Word Marketing Blog

Brand Alive

The last ten years saw the rise of several buzz words in marketing, especially the term "branding". The result of which has left a lot of company owners and managers burnt out on the word. Why? Simply because it became a "darling of the industry" and a lot of folks from people who wrote best selling books to the local media rep claimed they were a practitioner of "branding".

The result of which left many business owners and CEOs leary and burnt out on the term. Turns out many of those folks didn't know what they were doing and left the clients feeling misled.

"I've tried that branding and it didn't work" is an all-too familiar phrase we still hear many times today.

Branding isn't something you try, it's something you do. Branding isn't advertising. Branding isn't buying spots. Branding isn't a logo re-design.

Branding is a strategy.

Throughout the whole company, not just in the newspaper.

I know a lot of decision makers are tired of the term. The fact remains, though, that people are brand loyal. Building a brand is still the best way to ensure business vitality long-term. Many companies in America have drifted from it throughout their history. You can probably name the ones who have lost their way in this strategy today. Many haven't. I just saw on television this morning, one of the most enduring companies which is experiencing a huge burst of profitability during the New Economy is Campbell's Soup.

Campbell's Soup isn't a flashy brand, but it is a consistent one. Compare it to, let's say...General Motors?

General Motors will spend 50 million dollars a month in it's new plan to re-vitalize the company and hopefully re-pay it's U.S. Government loans. Let's see a show of hands. Who thinks spending 50 million a month in ads will fix GM's brand issue?

It's the brand which needs the revitalization, not the ad budget. Your thoughts?

The Experience

I arrived on a rainy day. Upon entering, the rain outside immediately subsided to the deeper recesses of my thoughts. The scent of fresh linens and soft florals tip-toed into my nose. The lighting was demur with a supple wave of candle flame, deliberately placed. A brook seemed to gurgle just around the corner, where the birds twittered sweetly. Relaxation absorbed me before I ever donned the plush white robe and cushy slippers. The next few hours would seem like another world.

This was my first encounter at a day spa... fifteen years ago. The longevity of this memory is rooted in its beginnings; that the experience began the moment I walked through the door. Every detail was planned precisely to welcome me in, and nothing of discord was chanced to tarnish the experience.

What meets your customers when they walk through your front door? Are things neat, clean and attractively arranged, or are there piles of clutter in plain view? Does it smell fresh and pleasant, or is a stale smell of the last lunch reheated? Are your associates smiling and attentive to greet them, or are they gossiping behind the counter?

Every time a customer walks through your door an experience is created for them. Are you deliberately designing something positive? Take a look around your business with a fresh nose, eyes and ears, and make sure the memories you create are ones worth coming back for.

Go Ahead and Leap!

Remember making the leap from junior high to high school? Many found the changes a bit scary. Perhaps you switched classrooms for the first time. It's likely your classmates changed. Your studies got harder and your teachers expected more. Soon you realized that the way it worked in junior high was not the way it would work in high school. And even if a really bad day made you wish to go back to the way things were, you knew deep down that it wasn't coming back.

Hopefully, you learned to embrace your new realty. You expanded your network of friends. You developed new study habits. You adjusted to a new schedule and you planned your day accordingly. And your adaptability was rewarded.

You experienced new adventures, new challenges and greater successes. You not only survived - you thrived.

It's much the same with our economy today. No matter what improvements are yet to come, the economy won't go back tot he way it once was. And that means you need a new strategy for your business, because what worked then won't work the same now. Many will find the leap to be a bit scary. But those who make it will enjoy great rewards.

The new economy demands a new strategy. Need a little help making the leap?  Let us know.

GM Brands To Save

After reading about a recent study yesterday which tried to determine which of the General Motors brands that are on the block should be saved, I decided to take a random poll myself. I asked my Facebook friends and Twitter followers simultaneously the question just out of curiosity.

GM is looking to sell three brands and kill off one. The four brands are Pontiac, Hummer, Saab and Saturn.

In my informal social media survey, Hummer received the most support (which has already been sold off) followed by Saturn, Saab and then Pontiac.

In the worldwide CarGurus survey, Pontiac received the most support with 44%, 27% said Hummer, 20% picked Saab and only 9% named Saturn. 1700 participated in that survey and about 35 people in mine, with several people choosing to email or IM me their response. There are about 11 responses published on my Facebook profile page.

Pontiac has quite a heritage, the GTO was a most beloved car when I was growing up and I have a client that has a picture of her beautiful one sitting on her credenza. Another of my friends which participated in my survey told me last night "God save the Hummer"! after also revealing she had hit a large animal in the road on the way home from vacation. Neither the vehicle, family or animal were hurt in the producing of my poll.

Tweeting Men

In recent studies, women have been the prevailing dominant users of social media. In a surprise, according to a recent Harvard Business School study, men may be the driving force behind Twitter.

Women actually comprise a higher percentage of the users on Twitter (55%), men actually have more followers (15%). Even though they tweet about the same amount each day, an average man is more likely to follow another man than a woman.  A woman is 25% more likely to follow a man than a woman and the average man is 40% more likely to be followed by another man than by a woman.

