From Blog to Book.

www.dannielleblumenthal.com

2007 2007 - 07 What is a brand? - 2007-07-21 10:39 A blog on branding should start by defining what a brand is. Admittedly there are numerous definitions of brand out there.

● The classic (or legal) view is that a brand is "A name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or

service as distinct from those of other sellers. The legal term for brand is trademark. A brand may identify one item, a family of items, or all items of that seller."

● ● My view is that a brand is also an image held in the mind. Therefore, I go with this

aspect of the definition, from Wikipedia: "A brand is a symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to the product and

serves to create associations and expectations around it." ●

Key takeaway: It is important to develop and protect the name/logo/sound/etc. of one's product or service, but it is more important to develop and protect the associations that people have with that name. What I am interested in is, how do people--including brand producers, brand consumers, and brand commentators--co-create this image that people hold in their minds? Informal Influence - 2007-07-22 11:47 A new article in Fortune magazine, "What's Your OQ," (7/23/07) talks about the importance of reaching employees through their informal social networks rather than through the formal chain of command. These networks are seen as key in persuading employees to make needed cultural changes. An old article from the New York Times, "Brand Blogs Capture the Attention of Some Companies," talks about informal channels of influence that people have on brands (such as Starbucks and Netflix) by starting blogs dedicated to those brands. Other consumers read them and the brand owners themselves sometimes turn to the bloggers for advice. What both of these articles have in common is the recognition that formal corporatespeak, and formal rules, regulations, and channels of communication, are a turnoff. People want to hear from other people like themselves--that's what motivates them to listen and possibly change their behaviors. As the NYT article says, a Yankelovich marketing survey found that

"a third of all consumers would prefer to receive product information from friends and specialists rather than from advertising."

This is something to keep in mind for branding, whether internally or externally. Employees and consumers alike want to hear from real people, not the PR department. So the marketing has to be doubly sophisticated...recruiting regular people to spread the word virally. Now even as I write this it sounds like old news, don't we all know that already. But how many brand initiatives actually turn to real people to spread the word? For example, how many companies have set up internal and/or external blogs/wikis/communities of practice dedicated solely to letting real people discuss the brand? You are thinking that the reason they haven't is the fear of nasty words. If we open the floodgates, the fear goes, people will rush in to destroy the kingdom. But that fear is not well founded. As the NYT article mentioned, even in a blogging environment, people are likely to steer the discussion in a balanced direction. And as I heard at the recent Government Communicators Conference, this includes correcting others who seem to be veering off the path. I also recently heard presentations by IBM and STRATCOM (U.S. Strategic Command) to the effect that they have numerous internal blogs

and have never had a problem with inappropriate comments. So let's get to the real fear--the fear of not being good enough. Branders are afraid that they are not executing well on the brand promise and that is why consumers (and/or their own employees) can't be relied upon to act as ambassadors in informal settings. So they turn to marketing collateral like advertising, posters, brochures, newsletters and the like to try and "control" the conversation and the impressions that people get. The truth is, all of that may succeed in getting someone initially interested in the brand. But to keep the brand going, there has to be independent validation of it by the target audience. A good example of this is the iPhone. Great great ad campaign leading up to its launch. But then people started questioning whether it lives up to the hype. I saw one blog posting talking about the hidden costs behind the contract that AT&T imposes for using the service. Another question arose about how well the internet connection worked. A third issue I heard about was the keyboard--not a great typing experience. So for me the initial impression was great, but subsequent informal feedback made me want it a lot less. How could Apple do better? How about addressing all these points through public usability testing...set up a news conference or create an ad and let us watch people work through all these issues. For goodness sake, even have the AT&T rep on hand to answer questions. And then if the issues are persistent, redesign the phone or the AT&T contract or the internet connection to work as well as the initial hype suggested. That's good branding in a nutshell--keep your promises and let the public keep you honest if you aren't. Going back to the subject of influencing employees--as was recently noted, one thing Apple did right with its employees was to give them each an iPhone for free. This is not only a gesture of goodwill but also of confidence in the product...because if they don't like it or can't use it they won't be able to sell it. Smart--even though it remains to be seen how it pays off. Transparency - key to a good brand - 2007-07-23 07:57 Today's New York Times has an item ("Let the Sun Shine," p. C1) that highlights the importance of transparency in government, and indicates that transparency is currently somewhat lacking. Apparently, a recent study by a private research group at George Washington University found that Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests at some agencies have been stalled for 15 years or more. (The article goes on to say that there are two bills afloat that are aimed at remedying the situation, and to detail their status on Capitol Hill.) I am not advocating one way or the other for the passage of legislation, but just want to note that from a brand perspective the FOIA problem is troubling. For in order to build a good relationship with the public, the agency must build up a relationship of trust with them. And that trust depends on a free flow of information to the greatest extent that is legally possible. After all, government agencies are entrusted by the taxpayer to fulfill many critical missions. Those missions are the "brand promise."

Therefore, taxpayers need to know to what extent those missions are being fulfilled--or not. Now, being honest about possible shortcomings does not necessarily compromise the brand. An agency can theoretically be failing in its mission yet have strong brand equity with the public. The key question is, does the public trust that the agency is doing everything it possibly can, given the resources it has, to fulfill the mission? Federal agency branding - yes, it's allowed! - 2007-07-23 12:06 Some people may think that branding a federal agency is, quite simply, not allowed. This is because we are strictly prohibited from engaging in propaganda—meaning any activity done simply for "self-aggrandizement" or "puffery" of the agency itself. And isn’t that what brand-building is, simply the act of creating a well-known name? Actually, no. Brand-building is about creating a very specific kind of relationship between an organization and its stakeholders, a relationship in which the stakeholders understand 1) that the organization exists 2) what an organization is promising to do for them and 3) what they must do in return to obtain goods or services from the organization (pay a fee, comply with specific rules, etc.). Ideally, to have strength, that relationship will be based on an image of the organization that is positive, high-level, and conceptually abstract—representing something more than just what the organization does on a day-to-day basis. For example, the Coast Guard arguably stands for “bravery,” not just “protecting the nation’s waterways.” In a federal agency context, branding is accomplished through “disseminating information to the citizenry about the agency, its policies, practices, and products,” a role for public affairs that is specifically allowed by the Government Accountability Office. (Branding is also accomplished through the actions of the agency itself, but the public affairs officer has no control over that except to try and explain those actions.) People who think agencies shouldn’t build a brand don’t understand the distinction between brand-building as a process and a brand as an outcome. The process is about sharing information to help key stakeholders understand what the organization is about and how they should relate to it. The outcome is indeed a well-known name that is associated with certain promises. (Now, there can be a very fine line between disseminating information about what an agency is and does for the sake of promoting positive compliance with agency rules, and promoting that agency’s existence just for the sake of getting the public to be aware of the name. The difference has to do with intent.) So far it may sound like agency branding begins and ends with citizen education initiatives. Yet this is far from the case, because the brand is shaped by all the communication that goes on about and around it. We can issue press releases on our website until we are blue in the face, but the fact of the matter is that the public is equally if not more influenced by others who are disseminating communication about us:

● The press writes about our rules and requirements as well as any other story of interest to the public that concerns our agency;

● Congress will hold hearings about programs, events, and incidents that affect our agency; and

● The public will write about our communication and actions themselves, for example, in blogs and other social media vehicles such as Wikipedia.

All of those communications affect our brand because they affect the way the public understands and relates to us. So if we are to maintain a positive relationship with the public, in which the public understands who we are, what we do, and why we do it, we are responsible for engaging with all of these communicators to make sure that our message is clear. When we write op-eds in the press, respond to Congressional invitations to testify, and respond to citizen questions on our website, we are also branding the agency. Again, the end goal is to create and sustain a relationship with the public (not to mention our own employees) that is productive, leading to rules being followed with a sense of pride and enthusiasm for supporting the higher-level purpose of the agency. If branding makes sense and is allowed, why does it seem to be in such short supply in the federal government? Perhaps this is due to the common, but misguided view that a public affairs officer’s job is limited to simply supplying information about particular incidents, events, and programs without telling a broader story about what the agency is, why it exists, and how those incidents, events, and programs work together. It is important to tell the larger story in order to impress upon the public mind that the agency is a cohesive whole, and not just an assortment of individual sub-departments dealing with isolated incidents. It is possible that many federal public affairs officers shy away from creating that bigger picture because they don’t want to be seen as promoting the agency for its own sake—that they are afraid of being seen as propagandizing. The reality is, there are very few strong federal agency brands. And those brands that are strong—like the Coast Guard, the Secret Service, the FBI and the CIA—have become well-known not necessarily because of their public affairs offices, but because they have become visible through their extraordinary actions as portrayed in the news, on TV, and in the movies. For example, in the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the Coast Guard rose to the rescue, with images of Coast Guard leadership saturating the media. And there have been many memorable portrayals of Secret Service, FBI and CIA agents in the movies and on TV. Has anyone tried to build a federal agency brand from within a federal agency? No doubt many agencies are engaging in branding to some extent or another. But until we get rid of that dangerous misconception that branding is equivalent to propagandizing, they will likely encounter obstacles that prevent them from being fully successful. The bottom line: for maximum effectiveness, federal agencies should engage in more than just providing information—they need to brand. Not for the sake of creating a name, but because it’s the way to build the best possible relationship they can with the American people—increasing compliance with agency rules and demonstrating to the taxpayer that their dollars are being invested wisely. Brand heritage and Ford - 2007-07-24 05:55

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Ford CEO Alan Mulally, who is trying to turn the company around. He said that he has spoken to everybody about what to do:

"You talk to all the stakeholders, starting with the customers. You also look at the macro economics, the economy. You talk to customers, dealers, Ford employees, UAW, your suppliers, your investors, everybody."

I wonder, in all those conversations, did anybody talk about the brand? Because Ford's brand is dying. The "Bold Moves" campaign is a terrible betrayal of its brand heritage--affordable safety. ("Bold moves" are exactly the opposite of what a safety-conscious driver does.) Remember the Ford Taurus? A great car. And now there is talk of Ford selling Volvo, the brand that defines safety. What are they doing over there? Why don't they leverage the brand equity they have built up over time?

Sprint's copycat ad campaign - 2007-07-24 06:08 Remember Microsoft's ad campaign - Your Potential, Our Passion? Sprint's new ad campaign looks just like it, with people surrounded by neon streaks. Every time I see the Sprint ads I think of Microsoft and wonder, did Sprint copy Microsoft on purpose or are they just clueless? The new campaign doesn't detract from Microsoft; if anything, it reminds the viewer of just how brilliant the Microsoft ads were (to me, anyway). But Sprint is reduced to far less than it could be. Repairing the image of the Justice Department - 2007-07-25 04:51 Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez vows to stay at the Justice Department "to try to repair its broken image". In a prepared statement for the Senate Judiciary Committee he said:

"I believe very strongly that there is no place for political considerations in the hiring of our career employees or in the administration of justice," he said. "As such, these allegations have been troubling to hear. From my perspective, there are two options available in light of these allegations. I would walk away or I could devote my time, effort and energy to fix the problems. Since I have never been one to quit, I decided that the best course of action was to remain here and fix the problems."

This is either a very smart move or a very misguided one. I say smart because through his actions he is showing that he feels he is in the right, an assertion that people may ultimately accept. I say misguided because if people believe he is in the wrong then no amount of effort on his part will help the Department, other than to resign. Right now, his major problem is that public perception--rightly or wrongly--is that he is at the heart of the scandal. If he is going to pursue this strategy my suggestion to Gonzalez is that he start his campaign by convincing employees of his rightness, because they are a critical audience to carry the message forward both internally and externally. First you clean up your house, then the rest of the world. If Gonzalez does so, let's hope he fares better than former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz, who, when he apologized to employees for providing professional help to a World Bank employee with whom he was involved (not that Gonzalez is apologizing), got booed and hissed with chants to "Resign. Resign." Red Lobster - brand operationalization, at least in part - 2007-07-26 07:02 Red Lobster is setting itself back on course, reports the New York Times, with a major brand makeover that's taking it from "frumpy and downscale" to a more upscale operation. What's noteworthy to me is how intelligently they designed the change - first focusing on operational improvement, then on changing the image with the public. See quote from the story below:

"Kim Lopdrup, president of Red Lobster, says that the marketing initiative is part of a three-stage effort to revamp the brand. The first phase involved improving operations so that customers got what they ordered and did not have to wait too long. The second phase is aimed at changing the public image and perception. The third part will be dedicated to increasing sales at existing restaurants and perhaps adding locations."

The only question I have for Red Lobster is, did they revamp operations in a branded way - did they educate employees on the new image and how operational changes would enhance it - or did they just focus on straightforward customer service changes? Because it makes a difference...especially since (aside from the food) the restaurant is only as good as the kind of service provided by its waiters and waitresses. Harley Davidson marketing to women - what a mistake! - 2007-07-26 07:11 Harley-Davidson is ruining its brand. As reported by the New York Times, the company is chasing the female market, which is reportedly the "fastest-growing part of the motorcycle business, buying more than 100,000 of them a year." Harley is changing the motorcycles to be more comfortable for women, selling female-oriented clothing ("bright colors and with rhinestones"), etc. What a mistake! Harley is the quintessential brand for men. They should start a "sister" brand for women, not mess with the original.

When obsession is good and bad for the brand - 2007-07-26 07:15 Steve Jobs hates buttons on computers and electronics gadgets, and even his clothes, reports the Wall Street Journal, because they create too much complexity. Read the article to find out the details, but one point stands out: Jobs is obsessed with getting rid of buttons. My point is, this obsession has been good for the Apple brand in that it has created a point of relevant differentiation -- i.e. it's a different approach to technology and people like it -- but bad in that it's gone too far, especially with the lack of a keypad on the iPhone. Results? Early iPhone sales are disappointing, although not everyone is concerned that this means the phones are a bust. Marketing experts are having fun disagreeing on the prospects for the gadget. My prediction: it will be a big flop. Lindsay Lohan vs. Britney Spears: Whose career will survive? - 2007-07-27 06:55 Here is an interesting contrast between two celebrity brands...two female entertainers who are famously troubled, but whose brands are affected in different ways. First, Lindsay Lohan, who recently denied having done drugs. Honestly, even if she did, I am 99% sure it doesn't affect her brand. Why? Because Lohan has always been an out of control type party girl. That is her brand promise --trouble. I don't foresee any negative impact on her career at all. That doesn't mean that her behavior is OK, but it does mean that in the marketplace, you are judged on how well you align to your brand -- even if your brand is a negative one. Her movies will still get insured--no worries--and her movie "I Know Who Killed Me" is going to be a major hit. (Predictions are that ticket sales will be even higher than projected due to interest in her personal life.) Now, Britney Spears is another matter. Her career may as well be over. It's not because she keeps doing strange, out of control things--like letting her dog poop on a designer dress at a recent photo shoot, running off with her kids to Vegas in the middle of a custody battle, or, of course, shaving her head--but because her brand is all to do with innocence. We used to trust Britney to be an innocent teen who, although she pushed the boundaries a bit, was fundamentally a good girl. Now she has gone completely over the edge. From that, her brand cannot recover. Strangely, the press is reporting that Britney recently called Lindsay to empathize over their mutual problems. I wonder if that call was made out of Britney's desperate hope to be a soul sister with someone whose career is on the rise despite having her image trashed in public. What is going on at NASA??? - 2007-07-27 10:19

Update 8/9/07: NASA can't find anything to substantiate the allegations about drinking. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070809/sc_nm/space_shuttle_nasa_dc News just broke that astronauts were reportedly drunk before flying and a NASA subcontractor employee sabotaged the shuttle Endeavour. It wasn't that long ago, the report notes, that astronaut Lisa Nowak was accused of attacking her "romantic rival" with pepper spray. And let's not forget the shooting at Johnson Space Center in Houston by an employee who ended up killing himself. They better do something to repair their image, and fast! Corporate communication: FIRST LISTEN, then talk (when internal branding has the opposite effect) - 2007-07-27 13:47 Is everybody sick to death of branding and brand messages at work? If so, does internal branding stand a chance? I’m thinking of the popularity of games like buzzword bingo (or “B.S. bingo”) where people attend meetings and cross out buzzwords as they’re spoken—the fun part is you get to yell out “Bingo” (or scream it silently to yourself) when you get five in a row. And of course there is “The Office” and “Dilbert.” I wonder if, to employees, brand messages—no matter how well-intentioned or expensive—have the exact opposite effect they’re supposed to. Recently I stumbled on this essay--it gives you the idea:

"When I was working at Pizza Hut, they used to show us promotional videos for the new pizzas they were unveiling. These were not for the customers; no one would ever see them but employees, yet they were still expertly produced with fancy jump cuts, jingles, lighting, sound, everything. I have no doubt that they cost the company thousands of dollars a year. The intent was to get us excited about our work. They were trying to sell us on making pizzas. Rather than give us a raise, however small it might be, they decided to spend the money on an utterly worthless attempt to motivate us about something we already had to do."

Yet if Pizza Hut were to give this employee more money, would he then want to watch the Pizza Hut internal video? Or would he find some other reason to reject it? I guess my question is, if employees reject internal branding/marketing, what is the alternative? Should organizations simply say nothing to their people? Perhaps that’s exactly right. Maybe it’s time for organizations to listen to what their employees have to say FIRST, and then feed that back in the form of corporate communication. This goes along with the idea that brands are co-created between the producer (employer) and the user (in this case, the employee). If employees have stopped listening, then brands should stop talking until they hear something from the employees. That gives them a place to begin.

When to say that "brand is reputation" and when not to - 2007-07-28 08:01 When I was a brand consultant, we used to tell our clients that brand is the same thing as reputation. Primarily, it was a way to get them comfortable with the idea of assessing where they stood in the eyes of their stakeholders (you can't do a brand analysis without understanding what image people have of the organization). And frequently this strategy worked: After all, who does not want to know what others think of them--what their reputation is? And in fact, brand does share some things in common with reputation, most importantly that both result from the perception of the organization by its stakeholders. In other words, when you ask the question "what do other people think of us?" the answer you get back could either be your brand or your reputation. However, routinely and unthinkingly equating brand with reputation is a slippery slope. Because reputation has to do with specific characteristics like those that Fortune uses to determine its most admired companies: "innovation, people management, financial soundness, quality of management, use of corporate assets, social responsibility, long-term investment and quality of products/services." On the other hand, there are no specific characteristics that determine a brand--the image that people have of the organization can be anything: happy, swift, responsive, down-home, fashionable, whatever. So theoretically you can have a great reputation (strong on the specific characteristics that compose a great reputation) and a weak brand (no unified image in the minds of your public). So although you can say that in a way reputation and brand are the same, you have to be careful what questions you ask when you do an assessment...not to confuse reputation with brand. You have to ask different questions to get at what the reputation is and what the brand is. Another thing to keep in mind is that there are specific metrics for assessing brand strength, and those should be included in the survey as well. I like Young & Rubicam's Brand Asset Valuator methodology, which measures the brand along four dimensions: differentiation, relevance, esteem, and knowledge. The more unique the brand, the more relevant it is to the customer, the more highly they think of it, and the better they know it, the stronger the brand. Note that "esteem" is aligned with reputation--so we could say that reputation is one element of the brand, not the brand in totality. (See this article). When the CEO dismisses the brand - 2007-07-29 09:11 To brand an organization effectively, you have to start at the top – with executive leadership. The CEO (or equivalent) must be totally committed to the concept of branding and must drive the brand throughout the organization. Otherwise the organization cannot effectively display the right image at all the points at which it reaches its stakeholders. If you understand the concept and the importance of brand, this much is obvious. But there are still leaders that “don’t get it.” I believe that there are basically two reasons why.

● The first is that they literally don’t understand branding at all. To them a brand is Coca-Cola or Disney or Starbucks. It’s a marketing or an advertising gimmick. It doesn’t apply to the widgets they produce. It’s flighty and self-promotional and frankly, stupid. It has nothing to do with the organization believing in anything, or communicating a unified image to the outside world. Branding, to them, has to do with creating a TV commercial and maybe buying some ad space in a magazine or two. That’s it.

● The second is that they refuse, on principle, to operate according to the rules of brand – which is that it is fundamentally your image that creates value for the organization. Even though that image is derived from real actions taken by the company, they don’t want to hear it. They want to focus on actions first, and image later or not at all. They actually believe that they can run the company without paying attention to the image that the company’s actions create. This belief is magnified by the fact that there is little in the way of well-known tangible evidence that “branding” creates real value.

What can you do when your organization’s leader dismisses the brand? That’s a good question…I wish I knew the answer to it. But the first step is to understand what is blocking the CEO in the first place—whether it’s one of these reasons or something else. The road to convincing him or her to implement the brand begins with unblocking the invisible barriers that are lying in the leader’s path. (See this for more on the importance of the CEO leading the branded organization and for a couple of examples of brand return on investment.) What the CEO needs to do to build the brand - good points from Prophet Brand Strategy - 2007-07-30 04:18 Going back to the Prophet Brand Strategy document referenced in the previous post, this is to summarize what the CEO of the brand-enabled organization must do in order to lead it forward effectively. Basically Prophet says that the leader must do two things: strategize and execute. Not a wondrous insight there, but it’s the “how” that matters:

● By strategize they mean that the leader must bring “world-class strategic brand thinking” to confront “market opportunities and business challenges.”

● By execute they mean the ability to “deliver,” or “operationalize,” the brand “in the face of limited resources and the need for prioritization and tough choices.”

Strategic thinking, they say, involves four actions (two of them have to do with portfolio management so I’ve combined them under #3):

1 Knowing the customer 2 Developing a brand identity and position 3 Managing the range of brands represented under the major brand and shedding them

when necessary 4 Managing the brand from within the various functions and disciplines of the

organization

Execution involves:

1 Understanding where the brand touches the customer and prioritizing which brand experiences are most important

2 Making sure that the purchase and post-purchase experience are optimal 3 Executing the brand’s marketing across multiple channels 4 Deciding what to measure and how to change the brand implementation accordingly 5 Making sure that employees understand and deliver on the brand promise

The key question to ask re: execution, they say, is: “Do we want to reinforce the brand and its promise by controlling all our customer touchpoints or do we want the touch points to control us and risk denigrating the brand and its promise?” The brand council -- an indispensable tool - 2007-07-30 06:22 The implication of being a brand-driven organization is that the organization becomes driven by the marketing function. This is sure to elicit hoots and howls from Finance, IT, Human Resources, and the other back-office mission support functions, each of which believes that it can and should be primary in the organization. The job of the CEO is to look all those other functions in the face and say NOT that they’re unimportant, but rather the opposite: “Your support is critical if our image is to be presented effectively to the public.” This is where the concept of the executive brand council (or brand council for short)—a multidisciplinary team of executives from each line of business and support function—comes in. (This is strategic thinking item #4--see previous post.) The CEO cannot lead the brand forward alone—the informed advice of key leaders from across the organization is all-important. As Paula Dumas, a senior-level brand marketer at Kodak, says (quoted in Prophet--see previous post), having a brand council means that “brand stewardship is shared by everybody within the company.” Commitment comes from the top through the brand council, and is disseminated out throughout the whole organization. Prophet says that the executive brand council tackles issues like acquiring new brands, launching new products (brands), and licensing agreements. However, in my view this doesn’t go far enough. In reality, one needs to address all the issues that affect the brand—from positioning, to portfolio management, to employee culture and more—by bringing them before the brand council regularly. This is the only way to make sure that there is genuine understanding of and buy in for the brand takes place, at all levels of the organization. Build your brand with ONE image, not many - 2007-07-31 07:26 When you are building a brand, it is critically important that you project one singular image. This may sound very simple and intuitive, but it always amazes me when companies get this wrong—and it also amazes me how powerful it is when they get it right. An example of a company that gets it very wrong is GEICO, the American insurance

company. GEICO is represented by two different advertising campaigns with two completely different messages.

● One shows a gecko (lizard) featuring the message that a 15 minute phone call can save you 15% on your car insurance. Here the message is “convenient savings.”

● Another shows a caveman who is insulted when he hears the message that the insurance is so easy to use “even a caveman can do it.” Here the message is “easy.”

It’s a shame because both campaigns have the potential to be enormously effective, but when you put them together, they cancel each other out. An organization that gets it right is the American cable TV channel TNT, which runs the tagline “We know drama.” Their TV commercials repeat the message over and over again. And every show on TNT that I have seen is, indeed, very dramatic. An effective brand…a single message. When you build your brand, make sure that you are saying ONE thing and that’s it. 5 key steps to crisis planning for the brand - 2007-07-31 17:46 Kami Watson Huyse recently wrote a useful article published in Communication World Bulletin (membership required to read the fulltext).

The article is called "Crisis Planning in a Digital Age: Beyond Tylenol" and makes the following point: Modern crisis planning has to happen faster than ever. Johnson & Johnson responded to the Tylenol crisis within a few weeks. Today we are operating on a "30-minute news cycle, driven by the wild card of the Internet." "All it takes is one influential blog to take up the story, followed by accelerated coverage by online and mainstream media."

Huyse offers a number of ideas for communication channels for dealing with a crisis in today's accelerated environment. Most of them make sense to me; here are my top picks (see the full article to read all 10):

1 Be ready to send email blasts out as needed. 2 Connect with important online blogs and forums before a crisis ever occurs. 3 Create an online communication center (like a blog). 4 Be ready to send out messages by text message or pre-recorded phone call. 5 Make it easy for your website visitors to use your information in blogs and social

media platforms (she doesn't say how but I imagine that it's something like what you do in a social media press release where you give relevant pieces of content).

This article seems important for anyone who needs to be prepared for a crisis in the age of Web 2.0 (and who doesn't?)

2007 - 08 Rupert Murdoch to buy the Wall Street Journal - how will this affect the brand? - 2007-08-01 12:10 The Wall Street Journal is a titan brand in American journalism--very strong, well-respected, and elite. Rupert Murdoch is an international king of mainstream entertainment--also a very strong brand in his own right, and owner of the strong FOX entertainment brand--but not elite. How will the purchase by Rupert Murdoch of the Wall Street Journal affect the newspaper's brand? An article today's Wall Street Journal (August 1, 2007) delves at length into Murdoch's possible plans post-purchase and the results are somewhat inconclusive. What is clear: Murdoch wants the Journal to make more money. He may expand the Journal's presence online. And he will likely position the Journal as more of a competitor to the New York Times by adding more general interest news. The unspoken question on everybody's mind is: will the editorial quality of the Wall Street Journal remain the same? Not only that, but will the BUSINESS editorial quality remain the same? As Murdoch leverages the Journal's brand equity, he mustn't forget where that equity derives from: being a top source of in-depth business news reporting. If he does, the brand is doomed. When the brand competes against itself - 2007-08-02 07:26 What happens when you have multiple identities within a single organization, each one competing for dominance? From a brand perspective, there are several brands housed within a larger brand, and each one wants to express itself as the main brand. This leads to competing messages that end up confusing the audience or canceling each other out. Essentially, you can look at this as a brand architecture dilemma. Brand architecture refers to developing an optimal strategic relationship between multiple organization names. The goal of brand architecture is to create maximum “brand equity”—meaning the added value the brand name brings to the product or service beyond its functional value. There are three types of brand architecture:

● Monolithic: The corporate name, or “master brand,” is stamped on all products and services offered – like Starbucks.

