Branding Analysis: Magic Spoon

by Branding AnalysisBusiness

Today I challenged myself to reverse engineer the values of the first company that advertised to me on Instagram. I did this because I wanted to show how using values in advertising and branding makes both so much more effective.

 

Magic Spoon was the first company to advertise on my Instagram feed (@standoutprofessionalbranding). So, hello, Magic Spoon!

Magic Spoon's Branding

Clicking their video took me to the landing page I screen-shot below. Essentially all of their branding revolves around the notion of communicating “we’re the best” to the consumer. Best taste. Best ingredients. Etc…

Problems With Magic Spoon's Branding

The problem with this kind of advertising is that it doesn’t give you an actual reason to purchase this product. Listing the reasons a product is the best isn’t a message that resonates with consumers very well, because it doesn’t connect buying their product with any kind of a feeling.

How To Brand Food So That It Resonates With Consumers

When it comes to taste, “the best” is entirely subjective. Fine restaurants don’t advertise themselves as being “the best” or giving you a list of all their good ingredients. They advertise by showing you why going there is essentially a flex. It’s a status symbol. People go because they want people around them to know that they can spend that kind of money, or because they want to commemorate a special occasion.

 

The marketing of kids’ breakfast cereals is actually another a good example of how to resonate with your consumers in action. Commercial cereals generally don’t advertise the ingredients of their cereal; except as maybe a footnote to placate the parents. They advertise by showing a big cartoon and hoping that the cartoon they show resonates with the target audience.

I remember asking my parents to buy Frosted Flakes because their cartoon mascot had that big booming voice, so he sounded trust-worthy, and other kids in the commercials seemed to be enjoying eating that cereal. Connecting with me and millions of other children doesn’t take much more than giving us a feeling that resonates with us.

 

Going to a nice restaurant gives you the feeling that you’re showing off how much money you have. Getting cereal with a cartoon mascot gives you the feeling that you’re trusting a mascot and the experience of other kids. Communicating these messages to their customers is how these food providers connect with their customers in a meaningful way.

Conclusion and Take-Aways For Magic Spoon

Conclusion

The problem with Magic Spoon advertising by saying “we’ve got the best ingredients,” is that there is nothing for the audience to identify with in an advertisement like that. To resonate with consumers you need to give them something to connect with. Some adults want to show off their money. Children want to be accepted by the group. The ingredients in those foods are irrelevant in both cases; the message that you can show off your money or be accepted by a group does is what resonates with branding for food.

 

Elegant restaurants often don’t have the best food. And children’s cereals all sell what is essentially the same repackaged high-fructose corn syrup. But both thrive because they tie the purchase of their product to a value in the mind of the consumer.

How To Fix Magic Spoon's Branding

What I think Magic Spoon should be doing is focusing their branding on why you’d want these terrific, healthy ingredients. They should talk about how, if you buy their cereal, you’ll be helping your kids live healthier, happier lives. Everyone wants their kids to live healthy, happy lives, so that’s a concept that will be easy for the cereal buying audience to identify with and connect to meaningfully.

 

They should replace their lists of ingredients with pictures of kids doing healthy kid stuff, like playing sports, graduating elementary school, and passing sight exams at the doctor’s office enthusiastically. This way the notion of happy, healthy kids is tied to eating the cereal in the mind of the parent buying the cereal.

West Kraemer On: How To Build A Brand Basics Part 1

by How To Build A BrandJob Seeker

Hi, my name is West Kraemer and I’m here to show you the very basics of building a digital brand for yourself during your job hunt.

Start With A Website

The first thing you want is a website. You’ll publish your tent pole, or “pillar” material there. That kind of content usually breaks down along the lines of “audio” (podcast), “written” (blog post), or “visual” (video). 

So, if you’re making a podcast, you’ll publish your podcast on your website and send it out to the streaming services from there. If you’re writing a blog, you’ll publish your blog posts there. And if you’re making videos, you’ll use YouTube to host them (because YouTube is free), and embed them onto your website from YouTube. 

You’ll build this project on WordPress, which is free. Your website will be “hosted” on Bluehost.(“hosting” means the website’s files will be located there. You’ve got to pay for that. It’s about $80 a year, give or take depending on how much data you use.).

Posting Schedule

Once you’ve got your website and pillar content going, you’re going to start posting it on social media. You’re going to want to post a piece of pillar content once every 4-5 days. In between posting, you’re writing new pillar content, and posting small snippets of information from your previous “pillar” post.

This in-between period is also a great time to post content documenting your process. Overcoming struggle is a compelling narrative, so if you’re frustrated with a process and want to Tweet/IG/LinkedIn about how you overcame that challenge, go for it.

