March 19, 2007
In his book A New Brand World: Eight principles for brand leadership in the twenty-first century, Scott Bedbury (former Starbuck’s marketing head and Nike advertising director) says:
“I can think of no better organizing principle for a company than the brand itself.”
What do you think — true or untrue?
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March 19, 2007
We have many opportunities to extend our brand’s reach every day. Most of them are tiny little details that seem insiginficant. But they’re not.
Dawud Miracle raised this issue in a recent post where he suggests that people should be mindful of how they sign off on their blog comments. He makes a very strong argument for always using the same signature to build awareness and increase your "findability." He tells the story of how his frequent commenting on blogs has encouraged other people to look him up and in doing so, discover his blog.
Let’s go a little further. How a person comments — do they ask questions, do they tell stories, do they play devil’s advocate? Do they add to the post by sharing or illuminating? Answer those questions and you have a snapshot of a person’s brand. This, by the way, holds true on or off line. How you engage says a lot about you.
Want to watch a Master (or in this case, Mistress) in action? Start watching for Valeria Maltoni’s comments throughout the blogosphere. Check out her comment on David Armano’s recent post. She’s amazing. Smart, engaging, collaborative — her brand is all over her comments.
We all have the same opportunity — how are you doing on maximizing yours?
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March 18, 2007
Harry Beckwith gets it. Marketing. Branding. Communications. Relationships. Not only does he get it — he helps his readers get it.
Short, concise 1-4 page chapters. Each one punctuated with a summary lesson/thought. Compelling stories. And not just marketing lessons. Plenty of people lessons too.
Harry’s most recent book, You, Inc.: The Art of Selling Yourself was just released. It’s as good as the rest (see links at the bottom of the post.) of his offerings but a little different. The earlier books took a more global, company-wide perspective. This book shrinks the focus down to the reader.
If you want to:
then you need to read this book.
Beckwith is a master storyteller who never leaves the reader hanging. Together with his wife Christine (a much celebrated pro in her own right) he outlines very simple truths that can have a significant impact on your life. Professional or otherwise.
I’ve read some great business books already in ’07. This one tops the list.
Harry’s other books:
No business library should be without the complete set.
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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.
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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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!
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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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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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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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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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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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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