How Tindering and branding are pretty much the same thing

I'm not old, but I'm not exactly young either. I still remember the times back in the day where you used to be able to do things like call a girl out of the blue. And I don't mean text, but actually speak to her on the phone. Or when you could send a bouquet of flowers to her house. Or pick her up at her house before you went out on a date. 

If you do any of these things in the modern era, you'll not only sink any hopes of actually courting  a woman (a term we old folk still like to use), but your chances of ending up on a police sketch report become more likely than not. In this day in age of Tindering, and in business, attention spans are short, options are unlimited, so the sense of urgency you need to communicate who you are goes up a notch or ten. 

Where I'm from (Seattle, let's just say circa early 80's), we still believe in a thing called love and relationships. Which is why I got into branding in the first place. I don't believe in shoving things you don't want down your throat, I believe in connections. 

One of my favorite branding quotes ever comes from the uber talented and disgustingly successful creative director, Yo Santosa. 

"People don't fall in love with businesses, they fall in love with personalities." -Yo Santosa. (See more of her talk here)

Yo Santosa, my spirit animal.

Boom.

Blog over right? Okay I'll elaborate a bit more. 

See the thing is, building a brand is exactly like building a personality. The worst "brands", if you can even call them that, are not really personalities at all. They're a shadow of a personality. Kind of like those guys on the Bachelor (I kid. But seriously, switch it up a little ABC. Not that I watch it or anything.). 

So here's the challenge. Make a girl, perhaps out of your league, if that's your demographic, fall in love with you. 

That all sounds great. But some specifics would be nice. 

Well first-you need to look nice and presentable. That's where things like graphics and photography come into play. If your brand doesn't look nice, that's like showing up to a date in sweat pants and flip flops. (That's really specific-it's not like that's happened to me or anything)

Put on some nice jeans. A collared shirt. A nice watch. Look clean, modern, sophisticated. And if you're someone like Audi, look like a million bucks. 

Next-you need to start speaking like a gentlemen. This is where us copywriters come in. Speak to your date like you're super interested in them. Ask them what they like, what they dislike, what they want out of life. Most importantly-don't treat them like objective where you're trying to get "something" out of them (I'm talking about money, get your mind out of the gutter). 

Last but perhaps most importantly-you can start talking about your benefits. But not in a sales-y way, but in a "what can you offer them that others can't" kind of way. After all, your customers, err...dates, have a ton of choices, and it's up to you to sell them on why they should choose you over everyone else. 

Branding and personal relationships ultimately all come down to one thing: Trust

What this all comes down to is trust. And to a certain extent, likability. People/dates want to know that they can trust you and they like you. If you can play the part of their soulmate, you might be onto something special. 

Divorcing yourself from your creativity

Apologies for the delays since the last blog post. In my endless quest to discover the meaning of life, I recently started a new position with a longtime Seattle lighting company. Things are getting off the ground slowly but surely, but most importantly I now have a steady paycheck and am not living off that scary, I don't know when I'll get paid, freelance life. 

But I love working in this industry. Love is a word we use to describe things we become attached to, but there are consequences. When applied incorrectly in this industry it can cause severe depression, loneliness, and of course, spontaneous Tinder profile creating. 

Recently a fellow creative and I were talking about our work, and she confided in me that she doesn't feel like her work is appreciated or understood. I don't think there's a creative person alive that hasn't felt like that at some point. As people whose job it is to literally create things, we become passionate, invested and fall in love with our own work. We become so close to it that we feel like we are pretty much married to it (two words: pre-nup). 

So we hashed it out, because that's a common, relatable struggle. The one thing I think I've realized after (insert large number here) years on earth is that as a creative, I can't get married to my work. 

I realized I need to divorce myself from my creativity. 

When to separate your life from your work

About a month ago, I felt inspired, and surprisingly productive so I decided to do something that I'd be too lazy to do and procrastinate until the sun turned into a red giant (I've been listening to a lot of Neil Degrasse Tyson lately). I decided to paint my bathroom. 

