DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND

How to Create Customer Insistence through Internal Employee Brand Engagement!
By Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder, The Brand Ascension Group

Building a brand in today’s global market is very different from what it used to be. No longer can an organization expect marketing to do the work of branding. Marketing is important for communicating and spreading your brand’s message, piquing the interest of and acquiring new customers, however, the sheer effort of marketing doesn’t create a unique culture, systems and processes, nor deliver memorable brand experiences that keep customers coming back for more. That’s why the function of brand definition and development is critical prior to the creative efforts of marketing.

Branding is the process of defining and consistently living your brand’s message at the internal level through your employees to build the ever sought-after customer DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND.

With the infusion of the internet into just about everything we do and social media connecting people across the globe, every business is highly exposed to anything and everything that is said about them.  Like it or not, all humans are emotional creatures. Everyone loves a good story whether positive or negative. Stories can spread like wildfire and make or break a brand’s reputation, empowering consumers to make snap decisions on whether to do business with you or your competitor. Talk about the creation of a new level of transparency for businesses. No longer can any business hide behind a clever marketing campaign to create DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND.

Consider the following true story (that has been all over the internet for some time) about a musician, Dave Carroll on a flight from Nova Scotia to Nebraska, U.S. who claimed the airline broke his guitar that was valued around $3,500. He spent several months trying to get the airline to make the situation right, to no avail. So, Mr. Carroll and his band recorded a song about the incident and posted it on YouTube. Needless to say, once the airline caught wind of the post it immediately contacted Mr. Carroll to make the situation right.

According to buzzstudy.com, their analysis of the web chatter on this airline brand showed a dramatic spike for many days following the post; creating a flurry of negative press for this carrier which could have been avoided if they had made the situation right for the customer in the first place.  Situations like these can have a negative effect on any brand. In the airline industry, many of us have come to accept and expect bad experiences. It seems like the status quo, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Situations like these can easily be avoided by making sure your employees understand what your brand stands for and are empowered to deliver whatever it takes to deliver on it—including doing what it takes to make it right for the customer.

So, I think we can conclude that no longer are the days of companies buying their way through a clever marketing campaign to create DEMAND FOR THE BRAND. We’re living in an emotionally charged experience economy that’s moving at lightning speed. More often than not, marketing campaigns promise one thing, while the customer experiences something different. These campaigns are short-lived and a waste of a lot of time and money.

Creating demand for your brand is about forming a strong emotional bond with your customers. As emotional creatures your customers are forming impressions of your brand at every touch point. The best way to create customer demand is to engage your employees to get behind your brand and establish that emotional connection by delivering positively memorable experiences that delight your customers.

You’ve got to wow your customers at every possible opportunity. Your employees are the life-blood of the business and are crucial to its success. All the money spent on marketing messages cannot create insistence for your brand without the internal brand strategies to back up those messages. Marketing won’t create a culture of engaged employees that live and breathe the essence of your brand consistently. You have to start internally to get your employees behind your brand and cultivate the culture that will behave in ways that affirm and continue to reaffirm your brand.

So how do you create DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND through a culture of committed and engaged employees? Here are four simple steps:

1.    Define the Essence of Your Brand—your unique Brand DNA.

Engaged employees understand the essence of the brand. By understanding the essence of your brand and being empowered through a set of shared values and standards to deliver on that essence, they will instinctively know how to act on those values, despite any procedures manual you may have. Procedures are guidelines but they shouldn’t take the place of using common sense to delight customers. Let’s take for example a Brand Essence expressed in 3-5 highly descriptive words (like a mantra) that every employee can immediately comprehend. Take a look at these examples of some our clients to illustrate the point. We refer to these as Brand Platforms. See the clarity and emotionally charged feeling they convey:

• Excellence, Simply Mind-blowing Experience
• E3 – Entertain, Engage, Excel!
• D2D – Driven to Deliver!
• ESP – Extraordinary Solutions + Partnerships
• C.A.R.E.S – Community, Accountability, Respect, Empowerment, Service

Each of these examples can give employees a clear focus on what these brands stand for. It’s important to dig deep to uncover your unique Brand DNA—your values, your style or personality as a brand, your differentiators, and your standards of performance, your Brand Platform and Promise. However, it doesn’t stop there; your Brand DNA is the blueprint that needs to be embedded into every facet of your organization. There needs to be some teeth behind how you and your employees deliver on what the brand stands for through distinctive and consistent behaviors.

2.    Ensure Effective On-going Communication

Leverage every opportunity to communicate the essence of your brand and reaffirm the message. There are a variety of ways to do so—through your orientation or on-boarding process, your employee handbook, town hall meetings, daily interactions and team meetings. If you are a larger organization, bring together Marketing, HR and Communications to develop a well-thought out process for communicating your brand through all the internal vehicles available.

Be creative, leverage your internal newsletter, your website or intranet to speak about what you stand for; consider developing a brand-relevant DVD that explains the attributes of your brand for employees or a branded mascot that serves to champion and express the essence of the brand. Get the information out there on what your brand stands for and do it continually. Repetition is golden.

One of our clients has created a cartoon character named Elena E3! Based on their Brand Platform: Entertain, Engage, Excel!  She is the official brand champion representative and even has her own email address. She acts as the ‘cheerleader’ for the brand and regularly sends out messages, appears on videos and through emails reminding and empowering the employees to live the brand. So far, this has been a very successful internal campaign to keep the essence of the brand top of mind.

Communication should always be two-way. Give your employees opportunities to ask questions and express ideas in a proactive and productive manner, and provide feedback.

3.    Develop and Implement Branded Service Training to Deliver on the Brand Experience

Develop a fun, experiential and highly interactive training process for all employees to better understand, embrace and deliver a branded service experience both internally and externally that reflects the essence of the brand.  Convey the importance of how you can differentiate your brand behaviorally at every touch point.

