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My Marketing/Branding Favs Over 2 Years July 1, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, CMO advice, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction.
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In a continuation of the look back at my first two years of blogging, today I’m listing some of my…

Favorite Marketing/Branding Posts

From my perspective, brands aren’t color palettes or logos. They’re not tag lines or advertising campaigns. They’re an organization’s raison d’être. Here’s how I describe branding:

True brands are more than just marketing slogans, they’re the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause.

The bottom line: Most organizations need to re-establish their raison d’être.

Brands Are Dying; Deal With It March 6, 2009

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction.
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In my presentation at Adaptive Path’s Mx Conference earlier this week, I mentioned that brands are dying. This turned out to have more of an impact than I thought. Helen Walters from BusinessWeek (who was in the audience) ended up interviewing me and posting a video of our conversation on her blog.

Why did I say it?

I often discuss Experience-Based Differentiation (EBD), a blueprint for customer experience excellence, in my blog (and in every other forum where people will listen). In my research, I track how large companies progress towards EBD. It turns out that they’ve actually regressed when it comes to the second principle of EBD: “Reinforce the brand with every interaction, not just communications.” Here’s one of the data points from surveys of large North American firms:

brandchart2_vsmall

Why are brands dying?

It’s simple: Companies have let profits replace purpose. As firms optimize left-brain management techniques for squeezing out additional profits, they’ve lost something very important — their raison d’être. True brands are more than just marketing slogans, they’re the fabric that aligns all employees with customers in the pursuit of a common cause.

This quote from Mohatma Gandhi gives insight into how companies should think about their brands:

All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.

The bottom line: Don’t let your brand slip away.

HTC On Innovation, Simplicity, And Branding October 8, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, Customer experience, Disruptive customer experience strategies, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction.
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I ran across a very interesting Q&A with John Wang, CMO of HTC, the Taiwanese company that delivered the first cell phone using Google’s Android operating system. The article focuses on how HTC cultivates innovation through it’s Magic Labs organization, which is a group of people across multiple disciplines (called “Magicians”) that focus on long-term innovations. The CMO runs the group and his business card says “Chief Innovation Wizard.”

While the article provides interesting insights about how HTC handles innovation, I really enjoyed Wang’s discussion about two of my favorite topics: simplicity and branding.

The way most companies compete is by adding features to their products and services. So, over time, the offerings become more complicated than what’s actually needed by large segments of customers. And the interface to those products becomes increasingly complex. That’s why I’ve defined ULTRASIMPLICITY as one of the Five Disruptive Customer Experience Strategies. Here’s some of what Wang had to say on the topic:

Everybody was talking about simplicity, everybody was talking about usability. What did people do? Well, they rearranged the menu and called that improving usability. That’s not simplicity, that’s rearranging menu items…. The true mission is not to reduce learning, but to eliminate learning… The baby is probably the best expression for zero learning because the baby has not learned anything yet. If she wants to see the monkey on the other side of the block, she simply reaches out and turns the cube.

When I discuss brand, it’s often in context of the 2nd principle of Experience-Based Differentiation: Reinforce the brand with every interaction, not just communications. Brands need to be about walking the walk, not just talking the talk. All too often, though, I find that ”the brand” only exists in advertising groups. When that happens, the rest of the company doesn’t really reinforce any of the brand value; leading to empty promises in marketing. So I really appreciated the following comments from Wang:

There is a very important difference between brand value and brand recognition. Brand value means something to the end user. Brand recognition, all it means is a bunch of advertising to make people recognize the brand name. At HTC we care about brand value, not brand recognition. Building brand value is like earning respect; you have to earn respect, you cannot buy respect.

The bottom line: “Innovation + Simplicity + Brand Value” is a great formula.

JetBlue’s “Happy Jetting” Is More Than Empty Promises May 8, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction, Experience-Based Differentiation.
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I’ve written posts that have chided marketing campaigns from JP Morgan Chase, Circuit City, and John Hancock because they appear to be disconnected from the reality of how the firms treat their customers. Those myopic marketing efforts fail to meet a fundamental tenet of Experience-Based Differentiation: Reinforce the brand with every interaction, not just communications.

I even developed this diagram to show how these marketing campaigns can lead to empty promises:

Probability Of Success For Branding Efforts

Positioning And Scope Of Effort

Given my recent negativity towards marketing campaigns, I was thrilled to read about JetBlue’s “Happy Jetting” initiative. I call it an “initiative” because it’s more than just an external marketing campaign. Here’s some of what Andrea Spiegel, JetBlue’s VP-Marketing, had to say about “Happy Jetting” in an Advertising Age article:

This is much more than just an ad campaign, it’s a brand campaign because it speaks to what the core of JetBlue is. It’s executable across every touch point for crew members and customers. [It's also] the most integrated internally and externally. We’ve brought to life this new world of jetting internally for crew members through training programs, screensavers and posters all over the company.

Now that’s what Experience-Based Differentiation is all about!

The bottom line: Don’t push ad campaigns, embrace brand initiatives.

Ford (Finally) Turns Employees Into Brand Ambassadors April 26, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, CMO advice, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction, EBD #3: Treat Customer Experience As A Competence.
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I just read a BrandWeek article called Ford Asks Employees, Dealers to Spread Ad Message that talks about Ford’s new campaign called “Drive one” which includes a push for employees and dealers to spread the word. Jim Farley group vp-marketing and communications for Ford explains it this way:

The whole idea behind this campaign is not fancy ads. It’s talking to the customer, who talks to a friend. It’s the only chance we have to break the apathy.

