Branding Archives - Page 21 of 42 - McLellan Marketing Group

You are always on stage

December 8, 2007

I pulled into a Jiffy Lube to get my oil changed. The guys had the bay doors closes to keep out the wind.

Just as I was about to knock on the window, I heard the very annoyed manager ripping into the employee standing next to him, "I don’t give a %$#* if you need to…"

He then turned, saw me and came out with a big smile on his face. A little late for that.

He had forgotten (or never learned) a key business lesson.

You are always on stage.

If you were to get a job at Disney World, you’d go through three days of "The Disney Way" training. It doesn’t matter if you are sweeping up popcorn, running an attraction or putting on the Goofy costume. Everyone goes through the training. And one of the core lessons taught to the cast members is….you are always on stage.

If a customer can hear, see, touch, smell or taste you (okay the last two are probably not as likely) then you are on stage. You should behave as though the most important customer in the world is right there.

Because it might be true.

Are you an elf or a scrooge?

December 6, 2007

No, I’m not really polling you about your pre-holiday state of mind. (I won’t ask if you don’t!)

But this holiday season, you can fashion yourself as an elf, scrooge or even a chipmunk! Viral marketing campaigns that allow people to add their own voice or picture and share them with their friends is all the rage.

Check out these interactive campaigns.

Feeling the season? Turn yourself (or a friend) into an elf. (check out this crazy elf!)

Feeling a little bah humbug about the holidays? Turn yourself into scrooge.

Remember sucking helium from a balloon? Turn your voice into a chipmunk’s.

Love football this time of year? How about doing your own victory dance?

So here’s the real question. These campaigns drive a lot of traffic to your website. They’re sticky, funny and very viral. Are they about branding? Does it make you want to buy stuff at OfficeMax or drink CokeZero? Or see the new movie?

Do you think certain products, services or companies can benefit more from this sort of campaign?

Logo re-designs — a good idea or bad?

December 5, 2007

It seems like a lot of companies are getting antsy about their logos. Whenever that happens — they get a bug to "update" their current logo. Sometimes that’s a great idea. Other times, a bit of a disaster.

Chrys Bader of Clever Cookie has gathered up many of the most recently revised and put together his own critique.

A logo revision is such a fine line. A company’s logo is one of their biggest assets. But, over time some of them begin to look a little dated. But the general feel/look of it should be timeless.

Head over to Clever Cookie and then come back and tell us which logo revision do you think hit it out of the park…and which one struck out?

Lewis Green: What makes you special?

November 27, 2007

If you are a small business owner, an entrepreneur or a consultant, you likely understand that customers have expectations and they expect them to be met. Therefore, in order for you to differentiate your business, you need to find a niche, which can be difficult as seldom do we sell products and services different from our competitors. Furthermore, even if we believe our products and services are better, it is nearly impossible to create that kind of customer perception, as again, they expect products and services to be good to excellent. So what to do?

One way to overcome the differentiation challenge or what I prefer calling the "what makes you special" opportunity is to focus on the "who" (customers)" not the "what" (your products and services). By doing so, you can create a customer experience that is unique to your business, and cater to those customers who want and need that experience. Of course, before you do any of this, you must understand who your ideal customer is and that should be done as early as possible in your business's life.

My business employs several well-thought out strategies to exceed our customer's experience expectations. They include, but are not limited to, the following:

We guarantee our services (marketing and communications). If we do not achieve the goals that were set before the job started, our customers keep a substantial sum of money, which is deducted from the final payment. Risky but our customers love it.
Our clients deal only with me. No matter how large or how small the client's business, every client talks with me and I am their Account Executive. It's time consuming but we also promise that every client is treated as if they are our only client. We have to keep our promises.
We are a values-based business and every decision, everything we say and do, is filtered through those values. That means we only work with clients who have similar values, which sets up a model wherein we and our clients work well together and are a good fit.

Well, that is how we strive to be special.

