Lots of excitement here at Gazillion & One. Once again we find ourselves surrounded by boxes as we get ready to move to our new building in downtown Grand Haven, Michigan.
It’s been a long time coming and we’re very excited to make our next (and last) move into a new space designed from the ground up to support the work that we do for our clients. Our new office is the culmination of a decade of research and planning to define a place where our particular brand of creative collaboration can thrive.
The move will take place on March 13th, 14th, and 15th. It’ll be a hectic few days but we’ll do our best to stay on top of any calls or e-mails during that time, of course. We should be settled in and back to work on Monday the 18th.
Watch this space for updates and photos from the move!
It was a snowy day as we said goodbye to our temporary digs on Robbins Road...
Day Two of the move: Don't let the smiling faces fool you. It's been a long week.
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]]>"I realized something was wrong at about 5 p.m. on Friday. I was playing with my daughter when my iPhone suddenly powered down. I was expecting a call, so I went to plug it back in.
It then rebooted to the setup screen. This was irritating, but I wasn’t concerned. I assumed it was a software glitch. And, my phone automatically backs up every night. I just assumed it would be a pain in the ass, and nothing more. I entered my iCloud login to restore, and it wasn’t accepted. Again, I was irritated, but not alarmed.
I went to connect the iPhone to my computer and restore from that backup — which I had just happened to do the other day. When I opened my laptop, an iCal message popped up telling me that my Gmail account information was wrong. Then the screen went gray, and asked for a four-digit PIN.
I didn’t have a four-digit PIN.
By now, I knew something was very, very wrong."
We're no strangers to security scares here at G1 — I had a Friday evening very similar to Honan's a few years back — so know how important the little things are.
If you haven't yet read Honan's account, you should absolutely do so right now. The takeaway isn't that Apple and Amazon should have better processes in place to protect their customers (over the weekend it appears they've already changed their policies to protect against this) but that almost everything that Honan went through was entirely avoidable. As he admits in the article, he only had himself to blame.
Here's a few tips for avoiding your own epic level catastrophe...
If you're a Gmail user, you need to institute the two-step level protection described in this article. It's a bit of a hassle to get all your devices and computers updated, but it's your first line of defense against the same kind of attack that Honan experienced. What's a lost hour compared to lost weeks, months, or even years of hard work and data? You do not sit powerless like Honan and watch all of that go up in flames.
You should never, ever share a password between any accounts. And all of your passwords should be at least 12+ characters long, including some of those special, hard to remember ones. The good news is, there are applications like the excellent 1password that make it easy to keep track of all your hard-to-remember passwords . . . and they'll even generate really long, nonhuman-readble ones for you.
The most heartbreaking part of Honan's article is the loss of family photos. Also entirely avoidable, had he but taken the time to back up everything regularly.
Applications like SuperDuper let you schedule daily backups, producing an accurate snapshot of your hard drive. In the even of a catastrophic failure, you can boot up a new machine using your snapshot.
In addition, an offsite or cloud-based backup service in an inexpensive way to give yourself a little peace of mind. There are a variety of services out there with different options and pricing plans, but I like CrashPlan and BackBlaze best for their ease-of-use, restore options, and ability to backup external drives along with the hard drive.
It's easy to let things slide a little, distracted by the day-to-day demands of your business. The antidote to this is to find a reliable partner who can come in every so often, check your machines and give you the latest on what's happening in the industry. Talk to some of your colleagues, do a little Internet research, and interview a few firms in your area. You'll find someone who's the right fit for your organization.
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As technology advances, our reliance on it grows . . . and so does our vulnerability. The good news is, it's now easier than ever to make sure you're protected. A few hours of legwork will save you a ton of headaches.
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Chances are, by now you've heard of Pinterest.
If you haven't yet, you really should take a peek. It's a lot of fun and it's rapidly becoming one of the most popular new social networks.
By now, it probably already is.
A few people here have been playing with it for a while now . . . okay, we'll admit it: We're total pinboard junkies. So much so that we even started up a board for Gazillion & One.
As much fun as it is to share our discoveries and enthusiasms, we've got a sneaking suspicion that — if you do it the right way — Pinterest is also a brand new place for brands to cultivate consumer engagement.
There's definitely something going on there. We'd tell you more but we've got to get back to our boards.
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"Great employees are reliable, dependable, proactive, diligent, great leaders and great followers... they possess a wide range of easily-defined — but hard to find — qualities. A few hit the next level. Some employees are remarkable, possessing qualities that may not appear on performance appraisals but nonetheless make a major impact on performance."
This article at Inc.com walks through 8 key qualities that sets a great employee apart from all the rest. Even though we might not agree with every single point the author makes, it's worth taking a look whether you're looking at new recruits or evaluating the people already on your team.
If there's one word that lies at the heart of our hiring process here at Gazillion & One, it's the word "fit" — it doesn't matter how experienced or qualified you are, how well you know your stuff, if you don't fit with the values, process, and culture of our company then we'll never find common ground. At the end of the day, it's all about how well we all fit together to become greater than the sum of our parts.
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I was excited to hear the news today that WIRED Magazine had finally figured out subscription-based delivery for their iPad edition — and not just because I'm a longtime WIRED reader and an utter Apple-iPad-Mac-Steve-Jobs-is-God-Incarnate cultist.
