Fri 5 Mar 2010

Brand Differentiation—It’s An Inside Job

Posted by brandascension under Brand Differentiation, brand building
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3 Ways to Maximize Competitive Advantage!                                           
By Suzanne Tulien, Principal and co-Founder of The Brand Ascension Group

Business innovation never ceases to amaze me! Every day I see ads that blow me away when it comes to new ideas and state-of-the-art features and benefits of existing products. The problem, however, with differentiating your brand through product features and benefits is that those are easily copied by competitors. Once it catches on, ‘poof!’ — no longer a differentiator.

Brands that are highly product based can’t help but differentiate through features. I remember my jaw dropping when I saw an ad for the newest Maybelline mascara equipped with a tiny battery that causes the wand to vibrate! It’s the first of its kind, vibrates 7,000x a minute, and has a battery life of up to 130 applications. I had to think, well, ‘how else could they innovate mascara?’

But brands that have an opportunity to include service as part of what their customers experience have infinite possibilities to get more creative in their differentiators. What continues to make Starbucks one of the most fascinating brands is their dedication to unrelenting uniformity in their delivery of customer experiences. Granted, no brand is perfect and 100% all the time, but they have to be pretty darn close to it. The incredible thing about them is that they are reliably mindful of their own brand promise and it all starts internally, with their employees, their culture, and their processes. This internal ‘due diligence’ gets expertly expressed through touch, sound, smell, and taste…not to mention sight—direct eye contact and a smile.

I am not, however, going to make this article about Starbucks. They are simply a very accessible example and well-known enough to make my point. There are a select few other brands that get it too. Zappos.com, Ben & Jerry’s, and Singapore Airlines, to name those few better known brands, and one not so well known, NuStar, an amazing energy company I recently researched. They profess their employees are their #1 asset and treat them like stars (and have an incredible employee manual to prove it – www.nustarenergy.com). And I must say, thanks to the new TV program ‘Undercover Boss’ – this concept is finally getting the airtime it deserves. Maybe over the next few years we will be able to tout more than just a dozen or so examples of highly conscious, customer-centric brands that sustain themselves through any economic environment.

This article is really meant to unveil some other than obvious ideas when it comes to creating true, memorable differentiation within your competitive landscape. So let’s get started.

1)      Differentiation by Association: Every business brand has an opportunity to take advantage of this often overlooked differentiator. Differentiating through associating your brand with something larger than the obvious product or service directly connected to you is potent. Today, our humanistic tendencies to feed our ego (even at the very basic level) seek confirmation in many forms. We want to feel needed, we want to contribute to a cause, be a part of a solution, a team or a movement.

So the question becomes, how does, or how can my business brand associate itself with a greater cause? Your answer comes from knowing what your brand truly stands for. Identifying your core values will help you match the ‘associative relationship’ with a congruent cause or movement. Here are a few examples:

OPRAH doesn’t just use her platform to expose and discuss interesting topics, she truly values education. Cause = Oprah’s Angel Network, launching in 1997, viewers have donated more than $70 million dollars to the Angel Network to build schools, donate school uniforms, and buy text books among other needed learning supplies.

DOVE brand, doesn’t just sell the ‘beauty bar,’ they value the beauty within each of their customers. Cause =  The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched in 2004 that includes advertisements, video, workshops, sleepover events and even the publication of a book and the production of a play. The principle behind the campaign is to celebrate the natural physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the confidence to be comfortable with themselves. As part of this campaign, in 2006, Dove started the Dove Self-Esteem Fund that claims to change the Western concept of beauty from ultra-thin models with perfect features to making every girl (and woman) feel positive about her looks, no matter what they are.  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_Campaign_for_Real_Beauty

Ben & Jerry’s use ice cream creatively to express their core values around giving back to society. Cause = The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation. The Mission of the Foundation is to make the world a better place by empowering Ben & Jerry’s employees to use available resources to support and encourage organizations that are working towards eliminating the underlying causes of environmental and social problems.

Those who apply for grants must have projects that will:

       Lead to societal, institutional and/or environmental change;

       Address the root causes of social or environmental problems; and

       Lead to new ways of thinking and acting.

Source: http://www.benjerry.com/company/foundation/who/

Their ice cream products are merely a very creative vehicle to contribute and deliver results for what they are really passionate about!

2)      Differentiation by Experience: This differentiator is greatly under-used and has so much potential for so many brands. Consumer research continues to show us that human beings are more drawn to buying an experience and that price is only one factor. Duane Knapp, author of The BrandMindset® states that “Consumers pay in three important ways: time, money and feelings.” Price alone does not drive your customer’s behavior but rather the consistency in how your brand delivers value [through the experience].

For starters, all brands have to do is look at enhancing the customer experience through one or more of the six human senses.

  1. How can you add smell to your brand experience?
  2. How can you stimulate visual consistency in your brand’s experience with your  customer?
  3. How can you create a more multi-sensory experience leveraging two or more of the human senses?

