I’ve said it before and I will keep saying it: YOUR LOGO IS NOT YOUR BRAND. Your brand is everything—EVERYTHING—that is a part of your business. Sure, your logo is definitely the most visible, but there is so much more to it and this includes customer interactions.

Recently I had an experience with Staples that served to reinforce the notion of employees being a vital part of your brand. I had to prepare some comps for a client meeting and sent them to Staples to have them printed. Generally, I use Staples for this sort of work because they have high-quality color printers, produce the work relatively quickly and aren’t too expensive.

I have had a few bad customer service experiences with Staples print center, mostly due to the inexperience of some of the people working there. By and far, though, my experience with the Bay City location has been positive.

On this particular order, though, I sent the files with EXPLICIT instructions, in hopes of avoiding any issues. The girl working at the copy center called me to confirm the order and that she would have them done very quickly. I went to pick the order up and it was wrong. The files, which were larger than 11″ x 17″, needed to be reduced to fit the page, but they were printed at full size and parts of the pages were cut off. The Staples co-worker told me that what I asked for couldn’t be done. I was really annoyed to have to pay $10 for work that was wrong, but the co-worker couldn’t fix it.

I was probably a little more curt with her than I would like to be, but I was furious. I had an 8AM meeting the next day and had to show up with bad proofs. The girl working there felt bad for me and talked to her supervisor (who was not in the store while I was there). The supervisor took it upon herself to call me and let me know that it was an easy fix and that the girl who ran the prints just needed to push one button. The supervisor offered to reprint everything for me and have it ready for me to pick up in the morning. I explained that I needed the prints an hour before they opened and she talked to the store manager—who comes in before 8AM—and told him what was going on.

She called me back and gave me the manager’s phone number so that I could come at 7:30, call him and pick up my proofs in time for my meeting. The supervisor’s follow-through was really impressive. And when I picked up the prints in the morning, the manager was both very friendly and very apologetic. By this time, all had been forgiven. Staples really did make up for their screw up and by going out of their way to make sure that I had what I needed, they reinforced what I already feel about them.

When I was a general manager for kinko’s (sorry FedEx, but I can’t bring myself to call it FedEx Office), we were at a managers meeting (in Austin or Cincinnati, I think) and we reviewed a customer service case study. The point of the study is that customers actually have a higher opinion of customer service from companies who have screwed up and recovered. Because this was almost 20 years ago, I can’t remember the actual figures, but the way it works out is that if you consistently perform very well, customers’ opinions stay equally constant. If you make a mistake and recover from it, overall approval ratings end up higher than if you had never made a mistake.

Staples is a great example of this very thing. Because they stretched themselves a bit to make sure that my needs were met, I really think very highly of their customer service. I was never going to boycott them or anything like that, but I’d be less inclined to go there if I need something. As of now, though, I will have no such hesitation.

Good save, Staples.

I have had a few people comment recently that I have not updated my blog in forever. Believe me, I didn’t need to be reminded because it’s always been very high on my list of “Things To Do When I Have the Time.” You’d laugh if you saw all of the timely blog ideas I have had and then scrapped because by the time I got around to writing it wasn’t relevant anymore.

For example, I had a great post about Michigan State University’s proposed logo change and the furor that came from Spartan Nation. In the end, the University scrapped the new design—which really was an improvement—in favor of tradition. Their head-fake toward progress was adopting a different Pantone green. I’m all for tradition, but I think that there are times when a stale logo can stand to be freshened up. The new logo wasn’t a major change, it was just an updating of the current logo.

Doesn’t matter, though, because I never wrote the post. Or one hundred others just like it. I can’t fault myself for prioritizing client design and writing ahead of my blog, but I need to make the blog more of a priority. And that’s exactly what I am going to do. It’s the summer solstice today and that feels like a pretty good time to pick back up with the blog.

To the people who have come back time and again to see the same, old posts I wanted to say thank you for your continued patronage. I promise to work harder to earn your repeated visits.

Happy Summer Solstice, everyone.

Today’s lesson comes from the pages of one of America’s great creative minds—Woody Allen. Sure, his best days are behind him, but that’s only because his early work (read: Annie Hall) was masterful.

Woody Allen was quoted once as saying, “80 percent of success is just showing up.”

Often when I am speaking to high school or college classes, the question of how to be successful designer comes up. And more often than not, I quote Woody’s wisdom because it is an absolute truth that applies not just to filmmaking and graphic design, but just about any other path in life you choose to follow.

The best example of not showing up is something that happened recently in my attempt to have a print project quoted by a printer. I am not going to name the printer, but I will tell you that it wasn’t F.P. Horak, McKay Press or QRP. Those are the three printers I use most often and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m talking about them.

This particular project, I thought, was a good fit for another printer in the region. The printer in question threw up every single roadblock they could come up with along the way. Honestly, it was as if they didn’t want my work.

My first step was to find their website to get contact info. The Google search took while because I wasn’t 100% sure of their name (they have gone through some ownership changes). With the correct site located, I clicked through to look for contact info and trouble ensued.

Their site is a wide-awake nightmare. I couldn’t find the information I was looking for, contact info was buried, sales department names and e-mail addresses weren’t available, etc. I didn’t want to fill out a form to wait for a response because my experience with these forms is that response time tends to be slower.

I was able to locate a phone number, though, so I called which led me to a pain-in-the-ass phone tree. If you don’t know the name of the person you are trying to reach, you’re directed to a general mailbox. Since I couldn’t find any sales rep names online, I would be stuck in the general mailbox which often isn’t much better than filling out the online form, where response time is concerned.

