Here's wishing you and yours a blizzard of best wishes. A whiteout of wonder. A flurry of friendships. Gales of laughter. And a winter of warmth and cheer.
As my final post for 2009, I leave you with some free gifts and this bit of whimsy and wisdom from Dr. Seuss:
"Waiting for the fish to bite or waiting for wind to fly a kite. Or waiting around for Friday night or waiting perhaps for their Uncle Jake or a pot to boil or a better break or a string of pearls or a pair of pants or a wig with curls or another chance. Everyone is just waiting."
Please make 2010 the year that you finally stop waiting.
See you next year with a new book, passion for the possible, and my take on making things happen!
*****
My gift to you this holiday season is a PDF version of a little book I wrote more than five years ago (pre-social media) titled, "A Brand New World - 10 Guiding Principles for Success in Chaotic Times."
You'll probably find the ten "truths" even more pertinent in today's highly competitive and totally connected marketplace.
You can find the free book (PDF) at the following link:
Please post it on your site, email it as a gift to your friends, share it with your colleagues and clients, read it to your kids, etc., but do NOT change it or charge for it. Thanks in advance. It will remain on my site until the 1st of the year.
*****
Steve Jobs and Seth Godin are also providing you with a gift for the holidays.
From Seth, a free ebook with contributions from more than seventy big thinkers, each sharing an idea for you to think about as we head into the new year. What Matters Now
From Steve, an album of 21 holiday songs FREE from iTunes. iTune Holiday Sampler
All the best to you and to those dear to you!
“When will the recovery begin?” I’ve been asked that one question more times than any other during the past two years, as business leaders struggle to navigate the stormy economic landscape. My typical response is, “It never will,” since the word recovery implies a return to “normal.”
For the foreseeable future, now is the new normal. The worldwide economic collapse has permanently shifted consumer expectations, and business approaches that were successful during more robust economic times are proving ineffective these days.
Today’s consumers are anxious about their financial situations and futures, as they should be. For that reason they are extremely price, quality, and value-conscious. They’ve responded to the marketplace with bargain hunting, decreased usage, major purchase delays and reduced consumption in many categories.
Smart companies have adapted to these conditions in a variety of ways, including streamlining operations, slashing discretionary spending, renegotiating contracts and payment terms, and reducing prices. One particular approach, which attempts to maintain growth and margins while meeting the new demands of the transformed economy, is called repositioning.
What is repositioning?
Repositioning, in the classic sense, is a marketing communication strategy designed to reframe a company’s offerings in a more favorable light to better appeal to changing consumer sensibilities. Today it’s primarily intended to lure customers by emphasizing value for money.
For example, instead of using advertising to position a luxury automobile as a status symbol, a company may choose to reposition it as a sound investment. A premium detergent brand may change its messaging from “whiter clothes” to one that emphasizes the cost savings gained from cold water washing. A cosmetic brand may shift away from competitive positioning to one that compares its brand to much pricier alternatives, like cosmetic surgery.
In some cases, companies may choose to reposition the entire business, rather than just a product line or brand, in order to change existing consumer perceptions. For example, a company may find it necessary to initiate a rebranding effort to allay consumer fears, as GMAC Financial Services did in the wake of the U.S. auto industry woes by renaming its banking unit. Or a company may change its brand message to appear more empathetic or optimistic, or simply to capture attention and spread awareness.
Whatever the reason, the point of repositioning and rebranding is to shift expectations. It’s about changing the way consumers perceive the brand, primarily by changing the way the company communicates.
Is communication enough?
Is repositioning a brand by way of messaging enough to persuade consumers to remain loyal, maintain purchase frequency, or trade up and pay a premium price during tough economic times? That depends on many variables, including, but not limited to, the number of competing alternatives, the perceived value of the alternatives, the relative price, the price differential, the creative approach, etc.
However, what truly matters when consumers are actively discerning the relative worth of competing brands is not the message. Rather, it’s whether the brand adds unique and tangible meaning and value to their lives. They may remember a brand’s message, but customers choose and talk about the brand experience.
The best way to assure that consumers choose your brand is to create a unique mix of value, build the capabilities to deliver that value over time, and then repositioning the brand to reflect those offerings.
We’re living in a new world now -- one that revolves around the rapidly changing expectations of the customer. There’s no stability. You must move with people, like a life preserver in a shifting sea. You must catch their wave. Get out there and interact with your audience. Find new and compelling ways to become meaningful to them. Try something new and see if it takes hold.
Brand is a verb
Leaders must realize that they cannot stand still, broadcast messages, cross their fingers, and hope that the recession will end and everything will return to normal. It won’t. So throw away the branding textbook. Forget about trying to engineer your brand through creative messaging and associations.
