Strategy Archives - Page 38 of 53 - McLellan Marketing Group

If you could only use one sentence…

June 21, 2007

…to market your organization, what would it be?

(Draw a blank? E-mail me.)

But will they buy Paul Potts’ CDs?

June 20, 2007

Odds are you have watched at least one YouTube video of Paul Potts, the cell phone sales guy who arrived at the UK’s Britain’s Have Talent as the unknown underdog and took the world and the competition by storm.

If not…here’s a chance to see him in action. This particular video has been viewed over a million times and it’s one of many variations.

So why are we so fascinated and taken by Paul Potts?

He’s the underdog.
He’s ordinary.
He’s not gorgeous or appearing to have any other "advantage" in life.
He’s afraid but doing it anyway.
He has a dream that he’s willing to take risks to explore.

We are suckers for this kind of story. We take heart in them. We cheer on the underdog and feel like maybe if he can capture his dream…then we can too! (cue the music.)

But.

I know…I’m the jerk who is raining on the parade. The world has embraced Paul Potts. But he sings opera. And the bulk of the world does not like, listen to or understand opera. And he is ordinary looking in a field (entertainment) that clamors for beauty. Think I am being mean? In his first post-winning interviews, Potts also focuses on his looks and the "repair work" that needs to be done.

So now what? Do you think Paul Potts will change the world’s impression/buying patterns regarding opera? Will he at least take the opera world by storm?

Will the traits that attracted the world also inspire them to pull out their wallets? Or will Paul be a great inspirational YouTube video and in a few months, be back at the cell phone counter?

His personal brand served him well to win the competition. He won our hearts. Do you think it will serve him well in the marketplace and let him win our wallets?

Keep banging into those walls

June 12, 2007

We have one of those roomba robotic vacuum cleaners. It’s a beautiful thing. You stick it in the room, hit clean and away it goes.

But…it’s a blind robot. So the way it navigates through the room is by going in a straight line until it hits something. Then, it usually tries again…and hits the same thing. Then, it makes a slight adjustment to the left or right and maybe gets an inch further…and hits the same wall. So it adjusts again and again until it finds a new stretch of carpet to clean.

Eventually, it has covered the whole room. Not in a straight line but by making many, many slight adjustments until it finds the light of day.

Marketing is a little like that. Sure, sometimes we hit it out of the park with one ad, event or website. But more typically, it is about doing the same things over and over and making minute adjustments along the way. The key is the persistence. Believing in what you’re doing and be willing to bang your head a few times as a trade off for the eventual success.

As you might know, one of my personal heroes is Walt Disney. He chased his dreams despite bankruptcies, nay sayers, rivals stealing his ideas and a lifetime of hearing the word "no." Tim Siedell of Bad Banana Blog puts a different spin on Walt’s struggles.

Do you have the roomba spirit? Are you willing to bang into a few things to get the job done? Do you believe in what you’re doing as much as Walt did?

BrandingWire: The Coffee Shop

June 11, 2007

Welcome to the first monthly installment of BrandingWire. For the first month, we are using a fictitious local coffee shop chain as a case study. If you are or know of a company that would like the posse at BrandingWire to tackle a challenge, let one of us know. Your idea may get chosen for a future BrandingWire feature!

The challenge (in a nutshell):

Small, family owned coffee company in mid-America. They have a few retail stores, roast their own beans on site, kind of country-funky décor. They’ve got a strong local following but nothing beyond that geography, in terms of business awareness and/or traffic. They’re reasonably profitable and have good cash flow.

They have a bad name and bad tagline (great coffee at great prices!) and no distinctive visual pieces/brand.

They want to grow but are not sure how/in what direction. Competition is closing in.

My response:

It’s incredibly tempting to simply prescribe a solution. That’s one of the biggest dangers facing marketing professionals. It’s very seductive to just make one of the following assumptions at the outset:

We are the audience – "I hang out at a coffee shop so I must be just like their customers."

We know who the audience is – "I get the coffee shop people. They’re all yuppies who want…"

This is just like another project we worked on – "when we did the re-branding for the salad dressings, we…"

Are there kernels of truth in all the statements above? Most likely, yes. But do we know enough to make sweeping recommendations? Nope. And if we do, we’re going to get it wrong. Even if we’re partially right.

So where do we go from here?

Really, this is three very different challenges:

Branding – how should this coffee shop differentiate themselves from their competition?

Marketing – how should they spread the word, increase traffic and demand for their products/services?

Growth Strategy – in what directions (more stores, customer loyalty/ambassador clubs, online sales of coffee beans, adding food/catering, coffee tasting – like wine tastings, coffee region tours etc) should the store owners take the business to create sustainable growth?

Just from a manageability point of view, I am only going to address the first of the three, because I’d like to go deep, rather than scratch the surface of all three. And I suspect this is already going to be my longest post of all time! Normally I’d break this up into a series, but…bear with me and the length. Hopefully it will be worth it.

