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Note: This is a reprise of one of my first blog posts and dates back to 2010.

Hoofin’ it over to Safeway on a lovely Monday, I pass the restaurant I mentioned a short while ago.

There has been some progress since then. It appears that the new eatery is now in business, though, oddly, it’s closed for the advertised lunch trade. The awning over the door sports a new and nicely printed panel with “Now Open,” the new name (Christina’s), the hours, and the tagline “All American Cuisine.” Just below the awning, a big banner bearing the words “1/2 Pound Hamburger and Fries, $5.95” flaps in the breeze. A free-standing blackboard advertises a blues band on Friday nights. (No more hookah lounge. Darn!)

Despite these efforts, the place has an unfinished feeling. The big palms from its Mediterranean incarnation still stand sentry by the door in their gorgeous, ornate pots—too heavy to move, I guess. The name of the old restaurant still appears on the windows, and so do those cheesy-looking stick-on letters with the hours. Peering through the window, I see that the place still looks Mediterranean. As I turn and start walking, I notice that the sign on the roof refers to the place as “All American California Cuisine.” A small inconsistency, but an inconsistency nonetheless.

Lest you think I’m being a bit mean-spirited about branding snafus, let me say that I’m rooting for the place to survive and thrive. My neighborhood could use good saloon food and entertainment, and the owners and employees are nice, hard-working people. You should have seen their pride when they first opened their doors—as a Mediterranean restaurant called Tartousa—six months ago.

So, I’ll clap my hands and wish for the best. It saved Tinkerbell, but it may not work as well here. As my sister-in-law Betty says, if you’re going to change your identity, don’t do it half way and then stop.

2015 Update

There have been a number of restaurants—at least five—in that location since. To be fair, branding is important, but so is location. Put shaky branding together with a poor location, and success is not assured. In this case, there’s a thriving Mexican restaurant a couple of doors down, and parking is not terrific.

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Ay caramba! I love to eat. I particularly like the Mexican food served in cheap neighborhood places frequented by those who work physically hard for a living.

But what does this all have to do with branding, you ask? Quite a lot, it turns out. Let me offer up Los Primos Taqueria on San Mateo’s Ellsworth Street (near Poplar for those of you who want to swing by) as an example of branding done right.

There’s no confusion about what Los Primos is—in stark contrast to the restaurant I wrote about in an earlier post. What you get is consistency from start to finish.

The first thing you see when you walk up is “Home-made, authentic Mexican food” hand painted on the plate-glass window. Then you step through the door and are hit by the wonderful, aroma of beans, frying tortillas, and carne. Proceeding on to the cash register, you catch a glimpse of the grill cook at work and hear a telenovela or soccer game blasting on the two big TVs. Then there’s the food. Boy, is it good!

Everything about Los Primos, from the patrons grabbing a hearty meal and a beer at lunch to the collection box for a sick relative in Mexico tells you exactly what you’ll get, great food in a no-frills, workingman’s café.

Whether it’s fancy, polished, or not, I think that’s the essence of branding. A promise, a consistent look and feel, and always-on delivery. Los Primos has it right. I stop by every week, as much for the experience as the food—though you will probably never catch me sampling the menudo. That’s for the boys in long pants, as my grad school dean used to say.

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Note: This month I’m reprising some older posts on branding. This one dates back to 2010, but I think it’s still relevant. The Safeway program referenced may well work better now, but it was enough of a hassle that I never got engaged. Such is the power of a negative brand experience in a time-pressured world.

 I am an unashamed cheapskate, so when I heard about Safeway’s recently launched Just 4 U program, I thought “Great! I love to save money on groceries.”

The details of the program seemed a touch complex; still, I went ahead and signed up. I started getting emails immediately, exhorting me to load up my Safeway card with items I normally buy and to visit the coupon center on the Safeway.com site. There, they said, I would find bargains on a veritable cornucopia of comestibles and household supplies.

Then the fun began. First, my password was rejected, so I called Customer Service, bailing after 15 minutes on hold. A couple of days later, I tried again and got through to a nice woman who told me my email address wasn’t in the system. Huh? She fixed that problem, walked me through a few tweaks to Firefox, and generated a temporary password. (I tried it 24 hours later, as directed, and it didn’t work.) During our conversation, she confided that there had been quite a few problems with the program.