● Endorsed: The corporate name endorses sub-names – like Polo by Ralph Lauren. ● Freestanding: The corporate name is a holding company and each product or service is

individually branded – like Procter & Gamble and Tide.

The monolithic solution to the problem is to combine all the brand equity from all entities into a single brand, called by a single name. Organizationally, this means that the culture of each brand has to change to become one single entity. This is extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, if you have an entrenched subbrand. The endorsed solution is to lend a master brand name to each sub-entity but let them retain their own organizational identities. The culture has to change less, because it is acknowledged that each entity takes a different approach, but there still has to be a common thread or theme tying all the sub-brands together into the main brand. If the sub-entities have a really strong identity, even this can be difficult. The freestanding solution is to reserve the master brand name for a holding shell, and allow each subbrand to go forth and prosper on its own. This means that there are multiple missions with multiple cultures, and the subbrands may even compete against each other. Keep in mind that there is no one right way to respond to a situation like this, but it is important to address the issue through one of the strategies above. The Microsoft brand - better after Bill Gates leaves? - 2007-08-03 08:58 The question is will Microsoft remain a dominant brand once Bill Gates leaves the company? Or maybe the question is, will Microsoft regain its brand dominance once Bill Gates leaves the company? Microsoft’s image is currently being battled out. On the one hand it was recently named as the #8 “best brand” among consumers in a Harris Poll, beating out Apple. On the other it is the subject of a devastating and popular series of attack ads by Apple on how old-fashioned and clunky it is. (QuickTime needed to view) I believe that Microsoft will actually get better once Gates goes. The company has a strong culture – look at the number and outspokenness of Microsoft-related blogs. From that point of view, there is a great deal of potential there, just waiting to be unleashed through new leadership. Perhaps the way forward will be through Gates’ strategic-thinking successor, Craig Mundie (subscription required to view full story), who plans to improve the brand by changing the company’s image as a lumbering giant, unable to innovate on its own. Microsoft’s advertising tagline is “Your Potential. Our Passion.” That tagline seems to apply to the company itself – it needs to rediscover its own locked-up potential. What is the company good at, and good for? (Can it break through the dark side of its image, as a company that seeks to dominate computing at the expense of new and better ways of doing things?) That’s what the public wants and needs to know.

“Classic marketing” vs. “Classic Branding” - 2007-08-04 08:57 Last year, Google was the #1 brand in America as rated by brand design agency Landor Associates’ annual national Image Power ® Newsmaker Brands survey. What do we learn from the rise of a brand that has no essential identity other than to serve as a platform for consumers to search the Web—the ultimate “blank screen”? And what further do we learn from the fact that three other “blank screen” brands were in the top 10—YouTube (#4), eBay (#5), and Yahoo! (#6)? For those who are unfamiliar with these brands, YouTube is a platform for consumers to post videos; eBay is a platform for consumers to sell merchandise to other consumers; and Yahoo! is a portal for users to obtain personalized content online, from email messages to news and more. It is possible that the rise of these brands represents the triumph of the Internet. But there is another way to look at it: all of these brands are “classic marketing” driven brands. That is, they have no intrinsic identity other than the wants of the consumers who use them. This is in opposition to “classic branding” driven brands, which have no intrinsic identity other than the vision of the businesspeople who created them: Oprah (#8), Sony (#9), Target (#7), NFL (#10), iPod (#3), Las Vegas (#2). I developed the concepts of “classic marketing” vs. “classic branding” based on Jacques Chevron’s argument nearly a decade ago in Brandweek (5/31/99; “Marketing vs. Branding: Separate Pieces”) that marketing and branding are not the same thing but rather represent two different disciplines, in large part because “marketing is extraverted while branding is introverted.” By this he meant that brands can follow either a marketing approach—looking primarily at what customer want and then tailoring the brand to it—or a branding approach—looking inward at what the brand represents and focusing on communicating it outward. In a way, marketing and branding are more than two opposing disciplines. They are two different visions of the world. The marketing-oriented brand thinks about “consumer wants above all,” while the branding-oriented brand thinks about “what consumers should I channel into my brand?” There are so many differences between branding and marketing. Branding is about living with consistent values, like swimming your laps; marketing is about taking one good shot at the basketball hoop. Branding happens slowly; marketing is fast. Branding is a multifaceted personality; marketing is one aspect of that personality. Branding is talking; marketing is shouting. Branding is value driven (example: Office Depot has a note on its computer screen for salespeople, reminding them to tell

customers when office chairs are vinyl and not leather); marketing is amoral. You brand a name; you market an initiative. And on and on. The rise of marketing-oriented brands reflects a customer whose wants are always changing and changing fast as the things available to them become more advanced more rapidly. More than that, it reflects a sense of entitlement among customers who expect that brands will ultimately be tailored to them: “an audience of one.” These brands serve the customer who has moved away from mass brands and beyond niche brands to the customer-created brand. It’s impossible to keep up with customers like these because virtually as soon as a new brand framework arises, it is outstripped by the customer’s advancing wants. (Social theorist Georg Simmel called this the eternal conflict in modern culture.) Thus Google, YouTube, eBay and Yahoo!, as well as the top brand Craigslist.com, all decline to offer the customer a brand framework, preferring instead to let the customer define the brand. At the same time, the strength of Oprah, Sony, Target, NFL, iPod, and Las Vegas reflects the fact that for other consumers, the need for a solid brand remains eternal. Rather than seeking to create brands themselves, these customers seek to connect their wants to the image projected by the brands offered to them. They cry with Oprah, are entertained by Sony, become chic on the cheap at Target, crunch bones through watching the NFL, escape the world with their iPods, and experience “what goes on here, stays here” in Las Vegas. There is another way of looking at this issue—by the level of customer involvement in the brand.

● “Classical brands” exist without reference to the customer—they are iconic, like Coca-Cola, Tiffany, Oprah, Disney, Starbucks, “24”. That is, they are so deeply introverted, or rooted in their set of brand beliefs, that they almost don’t require a customer to exist. Even when they depend on the customer to exist, the customer plays a scripted role (as in the crying and clapping on the Oprah show).

● Integrated brand/marketing brands allow the customer a voice in determining the direction, voice, and values of the brand. Think of Amazon.com and its rating system, or American Idol and the co-creation of brand between judges and contestants.

● ● “Classical marketing” brands allow the customer to determine the entire identity of

the brand – the “blank screen” brand discussed previously. What kind of brand has the most earning potential for the future? Are we looking at a future based wholly on the marketing approach, where companies welcome customers “hijacking” their brands and determining their meaning and direction? Or is the success of brands like Google and YouTube just a fluke, and the real value lies in the Oprahs and the Starbucks of the world? Unfortunately for investors in Google and the like, it is likely that the “classic marketing” approach will not have lasting value. The lack of a strong brand identity for the company—despite the well known personalities of its inventors—means that as soon as another company comes along which is

equally functional and reliable, customers will turn to it as eagerly as they embraced Google. At the same time, brands which are so introverted that they fail to embrace customer evolution will inevitably collapse inward. Look at the Gap, for instance, which once defined classic clothing for those in their late '20s and early '30s, but failed to grow and mature as times changed. And one could argue that the Home Depot brand, similarly, has lost favor precisely because it’s not listening to what customers want in a home improvement store—and that Lowe’s has stepped in to pick up the slack. Likely, the winning brands will be integrated brand/marketing brands—those who embrace “classic branding” while integrating the lessons of “classic marketing”— defining a strong identity framework for the brand while allowing consumers (or representatives of consumers) to add their own unique stamp to it. An example that quickly comes to mind is the Disney television channel for kids, which stamps the idea of “realizing your dreams” on a widely diverse array of shows aimed at children in the 5-12 age group. Brands like this stay true to a vision, values, personality, and culture that give the brand name its value in the first place. At the same time, they stay current by adapting the brand framework to consumers’ ever-evolving understanding of what the brand means in their lives. That, forever, is a winning formula. 5 ways to achieve brand consistency - 2007-08-05 09:25 In the beginning the company (brand) is launched with the best of intentions. There is a leader, with a vision of what the company can achieve, and he or she implements that vision within the small group of people who helped to found the organization. Then, more people join the organization. Suddenly the original vision, mission, values and culture are threatened. What if we go this way and not that way? somebody, or many someodies, asks. What if we seize this opportunity, and that one, and another?

Controversies arise about what to do. Corporate communication, both internal and external, suffers as the brand gets pulled in different directions. Suddenly it takes three or four people in as many different departments to clear statements before they are made. And everybody edits every document to death, until things end up saying nothing at all. It's like what happens when you mix too many colors of paint together - you end up with a sad brown mess. Sound like a bad brand dream? It can happen. To prevent this:

The company founder must make it priority #1 to not only articulate but enforce the organization's vision, mission, values and culture across the board. If the founder is not there then the staff must ask themselves, what would our founder have done? (They do this at Wal-Mart, a fact which not everybody likes) Or they must find a true brand genius with outstanding management skills to keep the brand consistently on track. (Watch The Gap struggling to do this - see - it is not at all clear that the leader they just hired is the brand guru they need.) The brand must be stated, communicated, and articulated every which way possible to keep the organization going in the right direction.

The company can hire for brand. At top brand Google, potential employees are vetted extensively to make sure that they will fit into the culture -- as well as highly intelligent. Same at Southwest Airlines. It is much harder to instill the brand once people have already been hired. They have to pre-fit the mold, if you will. (There is evidence that a strong company culture is positively correlated with stock price.)

The company can instill corrective mechanisms to keep the brand central to decision-making. One of these is an executive brand council, that stewards the organization through key decisions that will affect the brand. Another is to instill in a chief brand officer (could be the CEO) responsibility for keeping the brand's integrity. Another corrective mechanism is to open up internal communication through blogging, discussion boards, etc. and allow employees to state freely when they feel that the brand's boundaries have been overstepped.

The company can instill positive rewards (ranging from noncash time-off awards to cash bonuses) for employees who make suggestions that keep the brand healthy.

The company can make a public pledge to stay true to the brand and invite the public to write in at its website with feedback as to whether it is doing well or badly in that respect.

The brand can stay consistent. The key is to recognize the centrality of the brand to the health of the organization as a whole, and not to lose sight of it when new opportunities walk in the door.

Branding as an organizational change - 2007-08-05 18:54 Branding ideally is something that exists from the moment the company is born. It is not a change but is rather part of the living breathing fabric of the organization. That way it is not something that people have to separately "buy into," an approach which may or may not work. But what happens if for some reason the company changes direction and has to rebrand? Then there is no choice. The company has to create and assimilate a new brand profile. At that point it is time to bring the change management specialists in. Do not think that you will simply announce it, launch it, "roll it out." It will not work. Someone with a deep understanding of the existing culture has to model out what paths to change have been successful in the past and copy those. Remember that this is not one of those situations where majority rules. There must be absolute total allegiance to the brand from beginning to end. By the way, expect to fire a portion of the workforce...those who just won't go along. No matter how good their work is, if they don't add value to the brand, they should be out. I cannot emphasize this point strongly enough. Do product brands require a strong culture? - 2007-08-06 17:16 So far I have used the term brand rather loosely to refer to the company that sells a product or service--the corporate brand. But it seems worthwhile to take a moment and reflect on product brands, which emanate from the company but are not equivalent to it. Do product brands require a strong culture behind them? Or is it sufficient to market, advertise, publicize, and sell them on their own? I would say that it depends on the extent to which people are involved in the selling context. For example, take Procter & Gamble's Tide detergent. Everybody knows that Tide is synonymous with "strong clean." So every person involved with Tide should at a minimum wear very clean clothes. They don't have to preach cleanness, but they have to be clean--must reflect the brand. They should probably also extol Tide inasmuch as they can. And there should probably be a Tide lab (I don't know if there is or isn't one) where all they do is search for the newest ways to keep clothes ultra-clean. Nevertheless, in general, product brands require much less in the way of corporate culture than corporate or service brands. Nobody has to "live" the Tide brand. In my view, Tide is tops because of the way it is made (you see, I'm a brand believer in the product) and the way it is advertised--a well designed mass media creation by P&G. A hybrid kind of brand exists in retail...where product and service are inextricably linked. Think of Starbucks. In retail the salesperson is absolute king or queen of the brand...and he or she shares that throne with the merchandise. The two must blend together seamlessly. The salesperson must not only wear the right clothing but must

"live" the experience that the brand promises. So for example, a Starbucks barista should know coffee well enough to be convincing about the kind of experience it is to drink a Starbucks drink. And you know what? Even if you never ask, you get the feeling that they do know the coffee in all its variations. This derives straight from the fact that Starbucks has a strong corporate culture and makes a point of treating its sales associates well. Read this:

"Ask Starbucks executive about the company's recipes for success, and they will tell you unequivocally that it's the people, or 'partners,' as Starbucks calls its employees. They will tell you that Starbucks doesn't just sell coffee, it sells an experience. And that experience, they will say, is completely dependent upon the attitudes and abilities of the partners on the front lines who greet and serve more than 30 million customers globally every week." (http://www.workforce.com/section/06/feature/23/94/44/index.html)

In contrast, Dunkin' Donuts (which has better coffee, incidentally) offers absolutely no brand experience whatsoever. All they promise is to get you moving quickly ("America runs on Dunkin"). From what I can tell, the store associates are not particularly well-treated nor do they convey a brand promise. As a result, Starbucks has higher brand equity than Dunkin' Donuts, hands down. Now if you look at Target vs. Wal-Mart, there is an interesting problem at play. For Target undoubtedly has more of a brand positioning than Wal-Mart--selling "cheap chic" rather than the commoditized promise of "the lowest prices out there"--but Wal-mart has the stronger corporate culture. (The corporate culture is so well known that there are a multitude of term papers for sale on it; see http://www.oppapers.com/topics/Wal-Mart-Organizational-Culture/0.) For example:

"The last rule on the Wal-Mart list is to take care of the customer. Unless the situation is completely unreasonable, a customer must never be allowed to leave a Wal-Mart store unsatisfied, Mauldin said. Taking care of customers is possible, because the company has an unwritten deal with its associates. 'Sam Walton believed that if he was good to people and fair with them and demanding of them, they would eventually decide that he was on their side,' she said. 'The focus of that deal is that cost-cutting can co-exist with a moral center, which operates on the principle that Wal-Mart can be the cheapest place to shop and the best place to work at the same time.'" (http://refrigeratedtrans.com/mag/transportation_corporate_culture_provides/) (Also see http://www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=251)

Contrast this with these weak comments about Target:

"Company culture is 'a hard thing to understand,' insists one insider. 'My brain shuts down when the human resources people start droning on about mission statements, corporate culture, and other similar fluff.' What she does understand, however, is that 'Target values employees who do their jobs well.' The company also 'appreciates new ideas and the people who introduce them.'" (http://www1.excite.com/home/careers/company_profile/0,15623,129,00.html)

In the end, which is the stronger brand - Target or Wal-Mart? Or think of it this way: given a choice between the two stores, where would you shop? I'd say it's a tossup. I'd go to Wal-Mart, because I trust that I will get the lowest prices out there with satisfaction guaranteed. But I think others would just as easily go to Target, because their product brands are so strong. I still believe, though, that Target's seemingly absolute lack of a corporate culture, especially compared to Wal-Mart, might sting them in the end. In fact, if Wal-Mart stood for anything other than the essence of frugality, which is a commodity promise, it would probably supersede Target easily. So, in the end, brands with a strong culture usually trump those without one--except when it comes to product brands, where the less visible the people are, the less important the culture is and the more important advertising and marketing are. And retail brands benefit from having a strong culture, but they may need to make less of an effort at this if their product brands are extremely high-equity. Internal branding: target innovators and early adopters first - 2007-08-07 04:50 In Seth Godin's 2003 book Purple Cow (see free excerpt and bonus chapters) he argues, as many do (here is just one example), that mass marketing is dead. Rather, marketers should try to persuade that small group of people who are influencers of the masses, rather than the masses themselves. (To illustrate, he shows a bell curve in which innovators and early adopters are on the left hand side, laggards [people who are late to adopt new things] are on the right side, and the early and late majority [the masses] are in the middle. Ideas spread from the left hand side to the right.) You may be saying to yourself, I've heard this already -- what is the big news here? The news is that we as marketers haven't applied this truth to one important area - internal marketing or branding. When you need to launch a big internal branding initiative, do you instinctively reach for the influencers or do you try to hit the masses of employees with the message? My guess is the latter -

and they react the same way people do when they are exposed to mass advertising - they ignore it. Next time, try putting your message out only to a select few - the opinion leaders - and let them get the word out for you. It goes without saying that your message should be meaningful and credible. If it's the same old b.s. then nobody is going to influence anybody to adopt it - just the opposite. Also note that this approach is different from the traditional employer branding communication methodology as expressed in "Internal Branding (Employer Branding)" by R. Alan Crozier, writing in the IABC Handbok of Organizational Communication. Crozier suggests that the internal branding initiative needs "a champion from the top of the organization." While it is true that the initiative needs to be supported by the CEO or equivalent, the actual championing of the message needs to be done employee-to-employee. What are some activities that you could undertake to implement internal branding this way? 1. Survey the workforce to find people who are known as opinion leaders/influencers. Ask directly: who in (name of company) would you consider an informal or formal leader with a lot of influence over what other people think? 2. Call opinion leaders on the telephone and speak with them in person to describe to them the new initiative and ask for their support in sharing it with others. Provide them with written materials that can help them to talk about it. (Stop with the banners on the walls...as was demonstrated in the movie Office Space these banners make people feel uncomfortable. There is also anecdotal evidence of this from the Land's End company, where a banner on the warehouse wall describing the mission was rejected by employees as intrusive...I don't have a written source on this one but heard it in a recent podcast on organizational development; I'll try to get the name of the podcast and post it here.) 3. Place internal branding/marketing materials selectively in places where they can be accessed easily by those looking for them. Online, on the intranet, is the best place to start. 4. Once the initiative has had some time to grow and mature, and people on the ground are interested in it, start talking about it more publicly. Seed employee blogs with discussions of the brand, insert it into online discussions, etc. Incorporate feedback from these discussions into the implementation of the brand. 5. Finally, when all the dust has settled and people are already fairly familiar with the internal brand, roll out the new guidelines for using it in a "mass market," traditional but creative corporate communications way. 6. Institute an award ceremony to recognize people who have incorporated the internal brand into their everyday activities. McDonald's: A testament to the power of brand - 2007-08-07 15:12

To little kids, carrot sticks, milk, and apple juice physically taste better when they're presented in a McDonald's wrapper (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/06/mcdonalds.preschoolers.ap/index.html.) Those are the stunning findings of a recent study which found that the more TV sets children have in their home, the more likely they are to find McDonald's branded food to taste better than unmarked packages. (An interesting exception is hamburgers, where the preference was not "statistically clear cut.") The media are all over this study, for multiple reasons: 1. It shows how powerful brands are (!) 2. It shows how vulnerable low-income kids are to TV advertising (it was a study of 63 low-income children ages 3 to 5) 3. It points up the problem of obesity in America and points a finger at fast-food companies for causing it CNN quotes Dr. Victor Strasburger, an author of an American Academy of Pediatrics policy urging limits on marketing to children:

"Advertisers have tried to do exactly what this study is talking about -- to brand younger and younger children, to instill in them an almost obsessional desire for a particular brand-name product."

And? What about it? Kids get hungry and they want good food. Of course they learn to distinguish between what tastes good and what doesn't--they learn to trust certain brand names to provide them basic sustenance. It is up to their parents to steer them away from the junk, not up to companies to stop marketing to them. I don't know why McDonald's is apologizing all over the place for marketing its food to kids (large and small)...("This is an important subject and McDonald's has been actively addressing it for quite some time," company spokesman Walt Riker told CNN. "We've always wanted to be part of the solution and we are providing solutions.") The company should instead be taking credit. They are geniuses at making food appealing, and they're serving healthy food these days as well. If people choose to gorge (or to let their kids gorge), that is their problem. Why your brand should be - yes! - boring to you - 2007-08-08 15:14

Take this quiz: 1. Does your organization have a proliferation of names and acronyms that it tries to promote among external stakeholders? 2. Do various projects and programs within your organization each insist on having their own logo for external use? 3. Do you ever hear people say that they're sick of using the standard PowerPoint template and want to be more "creative"? If you answered "yes" to more than 1 out of 3 of these questions then your organization is in "hyperbrand" mode. It is frantically creating new names and identities to distinguish innumerable projects and programs within the organization, likely confusing your customers and other outside stakeholders. Hyperbrand mode is a bad, bad thing. A similar problem has to do with marketing departments and their need to come up with "fresh" new exciting campaigns for every this and that. As Seth Godin writes in Purple Cow (p. 75): "Marketing departments often feel a need to justify their existence. If last year's slogan feels old, they'll spend a million dollars to invent and propagate a new one." It is better sometimes to do nothing: "If you do nothing, at least you're not going to short-circuit your existing consumer networks by loading them up with a lot of indefensible junk." Website consultant Gerry McGovern (http://www.gerrymcgovern.com/), in a recent lecture, said something similar. He said that good websites are often boring websites to those who create them (not to the public) because they do what they're supposed to do--get the public to their tasks--without steering them in directions they don't need to go. Remember that your brand should be boring to you because you need to state the same thing over and over again in order to get the public to hear you. If you get the urge to redesign, rebrand, remarket, or relaunch your products and services over and over again, or if you start feverishly promoting product and program names to the outside world, you will LOSE CUSTOMERS to confusion. They will turn to a simpler brand, one that is easier to follow and to understand. Overcome the 5 hidden reasons why internal branding fails - 2007-08-09 11:08 In Covert Processes at Work: Managing the Five Hidden Dimensions of Organizational Change (see excerpt at http://www.bkconnection.com/static/marshak-excerpt.pdf), Robert Marshak describes the hidden dynamics that characterize organizational change at work--things that affect the organization, but which for the most part go unspoken. These include

(the following list is quoted): "1. Politics: Individual and group interests 2. Inspirations: Values-based and visionary aspirations 3. Emotions: Affective and reactive feelings 4. Mindsets: Guiding beliefs and assumptions 5. Psychodynamics: Anxiety-based and unconscious defenses" (p. 5) Obviously, internal branding is an organizational change. It is therefore critical to pay attention to each of the above dynamics when implementing it. Unfortunately, however, most organizational change programs neglect them, instead drawing on reason, or "rational and analytic logics." Marshak notes that "most organizational change initiatives begin...with 'making the (logical) case for change.' If/when that doesn't work, some organizations try to do an even better job of convincing employees of the need to change. When that fails, "venting" sessions occur to address "irrational resistance." If that too doesn't work, the change effort is either "aborted, abbreviated, or forced." (p. 6) What can be done instead to implement the internal brand so that it is accepted by the workforce? Translating Marshak, I would say that one has to appeal to all five hidden dynamics of change, in addition to making a logical case for why the internal brand is needed. Specifically: 1. Politics: Show people how the brand will empower them. For example, that they can now make decisions based on the brand that they couldn't otherwise be free to make before. (E.g. for a customer service situation, rather than calling one's supervisor in to resolve a situation, one can act based on the values that the brand promotes.) 2. Inspirations: Inspire people to want to be part of something greater than themselves by buying into the brand. (E.g., a brand promise might be to "make people happy" and the employee can make that happen in their work every day. 3. Emotions: Understand and respond appropriately to the typical emotional stages of reaction to organizational change: "denial, anger, bargaining, acceptance, and finally adaptive behavior" (p. 10) (as Marshak points out, similar to the stages of death and dying formulated by Elizabeth Kubler Ross in 1973). (E.g. don't be surprised if in the beginning people ignore the pronouncements about the internal brand, then express anger, etc. ...give them the opportunity to say what they have to say without marginalizing those who need to express anger or cutting the vending sessions short.) 4. Mindsets: Understand and appeal to the "assumptions, beliefs, and premises" (p. 11) that are prevalent in the workforce. Know the culture that you are dealing with. For example, in a hierarchical law enforcement culture, a brand that encourages transparency and two-way communication is going to be a tough sell. You must be able to overcome the ingrained mindsets in order to move the brand forward. 5. Psychodynamics: Realize that the change is going to provoke unconscious anxiety and unresolved feelings in people and that they will defend against that anxiety in various ways. As Marshak points out, they might "engage in 'fight or flight' behavior (by being

argumentative or by avoiding the topic)". Or they might "engage in transference and begin to act as if the leader were a parent." Or the leader might act cold when warmth is called for (p. 14). The marketers of the internal brand must be able to identify and skillfully manage unconscious responses when they see them. Internal branding is a serious organizational change endeavor. We must manage it accordingly if we want it to be successful. This might even mean bringing in an organizational development consultant if needed. Should customer service staff ever take a break from the brand? - 2007-08-10 09:16 In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), sociologist Erving Goffman talks about the importance to people of controlling the impression that others have of them. He writes: "When an individual appears before others he will have many motives for trying to control the impression they receive of the situation." He goes on to elaborate that he is "concerned with some of the common techniques that persons employ to sustain such impressions." Basically, Goffman looks at human behavior as taking place on a figurative stage, where behavior evidenced in front of other people is "frontstage" and private behavior takes place "backstage." "Frontstage" is where people try to manage the impressions that others have of them; "backstage" is where they relax and don't try to make an impression. People use "masks" to control the impression they provide to their "audience." Branding takes place in interaction with other people. This begs the question of whether people involved in delivering the brand should always be displaying branded behavior, or whether they can and should take a break when they are in private. For example, let's say a certain brand of fast food represents itself as "fun." Its customer service representatives will generally be expected to convey the concept of fun to the customers--and so the employee should act as though he or she were having fun on the job. The question is, when they step away from the counter, is it in the best interest of the brand to allow the customer service representative to drop the mask and act ordinary? Well, yes and no. From a mental health point of view (and the organization should serve its employees mental health where possible), nobody can be expected to portray "fun" for a full 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. So it is normal for people to relax and go "off-brand" when they're not facing the customer. On the other hand, from a brand point of view, there are other stakeholders in the organization besides customers -- how about other employees? If people do not act "fun" then the fast food business is not a "fun" place to work and that will inevitably be conveyed to the customers at some point. I would say that the best course of action is to hire people who are inherently "fun" (or whatever the brand type is), so that when they go off-brand they are actually still in brand mode. This is also the best way for the brand to convey authenticity to the customer -- to

make it clear that the brand is real, not just a show. Remember, hire for brand and the brand will inevitably be stronger as a result. Fixing a brand mistake - 2007-08-11 07:57 In Purple Cow (http://www.sethgodin.com/purple/), Seth Godin argues that the only way to be profitable these days is to sell a "remarkable" product or service. And along the way to trying to make one's product or service remarkable, one is likely to make mistakes and to get criticized for those mistakes. Yet "being safe is risky....It's people who have projects that are never criticized who ultimately fail." (p. 47) What if you make a brand mistake? Let's say you: 1. Mis-named your company or product or chose a bad logo 2. Implemented the internal brand wrong and people don't follow it 3. Rolled out as permanent a "brand initiative" that should really have been a temporary marketing initiative 4. Misjudged who your real customer is 5. Failed to reach your target market with the brand What do you do? Do you try to keep implementing the brand mistake--improve on it incrementally--or do you go back to the drawing board and start from scratch? Take the Purple Cow litmus test. Is what you are doing remarkable and you just need to get the word out better? Or are you selling something mediocre or "just good enough" to start with? If you are truly doing something remarkable with your product or service then you should feel free to experiment with different ways of branding it--and that can mean going back to the drawing board several times. On the other hand, if the problem is with your product or service, then you need to go back and look at what you're selling. Don't even think about the brand, think about the essence of what you are promoting. Make THAT remarkable. The brand will follow naturally...any changes you make after that will just be tinkering. Either way, you need to fix the mistake, even if it will be costly. It's just a question of how you approach it.

