A bad idea for brands: The logo contest.

November 21, 2009

by John Furgurson

Sometimes the most powerful case studies fall into the “what NOT to do” category. Take, for instance, a new branding initiative from the Australian Ministry of Tourism.

It’s a big deal down under.

This isn’t some neighborhood non-proft looking for a new logo for their newsletter. This is a multi-national marketing effort for a nation of 21 million people that consistently ranks as one of the world’s most popular nation-brands.

They’re going to spend 20 million dollars next year promoting their new brand to the rest of the world.  And they’re launching the effort with a logo contest. Grand prize: $2500.

What’s wrong with that picture? How much great branding work do you suppose they’ll get in exchange for a slim chance at $2500?

The problem with contests is they attract the youngest, hungriest designers with the skinniest portfolios around. Serious pros won’t touch it because it’s not enough money and the odds of success are too slim.

The Austrailian government received 362 entries and have now culled the uruly collection down to only 200 or so. (to see some entries click here: )

http://www.designbay.com/brand-australia-contest/

Beyond Kangaroos... Australia's new brand

But I’m not even going to address the subjective, artistic side of this. (I think the samples above say it all.)  Instead, let’s look at the steps in the branding process that are always ignored in a contest environment. Like brand strategy and a clearly defined creative brief.

Here’s what the brief says for the Australian assignment:

“Designers and contest participants should submit ideas for a contemporary Australia brand that captures the essence of the nation and presents Australia as a great place for living, holidaying, education, business, manufacturing, agriculture and investment. Submissions should articulate as clearly as possible Australia’s brand position in the context of the global marketplace and help the Government capture “the vibrancy, energy and creative talents of Australia”.

What brand position? How can they possibly “capture the essence of a nation” when there’s nothing on the website or on any links that even hints at a brand strategy document? The young art school grads are left to figure out the strategy on their own…

“Designers and contest participants may choose to spend time researching Australia and its current brand.”

“May choose to???  Any good branding firm would insist on it.

Research is the foundation of any truly professional branding effort. But the graphic designers who enter contests are not the people doing the research and the strategic thinking. It’s not in their DNA. They’re involved later in the artistic, execution phase. But if you skip the strategic piece, the designers have no direction. They’re just throwing darts, hoping something will stick.

Taglines are always a good reflection of the strategy. If the lines are random, like the list below, the strategy is clearly missing.

Australia  “The heart of many nations.”

Australia “Lighting up the world.”

Australia “Make it real.”

Australia  “Live it up down under.”

Australia “It’s real noice.”

Australia “The inside story”

Australia “It all happens here.”

Which is it?  Without a thorough brand strategy document it’s virtually impossible to judge the 362 taglines in any objective way.

And here’s where it gets really messed up. The public gets to vote! With no strategy, no experience and no information whatsoever, the average Joe gets a say in the branding of a nation.

I’ve often seen the results of these contests fail completely. The client pays the prize money but ends up with nothing useable. Then it’s back to the drawing board with a firm that actually knows what they’re doing.

Developing a brand strategy is not easy. It takes discipline, creativity and thorough research. But it’s a required element for success. Contest or no contest.

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Twitter me this… how do you define “guru” in social media marketing?

November 9, 2009

 by John Furgurson

Eleven years ago, in The Cluetrain Manifesto, Christopher Locke wrote, “the internet has made it possible for genuine human voices to be heard again.”

What do you mean, again? This is a first.

218553500_b2ee528066Never has the average Joe been afforded  unrestricted access to an audience any bigger than the neighborhood pub. This giant electronic soapbox known as the internet delivers a world-wide audience. Anyone can pontificate at will, on any subject, and potentially reach billions of people across the globe.

On one hand it’s the greatest thing since the invention of the radio broadcast.

On the other hand, it’s a can of worms. Since there’s no barrier to entry, there’s an awful lot of noise. 

Used to be, you had to get published to achieve guru status in any given line of work. And the editors in control were brutally picky. They didn’t let just anyone in. You had to have something to say, and a unique voice with which to say it.

Not online.

