A Leadership Ethics Lesson Courtesy of a Leeson

Although ethical behavior in business is often touted, it can be hard to attain in practice. That's because ethical behavior has to be practiced by every individual, every day. It's not the sort of thing that can be decided upon and implemented en masse. Leaders are often under particular pressure to be practical over ethical. The reasoning is often because hard decisions require frequent compromise, and ethics often come across as black-and-white perspectives that don't match the reality facing a decision-maker.

A Virtue You Can't Afford to Ignore

However, ignoring ethics can be a dangerous path. Nick Leeson provides a very vivid example of this. His name is well known in financial circles as the man who single-handedly put the Singapore financial markets into a panic and brought down one of Britain's most famous banks.

Leeson got his start early in banking as a clerk in 1985. At first, Leeson seemed to be a success. However, he began quickly playing outside the rules, and because he was bringing in big profits, Barings Bank ignored the risks.

By 1992, trades started going bad. Leeson packed the losses into a technical account originally designed as a dummy account for accounting errors. No one noticed, so he continued on his unethical path of hiding losses repeatedly. The tipping point came in January 1995 when Leeson placed a big trade between the Singapore and Japanese markets. Not expecting a major earthquake in Japan to throw both markets into a tailspin, Leeson realized the gig was up and went into hiding. Barings Bank folded a few weeks later owing ?827 million in losses, and eventually, Leeson went to prison.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

Interestingly, following good ethics not only avoids situations like Leeson's, but it also works as a defense for a business leader. The adage, "actions speak louder than words" is true for ethics as well. Ethical behavior not only keeps employees behaving on the right side of the law, but it also gives managers and leaders incentive to work for more than just the bottom line. Ethics can incorporate greater goodwill for the community a business operates in, safety protection of employees and customers, market protection from unscrupulous players, and far better interaction with the government and regulators. All of which, in turn, help a company see a larger bottom line.

No question, the ethical path isn't always the easiest. However, leaders of companies and organizations need to remember that good ethics involve more than just an individual perspective; by the very nature of their role, top managers affect all of the organization and set an example for staff to follow and the community to model after. Good ethics can be far more than just a set of rules; it can be a powerful marketing/communication tool positively setting a business apart in the market from competitors and creating the long-term foundation for customer retention.

AR, VR, and Other Ways to Use Technology in a Print Campaign

From the affordable headsets that take users into another setting or world via virtual reality to games like Pok?mon Go and even children's coloring pages, technology is impacting the way we live and seek out entertainment. It may seem like virtual or augmented reality is firmly fixed in the digital world (and therefore of no interest to those who create and use printed pieces), but a surprising amount of technology can be incorporated into printed media.

Augmented Reality and Printing

Augmented reality technology provides an overly to the "real world" you can see via your phone's camera, adding digital elements to the space around you. Pok?mon GO is the best recent example of AR in action, and retailers like IKEA also use it to allow you to see what furniture pieces would look like in your own home.

Adding AR elements to your printed pieces gives people a whole new way to interact with your postcards, business cards, catalogs, and more. It also adds an element of fun and makes it more likely that the recipient of the piece will want to hang onto it and even show it off.

While not everyone will "get" AR right away, recent hits like Pok?mon Go show that AR can be accepted by a wide group of ages and demographics. From including an interactive game in your materials (as Toys R Us did in a recent catalog) to using a playful mascot or other element, creative use of AR can help your printed piece make a splash in the real world.

QR Codes

Those little square barcodes are an ideal match for printed pieces and can bring visitors to your site. Since QR codes are designed to be read with a smartphone, you give the person holding your printed material the ability to visit your site in an instant. Use a QR code on your printed piece to link to a special offer, unlock content, or even provide additional information. QR codes are small and won't take up much space on your printed materials, and incorporating one allows your prospects and recipients to interact with your business in a whole new way.

QR Codes and Virtual Reality

Immerse your reader in your printed materials by providing a QR code that links the viewer to a virtual reality experience or unlocks additional content. If you already have a VR showroom, game, or content, then making it easy for users to access it by simply scanning a QR code ensures you get plenty of extra traffic, without taking up space on your materials.

