No Agony, No Ecstasy

Like popes of old, today's venture capitalists have no patience with the tortured perfectionist.

"Perfection has no business in the world of entrepreneurship," Charlie Harary says in Entrepreneur.

Today's marketplace is "supersonic," so entrepreneurs must tightly cap opportunity costs—and quality.

He quotes LinkedIn founder Reed Hoffman: "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late."

Products need only be "minimally viable," Harary says, and businesses thick-skinned.

"A little criticism or failure never killed anyone. Learn to embrace it and use it to make you great."

In other words, scrap excellence for the quick buck and one day you, too, will run a respected company.

This wolfish mindset explains why so many of the apps we buy are broken; the books, riddled with typos; the drugs, full of dangerous side effects.

It's not because we lack talent.

It's because we're in such a goddamned hurry.

As novelist Irving Stone said in The Agony and the Ecstasy, “Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive."

Love Story

I remember little of my first formal date, except that I took the girl to see the schmaltzy blockbuster, Love Story.

The film's tagline perfectly states what every B2B marketer wants skeptical buyers to believe.

Love means never having to say you're sorry… you bought from us.

That's why B2B marketers adore case studies.

They're the ideal way to spread customers' love.

You're nuts if you're not dishing them out repeatedly.

Case studies are like movie reviews, except your customers are the stars and every movie's a love story.

And buyers can't get enough of them, because people love to compare themselves to others.

Here are seven case-study do's and don'ts. Keep them near and dear:

• Case studies adhere to a classic construct—a three-point story arc: problem, solution, results. Don't stray from that. 

• Make your customer the headliner. Keep you company off the marquee.

• Interview your customer in a knowledgable, but laid-back manner. Don't put her on edge with tough questions, or prompt her to say things she wouldn't say naturally.

• Use a lot of customer quotes for color and credibility.

• Illustrate your case studies with photographs and charts.

• Ask your customer to sign a release.

• Besides publishing the case study on your website, create a PDF version customers (and your salespeople) can download and share.

Travel's Romance with Video

Travel brands will increasingly lean on video to seduce mobile-carrying customers, according to Skift.

As evidence, the newsletter cites the 25-minute reverie French Kiss, recently produced by Marriott.

"Instead of selling hotel rooms and airplane seats as commodities, brands are learning to tell stories using video that create an emotional connection with a specific audience," Skift says.

Leading the field, Marriott runs a full-scale, in-house studio that produces original shorts.

Technicians

Bill Bernbach, named by AdAge the most influential adman of the 20th century, had a beef with technicians.

Before quitting Grey to start his own agency in the late 1940s, Bernbach sent a one-page letter to his colleague that creatives, to this day, love to reproduce.

Bernbach told them he worried Grey, by ceding the agency to technicians, would "follow history instead of making it."

"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising," he wrote. "And unfortunately they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can tell you that body copy should be broken up for easier reading. They can give you fact after fact after fact."

Bernbach admitted technicians can help—a bit.

"Superior technical skill will make a good ad better. But the danger is a preoccupation with technical skill or the mistaking of technical skill for creative ability."

Bernbach pled with Grey to shun "routinized men who have a formula for advertising." His parting advice became his eventual battle cry—and a mantra of creatives everywhere.

"If we are to advance we must emerge as a distinctive personality. We must develop our own philosophy and not have the advertising philosophy of others imposed on us.

"Let us blaze new trails. Let us prove to the world that good taste, good art, and good writing can be good selling."

What's in a Name?

Your name speaks volumes about your brand's personality.

Brand names can be descriptive ("Toys 'R' Us"), abstract ("Aloxi") or evocative ("Uber").

Rational brand names ("IBM") appeal to our inner accountant. 

But brand names can also pack emotional punch—positive or negative—as wordsmith Nancy Friedman says.

Friedman lumps emotionally charged names into six categories:

Old words. The right Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman or Norse word "makes us feel warm and welcomed," Friedman says. "Kindle" is an example. "Many successful brand names draw on this old-word resonance to soften a new idea."

Sense words. "Sight, sound, smell, touch and taste are direct routes to an emotional response," Friedman says. "Bevel," for example, names a brand of men's shaving supplies.

Nature words. A name plucked from nature "inspires and soothes, challenges and restores." "Sequoia" names a venture capital firm.

Art words. The language of the arts "can remind us of pleasurable, even transcendent experiences." "Allegra" is a prime example.

Adventure words. Pirate a word from an adventure tale and you'll stir feelings of excitement and exoticism. "Mandalay Bay" is an example.

Personal names. Real and fictional people's names can evoke "friendliness and reassurance." "Lynda" names an e-learning company.

Consider your band name carefully, but don't tear out your hair over the choice.

Remember the words of W.C. Fields: “It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”