Let’s go to dinner. My treat. You’ll love the restaurant and get something unexpected to take home with you.

Our maître ‘d is gracious and welcoming. We immediately feel like honoured guests as he seats us at a softly lit table with a pristine white tablecloth and sparkling silverware.

The room is filled with quiet conversation and easy laughter that weaves its way through the mellow sound of the gleaming baby grand piano in the corner. We settle in and ready ourselves for what’s to come.

The chef has prepared our menu.

Salad
The meal begins with pear and walnut salad, chilled to perfection. Artisan-made dishes complement the salad perfectly, and the server delivers it with such subtlety it seems as if the food has materialized out of thin air. We’re hungry, but eat slowly, savouring each bite and soaking in the delicious atmosphere of the place.

There’s just enough of a pause between courses.

Soup
Next is roasted red pepper soup garnished with fresh oregano and parsley. The aroma and texture are heavenly. The soup is accompanied by a small platter with fresh rosemary bread, roasted garlic, and olive oil lightly flavoured with basil pesto for dipping. We’re each presented with side plates and small, beautifully crafted knives to spread the garlic.

Once we’ve caused the soup and contents of platter to disappear, we wait for the next course, contemplating our Sauvignon Blanc as it catches the light through hand blown glasses. The server hasn’t changed the wine, so we anticipate something fresh and flavourful.

We are not disappointed.

Main course
Our now-beloved server delivers unto us lemon risotto with fiddleheads and asparagus, and grilled halibut garnished with lemon and a spring of rosemary. The vegetables taste fresh-picked, and the fish likely came from the wharf just a few hours ago. We’re rendered nearly speechless, except to ruminate on the nature of Nirvana and how sad it is the food probably isn’t as good as it is here.

We take a break before moving on to dessert, enjoying each other’s company and the sense of ease the proprietors have created for their guests. There’s original art on the walls, the lighting is modern but subtle, the chairs are comfortable, and the round table is the perfect size for intimate conversation as well as leisurely dining.

And dessert
We decline ice wine in favour of black tea. Almond cake, topped with delicate slivers of dark chocolate, arrives soon after. We stretch out the final course as long as we can, delaying the inevitable end of our evening.

*  *  *

Still with me? Give your head a shake—we’re about to make a small change to our feast.

Let’s serve our magnificent meal in a cafeteria.

Change the context, change the story
We’re greeted by the harsh blue zombie-like tinge and incessant hum of fluorescent tube lighting. That sound is mercifully dampened by the dull roar of the ventilation system. The walls are concrete, painted some headache-inducing combination of beige and faded red. There’s canned music piped in from the ceiling—tinny instrumental covers of hits from the 1980′s and ’90′s.

We pick up our food from a serving line. No courses—get it all at once or get lost. The dishes, cutlery and soup bowls are plastic, and the wine comes in a styrofoam cup.

The ambience doesn’t exactly jive with the food, does it.

Let’s try another variation: a Country & Western bar, complete with live band.

It’s the same meal. Does it still feel like lovingly prepared gourmet fare? You might decide it’s exactly the same and try to argue the setting doesn’t matter. But how does it feel? And what kind of price tag would you assign to each experience?

Granted, the above shift is a pretty extreme, but you get the point. And it leads to an important question: what “story” do you tell when you show your work to the world?

Context tells your story
Putting your work in the right context has a powerful impact on the way your audience perceives it. Your story is crafted from more than just what you create. It’s how you introduce yourself and your work to your customers—your words, the design of your website, pricing, the venues you choose, even your business card.

No detail is a throwaway.

Your customer may only be able to afford a salad, or she may only want dessert, but if you do it right, she’ll remember you and the care you took to create an experience that made her feel like an important guest rather than just another sale. She may come back wanting another salad—or she might decide she wants a four-course dinner.

Create an unforgettable experience
It’s not about how much money you spend—although at some point most of us have to invest real money in our businesses—it’s about the thought you put into every aspect of your brand and your marketing message. It’s about the story you tell.

Telling a good story isn’t about picking a theme and jamming it down the throats of your audience. There’s a big difference between funky and tacky, or between elegant and done to death. A good story creates context. Context creates atmosphere. Atmosphere seeps into the consciousness of your audience. Just like the ambience in an elegant restaurant, the context you create stays with your customers. They associate that feeling with you.

You don’t have to turn yourself inside out or agonize over every tiny detail. Just ask yourself: does this complement my work and reputation or detract from it?

Your brand is every experience your customer has with you and your business. When you align your marketing message with the quality and spirit of your work, you create an extraordinary brand.

