A client (accidentally) told me one day that they didn’t know the breadth of our services or the depth of our people. It wasn’t their fault. It was mine. I let my marketing guns down by not promoting and educating, while focusing on the work at hand. Their accidental admission was my wake-up call. I had put our new Train of Thought site development on hold several times. Big mistake.

I’ve always told clients if you stop marketing, your business will absolutely drop off. And it’s true. Even if you are so busy you can’t imagine bringing on another client, you must continue marketing, even if only a little bit. You have to keeping educating the clients you have, and continue reaching those you hope to one day land.

That one interaction lit a fire under my tail. After all, we began the project in May, 2010! I’m stoked to announce the new Train of Thought site has finally launched. Is it everything we’d hoped? Resoundingly, yes.

This is the first site we’ve had that accurately describes who we are, what we do, the depth and breadth of our work, speaks in the tone we actually use (minus any occasional expletives), and shows large work samples complete with strategy or background details. In short, it’s completely true to our brand.

As a person who is usually looking for a better way, I’m pleased to say I am completely happy with the site. You can read about our goals and accomplishments with it here. I hope you will poke around, read the branding blog, check out our portfolio, and generally find the site useful.

I’ve been a professional graphic designer (and art director, creative director, senior copywriter) for 26 years, yet I still get asked to do work at near-minimum wage by some companies, and I’m not the only one. Professional graphic designers commiserate about this all the time. Would you ask your marketing director, bookkeeper or auto mechanic to work at minimum wage? Of course not, because they all play pivotal roles in keeping you and your business healthy, as does your graphic designer.

Professional graphic design is not a commodity or unnecessary service in the way that flipping burgers might be. Smart graphic design feeds marketing pipelines, whereas clipart and non-strategic graphic design does not.

There can be no question about the marketing value of graphic design. That value comes into question primarily because companies hire based on price, not based on needs. They do it to themselves.

It is commonplace in the design industry for clients to price-shop. Companies routinely choose the lowest price, regardless of qualification or possibilities. If you hire based solely on price, the end-result will invariably be of lesser quality, which means you’re knocking the legs out from under your marketing.

Legs are what you get when you hire highly-qualified professional designers. Legs carry your marketing. Cheap design falls on its face, undermining your marketing.

There are two kinds of graphic designers: hobbyists who work for free or cheap and do work that helps you fill a budget sheet; and professionals who can make your marketing fill your pipeline. Only one of them has real value to businesses serious about success.

Take going gluten-free as an example. Can you guess the biggest fears people have about going gluten-free?

1) They won’t like the taste.
2) They won’t be able to eat out.
3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
4) They will always be hungry.

These are all myths people tell themselves to avoid change. Funny thing about change is that it almost always has positive benefits. Not changing, on the other hand, or investing in fear, almost always has drawbacks. People invest in fear because it sounds easier and seems to cost less from an effort standpoint, when the reality is they are making life or business much harder.

Like all myths, the above fears about gluten-free eating can be dispelled in seconds flat:

1) They won’t like the taste.
Finding a taste they like may be an exciting adventure. Just like with glutinous foods, there are artisan gluten-free bakers and brewers to be found.

2) They won’t be able to eat out.
Restaurants have one primary goal: to make people happy. The first person who requests gluten-free food might be an inconvenience, but everyone after that presents an opportunity to please. Eating out will not be a problem.

3) They don’t know how they will find gluten-free foods.
Finding gluten-free foods is easy, presents opportunities for venturing outside of old routines, and promotes positive change. Reading labels is easy and takes only a few seconds.

4) They will always be hungry.
In point of fact, they are likely to be less hungry. You need less food when your diet contains no gluten. Gluten reduces the effectiveness of the digestive system, so eating gluten in effect manifests hunger. Eating gluten-free foods allows the digestive system to pull maximum nutrients from food, so you require less intake.

