Is your brand acid-test proof?

March 18, 2007

I love (and try to live by) the famous quote "character is what we do when no one is watching."

I believe branding follows the same path.  For decades, we (marketers) have been trying to craft and control all of our marketing messages.  Now, don’t get me wrong.  Consistency is critical to marketing success.  That’s us standing tall and saying "here’s our story and our promise." 

We need to know and believe in that story.  We need our employees to know and believe in the story.  But that’s only half the equation.

What happens when "no one is watching" is the other half.  It’s the grace under pressure.  It’s the acid test of your brand.

It’s the instinctual response to any situation.  Especially sticky ones. 

• How does your organization respond when a reporter shows up asking invasive questions
• What do you do when the homeless man takes up residence in your lobby
• A competitor leaks a story that implies you are unethical
• Misuse of your product results in a man’s death
• You discover that something you own holds the key to another company’s success…or failure
• What do you say when a former employee solicits a current customer
• How does your employee manage an angry customer who is making a scene?
• What’s the next step when you accidentally get copied on an e-mail from an employee lambasting you

This is where the "our brand is our logo and our tagline" philosophy falls flat.   That version of branding is skin deep.  And skin deep will not hold together when there is no brainstorming time or strategy bullet point in the marketing plan.

Is your brand deep enough?  Would you survive the acid test?  Would you and all your peers react in the same way to the situations above?  Or do you only have a skin-deep brand?

 

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Five minute sex tips?

March 17, 2007

                                    

                           

One of the "learn more" about my readers exercises I routinely do is to examine the words that people enter into Google or other search engines to navigate to Drew’s Marketing Minute.  Most of them are what you’d expect, but some of them just crack me up, so I thought I’d share.

I just have to say…some of them must be so disappointed when they arrive at a branding & marketing blog!

• Five minute sex tips  (I can hear this guy cursing up a storm — who cares about marketing!  I’m down to 4 minutes!)
• Kemp‘s maple ice cream
• Plumbing (wow…I can hear the water overflowing out of the toilet and he’s now engrossed in some post!)
• How to say lipstick on a pig in Italian (Why would you want to??)
• Sex for money
• Junkett custard
• How do you spell posse (wouldn’t dictionary.com have been easier?)
• Family guy phone ringtone

My point is two-fold.  First — just to share a good laugh with you on the weekend.  But second and more seriously — if you aren’t trying to learn more about your readers and what they  want to talk about, you are missing a serious opportunity. 

For every five minute sex tip entry, I saw plenty of  branding, employee loyalty, market plans, authentic voice, copywriting entries.  That does my heart good.  it means I’m doing my job.

But obviously I am going to have to throw in a sex tip now and then!  Who knew?   

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What’s memorable about you? (part two)

March 16, 2007

A few days ago, I asked:

If you had a client/customer who took their business to a competitor for a year or two and then decided to come back…how would they complete this sentence… 

"Do you guys still….."

What do you do for/with your clients that is so memorable that even 2 years later, they’d hope it was still part of your company’s culture?

I know the kinds of things that went through your brain — we deliver on time, on budget.  We partner with our clients.  We are accessible. Etc. etc. etc.

And you’d think that those are the things that matter.  After all, they’re the big things. 

But they are also the expected things.  Our clients have every right to expect that we’ll deliver a quality product on budget and on time. 

What they don’t expect but grow to to love are the little extras.  Those gestures that say "we’re glad you’re with us.  Something special happens here." 

At McLellan Marketing Group, that extra something comes in the shape (and flavor) of M&M cookies.  Warm from the oven. Every meeting at our place. Every time.   To add a little branding lesson into the treat, we only use  M&Ms that match the colors in our logo.

The scenario I painted above happened to us recently.  A client left and then decided to come back. As we set up our first re-meeting at the MMG headquarters — the client asked, "Do you still bake the cookies?"

She was pretty happy when I said yes.

CK talks about how the little things make a big difference.  Check it out!   

And — find a way to be memorable.

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Drew sucks!

