AMAPS Luncheon on Branding Demonstrates How Brands Must Evolve to Maintain Relevance.

If you missed the AMA Puget Sound October luncheon, you missed a thoughtful look at how branding has changed and must continue to change in today’s digital age.  You also missed a chance to learn how two major NW brands, Alaska Air and Ben Bridge Jewelers, are updating their respective brands to position themselves for future growth.

The presentation began with a thought-provoking general review of how branding needs have changed as new digital tools have changed how potential users gain and process information.

Kass Sells, President of WE Communications, reviewed the results of a major global study among over 3,000 consumers in each of six different countries, on the new realities brands face in today’s business environment.  The conclusion of the Brands In Motions study is that all brands are in motion relative to the geography that they operate in, the industry they are a part of, and the stakeholders critical to their success.  This is a result of many things, including the disruption and dislocation within a brand’s environment, as explained by this quote below.

“Disruption is what happens when someone does something clever that makes your company look obsolete.

Dislocation is when the whole environment is being altered so quickly that everyone starts to feel like they can’t keep up.”

- Craig Mundie, Former Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft

What this means for your brand is that disruption & dislocation plus changing consumer expectations have created a new environment where consumers want it all and your brand story must focus on the entire media ecosystem if your brand is to build and maintain a relevant position in your potential customers mind.
After this initial general review on branding, Jessica Leonard from Alaska Air offered details on how that iconic brand had responded to a major new addition – Virgin Air, and how their  advertising addressed the potential disconnect between two brands with existing brand images that were very different from each other.  She then shared how Alaska Air was approaching this new branding environment with some thoughts on the future goals and strategies for positioning the brand. 
Jessica talked about the need to provide their audience with something beyond service.  Alaska Air terms this new approach as hospitality that is personal, enjoyable and generous + a personality that reflects a West Coast vibe that is thoughtful, vibrant and unconventional.  The goal is for Alaska Air is to always “Be Remarkable” in everything they do for their customers.

Then, Marc Bridge from Ben Bridge Jewelers shared how this 100+-year old brand was updating its marketing and advertising approach, through a review of the competitive environment and the need to stand out in a “sea of sameness”. 

Marc talked about how the goal of their marketing was to transcend the perception of jewelry as an occasional, special moment experience, and the true value of jewelry is revealed over time as it becomes part of someone’s lifestyle and life.  Their new advertising campaign, For Life, addresses this belief as well as positions Ben Bridge Jewelers to be your   ”Jeweler For Life”.

This thoughtful, and thought-providing, luncheon presentation was capped off by a lively Q and A session  among the presenters.  All of the presenter’s charts can be found on the AMA Puget Sound website www.amapugetsound.org , and we encourage you to take a look to see how this knowledge can impact and improve your own branding programs.

-        Don Morgan

Don Morgan is Head Rainmaker at Raindance Consulting, and a past president of AMA Puget Sound.  He can be reached at dmorgan@raindanceconsulting.com.

Forrester Study Shows How Social Media Is Changing Brand Building

A 2012 study by Forrester offers agency management a new tool to consider when advising your clients on when, where and how to use social media.  Their conclusion: social engagement is a necessary ingredient to brand building in today’s digital world, but does not have the power to build a brand alone.

That should make agency management happy because it reinforces the need to continue to take an integrated marketing approach to building a brand.  But no agency can dismiss social media as unnecessary to brand building -- it has fundamentally changed how consumers interact with each other and with brands.

As a result, 93% of their study respondents agree with the statement that “Marketers need to reinvent their brand building strategies as a result of digital innovations”.
The challenge then becomes how to how to use social media and determine its relative importance for your individual corporate or brand situation.

Many businesses have erred on the farthest extremes on the opposite sides of this issue – some are using social engagement strategies as their sole basis for brand building, while others have ignored its value altogether.  The truth lies somewhere in between, and the Forrester study, How Social Media Is Changing Brand Building (http://lp.wildfireapp.com/Forrester_Brand_Building_Report_Req_US.html), offers some good insight into how social marketing can advance your brand building.

The Forrester study offer some positive advantages for social media's value as a channel, but at the same time lists these limitations for brand building:
1.     Social is not as scalable as mass media.  Social media does a good job of reaching a defined audience of platform users, but cannot reach critical mass in the same way that paid media can.
2.    Social is too fragmented to provide a consistent brand voice.  The unique power of social media is through the many voices of the consumer, and that naturally leads toward a fragmentation of essential messages.  According to digital experts, you need to invite consumers to join the party, but if you are too collaborative, you aren’t able to clearly establish a strong foundation for your brand.
3.    Social can offer a distorted vision of who the brand is and what it stands for.  Without a firm brand identity to start from, the social strategy can be artificially influenced and distorted unwittingly by passionate fans and detractors.

The Forrester study, on the other hand, points out that social can contribute to building trust and bring a number of key benefits to your brand building efforts.
1.    Social can put a human face on a corporation and provide a deeper meaning to its relationship to customers.
2.    Social can be used to “test the waters” for alternate promotional concepts.
3.    Social can create a groundswell of support for risky decisions or changes in your marketing strategy.
3.    Social can use its two-way communication basis to correct a negative image regarding controversial topics.
4.    Social can bring the emotional benefit(s) of your brand to life through peer to peer input.
5.    Social can create bond with customers by rallying consumers around a shared cause or ideal.
6.    Social can segment communications to a group of  fans and emphasize an understanding and support for their passions.
7.    Social can generate brand advocates though access to brand-supported communities.
8.    Social can promote better, more responsive customer service.

Many of these points are expanded on in the Forrester study so you should check it out.

Despite the fact that social media can be a valuable asset to your branding strategy, It is important to remember that the fundamentals of brand building have not changed.  You must still generate a consistent brand identity and communicate it across all consumer touchpoints to create a consistent brand experience.

But as this study points out, an effective social marketing strategy can leverage a number of emotional and persuasive elements that are difficult to deliver through traditional media and marketing efforts.

Does your client have a "Genius Bar"?

David Asker's latest blog highlights the success of the Apple Genius Bar and what has made it such a big hit with visitors to the Apple Store.