An effective branded service training program incorporates a variety of activities by applying the different modalities for adult learning (i.e., visual, auditory, intellectual and kinesthetic) to help employees understand what it takes to deliver the desired branded experience, such as:

• Role playing training/scenarios at key touch points to help employees learn behaviors that reflect the brand.
• Developing a distinctive ‘brand speak’ that can be incorporated into daily interactions with other employees and customers.
• Communications etiquette both in oral and written form.
• Emotional intelligence understanding/training to help your employees enhance their self-awareness and self-management, as well as develop more social awareness and relationship management skills when interacting with one another and customers.
• Understanding/reading body language.
• Personal image and professional presence that reflect the brand.
• How to interpret and adapt individual style that complements your brand’s overall style.

Training in these areas can go a long way in channeling employees’ energies and how they manage their behaviors with one another and your customers—creating that ever coveted DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND.

4.    Reinforce the Desired Brand Behaviors

Recognition can go a long way. Make sure you have a recognition program that is highly brand-relevant. A well-designed and effectively administered recognition program can have many positive results such as:

• More proactive, fully engaged employees
• Fosters channels of communication
• Increases productivity
• Motivates employees to believe in the brand and achieve more
• Reinforces your brand’s attributes (i.e., values, style, culture, brand essence, etc.)
• Creates camaraderie
• Builds a culture of trust, confidence and appreciation
• Acknowledges positive behaviors that support the brand
• Builds mutual commitments and relationships
• Improves employee and customer satisfaction
• Boosts sales and bottom-line performance

A recognition program doesn’t have to be solely financially focused. In fact, recognition can take a variety of forms.

Identify and establish the right mix and array of creative vehicles. Best practices suggest as much personalization as possible.

Get your employees involved in developing the program. Consider a variety of fun awards, celebrations, ‘kudos’, parties, personalized gifts, thank you notes, simple praises, regular internal press releases, external customer press releases, certificates. You’ll be amazed at the how creative you can get.

Following these simple steps will enable you create and sustain DEMAND FOR YOUR BRAND!

Contact Details
Phone: +1 719.748.2290
Email: Info@BrandAscension.com
Website: www.BrandAscension.com

Employee Team Motivation in Tough Times

There are sure fire ways to motivate your employee team and keep them highly focused. The key piece to this is undergoing a internal brand-defining initiative. This process will awake and re-energize your team to take ownership in the brand they represent. We have seen amazing paradigm shifts in employee cultures when they begin to truly understand and CONTRIBUTE to what the brand stands for.

Too many businesses, unfortunately, do not take the time to create the brand foundation and provide an clear definition of its own Brand DNA. How can employees truly embrace an employer, especially when times are tough, when they don’t clearly understand what the brand stands for? Through our proprietary, step-by-step, online course you can engage your employee team through powerful experiential brand-defining activities that not only build teams, but help them get crystal clear on the brand and take ownership of its success. This process re-ignites the meaning and depth of your brand and re-energizes it through unique behaviors and actions that help you create more consistency and distinction in your marketplace.

I highly encourage you to check out this comprehensive MISSING PIECE in small business growth. http://www.BrandAscension.com – Would love to speak to you personally, you can reach me at Suzanne@BrandAscension.com.

A mere 5% increase in your customer retention translate anywhere between 25%-100% increase in your bottom-line.

 What can you do to take advantage of this statistic?

• Identify why your best customers come back (with a casual one-on-one survey question), then create a ‘loyalty campaign’ and referral reward program leveraging your brand’s key loyalty attributes. Define what exactly your reward/incentive would be (relevant to your brand style of course)  and have fun issuing those rewards to customers who refer others!

Share with us your most successful referral reward program!

THE ROI OF INTERNAL BRAND ALIGNMENT: A SYMPHONIC MASTERPIECE

Learn to profit from the synchronicity of brand harmony
and rhythm within your organization.
By Suzanne Tulien, Principal & Co-Founder

They say that music is a universal language. That all humans can relate to rhythms, beats, and tones and pace at an emotional level. We all know that music can cause an eruption of tears, build heightened states of energy, slow things down, and relax even the most wound up children. Why is this important and how does it relate to your brand? Good question.

The music concept is important in the creation of a highly relevant analogy that will creatively explain the underlying value of conscious, strategic internal brand strategies within your business. It relates to your brand because everything you do in your business contributes too, or takes away from the value of your brand.

I started thinking about this analogy when a prospective client asked a simple question regarding one of our proposed approaches to defining and aligning his internal brand with his external marketing promises. He asked, “What is my return on investment?” It was then I realized I had to put it into simpler terms and get them beyond thinking about just the bottom-line, at any given snapshot in time, and more about the organization as a whole. So I started thinking…

The very next day, while I was flipping through our XM channels trying to get a sense for what genre I was in the mood for, I came across a station playing popular symphonies. I happen to tune in during a live interview being broadcast from a music hall with the highly recognizable sounds of musicians individually tuning and rehearsing for the next set. You know, that random collection of various instruments practicing from a different area of the sheet music all at the same time.  That’s when it struck me!

THE POWER OF THE COLLECTIVE.

When I thought about the internal operations, the culture, the systems and processes of many of business brands, I realized I could liken them to the individual musicians tuning and rehearsing their own instruments prior to joining the orchestra. You see, each musician has their own part they play, their own expertise they provide, and their own sound contribution. Like a business with several departments, areas of expertise, and a variety of functions each employee plays, they are each responsible for providing their own contribution to the overall brand.  But what brings these employees together to function efficiently, productively, and energetically tuned specifically for the overall benefit of the brand?

