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.

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.

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.

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?

DON’T PUT YOUR BRAND AT RISK LIKE ‘AIG’ BY NOT LIVING YOUR CORE VALUES!

Just this morning, I was interviewed by David Wolf for his SmallBiz Brain Series to be aired on SBTV.com’s website (www.sbtv.com) in a few weeks. Our topic related to 8 key questions business owners should ask themselves about their unique Brand DNA and how imperative it is to answer them so as to not only survive but thrive in this troubled economy.

One of the questions we discussed was “What are the core values of your brand that guide your behaviors and business practices?” We talked about what values are—those ‘guiding principles’ that form the basis of what is important to you and give meaning to the intentions behind your brand and your business practices. We also talked about why living your core values is so important in today’s business environment.

Just before the interview, I thought about the issues that AIG is experiencing right now while under the scrutiny of the public and the government for paying out a $165 Million in bonus payments after a few months earlier receiving $182 Billion in bailout money. I was just curious to find out if they had a set of core values for the business. So, I got on their website and searched. I found a button on the menu of items for Vision and Values. As I clicked on it—I found the page showed it was temporarily down. No other page around this page on the website was down. I thought, “How odd.” I also said to myself that this couldn’t just be a coincidence.

I then proceeded to get on Google. I typed into the search section ‘AIG Values’ and found the link to the same webpage. When I clicked on it I got the same message about the webpage being down. So, I went back to Google’s link and lo and behold I found they had “cached” the page. When I clicked on it, there the page was with AIG’s values. The cached page was a snapshot of what the page looked like when it was last active and live—that date was March 13, 2009.

I checked the list of values on this webpage for AIG and found six of them, two of which I zeroed in on, ‘Performance’ and ‘Integrity’. They defined performance, “Be accountable. Manage risks. Deliver AIG’s strength.” They define integrity as, “Work honestly, Enhance AIG’s reputation.” It made me seriously question whether the company was truly accountable and enhancing AIG’s reputation.

Given the current situation, I think most people would say AIG has severely tarnished its image and most certainly negatively impacted their reputation with the payout of those bonuses given the current economic situation and the bailout money handed to them. In fact, not living their values goes far beyond just this one incident, but goes to the core of who they are as brand. As I dug deeper into their values statements, I found the terms to describe these two values as “superior performance, building and persevering the company’s financial strength…disciplined practices…to manage risk”. I found words like ‘integrity in action…integrity is the bedrock of AIG’s reputation..being honest, transparent, with acceptable business practices.” I was just floored when I read this.

The learning point here is that why haven’t they and other companies like them learned that if you don’t live your values, eventually it comes out and it can have devastating effects on your reputation as a brand. Consider the effects of Enron and Arthur Andersen a few years back. One of Enron’s values was integrity. They are no longer in business. That’s pretty devastating.

So, I ask you to ask yourself what are your brand’s core values? Are you living up to those values and consider your actions going-forward? All of us can learn from AIG’s situation. The price of misrepresenting your brand and what you stand for is just not worth it. It erodes your reputation and creates mistrust!

Great Brands – Leading Practice Tip for Small Business

#1  Great Brands dedicate a large majority of their ‘marketing dollars’ on increasing customer loyalty versus on acquiring (advertising/marketing) new customers.
Why is this? Well, we all know that it takes 5 to 7 times more time, money and effort to acquire a new client than it does to keep one. So in using this leading practice, your marketing dollars go farther to keep your current customers loyal, AND to provide more opportunities for your raving customers to refer others (free advertising!) What are your existing customer touchpoints and how can you enhance them to create a ‘wow’ brand experience? So the question becomes, “What is our Brand DNA?” When you define this with key players on your team, it can then come alive within your business through behaviors, systems, and your leadership.

BRAND ACTION CHALLENGE: Take a look at your yearly spending on marketing and advertising. Then inventory what you spend toward customer retention efforts. You may be surprised. Begin thinking about ways (we encourage you to involve your employees) you can create more customer ‘touch-points’ and/or ways to enhance how your current touch points are reflective of your unique Brand DNA. Incorporate one or two newly enhanced behaviors that positively affect your customers and are congruent with your brand.

Let us know what you decide to implement and what outcomes you experience. Remember to put some metrics in place and measure!

ANOTHER BRAND BITES THE DUST – Why high-potential brands may never make it to ‘Great’!

By Suzanne Tulien, Principal & Co-Founder, The Brand Ascension Group

 

I am writing this with sad news. Another one of my newly experienced, ‘fav’ brands I was so excited about has fallen from grace. Oh, and it sooooooo didn’t have to be this way!!!

 

A few articles ago I wrote about a new up and coming brand in the airline industry, and how excited I was about their model, the overall experience, and it’s savvy potential in a decaying airline service business. They were definitely creating their own ‘Blue Ocean’ (re: Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne) in the marketplace.

 

And then,…we flew them again (optimal word; AGAIN).