Instead, stay tuned in and connected to the living, breathing marketplace of your audience’s fears, challenges, and aspirations. Brand isn’t a noun to be promoted; it’s a verb to be lived. Put your brand at the heart of your organization and make people feel that they exist at that heart. Get everyone focused on the outside and talking about customers and their feelings. Rediscover your unbridled imagination and idealistic hopes and create new and preemptive benefits for your customers.
Is repositioning enough during a slowdown? It is if it communicates relevant, fresh and undeniable meaning and value. Value that customers are willing to go out of their way for or pay a premium for. Value that customers feel compelled to share with their family and friends. Value that surprises and reassures people. Value that truly makes a difference in people’s lives during a very difficult and stressful time.
Purpose
What is marketing? What is its purpose? The AMA 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." That's certainly part of it, but it hardly goes far enough. Peter Drucker wrote, "The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous." In other words, it's about creating a valuable product, service, and experience that draws customers towards the brand and commands higher margins because of its superior desirability. In essence, the brand sells itself without the need for persuasive techniques. I agree with Drucker and would go one step further and say that the purpose of marketing is to create and keep customers while making selling superfluous.
Understanding
Drucker also wrote, "Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two - and only these two - basic functions: marketing and innovation." And in today's marketplace, marketing and innovation are not about "making and selling;" or doing to people. It's all about doing with and for; creating strong feelings and relationships through shared information, insight, collaboration, and coordination, both externally and internally. It's about being strategically captivating, desirable, real and interesting in every customer exposure to, and interaction with, the brand, the organization, its operations, communications, people, and other constituents.
Action
What’s a marketer to do in this chaotic environment of abundant products and services, high expectations, fast-flying consumers, and a rapidly changing landscape? I'll tell you what not to do: Don't sit around and navel gaze, mulling over your brand's and organization's "essence." Do something! Be a bold and creative force in the lives of your customers, community and people! Will Rogers once remarked, “Chaotic action is preferable to orderly inaction.” Orderly inaction describes today’s ineffectual, status quo marketing. Chaotic action is the new marketing imperative; to wit:
Your core business theory should be fanatical pragmatism, along with a strong distrust of abstraction. You should be constantly striving to figure out what works by doing with, not doing to, people. And you must be audacious in your execution. Because boldness is scarce, and scarcity is what drives marketplace value.
I'm going to come clean with you. I’ve become brand saturated and blogged out. In my quest to keep up with, and influence, the evolving “body of knowledge,” I’ve been increasingly subjected to a bunch of babble about brands and branding. Everything from what a brand actually is to the critical importance of brand names and brand positioning.
And it has been coming from everywhere; from authors and the media to academics and agencies. Here’s a recent NY Times Media & Advertising article headline (no, it's not a headline from The Onion):
“AOL Revamping Its Logo, Hoping to Revive the Brand”
All I can do is shake my head and wonder. So here are my seven wonders of branding (as in, I wonder why these dated concepts still flourish in these postmodern times):
1. Positioning
Here’s how Ries and Trout defined positioning in their seminal book of the same name:
“The basic approach of positioning is not to create something new and different, but to manipulate what's already up there in the mind, to retie the connections that already exist.”
And that may have worked well twenty-seven years ago when product and service options were a fraction of what they are today and people were still influenced by propositions like, “We try harder.” People today are better informed, hyperconnected and marketing savvy. We’ve been trained to be highly skeptical of any type of company communication or claim.
Which makes ours an era of action, not talk. We expect you to prove your pitch with new, exciting and relevant products, services and business models. We’re living in a marketplace driven by creativity and innovation. The concept of branding is a much more dynamic idea. Sticking to your knitting, and trying to persuade people with clever advertising and image-building campaigns, is a sure route to the retirement home.
2. A brand is a promise
This particular babble makes plain that a brand is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value. If this is true, then customers of the brand should be able to articulate those promises. Right? Because that’s how they differentiate between -- and ultimately choose -- brands. Isn’t that so?
So what’s the unique brand promise of Nike? Nike what? Pick one: glasses, golf ball, soccer shoes, sweatshirt. How about BMW? The Z4, M6i Convertible, Mini Cooper? The brand promise of the NFL is different than the NBA, MLB, and NHL in what way precisely?
A brand is NOT a promise (Please don’t tell me that people are buying the Mini because of the promise of German engineering. Most people think it’s a British car). A brand is a performance. It’s about arousing people’s emotional drives through a unique expression of those emotional drives -- with the cool design of a Mini, the stellar service experience of a Zappos, the cultural immersion of a Nike, etc.
3. Be consistent and repeat . . . repeat . . . repeat
The rationale behind this bit of jabber? The customer’s mind needs to be repeatedly exposed to a message (I’ve read everything from at least five times to nine plus) for it to cut through the marketing clutter. Plus the fact that repetition helps build familiarity, which in turn helps build credibility.
