The “Be bold. Be a Viking.” umbrella campaign features four :15 television spots “Be Successful,” “Be Involved,” “Be Smart,” and “Be Anything” as well as radio spots, digital advertising and outdoor media. The multi-platform campaign is the first of smith&jones’ work to be launched after being awarded agency of record status by Hudson Valley in September 2011, following a state issued RFP.

Christine Tieri, President and Creative Director at smith&jones idea agency, explains, ”The campaign is designed to highlight Hudson Valley’s commitment to cultivating successful futures through personal connections and a progressive approach to learning. The palpable energy, excitement and pride of the school is captured and brought to life in the simple yet bold creative.” Targeted towards current and prospective students, and spoken in the voice of an influencer, the “Be bold. Be a Viking.” campaign embodies the core values of the Hudson Valley brand.

Dennis Kennedy, Executive Director of Communications & Marketing, Hudson Valley Community College adds, “Our primary goal is to invite prospective students to be a part of our proud community and to clearly communicate the key benefits that are hallmarks of a Hudson Valley education. smith&jones’ work does just that while conveying the pride our students, faculty, staff, alumni and partners share in creative and compelling ways.”

In the months leading up to the launch of the campaign, smith&jones – who, over the past two decades, has collaborated with a variety of higher learning institutions –worked with Hudson Valley Community College, steering them through a brand discovery process “which allowed us to uncover and reveal the true essence of the brand,” comments Tieri.

In their words
This book is essentially a “how to” book on overcoming resistance when working on a business idea, novel, life change, or everyday project.

Synopsis by Susan Stebbins
Pressfield helps the reader to understand the forces that work against us when working on a project as well as the champions on our side. He provides the reader with a step-by-step guide on how to overcome resistance and continue moving forward to the finish. Do the Work is chock full of what to do when, including the inevitable road blocks. Author Seth Godin (one of our favorites) also recommends the Pressfield’s other book “The War of Art,” which helps you understand why you are stuck.

What stood out or was revealed
What works against us:

• Resistance (i.e. fear, self-doubt, procrastination, addiction, distraction, timidity, ego, self-loathing and perfectionism, etc.).  Your brains chattering….
• Rational thought and friends/family are other forces that work against us.

The champions on our side:

• Stay Stupid
• Be Stubborn
• Blind Faith
• Passion
• Assistance (from family & friends)

How to work through resistance/words of wisdom:

• Start before you’re ready
• Use three act process – beginning, middle and end
• Limit your research at the beginning
• The crazier the idea the better, always say yes – these are the best ideas
• Ideas do not come linearly
• Idea generation process – act, reflect, act, reflect. Never act and reflect at the same time
• Be ready for resistance
• Pressfield also offers operating principles for each step with a common theme throughout – “don’t stop working”

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color
This book offers great advice to myself as well as the agency as a whole. For myself the best advice from this book is to not let my self-imposed resistance stop me from working and idea through to the end and encourage the agency to do the same.

Do the Work by Steven Pressfield

In their words
Brands cannot be built by being safe today. Safe is boring. Safe is risky. And most of all, safe is taken – by all the big brands that started with maybe a small hint of PURPLE (for their time) and whole lotta ad money behind it. Seth proclaims you’re either remarkable or you’re invisible. We wholeheartedly agree.

Purple Cow is almost an embodiment of the smith&jones philosophy and a must read for everyone in marketing or simply anyone with a vested interest in the success of a business. It truly is marketing of a different color.

Synopsis by Derek Beahn
Gone are the days of huge, successful brands being built on big TV budgets alone. Today, a product or service must truly shine to even be noticed by the over-stimulated masses. To be a success, to be great, it must stand out from the rest. It must be PURPLE. Not just in its marketing and advertising alone, but at its core, from its inception. The product or service must be different, appealing, remarkable. You CAN’T simply PAINT your product or service PURPLE after the fact. We need to become more designers than marketers.  And market products and services that are worth marketing in the first place.

Traditional Ps of marketing that marketers have used forever – PRICE, PROMOTION, PUBLICITY, POSITIONING, PACKAGING, ETC. – aren’t working today. They need to include being PURPLE. Cows, after you’ve seen one or two, are boring. But a PURPLE cow! That’s remarkable.

Being SAFE is risky (and taken) and being VERY GOOD is bad. You’re either REMARKABLE or you’re INVISIBLE. You’ve got to be different. Do something no one else has done already or is doing now. It’s very hard to find a niche; everything is taken – by all the big brands that started with maybe a small hint of PURPLE (for their time) and whole lotta ad money behind it. Coke, IBM, GE, P&G, etc.; 70 of the top 100 brands were built this way.

