PCC January Luncheon Presented Creative "Tool Boxes" For Professional Communicators

By Sue Masaracchia-Roberts

From left: Janet Carl Smith, Steve Yastrow, Connie Dickinson, Sam Landers (photo by Ted Lacey).

MODERATOR

Connie Dickinson, President of the Dickinson Group

PANELISTS

Steve Yastrow, President of Yastrow Marketing and author of "Brand Harmony"

Sam Landers, a Principal in Designkitchen

Janet Carl Smith, Deputy Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs

PANELIST REMARKS

Moderator Connie Dickinson called on each of the participants to call on their creative spirit to carve out a niche and battle the myriad of demands that distract each of us. The January Publicity Club of Chicago luncheon focused on how to do just that, with each of the speakers sharing parts of their "toolboxes" that allow them to tap into their "out of the box" ideas and expand their horizons.

Dickinson, president of DickinsonGroup, has spent more than 25 years designing and implementing long- and short-range marketing and public awareness strategies for business-to-business and consumer markets. She was joined by panelists: Steve Yastrow, president of Yastrow Marketing and author of "Brand Harmony"; Sam Landers, creative director and principal of Designkitchen; and Janet Carl Smith, deputy commissioner for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs.

Steve Yastrow

Focusing on helping companies align their organizations to create powerful, motivating experiences for customers, Yastrow enjoys challenging audiences to reinvent the way they look at marketing and get everyone in the organization to be part of the experience. Yastrow’s book, which offers clear action steps to improve business performance through better branding, has been called "compelling and powerful" by management guru Tom Peters.

Yastrow describes customers today as being more savvy and skeptical, less tolerant and more scrutinizing than ever before. They evaluate brands based on all the experiences they have ever had and look beyond the ad promises. Integrated marketing communications is no longer something that belongs entirely in the marketer’s toolbox according to Yastrow. Customers are now doing a lot of integrating. Everyone needs to be the brand and be creative, starting with a strong brand strategy.

"Everyone in the company needs to understand their personal role in the delivery [of brand] and understand what makes the company special," said Yastrow. "They need to share an idea and understand that they are building ‘cathedrals,’ not cutting stones. They have to shift their perspective." The challenge of senior management is to get people to buy into brands. Having those at the top endorse ideas is like whispering through a megaphone.

Customers evaluate a company based on brand harmony. The playing field is now leveled and the competitive advantage is how to get every in the company to be on board and be the brand. Everyone needs to be involved.

Sam Landers

Founder and chief architect and brand strategy steward of Designkitchen, Landers prides himself on turning vigorous business challenges into viable brand solutions. Using his creative process, on- and off-line brand strategies have been established in partnership with clients like Wolfgang Puck Worldwide, Aon, Bays Corporation, Motorola and the NutraSweet Company.

According to Landers, the key words to keep in mind are "brand practitioner." The practitioner leverages positioning and branding. Public relations controls the message points.

"The web has made the company transparent," said Landers. "Practitioners are moving targets. Working with multinational companies, some have different ways of looking at things. However, inherent in a company is establishing the brand. Without harmony between what is true and inherent and the messaging, it all becomes a campaign. There is a shift in how people receive information. Execution is different than branding."

He explained that it is important to understand the company’s business objectives, culture and goals. Landers offers four tips for developing a successful creative process:

• Preparation is the key in branding companies to link creative, branding, research and marketing.
• The right mix of people for whom the message is directed. The size, look and impact on the audience both are difficult and need to be expressed.
• The right mix of creative needs to be set in the right environment.
• Persistence blended with preparation creates the hard work that allows good ideas to emerge.

He encourages more of a public relations presence on the web, which currently is being used more as an advertising vehicle. The web is an entry point through which to obtain brand harmony. He suggests there is a leap frog effect where the employee starts mirroring what is on the website.

Messaging should be done well and should be inherent in branding activities. There should be a constancy of message, whether the medium is PR, advertising, the website or direct mail. The PR person should integrate the message.

Janet Carl Smith

Smith has administered Chicago-area quality art experiences throughout Chicago over the past 30 years. Her major responsibility is free public programming at the Chicago Cultural Center, as well as exhibitions, education, retail services, marketing and volunteers. She is also the point person for the nation’s only remaining municipally-funded, free, outdoor classical music series -- the Grant Park Music Festival, and directs a range of city-wide collaborative programs that promote Chicago’s cultural resources, as well as helping local artists and art organizations.

Responsible for the creative element and working within the bureaucracy known as the Department of Cultural Affairs, Smith serves a variety of functions, including the office of tourism. A tremendous amount of free programming to enable the public to experience the arts is done through her office. Smith’s office deals with both the product development and marketing sides, forcing her staff to focus on ideas and where they come from.

"A lot of our role is to take ideas and put them in a framework that allows people to participate," said Smith. "In this millennium, things are put on the website and the city now accepts ideas from everyone! We’ve had one come from Italy, suggesting we have two people from each country have dinner with Mayor Daley. Lois Weisberg said it was one of the toughest things to do, since we’d have to identify the countries and the people to invite, then invite them. It would, however, allow us to build a relationship and partnership with those countries and ask them to help. To find the right ideas, we need to reach out to a wide variety of partners to create something larger than one person can do. We collaborate to establish a creative approach."

The City’s current campaign is "Winter Delights" to encourage Chicago winter tourism, showing there is a lot to do indoors in the city. To come up with this idea, Smith’s office partnered with programming people to ascertain more appealing reasons to come to Chicago for specific weekends, using a thematic approach. Each weekend has a theme . . . food, blues, dance, museums, etc. To get support, the Office of Cultural Affairs offered to cover and create promotional opportunities in exchange for local venues participating in the themed weekend. .

Her office also found that Chicago residents want to take advantage of discounted pricing to explore their own city. Through the tourism office and its affiliates, the Winter Delights program was established as a collaborative approach, supporting the message that the city is a great place to visit no matter what part of the year.

Inserting her experience-based comments, Dickson shared her feeling that this is the age of "customer-focused organizations." It takes questions, research and other advance work, in order to make people comfortable before an idea session. "Food, fluid, time and bribes all help develop messages,"said Dickson. "Good ideas don’t have to come from someone with a big title."

She contends there are no bad ideas, however the facilitator needs to be specific about strategic goals. The client frequently explains what they think the solution is without explaining the problem they need to solve. The goal is to determine needs before establishing the tactical pieces.