Are you implementing a mistaken brand? Great branding is storytelling - Why Jeep's new campaign won't work while Apple and Disney will sell forever - 2007-08-12 11:41 In All Marketers are Liars (2005) (http://www.allmarketersareliars.com/), Seth Godin urges marketers to tell a compelling story about their brands. Great stories, he says, have nine components (pp. 8-10). They (summary is Godin's; examples are mine): 1. Are true in the sense of being "consistent and authentic" -- think Nike and its "just do it" slogan 2. Make a promise - one that is "bold and audacious and...exceptional" -- think Target with its determination to make chic affordable for all 3. Are "trusted" -- think Johnson & Johnson with its baby shampoo that you wouldn't hesitate to get in your eyes 4. Are "subtle" - they leave something to the imagination -- think of Google and its "don't be evil" tagline - what does that mean? You have to mostly make it up yourself. 5. "Happen fast" -- engaging the consumer quickly -- think of Hewlett Packard when its says "the computer is personal again" - you immediately grasp what that means 6. "Don't appeal to logic, but they often appeal to our senses" -- think of the smell of Starbucks coffee 7. "Are rarely aimed at everyone" -- think of Harley Davidson (although Harley is now going after women motorcycle riders, so they may be violating this rule) 8. "Don't contradict themselves" - every element of the story hangs together -- think of Saturn cars and their continuous emphasis on the individual and customer service from point of manufacture to point of purchase

9. "Agree with our worldview" - which is why not every brand story is for everyone -- think of Coca Cola vs. Pepsi, each appealing to a distinct kind of customer Jeep is a once-great brand that ruined its story. It used to be a tale about surviving in the rugged outdoors. Now, they have reduced the brand to "fun." (http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=63128) It's horrible. I don't buy the new Jeep story; it breaks rule #1 and #8! Fun is completely inconsistent with the concept of survival, which is at the heart of Jeep's brand heritage. An example of a brand with a good story is Apple, which tells a story about "freeing creative spirits while slaying the Microsoft dragon." This is from Marketing & Strategy Innovation Blog (http://blog.futurelab.net/2006/07/the_ten_truths_of_branded_stor.html), which has a good "ten truths of branded storytelling." They urge marketers to have a unique STORY proposition in addition to a unique SELLING proposition. Of course the ultimate brand storyteller is Disney, which has managed to maintain a story about a magical happy place (http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=109) for decades. They don't call it the "Disney magic" for nothing. You can turn your brand into a story. Make it a great one. BIG $$ IDEA for Young & Rubicam (and/or Interbrand): Start a brand index mutual fund - 2007-08-12 14:29 I have a major, major idea for Young & Rubicam: They should start a brand index mutual fund based on their Brand Asset Valuator (http://www.brandassetvaluator.com.au/). The fund should tie to current strong and emerging brands based on the BAV methodology of identifying brand strength along the pillars of differentiation, relevance, esteem and knowledge. Look at the "Financial Returns" tab on the BAV website. It states: "Brand strength promotes strong earnings. BAV® has plotted pillar data against revenue growth, margin, NOPAT (whatever that is -- DB) and economic value added (EVA) in over 400 cases over a ten year period, across 18 economic sectors. From this, BAV® has

produced a consistent pattern of results. Differentiation is the margin driver - brands that grow their Differentiation have about a 50% higher operating margin on average than those which allow their Differentiation to decline. Relevance is the key to market penetration. Those brands that grow both their Differentiation and Relevance report the greatest increase in operating earnings." Well it's a short leap from increased operating earnings to increased stock price -- can anybody say "ka-ching"? The world's top brands have higher stock prices than nonbrands, but to my knowledge nobody has ever invested in a brand methodology per se -- started a mutual fund based on a brand strength methodology. Creating such a fund would not only prove that brands have a higher value than their generic counterparts (which would be good concrete tangible evidence for the academic), but it would also create an investment vehicle for people who believe strongly in the power of brand. Well Y&R, what are you waiting for? Or Interbrand could do it - they have their own financial formula for calculating brand value -- see http://www.interbrand.com/best_brands_2006_FAQ.asp -- and they annually calculate what the top brands are. I'll stand by and wait for the announcement. Parent brand and baby brand - 2007-08-13 04:59 Once upon a time there was a proud parent brand that gave birth to a baby brand. The parent brand was so proud of the baby brand that she bought baby all sorts of fine posters and website designs and other paraphernalia declaring the baby's birth to the proud parents. Then the baby brand grew up and wanted an identity of its own. Suddenly the parent brand was not so happy and proud; it wanted everyone to keep on declaring the baby brand "child of" the parent. The child brand, now a full-fledged young adult, verbally declared its independence of the parent brand and told everyone who would listen about his independent identity, but still needed its parents' money so couldn't break out completely. Neither side was happy. What is the optimal relationship between a parent brand and a child brand, a brand that is part of the parent brand yet distinct from it? There are three choices. * At one extreme, the parent brand can declare that everything the baby does, is part of the parents' own actions and a reflection on her. In that case the baby brand must constantly reflect the parents' name in every communication, declaration, and conversation.

* At the other extreme, the parent brand can grant the child brand independence, and hope that the child decides to thank the parent every once in a while. * A middle of the road solution is for the parent brand to allow the child to be semi-independent, keeping the parent's name and "living on the same block" but asserting its own identity. How the decision gets made in the real world has to do with a lot of things--rational considerations, political interests, and so on--but partly it has to do with psychology: how secure the parent brand is in its own identity. The more insecure the parent brand, the more it fears that it is not contributing value, the more it clutches on to the child. On the other hand, the more disorganized the parent brand, the less it clamps the child's identity to itself as part of a cohesive whole and the more it just lets the child brand "do what it wants." The optimal balance, usually is for the parent brand to at some level acknowledge the existence and importance of the child brand, but at the same time to let the child brand have its own identity and operational freedom. (That is, unless the child brand is so radically different from the parent that it would be better to pretend that there is no relationship there; or if the child brand is so dysfunctional that the parent brand needs to care for it totally.) In your organization, if there is a conflict between a parent brand and a child brand, it may be worth having the important conversation of where the child brand sits in relation to the parent, and how an optimal balance can be achieved. It is a difficult balance to obtain, but one that is worth pursuing. Branding in the real world: 20 lessons learned - 2007-08-15 08:30 In my experience as a brand specialist, I've learned many lessons. Some of them I've often seen in print; others, never. Here are a few.

1. Some people think they need to make a "big splash" out of a branding initiative. I disagree: Until you're absolutely ready to launch (and that means you have buy-in across the board), making a lot of noise only provokes cynicism and opposition. 2. What should you do while you're keeping quiet? First, gather as much information as you can about the culture, context, and interests of key stakeholders. Second, lobby for support among management opinion leaders and key influencers in the employee community. 3. When you absolutely have to announce the branding initiative, limit the scope of the message to naming the new brand director and explaining the scope of his or her authority. Similarly, do not unveil a new logo or tagline until you've sold it, very thoroughly, internally, and tested it among external stakeholders. If the initiative is successful, you can brag about the results later.

4. Sell branding as a solution to a business need (increased market share, enhanced customer loyalty, higher employee retention rates, etc.) rather than as a solution in and of itself. Long-term, nobody can stand the discipline associated with genuine (as opposed to cosmetic—logo/tagline only) branding unless they can see a tangible benefit. 5. Expect resistance. No matter how well you prove your case from a cost-benefit perspective, the group has to be emotionally ready to change the way it does things. 6. Be prepared: Some projects are called "branding" but really have nothing to do with branding at all. (Other times the opposite is true.) When to make an issue out of these things depends on your unique organizational culture and political climate. Tread carefully. 7. Know that branding removes power from certain people in the organization, who will fight tooth and nail to keep that power. That is why 1) CEOs are the best brand champions 2) brand people have to be people-smart—because branding always divides people before it unifies them. 8. There will always be people who hate the brand. Instead of wasting energy fighting them, invite them to the table to complain. You may or may not learn anything useful, but simply giving them a voice will neutralize some of the negative energy they create. 9. Branding is not an endeavor for "lone geniuses"—you will have to assemble a "coalition of the willing" in order to get it done right. 10. Remember: No trust = no brand. Similarly, no heart = no brand; no leadership = no brand; no sincerity = no brand; and so on. Branding is ultimately a people business, not an arid intellectual program. 11. You may think that there is no hope. You may endure long periods of silence, punctuated by ups and downs. Nevertheless, keep talking about the importance of branding; keep trying to find ways to make it serve a business need. Eventually someone will pick up the thread and run with it. Brand thinking is contagious. 12. Don't be afraid to draw on industry best practices in order to build your brand. At the same time, remember: Real-world branding can't be found in any book. Nobody is going to write a case study about how they actually got their brand to work, because often, the dynamics involved are not a pretty sight. 13. On the one hand, "those who fail to plan, plan to fail." But on the other, it's an unpredictable world. Be strategic about your brand initiative, but be willing and able to change course rapidly if you need to. 14. Start small, and celebrate small successes. Admit your failures publicly, too—preferably on an "our brand in progress" webpage where you invite comments from all interested stakeholders. (Depending on your organization, you may want to limit these stakeholders to employees.) 15. Choose something to measure as an indicator of your success—preferably a metric that is aligned with the business results you are trying to achieve. Then, measure it consistently and report on the results. 16. The two most important internal partners for brand professionals, aside from other marketing/communications/PR people in the organization, are Human Resources and Information Technology. There is no way around it; you will need their support in order to succeed. 17. When you mess up with a brand-related initiative, don't dwell on it. Discuss what went wrong, and then move on. 18. Remember that everything contributes to the brand, but that doesn't mean the brand is everything. Learn to see the brand from the perspective of those who either don't know what

branding is, or don't care. Speak to such people accordingly, in business terms—for the more brand jargon you spout, the less seriously they will take you. 19. Read, read, read. Even if you think you know all there is to know about branding, you don't—the field is ever-evolving. You can also gain education and inspiration from myriad sources that have nothing at all to do with branding. 20. Never give up. Branding can be a tough job, but it is ultimately a worthwhile and rewarding one.

Branding and the importance of being authentic - 2007-08-16 07:18 How many times have you . . .

● Needed help from another individual or department to resolve an issue, but they put obstacles in your path rather than help you—for no real reason at all?

● Had a pressing matter to discuss at a meeting, but the meeting kept being deflected to other, trivial matters?

● Participated in a "brainstorming" session, only to have your ideas dismissed out-of-hand?

● Been asked for feedback, then had your feedback dismissed when the listener didn't like it?

Why must this be so? Oddly enough, it is simply the nature of the group. The key, psychoanalysts say, is a destructive force called "regression." What that means is that joining the group sends us back in time, to a more primitive mental state, where we are driven by irrational feelings of fear, hatred, and jealousy. So we hoard information, deflect productive conversations, put other people down, and deny any responsibility for things going wrong—and none of this for any good reason that we can think of. Given that groups are so important these days, it is even more frustrating that they tend to fail. For we live in the age of specialization, when most projects require collaboration by a diverse team of specialists. Even the most basic brand communication plan, for example, can require the input of copywriters, designers, multimedia specialists, web content specialists, change management specialists, human resources representatives, diversity managers, cross-functional representatives, line specialists, and more. But there is good news: Every group has the potential to confront and overcome this innate tendency. And if the group can manage to do so effectively, it can literally soar, by far, above the sum potential of its individual members.

Assuming that the group is enlightened enough to confront its own destructiveness, what, specifically, can group members do to stop it? The answer is simple but powerful. Be authentic. Say what you are thinking or feeling, as directly as possible while still being constructive and appropriate. Why does authenticity work? Because secrecy and collusion feed the dysfunctional system. You know what that looks like—everybody getting together and pretending that everything is OK when it's not. Everybody smiling, but underground, the negative energies of the group fester, breed, and grow stronger. Authenticity is absolutely nothing new. It's a staple of every good movie, even: The main character says what she or he is feeling—tells the group—and their words quickly clear out the cobwebs of secrecy, silence, deception, irrational pain. The group is refreshed; it can go on and live another day. The character is a hero. Of course, real, positive change takes more than you deciding to be authentic. And the way one person acts may not make much difference. But the fact of the matter is, you can't control what other people do—only what you do. You have the power in you to be authentic, and to encourage others to do the same. The only thing that may stop you—and this is a judgment call on your part—is if the group is just too far down the path of destruction. In that case, you may be punished for taking the risk.

But if things are that bad, you may want to think about what you are doing there—and how long it will take before those negative energies go after you. Since you need to -- 25 practical things you can do to brand yourself NOW - 2007-08-17 07:34 The other day I said that personal branding is unhealthy. It can be. But on the other hand, it is often a business necessity. Here are some tips on how to do it right (without doing too much damage to your psyche). The key is to shape your personal brand around who you really are - so that you do not have to go through self-manipulative machinations as you go through the day. 1. Search your soul and spell it out. In essence, a brand is "personality in a bottle." Personality, in turn, is simply how you behave when confronted with the world. So ask yourself: "How do I act, in general?" and then write down as many personality characteristics as you can think of. (Be honest: Seemingly negative traits brand you as well as positive ones. Just ask American Idol judge Simon.) Then, list all the brands you love, the ones you are absolutely drawn to: clothes, cars, coffee, celebrities, and so on. This stuff is not for the world to see, but for you to use in defining what it is about your personality that is different and therefore valuable. You will draw on it later on as you determine what kind of words sound like you, which colors reflect your personality, and so on. 2. Narrow down who your customer is. Private industry or government? The boss or a frontline staffer? Entrepreneurs or corporate staffers? Baby boomers or Gen Xers? Americans or Europeans? End users or vendors that sell to them? It can be annoying to do this, but remember: It's a crowded playing field. You need to narrow your audience to be effective. 3. Make sure you have a unique selling proposition. This is one sentence that states the value you deliver to your customers. It is the business proposition through which you deliver your brand. Just like CNN ("the most trusted name in news"), say it at every opportunity. 4. Get your blog going. Register your blog name - it is YOUR NAME (you are the brand) - and start submitting it to the search engines – Google, etc. Once it's up there you will be motivated to get the design and content going. 5. Choose your color. Own red, blue, orange, yellow, purple, green, whatever. This is the color you are going to use in all your marketing materials. You may not have the money to develop a logo, but your choice of color is free. 6. Join an association that matters to your audience and help organize an event for the local chapter. 7. Find a conference to attend. It doesn't have to be the most expensive gathering in the world, but it should focus on your specialty area and focus on an audience that is likely to buy your services. 8. Arrange for a small speaking engagement. Your local university is a good place to start: They always need guest lecturers. 9. List yourself as an expert with a wire service such as PR Newswire. 10. Take on pro bono work for a local organization you feel comfortable with. For example, if you have school-age children, you may want to start with their school. 11. Start writing. Begin with short articles, which you will post to your website. They don't have to be scholarly. In fact, it's better if they're not. Keep it practical and include numbers: 5 ways to do

XYZ, 3 things to keep in mind, 10 myths vs. facts, etc. Eventually you will put all of your articles, e-posts, and online advice into a meaningful package: your first book. 12. Start e-networking. Find blogs, mailing lists, and websites that allow comments, and get involved in the conversation. 13. Get on the editorial board of a respected industry publication. Start by volunteering to review manuscripts. Work your way up to the board. 14. Collect 3 testimonials and post them to your blog in the helpful links section. 15. Write 5 one-page case studies showing results you have generated and post them to your blog in the helpful links section. 16. Determine your fee structure. When you finally get asked about your fees, this will save you from stammering and stuttering your ill-thought-out response. 17. Create a proposal template or list of products/services. You want to focus on the content of your value to the client, not fuss about the package at the last minute. 18. Put together a list of professional helpers. You will need a decent website developer and a marketing communications consultant. Ask for some references from schools in your area if you're strapped for cash. 19. Write your bio. You will need it for speaking engagements, "about the author" descriptions, and of course your website. 20. Generate an "advice" column that promotes what you do. Of course, you will write the questions and answers, at least at first. Post it to your blog. OK, now for 5 bonus tips of a more conceptual nature: 21. Be consistent. I define a brand as "a set of consistent processes that define, differentiate, and add value." Basically, you have to set expectations and then meet them. Everything counts: what you say, to how you say it, your clothing, your billing processes, everything. 22. Plan for fame. You lose your personal life. Is that what you want? Think it through. You may have to settle for a lesser level of renown. 23. Weigh the economic risks. If you get in legal trouble, your company could sink. (Martha Stewart, enough said.) 24. Understand that the quality of your product or service has to be impeccable. You can't put lipstick on a pig. 25. NEVER compare yourself to the competition. You need to keep your head clear and be proactive, not reactive. Samsonite's brand folly - 2007-08-18 06:43 The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday (August 17) that Samsonite luggage is trying to go high-fashion. What a waste of a good brand. The company owns the "sturdy" image, a critical niche in the luggage (and handbag) space. Yet the CEO wants to be more like Burberry or Coach and has hired British designer Alexander McQueen to make suitcases that can compete with these brands.

The designs pictured in the Journal are terrible--who is going to buy a suitcase shaped like a ribcage and what does that communicate about the brand, anyway--and the Samsonite name is still being used, so all the brand associations that go along with Samsonite still exist. In my view -- to take a lesson from Seth Godin's book Purple Cow -- Samsonite should stick to its knitting and build even more remarkable sturdy luggage and handbags than it ever has. If they want higher margins, the company can brand its suitcases a la the Panasonic Toughbook and charge a price premium for their ultra-durability. This is not to say that a brand cannot make itself over into a new image. Look at what former monopolist IBM did by embracing open source brand Linux. But even then, the old image still sticks -- IBM will always be "Big Blue." The difference is that IBM updated its image to adapt to the context of technology services today, and as a result looks jazzier and more nimble -- a needed change. Samsonite has a goldmine in its "sturdy" image. Wanting to be something you're not -- to go from middle market to upper-class brand -- seems like mere CEO vanity. What do you think? John Deere and brands as families - 2007-08-19 08:55 On August 14, John Deere CEO was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, saying that the company and dealers of its farm equipment are "not a family. What we are is a high performance team....if someone is not pulling their weight, you're not on the high performance team anymore." The company is getting rid of some smaller scale dealers as part of its business strategy. This is not to debate the merits of that strategy but rather to note the danger of telling your business associates that they should not consider themselves part of your family, especially when they are fiercely loyal. In the case of Deere, the Journal reports, dealers have been known to say they "bleed green," the company's signature color. In the book Creating Customer Evangelists, authors Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba note that people are loyal to people not to brands, and that top companies create a sense of family both internally and externally. (Examples are Southwest Airlines and Build a Bear.) The first part of that statement is debatable, but what is clear is that by alienating its dealers from the family they once had, Deere is creating the risk that they will go elsewhere for business opportunities for themselves. Smart brands create and encourage the perception that employees, customers, and other key stakeholders are all part of one big, happy, warm family. The high performance team aspect of that family relationship cannot be forgotten, but it is subordinate to the family relationship.

Do you think that brands can operate as families and high performance teams at the same time? Disappointment at Disney - 2007-08-20 17:49 Just returned from Disney Orlando. I had expected to be treated to a master class in branding. Instead, it was a near-total disappointment:

● The parks were crowded beyond belief and we waited a minimum of an hour to an hour and a half for every ride. In general, as well, the rides were very short given the wait time to get on them. This is a far cry from the imaginary world of the brochure and Disney video that ran in the hotel, which prepares you for an action-packed day. If we managed a few rides in a day, that was a victory.

● Customer service staff (greeters) were in short supply and they did not greet us with any kind of Disney "signature" hello. Though helpful when we could find them, there was nothing that set them apart especially as Disney employees. They also didn't seem to have a standard Disney uniform, which was surprising.

● Animal Kingdom seemed dirty and the directional signs were incomprehensible. Moreover, there were few actual animals to be seen (we did see a tiger, an anteater and some bats). Other than the roller coaster ride, the rafting ride, and the jungle safari (which we didn't even attempt because we were told the wait time was too long) there was nothing to do that was of any interest to us. And although I paced around nauseously (from the roller coaster ride) looking for some regular food to eat, there seemed to be nothing for sale besides ice cream and sugar drinks (like I said, we couldn't navigate so if there was other food we couldn't find it.)

● Epcot was by far the best park in Disney, but was also a shameless advertisement for a number of other companies that sponsored various presentations there including IBM, Hewlett-Packard, and Nestle. (I have to admit that the Soarin' ride, in which you seem to ride above the earth, was worth the incredibly long wait.) I was a little offended at the extent of corporate sponsorship of what should have been a "pure" Disney experience.

● MGM was good in terms of having good stunt shows to see, but was also crowded and impossible to navigate.

● At Magic Kingdom, which was flooded with literally a crush of people, we waited 1.5 hours for Splash Mountain then got thrown off the ride because it was broken. The railroad ride was also broken and the haunted mansion was closed, and the monorail that got us to the main part of the park got stuck in midstream. The worst part of it was when we tried to leave but were blocked by a Disney parade from getting through. They literally will not let you pass when the parade is in session.

● The Disney theme park cards (the cards you use to gain entry to the park) didn't work and had to be reprinted. Further, the cards were keyed to each individual user by fingerprint but had no space to write our name on them - causing confusion each time we entered the park.

I still want to believe in Disney, even after this experience...but it is tough. I think it's still a great brand, but as far as the theme parks go, I did not have a good customer/brand experience. Checklists are not a substitute for brand communication - 2007-08-21 04:40 The Wall Street Journal once published an article about people who keep to-do lists. It caught my attention as I am forever carrying around a list of things to do and consider it a small victory every time I check off one of those tasks as done. One of the points the article made was that some people get neurotic about checking things off their list. For example, if they've done everything on their list, they will add a couple of things just so they can feel like there is something left to accomplish. So checklists can be useful, but they can also be used in neurotic ways. This brings me to the use of checklists in professional communications. On the one hand, these checklists can be a powerful tool for getting things done, especially in organizations that are relatively undisciplined about project management, or that experience frequent misunderstandings about timelines and deadlines. Having a list that everyone can refer to reduces conflict in two ways. First, it keeps people focused on an external, objective task, rather than on each other (what she said or he said, who is supposed to do what, why they will or won't do what they're supposed to do, etc.). Second, it reduces misunderstandings by clearly documenting roles, responsibilities, and timelines. On the other hand, checklists can actually lead to the organization avoiding communication. Because the communication team can easily set up a checklist that makes it look like communication has happened, when in fact nothing of any significance has taken place. (Remember, the message must be received and understood, if not acted upon, in order to be worthy of the term "communication.") Here is an example of what I'm talking about:

<font size="3">Checklist for Project X Communication Initiative</font> __Send e-mail to all managers today __Hold all-employee webcast next week __Follow up with telephone recording of webcast a day later __Post summary to intranet in two weeks __Place article in employee newsletter next month

Let's say you accomplish all of these tasks, but people still don't know what is going on. How is that possible, you say? Well, in this fictitious example:

● Most of the managers deleted the email without reading it. ● Half the employees didn't watch the webcast, and the other half didn't understand

what the CEO was trying to say. ● Nobody ever goes to the intranet except when they are forced to visit a specific link

for benefits information or something like that. ● Most people read the humorous parts of the employee newsletter and disregard the

rest. So you need more than just a checklist to make the communication happen. What can you do? I'd say, keep the checklist, but add four tasks to it:

● Concept testing: Run the communication past a few people before you send it to everyone.

● Refinement: Based on early feedback, edit the content of the message, or the style in which it is delivered.

● Measurement: Find out 1) how many people received the message 2) how they understood the message and 3) whether they intend to act on it in the way you want.

● Feedback sharing: Make the results of your measurement public. This demonstrates your confidence, builds your credibility, and motivates you to improve your performance.

Are you scared by the idea of really measuring the effectiveness of your communication, let alone making the results public? Of course you are! Traditional business writing (and speaking) is absolutely boring, not to mention difficult to understand. This is no secret to anyone, but the situation continues because communication senders stubbornly insist on ignoring how their messages are received. As long as communicators fail to measure how their words are received, and pretend that checklists are a good-enough substitute, the people on the receiving end of their words will

continue to ignore, misinterpret, and poke fun at the mix of buzzwords, clichés, and jargon that pass for the transmission of actual meaning from one human being to another. Are people loyal to other people or to brands? - 2007-08-21 11:44 In Creating Customer Evangelists (2007), Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba state: "When we set out to understand what created evangelists for our case-study companies, we discovered a simple yet undeniable truth: People are loyal to people, not necessarily brands. That's the magic bullet about word of mouth and how it spurs evangelism." (p.3; emphasis in original) The authors go on to describe how companies like Southwest Airlines, IBM, Build-A-Bear Workshop and others are enjoying the benefits of customer word of mouth. While Creating Customer Evangelists is a great book, and I'll be talking more about it in this blog, I couldn't disagree more with the authors on their conclusions about branding. I say, people are not loyal to the customer service representatives they deal with. They are loyal to the BRANDS that those customer service representatives represent! This is definitely true for consumer packaged goods, where there is no customer service aspect to the buying situation. And it is true as well for service brands, although trickier to see because you're dealing with service provided by people. In my view, people REMEMBER a good customer service experience and ESTABLISH a relationship with the BRAND not the person they deal with. I'll go to any Starbucks coffee shop, not just the one on the corner where I recognize the people who work there. Every Southwest flight attendant has a humorous attitude; every Build-A-Bear workshop attendant provides a "heartfelt" experience to a child buying his or her bear for the first time. The service they provide is not spontaneous but BRANDED...and I think most people recognize that. You pay for the brand and expect the brand's promises to be fulfilled, whether by a product or by a person...that's it, end of story. Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, Nike, Google, GE, Nokia, Toyota, Intel, McDonald's, Mercedes...people go where the product and service best suit them. Believe me, all those little girls walking around in princess outfits at Disney are not loyal to a person, they're loyal to a brand fantasy that exists only in their heads.

