Guess what? The same characteristics can be found in many marketing tools whether its door hangers or print flyers and brochures. These tools are egocentric and are only interested in talking about their business and the products and services they offer.

These collaterals like your door hanger printing are only interested in themselves rather than helping customers solve their problems and concerns. It may be easier to escape from these types of collaterals than having to leave a conversation with a narcissistic person. However, the same thing applies – customers tend to veer away from these types of marketing campaigns.

A narcissistic marketing tool, whether they are door hangers or print flyers, are interested only on the company’s spectacular features and offerings. They have the most superior manufacturing techniques, the most brilliant people, and the well designed company offices that no one can resist their offer. Surely, there are more than the features of the company that the target customer is looking for, like, customers’ issues perhaps. Too many marketing collaterals just ignore this simple fact.

A marketing tool can only be effective if it contains benefits and solutions to people’s concerns. When you consider the time it takes for a person to absorb any information that is of interest (say, in less than 7 seconds) a narcissistic door hanger printing for example can only result to one thing – turn off its readers.

On the other hand, an intelligent and well-presented marketing tool does not leave its readers cold. It actually provides the benefits for customers from the company’s products and services based on careful research and well thought of planning. It only shows that an intelligent marketing tool is in tune with its target audience’s needs and wants. Hence, it provides clear statements that are benefit driven, as well as supports its claims by providing other customers to feed testimonials and satisfaction guarantee.

A well-designed and intelligent marketing tool simply encourages the reader into a dialogue where both participants can benefit from the exercise.

Even if the marketing copy sounds good to you, the best indicator that your marketing campaign will ever get a favorable response is if it answers the question – where does your customer fit in? What is in it for them? When you are able to answer that in your marketing tool, you can finally say that you have moved on to being narcissistic to having a marketing campaign that can effectively generate customers every time.

This is the point: while prospects and clients care a lot about the businesses they engage in, they look for their own needs first and foremost.

Author: Kaye Z. Marks

f you plan to get a free Customer Service Software solution because you prefer to give it a try and then decide if you go for the premium option, you have to take into account that you will be investing effort in installation, training, database building, historical records… you will be locked into this particular Customer Service Software and the vendor pricing schemas.

Live Chat is indeed the best option after phone support. The great thing about Live Chat is that there are no expenses associated with it, besides paying the support team, but you do that anyway. This is a serious advantage compared to phone support where you would have to provide customers with a toll-free number and pay the bills.

This method of providing first class customer support also does away with any difficult technical problems. As all the software programming for the service is on the service providers servers.This is all understandable but for a disgruntled customer it is not a good experience and the vendor will probably lose the customer for good.

You need to contact the software supplier and go through all of your requirements with them, if you need the software to take credit card payments then you need to tell them and they will make sure it does that. There are many types of customer support software, another more simple one will act like a switch board.

The most worthwhile customer service software should provide all of these attributes in a knowledge base system that allows you to easily have access to all of your client communication in one place. Streamlining your customer service process will give you more time to focus on other important aspects of your business, while still addressing your client’s needs.

Build customer loyalty providing faster, responsive customer contact. Customer chat and live technical support are important to online customer service. Customer requests may be serviced via phone, using the help desk, or by technicians.

So what’s the key to amazing customer service? You need to be available for your customers. There is nothing more annoying than spending twenty minutes wading through a company’s automated phone system before talking to an actual human being.The Trouble ticket system is based on the priority and urgency of the query or complaint. The system was created to resolve problems within a specified time-line and under a specific service level agreement

By making use of a standard software solution, your technicians and other personnel will be able to take advantage of the many useful features. Customer support software enables business to generate, administer and settle service requests. Such software can maintain an accurate database of questions and answers for both internal and external clients in a cost effective manner.

Customers are getting more comfortable with the idea of self-service and even prefer it to service guided by technicians. Online customer management solutions such as NetSuite equip you with the ability to launch self-service portals for communication with your customers.

