brand as business bit:  The folks at UpMo, an employee-centric career management company, asked me to contribute to their blog, the upMover.   I thought it was the perfect opportunity to share about something I’ve been thinking about for awhile now:  the power of storytelling to engage employees.

Companies often use advertising and social media to share rich and compelling stories with their customers and then revert to PowerPoint presentations and strategy documents for internal communications.  But employees need to be inspired as much as – if not more than – customers.

In my post, Once Upon a Company, I convey how business leaders can use stories to convey their company’s vision, reinforce its values, and inspire connections among its people. I’d be grateful if you would take a click over to my piece and let me know what you think.

Late last year, 60 marketing experts shared their visions of the future of marketing through a “micro-conference” run by Sam Rosen of thoughtlead.  It found it fascinating on several levels.

First the “micro-conference” is a really neat format.  It’s a podcast-type audio event in which each person has only 60-seconds to speak.  Sam initiated the format with The Influencer Project, billed as “the shortest marketing conference ever” and featured thought-leaders on the subject of increasing your online influence.

In just one hour a “micro-conference” gives listeners a broad range of perspectives – it’s a little random, and by design, there isn’t a lot of depth, but nuggets of wisdom emerge throughout.  It’s kind of a buffet for the brain.

Also the types of thought-leaders who participated in the Future of Marketing were interesting.  There weren’t any real surprises in the speaker list – it included the expected experts (e.g., Guy Kawasaki, Charlene Li, Steve Rubel, and more), popular business figures (e.g., Scott Monty, Tony Hsieh, Alex Bogusky, etc.), and the authors everyone has read (e.g., David Meerman Scott, Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, etc.)  No real academics, no one from outside the field of marketing, and no celebrities (although Alex Bogusky might have as many fans — and critics — to qualify for that designation!)

I’d guess the speakers’ average age was around 40 (with Barry Schwartz representing the top end of the scale at 65 and Frank Gruber at the low end at 29).   Only 15 of the 60 speakers were women; only 6 were people of color.  All the speakers were U.S.-based.

I’m reporting these stats not to pass a judgment on who was/wasn’t included, but rather to paint a profile of the type of person who is leading the marketing profession these days.   And that profile — white, American middle-aged male marketing leader with an established platform — was another of the things that fascinated me about the event.

tag cloud of transcript from Future of Marketing

Finally the content itself was fascinating but even more so was the types of topics discussed.  I did a quick classification of the topics mentioned and my tally showed:

25% focused on social (social media, social commerce, social search)

Amber MacArthur talked about “the idea that more and more people are going to different social networks to get recommendations for products and services they buy versus is going to traditional search engines like Google.”

Ekaterina Walter, Social Media Strategist at Intel, declared, “Revolutionary marketing strategies are nonexistent without social media nowadays.”

20% talked about a broader aspect of business beyond marketing

Sonia Simone, Chief Marketing Officer of Copyblogger Media, suggested, “Everything we do is marketing, from our supply chain to what our CEO says over drinks to how our support teams treat our customers.”

Innovation was Virgin America Marketing VP Porter Gale’s point:  “We tried to use the central part of innovation at the core of our DNA.  We looked at the product.  We looked at the guest experience. We looked at all of our marketing channels and made sure that we pushed beyond the traditional landscape and changed the game.  For us it’s plugs at the seats; it’s wi-fi in all of our planes; it’s food on demand; it’s mood lighting; it’s things that guests actually didn’t even realize they needed.”

10% focused on content

Victoria Harres from PR Newswire explained, “The role of the marketer will be to facilitate rich and useful content to that well researched audience. And that is what I mean by the future of marketing isn’t selfish.”

“Focus your marketing on helping other people,” was the advice from Michael Stelzner of socialmediaexaminer.com.  “Everybody wants access to great insight and have great people who can help them, so produce engaging content that meets people’s insatiable demand for how-to information.”

the remaining 31% ranged across a bunch of marketing tactics and approaches — from mobile to shopper marketing to email marketing and more

Here’s the most fascinating part: only 3 made the customer their main point

“The real best companies in the world and best marketers imagine the unrecognized needs of their customers,” declared author Chip Conley.

Chris Brogan encouraged marketers, “…to incorporate [listening] into both your lead development, your awareness, your sales, and your customer service.  Basically do more to understand your customers in a 360-degree way.”

Todd Defren at SHIFT Communications challenged listeners saying, “So many companies and marketers think about taking a content-specific approach where they put ‘creative’ at the forefront of everything.  Really what they should be thinking about in the social media era is putting relationships at the center of everything.”

and only 3 people focused on the brand as the future of marketing

Michael Margolis, President of GetStoried.com, said, “People don’t buy your product or your solution or even your idea.  What they’re buying is the story that’s attached to it, or more importantly, the story they tell themselves about what your brand means to them, which is why you need to give people something to believe in, a bigger story. When your brand stands for something larger than just a widget, a sale, or a transaction, you invite people to find the deeper meaning.”

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh spoke on his resounding theme, saying, “A company’s culture and a company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin.”

