You know those tiny links on the bottom of most websites to things like “disclaimers” and “terms of use”? Nobody ever reads them, right? Well, what happens when someone actually does read them? For most of us, your site visitor will be treated to a very boring and confusing page. There’s a good chance that if they ended up on your disclaimer page, they’re going to run for the hills as fast as possible.

If every customer interaction is a brand experience, an experience that sends your customers running for the hills is not a good thing.

Now imagine a world where customers not only read your ‘disclaimer’, but enjoyed reading it, and then forwarded it on to a friend. Sound crazy? The Valorem Law Group lives in such a world. Don’t believe me? Take a look at their disclaimer page. Not only do you learn what they’re disclaiming, you also get a sense of their brand. You might even chuckle.

On a flight to Hawaii earlier this year, I was killing time by flipping through the airline magazine. Between ads for timeshares, restaurants, and rental car companies were about twenty ads for snorkel gear rental. Turns out it’s a big business in Hawaii. Some of rental places claim to have been in business the longest. Others claim to have the best staff, and yet others claim to have the best selection. But, only one ad succeeded in getting me to remember the name of the shop. Rather than focus on the shop’s selection, tradition, or knowledge, their ad’s headline read “Snorkel Bob Weds Cat. She’s a cat. I’m Snorkel Bob. We’re in love.”

(view the entire ad)

Your company is established, trustworthy, and built on a great tradition. You’re experts in your business, you partner with your clients, and you can be counted on. That’s fantastic. But, I’ve got bad news: when in comes to getting your customer’s attention, they don’t care. And, it gets worse: there’s a good chance your competitors feel that they too are all of these things.

When you’re preparing your next marketing campaign, you will likely be drawn to communicate your history, value, or trustworthiness. But, if you do so, there’s a good chance you’re going to waste your money. Why? Because these messages are almost always instantly forgotten by your customer.

What do your customers remember? Companies that show a personality get remembered. So, next time you’re planning your upcoming marketing campaign, take a risk. Show some personality. Your customers won’t forget it.

No matter how well you plan, sooner or later, something’s not going to go as you planned. And sometimes, those things might affect your customers. When your day comes, you can hide in a corner and hope they didn’t notice, or you can turn the snafu into a marketing opportunity. Things going wrong can be the perfect chance to remind your customers that you appreciate their business. Take a look at the email below I received earlier today from Road Runner Sports:

Aaron,

You deserve the BEST shopping experience at roadrunnersports.com. But, we really let you down last week. We’re in the midst of some exciting site enhancements to make your shopping experience better than ever. Unfortunately, we encountered some bumps along the way that have since been ironed out. When you visit our site now, you’ll get the shopping experience you deserve.

Last week, you received an amazing offer, and you may have encountered issues placing your order.  Please accept our sincerest apologies.

We have extended your offer for FREE SHIPPING & 10% OFF your order of $125 or more. You’re free to take advantage of this great offer until midnight Thursday 09/18/08.

Please give us another chance to make you feel great!
Visit the Site >>

Warmest regards,

Your Customer Experience Team
Road Runner Sports

I can picture the meeting that must have happened recently somewhere in the Barak Obama HQ: a group of campaign staffers, sitting around a table brainstorming ways to encourage people to register with them and provide that little bit of critical information that might be the something to make or break the campaign. Amid the usual ideas (”ring tones”, “viral marketing”, “personalized home pages”), someone throws out the crazy idea: “What if we announce Obama’s running-mate via SMS and email?”

It might seem like a novel idea, but as most campaign strategists learned in 2004, the one with the most email addresses wins. So today’s announcement that Obama will, in fact, be announcing his VP candidate first by SMS and email, should come as no surprise. And, while the idea seems like a gimmick, more than likely, it’s part of a larger strategy. By incentivizing supporters and non-supporters alike to register with the campaign, Obama is taking a crazy idea and creating a huge asset.

Our clients are constantly asking us for ways to help them increase awareness of their online offerings. Their first question is almost always about buying lists. We’re not fans of buying lists for many reasons, but we do suggest they think creatively about ways to grow their own lists. Simply putting an ‘email’ field on a page isn’t enough. If you want to build an email list that produces results, you need make sure people understand the value you provide when they sign up. So take a cue from Obama - think about what can you can offer your customers and prospects that is of value in exchange for them volunteering their contact information.

