January, 2009

Branding Basics — 2 Comments
31
Jan 09

Broken Promises


Photo Credits: Amit Gupta

A few days ago, State Farm announced that it will be pulling out of the homeowners insurance business in Florida, after a substantial price increase proposal was rejected by Florida regulators.

I believe the decision to leave 1.2 million Florida customers without homeowners insurance will not only harm these customers but also the State Farm brand. As you may know, the company has built a business around the following brand promise: “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there”. That promise, at least for Florida homeowners, is now worthless.

Has State Farm made a good business decision? Can a company adopt a business strategy that openly contradicts its brand promise and expect its brand to come out unscathed? Should short term gains take precedence over long term brand building? I’d like to know what you think.

Personal Branding — 3 Comments
26
Jan 09

Not a Good Time to be a Cog in the Machine

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Photo Credits: Elsie esq.

Today was a particularly bad day for the job market, with several large companies announcing over 70,000 job cuts (you can see the total jobs lost so far in 2009 in this table).

While many of these layoffs were inevitable as the economy adapts to a more sustainable level of consumption, I wonder how many jobs have been lost simply for failing to quantify, articulate and communicate the value that these employees were providing.

The key is that your contribution must be perceived as being worth more than the money they’re paying you. How do you do this?

  • By doing something exceptionally well and making sure the right people know about it.
  • By becoming your company’s go-to-guy .
  • By accomplishing more than you’re asked to.
  • By bringing a solution (or two, or three) every time you bring up a problem.
  • By working on reinforcing the positive mental associations you want others to recall when they hear your name.

There will be those rare cases when even all this won’t help, like when a whole company or division closes down. However, you can prepare for that worse case scenario by building your brand and your network of contacts outside your company, long before you need them.

By thinking in terms of career security instead of job security, you’ll run circles around those who just go through the motions when times are good, but don’t know where to start when the going gets tough.

Branding Basics / Personal Branding — 3 Comments
20
Jan 09

Polarization: Branding’s Lethal Weapon

Good branding means taking sides, making choices and learning how to say no.

  • While some of us love all things Google, others think of it as a 21st century version of George Orwell’s Big Brother.
  • For every wine snob who wouldn’t touch anything that hasn’t been aged in an oak barrel and comes in a bottle closed with a proper cork, there’s a young, casual drinker who doesn’t mind her wine in a box.
  • For every blue-blooded WASP who thinks that Frank McKinney’s 100 million dollar mansions are extravagant and tasteless, there’s probably a rich Italian with a red Ferrari and a trophy wife who’s ready to call them home.
  • For every person who listens to Gary Vaynerchuk and can’t get past the swearing, there are thousands of us who consider him inspiring and brilliant.
  • While Sarah Palin scares some people, others are her adoring fans.
  • For every hard core off-roader who worships his Jeep, there is a member of the Sierra Club driving a Prius.
  • For every brand that tries to be all things to all people, there are brands like Crocs or Scion that not only are not afraid of polarization, but embrace it.

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Image courtesy of Attik

No, you don’t need to tweak your product to make it more “mainstream”. You don’t need to offer more choices. You don’t need another line extension. What you need to do is to draw a line in the sand and choose what side you want to be in.

Book Reviews — 4 Comments
17
Jan 09

Career Renegade: How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love

If you’ve ever wondered how you can turn your passion into a business, this book is probably the best place to look for answers. Compared to other how-to books, this new book by Jonathan Fields doesn’t hold anything back (you’ll even find a chapter showing you how to pitch your loved ones before leaving your job to start your own business).

The author, who left a career in law years ago to pursue his dreams as an entrepreneur, describes in great detail seven often overlooked ways to make money doing what you love.

He starts by explaining how each particular strategy can work for you, and follows through with real life examples and a list of resources for you to dig deeper on your own. Then, he continues to guide us through the process of marketing our dream, the basics of Internet marketing, and how to use blogs and social media to make our mark in the world and gain influence.