Any dumbass can start a blog on WordPress or Blogspot. That’s the essence of social media and “Web 2.0” — publishing is now free and open to anyone. (Some estimates have the number of blogs up to 100 million. And that doesn’t count the microblog sites like Twitter)

As the popularity of WordPress and Twitter explode, the quality of the dialog has not improved. Just the quantity. 

On some subjects, it’s too much information from too many questionable sources. For instance, you could never wade through all the chatter about Twitter, Facebook and social media marketing in general. “Will it help my small business? Can I build a brand around it? How do I do it? Can I generate leads on Twitter? Where’s it all going?”

I don’t know. But I know this: Just because you have a blog and a few thousand friends on Facebook doesn’t make you a social media marketing guru. There are no gurus in that field. It’s too new, too experimental. Guru status comes from wisdom, proven results and the perspective you can only get from lifelong experience. 

But there are a lot of wannabe rockstars. So if you’re a brand manager, marketing director or business owner trying to figure out that social media thing, beware. Many of those purported “experts” or “thought leaders” are just accomplished, online self-promoters riding the next big internet craze.

Here’s something else I know for a fact: Few people can communicate meaty, worthwhile thoughts in less than 140 characters. If they can, they were doing it way before social media was ever invented. They were the copywriters, the journalists, the humorists and the guru businessmen. The great communicators of the world who were published in books a lot bigger than Cluetrain.

Locke preached a sermon of hope for the digital pulpit. He predicted that the internet would forever shift the nature of business communications, and he envisioned a world where the consumer would have a voice and corporations would have to listen.

Pretty good crystal ball, he had.

Many great brands are embracing the online “conversation” and are getting better at communicating on a one-to-one level. They may not be the earliest adopters, but they’re catching on and beginning to respond to our wishes. If nothing else, they’re now painfully aware when people start spreading negative word-of-mouth.

But corporations don’t control the bulk of the internet conversation. It’s the average Joe on his soapbox with a big ego and a pay-per-click budget. Those businesses are popping up faster than you can say, “what happened to Myspace?” And unfortunately, many have the tone of a snake oil salesman.

In other words, despite the advances of social media, (or maybe because of the advances) there’s more phony crap out there than ever before.

The self-help industry. The diet programs. The plastic surgeons. The get-rich-quick guys. And my personal favorite, the golf swing gurus who can’t break 80. What a bunch of crackpots! Every Tin Cup wannabe has an instructional DVD or downloadable E-book available on the web. And they’re all “guaranteed to shave strokes off your game.”

Golf Digest wouldn’t publish any of them on a bet. Most wouldn’t even make it in the infomercial world. But they’re out there, sucking people in faster than the word can spread against them.

The tone is no better than the corporate spiel that Locke railed against in Cluetrain Manifesto. “The voice is like a third-rate actor in a 4th rate play reciting lines that no one believes in a manner no one respects.”

Yep. 

Sometimes I long for the good old days when websites weren’t free and there was some barrier to entry on the internet. But not really. We’ll all put up with some noise in exchange for the freedom that blogging has provided. Now I’m just hoping for a natural weeding out process.

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Marketing Strategy vs. Tactics

November 1, 2009

by John Furgurson

I’m appalled. A successful marketing guy asked me a question recently — a real no-brainer — which led me to believe he didn’t know the difference between strategy and tactics.

How can that be? He’s held several high-paying marketing positions. He’s college educated in Marketing 101. He’s gotta know this stuff.

So I started doing some research online and I’ve found the problem: The internet!

There’s more misinformation than information out there. More nonsense than common sense. Even some of the biggest gurus in the industry have posted conflicting information on the subject.

No wonder the guy’s confused. I ran across one article that listed “search engines” as a marketing strategy and that “long term strategies such as giving away freebies will continue to pay off years down the road.”

This isn’t just a matter of semantics, it’s negligence. Advice like that would never get past the editors of a trade publication for worm farmers, much less a brand-name business magazine.  But you can find it on-line!

In any case, the easiest way to clarify the difference between strategy and tactics is to go to the source. I’m sorry if the war analogy doesn’t appeal to you, but that’s where these terms came from, some 3,000 years ago.