Author: Steve Austin

Every restaurant has a line of specials that they serve. Servers may suggest the special, or describe it, but a button can really show it. People are stimulated by what they seehence all the pictures in menus. It would just make sense to have an appetizing photograph of your daily special or weekly special on a button to attract attention. The server might suggest the special while pointing to the button ‘As you can see, today for our special we have a delicious pot roast with mixed vegetables’.

Buttons and badges are a really inexpensive way of advertising your specials and increasing your sales. Buttons can also be used to advertise the next night’s special to tantalize your guests to return. Want to increase the dessert sales? Nothing makes the mouth crave cool creamy ice cream more than a photograph of a hot fudge Sunday or a malted milkshakewords just can not describe those types of images well enough. These buttons can be made and handed out to the staff each day or each week of the special and then returned. Buttons are small enough to store easily, reusable, durable, and still large enough to make the mouth water when covered with pictures of your luscious entr’es.

Do you have a unique or unusual theme to your restaurant? Sell souvenir buttons with your restaurant logo. If you are in a travel location, such as along an interstate, buttons with the state information and name on it are also great souvenirs. These buttons can be sold for as little as a dollar and still generate a handsome profit. ‘I always eat at Joe’s Bar and Grill’ or ‘World’s Greatest Bar-be-Que’ over a picture of your restaurant would be a simple button to make and could also be sold as a souvenir. Do you have a signature dish or a super large portion? For that guest who accomplishes the clean plate give them a button. For example, ‘Survivor’ stamped over a picture of a porterhouse steak with your restaurant’s name at the bottom would certainly get people’s attention.

Making up buttons with your logo and address on them are great for sponsored events as well. Does your restaurant support a local youth sports team? Making up buttons to let people know who you sponsor and to give out to the team players is a great way to get the word out that you are involved in the community. Staff members can wear these buttons in the restaurant to let guests know that your establishment inspires youth activities. These buttons can also be made with the team’s final placement or the word ‘Champions’ over your restaurant’s logo. This is a keepsake for the team members and a way of getting your logo and name out in the public.

Would you like to reward your frequent repeat customers? A button that reads ‘Thank You for Your Business’ can be a great way to say thanks and will get the word outside the restaurant that you appreciate your guests. These can also have a discount on them. If you have regulars who visit often, give them a button for five or ten percent off their next meal. These buttons can be returned at the time of the purchase, just like a coupon, and saved for the next customer you want to reward. This is an inexpensive way to promote your establishment at openings as well. Pass these buttons out to new customers to draw them back in, and maybe even their friends.

Use buttons as nametags for employees. These can be customized with the restaurants logo and address or if you are a less formal establishment, have the servers and staff design their own buttonswithin reason of course. Buttons are also large enough to include years of service. Rewards for staff can also be made out of buttons. The employee of the month or week can wear a button saying ‘Employee of the Month’ or ‘This week’s Star Performer’.

Buttons for special meals or special employees are an inexpensive addition to your establishment. These buttons can help increase sales, generate more revenue, advertise inside and outside the restaurant and reward your frequent guests. No restaurant should be without one of these money saving devices.

Author: Greg Allison

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Of the Ten Communication Qualities, Communicate at the Prospect’s Level is number nine and is this article’s topic. When you communicate at the prospect’s level they get you. They feel the two of you are on the same wave length. Don’t communicate at the prospect’s level and they feel dumb and that they can’t do it. They also feel very different than you. Have you ever sat around people speaking a different language? You felt alienated and you were.

If you use esoteric terms (the word esoteric means – Intended for or understood by only a particular group ) that your prospect doesn’t know, then you’re going to have partial or no communication. What does that mean?

Partial communication is when parts of what you say are understood by the prospect and parts are NOT understood. So they only understood a part of what you said. An example could be that you say breakaway compensation plan. They only understand compensation plan so they know it has something to do with making money but it’s not clear to them exactly what you mean. That’s partial communication.

