The brief:

• 400 words (max)
• Compelling and yet easy to read
• Call to action, multiple mentions of company name
• Draw card – identify the unique selling proposition of the course
• List of benefits the qualification can provide

The Ad Agency recently attended Verne Harnish’s ‘Go for Growth’ seminar in Brisbane. This one-day conference focused on key components from Verne’s best-selling book, ‘Mastering the Rockefeller Habits’. We’re happy to share the key points below taken from this year’s seminar. If you’d like to become a member of ‘The Growth Faculty’ simply register your details here. The Ad Agency has implemented Verne Harnish’s teachings for several businesses; including our own, and we highly recommend purchasing his book, becoming a member of ‘The Growth Faculty’ and attending these seminars.

Key points:

• Setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

1. Set KPIs whereby the function matches the strategy: as opposed to setting KPIs where the person matches the position; i.e. don’t assign KPIs based on the person’s ability in that role. Set KPIs based on the position they’re in to what needs to be achieved strategically for that role. Verne suggests this is a good way to ensure the right person is in the right (or capable in the) role.

2. The Head of Company’s KPI should be to ensure everyone who reports to them directly achieves their KPIs.

3. Separate “Sales” and “Marketing” functions and titles – they’re very different core competencies.

4. Choose a couple words the company should own. For instance: Verne is “the growth guy”; Volvo is “safety”. What couple words does your business want to stake its claim? These words can be applied heavily to the website, collateral, and in search engines.

• Read, read, read! Commit to routine leaning. Out-learn, out-think, our-idea the competition.

1. Verne’s consultants encourage leadership teams to read certain chapters of a book (overlapping), then report back in a group the key learning that can be applied to the business.

2. You cannot self help: no one has ever achieved peak performance without a coach or mentor.

3. Set your objectives and get a coach (or an expert in their field) to assist to achieve each objective.

4. Know your strengths and apply that to your role. Don’t try and work on your weaknesses. Get someone else to do the role.

• Measurable brand promises

1. ‘Cheapest prices’, ‘delivery overnight’, ‘service delivery’, etc. if you can’t measure your brand promise how will you know if you’re hitting your goals?

2. If it can’t be measured then how can we see how we’re performing?

• Specialise

1. Know what products or services generate revenue, and focus on being the best at delivering that product or service to the market. For example, Apple being a billion dollar company are able to fit their entire product range on an average sized table. Apple has so few products, but they leverage using itunes, apps, etc.

2. If you don’t specialise (and gain a competitive advantage), someone will and take away your market by doing ‘things’ better.

• Use the phone/face to face to close deals (proposals), get payment of invoices.

1. Never email a proposal without an immediate follow up phone call. Take as much time as required to talk clients through. Build the value. Ideally, see the decision maker face-to-face and talk them through the proposal.

2. Know the account payable clerk’s name. Build a relationship. Send the client a lotto ticket if you have to (as an example) to the clerk if they paid their account on time.

3. No “Payable in 30 days” written on invoices. Instead, have a “Due date”. Make the copy red. Make the invoice a different colour if it will stand out from the rest in a pile.

4. Get the MD to “ok” every single expense if required to find out how to save money in certain areas.

5. Cash is king! Most important figure is to know current cash position. More than net profit or revenue.

• Top 2 skills for Managing Directors – negotiation and interviewing.

1. Hire for motivation; not skills

2. People quit people; not companies.

3. Stop demotivating behaviours, as opposed to trying to motivate.

4. Fully prepare before hiring: have the desk, phone, email, computer set up. Don’t have a new employee start until the preparations are ready.

5. Four reasons staff leave – 1. Do I get to put my strengths to work? 2. ‘Connectiveness’ to the role 3. Feeling appreciated. 4. Pay

6. Company cultures rarely change; behaviours do.

• Meetings

1. Develop a meeting rhythm – daily huddle, weekly catch up, monthly report review and quarterly leadership team strategic meetings.

2. Have back to back meetings – will be easier to spot gaps from one department to another.

1. Daily huddle – 1. What’s up today. 2. Daily metrics (numbers that matter – cash position of the company, bums on seats, bookings, enquiries, proposals, etc). 3. Where are you stuck? No more than 2 minutes each person. Take offline if required. Not problem solving – identification.
2. Encourage “real time” communication. Hear, not read. Looking for patterns, numbers, names, schedules. Give specifics in meetings. A proposal, “who”? Looking for departments to pick up on info from other departments.

3. Routine and discipline (in regards to priorities, data metrics, and meeting rhythms) are vital.

4. Put aside 3 x 90 minute uninterrupted sessions a day to work on current priorities. You’ll achieve more doing this than you would working a 12 hour day. That means no interruptions, no checking emails, no meetings, taking calls or texts – that’s what the rest of the day is for.

Seems common sense enough, but businesses tend to spend more time and money on a logo than they do market research to find out if the product or service they’re offering has a market to match. This is particularly the case for small business selling a product in a geographically confined area.

The four Ps marketing mix is a simple method (or marketing tactic) to review how your business will best satisfy its customers and target market:

Price

• High or low end; Margins; Discount structure

Product

• Quality; Models and size; Packaging; Differentiation; Brands; Service

Promotion

• Advertising; Sales promotion; Personal selling; PR

Place

• Distribution; Location; Sales geographic areas; Warehousing

By examining the four Ps you can start to think about how you’ll produce a clear customer offering, and review and adjust accordingly based on changing circumstances, either internal to the business or external through the environment. It’s possible to increase the four Ps to five Ps to include people, or seven Ps, process and physical evidence.