Jeanne Bliss of CustomerBliss.com explained that brand experience is driven by five things:

1. clarity of purpose: redefine your purpose from your customer’s point of view.
2. recognize that employees are the brand in so many interactions.
3. be human and real in your communications.
4. become a talk-able brand by delivering a reliable experience your customers can tell others about.
5. be there on customers’ terms and nurture your humility and your humility muscle in how you say sorry and respond to customer disappointments.

On the one hand, this breakdown is concerning – only a handful of marketing experts put customers or the brand in the center of their vision of the future of marketing, while over half are betting on social or some marketing tactic.  It would seem they’re forgetting the fundamentals of marketing.

But as I try to be open-minded and give these people (many of whom I respect a lot) the benefit of the doubt, I think I may understand their perspective.  Customers and the brand are indeed marketing fundamentals — the core of the discipline — and their importance is timeless.

But perhaps it’s the tools and tactics that are what’s changing. And they are ushering in the new marketing era.

related posts:

• five leading business ideas for 2011
• michael tchong on trends to pay attention to

]]> http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/2011/02/08/future-of-marketing/feed/ 10 http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/2010/12/21/best-bits-of-2010/ http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/2010/12/21/best-bits-of-2010/#comments Tue, 21 Dec 2010 12:24:38 +0000 denise lee yohn http://deniseleeyohn.com/bites/?p=4516

Whew!  What a year it’s been.

Over the past year, my brain has pumped out 1778 tweets, 81 brand as business bites blog posts, 17 videos, 11 published articles, 11 brand as business brief newsletters, 10 podcast interviews, 8 QSR Magazine columns, 8 Slideshare documents, 7 speaking engagements, 3 guest blog posts, and countless random thoughts – not to mention all the client work I’ve been blessed with this year.  No wonder I’m tired!

Here are 10 of the best bits from this seemingly-eclectic but definitely-strategic collection of content:

1.  Marketing Myopia – a brand as business bites blog post about whether marketers should try to increase the marketing function in the organization or whether they should try to increase the marketing capability of the entire organization.

2.  Build Your Brand by Operationalizing It – a guest post on the MENG blog, MENG Blend in which I suggest that instead of thinking about brand-building as an externally-oriented activity, we shift to more internally-directed efforts.

3.  The Sharp Experience All-Staff Assembly Highlight Reel – highlights from Sharp Healthcare’s  re-commitment of its 20,000+ people to the organization’s vision and values (see accompanying blog post for background and my key takeaways).

4.  Maslow, Emotion and a Hierarchy of Service – a guest post on Roger Dooley’s fantastic Neuromarketing blog about the Maslow-like hierarchy which exists when it comes to meeting consumer needs and motivations with customer service.

5.  Six Best Practices in Retail – a brand as business bites blog post outlining what extraordinary retailers like The Container Store and Wegman’s do best

6.  Not Just a Punchcard — one of my columns in QSR Magazine which argues that most quick serves don’t understand that building loyalty takes more than handing out punch cards and promotions.

7.  Brand Promise:Reality Gap – a post about the average of 48% of people who say there’s a big difference between what fast feeders promise in their advertising and what they experience at the chains’ restaurants (see accompanying video).

8.  Marketing Is Losing Its Mojo – an article published by Adweek in which I explain that it seems the pursuit of breakthrough marketing creativity has taken a back seat to work on more predictable and achievable efforts.

9.  Notes & Quotes from Seth Godin – insights and soundbites from a talk Seth Godin gave at a LinkedOC event about his new book Linchpin:  Are You Indispensible?

10.  Ben McConnell on Employees as Brand Evangelists — a podcast interview with Ben McConnell, one of the most influential online marketers, about employees as brand evangelists and other developments in today’s participatory culture.

***

Thanks so much to all of you who read, share, and comment on my content.  I learn so much from you and I’ve enjoyed meeting people from around the world.  Looking forward to a great 2011!

Have a blessed holiday!  (brand as business bites will resume on 01.04.11 — in the meantime, check out more best bites!)

Nike recently released their “Corporate Responsibility Report FY07-09” and I was so impressed by it, I just had to share my thoughts about it.

Many of you know how big of a Nike fan I am, so it’s probably not surprising that the report resonated so strongly with me.  But actually, I don’t think my positive brand bias has much to do with my reaction to the report.  After all, I take a very skeptical stance when it comes to corporate social responsibility because many companies’ CSR efforts lack integrity the way their brand efforts do – they emphasize the saying vs. the doing.

Clearly Nike is giving CSR more than lip service.  Although the report itself is an impactful document (it’s a well-designed, well-written 176-page piece), it’s what it relays that is so impressive.   Here are 3 remarkable things Nike is doing:

1. Connecting vision and execution – Nike has a compelling vision for their CSR efforts – “to bring people, planet, and profits into balance for lasting success.”  It’s crisp, memorable, and inspiring.

And while many other corporations have similarly lofty aspirations, Nike’s vision is clearly only the beginning for them.  They have crafted specific strategies to fulfill the vision, specific goals for each strategy, and specific plans for each goal. This planning infrastructure increases the likelihood of actually achieving what they dream.

