3-7-08mill

Well,

I believe in all of these definitions but the last (which I made up and wasn’t in the dictionary). Rethinking....I might just be able to charge more if the last was true. Nah.

In essence creativity is mostly the result of a good education, practice and passion. No matter what you do, a true love for the endeavor, mixed with repetition and a dash of instruction, will produce results that are better than average. Same is true with creativity. Like a muscle, it gets stronger with exercise.

And what is the added ingredient that is rarely mentioned, but really makes it work? Bravery. Once you create, you have to show it off—sometimes to mixed reviews. If you are devastated by criticism, you will not have the perseverance to become really good. It might be subjective, objective, positive, constructive, rude—whatever, you have to be ready for it in the creativity game.

I think you

have already guessed that creativity is not just limited to marketing and advertising. Everyone has to use creativity to solve things in their life and business. Simple things to grown-ups are difficult to master by children. But, with trial and error, they can create a solution. Can’t walk down those stairs like mom and dad? Hey, what if I turn around and put my hands on the high stair and move my feet down one step at a time? “Look at me!”

As I notice a lot of kids today, what I’m a little worried about is that we give solutions away too freely. We don’t let them try their hands at creative solutions. It takes a lot of patience to do so, but I think we have to try. Otherwise, we’ll come up short in the next generation—Tommy Edison, Jonas Salk, Madame Curie, Moms Mabley—I’ll bet they loved to exercise their creativity muscles. And maybe it’s because they fell down a stair or two.

Please create a culture of creativity wherever and whenever you can. And when they get old enough, please have them send their resumes to hiring@peppergroup.com.

Client Spotlight: All Out Print Communications

The Challenge: All Out is one of a handful of commercial printers in the country with a 56” press, however, their brand was being lost in a sea of commodity printers. With a business plan targeting significant growth, All Out recognized the need to put into place a powerful marketing plan that would support their goals.

The Solution: Targeting packaging houses and design firms, Pepper Group helped All Out completely rebrand itself from an empty “We Go All Out for You” platform into a brand that gives creatives the freedom to “Think Big, Go Bold, Be Fearless”. Working with All Out, their creativity is no longer limited by press size or substrate. It’s a positioning that not only gets attention, but succinctly summarizes the benefits that All Out delivers.

Pepper Group created a full-scale campaign aimed squarely at All Out’s creative target audience. With a website that dramatically expands to fill even a 30” monitor with huge images and edgy copy, oversized lead generation pieces and demonstrative sales collateral and “Alice in Wonderland” coffee mugs on premise, the new effort created a powerful and fun brand that helps All Out truly differentiate itself in the competitive print industry.

The Results: With its new, engaging, powerful messaging and communications, backed up by extraordinary service and quality, All Out has achieved major new client wins and is on track to meet its aggressive growth goals. In fact, the company is adding yet another multi-million dollar 56” press!

George's Going to Market: Why is Positioning so Important?

What do you do about the incredibly frustrating and all too common problem of coffee mug theft?

Just get a Lock-Cup! It has a hole that can only be plugged with the user’s unique key, making it useless to any “unauthorized” drinkers.

Here’s another one. Have you ever thought to yourself, “Gee, I wish I had some way to keep my banana safe when I take it on the road.”?

Well, if you have, Banana Guard has got you covered!

And finally, how do you remember what day it is next time you’re on a vacation? Just bring along a DayClock!

These products can seem both ingenious and ridiculously silly at the same time. The difference in how you may perceive them has much to do with who you are, but it is also significantly influenced by how the products are positioned.

Think about it. The Lock-Cup as an “anti-theft” deterrent is really dumb. But what if it was positioned as a way to bring eco-friendly practices to your office? Many offices use paper or Styrofoam cups partially because they lack dishwashing facilities, combined with the “ick” factor of someone else using your mug. But if you had your own cup, that no one else could ever use, you wouldn’t have to worry about sterilizing it. Most importantly, you’d be doing your part for the environment.

