Brent Swanson

Sometimes, you just need a bigger microphone. When self-described “rock mama” Stacey Marmolejo, the owner of two Twin Cities’ School of Rock locations, decided to open a new one in Burnsville, she used a public relations campaign to spread School of Rock’s message in a way that would bypass much of today’s consumer skepticism.

As I’ve said before, we live in a culture that is highly cynical. Most people consider themselves to be fairly media-savvy and almost nobody wants to admit to being influenced by advertising. This is why public relations—and the broader category of Earned Media—can be so valuable to your business.

How often have you seen a television commercial that promises what seem to be impossible product benefits and thought, “Yeah, right. Give me a break.”? You’re not alone. Our world is becoming increasingly cynical. Most observers agree that it is more and more difficult for brands to gain the trust of the public — and progressively easier to lose it. Just consider these statistics:

Each year at the Overnight Website Challenge volunteers form teams of ten web professionals that show up not knowing what nonprofit they'll serve, pro bono, for 24 hours.

This year, Circadian's Brock Ray joined Team BIOS to develop a new website for Community Neighborhood Housing Services. See samples of what they produced on our Facebook page.

Over the years, we’ve noticed a lot of companies struggling with one challenge in particular: how to make their marketing less reactive and more proactive, less impulsive and more strategically planned to help push the business forward. We get it. It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activity of working in your business. There are customers to keep happy, vendors to manage and all kinds of fires to put out.

Ever wonder how the media landscape has been affected by all of the technological changes in recent years?

The TwinWest Chamber of Commerce recently held a panel discussion with Mike Franklin, David Brauer, Gregg Peppin and Mike Zipko to answer those questions, and Circadian’s Brock Ray was on hand to help livetweet the whole affair. Check out the exciting conversation.

“This isn’t right,” the brand manager told me. She waved at the bottom corner of the ad. “Our brand guidelines are very clear: the logo has to be a half-inch up from the bottom of the page and three-quarters of an inch from the right.”

The ad in question had a center-line running down the middle that everything aligned to, including the logo. This placed it more than an inch from the right-hand side, rather than the requisite thee-quarters of an inch. I explained as calmly as I could that the ad functioned better with the logo aligned to the center-line. But the brand manager was insistent: “We have to follow the brand guidelines.”

Circadian is proud to once again be sponsoring the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce's Annual Gala. Enjoy gourmet sweet and savory selections by some of the finest restaurants and caterers in the Twin Cities, find that special treasure during our live and silent auctions or dance the night away to the sights and sounds of the R-Factor. Mark your calendar today for TwinWest's 27th Annual Gala, Dancing Under the Stars.

27th Annual TwinWest Gala

Friday, March 9, 2012
7:00 p.m. - 12:00 a.m.
Doubletree by Hilton Minneapolis - Park Place, St. Louis Park

Have you ever wanted to know how to calculate the return on your marketing investment? Or how much you can reasonably afford to spend to acquire new customers? Or what the value is in having a robust online presence?

Circadian’s White Board video series answers these questions and more in easy-to-digest nuggets of marketing wisdom. Check out the first four videos below. And if you’re itching to know even more about marketing, PR, or graphic design, ask away, and we might just answer your question in a future edition of the White Board.

Discovering Unique Opportunities: 11/28/2011

These days, it seems like you can’t turn on the TV or walk into a bookstore without being told how brilliant crowds are. Books like The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki and Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe tell us that large groups of people, working together, are better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, and even predicting the future than any individual working alone. According to Surowiecki, “under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.”

Circadian is proud to introduce the White Board, a series of short videos that asks complicated marketing questions and answers them in simple, easily-digestible chunks.

For our first session, we explain how much you should plan to spend for your marketing budget. Over the coming weeks, we'll look at:

• Your Target Audience
• Return On Investment
• Perceptual Maps
• Choosing the Right Promotions
• Leveraging Earned Media

Have your own burning question about marketing, PR, or graphic design? Ask away, and we might just answer it in a future edition of the White Board.

Quick! Think of your favorite website. What do you love about it? The graphics? As a creative agency, we’re all for beautiful images. But let’s face it: aesthetics alone won’t keep you coming back. If you’re like most people, an attractive site is more about content and functionality than superficial looks.

Given this, it stands to reason that the most critical part of creating any new website is understanding how it should work and what it has to say to achieve your goals. To get these things right, don’t just jump into designing. Take the time to plan your site thoughtfully by answering these three essential questions.

You’ve made it! You’re ready to take the plunge and hire a creative agency to help grow your business, or maybe you’re ready to transition from another agency that isn’t quite meeting your needs. In either case, how do you know this is the one? How do you go about making sure the agency you choose will be a good partner for your needs?

