When we talk about branding, many would immediately begin thinking about how it works in relationship to the sales cycle and staking a claim in the consumer marketplace. But what about the human resources marketplace?
We all understand how vital our staff is to our success, not only in their skillset, but also their fit with the company’s culture. Having recently made two new hires at G/L, this has been top of mind for us lately. So when we saw a new study from Hinge Research that showed that 73% of professionals place the utmost importance on a clearly defined and articulated company culture, we weren’t surprised. But it definitely got us thinking.
A company’s culture permeates everything they do: from the work they produce to the way the company grows and moves forward in their overarching plan. So why not articulate this in your branding? In the same study, around half the people surveyed cite the ability to attract candidates as the most important element of an employer’s brand.
Both our company culture and our work are tied directly into Making It Mean Something. Not only is it our north star internally, but it is branding that clearly communicates to both potential employees and clients what we are all about here at G/L. Sure, the work matters more than anything else. But putting ourselves into a position to create great work is a result of using our brand to attract the most talented people who work together seamlessly, along with clients who understand the long-term importance and ramifications of everything we do.
Everything we do, we Make It Mean Something for our clients. And everyone here at Geile/Leon is pulling in the same direction to achieve that. That’s how great branding works. It’s the megaphone on the rowboat to let us all know when to row, that way we can go further and faster than we would simply by paddling at our own pace and our own discretion.
Have you thought about how potential employees view your company? Does your brand properly reflect your culture? Or is it holding you back in building the staff you need to realize your vision? These big-picture discussions are what gets us really excited at G/L, so get in touch so we can talk about building an all-encompassing brand for you.
One of the reasons we continue to do great online video work despite the pandemic is because we’ve put into place safety protocols to keep our production crew and our clients safe.
As the world continues to adapt to new work environments in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, we saw many wonder what the future held for both content marketing and for business as usual. However, our Return on Empathy™ campaign helped shine a light on these answers. And our Chief Brand Strategy Officer Tim Leon put these ideas into practice in his accompanying social media video series.
The idea behind Return on Empathy™ is that now more than ever is the time to listen closely to your customers and communities you serve. And when it comes to creating online video, understanding how to effectively engage your customers is a result of truly understanding your customers and what they value in your brand.
And that comes from empathetic listening.
Through this series of LinkedIn videos, Tim saw a big jump in engagement, with video views far exceeding our targets. Not to mention the conversation it started. And while we throw the word “conversation” around liberally in the marketing world, this heartfelt messaging did spark it.
Of course, we were working from home at the time, so there was no way we could manage a studio setup. Or even much by the way of lighting. However, we understood at the time that people were not seeking out high production value or giant promises of “the top 10 secrets to pandemic success.” People wanted honesty and a roadmap that may not have been always easy to execute, but is easy to understand.
So with this in mind, Tim pulled out his iPhone and hit record. Then the G/L Content Studios editing team got to work packaging up and turning it around within a day. Since Tim was discussing current events and trends, so time was of the essence. It seemed like huge news was breaking every second for weeks on end, so our nimble production process helped seize upon the moment to talk about current events while they were still…current.
Of course, the answer for online video isn’t for every company’s president to pull out their iPhone and go to town. The point is that effective marketing is based upon gaining a deep understanding of your audience, planning carefully and then determining the best way to communicate your message effectively and timely.
We believe that the businesses that displayed an empathetic attitude towards their customers during the pandemic are the ones that positioned themselves for long-term success. But empathy doesn’t have to (and shouldn’t) stop there. If we can inject it into everything we do, then we build a solid foundation for long-term success in our marketing strategy.
If you would like to learn more about how to build an online video strategy that deeply resonates with both current and future customers, get in touch. We’re always happy to listen.
Now is an unprecedented time for businesses. Of course, we’ve been saying that since March at least. But at least now optimism mixed in with all the uncertainty. However, when it comes to opening back up for business, you can’t just sprint out of the gate. You have to move slowly and safely.
