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.
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.
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
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
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
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
Remember when organizations used to talk about the “internal customer?” You still hear it sometimes, but it’s mostly fallen on the trash heap of yesterday’s useless business jargon – another example of a cutesy idea turned into a misguided metaphor.
You could argue that the proponents of that idea had their hearts in the right in place – i.e., coworkers should treat one another with the same regard and cooperation they give to customers. But think about the flipside of that comparison. One defining characteristic of a true company-customer relationship is this – if a customer gets sufficiently unhappy with the product or service they’re getting, they’re outta’ here.
That Ain’t No Way to Build Relationships
We like to think we’re fostering the kind of customer loyalty that will give us some wiggle room to recover if we screw up. But anyone who believes the typical disgruntled customer is going to stick around for long while you “work things out” is sorely mistaken. In fact, according to research, for every customer complaint a company gets, 25 more people have a similar problem, but instead of saying anything, they just quietly walk away.
Now, is that really the kind of relationship we want co-workers to have with one another? When things get tough and tensions run high and solutions are hard to find, do we want colleagues to bail out and say c’est la vie? Hardly. Fact is, we got it ass-backwards in the “internal customer” days. Instead of thinking of employees as customers, we should be thinking about both employees AND customers as partners.
No One’s an Audience Anymore
Luckily, we’re moving in the right direction. In recent years, there’s been a conspicuous shifting tide in employee communications – moving away from creating messages for an employee audience to engaging employees in conversations as partners and stakeholders. As it should be. After all, isn’t it a bit weird to think of the people who make everything happen in an organization as an “audience?” They ARE the organization. They certainly are NOT a passive recipient of messages – or at least they shouldn’t be.
But what about customers – the people communicators subject to a constant barrage of sales and marketing messages? Surely, THEY are an audience, right?
Engage your Partners – Inside and Out
Not according to the authors of the book Grapevine, who advocate WITH versus AT marketing. “AT marketing is about targeting, capturing, and one-way communication,” they say. (I won’t quibble for now over the faux pas of “one-way communication,” which is sort of like clapping with one hand.) “WITH marketing means that companies and consumers work with each other. They (companies) cease to think of consumers as targets. They find ways to … partner with them. In WITH marketing you don’t talk about capturing. You talk about listening. Targeting is a concept from the old days. Now it’s about engaging.”
Different organizations will take different approaches to engagement, to be sure. But the underlying premise is the same – messages don’t build relationships, conversations do – whether your partners are inside or out.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
The other day, I was looking at different definitions for marketing. In a nutshell, it’s described mainly as a process for getting in front of prospective customers and enticing them to buy your product or service.
- The American Marketing Association defines marketing as the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large. Marketing practice tends to be seen as a creative industry, which includes advertising, distribution and selling.
- On Wikipedia, marketing is defined as an integrated communications-based process through which individuals and communities discover that existing and newly-identified needs and wants may be satisfied by the products and services of others.
- Webster’s dictionary describes marketing as the process or technique of promoting, selling, and distributing a product or service.
As far as they go, those definitions are okay, but their main thrust can be summed up in one word – attraction. While that’s important, it doesn’t account for the other vital half of the business building equation – retention.
Invest in Keeping the Customers You Have
Depending on what sources you cite, it takes 2-20 times as much investment to attract a new customer as it does to keep an existing one. But look at where most of the business building dollars go. It’s mainly for advertising, sales and other promotional tools and techniques designed to acquire or attract new customers. For many marketing people, that’s essentially how they view their role.
When it comes to retention, that’s usually handled by customer relations or consumer affairs or some similar function – and only a fraction of what’s typically spent on marketing is dedicated to the work they do.
Define Marketing as Relationship-Building
Rectifying that imbalance starts with a more encompassing definition of marketing – to create, sustain and continuously improve relationships with the organization’s key stakeholders.
At a minimum, that definition begs for marketing and customer relations people to be joined at the hip in working on the company’s business building efforts. But the implications go farther than that – to the very heart of why marketing communication and employee engagement must go hand-in-hand. It’s pretty simple, really. If you define marketing as “relationship building,” then it’s no longer just a promotional activity for creative specialists. Instead, it becomes an integral part of each employee’s job. Everyone who has an impact on customer relations – directly or indirectly – ultimately shares responsibility for the company’s marketing success.
