I was driving I-95 north of Petersburg with no particular thoughts in mind when it came up behind me: a silver slyph of a car I couldn’t identify in the rear view mirror.  

As it pulled around to pass my yellow Ford Galaxie, I read the badge on its side:  Datsun 240Z, and watched hungrily as the new object of my desire eased ahead and then vanished in the haze that hung over Richmond.  I caught sight of the car once more, at a toll booth. 

Then it was gone.

Needless to say, I was smitten.  And immediately on returning to North Carolina I placed my order for one – that is, I added my name to the waiting list.  Then, as sure of himself as a young man can be, I waited with considerable lack of patience for my car to come in.

Six months or so later, the phone rang.  I arrived at the dealership to look at the car that could have been mine with a mixture of awe and disappointment, since I didn’t have the money to pay for it – just over $3,000, as I recall.  

A much older man today, I savor the memory of that young man’s moment.  Not the auto lust that arose at first sight of the car that day in Richmond but the decision moment that came later as real-life priorities asserted themselves, priorities that did not include borrowing money I didn’t have to buy a car I couldn’t afford – I’d done too much of that already.   It was time to settle down, and with that in mind, I no longer lusted after the Zs that flashed by me on the Interstate.

Now flash forward more than forty years to an article I came across about the “new” Datsun 240Z, a hope born in dreams that never totally got off the ground, although plenty of grown men with auto lust in their hearts seemed willing to spend themselves silly trying. 

It was the mid ‘90s.  Nissan, the Japanese car company known for a while in this part of the world as Datsun, had stopped production of their latest Z car iteration, and since a new one was still in design, decided to fill the gap with a bold and inventive marketing move.  

First step was to buy up all the ’70 and ’71 240Zs they could find that were in good enough shape to rebuild (primary from the desert states).  And the next step was to enlist the help of a handful of Southern California restoration shops that would dismantle and restore the cars – a process more akin to remanufacturing than restoring.  Every nut and bolt was either reconditioned or replaced, including interior parts, engine and transmission; only the brake pads, some suspension pieces and tires were upgraded to meet current code.  Nissan even supplied a plaque commemorating 26 years of the Z-car to be affixed to each “new” 240Z.

This time the price tag was $25,000, which increased to more than $27,000 before the project was abandoned after only 40 of 200 cars were produced.  Apparently there weren’t enough takers.  

Of course, I didn’t know anything about this in 1996 when the remanufactured cars were first offered for sale.   Good thing, because life at that moment did not offer any spare change for an indulgence like the authentic … lustworthy … new … silver … Datsun 240Z that Nissan would have tempted me to buy.  

It’s an amazing story.  (http://jalopnik.com/what-happened-to-all-the-datsun-240zs-nissan-restored-i-1583370936).   What's even more amazing, however, is how the image of that silver car from that day so long ago still lives in my mind.  But isn’t that what brand is about, whether you’re selling an alluring sports car or making the best strawberry jam on the planet?  

The most lasting brands are images.  They are ideas that stick to your being.  And will not be dislodged by anything short of calamity. 

Brand is experience writ large.  And for a few short years, Datsun got it right.

TakeAway:   Does your brand live in the minds of your prospects and customers?   If not, how can you make it that way?

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer
and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series,
on the air since 2003. 

You know the drill.  Whack yourself repeatedly over the head with a board, and if things work out the way you intended, you may soon find yourself in a slick new rental car grooving down the highway toward your out-of-town meeting or hideaway vacation spot.   Or … you could end up with a ride that pulls to the right and smells like last week’s tacos.

For many of us road-weary business types, the car rental process approaches legalized torture -- forget about waterboarding.  Try Alamo instead.   I did, on three trips to Seattle to see my daughter and her family.   I don't recall why I chose Alamo but began to regret the decision almost immediately.

Alamo turned out to be the only rental car company that didn’t have a counter at Sea-Tac, and that still may be the case for all I know.  Instead, we were directed to the parking garage where humidity hung in the air like doom and where we had to follow a series of yellow lines past all the other rental companies’ cars to an office hidden in the far back corner – while dragging a huge sea of baggage along behind us.  The fancy automatic check-in machine didn’t work, so we (that is, I) joined the line with other similarly-entangled Alamo “customers” to wait our turn.

The clerk was great, however, filled with personality and can-do spirit -- despite the late hour and clearly faced with someone who’d arrived at her counter with the vigor of a sweat-soaked sock and halfway short of breath.   She took care of the paperwork lickety-split and walked us out to our car.   Each time we returned to Seattle, we rented from Alamo for some strange reason – perhaps because we already knew how to find them (no sale there) but more likely because we hoped that same helpful young woman would be working, but it was not to be.