In spite of all these facts, people keep eating gluten because it’s easier to invest in fear. Marketers understand this and play to it on a daily basis. The results of investment in fear about going gluten-free include a steady decline in health, a bigger belly, asthma, digestive problems, discomfort, sleep apnea, and so on.

Do you invest in your fears? We all do. Investing in fear is free and easy. It requires almost no effort. It’s also boring. Doing things that scare you just a little bit is healthier because you are challenging yourself and those around you to learn and grow.

If you are marketing fear to yourself on a regular basis, you reinforce your own status quo. It’s how bad hair, habits and horrible has-beens happen. Doing the opposite is exciting, scary, and actually pretty awesome feeling. The price is change. The benefit is priceless.

We all tell ourselves little lies. It’s how we get past the unbelievable; how we embrace the impossible, inconvenient, or unacceptable, which is kind of a weird habit because in the long run, it always comes back to bite us.

Companies are dishonest with themselves all the time when it comes to their marketing. It most often manifests in false messages in advertising, websites, promises.

I’ve seen clients self-inflate budgets they can’t afford to increase or talk themselves into buying advertising space they can’t afford. The most common of lies people and businesses market to themselves are in regards to the claims they make about their products. When they do it – and people do it every day – they open a bottomless can of worms with two heads, eleven lives and sharp fangs that inflict ‘lie hangover,’ a highly poisonous substance. And the thing is, there is absolutely no need for it.

There’s a difference between polishing a boring truth and being misleading. One involves first telling yourself a lie, then marketing it to others until you both believe it. The better path involves strong creative. That’s it. Nothing misleading, negative, or fang-bearing.

Honesty in marketing is truly all that’s needed to connect with people.

How do you market from within? Do you tell yourself convenient half-truths, or are you honest and up-front with yourself?

Honest marketing begins within. When you are honest with yourself, you manifest what you need, and it comes through in everything you do. Whether or not they tell you directly, people notice; you see it as people trust your brand and messages, and your business rises as direct result.

Funny thing is, each time this has happened, the businessperson tried to negotiate on price (bigly, like 50% or more discount big), then wound up going with another buddy deal after I refused to give them one.

Could I give them a deal? Sure, I could (not 50%), but that would only serve to set us both up to fail, and I have no interest in failure. They shouldn’t either (but they often do). After all, they came to me because they found out that ‘getting a deal’ netted them less than what they wanted.

I’m rarely given the opportunity to ask people if they are being honest with themselves when they go for the next buddy deal. Then again, I already know the answer and they probably do too, deep down inside.

Buddy deals are great when it’s a long-time friends equation, but when it’s that person you met at a networking party once and exchanged cards with, there’s no ‘buddy’ in the deal. Seeking a deal there is essentially trying to put one over on the person being asked. Perhaps worse, however, is the fact that the person doing the asking isn’t being honest with themselves, which undermines the foundations of both their marketing and their brand.

This is a blog about marketing, working better, and customer service, for uncommon thinkers and unusual companies.

The scenario: A customer calls to complain they have been overbilled by $10 every month for two years, and they have the paperwork to prove it. Your company can easily see he is correct, but you have a policy of crediting bills for only up to six months. Your company would have to refund $240. In a monotone voice, your customer service representative tells the customer they will not do the refund, and to pay their bill, or service will be interrupted… In essence to go pound sand.

The common solution: Do everything you can to beat down the customer’s will and keep their money, without regard for retaining their business.

The better solution: Give them their money back without any fight whatsoever. If you know you are wrong, don’t fight about it, and you will keep a happy customer. If you have documentation which clearly shows the customer is wrong, prove it by sending it to them, with no disrespect or fighting.

For anyone thinking your company would not treat customers to the above scenario, you would be surprised at how common this policy is for large corporations. Telecoms and cable companies in particular are famous for it (what a terrible thing to be famous for!), as well as banks and mortgage companies.

Good customer service is good marketing. It’s a rule to thrive by.