Live Up to Your Image
Loyalty programs like “frequent flyers” are designed as a retention device, but they’re usually in the form of promotional spiffs. While that can be effective, it still falls short of the personal relationship building that goes beyond loyalty and leads ultimately to customer advocacy.
In the end, attraction comes more from the image you project, while retention comes more from the performance you deliver. Both are vital, so don’t get suckered into putting disproportionate emphasis on getting customers in the front door – when keeping them is so much cheaper than replacing them after they slip out the back.
To learn more about our approach to Marketing Communications, visit http://www.landesassociates.com/index.php?/Marketing-Communications.html
No dispute there. They also all have customers. Call them consumers or taxpayers, students or patients, passengers or clients, patrons or donors … or whatever you want. In the end, their satisfaction largely dictates an organization’s destiny.
All organizations also have employees. Call them associates or co-workers or partners or colleagues … or whatever you want. In the end, their sense of trust and happiness in the workplace determines how they relate to customers – and how satisfied those customers will be.
Connect the dots, and the picture is clear.
Making employee well-being a top strategic priority is more than a nice thing to do. It’s just good business. That’s the central theme of a highly touted book that came out several years ago entitled The Customer Comes Second: Put Your People First and Watch ‘Em Kick Butt.
The principal author is Hal Rosenbluth, the fourth-generation head of Rosenbluth International, a family-owned corporate travel agency that grew in annual revenues from $20 million to more than $6 billion in a span of 25 years under his leadership. When he joined the business right out of college, he noticed that they put a lot of emphasis on making customers happy, but virtually none on the employees who served them. That didn’t make sense to Rosenbluth, and the disconnect showed on the unhappy faces and performance of disgruntled employees. So he set out to shift the company’s focus first and foremost on the attraction, retention and development of outstanding people.
Realizing that’s counterintuitive for many organizations, Rosenbluth explains, “Companies are only fooling themselves when they believe that ‘The Customer Comes First’ … Only when people know what it feels like to be first in someone else’s eyes can they sincerely share that feeling with others. We’re not saying choose your people over your customers. We’re saying focus on your people because of your customers. That way, everybody wins.” With industry-leading customer satisfaction rates of over 99%, how can you argue with him?
A Secret Weapon
It all adds up to a simple yet significant phrase from the book, which serves as a poetic and memorable motto: “People who feel cared for will care more.”
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
I’ve quoted my friend and mentor, David Berlo, numerous times in this column. Here’s one of his more curious gems. “The key to being effective is sincerity,” he said, “and if you can learn how to fake that, you’ve really got it made.” He was joking, of course. But like the old saying goes, there’s a bit of truth in every joke.
Key to Leadership
I was reminded of David’s quip recently when I attended a presentation on a report entitled “The Authentic Enterprise.” It was published two years ago by the Arthur W. Page Society from a study that examined the role of senior communicators in the 21st century.
Based on comments from numerous CEOs and chief communications officers, the report summed up the study’s pivotal finding like this – “In a word, authenticity will be the coin of the realm for successful corporations and for those who lead them.” The report goes on to say, “Demands for transparency are at an all-time high, and give no sign of ebbing.”
Reality is Fabulous
Perhaps it’s not surprising that businesses have struggled with the elemental need to be straight shooters. It’s certainly not new – just look at what Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden more than 150 years ago …
“Shams and delusions are esteemed for soundest truths, while reality is fabulous. If men would observe realities only, and not allow themselves to be deluded, music and poetry would resound along the streets. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks, which we can call reality.”
Despite the apparent yearning for greater authenticity … or sincerity … or reality, some skeptics think it’s mostly a hoax. They argue that when stakeholders – inside or out – say they want more authenticity, all they’re really looking for is consistency. I guess they haven’t run into as many consistently inauthentic “spinners” as I have.
A Choice and a Voice
Still, the remark made me examine what I mean when I use the word authentic. It was easier to grasp its significance by describing what I mean by IN-authentic. Here are some words and phrases that come to mind – doubletalk … misdirection … sanitizing bad news … glamorizing good news … manipulating the truth … distorting the facts … empty jargon … phony platitudes. It’s rarely an outright lie – just an artful shading of reality. Sound familiar? From where I stand, that’s a whole lot more sinister and unsavory than merely being inconsistent.