Alamo -- to their credit -- rose to the occasion once more but then totally and irrevocably blew it. 

Credit:  A drunken, uninsured young woman dressed to party lost control of her convertible on a narrow side street, slammed into a parked VW (reducing it to junk) and then careened across to our Chrysler 300 and neatly removed the driver’s side parking light before jumping from her car and weaving herself away down the street.   Oddly, the rental wouldn’t run after that, so Alamo sent a wrecker with a sub on the hook, exchanged cars without a hassle, and all was well.   Until later.

Debit:  The woman in the convertible proved to be less than a model citizen and Alamo’s recovery unit didn’t get a dime out of her.  So my insurance company (State Farm) paid up.  And then Alamo began hounding me and hounding me and hounding me for a $100 balance.  They were merciless.  The same collection guy (Steven) called so often we almost got to be phone pals, but no matter how positive the conversation, Alamo’s computer kept spitting out nasty notices.  They finally handed it over to a collection agency, which prompted me to pay it off.

Think of the goodwill Alamo could have purchased for that $100.  Now, when they invite me online to “Save $10 on an Alamo rental this weekend,” I sneer at the screen and threaten myself with serious injury should I deign do business with them again.

Now flash forward to last night, while scanning one of my favorite pre-sleep diversions:  Jalopnik, an oddly irreverent but entertaining web site about cars and car owners (tagline:  Drive Free or Die).   An article describing the top ten auto rental companies did not include Alamo.  Ha!

But it did introduce me to Silvercar, a disruptive industry upstart from Austin with a tagline that screams competitive advantage!   It also promises a novel and entirely unexpected experience:  Car Rental That Doesn’t Suck.

Silvercar only rents silver cars.  Audi A4s.  You reserve your silver A4 (generously equipped with all the digital doodads you need these days) via smartphone app.  Then you show up at your destination, unfortunately only Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Los Angeles and San Francisco so far, where you set off immediately in your A4 with ZERO hassle.  Or, if you’d prefer, you could hang out a while in a customer suite that’s been described as a cross between a W hotel and an Apple store.

“We want to do for rental cars what iTunes, did for music,” CEO Luke Schneider told Wired in a pr-launch (October 2012) interview -- he had been CTO with another paradigm-buster, ZipCar. 

Here’s the way Silvercar tells their story online:

“From reservation to return, Silvercar has re-imagined car rental.  What does that mean?  It means that we have worked hard to eliminate many of the hassles that have plagued this industry for years.  But we haven't just improved the car rental process; we have truly re-imagined what it could (and should) be. We like to think of it as bringing the "wow" back to car rental.  And we think we're onto something ... because at Silvercar, we don’t believe in ‘average’ or ‘sometime.’  We know you expect a world-class car, every time.”

Having only one car to choose from (everybody gets an upgrade) is pure genius.   And so is their gradual rollout plan – not to mention the fun they seem to be having building their business.  What other rental car company suggests that its customers strap a GoPro to their car, record their experience and post it to Silvercar’s zany Trunk Show blog?  Or has five favorite movie car chase videos posted on their Web site for people to watch?   Can you imagine Hertz or Avis doing that?

There are no lines and no hassles – even the old gas fill-up bugaboo has been done away with.  Your Silvercar mysteriously knows how much fuel you need and that amount is calculated and added to your bill automatically (at local pump prices plus five bucks).   The price seems right – about what you’d pay for a full-size rental with those other guys.   In short, Silvercar has nailed it in a business that’s been stuck on stop for a long time.

“The cars are great and the whole process is laughably easier than conventional rental car companies,” reads one happy reader testimonial.   So take that, Alamo!

As for me, I have but one question for Mr. Schneider:  When is Silvercar gonna show up at Sea-Tac?  

"Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought."
- Albert von Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Prize-winning Hungarian physiologist and co-discoverer of Vitamin C -

TakeAway:  A product that makes a clear and compelling difference in customers’ lives can disrupt and scatter its competitors.   If you have a competitive advantage like that, communicate it imaginatively and with gusto.
Tags:  Alamo, VW, Chrysler, Chrysler 300, State Farm, Silvercar, Audi A4

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner.

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer
and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series,
on the air since 2003.

Read the other day about Microsoft’s new retail store opening at New Jersey’s Garden State Plaza.  Like happens during the opening of new Apple stores, people lined up to be first on the scene – some even camping out in front of the place overnight.  

