The true cost of an identity crisis

What is the most valuable asset to your business? Is it your employees? Is it your product? Is it your building? Your location?

Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

Too much negativity to start a column? Sorry about that. The most powerful and valuable asset to any business is …

…. its brand.

So what is a brand? Most often, people look at a brand as one thing:  the logo. Most often, when clients approach me about designing their logo they just say “give me a logo that works like the Nike logo … or the McDonald’s logo … or the Coca-Cola logo. Give me a logo that provides my business with instant notoriety; something that will sell my product, market my company and cure cancer — all before breakfast.”

The problem to that line of thinking is that a logo is just a picture. There is no single image, that when introduced, will be instantly effective in communicating every product, service or message a business wishes to introduce to the public. Many people see the Nike, McDonald’s and Coca-Cola logos and are instantly reminded of their products, services and messages and, to put it bluntly, they see the logo as the vessel of the message and not the product of a consistent marketing and branding effort.

Truth is the Nike swoosh was nothing more than just an image when the first shoe introduced to the public back in 1971 (ironically it was just a design element on a shoe — the original company – Blue Ribbon Sports – it wasn’t until 1978 that the company changed its name to Nike). It took 7 years of branding and marketing efforts to tie the swoosh with the name Nike (founderbios.com). So even one of the most recognizable logos in the entire world took seven years to reach a point of prominence where it Nike was recognized by a mass audience.

There is more to a brand than just a logo. A brand is the product you sell and the quality of its performance; it is the service provided by the people who sell to or service the customers; it is the innovation and intellectual property that spurs the ideas the company introduces; and it’s the philosophy and approach to business. In time, a logo — like Nike, McDonalds and Coca-Cola — can come to embody all these elements, but it is not an overnight solution. A solid brand identity is the result of a quality product consistently reinforced by a thoughtful message, quality product and marketing effort over a an extended period.

Let’s briefly look at how to build a brand, and let’s start with the obvious…

THE LOGO

In my time, I have seen some beautifully created logos; true works of art. Elegant, eye-catching and creative. And I’ve seen the businesses with these logos fail quickly. I’ve also seen the most hideous, drunk-sketch-on-a-greasy-napkin logo become an iconic symbol of a successful company (Two Men and a Truck). A successful, effective logo is timeless meaning that it does not changed year-to-year, but rather is consistently reinforced and pushed into the public arena.

Every time a company introduces a new logo, it effectively destroys or at the very least, degrades any headway the previous logo had on the public consciousness. I’ve seen too many companies believe that simply changing their logo will boost their fortunes, and I’ve seen too many ad agencies advocate a logo change for no other reason than they don’t like the design.  If  a business does decide to change its logo it needs to be part of a bigger strategy; one that designed to reintroduce the new look and reinforce the existing messaging so that the new look becomes intertwined with the existing marketing message.

I could spend time going into great detail on what makes for effective logo creation, but this article is about branding so to keep us on topic, so instead I’ll refer to my personal blog entry about logo creation. It is decidedly written to help graphic designers develop effective and versatile logos, but still provides valuable ideas and information any business owner evaluate his existing logo design or the ideas provided by the designer or agency.  You can read it by clicking here.

CONSISTENCY

One of the biggest mistakes businesses make — particularly small businesses — is that they do not promote themselves in a consistent manner. Any marketing message, and advertising product (brochures, business cards, print ads, television, web sites, blogs, flyers, posters, packaging, etc…) must follow a consistent design standard.  Too often, people get caught up in looking at a brochure as being a standalone project than their business card or their print ad; each one with a different set of criteria and as a result the visual representation or messaging across an entire campaign differs from one project to another. This diminishes your brand effectiveness.

It’s important that design and messaging standards are established at the corporate level and enforce the consistent application of those guidelines to every product, every employee, every storefront and every product.  A few of these include:

• Colors – Pick specific Pantone colors or set specific color builds (your agency or printer can help with this).
• Logo size and application – Dictate the where, the size and how and your logo to be used in all applications (ask your agency or graphic designer to develop a written set of logo standards).
• Tagline – Pick a specific tagline and stick to it, do not change across multiple projects.
• Fonts – Choose specific fonts to be used in all your marketing, advertising and packaging — I recommend having a single Serif and Sans Serif font choice and the option for a Script font; once set, do not deviate.
• Images – Identify and select what time of images can and cannot be used in your marketing. If you have an artistic, hand-drawn style, do not mix in photography; if you cater to high-end clients, use quality photography, not clip-art.

Ideally, a consistent brand results in the continual reinforcement of your identity across your entire product line and marketing efforts, with each project providing support and feeding identical messaging to every other subsequent process. This is how to build brand awareness and consistently reinforce your product or service.

MESSAGING

Maintaining a consistent message is very important to building a strong brand. The easiest application of this concept is through a tagline (a short, 3-7 word phrase which sums up your service, the founding ideals of the company, or the benefit to the customer.

