Do marketers know the meaning of the word "branding?"

Robert Rosenthal over at Freaking Marketing believes that some marketers just don't understand the term "branding."

Either that or he builds a strong case as to why designers and ad agencies purposefully misuse the term.
Check out his post.

Book review: Growing Small Businesses into Big Brands

Jack Sims has pulled together a great mix of theory and his own real-life examples in this book. His "brand to the bone" concept nicely illustrates that gaining a big share of your customers' hearts and minds is essential to gaining a larger share of their wallets, not in a deceptive way but in a way that benefits them so they willingly purchase your brand. You capture hearts and minds by being meaningfully different.

All this gets to the heart of it all. An authentic brand that delivers real value and that stands for unique benefits will be rewarded.

Don't overlook the questionnaires and checklists at the end of the book!

On my "Professional Marketer Investment Scale";
($-Poor investment, $$$$$-Great investment)

Rating: $$$$

Tropicana-Twitter ad campaign

I recently interviewed Leslie Bradshaw, Public Affairs Communications Manager at New Media Strategies who created a novel advertising campaign tied to Twitter for Tropicana.

Q: I noticed an advertising campaign at http://www.anorangeamerica.com that seems unique.  This campaign seemed to be tied to an analysis political talk on Twitter during the recent U.S. presidential campaign.  What exactly are you doing behind the scenes?

A: Not to totally geek-out here, buuut, to make it work, we take a sample from Twitter every 30 seconds and analyze them in 50-result batches for associations and term matches. They accumulate for 5 minutes and then we flush sample aggregates to the database. So the database has samples from when it started through present in 5-minute granularity. As new terms trend, they begin to populate on the X-axis. The system back end will be implemented using a Java-based stack and PostgreSQL RDBMS. The presentation will be implemented using Flash targeted to Player 9, standards-compliant XHTML/CSS targeted to modern browser versions with significant market share (Safari 2+, Firefox 2+, IE 6+).

Q: For those who might not be familiar, what exactly is Twitter and what is a Tweet?

A: I could go on and on about Twitter, because I love it and think it is an extremely useful tool... I think founders Evan Williams, Biz Stone and the Twitter team are incredibly brilliant for creating and harnessing the simplicity of what is human nature to us all - our ability to produce short, random, meaningful, silly, insightful, introspective, engaging and/or social thoughts. Hopefully this isn't too much...

Broadly ~ Twitter is a new communications application that allows users to send short updates to other users via the Internet, Blackberry, cell phone, and instant messenger (IM) applications.  Generally considered a "micro-blog," the application allows a user to send a text-based message, of up to 140 characters in length, to other users who have requested to receive updates them from that user.  When you post, it is called a "tweet" and the act of posting on Twitter is "tweeting." It's growing in popularity due to its simple, easy to use, and stripped down format. As of October 2008, there are over 2 million registered accounts.  

Specifically ~ Twitter is a social and efficient way of staying in touch with friends and contacts (who also use Twitter, of course) and meeting new folks. It is also provides an outlet to life-stream your thoughts, however short or random they may be, in a public or private (protected) web profile.

Q: How do you "see" or gain access to what people are talking or tweeting about and how do you tie that to the Tropicana brand?

A: There are a couple of ways you can do this, depending on your end goal. If you are a general reader and consumer, just interested in finding others talking about a subject in which you are interested, we recommend ,http://search.twitter.com/. If you are a developer, or an organization, wanting to tap into the data and build a site like we did with Tropicana ("An Orange America"), you would want to connect to the Application Programming Interface (API), which gives you access to the raw data (in this case, the short messages, aka: "tweets") and allows you to perform whatever analysis you would like.

Q: Could this technology be easily targeted to other conversations?

A: Absolutely. You can target conversations through the search engine I listed above and through the general API data I also just mentioned. The key is to make it both useful and authentic -- it is important to understand and participate in the space before just diving in. That is why working with the New Media Strategies Public Affairs team, all of whom are on Twitter; Tropicana was able to further leverage their ingenious idea.

Q: What implications might this have for branding efforts and what would one have to do to make sure it is not intrusive but rather something that advances the conversation or the dialog?

A: The great thing about Tropicana is that when they came to us, they really wanted to find a way to help add value to the social media community and larger political dialog going on around Election Day. As you can see in their An Orange America video, they have a non-partisan, 100% orange approach ("We're not red. We're not blue. We're 100% orange."), which allows the data to speak for itself. Not to overdo it on the juice puns here, but as a political blogger myself, it is refreshing :)  Overall, they felt that building a Twitter application would help make sense by "freshly squeezing" the massive amounts of data (aka: tweets) that would be posted this week.

