The Sponge Blog: Evolve – embrace brand evolution. - Insights and ideas about design and marketing from The Sponge Sydney

I have finally been able to review the answers of our recent Value Proposition survey. While there is still a sizable amount of work remaining to produce the intended value proposition statement, there were some wonderful comments that have made me and my team extremely happy. So, on behalf of my team I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your help!

I would like to share some of the comments right away, however I will be respecting the privacy of their authors.

“A refreshingly practical and commercial approach to the smoke and mirrors world of digital marketing and web development”

“Easy to work with. Great ideas flowed from the very first meeting. “

“Lots of positive feedback, comments that our website looks amazing, professional and makes our clients feel confident in our company & brand.”

“I have only ever heard positive comments relating to our brand name and design. They were fresh 7 years ago, and I believe will continue to be so for many years to come. “

“They make a brand exciting and give it new life.”

“Received many compliments from strangers and clients.”

“A real market presence and recognition of our brand.”

“They are not cheap, BUT if you want quality creative that works you need to meet with them before you go anywhere else.”

“A company with youthful energy, and ideas that are contemporary and innovative!”

“Different is such an understated word but it sort of is appropriate.”

“A simple engagement process and a team that is very easy to work with. No attitudes; No egos. Just a group of hard working, keen and very creative guys and girls that produce outstanding designs.”

“They are creative and cutting edge with their thought processes; their professionalism and willingness to work with the client (us) was very refreshing. They were always positive about achieving the results that we were going to be happy with.”

We love the work we get the privilege to do for you here at The Sponge and this kind of positive response is really special to us. So again from me and my team, a HUGE thanks for your help, your answers are invaluable to us.

As one of our core services is creating (and managing) brands for new businesses, my team and I have the frequent pleasure of meeting with entrepreneurs. I think many of these entrepreneurs wouldn’t call themselves this, however Webster’s dictionary defines “entrepreneur” as: ‘one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise.’, so in my opinion they definitely are.

I personally admire the bravery that it takes to invest in an idea. I feel a kinship with this type of person as it is something I do time and again (with varied success!). Even with the uncertainty that accompanies creating a new business, there is freedom in knowing you are in control and not at threat of being fired.

The economist and entrepreneur Paul Zane Pilzer informs us in his Entrepreneurial Challenge that with the current economic climate, you really have no choice but to become an entrepreneur and the time to do it is when the going is good, not to wait until times are tough. I am not saying that you need to quit your job today and invest in that idea you have stewing over. I am saying that it is definitely worth a discussion to see if it is feasible.

Our policy of only accepting new “non-competitive clients” means our clients are spread across many different industries. With this variety of industries comes the privilege of experiencing and learning many different business models, processes and practises. One benefit is that we can share these practises with our clients in different industries, in some cases giving them first mover advantage. Similarly and sometimes more importantly, we can use them to shape a newly born idea, brought to us by an entrepreneur, into a fully developed brand and strategic business model.

We have two such projects in the development which I will touch on briefly now and share with you in detail in future posts once they have launched. One is an international business model that worked successfully ten years ago, but has been flailing in recent times due its laborious and out dated processes. We have streamlined this model into a completely scalable, cashflow generating online model with a powerful referral funnel and client retention system.

In the second of these we recognised that what the client thought was the product would work better as a free lead generator and the actual ‘profitable’ product is something else entirely. The new product has the potential to generate more than eight times the revenue from each client than the original idea. Furthermore if we are successful in adding the value we plan with this project, the repeat revenue is ongoing.

You may be thinking how does this fit in the realm of branding?

My team and I believe that client experience is a huge part of branding. If you get the client experience right, you will get the brand right. An awesome example of this is Zappos! Zappos generates over a billion USD in online sales annually, with 80% coming from existing clients. Their focus is their company culture and their client experience. I recently read to Zappos CEO Tony Hseih’s recently released book Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose in which he goes into detail about how Zappos got to where it is today. I highly recommend it!