What attracted these ersatz Microsoft aficionados?

Was it Microsoft’s new Surface 3 tablet, nicknamed the laptop killer?  Surface is a powerful and versatile piece of gear for sure – and one I’ve thought seriously about buying.  But with only a 2% share of the tablet market, which is dominated by Apple’s iPad, it hardly has the makings of a tech celebrity.  

Or was it something else that attracted folks?  Could it have been a performance by rapper Macklemore and pal Ryan Lewis?   Could it have been the DJ on hand spinning the hits?  Or the prizes?  Or the million dollars worth of product donated to local charities?

It had to be the Surface!   Or the slick new Microsoft store!   Maybe even the magnetic attraction of the Microsoft name!

Now here’s a real surprise:  It probably was all those things.  

Microsoft gets credit for ginning up a successful event, but they’ve also upped the ante lately among tech buyers for having become “more trusted and essential across multiple generations,” according to Tracy Stokes of Forrester Research, as reported earlier this year by GeekWire.  “The very ubiquity that perhaps renders it uncool turns out to also be its strength,” he says in the article (Study Shows Microsoft Outpacing Apple in Battle for Tech Consumer Mindshare), in which Forrester called the company a “trailblazer” in building its consumer brand. 

Yes, Microsoft seems guilty of cranking up some artificial cool for their new store, the latest of 90 Microsoft retail outlets in operation – compared to around 250 U.S. stores for Apple and many more overseas.  But at the same time, the Microsoft brand seems to have risen to greater prominence recently than I’d ever imagined –  edging ever closer to cool, at least compared to the stodgy old Microsoft that’s been living inside my head.

Frankly, I thought the cool train had left the station for Microsoft and even snickered a bit to think that Microsoft had to resort to paying entertainers to draw a crowd.  I was mostly wrong. 

“An increased tablet presence would add to Microsoft's hip brand factor,” claimed the CNBC article about the store opening, “which often can be associated with Microsoft Xboxes.”

Despite this potential – and despite the accolades that have come Microsoft’s way recently (http://www.geekwire.com/2014/study-microsoft-outpaces-apple-battle-mindshare/), consider how the company describes itself in the “boilerplate” copy at the bottom of their press releases.  This example is from publicity announcing the launch of Microsoft retail stores for the 2012 Christmas selling season: 

The worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.   I’d call that “corporate relaxed.”

In contrast, here’s Apple’s boilerplate: 

Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software.  Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store.  Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.  

Apple's boilerplate is much longer, but it’s also filled to overflowing with what I call Marketable Truth©.

Time and again Apple has rocked the world with its innovative products.  And while many Windows-based devices may be equally as capable (in a different way), Apple has owned the mindshare with their Macs, iPhones and iPads.  But that’s changing … which is increasingly good news for Microsoft.

The truth is out there.  Now all they’ve got to do is claim it.

TakeAway:   When cool comes your way, communicate it for all you’re worth – in the context of product benefits, of course.

Tags:  Microsoft, Surface, Surface 3, Windows, Apple, Apple store, iPad, Mac, iPhone

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner.   Marketable Truth © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.  

I was mildly shocked to read today that Burger King’s perfectly serviceable 40-year-old Have It Your Way tagline has been chucked in favor of Be Your Way.   Turns out the old tagline actually has been retired for some time, apparently leaving the home of the Whopper taglineless for a while, which in the world of high powered fast food marketing is like arriving at the office half naked.  Although, in the interest of full disclosure, I was reminded in re-reading the source article that there had, indeed, been an interim tagline: Taste is King. 

Oh no!  Shades of the creepy burger king!

The company (or whoever it is they hire to come up with these creative gems) claims the new tagline is more “hip” and will remind would-be customers how “they can and should live how they want anytime.  It’s ok to not be perfect,” they note.   “Self-expression is most important and it’s our differences that make us individuals instead of robots.”

Ick.  Sounds like a forced paean to individualism, as if we have any trouble acting out our personal dramas here in the US of A anyway (and broadcasting them to the rest of the world on TV).  So maybe they should get one of those vacuous young blonde baubles like Paris Hilton to be their on-camera spokes-star.  The new tagline is not very memorable, either, whereas Have it Your Way rolls easily through the mind.  I had to keep looking back at the article to recall what the new one was.

Be Your Way.  Oh, yeah! 

“We want to evolve from just being the functional side of things to having a much stronger emotional appeal,” says Fernando Machado, Burger King’s senior vice president of brand management.  Since he’s relatively new on the job, I can imagine this guy driving by the local Burger King every day on the way to his old job with steam venting from his ears.