Variable Data Printing

This type of technology won't change the look of your printed pieces, but it can help personalize the materials you create. Your customer won't notice anything special about the printing, but they will think you're really in tune with what they want and need.

The ability to create on-demand pieces that match your customer's preferences boosts the likelihood that your offer will resonate with them. Used primarily in direct mail, but adaptable to other pieces, variable data printing allows you to target the elements used in a specific piece to the intended recipient. This technology is particularly useful for targeted marketing campaigns with a personal touch.

Adding a dash of high tech to your printed materials gives you additional ways to connect with customers and helps you get the most from your printing investment. Your pieces are also more likely to start a conversation, grab attention, and even be saved by the recipient, boosting their long-term value and ensuring your brand is remembered when your prospect needs something.

What You Need to Know About Color in Design

In a recent study conducted by KissMetrics.com, visual appearance and color ranked more important to consumers than just about everything else when viewing marketing materials. In fact, ninety-three percent of people who responded to the survey said that visual appearance (which color is a part of) was the most important factor they used when making a purchasing decision. Only six percent said texture, while on percent placed a heavy value on sound and smell.

Color and Marketing: Breaking it Down

Along these same lines, an incredible eighty-five percent of consumers said that color was THE primary reason why they chose to buy a particular product or service. It goes without saying that the right color design is the perfect place to start with your marketing materials.

In terms of your long-term success, one of the most valuable resources that you have available to you is and will always be your brand. It's something that lives on long after a purchase is made. It's the narrative and the set of strong, relatable values that are at the heart of your business. Additional studies have shown that the careful use of color can increase brand recognition by up to eighty percent, which, in turn, goes a long way towards increasing consumer confidence at the same time.

But What Do Colors Mean?

However, none of this is to say that your marketing materials should be jam-packed with as many colors as possible. Quite the contrary, in fact. Different colors have all been known to affect people on an emotional and psychological level in a variety of ways. Consider the following:

• Yellow is often associated with optimism and youthful enthusiasm. This is why it's often used to grab the attention of people like window shoppers.


• Red is almost always associated with a sense of energy and excitement. In fact, red is a great way to create a sense of urgency in your readers (and when used right can even increase their heart rate, too!)


• Black is considered to be very powerful and very sleek, which is why it is usually used to market luxury products.


• Green is normally associated with wealth - which makes perfect sense because money is green. It also happens to be the easiest color for the human eyes to process, which is why green is often used to underline important information in marketing copy.

To that end, it's important to use different colors depending on exactly what it is you're trying to accomplish. Are you trying to highlight an upcoming clearance sale and want to create a sense of urgency? Make sure those fliers and posters have as much red on them as possible. Are you trying to attract the attention of a more sophisticated level of clientele, or do you want to positively influence the overall impression that people get when they see your products? Try using as much black as you can.

Color is a powerful tool when used correctly, but it's important to remember that it is just one of many. But, provided your use of color matches up with both your audience and your long-term objectives, you'll find that it can be a terrific way to put your campaigns over the top and start generating the types of results you deserve.

How to Live Your Passion in Any Profession

We all want to live a purposeful life. Some individuals are lucky enough to be in a professional role that allows them to live out their passion through their profession. Even if you aren't able to make money while at the same time living your passion, you can still integrate your passion in your current profession. After all, "Often finding meaning in life is not about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in new ways," says author Rachel Naomi Remen. More on this below:

Understand You Don't Have to Change Careers:

No matter what your current profession might be, you have the propensity to make a difference and live your passion. This means, living your passion doesn't have to include a career move. Not everyone can get a job that embodies their passion. That's why it's good to "bloom where you're planted" so to speak. Whatever your profession, find ways to live your passion within it. The following are a few ways to do that:

Treat People Like They Matter:

To live a life of purpose, you should treat those around you like they matter. For example, a cafeteria worker might feel her job doesn't matter. Yet, what if while doing her job, she gives kids the only kind words and the most genuine smile they will get each day? Doesn't that make her job of serving food more purposeful? Another example could include a handyman that takes the time to talk to the widow whose house he is repairing. It might not seem like much to the man, but to the lonely widow who was yearning for company, it can make a great difference. In the service industry, each customer served is another opportunity to make a difference.

