Pianos, especially grand pianos, have the misfortune to all look pretty much alike.  From ten feet away, it’s hard for most of us to tell the difference between one black grand and the next black grand.   The relatively uniform look from one instrument to another is what prompts makers like Steinway and Yamaha to emblazon their names on the sides of their concert pianos in very large letters, hoping that the audience’s eyes – not to mention TV cameras – will linger there a little longer.

Go to a piano store and lift the lid on a grand of any size. Unless you are a true piano aficionado, for whom even the slightest difference between instruments can be an endless source of amazement and delight, you will find a golden plate (or harp) crisscrossed by an array of bronze and silver colored strings contained within a hefty case that makes that instrument look a lot like the one next to it. However, pianos are anything but alike in tone and touch, the primary criteria pianists use to evaluate the world’s best instruments – mostly hand-crafted in Europe but also including two premier quality holdovers from piano’s so-called golden age in the U.S., Steinway & Sons and Mason & Hamlin.  

Even so, top-tier piano makers typically describe their products in technical rather than tactile terms. Surprisingly, hardly any differentiate their instruments by their tonal palette.   

“To most piano buyers and owners,” writes Larry Fine in his publication, The Acoustical and Digital Piano Buyer, “a piano's tone is probably its most important aspect, but also the most difficult to quantify or describe.”

“There’s only so much that words can say about piano sound,” agrees Eric Johnson, a Registered Piano Technician and piano industry veteran with an MBA from Cornell who has prepped and tuned pianos for “some really great pianist in some really great concert halls,” including Carnegie, Avery Fischer, Alice Tully, Detroit, Chicago, LA, and San Francisco.   (http://www.ericjohnsonpianos.com/ )

“Differentiating one piano from another is a tough thing,” he says, “which is why copywriters so often fall back on design and build processes and brand history.”

So how do piano makers communicate their performance difference?  Mostly they don’t, knowing that playing and listening to pianos is largely a subjective experience.  They’re confident enough in their products to leave praise about tone and touch to the players of their instruments, people who are not shy with their opinions and likely will have gone through an exhaustive audition process before selecting their piano.  The makers then reflect the experience of these brand advocates back to the marketplace, where future buyers will read or hear the accolades.

But words mean different things to different people.

“You can say one piano is bright and another is warm, one is powerful, another is lyrical,” notes Johnson.  “But that distinction is made in the mind of the player.  I see that every time somebody tries to describe some uniquely personal combination of tone and touch they want me to coax from their instrument.”

Of course, people purchase pianos for many reasons, including exotic veneers, intricate decorative work and prestige names.  But the deep difference between instruments truly becomes apparent when their 12-thousand or so parts begin to make music together. Until that happens, even the most lauded piano is just an expensive piece of furniture.  

The artists who make the music aren’t likely to mention how their piano’s hammers are made or point out whether the bridge cap grain runs vertically or horizontally.  But they can close their eyes and know what their piano sounds like.  They can hear it in their dreams … sometimes even before they find that “perfect piano.”

“It is uniqueness that I seek,” says acclaimed classical artist Valentina Lisitsa in praise of Vienna's famed Bösendorfer.  “Bösendorfer gives me a unique voice, unique palette of musical colors, unique tools to achieve my vision.”

Larry Fine describes Bösendorfer in more prosaic terms:  “Perhaps the world's most expensive piano inch for inch, Bösendorfer grands make an eloquent case for their prices. They are distinctive in both appearance and sound, and are considered to be among the finest pianos in the world.”

Emanuel Ax says this in praise of Steinway & Sons: "When one plays a Steinway, there is a warmth and nobility in the sound that is unequalled by any other instrument."

And here’s Fine’s take:  “Steinway pianos at their best have the quintessential American piano sound: a powerful bass, a resonant midrange, and a singing treble with plenty of tonal color. Although other brands have some of these characteristics, it is perhaps the particular combination of harmonics that comprise the Steinway's tonal coloration that, more than anything else, distinguishes it from other brands and gives it its richness, depth, and power.”