Q: What else should we know about this technology?

A: At a workshop over the summer at the Online News Association, we shared something then that I would like to share again: Twitter is a natural extension of short-form communication that humans have always used to get their points across, like psalms, Haiku, hieroglyphics, graffiti, slang and text messaging. It is just the most recent - and technologically evolved - carnation of communicating. I want to challenge people to see it as a natural medium and tool, not something highly technical or alienating.
 
Q: What type of brands authentically lend themselves to this type of alignment to conversations on twitter?

A: I would say news brands lend themselves the most to twitter -- Fox News, C-SPAN, Huffington Post -- because they naturally generate a lot of discussion as it is. Twitter is a good way to create a conversation about those stories to make them much more interactive.

Thanks for the story behind the campaign. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of this type of advertising in the future.

Help restore my faith in the profession

All you marketers out there, please, please help restore my faith in the profession. Please reply with your comments and answer this one simple question:

What is the goal of marketing?

Book review: Meaningful Marketing

Over the weekend I finished the book, "Meaningful Marketing: 100 Data-Proven Truths and 402 Practical Ideas for Selling MORE with LESS Effort" by Doug Hall. This book should be on every marketer's bookshelf.

Packed with solid information on how to sell more product and services, Doug Hall backs up his assertions with research-backed studies and data to assure the reader that these truths fall out from hard data. Experienced marketers might not learn anything new, but they probably will. At the very least the book will have you revisiting sacred cows and "common knowledge" about what you think you know about marketing and sales tactics that elicit customer response.

While probably not meant to be read from start to finish as a typical marketing work, this book belongs in your library as a handy reference. Packed with common (and not-so-common) consumer insights, the book is arranged with each left-hand page being a "truth" and the accompanying right-hand page listing several practical ideas to support those truths. Everything is well-indexed and easily findable.

Perhaps the most valuable gem of the whole book is the author's complete list of all references that support each truth so that you can track down the primary research or journal articles that the author researched. This list alone is worth the price of the book if you are looking for jumping off points to dig deeper into any of the topics.

On my "Professional Marketer Investment Scale":
($-Poor investment, $$$$$-Great investment)

Rating: $$$$ 1/2

Internal and External Brand Alignment

Mind the Gap - Are You Bridging Your External and Internal Branding?
By Laura Pasternak

You've seen it on tee shirts. Perhaps you've heard this British proper announcement on the London tube. But have you considered the importance of minding the gap between your internal and external branding efforts? If you haven't, prospects, clients and shareholders could very easily be get caught in the gap between brand promise and delivery.

No matter how brilliant your external brand communications, if the brand promise isn't validated through your internal efforts then it could all be for naught. By creating, implementing and maintaining consistency, you will build a stronger brand and, in the process, instill greater trust and customer loyalty.

The Pitfalls of Not Minding the Gap

Not heeding the gap can spell disaster for a company. All too often the focus of brand building is external - the sales force, marketing collateral and public relations efforts - with little attention given to internal brand touch points - company policies, practices, customer relationship management and employee protocol. Managing your brand both internally and externally is critical to creating a successful brand. When customers see a gap between what you tout and what you deliver, the mixed messages can have an adverse effect on your brand.

Brand is influenced by every contact you have with your customer. Does your customer's experience with your product support team align with your company's brand message? Is the experience created by the sales representative mirrored in the execution of the service? Does your collections department communicate the same brand attributes in their interactions with customers? Examine the consistency of your message, tone and action among all internal and external customer contacts. Chances are you'll find some sort of gap. Effective brand-driven companies focus on closing this gap.

But even some of today's most well-known brands face the challenge of effectively minding the gap. One high-profile example was internet service provider, America Online (AOL). On its corporate website, America Online (AOL) stated its commitment to creating an easy and painless experience for customers:

"We do all these things and much more because at AOL, we are dedicated to the simple premise that our members and consumers deserve the best possible - and most valuable - online experience available anywhere."

However, allegations among the company's customers suggested that AOL's external branding was not consistent with the company's internal operations. The web site, consumeraffairs.com, revealed AOL users' discontent with several of the company's policies and practices, citing extreme difficulty in canceling accounts, rude customer service representatives, unauthorized charges and even double billing.

If you reread the above corporate vision statement, there is clearly a disconnect between the message and the experiences of customers who posted complaints at ConsumerAffairs.com. This is a classic example of how actual practices fail to support a company's marketing rhetoric. AOL's message said their customers deserved the best experience (rhetoric). However, delayed cancellation techniques, antagonistic, and often difficult, attitudes of some customer service representatives and frustrating cancellation problems (actual practices) contradicted the company's promotional language.