Volunteer Your Time To Causes You Believe In:

If your nine to five job isn't world-changing, that doesn't mean you can't still make a difference and live out your passion. Find organizations that are addressing the areas you feel need attention. Join their cause through volunteering your time. If possible, you can find ways to combine your day job with your volunteer efforts. For example, let's say you work in an office and you want to give back to kids who have cancer. Ask your co-workers to make donations along with you. Organize a visit to a local hospital and take gifts to the kids. Make baked goods, sell them to your co-workers, and then give the proceeds to the organization. You could also take part in a run that benefits the cause and ask your co-workers to join in. The main thing to remember is you don't have to keep your passion and your profession separate. In fact, many businesses are more than willing to give back to worthy organizations. It's good PR, and they can write it off on their taxes.

Don't Give Up:

Above all else, to live a life of passion and purpose, you can't give up. Even if things haven't worked out exactly as you would have planned, you can still live a life that changes the world. Of course, this doesn't mean you have to remain in the same career, but you shouldn't feel the only way to live a life of passion is to change your profession.

Avoid These Common Print Marketing Mistakes for Visually Compelling Content

Compelling images are the perfect way to attract attention and create an emotional connection with your customers and prospects. Avoid these common mistakes as you design newer and richer content moving forward.

Mistake #1: You Didn't Keep It Simple

Why do you think audiences have gravitated towards visual print marketing content over the last few years? If you thought "because people are bombarded with information these days from nearly every angle," you'd be right! From the moment people wake up in the morning, their smartphones are sending them emails and push notifications. They're wading through dozens of blog posts. They're reading massive reports at work all day long. Information is everywhere, and it can often feel overwhelming.

Solution: Make your print marketing visually impactful, and easy to read and interpret.

Visual print marketing is an excellent way to relieve people from these stresses - or at least; it's supposed to be. It can allow you to take your message and wrap it up in a way that is easy to understand and a refreshing change of pace from everything else.

Think about it in terms of infographics. Infographics are an incredibly popular form of visual content because they take complicated ideas and break them down to just what you need to know and nothing more. Apply this same concept to your print marketing designs.

Mistake #2: You Failed to Account For Light

When you're leaning so heavily on your visuals, you MUST account for the number one factor that can destroy the feeling you were going for - light.

How that gorgeous new flyer or banner you're creating looks on a computer screen and how it looks in a store window in your neighborhood can be very, very different depending on the lighting quality of the area, the direction of the sun, and more.

Solution: Ask yourself how light will affect every decision you make, from the richness of the colors you're choosing to the specific type of paper (and finish) you'll be using.

Accounting for these simple mistakes will put you ahead of the game and on your way to stunning and compelling visual print marketing.

Make Customer Loyalty a Bigger Part of Your Marketing Efforts

In the early days of your business, the goal of your marketing program was essentially a singular one: you tried to get your product or service in front of as many eyes as you possibly could. Once you've established yourself, however, it's time to switch gears a little. According to most studies, it's between five and twenty-five times more expensive to gain a new customer than it is to keep one of your existing ones. This means that if you're not already making customer loyalty a significant part of your marketing efforts, it's about time to get going on it.

What a Difference Customer Loyalty Makes

According to a study conducted in 2014, seventy-three percent of consumers said that loyalty programs should be the way that brands show loyalty to their existing customers. Regardless of which way you choose to look at it, even instituting a modest customer loyalty program can have significant benefits across your entire organization. It can help make your marketing more appealing to new customers, as well as lead to higher levels of engagement with existing ones. That engagement breeds retention, which research suggests creates a situation where your average customer will be up to five times more likely to only buy from you in the future.

