This post is by Michael Pollock, the original owner of Small Business Branding. Yaro Starak now owns and produces the latest content for this blog.
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Sometimes the words just aren’t available to express my ideas. I hate that. For example, I was speaking with a client recently who thought if she could just get her website copy right, she’d get more business. Inside I was feeling that was hardly her problem. Of course, blurting out "that’s not your problem" would surely necessitate a quick, savvy response as to what the real problem was. And I knew what the problem was. I just couldn’t find the words to express it (maybe I should start taking gingko biloba).
Fortunately, I’ve become a rather comfortable resident of the blogosphere over the past six weeks. And as a resident, I found refuge in the words of this post over at Whisper Blog. I’ll boil it down for you.
"Branding is demonstrating. Advertising is explaining. What you fail to demonstrate, you are left to explain."
Have you ever been to one of those home shows? You know the ones where a colossal coliseum is crammed full of vendors selling everything from Ginsu knives to garden tractors to gold plated tire irons. I’ve been to a few, and it never fails that I end up mesmerized by some guy selling a four hundred dollar set of "gourmet" cookware. I’m certain that if I cooked anything other than frozen pizza, pasta and peanut butter souffle I’d have cookware coming out my Cornish game hen house.
And what is it that so mesmerizes me each time? It’s the demonstration. The way this graceful, gliding gourmet navigates his cooking area like an Olympic skater rounds her final figure eight to take home the gold. The way he slices, dices and chops the vegetables into perfectly fine floret-shaped morsels. The way the sauce pans shimmer, the Hollandaise simmers, and the poached salmon leaps off the plate in an eruption of flavor that reduces a grown man to tears (the guy next to me).
Fortunately, just as I’m about to reach for the magic money card, my inner adult chimes in. "Take it easy there Julia Child. They’re just pots and pans, and you don’t cook."
Put a perky guy in front of me, and let him try to EXPLAIN why I should buy that same cookware, and I start to look very much like an extra from "Night of the Living Dead."