Brand Development as People

Posted on February 16th, 2011 at 3:22 pm in Blog, Blue Ocean Ideas by brody

You’ll hear us say it incessantly: a brand is a promise.

Brands are directly tied to customer experience. But what fashions your customers’ experience?

People.

It all comes down to people. It’s the sales people, the cash register people, and the call center people. But it’s also the R&D people, the finance people, the marketing people, the leadership people, and the janitor people. Everyone is always doing something that creates the customer experience.

Brands are slaves to the quality of their staff. The single best thing a brand can do is hire great people.

Speaking of great people, we are absolutely stoked to announce that Anna Grace Abell has joined the Blue Ocean Ideas team. Anna Grace is a born designer. But her greatest asset is her commitment to the success of our clients and her commitment to the overall mission of what we’re trying to achieve at Blue Ocean Ideas.

If you’d like, you can send Anna Grace a welcome note at annagrace@blueoceanideas.net. You can also find out more about Anna Grace at www.blueoceanideas.net/annagraceabell.

Brody

P.S. Last night, Greg and I spoke at a networking event for Princeton alums. We were talking about what happened culturally and technologically to bring this whole social media thing to the forefront of our society. Just wanted to let you know that we give some great talks of varying lengths on a variety of topics (social media, brand development theory, marketing strategy, mobile devices, and some other more technical things). If you ever need a speaker for your event, give us a call and we can talk through how to best serve your guests.

Weekly Idea: All Marketing Is Brand Building

Posted on August 3rd, 2010 at 2:38 pm in Blog, Suggested, The Weekly Idea, brand development, ideas, thought provoking by brody

This quote drives what Blue Ocean Ideas does for clients:

“The art of marketing is largely brand building. If not a brand, it will be viewed as a commodity.” – Philip Kotler, Kellogg Graduate School of Management

We counsel clients to not spend another dollar on advertising or marketing until that money becomes an investment that builds their brand. Everything you do matters when you are building your brand.

Brand development means telling the truth about who you are, faster. It’s about telling your story and making a promise, and then living it out.

Story. How are you saving the world (or your customer’s world, at least)? What do you do better than everyone else?

Promise. What do you deliver on over and over again? What is your customers’ unique experience?

Your brand is communicated in all sorts of ways: logos and identity packages, events, advertising, websites, email, etc. The most significant way your brand is communicated is through the direct interaction between your customer and your staff. Can your staff tell your story?

Do you have a story to tell?

Brody

P.S. The holy grail of advertising is word-of-mouth. When your story is told well, other people will start telling it too.

The principle of “shareableness” is the core of social media marketing. This Friday, we will show you the meaning behind Web 2.0, social media, mobile devices, in-bound marketing. Once you have the vocabulary down, you’ll be able to strategize about how social media is relevant to your brand. Join us for Social Media 101 & 102.

First Time Hearing Sound

Posted on June 9th, 2010 at 1:34 pm in Blog, brand development, somewhat arbitrary by brody

I could elaborate on the point that one of the purposes of brand development is to bring the music of your organization to the ears of someone who has never heard you. I could talk at length about how to craft messages and use tools to make that possible.

That might stretch us too far away from the sheer enjoyment of the moment shown in the video below:

Weekly Idea: Why We Are Blue Ocean Ideas

Posted on May 25th, 2010 at 2:44 pm in Blog, Blue Ocean Ideas, The Weekly Idea, brand development by brody

Most businesses and organizations exist “competing within the confines of [their] existing industry or trying to steal customers from rivals,” according to Mike Metzger. Those organizations exist in “red oceans.”

It’s tough to fish where there are a lot of boats. The water turns red from the mêlée of competition.

What does it take to get out of there? Great ideas. Using new language and new metaphors will help, too. The businesses that do this are the ones sailing in “blue oceans.”

Getting to a blue ocean requires innovation and courage. You can’t execute on a blue ocean idea unless you ask tough questions, find new solutions, and face the precariousness of going somewhere new. The businesses stuck in red oceans are the ones without a great idea or the guts to act on a great idea.

Positioning yourself for success in a blue ocean is the reason for developing your brand. The best brand development uses innovation and courage to tell the truth about who you are, faster and more compellingly.

Why are we Blue Ocean Ideas? Because this is what we do for our clients: bring out the best ideas and then implement them.

Most of you are going to do the same kind of marketing you have always done, using the same language, the same media, and the same bait. Good luck.

For the courageous few that want to build their brands, you have to become a sailor. More on that next week.

