DW's Blog
More Cool!
by DW Green — April 9, 2015
So Adam is talking about cool. Cool, as in the context of slang, as an interjection to express acceptance, approval or admiration. And what’s more cool neat, nifty, boss, keen, groovy than a brand mark or Icon. Brand marks are simple, clean, and an easy to remember graphic representation of a company’s Brand name. Brand marks are like punctuation symbols:. stop
, pause
; pause longer
! exclamation mark
? question markBrand marks and icons can represent a deeper meaning of a company’s purpose or an abstract expression like the Nike swoosh. We have a Northwest client whose brand mark is a sailboat. Who would have thought of a sailboat icon for a food store? The sailboat is very meaningful to their company culture. It’s meaningful to me too. I’m proud to wear their caps and jackets that showcase their company icon.The DW Green icon reflects our design mantra “Less is greater than more.”So if you’re considering a new or updated design for your company’s brand mark, give us a call.
...read moreNot The Same Ole Grind
by webmaster — March 10, 2015
Differentiation is the essence of competition. I love the word differentiation. It’s a difficult word for me to spell and pronounce—the word inaudibly tumbles out of my mouth, often landing on deaf ears! But aside from poor enunciation skills and misunderstanding, differentiation is a very powerful business tool.Everything can be and is differentiable, even such “commodities” as steel, cement, money, chemicals and well, ground beef. Success goes to those who differentiate themselves in ways that attract differentiably superior numbers of customers to themselves.Though clothes may not make the man, they help make the sale. And if they do, the customer is buying something beyond the generic product that the salesman offers. That is what is meant by “differentiation.”While positioning is about performing different activities from rivals or performing similar activities in different ways, differentiation then, arises from both the choice of activities and how they are performed. See “Activity Breeds Success.”Adam’s Setting Your Ground Rules blog is an excellent example of differentiating both your store and your ground beef program. Your gro...read moreOut Locally-ing the Real Locals!
by DW Green — March 4, 2015
It’s well documented that consumers prefer shopping a locally owned retail store to a national or regional chain store. But being locally owned, in and of itself, is not reason enough to maintain a long-term business relationship with consumers. A local retailer needs to minimally match the national or regional retailer in terms of its product offering, quality, customer service, store cleanliness and other operational considerations like product presentation, signage, stock conditions and so forth. From my perspective, the local company should strive to exceed operational standards of its larger size retail brethren.Aside from the many “financial benefits” of supporting a local business, as described in Adam Zack’s “In Support of REAL Local” blog, the underlying benefit or “reason to believe” in local businesses is the deeper emotional connection that consumers hold for their local community. This emotionality is enhanced by the authenticity of the local retailer. Authenticity is expressed through merchandising and messagi...read moreAddition By Subtraction
by DW Green — February 25, 2015
In the spirit of high school mathematics and National Pi day lets look at another mathematical concept, the “addition by subtraction” theory! Can a successful retail brand appeal to everybody? Nope. No one brand can possibly have a universal appeal. Since you can’t be everything to all people successfully, you must purposefully limit what you offer and to whom. When you are identifying your strategic initiatives, choices about what not to do (subtraction) are just as important as choices about what to do (addition). Your success depends on the trade-offs you are willing to make. Simply put, a trade-off means that more of one thing necessitates less of another. A supermarket can choose to offer more service departments, adding labor costs and higher retails, or it can choose not to, offering less service and lower retails, but it cannot do both without bearing major inefficiencies.In a recent conversation with a high profile and successful Northwest retailer, I learned about their thoughtful and discriminating approach to creating their retail brand product assortment. The retailer understood that to be brand successful they needed to limit their retail brand prod...read moreSign of the Times
by DW Green — February 18, 2015
The ole maxim “Signs Sell” is true! But then I guess that’s what a maxim is, an expression of a general truth or principle. In truth, however, the maxim should read “A well-designed sign with thoughtful and intentional copy sell a lot!” Aside from the obvious sign ingredients like product description, price point, accurate spelling, product benefits and so worth, the sign design itself should reflect the purpose, meaning and personality of the store brand itself. Otherwise you are missing a tremendous opportunity to reinforce the unique benefit of your store to your customers. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a well-designed sign is worth a thousand sales....read moreStick to the business you know and outsource the rest!
by DW Green — February 10, 2015
In Search of Excellence, Tom Peters’ famous book first published in 1982, describes eight basic principles of management that made forty-three of America’s best-run companies successful. One of the principles was “Stick to the netting.” Stay with the business you know and outsource the rest! Retail grocery is about selling and merchandising. Not advertising and marketing design.On the surface in-house ad departments can seem more efficient and cost effective. However, if you look deeper into the actual cost of maintaining a highly professional advertising design team those cost can be much more than what you thought. Often times in-house ad departments become a source of overhead that limit or reduce resources needed to improve retail activities that directly improve sales and customer experience. Not to mention the negative impact poorly designed materials can have on your company’s brand.The added cost of office space, computer hardware and software and their ongoing maintenance, as well as photo libraries, insurance, and labor benefit packages can make the benefits of an in-house department much less attractive. Even the rate of pay necessary to a...read more
