Seasonal Branding: Tread Carefully with Christmas Themed Brand Strategies

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Fourth quarter commercialism looms large. Sparkly red and green Christmas displays are simultaneously mounted as spooky orange and black Halloween decorations come down.

From Ireland to Illinois, consumers react in unpredictable ways to brand seasonal messages that creep in earlier and earlier every year. For retailers, that response can mean boom or bust for critical end-of year-sales figures.

  

 

Black Friday Launches the Season

 

Like a turkey sandwich in-between Halloween and Christmas, America has another huge national holiday. On the fourth Thursday of November, the weekend following Thanksgiving traditionally signaled the official start of Christmas during most of the 20th century. Dreamt up as a marketing concept in 2003, Black Friday is now the most frenzied shopping day of the year. It sees queues forming overnight for big sales, many beginning at dawn and some as early as midnight on Thanksgiving Day.

 

Black Friday is spreading. In recent years, Canada, Mexico and India have followed suit while giant American retailers like Disney and Apple introduce online sales in Australia, too. French shoppers are familiar with “Vendredi Noir.” In the U.K., Tesco and Argos 2014 Black Friday promotions prompted police action in Manchester, with Argos withdrawing from the event in 2015. 

 

Meantime, as early Christmas shop windows draw back the curtains on November installations, the 114-year-old U.S. retailer Nordstrom takes a different approach, making a statement about celebrating one holiday at a time, as seen in a window display. 

  

  

 Nordstrom Window Twitter

Image via www.twitter.com

 

  

In America, Hollywood goes nuts at the holidays over box office receipts for new film releases, but the small screen is tame on TV adverts compared to the U.K., where Christmas adverts are a national pastime. 

  

We look at a mixed bag of examples representing both large brands and smaller ones on both sides of the pond to see how campaigns are making the most of the season — while others have misfired and are quickly pronounced a failure. See what you think about these adverts.

  

 

Balancing Sales Strategies Intended as Charitable Endeavours

 

John Lewis is one of those nationwide UK brands that attracts considerable media attention with their annual Christmas message, usually a tear-jerker. This year’s advert tells the story of a little 6-year-old girl called Lily and an old man she spies with her telescope, who lives — all alone and lonely — on the moon. The advert is designed to raise awareness for the charity, Age UK, with its tagline: “Show someone they’re loved this Christmas.”

 

 

 

 

 

According to The Guardian, “Last year, the retailer also spent £7m on a campaign featuring a realistic animated penguin and a young boy playing together to the tune of John Lennon’s Real Love, sung by British singer-songwriter Tom Odell. It had drummed up 22m views on YouTube by the first week of January…” This year’s numbers are soaring ahead of last year’s. 

 

  

 

 

Rachel Swift, head of brand marketing at John Lewis, is quoted in The Telegraph saying there is a consistent style for the store’s seasonal adverts. “It is has become part of our handwriting as a brand. It’s about storytelling through music and emotion. The sentiment behind that hasn’t changed – and that is quite intentional. The strategy behind our campaigns is always about thoughtful gifting.”

  

The £1 million production for a six-week-long £7 million campaign, which includes more cost for shop floors kitted out to resemble a moonscape, has seen members of the public ask[1]: Why couldn’t John Lewis make a multi-million contribution to Age UK? In fact, the profits from three small ticket items sold at the department store – a mug, a gift tag and a card – will go to the charity supplemented by donations from the public, inspired by the advert’s message.   

 

 

John Lewis Consumer Reaction Twitter 

Image via www.twitter.com

 

 

Brands Play to Emotions to Drive Brand Loyalty 

 

Tugging at the heartstrings via hugs, cute penguins, a melting Mr. Snowman, and even World War I soldiers celebrating a Christmas truce in the trenches are among the emotional connections brands are working and spending hard to make happen.

 

 

 

 

 

Why? In a word, loyalty. As pointed out by a retail analyst[2], for modern consumers to change brands no longer involves driving to another village or shopping centre; swapping brands is as easy as the click of a mouse. All of which means your brand strategy needs to be a lot more sophisticated if you want to first attract and then hold onto your customers. Remember people buy with emotion first and justify with rational afterwards — regardless of gender or cultural background. Your brand must be rich with authentic personality, have a really big why — reasons beyond the money to buy, create emotionally compelling reasons to engage, and ensure it includes an advocacy strategy within your action plan if you want to increase your profitability and ensure long-term success.  

 

A MindMover opinion poll[3] indicates the following brands are most closely associated with Christmas adverts in the U.K.: Coca-Cola, Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Argos, Cadbury, Asda, Toys R Us and Amazon. Not queried is the million pound question — that is, whether top-of-mind-awareness produces the all-important return on investment.

  

  

A Big Brand Blunder at Bloomingdale’s

 

Bloomingdale’s, U.S. luxury fashion chain stores owned by Macy’s, made such a spectacularly poor judgement in their 2015 Christmas advert that a week after the department store had apologized via Twitter, major editorials continued to call for a deeper response.

 

  

Bloomingdale's Advert Via Twitter 

Image via www.twitter.com

 

 

“Appearing to promote date rape,” says the Wall Street Journal[4], the “creepy” and “offensive” advert reads, “Spike your best friend’s eggnog when they’re not looking.” Clearly, it went viral in the wrong way for the large retailer.

  

  

 Bloomingdale's Apology On Twitter

 Image via www.twitter.com

 

  

A Storm in a Teacup at Starbucks

 

At Starbucks, they knew what they were doing when the white snowflakes decorating the seasonal red cup design were removed. A seemingly simple change sent consumers in large numbers straight to social media, to sign a petition, and to boycott the brand, claiming that Starbucks was making an anti-Christ religious statement. “It’s just a red cup”, tweeted the voice of reason while Instagram lit up with Starbucks images and the nation’s top talk show hosts chimed in.

 

 

 Starbucks Red Christmas Cup 2015

Image via www.vox.com

 

 

Three lessons learned, says Entrepreneur[5], and small brands should pay especially close attention to number three on this list:

1) All PR is good PR. Starbucks marketing knew the response wouldn’t be universally positive, but they also knew this was not a crisis

2) The power of social media sharing is awesome — and free

3) Brands who react fast can newsjack a trend. “Other coffee brands got a boost from the issue, such as Dunkin’ Donuts, with its holiday cup release.

  

  

 Dunkin' Donuts Shout Out Twitter

Image via www.twitter.com

 

 

The subject has also created opportunities for smaller companies, YouTubers and creative types alike to ride the wave and get attention.”

 

 

Just Wine Starbucks Cup Twitter 

Image via www.twitter.com

 

 

That’s the same brand strategy employed by the many John Lewis parody adverts that follow immediately on the heels of the store’s annual commercial.

 

 

Smaller Brands & Seasonal Brand Strategies

 

Small brands can make a large impact in the community by scaling ideas such as co-branding in a lower key way, supporting a charity or club, adding removable seasonal details to products and packaging design, donating Christmas trees to community centers, hospitals and nonprofit organizations.

 

In London, independent, privately-owned residential estate agency Bective Leslie Marsh has supported West London Action for Children for over a decade. Estate agents and local residents partner to raise funds for the 98-year-old charity through year-round bridge and tennis tournaments, trivia quiz nights, barn dances, garden fetes and more.

 

To offset Black Friday’s emphasis on big box stores and chain stores, Small Business Saturday was launched in the USA in 2010. It focuses on the bricks and mortar local shops that are the fabric of the Ma & Pa character neighbourhoods with American Express is the main sponsor. Partnerships and promotion via Google street view, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook come up with initiatives to launch holiday shopping on the last Saturday of November too. 

 

Other successful ideas have included branded shirts and kits for a local sports club, providing staff to serve Christmas dinners at senior centres, running a toy drive or food hampers collection, singing Christmas carols to collect for the Salvation Army, St. Vincent de Paul and similar. It’s important to make a small investment in well design brand collateral such as banners, posters, placards, T-shirts, caps and other branded items to decorate and to wear in order to properly associate the occasion with your own brand.

 

 

So, what do you think?

  

• Are you often caught short of time, or do you have a holiday marketing plan drawn up by Quarter 2? Do you need to include this as part of your brand audit health check or brand revitalization strategy?

 

• Does your brand have a charitable and/or community giving programme?

 

• Does your brand strategy include corporate social responsibility?

 

• Do you know what initiatives, outreach or volunteer activities your employees — your brand champions — would feel most supportive of on behalf of your brand?

 

• Do you feel confident about maximizing the potential impact on sales via volunteerism on behalf of your brand?