Between these posts of snippets, documentation, and pillar content, try to post at least once a day.

Next Steps

Now, with these tools in your belt, you’re almost ready to start building your brand online so that employers can see why they should hire you. 

But, what are you going to post about for all of this? In Part 2 of this series “West Kraemer On:“, I’m going to write about how you first establish your values, a mission statement, and a slogan, then use those values to shape your message and ensure you always have something to write about.

Job Hunting Is Lonely And Ineffective, Brand Yourself Instead

by Job Seeker

Personal Branding Is A Better Way To Get A Job Than Traditional Job Hunting

Results Comparison

Personal Branding

  • Companies approach you to work for them. 
  • Potentially avoid several rounds of interviews because the decision makers at a company want you on board.
  • No need to send out thousands of resumes or spend hours a day searching for jobs.
  • You get to be creative and show off your skills in a way that you’re already good at.
  • Feedback received frequently.

Traditional Job Hunting

  • Sending out thousands of job applications, 99% of which will be ignored.
  • You have to spend hours searching for the right jobs to apply to.
  • Filling out applications takes forever.
  • Everyone else is doing the exact same thing, so unbelievable level of competition.
  • Ghosted constantly during interview process.
  • No way to tell if you’re going in the right direction.

Personal Branding > Job Hunting

Personal branding is a much better way to go than traditional job hunting. If done well, you’re working a lot smarter. Think about it: if you’re constantly publishing the fact that you’re good at what you do online, Google search results for your name are eventually going to reflect that. So, you’ll stand out to companies a lot more than a competitor who just has their LinkedIn profile and maybe some results from a track meet pop up when you Google their name.

Another reason why personal branding is a better idea to use for job hunting is that you’re not just going to get yourself the next job. You’re going to get yourself the next 3 jobs with the connections you make while doing it, so it offers your more security.

How To Get Started Building Your Brand

To start building your brand, you need to decide on your values, and use them in your messaging. Then you need to make a piece of pillar content per week, which you post on a website. From there, you spend the rest of the week posting about that pillar content online. That pillar content needs to give a real value to the person reading, watching, or listening to it. After you’ve begun establishing your digital presence, you need to start creating and organizing in-person events for people in the field you want to enter to gain value from.

To get started establishing your values, you can look at the free PDF here. 

A Network Is Important Because It Helps You Land On Your Feet

by Job Seeker

A Network Is Important Because It Helps You Land On Your Feet

The fact that you need to develop a network (while employed and while unemployed) is the single most important message I can provide to job seekers. A network is important because it helps you land on your feet.

The developer in the video below, Kilo Loco, is a great example of why this is the case. He’s recently been fired, but he’s absolutely, 100% going to land on his feet because he was working on creating a network of people before he even got hired at his most recent job.

The Engineer In The Video Below Is Going To Be Fine Because He Has A Successful Personal Brand

A Network Is Important: Especially When You've Been Fired

Kilo Loco has got 17,500 subscribers on YouTube alone. Do you think out of one of those 17,500 people one of them isn’t going to be willing to help him get his next job? Of course they will; having built this network Kilo Loco has essentially created career security.

But his network isn’t going to help him because they feel bad for him. They’re going to help (if he wants them to) because, over the course of ~200 videos, he’s provided value by sharing his coding knowledge for free. (And his videos are good! I used them a ton when I was learning to code. If you need an iOS app, hire this guy).

I’ve said that building a network is important here, here, and here. And guess what? I’m going to say it a lot more, because it’s the most important thing you can do while you’re employed and unemployed.


Conclusion

If you’ve currently got a job, now is the time to develop a network so that if something bad happens, you can land on your feet. If you don’t have a job, getting started on this is as urgent as ever, and can be a more direct path to employment than simply sending off hundreds or thousands of resumes. 

So, get started on building your network and getting career security. Job seekers can get started hiring Stand Out Professional Branding to help them develop their networks to gain career security here.

Become A Marketable Employee

by Job Seeker

Why Do You Need To Become A Marketable Employee?

You probably won’t have the same job between now and when you retire. That’s a fact for 90-95% of the people reading this right now. The market is simply different from what it used to be. So, job hunting is inevitably in your future. When you’re looking for a new job, you want to be as marketable as possible. So you need to become a marketable employee and you need to Stand Out. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Scroll down and look at the accomplish of both people below. Which would you rather hire? 

Become a marketable employee
5/5
  • Does job well
  • Shows up on time
  • Liked by colleagues
  • Hosted conferences in several cities for professionals in her field
  • Organized events for people in her field to gain knowledge
  • Given lectures on her professional expertise
  • Built a community of professionals in her field
  • Has several established social media channels dedicated to providing value to professionals within her field and showing her values
  • Has Google Search results of her name reflect all of this
Become a marketable employee
3/5
  • Does job well
  • Shows up on time
  • Liked by colleagues
  • Recently updated LinkedIn account and resume

So, if you’d hire the first candidate over the second, BECOME THE FIRST CANDIDATE.

