Johnnie Moore is a marketing consultant and facilitator based in London. As well as 20 years of marketing experience he's trained in psychotherapy, NLP and Improv. Find out more at his blog.
Andrew Lark's more than 18 years experience of all facets of marketing, branding, sales and communications spans technology, Internet, telecommunications and consumer sectors. There he has led award-winning programs and teams for brands such as Dell, Sony, SBC, IDSoftware, Nortel, Microsoft and Sun. He is a thought leader and innovator on the convergence of brands, communications and social networking technologies. Find out more at his blog.
Jennifer Rice is a strategist and evangelist for relationship-centric brands. She brings 15 years experience in brand strategy, customer insight and marketing communications, and has worked with companies such as Microsoft, Verizon, Alcatel and Corning. Her current passion is exploring how brands are being impacted by blogs and other social technologies. Her company blog is What's Your Brand Mantra?
John Winsor is the author of Beyond the Brand: Why Listening to the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business and the Founder/CEO of Radar Communications, a consumer-centric consultancy. You can find out more about him at Beyond the Brand.
About this Insider
BrandShift explores key trends in branding such as customer
experiences, market conversations and social technologies. Our goal is to
help executives and brand managers evolve their brands to thrive in the new
customer-driven marketplace.
Last week, when I was on the road I read Seth Godin’s glowing post on Tom Peter’s crazy schedule. Here’s what Tom had to say about his trip:
So I've been consciously working on a new (for me) approach, with at least a smidgeon of success. Either at day's end or dawn's early light, I have a little meditation and self-counseling session on making the day count, rather than devoting the day to eager anticipation of the moment I can cross it off the calendar. Professionally, that first means looking anew and in depth at the forthcoming lecture to be sure that it clearly encompasses (as best I can) an ennobling purpose, challenges participants' minds and engages their souls. (Will it at least aspire to the JFK idea that no speechifier should utter a word unless she "aims to change the world"?) Also professionally, I "work on" my attitude. This may be day 45 and mile 76,000 for me, but for the Client it is D-Day for an Important Event (often their year's #1 event, for God's sake); hence my exhaustion and accompanying short temper must be thrust aside ... and downright cheeriness and spirited engagement must become the invariant orders of the day. Besides, such cheeriness, even if feigned, cheers me up first and foremost! Next, and in a way most important, even though I have little trouble infusing my lecture with meaning, I must thoroughly convince myself that this is a day every hour of which is worth savoring! Hackneyed though it is to write, 25 October 2005 ain't gonna come around again and this 62-year-old is gonna be a day older and closer to checkout time when it's done.
While I think it’s great that Tom has such a good attitude and I admire both Seth and Tom, something struck me as odd. It could have been that I was tired from being on the road, as well. There is, however, an underlying assumption in the post that no matter how tired you are, you can still give the best performance, every time. I disagree.
As an athlete most of my life, I’ve tried several times to push back standards. In the mid 90’s a friend and I went to Africa to set the world record running up Kilimanjaro. We trained for months, running up and down the mountains in Colorado for up to 10 hours at a time. When we got to Kenya, we spent a week on Kilimanjaro acclimatizing and studying the route. Only after all of this preparation were we ready to make an attempt. We waited for the right day and got lucky. We set the record.
That day I recognized that our peak performance was an alchemy of many things some that we could control, like our training, and others we couldn’t, like conditions on the mountain. I certainly would have never deceived myself that I could have pulled off the record on Kilimanjaro after traveling 76,000 miles over 45 days. I would have given a sub par performance.
The ability to have a truly peak performance in business is similar. My company, Radar Communications, has only hurt long-tem relationships with clients when we accept a job knowing that we are too worn out to do the very best for our client, exceeding their expectations. In today’s business you get only one chance to perform at your peak. If you don’t, you will lose a customer.
Likewise, brands have a habit of communicating their ability to always be on. To be there, waiting to give you the very best performance. Most of the time the “peak performance” message is quickly diluted when the customer starts interacting with the brand by such things as calling to place an order and having to wait too long on the phone or by getting a delivery only to find out half of the items are back-ordered with no communications.
The only way to solve this dilemma of promising a peak performance and delivering something less is to practice the art of saying no. It’s hard to do. Yet, I’ve lost too many clients over the years by trying to stretch our capabilities at Radar too far. I hadn’t trained enough.
I’ve learned that by saying no I can create satisfied non-customers. And, I’d rather have satisfied non-customers than dissatisfied customers, any day.
How much more satisfied would Tom’s customers have been if he had said no once or twice and traveled only 33,000 miles?
We’ve heard so much over the last few years about developing your own personal brand, yet so many people are unaware of how their day-to-day actions effect the brands they work for.
A recent experience only highlighted the issue. I was flying to Los Angeles last week, sitting in an isle seat. As the door was closing, a woman got on the plane with three carry-ons, her lunch from McDonalds and magazines under her arm all the while talking loudly on her cell phone.
Instead of hanging up the phone and taking her seat, she tried to throw the magazines and McDonalds’ bag onto her seat while yelling at her assistant on the phone. Not surprisingly, the magazines and the Big Mac ended up on my lap! And, she wasn’t even aware of anything that was happening because she was so focused on her call.
While the woman took her seat, the stewardess had to remind her twice to turn off her phone.
Just when I thought things would mellow out, she turned to me and launched into a diatribe about how she was overworked and underappreciated, while eating her Big Mac and flipping through her magazines.
The only thing I could think about was my loss of respect for the Fortune 500 Company she worked for. The company had just lost a potential customer because of one executive’s unrelated actions.
Whether we like it or not, everything we do reflects on the companies we work for and either attracts repels customers.
Not to my surprise, as the plane landed, my neighbor once again was on the phone yelling at her assistant!
What is really cool is the center section in which stories are ranked in terms of the conversation - based on comments. This is a fantastic idea. Those that are participating in the news, get to set the editorial flow.
Also love the scroll through treatment of the mast area. Idea. Also like how they have moved away from the traditional industry segmentation navigation. And a new, Media 2.0 news section. That's smart.
This is a vastly improved version of an important news site. Anyway, I'll keep looking and sharing views.