Next time you walk into a Victoria’s Secret retail store count the ways they consciously leverage and manage their customer’s experience. From sight, sound, smell, and touch it is all strategically planned to manipulate the sensory impact the customer has with the brand.

Then, there are Stouffer’s frozen dinners. How do they create an experience for their customers? In their advertising they tout how their prepared frozen meals help bring the family together around the table. And they take it one step further, by leveraging stories, ideas, statistics that back up their philosophy (e.g., studies show that teens who have family dinner 5 times a week are 45% less likely to drink and 66% less likely to do drugs) around the importance of the family dinner at their dynamic website:  LetsFixDinner.com

They’ve even set up a Let’s Fix Dinner™ Challenge where participants can set dinner goals and track their progress for some cool prizes. And Stouffer’s is pleased to be the title sponsor of CASA’s annual Family Day – A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children™ – a national movement to engage parents and educate them about the benefits of frequent family dinners. This year, Family Day is September 27, 2010.

Source: http://www.letsfixdinner.com/Fact.aspx#

For strictly service providers, think about all your customer touch-points. How can you leverage one or more of the senses to create a greater bond with your customers through your website, personal interaction, invoicing, follow-up, etc.?  Research from Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense, shows the more senses you activate, the strong the bond you create with your customers.

3)      Differentiation by Innovation: We’ve come a long way baby! Brands that have not yet considered the vast applications of new technology, social media, video, and their own website presence are missing the boat. Can you think of one industry that can’t begin to utilize innovation in their strategy to differentiate? But the real trick for business is getting crystal clear on who they are and what they promise and make a commitment to live that promise throughout every facet of their organization – that is when the brand-relevant ideas begin to flow.

Here are just a few examples:

  1. Hallmark® greeting cards – Brand Platform; “Caring Shared” – so what better way to share sentiments in this day and age than to embrace technology that incorporates digital pre recorded sound files into their printed cards. But they didn’t stop there; they realized it is even more powerful and relevant to their brand’s purpose to allow the customer to record their own personal voice greeting! After that, they continued to embrace technology and innovation by creating a whole line of multi-sensory digital-delivery cards online. Staying true to what their brand stands for coupled with being open-minded and creative with technology results in a powerful bonding with an ever-evolving customer base.
  2. Progressive Insurance. Brand commitment: Fast. Fair. Better. Staying true to that statement led them to be innovative by studying the behaviors and desires of its clients resulting in the ‘Name Your Price’ option that taps into relieving the fears of overpriced, canned, non-customizable insurance packages and ‘Be the Boss of Savings.’
  3. Delta Faucets realized their customers often come to the sink with sticky, muddy, or otherwise dirty hands that if they used them to turn the handle, the handle would get dirty. So, they innovated a faucet that, with a touch of an elbow or upper arm, the water would begin to flow = Touch 2O® Technology.

When is the last time you surveyed your clients, secret shopped your own business, or observed how your customers use or don’t use your product or service? These types of actions can provide ‘aha breakthroughs’ for leveraging your next differentiator!

It is important to note that these differentiators will be most effective if they reflect your brand’s core values and committed promise. Creating a differentiator for the sake of differentiation will be short-lived and thus create distrust among not only your customers, but your employees as well. Take some time to think through the key attributes of your brand’s DNA and then match those attributes with one of the differentiator topics outlined above (there are many more where these came from)! Sometimes it takes getting back to basics before you can take the next step towards evolution.

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Tue 9 Feb 2010

Undercover Boss – Afraid of what you might find?

Posted by brandascension under Brand Culture, Brand Definition, Corporate Values, Internal Branding, brand building
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If you watched the new series Undercover Boss that debuted right after the SuperBowl then you probably wondered what would be discovered if you did the same (assuming you are the boss reading this).

This series is a perfect display of an organization not being fully conscious of how their brand is lived and breathed from the inside out. A common oversight, but could be a fatal mistake in the long run.

Remember Larry O’Donnell’s (CEO of Waste Management) realization that some of the issues he experienced personally were mandates that came directly from him own office? Wow! What an eye opener for him and his leadership teams. I’ve searched their website and did not find a listing of core values per se, but a lot on their company governance, mission, and their THINK GREEN tenants: http://www.wm.com/wm/about/itged.asp

G – Great operations

  • Be safe.
  • Do it right the first time.

Great operations are important to make sure we are delivering the best service to our customers and to run our operations safely. Doing things right the first time helps from cost efficiency, safety and customer service, to missed pickups and reliable trucks.

R – Respected brand

  • Have pride.
  • Be clean. Be professional.

Our brand is everything a customer can experience about Waste Management: our people, uniforms, trucks, commercials, landfills, containers, service, driving – everything. A Respected brand helps us provide value to our shareholders, bring in new customers, and attract and retain committed employees. When we all take pride in what we do and show it through our everyday actions – such as being friendly, clean and professional — we contribute to a positive image of our brand.

E – Empowered employees

  • Fix it. Fix it now.
  • Have fun.

Having Empowered employees is important if we are going to be a best place to work.  That means employees who care about our customers and have the tools they need to take personal responsibility for fixing any problem they encounter.

