We used a variety of animation techniques to create the energetic and informative video illustrating the four components of Global Aerospace’s SM4 safety program: planning, prevention, response and recovery.

The project is yet another video created by our fast-growing video production group, serving a wide range of B2B clients. “We’re finding that a short but poignant video can often tell a story faster and more persuasively than a long, text-based document,” said The Creative Alliance President David Heitman. “There’s still an important role for print, but video has the ability to gain traction with an audience in a manner of seconds.”

This from the highly successful CEO of AirBNB, Brian Chesky. “That’s how we’re going to continue to be successful.”

For a one-liner of a business strategy, this is pretty powerful.

It’s powerful because it’s vision-driven, rather than being couched in terms of industry norms already in play, or what current capabilities are limited to producing.

Stephen Covey put it this way: “Start with the end in mind.”

At The Creative Alliance, we bake this approach into the strategic planning and branding work we do for our clients. We begin our initial strategy sessions with an important question:

“What does a big win in marketing look like? A year from now….five years from now…when you are ready to sell your business, go public or pass it on to your kids?”

An equally important question is:  ”What will success feel like?”

Vision—the kind that actually gets implemented—is as much felt as told. As much a matter of the heart as of the head. All great leaders in history and business had a sense of what success would look like and feel like. From Teddy Roosevelt to Steve Jobs, these luminaries had the ability to cast a vision and then gather a team to reverse engineer it into existence.

Thus, starting with the end in mind, with the goal of delivering the perfect experience to your customers, is the secret to successful business operations. Similarly, starting with the end in mind of what branding and marketing can accomplish in terms of audience share, revenue growth and profitability is the true measure of success.

If you’ve ever attempted to solve a maze puzzle, you’ve probably noticed it’s somehow easier to solve it going backwards from the endpoint in the middle of the maze, instead of from an entry point on the outside. I’m not sure exactly why that is, but it certainly makes the final goal the starting point, back to a point of entry.

Sounds a lot like marketing right? You start with a clearly defined—often audacious—goal, and then you strategize regarding the best path to get there. It would be naive to suggest strategy will pre-solve all the problems and answer all the questions. It’s merely a working hypothesis that gets adjusted on the fly as new realities present themselves. What a good strategy does is narrow the options to the most promising ones, as part of the reverse engineering process.

A vision implemented by painstaking reverse engineering almost always leads to great results. It takes hope and vision and a healthy dose of dissatisfaction with the status quo. But the result is an organization that is ahead of the curve and sustainably relevant with its customers.

Mark Swanson of Birko, Jennifer Armstrong, Bob Byrd, and Jenny Herring of TCA, and Kelly Green of Birko celebrate the BMA Gold Key Award May 4, 2012

We’re delighted to announce The Creative Alliance received a 2012 Gold Key Award from the Colorado Chapter of the Business Marketing Association for a comprehensive rebranding campaign on behalf of our client, Birko, of Henderson, Colo. We were recognized at the annual Gold Key Awards Gala Friday, May 4, 2012, at The Denver Art Museum.

The rebranding campaign for Birko involved a corporate identification program and integrated public relations/marketing communications, including a new logo, a new website and social media presence, and an intensive media relations campaign. Birko, founded in 1953, had been perceived as simply a chemical supplier to the beef industry. Through an integrated approach to advertising, marketing and PR, we successfully rebranded Birko as a food safety leader in the food processing industry, showcasing the company’s integrated expertise in chemistry, equipment and technology. As a byproduct of our work, Birko’s 2011 revenue grew 15.6% over 2010 revenue; media coverage increased in key trade outlets; and Birko was recognized as a highly successful Colorado business.

“We’re excited to be recognized for our work on behalf of Birko,” said Bob Byrd, Vice President, The Creative Alliance. “It’s been rewarding to use our full scope of marketing and public relations skills to help increase Birko’s visibility, and then to see the bottom-line impact it is having for them. We thrive on this kind of work and these kinds of results.”

