Every year Inc. Magazine dispatches its scouts to the four winds to find the 5000 fastest growing, most sure footed, baller companies around. They look at marketers, advertisers, food service companies, manufacturers and everything in between….and this time around they found little, ol’ Centresource (blush), ranking us the 2,532nd fastest growing company in the country!!! (Balloons!! Confetti! Cheers! Tears of Joy! World peace! Dogs and Cats living together!)

This is a tremendous honor and we are proud to have our brand listed alongside some real impressive players. We’ve spent years trying to create the most strategic and creative interactive campaigns for our clients and it is paying off. Thank you Inc. Magazine for noticing and thank you to all the companies that have trusted us with your brands and businesses. We’re excited for what’s ahead!

Pro: The interface is gorgeous. It’s an art piece. Every function renders beautifully on the screen and tumbles in and out of view with each app you enter or leave. Don’t know whether to make a call on it or to hang it on the wall and stare at it. Love it.

Con: This thing won’t synch with anything that has the Mac name on it. No contacts, iTunes, apps…nothing. I have had to bounce my .Mac contacts off a variety of Gmail accounts and apply the appropriate amount of backspin to get my contacts in my phone. I did it, but it was huge pain.

Pro: The Venue Pro is lightening fast. This phone can bark the tires in third gear. No complaints there.

Con: No apps. Or at least no familiar apps. There is an entirely different eco-system for buying and downloading apps that I have found clunky and hard to deal with. Thumbs down.

Pro: You can “pin” the key apps and contacts you want to use on the phone’s homepage. This give’s you a large icon / shortcut for any function on the phone. This replaces speed dial and is a pretty useful feature.

Con: No visual voicemail. Booo! Visual voicemail is amazing and one of the things that makes the iPhone the iPhone. Not having that on a smart phone is like not having a stereo in your new sports car. Sure…it’ll still work…but driving it just became less fun.

Pro: There is a built in maps app that’s killer. That was a surprise. It’s accurate, gives you street address as you move down the road and has a great variety of street views. Check-plus.

Con: You have to download a YouTube app to watch anything on YouTube?! Really? Fail.

Pro: I’m out of pros. Cons from here on out…

Con: You can shoot videos on it, but you can’t email them. What’s up with that?! My videos are trapped.

Con: Camera isn’t that easy to use. Photo galleries are hard to get to and if the settings get adjusted, it is a cosmic impossibility to take a clear picture.

Con: We mustn’t forget that at it’s core, a smart phone is…well…a phone….Dell seems to have forgotten this. The phone is awful. Poor signal. Drops calls. Honestly, my Motorola flip phone dominated the Venue Pro in its ability to just make a simple phone call.

Con: Every time the battery on this phone get’s low and I plug it in, the Venue Pro shuts down. Total reboot. This is wildly annoying when I’m in a hurry or in the middle of a call. Seems like a pretty basic idea to be able to plug your phone in when you get a low battery warning and not miss a beat, but not with the Dell. Fail.

Con: It’s a Windows phone. It good, but at the end of the day it’s RC Cola in a world of Coke. It’s Lee jeans in the face of Levi’s. It’s MySpace not facebook. You can use it, but come on…You’re that guy. And who wants to be That Guy…except me who is currently That Guy, rocking the Venue Pro. I am, however, content. Sure I might not be able to synch my phone with any other devices I own, but it beats the Motorola flip-phone…unless of course I need to make a phone call.

I love C-Span.

There. I admitted it.

Not cool, but it’s true. In this sound byte world, I find something refreshing about listening to a representative on the floor of the House going on and on about Bill No. 2221. While for most this would be something mandated in purgatory, for me it’s a not-so-guilty pleasure.

On occasion, C-Span will air footage from the United Nations. 99% of the time the delegates are speaking a language I don’t understand, but I still get a kick out of their posturing, mannerisms and delivery. They are professional communicators and their careers have been defined by their ability to sway an audience.

That being said, no matter how great of an orator the leader of Zamunda might be, he has no real power to persuade me. I don’t understand a word he’s saying after all. I’m immune to his influence. I would make more of a connection with him if he were to read the New York City phone book.

Thinking that through I realized something important: Only 50% of communication is what and how you are saying something.  The other 50% is what people hear. You can have the most creative interactive and marketing campaigns of all time, but if you aren’t speaking in a way that your customers can understand, they are lost.

This is why it is key to understand your target demographic intimately (or, as we call them at Centresource, your Stakeholders). Are they men, women, old, young, rich, poor? Do they make their decisions online or through direct mail? All of this will shape the tone of your conversation. It will teach you the right dialect. It will tell you the questions to ask and how to engage people where they live. Taking the time to understand the lives of your Stakeholders frees you to speak their language. Sure, it’s great to have a polished presentation, but if you don’t know who you are talking to…you might as well be speaking Zamundan.