I call back and hit zero a few times and get through to a live person. I explain that I need a quote and she isn’t sure who she needs me to get to. After some confusion on her part, I just ask for a customer service rep and says she’ll connect me to the person I need to talk to. The call goes through to an extension which promptly hangs up on me. I call back again and ask if I can speak to a living, breathing customer service rep, but because I don’t have an account manager, she can’t direct me to a CSR.

Finally, in frustration, I give up. The job was a perfect fit for them and it will be printing elsewhere. It isn’t the hugest job in the world, but it would probably be somewhere between 5–10 grand every month or two. How many jobs like this do they lose in the course of a week? There were several opportunities along the way for them to save the interaction, but they managed to miss at every step. All they had to do was show up, but they phoned it in and missed out on a decent, little revenue stream.

There is actually a humorous postscript to the story, too. About one week after being unable to get a quote, I actually get a call from the sales manager wanting to sell me on doing my printing with them. I told him that I was surprised to hear from him and told him all about what had happened the prior week. He is both grateful for the candid input and assures me that is not the way they do business. He asks if he could send me some material to look at about them and maybe set up a meeting. I understand that every business has bad days, so I tell him to send the info and we’ll get together after that.

Five weeks later and guess what…nothing ever showed up.

Chuckleheads.

Have you heard that Simpsons matriarch Marge Simpson will be the first-ever cartoon to grace the cover of Playboy? In addition to the cover, she is given a few pages inside the book complete with data sheet and a two-page centerfold. You can read more about it at NPR.org.

Personally, I think it’s pretty funny and it’s a GREAT promotional coup for The Simpsons, who are celebrating their 20th anniversary on Fox this year. Thing is, it sounds like it wasn’t Fox’s idea. Sounds like the idea came from Playboy who wanted to try to draw more 20-something readers to the magazine, whose readers have a median age of around 35.

Why Marge Simpson, though? The Simpsons is still a solid enough performer on Fox, but the series is decidedly in decline. And I can’t quote viewership statistics, but my feeling is that the younger readers they are trying to appeal to aren’t necessarily Simpsons fans. My guess is that if they watch the Simpsons, they only do it to kill time until Family Guy comes on.

Family Guy skews much younger and with it’s edgier humor would seem to be a better fit for what Playboy is going for. Maybe the problem is that Playboy’s folks are skewing a lot older themselves and can’t be bothered to stay up past 9PM. Or, worse yet—and more likely—they’re too busy watching Desperate Housewives.

I like the idea behind the cartoon cover and giving a few pages on the inside—I’m even sure that the novelty will give Playboy a nice, one-issue sales bump—but I think those buyers are going to be in the 30-45 age range. If anything, the median reader age may go up for an issue.

Overall idea: B+
Probability of giving the magazine a short-term (one issue?) sales increase: 80%
Probability of achieving stated goal of drawing younger readers in: 15%

Overall grade (for Simpsons): A

Overall grade (for Playboy): F-
I would have given a C- because it is a fun idea and will result in a temporary sales bump, but they kind of botched when it comes to drawing in the younger crowd.

I received an e-mail a couple of weeks ago that Tri-City Monthly Lifestyle Magazine is changing its name to Great Lakes Bay Regional Lifestyle Magazine. This rebranding comes within a couple of years of the magazine’s previous rebranding project. Launched 5 or 6 years ago as Interlude, the magazine wanted a greater regional appeal so they settled on Tri-City Magazine. I never cared for the name Interlude, so even the unimaginative Tri-City Magazine was a change for the better.

For any established institution to undertake a rebranding project is a pretty big deal and to do it twice in two years is a risky proposition. Any momentum you have gained with the initial rebrand stands to suffer a little bit with a second rebrand. On top of that, changing the name and then changing it again so soon after will give some people an impression that the magazine is not stable or lacks direction. In the magazine’s defense, due to some big internal changes, I can attest to the fact that they are now probably more stable than they’ve ever been. With the recent changes as well as the editorial changes that took place a couple of years ago, I think the overall content and presentation are better now than they’ve ever been.

While I don’t like the idea of rebranding so hot on the heels of another rebrand, my real issue isn’t that they’re changing the name again, but what they’re changing the name to. Great Lakes Bay Regional Lifestyle Magazine? Really? I have to admit that I am surprised that Tri-City drank the Kool-Aid on this one. When the local communities first unveiled “Great Lakes Bay Region” as the new name for the regional brand, I wasn’t particularly wowed by it. I think the name is way too long, doesn’t lend itself well to certain applications, and I don’t much care for the logo. In branding terms, that’s three strikes against you.

Right away, though,you saw a lot of businesses jumping on board. Public radio quit calling it the Tri-Cities and started using the GLBR moniker. Newspapers quickly updated their style guides to push the new regional brand. My problem with the magazine changing their name, though, is that I think they are the first business to make the regional brand a part of their identity. In effect, they let somebody else name their business. And until then you are saddled with a magazine name that’s as long as an entry in the dictionary.

I don’t think you’re ever going to see an everyday person on the street refer to this region as the Great Lakes Bay Region. As I’ve written about (at length)—it’s just not a great name. There’s no tongue appeal to it. It’s not sexy. It’s just…wordy. Try slipping Great Lakes Bay Region into casual conversation. It’s not easy to do without sounding like you’re selling something. What happens in a few years if this brand doesn’t catch on and people just stop using it? Do you change your name again?

This name change just seems like they are trying to fall in line with what the regional chambers of commerce want. Why let somebody from outside dictate what your identity is? What’s next? Give the chambers final editorial approval on the articles and ads? We’re not talking Woodward & Bernstein here, but tying a publication too tightly to local business interests takes away any appearance of journalistic integrity.

I think Tri-City would have done well to just leave it alone and keep their name. Or, if they are really committed to rebranding, take some time and actually come up with a solid identity. There are some really talented and creative folks working at the magazine, they could come up with something great if they were given the opportunity.