It works for us because we have a clear understanding of where our business is going, how it is going to get there, and what clients we are going to work with along the way. Some of you may find our strategies unwise and some may relate to them.

Feel free to share. We all can learn from each other through the comments section. How do you differentiate your business? How would you advise others to show their specialness? What works for you and what does not?

P.S. Drew, thank you for letting me to talk with your readers. It is my honor. And readers, I hope I delivered the quality you have come to expect from Drew. He is a tough act to follow.

Drew's Note: With over 30 years of corporate marketing experience, Lewis Green jumped the fence and opened his own agency, much to his clients' good fortune. Lewis' 5th book, Lead with Your Heart has just been released and Lew blogs to boot. Just like his book title, Lewis leads with his heart and is clearly one of the good guys!

Cam Beck: The Magic of Childhood

November 22, 2007

At first glance, the mission of Disney seems too simplistic to be useful. They create happiness. Perhaps it is simplistic, but simplicity is often the tool geniuses use to break down seemingly insurmountable obstacles.

Although growing up is always fraught with both common and unique difficulties, for most, the word "childhood" conjures memories of carefree, sweet innocence and unconditional love. This is true even though not everyone had a great childhood.

While we were children, many times our ignorance about the ways of the world caused us to consider our minuscule problems to be all-consuming.

However, that w as before we were burdened with the curse of experience, which taught us how many responsibilities come with the freedom we craved. Foggy hindsight allows us to look at our childhoods more favorably than they were.

Who would know this better than Walt Disney himself? To say Walt's dad, Elias, grew up hard would be an understatement. And though I've not read anything to suggest that he, like his father before him, broke a fiddle on Walt's head for trying to sneak off to play at a dance, it is clear that his frequently unemployed father had little tolerance for whimsical activities typically associated with the young – and with Disney World.

How can this be?

What gives us the ability to look back at — if not our childhoods — at least the myth of our childhoods so affectionately is the capacity kids seem to have for persistent imagination. To children, make-believe isn't a state of mind; it is a way of life. The magic of childhood Walt Disney sought to harness might rightly be called the magic of symbolic and selective nostalgia.

Genius Principle #1
The first real genius in the mission is the illusion it reveals: Disney can no more create happiness than they can count the number of angels dancing on the head of a needle. They instead must rely on people's willingness to be led to happiness.

To get there, Disney relies on two self-evident truths.

Truth #1
No one can make happy those who have not granted permission first.

Truth #2
People want to be happy.

They want to occasionally shed the heavy shell, let down the guard life has taught them to keep, and feel as – not just children – but as they believe children should feel. They give themselves permission to make-believe, and they give Disney permission to deliver the experience that convinces them that magic is real. What's more, they'll pay through the nose for it.

Disney doesn't take advantage of this desire, though. Whereas other "theme" parks nickel and dime patrons through concessions and extras, Disney's are quite reasonable by comparison.

Genius Principle #2
The second genius in Disney's mission is that the delivery of value – call it "the happiness quotient" — beyond what is paid for keeps on giving to the visitors for years after the experience.

It's a value that patrons of the parks and resorts give back to Disney a hundredfold by telling the stories of their visit to friends, family, and even complete strangers in the right circumstances.

Even if they are never afforded an opportunity to return, they can still spread the message by remembering and reminiscing the joyfulness of their visit.

Walt Disney's greatest success was his ability to take a flawed idealism about childhood and deliver a vision for an extraordinary experience that would make people believe in the magic and basic goodness they believed in as kids.

It's a simple message, but one that has carried one of the world's great brands through all sorts of national and global turmoil.

Going Head-to-Head with Disney
Should your mission be so different? Your goal as someone who provides a product or service should be to either make people happy, provide people comfort, or both. The rest is details over the where, when, and how.

Perhaps you don't have the resources available to Disney. Very few do.

That doesn't mean you can't deliver on the simple promise to make people happy.

You might be surprised at what you can accomplish with a smile and the insatiable desire to get others to do it, too.