As a quick reminder, the Genius Bar provides technical support within Apple stores to customers having problems with the product or application. The Genius Bar has been hailed by many retail consultants as a key element in the most successful retail concept of recent times and a builder of the Apple brand and relationship.

As Aaker points out in his post, "the Apple store's financial performance and impact on the Apple brand is amazing. The sales per square foot for its 380 or stores is more than $5,000, which is six to ten times other successful retailers, and the average store pulls in 18,000 visitors a week. Perhaps more important, the stores provide a way to express the Apple brand and showcase its products."

Aaker lists these seven reasons for its success:

1. Apple owns the brand and the concept. No other firm can have a Genius Bar because Apple owns the brand. Any other firm will at best be an imitator. 
2. The brand has a distinctive personality — humorous and understated yet competent and reassuring.
3. It is staffed by people that are both knowledgeable and disciples of the products and philosophy.  
4. Their training is disciplined following the APPLE dictum of Approach customers with a personalized warm welcome, Probe to understand the problem, Present a solution, Listen for issues, and End with an invitation to return. That means consistency no matter which store you are visiting.
   
5. Apple makes both the hardware and software and, thus, has a unique ability to create and staff a Genius Bar. 
6. It enhances the customer relationship with its person-to-person approach. 
7. It can transform a disgruntled, disappointed customer with the potential to have a distasteful retail experience and become a negative voice in the marketplace into a satisfied if not enthusiastic supporter of the Apple store. 

What about your clients? Is there a "Genius Bar" in their story? If you can find one for them, you can be their hero!

Don't let your branding strategy get lost in the digital shuffle.

What's happened to branding in the digital marketing era?

It seems like 99 out of 100 posts/articles/reports these days are focused on social media or some other tactical tool that is the next big thing in the world of digital communications.

Recently, I've been seeing more (or maybe it's just my noticing more) on branding.  And that's a good thing.

In his latest book, Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant, David Aaker analyzes case studies on dozens of successful brands to offer guidance on how to create or dominate new categories or subcategories and thus make competitors irrelevant.  He stresses the importance of identifying and building new categories and subcategories that contain innovations that customers "must have" and that competitors cannot or don't offer.  He also points our that these customer "must haves" can involve brand characteristics that are beyond attributes or benefits, such as brand personality, organizational values, social programs or self-expressive benefits.

In a recent Marketing News article, he reiterated the importance of establishing brand relevance in a competitive world of me-too products, and  the need to become an "exemplar" of the new category or subcategory in order to stave off competition.  By positioning  your brand as the innovator and quality standard, your brand can define others as imitators and inferior.

The 2012 Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Engagement Index (CLEI), now in its 16th year, was just released, and concludes that emotional engagement factors are driven by the brand’s “values” and the consumer’s brand “experience.” In a post published by MediaPost, Brand Experience, Values Increasingly Drive Loyalty, Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys founder and president,stated that “across most of the 83 product categories studied, we found that consumers’ loyalty now hinges more than ever before on the degree to which a brand has established a clear core value proposition -- a differentiator that goes beyond the basic utility of a product or service.”  H went on to say, “Today, delivering on the ‘rational’ reasons to buy a brand -- good or superior quality and value for the price -- is just the ‘door-opener.’ If that’s all a brand is doing, it’s in grave danger of being commoditized. In fact, it’s not a brand; it’s a category placeholder.”

It's good to see that some folks have not lost sight of the basics.  As we are looking for ways to succeed  in today's digital marketing era, don't lose sight of the importance of a solid brand as the underpinning for your social media and other marketing communication strategies.  The best tools are meaningless unless they are in the right hands!

A New Perspective on Building Brand Loyalty

One of my must-read blogs each week is Aaker on Brands, and this week's post offers some interesting new thoughts on building brand loyalty. The post is titled "Does Brand Love Really Exist", and recounts a recent study exploring what a person means by loving a brand or other object and a quantitative study to identity its underlying dimensions and the output or value.

The qualitative studies found that subjects identified these ten characteristics for brands they loved:

1. The brand is the best in every way from value, to key attributes, to experience. 
2. The brand connects to something deeper than its functional benefits. (e.g. Apple represents creativity and self-actualization.).
3. The brand creates emotional benefits like being happy (e.g. “Pinkberry frozen yogurt makes me smile.”).
4. The brand provides self-expressive benefits and high levels of word-of-mouth buzz.
5. The brand generates affection and warm-hearted feelings. 
6. There is a natural fit and harmony between the user and the brand they love.
7. The brand stimulates a desire to maintain proximity to the brand and even feeling “separation distress.” 
8. The brand engenders a willingness to invest time, energy and money into loved brands
9. The brand is somehow involved in frequent, interactive contact with the consumer.
10. There is a long-standing relationship history.

These findings were from a qualitative study, but a separate quantitative study by the same researchers found that the brands people profess to love predict loyalty, word-of-mouth communication and resistance to negative information.  As David concludes in his post "This, to me, is an impressive validation and elaboration of what had been basically a common sense analogy. Each of the 10 characteristics has implications about the creation, maintenance and measurement of loyalty."

So what does this mean for you and your clients, and the marketing programs you develop?  
Well, it is certainly a validation of the need to understand and communicate the emotional benefits, not just the attributes of your brand. But more than that, I think it says that brands should be treated as a  living, breathing extension of their users if they want to be "loved".

And if they want to have a loyal user base.

Harry Potter - Brand Wizard?

I've been thinking a lot about the Harry Potter phenomenon lately. I continue to be impressed with the branding strategy and the marketing tactics that have been used to sell this "brand" to such a broad audience.

I've been a fan of Harry Potter since the first book was released in 1998. I've read all of the books (some more than once) and seen all the movies. My wife has been bugging me to take her to Orlando to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, so we'll probably do that soon.

But whether you are a fan or not, there’s more to this story than movie magic and the storytelling wizardry that has sold over 400 million books worldwide. There are great branding lessons we can take away from the boy wizard .

Here are a few.

