April 27, 2011

Launch Your Brand Internally First

How a great story can turn your employees into brand ambassadors

Brands are expressed in many ways, including in the actions and behavior of your own people. In fact, employees are crucial to the brand experience, particularly in the B2B space. Inasmuch as a brand is the totality of all your perceptions about a business, obviously, employee actions and attitudes have an impact—everything from answering phone calls promptly to product knowledge. But it goes beyond customer facing employees. Employees don’t just represent the company, they are the company. The depth of understanding each person has about brand values and purpose is reflected in productivity. The workers of strongly branded organizations literally “live the brand”, giving them focus, motivation and a guiding direction.

(more…)

June 16, 2010

Designing Web Sites for Architects

No architect would begin designing a building without knowing the purpose of the structure: how it’s used, for whom and to accomplish what? Successful buildings are aesthetically satisfying and serve the needs of their inhabitants. A well-designed space can make our lives easier and happier.

Web sites are no different. What’s the purpose, how is it used and by whom? If the Web site is well-designed, “inhabitants” are happy and can find their way around. (more…)

August 1, 2009

Positioning Brand Strategy

Back in the early 1980s, a friend of mine in the printing business loaned me a book that I never gave back. The book is the now-classic, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I didn’t give it back because I didn’t want to. I felt like I had to hang onto this simple volume that so profoundly changed my point of view (as well as a half-million others). One reviewer said, “If you can grasp the simple truths in this book, you’ll understand what 90% of marketing people don’t: it’s the customer, stupid”.

What Trout and Reis pioneered 20 or 30 years ago is now a universally accepted (and most would say, the most important) discipline in brand strategy. Brand positioning literally means to “position” your brand in your customer’s mind. The spot you want to find is the strongest position you can claim relative to your competitors. Finding that position means you must, of course, understand who your customer is—your target market—and how they behave.

In business-to-business marketing, it can be difficult for a large, complex, multi-product, multi-service company to find a common denominator. It’s easy to find companies that failed the effort. Just read their position on the home page of their Web site. Is it more than empty phrases? Is it just a lot of “hot air”? Even more enlightening may be to read the position of one of your competitors. Does it sound a lot like your own?

In Marty Neumeier’s book, Zag, he asks “What makes you the only…”. He says complete this sentence: Our brand is the only _____________ that ____________. In the first blank, put the name of your category (sign company, reading glass distributor, medical clinic). In the second blank, describe what makes you different (that has multiple offices in the West, that combines fashion with function, that is locally owned). If you can’t keep it brief and use the word “only”, then you don’t have a “zag”, or a defendable position.

Once you’ve figured out your position, you don’t change it. It’s not like an advertising campaign or even a tagline that might change every few years. In the words of Philip Kotler, in B2B Brand Management, “A brand can only have one true position. An effectively positioned brand communicates its core values to all stakeholders, internally and externally. Positioning a brand is not a tactical activity but rather a strategic process aimed at creating a sustainable competitive advantage.”

June 1, 2009

Brand Stories: Beyond Marketing

The thought of public speaking makes them weak in the knees. They prefer to stay in the background to avoid having to risk embarrassment. They don’t like going out of their comfort zone. Sound like anyone you know? Or perhaps a brand you know?

Brands, like people, can suffer from social anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, by their very nature, brands are supposed to be in the spotlight, speaking to the public everyday. Every chance a brand gets to show its personality is vitally important, yet many brands waste the opportunity by hiding who they are behind boring facts.

In contrast, the very best brands let their unique personalities shine through. They get out in front of the crowd unashamed and unafraid of how others will judge them. They understand that all of their weaknesses will be on display, but they also have unwavering confidence that their strengths will completely overshadow their deficiencies. Most importantly, they are prepared with a brand story to tell; one that is much more substantial than their most current advertising campaign.

A story is not only the best way of earning an audience’s attention, but its heart as well. It breaks down barriers, allowing people to understand you and forgive your weaknesses because they can see how your story relates to them. More than this, an established story is memorable and should encapsulate what the brand ideals are, and should be the blueprint for how the brand is marketed.