Drew's Note: Cam Beck works at Click Here and blogs at ChaosScenario. He's about as straight a shooter as you'll ever meet and his posts are rarely just about marketing. They typically take you to a much deeper place. Like Greg and Gavin before him…he's one of the good guys!

Greg Verdino: Love Your Haters!

November 20, 2007

I've discovered a surefire way to get a room full of marketers to go quiet. Just bring up the notion of reaching out and bonding with the consumers that hate their brand the most. Just a few weeks ago, I suggested this very thing to a client. You could hear a pin drop in that room.

Now, I've written about the notion of "loving your haters" at my own blog and to me it seems like a no brainer. You seek out the people who are your most vocal detractors and you listen — and I mean really listen — to all the reasons they don't like you and how they think you might improve. You engage them directly, show them why you do things the way you do them, and make them full fledged partners in helping you turn around. You actually implement some of the things that they'd like to see.

At a minimum, you get some great ideas for how you can make your business better. Beyond that, you might even earn yourself some new customers, committed fans who feel like they were part of the solution.

After all, isn't that why people complain in the first place? Not simply to let you know you've let them down but also to prod you along the path toward better business. Right?
I admit that I live inside the social media "echo chamber" where any conversation — even disagreement (maybe disagreement most of all) — is good conversation. And I'll also admit that, out there in the real world, not every detractor has your best interests in mind; some people really do want to see you go down. But if someone has taken the time to let you know that you've let them down — by calling your customer support line, by writing a letter, by complaining to their sales rep or (increasingly) by writing a negative blog post, uploading a video to YouTube or starting a negative thread in an online forum — isn't that exactly the kind of person you should engage?

McDonalds did this very thing earlier this year, when they put together a small panel of health- conscious moms and asked them to provide their unvarnished feedback about the restaurant and its menu choices. Was this a risky move? You bet — after getting a bit of an inside look at McDonalds any one of these moms could have walked away with a worse impression of the brand, and gone on to tell their entire network of (real world and online) friends about it. But one look at the women's public and (to my knowledge) unedited journals show that the gamble paid off. That's some pretty powerful marketing, if you ask me.

And here's the thing — you don't need to be a Fortune 100 company to do this kind of thing. I'd bet that any business — no matter how small — can find five or six unhappy customers or (even better) former customers who left after a bad experience. Find them. Make contact. Bring them in. Let them know what you're doing and why. But most importantly, get them to talk about what they would do differently and how they think their recommended changes would benefit your current customers — and win you new ones.
What's the alternative? Let the feedback get worse and worse until you have a real problem on your hands? Sure, I suppose that could work…

So think about it — what are some of the ways your company can partner with its biggest critics to have real, positive impact on your business? And if anyone out there is already headed down this path, I'd love to hear your stories – I'm sure Drew would too.

Drew's Note: Greg Verdino is Chief Strategy Officer for Crayon and writes his own blog as well. Greg's blog is a great place to keep track of trends in media and marketing, especially in the arena of new media and marketing disruption. He's an in demand speaker and all around great guy.

Marketers are wishy washy on social media

November 19, 2007

According to a recent Coremetrics survey, titled "Face of the New Marketer" 78% of marketers indicate that social media initiatives give them a leg-up over the competition.

The survey found that in the last 12 months:

31% of respondents have started a blog
25% of respondents have put in place an RSS feed

So far, so good — right? Well, here's the rub. They talk a good game, but they're not really putting their money where their mouth is. Just 7.7 percent of their total online marketing spend was allocated to it compared to 33 percent to online advertising and 28 percent on online promotion design and implementation.

In a completely separate study conducted by Gunderson Partners, they found that 45% of companies surveyed have allocated 10% or less of their budget to new media. The report goes on to say "Of the hurdles mentioned, nearly 40% cited insufficient knowledge [lack of metrics] and 33% stated not having enough time to evaluate [metrics]."

So what do you think? Are we just on the bleeding edge? Is it a matter of time? Or is there a flaw in the medium?

