For organizations to thrive in today’s hyper-competitive marketplace, leaders have to learn how to build a culture of trust and openness. Here are four strategies to help in this regard:
- Encourage risk taking – Leaders need to take the first step in extending trust to those they lead. Through their words and actions, leaders can send the message that appropriate and thoughtful risk taking is encouraged and rewarded. When people feel trusted and secure in their contributions to the organization, they don’t waste energy engaging in CYA (cover your “assets”) behavior and are willing to risk failure. The willingness to take risks is the genesis of creativity and innovation, without which organizations today will die on the vine. Creating a culture of risk taking will only be possible when practice #2 is in place.
- View mistakes as learning opportunities – Imagine that you’re an average golfer (like me!) who decides to take lessons to improve your game. After spending some time on the practice range, your instructor takes you on the course for some live action and you attempt a high-risk/high-reward shot. You flub the shot and your instructor goes beserk on you. “How stupid can you be!” he shouts. “What were you thinking? That was one of the worst shots I’ve seen in my life!” Not exactly the kind of leadership that encourages you to take further risks, is it? Contrast that with a response of “So what do you think went wrong? What will you do differently next time?” Garry Ridge, CEO of WD-40, characterizes these incidents as “learning moments,” where planning and execution come together, a result is produced, and we incorporate what we learned into our future work.
- Build transparency into processes and decision making – Leaders can create a culture of trust and openness by making sure they engage in transparent business practices. Creating systems for high involvement in change efforts, openly discussing decision-making critieria, giving and receiving feedback, and ensuring organizational policies and procedures and applied fairly and equitably are all valuable strategies to increase transparency. On an individual basis, it’s important for us leaders to remember that our people want to know our values, beliefs, and what motivates our decisions and actions. Colleen Barrett, President Emeritus of Southwest Airlines, likes to say that “People will respect you for what you know, but they’ll love you for your vulnerabilities.”
Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action. Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.
Roy Disney said, “You need branding when your product has nothing to offer.” Roy’s uncle, Walt, invented Mickey Mouse and created the Disney empire. At the time, the word “branding” was reserved only for cowboys branding herds of cattle by the fiery iron.
The word “branding” is dangerously overused. Many people use branding as a cure for all kinds of problems in all kinds of businesses. To lay claim to a deeper understanding of this elementary word, branding agencies all over the world have developed some cute variations of it, from “emotional branding” to “primal,” “sensory,” “musical,” “internal,” “external,” “holistic,” “vertical,” “abstract,” “nervous” and all the way to “invisible” branding. However, to see these distinctions, you will need special 3D spectacles.
The list of branding types is almost like the three MIT wizards who took an academic conference for a ride by submitting a paper in all fake jargon: “Rooter: A Methodology for the Typical Unification of Access Points and Redundancy.” Their paper was accepted.
Haphazard Branding
There are hundreds of such branding terms pointing to the same thing. Let’s analyze and see how this historical process of branding ownership marks on animals got transformed into a word circus, bending the state of mind among corporations, institutions and many governments.
Branding is often presented as a culturally, emotional or lifestyle crazy, sugarcoated packaging process. Sometimes it is like rap music, with spinning colors or psychedelic pastel overtones accompanied with hip-hop idea drivers. Other times it comes with esoteric concepts to camouflage the products or services just long enough to get the customers’ attention. Most of the time, it comes as juicy ideas under some new blanket term of branding that is designed to create a safe and secure feeling for the corporation while waiting for the thunder from the charge of anxious customers.
For some reason, if the highly anticipated traffic doesn’t show up, then the term is changed immediately to the likes of “primal branding,” with a twist or a new style dance added to the circus. The same single promotional process is re-named repeatedly.
The idea is that when share prices fall, call the branding team and let it apply its “fiscal branding” to mail fancy brochures to shareholders. When products fail, let the “visual branding” make logos makeover, and when elevators don’t work, give it to the “yo-yo branding” unit, as they are real experts in north and south mobility. Floor please.
Today, branding is a mixed bag of basic, traditional advertising tools, simply waxed and packaged to appear as intellectual advice with an expensive price tag. It is targeted to fit any hungry frame of mind, and is designed to make corporations feel ever so comfortable with terms like “verbal,” “digital,” “audio,” “smelly,” “silent” or “loud” branding, as all these terms are designed to offer great safety and invisible lifelines to sinking ships. But does it work?
Just Promotional Tools
At times it does, as corporations do need solid and real branding. However, it most often fails, frequently due to lack of substance, quality, intelligence and experience. What is now being offered in the name of branding includes perfumed stationery at the banks, as sensory tickles, jingles and chimes for the funeral parlor — just raw promotional tricks.
These approaches fail because they are just basic promotional tools and skills and because they are trendy quick fixes. Branding has been defined so many times by so many experts that it is almost useless to redefine it. Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.
The presentation of fancy fireworks at a huge marina as a big branding exercise might be merely ordinary to some other company. Hundreds of hired people walking on a busy street with their foreheads painted with the names of products might be kinky, tacky or too smart, all depending on the culture and mental level of the client.