Business thinking tends to run in generational cycles. For the last 15 years or so, the fashion in business thinking has focused on the ascendency of The Brand. Instead of being product oriented, modern companies tend to be brand driven. There are precious few companies left that fuse the two orientations -- think Apple, which defines itself entirely by its products and thus gets a brilliant brand in the process.
Brand logic is the bulwark of defending the status quo. Product logic is where the revolution comes.
When it comes to a war between products and brands, products almost always win in the end.
In sprit, I am with Bob. Sadly, just as there will always be successful conmen, there will always be some brands that succeed with rubbish and noble products that fall through want of smart marketing. And, of course, there will always be arguments about what category any brand belongs to. BUT I do think the net is making it harder for the fanciful image making and narcisstic marketing to work.
Great read from GAIN with Ivy Ross over at Matell on brands and innovation. Tackles the issue of how you take a large, existing organization and encourage innovation:
GAIN: And the normal company structure didn’t allow for this type of exploration?
ROSS: I have 450 people who work for me. Everyone is busy all the time - practically 24/7 - just growing our existing brands. No one has time to become truly immersed in the possibilities. Through this project we are trying to create a way of working together that is more of a living system. Take a cow, for example. If you want to get milk out of a cow, you have to give it time to graze. These days, no one has time to graze. No one has time to explore. It's not just about giving people the best equipment and software to work with, it's about feeding their soul, their mind and creating an environment that each of them can grow in.
Thank to Suw Charman for spotting an excellent article by Simon Caulkin in the Guardian: The language of management is devoid of meaning Here's sample, referring to Gate Gourmet, the airline catering firm with a less than wonderful reputation in industrial relations.
Gourmet, as in Gate, is a good example. I mean, I've had airline food that didn't actually taste awful. I've even had airline food that was OK. But gourmet? Come on
Trivial, perhaps. But it matters because the name is an affront to common sense and makes you query the company's good faith, grasp of reality, or both. The uncertainty deepens as you read the company's website's references to 'passion', 'world class' and (full house!) 'our most valuable resources - employees'. When you get to 'We communicate in an open way and promote inspiring teamwork; we treat our colleagues, customers and suppliers with respect and dignity; we pay market competitive salaries and offer adequate social security,' you know you're no longer in the universe inhabited by most people: you are deep in Tlön.
(Tlön being a parallel world in the literature of Jorge Luis Borges).
If you have time, please read the whole thing, it's wonderful.
Boing Boing reports that Virgin Enterprises is suing a small business owner for using the name Virgin Threads. This strikes me as grandiose and obnoxious.
A joint-task force composed of members of the Association of National Advertisers, American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Advertising Research Foundation yesterday unveiled an initiative that would shake up the classic equation of advertising math that determines consumer exposure to an ad. It would replace the concept of frequency -- the number of exposures to an ad -- with “engagement,” a metric that could better reflect the growing number of media choices facing consumers, from cell phones and the Internet to video games and podcasts. [AdAge]
This will only become more important as communicators discover the need to measure the degree to which customers are participating in their communities and brands. The best campiagns will measure what changed: did we move markets, change minds and increase sales? This isn't just about driving communications accountability, its also about driving marketing accountability.
According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, Costco puts Wal-Mart to shame in the arena of low pricing. They steadfastly hold to the rule that nothing shall be marked up more than 15% (compared with competitor's markup of 25% and more). They pay their employees an average of $17 per hour... 42% higher than Sam's Club... and have one of the best health plans in the industry.
Costco's stock has risen more than 10% in the last year. Employee turnover rate is nearly non-existent. Sales revenue for June of 2005 is up 9% from the same period last year.
What does Wall Street have to say about this? If you can get their thumbs out of their mouths long enough to tell you, they wail that Joe is too generous. He just isn't shaving enough off the top for them to get their greedy little hands on. An analyst from Deutsche Bank whines, "it's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder." "They could probably get more money for a lot of items they sell," complains another analyst at ThinkEquity...
My God. A business that puts its employees and customers before the Almighty Profit does exist. Isn't it amazing that a simple thing like that would create cult-like customer loyalty and $40 billion in revenue... with almost no advertising?
Jeff Risley's firm is sposoring a survey on cause-related marketing. They're talking to marketing people and not-for-profits. Jeff's looking for suggestions for questions.
Very good article by Jay Rosen, about media coverage of the appointment of a new Supreme Court Justice in the US. He suggests that two sides are preparing to do battle in a way that seems to be about activists battering away at each other without noticing that they're not likely to achieve much. Here's a snippet:
Reaching for her cliché gun, Robin Toner can say "nothing less than a national political campaign had begun," but she has no idea how it's supposed to work, either. Everyone parades around as if this mobilization of opposing armies makes perfect political sense, when in fact "all the time and money spent on campaigns may have little influence on the outcome."
Why does this go on? One reason is that activist groups, by opposing each other, use each other for mutual self-definition. They too don't know how their e-mail blasts and TV ads are supposed to work. Like spammers, they just send the stuff out. What they know is that the other side will be sending e-mail blasts and running TV ads. Spam must meet spam.
I don't want to dwell on US politics in this blog, but I think what Rosen sees here is a kind of folly that marketing folks often get trapped by: obsessing with positioning and defining themselves against their perceived competitors, rather than focussing on expressing their own views or (heaven help us) thinking whether any of these campaigns really touch the customer.
I just had an interesting interview with Liam Mulhall, co-founder of Blowfly Beer in Sydney. He talks about how he launched his brewing business using open source principles he'd learned working at the Red Hat Linux consultancy. I've blogged fuller details and a link to the podcast here.
Johnnie's terrific post on Skype below inspired an entry over at my blog which a few of you suggested I post here... So, here you go.
Skype is a brilliant example of the power of nurturing communities with a high-quality product, continued innovation and ease of connection. While recognizing that in this instance it's also the essence of the product, that's a sub-text.
Compare Skype to Vonage for a second and you will see what I mean. I "joined" Vonage about four months ago. They treat me just like SBC or Verizon. Every add-on costs more. I get a bill and little else other than the product. The quality is pretty suspect. And while cheaper than Verizon, it ain't cheaper than Skype.
Then there is my Skype account. I get more and more value from neat add-ons developed by Skype and its community. The price and quality are much better than anything Vonage offers. And the community just gets better as a result of this innovation. Then vSkype comes along and adds to my Skype experience with video calling. Bam! The community activates and becomes more valuable - to Skype and to each other. vSkype's CEO says in an email that in the first 36 hours they had 50,000 downloads while some 8 hours later they zipped past 100,000. That's momentum.