As a result, customers were canceling their AOL accounts by the thousands, with statistics showing 800,000 cancellations in one quarter alone. Nearly 4,000 former users wrote ConsumerAffairs.com about problems with AOL and difficulties in canceling services. One former customer went so far as to record and post on the Internet his conversation with AOL customer service, further compounding the negative perceptions about the AOL brand.

The company responded with this statement:

"At AOL, we have zero tolerance for customer care incidents like this - which is deeply regrettable and also absolutely inexcusable," said AOL spokesman Nicholas Graham. "The employee in question violated our customer service guidelines and practices, and everything that AOL believes to be important in customer care," he said.

Despite the company's self-proclaimed "zero tolerance" for such incidents, the public perception that this was not an isolated incident didn't garner much sympathy for the company or positively support the company's desired brand position. Obviously, there had become a widening gap between AOL's internal and external brand management efforts.

Minding the Gap, Maintaining the Bridge

The above example demonstrates that even when you think there are no gaps between your internal and external branding, both require ongoing review, maintenance and careful management. Even with "strong safeguards" and "rigorous internal and external compliance methods" in place to help mind the gap, the reality is it could happen to any of us.

Brand management in an ongoing process that must be adopted by your entire organization. The key to ensuring you deliver on your brand promise is to empower your employees to be brand ambassadors. Have them participate in the process of establishing brand guidelines that identify how the company's brand is actualized at each touch point with a customer (from the initial sale through delivery and ongoing support). Then, on a continual basis, implement and monitor checks and balances to identify and close any gaps between your brand promise and brand delivery.

What can you do to ensure that you don't become the next news story? Here are some practical tips for minding the gap:

* Align your internal operational practices with your external brand message. From the president and CEO to the customer service representative or maintenance person, every employee must understand, articulate and implement that brand consistently. They must recognize that their actions and interactions with customers are what create the value of the brand. They must be brand ambassadors in everything they do. Forgo this crucial step and contradictions between your brand and how your employees deliver on it will create doubt in prospects' minds as well as in those of your customers, partners, shareholders and the public.

* Measure and monitor customer experiences. In essence, we don't know what we don't know. That's why measurement and customer feedback is critical to managing your brand. Whatever you promise to deliver to the customer, you must ensure that the measures are in place to monitor customers' perceptions of your delivery on that promise. AOL wanted their clients to have the best experience possible, yet the actions of its customer service representatives challenged that premise. By instituting measures for feedback, as well as establishing internal checks and balances, you can ensure that you deliver on your brand promise and close any potential gaps that could erode the trust and loyalty of your customers.

* Be objective when minding the gap. It's human nature to want to play up our strengths and downplay or ignore our weaknesses. But examining our Achilles' heel is as essential as understanding what we do right. The best way to do this is to be as objective as possible. Allow customers and vendors to give you essential feedback, even if it is negative. And, instill a sense of self-regulation in your employees. Proactively addressing customer-identified brand gaps will pay off tenfold.

* Walk a mile in their shoes. Selling in the field with the sales force, sitting at the customer service help desk or working the warehouse dock for a day, will give you a better understanding of where your company excels in delivering on its brand as well as where it is falling short. By understanding the intricacies of the interactions various functions have with your customers, you can help establish the procedures and measures for ongoing assessment and management of your brand.

* Motivate your employees to build and maintain the brand. Plain and simple, if your employees have a vested interest in the brand process, they are far more likely to uphold the company values and brand. They must understand the importance of their role and be motivated to act with the brand in mind at all times. Have employees work together to establish the framework for how they will embody the brand and then implement a plan to get all employees on board. Publicly recognizing employees for brand-driven actions or solutions is one way to begin to build brand into the culture of your organization.

Like anything else, your brand is only as strong as your weakest link. If that weakest link is the bridge between your internal and external branding efforts, then your brand won't be sustainable. By instituting checks and balances and consistently reevaluating them, the link between your company and your customers can become a powerful and lasting connection.

Don't let your clients, shareholders, partners or the public fall through the cracks. Mind the gap by building and maintaining a solid bridge between your external brand message and your internal processes for delivering on that brand message. By doing so, you strengthen the commitment and loyalty of your customers, in turn strengthening your bottom line.

Laura Pasternak is President of MarketPoint, LLC, a brand management firm that helps businesses improve results by identifying, integrating and managing customer-driven brand equities and strategies. Visit http://www.yourmarketpoint.com or call 1.866.21POINT toll-free to learn more.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Laura_Pasternak http://EzineArticles.com/?Mind-the-Gap---Are-You-Bridging-Your-External-and-Internal-Branding?&id=1463136