Hoist the sails,

brody

P.S. This weekend is Blood:Water Baltimore’s 2010 Running Water 5K race (& 1 Mile Walk). We hope to see you there!

Weekly Idea: Why We Are Blue Ocean Ideas

Posted on May 25th, 2010 at 2:44 pm in Blog, Blue Ocean Ideas, The Weekly Idea, brand development by brody

Most businesses and organizations exist “competing within the confines of [their] existing industry or trying to steal customers from rivals,” according to Mike Metzger. Those organizations exist in “red oceans.”

It’s tough to fish where there are a lot of boats. The water turns red from the mêlée of competition.

What does it take to get out of there? Great ideas. Using new language and new metaphors will help, too. The businesses that do this are the ones sailing in “blue oceans.”

Getting to a blue ocean requires innovation and courage. You can’t execute on a blue ocean idea unless you ask tough questions, find new solutions, and face the precariousness of going somewhere new. The businesses stuck in red oceans are the ones without a great idea or the guts to act on a great idea.

Positioning yourself for success in a blue ocean is the reason for developing your brand. The best brand development uses innovation and courage to tell the truth about who you are, faster and more compellingly.

Why are we Blue Ocean Ideas? Because this is what we do for our clients: bring out the best ideas and then implement them.

Most of you are going to do the same kind of marketing you have always done, using the same language, the same media, and the same bait. Good luck.

For the courageous few that want to build their brands, you have to become a sailor. More on that next week.

Hoist the sails,

brody

P.S. This weekend is Blood:Water Baltimore’s 2010 Running Water 5K race (& 1 Mile Walk). We hope to see you there!

The Idea: Preparing the Ground

Posted on January 5th, 2010 at 9:15 am in Blog, ideas by brody

You know how to get snow to stick to the ground really well?

Make it really, really cold. And keep it really cold for a long time.

Your sales and marketing tactics are like a snowstorm. No matter how ferocious your blizzard is, your strategy will not stick unless you’ve prepared the ground. You gotta keep it cold enough long enough so that your customer is willing enough to let your storm turn to beauty.

If you don’t prepare the ground, you’re wasting money with every flake that melts.

Here’s how to make it cold: Say the right things in the right ways. The “right things” are the things your customers care about. The “right ways” are ways that are a) surprising enough to get attention, and b) beautiful enough to earn credibility.

(Can you feel the B.S. meter going up these days?… it’s not just how you say it, it’s what you say.)

Here’s how to keep it cold: Say the right things in the right ways over and over and over again.

How do you know the right things to say? Ask. Ask your customers. Ask your sales people. Ask Blue Ocean Ideas to help you.

How do you know the right ways to say them? Ask. Ask your customers. Ask your sales people. Ask Blue Ocean Ideas to help you.

How do you say them over and over and over again? Strategize. Ask Blue Ocean Ideas to help you.

We define brand development as “telling the truth about who you are, faster.” But we should also add “…for the long haul.”

As soon as you change your set of promises, you start the freezing process over again. It’s ok to do that. Just be patient, like the last time.

P.S. Our team loves to do brand assessments where we research your “stuff”. How good is your message and your media tools? What are your competitors doing? But really, all that only helps to assess the main questions:

• Do your customers know the promises your making?
• Do those promises matter to your customer?
• Do your customers believe that you can deliver on those promises?

Ultimately, do your customers/members/donors/stakeholders know you? Trust you? Advocate for you?

If so, great! Let’s run with that. If not, great! Let’s fix that.

Prices start at various four-figure amounts. Start 2010 with a Blue Ocean Brand Assessment.

The Idea: Do Not Live Like It’s Your Last Day

Posted on December 23rd, 2009 at 1:28 pm in Blog, brand development, ideas, must read by brody

So, we’re in the season of stale platitudes, cliché religious advice, crassly commercialized quips, and bad photography. How are your holiday cards and public service announcements looking?

There’s an oft-quoted piece of advice that sometimes rubs me the wrong way: “Live everyday as though it were your last.”

To me, that can be short-sighted, selfish, hedonistic, uncharitable, rude, or opportunistic. There are certainly times when we shouldn’t throw it to the wind. We should often take care to live today like there is a tomorrow – so that tomorrow is all it can be.

The implications for your organization and it’s brand development are strong. Simply, a business cannot think only of the present if they are interested in building a brand. A brand says, “we’re here, today, tomorrow, or whenever you need us, ready to serve you and meet your needs.” A brand’s marketing and advertising needs to communicate that.

The opposite of a brand is a commodity that screams, “Sale! Today only! Call us now! We are awesome! Your opportunity (and our success) lives or dies right now!” Those businesses take advantage of their customers.

