Filling Empty Vessels

For companies seeking to establish new brands, or who are looking to evolve or change existing brands, there is a singular challenge that must be met before anything else can happen.

I call it the process of finding authenticity.

Most people have an authentic self -- that person you are when you strip away society's notions of who you should be or your family's view of what they want you to be; that woman or man in their most unguarded, unvarnished and revealing moments. The real person.

Companies, too, have an authentic self. It's who they are, what they do and what they stand for at the end of each day. Answering these questions -- honestly and with integrity -- is the essential first step in filling out that empty vessel called a new brand. For established brands looking to change the ways in which their brands are seen, it's nearly the same, except these crucial additional questions must be answered: what's changed and why?

Because brands come to mean something over time, and are imbued with a company's everyday actions and performance, it is absolutely essential that the company approach its' work with a deep embrace of who they are; why they exist; the value they hope to bring to all those they seek to serve; and the integrity with which they conduct their business.

Consider the three "C's" of brand management: clarity, conciseness, consistency. If you can't say clearly who it is you are, what it is you do, and what it is you stand for -- crisply and simply -- then it will be impossible for all the stakeholders in your business to deliver a coherent and unified message over the long haul.

MacKay Miley has a terrific client right now that has done this basic exercise very well: Rackspace. Here's how they've applied this exercise (from my point of view):

1. Who it is we are: We're Rackspace and we are the best in our business.
2. What it is we do: We provide best-in-class hosting solutions to start-up and growing companies and organizations.
3. What it is we believe in: We believe in being fanatically supportive of all our customers, and we do this with openness, honesty and integrity -- without fail, at every single point of interaction with all those we serve and seek to serve.

This is great stuff, and it goes a long way toward giving definition and meaning to the brand called Rackspace. What continues to fill out this particular vessel is their every day performance and the satisfaction of their customers.

After their people, a company's brand is their most important asset. At birth, brands are empty things ready to be filled with all the authentic aspects that will come to define a business in the eyes of the marketplace it seeks to serve. Tapping into your company's authentic self will go a long way to ensuring its' ultimate success.

(The fabulous graphic above came from David Armano's site, Logic + Emotion.)

Motrin's Weekend Headache

Over the weekend, Motrin posted a new ad on YouTube that was quickly discovered by moms. And they didn't love what they found. The ad indicates that moms carry their babies in slings around their necks for fashion reasons alone.

Women across the country took to their blogs, Twitter and Facebook to denounce the ad. They developed and published a video in response. Motrin's website was either shut down or brought down by too much traffic. The company sent an email apologizing for offending their customers, but didn't respond (as far as I can see) using the same social media moms used to mobilize against the ad. This morning, The New York Times caught wind of the controversy and published what is sure to be the first of many mainstream media stories. And today, there's a ton of Monday morning quarter-backing going on. Just one look at Google's search result for "Motrin" says everything.

And this is all since Saturday!

Forrester social Web analyst Jeremiah Owyang weighed in with his analysis. And Logic + Emotion's David Armano also blogged about the phenomenon, providing both the Motrin video and the mommy response video, and offers this advice:

1. Design Your Website For Rapid Response
If your site has to be taken down in order to respond to a crisis, re-design it so that it can be updated quickly and easily without having to throw your organization and agencies into a panic. Worry about your response strategy, not the design of your site.

2. Think Like A Blogger, Tweeter, Community & Citizen Journalist
Look at how quickly the mommy community organized and produced an authentic video. It's because they don't have legal guidelines holding them back. You probably do—but of you can figure a way around them, you can fight authenticity with authenticity, which looks less like a fight and more like a conversation anyway.

3. Have A Google Strategy In Place
Aside from perhaps smoothing things over with the offended, the real incentive for any organization to engage in situations like this is to influence the search results and digital trail so that your organization presents well on them. The best way to do this is to have people saying good things about you which means you have to give them something good to say and can't force it. The end goal needs to be helping people. The ROI will be a much more positive long tail.

This is great advice. Moreover, brands should not conclude from this experience that they should avoid the social Web at all costs -- quite the contrary. Engaging your audience in more intimate, two-way conversations represents the future of brand and marketing strategy, so understanding the best ways in which to achieve this objective is critical.

For Motrin, this kerfuffle represents a terrific opportunity to reach out to all those mommy bloggers, and YouTube video posters, Twitterers, and Facebook faces with a simple message: we hear you... we love you and want to serve you better... and tell us what we can do better.

Nothing succeeds like honest, two-way dialog (and more than a little contrition.) This is a great case study with terrific lessons in it. All brands should take notice.

