Getting back to real R.O.I. – Part 2

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of being able to discuss real R.O.I. with a decision-maker who just doesn’t get Social Media yet. Instead of trying to “sell” them on the benefits of conversations and developing relationships, I suggested a more pragmatic approach: Basically explaining to them how Social Media can be used to increase sales (what they really care about) by impacting certain factors intimately tied to sales: Net customers growth, and depth-of-product transactions. (If you missed it, check it out.)

Today, let’s talk about another factor: Frequency.

In other words:

Frequency of interactions = Frequency of transactions.

(More of one usually leads to more of the other.)

One final note: For most businesses, reach seems like a more important factor than frequency, but what happens when acquiring more customers isn’t realistic? Or when it isn’t enough? For many established businesses (especially with a closed distribution channel), frequency is a more variable (and thus more viable) factor to impact: If they can’t acquire new customers, the next best thing is to get their existing customers to transact more often.

Food for thought.

So there you go: One more specific factor/objective and set of metrics to take to your favorite Social Media agnostic manager… or keep in your back pocket in case the need ever comes up.

Read Full Post »

Political Brand-Building: Crossing the candidate-brand barrier, one logo at a time

Pictured above: Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential Campaign logo.

Brand development: A quick look at the power of symbols.

Back in the good old days of cowboys and cattle drives, “brands” were marks to identify ownership of livestock. That ownership eventually became a stamp of quality in cattle markets. Over time, the terms “mark” and “brand” became interchangeable in the world of product marketing. (In francophone countries, the word “Marque” – the French equivalent of ‘Mark’ – is still in use today.)

Whatever your language of choice, the term “brand” has since evolved to encompass almost every facet of a specific business’ identity, from cultural relevance and market leadership to the ability to routinely create iconic products and build a great reputation. At the forefront of a brand (as printed on a company’s packaging, products, websites, letterhead, front door, etc. is its mark. Its logo. Its symbol.

Humans like symbols and emblems, whether they show up on flags, military unit patches, family crests, educational institutions’ emblems, sports teams’ uniforms, the butt of livestock, products, or corporate letterhead. We wear them on T-shirts and baseball caps. We stick them on our cars and laptops. We paste them onto our desktops. We add them to our Facebook walls. Some of us even get them tattooed sometimes. (Note: The next photo is not of me.) That is the level of emotional attachment that people can have with symbols, which is why almost every organization in the world uses them.

Without flags, symbols, marks and logos, what would initially separate Nike from Adidas, France from Belgium, Dell from HP, Volkswagen from Audi, or even the Yankees from the Socks? (I said initially! Chill, sports fans.)

To illustrate the role that evocative emblems (logos) can play in the success and longevity of a brand, here are a few you might be familiar with:

Pretty potent stuff. Okay, so we’ve established the power of logos. Badges. Emblems.Symbols.Whatever you choose to call them. We can move on now.

The emergence of branding concepts and logos in political campaigns.

One of the prime newcomers on the list of most-viewed “logos” in the last few months has been Presidential hopeful Barack Obama’s distinctive circular sunrise and stripes. Last month, I brought you the history of the Republican and Democratic parties’ elephant and donkey emblems; today, I bring you a little bit of insight into how the Obama campaign logo came to be.

From Chicago Business News:

A team of Chicago graphic designers has given Barack Obama’s campaign its signature look. Sol Sender of Sender LLC and five others in his firm created the logo the Illinois senator is using for his 2008 presidential bid.

The icon, a gradated blue “o” featuring three red stripes, is prominently displayed on Mr. Obama’s campaign Web site pages and featured on t-shirts, buttons and bumper stickers.

Sender LLC is a Chicago brand consultancy and design studio whose clients include Crain’s.

“We were looking at the “o” of his name and had the idea of a rising sun and a new day,” Mr. Sender said. “The sun rising over the horizon evoked a new sense of hope.”

“It begins to break with tradition while also rooting itself in tradition,” said Peter Krivkovich, CEO of Cramer-Krasselt advertising agency in Chicago. “Patriotism is the foundation, but above that is hope, opportunity, newness.”

While most presidential campaign sign designers have traditionally not strayed beyond the realm of background color and font type, it is interesting to see logo design finally make its way into the world of voter influence tactics.