I wrestled with how to approach this branding challenge for quite a bit. I could make some assumptions (even sharing what they are) and propose a solution. But that’s not how my agency or my brain works. And I don’t think the readers of this blog (and the BrandingWire site) will gain as much from my guesses as they will from an abbreviated version of what we’d really do if a prospect like this walked in the door.

Just a quick refresher from my post a couple weeks ago.

A brand is a unified, singular understanding of what an organization is about and how it is unique from the key audiences’ points of view. In English – it’s why a potential client or employee would choose you over your competitor. What makes you stand out from the rest? What’s it like to do business with you? How do they experience you?

It is you standing up, hand on heart and making a promise. And then keeping that promise.

A brand is like a three-legged stool. The three legs are:

1. The company’s vision of the brand
2. The consumers’ vision of the brand
3. Where your brand sits in the marketplace

At MMG, we help a client discover their brand so they can create a love affair with their customers. To do that, we ask questions. Lots of questions. (Naturally, I’m only going to scratch the surface but you’ll get the idea.)

So let’s identify some questions that will help the coffee shop hone in on all three legs of their stool. Keep in mind we engage a client’s internal branding team in 20-25 hours of questions, exercises and exploration to help them discover their brand. But, this is a good sampling.

We’d ask the coffee shop owners to form an internal branding team that would work with us throughout the process. The branding team must include everyone at the C-level and then a member from each department or area of the shop. So it might be a bean roaster, a clerk, a barista, a bean buyer, etc. The key is to have all aspects of the shop represented.

From the coffee shop owner’s POV:

Of all the businesses you could have started, you chose the coffee shop business. Why? What appealed to you? Is it what still appeals to you?

If you closed your business today, what "hole" would be left in your marketplace? What wouldn’t people be able to get/do?

Do you help your customers do or achieve or get something that they wouldn’t be able to accomplish without your help?

Make a list of 2-3 core reasons for being. Why you exist and what unique role you play in the marketplace. (Don’t be surprised or frustrated if you can’t answer this. Most often it needs to be discovered.)

What kinds of promises do you already make to your customers? Are they related to:

Pricing
How you’ll deliver your product/services
Product (quality, quantity, variety etc.)
Environment (what the shop/experience is like)
Something else?

What do you hope every customers walks out knowing/feeling?

What are 3-5 things your customers have asked for/if you did in the past 6 months? (i.e. coffee tasting events – like wine tasting events)

If money/time were no object – how would you change/add to the customer experience in your current shops? What do you wish you could do different?

What three things are you most proud of, in terms of your business?

If your business were a person, how would you describe its personality? Give us five different adjectives. (Serious? Warm? Informed? Etc.)

From the customers’ POV:

The ideal way to find these answers is t o spend time interviewing the coffee shop’s customers, one by one. This interview technique is preferable if you are looking for qualitative data – impressions, feelings, reactions, preferences, frustrations etc.

We’d ask for a cross section of customers, both in terms of frequency of visits and demo/psychographics. What we’re looking for are trends and recurring themes.

Where did you go to get coffee before going to the client’s coffee shop?

Why did you switch?

What did you expect (both good and bad) the first time you walked into the coffee shop? Did they meet those expectations?

How often do you visit the coffee shop?

When you are there, do you go in? Drive thru? How long do you stay?

What do you do when you’re there? Are you usually there alone?

What do you love (and yes…that’s the word we’d use) most about the coffee shop?

What do you tolerate because you love the place?

Do you consider the coffee shop "your" coffee shop?

If you owned the shop, what would you do differently? What new products/services would you offer? What would you take away or stop doing?

What five words would you use to describe this coffee shop?

If the shop were ten miles further away, would you still be a customer?

If someone moved into your neighborhood and asked you about local merchants, would you tell them about this store?

If someone had never visited the store and asked you about it – what would you say?

The marketplace that impacts the coffee shop:

This is about two different aspects of the marketplace. First…who else is out there and what is their claim to fame? How do they brand themselves and how well do they do it? Keep in mind that competitors not only include other coffee shops but other places people gather, other places people buy drinks etc. The competition that most people forget is the choice to do nothing. To make coffee at home.

The second aspect of this focus is to answer the question — what’s not there? Think of the marketplace as a topographical map. Any brand position successfully occupied by a competitor is raised on the map. Where are the flat spots? What needs are not being met? Here’s the toughest question – what need that hasn’t yet been identified as a need, is not being met?

We can gather much of this information through observation. Visit the competitors and do some secret shopping. Check out websites. Clip ads.

