Branding Archives - Page 16 of 42 - McLellan Marketing Group

Will you have a little branding with us tomorrow?

August 5, 2008

Join the gang at MMG for the Branding Breakfast or Lunch!

Here’s the drill. You come. We talk branding. You leave with some new ideas to try back at the ranch.

Remember…if you come for breakfast, we feed you. If you opt for lunch, it’s BYOL.

What: Branding Breakfast (delicious, hot breakfast provided)
When: 7:30 — 8:30 a.m., first Wednesday of February, May, August and November. That’s tomorrow…August 6th!
Where: Workforce Center. 430 East Grand Ave, Des Moines (map)

Or…

What: Branding Lunch (BYOL)
When: noon — 1:00 p.m., first Wednesday of February, May, August and November. Again…that’s tomorrow…August 6th!
Where: Simpson College WDM Campus. 3737 Westown Parkway (classroom #9) (map)

RSVP: Yes, I want to talk about branding!

We’d love to have you join us! (If you live outside of Iowa…it’s probably a bit of a trek. But you could be with us in spirit!)

Business Cards 2.0 (They’re Leo Approved!)

July 31, 2008

Haven’t you wondered what the archaeologists from 3008 will think when they unearth piles and piles of business cards? I suspect they’ll think we killed a lot of trees.

Leonardo DiCaprio spends a lot of his time trying to inspire people to save the earth through his eco site. He would heartily approve of this latest business card option.

Meet the mobile business card.

These cards can be e-mailed, sent via text message or posted on a website or blog. Thanks to www.211me.com you can create and use them for free.

Here’s how it works:

Go to www.211me.com
Create your free business card
Grab the code to post on a website or blog
Or…Get the code to embed it into your e-mail signature
Or…Send a text to: 555211 (their short code) and in the body of the message, enter any mobile number and they’ll receive a copy of your card*

It was not only easy to create, but it was easy to personalize. I wasn’t loving any of their backgrounds, so I uploaded a photo of my own and within a couple minutes, had created the above card.

The FAQs on the site say that you can also create fliers and use images, text and hyperlinked content to create a paperless way to promote concerts, bar specials, events, invite buddies to a party, or whatever else your mind can come up with.

What do you think? How (or would) you use this technology?

*For some reason, Verizon is the only phone company that isn’t playing nice. I could still send my card…I just got a false error message. When I sent myself my card, Verizon wouldn’t let me click on the link. Apparently, if I had a Treo or Blackberry, it would have.

Is hip hop a buzz kill?

July 17, 2008

Okay….how would you (or should you) blend these elements:

Hip hop viral video
ice cream
the Colony Collapse Disorder that is plaguing the Western Bee population

Haagen-Daz is doing a little cause marketing and they have mashed up those ingredients (think figuratively for those of you who went right for the blender visual) to try to create some buzz for the honey bees.

In my post at Marketing Profs Daily Fix, I wonder about the effectiveness of the tactics and the inconsistency within the campaign. I’d love to get your take on the video and overall effort.

Click here to take a look and jump into the conversation.

I have a stomach ache…I think I had a bad brand for dinner

July 15, 2008

We have a new minor league hockey team (Anaheim’s farm team) moving to Des Moines. I am embarrassed to tell you that the new team’s name is….The Iowa Chops.

I know…and from a branding perspective, it gets even worse. They have given their team name even though someone else owns the name! Read about who owns the rights on the name and why that makes this an even bigger branding mess.

Check out my post at IowaBiz.com (which is back in business, thanks to it being acquired by the Business Record!)

Do you want an * by your company’s name?

July 9, 2008

As a baseball fan, I watched with great dread as Barry Bonds approached Hank Aaron’s home run record. For me, the two men couldn’t be more different. Bonds surpassing Aaron’s record was sort of like when the villain gets one up on Batman. They usually do it through deceit and trickery.

In my opinion, Barry got his spot in the record books the same way.

The historic baseball that was #756 was delivered to the Baseball Hall of Fame last week. But it arrived with an asterisk.