 

 

You might also like:

 

• Christmas Branding: Top 10 Tips to Infuse Your Brand with Seasonal Spirit

  

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

 

• Brand Voice: Differentiating Through Your Own Brand Language and Attitude

 

• Brand Sponsorships: The Best Brand Ambassadors Are Already On Your Payroll 

 

• Humanizing Your Brand: Why It is Key to Commercial Success

 

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

 

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

 

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

 

• Brand Profiling: How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable  

 

[1] As seen on Twitter #johnlewischristmasadvert

[2] Bryan Roberts, Kantar Retail analyst, The Telegraph, 16/11/2015

[3] “Glad Tidings for John Lewis…”, The Guardian, 6/11/15

[4] “Bloomingdale’s Holiday Ad Draws Backlash…”, Wall St Journal, 12/11/2015

[5] “3 Lessons from Starbucks’ Red Cup ‘Controversy’”, Entrepreneur, 16/11/2015

 

 

Brand Management: Top 10 Tips for Managing Your Brand Reputation

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Got a brand? Just like a person, your brand has a reputation to establish and uphold. The identity of your brand, of course, begins with its name. Your product or service is your brand’s body and mind, and you must use all five senses to reach out in appealing ways to old and new friends (customers). Your brand lives, breathes and grows via its brand personality, which has simply got to be consistently appealing, authentic and dependable.

 

That’s all wrapped up in what brand marketers refer to as a brand’s tone of voice. It reveals a style reflected across everything your brand says and does online and offline, both written and visual.

Leverage Your ROI

Smaller businesses can punch above their weight without a string of zeroes in the budget when they get their branding basics right. Why? Because brand loyalty, sharing, peer recommendations, transparent feedback and brand ambassadorship are stronger than ever in the digital age. We’re passionate about working with brands every day, large and small, to make this happen, so they can leverage their ROI to the maximum.

Google For Business

Image via www.google.com

See and Be Seen Where Your Brand Belongs

Even the most popular person can’t be — and shouldn’t try to be — everywhere at once. Decide where you want to be seen and heard depending upon who your customers are and where the circles of your brands’ look-alike audiences (as Facebook Ads have named this tool) are found. That’s why you don’t go to a convention for lovers of African violets to network with extreme adventure travelers and vice versa. Nor would anyone switch on a television shopping channel to buy heirloom Tiffany & Co. gems.

Online and On Brand

Apply traditional channel and networking logic to online platforms to determine where you belong. An anti-aging cream on Snapchat represents wasted effort in the same way that a traditional print advertisement for wrinkle cream would be absurd in the pages of Seventeen magazine. If you need some brand strategy support our team can steer you through your social media distribution decisions, specific to your brand, to get the most from your investment.

To see the big picture, AdWeek[1] has published infographics providing some insights about the expected growth in online audiences of 180 million by platform and age group worldwide through the end of 2016. We can take your brand on a deeper dive into your brand’s affinity groups and demographics to pin down your best placement.

Who's Really Using Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tumblr Instagram In 2015

 Image via www.adweek.com

Lights On, Always Open for Business

Since your consumers (all consumers!) are online, let’s go there first to discuss building your brand’s online personality in sync with your offline one. Importantly, they require fine-tuned alignment.

The days of turning out the lights and locking up the shop for the night are over, as you’re open for business 24/7 online. In the hearts and minds of your primary audience, the digital brand is indistinguishable from the bricks and mortar brand. Your clients don’t separate the online and offline personality of your brand, and you shouldn’t either.

Claim Your Free Real Estate

1. Claim your free real estate from these main social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and Tumblr. Google+ and Google Places for Business are must-dos for everyone wanting to be found 24/7 by customers online. You can easily edit your contact information, business description, hours, website URL and photos. Not being on social media at all is not an option; you cannot manage your brand reputation if you’re invisible.

2. Add to your brand’s online presence by completing your business profile on free aggregate platforms pertaining to your business sector, such as TripAdvisor for travel and hospitality providers or Realtor.com for real estate. Your competitors are doing likewise.

3. Make sure your website is 100 percent mobile responsive; this is no longer optional. From April 2015, Google’s algorithms began penalizing search results for websites that don’t provide the best user experience on mobile devices.

According to Search Engine Watch[2], Google says that “near me” mobile searches have grown 34 times over since 2011. With 73 percent of the world’s population using mobile phones, we can be certain that mobile wallets are poised for exponential growth. In other words, brands that don’t optimize their online presence by paying attention to their appearance and brand tone of voice are leaving heaps of money on the table.

4. Develop the right tone of voice for your brand with brand profiling, using a system like our Personality Profile Performer™ and use it consistently across all content, all visuals and all devices (desktops, laptops, tablets and mobiles for all operating systems). You need to think of your brand as a humanized entity with a richly developed brand personality with key character attributes much like a real person e.g. likeable, friendly, sincere and genuine. Corporate-speak really doesn’t fly.

5. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. There’s no point in signing onto a social media platform other than to drive business to your website or to your door. So, once you create your online personality, brand reputation management has only just begun. As the old scouting song goes, “Make new friends but keep the old, one is silver and the other gold.”

Answer comments and questions promptly and sincerely. An honest response to a negative review sets you up for an even better review.[3] Remember, online you are speaking to two audiences — the person who make the comment and the rest of the world! Brand authenticity and honesty pays!

Visuals Are Vital

6. Upload original quality photos and videos. You simply cannot have too many. Visually appealing content needs the same attention as bricks and mortar appearances such as clean shop windows and display shelves free of dust.

The impact of visual is enormous. According to Social Media Today[4], 63 percent of social media is made up of images and 50 percent of users have shared online images and videos. On Instagram and Pinterest, you’ll inspire users and gain followers by creating hashtags and boards, translating in to more free real estate for your brand.

   Content With Relevant Images Gets 94 More Views

Image via www.socialmediatoday.com

Twitter indicates[5] that content with a relevant photo gets 313 percent higher engagement, good news for small and medium-sized businesses. Make sure your brand personality and brand tone of voice is consistently expressed through your chosen images as well. Are you a fashion shop showing dresses, a utility provider showing friendly staff, an animal shelter featuring pets for adoption? Have fun with who you are to drive engagement.

Get it Right From the Start

It cannot be over-emphasized that getting your brand tone of voice right for your online brand personality is essential. Once you’ve taken control of that voice, it’s all yours for as long as it works effectively. We can help you with everything from developing your brand personality through brand profiling, or auditing your brand to give it a health check to creating your brand name, to re-branding (if and when that becomes necessary) and developing your brand strategy.

New and Improved Offline

7. Protect your brand’s reputation. One of the 10 commandments of effective leadership applies directly to brand reputation management, “Thou Shalt Not Over-Promise and Under-Deliver.”

Meeting and exceeding expectations is classic business strategy and the risks associated with getting it wrong fill volumes of business manuals. It comes straight back to the pillars of reputation management: authenticity and dependability. Your successful business has likely been handling this properly all along, or you wouldn’t be where you are today. However it’s always a good time to dust off and revitalize through refreshing, reminding, re-enthusing and re-training your staff — they are your brand ambassdors and consequently a really important part of your brand strategy.

8. Authenticity is everything…and the moment it’s lost, you’re damaged goods. Your strong and clear voice is required wherever your brand touches, in both your digital presence and offline, too. Always consider as a minimum the four ‘Ps’ of Marketing 101: Product, Promotion, Place, Price — which lead the way on the path to Profit.

9. Listening is good, conversation is even better. Wow, WOMMA! The Word of Mouth Marketing Association is a real thing…it has even has its own annual conference. Of course, before the internet, one-by-one sharing via word of mouth was the prevalent means of unpaid advertising. And it still works, more powerfully than ever. We can help you engage with customers in more dialogues for wider and deeper reach, always maintaining the critical overlay of brand authenticity.

10. Satisfy every customer from entry to exit. Imagine your brand once again as a real personality and recall these two tenets, “First impressions count” and “You only have one chance to make a first impression.” Both statements are true, but there’s more. We believe that the entire customer experience is integral to perceptions about your brand, from the moment your client walks in or first engages with your brand, until they depart, and your follow up in-between and later on. Your core brand values and what your brand stands for must shine through consistently in all your brand communications be they online or offline. Own it and win.

You may also like:

• Brand Voice: Differentiating Through Your Own Brand Language and Attitude

• Rebranding Strategy: Why Your Rebrand Must Embrace Storytelling

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

• Humanizing Your Brand : Why It is Key to Commercial Success

• Packaging Design: How to Make it into an Irresistible Customer Brand Magnet

Feel free to get in touch and let us know how you’d like us to help you with building your brand and establish a strong brand reputation online and offline:

T: +353 1 8322724

E: [email protected]

• Is your current brand personality and tone of voice hitting all the right notes for your brand? Is it truly reflective of your core brand values and what your brand stands for?

 

• Do you know how to craft an authentic, humanized brand voice through brand profiling to get people raving about your brand to all of their friends?

 

• Has your brand strategically planned for the changing social media landscape? Are you thinking differently or are you winging it with occasional assistance from an intern?

 

• Is your brand in the right places at the right times and talking to the right people to realize the most bang for your buck?

