Baby ReBrand

Sassy Baby Products is a local Grand Rapids company that produces, yes you got it baby products.  Recently I have noticed Sassy undergo a brand redesign.  See below for their old packaging on the left and their new packaging on the right.

Quite a difference.  A change from a cursive, rounded text with a unique (ugly) color pattern of red, orange, white and yellow, to a simple clean look of red, white, and black with a straight font.  Not to mention a logo which is more than just the name spell out, by using the red and black lady bug in conjunction with their brand name.  Unfortunately I could not find any of their new packaging pictures online but stroll though the baby section in any store and you will notice the rebranded Sassy toys.

I like their new color choice and it makes perfect sense for a company that caters to babies.  Why, well babies can see and are attracted to high contrast colors, like white and black and even red (see link).  So effectively the Sassy redesign speaks to the babies, so if a parent is shopping in the store and holds up a few packaged toys to the baby in the shopping cart, the baby may not be looking at the toy itself but at the packaging.  With Sassy’s white, black and red look you may have a few more babies reaching for, or engaging the package, that their parent is holding up.

Also one small side note, I was told that Sassy has a factory outlet store by their Grand Rapids facility.  Let me know if anyone has been there and if it is still open.

So what do you think, is Sassy marketing to the babies?  What do you think of their old brand versus new brand?

Showcasing Your Company

This is an image of Lamar Construction’s corporate headquarters in Hudsonville.  You can easily view this on the east side of I-196 just south of the Hudsonville exit.   According to Lamar’s website the building features a “52 ft. x 100 ft. structural steel cantilever–one of the largest of its kind in the United States.”  What I like about this building is the statement that it makes to everyone who looks at this building.  Lamar designed their headquarters with the mind-set that “We are a construction company, we better prove it with this building”.  They could have easily just built the typical rectangular building which would have served them well, but instead they took this as an opportunity to showcase their company’s skill in construction.  They showcased their company’s talent by building a structure that seemingly only an expert in the industry would build.  Appearances are important, and they do play a role in the consumer’s mind, there needs to be alignment between the company, their product, and their appearance, it is the whole brand experience.

It is no different then if you walk into an advertising agency, you expect to see their work displayed, as a visitor you want to experience their brand.  Or if you were to step foot into one of the office furniture manufacturers you expect their best and newest furniture in the front lobby and throughout their building.  It would be a total disconnect for you if you had to sit down on a fold up chair in the lobby, and the company would have failed in showcasing itself.  It is part of the consumer experience to make sure that every message or image received from the company and fits together.  What are some other examples of companies who have their brand, products and appearance aligned in order to showcase themselves?

How many of you would take that corner office at the end of the cantilever at Lamar?

Welding…Really?

Stu, you have me quite confused.  Are you really trying to advertise your welding services with this ad?  It is winter time you know and a picture of a snow plow in an ad usually means that you are a snow plowing service.  So how many calls have you gotten for welding services and how many for plowing services?

Wow

Last week, I had the opportunity to attend an event over at one Haworth Center in Holland, MI.  Of course this was at Haworth, and all I have to say is Wow.  What an amazing building and workspace, granted I only saw a small section of the building, but I was still impressed.  Haworth pulled out all the stops for this building, hell the pond in front even had swans, not Canadian geese but swans!  Anyways for more information on the building visit this website.  The website gives you a virtual tour of the building while highlighting the sustainable design features, organic workspaces and workplace insights which is quite fascinating.  Again if you ever have the opportunity to visit One Haworth Center, I highly recommend that you do.

How to Market a New Restaurant

I like restaurants, I like frequenting the local ones, the nots….not-national, not-franchised, etc.  It is great when new restaurants opens up, and  I get quite excited to try out the place.  Unfortunately, many of these restaurants end up closing their doors shortly after opening.  This could be for a number of reasons:  lousy food, bad service, not enough customers, and lack of publicity.   Now I understand that opening and running a restaurant is quite an undertaking and it must be extremely difficult work.  But nothing irritates me more than seeing a newly opened restaurant not promoting and marketing themselves.  There are a plethora of free marketing options that every restaurant should take advantage of, but few do.  In no way should your restaurant fail because of lack of promotion.  Below is my list of unproven, untested, marketing and promotion tips that are must haves for every new restaurant that wants to get noticed.