Other points of view are welcome, of course. Why customer feedback is critical to your brand - 2007-08-22 11:24 It can be tempting when one is building a brand to simply stick with the vision, and assume that your core customers will find you and follow along. However, this is not necessarily the best way to approach things. For you will encounter people who WANT to be loyal customers but have some issue with your product or service that they need to express to you in order for you to better serve them. In short, you need to hear what your customers have to say. In Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba, the authors call this "Customer Plus-Delta." The Plus part is what customers like; the Delta is what they don't. They offer "10 golden rules" in this regard; they can be boiled down to the following 5 (quoted from p. 32 of the book): "1. Believe that customers possess good ideas. 2. Gather customer feedback at every opportunity. 3. Leverage technology to aid your efforts. 4. Share customer feedback throughout the organization. 5. Use input to make change--and communicate changes back to customers." What should you ask customers? The authors state (p. 34) "1. Do they recommend your product, brand, or company? 2. If yes, why? What's the one thing they value most? What do they say when they recommend you to others? 3. If no or don't know, why? What must you improve to earn their recommendation? When was the last time you angered or disappointed them?" As you gather feedback, remember not to change your brand to suit customer tastes; rather, use the input to make sure that you are delivering on the brand promise. To go back to the case of Disney, if I write and tell them that I find the brand "artificial," that doesn't mean that they should change anything--artificiality is part of the brand. However, if I write and tell them that the theme park is too crowded, they should do something about that--as part of the brand promise is ACCESS to the dream. 5 brand lessons from Hillary Clinton - 2007-08-23 07:29

Whether or not she becomes our next president, with her distinctive look and style, Hillary Clinton can teach us a lot about branding. 1. Don't take criticism personally: I can't think of another political figure who stirs up as much emotion as Hillary does. But whatever people say, she seems to rise above it, even as she responds forcefully. Whether you are building a brand, sustaining it, or defending it, don't let your critics get your goat. 2. Know your subject matter: Say what you want about her, but Hillary knows her stuff. When you are promoting your brand, be a subject matter expert. Speak knowledgeably about whatever it is you're selling. Image alone is not enough. 3. Look the part: Again, say what you want about her, but Hillary looks like a president. Her hairstyle, her clothing, her demeanor, all bespeak presidentiality. When you aspire to promote a brand, it is critical that your look match the brand image. 4. Play to the center: Although I agree with the premise of Purple Cow by Seth Godin, that only remarkable products and services stand a chance of survival, I also see the merits of toning down one's distinctiveness to be acceptable to a mass market. Hillary has intelligently moderated her image so that she appears to be centrist rather than aggressively left-leaning. And I believe that has won her additional support. 5. Don't apologize, explain: She will not apologize for supporting the war. And she is right to uphold her actions, because she believed in them at the time. Remember -- unless the brand has violated its own promise, in which case an immediate apology is warranted, it is best to maintain an image of consistency by explaining where the brand is coming from rather than resorting to an apology for unpopular choices. It has also been pointed out (http://www.russpage.net/the-hillary-clinton-brand-iraq/) that Hillary is consistent in her messaging: "Tell it again and again, and tell it the same way"--another sign of a strong brand. For those who are interested, here is an article on Hillary's unique political brand: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050606/sargent. Brands as families part 2 - 2007-08-24 05:09

Continuing the recent post about John Deere and brands as families... Great brands provide a respite from today's world of broken families and disconnected individualistic behavior. They create a sense of community that is so strong it feels like being part of a family. This is especially true within the branded organization. While it is a stretch to make customers feel like they are part of a close-knit family, it is very possible to draw in employees into a familial environment. If that is done successfully, employees will extend the family metaphor out to customers (as well as other stakeholders) so that at the very least they feel they are part of a closely knit community or "tribe." Two examples from Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba: 1. Build-A-Bear Workshop--Maxine Clark, founder: "Having a heart is more than a company strategy, it's a way of doing business. It extends to how people are treated in every aspect of the business. It is what excellent companies know is the core to success: treating vendors like partners, treating customers like guests, treating employees like friends and family." (p. 163) 2. Southwest Airlines--Colleen Barrett, president: "The Golden Rule is pretty important here." (p. 178) Barrett "despises empty walls, so nearly every square foot of company walls features framed pictures of employees in action at work, pictures of their kids and families, pictures in their high school cheerleading uniforms. Like a proud mama, the company even frames its employees' artwork and hangs it on the wall....Barrett chairs a committee of employees from every area of the company. Known as the Culture Committeee, its purpose is to build on the company's effervescent personality throughout the employee ranks. The results allow Southwest to retain a familial atmosphere amidst rapid growth." Who creates the brand - the consumer or the producer? - 2007-08-25 16:24 By now it is widely acknowledged that consumers and producers co-create brand meaning. But in Brand Hijack (2005), Alex Wipperfurth (see http://www.usatoday.com/money/books/reviews/2005-05-01-brand-hijack_x.htm) takes this a step further, arguing that for maximum traction, brand makers should let

go of the brand entirely and let consumers appropriate, define, and sell it in their own ways. As Wipperfurth puts it:

"Consumers are in charge, and they have proof of their power....The next consumer will be an active participant in shaping brand meaning and marketing the brand to others. This will no longer be the sole responsibility of the marketing department." (p. 126)

The implication, at the extreme, is that marketers should stop trying to tell consumers what the brand is about and instead offer up a blank canvas that consumers can paint their own meanings on. But frankly, this approach just does not work for me. The marketplace is extremely crowded these days, and it is simply stupid to tell people that they should leave their products undefined and let the marketplace do that work. No, marketers have a responsibility to establish a meaning for the brand in advance of presenting it to the consumer. The consumer may appropriate the brand in different ways, may reshape and refine and rework its ultimate meaning, but the essence of the brand is, or should always be, in the hands of the marketer. This is not to say that there can't be a happy accident, where the marketer has defined the brand one way and the market soars it to popularity along another track entirely. As Wipperfurth demonstrates in Brand Hijack, that can happen. But most of the time, it is the marketers' responsibility to study the marketplace, understand the target audience, and go forward with a brand proposition that speaks to them. Otherwise how can the brand even go to market? Which comes first - the chicken or the egg? - 2007-08-26 07:21 When you're creating a brand, which comes first - the meaning that the brandmaker assigns it or the meanings that consumers assign it? Ideally, it should be the meaning that the brandmaker assigns it. The brand owner should establish a vision for the brand and then work to sell that image to the public. Some people believe that it is the opposite - the consumers assign the brand its meaning first and then the brand manager facilitates that co-creation between the customer and the brand. ("Classic marketing.") That may indeed happen. But 9 times out of 10, when you are dealing with a strong brand, you are dealing with a brand where the owner had a vision for what it would mean and then imparted that vision to the outside world. Target, Starbucks, Nike, Microsoft, Oprah - all of these and more are

examples of "classic branding." It is true that "classic marketing" appears to be on the rise with Internet brands like YouTube and Google -- where the customer's input shapes the presentation of the brand nearly completely. However, brands that endure impart an idea to the public and then keep the public engaged with the brand over time - it is not easy to create a substitute for them. That is what branding is all about - establishing a strong, distinctive meaning that customers can then work into their lives as an enduring symbol of something that matters to them. What branding has in common with religion - 2007-08-27 14:21 Religion gives meaning to life. So do brands. (The latter may or may not be a sad fact, depending on how aligned you are with organized religion.) Here are some other similarities - drawing from Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion) as the source; my thoughts in bullets. "Religion is a set of common beliefs and practices generally held by a group of people....Religion also encompasses ancestral or cultural traditions, writings, history, and mythology, as well as personal faith and mystic experience."

● Strong brands prescribe a set of values and practices (use of the product or service) ● Strong brands have traditions and myths associated with them

"In the frame of...European religious thought, religions present a common quality, the "hallmark of patriarchal religious thought": the division of the world in two comprehensive domains, one sacred, the other profane."

● Strong brands divide the world up into the sacred (those who use the brand) and the profane (those who don't)

"Religion is also often described as a 'way of life.'" ● The brands that people are loyal to often describe their way of life

"'Religion' is sometimes used interchangeably with 'faith' or 'belief system,' but is more socially defined than that of personal convictions."

● Brands are used by individuals but their meaning is defined socially. Ian Schrager + Marriott: A marriage made in heaven? - 2007-08-28 04:48 The International Herald Tribune (August 21; www.iht.com/bin/print.php?id=7197141) reports that boutique hotelier Ian Schrager and Marriott are joining forces to create a line of about 100 boutique hotels. The new brand, which is so far unnamed, will combine the "master of the ultrahip hotel" with a

decidedly "unhip" but much more powerful, mass-market leader. The question is will this marriage of opposites be successful? The answer is, it depends. Certainly it fills a need for both Schrager and Marriott. As the article notes, the partnership will instantly put Schrager "in his rightful place as a major player in the lifestyle market segment and in the longer term will position him to build a mass customer base for his innovations, a la Apple, Nike, and Sony." As for Marriott, though it "has $12 billion in annual sales worldwide...the company is notably absent in the boutique segment." But does the partnership fill a need for the hotel-going customer? This, I think, depends on how well the plan is executed. As the article notes, Schrager is "obsessive about details" that can seem quirky, like leaving the lights dim or putting "stylish" notepads in each room, while Marriott is more "mainstream" and cost-conscious--the lights will likely be brighter for safety reasons and the notepads may be too expensive. How will they collaborate? Which brand will have the larger share of voice, if you will? And which customer will they serve--the potential Marriott customer looking for a boutique-like experience or the boutique customer looking for a more Marriott-like experience? My guess is that it's the former--which means that Marriott will need to let Schrager's voice be heard loudly and clearly in order to have an impact. Can you brand a brand that charges nothing? - 2007-08-28 14:57 Today's Wall Street Journal (8/28), in an item titled "Voluntary Pricing Lets Small Eateries Give - and Get Back," talks about cafes that sell food without charging for it. That's right--places like Terra Bite Lounge, One World Cafe, and Six 89 operate on a pay-what-you-want basis. The idea is to make money from those who pay a little more generously than they need to, while helping out those who can't afford a meal. Does this kind of payment system make branding sense? On the one hand, notes the article, "the marketing buzz such a scheme generates can help a business stand out from the pack." On the other, I think, having a no-price payment system, with a unique selling proposition that involves feeding the poor, makes the whole thing seem like a soup kitchen. That is not an appealing image. The success of this kind of business depends on finding the right kind of customer, as the article notes, "one who understands the concept and, therefore, contributes appropriately." Apparently there are those kind of customers out there in states like Washington, Utah, and Colorado. But I'm not at all sure that the model extends to urban metropolitan centers like New York, which is where One World Cafe founder Denise Cerreta plans to open a pay-what-you-want cafe. You never know--but it seems unlikely to me that the model will gain mainstream traction.

Branded training for front-line managers - 2007-08-29 09:33 Front-line supervisors who undergo management training learn how to provide feedback, resolve conflicts, assert authority, communicate, delegate, and motivate employees, reports The Wall Street Journal in "Firms Step Up Training for Front-Line Managers" (8/28/07). Companies like Dell and Home Depot are expanding their programs in an effort to "better motivate and engage workers in an increasingly global and fast-paced environment." The question from a brand perspective is, should these programs include training on how to deliver the brand to employees (and by extension, customers) or should they focus simply on excellence in management? In short, is there a benefit to having a brand component of the training? The answer is, yes and no. In Branded Customer Service (2006), co-author Janelle Barlow recounts an embarrassing experience she had in a Rite-Aid store (which was branded with a large sign stating that "The Customer is #1"), in which she was made to wait in the check-out line for a manager to reverse a purchase she did not want. Long story short, the cashier loudly called out for a manager, stating that Barlow did not want the item becaue it was too expensive. Would branded management training have helped in this situation? In a way, yes...because if managers are taught to help staffers uphold the brand promise that "The Customer is #1," the manager will have tools to help staffers do so. But in a way, no...because treating the customer as #1 is a rather generic brand promise. It is really, in fact, nothing more than a customer service promise. And you don't need brand training to help employees deliver excellence in customer service. I think the bottom line is, if the brand is truly unique or different in a demonstrable way then branding should be a key component of frontline manager training. And not every brand is demonstrably different when it comes to managing people. For example, if someone intends to work at Southwest Airlines, then they need to understand that a sense of humor is key to handling typical job situations. However, if someone intends to work at Starbucks, it is harder to teach them to offer a satisfying "third place" (not home, not work, just a hangout) experience...simple training in positive employee interaction and customer service would cover that.

To sum up: Branding is important, but it's important to use it wisely and sparingly - not every situation calls for it. Sometimes excellence alone will deliver the brand results that are sought. Katrina and the White House, federal government, and FEMA brands - 2007-08-30 10:57 Two years after Katrina, the FEMA brand is still tainted (as is the brand of the White House and the entire federal government) by the relief efforts that took place after the hurricane. The question is, why? If you look at the White House factsheet (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/20070829-1.html) on Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, you see that the government has spent many billions of dollars to assist hurricane victims and strengthen infrastructure against floods, and President Bush and his wife personally visited the area, reinforcing their commitment to help in the recovery. Yet as recently as yesterday (8/29), on the Oprah Winfrey show, CNN's Anderson Cooper talked about the inadequacy of government efforts to help people in the area, and a story was told of a family suffering continual illness as a result of living in a FEMA trailer. Clearly there is a disconnect between the efforts being made by the federal government and the experiences and perceptions of the affected citizens of the area. I am not an expert on the situation in New Orleans, but Cooper gave a clue as to what one of the key problems might be: communication by the government to affected individuals. People don't understand where to go for help, said Cooper; the government has left people to figure it out on their own. I didn't watch the whole show (probably like many people, I got just a few bits and pieces), but my impression is that a better communication plan by the government, and FEMA in particular, might help enormously in routing people to the services they need, and in turn improve impressions of the public regarding what the government is doing to help. This is a good example of how simply throwing money at a problem does not necessarily help. Because separately from relief funding, what is called for is a coordinated brand campaign demonstrating what has been done, what the remaining needs are, and what the plan is for closing the gap. (Yes, that will cost money too.) It's not just a communication plan, but a brand communication plan, because it affects the entire image of the White House, the federal government, and FEMA. Not only that, but there should be some sort of listening mechanism, if there isn't one already, instituted by the government to pay heed to what affected citizens have to say about their experiences obtaining relief. At a minimum, every call and email should be acknowledged; optimally, incoming cases would be managed from beginning to end to make sure that every last citizen is being taken care of.

Brand is a promise made and delivered. More can be done to communicate to citizens how the promises associated with Katrina are being handled effectively—and what is being done to improve things where they're not. Branded store brands at Target, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger, and Costco - a brilliant move - 2007-08-31 09:48 The Wall Street Journal reports (8/29/07) that "food retailers are growing more sophisticated about developing and branding their own products." In a far cry from previous years, when store brands were relatively generic offerings, U.S. retailers like Target, Wal-Mart, Safeway, Kroger, and Costco are offering new brands that compete with manufacturers like Sara Lee and Kraft. It's a brilliant strategy. As the Journal notes, "sales of private-label products carry higher profit margins than the goods they buy from the traditional food companies." And the food retailer-created brands are doing well: "private-label sales of food and nonalcoholic beverages in the U.S. rose 4.3% to $44 billion in the year ended July 14" (not including Wal-Mart) vs. a 2.2% rise for branded food and nonalcoholic beverages during the same time period. It is ingenious how grocery stores are elevating their commodity offerings to the status of a brand. And it is interesting how the best-branded food retailers are creating successful new brands that have no resemblance to the original - like Target's Archer Farms line. This is an example of intelligent brand architecture - a parent brand spinning off a child brand that makes no mention of the original. (There is no connection other than being housed by it in the parent's retail environment.) This is not always the right call to make, but in a case where the parent brand's equity would not enhance the child brand's equity, it can work well to build a new brand starting from scratch. For Target, "chic at reasonable prices" equity does not translate directly into house-branded items, but it does work well at bringing in other brands into the Target umbrella. This is an example of good branding at work--creating added value out of items that would normally be sold at generic prices. 2007 - 09 Advice for Starbucks - after the leaked memo - 2007-09-02 11:45

I recently read the leaked Howard Schultz memo (http://starbucksgossip.typepad.com/_/2007/02/starbucks_chair_2.html), in which the chairman of Starbucks states: "Over the past ten years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand." The memo goes on to talk about such things as the move toward automatic espresso machines, which, although they "solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency," also took away "much of the romance and theatre" involved in watching the barista create the coffee drink by hand. It also talks about the decision to move to flavor-locked packaging, which removed the smell of coffee from the stores -- "perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had." Schultz admits that "Some people even call our stores sterile, cookie cutter, no longer reflecting the passion our partners feel about our coffee." I have an idea for Starbucks to add to the Brand Autopsy manifesto (http://brandautopsy.typepad.com/brandautopsy/2007/04/manifesto_what_.html): kill the brand while it's still at its peak, and replace it with another one. Right now. Today, the Starbucks brand is extracting the absolute most it can from its brand equity. It is at the top of the hill. It has nowhere to go but down. The company should pull back and create another, new brand "from the makers of Starbucks" which redefines the coffee category and gets back to the essence of what Starbucks used to be all about. They could call it "Brouhaha" (Brew-haha, get it?) They would benefit from a glorious mountainous buzz effect. Everybody would flock to the new brand - a Starbucks for the new millennium. Just a thought - for what it's worth. A dying woman's obsession with eBay - 2007-09-03 10:50 "On September 17, 2003, in a chaotic intensive-care ward, just before being medically induced into a coma, my mother summoned all of her energy and whatever oxygen she could to make one request: 'Take care of my eBay.''' So begins a story in the Wall Street Journal (Sept. 1-2, 2007) about a dying woman's request -- that her daughters safeguard her reputation on eBay by paying the bills for auctions "she

might win while lying unconscious," so that she would not get "negative feedback from sellers that would tarnish her superstar status." This somewhat bizarre story highlights a number of things about branding.

● First, though it may be hard to believe, a dying woman's thoughts were consumed by her own brand--how others on the eBay community might perceive her. This is how ingrained branding is in some (many?) people's lives.

● Second, top brands tend to connect people into communities. In particular, eBay has constructed a virtual community that is very real to its members. The article goes on to note how the dying woman made a connection through her auctions with another eBay member, and how the dying woman's daughter later looked him up to learn more about her mother's interest in auctions.

● Third, top brands stand head and shoulders over their counterparts. It is hard to imagine this woman getting as worked up about her auctions on a no-name site: She is conscious of her own reputation in association with a superstar brand, eBay.

While some might view this as a cautionary tale about getting one's priorities in life completely mixed up, it can also be looked at as an example of the power of brand to organize our lives and create moral value systems. This particular woman did not want to die while leaving her auction bills unpaid -- she did not want to leave life having violated the norms of her chosen (brand) community. This makes me think that there are many ways branding can be used for good purposes in life -- not just conforming to the values set forth by the brand, but also uniting people around causes that they otherwise would not have found. The bottom line: Brands are a serious moral force at work in the world today (for good and sometimes for bad, depending on what brand is being promoted). We shouldn't get carried away with branding, but we do need to recognize how much it affects people's psyches as well as their social and spiritual lives. Teen fashion brands - all the same? - 2007-09-04 10:57 Aeropostale, American Eagle, Abercrombie...is it just me or do they all sound and look the same? (I know, there are more, but still -- teenage styles all seem very similar, at least in the U.S. The only exception I can think of is Hot Topic.) Brands are supposed to provide choice to the consumer, but it seems like teenagers have a very limited set of choices to work from. An observation.

Blockbuster is going to mop the floor with Netflix - 2007-09-05 09:14 It is war between Netflix and Blockbuster. As the September 4 New York Times reports (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/us/04fashion.html?ref=business&pagewanted=print), in an attempt to stanch the flow of customers who are leaving the service, Netflix has implemented an all-telephone customer service system, with no email option, because of the belief that customers prefer human contact to impersonal computer-based interaction. It's an iffy bet. According to the Times, Netflix has started losing market share to Blockbuster ever since the latter introduced its Total Access program, which lets people return online rentals to stores and get an in-store movie in exchange. Netflix added 480,000 new subscribers in the first quarter of 2007 vs. 780,000 for Blockbuster. By the second quarter, Netflix lost 55,000 customers while Blockbuster added 525,000. How long do you think Netflix is going to retain its approximately 3 million customer lead over Blockbuster in the online DVD-ordering business? Consumerist (http://consumerist.com/consumer/video-wars/the-ace-up-netflixs-sleeve-excellent-customer-service-291033.php) thinks the all-telephone customer service system is an "Ace up Netflix's sleeve," stating that this is "an exceptionally prescient move by Netflix." Certainly it's in line with Netflix's brand emphasis on customer loyalty. However, what Consumerist is missing is that Blockbuster simply offers a better service than Netflix. Blockbuster is leveraging its bricks-and-mortar presence to offer something that Netflix simply cannot. There are limits to branding—all the customer loyalty in the world can't save Netflix from being only a virtual reality compared to its rival. It's a shame, because Netflix had a good idea. But this is a case where an upstart brand is being challenged by an industry behemoth that copied its innovation, and may well ultimately lose out.

See a comparison between Netflix and Blockbuster here: http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-11445_7-6325775-1.html Oprah's brand -- will it make a difference for Obama? - 2007-09-06 11:52 The Washington Post reports (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/04/AR2007090402188.html) that Oprah Winfrey, who has endorsed Barack Obama for president, "is in discussions with his advisers about playing a broader role in the campaign -- possibly as a surrogate on the stump or an outspoken advocate -- or simply bringing her branding magic to benefit his White House bid." Oprah this weekend will host a presidential fundraiser for Obama. The question is, will Oprah's brand create a halo effect for Obama? As the Post notes, she has a huge constituency: 8.4 million viewers daily of her TV show, 2.3 million unique viewers of her Web site each month, 2 million magazine readers each month, etc. Initially the Post is skeptical, noting that "historically, there's little evidence that celebrity endorsements have done much to draw voters to political candidates." However, the political analysts interviewed for the article felt that Oprah's magic might be different. Then, the paper notes, there is the case of the 2000 George Bush interview, in which the candidate moved up twelve percentage points to tie with Al Gore after talking to Oprah. The Post goes on to state that a professor of African-American studies at Duke University, Mark Anthony Neal, says the prospects for the partnership are "immense but uncertain." I tend to disagree. I don't think Oprah's support will make much difference for Obama at all. Oprah's brand essence is apolitical. She is about self insight, growth, and finding opportunities to make one's life better. While it's true that she was masterful at getting America to read books, her brand just doesn't translate into the political realm. The "Oprah bounce" that George Bush received after her interview does not equate to long-term ratings changes for a candidate. On the other hand, I am a huge Oprah fan and always wanted her to run for president herself. So, it's an odd situation: on the one hand she has political capital with me, but on the other hand her brand doesn't necessarily extend to other candidates.

Time will tell, I suppose. Gain vs. Kentucky Fried Chicken: Smart Scents vs. Nonsense - 2007-09-07 12:11 The good: The Wall Street Journal (September 4; http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118885654555916198-email.html for subscribers only) reports that Gain has risen to #2 in the laundry detergent market by positioning its brand as "a heavily fragrant detergent." Wisely, Procter & Gamble didn't go after the mass market (for whom strong-smelling laundry detergent isn't necessarily appealing) but rather targeted "the scent-loving consumer segment." As the Journal reports, it was an out of the ordinary move for P&G to focus on a niche rather than the mass market, but they've succeeded. And P&G is knocking the socks off Unilever (literally); Unilever is selling its U.S. laundry business. Already, Colgate-Palmolive has abandoned that market due to P&G's strength. So score 1 for P&G! The bad: Consumerist (http://consumerist.com/consumer/badvertising/kfc-launches-program-designed-to-make-your-office-smell-like-chicken-295699.php) aptly reports the "badvertising" news from a Kentucky Fried Chicken press release (http://www.kfc.com/about/pressreleases/082807.asp) stating that KFC, "in a marketing first," is placing the scent of KFC in "the halls and offices of corporate America." That's right, in a pilot program, "Along with carrying inter-office mail, overnight packages and bills, mail carts in Washington, D.C., Chicago and Dallas delivered the aroma of freshly prepared Kentucky Fried Chicken during pre-lunch mail drops." The scent was delivered by a $2.99 Deal - "a plated meal including KFC's world famous chicken, a side item and a biscuit - on the actual mail carts that pass the offices of hungry workers." So now you can get your office mail "greasy" or "extra greasy"--just kidding. (And in an age of email and IM, who even gets interoffice mail anymore? But that's another story.) I don't even pretend to understand this part of the release: "To bring the sweet-smelling promotion to life, KFC collaborated with Chemistry.com in Dallas; the Trade Association & Society Consultants of Washington, D.C.; and the Chicago offices of the Salvation Army." What, did they send around an actual plate of food spiked with chemicals? Yuk. Yet chief marketing officer for KFC seems to think it's the most brilliant idea around: "There is truly no better brand ambassador worldwide than the signature aroma of freshly prepared Kentucky Fried Chicken," said James O'Reilly." The key brand lesson is that odors should be confined to situations where people want them. In the case of Gain, there is an avid bunch of raving fans involved. And P&G admits: "We deliberately made it more intense, more polarizing -- they (the detergent's smells) weren't

designed to appeal to everybody." (P&G North America laundry marketing director Kevin Burke). And even then, you can't smell the scent on the outside of the container (at least I don't think so), so the brand identity is literally well contained. In the case of KFC, they are going into an environment that is NOT SUPPOSED TO SMELL LIKE ANYTHING, the office, and injecting a smell that some people like and some people don't. Stupid! The only scent that people may REMOTELY want to smell in an office is coffee (and maybe, just perhaps, fresh doughnuts?). Not a strong-smelling takeout food smell. Another key brand lesson is not to abuse your scent identity. KFC's brand is indeed equatable with the smell of its chicken, but that doesn't mean that the smell of fried chicken should be everywhere. The things that people think of... Brand Theory vs. Brand Practice - 2007-09-09 09:52 There are two ways to go about building a brand: I call them brand theory vs. brand practice. Theory Sometimes you might read brand books and articles and get grand ideas about how you are going to build your brand. You might proceed as I have advocated in this article: (http://www.govexec.com/features/0307-01/0307-01advw1.htm)

"It starts with brand assessment, that is, finding out how your key stakeholders see you versus how you see yourself…

Next comes brand strategy. Based on research inside and outside the agency, you articulate the vision, core values, common culture, positioning and other key attributes…

Third are brand communication guidelines: How do you want your graphics, Web site, press materials, recruitment documents and other materials to look? The goal is to arrive at a consistent identity that allows for some variation to keep things interesting. You want to reinforce the vision, mission, values and culture in all you say and do.

Fourth is a brand launch. You'll need a change implementation program to prepare your employees and customers for a shift in the way you communicate about yourself."