 

• Do you know if you are getting more than your fair market share, and if not, what to do about it?

 

• How well do you know your customers? Have you developed your buyer personas? Have you organized channels for customer feedback for continual improvement?

[1] AdWeek, Jan. 12, 2015 http://bit.ly/1SRJM4D

[2] John Schepke, Search Engine Watch, June 25, 2015  http://bit.ly/1Stzlt1

[3] eTourism Summit interview with Andrew Wiens, TripAdvisor, Nov. 20, 2014 http://bit.ly/1KIsWU3

[4] David Hall, Social Media Today, April 6, 2015 http://bit.ly/1fTDxk7

[5] Jane Stecyk, TweetTip, Small Business Content Team, January 28, 2015 http://bit.ly/1JEq0ZL

Brand Audit: When the USA Took the Branding Bull by the Horns

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Household brands bearing the “Made in America” tag were in big trouble in the mid-1980s. Shivers ran down the spines of Detroit automakers as efficient Japanese models filled the U.S. highways. Sony Walkmans, Nintendo and Atari video games were on everyone’s shopping list. America lost ownership of household brand names as well as bricks and mortar symbols of the USA, such as Rockefeller Center and Columbia Pictures of Hollywood.  

 

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s solution was a renewed focus on supporting American brands in an increasingly competitive global marketplace. A new public-private partnership began with incentivizing American companies to ensure continuous product improvement before asking consumers to support American brands via their wallets.

 

When the cabinet leader that President Reagan had in mind to spearhead the re-branding of the USA’s output was fatally injured in a rodeo accident, the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program was named in his honour — envisioned as a standard of excellence to help U.S. organizations achieve world-class quality.  

 

America’s only presidential award for performance excellence among both private and public companies goes annually to a maximum of 18 organizations within six sectors: small business, service, manufacturing, healthcare, education and nonprofit.

  

  


  

  

Groundbreaking in its day, the core competencies of the program are now widespread. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, many U.S. states and 60 other countries have adopted the Baldrige Criteria to create similar programs at home.[1] The European Quality Award is modeled on Baldrige Criteria, adding two additional  layers for social and environmental community. [2]

  

  


  

   

How Can A Brand Improve Itself?

The Baldrige Performance Excellence Program criteria reflect an evolution from a focus on service and product to a broader, strategic focus on overall organizational quality, called performance excellence.

  

In other words, don’t just build a better mousetrap (product). Do so with a good roadmap (leadership, vision, planning) examining the means to reach the ends (training, education, management) and keep a happy workforce (engagement, performance) and customers (quality, profit). 

  

The Baldrige Criteria guide a company through examination within seven areas of achievement and improvement.  

 

  • Leadership: How upper management leads the organization, and how the organization leads within the community.

 

  • Strategic Planning: How the organization establishes and plans to implement strategic directions.

 

  • Customer and Market Focus: How the organization builds and maintains strong, lasting relationships with customers.

 

  • Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management: How the organization uses data to support key processes and manage performance.

 

  • Human Fesource Focus: How the organization empowers and involves its workforce.

 

  • Process Management: How the organization designs, manages and improves key processes.

 

  • Business/Organizational Performance Results: How the organization performs in terms of customer satisfaction, finances, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations, governance and social responsibility, and how the organization compares to its competitors.

  

  

Look Inside

Companies applying for a Baldrige Award go through self-assessment as a first step. It’s a framework that empowers an organization to understand its own strengths and weaknesses, improve, reach goals, become more competitive. A good number of companies in the Baldrige circle indicate that this process — and the trained Examiner who leads them through it — is the most useful aspect of the program, award or no award. 

  

  

Evaluate to Elevate

When you evaluate your organization from a branding perspective, you’ll compare your own performance with best practices across brand profiling, brand strategy, brand alignment, brand communication, brand execution, and additional markers. As a Baldrige Examiner would do for an applicant in that program, we can guide you through the brand audit process, make recommendations and work with you to elevate your brand.

 

These two companies won the Baldrige Award. Of the 23 small businesses to earn the quality prize since 1987, K&N Management did it in 2010. Ritz-Carlton is the only winner in lodging…and they achieved it twice. 

  

 

K&N Management: The Love of Excellence

 

K&N Management is a small Austin-based operator of burger and BBQ restaurants in eight Texas locations. 

 

What is the world “management” doing in the name of a burger, fries and shakes outfit? As one of only two restaurant companies to win the National Quality Award, K&N’s website tells the story of the family behind the grill. 

   

   


    

    

It’s more than flipping burgers; they have a vision and brand values:

 

  • Mission: “To Guarantee Every Guest is Delighted Because of Me”

 

  • Vision: “To Become World Famous By Delighting One Guest at a Time”

 

  • Core Values: “Excellence – Quality – Integrity – Relationships”

 

  • Key Business Drivers: “Food Quality – Speed of Service – Cleanliness – Texas Hospitality℠ – Accuracy – Team Members – Value”

   

At K&N Management, they make leaders. Training courses are offered for each step up the career ladder, such as “How to Create Effective Internal Communications.” The career progression ladder — with salary expectations — is shared with employees (and the public). It looks like they’re doing the unimaginable: inspiring fast food workers, retaining staff, creating community, promoting from within.

     

    Kand N Mangement

 Image via www.knmanagement.com

   

   

Visit the website to see more about the employee volunteerism being fostered by K&N Management, including Gold Recognition for Community Impact. The recognition that comes with that certificate held high for the camera is accompanied by peer support, kudos from management, family and company pride in addition to the important volunteer work itself.

    

     Kand N Mangement Quality Award

 Image via www.knmanagement.com

  

  

“Our guests can expect Texas Hospitality℠ at each of our restaurants: Rudy’s Austin and Mighty Fine Burgers, Fries & Shakes,” is the statement of pride from the same folks who can claim “Awarded the Highest Presidential Honor.”      

  

  

Ritz-Carlton Hotels: Lasting Success

 

Ritz-Carlton operates 89 luxury properties in 29 countries with 35,000 employees.

  

Founded in 1983, within three years, Ritz-Carlton was named best hotel group with only five hotels. In the fall of 1992, with 23 hotels under management, Ritz-Carlton became the first hotel company to win a Baldrige Award. “We realized the award criteria could serve as a road map for quality improvement,” said Patrick Mene of Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.

   

   


   

     

America’s Ivy League Cornell University School of Hotel Administration built a case study around the Ritz-Carlton’s 1992 success, only to witness the company, now with 36 hotels, collecting the service category Baldrige Award from the president of the United States for an unprecedented second win in 1999.

 

 

 Ritz Carlton Logo 600px

Image via www.ritzcarlton.com

 

  

Did the lessons learned from the process of self-assessment and improvement stick? In July 2015, J.D. Powers and Associates released the results of their 19th annual satisfaction survey of 62,000 North American hotel guests. Number one in luxury hotels: Ritz-Carlton.

  

How are the lessons learned from the process being shared across brands? The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Centre is now the place where executives from other companies worldwide in many disciplines come to learn The Ritz-Carlton principles of service.

  

Clearly, even in a five-star hotel, not everyone’s job is a glamorous one, yet every member of staff must be proud of the brand. The Ritz-Carlton brand motto rings in the ears of many hoteliers: “We are Ladies and Gentlemen Serving Ladies and Gentlemen.”

  

Former founding President and COO of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company L.L.C., Horst Schutze, explained, “’Ladies and Gentleman’ has two values to us. Of course, the first is the expression of our expectations of our employees, from the president to the vice president to the last housekeeper or dishwasher. It expresses to them an expectation of how to behave, look and so on. At the same time it expresses a promise to the same group that they all are important to this organization. Their jobs may be different, but they’re equal. They are in service but aren’t servants.”

   
Remembering that Total Quality Management intrinsically promotes brand, and likewise to brand, it is an integrated philosophy embodied by everyone with whom it engages. Here are a few takeaways from the case study of the original Ritz-Carlton win:

  

  • Commit to Quality: This requires support throughout the organization and must be actively led from the top.

 

  • Focus on Customer Satisfaction: Customers know what quality looks like to them, and the company must meet and exceed expectations.

 

  • Assess Organizational Structure: A good, long, honest look inside the company must focus on its culture and identify any places where organizational structure could impede the drive for performance excellence.

 

  • Empower Employees and Teams: Adequate training is required so that empowered staff and teams can implement best practice from the bottom-up.

 

  • Measure Quality Efforts: It is critical to gauge efforts toward superior employee performance, streamlined decision-making, supplier responsiveness and improved customer satisfaction.

 

   

Learning, improvement and quality are integral to any successful brand, particularly one that goes after a competitive award that’s a good fit for the brand. The Malcolm Baldrige Award is estimated to have an ROI of 820-to-1. Can you identify a suitable crowning achievement that your brand might also pursue?

   

You may also like:

 

• CEO Brand Leadership: How Does Your Leadership Impact Your Brand?

