Category: branding

Yay change! Your DIY Brand Audit Starts Here.

“Change is the only constant.” Said Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher. His wardrobe might not still work today but his thinking is spot on. This guide is intended to help you embrace change and leverage your knowledge and goals into a more powerful and effective marketing plan.

Take some time (we recommend 45-90 minutes daily over 3 to 5 days), grab a few team members or just a cup of coffee and your favorite writing tool or machine, find someplace quiet, shut the door and start. Starting is the hardest part. When you’re done, you will know how often you want to repeat this and some necessary next steps.

Ps: When we work with clients on this process, it is a multi-day experience of discovery, thinking, brainstorming, creative message ideation, execution planning, and more. Give yourself time to think, to ponder. Break your thinking into a few sessions. This is where the best ideas and insights are born. Most importantly, have fun.

Wins & Losses.

What did you do this year that rocked? What didn’t so much? What can you learn? If you want to dive deeper here, perform a  SWOT analysis, considering Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – to inform your thinking below.

Your Customer.

How have the changes in the landscape over the last year/quarter/month changed your customers’ challenges?

Your Value Proposition & Your Purpose. 

Which of the customer problems above do you help solve? Is your solution still as relevant as it was the last time you made an assessment? Do you have new data points, customer input, or feedback to consider?

What is your purpose? Where do your purpose and your customer’s problem(s) intersect? This is your sweet spot. Make sure that your sweet spot is concisely incorporated into your value proposition.

Brand Landscape.

Where do you fit or not fit (for you disrupters) in today’s landscape? In your industry landscape? Do you have more or fewer competitors? Who are they? What are they up to? How is your offering (solutions, process, bouncy castle in lobby) differentiated from your competition?

Messaging Plan.

In Brand Landscape above, have any competitors pivoted? In what ways might this inform your positioning and messaging plan?

Create a list of messaging themes from your “customers problems” list that speaks to how you solve those problems. Think about how you’ve solved client problems like this and how you’d like to evolve your process.

Consider how you will get this message out. First, list your communication platforms, then create a plan that assigns messaging themes (based on customer problems and how you solve them) to every platform. You might be tempted to copy and paste each message into each platform for the same posting period. Try to refrain from doing this. If you are tired and need a break (this is tiring), start again tomorrow. Your goal is to drill down into your primary messages, state 3-5 subpoints for each, varying your message for each platform, all pointing at the same problem/solution story.

Voice & Storytelling.

Is the way you speak to your customer still relevant? Given shifts in the economic, political, and cultural environment, are there new opportunities to show sensitivity? How might this shift your use of words or imagery? Or the context in which you present your product or service?

Uncle.

I love doing this, can you tell?  There is much more to dive into and sub-dives to suit up for,  but this is a good start.

During January 2023, book a complimentary 30-minute session to discuss your concerns, goals, and ideas for getting there.

Book a 30-minute session here. 

On being a horrible branding client.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “We learn something new everyday.” I agree. Today I have learned that I am a horrible client.

Why? Read on, dear friend.

When working with clients to build or rebuild brands, we start with a workshop to discover everything we can about where our client is now, where they want to be instead and why. This workshop has structure, but at the same time, it is a fluid exercise. We encourage clients to share anything and everything that comes to mind as we serve them small prompts, like Venus and Serena’s dad serving them balls, that they run for and hit repeatedly using a million different muscles. But never fear; we don’t make clients run, and no hand-eye coordination is necessary to attend our workshops.

Why do we have workshops and not worksheets? You ask because your time is precious and you never have enough.

We lead workshops either remotely or in-person to activate the collective energy of humans gathering and thinking together. In brand strategy, this is called collective effervescence. How often have you been in a meeting, discussing a project, and amid this loosely structured meeting, you have an idea? Would you have had that same idea on your own? At your desk? While filling out yet another form?

We think not.

We believe the world needs fewer forms and more human interaction.

More structure with a lot of space built-in for sharing, thinking together about specific ideas, dreams, goals, behaviors, data, learning, cultures and movements, history, the future, and results. When we think together, in a safe environment, we have one rule and one only. The rule improv uses for comedy is, “Never say no.” When someone shares something, you add your ideas, memories, or knowledge building on what was shared. This process diminishes the fear of failure and builds trust and collaboration, making it easier for people to be vulnerable and express ideas. The result is collective positivity and a safe space for sharing, creativity, and innovation.