Pregnant mothers are being pooled to place ads on their round, shiny stomachs as part of “tummy branding.” Some argue that this is how news is created. To some, this is “desperate branding” in action, to others it is getting the word out at any cost.
Welcome to “guaranteed-to-fail branding,” a process that ensures a top spot on the list of branding failures. These projects are sometimes called “reality branding.” There is no limit to these weird processes.
Most of the time, the creative powers overtake the process, and fancy jargon becomes the Band-Aid while the Laws of Global Corporate Image, Rules of Corporate Nomenclature and Name Identities, Cyber Domain Management, Principals of Marketing and Global Branding are all completely ignored as being too rigid, too serious and too formal.
Solid Training, Thorough Skills
Let’s face it, these branding rules are very hard to learn and very difficult to apply because they require solid training and thorough skills. Simple, raw promotional skills backed by big budget fireworks are only “accidental branding” at play, where everyone becomes happy as long as there is some noise. In the recent past, this is how “high volume” or “intense” branding got the center stage. Today, in this budgetless environment, it is only a dream for most agencies to get such mega breaks.
U.S. businesses are still very much overdosed with over-branding. Massive turnover in the advertising and branding industry, compounded by the Internet , e-commerce and outsourcing has created a large glut of branding consultants with too many faceless, nameless consulting services and Web sites.
The market is simply glutted. Western branding agencies are losing their grip by not producing world-class standards and are becoming a laughing stock by adopting, in a panic, monkey-see-monkey-do campaigns.
In reality, you definitely need proper branding today; the type is not the issue. However, first you must have something very good to offer. You also need highly specific and proven branding with highly tactical positioning skills, under proper corporate and brand name identity and image laws, rather than raw graphic and promotional tools.
‘Useless Branding?’
Empty concepts and poorly designed and beaten up products and services can’t be resurrected with some abstract branding terms along with some flashy campaigns. Big money spending will not buy big image anymore. It worked in the past, but times have changed. Today, the latest cyber-branding techniques are in big play. Corporations are opening up to a debate on this subject among senior management and ignoring the old, traditional branding methodologies.
As e-commerce matures by the minute, the masses of customers have successfully ignored the expensive blitzes and pretended to have some type of an early Alzheimer’s condition to justify their memory loss. Nothing sticks in mind any longer.
The blasted, useless messages are instantly forgotten. The 15-minute fame suggested by Andy Warhol is now only a 15-second blip on the global e-commerce landscape. What was previously shoved on 24-7 ad campaigns and lasted at least a year is now completely forgotten the very next day.
Should we now re-define branding all over again? Should this word be re-invented? How about “useless branding?” No, not yet.
– Naseem Javed
– 7-27-05
If you’re the head of your company, you have to be able to define not just what your company does, but why it does it.
Having difficulty? That’s normal. You can blame it on the way your brain works. The part of the brain that contains decision-making and behavior doesn’t control language, so when you’re asked questions about why you do what you do, it’s natural to get tongue-tied.
That’s where great leadership comes in. Leaders are required to put in to words what a group does; they’re required to cross over between the decision-making and behavior sphere and the language sphere. Leaders are great because they’re good at putting feelings into words that we can act upon.
So it’s up to you, as company leader, to define your “why.” Here are four reasons you should, if you want to survive as a company.
1. Your company’s “why” generates loyalty.
Apple can sell phones not simply because they have the smarts to make phones; every single one of their competitors can make phones too. What gives Apple permission to sell products beyond computers is the fact that it doesn’t define themselves as a computer company; rather, it is a company that stands for something. It represents an ideal: Down with “the man”; attack the status quo; champion the individual.
As long as Apple’s products are consistent with its cause, the company has the freedom to do things other companies cannot. Those who identify with Apple’s cause, in turn, will say they “love” Apple–even if they think it’s because of the products.
2. Organizational success (or failure) often dates from inception.
Most great companies were founded by a person or small group of people who personally suffered a problem, went through an difficult experience, or had someone close to them face a tricky challenge–and then came up with a solution or alternative. That original solution to that original problem is what they formed their company around; it’s why they do what they do.
Organizations that just look to capture some market opportunity, or are born out of some market research, often fail (or else need endless pools of money to keep going). No one has passion for a problem revealed in market research. People have passion to solve their own problems or to help those they care about.
Fortunately, it’s easy to build trust in a business relationship. Here are the rules, based on a conversation with a true expert in trust-building Jerry Acuff, author of The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success.
1. Be yourself.
Everybody on the planet has had unpleasant experiences with salespeople, and many have walked away from a sales situation feeling manipulated. So, rather than acting or sounding like a salesperson, simply act the way you would when meeting with a colleague.
2. Value the relationship.
If you want people around you to value having a relationship with you, you must truly believe that relationship building is important. You must also believe that you honestly have something of value to offer to the relationship.
3. Be curious about people.
People are drawn to those who show true interest in them. Curiosity about people is thus a crucial element of relationship building. Having an abiding fascination in others give you the opportunity to learn new things and make new connections.
4. Be consistent.
A customer’s ability to trust you is dependent upon showing the customer that your behavior is consistent and persistent over time. When a customer can predict your behavior, that customer is more likely to trust you.