When the orchestra musicians are satisfied with their tuning, they come together, each to the same page of music, and eagerly await the maestro’s masterful guidance in aligning them to play in perfect unison, creating a symphonic masterpiece, such as in Beethoven’s No. 9. The outputs result in an amazing experience for the audience, often taking their breath away and leaving them with an explosive and beautiful auditory and visual experience.

Who within your Business Brand is your maestro? Are your employees constantly tuning their own areas of expertise or are they working in unison to compose and deliver an unforgettable customer experience?

WALKING YOUR BRAND TALK.

Steve Mckee, President of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, recently wrote an article stating the seven key reasons ‘Why Your Advertising Isn’t Working.’ In the seventh reason he hit one of the most common, but least attended to issues of dissonance customers have with a brand…

7. “It’s not an advertising problem. A common mistake many companies make is trying to use advertising to fix another problem. It may be faulty or outdated product design, an uncompetitive cost structure, customer service letdowns, or any number of other things. It’s not as if they do so intentionally; it’s just that it’s a whole lot easier to put on a new coat of paint than it is to fix the foundation that’s causing the drywall to crack. No company executes flawlessly, but until you can maintain a solid track record of excellence, spend your money on internal improvements rather than advertising. Paint may mask the problem for a short time, but soon new cracks will begin to appear.”

 
His point is powerful and clearly stated, but unfortunately sorely attended to within organizations generally because it is difficult to know where to begin within the brand to bring the ‘orchestra of employees’ together to create the masterpiece experience for the customer, consistently.

We see this all the time. Advertising and marketing dollars are continuously used in efforts to mitigate a growth problem and it becomes a never-ending game of customer acquisition. Instead we ask that you consider the alternative; by focusing on customer retention techniques through internal brand definition and strategic implementation throughout all facets of the organization. An action such as this will engage your employees, provide a crystal clear branded ‘symphony’ to play from, and create positive, beautiful outputs that move your customers to buy more, return more often and tell their friends. What is our learning point? Stop marketing, for now, start BRANDING…from the inside out. Build a branded foundational masterpiece that will increase your marketing ROI by aligning its operations and behaviors to empower your brand to walk its talk.

Remember, 94% of your customers WANT TO BE LOYAL. Enhance their reasons to.

Here are a few things you can do now to kick-start the process:

1. Implement a customer ‘touch-point’ audit and discover all the areas and stages your brand reaches the customer (e.g., phone, invoice, on-site environment, employees, follow-up, referral programs, special events, transactional experiences, etc.)
2. Get your leadership team together and ask the question: ‘What ONE WORD do we want to own in the minds of our market?’
3. Get creative! Use that word as your basis for creating relevant behaviors and actions that express and elevate it through each of those ‘touch-point’ areas you listed in your touch-point audit.

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE OVER WHEN THE FAT LADY SINGS, IT COULD BE JUST THE BEGINNING.

DO STRONG BRANDED CULTURES DELIVER BETTER PERFORMANCE?

A testament to brand awareness practices
within your employee culture

By Carol Chapman, Principal & Co-founder, The Brand Ascension Group

In Jim Collins business best-seller, Good to Great, there are three key dimensions common among companies he studied that have made huge leaps in performance over the competition and sustained them over a long period of time—15 years or more.  These dimensions are:

1. What you can be best at in the world
2. What drives your economic engine
3. What sparks the passion of your people

At The Brand Ascension Group, we believe all three dimensions are connected to the power of an organization’s culture—a shared and expressed set of values, behaviors and actions reflective of your unique Brand DNA, the essence of who you are as a brand.  To build on Collin’s research, organizations that consistently deliver on-brand (i.e., what you promise to deliver at every internal and external touch point) share the following characteristics:

• Employees who have clear sense of purpose and passion for what the brand stands for
• Employees who are inspired and motivated to deliver on what the brand is best at
• Employees who consciously and collectively create a winning strategy (through behaviors, internal practices, systems and processes) to produce great performance results

Consider the following research that creates a compelling case for strong branded-cultures and their ability deliver higher levels of business performance:

Companies with high levels of employee trust, understanding and belief [in their brand], perform better [company earnings] than companies with low levels by as much as 186%.  Source: Watson Wyatt Worldwide.

“Deloitte Consulting tracked shareholder returns of the 56 publicly traded companies on the *2005 100 Best Companies to Work For list. These companies not only consistently beat the S&P 500, but they walloped them.”
   Source: Fortune Magazine January 2006.

The data for the Deloitte study was captured over a 10 year period. These are companies where employees are highly valued and appreciated and it shows in their placement on the 100 Best Companies to Work For list. Deloitte’s analysis of these companies demonstrates how much better they delivered financially over the S&P 500 in returns to shareholders. These are companies that have created great cultures.

Selection of the 100 Best Companies to Work For list is administered by The Great Place to Work Institute. There are two components used to assess who gets on the list:

1. The Great Place to Work® Trust Index©.  This is an employee survey conducted by the Institute within the company. This survey measures the level of trust, pride, and camaraderie within the organization.
2. The Great Place to Work® Culture Audit©. This is a management questionnaire that asks key questions to understand the overall culture of an organization. 

This research shows that companies are built and sustained by not just a focus on the numbers, but by channeling the energies and passion of their people through strong branded-cultures. Cultures that are highly engaged to deliver on what the brand stands for.

In Wikipedia, culture is defined as the “shared set of attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group”.  We believe the following  are great examples of companies with strong branded cultures:

EXAMPLE #1:
ZAPPOS.COM – Founded in 1999, by 2008 they exceeded $1B in revenues. They applied for Fortune’s 2009 100 Best Companies to Work for List and made the cut, coming in at #23. They had not previously been on the list.