So, why are we a bad client? Or why am I, Marni, a bad client? Because I hired someone to help us think about our brand. I have confidently and successfully done this for clients, but I am wrestling with the process for our brand. The first step was a worksheet to fill out. That worksheet is still blank. I haven’t done my homework, and in fact, I lost my it. Yikes. I need more help with branding than any of the clients at Seed Agency right now.

I am now going to go back to working on my worksheet. But if you feel like it’s time to think about how well your brand is connecting with your intended audience, let’s talk. I would rather help you than fill out this worksheet.

Photo by Patrick Perkins on Unsplash

How to make a brand resilient? Embrace change.

Around here we think a lot about change. Working with clients to create new iterations of products and brands, we are up to our elbows daily in looking at the process, and whys, the challenges, ways to make it more palatable, ways to inspire embracing the difference between where a brand or a person is now and their ideal vision of themselves in the future.

Yet every day in our own lives, we find ourselves bracing against change, looking for small ways to avoid it because let’s be real, the idea of constant change is disturbing.

Small amounts of change can feel refreshing, like entering a newly painted room or taking a weekend trip to a place with a higher altitude, or more sunshine than you’re used to. So how do we balance the need for stability and the need to remain open to small shifts? Small shifts that enable us to stay plugged into the world around us, but not overwhelmed? Shifts that allow us to emerge and grow into our best selves without feeling like we’ve changed so much we’re unrecognizable?

I remember a few times in my twenties being asked to house, baby, or puppy sit. I’d say yes because the idea of stepping out of my own life for a few days or a week intrigued me. Sometimes I not only lived in someone else’s house, but I drove their cars – think baby seats and dog hair. Living in someone else’s house and driving their car was delightful. I was fully immersed, dwelling in another person’s home, reading their books, cooking with their pots, and trying their spices. One time it involved borrowing a shirt, (think babies who spit up) but mostly I stayed away from wearing their clothes. That seemed like a boundary line inappropriate to cross, unlike using their soap in the shower and their shampoo. Pretty much I was still me, but everything around me was theirs.

I loved it. Until I was ready to go home again.

Going home after one of those visits allowed me to see my world with new eyes. It helped me discern what I wanted to keep and create more of and what I was ready to part with.

So how does this apply to work? To brands? Clearly, a brand cannot try on the trappings of another brand for a weekend. Or can it?

When we work with clients on content planning, we look at the competition. We look at who the competition follows and who they are followed by. We look at their hashtags. We sift and sort and learn from what they are doing. We go back to what we are doing, shift where appropriate, test and measure results. We continue to make small changes, aligned with our brand core, and watch what transpires.

Regardless of whether we wish to evolve our brands, or ourselves, the world is evolving around both constantly. Eventually, if we want to keep playing, we must confront change and find a way to participate.

And when we do this, we first remind ourselves why we do this. We do this because it would be our avocation if it weren’t our vocation.

So before you feel overwhelmed by the idea of change, first allow yourself to feel the joy that comes from feeling plugged in, listened to, alive, and understood. Then marry this feeling of joy and connection to the process of evolving. And then take the first step to assess where you wish to go from here and what needs to happen first to get there.

And if you’d like a partner to walk through the process with you, to guide you, and encourage and inspire then we are right here.

Our Process + You = The Process

Frequently we are asked, “What is Seed Agency’s process? How do you work?”

In answer, we share a narrative of the steps we take, successfully working through a project from point A to point Z.

But since the most recent share, the question remains in my mind, some part of me not satisfied. “Why?” I wondered, “Can my mind not let this go?”

And thus, I walked, I talked with team members and current clients, a past client, a smart neighbor.  I might also have had too many cups of coffee and bars of chocolate while pondering.

The question is like someone asking, “How do you walk?”

Because our process of creating a new brand or reimagining an existing one has been honed over years of doing. But not thinking about or articulating the doing outside of the vernacular and jargon we toss around in the office, or in Zoom calls. We began to rethink how to articulate how we see our process. We added and subtracted. Putting down initial ideas,  building on those, or taking away, adding more in again, sculpting, then stepping away.

By stepping back, viewing the question from a metaphoric 30,000 feet across a variety of industry categories, client types, not to mention personalities, a new view emerged.

We have our core approach, which is structured, methodical, tried and tested, but depending upon the client and the project, the approach is like a stretchy net, a structure that can be wielded to accommodate the needs of the client we are working with and the problem we are working to solve. It is structured and it is flexible. It is somewhat different in form and experience for every client and project we encounter. Like any relationship-based activity, the dynamic is slightly different every time. But good different.