1. Great branding starts with a great product. Each book has taken its readers, young and old, into a fantastic world of heroes and villains. We were drawn into the “brand” by our fascination with the concept of wizards and muggles, the interplay of good and evil, and the supporting cast of characters. We developed an emotional bond with the three principal characters as well as the supporting cast that serves as a great lesson for marketers – it starts with the product.

2. Stay true to your brand. How many times have you seen a movie after reading the book and been disappointed that they changed the storyline or the characters just didn't come to life as you had expected them to do? Throughout this film series, each movie was taken directly from the book. There were no unexpected surprises to interfere with the development of the story. And the casting has been superb. Can you imagine anyone else as Professor Snape or Bellatrix Lestrange?

3. Have a long term plan for success. J.K. Rowling has said in numerous interviews over the years that while she never imagined the success the books have garnered, she knew that the story would progress and grow to its ultimate climax with Harry defeating Voldemort, and good triumphing over evil. During a prolonged gap between books five and six, she stated that she wanted to be sure she got the story right. There’s a great branding lesson in making sure that subsequent marketing efforts build on the brand premise and stay true to the brand’s personality. There’s also a lesson here about positioning your brand for long term success. Too many marketing managers have an 89-day focus based on the need to bolster quarterly earnings, and sacrifice the long term.

4. Make your brand a must have. Ms. Rowling was insistent that no advance copies of the book go out before the official on-sale date. She angered a lot of book sellers, but that tactic was a primary reason many book stores held midnight parties and lotteries for that first all-important copy. And, as mentioned in point #1, she didn't disappoint her audience.

5. Look for ways to extend the brand by continuing to surprise and delight the target audience. Harry Potter has become as entrenched in our pop culture psyche as Luke Skywalker, Batman and Superman. And The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at the Universal-Orlando theme park brings the story (and the brand) to life and allows readers and fans to experience the books. What a great case study for experiential marketing. You can shop for a wand at Ollivander’s, enjoy a butter beer in Hogsmeade, ride with Harry on a dragon and tour Hogwart’s. Creating an opportunity to experience the brand first hand is great way for any brand to build loyalty.

6. Look for ways to build new excitement to extend the life of your brand. Now that the book series is over, don’t expect Harry Potter to disapparate. Ms. Rowling is about to unveil pottermore.com, an interactive experience that she promises will be “an online reading experience unlike any other”. The site will offer exclusive insights, new stories, ebooks and even the ability for the user to be sorted into one of the four houses of Hogwarts. Pottermore will not launch until October, but a sneak peak will be available to one million lucky winners of an online scavenger hunt that begins on July 31 – Harry’s birthday.

At every step, we’ve seen one smart marketing move after another. And I suspect we’ll see a few more before it’s over. I, for one, can’t wait to experience pottermore.com.

And along the way we’ve witnessed a great example of how to build and manage a brand. There’s really nothing magical about that. Or is there?

2010 PR Lessons On How To Handle A Crisis

We saw the positive results of an effective PR crisis plan almost 30 years ago with the famous J&J tampering incident. But the harsh memories of the financial and housing crises, coupled with resentment toward government and a growing public mistrust of all business, make the importance of a PR crisis plan today more important than ever.
In today’s online world, the 24/7 instant news cycle and the swift response potential of a skeptical and increasing militant blogosphere, require that your crisis plan should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis so that it can be implemented on a moment’s notice. That’s why I thought it would be helpful to review three key PR mistakes that made headlines in 2010 and gave us these important lessons:

• Make sure you have a spokesperson for the company that will be seen as honest, transparent and sympathetic by the public both on and off camera.
• Don’t try to minimize the problem or ignore public perception, because perception is reality to the perceiver.
• Be ready to move quickly and decisively to repair public trust in your brand, and find a way to give the public “permission to believe” you have resolved the issue at hand.
  

Tony Hayward wanted his life back . . . but what about the millions of Gulf Coast residents’ lives and livelihood his company’s negligence disrupted?

BP’s image suffered a major setback with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, yet BP responded fairly quickly with ads showing their efforts to clean up the mess and “do the right thing”. One early commercial featured then-CEO Tony Hayward with a pledge that taxpayers would not be footing the bill for clean-up. Despite public skepticism kept fresh by daily media updates on the massive spill and memories of the Exxon Valdez travesty, public opinion remained somewhat positive toward the BP brand.

When Mr. Hayward traveled to Louisiana to survey the damage first hand, his prepared statement began with an apology. “The first thing to say is I’m sorry,” he told reporters. Unfortunately, his unscripted comments in response to reporter’s questions destroyed whatever goodwill remained for BP. When asked what he would like to tell locals whose livelihoods had been affected, his response that “We’re sorry for the massive disruption it’s caused their lives. There’s no one who wants this over more than I do. I would like my life back.”

His answer angered locals and became a lead-in for news stories around the world. It wasn’t the first time that the British executive had caused anger with his comments. He had previously described the spill as “tiny” compared to the size of the ocean. He also asserted that the environmental impact of America’s biggest oil spill, and of the 950,000 gallons of toxic dispersant that have been used to treat it, would be “very, very modest.”

While the CEO is a natural, and normally good, choice as a primary spokesman during a major crisis, if he can’t be consistent as a reassurance to the public, he may not be the right fit. The key lessons learned in the BP story are to find a public face that can be empathetic and sympathetic to public concerns and who will be consistent and stay on script.

Steve Jobs tried to minimize the problem with the iPhone 4, and forgot an important CRM rule – the customer may not always be right, but ignoring their concerns is never a good idea.

Apple has had an unbelievable string of successes with the iPod, iPhone and iPad. But that streak ended when Consumer Reports said it would not recommend buying the iPhone 4 because its tests showed a hardware defect that caused the phone to lose reception when held a certain way.

Steve Jobs is thought to be one of the most savvy executives in U.S. business, but his refusal to accept that evaluation and his initial response that the problem was in the software and could be easily fixed was not his finest hour.

In a press briefing, Steve stated that “the iPhone 4 is using a very advanced new antenna system – a more advanced antenna than ever has shipped on a smartphone before." And, later in that same briefing, he said "looking at the data, we don't think we have a problem."

