Focus, Focus, Focus

Great post from Darcy Burner at Microsoft on marketing software.

Suppose you engineer a pointy metal thing with a handle at one end and tines at the other. It's the finest stainless steel, it's beautifully engineered, it's got great balance, you're very proud of it, you use it for everything, and you're ready to ship it. Since you've built it, they will come! Right?

Okay, so how do you get people excited about it?
It's a multi-purpose tool. You can use it for all kinds of things! It can untangle hair. It can be used as a weapon of self-defense. It can pry things open. It can be used as a musical instrument if you bang it on things! You can use it to pick up food without getting your hands dirty. It will help you draw a series of roughly parallel lines by providing a guide. It's even a fashion accessory!

Are you ready to buy it yet? Yet this is the way most software marketing is done....

Instead, we need to be clear and simple in building the mental product. We cannot tell the story of every possible use of a fork. We cannot talk about all of the cool features of the fork (“See how the stainless steel gleams in the light!“) in the absence of their direct applicability to something people might do with the fork. And we can't change our minds with every communication about what story we're going to tell about how a customer should imagine using the fork.

There is a lot more I could say about basic positioning and messaging, but that's it in a nutshell. The hardest thing, quite frankly, is having to choose.

Having worked with a lot of technology companies (software and telecom), I completely agree. A software designer in Europe recently emailed me about how to market his product. A quick glance at his website revealed a laundry list of the many things you could do with the software. But I never got a quick answer to my question, "what is it and why do I care?"

Focus.

If I buy your software (product, service, whatever) instead of the alternative (pick one primary alternative, not several), I'll get what benefit and why. Answer that question -- without using the words 'and' or 'or' -- and you're on your way to creating a focused positioning platform that paints a clear, unambiguous picture in customers' minds. And once they can visualize using your product in a way that's meaningful to them, you're that much closer to winning their business.

Not by marketing alone

Here's a great post on Frozen North that discusses the contributions of customer service to building a strong brand. Here's a snip:

In too many companies I've observed, advertising and marketing is viewed as a cost of growing and acquiring new customers; while customer service is viewed strictly as overhead. As a result, the is little or no cross-communication between the marketing side of the business and the customer service side of the business, and certainly no common budgetary authority. So, for example, nobody (short of the CEO) has the authority to say, "This million dollars would be more effectively spent improving customer service than on an ad campaign."

The result is that marketing and service often work at cross-purposes. The mandate of marketing is to polish the brand image, to induce customers to make a purchase. Then, the call center (often organizationally lumped in with the data network and phone systems) says, "Those pesky customers just keep calling and costing us money!"

The problem is one of priorities. Every customer phone call presents an opportunity to strengthen your brand image. Most large consumer-oriented companies get millions of these opportunities a year, and waste most of them. Or worse, they ship them off to a third party outsourcer, who has no stake in the company's brand image, and only has incentives to provide the lowest-cost service.

Pardon the bad analogy, but hiring a third party to handle your customer's phone calls is like asking a friend to go on a date for you. It might be cheaper or easier in the short run, but it completely misses the point of the relationship.

Amen, Peter! It's been interesting to watch my own changing points of view on this topic. Early in my career when I worked at an ad agency, we all thought that we (at the agency) were the brand builders, that we could change people's perceptions of the brand by simply rolling out a new campaign. Moving into customer research and marketing director roles gave me the insights that Peter mentions above. And I don't hesitate to tell a CEO or CFO that his money is better spent on improving the customer experience before a dime is spent on advertising. I call it "curing the marketing black-hole syndrome" since marketing, customer service, product development, etc. must all work together to attract customers, keep them, and transform them into a free sales force. Companies that depend on one department at the exclusion of the others cannot be successful in the long term.

Corporate Weblog Manifesto

If this is old news to everyone, I apologize... but I just stumbled upon Robert Scoble's Corporate Weblog Manifesto. If you have -- or are thinking about launching -- a corporate blog, this is a must-read.

Neuromarketing Continued

Rob and Jon are both surprised that I'm not a fan of neuromarketing. I read Kurzweil and sci-fi; I'm fascinated with nanotech and other future technologies... so how can I be negative about neuromarketing?

When people misuse low-tech options, it's quite probable that they'll misuse newer high-tech options. I'm not averse to new technology; I am averse to making it available to users who don't often understand the basic principles.