Safeway, like a lot of smart companies, wants to build and maintain brand loyalty. And its execs probably thought that Just 4 U would help the organization stay closer to customers. It seems that they may have rushed it into production prematurely, though.

Will this stumble do lasting damage to the Safeway brand? Of course not. But I tend to agree with the person the Customer Service rep told me about—the one who said, “This is really not simple at all. Why don’t you guys just reduce prices across the board and be done with it?”

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Writing and speaking are all about making good word choices. Those of us who write for a living, as I’m fond of pointing out, are also on the struggle bus from time to time when it comes to finding just the right word. (Le mot juste, as the French would say.)

Laura Hale Brockway, a medical writer and editor who blogs at  impertinent remarks has come up with 32 words to substitute for “a lot,” which we all use too frequently, if not in writing, then certainly in every day speech. I won’t list them all here, so you’ll need to check out her article.

Here are a few of her suggestions:

• A good/great deal
• A large number
• A whole heap (Love it. Ms. Brockway lives in Texas, BTW)
• Bunches
• Copious
• Myriad
• Plenty
• Plethora
• Scads
• Slew
• Tons

I love these, though some are not suitable for business writing. Just considering, and even rejecting, some of her list should get you going on creating your own. The next time “a lot” pops into your head, I can almost guarantee that you will come up with acceptable substitutes. In fact, if you’re lacking in dinner-table conversation, try coming up with not-so-great word choices and encourage your table mates to make suggestions.

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Even those of us who write for a living lose our writing mojo from time to time. In fact, I’m sitting here in front of my screen, gnashing my teeth over this post and other writing projects I have coming up today. Writing mojo, how do I get you back?

Thanks to Kristen Dunleavy (@KristenWritesIt), senior content marketing manager at Movable Ink, I’ve got some ideas. In her article, “10 ideas to help writers get it in gear,” she proposes 10 maneuvers that can help you blast free of your writing reluctance, fear or whatever it may be and get productive. Here are my five faves:

• “Get out for some green.” The color green can boost your motivation. So go out for a quick walk in your neighborhood and look at the grass and trees. I love walking by “Calvin’s Garden” in my neighborhood. Amazing to see what he’s producing from a tiny patch of ground.
• “Challenge yourself to beat the clock.” This seems too much like work, eh? But it’s effective. I set myself a goal of getting a good outline done in an hour. Finishing it delivers a legitimate sense of accomplishment, and the rest of the project almost writes itself.
• “Get moving, then get to work.” Even if you’re the laziest soul on the planet, there’s something magical about getting your body in gear. Even walking up and down the walkway outside my apartment and doing grapevine moves does it for me. Oxygenated and more relaxed, I can more easily get down to business.
• “Recognize that you can get stuff done even when you don’t feel like it.” This is the biggie, the moral equivalent of taking a dose of cod liver oil. Getting down to work may not feel like fun, but boy howdy, you’ll feel better as you progress, because working is good for you.
• “Try to enjoy the process.” This injunction is related to the previous bullet. That is, if you can see what you’re doing as a process encompassing both great and not-so-great moments, you’re ahead of the game. Ms. Dunleavy quotes editor and blogger Peter Turley who says, “If you can enjoy the process, then you’ve already achieved your goal. If you focus on the endpoint, you’ll quickly lose writing motivation.”

There you have it, or at least five good ideas to help you when you’re feeling stuck in your writing. I’ve put them up on the bulletin board next to my desk, where they will serve as a reminder that writing is hard, but it’s good.

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According to custom market research firm Chadwick Martin Bailey (cited in Marcia Yudkin’s The Marketing Minute), a whopping 47 percent of email recipients decide to open an email based on its subject line. Not too much pressure there, eh?

If you want to improve your subject lines and open rates, you will want to take note of these five suggestions from McKenzie Gregory (@kenziegreg) of Emma.

