I’m thankful to Kenneth Weiss for sharing a chapter from his book Slightware - The Next Great Threat to Brands through a brand strategy forum on LinkedIn.  I took a quick read through the chapter and was intrigued enough to do some follow-up reading on Kenneth’s site.  His book serves to not only put a name and face on the challenges (and misuse) brands face in a digital world, but also to remind marketers about fundamentals in customer engagement.  Slightware is best defined in the following excerpt:

Brand building is fundamentally changing from a one-way transmission through media and marketing to a two-way transaction powered by software.  Once again, the initial step of brands into this new era of technology will not go well. Brand and software will not be entwined gracefully. Done poorly, digital experiences will be slightly “off brand.” Done very badly, the brand will be slighted. This is the age of Slightware.

We’ve blogged about and done client work around the area of online brand engagement.  There’s so much to be said about this area and yet there are so many examples of major brands stumbling their way through it.  At its heart, it comes down to whether marketers are thinking of (and executing) their online presence as a campaign or a conversation.  Weiss does a great job summarizing this point in the visualization below:

So, as marketers in a new era of customer engagement (and customer power), we need to at times honestly evaluate our efforts and ask the question of whether we’re talking at, to, or with our customers.  Often, that simple exercise helps assess the need to switch tactics or re-allocate resources.

I encourage you to check out Weiss’s work and examples of Slightware.  Really good food for thought.  Do any of his examples seem familiar to you…either as a marketer or as a customer??

My brother shared with me a recent NY Post article on how Zagat, the eponymous restaurant guide that once ruled food ratings is now struggling to fight off online competitors including Yelp.com and Chowhound.com.   Much like newspapers Zagat faces an endemic problem: people can now get comparable information for free elsewhere, which has Zagat sweating more than garlic.

The situation made me think of other successful brands such as AOL, Gap, Motorola, and Sears that didn’t anticipate key market trends which cost them leadership positions.  Jim Collins’ newest book, How the Mighty Fall, provides a great look into why companies fail.  He says that often times they don’t notice until it’s too late.

Unfortunately that may be the case for Zagat.  Take for example that over the past 12 months, Yelp and Chowhound have outpaced Zagat’s web traffic by more than 4 to 1.  On the surface you could say that this isn’t that bad given Zagat’s 15% annual growth rate.  It may be able to find its place as a niche brand, which may be suffice given it’s focus more on affluent segments and loyal “foodies” but the downward trend in the graphic below may be a tall-tell sign that there may be bigger underlying problems.

Unique Monthly Visitors (July 2008 - July 2009)

Data source: Compete.com

For many brands including Zagat, such a downturn could be simply a cyclical side effect or it could be the cusp of a steeper decline that is just beginning.  Collins would argue that leading companies never take success for granted; they have a healthy dose of insecurity and neuroticism that keep them in check.  We would add that leading companies always keep a close ear to the market.  They collect and apply customer insights on a regular basis, which is where marketing can play a much more prominent role in keeping companies moving down the right path.

In thinking about the post my colleague Karl recently shared on the importance of culture I couldn’t help but ask myself, “how about vision?”  Culture is critical in successfully connecting brands with customers, but we have to recognize that the long-term vision for the organization and its brand(s) are what shape culture.  Not having a clear vision and applying it across the organization will result in cultural differences that lead to external and internal misalignments such as the ones that Karl spoke about.

And before you dismiss vision or mission statements as consultant speak or items that only appear on a company’s website or in an annual report, consider brands like Apple, Old Spice, Samsung, and Xerox.  These are leading organizations that used redefined brand visions as the catalyst to achieve newfound success, turnaround their failing businesses, and reposition themselves as brand leaders.

“Even while Rome was burning people wanted to know what the city of the future would look like.  What will Xerox look like after it comes through this period of survival and turnaround?” – Anne Mulcahy, CEO of Xerox

But having a vision of what to strive to achieve will only get you so far.  A common tenets that these successful brands shared was decisively directing their resources.  From operations to R&D to marketing communications, investments were made to support the new brand vision.  Another key component was leadership’s ability to have the entire organization adhere to the vision.  Commitment to a singular idea over time, in some cases more than 5 years, is what’s needed to turn a brand around.