I pointed him out to my 3 year old little girl who couldn’t help but stare. I couldn’t either, so I got out of my chair and walked over to him. “Excuse me, sir. My daughter is pretty amazed by your mustache…would you mind looking over there and waiving? She’d love it.”

He lit up. “SURE! I’d love to. Hey, you want a picture?!” To which he reached in his shirt pocket and had a business card in my hand within a second. His card would explain his outfit, right?… A wild west actor? Rodeo promoter? He does birthday parties?

Nope.

Ron G. Creative Title and Escrow.
“We shoot straight and aim to please!”

There was a large photo of him in front of a log cabin in full cowboy regalia brandishing two un-holstered six-guns. Turns out he wasn’t in costume. That’s what he wore everyday without a hint of irony. Ah-mazing. Over the next hour we watched as six other people approached him and every one walked away with one of his cards.

I’ve thought about Ron a lot over the last 12 hours. I was sure there is a pretty good lesson to be learned from him. Here’s what I think…

You know what Ron’s outfit had to do with Real Estate? Not a thing. What it did do, however, was distinguish him from the Title and Escrow pack. In a one hour period he gave out six business cards. In the course of a day, who knows how many times he is approached. Now, I know as well as you that dressing like you’re from Lonesome Dove isn’t a credibility builder in the urban Title and Escrow market; but I’d bet dollars to donuts that a lot of folks in rural Tennessee find someone like Ron G. endearing. I’d also bet he’s built a healthy business from all the cards he’s handed out to those people. Why? Because he believes his shtick 100% and he’s memorable. Sure, it’s corny, but I now know Ron G’s name and his card is sitting on my desk. If I were in his target demographic, guess who’d be doing my title and escrow work next time around?

The deeper point that I’m trying make is this: True greatness does not happen because of the status quo, it happens in spite of it. Great companies are established, movements are launched and markets are changed when people quit worrying about looking ridiculous, merge their passions and vision with their gifts and throw their entire being behind a good idea.The fact is, there has never been a success of any sort without someone distinguishing themselves from the herd. No, I’m not suggesting you need to dress like a cowboy or grow a fur boomerang over your top lip, but I am suggesting that a successful career or campaign involves risk; the kind of risk that pushes against the status quo in the right ways. I’m pretty confident Ron G. isn’t building the next real estate empire, but you have to tip your hat to him (10 gallon or not). He’s going for it and we can all learn a little something from his eccentricity.

First, you cannot attach meaning to anything unless you put it in the context of a larger storyline. Stories connect events, individuals and details. They create cause and effect, therefore, creating significance. A list of facts has never changed a person’s world view. Graphs and statistics are empty by themselves. Stories are what give meaning to facts.

So, if our job is to make a product meaningful, then we need to connect it to a story. If I need to prove, for example, that an iPhone App is worth your time and money, I need to prove that it will be meaningful in your life. And the only way I can prove this meaning is by talking about it in the context of your story.

Stories, however, are not just a re-telling of connected events. All good stories have a single common theme: Something has knocked life off balance and there is something being set in motion to restore that balance. As hyper-intellectual as this might sound, it’s true. Basic example:

Little Red Riding Hood goes to deliver food to her grandmother’s house. Not much of a story. Everything is in balance. She has food. She is taking it to grandmother. Grandmother is waiting.

…enter the Big Bad Wolf….

BBW ate grandmother and is now wearing her nightgown, lying in her bed. LRRH has no idea. BBW is pretending to be grandmother in order to get LRRH close enough so he can eat her too. Situation off balance. Good, compelling story is in motion…

Next…LRRH is swallowed whole. Situation more off balance. Enter hunter with his ax. Hunter has the ability to put this situation back in balance. Hunter cut’s BBW open. LRRH and grandma are freed and everything is put back in its proper place.

When I am trying to create a market for that iPhone App, I need to remember Little Red Riding Hood and establish four things:

• • What is the story in balance?
  • What has knocked this story off balance?
  • What does this iPhone App do to restore that balance?
  • What is the most effective way to tell that story to people who’s lives are effected by this lack of balance (i.e.. potential customers).

You answer those four questions and you have the skeleton for a powerful marketing campaign; if you don’t, your only chance of success is someone else figuring your product out and selling it for you. Given the fact that our job is to maximize the possibility and probability of products being purchased, I’ll take the former over the latter any day.

A lot has been made of multivariate and A/B testing with e-commerce sites. Anyone who has spent any amount of time reflecting on branding and marketing knows intuitively those small differences in color, layout and wording have a tremendous impact on conversion rates. Every once in a while, however, someone gives us a great example of the real power of multivariate testing.

In 2007, Obama was trailing by double digits in the Democratic primary. Eric Siroker, Obama’s Director of Analytics, began to experiment with multivariate testing to find the right combination of images, words and banners to close the gap between Obama and his opponents. His goal was simple: get more people to sign up for the campaign’s email list.

Siroker set up a testing campaign that focused on changing the large banner at the top of Obama’s web page and the call to action “button” at the bottom of the page (the button submitted your email and zip code to be added to the mailing list).

