When Two Brands Are Better Than One

Here’s another way to expand your market awareness and market share: find a business that matches your entrepreneurial mindset, has good brand equity, sells complementary products or services and offers exposure to new audiences. Then brand a product together — and have fun doing it. That’s what East Coast lifestyle-clothing store Vineyard Vines and West Coach vintner St. Francis Wineryrecently did. Not only did the venture produce nice results, it yielded new friendships.

For more on how this worked see NYT:

http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/28/when-two-brands-are-better-than-one/?scp=2&sq=branding&st=cse

Zappos Founder Tony Hsieh On Why Brand Building Must Be Different Today

There is a new way of branding that emphasises the development of your company culture.  Here’s what Tony Hsieh, founder of ZAPPOS has to say about it:

Building a brand today is very different from building a brand 50 years ago. It used to be that a few people got together in a room, decided what the brand positioning was going to be, and then spent a lot of money buying advertising telling people what their brand was. And if you were able to spend enough money, then you were able to build your brand.

It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.

For more go to: http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2009/01/03/your-culture-is-your-brand

Are Customer Satisfaction & Customer Experience The Same Thing?

 

Linda Ireland writing for Business Insider makes a compelling argument that making a customer happy and satisfying a customer are two different things.  

Every customer experience begins with a person who has a need, problem, or desire they would pay money to solve. Whether or not they are able to solve their need is their ultimate measure of success. Whether or not you help them solve that need is yours.

Since the customer experience hinges on solving a customer’s need that’s where your focus should be. From product design to marketing, from operations to staffing decisions – everything you do should be about what solves your customers need better than anyone else.

Satisfying customers is a good thing. However, making them happy and solving their need is not the same thing.

I often like to illustrate this point by talking about a visit to the doctor. If my doctor’s main goal were to make me happy, to satisfy me, I’d leave the office with some good drugs and a scale that lies. Is that solving my need? No. I’d sure be happy though.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t bother worrying about customer satisfaction, or the degree of happiness your customers feel about your product, brand or company. It just means that your investment should only be in making them happy insofar as it solves their problem.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/customer-satisfaction-and-customer-experience-2-very-different-things-2011-2#ixzz1EbzngpGG

Harvard Business Review Explains How Social Network Marketing Is Different

…For starters? You need to alter your company’s message to match the more informal and yes — even vulnerable — tone of social networking. While most companies are schooled to never express weakness and always stay on the message, social networking doesn’t work this way. You won’t compel customers to interact with you if your Facebook message reads like a print ad in a magazine.

“We are taught to create ‘personal brands’ that prominently feature our strengths and carefully hide our weaknesses. But trust requires vulnerability, so if you value trust in your social network, you might want to talk about some of the really difficult problems you are wrestling with and seek advice,” said the HBR. Seek advice from your customers about how to address your company’s weaknesses? Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it? It’s necessary.

Next? Provoke your customers a little. Playing it safe may be, well, safe, but it won’t let your customers see you as a living, breathing entity run by real people, which is the goal of social networking.

“It turns out that provocation does two things: it reassures people they are seeing the real you (assuming most of us have provocative views of one sort or another) and it helps stimulate other people to generate new insights,” wrote HBR bloggers John Hagel III and John Seely Brown.

Next, recognize that social networks are organic, growing entities, and it’s not enough to build a presence and then let it take its own course. “Truly vibrant and growing social networks are carefully tended by the individual at the center of his or her network. These social networks require catalysts to expand — interesting people, ideas and conversation topics that can motivate people to connect with you and become more and more engaged. The people who contribute the most need to be recognized and rewarded. And the people in the social network who are generating negative energy and too focused on their own self-promotion need to be gently escorted to the exit,” said Hagel and Brown.

Tracey Schelmetic is a contributing editor for TMCnet. 

This is a webcast about Virgin and how CEO Richard Branson managed to create its unique Corporate Identity, simply by embracing public relations. His strategy involves traditional use of PR, Corporate Social Responsibilty (CSR), and of course the use of social media.

You May Not Know It, But You Already Have A Brand

If you have a business, you have a brand.   People have already formed a perception of you, your people, your services, and your products.

Your brand makes a promise, even if you can’t articulate that promise yourself.  Your company will be judged on how well it fulfills that promise.

 You have a choice:

  • Ignore your brand & hope it conveys the right promise to your clients.
  • Create your brand so that it promises confidence, competence & trust.

What Happens When You Don’t Get Branding? Ask Borders!

 What happens when you fail to understand your place in the market? You file for bankruptcy.

Borders had a poor Brand Strategy and the result was a Marketing Plan doomed to fail.  This observation was made last summer.

 

Borders needs a new business model not just a new brand. Otherwise, change will consist solely of the smoke and mirrors of advertising rather than the real transformation required to win a profitable share of the market. As a Borders lover, I’d hate to see LeBow follow in the footsteps of other leaders who foolishly and tragically banked their hopes on a new brand alone.

Let’s face it. Amazon.com owns on-line book sales, a position so strong that it’s broadened its scope into all kinds of other categories sold on line beyond books. Barnes and Noble Booksellers won the retail store war. Which leaves Borders with higher relative costs per book sold, lower profits and therefore a new controlling investor.

 

For more on Borders failure visit:

http://www.plantescompany.com/blog/comments-on-current-business-news/borders-books-needs-more-than-branding/

How effective do you think this viral video from Levi is?  This is what the video is attemtping to communicate.

Titled with “Shape What’s To Come”, the online brand advertising and marketing campaign is aimed to inspire young women which are presented with a complex web of opportunities of which are theirs for the taking. And while the possibilities and uncertainties that come with so many options can be daunting, all of the young women should going forth. Therefore, the Levi’s Shape What’s to Come is about online women community who shared interests and passions, regardless of age or location. It’s a place where they can seek perspective and support from women like their selves.

For more on this campaign visit

 http://www.invisiblepr.com/online-brand-marketing-campaign-by-levis-for-young-women-shape-whats-to-come/