It’s unfortunate that such foundational issues are often times put off to the side, possibly because leadership isn’t ready to make a commitment or because it’s so difficult to measure such efforts within the short-term.  But for a successful brand to thrive over time, it needs a solid foundation.

As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

If you need any convincing that employees play a vital role in building a brand, talk to Michael Williams, who wrote this seething letter to Delta Airlines yesterday.  To give you the flavor of his letter, here is the opening paragraph:

“Please allow me to share my experience with one of your standout customer service agents, today. Feel free to use this incident in the unquestionably effectual training program this person must have completed. If I may be so bold, I’d recommend titling this exercise; ‘The ROI of Hiring Ass Hats.’”

Michael went on to talk about his previous years of loyalty to the airline, which was all erased by this one, single experience with a Delta customer care rep.

While we don’t know what was really at fault in this case – the rep’s poor judgment or his/her inability to do what was right for the customer because of Delta policies – in the end it doesn’t matter.  As we point out in our article just published on brandchannel, “employees have the power to either reinforce or break a brand’s promise every time they interact with a customer, shareholder or even another employee.”

Unfortunately for Delta (and Michael), Michael’s experience resulted in a broken brand promise and a lost customer.  Delta would benefit by learning from the likes of Virgin Media and Red Hat, two companies featured in our article, who have successfully engaged employees in living their brand.

This is the sixth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

Whether developing new products or looking to increase loyalty, having a continuous stream of customer insight that draws on many different sources is important. This feed needs to be constant and plentiful. Technology is making it easier to find new ways to gather and make use of customer insight with limited resources.

Customer research and voice of the customer programs like councils and feedback meetings are the more traditional ones many marketers employ.  Marketing organizations should not forget the many simple everyday ways to accomplish this via tools like email, google alerts, RSS feeds, Twitter or talking with the services or sales representatives. The important thing is to make it an integral part of your day / week.

What can happen if you are not watching/listening?

Many should not forget the Motrin campaign that had so much twitter backlash over a weekend after the launch of a new “hip” mommy ad that the parent campaign pulled the ad. Don’t let this happen to you! Ensure your insight and listening post are capturing as much feedback as possible.

An example of a company doing this well is Dell with their IdeaStorm.com, where users generate ideas for new features or often irritating sales and marketing practices or service policies. The community can then vote on them which helps Dell focus and prioritize.

[Repost from http://alanhart.wordpress.com]

Many brands talk the talk, spending millions to create compelling marketing campaigns but only a select few actually walk the walk by activating a consistent brand experience that fulfills their brand platform throughout the customer experience.

Hosted by the Business Marketing Assocation (BMA) of Boston, Mark Carr, partner at CMG Partners will present Activate your Company’s Brand next Thursday, June 18th at the Hilton Garden Inn Waltham.

If you’re interested in attending or would like more information, click here

You can sign up to receive invitations to our future events, or you can sign up for our general mailing list which automatically signs you up for our quarterly newsletter as well as event announcements.

• Brand: failure to recognize the impact of a company’s culture on their brand and overall customer experience. An area that we are passionate about, and what we refer to as activating the brand (essentially employees embodying the brand), is critical for a brand to achieve its full potential and appropriately manifest itself in the marketplace across all stakeholder touch-points.
• Marketing & Sales alignment: inability for marketing and sales functions to respect each other, collaborate, and align in the best interests of the organization in order to accelerate and improve the purchasing process. An age-old business challenge that can only be addressed if there is mutual respect and understanding of how each function can best collaborate to deliver on the overall organizations goals.
• Marketing performance: lack of respect for marketing analytics/operations to measure and improve marketing performance. We whole-heartily believe that the best companies measure, learn and improve over time and this requires having an appreciation and belief in the science of marketing as well as the art.

The learning that I would pass on is when faced with a business challenge first ask yourself if there is a cultural problem associated with the challenge. In many cases without addressing the cultural aspect, all of the fancy planning and strategery will undoubtedly fall short of expectations.