 

• Brand Audit: Tips for Determining Your Brand’s Health – Can it be Improved?

 

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

 

• Rebranding: How to Make it Through a Rebrand and Emerge Stronger  

 

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

 

• Branding Amazon: 3 Lessons to Learn for Your Brand Success

 

• Brand Audits: 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know

  

  

So what do you think?

• Can you identify a suitable crowning achievement that your brand might go after?

 

• Are there any community, local, regional brand awards that you’d like to earn? Go for it!

 

• Have you crafted a mission statementand a vision for the future of your brand through your brand profiling?

 

• Do you perform an annual brand audit and SWAT analysis for your business?

 

• How does your organization create exceptional brand experiences and recognize outstanding customer-facing performance?

 

• How does your organization recognize and reward exceptional employee performance ‘behind-the-scenes’ so that peers are aware too? 

  

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

  

[1] Mark L. Blazey, Insight to Performance Excellence 2013-2014: Understanding the Integrated Management System and the Baldrige Criteria 

[2] American Society for Quality

Brand Strategy: 7 Winning Components of a Market Leading Brand Plan

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This may sound obvious but how people feel about your company significantly impacts how much they’ll spend on, or refer your products or services.

  

If you want customers or prospective customers to feel positively inclined towards your brand, or indeed to become enthusiastic brand advocates, then you need a really solid and consistently applied brand strategy to make it happen.

   

Ryanair and their change in brand strategy with a ‘customer charm offensive’ initiated earlier this year is a great case in point. Michael O’Leary, CEO of Europe’s largest airline Ryanair, infamously said “If I’d known that being nice to customers was going to be so good for my business I would have done it years ago.”

 

  

Bloomberg Ryanair Charm

  

  

An effective brand strategy is a blend of science and art that engages customers, meets their needs, solves their problems and strengthens brand affinity by making them feel good about choosing your brand. In a nutshell it’s the action plan for putting your brand to work effectively in the market place to generate a positive return. 

  

When developing and executing your brand strategy it must be centred around your core brand vision, values, promise, personality, story and customer brand experience. You need to ensure you’re clearly engaging with your audience congruent with what your brand stands for, so that it authentically resonates with them. Consequently, if what you do and say is true and believable while meeting the needs of your customers, solving their problems and enhancing their lives, your customers will increasingly value everything that makes your brand worthwhile.

 

Conversely it’s also important to note that haphazard or inconsistent brand activity can sabotage the context of what your brand is all about. To use industry jargon, ‘off brand’ activity can in fact dilute or undermine the credibility and impact of your brand, together with your connection and engagement with your primary audience and the perceived value and benefits your brand offers from a customer perspective — all of which can ultimately undermine your brand’s profitability.

 

  

Getting Started with Your Brand Strategy

 

Assuming you haven’t inadvertently done any significant brand damage, through engaging in branding activities without a well thought out brand strategy, you can get back on track and put your brand to work to best effect.

  

However it does takes time and thought to build a strong brand strategy that your ideal customers are attracted to and can identify with, and most importantly, believe in. It’s also really important to identify what success means i.e. your desired outcomes and goals, and measure what’s working best to achieve those results. This is a key part of brand strategy development and an area we delve into with considerable depth when working with our clients before supporting them in executing it consistently.

 

The following are seven primary factors that can help you develop a strong brand strategy. Each piece works together to create the engine that supports your brand’s external and internal culture and perceptions. Like engines, brand strategies need regular maintenance to keep them running smoothly and achieving the required results and should be reviewed on a regular basis. Consider this your brand strategy tune-up.

   

  

1. Your Brand Strategy Must Align with Your Products or Services Offered

   

A brand is much more than a single product or a clever logo. Remember your brand logo is just your visual identifier, not your brand! However they must all work congruently together. Your company possibly evolved around one product initially or a set of similar products, so it’s typically worth including this heritage in your brand messaging, assuming it’s still relevant and a valuable part of your brand equity.

  

Most importantly your brand strategy needs to be customer centric – focussed around how you can add perceived value for your customers, how your brand more than meets their needs and helps your customers overcome their challenges and so forth. It needs to have a well developed and distinctive brand personality that engages your target customers, highlights your products or services offered and enhances your customers’ interactions with your brand.

 

Your brand profile or personality is developed using a system like our bespoke Personality Profile Performer™ System. Customers will be confused and wary if your brand attitude, marketing and messaging don’t feel right and consistent with how your brand expresses itself.

  

Occasionally we see marketing strategies that break away from what the brand is all about, expressing themselves inappropriately or in a way which isn’t reflective of the brands’ true personality or feel. These strategies typically perform poorly and at best, do little to help grow the brand, or worse still can actually damage the brand so are best avoided.

   

Apple is one of the most well-known examples of how a brand has built massive success on delivering, not only leading edge products technically but by making their brand strategy totally customer centric — making customer interaction and how the brand enhances their customers lives integral to their products and business models.

 

When someone talks about Apple, they typically do so in an emotive way, associating the brand with how easy and intuitive it is to use and how it enhances various aspects of their lives. Unless someone has geeky inclinations, you’ll rarely get a customer talking about their love of the brand in technical specification terms!

 

Regardless of the product or model purchased, be it Apple Watches, iPhones, iPads or MacBooks the overall brand experience and strategy is consistent across all of its various product lines. Apple’s products are elegantly designed and intuitive, their brand strategy reflects these attributes and amplifies their message in a way which is also elegant, and emotionally engaging, and which most importantly enables the brand to reach beyond any single device.

 

Coca-Cola does the same thing with a brand strategy which is built on triggering and associating with moments of “happiness”. It’s a brand that’s more about celebrating all the different moments of happiness in our lives and bringing people together, than selling sugary soft drinks to satisfy a thirst. Heightened emotion — happiness in this case — is what makes it memorable and compelling. That’s why its adverts work even when there’s no product shown.

  

  

  

    

For small brands, it’s vital to align branding and products. Orabrush, a tongue cleaner, is a great example of how even startups can capitalize in this space. 

  

  

  

 

Orabrush has been able to create a personable brand that highlights very personal, somewhat wince-inducing experiences, around a product that is extremely personal, through social proof.

  

   

 

  

  

They’ve built a brand from very humble beginnings to worldwide distribution using YouTube videos exclusively, most of which is user generated. To build the brand, Orabrush gave away a first product for free and invited people to try it out and post their response on YouTube.

 

  

 Orabrush Bristles Wired Design 600px

  Image via www.orabrush.com

 

  

This very small company with just one product, until recently, has more online viewers than P&G, Crest and every other product in the oral healthcare sector combined!

  

  

2. Make a Keep Your Brand Promises

Every successful business makes promises and commitments to its customers. These are at the heart of your brand strategy because keeping promises, and indeed exceeding them, is what keeps customers coming back.

  

Orabrush’s brand promise is to get rid of the bacteria and other unsavoury coatings on your tongue that are responsible for 90% of bad breath. The promise is entirely personal and requires trust for people to believe it. That makes the brand strategy of social proof through public endorsements especially effective.

  

  

   

  

By using ordinary people that the audience trusts to pitch their product, Orabrush demonstrates a commitment and delivery of its promise building trust before many customers even try it for the first time.

 

The important part of branding around your commitment is to be consistent in the execution. Make a promise and deliver every time; and if you can’t, apologize quickly so customers can see you’re human and working hard to fix things fast.

 

Keeping your commitments to everyone, not just the final customer, is important. The restaurant chain Arby’s has a deal with Pepsi to feature its soft drinks in at least two Arby’s commercials each year. Last year it forgot and almost failed to live up to the deal. Campaigns were already made, so the brand needed a new commercial.

 

Its mea culpa was public and heavily touted Pepsi – definitely worth the 30-second watching – and did great things for the brand. The commercial had high sharing volumes on social media, got a lot of press coverage and the majority of comments on news stories were positive.

 

  

  

  

Taking responsibility builds trust and improving trust enhances bottom lines. We’ve seen clients achieve stronger results when their brand promise is integral to their brand strategy and consistently delivered, and when the occasional glitch has occurred, being willing to own up to their mistakes quickly.

  

  

3. Leverage Public Relations as Part of Your Brand Strategy

 

If you choose to use public relations within your brand strategy then it too must also be built on, and congruent with your overall brand strategy. Done well, it can help you amplify, build and leverage your company’s brand reputation and establish the perceived market leadership you need to build or maintain that image.

 

A good PR strategy helps your brand tell its story relevantly, coupled with highlighting its industry, social and public successes. It can be especially effective when you don’t have a large advertising or media budget but it must be executed effectively and consistently to get the desired results. 