My take: As I talked about in my previous post about John Hancock, advertising alone can’t dramatically change a company’s positioning. It takes a shift in how you interact with customers. That means you need to get employees involved (and for car makers, it means dealers as well). So this approach makes absolute sense. Yet, something is wrong.

The fact that Ford is making such a big deal out of this approach means that it’s an unusual occurance. So the car maker does NOT regularly engage employees and dealers in its advertising efforts. That’s a problem. Employees and the entire front line need to be developed into ambassadors for any campaign. And if they can’t promote it, then that’s probably a good sign that the campaign is not a good one. 

When I interviewed the CMO for JetBlue several years ago, she told me that she spent half of her time communicating the brand message internally. Sounds like a good benchmark.

The bottom line: CMOs need to become CMMOs, Chief Marketing And Motivational Officers.

John Hancock Repositioning Provides Lesson About Empty Promises April 24, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction, Experience-Based Differentiation, Financial services.
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John Hancock announced a new ad campaign called “Cursor” that showcases two areas: the rise of digital communications and the opportunity for financial success. It is trying to reintroduce the company to the public as a relevant and inspirational brand. Here’s how Jim Bacharach, vp-advertising at John Hancock described the campaign:

The thinking behind the campaign was to recognize where consumer sentiment is today. The unstable economy is a source of anxiety for a lot of folks. One of the key differences from what we’ve done in the past is that today, more than ever, these conversations take place through electronic media.

My take: Right below is the John Hancock homepage (from earlier this week). Other than the discussion of the new “Cursor” ad campaign in the lower right, is there anything about this page that reinforces the notion of relevance, inspiration, or digital conversations?

I didn’t bring this up to pick on John Hancock’s Website or even to discuss its repositioning efforts. Instead, I wanted to (re)make a point that advertising alone can not reposition a company.

While ad campaigns can certainly introduce new brand promises, repositioning can only occur of the company actually keeps those promises during all of its interactions. That’s why the second principle of Experience-Based Differentiation is: Reinforce the brand in every interaction, not just communications.

Without designing all touchpoints to fulfill the new brand promises, the hope for repositioning is likely to just lead to empty promises:

Probability Of Success For Branding Efforts

Positioning And Scope Of Effort

The bottom line: Don’t waste your marketing dollars on empty promises.

Note To Circuit City’s Board Of Directors March 9, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction, Executive leadership, Experience-Based Differentiation.
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Since my previous post talks about customer service and my next post will talk about customer loyalty, I felt compelled to squeeze in something about Circuit City. The retailer just announced that both its CMO and president of small stores are leaving — just a few months after the retailer’s exec VP of multi-channel sales also left the company. In the midst of this turnover, I have a few thoughts for the Circuit City board of directors as they retool their efforts.

To being with, let’s look at how customers rate Circuit City. Here are some findings from my research which shows Circuit City’s rankings:

It’s clear that Circuit City has it’s work cut out for itself when it comes to Customer Experience. I think it makes sense to repeat advice that I gave to JP Morgan Chase in ”Chase Can’t Advertise Its Way To Customer Friendliness:” You can’t advertise yourself out of this problem. 

So here’s a suggestion for the Circuit City leadership team: Transform your latest marketing slogan, ”Simplicity guaranteed,” from a tag-line into an operational blueprint. How? By following the second principle of Experience-Based Differentiation:

Reinforce brands with every interaction, not just communications. Traditional brand messaging is losing its power to influence consumers — that’s why branding efforts need to expand beyond marketing communications to help define how customers should be treated. To master EBD, firms must articulate their brand attributes to both customers and employees, clearly describing how the firm wants to be viewed. That’s just the first step, because companies must go on to translate brand attributes into requirements for how they’ll interact with customers.

The bottom line: Circuit City should stop guaranteeing simplicity and start delivering it.

Chase Can’t Advertise Its Way To Customer Friendliness January 11, 2008

Posted by Bruce Temkin in Branding, Customer experience, EBD #2: Reinforce The Brand With Every Interaction, Experience-Based Differentiation, Financial services.
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J.P. Morgan Chase is planning to unveil a new campaign called “Chase What Matters” in an effort to reposition itself as being more customer friendly. Here’s a quote from a news release on the topic:

“We’re launching it across all lines of business at Chase, working in partnership with our retail side so all branches and all Chase-branded products will be under this campaign,” said Sangeeta Prasad, svp-branding and advertising for Chase

My take: First of all, lets look at some data that I’ve published about Chase:

Chase certainly has its work cut out to be viewed as customer friendly.

But is the firm’s problem really its advertising slogan? Will a high recall rate for “Chase What Matters” make customers think that Chase is customer-friendly? I doubt it. To change customer perception, Chase needs to follow the second principle of Experience-Based Differentiation:

  • Reinforce brands with every interaction, not just communications. Traditional brand messaging is losing its power to influence consumers — that’s why branding efforts need to expand beyond marketing communications to help define how customers should be treated. To master EBD, firms must articulate their brand attributes to both customers and employees, clearly describing how the firm wants to be viewed. That’s just the first step, because companies must go on to translate brand attributes into requirements for how they’ll interact with customers.

The bottom line: Don’t waste money on brand promises that you can’t keep.