Recently, Inside Facebook reported that most of the online social activity focused around women, and men follow content produced by women they know and do not know. Generally, men receive little attention from other men or women.

So there's around 300,000 Twitter users now and about 80% follow or are followed by at least one user. In other social network mediums, only about 60-65% of users have at least one friend. All you really have to do is do a search for one of your friends on Facebook, when the matches come up, look at all the people signed up under that name which have no friends connected to them.

Many people sign up for Facebook because someone has pictures they want to see and then they never use the Facebook account again.

Some other interesting things the study revealed is that Twitter’s usage patterns differ significantly from typical online social networks, where individual users tend to make more per-person contributions. On the other hand, a typical Twitter user contributes very rarely. Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.

Twitter helps me keep my Facebook status updates concise, since Twitter "tweets" can only be 140 characters long. I update both Twitter and Facebook simultaneously using Tweetdeck. We also use Twitter for business purposes by direct messaging each other using tweets rather than calling cell phones or texting. It's handy.

New Economy Means More Free

I've had to shift my thinking, as have most who want to navigate the world of this New Economy.

Companies like Google have fundamentally changed commerce, in that they help folks organize content, a lot of which is free. When there are more dollars, there is still competition for those dollars, but it's not as intense because of the abundance of them. Most consumers are holding tight to their dollars in this New Economy which make the competition for the available ones pretty fierce.

Media is trying to cope. What content is the most valuable? What can we limit access to? What can we charge for?

Media consumption has morphed into something different.

Many media heads have announced they will start charging for content online or the online model will be moving from free to paid. However, most research indicates consumers are moving more from a paid to free mindset concerning online content.

The cycle has been seen before. AM to FM, FM to Satellite, Satellite to Digital. It's a matter of coping then understanding. A moving to what was to what is.

But, coping is painful.

Creeping Misalignment

It happens in almost everything.

You take your car to the service center of the tire store and get four new tires installed all around. Over time and miles down the road, slowly they are going to get misaligned. Every so often, you need to go back to the tire store to have the service people realign them, so your car functions properly.

Your business or organization (just like your car) has parts like your brand (just like your tires) which over time, wear and tear slowly become misaligned. It doesn't happen overnight, but it does happen.

How many people have something to do with your brand? These people publish it. These people broadcast it. These people display it. These people write about it. These people drive it. These people advocate it (or don't)

Several people have their hands on it and over time, creeping misalignment changes the course of your brand and it's image. In the New Economy, it's critical your brand is tuned correctly for today's environment, which means it's conducive to the thinking of today's consumer's wants and desires.

What was your name, again?

One of the most powerful things you can do in business is be stellar at remembering people's names. People love the sound of their name. It's been said it's the most important word in the world to that particular person.

In studying memory, many experts say that we have perfect memory in many levels. The problem may not lie in the memory, but in the recall of the information.

Late-night TV has been stocked full over the years with memory-enhancing programs designed to help you remember everything from names to well, you name it.

You can actually develop your own technique that works best for you.

Association for example, if someone tells you their name, you can automatically associate them in your head with someone who has the same name. (i.e. cindy you just met with cindy crawford in your head).

You might also just pay attention to the name when they tell you their name. It may seem obvious, but it's not. Just keep recalling it immediately after you hear it. Repetition builds recall, so repeat it often. Memory is also linked to emotion, so as you link more emotion with the person's name coupled with repetition will help build recall for you.

Also, if you forget a person's name during the conversation, now is the time to ask, not when you run into them the next time. You will look like a total loser if you had a fill conversation with someone and then can't recall their name the next time you see each other. Better to ask forgiveness and ask now, than to look silly later.

I've been watching "Expedition Africa", the new show on the History Channel in which four explorers are retracing Stanley's expedition through the Dark Continent. So, I'm practicing learning their names. It's a good practice for real interactions. You can do it with any TV show or movie and it causes you to engage and remember on purpose a character's name when he or she is introduced. Try it.

5 Best and Worst Songs In Commercials

Billboard magazine has released a list of the top 5 best and worst songs in commercials over the past years.

Do these really make you buy more? :)

The Five Worst Songs in Commercials:

5. AARP: “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays” - Buzzcocks
4. Swiffer: “Whip It” - Devo
3. Wendy’s:  “Blister in the Sun” - Violent Femmes
2. Royal Caribbean Cruise Line: “Lust for Life” - Iggy Pop
1. Victoria’s Secret: “Love Sick” - Bob Dylan

The Five Best Songs in Commercials:

5. McDonald’s: “A Minha Menina”- Os Mutantes
4. Apple: “Jerk It Out” - Caesers
3. Nike: “Revolution”- The Beatles
2. Coca Cola: “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing” - The Seekers
1. Volkswagen: “Pink Moon” - Nick Drake

About the rankings: To compile its list, Billboard consulted with a six-person panel of experts in advertising and branding to determine its list of the best five songs in commercials - and five that made viewers reach for the off buttons on their remotes.

Get a lead

What do you want to accomplish before Noon today? The team that leads at halftime typically has a major advantage. Do it now!