What is the marketplace saying about your business, brand, product or service?  

    > Do your customers or clients sing your praises?

    > Does what they have to say enhance or conflict with what you communicate in your tagline, marketing
       materials, advertising, positioning / capabilities videos and sales conversations?    

    > Do their words prompt others to want what you have, to experience your product’s performance for
       themselves? 

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, take a note from the world of high performance pianos -- and start listening.

TakeAway:  Customers can be your best brand advocates.  So can the people who write articles that your best prospects will read.  

Tags:  Steinway & Sons, Yamaha, Mason & Hamlin, Bosendorfer, Eric Johnson, Registered Piano Technician, Larry Fine, The Acoustical and Digital Piano Buyer, Valentina Lisitsa, Emanuel Ax

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner

Brian Faulkner is a content writer and 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.  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:

>  blogs to establish you as the knowledge source / authority in your business category
>  case stories that communicate your sales successes and invite prospect inquiry
>  testimonials that showcase customer / client satisfaction in 1-2 short sentences
>  positioning statements to guide business development & marketing
>  landing page copy to set your business or brand apart in a compelling way
>  tagline development to attract the interest of your most qualified prospects

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 sound has been heard on many hundreds of radio spots and client videos since the 1970s.  People say he has a "Mercedes voice" and sounds a bit like Charles Kuralt, which Brian considers a welcome ... but happy ... illusion.

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

 

Last month, an article posted on this blog about a 66-year-old Oregon packaging company and its revenue-generating products for the produce industry was sent by one of their sales reps to his prospects and customers.  

It worked! 

Before long, the company reported an increase in sales directly linked to the blog post.  (http://tinyurl.com/l3cw6cc) 

Then a produce industry trade magazine discovered the post, lifted quotes from it and published an article about the astonishing financial performance of the company’s Home-Toters® produce merchandising bags.  It’s too soon to measure the effectiveness of that happy outcome (if it can directly be measured at all), but as with any productive Internet content, the post (and its derivatives) no doubt will have other lives.

Content marketing is a relatively new term based on a time-proven concept:  if you come across an idea (content) you can put to work in your business, you’re likely to send it along to a colleague or friend who can use it in theirs.   They, in turn, will spread it further—perhaps to places you’d never imagined, like that produce trade magazine.   

“Salespeople love great content, because it’s an opportunity to reach out to customers and offer them something of value without asking for something in return,” says Frank Strong, a PR professional quoted today in The Content Strategist , an online publication about content marketing.  Strong calls people like the packaging company rep “potential content champions.” 

The key word in that phrase may be “potential,” because content marketing is only now beginning to take hold in business people’s minds (especially C-suite execs), and its strategic potential is practically unfathomable.  Even an old hand like Bill Marriott, executive chairman and chairman of the board of Marriott International, Inc., reportedly has taken to blogging after having been “evangelized” by an employee – he records his thoughts and depends on others to weave them into online content.  If you read Marriott’s blog, you’ll see it’s nothing more than good old fashioned storytelling. A good is example is his life-affirming post about “deciding to decide”.  (http://tinyurl.com/pxvnwf4  )

Anyone who’s read one of LinkedIn’s Influencer posts will have witnessed the appeal of content marketing.   “For the past couple of years, LinkedIn has been slowly and effectively doubling down on content,” writes Joe Lazauskas in The Content Strategist.  LinkedIn’s Head of Content Products, Ryan Roslansky, notes in the same article that LinkedIn Influencer posts "average nearly 31,000 pageviews and over 80 comments.”  People are no longer just trolling for job opportunities on LinkedIn, they’re increasingly looking to the business networking site for content that will help their businesses become more successful.

So why not you?

TakeAway:  Got a valuable business story to share?  Extend your reach through content marketing.

