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Title: The Sound of Business - Part 2
Author: Jerry Bader
Article:
PART II - THE SOUND OF BUSINESS
SONIC PERSONALITY© STARTS WITH BUSINESS PERSONALITY
Creating a 'kick ass' Sonic Personality© for your business
requires that your business have a personality in the first
place. Of course every business has one, whether you are aware
of it or not, and this is a real danger. Your customers'
understanding of who you are, and what you do, as a business,
may be very different from the vision you have of yourself. This
can be a very serious problem for owner-managed businesses,
where the personality of the entrepreneur oft times gets
substituted for the personality of the business - big mistake!
So what's the first step in crafting a marketable business
personality?
What Business Are you Really In?
OK kids, its story time. Back in the day, the railroad barons
were the most powerful business leaders in the country. They had
the money, the power, and the political 'shlep' (that's drag for
the uninitiated) to do pretty much whatever they wanted. Today
railroads are a depressed industry. So what happened? Simple,
they didn't know what business they were really in.
If you could have asked Leland Stanford or Collis P. Huntington,
what business they were in, they would have most likely
answered, 'the railroad business'. And in the long run, that was
their downfall. Instead, they should have thought of themselves
as being in 'the transportation business' and if they did, they
surely would have used their money, power, and influence to
control the emerging automobile, trucking, and airline
industries.
Before you can craft a Sonic Personality© you first must
understand who you are, what you do, and why you do it better
than the other guy. If you can answer those three questions
clearly, then you have the beginning of a coherent business
personality that must first exist before you can have a Sonic
Personality©.
Focus On One Core Value
One of the hardest things for entrepreneurial businesses to do
is to focus on one core value. This may sound, on the surface,
to be contrary to the lesson learned from the railroad barons,
but it isn't. Your core value focus has to be broad enough to be
able to sustain your business through the onslaught of
competition and fast moving technological change. When the
railroad barons focused on just one form of transportation they
let all the other transportation opportunities slip through
their fingers and ultimately overtake them.
Most accountants and bankers will tell you to 'stick to your
knitting' and not let yourself be spread too thin with secondary
initiatives. This is generally good advice, however there is a
fundamental difference between going off on a tangent and
sticking to your core values. Knowing who you are, what you do,
and why you do it better than the competition will help you keep
your focus while at the same time allow you to critically
determine whether new opportunities are ones that you should
pursue.
Create Definition: Lift and Separate
So far I have managed to avoid using the term, brand, because it
is generally misunderstood and ignored by most owner-managed
businesses. Substituting 'personality' for 'brand' puts the
notion of brand in context. Think about it. You may have thought
your business doesn't relate to branding concepts, but you've
accepted, or at least are intrigued by the idea, that your
business needs a clearly defined personality.
Al Ries and Jack Trout have written numerous books on branding
and marketing, including 'The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing."
One of the lessons to be learned from this book is 'The Law of
Opposites'. Simply stated, unless you're the 'top dog' in your
industry, you have to define who you are in contrast to the
industry leader. This is not dissimilar to The Theory of
Contrary Thinking.
The example sometimes used to explain The Theory of Contrary
Thinking is Tulip Mania. When tulips were first introduced to
Holland in the middle to late sixteenth century, people fell in
love with them. By the early 1600s, an exchange market had been
created that dealt with tulip futures. Similar to what happen in
the Roaring 20s, everyone got involved in purchasing tulip
futures for ridiculous prices, until some wise guy yelled SELL!
Panic set-in and like in the 1920s, the market collapsed. The
moral of the story is simple; if everyone is doing it, you
better do the opposite.
By defining your business in contrast to the industry leader,
you create a separate and distinct business personality that
gives your audience an alternative to the 'big guy'. You no
longer are a second banana 'wannbe' imitator, but rather a
distinctive company with your own image, strengths, advantages
and of course, personality.
Customers Are An Audience
Finally, this distinctive personality needs to be communicated
to your audience, and you'll notice I've called your customers
an audience, because that is exactly what they are. If you think
in terms of audience, it will open up a whole new understanding
of communication techniques and media, that will lead to better
audience recognition, acceptance, and ultimately sales. Now we
have to give your finely crafted personality a voice. Tune-in
next time for 'How to Give Good Sonic Personality©.'
About the author:
Jerry Bader, is a partner in MRPwebmedia, a website design firm
that specializes in creating multimedia websites that enhance
their clients business opportunities by delivering their
marketing messages using the latest audio, video, Flash, and
interactive techniques.
MRPwebmedia developed the Sonic Personalities© concept that
effectively conveys your brand, image and message on websites
and DVD/CD presentations using custom-crafted voice-overs.
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