Posts in the Communication Category

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Humor and Your Brand

A couple of weeks ago, 7-Eleven made a bit of a Social Media misstep when attempting to inject humor into a Facebook post. Here’s a screen of the actual status update:

Funny? Not so much. Tacky and insensitive, but not funny. That’s not the point of this post, however. Regardless of whether or not you find the questionable comment amusing, it leads to a larger issue: What’s the relationship between humor and a brand? Is it safe or advisable to employ humor in any way when speaking or writing on behalf of your company?

In spite of my response to the 7-Eleven post, I think the answer is a qualified “yes.” Injecting humor is a great way to increase brand appeal, capture attention, and engage your audience – as long as it’s used correctly. I do think there are a couple of things to consider before hauling out a bunch of blonde jokes, though, so if you’re looking to post a comment that aims for a chuckle, you might want to think about these tips first.

Before the funny:

Listen for Jiminy. If there’s a little voice in your head advising to think twice about whether to use the joke at all, you should listen. You know the voice: It’s similar to the one that warns you to delete the blistering email before you hit “Send.” And if you let it, that little voice will save you a lot of trouble. If the voice is talking, then you have a niggling doubt about whether the joke is going to play well with certain members of your audience, and that is worth noting. In the example above, I’m fairly certain that the inner Jiminy suggested to the post author that the joke might be seen as insensitive, but if you ignore the cricket, he can’t help you.

Remember your brand. The trick is this. What you personally find funny may not be representative of your company’s brand. No matter how amusing, if it’s not consistent with the voice or style of the company, it may work against what has taken years to establish. Not worth it. 7-Eleven has no relationship to mental health issues so it’s hard to imagine why it was deemed appropriate to lob in on the topic at all. Stick to the Slurpees is my advice. It’s truer to the brand.

If your joke passes the test and can add a laugh while remaining reasonably tasteful and on brand, then you have a chance to laugh with your audience – not at them. That’s the difference.

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Silo Sandwiches

If a business wants to create a culture where everyone contributes equally to a project and in the best interest of the client, then we need to move away from silo-thinking. This article is great because it puts a real-life example to the forefront. It shows that if everyone in a company doesn’t work together, the fault will fall back to the customer.

Teamwork is such an important aspect of GS Design. Sharing information and communicating with everyone on your team will help a project develop to its fullest and become successful. If you communicate effectively with your team from the beginning, this will minimize mistakes and help everyone be on the same page.

Do you face similar challenges in your work? Let me know in the comments.

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OMG! OMG is Not a Word.

My favorite source for online news, Mashable, surprised me with an article this morning indicating that the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary includes some unusual new additions (a.k.a. edition additions). Among them are favored interweb acronyms and symbols like OMG, <3, and LOL. They join the ranks of TMI, BFF, and IMHO which were apparently added in earlier updates.

Now I’m not trying to hate on the folks at Oxford, where they call themselves, ‘the definitive record of the English language’, but it seems to me that popular symbols and acronyms, while appropriate for a lexicon with a broader focus than a dictionary, are not suitable here. After all, Oxford itself says,  “The Oxford English DOMG WTF BBQictionary … is an unsurpassed guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of 600,000 words— past and present—from across the English-speaking world.” Please note the operative word – words. Now, I am aware that dictionaries contain other wackronyms (That means words that are actually acronyms – but don’t go looking in the dictionary for it, cause you won’t find it – at least not this year.) like scuba and awol, but those words have longed been used to represent ideas as opposed to acronyms. The same may happen with LOL over time, but the current induction seems a bit premature. Why OMG but not MILF? Where do we stop and when is it appropriate to say that acronyms have become more than the sum of their parts?

Maybe I’m splitting hairs. Maybe I need my morning coffee in order to read news in a less biased fashion, but at this point, the practice of adding acronyms like OMG to a dictionary kinda makes me say WTF. How about you?

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Why Trust is a Must When Building Your Client Base

An article on B2B email marketing I read today included this great infographic from Scott Stratten’s book UnMarketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging.

No matter what kind of sales or marketing efforts you’re involved with, the approach Stratten defines is rock solid: build trust, build relationships, and you will build your business, period. No gimmicks required. As Stratten says in his book, “When you’re good, you tell people. When you’re great, others say it for you.”

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