As most of you know, fashion designer Marc Ecko purchased the ball in an online auction for $752,467 and then held an on-line poll to ask what should be done with it. The choices were:

Bestow it (Just give it to the Hall of Fame)
Brand it (Give it to the Hall but first put an asterisk on it to signify the doubts about Bond’s steroid use)
Banish it (Launch it into outer space)

Almost 10 million people voted and almost half of all the votes went for brand it. And so it was done.

The truth is, we’ll never know the truth. But Bonds conducted himself in a way that we doubt his character. Most of us don’t give him the benefit of the doubt and he will probably never be able to behave his way back to being respected and trusted.

Think about that sentence. Probably never be able to behave his way back to being respected and trusted. Yikes.

Why? Because through his words and actions, he had built a brand that told us he was rude, conceited and didn’t care about the game as much as he did about his own creature comforts and fame. And now, that brand is part of the reason behind the lion’s share of the country thinking that he lied when he said he hadn’t taken steroids.

Is it fair? Probably not. But life and branding aren’t fair. As I said in a post from last year, once you don the black hat, it’s pretty tough to take it off.

I don’t think Barry built his brand consciously or with one fell swoop. It was a million tiny choices and interactions. Do I think today he wishes he had been a bit nicer to reporters? Do I think he wishes he stuck around a little more often to sign autographs after a game? Do I think he wishes he had handled himself better when things got heated up?

You bet. But he can’t. He’s already wearing the black hat.

So why am I waxing on about this, you ask? Because we could just as easily and just as accidentally create the same sort of brand trouble.

What small decisions, policies and behaviors are going on in your company that might add up to a brand you can’t behave out of? Don’t be too quick or too smug to think there’s nothing you can’t improve on. I’ll bet with a little thought (and input from your co-workers and clients) you could come up with 5-10 small things that aren’t giving off exactly the brand message you want to create.

You have time to fix it. Before your marketplace puts an asterisk by your company’s name.

For more on marketing and asterisks, check out Patrick’s post over at Responsible Marketing. I borrowed the above photo from him as well.

Are you tough enough to take it?

July 7, 2008

Most businesses have a heavy focus on acquiring new clients. Especially as we consider that we might be rolling into a recession. Everyone is sensitive to the importance of keeping new prospects flowing.

But we should remember that the way to get new prospects is to be smarter about how we treat current customers and even how we treated those customers we’ve lost. Getting smarter is a much better strategy than blindly lowering our prices to combat tougher times.

Losing a customer is inevitable. It happens to every business. But losing them for good is not inevitable. You can get a good percentage of them back.

One of the most powerful pieces of research you can do is a lost customer survey. This isn’t for the meek. It’s a little like being hit with a toxic gas. It can knock the wind out of you!

You need to be ready to hear some painful truths. They left for a reason. And the reason is rarely price. So something in your product, service or interactions pushed them into your competitor’s arms.

This is not something you can do effectively by yourself. Here’s a human truth that works both for and against us. People are basically nice. They don’t want to offend you or hurt your feelings. But you will be amazed at how candid (and sometimes brutally honest) they will be with an objective third-party. So, get professional help.

Once you hear the truth, there will be elements within your business that you will clearly want to change. Change them or put plans in place to change them. Then, craft a letter to your lost customers thanking them for their participation and sharing the results with them. Yes, air your dirty laundry. Then tell them about your plans to change the problems. Finally, ask them to come back. Give them an incentive to do so.

You won’t get them all. But you’ll get many of them back. Best of all, you have made changes that will keep more of your current clients right where they belong – with you.

One of the services we provide MMG clients is a customer satisfaction assessment. Every one of our clients who embarks on the research ends up changing the way they do business for the better. Hard to argue with results like that.

Oodles of insight

June 30, 2008

Looking for some reading that will make you pause and go "hmmmm?" I’ve discovered a treasure trove.

1) Check out a spot that Chris Brogan pointed me to — Manifesto archives. They’ve got articles on marketing, ROI, escaping corporate America, the upside of a downturn and much more.

This is all part of a non-profit called Change This. Their goal — to change the way ideas are spread. Interesting premise…and some great thinking.

They also have a blog where they founders and participants talk about why Change This is so important.

2) Char Polanosky over at Essential Keystrokes is celebrating her blog’s 2nd anniversary. If you aren’t familiar with Char’s blog — it’s an excellent read. She covers a wide array of topics from web design to blogging to new media and more.