According to Siroker:

“We tried four buttons and six different media (three images and three videos). We used Google Website Optimizer and ran this as a full-factorial multivariate test, which is just a fancy way of saying we tested all the combinations of buttons and media against each other at the same time. Since we had four buttons and six different media that meant we had 24 (4 x 6) total combinations to test. Every visitor to the splash page was randomly shown one of these combinations and we tracked whether they signed up or not.”

Using sign up/subscriber rates as the barometer for success, Siroker and his team found one banner button combination to generate a conversion rate that was 40.6% better than their original page. That was a difference of 11.6% of the people signing up for the email list vs. 8.26%. Keep in mind we are dealing with millions hits to this site.

In Siroker’s words:

“Roughly 10 million people signed up on the splash page during the campaign. If we hadn’t run this experiment and just stuck with the original page that number would be closer to 7,120,000 signups. That’s a difference of 2,880,000 email addresses.”

So what?

Each email address on average was responsible for a $21 donation. There were 2,888,000 additional email addresses captured as a result of the multivariate test. Therefore, the adjustments they made in response to their experiment picked them up an extra $60,000,000. No. That is not a typo. $60 MILLION. All because someone considered how images and simple wording affected their campaign and took the time to set up a simple Google Website Optimizer to measure how each combination impacted conversion rates.

Lesson: Test what your gut is telling you. You could be off base. Nobody on the Obama campaign chose the banner/button combination that put up all those numbers. In fact, the majority was in favor of the losing combo. Be willing to listen to your web traffic and let it teach you. A simple A/B or multivariate test might be able to give you all the information you need.

The holiday season is upon us and this is the time of year I break out the themed sweaters, pour myself a hot mug of nostalgia and remember my favorite branding and marketing victories at centresource. While we’ve done a number of high profile campaigns that made household names out of products like the color Red, Happiness and the Internet, I have to say my favorite clients thus far have been Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

When the holidays first approached us for help they were in various states of marketing disrepair. We wanted to create a series of iconic images and distinguishing color pallets that would become synonymous with each holiday.

Halloween was our first project. We knew it needed a branding hook and our strategy and creative teams spent days spit-balling ideas in the centresource war-room. It was there they came up with the idea to brand the holiday with a tri-cornered, sugar based ornamental candy we like to call the Candy Corn. A little slice of marketing brilliance. Kids loved the Candy Corn and before we knew it they were going door to door asking their neighbors for C-Corn handouts (we later came up wax lips, gum and insulin shots). Soon they began wearing costumes to hide the fact that they were in fact making multiple visits and…Booya!, a tradition was born.

We soon replaced Halloween’s existing color pallet of teal and green with orange and black. Look at the colors individually and they don’t mean much. Look at them together and I defy you not to think of Halloween (we also invented the pumpkin and black cat). One of the world’s great branding victories and to this I say, well done centresource!

Next came Thanksgiving. Multi-colored Indian corn is not something you will find in the natural world. Is it, however, something you will find at centresource because, well, we invented it. We knew Thanksgiving’s imagery was stale, so our designers created a little marketing drama via photoshop by colorizing every other kernel on Mother Nature’s greatest staple (yellow corn). We ended up with a multi-colored icon for family togetherness (Editor’s note: While multi-colored Indian corn looks like it would be nature’s Skittles, we encourage people to not actually eat it. We are not aware of the affects digitally enhanced produce can have on the human body).

The next problem we had was the Pilgrims. Besides the Turkey, the Pilgrims were Thanksgiving’s main spokespeople. Pilgrims, however, were a non-starter. Zero chance of going viral. That is, until we vibed out their hats and shoes with buckles. That transformed them from being a dreary, religiously oppressed bunch of squatters to a warm, native friendly brand of brothers that loved to cook and eat family style. Now the Pilgrims are Thanksgiving’s version of the Maytag Repair Man. Don’t believe me? Think of a Pilgrim in any other context besides Thanksgiving. Exactly. Can’t do it. It’s the buckles…all about the buckles.

And finally, we have the biggest feather in our buckled hat: Christmas.

I don’t have the time or space in this blog to talk about how we came up with the elf, candy canes or snow, but I can say our branding made Christmas the Superman of annual holidays. The Silver Back. The Alpha Male. Game over…Christmas iconography is so entrenched in the American psyche that one jingle of a bell, one glint of green and red, or one Triple “Ho” and our collective Pavlovian response generates enough cheer and good will, were we able to channel it correctly, we could broker peace in the middle east. Our branding was that kind of good.

So, as we stare down the final stretch of 2010 and consider the branding and marketing projects that wait for us in 2011, it’s good to remember where we’ve been. Remembering helps us to approach new projects the right way, because if I’ve learned one thing at centresource it is that we have to be careful. The last thing we want to do is put too much mustard on our next branding push and end up creating another national holiday.

Editor’s note: This is usually where we put something saying that this post is satire. You can imagine what we would have said in this spot.