“I absolutely abhor that Burger King tagline!” he fumes to himself.  “And one day I’m going to do something about it!   Besides, that tagline may be older than I am …”

I forever wonder why some marketers change their taglines at all – G.E. for example.  We Bring Good Things to Life is one of the best taglines ever invented.   So is When It Absolutely, Positively Has to Be There Overnight – I think FedEx’s current tagline is Relax.  It’s FedEx.   Ugh.

Have It Your Way still works.  It refers directly to the food you can buy, particularly the choices of toppings at your disposal (a product benefit) – as opposed, one would guess, to the Have It MY WAY offerings of Burger King’s competitors.   The new tagline just goes off in space somewhere and is only a pale shadow of the slogan it replaces.

I think what bothers me most about the new Burger King tagline, however, is its artificial cool, its slithery attempt to fit into today’s social schema.  Did the execs that finally signed off on the thing dance down the hallway in creative bliss when the Aha! moment hit them?  Or did they slump in their chairs and sigh in collective relief that some decision -- any decision -- finally had been reached?

You decide.

TakeAway:  If it ain’t broke, don’t bust a gut trying to fix it.  And puleeze!   Don’t try to be cool if you’re not.

Tags:  tagline, taglines, Burger King, Have It Your Way, Be Your Way, G.E., FedEx
Content © by Brian Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for clients over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.  

This morning, an article about The 7 Bad Habits of Entrepreneurs popped up on LinkedIn, authored by one of my LinkedIn connections.   The headline caught my eye, and the content sounded familiar.  I’d read it before.

Four days ago, essentially the same piece had dropped into my email in-box – with a slightly different headline: The 7 Bad Habits That Will Hurt Your Voice Over Career.  Author and voice over artist Dan Hurst had adapted Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to his own purposes, and it had caught my attention twice in less than a week.   http://danhurst.com/posts/7-bad-habits-of-struggling-entrepreneurs

Dan and I seem to have two things in common:

1.  We are both voice over artists with tons of experience (one of only a few hats I wear comfortably).

2.  We both understand the need to communicate competitive advantage in a clear and compelling way – which requires an unusual degree of self-awareness (most often learned by thrashing your way down that hard road people talk about all the time) and brutal objectivity.  It seems especially true of lone-wolf types like consultants and voice over artists but likely rings equally true in your business as well.

“It’s important to see yourself for what you really are,” writes Hurst, “but that needs to be tempered by really understanding how your clients view you.  The right voice is like choosing the right oil color for a painting. Ok, fine.  You’ve got the right color, but it’s more about what you do with that color that counts.”

In the consulting business (in positioning any business or product for that matter), it’s imperative to understand how you make a difference to customers and clients.  Why should they want to inquire about your services or buy what you’re selling?   Can you express that in a very few words -- a convincing tagline?

On the consulting side of my business, I am a Key Messaging Expert.  I help clients come up with words to Attract The Customers You Want Most.   In voice overs, I am The Natural Choice known for my “Mercedes delivery.”  Dan Hurst is One of America’s Most Experienced Bi-Lingual Voice Over Talents whose English and Spanish voice overs are “smooth and powerful.” 

In assessing what I call the Marketable Truth© of your business, brand or product (even if your business is just you), it’s critical to know what standard you’re comparing yourself to.  Dan puts it perfectly:  It’s all about “knowing the difference between good, better and great.  Good is based on the market standard.  One isn’t even competitive until one is good.  Better is stepping beyond good to get noticed.  But great is what the client chooses.”

All too many marketers (not limited to voice talents and consultants by any means) are content with communicating “pieces and parts” – we do this or we sell that -- without reference to the benefits they bring to a world that’s all too willing to reward mediocre positioning with mediocre results. 

“I don’t want to hire someone that ‘can do’ something,” Dan Hurst concludes.  “I want to hire someone who excels … who owns the element that I’m looking for.”

TakeAway:  Don’t be content with selling GOOD.  Or even BETTER.   Sell GREAT!    And communicate your greatness in terms that make a big difference for your customers or clients.

Marketable Truth and content © by Brian Faulkner.

Tags:  7 Habits, Steven Covey, Dan Hurst, Mercedes

Brian Faulkner is a Key Message expert.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a three-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.
His distinctive voice overs have been heard on many hundreds of radio spots and client projects since way back in 1966.  People say he sounds a bit like Charles Kuralt, which Brian considers a welcome but happy illusion.

www.faulknerproducerservices.com

 

 Heard an interview on NPR the other day with an author who suggests in his new book that “leaders should eat last.”   In other words, put your people first and you will rise to greatness on their shoulders.

