Friday, April 20, 2012
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Friday, April 6, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Friday, March 23, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
West Bank Sports Project - A ministry opportunity
Dear
Friends and Family;
Greetings
from Athens, WV! We trust this letter finds you well and looking forward to
warmer Spring weather which should be right around the corner. The reason for writing this letter is to
inform you of an exciting opportunity Brandon and myself have this summer.
I was approached back in October
by Mike White, the Southern WV Director of FCA to help run some soccer clinics
for players and coaches in the West Bank for the West Bank Sports Project. Mike takes a team of coaches each year to
minister and work with the young children in a variety of sports. This will be the 12th year Mike
has taken a group of coaches to the West Bank.
Soccer is by far the most popular sport in Israel, and because of my
knowledge and experience in organizing and coaching in the camp/clinic setting,
the prospect was very attractive and after much prayer, I agreed to
participate. Brandon has never been on a
mission’s trip and Tina and I felt this was a tremendous opportunity for
Brandon to use the abilities he has been given to serve The Lord. Again, after much prayer, we all agreed that
this represented a fantastic opportunity to serve using the gifts and abilities
given to us.
We leave
on June 6th and will be there for 2 weeks. We will run camps in Bethlehem and Nablus in
the West Bank (Palestine) of Israel. Coach
White is anticipating approximately 500 children to participate in the
basketball, swimming, volleyball, and soccer camps. In years past FCA soccer camps have had
around 150 children the coaches have worked with. We will interact with various faiths and have
opportunities to witness to the children and each camp has an award ceremony in
which the gospel is clearly presented to all those in attendance.
We are anticipating God’s hand to
go before us and prepare the way. Not only are Brandon and I going to be
sharing God’s Word this summer, but Austen is going with his Inter -Varsity
Christian Fellowship group at WVU to Kingston, Jamaica’s college campus to do
the same during his spring break. The total cost for our trip is around $3,400
each. We have been given some help through
FCA and our Church, and are in the process of organizing some local soccer
clinics to raise support. However, we are still in much need of help as we look
to funds this trip. The team will be
taking around 10 thousand dollars worth of give-a-ways for the children who
come to camp including FCA Sports New Testament Bibles.
We would
ask that you prayerfully consider helping us financially. Any contribution is tax deductable. Checks
can be made payable to FCA and mailed to PO Box 840, Beckley, WV 25802 Please
write Barrett’s West Bank project in memo line. Brandon and I are asking that
you join us in prayer for the children of the West Bank who we will come into
contact with. Also, we ask you would pray for us as we prepare our hearts for
this mission trip.
If you
have any questions you can contact me @ 304-887-0097, or Mike White @ 304-253-2858.
God
Bless you and thank you for considering helping us help the kids in the West
Bank.
Steve
Barrett and Brandon Barrett
Can We Live to This Standard?
Psalm 15
A Psalm of David
Who may worship in Your sanctuary, LORD?
Who may enter your presence on Your holy hill?
A Psalm of David
Who may worship in Your sanctuary, LORD?
Who may enter your presence on Your holy hill?
- Those who lead blameless lives and do what is right, speaking the truth with sincere hearts.
- Those who refuse to slander others or harm their neighbors or speak evil of their friends.
- Those who despise persistent sinners, and honor the faithful followers of the LORD and keep their promises even when it hurts.
- Those who do not charge interest on the money they lend, and refuse to accept bribes to testify against the innocent.
I want to stand firm forever, its about integrity and I hope I can show integrity in all I do and say.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Brand versus Branding
Brand vs. Branding: When Less is More
When it comes to branding, the larger danger is spending too much, rather than spending too little.
It's a myth that having lots of brands and plenty of branding is good for business. After a certain point, both brands and branding cease to be useful–and, in fact, can be positively toxic.
To understand why, though, it's first necessary to differentiate between "brand" and "branding." You'll see why in a minute.
