Communicating with the American workforce through brand design, marketing and social media.

America is full of brands built for white collar. High-end products and services aimed at upwardly mobile, BMW-driving, latte-sipping, corner-office types and wannabes.

Where are the brands for blue collar America?

In his Blommit entry, Jordan Childs writes: Blue collar is just waiting to be championed. Every year there are fewer plumbers, fewer electricians and enrollment in trade schools is dropping off exponentially. People are not looking at these careers and getting excited about the possibilities any longer. The life of the Blue Collar worker is becoming more and more unattractive.

In actuality, this is completely wrong. You want to know what an honorable day of work is? It’s performing a service that satisfies basic societal needs. We must begin bringing the appeal back to these jobs.
People who put in more than 8 hours every day of difficult, physical labor are the new elite society in our country. More and more MBAs, lawyers and academically trained robots are pouring into the workforce and the thought of getting their hands dirty is enough to send them back for more degrees. Hard work is not something everyone can do — this should be celebrated.

Value brands (Target, Vizio, Wal-Mart, Ikea) are very much in vogue but none of them speak to this blue collar group while ruthlessly excluding the delicate, pencil-pushing white collar worker.

Where is the brand for the American Worker?

The brand that celebrates the life and contributions they offer. A lifestyle brand that is built with the hard worker in mind and one that serves the specialized needs of this group. Grooming products, clothing, shoes, tools, cooking products, catering trucks.

The opportunity is waiting — the American worker is due for another time in the spotlight.

Celebrating blue collar, the High Life way.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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You might not associate symphony music with a working class audience. But the Nashville Symphony believes everyone should enjoy classical music, regardless of background, education level or net worth. The symphony is always looking for ways to introduce its music to a new group of fans to grow its patron base. And it has a powerful new weapon to accomplish that goal: Giancarlo Guerrero.

Giancarlo, the new music director at Nashville Symphony, is not your typical maestro. He’s approachable, funny and refreshingly honest — he admits he first came to enjoy classical music watching Bugs Bunny cartoons. In short, he’s the perfect vehicle to reach a non-traditional, more blue collar audience that might otherwise think classical music is elitist and stuffy.

We had the pleasure of helping the symphony create a marketing campaign to introduce Giancarlo to the community. The challenge was a little tricky — while we wanted to attract new audiences, we also had to retain the symphony’s current base of patrons. And, of course, the most important goal was to sell tickets.

The centerpiece of the campaign was a one-month burst of television advertising designed to get the 2008-2009 ticket-selling season off to a fast start. We shot the spots at area landmarks to demonstrate Giancarlo’s excitement about being part of the Nashville community. And we put him in unexpected situations to create a fun, approachable tone.

Other tactics such as print and online advertising, e-mail blasts and even a rolling billboard complemented the TV.

By all accounts, the campaign was a success. On opening day for ticket sales, single tickets were up 59% and season tickets were up 39% compared to the previous year. Also, first-time buyers were up 16%, indicating that we tapped into the non-traditional audiences we sought.

The point is, when reaching a non-traditional audience — or any audience — your message must engage with them on their terms. A traditional, elitist tone would have further alienated blue collar types from the symphony. But a campaign that shows how classical music can and should be enjoyed by everyone opened the door to grow the symphony’s patron base.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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Most evenings as I walk around my mostly blue collar neighborhood that’s becoming more and more gentrified daily, I’ve noticed something. At 7:00, even 8:00 in the evenings, the morning newspaper is still folded neatly in its plastic wrap lying on the lawn in front of many houses. More than 12 hours later, it’s still not been read. Yet some still get it.

Is it because people just don’t want to open it up to read about new job losses and the tanking economy?

Or is it that they are getting their news elsewhere? Or maybe the newspaper just isn’t news anymore? Sad. I still get my paper and look forward to getting ink on my hands but I’ve got to admit that I’m reading about stuff I already know.

We get our news so many ways — television, radio and all the ways the Internet provides us, on demand, on our schedule. Before I go to bed, my friends on Twitter have already told me what just happened and my home page gives me the details if I want it. My mobile phone gives me the highlights immediately and if it’s personal, someone has already texted me the data.

While I still tend to believe what I read in the newspaper because anyone can disseminate information online without recourse, I can’t help but get caught up in the immediacy of the new media.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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Provide a meaningful brand experience and customers will follow.

Private-label products accounts for 30 percent of unit volumes in food, drug and personal care, reveals research by Dechert-Hampe & Co. marketplace consulting firm. These goods constitute one-fifth of total retail sales — or $50 billion — according to Information Resources, Inc.

A recent survey by Meyers Research says that Americans actually prefer private-label products in many popular categories. The Private Label Manufacturers Association estimates that private-label products are growing at double the rate of manufacturer-branded counterparts.