To celebrate her anniversary, Char is giving away some of her favorite web-based tools, including:

6 months free subscription to 37 Signals Highrise – the contact management system with a kick – valued at $300.
1 full year of Freshbooks (Shuttle Bus package) to streamline your invoicing process – valued at $168.
5 one-year Pro subscriptions to pMetrics – the ultimate blogger’s stats package – valued at $59.99 each.
Wiley Publishing has offered 5 copies of Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett’s Problogger: Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. It is the absolute must read book this year!

So get over there, get comfy with her blog and win yourself a prize or three!

3) Lewis Green of bizsolutionsplus finds his summertime Fridays a bit of a dead zone. But leave it to Lewis to come up with a long list of useful ways to fill that time.

Here’s a few of his thoughts:

Recommend client’s move forward in new ways.
Send out a new thought paper.
Read other’s work.
Recommend other’s work.

Check out his post to get the whole list and add a few of your own!

Whew! My brain hurts just writing about all that thought leadership. Go slow so you don’t get a brain freeze…but don’t miss these great resources.

Is your brand an accident waiting to happen?

June 25, 2008

David Vinjamuri released a book this spring called Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands and it’s built to inspire.

The book tells the story of seven average people who developed successful brands despite their lack of formal marketing training.

Instead, they built their brand from their heart and their gut.

As a comment from the book jacket (from Gareth Kay) points out, one of the things that makes this book so interesting is that the companies profiled are not the same Nike, Apple, Virgin and Whole Foods that we read about every day.

Vinjamuri spotlights:

The Storyteller: John Peterman (J. Peterman)
The Contrarian: Craig Newmark (craigslist)
The Tinkerer: Gary Erickson (Clif Bar)
The Visionary and the Strategist: Myriam Zaoui and Eric Malka (The Art of Shaving)
The Pugilist: Gert Boyle (Columbia Sportswear)
The Perfectionist: Julie Aigner-Clark (Baby Einstein)
The Anarchist: Roxanne Quimby (Burt’s Bees)

Each brand’s story is very different and gives readers a rock solid reminder that anyone and everyone has what it takes to build a killer brand.

I think the stories also serve as a reminder that you cannot fake branding long-term. What made these businesses extraordinary is how authentic each business owner was in terms of defining and protecting their vision.

Bottom line — they believed in it. And eventually, so did we.

Like any good professor, Vinjamuri sums up the lessons and packages them into six rules:

Do sweat the small stuff
Pick a fight
Be your own customer
Be unnaturally persistent
Build a myth
Be faithful

This is a fun read. Vinjamuri is an excellent storyteller and each story has a lesson or three for each of us.

FREE e-book on word of mouth marketing

June 19, 2008

Dave Balter, of BzzAgent (which I have written about before) has written a new book, The Word of Mouth Manual: Volume II.

His book and how he’s promoting it is an embodiment of Word of Mouth itself. As Dave’s site says "Every aspect of it was conceived as an illustration of how to get people talking. There are dozens of elements of WOM in action which will become entirely obvious once you see it, read it and hold it. For example, the title begs people to ask, "Where’s Volume I?" which is as good a way as any to get a dialogue going. The same goes for the monkey on the cover (and how that guy eats bananas, of course)."

You can buy the book on Amazon for $45 or you can download the PDF (full content) version for free.

Your call. I went for the free one myself!

Thanks to John Jantsch for asking me to pass this along to you.

Be brave enough to trust your audience

June 18, 2008

Some marketers under estimate their audience. So they decide that they have to beat them over the head with their message. And in doing so, that actually waters down the message to the point of it not being anywhere near as effective.

This spot starts off so strong. Watch it to the end and see where it loses its edge for you.

The power of this spot was the close ups of the women. We could see and feel their emotions. The connection was real because they were very raw and the shot was very tight. But then, the editor decided we might not understand that many women have been sexually abused….so they had to do the old "and she told two friends, and so on and so on" screen split.

Which completely disconnected us from the women. The emotion is lost. And so is the power of the spot.

Don’t be afraid to let your audience connect the dots.

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