B Series B Bold element

“A person’s name is the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”
-Dale Carnegie

Please Allow Me to Introduce Myself

Not yet on a first name basis with the 200 individuals we targeted in our B Series awareness campaign, we wanted to introduce ourselves strategically and make a tremendous first impression without being too forward.

Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

There are a myriad of personalization methods and options available; however, in business-to-business (B2B) correspondence to C-level executives, it’s presumptuous to use too friendly an approach.

Personal Touches

Using a hand-picked database of individuals within companies we knew would be a good fit for our experience and capabilities, the campaign tailored written communication to individual readers based on personal attributes, details or actions. We addressed recipients by their first name or professional title only once in the salutation of each piece. We also feathered in their company name in customized copy only when and where it made sense.

Behind the Scenes

Each outgoing piece invited the recipient to download free marketing materials from a web page accessible via a username and password. This allowed us to identify individual visitors and greet them online with a personalized message and in some test cases, a video specifically recorded for them.

Our analytics recorded when a recipient visited the web page and what they viewed and downloaded while they were there. This information was then referenced in context in the next piece they received—without calling undue attention to it.

Click for an overview of B Series personal touchpoints, destination points and timeline.

Delivery

Voice was a critical aesthetic touch that displayed our company’s personality in a tone appropriate to the audience, in a way that made the technology behind the message disappear. In the B Series, we communicated in a warm, friendly, personable manner that, by design, wasn’t too familiar.

Whether our deliverable is design, consultation, brand revitalization, a decision-tree interactive piece, or packaging, our solutions spring from individual customer needs and desires. Therefore, each touchpoint contained a succinct message defining ways in which Brainstorm fulfills our clients’ goals.

An Ongoing Effort

As an awareness campaign, the B Series was simply a request for an initial introduction—a first step in earning the right to address a select group of people by their first names.

Building an introduction into a long-term business relationship takes time and effort. To that end, just as we did before hand-selecting our list, we continue to read and follow business news for each company with which we engaged, commenting and congratulating as appropriate.

Because genuine interest may just be the second sweetest sound in any language.

Up Next

The B Series Part 5: Offers & Incentives

To read previous installments in this series click on one of the links below or click “B Series” under topics:

The B Series Part 1: Awareness Overview
The B Series Part 2: Strategic Design & Messaging
The B Series Part 3: The Componentry

Our copy of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, already on its way to a good dog-earing.

Serious about marketing your brand online? This book will teach you what you need to know about web analytics.

Published by Wiley’s Sybex brand, Web Analytics: An Hour a Day, by Avinash Kaushik, the Analytics Evangelist for Google, and author of the widely-read Occam’s Razor blog, is a must-have resource for online marketers.

About the Book

The book went beyond what we were expecting, i.e., how to better read analytics dashboards. What we found was a sophisticated and marketing-oriented book that teaches how to use the available data to create a clear picture of return on investment in the online world. This is more than your typical programming book, this is a marketing book.

Kaushik does a great job with the format. As with any subject you’re committed to knowing, reading the information and applying it in small pieces is the best way to learn. Most of the content is arranged by subject and is segmented into daily readings, allowing you to focus and build upon the knowledge one piece at a time.

A Worthwhile Library Addition

The book is easy to read, full of practical application, and one that will be tattered, bookmarked, and referenced often here at Brainstorm.

Best of all, Kaushik has committed every dollar earned from the book to charitable causes.

Order a copy on Amazon now.

A formula for success: Research + Design + Passion = Impact

“I stop cold in my tracks. It has been a long time since I have thought deeply about how I am the exception, not the rule. I toggle back to the report to watch the story being told.”

—Erica Rois, O’Reilly.com

The Challenge

Critical information is inaccessible to the masses. Latinos’ access to postsecondary education is a topic critical to the success of millions in the United States. Most people don’t understand the challenges Latinos’ face, the opportunities available to them, or the impact it has on the United States, both now and for the future.

Sponsored by the Lumina Foundation for Education, University of Texas at San Antonio Professor Dr. Raymond Padilla’s “What is Known About Latina/o Student Access and Success in Postsecondary Education” assembled and tagged decades of research with regard to college access and the Latino population.