And maybe you have an idea about how you want to proceed. But no matter how meticulously you’ve planned your reopening, your plans don’t matter if they don’t align with your customers’ expectations.
Before you do anything else, you MUST take your customers into consideration.
Finding the Right Fit
Our client, Club Fitness, is a great example. As a gym with locations across the region, they are already under more scrutiny than most businesses. Regardless, their core mission is based on Lifting Local with a focus on healthy, happier lives. And that mission permeates everything they do, which means listening to their members and giving them the experience THEY want when they open their doors again.
Because of this core mission, when they began considering what their reopening would look like, they opened the floor to their customers with surveys and research with regards to what their members wanted to see upon reopening.
The result? They’ve taken extra precautions to ensure their members’ safety, from the moment they enter their club, throughout their workout and even when they leave. Club Fitness has gone above and beyond CDC recommendations to ensure they don’t just open, but they open their doors to the experience their members want.
The Beauty of Listening
Additionally, hair salons are high contact by their very nature. That makes it difficult for our client, Fantastic Sam’s. And since they have franchises throughout many different counties and municipalities, they abide by different guidelines. However, they made it a priority to listen to their customers tell them what they wanted to make them comfortable beyond what the law requires.
So we worked in tandem with each salon owner to perform in-depth research to discover what their customers were seeking in a post-COVID salon experience. CDC guidance, for them, is a baseline, but going beyond to give their customers the experience they want means that they can not only keep them safe. That makes them especially prepared to overcome the hesitance we all feel when it comes to going back into public.
First and foremost, your business must follow CDC and government guidelines to the very letter of the law. However, when it comes to reopening, your plan better include listening carefully to your customers and acting with empathy. You may have your own ideas about how to do it, but what your customers want you to do could be totally different.
If you need help strategizing your reopening plan or creating a questionnaire for your customers so you can gain a deeper understanding of exactly what their expectations are, then get in touch. We’ve got decades of experience in customer insights and can put it to work for you now, when it matters more than ever.
The world has been turned upside down by the COVID-19 crisis, and every industry had to adapt to new circumstances to survive. What does that mean for the future of your business? Digital sales will undoubtedly play an increasingly bigger role in your marketing success.
McKinsey and Company, the global management consulting firm, is reporting major changes in the way that B2B buyers and sellers interact as a result of the crisis, and savvy companies are changing their go-to-market strategies to adjust to these changes.
McKinsey believes that we are at a digital inflection point, where B2B sales operations going forward will look fundamentally different from what they were before the pandemic.
One very relevant finding….looking forward, B2B companies anticipate digital interactions to be two to three times more important to their customers than traditional sales interactions. During the crisis, digital sales played a crucial role and increased dramatically as in-person and field team sales dramatically declined. McKinsey reports that these B2B model changes are very likely to be significant and long-lasting.
McKinsey found that buyers are now expecting a B2B purchasing process at least as convenient and robust as those that they experience in their personal digital shopping experiences.
B2B companies should address customers’ most pressing frustrations such as length of the ordering process, difficulty in finding products, technical glitches with ordering, confusing websites, a lack of information on delivery and technical support and difficulty setting up payments.
Other studies are backing up McKinsey’s findings that B2B buyers desire self-service functionality and better e-commerce experiences. As marketers navigate possible budget cuts and revise their plans for future go-to-market initiatives, they would be wise to address these issues. Luckily, we have a deep understanding of the user experience and consumers’ expectations and demands for their digital interactions with their brand. Get in touch with us to explore how we can transform your B2B brand’s online presence.
During this worldwide health crisis, brands should be communicating frequently with their customers and stakeholders. And even more importantly, listening carefully. Maximizing your Return on Empathy is crucial right now, and communication is a large part of that.
However, when it comes to crisis communications, nobody’s getting an A for effort. It’s NOT the thought that counts. People will hang on your every word and find deeper meaning in any ambiguity or thoughtless turn of phrase. It’s imperative that leaders and marketers take great care in choosing the right words.