5. Seek the truth.
Trust emerges when you approach selling as a way of helping the customer–so make it your quest to discover the real areas where the you can work together. Never be afraid to point out that your product or company may not be the right fit.
If employees are so connected, why is it so hard to communicate with them?
Over the years, I’ve developed a strategy tool that I call measurement-based planning. It may sound counterintuitive to start your plan at the end, but starting with defining what you ultimately want to measure—and how you will measure it—creates a more focused and concrete communication plan, with more quantifiable results.This is a twist on the traditional planning process that focuses on goals and objectives. Yes, the things you ultimately want to measure are the objectives. However, analyzing those objectives through a measurement lens from the outset forces you to think much more concretely.
For instance, one of the responsibilities in your job description may be to manage employee communication and to educate and motivate the company’s workforce. Instead of plunking down “educate and motivate employees” as an objective, start by asking yourself, “How would I know if employees were educated and motivated? How would I measure that?”
Consider three types of outcome measures, which social media measurement expert Kami Huyse has summed up neatly as the three As: awareness, attitude and action. In other words, what will your audience know, what will they believe, and what will they do?
When Should We Measure Communications?
Annual in depth surveys. Engagement and satisfaction surveys are typically carried out annually and can carry additional questions to provide some insights into the effectiveness of communications.
Prior to a specific communications campaign. In order to best understand the impact of communications, it is necessary to measure (awareness, attitudes, knowledge etc) before a campaign.
After a significant communication or campaign. It is important to measure the effectiveness and impact of significant communications programs and initiatives. This allows you to tailor internal communications to make sure they are effective and delivering quantifiable business value.
At intervals to track attitudes. Regular measurement helps communicators to gauge the ever shifting feelings and attitudes within an organization and to tailor messages to make sure they are appropriate to their audiences.
Pulse checks and temperature checks during and after specific events provide an insight into the issues and challenges an organization faces and to gather feedback on specific issues.
At intervals to benchmark and track against KPI’s. Measuring regularly against benchmarks and tracking trends over time provide an early warning of issues that may go undetected until they have escalated further.
What to Measure?
Determining which aspects of communication to measure will depend on the organization’s specific business and communication objectives. A few examples of useful communications measurements include:
It’s no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new rules of branding online.
1. Don’t just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. “Social media has one very important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another,” says Ed Roach, founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media versus traditional channels haven’t changed, but “the game sure got better and more interesting,” says Roach. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith, president and founder of S&A’s Cherokee, a public relations and marketing firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you’ll want to stay on top of what people are saying about you and your brand online. “Monitoring social media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days,” says Smith. Read more.
2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements companyBrainQUICKEN and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John Warrillow: “Unless you’re in one of a handful of businesses like public speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a personal brand, but it isApple’s product design that makes it such a valuable company. He isn’t jumping onFoursquare to develop his ‘personal brand.'” Read more.
3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building your brand, Inc.’s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them targeted pitches.
Why do weaker creative brains have a tendency to steal in broad daylight, and why is big money spent in promoting look-alike names, despite knowing full well that these names are stolen from other famous brands? Is it really human nature or just sheer stupidity? Unfortunately, some lack the basic skills for recognizing The Three Golden Rules of Naming.
Millions of entrepreneurs and thousands of account executives from major ad agencies all over the world are losing their sleep these days, most sleepwalking in search of new names with some extra “OO”s to ride along with the success of Google’s name.
During the day, they daydream about coming as close to this name as possible. Copy, modify or steal, who cares, as long it as sounds like Google. OOGLE, BOOGLE, FROOGLE, NOODLE, POODLE, CABOODLE, who cares? Just leave the Google brand name alone.
Look-Alike Names
Why do weaker creative brains have a tendency to steal in broad daylight, and why is big money spent in promoting look-alike names, despite knowing full well that these names are stolen from other famous brands? Is it really human nature or just sheer stupidity?
Unfortunately, they seriously lack the basic skills necessary to recognize The Three Golden Rules of Naming:
- Rule One: Do not hide under someone else’s umbrella, you will still get wet. Don’t be a copycat. It is very bad to copy or borrow from an established identity. A look-alike, sound-alike name, resembling the personality of a powerful, established, legendary name would be fruitless in the long run. Stay clear of legendary names.
In the current battle with Froogle, Google has the full right to challenge as the spelling of frugal was changed to appear like Google’s. Just like in the past, Apple, as in computers, faced copycats called, Pineapple, Banana and Cherry, but all perished in the copycat game. There were also Boohoos, UHOOs after Yahoo. Creative agencies love to steal. That is why there are ALTIVA, ALTIPA, AMTIVA, by the hundreds or ENGENT, PANGENT, and CANGENT. Ever wonder why most cars, beer, banking, medicine commercials are just the same? The corporations pay millions and do endless research that is all wasted in the end, as the resulting names or ads are always just the same. Surely, they are not all out of new ideas — or are they?