Your turn
What do you think—do you believe context matters? Is the idea of a brand something you care about? Does presentation influence your buying decisions? Is the best way to learn about branding and marketing through your stomach?

Related posts:

1. Selling and the Myth of Everybody
2. A branding case study and a virtual field trip, part 2
3. How intention makes a brand – a quick case study

There were a couple of responses to my call for your most burning questions that point to an important part of marketing and personal branding: you.

The questions were about name recognition, writing a bio, and how to write an About page for your website. Each requires talking about yourself in a way that engages your audience.

Unless you’ve gone through the process a few times, writing a bio or About page for your website can be stupidly intimidating. You’re not sure exactly what you should write. You want to impress people. You want to sound smart and talented and likeable, or smart and talented and edgy, or smart and talented and sophisticated.

Which might be exactly the wrong approach.

Stop trying to impress people and tell it like it is
You know what happens when you try too hard. You trip yourself up almost instantly, wanting to prove yourself worthy. But it’s not about being worthy—it’s about being real.

Your audience wants to know you, the artist. They want to make a connection with the person who makes the work they want to buy.

Start with the facts
You probably have a resume kicking around somewhere with some important dates on it. The training that gives you professional credibility, years of experience, awards and shows. Take the best pieces and put them into a few paragraphs, along with pertinent facts about your work, and possibly where you were born and where you live now. Make it into a story to engage your reader.

You have probably also read countless bios of other artists, as well as prominent people. Go look at a few, both of people you know, and famous artists. For the sake of quick reference, here’s one on master portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh. Yours won’t read exactly like his (because you’re still here, and probably not world famous), but you get the idea.

There’s no perfect formula
Don’t feel like you have to follow a formula, and don’t feel like there’s only one correct way to write your bio. You don’t have to say where you were born or where you grew up. If you do a little research, you will realize there’s no one style or format. Make sure you have the important information in there, then write what feels most authentic to you. If your audience loves hearing about how many kids and pets you have, write about it, as long as you feel comfortable. If not, leave it out.

Who should you be—I, he, she or we?
Some people like to write about themselves in the third person, and sometimes it’s appropriate. That usually happens in a formal document, when a convention has already been established about writing about yourself as “she,” and it usually involves far too much paperwork and a snooty jury of some kind. Normally you will be you (that is, “I”), unless there are more than one of you, in which case you’ll be a “we,” not an “I.” Don’t use the royal “we,” which is a bit pretentious.

(I was trying to make you laugh, not confuse you. Writing about yourself can be stressful. It shouldn’t be, because you’ve been you all your life, but it is. Not taking yourself too seriously can help keep you grounded.)

The point I’m trying to make is you don’t want to get too complicated or too uptight. Talking about yourself in the first person isn’t narcissistic, it’s factual. If you really want to go with third person, and it fits your personal style, do it.

If you want to write in first person and want a bio that can be used for press coverage, write one in third person and put a link to it on your website for just that purpose (tip: reporters love it when you make their jobs easier).

Your About page—should it really be about you?
If your About page is your bio page, then obviously the answer is yes. But if you offer a service, your About page might focus on your audience, and what you can do for them, with a short bio at the end.

How you organize that information depends on how you set up your website. You can have a Services (or Gallery or Portfolio) page, and an About page that contains your bio. Make it as easy and clear for your website visitors as you can. Some creatives who offer services take a “Who We Are” and “What We Do” approach. Dead easy for anyone visiting the site to figure out exactly what’s on the site.

(Writing tip: technically, none of the above capitalized words are proper nouns, so they shouldn’t be capitalized. I’m just pretending they’re officially named pages so you don’t get confused.)

What to do when you’re stuck
This is an exercise I like to suggest when you can’t get out of your own head: write a letter. An old friend, who you haven’t seen in years, asks what you’ve been up to lately. What would you tell her? Write it down, without editing, until you run out of words. Then leave it for a while, even a day or two, then come back and clean it up—without losing your own voice.

If you’re still stuck, do a W5: who, where, when, what, and why. Adapt as needed. That will give you a basic structure and solid starting point. When you flesh it out, remember that your audience, no matter who they are, connect with your work and you, so you don’t want to back away so much that you disappear.

Be present
The work doesn’t sell itself. If it did, you wouldn’t be thinking about writing a bio, or an About page, or working on marketing. You make the work, and directly or indirectly, you—your reputation, your brand—are a critical part of selling it.

Over to you: what trips you up when talking about yourself? How do you approach writing your bio?