The most important part is that our process is proven. As evidenced by the success of countless projects small and large, we create greater awareness, engagement, and ultimately value for our clients. For that, we are grateful, gratified, but also, just because, excited to experience the evolution of the process as we continue to be challenged by our clients and ourselves.

 

2022 Planning: Gen Z by the Numbers

One of the most crucial aspects of content creation for any brand is knowing your audience. Once you know who your audience is, where they hang out and the challenges they face, you can create engaging content, and share it where your audience lives. Seems simple enough. But how well are you balancing the audience you have now and the audience you’ll have in the near future?

Here are some reasons to consider how the Gen Z-audience figures into your content and creative strategy planning for 2022:

Gen Z currently comprises 70 million people in the US, with a combined spending power of $150 billion.

Defined as those born from 1997 to 2015 Gen Z shoppers now range in age from 6-24. Despite their young age, they number about 70 million in the US with a combined spending power of $150 billion.

Companies should expect Gen Z to hold their feet to the fire when it comes to social causes.

“For the last several years, the most important social cause to Gen Z has been combating climate change or protecting the environment. However, this year our research revealed a rapid shift where racial equality and social justice jumped to the top spot,” Jason Dorsey writes in MarketWatch. “This trend looks likely to continue given the emotional connection to the generation, and will have a big impact on brands, companies and investing — such as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) — for decades to come.”

79% of Gen Z is willing to engage with a brand that could help them make a difference.

That initial engagement can lead to long-term loyalty.

77% of Gen Z shoppers say shopping online allows them to buy products from new or small companies they couldn’t find in stores, vs. 65% of other age groups.

While 54% of consumers still haven’t bought something they saw on social media, nearly 60% of Gen Z have done so.

28% of those have made purchases on TikTok. 43% on Instagram, 35% on search engines like Google or Yahoo, 15% on ecommerce-only sites like Amazon or Etsy, and 14% on fashion or trend websites.

What’s with all the numbers you ask?

While we are a creative company first, we use data and information to ensure that the messages we create can connect to your intended audience. Without data or strategy, creativity is fine art. At Seed Agency, we love the challenge of crafting art built on thoughtful strategic planning.

Are you looking to refine your brand strategy to reach new or emerging audiences? Let’s talk.

 

Source:  How to Cultivate Loyalty with Next Gen Shoppers, The Robin Report

Maintaining an on-brand message during a crisis.

Due to unavoidable built-in wiring that comes installed free in all humans, we will each at some point during a time of crisis, be overcome by the part of our nervous system that in an effort to protect us, shuts down everything we don’t need in an emergency. Despite how much we might wish to use them, while in “fight or flight” mode, triggered by stress, panic, or surprise, our brains will be momentarily closed for decision making.

With a few slow, deep breaths, your brain will kick back into gear. And with it your ability to think wisely about how to proceed with creating the necessary messaging to communicate with your teams, partners, vendors, and most importantly, customers.

Four things to keep in mind while you navigate communication during a pandemic, that will serve you always:

 

Empathy: We are all experiencing a loss of some sort. Keep this in mind while you frame your intended message.

Information: There are so many rumors and so many rules, it is hard to keep the facts from the assumptions right now. Stick to what you know, keep it as brief as possible, share the most crucial information each type of audience needs from you, in the simplest form.

Optimism: We are bombarded by bad news on a normal day, let alone during a pandemic. Unfortunately, this causes more stress on the nervous system and consequently more stress on the immune system. Incorporating positivity and forward-looking optimism into your message is one way to support the health and wellness of your tribes, at no cost to you.

Consistency: When you know someone well and have a sense of comfort and fondness in your established relationship it is shocking when one day that person shows up with a totally different hairstyle or accent, or tone of voice. The same is true for your brand. In any message you are sharing, stay true to your aesthetic – the visual side of your brand, your color palette (or lack of one), and the language you use to communicate. The more you look and sound like yourself while sharing information, the more normalcy, comfort, and possibility for connection you bring.

For more information about how to create compelling and on-brand messages during a crisis or anytime, send us an email at hello@seedagency.com We’d love to help.

Our approach to creating relatable brands for our clients.

Q:

Does our logo look tired? Can you tell us how we should update it? Is the orange still relevant? Is the typeface dated? Is the icon working?