In times like these, your words will be remembered forever. Your words can engender loyalty and inspire people to come together to lift up each other. However, the wrong words can create a sour taste that, no matter what you do, may never go away. So when you choose your words, remember these three points.
Do not place blame or make excuses. Put the onus for progress on yourself.
This is the time for strong, clear directives. Provide an unwavering vision for how you plan to move forward. A plan with caveats, escape hatches and ambiguity is unlikely to be taken seriously at best…and destined for catastrophic failure at worst.
Ensure that your customers, employees and stakeholders know that you have accounted for them and you have a plan in place moving forward. It’s not always going to be a happy message or a best-case scenario. But your upfront honesty and empathy will prove to be the best long-term strategy.
Do not tell people what to do. Inspire them to do it.
There’s a reason why we’ve all heard the saying, you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. Effective leaders do not provide commandments and speak from an authoritarian position. They provide the inspiration to achieve. They speak to their audience respectfully, giving them the facts and the framework for a plan.
An empathetic leader motivates, appeals to passion and lets others share in the credit for successfully executing a plan. They provide the map and empower you to reach new heights. Instead of giving you fish, they teach you to fish. Dig deep into your empathy and understanding. You will find that it is the glue that unites us all.
Do not mislead or misdirect. Speak and act in a forthright manner.
This seems obvious, of course. However, sometimes leaders in a time of crisis can lean towards ambiguous communications. And the thing is, it doesn’t come from a malicious place. When our situation is constantly changing and our understanding of the health crisis is constantly evolving, it’s natural to not have all the answers. Plans may have to change. And sometimes leaders don’t have all the answers.
However, an empathetic leader can communicate these things. Your audience will be grateful to know that you are still actively seeking new information and solutions. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Nobody expects that.
Constant communication, empathetic listening and ensuring that everyone remains abreast of the latest developments may not bring certainty, but it will certainly engender trust. During a crisis, leaders who contradict themselves or speak with bravado only to be proven wrong will breed uncertainty and create mistrust. And once you lose the trust of your customers and your organization, it can be difficult (if not impossible) to regain.
Now is the time for strong leaders, but also leaders who are thoughtful. Your marketing, PR and communication efforts must reflect that. There’s no cure-all here, but true leaders rise to the occasion. You undoubtedly have a vision. We can help you communicate it. Get in touch and we can discuss how you can benefit from approaching your communications with one important metric – Return on Empathy. It can lead to increased customer and employee loyalty which is invaluable to a brand.
It’s a simple fact right now: whether it’s business or play, we’re going to be doing it online. So where on social media is your audience social distancing? Other than online video conferencing services, of course, because that’s a no-brainer to businesses at this point.
But when it comes to reaching your target audience, consistent and transparent communication is an essential tool for brands to survive the crisis and thrive when it is over.
A recent study from Marketing Charts discovered where to find some difficult-to-reach audiences. Here are the key takeaways:
When Marketing Charts performed their study, they discovered that LinkedIn was the most-used social network for households earning over $100k. If that shocked you, then welcome to the digital age!
However, what really is surprising is that the second-most-used network for those affluent households is Snapchat. Turns out, Snapchat’s easy-to-use messaging and visually oriented updates resonate with anyone. Good design is good design no matter who you are, and so it’s spread shouldn’t be surprising. Although, to be honest…we were surprised.
While we don’t think Snapchat is the be-all, end-all solution for every brand out there, this does illustrate a good point. Keep an open mind when it comes to your content marketing strategy. It may take you to unexpected places and lead to pleasant surprises.
Radio Has Reach
Another interesting finding? Radio has always provided reach, but internet radio can reach further than traditional broadcasts. And it also is reaching the ears of a traditionally very-difficult-to-reach demographic: the Hispanic population.
The Marketing Charts study determined that Hispanic people are 21% more likely to listen to internet radio in a given month than the rest of people online.