The evolution of the Analog to the Digital is fascinating to me. In fact, any technological evolution fascinates me. In his excellent "What Technology Wants", Kevin Kelley (WIRED Editor and one of my own personal technological shamans) talks at length about this evolution. It's a great book and well worth the read.
With any new advance in technology, the Media spends a fair amount of time chronicling (and, some might say, fostering) the predictably tiresome reaction of "Gasp! The [analog media or technology] is DEAD! And it's all [digital media/technology]'s fault!"
In Kelley's book, he makes a startling observation: Technology rarely, if ever, becomes extinct.
Technology always evolves. Although there were some missteps along the way, the so-called "Industry" — be it books or magazines or television or even music or newspapers — is finally starting to adapt and evolve into these new digital habitats. And, based on what I'm seeing, it looks like these nearly-extinct media are starting to develop into some new and exciting lifeforms.
We've got a long ways to go, of course. Once upon a time, I used to compare the Web to cave painting; the point being that we were in the very early stages of something, working by candlelight with inferior materials. Fortunately, we don't have to worry about being hunted by saber toothed tigers while we do it — at least, not yet.
Obligatory connection to Marketing/Advertising: From the Agency point of view, this is an incredible time to be working with clients. From the web to mobile devices, brand new methods are opening up nearly every day, allowing us to connect with people in ways that only science fiction writers would have dreamed of.
It's an exciting time.
Where exactly does a brand come from? If one is going to set about discovering and defining their company’s brand, where should he begin? Far too often I see businesses start with market research.
Don’t misunderstand me. I’m a huge advocate for market research. Every single piece of information we can get our hands on to better understand the customer is worth its weight in gold. And—thanks to the magnetic band on our credit cards—consumer data is being gathered more profusely than ever before. Any salesperson will agree, the more you know about the person you are selling to, the better your chances of success. Advertising is no different.
The problem is the misuse of research. Companies are using research to guide almost every decision they make, even brand development. Your brand is the definition of who you are as an organization. If that definition is based on consumer demands, market trends, and every-changing indicators, it won’t hold up. The result is a brand claim that may resonate with your customers on some level, but is largely untrue. It is not an accurate, honest representation of your organization.
Let us imagine we are teenagers on a journey of self-discovery (as painful as that thought may be). We enter the high school cafeteria (a.k.a. the marketplace). We see the popular group everyone idolizes. We want that for ourselves, so we dress like them, talk like them, and imitate their every move. See where this is going? Following never leads to leadership. We are no closer to closer to figure out who we are, rather we are embracing someone else’s persona. Finding our own individuality is a process of uncovering the talents, experiences, and beliefs that make us unique. When we understand and appreciate that no one else has the exact combination we posses, we are able to embrace our individuality. Our brand, if you will.
In the same way, your company’s brand is what makes you unique among your competitors. Market research can provide valuable insight. It can help you communicate your unique brand in a more relevant way to customers. But it can never reveal your company’s brand identity.
Research is valuable, but using it to define your company’s brand is nothing more than copying someone else’s homework. You may get a few answers right, but you’ll get caught in the end.
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Are you the top dog in your industry? Category leadership is an enviable position to be in. Most of us spend a lot of time and energy watching, imitating, and competing with the leader. We try to provide a better product or service hoping to sway the customer’s loyalty to our brand. Ironically it’s often a futile exercise. Because there can only be one top dog.
Being the best doesn’t always mean you get to be first. There are plenty of examples of companies making a better product or delivering a better service than the industry leader. Yet customers seem to be unchanging in their loyalty to the number one brand. Why is this true? An important factor to consider is that the leading brand in any category is almost always the first brand into the prospect’s mind (Coca-Cola in cola, IBM in computers, Hertz in rental cars). And because they are the first brand in their category, they earn a place of leadership and credibility in the consumer’s mind that is almost impossible to change.
If you aren’t the leader in your category, the best strategy is to create a new category where you can be first. If history proves that being first in a category is the best way to become the leader, then find a new category.
How exactly do you create a category for yourself? It begins when you stop talking to your customers about what makes you “better,” and start talking about what makes you “different.” Finding and communicating your company’s unique brand is the first step toward owning a niche or category for yourself. A place where your competitors can’t touch you. A place where you can be the top dog.
]]>Consumers are constantly looking for that little something that can make their cars go faster, their hair smell better, their lives more meaningful. People change, lifestyles change, loyalties change, and every time they do, product categories are turned upside down. If you want to evolve with consumers, you can’t study their behavior alone, because few things are more unpredictable than human behavior. You must study the behavior of your competition. Because setting yourself apart from your peers is what makes the difference.
When you look at the category your brand resides in, what makes your product or service different? Is it the benefit to the consumer? Subtle manufacturing nuances? The company history? There is always something unique that can be communicated. How you communicate that difference is what makes or breaks your brand. Because consumers will never understand what makes your brand unique if it is presented in the same idiom as the competition.
Most brands do not have sustainable or sufficiently compelling differentiation to inspire brand loyalty. And brand loyalty is what allows you to not only avoid competing on a commodity level, but to avoid competing at all. If your company can offer a promise that no one else can deliver upon, then you have the makings of a dominant brand. It may live in a category that you created, but if you built it, you own it. And the customers will come.
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