An example; a cafe offering premium priced sit-down food (price) in an industrial area (place), where typical clientele (people) are used to bain-marie deep fried and quick and convenient food (product) may not cherish where it could if positioned in an inner-city location. They could go in marketing their business (promotion) providing a premium product and service, one that’s unique to the area and which differentiates them from every other local cafe. However this doesn’t necessarily make for success. They are not servicing their market which is largely made up of tradesmen who typically take infrequent and short lunch breaks on the run; who require cheap and convenient food; who don’t have meetings at cafes; nor splurge on meals with a latte.

In the same way you won’t see a Versace store in a lower socio-economic region, nor too should you position your business in an area which won’t service its market; despite possibly being superior to local competitors in quality or service.

Service your market, then gain a competitive edge through price and value efficiencies, quality and uniqueness, and/or customer service/intimacy.

On Movember 1st, guys register at Movember.com with a clean-shaven face and then for the rest of the month, these selfless and generous men, known as Mo Bros, groom, trim and wax their way into the annals of fine moustachery. Supported by the women in their lives, Mo Sistas, Movember Mo Bros raise funds by seeking out sponsorship for their Mo growing efforts.

Mo Bros effectively become walking, talking billboards for the 30 days of November and through their actions and words raise awareness by prompting private and public conversation around the often ignored issue of men’s health.

At the end of the month, Mo Bros and their female supporters (known as Mo Sistas) celebrate their gallantry and valor by either throwing their own Movember party or attending one of the infamous Gala Partés held around the world by Movember, for Movember.

Join our team, “Team Mo Men” this Movember here

A tag (or slogan), is essentially a phrase; typically up to 10 words, that captures the essence of your business by identifying its identity. Ultimately your tagline is catchy enough that your customers will remember the tagline and associate the tagline with your business.

A tagline separates your business from its competitors. It’s acts as a point of difference.

Some famous taglines include:

1. BMW – The ultimate driving machine
2. Volvo – For life
   
3. Nissan – Shift
   
4. British Airways – The world’s favorite airline
   
5. FedEx – When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight
   
6. Subway – Eat fresh
   
7. Hertz – Hertz puts you in the driver’s seat
   
8. Honda – The power of dreams
9. McDonald’s – I’m lovin’ it
   
10. L’Oréal – Because I’m worth it
11. Nike – Just do it
    
12. MasterCard – There are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.
    
13. Hallmark – When you care enough to send the very best
    
14. Intel – Intel Inside
15. KFC – Nobody does chicken like KFC
16. The Ad Agency – Beat your business nemesis!
    

Common features of the above taglines include:

1. 10 words or less: not hard-fast rule but typically slogans are short and sharp
2. Catchy and attention seeking: not bland
3. Lower themselves to using cliches: use of descriptive, motivating and inspiring words
4. Represent the current brand promise or value proposition: KFC have a unique and secretive herbs and spices formula nobody can emulate.
5. Unique, in that they’re not imitating their competitors

Not every business needs a tag line, but saying that, there aren’t many reasons NOT to have one.

Here are a few tagline tips:

• Allow graphic designers to graphic design – not think up tag lines. Leave taglines to ad agencies.
• Don’t even consider a tagline unless you know what the value proposition, or brand promise of your business is. What can you deliver to your customers better than your competitors? What gives you the edge? FedEx is a prime example with their slogan, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight”. At the time, FedEx had a competitive edge in that they could deliver parcels and guarantee next day delivery. FedEx raised the bar and their service could not be matched. Hence the tagline, which fits their brand promise and value proposition. A few years later, the competition caught up and FedEx’s tagline became the norm. It was time for FedEx to look for a new competitive edge, and therefore tagline.

• Be proud of your tagline and incorporate it into the headings of your mainstream advertising. Don’t hide your logo and tagline in the bottom corner of your ads or billboards. If you have a tagline that represents your business in a few catchy words, then make it the main heading of the ad. Keep that in mind when developing the tagline – can I use this as a headline in my ads? If not, then rethink the effectiveness of your tagline.

• Avoid cliche words like “unique”, “excellence”, and “quality”. These words become the norm and therefore meaningless. Every business strives for quality in one form or another, so differentiate yourself with alternative brand promises.

• Your business won’t remain static, so be prepared to change the tagline over the years as the business evolves. You’re always reinventing your business model in order to keep an edge on your competitors, so allow the tagline to change and reflect your new brand promise.

• Use your tagline to promote the benefits of your products or services, not the features. If you’re selling body soap, a catchy slogan that promotes beauty would work better than one that promotes that that the soap cleans. If you’re selling saunas, promote the health benefits and how it makes your customers feel; as opposed to the type of wood, or quality of the materials.

• Finally, live and breath the tagline. Roll our the new slogan to staff and make sure they understand it. Update print collateral, online, logos, merchandise, with the new slogan. But first, Trademark it, if you’re worried about the competition grabbing it.

The Ad Agency has written many a business tagline. Click here to get in touch.