No communication is when you say something and the prospect has no idea what you’re talking about. You say phytochemical (means: nutrients in plants that have health promoting properties) and they think dog chemicals. You might think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not! I’ve surveyed people about what they think the word Network Marketing means. Six out of ten (60%) think it’s something to do with selling networking equipment, as in computer networking! That’s NO communication.

You must communicate only with words that are in your prospect’s vocabulary. If you really think about it, a dictionary merely describes an unknown word with words already in a person’s vocabulary. That’s the reason there are different levels of dictionaries children’s dictionary, collegiate dictionary, medical dictionary and so forth.

Vocabulary what does that word even mean? One definition is – All the words of a language. That would be good if everyone knew all words and all their definitions, but they don’t. The second definition of the word vocabulary is the sum of words used by, understood by, or at the command of a particular person. That’s a much better definition for what we’re discussing here.

So where did you get your current vocabulary? You got it from things you’ve heard or things you’ve read. It does you no good to create your own words because no one knows what they mean except you. That’s like if you had the only fax machine in the world who could you send a fax to?

Contrary to what your English professor told you, you do NOT become a great communicator because you have a large vocabulary alone. It’s part of it, but not the whole package. A larger vocabulary allows you to communicate to a larger audience meaning you have more in common with a greater number of people. It gives you diversity. Let’s suppose you knew the entire English vocabulary you could then carry on a conversation with anyone on any subject. Until you ran into someone who spoke Spanish then you have no communication again. You learn all the words of the Spanish language and then you could communicate to anyone in Spanish on any subject also.

What point am I trying to make here? Two points actually. One is I’m driving home your understanding that good communication is not something one is born with. Every person had to learn the definition of all the words in their vocabulary. And the other point I’m making here is that you can communicate with people only to the degree that you know and USE THE SAME vocabulary they do. If you knew all the words of a language, its value would only be known by the one other fellow who knew all the words.

Most of the time you will never use more than about 10% of the vocabulary because that’s what most people know and for you to be a good communicator you must, I repeat, you must only use words that the person you’re communicating with knows otherwise that person will walk away from you or hang up the phone on you or fail the class that you’re teaching or quit network marketing! And don’t think for a second that people will say they don’t know something – even if you ask them if they understand. This is something that our society has taught us is wrong to do. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever observed.

A person not knowing something will pretend to know something so they don’t seem dumb but they are dumb on that word or subject and will forever stay that way because they would rather appear smart and be dumb, than be smart by asking, What does that mean? So don’t use words people don’t know. If you need to use a new word, only use words to define that new word that your prospect already knows. And please, please, please when you hear something you don’t understand ask what it means.

I do respect and admire you,
Tim Sales

These questions point out the places where human nature can fall down.  It can also tell you a lot about the “PR” of that person or business.  When I am asked to come in and evaluate a company’s internal PR, I look at one main factor before anything else… how they operate on the fundamental datum of rewards and penalties.

What do I mean by this?  Rewarding and penalizing based on merit, or rather based on true production, will determine whether you win the war in business, against the suppressions of life or whether it is against naysayers who would rather hate than participate.  In other words, rewarding those that deserve it and penalizing those that do not, you will actually form your public relations image to your employees and subsequently to your community.

Did you know that Sun Tsu’s philosophy on war contained the very basics that I am talking about here?

Take your employees for example.  I know a company in a small community that typically pays WAY below industry standard.  I mean WAY below.  Yet they demand high caliber people and the work that they have to do is not for slackers.  It takes people with highly technical skills, communication abilities above the norm, judgment over what they see and what they study so that they can make the very best decisions for their clients.

But that is not all.  These employees are willing to work there because the company has a stellar purpose.  They demand perfection which when achieved makes every employee more competent.  This type of competency builds great morale.