Get Listed – Get your restaurant on the map!  Google, and Google Maps, Yahoo Local, Bing, Judysbook, urbanspoon, grnow, whatever. Each has a system in place where you can claim your restaurant or add a new place to the map to post your restaurant.  You can often enter in lots of pertinent information, that consumers are looking for, like:  hours of operations, what type of food you carry, website, credit card information, etc.  The point is to make it easy for someone who uses these sites to find you.  If you are a Mexican restaurant and I am in mood for Mexican I want to be able to search Mexican food near Holland, Mi in Google and get your restaurant on there.  How much does this cost?  Nothing!

Social Media – Get a twitter account, make friends with all the locals you can find.  Announce your grand opening, your happy hour specials, you lunch time menu, new menu updates.  The possibilities are endless.  While you are at it might as well get a Facebook page up and encourage people to become fans.  Join the local networks use your tweets to refer back to your Facebook page and vice-versa.  If and when you do get customers in the store tell them about your social media efforts, encourage them to join or follow you.  Not everyone will but some will and they will spread the word.  Again the cost of this marketing effort?  Nothing!

Website - This one gets me all the time, but as a restaurant you need a website.  You need a website where you have your name, address, phone, hours of operation, a pdf of a menu (very important), and maybe a map.  Yes, websites cost money but there are various websites that offer free hosting and free do it yourself design.  Will it look awesome, no but at least you have a place where customers can check you out before committing to walking into your restaurant.  Check of weebly for free websites, or use your Facebook fan page.  Keep it simple, and again the cost can be free.  Oh and make sure you post your website URL everywhere where you are listed.

Carry-Out Menus – Make copies of your menu and have them available for people to bring home.  If I see a new place I will stop in scope it out and ask for a carry-out menu in order to plan a return visit to eat at your restaurant.  Quite a concept, so please make plenty of copies of your carry-out menu because I hate hearing “oh we ran out”, or even worse “we don’t have any”  Why not?  Ok so there is some cost involved with this one, but a simple black and white menu on white paper is fine with me.  Just make it happen.

Promote Locally – Every town or municipalities has some sort of website where they promote local businesses, find these and promote yourself.  Examples: Downtown Holland, another holland one, chamber of commerces, Visit Grand Rapids, Downtown Grand Rapids.

Contact Newspapers – Our local area newspapers seem to love doing stories on new restaurants.  Go ahead and search for restaurants on your newspaper’s website and lots of things will pop up.  Write a press release and send it out to them and see what happens.  Click here for a list.  Cost of writing a press release… nothing again.

Lastly, this post is in memory of Pizza Italia, the best pizza the city of Holland every had.  Sadly, this establishment lasted less than a year despite my constant patronage, (but they did had horrible service) but the food was amazing and the pizza’s were delicious and the best deal in town.  I wish I would have come up with this list sooner to help you guys out.  But you know what I think that the building that they inhabited is cursed because nothing survives there (I think it just claimed its latest victim – Tulipanes), must have been built on an ancient native American burial grounds.  Going back to 2005 Tacqueria Azteca was vacant for a long time, then in 2006 Chonita’s took over only lasted a few months, the was vacant again then in 2007 Pizza Italia moved in for 6 months, then was vacant again until Tulipanes moved in during the summer 2009, but now it has not opened for a couple of days in a row.

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Company Fun Time!

Can West Michigan companies host fun activities for their employees?  Thinking back on the things that my company does there are a few, like an occasional summer picnic, game room which is “lightly used” and our most recent chili cook-off/Halloween event.  The chili cook-off was also held in conjunction with Halloween costume contest so your department could develop a theme around your chili entry.  Despite our contest not being fair and clearly having an inferior chili win the employee vote (need to think of some guidelines to prevent ballot stuffing next year), it was a good time, and it seems that everyone had enjoyed themselves.

So what other fun things are companies doing for their employees?  Back in August, six local West Michigan companies (Amway, Gordon Food Service, Meijer, Perrigo, Steelcase, and Wolverine World Wide) put together the West Michigan Intern Olympics, where 160 interns competed for their employers, to determine which company hires the most athletic interns!  Well not quite but they do get a trophy, and at least they get a small friendly rivalry going between the companies to keep things interesting.  For internal purposes, I am sure it is a nice little team building exercise and unifier.  I just want to know how they came up with this idea. Perhaps next year they can invite Herman Miller and Haworth to participate and see how competitive they get with each other and with Steelcase.  Anyone reading who participated in the Intern Olympics (you better comment)?

So what fun things does your company do or what have you heard that those other companies do behind their walls?  Let’s show those internet startups (pre-bubble) area how West Michigan represents!

Deterrent

I came across the company Tanglefoot, based on this story in the Grand Rapids Press.  Interested in what this company was about, I quickly visited their website to find out more.  Well Tanglefoot has many interesting products to eliminate pests (mainly insects) in your home and outside.  But there is one product that really caught my eye.