Professional communicators have a choice and a voice. We can play along and help our organizations engage in “shams and delusions” that strain credibility – or we can be champions of authenticity. Promoting the latter, the Page report says, “If we choose this path, we can transform our profession, open up new and meaningful responsibility and learning, and create exciting new career paths for communications professionals.” Now that’s something to look forward to – sincerely.
Les Landes, Landes & Associates
Buy Les’s webinar replay: Getting to the Heart of Employee Engagement
A recent Wall Street Journal article validated many of the tenets upon which I founded our firm nearly nine years ago. The article was entitled, “M&A Blind Spot. When negotiating a merger, leave a seat at the table for a marketing expert.” Unfortunately, this rarely happens.
The article talked about the integral role of marketing in securing and consummating a deal through internal acceptance by the organization. It reminded me of a statistic I heard nine years ago to explain M&A failures. Dr. Michael Hammer said “that 80% of mergers and acquisitions fail and that 50% of the reasons that they fail are due to personality and culture clashes between the companies and their leadership.” This is just as true today as it was a decade ago.
In my opinion, marketing and branding are lynchpins of a successful merger and acquisition. All too often, however, marketing is just an afterthought. Bankers, lawyers, and accountants have a place at the M&A table to ensure that the deal lives up to its potential in regards to risk minimization, asset evaluation, and legal due diligence. But where are the marketing experts? They should be at the table as well to ensure that the organization embraces the merger, positioning it with positive benefits inside and outside the company. Effective communications and messaging can win over all the critical stakeholders and ensure success.
Find me a lawyer, accountant, or banker who can manage all this:
1. Vision and direction
The company must have a clear sense of direction and vision after the M&A plan is laid out. The vision should be in simple language (with examples) so employees can relate to it and understand the benefits for themselves and their company. Marketing departments and their leadership are trained and experienced at creating this kind of messaging.
Creating a new, combined vision is clearly the role of marketing. Imposing one company’s vision on two merged entities often alienates half of the people the instant the merger is launched.
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Overcoming uncertainty through employee engagement
Without doubt, uncertainty is the number one issue after announcing a merger or acquisition. Overcome it by enrolling the staff through relevant messages and experiential communications programs.
Marketing professionals understand consumer insights and motivations that translate into actionable tactics and communications. With knowledge and understanding, employees gain motivation. After internalizing the merger value proposition, they finally gain inspiration. They will be engaged and enrolled. -
Understanding where your employees stand on issues
Companies should segment their employee audience the same way they segment and analyze their external audiences to measure their acceptance of change and learn the best ways to communicate with them.
These are the types of questions that marketing will answer:
– What motivates employees?
– What inspires them?
– What are their opinions of management and the corporation?
– How do employees relate to management and management communications?
– What forms of communication do the employees prefer?
Marketing professionals are analytical. They are in constant search of insights and buyer values that can be deployed toward an internal employee audience as well as an external one.
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Experiential communications
Particularly in an M&A situation, old forms of internal communications are no longer relevant or successful alone. New and more creative methods, with involving and entertaining communications, are more appropriate for adult learning.
Media should vary by audience: video games, gadgets, viral campaigns, role playing, one-on-one meetings with senior folks, skits, outings, company-wide challenges, events, internal trade shows, a staff radio station, a webcast-whatever draws them in. The key idea is to engage the employees to participate in the exchange and learning. -
Developing the message
Like any other marketing campaign, internal branding starts by understanding the change readiness of the organization, followed by developing messages that are relevant and meaningful at all levels-corporate, team and department, and individual. The company needs a clear positioning and sense of what it aspires to be.
The messages should be presented by the leaders of the organization who know their business and the marketplace best. -
Establishing brand ambassadors
Seek out the critical internal stakeholders and opinion leaders for their support and help first, then build consensus within the organization.
Involve the full spectrum of employees. Ask for their input into the program-they know the customers and the business from all angles. -
Project management, not ad hoc effort
Treat the plan like a program-management launch. Assign a great program manager and allocate the proper monetary and HR resources for the effort to succeed.