However, these employees started to drop off like flies after a while.  It really wasn’t the low pay for most of them that made them leave (even though that is a deciding factor in many cases.)  It is because they never got acknowledged.  No one said thank you to each other for a job well done – because no one from above ever acknowledged the staff when they did a job well done.  It was all “expected.”  So the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge emanated from the top. And was filtered to the staff and the place was pretty gloomy.

This was a prominent company in their little community.  What do you think happened when the employees all started to quit?  Yes, they had a PR nightmare on their hands.  Their public relations went haywire, all because they did not compensate their employees to the degree that they were getting more wealth due to their employees’ efforts.  And what’s more, they did not even thank them when they did make them rich.  And management could not even figure out why the production levels of the staff were lower each year and there was a bunch of infighting amongst the staff and management.  I guarantee you had they make a big to do over their staff’s accomplishments on a regular basis they could have prevented this from happening.  But eventually they were going to have to change their pay structure.  Eventually some high achiever was going to work for them that would question the discrepancy in the income and would have demanded more – and rightly so.  People should be rewarded for their work.

On another note, another business in a large metropolitan area had all the right aspects this other company didn’t.  Great pay, above the norm actually, and they gushed over their staff all the time.  People LOVED working there.  But something else happened in this area of rewards and penalties.  One of the highest producers was not protected by management, yet allowed other staff to “bad mouth” this person in very covert ways.  In other words, they allowed their own protection of this valuable employee to be compromised by not investigating anyone that made snide or seemingly “joking” comments that degraded that individual’s repute.  The end result: that high-powered individual finally left.  That individual had a top-notch opinion of his employer.  He would have died for that company.  But when he failed to be protected, when the rumor-campaign got the best of the inner executive circle, it lowered his opinion of the company and the management…so in essence their PR went down the crapper.  Do you think others noticed it?  You bet.  Whether anything was said openly or not.

The naysayers, no matter how jokingly they seem to make their comments should have been hung by their toes for saying anything against the high producer.  And if the person “complaining” was a high producer as well, then he or she should have been made to put whatever “complaint” they had in writing in the proper employee reports.  That would have stopped it dead in its tracks because written reports can be acted upon and if they are written on a stellar producer, you should start to be very suspicious of the person writing the report.

The point here is that your PR, your public relations image within the community and within your organization, has e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g to do with your ability and willingness to reward your staff and acknowledge each other.  AND it has everything to do with your ability, your willingness to penalize your staff, no matter how close of friends you are with them, when they are not working or operating up to par or are acting below the best interests of people that push support and help your way.

This goes a long way in developing good customer service campaigns and delivering top notch products.  Happy employees make happy customers.  This is a key factor that drives sales and delivery.

I know a company in Tampa Bay that applies this datum to a tee.  I heard the CEO speak at an event for C-level executives and entrepreneurs.  He shared what he does to make his employees all KNOW that they are appreciated.  Besides regular picnics, parties and fun acknowledgment capers, he has given everyone of his employees a raise every year, yet his salary has remained the same since 2005.  Likewise on the penalty side, when his IT department “held him hostage” through negativity, infighting and just plain unwillingness to work creating ½ million dollars in losses caused by departmental naysayers who infected the whole area, he terminated the entire department.  Why?  Penalizing the area that was running the company into the ground despite warnings was what was needed to win the war.  You may think that is harsh.  I think it was appropriate given the circumstances.  The naysayers were given plenty of warnings.  “Fool me once, shame on me.  Fool me twice, shame on you.”

Now what do you think their company is like financially?   No debt, healthy reserves in the bank and a stable employee base… and incredible community PR.  I don’t think that is a coincidence at all.  Rewards and penalties all the way, baby!

So, how are your rewards and penalties affecting your PR?

By Karla Jo Helms

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Try to keep your articles brief, yet helpful; these tend to be the best. Most Internet users browse through articles extremely fast; since this is your target audience, you want to make sure they don’t skip over yours. It is for this reason that you must write articles that are easy to digest quickly. You do not want your audience to misunderstand any of the information that you are putting forth; your articles should be easily comprehended and appeal to a wide variety of readers. Skip the specialized language and niche jargon and stick to plain language that any person can understand. Keep the sentences short and use simple terms.