- Rule Two: Creativity is a spark of genius. Over-creativity can cause fire and damage. Don’t get too creative. Do not twist, bend, stretch, exaggerate, corrupt or modify alpha-structures to their extremes in naming. It might result in difficult, confusing, unpronounceable and only silly names. Avoid overly creative solutions. Studies have shown again and again that most ad commercials or strange branding themes and names, which surely win top awards from their peers, are simply shut out by customers. Next time, just check the top 10 most-awarded campaigns and their related sales performances. Here, raw creativity is rewarded whether it rings clients’ cash registers or not.
- Rule Three: Work locally, think globally and name universally. Do not short-change. No matter how small or local the project, think of the future and think of this small planet. A name is only good when it is free and clear to travel around the globe, without encountering translation problems or trademark conflicts. Name for the universe. Ninety-five percent of the corporate and major product names will fail a test of global protection and suitability. It is so easy to have a global name identity.
Clarity Needed
Global branding and rules of corporate branding in just about every sector are faced with the massive proliferation and commoditization of leading brands. This factor alone demands clarity in the name identity and a precise definition in the marketplace. Copying and stealing famous names is the first step to a big failure.
Globalization is at a serious crossroad. Nationalistic posturing is demanding localization of brands at a much faster rate. At the end of the day, global corporate nomenclature is the most sought after issue of any serious branding exercise. This process is not to be confused with name branding exercises that are primarily looking at global directories and stealing famous name ideas by changing a letter or two, all in the name of big branding.
Creative agencies should pack up all gear, leave the success of Google’s name alone, and wake up and smell the coffee.
By Naseem Javed
10-07-05
Deciding whether to grow or to remain hunkered down is a key issue for America’s business leaders today. Companies can do more to take their future into their own hands and move forward faster in the economy by addressing their brand. Here are five critical steps that a company can take to drive growth through branding.
1. Know where you are relative to the competition.
Continuously monitoring your competition will help identify where you are today and set the direction for the future. It will help to determine whether your positioning is still unique or if it needs to evolve to better separate yourself from the pack. It will also gauge the momentum of your corporate brand on multiple attributes. Familiarity and favorability measures versus your industry and the competition can provide key strategies for future growth.2. Develop a long-term five-year brand strategy.
Your brand strategy should support your business strategy. Base the branding budget on what it will take to achieve specific revenue and asset growth goals. Branding is an investment, so establishing long-term goals today is critical for future success.3. Communicate to the world.
Show that you are serious about your growth plans. Demonstrate how you are retooling your brand to reflect a current look at who you are. You might refresh your logo or your brand identity. Whatever you do, communicate your new brand position to both internal and external audiences.
How much planning has your organization dedicated in enhancing (or, God forbid, establishing) a creative corporate culture?
First, let’s get a grip on the “creative” in creative corporate culture. Creativity isn’t just for design firms, art studios and elementary craft projects. Creativity and creative thought is necessary for all agencies and communication professionals who seek innovative strategies for their clients. Consider your organization’s best and brightest idea—was there not a light bulb of creativity that popped on (even flickered) that lead you down the path of project righteousness?
It’s also important to recognize that culture comes from the people—it is the people. Think about the individuals within your organization—what are their personalities like? Who are they outside of work? What tickles their fancy? All of these things lend to the culture of your organization, and ultimately your agency’s product. Once we begin tapping into these quirks, culture begins to form.
As daunting as the idea of a creative corporate culture may seem, fear not my fellow PR and marcom professionals. If you are one of the bold and daring to take on the challenge of building said culture in the New Year, here are a few tips for your right brain to digest:
1. Get a desk tchotchke, already. Culture is built by sharing parts of our personality with those around us—what better place for that than your workspace? If your personality could be personified by something small that fits on your desk, what would it be? Find that thing, embrace it and share it!
2. Build a community space. Forget the archaic days of water cooler chats. People like to hang in hip spaces—gather ‘round a Wii, create a community bulletin board or have a reading nook filled with industry related publications. As the saying goes, “if you build it, culture will come.”
3. Play games and buy toys. Incorporate games (and yes, even toys) into traditional office activities. Play a round of Apples to Apples before a staff meeting, or leave baskets of building blocks around the office. Using different parts of the brain is important to creativity and improving the overall quality of our ideas.
4. Find a platform and give back. A surefire way to build corporate culture is engaging team members in charitable activities—it feels good to give back, and when you do it as a group it creates unique bonds and fun memories. Find a kooky charitable activity in your town and make a day of it!
5. Eat, drink and be creative. The easiest way to enhance an organization’s culture is eating together. Consider a monthly potluck where staff can bring their favorite fares for teammates to enjoy. Encourage exotic recipes and fanciful presentations—these always create a buzz around the office.
It’s no longer enough to have a sleek website, social-media presence, and consistent brand aesthetic online. The new rules of branding your business on the Web have a lot less to do with presentation, and a lot more to do with interaction. In order to bring you up to speed, Inc.com has compiled nine of the most innovative and ingenious tips from articles, guides, and interviews in Inc. and Inc.com over the past year. These are the new rules of branding online.