The Meaning of Brand
A brand is the set of emotions that people associate with a corporate name or a product name. Brand is almost entirely the result of the customers' experience with a product or series of products.
If a company's products are mostly excellent, the brand becomes a major asset. For example, people are willing to forgive Apple for the occasional turkey because the company has a history of high-quality products.
However, if a company's products are mostly lousy, the brand rapidly becomes a liability. For example, the Packard Bell PC brand self-destructed because the products gained a deserved reputation for low quality.
Most often a company's products are more or less average–and in this case, the brand is pretty meaningless. Chances are the company is competing on price and the brand simply isn't much of a factor in buying decision.
Branding Isn't Brand
Branding, by contrast, consists of marketing products and activities that attempt to create, reinforce, or change those emotions. These include new product names, logo designs, tag lines, brand-oriented advertising (as opposed to product ads), brand placement (like naming a stadium), and so forth.
If your products suck, however, any money spent on branding is only going to remind people how much your products suck.
Once again, Packard Bell is an example of this. Right before they went out of business, they spend a huge amount of money touting the "high quality" of their products. It didn't work because buyers knew differently–from their own experiences and from the all-powerful word of mouth.
If your products are average, money spent on branding won't make things worse, but it probably won't make things better either. If people simply don't feel an emotion, there's really very little you can do to create one.
If you're willing to spend a huge amount of money–and we're talking many millions of dollars here–you might be able to create some buzz around a mediocre product. But it's a big gamble and most of the time such efforts fail.
So spending money on branding only makes sense if your company falls into the first category–that is, if you've got excellent products and you want to reinforce those positive emotions.
Apple, for example, expends plenty of effort creating a coherent brand image and on product advertising, because these activities make it easier to spread the positive buzz. However, those activities would either fall flat or be detrimental if Apple's products weren't capable of creating those positive emotions in the first place.
Common Branding Error
What happens in many companies is that people start focusing on branding (the activities) rather than the brand. When demand drops or competitive products grow market share, many executives jump to the incorrect conclusion that the problem can be solved with more vigorous branding.
Before the bailout, General Motors used to be a perfect example. By the 1980s, GM's products had become substandard, especially compared with the Japanese brands. Rather than fixing that fundamental and all-important problem, though, GM spawned more brands.
Eventually GM had more than a dozen different global brands, all of which were either mediocre or worse: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, GMC, GM Daewoo, Holden, Hummer, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, Vauxhall and Wuling.
While this scheme no doubt kept thousands of brand marketers employed, it continually kept the company focused away from its only real business issues, which were building great products and selling them at a reasonable price.
In other words, GM's focus on branding kept the company from focusing on the brand itself–the emotions that people feel about the products.
Simplify, Simplify, Simplify
Another problem with spending lots of money on branding is that it encourages more complexity. Here's another example: Research In Motion, the guys who make the Blackberry.
Here's a partial list of RIM's product brands: Electron, Pearl, Pearl Flip, 88xx, Curve, Bold Storm, Tour, Style, Torch, and Bold Touch. Say what?
To make matters worse, most of these product brands have (or had) multiple numbered product versions. The "Bold" for example, comes in the 9000, 9650, 9700 and the 9790 varieties.
Compare that with Apple's iPhone — one product name, with a version number that's pretty easy to understand. While Apple's other product lines are a bit more complex, they're absurdly simple compared with RIM's Byzantine
nomenclature.
Returning to GM, it's no coincidence that the company returned to profitability after it shed most of its brands and began to focus on the quality and originality of its products rather than on its baroque branding schemes. Today, after a significant restructuring, GM has only seven global brands, and only four in the U.S.: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, and GMC.
In my experience, the greatest danger inside most companies, when it comes to sales and marketing, is spending too much on branding. In almost every case, it's smarter to focus instead on the brand itself: specifically, on the product and the customer's experience buying and using it.
If your products aren't up to snuff, you should flat-line your branding budget until the product problems are fixed. And even when your products are top-notch, you should spend money sparingly.
Less truly is more.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
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