The Gold Key Awards is Colorado’s most prestigious competition dedicated solely to business-to-business marketing communications. This year’s competition had 160 entries from Colorado’s top B2B businesses and agencies. Entries were reviewed by a panel of seven independent judges from across the country consisting of agency and corporate marketing professionals.

“The BMA Board of Directors extends our congratulations to the winners of this year’s awards program,” said Marilee Yorchak, CAE, executive director of the Colorado Business Marketing Association. “It is a fiercely competitive program that truly recognizes the very best in business-to-business marketing for 2012. With our emphasis on results and the quality of entries, the BMA Gold Key Award is one of the most coveted by marketers in Colorado.”

“This new website showcases Oaster’s expertise in helping churches expand their ministry outreach by expanding their facilities,” said David Heitman, The Creative Alliance’s president and creative director. “Through the website’s user-friendly navigation and extensive portfolio section, churches can learn more about Oaster’s services including strategic planning, real estate acquisition and construction oversight.”

The new website was the culmination of a complete rebranding effort that included a new company logo, color scheme and templates for printed and electronic communications. Growing out of our Marketing Action Plan (MAP) strategic planning and branding process, the entire effort was implemented over just a few months, helping to reinvent Oaster and its brand for greater relevancy to its design-savvy audience.

The new website can be seen at: http://www.bradoaster.com/

The materials include a pocket folder / brochure that showcases the company’s global experience in underwriting insurance for leading insurers and reinsurers. Single-sheet flyers provide more detailed information on the scope of Global Aerospace’s products and services for aircraft, ground operations, airports and helicopters.

“This beautiful suite of materials underscores Global Aerospace’s reputation as the world’s leading aerospace insurer,” said Amy Hickey, client services manager. “Jennifer Armstrong, who provided the design lead on the materials, succeeded in re-tooling their visual brand in a way that paid homage to the company’s rich history.”

Have you ever noticed when walking into a company’s office or warehouse for the first time, that within minutes, you detect a refreshing level of enthusiasm and commitment among the people you meet? There is something positive animating the whole environment. What you’re sensing is the employees’ collective loyalty to the company and its brand.

The effort to consciously cultivate this experience is often referred to as as internal branding—a concept predicated on the belief that your employees are just as important an audience as your customers and prospects.

As with all branding efforts, authenticity is key. If a company attempts to instill excitement around brand attributes and virtues that it really doesn’t possess, it only generates cynicism among employees. Mission statement posters that claim one thing while management attitudes and behaviors say another, end up breeding low-level negativity—a passive aggressive attitude that ultimately seeps out into interactions with customers. It’s like a low-grade fever that passes from employees to customers, and never quite gets cured.

On the other hand, brand loyalty is equally contagious. Customers can’t help but be swept up in the excitement when a company is living out the highest virtues of its brand every day. To create this positive flywheel effect within a business, internal branding must be reinforced 1) from the inside out; 2) from the top down; and 3) from the bottom up.

From the Inside Out

“Our internal branding is really all about our company’s culture. It grows from the inside out,” says my colleague Steve Gade, vice president of sales and marketing at Duncan Aviation. “We set expectations from day one with all new employees regarding our brand values, beginning with an orientation that includes a dialogue with our chairman, president or the most senior leader at each hiring location.”

Another way that Duncan Aviation reinforces its brand is by sharing companywide each Friday, how various customers have mentioned the positive experiences they’ve had with specific employees. “Our people thrive on this positive feedback,” Gade says. “It encourages us all to be our best.”

From the Top Down

Internal branding goes far beyond what the marketing department can deliver. Unless an organization’s top leadership is actively and consciously cultivating the brand within the organization, the effort will never reach its full potential.

For business leaders to assure that such internal branding is given proper attention, it is good to set aside some time annually to take a pulse on the company culture, and to talk to customers about what they are experiencing. The late Steve Jobs was known for periodically manning the customer service phones at Apple just so he could hear this kind of first-hand feedback. His commitment to delivering the Apple brand experience across all customer touch-points is what has made the company so fanatically beloved and so immensely profitable.