1. Don’t just start the conversation.
Be an integral and evolving part of it. “Social media has one very important perspective to share with brand management—the conversation. Like branding, social media is all about the conversation and building effective relationships. They are perfectly suited to one another,” says Ed Roach, founder of The Brand Experts, a brand management consultancy in West Leamington, Ontario, the author of The Reluctant Salesperson, a free e-book available at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca. The rules for brand messaging through new media versus traditional channels haven’t changed, but “the game sure got better and more interesting,” says Roach. It’s not enough to have a Facebook page or a Twitter account, you must participate in the conversation by making regular posts and replying to direct messages from your customers. Ron Smith, president and founder of S&A’s Cherokee, a public relations and marketing firm in Cary, North Carolina, agrees, adding that you’ll want to stay on top of what people are saying about you and your brand online. “Monitoring social media is a must for all companies. Social media has shortened the time frame for company responses to complaints or accusations. These days, companies need to acknowledge any issues and control the messaging in a matter of minutes instead of hours or days,” says Smith. Read more.2. Either keep your personal brand out of it…
So you have 10,000 Twitter followers. Does it matter to your customers? Tim Ferriss, the entrepreneur behind the sports nutritional supplements companyBrainQUICKEN and author of The 4-Hour Workweek, told Inc.com contributor John Warrillow: “Unless you’re in one of a handful of businesses like public speaking, I think managing and growing a personal brand can be a huge distraction for company founders. I see all of these entrepreneurs trying to collect Twitter followers, and it reminds me of a matador waving a red flag in front of a bull. In this case, the founders are the bull. The bullfighter moves the flag away, and the bull comes up with nothing but air. Steve Jobs has a personal brand, but it isApple’s product design that makes it such a valuable company. He isn’t jumping onFoursquare to develop his ‘personal brand.'” Read more.3. …or dive in and make all the headlines you can.
Appearing in the media as a source of expertise can go a long way toward building your brand, Inc.’s April Joyner reports. To gain press, identify media outlets that are most applicable to your particular areas of expertise and send them targeted pitches.
WHEN STEVE JOBS INTRODUCED THE IPHONE IN 2007, he said: “I skate to where the puck is going to be…not to where it’s been.” He often borrowed that saying from Walter Gretsky, who said it constantly to a boy named Wayne.
Poignant words that I resolutely believe drive breakthrough brands. It’s not enough merely to improve on your competition. You must innovate. To do that you must imagine where the puck will be, not where it is.
That said, if you were to ask me where the puck is going in social media, from a business perspective, I would say without hesitation: reputation management.
Mark my words. This will be a major growth industry over the next decade. Think about it: Companies invest thousands, millions, even tens of millions of dollars–and untold hours–building precious brand equity and erecting a beautiful brand image. And, it can be unraveled online in hours. Very few people, or companies, know the art of reputation management.
If you were considering a career to pursue, marinate over this one. If you can help companies listen to the online conversations about their brand, draw actionable insights from that, develop strategy and make measurable progress, you can write your own ticket. This is a brand new field. There are no “benchmark salaries” for this kind of job. It’s all “value based fees.” You could waltz right in and say: “Look, you spend $11 million a year on advertising to build your brand. You should pay me 10% of that to protect it.” If you are an expert in reputation management, you will be able to charge a fortune — and get it.
Deciding whether to grow or to remain hunkered down is a key issue for America’s business leaders today. Companies can do more to take their future into their own hands and move forward faster in the economy by addressing their brand. Here are five critical steps that a company can take to drive growth through branding.
1. Know where you are relative to the competition.
Continuously monitoring your competition will help identify where you are today and set the direction for the future. It will help to determine whether your positioning is still unique or if it needs to evolve to better separate yourself from the pack. It will also gauge the momentum of your corporate brand on multiple attributes. Familiarity and favorability measures versus your industry and the competition can provide key strategies for future growth.2. Develop a long-term five-year brand strategy.
Your brand strategy should support your business strategy. Base the branding budget on what it will take to achieve specific revenue and asset growth goals. Branding is an investment, so establishing long-term goals today is critical for future success.3. Communicate to the world.
Show that you are serious about your growth plans. Demonstrate how you are retooling your brand to reflect a current look at who you are. You might refresh your logo or your brand identity. Whatever you do, communicate your new brand position to both internal and external audiences.
Purchase Jim Gregory’s Turning Stakeholders Into Brand Champions – Replay
Sometimes it’s darkest just before the light. Here are 11 great articles to assess the times we’re in, and plan for better days.
Five C’s for Communicating in this Crunch
We’ve developed a gut-check list of “Five C’s” to help guide communications on dire economic subjects, from news releases to corporate Web sites to internal communications.
10 Tips for a Challenging Economic Environment
9. Communicate authentically. Strong leaders acknowledge the challenges they struggle with and, by doing so, build trust among followers. Rather than being a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of strength.
Marketing and PR tactics, budgets likely to change during recession
What companies don’t realize is their marketing budget will go a lot further and create much more buzz in a down market. As your competition pulls back, you should become much more aggressive. When you do, you will achieve top-of-mind status and grab market share as the economy stabilizes and will be able to remain on top during the next upswing in the economy.