Conventional vs. Unconventional Marketing

In today's AdAge, experience designer and blogger David Armano lays out an argument for abandoning traditional marketing practice that depends upon careful planning and research, in favor of a cycle that is more about immediate engagement and learning as you go. He lays out his arguments from the point of view of his own blogging experience, informed by his professional engagements, and provides a compelling visual model by way of explanation, which I've included here. Marketing professionals of all stripes will find this interesting, so check out the AdAge article and David's excellent blog Logic+Emotion -- you'll definitely be challenged to think through your own practices.

Daylife Launches New Service

Derek Gordon, who is an associate of mine at MacKay Miley LLC, wrote this post:

If you're a publisher -- whether you're the Washington Post or a huge blog like Huffington Post or, well, a small-time blogger guy like me -- it's tough to do much with the original content you generate after it's been published. Most blog hosting platforms or enterprise content management systems pretty much archive your stuff and make it tough to search for, reference or reuse it in interesting ways.

One of my current clients, Daylife (who I've been having a ton of fun working with) released a new service on their intelligent content service platform called Enterprise API. It enables publishers to send Daylife a feed of their stuff when they're ready to release it. Daylife's platform deeply analyzes the content to figure out what type of media it is (photo, story, blog post, graphic, etc.) and the salient pieces of information in the content (names, places, brands, etc.) to create a database of the publisher's original content. Daylife then feeds that data back to the publisher through their own, dedicated API, which they can then reuse in an infinite number of ways. They can even choose to make their API public-access, so third-party developers can do fun and interesting things with the data, too (which, of course, links back to the publisher's site).

The picture above is from washingtonpost.com, which has been the first to use Daylife's new service to power the photo galleries in their new Political Browser feature, among other projects.

This is great for publishers who are increasingly understanding the important of plugging in to the Web's link economy in order drive traffic to and interest in their original content. It also enables publishers to increase their inventory -- i.e. new pages of content with advertising wrapped around it -- in a fast and easy way without having to add more headcount to do it.

To learn more about the link economy, check out fab blog BuzzMachine; Jeff Jarvis is an expert on this stuff. For a great story on the link economy, check out this recent New York Times story.

Daylife's CEO, Upendra Shardanand, blogged about it from a higher-level perspective and Daylife's evangelist, Vineet Gupta, blogged about from a more technical perspective, in case you'd like more information. And, of course, there's an official blog post on Daylife.com.

And if all this stuff is just a little too geeky for you, just go to Daylife.com and enjoy all the news information available to you there.

Are customers getting manipulated?

A friend asked me today if brand strategy was about manipulating people.

The answer is No.

There is a fine, but definite line between manipulation and influence. Great brand strategy is all about influencing customer choice through creating a uniquely compelling offering that is resonant and authentic. When companies go the manipulative route, they end up undermining their own reputation --- think Microsoft and “evil empire”-- which results in expensive programs to fix the problem -- think Microsoft’s move to open a Silicon Valley office.

Bottom line, people know when they are being manipulated and generally resent it.

Sure there may be a rare soul that enjoys being treated like a puppet; however, it is far better to have droves of people want to walk towards your brand and make an active choice based on their own free will. And if you really want to go for the gold, create an offering that is soooo compelling that people run towards it -- think Apple’s iPhone.

Bubble it up

Great ideas rise the top like bubbles. What the Obama campaign has taught us is how to let go – empower rather than control, and let your audience help shape the brand. Done with finesse, the result is a highly resonate and powerful brand that is authentic because it’s built from the roots up, rather than architected from the top-down. (The Wiki-Way to the Nomination) A powerful lesson in the world of brand management, and how to build strong brands in a web 2.0 world.

How Much Did You Say the Kinko’s Name Was Worth?

Sadly, FedEx took a write-down on the Kinko’s acquisition to the tune of $891 million -- that’s about 30% of the original 2004 deal amount of $2.4B attributed to the Kinko’s brand, which when you think about it is amazing in itself. (FedEx drops Kinko’s name)

But what this also says is that the FedEx brand management team lost nearly a billion dollars in brand equity and customer goodwill (directly reflected in market cap). Equity that could have been transferred to the FedEx brand long ago.

So starting today, FedEx will no longer be using the Kinko’s name and will instead focus on extending the FedEx brand to include those capabilities associated with Kinko’s -- an excellent decision, too bad it took so long and at such a cost.

Making Talent Based M&A's work

Great article today in the NYT’s re: Disney’s acquisition of Pixar. (NYT article on Disney Pixar Acquisition). For talent-based M&As, take time to build a relationship founded on trust and respect first while explicitly mapping out what underpinning business drivers will be sustained… or better yet, infused into the acquiring company. And communicate, communicate, communicate. Simply resisting the urge to move quickly with these types of deals, will increase the odds of a successful M&A.