 

 

4. Online Marketing

  

Brand strategies, large and small, can include a range of channels to show your primary audience exactly who you are, what you stand for and what you offer in a way that’s most relevant to your customers. Most effective brand strategies today must include digital in the mix. These elements need to be fully integrated, with a look and feel that is consistent throughout your communications and appropriate to where your customers interact most. A professional services brand might include their primary focus on their blog, YouTube and Linkedin while an FMCG brand might favour Facebook, Pinterest and YouTube.

 

Brands with a clearly defined and articulated mission and purpose — communicated consistently in both their offline and online dialogues — develop much stronger brand identities, all of which results in enhanced brand perceptions and most importantly increased profitability.

 

A good online brand strategy team can also help you stay current with what’s happening in your industry by tracking digital information e.g. what the competition is up to and where customers see gaps in service. Attentive listening can help you identifying weaknesses in a competitor’s offer and then use it as an opportunity to present your brand as the solution that meets your customer’s needs. It can also help you develop new product solutions driven by what your customers are specifically requesting or looking for.

 

From 2006 to 2009, Apple ran a solid campaign against Windows with 66 different “I’m a Mac, and I’m a PC” TV spots. Adverts were built specifically around the complaints in the PC space and presented Apple as the alternative choice with a solution that solved all those issues. 

  

  

  

 

Apple had a strong team that was listening to people, conducting interviews and cataloging competitor problems. Consequently Apple’s commercials were built around how they solved the problems identified in the competitor brand.

  

It was all done with a humorous touch, which also helped increase Apple’s customer rapport, creating an overall brand perceived to be reliable and intuitively easy to use. It was a strong campaign that led to growth throughout its run. The adverts were shown on TV as well as on YouTube, enabling them to be accessed and shared across a wide variety of social media sites and channels.

  

One of the most important reasons for having an integrated offline and online strategy is that some of your customers want to shop in person and others want to shop online. Lines between the on and offline worlds are becoming more and more blurred so your brand strategy needs to consider meeting the needs of your customer through a fully integrated solution for both.

   

  

5. Make Customer Recognition Part of Your DNA

 

The success of a company is built on many different people and customers. Strong branding strategies incorporate recognition of people both within the business and loyal customers externally because it makes a business more productive and profitable. It’s also conducive to better company morale, stronger brand culture and enhanced customer relations.

  

Recognition enables your customers to feel like they’re part of your brand; it makes you more human, trustworthy and engaging.

 

Discounter T.J. Maxx is a good example of using customer recognition to build brand engagement. It built its recent brand strategy around how their core customer thinks and shops. Adverts highlight its customers as fashion-forward and able to pull off stunning looks, while still saving money. The branding started with adverts and its “Maxxinista” push, which it promoted on social networks.

  

  

 

 

It really stepped up its game when it began sharing all of the shopping hauls customers were posting online, providing instant recognition to loyal customers. The retweet and share efforts were so successful that it built an entire site dedicated to recognizing its shoppers.

  

  

6. Track What You Do

 

It’s a mistake to leave decisions about metrics and analytics till after a campaign has begun. You need to know what you’re aiming for with your brand strategy to achieve the required outcomes or evaluate what success looks like. Brand owners who evaluate their objectives and set clear goals early on in their brand strategy process, and determine how to track those targets achieve far more than those with a less structured approach.

 

Search is also another way to start the process. Start tracking organic and branded searches before a campaign and continue through the full cycle. If you record an increase after the campaign starts, you’re building attention. If you maintain that growth momentum through the end of your campaign, you’re building a broader recognition and fan base.

 

Metrics also let you know when the message isn’t working. So if your campaign isn’t showing the desired increase in activity or you’re not improving how long people spend on your site, it’s probably time to change gears.

   

  

7. Be Rigidly Flexible

 

The final part of a high performing brand strategy is to establish limits and boundaries. You have core brand values and a brand promise, which are sacrosanct but sometimes your strategy and execution may have to adapt to meet the changing needs of your market or your customers.

 

A brand needs to have a strong brand personality, developed through brand profiling and positioning, with highly recognizable characteristics and unique ways of expressing itself so that your brand strategy has a clear road map from which to base its communications. Without this your brand strategy lacks much needed strategic direction and coherency. When you develop your brand profile using a system like the Personality Profile Performer™ you establish the do’s and don’ts of your brands’ behaviours and characteristics, all of which are used to underpin your brand strategy.

 

Define and articulate this solid centre to your brand and also establish what parts of your brand identity can be flexible or negotiable and what parts must never be compromised, otherwise you’ll lose your way and your brand will get lost in the competing noise.

 

If you shift too often, your customers may get confused and won’t necessarily trust you, and that can undermine profitability too. On the other hand, if you’re too rigid you can lose your edge and get left behind as trends and markets change. The best brand strategies work with well-defined boundaries of what can and what can’t change. It all requires a delicate balance and brand profiling provides that much needed strategic direction to hit the magic tipping point for your success.

   

Change doesn’t have to be a difficult process. Clearly define where you’re willing to compromise and your branding team will have a clear roadmap to keep your brand on track and your brand’s image safe. Brand strategies that anticipate market changes or roadblocks can adapt without losing their core identity.

  

Like all successful brands, many of our clients have had to evolve their brand strategy and image over the years, and the greatest successes come when everyone understands and can articulate their core brand DNA. This then empowers them to make choices around where their brand can be evolved to move forward strategically and meet the needs of a constantly moving market place. The secret lies in having a well developed brand strategy and then also being able to evaluate when, where and how to best adapt to stay relevant — to be the brand leader within your niche in your market sector.

 

You may also like:

 

• Brand Personality: Is Your Brand’s Character Big Enough to Compete?

 

• Brand Differentiation: 30 Ways to Differentiate Your Brand

 

• Rebranding: How to Make it Through a Rebrand and Emerge Stronger

 

• Brand Audit: Tips for Determining Your Brand’s Health – Can it be Improved?

 

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

 

• CEO Brand Leadership: How Does Your Leadership Impact Your Brand?

 

  

So, what do you think?

 

• Does your branding strategy congruently reflect your products and personnel?

 

• Would a brand audit help you develop a more effective brand strategy?

 

• Are your customers being recognized and rewarded? Could a rebranding strategy which includes recognition increase your customer engagement levels?

 

• Could your existing brand collateral be better aligned with your core brand values and does it fit in with your brand strategy?

 

• Do you conduct brand audits of your campaigns to ensure they’re achieving the results you want?

  

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

 

Brand Profiling: How to Use Emotion to Make Your Brand More Profitable

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There a literally thousands of excellent products and services available in the market that very few people ever purchase — even though they’ve been developed with them in mind.

 

This behaviour might seem perplexing, but it is actually quite simple: great products and services alone are not enough to motivate people to engage in a potential purchase. The product, service or idea must instead offer more emotionally compelling reasons to achieve ‘purchase’ or ‘buy in’ beyond mere facts, data and features.

  

If you want to awaken a customer, client or investor to your brand you need to engage them in an emotionally heightened state. It’s only when you trigger a strong emotional response that your brand will be noticed, remembered, picked up, referred, cause someone to smile, be curious, want to know more and so forth. Put in its most simplistic sense, if your brand is a banal ‘more of the same’ generic blend, why should anyone bother with it?

 

Your target audience needs to be drawn to what your brand can do for them, not in the literal sense, but in the perceived emotive sense of what is relevant or important to them such as familial bonding, associated prestige, excitement, relaxation, desire, safety, high risk thrills etc.

 

It’s only when you truly understand your primary audiences needs, wants, problems, aspirations and desires and so forth that you can create an emotionally compelling brand that attracts them. These in-depth insights and understanding of your customer will then enable you to develop a brand, product or service, that resonates with their needs at a deeper level and consequently drives purchase, loyalty, emphatic social recommendations among hyper-connected customers and ultimately profitable growth.

 

Simon Sinek refers to this principle as putting your “Big Why” first, before the finer details of the product, the reason why someone should care — on an emotional level — in the first place. From that central idea, you can craft your brand’s vision, its mission, its unique story, its promise and the ultimate experience a consumer will have. This is what’s also known as brand profiling.

 

It’s only when you have these critical brand foundations fully developed that you can begin to focus on other aspects of your brand strategy like brand identity, brand collateral, social media, advertising techniques, product packaging and marketing campaigns etc.

 

Without your fully developed brand profile you’re in effect attempting to develop a brand without a framework or foundation on which to base it. As Simon Sinek puts it: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it.”

 

  


  

 

To help your brand achieve this level of singular vision and emotional connection to increase your profitability, here are some important factors to consider. Some of the following case studies may also inspire you to lead your company in a direction that drives customer engagement and action, rather than apathy.

  

 

Use Data to Help You Extract Market Insights

 

Although there are a number of exceptions, great ideas don’t often come tumbling out of thin air. Perceptive brands must often deduce them by evaluating their market carefully and from multiple perspectives.

 

Data research can give many of the much-sought answers needed, and since data propels nearly everything in this modern age, data driven strategies fit with the direction of many businesses. However don’t overlook the value of on the ground experience and exposure too—at the forefront of customer interactions so to speak.