The real secret is choosing the right story for your brand. Just like any person, a brand can have any number of stories that defines it. These stories can range from seemingly insignificant, to monumental. Last year we were engaged by the School Improvement Network for strategic and creative services. During the 5d Process we realized that they had the perfect story to tell, and suggested they place it front and center on the new Web site we created. Their simple story of how two teachers started what would become a very successful company makes a powerful connection with their target audience, the education community.

The reason this story is important is because it’s sticky. Those who read it will come away with an impression of the company based on that story, and will bring that perspective to all other communications with that brand.

Chip and Dan Heath, authors and columnists for Fast Company magazine, expounded on what makes an idea (or story) sticky, and it’s a lesson that all brands can benefit from: Like School Improvement Network’s story, it is simple (current training wasn’t effective), unexpected (the need was filled by two public school teachers), concrete (they fixed it by taking matters into their own hands), credible (supported by research-based best practice), and emotional (the results are better teachers, and a better education for children). Not all stories have all these elements, but the more they have, the more effective they are.

Admittedly, finding that “sticky story” to stand out and connect with your audience amid so much clutter, may be daunting. For every good story out there, there are dozens of completely forgettable ones. All the more reason to put the extra effort into finding and telling a good story. If good brand story is worth having, it is worth working for.

December 12, 2008

(B)2B or not 2B

Some of the world’s strongest brands are B2B. Companies like IBM, FedEx, Boeing, General Electric and Oracle are all primarily business-to-business brands as opposed to business-to-consumer. Despite these well-known names, brand management in typical B2B companies is rarely as well executed as it is in the typical B2C company. Business-to-business organizations rely more often on functional descriptions of their capabilities whereas business-to-consumer companies are more likely to emphasize emotional experiences that lead to brand preference.

Making a sale in a B2B company is a more complex interaction than in a B2C company and yet purchasing departments are run by people who make choices based on symbolic as well as pragmatic attributes. After all, your brand is nothing more than a person’s gut feeling about your company. As Waldemar Pfoertsch, professor of business at Pforzheim (Germany) University said, “Successful B2B brand communication requires sales strategies that incorporate brand values that appeal to the social and psychological as well as the rational concerns of the different organizational buyers involved.”

B2B companies often assume their prospects are inherently interested in the products or services they offer, when in fact most prospects are really only interested in a solution to their problems. A B2B brand strategy must address the specific needs of the customer, learned through customer interaction and research.

Fortunately it is usually much less expensive to implement a defined brand strategy in the B2B space than in B2C, because the message is directed toward a more specific audience. Most of modern8′s clients are B2B. Our core competencies are brand strategy and design, which fit perfectly with the needs of B2B.

July 30, 2008

Create the Big Idea

When engaged in brand strategy, we help clients establish what’s known variously as the big idea, the main idea or the brand promise. It’s the “take away,” the thing you want your customers to remember about your company. It’s not what it says on your home page or brochure cover—the big idea is the message that should be communicated. The big idea should always be expressed in one sentence. If it is any more complicated or lengthy than that, your marketing will suffer. Despite its short length, the big idea should encapsulate everything else in the brand strategy. The big idea, or brand promise, is the one thing that is most likely to make people take notice, form new opinions and take action.

Sometimes the big idea is distilled into to a tagline—something that is often shorter, catchy, and can be put on everything from a business card to an annual report. The tagline is a succinct way to reinforce the big idea, but it is not a substitute for it. In the over-communicated society we live in today, the message of the big idea must be repeated frequently and consistently.

December 30, 2007

Mapping Branding Preceptions

We have been engaged by a local architectural firm for brand strategy and identity development. While we were strategizing with the marketing director on factors that drive business development for architects, he explained to us the importance of experience and relationships. We asked which was more important in the minds of their clients. Is the accumulated experience of the firm, or are personal relationships more important?

The marketing director answered by diagramming the classic four squares with experience along one axis and relationships on the other. The best option is when you have project experience in addition to a client relationship. But lacking one or the other, relationships trump experience.

We like the diagrammatic approach, because it lets you visualize what you already know. You can literally map out perceptions. Whether it be the relative value of relationships vs. experience, or Stephen Covey’s Urgency vs. Importance matrix, you can take a great deal of information and look at it all at once. It lets you position brands and brand attributes relative to others with the dimensions that customers use to distinguish them.