Considering that Hispanic people are under-indexed in any other media channel, this is quite interesting. Especially since we are all spending extra time tuning in to our preferred entertainment channels these days.
Newspapers and Magazines Still Matter to the Middle Aged
While many people may be following their social media feeds for updates, middle aged people are still spending a lot of time reading the websites of their favorite print publications. In fact, the 35-44 age bracket is 30% more likely than any online adults in other age brackets to visit a website for a newspaper or magazine in a given month. This is up from 18% in 2018.
(And I guess my digital subscription to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch really dates me, huh?)
Additionally, the 45-54-year-old age bracket is 18% more likely than other demographics to visit newspaper and magazine websites, as well.
Your messaging really matters in times like these. Now more than ever we need to Make It Mean Something. But what you say only matters if you manage to get it in front of the people who need to hear it. Get in touch and we can help you find the best way to deploy your messaging.
At the advent of online video, many marketers realized that viewer engagement was difficult. So we began thinking differently than we would for a medium, like television, where the viewer had to pay attention…until DVR came along, that is.
But the thing about evolution is that, well, it keeps evolving. Now we have skippable ads, a loose definition of “broadcast” television, and an increasing amount of online video viewers on mobile devices. So how do brands engage viewers?
It’s easy. All you have to do is make sure you get your CTA, branding and engaging content out in front of the viewers…sometimes in two seconds or less.
Funnily enough, this goes back to the 2009 Super Bowl when Miller High Life ran a series of 2-second ads. When this guerilla ad buy worked out splendidly for our beer brewing brethren to the north, marketers of all stripes took note.
Now we’ve taken these lessons we learned and applied them to another medium where we have to capture viewers’ attention quickly: online video. Whether you’re waiting for the “skip video” button to pop up or scrolling through your feed, that video has to capture your attention immediately to have fighting chance.
No more saving the CTA for the closing credits. Less mystery. Less intrigue. Fewer slow burns, more quick hits. You’ve got two seconds to accomplish your campaign’s goals.
Of course, it’s not as much of a desperate plea for attention as it sounds. All it takes is an understanding of how visual storytelling and copywriting work together. How to make your CTA feel fun, not forced. How to deserve attention, not demand it.
And that’s what we do at G/L Content Studios. Do you need to get viewers’ attention? We can do it…quickly. Get in touch and let’s see how we can do it.
By now, it’s hard to be a person alive in the world and be unaware of the Coronavirus. We’re not here to talk about illnesses and pandemics. There are scientists, doctors and experts who know far, far, FAR more about…you guessed it…science than we do. However, Coronavirus has spilled into our area of expertise, and that’s what we’re talking about at the G/L offices lately.
We’ve been seeing all the jokes about Coronavirus and Corona beer on Twitter. A personal favorite: “I prefer my Coronavirus with a twist of Lyme disease.” However, turns out that it’s not all jokes. Some people are quite serious. In fact, according to a survey of American beer drinkers conducted by PR firm 5WPR, 38% said they would not buy Corona beer under any circumstances due to the spread of Coronavirus.
If you’re reading this, then there’s probably no need to explain this to you. But it is our professional obligation to point out that Corona beer is ONLY a tasty beach beverage. NOT a highly transmissible virus.
In an even more telling statistic, only 4% of regular Corona drinkers said that they would stop drinking Corona. But there is a not-insignificant 14% of Corona drinkers who will no longer order it in public. Meaning they know better…but they are still too ashamed to be caught with a Corona!
It makes sense. Sometimes you want to enjoy a frosty beer and not wade into a controversial topic. In fact, most people most of the time would like to keep beer and controversy separate. They’re on two opposite ends of the spectrum as far as we’re concerned. For evidence, joins us at beer:30 every Friday afternoon.
