Ready, Set, Recovery! We're pointing the way.

Pasadena Advertising Marketing and Design (P-AMD) has been selected to create a new print, web and social networking campaign for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board (FWIB). FWIB provides workforce services that are invaluable in any economy and absolutely vital in today’s precarious environment. They offer a one-of-a-kind, employment lifeline that connects both sides of the workforce to what they need the most – for FREE. Until now, they have gone largely unnoticed by both the employers struggling to keep their businesses afloat, and by the great majority of unemployed desperate to find the right job. 

This is a dream project for us, because the concept essentially sells itself. Everyone wants it; everyone needs it, and it is vital to the community and the economy as a whole. The only fundamental element lacking is awareness. If prospective employees don’t know that the keys to a better life are at their fingertips, they can’t ask for them. If business owners and managers don’t know they have access to essential business survival skills and to an unparalleled pool of highly qualified talent, they can’t use them. That all of this is free isn’t even an issue. Awareness is the key, not just for now but for the long term.

As a part of this coming year’s campaign, P-AMD will create and develop a new website for the Foothill Workforce Investment Board designed to reinforce their overall marketing plan. The site will be the center of a hub of social networking sites that appeals to employers, talented potential employees, city governments, business improvement districts and chambers of commerce that stretch from Duarte to South Pasadena. 

This is not only an exciting project for all of us at P-AMD to undertake but a vital step in the revitalization of our region. A wave of recovery is coming. Nobody can tell when, but the signs are everywhere. However, the job seekers and employers of Arcadia, Monrovia, Duarte, Pasadena, Sierra Madre, and South Pasadena have to be ready for the wave when it arrives if they hope to ride it. If they jump on it too early or wait too long, they’ll miss it, and recovery and prosperity could be lost altogether. 

Job seekers need to know not only how to get “a” job, but get “the” job they want and can do the best. Employers need to know that there is a viable resource, in their own backyard, where they can find sound business advice and a pool of local, highly qualified applicants at no charge. 

That is now our task, and we can hardly wait to get started.

The Branding PowerPoint (as requested)

After a very well received Branding and Positioning seminar in South Pasadena, we are posting the Powerpoint presentation. It is little more than a slide show for those who like a little side of tongue in cheek with their information. However, when I posted this on Youtube, I received a little criticism about the lack of sound. For those of you who attended the presentation (and their friends), this first video is for you... quiet though it might be.




However, I felt absolutely horrible that anyone could have felt so cheated by the lack of sound in the presentation. So I recreated it with the help of my very good friend* Boots Randolf. Please enjoy the "sound."  :-)




Who ever said Branding and Positioning can't be fun?

*Never actually met my good friend Boots Randalf, but I love him (and Yakety Sax) all the same.

BRANDING A SMALL BUSINESS

Suzanne Marks, Pasadena Advertising’s comely CEO, just gave a seminar on "Branding" to the South Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.  The audience members, by and large, were small business owners. They were concerned that since the big stores spend so much money on branding, they had better learn about it too.  However, branding and positioning efforts (for those who like semantic hair splitting) are usually reserved for large, impersonal corporations.  Branding is what gives the company a face: a personal connection that clients and customers can hold onto.

The business owners’ concern is understandable, as John Costello of Procter & Gamble fame once famously explained, “A brand image signifies a relationship with the customer.  It is the company’s most valuable asset.  It’s also the main differentiator, the best defense against price competition and the key to customer loyalty.  Competitors can copy your features and benefits, but they can’t steal your image.”

That said, giving a face to a small business is infinitely easier than creating a “face” for a corporation, because the business is, well, small enough to have a face built in, usually the owner's face.  The salespeople's faces.  And, the personal relationship is, more often than not, is actually personal – directly between people.  So branding techniques are ... well, simpler.  Take a shower.  Dress for work. Open your shop for business. Smile and make your customers happy.  Annnnnnnnnnd: Congratulations.  Your branding is done.

Okay, not quite. You also have to know who your prospective customers are. You have to design your store (and your signage) to appeal to them, and they have to see your appeal from across the street.

You have to pick a location where your customers would likely be and would like to be. You have to make your shop their home.  That’s all a part of your brand.  And you have to give your current customers the best product or service possible to build up the most powerful, long lasting brand advertising possible – Word of Mouth.

Then there’s that other advertising – the kind outside your store.  That's something you need to think about.  You have to be consistent and reinforce the image of your store, yourself and thereby your "brand" in everything you do. However, with the advent of social marketing, your advertising just got a whole lot cheaper.  With a web page, email, Twitter, Facebook and a blog, you can give directions, post hours, gain fans, thank old customers, entice new customers, post online coupons, showcase new products and services and reinforce your brand. And update it whenever you want.

All in all, a pretty hard working advertising medium that's worth all the work you put into it.