It is true that mere exposure to something results in a more positive attitude toward that thing. But running the same ad -- or mailing the same piece -- month after month is simply shallow and unimaginative. Like many of the impersonal, scripted remarks of service personnel. “How was your stay?” “We appreciate your business. We know you have a choice.” “Would you like fries with that?”
Sure, an emotionally provocative message may touch a chord with a customer . . . the first time. The tenth time, it touches a nerve. And that’s no way to build a relationship.
4. Top of mind awareness
This piece of brand wisdom is tied directly to the previous one and is closest to the dated, classical idea of branding. It goes like this: If we can burn our name and proposition into our audiences’ minds, then when the desire arises they’ll automatically think of – and choose -- us! Brain autopilot. Click. Whirrrr.
I have news for you (perhaps). The age of branding as brainwashing is over. I can hear it now: “Come on, Tom. For habitual buying, which occurs when involvement is low and difference between brands is small, top of mind awareness is key.”
You know, you may be right. Or maybe, low price is key. Either way, I wouldn’t want to take my customer relationships for granted and hope that my product or service category remains low involvement and undifferentiated.
5. Personal branding
It was management guru Tom Peters who started the personal branding noise with an essay that appeared in Fast Company in 1997 under the title "The Brand Called You." Peters wrote:
“. . . think of yourself differently! You're not an ‘employee’ of General Motors (ooops, bankrupt), you're not a ‘staffer’ at General Mills, you're not a ‘worker’ at General Electric or a ‘human resource’ at General Dynamics (ooops, it's gone!). Forget the Generals! You don't ‘belong to’ any company for life, and your chief affiliation isn't to any particular ‘function.’ You're not defined by your job title and you're not confined by your job description. Starting today you are a brand.” [Smart aleck emphasis mine].
With all due respect to Tom’s rant, he was right about one thing: In today’s rapidly changing world, jobs are NOT for life. But neither are companies, relationships or brands. In the article, Tom points to Arthur Anderson as a “model of the new rules of branding at the company and personal level.” Hey Tom! Ooops, they’re gone too!
Consultants, authors and personal coaches have jumped all over this buzzword and have in essence rebranded Dale Carnegie-like success secrets as “Personal Branding.” With a little dedication (time, money, and a Flip video camcorder), you too can become an Oprah, Madonna, or Donald Trump (although I’m not really sure why you’d want to be). Or perhaps a social media rock star.
Do yourself a favor. Dump this self-involved concept and get back to being a caring, passionate, curious, human being. Go out into the world and do something to help improve the lives of others. You’ll enjoy life a hell of a lot more, and -- as a bonus -- you’ll probably make more money in the process. Success isn't about self-promotion. It's about passion for the possible; sensitivity and caring for people; the willingness to try new things, to take risks, to learn and to grow; and a self-deprecating sense of humor.
6. Brand inside
I understand this one. I simply don’t believe in it. The grounds for creating this brand adjective gibberish are that executives by and large ignore their internal audience (employees) when developing and executing branding campaigns (Hey CEO! It’s strategy, not a campaign). As a result, employees end up undermining the expectations set by the company.
So now we need a distinction to get executives to understand the importance of organizational alignment? Of getting everyone to live the brand? Or . . . do consultants need the distinction to position and sell their services? You know, I suppose one could also draw a distinction between the retail outlet outside and the retail outlet inside. That way, employees who work inside the store can be conditioned to rush right past gum wrappers in the parking lot on their way to their real jobs.
7. Brand logic (with a focus on USP, UVP or what ever you want to call it)
And last but not least on my notorious list, a return to rational, features and benefits marketing (Déjà vu all over again). A scientific sales mentality brimming with arguments, metrics, dollarization, etc. Irresistible logic. “How can you NOT be persuaded to choose my brand? I’ve proven it to you the way that one proves a theorem. Are you stupid, or what?”
This is direct marketing gone mad. You can find it on web sites, in brochures, sales letters and presentations, infomercials . . . you name it! You know when you come across it, because it always begins with a rhetorical question (we really shouldn’t call such questions rhetorical, because they don’t enhance the persuasive effect. Stupid or manipulative comes to mind); e.g. “Do YOU want to lose your shirt in real estate? If not . . . blah, blah, blah.”
Look. Branding today can only work through ideas that customers WANT to connect with. People can neither be hypnotized with media images nor cajoled with flowery prose. You must truly understand their pain, speak their language, and be felt like a part of their inner world of hopes and dreams.
The old world of branding was similar to an adolescent’s view of love. It was about gazing into each other's eyes and being dazzled by the reflection. Today, great branding is about a mature love. It’s about standing side by side in a trusting relationship with both sets of eyes focused on the horizon of life’s amazing possibilities.