Furthermore the tactics they’ve undertaken demonstrate they’re breaking down their plans into digestible chunks and incremental steps.  Sometimes even small-sounding changes – like using a single shoe lace woven between parts of a shoe to eliminate the need for adhesives and allow for easier disassembly – has moved them one step closer to their vision.  It’s clear they understand the Thomas Edison adage “vision without execution is hallucination.”

2. Seeing it a business issue – CSR at Nike isn’t about being politically correct or improving brand perceptions.  Yes, those may be outcomes but Nike is doing this because it matters to their business.

Nike explains, “The cost of competition for resources will increase as [natural] resources become increasingly scarce.  Coupled with emerging trends – such as customization, a push to be closer to multiple markets and shifting labor markets – we see a new opportunity to create business growth for the future.”

This business orientation is evidenced in that they are pursuing new business models, not simply new programs.  The report repeatedly states that “sustainability is a route to future profitability” – and explains why they believe that.  They tie their CSR results to business performance (It’s remarkable that the first pages of the report include a Business Overview. )

3. Leveraging core competencies – Many companies seem to struggle to implement impactful CSR because it requires them to adopt new skills and perspectives that are counter-intuitive to their m.o.

A fast food burger chain which usually runs ads that exploit women suddenly adopts breast cancer as their CSR cause; an investment bank which caters to high net worth individuals trying to connect with local communities through food drives and homeless shelter donations – these efforts are doomed to fail because they don’t make sense to the company’s customers and don’t leverage the strengths of their stakeholders.

Nike’s CSR work, on the other hand, involves what Nike does best – design, innovation, and brand-building.  They’ve attacked the problems of resource scarcity, workforce abuse, and social injustice with the power and prowess that comes from these core competencies and thus have been able to make real progress.

solid business principles

Beyond these smart approaches, Nike’s CSR report outlines how they’re using the business principles that characterize any effective corporate undertaking:

• proactive stance – Although Nike may have started down this road reacting to criticisms about labor conditions in the company’s supply chain, they’re now taking a proactive approach.  The report declares, “Waiting means we risk facing a forced requirement to shift on someone else’s timeline. For us, the choice is clear. We are always on the offense.”
• address root causes – Similarly, Nike’s first steps in addressing labor conditions were in monitoring and policing, but their approach has evolved to diagnose and solve the root causes behind the problems they experience.  They’re focusing on training factories in Human Resource Management so that the factories implement environmental, health, and safety practices because they’re valued, not because they’re required.
• organizational alignment – They’ve increased the traction of their CSR efforts by reorganizing the functions responsible for driving them — and integrating “dedicated sustainability specialists” into operational parts of the organization such as retail, logistics, and information technology.
• political insight – Pushing for legislation and cooperation through advocacy groups and world stages demonstrates Nike’s savvy.  Indeed, everything is political.
• collaboration – Nike acknowledges that they will be able to affect real change only by working with others, so they’ve partnered with other companies to improve conditions in their shared supply chain through the International Labour Organization’s Better Work program, and to build GreenXchange, a digital platform that enables companies to promote sustainability innovations, for example.

Mark Parker, Nike’s President and CEO, provides the best summary of the company’s CSR efforts with a short-list of “lessons learned”:

Transparency is an asset, not a risk.

Collaboration enables systemic change.

Every challenge and risk is an opportunity.

Design allows you to prototype the future, rather than retrofit the past.

To make real change, you have to be a catalyst.

While I’ll let other people provide a reality check on whether the information in Nike’s report is fair and accurate, I’ll tell you why I’d be willing to bet it is.

First, it relays failures as well as successes. For example, Nike admits that one of their strategies has been derailed, and they concede they haven’t made as much progress as they would like in some areas.  Sure, there’s a positive spin to the entire report, but how many other companies are willing to publish and widely promote a document that outlines that they missed their targets?

Secondly, Nike employees attest to the success the company has achieved. The report includes findings from an employee survey which their full- and part-time employees voluntarily completed.  78% of employees agree with the statement, “I am satisfied with the actions my company is taking to be socially responsible,” and 74% with the statement, “I am satisfied that my company is responding appropriately to address the impact of our business activities on the environment.”

A company’s employees are in a great position to evaluate the veracity of corporate claims.  They know first-hand whether or not if the company is doing what it says it is.  If they’re satisfied, it gives me reason to be as well.

related posts:

• stuff that matters
• brand inspiration

Andy Beal, an internet marketing consultant, award-winning blogger, professional speaker, and co-author of the critically-acclaimed book Radically Transparent: Monitoring & Managing Reputations Online, was kind enough to share a few moments with me earlier this week. 

Our talk covers topics like:

• how the social web is changing search
• the difference between brand and online reputation management
• noteworthy points about marketers and this year’s Super Bowl

We also discuss a cool company Andy founded, Trackur.  Trackur is an online reputation monitoring service that tracks what is said about you on the internet. Trackur scans hundreds of millions of web pages–including news, blogs, video, images, and forums–and lets you know if it discovers anything that matches the keywords you’ve indicated.  Fortune 500 companies, as well as small businesses, agencies, PR firms, etc. currently use Trackur as their “reputation guardian” and I think we’ll see even more uses and applications of the service going forward.  Check it out here.