 

Data processing agencies like the international company Annalect have discovered profound ways to link data within creative processes to give new perspectives on consumer choice as well as how those choices can be impacted. Smaller brands can harness this type of power through methods like social listening as well as by examining statistical reports provided by firms like Nielsen.

 

For instance, a Nielsen report from February discovered that despite a professed public interest in healthier eating, “indulgent” food sales have not shrunk. In Europe, they have actually grown! Owners of CPG brands (consumer packaged goods) can use such information to begin crafting your brand’s big “why,” and working your way towards developing your brand’s defining values, unique brand vision, promise, image, story and overarching brand experience—in short your brand profile. We develop brand profiles for our clients through a process called the Personality Profile Performer™.

 

 

Think Socially

In today’s hyper-connected society, brands that achieve emotional resonance see greater success in both online brand affinity and reputation. This effect comes from the fact that people online are constantly in search of stories to share, and brands that have been able to master the content game early on are now cashing in with campaigns that drive interest, sharing and, eventually, conversions.

 

 

Red Bull Logo 600px

Image via www.redbull.com 

  

 

Red Bull has been able to dominate the digital landscape using such techniques, all without even bothering in many cases to mention their product. The reason is that the emotion generated by Red Bull campaigns has become so intrinsically linked to the brand image that consumers have begun to see Red Bull’s extreme stunts and sports as products unto themselves.

  

 


  

 

As an example, their Space Jump video in 2012 was streamed by 8 million viewers simultaneously, received 3.2 million tweets using official branded hashtags and a single Facebook photo of the event garnered 1 million likes, all within a few hours of the jump occurring.

  

  

Humour Sells

 

While being appropriately humorous is not always easy to achieve, those that have a knack for it can create strong connections for their brand in ways that create instant customer affinity. Humour can even be used to overcome negative or neutral emotions that would otherwise have been associated with your brand.

 

 

Nintendo Muppets

 Image via www.gameinformer.com

   

 

As an example, fans of the international video game brand Nintendo were largely dispirited by the lack of new game announcements that stirred excitement at this year’s Electronics Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles. Some announcements generated a positive response, but overall the video game press reported both highs and lows.

 

Yet, despite the lack of a single, overwhelmingly-exciting announcement, Nintendo was still able to strike a chord online and earn millions of social shares and renewed brand attention. How? With Muppets!

  

  


  

 

Nintendo decided that a humorous, borderline-whimsical presentation, using charming puppets was the best way to go about making their announcements. They even took the trouble to enlist the help of Jim Henson Studios to construct the puppets, which sparked a whole new round of accolades and adoration. This humour and originality softened the blow for gamers who were looking forward to more unexpected developments, and it strengthened the position of those who have faith in Nintendo regardless of the market’s current milieu.

  

 

Use Emotion to Engage and Share Your Brand Story

  

Emotional branding is often a shorthand that requires the audience to fill in the blanks. Priceline’s memorable stint with William Shatner as “The Negotiator” implied that the brand would fight hard to get you the best possible deal on travel rates, no matter the lengths required.

 

 

Priceline Site 

 Image via www.priceline.com

  

 

Travellers could feel empowered by having such a masculine figure at their side, but at no point were they invited to participate in the event—as in shopping through Priceline could help you “kick butt” in a way that brought those unwilling to haggle to their knees. Yes, the campaign was iconic and effective thanks to an engaging celebrity endorsement, but the emotional connection remained somewhat incomplete.

   

  


  

 

Contrast that humorous approach with Expedia Australia’s recent YouTube spot that shows ordinary people longing for an escape to experience the extraordinary. Almost instantly, viewers feel a sense connection to that yearning feeling, of being removed from the trap of everyday mundanity. Others like the cab driver exude a sense of lost opportunity. A whimsical song of dreaming also helps evoke nostalgic memories, while also connecting all of society in a commonly experienced and familiar emotional moment.

  

 

 

 

When the characters in the unfolding story use Expedia, their achievement is triumphant. A holiday is suddenly transformed into a life-changing experience through Expedia’s help. Throughout the story told in the advert we have a complete arc of multiple characters hailing from all walks of life. Expedia was the key to unlocking their dreams, but their emotions took centre stage the entire time and are what engaged us—the viewer—with a universal sense of shared feelings. We can relate to what they are feeling and consequently are much more emotionally engaged in the unfolding story.

  

 

Authentically Live Your Brands’ ‘Big Why’ to Find a Place in Your Customer’s Hearts and Minds

 

If brands are to be really successful, they must emotionally engage their primary target audience in a way that’s totally relevant and appropriate to their particular needs by tapping into their subconscious at a deeper level. This is one of the key secrets to driving brand growth and long term loyalty.

 

These emotional connections are intrinsic to human life regardless of gender, social status, occupation or even geography. They’re a universal given that stand the test of time, the key is to evolve them to maintain relevance as the market changes and transforms.

 

Your brands’ “Big Why” must be the engine that drives your branding process. Your unique vision and promise to your customers will be what they remember above all else, but if you cannot define and articulate the “Big Why” of what separates your brand from its competitors then neither will your customers. Your special “Why” should be transparent — plain as day — from the moment a potential customer sees your blog posts, your website, your social media content, your packaging or experiences your brand.

 

The full range of human emotions is at your disposal to engage your customers. The secret is to choosing which route is most effective and relevant to both your brand and your primary customer, all of which is underpinned by the outputs from your brand profiling process.

 

You can choose to use humour to remind people of what makes your company human, you can use yearning and the joy of fulfillment as Expedia has done or you can forge your own path along the face of the earth to create a unique mix of emotions that no other brand could hope to emulate. The trick with all of it is to remain true to your “Big Why” and your brand’s humanized story, its profile, and leave everything else, features and benefits to become secondary.

 

For more inspiration on how to make your brand unique and enable your brand’s “Big Why” to shine through in everything you do, you can engage our help and put our Personality Profile Performer™ System to good use. It will help you identify and amplify the key traits unique to your brand and thereby separate your brand from your competitors. Click here to discover more about how the Personality Profile Performer™ System can transform new brands that are about to be born or more mature brands in need of revitalization into market leaders.

 

You may also like:

 

• Brand Profiling: Top 6 Components to Creating a Strong Brand Personality

 

• Branding for Women: Why and How Women are Redefining Brands and Branding

   

• Brand Promises: Are You Consisently Deliverying Yours? 

 

• Packaging Design: How to Make it into an Irresistible Customer Brand Magnet

 

• Creating New Brands: Top 10 Tips for Brand Success

 

• Brand Audits: Top 10 Things Successful Brand Owners and Managers Must Know

 

 

So What Do You Think?

 

• Does your brand strategy encompass a unique, transparent “Big Why” that underpins the reasons you want to enter the market in the first place?

 

• Does your brand’s packaging design reflect your “Big Why” while also evoking congruent emotions on your social media channels or adverts?

 

• Would your brand benefit from a rebranding strategy that follows Simon Senek’s model of beginning with a “Big Why” then moving on to “how” and finally “what”?

 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, we’d love to hear from you.

Brand Honesty: Why and How It Pays to be Truthful

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Openly, honestly admitting your brand’s flaws is a daunting prospect, but it just might save your bottom line or even help grow it!

   

Few companies willingly confess their problems, but most customers notice those problems. Whether it’s an unclear label on some packaging that makes it difficult to read the ingredients, a supply chain that’s less than green, or terrible Wi-Fi at your conference table, attempting to hide flaws often leads to unrealistic customer expectations. When assumed standards aren’t met customers have poor experiences. They can become a source of frustration, which in turn can potentially boil over into anger. You can avoid those brand disasters by managing customer expectations through a well developed brand strategy and proactive messaging aligned with your core brand values — and properly developed brand packaging where applicable.

  

The easiest way for you to manage your customers’ expectations, minimize unrealistic frustrations, and show that you care is by being honest. Share all of the information that customers need – the great and the not so good – and you’ll create a level of trust with each customer interaction.

   

After you’ve established trust, you can leverage it by showing customers how you’ve overcome challenges or limitations. Manage expectations and your customers will not only forgive the big problems, they may even completely ignore the small ones like Velocity marketing did when it took a chance on an honest restaurant.

  

One great thing about honesty is that it standouts as a strong part of your brand voice when it’s an integral part of your brand strategy, marketing, sales and service. Now, you have to decide if you want that benefit.

 

 

8 Ways Brand Honesty Pays

 

1. What Does an Honest Brand Voice Do?

 

If customers believe your brand is honest and authentic, they’re more likely to trust the claims that you make.

 

For example, let’s say you have a system that truly saves procurement professionals 3% on every bulk order. If you’ve previously made similar claims but customers haven’t been able to achieve those savings, your messaging will seem like just another pitch. But, if you limit or frame your guarantees to very specific usage applications that customers can achieve, they’re more likely to believe and trust what you say.