Here’s how it breaks down: Goals first. Then strategy. Then tactics.

Goal: Win the war.

Strategy: “Divide and conquer.”

Tactics:

CIA spies gather intelligence.

Navy Seals knock out enemy communications.

Paratroopers secure the airports.

Armored Divisions race in and divide the opposing army’s forces.

Drone attacks take out the enemy leadership.

An overwhelming force of infantry invade.

Hand-to-hand combat.

A strategy is an idea… A conceptualization of how the goal could be achieved. Like “Divide and Conquer.” Another possible war strategy would be “Nuke ‘Em.” (They call them Strategic Nuclear Weapons because they pretty much eliminate the need for any further tactics.)

A tactic is an action you take to execute the strategy.

But let’s get off the battlefield and look at a successful brand…

images-2Back in the 70’s, executives at Church & Dwight Inc. noticed that sales of their popular Arm & Hammer baking soda were slipping. The loyal moms and grandmas who had been buying the same baking soda all their lives weren’t baking as much as they used to.

Business Goal:  Turn the tide and increase Baking Soda sales.

Strategy: Devise new reasons for their current customers to pick up that yellow box at the supermarket and use more baking soda. Specifically, sell Arm & Hammer as a deodorizer for the fridge. That’s a big, strategic idea that led Arm & Hammer in a completely different direction. They’re now marketing a whole line of environmentally friendly cleaning products. Every current Arm & Hammer product, from toothpaste to cat litter, originated with that strategy of finding new ways to use baking soda. And in the process, an old-fashioned brand has managed to stay relevant.

Tactics: TV advertising. Magazine ads. Infomercials. Retail promotions. Website dedicated to all the various uses of Arm & Hammer Baking Soda. All the traditional marketing tactics were employed.

All good marketing strategies share some common components:

• Thorough understanding of the brand’s status and story. Arm & Hammer has a strong heritage that dates back to the 1860’s. That yellow box with the red Arm & Hammer logo is instantly recognizable, and stands for much more than just generic sodium bicarbonate.

• A realistic assessment of the product’s strengths & weaknesses. Market research proved what Arm & Hammer executives suspected… that people don’t bake as much as they used to. But it also showed that people use their baking soda for all kinds of things besides baking. So why not leverage that?

• A clear picture of the competition. Arm & Hammer has always been the undisputed market leader in the category. However, when they decided to introduce toothpaste and laundry detergent, the competition became fierce. Arm & Hammer’s long-standing leadership position in one vertical market gave them a fighting chance against Procter & Gamble.

images• Intimate knowledge of the consumer and the market. The shift away from the traditional American homemaker directly affected baking soda sales. Church & Dwight kept up with the trends, and even led the charge on environmental issues.

• A grasp of the big-picture business implications. Good strategies reach way beyond the marketing department. When you have a big idea, execution of the strategy will inevitably involve operations, R&D, HR, finance and every other business discipline.

A great strategy does not depend on brilliant tactics for success. If the idea is strong enough, you can get by with mediocre tactical execution. However, even the best tactics can’t compensate for a lousy strategy.

Some people confuse marketing strategy with goals.  They are not synonymous. Here are a few examples from misguided on-line sources:

“Create awareness”

“Overcome objections”

“Boost consumer confidence”

These are NOT strategies, they’re goals. (And not even very good goals.) Remember, it’s not a strategy unless there’s an idea behind it.

Any number of strategies can be used to achieve a business goal. In fact, it often takes more than one strategy to achieve a lofty goal, and each strategy involves its own unique tactical plan. Unfortunately, a lot of marketing managers simply throw together a list of the tactics they’ve always used, and call it a strategy.

Sometimes you can build a hell of a strategy around a simple, tactical idea. Like Dominoes did with their 30-minute delivery guarantee. Someone said, “Hey, what if we guaranteed 30-minute delivery?” and a strategy was born.  They couldn’t compete on product quality, but they could compete on speedy delivery. After that, their entire operation revolved around the promise of 30-minute delivery.

