by Miriam Hara | May 4, 2012 | Branding, Business Success
I like to think of Internal branding as mushy on the inside, solid on the outside… just like those chocolate coated marshmellow cookies! Businesses must realize that their internal brand must be a focus and it takes more than a positioning statement on t-shirts or jackets to make that happen. It is no longer viable for companies to rely on their external customer base to propagate the brand experience to their internal customers: their personnel. Gone are the days that the external message of brand is all that counts. In today’s environment, in order for an external brand to succeed, the internal organization, its employees, its processes all have to align themselves to the external brand…. if not, you’ll be short in offering your market base in brand experience, brand premise, brand promise and brand delivery.
Remember when offering friends and family discounts to your staff was the whole internal brand initiative companies employed? By doing this, companies provided employees with a way to “advertise” their product. In today’s social market, employees’ friends and families cast a wider net! Internal branding allows the potential of each employee becoming a proponent of your brand. They can and will be your best PR campaign. Word of mouth has taken on a whole new meaning.
Whether your business is in CPG (consumer packaged goods), b2b, medical, financial or non-profit… the ability to engage your personnel with your product, brand and service goes a long way in creating a complete brand experience. Organizations need to walk the talk. Today’s savvy consumers/customers expect and want more from their purchasing experience. In order to buy into a brand, to endorse it and select it, the complete 360 degree brand messaging must be consistent… and that includes your internal people. But how to do that?
To start, develop a clear company vision: Just like a brand positioning statement, this doesn’t have to be elaborate, however, it needs to be succinct. This isn’t anything new. Companies have always had a visions statement…. however, what you do with this company vision must be considerably more than framing it and placing it on the wall.
Identify key personnel to be the “internal brand ambassadors”, to motivate colleagues to embrace the vision: This is imperative. Identifying leaders within each department of your business will go a long way in creating a holistic experience for your brand. Empowering these ambassadors will ensure that within their department that the brand vision and premise stay strong and in line.
The company vision needs to be communicated to the internal team and “adopted” by senior management: The old adage “Do as I say…. not as I do” doesn’t work anymore. The culture of an organization needs to deliver on its brand promise. Actions speak louder than words. Management must get in line and be expected to tow the mantra.
Develop clear goals and measurement metrics, to assess along the way. (ie: sales mix % per sales person, customer service process and goals). This goes a long way in engaging employees and making them part of the process as “part of their job”. This assists in establishing the expectations and tying them up to the brand experience.
And lastly, but definitely very significant in the adoption of internal branding, is the ability to establish goals and reward personnel who demonstrate that they have embraced the culture.
In order to propel a cultural shift within an organization where employees are more client focused and more business focused, a developed and organized plan is essential in order to lead to the desired outcome. Just like everything else in business, a strategic plan identifying key goals is the first step. This will enable all key employees, and key stakeholders to be more engaged and relevant in the business process. I don’t remember where I read this but it did resonate with me: “There is a difference between communicating a message, and getting it understood, and changing behaviour.” So next time your are in a marketing meeting ready to establish your brand deliverables, don’t forget to bring those chocolate covered mashmallow cookies!
by Miriam Hara | Apr 26, 2012 | Branding, Business Success
It use to be that Brand referred to product, but in today’s world, the use of brand has taken on new applications. I see a lot of reference to Personal branding and Inward branding. In fact I just recently read an interesting article on Forbes.com about Donald Trump, and the concept of the human brand. Have these terms been renamed to speak to the times and establish a sexier term for initiatives that were always around but never deemed as important as Product branding?
This post concentrates on Personal Brand. I will expand on Inward Branding in a separate post.
Whatever industry you play in… or work in, Personal Brand and Branding are increasingly important for you to achieve business success…but what does Personal Brand really mean anyway?
Personal: it’s you. It’s your personality. To bring up The Donald again, he IS his brand. In the world of social media and constant communication, it is increasingly important to brand yourself. You don’t have to be a public speaker, or a blogger, looking for a job or a celebrity, and still you need to brand yourself. Branding yourself personally provides you with a point of differentiation from others in the business arena.. so when you will need it, you can draw upon it. You need to build awareness of you. In short, you are the product. It’s your game face!
I believe marketers not only always knew this but they knew how to work their own style to create a personal brand. However business and sales managers and executive, although very business focused may not have been so personal brand savvy.
In today’s communication era the need to have a defined personal brand is no longer a nice to have… but a need to have. In order to stand apart, to get ahead, it is no longer okay to just have a name with a good solid handshake! Just like a product Brand….you have to have a persona, a way to make sure that you do not blend into the background.
Are you among those that are mystified by this new brand adjective? As I browse the my LinkedIn network, I find a lot of discussions about “personal brand”… What is it? How to own it? How to achieve it? It’s really not that hard, (says the marketer!). Think of yourself as a brand… Lululemon, Nike, Channel or whatever Brand gets you excited. Now take that excitement and turn it onto yourself. Ask these following questions: What makes me different (what talents do I have?) What do I want others to remember about me? How do I make myself stand apart?
