#3  Communication

Relationships require continuous contact in order to grow. Staying connected is critical. Without regular intervals of communication, we lose our significance to others which can lead them to forget about us and move on to the next existing concern. This can also be better managed in the online world as we let our customers determine how, when and how often they would like to be communicated to. The more personally relevant the contact, the more valuable and effective and pertinent it will be. Whether in person, on the phone or online, each meeting is an opportunity to increase our visibility and strengthen the relationship while making the recipient feel considered without feeling overwhelmed.

Of course there are numerous tools and techniques to building upon these founding principles to creating a personalized a web experience. Each company will utilize and find themselves gravitating toward different facets of the user-experience depending on the focus of their business model, but an effective next step would be to brainstorm a list of ideas on how to build trust, understanding and communication for your own professional goals.

Strong, enduring relationships require a certain amount of care and attention to build, nurture and maintain. Any amount of effort put into these areas will be recognized and appreciated in many spoken and un-spoken ways from your clients. As we give them both opportunities and reasons to continue doing business with us, the more readily we will become a trusted, more personal part of their investment and those in whom they invest.

#2 Knowing and Understanding

Know your audience… your partner… your customer. Personalization can be defined as the design, management and delivery of content based on known, observed and predicted information. The more you know the more you can personalize and customize. Use this information to make every aspect of their online experience specific to them, from simply using their name to allowing them to create wish lists and delivering suggestions based on their past choices and selections. The more a user feels connected to their own personalized experience, the more readily they will depend on the service as one that both understands and meets their needs.

Tomorrow: Key #3 Communication

While conducting a recent motivation mapping session, the conversation turned to businesses built on traditional, personal relationships. A once face-to-face customer interaction is increasingly becoming screen-to-screen, which sparked the essential question from a client: “How do you personalize a web site or web experience?” As pervasive as the web experience has become, this is a question that continues to be relevant and vital to many organizations still adapting their business model to the virtual world. How can this transition successfully occur as more traditional personal business models become more web-based without losing a personal human element of connectivity? The keys to developing a successful personalized web experience can be found in the essential ingredients to any strong relationship.

#1 Trust

Trust is the lifeblood for any enduring relationship and customers (visitors) need to trust in the company they are doing business with. Trust is gained through accuracy and speed of delivery as well as providing consistently accurate, authentic and customized information. Another key to building trust is an integrity of business practices and customer interaction that must be maintained throughout the experience from first encounter of a home page through returns processing. If any action compromises trust, it must be admitted, apologized for and, most importantly, made amends for. When we acknowledge our shortcomings and offer ourselves for correction, it communicates to others that we value them, we are real (places our humanity on display), and are eager for an opportunity to restore integrity. Personal and professional relationships often grow stronger when we take full ownership of our mistakes and offer solutions.

Tommorrow: Key #2 Knowing and Understanding

New work from WhiteSpace Designer Vince Rinaldo

WhiteSpace designer Vince Rinaldo, has a piece titled “Joe & Larry” in the Paper or Plastic: A New Lowbrow Toy Show opening tonight, Friday, November 18 at the Box Gallery in Summit Art Space 140 E Market St., 3rd Floor, Akron OH 44308.

It is an exhibition of vinyl toys customized by 30+ artists using the iconic Kidrobot Munny. Their will also be live music by Comfort Clouds and Brooks Strause.

Vince also contributes ideas and design to the Zombies & Toys Blog

Tips for Jump Starting Your 2012 Integrated Marketing Plan

I understand. You’re busy. Very busy with implementing the final quarter of your 2011 plan in the midst of what is also a typically hectic tradeshow season for most companies. However, this is an ideal time of year to get a jump on your competition and create a 2012 integrated marketing plan.

Here are some ideas to help.

Revisit your brand strategy

What does your brand stand for? All great planning is built upon solid strategy. Spend some time reviewing the goals of the organization and the business plan (hopefully this exists – if not, create it). When developing plans and tactics connect them directly to specific goals and objectives.

Form a cross-functional, diverse ideation team(s)

Diverse perspectives are critical to gaining insight and cultivating unique ideas. Put together a team including employees representing diverse viewpoints within your organization. From front-line business experience, multiple customer touch-points, specific functional knowledge… draw from all levels including those known for being outspoken and energetic and brainstorm (utilizing some of the other tips listed here) to generate ideas.

Collect and review the most interesting stories from the past year

The power of storytelling is incredible for both internal and external communications and the need for content has exploded with the onset of social media. If you haven’t been collecting stories, you can use a variety of techniques (online, as part of meeting agendas, contests…) to quickly gather them from customers and employees. Choose three to five key categories (products, service, above & beyond…) and begin gathering.

Build on the positive

With thanks to Dr. David Cooperrider & Appreciative Inquiry - 
What is working within our organization and what do we do best? What are the things we do that add value for customers? How can build upon or extend these ideas? Too often we focus on the negative… What is the problem? And, how do we fix it? Use these questions to focus planning on the positive.

Strengths. Weaknesses. Opportunities. Threats.

The S.W.O.T. analysis is a marketing tool that has been around for decades but is still one of the best and most widely used strategic planning tools. Strengths – what gives your organization an advantage over your competition? Weaknesses – what disadvantages are slowing down growth or impeding customer satisfaction? Opportunities – what markets, tools, mediums, techniques can open up possibilities for growth or to get a step ahead of the competition? Threats – What factors (external, internal, environmental…) can cause problems for your organization?