(continued from Tuesday’s post)
Jason Fried
Having used Basecamp for the last six months, it was interesting to see the man behind the machine. Jason is a funny, intense and an articulate speaker. The tenacity of Jason’s work ethic comes through in the applications of 37signals with a razor sharp attention to detail and a pursuit of refining user interaction down to a fine polish. As structured and articulate their work may be, their design process is different from the average web shop. Eschewing artifacts, Jason claims that there is no paper, documentation, wireframes or Photoshop documents. For Jason, designing is building. An interesting architectural metaphor he used here (paraphrasing Philip Johnson) was that a building can only be understood as successful when you are able walk inside of it.

Jim Coudal
Jim’s presentation was a conversation about his “general theory of creative relativity.” Admittedly unscientific, Jim’s theory stems from his notion that work for hire in North America is broken, not equitable and that the work is stifling. Jim’s theory is for us to become happier creatives; to examine the way ideas come about, are fertilized and encouraged. What immediately becomes evident when listening to Jim is that he’s the creative version of an adrenaline junkie. Just like a B.A.S.E. jumper or F1 racer, Jim is addicted to that initial spark of creativity, where all bets are off and ideas come like an uncontrollable torrent. To follow the creative spark, to live for it is really at the heart of his theory. Being in a work environment that encourages this kind of rampant creativity is apparently what Jim has developed. This is best exemplified by office bathroom that is painted with chalkboard paint. The chalkboard attracts ongoing games of hangman as well as a game called booking bands. Booking bands is a word game that consists of mashing up the name of a band with the name of a book. The results are hilarious and compelling: Midnight in the Soundgarden of Good and Evil, Ramones of the Day, The Reverend Horton Heat Hears a Who.

Gary Vaynerchuck
Gary was the perfect way to end a conference. Gary isn’t an immediately logical presenter choice for this conference; he’s a wine connoisseur with a successful video podcast that aims to break down the snobbery around wine in America. Gary is also a successful entrepreneur who has turned his father’s liquor store into a multi-million dollar online retailer. In lieu of being the black sheep in the room, Gary represents the future of the web just as much as the other presenters. Focusing on personal branding and following the creative muse much like his colleagues, Gary encourages his audience to follow their own dreams and not imitate how he has done things. By putting out content and drilling into every conceivable niche where his product might be appreciated, Gary believes he’s participating in the “gold rush for personal branding”.

In many ways Gary’s presentation was a fusion of all the speakers at Seed:
• follow your interests,
• take risks by being yourself,
• cultivate clientele that appreciate and respect you,
• nurture creativity and don’t copy - invent.

Values such as these seem imbued in the building where the event was held. Crown Hall was a risky building for its day; it couldn’t hide from itself behind old, tried and true building methods. This was an entirely new concept; made of glass, no support columns, nothing covering the windows to hide the interior from those outside. In many ways Crown Hall represents the authenticity and transparency of the people we gathered here to listen to today— a location of inspiration for the inspired to gather.

On June 6 I attended the Seed conference at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Seed is billed as a one-day conference on design, entrepreneurship and inspiration, so for many of the attendees, including myself, Seed is a place to be inspired by the major players in the web, creative services, and web applications space. The roster of speakers was impressive – Carlos Segura of T26 fame; Threadless founders Jeffrey Kalmikoff and Jake Nickell; Jason Fried of 37signals; Jim Coudal of Coudal Partners, and finally the spastic and outspoken Gary Vaynerchuck who began his professional life at his father’s liquor store, turning it into a multi-million dollar online retailer.

Seed was held in Crown Hall, designed by master architect Mies van der Rohe in 1960. This magnificent example of mid-century North American architecture is a temple to modern design, representing the best of the modernist movement through it’s clean lines, open spaces, and ability to seemingly float above the campus grounds.

Here are some highlights from some very special and very talented people.

Carlos Segura
“Communication that doesn’t take a chance doesn’t stand a chance” was a reference to clients going outside their comfort levels and enabling the vision of a design or marketing plan to shine through. Another great quote was “Build relationships with clients that choose to listen to you.” This somewhat hinges on the first quote in that trust is an undercurrent of implementing bold and effective campaigns.

