The Corporate Mirror

Fouro makes a great observation:

You can't change organizations. You can only reveal them to themselves. And they like what they see. Or not.

If they follow the "or not" path, you can offer suggestions as to the alternatives that fit for them, and for what they believe. If they haven't evolved to the point of knowing what they believe, you start there and the rest reveals itself.

It is really that simple. The rest consists of removing spackle and years of self-deception.

Who's volunteering?

Here's a good test of brand strength:

If you asked for customer volunteers to work for your company, how many would jump at the chance? How many would ignore you?

Great brands have passionate customers. They'll work for free. They'll sell better than your paid sales force. They'll write code. They'll create online fan clubs.

Here's a key indicator: If your employees aren't passionate, your customers probably aren't, either. 

How you do it

Had a one-day branding session with a client yesterday. Small company, lots of potential. They wisely selected a niche market to target initially, because they're in a crowded space. So right now, they can say to prospective customers that they're the only widget software designed to meet the needs of "x" market.

This is a terrific way for most businesses to get a loyal following: pick a niche and own it. Then pick another one. And another. (I wrote previously about this here and here.) BTW, this can't be a marketing trick; your product really needs to be designed to meet the specific nuances of that niche.  But the challenge is, you can't build your company brand on being the 'Niche X Widget Provider' for two reasons:

1. The 800-pound gorillas finally notice you and think, "Hey, that's a great idea. We'll do that too." And they've got the resources to eat your lunch pretty quickly (or they buy you, which isn't always a bad thing).
2. You're too successful, run out of customers in Niche X and want to adapt your product to Niche Y.

So you build your brand not on what you do, but how you do it. There will always be somebody else doing what you do. If not today, then just wait a couple months. I disagree with Al and Laura Ries; you can't "own" a product category... but you can own a way of doing business.  The computer industry is a great example of this:

• Dell makes computers. Big deal; so do a lot of other companies. But they've built their brand on how they do it. Customized and mail-order. Now, do they have to stick with computers? Not if they leverage their "how."
• Apple makes computers. It's their "how" that's given them a cult following. It's their "how" that they extended to the iPod. There are a lot of other music players out there. It's iPod's "how" that sets it apart.
• Gateway makes computers. How? Hmm... like everybody else. Oh, and they have something to do with cows. Once you pull off the cow suit, their products and service are pretty generic. This is why branding is the executive team's job, not marketing. Marketing can work with customers to determine the opportunity in your space, but it's got to be translated into an operational "how" before it's turned into an ad campaign.

What is your "how?" Are you faster, better, cooler, more innovative? More connected with your customers? Or, asked another way, how do you inspire emotion in your customers? Do they feel liberated? Hip? Special? In control? Connected?

Own a "how" in your industry, and you'll have a path for future growth as the market and competitive set changes.

Is Apple losing its cool?

PSFK suggests that Apple's losing its cool.

Interesting, I just had a conversation about this a few weeks ago. My conversation partner suggested that Apple will lose its cool factor now that it's hit mainstream with iPod... and that its "cool" came from its being a high-end niche player. My argument was that if Apple remains true to its brand (innovation) it can maintain its cool... but the innovation position requires Apple to have something new (and cool) ready to launch as soon as the trend of the moment has reached its peak. As long as it continues to provide new products for the trendsetters to adopt, it can 'surf the wave,' so to speak. My 2 cents... we'll see how it plays out.

Market overview of blog tools

Terrific in-depth review of the market space for blog tools at elise.com.

Love/Hate brand scores

Just for fun, I started typing in "I hate (brand)" in Google to see what comes up. I then got curious about the findings for "I love (brand)." Here's the love/hate score for a random selection of brands. While I was at it, I did a "passion buzz  index" against the average number of comments for these brands (positive or negative). Microsoft, Walmart, Comcast and McDonalds  are the big losers on the Love/Hate score. No surprise. (And yes, this is the random stuff I do when I'm procrastinating.)