4 things marketers could learn from reality shows

November 16, 2007

We make fun of them, we swear we never watch them….and yet they are everywhere.

Reality shows.

Long before the writer's strike, they were already here to stay. Having a teenager in the house means I get to watch more than my fair share of them. Like the proverbial train wreck, they're sort of hard to turn away from. They are both grotesque and fascinating.

I realized tonight that there are some lessons for us in the reality show recipe. After all, wouldn't we like our marketing efforts to be mesmerizing?

High Emotion/Drama: There's not a dull moment on these shows. They have a wonderful sense of story-telling build up. You can feel the tension mounting and before you know it — someone is taking a swing at someone else or we've got a full on sob fest.

How about your marketing materials? Are you telling a story that builds up to a satisfying emotional reaction? Are you drawing your audience in?

Messy: There's nothing pretty or perfect on a reality show. But then again, life isn't perfect. It's messy. Especially when you are doing things "live" or on the fly.

I think one of the reasons many companies shy away from social media tactics is because they can't package them up and put a bow on them. It's okay to just get out there and wing it a little. Maybe it will look a little messy from time to time — but it will also look authentic.

Conflict: Most reality shows are some sort of contest. It pits people against each other and within that, secret alliances, grudge matches and villains. We need someone to root for. And against.

We know that all buying decisions are based on emotions. Do you know what emotions trigger a prospect to become a buyer for your product/service? Are you setting up conflicts to evoke those emotions?

Surprise: There are more twists and turns than the roller coasters at Cedar Point. They're always bringing back old contestants or revealing secrets, just to keep everyone on their toes. Adding an element of surprise enhances the three earlier elements — high emotions, messiness and conflict. Surprise also offers relief from those elements. So just about the time you can't handle any more drama, they'll take a twist and offer a sentimental moment.

Are you remembering to surprise your customers? That's a very powerful way to generate word of mouth and stickiness.

So next time you are feeling a little guilty about watching Dancing with the Stars or I Love New York 2 — have no fear. You're just enhancing your marketing knowledge!

How confident are you in the value you deliver?

November 14, 2007

I've mused aloud on this before. It's an intriguing concept to me.

Letting our customers set the prices.

Mack Collier from Viral Garden reported on a band (Radiohead) that allowed fans to download their CD and determine what they were willing to pay for it. Interestingly, not only did their traffic have a huge spike, but they sold more of their boxed sets (at full price) than the downloads at any price.

The Springwise newsletter also reported on this trend by pointing to several restaurants like Melbourne's Lentil As Anything which also lets customers pay what they can afford or what they think the meal was worth.

Here in the states, we could visit the One World Café in Salt Lake City or the SAME Café (So All Might Eat) in Denver. An interesting note about these two restaurants. They've added some cause marketing to the mix, stating that the reason they're doing this is so they can feed those in need as well.

Hmm.

Does this idea only work with products that have a relatively flat price point? We all know CDs (or downloads of CDs) range from $10 – 20, usually. And dinner for 2 at an average casual restaurant is going to be somewhere around $25-40.

Does this concept hold as well for service-based businesses? Do I really have any concept of what it takes for an attorney to review a contract or for an ad agency to create a brochure? Would I have any idea what to pay an architect for drawing some blueprints of a new house?

What do you think? Would this work in your industry? Without a doubt, it is risky in any arena but it sure has a lot of buzzability around it.

Pricing strategy says quite a bit about your brand. What would this say?

Anyone willing to try it and be our case study?

I still wish I had written this

November 14, 2007

Very early in my blogging life, long before you began to read what I had to say…I discovered one of the finest, most precise bits of copywriting that I have ever seen. I've decided that I needed to bring it back around, because I really want to share it with you.

It is the best of copywriting…both form and function supporting the core message.

Selfishly, as a writer, I also love that it clearly demonstrates that memorable copy is not accidental. This is a work of art.

I felt a surge of both admiration and envy when I saw this. Stick with it for the entire two minutes. The twist is worth the wait.

I hope we all aspire to be this good at something!

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