Most of the time branding comes down to paying attention to the littlest details and putting them into the littlest things – like your voice mail message, fax cover sheet and even your automated out of office email reply.

Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing gets this.

In true Andy fashion, here’s his vacation reply that I received recently. Instead of the typical fact based message this made me stop, laugh and think of Andy’s brand. It’s always the little stuff!

Without Andy’s permission (he’s camping somewhere) – I share it with you. Hope he’s ok with that, if asked just tell him you sent him an email and this is the response you got.

I’m off on vacation from Aug. 13-24.
No, really, I am. For real.

I’ll be camping somewhere, with minimal access to phone and email. If it’s an emergency or urgent new business, please send an email and I’ll call you from a Starbucks.

Actually, they recently installed a Starbucks in the trunk of my car, because having a store every 80 yards just wasn’t enough.

Other options:
1. Take a vacation too.
2. Call my office #. It forwards to my cell. I’ll check messages on occasion.
3. Order a shipment from http://www.corkysbbq.com/
4. Procrastinate by writing a silly and long out of office message.
5. Find me a new assistant, hire them, then have them call me. (Seriously, I’m hiring a new team, so send resumes.)
6. Read the funniest thing ever written: http://www.candyboots.com/wwcards.html
7. Buy this album: http://www.amazon.com/Fillmore-East-Frank-Zappa-Mothers/dp/B0000009S9/

Cheers,

Andy