A recent discussion on the Marketing Design Group on LinkedIn asked for contributions as to the most overused and cliché ideas. It’s a pretty entertaining list to be sure and a good litmus test to ensure that your company isn’t recycling an overused concept employed by other businesses — or worse, your competition. Read it here (Note: You may have to create/log-in to LinkedIn to view the discussion).

It is important that a company distances itself from its competition through a unique and relevant marketing proposition. If the message is similar to that of another business, or if a company changes its message project by project, the end result is that mixed or conflicting messages exist in the public arena. That company can no longer be identified by a unified idea or thought, but will more likely be seen as a business with no sense of self-identity – and it’s hard to trust a company who is unsure of who it is, or what value it brings to the table.

EMPLOYEES

Have you ever considered that your employees are probably one of the biggest contributors to your brand’s value, or the biggest contributor to your brand’s decline? It’s absolutely true.

Your employees are often the front line defense in protecting your brand (and a big element to brand value is your reputation). If your employees are involved and take a personal investment in providing the highest-level of service and exemplify the ideals of your company, your brand and reputation is strengthened; if they provide inferior service or reflect upon your company in a negative light, your brand is diminished.

Your employees get more face time with customers than does ownership. It’s critically important that their approach to your business and delivering your message is consistently reinforced.

BRAND IS EVERYTHING

The one thing that will always follow a company is the value of its brand. It’s the most important asset a company has and contributes more over a length of time than any other factor.

Employees may leave and can always be replaced. A building doesn’t speak to the value of a company and a location can always change.  Computers and furniture can be easily replaced when damaged or broken.

Damage to a brand can take years to recover from, or may prove to be a fatal blow to a company’s success. Your brand is the heart of your company and is a vital living, breathing component which feeds all future success. Take care of it. Develop it. Nurture it and take whatever steps are necessary to protect it.

What are your thoughts on brand value? Leave a comment and contribute to the discussion.

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Are you feeling social (media)?

Should a company use social media as part of its marketing mix?

Absolutely.

It’s a question I know I’m getting asked more and more often by clients, friends and coworkers. They’re curious as to whether it’s a passing trend, or something that’s here to stay; something that will change the way businesses markets themselves and reach their customers. I say that it already has. I say that advances in technology have made social media a necessary element to any company or institution that seeks to maintain or grow its awareness with the public.

It’s hard to ignore the obvious truth that we are becoming a more and more mobile society – ever more connected in more ways that previously possible. This connection has had the fortunate effect of making the world a smaller place, bridging gaps of distance and culture and allows the sharing of information and ideas on a scale never before seen in human history.

Where once people relied on town criers to spread news, we now have RSS feeds.

Where people once had to stand on soapboxes or stage rallies to advance an agenda, we now have blogs.

Where we once had handwritten letters and it took weeks for correspondence to be delivered by foot, horse or wagon across thousands of miles of treacherous terrain, we now have instantaneous e-mail (and increasingly poor penmanship).

Where the daily newspaper once provided the news of the day, we have websites.

Where people once had to spend hours in the library searching through thousands of texts to prepare a single book report, research can now be done in minutes on the Internet.

Where people once huddled around the radio to listen to music and recorded entertainment, we now have podcasts and streaming audio.

Where people once tuned in to a handful of television stations for news entertainment, we now have satellites capable of beaming on-demand movies, television shows and news across hundreds of channels right to our living room.

And of course, there are the webinars, chat rooms, PVRs, internet-enabled video game consoles, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook and countless other things that vie for our attention.

The question for any business is to how to compete with all these ‘Options of Mass Distraction‘ and deliver a meaningful marketing message. The answer, ironically enough, is to embrace these changes and to make them work for the business instead of against the business.

Up until now, marketing to the population has essentially based on the ‘interruption model’ — meaning that we target people as they’re in the middle of doing something they enjoy, stop them cold in their tracks just long enough to insert a valuable message about a product or service before returning them to the bliss of their chosen diversion.  And up until recently, it’s worked pretty well. But with all the advancements in technology and the advent of social media, the power of marketing now resides solely in the hands of the consumer. The choice is his as to whether he wants to flip to another channel instead of watching a commercial.

But you have a business to run. You need to promote; to market; to advertise. You need to get people’s attention and get them into your store or restaurant or to attend your event. If they have the option to tune you out, how do you get them to want to tune back in?

Where social media has caused your problem, it has also provided the solution — or in fact, numerous solutions.

Social media is yet another step in the evolution of the way we communicate as a society. These advancements have given even the most ‘Average Joe’ a vehicle to express himself. And people have come out in droves to do just that. They want to express themselves. They do express themselves and they expect to be able to express themselves.

Social media has broken down traditional walls that normally kept us apart. No longer is there a significant boundary between the employee and management; between the population and government; between customers and corporations. The power of the people, the power of the single average voice or many voices heard as one, has more power to influence public opinion than all of the masters of industry or world leaders combined.

