How to brand the legendary way

It’s hard to explain what a brand is. Unless you are an expert at branding. Well, we have some experience, let’s see if we can pass that for expertise.

Look below. These are logos from some of the most famous brands in the world

What you SEE is the logo, but what you FEEL every time you see that logo, or think about that company/product THAT is the brand.

Now, how do YOU feel about these brands is merit of EVERYTHING they do, high quality of products, inspiring communication, customer experience and so many and many more subtle things that make you fall in love with them.TO say it with less words: they have to deliver their promises, always, and no matter what. So, let’s say you have a brand (even a personal brand counts) and you want to make that brand work. That actually means taking your brand out there and applying it to the world.

Step One: Describe the person you are most excited to work with.
This would be your ideal client. Even if you want to attract a big audience, at the center of that group is the person who would be the perfect fit for your services. The person you’d be most excited to work with.

Step Two: Connect your client’s goals with the problems holding them back. These should be related to the services you provide, meaning your services are the solution to their problems.

Step Three: How is your client’s life improved as a result of working with you? Helping your clients achieve this is your brand purpose.

Seems easy right? Now that you know, of course it is.

And still, you might know everything there is to know and read everything there is to read, but there are secrets that you discover only in the wild urm, market sorry.
For example, in our 12+ years of building brand after brand after brand, we have grasped the most essential lesson of all:
That legendary brands are not about portfolio, image or business. A legendary brand is all about CUSTOMERS. If you grasp that concept and apply it by all means, at all costs, your success will be unstoppable.

If you are interested in learning more about how we help Companies rock their brands, shoutout to us at info@pik.al

Digital

November 10, 2021

How to spend up to 80% less from the allocated budget

There is a tremendous noise out there with notifications, ads, reminders, messages, calls from work, family, thoughts in your own head. But this isn’t just you or because you work in a crazy industry. Everybody is in the same place. Everybody. So you want to sell these busy people a product or service and think just because the ad reached them it will sell? Good luck with that. People ignore kids dying of cancer in need for financial support, you still think your ad is gonna close sales? Unless your ad is extraordinarily awesome, that’s never gonna happen.

According to a study 95% of the marketing people that have all the budget needed to hit their sales targets, still don’t hit their sales target. Just kidding, there is no such study, but we know from what we see everyday in the market. Because it doesn’t matter how much you spend, if you don’t know exactly what you’re doing, you’re not spending, you’re wasting.
Before you get your feet in the water there are some things you should know, or learn so the campaign doesn’t project as a failure before it even starts.

How to turn followers or engagers with your campaign into buyers really quickWhy your customers are not engaging and how to trigger them
How to generate thousands of leads and getting the cost per lead to almost nothing.

Let’s take these down, one by one and real quick

To get someone to buy something there is one big thing and thousands of smaller things. The big thing is they believe strongly and have all the proof that what is being offered will solve their problem the fastest and at the best price available for that quality.
The smaller things are “I am getting this because the offer is great and I might need this in the future”, “everybody is getting this”, “I want this because I will look/feel cool with it”.

Funny thing is, all reasons are valid, but it’s not really advisable to make something that aims at all reasons. That will create confusion in the buyer, and a confused buyer is never a buyer.

Your customers are not engaging because they don’t feel related with the ad/product/post. Why they are not related? Most probably because you didn’t do your homework and don’t even know WHO your perfect customer is and HOW do they feel everyday about the problem you want to solve with your product/service.

Leads are the first step to convert public into buyers, but these are sometimes hard to get. Well, hard if it’s done the hard way. And the hard way is always not knowing your possible customer. Where they spend their time, what they do, what content they consume, where they consume it.

There are many and many more things to check, but we always have a session to define the strategy and check the requirements to validate the campaign. Maybe you are interested in knowing how this works, you can reach us out at info@pik.al and get your free session for a marketing strategy that will get your sales through the roof.

Business

November 10, 2021

Was it always this hard?

In the rushing of the “everything lasts 3o sec max” (we thought of that too, it’s not that funny) it has become hard for the leaders, how to say this… to lead, meaning communication and execution.

Because the leaders, or the management, just like everybody else has their own life challenges and also work load to carry around. And rest assured it’s heavier compared to employee load (that’s why more money right?). We might be wrong but all other agencies might face this. Being busy with treating the client right, and going back and forth for half a workday on the hue of a background color which is irrelevant to the whole thing. And thi is where everything starts.

There is a new trend in the business where the Client seems to have lost the concept of what the purpose and role of Marketing.

These migrations of people in parallel positions in a company take someone from finance, or product/sales and put them in a marketing role.. these people might know a thing or two about marketing, or even a deeper grasp, but hey, if they weren’t grinding 10 hours a day for years on end like the rest of us, it’s impossible to compete in a nasty environment. Because it is nasty.

Brands are out for two things mainly: money and clients.

