J: Greetings all. Welcome to Straight Shot. I am Jennifer Bennett. With me as always is the lovely Mr. Bennett, Zachary Bennett. How are you?

Z: Good. How are you?

J: I’m doing good. For today’s straight shot, I thought we should resurrect one of the old blogs that was on reformationproductions.com. It is about the UPS commercials that we saw. We were sitting at home and there was a UPS commercial on T.V. It provoked Zachary to go online and check out UPS.

Z: I went on somewhat of a rant.

J: You did. We went online and checked out at the time which is UPS’s latest campaign. It’s not their latest campaign anymore, but I think that talking about what UPS was trying to do is relevant today. They provide us with an excellent opportunity to showcase the differences between a vendor relationship and an agency partnership. I think a lot of our prospective clients get those completely confused.

Z: A lot of people do. I think they get it confused by design. I think it is taking advantage of the naivety of the small business owner. That is what we are going to talk about today.

J: It’s a common thing that we hear all the time. As you heard Zachary say, watching this UPS commercial sent him into a rage. The blog was initially written in ranting and raving. We are going to try to bring it to life on the Straight Shot.

Z: Maybe make it a little less rant.

J: Yeah, a little more positive. Start the New Year off on a positive note. You’ll hopefully be able to see what we’re talking about after we play this commercial. Let’s take a look at the first commercial from the campaign.

 

3:09: First UPS Commercial Explained

J:  Everything your customer sees tells a story. There is so much truth in all of these commercials.

Z: The underlying message of all of it is true. It’s not enough to simply open a business that’s true. A large part of your business is communicating your business to the public. Without it, you end up just like the people that are shown in these commercials.

J: Friends and family are great, but they can only take you so far. Once you’ve tapped out of all of that, then you have to reach out beyond that.

Z: Three very good truths.

J: Let me preface before we continue by saying that UPS is a wonderful store. They do wonderful things. What they do is wonderful. Sometimes, they seem to promise more than they can deliver. We are not trying to slam UPS specifically. We are just using them as an example. This kind of thing happens all the time in the industry. Marketing industry gets stretched pretty far. Let’s take a look at another commercial and see what that one has to say.

 

4:31: Second UPS Commercial Explained

J: Again, so much truth.

Z: Yes, a lot of that is absolutely spot-on. I can tell you how many times that I’ve seen that: the menu that looks like it was put together on their home printer. You see that stuff a lot. Every touch point that your business has with potential and existing customers is important. Every communication tool that you have needs to be consistent with your brand message. It does need to tell your company’s story. Every bit of that is truth. There is no lie in these.

J: Everything the UPS store is telling you in this commercial is 100% true.

Z: It is things that we see all the time.

J: We haven’t gotten to the part that makes Zachary insane yet, but it’s getting there. Like I said, the narration is perfectly true. Businesses all need that. Businesses need marketing material so people know you’re a real company.

Z: While we are talking about that, along with not having a proper business card is having an improper email address. Nothing says I’m an amateur that just started a business like having a Gmail email address or Hotmail or Yahoo.

J: I’m going to push back a little bit because Gmail is connected to so many things these days that a lot of companies do use Gmail. I do think that it is probably more professional to have your own website.

Z: If you want to use Gmail, that’s fine. But, your email address should be your company’s email address.

J: So far, everything that UPS has said in their ads is 100% true. Let’s look at another one.

 

7:18: Third UPS Commercial Explained

J: Like you said, it’s a very well done commercial. You and I both know there is at least one restaurant location that has changed over and over again. Companies have come in and out of it. You always get bummed when you see that they’re moving out. If it’s a new restaurant, you go there and you know this place isn’t going to last.

Z: The message that is in this spot is a lot of companies go out of business because they don’t plan their communications. They don’t have a proactive strategy to market it the right way. All of these messages are right on point which they should be. We will talk about this a little bit later. First, if you noticed, we haven’t played all of any of these spots. Let’s watch the end of one of these spots. Then, we will see what the problem is.

 

8:32: End Part of the UPS Commercial

J: What was the landing message there? Come to the UPS store for help with all of the marketing things mentioned: how to market your business, telling your story and communicating with the public.

Z: There is one major problem with all of this. That is they are UPS. UPS is a package delivery store. They are not qualified to deliver on any of the truth that they just provided. The question is why are they saying these things?

J: Let’s take a look at their history. To grow their business reach, UPS has opened up store front locations everywhere so that people can bring their packages to UPS to be delivered.

Z: Amazon keeps trying to get me to drop off my returns as opposed to the UPS guy coming to pick them up.