If you’re still wondering about the difference between strategy and tactics, try the “what-if” test. “What if we came up with a bunch of new uses for baking soda?”  That’s a strategy.

“What if we search engine” doesn’t make sense. Must be a tactic. “What if we increase market share?”  No idea, must be a goal.

What if we could screen all web content for factual errors?

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On-line shopping — The best thing ever for MANkind.

October 26, 2009

by John Furgurson

Twenty five years ago I couldn’t imagine getting all my Christmas shopping done from the comfort of the man den. The idea of a world without malls was pure fantasy, right up there with that scene from Flashdance where Jennifer Beals dances in place until she’s raining sweat.

But today, it’s reality. Men really do have an alternative to the drudgery of shopping. It’s called e-commerce.caveman

For men, shopping harkens back to cro-Magnon days when we’d hunt down the things we NEEDED to survive. Men shop alone, in order to be more stealthy and less visible to people who might recognize us. We know what we want and we go out and get it… Essentials like tools, sporting goods and electronic gadgets. It’s a focused, goal-oriented, testosterone-producing activity. But only after the prize is in the bag.

Women go out in groups and gather things they might need someday, during an unusually hard winter. Frivolous stuff like bed skirts and duvet covers. It’s part of their natural, nesting instincts. They can happily browse for hours without buying anything, because shopping fulfills a physical need for women. Recent brain research is conclusive on this… An afternoon at the mall with friends produces oxytocin —  a chemical in the brain known as the cuddling hormone.

Googling “bargain jeans” just isn’t the same.

On-line shopping doesn’t offer the same psychological, sociological and even anthropological benefits that women get from traditional shopping trips. Let’s face it,  websites are more logical than they are intuitive. The whole on-line thing is more geared to the male brain than the female brain. It’s the nature of the beast.

Few on-line retailers establish the emotional connection women really need. Nancy F. Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School who studies retailing and consumer habits, said that online shopping is more a chore than an escape. “It’s not like you think: ‘I’m a little depressed. I’ll go onto Amazon.com and get transported.” 

Koehn said that while traditional retailers have made the in-person buying experience more pleasurable, online stores have continued to give shoppers a blasé experience.  Well guess what… Men don’t care! They’re not looking for an “experience,” they’re looking for a trophy on the wall.

The last thing men need is a true shopping “experience.” That’s what we’ve been trying to avoid all these years. That’s what we know as sitting outside the outlet mall waiting for the women to return after an hour and a half in the Dress Barn.

In better retail environments, lighting, store layout, background music, graphics and good customer service all work together to make shopping a pleasant, sensory experience that appeals to the emotional center of a women’s brain. It’s a real art.

Unfortunately, most on-line stores are slapped together about as well as a Mexican convenience store. If it weren’t for men, half of those sites would be out of business entirely.

According to Forrester Research, men spend more and take less time than women to make on-line purchases. And once a sale is made, men return only 10% of apparel purchases, while women return more than 20%. As to spending, another market research group found that men dropped an average of $2,400 online compared to women who spent closer to $1,500 in the same, three-month span.

Don’t quibble over price, just locate the target and make the kill. Get in get out.

Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time with sites that present a thousand random choices, right off the bat. Too many choices slows the decision-making process and leads to frustration for men. It’s like standing in the beer isle in an Oregon grocery store … there are so many choices of micro-brews it’s almost ridiculous. Ales, IPAs, Hefes, Lagers, Pilsners, Stouts, Browns and Ambers in a crazy array of packages from all over the world. It’s too much information. 

That’s one reason men love brand name products, brand name stores, brand name sites and brand-name beer: We trust the brand to narrow the choices for us and provide some degree of quality control. (Anything from Deschutes Brewery is good.)

When I shop at REI, online or offline, I know I don’t have to wade through a bunch of crap before I find the quality products. It’s all good, because it’s REI. In the brick & mortar world, the choices are limited by the physical floor space. An REI shoe buyer has room for only so many different styles and prices points, so that’s all you get to choose from. There’s no such limitations in the on-line world.

Zappos claims to have 1,095 brands, 165,722 styles, 906,874 UPCs and 2,957,471 products. That might work for women who make shoe shopping a pseudo-profession, but guys want those choices narrowed down.