E – Engaged customers

  • Prefer us.
  • Recommend us.

We want to be the waste solutions provider of choice for our customers.  To do that we need to have engaged customers.  This means that our customers aren’t just satisfied, but are loyal.  As a part of the WM team, we have to work together to make our customers prefer us, and even better, recommend us to others. 

N – Neighbors of each other and our environment

  • Treat everyone with dignity and respect.
  • Protect the environment.

At WM we want to be good neighbors of each other and our environment.  We all do this by treating our fellow employees and the communities where we live and work with dignity and respect, and by protecting the environment on and off the job.

The above listing of GREEN tenents came directly from their site. As you can see, if you watched the show, many of these tenents are nearly impossible to live by the employees due to ‘corporate’s’ mandate on productivity and efficiencies.

So, if the brand truly believes the GREEN philosophy it wrote, then why is it overriding it with new rules that negate the ability to be the brand? This example is not new, in fact we find it CLASSIC in many relatively successful businesses. Why? Because complacency sets in and the brand is not top-of-mind every single day.

It is not that difficult to do – it is just an awareness that is not only touted through visual posters and corporate ezines, but must be present in the everyday  brand vocabulary, collaboration, training, systems and processes, culture, leadership and teambuilding within the organization.

Our mission is to help businesses do just that. First, define the brand, second, build it at the internal levels of the organization, then live it with energy and meaning. This function is the single-most overlooked business (brand) building strategy we have experienced. So our message, 1) Stop marketing, for now 2) start Branding, AND 3) watch the next Undercover boss and learn from their oversights! It could be the difference between building a good brand vs. a TRULY GREAT ONE!

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Sun 31 Jan 2010

DARE TO BE YOUR OWN BRAND!

Posted by brandascension under Brand Definition, Personal Branding, brand building
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Overcome the Common Stumbling Blocks to Executing a Winning Personal Brand Strategy

Personal branding has become a widely popular topic. People from all walks of life are taking the idea more seriously. What about you? Do you want to make the most of what you have to offer and become more of what you visualize yourself to be? Are you asking, “What’s the right strategy for me?” and “How do I go about putting a personal brand strategy to work that will bring me greater success?”

Implementing a personal brand strategy starts with a true desire to put a clearly defined strategy into play and act on it. From the moment the desire sparks within us to the point we decide to take action, we can end up sabotaging ourselves in the process.  Here are some common stumbling blocks that may be keeping you from implementing a winning personal brand strategy:

1.    Unclear on what makes you unique
2.    Self-limiting beliefs
3.    Fear of moving out of your comfort zone
4.    An undefined Personal Brand Strategy/ROADMAP

Have you experienced any of these stumbling blocks? If so, then you are most likely experiencing less than optimal success. Dare To Be Your Own Brand demands that you get clear on what makes you unique. Then you have to leverage it with an unwavering commitment in everything you do and be willing to step out-of-the-box, focus on a clear path for personal brand elevation and stay the course.

T. Harv Eker, author of The Millionaire Mind says ”Most of us have a pretty good idea about the sum experience of our lives; what we’ve been taught, how we’ve come along so far, and how we generally tend to operate. Maybe a better question than ‘Who are you’ is, ‘Who do you want to be’?” I believe you have to ask both. To bridge the gap between these two requires unearthing your unique attributes and leveraging them!

4 STEPS TO OVERCOME THE STUMBLING BLOCKS TO YOUR PERSONAL BRAND STRATEGY

Step 1:  Define What Makes You Unique—become more consistent with who you already are!
Your personal brand is your unique Brand DNA (your own unique Dimensional Nucleic Assets®)—a reflection of you and what you stand for. At the heart of the matter, it starts with uncovering your values, your personal style, standards and differentiators, and a compelling Brand Mantra you can live by.

  • Personal Values—what is most important to you? What guiding principles drive you? (Do you value adventure, creativity, relationships, honesty, freedom, financial security etc.?) Your behaviors and actions are a reflection of your values. Your personal brand is physically expressed in what you do and how you show up. Take the time to reflect on your behaviors. Are you consistent in your behaviors? If not, then you may not be acting in concert with your values.  And if that is the case, it is time to get clear on your values.
  • Personal Style—how do you present yourself? What are the dominant attributes that express your unique personality? Are you inquisitive? Do people consistently respond to your positive attitude and straight-forward approach? We all have a unique personality. Take some time to examine and define the attributes that reflect your personal style and commit to behaving relevant to your style every day.
  • Personal Standards—what level of performance excellence do you adhere to in your personal and professional life?  What standards do you set in personal and business relationships that are important to you? Do you have standards for how you relate and deliver on your commitments to friends, family, colleagues, clients and or business associates? Are you consistent in living up to those standards? Take some time to consider what your personal standards are.
  • Personal Differentiators—what makes you stand out? What distinguishing attributes set you apart from others? Have you taken the time to inventory the attributes that distinguish you from others? If you haven’t examined the quality attributes and distinctive competencies that make you stand out, then how can you leverage them in every facet of your life?
  • Declare a Personal MANTRA—what will you live by? What 2-3 key words describe the essence of who you are? Are you “Bold and Adventurous”?  “Simply, Mind-Blowing”? “Driven to Deliver”? Get to the heart of who you are and what you want to be. Getting clear on this will give you a personal mantra to live by each and every day. Think of this as your personal ‘cheer’ that you can cite in your mind or out loud to keep you living your brand 100%.