The cycle of the PURPLE cow is that now most of these are boring, but that first burst of energy propelled them to stardom and market domination. At some point you’ll need another Purple Cow. The trick is to milk the cow for all it is worth while inventing a new one.

What stood out or was revealed
A couple call outs:

• Consumer Bell Curve: Old marketers targeted the majority, the early and late majority.  But, the value of a group is in their influence, not their size.  Early adopters influence the rest of the curve.  So persuading them is worth far more than wasting money persuading everyone else.
• Before, During, and After Advertising: Before brands were built with word of mouth.  Best vegetable seller in market earned a reputation and was a success.  During advertising, consumerism rocketed (he calls it the TV-industrial complex) and the power of TV and mass media led to a magic formula: if you advertised to everyone you’d be a success.  After, we are back were we started and the power of our new networks allows remarkable ideas to spread at rocket speed.
• Examples: Original Beetle – the shape and uniqueness, not the ads
  Jet Blue – low cost (by underused airports, nonunion, etc)
  Starbucks – coffee bar idea
  Apple – remarkable products and stellar advertising
  Dutch Boy – user friendly paint cans.

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color
Purple Cow is almost an embodiment of the smith&jones marketing of a different color philosophy.  A philosophy we always have, and always will,  live by.

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Cheryl A. Hackenson, Business Technology Educator at Tantasqua, states, “the involvement of outstanding business and civic leaders … is very important to the effective operation of the Technical Division. As a committee, members will help to develop a curriculum, suggest potential speakers and provide project ideas rooted in real world situations.” According to Peterson, “it is an honor to serve on the Tantasqua committee, helping to motivate students interested in pursuing a marketing degree in college and exploring potential career paths in the field.”

Christine Tieri, smith&jones’ President and Creative Director, a Tantasqua graduate herself and current President of Ted., the Tantasqua Educational Foundation, comments, “giving back to the community by playing an active role at the regional high school is an honor. We cannot think of a more important job than helping to mentor students as they identify and prioritize career objectives and work on building their future.”

Synopsis by Jennifer Perry
It is not enough to have great ideas, you have to be able to convince decision makers of an idea’s value. Idea Selling is about how to get in front of people with a great idea and not fail at getting that idea to fruition. Just because we think it is great doesn’t mean the customer can see its value immediately the way we do. They need to be sold to. This book talks about how to approach, how to present to and how to work with the client in order to succeed.

What stood out or was revealed
Harrison made some great points when it comes to selling your ideas. Among the best:

• Get to know the client personally.
• Be curious “to the point of being nosy”—don’t be shy about getting the info you need.
• Prepare & practice.
• Get to the point fast.
• Show them the problem—and then solve it.
• Edit edit edit edit—it shows the client you respect their time. “I wish you had talked longer” are words you’ll never hear from clients.
• Just because it’s a good  idea doesn’t make it the right idea.
• Ban bullet points in your presentation (this is my favorite).
• Rollout—I loved this idea, instead of ending a presentation with “hey we’re done” ask, “so do you think this fits in with the brand right now and can you see this playing out for you in any other areas of the business?” It will get them thinking and might end up winning more work!
• How to rescue the mission: while you need to practice your pitch, you have to give it from the gut. If you get there and it feels off, adjust and rejigger, and read the temperature in the room—if it feels off, respect that instinct.
• Stop calling it an “approval” process, start asking for input. Involve clients as collaborators rather than an approval stamp.

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color
We’re strong in our pitches, but we can always be better. We can work on getting in deeper with our clients and getting them to like our ideas without having to think like we think—that’s not their job!

Idea Selling by Sam Harrison

In their words: Jen Day and I recently attended this seminar presented to the Society of Professional Communicators by Blue Train Mobile‘s Conductor and CEO, Steffan Berelowitz.

Steffan gave a very compelling presentation that provided an overview of mobile marketing. Agencies must embrace mobile marketing and become knowledgeable in it very swiftly. Mobile marketing is a land-grab in which the competition is fierce and the customers are racing into the platform.

Some of the biggest points I took away from this presentation included:

• Innovative companies have still fallen behind (Wang, Digital, Atari, etc.) while some have survived (Apple, IBM).
• The market is expected to reach 200,000,000 users by 2014 or 2015.
• By 2014, mobile users will exceed desktop users. In the past year mobile search increased by 400%.
• Content for mobile has to be more concise: the audience is multitasking.
• The audience is more likely to visit in the evening (opposite of desktop browsing).
• B2B is still catching up on this platform.