Or you might follow guidelines of the kind set forth in BrandSimple, where author Allen Adamson advocates a five step process as follows:

● Step one: Establish your brand idea ● Step two: Capture the essence of your idea ● Step three: Get your employees engaged in the idea ● Step four: Consider your brand's name ● Step five: Create branding signals beyond the name

Practice But other times you might not have the luxury of following an elegant pre-defined process. Sometimes, because you don't have full buy-in from the organization, you have to do things piecemeal, working from the ground up, going step by step without going according to a grand plan. You may not even have the luxury of market research to define your target. Then what do you do? Ideally, the first step is to establish a unified infrastructure within the organization to manage the brand function. Normally this includes a chief branding officer (someone designated to manage the brand) and a brand council that brings together subject matter experts from frontline functions to determine how best to present the organization to the outside world. But the above may not happen—there may not be sufficient understanding of branding within the organization to devote those kind of resources to it. You may need to start by deciding on a unified look for the brand as well as a tagline first. Again, you may not have the luxury of doing research to arrive at what this will look like, but you can use instinct to arrive at something that "looks right." Next you can host small group familiarity media tours – targeting key media players – educating them regarding the new brand. Following that you can do any of the following:

● Create a living story for the brand—an enactment via the website or video of characters who tell the audience what the brand is about in a dramatized, fictionalized way Redesign the website! Make sure that people answer the phone with the new brand name and tagline Deliver a vision/mission/values poster to all offices and have it posted prominently (and

have a pocket card to go with it to be distributed to all employees) Purchase giveaways, such as T-shirts, caps, and tote bags, as well as postcards which

portray the brand

Create a coffee table book that tells the story of the brand in a lasting format Develop a brand reference handbook for employees that describes what the company is all

about and how to communicate on behalf of it Hold meetings with employees to discuss other ways that they can be encouraged to

reinforce the brand Purchase advertising, once you get a sense that you are on the right track

It's not a perfect approach, working from the ground up, but it's better than nothing. And it may lead to a grander brand plan, in the end. All roads can lead to brand awareness and business results. Why are people still confused about “what is a brand?” - 2007-09-09 19:04 Branding has been around for over two centuries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pears_Soap), yet when I type "what is a brand" into Google I get these comments like people still are confused by what a brand is.

Colin Bates: "What is a brand? Too often even marketing professionals don't have an answer, and too many have their 'own' answer. Which makes life very confusing!" (http://www.sideroad.com/Branding/what_is_brand.html)

Debbie MacInnis: "If you were to look at what people have written about branding, chances are you'd be confused about many things, not the least of which is the term "brand." What is a brand, anyway? What does it mean? How is it different from "brand image" or other terms?" (http://www.marketingprofs.com/premium_preview.asp?file=%2F4%2Fmacinnis20%2Easp)

I think I understand what is so confusing about branding. It's that there are "simple brands," like trademarked names for packaged goods, and "MAJOR BRANDS," free floating associations with companies that include anything and everything from goods to services and more. A simple brand is Ajax laundry detergent. A MAJOR BRAND is Oprah. To make things more complicated, a "simple MAJOR BRAND" is Tide. What do they have in common? Ajax, Oprah, and Tide all signify an identity. What do they not have in common? Unlike Ajax, both Tide and Oprah—MAJOR BRANDS—stand for something more than what they physically are. Tide stands for "power"

(as in the power that comes from the ability to scrub something really clean) and Oprah stands for "spiritual self-improvement and empowerment." What is the difference between a simple MAJOR BRAND and a (regular or major) MAJOR BRAND? Tide is easily reducible to a tangible thing while Oprah is essentially intangible. Oprah's products and services are tangible, Oprah the individual is tangible, but Oprah's brand effect cannot be captured under a microscope. It can barely be captured in words. People tend to get mixed up between the tangible and the intangible aspects of brand. That is why when you say to someone, "we have to work on our brand," they might think that you are talking about creating name awareness of the organization, while you are really talking about creating positive associations with the organization's name. It's a subtle but really powerful difference. People also get mixed up because everything is a brand, but not everything is a BRAND. Just by virtue of existing, everything and everyone has a brand (name), but not everything and everyone has a distinct, clear set of associations that make that name special. So remember: A simple brand is just a name. A MAJOR BRAND is a name with a set of mental associations to it. And branding is the art and science of creating a set of associations around a name. Simple, clear, and hopefully this will be the end of the confusion. Greedy fashion designers destroy their own brands - 2007-09-10 18:20 The Washington Post (September 10) has a front-page article in the Style section, “Proving Their Worth,” about designers—like Badgley Mischka and Vera Wang—who undercut their own brands by selling lower-priced lines of their own clothing. “The signature collections form these designers sell for 10 to 30 times as much as what they delivered to the Gap,” writes the Post about Rodarte designers Thakoon Panichgul, Doo-Ri Chung and Laure and Kate Mulleavy, “So why spend the extra money?” Why, indeed. “There have always been those who cast a skeptical eye on the expensive and esoteric merchandise peddled on designer runways, but now the designers themselves are forcing the question,” notes the paper. Designers who sell lower-priced versions of their own lines aren’t smart. They’re stupid and short-

term greedy. Branding, in fashion, is about creating the illusion of premier status, and part of the illusion involves the extraction of enormous amounts of money from consumers’ wallets. When designers sell themselves short, they literally destroy the halo that surrounds their work. They drag the price of the brand down and with it the entire image. Contrast this with Ralph Lauren, who, notes the Post, has been in the fashion business for 40 years this year. He celebrated by showing his spring collection in Central Park then “following it with a black-tie dinner that had all the breathtaking elegance that only Jay Gatsby himself could conjure.” In addition to lauding his collection, the paper notes that “few designers are as facile at myth-making as Lauren. They have the pressure of being judged on their clothes alone, not the stories they weave.” Ah, but the whole point is to tell the story. Ralph Lauren does this majestically. When we pay for the fashion, we’re paying for the story. Designers who sell the clothes are missing the point. How branding both stifles creativity and sets it free - 2007-09-11 14:30 There are some people who think that branding has a dampening effect on creative self-expression. They are right! However, that is a good thing. Having too much freedom of expression is bad for the brand, because you end up expressing too many visuals and messages for any one of them to catch hold with the marketplace. Imagine how boring it is to say the same thing 7 times. Now imagine saying the same thing 70 times, 70,000, or even 70 million. Naturally it stifles your creativity…but the more you say the same thing the more people will remember it. I once heard that in corporate communication, you have to repeat a message something like 7 times before it sticks in people’s heads. (See for example http://fivesparrows.com/blog/2007/04/, “Studies show that the average consumer needs to hear or see your message about seven times before he or she will buy from you.”) On the other hand, the act of branding itself can be very creative. There is a 2006 book called Juicing the Orange, by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn (of Fallon Worldwide, “one of the world’s largest advertising and media conglomerates”) that is worth a read if you are afraid that branding means that you can’t step outside the box and do something new. I wish I could reprint the entire book here, it’s so good. An especially applicable case study from the book is about the islands of the Bahamas. The Duffy Design group of the Fallon team (formerly part of the agency) gave the entire 700-island country, with its “staggering range of geography, culture, activities, and personality,” a distinctive graphic identity that managed to capture the diversity of the islands within a single framework (see www.bahamas.com). According to Fallon, “All Bahamians felt represented” by the graphic. Having a single visual identity makes it possible for the Bahamas to package itself while at the same time presenting itself creatively. And the results are measurable: Among other things, “The integrated campaign helped drive a 14.5 percent increase in total arrivals to the Bahamas from January through April 2004, compared with the same period in 2003…The year before, the Bahamas had lagged behind the region’s growth by 38 percent…this year it had turned things around, finishing 28 percent ahead of the Caribbean regional average.” This is an example of a creative approach that works

because it is implemented consistently. Another good story from the book concerns United, and the “It’s Time To Fly” slogan/campaign. The agency used an extraordinarily creative approach to the brand, bringing in animation and classical music, then executing variations on the visual "look," and content themes, with the consistent tagline “It’s Time To Fly,” in numerous ways and places. The result: “Among all business travelers with access to United flights, its rating as ‘airline most preferred’ shot up from 9 percent to 20 percent.” Another creative approach that works because it is executed in a similar way all over the world. 1) Branding works. 2) Branding works. 3) Branding works. 4) Branding works. 5) Branding works. 6) Branding works. 7) Branding works. Branding: Balancing the right and left brain - 2007-09-12 14:53 Yesterday I talked about creativity and branding, referencing the book Juicing the Orange (2006), by Fallon Worldwide cofounders Pat Fallon and Fred Senn. I made the point that you need to be creative before you brand, then repetitious afterward. Today I want to talk about creativity and branding again, but from a different angle: How you need to balance the creative and analytical sides of the brain in order to arrive at a truly good brand campaign. There are numerous examples of research informing creativity in Juicing the Orange. Here are a few:

● Citi: Fallon held focus groups (which yielded little) on the role of banks in consumers’ lives…then figured out that the focus groups should focus on the role of money in people’s lives. From there the agency discovered a group they call “balance seekers,” people who see money as “a means, and little more”. The research they conducted led to a whole campaign about the importance of living life without chasing the almighty dollar. The “live richly” brand campaign influenced many aspects of Citi’s business, eventually leading to Citi becoming a “global power brand.” “Credit card acquisition went up by 30 percent, home equity loan applications increased 14 percent, and small business card accounts rose 20 percent.”

● Holiday Inn Express: Fallon spent time with the target market, entrepreneurial road warriors, videotaping them while they drove across the country. “We talked to them about their work, their families, and their daily experiences,” write Senn and Fallon. What they learned was that this kind of traveler wanted to travel smart—get the most for their money—and get respect for their hard work. “They were working hard and working smart,” they write, “and that was going to be their ticket to success.” They got an “emotional reward” for staying at a limited-service hotel, the reward of satisfaction for choosing wisely. This led directly to the “Stay Smart” campaign, which features people demonstrating feats of intellect and then proclaiming that they’re not experts, they just stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the other night. The campaign successfully differentiated the Holiday Inn Express brand from Holiday Inn itself. Result: the hotel’s revenues per available room are growing at 15 percent (vs. 9 percent for the category). And the hotel is even able to charge a small price premium, living “at the upper end of category pricing.”

● Purina Dog Chow: Fallon’s account planners read research and tracking studies then actually spent time with dog owners, watching the interaction. From this they learned that

dog owners either tend to feed their dog a steady diet of the same dog food or give them a variety of dog foods from the store. From there they launched an educational kind of ad which reminded dog owners that the best diet is a steady diet, and Purina Dog Chow is ideally suited to provide it. Result: “In the first two years of the campaign, sales grew 12% a year….(meaning) $35 million in additional revenue with no change in pricing or distribution.”

Can you dump the research and just be creative about developing your brand? Sure. But this strategy probably won’t work unless you are 1) unusually insightful to begin with about your target market or 2) visionary about what the market will want in the near future—i.e. you are providing something they didn’t know they wanted. For the rest of us, good research—as much as you can get—is the key. Citi’s “Let’s get it done”—a pale imitation of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s “Make it happen” campaign* - 2007-09-15 20:01 I know I’m coming late to the party, but the new (May 2007) Citi brand campaign stinks; to me, “Let’s get it done” is a shameless copy of the Royal Bank of Scotland’s “Make it Happen” brand campaign (at the very least in message, if not in execution). Why did Citi drop the “Live richly” theme, developed by Fallon, which was doing so well? (Even if it was a bit controversial -- or because of the controversy -- see http://www.slate.com/id/2068683/#) Creditcards.com reports that “Starting in January, Citi brought research from its rebranding effort to meetings with representatives from Fallon and Publicis, with the goal of creating a campaign that would be suitable for retail and credit card customers, major advertisers, and investment banking clients.” (http://www.creditcards.com/Citi-Launches-New-Brand-Ad-Campaign.php) What does that mean? What research? The bank wasn’t happy with the results that its “Live richly” campaign was driving? It couldn't stand being high-level, high-concept, and idea-based? What a waste…what a loss of a good brand. Adpunch.org notes that the new campaign is supposed to connect with audiences’ financial aspirations: “The basic theme of the campaign is Citi’s outstanding portfolio of financial products and services drives its clients towards financial success. The advertising has been customized to appeal to different markets and cultures in a variety of languages.” (http://www.adpunch.org/entry/citi-group-lets-get-it-done/) The Royal Bank of Scotland campaign is so much more effective than Citi’s effort: “At The Royal Bank of Scotland Group we believe actions speak louder than words.” (http://mediacentre.rbs.com/advertising/index.aspx) That’s it. Simple. The same message as Citi is trying to broadcast with the new campaign, but so much higher-level. Publicis, which is responsible for the new campaign, shouldn't take all the blame, though. By October 2006, Fallon had already veered away from "Live Richly" with the "Very Rewarding" campaign "which features two eccentric East European-sounding characters, Roman and Victor showing the many ways they can earn Citi rewards points." (http://www.thirdwayblog.com/category/citi/) As ThirdWay points out,

"By displacing rather than supplementing the 'Live Richly' campaign, however, Citibank is essentially swapping a branding campaign based on the type of user who might be attracted to Citibank (the consumer who understands that life is not just about money) for a 'features and benefits' brand positioning. The 'Live Richly' brand positioning was clear and defendable. By using television and huge spend levels, Citi is creating new brand positioning with these product spots whether they like it or not." All of this points up a major problem with brands today: a lack of continuity. Instead of updating “Live richly” to incorporate the key message of “Let’s get it done,” which could have been done, the bank dumps a successful brand in favor of a very bland, commodity-like imitation of a bank positioning that has already been taken. Sad. *Note: I have no way of knowing whether the campaign is actually an imitation or just happens to look like one. It doesn't really matter, though...because this is really a matter of perception. The RBS ads hit the streets before the Citi ads did (http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-6387518/RBS-takes-Make-it-happen.html), and that's what counts. Brand touchpoint analysis--how to get it done - 2007-09-17 09:01 Everybody knows that a brand is only as good as its communications with internal and external stakeholders. If you only communicate the brand in some places, but not in others, you are creating an inconsistent image and the brand message will not take hold. The question is, how do you get the organization to look at all the ways it communicates (both to employees and the outside world) and come up with a true inventory? I suggest that this is where the brand council comes in. Headed up by subject matter experts from every line of business and back-office function, the council should meet and together brainstorm all the typical places where the brand is showcased. It is likely that the council will find out that there are numerous touchpoints that need to be controlled, starting with the marketing/PR departments, continuing with customer service, and ending with...who knows? If you haven't conducted a brand inventory yet, now is a good time to start. Some radical brand advice for Hillary Clinton - 2007-09-17 18:28 Ten years ago, in my “sociology phase,” I wrote a book, Women and Soap Opera: A Cultural Feminist Perspective (Greenwood Press, 1997), which argued that soap operas are empowering for women because they allow women to express high emotionality, something that is taboo in a masculine-oriented society. (Implicit in the argument was the notion that society is still predominantly tilted in favor of men.) This is the perspective of cultural feminism: that women can become empowered by enjoying traditionally female ways of expressing themselves, and by taking on traditionally feminine roles and responsibilities. In my view, Hillary Clinton is running for president of the United States on precisely the opposite assumption: that women can become empowered by erasing the difference between themselves and

men, by participating fully in masculine society, and by rejecting any kind of role definition that is masculine or feminine. In fact, if I had to think of a “brand symbol” for Hillary, it would be the pantsuit: a traditionally male outfit reshaped for women to wear. This is liberal feminism: the concept that women and men are fundamentally the same, not just equal, that there are no inherent differences between them. Now, I could be wrong, but I suspect that Hillary Clinton is deeply wedded to the idea of gender neutrality. This is something that fundamentally defines her. And she has risen to the elite of American life by envisioning herself as able to do anything that a man can do. But ironically, her very gender neutrality is, I suspect, something that turns people off about her. As much of a front runner as she is, she is equally disdained by those who “just don’t like her,” and I suspect that her refusal to assume a traditional gender role is part of that dislike. Remember when she said that she wasn’t some woman standing by her man baking cookies? That was a huge turnoff for a lot of people who think there is something very nice about a woman standing by her man baking cookies. I am not saying that she shouldn’t run for President—not at all! What I am saying is that she should embrace her femininity, or at the very least show the world that she has a feminine side. She has already embraced some traditionally feminine issues/causes, such as childcare and healthcare. But she is still refusing to inhabit the female gender. She should get on television and be emotional, even shed a tear or two. I’d like to see her be a guest on more daytime television, on The View. I’d like to see her be a personal role model for women who want to achieve everything that men can, but as women not pretend men. Now THAT would be a radical turnaround for Hillary—and whether the polls show it or not, it would be a move that I think would push her into the White House. Two missions, one tagline - 2007-09-18 18:37 Ideally companies are driven by a single mission, to be expressed in a single tagline. But life is not always ideal and a situation may come about where you have multiple missions, each one begging to be expressed. What do you do? Essentially there are four choices. You can:

1 Choose one of the missions and elevate it to “most important status,” expressing only that in your tagline

2 Choose two or even three of the missions and express them all in the tagline 3 Go higher-level than all of the missions and express a vision 4 None of the above—just say something memorable

Strategy #3 seems to be the most popular if you look at the “top 10” taglines described at http://sbinformation.about.com/b/a/257130.htm (quoted below; my interpretation after the dashes) “1. Got milk? (1993) California Milk Processor Board – very direct and product oriented; no vision here 2. Don’t leave home without it. (1975) American Express – vision-oriented; the idea of being “indispensable” 3. Just do it. (1988) Nike – vision-oriented 4. Where’s the beef? (1984) Wendy’s – just memorable

5. You’re in good hands with Allstate. (1956) Allstate Insurance –vision-oriented 6. Think different. (1998) Apple Computer –vision-oriented 7. We try harder. (1962) Avis –vision-oriented 8. Tastes great, less filling. (1974) Miller Lite –mission-oriented 9. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. (1954) M&M Candies –mission-oriented 10. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking. (1956) Timex” – mission-oriented I myself prefer a more literal tagline, one that sounds almost like a mission statement, if only because a company name rarely describes what it does, and it’s a crowded market: you have about two seconds to make it clear what value you contribute, and your name probably doesn't signify what you do. (Not everybody can be a superbrand and go abstract.) But I can see where option #3 works – it has a unifying quality that brings out a higher-level purpose to all the diverse things the company does. Bottom line: If you’re stuck for a tagline, go higher. But try to keep it memorable AND distinctly related to the product or service. Moving the brand forward initially – also known as "thriving on chaos" - 2007-09-19 17:08 The key to branding the organization is to be able to do a number of things simultaneously. It’s not going to work in a, b, c order. You can expect a bit of chaos. For one thing, you will work on the brand SIMULTANEOUSLY with other marketing and awareness campaigns. The whole world is not going to stop and wait for you to come up with a name and a tagline. Things are dynamic. Deal with it. For another thing, you have to start lining up your “ducks in a row.” Meaning, you have to get the strategy together. Do you have a brand touchpoint analysis done yet? In other words, do you know all the places where employees, customers and other stakeholders encounter the brand? Time to write it down and prioritize: which are the most important encounters, the ones that have to be controlled most seriously? You also need to do a situation analysis: what is the history of the brand, what is the rationale for branding today, what are all the risks and challenges associated with branding and how are you prepared to deal with them? The analysis should include all the initial actions you want to take to create brand awareness; one of those actions should be the creation of a brand council (see below for a bit more detail on this). Third, are you settled with the name and tagline? Time to get the team brainstorming…even if the name is set in stone the tagline needs to be agreed upon. There has to be agreement within your marketing group, and then you need to radiate outward to the brand council, composed of individuals from all lines of the business, which will agree on one. Branding doesn’t work unless there is strong consensus that propels the initiative forward. Fourth, you must get some basic background collateral together: a brand vision/mission/values poster and pocket card, a brand reference book/website for employees, and public affairs guidance (talking points) for your media group. These documents set the stage for all the other brand communication

you will be doing because they set expectations not only about what the brand is, but about how it should be expressed verbally and visually. This is only the beginning…but ideally you and your team should be getting more involved, more excited about the brand as you go along. Are you feeling it? If not, go back to the drawing board, because something is wrong. More on this theme to follow in future posts. Branding is not a luxury—it’s a necessity - 2007-09-20 17:30 I continue to be amazed at the sentiment that branding is a kind of luxury to be undertaken when there is time. There is no time. Don’t people understand that in order for marketing to have credibility—forget credibility, to be listened to at all—it has to be backed up by a brand? There is this big fat rush to get to market…but without the product or service being properly branded, it’s a waste of time. Nobody is listening. Ideally you would brand first, then market whatever it is you’re selling. In the real world, you often have to market without branding. Consider yourself lucky if you get to brand and market at the same time. What is the difference between marketing and branding? See my post at http://blumenthalonbranding.blogspot.com/2007/08/classic-marketing-vs-classic-branding.html. Basically branding is the slow, strategic process of establishing an identity for your product or service whereas marketing is spreading the idea rapidly about what you have to sell. Also see http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BDW/is_22_40/ai_54787827/print. Branding is war – confront the enemy (hint: it's not always who you think) - 2007-09-21 16:53 Because the pace of branding is slow compared to that of marketing, you might think that branding is a leisurely activity. Nothing can be further from the truth. Branding is an urgent, strategic activity driven by the fact that every organization faces three enemies:

● Itself ● Its parent organization, if there is one ● Its competitors

Let me explain. ● First, every organization is at war with itself. Ask two people and you will get at least three

different opinions about what the identity of the company is or should be relative to competitors, what the tagline is, what the name is, and what the strategy should be (well, sometimes; not everybody cares about this.) This is particularly true if the organization is divided into separate lines of business, as most companies are: then you can expect fairly consistent disagreement along party lines. So when you brand, you take sides in a battle that has a fairly lengthy history and can be expected to go on for a while.

● Second, every organization is at war with its parent brand, if there is one. This is because, unless it is extraordinarily strategic-minded, the parent tends to have a sort of identity conflict and to want to take credit for the achievements of the child brand, or at the very least is conflicted about setting the child brand free to mark its achievements on its own. See http://blumenthalonbranding.blogspot.com/2007/08/parent-brand-and-baby-brand.html.

● Third, every organization is at war with its competitors, which is obvious. What is not so obvious is who those competitors are. You may think that you have a monopoly, but when you talk to your external stakeholders (primarily, customers) find out that they have you confused with someone else. That “someone else” is your competitor and your enemy, even if you actually do not compete.

When you brand, brand as though an enemy were at your back. What does that mean? It means ● Treating the whole initiative with a sense of urgency; ● Rallying people around the brand as though it were a cause; and ● Bringing people along to the brand, not assuming that they are automatically on the “right

side.” It also means listening carefully to internal and external feedback: find out who your enemies are, learn what sides have been drawn and who stands where, and determine how best you are going to navigate the politics. Finally, it means branding with a sense of passion about what you are doing: If this is a war, you want to end up on the winning team. And that means standing with the group which promotes the right brand image throughout the organization, successfully, overcoming all (or most) of those who resist. Parent brand and baby brand, part 2 -- finding the right balance - 2007-09-23 17:20 Recently I posited (http://blumenthalonbranding.blogspot.com/2007/09/branding-is-war-confront-enemy-hint-its.html) that “every organization is at war with its parent brand, if there is one. This is because, unless it is extraordinarily strategic-minded, the parent tends to have a sort of identity conflict and to want to take credit for the achievements of the child brand, or at the very least is conflicted about setting the child brand free to mark its achievements on its own.” The implication is that it is always legitimate for the child brand to establish its own identity. However, this is not always the case. There is at least one instance when a baby brand should stay close to the fold of a parent brand: When the unity of the parent brand is at stake. That is, if the baby brand’s having its own identity will threaten the parent brand’s unity, there is a problem. One solution to this dilemma is to fold the baby brand back into the parent brand (renaming it, at least partially). The benefit is to flow brand equity from the baby brand back into the parent brand. The risk is that brand equity will flow out of the baby brand, but not flow into the parent brand – with the result that there are two flattened brands. If it is not possible or desirable to fold the baby brand back into the parent brand, the parent brand should indeed let the baby brand go and surround it with “siblings”—related subbrands that can establish a kind of “melting pot” family for the parent brand. E.g., Coca-Cola has not only its namesake cola brand, but also Minute Maid juice, Powerade, Nestea (with Nestle), Fruitopia, and

Dasani (source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coca-Cola_Company). All of these subbrands have their own identities, but all of them are also known to be related to each other as part of the Coca-Cola family. In general, although there are baby brands that supersede their parents and deserve to have their own spotlight, it is not desirable for a master brand to have a proliferation of subbrands—unless each subbrand contributes something concrete and valuable to the master brand portfolio. If the master brand does not exert control over its baby brands, it will be overrun with divisions and offices each wanting to brand their own activities, each leaching equity from the master brand probably before being ready to exist on its own. So it is a careful balance that has to be struck between parent brand and baby brand—proceed with caution. Part 1 of Parent brand vs. baby brand is here: http://blumenthalonbranding.blogspot.com/2007/08/parent-brand-and-baby-brand.html Branding -- always a team effort - 2007-09-24 18:03 Branding should never be a solo exercise, for the following reasons:

1 It requires the commitment of all parties in order to work—not only the parties involved in the branding process, but also those involved in delivering the brand—the frontline employee.

2 It requires a deep understanding of the competitive position of the organization—and obtaining that knowledge should ideally result from intensive research and discussion with both internal and external stakeholders.

3 It is extraordinarily rare that one person has the breadth of vision and depth of operational knowledge required to truly instill the brand.

At the same time, someone has to champion the brand and drive it throughout the organization. That is why the best operational structure for a brand is the chief branding officer (solo artist) + the brand council (team). The chief branding officer is: “responsible for creating and strengthing brand names, and drawing real and measurable value out of them. This often involves not just product positioning, targeted marketing, but the identification of the components of a product or service that differentate a business from their competitors. Most CBOs work hand-in-hand with the head(s) of Marketing and Sales” (http://www.chiefofficer.com/faq.php) The brand council is the team counterpart to the chief branding officer. See below: “If the company is going to orientated (sic) itself around an 'on-brand' ideology, cross functional teams are essential. These teams, consisting of staff members from across the internal hierarchy, are the only method through which to place the brand itself at the heart of the business. 'Our experience has shown that the creation of a company brand council, consisting of staff members from all levels, is critical,' says Spark. 'This council can cut through internal dynamics and power plays inherent in any organisation and focus on the health, relevance and role of the brand itself within the company.'” (http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/12/6072.html) I know I talk a lot about brand councils, but they really are critical to the success of the brand. The brand cannot belong to the public relations/marketing communications department alone. It must

belong to the entire organization. And for that to happen, a team must form to take the brand forward, even if it is led by an individual whose entire job is to shepherd the brand. Social Marketing is a Scam - 2007-09-25 12:01 The book Social Marketing: Why Should the Devil Have All The Best Tunes? by Gerard Hastings is all about the notion that traditional marketing concepts can and should be applied to promoting socially desirable behavior. This is called “social marketing.” The book has a laundry list of case studies on everything from cancer prevention to safe driving to junk food advertising, racism, suicide, obesity, diabetes and more. My question is, why do we need the term “social marketing” at all? Marketing is marketing, whether you’re selling soap or reduced fat consumption. The author writes that “social marketing is not just valuable—it is a matter of life and death.” (p. 4) Well, social marketing may be powerful. But in the end it’s just the same thing as marketing itself. This word “social” makes it sound like something different, but it’s not. If you ask me, I think someone developed the term “social marketing” as just another way to sell books. But what’s really offensive about it is that the discipline seeks some kind of moral high ground, when it’s doing the same thing as every marketer does. The author writes: “These twin notions of both learning from and scrutinizing commercial marketing are encapsulated in the concept of social marketing.” I don’t see any scrutiny going on in the critical sense; rather the traditional marketing discipline is being looked at to see how its principles and practices can be applied to drive systemic social change. And I have to say that I find it troubling, this term called “social” marketing. As if one can uncritically accept any and all agendas for social change as positive. For although the causes described in the book are generally undebatable in terms of their contribution to a better world, I think there is a fine line between promoting a better world and promoting one’s political or personal agenda for that world. Take obesity for example. In promoting a world where overweight is vilified, aren’t we also driving people toward eating disorders who may otherwise have been satisfied with living at a slightly higher weight than is usual? Or on a related note, fat consumption. There are arguments to be made on both sides of the coin, that fat is good and bad for you. Or how about sugar-free medicine? The social marketing case being made in the book is that eliminating sugar in medicine is an uncritically positive move, but some would argue that sugar substitutes are dangerous and should not be used. So we need to be careful about who gets to define what “social marketing” is—and that seems to me to be a somewhat political matter. In the end, marketing is marketing and branding is branding. Let’s focus on the discipline and making it better, not on the idea of whose marketing agenda is “right” and “good.” If we have to use another term for "social marketing," I vastly prefer "cause marketing" as this term doesn't imply the rightness of the cause.