Which brings us to the heart of our discussion. Just because a brand is only very, very loosely connected to an adverse event or news story (or perhaps not even involved in the least) doesn’t mean that they can’t get swept up in it. That’s why we provide extensive PR and crisis management services to our clients through professionals who have been, seen that and weathered the storm. Get in touch and we can talk about how we can guide your brand through any storm.
It’s an exciting time for St. Louis and for G/L. Our advertisement for the Saint Louis Public Library is airing on all the local broadcast television networks. And the “Overdue? Get a do-over.” messaging is on billboards, busses and signage. We are really excited to see the results of the campaign. Of course, we want every client’s campaign to be successful, but this one really hits close to home.
For those of us in working in a creative capacity, it should be no surprise that our public libraries played a big part in our lives growing up. And it’s not only reading, video or learning opportunities. Not just the boundless possibilities to develop your creativity, imagination and critical thinking, all of which are essential to our day-to-day work here at G/L.
As we look forward to seeing how the SLPL going fine free entices our neighbors to use the local library (in fact, many of us signed up for library cards in the course of this work), we reflected on how the library shaped our future.
Anne-Marie, The Leader of the Readers
I’ve just always really liked to read. We didn’t have much money growing up, so my family didn’t have cable TV or video games.
I do remember that one of the first adult novels I read as a kid was All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot. I was probably in the first grade I think.
When ebooks started getting popular, I honestly didn’t think I’d like them at all…but now I can’t imagine going back to paper books. That’s what I love about being able to check out ebooks from the library. As a compulsive reader, it just wouldn’t be feasible for me to purchase all the books that I read. The library helps me feed my habit instantly— as soon as I finish one, I can check out and download another. Plus, I can read anywhere without carrying around a physical book.
I read about 55 books last year and about 75 the year before. According to my Kindle app, I’ve read for 575 days in a row. Not exactly sure what happened on July 30, 2018, but it doesn’t actually look like the data goes back any further than that. So it’s probably just when they started tracking it.
Ben Schwab, Senior Art Director and Videographer for G/L Content Studios
I do have a soft spot for memories of my mom bringing myself and my younger brothers to the Festus Public Library as kids.
I must have checked out Old Yeller half a dozen times… and not specifically for the movie itself, although I did run through it numerous times, but because it was one of those early VHS tapes that had a behind the scenes feature on it that explained how the film was cut and how the foley artists created the sounds in the film. Which is my earliest memory of realizing that movies are a thing that is created by people with an idea in their heads… making decisions/deceptions to tell a story. It’s something constructed.
That is probably the earliest spark I can recall experiencing for my interest in the work I do now. Not specifically video, but creation of things in such a way as to service story telling. It made me want to make things.
Grace Cohen, Junior Art Director
I remember going to the library in elementary school to check out books for my class projects. I loved searching the isles of books for the perfect resource to match my research project needs, but would always get sidetracked by the picture books and the various comfy places to cuddle up with my finds. No matter how rainy or dreary the weather was outside, the library was like a bright oasis.
Shawn Maher, Copywriter
As a child, my mom would always take my sister and me to the library at least once a week. The librarians would always make jokes about how many books we would check out (usually a few large grocery bags full of them) but we would always plow through them all. I would stay up late during the summer break reading every night and always carry a book with me wherever I went. It should be no surprise that the two children would become writers, with my sister’s first book coming out in May.
I fell in love with the written word and how it the slightest inflection, word choice and turn of phrase could have such a great impact on a reader. How storytelling is not so much about what you say, but what you don’t say and let the reader figure out for themselves.
Were it not for the library, I wouldn’t have felt as free to explore any book that caught my eye and would not discovered many styles of writing or subject matter. I wouldn’t have gained the thirst for discovering new subjects and finding new things to learn. And that is an essential part of being a copywriter: learning about new industries, new clients, new brands and volumes of new information.
The library is a great place to inspire creativity and lifelong learning. We are excited to help bring new generations into this invaluable public resource. If you don’t have library card, go get one! And if you do, then stop in and see what’s new at the library!