  

Part of remaining believable is explaining your promotions and promises. If that 3% saving requires a continuous monthly order of more than 1,000 units in OEM hardware, that is the truth whether or not the marketing says so.

 

For FMCG brands, honest branding makes your claims far more believable — even if it goes against previous experiences. This is well evidenced with a brand sold in India, in a category that is very busy in terms of competitors all claiming similar things and nothing really significantly differentiating them or having much brand impact.

Heat can cause significant skin irritation and itching in hot climates, with prickly heat being a common and very uncomfortable skin ailment, especially in places like India. Many products on the market in India claimed they would provide instant relief, but that’s a claim very few – if any – brands could actually deliver on. Instead of making the poor “instant” claim, Medimix’s Prickly Heat Powder promises relief in three days.

 

 Medimix Prickly Heat Powder

 

 Image via www.cholayil.com 

 

The brand was able to quickly climb to a top seller in this category with a series of honest adverts about its three-day window. The observations that kids scratch their prickly heat skin itch without any inhibitions, a bit like monkeys, became the inspiration for this brand’s honest story. One of the best is this “Monkey” spot that shows it actually taking three days to find that sweet relief. Even if you don’t speak the language, the message is clear and feels extremely genuine.

  

  

  

  

Take it out of the fine print and make it a clear part of your sales communications. This honesty ensures your audience knows what to validly expect and it makes you far more trustworthy. The important part is that this honesty and openness will improve your brand reputation, even among prospects that aren’t suitable for availing of your offer.

And your brand reputation is more important than price when it comes to online sales.

 

 

2. From Problem Selling to Problem Solving

 

Today branding is all about meeting your customers where they need help and making their life easier. Yes, you do this through selling goods and services, but today’s customers crave a relationship. That means they’re more likely to feel spurned when things go wrong and consequently voice their feelings freely, particularly online.

 

If you have dissatisfied customers who are active on social media, you’re more likely to see a complaint out in the wild. That’s a trend that’s been on the rise since 2012.

 

Building your brand as an honest operator can help reduce the amount of complaints you see online by focusing your branding on what you truly provide. Don’t conflate capabilities; offer true solutions to problems. This excites customers by showing that you’re able to view the world from their eyes and work on problems that matter most to them.

 

When our clients have shifted from sales approaches to a customer centric service focus, and integrated this into their branding and marketing strategy, their customers responded very positively. Get rid of overt sales tactics that push the “buy, buy buy!” message and replace it with an honest evaluation of how your goods and services solve problems, and you’ll see those digital complaints turn into digital thanks.

 

 

3. Keep The Customers You Really Want

 

Honesty can sometimes scare away customers, but that’s part of your brand filter too. Those are probably the customers who were pursuing products, services or support that did not necessarily relate to your core competencies or align with your brand values.

 

Being forthright about your strengths and capabilities will enable you to attract your ideal customers who need the solutions and products you offer. Those who your honesty deters are more than likely poor leads – they would probably need significant inputs in areas that may not be a good fit with your core business model and likely be less satisfied with your brand.

 

Honest communication allows you to focus on and attract customers with a high lifetime value, while reducing the time and effort your sales and service teams deal with low lifetime value customers. It’s not a loss, it’s separating the chaff from the wheat. A its most fundamental that’s what effect branding is all about, attracting your ideal customers and deterring those who are not a good fit.

 

We’ve found clients achieve more success when they focus on core, high-value customers and connect to them on an honest brand level, living their brand values through how they operate internally, their brand culture, and the positive experiences they create for their ideal customers.

 

 

4. Honesty Sells, No Matter How Bad It Is

 

Would you stay at the worst hotel in the world?

   

Hans Brinker Hotel

Image via www.hansbrinker.com 

 

 

Amsterdam’s Hans Brinker Budget Hotel thinks you will. And it also thinks you’ll love the experience so much you’ll tell everyone you know. Even if you never stay there, you’ll probably be inclined to share its adverts when you spot one.

  

 

  

  

 

The brand doesn’t take itself too seriously, so it can poke honest fun about the fact that its forks will be bent, heating is just another blanket, and “it can’t get any worse, but we’ll do our best.”

  

The Hans Brinker has been advertising itself as the worst for more than 10 years because it wants customers who aren’t looking for the best. It focuses on the typical hostel tourist, backpacking across Europe for adventure or at least a temporary escape from college. That means it has created a large amount of buzz with each advert and continues to attract new customers.

Even when it promotes the germs and bugs that live in its sheets!

   

       

 

  

 

5. Honesty Helps You Make A Successful Come Back

 

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) had a somewhat “unflattering” reputation, but it wasn’t a strong selling point for the brand. It hurt market share and provided opportunities for the rise of Google’s Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. For many Internet Explorer became the Web browser that people simply used to download other Web browsers.

 

When Microsoft wanted to unveil IE9, it had to acknowledge the problems of the old browser or customers simply wouldn’t have listened or believed them. So, Microsoft fessed up to its shortcomings and pushed honesty as the chief message for all the people who grew up with IE and its issues.

 

Microsoft began rebranding its browser with a pitch that harkened back to the nostalgia of the 1990s and it’s slower pace. It focused on the differences between the end of the analog era and what digital media has brought, noting that the brand grew up just like its core set of users. But, throughout all of its branding, Microsoft acknowledged the imperfections and showed how it changed – and only where it actually changed.

    

   

  

 

Our experience has shown that clients with brand challenges have been able to revitalize their brands more successfully when new brand messages are honest and open about past shortcomings, failures and successes. Saying the right Mea Culpa can improve your standing and help reconnect with customers who previously might have left through frustration and annoyance.

  

 

6. Honesty as a Competitive Advantage

 

Most brands aren’t at the top of their industry. We all want to be, but it’s a commercial reality that someone is going to come in second. If that’s you, being honest about it can garner a lot of attention.

   

 Avis We Try Harder 600px

 Image via www.avis.com

 

 

One of the biggest companies to embrace this has been Avis. The car rental service acknowledged competitors in its adverts for more than 50 years but consistently ran with the slogan: “When you’re only No. 2, you try harder” – later shortened to “We try harder.” They didn’t aim to win business by saying they were the best. Avis told you what its competitive advantage was – trying harder than the rest – and its adverts worked to show that for over 50 years.

   

   

 

 

   

Whether it’s a 1978 ad explaining what the brand does behind the scenes or another from more recent years that shares a true customer experience with someone going the extra mile, Avis lived its brand values and its promise, expressed through it slogan, and consequently was perceived to be an honest brand.

  

      


   

    

7. The B2B and B2C Honesty Commitment

 

Transparency is the order of the day for all brands be they B2C or B2B, from sourcing and logistics to software or the total cost of a product. Every customer wants to know as much about you, your values and your product or service costs as possible.

 

Transparency is simply the buzzword that means demonstrable honesty. A client who wants you to be more transparent is asking for you to provide honest claims and assessments, with tools, reports and other information to back up what you’re saying.

 

Transparency is also a key factor in making your other competitive advantages viable. If you’re trying to promote sustainability, two of the most important factors for your customers will be their awareness of a positive impact and the believability of your impact claims, according to a study from the United Nations Global Compact.

 

 

8. Make Your Brand Extraordinary with Honesty

 

An 80-year-old shirtless man running on a bridge kicked off one of the most well-known branding campaigns ever: Nike’s “Just Do It.” In just 32 seconds, Nike presented a simple, honest message that told a story everyone could relate to and was impressed by. It helped Nike jump from $800 million in sales to $9.2 billion in under 10 years.

  

  

 

 

  

Nike built its brand on an honest statement that didn’t promise anything it couldn’t provide: You do it, and Nike helps.

 

Your brand doesn’t have to come up with anything as minimalist or iconic as “Just Do It,” but you can take lessons from the approach of Nike, Avis, Microsoft and Hans Brinker. They show their flaws, highlight their strengths, don’t over-promise, and poke a little fun at themselves to show their human side — all of which gets us emotionally engaged. 

 

Remember, people buy with emotion and justify with rational, regardless of gender. If you want your brand to connect with your primary target audience you must engage them emotionally, in a positive way that’s relevant to them, and honesty is integral to that lasting connectivity.

 

We’ve seen clients significantly enhance the perception of their brand and consequently their bottom line when they implement these fundamental pillars as part of their brand values. Is it time to try your hand at all of them and integrate brand honesty as part of your brand strategy?

Honesty is not only the best policy, it’s among the most profitable ones too.

 

You may also like:

  

• Brand Promises: Are You Consistently Delivering Yours?

 

• Humanizing Your Brand: Why It’s Key to Commercial Success

 

• Brand Voice: Differentiating Through Your Own Brand Language and Attitude

 

• Destination Branding: The Key Essentials for Success

  

 

So, what do you think?