Reinforcement is critical. Your employees need to see the message all the time, in lots of different media via different channels. You can emblazon it on a lapel pin, a parking-lot sign, a redesigned uniform, or a lunchroom banner. Or anywhere else that it makes sense to remind people. -
Measurement and Feedback
Take measurements and make adjustments. The campaign will need fine tuning as it gains momentum. Gauge how the organization’s culture is receiving the message and reacting to it. Then modify your emphasis as needed.
Budget for post-campaign analysis and an audit of effectiveness. Conduct before-and-after employee surveys to measure business literacy, brand awareness, and awareness of M&A messages and corporate initiatives.
In the end, what matters is an educated and aligned workforce motivated to get behind the sale, acquisition, or merger. You want your people to be inspired to work for your firm. They should be proud of what it stands for and what they do. If they care about being part of the process, they will spread the word to your clients and to each other. By enrolling your employees, you will accelerate the changes you have planned and get down to business faster, with fewer internal squabbles, and with a steady stream of re-energizing successes that will sustain itself over time.
Is your company facing a merger or acquisition, or just going through major changes such as ERP implementation or reengineering? Don’t forget to reserve a place at the table for professional marketing counsel. With marketing present as an equal partner with the lawyers, bankers, and accountants, you will ensure success of the merger and win over your employees, who are ultimately responsible for making it all happen.
I just got back from a three-week business trip in India, where I helped a major Indian conglomerate re-brand itself for a global launch. Visits to exotic places are always full of intrigue and anticipation: But since I had been to the region before, I knew what to expect. Or so I thought.
But on this trip I was stunned by a dramatic integrated advertising campaign launched by the Times of India, called India vs. India. The Times kicked it off on New Year’s Day, on the front page. That’s right; no news appeared on that morning’s front page. This was followed by major, spectacular billboards and posters, which appeared everywhere, arriving overnight as if by magic. Next came a parade of Indian celebrities who endorsed the “Anthem” (as they called this) on TV advertisements. This was a highly orchestrated campaign that quickly became celebrated, espousing the idea that there are two India’s, working against one another and preventing India from being the global power that it ought to be. It was a call to arms to unite around the idea of one India, to be progressive, to heal the country’s divisions, and to look toward the future. The thought was summarized with a tagline: India poised-Our time is now.
The copy reads like poetry. Here are a few lines.
There are two India’s in this country. One India is straining at the leash, eager to spring forth and live up to all the adjectives that the world has been showering recently upon us. The other India is the leash. The other India says, give me a chance and I’ll prove myself. The other India says, Prove yourself first and then maybe I’ll give you a chance. One India lives in optimism of our hearts. The other India lurks in skepticism of our minds. One India wants. The other India hopes. One India leads. The other India follows.
It’s powerful copy.
As an American, after seeing this campaign unfold, I couldn’t keep myself from wondering whether this idea is just as relevant here. Do factions and discord within our political and business arenas hold us back from becoming even greater than we are now? Is it time for the marketing and media community to do something as dramatic as India vs. India to unite the country or its industry around a common purpose and a vision of the future?
My thoughts then wandered over to our marketing industry. Can we make an India vs. India comparison? Do we even have unity around the value of marketing? Are clients and agencies/PR firms on the same page? Who is the “leash” and who is “straining the leash” in our industry? Clients seem to concentrate on growth, attracting new customers and growing market share, while agencies and-yes–even consulting firms, frequently focus on creative ideas and new technologies. They often win awards, but do little to attract new clients. Some of them are fixed on the almighty 30-second TV commercial, while others on rely on interactive internet marketing. Are we suffering from Marketing vs. Marketing?
The answer, in my opinion, is marketing integration. Marketing should never be exclusively one thing or another. It should do whatever it takes to solve the client’s problems and unite around that solution. Use all available techniques, media, creativity and technology to help the client’s business grow and improve its market share. That does not mean simply doing what the client wants, but providing new ideas, insights and perspectives, no matter what creative medium might be used.
No more Marketing vs. Marketing. It’s time for Marketing AND Marketing.
Is it time to examine America vs. America? Or marketing vs. marketing? Please send me your thoughts. Let me know your opinions on this topic and let’s see if we can apply the same logic to our business and political culture.
If you are interested in learning more about the India Poised campaign currently underway and to see some of the creative marketing built around the mission themes and values, visit the Times of India’s India Poised Website by clicking here-Visit The Times of India Interactive Website .
