Category Archives: Branding Thoughts

Social Media is Already Inside Your Organization…

….you just might not know it. Sherry Heyl writes an insightful post, Social Media Affects Every Department Within Your Organization, which points to the ever-broadening reach of social media and its power as a resource for all disciplines within the modern corporation. I think this is an important observation, but the post also implies an issue that I think should be stated overtly: the social media contagion has already infiltrated your organization. Chances are, even in the most buttoned-down and security conscious corporate culture, that social media is gaining a foothold. Why? Because the vector for this infection is people. People recognizing the power of communication on their own terms, people increasingly aligning themselves to transparency and authenticity in their choice of community. People like the Generation Ys/Millennials who have made distributed communication their natural mode of interaction. You can try to shutdown the blogs, vlogs and podcasts, you can ban the IP addresses of every wiki, but you can’t change the fact that every day the people you hire, the people who are already in your organization, are becoming acclimated to a new set of communication tools and are hitting the reset button on their cultural expectations for integrity, immediacy and empowerment. I think the call for smart companies is to embrace this new connected, community-oriented, and empowered corporate citizen and do what is necessary to learn from the best of their skills, to nurture environments that will attract and retain the top talents, the most effective distributed thinkers. The challenge will be to adjust the top-down management styles and to educate this new employee on the ethics of corporate communication in a world where information is permanent.

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Sugar, water, caffeine and fizz

How do you sell your product? By listing the ingredients?  If you’re a repeat reader of this blog you probably know that I like my Coca-Cola.  I like to drink it and I like to learn from one of the top marketing companies of all time.  How often do you see Coke advertising the quality of their sugar refinement process, or showing a schematic diagram of their bottling and distribution process? Unless you’re a bottler or distributor, the answer is probably never.  Coke doesn’t try to sell the end consumer on the merits of all the great ingredients and brilliantly innovative processes that go into making the little 12 ounce miracle that is a can of Coke.  Instead they focus on what Coke does for you, what you get from their product.  Coke sells refreshment.  Coke sells nostalgia.  Coke sells an association with positive experiences that are varyingly hip, exciting, and even patriotic.

So what does this mean for your business? The next time you are developing an ad or a brochure  consider who it is for and what does that audience want.  Try to get beyond the logical and strictly feature-oriented  and introduce emotional and associative elements that tap into the buyer’s motivations. Ask yourself, is there a narrative?  Have you left room for the consumer to participate in an experience? If your customer can’t envision a better, more successful self through the lens provided by your marketing materials then even the best ingredients, the most innovative process, the most comprehensive set of features, will all just be noise competing with your value proposition.

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Are you nodding in agreement or just nodding off?

I’ve posted here before about being the Ambassador of your Brand, but I thought that Seth Godin made a nice point in his blog today (big surprise) that tied in neatly with the concept.  In his post, entitled Always on (everybody markets), he points out that how you act throughout your day, is in itself a form of marketing.  If you’re falling asleep or looking bored during a meeting you are advertising your lack of enthusiasm, and like it or not, that reflects on your personal branding.  There is an old saw that goes “how you practice is how you play” and whether you choose to believe that or not, it is often how you are measured by those around you.  If you consistently project an air of apathy, chances are you will be labeled as an apathetic person — not usually considered a career enhancing trait.

This also points out the importance of the brand ambassador’s job to communicate:  if you are yawning in the conference room because you’ve been pulling all-nighters to meet a critical deadline, then don’t be reluctant to politely share that fact.  Better to be thought of as someone who might be tooting his/her own horn a little bit, than to be perceived as someone too bored to stay awake, or worse, labeled as someone who just doesn’t care.

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I didn't finger-paint

When I was just a little tyke I became somewhat notorious for saying what I didn’t do. It all began when I was queried by my father at the dinner table one evening about what I had done that day in pre-K. I am told that without hesitation I exclaimed that “I didn’t finger-paint!”, and promptly burst into tears. I’m can’t quite recall now what it was about finger-painting that had caused me such childhood stress, and anyone who knew me in art school will certainly attest that whatever it was I got over it – in spades, but I digress. No matter the cause, it was apparently the start of a habit, which to my parents’ dismay continued well into adulthood, of answering questions of the “what did you do today?” variety with an initial summary of what I didn’t do. Parental frustration aside, it turns out to have been good practice for a brand strategist.

To know what you didn’t do, to choose what you won’t do, to pick the line you will not cross, are all actions that help us define who we are, what we’re interested in, where we set our priorities. The same process can help develop the meaning behind your brand. Understanding what your brand isn’t, what you don’t want it to be, can be enormously useful in learning to articulate just exactly what you DO want it to mean.

The first, obvious place to explore is your competition. Seek out the edges of your difference: the territory where your competition does not compare – by knowing what they aren’t you gain access to who you are, but you can go further still. Consider Nike: Certainly they are not Adidas, nor are they Converse, and exploring these and their other competitors can do much to illuminate the brand ethos and that drives product development, but to understand the potency of the brand, and its ability to build cult-like loyalty it is helpful to explore other things that Nike is not: Nike is not about apathy.  It’s not about being a couch-potato.  The words “Just do it” aren’t just a slogan, they are a challenge, a call to action that imply that the non-Nike is perhaps indecisive, less bold, or even lazy. Or how about Whole Foods? Their brand promise is expressed as much by what they do not carry in their stores as by what they do.

So in conclusion, next time you are at the dinner table (or maybe in the boardroom) try asking, “What didn’t you do today?” Throw in a “Why not?” and you might find that you have a revealing conversation.

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On the air again

Well, I’m delighted to report that I’ve been invited to sit in as a guest on Brian Blomgren’s radio show on Radio Sandy Springs 1620 AM , airing live at 10am on Monday, November 19th. Brian hosts the Business Hour every Monday when he is not busy helping Atlanta area businesses as the owner and operator of the Sandy Springs office of Action International. Brian and I will be discussing my company, Equation Arts, and some of the factors that can help build a community around your brand. I hope you can join us.

Also posted in friends, personal branding | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Setting expectations

We TryWhether we realize it or not, the actions we take are measured against expectations created by our brand. In some cases this can be a slippery slope. Consider the deliberately expectation-setting tag line for Avis car rental service, “We Try Harder” – certainly this phrase leads to an assumption that the service from Avis will reflect more effort than their competitors. We infer that the extra effort will result in better service. It’s a memorable phrase, and a noble goal, but is it good branding? That depends on the follow-through of every Avis employee you meet. If the company culture promotes a positive, service-focused, can-do attitude across the board, then yes, this is good branding. If however, the trend is to have service that is poor, attitudes that are uncaring, or worse, surly, then the brand message collapses under the weight of the failure to live up to the expectations created in the mind of consumers. In the age of the blogosphere, disconnects between promise and follow-through can be rapidly exposed. The lesson boils down to “walk your talk.”

Since Avis has used the “We Try Harder” line for a long time now I will gladly assume that it has been a fair reflection of their actual brand experience. However, not every tag line is so overt in the expectations it sets. What promises does your branding imply? And do you deliver on those expectations?

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    Caitlín Mowbray"I adore your doodles... I swear looking at those bunnies lowers my blood pressure, calms my mind and makes me smarter. Who needs meditation when there are bunnies?"
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