The Solution

Eloquent research, presented elegantly. The Lumina Foundation believes that making this research accessible to a larger audience can help drive efforts to reduce or eliminate Latinos’ educational attainment gap and systematically promote their success in postsecondary education. Their passion in that belief led them to task Brainstorm with presenting a creative medium to communicate the information.

Initial discussions revolved around redesign and presentation, but after meeting Dr. Padilla and learning more about the research, Brainstorm proposed an interactive solution. The site, entitled Camino de la Universidad (The Road to College) is a Flash-based, rich media site that presents the research and findings in a memorable and easy to understand format. Design, photography, music, voice, and text set the conceptual tone. Additional resources were created to allow deeper levels of self-discovery into the research.

The Results

Early results are positive. With the official launch set for later this fall, the site is currently being used in presentations to policy makers and Latino community leaders around the country. It’s also being introduced to select groups via email announcements.

O’Reilly.com, Women in Technology:

“…What sets me apart is that I have learned to harness the power of my difference.

Case in point: just days before being invited to write this article, I receive an email from the UC Davis Chicana/o Studies alumni list to which I subscribe. It contains a link to the Lumina Foundation’s interactive report on Latino’s educational attainment entitled Camino de la Universidad (The Road to College). I click on it only because there is a promise of it being interactive.

I am happily met with a fast-loading Flash page full of rich images, beautiful sounds, and intuitive navigation. As I check out their source code, the narrated report continues to play in a different browser window. I listen to the stats, For every 100 Latino elementary school students, 48 drop out of high school and 52 graduate from high school. Of those 52 that graduate, only 10 earn a Bachelor’s degree and only 4 go on to earn a graduate degree.

I stop cold in my tracks. It has been a long time since I have thought deeply about how I am the exception, not the rule. I toggle back to the report to watch the story being told.”

—Erica Rois, O’Reilly.com

Main Street Project

“This is really an amazing report on so many levels. The multiple literacies, the visuals, the presentation, the amazing coding that must have gone into creating this. I am really impressed and feel like there are so many uses for this format—especially in communities…I have never seen a report so well presented!”

—Amalia Anderson, Main Street Project

Making a Difference

This project is an example of how a variety of individuals with seemingly unrelated skill sets (research, philanthropy, marketing and design) can come together to create an elegant, informed, and passionate message with impact for the greater social good.

Visit the Camino de la Universidad site here.

The FiveFingers Classic from Vibram

A slipper, a running shoe, a statement and a glove for your foot, Vibram FiveFingers is a unique line of footwear.

Odd, But Good

Wearing Vibram’s FiveFingers footwear has been likened to the freeing sensation of running barefoot as a child—without the fear of stepping on the occasional sharp object.

Designed by industrial designer Robert Fliri, FiveFingers’ unique orthotics and independent toe movement provide a biomechanical benefit to treks across uneven terrain, and to walking in general.

Versatile

Form-fitting, comfortable and durable, the FiveFingers line covers a gamut of terrain-ready products which have been road tested in the Boston Marathon and nearly every other situation in which you might wear traditional active shoes.

One way to ensure brand differentiation is to offer unique products or services. The FiveFingers line certainly stands apart in the active footwear market space.

Go here for more on the ergonomic benefits of FiveFingers footwear or to see the whole line.

See how different web fonts render with Typetester.

When it comes to font usage on the web, sometimes developers, designers, account executives and clients speak different languages.

The Conflict

Developers describe typographic attributes in cryptic terms: “Font color=#666999.” Designers use more esoteric descriptions: “More chroma, a tad bigger.”

Clients often sound like brand police: “Just match our brand standards,” and account people adopt the role of arbiter: “Just give the client what they want, PMS 285 blue, and don’t be difficult.”

These are all valid approaches, but if a font doesn’t render properly for a large percentage of your audience and makes the end user feel like the site was designed by committee, the whole team loses.

One Picture, 1000 Words

Enter Typetester, an online resource tool that allows you to view and compare font family members (web safe and otherwise), see tracking, colors, and line spacing—even specify background colors—and view it all across multiple browsers and platforms.

Typetester is simple, useful and efficient, and helps bridge communication gaps between web project team members and stakeholders through visualization.

The Resolution

Typetester takes the guesswork—or at least the assumptions—out of web design.

Next thing you know, developers, designers and marketing people will be going out to lunch together.

Test it out for yourself here.