Brand metrics -– when to bother and why - 2007-09-28 09:33 I have been thinking about brand metrics for awhile now, as numbers help to demonstrate the value of a brand to the organization, but in my experience are seldom actually used. A couple of questions arise around the concept of brand metrics:

1 What is most important to measure? 2 Do people use brand metrics? 3 What happens if you don’t measure? 4 Are the advanced brand measurement techniques you read about really worthwhile

or just a lot of gobbledygook designed to make someone look smart? Let’s take these one at a time. 1. What is most important to measure? According to Prophet Brand Strategy, it is only important to measure things that help you make strategic business decisions. (http://www.prophet.com/downloads/articles/Brand%20MetricsReprint.pdf) So for example, a certain retailer wanted to upgrade their image from low-end to high-end so that they could sell more high-margin goods. Therefore, they instituted a measure called “basket composition,” basically measuring what percentage of each sale had been composed of high-margin items. The connection between brand and basket composition is simple and causative. You change the image of the retailer, the consumer is more willing to purchase high-margin items. But it’s not always so easy to determine the connection between brand and business results. For a government agency, for example, increased retention might be one goal of an internal brand initiative. However, that brand initiative will likely be bundled with increased benefits from Human Resources. So if turnover is reduced, it is difficult to say how much the brand contributed to it vs. how much the HR factor did. In that case, what do you measure? Perhaps you go back to awareness (asking about the ability to recall key brand messages) and impact (literally asking the extent to which branding messages have affected the desire to look for a job elsewhere). It goes without saying that if you're not making strategic business decisions that involve the brand (which is possible), you don't need to measure anything except perhaps awareness, because that affects everything else. 2. Do people use brand metrics? Some have pooh-poohed awareness (http://chiefmarketer.com/crm_loop/roi/brand_metrics_track/), saying things like “If awareness is your be-all and end-all, you’ve got a long way to go,” but I think that is definitely the place to start, especially given that so few companies measure any aspect of brand at all. As Prophet notes, its “2002 Best Practices study showed that only one-third of the 90 companies surveyed in 2001 measure the performance of their brands.” Similarly, Chief Marketer states that VisionEdge Marketing found the exact same thing: “two-thirds of all marketers do not include metrics in their marketing plans.”

I am personally not surprised that so few companies use brand metrics, because it is difficult to definitively relate brand realities to business outcomes. Also, many marketing decisions are based on whim, intuition, gut instinct, etc. and not measurable business arguments. Finally, organizations can tend to do marketing/branding because everyone else does, and there may not ultimately be pressure on the marketing director to show results. 3. What happens if you don’t measure? Sometimes, nothing bad will happen. But other times, if you don’t measure, you are in danger of having two things happen to you, as Chief Marketer notes. The first is that your marketing budget may be used as a “slush fund” for executives who need to get budget money from somewhere. The second is that you may be fired for failing to demonstrate bottom-line results. So even though it may be difficult, you’ve got to measure something, and that something has to connect with business objectives. I say, start with awareness. Then find a way to connect it to a business result. This means coming up with the right cause-effect relationship, the right survey questions, and the right target population to ask those questions to. 4. Are the advanced brand measurement techniques you read about really worthwhile or just a lot of gobbledygook designed to make someone look smart? I do think that frequently, advanced techniques are designed to make someone look smart and are not really useful for the average marketer. A helpful article in this area, by Prophet Brand Strategy, is called “Brand Metrics: Gauging and Linking Brands with Business Performance.” (http://www.prophet.com/downloads/articles/MunozBrandMetrics.pdf) I like the way they advocate the following: “Metrics should be: simple to use…meaningful…actionable…repeatable…time-bound.” (SMART)

● They explain that the measures should be simple because you want to spend your time managing the brand, not measuring it. Overly complicated measurements are a total waste of time.

● They should be meaningful in that they tie the brand to a business result. ● They should be actionable in that you can do something about them (make a business

decision). ● They should be repeatable to ensure consistency in measurement. ● And finally, they should be time-bound in that you can take the pulse of the brand and

compare it to other brands and the competition regularly. To get just the right metric, one that meets all of these criteria, takes a lot of thinking and you might even want to hire a consultancy to help. At the same time, I still say that awareness is not a bad place to start…it is how you carry it forward and create cause and effect relationships that makes the biggest difference. Ultimately, of course, the measure is sales volume: is brand awareness leading you to move the merchandise? (Of course that metric is not useful for everyone, if for example you are in a nonprofit or government agency setting.) Of course, we haven't even gotten into the discussion of whether measures mean anything, because you may not be able to trust what survey respondents tell you. But that is a discussion for another day.

Giuliani’s brand problem - 2007-09-29 19:51 Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani has a brand problem: he is perceived as being mean. “Rudy Giuliani’s temperament is well known in New York. He’s quick to anger, an egomaniac, very stubborn, throws tantrums and is generally, well, mean. Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter: ‘His ridiculously thin skin and mile-wide mean streak were not allegations made by whiners and political opponents. They were traits widely known to his supporters.’” (http://www.rmchronicle.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1138) Right now, what’s saving him is the collective memory of Giuliani on 9/11: ashen through the streets of New York City, uttering brave and reassuring words. But there is a darker underside to the candidate: “Many probably now regret their decision (to elect Giuliani) after seeing Giuliani's mean-spirited assaults on the poor and on freedoms guaranteed by the bill of rights during his term in office.” (http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2006/05/11/giuliani-time/) And again: “Giuliani was mean enough to be New York’s greatest mayor. Is he too mean to be president?” (http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=YWFmYTc2MzEzM2U2OTQ3NjVkNTRjMjEyOWJlMTVjYzg=) The irony of it is that if you read Giuliani’s book Leadership, you begin to understand that what comes across as meanness may actually be a steely rationale behind his governance strategy. He is willing to make the tough choices needed to make a city (country) work and he has the numbers to back up his strategies. Nevertheless, he can’t be elected if he is perceived as mean. And the problem is, he looks mean too. Time for some major image upgrades, especially if he is going to run against Hillary. She, I’m sure, can be mean when she takes off the gloves, but her image is that of a composed centrist above all. Right now, he is simply no match for her. 2007 - 10 Branding in China: Where Buick and Clarins have messed up and KFC and Omega stand out - 2007-10-01 18:24 BusinessWeek’s 9/25/07 edition has an article by Shaun Rein, founder and managing director of the China Market Research Group, called “The Key to Successful Branding in China.” The article makes a set of important points about branding in the Chinese market:

● If the Chinese are not brand-loyal, it is because they have many more choices than they did in the past. But perhaps more importantly, multinational companies have failed to target consumers effectively, leading to brand fickleness.

● ● Brand-fickleness has nothing to do with culture. Chinese consumers have shown

that they are faithful to brands “that suit their needs.” ● Chinese consumers are loyal both to homegrown and international brands—like

Yum Brands’ KFC and Omega, which “controls 70% of the luxury men’s watch market.”

● Companies need to do more than “define their brand position” and “understand and relate to their consumer base.” They must also reach out to China’s younger generation, which has both money to spend and savvy about how to spend it.

● In addition to targeting the younger generation, multinational companies should target Chinese baby boomers—meaning people from the generation born after 1978. This group grew up using a variety of brands and is now having children. They are “teaching their children what to buy.”

● A case study of failing to keep a consistent brand position is Buick. GM reintroduced Buick to China a few years ago, positioning it as a brand for senior executives. Buicks shot up in popularity—selling more widely in China than in the U.S. Then, Buick tried to go “mass” and started selling lower-end models. At first, people snapped up the cars; then market share fell heavily. The reason is obvious: both business executives (who wanted exclusivity) and middle class drivers (who wanted higher than usual quality) were disappointed with a brand that promised to meet both of their needs but ended up meeting neither.

● A case study of failing to understand and relate to the consumer base adequately is Clarins, which used models for their advertising that typical Chinese men could not relate to.

The Chinese are a sophisticated buying group and marketers would do well to heed the lessons of this article. What is the Republican brand now about? - 2007-10-03 12:47 In an article titled: “GOP is losing grip on core business vote,” (10/2/07) The Wall Street Journal suggests that “Republican” is no longer equated with “business.” The paper writes: “New evidence suggests a potentially historic shift in the Republican Party's identity -- what strategists call its ‘brand.’” A September Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll taken in September 2007 shows that 37% of professionals and managers call themselves Republican or Republican-leaning—versus 44% just three years ago. The article states that key reasons for “drifting away from the party” include: 1. The war in Iraq 2. The increase in federal debt 3. Disaffiliation with the Republican conservative social agenda

Other reasons mentioned include: 4. A desire for help with healthcare costs 5. Desire for more activity on global warming John Canning Jr., chairman and CEO of Madison Dearborn Partners (a private equity firm) is quoted as saying: “The Republican Party left me.” What is the Republican party of today now about? I sure can’t tell. Can anyone? Don’t write off Wal-Mart Yet - 2007-10-06 19:22 A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Wal-Mart era wanes amid big shifts in retail,” (October 3) makes a grand statement that “The Wal-Mart era, the retailer’s time of overwhelming business and social influence in America, is drawing to a close.” The author cites a number of reasons for Wal-Mart’s supposed decline:

1 Rival retailers offer “greater convenience” 2 Rival retailers offer “more selection” 3 Rival retailers offer “higher quality” 4 Rival retailers offer “better service” 5 Wal-Mart’s image is “down-market” 6 Wal-Mart’s image is “politically incorrect” 7 The Internet “has changed shoppers’ preferences and eroded the commanding influence

Wal-Mart had over its suppliers.” Don’t you believe it. Wal-Mart’s brand is all about saving consumers money, and the company delivers on that promise: A study showed it saved shoppers $263 billion in 2004 and even though that study is disputed, there is no question that the bottom line savings are there. As long as Wal-Mart stays true to its brand, it will continue to be a valuable company. Martha Stewart stock due for a rise - 2007-10-08 11:39

As MarketWatch noted Sept. 27, Martha Stewart is back, and she’s better than ever. “‘Brand Martha,’ says the site, is not only untarnished but on a major roll.” How do we know? As MarketWatch notes:

● Her magazines are “bursting with ad pages” ● Her “partnerships with major retailers are expanding”—like Macy’s, which is debuting

2,000 products in the first season that her collection is at the stores ● Former President Bill Clinton appeared as a guest on her daily TV show ● She signed a deal with 1-800-Flowers.com ● She opened her first co-branded residential community with KB Home ● She has agreements with Fine Living TV and the DIY cable network ● She will soon be selling a line of food at Costco ● Clarkson Potter/Publishers has announced a new 10 book, five year deal with the company ● She has also signed a deal with E&J Gallo Winery to sell “Martha Stewart Vintage” wine

(Wikipedia)

The financials are fantastic, notes MarketWatch: ● Revenue at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia was up 7% in the last quarter ● Ad revenue at Martha Stewart Living was up more than 20% to $89.8 million January

through June ● Revenue for the Martha Stewart wedding publication was up 16% vs. an industry average

of 6% Yet the stock price is flat – shares are currently at about $13.20 (October 8) vs. a 52-week high of $23.21 last December. Bear Stearns, says the site, issued a fairly positive report on Martha Stewart, noting that “business trends are solid” and “the balance sheet is strong” and that the Macy’s launch could boost the brand even further. On top of that, the Today show recently held “A Martha Stewart Wedding,” choosing a couple to bestow a Martha-Stewart style wedding ceremony upon. Great publicity. The only thing that bothers me, to be honest, is the product: I don’t love it. But enough people love the image and the ideas that I think her brand is solid and here to stay. Talbots to review brand positioning--hopefully they will go MORE classic, not less - 2007-10-10 07:26

The Boston Globe has an article today about Talbots (the clothing brand, remember them?) hiring a consultant to "sharpen its brand" to appeal to women over 35. VP of investor relations at Talbots Julie Lorigan admits that "we haven't gotten it right yet...we're not offering the customer exactly what she needs -- and we need to do that."

The article quotes Todd D. Slater, managing director of retail and consumer equity research at Lazard Capital Markets, saying that "the baby boomer customer has been less interested in the traditional look for quite some time." Slater thinks Talbots should be "a little more forward. A little more in step with current fashion." That comment is idiotic. Talbots is doing badly because its current "classic" designs stink, not because it should abandon classic design. When I think of Talbot's great years, I think of preppy clothing for grown-ups. Rich color, rich texture, rich design. Now go take a look at the Talbots website. The pants (the ones on the upper right, on the model with the red jacket)? Too short - trying to copy that capri look? Ugh. The red jacket with the wrap belt--nice, but what is the model doing with a camisole underneath? That's not classic -- that's tacky! And those boots! What are we, back to the '80s? And what's with the cheap-looking leather and suede? Where are the classic, rich leather, stack heeled boots that will never go out of style? I'll admit, they have another outfit on there that's nice -- the white brocade jacket and long, wide-legged pants -- why don't they go with more clothes like that? Also, while we're on the subject, that model is all wrong...she doesn't look like an over-35 young baby boomer. She looks like a gawky under-35. No, no, no. If you have time, click on the entire collection to take a look. Most of their stuff is tacky -- yuk. They need to hire a name designer to put his or her stamp on the collection...really go out there...pearls and cashmere and leather and plaid, plaid, plaid. Also, their price points are too low...the clothing should be more expensive than it is. You go Talbots! I have faith in you! Ann Coulter's "Jew perfected" comment -- branding or theology? - 2007-10-12 07:53

According to this CBS News report, Donny Deutsch told AdWeek: “Candidly, I had her on not to talk about politics but to talk about her brand strategy. Whether you like her or not, her strategy is to be extreme and that's a way to make money. But because it's her, it drifted into politics." Coulter was a guest on Deutsch’s show The Big Idea, where he asked her to “give her version of a better America.” As CBS News reports, she said that “it would look like New York City during the 2004 Republican National Convention.” (quoting CBS News here, not Coulter) Deutsch asked Coulter to explain and she said “People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant. They defend America ..." Deutsch interrupted Coulter to say: "Christian ... so we should be Christian? It would be better if we were all Christian?" Coulter replied “Yes” twice. According to the news report, Coulter tried to “shift the conversation,” but Deutsch repeatedly brought it back to her comments about Jews. And Coulter accepted Deutsch’s provocation, later stating: “We just want Jews to be perfected…That is what Christianity is.” The reality is that Coulter’s comments fit right in with her brand strategy. That is, she stuck with her “promise” to be extreme in her point of view--to go so far out on the precipice that there is no coming back. The comments also seemed to fit in with a brand strategy on Deutsch’s part, as he kept purposely bringing her back to her comments about Jews and Judaism. Maybe being outrageous is part of having a big idea. Coulter's dismissal of the validity of Judaism as a religion is anti-Semitic, of that there is no doubt. The real question that remains is, was Coulter only "doing branding" or sincerely expressing herself as a Christian believer? The answer, probably, is both. Branding Belfast - an interesting situation - 2007-10-16 09:57 The Belfast Telegraph reports on Belfast's new branding initiative. A couple of interesting things here: 1. The dilemma over how Belfast should be branded - as a generic tourist attraction (the fantasy) or as a more complex site of political conflict (the reality)? Which will make the most money? "Much as we would like to put the Troubles well behind us, it has to be accepted that they are Belfast's top selling point in any campaign. People have heard about us, all over the world, because of our historic quarrels - and the queues for open-top bus tours of the Falls and Shankill are proof of their curiosity value."

2. The problem over accommodating local feelings as a new image is crafted: "With so much about the past that is still in dispute, the marketing team will have to be sensitive to local feelings, as they portray Belfast to the world. To most people, the fact that it is both British and Irish is a plus point, but getting this across without treading on too many toes will be difficult - as will be the concept of a 24-7 city." 3. The development of a site where anyone can vote on how Belfast should be branded. "The views of anyone with access to a computer are being sought - on www.yourviewsonbelfast.com - to find out what people think of the capital city and how it can put on its best foot forward." We can learn a few things from these elements.

● The thing that you want to emphasize in the brand may not be what is marketable to your target audience. Are you mature enough to recognize that and overcome it?

● On a related note, the things they want out of the brand might generate sensitivity--e.g., might even hurt your feelings. You have to be ready for that and determine how much of a factor your feelings will be in making brand decisions.

● One way to approach this is to open your campaign up to voting on the Internet to provide objective research-based data for use in making decisions. This can mitigate potential hurt feelings as well as avert misdirection, as image decisions become a matter of responding to the public rather than determining a direction based on political or "gut" considerations.

Flexible logos and the Face of the Brand - 2007-10-18 17:29 The New York Times reports on a trend: "adaptable logos." These are logos that are capable of holding or being meshed with other content. Examples are:

● the logo of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, which is flexible enough to allow Olympic sponsors to put their own "brand symbols or colors" into it, "in effect creating logos within the logo of the Games."

● The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, which is using an adaptable logo to proclaim that it has a new address.

This adaptable logo thing is a big deal, says the Times, because "companies [normally] employ armies of people to make sure the color, shape and placement of a logo never vary." Well, with too much control, people become distanced from the brand--it's cold. The idea of an adaptable logo is not new. The Times points out that Google "has long been playing with its basic logo." So has Target. What the Times does not mention is that for a number of years at The Brand Consultancy, Diane Beecher pioneered something called the "Face of the Brand" -- a methodology for brand design that allows for flexibility in its visual depiction. "It's a single graphic or series of graphics--of three or

more primary brand attributes that work together." (me, Design Management Institute Journal) Beecher says that "FOTB is the total visual representation that supports a brand and its attributes. It is unmistakably personal, representing the unique attributes of one particular brand, and takes every visual factor into account." I've written that "the overall effect is one of a consistent corporate ID, but the sameness is like that of a family--individual members may look alike, but like snowflakes, no two are the same." I think adaptable logos, like the Face of the Brand, are a good brand idea. As the Times reports: "In the era of blogging, social networking and mash-ups — through which consumers have the power to do what they want with a company’s logo and show it to the world — a bit of flexibility is essential, Mr. Heiselman said." Adaptable logos/FOTB invite the viewer into the brand's world, to see the brand as a living, dynamic entity rather than a cold, unfeeling, unthinking, inflexible piece of deadness. And deadness is not appealing. Can McDonald's get its workers to rhapsodize about its quality? - 2007-10-22 18:15 According to a story in PRWeek, McDonald's is looking for internal brand ambassadors to spread the word about McDonalds' "quality message." The internal campaign complements an external one aimed at "real life moms" who "would push that quality message to their peers and others." The McDonald's campaign is called the "McDonald's Brand Advocate (MBA) program." Its purpose, one assumes, is to get Mcdonald's employees and owner/operators to also push the quality message. The manager of U.S. Communications at McDonald's "says the program will help its employees more effectively communicate specific messages about the McDonald’s story in their day-to-day work and personal lives." Basically, the watchword is quality. Heather Oldani, director US communications at McDonald’s, told PR Week that "the quality message is being taken so seriously" that McDonald's has formed a cross-functional team to address it -- people from all of the functional areas of the company are involved. I say to you, McDonald's is dreaming if they think its employees are going to bring their work home and talk about McDonald's quality in their personal lives. Maybe they can be incentivized to do so at work. But even so, where in the customer service experience is there a place for a worker to go on and on about McDonald's quality? Their role is to say "May I take your order please?" and "Do you want fries with that?" McDonald's is living in a brand fantasyland. See also: branded training for front-line managers.

Nike gets away from its brand with "influencers" campaign - 2007-10-24 07:55 Today's Wall Street Journal has an article, "Running Underground: To Sharpen Nike's Edge, CEO Taps 'Influencers,'" about Nike's new emphasis on popular culture to shape its brand. As is usual when a brand gets ruined, the CEO, Mark Parker, is answering to Wall Street--he has promised a 50% increase in revenue by 2011--and therefore needs to turn to "fickle, style-conscious consumers" rather than the performance oriented athletes around which the company has built its brand. The article says Nike "hasn't lost its traditional focus on pure sports"--it is acquiring British soccer brand Umbro PLC--but needs to "broaden and deepen its appeal--even among non-athletic types." The CEO says things like "How do you keep an edge, a crispness, a relevance?" As a result, Nike has worked with characters like Los Angeles tattoo artist "Mister Cartoon," who has designed six lines of limited edition shoes for the company. It has also collaborated with New York graffiti artist Lenny Futura, industrial designer Marc Newson, and Brazilian muralists Os Gemeos. The idea is to create "an insider's buzz that widens out as it is discovered by consumers closer to the mainstream." Will it work? I don't think so. This seems to me like an approach that is close to the CEO's heart--says the Journal, "the CEO is drawn as naturally to art and culture as he is to sport"--but not close at all to the brand. There are a few lessons here: 1. The CEO must be the brand champion, but the danger is that he or she will substitute personal preference or "gut instinct" for sound brand-based marketing research into how best to lead the brand forward. Nike's CEO likes popular culture, so he is leading the company in that direction. Big mistake. 2. When companies start answering to Wall Street, in the drive for profit, they can tend to lose the features that made their brand distinctive in the first place. I don't have an answer for this one but it is a real problem. When you get away from the brand, you are in trouble. Branding and the coming recession - 2007-10-28 17:53 As the housing market goes, so goes the economy...and things aren't looking good. As BloggingStocks.com notes,

A whopping 65% of Americans now believe that a recession is coming in the next year and 51% believe the economy is doing poorly, according to a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times survey. Wall Street executives predicted a 37% chance of a recession, according to a Financial Services Forum survey released last week by the Financial Services Forum.

Which kinds of brands will survive the down economy? Not clear, but The Charlotte Observer has some advice about building any brand to survive in a downturn--essentially "going beyond the basics" to "delight your customers," not "just meet their expectations." Even when people don't have money

to spend, they have money to spend, and they will spend on brands that offer superior service and a delightful experience. For brand managers, the question arises, Do you stop spending on the brand in a recession or go full steam ahead? Brandchannel.com, in a 2001 article that still resonates asks this question and has the following response:

Branding is not just a patina to be applied during times of growth. It's a constant maintenance job. Nurture it and you'll always be safe; dismiss it and you'll start to see the immediate effects of decay and neglect.

The article goes on to say that most brand consultants recommend that money be spent more wisely, not necessarily more freely. I agree but caution brands to look carefully at the industry and sector they live in; if people don't want to spend more for brands in that particular area, they should either create intelligent generics or fold up their tents and find a more brand-friendly business. Searching for brand answers - 2007-10-29 14:45 The results of a new study, published in “Online Search Can Be Powerful for CPG Branding,” (MediaPost.com) show that online search can help build consumer packaged goods brands. Here are the notable findings of the survey (a difference of ten percentage points is usually considered significant):

1 Nearly half (47%) of the 93.7 million unique site visitors to food product sites were generated by search. Search was responsible for 60% of baby product sites' total unique visitors, 27% of personal care visitors, and 23% of household product visitors.

2 Searchers were somewhat, but not terribly much, more motivated by wanting product information or help than non-searchers (73% vs. 58%). Searchers were also more motivated by wanting help with a purchase decision than non-searchers (64% vs. 44%). (It appears that there is some overlap between these two motivations in the "help" area, but this is not explained by the article.)