Forrester Research reports that 70 percent of online consumers research their purchases on-line, then buy off-line. This so-called “clicks-and-bricks” hybrid model is classic male behavior. But it’s not really shopping, it’s research. 

So where’s it all going?

Less than four percent of all retail sales are currently made on-line — a reassuring stat for traditional retail businesses. If you have an e-commerce company, look at it this way… you’ve hardly scratched the surface.

If your product line and/or brand appeals to women you have to work hard to establish an emotional connection and emulate the mall experience as close as possible. But realize, e-commerce will never replace the real thing. 

If your on-line store is more male-oriented your job’s a little easier. Keep your product selection focused — don’t try to be all things to all men. Offer brand name products and establish your own brand as a name to trust.

And give guys a way to avoid the mall altogether… they’ll reward you for it in the end.

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If you got hit by a bus, what would happen to your brand?

October 9, 2009

by John Furgurson

Death and taxes. Death and taxes. The two are always lumped together as inevitable parts of life. So why, as business people, do we obsess over taxes and ignore the issue of death?

Nothing derails a small business faster, and more dramatically, than death. When a partner or key employee dies, or experiences a death in the family, the business suffers. No two ways about it. The question is, is your brand strong enough to survive a devastating personal loss? 

My dentist lost his 3-year-old daughter in a drowning accident.  How do you go back to drilling teeth after that?

My cousin lost his mom to liver cancer. He’s taking a 12-week leave from Amazon.com. (They won’t even notice)

My business partner lost her 14-year old son to a rare form of brain cancer. Promoting flea and tick products for big pharma just isn’t on her radar.

Children. Siblings. Parents. Clients. Close friends. When you lose them, you also lose hard-fought momentum, motivation and money if you’re in business for yourself. And chances are, you won’t even care.

All those niggling managerial details that seemed like a high priority will almost certainly fall by the wayside. Clients and vendors are usually very forgiving in times like that, but if you don’t have some kind of contingency plan, you’re liable to experience yet another loss… of your business.

Personal loss is particularly hard on professional service businesses. Imagine a key attorney in a small law firm. A star architect. A senior executive recruiter with a big, fat rolodex. These key players are often the lifeblood of a company. Or as CFOs like to call them, “irreplacable assets.” When those people go, the brand goes with them.

So what can you do?

Before you get too depressed to read on, here are some tips on how to build a brand that will withstand loss of all sorts.

  1. Make it about more than just money. Great brands stand for something beyond business. There are values built into the brand that transcend time and personnel. Patagonia for instance… if Yvonne Chounard were to die in a climbing accident, the brand would endure. Not just because it’s a big company, but because they have a large clan of customers and employees who share the company’s core values.
  2. Have a better hiring strategy. You want people who share your values and your vision, not your management style. Rather than hiring clones of yourself, find people smarter than yourself, with diverse backgrounds, experience and style. That way you’ll achieve some balance in the organization and it’ll be easier to fill a void, if something happens.
  3. Keep your story straight. Too many companies get fixated on their logo and forget about the brand story they have to tell. Logos change and evolve, but the core brand story should always stay consistent. Unfortunately, many C-level executives can’t articulate their brand story. Even Richard Branson has a hard time with the question, “what’s the Virgin brand about.” So before something bad happens, put it down on paper. Hire someone to help you craft the story, and then stick with it.
  4. Build strong alliances. Successful companies tend to have a large number of brand affiliations.  They don’t operate in a vacuum. The more companies, people, brands and causes that you are affiliated with, the more support you’ll have in tough times. But don’t forget… all those affiliations need to be aligned with your brand. You don’t want just random alliances.
  5. Devise a succession plan before you need it. It’s kind of ironic… in order to get funding, start-ups have to include a slide about their exit strategy. And it’s usually pie in the sky stuff. But many established businesses that are actually good targets for acquisitions, never even think about succession. It’s one of those painful things that always gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do pile. But you need to make time for it. If you’re an owner, a manager, or just an employee, you need to know what would happen in the worst-case scenario.

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