J: UPS decided that it’s going to make them different if they open up these store-front locations. This strategy would save them money so it’s a good business strategy compared to having drivers pick up packages infrequently here and there. It was serving their customers better, but at the same time increased their volume of customers by being more convenient to people’s schedules. People will use UPS if they can just drop their package off on the way to work instead of having to sit around and wait for them. Since they have opened up these store-front locations, they have to justify it. They have to justify the cost.

Z: They have additional overhead now.

J: They have to have staff. In order to maximize the investment, they decided to start offering things like mailbox services and printing services. There is absolutely no problem with that. We are all for business. It’s a growth and it’s proactive. It is a smart business decision and it does help them get the most out of their business decision. There is an issue with that though. Would you like to start your rant?

Z: The issue is with their messaging. They have used all of these marketing buzzwords to bring small business owners into their shops for advice that they cannot provide. Everything that they said was true, but they can’t deliver on their promises. That is the problem. As they said in the commercials, every business does need to tell their story through marketing communications. The issue is that UPS doesn’t know how to do it. UPS is a vendor. Their commercial didn’t say “we can print things for you.” It said “we can help you with your marketing.” While it is related, the two of them are not the same thing.

J: Printing is a service. Printing does not tell the story. All it is printing the story, but it doesn’t actually tell the story.

Z: Printing is important.

J: It is important. Not all agencies print. If a business owner sees that commercial and goes to them for marketing consultation, they are going to wind up empty-handed. A lot of business owners don’t really know how to tell their story. That is why they haven’t done it yet. It’s like a sign company that tells you that they can brand your company, but they can’t. What they do very well is they can print your logo on a pen or embroider it on a shirt. It is all very important, but at the end of the day, if you don’t know what your message is, you shouldn’t be printing it.

Z: All the ones that you just mentioned are all transaction based vendors. A lot of them use buzzwords like marketing and branding in order to attract new business. That is what I have an issue with. They are promising things that they cannot deliver on. These naïve business owners will go in and ask them for marketing help. Then, the person that is working behind the counter will have no idea how to tell them to communicate their story. They don’t know who the customer base is or what the history of the company is. They can’t do what this commercial just said.

J: Somebody that walks in and wants business cards will ask UPS and they won’t know how to help them create a logo. They are going to bring out a big catalog and then say “point to the clipart that works for plumbing.” If we have established that UPS is not a marketing expert, then how do they know all the information to put into their commercials?

 

14:24: Vendor vs. Agency Relationships

Z: That would be because UPS themselves have a marketing agency. UPS hired an agency Ogilvy in Atlanta. Ogilvy is a big advertising agency out of New York. They do excellent work. They knew that these spots using these words would speak to the needs of the small business owner. They decided to use this in order to bring those small business owners into the UPS store locations. The problem is that these small business owners are coming in looking for a relationship that they simply cannot get through UPS. Marketing agencies are part consultation and part creative production. Reformation Productions, our agency, is a marketing agency. We partner with businesses to help build their brand, develop strategic plans, and showcase companies’ brands to the public. That is something that UPS cannot deliver on.

J: It’s a completely separate business. When a brand new business owner opens up a shop, you got to have a logo and business cards. I don’t think a lot of business owners think a lot about needing a partnership. Some of them might think that the vendor relationship is what they need. They go to some of these places just to check these things off their list without realizing that everything that’s on their checklist should be cohesive.

Z: It should be well thought out and planned.

J: Your brand, your messaging, your website, and your logo should all happen within an order.

Z: Logos have meaning. Do you want to describe this logo?

J: The logo for Straight Shot Podcast is an arrow and a bullseye because marketing is about targeting your audience. With the arrow, you aim for the center. Reformation Productions’ tagline is “We think in straight lines.” We strongly believe that the best way to get from point A to point B is a straight line, so we have straight line marketing. The colors are reminiscent of our marketing agency, but also are separate so that Straight Shot can stand on its own at some point.

Z: Straight Shot itself is its own cliché which means being honest and direct. That represents the personality of who we are and what we do. We will tell you the cold, honest truth.

J:  We tell our clients that, too.

Z: All of that goes into our logo. It was not randomly picked off of a wall. If somebody is talking to you about your logo and you don’t have any of that thinking behind it, your logo was not made with care and with thinking. It’s not going to be an accurate representation of who you are. Just because you think it’s pretty or the name sounds good that is not a good enough reason to branch your company.

J: We are establishing that there is a difference between a vendor relationship and agency relationship which is more of a partnership. An agency basically helps you plan your steps for the entire year if not longer. They are there with you along the way. What are the other big differences with vendors and agency partnerships?