3 Non-searchers were more likely than searchers to visit sites for the purpose of obtaining special offers/promotions (59% vs. 47%)

Al Ries, the brand expert, is quoted in the article saying that search “is not a strategy, it's a tactic….In general, a company needs to create awareness of a new category by other means--generally PR--before consumers are going to search for that particular category.” I am not sure why Ries emphasizes PR to the exclusion of advertising and marketing tactics, but think he has a point when he says that marketers should not think “that the Internet is the answer to (all) their branding problems.” He reminds us that Anheuser-Busch spent millions of dollars to build Bud.TV when “the typical Bud drinker is down at the tavern watching the World Series.” I also think Procter & Gamble Search Innovation Manager Randy Peterson, also quoted in the article, has a point when he says that the research shows search is more valuable than just to serve as a tool for direct response marketing. Searchers are motivated consumers, and it makes sense to cater to them

with more targeted branding initiatives that inform, educate, and assist in their making wise product decisions. Buzz-based brand building - 2007-10-31 15:12 In "Brands Infiltrate Social Circles to Create Buzz," Adweek talks about recent efforts being made by brands to facilitate buzz about themselves. The idea is to get people talking "without incurring backlash." The attempt to generate buzz, says the article, is supported by research showing that consumers believe their friends rather than marketing messages. A recent example of the new buzz-based brand building: At TV Guide's "suggestion," "agents" whose job it is to "give feedback and talk up products to others" hosted 10,000 TV Guide parties across America before it launched its $20 million (estimated) ad campaign to "reintroduce its 54-year-old brand as a multiplatform provider and celebrator of TV culture, rather than a weekly listing of shows." The agents were honest about their affiliation. Marketers need to be careful about using social media, says the article. Burson-Marsteller, the PR firm, recently found in a study that influential consumers "have a heightened wariness of commercial interests weighing in on blogs, message boards and review sites." NBC, says the article, initially tried to plant positive comments on its shows on message boards, triggering consumer skepticism. So in a change in tactics, it previewed most of its shows to bloggers, and let them write about it. Sci-Fi went a step further, inviting 35 bloggers to Canada to visit the set of Battlestar Galactica and meet the cast. As the article notes, there are two key problems with buzz-based brand building: 1. Predictability. "The challenge is how do you turn the social media space into something that can scale, that you can manage and can deliver predictable results." (Bant Breen, president of Interpublic Group's Futures Marketing Group) Even more important is 2. Authenticity. "It's a tough equation because the consumer is stubborn and has a voracious appetite for the truth." (Pete Blackshaw, CMO of Nielsen BuzzMetrics.) It takes a lot of sophistication to build a buzz-based brand...marketers, tread carefully. 2007 - 11 Brands are people too - 5 lessons - 2007-11-01 07:36

The October 2007 issue of Fast Company has an interview with Alex Bogusky, the chief creative officer of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, an ad agency well known for its campaigns for Volkswagen and Burger King. Bogusky contributes an important element to the discussion about brands -- talking about personifying it and making it real. Asked how you make a brand famous, he responds: "You start to think about the brand as a person and do some things to personify it a little bit." Bogusky notes that "personifying a brand" helps the creative process because "It allows you to think about the story of the brand and the narrative of the brand in more of a long-term way." Bogusky also notes that it is important for brand narratives to evolve: "Madonna is a genius in branding....Madonna was always able to evolve to keep people interested. Brands need to be that way too. They can't lose the essence of what they represent but they've got to continue to surprise and delight you." Here are five key takeaways for branders: 1. Go beyond a simple message -- be multifaceted with the brand personality. People are complex and so are genuine brands. Microsoft has a great potential to do this if only they would try. 2. Instill feelings, values, beliefs, and long-term goals in your brand as if it were a person. Think: If my brand were human, what would it say/do/think/believe? Then communicate based on that. 3. Give your brand an interesting story. Dull people have no friends. Neither do dull brands. 4. Make your brand story evolve over time. This is difficult to do well, but IBM has achieved it. 5. Make sure the brand story evolves consistently. Jeep is an example of a company whose brand story has evolved, but not consistently--it has gone from "survival" to "fun"--and therefore the brand has lost credibility. Branding and the pharmaceutical industry - 2007-11-02 13:00 Pharmaceutical Executive (November 1) has an article called “Step it up: Branding Roundtable” that talks about branding in the pharmaceutical industry. I'm not sure what benefit branding ultimately is to the pharmaceutical industry, since generics are required by the Food and Drug Administration to be every bit as good as brands and are widely available. I guess the scam is for the pharmaceutical industry to convince people that branded drugs are somehow better than generics...which is absolutely not the case. To that end, here are some quotable quotes:

● The fundamentals of branding: “If somebody is not willing to pay a little bit more for your brand, you did not have a brand in the first place.”--Jeff Conklin, VP, marketing practices and innovation, Wyeth

● Being customer-centric: “Branding is going to be driven by the complexity of consumers rather than the complexity of brands.”--Conklin

● Branding as an experience: “A brand has to create an experience, a situation where people see a reflection of themselves and their values. So the whole act of putting a nurse educator into a physician’s office is imparting a value to that brand. The brand becomes helpful, nurturing.”--Vince Parry, president, Y Brand

● The importance of salespeople: “Probably the main brand experience for doctors is still the sales forces. Yet there is no training whatsoever on how sales reps should represent the brand they sell. They are not representing a nurturing, helpful, caring brand if they are coming into the office and saying, “Doc, I need your next 10 patients.” “--Vince Parry, president, Y Brand

● Content as brand strategy: “As we become more commoditized, every market becomes more crowded. You’ll to need more depth to differentiate yourself....That may mean mobile media reaching out to patients at mealtime and saying, for example, ‘Crestor is reminding you to take your medication,’ and then recommending a heart-healthy diner nearby.”--Mark Nolan, senior VP, group creative director, Digitas Health

● The importance of the corporate brand: “The role of the corporate brand is going to—has to—change drastically over the next 10 years. Patients are going to know who makes their drugs, and it will drive preference because these big issues, like trust, can be handled only at the corporate level. It’s the most underleveraged business asset of pharma companies.”--Wes Wilkes, managing director, Interbrand Wood Healthcare

Brand momentum strategies released, but methodology for brand value determination still unclear - 2007-11-05 11:13 Landor Associates and Stern Stewart's BrandEconomics unit released on November 1 the results of its third Breakaway Brands Study. The study analyzes brands that "exhibited sustained, quantifiable growth over a three-year period, delivering brand-driven value to the bottom line between 2003-2006." It includes about 2,500 brands from Young & Rubicam's BrandAsset® Valuator database. (Some brands, like Yahoo!, are excluded from this database, says Fortune (11/12/07), and they include "nonprofits and media firms with their own distribution channel -- whatever that means.) Top Brands Nevertheless, the top 10 momentum brands, ranked in descending order by value gained over the three year period, include: 1. General Electric 2. iPod 3. Microsoft 4. Blackberry

5. Samsung 6. Costco 7. T.J. Maxx 8. Barnes & Noble 9. Propel 10. Stonyfield Farm Key Findings Three key findings from the study, says Landor, include: 1. It is important to engage customers through branded experiences. "Samsung, Barnes & Noble and TJ Maxx have each leveraged deep customer insight to deliver uniquely relevant and engaging in-store and online experiences to consumers old and new." 2. Partnerships can help to build the brand. "BlackBerry built strong relationships with virtually all of the national telephone companies to attract independent subscribers, while Gatorade’s Propel and Apple’s iPod also saw growth through partnering strategies." 3. Businesses that are brand-centric have greater brand success. "Even mighty industrial and technology giants like GE and Microsoft have demonstrated they can accomplish significant cultural change through brand-driven initiatives, while yogurt maker Stonyfield Farms has retained and even enhanced its core brand persona despite coming under the wing of a global food giant." Fortune notes the importance of corporate social responsibility to the top-ranked brands. For example, Microsoft's brand has been bolstered by its "kinder, gentler" image..."the company's image as a fierce, rapacious monopolist has faded" while General Electric's brand growth "is attributable almost entirely to its environmental efforts." Brand valuation still unclear Personally, one thing that still confuses me is how the value of a brand is determined. I went to the Landor web site and learned that BrandEconomics uses an "economic value added" framework to determine brand value. The site says that "EVA involves deducting a charge from post-tax operating profits that represents the opportunity cost of all the capital employed by the business. The capital charge represents the minimum return required by the providers of capital to the business; whatever a company produces over and above this represents an excess return on the investment." The company also uses "Young & Rubicam Inc.’s Brand Asset Valuator (BAV®)...the world’s largest database of consumer attitudes towards individual brands." I would like to know how EVA and BAV work together to yield a number. Fortune says that Landor starts with BAV then turns to the financial calculations, but this is not specific enough. This is the crux of everything related to brand--and it's still murky. Brand Lessons from RAND’s “Enlisting Madison Avenue” - 2007-11-06 11:05

In a fascinating 2007 study, “Enlisting Madison Avenue,” RAND analyzed (pp. 57-129) how the United States military could better influence indigenous populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. I thought readers of this blog might find it interesting to read some of the key ideas from that report and how they could be applied to any environment. (This is a sort of circling back from business, to government, to all settings.)

1 Know your target audience through segmentation and targeting. This means using research to identify key stakeholders (by demographic [age/gender/income/occupation], psychographic [social class, lifestyle, personality], geographic location, behaviors) and crafting communication strategies that are relevant to each.

2 Apply business positioning strategies. This means coming up with a core message—a message to emphasize—not emphasizing everything. Start with opinions or concepts held by the customer and work those into messages that come from you.

3 Understand key branding concepts. This means understanding and leveraging the reality that people have certain associations with our organization and creating a unique and clear identity for them to catch on to. “Align every brand-consumer touchpoint to convey a single, clear, and uniform message.” You also need to continually update your brand to keep up with the times.

4 Synchronize the brand. This means focusing your “brand architecture” so that you either apply the corporate name to all of your divisions, programs, and products, or reserve the name for distinctive use and promote various subbrands without the corporate brand name.

5 Synchronize the workforce. This means making sure that employees properly convey the image you want to represent to the public. This also means answering complaints quickly, inventorying all brand-customer touchpoints and determining how people should conduct themselves in all interactions with the public, and educating the organization about your brand and how to manage and maintain it.

6 Promote customer satisfaction. Make promises that you can keep. “When promises go unfulfilled, customers become disappointed and their likelihood of doing business with that company decreases.” Along these lines you should empower customer service representatives to solve problems and should make it possible for people to route their calls to the same representative who first took their call.

7 Listen to the customer. “The most successful business endeavors are those that are premised on meeting customer needs.” You also need to monitor outcomes – stay in touch with customers “so that problems can be fixed before they alienate the customer base.” You should survey the public regularly, monitor complaint lines, etc.

8 Harness the power of influencers. Reach out to “those in society whose position affords them a megaphone and the respect and admiration of key population segments.” These include the media, writers, bloggers, academics, celebrities, etc. This also means reaching out to customers who are very positive about their experiences with the organization and inviting them to share their experiences with others – perhaps via a blog. In any case you need to establish outreach to the community through regular interactions with people who are “customers” and make them feel like they are part of the organization’s “family.” You could also allow employees to blog online, within limits, about their insights and experiences.

9 Use the principles of social marketing to achieve success. Social marketing “applies well-grounded commercial marketing techniques to influence noncommercial behavioral change in a target audience.” These techniques include knowing your desired behavior

change; focusing on population segments most likely to respond to a behavioral campaign; determining concrete goals and objectives; knowing your market and the competition, if any; designing a product “just for them” (the audience); making prices “as low as they go”; placing the product effectively (location, location, location); creating motivating messages that stand out; getting the message out; and monitoring and evaluating campaign success.

Should brand consultants serve as policy advisers? - 2007-11-07 14:42 In a November 6 interview with the Council on Foreign Relations, Simon Anholt, who coined the term “nation-branding,” says advertising is an “utterly futile” way to change perceptions of a country and instead argues that countries should change the way they operate first. The traditional way of marketing a country is way off, says Anholt, with tourism boards, investment-promotion agencies, government public diplomacy agencies, etc. giving out different messages. “It’s not very surprising that most countries end up with very fragmented, out of date, confusing, unhelpful images,” he says. “So I suppose the primary principle I tried to introduce here with the original idea of nation branding is that if all of those stakeholders work together and try to agree on some kind of common long-term strategy for the country and its role in the world, they’re far more likely to be able to influence the way it’s perceived.” Anholt does not do advertising. Rather he serves as a kind of policy adviser “to the governments of, at any given moment, seven or eight different countries. I work with a small team consisting of, usually, the head of state, two or three ministers—foreign affairs, economic affairs, culture, and so forth—the head of the tourism board, a couple of chief executives of major corporations, particularly if they export, and one or two figures from civil society….We try to work out a plan for how the country can position itself in the world, and what are the policies and innovations and investments the country needs to undertake to earn the image it feels it wants and desires.” About advertising, Anholt says: “People believe what they believe about countries because they’ve believed it all their lives and they’re not going to change their minds because a twenty-second ad on CNN tells them to. People immediately recognize that kind of communication for what it is—propaganda—and they will instinctively reject it or ignore it.” While in theory Anholt’s approach makes sense, I find the idea of a communications person serving as a policy adviser frightening at the very least. It is like building policy based on what will make a country popular rather than based on what will make it effective in the world. I also think his approach undervalues the traditional tools of marketing communications significantly. Brand experts are primarily marketing communications advisors, not policy makers, and they should restrict themselves to the communications arena. That said, if a country is embarking on a policy that seriously damages its image in the world, it is not out of line for a brand consultant to mention it. One also wonders what countries Anholt is consulting to…I assume they’re not rivals are they? In general, what about the issue of conflict of interest?

New Facebook strategy - an Orwellian brand nightmare - 2007-11-07 19:30 OK, so I think I get it - Facebook is

● Launching company brand pages where people can sign up as fans and have that information fed out to their contacts

● Launching a service where people who shop at certain third party vendors can have that shopping information fed back as advertising to their contacts

● Launching a marketing research service that serves up all the collective information about brands and those who prefer/use them

Facebook CEO Zuckerberg thinks that this is the wave of the future...a form of trusted referrals from friends to friends. But let me tell you, this is the beginning of a nightmare for Facebook from which they will never wake up. Somebody once said that no money can be made on the Internet, and they were right from the standpoint of the Internet user -- people don't want to be spammed with ads online. Having ads shoved at you from your dozens of "contacts" is not going to do anything to make Facebook more valuable or the companies advertising more popular. Instead it will just increase resentment and people will run away from Facebook. The thing about trusted referrals from friends is, it's a noncommercializable phenomenon...and people these days are ever more suspicious of commercialized recommendations. Plus, it's very Big Brother to be tracking what people do online and then broadcasting it to the world. I know kids these days don't want their privacy, but still. There's a limit. The bottom line is: people get the information they need by Googling it and maybe clicking on Google's sponsored ads. They ignore the information you shove in their faces. Bad move, FB. Terrorism, anti-Semitism damage Israel’s brand: What can be done? - 2007-11-12 11:10 Carnegie Mellon’s student newspaper, The Tartan reports (November 12) on a brand talk given to students by Ido Aharoni, Israel’s assistant foreign minister and brand team manager. In his talk, Aharoni said that Israel’s brand could be improved. “Israel’s brand image does not serve its interests right now; I believe we can do much better.” Israel’s Foreign Ministry has been trying for several years to re-brand Israel in terms of more positive qualities than “solely in terms of war and religion,” and in particular is trying to move Israel’s brand out of its association with the Israel-Palestine conflict. However, until the Palestinians “curb

terrorism,” said Aharoni, the process for Israel of growing beyond the association with the Israel-Palestine conflict cannot start. A survey released last year, in November 2006, and reported on in Israel Today supports Aharoni’s contention that Israel’s brand is damaged. The National Brands Index, conducted together by nation-branding consultant Simon Anholt and Global Market Insite surveyed about 26,000 online consumers in 35 countries about their perceptions of those countries in six areas: Investment and Immigration, Exports, Culture and Heritage, People, Governance, and Tourism. Israel came out on the bottom on every measure, and Israel’s citizens were called “the most unwelcoming in the world.” (American’s weren’t very friendly to Israel either. In the survey, Americans “ranked Israel just slightly above China in terms of its conduct in the areas of international peace and security.”) In reporting on the survey, Anholt blamed Israel—without mentioning the possibility of anti-Semitism—for the survey’s negative findings, commenting that “to succeed in permanently changing the country's image, the country has to be prepared to change its behavior.” He stated that people’s negative opinion of Israel was influenced by the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, implying that it is Israel’s response to that conflict that is causing negative perceptions of the country. Anholt also stated, accurately, that “most people did not bother to form a balanced opinion about other countries, preferring to find a simple shorthand for every country…(and) the most persuasive and memorable facts (about Israel) were about the conflict, so the image of Israel as a bully as more likely to stick in people’s minds.” (In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, Anholt minimized the negative impact of the fact that the study was conducted during Israel’s war with Hezbollah in Lebanon during the summer, but said he planned to include Israel in the survey again during a “quiet period.”) Anholt also told the Jerusalem Post that it could take decades for Israel to rebuild its brand image. Thus far, Israel’s strategy has apparently been to try to divert international public attention away from the Israel-Palestinian conflict and toward “more positive images such as the country's technical innovations as well as musical, cultural and historical attractions.” However, Israel’s approach, to me, is wrongheaded. The nation is in the midst of a longstanding public relations crisis caused by terrorists and exacerbated by anti-Semitism. It therefore needs to respond proactively and aggressively—head-on—to the negative elements that are staining its brand image. That means launching a proactive, aggressive foreign diplomatic campaign to educate the public about its stance with respect to the Palestinians, including its history and future strategies for creating peace in the region. While Aharoni states that Israel can re-brand itself by “revising its policies,” “initiating greater tourism efforts,” and “increasing exports and foreign investment,” Israel has to do its basic PR homework of explaining its existing policies to the public in a way that will satisfy its critics once and for all. Israel should take every opportunity to emphasize that it is a peace-loving nation and that it is the victim of terrorism, not a bullying cause of it. An effective public relations push is especially important in light of the upcoming Annapolis meeting (November 25-27) between Israel and the Palestinians to discuss prospects for peace. Already, Israeli President Shimon Peres has let it be known that “Israel has decided to make Annapolis a success, to

bring an end to the conflict, to finally make peace between the Palestinians and ourselves….All parties concerned are decided... not to let this chance pass away.” And Israel is warning that Hamas may carry out terror attacks to stop the peace process from going through. Continually educating the world about the fact that Israel wants peace while the terrorists want to stop peace from going forward is a good step. Israel may think that it has been shouting that message from the rooftops, but unfortunately it is drowned out by an equally loud Arab PR machine that states Palestinians are innocent victims of the Israelis. The way forward here is for Israel to flood the airwaves, the Internet, and public speaking opportunities in America, Europe, and elsewhere with an elucidation of the situation from Israel’s perspective. Further, Israel should embed the media, as America has, with its soldiers on a day to day basis so that they can report on the challenges that Israel faces in trying to keep peace. Unfortunately, anti-Semitism will always complicate these efforts, but Israel can do a better job of them nevertheless. This discussion points up the difference between a public relations campaign and a branding campaign. As I have stated elsewhere, “the role of PR was never really to build a brand…rather, it is to do no harm to it. PR is inherently a tool for building a great reputation.” Israel’s PR is sorely lacking—it has failed to build its credibility and reputation in the world through effective communication via the media—and as a result it is hampered in its ability to build a brand image that reflects the peaceful, high-tech image it seeks. I say, forget about changing policies now. The policies are not the problem. The distorted perceptions of Israel are the problem. Work with PR first, then brand. Despite the efforts of terrorists to destroy the nation, Israel has a good story to tell…it needs to tell it. Otherwise the terrorists have accomplished their goal of destroying the nation—impairing its ability to function economically and politically. Aligning your personal brand with an employer brand - 2007-11-13 19:38 In "Employers Study Applicants' Personalities," the Associated Press reports on a new trend in hiring: keeping jerks out. “Despite a labor shortage in many sectors, some employers are pickier than ever about whom they hire. Businesses….are stepping up efforts to weed out people who might have the right credentials but the wrong personality.” Or to put it in brand terms, aligning job candidates’ personal brand with the employer brand. Says Tim Sanders, former leadership coach at Yahoo Inc. and author of The Likeability Factor: " If you have a bunch of jerks, your brand is going to be a jerk.” Job interviews at Rackspace, for example, are all-day events, so that interviewers can wear away “fake pleasantness” and get at the applicants’ real personality. CEO Lanham Napier says, "We'd rather miss a good one than hire a bad one." What can you do to make sure your personal brand is aligned with a potential employer?

1 Study your own personal brand. Develop a short list of 3-6 key characteristics that genuinely describe your personality.

2 Put it on your resume. Put your brand characteristics on the profile section of your resume. This will allow potential employers to either choose you if you are a good fit or not waste your time by calling you in for an interview.

3 Research potential employers. Find out as much as you can about the company that might be hiring you. Study its website; often you can learn a lot about the company’s personality from the way it presents itself online. Review its press releases; find out what kind of achievements it thinks are noteworthy. Finally, look up news about the company; what is its brand in the media? If possible, look also on sites like Vault.com to get insider information about how it treats its employees.

4 Describe yourself according to your characteristics in person. Be ready to elucidate your personal brand to a potential employer, giving examples of how, very generally, you “live” the characteristics that you say you have.

5 Start a professional blog if you haven’t already. Writing a blog is a good way to demonstrate to others what your personality is like. It is like an extended job interview, and you can save yourself a lot of time explaining yourself if you simply direct people to your blog as part of your resume.

Although there are arguments to be made pro and con branding yourself, if you take the time to at least understand your personality, you may save yourself a lot of time choosing the wrong employer or even the wrong profession. Branding the homeless—a pathetic display of the dark side of branding - 2007-11-14 13:40 The Wall Street Journal, in “In West L.A., A Homeless Man Inspires New Brand” talks about “the newest sensation at the center of Hollywood’s fashion scene”…56-year-old, homeless, John Wesley Jermyn. The entrepreneurs who are milking Jermyn’s name for profit have already created a MySpace page for him, which “doubles as an ad for the clothing brand and their nightclub-promotion venture, which is also named ‘The Crazy Robertson.’” According to the Journal, these twentysomethings spent “months” getting close to Jermyn to get his approval; got his buy-in on design decisions; and also had a photographer take pictures of him for publicity purposes. (Jermyn makes just 5% of “net profit” from clothing sales.) The brand-builders are riding a trend of “increased fascination with homelessness,” says the Journal. The paper mentions the popularity of “Bumfights,” or videotaped street fights between homeless people; as well as “Filthy Rich and Homeless,” a British TV series showing real-life millionaires acting like beggars in London. Also, the paper notes, over 17,500 videos on YouTube are tagged with the word “homeless.” Jermyn’s sister says he is being exploited, and Joel John Roberts, chief executive of People Assisting the Homeless, has similar concerns. But the brand-builders say they look at Jermyn as a “business

partner.” Said one, “He knows everything that’s going on.” Jermyn himself told the Journal that he is a “facilitator” for the brand. This phenomenon brings up a whole host of questions and issues, as follows: 1. Is it exploitive for someone to build a brand around a homeless person, or is it insulting to the homeless person to suggest that they cannot be the subject of a brand? I say it’s exploitive, especially when the person has schizophrenia, as Jermyn does, and cannot see all sides of the issue. 2. Is it ethical for consumers to purchase brands that are created in exploitive ways? Obviously not…and yet here we are in the richest part of Hollywood exploiting the homeless. This trend toward exploitation runs absolutely counter to the modern emphasis on corporate social responsibility and “fair trade” and must be seen as a thoughtless, childlike rebellion against it. 3. What does it say about modern consumers that they find a valuable brand in utter poverty and mental illness as represented by homelessness? I suggest it’s a few things:

● A deep impulse to find and brand whatever authentic phenomena in society are available…unfortunately, looked at from this angle, branding is some kind of sickness or disease that seems to have no cure and no end and no purpose but to swallow up all the non-brands that are out there.

● A sick need to feel superior to other, desperate human beings. ● A distorted view of the world, seeing it as a place where brands “normalize” people who

are not in their right mind. 4. What can concerned consumers do about brands like this? Don’t buy them; speak out against them; encourage others not to buy them. This is truly a post about the dark side of humanity. There is a limit to "cool." Kellogg’s “silent” branding: smart or cynical? - 2007-11-16 08:20 The Economic Times (India), in “When not to use the parent brand,” (16 November 2007) discusses Kellogg’s decision to minimize its connection with a new U.K. brand called FruitaBu. FruitaBu is a healthy snack brand “comprising apple crisps and dried fruit.” The product is aimed at people who want to comply with the Department of Health recommendation to eat more fruit, and to get that fruit in a quick, convenient way. (The Department of Health “five-a-day” logo is displayed on the product packaging.) FruitaBu brand manager Paul Humphries says that Kellogg decided not to put its logo on the packaging (the Kellogg name is on the back of the box in small print) because the Kellogg brand is associated with “cereal and cereal-based snacks” and “we thought that if we put Kellogg on FruitaBu, people would assume it was a cereal product.” Branding experts disagree on whether Kellogg’s move is smart or cynical. Interbrand chairman Rita Clifton says: “Kellogg has terrific brand equity, but what makes it strong can also be a weakness

because it is associated with brightness, morning-time and sweet cereals.” Landor Associates managing director Cheryl Giovannoni says the strategy is “cynical,” a way to sneak into the healthy snacking market. “It should try to be more honest with consumers — that would give it a lot more credit as a brand.” For my part, I think Kellogg is wasting its time worrying about whether people associate FruitaBu with it or not. Dried fruit is related to cereal. In fact I might be more likely to buy FruitaBu if I knew that Kellogg was connected to it—I’d know the fruit would taste good and be of high quality. In general, though, I think mainstream snack companies should stick to their knitting and not get into the healthy food market—people want authentic health food and not slickly packaged, fast moving consumer goods that parade themselves as authentic. The end of Starbucks, part II - 2007-11-18 12:48 In a previous post, I said that the Starbucks brand should be killed and resurrected because it is veering toward commoditization, as CEO Howard Schultz himself admitted in a widely leaked memo. Now the Wall Street Journal (weekend edition, Nov. 17-18) reports in "TV Campaign is Culture Shift for Starbucks" that the company is turning to national TV ads in the wake of slower sales. This goes against the brand wisdom espoused ten years ago by Schultz, as the Journal reports: Schultz wrote that "By its very nature, national advertising fuels fears about ubiquity." The central problem facing the Starbucks brand is that it seeks to be everywhere and an out-of-the-way "third place" at the same time. This cannot be. Either the company embraces a niche strategy, or it tries to be everything to everyone, diluting its brand identity. Despite its protestations to the contrary, it is going the latter route. There should not be a Starbucks on every corner; they should not be selling breakfast sandwiches and music; and the staff should return to its former reputation for having coffee expertise, not just be anyone off the street that wants to get health benefits. And of course the company should not be on TV. Little by little, the brand is dying...and all of us are watching. Why do people love to hate the Department of Homeland Security? 7 reasons and 10 brand "cures" - 2007-11-19 11:43 The Department of Homeland Security does a critical job protecting the United States. Why then if you look it up on the Internet, do you find what can only be described as an outpouring of contempt? Some examples:

● Milcom Monitoring Post: "I said this when Congress shoved this insanity known as the Department of Homeland Security down the American taxpayers throats--"This will be one

of the biggest waste of time, money, energy, manpower and skin in US Government history."

● Kerfuffles: "If Americans were truly serious, they would elect a 100% brand new United States Congress and a new President who would drive a bulldozer through...the Department of Homeland Security (D.H.S.). "

● Suzatlarge: "Our fine bureaucrats in the Department of Homeland Security [sic] would rather watch our country’s buildings burn down than let a single questionable person sneak across the border. On a firetruck. With flashing lights and sirens. Responding to a fire call. I wish I were making this up. This federal agency has gone beyond incompetence - into insanity."

It is hard to understand how things have deteriorated to this point, especially since DHS (at least in its earliest stages) was strongly devoted to branding. In "The Image of Security; Homeland Chief Tom Ridge, Keeping Up His Appearances," The Washington Post (May 22, 2003) talks about how former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and his aides were preoccupied with image issues:

"Tom Ridge, 57, is talking a lot about "branding" these days....Nearly all politicians care about branding....But Ridge is the rare public official who uses the term. He is attuned to small details of his department's "visual brand." These include the creation of DHS logos, patches and signs."

"Ridge is selling the brand hard....He wants Americans to know he's doing more than just waiting. He wants to make the "respected brands" of the Homeland Security agencies (FEMA, Customs, Coast Guard) as powerful as the brands of the U.S. military (Army, Navy, Air Force)."

"From the outset, Ridge's staff worked strenuously to market him as a reassuring presence. 'When people see him, we want them to think, "My babies are safe,"' a top aide said shortly after Ridge started at the White House."

From my perspective, there are a number of issues at work here: 1 The lingering effects of the Katrina disaster 2 Resentment of President Bush and his policies 3 Longstanding paranoia about the federal government "taking over" at the state and local

level 4 Fear of another 9/11...and the wish to deny that the nation is confronting a long-term

terrorist crisis 5 Fear/perception of corruption/incompetence at the Department of Homeland Security (the

TV series "Jericho"); publicity over reported corruption, however minor 6 The immigration crisis/Lou Dobbs' continuing series on CNN, "Broken Borders" 7 The reluctance of agencies to aggressively brand themselves for fear of being labeled

propagandists What can Homeland Security do about this? Essentially, the agency has to treat its beleaguered reputation like a full-fledged crisis, and do the following:

1 Engage with its critics point-by-point, at every opportunity and in every public forum, especially on blogs, which are so virulently anti-DHS

2 Demonstrate to the American public the dedication of its employees to public service 3 Show integration and cooperation among its component agencies--that the whole is greater

than the sum of its parts 4 Proclaim its accomplishments at every opportunity online and in person, via speaking

opportunities at conferences and trade shows 5 Make special efforts to publicize partnerships with state and local authorities

6 Initiate a public education campaign about terrorism, its risk to our homeland, and how Homeland Security is planning to combat it

7 Embed the media with its component agencies as they go about doing their jobs, and have the media report back on what they see--generally play up the successes of its component agencies

8 Downplay the impact of politics on its operations and play up protective measures that have broad-based support

9 Create a special publicity campaign for FEMA to demonstrate how it has grown since the Katrina debacle

10 Initiate publicity around employee corruption--how it is identified and rooted out of the agency

The Department of Homeland Security is a vital government entity doing vital public service, but it needs the support of the public in order to really be effective. Following these brand measures would help. Branding leaders - 2007-11-19 19:33 In "Building a Leadership Brand" (Harvard Business Review, July-August 2007), Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood say that companies should in effect brand their leadership styles. For example:

● GE, which is known for “turning imaginative ideas into leading products and services,” is also known for having the type of manager who is “a strong conceptualist as well as a decisive thinker.”