I'm not entirely sure what direction 2010 will take me, but I'm pretty sure that I'm giving up on the tired concept called "brand."
Salon.com's CEO Richard Gingras is tasked, like many of his counterparts in the content business, with saving the business. His solution? The "brand," as described in a recent ClickZ article:
"[I]ncrease readership by focusing on relevancy and SEO; bring in advertisers by modernizing the ad inventory; and create new revenue streams, such as an online store. What makes Gingras thinks he can accomplish this amidst the most dire ad market in decades? The magic bullet, he says, is the brand."
"'I do think that in the content space, as we see the print publications decline, I think brands matter more than ever,' he said. 'I think brands with sharp personalities matter more than ever, and I think that presents an opportunity for salon.'"
He doesn't get it. He's living in some 1950s fantasy world of brands. A brand is not primarily a "personality;" not any longer. Snap, Crackle and Pop are impotent in today's age of skepticism and abundance.
In addition, content providers are living in an age of free, where writers trade work for attention and marketers increasingly launch their own media properties funded with the same ad dollars that Gingras and others so desperately seek.
Here's the reality: Today's readers are searching for unique value; a compelling why to trade for their scarce time, attention and money. The why comes before the who. Where are the whys in Gringas' solution? Relevancy? C'mon. Relevance is simply another word for niche. And every strong brand is a niche brand today.
Here's what I think (call me crazy, many have): I think emerging platforms, like Apple's forthcoming tablet, are the whys that will save niche content businesses like salon. When people have the cool, portable media device in their hands, they'll want their who -- their cool content -- to be on it and travel with them.
Salon.com presently has about 5 million readers a month, with only 25,000 selecting the ad-free version at $45/year. Fast forward 18 months, and if Gingras gets the SEO and experience right, salon may have millions of people downloading a $9.95 tablet version of the digital magazine.
And then, instead of starting an anemic on-line store to "'curate' lifestyle goods from around the Web," salon can create and sell branded APPs for their community; social tools for their community; and other useful and meaningful innovations for the benefit of their community. And that's when the salon brand will matter more than ever.
“I put my team first.”
That was Patriots head coach Bill Belichick's response to reporters on last night's failed decision to go for it on fourth-and-2 from his 28 with 2:08 left at Indy. And I happen to both believe in and respect Bill's decision and intent. Here's the entire quote:
"I told the team, and I think they believe I do what I feel like is best for our football team to win every game. I put the team first, I put those decisions first. I just hope everybody understands that."
As a leader, did Belichick make a bad call? Absolutely not. A leader's job is to acutely examine the changing situation, assess his or her organization's resources and abilities in the evolving environment, and make a decision that best favors the entire organization's chances for success.
Most pigskin pundits have panned Belichick's decision. They're almost unanimous in their criticism of the controversial call, declaring that he should have played the percentages and punted the ball. Some have even called his decision a slap on the face to his defensive unit.
Bullshit. Great leaders make decisions for the benefit of the entire team, not to make certain folks feel good about themselves. I know I have many Boston friends seething right about now, so . . . sorry. Now answer me this (and be honest with yourself):
If last night's exact scenario presents itself in a do or die playoff game in January 2010, wouldn't you want Bill to go for it . . . again?
Especially considering the fact that since 2000 when Belichick has faced the Colts, on fourth down he has gone for it 12 times during the regular season and gotten it eight times. And during the postseason he's gone for it four times against the Colts and gotten it all four times.
You bet you would. We all want a leader who goes for it. One with an inspiring vision, who makes both informed and bold decisions for the benefit of the entire team.
I say thumbs up to Belichick on a courageous and correct call last night. We desperately need more leaders like Bill with the passion, intelligence and guts to go for it with the game on the line. Because for most of us in business today, every game is on the line.
People are finally realizing that their most powerful assets are not their buildings, bank accounts, or even technologies. It’s their relationships with their audiences. The problems arise when they try to be all things to all people.
Instead, they should develop a core attitude with their core audiences and be as many things as possible to them.
Conventional wisdom resists most attempts to develop a business concept around an attitude.
“We need a defensible position. We need to own a space in the customer’s mind.”
Unfortunately, that’s why more than half of the businesses on the Fortune 500 list when I was in college are no longer in business. They stuck to their knitting while their audiences moved on.
New and improved products and services will continue to appear at a mind-numbing rate. You'll never keep up as an outsider; by watching and reacting.
The future is about being an insider. It's about co-creating with - and for - a passionate subculture of like-minded people.
It's time to go deep and discover their hopes, dreams and concerns. And lead them and educate them to new value propositions, new possibilities, for their benefit and for yours.
(Rest assured, we will never provide your email address to anyone. Period.)
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