Z:  There are a couple things and you mentioned a lot of them. The biggest thing is that vendors are transaction based. There is a counter and they say I will pay you x, you will do y. That’s it. It’s just like going to a counter and you’re buying something. An agency has a partnership with their clients. This includes the thinking and the consultation to figure out what the logo is and why. People on their own do post to Facebook all the time. When it comes to your business, you should post 15 posts a month and you have to figure out what to say. It’s not only what are you going to say, but why.

J: You have to know your business. You have to know how your business speaks to people. Your business may not be your voice. You have to be able to identify that voice and speak with it. A lot of the time vendor relationships will only take you so far. They won’t help you discover these things. They assume you already know everything and you just need a widget. You pay them the money. They give you the widget and you’re on your way.

Z: Vendors are important. We are not saying that all vendors are bad people.

J: We are going to take a break for just a second because I have more that I want to talk about in regards to printing. I feel like we are bashing on UPS and printing services.

Z: We love our UPS guy.

J: We love our vendors. We will go into detail about the sponsors.

 

22:55: Vendor Relationships

J: Welcome back to Straight Shot. I hope you missed us. I know we missed you. One of the things that I promised you before the break was that I was going to dote a little bit on our vendor relationships. I’m the art director of our agency. I use vendors all the time. I am the manager of vendor relationships. I call them relationships because as an agency we partner with our clients and our vendors. I have vendors that I use all the time that I rely on. I know their first and last names. A lot of these vendors are mom and pop shops. I know their whole families. We have excellent relationships with our vendors which we use for printing. We are a production house. We do creative work, but we don’t have the printing presses. I need these vendor relationships to see a product all the way through to completion. I partner with vendors for sign production, printing, embroidering, and promotion. All they need is everything. You give them everything and they will slap it onto a product for you. If I was a business owner, I wouldn’t know the first thing to do. It’s a good thing that I’m an art director/designer because they aren’t really helping me out with figuring all that stuff out. I love the vendors that provide their service for a fair price. I test out a lot of different vendors. As an agency, we tend to get better pricing because we send them so much business. I do have an issue with companies that try to take advantage of other businesses by promising things that they don’t really deliver. Vendors are not set up to get into your business or to help you develop your brand. If they did, they would be an agency. With a vendor, you have to provide all of the artwork that is placed appropriately and outlined, vectored, high resolution dpi, fonts, etc.  - all the art ready files which includes the copy, graphics, fonts, etc. - As long as I have laid it out correctly and provided them with everything that they need, they are great. But if you walk in there without all of these boxes checked - "I don't really know what my font is, I don't know what photos, I don't know what my brand voice is,I don't really know how to do that, etc." They aren't going to be able to provide that on their own.

Z: They may try.

J: Yes, but a lot of them are upfront and will tell you "Hey man this is what we do: we are just going to put it on a product for you" But some vendors, kinda promise things, saying that they can do things that they really can't. I that really bothers me for these small business owners.

Z: The problem is that they won't really tell you know because they want your dollars. And I have an issue with that. You are misrepresenting yourself.

J: And you are exploiting the small business owner's naiveté.

Z: Yes, and I believe in being transparent and providing knowledge. Knowledge is power and the more you know, about what it is that you need to know, the better company you are going to be. And my job, as the agency, is to help you be the best business that you can be.

 

27:50 DIY Software and Service Providers

Z: I also have issue with companies that tell businesses to “do it themselves” like it was good business advice.

• 9 out of 10 businesses do not have the marketing expertise to “do it themselves” anymore than a vendor does…

• and telling them that they should tackle such an important part of being in business themselves is irresponsible.

They are simply trying to collect quick money from people that need help.

J: They are also downplaying the importance of brand messaging and putting in the work that is necessary.

Z: Companies like Wix, Vista Print, and others are best suited for school projects, MLMs and hobby-type businesses that are just dipping their finger in the pool.

• Customers will have to provide their own content to be plugged in to template creative that will just be like or at least very similar to any number of customers that they may have had before or after you.

• Professional businesses, businesses that are necessary to provide the owner and employees' livelihood, that are wanting to serious enter the marketplace and grow something are going to need custom, non-templated, content rich communication tools that tell can actually their story in a way that will position them in a way that they will be remembered and even preferred in the marketplace.

And most people simple aren’t skilled in how to develop these things themselves. Most business owners or managers are excellent at whatever their business is, not marketing communications.

 

40:03 The Straight Shot

So, the straight shot:

• IT companies don’t do web design,

• Printers and Sign companies may do layout but they don’t do brand development,

• promo companies don’t know your business or your customer target and can’t advise you on what to say.

• And delivery services don’t market businesses either

 

Be proactive and informed when it comes to running your business. Do your research…know who you are working with before putting down your hard-earned marketing dollars. Look out for buzzwords and challenge empty promises. Yes, you need the service… but can they actual deliver on it?

 

Episode One: Introductions