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.