Also, remember that increasing customer retention (which these types of loyalty programs are great at doing) by just five percent can boost your profits anywhere from twenty-five to ninety-five percent, according to Bain & Co. Let that sink in for a second.

Building a Customer Loyalty Program

When you begin to institute a customer loyalty program for your business, the biggest mistake you should avoid is one of perspective. Remember that what you're trying to do is show loyalty to your customers, period. Far too many businesses make the mistake of assuming that this is a way for customers to show loyalty to a brand, which leads to the type of ill-advised thinking that generates bad customer service and only ends up with a program few people want to take advantage of.

Assuming that you're "giving your customer the opportunity" to show loyalty to your business is how you end up in a situation where forty-three percent of consumers say that rewards programs require too much spending to reach the next level, or where points expire before they can be used, or where points are worthless because of all the restrictions they come with. Build a program that lets you say an emotional "thank you" to the people who got you where you are, NOT the other way around.

If you are going to make customer loyalty a bigger part of your marketing efforts, however, always remember the old saying that "variety is the spice of life." In a survey conducted by Collinson Latitude, sixty-three percent of respondents said that having a wide range of rewards and offers was the single most important aspect that decided whether or not they would sign up for a loyalty program. So the occasional coupon isn't necessarily going to cut it (pun absolutely intended).

Again, making customer loyalty a bigger part of your marketing efforts is, and will always be, about giving back to the people who helped build your brand. If you make every decision with this one simple perspective in mind, all of the other benefits - from increasing the value of each customer to engagement and long-term loyalty - will happen as a happy byproduct.

Don't Fear Your Marketing Competitors. Learn From Them

Regardless of the products you're trying to market, the audience you're trying to cater to, or the industry you happen to be operating in, all businesses face competition. This is just a fact of life. But it's important to realize that a competitor isn't just another company that is trying to go after the same pool of customers that you are. Competitors are invaluable learning opportunities that are just waiting to be taken advantage of, provided you approach things from the right angle.

Learn About Your Audience

One of the most important lessons that you can learn by taking a closer look at your marketing competitors has nothing to do with your competition itself and everything to do with the shared audience you're both going after. For the sake of argument, let's say that your number one competitor offers products or services that are very similar to yours.

How is your competition marketing those products and services to that audience? What types of print materials are they designing? What tone do they use when speaking to them directly? What prices do they charge, and why do they feel like the market can sustain that? What values do they choose to single in on when representing their brand?

All of these choices, along with the public reaction to them, can tell you a great deal about what your audience is looking for. Marketing is all about making a connection, and if you can pick up something through observation that you can adapt and make your own to strengthen that connection, you should absolutely take that opportunity.

Learn About the Competitors Themselves

The second lesson you can learn by taking a closer look at your marketing competitors comes down to how they choose to run a business that is very similar to yours in many ways. This goes beyond just the products or services they provide. Look at how they choose to distribute and deliver those products. Look at the steps they take to enhance customer value or build loyalty. Have they recently instituted a rewards program with great success? If you were thinking about doing one yourself, congratulations, someone else just did your trial run for you.

Perhaps the most important thing you should be watching out for when it comes to your marketing competitors is how they react when they make a mistake. These days, everything is essentially an extension of your marketing arm - from the print collateral you're putting out into the world to customer service interactions on a site like Facebook. Everything is taking place in the public space, which means that other customers (and you and your associates) can all see everything go down in real-time.

Did your biggest competitor have a particularly nasty public interaction with a customer? What factors caused it to occur in the first place? How did the customer react? How did the business react? What did the rest of the audience have to say at the end of the day? Remember that mistakes are only a bad thing if you choose not to learn from them. If you can get someone else to make a mistake and arrive at the same lesson, you come out all the better for it.

Competition in the world of business (and especially regarding marketing) isn't going away anytime soon. However, it's not something you should let get you down. Instead, look at it for what it is: an incredible ongoing education into your market, your industry, and even your own business that someone else is paying for.