I picked out a color that I thought was nice on the color swatch, but when I actually put it on my walls it looked ugly as shit. Picture a green apple that's been chewed up, spit out, then put on a paintbrush and smeared on a bathroom wall. 

I failed, I made a bad decision, but as invested as I became into doing something cool with my bathroom, I needed to take my ego and emotion out of my initial decision to go with that ugly green color. I have to do it again.  

Whether it's creative work you're doing for yourself or doing for others in a professional environment, it's important to know that you don't have to tie yourself to your ideas or your work. You can emotionally detach. You can be like the George Clooney of creative ideas. 

When science is kind of like art

Science and art on the surface don't have a lot in common. But they are very similar in one, perhaps most important aspect: they both seek to find solutions to a problem. 

In our field, the problem is typically how to solve for the human psyche. As creatives, we must understand how people work in order to produce work that resonates with people. And often times, that means throwing out a lot of theories, testing your hypothesis, and formulating a solution that you think works best. 

Scientists, from all my years of experience in that field (and by all my years, I mean zero years), do not seem to have the same emotional attachment as we do. They know that theories and ideas are just ends to a mean. They can do a lot of work, and if it turns out to be wrong, it can suck but at least it's not heartbreaking and they can move on. 

I don't care if 100 of my ideas get shot down (okay I do a little), but if there is one out of 100 that really works, I've done my job. 

When you stop treating your work like your loved one, you will find that it's not so much holding on to your ideas that counts, it's about treating them all like Tinder profiles, swiping through each one until you find a match that you kind of like and maybe want to hold on to for a while. Just don't get too attached to it.  

Producing your best work means not getting emotionally involved in the process. Your brain, and your heart, will thank you. 

No one likes advertising. Cue the crying Jordan face.

It's sad, but true. No one really likes advertising. Not unless you're like my Filipino auntie, who pours through the sunday newspaper ads trying to find a coupon for a Swiffer even though she already has 2. 

Spam, ads, banner ads....99% of us would just rather not. 

So what's the solution for those of us in the creative advertising field?

Don't make ads. 

Instead of promoting your ads all the time, think about your customer, and what interests them. Not just your product or service, but their lifestyle. Are they a hiker? A tech geek who's never met a shirt that he'll tuck? A retired mom with 2 cats and goldfish named Doris? 

The name of the game is to product content that speaks to the lifestyle of your audience, and letting it be known that you're "one of them". Once you've established that all too important brand identity, trust is established. And that's where the ads come in. 

Branding Sells

Example: One of the best in the business in my opinion is Whole Foods. What's that? You don't like healthy, nutritious, socially conscious food? Well, if you don't shop at Whole Foods, that's the assumption that is made about you.

If you were really health conscious, you would shop at Whole Foods, because they are all about organic, non-GMO foods that are good for your body, and the planet. 

Now is that true? Of course not. But they've done such a masterful job at branding, that's what they've established as "true". 

I mean, what other grocer can sell Asparagus water for $6?

So bottom line: Stop doing so much advertising. Start off by being likable, and the rest will come. 

When Being a "Writer" Doesn't Mean What You Think it Means

So true story: In the middle of working on content to write this article, I attended a free class at the School of Visual Concepts in Seattle (a school for creatives which I can't possibly recommend more), and the lecture was about portfolios, resumes, and interview success. A copywriter friend and I sat in a panel of recruiters in the creative industry, talking about what it takes to land a dream job. 

However, as the class went on, my friend and I looked at each other because we suddenly felt very out of place. 

She wrote on my notepad "I feel like this lecture is VERY designer centric." She underlined very quite a few times. 

I nodded my head in agreement, but rather than embarrassingly walking out of a crowded room, we sat and listened. And it dawned on us perhaps at the same time: While some of the specific strategies were design focused, the basic principles for good design and good copywriting are universal not only in execution, but how they are applied to the workplace. 