Of course, we don’t need to look too far to find another example of catchy political logo work of late. Our sitting president, George W. Bush’s iconic “W” (ironically adopted by Oliver Stone as the title of his latest movie) has served as an emblem in its own right, showing up on bumper stickers, T-shirts and even underwear.

Where do we go from here?

Are we seeing a new trend in presidential political marketing? Possibly. If the objective is to help a candidate appear to stand stand for something greater than a political platform or formulaic series of promises, why not create an emblem that can hold that message for them and resonate with an audience in the same way that our favorite brand logos do? Why not transcend agendas and soundbites to create something greater – something that can be conveyed in a symbol? It looks like political strategists have finally tapped into our need to rally behind symbols rather than… words. In the same way that we get behind Apple, Harley Davidson, Nike and New York Yankees logos, we can now get behind our presidential candidates’ logos and truly join their team.

It’s probably too soon to tell whether or not a candidate – in spite of their record, position in regards to issues and even charisma – might actually gain an advantage over another by having a well-designed logo, but the question is well worth asking.

Eh.

One quick word of caution as present and future presidential hopefuls begin to venture across the candidate-to-brand barrier in order to gain a strategic advantage: The margin of error in the world of brands is razor-thin. As expectations rise to unrealistic levels (political leadership is much more complex and volatile than market leadership), each mistake become increasingly costly. (The White House doesn’t have a customer service department. You aren’t likely getting a refund or a discount coupon in the mail when things don’t go your way.)

The power that comes with becoming a brand can be too much for just one man (or woman) to handle – even for a Washington, Kennedy, Roosevelt or Lincoln.

As my uncle Ben once told me, with great power comes great responsibility. Something to consider once elections are behind us and the time comes to actually deliver.

Have a great weekend, everyone. 😉

image of Super Obama by legendary graphic artist Alex Ross.

Read Full Post »

On Selling Marketing Short: Fixing the R.O.I. void

http://wray-mccann.com

Interesting post by JP Voilleque over at Marketing 2.0 this week about the use of mythology and archetypes when creating narratives for brands, but also (and more importantly) the generational roadblocks standing in the way of smart marketing being adopted by conservative companies.

Both of these topics are dear to my heart: The first because tapping into hard-coded symbolism and archetypes we project onto our various mythologies to make sense of the world can be the difference between an organization becoming little more than a company with a logo and that same company becoming a global lifestyle brand. The game here being one of identity and purpose, if a brand can tap into the collective need for a particular archetype, it can become a vessel for a culture’s very specific aspirations.

Nike is a perfect example of this type of exercise, from its choice of name to the way its brand is communicated via its many marketing channels. (Tell me Nike ads aren’t designed specifically to inspire the champion in you.)

The second is also crucial, especially in this economy, because it strikes the heart of Marketing’s Achilles’ heel: The seeming absence of R.O.I. (Return On Investment) at least in the minds of so many first wave baby-boomer executives. I have run into this my entire career, and I have to confess that has been one of the most frustrating of hurdles: Most business leaders simply have no faith in Marketing. They don’t see it as an effective business function, they see it as an expense rather than an investment, and more often than not, marketing takes on the form of a formulaic, uninspired afterthought that barely ever ventures beyond the stale world of “marketing deliverables” like brochures, websites, mailers and print ads. Worse yet, these deliverables are often utterly ineffective in both design and purpose, adding insult to injury in the world of pragmatic, no-nonsense business execs. This is not good, and it needs to start changing immediately.

Here’s what JP has to say:

I have a special place in my heart for resistance to change. It is endearing, like sepia-tone photos of families in Wild West garb. But when it comes to grappling with network externalities, it loses that cuteness and becomes a real impediment to rapid adoption of effective messaging. The people who are ordering the message don’t think it “belongs” in the Web 2.0 universe except in very narrowly sliced, buzzword-laden places that are no less guaranteed to provide a return than the entire space.

[…]

We’re talking for the most part about first wave baby boomers, but in some cases we’re discussing some “silent generation” folks. So depending on circumstances, these are people who are focused on toeing the line, “team play” as art form, and (for the most part) a hierarchical model of career development, decision making, and information processes. The 1984 Apple ad was aimed at/authored by the second wave of the baby boom, the ones that came of age during the sixties, and aggressively anti-hierarchy (though no less hard-working). The roadblock is the first wave. Worse, it’s a committee of them.

