One of our key philosophies in creating charismatic brands is alignment; A consistent message, voice, and experience throughout all places of interaction. Alignment is also a key component to creating Brand Champions. One helpful way to asses your entire “brand experience” is to map out every single touchpoint of the process. When do you first engage with your audience? What happens next? Then next? Then next? (you get the point)

Once thoroughly mapped out you can begin to score each individual touch-point on how well they engage your audience. Maybe your initial and latter touchpoints are strong, but somewhere in the middle it gets a bit soggy. Maybe you start strong and trail off like a SNL skit. Regardless of your scoring, you can prioritize which touchpoints to focus on and improve. You now know where the gaps are in the wall, and like my good friends from GI Joe said, “Knowing is half the battle”.

We recently did this exercise for ourselves, and below is the out pouring. It’s important to know every map should be different and a comfortable and honest scoring system is crucial.

Have you ever done this? If so, Which ones need the most love? If not, how can you start the process?

Today marks the beginning of our 8th Matchstic retreat.  We will spend the next 3 days taking apart our company and putting it back together again.  One of the ways we commemorate our retreats is by releasing a new Matchstic t-shirt for everyone.  So above you’ll see our newest shirt arrival.  I call it the Flag Shirt.

The reason I call it the Flag Shirt is that it was inspired from the flag you see to the left of it.  On our last retreat we flushed out our three core values.  At the time I was studying a lot of country flags and love their direct relationship to a brand identity.  I wanted to develop something that represented our values without just stating them directly.  So I approached Alvin about this idea of a flag that represented our three core values.  Later he put together this shirt to represent the flag.  Here is a brief description of our three core values and which color bar of the flag represents that value.

Blue | Harmony. Great relationships are the cornerstone of great work. Great relationships internally. Great relationships with clients. Great relationships with partners & vendors. Great relationships with our community. When there is no dissonance, but pure harmony, then and only then does pure beauty soar. Great work always starts with Harmony.  The sky blue color is a great representation of Harmony.

White | Truth. We are in a constant pursuit of truth. We are not manipulative marketers. We are seekers of truth. We dig for gold and bring it to the surface, clean out all the dirt, and hold it tall for all to see. Truth is excellence. Truth is what’s right, not what one wants. Truth is sought after with unmatched urgency. Truth is always black and white, hence the white bar of the flag.

Red | Courage. Excellence comes at a risk. Risk of humiliation. Risk of failure. In order to risk, one must have Courage. Courage to act in accordance with beliefs, in spite of criticism. We must also encourage our clients to take the risks they need to take in order to accomplish their dreams. Courage is not easy, but it is a vital component of building a brand and working at Matchstic.  Red represents that courage.

Thanks again to our friends at Zoink! for yet another amazing print job printing our shirts. You all are the best.