Building Brand Values (In Tough Times) – HSMAI South Florida’s July 22nd Meeting Presentation…

Our monthly educational meeting yesterday, July 22nd, at the new W Hotel – Fort Lauderdale was another sell-out event! We haven’t figured out why people still don’t believe us when we advise that they register early…

We’d like to thank Bruce Turkel, Turkel Advertising, for providing a highly educational and entertaining presentation (including some very talented harmonica renditions). His topic focused on branding. He noted that in these especially bad times, it’s harder to do business now. Everyone needs to accept that things have changed. We must figure out what to do about it and how to change the consumers’ perception of what you do or what your business offers them. In general, we should understand that you want people to do 3 things: remember you, recall you (the specifics) and then react to you, i.e. do something (like book your hotel?).

He offered us a list of seven techniques to change the perception of your business. If you change the perception, then you can change the reality and you will get a bigger piece of the pie (a larger share of the available business).

Here are his “Seven Simple Steps to Profitable Communications”:
1. All About Them – People care most about things that affect them. In order to reach them, you need to communicate in a way that tells them “what’s in it for me?”
2. Hearts Then Minds – People make decisions based on emotion and justify their decisions with the facts. To get someone to pay attention, you must get them emotionally involved.
3. Make It Simple – today’s world is a busy, confusing place. To make an impression and an impact, your message must be succinct and digestible.
4. Make It Quick – Things happen so fast these days that if you take your time, no one will wait around to receive your entire message.
5. Make It Yours – A message is truly powerful only if it is associated with you or your product. Make sure that the message you’re presenting belongs only to you and you alone.
6. All Five Senses – Conversations involved all of the human senses. To communicate effectively, make sure you’re engaging as many of your audience’s senses as possible.
7. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat – Your message must be repeated often enough that your audience can act on it. Ironically, this doesn’t give you license to be repetitive, but demands new and creative ways to reinforce your position.

And a special thank you to the W Hotel for their great service and a delicious meal. Quite a number of our attendees took advantage of the hotel tour after our event. We'll look forward to seeing Jay Guttveg's photographs posted on our website.

Plan now to book early for our August meetings so you don’t miss out! Visit our website for reservations and details: www.hsmaisouthflorida.org And if you're not already a member, won't you join now? Best, Julie Wernick, HSMAInsider, Managing Director, HSMAI-South Florida.