Ultimately, you need to become a marketable employee by standing out if you want career security. I’m writing this in April of 2020 and things are about to get really difficult to people looking for jobs.

Doing all of these things is going to take time. You’re talking about building security in the long term. You can do that over a period of months, but you need to start now.  I can help you become more like the second candidate and gain career security if you hire me to do so. You can click here to get started.

Reverse Engineering Values

by Business

Reverse Engineering Values In Real Life

When a company communicates its values to the customer or client successfully, or when the job seeker communicates their values to the company they’re applying to successfully, the act of doing business becomes an expression of values rather than a transaction. You’re buying a Mac computer to show that you’re an original thinker. A company is hiring you because you’ve established yourself as someone who aligns with their corporate values and has a reputation for doing so.

So, what does it look like when a company expresses its values in real life? Let’s do some reverse engineering of the values of the American football team, The Oakland Raiders. Let’s start with the logo, because this embodies the team and is present across all of their communications to their fans.

The logo has weapons in the background, it has a guy with an eyepatch, and the helmet he’s wearing is old-school NFL. This team is known for being rough and rumble and aggressive. When you buy Raiders gear, or a ticket to a Raiders game, you’re buying an aggressive, passionate image, with cultural associations to gang culture. By buying Raiders gear, you’re being rebellious, and that’s the value that the organization embodies.

Reverse Engineering Values

This football team has successfully managed to make buying their gear into an expression of values, not a transaction. And that carries benefits of loyalty and appreciation that simply do not result from transactions.

"You never hear someone say, 'I'm kinda a Raider fan.' It's either all the way, with great passion being a fan, or it's nothing. That's what being a Raider fan is." .
Reverse Engineering Values
-John Madden
Coached the Raiders to their win in Super Bowl XI

Reverse Engineering Values Put To Use

People get passionate about their values. It drive people to feel loyalty to a football team, and toward brands. Use your values to connect with people and build that loyalty within your network while you’re providing value for them. 

Reverse engineering values can show you how successful brands have communicated their message effectively. If you want to drive more customer loyalty, you can do so through reverse engineering the values of a competitor and trying some of what makes them successful on your brand.

Top Ten Tips For Getting Value From Networking Events

by Job SeekerTrending

Go Because You Want To Help Others

1 The most important thing you can do at a networking event is provide value for other people. That’s why you go. If everyone had this mentality, networking events would be hyper effective.

Learn What Others Need

2 To provide value for other people, you need to learn what it is that they need. Ask questions about them and their career trajectory. Ask about their job. From there, you’ll figure out if there’s any way you can provide them value.

Hire Stand Out - Job Hunters

Think Of Specific Solutions

3 Find out what you can do for them. Do you know someone you can connect them with that will benefit them? What is their goal for being at the networking event? How can you help them achieve that goal?

Listen More Than You Speak

4 Show a genuine interest in the people you meet and try to listen more than you speak. If you don’t learn enough about someone and what they do, there’s no way to know how you can help them, or even if you can. Try to listen more than you speak.

Hire Stand Out - Job Hunters

Connect With Purpose

5 Establish what you’re there to do before you go. Don’t waste your time on going with the overall goal “to network.” Are you there to promote your own event? To find speakers for your event? To find out about what is working at this event and use those techniques on your event?

Avoid Distractions

6 Establish what you’re not there to do, and avoid those things.

Hire Stand Out - Job Hunters

Not Every Interaction Will Lead Somewhere, That's Okay

7 You don’t need to give or get something out of every interaction. If you truly can’t help someone with anything, just enjoy your time speaking with them. Most interactions you have won’t be fruitful, the point is to keep interacting until you do have a fruitful one.

Smile!

8 Have fun. Be pleasant. Smile. No one wants to connect with a person who is deadly serious all the time.

Hire Stand Out - Job Hunters

Keep It Organic

9 If someone asks, or it comes up naturally, don’t be afraid to talk about your successes or times you’ve helped other people. If you do this without it coming up naturally, it will sound like bragging though. Do not brag.

Help Facilitate Immediate Connections

Ten If you can help two people at the same event connect, do so that night.

How Does A Company Express Its Values Effectively?

by BusinessTrending

Values-based marketing drives successful businesses because it results in relationships with customers that are based on purchases being driven by an expression of values, not soulless transactions. This strategy is so potent that it can drive the success of an inferior product. So, how does a company express its values effectively? What does this look like in practice?