Skype Journal has a terrific interview with Stuart Jacobson. In the Participatory Era Skype is establishing an incredible lead over Vonage - in participatory terms,
Skype is an engaged brand. It is engaged with its community. It has engaged with its users. So many brands forget this. They sell, you buy and that's it. Nada.
I attended an interesting session at the Reboot 7 conference in Copenhagen at the weekend. Malthe Sigurdsson, from Skype, did a talk about how they built the brand, which he blogged here, with a pdf of his slides here and an MP3 audio recording here.
I was struck by the principles Malthe articulated: do simple things really well; release all the time (ie keep updating the application in small bites); evolve; open up; and viral features. A good illustration of the idea of simplicity is their preference for plain language - so talk about sharing and calls, not peer-to-peer and VOIP or telephony. Bearing in mind Skype has about 45 million registered withouth advertising, I think it's a pretty interesting case study.
One of the things that he said that caught my attention was what he said about fear. They do fear their competitors (eg the big telecoms)... and that makes them stay busy innovating. I like the notion of acknowledging fear and using it, instead of blocking it.
It seems to me that Skype is a brand with a lot of vitality - and this presentation makes good sense of how it operates.
C/Net reports on Sun's launch of Open Solaris in which blogs feature prominently.
This is the first time we've seen social networking technology integrated so fully into a launch. It's appropriate that an open source product would so actively use open source marketing to engage with its community.
I'm sure the skeptics will dismiss this as yet another PR stunt but it simply isn't (although I won't deny the PR benefit).
Sun deserves credit for the geek-centric approach, said RedMonk analyst Stephen O'Grady. "The best aspect of it for me is seeing a rather large software organization actually recognize the audience they want to be speaking to--in this case the developers." - Shankland, C/Net
This is a really smart and deep use of a complete spectrum of participatory communications technology to enhance and streamline communications with a fast growing community - it goes well beyond the standard corporate blog which for the most part is still about transmitting information and soliciting a response. I like how they are providing tags as well. Then there are the photos on Flickr. And, Johnny L - Sun's head of software launched his blog. It's a regular blogfest!
They've lit up the Open Solaris community inside Sun to light up the community outside Sun. You need to be a tripped-out geek to get some of this but the mobilization of the Sun team to provide different views on the product is great.
Conversations are a feature of the launch. Having spent 18 years in tech I can't tell you how different this is - most launches follow a standard pattern of big transmission followed by an expectation that what was transmitted will be written about then read.
The launch is about inviting participation. Shankland points to a great example of this as Sun flags 300 bugs in the product and invites the community to get involved with fixing them. Here is Liane Praza's first bug-fix.
Stephen has a terrific Q&A over at the Tecosystems blog, an excerpt from which looks at Sun's blog-fest:
Q: What did you find most interesting about the launch itself?
A: The way that it targeted the most important constituency of all; developers. Back in April, I posted the following note:
Spoke to a vendor marketing representative yesterday who I won't name (though they should feel free to identify themselves if they wish) that actually initiated a dialogue around del.icio.us, Flickr and tagging in general. First time that I can recall that's happened. Very refreshing, and a good sign for the product line in question.
Well, that person was Claire Giordano, and the product line was OpenSolaris. Her hand is directly visible on the OpenSolaris.org page itself with links to developer-friendly services like del.icio.us and Flickr, and also in the lack of a big bang style launch, press release, etc. The focus has instead been on conversational and participatory launch mechanisms like the aforementioned services and an explosion of related blog entries. OpenSolaris, as with any other product, will ultimately sink or swim on its own merits. But if those merits will jointly determined by Sun and the community around OpenSolaris, it's obvious that engaging developers using the means and mechanisms that they prefer is imperative. Given that context, I'd say that today's launch was an excellent start.
Couldn't agree more. Gold stars to Sun. Great reporting by Shankland. Great analysis by Stephen.
First it was Carley's comments at a graduation - now it's Pepsi with CEO Indra Nooyi making inflamatory remarks regarding America's role in the world today:
After talking of her childhood back in India, Ms. Nooyi began to compare the world and its five major continents (excl. Antarctica and Australia) to the human hand. First was Africa - the pinky finger - small and somewhat insignificant but when hurt, the entire hand hurt with it. Next was Asia - the thumb - strong and powerful, yearning to become a bigger player on the world stage. Third was Europe - the index finger - pointing the way. Fourth was South America - the ring finger - the finger which symbolizes love and sensualness. Finally, the US (not Canada mind you) - yes, you guessed it - the middle finger. She then launched into a diatribe about how the US is seen as the middle finger to the rest of the world. The rest of the world sees us as an overbearing, insensitive and disrespectful nation that gives the middle finger to the rest of the world. According to Ms. Nooyi, we cause the other finger nations to cower under our presence.
Pepsi has posted a comment and a copy of her remarks. The blogosphere is wound-up on this one. Frankly, it isn't a great speech, it's geographically incorrect, the metaphor doesn't work and is offensive, and the comments are definitely controversial...
It breaks most of the rules of effective public speaking, some of which are - ensure your content, tone and comments are in line with your brand - both personal and company; ensure the topic illuminates the brand and doesn't detract from it; focus on subject matter that is relevant to your message; use clean and clear metaphors that aren't so multilayered that they cloud the content and your message... the list is a long one. What did Pepsi hope to gain from speaking on this topic?
Aside from all that, there is another lesson here for all communicators in that the blogosphere is an incredibly powerful medium for distributing executive's remarks, and stimulating debate on them - so much more than conventional media.
Brands are being shaped at wire-speed in the blogosphere. Having a blog might not just be a proactive communications tactic but also vital for reactive communications. Rather than the staid press release or statement, imagine a Pepsi blog right now with dialgoue taking place and Indra engaging with the enraged community of Pepsi drinkers. She might even rally a few supporters along the way.
Transparency and open dialogue would have enabled a much better response to an unfortunate metaphor.
Yesterday, I had a brand experience that rocked my world. First, I was driving to meet a friend in the morning. I called the company that he worked for to ask directions (Hertz was sold out of Neverlost). I was bummed after I called three times and no one could tell me how to get to the office from the Pacific Coast Highway. I had to stop at a retailer to ask and found that the office was only a couple of miles away.