If I'm in a focus group and you offer me a choice between a snake, a roach and a June bug, I'm quite likely to pick the snake. Not because I'm a huge fan of snakes, mind you... I just think it's better than the alternatives.

That's what happens in focus groups, whether for an advertisement or a new product design. Few companies bother to actually initiate conversations with customers, build relationships with them, and involve them on the front end. Rather, they come up with some ideas while sitting around a conference table and decide to 'test' those ideas with customers. Hmm.

Now enter neuromarketing. Yep, it magically confirms that the snake "registers as a "strongly preferred choice"—the goal of every advertiser—the action switches to the right parietal cortex, above and slightly behind the right ear." And then the marketers wonder why the snake isn't flying off the shelves. Maybe it was the packaging? Or should we have made the font size bigger in the ad?

When businesses begin to learn the right process -- involving the customer in the initial creation -- then I have no problem using a new technique that is effective in context to that process. BTW, I'm not a fan of focus groups either, for all the reasons Zack mentions in his above-referenced post on neuromarketing. I find it most effective to talk one-on-one, or to get 2 or 3 people (max) in a room to have a real discussion. In the book "How Customers Think" mentions that 8 in-depth one-on-one interviews are the informational equivalent to 150 quantitative responses (my stats are probably off; I'm going from memory here.) When I was an account planner working on an apparel account, I went into people's homes and closets and learned first-hand what they wore and why. There are plenty of ways to understand your customer and learn -- before you test -- that a cat is preferable to a snake. Oh hey, how about starting a weblog and getting comments from customers? Now there's a novel idea!

Are you a survivor?

David at Ripples offers a great post on Survival of the Fittest. He asks the question,

"Would you like to be writing your weblog a few years from now? Can you even stand the idea of blogging for that long? I don't have the answers for you, but it has made me think about my own future as a blogger."

Great question. Visit his post to read the 6 factors that will lead to a long-term life for a blogger.

More on the Manifesto

I was going to write a continuation of my last post on The Guru Red Manifesto, but John Moore at OurHouse so eloquently stated what I was thinking that I'll just direct you to his post. Here's a snip:

I think there is always going to be some kind of tension between customers and other stakeholders though I balk at the idea that the relationship is built on that tension; I'd say that good marketing resolves these conflicts in ways that work for all parties... The confrontation word suggests a Mexican stand off, a game in which one side can only win by the other losing. That's not the ideal of conflict resolution which aims for win:wins. By focussing on the money, the RedGurus may well be giving a good pragmatic steer against idealism and fantasy on the part of entrepreneurs; but they may also be missing how people actually create real value in relationships.

And then I went back to the Guru Red Manifesto for more. Here's what I found:

Do not sell. Campaign. Reconcile current competency with current opportunity. Maneuver your forces. Exploit center of gravity. Calibrate time, space and energy. Combine segregated sales and marketing functions into an integrated campaigning function. Replace soft selling metrics like satisfaction, delight, recall and impressions with hard campaigning metrics like objectives, revenue and margin. Build revenue engines and not sales organizations. Focus on speeding up cycle time. Develop and amplify competitive instincts. Utilize logos, ads, commercials, trade shows, etc., as ammunition and weaponry, not as artistic expressions or award opportunities.

As with the previous post, there are parts I agree with and others I don't. Absolutely, everything should work synergistically (overused word, but effective) in an integrated campaign. I'd add that it's not only sales and marketing that must work together, but product development and customer service as well. And yes, marketing materials should be used as ammunition, not as award opportunities.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Let's keep 'soft' metrics like satisfaction and delight. In a recent satisfaction study for a telecom client, we found that 'very satisfied' customers were 60% likely to refer a friend, compared to only 28% of 'somewhat satisfied' customers. Here's another stat: 'somewhat' and 'very' satisfied customers were 2 1/2 times more likely to purchase additional products than neutral or unsatisfied customers. No real surprise here: customer satisfaction directly leads to additional revenue. Delight your customers and they'll stay with you, spend more money with you, and bring you new customers. Creating a free sales force within your customer base might be tougher -- but infinitely cheaper and more effective in the long run -- than putting all your efforts into paid distribution channels. Think of customer delight as yet another component of your 'revenue engine'.

