Which Restroom Would Your Brand Use?

"Brands identify as many things—cute, quirky, rugged, industrial—but they are rarely male, female or other," says researcher Andreas Voniatis in Brand Quarterly.

"They may appear to be more masculine or feminine by design, but it’s rare for brands to speak in a gendered voice."

But shouldn't every brand man up to gender?

They short answer: Yes.

Voniatis cites a study by his own firm that asked how customers react to content when blind to its author.

Researchers presented 1,000 adults content grabbed from popular Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. They found that content which typically produces negative reactions produced positive ones when anonymized.

"But the most interesting revelation was how responsive we are to content written by members of the opposite sex," Voniatis says. "We found that women responded more positively to content authored by men and vice versa."

According to the study, women are 2% more likely than men to react positively to content authored by a man; and men, 5% more likely to react positively to content authored by a woman.

The findings suggest brands would strengthen the appeal of their "personalities" by speaking in a gendered voice.

"By attempting to appeal to the opposite sex when writing or gendering the brand voice as the opposite of the majority of our customers, we could find new and interesting ways of engaging with our audience," Voniatis says.

How to Choose the Right Email Marketing Consultant (Infographic)

Been-around blogger Matt Banner contributed today's post. Matt teaches techniques for better blogging at OnBlastBlog.

Email marketing offers an immensely high return on your investment, but in most cases you will need a consultant to help you master today’s top strategies. 

The right email marketing consultant:

• Understands today’s underlying strategies and tools. 

• Understands your brand and of the voice you use when speaking to your users.

• Can build a list of people interested in your product or service.

• Sweats the details, because everything about your emails matters, from the length of the subject line to the content within. 

The latter is where a skilled copywriter comes into play. The copy within your emails must be compelling and properly written to ensure that it grabs readers' attention immediately and keeps them engaged throughout. The ability to write strong sales copy is also a must, as the call-to-action is massively important. 

In order to properly choose a consultant, you will first need a basic knowledge of what makes any email marketing campaign successful.

Take a look at the infographic below to find out more about what defines a strong email marketing strategy. Using this information, you can better choose a consultant.

The Art of Art is Simplicity

The art of art, the glory of expression, is simplicity.

—Walt Whitman

Simplicity's cool... so cool, brand researchers now index it.

But before it was cool, two artists preached simplicity every week on popular TV shows.

The beatnik, Jon Gnagy

Beatnik Jon Gnagy premiered in 1946 on NBC's first regularly scheduled TV program, the hour-long variety show Radio City Matinee. 

In the opening segment of the first episode, Gnagy stood at an easel and demonstrated, in a few simple steps, how to draw a tree. 

The show's producer called those 10 minutes of airtime "pure television," and within four months gave Gnagy his own 15-minute show, You are an Artist—TV's very first spin-off.

Gnagy used his weekly show to teach viewers how to draw the barns, haystacks and water mills that symbolized bygone America. He sketched his subjects using four basic forms—the ball, cone, cube and cylinder—with shadows cast from a single light source. When he finished each drawing, he matted and framed it, so—voila—the piece was ready to hang on the wall.

During each broadcast, Gnagy also pitched his branded art kit, complete with pencils, paper and a book of drawing lessons.

While Gnagy's prime-time show lasted only two years, it continued in weekend syndication for another 12, inspiring thousands of Boomers to learn how to draw chestnut trees, horse corrals and covered bridges.

The hippie, Bob Ross

Hippie Bob Ross preached simplicity for 11 years through his half-hour PBS show, The Joy of Painting.

Remembered for his fuzzy Afro and fuzzier aphorisms—"Happy little trees" being the most famous—Ross popularized the 16th century oil painting technique known as “wet on wet."

He also marketed a branded line of paints.

Throughout the 1980s, Ross' weekly show (which his business partner called “liquid tranquilizer”) inspired thousands of pre-Internet kids, if not to pick up a paintbrush, at least to contemplate das Künstlerleben.

Ross himself finished over 30,000 paintings in his lifetime, many of which he donated to PBS fundraisers.

Childish Tchotchkes

Want to win over a jaded audience at your next trade show?

"Appeal to the inner child," says marketing consultant Jill Amerie.

Amerie recounts a midnight film screening at this year's SXSW.

A house full of film journalists sat waiting for Keanu, an action-comedy about a kitten, to finally begin. The mood was sullen and bitter.

"Then something interesting happened," Amerie says. 

"The comedic team of Key and Peele came on stage with a basket of toy kittens. They started throwing the stuffed animals into the audience, and suddenly, those tired, grouchy journalists were jumping to catch them like a bunch of bridesmaids going after the wedding bouquet. 

"A lot of those kittens will end up going to the children of those attendees, but it’s a safe bet that a significant number of them will end up in their offices, too."

Punctuation Power

Novelist Cormac McCarthy once told Oprah, "If you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate."

McCarthy rations his use of “weird little marks" strictly.

“I believe in periods, in capitals, in the occasional comma, and that’s it.”

McCarthy adopted his unusual technique while in college, where a professor asked him to Americanize the punctuation of the a bunch of 18th century essayists for a planned anthology.

Before the 20th century, most writers overused punctuation when writing for publication (though not in private letters and journals).

Contemporary punctuation is clean—and easily mastered. Strunk and White, in fact, cover the basics in just four "elementary rules."

But effective punctuation means more than avoiding "weird little marks."

Copywriter Herschell Gordon Lewis says punctuation is vital to credibility.

He believes there's a "psychology of punctuation" every writer should heed:

• Question marks are "interactive," involving readers automatically

• Quotation marks around a term say you appreciate its novelty—and help readers accept the unfamiliar

• Decimal places in a price ($49.99) lower the perceived value of the product

• An exclamation point doesn't make a true statement any more true; and two or more signal that your excitement is phony

• Colons have force: they push readers onward

• An asterisk suggests you're lying

• A dash is stronger than an ellipsis

• Commas clarify a series, making the "Oxford comma" is a must

HAT TIP: Video producer Ann Ramsey brought McCarthy's interview to my attention.