The search for an agency is similar to dating. During the first conversations and meetings, you are both nervous & excited, yet you remain cautious & optimistic. If it all works out, what grows from those first tentative encounters can last for years or decades. But just as in dating, you don’t want to enter into a commitment lightly or prematurely. This is a critical decision that will have long-lasting implications on your brand, your finances and the health of your company. Hiring the wrong agency can create friction and tasks may take far longer or never be completed.

The furniture’s in place and the ribbon’s been cut. Now it’s time for you to see our new home. We’ll have food from Chowgirls Catering, an uncommonly good beer selection, and plenty of fun for everyone. If you haven’t done it yet, be sure to RSVP.

Have you seen that image, based on an old WWII British propaganda poster, that reads, “Keep Calm and Carry On”? It’s something of a mantra around the Circadian offices, conveying the essence of our approach to our marketing work. The basic advice—to follow the plan and avoid panicking—is one we wish more companies would heed. In our experience, organizations that fail to “keep calm” are the cause of most of their own headaches. These firms are often stuck with a sales-based mentality.

Third in a 3-part series: Gaining Actionable Insights

In part one, we talked about how you build an online presence, and in part two we discussed how to leverage social media to strengthen your pull. In this final installment of this series, we’ll look at how you can measure the impact of your presence to help make decisions on where to invest more resources, refine efforts and net the results you are looking for.

Second in a 3-part series: Building Out Your Galaxy

As you read in part one, establishing your online presence works to ensure your company’s information can easily be found by potential customers searching on the web. But just as a single star shines on its surroundings, its no match for the collective brilliance of a galaxy of stars. Content shared freely and linked to your website, directory listings, and various online profiles increases the relevance of those properties and can boost customer attention on you and your company. In this article, we’ll cover how to create content that will help your stars shine the brightest.

First in a 3-part series: Getting on the Field

By now, you’ve likely built your “Web 2.0” website, added a blog (with RSS feed), embedded analytics and Search Engine Optimized (SEO) all of the content. You’ve also devoted an entire chunk of your marketing budget to running online ads. Yet for some reason, traffic to your site has not increased, the sales funnel isn’t being replenished, and qualified leads aren’t being generated. You built it, but they didn’t come. Why? The weak link may not be your website or ads. It could very well be the lack of a strong online presence.

Now that the paint is up and the furniture’s on order, it’s time to throw open the doors and have a party!

We hope you’ll join us at our new office to celebrate in style. We’ll have plenty of food and drinks for all. RSVP on our Facebook page if you think you can come.

Brand names are a funny thing. On the one hand, they are incredibly important. The right name sets the tone of the brand, helping to define the essence of what that brand—be it a company, product or service—offers to the public. And yet for many brands, the name is often treated as an after thought. They are either generic descriptions of the company’s products—Amalgamated Widgets, Inc.—or some other meaningless default, such as the name of the founder—Johnson and Company.

The problem, I suspect, is that too few people really understand what a brand name should—and can—do for them. All too often, the naming process comes down to a subjective decision based on immediacy and familiarity. Instead, we recommend approaching the naming process with the same objective rigor as any other important business decision. To that end, there are three criteria we look for in a great brand name.

Fergus Falls-based Vinylite Windows has hired Circadian to help them navigate through a company-wide rebranding project.

The manufacturer of vinyl windows and doors is looking for a new company name and brand identity. In the coming months, Circadian will help them develop a brand strategy aimed at doubling sales revenues over the next three years.

In order to develop an improved brand identity that conveys the knowledge and quality associated with Vinylite products & service, enhanced sales materials to attract & support professional trade partners, and a strong brand presence & visual identity for a new consumer-focused window product, Circadian will conduct a strategic brand assessment. This will give Vinylite a comprehensive understanding of their current branding & marketing efforts and how they can be improved to achieve the company’s financial goals.

Circadian’s Brock Ray was featured in the July 15th issue of the Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal. The story, which preps readers for the final round of voting in a beauty contest for Minnesota-based brands, tries to define what makes for a good brand and how these finalists stack up.

“A strong brand,” says Ray, “owns a particular concept in the minds of its target audience, while a weak one does not. The single most important thing a company can do to improve its brand is to know what concept it wants to own and be completely focused on doing so.”

When developing new product or service offerings, it is often tempting to ask existing and prospective customers what kind of features they’d like to see in the new offering. For most marketers, this seems intuitive. After all, why wouldn’t a company want to know what their customers want? Isn’t that the best way to ensure they’re creating a product or service the audience will want to buy—and at a price that will compel them to do so? Frankly, no.