Their Brand Mantra is “At Zappos.com, Customer Service Is Everything. In Fact, It’s The Entire Company.” They have 10 core values that serve as a code of honor and are a critical part of their Brand DNA blue-print and what keeps their customers coming back for more. In fact, they say that 75% of purchases are from repeat customers. Check them out at www.zappos.com. They’ve only been in business 10 years and just recently announced that they would join forces with Amazon.com, retaining the brand as a separate entity-because of the equity it has built through its culture.

What’s the reason for their success? Their employees support the brand 100+% through their behaviors and actions, their customer relationship practices, all of which are a reflection of their brand values.
Their values reflect how they do business, how they support one another and how they do business with their customers. Their employees go through extensive training on each of the 10 core values. This training occurs as soon as they come onboard. Every employee goes through this training. Regardless of the job everyone also gets the opportunity to experience the call center environment—the real heart of their business.

Let’s go inside Zappos.com to explore their culture more deeply:

• They thrive on building a positive team spirit. They celebrate who they are and their successes on a daily basis and through various company events, conferences and holidays over the course of each year.
• One of their core values is “Create Fun and a Little Weirdness”. It’s not surprising they speak about spending time with their colleagues outside the office to get to know one another—sort of an extended family bonding process.  A great way to live up to this core value!
• The Zappos.com Culture Blog gives all employees the opportunity to see what they refer to as a “play hard” side of their lives. This is also how they express themselves and that bit of weirdness and fun on a day to day basis. Tony Hsieh (their CEO) also has a blog and communicates regularly to employees and others outside the company. He is also on Twitter too! – communicating to the world about what they stand for as a brand and how their organization is “Powered by Culture”—their tagline.

EXAMPLE #2:
CISCO – Founded in 1984, is more than just a company providing a network of routers that carry information across the internet for its customers. They are an $8.5Billion company that emotionally connects to their customers and employees by innovatively expressing the benefits of what they do through their Brand Mantra: “the human network effect”. They are all about collaboration of ideas and bringing the world of people and passions together to solve problems. They recognize that the key to creating these emotional connections rests in its dedication to sustaining a strong branded-culture.

Cisco’s belief is that “while market transitions evolve and change over time, the components of their culture remain consistent.” www.cisco.com. Their core values and DNA expressed through their Code of Business Conduct are the basis for how they deliver the brand experience both internally and externally. It’s also a key driver to creating long-lasting customer partnerships and satisfaction in meeting customer needs. They foster community and engagement (connecting and collaborating) through their employee culture in the following ways:

• Annual employee survey capturing and measuring employee satisfaction across a number of key workplace dimensions. They focus on continual improvement and raise the needle yearly. Employee satisfaction is currently at an all time high of 87% favorable.
• The employee survey is augmented with employee focus groups to identify how to improve employee engagement and create more satisfying work practices to meet employee needs and promote work/life balance. It has generated numerous ideas, including an integrated childcare, fitness, and employee health center.
• The “I-Zone” (Idea Zone) – an interactive online forum which provides all employees the opportunity to submit innovative ideas on new products and build off of others ideas. To date, employees have submitted more than 500 ideas, some of which have led to the company’s most innovative emerging technologies. 
• Cisco employees give back regularly by volunteering for community service initiatives. The volunteer hours increase yearly. This plays an important part in demonstrating the outputs of what they stand for as a culture and company by contributing to their communities.

Both Zappos.com and Cisco are companies that have a commitment to building and sustaining strong branded-cultures through positive employee engagement practices that reflect the essence of their brand. They understand that consistency in their values and DNA as a brand are essential to the continued trust they foster and sustain with their employees and customers. Yet they know their cultures have to constantly innovate and adapt to changing market conditions to service the needs of their customers.

Strong branded cultures don’t just have engaged employees. They aren’t just passionate or proud of their brand. Even more so, they have a clear understanding of the brand’s purpose and vision with a clear line-of-sight as to how they contribute to the success of the brand, and they’re empowered to deliver!
 

Build your strong branded culture to deliver consistently on what you stand for:

1. Define and communicate your values and unique Brand DNA to your employees—the essence of what your brand stands for.  See http://www.brandascension.com/Brand_DNA_Process.html  for more information on Brand DNA. Make sure this definition is expressed and shared in your new employee on-boarding process, your employee handbook, employee meetings and through other communication vehicles. 
2. Engage your employees to embrace and live your brand. Regularly speak about what you stand for in team or town hall meetings. Walk the talk! Reinforce their engagement through a brand-relevant recognition program to celebrate brand successes.
3. Connect them to the strategic vision of your brand by showing them a clear-of-sight in how their individual role links to team and business goals. Set individual performance objectives and measure progress against objectives.
4. Establish/refine your systems and processes so they enable your employees to deliver on what your brand stands for at every internal and external touch point. Periodically assess how your internal processes support your brand and make adjustments accordingly.
5. Empower your employees to deliver on the brand experience you promise. Give them leeway to express the brand experience at every opportunity, thus delighting one another and your customers.

You’ll be amazed at the results!

Contact BA Group at info@BrandAscension.com for more information how to define your Brand DNA and build a strong branded culture that consistently delivers on what your brand stands for.

WHAT’S THE ‘DIFF?’

Creating competitive advantage through a Values-led vs. Goals-led approach!                                           
By Suzanne Tulien, Principal and co-Founder of The Brand Ascension Group

This article was spawned once again from an experience that jarred me to thinking about the power of brand differentiators and how so many small business owners have an enormous opportunity to leverage and capitalize on them….but just don’t.  For one reason or another, the same old issue creeps into many small business offices, retail space, mind sets, and employees; “I don’t have time to work ON my business brand, because I am too busy working IN it!”  I am writing to our valued audiences and shouting from a mountain top “You cannot AFFORD NOT to work ON your business brand!”

Phew! Now that felt better! I hope you were able to hear my authenticity, passion, and urgent tone in that message from all these miles away!  This article is going to be short and sweet with some key examples of our client, and non-client differentiators with points about how they are creating their competitive advantage with a little bit of consciousness around consistent distinction.