Here’s a 3-step approach to creating your, yes, very own, personal brand:
1. It’s all about the first impression…. at first.
The informality of business has allowed for a multitude of possibilities to set you apart. Maybe it’s a certain style of clothing, or like me, wearing a distinct colour. Yes, I wear purple every time I see a client. Initially I started doing that to assist in branding my firm. I accomplished that but it has also become synonymous with me! Be careful not to go too overboard. Always be cognizant of whom you are meeting, what their style is like and what the “acceptable tone” of the company is. Standing apart doesn’t mean making a spectacle of yourself, it means you have to be assertive in your statement, without overpowering your statement with props and fanfare.
2. Leave something behind…with that first impression…
Top the incredible first impression with a business card to leave behind. This business card has your coordinates and a positioning statement that succinctly states what you can deliver on… on what sets you apart in the business arena. This is probably going to be a lot harder than deciding what clothes you have to wear! It’s difficult to describe yourself, your abilities and what you do in one sentence. Start by asking what makes you different from others? What experience can you state (professional and personal) that provides you with an edge? Reach out to your colleagues and business associates and ask what they see as your biggest strength.
3. As with product brands… you have to deliver the goods….
Each one of us has bought into a brand promise, whether it’s a service or a product, and have been disappointed. You know what I mean? The brand just didn’t live up to to its sizzle (brand promise). So be sure that doesn’t happen to you. In other words, you could look great, exude all the energy that sets you apart from others and make that first impression count. Top that fabulous first impression with an equally fabulous designed business card with that concise positioning statement and you have it made…. Or almost. You have to live up to your promise and to your uniqueness. You have to deliver on the sizzle and maintain the reputation that your Personal Brand is based on. And that’s the most important step in developing and establishing a Personal Brand and ensuring your business success.
Keep posted on the second part of this series about Inward Branding. I invite you to join in the conversation! If you got here via a link from a friend, or LinkedIn, I invite you to join the conversation on marketing, branding and design… sign up on 3H hoopla! here.
by Miriam Hara | Apr 20, 2012 | Branding, Business Success, Creative
We’ve all said it before… but I’ll say it again. Brand is so much more than a logo, than a positioning statement. These establish the brand premise and the foundation to build the brand culture. A true brand must be bold, must stand apart every time it speaks to the consumer. It must always be authentic to its premise. It must reinforce its uniqueness and authenticity with every piece of communication… whether it’s an e-initiative, an ad, outdoor campaign, digital campaign, website, customer letter, greeting card and, yes, even a sign on the wall.
It has always been my belief that every detail that is viewed by the target market is an integral piece of the brand building process. I have always correlated building brand to building a house. The logo and the positioning statement are the foundation of the brand. Then the framework, dry walls, windows all have to be added…. to support and build the “total vision” of the house.
This “building strategy” recognizes the need of investing a little more in say, a business card or a leave behind , and is as integral as a full scale advertising campaign. Okay, I hear you asking the question… what do I mean by “investing a little more?” This is what I mean: look at every communication piece and ask the number one question… “How do I make my brand the sole owner of this piece?” Is it only colour? Is it simply by stating the brand’s offering? Does the initiative I am working on speak to my Brand and communicate my Brand solely… only and truly? Is it moving beyond the mundane, true and tried initiatives that have been done… offering no intrinsic value, no additional wow effect to my target audience? Does it assist in making my brand stand apart…even before they read it…as soon as they see it?
How to evaluate a marketing piece and increase the brand ROI of that piece. Here’s a simple way that will help you in answering the question.
If a competitor can replace your logo with theirs, change the colour and the words and use everything else that you’ve developed than you haven’t created a unique brand piece. This question works whether you are evaluating an ad, a flyer, a billboard, a sales aid, a leave behind, brochure, etc…
So how do you create a brand piece that no one can “take” from you. The answer is easy:
Create it so that it reflects your Brand Offering and USP… and I don’t just mean plopping a logo, and making everything in your brand colours (although that is must!). The initiative has to speak to the Brand Culture, position in personality, in format, in copy style. This is the only way that competitors can’t mimics your brand or “take ” your initiative and make it their own… because they can’t deliver on the promise or on your brand’s USP… only your brand can.
In short: creating brand ROI is the first step in achieving business success.It is obvious that Brand must provide ROI. But what should be the expectation of delivering on brand ROI? Is it reasonable to expect brand ROI immediately? Is it reasonable because you have a website and a logo to expect that your brand initiatives are done and all other initiatives just need to follow through? Today, more than ever, halfway measures and “me too look alikes” will damage the performance of you brand and believe me, that will definitely effect the brand ROI.