Brand	Hate	Love	L/H Score	Buzz Index
Linux	3860	34,000	8.8	358.8
Google	1170	22900	19.6	233.2
Microsoft	16600	5990	0.4	214.1
Apple	696	16100	23.1	159.2
McDonalds	3540	2730	0.8	59.4
Yahoo	2800	2950	1.1	54.4
Target	438	4950	11.3	51.1
Walmart	4850	534	0.1	51
Dell	2410	2240	0.9	44.1
Ikea	469	3350	7.1	36.2
Comcast	1800	318	0.2	20.1
Starbucks	861	878	1.0	16.5

Big thanks to Christopher for helping me get this info into a table format!

I hate Comcast...

I normally don't rant about negative experiences on my blog, but I'm hoping that my little post about how much I hate Comcast will bubble up high in Google rankings and that SOMEBODY at that company might think about improving their customer experience. It's all about the power of the customer, baby. Might as well stop spending millions on smiley-face advertising to get new customers, because  the viral nature of the blogosphere is guaranteed to counteract it. So you really don't need to keep reading unless you're interested in a case study on terrible customer experience.

This is how bad it is: it's taken me 3 weeks to disconnect my service. When I cancelled, the gal in the billing department kindly informed me that I'd have to call customer service repeatedly to disconnect my service or else I'd keep getting bills (yes, that happened. Thanks for the heads-up.) I then received collections calls almost every day for several weeks. And every time, I'd repeat my story about why I didn't owe anything and requested that they stop calling me. And then the phone would ring the next day: "Hi, this is Comcast. I'm calling to see if you can make a payment today." Someone finally figured out that no one ever officially submitted a disconnect order. The funny thing is, I thought they'd disconnected my service because my service wasn't working. Just a bunch of static. (I'd always had problems with the digital music channels.)

3 weeks after my initial call, the contractor showed up at my door  to collect my cable box... and whadayaknow, another contractor showed up (from a different contractor company) to do the same thing. Both of them nodded knowingly when I remarked on Comcast incompetence... they both said they'd heard the same thing from other cancelling customers.

Last straw: I just got off the phone with -- guess who -- Comcast. I'd given back my box and final payment a week ago. Apparently my number got back in the collections cue because they keep billing customers after the cancellation date. Why? Because the actual line outside isn't disconnected. They have to send someone out to disconnect the line (which happens 4 weeks after cancellation) and then the customer is credited back the amount they paid. So the obvious question is, why didn't the contractor who picked up my box disconnect the line while he was here? This has got to be costing Comcast a fortune in repeat visits, billing, customer service, collections, and any residual customer goodwill... all because their cancellation process is broken.

There's more, but I won't bother going into the details. It just feels so good knowing that with a single diatribe, I can inform potentially thousands of potential Comcast customers that they'd be better off finding an alternative for their cable TV service.

Venturing out

I'd gotten locked into this tiny little world encompassed by my RSS reader... so tonight I'm venturing out to read new blogs. How the heck did I miss Diego's MetaCool blog? Really smart stuff. Onto the blogroll he goes. His Creating an Organization around Customers and Good Brands are Fractal are a fresh and different take on my thoughts around  Brand as Ecosystem...  I'm really digging this fractal idea.

I think I haven't ventured out because... good God, how many blogs can one read? I have no idea how Scoble peruses 1000+ blogs per day. I have a hard time keeping up with the 50 or so in my list. Scary.

Self-expression

I dashed off this comment on a BrandShift post on co-creation, and thought I'd reproduce  it here. It merits some additional thought...

Successful brands allow customers to assign their own meaning to a product or service, which gives them a feeling of ownership and self-expression. So for example, it's not really about open-source software, it's an open-source movement where participants have assigned a bigger meaning (power to the people) to a product.

Most examples of co-created products and services (like Lego Factory, Google's API, epinions.com, etc.) are really about facilitating self-expression. So even in the case of Lego, it doesn't really matter whether a design is actually implemented: Lego has facilitated self-expression and peer recognition. iTunes facilitates self-expression. epinions.com facilitates self-expression. Tivo. eBay. Amazon. Today's recipe for success appears to be: To serve as a facilitator for people to do, say or experience what they want. Because the underlying pent-up dissatisfaction in society today is having too much pre-packaged crap shoved down our throats... whether that's products, media, information, whatever. Witness the revolution of the masses. We want control.