They say step number one is admitting you have a problem.  Brand stewards have big questions stirring in their heads sometimes:  “where are people talking about us?”, “how big of a bang am I getting on this program?”, “am I actually generating the level of buzz I need to create awareness for my brand?”.  So, of course, consultants like us love to try and answer that question.  In an article we wrote on product launch, we give our take on the old saying “it’s a mixture of art and science”:

The tools used in the product launch process, such as market sizing and market research methodologies, alpha and beta frameworks, launch checklists, etc., are “the science”,  whereas, deciding on which tools to apply and how to apply them, is “the art”. 

Well, when it comes to the science of monitoring web presence and social media impact, I must admit my addiction to Trendrr.  I haven’t been using it long, but so far I’ve found it incredibly useful for gauging the play certain terms, brands, companies, and people are having on the web.  For any given topic, you can get everything from the number of matching Twitter posts per hour to the number of Google searches conducted.  The best part is you can create your own data sets which will be captured and synthesized for you.  This is particularly useful if the term(s) you’re searching for are too obscure or not mainstream enough for Google trends.  You can also easily compare sets of data by using the Trendrr sketchpad, a spiffy feature that allows you to mashup multiple data sources into one easy-to-read graph.

Of course, measuring online brand reputation is not all about quantity .  Quality, tone, passion, and other factors can be just as important as prominence.  For a great list of free social media monitoring tools, I’d recommend starting with Andy Beal of Marketing Pilgrim’s 8 Essential Free Social Media Monitoring Tools.

So, while measuring and assessing brand reputation on the web can be an all-consuming exercise, simple free tools like Trendrr can be a great place to start!

IKEA did it again.  For their most recent US store opening in Tampa Bay, Florida IKEA placed large bottles containing select pieces of furniture on the St. Petersburg pier to promote its new store location.  You can see images taken by MediaPost here and here.

Although stunt marketing might be considered corny, if it’s done right, it can be a more effective brand building tactic.  For IKEA, the continuous usage of stunts has helped it to associate its brand with creativity, cost consciousness, and a quirky personality.  These efforts have allowed IKEA to clearly differentiate itself from its competitors.  What other furniture store would think of doing something like this?

One of the additional benefits of stunt advertising is the extended PR and word of mouth effect that can be generated from one event, like this blog posting.

IKEA does what so many brands strive to do; get people to interact with its products in a non-retail environment.  IKEA did that a few years ago in Copenhagen, Denmark where it furnished bus shelters with IKEA furniture so they looked like miniature IKEA stores.  The government objected to this an eventually had IKEA pull out the furniture but by then IKEA got what it was looking for, huge impact.  So IKEA decided to do something similar for Fashion Week in New York.

But stunt marketing, like other word of mouth campaigns, can backfire on you if not properly thought through, as it did for the Head of the Cartoon Network.

Do you know any other brands that have launched similar successful stunt marketing events or campaigns?

This is the fourth in a series of short posts related to The CMO Agenda research. Informed by recent CMO conversations and CMG Partners‘ collective experience helping top marketers develop marketing strategy, we have compiled a list of seven ideas or jump starters for further conversation. These are meant to spark discussion, ideas, and action as we all enter a difficult 2009.

The transparency and accountability of brands is increasing as new uses of the Internet drive the democratization of voice — shifting knowledge and control from marketers to consumers. This trend is forcing marketers to adopt non-traditional methods of brand management to ensure the brand is consistent not only in communications but through all customer touch points. As one CMO put it, “everything we do communicates.”

If you believe that the true definition of a brand lies with the perceptions of consumers not with the marketing leaders, then the extreme brand management practice would be for consumers to drive the expression of the brand. Well maybe not, but this is exactly what the maker of Skittles has done (knowingly or unknowingly).

In March, Skittles re-launched their website, which used social media tools for content: Twitter for “Chatter”, Facebook for “Friends”, Wikipedia for “product information” and YouTube for “Media”. This was heralded by some and refuted as a circus trick by others (see a previous post for my take).  Unfortunately, I have not been able to find information on the performance of the campaign.

This example, whether good or bad, does provide a new theory for brand managers and bring to reality the old phrase “a brand is what others say about you, not what you say about yourself.” How will you begin to renew your brand management practices to align with consumer voice?

Mirror post at alanhart.wordpress.com