Read the entire post here.

Anytime someone talks about archetypes, metaphors and marketing all in the same paragraph, they have my undivided attention. There isn’t enough of this kind of thinking in our industry, and it’s a damn shame because it holds so much power. Unfortunately, the silent generation doesn’t always have time for archetypes, Jungian psychology or for peeling back the layers of mythology-inspired metaphor.

Fact: These guys don’t believe in the value of marketing because no one has ever shown them that it indeed has any value. Too many hacks in this business are content to charge exorbitant fees for deliverables without actually ever working towards actual business and brand-building objectives. (And I won’t even touch the topic of the growing number of internal marketing departments whose staff can’t come up with a single original idea, much less write half a page of decent copy.) Many small marketing and PR firms have thus become little more than job shops where a) the talent and the creative have – over time – slipped to the bottom of the commodity ladder, and b) have completely eliminated the strategic in favor of the tactical (if you can even call it that). This may be a great way to keep paying the bills, but it is no way to inject the true value of marketing into a company that needs it. Enough firms and practitioners do this, and the entire profession soon becomes plagued with low rent hacks selling “marketing” to business folks too busy running their businesses to know any better. This is how the marketing field spent the last three decades losing all credibility and value, bringing us to where we are today: A business world in which the first thing that gets cut during tough economic times is marketing. Bravo.

Incidentally, the one line-item in a business’ budget that should actually increase during difficult economic times is marketing. Why? Because the best time to reach out to your customers and possibly gain market share is precisely when your competitors are retreating. We’re upside-down in this scenario because for the last thirty years, hacks have been dragging this discipline down into the commodity gutter. Enough is enough. We need to get back to business now. And I mean right now, starting with the very same first wave boomers who currently have absolutely zero faith in the discipline.

To these folks, marketing is at best fluff. Pretty fluff, sometimes, but fluff nonetheless. And expensive fluff at that. They reluctantly sign off on brochures, flyers, websites, catalogs and the occasional press release (the latter usually aimed at investors and stakeholders rather than their customers) because they feel that they have to. It’s just a cost of doing business. *sigh* Aside from this expensive exercise in seemingly worthless self promotion (a concept they aren’t particularly comfortable with anyway), marketing seems to be an expense rather than a worthwhile investment. This is the biggest fundamental problem faced by marketing departments and firms today.

Another way to look at it is this: There seems to be little to no measurable ROI from most marketing campaigns or activities.

Chances are that if you are dealing with a CEO who has little faith in marketing, it is because no one has ever shown them the link that exists between real marketing (which reaches far deeper than just messaging), and something as simple as F.R.Y. measurements (Frequency, Yield and Reach), for starters. Forget brand valuation for the first couple of quarters. Don’t even bring it up. Just show them how great marketing can increase their sales through an increase in interactions between their company and its customers, a positive change in the average order size, and/or an increase in net new customers. This is something they understand. This is something that puts food on the table, therefore it is tangible. This is how marketing stops being fluff and starts being valuable. This is how cost becomes benefit. This is how risky expense becomes worthwhile investment.

In order to enable this transition, we need to connect the dots by demonstrating clearly and objectively that marketing drives business growth in a measurable, quantifiable way. Not only that, but your efforts have to show that the return outweighs the investment. Not through bullshit metrics but through measurables that actually show up on the P&L.

You aren’t going to turn the older boomers to pay any attention to quests and archetypes (unless they happen to work at Nike or Jaguar or Starbucks), but you can take these concepts and turn them into what they understand: ROI. Simple Business 101. Common sense cost-benefit data. Period.

Does this put marketing practitioners on the spot? You bet. And it’s about time too.

The shift that needs to occur is simply this: Marketing practitioners need to a) stop behaving like commodities salesmen, and b) (to borrow a phrase from the presidential campaign trail) stop slapping lipstick on a pig.

Our job is not to sell deliverables like websites, catalogs, print ads and clever copy (and especially not the mediocre kind). Our job is to help folks who already spend over 80% of their time running the day to day operations of their business connect that business with the outside world in an effective and extraordinary way. More to the point, our job is to help drive sales, create net new customers, and increase the number of positive interactions between the companies we serve and their growing customer base. Our job is to help delight customers so that they will become a) repeat customers and b) brand ambassadors. Our job is to bring context to products, services and companies’ identities in specific cultural subsets. Our job is to bring companies and “markets” together, which is really to say companies and people.