And they don’t build trust. Hurried messages can’t make the type of promises that you can deliver on over and over again. A brand is a promise. And, without a concerted effort to build a brand, it becomes difficult for people to become advocates and fans of who you are.

All of this is directly tied to the religious significance of this season:

Hanukkah is a holiday that celebrates longevity. Consecrated oil that was thought to only be able to burn for one day miraculously burned for eight days.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ, whose very coming was predicated on God’s desire to redeem the world so that people could live forever with Him.

Right on the cusp of every new year we are reminded of what endures. Does your organization – does your brand – follow the theme of that song?

Joy to the world,

brody

The Idea: Arrogance

Posted on December 15th, 2009 at 2:33 pm in Blog, brand development, ideas by brody

“All you and Lisa ever do is come home, turn on the tv, and then do your own thing on your computers as you sit on the sofa all night long.”

So says my wife’s brother who lives with us.

Certainly, my wife and I are not going to have deep conversation nor get cuddly while he’s around, right? He has a limited perspective of how we spend our time.

The problem is that his limited perspective creates his entire framework for how he sees our marriage. It’s arrogant.

And we all do it.

We so often use our limited perspective to give us our entire framework of looking at something. Like my brother-in-law, we let our perceptions of something project realities that aren’t always true. We are all arrogant.

This happens in business all the time. The limited (and jargon-laden) perspective of a business owner will often provide the entire framework for how that organization communicates with their prospects and customers. The message will be about the company, in the language of the company, and about things that the company cares about.

But remember: marketing and advertising are not about you. Each ought to be used to serve your audience. Messages should be about your customer, in the language of your customer, and about the things your customer cares about.

At Wordswell, we define brand development as “telling the truth about who you are – quicker.” It’s a process that requires humility. Only when we are humble can we speak someone else’s language. Any only then can we convey real meaning.

How do we meaningfully communicate the truth about something (e.g. our organizations)? 1) Realize our perspectives are limited. 2) Listen.

Ya hear?

brody

P.S. The best advertising merely echoes that which people are already saying about you. Research is a key element of brand development. That’s why Wordswell helps our clients research what they should say before they say it. When we interview your clients to see why they love you, you get invaluable information about your brand. (And, along the way, you get some huge customer service points with your audience.)

The Idea: Social Proof That Says You’re Worth It

Posted on November 15th, 2009 at 9:39 pm in Blog, brand development, ideas, social media, thought provoking by brody

Recently, Mike Metzger of the Clapham Institute wrote a piece called “Peer Pressure”. Metzger described a research study that looked at what message motivated people to reuse their towels in a hotel. Here’s the summary: appealing to folks to “do the right thing” didn’t work. Instead, telling folks that “most guests in this room reuse their towels” did work.

The conclusion? Metzger writes, “People tend to conform to social customs, or what others call peer pressure. When people discover what most of their peers are already doing, they’re more likely to begin doing it themselves.” (Emphasis mine.) When there is “social proof” that something is a good idea, more people hop on the bandwaggon.

So how can you get your customers socially proving that other people should spend their time or money with you?

First of all, we need to understand that people have an unprecedented number of options when it comes to finding the goods and services they want. Additionally, the providers of goods and services now have new and innumerable ways of communicating about their brand. Both are largely the result of the forces of the internet.

In light of this, brands and organizations need to start adopting tribe mentalities. Meaning, your best chance at success is through ever-expanding influence. For more info on tribes and marketing, google Seth Godin.

In a tribe mentality, you as the leader (the brand that people love) need to create your own cultural norms, customs, and even your own language. These all contribute to a shared experience amongst your fans and members – and they create the dynamic that is the tribe. Metzger puts it this way, “People tend to convert to what their surrounding culture tells them is normative.”

Never before has this been so important, and never before have there been so many tools to do this. Social media is a key set of tools you can be strategically using to create your own normative culture. Social media is the easiest and fastest way for you to gain social proof that you’re worth the attention of others.

Make sure that you are creating customer experiences that make them want to vouch for you. Once you do that, make sure you’re helping to create venues where they can share their experience. The tools exist. Ever hear of a “re-tweet”?

Is Social Media a Fad?

Posted on September 14th, 2009 at 1:08 pm in Blog, brand development, social media, technology, thought provoking by brody

This video speaks for itself. Wordswell helps organizations navigate this new reality as part of a brand development process.

You’ve heard that social media is all about “engagement” – and it certainly is. But it is also about serving your clients. More about that in a later post…