Welcome and handy tip

Welcome to my blog and my first entry! I want to take a minute to talk about how I intend to use this space. My initial thought was to post tips to help marketers solve problems and tune up their creative. I'll definitely do that, but I'd also like to respond in real time to creative I see pop up in my email and in my mail box; a combination of how-to fundamentals and in-the-moment reviews that are seasonally or environmentally relevant. As for timing, I'll try and get to this weekly -  I'll post an update notice on Linkedin. 

You may ask, "why is he doing this, giving away valuable information for FREE?" Good question.. Since I have a self imposed "honesty in promotion" policy, I have to tell you, this blog is shameless self-promotion. I am altruistic by nature and I do want everyone to succeed, but like everyone I have to pay the mortgage, son's tuition, etc. However, I promise in fact to give away lots of good information that you are welcome to put to work for your brand. As you begin to see how applying tested creative techniques can improve your business, you may want to expand the effort, in which case feel free to get in touch. (Blog followers don't get a discount, just a head start on better response and improved sales). 

Okay, like the subhead promises, here's a "result driven" tip:

Put on your customer hat! 

Be sure your site and catalog are customer centric. It sounds like a no-brainer, but creative execution can easily become self-centered and drift from the target audience. To keep your creative on track dig out your brand positioning and customer profile and create a handy brief that you can distribute to your creative team. Think about it this way; everything the creative team does either adds or subtracts from your brand value - this is an easy way to assess if your creative execution is audience-correct. 


The target customer informs the brand, the brand informs the creative, and the creative resonates with the customer and drives response.. Voila!