An atmosphere of trust and cooperation can be set within an organization, claims Simon Sinek, a former adman who has transformed himself into a speaker and writer on inspired leadership, including Start With Why: How great leaders inspire everyone to take action and the book he was touting on NPR, Leaders Eat Last: Why some teams pull together and others don’t.    

“Leadership sets the tone,” Sinek said during the interview, by establishing a “circle of safety” in which trust is paramount and people do not get sacrificed in favor of numbers.  Ron Kaplan, CEO of Trex, a manufacturer of outdoor decks, expressed a similar sentiment in a recent Sunday New York Times Corner Office column in reflecting on something his combat veteran father told him: “That the No. 1 job of a leader is to make the staff feel secure.”

Sinek concurs in counseling leaders to put people first, much like the Marine Corps general he once observed waiting with his senior officers until their men had been served before joining the tail end of the chow line.   

Leadership, like quality, is tough to define.  Some say it’s simply the art of getting followers to go where you want them to go.  Leadership consultant Dusty Staub once told me that his father, also a military man, defined leadership a bit more abstractly. “Leadership is a simple task,” he said.  “It’s a lot like drinking water and whistling at the same time.”

Of course, writing about leadership is one thing. Doing it is another.  I know that from experience, by having come to grips with my own poor leadership skills as president of a small company and by observing over many years the leadership skills (or not) of the many C-level clients for whom I have consulted on communication issues.  It was fascinating to observe how a few of my president/CEO clients couldn’t be recognized on a walk through the company lunchroom while others could transform a walk through the plant into old-home week with handshakes and glad tidings all around.  Some clients wanted to lead but didn’t have the self-effacement to do so.  Others tried to be chummy but came across as clumsy and disconnected,.  

Are the most effective – and most trusted – leaders truly naturals?  

My personal observation suggests yes, that leadership is -- in great part -- an inborn quality that cannot readily be learned from reading books or listening to lectures.  The best leaders are like the truly gifted athletes you see whose performance has an almost effortless ease about it. 

I cite as example one particularly memorable client, who began a company almost quite literally in a closet of a parent firm.  His fledgling business grew rapidly and within a few years it had established itself as the national leader in a heretofore undisciplined business category.  They created a great brand that solidly addressed their customers’ needs, were excellent marketers and didn’t have to establish their own manufacturing plants.  But mostly, they had a superb leader who not only was able to dream big but wrap people into his vision of the future and inspire them to want to help him get there.  They were a tight team that worked hard and played hard.   They had a common cause.  They trusted one another.  And truly anything was possible as they forged a path into uncharted market territory.  When the leader left (given broader responsibility higher up in “corporate”), the thread of trust he’d established dissolved.  The new company president was a strong and capable manager (and certainly looked the part) but didn't have the the gift of leadership.   

In his radio interview, Sinek mentioned Costco as an example of a company that invests in its people – often at the expense of Wall Street.  I know little about Costco but can appreciate what he said about them.  Time after time, I have seen senior managers crash and burn in admirable efforts to inspire employees because they didn’t "make plan” and had to get tough or because corporate suddenly decided to ship some of their jobs offshore. 

“Leadership is an art,” Max De Pree once proclaimed in his powerful little book of the same name, the act of “liberating people to do what is required of them in the most effective and humane way possible.”

The covenant between leaders and their followers that he describes is very Christ-like, a self-sacrificial model of leadership that in these days – any days – is all too uncommon. 

TakeAway:  True leaders make it possible for others to succeed.  Hold onto these rare treasures with everything you’ve got.   

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Tags:  Leaders Eat Last, Simon Sinek, leadership, Ron Kaplan, Trex, Adam Bryant, Corner Office, Dusty Staub, Max De Pree, Leadership is an Art, Costco

Brian Faulkner is a content and strategic communication writer.  He helps clients come up with words to set their businesses, brands and products apart and attract the customers they want most.  His strategic insights, and the words that go with them, have made a significant, often immediate difference for client companies over many years.  He thrives on strategic communication problem solving, complex subjects, new ideas, concepts-as-products, challenging marketing situations and demanding deadlines.  His "sweet spot" is smaller to moderate sized consumer products, retail, service and manufacturing companies that may have struggled to find just the right words to position their business, brands or products to competitive advantage.

Brian also is a five-time Emmy award winning Public Television writer and narrator of UNC-TV’s popular Our State magazine series, on the air since 2003.