After nine months of keeping this branding blog separate from my Meaningful Marketing blog, I’ve decided that it makes more sense to consolidate them into one blog. I no longer want to split my attention between the two sites, nor continue splitting my audience — it was a good experiment, but it’s time to put the two blogs together.

Please take a look at Meaningful Marketing, where I’ll continue this branding conversation. There you’ll also find articles about marketing strategy, tactics and techniques, customer evangelism, conversational marketing, how to talk to the brain with your marketing, capturing attention, and much more. And let me know what you think, okay?

Thanks for stopping by.

Tags: Brands that Connect, Meaningful Marketing

My step-daughter just got married in Nashville. Jaime is beautiful, interesting, lots of fun, and unconventional. I’ve known her since she was nine years old, and she’s always been that way. So none of us who know her were really surprised by the way she chose to get married. It was beautiful, interesting, lots of fun, and unconventional.

Jaime was true to her brand — she didn’t bend to the norms of wedding tradition. She tried wedding planners, but they wanted her to choose colors and have a reception. Bridesmaids? Wedding party? Nah — instead of all that, Jaime decided to be “walked down the aisle” by her three dogs.

The effect was awesome. It was true Jaime. And I couldn’t help but think about how powerful being true, being authentic, can be.

Tags: personal branding, authentic branding

It’s often been said that brands live in the mind of the customer — that they’re not really owned or managed by the company that developed them. That all we can hope to do is influence the customer’s perception of the brand by fulfilling our promise to them.

Word of mouth is a fantastic way to influence customer perception, if you can get it. A story about your brand that engages the imagination or stirs the emotions can spread almost at the speed of light, and suddenly it’s everywhere. I can’t help but think that if cats were a brand, they’d be sitting very pretty right about now, thanks to Oscar the cat.

Who hasn’t seen the story about Oscar the cat? Last night he was in the editorial section of my local newspaper, and this morning I saw him twice online — once in the news on my browser, and once on WebMD when I was researching a friend’s symptoms. This evening he was on national news. This week, cats reign — at least Oscar does.

Oscar was adopted by the staff of the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, Rhode Island, and grew up roaming the halls with the medical staff. After about six months, the staff noticed that Oscar seemed to be able to predict when the nursing home patients were going to die by curling up next to them during their final hours. After observing his accuracy with 25 deaths at the facility, Dr. David Dosa wrote about the phenomenon in The New England Journal of Medicine. The rest, as they say, is history.

After the story appeared on NBC, viewers started giving feedback, showing that perceptions about cats had been altered by the story. Comments included a viewer who, despite having always been a “dog person,” now was considering getting a cat, and others who were surprised and pleased to know that cats could have that kind of talent.

One story about a cat can change perceptions in people’s minds. That’s pretty powerful. Does it give you any ideas?

Tags: brands, perceptions, Oscar the cat, engaging stories, emotional branding

I recently came across a beautifully written, designed, and implemented brand standards manual for a large corporation — the thing has to be over 200 pages. It really is a wonderful piece, and very well executed.

After perusing the manual, a colleague and I were also able to take a look at samples of some of the company’s printed materials and advertising. We were immediately struck by the incongruity of the messages — it was obvious that the intelligently directed and meticulously prepared guidelines set forth in the manual were not adhered to by the producers of the samples we were viewing. Our first reaction was disappointment — with such a wonderful plan all laid out in front of them, why hadn’t the company followed it?

The answer, as you know, could be any number of things, from uninformed managers delegating the work to a rush to meet deadlines. It happens all the time, but the the sad thing is that it happens at all. If your company has spent the time and resources to define its brand and document the brand guidelines, it makes sense to rigorously enforce their use. And if your company doesn’t have a documented set of brand guidelines, there’s no time like the present to get moving in that direction.

Tags: brand guidelines, brand standards, brand standards manual

It’s so easy to do a lot of good work on your brand and then slip back in to old patterns of doing business as usual — old habits are hard to break. One method I’ve found to help solidify the new brand values your organization has developed is to have each person on the branding team take the time — right now, when the essence of your brand is still fresh in your mind, you know why you’ve agreed on a few key phrases and attributes for your brand, and you feel strongly about them — to document your understanding of it.