You can reach Andy through his website:  www.andybeal.com .

I enjoyed talking shop with Andy and hope you enjoy listening in our conversation in the podcast below.

The folks at BLACKCOFFEE have been inviting folks to complete the thought, “A Brand Is…” I was so fascinated to read the range of responses that I decided to take a closer look.  I wanted to see what common themes emerged among people’s definitions of “Brand” and what we could learn from them.
Here’s what I did:

• I collected all of the responses that were on the site as of this past weekend – there were over 170 of them.

• I culled out the ones that I didn’t understand (e.g., “A brand can be anything, just not ‘like that.’”) and ones that didn’t provide a helpful answer (e.g., “A brand is an elusive concept that many brand professionals can’t define.”)

• I sorted the remaining answers into groups/themes.  (I had difficulty classifying some of the answers because I wasn’t sure exactly what some people meant, so I apologize in advance if I mis-grouped yours.)

Here’s what I found:

1.    Some used the historical definition of a brand when branding was used on cattle, or suggested a brand is something which functions like a brand on cattle.

A brand is a label created by a company.—lix
A brand is a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership—Bill
A brand is a different name for the same product—yo
A brand is a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership—@SIGEPJEDI
A brand is a logo, a font, a long-standing celebrity spokesperson. It’s a memorable commercial. It’s a quality product with quality ingredients. It’s consistency.—Jocelyn Geboy
A brand is an iron tool heated in the fire and used to indicate ownership of cattle.—Stephen

2.    Some chose simply to say what a brand is not.

A brand is not merely “something that’s nice to have” any more than air is something good to inhale once in a while.—David Brier, Chief Gravity Defyer
A brand is more than a logo.—Brad C
A brand is not a logo, unless it is on a cow.—Misc
A brand is much more than a logo.—Erick Straghalis

3.    Some responses were negative towards brands.

A brand is a fake image—anon
A brand is unfortunately bullshit a lot of times.—unknown
A brand is a set of lies we convince ourselves to believe in and hope the public will to.—HMMM
A brand can be fake—http://sidere.wordpress.com
A brand is a terrible lie.—Craig Elimeliah
A brand is a relic of an illiterate culture.—Bud Caddell
A brand is gay—Nicole

4.    Some people spoke of the financial value of a brand.

A brand is something you pay extra for—Mark
A brand is the difference between a 99¢ cup of coffee $4 venti, foamy, ristretto, doppio expresso con panna cappuccino.—Ken Peters
A brand is your most important asset if you own it or rely on it for income.—Kendall Langston

5.    Many people suggested a brand is “in the eyes of the beholder,” not under the control of the companies or marketers who promote it.

A brand is something companies try to control but often can’t—Jordan
A brand is perception—accidentalthinking
A brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what consumers say it is – and you’d better listen, because they’re vocal.—Ken Peters
A brand is a set of associations the audience has and how they see your business activities—@alexisvandam
A brand is a user generated meaning—Luis Miranda
A brand is the sound of your voice coming out of someone else’s mouth—Bill Gathen
A brand is what people outside a company perceive it to be based on everything they hear, read and see about that company.—Lewis Green
A brand is a recipient built by marketers but filled with people’s thoughts, frustrations, use, likes, dislikes… experience.—Rafael Lizárraga
A brand is perception—@kandacehudspeth
A brand is a collective perception in the minds of consumers—@faris
A brand is whatever I perceive it to be—Arvind
A brand is perception—Kandace
A brand is the sum of audience associations and expectations, both tangible and intangible, that surround your offerings.—@ericbrody
A brand is what everyone else sees—vera
A brand is how you are perceived by others and you get the opportunity to build your brand up – or tear it down with every customer interaction.—Stephen Lynch
A brand is the perception of a product.—David Mitchel
A brand is what they say about you after you have left the room…—Rob Levinson
A brand is everything people believe about your product, real or imagined, true or false.—Roger Dooley – Neuromarketing
A brand is the collective views of the people who care.—David Meerman Scott
A brand is the idea held in the minds of the customers of the experience they’ll have, and in some case what they will become, by purchasing your product.—Steve Farnsworth (@TheRealPRMan)
A brand is your reputation, your legacy. It is how you are perceived by an audience that must find you relevant.—Lida Citroen, LIDA360.com
A brand is how you are perceived by others—Stephen Lynch
A brand is useless without consumers.—Bryant Florez
A brand is what the public believes it is, not what companies say it is.—Jonathan Moore
A brand is what customers buy, not what businesses sell.—David Brier
A brand is all that stuff in the head of people ‘out there’ that you often have very little control over—Jon Howard
A brand is about people’s reactions to an organization’s actions.—Mark Gallagher—Brand Expressionist®, BLACKCOFFEE
A brand is a perception in the minds of others. It’s what they think you are, not what you think you are. It can be an image, a voice, a personality or a product/category, but it boils down to whatever people think when they hear the name.—Janice Dottin
A brand is [mine]—Kevin Gatta

6.    Yet, others responses spoke about a brand as a company’s values and/or corporate culture.

A brand is vision-led culture.—Steve Barnett
A brand is much more than a logo. It should represent the core values of your company, product, or service. A good brand should lead your organization internally, and clearly represent what you stand for to consumers.—D.K. Smith
A brand is your company’s DNA.—Nicho Valadez
A brand is a set of values you agree with.—Michael Ancevic

7.  A lot of people’s responses were about feelings – either saying a brand evokes feelings or that a brand is a feeling itself.