Earning Premium-Brand Status

Thanks to Heath at FC Now for the link to The Guru Red Manifesto. As I was clicking through the "Operating doctrine and rules of engagement," I came across the following:

The Customer is Not Your Friend

The customer is not always right. The relationship between customer and vendor by definition is built on tension. Tension characterized by the customer who wants to minimize price. And the vendor who wants to maximize price. These are conflicting objectives. Customer-centric strategies that focus on delighting the customer ignore the economic realities of delivering this strategy. THIS DOES NOT MEAN THAT YOU DON’T LISTEN TO YOUR CUSTOMER OR RESPOND TO CUSTOMER NEEDS. It means the customer voice is one of several voices that need to be reconciled. Any customer strategy first and foremost must begin with the objective of maximizing short-term profit. It is not possible to lead a sales force schooled in delight and collaboration into a market share battle demanding tension and confrontation.

You know, don't you, dear reader, that I'm going to disagree with this statement. At least with part of it.

Yes, sometimes a price tension exists between the company and the customer. But not always. Not when the customer feels like he or she is getting good value for the money. I've done enough research on the B2B side to know that price is often the 5th or 6th item in importance. Why do market leaders like IBM and SBC continue to command higher prices than the competition? Because they're a safe buy. They've developed a level of trust with customers. Why does Apple -- although not a market-share leader -- command higher prices than a generic PC? Because they've delighted their customers with superior aesthetics, innovation and performance.

I have an image/innovation matrix that visualizes this idea (and I'd include here if I could figure out how to include images in posts). Imagine a vertical axis that is Image (overall awareness, market leadership) and a horizontal axis that is Innovation (ie. listening to customers and delivering on their needs in a new and better way... this may take the form of a new package design by Coke, pull-up diapers, or customized PCs.)

Low image/low innovation = commodity prices. This is the tension-filled space that is referenced by the quote above, because customers can't find any reason to justify paying more than minimum dollar. High image/low innovation can command a bit higher price due to the customer-trust factor; conversely, high innovation/low image can command a higher price because of some real perceived value. Yet where companies truly want to be is in the upper-right hand quadrant -- high image/high innovation -- which represents the biggest opportunity for revenue. This is the space where customers don't haggle over price because the perceived value exceeds the actual price paid. To get here, companies must move horizontally by creating innovative solutions to customer problems. This space will often act like a hot-air balloon, pushing the brand up into the high image/high innovation quadrant. Why? Because this is the buzz space. When you have something new to offer -- one that delights customers and solves a problem -- customers (and media) talk. You'll get press. Visibility and image increase... without having to spend a ton of marketing dollars. This is what's happening with Apple, by the way, with the iPod. The iPod innovation has served to push Apple even farther to the right side of the Innovation quadrant and as a result has elevated the entire Apple brand.

And this is why advertising and sales tactics alone can never elevate a brand into 'premium brand' status. Without real substance to the brand (ie. customer experience that represents high perceived value), all those marketing and sales dollars are being poured down the drain. A company must do the hard work and actually earn it.

Blogging for business

I love reading my 'stats and referrers' section of my Typepad, because I invariably stumble across interesting new blogs like Bplans Blog... which is the new blog for bplans.com, owned and operated by Palo Alto Software.

As the recent Fast Company article indicates, blogging for business is on the rise. Although the article primarily references larger companies using blogging for internal communication, it does mention Scobleizer... and there are many more company blogs peeping their heads up into the blogosphere to communicate with customers. This is a terrific trend, because it's a way for customers to put a face on a usually faceless company. Bplans Blog, while allowing comments (but no trackbacks), still doesn't have a 'face' on their blog. Clicking on "About Us" reveals corporate information and a brief mention of Tim Berry, the Founder of Palo Alto Software (who you don't realize is a contributor to the blog until you scroll through the posts and see his name)... and nothing about Noah, the primary contributor to the blog.

Now, Tim and Noah, this is certainly not meant to be a criticism of your blog... although it's not quite a week old, I can tell it's going to flesh out into a great resource. But I think it surfaces a few questions about corporate blogs... Should corporate bloggers give some background on who they are? How much information should they share? What's the right balance between the face of individual bloggers and the corporations they represent?

Customer Evangelist Wrap-Up

OK, that wraps up the 3/19 stop on the Business Blog Book Tour for Creating Customer Evangelists. We covered how the 6 Tenets apply to the Blogosphere, and we'd love to hear and address your comments and questions!