In short, people do have a voice and they want to express it. As a business owner, you can either hide from that fact or you can embrace it. The smart business owner embraces it and looks upon public commentary as a means to improve his product, his service and his relationship with is customers.

Businesses are coming around to this realization. Companies are beginning to understand that it is no longer a matter of delivering a message to the masses; it is about developing individual relationships and cultivating loyalty to a brand in an era where competition and options appear endless. In many ways, business has evolved to the very same place it started: With a person, a product and building awareness one person at a time.

I recently received the 2010 Digital Media Outlook survey (look for a link to this report at the bottom of this post). It shows that companies and marketing firms are planning on sinking more and more resources into social media as a means of connecting to the consumer. Social media is not going to go away, but nor is it going to replace traditional media (as some fear). It’s going to become a nice companion element of any solid marketing plan and a means for developing meaningful dialogue between business and consumer.

A former mentor and I were discussion social media and its application for marketing and his feeling is that small business owners will never adopt social media as a legitimate advertising vehicle because their only interest is to get the cash register to ring. It is a sentiment I happen not to share, because I believe that the small business owner is far more dependent on the personal relationships he has with his customers than does a big business with a far greater pool of customers to draw from. If a big business loses a customer it’s probably not going to be as big a deal (there’s always more fish in the sea), but if a small business loses a customer it’s a far more difficult challenge to replace that relationship and the loss of revenue is felt more immediately and has longer lasting effects on the health of the company.

Let me be clear. Social media is not a way to reliably make the cash register ring. That’s not where its strength lies. Its strength lies in two arenas: branding (advancing the awareness of a company, its products, its mission and services) and communication. Continued and sustained use keeps the business aware of public perception and helps establish a direct dialog with customers that can be used to improve issues and disseminate critical information to the public.

Don’t go looking for ROI on social media; it’s not there — at least not in any tangible form that can be tied to a specific amount of income. The real ROI is realized on a much more gradual, sustained scale. The benefit to the company comes through better relationships with its customers which, in combination with traditional marketing, allows for fewer lost customers and advance notice of looming issues (i.e. an ounce of prevention for a pound of cure).

So how much does a small business need to invest to make effective use of social media?

Fortunately, the answer is only one thing:  Time.  Many of the social media tools available are 100% free. Your only investment is the time and dedication to utilize these tools on a regular basis.

Start a blog. Use it to advance your thoughts and ideas on a topic just like I’m doing right now. It has the benefit of positioning you or our company as a subject matter expert and increasing the weight of your ideals or opinions. As people find your blog and find your content of interest, they’ll come back time and time again. The key is to keep your content fresh and update on a regular schedule. If you’re busy, just post once a week. If you have more time, post more often. The more information you post, the more often your blog will turn up in search results and the more often your company (and its message) will be exposed to the public.

There are a variety of providers of free blogs out there. For this blog, I use WordPress. It’s easy to use and you could quite literally be up and blogging in five minutes.

Start a Facebook page. You see it all the time “Become a Fan” visit our Facebook page. Facebook is a great, free way to provide your customers a place to gather, discuss and comment about your favorite topic — your business. Start discussion topics and encourage feedback as a means of product research and development.

The key is to interact with your customers. DO NOT censor any harsh or negative criticism. You cannot be afraid of what your customers are saying, instead look upon it as a chance to change their opinion. Embrace their critique and respond personally. If a client knows they can voice their opinion and have that challenge be answered by the owner or a person of influence within the company, the easier it will be to change his opinion and thwart a groundswell of negative publicity.

Use Twitter to blast out updates. Twitter is one of those social media tools that have a real possibility to make your cash register ring. Encourage your customers to sign up for your Twitter feed and receive special advance notice of sales or special discounts or deals. Give them a reason to follow your business on Twitter and you now have a vehicle to deliver your message directly to the people who WANT to hear from your business and utilize your services.

Authentitcity is the key.

The key to any effective social media marketing is to be genuine; be real. Social media is a vehicle for business owners to communicate with their customers in a real, authentic way. You can have an employee monitor your various social undertakings, but you do not want that same employee to be the voice of the company. That voice must be yours. It is not the voice of your secretary, nor is it the voice of your marketing or PR firm. It has to be yours. If there’s a problem, don’t throw some PR spin doctor at it and hope the issue will go away. Instead embrace the feedback and use it to positively address concerns. If you get good feedback, use that in your other marketing endeavors to advance the quality of your product and reputation of your brand.

Social media is changing the way businesses are marketing to their customers. Embracing this new media will position your company for future growth and better consumer relations. It doesn’t take a lot of time or money to use but the overall benefits can be substantial.

Below are a few links to some suggested readings, including the aforementioned 2010 Digital Media Outlook survey results (Interestingly enough, the reading links go to Amazon.com. Their use of customer ratings alongside their products is another example of social media at work. Think about how often these ratings affect your purchasing decisions).

2010_Digital_Media_Outlook

The New Rules of Marketing and PR by David Meerman Scott

Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time by Anthony Robbins