A brand is the feeling I get when I think about a company.—Jon
A brand is my connection to the product.—Missy
A brand is a gut feeling—luke
A brand are the hopes and expectations you have of a product and the company that makes it.—edward boches
A brand is the emotion invoked by a product—Mansi
A brand is a feeling evoked by simply thinking of the brand name.—Greenwala
A brand is an evocation—http://sidere.wordpress.com
A brand is how it makes you feel—Ld
A brand is butterflies or knives in your stomach—David Armano
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.—Marty Neumeier, Neutron
A brand is a perception and lingering feeling that lives in the minds of your market. It’s based on emotion and defined by the experience people have with your brand.—Carol Chapman
A brand is an emotional short-cut to feeling good.—Anthony
A brand is what captures a consumer’s heart, not just a mind—Heidi Foreman
A brand is a collective emotional response.—Michael Troiano
A brand is something that evokes everything from DESIRE … to HATE.—Stephen Cocca
A brand is an expectation of receiving a feeling by way of an experience.—Tom Asacker

8.    Many people offered up answers describing what a brand does – e.g., generate demand.

A brand is what my teenage son is always talking about when he wants my money.—Eric
A brand begets preference, sometimes without actually being better.—@RJ_in_SF

9.  Some explained a  brand functions like a memory tool.

A brand is something people remember.—EV
A brand is what you would want another person to remember first thing in the morning and think of just before he or she goes to bed.—Strategic Growth Advisors
A brand is the scar left behind on a person’s brain.—Zach K.
A brand is a concept seared into the mind.—Mark
A brand is like knowing exactly what to reach for when you cut your finger.—Jordan Julien
A brand is a product idea/vision that gets burned into consumers’ minds.—RcSim

10.    Others described the differentiating function of a brand.

A brand is what you have when everything else is equal.—Michael
A brand is unmistakable and unique.—@bradleyphoto
A brand is a developed and distinctive concept—-unknown
A brand is all you put on something that is equal to everything else in order to make it different—sg
A brand is a how people identify and differentiate goods and services.—Bobby
A brand is a token of difference.—Minko Dimov, creative director at protobrand
A BRAND IS THE RECOGNITION THAT ADDS SUPER-VALUE TO A PRODUCT THAT COULD DEFINE THE UNIQUENESS IN IT!!—Naveen Kumar
A brand is your face in this world to differentiates you from others—Karl Varley
A brand is a unique and deliverable claim of distinction supported by evidence of performance.—Ro Breehl

11.    A brand is an image or personality to some folks.

A brand is PERSONALITY!—Trish
A brand is the face you put on when you go out in public—Doug Besser
A brand quite simply is your voice, your vibe, your essence. It’s how you’d like to be perceived you in your ideal reality. There are three views: How you see yourself, how others see you and how you really appear. In many instances, companies use the equivalent of plastic surgery, attractive lighting and couture to craft their personae. Standards and guidelines aside, Few rarely “live” the brand, which in itself is a somewhat overused term.—David Weinstein
A brand is like a purpose-led person’s personality.—Harasha Bafana
A Brand is Attitude. It’s what you stand for, illustrate in visuals, sound like, how you act, what you stand for and how you communicate. It’s the sum of all impressions perceived in every brand channels.—Karsten Kjems
Very simple…an IMAGE of what your product/service is conveying to the masses.—Judy
A brand is your first impression—Joel Beukelman
A brand is what people see when they look at you and your product—Aaron Irizarry
A brand is more than a logo or a website. It’s a complete personality. One that drives the focus of the audience and engages them on a personal level.—Troy

12.    It’s an identity to others.

A brand is who you are.—John Turmelle
A brand is…expressing your own identity.—Kim Brown Irvis
A brand is establishing your sense of identity—MIke B
A brand is a part of someone’s identity—Mark Begin

13.  And a story or drama to still others.

A brand is a fairy tale.—@issamheddad
A brand is a story in which the author and the audience are both in control.—@mattquint
A brand is story or association in the mind of consumer.—Ritu Sinha
A brand is performance art.—Mike Wagner, CEO White Rabbit Group
A brand is part theater, part magic, part inspiration and whole-hearted passion. The stage is the mind of your audience. Let the production begin.—David Brier, Chief Gravity Defyer
A brand is a story told in the marketplace. Customers are telling your story with or without your help. Align the right brand message to the right channel of the consumer’s social grid to provide a multi-touch experience.—Matthew Kruchko, Applied Storytelling