Step 2: Gather Feedback.
To make change happen, you need to identify habits, behaviors, actions and self-limiting attitudes about yourself. What are the consequences of not committing to change with a solid strategy? Everything will remain status quo.

Once you have articulated your personal brand attributes in Step 1, get some feedback from friends, colleagues, business associates. You may be thinking, “Are these attributes really me? What would others say?” Well, you won’t know unless you ask.  Why is it important to get feedback from others? To help overcome those self-limiting beliefs and to better manage your personal brand—to become more of ‘who you want to be’! It will also help you understand other’s perceptions and the gaps/limitations in how you view yourself.

Step 3: Commit Yourself to Change.
The feedback in Step 2 will also help you stretch your skill sets and uncover some hidden attributes you didn’t realize or thought unimportant. Reflect on the feedback and keep an open-mind. You need to know if your personal brand is aligned with your actions and words. Then make an action list of the things you need to do to be what you want to be. Commit yourself to change.

Ask yourself, “How can I aim even higher? What quirks and oddities of mine can I incorporate into my personal brand and leverage?” Most of us spend our adult lives trying to conform. This is a chance to celebrate your uniqueness and strengths, and break out of your comfort zone.

Step 4: Establish and Execute your Personal Brand Strategy/ROADMAP.
Set priorities, execute and monitor progress. Review your personal brand attributes and establish clarity in your strategy and goals. Write them down. Then write down at least three small steps you can begin to take to work towards reaching those goals. Why is it important to document your goals? It’s a way to put a stake in the ground with clear direction and purpose. It gives you a clear roadmap to monitor progress and leverage highly targeted actions. Ask yourself, “How important is this to managing my personal brand?” If it’s not important or you don’t set the time aside, it’s usually a lack of focus and misappropriation of priorities. Set your priorities. Take it in bite-size pieces and stick with it.

REMEMBER:
Our actions are a direct result of our desires, priorities, beliefs, and emotions about ourselves. Living and elevating your personal brand is a conscious, strategic and deliberate process. It requires pigheaded discipline and determination. What is your desired future state? What are the specific goals and actions you need to take to be more of who you want to be? Don’t be afraid to stretch yourself.  By doing so, you become a stronger, more resilient and successful personal brand.

A FEW TIPS:

  1. As you implement your Personal Brand Strategy/ROADMAP, you WILL uncover some unique attributes. As a result, your personal brand WILL alienate some people, and from a branding point of view, that is a good thing. Strong brands don’t try to be all things to all people. No brand is UNIVERSAL because being all things to all people is not UNIQUE. In our personal and professional life, it takes courage to make that a reality.
  2. Always check for congruence with others – pay attention to the cues, (spoken or unspoken) body language, and adjust accordingly to ensure you are showing up in the way you want to be perceived. Ask yourself, “Are you seeing the results you set out to achieve?” Adjust/adapt accordingly.
  3. Don’t hesitate to find a personal branding coach. A coach can be a very effective accountability and thinking partner. They can help you face your blind spots and implement laser-focused, high impact actions that deliver breakthrough results with significant return on your investment. It’s an investment in YOU!  (If you are interested in learning more about Carol’s personal brand strategy and executive coaching services please contact her at carol@brandascension.com or check out http://www.brandascension.com/Coaching.html or ask us about our Self-paced Personal Brand Strategy Program—coming soon!)

Posted by Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder.

Connect with Carol on LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin/in/chapmancarol
Follow her on Twitter:  http://www.twitter.com/CarolChapman
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Check out our blog at: http://brandascension.com/Blog/

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Mon 25 Jan 2010

It’s Time to Think Differently About Brand Differentiation

Posted by brandascension under Uncategorized
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As business owners, we know that differentiation is one of the key attributes that win and keep business. Unfortunately, many business look at their differentiators from a product feature standpoint; which means they are missing a hugh component to true brand differentiation.

Remmeber, a brand is a perception. We all have a brand; good, bad or indifferent. So when we think about the perception that our brand brings to the minds of our customers (and employees), we must consider all the actions and behaviors that accompany our product or service.

Great brands see themselves as holistic in how they operate. Living their core values and brand style through every facet of their organization. The branding function doesn’t just live in the Marketing Director’s mind, but rather in every employee.  How many of you reading this have been officially oriented into the brand you are working for? I shiver at your answers.

We just finished helping one of our clients reinvent their employee onboarding process. Never before did they have a formalized system that was consistent across all divisions throughout the U.S. Now, they can orient their new recruits into the true meaning of the brand through experiential activities and learning, their new ‘associates’ become aware of the passions, the brand personality, the values and their unique differentiators (how they behave and action their brand).