That afternoon I drove up to do some work with Patagonia. I called in to ask directions and Patagonia's "Gatekeeper", Chipper "Bro" Bell, answered the phone while sitting at Mission Control. You see, instead of having an entry level receptionist answering the phone and interacting with customers, Patagonia has Chipper.
When I asked Chipper how to get there, Chipper started off by saying, "You've got it bro, " and then gave me detailed, simple instructions on how to get there. When I told Chipper thanks, he said "Believe it!" It was magical.
Soon after we talked, I realized I was going to be early so I called back looking for a friend to borrow a surfboard and get some exercise before my meeting. I called Chipper back and he paged my friend. Unfortunately, my buddy was in a meeting. When Chipper asked what I needed, I told him I wanted to borrow a surfboard. Chipper said, "No worries, come see me and I'll have a board ready for ya, bro!"
When I arrived, there was Chipper, stoked to see me with a board ready to ride.
I returned from a nice surf session and I sat out front watching Chipper spin his magic. He was treating everyone in a very human way, no matter what they needed, trying to solve everyone's problems. What really blew me away is that Chipper keeps this stoke that exudes the Patagonia brand 1800 times a day!
What would happen if your company had a brand gatekeeper instead of a receptionist? Would your customers be more stoked?
To learn more about Chipper, check out the fun article about him on the Patagonia web site.
More and more product launches, communities and brands are incorporating blogs as a way of engaging with their constituents. Today's new entrant is Star Wars who have buried blogs in their community site. To find them you are going to need to force on your side but they are there! Here you go...
Blogs are much more than traditional brand extensions. They are brand activators, providing a platform on which the community can come together to share, interact and broaden their experience. You've got to pay to play, but hey, every community membership has its price.
One of the most telling moments of the hour occurred just as the meeting opened when Nachison and Peskin put a slide up of Craig Newmark and asked how many people in the room of several hundred recognized him or his name. Only a smattering of hands rose. A few more hands went up at the mention of Craigslist and its free classifieds.
Nachison reminded the editors that the competition of Craigslist didn't grow out of a business model, but arose more spontaneously from Newmark's desire to create a community of trust - the same trust newspapers are struggling to regain.
Jarvis also spotlights this comment by Andrew Nachison
The bigger point was trust - and that there's someone "out there" who has built a business at the expense of newspapers not by trying to compete *against* anyone, but by trying to help others.
The business followed Craig's authentic devotion to helping people find each other in a trusted environment.
There's serious food for thought here for a lot of brands beyond newspapers.
I've just posted over at 173 Drury Lane about a fascinating article by Judi Bevan in The [UK] Sunday Times of April 3: How Davis lost the Sainsbury throne. It recounts how Sir Peter Davis was fired as Chairman of the supermarket chain Sainsbury's, as well as touching on the issues Justin King, the new CEO, has had to deal with. Apart from being a highly engaging, if gossipy, tale, it's a good example of how human relationships and their weaknesses are at the core of any business, for good or ill. And further evidence that your brand in the public eye will be shaped by a lot more than just your polished, official communications.
Microsoft Canada announced the creation of the Child Exploitation Tracking System (CETS), which is helping international law enforcement stop those who prey on children online.
"Our vision is to support more effective child-exploitation policing by enabling collaboration and information sharing across police services," says David Hemler, president of Microsoft Canada. "The tracking system will serve as a repository of information and will also be used as an investigative tool."
Using CETS, police agencies can manage and analyze huge volumes of information in powerful new ways, such as cross-referencing obscure data relationships and using social-network analysis to identify communities of offenders.
"CETS has helped police catch up with cyber-criminals on the Internet," Sergeant Paul Gillespie says. "The product has exceeded my wildest dreams. I have also been impressed by Microsoft Canada and their passion to do the right thing. I am overwhelmed with their sense of responsibility."
I continue to be pleasantly surprised with the work Microsoft is doing to become a "kinder, gentler" brand. So far they've spent almost $4 million on CETS (pocket change, I know) and plans to spend more as it rolls out globally. I hear many execs asking, "what's the ROI on social engagement? Connecting with customers? Being ecologically aware?" etc etc. Here's the ROI: people will like you. I know, that's rather simplistic and touchy-feely. But how do you put a dollar value on being liked and appreciated? What are the odds of people doing business with a company they genuinely like, versus with the many closed-off companies that are just focused on making a buck? Unfortunately there's no scientific model to prove this. We'll just have to wait for more companies to start demonstrating that the theory works.
Regina Miller points (with appropriate disdain) to this event: Chaos in the Public Square offered by Harvard Business School Publishing Conferences. (And I thought it was only advertising agencies that had ridiculously long names; but if I were at HBS I'd be happy to be two additional words away from a direct association with what follows).
The blurb is a great example of really dreary communication. First off what's with this new phrase "corporate speech"? Is that what used to be called PR in less complicated times? I wonder if they really mean "corporate drone", as eloquently fingered by Cathy Moore in her blog. This promo page seems like a pretty good example of it, with such gems as
In this forum we will tackle the contentious issues – not to advocate one side or the other but to define the parameters of the new reality
In short, the rules of corporate speech have changed -- and continue to change – making life turbulent in the executive suite.
How do you craft a strategic approach for navigating the new terrain?
Hmm, interesting theme here of "chaos in the public square" and "turbulence" in the exective suite. Sounds like some folks are terrified by what strikes me as an exciting time for engaged, informed public debate.
I was also intrigued at how they define their target audience:
Director and above management who are directly responsible for the public persona of the company
which strikes me as laughably sycophantic. Basil Fawlty was more direct; he ran an ad that just said "no riff raff". Why don't they just come clean and say "This is an important conference that only important people will understand".
Seriously, if the organisers haven't woken up to the fact that EVERY EMPLOYEE is responsible for the public persona of a company then they need to go to a conference themselves. And not this one.
John pointed me to a great new blog, HR's Brand New Experience. Regina wites about how good brand architecture involves organizational development, and how HR is (or should be) an essential part of the strategy alignment and execution process. Here's a snip:
Most of the agencies I have dealt with have not been able to provide the appropriate resourcing and/or expertise to be able to take their brand/rebranding efforts to this level.