Circadian is pleased to announce that on July 1st, 2011, we will be moving to a new office. The 1500-square foot space, in the heart of the Minneapolis warehouse district, reflects the forward-thinking nature of the Circadian brand and features exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, and 16-foot ceilings.

Our Creative Principal, Brent Swanson, says, “The new office space, with it’s semi-private entrance and creative vibe, really helps to set the tone for our visiting clients and prospects.” See pictures of the new space, in it’s unfurnished virgin state, here.

If you want to send us mail, the new address is:

Circadian
113 Washington Ave N, Suite 201
Minneapolis, MN 55401

Ah, yes, the ubiquitous mission statement: a soporific, committee-written word soup that is somehow supposed to provide a guiding light to everything the company does. To be frank, the average mission statement is about as interesting as the nutritional information on a box of whole grain cereal. I don’t know how these things are supposed to provide any value to a company.

So what makes for a good mission statement? To understand that, it helps to know the reasons for creating one in the first place. In it’s most basic form, an organizational mission statement is an explanation of why the institution exists worded in a way that all stakeholders can instantly appreciate and identify with.

As part of the TwinWest Small Business Awards, Circadian's marketing principal, Brock Ray, was interviewed for Next Stage Business Radio's Your Business Your Story show. Listen to the full interview to learn more about how Circadian started and our approach to our work.

The ever-prolific design writer Steven Heller recently wrote about how many mediocre entries he had to sift through while judging an awards show. He compared these uninspired submissions to the middling pieces that graphic designers under his art direction would create in the course of their work, damning them with the praise of “It’ll do.” When pressed, Heller explained that the work was “professional enough that under the circumstances (a tight deadline or, more likely, an inability on my part to suggest how to make it better), I was willing to take the line of least resistance.” The pieces lack, he said, “nuance” and/or “flair.” Without that je ne sais quoi, the designs were minimally acceptable, but they would never be great.

Over the years, we have hired a number of vendors to perform services for both Circadian and on behalf of our clients. Most of these folks have been excellent, but, on occasion, we have found ourselves astonished by the incongruity between how the company advertised their services and how they actually delivered once we had signed the contract. The result is uniformly disappointing, and the value of the vendor’s brand always suffers in our eyes.

Volumes have been written on improving customer service, and I have no intention of duplicating that work. Rather, I want to point out that the way your company performs customer service is an integral part of your brand. More than being simply good or bad, the way you interact with your customers says as much about your brand as the actual quality of the services you provide.

Spending on marketing communications—promotion, advertising and public relations—varies widely per industry, from less than 1 percent of net sales for business-to-business operations to 10 percent or more for companies marketing consumer-packaged goods. Given this wide range, it can be difficult to know exactly how much you should be budgeting for your marketing promotions every year.

Often, small businesses estimate their sales revenue, cost-of-goods, overhead and salaries, and then gross profit. Anything left over is considered available funds for marketing support. That's not such a good idea, as those companies often end up short-changing their marketing efforts, which leads to stagnant growth and the loss of market share.

An old rule of thumb has it that the amount you spend on marketing per year should range anywhere from 2 percent to 10 percent of sales, or possibly more, depending on several factors, including:

Brock Ray, marketing principal of Circadian, has been named a finalist for the TwinWest Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award. Award finalists will be featured on the cover of Directions magazine, and the winners will be announced at the annual Small Business Awards Luncheon on May 24th, 2011, at the Doubletree Park Place Hotel in St. Louis Park.

To learn more and register for the luncheon, visit the TwinWest website.

Any brand, no matter how memorable, will fail to achieve its goals if it does not gain the public’s trust. Given the skeptical & jaded nature of the public today, this is exceedingly difficult to come by. Nonetheless, by following a few simple rules, trust can be built, brick-by-brick, into a strong brand that produces loyal customers.

Circadian's own Brock Ray has been invited to present to the Minneapolis Regional Chamber of Commerce Small Business University.

The advent of Social Media, with its emphasis on constant user participation, gives businesses a golden opportunity to become relevant to their target market through the development of authentic, interactive relationships.

Unfortunately, there’s no one way to use social media platforms to move your company forward. Successful social media strategies depend greatly on which tool you’re using and what kind of business you’re running. And while there are certainly metrics attached to social media tools, it isn’t always easy to make sense out of them.

Try your luck and have some old-fashioned fun and excitement at the 26th Annual TwinWest Gala: Riverboat Mavericks.

