The Business Behind the Buzz

The Brand “Stress Test”

The Obama Administration has recently put the 19 largest US banks through a series of assessments designed to gauge their financial health. Not a bad idea in my opinion. Ultimately, these “stress tests” have given the Federal Reserve and Congress a clearer picture of which banks have the equity to stay afloat during the recession without Federal aid.

Admiring this effort, I sought out to provide a “Brand Stress Test”. Using the three components of the Brand Hierarchy[i] put your brand to the test to ensure your marketing dollars are diversified with efficacy and that your brand equity is fairing better than the bottom lines of our ailing financial institutions. 

Complete the Brand Stress Test by answering “yes” or “no” to the questions below to see if you are in need of a branding bail out.

Section # 1: Brand Identity

• Is it clear to my target market what category I compete in?
• Am I in the top three brands that come to mind when my product category is considered?
• Does my target market clearly understand my unique benefits (brand position)?

If you answered “no” to any of the questions above, you may have an identity crisis on your hands that could prevent you from seeing healthy returns from your marketing investment as it relates to your brand equity. A clear “reason for existence” is key to growing the value of your brand.

Section #2: Brand Integrity

• Do consumers feel that I consistently deliver the core benefits expected of my product or service category?
• Do consumers feel that I deliver the unique benefits I promise?
• Is my brand perceived to have ethical and honest business practices? 

If you answered “no” to any of the questions above, than listen up. Have you ever heard, “there is nothing worse for a bad company than good advertising”?

Maintain realistic consumer expectations based on benefits or an experience that you can consistently pay off. If you don’t have a valued point of difference, then take a closer look at your business model and establish a more compelling value proposition.

Section #3: Brand Resonance

• Do consumers identify with your brand because it is a familiar part of their daily life?
• Do consumers connect with your brand because they identify with the qualities possessed by other users of your brand (i.e. lifestyle, demographics, looks, etc…)
• Do consumers connect with your brand because it symbolizes aspirations or beliefs they identify with?
• Do consumers identify with your brand because your actions foster personalized relationships between your brand and its customers?

If you didn’t answer “yes” to at least one of the questions above, you are missing out on the big branding payout—a shared emotional connection with your customers (brand resonance).

This is the intangible element that fuels the success of the world’s largest companies. To put it in perspective, if every last component of Coca-Cola’s infrastructure was to suddenly disappear into thin air, the company would still be worth billions because of the strength in its brand name.

Are you the next Coke? Let me know how your brand faired in the stress test? Post your total score to comments.

Section #1: Each “yes” = 1 point

Section #2: Each “yes” = 2 points

Section #3: Each “yes” = 5 points

---

[i] The Brand Component Hierarchy as developed by William E. Baker, Ph.D,

Written by Kevin McCray, Account Executive at Glass McClure. kevin@glassmcclure.com
Glass McClure is an independent full-service advertising, design and brand consultancy focused on creating buyers by developing unexpected ideas to deliver unexpected results.

How to “Tweet” with the best of them

SEE HOW RETAIL BRANDS ARE SUCCESFULLY USING TWITTER 

TO STRENGTHEN CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS BEFORE YOU HOP ON THE TWEETING BANDWAGON.

Whether you are managing a supermarket brand, running a department store or hocking used stereos out of your garage, Twitter is a great resource for your business—if you know how to use it. Retailers of all shapes and sizes are investing nominal resources into the hotshot social network and are using their Twitter profiles successfully to strengthen their connection with thousands of customers.

Before we uncover the keys to tweeting success, lets touch on the genius behind the Twitter community as it relates to marketers. About five years ago, someone decided the “suggestions box” by the cash register that garnered two responses and a vulgar sketch on a good day, wasn’t going to cut it. Marketers began to see the value in opening communication lines with their customer base and giving them outlets to provide feedback on a regular basis. Naturally, with consumers already Blogging their opinions all over the Internet, marketers turned to the web as a their platform for two-way communication.

Five years, dozens of social networks and hundreds of Blog sites later, Twitter is the best channel developed to date for two-way communication between brands and consumers. However, the primary challenge for brands is, Twitter’s interface provides an interactive and immediate landscape that many marketers are not used to. Traditional methods have been to interrupt content consumers value to communicate “at” them about their product or service. With Twitter, your brand becomes the source of the valued content and you have the opportunity to interact “with” consumers.