And most revealing to me:

• Mobile websites are for lead generation, which answers the question “why would a company that already has an app spend more money to build a mobile site as well?” –because your prospects won’t download your app on a lark…they need a mobile website to sell benefits.
• The majority of Facebook, Twitter, and Pandora mobile users access these services via the mobile web.

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color:
The mobile platform should be a required venue for clients as we approach new web projects. It is no longer a matter of when mobile is going to catch on and is now an issue of how well a given site is mobilized. Our strategy needs to encompass mobile considerations (as cited above) and the tactics need to provide a compelling introductory experience (landing page) on mobile – mobile sites can’t simply be a stack of buttons leading to more stacks of buttons that occasionally terminate in content. The mobile experience has arrived!

Synopsis by Polly Currier
Lindstrom conducted several scientific experiments using MRI and SST technologies to determine actual brain patterns and how they relate to certain brands to determine why we make the purchasing choices we do. Lindstrom refers to this as “neuromarketing.”

Lindstrom was able to determine that most decisions to buy or “buy-in” to a product were at the emotional level and based on years of personal experiences and associations. A famous logo does not register in the brain as much as images, colors, scents or sounds associated with the particular brand. For example, enjoying a cold cola on a summer day. Or hearing the distinct crackle of a can of soda or beer open.

What people see on surveys and in focus groups does not reliably affect how they behave. For example, heeding the cigarette warning labels and/or avoiding certain behaviors based on superstitions. The Pepsi Choice campaign demonstrated that people chose Pepsi over other colas hands down, but when those same people went to the store they ended up buying Coke because they bought emotionally based on their past life experiences with the product.

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color
In an age of visual overload we are becoming desensitized to visual media. Buy-ology reinforces what PURPLE is all about, scientifically. The visual aspects of a campaign often detract from the product. Therefore, it is important to create brands that people want to be a part of emotionally.

Buy-ology by Martin Lindstrom

Synopsis by Dave Peterson
This is a marketing book that has nothing to do with marketing the way we know it. Instead, it’s a book that preaches the need for product design to be hand-in-hand with marketing at the company’s strategic center. The book stresses the importance of getting people together to co-create the narrative for a product in a spirit of collaboration.

What stood out or was revealed
Among the 28 rules for baking your marketing into your product:

• Get out of whatever business you think you’re in: Is a website a product, a retail location, or marketing? The answer is “yes.” The book challenges us to push against the definition of where the product begins and ends.
• Understand both sides of your truth: Focus on experiences and live your products and services. Don’t be like the GM executives who actually had their cars delivered to them, and thus, never experienced the process of buying a car.
• Intuition drives innovation: Quantifiable analytics have become mainstream in the decision-making process at companies, but “Baked In” challenges that notion by encouraging us to trust our intuition. Random tinkering is the path to success, and brands built on intuition are more likely to be disruptive in the marketplace. Design intuition drives good innovative decision making.
• The power of the absolute: Don’t be “faster,” be the “fastest.” Consumers don’t care that your product is faster than another unless it is the absolute fastest of the whole bunch. Find an absolute. It could be the slowest, smallest, or quietest too.
• Make what’s inside visible on the outside: Perhaps this is the ultimate example of “baking in.” As an example, the Nissan Xterra – launched in 2001 – had visual appeal for the outdoor consumer with big tires, big fenders, and roof racks. But so did the Ford Explorer. The one incredible piece that set it apart in its marketing was the actual hump in the rear lift gate that made room for the first aid kit on the inside. The makers of the car deliberately changed the external look of it so people asked what the hump was all about. When the outdoorsy people found out that the hump housed a first aid kit, they knew they had found the car that fit their lifestyle.

How we will use this information to create marketing of a different color
There are great opportunities for me to use this information with clients. The book basically challenges us to ask our clients if their products are really the most appropriate products to be selling. If they don’t have their current marketing baked in, are there ways we can help them to make that happen? If not, is it really worth having the product on the market anyway? We shouldn’t just take orders from clients who’ve created products that they now want to “create an ad for.” We should again take the smith&jones 30,000 foot view and ask the client to be involved in the product development process. In this manner, we can help them create a new product that has its marketing baked in.

Baked In by Alex Bogusky & John Winsor