When we work with company leaders on their branding or re-branding efforts, one of the exercises involves asking questions such as:

• What is the first word that should come to mind when people hear your company mentioned?
• What are the core brand values to which you are willing to hold fast, even if it means losing business?
• What is the greatest compliment your fiercest competitor would have to pay your organization?
• What is the most frequent compliment you hear from your customers?
• What behaviors are most rewarded in your organization?
• Would all your employees give the same answers to the questions above?

Simple questions like these provide much-needed clarity on the path to developing a coherent, authentic and relevant brand. It then remains to give creative expression to it, both within and outside the company.

From the Bottom Up

There’s a world of difference between employees giving passive assent to a company’s brand virtues and actively finding ways to reinforce them in their daily lives. The sure sign of a company’s successful internal branding effort is overhearing employees talking about the brand virtues in conversations with each other and with customers.

And because you’ll never find employees more receptive to imbibing the brand than when they are first hired, orientation is a crucial time to be highly intentional about internal branding. Rather than viewing this opportunity as some sort of passive corporate “indoctrination” process, new hires should be encouraged to apply the brand in their everyday work, and even be empowered to challenge company policies, procedures and experiences that are inconsistent with the brand.

Keeping Things Simple

As with all marketing efforts, simplicity is crucial to success with internal branding. A complex mission statement will never fire the hearts and imaginations of employees. They won’t be able to remember it, let alone apply it to their daily lives. But a clear, simple brand is a clarion call that enables employees to reinforce it with customers every day.

For example, Ritz-Carlton’s legendary mantra—Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen—is a simple but elegant encapsulation of the hotel’s internal brand. Because it is so simple, it requires the conscious, intelligent application by all employees. It doesn’t tell people what to do. It tells them who they are as employees of the Ritz-Carlton. You only need to stay at a Ritz property once to realize that this internal branding effort is working.

Perhaps the most powerful tactic in this area is to encourage employees to treat each other like customers. Such internal reinforcement of the brand among coworkers will result in a greater consistency of the brand experience for customers

Ambassadors of an Embassy

In most industries, strict adherence to checklists, protocols and standards of professionalism are indispensable. The same is true of internal branding. Ultimately, the goal of internal branding is to make every employee a brand ambassador—someone who is loyal to the brand, who defends and promotes it to those outside the organization, and whose day-to-day decisions are defined by the freedom and empowerment to apply the brand. As Steve Gade at Duncan Aviation says, “Our customers tell us that we have something different going on here. That’s how we know we are doing things right.”

“This beautiful site serves as an important resource on LaserCycle USA’s commitment to sustainability,” said David Heitman, The Creative Alliance’s president and creative director. LaserCycle USA is one of the nation’s largest producers of recycled, remanufactured laser toner cartridges.

The website can be viewed at www.LaserCycleUSA.com.

She will have increased responsibility for implementing the full range of web, advertising and direct marketing tactics on behalf of the agency’s clients.

“Kate’s outstanding work and resourcefulness as well as her energy and friendliness have made her an instant ally to all of the clients she serves, “ said The Creative Alliance president David Heitman. “Her new role and her increased responsibilities will allow her to continue to demonstrate her talent and dedication to our clients.”

Kate Rubsamen

Kate joined The Creative Alliance in July 2011 as a client services assistant. She previously was a sales administrative coordinator with Z57 Internet Solutions, San Diego, and also provided client service support through internships with three advertising agencies in Nevada and California.

Kate graduated from the University of San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in business administration, with an emphasis in marketing.

The site serves as an important resource on Timberline’s intelligent, sustainable solutions for HVACR equipment, including preventive maintenance, ongoing service and special projects.

The website can be viewed at www.timberlinemechanical.com

 ”We’re excited with this first place recognition for Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell,” said Bob Byrd, vice president of client services for The Creative Alliance. “They’re a great law firm doing great work in the community and great marketing.”

 Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell was recognized for the marketing program promoting its charitable foundation. The Five-Year review, designed by The Creative Alliance, was part of a suite of marketing materials for the Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell Foundation. The LMA judges commented, “For a small firm, (Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell) really put together a great program. Well executed. Graphically strong.”