14.    Some responses spoke of a brand as a promise.

A brand is a promise—@brennahanly
A brand is why I keep coming back, when that brand keeps its’ promise.—Dave Bradley
A brand is a promise, not something that happens when you spend mountains of money advertising.—Restaurant Marketing
A brand is delivering on a promise – perhaps inspired and initiated by a Company – but driven & actualized by the customer.—Robert Collins
A brand is a promise which when kept creates preference—Justin Basini (although not my defnition but I love it)
A brand is promise delivered to your customers.—Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO, Kodak
A brand is a promise fulfilled—Lauren Hughes
A brand is a promise of performance in the mind of the consumer.—Jack Birch
A brand is the equilibrium between people’s emotion and a company’s product, service; in short, a brand is the value a company promises to its clients—Colin
Some thought a brand is more of a relationship.
A brand is meaning & relationships—Juanjo
A brand is a mutual friend.—farfariya
A brand is a relationship driven by the customer experience—Fred Page
A brand is a relationship.—Dave Bradley
A brand is a long term profitable bond between an offering and a customer. This relationship must be based on economic, experiential & emotional value. Backed up by operational excellence & consistently monitored, measured and improved.—Marcus Osborne, Malaysia
A brand is a connection between the company and it’s customers—Stephan Lenting
A brand is a proxy for a relationship.—Ben Kunz
A brand is an experience to be shared with others or kept to ourselves. A brand is the personal interaction we have with a product, service or person. A brand is as fragile or as strong as friendship. If it breaks its promise, the relationship may be in jeopardy.—Kneale Mann

16.    And some offered that a brand is an experience.

A brand is what i experience when i get in touch with its products and with it communications efforts—maria
A brand is something you trust because it gives you lifestyle experience—http://scratchvertise.blogspot.com/
A brand is a customer experience — including perceptions, like, dislike or apathy — of a product or service.—jeff
A brand is the reaction one has to a company, product or service based on the sum total of experiences, directly or indirectly, said person has had with company, product or service.—Joel Mier
A brand is the entire experience a consumer has with every touch-point of your brand, the emotional connection they have with it and the interaction itself represents the opportunity for a brand to transact an experience with the consumer that will not only deliver the delight they expect but also provide them with unexpected value and satisfaction that is unique unto your brand alone.—John Walsh – FlyLite
A brand is a summary of thousands of touchpoints.—Tyrale
A brand is the aggregate of all the tangible and intangible interactions one can have with it.—John Schneider
A brand is the emotions, feelings, and thoughts generated from the experience of a place, idea, or product.—Seth Hosko
A brand is an experience that is shared between customers.—Kneale Mann

17.    Some responses didn’t fall into one of the above groupings – either because they spanned multiple themes, or because they introduced a different thought.

A brand is the vision behind a logo—Digdamao
A brand simplifies the complex.—Dava Brada’lei
A brand is where an object or a service meets culture—Carito K
A brand is our imagination.—@maharis
A brand is a reflection of how effectively we are communicating our passion.—@mpack7
A brand is simply what we apply to things to make them more human.—Dom Rodwell
A brand is simply a mental construct. What you DO with that mental construct, after it has been created, is up to you.—Tom Asacker, author of A Clear Eye for Branding
A brand is a miracle with a name.—Mr. Markenlexikon
A brand is…the truth about you, well told.—Michael DiFrisco
A Brand is a journey of a product/service which starts at any company and ends in consumer mind.—Gaurav Nadgouda
A brand is living entity, always changing and open to individual interpretation.—Paul Coles
A brand is like a human being. It has emotions and evolves with changing environment.—Ashish Shah
A B.R.A.N.D. is Being Recognized And Never Doubted—Derrick Hayes
A Brand is about continuity not consistency.—Ed Walter
A brand is my constant puzzle because no matter how much I work on all the support elements, it’s completely in the hands of our front-line employees.—Julia Carcamo
A brand is the shadow of your profile—Gianni Tolu
A brand is like a human being. It has emotions and evolves with changing environment. A corporate identity is a reflection of what company thinks about itself; a brand is what target audience thinks about the company.—Ashish Shah
A brand is a company’s most valuable asset.—Robert A. Miller
A brand is a marriage between the rational (your positioning) and the irrational (the emotional response to you).—Karen Kang Consulting @ Kang.com
A brand is shorthand for a winning company & products. Losers don’t have brands…—Bill Hawe
A brand give a sense of belonging—Mark Cameron
A brand shouldn’t need to be explained.—Erick Straghalis
A brand is a manifestation of the hopes, expectations and aspirations between consumer and provider.—Jason C. Otero
A brand is a blank canvas with guidelines—Andrew Wendling
A brand delivered is the result of the steady iteration of a message over time. A brand received is another story. “National health care” vs. “ObamaCare”.—John Burnham
A brand is, and should be timeless.—Hee Chung
A brand is a collection of experiences, stories, and associations that create a perception about a product, service, or company.—Steve Jones – brandlikearockstar.com
A brand is a living, breathing representation of the lifestyles, emotions and values of the audience it serves.—Gennefer Snowfield
A brand is [true to self]—Kevin Gatta
A brand is [familiar]—Kevin Gatta
A brand is consistent.—Heidi