Mike Moser recommends this step in his book, United We Brand, as a way to help people internalize the key brand messages: write a few sentences in your own words explaining why each particular brand value defines or is relevant to the essence of your organization.

For example, if you chose “expertise” as one of your key brand values, Moser suggests thinking through and writing down how it defines you and why you think it’s relevant. Something like:

“Expertise – Every message we communicate should be grounded in facts. Every solution should be actionable and relevant to the lives of our customers. We need to communicate that we have the ability and the power to get things done.”

or

“Direct – Our business model is direct and so is our personality. That means we’re relentlessly honest, straightforward, and we ‘tell it like it is.’ We don’t go through middlemen to sell our product, or go through metaphors, analogies, or euphemisms to make our point. We state each message simply and directly.”

Collect what everyone’s written and distribute the document to everyone on your team. Discuss the interpretations, especially if there are any conflicting ones. Think about what’s been written, and talk about what needs to change in your organization to in order for these descriptions to stay real and meaningful.

And don’t pack them away on a shelf somewhere. The more you refer to these brand values and what they mean to you, the more relevant your new brand essence will become.

Tags: brand essence, branding, brand relevance, Mike Moser, key brand messages, brand values

es•sence [es-uhns] noun
1. the basic, real, and invariable nature of a thing or its significant individual feature or features: Freedom is the very essence of our democracy.
5. Philosophy. the inward nature, true substance, or constitution of anything, as opposed to what is accidental, phenomenal, illusory, etc.

Okay, so you’ve run the Perception Balancing process described in the previous post and you think you have a pretty good handle on your brand essence. Depending on who you’re talking to and what process you use to arrive at it, your brand essence may encompass your brand character, your brand personality, and/or your brand values — the related, sometimes overlapping subsets of the essence of your brand. You can divide the phrases that describe your brand into these subsets to better understand how they interrelate and form the basis for your brand communication, but that’s a subject for another day. For now, let’s just look at the five or six descriptive phrases that resulted from the Perception Balancing process, and run them through a few tests to make sure they really work for you as a good, solid brand essence.

The Tombstone Test
You’ve heard this one before. Think about your organization being gone — what would you want written on the organization’s tombstone? Can you imagine each of your descriptions being something you’d want engraved on the tombstone? Are the descriptions memorable enough that you’d want your brand to be known for them after it’s gone?

The “I’ll really miss their ______________” Test
This is a variation of the Tombstone Test. Think about your organization going out of business — what would your clients say they’d miss about you? Would they miss the five or six descriptive phrases you came up with, or would they miss something else? Would they really miss your professionalism, or would they miss how easy you are to work with more? If new phrases come to mind when doing this test that are more important than the original phrases, consider substituting.

The Banker Test
This test helps weed out descriptions that you may like because they’re trendy or edgy (and they may indeed be you), but are just not that important when push comes to shove, and they won’t stand the test of time. Imagine you’re sitting in front of your banker asking for a huge loan because your organization is on the verge of collapse. You’ve got to convince him that your company is worth the money you’re asking for — your survival depends on it — and you must speak and act in ways that represent your brand essence. Your descriptions should hold up to this kind of scrutiny — as he locks his steely gaze on you, and demands to know why he should trust you, is it really so important to be “irreverent?” Depending on your organization and your customers, perhaps it is, and now’s the time to make sure.

The Senate Subcommittee Test
If the Banker Test isn’t enough to make you sweat, try this one instead: imagine your organization is brought up to testify before a government subcommittee, and, as with the banker, you must speak and act in ways that represent your brand essence. This time, you’re under oath — can you still pull it off? Is this the way you want your brand to be represented on CNN for the entire world to see?

If you can come out of all four of these tests with your descriptive phrases intact, you’ve got a great basis for your brand essence. And if you learned some new insights, that’s great too. The bottom line is that an essence is, according to dictionary.com, “basic, real, and invariable,” it’s “the inward nature, true substance.” Getting to the core of your organization’s brand essence will bring you closer to your authentic brand, a brand that will stand the test of time, and help you to truly connect with your audiences.