I took a look at a handful of the most popular tweeting retailers effectively using Twitter as a brand-building tool to see what they are doing right. After following Whole Foods Market, The Home Depot, and Best Buy, I found that each of them had three Twitter tendencies that have earned them popularity among the rapidly growing community.

Be Consistently Responsive

Before you commit to having a presence on Twitter, make sure that you have the internal capacity to field and respond to the feedback that comes your way. The benefit of Twitter is the ability for two-way communication with your audience. The minute customers feel like they aren’t being listened to, you have lost their attention and your credibility.  

Marla Erwin, the interactive art director at Whole Foods, is the tweeting personality for the world's largest retailer of natural and organic foods. With 537,850 Whole Foods followers, Erwin gets dozens of tweets each day with questions, suggestions and complaints. No comment goes un-responded and her solution-oriented approach is what makes her tweets valued by the audience. 

Not only do you have to respond, you have to respond fast. A challenge marketers are facing is that the definition of responsive is different with Twitter than what they are used to. The days of battling the recorded voice on customer service hotlines or waiting weeks for a response to an email complaint are over for customers using Twitter. Brands that choose to tweet will respond with haste or crash and burn. 

“There is an expectation of immediacy around twitter. Being as timely as people would like with information can be a challenge.” - Keith Burtis, the face behind the Best Buy Remix account told mashable.com.

Provide Relevant Information 

Whether it is a recipe, a home improvement tip, or a link to the latest tech goober site, all three of the featured retailers have been providing information that is relevant to their followers. If you are viewed as a resource for information your customers’ value, they will continue to interact with you. 

This step is important to the brand-building aspect of Twitter; customers will begin to look to your Twitter profile for valued information, as opposed to merely using it as a complaint department. 

Whole Foods actually has a separate Twitter profile, WholeRecipes, dedicated to providing the latest recipes from the Whole Foods Market. Their latest post is a “veggie-packed pesto.”

Offer Promotional Incentives

There is no better way to build your Twitter audience than to keep your profile promotionally exciting. Exclusive coupons, giveaways, challenges and the like are all used by the featured retailers to enhance the level of customer interaction with their brand, create goodwill and to keep their customers checking back in for the next promotional oapportunity. The net effect of promotional incentives is increased excitement around your profile, which will result in a larger following (more followers = more “tweet value”). 

The latest Best Buy promotion challenges their Twitter following: “Think you can build a better Best Buy? We do, and we’re launching the Remix Challenge to prove it!” Burtis has tapped customers to develop solutions for specific challenges Best Buy faces. Winners will be rewarded with $250 cash.  

If these Twitter guidelines sound easy enough (which they are), get out there, tweet away and start building your following. Twitter is still relatively new and there is a lot of room to grow. So be inventive and think of new ways to connect with your Twitter audience…give me something exciting to write about next time.

--
Written by Kevin McCray, Account Executive at Glass McClure. kevin@glassmcclure.com
Glass McClure is an independent full-service advertising, design and brand consultancy focused on creating buyers by developing unexpected ideas to deliver unexpected results.

Exploring the Sin of Your Brand

Repositioning in a Recession

As our country fights its way out of this deep economic slump, a discussion topic that has naturally surfaced is that “now couldn’t be a better time to invest in the stock market.”

While morally unpopular, many stock analysts are quick to point to “sin stocks” as a sure bet. Sin stocks being those behind the things people do when times are tough to temporarily take our mind off of life … smoking, drinking, etc. So, what does all of this have to do with marketing? Quite a bit, actually. Brands could learn a lot from consumer behavior during poor economic times.

During the 2000-2002 economic downturn, for example, when the market fell nearly 50%, Philip Morris, MGM Casinos and Molson (beer) all saw values rise 75% or higher. And that’s just one example of many. The marketing counsel, here, is not necessarily to send each of your customers a bottle of vodka, though this might be a relevant move for some brands. Rather, it’s to explore how your brand can deliver something reminiscent of what sin stocks give us – a small reprieve from real life, a way to feel better - done in a manner that is uniquely appropriate for your brand.