I recently heard an interview with Stephen Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People, and one amazing concept bounced right out of the CD and hit me across the face while I was driving in my car. I had to hit the back-track button and hear it again as its power began to sink in. He says,

“You cannot effectively solve problems you continuously BEHAVE yourself into.”

Read that again. Is it me, or is this not a truly profound way of thinking about changing behaviors to reach your next level of success? Now is the time to begin consciously realizing what you are doing day to day to innovate, strategize, and move your business to the next level as CEO of your company – that is YOUR job.

One of those ways is what this article is about; digging deep to uncover and leverage your true brand differentiators! Some of you on our e-newsletter list have gone through our Brand DNA program which features an entire area on this activity. It is often transformational to the business in that the outputs create a paradigm shift in how the business sees itself and begins to operate. But again, as always the true test in the power of this activity is ACTIONING it consistently.

The other day I was thumbing through the latest Oprah magazine and spotted a rare, but highly on-point ad from Starbucks that read: 

“IF YOUR COFFEE ISN’T PERFECT, WE’LL MAKE IT OVER. IF IT’S STILL NOT PERFECT, YOU MUST NOT BE IN A STARBUCKS….It’s not just coffee, it’s STARBUCKS.”

Now, these just aren’t words on paper, they live and breathe this differentiator, so much so, that they train their ‘partners’ (employees) to ask patrons consistently if the product is perfect. Do you see how this exposes Starbucks to be vulnerable? They are literally asking for a judgment by the client right there and then – but the mere action of this creates a unique, yet humbling perception of the brand in the client’s mind.

This differentiator evolved out of a value attribute they call ‘Legendary Service.’ Starbucks knows they aren’t perfect 100% of the time, but has created a process to ensure the client can express an opinion that gives Starbucks the opportunity to ALWAYS be perfect in their minds! See how this works? Ingenious!

One of our Brand DNA graduate clients uncovered some powerful internally focused differentiators that were never before brought to the forefront of their brand. One of those differentiators discovered was employee tenure:  over 50% of their employees have been there for 6 years, and 20% of their employees have been with the company  for over 10 years! This is unique in their industry and a big plus for the clients doing business with them, adding a perception of stability and continuity in customer relationships, which this brand prides itself in. Another differentiator related to their employees is that they PAY 100% of employee healthcare benefits! That differentiator is becoming rarer in this economy, but a huge nugget to leverage themselves when it comes to hiring great talent, particularly with the rising costs of healthcare!

On the external side – through a discovery process, their team realized that their products were in every pc and cell phone on the planet! Wow! What a great marketing message to leverage in their advertising, web site, and sales team! Secondly, they’ve dissected the numbers tracked on their current clients and realized they have a 90+% retention rate; another key differentiator creating competitive advantage. These days that kind of customer loyalty is unheard of. These are just a few examples to illustrate a level of consciousness that occurs when you begin focusing efforts working ON your business versus IN it.

A web site based Brand DNA graduate client knew that its complex data delivery was powerful, but never really thought about detailing out the uniqueness in its characteristics to expose their visitors to the benefits, the true W.I.I.F.M. (‘What’s in it for me’). Now, without revealing any trade secrets about their proprietary database model, they were able to tout key benefits highlighting the characteristics to the site visitor and re-affirming the unique value of the brand.

If you had this company’s completed Brand DNA blueprint (or any of the other examples), you would clearly see that the above differentiator evolved from their Value (Community, Balance, Integrity) and Style (Collaborative, Pioneering, Authentic) attributes.

KEY LEARNING POINT: When organizations build their business brands from a values-led (or principle-led) vs. a goals-led standpoint, the strength, consistency, and sincerity of its behaviors evolves organically. The secret is in the Brand DNA defining process, getting crystal clear on what you stand for as a brand and integrating it into all facets of your business; thus taking relevant action to make it tangible for all stakeholders to experience.

I don’t know about you, but when I have my customer shoes on and I experience a unique, positive, sometimes awe-inspiring situation that creates an emotional connection between me and the brand I’m doing business with, I could swear I am in the TWILIGHT ZONE! Unfortunately, in my opinion, it is all too rare when it does occur and it feels like an anomaly.  But when it  does happen, I feel like a scientist discovering a new species and I make an immediate mental note about the perception I have of that  brand to ensure I come back often and tell my friends.

I would be remiss to write this article and not provide you a list of some areas you can begin to flush out, in detail, where you have a true differentiator hiding in your file drawers, or under your computer somewhere! Read through the few areas listed below and see if you can uncover one or two key differentiators that, when actioned, can create a unique competitive advantage in the minds of your customers.

1. LONGEVITY: What  point of difference do you own in the market that is sustainable over time, can get better with age, and will not quickly become irrelevant, out of style, or out of mind?
2. DISTINCTIVE OR ONE-OF-A-KIND SKILL SETS:  What  quality attributes, credentials, awards, etc., distinguish you from all others in your industry category?  (i.e., no one else can lay claim to how you do it!)
3. PROPRIETARY INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL:  What do you possess and that you can leverage:  technology, trade secrets/patents, processes, methods, products, people (certifications, talent, knowledge, etc.)?
4. UNIQUE BEHAVIORAL ACTIONS: What behaviors do you  demonstrate that are uncommon in the industry and set you apart from your competition (relationship building—remember customers’ names and use in conversation at every touch point, service delivery—e.g., overnight, free shipping—both ways, response time—within 1 hour or less, accuracy—99.5% error free, etc.)

 

We have all experienced a brand that starts some unique action or behavior, like when Block Buster Video trained their employees to acknowledge when customers came in the door with a verbal “hello” from behind their service desk – always a pleasant surprise for as long as they did it. Then one day, it stopped. I’m not sure why, but I sure noticed it when it didn’t happen anymore. To me, it was a subtle emotional let-down, almost like when a relationship is giving tell-tale signs it has run its course and it is time to move on. 