1. Use character count. During a webinar years ago, a direct marketing guru suggested no more than 41 characters. It doesn’t seem that much has changed since then. Ms. Gregory says that many marketers aim for 40–50 characters. More or fewer characters may be more memorable, though. At Emma, they try to keep the count down, because iPhones cut subject lines off about 35 characters. And, as we all know, that’s where tons of folks are opening their emails.
2. Give potential readers an incentive to open. That is, “Tell them what they’ll get (and make it valuable).” Don’t get so caught up in your brand that you waste valuable space and time being cute, though humor is ok. And never, never mislead.
3. Don’t ignore preheader text. “ … your preheader text can actually what be makes or breaks the success of your subject line.” Depending on the mail program you’re using, you have anywhere from 35 to 140 characters for a preheader. Quite a range, eh? A 2016 survey says that 25 percent of your audience use your preheader to decide whether or not to open your email.
4. Be yourself. Be authentic. Start with email best practices, of course, but if you know your audience well, you may be able to successfully disregard them. (Check out Ms. Gregory’s post on the topic .)
5. Yes. Don’t assume anything. Preferences change, technology evolves, industries shift—think Uber and Airbnb—so test and iterate continually.

Short form, which is what email subject lines are, after all, is hard to do right. And that’s probably what makes it fun.

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I recently ran across a helpful article and infographic on Ragan.com about better business writing, sourced from Entrepreneur and originally from Instructional Solutions.

Of the 19 tips in the infographic, I herewith offer the five I found most helpful. Take a look at the infographic and let me know which ones resonate for you.

1. Know your audience. This is so obvious, but you’d be amazed at the number of people who assume that audience is obvious—probably because they’ve lived with their topic so long that they’ve lost that helpful arm’s length distance from it.
2. Editing is last. The infographic suggests that you allocate 30 percent of your time to editing. I think that’s reasonable and add that you should give what you’ve written a rest before you look at it again. That is, if there’s time. There may not be, but taking 30 minutes off to have a cup of coffee or to do something mindless can be a huge help.
3. Online, keep your paragraphs to seven lines or less. Anything longer can look dense and intimidating, especially in this day of short attention spans and compressed schedules. Corollary: Try a one-sentence paragraph or two.
4. Verbs = Energy. Make them the pivot point of a sentence. Corollary: Avoid the passive voice, even if some think it sounds more polite. (Engineers are typically guilty of this.)
5. Own your work. Make bold statements such as “I recommend,” rather than “I think” or “We should probably … “ Take a stand. It’s kinda refreshing.
6. Bonus tip: Don’t start sentences with “There is” or “There are.” Such sentences are clear but unexciting. Look for a better way to say what you mean.

I love tips and hints. Even for those of us who write for a living, they serve as exceedingly useful reminders. When you write every day, it’s critical to keep that the sparkle, the edge that engages readers and puts your point across. No one is too good, too wise, or two practiced to ignore the rules of the road.

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Like it or hate it, we all need to learn the basics of marketing to millennials.

In a recent article, “4 ways marketers can attract new consumers,” Dale McIntyre (@discoveringbest) of Pharos Systems has taken note of the need for businesses to recognize that “The millennials in today’s workforce will be the decision-makers of tomorrow, not five years from now.” Further, “Organizations that fail to recognize this shift, or delay the process of discovering how best to change along with new demographic opportunities, can end up fueling internal resistance to such change and ultimately lose their opportunity to stay relevant.” Whew!

Mr. McIntyre presents four common-sense steps—ultimately based on creating an optimal customer experience—that you can take to help your business appeal to a new demographic.

1. “Develop robust personas.” Every communication should align with a specific persona. And of course, each persona requires different messaging. Surveys work in gathering information, but Mr. McIntyre believes in one-on-one interviews, even if you can only do a small sample. For example, if I’m a hotel exec who’s concerned about the incursion of Airbnb and who also travels a lot, I’d make a point of asking seatmates what influenced their choice of accommodations in their destination city.
2. “Understand what your data is saying.” Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Ask a wide range of questions and translate the data into customer characteristics. That will enrich your personas. Mr. McIntyre also points out that analyzing your data can help you discover audiences you may not have considered.
3. “Showcase how your brand delivers what people want.” You certainly don’t want to abandon or alienate current buyers, but you also want to adjust your message to promote the benefits a whole new crop of buyers is interested in. Mr. McIntyre mentions Vera Bradley, a boomer brand that checked out social media to learn that millennials absolutely hate short-lived smartphone batteries and clunky battery cases. The company responded with a popular bag with a built-in smartphone charger.
4. “Harness the power of marketing automation.” If you aggregate your demographic data, you “destroy any change of recognizing the need to change,” to say nothing of robbing yourself of the information you need to create robust personas. Hatchbuck, HubSpot, and Marketo are all great tools with great micro-targeting capabilities, and they support your efforts to create the personalized messaging that’s becoming normative.