Surveying the marketplace is a powerful and quantitative balance to these observations. Be sure that your questions measure not only how the competitors position themselves in the marketplace but if the consumers buy the positioning. Just because they say it, doesn’t mean their actions confirm it. In other words, I can tell you that I’m a duck. But, you may not believe it. My actions and choices might suggest I am more of a penguin and you probably see me as that way.

Letting the answers be your answer

By asking all of the questions and sorting and sifting through the answers, the brand reveals itself. It will reflect the coffee shop owner’s heart and soul. It will represent something the employees and customers recognize and know is authentic and true because they’ve experienced it, even if they couldn’t describe or identify it before. It will be something that the marketplace is hungry for, whether they know it or not.

And from that sold foundation, the marketing and growth strategies can build.

BrandingWire is a collaborative of high-voltage marketing experts with a wide variety of branding, marketing, PR and communications skills. The pundits of BrandingWire not only maintain individual content-loaded blogs, but also have banded together to collaboratively offer perspectives and commentary on a variety of branding themes.

Each month, we focus our creative bandwidth on a particular branding challenge or topic, and collectively give our perspectives on how we’d apply best branding practices. So tune in, early each month, for the newest jolt from the BrandingWire team! Contrast and compare our responses to this month’s branding challenge.

The posse:

Olivier Blanchard
Becky Carroll
Derrick Daye
Kevin Dugan
Lewis Green
Ann Handley
Gavin Heaton
Martin Jelsema
Valeria Maltoni
Drew McLellan
Patrick Schaber
Steve Woodruff

The Age of Conversation – share your pricing strategy

June 9, 2007

About 8 weeks ago, Gavin Heaton and I conceived the Age of Conversation and put an ALL CALL out for chapter authors. In less than 7 days, 106 people initially responded and 104 actually followed through and wrote a chapter.

We’re shooting for an end of June release (we’re knee-deep in editing, design and author wrangling as we speak) so we need to make some big decisions. One of the biggest is price.

Here are the salient facts:

104 authors – all writing on their take/unique view of the Age of Conversation
Remarkable content (you’re going to be delighted)
All original content (will not be released elsewhere for at least 6 months following launch)
All proceeds donated to Variety, the Children’s Charity (monies will be given directly to the countries that align with our authors when there’s a Variety chapter there)
Downloadable e-book
Dedicated to the life and spirit of CK’s mom, Sandra Kerley

So…help Gavin and me. Tell us how much you think we should charge for the book and give us some rationale. (We’ll take it all in and then make a decision.) So, show us some pricing strategy smarts.

We’re listening and the comment box is open!

Here’s the stellar cast of authors (To help you valuate the book and to give them their due credit.)

Gavin Heaton
Drew McLellan
CK
Valeria Maltoni
Emily Reed
Katie Chatfield
Greg Verdino
Mack Collier
Lewis Green
Sacrum
Ann Handley
Mike Sansone
Paul McEnany
Roger von Oech
Anna Farmery
David Armano
Bob Glaza
Mark Goren
Matt Dickman
Scott Monty
Richard Huntington
Cam Beck
David Reich
Mindblob (Luc)
Sean Howard
Tim Jackson
Patrick Schaber
Roberta Rosenberg
Uwe Hook
Tony D. Clark
Todd Andrlik
Toby Bloomberg
Steve Woodruff
Steve Bannister
Steve Roesler
Stanley Johnson
Spike Jones
Nathan Snell
Simon Payn
Ryan Rasmussen
Ron Shevlin
Roger Anderson
Bob Hruzek
Rishi Desai
Phil Gerbyshak
Peter Corbett
Pete Deutschman
Nick Rice
Nick Wright
Mitch Joel
Michael Morton
Mark Earls
Mark Blair
Mario Vellandi
Lori Magno
Kristin Gorski
Kris Hoet
Kofl Annan
Kimberly Dawn Wells
Karl Long
Julie Fleischer
Jordan Behan
John La Grou
Joe Raasch
Jim Kukral
Jessica Hagy
Janet Green
Jamey Shiels
Dr. Graham Hill
Gia Facchini
Geert Desager
Gaurav Mishra
Gary Schoeniger
Gareth Kay
Faris Yakob
Emily Clasper
Ed Cotton
Dustin Jacobsen
Tom Clifford
David Polinchock
David Koopmans
David Brazeal
David Berkowitz
Carolyn Manning
Craig Wilson
Cord Silverstein
Connie Reece
Colin McKay
Chris Newlan
Chris Corrigan
Cedric Giorgi
Brian Reich
Becky Carroll
Arun Rajagopal
Andy Nulman
Amy Jussel
AJ James
Kim Klaver
Sandy RenshawSusan Bird
Ryan Barrett
Troy Worman
S. Neil Vineberg
C.B. Whittemore

The shirt off my back as a new marketing tactic?

June 7, 2007

Which one of these shirts inspired my latest post at the Marketing Prof’s Daily Fix?

