Effective Naturally

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This is a question that has been asked quite a bit.

"What's the difference between a Vision and Mission?"

A vision or mission is only helpful if people actually take notice of it and live by it. If it's not at front of mind then it's useless.

However if you don't have a mission or a vision, you are quite literally wandering with no purpose.

Should you have both?
Ideally yes, especially in a larger organisation and the rest of this post should help you to know the difference.

How do you know if yours is good?
You can remember what it says and it will shape the way you work.


So a Vision is...? » Read more

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Have you ever seen an event advertised where they say "and now smaller and worse than last year!" or hear a product advertised where they say "Now smaller and we're helping to take the world backwards"? Obviously not, it would crush excitement in whatever it was they were promoting.

Just as bad as going backwards is going around in circles and that's why an aspirational vision is so important to give you clear momentum forward. Across the globe any living breathing thing wants a vision for the future and that's why a clear Vision is critical.

In January we'll help you to get the year off to a flying start by helping you refine your vision so that your target customers and employees are fully engaged in helping you achieve it.

A vision should be in your mind day in, day out. It shouldn't be a burden, it should excite you and give you strength and direction when times are tough.

One of the hardest things in life is to keep things simple so sometimes it's hard to break away from all your daily tasks to ask yourself "why?"

Our vision has never really changed but I must admit we've refined the wording recently to better communicate it.

Here it is...

Every Tasmanian reaping the rewards as a brand people love.

We say every Tasmanian because we include individuals, business, not for profits and even the state itself!
For those of you who live outside of Tasmania, it's ok we'll share the same secrets with you too.

Will we ever get to 'every' Tasmanian? Well we're having a fair crack at it and so far we're including schools, community workshops, arts, corporates and all sides of government. We've developed strategic partnerships to roll out in 2012 to help us get the message farther, wider and clearer and shhhh...secret...we've got some some not for profit assistance grants coming in the new year! Personally, nothing excites me more (well nearly nothing) than knowing my home state is full of people punching well above their weight (and selected favourites across Australia).

Ok stop it, I'm getting excited...I'll get to the point...

If you can't even remember your vision then this Christmas is the perfect time to think about it. What makes your heart tick? What can you show your teams that will get them excited simply because you're sharing your passion? What can you do to create buzz about why you exist?

Don't worry about the wording of your vision, just think about the intent and where you want to be. Why do you do what you do? What's your bigger picture? We'll help you narrow the wording down with our first Perspectives back in 2012.

Whatever you're doing and whoever you're doing it with over Christmas, I hope it's amazing.
Thanks for reading and your support. I really do appreciate the chance to share what I love.

Christmas Cheerio!

Rick Marton
Brand & Culture Architect

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Are music festivals and retail really dead?

Last month a music festival in NSW called New Beginnings was cancelled.
On their Facebook page and across the media, organisers were quotes as saying "this proves festivals are dead".

I beg to differ.
This falls in the same category as retailers who hit troubled times and blame everyone but themselves.

There is a glaringly obvious problem with their statement - NOT EVERYONE IS DYING!

There are festivals that are still going very well. It's a similar story in the retail industry where some stores are closing and others are snapping up the real estate! But of course the ones not doing so well are more busy wanting everyone else to take the blame rather than proactively look at what they can do to better deliver what the audience wants.

With so many events competing for attention, you need to offer something that will capture the attention of your market and justify their investment of time, energy or money.

I don't want to sound rude, but i'm going to be straight to the point.
If you're business (retail, festival or otherwise) isn't getting enough sales then you need to realise the buck stops with you. You'd have an argument if no one else could survive, but the fact is that others are surviving, flourishing even!

There are three missing components here that separate those that are succeeding and those that aren't  - 'trust', 'relevance' and 'value'.

Let's have a look at those components. I've related them to this specific music festival, but they are no way alone:

Trust
Much human behaviour is driven by a gut feeling. A good gut feeling is required and this can only come with trust. Your market won't tell their friends about how good your offering is unless they trust that you'll deliver something worthwhile. On the New Beginnings Facebook page they use words that say "New Beginnings rises from the dead this summer with offerings of apocalyptic proportions. True to its name, the festival is unrecognisable from its previous incarnation...." It is worded like there was something wrong with the last one and this is an attempt to make something better. Of course "offerings of apocalyptic proportions" makes me wonder if they're slightly overstating their case! In the end it just doesn't drive confidence.

Relevance
The event was priced pretty low as far as festivals go but then the main acts touted were The Vengaboys (big club tunes from last decade) and a Spice Girls Tribute band. I don't think there is anything particularly wrong, especially because I was a bit of a Vengaboys fan. The thing is, if I were going to see them it would need to be in the right venue. Ensuring relevance to your audience requires you to ask a lot of objective questions to yourself like this one for example...."Would people rather see the Vengaboys and Spice Girls in a nightclub or whilst camping in a paddock?" Dance Club artists and camping don't really seem to mix. That's just my opinion, and I'm sure many other people with have theirs. What I can say is simply this...if people didn't buy tickets, they probably didn't feel it was relevant to what they were looking for.

Value
The saying "you get what you pay for" comes to mind. Relevance and Trust combine to determine Value. No one will give up their assets of time, energy and money if they don't feel like it offers a good return. Consumers are much more value conscious than they are price conscious. It's also interesting to see that according to their facebook page ticket sales for the same bands after they were moved to 'venues' were relatively strong.


The Point: If you feel like you're in the slow lane and struggling to get buy-in from customers there is no one else to blame. Sometimes the market shifts, sometimes you can help to shift the market, other times you need to do the shifting. If you're not selling enough tickets or not enough customers come in to your store it's because you haven't given them a compelling reason to do so. I'm not saying it's easy to work out what these reasons are, but the product must be created and adapted with the target audience in mind (without abandoning the DNA of your brand). Make sure you continually earn trust, keep your product relevant and deliver something they really value. If it still doesn't work then the only thing to do is learn your lesson, listen to your customers and think again. » Read more

'Tis the Season to be jolly!

But first we must continue this series on Brand Integrity... » Read more