A Zenecist™ (my word) is someone who is “a light in the moment.” It’s also a soon-to-be retail and lifestyle hub, now in a soft opening as we ideate and source products.
My ‘second career’ after running a brand marketing and design agency the last 34 years, during the warmer months I’m a gardener locally on a part-time basis. I enjoy the work and offer essential gardening services from planning to planting to weeding, soil make-up/pH, and maintenance. I will have an exciting new offering in the kitchen-to-table table gardening space coming in early Fall. This system features a fully self-contained kitchen- or pantry-ready growing cabinet, now the rage in Europe.
Currently ZENECIST has two year-round components.
ZENECIST™ | High-Level. Laid-Back. Lifestyle.™ is an online retail business now under construction. Initially we’ll be testing products and different categories on an eBay store. As I learn, I’ll be building out the e-Comm module of this site, with a planned Grand Opening of ZENECIST™ online shopping scheduled for late 2024.
My goal with ZENECIST is to do some good, live an active lifestyle, and have some fun. Your insight, comments, and help are welcome as ZENECIST builds out. Add a comment to a blog post or go here.
Cheers! T –
PS: I also run my current Apple Music playlists in the sidebar: Spring, Summer, Fall & Winter (not an affiliate) for your perusal and amusement, and mine too.
I almost took the ZENECIST™ brand into the land of off-brand. It’s all been based upon a long-dwelled upon idea for an apparatus that, in fact, has no relation to the Zenecist brand spirit nor those whom I hope to engage.
Good grief. It’s Brand 101. Align the brand across all touch points and elements. Designing a product just because you can doesn’t mean it fits the real goals of a brand and its stakeholders: to create delight and engagement; and to help fans internalize its relevance to their personal and/or professional brands.
To make a brand part of their own.
Frankly, designing a product was about the simple fun of creating something because that’s what I do. Or that’s what I did with my erstwhile marketing and design agency.
My goal here is to sell a product I can pull from inventory, ship, and scale. And, while thinking back at a conversation I had the other day with my best friend Bobby, and how he laughed when he heard I was back at creating something again (“You can’t help yourself can you?”) it struck me: I should stay with what I know. That’s how to create and position a brand. So it’s back into the vest pocket for that idea.
In its stead I’m focusing on creating a minimum viable brand (MVB), as part of the lean startup process. On aligning its tactical approach based upon strategic goals.
So instead of creating products I’m sourcing them. I have 3 samples are coming in for evaluation already. And the product category is ridiculously narrow, so much so that ZENECIST may be the only one in the space. And way out front by the time others discover its value.
My single criteria: that I’d wear or use products myself in the spirit of high-level, laid-back lifestyle. That’s what this is. It’s my current state of being. I tell you, for a man of age, it’s a delightful gift.
Oh, and I’d like products to be Made it in America. For every reason.
Seeing What I See Now
As with all gardens, the key is to grow what you love.
I realize just how lucky I am to have the luxury not to do a full-court press 24/7 to get revenue flowing as I did at age 36 when I started Thomas Marketing Services. And while it might seem to go against semi-retired guy principles, I’m getting a part-time out-of-home job at an amazing garden center these next months.
Fact is I enjoy working; and really enjoy outdoors and gardening. And having drained my IRA to keep us in home and college tuitions back in my health challenge decade, I can use the additional discretionary income (I have Finland in my sights).
Too, I simply must get from behind my standing desk and out of the house to intact with real people, sans the baggage and button-pushing inherent in day-to-day generational living. You see, our 26-and 31-year old sons live here in our open post and beam log home in the deep burb’s of Boston (a third lives in Manhattan and calls almost daily); and I can validate what’s said about the relationship Italian mothers have with their Italian sons. I’m Finnish. You get the picture.
I’ve decided too I enjoy writing, and that my bonehead startup goofs and recoveries may amuse some starting their own ventures. If nothing else, I hope it centers people for a moment, that it quiets their minds so they can see their business from a slightly different perspective. And with quiet focus.
Of course these thoughts are not new. I’m just getting around to putting them into practice. It’s the laid back kind of guy I am today; and frankly, is something new in my charmed life. Though I suspect it comes largely from the peace in inherent in a business not carrying dept.
But high-level? That’s something about the brand only you can decide. But that’s the goal; it’s how I’d like to think of you. Because a brand is a 2-way street. And I hope we’re both be satisfied.
For now, and without paying customers, so far so good. I’d hope you’d tell me otherwise.
As the primary brand stakeholder the Zenecist™ logo reflects my sensibilities based upon my contention at a brand’s core The Difference is You.™
(V2 Feb 2024) We’re pleased to present the revised Logo Mark Design for ZENECIST, Tom Lanen’s new e-commerce adventure in lifestyle products.
The first element of a new design system, it uses Tom’s Zen Sailboat™ logomark design, which had also been a part of his erstwhile brand marketing firm’s logo, but which he has long considered central to his personal karmic brand. In fact, for his 70th birthday he had the Zen Sailboat made into first body art on his arm (3cm diameter), explaining he’s “either a Christian-Buddhist, a Buddhist-Christian or none/all of the above.”
A tattoo on others, but get one and it’s ‘body art’–this is mine.
The design mark features Futura, a legacy font Tom loves because of its crisp and unfettered letterform, and a complementary purple and gray palette reminiscent of the first logo he created for Thomas Marketing Services 34 years ago.
The mark is being used on all ZENECIST online properties, products and merchandising. The design can also incorporate the revised ZENECIST tag line: High-Level. Laid-Back. Lifestyle.™
2.9.2024: I’ve truncated the ZENECIST™ tag line, and have deleted the “Low-Keyed.” phrase feeling it was an unnecessary element that adds no value to the brand’s strategic position, and probably dilutes its intent. What’s more, it reduced the visibility of the communication within the geometry, thus compromising its function, which is a defining requirement of design.
The “zen sailboat” logo mark design element is also a little smaller, though we can use the uncluttered logo mark at any size. Less is more for this minimalist brand owner; I revel in the elegance of simplicity.
This is all part of the early stage formation of a brand. Sometimes you just have to see a design or core element within its environment to fully understand its meaning and impact. It requires “think time.”
To me, this is cleaner. Given a brand is a direct reflection of its owners, I am satisfied. Done.
I’ve had a productive, albeit challenging and single-minded week creating and fielding a new multi-faceted & branded Everyday Deals promotion initiative for client New England Hydroponics (a Hydrobuilder Holdings unit). Everything in the visual, along with website product posting, was created in 6 business days – moving at the speed of retail!
Nothing like the adrenaline of creating a new branded promotion! (Click the image to expand your view of the elements.)
Up first was the creation of the branded promotional logo, a “Violator” BOOM burst featuring the primary green in the brand design palette as the primary brand “touch point.”
The strategy was to use it as a point-of-sale tactic, on labels & Buyer’s Guides for individual products, maintaining the singular DEAL singular focus for a singular customer shopping that moment; and tucking in the stylistic lower case ‘everyday’ into the larger font construction to hold/work together as a unified brand design element.
Then, finding letterform on the plural DEALS didn’t work with the same compact footprint of the original violator BOOM, and wanting to expand the concept to attach an emotion to a transactional concept, I went back a standing strategic brand design tactic, the sunburst and its positive feeling, to create some branded drama and expand the focus to the overall portfolio of products in the category.
I executed Point-Of Sale signage in two sizes, Social Media and website imagery, both the primary & category pages, to this branded design strategy. Our plan is to more fully roll out the promotion across the media/web and in-store touch points.