A brand is co-created by the brand owner and its audience.—Laura Savard—Brand Expressionist®, BLACKCOFFEE

A brand is a company’s most valuable asset!—Laura Savard—Brand Expressionist®, BLACKCOFFEE

A brand is everything you can control about how it looks and acts and nothing about how people feel about it and react to how it acts and looks.—erich nolan bertussi

18.    And some offered up definitions similar to mine:

A brand is what a brand does or doesn’t do.—Martha
A brand is a desirable and exclusive idea integrated in products, places, services, people and experiences.—@designdamage
A brand is not what you say, it’s what you do.—The Australian Centre for Branding
A brand is everything you do and don’t do.—Jason
A brand is what a brand does.—Edward Boches

My response:
A Brand Is… a bundle of values and attributes that define:
•  a product or service’s value which is delivered to its customers, and
•  the way of doing business which is the basis of a company’s relationships with its stakeholders

What can we learn from all of this?

Here are a few of my observations and thoughts:

•    There’s a lot of passion for brands.  The BLACKCOFFEE site got over 170 responses in what I believe was less than a week — and there are already so many more responses that have been entered than when I started this analysis only a few days ago.  And I love the many thoughtful, interesting responses.  Thanks to BLACKCOFFEE for starting what I hope will be an ongoing conversation about this thing, Brand!

•    Two of the groupings that include the most responses are the one that explains a brand is not something companies/marketers can control and the one that speaks only of feelings.  This concerns me.

Although some of the responses in these groupings came from folks I have a lot of respect for, I have to disagree with them.  I believe a brand is something that a company creates and actively nurtures and builds – certainly a brand’s success is dependent upon customers’ reaction to it, but there must be strategic intent and active leadership to determine which customers the company wants and why and how they want them to react.  Likewise, a great brand certainly sparks emotions – but feelings alone do not a business make.  The point is to translate feelings into actions (buy, make, change, do…).

I expect people to disagree with me on this, so please do share your comments.

•    There are a lot of definitions and interpretations of what a brand is.  This makes brand-building ripe for confusion – which is a barrier when we talk about it with business leaders and try to make the case for investing in it.  I’d like to see more clarity and alignment within the business community about what a brand is – I’m not sure how to get there, but I believe doing so is important to the future effectiveness of brands and brand-builders.  I’d love to hear your thoughts on how we might go about addressing this.

Comments open!

Sony‘s celebration of Walkman‘s 30th anniversary this month has been bittersweet.  The headlines of stories covering the occasion speak to brand’s lost luster.  Yahoo! Tech declared “Sony struggling as Walkman hits 30th anniversary“; “Sony toils” MSNBC’s headline agreed and added:  “Once a pioneer of cutting-edge gadgets, company struggles to reinvent self.”

In the midst of this downcast coverage, I thought it important to discuss the virtues of the venerable Sony brand — and the best way to do that is to extol the man behind the brand, Akio Morita.

akio morita with a walkman

In 1946 Akio Morita along with Masaru Ibuka started the company with a scant $500 and a floor of a fire-bombed Toykyo department store for an office.  From the very beginning, Morita-san advanced some strong beliefs and philosophies which shaped the company which has become the multi-billion enterprise and one of the world’s most valuable brands today.

“We do what others don’t.” Morita-san felt strongly that Sony “never follows.”  His commitment to true innovation led to a string of firsts for the company including the first pocket-sized transistor radio, the first color television tube, the first home video tape recording unit, among many others.  Beyond products, Morita-san infused everything Sony did with this convention-breaking spirit.

Consumer-inspired product development and marketing. Morita-san is notoriously known for not believing in consumer research, asserting that Sony shouldn’t ask people what they want because they don’t know what they want.  But this unfairly characterizes his beliefs, because he led the charge to develop products and market them based on a keen understanding of consumers and their lifestyles.  In fact, the Walkman was designed and launched as a fashionable device because Morita-san predicted the rise of a “headphone culture.”

Creating a culture. The prospectus drafted by the founders of the company speaks of their desire to create an organization in which “persons could become united with a firm spirit of teamwork and exercise to their hearts’ desire their technological capability.”  Morita-san’s mission was to create more than products; he wanted to create a new kind of company, a distinct way of doing business, a culture.

These are just a few examples of the spirit of Morita-san which became the spirit of the company — and the Sony brand.  Say what you will about Sony’s current state and future outlook.  The man behind Walkman — and the way he built the Sony brand — is an inspiration to any entrepreneur or business leader today.

To learn more about Akio Morita and the brand he built, here are some book recos:

• Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony (Signet)
• The Sony Vision
• Sony : The Private Life

I’ve been thinking about the importance of connecting the internal organization with external customers.  All too often it seems companies are either too inwardly focused, getting too caught up in their own capabilities, technologies, and process — or too outwardly focused, trying to be everything to everyone and ending up being nothing to no one.

My thoughts were sparked by a proposal I’ve been working on. It’s for a well-known company with a what most people would agree is a really strong brand.  So imagine my surprise when I learned they were seeking a resource for “brand discovery.”  At first blush, it didn’t seem to me that they needed any help.