A:

If we answered these questions before asking many more first, we would be referencing our ideas of what is valuable, relevant, and interesting. Those answers would be about us, not about you, your customer or the true value you represent and therefore, they would be wrong.

If that was our process, we recommend you fire us.

Your questions need answers that come from looking more deeply at who you want to have a conversation with. Who do you serve? How do you serve them? What is the most important way that your service improves their life? How are you serving them vs. the competition? What insights and additional questions come from asking these questions? And so on.

The answers can reveal which services your customers need and value, and which may need to change, a little or a lot, to better meet customer’s true needs and practices as well as revealing clues as to the best way to speak to your customer so that they can hear you.

The world changes with ever-increasing speed. Thus, the way you talk to people, the reasons you think they work with you or buy from you and the narratives and media channels you use all benefit from consistent, periodic evaluations.

Pop Quiz

Who is using your product? What are their 3 biggest stressors daily? 

Why and how do your customers choose and use you?

What are you doing now that positively impacts your customers lives that your competitors are not?

And how is that message reaching your customer? 

If you haven’t considered these questions in a while, we can help you through the process.

And from there, we can talk about the color of your logo.

At Seed Agency, we help clients navigate their brands through an ever-changing landscape of customers, behaviors, media platforms and data. If you need a partner in better navigating toward your own north star, we are here to help.

 

Man plans. God laughs. Plan anyway.

They say that when man plans, God laughs. We find it wonderful to make people, and if possible deities laugh, so we plan.

We also find that if we don’t plan, we are super busy all day, but in the end, find it hard to measure just what we accomplished with all of that busy-ness. So, we set goals, create action plans, look back to see what worked and what didn’t work and use that insight to adjust and keep going forward.

In the midst of the holiday frenzy of parties and shopping, light shows, and end of year ‘best of’ lists, we are stopping for a moment and asking ourselves a few questions to help get 2018 off on the right foot. In our Girl Scout-inspired spirit of preparedness, we offer this list of things to ponder, as you get ready to kill it in 2018.

Winning: What marketing initiatives and events went right or better than expected in 2017? For each of those wins, name three decisions, actions, or people responsible.

Learning: What didn’t go as planned? What ideas failed? What were three things learned from those failures?

Change: In what areas do you plan to grow or change in 2018? And how will this set of changes solve problems that your customers or stakeholders struggle with now?

Actions: What are 3 action steps must be taken for you or your team to successfully make these changes? And what lessons from number two can you apply as you create your plan of action?

Assessment: How will you measure the effectiveness of the changes you are making? And how often will you measure?

Time: What timeline are you giving yourself and your team for putting these changes into place?

Partnership & Cookies: Who can be your partner in planning, mapping, strategically thinking about, taking action and achieving your goals? Who will hold you accountable to your timeline and pick up the slack or play cheerleader when you or your team are overwhelmed? That is the easiest question of all. Us!

Wishing you the joys of the season and a spectacular new year.

Small opportunities to make big connections with customers.

How do you ensure that your brand and all that it stands for radiates out memorably to all who come in contact with you, your space, your services and your people? There are infinite touch-points to consider but let’s start with one that is easily overlooked: Passwords.

When guests arrive, settle in and ask, “Do you have wireless?’ or “What is your password?” This is an opportunity to not only provide a helpful amenity but also to convey something positive about the personality of your brand. What does your password do to help your messaging?

In 2016 I visited Copenhagen, a city that amazed me by the kindness of its people, innovative and efficient systems of travel and transportation and an almost indescribable sense of impish whimsy and joy beneath the surface. At one hotel, when plugging in for an afternoon lobby work session, the password was simply “Welcome!”, which, despite its simplicity and perhaps obviousness, made me smile and feel just that, welcome.

Later in the week, starving and a little damp after getting lost on my trusty hotel bike, I ducked into a restaurant a few minutes before closing and was excited to get a seat. The server was quick to share the specials as he placed utensils and the many dining accessories one never knew one needed before me. Along with a few delicious oysters and a glass of crisp wine, he met my question about wireless with a simple, “Yes you can.” which was both the answer and the password. I loved the place instantly.

How do you want your customers to feel when they walk into your space? How are they greeted by you, by your staff? What small but simple things can you do to make them feel welcome and as at home and at ease as possible? What warm and clever way can you add to their experience and leave a lasting and positive impression?

A look at your wireless password is an easy place to start.