When negative comments continued to make news, Apple’s primary defense sought to transfer the problem to all phones. Official statements from Apple began by saying that “every phone's reception sucks when you hold it. Gripping any mobile phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone."

Eventually, Apple admitted the flaw and offered a free case to iPhone 4 users that alleviated the problem But this PR gaffe may have opened the door for Android phones to impact future sales. It certainly damaged the previously unassailable reputation and magic of the Apple brand.
The lesson here is obvious – always listen to your customers and if they are telling you something is a problem, don’t ignore their concerns.

Toyota initially drug their feet when faced with a quality issue, but when they finally responded, they focused on how they were changing their processes and introduced a new customer assurance program.

Toyota shook up the automotive world with a quality message that Detroit either ignored or could not match, and for 30+ years they enjoyed the benefits of that brand position. But in 2010, the car maker had to pay a $16.4 million fine for its failure to quickly disclose potential safety defects, and more recently was hit with $32.4 million in civil penalties for failing to properly disclose what it knew about safety defects. PR consultants say that Toyota was slow to respond and didn’t clearly explain the cause of the problem.

Experts now say that although Toyota has lost some market share, they are repairing their image with the help of ads that talk about their Star Safety Systems and showing that they are changing some processes that assign more engineers to monitor quality problems and extending time devoted to testing new models. Toyota execs now say that they are seeing the number of competitor trade-ins “returning to historic levels” and that customer loyalty shows “encouraging signs”.

The lesson here is to be prepared to respond on a moment’s notice, and don’t just say that you are fixing a problem, show your customers how you are doing it.

The overall lesson is that an unexpected corporate crisis is not a reason to panic . . . if you and your clients are prepared.

Does Your Brand Deliver On Its Positioning Strategy Every Day . . . Or Are You Just Faking It?

Many marketers are asking the question “is brand positioning still relevant in the 21st century”? I've written on this topic before, and the majority of comments, both public and private, agree with me that positioning is still an important and viable tool in marketing. At the same time, almost all acknowledge that effective branding is much more difficult in a world where an angry tweet, critical blog post, or catchy YouTube video can cause serious damage to your brand image.

United Airlines discovered this during 2010 when their “friendly skies” were revealed as not so friendly by the YouTube video “United Breaks Guitars”, which has over eight million views (and counting). So did Maytag, Nestle, and others who saw angry, empowered consumers calling them out as branding frauds based on their actions.

But what caused that damage? Is it simply the availability of technology that allows a disgruntled customer to broadcast their dissatisfaction to large numbers of people? Or is it nothing more than poor brand management?

A brand that has been under fire this past year for major branding missteps is Toyota. Toyota shook up the automotive world with a quality message that Detroit either ignored or could not match. And for 30+ years they have enjoyed the benefits of that brand position. But all of that customer brand loyalty is now threatened because somewhere, along the way, Toyota managers failed to understand that a brand built on product quality must live that strategy every day to be successful.

One of the biggest mistakes that marketers make is not realizing that branding happens in every interaction and point of contact between a company and its target customer. They work hard on their advertising and other external communications, but don’t understand that brand communication is much more than just what the brand manager and ad agency say about it.

It’s how your staff answers the phone, how easy the web site is to navigate, what message the packaging sends, the tone of the copy writing, and even, in the case of a retailer, how the store looks and where it is located. It’s the sum total of any and every experience people have with the company.

Consistency is a critical element of an effective branding strategy, and one brand that I have always admired for its belief in the power of delivering on expectations every day is McDonald’s. Every owner and manager must attend Hamburger University in Chicago, where they not only learn the operational aspects of running a franchise; they also study the importance of providing a consistent experience for the customer. Few customers would say that McDonald’s makes the best hamburgers, but the company continues to dominate the fast food marketplace in part because the customer knows what to expect. No matter where they are in the world.

This devotion to consistency was most apparent when McDonald’s entered Russia. McDonald’s execs felt that native Russian potatoes did not deliver the same crispness and flavor that McDonald’s is famous for serving. So they delayed their introduction into Russia for two years, imported their own seed potatoes, and waited until they got it right before opening the first restaurant. That is a great story and a great testament to the power and need for consistently delivering on every aspect of the brand promise.

Branding is a tough job. And it’s certainly not getting any easier when even the slightest misstep by anyone in the organization can have a snowball effect. But some brands get it right, by building on a platform that is truly representative of the core values of the company, solves a relevant need, and is consistent over time.

The New Importance of Customer Service As A Business Model

Last week, Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos .com, gave a record PSAMA luncheon audience of over 300 attendees an inside look at his own company’s approach to customer service, and says there is no doubt in his mind that “Delivering Happiness” (his description of customer service) is, indeed, a route to building a long term sustainable business.

Based on his New York Times bestselling book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, Tony shared his philosophy on why customer service and delivering the best customer experience for customers, employees and vendor partners can pay dividends. After all, he sold Zappos to Amazon last year for over $900 million.

But Tony is quick to stress that delivering a WOW customer experience is about much more than financial success. It’s about personal fulfillment and pride. It’s about having a passion for your job that builds a fierce loyalty to do the right thing every time. And it’s about having a company culture that strives to make every person in the company feel that they are part of something bigger than selling shoes. Happiness is a framework for business that can produce profits, passion and purpose both in business and in life.

At Zappos, they let their customers do their marketing for them.
Tony describes the Zappos approach to business this way, “at the end of the day, we aren’t in the selling shoes online business, we are in the stories and memories business. If we can create a WOW customer experience every time someone interacts with our brand, then those customers become our best marketing effort.”

To create and sustain that WOW experience, Zappos constantly asks these important questions:

1. What do customers expect?
2. What do customers actually experience?
3. What emotions do customers feel?
4. What stories do they tell their friends about us?
   

Answers to those questions led the way for Zappos to offer free shipping both ways and a 365-day return policy. It’s also why their website features a 1-800 number at the top of every page on the site. Tony says “we want our customers to talk to us, so we can build a relationship with them and better serve their needs”.