Perhaps the passage of the book that I liked the most is when the author talks about conventional wisdom, and how it gets in the way of identifying opportunity. Learning to defy conventional wisdom (or what others may call “thinking out of the box”) is the best way to discover niches that nobody is addressing and that you can turn into a business.

With that frame of mind and the practical tips in this book, you shouldn’t have any problem finding work that is at the same time lucrative and fulfilling.

Branding Basics / Online Branding — No Comments
15
Jan 09

Product Placement Doesn’t Need to Break the Bank

The general tightening of advertising budgets and the lack of effectiveness of traditional advertising have turned product placement, also known as brand integration, into an important component of the marketing mix.

Through product placement in films, brands get wide exposure while helping film producers absorb part of their production costs. Two well known examples are Windex in the hit movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Pinot Noir wine in Sideways, which caused sales of both products to soar.

I came across an interesting case of product placement while reviewing the nominated films of the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. In Adam, one of the nominees, a high end Meade telescope is the star of the film.

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What is more interesting is how Meade and Adam, an independent film short on budget, where able to connect and create a win-win situation. Both parties got in contact through Placevine, a new online platform that is pioneering the use of the Internet to connect brands with content producers offering brand integration opportunities.

In this case, Meade lent one of its large, high-end telescopes to the production team, filming in New York, and also covered all of the shipping costs to and from the set. In return, the Meade Telescope became the “hero” of the film, and the production team was able to shift valuable budget towards ensuring that the final cut was the best film possible.

In the past, product placement was a complicated process that relied in personal relationships and time-consuming outreach efforts to individual agencies and brand managers.

These days, however, through companies like Placevine, the Internet is once again leveling the playing field and is making it easy for small business brands to connect with content producers and find brand integration opportunities on a shoestring budget.

Others / Personal Branding — 1 Comment
12
Jan 09

The Mentor, the Coach and the Consultant


Photo Credits: The Fayi

Consultant, coach and mentor are three roles that all of us need to play in the business world, regardless of whether we are managers in a large corporation or small business owners.

What is the difference between a consultant, a coach and a mentor?

Each role is usually defined by how close it relates to another person.

A consultant is usually focused on a process, a task or a project, rather than an individual. For example, a consultant may help a company streamline its customer service operations or optimize the use of its warehouse space.

A coach, on the other hand, focuses on improving an individual’s specific performance. For example, a coach may work with an executive to upgrade his presentation skills, with a golfer to improve her swing, or with a job applicant to polish his resume.

A mentor, however, is somebody who gets actively involved in another person’s development (personal or professional). The role of a mentor is not limited to teaching new skills or improving a specific performance, but rather to act as a guide and role model. A good mentor will act as your personal advocate and will often put her reputation on the line for you.

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Putting it all together

As a manager of people it is crucial to learn how to be a coach. Becoming a coach is not easy, especially for those promoted to management for doing a great job as individual contributors.

My number one challenge when I was first promoted to management was to stop myself from trying to fix things. Dictating solutions to problems is easy, but it doesn’t let your people, department or company develop and grow. Instead, encourage those who come to you with a problem to also come with a solution. You can then give feedback, guidance and proper training, if necessary.

You also need to play the role of a consultant. This is more important than you think: after a while, managers and business owners get caught in “the way we do things around here”. That leads to consider normal habits and practices that are inefficient and wasteful.

By acting as a consultant you will be able to look at your business from the point of view of an impartial outsider, asking “why” a lot and keeping your company moving in the right direction.

Finally, your own needs for self actualization will encourage you to play the role of a mentor. You can become a counselor and a guide to those who need help navigating their career path. In the end, there is no better investment than the time you take to make a positive impact in someone else’s life.

These days being a mentor has more to do with experience than with age. For example, the explosive growth of the Internet has created opportunities for young, tech-savvy social media experts to mentor older, senior executives who want to succeed in the digital world. Interestingly enough, that kind of arrangement may evolve into a mutual mentorship program, where members of two different generations can learn from each other.