These tips are helpful, of course, in appealing to new and upcoming audiences, but I hasten to add that they apply to refining your appeal to any demographic.

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In Silicon Valley, the land of constant change, it may seem strange to write about heritage brands and keeping them fresh, yet in a relative sort of way, even the valley has them. Take Cisco, for example.

In his article “How to Keep a Heritage Brand Competitive,” Mark Di Somma (@markdisomma) of Branding Strategy Insider answers a question from a senior marketer who’s concerned that many in her organization are reluctant to make any changes to a heritage brand for fear of losing “traditional” customers.

Mr. Di Somma’s initial response is that “The good news is that consumers take considerable comfort from brands with genuine history and authenticity.” These brands have what Jennifer Aaker (@aaker) describes as “sincerity characteristics.” The bad news, of course, is that a brand can get so caught up in its mystique that it gets mired down and can’t move forward.

So, says Mr. Di Somma, “The key to navigating your way forward is to take your cues from what’s got you to where you are. What is the core characteristic that consumers have come to trust you for?” Keep that, but find ways to make your take on it more timely. An example I love is the Cheerios commercial that featured the interracial family touting the nutrition and delicious taste of a cereal that’s been around forever. The ad was endearing—the little girl was wonderful—and it perfectly blended traditional values with a positive view of our evolving society.

Here are some other things to consider:

• What do customers want now? What is important to them? Should you change your communication channels to reach them? Should you update your product line? (I think the key issue here is relevance.) An interesting point: Heritage brands became heritage brands because they have successfully innovated.
• Have you stayed abreast of industry changes and what customers expect? Are these changes reflected in your packaging and communications?
• “… don’t be afraid to kill off something you still hold dear if it will liberate your brand to explore new territory and pave the way for new growth.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, Cisco is a heritage brand. Not content, and rightly so, to be seen as a purveyor of upmarket networking equipment, the company is tweaking its identity, recrafting its messaging to focus on solutions that not only solve business problems but also improve human-to-human interactions. Yes, equipment is still part of the picture, but now routers, hubs, switches, LAN controllers, etc. are vehicles for progress, not progress itself.

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Brand innovation—which is all about creating new products—often fails. That’s a blunt, bold statement made by Tim Sutton of Branding Strategy Insider.

In a recent article, “Brand Innovation: Why So Many Projects Fail,” he gets right to the point about why this happens.

The teams behind new products know what they’re doing and yet they typically do not check out the new. In fact, Mr. Sutton has asked audiences “How many of you have intentionally and mindfully tried something new in the last month? This week? Today?” the typical response is that professional innovators try out something new maybe once or twice a month. Hmmm.

What else is at the root of brand innovation failure?

• Products are proliferating like crazy, but—and this is the broader issue—there is not enough “novelty capital” to support all the products being launched.
• The number of products is increasing faster than the U.S. GDP; money available to spend on new products is “more hotly contested than ever.”
• Innovators are optimistic by nature, and yet markets are distinctly unwelcoming to innovation.
• Companies may spend thousands of hours developing a product, but consumers give it an astonishing 5 seconds of attention.

The monumental gap between a company’s efforts and consumer response is critical. As Mr. Sutton puts it, “ … even the best innovators are chronic (if not reckless) overestimators. We rarely appreciate the difference between what we see in thousands of hours and what consumers see in 5 seconds.”

Addressing potential failure requires companies to stress test innovation products “early and often,” systematically identifying the positive bias that keeps the process moving forward when it shouldn’t. Successful innovators ask themselves how they can make a product’s value immediately obvious, which products their offering will replace, what consumer problem they’re solving. This approach helps prevent them from deferring the harder questions to a point at which it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make changes. This reminds me of economist Kenneth Boulding’s sacrifice trap, a theory articulated during the Vietnam War. In a nutshell, he noted that after decision makers have made a huge investment of time and resources, it is impossible to withdraw.

I know that many of us have a mental list, probably half-forgotten, of products that we shook our heads over when they were introduced. I think of the American Motors Gremlin, dubbed one of the world’s “15 ugliest cars.” What comes to mind for you?

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