Summed up, our job is to develop all of the strategies and tactics that help companies find their audience, facilitate the first handshake, and develop lasting, delightful, fiercely loyal relationships with as many great people as possible.

Our job is to do this in a remarkable, memorable, delightful way. Our job, if anything, is to inspire our clients and the people they serve to engage in a relationship which benefits both parties equally, and somehow improves their collective condition in the process. Our job is nothing short of ensuring that the marriage between between them is a great and lasting one.

This is not the sort of thing you entrust to just anyone. Yet too many companies do just that – most of the time because they may not be aware that they have other, better options.

I say enough. Seriously. Enough with uninspired, ineffective mediocrity. Enough with chop-shop marketing. Enough with inexistent (upside-down) R.O.I. Enough with the snake oil bullshit.

Enough.

Not until that first wave of boomer execs start to see that Marketing is as vital to their growth and as worthwhile an investment as an acquisition or product innovation will they be able to connect the dots between marketing activity and simple, bottom-line, black-on-white R.O.I.

It’s time to start cleaning up our industry once and for all, one company at a time. If that’s what it takes, then so be it. I hope you’ll join me in this quest, assuming you aren’t fighting the good fight already.

Have a great Thursday, everyone. 😉

image by Chris Wray-McCann

Read Full Post »

Guy Kawasaki + Dan Roam on The Art of Visual Thinking

Being a big fan of sketching, visual mapping and drawing diagrams of every idea, process and problem I run into, this post by Guy Kawasaki made me a very happy camper. (I really need to get out more.)

First things first: Go to Guy’s blog and read his post on the subject.

Second: Go read Guy’s interview with Dan Roam, author of T.he Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Here’s a taste of the interview:

Question: What problems are you really talking about solving with pictures?

Answer: All of them: business strategy challenges, project management issues, resource allocation problems–even personal problems–can all be clarified, if not outright solved, through the use of pictures. And the pictures we’re talking about are simple ones. If you can draw a circle, a square, an arrow, and a smiley face, you can draw any of the problem-solving pictures I talk about.

Question: What is an example of how a business problem was solved with a sketch?

Answer: The most famous business napkin is the route map of Southwest Airlines. When businessman Rollin King and lawyer Herb Kelleher sat down in 1967 in the St. Anthony’s Club in San Antonio, their intent was to drink to the successful closing of King’s previous airline. Instead, King picked up a pen and–drawing a triangle on a bar napkin as he spoke–said, “Wait a minute. What would happen if we created an airline that only connected Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio?” The world’s most profitable airline was born.

My personal favorite is still a work in progress. I’ve spent time with the senior executives of Peet’s Coffee and Teas helping map out the company’s growth and business operating strategies. In number of coffee retail stores, Peets is second after Starbucks, but it is still orders of magnitude behind: one hundred and sixty stores to Starbuck’s fifteen thousand. Clearly there is the opportunity for Peets to grow, but Peets has long been known as the “best” coffee available. So the question remains, “How do you grow without giving in on quality?”

We’re created a simple back of the napkin sketch that outlines Peet’s approach to maintaining quality while growing, and it has been circulated around the company so that everybody gets it and sees exactly where they fit into the “quality chain.”

Read the full thing here.

Simplicity works. A picture (or sketch) is worth a thousand words. Why bore your audience with numbers and bullet points when you can tell the entire story in one simple slide – or by sketching something on the back of a napkin? I thought I was weird for doing this, but now that I feel all vindicated by Guy and Dan, I am going to have to turn this quirky little habit of mine into standard operating procedure.

Next time someone asks you if you want them to draw you a picture, puff out your chest and proudly declare “yes!”

Read Full Post »

Archetypes & Brands

Filling The Contextual Void:

Ever since a friend convinced me to read Robert Johnson’s “He,” I have been fascinated by the role that archetypes play in the genesis and of mythology, relationships, personalities, pop culture, and even brands.

Given my profession of choice, perhaps especially brands.