This year’s Gala will depart on an entertaining journey of great games, tasty treats, and chances to win fantastic door prizes. Join us to play black jack and roulette as entertainment. This event also includes a live and silent auction, and features the popular “Wall of Wine” (back by popular demand.) Get a taste of some sweet and savory selections offered by many local restaurants and caterers. All members, guests, friends and families are invited and encouraged to attend the 26th Annual TwinWest Gala.

Proceeds from this event benefit TwinWest Chamber of Commerce initiatives and the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce Foundation scholarship fund. Support your business community through participation in the Gala!

Over 350 business and community leaders are already registered to attend!

For some time now, we’ve been meaning to clarify what we mean by the words Communications and Marketing, and how they relate to Advertising, Public Relations, & Graphic Design. We’ve found these terms are frequently used interchangeably. While they do refer to similar activities, often used in tandem to support one other, they are actually different concepts. So it is understandable how easily one can become confused about what these terms are used for and what the value is of each.

We’re going to try to explain by to distilling down these complex concepts and answering the following questions: What is it? Why use it? And what is the benefit? We hope you find this information insightful.

You can’t really judge the effectiveness of your advertising unless you know what you’re trying to achieve. Do you want to drive people to your website? Or are you aiming to improve awareness of your brand? Or are you trying to generate new leads? Every goal requires a different approach to your marketing efforts. Moreover, having goals means that you need be able to measure how well you’re achieving them.

There are three ways to measure the value of your marketing campaigns: what your audience knows, how they feel about you, and what they actually do. With all of these tools, it’s important to set a baseline before your campaign runs to compare against afterward.

Avenues for Homeless Youth provides emergency shelter, short term and transitional housing and support services for homeless youth in a safe and nurturing environment. Through such service, Avenues seeks to help youth achieve their personal goals and find a positive transition into your adulthood.

Circadian is proud to provide design services for the 2009–2010 Avenues for Homeless Youth Annual Report. To learn more about Avenues, visit them online.

I remember when I first heard about Twitter. Someone on NPR was talking about this new technology that would let us all update one another in real time, detailing all of the mundane things we were doing throughout the day. Like most people I know, Twitter at first seemed like a complete waste of time. Same with Facebook. I was already too busy, I thought. When would I have time to post, let alone read all of this new information?

Eventually, of course, we all decided that these tools were great. Now, the real question is not whether businesses should be involved with social media, but how can they use it productively. Because if your social media is not effective, it’s just the waste of time we all thought it would be.

Have you ever heard of the Pareto Principle? These days it is normally called the 80/20 Rule, and it states that 80 percent of outcomes are a result of 20 percent of inputs. The actual numbers aren’t the important thing here; they don’t need to add up to 100, and they will vary from situation to situation. The critical concept of the 80/20 Rule is that a minority of causes—whether customers, software bugs, or employees—are responsible for a majority of results, such as revenues, system crashes or productivity. For businesses trying to market their products or services, this idea has some important implications.

A couple of years ago, a client came to me in a rush: “Brock,” she said, “I need an ad to go into the newsletter of my mother’s retirement community. And I need it by tomorrow.” Now bad time-management aside, I had real questions about this. In all of my conversations with this client—an operations consultant—we had never identified retirees as a target market for her business. I asked if she was just trying to support her mother. No, she assured me, sometimes the children of the residents also read the newsletter. And some of them might be potential clients.

Circadian partner Brock Ray will be showing off his obsession with beer and brewing this Thursday night, November 18, for Pecha Kucha Night Minneapolis/St. Paul. He joins seven other geeks of various origin in the patented 20x20 Pecha Kucha format. Each presenter gets 20 slides shown for 20 seconds each. That makes a whirlwind 6 minute 40 second tour through each of these subjects.

The other geeks are:

• Hoax Geek: Chris Strouth
• Scientist Geek: Benjamin Kjos
• Chic Geek: Elizabeth Rose Schneider
• Civic Geek: Mike Haeg
• Boardgame Geek: Bryan Bornmueller
• East Asian Calligraphy Geek: Paula Commerford Negishi
• Movie Geek: Pete Basgen

This is a free event, but you can pay in applause!

Sales and marketing work hand-in-hand to move a company forward. The best sales efforts align with the message & positioning established by marketing, and the best creative is tuned to the realities of life in the field. So what can you do to create better sales materials? Brochures, catalogs, presentations, proposals and sell sheets help the salesperson actively trying to court a prospect. When done well, these pieces reinforce the brand message and help the sales team tell a compelling story. When done badly, they undermine the salesperson’s credibility and make it that much harder to close the deal.

So how do you ensure that your sales materials are more help than hindrance? Join us to find out.

