Neck Tattoos

Do you have a plot? Most companies spend a considerable amount of time, energy, and money plotting what to do and how to do it.

Let’s say you need a website, so you develop a plot, present it to a bunch of website designers, and get quotes or proposals. You’re not vacant to get caught with your pants down like the last time by some nerdy geek, you know the skinny kid with the scraggly beard, whose techno-babble gave you a headache, or the bizarre childish lady dressed in gothic chic with the black lipstick and tattoo to match – yikes, no thanks, not this time, this time you got a plot.

Creature Motivational Optimization

You read all the blogs on website design, you know all the ins-and-outs of search engine optimization, and Google Adwords. No one is vacant to pull a quick one on you. You know your business, your market, and your needs. Or do you?

How much do you really know about how real people interact with your website? How much do you really know about what we call Creature Motivational Optimization? All the stats, logs, and number crunching analysis that forms the basis of many website development plans does not truly give you the visceral understanding of how to join to an audience, and isn’t that what you want your website to do?

So maybe your plot is the incorrect plot; it’s like plotting a trip to Home Depot to buy a cabbage; it just doesn’t make sense. So how about a plot that does make sense, something simple, understandable, simple to implement, that is if you hire the right people to do it. But before we tell you the four steps to making your very own Website Branding Plot, let’s talk about Don LaFontaine.

Every Companionship Needs A Movie Trailer

Chances are you don’t know who the late Don LaFontaine was, but you’ve heard his voice many, many times. Don was the most well-known and influential voice behind thousands of movie and television trailers. He had a distinctive deep, gravely voice, and a writing style that reinvented the entire movie trailer plot. But why should you care? Simple. Movie trailers are the ultimate crank pitch, a small memorable performance that compels you to proceedings, kind of like what a mission statement is suppose to do, but I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, or rather, the end.

Branding Starts With Thinking Backwards

Most people like to start a project at the beginning and work their way through in anticipation of they reach the end. Makes sense, or does it? If you don’t start with where you want to end-up, it’s unlikely you’ll ever get where you want to go. Dredge up our cabbage? Plotting a shopping to trip to Home Depot because they got cool stuff, doesn’t help if what you want is a cabbage.

Branding is no different. If you don’t start with how you want your audience to reckon about you, they will probably never reckon about you at all. So now that we got that straight let’s start our plot where it makes sense, the end.

The 4 Step Web-Branding Plot

1. The Slogan

Your slogan, you know the thing that sits underneath your logo, that simple small phrase somebody in your office came up with that makes you signal vital, stuff like “the cool air conditioning companionship.” Most small and standard size companies don’t reckon too hard about this small marketing gem, and as a result they either have something really cheesy, or some meaningless platitude that has no memorable meaning at all, like “the best people for the best job.”

Just because you’re small and don’t have millions of dollars to spend on television ads promoting your pithy small motto, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have one. That tag is who you are, and how you want people to dredge up you, small, memorable, and to the point. I dredge up my sons arguing over some intricate bit of business when one of them in frustration finally said, “Enough already. Give it to me in one word or less!” a demand to articulate what was vital without all the peripheral issues; a lesson all businesses should pay attention to.

2. The Tale Line (Logline)

To my mind, mission statements are a really dysfunctional marketing element, misused and abused by a bean-counter attitude, born out of trying to squeeze every last drop of in rank into a statement that won’t offend anyone. A wise man once said, “If what you’re saying doesn’t offend somebody, maybe you’re not saying anything” and most mission statements that are full of meaningless platitudes and toned-down amendments, fall into the category of not saying anything, at least, anything value examination.

Okay so let’s forget about mission statements, after all this isn’t the military, and we’re not plotting the next Desert Storm. Instead let’s reckon loglines, or what you can reckon of as your brand tale line.

You know persons small statements you find in TV Guide, or your weekend television insert, prompting you to watch the next episode of ‘House,’ or ‘Desperate Bimbos.’ They are a small form text version of a trailer, intended to get you to watch the movie or television show. For our purposes, we want people to go to our website, and stay-tuned long enough to get our core marketing message, and not walk out half way through the presentation. So, how do we do that?

The Six Elements of Effective Web Trailers

In order for us to come up with a compelling statement that prompts people to view our website presentation, we need to refer back to our ancient pal Don LaFontaine. What if Don LaFontaine wrote our website trailer. How would he do it?

Don had a very distinctive style that you’ve heard a thousand times for a thousand different movies, but they all followed a similar plot. Each trailer needs to cover six distinct elements, who, what, where, how, why, and when. All the things businesses should be presenting in their crank pitch, but with one extra ingredient, personality.

Here’s the plot used in many movie trailers:
“In a house (where), one man (who) brings stability to chaos (what), in an epic tale that will both amaze and inspire (why)! Coming soon (when) to a theatre near you.” Signal familiar?

Let’s take our air conditioning example, you dredge up, “the cool air conditioning companionship.” Let’s say our fictitious companionship is called Kool Air Conditioning, their website trailer might signal something like this:

“In a town where summer heat melts the cool of the coolest homeowners, one air conditioning companionship comes to the rescue. When the mercury rises to eye-popping, mind numbing numbers, the men from Kool spring into proceedings, bringing relief to the sweltering masses. The Kool Guys will amaze you with their prompt service and installation know-how. The heat is on. It’s coming sooner than you reckon; it’s coming this summer to your town, your neighborhood; your house. Kool, the cool air conditioning companionship.”

Over-the-top? Maybe, but we’ve covered all the bases, we know who (Kool), what (air conditioning), when (this summer), where (your house), why (the heat) and how (prompt service and installation know-how). Now that’s a mission statement; one with a small style, panache, and personality; one that will get you remembered and prompt your audience to proceedings.

3. The Personality

Movies like businesses all fall into certain genres or categories. There’s the proceedings movie plot that’s suitable for sports related businesses, the baby chicken flick style that’s ideal for cosmetic or fashion industry businesses, and the family comedy plot suitable for entertainment and recreation based companies, and of course the kids movie version perfect for any business selling things for children. The point is that every companionship and website has to have a personality.

Many hardnosed business executives scoff at the thought of spending money on such seemingly trivial marketing concepts as companionship personality, but ignoring your website persona, is a huge mistake. You can either invest a small in developing, making, managing, and promoting this personality or you can let the marketplace choose for itself, or worse, find you completely disused and irrelevant.

4. The Delivery

You may be asking yourself, this sounds excellent on paper, but can it really be done, and can it be done for my business, on my website? The resolution is damn straight it can. Like most things in life, and in business, it’s not grasping the concept that so hard, it’s implementing it.

With a small investment and a willingness to take some chances, you can be the market leader. But if you thought you could simply take your newly made movie trailer style website crank pitch and slap it onto your website in text form, you would be mistaken. How you give up the message is as vital, and in many cases more vital, than what you say.

Whether you sell lipstick, licorice, or lingerie, you probably have lots of competition, so how you give up your message is what’s vacant to make the difference.

You want your website presentation to motivate people to email or phone. You want to give up a compelling performance that is more than a sales pitch, a presentation that uses voice, visuals, words, and music to make a website personality, a lasting depression; one that is vacant to allow you to stand out from the crowd and give you a competitive advantage.

Nothing will win over better than seeing an actual example, and guess what, we just happen to be able to provide you with one: try out out http://www.SonicPersonality.com and see what an effective website presentation sounds like. If nothing else, you may get a chuckle or two.

Jerry Bader
http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-articles/the-plot-4-steps-to-a-website-brand-742753.html

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