There was once a time where simply being a writer was good enough. For you millenials out there, we used to have this thing called a typewriter where you actually typed on these metal keys that would stamp ink onto actual sheets of paper. There weren't even emoticons to express what we felt. Instead, we had to use real words.  

It was a weird time for everybody. 

But along came the processor chip and our lives changed forever. Nowadays, being a writer means more than just typing words, it means thinking about the overall visual presentation. You are a creative, an idea person, and a better designer than you probably think you are. You know what looks nice and what doesn't, right? 

This probably sounds like common sense to you, but check out this stat that I definitely did not Google or look up for fact checking:

The average user spends less than 5 seconds on a website/link before they get bored and look elsewhere. 

What does this all mean for writers? This means that we as writers have to think visually, in order to truly put great ideas on the table. 

It will benefit you as a copywriter to learn a thing or two about good design. This doesn't mean you have to spend your life savings taking a design class at the Art Institute, it just means knowing what the difference between serif and sans-serif is. Knowing how to properly apply white space. Knowing your color wheel. Knowing the difference between a well designed page, and a page that is simply doing too much. 

What's more, think about the fact that you will probably be working very closely with graphic designers, illustrators, UX designers, AD's, etc. and you will likely have to learn to speak their language.

And in case that's not enough to convince you, just know that the hiring manager at a creative agency or enterprise will likely be an art director with a background in visual design, so it would benefit you to be on their same page (man, I probably should've just started with that). 

If you are a copywriter, marketer, content writer or pretty much anyone whose job it is to write words, and you aren't thinking about visual design; the chances are that you are behind the eight ball. 

Turn customers into fans with social media

When you hear the term "social media", what goes through your mind? 

If you're over 35, the chances are that you think social media is this satan's spawn of a creation that will ultimately prove to be the downfall of civilization (which you'd be wrong about. You're thinking of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. Duh) all while screaming "Get off my lawn!"

And if you're under 35, you probably think social media is just this thing that has been around since Jesus times, and you can't believe how stupid old people are because they don't know how to tweet or make themselves puke rainbows on SnapChat. 

Well I'm here to say that both camps are right. Social media is inherently evil. But a necessary, sometimes entertaining, evil. 

When people approach me about social media, and by "people" I mean my mom, the first question I ask is "Is your router plugged in?" After that I say: Don't take social media too seriously, because no one else really does. 

For all the hoopla we make about strategizing an effective social media campaign, trying to look smart and professional, you should keep in mind that the best strategy for engaging your audience is to be entertaining. I've probably said it elsewhere on the blog but it bears repeating once again-people don't like to be "marketed" to, and it's double true on social media. 

The thing to keep in mind is this: The goal of your social media campaign shouldn't be to attract more followers, because followers aren't an effective measurement. The goal should be turning your customers into fans. 

Let's take a look at an example-Arby's (@arbys). 

Now I haven't eaten at Arby's since college and I wouldn't eat there if it was the last food remaining after the apocalypse...which is a very real possibility because I'm pretty sure their meat is radioactive anyway and could survive a nuclear fallout. 

But I follow them on Twitter because they are endlessly entertaining. They get it. They've found a way to tie their brand into the pop culture phenomena of Twitter. Ex:

This tweet is awesome because it promotes their brand, while playing into the "Walking Dead" (a horribly written but entertaining show) crowd. 

It appears effortless, but this one took some thought. And it was retweeted 1,000 times. 

Another favorite of mine is Chipotle (@chipotletweets). Their social media account tweets with a relatable, humorous tone that most companies wish they could capture. Here's some examples:

These tweets are funny, lighthearted, yet still speak to their brand. People eat this shit up like a bowl of beans covered with E.Coli and they love it. And their use of puns is legendary at this point. 

The truth is that the best brands on social media are the ones that don't take themselves too seriously. Have fun with it, and you may just get something more than customers, you may get fans.