Behold the Doggie Doo Doo Sign, I wonder if it is effective as their other products.

Spin off product idea, a “Kitty Doo Doo” sign for the kid’s sandbox.

Lack of Foresight

LeanLogistics, a transportation and logistics management firm, has been on the move.  It has moved its corporate headquarters to three different cities, since 2008.  This all started back in August 2008, when it was announced that LeanLogistics will receive an $11 million tax credit from Michigan Economic Growth Authority.  They were working out of their Holland Township office.  With that new tax credit they relocated their corporate operations to Zeeland and ended up moving in around 10 months ago, in January 2009 to the Colonial Clock Building .  Apparently their relocation to Zeeland was not a good idea because they have now realized that the space they have in Zeeland is too small so they are packing up their bags once again and moving to Holland to the following facility. Based on the news stories, they will be consolidating their Holland Township and Zeeland operations into one building.

How did this move to Zeeland get approved?  Obviously someone did not do their research or severely under estimated the amount of space needed.  Or they just did not have a clear idea of what they wanted.  It is somewhat inconceivable that this would happen.  Now this is leading to a PR issue as well.  As you could imagine the City of Zeeland was not to please with this announcement.  In fact they learned of the move from the local press and not from LeanLogistics themselves.  Which leads us to this story with the CEO of LeanLogistics, Dan Dershem, having to apologize to the Zeeland City Council.

Is there something more going on with this move than just lack of space?  I am assuming that Zeeland has numerous other vacant facilities which they would be eager to work with LeanLogistics to keep them in the city.  The CEO Dan Dershem lives in Zeeland as well.  All in all this one is a head scratcher.  The employees are quite fortunate that all three of these locations are at most seven miles away from each other.  The one good thing is that LeanLogistics will get to use its own equipment to make the shipment of equipment and materials between facilities as efficient as possible.

Wasted Energy

I have been sitting on this story for awhile (it came out in May 2009) about a Kent County landfill being tapped for its methane gases and converting them to electricity to power area homes.  This reminded me of a local company taking advantage of a landfill’s gases.  Zeeland Farm Services uses methane gas from nearby Autumn Hills (what a beautiful name, good job marketing) landfill to power its operations.  Zeeland Farm Services is synonymous with soybeans – anything soybean, just look at their website , they even make a great cooking oil called Zoye (this is one product which I actually have tried, though I am unsure how to pronounce it – ZOIL, Zoee, Zo-YE).

In 2005 ZFS, North American National Resources (owns the compression station), and Waste Management (owns the landfill) worked together to build a “landfill gas pipeline/compression station project that carries methane gas from the Autumn Hills Landfill to the ZFS soybean processing plant over six miles to the Northwest”.  Looks like some money exchanged hands since ZFS quoted that payback for the project is in the 6-10 year range.  This arrangement most likely is cheaper than having to pay for electricity, not to mention they are getting plenty of good public relations (here and here) with the whole green and sustainability movement going on.  Previous to this pipeline being built, the methane was just burned off and wasted, and now looking at some of the environmental impact statistics that ZFS produced what an impressive change.  Couple that with the fact that some of ZFS fleet of trucks runs on biodiesels you have an local area company doing some pretty progressive environmental initiatives.  Well done.

I wonder how many landfill have these sorts of agreements with companies and if this will be a continuing trend going further.  To me it would seem like a no brainer to partner up with local companies and work out an agreement, which makes both of you look good in the public eye and which would earn money (or save money after payback) for a previously wasted asset.  Maybe there just are not enough businesses nearby landfills, in my opinion it would stink to be close to one.

Grade F in Marketing – PEAS, Make it Stop

Groan.  Seeing this billboard ad along the Beltline heading south near M-6 reminds me of another annoying play on words I have recently come across.  My daughter has a Strawberry Shortcake book, which I read to her on occasion.  There is one aspect to this story that just drives me crazy.  Strawberry and all her cake/dessert friends never use the word “very”, instead being cute and all they use “berry.”  For example “This is the berry best cake I have eaten.”  As a father who wants to teach my daughter how to speak properly, I am not impressed.  Just like with this Allen Edwin Homes ad.

Peas of Mind?  Was Bretonfield built upon a former pea farm, is that the connection?  Perhaps they could have gone the junk food route and had “Piece of Mind” with a house built of pizza slices.  Even the artwork for the supposed pea house make it end up looking more like a church or a school than a house.  I find this ad berry confusing.  What do you all think?