Given that you had to manually type in the web address to get here, let’s take a wild guess and say that you found something in our Directions article intriguing, and it was at least compelling enough to get you this far. We’re glad you’re here, and we want to reward you for that effort. First things first: let’s recap what got us this far.

We told you how important it is to create marketing messages that are relevant to your audience. Why? Because too many advertisements and marketing messages are pure, self-serving drivel. The companies that produce those pieces don’t care about their audience; they just want to sell more of whatever they’re peddling. So customers are jaded. They don’t trust companies, and for good reason.

Circadian recently started a new advertising campaign aimed at members of the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce. The campaign started with a half-page ad in the October issue of the chamber's Directions magazine and will include an article, banner advertising, direct mail, and a full-page ad in the organization's member directory. Each installment of the campaign asks a question about how companies can achieve the best value for their marketing dollars. The pieces have a uniquely self-aware voice that encourages readers to think more deeply about their communications efforts.

Each piece teases the reader, hinting at the response to the proposed question, but makes them go online to find the complete answer. See the campaign microsite here.

I occasionally teach classes in HTML for the continuing education department of a local community college. During the most recent of these, as I was explaining how HTML and CSS interact to make the web designer’s life easier, it occurred to me how rare it is these days for us to code an entire site with only HTML and CSS. For the vast majority of our clients, it makes more sense to develop their website using a Content Management System (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal.

A paper frog jumps
trying to win the contest
leaping high and far.

I have always viewed origami as a sort of poetry made out of paper. The single folded square is almost like a haiku. Ever so simple but, done right, an amazing experience. It should come as no surprise, then, that I am enamoured with the work of Sipho Mabona, a paper-folding artist out of Switzerland. His individual animal & abstract pieces are beautiful, and his installations are absolutely stunning. Go here to view more of his work. You won’t be disappointed.

And, if you’re jonesing for even more origami, check out the video below for an animated voyage through a folded paper world that should generate some inspiration.

--Brock Ray

So, you saw our ad and came to the site. Thanks & welcome. We’re glad you’re here. Now, take a few seconds to look through the other ads in Directions. What do you see? Logos, bullet points, maybe a picture or two. How many of them make you want to learn more about that company? How many make you excited by what they have to offer? We’re guessing there aren’t that many.

Why Advertising Often Fails

Most companies don’t do the heavy lifting necessary to create compelling advertisements. Many don’t understand the importance of developing brand awareness or know how valuable good advertising is to that effort. And those that do often seem unable or unwilling to invest the time and energy to ensure that their ads are actually getting results.

It’s no ordinary school: guitars and drums replace books – and the authors have names like Zeppelin and Aerosmith. Working musicians teach students from ages 8-18 how to sing, play guitar, keyboard, drums, and bass guitar. The concept is to unleash talent and confidence by encouraging students to perform in front of real crowds.

School of Rock is opening a third Twin Cities location. Come out and rock with us on Saturday, October 16. We're gonna smash some guitars!

At a recent networking event, an entrepreneur friend complained about her horrible work situation. “Every project estimate comes down to price,” she told me. “No matter what else we do on a proposal, it’s always the final number that matters most.” She looked at me expectantly, almost begging me to agree and commiserate with her. At the time, I didn’t have the heart to tell her this wasn’t a problem for my company. It occured to me later that there are too many people who, like my friend, are resigned to competing primarily on price alone.

Circadian has offered its brand development & management services to Torch Community, an organization designed to encourage young Twin Cities professionals to utilize their talents in support of Career & Leadership Development, the Arts, Diversity, and Social Responsibility. Torch works hand-in-hand with nearly two-dozen local organizations, many of which are non-profit and share an interest in making the metro area the premier place to be for young professionals.

Officially launched in May, the Torch brand is still very young and has experienced some very real growing pains as they gain notice among their partner organizations and sponsors. Their Career & Leadership event “BYOB: Build Your Own Brand” was held on August 25 and was the most successful yet.

Circadian is proud to be one of the sponsors of the 2010 Minnesota Gubernatorial Debate hosted by TwinWest, and we want you to come with us on the big day. Register to win by following us on Twitter then tweeting this:

I just registered to win a ticket to the 2010 MN Gubernatorial Debate from @CircadianMN. Find out how: http://bit.ly/aTYCes

The debate is expected to draw more than 250 business & community leaders and members of the media. With so much at stake for the future of Minnesota, the 2010 Gubernatorial Debate is extremely important in electing the state’s next chief executive officer. Don't miss this opportunity to learn about the candidates first hand & what they plan to do if elected.