It really doesn’t take much to think and act differently. A lot less time and effort we currently are spending in advertising our businesses for sure. $30 billion dollars are spent in America by Small Businesses to advertise their wares. It is estimated that at least 40% of that ($12 billion) is wasted due to ill-informed, de-motivated employees not engaged in the brand’s promise. OUCH! It’s l ike throwing your marketing dollars down the drain.

It’s 2010 — do you what makes your brand really different? Please comment and tell us how your brand behaves differently.

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Sun 17 Jan 2010

CUSTOMER SERVICE MISHAPS – DO YOU HAVE A PROCESS FOR QUICK RECOVERY?

Posted by brandascension under Brand Culture, Brand Definition, Customer Service, Internal Branding, Organizational Values, brand building
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Service recovery is a big issue for many businesses. Service mishaps happen all the time, but how often do they happen in your business? Are you keeping track? When it does happen, you can’t mess around. Your employees need to be empowered to recover as quickly as possible, show the customer you care and make it right. When you recover quickly with concern, it will most definitely get the attention of your customers. They will understand you care and appreciate that you can deliver on what you promise and enhance their loyalty to your brand.

Here are five simple tips to implement that will enable your employees to recover from a service mishap quickly:

1.  Challenge your staff to take charge and handle the mishap in a way that is consistent with your Brand Promise. Do you have a Brand Promise? If not define it. Check out http://www.brandascension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html to define your brand and develop your Brand Promise. You’ve got to do more than just recover, but recover in a way that is totally ‘on-brand’ with the promise you commit to your customers.

2.  Ask your staff to walk in the customer’s shoes. Have them play out the scenario in their head with the customer’s viewpoint in mind to fully take in the situation and determine how best to resolve and recover in ways that represent what your brand stands for.

3.  Make sure your staff understands your brand values. These are the guiding principles that form the basis for how you behave as a brand and what you believe is important in delivering to your customers. If you value compassion, then ask your staff to consider how compassion must show up in the process of service recovery.

4.  Communicate your style as brand to your employees. How can they recover so they show up consistent with your unique personality as a brand? For instance, if your brand personality is all about humor such as Southwest Airlines, then a start is to admit the mistake and keep that sense of humor combined with humility when resolving the issue.

5.  Empower your employees to identify ways to avoid the problem after they have resolved this service mishap. What are the alternatives available—process changes, etc. to avoid the mishap in the future?  Give them every opportunity continuously provide input on enhancements that will improve service recovery quickly.
Take the time to implement these key tips in your business. You’ll be surprised at the difference they can make in how quickly you recover from a service mishap so you can continue to retain and build customer loyalty.

By Carol Chapman

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Sat 2 Jan 2010

It’s 2010 – Where is YOUR Brand Going?

Posted by brandascension under Uncategorized
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I am watching an intriguing show on CNBC called ‘Keeping America Great’ featuring two prestigious American icons, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, while a host facilitates a town hall-style meeting with students from Columbia University asking them thought-provoking questions. One of the questions from a third year student was directed at Mr. Gates and asked something like this “Considering your level of success, what do you attribute to just sheer luck?”  Bill Gates answered by stating that there were many incidences he attributed to his luck and success but the first two was being born in America and being born at this particular time in the world’s evolution.

After that, an insightful discussion began about the importance for business leaders to understand the context of the overall environment (economy, perceptions, technology, and trends to name a few) and having sound principles to see you and your stakeholders through the evolution of growth and innovation. Mr. Gates reminded the audience how exciting the times are right now in terms of innovation, evolution and transformation. Never before have we had such a level of speed, mass communication, transportation, mobility, convenience, research and technology at our fingertips to further our own evolution.

It was this CNBC special that stirred my thoughts about writing this article. The show truly begs the question, ‘do you know where your brand is going?’ And secondly, ‘how will you and your stakeholders prepare to get there?’ It’s 2010, wow, just sounds like a sci-fi movie doesn’t it? Well, it’s here, so now we get to embrace and leverage it…or not, it still is a choice.

At The Brand Ascension Group, we choose to embrace and leverage it! And we hope you do to. So we offer five strategies to prepare your brand for sustainable elevation. These are key areas we recommend you take inventory and consider serious action. By no means are these strategies the ONLY strategies to mull over, but we believe they will jump start you to in take full advantage of the context of your environment and drive the direction your brand is going.

Strategy #1 – Get clear on the capacity and impact technology is and will be having in your industry.

Everything is changing. Whether it is how you build your product, buy parts, sell parts, invent, service customers, deal with vendors, or promote your business – it is changing, either incrementally or in very obvious, abrupt ways.

 

Start studying these changes and begin to forecast how they will affect your processes, your customers, your employees and your bottom-line. Form a task team that can analyze this information and begin planning scenarios for success.