In summary

A consultant is someone who focuses on a project, task or process. A coach is someone who focuses on improving an individual’s skill or performance in a given area, and a mentor is someone who focuses on an individual’s personal or professional development. To be a successful manager or business owner you need to master all three roles.

Branding Basics — 6 Comments
3
Jan 09

Losing Brand Equity with Radical Packaging Changes

In branding, there’s a pretty basic guideline: don’t change your branding signals (colors, look and feel, packaging, logos, etc.) so much that customers won’t be able to recognize them. There is valuable brand equity invested in a brand’s visual identity and it can be lost if the changes go too far.

On a recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed that Tropicana orange juice recently changed its packaging. Unfortunately, this is one of those cases where the changes may have gone too far.

The first sign of a problem came when I couldn’t find the cartons of Tropicana juice even when I had them in front of me. I had to ask an associate and he pointed them out to me.

To help you visualize the nature of the change, this is the way Tropicana looked before:

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And this is how it looks now:

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Not only is the new look so bland that it can be confused with a cheap private label store brand, but Tropicana’s most important branding signal: the orange with the red and white straw (possible one of the most brilliant logos of all time) is nowhere on the package!

The characteristic typeface of the Tropicana logo has also been replaced with a boring font that almost looks like the ubiquitous Arial.

So much has changed in Tropicana’s packaging that a competitor now looks more like the old Tropicana than the current version (see below, to the left):

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I wonder how many people will grab this other brand thinking that it is Tropicana, and if this package change will end up costing Pepsico (Tropicana’s parent company) significant sales (I would think so).

Think about this before you make changes to your brand’s trade dress.

Customer Service — 7 Comments
1
Jan 09

Opt-Out Policies and the Myth of the Complementary Newspaper

A few weeks ago, while in a conference at a high end Miami Beach hotel, a copy of USA Today was delivered at my doorstep every morning. Since I don’t read the newspaper any more (I get my news from the web or through RSS feeds), I just left it in a corner of my room before going about my daily activities.

On the third day, I noticed the following statement written in a very small font on my room card keys envelope:

“Please call the front desk to refuse delivery of USA Today. If refused, a credit of $0.75 will be applied to your bill”.

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If the powers that be who manage this large hotel chain thought guests would appreciate this gesture, they’re probably thinking like accountants, not like customers. I don’t know if I fit the profile of a typical guest, but this is what went through my mind immediately after reading the statement:

“This fancy hotel has taken it upon itself to buy a newspaper I don’t want, and charge me $0.75 without even asking me. On top of that, since I don’t want it, I have to spend time and effort making an opt-out phone call that will probably make me look like a cheapskate. Finally, I will need to spend more time at check-out to see if the $0.75 were in fact credited for every day I didn’t receive the paper.”

Some time ago I explained why I think opt-out policies are a bad idea, and this simple example is no exception.

If I were running the place, I would not offer newspaper delivery by default, and I would re-write the statement as follows:

“If you want a copy of USA Today at your doorstep every morning just call the front desk and we will deliver it at no charge”.

Now, if I really wanted to kick it up a notch, I would change the statement to:

“In our efforts to help the environment, we do not provide automatic newspaper delivery. However, if you want a copy of USA Today at your doorstep every morning just call the front desk and we will deliver it at no charge.”

Fine, but “what about the newspaper cost?” you may ask. Well, the cost of the newspaper vs. the cost of a room in this hotel comes out to less than 0.25%. Furthermore, if only 30% of guests opt to receive the free newspaper (and 30% still strikes me as a high number) the newspaper cost per room would go down to around 0.08%.

In other words, it would cost practically nothing for the hotel to institute a much better policy that would leave everybody happy (with the exception perhaps of USA Today and a few obtuse accountants).

Do you think the hotel’s current policy is a good or bad idea? Do you expect hotel newspapers to be free? Do you still read newspapers? Please share your thoughts here.