So, what’s the diff? Well, consider this statistic. “94% of your customers WANT to be loyal.” Why do businesses just stop giving them reasons not to?

For more information on our step-by-step Brand DNA methodology; now delivered both on-site, and online, go to: www.BrandAscension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html.

About the Author:
Suzanne Tulien is Principal and co-Founder of The Brand Ascension Group, a multi-faceted consulting and training firm specializing in building brand perception. They partner with organizations to assist them in get laser-focused on defining their brand DNA and achieving sustainable brand success from the INSIDE OUT. They do this by guiding them to define, create, and build powerful brand experiences that engage, captivate and inspire customers, employees and all stakeholders. She is author of The 6 Myths of Small Business Branding, and co-author of Brand DNA.

 © THE BRAND ASCENSION GROUP®, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Reprints by permission only. Suzanne Tulien and Carol Chapman are Principals in The Brand Ascension Group LLC a leading-edge, multi-faceted consulting and training firm that partners with organizations in defining and elevating their brands.  Through their innovative Brand Elevation™ methodology, they help clients capitalize on the power of human perception and engage them in conscious internal and external branding practices to propel and sustain the growth of their businesses. They can be reached at info@BrandAscension.com or 719.265.1707; 719.748.2290.

Branded Imagination

IMAGINE…

• being served an entrée that actually looks better than the menu photo.
• a clerk responding to you with ‘My pleasure!’ instead of ‘No worries’ or ‘No problem.’
• getting the same ‘WOW’ service EVERY TIME you deal with that vendor.
• a sales representative who is familiar with the coupon you present and details of marketing campaign and is excited you are taking advantage of their offer.
• the grocery store clerk saying ‘thank you for shopping with us’ BEFORE you, the customer, says ‘thank you’ to the vendor for checking you out.
• a store clerk ignoring the phone ringing behind the desk, and giving you 100% attention as you check out.
• getting a return phone call or email within 12 hours.
• a vendor you frequent knowing and calling you by name when you shop there, every time.

I know, I know, these imaginary thoughts seem pretty far fetched in this day and age, but I believe it can happen, really…. pinch me if you think I am still dreaming!

All of these ideal behaviors I dream about above don’t seem too difficult to attain, or do they? Why is it so rare for businesses to actually BE what their marketing messages tout;  consistently? I often wonder about the saying, “we are creatures of habit”, when consistency is the one thing lacking in most businesses, and is one of the primary causes of losing customers. It seems so easy, and yet only a select few brands actually practice this type of ongoing consciousness in their everyday business lives and have truly made a habit of doing so. Unfortunately, too many businesses make inconsistency the habit!

David Barrows, from The Design Agency, UK, once quoted “40% of marketing dollars are wasted, due to ill-informed, demotivated staff undermining the promotional promise.” For now, let’s assume that were true and then consider the amount of money American small businesses spend on advertising every year at around $30 billion. Now, based on this statistic, that’s $12 billion wasted dollars annually!

Case in point:  A friend of mine works in an inbound call center for a national satellite TV program provider. He told me the other day that he received several calls from customers who had visited the company web site and spotted a special Father’s Day offer. My friend and all the other call center employees were completely unaware of the offer and therefore presented the perception of ignorance to the customer. The customer is left frustrated and ‘lead on’ by the promotional offer. What did this lack of awareness do to the overall perception of the brand? One customer at a time…all evening long, calls were coming in and customers were left frustrated….hmmmm. It doesn’t have to be this way!

What would it have taken for the managers to brief the employees of the new offer? A five minute briefing before the shift started? What transformations in perception would the customer have had if the representatives said “Thanks for calling in for our Father’s Day promotional offer, let me explain how you can take advantage of this great special.” Again, very small gestures that have huge consequences!

Consider this amazing statistic, “94% of our customers WANT to be loyal” (Zamba Solutions, 2002). Unfortunately, businesses continue to give them reasons NOT to! We all know, as consumers, we’d like to find a hairdresser, an auto repair guy and a banking institution that we could ‘settle in with’ long-term because we believe we are cared for, receive high value consistently and are acknowledged regularly as valuable customers.

If you’ve been reading our articles regularly, then you know that EVERY business has a brand; good, bad, or indifferent. And as business owners, we have the power to control how our brand is defined, built, and experienced by our employees and customers. How many of you, reading this right now, have taken the critical time to actually define your brand’s DNA? It’s genetic code, your brand ‘blueprint?’

We believe that most businesses lack consistency because there is no truly defined and articulated brand. How can you create consistent systems and processes, and unique culture and leadership behaviors and actions when there is no foundation as to what the brand stands for? How can you market a brand authentically that has not yet been defined? How can you walk your brand talk? This is where so many businesses are missing the boat, but could very easily aboard the next one as soon as today

By making a decision and commitment to define your brand’s DNA, business owners and their employee teams open a whole world of opportunities to be highly brand congruent and CONSISTENT in your actions and behaviors. This will also lead to discovering your true differentiators and leverage them so that you can stand out beyond your competition and win customers for life.

In an annual survey on brands and branding by experts from top global brands, guess what was cited as the most critical aspect of successful branding? (The 2007 Brand Marketers Report by Interbrand).

1)      Marketing/Advertising                         .8%

2)      Consistency                                            36%

3)      Product                                                        3.5%

4)      Budget                                                         4.3%

5)      Innovation                                                  18%

Pay particular attention to the rating given to the aspect of Marketing/Advertising—less than 1%! This is exactly why we have a workshop and article entitled, ‘STOP MARKETING (for now), START BRANDING!’