Many article writes attempt to focus on as many different things as possible under one topic, but this is a mistake. If you attempt to include everything in your article, you will not give your reader focus and they will not figure out what you are writing about. Keep your article on topic and strongly focus on a single point. You should remember that you are writing for a different sort of audience when writing web based content than when writing for a traditional audience, and your approach needs to reflect this.

Ultimately, choosing a subject for your articles should not only benefit your audience, but mostly you too. While there are no limits on what you could choose to write about you are much better off working within the boundaries of subjects that will serve to bring greater exposure to your business in the long term. The purpose of your articles should be to bring traffic to your site and that will only work if they’re on point.

So while writing for the Internet is no more difficult that writing for any other medium, there are still things you need to remember. You should understand the ins and outs of the topic you are writing about – either through research or personal experience – and stay focused on that subject. If you truly want to produce high-quality articles, keep your target readers first in your thoughts as you write and don’t stray from your topic at hand.

By Emma Golden

News traveled at a snail pace and methodically before the advent of Internet. The communication channels have radically transformed since then, Internet being the most conspicuous one. Internet has gained the distinction of becoming the most preferred platform for finding information and the same is provided at lightening speed. Internet has an abundance of consumer generated media (CGM) in the form of forums, blogs, review sites, opinion postings, and many more; on any topic imaginable. With a plethora of self publishing options available to users, nothing is inviolable, including online reputation.

Building reputation, both online and offline, demand years of hard work and millions of dollars. It would be justified to say that reputation management is critical to any organization. Your brand is not immune to comments (positive, neutral or negative) in the public domain. People enjoy the liberty to talk about whatever they want and wherever they want. A lot of these discussions involve brands, products and services. A vindictive content has the potential to start an avalanche that could sully your reputation forever and thus online reputation management becomes essential.

Researchers have found that negative comments always look credible, even if they are frivolous or unfounded. There are numerous sites such as Rip-off Reports, Epinions.com, etc. which helps people voice their concerns vociferously. Negative press, in the form of discussion pages from these websites can show in search results, worse make it to the top ten. For the same reason, reputation management that belonged to the PR (public relations) domain since time immemorial, is proliferating into the realm of search engine marketing.

The power of search engine optimization could be leveraged to counteract negative publicity. The strategy is simple – displace offending search engine listings by favorable listings. Easier said than done. An extensive analysis of keywords and brand terms would help in assessing the extent of damage done. Promoting company’s primary website in tandem with positive pages is a tried and tested technique and would delivery fruitful results. All these exercises (search engine optimization and social media optimization) could be coupled with efforts, to get the derogatory comments removed. Online reputation management companies also explore legal avenues or contact webmasters individually to accomplish this task.

‘Prevention is better than cure’ and preemptive online reputation management allows you to do it. Creating listening posts to track what is being said about your company, would help you in nipping trouble before it blows out of proportion. There are many online reputation monitoring tools which prove to be handy for doing this task and some of them are mentioned below:

1 Set up Google and Yahoo email alert for specified keywords.

2 Track message boards, forums and groups.

3 Use tools like Copernic tracker, Website Watchers, Watchthatpage.com to track changes made to particular web pages.

4 Create RSS feeds for designated keywords (Feedster, Technorati, Yahoo/Google news, MSN Spaces, Blogpulse, etc).

5 Use ‘MonitorThis’ that allows you to subscribe to results from 22 search engines and many more.

Companies should incorporate online reputation monitoring as a permanent function and not consider it as a counteractive measure only.

‘Online reputation management ethics’ is a widely debated topic. Is it ethical to help a business which is ‘guilty as charged’? Doing online reputation management for innocent people, whose names have been tarnished by disgruntled customers, unhappy (ex) employees, etc. is justified and not against business ethics. Unfortunately, many online reputation management companies don’t buy this argument and do business with anyone and everyone.