• Would customers consider your branding and packaging design honest?

 

• Do you need a rebranding strategy to find a candid, authentic brand voice?

 

• Are there limitations you can acknowledge as part of your brand strategy that would ease the burden on your customer service?

 

• Could any of your brand collateral create customer misconceptions about your products, service or even core brand values?

 

• Would you stay at the worst hostel just for bragging rights? What would a brand audit highlight as part of your brand’s bragging rights?

  

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you! 

 

 

Christmas Branding: Top 10 Tips to Infuse Your Brand with Seasonal Spirit

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The Christmas season is an important time for any brand. In the UK, Christmas spending online is expected to reach more than £13 billion – an estimated 18 percent increase over last year’s online spend. What’s more, online spending and marketing typically increases retail and in-store spending, as more of your customers reach and connect with your brand through channels like mobile and social media.

 

At this time of the year, having a seasonal marketing strategy can deliver tremendous ROI for your brand. Customers love to see brands getting into the Christmas spirit. But just as with any branding strategy, it’s important to make sure your Christmas branding is authentic, meaningful, and engaging and most importantly – congruent with what your brand stands for.

 

Here are our top 10 tips on what to do – and what not to do – in order to bring the seasonal spirit to your brand and elicit a positive and profitable customer response.

 

1. Don’t Just Slap on Some Tinsel and Call it Christmas

Great Christmas branding collateral incorporates the season in a meaningful way, and delivers a message that makes customers look forward to celebrating Christmas, it must touch them with appropriate emotional connectivity – preferably with the help of your products or services. But dropping Christmas-related items into your regular marketing without any particular reason or strong branding strategy simply makes things uninspiring and largely forgettable.

  

 

 

2. Do Have a Defined Reason for Incorporating Christmas with Your Brand

There are so many aspects to the Christmas season that failing to draw a connection to your brand with seasonal marketing should be inexcusable. Whether your brand platform emphasizes fun, heartwarming, luxurious, affordable, or timeless, there are endless meaningful connections you can make.

 

For online custom greeting card company Cardstore.com, one campaign highlighted their brand’s convenience. This video spot contrasted an overly enthusiastic Mum trying to package her actual family inside a Christmas card, with the convenience of creating your own custom cards online.

  

  

  

Another company that gets Christmas right is John Lewis. The upscale UK department store, which also owns Waitrose, has created powerful and heartwarming Christmas commercials that have really captured the spirit of the season and kept customers coming back to shop. In fact, this year’s adorable advert from John Lewis contributed to the groups’s record-breaking sales during Black Friday week.

   

  

  

3. Deck out Your Packaging (or Brand Collateral)

At this time of year, an enchanting presentation is important to your customers. Shoppers want their loved ones to know that they’ve put some thought and effort into their Christmas preparations, and they’re drawn to festive packaging and cheerful or whimsical designs.

  

You can make your brand aspirational, fun, and desirable with limited edition Christmas packaging – or if you didn’t consider it this year, now is the time to include it in your brand planning for next year! You can also brand your online collateral such as your website and social media channels with Christmas themes.

 

Again, the key here is to make it meaningful and connected to your brand, without going over the top and obscuring your core brand messaging. Hershey’s is a well-known example of this, as they change their signature silver wrapper for Hershey’s Kisses to a mixture of red and green for the Christmas season.

 

For websites and social media, a simple banner change to Christmas greetings that aligns with your brand colours and themes can bring cheer to your customers and seasonal spirit to your brand.

  

4. Redefine Your Christmas Discounts

Christmas shoppers love a good bargain. But while deep discounts, clearances and blowout sales can move products, many are reluctant to take advantage of such heavily advertised specials. It can cheapen the experience of gift-giving, and the recipient may realise that they’ve just seen the item on sale.

 

A good alternative way to offer your customers added value, without devaluing your brand, is to pair products with a free gift, which customers can either keep for themselves or give to someone else. Some popular examples here include branded items like tote bags or mugs, trial sizes of products, or even small gift vouchers.

  

 5. Make it a Mobile Christmas

Recent research from Nielsen found that 80 percent of UK Twitter users access Twitter on their mobiles, and for 70 percent, mobile is the primary means of access. More importantly, 94 percent of UK Twitter users engage with mobile commerce on their smartphones, and one-third of all online sales are now made via mobile devices.

 

There is a strong case for your brand to interact with your customers via mobile. In the midst of the Christmas shopping season, mobile branding and marketing allows you to connect quickly with customers and keep your brand top-of-mind while they’re shopping, either in-store or online.

 

  Royal Albert Hall Advent Calendar

 

 

The Royal Albert Hall took this strategy onboard for Christmas by creating an “Advent Calendar” for their Twitter feed. The iconic venue counted down the month of December by tweeting a series of historic facts that tied into the day – for example, on December 19 the tweet read: “Beach volleyball has been played at the Hall for a grand total of nineteen minutes” and included an image of beach volleyball at the Hall.

  

6. Make it Easier for Last-Minute Shoppers to Choose your Brand

Regardless of intentions, most of your customers will end up last-minute shopping for Christmas. You can create an inviting sense of accommodation for your brand by keeping customers informed of last-minute opportunities. Use your website and social media channels to highlight any extended opening hours for your retail location, shipping deadlines for orders delivered by Christmas, and special last-minute offers or deals such as free shipping upgrades.

  

 Asos Christmas Gift Suggestions

 

  

7. Help Customers Find the Perfect Gift with Your Brand

Many a Christmas shopper struggles to find the right gift for the right person. One inexpensive and effective Christmas branding strategy is to put together a seasonal gift-giving guide, showing which of your products make the best gifts for certain people. For example, UK clothing retailer ASOS has created a Christmas splash page that groups gifts into fun categories like “Me Me Me,” “BFF,” “Cheap ‘N Cheerful,” and “Beauty Booty.” The page includes a few short YouTube videos that offer further gift-giving tips and tricks for shoppers.

  

  

  

8. Consider Christmas Vouchers to Extend Brand Loyalty

It can be difficult to choose the perfect gift – that’s why more shoppers are turning to gift vouchers that let recipients buy whatever they want. Offering branded gift vouchers or gift cards is a great way to increase visibility, strengthen your brand platform, and increase profits – an estimated 61 percent of gift card holders spend more than the amount of the card when they make a purchase.

  

Gift vouchers give your customers an additional way to interact with your brand, and also introduce your products or services to new customers who receive your gift vouchers as Christmas presents.

  

9. Reach out to Your Current Customers

The Christmas season is an opportunity to increase brand loyalty by reaching out authentically to your current customer base. It’s the perfect time to do something unexpected and pleasantly surprising for your customers – reach out with a small gift or freebie, hold a VIP night, or organize a special Christmas event for your most loyal brand supporters. Demonstrating appreciation for your customers’ patronage helps to ensure that they’ll remain loyal to your brand, and they’ll remember the gesture fondly.

 

Canadian airline WestJet deployed this strategy in a big way in 2013, treating 250 of its customers to a Christmas miracle. As passengers boarded their Christmas flights, they were invited into a booth to “tell Santa” what they wanted for Christmas. The passengers were recorded and viewed by airline employees at the destination airport, who raced out to buy all the gifts the passengers had wished for – and had them waiting when they arrived at their destination.

 

WestJet uploaded a video of the campaign to YouTube, and it promptly went viral. Currently, the video has more than 37 million views.

  

 

  

10. Get Festive on Facebook

In order to engage with your brand authentically, your customers need to know that there are real people behind the brand. One of the best ways to accomplish this during the Christmas season is to show your Christmas spirit on social media channels like Facebook. Post photos and video of your staff, your office or storefront, your corporate Christmas party, your involvement in the community and giving back together with other seasonal events that your customers might like a glimpse into.

 

And whilst using social media, don’t forget to be social! Engage your audience with interesting conversations that are relevant to your brand, or share your Christmas sentiments with favourite quotes, inspirational photos, or interactive question and fill-in-the-blank posts such as “All I want for Christmas is [blank]; how about you?”

 

Christmas branding doesn’t have to be complex or expensive to be successful. No matter the size of your brand, you can engage in authentic, meaningful seasonal strategies and initiatives that preserve your brand values, story, and loyalty without devaluing the core of your brand amongst the Christmas mayhem.

 

So, what do you think – how will you integrate Christmas into your brand strategy?

• How can you dress up your brand collateral for the Christmas season in a meaningful, relevant way?

  

• What authentic connections can you draw between your brand and popular Christmas symbols, values, or traditions?

  

• How are you maintaining the authenticity of your brand amidst the rush of the Christmas season?

  

• Are you reaching out to your current customers with Christmas rewards to preserve brand loyalty?

  

• Can Christmas shoppers clearly find the right products or services for the people on their gift lists, and identify last-minute shopping opportunities from your brand?

 

• Are you engaging your audience on multiple channels during Christmas, including mobile and social?

 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!