Capitol Communicator Thought Leadership Series: Limor Schafman discusses how to work with the federal government with Bob Rainford from Marcom Group in a Capitol Communicator TV video and podcast sponsored by RHED Pixel (www.rhedpixel.com). The Capitol Communicator TV Thought Leadership Series podcast is up in iTunes now. The transcript of that interview follows:
Limor Schafman: You’re watching Capitol Communicator TV, I’m Limor Schafman, and with me is Bob Rainford from Marcom Group. Bob, thank you so much for joining us.
Bob Rainford: Thank for having me, Limor.
Limor Schafman: So your group focuses a great deal on working with the federal government.
Bob Rainford: Yes, we do. We actually do work for both commercial and federal, but the federal practice is one of our largest segments right now.
Limor Schafman: Okay, and for this topic, I’m finding them kind of interesting because often for those of us more in the commercial side, and sometimes even for the federal, we think that the federal government is one big blur of red, white, and blue. And we’re not quite sure how they brand themselves, we’re not quite sure where the differentiation points are necessarily always between the different agencies, and perhaps sometimes the agencies fall prey to that themselves, and aren’t always aware of how to brand themselves. In looking at what your company does, your company has this whole visioneering process which I really love the word of. Can you describe what that is, and also then let’s relate it to the federal government and how you’ve helped them brand themselves accordingly. So first discuss, what is visioneering?
Bob Rainford: Visioneering. Visioneering is the art, I wish I could trademark it but I can’t, but visioneering is the art of working with your clients, understanding their creative objectives, their problems, and what they want to accomplish, and then coming up with crafting the right creative solutions to help them be successful. So it’s a visioneering result to a client’s objective.
Limor Schafman: Okay, and so the client’s objective is it to talk to a particular audience, or is it to affect a particular product or service in the market place? Can you describe that a little bit.
Bob Rainford: It could be anything, it could be a corporate client, a commercial client might want to watch a new product. Not quite sure how to get there. It might be a telephony product, it might be a technical product, it might be a service, or they might want to talk about themselves, just overall their company brand, or it might be something that they want to create for investors, an investor solutions or investor relations. So whatever the case might be, whoever the target audience is that they’re trying to satisfy, again they’ve identified a problem, it’s then teaming with the client to try to say all right, what’s the problem, then what are the creative solutions, now let’s create a vision to solving that problem and coming up with the right processes for you.
Limor Schafman: Okay, so what does that vision usually entail?
Bob Rainford: The processes, there is a process or a methodology that we do use. From working with the client doing a learning phase, learning session, we call it our strategy wheel. And we start off with identifying the strategic objectives and what the client wants to do, what resources might be available, is there an existing brand, is there through the research we’re able to identify, you know, how the client, the product, or whatever the case might be might be perceived. We’re able to then lay out strategies for tactics on message development, logos, look and feel, brand, graphics, fonts, anything that will help truthfully represent the client with their brand, rolling that in to actually developing the materials themselves, it might be TV commercials, posters, flyers, brochures, websites, social networking sites. You know, anything you could imagine that can be used to communicate to the target audience. And then, the final phase is actually a measurement, measuring the results of how well each of these pieces, and are they truthfully moving us to the results a client needs, or do they need to be corrected. So that’s generally the process.
Limor Schafman: So can you give us an example of how you’ve helped a government entity go through this visioneering process and realize some of their objectives.
Bob Rainford: Going from one example would be the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC. When the chairman at the time, Michael Powell, was working there, interestingly enough he was at a symposium and he was sitting on the panel. And they had logos projected behind each of the panelists. And he looked up, and he saw Microsoft and Nortel Networks, and so many of these others. And he looked up and he saw his, and it was this old, dated FCC 1960s logo. And he said, “You know, this really bothers me.” So, when he got back he was talking with his executive committee, Marcom came in, and we were tasked to help him create a whole new brand, a face and a voice to the FCC. One of the challenges we had was to then try to do the research to understand well what is- what essentially is the FCC, and what do they stand for? Obviously there’s some things we know they do, but what do they really do? And through our research, we were able to find out they really own the light spectrum. They license all of the radio waves and frequencies and emissions that anybody in the electronics industry wants to build their products under. So through the various research and the conversations, it was interesting, somebody mentioned we’re like the pond, and when a rock goes in to the middle of the pond, everything emanates out from us, we own that licensing medium. So we know what’s coming before anybody else knows what’s coming. And from that research and that insight, we literally created a look and feel for them in during our red wine, white wine, which design might best work for you was a look where the light waves were emanating from the center of the design and emanating out.
Limor Schafman: And is that the one that was finally chosen ...
Bob Rainford: That was the one that they went with. And what we were able to do from that point is then create a whole series of variations so that none of the material was identical. Obviously they all created a complimentary family, and then that material is rolled in to their friendly collateral, their recruitment campaign, their in-house university catalogues, we even went through and actually created a whole new FCC logo that was rolled out and should now be coming up on the back of all the printed electronic devices and et cetera when you open the back and see the FCC, it should now start to be the new logo that we created for the FCC.
Limor Schafman: That’s wonderful. So Bob, when you are looking at a brand, are there different elements of it and how should a company be thinking about their brand?
Bob Rainford: You know, it’s interesting, yes there is. I think that anybody would want to use some similar terms that we use internally. There’s the face of the brand, what people will see or the public will see is the look and the feel, and the color, and the fonts. And then there’s the voice of the brand. The voice of the brand is the words, what’s being said, how it’s being said, that emphasizes, that communicates the message to the audience.
Limor Schafman: And it’s really about unifying the two that really conveys an effective message.
Bob Rainford: Right, that’s exactly right. And when you tie that together, it has to be truthful, it has to be real, it has to truly represent the brand and the agency or the client, or whatever the product might be.
Limor Schafman: Bob, thank you so much for joining us.
Bob Rainford: Thank you for having me Limor.
Limor Schafman: You’ve been watching Capitol Communicator TV.