Some people didn’t really see it that way, which is really just another way of saying they didn’t really see it all. Outraged critics said the ad celebrated transgendered children, as if that was a bad thing. Is it better to hide them all away in locked chests, and pretend they don’t exist? The critics seem to forget they are talking about living, breathing human beings, with parents and siblings, eyes, ears, and — I don’t know — feelings and choices of their own.

“This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity,” psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow wrote in a FoxNews.com Health column about the ad. The key word in that sentence being “trappings.” Gender rules exist primarily to trap consumers into thought patterns that encourage more spending. People can figure out their own leanings without a bunch of arbitrary societal gender rules.

We are now beginning to see, at last, that gender rules are no longer all that relevant. Authenticity is relevant, and J.Crew seems to get that, at least with this ad.

Why there was any debate at all about it, be it on Fox News, Sodahead (40 pages of comments? Come on!), in the social media world (a 500 tweet blip on Twitter), or wherever, suggests simply that people have too much time on their hands. Who cares if a boy likes neon pink toenails? Maybe he’s color blind. Maybe he just likes pink. Who cares? Jenna Lyons has at least one value — that of open-mindedness — that I’d like to see in the future mother of my children, or at least in society at large.

If we took gender rules completely out of the social picture, what would happen? Would it render utter mayhem in the streets? Would the sky crack open and acid-baked space lizards rain down upon us? Would all men’s wives paint their power tools the colors of the rainbow? And all women’s husbands paint their toenails dark blue? Kinda’ doubt it! We don’t need no stinking gender rules. We need an open dialog, open minds.

Since this is a marketing blog…
It is almost always a good idea to break social norms and take calculated risks in marketing. The appropriateness debate has less to do with guidelines and more to do with being honest and authentic, and discarding any false sense of how things are “supposed to be.” If someone disagrees, so what? Let them eat toenails. Keep the customer in mind, be true to your brand, create and spread authenticity, and you will inevitably connect.

Hot and cold water
It’s 95 degrees out. Hot food and drink are the last thing on my list of desirable sustenance. I’m pouring ice cold chocolate hemp milk into my coffee solely to bring the temperature down so that it does not heat up my body. And yet, every time I turn on the water at the sink, I turn on the hot water. It’s a bad habit. I keep correcting myself, but not before I feel hotness on hands. It costs money to heat water. Granted, it’s not much, but when you wash your hands as often as do I (yeah, I’m sort of a germ freak), it adds up. I’m teaching myself to turn on the cold water first, but years of badness are hard to undo.

This one isn’t bad, but it illustrates the point well
I eat a lot of soy yogurt. Heaps. I usually buy the 4-serving tubs, but sometimes they are sold out, so I get the 1-serving minis. The tubs come with a re-closeable lid, the minis with a foil peel-away lid. Every single time I get the minis, upon finishing the yogurt, I search the kitchen in vain for the plastic lid so I can recycle it. But there isn’t one, I realize eventually. My mind believes there is a lid because so often there is indeed a lid. I know that I must recycle that lid. Each time the product availability changes, I must change. If I do not change, I waste my effort.

Bad marketing is habit forming
Every week, it seems, I talk with agents and sales professionals who are trying to find easier ways to connect; ways to put less effort into their marketing, and ways to procrastinate from implementing tried and true marketing methods that work.

Procrastinating is habit forming. Bad marketing is habit forming. The more you invest in bad marketing habits, the more your business will flounder, and the more you will ask yourself when will it all turn around? Blaming slow business on the economy is a form of procrastination. Stop blaming and start marketing. When will it turn around?

It will turn around when you turn around.

Turn it around now!
Here’s a simple yet extremely effective exercise. Take a look at your marketing methods. List them out on a sheet of paper (or in Excel if you just can’t bring yourself to use paper and a pen). List out everything you do during your day that could possibly be categorized as marketing, and add it to your list. Now, write the time you are spending on each item on a weekly basis. Next, write the positive outcome in a third column, and finally, write the negative outcomes in a fourth column. It will be very easy to see what is an effective use of your marketing time. This exercise will take you all of about one hour.