I look forward to your comments and discussing your point of view. I invite you to join in the conversation! If you got here via a link from a friend, or Linkedin, I invite you to join the conversation on marketing, branding and design… sign up on 3H hoopla! here.
by Miriam Hara | Apr 5, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Creative, Social Media
Is the way we are communicating SAFE? Has the less “physical” interaction that we are now all adopting with so much enthusiasm curtailed our ability to develop original thinking and thought provocative inventions and innovations? Has being faceless allowed us to be impolite, rude and COLD?
Humans have never been more “social” then in the present… and yet, recently, on a discussion I posted on Linkedin, I received one statement that left me quite chilled! My discussion point was very succinct: Is the way we communicate digitally impacting negatively on the way we network in business or not? This discussion topic, based on a post to our company blog Hoopla, written by one of my colleagues about the “social in social media.”
With the onslaught of social media, the ability to communicate has never been easier nor more immediate. But does more mean less? Is the quality of the communication and the connection as important or as necessary as it was in the past, a mere 2 or 3 years ago? Has our ability to be considerate been diminished by the fact that we can be impersonal. That we are one step removed from the person trying to connect with us. No longer is a voice or a face to the conversation reminding us that there is a person at the other end of the communication. We have become fonts and letters.
In my original discussion, there was much conversation over how relevant the Connections were and that having replaced the “personal” in the interaction with a computer screen that communication has become faceless. The one comment that I previously referred to was stated by a fellow group member from the Marketing Executives Group, Caron Hughs , and it is the one I really would like your opinion on. This statement is the reason for this post.
“… There are few left who practice manners in acknowledging a phone call, or an email. It is far easier to ignore someone’s plea for help if you are not looking into their eyes. It is far easier to miss a career changing proposal because you are too busy to read an email or return a phone call. We are becoming a very SAFE society in the way we communicate … and there are no manners, or “outside of the box” thinking in our communications. We choose to respond to what is safe and what is familiar … and from that the great new ideas that could be born to life in a collaborative effort are fading away. Even in entertainment … could there be any more remakes from stories of old or copycat competitions born from the original’s success?”
When I read her comment, it made me realize how much of what she said is accurate. You only have to look to fashion, listen to music, look at design and see how re-inventing the old has become the norm. Where is the trend-setting? What is new and novel? Even Lady Gaga… has taken so much of Madonna… in attitude but also in sound and music. Madonna was the first, Micheal Jackson was a first, the Beatles were a first and so were the Rolling Stones. They were and are original. They made the moves. They struck the cords. They established the trends. Okay, so that is music…. what about fashion? Dare I say sunglasses…. big buggy sunglasses, or how about the new Aviator look? And let’s speak to design… Retro is in!!! Yes indeed… everything new… well, isn’t.
So has social media and the ease of communication lessened our ability to think outside the box because we spend so much time staring into a frame….so to speak?
What are your thoughts on this?
by Miriam Hara | Apr 3, 2012 | Advertising, Branding, Business Success, Creative
Way too often, ads are filled with too much information and lots of copy. How does that happen? Why does it happen? I can almost hear the collective grumble from all my peers saying…. “Clients!” But I believe that laying blame at the doorstep of clients, absolves us, the creative professional of any blame. I believe as Creative Professionals, it is our role to accommodate but also to advise. In my experience, once you explain the reasons why you shouldn’t do something , or even show them what is being compromised, clients really do get it.
Just think back… even recently and consider this:
- Ever watch a TV commercial and say, I don’t get it?…. or worse, what’s the brand? Remember the Head On ad?
- Drive and spot an outdoor billboard and you can’t read the caption because there’s too many words like the one below…. and the type is so small?
- Flip through a magazine ad and miss the total point of the ad? Like this one.
It always amazes me that there are ads that actually get to the marketplace without a clear single focused message. Or the creative is sooo out there, that it doesn’t circle back to the brand or to the product. This is a particular pet peeve of mine, as I just recently wrote an entire blog on this issue! An ad (any kind of ad) shouldn’t be closing the sale…. it should be generating interest… It needs to communicate benefit and to engage consumers enough so that they take action. Ads were never meant to replace sales people! They were meant to increase awareness of a product and service and increase the knowledge of the benefits within that product or service. Ads are meant to get traffic, whether it’s a website or a physical location.
So the next time you face a challenge, think back on what makes you a creative professional. Advertising isn’t about pretty pictures and for it to work there are certain protocols that need to be followed. At times it can be challenging, but that is what our profession is all about. How often are we faced with and given mountains of information to decipher and create a single succinct statement that says is all. Or given so many logos and visual elements to layout into a visual flow that directs the consumer’s eyes and makes sure that the main message is delivered. The minute we let go of this basic standard, then everyone and anyone who owns a computer can “create” an ad. All they need is Indesign or Illustrator knowledge.