Is the physical design and environment taken into consideration? Is the pay system involved if people’s behavior needs to change? Is the performance management system changed so that people are informed of new expectations of behaviors? and then given feedback on same? and then paid accordingly? Are work processes redesigned so that people can deliver “a brand experience” to customers? Are managers trained to help people deliver brand experiences? to recruit the right people who can deliver it? Does the HR department live the brand in it’s delivery of services to internal customers?
Creating and implementing a brand architecture is hard and a lot of work. Trying to change consumer behaviors based on a your brand is even harder. Adding the necessary components internally to change employee behavior is equally hard and daunting. But one can’t happen without the other.
We've written a few times about brand pull through - where one brand (iPod) pulls another through in its wake (iMac). Accoring to Good Morning Silicon Valley the brand pull-through at Apple is exceeding forecasts:
iPod, therefore iMac: And here I thought iPod's halo effect was just spillover from Apple CEO Steve Jobs' reality distortion field. Turns out I was wrong. According to a new survey by Morgan Stanley, Apple's iPod is funneling customers to the company's PC business. The research outfit surveyed 400 iPod users and found that 19 percent expect to convert from PC to Macintosh. That's twice what Morgan Stanley expected. "We believe the Mac conversion rate within Apple's iPod customer base is roughly double what the market expects today," Morgan Stanley analyst Rebecca Runkle told clients "... The street still underestimates the power of Apple's iPod." Indeed, Runkle noted that forward intentions indicate the Mac conversion rate could track closer to the 25 percent range going forward. If Apple plays its cards right, it could soon control 5 percent of the desktop computer market.
This is all food for thought, and perhaps a new metric for brand marketers - the extent to which one brand is driving loyalty and recommendation effects in another category. It also proves - again - the power of brand synergy, or, how different products benefit from a common brand experience and halo. We celebrate the difference and buy the similarity.
Could otherwise be titled, "Clueless in Government", but...
Washington Post reports that the issue of transparency and news dissemination is getting a little murky in DC:
The Bush administration, rejecting an opinion from the Government Accountability Office, said last week that it is legal for federal agencies to feed TV stations prepackaged news stories that do not disclose the government's role in producing them.
That message, in memos sent Friday to federal agency heads and general counsels, contradicts a Feb. 17 memo from Comptroller General David M. Walker. Walker wrote that such stories -- designed to resemble independently reported broadcast news stories so that TV stations can run them without editing -- violate provisions in annual appropriations laws that ban covert propaganda.
We appear to have a right to do propaganda, but what about covert propaganda?
The legal counsel's office "does not agree with GAO that the covert propaganda prohibition applies simply because an agency's role in producing and disseminating information is undisclosed or 'covert,' regardless of whether the content of the message is 'propaganda,' " Bradbury wrote. "Our view is that the prohibition does not apply where there is no advocacy of a particular viewpoint, and therefore it does not apply to the legitimate provision of information concerning the programs administered by an agency."
GIVE ME A BREAK! They really believe these VNRs - with PR people pretending to work as baggage screeners - and packed full of propaganda - represent pure reporting - by that I mean, the don't advocate a particular viewpoint. Well, in that case, lets get rid of the media all together.
I need to go cool-down somewhere... the parting quote from the story says it all...
"Whether in the form of a payment to an actual journalist, or through the creation of a fake one, it is wrong to deceive the public with the creation of phony news stories," the lawmakers wrote
Friday's ruling in favor of Apple has deep implications for brand communicators. Now I'm no lawyer and experience tells me that different corporate legal counsel will come at this one from different directions. So, take this as you will.
AP: Judge: Apple can press Bloggers on sources. A California judge on Friday ruled that three independent online reporters may have to divulge confidential sources in a lawsuit brought by Apple Computer Inc., ruling that there are no legal protections for those who publish a company's trade secrets.
The Judge seems to have not bought into Apple's argument that Bloggers are not Journalists, preferring to sidestep the issue all together. As I've stated on my blog, I don't believe bloggers are journalists unless they are blogging to what they regard to be a media blog. But that doesn't mean we're not entitled to report and to all the protections of the Fifth Amendment. And, the blogosphere shouldn't be confined by traditional notions of publishing. Suddenly, anyone who has information in the public interest must check with a company to see if it is a trade secret? To which the response is naturally, yes.
There are so many worrying things about this ruling. The least of which is a Judge ruling on the nature of content. "Even if the movants are journalists, this is not the equivalent of a free pass." Kleinberg firmly defined the trade secret information as stolen property. Assuming that all information belongs to someone else, where does this one stop?
Anyway, enough of the rights rant. So what are the implications for brand communicators?
Communications policy takes a new twist. Most documents carry the line "Company Confidential - Not For Distribution". I suspect many will start to add "Trade Secrets". Dan Gillmor said it well, "Reporting on business, if this bad ruling is upheld on appeal, will be a great deal harder in the future. Companies will simply slap "trade secret" protection on everything they do, and any reporter who gets a scoop on anything the company doesn't want the public to know about will be under a legal threat."
More enforcers raise their ugly heads. In a challenge to independent journalism - and reporting in general - more companies get more aggressive on leaks and use the Apple ruling to aggressively pursue and plug leaks. I'll be the first to admit to being on the receiving end of leaks. It's incredibly frustrating. At the same time I always had enormous respect for media who cultivated sources and were aggressive in reporting. I suspect the ruling will open the door to any aggrieved company pursuing journalists it doesn't like. This is going to get personal.
Advances & NDAs are the next to be challenged. For decades companies have attempted to manipulate media coverage via negotiated advances, exclusives and NDAs. Apple is one of the grandmasters at this. So what if the information has been given to a range of selected outlets? Is it still a trade secret then? Perhaps the Judge's ruling will have the unintended effect of reducing these practices if information is regarded to be fair game once in the public domain? This is one for the Lawyers but its important.
New additions to blog policy. I know companies are rethinking blog policies in the light of the Apple ruling. Thou shalt not disclose trade secrets is being added to the list. Very specific language is being crafted into employment contracts related to disclosing trade secrets to non-traditional media sources.