● Johnson & Johnson, which states that “our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services,” has the type of manager who is “known for being socially responsible….committed to building consumer trust, to product quality, and to safety.”

The authors state that “building a strong leadership brand requires that companies follow five principles.”

● Do the basics of leadership development well: “First, they have to do the basics of leadership—like setting strategy and grooming talent—well.”

● Be customer-focused: “Second, they must ensure that managers internalize external constituents’ high expectations of the firm.”

● Evaluate leaders according to customer perceptions: “Third, they need to evaluate their leaders according to those external perspectives.”

● Invest in additional leadership development: “Fourth, they must invest in broad-based leadership development that helps managers hone the skills needed to meet customer and investor expectations.”

● Measure success: “And finally, they should track their success at building a leadership brand over the long term.”

The authors state that many companies are off the mark in their leadership development practices because they tend to focus too much on individualistic approaches and not enough on grooming leaders to stand for something specific in the eyes of “customers and investors.” The result? “Leadership practices are piecemeal and are seldom integrated with the firm’s brand.”

Also, oddly enough, focusing on individualistic development leads companies in the direction of a “competency model that identifies a set of generic traits—vision, direction, energy, and so on.” This is the difference between “leaders and leadership”—leaders are individuals, but leadership involves “the methods that secure the ongoing good of the firm.” I agree that companies should brand their leadership styles, but think that it is difficult to measure whether they have ultimately succeeded. Perhaps the best proof is in the (qualitative) pudding—in asking employees what leaders stand for—whether they embody the brand or not. I say ask employees and not customers because it is employees who are daily in touch with the behavior of their leaders. Unfortunately, in this article, the employee perspective is overlooked. One last point: I liked the Leadership Brand Assessment the authors provided, but am not sure I should reprint the whole thing here. It is worth reading the full article, if you can get it from the library or pay for it at HBR.org. Branding as war - 2007-11-21 07:58 In the classic book Marketing Warfare (1986), Jack Trout and Al Ries make the point that marketing is no longer just about serving customer needs better, because everyone is already doing that. Rather, marketing is about fighting the competition. Key point:"To be successful today, a company must become competitor-oriented. It must look for weak points in the positions of its competitors and then launch marketing attacks against those weak points." Also: "The true nature of marketing today involves the conflict between corporations, not the satisfying of human needs and wants." Key principles of marketing warfare:

1 The best defensive strategy is the courage to attack yourself, but only the market leader should consider playing defense.

2 Always block strong competitive moves. 3 Find a weakness in the leader's strength and attack at that point. 4 Launch the attack on as narrow a front as possible.

These principles apply equally to branding as marketing, although we may not normally think so, because branding is so carefully about getting close to the customer. But yes, in general, you want to knock out the competition to your brand more than you need additional customer insights. The other important point here is that in branding, unlike marketing, smaller companies have an innate advantage in that customers today are turned off by big box brands. The question is how do you go from being a popular small brand to a mainstream leader without turning people off. Burger King's descent into commoditization - 2007-11-22 18:59

Burger King, in a desperate move to increase market share, is planning to test a $1 double cheeseburger to compete with McDonald's, reports the Wall Street Journal. It is interesting because McDonald's has managed to maintain their brand even though they offer deeply discounted items. Yet Burger King is damaging its brand by going the commodity route. I remember when BK used the "broiled, not fried" strategy to great success. Why do they not make a move to distinguish themselves as a brand? Why stoop to price wars? As always, it has to do with the pressures of Wall Street, which leads firms to focus on short-term profits rather than long-term growth strategies. If I were in charge at BK, I would go back to the drawing board...perhaps offer "gourmet" burgers at regular price. Value for the money, but without destroying the brand. Strong brand, weak market: Rolodex - 2007-11-25 08:56 The Wall Street Journal has an article about executives clinging to their old fashioned Rolodexes. (Rolodex is the top brand in rotary card files and everybody refers to them by that name, demonstrating the brand's strength.) It's a way of showing social status apparently. Despite the loyalty of some users, sales of rotary card files appear to be trending down. The question is, can Rolodex continue to be a strong brand even when demand for the product is declining? I think so. The issue is what brand characteristics make Rolodex stand out and how Sanford (the company that owns Rolodex) can leverage those. I would suggest that those charcteristics are tangibility and visibility. Sanford could go back to manufacturing the monster size Rolodexes in strong materials like titanium steel. It could make accessories for the Rolodex. And it could even make a custom business card business to go along with the Rolodexes. Just because technology has advanced, doesn't mean there aren't still customers for paper and pen. Small company rebranding - just a logo? - 2007-11-26 19:44 In an article titled "Extreme Makeover," the Wall Street Journal (November 26 2007) talks about the trend toward small companies pursuing rebranding. Increased competition and lower costs are the drivers of this trend. The problem is that the Journal talks about rebranding exclusively in design terms. (Or the problem is, small companies think about branding exclusively in design terms.) For example, it cites the offerings of Powerful Impact in Great Neck, N.Y.--which are provided in tiers. The lowest tier is logo, business

card, stationery; the highest tier includes a Web site and product packaging. Nowhere does it talk about brand assessment, strategy or internal branding, all key critical elements of any rebranding. The danger of this kind of approach to branding--of looking at it purely as a design exercise--is that it minimizes the strategic and people elements of branding. Without thinking through what the positioning should be, who the audience is, what the distribution channels are, what future opportunities exist, and how people deliver on the brand, the whole thing is wasted. A more interesting article would be on whether small firms ever choose to do a comprehensive rebranding or whether they tend to stick with redesign as a substitute for something more strategic. Even more interesting would be an article on the state of branding today--how many companies understand what branding really is and pursue that, vs. how many are still stuck in the logo mindset. Should you really "lose control" of your brand to brand effectively? - 2007-11-27 14:52 Elsewhere, I have argued that brands are in effect co-created between producers and consumers. Now Brandweek (November 26, 2007) features an article called "Lose Control: It's Good for Your Brand," in which the author argues that brands are not at all created by producers but entirely owned by consumers. "In my world...campaigns....exist at eye level with the consumer, seeing in real time how he interacts with products, services and the core brand itself....the days when you were able to exercise 360° control over your brand communications have ended....when the brand lets go a little, consumers start to open up a lot." The author argues that the tools of the "average citizen"--"Digital cameras, cell phones, blogs, social networks, Web videos, urban interventions, word-of-mouth and more"--are becoming ever more important in communicating about brands. The idea is to stop overtly marketing to your target audiences, and "allow consumers to become active participants in its evolution." There are five principles to follow in this regard, says the article:

1 Focus on the experience your customer wants to have with the brand, not the experience you want the customer to have.

2 Find out what the "cultural phenomena are that get people excited," and whether your brand fits in with one that you can "customize and own."

3 Figure out what the "ideal media" for your brand is...if it doesn't exist, "create it." 4 Make sure that your campaign to promote the brand is "exciting." 5 Make use of "the new 'clipping' nature of the social Web....furnish icons, visual

experiences, sound bites and entertainment in a way that translates easily to sharing—photo, video, blog and mobile."

In essence, the article argues that you should set up the brand experience intelligently, then trust consumers to run with it. "Furnish the consuming public with brand experiences that are interesting to

them—ones that permit them to get involved with the brand instead of just watching a pitch; ones that invite and trust them to deliver the branding message to others." At first glance, all this sounds very shrewd and strategic to me. But then a question follows immediately--whether you really can predict what consumers will do with the brand once you hand them total control. The truth is that no, you can't. And then you really haven't created a brand at all...you've just plopped a product or service out there and let the market take over, for good or for bad. The article alludes to this issue when it says that brand marketers should provide the brand experience that will be exciting to the public in the first place. But there again, I say, it is the job of the brand to set forth the vision--to create the compelling idea--not to follow trends. Following trends is marketing, not branding. I say it is the brand marketers' job to instill a message, a core vision for the brand and then disseminate that experience to the public at large. This means holding on more tightly to the reins of the brand. Let the customer co-create it with you, but always maintain some measure of control. And lead the way, don't follow. True brands have an experiential essence that cannot be market researched, duplicated, or created by the customer--they retain that elusive yet very real promise that only a true brand master can instill. The Army's misguided "influencer" campaign - 2007-11-29 14:16 Today's Wall Street Journal (November 29, 2007) has an article about how the Army is now promising new recruits up to $40,000 in seed money toward the purchase of a home or the starting of a business. The goal, says the article, is not so much to reach recruits as their parents. It quotes the program's "architect," Lt. Col. Jeff Sterling: "If you want to get a soldier, you have to go through mom, and moms want to know what kind of future their children will have when they leave the Army. This is meant to answer that question in a tangible, concrete way." As the Journal notes, the new program "is the latest sign of the military's growing use of marketing and other recruitment strategies from American corporations." In particular, the idea of targeting "influencers" rather than the audience themselves is a forward-thinking approach. The problem, I think, with the Army's new campaign is that it misreads what influences the influencers. Parents are not wary of the Army because they are afraid their children will have no future when they get out. They are wary of the Army because they are afraid their children will die in battle in Iraq, or be seriously wounded. The way to address this is not to up the financial ante, but to speak directly to the emotion--the fear that parents have. The Army needs to initiate some kind of campaign that talks about the likelihood that recruits will be hurt or killed in battle. If the likelihood is low, then they can say that. If it is high, then they need to say, this is the situation, but it's the price we pay for freedom--appealing to parents'

patriotism and sense of duty and loyalty to the nation. Money can't fix everything...and there is no way to buy patriotism. Either you believe in the Army's mission, or you don't. The rest is just Madison Avenue talk. 2007 - 12 Global "tribes" and branding - 2007-12-11 18:51 The Wall Street Journal (December 10) has a story about marketers closing in on global "tribes" who are united more by demographics than by nationality. The article gives the example of baby boomers, a transnational "tribe" that may well need hearing devices as they get older. Phonak Group is targeting boomers, who dread aging, by calling the device a "personal communication assistant." Multilingual advertisements all feature the same type of image--"youthful-looking customers who lead interesting lives." The CEO of Phonak says that baby boomers "all have a similar psychology--if we take away the stigma and show them a product that is high-tech and hip and easily improves the quality of their lives" they will buy it. Other examples are teenagers "who socialize on the Internet and like the same music and fashions" and "working women trying to juggle careers and families." The idea from a brand perspective is to "focus on the similarities instead of the differences," says Melanie Healey, president, Global Health and Feminine Care at P&G. In an increasingly international world, it pays to be mindful of "tribes," and to cater to them...it's an idea worth pursuing. In fact, I wonder whether consumers of global brands are not themselves kinds of tribes, whether the Prada buyer in the U.S. is similar to the Prada buyer in France or England or Spain. If so, we may be wasting our time trying to cater to people by their sociodemographics...we could just cluster them by the types of brands they buy. Certain brand tribes affiliate with certain other brand tribes, and you can just go from there. People are increasingly tending to define themselves by multiple brands, not just one or two. This brings to mind an interesting Harvard Business Review article from June 2001, "See Your Brands Through Your Customers' Eyes," that talks about "A new, three-dimensional approach to mapping brand portfolios" that "reveals the complex relationships between your brands and those of other companies." It notes that "Volkswagen and Trek team up to bundle

bicycles with cars. American Airlines, Citibank, and Visa jointly offer a credit card. Subaru markets an L.L. Bean edition of its Outback station wagon. Dell stamps Microsoft and Intel logos on its computers. Toys R Us partners with Amazon.com to launch an on-line toy store. The interweaving of brands, now commonplace in business, is changing the rules of brand management." The article notes that a tool is needed to look at brands the way they "actually appear to customers. In this article, we’ll describe such a tool and show how it can be used to create multidimensional maps—we call them brand portfolio molecules—that reveal the relationships among diverse brands and provide a powerful new way to think about brand strategy." The point for tribes and branding is, it pays to understand the unique power of a brand, and how it aligns with other brands, when one is trying to classify a global tribe. Also, an interesting document at this UK tourism site talks about "brand clusters" in terms of the type of vacation people like to take. "To capitalise on this, Towards 2015 will concentrate on the development and promotion of what are known as ‘Brand Clusters’. These clusters define the sort of holiday our customers want in terms of the experience they are looking for. For example, there is the ‘sheer indulgence’ cluster which is characterised by fine dining, pampering, treats, luxury and celebration. Then, there is the ‘close to nature’ cluster which trades on the ‘wow’ factor of the South West’s uniquely diverse landscape, the fresh air, the wildlife and the stunning views." That is another way of separating people into tribes...according to the type of branded experience they want to have. One can keep going, but the point is to be imaginative about tribes, and not limited to the same old thinking (Internet teenagers, baby boomers, working mothers). Brand positioning vs. brand stories: it’s really both, not one or the other - 2007-12-15 15:01 A new paper by the Verse Group claims that brand positioning is dead, and in its place comes brand storytelling. Brand positioning, as Verse notes in this release on the subject, is the “theory that a brand should own one idea in a person’s mind.” Brand storytelling, in contrast, relies on a “complex interplay of emotions, experience, and sensations” to get the message across. What’s this all about to begin with? Verse is responding to an Advertising Research Foundation report, based on three years of research, which found that storytelling-type TV advertisements are more effective than positioning-based TV advertisements at engaging the viewer. According to an article in Brandweek (October 29, 2007), the ARF findings were clear. A total of 33 ads in 12 categories were analyzed by 14 “leading emotion and physiological research firms.” The study found, for example, that “Bud's iconic ‘Whassup’ (campaign) registered more powerfully with

consumers than Miller Lite low-carb ads that essentially just said, ‘We're better than the other guys.’ Why? Because Bud told a story about friends connected by a special greeting.” The ARF report emphasizes, as I have stated repeatedly, that brands “co-create” meaning with their consumers, rather than straightforwardly imposing meaning on them. The co-creation process is enhanced when brands are presented as stories rather than as one-dimensional aspects of meaning. At the same time, the Brandweek article notes, storytelling ads are only “truly effective” when “the plots tie in to a positive brand message.” “When the emotional peaks align with the presence of the brand, or the impact of the brand in the story, the emotional connection with the brand is greatest,” says ARF Senior Vice President, Research and Standards Bill Cook in the article. The reality is, it is brand positioning + brand stories that makes the brand work, not brand stories alone, and Verse Group misunderstands this completely. In trying to make a name for itself—ironically, in trying to position itself when the company is anti-positioning—Verse misses the mark. The company states, in very strong terms, that “‘brand positioning’ is perhaps the most misguided marketing idea in the past 30 years.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It is when brands are positioned effectively, and storied effectively, that they resonate with the target audience. Verse is trying to put a semblance of ROI on brand stories. It says in its response to the ARF report that “paid media spending (is) estimated by Nielsen to be over $150 billion in 2006,” so that “even a modest increase of 10% in effectiveness would be equivalent to $15 billion.” Verse wants to “own” brand stories—it wants to be positioned as the company you turn to when you need one. But in the Brandweek article, Mark Truss, director of brand intelligence at JWT, cautions that the industry still doesn’t see the ROI, and therefore “marketers and advertisers are not going to embrace (this approach).” My advice is to incorporate brand stories where possible, but center them on a strong positioning. This is the best approach to take to increase brand value. What to do? Seniors have brand hijacked the Wii - 2007-12-18 19:10 In a previous post, I talk about the issue of whether brand creators should "let go of the brand entirely and let consumers appropriate, define, and sell it in their own ways," as Wipperfurth argues in Brand Hijack. I conclude that "marketers have a responsibility to establish a meaning for the brand in advance of presenting it to the consumer. The consumer may appropriate the brand in different ways, may reshape and refine and rework its ultimate meaning, but the essence of the brand is, or should always be, in the hands of the marketer." Now we have a situation where older people are appropriating the Wii game console for their own use, as The Washington Post reports: "On the retirement community scene, bingo is looking a little like last year's thing, as video games have recently grabbed a spot as the hot new activity. More specifically, retirees are enthusiastically taking to games on the Wii, which has been under-supplied and over-demanded at retail stores all year, thanks largely to the system's appeal to a range of consumers." What is Nintendo, the maker of Wii, supposed to do about this? Should the company allow senior citizens to hijack the brand, and even cater to them; should the company ignore them and hope they

will go away so that they don't drive away the core youth demographic that the Wii is aimed at; or what? My thought is that Nintendo should cave in, but in a very limited way: design a limited-edition Senior Wii subbrand, along with targeted games for seniors, to divert off that segment of the population. It would be a brilliant move. Not only would the company retain their business, but they would probably increase business, as seniors experience a brand made and customized just for them. At the same time, the core demographic will not be alienated...they will have the original authentic Wii experience. Brand hijacking can be scary for a company when it occurs. But the best thing you can do is ride the wave on a golden surfboard: Make brands anew when a segment of customers calls for it, and preserve the original brand meaning you initiated for your target audience. “Curator Culture” and Branding - 2007-12-24 18:55 In a recent article on his blog, Steven Addis, the CEO of the CEO of Addis Creson, a Berkeley, CA based branding firm, postulates that we have shifted into a “curator culture.” Like museum curators, the new consumer has “unlimited resources to research products, review them for others, and expose the disingenuous….the ability to transmit on a mass scale…. with credibility corporations have all but squandered.” This idea is not new, although the terminology may be unique. It is similar to the premise of Brand Hijack and Creating Customer Evangelists and my own writing on the subject of customer co-creation and brands. And earlier than that, in 2001 and before, brand futurist Marian Salzman was talking about the “prosumer,” or “empowered consumer,” noting that customers had seized the reins from marketers and were increasingly demanding—and getting—their way. What is unique about the curator culture concept? The role of brands, which has shifted. As consumers enjoy a higher-level status, companies’ status has been lowered to that of potential peer. And curator customers only trust peers that behave in a certain way. In effect, brands need to step off their high horses and get into the mud with the average consumer, becoming one of them—like them—no higher in level. Addis outlines several ways that companies like this “are earning our trust”: 1. Locate and serve a niche market: “Consumers reward the brands that speak directly to them. The more they feel understood, the more they bond. In spite of this, the natural tendency of companies is to extend their brands as wide as possible in the hopes that they might appeal to everyone. These mega-brands inevitably fall on their own weight as they lose the connection with their core audience.” Companies can serve the masses, but they have to do so by hosting “a portfolio of narrowly defined brands.” He gives the example of Toyota, which created the Lexus brand for luxury buyers, and the Scion brand for the polar opposite—urban youth without a lot of money. He notes that Scion billboards proudly state: “So wrong for so many.” Personally, I’m not sure this is an aspect of curator culture, but rather the continuing kingship of positioning, which has recently come under attack. 2. Act trustworthy: This is a no-brainer. Addis writes: “The Curator Culture cuts both ways—consumers reward the sincere and expose the disingenuous. As John Feldman, partner at the law firm Reed Smith said, ‘If you’re in the business of selling candy, sell candy; if you’re in the business of

selling burgers, sell burgers.’” You can be a “bad” brand, as long as you’re honest about it, but if you act like a “good” brand and are not, you’ll get trounced. “An infamous example of corporate duplicity was the controversy surrounding the Working Families for Wal-Mart blog,” he states as an example. “At first glance, the site appeared to be a grassroots organization countering the public criticism of Wal-Mart by union-backed groups like Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch. But it was later revealed that this site was actually created by Wal-Mart and their public relations company, Edelman. Wal-Mart was publicly flogged for creating the impression of spontaneous, grassroots behavior.” 3. Invite customers to co-create the brand: “In the current zeitgeist, the ‘tell-and-sell’ approach of traditional advertising is waning. Today’s consumers have become accustomed to having a growing impact on the success of a brand. So, when a company invites its customers to participate in their brand, it’s saying that it values them and their opinion.” Examples range from letting M&M consumers vote on a new candy color; letting LEGO customers “design and buy their own custom LEGO models, and share their designs with others”; a director meeting with “nontraditional media” (e.g., bloggers) to generate publicity for the movie Superman Returns; and even allowing customers to create the TV commercials for Doritos and Chevy. 4. Act as an advocate for other consumers. “Some companies actually rise to the level of peer by putting the consumer’s interests above its own.” This is notable, he says, in the Progressive Insurance business/brand strategy of showing customers quotes from itself as well as its competitors. 5. Be original—independent of other brands. “The new consumer values originality and can easily perceive ‘me-too’ brands,” writes Addis. “The courage to differentiate from other brands is a weapon against mediocrity. Nobody rushes to share a mediocre experience with a friend. But, I underscore ‘courage,’ as most companies’ tendency to frame brands errs to the familiar, leaving the courageous few to be envied. Part of this differentiation is creating “a great story,” as the Verse Group has also emphasized. Of course, as noted above, other peers (consumers) to the brand will want to have a hand in generating those stories themselves, now that we are in the age of YouTube. 6. Provide an experience of elation—more than just satisfaction. “A common misconception is that the opposite of dissatisfaction is satisfaction. Satisfaction falls in the middle of the continuum. The opposite of dissatisfaction is something more like elation. Satisfaction should be the bare minimum companies expect from us,” writes Addis. An example Addis provides is JetBlue giving customers great snacks “like Terra Chips, pistachio biscotti, and jumbo cashews—and they certainly don’t charge for them. Every seat has DirectTV and XM Satellite Radio, and in select airports, free wireless hotspots are provided. Best of all, they keep their prices competitive, which has earned them a loyal, evangelistic customer base.” (He adds: “This, coupled with its CEO’s sincere apology posted as an online video, got them over a dramatic lapse in their service last winter.”) Addis argues that consumers “do feel special bonds with the very few brands that rise to the level of peer….While you might not be able to put your finger on exactly why you love the brands you do, they stand out above the others by instinctively understanding the power of the Curator Culture.” I think these points are well worth companies’ pondering. As much as other books and articles have provided a cultural context and some understanding of the elevation of today’s consumer, this article provides some concrete guidance for brands seeking to cope in this new environment. Experiential marketing/branding and the newfound power of Gen X - 2007-12-25 17:56

In an article called “Enjoy the experience turn on, tune in--and pay attention,” (December 3, 2007), Brandweek talks about the trend toward experiential marketing—“essentially, a sophisticated term for getting into public spaces and letting the consumer interact with your product personally.” Apparently giving consumers a live experience with the brand is proving to be a successful way of reaching people. Here are some examples of companies and what they’re doing to give customers a branded experience: * Panasonic is parking tractor trailers labeled “Panasonic. Living in high definition.” outside Best Buy and other retailers. The trailers have had a makeover designed to look like “a guy’s dream living room,” complete with all the Panasonic electronics it can hold. Sales of Panasonic HDTVs are up an average of 30% at every retailer that’s had the truck parked outside; Panasonic has set aside one-third of its 2008 marketing budget for experiential initiatives.

* The Wii videogame has been on tour to U.S. shopping malls, where consumers can experience what it’s like to use it.

* For Paramount Pictures’ The Spiderwick Chronicles Experience, the company sent “a customized vehicle loaded with digital equipment that stopped at schools, malls and museums, where kids who ventured inside could see how CGI animation works.”

* “DeWalt tools now spends 50% of its marketing budget on nontraditional advertising, including experiential efforts such as Rolling Thunder, a roving display that parks at Nascar events and allows the public to have fun playing with its newest power tools.”

* “Air New Zealand is hitting the streets of California in an ice-cream truck. Free treats are meant to remind customers that there's beautiful summer weather in Kiwi land. ‘It gives a face and personality to our airline,’ said marketing manager Jodi Williams. ‘This approach gives us more buzz for our buck.’”

Experiential marketing is working well right now because consumers are sick of being bombarded with in-your-face TV, radio, and web advertisements, and are shutting them out with TiVo, satellite radio, and simply clicking away from online ads. (Not to mention the do-not-call laws restricting telemarketing.) In contrast, experiential marketing is an interactive, personal, tactile experience that takes place at the discretion of the consumer.

Experiential marketing is not new, notes the article…as long ago as 1911 Heinz sent door-to-door representatives to do taste-tests with consumers. And the tactic worked.

The article also notes that experiential marketing comes with potential pitfalls, such as spoiled food, people who “simply don’t want a leaflet thrust at them,” and with legal issues that come up. But I think one of the biggest potential pitfalls is to create a marketing experience as opposed to a brand experience. People should not just experience the product, they should experience the brand. That is what builds loyalty over the long term, rather than just having the consumer encounter the product and walk away with a shrug and a “that was nice.” Speaking of experiential marketing, Brandweek also (December 17, 2007) has a case study called “Schwab’s (Gen) X Files,” about an event targeting 25-to-34 year olds in New York in which “teams of financial consultants and brand ambassadors” took up posts at kiosks and “roaming the streets in a 37-foot ‘Talk to Chuck’ RV. They gave out calculators that compared the yield of Schwab’s own checking account vs. the national average, gave out fake ATM cards which people exchanged for $2

bills (and some $100 bills), and also gave out checking account applications. Schwab is pleased with the results thus far. Interestingly, targeting Gen Xers was cited as a priority by 86% of top marketing executives in a recent survey commissioned by the Marketing Executives Networking Group and conducted by Anderson Analytics. This is a very high percentage and only two percent shy of the percentage who said baby boomers are “still the most sought-after demographic.” I say this is interesting because it seems to me that it is Gen Xers who are leading the charge when it comes to taking their thoughts about brands to the Internet (a la Citizen Marketers), and it is probably . Gen Xers who are the ones tuning out TV with TiVo and turning on satellite radio. The power of this group to completely shift the marketing and branding paradigms we know of today seems very much unrecognized by the marketing media, so it was nice to see the marketing survey come out which pointed to the influence this generation is having. Now here’s a piece of can’t-turn-away-from-it marketing that clearly doesn’t work. In “Fast food gets its greasy hands on report cards,” the Chicago Tribune talks about a school in Florida that partnered with McDonald’s to feature a cartoon of Ronald McDonald along with an ad for a “food prize” for “elementary school students who had good grades, behavior or attendance.” The idea was for parents to reward their high performing children with a trip to McDonald’s. The promotion, in which the sponsor paid the cost of printing the report cards in exchange for an advertisement on them, totally offended parent Susan Pagan, who was “told that she was the only parent who thought it was inappropriate to put fast-food ads on the report card jackets.” But apparently it’s been going on for the last decade, and Pizza Hut used to be the sponsor. Here is a way, the article notes, that McDonald’s is “branding its product early and often in impressionable young minds to build loyalty and create lifelong customers.” This even though McDonald’s has recently stated that it will “stop marketing all food or beverage products in elementary schools” and will “advertise only its healthier options to children younger than 12.” Pagan is likely a Gen Xer herself; and I am not surprised that her story is all over the Internet. The bottom line: Gen Xers are taking control of the marketing and branding marketplace, influencing everything about this field in a big way. Nobody is talking about it much, but they really should be. We are witnessing a key generational shift.

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Edited: November 28, 2015