Both public relations and advertising are used by companies to create awareness about their products and services. Advertising services is a complex business with emphasis on ideas, innovations, trends and changing lifestyles of people. However, public relations rely on popularity and through planning. Your expanses on both public relations and advertising are likely to be the same as both have their own significance. Most people are of the view that advertising is better when compared to public relations as advertisements can carried out on radio, television, newspapers and internet. Even though public relations can be done in all these mediums, it lacks the required punch.

It is therefore important that your advertisements have a lasting impression in the minds of the consumer. Advertisements are more than just creating funny punch lines to attract the customer. It requires detailed planning, an understanding of the product and service and a perfect execution of the advertising strategy. Therefore, if you have created a funny advertisement it is important that you tell the joke in a manner which makes people laugh else you will become a joke. So find out ways how you can create fun with the brands that you are working on. You must realize that not everyone is able to tell a good joke which will make people laugh. This does not mean that you can make each and everyone laugh by telling a good joke. There are many people in the world who are unable to understand a joke unless you explain the joke. However, if you make an explanatory advertisement it is no longer funny.

Here are a few funny advertisements which have created a lasting impression in the minds of the consumers.

a) Mercedes Benz – E class driving in the snow advertisement.
b) National Geographic – “take a bite out of life” commercial
c) The Axe Effect Advertisement: It has axe effect displayed on the bus which supposedly carries Las Vegas strip girls
d) Dr. Best Toothbrushes: Bus advertisement
e) NZDating.com: Advertisement which displays two buses
f) Blaupunkt Audio: A commercial about speaker system which has bunnies jumping when music is played
g) Super bowl Commercial: Wedding reception commercial where a guy pays for completing the wedding quickly to watch super bowl.
h) MINI’s Jump Game: There is a fantastic twist at the end of the commercial
i) Hummer “Like Nothing Else Commercial”: Displaying a bear having elephant teeth
j) Anti Bored Campaign by Antenna: The old lady taking a spare steering wheel.

Therefore it is important that when funny advertisements are created your brand identity is not lost. The ads created should reinforce brand identity in the minds of consumer. Advertising should be simple as consumers know what they want and if commercial are too flowery they get suspicious. So create an advertisement which creates a smile on the face of the consumer who intends to buy your product.

Sick of the impersonal quality of much of their daily lives, Americans are seeking to reconnect and build stronger relationships. “In all walks of life, we see a trend toward wanting to convert impersonal transactions into personal relations,” reports famed futurist Daniel Yankelovich.

Connection, or the feeling of belonging, is one of the top three human needs, according to psychologist Abraham Maslow, after physical needs. In our well-fed society, almost all of our physiological and safety needs are being met, but for many the need for connection is not, and smart businesses are responding.

The image of business today is being altered, says futurist Faith Popcorn in her bestselling book Clicking. “(Business will be) no longer seen as a war to be won by trouncing the competition, but viewed as a complicated mosaic to be developed, one relationship at a time.”

Sharp marketers forge stronger connections with their constituents by building deeper relationships that result in trust, and this trust is built on the four Ps of high voltage communications.

Personhood: Personhood requires companies to be self-aware, self-accepting, and self-disclosing. In order to be self-aware and accepting, many marketers use a tool called “gap analysis.” During a gap analysis, research is conducted to determine if a company’s current reputation matches its desired one: if it doesn’t, further research is required to find out why. If it’s because of consumers’ perceptions, marketers know they must do a better job of promoting, and if it’s a real problem, they understand changes must be made.

Personhood also requires being authentic and after too many recent corporate scandals, being authentic has never been so important.

“In the current environment, it’s time for brands to rethink their basic brand foundation and consider adding a pillar around trust. They must clarify their company’s values and synchronize them with their customers’ values,” says Ed Keller, CEO of RoperASW, one the world’s most respected market research firms.