The key to consistently achieving consumer buy-in seems to require both providing a value-driven product with a meaningful brand experience.

Target has mastered this approach through innovative and appealing product and package design. It has created a number of exclusive product lines that either have proprietary brand names (e.g., At Home, Archer Farms, etc.) or are endorsed by well-known designers (Michael Graves). These offerings all maintain the exclusivity of a house brand while enjoying the appeal of national power-brands.

Building a brand experience goes beyond merely endorsing the retailer. It can help create an exclusive, emotional bond with the consumer that encourages customer loyalty and retention.

To get the most out of your private label program, remember these three ideas:

1. Develop private-label products that deliver an emotional experience for customers.
2. Cultivate customer loyalty and retention for these brands through compelling packaging and emotional advertising.
3. Facilitate control of product and pricing strategy for the retailer by creating “ownable” exclusive house brands.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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White collar, skilled, middle-class job losses increased by more than 120 percent for March 2009 as compared to last year, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS).

In comparison, the number of blue collar job losses increased by 75 percent in the same period. Roles particularly hard hit during the recession include sales managers, lawyers, and positions in advertising, while the number of corporate managers losing positions in March rose by 170 percent — with marketing and construction managers particularly hit.

James Derbyshire, an economist at Cambridge Econometrics, told the Financial Times: “A feature of the current recession is that it is affecting white-collar workers at least as much as, and probably slightly more than, less-skilled workers. By comparison, job losses in the previous two recessions were more confined to lower-skilled occupations.”
While not good news for anyone, it still speaks to a need to keep marketing to blue collar workers. They remain the backbone of our economy.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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What used to be reserved for working class families is now just as prevalent on affluent dinner tables across America. It was a source of embarrassment to use private label products because they delivered a lower quality, unbranded, no-panache message.

Not anymore. And, according to Ad Age, not just because of the economy.

Because private label products are usually cheaper, they always represented a more blue collar image. Many times these products are of equal or greater quality than their branded brethren.

I have created many package designs for private label products, ranging from clothing to motor oil to bird suet.

The proper design message helps send the message that it’s okay to use these products without fear of being called out by the brandanistas.

And, when you consider that the ONLY advertising many of these products will get is what appears on the shelf, doesn’t it make sense to make them speak loudly, clearly and with the right personality you wish to convey? Don’t miss the opportunity to sell your product through the powerful tool of package design.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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We recently did a photo shoot for one of our retail clients in the farm and home supply business. These were lifestyle shots that are to be used for general advertising, collateral and web. The audience was both suburbanites and blue collar.

The shots had to:
• look real, believable
• reflect the customer’s lifestyle
• present the products honestly
• shoot on a budget

To that end, we:
• used real people, not professional models
• collaborated with our client’s art director, who knew the products inside and out
• art directed like there was no tomorrow

Take a look and tell me what you think.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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It’s one thing for your company to say in blog posts and email newsletters that you love your customers. It’s another thing to go out and do the hard work of brand building and demonstrate it face-to-face. Sure, we all say we communicate with our customers often and we’ve got zillions of followers on Twitter, but what does that really mean if we don’t connect personally with them?

Nothing, really.

It’s difficult, time-consuming work to build content that is relevant and useful for customers. There’s a real person on the other end of the computer who actually brings ideas and value to the words in a blog.

So we all know Content Is King.

So much so that this is one job that cannot be replaced by a machine or cleverly written software. It will always take smart people to make the personal connection and deliver meaningful content.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

Follow Habib on Twitter

He was a pitchman for Ace Hardware, Tough Actin’ Tinactin and other blue collar brands. Even though John Madden is a smart guy who had insights into football that nobody else had, he never came off smarter than you. He related to football fans on their own level, which is what a good brand ought to do.

It’s a good lesson for anyone branding products or services to blue collar Americans: be honest, straight-forward and uncluttered.

Most importantly, of course, were his achievements in the broadcast booth. There he established himself with a matter-of-fact, blue collar tone that related easily to thousands of weekend armchair quarterbacks, myself included.

John Madden speaks in simple language we all understand, gets to where he’s going on a bus and looks like many people I know. I’ll miss his personality and approach. But the brand he built will endure.

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

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As the article begins, “if you have a life, not a lifestyle,” Dunkin Donuts speaks with the voice of working Americans. The brand has resurrected itself in the face of stiff competition on the strength of all the average Joes who need their starter fluid to jump-start the day. It’s not fancy and not fussy.

Dunkin’s ad campaign that helped turn the corner extols: “America runs on Dunkin.” The ads showed workers grabbing the company’s coffee before heading to work, sharply contrasting its offering with Starbucks’ painfully hip, coffeehouse ambience.
Score one for the everyman!
Read more

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S. A. Habib is the founder of Locomotion Creative, a brand marketing and design company in Nashville, TN.

Follow Habib on Twitter