 

With a fairly limited flight schedule, I was so excited that this regional airline flew to the destination we were planning for my husband’s birthday week. A reasonably priced, non-stop, fun, easy flight with XM Radio, a meal AND snacks, $3 wine and $1 dollar beers, not to mention a farewell mint candy and a smile delivered by the flight crew as you step off the plane.

 

I told all my friends. I touted the brand in my workshops while covering the importance of creating powerful differentiators, and I wrote about my experience flying them. It’s not so much the embarrassment for ‘jumping the gun’ and actually believing they were different and telling ‘the world’, but the pain of realizing it was only a or a ‘one-off’ experience and then KNOWING that it didn’t have to go there!

 

In brief, here’s what happened.

 

There were three in our travel party. As we were getting settled in our seats (two on the right, one on the left with an aisle in between), our stewardess interrupted the hum of passengers settling in by announcing on the overly loud intercom that we will not be receiving a meal as this city was not a ‘catering destination,’ in her short, sassy, memorized shtick. I was confused as we were served a meal and snacks the last time we flew from this same city just a few months ago. Disappointment #1.  

 

Our travel buddy neglected to grab a set of individually packaged headphones from a wicker basket at the ticket counter (for listening to the onboard XM Radio) and politely asked the stewardess for an extra pair. She abruptly replied, ‘you were supposed to get yours before you boarded the plane, I doubt I have any onboard for you,’ as she whizzed by slamming the overhead bins closed. We started to feel like elementary school children being scolded by the bus driver. Disappointment #2.

 

Once airborne and beyond 10,000 feet, our stewardess began her beverage service. We were close to the front of the plane and one of the first to be served. As she pushed the cart down the isle and asked us our beverage preference, we noticed that her short, sassy comments were not few and far between. When she approached our buddy and asked for his order, this is what our friend recounted, ‘I was dozing lightly and had my ear phones in and the ‘flight attendant’ asked if I wanted something to drink. I had a little trouble pulling out the head phones (3 seconds) and when I did she said ‘I’m not your wife, I can’t read your mind.’ She didn’t yell at me but delivered a tone to show cue me that she was frustrated with my delay in responding…Yikes! Did that really happen? Thank goodness our friend was mildly tempered and held back his reaction to the comment. Disappointment #3.

 

Disappointment #4 -  A ‘no go’ on the candy mint farewell treat. A big deal? In the scheme of things, no, but when it comes to creating a memorable brand experience that caters to small but meaningful emotional connections, then I would argue that YES, it is a big deal. As Americans, we are lucky to have the array of choices that we do in everything we seek to purchase. It is the brand’s job to carve out a unique position in our minds and emotions to the point of basing our buying decisions on these emotional connections.

 

In a the most recent annual survey (2007 Brand Marketers Report by Interbrand)  on brands and branding by experts from top global brands, what was cited as the most critical aspect of successful branding? CONSISTENCY! Hands down! At 36%! Marketing and Advertising rated at less than 1% (.8%),
and Innovation rated only 18.2%.

 

This article is really about missed opportunity, inconsistency, and cognitive dissonance of the brand. This airline has a great concept, super differentiating behaviors, and much appreciated amenities that no longer permeate the airline industry; all lost in a single experience – a moment in time forever embedded in the minds of the customers. The customer question becomes, ‘How do I trust my experience with this brand? What will I receive next time? When prices and schedules are the same (commodity), which brand do I choose?”

 

Questions for the brand are:

1)      What are the true costs of inconsistencies in the brand’s behaviors?

2)      Do our employees understand, live and embody the brand values?

3)      What investment do we make in our people to assure the brand is articulated correctly and consistently to our market?

4)      What systems and processes can we put in place to assure proper cognitive resonance of the brand with our customers?

 

Brands with consciousness become mega-brands. Brand consciousness consists of being fully aware of who and what the brand stands for; not just today, or the first 6 months of business, but everyday, in every behavior, through every process. It starts internally with defining the brand’s DNA, integrating it into the culture, systems and processes, and leadership. It’s not rocket science, just tenacity, due diligence, and a passion for the brand.

 

So, will I fly this brand again? Probably. But I won’t be seeking it out, ranting and raving about it or using it as an example of what powerful brands can do to differentiate themselves. No, as of this moment, they have unfortunately transpired into a commodity, lumped into a blur with every other airline in my mind. Another promising idea that didn’t consistently fly…sadly, another one bites the dust.

 

Don’t let your brand go there!

 

Suzanne Tulien is Principal and Co-Founder of the Brand Ascension Group, LLC. She is brand consultant, award-winning graphic designer, a certified trainer and certified in Accelerated Learning Methodologies. She is author of The 6 Myths of Branding, and co-author of Megapreneur. She regularly writes article on branding for entrepreneurs and is published in a variety of publications. www.BrandAscension.com, info@brandascension.com, 719.265.1707.

 

How to Make Your Business Brand Recession Resistant!

Learn how conscious branding practices can capture and sustain valuable market share in any economic situation …By Suzanne Tulien, Co-founder of the Brand Ascension Group  

How many of you are conscious of the state of our current economy? How many of you have started tightening the purse strings to prepare for rising prices, slow sales, and a tough ride ahead? 

