Just yesterday, our creative lead, Jamie Bolak sent me an excerpt from a blog she follows,
Brand Like a Rock Star by Steve Jones. “Know what makes you unique. Know what makes others unique. Carefully use those differences to create something incredible.”
This is great advice, but at first, answering the “unique” question can be daunting. How can you say you are uniquely “the leader” or “most creative” or “most efficient” or “most cost-effective”?
Here’s a tip to help you over this speed bump: Don’t begin by trying to stake out something to which you alone can lay claim. Instead, start with what is specific—to you and to your customers. When you start here, a picture of who you are now and who you aspire to be will begin to take shape. As you dialog about these specifics with your team, it will become clear what makes you distinctive, and yes, in fact, what makes you unique.
Let me give you an example by using MOVE Communications. We are a marketing firm with offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Asheville, North Carolina. (Hey, how many Ann Arbor agencies have offices in Asheville—or Asheville agencies with offices in Ann Arbor? We’re starting to sound unique already.)
As a team, we see ourselves as strategic artists—“strategic” meaning we look at the big picture and work from a plan—“artist” meaning we can touch people’s minds and emotions through creative work.
This coming July 3rd will mark the date that we started in business twenty-five years ago (our first job was for Dominos Farms) as a video film production company, so we have strong roots in storytelling through motion pictures. Over time, because of our ability to distill complex information into a clear message, our customers asked us to begin thinking strategically about how they could take these messages to their customers using venues in addition to video or film.
How do we accomplish this? We have a fundamental belief that finding the right idea is the key to moving the hearts and minds of people so that they become loyal to your brand and repeatedly purchase your products or services.
We follow a process called Integrated Marketing Communications. Through this approach, all the disciplines of research, brand development, advertising, e-marketing, media relations and point-of-sale events and promotion build off one another, resulting in greater impact.
We begin any engagement by listening to the voice of your customer and discovering their needs and preferences. In this phase, we work with one of our key strategic partners, David Baker of
Baker Strategy Group. With David’s support, we distill essential recommendations for achieving your objectives and articulate a promise that you can make to your customers. We then connect your customers to this promise through the right idea expressed in a fresh, compelling, creative manner.
We have ten people in our core team and about fifteen other key strategic partners that compliment our core skills—in strategic planning, ideation and design, and our expertise in video, web and flash production.
Our industries of focus are automotive, education, alternative energy, publishing and non-profits. In the non-profit sector, we have a particular strength in servicing faith-based organizations.
The MOVE global perspective is shaped by having traveled to Japan, India, France, Germany, Jamaica, Haiti, and Guyana on behalf of our customers and by the fact that we are on-line or on the phone in conferences across the nation or to Europe or Asia weekly.
We are “people persons.” We love meeting people and getting to know them. It’s likely that’s why we are very customer-service oriented and enjoy a number of customer relationships that extend over a decade and include organizations like
Johnson Controls,
Zondervan,
ProQuest and the
University of Michigan.
Want to get more of a feel for what makes us specific? Visit
our website to see our work and our bodies in motion (yes, we “move” here). Or better yet, stop in at our offices in Ann Arbor or Asheville. You’ll love the daily humor and inspiration postings from Texas born-and-bred Linda Weatherly in Ann Arbor, or the office mountain vista that Jamie Bolak can show you in Asheville. After a drink of Absopure water, we’ll sit and talk about how you are specific, and therefore unique…then we’ll go tell the world!