Tags: brand essence, brand values, brand personality, brand character, branding, brand communication

Danielle Rodgers’ post on Small Business Branding got me thinking about brand essence again. In her post, Danielle describes her “intricate and complex journey” to find the essence of her own brand, which had eluded her for a long time. Recently, Danielle came to a turning point when,

“Suddenly I realised that the key to my brand’s essence is not out there at all; it’s in here, in me. Here I was thinking it was ‘all about my customers’ and therefore separate from me. I was trying to find the essence of my brand in other people. Nice aha moment.”

It sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? But for many companies, this simple truth remains elusive as they continue to search for the branding Holy Grail, out there. Me, I’m sticking with Danielle.

Read Danielle’s post to find out how she went about her search for meaning. Then come back here and I’ll walk you through one of the tactics we use to dig deep.

Perception balancing
Here’s a simple process anyone can use to learn more about the essence of their brand.

Make a list of descriptive terms that describe how you think your company is currently perceived by your clients and your industry. Take your time, list as many as you can think of, and be honest — list positive and negative perceptions. Use words like “professional,” “caring,” “accurate,” “expensive,” “out of date,” “old school,” “cool,” “expert,” “has integrity,” “slow,” “average,” “best in class,” “friendly,” and “inexperienced.” Ask other people in your company to add to the list. Ask vendors and clients (ones who will give you an honest assessment) if you’ve covered everything.

Then make a second list with terms describing how you’d like your company to be perceived by your clients and your industry. Again, take your time. Some of these terms will be the same as the ones on the first list, and some will drop off. Be honest, and be slightly aspirational, reach a bit — you may think of some descriptions that don’t fit you quite yet, but that you’d like to work towards, go ahead and put them on your list.

Now compare your lists. Study them. You can see where there’s work to be done. You’ll be able to see the negatives that are holding your brand back — do your best to dispel them as quickly as you can! Separate these negatives and post them where you can see them with the headline “Negatives to dispel” or “Things we are not” to remind you to shake these negatives. Right now, they’re part of your brand essence. You may need to smile more or communicate better or even change your strategy, but it will be worth it to get these monkeys off of your back.

Now look at the positives, especially the positives that show up on both lists. These descriptions will give valuable hints to your brand essence — your brand character and your brand personality. They describe not only what you want your company to be, but what your company most likely already is. Cull this list to the best of the best, to five or six descriptions that are the most important to you. Separate these descriptions and post them with the headline “Our brand essence” or “Things we are” to remind you to always think, speak, and act in these ways. Over time, you can tweak these descriptions a bit, but most likely you’ll find that by beginning to take them on consciously, you really do own them, and they’ll become more conscious parts of your authentic brand.

“. . . in the truest sense, the synonym for brand is ‘reputation.’
It’s the power of a blend of ideas, a sense of identity,
and it helps consumers make decisions in a crowded marketplace.”

— Robert Friedman, formerly with AOL

Next time: Ways to test your brand essence

Tags: Danielle Rodgers, brand essence, perception balancing, branding

If you’re like most organizations, you don’t have a real point of differentiation.

You’ve got great products and services, but you just don’t seem to be “connecting” with all of your customers. Some of your customers like you well enough, but they’re not actually raving fans, and they’re just as likely to defect if something less expensive or more interesting comes along. And who knows if they recommend you? They probably don’t, especially if you don’t regularly ask them to.

Your customers feel distanced from you — they feel like they’re doing business with an organization rather than with people, so they don’t mind leaving you for a competitor, and they figure you won’t mind — after all, they don’t really know you, you’re just a business. What’s the harm? The harm is you can’t afford to lose the customers you worked so hard to get.

You just don’t stand out from the competition — and the competition is getting tougher. It’s hard to really describe what makes you different or better, isn’t it? You think your customer service is better, and that should be enough for customers to buy and to stay with you. But it’s not and they don’t. You think you really care about your customers, and they should recognize that and continue to buy from you. But they don’t recognize it, and they leave when something else catches their eye.

And yet some organizations create raving fans, stand out in the marketplace, and demand premium prices.

Why is that? It’s the power of their brands.