Business owners are already searching for ways to reduce the impact of the impending “R” word (RECESSION, there, I said it!). But there are many companies who have done the “due diligence” within their brand building strategies to ensure and support withstanding almost any kind of economic condition (barring national disasters!). 

But before you start feeling like you need to invest in a family-sized bottle of Tums® finish reading this article and look for ways you can take on board the ideas. 

Consider the following scenario with one of our clients – a premiere tanning salon who embarked on a branding initiative about 2.5 years ago. They were a dual store location of about 12 employees, and feeling the crunch of high gas prices, finding it to harder to retain young employees (“Y” generation), and implementing marketing campaigns with minimal return on their investments. Finally a big whammy, they were plagued with a profound “commodity mindset” from their targeted audience.  Enter: The Brand Ascension Group. Hearing their dilemma we immediately quiz them on their current brand. With questions like: (among others)

1. Do you and your employees truly understand what your brand stands for?
2. Do you have a set of core values for the brand that everyone in your company is aware of and understands?
3. Do you have a unique culture that fosters positive, memorable behaviors that differentiate you from your competitors?
4. Do you regularly ask your customers for feedback on your standards of performance?
5. Do your employees have the authority to “break the rules” to make a situation “right” for the customer?
6. Do you benchmark your employees’ behaviors against leading practices of highly successful brands?
7. Do you have a specific and unique ‘brand vocabulary’ that creates distinction with your brand?
8. Do you have a Brand Promise that your employees commit to and continually deliver on?
9. Do you understand and leverage all your key differentiators to your competitive advantage?

 …..among other questions.  

After lots of ‘deer in headlights’ and ‘no’ responses throughout this revealing interrogation (we had fun with it, really!), we recommended the immediate huddle of their core team into a highly intensive, interactive invention process to define, create, and build their Brand’s DNA from scratch. They were game, and after two full days of ideation, collaboration and precise selection, the team emerged from the process proud parents of a brand new brand! They built it, now they own it! 

To make a long story shorter, we continued to consult with them throughout the year and guide them on how they would go about ‘operationalizing’ the new brand DNA into every facet of their operation so they could begin living and embodying it (across a ‘brand scorecard’; employees, customers, financial, and through their systems and processes). 

From the Brand DNA process their team flushed out a very compelling and distinctive ‘Brand Platform’: SIMPLY MIND-BLOWING EXPERIENCE, which became the essence of their brand’s ‘way of being’ from that point on. 

I remember this phone call from one of the owners: “Hey, Suzanne, I had to call you and let you know what I’ve noticed since we developed our Brand Platform from the DNA session. The first thing we did was make a critical decision to let go of two of our employees who just weren’t willing to ‘step up’ the brand’s experience and what a relief to all the other employees who are taking on the new brand like wildfire!  And, I noticed something yesterday that was so interesting! As I was walking through our retail portion of the store I overheard one of our employees challenging another to create a ‘mind-blowing experience’ for the next customer who walks in the door! They are really having a blast inventing ways to impress and take care of our customers, it’s incredible to watch!” 

Fast forward 1 ½  years. Just a few weeks ago we connected with this client once again to check in on how the brand development was going. And as if the flood gates had opened, she burst out with a list of things they have been implementing with their employees, their processes, and customers. All of which have positively impacted their bottom line! And each of these changes was highly relevant to the attributes of their Brand DNA (core values, style, differentiators and standards). 

The industry overall has been in a virtual “slump” the last few years and with the “recession” mindset eroding any hope of new client enrollment into their services. However; our client has reportedly increased their per customer transaction 35%-50%, adding much needed cash flow to their bottom line. How’d they do it?  They achieved this increase by being much more conscious of their behaviors, how they interact and communicate with each other, as a team culture, and with their customers. All this redesign was possible because of the work they did to define, create, and build their brand’s core DNA…from the inside out. 

Here’s my point. When an entrepreneur makes the decision to build their brand, it has to mean more than developing a logo, business cards or develop a marketing campaign. The process of branding has to start INTERNALLY with your core purpose in mind of how you want your employees and customers to perceive you. If you don’t actively define and manage that perception, your customers will! 

And when you take the time to develop your authentic brand, put a ‘stake in the ground’ and COMMIT to behaving consistently that way, then you will build trusting relationships with your team and your customers. So when your customers need/want your product or service, and when they have a choice of who to do business with….the choice will be obvious for them…YOU of course! Gain and retain market share now by building your brand’s DNA! 

(For more information on how you and your team can experience improved business performance just like our tanning salon client go to: www.BrandDNAProducts.com. We’re now offering this same brand-building methodology in a highly interactive and accelerated on-line course environment utilizing the latest web-based technology You too can experience phenomenal results through our progressive methodology. 

© All Rights Reserved. Suzanne Tulien and Carol Chapman are Principals in The Brand Ascension Group LLC a leading-edge, multi-faceted, experiential consulting and training firm that partners with organizations in 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 www.BrandAscension.com. 719.265.1707; 719.748.2290.