How about the Banana Guard? If it were presented with a serious tone, it would be ridiculous. However, the people behind the protector have done a nice job positioning it with a lot of humor. For example, you’ll learn that the inventors were “extremely concerned about the fruitless amount of banana trauma in the world”, and you can now “take your banana to work, school or play

secure in the knowledge that no harm will come to it.” Their tagline? What else: Protect Your Banana!

And now, the DayClock. It’s currently positioned with uses as dim-witted as a way to remember movie night or something to take with you on a cruise. But how about as a great gag gift for a retiree or the perfect finishing touch for a vacation home? It’s a gift that says to the recipient “You don’t have to worry about what time it is anymore—congrats!” Suddenly, I like the product a lot more.

These are silly examples, of course, but in a fun way, they do illustrate the point about positioning. It doesn’t matter if you’ve invented the Banana Guard or if you’re going to market with a high-tech B2B security solution: the subtle positioning messages that form the core of the marketing are critically important for success.

George Couris
george@peppergroup.com

Copy Corner: President Bush is a Lame Duck: The Politics of Grammar

My fellow Grammericans: as the election season ramps up, here’s an election vocabulary and usage refresher.

	Election Day is defined as the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Votes held at other times during the year are election days (lowercase). Primaries are also lowercase. For example: the Republican primary.
	Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are not Democratic candidates for president. The Democratic candidate will be chosen at the Democratic convention. Until then, Obama and Clinton are candidates for the Democratic nomination. Election returns: Use figures, with commas every three digits starting at the right and counting left. Use the word to (not a hyphen) in separating different totals listed together.
	Example: Melanie Davis defeated Vanessa Medina 40,827,292 to 1,562 in the vote for Cutest Person Alive.
	Use the word votes if there is any possibility that the figures could be confused with a ratio: George defeated Tim 16 votes to 3 votes in the Best Dressed Marketing Guru election.
	elect: Always hypenate and lowercase. A President-elect is a political candidate who has been elected president but who has not yet taken office, as it is still occupied by the outgoing president. Similar terms can be used depending on the type and level of government, including Prime Ministers-elect, mayors-elect, governors-elect, etc.
	President: Capitalize president only as a formal title before one or more names: President Reagan, Presidents Ford and Carter.
	presidency: Always lowercase.
	presidential: Lowercase unless part of a proper name.
	Electoral College is capitalized; electoral vote is not.
	re-elect, re-election: Always hyphenate.
	Political parties: Capitalize both the name of the party and the word party if it is customarily used as part of the organization’s proper name: the Democratic Party, the Republican Party.
	Capitalize: Conservative, Democrat, Liberal, Republican, etc. when they refer to a specific party or its members. Do not capitalize these words when they refer to political philosophy.

Here are some of the terms you’ll be hearing over the course of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. If you’re not sure why a Super Tuesday is so “super” or why Barack Obama is Illinois’ “favorite son”, then check this out.

	Favorite son: A politician winning support in a state because of connections to that state, such as being born there or having held public office there.
	Lame duck: A lame duck is an elected official who loses political power or is no longer responsive to the electorate as a result of:
	A term limit which keeps the official from running for that particular office again, Losing an election, or The elimination of the official's office, but who continues to hold office until the end of the official's term.
	Super Tuesday: Super Tuesday is the biggest day of primary voting. It generally occurs in February or March of the presidential election year when the greatest number of states hold primary elections.
	Purple state: A state that regularly swings from one party to the other, also known as battleground states or swing states.
	Stump speech: the candidate's form speech in which he/she mentions key policies, family background and asks for citizens' votes. It is generally repeated in the same form in state after state with only minor tweaks for each venue.
	Wedge issue: A key issue used by one or both parties to show clear differences between the two parties or candidates. Wedge issues are often raised to get each party's "base" supporters out to vote. Gun control is a wedge issue that generally separates Democrats, who typically support stricter gun control legislation, from Republicans, who are generally oppose gun-control legislation.

So, no matter where you stand politically, I think we can all agree to vote for good grammar!

Vanessa Medina
vanessa@peppergroup.com
Melanie Davis
melanie@peppergroup.com

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