Steve Jobs was right, design without strategy is just veneer
As a prelude to every design assignment, Greenfield/Belser helps consulting, accounting, law, architecture, engineering, association and other B2B organization clearly define brand positions.
The brand positions and strategies we research and recommend are acceptable to your market (clients, members, customers, influencers) and, importantly, to the people in your organization. This is key since, more often than not, your products are your people. And they can’t deliver brand promises they don’t believe in or understand. With 35 years of professional services branding and association marketing experience we know how to listen to and engage your people without getting led down all too common positioning paths.
With a clear and fresh brand strategy and position articulated and approved, we use our design and content development creativity to solve marketing problems or align your organization’s messaging with opportunities.
Yes, clarity demands great design, copy and content skills. And we have those skills in spades (along with the awards and results to prove it). But great brands, great designs and great results start with clear brand strategy. Anything else is, well, lipstick on a pig.
First impressions matter now more than ever
B2B buyers of accounting, legal, association and other professional services will judge you by how your brand looks, feels and sounds. As importantly, they are so busy multitasking that your brand communications and campaign efforts are easily overlooked. Content may be king in today’s marketing communications for B2B product and service providers, but only engaging content earns your prospects attention.
Greenfield/Belser has been working with brand and marketing challenged firms and organizations for 35+ years with the goal of taking clear brand positions to market in a way that gets noticed. This is no small task.
While no two firms or organizations are alike—believe us, we’ve done brand strategy, design and content work for hundreds of professional organizations—the best brands are expressed with these simple goals:
- They help your organization look like a leader. As one sage marketer put it, you can’t have a first rate organization or brand with second rate marketing.
- They deliver substantive information graphically. Designs and content need to be built for scanners, not readers. Say goodbye to the wall of words.
- They tell stories and deliver proof. We like to say marketing is like one giant cocktail party, those that tell the best stories, get remembered.
- They humanize the offering and preview the brand experience you deliver.
What comes after building your brand? Raising your brand.
Congratulations, you completed your brand research and strategy exercise, lived to tell about it and then expressed your brand story in a host of new communications (ID, website, collateral...the works). Then you optimized your new site and created lots of great content to fuel your on- and off-line marketing efforts. Everyone’s impressed. But what matters most is what comes next.
Whether you are extending the new brand or leveraging it to achieve new strategic marketing and business development goals, Greenfield/Belser has ideas and experience to help. This could be things like a recruiting campaign—on campus or for experienced hires. Or maybe you’re in acquisition mode and have news to share and other brands to integrate. Need a new product or service launch under the new brand banner? No sweat.
We are also actively helping clients with brand building initiatives that go well beyond the launch. These are things like branded thought leadership programs that rise above the content marketing chatter. Or packaging and promoting initiatives to strengthen key industries, services, accounts, client loyalty programs and major events.
After a brand launches, many firms ask us to audit what their internal communications teams have done with the brand to make sure it is on course. And if they don’t ask us, we’ll ask them. It’s all part of being proud brand parents.
You’ve earned their attention, now what?
No news here. Content marketing is the new black. Everyone’s talking about it, many are investing in it, all are wearing it, but few professional services firms or associations are wearing it well. As background, content marketing is not new to professional services. McKinsey introduced McKinsey Quarterly in the ‘60s to counter the commoditization of strategy consulting at the time.
Ever since, with some standout exceptions, other professional organizations have invested in a relatively dry mix of newsletters, alerts, white papers, articles and seminars. More recently, this “everyone’s-doing-it content marketing” looks for an audience in blogs, videos, social media posts, webinars and podcasts. Broadly, the same uninspiring fare is served through new digital distribution channels, like your mobile phone.
We call this "chatter content"—all it does is add to the noise in the system. Nothing wrong with it in principle, per se, but it could and should be more compelling, impactful and effective. That’s where Greenfield/Belser comes in. We deliver branded content that sells. Our skills include everything from content management system selection to content creation in the form or copywriting, video, information graphics, portrait photography, social campaigns, pitch books and proposal systems. We even have a hand in the creation of thirty second speeches so your people know what to say when they are asked what they do.