I was reminded of this connection yesterday when I happened on John Howard Spink’s “Using Archetypes To Build Stronger Brands.“

As John himself notes, surprisingly, not a lot of work is being done on this front. Knowing what I know about the role that mythology and archetypes play in cultural identity, it surprises me that very few brand strategists and Marketing thought leaders have made the connection between archetypes and brands – or at least that most have not worked to incorporate the notion of archetypes in their operational brandbuilding methodology.

Per John:

Though the development and management of brands is central and fundamental to everything we do, are the tools we use up to the job? Or do they do more harm than good? Brands are complex, abstract and difficult to pin down. However, in endeavouring to define them we often forget this. With techniques such as brand pyramids,we take something wild and untamed and attempt to constrain and control it. Rather than trying to understand brands in their natural habitat, we put them in a zoo. I recognise that pyramids, onions and similar techniques can be useful internal disciplines. But do they really help define the unchanging core values of a brand? We spend weeks debating the nuances of synonyms, performing semantic gymnastics to prove that Brand X is different from Brand Y, and agonising over whether something is an Emotional Benefit or a Brand Value – a distinction we struggle to understand in the first place. At the end of the day, what does this get us? More often than not, a pile of disconnected words that looks like nothing less than an explosion in a bombed thesaurus factory. Unfortunately, having built our pyramid and agreed that our brand is contemporary, stylish, relevant, inclusive and other usual suspects, we fall into the trap of thinking our job is finished. Usually though, we are no closer to articulating ‘core essence’ than when we began – even if that particular box has been filled in. What should be rich, complex and, by definition, hard to articulate ends up neutered and subjected to death by a thousand adjectives. Ironically, our supposed unchanging brand template is reduced to a fluid selection of meaningless or undifferentiating words that even those close to the process interpret in different ways. The result, to quote Shakespeare, is a brand which is ‘…a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing’.

You may feel this is harsh, but ask yourself how many walking shadows there are out there, and if we struggle to find meaning, think how consumers feel.

Amen.

Enter the archetypes:

There are certain basic characters and storylines that appear regularly in myth, fairytale, literature and film; archetypes that represent core aspects of the human condition, and tap deep into our motivations and sense of meaning. When we encounter these, they resonate in powerful ways that transcend culture and demographics.

This is why, when penning the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas turned to Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces, to help him understand the archetypal narrative structure and characters found in these mythic stories, and why these three films enjoy such strong and enduring appeal. Whether Luke Skywalker, The Man With No Name, Red Riding Hood, Harry Potter, or real people such as JFK, Princess Diana or Marilyn Monroe, there is something primal in archetypal characters and situations that stirs our emotions, stimulates our memory and sometimes changes lives. In developing and managing brands, are we really so different from George Lucas or a budding Barbara Cartland?

Ironically, in this postmodern age when people are supposedly no longer interested in meta-narratives with common understanding, brand development is nothing short of creating a story that people want to be part of; a character with values that have deep resonance which our target audience want to emulate or be associated with.

This is why a Harley-Davidson marketer can say: ‘what we sell is the ability for a 43-year old accountant to dress in black leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of him’ Or why Scott Bedbury, in his time head of marketing at Nike and Starbucks, believes that: ‘a brand is a metaphorical story that … connects with something very deep — a fundamental human appreciation of mythology … Companies that manifest this sensibility … invoke something very powerful’.

Bingo. Right from the horses’ mouths.

What seem like “intangible” elements of a brand are really very precise sets of contextual values, emotions, aspirations and projections that can easily be not only identified but plotted, graphed, and inserted into a brand’s identity. (All you need is the key – the actual archetypes – and a clear understanding of the role they play in the psyches the folks whose culture you are trying to intertwine your brand with.)

This is actually VERY easy to accomplish. Some brands even achieve this without even realizing it. They instinctively tap into something primal and culturally relevant without really knowing or understanding why or how they did it.

Take Nike, for example: The Nike brand appeals to the “champion/hero” and uses sports as the medium for its allegorical language. The very choice of names – “Nike” the Greek Goddess of victory – has immediate Archetypal implications:

A) Nike is a Goddess. A creature straight out of Mythology – in which every character, god, human and everything in between is the embodiment of a specific human archetype.

B) Nike symbolizes victory. Victory typically comes from bravery, sacrifice, courage, strength… all being the attributes of the brand – or rather, the symbolism that the brand aims to help consumers project onto itself and every product it stamps with its sexy little swish mark.