At Zappos, the telephone is their number one branding device.
A big part of the Zappos experience involves interaction with customers on the telephone. To make each call a special experience, there are no rules, no pre-set scripts, and no attempts to make calls more efficient by limiting the amount of time a call center employee spends on the line with the customer.

Zappos wants their customers to say “wow” when they get off the phone”. Tony offered several anecdotes on call center efforts to deliver that special experience to their customers, including a very funny story involving a 3:00 AM desire for pizza and the Zappos call center employee who took it upon themselves to find open pizza restaurants that would deliver at that hour. How many of your employees would go out of their way to satisfy a customer to that extent?

If we get our culture right, the WOW customer experience will follow.
Tony stressed more than once that company culture is the number one priority at Zappos. Their attention to maintaining a consistent culture begins with the employee interview process, which involves two separate interviews – one to determine skill set and a second interview to determine the cultural fit. They also offer five weeks of training before anyone is allowed to interact with a customer, so that everyone is on board with the core values of the company and how to express those core values to customers.

Tony related an interesting twist to their employee hiring process. Midway through the training period, employees are offered a $4,000 bonus to quit. That’s right. They will pay you to quit on the belief that if you are only working for the money, it’s unlikely you will be a good fit with the company culture.

Other culture builders include an annual “culture book” where employees are allowed to provide unedited comments on how they are “delivering happiness” in their own departments. And they also use Twitter to provide an opportunity for employees to get to know each other better and to share their experiences.


As he concluded his talk, Tony re-emphasized his belief that a strong, high touch customer service experience was a successful business strategy. But he also stressed that his message was not to adopt the same core values as Zappos in order to be successful. But rather, it was to say that it doesn’t matter what your core values are as long as you commit to them. That’s the real secret for business success.

So what does customer service and delivering happiness have to do with new business prospecting? Everything if you believe that the future of the agency business is a partnership with clients to help them build a relationship between their customers and their brands. Clients aren't looking for someone to do a new ad for them. They are looking for help. Smart agencies should know that help comes in many forms.

At Zappos, their secret to long term success is to deliver happiness through the best possible customer experience. What’s your agency's secret? Or is it a secret?

Adding Value - A Facebook Primer For Retailers

In previous posts, I have discussed two powerful strategies to gain new business - presenting new ideas to build a relationship and helping to guide clients and prospects through the often murky waters of the new digital marketplace. Here is an example of a recent value-added document I produced for a client to help him integrate Facebook into his marketing program.



A FACEBOOK PRIMER FOR RETAILERS

Are you a retailer who has finally acknowledged that social media is not just a fad but a legitimate marketing tool? You might already have a Facebook page, but do you really understand how to use it to build your brand and your customer base? Are you confident that you can tap into 400+ million users who spend an average of 55 minutes every day checking out the activities of their friends and browsing for info and interaction with companies they trust and appreciate?

Here are seven practical tips you can you use to help you along the way:

1. Before you start anything, write down the objectives of your social media program and specifically how you plan to use Facebook to build your brand identity and customer preference. This sounds simple and logical, and has been repeated by almost every social media proponent. Yet clients still come to me and ask “can you help me set up or improve my Facebook page?” without a clear objective in mind.

Too many retailers and small businesses have jumped into FB on the assumption that it was a cheap way to advertise, only to be frustrated and confused about whether their efforts are bearing any fruit, and disgruntled that it takes up so much of their time. The truth is that it’s not free, or even cheap. Time is money in any business. And it will take someone’s time to effectively use FB or any social networking effort. So you might as well think it through first; determine what you can and can’t accomplish, who in your organization has the time and talent to devote to the effort, and how you plan to monitor and measure the program. Just like you would do for any other element of your marketing program.

2. “Companies they trust and appreciate” is an essential concept that must always be uppermost in your mind. In everything you do on Facebook, you should be transparent, honest, listen before you engage, and add value to the community. FB is not a push medium. It is an opportunity to have a two-way conversation with your customers. If you don’t respect your customers by adding some value to their spending time with you, they won’t respect you. And many will tell thousands of their closest friends not to respect you either. An addendum to this point is that retail brands with social media campaigns must be increasingly sensitive to the privacy of their customers. This is especially important in light of growing public scrutiny of some missteps by FB corporately on how they are using the information many users innocently added to their profile.

3. Your Facebook page is not just another shopping website for your company, but it can work like one if done right. Users come to a FB page with a different mindset and objective. Most people visit a retail website to gain information or to shop. FB users come to interact – with friends and family or with companies they trust and appreciate (see above). It’s okay to offer a shopping option on your FB page, but if that is the sole thrust of your effort, you will alienate many potential “fans” and not use FB to its true potential.


1-800-FLOWERS.COM offers a good example of walking the line between shopping and interaction. Their Facebook page allows fans to share their favorite flowers and send virtual bouquets to friends, but also to browse flower arrangements and send actual flowers to their friends without ever leaving Facebook.

But that’s not all they do on their site. Wall posts introduce special promotions, offer information about specific flowers and engage their fans with conversation starters to encourage response, e.g. what do you think is better for cheering up a sick or injured friend – flowers, gift baskets, balloons, or something else?” They also invite fans to post pictures of flower arrangements they have received and to comment on the occasion.

Shopping and selling is not verboten on FB, but it must be done in a way that fans see as a natural course of action based on interactions with the company.

4. You can engage and reward your customers and build your “likeability” through polls, contests and other giveaways. Several companies have used a “Cutest Baby” contest to not only solicit entries, but also to encourage the sender and others to solicit votes to determine a winner. In the process, they have gained awareness and fans. If you give your fans an incentive to associate themselves in a positive way with your brand, you can grow that trust and appreciation discussed earlier in this post.

Disney recently offered a great example of providing a traffic-building incentive with their “Give a Day. Get a Disney Day” promotion. Through Facebook and other media, Disney encouraged their fans to celebrate the spirit of giving by volunteering for one day with any local non-profit to win a free day at any Disney park. Their plan was to give away 1 million free passes throughout 2010. Instead, they reached the 1 million mark in only 10 weeks.