 

The brand defining and building process is not difficult. And it is not an initiative meant solely for the owner of the business. Everyone in your business represents the brand and should have some sort of ownership in the development and/or implementation process. Yes, the process. Branding is the process of defining and living the message/promise/essence of the organization. Building a brand is not a marketing campaign, or a logo creation or refresh. Building the brand is conscious, strategic, and deliberate effort in defining the perception you want your employees and customers to have of you – then controlling that perception by creating actions and behaviors that consistently and distinctively affirm and reaffirm that perception. Read that sentence again. If you glean anything from this article that is probably the most important sentence we have to deliver to you.

Being a business owner/entrepreneur is one of the most exciting privileges and opportunities we have here in the U.S. It should be a creative, exciting, challenging, and inspiring experience. We all know the definition of INSANITY:  Doing the same thing expecting something different. Well, here is your chance to do SOMETHING DIFFERENT – and get different, amazing results! Commit to spending some time defining who you are as a brand and discover what stake your brand will put in the ground and claim.

Our ‘IGNITE YOUR BUSINESS BRAND DNA’ step-by-step, brand-defining methodology is now online, self-paced and available for those savvy business owners who are ready to do something different.

Now, imagine….

…that everyone one of your employees understand and can articulate your Brand Values.

…that everyone in your company finds ways every day to live and deliver your Brand Promise.

…that your brand’s differentiators reduce customer price sensitivity.

…that your customers become your ‘no-cost sales force’ as ambassadors of your brand and tell their friends.

…you and your employees are having fun inventing new ways to enhance your Brand Standards of Performance.

…that you and your employees recite your Brand Mantra daily to inspire and motivate ‘on-brand’ actions that represent your unique Brand DNA.

…that in any economic environment, your brand continues to thrive.

…that those vendors you patronize leave you with a ‘wow’ experience, every time.

On second thought, don’t pinch me yet, I want to keep dreaming.

 

Suzanne Tulien is Principal and Co-Founder of the Brand Ascension Group, LLC. She is a brand perception expert consultant, award-winning graphic designer, a certified trainer and certified in Accelerated Learning Methodologies. She is co-pioneer of the Brand DNA methodology, the first ever step-by-step brand defining online process designed specifically for small to medium sized businesses. She is author of The 6 Myths of Small Business Branding, and co-author of Brand DNA. She regularly writes blogs and articles on the process of branding and has been published in eHotelier, BrandChannel.com, among others. www.BrandAscension.com, 719.265.1707.

Don’t Miss the Brand Boat!

I’ve been holding off on this for a while, hoping that sooner or later leaders in the industry would actually catch on. But, to my dismay, yet another example has come to my attention to fuel my frustration about the ‘understanding of the term branding’.

I was on Twitter earlier today and came across a conference on branding, called Brand Manage Camp — being held in Las Vegas this October. Curious, I went to the web site hoping to see a plethora of skilled experts discussing the huge scope branding covers. Needless to say, once again, the primary (there is no secondary) focus is on the EXTERNAL side of ‘branding’ that should really be called ‘Marketing’.

Not one of their speakers is touted as being an expert an internal brand definition and development. And that really disappoints me because they are only educating the participants on half the picture! When companies focus their efforts entirely on marketing (external exposure) behaviors and have not yet clearly done the due diligence in clearly articulating who they are as a brand (their Brand DNA), then how can they create promise after promise in their marketing message and live up to that message??  They may be successful at getting customers in the door, but HOW DO THEY KEEP THEM? What is the promised experience? And where is the consistency?

What is the company’s brand style? What are their Values, true Differentiators? Standards of Performance? Without knowing these brand attributes, companywide, how do they deliver on them? How do they gain loyalty? How to they hire and retain employees?

A conference on Branding should cover all aspects of the process of branding both internal and external. When will this concept be embraced?

Our Brand defining process (IGNITE YOUR BUSINESS BRAND DNA) is a critical first-phase process of brand development, not dropping $10,000 into a marketing campaign or logo refresh. Long-term, sustainable, trusted brands are built from the INSIDE OUT.

If you are a small business our message to you is: STOP MARKETING, for now, and START BRANDING! Once your unique Brand DNA is defined and actioned internally, your marketing dollars will work smarter!

Check out our new small business, self-paced online Brand-defining course and discover how the process of brand definition can catapult your business growth. Work smarter, not harder — without spending $1 in marketing!  http://www.BrandAscension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html

BRAND AWARENESS; It’s All a ‘TWITTER®’

Have you been wondering how Twitter®, a free social networking service (www.twitter.com), can help you build brand awareness for your company? I must admit, I was a bit skeptical at first, but after encouragement from a business associate, I decided to give it a whirl and a whirl it has been so far.  After just a few months of investigative use of the tool, I am now a firm believer that Twitter can definitely build tremendous awareness for any brand.

To date, no one really knows how many users are registered on Twitter. Some say as much as 5 million; others say as much as 10 million or more worldwide. When I heard these numbers, I thought, ‘Now that’s a huge opportunity for exponential brand exposure – with no hard costs!’

One thing we do know is that Twitter has grown in popularity at an extraordinary rate. So many people are using Twitter from all walks of life to expand their reach and express their brand—whether business or personal. This includes individuals, businesses, professionals, celebrities, and politicians—from all over the world.

What is Twitter?

1. Specifically, Twitter is a micro-blogging and instant messaging tool for your company. You can literally Tweet what you want all day long just so long as you stay within the 140 character or less limit per message.
2.  It’s a mass-communication tool to leverage your business message to the world. Some businesses are even dedicating staff to manage their Twitter accounts. And best of all it’s free to join – what a great brand awareness tool!

 What are Some Basics in Getting Started with Twitter?