Comments |
RE: Marketing vs. Marketing |
I am produ to know that my country is making giant strides…also the India Poised campaign is seen as a powerful message in uniting and spurring a nation ahead. While I agree about the need to brand/market a message, it sometimes goes downhill when the audience reads it differently or it is timed wrongly. What is essential is transparency and follow-ups. Keeping citizens informed on change and how they can make a difference. There was a similar campaign called India Rising – which portrayed India as the next superpower. It was a powerful message but many viewed it as a political gimmick..due to the timing ( around elections)… |
Words and phrases including “blog,” “wiki” and even “chat room” make some business leaders nervous. They’re not sure what to make of these new social media. The technology seems mysterious and a bit scary to people who are still trying to find their way around the Internet or figuring out how their BlackBerry works.
If the wild world of online media makes you hyperventilate, relax. Take a deep breath. Despite the hype around Skype, behind the stress caused by RSS, it all comes down to a fundamental process as old as humanity: communication.
What really matters is how well you communicate with employees, customers, shareholders, the community and other important people. The methods you use, while important, are secondary to the quality of communication.
A recent illustration of this principle involves computer maker Dell. Unhappy customers took their complaints about Dell’s products and service to the “blogosphere” – that online place where everyone with a laptop and an Internet connection can share their opinions with the world. Despite the outcry over problems with Dell, which quickly reached hundreds of thousands of people thanks to blogs with names like “Dell Hell,” the company resisted joining the virtual discussion.
Apparently, however, the pressure became too much. A few months ago, Dell created “Direct2Dell,” a blog intended to improve communication with customers about issues ranging from the company’s battery recall to new products. The company’s critics considered the action too little, too late and charged Dell with paying lip service to open communication with customers. On the surface, bloggers said, Dell seemed to be improving communication, but in reality “Direct2Dell” represented more of the company line.
Last week, Dell posted a new “Online Communication Policy” and held a news conference to announce it. The policy, aimed at Dell employees, recognizes the value of online communication tools, lays out expectations of employees who use them and states the company’s commitment to “transparent, ethical and accurate” communication. Translation: no more company PR disguised as real, direct dialogue.
Time will tell if Dell’s policy makes a difference, but for now the bloggers are skeptical. “Dell Hell” creator Jeff Jarvis wrote, “Isn’t it always a company’s policy, in any interaction – by blog, telephone, or letter – to be open and honest?” He wondered if Dell’s 500-word policy might have been boiled down to three words: “Tell the truth.”
What can your company learn from all of this? It doesn’t matter if you choose to communicate through blogs, chat rooms, e-mail or good ol’ face-to-face interaction. What matters is that you communicate honestly and as completely as possible. The latest technology won’t save you if your stakeholders feel you’re not being truthful with them.
It’s the quality of communication that ultimately matters.
Traditional marketing — including advertising, public relations, branding and corporate communications — is dead. Many people in traditional marketing roles and organizations may not realize they’re operating within a dead paradigm. But they are. The evidence is clear.
First, buyers are no longer paying much attention. Several studies have confirmed that in the “buyer’s decision journey,” traditional marketing communications just aren’t relevant. Buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, and often from sources outside the firm such as word-of-mouth or customer reviews.
Second, CEOs have lost all patience. In a devastating 2011 study of 600 CEOs and decision makers by the London-based Fournaise Marketing Group, 73% of them said that CMOs lack business credibility and the ability to generate sufficient business growth, 72% are tired of being asked for money without explaining how it will generate increased business, and 77% have had it with all the talk about brand equity that can’t be linked to actual firm equity or any other recognized financial metric.
Third, in today’s increasingly social media-infused environment, traditional marketing and sales not only doesn’t work so well, it doesn’t make sense. Think about it: an organization hires people — employees, agencies, consultants, partners — who don’t come from the buyer’s world and whose interests aren’t necessarily aligned with his, and expects them to persuade the buyer to spend his hard-earned money on something. Huh? When you try to extend traditional marketing logic into the world of social media, it simply doesn’t work. Just ask Facebook, which finds itself mired in an ongoing debate about whether marketing on Facebook is effective.
Read full article via Harvard Business Review blog