A bagful of ideas: 06/07/07

June 6, 2007

From time to time, I’m going to share a mixed bag of ideas, marketing tips, brilliant writing and sometimes — something that just made me laugh out loud. Here’s today’s offering:

This one had me pumping my fist in the air: Tom Vander Well hit the nail on the head when he said okay does not drive customer loyalty or word of mouth. Right on Tom! Why are so many businesses slow to understand this?

This one had me applauding my peers: Sabina shares some really creative work. Reminds us all to stretch a little.

This one had me taking notes: Get it in Writing shares the top 20 words that when/if you misuse them make you look stupid. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t need any help in that arena!

Marketing Tips from a Marketing Agency: Make a good first impression

June 2, 2007

It would only stand to reason that a marketing & branding agency would be pretty good at branding and marketing itself.

So I thought it might be fun to explore some branding & marketing concepts using our own agency, McLellan Marketing Group, as the guinea pig.

Make a Good First Impression

Retail brands like Apple and Barnes & Noble get this. Just by walking into their space — you are enveloped into an experience. They begin their brand story at the front door. But B2B companies and service providers have been much slower at recognizing the power of maximizing that first impression.

At MMG, we don’t even let them get into the front door before we begin our brand story. I’ve enhanced this night time shot, so you can get a sense of what our building looks like — day or night. The upper panel shows our tagline (where strategy and passion collide) and logo in a can’t be missed size. Then, the display window below is filled with our work. Often times, people show up late to meetings at our place, because they’ve stood and perused our display and lost track of time.

And clients love to see their work in the display case.

Using your exterior or lobby to create a brand impression can really set your company apart. It’s not uncommon for prospects to scout a few companies before they choose a new partner.

John Roberson the president of LobbyMakeover.com, a division of Advent based in Nashville offers these 7 elements to consider for your lobby makeover.

A high-impact logo—Reflect your brand with a tastefully fabricated logo that is appropriate to the space.
A clear key message—Differentiate your company with a positioning statement that lets folks know what you do and how you do it differently.
An effective color palette—Use colors that are evocative of the brand and show contrast, but are not a literal application of your brochure.
An engaging group of images—Choose images that reflect your company and the way you do business.
Success stories and awards—Artistically include customer testimonials and accomplishments.
Mission/value statement—Share where you are going and what you value because it is meaningful to customers, employees and vendors.
A user-friendly information and media center—Offer presentations, information, brochures and business cards to guests in a purposeful and attractive manner.

Be honest — what does your exterior/lobby say to your visitors? What do you suppose that first impression costs or earns you?

Analogies = sales

May 30, 2007

If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you know I believe in the power of storytelling, especially analogies.

If you want to talk about the importance of your employees understanding/believing in your company’s brand, why of course you’d talk about little red wagons.

If you need to convince someone of the importance of repetition and consistency, wouldn’t you naturally talk about toothbrushing?

The importance of planning? Why getting to Cleveland silly. How marketing should feel? Hello…campfire. You get the idea.

Analogies work because:

They break down the complex and make it simple
They turn the unfamiliar into something relevant
They are very memorable
They’re viral — you can tell the story and watch it spread
They take the abstract and make it tangible

But don’t just take my word for it. Check out this article at RainToday.com. What Jill’s selling is no fish story!

Think of the most complex aspect of what you sell. If you could make it tangible, relevant and easy to understand — do you think you’d sell more? What analogy could you use to vividly describe it?

Do you inspire joy?

May 28, 2007

We spent the weekend in New York City. While we were there, we saw the new play, Curtains. It’s a whodunit musical and well worth the ticket price. The performances, singing, dancing and choreography were really something to behold.

As I stood watching people spill out of the theatre, a young girl about five years old literally came dancing up the aisle. Her face was one of pure joy. At that moment, she *was* on that stage, dancing to the roaring crowd. You could see it all in her eyes.

My first thought was, "I wish the cast could see her. They’d be reminded why they chose this profession. Because they inspire joy."

My second thought was for you. (And me.) Do we inspire joy in our work? Does our product or service make our customers want to dance?

It’s really easy to dismiss that question with a "We don’t sing or dance, we build websites. Or we sell checking accounts …or we insure their families." But that’s a cop-out.

Every one of us has the capacity to create a joyful experience. Haven’t you ever hung up the phone with a big smile on your face because someone exceeded your expectations? Haven’t you ever finished a meeting with a business partner and felt so good about the work you’re doing together that you wanted to do a little jig? How about that little song of relief that wants to burst out when you realize that someone really and truly "gets" you and your work?

If not…you need to find new business partners. And if we’re not inspiring our clients, so do they.

What could you do that would inspire joy in your clients this week?

And now, for your viewing pleasure…some shots (off their official website) of Curtains. The lead in the play is David Hyde Pierce (Frasier’s brother Niles).

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