Sometimes also to make a good deed once a year so they fulfill their CSR requirements, but mostly is just profit. And that is a tough thing to get. Even for pros, imagine someone who just started. And finance, product, sales people are individuals who rely on processes that ensure safety of the outcome.
With the marketing is the exact opposite. If it’s not risky, is it even worth the efforts? All groundbreaking creative concept or products came from never seen before approaches, that’s why their impact was so powerful.

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Delivering truly great creative work has never been easy, but in the everyday change of digital, internet, mobile, now Meta everything need to be re considered every now so often. Trying new thing is risky of course, but the rewards are always there. Playing it safe means doing something which you have seen being done and works. The problem is that “it has been done, who’s gonna have an interest on it again.

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Simply put “stop doing the same thing everybody did… yesterday”!

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Still the clients require things. And they want those things fast. So the pace gets crazy. That’s where effective leadership comes in. That what’s separates mewh agencies good agencies and great agencies. Delivering steady quality work without

ADVERTISING

November 10, 2021

How copywriting starts the sale

It is magical what effective copy can do. Even the most simple image(sometimes no image at all), with some nice/great/awesome copy in it, will dowonders.
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But what is copy and what is copywriting?
Ok, let’s get over with this once and for all and move on.
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Copy is the text of promotional content. The text on print or digital materials, or the lines in in TV and Radio commercials and the disclaimers.Dear lord, we still have to clarify this even after years and years that copywriting entered as a separate process in the agency routines.

Anyway, let’s move on and share some tricks on how to trigger emotional reaction that make the hand reach for the wallet.

There is one that everyone overlooks and seems weak as an approach, but it’s most probably the best: honesty. We are not talking about being dull honest and just showing the facts. We’re talking about knowing people’s fears and being open to discuss things. You might ask how do you do that when the communication is one way? Well, you start by asking an honest question? A question that shows the way to a great solution.

For example: let’s take a house loan as a product. What is the common benefit that anyone is looking for in a house loan? Obviously not paying to rent but paying to own.So we shoot the question with a big headline: ARE YOU SAD YOU STILL RENT?

We know that the target audience will answer “yes” inside themselves, so we follow in the sub headline: Live today the happy life you deserve in your own home.
Simple. Clear. To the point.

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Then in the bullet points we put the product features. And these must be competitive, or else what’s the point. No one will want to pay more because your copy is good, but your communication will start a journey. And it’s up to the 360° campaign to close that sale by targeting etc.

To be continued…

Pikers

November 10, 2021

7 Questions For NEO

‍Neo is advertising the fine art of separating people from their money?
‍I would say that it is an old misconception. Today, we are people driven, customer driven versus product driven. Businesses as well as advertisers look to consumers needs in order to offer them something useful or meaningful.

That takes an extremely clever use of wit from charismatic people that solve business challenges. Also, advertising people are people that want to be expressed, to talk for the world that they live in, to address subjects that are bigger than the business challenge, in the same moment they are addressing the business challenge. And you can do as such only by talking the truth.

‍Since you mention truth, what is the true purpose of advertising then?
‍The purpose of advertising is to support business. The purpose of business is to make money. The end result of business is to create jobs, to create a civilized way of life for people who might not otherwise be able to have a civilized way of life. Making money, creating wealth makes civilized life possible and if someone has been poor at a certain point in their life, they understand what that means.

Advertising is a facilitator in that equation. It allows businesses to be conducted in such a way that they have dignity and value. When I say value, I mean worth that becomes essential, fundamental. The kind of value that only Brands, more than businesses, have.

As we all know, any product itself can be matched, imitated if you like, by competitors in a matter of short time. Technology can be matched in a matter of 3 months. Cars, shoes, juices, even medicines can be matched in an even shorter time. But a Brand is the personification of the product, the Brand is what advertising has done to create within the mind of the consumer: a vision of that product. And this, cannot be matched.

Creating a Brand for a business is invaluable because it separates it from its competitors and it allows the consumer easier choice. Brands make choices very clear and very simple because they carry meaning and understanding in consumer’s mind.

So, the ultimate purpose of advertising is to conceive and create that meaning.

‍So advertising provides you with the freedom to choose?
‍Certainly, advertising provides you with the freedom to choose and advertising is information for the consumer. And that information can be used with great truth or it can be used to deceive. Most deceptions though are uncovered fairly quickly and, you know, one of the oldest axioms of the advertising business is, great advertising will kill a bad product.

It becomes more difficult when you have products that are hard to distinguish between.

Then advertising becomes important because the product itself is not used so much for its actual value as it is as a statement about the person. So, in a way advertising allows people to be who they want to be. Or attempt to be someone they aren’t.

How can you be successful selling a product?
‍I don’t think you can be successful selling a product.

Ok let me rephrase: how can you make money in advertising business?
‍You can make money for a short period of time by selling products. But I think you can become a big winner, long-term, if you sell brands.
Products have short lives.

Brands have everlasting life -or close to it, at least. Brands transcend products. I will give you an example. Back in 2001 I had a discussion with my Head Creative Director Mr. Liarmakopoulos. He was the guy that thought of claiming that a popular detergent of that time was fighting dirt better because of “blue and green dots”. The truth in that case was that the specific product was an innovation and it was better than the competition. But they couldn’t be persuasive.