Next stops on the BBBT include:
March 22 - Danavan.net
March 23 - StartupSkills.com
March 24 - Small Business Blog
March 25 - A Penny For...

Creating a Cause

I'm skipping Tenet 5 (Bite-Sized Chunks) since we talked about it here... so onward to Tenet 6: Creating A Cause.

I suppose every good blog has some sort of cause or reason for being. I started my blog because there’s so much confusion about branding, and I hope that I can share my knowledge to help people become better marketers. If the cause is relevant and important enough, it will attract readers. No forms to fill out, just read and comment if you like.

Jackie and Ben say: People generally read blogs to learn. The cause can't be self-promotion... no one wants to read someone talk about themself. You have to give in order to receive. When your blog has a cause, sometimes you'll need to say some controversial things. Causes generally elicit different beliefs and points of view, which is great because people want to talk about it. If we sit in our office and rant about a subject, we immediately know that it would make a good blog post. That's what generated our article, "How to Ignore Your Best Customers, The Tivo Way." We were a bit apprehensive about posting it; our cause is to be inspiring, yet here we were, taking a company to task and saying what they were doing wrong. But we decided to post it because we thought people could learn from what companies shouldn't be doing. And we got a lot of responses, some really negative and mean, but we were trying to make a point.

Seems like this tenet is highly related to blog branding. Blogs with a central cause or theme tend to create more buzz than blogs that cover a variety of diverse topics (at least that I've seen). How is your blog positioned, or branded? What is the central theme or cause, and how does it resonate with readers?

Creating Community

Tenet 4 of Customer Evangelism is Creating Community. This is one of the benefits of blogging that I hadn’t expected. On the occasions when I’ve written a buzzworthy post (like the recent series on positioning), people come from out of the woodwork to post comments and debate amongst themselves on the subject. I love that I can become a host for a community of like-minded individuals, and our combined thinking ends up benefiting everyone.

Ben and Jackie say... The blog world is a self-organized community. We know -- or can easily find -- the bloggers on any given subject. Look at a blogroll and find the community. "The blog is the community, and the community is the blog." You're part of the community even if you're a lurker, since you can learn a lot from the other members. Sometimes we talk about the "echo in the chamber" because members of a community share similar ideas and values. Chances are, if your beliefs are divergent from the rest of the group, you won't be a member of that community. The key is to attract members, not convert them. That's the Customer Evangelism model. Using the Krispy Kreme example, not everyone loves donuts. That's ok. Just build a community of people who do love donuts. Invite them to join the echo chamber.

As another example, Todd at A Penny For... created this Business Blog Book Tour (BBBT) to form a cross-blog community of business book readers. Terrific idea! How are you building -- or contributing -- to a blog community? How have you benefited from the blog community?

Building Buzz with Blogging

Continuing our application of the 6 Tenets of Customer Evangelism to the blogosphere, we're now on Tenet #3: Building the Buzz (for a chapter summary and descriptions of the 6 Tenets, go here).

The more buzzworthy the blog content, the more links we generate. The more links, the higher the Google rankings. Higher Google rankings mean more visibility, more hits to your blog, and ultimately more links. We also build buzz by finding the mega-hubs and individual hubs for our content (Fast Company and BusinessPundit come to mind for business and marketing), posting comments and catching people's attention. If we’re buzzworthy, we’ll get public notice on their blogs. And we benefit from real-time feedback; if a hub isn’t picking up on our content, it means our content isn’t buzzworthy. Blog hubs are quite astute in identifying buzzworthy content.

Jackie and Ben respond: That's exactly right. Our blog is the most popular portion of our web site; it gets double the hits of the second most popular page (typically the home page). What everyone had hoped to create with web sites, blogs are now achieving. A blog is much easier to update frequently than a traditional web site, so it will naturally create more interest.

The most buzzworthy blogs are the ones that pose the best questions. Scoble does this very well. He'll ask general industry questions like, "What position should we take here?" He's really interactive with the people who post comments and track-backs, which increases buzz even more.

For more thoughts on building blog buzz, here's a post of mine from December that quotes Phil Wolff: "Is your post linky enough?" It's been terrific advice for me as a relatively new blogger.

So in the interest of posing some good questions and generating some buzz... What have you found most effective in building blogging buzz? What's the future for traditional web sites? Are blogs effective buzz-builders for all types of businesses?