1. When you register your account, create a complete profile on your business. Make sure you fill out all requested areas to include a graphic (visual) of your brand’s logo, your website URL, and a bio of your business. Your bio is very important as it is one of the first things people check out when they go to your Twitter page. They want to find out more about you. In your bio, be specific and to the point, as you are limited in the number of characters – 160. I am constantly referring to other’s bios to determine whether I want to follow the person/company or not as it’s important to connect with those who have a mutual interest in what The Brand Ascension Group does in the area of internal brand definition, creation, strategy and management.

Also, your website URL in your company profile is important. People who check you out see that  as well and they can click on it to get to your website. I check out everyone who has a website URL as that provides a lot more information on who they are and what they do and helps me determine if I want to follow them and their Tweets.

1. Create a custom background on your Twitter page that is highly appealing and has the same look and feel of your brand based on your unique Brand DNA. See http://www.brandascension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html for more information on defining your unique Brand DNA. This is extremely important. Your Twitter page should mirror the look and feel of your website, and emulate your distinctive brand attributes (Values, Style, Differentiators and Standards), which are the foundational elements of your Brand DNA. This creates consistency every time when others engage with you on Twitter, not to mention it’s essential to define and build your brand, and catapult your business growth. Notice how ours is highly relevant to our unique look and feel of our visual brand dress. Check out www.twitter.com/CarolChapman, www.twitter.com/SuzTulien, or www.twitter.com/brandascension (which we just set up).
2. Make your Tweets understandable, inviting, compelling and informative. You want to attract the right Tweeters as followers and you’ll want to follow those that have a common interest in what your business brand has to offer. So, make sure the information you Tweet is useful.

How Can I Build Brand Awareness on Twitter?

1. If you want to gain maximum exposure, keep yourself on the “public timeline” so everyone sees your tweets. To do so, leave the “Protect Your Updates” box in the Settings area unchecked.  If you check this, then your Tweet updates will become private and you’ll have to approve who you can follow you every time. It will also keep your updates out of search results within Twitter and you don’t want that to occur as this dramatically reduces the ability of others to find your company.
2. Use the ‘Find Other People’ or ‘Search’ tool on Twitter. Just type a name or particular concept such as branding, culture, marketing, etc.. This can be huge if you type in people in your industry and then find others that are following them. It opens up your reach significantly within your targeted industry or area of interest.
3. Post updates (messages) regularly (i.e., several times daily). Share your knowledge and resources, create mini-press releases (remember 140 characters or less) on something of interest about your company, notify others of your products and services, white papers, case studies, business events, etc. Don’t forget to provide any links to the information either on your website or other URLs.
4. Use Twitter to make connections, identify prospective customers and point others to your company’s website or other website with resources. This is a huge opportunity, as you build followership, to communicate information on what you are doing, your products and services, new product or service launches, or other resources you may want to point others to.
5. Create multiple accounts to exponentially expand your company’s exposure.
6. Leverage powerful tools to manage your accounts and the exposure of your brand. Go to http://adecon101.blogspot.com/2009/03/100-twitter-tools-to-help-you-achieve.html for 101 resources you can use. In the meantime, here’s three tools I’ve checked out recently and am using that you may want to consider:

•        TweetDeck.com –allows you to stay in touch with what’s happening at any given point in time, and connect you with your contacts on Twitter in a single concise view.
•        TweetSpinner.com or TweetLater.com– enables you to create and schedule Tweet messages in advance and manage these activities so as to increase your productivity.
•         TweetScan.com – allows you to find out information that is being Tweeted about your company and brand keeping up real-time with what is being said about you.

HAPPY TWITTERING! Feel free to respond to this article as it will be posted on our blog at http://feeds.feedburner.com/BusinessBrandingTips. We’d invite you to share your experiences in the use of Twitter with us and others who read our blog.

Don’t forget to check out and sign up for our brand-defining e-course “Ignite Your Business Brand DNA”  at http://www.brandascension.com/dna_webinar_weblanding.html before you get too far  using  Twitter—as it will only ensure consistency, relevance and distinctiveness with your brand in how you show up on Twitter.

And….stay tuned for future additions to this article as The Brand Ascension Group expands its knowledge, expertise and success in using Twitter and other social media tools to build brand awareness and grow our business.

State of Customer Service in a Fearful Economy

I am writing this blog out of shear frustration. What is happening to our state of service in this economy? Phone calls not being returned, emails not being replied back to, over promising and under-deliverying (or not at all!) has been very apparent in all realms of service lately. I don’t know about you, but it is getting worse and worse. It is as if the FEAR has made a nice comfortable nest in this economy is creating a crazy reaction with business owner and employee INDIFFERENCE; e.g., how customers are being treated – no one has time to be nice, cordial, respectful, or professional — it is all about the bottom-line – survival of the fittest.

I see a huge opportunity for businesses to rise above the so called new ‘standard of performance’ and start OUT-BEHAVING your competition by simply looking your customers in the eyes, using their names in conversations, returning phone calls, following up on emails; all of which are low, or no-cost strategies to build customer loyalty and distinction. Sure, we are all busy, but when you become too busy to pay attention to your bread and butter, either you are in the wrong business, or you need a swift reminder to SLOW DOWN and APPRECIATE the customers, colleagues and friends you have now….or you won’t have to later!

It is good to keep top of mind — “Everything we do in our business contributes too or takes away from the value perception of the brand.” – Brand Ascension Group, LLC

At times, we all need to remember the basics of building distinction, consistency, and relevancy.  It all starts with building relationships that leverage memorable experiences, and basing those experiences on what your brand stands for – your brand’s DNA.

What are the three most dangerous words to the mind? …”I KNOW THAT!”  When you are ready to learn more and know what you don’t know, check out this e-course:  www.BrandAscension.com/dna_webinars_weblanding.html

If you are not GROWING, you are _______!

Have any of you experienced this frustration or am I in a black hole?