Content © by Brian E. Faulkner.

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.  

A guy from GoDaddy called me today.  That’s never happened before.   At first, I was suspicious.  What is he trying to sell?   Nothing, as it turned out, other than to offer help in renewing (or not renewing) three Web domains I have registered with them.  A helpful and altogether thoughtful gesture, I must admit – especially for a small change customer like me.

Heretofore, I’d not been all that impressed with GoDaddy.  

As an occasional user over the years, whether to add, renew or cancel a domain name, I have found their site uninviting, difficult to navigate and tricked out with product offers I didn’t need – and often didn’t even understand.  They assumed I had a degree of technical knowledge, which I do not.  To me a computer is an appliance, a tool:  turn the thing on, start working on my thing and that’s as far as I care to go.  Which is pretty much what I told Adam when he called.

We had a positive discussion.  As if Adam had any power to change things, I suggested that GoDaddy needed to reboot their marketing after having cranked up their visibility with the famously controversial GoDaddy Girls.  It’s time to position themselves more effectively to the vast, largely unaddressed portion of their potential market:  people like me, who would almost rather undergo a root canal than struggle with a tech-belabored Web site.  He said they were working on that, thanks to their relatively new CEO, Blake Irving.  

What actually IS GoDaddy? I wondered.   And what is Blake Irving up to?

A little wandering around on GoDaddy’s pleasantly refreshed, more accessible site revealed Web site building options, email services and online bookkeeping products in addition to domain registration.  There’s a new service called GetFound, which helps spread clients’ basic information across the Web and makes it easier for people to find them.  And now, WordPress blog hosting and management, which especially caught my eye as a blogger thinking about a hosting change. 

Comments posted to Blake’s Blog lauded GoDaddy's customer service (Adam is a terrific example, and they’re said to have 3,500 people just like him engaged in “customer care”).  And Wikipedia reveals the company to be staffed by true-believers with shared values, which makes them rightfully particular about who they host. 

So what would you do if given the opportunity to help elevate Go Daddy’s marketing?  

My first task would be to develop and launch a more strategically differentiated message.  I would answer the question, “What does GoDaddy do and how does it benefit me?” while maintaining their enviable 80% aided, 50% unaided brand awareness with ad buys during the Super Bowl, NASCAR races and other high visibility events.    I’d present some grounded-in-reality customer success stories that present tangible benefits to the great bulk of prospective customers who have yet to “tune in” to GoDaddy's wavelength or who have been put off by the tone of their advertising.  

After writing the previous paragraph, a modicum of online sleuthing showed me that GoDaddy already has shifted in that direction.  See their Super Bowl spot about the woman who quit her day job to start a puppet making business here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gf0vzLgF-OI .      

And according to the blogged transcript of a GeekWire Summit discussion he participated in last year in Seattle, ( http://blakesblog.com/?p=223 ) Blake Irving is a man with a plan that rings my bell and clearly should ring the bell of tomorrow’s GoDaddy customers.

The basis of GoDaddy’s move into the future is a 32-page strategic document that includes a “bigger than life” vision of “radically shifting the global economy toward small business.”  He described their target market as “1-5 people trying to turn themselves into a real business” and talked about changing the world for them.   In a more recent online article, the GoDaddy leader noted that 75% of U.S. businesses are sole proprietorships.  So the opportunity to add more paying customers to the 12-million-plus they already have is huge.

“Changing the world for small business” is a great example of a compelling Key Message that's extracted from a larger strategic document and used to communicate to the prospect base about -- and rally company culture around -- what now is possible. 

“We’re in a deep transformation of the company,” the GoDaddy CEO said.  “Who we serve, how we serve them, how we position ourselves, how our employees feel about themselves, about serving those little guys, is really different.  Our mission in the company is we help small business kick ass.