Napsterize and Bite-Size

Napsterized knowledge is what blogging is all about. I’m giving away a lot of free intellectual capital on Brand Mantra and it's resulted in one great new client and many terrific business contacts. I’m reminded of one pretty good business blog that’s password-protected. I’d like to expand on some of his posts, but it would be a pain for readers to register before they could read the link… he’s preventing Napterization of his knowledge. My question for Ben and Jackie is, What's the difference in the blogosphere between Napsterized Knowledge and Bite-Size Chunks?

Ben and Jackie say: Bite-size chunks help customers try a product before they buy, and Krispy Kreme is a great example. Salesforce.com offered a free one-year trial before purchase, which gave them a lot of traction in the market... But in the blogging world, there isn't much difference between Napsterized Knowledge and Bite-Size Chunks. It's all intellectual capital.

I thought that the Know-How Exchange on MarketingProfs.com could be a great example of Bite-Size Chunks since consultants are addressing specific problems posed by readers. An answer is a bite-size chunk of how they would solve that particular business problem. Whereas blogs represent Napsterized knowledge -- ie. generic knowledge and opinions that require the readers to apply the learning to their individual situations. Maybe I'm splitting hairs and there really isn't a difference between the two tenets for intellectual capital: what do you think?

Customer Plus-Delta and Blogging

Customer Plus-Delta is all about listening to customers... and blogging is the ultimate connection with customers (readers). Comments, emails and and track-backs tell me how well my content is connecting with people out in the blogosphere. It’s real-time feedback.

Ben & Jackie say: That's right, at least for weblogs that do allow comments. One-way blogs don't work as a Plus-Delta tool since you can't establish and facilitate conversations. Howard Dean's use of his blog as a feedback tool was amazing. The guys who ran his campaign were always asking "What are the blogs saying?" Once they got 600 comments in 2 hours in response to a question. They actively solicited ideas and opinions.

How have you used the Plus-Delta tenet in your blogging (or blog reading)?

Blogging and Customer Evangelism

Good morning! Welcome to the 5th stop of the Business Blog Book Tour (BBBT). I had the opportunity to chat with Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell of Church of the Customer to talk about their book, Creating Customer Evangelists. After reading the book, I was struck with the parallels of blogging with each of their 6 Tenets of creating customer evangelists. So in the upcoming posts today, I’ll address each tenet with both my own observations from reading the book, and Ben and Jackie’s comments from our phone conversation (paraphrased from my fiercely scribbled notes; unfortunately I didn’t have a recorder). They’ll be visiting Brand Mantra to address any questions or comments you may have, so (as always) fire away. This group isn’t known to be shy!

Neuromarketing Not So Hot

Zack Lynch of Corante's Brain Waves talks about neuromarketing last week (old news, I know, but I'm now getting caught up on my blog reading):

Either corporate America doesn't believe the hype surrounding neuromarketing or their marketing departments don't understand what "neuromarketing" means. My bet it is more the latter than the former. Regardless of the reason, the lack of interest in neuromarketing caused the first neuromarketing conference to be cancelled this week...

If you really think about it, how many marketing or advertising executives do you know that have a background in neuroscience. As I've said before, as brain imaging advances, neuromarketing will become a significant growth sector in years to come as the trillion-per-year advertising and marketing industries leverage brain scanning technology to better understand how and why people react to different market campaigns.

I'm going to disagree with Zack and with Rob at BusinessPundit: I wouldn't have signed up for the conference because I think neuromarketing can be both pointless and dangerous.

Rob refers to the "Pepsi Challenge" given in an MRI scanner, and the results were no surprise: people liked the taste of Pepsi but bought Coke. Since the MRI scan didn't tell us anything we didn't already know, is it really worth the money? I'm not seeing the value here. We can look at revenue and market share data to tell us what consumers are purchasing. Chances are, listening to your customers will tip you off as to why they're purchasing one brand versus another.

Yes, it's interesting to see physiological responses to campaigns. Yes, it's probably more reliable than focus groups. But I think we're missing the boat here. First, campaign testing isn't that necessary if you've done your homework, understood your customers' needs, and crafted a great strategy on the front end. Second, this is reinforcing the fallacy that advertising is what sells product. If I'm Southwest Airlines or Krispy Kreme or Apple, why do I need neuromarketing to tell me that a TV spot A is more interesting than TV spot B when I have customer evangelists who are actively promoting my business for me? I'm not saying that advertising isn't important; there are plenty of case studies to demonstrate that advertising helps to build brands (especially in packaged goods). However, tactics like neuromarketing serve to reinforce the impression that 'if we can just get our ad campaign right, all our sales woes will be resolved'... as if advertising can somehow compensate for a lack of differentiation, perceived value, or customer experience. Advertising is not a cure-all. A great neuromarketing-validated campaign does not a strong brand make.