Brands will be defined by how they handle the blogsphere. How would you have dealt with the leaks Apple faced? I'm an Apple fanatic. I've only bought Apple for years. But all of this has made me much less loyal than I once was. What I'm also surprised at - from a company that is meant to care so much about its community - is the lack of dialog. As far as I can tell there isn't an Apple blog in sight providing perspective on the issue. Your reputation will be partly defined by how you react and act in relation to leaks. Apple has tarnished it's reputation.
These are just five of the implications of this absurd but critical case for brand communicators. I'd love to build a list of other implications and then publish them as a whole. Drop your thoughts into the comments section... I'll leave you with Charles Cooper's comments from his C/Net column:
The real subtext is this: Apple is directed by a collection of control freaks who would have found themselves quite at home in the Nixon White House. The big difference being that reporters had the constitutional freedom to report on the Nixon White House.
Apple has been an infuriating company for me to cover over the last two decades or so. I adore its technology but can't stomach its overreaching sense of entitlement. Other tech companies deal with leaks all the time. Nobody's happy when their discussions wind up as fodder for the rumor mill. But that's part of the give-and-take that's defined the technology business for decades.
John Winsor opens the first chapter of Beyond the Brand with this quote from Stephen Jay Gould:
"The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best -- and therefore never scrutinize or question."
Here are some stories that come to my mind:
We know what our customers want.
Everyone in our company understands our mission.
Customers care about our brand.
If we relinquish control over our brand image, it will be a disaster.
If we allow customers and employees to speak their mind publicly, it will be a disaster.
We're the experts, so we have nothing to learn from outsiders.
And the list goes on. What are the common assumptions floating around your company or department? Hint: they will be the ideas that cause the most internal resistance. Who will be brave enough to ask... What if we're wrong?
At the very least, open up enough to test some alternatives on a small scale. You just might surprise yourself.
Let me first say that I am a great fan of KFC and have been known in recent history to quite literally "live off" the stuff for stupidly long periods of time. Recently, however, I have been forced to make the harsh decision to boycott the restaurants. I have even gone as far as to blog my decision, much to the disbelief of most of my friends who know that I'll likely starve as a result.
I am one to stick to my principles, and I am also not one normally swayed by advertising. However, the recent "operatic" campaign is just so painfully awful that I have chosen never to set foot in a KFC again until they are removed from the television. The whale-mouthed screacher who takes a full 30 seconds of "woooaooaooaoohhh" to tell her colleague that he can't have her mini-fillet burger is a bigger deterrant for KFC than Supersize Me was for McDonald's...
Incidentally, I also think that another of the ads was rather ill-advised. Who on earth thought that having a bunch of "African Americans" singing about fried chicken was going to help shift burgers? What next? Watermelon desserts and a kids meal with a toy butler that says "Yus, Massah?".
IT may go down as one of the biggest rebranding disasters in corporate history.
When, in September 2003, Luqman Arnold, then chief executive of Abbey National, declared the institution was “turning banking on its head” by shortening its name to Abbey and slapping a lower-case logo in pastel shades on its branches and product literature, there were a few raised eyebrows. In Scotland there was much gnashing of teeth as it emerged insurance brands Scottish Provident and Scottish Mutual were for the chop.
The exercise – which brought an end to Abbey’s famous “couple under an umbrella” logo – was overseen by brand agency Wolf Ollins at a cost of some £11 million. It was led by former Abbey director Angus Porter, who when at Mars rebranded Opal Fruits as Starbursts, and recently left the bank with a near £1m pay-off.
In marketing terms, however, the rebrand was a clear disaster. Last year, pre-tax profits in Abbey’s core retail business shrank by 20% to £814m compared with 2003 and there was another big slump in market share. New mortgage lending is also down year on year from 9.9% to 3.1%, reducing its overall mortgage share from 10.7% to 8.6%.
£11m is a lot of money to waste on wishful thinking.
Jonathan Korzen, Audible's PR guy, responded 121 hours into my experiment started below. He wrote me a nice note. I'll let you know how the interaction goes from here.
I’m bummed! A year and a half ago I signed up for the Premium Listener program at Audible.com. At the time, I was stoked to listen to a few books on my iPod. It seems however, between writing and traveling, I wasn’t downloading the two books a month that came with the subscription.
So, a year ago I tried to cancel my subscription. I went to the Audible website and did everything they asked me to only to find a $19.95 charge on my credit card the following month. I finally picked up the phone and called. After the usual 5 minute wait I talked to a fairly responsible sounding person who said they’d take care of it.
Five nights ago my wife, Bridget, leaned over and said “What’s this charge on our credit card for $19.95 from Audible?” It seems that the friendly customer service representative didn’t, in fact, do what he said he’d do! So much for building trust.
Being in Mexico writing, phone calls are a bit expensive so I went back online to Audible’s site and was promised a fast and courteous response in 48 hours.
So, here I am 5 days later, out 240 bucks and no one to listen to me.
Hello, I’m a Customer. Is anybody home? I used to think your service was pretty cool. Now I’m starting to get bad!
Forget about co-creating, how about doing what you promised or at least sending an auto-response to my email!
Is Audible, and many other brands for that matter, too busy to listen to their customers? Are they really ready for the power shift that’s happening? Before companies, like Audible, can ever think about improving their products and services with the help of delighted customers they might want to think about creating satisfied customers first.
We’re living in lumpy times in the Brandsphere! Welcome to the Wild West.
My friend James Cherkoff has written a Change This Manifesto: What is open source marketing?. It's good stuff. Disclosure: I am horribly biased. (James and I are running a workshop together in March).
Jon Strande comments on Larry Lessig's experience of flying his millionth mile on United, and them not noticing.
Imagine had United taken the time to reward an obviously loyal customer even in the smallest way, say with a Thank you card on his seat when he boarded the plane.
Imagine the post he would have written had they done something really nice for him...
This coincides with the arrival of my pack from United, confirming that I have (after many years of being just a very ordinary passenger) recently gone back to Premier status.
Hmmm. A few years ago, I really got hooked into these frequent flier schemes, but now I am much less convinced. When they tell me I get 5" more economy legroom than the hoi-polloi, I don't so much celebrate as think, crumbs, if I don't keep this status I may switch to an airline that gives all its economy passengers a bit more legroom. This may be a carrot today, but there's a stick in the background for tomorrow.