Smart marketers earn consumers’ trust when they are self-disclosing and/or willing to make fun of themselves. A good example is when Jaguar confronted its reputation for mechanical problems and turned its business around by promoting, “We kept what you loved. The rest is history.”

By putting a face on a product, issue, or organization, high voltage marketers use personhood to personalize their products. But a pretty face is not enough; they are also using storytelling.
“The power of the story is upstaging the power of the sound bite in advertising,” writes Melinda Davis in her book The New Culture of Desire: Five Radical New Strategies That Will Change Your Business and Your Life. A good story is more personal and credible than a contrived advertising slogan, and we will remember a story long after a catchy tagline has faded from our memory.

Dave Thomas of Wendy’s, Scottie Mayfield of Mayfield Dairies, and Chrysler’s Lee Ioccoa are good examples of how marketers have used personhood to promote products. These CEOs are comfortable talking about themselves and are able to connect their stories to customers’ needs. Personalizing and storytelling work because they help people form emotional bonds with the company and its products.

Purpose: Most companies express purpose in the form of a mission statement, and while many companies have written mission statements, few live them. Many mission statements boast noble virtues, principles, and intentions, but it’s really profits that steer the corporate ship, and constituents know it.
Smart companies realize that when they put employees, customers, and society first, profits follow. By creating excellent work environments, they attract the best employees, and consumers will choose them over competitors if they offer hiqh-quality products and excellent service at a good price, and if they are socially responsible.

The last few years have seen an explosion in the field of corporate social responsibility. Today, almost all big companies have specific guidelines on social responsibility and are consciously engaged in efforts to give back to society.

Some call marketing with purpose “cause branding,” and one of the country’s leading experts on cause branding is Carol Cone, president of Boston-based Cone, Inc.

“As cause branding continues to evolve, so too will the public’s expectations about the role companies play in addressing societal needs. In the new reality, companies must implement meaningful, substantive programs around social issues to bring their values to life, articulate their soul’, and answer the question: What do you stand for?” Cone says.

Those that do put their money where their mission is — such as the BodyShop, Ben & Jerry’s, and Patogonia – are richly rewarded by consumers.

Persona: Persona describes the masks we wear, or the image we assume, in order to facilitate communication. In business, we call persona “branding.”

“Branding is merely establishing a relationship,” says Charlotte Beers, former head of two of advertising’s most prestigous brands, Ogilvy & Mather and J. Walter Thompson. Much has been written on branding and for good reason. Without it, a product, service, issue, or organization is no different than its competition and will die. But futurist Melinda Davis predicts that the power of the brand is waning. In its place, she says consumers will come to depend on new meta-brands that are idenified with a creed, or marketplace manifesto, and not tied into one product category. Davis sites Oprah Winfrey as an example of this emerging trend. Women interested in bettering themselves turn to Oprah for advice on a wide variety of issues from what recipe to cook to the right books to read. The Oprah meta-brand is also an excellent example of high voltage marketing™ because it possesses all four Ps: personhood, purpose, persona, and presence.

Presence: Presence refers to the way a company operates in the world including how it communicates with constituents. In the past, marketers depended primarily on one-way communication vehicles such as advertising and publicity. No longer.

Consumers want a say. “(They) are hoping to connect, to be heard, to be found – at least, to be seen – in a world that makes us feel increasingly invisible,” writes Davis.

Experts suggest using two-way communications vehicles such as word-of-mouth marketing, the Internet, and stronger consumer relations programs to dialog with consumers and build critical relationships.

Personhood, purpose, persona, and presence are not linear, but interrelated. Each depends on the other.
Personhood, purpose, persona, and presence can be pictured as the four points of a cross that is contained within a circle. Personhood is at the bottom of the cross where it grounds it; purpose is at the top. On the far left, resides persona, and on the opposite axis is presence. Where the four points join in the middle, high voltage communications take place, and it is here that we are at our most powerful as marketers.