Carnival of the Capitalists

Be sure to hit Catallarchy for this week's Carnival... a collection of great economics, business and marketing posts in the blogosphere.

More on branding

As you can tell, I've been quite lax in my blogging lately. I suddenly got hit with several great projects all at once, and I'm hoping that by the end of the week I'll have some time to catch up on the happenings in the blogosphere. One thing I did tonight was visit Mark's Fourobouros blog (I've been meaning to visit since Mark added some great comments to my Positioning post.) It's a great blog -- I want to spend a bit more time with his post on 'what makes people tick.' But what really caught my attention was the terrific quote at the top:

Branding is what you do when there's nothing original about your product. -- Roy Disney. Annual meeting of The Walt Disney Co. March 3, 2004

Conversely, I'd add that "branding is who you are when there's everything original about your product."

Quote of the day

From an email discussion with John Moore (US) of BrandAutopsy... John remarks:

"Marketing can only help brands that are worthy of being built."

Amen.

More on positioning

I've been thinking a bit more on positioning lately, and want to expand on some of the issues that have been brought up here and here.

In an earlier post, I say that Microsoft doesn't need classic positioning because it's a virtual monopoly. To clarify this statement, let's define 'classic positioning' as the old domain of the ad agency. The JargonUniverse calls it Brand Positioning, or: "The distinctive position that a brand adopts in its competitive environment to ensure that individuals in its target market can tell the brand apart from others. Positioning involves the careful manipulation of every element of the marketing mix."

The goal here is, let's look at everyone else's advertising in the category and "stake out a position" in our advertising that promises something unique and different. We'll create a new tag line and develop some cool ads and "reposition the brand" in the customers' minds. That's classic positioning. If I can borrow a phrase from Tom Asacker, this is the part of positioning that's dated and dying. Advertising and a tag line alone cannot reposition a company in the customers' minds. In Microsoft's case, they can run just about any advertising they want; everyone knows them and everyone has a mental perception of them... good or bad, regardless of the advertising message.

Conversely, 'holistic positioning' is something Microsoft (and every company) should be doing. And that is gaining a much better understanding of customer perceptions of the company and (if necessary) changing the fundamental structure of the organization to better deliver on customers' wants and needs, both now and in the future.

JargonUniverse's definition of Brand Position (as opposed to Positioning) is: "The entire collection of thoughts a client has in his or her mind about a professional services firm, service or product learned through contact, experience and communication."

Now we're getting into the macro view of the brand position. It's holistic because there's an implicit recognition that customers, employees, channel partners, location, management and the actual product/service itself all interact to create the collection of thoughts -- or 'experience perception' -- in the customers' minds. There was a question in an earlier post on whether one can consciously manage the brand position. Absolutely. It's important to not only understand your position in customers' minds, but where you want to evolve that position (especially if it's undifferentiated or negative). It's just like personal branding; if I learn that you have a negative perception of me, I must change my behavior to shift your perception to a positive one. I can't tell you I'm different ("Hey, trust me!") I must prove it. And that's what 'managing your brand position' is all about. Operations. Customer service. Product development. Every customer touchpoint proving to the customer that he or she is valued, that the company can be trusted, that the customer can not only feel good about using the product but recommending it to others.

Positioning is hard work. It is not the domain of an ad agency or a marketing department. It is aligning the corporate mission and structure to one that best supports customers, connects with them, and creates customer evangelists.

Brand Jargon

In a comment in my last post, Tom Asacker says, "Perhaps that's why many senior executives think branding is a bunch of consultant babble."

So to add fuel to the fire of brand jargon, along comes JargonUniverse by Manage Mentor (thanks to Heath at Fast Company for the link).

There are 37 (37?!) definitions for brand ________, some of which I've never heard of. Brand personality. Brand promise. Brand fingerprint. Brand sense. Brand signature. Brand voltage. Brand commitment. Etc. etc. etc. And we wonder why there's confusion about the concept of branding?