Earlier today I gave my presentation Growing Your Business with New Media to the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce’s small business/entrepreneur group. I have given this presentation in different formats to various clients and smaller groups before but this was the first large-scale setting. It was the perfect match of content (harnessing the cost-effective power of social media) and audience (small businesspeople and entrepreneurs). As I deflate afterward, I am reminded of the incredible opportunity that presents itself when you are asked to speak on a topic. What a powerful tool for positioning your brand — presenting, speaking, teaching. It’s not unlike the positioning power of blogging.

Do you have a speech that you are aching to give? Is there something related to your field of expertise that people are clamoring to hear about? Whether you are Al Gore presenting his traveling slide show on global warming or a neighborhood bank talking to a large medical facility about how your branch is sensitive to their employees’ unique schedules and needs,  you need to find that perfect fit of content and audience and use presenting as a positioning tool for your brand.

Oh yeah, shameless plug time … if you’d like us to come give our new media presentation to your business or group, let’s talk.

This morning on my way to may favorite local coffee shop, I found myself practicing my order. Let me back up … I was practicing because more often than not I get coffee from my favorite non-local shop, the Starbucks drive-thru a few blocks from my home. Because of the linguistic feats of Howard Schultz and co. Starbucks now controls how I talk about coffee. You see I am, like most human animals, a creature of habit and I almost always order the same thing at Starbucks — grande brewed coffee black. In generic, non-branded terms this translates to a dark roasted coffee in a medium-sized to-go cup with sleeve. So this brings me back to my initial observation — I have to rehearse my order when going elsewhere because Starbucks controls how I talk about coffee.

This is an awesome semantic power Starbucks has over me and — I am just guessing , here— a few others. This power is second only to those select few marketers who have managed to elevate their brand names to encompass their entire category — think Xerox, Kleenex, and now Google and the iPod. Words matter. One of my favorite lines ever from The West Wing (a word-lover’s delight!) is the proclamation from communications director Toby Ziegler that “the world can move, or not, by changing some words.”

Great brands are made of great words.

Aaron Sorkin gets it. Howard Schultz and the marketers at Starbucks get it. Do you get it? Do you exert as much control as you can over how your brand is talked about and the very words that are used? Better still — have you created a special set of words that will help them do so?

Photo credit doobybrain via Flickr

All of us at Westergaard Advertising are very excited about the prospect of the proposed passenger train connecting Iowa City and Chicago. So much so, that we lent our branding muscle to the cause and assisted the Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce with the naming of their support initiative and developed the logo above, hearkening back to the romantic heyday of the railroad that we hope to help reignite with this movement. Get on board the Chicago Flyer! For more information on this initiative check out the Chamber’s site.

These throwback boxes from General Mills are a lot of fun. They are nostalgic and full of retro kitsch. Plus you get a shirt out of the deal. You walk away smiling and probably carrying a box of something you haven’t had since you were a kid. That’s what nostalgia does. As a marketer you can’t go to this well too often but every now and then, after just enough time has passed, you can get out some artifact that will make your customers smile with childlike delight as you tug on their heartstrings and subtly remind them that your brand has been with them through it all.

Got some old signage or advertisements collecting dust in a closet or storage facility? Get them out and take them to your next meeting. Put them up in your business. Pretty soon your team will be smiling and together you’ll come up with a great way to re-introduce these memories back into your brand’s quilted tapestry.

No, this isn’t an excuse to show off pictures of my kids. When you have little children you eat fast food a whole lot more than you normally would. Last weekend on a trip to the golden arches I found my gaze wandering across the table to back of my son’s Happy Meal box. There on the box before me was depicted what a Happy Meal should be. A Utopian offering composed of a grilled chicken wrap, sliced apples and a cool inviting glass of milk. Mmmm.

The problem? This is the first any of us saw of it. No commercials (we watch a lot of kids TV too) and no in-store signage or menu call-outs. So — as you can see above — our gang ordered up our usual vittles. This is something about the Mickey D’s brand that we would actually like to know and it’s no where in the barrage brand impressions constantly pelted at families like ours. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that it was planned this way. The folks at McDonald’s want to be able to say that they offer something healthy in response to the heightened awareness of the post-Super Size Me world we live in but at the end of the day they don’t want anyone ordering it. Offer it and under-promote it and all of a sudden … We have a healthy Happy Meal on the menu but no one orders it … I digress …

Why should this matter to you? Is there something important that your customers should know or want to know about your brand that you have relegated to the back of the box?