise. Stay tuned...I'll try to get to it this week.

Hello, 2009. It's a pleasure to meet you.

2008 was a pretty good year for 989 Design, but I have to tell you that I am really looking forward to 2009. As much as I hate lame, weather-worn clichés, I am really excited to see the seeds we planed last year begin to grow.

Every day when you listen to the news or read the paper, you are hearing so much bad news about the economy that it seems like we shouldn't even bother holding onto hope. There are so many people telling me that the sky is falling that I'm afraid to look up.

They're right about the economy, it's a mess. And it is probably going to get worse before it gets better. But there are still plenty of bright spots to look at, so let's not give up hope. Just today I had a new client come in the office talking about a new project that they are starting up and I am really psyched about working with them. I can't divulge much due to confidentiality issues, but it is a great lemons-to-lemonade story. The owner of the company ran into a huge (and costly) hurdle and rather than just scrap the project or pay the freight, he came up with a plan that ended up creating an entirely new business. And this is a business with legs—he could make a fortune, if he's not careful.

I guess that what I am saying is that even though times are bad, keep your chin up. The new year is not just the turn of a calendar page, but it's a chance for us to (mentally) wipe the slate and start over. Spend some time the next week or so making plans for the rest of the year.

No matter what your business is, there are many low-cost advertising/marketing/PR ideas out there. Look into them and take advantage of them. If business is slow, it's a great time to try out some new ideas to see what ideas may help you attract new customers.

I hope you all had a really wonderful holiday season. Thank you for continuing to come around. Let's all have a happy and prosperous 2009.