Are You a Media Savvy Leader? How Agency Heads Can Boost Results in a Tight Economy
I think the inability of the PR business to really comprehend what Web 2.0 is about is shocking. So, real leaders get in there and they take a look at the trends in media and online and get active there. For example, if you’re going to offer a CEO blog, you have to be prepared to spend an hour a day doing it—not every other day. Also important is understanding and respecting the online world’s mindset of sharing—it’s all about developing conversations with constituents.
Your website can thrive in a recession
It is 14 times cheaper to allow a customer to complete a task on a website than to have the customer complete the same task over the phone. The Web is 35 times cheaper for completing such a task than a face-to-face interaction. Isn’t that a compelling business case for a website during a recession?
The range of possible futures confronting business is great. Companies that nurture flexibility, awareness, and resiliency are more likely to survive the crisis, and even to prosper.
Time to Reboot: What to Expect in Politics, Policy and PR in 2009
For those in consumer PR, this will be a tough year as product-side clients retrench. But if you are engaged in advocacy PR, public affairs or crisis communications, 2009 may be a robust year for your business, especially if you can hitch things to the “change” agenda in Washington and on Wall Street.
Social Media Begins Forcing the Totally Transparent Layoff
The combination of social media technology such as Twitter—where people post updates about themselves online at Twitter.com—and a cultural shift toward greater personal disclosure means more and more employees will document details of their dismissal, said Jennifer Benz, a communications consultant based in San Francisco.
Give Data a Human Touch to Weather the Economic Storm
The key, say many experts, is to use customer data and analytics for its original purpose: forging stronger customer relationships.
Market Smarter in 2009: Make the Right Choices
Remember two words: frequency, consistency. Even with finite resources, it’s vital to maintain a level of frequency and consistency. It is crucial to stay in front of your customers and prospects. You should never disappear for stretches at a time. If that means you need to focus marketing efforts on a few of your strongest market sectors, do it.
5 Lessons on Marketing for the Recession
Lesson: Keep hiring channels open and be pickier than ever. For anyone who hasn’t read Hard Times or any of the Studs Terkel interview compilations, they are an incredible insight into people’s attitudes and behaviors throughout history. I highly recommend
A client recently asked me if I had a tool that would help her track and collect measurement data during the course of a project. “Have you got a tool for that?”
It made me realize that when it comes to measurement we really harp on the planning skills. Which is crucial. But the collection, tracking, analysis and reporting are equally important. How many of us have planned our measurement, but never carried through?
So, here are some tips that will get your measurement skills up to speed across the entire measurement lifeline.
- Planning
- Target metrics that connect to business goals and prove communication success
- Find out what the organization is already collecting
- Determine the frequency of collection, approach of collection (e.g., survey, interview, electronic) and owner for each metric
- Collection and tracking
- Identify due dates for all the collection activity
- Determine all the collection logistics in advance so you don’t miss anything
- Automate what you can (e.g., invitations, reminders, electronic data reports)
- For longer-term efforts with multiple measurement points, document key data points and findings as they come in
- Analysis
- Identify the three most relevant findings
- Identify the most surprising finding
- Identify the findings that require additional follow up
- Categorize, count and analyze open-ended comments
- Consider the benefits of cross-tabulating some of your quantitative data
- Assess what worked well in the data collection process and what did not
- Reporting
- Understand the expectations and interests of the stakeholders to whom you are reporting
- Break out recommendations by short-term and long-term timing
- Identify those findings that best connect to goals
- Be realistic about how much you can present in the given time
- Determine which visuals and which words will be most useful to incorporate
- Identify the final call to action
- Anticipate questions and prepare a response
If you approach items two through four with the same diligence communicators typically approach item one, you’ll be more apt to follow through. And follow through means having more and better data, and more and better data means proving our value.
Proving our value through great measurement is one ingredient in the recipe for becoming a trusted advisor. Thinking strategically throughout the measurement lifeline is another. And, yes, we have tools for every step of the way.
Stacy Wilson, ABC, is president of Eloquor Consulting, Inc., in Lakewood, Colorado
Unless you’ve been holed up in a cave for the past few years, you’ve probably had some kind of brush with a quirky company called Zappos. You may be one of the millions of fanatically loyal customers who buy shoes from them over and over again. Or you may be a salivating investor who’s watched the company skyrocket from zero to over $1 billion in sales in less than 10 years. Or you may be like me – one of the lucky few who’ve had the rare opportunity to visit the corporate headquarters in Las Vegas and witness their wacky and wildly successful culture.
Why this Whimsical Workplace Works
Before I even entered the building, several “Zapponians” greeted our group of visitors outside with the kind of upbeat playfulness you’d only expect at someplace like Disneyland. (BTW, I’ve been to Disneyland, and they could learn a thing or two from Zappos).
You Can’t Fake Culture
It’s easy and appealing to subscribe to that kind of philosophy – and lots of organizations claim to live by it. But for most, it’s a shallow charade that shows up like a short-term promotional event. At Zappos, it’s the true essence and heartbeat of everything they do – and it’s captured wonderfully in the company’s annual “Culture Book.” It’s their traditional collection of stories gathered each year from employees, customers and vendors about their experiences with the company. In the 300-page 2010 edition, Hsieh makes a point that illustrates the emphasis they place on culture as a conscious business strategy. The company is very clear about its brand, and as Hseih puts it, “The brand is simply a lagging indicator of the culture.”