Co-creation defined

We're having a great dialogue over at Corante's BrandShift on Co-creation.  I'd love for you to join the party!

What is co-creation?
More on co-creation...

Brand positioning

I just stumbled upon Honeywell's brand position in their Brand Management site (and as soon as they realize that anyone can visit this, I'm sure they'll password-protect it):

We are building a world that's safer and more secure …
More comfortable and energy efficient …
More innovative and productive.
We are Honeywell.

Um... so what do they stand for? Safety, security, comfort, efficiency, innovation or productivity? How do they expect anyone -- employees or customers -- to remember this mouthful of marketing-speak? Honeywell doesn't have a brand position; it has a list of adjectives that describes its various divisions.

I don't know their business well enough to make recommendations... but this is why branding is an executive team exercise, not an ad agency exercise. What is the company passionate about? No, not a laundry list of things... pick one. Yes, just one. Now, what business units are in alignment with its passion? Any? All? Some? Honeywell doesn't have a passion; it has a bunch of disconnected business units, each with their own agenda. If Honeywell really wanted to create a true brand position, it would require some serious internal reconstruction.

BTW, this doesn't have to be about WHAT YOU DO. Large companies with diverse divisions can still have a singular brand. It really should be about HOW YOU DO IT, or how you want your customers to FEEL when interacting with your company. What you do will change over time. How you do it should not. IBM has switched its focus from mainframes to services, yet its 'trusted' factor has remained the same. Nike has expanded beyond athletic shoes into apparel and even golf clubs, but its 'aspirational' factor is the glue that binds it all together.

As companies grow and add new products, a good brand position acts as a compass and a sword. A compass, by helping to prioritize new initiatives based on the brand promise. A sword, by eliminating features or products that aren't relevant to the company's passion. A brand position that lists 6 adjectives is trying to be all things to all people, and results in being nothing to anyone.

What the...?

Thanks to Rich @ Hello World for the link to Que Sera Sera's post, Selling It. Cracked me up.  Having done my time in the agency world, I can so imagine this:

“So I have this idea, and stay with me here, because it might seem a little out there at first, but so did the eBike campaign at first, right? Anyway, it’s like this pterodactyl, with tiny old-fashioned cash register keys representing each of the 50 states spread all across his glorious wingspan. And he helps you find lower interest rates! Or refinance your mortgage; whatever; we can deal with that in the copy...

Maybe there’s some blood or shredded muscles in his beak? Were pterodactyls meat-eaters? When the intern gets back from lunch, let’s get her to google that. No? Too gory? God, you fucking account managers are always afraid of the big ideas, Dave!..."

Go read the whole thing; pretty funny.

 

ROI of Customer Experience

Reveries yesterday had a terrific article on Whole Foods:

"We're just basically outcompeting everyone," says John Mackey, explaining the success of his Whole Foods "organic" supermarket chain, as quoted by Seth Lubove in Forbes (2/14/05). He sure is: "Safeway and Albertsons have annual sales ten times as large," as Whole Foods, "but are valued at only $8 billion apiece." Whole Foods is valued at $6 billion. Winn-Dixie has "six times as many stores" as Whole Foods and "three times as much in sales," but "is valued at just 10 percent of Whole Foods' market value." While "profits are expected to fall 31 percent at Safeway and 6 percent at Albertsons for 2004," and A&P, Pathmark and Winn-Dixie "piled up a total of $195 million in losses" --- at Whole Foods "net income rose 32 percent to $137 million." Whole Foods, wholefoods.com, today has 166 stores and generates $4 billion in revenue -- its stock, trading at about $100 a share, is "up more than fivefold in five years."

Why?

Some of that performance is thanks to "organic foods, which can carry a price premium of 40 percent to 175 percent over regular foods."

But more importantly...

• "It's theater."
• "It's a very visual style."
• It's a mission: "Management's job is to take care of employees. The employees' job is to take care of the customers. Happy customers take care of the shareholders. It's a virtuous circle."
• It's grass-roots: "We allow innovation and experimentation to occur at the store level."
• It's taking care of the basics,  like having enough checkouts open.