Take simple attributes like innovative vs. traditional, and younger vs. older. Treat each of these as an endpoint of an axis on a map. Now consider well-known brand categories, like automobiles or soft drinks, for example. Position the relative importance of each attribute for different brands. Where would Coke be positioned vs. Red Bull? What about Volvo vs. Honda?

Choose the axes and quadrants appropriate for insights in your own industry and map your own brand against your competitors. Are there ways to position your company differently from others? Consider mapping different attributes, benefits and values that can be compared and contrasted. Small/large, local/national, expensive/inexpensive and many other attributes can be used to distinguish one brand against another.

August 30, 2007

Make My Logo Bigger

There’s probably no line more common—or more disliked by designers and art directors, than “Make the logo bigger.” It usually comes after the client has seen the first mock-up, while there’s still a chance to edit things.

Designers think that whatever attracts the viewer is most important and that almost any size logo will work if you first have their attention. The client tends to think that there’s little point in marketing or advertising anything if the viewer doesn’t know who it’s for.

Paula Scher, a highly respected partner at Pentagram, and designer of the Citibank logo, titled her monograph Make It Bigger. On the first page of the book, she describes the first ad she designed at her first job. She submitted the ad for approval and was told to make the headline and the product name bigger. On the second submission she was told to make them bigger still. On the third submission the headline and product name were huge. The ad was returned with a memo to also make the logo bigger. The fourth submission came back with the notation that there was not sufficient room for the body copy describing the product.

The instinctive urge of the client to make things bigger is based on common sense. Bigger brings more attention and presumably more commercial success. Designers are concerned with the hierarchy of all the elements involved and yet designers are notorious for liking small type.

The difference between these apparent opposing directions is indicative of larger issues. Where do intuitive, aesthetic and design considerations intersect with pragmatic, strategic and business issues? What’s more important—look and feel, or an unseen strategy? Are design-driven companies like Apple Computer and Target successful because of their emphasis on aesthetics? Are Dell and Wal-Mart strategically driven?

Let’s face it. Design is the means to an end, and that end, like it or not, is commercial in nature. Design can make a Web site, a brochure or an ad more memorable and therefore more effective in influencing its audience. But ultimate success combines artistic and strategic elements in a symbiotic relationship.

Marketing and advertising cannot be reduced to a logical, rational discipline that can be defined, measured and predicted like rats in a science lab. The fact, figures and projections of research, when done right, can play a vital role in marketing, but you can’t stand on that alone. As Jon Steel, brand strategist at Goodby Silverstein & Partners said, “In the scientific method, there is no place for art, inspiration, instinct, intuition, magic or luck, because they cannot be measured, predicted or easily repeated.”

If your marketing or advertising isn’t memorable, or doesn’t touch your emotions, it’s probably the fault of execution, not strategy. Execution—the design, the writing—is the hardest part of the branding mix to control.

Art is where the true magic lies, but art alone is not enough. When combined with strategic and business considerations to achieve a shared goal, creativity has the best chance for success, no matter what the size of the logo.

April 30, 2007

Who are we anyway?

One of the defining characteristics of modern8, and how we differentiate our business from that of our competitors is our inclusion of strategic, as well as creative services to achieve a shared goal. In this monthly column I often provide insights into brand strategy. And yet most of the staff at modern8, myself included, are graphic designers by training—artists, if you will.

Recently the current graphic design profession has had its own identity crisis. The AIGA has dropped the meaning behind its initials. Founded in 1914 as the American Institute of Graphic Arts, the organization is now simply four letters and the phrase, “the professional association for design.” The shift recognizes that for many members in the organization, calling oneself a graphic designer may be too limiting.

When I was in high school the profession was called commercial art, a term rarely heard today. And yet the art we produce is not art for art’s sake. Our art is the means to an end, and that end is commercial in nature. Art is the vehicle that makes our creative deliverables more distinctive and more memorable. Art carries the message in such a way that it becomes more effective in influencing its audience.

Smart designers today are creating solutions to communication problems that incorporate both science and art. Left and right brain. Strategy and design. But art is where the true magic lies. That’s what you’ll remember. That’s where the emotional connection is made. However in today’s over-communicated society, art alone is not enough.