Many of the other benefits are potentially more hamster wheel... get more miles by getting your mates to fly with us; earn more miles by spending more money at our hotel partners etc.
I wonder about the frictional cost of maintaining these elaborate schemes, an expense the budget operators cheerfully do without.
I see they've also included a book of vouchers to give to staff in recognition of good service. When they did this a few years back I quite liked it. It changed the game in Business Class from see who can look least excited about the service cos that will make you look more important to let's see who can enjoy this flight the most. Maybe it's just the passing years but now the little voucher scheme starts to feel like... more hamster wheel.
It's funny, I think of myself as unsentimental about brands but I feel sad that United are struggling. When they took over from PanAm on the transatlantic routes there was a palpable sense of pride about them. Ironically, they now feel a bit like PanAm did, sort of struggling to maintain a past grandeur.
I don't mean to seem ungrateful. After all, I only qualified for this treatment by flying on Singapore Airlines in the Star Alliance. So it's nice to get the recognition and the Alliance seems a smart idea.
I think that in larger organisations it's inevitable that things get bureaucratised and made into systems. The thing is, that can only get you so far in delivering a good experience. I also think that when times are hard, people tend to become more anxious and more wedded to systems. (And that's a pity, as probably innovation and risk taking are likely to be the best ways out of the hole). I sense there is a sort of denial going on at United. I think their people are trying hard but are demoralised; somehow the confident blurb (eg "the best frequent flyer programme" seems implausible to me). A bit like someone putting on a brave face... you don't really believe them and it creates distance - the opposite of what loyalty might be about.
I see Kathy Sierrra is posting some more smart thinking today about creating a spirit of caring. I wonder what sort of caring behaviours the high-ups at United are generating today?
U.S. trust in corporations is high; equivalent to China and Brazil
There is a significant “trust discount” for major U.S. brands operating in Europe and Canada, but not in Brazil and China
UK trust in major U.S. companies is the lowest in Europe
Problem most acute for iconic American brands
Problem can be repaired
No “trust discount” for Asian or European brands operating anywhere in the world.
Technology companies seem to have a halo effect compared to other industry sectors.
Edelman deserves Kudos for a) doing marketing and thought-leadership, something that most PR agencies seem to be asleep at the wheel on; and b) for a really timely piece of research. One quote really captured my attention:
"Sacrifice control and perfection of a message for speed and free-flowing discussion. The paradox of transparency holds that companies benefit more when they disclose fully what they know - bad or good - as soon as they know it. This is truer than ever."
This is also the paradox-trap brand marketers are stuck in. All but a few are trained to the max in completeness. Completeness of thinking. Completeness of research. Completeness in creativity. Completeness in everything. The phenomenon of social networking technology and behavior plays to incompleteness. It's all about dialogue. Conversation. It's about discovering the brand rather than presenting it as final. The new priority for brand marketers will be maximizing time-to-conversation and incompleteness.
Andy Spade hits on this - kind-of - in the most recent issue of FastCompany. Amongst a few of his rules:
"BRAND CONSISTENCY IS OVERRATED. The brand doesn't have to look the same, but it has to feel the same. An element of newness and surprise if important for every brand.
BRANDS SHOULD HAVE SOME MYSTERY. Customers should never understand the whole picture of a brand"
Edelman's Trust Barometer hits on another key point:
"Employees and "an average employee like me" are more credible than CEOs."
Brand Communicators are still way over-vectored on the c-suite as a vehicle for brand building. This is a subject for a much longer blog - which I'm working on - but the role of the c-suite in informing and building the brand is clearly being undercut by Blogs which are a revolutionary force in this respect. They run against what communicators have so long fought to do - keep the voice of the employee under wraps, driving market attention towards a select few senior spokespeople.
As blogs liberate the voice of the company they'll, somewhat ironically, become the most potent force for restoring the credibility of corporations as brands. Look no further than Scoble at Microsoft to see this in action...
The survey also found that Television and Newspapers were more trusted sources of news in the US while in China, the Internet is more than doubly trusted than newspapers. Will be interesting to see where Blogs factor in this in future surveys.
Either way, Brand Trust needs to be entirely rethought in the context of social networking technologies. But it's not just about applying the technology to marketing campaigns. It's about rethinking the act of branding. The context in which brand communication takes place has changed forever.
My friend Tim Kitchin makes an interesting observation today. Tim thinks a lot about how organisations create mutual advantage for stakeholders. He asks if Corporate Social Responsibility activity is a way of avoiding carrying out the core business responsibly.
Some interesting nuggets starting to emerge from BP recently, crystallising a move away from CSR, and maybe even CR, and treating responsibility as business as usual.
"We aim to create mutual advantage through ALL our relationships..."
Seeking to determine the balance of win:win relationships means understanding the nature of responsibility.
I've long held a smouldering belief that huge amounts of CSR (or CSI) activity is bunk or "greenwash". It's too easy for businesses to invest a sliver of their profits in worthy causes but not take responsibility for the detailed impact of their day-to-day operations.
In fact, let me see what happens if I try to kick the door open even wider. Maybe most sponsorship is bunk. For instance, I see that Guiness is the "Official Beer" of the Lions (Rugby) Tour of New Zealand. Budweiser slaps its name all over the Superbowl. Why?
Is it so great that sport gets funded this way? Especially as the vast majority of the money floods to the big ticket sports and sportsmen? What's wrong with Guinness and Budweiser that they're owners are not willing to stand or fall on the quality of their beer and let me decide for myself which sports to support?
Is it because of branding people, who can never be content with selling us goods for what they are, but pursue ever increasing profit by ever-inflating efforts to stretch the meaning we attach to mere stuff by posing with the stars?
An investment bank marketing director once proudly told me that they would be sponsoring the Tate Modern (London Modern Art gallery). Becuase he felt that this sort of creativity meshed well with his "brand image". I said it would be better to put their money into being creative instead of posing with (or as) people who were.
Are we really so willing to support corporates in these sorts of vanity exercises?
For years, branding gurus of all shades have lured businesses into striking these kinds of poses. I fear this is simply a distraction from doing what they're supposed to do, and doing it well.
Imagine you're trying to buy a new car. You want to have a conversation with the salesman about safety statistics or whatever. And he keeps changing the subject to last night's football. You'd start to feel pretty wary.