Related posts:

1. How to write headlines that grab your audience
2. Online selling – how to figure out your prospects without going crazy
3. Put four Ps in your creative marketing

Last time I sent you on a virtual field trip to analyze a brand. I promised to give you the in-person low-down, so here it is.

Cora’s is a most-of-the-day breakfast restaurant. The logo is a hand-drawn smiling sun. If you go to Cora’s during peak dining time, there are lineups. If you go a half hour before closing on Sunday, it’s still busy. If you go half an hour before closing during the week, there are lots of empty tables, but the covered dish of complimentary fudge near the cash register looks like a pack of grizzly bears went through it.

Cora’s has simple decor. There are a couple of rows of booths and a few rows of plain wooden tables. The kitchen runs most of the length of the space, which is longer than it is wide. The place is spotless. The tables are bussed quickly and efficiently. The walls are decorated with groovy hand-drawn pictures of some of the menu items, which mirrors the style of the menu. The service is fast, the coffee is hot, and the food is pretty darn good.

I can’t say the food  is extraordinary, because I’ve been spoiled by farmers’ market gourmet sausages (meat and spices with no filler) and made-from-scratch Hollandaise sauce. That kind of food comes with a longer wait time and higher price, and Cora’s doesn’t pretend to be a gourmet restaurant. I get the sausages and Hollandaise I expect from a place that charges about $10 to $15 per entree.

One of the things I like best is the food that lands in front of me bears a striking resemblance to the picture on the menu. There’s no bait and switch, what you get is what you expect. In other words, Cora’s keeps her promise.

These two photos, by the way, are used with the gracious permission of Sharon Yeo. Sharon has a great blog called Only Here for the Food. She wrote about her own experience at Cora’s a few weeks ago. I found her blog as I was looking at restaurant reviews while preparing this post. There are more pictures there, including a couple of the restaurant interior. If you like food in general, I highly recommend you take a look at Sharon’s blog. Her photographs alone are worth the visit.

So let’s talk about the brand exercise. Wait—let me back up one step. When I say, “brand,” do you immediately think of something slick and corporate, like Apple Computer or Volkswagen? If that word is a stumbling block, you can replace it with “style” or “business identity” if that helps you think of the exercise in terms of small businesses or solo endeavours. Marketing uber-meister Seth Godin defines a brand as “[Prediction of what to expect] times [emotional power of that expectation].” That definition can be applied to businesses of all shapes and sizes.

Prediction and expectation produced a couple of interesting comments on part one of our virtual field trip. Cora’s website doesn’t quite measure up to the in-person experience. The right elements are there, but the site could use a little polish (this isn’t wildly surprising—there are a whole lot of businesses that stumble when it comes to their websites). The drawings turned a couple of people off, but when you’re in the restaurant itself, they make sense. The atmosphere is something of a cross between an old-fashioned diner and, well, your Aunt Cora’s kitchen. The style of the menu is homemade. The style of the food is homemade—it’s comfort food. Unlike the other breakfast places I’ve visited, Cora’s serves up fresh fruit with most of the dishes. It’s presented well, and you have a sense that the kitchen staff care about it. Those hand-drawn pictures remind you there’s a real person behind the business who loves what she does.

Was it fair to ask you to analyze the brand based solely on the website? Given the criteria-the total experience a customer has with a business, product or service—you might say no. But if you haven’t been to Cora’s in person, your total experience is the website.

Which is exactly what happens to your audience when they visit you online.

Wherever we go, we take our expectations, preconceptions, and personal preferences along for the ride. If you’re of the opinion that branding is for big business and better left for corporate types, this exercise might cause you to reconsider. It’s well worth spending some time thinking about how you introduce yourself to your prospective customers and how you set and meet their expectations.

If you feel overwhelmed by the idea of developing your own brand (or style, or business identity), consider Cora’s. It isn’t the best restaurant on the planet. It’s not trying to be. The goal is to be the best breakfast place in its niche—geographically as well as price-wise. Cora’s serves up great food in a cheerful atmosphere at a reasonable price. She sets herself apart with her personal style and interesting menu items (it’s worth noting the French Canadian cultural influence in the food and graphic design). The brand isn’t slick and corporate. She simply shows you what she does and how she does it, and keeps her promise.

So was that an eye-opener? Has your opinion of Cora’s changed? Did you come up with questions about branding? Are you looking at your own brand with a more objective mindset? What’s your favourite breakfast eatery?

Related posts:

1. A branding case study and a virtual field trip, part 1
2. Selling and the Myth of Everybody
3. How intention makes a brand – a quick case study