5. Cause marketing is an integral part of the Facebook culture, so a great strategy is to partner with causes your customers care about. Don’t just think about driving traffic to your site or encouraging your fans to come into your stores to redeem their coupons. The Facebook culture is steeped in sharing causes with friends, and users have a great appreciation for companies that support worthy non-profit causes. You can take advantage of that pre-existing mindset by sponsoring a cause your fans will appreciate and by creating a way for them to interact with your brand in the process.

Target found a creative way to use cause marketing this past Valentine’s Day to encourage fans to send their love via a Super Love Sender e-card to one of five listed charities. Target responded by donating $1 million to those non-profit groups based on their percentage of response. St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital was the primary beneficiary with almost 50% of the donations, but Target is reported to have gained almost 170,000 new fans.

6. Take your conversation and interaction offline by promoting events but look for ways to draw them back to your page. Using Facebook to promote in-store or other offline events is a natural, but one key to success is to find a way to sustain the event in order to promote fan interaction and discourse. In 2009, Ben & Jerry’s introduced a new packaging innovation they call Flipped Out. They used their Facebook page to promote a city-by-city national tour that was successful in gaining trial, but also kept their fans talking and sharing tips for several months.

7. One final tip is to make creative use of the tabs to direct your visitors and fans to specific pages you want them to visit. The majority of successful Facebook pages continue to use the Wall and Info tabs as presented in the basic FB format, but them rename and reconfigure other tabs to take advantage of ways to build interaction with the people who visit their page. A common tab is for Photos, to encourage users to submit their own photos, but other tabs can range from specific Shopping pages to New Products. A good strategy here would be to see how your Facebook pages can complement your website interaction approach. The important thing to remember is that your Facebook page is a two-way conversation, not a one-way push. So make tab changes that promote user interaction with your customers’

As it is with any element of your marketing program, creativity rules. And the newness of the Facebook experience offers many opportunities to try new things. I’ve given you some examples of how other retailers and companies are incorporating FB into their marketing program. But let me repeat something I said at the beginning of this post. In everything you do on Facebook, you should be transparent, honest, listen before you engage, and add value to the community.

The most important element is to add value to the time they spend with you on your FB page. If you respect your customers and make it beneficial in some way to spend time with you, they will respect you. And that has always been the first step in driving a customer to any store.

Optimize Your Elevator Pitch To Win More New Business

When was the last time you updated your elevator pitch? Do you even have a formal elevator pitch? If you haven't sat down and thought it through lately, or if you just wing it on the spot, you could be missing prime opportunities to grow your business.

Most companies know the concept of the elevator pitch, and even practice it to some degree. But, in my experience, very few companies use this important new business tool as effectively as they could or should.

Here are five ways to take greater advantage of this tool:

1. Be prepared to tout your unique benefits, not your attributes.
As a member of several business associations, I regularly meet people at luncheons and other networking events and the variety of ineffective answers to the simple question "What is your company all about?" never cease to amaze me. Two common answers are "we make widgets" and "we serve the (your industry here) industry". Neither are very stimulating or motivating answers because they tell me your attributes, with no hint of the benefit of your company over competitors.

Many who do try to tell me the benefit their company provides often use the generic phrase full-service solutions provider in their answer. I suppose this does separate you from some companies, but a quick search on Google has over 82 million companies using that exact phrase in their web copy, so how unique are your benefits?

Since many of the people I meet are in their company's marketing department, or are entrepreneurs with their own company, these answers make me want to scream. You have an opportunity to "sell" your company to someone who was interested enough to ask. Be prepared to tell me what makes you unique in a world overrun with similar competitors by telling me your benefits, not your attributes.

2. Be prepared to adjust your pitch to your audience.
As a business development consultant, I work with both ad agencies and companies to help them be more effective and efficient in their marketing efforts. If I'm at an Ad Club meeting, my benefits are focused on positioning the agency, building a better target prospect list, and more effective RFP's and presentations. If I'm at a marketing association meeting, I still talk about positioning, but the benefits of my consulting practice are focused on corporate brand values, audience segmentation and target insights. As an independent consultant, I also promote the dual benefits of time and cost efficiency to both audiences.

In both cases, I am constantly refining and updating my story to take better advantage of the opportunity. By staying abreast of what people are most interested in knowing, and understanding the basic benefits I can deliver, I can adjust the framework of my company story to match the situation and the audience.

Perhaps the most important thing I have learned as a consultant for the past five years is that you never know when an opportunity will arise from a chance encounter. The person you are talking with has other friends and acquaintances that might also be opportunities, so I never want to miss a chance to spread the word about my company and its benefits.

3. Be prepared to give your audience permission to believe.
Everyone knows that it's a tough market right now, but it has always been tough, and will always be tough. A good elevator pitch should automatically build in some statement(s) to give the audience permission to believe that what you say about your company is true.

I will always incorporate my background and experience to lend credence to my story. When I can give a specific category or company example of a project I have worked on, my benefits story is dramatically strengthened. I have also learned that when speaking to a Gen Y or Millennial, I always reference my blog and Twitter handle to reassure them that even with gray hair I am actively engaged with today's technology.

4. Keep everyone in your company informed and engaged in touting your company's benefit story whenever they can.
One of the biggest mistakes companies make is to only arm senior executives, or business development staff, with an understanding and appreciation of the company's elevator pitch. Everyone in your company has the potential to help your business development efforts, even that new trainee or summer intern. We all have family, friends, neighbors, acquaintances who know other people. Maybe that summer intern lives next door to the CEO of company that could use your services. Or maybe their parents belong to a club or association or go to church with someone who could benefit from buying your company's products or services.

The important thing to remember is that you never know who, how or when an opportunity will present itself. My recommendation is to invest all of your employees in the new business process by touting their potential importance and arming them with the right benefits to promote when they can. In my experience, younger people are often more enthusiastic than experienced veterans when talking about their company and its benefits, so why not take advantage of that exuberance.

5. Read any good website copy lately?
A final thought on building a better elevator pitch is directly related to your website copy. In today's digital world, nearly every company relies on their website to interest and entice customers. Your website is a written version of your elevator pitch, but too often sites are homogenized with buzzwords, platitudes and jargon that does little more than fill space.