That's the impact of most corporate sponsorship and CSR on me. It makes me wonder: what are you trying to cover up? After all, it's not as if many organisations have reached the point where their customers are really satisfied with the service they get on the basics. So how come there's time and energy left over for this kind of thing?
Do you know what I think this is really about, in my darker more cynical moments? Strip away a few bogus spreadsheets, dubious powerpoints with buzzwords and ROI in them, and some half-baked bits of market research... and I believe you may find one thing: a bored marketing director, lacking in self-esteem and longing to have a beer with Tiger Woods or some other star. Dying to keep up with his mates at the golf club with stories of the glamorous events and people he's been seen at and with.
Ok, it's not quite this simple. I'm not sure I want to rule out philanthropy for companies... but I am deeply suspicious that marketing gurus have hijacked it and mutated it into another way to not be straight with us.
I've noticed the faintness of the praise with which some bloggers have linked to this particular blog. I don't blame them. I think a lot of stuff done in the name of branding sucks. Unbelievers are very welcome to the services at this church.
That’s not us. It’s those really nasty marketers over at McDonald’s who afronted the Blogsphere by creating a fake blog. How dare they undertake a marketing stunt on this hallowed ground! How dare they extend their brand into our space in such a juvenile way! Out damned fake blog! Out!
Ok, so I’m exaggerating a little. But not much. If Brandshift does nothing else than explore the intersection of branding and the Blogsphere it will have served a very useful purpose. That marketers look to extend their brands through the Blogsphere is inevitable. That they don’t quite get the spirit of this place and challenge it’s boundaries is equally inevitable.
The comments my blog drew earlier last week seemed to echo this. Jeremy made an interesting and unreported observation:
It was inevitable that there would be - and have been - fake blogs. But, the bigger picture is so what? Is this really going to affect our lives that drastically? McDonald’s is auctioning off the fake fry, and raising funds for the Ronald McDonald’s House Charities - that's what matters at the end of the day.
The trick is going to be seeing blogs in the light they were intended to be seen in. They might be juvenile. They might be pathetic. But we’re an equally diverse and weird bunch. All eight million plus of us.
If I were to offer a critique - strictly from an execution perspective - it would be on two fronts:
First - brands can’t just be about awareness. This is Kevin’s point:
...the fake blog shows a complete misunderstanding of the medium. The technology is designed to create an open, honest dialogue with customers. Fake blogs say "we just want awareness. We just want control over the medium. This is how we do it. By throwing money at a fake blog.”
Second - all great brands are close to transparent. The negative noise could have been easily avoided by McDonald’s simply stating that this was a fun blog written by fictional characters all in the name of profit and good. Lesson here - don’t inflame the Blogsphere by making these kind of obvious mistakes.
This new medium - these new communities and conversations - are set to reshape branding. Brand marketers have been stuck on transmit for decades. The smart ones who looked to have the very act of marketing become a conversation were quickly isolated as guerilla or viral marketers. The Blogsphere changes that. Use it to simply transmit, or purely for stunts, and you miss its enormous potential.
Brand marketing. Branding. Lovemarks. Call it what you will. All flavors have made a sharp shift back into community building and conversations.
So, while I did think McDonald’s fake blog was kind of silly, I did think it was silly funny. But I do wonder how much more McDonald’s could have gained by being transparent and even explaining the cause. They might have got to have fun while mobilizing support for their Brand like never before.
And here’s an open invitation to anyone from McDonalds reading this. Give us your thoughts. This is a conversation as well. And I’m lovin it.
Since Johnnie brought up pet peeves in his last post, here's one of mine: renaming something unpleasant to get more mileage out of it... AKA, putting lipstick on a pig.
Chris Lawer points to a Peppers & Rogers article on Voice Marketing. He quotes from their latest paper, interestingly titled: "At the Eye of The Storm: How Retail Chief Marketing Officers can Deliver the Optimal Customer Experience."
Retail marketers have a range of interaction tools to choose from to get the job done. An emerging option is voice marketing. Voice marketing helps retailers strengthen brand and communicate with customers more effectively by combining pre-recorded, telephone messages with professional voice talent. Designed to connect with existing customers, voice marketing allows retailers to accelerate their relationships with individual customers and capture higher value.
A voice message is typically a 35-second pre-recorded audio message that sounds like a live call.The messages are left on answering machines or voice mail systems...
Hmmm... last I checked, that was called "telemarketing." And it's not an experience that customers want to have. Is the outbound TM industry really deluded enough to think that a new label is going to save them?
I see this pattern all the time in "rebranding" efforts. Hey, I know! Let's design a new logo and create a new ad campaign, and... ta da!!! We have a magically new brand. Um, no... you dressed up your current brand in different clothing.
Rebranding, when done by an ad agency (oh, excuse me... "marketing communications firm,") is nothing more than pig lipstick.
Rebranding, when done by an executive team that's passionate about driving change throughout the organization, is true and believable brand evolution. Let's not kid ourselves into thinking a fancy new label, logo or campaign is going to fix our ills. It has to be an inside-out process.
(update: When I went to copy the trackback URL, I noticed that Johnnie already ranted about this subject on his blog this morning. Great minds think alike :-))
This new blog prompts me to think about some of the changes I'd like to see in branding practice. Here's one.
I'd like to see more opinionated marketing people.
No, not opinionated about the minutae of technique, but opinonated about the products and services they want to promote.
Too often, marketing folks act as if they are morally neutral and interested only in helping organisations communicate. Oh, they may turn their noses up at tobacco companies, but on the whole they show a willingness to work for anyone with the money.
I'd like to see marketing people take a bit more responsibility for where they put their talents. I'd like to see more organisations defining themselves by their attitudes, something beyond bland platitudes about customer service.
I'd like consultants to go beyond making predictions about the future as if they are merely neutral observers, and start taking responsibility for putting their efforts behind organisations they really believe in.
Too many agencies work with clients they secretly dislike or even despise, hanging on only for the money. The same goes for marketing people, who flit from company to company every couple of years, all the while issuing homilies about customer loyalty.
Dan Gilmour's been writing good stuff on the end of objectivity in news media. I'd like to see an end to the same kind of pseudo-objectivity in marketing.
Jennifer Rice
Andy Lark
Johnnie Moore
John Winsor