  1.  How will your brand communicate value to your customer base? Consider the social media tidal wave and how you can maximize this technology.
  2. Will your brand create more differentiation with new technology? If so, when, how and where?
  3. Where can you find technology-based partner alliances that can assist your brand in getting better, stronger, faster? For example, teaming up with ‘host-beneficiary’ or affiliate online retailers to also sell your products to like customer profiles.

Strategy #2 – Assess how your brand’s human capital can be leveraged to innovate.

Highly successful brands believe their people are their greatest assets. Do you have the right people in place? Not just from a skill level, but from a mental and emotional level? Are they engaged? Are they strategic in their thinking? Do they understand and embody your brand in everything they do? Are they a team player? Do they represent the future of your brand?

Gaining competitive advantage in your market space is not just about technology or a great product. It is perceptually weighted from the experience your customers have with your employees. Do you have employees who are ‘holding back’ the success of the organization? Do you have employees that are not reaching their full potential? These are questions to consider when evaluating your brand’s human capital and its ability to fuel your business’ growth objectives.

How can you begin the process of ‘full-on’ employee engagement with your brand? Moving your business into its next level of success cannot be done by a sole driver of the business (you). Consider the potential growth thrust when all stakeholders are behind you, understand your brand’s core values, differentiators and style, and truly live your brand at every customer touch-point.  

Strategy #3 – Commit to walk your brand’s marketing talk.

In our current and ever evolving global communication environment brands have to be more and more conscious of the dialogue that is occurring both on an internal and external level. Social media commentary, online reviews, ratings, chat rooms, etc. have created an instantaneous environment of available information about brands and customer experiences.

Have you been lured into a store or restaurant because of a compelling marketing message, coupon or promise and then sorely disappointed because your expectations were not even close to being fulfilled. Do you go back? Of course not, because there are 50 other choices less than a mile away. But I bet you tell a friend or two, or three (or Twitter) about your disappointing experience.

Now more than ever, your customers are increasingly educated, savvy, and highly particular with how, when, and where they spend their dollars. As an emerging, growing brand, you must take the time to assess your external marketing messages and ensure they are congruent with the actions and behaviors of your brand (e.g., your employees, your products and services). With the level of global competition brands have to start looking more internally at their own processes, their culture and their leadership to make certain they’re walking their brand’s marketing talk, better yet, exceeding the customer’s expectations.

When you think about the statistic, “94% of your customers WANT to be loyal” (Zamba Solutions), it makes you think about all the ways you may not be leveraging this…If you could retain 94% of your customers, that’s significant competitive advantage as it demonstrates you are walking your marketing talk.

Strategy #4 – Declare a powerful, authentic Brand Promise and action it.

This strategy is powerful in that it commits everyone within your organization to get highly focused on a particular ‘way of being’. The promise declaration is a great exercise for your brand to identify and articulate, in a very brief and concise way, what your brand stands for and how it delivers.  Then, once the promise is defined and composed – it has to be lived! This carefully crafted declaration is not just words on paper. It has to be able to transfer into specific behaviors and actions from within your business and expressed not only through all customer touch-points, but within the culture of your organization.

Your brand promise should be:

  1. Enduring, remaining relevant for many years to come.
  2. Intrinsically important to the stakeholders of the brand and the market you deliver to.
  3. Unique in that you are exclusively positioned to deliver on it 100% of the time.

Your brand promise is a strategic tool used to ensure congruent and consistent behaviors, create new processes that support it, and to hold all stakeholders accountable to a unique ‘way of being’ for your brand. It answers key business questions, guides and informs strategic planning, shapes communication strategies, reduces arguments, and provides a clear directional path for the future of your brand. The promise should be tied to the rest of your brand’s unique DNA attributes such as your core values, authentic differentiators and your own personality or style. It also shows up in the delivery of your brand’s standards of performance – guiding your every move to stay on target.

Strategy #5 – Assess where your brand can give back and take action in doing so.

Highly successful brands see the value in giving back to their local, national and global communities and environments. What particular values does your brand have that lend itself to a particular cause? Think about Ben & Jerry’s® – it’s not really about ice cream – it’s about supporting a variety of causes. The Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, established in 1985, is entirely run by employees for the sake of dedicating resources to improve and support environmental and social issues.

More often than not, consumers want to belong to something bigger than the product or service they are buying. They want to feel a broader sense of ‘ownership’ of the brands they are loyal to. Even companies like Harley-Davidson® dedicate time and resources to give back. For over 27 years, they have chosen to focus on and support the Muscular Dystrophy Association; raising over $65 million to aid in research and program services for children with MD.

Another well known brand, Starbucks®, has built an amazing Shared Planet™ program that includes such feats as ethical resourcing, community involvement, and environmental stewardship, as well as promoting volunteerism. Review these brands’ websites to get ideas on how your brand can begin actioning the process of giving back. Your customers will love you for it!

Our bottom line point is to turn inward, assess who you really are as a brand, dig deep and uncover your genetic code to competitive advantage – your Brand DNA. Allow you and your employee teams to get creative, have some fun and action it! There is so much more to business than just the almighty dollar, and with as much time and effort most entrepreneurs are putting into their business, why not make it all it can be. Walk your brand talk. Start seeing your business as a holistic part of the way the world functions and integrate more of your brand into every aspect of your being. Then you’ll know where your brand is going in 2010 and beyond!