But then as I immersed myself into their situation, I realized their issue is connecting the internal to the external.  Their internal culture and passion for their brand is really admirable, but what they seem to missing is an intimacy with the customer.  I believe they need to connect their internal strength with external customer understanding and passion — knowing which segments in the prospect pool are the most fertile for them, knowing how to connect with them, and channeling their energies toward delivering value to them.

At the same time some companies are so focused on the market, they don’t have an internal bedrock to ground their efforts, nor an internal compass to guide decision-making.  You know the companies I’m talking about — the ones who seem to be consistently re-positioning themselves — always trying to tie into the latest fad and never presenting a consistent POV.  In a way, these companies pursue “customer centricity” to a fault.

Peter Drucker believed the need to connect “the Inside that is ‘the organization,’ and the Outside of society, economy, technology, markets, and customers” is so vital, he advocated for an organization’s CEO to serve as the link.

I would offer an alternative — the brand is the link.  The way I see it, customer centricity only works when you have a strong brand to act as a filter for prioritizing customer segments and a tool for developing and managing customer relationships.  A brand defines what the company stands for, which in turn determines who it’s for and what value it will deliver.

The brand embodies the “Outside” by defining the value the organization delivers to its customers; and it embodies the “Inside” by defining the way the organization does business.

So my conclusion:  the brand connects the internal and the external. What do you think?  Do you agree? or do you see it a different way?  Please let me know.

Today my series on brand value creation comes to a close with a look at companies’ Learning and Growth.  Previous posts have examined how brands create value for companies from the Customer, Financial (2 posts) ,  and Internal Business Process perspectives.

The Learning and Growth quadrant of the Balanced Scorecard asks, “To achieve our vision, how will we sustain our ability to change and improve?”  The results produced by a strong brand relative to this quadrant may be the most difficult to quantify, but they are perhaps the most significant.   Here are 3 ways a brand creates value by impacting an organization’s Learning and Growth:

1.  When the “brand as business” management approach is engaged, the purpose and values of the organization are clarified.   Using the brand as the North Star for the business, your company not only adapts to outside changes appropriately but also create its own changes and use them to its advantage.

• Patagonia provides an example of a company which uses its brand — their “philosophies” — to be prepared for change. Yvon Chouinard, the company’s founder and owner, says, “What good does having a fixed set of written philosophies accomplish when everything else in the business world is so dynamic?…The answer is that our philosophies aren’t rules; they’re guidelines.  They’re the keystones of our approach to any project, and although they are ‘set in stone,’ their application to a situation isn’t…We have made many mistakes during the past decade, but at no point have we lost our way for very long.  We have the philosophies for a rough map, the only kind that’s useful in a business world whose contours, unlike those of the mountains, change constantly and without much warning.” (emphasis mine)

2.  Your brand can help you actually change the way business is done if you adopt a bold and differentiated brand platform.  Jim Collins, in his book Built to Last, describes how “Bill Hewlett and David Packard envisioned HP as a role-model corporation, known for progressive personnel practices, innovative and entrepreneurial culture, and an unbroken string of products that make a technical contribution.”  So they instituted many practices to manifest this bold vision – for example:

• HP introduced a profit-sharing plan which paid out the same percentage to the janitor as to the CEO and created a catastrophic medical insurance plan at a time when such actions were virtually unheard of.
• Beginning in the 1950’s, HP forsook the hiring of engineers from industry and recruited less experienced but more talented graduating seniors from respected engineering schools.
• Self-imposed rigorous standards led HP to bypass high-volume markets like IBM-compatible personal computers for a period of time because of its commitment to reject me-too or copycat new products in favor of those representing a technological contribution.

Clearly the “HP Way,” as the brand’s tenets became known, drove that organization’s learning and growth.

3.  Your brand can fuel the development of a robust organizational culture, by explaining why you do what you do in a way that gives more meaning to your relationships with customers and stakeholders alike.   After dissecting the factors that have driven the success of some of greatest organizations in recent history, including Apple and the Walt Disney studio, management author Warren Bennis concludes in his book Organizing Genius, “[They] think they are on a mission from God…they believe they are doing something vital, even holy…their clear, collective purpose makes everything they do seem meaningful and valuable.”  Your employee’s work can be transformed into more than churning out products; stakeholders can see themselves are more than functional cogs in the company wheel.  Rather, they can see themselves as contributing to something that has more substantive and lasting impact.

This motivates them embrace and execute change more effectively.  As the consultants who contributed to the late 1990’s turnaround of Best Buy explain, continuous improvement and growth flow naturally out of an emotionally satisfying culture:  “’Why is this important?   What’s in it for me?  Can I be successful?’ To be ready for change, people must develop a compelling conviction that there are positive answers to these questions,” they state.

So a strong brand increases an organization’s ability to change and improve — thus creating long-lasting and far-reaching value.

I hope this series on Brand Value Creation has been a good one for you.  By running it, my intent has been to make the case that brands produce substantial positive results for business.  And, perhaps more importantly, to present a different point of view on what a brand is:  what a company does and how it does it.