Mr. Liarmakopoulos invented that gag. The company accepted the idea and they modified the product as such. Huge success for the product followed. At that time this product saw massive increase in sales and it became number one in the market.

Now, 25 years later, the sales of the specific product it is only about 2% of the sales of the total Brand while its variations, from liquids to concentrates and other products under the same Brand, consist of the rest of 98%: the Brand kept up with the needs of the people. But yet, the Brand is as powerful today as it was back when it was originally launched because they kept up with the foundations set by the original concept.

What I am saying is if you’re a marketer of brands and if you understand what a brand is versus a product then that is how you become successful in selling and make money for your clients and your agency.

It sounds like advertising people are a modern version of bankers…
‍I never really connected bankers to this but I think that is a really excellent point of view. I’ve always believed that advertising creates equity. It not only creates equity in your pocket, it creates equity in the mind.

Advertising -when building a brand- it creates an equity in the mind of the consumer that allows the product to be bought and bought at a premium, so that there will be money for research and development for the manufacturer and for profits, and so forth.

For example, the top selling product of Lancome is the the Advanced Genifique. The 100ml costs approx. 190$. I bet the real cost of the product to be produced is much, MUCH less than that. But keeping in mind that L’Oreal spent 985 million euros in research and development in 2019 alone in order to be able to bring that innovative product to the consumer, then that price makes sense doesn’t it?

So, in a way, yes you are right. You could say that advertising people are the bankers of the intellectual equity of the brand.

Finally, a personal question: why are you creative?
‍It’s obvious: think of the alternatives.

Updates

November 10, 2021

How to Be Nervous on Your First Day After Being Hired

It’s natural to be nervous on your first day after being hired. People are just like us: when we’re nervous, we put our energy into what we want to do instead of what we are doing. Take a deep breath, clear your head, and realize that you will be learning a lot in the first six months.
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Anyone who has worked in the technology industry will tell you that it can be incredibly energizing to be a facilitatoror coaching developer. You can move up in the company very quickly if you are approachable and kind. So start showing some initiative by looking for ways to solve problems and take the initiative to do things that don’t have to be done. Start making your biggest impact as soon as you can. It is amazing how powerful it is to make a small change in the direction of things when you are making your impact at the highest level. It is so important to be aware of the habitual behaviors of powerful people. Research the lives of top entrepreneurs and find out what they do in daily life and ask how they got to be so successful.

Look for two or three patterns that they share and check in with yourself to see if they are similar. As you read their stories, write down everything that comes to mind. Into what ever they learn edit was common to see the need for a transformational learning experience. You could say that their dreams shattered before they ever had the opportunity to play in the arena of possibilities. Instead of absorbing all that you read, inators and change makers see the need for involvement from the other side of the equation. They seek out the experts and take the risk. It is lonely at the top unless you are the center of everyone's attention and expectations.

Ask yourself if you can be the subject of a learning event while you are learning about the purpose of your life. Some of us have discovered that we can when we allow time. Do not let your career life take a back seat until you can safely put it on the shelf for a while. The answer to this question is found in the wordless expressions of your actions. Each of us has many roles and intimate relationships in our lives which are not necessarily related to our career. It is important to set some boundaries forthese relationships because these are non-work related in some sense.

However, it is also non-work related because it imbibes a softness and a softer side to us as human beings. Work is what happens when the mind breaks into soft focus focusing and is not a fun centered activity. Seterers and changers both need to unhinge their minds in order to clear the foggy areas in their work life. It may be said that BillGates did not have a life beyond work. He certainly had a life beyond his business. However, he knew that his business was of secondary importance to the aspects of his life that he called home. He was a man of strong work ethics and a natural leader who could not (or wanted to) be anything less than dynamic and outgoing.

The primary difference between Bill Gate sand the rest of us is that Bill Gates had a business and his business was changing the world. That is what his work was about. Likewise every day for most of us consists of business, whether we know it or not. When we are members of the public, the distinguishing factor may be our place of employment. feing , hunting, sports team affiliations, they all somehow tie-in with what is on our minds, what we value, what we desire. That is fine, so long as we do not allow what is on our minds to influence our behavior. If we glimpse into the future and see only what is happening now, we may be precipitating a paradoxical outcome.

We set our mind to one thing only to find out that we cannot do that one thing without experiencing something else. We acquire skills and experience in the hopes of being valued and recognized for those acquired skills. In other words, we are trained to thrive in any environment and give up what we do not need.

The core challenge of the 21st century is the re-education of every individual to make them aware of what has happened and continue on. We must all be willing to revisit our cultural roots and example our parents and teachers. Start the educational process in your own household by asking what does your husband do to support his family? If his income is mostly from home and he drives a safe home, it is not the time to consider buying a new car. It is time to evaluate what you do to provide the stability that comes with a safe and dependable spouse. Moreover, change is inevitable.