March 16, 2007

Actually…

DrewSucks.com
DrewSucks.net
DrewReallySucks.com
DrewIsAJerk.com
DrewDoesn’tKnowSquat.com
ThatDrewisACompleteMoron.com

Any marketing strategy that J&J employs must be smart for all of us, eh?

Apparently the folks at Johnson & Johnson thought it would be wise to adopt the best offense is a good defense mentality when it came to their product Splenda.  They’ve spent countless hours and dollars securing every possible anti-Splenda domain name they could think of.

Seriously…this is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard.  This isn’t smart marketing. This is paranoia.

Surely we’ve all learned that in today’s citizen-driven communications, if people want to create a forum to say good or bad things about a company or product — they will. No matter how many domain names you own.

A hat tip and thanks to Roberta over at Copywriting Maven for calling this to my attention.

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In lead generation — knowing your target matters

March 15, 2007

We’ve talked about it before — people don’t like to do business with strangers.

And they don’t like to be called "hey you!" or by the wrong name.  Which means knowing who they are and what actually matters to them –should matter to us.

RainToday.com‘s new research report’s (What’s Working In Lead Generation) 2nd insight is all about the customer.  And how well we know them.

 

No big surprises here.  The more you know about your prospect, the more successful you will be.  So why do you keep sending out the "dear neighbor" or worse — "dear customer" communications?

Marketing isn’t rocket science. But it does require some sweat equity and effort.  You need to qualify your lists.  Is that some heavy lifting?  Sure.  But the chart above shows you that you’ll enjoy a 40% increase in lead generation if you actually know the name of the decision maker. Isn’t that margin of success worth the extra effort?

Note:  The full RainToday.com report shares 6 key insights which I’ll be exploring over the next several days with you.  In the meantime, if you’d like to download their free 21-page summary, you can grab it here.

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A shirt only a mother could love!

March 14, 2007

                     

                                                       

Do you think anyone has actually bought one of these?  (Shhh, I am getting my mom one for Mother’s Day!)

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It isn’t easy being green

March 14, 2007

                                                                                                 

Does your company turn your competitors green with envy?  If not — why not?   

And what are you going to do about it?  How could you become more enviable?

flickr photo courtesy of hey joe…

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Now I really heart NY!

March 13, 2007

Imagine a whirlwind, fast-paced 3+ hour conversation that spanned welcoming new bloggers, world politics, collaboration, prejudice, writing styles, buying shoes, the folly of mixing cough medicine and client meetings, working in sweats, life partners, a passion for marketing and seducing the elderly.

Who could possibly cover all that with wit, eloquence and style?

None other than our CK.  I had the amazing good fortune of sharing a magnificent dinner at Keens, much laughter and a few good hugs with her this weekend.  I have no doubt we will share many more over the years.

I have loved NYC for a long time. The energy, the theatre district and for me, many wonderful memories.

But after this past weekend, I have another reason to love NYC.

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What’s memorable about you? (part one)

March 12, 2007

If you had a client/customer who took their business to a competitor for a year or two and then decided to come back…how would they complete this sentence… 

"Do you guys still….."

What do you do for/with your clients that is so memorable that even 2 years later, they’d hope it was still part of your company’s culture?

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All about Apple

March 11, 2007

It occurred to me today how often I have written about Apple.  Now granted — I love the Mac.  I wouldn’t use a PC if you gave me one for free. But I’m not letting my brand bias my blog.  (Try saying that 5 times fast!)

One of the truths about elite brands is that they create buzz.  Look at how many opportunities for buzz Apple created that I grabbed onto:

Steve Jobs — $400 million  smart  (the free publicity gained by the iPhone announcement)

Hey raving fans, STOP promoting my product! (Apple lawyers trip over themselves, letting semantics get in the way of promoting the iPod)

Fortune 500 Corporate blog review series: Apple  (A study of corporate blogs and Apple’s place in that mix)

Want to create an Apple-sized buzz? (Inc. com’s study of how Apple creates buzz)

Should I launch this product?  (My thoughts on the iPhone launch)

Hey Goliath, I think you’re going down! (the Zune versus iPod discussion)

That’s a post about Apple at least once a month!  How many companies do you know that can/do create that sort of positive buzz?

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