So What's A Brand Really?

Brands are many things to many people – what you see, read, hear, feel, experience.  In business conversations the idea of brand seems to be very broad and many businesses have a seemingly way of making everything “fit the brand.”   The truth is if you ask 30 different executives what a brand is you’ll likely get almost as many definitions.  

However the broader a business allows the definition of “their brand” to be the less impact, uniqueness, value and ability to build a meaningful and competitive brand culture becomes.  The business may very well be successful however the relationship with the customer will always be limited to arms length transactions or better said simply a transactional brand.  

To build beyond the transaction and create exponential brand value where customers become emotionally attached to a brand the business needs to clearly focus on what it stands for and more importantly why the customer should care.  This moves the business customer relationship to one of caring for each other and in a sense a more human connection.  The better a business connects with a customer around meaningful values, ethics and concerns which are reinforced by their products and services the larger the brand equity grows in the customers mind.  

As customers give more of their mind-share to a brand the more meaningfulness the brand becomes in a customer’s life.  This is called brand equity and often is associated with premium value beyond other options of a similar product or service.  The more meaning something has in our lives the greater we will use, talk about, share and recommend the brand to others.  The best way to think about brand equity is like our personal relationships.  Those relationships we hold closest to our hearts are afforded more of us and more of them including trusting, caring, defending, forgiving and so on.

"Great leaders never believe they're the smartest on the team - instead they cultivate an environment to create the smartest teams"
 Chas Hermann

Stop Marketing...and Start Listening!

The Customer is in Control now!

For many, many years brands had the fortune of crafting and controlling their message to customers virtually single handed.  Through great creative and thoughtful marketing strategy brands were able to create extremely specific views of their product and/or service.  By investing heavy in media, PR and promotion the brands could virtually get customers to recite their messages.

From traditional channels (TV, radio, print, PR) to the new Internet enabled social word of today it's always been about having the best communication arc with the customer! 

About the the only channel with more impact, which is still true today, was word-of-mouth marketing.  What's different today is the ability to make word-of-mouth messaging as big or bigger than company controlled messaging.  The internet, social media, blogging and the explosion of new media channels has shifted the balance of power fully to the customer...and that's a very good thing for everyone.

Today more than ever business must be earned.  Business must be earned everyday by ensuring the customer is always satisfied with your product or service!  If an issue develops it seems everyone is watching to see how the company will address it.  Will the company go silent, defend the product and minimize the customer or will they they engage the customer and do everything in their power to make it right and improve their overall business in the process.  The companies that do the latter are thriving in today's connected world and they are growing rapidly.

The benefit to companies today is the ability to get feedback from their customers in real time.  The responsibility is to react to the feedback in the manner that reinforces who the company really is and what it is they stand for.  Brands and companies that look at the internet enabled new platforms as an expansion of marketing tools beyond traditional media like TV, radio, print, and even PR are leveraging the most important connection that matters and that is the customer connection.  We might start thinking about all the marketing tools available to brands as element in a communications arc with our customers - past, current and future.  Perhaps we should re-think of marketing as marceting and let the sum of the parts be greater than than the whole!

NFL is Back! - Great Brand Lessons!

Everyone needs to have an outlet and a passion for inspiring and recharging the soul!  For many, sports seems to fill the need and there is no bigger franchise than the NFL.  People gather from around the country and across the world every Sunday in the fall and the die-hards also include Monday and now Thursday to get their fix.

Through the advancement of sattelite dishes we can be almost anywhere and get the game - WOW!

With 32 teams and stories that go back generations, nothing seems to connect people like the history of the NFL.  Wherever we are gathered especially in the fall we can always find someone wearing a jersey, T-shirt, hat or some other decoration that celebrates their passion and commitment to "their team".  So much can be learned about how to build brand connections by studing how great organizations such as the NFL and the teams build emotion around the game, players, coaches and the memories created every year.  The sounds of the game, colors of the teams, changing logos, and all around strategy of the contest create engagement between fans, their teams and the overall league like nothing else.  It is clearly the definition of Tradition!

What's amazing is it is not always a positive outcome - sometimes teams lose (in fact in every game there is a loser).  Some teams lose for longer than we can imagine - but yet the die-hard committed fan hangs on and the win that arrives is just that much sweeter! That's commitment.

Build your brand memories in authentic meaningful ways just like the NFL and MAKE IT MATTER!

It's About Time!
Thank you AT&T

Huge news! After a year of organizing, you and thousands of fellow anti-robocalls activists just achieved a major win. On Friday, 33 companies, 2 federal regulators, and the Department of Justice sat down at a historic summit to face the robocalls crisis. By the end of the day, all the major phone companies, led by AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, announced the creation of a Strike Force to take on the robocalls epidemic.

I wish you could have been there to see it: in front of national press and the heads of the Federal Communications Commission, Stephenson and other phone company executives pledged to outline a clear line of attack against robocalls by October 19th.

We applaud AT&T for listening to the thousands of customers and robocalls activists who have pressed them to do more. And I want to be crystal clear: your activism got consumers a seat at the table. There’s simply no way that all these powerful executives and government officials would have come together to deal with this problem if you hadn’t convinced them — strategically, effectively, and repeatedly — that robocalls are a major problem demanding major solutions.

Over the next two months, we will keep up the pressure to ensure that the Strike Force doesn’t produce just another set of empty promises. Even when we have an actionable plan from the Strike Force, it’ll take continued oversight and perseverance to move from talk to action, and see a tangible reduction in the number of pernicious robocalls to our phones. But today, I hope you can savor a victory and sign of progress made entirely possible by your hard work.

Onward to victory!

Tim Marvin, EndRobocalls.org
Consumers Union, Policy and Action from Consumer Reports

Digital marketing, social media and data analytics is driving a renaissance of transparency...and that's a good thing!

24/7/365 Customers are Connected to Your Brand!

http://www.cmo.com.au/article/605279/what-skills-do-cmos-need-drive-future-marketing-function/

Happy Holidays!!

Merry Christmas!