I can attest to this. I live around the corner from a Simon David, which used to be an upscale brand. Now it's trashy, there's no experience, and the employees are lethargic. I drive right past it and down the road a few miles to shop at Whole Foods... where I cringe at the prices but love the experience. They obviously pay a lot more for good employees, all of whom are friendly, upbeat and caring. And it's obviously paying off for the company. You get out what you put into it.

BrandShift launches today!

I know I've been rather quiet the past few days... I've been working on a new project that just launched today.

I'm so excited to be part of a terrific group blog on Corante called BrandShift. My co-contributors include Johnnie Moore, John Winsor (author of Beyond the Brand) and Andy Lark (former VP Global Communications at Sun). We'll be focusing on how branding must evolve in order to survive in this new, transparent, customer-driven world.

A blurb from my intro post:

(BrandShift) is about helping brands (and branding) to "grow up" and mature in the real world of tempestuous change and customer demands.

What does it mean for a brand to mature? The same thing as when people mature... we become more honest, direct, transparent. We become better listeners and communicators. We stop seeing ourselves as the center of our world and begin to see ourselves as part of an interconnected whole. We move from following rules to making value judgements.

The BrandShift contributors are all passionate about helping brands through this transition. We'll not only discuss the theory of branding, but also the practice. We'll have podcast discussions with CEOs and brand owners on how their brands are evolving in the new economy... growing pains and all. And we'll cover the new social technologies and discuss their impact on brands.

Please come visit us! And if you have suggestions about specific topics you'd like us to address, please let us know in the comments section of my first post.

(And go read Johnnie's post on Spectators or Players... good stuff!)

Business Blogging Awards, 2

Looks like they finally worked out the kinks with the voting software at the Business Blogging Awards. Go vote! Lots of good sites in the list.

Enterprise as Publisher?

Great observation from Tom at SiliconValley Watcher:

...blogging will enable effective and honest communications. Companies will communicate with their communities of customers.

The future is about the enterprise as publisher/publication.

Here is some proof of this trend, I've been sitting on this one for a while because it is so hot: Did you know that Cisco Systems' highly regarded online magazine, news@cisco.com, gets more hits than several of the largest US business and computer trade publications?!

I can step you through this one if you want ... but I think you already know what this means.

I see where he's going and it's an interesting thought. Customers want information, not just products. But instead of "enterprise as publisher," I prefer "enterprise as communicator." We need to listen before we speak. The Cisco news site is currently a one-way information street... yet the company is well-known for being close to customers. It shouldn't take long (operative word: "shouldn't") before their news site becomes more of a community with two-way dialogue. Cross fingers.

Side note: I'm curious as to why this Cisco example was used in a post about corporate blogs (they do have RSS on their news feed, which is a good start). Tom, if you read this, can you comment?

Beyond the brand

I'm in Boulder, CO, all week on business and had the pleasure of having lunch yesterday with John Winsor, author of Beyond the Brand. Really sharp guy. He wrote a great blog post that is so in synch with my focus on the ecology of business... connections and systems, not components and silos:

Unfortunately, many companies have actually become divorced from the world around them... They must find a way to reconnect with the world before they can hope have a dialogue with their customers. The key is to first become in sync with their surroundings. The blogoshere is starting to offer a unique opportunity.

Companies can achieve synchronicity by going beyond the old model – of us and them, producer and consumer, company and customer – and developing a more organic, albeit more complicated model of the relationships that people inside a company have with people outside the company. Concentrating on these relationships means thinking about the dynamics of any organic system of give and take, ebb and flow. A system based on a dialogue. If traditional branding is all about searing the name of the company into a consumer’s mind, then the willingness to interact in the blogosphere is all about slowing down enough to have an honest dialogue with people. It is about a journey of learning rather than the accomplishment of the ‘right’ channel and message.

 

Typepad problem

I tried getting into Typepad all day yesterday and kept getting rejected by the server. Today, no problem. Not sure why it was picking on me, since other Typepad users were still posting. Odd. Has this happened to anyone else?