Many brands, unfortunately, will never look at themselves this way because their core attributes, on the surface, don’t appear to have the ability to deliver what sin stocks do. A bank, for example – strong, stable, typically would never think of itself as a reprieve. But strong cultural influences, like economic recession, war, social change … beg for dynamic brands to step away from their attributes, if only long enough to conjure what those attributes can become.

Bank of America is ironically a perfect example of a brand adjusting their position for the times. Mock it all you want, their “Keep the Change” program is all about feeling good (who doesn’t feel good about saving money?). It was a smart move and, arguably, helped the banking giant retain some level of loyalty amidst public skepticism.

Walmart refocused their position less than a year ago with the outlook of a better life. “Always low prices. Always.” was scrapped for “Save Money. Live Better.”. Walmart never lost who they are in the process (low prices are in their DNA), they just evolved for the times.

Extreme times.
One of the most unfortunate truths about our economy is most of us have never had to exist in anything like it. Typical recessions may make us want to be teenagers - drinking and smoking. Today’s economic storm has sent us back to the cradle, hoping someone will just tell us “everything is going to be okay.”

In an admitted move to provide consumer comfort, Nationwide Insurance just announced that it dropped “Life comes at you fast” (at least temporarily) for its old standby “Nationwide is on your side.” Commercials feature employee testimonials discussing how they are on the side of customers. Ford, Hyundai and General Motors are all creating reassurance by offering, in some way, to pay for your new car if you lose your job. As the economy grows worse, taking people’s minds off of their lives just isn’t enough. Comfort and reassurance are now earning a new kind of value.

Not every brand has the means to reinvent their marketing, but every brand does have the ability to be responsive to today’s economy on some level that is authentic – it’s not about should anymore, it’s a must. The task of exploring how your brand can maintain its relevancy and even thrive in these times requires an honest look at what your company really stands for and how this position can be translated into something that will speak to, and motivate people to buy your product or do business with you.

The hardest part of this will not be doing the research or even brainstorming creative ideas. In my experience, the part that most companies stumble over, when presented with the need to evolve, is being honest with themselves. Being culturally relevant requires risk and change and the uncomfortable feelings those present, too often, stifle companies from acting on real innovation - the magic ingredient of brand differentiation.

So, read blogs, read news story reader comments … start your own online conversation and see where it gets you. Then get your team together and invite someone to the table who doesn’t work for your company, but who is on the pulse of your target consumer. When you are informed and open to risk and change, trust me, the creativity will come.

Now, go enjoy being a little sinful and surviving this recession.

--
Written by Amber Williams, Director of Strategy at Glass McClure. amber@glassmcclure.com
Glass McClure’s branding division specializes in analysis of brand relevancy and ideation workshops for brand evolution.

5 Tips to Boost Your Marketing in this Economy

1. Identify your customer’s “point of chaos.”
What are the most prominent desires, needs, roadblocks or problems your customers are facing? And how can your products and services alleviate these concerns? Answer these questions and use your findings as the basis for your entire marketing plan.

2. Improve your target definition.
Studies show that targeting accuracy explains 50% or more of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign. No plan is waste-free, but improved precision can provide an immediate lift in rate of return for any program. Typically, a media target should be more quantifiable and narrower than a positioning target and should take into account both behavioral actions as well as demographic criteria. Getting to the bottom of identifying these types of characteristics in your most opportunistic customer can be a gold mine.

3. Set multiple performance measurements.
Guessing what part of your marketing program isn’t working is a luxury that you can’t afford. So, get in the driver’s seat and work with your agency to establish multiple metrics for them to gun for. Website traffic, promo redemption, benchmarked awareness, perception shifts, 800# calls, email inquiries or retail sales metrics are all possible ways to measure success.

4. Hang on to a modest ad budget.
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, companies that advertise during a down economy fare better than those that don’t. How? Because with fewer competitors advertising, your message stands a better chance of reaching the eyes and ears of your customers. And with less demand, your agency should be able to take advantage of favorable pricing from a media buying standpoint. And, the customers you gain will generally stay with you as times improve, giving you a long-term market-share bump.