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
The basic idea behind “brand alignment” is pretty simple – When it comes to delivering on your marketing promises, make sure everyone in your organization knows what’s going on and they’re able to walk the talk. Living up to that ideal, though, isn’t simple at all. It takes a concerted effort to get everyone tuned in and turned on to the principles and practices that align the “do” with the “say.”
Promise Broken
One revealing way to test if an organization is living the brand is to observe how they deal with customer complaints. I recently had an experience with a new service I subscribed to online that told me a lot in a hurry about what they believe and how they operate.
Within an hour after subscribing, I got a notice that the first program would be broadcast that same evening. They described the event and what the participants would learn during the one-hour session. I didn’t want to miss it, but I already had another meeting scheduled. Reluctantly, I contacted that person and asked if we could reschedule for the following evening. She agreed, so I was set to take part in the new program
About halfway through it, they still hadn’t talked about the topic that was advertised. I was getting suspicious that I had been sold a bill of goods – that this was yet another company that promised one thing and delivered something else. By the end of the program, they still hadn’t discussed the topic they had promoted, and I was fuming. It had been a long day … I was tired … I had wasted an hour … and I had put off another meeting.
Customer Disappointed
I decided to share one of my Inside Out lessons with them in the form of a “strongly worded” e-letter to what I thought was some nebulous person in the ether-world. To my amazement, I got a reply the next morning from a sales manager named James, expressing regret for my problem and promising to look into it. Later that day I had my next pleasant surprise. I got a real live phone call from James explaining how I had been connected to the wrong program. He also thanked me for informing them because they were able to contact other people who experienced the same problem. Then he said I would be set up in the near future to participate in the program that had been advertised.
Relationship Renewed
That would’ve been good enough, but then I got a call from David, their head of marketing. He had received my e-letter, too, and he also wanted to apologize for what happened. Then he really floored me – he said he wanted to give me a FREE lifetime subscription to their service. The only thing he asked in return was for me to give him occasional feedback on how I felt the service was meeting their customers’ needs.
I told him I thought his offer was very generous but I probably over-reacted a bit in my note, and his compensation was way more than I expected. To his credit, he would have nothing of my attempt to downplay my initial disappointment, and he apologized again for “wasting my time” and failing to give me what I was promised.
Execs in some companies might say he was crazy to give away so much. But I’m betting they don’t get many complaints like mine, and when they do, few people raise a fuss because the service is probably impeccable most of the time. Since it’s an online program, it’s not really “costing” them anything to give it to me free, but it still speaks volumes about their commitment to delivering on their promises – and living their brand.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
Measuring the value of communication has always been important. Today, it’s become something of an obsession, and it’s easy to understand why. But instead of focusing on measuring the value of communications, communicators should concentrate on communicating about measures that people value. Here’s an example of how a St. Louis-based winner of the Baldrige National Quality Award, Wainwright Industries, applied that principle.
Making data meaningful with “Mission Control.”
When they set their sites on the award, they knew they would have to collect a lot of data – and figure out how to share it throughout the organization. The solution was inspired by NASA. The Wainwright team decided to post the data in a single room organized around priorities that came from input provided by employees. They called the room “Mission Control,” and it was designed to let all employees know how various aspects of the company’s performance are tracking at all times. Using color coded flags, the display provides instant awareness of emerging problem areas. What’s more, it activates a pre-set course of action if performance indicators fall below established benchmarks.
While it’s essentially a communication system, not many professional communicators would typically see it as part of their domain. Therein lies the proverbial rub – and the opportunity to be more relevant.
Measuring what matters to people.
When communicators measure their success in terms of functional indicators like media impressions, newsletter satisfaction ratings and similar measures, they’re not connecting with most employees who don’t care much about those measures. Ultimately, the most vital function of organizational communications is to facilitate the exchange of data, information, and knowledge that support employees in doing their everyday jobs. That’s what most people care about – and that’s where communicators should focus much of their measurement efforts.
The first step is to ensure you’re focusing on relevant indicators. Examples might be safety, employee learning and development, results of continuous improvement efforts, quality of products and services, defect and rework rates, results of employee opinion surveys, customer satisfaction, sales and margins, progress reports on employee profit-sharing and the like.
Sharing information so people see why it matters.
But all that data is useless without an effective system for sharing it. In short, measurement needs to be supported with a communication system that spans the entire organization. Communicators shouldn’t try to do it alone, though. They should work closely with other key functions – human resources, organizational development, finance, quality, information technology, sales, marketing, customer service, etc.
The roles played by the people in this measurement and communication “orchestra” vary depending on numerous factors. Someone, though, has to take the lead and serve as the “conductor” who keeps the group operating in unison. That role is ideally suited for communicators who can see their way out of their traditional boxes.