If you need more detail on these, want to discuss other ideas or potentially utilize WhiteSpace to assist with creating your 2012 Integrated Marketing Plan, please contact us. We can lead & energize strategic discussions, facilitate creative brainstorms and research emerging markets all leading to developing on-strategy integrated marketing plan you can implement effectively.

We consume 400 million cups of coffee per day. Not at WhiteSpace alone, but the United States. That’s about 146 billion cups of coffee per year; making the US the top country consumer of coffee in the world.

Today, National Coffee Day, is a great day for celebrating this creative booster and possibly scoring a free cup as many companies have promotions. Most Krispy Kreme locations are offering a free cup of their new House Blend coffee. You can also pick up a free medium coffee from 7-11am at any 7-Eleven.

Today is also a great day to break the habit. Not the coffee habit. Definitely order a coffee but try a new place. The Greater Akron area has many great local, independent coffee shops and diners where you can get a great, often-bottomless cup of joe. Visit one you have never been too & send us your recommendation:

Fred’s Diner
Nervous Dog Coffee Bar
Akron Family Restaurant
Urban Eats
Crest Bakery & Café
Valley Café
Scribbles
Bent Tree Coffee Roasters

It’s good time to visit coffee related social media sites as many companies plan to share coupons, specials and ideas with their followers:

Check out the crowdsourcing mecca from coffee juggernaut Starbucks.

Product placement for the wired world – check out the The Sims Social game on Facebook & look for Dunkin Donuts to get boosts, collectibles and facebook gifts

Social media + social commitment from Green Mountain Coffee

Cafe Du Monde - Quite possible one of the greatest cafes in the world.

Take a coffee break (or two) to celebrate this creative fuel, important commodity (2nd in trading behind oil) and drink outside the box.

I'm talking about CreateAThon of course. Excitement is building as us WhiteSpacers prepare for our 10th anniversary all night probono extravaganza known as CreateAThon. We kick it off this Thursday @ 8 a.m. and concluded 24 hours later with presentations to clients.

Here's our pregame checklist
• Signed Creative Brief
• ALL Content Provided
• Coffee
• Pajamas
• Hearty sense humor

After 10 years of doing this sort of thing, we have noticed trends of psychocoping and chronoanalyticalfreak-outs. Please look for those details in our live coverage on CreateAThon via blog, facebook and twitter updates.

Ideas, music, art, design, film, food, storytelling, a BBQ challenge, yoga, improv…

One of most interesting and inspirational events of the year, Art in the Square, is taking place this Saturday, September 3, 10am - 7pm in the Highland Square neighborhood of Akron.

Paintings, sculpture, photography, art glass, ceramics, jewelry, multimedia… stroll through the diverse gathering of artists, artisans and craftsmen while listening to live music.

There are over 50 bands, theatrical troupes, international dancers and musicians entertaining across six stages. Whitespace recently designed two interesting projects for Rachel Roberts – a promo kit including a logo, cd cover and booklet for her new band Sexis Sixes and a CD design and packaging for her special release supporting the 93 Cents of Flight 93 Campaign. She will be playing on the Stage at North Highland.

I recommend catching a rare local appearance the jazz-rock space jam of Ralph Carney & Friends playing at 5PM on Conger Stage. Ralph is the uncle of The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney and collaborated with them on their album Attack & Release. He is best known for his long association with singer Tom Waits and has also recorded or performed with The B-52's, Elvis Costello, Jonathan Richman, Stan Ridgway, Medeski, Martin & Wood and They Might Be Giants. He is also the brother of Akron Beacon Journal writer Jim Carney.

Also, check out former Beacon Journal Columnist and current University of Akron Assistant Professor of English David Giffels, who will be on hand to select his favorite story at Square Stories a live storytelling project that will be featured from NOON to 2PM in the Highland Square Branch Library. Participants will be recounting stories of personal experiences in Highland Square and Giffel’s favorite will receive his or her own episode of Life & Lyrics, a once in a lifetime opportunity to share all-time favorite songs on 91.3 FM The Summit. Storytelling is a vital ingredient in developing compelling communications of all types but even more critical for social media. Check out the Art in the Square Facebook

The creativity and inspiration does not end in Highland Square as the Downtown Akron Art walk is also taking place organized by Downtown Akron Partnership (logo designed by Whitespace). Held the first Saturday of each month the Artwalk features nearly two dozen destinations for art, shopping, dining and entertainment. The City of Akron's free trolley service runs the entire route.

.com, .net, .org and some other Top Level Domains [TLD] have reigned supreme since the beginning of the internet. Now ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers] has approved the creation of new TLDs for brands, organizations and other verticals like .coke, .akron and .run.

This won't effect the typical web user, but rather open up new means of promoting brands and structuring internet marketing and SEO strategy. You may be seeing things like www.diet.coke, www.contest.coke. But you won't see coke.com going away any time soon, as these new domains won't really be available for release until 2014.

What's going to get interesting is the race for not easily trademarked TLD like .diet, .run, .chef. But domain-squatters beware! These new TLD will go through a global trademark evaluation as part of the application process and cost $185,000. You've got to have a pretty solid plan to sit on that.

Check out Mashable's 9 Things You Need to Know About ICANN's New Top Level Domains.