Using a company “manifesto” to share how you visibly display purpose and culture to your customers

What happens when you have mad scientists on staff? Just check the manifesto. (The magic is not only in the ink.) Savage’s Bethany Andell continues her visit with Patricia Quinlan, chairman and owner of InkJet Inc.

Bethany:  Welcome to this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their strategies. I’m Bethany Andell, President of Savage Brands, and my guest again today is Patricia Quinlan, Mad Scientist and Chairman and Owner of InkJet.  InkJet is a printing solutions company focused on industrial clients. Welcome back Patricia.

Patricia:  Thanks Bethany, I’m very happy to be here.

Bethany:  Good. I started with mad scientist because I’m very interested in this term and in our last edition we talked about mad scientist showing up internally at the company, we’ve spent a lot of time on your culture, but how do customers see that? Where does that come to life outside of the company?

Patricia:  The number one way that this is transpired externally to our customers is through the Uptime Scientist Manifesto.

Bethany:  Cool, I want one of those. So what is the Uptime Scientist Manifesto?

Patricia:  The Uptime Scientist Manifesto is InkJet’s way of describing our guarantee or our promise to our customers.

Bethany:  Why is uptime so important in your industry?

Patricia:  Uptime is the opposite of downtime. In any manufacturing setting, whether it’s food, electronics, wire and cable, whatever it is, in manufacturing you do not want the factory – you do not want the production line to stop. If the production line stops, you’re losing money or potential money.

Bethany:  So you really take that to heart, that’s part of the huge value you provide. Okay, continue; Uptime Scientist Manifesto, what are some elements of that?

Patricia:  So some of the things that we believe in is that the magic is not always in the machine. So because we’re an ink company and we provide printing solutions that put variable information onto products, there’s more than one component. And some companies in our industry mainly focus on the printer aspect and we focus on more than that. We believe that the ink, the environment, the people and the stakeholders all are equally important in keeping this production line running with a coder online.

Bethany:  And how have customers responded to your Uptime Manifesto?

Patricia:  One of the outcomes of the Uptime Scientist Manifesto is for the customer to articulate back to us in feedback that is simple, reliable and affordable, so that’s the message that we want to overall send to the market. I recently went on some ride-alongs with a sales associate that we’ve placed equipment into with custom ink solutions and I’ve asked the customer what they thought and they said yeah, the equipment’s super easy, I haven’t really had to do anything other than clean the print head every 2 to 3 weeks and it’s very user-friendly. It’s just like an iPhone, it’s touch screen.

Bethany:  So actual results have come from this, which is interesting because as a leader you‘ve been able to connect purpose to mission to values to behaviors. And those behaviors have externalized themselves to deliver results; that just seems like perfection. Thank you for being here and sharing a little bit about the maverick spirit that’s happening at InkJet. That wraps up this edition of Brandonomics, an inside look at top brands and their strategies. I’m Bethany Andell of Savage Brands and we’ll see you next time.