Regardless of who plays what role, several important elements have to be built into the design of an effective measurement and communication system:
- Leading and lagging indicators
- Frequent and timely
- Simple
- Visual
- Relevant
- Quantitative
- Benchmarked
- Action-based
Click here for a brief description of each of those elements.
It’s a big role to take on, but it’s worth it. Beyond the merits of the system itself, communicators stand to be recognized more for the value of their work – and appreciated more for their contributions to the performance of the organization.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
I want to share another insight from my late friend and mentor, David Berlo. He always emphasized the distinction between results and performance. Results are the outcomes you produce, and performance is how you get there, he said. From there, he asserted that being singularly results-driven in what you measure and reward eventually leads to the deterioration of both performance AND results. Here’s why.
Outcomes vs. Inputs
First, we all know that people tend to repeat behaviors that are reinforced in some meaningful way. Likewise, people tend NOT to repeat behaviors for which they receive negative response. Next, it’s important to realize that no one has direct control over outcomes (results) – unless the game is fixed or there’s an unfair advantage. People can only control inputs (performance).
Now, if bad performance always led to bad results, and good performance always led to good results, it wouldn’t matter which one you rewarded – results or performance. But that’s not always how things work out. Sometimes you don’t get good results even when you give your best effort – other variables can come into play. Other times, just the opposite is true. You can give a marginal effort and come out smelling like a rose.
That’s not how things usually happen, but look at what you get when they do. If you fail to reward people for good performance because they had bad results, you discourage them from repeating the good behavior. If you reward them for good results in spite of poor performance, you reinforce poor performance in the future. The cumulative effect over time is inevitable. Every time you focus on results in a way that either reinforces poor performance or discourages good performance, you also take a step backwards with long-term results.
Performance is the bottom line.
Of course, you have to add up the numbers on the bottom line eventually. But even if winning in the world of business means producing results, lasting success still requires focusing on the drivers of those results, and rewarding effective execution – regardless of the outcomes in the short run. Berlo summed it up this way: “Winning is the name of the game, but performance is the bottom line.” Clearly, if effective execution isn’t producing the desired long-term results, you need to figure out where the disconnect is. But it serves no purpose to penalize people for poor outcomes if they’re doing the right things in the right way. If that happens, you need to fix the systems, not the people.
So what does that mean for us in the people professions? For HR people, it’s pretty obvious. Some compensation and bonus programs are notorious for focusing solely on immediate, bottom line results without regard to how they’re produced – often leading to short-term “success” with negative long-term consequences. Those programs have to encourage performance that looks at the long haul. For communications people, we need to look at where the bulk of the ongoing organizational dialogue is focused. Are we communicating effectively about the “steps to success” – or is everything employees read and hear about focused on the end game? If it’s results we’re after, we’d better be talking a lot more about what it takes to produce them – because in the end, it’s how you get there that counts.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
It’s ironic, isn’t it, that one of the surest ways to raise suspicion about someone’s motives is for the person to say, “Trust me on this?” That’s certainly true when it comes to employees and customers.
In the workplace, few challenges have obsessed and perplexed the business world more than the issue of employee trust. The reason is obvious. With it, virtually any obstacle can be overcome in an organization. Without it, every day is filled with uncertainty and anxiety, no matter what else the organization does right.
In the marketplace, few things are treasured more passionately than loyal customers – those people who come back time and again, and even refer new customers to enjoy the same experience.
When you get them both right, it’s business paradise. The crucial thing to understand is that the two go hand-in-hand. Without employee trust, customer trust suffers, as well.
Management Credibility Factors
One reason organizations fail to foster a culture of trust is because they focus mainly on interpersonal factors. They’re important, to be sure, and here are key behaviors that managers have to exhibit to gain employee trust:
- Caring – Genuine concern about employee wellbeing is where it has to start.
- Honesty and Openness – Dance around the truth or hide important information, and people tune out and turn away.
- Responsiveness – Listening and taking action on what you hear tells people you’re sincere.
- Competence – If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s hard to win a following.
- Reliability – Can people count on you to do what you say?
- Apology – If you can admit mistakes and apologize sincerely, trust goes way up.
In a recent article I wrote for Communication World called “Cracking the Culture Code,” the communication VPs for Southwest Airlines and Enterprise Rent-A-Car talk about how their companies observe those behaviors in their extraordinarily successful cultures.
People-First Systems
But…that’s only half of the equation. You also have to design the systems, policies, and processes in a way that tells employees unequivocally that they are trusted. We call those People-First Systems, and they fall into five main categories:
- Measurement
- Rewards and recognition
- Communication
- Learning and development
- Continuous improvement
Of course, many organizations have some type of mechanism in place for all of those areas. But do they really demonstrate to employees that they are trusted? Do they truly reinforce the oft-heard mantra that people are our most important asset? Fact is, systems in most organizations are designed to protect against the miniscule number of irresponsible people, and those constraints wind up stifling the vast majority of employees you can count on like clockwork.
Bottom line, you can’t have performance excellence without sincere trust and belief in people. If you have doubts about the merits of that philosophy, consider the wisdom of renowned statesman, Henry Stimson, who said, “The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.”
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement