BrandShift

They Say Things...

Tue, 27 Dec 2005 14:43:49 -0500

to make you laugh and cry... Wired covers hillarious tech exec remarks from 2006, including:

"Screw the nano." -- Motorola CEO Ed Zander

"I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

"Lightweight, and crank it on, and you shuffle the shuffle." -- President Bush

Via tech.memorandum..

Lafley On Marketing

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 15:13:16 -0500

Thursday's edition of the FT had some telling quotes from P&G Chief, Lafley:

"Just as I believe the consumer has power in the purchase chain, I think the consumer has the power in the consumption and media and message chain. So she's the boss - or he's the boss. And so the world is shifting from a 'push' to a 'pull'. She and he have a lot more choices."

Kryptonite Is Back

Thu, 22 Dec 2005 11:49:14 -0500

Slowly but surely the other side of the Kryptonite lock picking story is coming out - Francois touches on this also. OK, some of the bloggers got it wrong - nothing new there.

I still maintain Kryptonite handled his terribly. Any crisis can be mitigated through effective communication. The vacuum of silence will be filled by misrepresentation, drivel and poison (I think Schopenhauer said that).

All the interviews reinforce for me is that as a business they responded well (except it turns out the problem had been flagged years before and they did nothing then). As communicators, they did lousy. If they knew about the commentary, but didn't respond, it's pretty much the same as not knowing and not responding. No response is no response.

And for the record, about that time I bought a neat new mountain bike. I needed a lock. The blog coverage specifically caused me not to buy their product. If they had communicated what they are communicating now, I might have done so. To answer the question posed by Kryptonite: "here are millions of blogs, but what are the audiences of these blogs?" - it's me, the bike owner. The interview gets worse, reinforcing further cluelessness about the blogosphere: "We know that lots of teens and college students have blogs and, mainly use them to communicate with friends and family. These are our customers, but are they going to corporate blogs? Not so sure about that."

And then, worse still, they correct the misperception that they only found out about the problem in last year when bloggers started getting into it. Oh no, they knew about it in 1992 - and it would appear they did nothing? That's meant to inspire confidence?

I had the privilege of working around some of the best crisis communicators in my agency days. I once asked why there were so few case studies on this type of thing. I got an interesting response - post crisis, all you want the focus to be on is how the business is moving forward - you don't want to get into the mechanics of the crisis, it just casts further light on your problems - A pretty good idea in my book. Seems like Kryptonite is determined to teach us what not to do pre, during and post crisis.

>> from a post over at Andy's blog

Participate in the Reputation Marketplace

Mon, 28 Nov 2005 21:57:10 -0500

I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of reputation and the potential it has to have a disruptive effect on marketing. The fluid reputation marketplaces, like ebay and Amazon, have certainly challenged the power of branding.

Because reputation can play such an important role in the way people relate to brands and companies, it’s important to think about how to make sure you stay engaged in managing your reputation in this bottom-up economy.

Here are some things to think about:

Research Your Reputation – Think about what kind of reputation your company has. Is the internal view of your company consistent with the external view?

Understand Your Reputation – Who really owns your products and brands: you or your customers? Is your company ready to acknowledge the illusion of control and start to listen to what people really have to say about you and your products?

Tap Into the Conversation – There is a current conversation going on in the world about your company. It’s hard to really listen to the conversations that are happening in the marketplace unless you get out of your office and seek them out.

Let Go – The idea that you can completely control your reputation is another illusion. While it can be valuable in the long term, try to let go now and then and focus on the relationship with your customers in the context of the journey. Enjoy the day-to-day experience.

Participate in Improving Your Reputation – The best way to start participating is to ensure that the actions of your company are consistent with your philosophy. Do you do what you say you’re going to do?

Create More Satisfied Non-Customers

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 14:20:24 -0500

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?

Innovation

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:44:16 -0500

John Winsor wrote a post here a couple weeks ago titled "Ignore the Consumer?". He quotes a recent Ad Age article:

Companies spend billions on market research to divine the needs and wants of consumers and businesses. Yet the new-product failure rate remains high. And we’re not coming up with better product concepts by listening to the voice of the customer. Why? Maybe the customer isn’t worth listening to.

John comments:

Innovation can spring from any part of the company-customer community, but ONLY if the support and encouragement for this environment exists at every level of the business.... When involving customers, be sure to think about inspiration and not reliance.

My personal philosophy on customer involvement is this: Find out what they want. Then figure out how to deliver it. Customers should be involved in "need identification"... or as John puts it, they should serve as the inspiration. But it's the company's job to figure out the best, most cost-effective solution to that need.

I was thinking about innovation this morning when making my breakfast burritos. I'd purchased Mission brand tortillas... ugh. I'll never buy them again. Not because the tortillas taste bad, but because they didn't put plastic sheets in between each tortilla so they wouldn't stick to each other. You can just picture the brand manager's scratching his or her head, trying to find out why they're losing market share... doing taste tests and evaluating product placement. And all the while, it's because of some silly little plastic sheets that make customers' lives easier.

Two insights from my Mission tortilla fiasco this morning:
- Brands that aren't in touch with their customers miss out on small but critical innovation opportunities.
- Brands that seek customer insight only along predetermined lines of thinking (like taste tests) can easily miss out on the real opportunities (like plastic sheets).

Have you connected with your customers lately? Have you allowed yourself to be surprised by a need you hadn't foreseen?

You, Called the Brand

Mon, 17 Oct 2005 12:23:04 -0500

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!

Just Words

Tue, 11 Oct 2005 15:04:17 -0500

Jennifer Rice has a nice post about buzzwords on her blog. The post made me think about marketing buzzwords that get under my skin me. One of them is ‘metrosexuals.’ Here's what I wrote in Beyond the Brand:

It’s human nature to use words as a way to classify other people’s actions or behaviors. Whether its right or wrong, we all categorize people at times. Companies, and especially their marketing departments, do the same thing. A recent popular example of how words can be appropriated is the term ‘metrosexual.’ Marketers now use this term to describe sensitive, image-conscious guys.
“Their heightened sense of aesthetics is very, very pronounced,” Marian Salzman, chief strategy officer at Euro RSCG(now at JWT), said of ‘metrosexuals.’ “They are the style makers. It doesn’t mean your average Joe American is going to copy everything they do,” she added. “But unless you study these guys you don’t know where Joe American is heading.”

It is somewhat ironic that gay writer Mark Simpson originally coined the term ‘metrosexual’ to mock everything marketers stood for. In the mid-1990’s, Simpson used the word to satirize the way that brands and consumer culture promoted the idea of a sensitive guy: one who shopped, used products for his personal appearance, and read magazines like Men’s Health.

Simpson felt that consumerism had taken its toll on traditional masculinity. From his point of view, men really didn’t go to shopping malls, use personal-care products or read self-help magazines. It was all a fantasy propagated by marketers.

A couple of days ago Salzman told the New York Tmes that her promotion of 'metrosexuals' was all a ruse to sell books:

While identifying a tribe of ‘metrosexuals’ ostensibly helped marketers reach that market, Ms. Salzman said her purpose was to sell her book. When the three authors' previous book, "Buzz: Harness the Power of Influence and Create Demand," was published in spring 2003, "we wanted to prove our own hypothesis, that you could buzz something around the world without paying for advertising."

Salzman and co-authors Ira Matathia and Ann O'Reilly have written a new book, "The Future of Men," they say the new ideal is the "übersexual."

The authors state that unlike metrosexuals, "übersexuals don't invite questions about their sexuality." They also produced a list of the "top 10 übersexuals," including Bono, George Clooney and Bill Clinton.

Ahhhh....I'm so confused! Who am I supposed to be? A metrosexual or an ubersexual? How about if I'm just me?

Companies should be hesitant to ascribe general classifications to their customers. While many times a label does a fair job of describing its target population, individual characteristics are completely subject to interpretation. Relying on a simplistic descriptive tool to give life to someone as important as a customer, or potential customer, is dangerous.

If you really want to know your customers; stop using labels and get out of your office and spend time in the context of their lives. Once you start understanding your customers as people, you can avoid the need to develop or depend on such generalized labels that seem to change in the whims of fashion.

Ignore the Consumer?

Mon, 03 Oct 2005 16:31:16 -0500

I was intrigued when I opened Advertising Age’s Point Magazine in September to find an article by Michael Treacy entitled, Ignore The Consumer. Here’s what Michael has to say:

Companies spend billions on market research to divine the needs and wants of consumers and businesses. Yet the new-product failure rate remains high. And we’re not coming up with better product concepts by listening to the voice of the customer. Why? Maybe the customer isn’t worth listening to.

While I appreciate Michael’s point-of-view, it is often not that customers lead an innovation effort astray. Many times, internal agendas and politics get in the way of true innovation.

While we can all point out innovation in marketing and product development as springing from the brilliance of one mind – Treacy uses the oft cited iPod as his primary example – the truth is that most innovation happens when co-creation is at the center of the innovation process for a brand. That means involving not only the internal resources of the company and a team charged with innovating, but also the external resources of the culture and the customers.

In my upcoming book, Spark, I had a chance to interview a number of leaders in innovation including, Mark Parker of Nike, Marsha Skidmore of Herman Miller and Rob Bon Durant of Patagonia. These interviews only reinforced my belief that there is no formulaic process, but the need to take a more holistic, co-creative approach to brand innovation with out excluding anyone, including customers.

For a team charged with innovation, try to remember to allow everybody, no matter the level of knowledge, to participate in a positive dialogue. Likewise, develop a policy of more open communication, dialogue, connectivity and equality. Remember to focus on learning and experience versus accomplishments.

In regards to the company as a whole, it’s important to remember that innovation is not necessarily a top-down process but the necessary support and nurturing must absolutely be top-down. Innovation can spring from any part of the company-customer community, but ONLY if the support and encouragement for this environment exists at every level of the business. Remember to learn from failure, reduce bureaucracy and encourage companywide communication.

When involving customers, be sure to think about inspiration and not reliance. It’s all about progression. And progression is based on immersion. People inside the company need to stop sitting at their desks and get out to spend time with their customers in the context of their lives. Take a chance and strive to become an inspired protagonist in the market. Have fun by creating a culture inside the company that mirrors the customers’ culture. Nourish the playful interaction between the company and customers.

In interactions with the culture that surrounds a company, think about leveraging relationships with suppliers in more innovative ways. Develop new ways to engage with the community. Remember, you’ll never be able to manage it or control it. Participate in it. Make use of new tools, like blogging, to interact with your culture. Allow the culture to create innovation with the company.

Only by taking a more holistic, co-creative approach that takes into account all constituents can brands be more innovative in their marketing and product design and thrive in this competitive environment in which we all exist.

A New C/Net

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 14:38:16 -0500

C/Net has long been one of my first reads. There is a new C/Net on the way. Take a look at this very cool beta site.

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.

Brand Humanity: From Processes to People

Sat, 24 Sep 2005 09:58:38 -0500

Both the blogosphere and traditional media are buzzing about “customer focus.” You can’t go a day without reading about word of mouth, the power of blogs, the shifting balance of power to customers, importance of customer service, and so on. Trendwatching identified "Customer Made" as the next big thing. Andy Sernovitz, President of the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA), rightly declared, “The weight of consumer opinion is greater than our advertising power.” And yet it doesn’t seem like anything’s really changing. The most lively discussion board about Comcast is the comments section of my “I hate Comcast” post. Last week Jake posted a complaint letter that he'd sent to American Airlines.

Do we think if we talk about “customer focus” enough, something miraculous will happen? Are we trying to convince the laggards? I don’t believe they’ll be convinced until they start going out of business. One would think that every smart business executive would be working furiously to improve customer service and product quality. There are enough examples, case studies, books and articles making a pretty compelling case that this stuff works.

So why aren’t all businesses noticeably moving towards customer-centricity? They’re either holding on because the old way of business is the only thing they know… or the current organizational structure doesn’t support the new way of doing business… or there’s something else that needs to happen first.

Here’s what I think is going on: contrary to popular belief, there’s no such thing as a product company, a telecom company, a consulting company or a retail company. All companies are people companies. People make products for people. People serve people. People work with people and for people. I’d venture a guess that the root cause of business problems is not financial, not product-related, and not structure-related. Businesses live and die by its executives' and employees’ talents, levels of empathy and ability to play well with others… and by their willingness to listen and acknowledge that customers just may have some valuable input. If a business is rife with internal politics, fiefdoms and one-upmanship, I doubt that it will be successful in this new customer-relationship era. If a company’s employees aren’t successful in their personal relationships at home, it can’t become a successful people company.

The current sea-change is problematic because the necessary solution is not a new business practice; it’s a new people practice. We don’t need a new ad campaign or a new org chart. There are no quick fixes. The skill sets needed in today’s times are not management consultants or word-of-mouth marketing specialists. If we’re all really honest with ourselves, what we really need are psychologists and coaches and relationship experts. We’re talking about real customer connections, not a personalized direct mail piece. And this is why blogging and other social technologies have exploded onto the scene. Evelyn Rodriguez writes,

"With everything you might have heard you’d think the blogosphere is anti-business. And it’s scary for businesses.

That’s not exactly true. But, yes, it is a response to the depersonalization - the dehumanization - of commerce."

Over the past few decades, we’ve lost the humanity in business. With the advent of mass-produced cars and org charts and relocation and nuclear families, we’ve forgotten our ability to relate and connect. How do we expect a company to build relationships with customers when most Americans have difficulty making genuine connections with anyone? In Bowling Alone: The Collapse & Revival of American Community, Robert Putnam notes that social and family ties are loosening and we're increasingly withdrawing into ourselves:

In the past 3 decades, participation in government, local clubs and organizations dropped by up to 50%.

Job instability, churn and the increasing numbers of independent contractors have resulted in a measurable decline of social connectedness in the workplace.

Americans are entertaining friends at home 45% less frequently now than in the mid-70s; the number of picnics declined by 60% in the same time period.

The fraction of married Americans who say that their family 'usually dines together' has dropped from 50% to 34%

The number of families who vacation together dropped from 53% to 38%; watch TV together from 54% to 41%; sitting and talking, from 53% to 43%

Reported charitable giving dropped by almost 20% from 1980 to 1995.

The percentage of those who feel that "people in general today lead as good lives -- honest and moral -- as they used to" dropped from 50% in 1952 to 27% in 1998.

So we can keep talking about the importance of customer focus, authenticity and co-creation. But we’ll never get there until we recognize that it’s not that easy to overturn decades of societal depersonalization. We may have to make some difficult choices: letting go of talented employees who are more focused on being right than being empathetic; moving to a new job at a company that fosters a relationship culture; taking a risk and going out on your own. I’m sure that part of the free-agent trend stems from a rebellion against the dehumanization of business.

Evelyn continues in her post:

"Blogs harken back to an era before…

Megaphones. Before Super Bowl ads. Before celebrity-studded concert-format megachurches. Before Ryze, Friendster and LinkedIn.

To a time of community marketplaces, bazaars, neighborhood shops and pubs where everyone knew your name, and town squares. And going back further still to trading posts and tribal campfires.

We know this stuff. Perhaps conversing is nearly a lost art. But it’s fundamentally human too. Basic building blocks of humanity."

So yes, let’s keep talking about customer focus. But let’s also focus on what we can do in our own sphere of influence. Let’s start where we are.

What do you want to know?

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 17:14:51 -0500

I've been AWOL for a couple months; my apologies! I'm coming out of a severe blog burnout phase, but I'm back. I've missed everyone. To help me get ramped back up... do you, dear reader, have any specific areas of interest in this rather broad "branding" category? I think it would be great fun to discuss specific issues or questions that you have, rather than trying to come up with stunningly insightful, but not terribly relevant, ideas.

I was wondering: who's reading this blog, anyway? Are you agency or client-side marketers? CPG or technology? Terribly experienced or newbies? I suppose that's the problem with blogs; traditional measured media conducts reader surveys and knows exactly who's reading and who's buying. With a blog, you just throw out thoughts and hope they're relevant. Commenters may have blogs, but often they're just an anonymous voice with an email address.

What's important to you? Analysis of current marketing campaigns? How blogs & social technologies are impacting brands? Customer research applied to brand development? Written from agency angle or client angle? Let us know; we'd love to hear from you.

Newspapers, the precipice and branding

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 14:42:55 -0500

Hylton tipped me off to Bob Cauthorn's post: Newspapers, meet precipice: It's the product, stupid. Here's the nub for Brandshift readers:

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.

Project Platypus

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 18:19:38 -0500

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.

Rebuilding Trust

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 17:47:14 -0500

EuroRSG just released their 11th Annual Survey of the Media with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

51% of journalists use blogs regularly – with 28% of them relying on them for day–to-day reporting, despite only 1% believing they are credible.

49% of journalists have lost trust in corporations over the last year, while 45% are less trusting of the professional behavior of their own colleagues – up from 34% in 2003.

76% of journalists agree that corporate candidness in times of crisis is poor, and 66% say the same about corporate transparency during a company crisis.

93% note that they are less trusting of colleagues, and 79% believe that recent revelations about journalists taking payment from third parties has had quite a strong effect on media credibility.