“It’s a quest, not a company.  Everybody’s leaning into this thing …”

Irving finished his GeekWire conversation by challenging the audience (and me) to check out the company’s Kick Ass Manifesto video online.  I did.  You should, too (see it below).  The only thing missing is that daring but powerful potential tagline:  We Help Small Business Kick Ass.

I deeply abhor edginess for edginess sake because so much of it is in-your-face tasteless, smug and self-serving, so I would pause when considering whether to include “Kick Ass” in my tagline -- and who knows how it will translate internationally.   But those six words are true.   “Kick Ass” will require some elaboration, but so do oft-used positioning words like “leader” and “world class.”   A less dramatic way of saying the same thing might be:

       GoDaddy Helps Small Businesses Build Their Dreams (incorporating their recent ad theme). 

I like taglines that make a bold statement and communicate Marketable Truth© -- in any language.  So, either way, I say go for it GoDaddy! 

TakeAway:  Develop a meaningful strategic vision that points your business toward the future.  Then extract a compelling Key Message from it that charges your team with purpose and makes the customers or clients you want most want to do business with you.    

Content and images © by Brian E. Faulkner unless otherwise noted.  All rights reserved.  

Tags:  Go Daddy, GoDaddy marketing, Blake Irving, WordPress, customer service, brand awareness, GeekWire, small business, vision, strategic vision, powerful tagline, taglines, Kick Ass Manifesto, Manifesto of Kick Ass

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.  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.  

There’s a lesson for small business marketers in the process Netflix used in deciding whether to produce “House of Cards.”   According to an article in the New York Times, it was clear that Netflix had a hit on their hands before shooting the first frame.  A more traditional media company would have invested in a pilot and tested it with focus groups before committing to a series.   Instead, tapping data from their 33-million worldwide subscribers, Netflix gauged audience preferences for director David Fincher, name-brand star Kevin Spacey and the British version of “House of Cards”, pointing toward the series’ success in advance.  (see: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/25/business/media/for-house-of-cards-using-big-data-to-guarantee-its-popularity.html?_r=2& )

The potential takeaway here for small businesses is Think first, do later, a discipline readily applied to any communication project.  Think first means asking strategic questions before moving forward with “creative”. 


·      Who will be reading or viewing your ad, brochure, video, etc. – and why?

·      What headline will most attract the eye and make people want to read more?

·      What information will pique their interest and engage their mind early in the first paragraph?

·      How will your product or service be positioned to their advantage?

·      What is unique or revolutionary about it?

·      How does it differ from prospect expectations – or competitors’ offerings?

·      How will your Key Message change people’s thinking about your product or service?

·      What action do you want readers or viewers to take – now or later?

Years ago, I collaborated with the president of an international consumer products company on a speech he was to give before a large group.  I don’t even recall the subject (assignments for this client typically were concerned with strategic visioning or the future).  What I DO recall, however, is finally realizing that out of that huge audience, he only wanted to influence a small handful of key people – inspire them to think a certain way and do certain things.  Armed with that information, I was able to not only hit help him the mark, but harvest tons of extra goodwill from the rest of his audience, many of whom took the time to ask for copies of my client’s speech.   

I have used the think first, do later concept a lot since then, primarily to slow down and focus clients who said they wanted this or that kind of communication project done but really hadn’t thought much about how they wanted people to feel, think or act when they viewed their ad, read their brochure or listened to their sales presentation.  It's like saying “We need a web site,” without having thought much beyond the notion that “We need a web site.”    You see the results all over the Internet: creatively attractive but strategically impotent web sites whose creators clearly have failed to ask the important questions up front.   You see the same thing in politics, where strategic questions with myriad long-term implications don’t seem to have been asked (or are ignored to serve ideological ends).    

But that’s a whole other story …

TakeAway:   Ask strategic, customer-centric questions before working on “creative.”  Build the answers into your content.      © Brian E. Faulkner

For related perspective, see http://www.brianefaulkner.com/key-message.html