I’m going to be totally honest with you here. This exercise might make you feel bad about yourself. It might make you wonder why you’ve been wasting so much time on facebook or twitter. It might show you that your blog posts are ineffective. Or, it may show that all of these are wildly effective. (I hate to say it, but in most cases, they’re not.)

There are some side benefits of this exercise. In addition to giving you a bird’s eye view of your bad marketing habits, you will get a good sense of how much consistent effort you have actually put into each method, and ultimately, how much you are willing to invest in your success. It will tell you if you can effectively manage your own marketing, or if you really need a marketing manager to keep you focused and on task. Finally, it will help you discover your strengths and weaknesses, which can be applied to your personal brand development.

Things can change, but first and foremost you must stab those bad habits in the heart with the sharp end of a highly motivated goal. You can do it. You just have to do a little hard work. Meanwhile, I’ll be hunting around for a nonexistent yogurt top.

An open letter to Starbucks’ marketing department:

Your latest ad headline reads, “Thanks to everyone who helped make us the country’s #1 best coffee, which includes our great baristas.” Could you possibly have worded that any worse? What exactly does that headline mean? What is a “#1 best coffee”? Why would someone in New York care if someone in Wyoming favors Starbucks coffee? I mean, really?

I should admit, I am opposed to chest-beating, ‘We’re #1 statements.’ They have no meaning, and they’re simply in poor taste, harkening back to apes proclaiming their dominance after battle.

I see Zagat did the rating. (They’re the #1 best business ratings company.) Funny, they never contacted me. Did anyone you know get a call from the folks at Zagat wondering about your favorite coffee? My informal survey revealed that fully no one I know got the ring up from the Zagat survery folks. Yet, Starbucks is the country’s #1 best coffee. Oh, I see the survey included just 6,000 respondents. That seems like a small minority to represent 305 million Americans.

It seems as if Starbucks is really saying thanks to all the folks at Zagat for designating you “the country’s #1 best coffee.” And the #1 best coffee includes the baristas. Or are the baristas in the coffee? Did I get that right? Will anyone else? Or are you saying thanks to your employees for being the country’s #1 best baristas? Does the whole country think that too? Does it sell Starbucks coffee?

Not on Zagat’s own site, it doesn’t. A search for ‘coffee’ on the Zagat home page will net you eight coffee shop results, none of which are Starbucks. So, Zagat awarded you with the ranking as the country’s #1 best coffee, but that doesn’t get you a listing in their top eight places for coffee.

Oh, wait! Zagat must be talking about rural America! The country! I love the country. It’s the #1 best place.

Really, what it does is get you a whole bunch of free news clippings that no one cares about. There are much more compelling ways to start a visible conversation about Starbucks.

Why spend valuable marketing dollars putting a poorly-worded, completely meaningless message out to the masses?

Your tag line is much stronger: “It’s not just coffee. It’s Starbucks.” Exactly! There’s thought-provoking power in that. People go to Starbucks for the ‘Starbucks experience.’

Since the ad headline has no real meaning, it creates confusion, which greatly reduces the likelihood that ad viewers will scroll down to see the much stronger tag line.

When you ask folks in Starbucks’ hometown of Seattle, many people say Starbucks coffee tastes burned, but the shops here are always packed anyway. That speaks to the quality of the experience, not the #1 best coffee.

What I’ve come to know about Starbucks is that I can stop into nearly any one of them, sit comfortably and work while a stream of interesting people pass through the door. I can get a decent beverage and some reasonably healthy food to boot. Starbucks ubiquity means that I can set up meetings in far-away towns with a setting that is familiar to both me and the client. These things are all about value and experience, not some arbitrary “country’s #1 best coffee” rating.

Don’t get me wrong here – I’m not beating up Starbucks, just their advertising, which could easily be a whole lot better.