When evaluating a new idea for a business or a brand, we like to think of it from your new client’s perspective. In the formative steps of creating a business there is every opportunity to shape the client experience completely so that it is ideal. Naturally this is heavily intertwined with the business’ process, so to us it is a critical part of branding and something we care very deeply about.

This kind of work is exciting to us and we relish every opportunity to create something special. Have you got an idea you want to discuss?

We have been working closely with some interesting entrepreneurs and organisations in the last two months who have really pushed us to work out our creative muscles. One project which is poised to go live in July has given us the opportunity to influence a positive change in Australia’s culture. I say this with some hesitancy, as I know full well that this kind of change is no easy thing.

The project, which I cannot disclose too much about right now apart from it being based around drinking, is about to go into a beta testing phase prior to the launch and we would like some help from 18-30 year old socially active Aussies to help us iron out any kinks. If you can help and would like to get an exclusive preview, email us for more information.

The weekend before last my fellow sponge director and I participated in a great motorsport event called the Italian Connection Trophy. We have been involved with it for three years as a sponsor and its charity (as of this year) is The Duchenne Foundation. If you are like me, you will not have heard of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) – it is the number one genetic killer of boys worldwide. Throughout the event we were all very moved by the video and the cause and donated everything we could to the Foundation.

The organisation is great, the cause is great, but there is one flaw which was a talking point through the event (due to the Duchenne car livery). Whoever was responsible for the domain name doesn’t appear to have thought it through carefully enough. It is www.blueball.org.au and it makes sense when you understand the logo and concept behind the brand for the foundation, but not so much if you haven’t seen it before. In my opinion the decision was made by someone too close to the brand and the curse of knowledge has clouded their thoughts. A quick look at blueball.org confirms the natural association that can be made.

The point is to think carefully about the domain name you are choosing for your brand. Have friends or family read through your short list to pick out flaws, or misreads that you cannot see. To see what some really bad examples a quick Google search for “bad domain names” returns a page with nine Bad domain names, as it says:

…these are companies that didn’t spend quite enough time considering how their online names might appear – and be misread…

1. Who Represents is where you can find the name of the agent that represents any celebrity. Their Web site is www.whorepresents.com
2. Experts Exchange is a knowledge base where programmers can exchange Advice and views at www.expertsexchange.com
3. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net

You can read the rest here, but you get the point.

Having said that, up until a recent check if you accidently omitted the .au in our domain name and typed www.thesponge.com you would have landed on the today sponge contraceptive device website!

I heard Brad Sugars (founder of Action Coach) share a quote from a mentor of his at his recent speaking tour, which rang true with me. It was “You can’t out earn me until you out learn me”. Although I don’t use Action Coach, I do agree with this principle.

I started on a diet of one business book per week many years ago and have been enthusiastically consuming knowledge in this manner on and above my weekly dietary goals. One of the reasons I am keen to continuously absorb knowledge is to discover new ways to add value for our clients and more effective methods to implement in our processes.

Given a large part of what we do at The Sponge is B2B marketing, one of the books I found to be extremely interesting late last year was Professional Services Marketing Written by Mike Schultz and John Doerr .

In April the authors invited me to participate in an online training course they were starting that builds on what the book delivered. In keeping with my intention to uncover new and better practices I joined the program. It is a four month course delivered online which is drip fed one or two lessons per week. Just one month in I have found it to be surprising value and it is providing me with much, much more than I expected. I had intended to use the knowledge gleaned to help our clients, but quickly realised that The Sponge brand could benefit from the exercise too.

What does this mean for you?

If you are currently using our services you will notice new insights and advice that will make your marketing efforts more appealing and effective in gaining traction with your market. You will see the effects it has on The Sponge brand and may be asked to impart your wisdom at certain stages (like our recent Value Proposition Survey) to help reach the outcomes. You will see relevant and hopefully useful posts in this blog, and are invited to join in with questions and comments.

Finally, when the next course opens up (later this year), I highly recommend every professional service consultant or practitioner to sign up and do it. If you have any questions for me about it, drop me an email.