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.

Our good friend, and amazing author, designer, strategist, and super hero, Alina Wheeler released the third edition of her book, “Designing Brand Identity“. In the latest edition she featured a case study on our identity for City Church Eastside, as well as our X31 logo in some of her examples- we are so honored!

Alina had this to say about putting the City Church case study in her book, “The third edition of Designing Brand Identity has 29 new case studies that I have identified as best practices from around the world. When I visited with Matchstic earlier this year in Atlanta, it was clear to me that it’s a firm to watch. Their “On the House” program is a model that many should follow. Their work is strategic and fresh.”

We will be reading the book together as a company, and you should stop and buy one now.

You can also read the entire City Church case study here

Our good friends at Sixthman, brought us “on board” to help develop the brand for their newest partnership cruise, VH1’s Best Cruise Ever. Included in our efforts were brand strategy, naming, logo design, print collateral, and the website design. A big initiative like this always leaves a trail of materials from our process, so I thought I’d collect some add some thoughts and share. Enjoy!

Concept:

Imagine everything awesome about VH1, then imagine it on a cruise for 4 days and nights with endless activities, so much so you’ll forget to put on sunscreen.

First Execution:

The first approach we tried was an illustration based design that would allow us to be a little more whimsical and playful, but we felt it took away from the simplicity and humor of the sunburn concept.

Second Execution:

The second approach was a photo shoot with an everyday Joe as our model. We didn’t want Billy Blanks or Xena the princess warrior, we wanted average. Someone who really would forget to put on sunscreen, you know, that guy. After we received the photos we tried various treatments, including a body covered in sun burnt type, but kept hanging on to this idea of simplicity. Below are some of the executions:

Final Solution:

We ended up on a version with only the logo burn mark and all the type set into the box in the bottom right. This version also allowed us to “swap” the background whenever needed. A TV Spot might have a setting sun, a web banner might have thousands of people packed onto the deck of the boat, or the festival poster might have the simple blue for ample room for autographs. The version below also includes the retouched final model image.

Logo

The logo was a simple stencil, used for the blocking of sunburnt chests, with an added Rock N’ Roll hand. Our goal was to make it translate easily into merch and lower back tattoos.

So, as Danny Bonaduce would say, What do you think?

We had the privilege of working on a campaign with Compassion International in early ‘08 – duly named Bite Back (check out the full case study here). It was an incredible project and campaign to be a part of.

Fast forward a year and a half later…and SEED (SouthEastern Excellence in Design) saw fit to present us with an award for our work on the campaign. Yes, yes…we may be self congratulating a bit…but hey, we’re excited!

And definitely check out the video they put together of all the ‘09 award-winners above (the Bite Back work is at the 2:38 min mark).

About a year ago I was headed out to a concert with some friends. In order to save time, I volunteered to grab all of us delicious submarine sandwiches from subway before racing off to make the show. As I walked in to a completely desolate store, the sandwich artist stood up from her stool and slugged over towards the beginning of the bar, with a stare that could freeze a charging grizzly dead in its tracks she looked up at me. Having the memory of a 90 year old man, I’d forgotten some of the orders, and rudely disregarded the “No Cellphones” sign and called my fellow concert goers. She quickly rebuked my action with a “What you want?” snarl. I calmly replied, “I’m not exactly sure yet, I’m calling to see what my friends want”. She returned a scowl of disapproval, and said slowly and sternly with an extra enunciated tone, “WHAT. DO. YOU. WANT?”. Let’s just stop right there. Not only was I super hungry and running late, I was now super annoyed and in the face of the rudest moment I’d ever encountered in my tenure of sandwich connoisseurship. I was about to order 14 sandwiches, a significant amount of business for a dying restaurant, and she obviously did not want my bothersome business.

How many times do we treat our clients like this?

Maybe not as extreme as the above example, but in small ungrateful ways, especially in a service based businesses, we can all be guilty. We fail to make the connection between our paychecks and our clients. I’ve seen this “bothersome- stupid client” attitude in so many agencies, and I hope we never become one of those.

After a brief confrontation, I ended up thanking the “Sandwich Artist” for her time and went next door to Willy’s for chimichangas and nachos.

What’s the worst customer service based experience you’ve ever had?

Anyone else notice that work seems to have suddenly picked up? Most everyone I talk to these days is saying the same thing…”we’re really busy!“.

It feels like the business community received a memo that stated, “You’ve experienced the worst of it, be fruitful and multiply“. And so they did.

Its an interesting phenomenon to witness, as obviously no such memo was sent out. No one said, “Hey America, BUY, BUY, BUY!“. But anecdotally – I can say that it seems this is the case.

How did this happen? Did everyone just get tired of the negativity and the no-buy policy that seemed to be employed from Nov 08 – Feb 09? Did the media affect our feelings enough to keep us from buying for a period of time, and then have the opposite effect with more positive reporting? Was everyone just waiting and watching, and collectively decided it was time to make up for lost time?

The economy (U.S. in particular) may be one of the most interesting brands to consider when you think of all the ways we consumers make decisions based on the slightest of nuances.

I wonder what’s in store for us in the post-Big-Co era we’ll be facing in the months/years ahead…

I love symbols. We look at thousands of them everyday, and in a flash the good ones tell us what they mean. They are the simplest and earliest forms of communication, even most eastern languages are still based off of symbols and not pronunciated letters, like our western alphabet. Here’s a look at over 2,000 symbols in a little over 2 minutes. Enjoy.

2,000 Symbols from matchstic on Vimeo.