Remember those 82 million companies that use the exact phrase full-service solutions provider? Would you believe that Google shows 224 million entries for full-service advertising agency? Quick, go look at your website and then see how many other companies are using the exact same words you are using. I think you will be surprised, and somewhat dismayed, at the answer.

If you subscribe to Inc. Magazine, you should check out Jason Fried's column in the May issue. His article is titled "What's Your Point? and his sub-title says it all "Nearly every company relies on the written word to woo customers. So why is most business writing so numbingly banal?"

Perhaps the same statement could be made about the elevator pitch. Think about it!

Building A Strong Agency Brand

Why do we insist that our clients follow the basic rules of branding yet disregard them for ourselves? I've just begun reading Tim Williams excellent book "Take A Stand For Your Brand", and his conclusion that ad agencies are as "undifferentiated as cows on a hillside" is a powerful condemnation of our industry.

Tim points out that if you read a typical web site or agency brochure, you get essentially the same message: ___________ is a full-service, diversified marketing communications company serving a wide variety of clients, from health care to high tech. We offer integrated solutions to make our clients successful, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda.

As I have noted in previous posts and white papers, a strong brand identity should contain these four elements -- it should be unique or differentiating, believable, relevant and true. There is nothing differentiating about being "full-service", "integrated", or wanting to "make our clients successful", although they may be believable, relevant and true. So is it surprising that clients have trouble distinguishing one agency from another?

One agency that has built a unique brand identity for itself is Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. They do excellent creative work, but their truly distinguishing characteristic to me has always been their creative and unorthodox use of media and promotions to garner buzz for their clients, especially Burger King. Their hidden camera prank called Whopper Freakout in which they pretended to discontinue the Whopper to gauge customer reactions was a creative way to demonstrate customer preference over the Big Mac. But their use of a longer form video on the Internet was a great way to integrate television and web video. The campaign generated millions of views on YouTube, a Grand Effie for the agency, and double-digit sales increases for Burger King. Another unorthodox promotion that demonstrated their out-of-the-box thinking was the Subservient Chicken (http://www.subservientchicken.com/). To some critics, the promotion was confusing/weird/stupid/sophomoric yet five years later it is still creating buzz and has garnered over 450 million hits according to Adweek Magazine.

Recently, BooneOakley in Charlotte (http://www.booneoakley.com/m/) has been generating a lot of buzz with their innovative use of YouTube as their web site. Personally, I'm not wild about the cartoon storyline or the difficult navigation, but the idea is brilliant . . . and differentiating.

BooneOakley will not appeal to every client, but they aren't trying to. As they say on their home page, they are "a full-service ad agency for those who dare to do daring work".


Defining your agency brand means not only deciding what you are, but also what you are not. That's a hard decision for many agencies to make, but it must be done. If you don't have a distinctive philosophy, distinctive capabilities, or a distinctive way of doing business, then your agency is a commodity. And commodity agencies have only one way to distinguish themselves from one another -- a lower price.

If you transform your agency from a commodity into a distinctive agency brand, you will most likely exclude some potential clients. But as Tim Williams points out that's OK because the ones who are attracted to you will be strongly attracted because you offer something they want from an agency. And that can give you a competitive advantage over those full-service, diversified marketing communications companies you may be competing against.

CP+B and BooneOakley aren't agencies for every client, but as Bill Cosby once said "I can't give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: try and please everybody".

Don’t underestimate the power of the customer when building your brand.

Last week, I attended a webinar titled “Brand Building in a Digital Age”. I was expecting a “how-to” seminar on incorporating social media and other new technology tools as part of the marketing mix. As it turned out, the webinar was more about the power of the customer and the importance of good customer service in an era of instant access to millions of potential customers via the Internet. But that’s okay, because the webinar did give me some new insights and appreciation for the importance of doing and saying the right things with customers.

I have always counseled my clients and trained my staff to be sensitive to the importance of balancing expectations with the reality of the brand experience. Creating the right expectation can cover a lot of areas, but the most important are these:
- Understand your customer’s needs and wants.
- Don’t over-promise what you can’t deliver.
- Be transparent about your policies and procedures.
- Make it easy for customers to alert you to problems.
- Listen to the customer and do your best to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.
- Fix the problem so that it doesn’t happen again.

Okay, none of this is brain surgery, but I am still amazed at how many companies ignore one or all of the above. And the potential negative impact on your brand has never been scarier than now. As last week’s webinar pointed out, we are all doing business in a virtual bazaar where customers have the ability to positively or negatively influence thousands of potential customers.
Several years ago, a Yankelovich study concluded that a positive customer experience was generally shared with 2-3 people while a negative experience was shared with 15. With the power of the Internet, those numbers are now mind-boggling as witnessed by the MotrinMoms reaction to a Motrin commercial they found offensive and insensitive.

If you missed the brouhaha last November, here’s a quick recap. On a Saturday morning, Motrin launched an on-line ad via their website touting Motrin’s effectiveness in relieving back pain in mothers who carry their baby in a sling. While the basis for the ad was probably true, they chose to use sardonic humor and a flippant tonality to imply that “baby-wearing” mothers only use the sling to make a social comment to others that they are an “official mom”.

Online moms did not respond to the ad by racing out for Motrin. They were offended by the suggestion that they carry their babies just to be “fashionable”.

By Saturday evening the ad had created a firestorm in the Twitter community, was the most talked about subject, and led one Tweeter to comment: note to self … never piss off moms … especially twitter moms … they can be a nasty bunch ;)

By Sunday morning, a MotrinMom had posted a video response on YouTube and at last count has generated at least 61 additional YouTube responses that have been viewed by over 575,000 people. The negative response also dominated the blogging community for days, and will continue to be available to millions via the “Google penalty” as one blogger termed it.
Even though Motrin responded quickly by pulling the ad and issuing official apologies to the general community as well as to specific email protesters, there is no telling how much damage they have inadvertently done to their brand. And they didn’t over-promise, they just did something stupid.