Once the brand takes on the attributes of the desired archetype (or two, or three), then people begin a sort of projective identification dance. They first project their wants and needs onto the brand, in effect using it as a vessel for the qualities which they cannot articulate or completely manage on their own. They then become patrons of the brand in order to possess these attributes in a form they can understand, use, and express. Once a brand has achieved this type of relationship with the public, it becomes alive. It becomes part of pop culture. It becomes relevant on a level that surpasses traditional marketing, messaging and business-speak. It becomes a power brand.

Understanding archetypes and using this knowledge to build powerful brands is kind of a no-brainer… but still, very few agencies, marketing firms and brand boutiques use this simple tool. Strange.

I’m glad to see that John has tapped into this, and I hope that more of you will as well. Aside from the books mentioned in his piece, I also encourage you to read Robert E. Johnson’s “He.” It’s a quick read (less than 200 pages) that will help you not only understand the roles that archetypes play in our everyday lives, but also understand human behavior (particularly in the Western world) in a way that no other book or university course can. It is pure genius.

The Messaging Crutch:

About a week ago today, I found myself having a conversation with a couple of branding experts. We were chatting about projects that I had worked on, and I sensed that the methodology behind the successes that I’d had in the last few years wasn’t clicking with them. Three or four times, they asked me about messaging.

“Yeah, but… what about the messaging?”

You might have thought they were asking me “where’s the beef?”

Messaging… Hmmm… It hadn’t occurred to me until I was asked the question that “messaging” had stopped to be all that important to my process in quite some time. Messaging. Yeah. In truth, messaging seemed almost superfluous. I explained that with every single project I had worked on since 2004, messaging had been secondary at best. In most cases, when dealing with branding projects and even most effective marketing campaigns, the strength of the product, brand or idea was easier to understand viscerally than when articulated. The clever taglines, the tight copy, the words on the page or the poster or the screen were almost completely irrelevant.

What I found is that the strength of a brand often lies in its power not to have to be explained or articulated. In a way, defining a brand too well may actually hurt it.

No, forget that. Replace may with will.

Does Apple need a tagline? Does iPod need messaging? Does Starbucks? Does Nike? Does Porsche? Does Halliburton? Does PowerBar? Does Disney? Ben & Jerry? Staples? Ferrari? Cartier? Target? Heineken?

PR pros will argue that they do. The reality is that they don’t.

If the brand you create is powerful enough – inside and out – then messaging is barely frosting on the cake. Heck, it’s little more than the colored sprinkles on the edges. The messaging is nice and it dresses things up a little, but… if you create a power brand or a love brand, it might as well be an afterthought.

Using archetypes in your brand development process can help you tap into the raw nature and identity of a brand better than any brand pyramid, onion, pie chart or whatever cookie-cutter technique you are currently using. It’s okay if you don’t believe me. But… for your sake (and more importantly, that of your clients), at least look into it. It might be the one thing your practice was missing. At the very least, it will become a great new tool to add to your brand-building toolbox.

Breathing Life into the branding process:

I’ll let John make one last important point before we close the book on today’s topic:

I find it more exciting to think of myself as the author of eternal brand stories than as someone who writes strategy documents and brand pyramids.

Well, um… yeah. I can relate. I hope we all can.

Truth: Brands live out there, in the collective ocean of pop culture that we all share, swim in, and contribute to. (Wait… that sounded kind of gross. Sorry.) Where brands don’t live is inside agency meeting rooms or in the heads of creatives living in the ad world. They don’t live inside your market research or on pie charts or inside brand pyramids. They don’t live in your taglines or in your copy or in the dialogue of your spokespeople. Your brands live in the same world as Darth Vader, Ronald Reagan, Brad Pitt, Hercules, John McLane, Rocky Balboa, John F. Fennedy, James Bond, Paris Hilton, Rintintin, Sony Bono, Spiderman, Jack Bauer, Cinderella, and Tony Soprano.

Maybe it sounds like a stretch to some of you, but if you look into this a little more closely, you’ll start to see it. Some of you may have to look a little more closely than others… but it’s well worth the extra effort.

Have a great Tuesday, everyone. 😉

Image by Tom Gauld, via the meme huffer blog.

Read Full Post »