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Tue 8 Dec 2009

Sensory Branding: It Makes $EN$E

Posted by brandascension under Sensory Branding, Uncategorized
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By Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder, The Brand Ascension Group

According to Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense, there is a true correlation between the more sensory memories you activate within others, the stronger the bond you create with your brand. Organizations can build a powerful brand by leveraging all the senses within their business, however most businesses tend to leverage just sight and/or sound. Perhaps it is time to focus on more than these two senses—by appealing to all the 5 physical senses: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch and the 6th sense: intuition.

Sight
83% of the information people retain has been taken in visually. So, how consistent are you leveraging the sense of sight to be consistent with what your brand stands for?

How consistent is your brand showing up in the colors and graphics that represent your brand through your website, the décor in your office or retail outlet; your marketing materials, signage, the packaging of your products and how you present your services. A great example of a brand that has leveraged sight is Apple with the distinctive stylish design of their computers. Not to mention the sleek design of the iPod, down to the unique smooth look and feel of their earphones. Apple has fully integrated a distinctive visual design into all their products. They’ve been doing it for years.

Sound
It’s a great way to leverage and create a distinctive brand. Sound is hard-wired into our emotional circuits. Songs from time past, when you hear them, evoke powerful emotions and memories. Sound is essential to creating the mood of your brand story. A great example is Disney and how they deliberately and carefully choreograph music and sounds reinforcing the entire experience in their theme parks. The music reflects the songs of highly recognized and enduring cartoon characters that have been a part of the Disney experience for years. A sensory experience to delight in.

Smell
A variety of surveys have demonstrated that the “olfactory bulbs” in our noses make smell the most impressionable, memory enhancement device of all the senses. Smells invoke a variety of memories within us. Singapore Airlines has been voted one of the best airlines in Asia. They patented a botanical scent and infused that scent throughout the cabin of their aircraft, the towels each passenger receives when they come onboard—even the flight attendants wear this scent. It creates a calming effect – Singapore Air leverages all the senses in the guest experience.  I flew them a lot while living in Asia. The scent continues to linger in my memory banks.

Taste
A Home nursing care organization (Nurse Next Door) has established a traditional “humble pie” flavor to its brand in their efforts to serve the customer and recover from a mistake. They introduced a few years back and continue to use the humble pie along with a hand-written note of apology to their customers when they make a mistake or receive negative feedback. The CEO reported in their first year of introduction they spent about $1,300 in pies, but estimated they retained over $90,000 worth of continued business. Wow, how creative is that! And they’re not even in the food business.

Touch
Our skin is the largest organ in our body and quickly alerts us to a sense of well-being or pain. The touch of a hot pan quickly travels from the skin to the brain and triggers the cortex indicating a warning signal – Ouch! When you think about branding, I have to admit the feel of certain products are important to me in my purchase decision. I buy cutlery based on the size and weight—the heavier and more solid the better. I buy a car, in part, based on the size and feel of the seats, and the feel of the steering wheel. The feel of Bang & Olufsen’s electronics has a unique sensory appeal to their designs. Their tactile designs have enabled them to lead the pack against their competitors.

Intuition
I’d have to say that Singapore Airlines has demonstrated an understanding in leveraging all of the senses including intuition. I  have to admit that my intuitive sense delighted at the thought of flying them given the entire sensory experience. They have integrated all the senses and understand the importance of creating a bond with their customers. Whenever I had to fly a different airline I was truly disappointed—especially when I returned to the U.S. Singapore Air has done a fabulous job appealing to all the senses.

Suffice it to say—the information we take in through the senses is unique to each of us leaving lingering memories either positive or negative. Businesses can leverage the senses, but why haven’t more caught on to this phenomenon. There are huge opportunities just waiting to be birthed by every business, but few companies have integrated them into their brand-building strategies.

So, why don’t you start now? Download this complimentary sensory development tool and begin to build an integrated, powerful branded experience for your customers. Click here for sensory tool download.

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Fri 27 Nov 2009

What’s your strategy?

Posted by brandascension under Uncategorized
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Wed 25 Nov 2009

Branded Service Moments of Truth

Posted by brandascension under Brand Culture, Customer Service, Internal Branding, brand building
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By Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder, The Brand Ascension Group

Most people have heard the term Moments of Truth. These are those defining moments when customers evaluate whether or not you Walk your Talk as a brand and declare “This is great—I’ll be back” or “Nada – don’t’ think I’ll return”.

I’ve recently come to believe (based on my experience) that there are very few brands that hire and train their employees for behaviors that reflect their brand. I think that most businesses just take it for granted that their employees know how to interact positively with their customers.