How Does A Company Express Its Values Effectively?

Apple

Many Apple phones are objectively worse machines than Android phones (Apple phones have worse cameras, are slower, and are inferior machines based on many other technical measures). 

So, why is Apple one of, if not the biggest company in the world? It’s because through its marketing, Apple has successfully tied the purchase of their product to the exercise of a value in the mind of their consumers.

The “Think different” campaign from Apple featured different celebrities from history that did something remarkable. These celebrities had to “think different” in order to achieve what they did. Albert Einstein had to invent a whole bunch of Physics. Amelia Earhart had to be daring enough to attempt a dangerous journey. And, according to Apple’s marketing, by purchasing an Apple computer you would be thinking differently in the same way that Einstein and Earhart did. 

Purchasing an Apple computer was not an exchange of money for a product, purchasing an Apple computer was a statement of values. By creating this connection in their customer’s minds with this advertising campaign, Apple showed how a company can express its values effectively.

How Does A Company Express Its Values Effectively?How Does A Company Express Its Values Effectively?

Corona Beer

Objectively, Corona is a terrible beer. It has no taste, it goes flat quickly, and it needs a lime to have any flavor whatsoever.

That being said, their marketing is nearly perfect. Corona is one of the most popular brands in the United States. So, how did this objectively sub-par product become so popular? It’s because they connect the purchase of their product to the expression of a value in the mind of the consumer through their marketing.

You buy a Corona beer because their marketing has successfully connected the value of relaxation with buying their beer through their slogan “Find your beach” and beach-themed visual imagery.  Wherever you are, buying a Corona makes you feel like you’re relaxing.

Conclusion

You do not need to be a massive corporation with dedicated teams of marketing professionals to use values-based marketing to develop values-based relationships with your clients or customers.

You just need to identify what values drive you and then put those values into your advertising effectively. If done successfully, you’ll develop the same kind of brand loyalty you see between large companies and their customers.

I put together some prompts for beginning that thought process here.

Business Relationships Are Similar To Romantic Relationships

by BusinessBusiness and Job SeekerJob Seeker

How Business Relationships Are Similar To Romantic Relationships

Business relationships are similar to romantic relationships. When either are established based on shared values, they are more durable, inspire greater loyalty, and last longer.

…express your values and provide the other party with value…

If you’re seeking to establish a relationship in either business or romance, you need to both express your values and provide the other party with value to initiate that process successfully.

Communicated Values

When I used to do online dating, I communicated my values in my profile through a funny re-imagining of the lyrics to “Baby Got Back.” The values I expressed with that were that I wanted intelligence in my partner.

Sharing My Value

The value I provided was humor; because I made up a funny remix of a song, I would probably be a fun person to go on a date with (another value I provided was in my profile picture above; I’ve got an adorable dog that you might get to see if you went on a date with me).

Because I expressed my values and communicated value, I was constantly getting reactions like the one you see below.

  • My bumble online dating profile
  • A nice message I got because of that profile.
Thanks, Sarah!

By putting my values out there, I was able to establish human connections IRL easily and frequently. I stood out from the crowd, and was able to create the relationships I wanted to create.

Business relationships are similar to romantic relationships. Both are stronger when established based on values. So, establishing your business relationships through the sharing of values and the providing of value like the above example in online dating should be the goal of your marketing. Each post you make from now on should be focused on both expressing your value, and communicating your values.

How Do You Define Your Business Values?

by BusinessEditor's Pick

Your business’s values are the umbrella under which you base all of your communications. As such, you have to define your business values before you start using them. A good example of how umbrella concept works in action is Nike. Their “Just Do It” slogan informs all of their communications. If “Just Do It” isn’t actually in one of their ads, it’s influencing the content.

So, the first thing you need to do when you’re trying to use values in your business communications is identify your values. I’ve prepared some questions below to help you start with that process.

Define Your Business Values

Questions For Defining Your Business Values

  • What values currently drive your business?
  • Why did you start your business?
  • What values do you want to be driving your business?
  • What values are your customers currently expressing by buying your product? 
  • Who is the intended recipient of your business’s services?
  • Identify a successful rival or competitor providing the same or similar good/service that you do. What value is a person expressing by purchasing that rival’s good/service? How has that rival successfully communicated that value to their customers?
  • How are you connecting those values and the purchase of your product in the mind of the customer with your marketing? Are you doing this at all?
  • When your customer purchases your product/service, what do you want them to be thinking?
Define Your Business Values

Next Steps

Once you’ve taken the time to define your business values, you need to synthesize a mission statement and a slogan from them. These will be what you use in your communications. But the first step in this process is defining your values so that you can use them.

I can help you develop and then implement that process effectively if you hire me to do so here.