Threadless (Jeffrey and Jake)
These two humble and very soft spoken guys have created a web-presence that has redefined how the customer interacts with a company’s products. Threadless is the media darling of the moment having just been featured on the June cover of Inc magazine. In lieu of all the attention being thrust upon their business model, Jeffrey and Jake talked about the source, not the product of their success. Their presentation was “why Threadless” not “how Threadless.” To them, taking on projects that get them inspired, that begin with the phrase wouldn’t it be awesome if is the key to finding happiness and fulfillment in what they do. Their intention isn’t to sell their business model to every web 2.0 startup out there They are fully invested in pursuing their own pleasures and encourage people not to imitate, but simply follow their own interests and dreams. Very mature and insightful thinking for a couple of guys just shy of 30.

(to be continued…)

The role of websites in both the consumer and business-to-business markets is changing and evolving; increasingly enabling customers to engage brands on their own terms. Consequently, visitors expect more from your website today and are quick to leave if the interaction is not satisfactory.

As a result of these developments, all companies with public-facing websites may soon be challenged with a redesign. My advise is don’t look at this as an obstacle — look at it as an opportunity to help you strengthen your relationship with your customers.

Put the customer in charge!

To put the customers in charge of their online experience, a website should be built with the customers in mind. This may be an obvious, oversimplified statement, but one worth stating. Here are some points to consider.

• A persona-based design will help ensure that the site is built with customer behaviors and needs front and center.
• The site should provide customers with choices of how they want to interact with your brand, including but not limited to email, blogs, online chat, and mobile. Of course, this depends on what you are trying to achieve online.
• Tools should be intuitive and relevant.
• Provide your customers with multiple options for how they want to receive content — RSS, podcasts, video, etc.

These are just some points to consider. Ultimately, they really should be part of a larger long-term web strategy driven by the needs of your customers.

Last week I posted about old logos that no longer carry the meaning of a brand. Sometimes, though, it’s the brand that has changed meaning. If your customers’ expectations of their experience with you changes, your brand changes. This is the exact challenge Starbucks is facing (see Starbucks Goes Social). Its brand, which once represented the highest standards in coffee, now reflects the mass-market volume business they’ve grown into. That’s not a good thing and they clearly want to change it.

In an effort to rekindle its old brand, Starbucks is temporarily bringing back a slightly sanitized version of their old logo and branding. They’re replacing the recognizable ‘Starbucks Green’ with the original brown and the head-shot mermaid is being swapped out for the original full-shot mermaid (though those of us who have been to the original Pike Place store will immediately recognize that this is the PG version). With this change, the people at Starbucks hope to evoke the company’s heritage and reawaken the meaning of the old brand with their customers.

In case the logo swap gets lost in translation, they’re following it up with a “Discover Our Heritage” campaign. The campaign includes the new Pike Place Roast and the phrase “for 37 years Starbucks has poured passion, expertise and experience into every cup of coffee we make.” But no matter how much they want to rekindle their early history, they can’t erase their recent history. If you’ve bought a coffee from an airport Starbucks in the past five years, you know those cups didn’t include passion, expertise, or experience.

Your logo should reflect the meaning of your brand. Unfortunately, sometimes meaning can change over time. Over the weekend I drove past a Sherwin Williams store and had a good look at their logo. Here’s what they say about their logo on their website:

“Our historical logo is one of the most recognized company logos in existence. Created in the late 1800s, the logo’s purpose was to represent the company’s desire to help beautify and protect the buildings of the world. It was a symbol of a young company’s enthusiasm, idealism and hope regarding its future and the possibility for achievement that hovered on the nation’s horizon.”

Given today’s green movement, do you think the ‘Cover the Earth’ logo has the same meaning it did in the 1800s?

Uptime and performance monitoring company Pingdom has released a study showing that there are now 162 million sites on the web. We began with one in December, 1990. Amazing growth that doesn’t seem to be slowing. The count grew by as much in the last 14 months as it did in the first 14 years.

How are you going to make sure your site doesn’t get lost in the crowd?