When an organization’s marketing messages promise something to their customers but the actual experience is short of living up to that promise, that’s when organizations need to be aware that this impacts how your brand is perceived –big time! Why are less and less organizations concerned about how their employees are showing up and behaving during service interactions? Consider the following scenarios that I experienced recently with a couple of online retailers:

Scenario #1:
I recently phoned Dell’s customer service as I had difficulty purchasing some printer cartridges for my Dell printer online. It was a very disappointing experience.

The problem I had was that during the online transaction process, I could not get the system to take the shipping address I entered. It kept defaulting back to the billing address of my credit card. I tried everything. Then I tried to cancel the order online. Wouldn’t let me do that either. So, I called their toll-free number and got a Customer Service Representative who transferred me to Sales indicating they had to cancel the order. When connected with sales, they were not authorized to cancel the order. It was customer service’s job to do that. So they transferred me back to Customer Service.

I explained my situation to the customer service representative and displeasure for being transferred back and forth.  He proceeded to get rude on the phone with me. He said, “I’m a Customer Service Level 1 Rep and my job is to transfer people to the right department. I can’t cancel your order”! I was really taken aback. I said, “you’re customer service and can’t cancel my order?” I asked to speak with a supervisor to which he replied, “One moment”. One moment turned into 5 minutes of wait time for him to come back to me. It finally took a total of 15 minutes to get to a supervisor.  After some discussion, she couldn’t figure out how to change the shipping address. I had to suggest to her we just cancel my order, which she was able to do – for a moment I wasn’t sure. But get this, she had to send me back to a sales representative to reorder. Geez, what kind of people are they hiring and what training are they receiving? And what kind of processes have they established. I’m currently looking for alternative vendors to purchase my Dell printer cartridges. I don’t want to return!

Scenario #2:
I ordered a pair of shoes from Zappos.com. If you are not familiar with them, please check them out at www.zappos.com. Service extraordinaire!  I received my shoes within record time with free shipping. When the shipment arrived, I received 2 orders. The one I actually ordered and another customer’s order by mistake. The shoes I ordered had a defect in the inside of the toe area on the right shoe. Very uncomfortable!

I phoned Zappos to resolve my issue. The customer service representative said “Please keep the shoes and feel free to give them to goodwill if you want to?” They also weren’t able to replace the order because they were out of stock. The customer service representative said, “I’d like to place you on our VIP list. You’ll receive free overnight shipping both ways with every future order. I’d also like to give a $15 coupon off your next purchase and will send you a confirmation email. I’ll also make sure you receive an email when this item is back in stock.” I was astounded and quite frankly just delighted with the whole interaction. He was friendly, helpful and genuine. He asked if I would place the other shoes I mistakenly received outside my doorstep for pick-up the next day to which I said, “absolutely, my pleasure.” I continue to shop Zappos.com. In fact, sometimes I prefer to call rather than just order via the internet, because of the interaction and the positively memorable experience I have every time with their customer service reps. Zappos.com—you rock!

More organizations can learn from companies like Zappos. All it takes is hiring the right people with the right customer service attitude and good human interaction skills; and some solid customer service training on how to deliver on the brand experience–consistently.

www.brandascension.com

info@brandascension.com

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Mon 16 Nov 2009

What is the ‘One Word’ You Want to Own in the Minds of Your Market?

Posted by brandascension under Brand Culture, Brand Definition, Internal Branding, Uncategorized, brand building
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By Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder

Regardless of the size of your organization, has the question been asked, “What is the one word you want to own in the minds of your market??  Before you answer, first think about the following:

  1. What is the overall feeling you want everyone (internally – your employees and externally – your customers) to experience ‘every step of the way’ with your brand?
  1. What is your brand’s ‘leave-behind’ expressed in one word? Try asking your employees and customers. The answers will most certainly be very revealing and probably varying.

Owning that one word requires that you be conscious and fanatical about your brand and focused on delivering consistently to show up that way. If you really think about, your brand is much more than your logo, image or clever advertising campaign. It is the emotional connection that creates a bond with others. It is a PERCEPTION that is result of the experiences you create internally with your employees and externally with your customers and how you manage those perceptions. Managing perceptions to the one word you want to own is a conscious, strategic and deliberate process that permeates every aspect of your business.  Every employee’s thoughts and decisions, every activity and process must support what your brand stands for.

Have you dug deep to unearth that one word you want to own? Is it ‘convenience’ or ‘ease’? Are you about ‘performance’ or ‘quality’? Brands like FedEx (Overnight), Disney (Fantasy) and Starbucks (Inspiration) didn’t get to own the words in the minds of their markets without consciously and deliberately taking the necessary enduring steps to reinforce the impression they wanted to leave. They’ve created cultures and systems and processes to deliver day in and day out. As phenomenal brands, they deliver consistently in very distinctive ways and they’ve worked hard and smart to skyrocket their success.

Think about it! What one word do YOU want to own in the minds of your market? Are you willing to dig deep to find out? Visit www.BrandAscension.com to learn more on how to capture that one word based on your unique  Brand DNA of values, style, standards and differentiators. Leverage these to distinguish your business from your competitors. Learn how to engage and motivate your employees to create consistent “Wow” experiences that win customers for life and grow your business exponentially!

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