So what does that say about retailers who loudly proclaim their “once-in-a-lifetime” sale that happens again next week? And again the following week? Are you listening department stores? Or what about the automobile dealers, mortgage companies and all the other advertisers who trumpet their incentives and hide behind the fine print. The old-fashioned notion of caveat emptor (buyer beware) has been replaced by seller beware that you don’t ruin your brand and your business in a blind quest for profit because your customers will tell the truth to the world.
The rapid growth of customer review sites like Yelp and Angies List and the emergence of customer feedback sites like Measuredup and Planetfeedback should be enough for marketers to wake up and smell that coffee.

The customer is not only in charge, they are in the driver's seat.

Branding in a Recession Economy

The Puget Sound Chapter of American Marketing Association held an interesting panel discusion this week on "How to Recession-Proof Your Brand". Despite this somewhat presumptuous title, there were several points that I found valuable nuggets of insight.

1. Now is the time to be authentic and consistent with your brand promise. There are two key points here. The first is to avoid the temptation to dilute or cheapen your brand image with promotional incentives that might damage the brand when the economy rebounds. The example cited was Macy's which has run 40% to 70% off on every item in their store for the past two months. The Macy's brand has always been about value, not low prices. Special sales are a retail mainstay, but I believe that they are approaching a point where many customers will be hesitant to pay regular price ever again. The second point is to avoid any overpromise as a way to entice new customers. As I have said in previous posts, today's consumers are unforgiving if they feel they have been duped, and the internet gives everyone a forum to express their disappointment.

2. Now is the time to focus on your unique market niche and deepen customer relationships with your brand. This doesn't mean you shouldn't explore new revenue streams, it simply means you should focus on what you do best and avoid trying to be something you are not really good at being. This is a good time to read Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail, if you haven't already. His hypothesis that the future of business is to develop and own small niches could never be more important than now. We live in an over-choiced world. It's best to stick with what you do well than venture too far afield.

3. Now is the time to make sure all of your brand communications are consistent with your brand image, and the first place to look is your web site. Joe LaPla made an excellent point when he said that "the web site is the front door to your brand." In today's wired marketplace, the internet is the first place most people will go to make decisions about your brand's benefits and quality. A poor web site can destroy customer confidence and potential sales. I continue to see too many companies (especially small ones) with an inadequate web presence. Last week, I interviewed a new CPA on the recommendation of someone I trust. My first step was to look for his web site to make my own evaluation and discovered that he didn't have one. When I met him, I asked why he didn't have a web site and he said that he does most of his business on referral. When I told him that I almost cancelled the meeting because he didn't have a web site despite the referral recommendation, he was shocked. But he also asked me to refer a web development company to build him a site.

4. Now is the time to be your promise on the inside and the outside. People will ultimately make the difference between success or failure regardless of economic conditions, but now is the time to arm everyone on your staff (in every department) of the importance of delivering the brand promise everytime they interact with customers, or anyone for that matter. As a new business consultant, I advise my clients that everyone on staff is part of the new business team. They must be armed with a knowledge of the company positioning strategy and brand promise. And they must be committed to living up to that promise any time and every time they have the opportunity.

One final thought was expressed by all panelists -- a recession is an opportunity to strengthen your brand and emerge in a better position than your competitors if you do the right things. One example cited by Ted Leonhardt is the case of Hornall Anderson, an excellent local design firm that continued to aggressively market themselves during the 2001 economic slowdown and now enjoy a strong leadership position.

As one panelist said, 2009 can be a time of opportunity or calamity. The choice is yours!

Branding 101: Building a Strong Brand Identity

Every marketer accepts the power of branding, but not all know how to do it well. So here some tips on how to build the power of your brand.

1. Building a strong brand identity starts with knowing who you are, who you want to be, and who you can be.
Knowing who you are is the first step, but you must also know who you want to be and who you can be. Your vision for who you want to be must be consistent with what you can deliver to your customers. Promising without delivering is the kiss of death.

2. Building a strong brand identity means aligning your external messaging with internal awareness and action. An important part of “inside-out” branding is to ensure that your internal audiences are in sync with your external communications. Too many marketers fail to nurture an internal awareness and passion for that external promise. One great example of this are banks who want you to believe they are friendly, but don’t deliver. When was the last time you saw a branch manager rush out of his chair to greet you? Or had a teller stop and smile and ask how you are doing today? Now I am sure that there are some friendly tellers and managers out there, but if your brand strategy is “we’re friendly and we care about you”, then your customer interactions must live up to that claim. All day and every day. If the expectations you create aren’t delivered, you may lose a customer for life.

3. A good branding strategy addresses these four elements – it is unique or differentiating; it is believable; it is relevant; and it is true.

• Strong brands offer something unique or differentiating to their customers.
Most business categories have too many choices. Customers need to see you as not merely a good choice, but the best choice to meet their needs. The challenge of a good
branding strategy is to find out what makes you unique, and then communicating that difference to your key target audience.

• Strong brands make claims that are believable to their audiences.
Customers should have permission to believe that your brand promise can be met. Today’s consumer is more knowledgeable . . . and more skeptical, than ever. Make sure you can give them enough logical rationale to justify their brand decision.

• Strong brands highlight their most relevant benefit.
This seems obvious, but this is often missed by marketers who forget to ask these basic questions. Does this really matter to my customers? Is this the most motivating way to present my brand? Our creative strategy for Puget Sound Blood Center is a great example of the power of communicating a more motivating benefit. Most blood centers simply say “please give blood” on the assumption that people will automatically understand the importance of their action. We highlight the benefit of giving blood with our theme “Imagine Saving a Life” and the Blood Center rarely needs to issue a distress call for donors.

• Strong brands make sure that what they promise to deliver is true.
Making an unsupportable claim may get you a onetime sale. But if you don’t live up to that claim, you will probably lose that customer. Plus all of the others they will tell about their bad experience. A Yankelovich study found that, on average, people with a positive experience tell three others, while people who have a bad experience tell eight. With the Internet’s easy access to thousands of potential customers, a bad experience can be devastating.


Whatever you do with your brand, remember this: Brands that thrive reflect their core culture and unique character, solve relevant needs, and provide a consistent experience for their customers.

Good luck with your branding development. I hope these thoughts help you along the way!