5. Work with your agency to redefine your Value Proposition.
Customers tend to make buying decisions based on a combination of three things: convenience, quality, and price. In a down economy, consumers and businesses alike are in the process of re-evaluating every line item in their budgets and are focused on price more than ever. Make sure you look at your value proposition through your customers’ eyes. Then be sure your marketing message highlights the monetary value you bring to those customers.

--

Glass McClure is an independent full-service advertising, design and brand consultancy focused on creating buyers by developing unexpected ideas to deliver unexpected results.

And then, "blah blah blah blah...You’re fired!”

Does anyone watch The Celebrity Apprentice, anymore? I didn’t think so.  Okay, I actually do but let me tell you why. I enjoy watching them make the same mistake over and over every week. It never fails; The Donald walks out in front of the remaining cast with the paid sponsor standing at his right and speaks of the wild success of Brand X and their product benefits. He then proceeds to forget the CEO’s name and asks him/her to introduce himself and then hands out the marketing assignment to the cast. Still with me? The next step happens so fast; the camera operators often don’t even get a chance to document it. Each team comes up with a “Big Idea.” For those of you out there that watch this show they way I do (with a grimacing face and a pointing finger of disapproval) you’ve probably noticed there is never anything “Big” about their ideas, I would challenge that nine times out of ten there isn’t even an idea at all. The show proceeds with a domino effect of haste and anger and frustration and missed deadlines and poor choices and finger pointing all the way to the boardroom, blah, blah, blah, you’re fired!
 
So, what does a bunch of b-list angry fired celebrities have to do with us? Everything. This behavior is just like ours. Only we should know better. We know the “Big Idea” is what we need. We brag to our clients, potential clients, coworkers, and even family members that we have bigger, better ideas and “around here” the idea is the most important thing.  But, when it comes down to it, most of us don’t manage our time properly to allow ideas to get “Big” enough.
 
Now, let me interrupt your brain before it interrupts me with this excuse, “I don’t have enough time anymore to tinker around in idea-ville.”  I agree. Sort of. Part of that is true. Timelines are ridiculously short these days. They are a fraction of what they used to be back in the world of press type, film outputs and proofreaders. And they’re getting shorter every day with a struggling economy and increasing competition for productivity (along with budgets getting smaller, but I’ll save that talk for next time.) But hear me out because this isn’t about extending your deadlines, quite the opposite. It’s about spending your timeline thinking instead of executing.
 
You see, somewhere between our caffeine obsession and our habits of clicking and typing and sitting in meetings, we stopped thinking. We have all tricked our bosses, our clients our co-workers and even ourselves into believing that if we are executing, we are working. If we are typing, we are doing. If we are meeting, we are accomplishing. In this hustle and bustle of executing and doing, we, as a culture, have stopped thinking.  And the less thinking we do, the more time we need to click, and type and sit in meetings. It’s that simple.
 

So about that doubling the timeline thing. Well, if not thinking up front takes more time to execute, then the same works in reverse. Take an example from my world. If my teams have a great big yummy campaign idea, it can be presented in many ways, even as a pencil sketch on napkin.  Yes, to a client if need be. Believe me you’re better off bringing a sketch a napkin and big idea to a presentation, than bunch of pretty pictures that everyone has seen before. Big ideas create their own momentum; like a law of physics. Big ideas have the inertia to present themselves. They also attract help; people want to be a part of better ideas, co-workers stay after work to help, vendors lower prices, and clients get friendlier (the ones that appreciate good work, mind you) and as an added bonus, great ideas actually work. Once the idea is in place, the executing is elementary. Trust me.
I guarantee you will spend less time to typing, clicking and sitting in meetings if you’ve spent the time it takes up front, thinking.
 
Give it try and let me know if it works. Put down the mouse, back away from the screen and give yourself an extra five minutes, hour, even a day to just work on the idea.
Then send me a pencil sketch on a cocktail napkin and tell me how it worked.

--
Written by Brantley Payne, Creative Director at Glass McClure. brantley@glassmcclure.com
Glass McClure is an independent full-service advertising, design and brand consultancy focused on creating buyers by developing unexpected ideas to deliver unexpected results.