Done correctly, branding can do more than anything else to plant a preference for your organization, product, or service firmly in the mind of your customers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, November, 2006, a neurological study at the University of Munich in Germany using MRI technology to monitor brain activity has revealed evidence that strong brands have a larger impact on the brain than lesser-known brands, regardless of what product the brand is known for.

While the study is preliminary and as of yet unpublished, the information revealed suggests that it’s not the product — like cars, which people expect to be associated with positivity and self-identification — that evokes positive brain activity. It appears to be the strength of the brand, and the positive emotions tied to it.

This is exciting proof that organizations can work to strengthen the power of their brands, proof that a strong brand can be a powerful differentiator. It’s proof that you can do much to differentiate your organization, if only you will take control of your brand.

For more information on neuromarketing studies, download our Neuromarketing special report.

Tags: neuromarketing, brand differentiation, strong brands, power of brands

Does your brand connect with customers to give your organization a sustainable competitive advantage?

Take this 10 point quiz to find out:

1. Do you have all the customers or clients that you need?
2. Are your customers “raving fans?”
3. Are your customers really loyal to your product or service, coming back again and again?
4. Do your customers recommend you to their friends, family, and associates?
5. Will your customers go out of their way to purchase from you?
6. Do your customers feel that you not only offer a great product or service, but also feel a real connection to your organization — that you understand them and will take care of them?
7. Can your customers easily describe what’s great about your product or service?
8. Can your customers recognize you easily in the marketplace?
9. Do your customers find you easy to do business with?
10. Are your customers willing to pay a premium price for your product or service?

If you can answer yes to the above questions, you’ve got a real point of differentiation — a sustainable competitive advantage at a time when it’s increasingly difficult for consumers to tell one product or service from another. If you can’t, you’ve got some work to do on your brand.

Tags: brands, branding, brands that connect, competitive advantage, raving fans, customer loyalty

Building web brands is different than building brands that don’t primarily live on the Web, according to Gerry McGovern. I took a look around the online branding articles at the Dey Alexander Consulting site mentioned in my April 14th Online Brand Experience post, and found Gerry McGovern’s Building Successful Brands on the Web. Take a look at the rest of his site, too, he’s got some interesting things to say.

McGovern contends that instead of focusing primarily on the visual aspects of the brand, as is often the case when building a brand with traditional marketing and advertising methods, successful web brands need to be built for function.

A web brand, like Google and Yahoo, exists primarily on the Web, isn’t seen anywhere else, and is concerned with helping people do things — that’s what they’re there for. Unlike offline brands, which can more effectively use the customary marketing elements of brand building, with promotion of mood, color, and feeling used consistently and repeatedly, a web brand is, first and foremost, functional.

In a global study conducted by Interbrand, the Google brand had the most impact on people’s lives in 2002. While we pretty much take what Google can do for us for granted today, it still impacts our lives tremendously. The Google brand works so well for us because it does a great job of helping us find what we’re looking for. It takes an anti-marketing, anti-advertising approach — it’s bare, minimal, and absolutely functional. It does what we want it to do, period.

Here’s how this plays out with web visitors: Web brands get stronger every time a reader succeeds in carrying out a task on the website, and the brand is diminished every time a reader is frustrated by a task on the website.

Offline brands can learn a lot from web brands in their web strategies, keeping in mind the impact that Google and Yahoo have had on the Web experience. People are used to instant gratification on the Web. They go to the Web for research, to find things, and very seldom are willing to wait through much superfluous chest pounding.

The very tools and approaches that make branding work offline are often drawbacks on the Web. Large compelling images take up space, can be slow to download, and frustrate impatient users in search of specifics. Catch phrases are of little use to someone who is looking for concrete information quickly.

Good web brands use accurate, well-written, and up-to-date content to build the brand. They use navigation, search processes, and ease of purchase to build the brand. And they don’t put anything in the way for their readers to trip over or slow them down while they’re there.

Well, this has given me some food for thought, how about you?

Tags: Gerry McGovern, online branding, brand experience, web brands, Google, Yahoo, offline brands, brand building, Interbrand, web experience, web function, web usability