innovation playground Idris Mootee

Many Made The Mistake Of Taking the Brand Out Of The Innovation Equation On The Fuzzy Front-End. Are You One Of Them?

Companies make many mistakes in their innovation journeys and often they go down the same path again and again and wonder why that is the case. The four main reasons among many are:

1/ They think it is all about creativity and coming up with more ideas.

Coming up with ideas is easy. Coming with good ideas is not difficult. Coming up with more ideas is not helpful. It is the quality of ideas and once ideas are being exhausted, it is time to perform the more difficult job of sensemaking and mapping. This is where most people fail and have no ideas of what and how to do next. They lack a framework of synthesizing these concepts into bigger themes and look at them in a differently way to see how each of ideas-system means to the customers, business and industry.

2/ They think innovation should be separated from the brand. Often people start thinking of new ideas without thinking without understanding the scope and scale requirements and that should be governed by the brand.

These ideas need to link to the current brand or masterbrand in whatever ways and has the potential to scale within a reasonable period of time. No established companies, unless for a very good reason, should start a new brand because of economic reasons and also the brand can be the powerful source to inspire innovation, in addition to the users or customers. Otherwise people can waste a lot of time and realize even they have a good idea, the marketing investment will cost too much making the project not worth pursuing. On the opposite, they also should not confused brand extension or other incremental innovation as strategic innovation.

3/ They think their current capabilities (including that of their agencies) are adequate and can do the job. The learning curve for them is too steep.

In many cases, companies have existing working relationships with their advertising agencies and marketing research firms and naturally would want to work with them on innovation projects. This is a bad decision as for the advertising agencies, they are too deeply embedded with the existing idea of what the brand is and should do rather than a fresh way of looking at it. And most marketing communications people and not equipped to manage the innovation process. Some innovation firm is basically ex-advertising agencies people repackaged themselves as innovation consultants (there are some occastions people successfully migrate). Most marketing research firms are not equipped with the right tools to do research that support innovation, and end up applying the usual quantitative and qualitative research methodologies which were designed for market testing and tracking.

To unlock the full power of applied creativity to drive innovation and economic value, let’s not approach innovation with overly simplified approach to getting the magic and bringing in the money. There is no magic in the innovation process, no one should hide behind this magic black box and the client expect them to show up one day with some magical ideas and then write them a check. Innovation is about applying design thinking and having all the right type of people and capabilities in place.

4/ They are confused between strategic visions, brand and innovation and what comes first?

Executives spend a lot of time on strategic vision – answering questions such as who we are, what we do and what do we want to be when we grow up etc. Then they trying to figure what the brand really stands for. At the same time they also spend time on creating new products and service ideas? What usually happens next is now they struggle bringing the two together to use?

When people hear about vision, they think of it as something that guides the company into the future, and to succeed in the future requires innovation. And innovation is about building a powerful brand and create new market space for the future. While the value of having some kind of strategic vision is obvious, it should never be mistaken as strategy. Strategy is not only about vision, it is about strategic innovation. And brand should guide innovation. It is so easy to get confused.

Moving forward companies need to do two things differently.

1/ Reorient their brand people with the idea that brand needs to get beyond communications. My new book 60-Minute Brand Strategist shows readers step-by-step guide to build a brand from the core and its meanings to customer experience design. Brand Managers should not be stuck in the old world with old-school approach and brand-building model developed in the 80s and take on the roles as Brand Innovators. Every brand manager’s jobs should have two roles: managing brand business performance and managing brand innovation.

2/ Rethink what kind of people and skills that is needed to implement innovation. Implementation innovation is 10X harder is coming up with the ideas and it requires more than a product development person. They need to understand the different roles that they have already – and will need – on the team and each role’s importance in the ideation and activation stages. Idea Couture research on innovation practices shows that many business leaders still believe that innovation is a rare gift that exists mainly in creative people who are in leadership roles or gifted creatively. For example, just think of how often you hear people saying, “That’s why I get paid the big bucks because I am the big idea guy.” Such thinking is not healthy as it usually means that organizations are overlooking other, much better sources of potential innovation. An idea, even a big idea, is not the same as an innovation. Only when an idea is turned in to a product, a service or a business that creates new value can it be considered an innovation. Whether the innovative idea is radical, substitutive, incremental, or complementary, it still needs to fit into the stages of a value chain within an industry.

On another note, my book 60-min Brand Strategist is offically launched this month. It is available in Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other book stores. These are some pages taken from the book. It only takes you 60 minutes to read through it. I know you're busy. Share with me your thoughts.

With The Emerging Of The New "Object-Culture" - Meanings Are Sought Through Social Identities, Visual Information and Interfaces / Interactions

There are objects that I love for many different reasons. They range from my Leicas to my JBL speakers, LV bags, Prada shoes and Mac computers. Objects that are highly functional can also be highly personal … expressive, reliable and artistic. Designers, brand marketers and product development executives often have to deal with the philosophical dilemmas such as subject vs. object; humanity vs. nature; function vs. style; and simplicity vs. complexity. Every time we come up with an innovative product design or experience we need to consider all of these things.

When does the value of a product exceeds its functional value and at what point the emotive value reaches a point of diminishing return? What is the value of the emotive premium or should there be a premium at all? Can we engineer emotive elements into the design without adding cost? Whose job is it? Did they teach that in MBA or MFA ? Or neither? It is something we think about everyday at Idea Couture. The engineering of desire; emotive attributes as product features; and interactions as gateways to collective experiences.

We are definitely reaching another higher state of our “object-culture” when consumer electronics such as cell phones and other gadgets replace or compliment our usual “badges” and these new form of badges are more than just symbols of tribes and tastes, they are windows to our other world – somewhere that our identities are developed and validated. It is worth to deploy our anthropologists to study the new role and meaning of social objects (electronics gadgets) and what it means to marketers.

Honestly speaking, I think men need badges more than women and men likes to see the world in groups and believe people in groups (including clubs, schools, sports, tribes, politics, religions or nations) tend to differ from one another to such a degree that they perceive each other as though they were totally different species from another planet. These groups (reflect by badges) provide their members with a strong sense of distinct and superior identity.

As designers and marketers we design objects that wonderfully fit in the palm of our hands; sometimes bring us a sense of confidence and occasionally moments of delights in the form of a text message. This is what it looks like. It’s got a little touch screen on it; you can shake it and it will respond to your command. It is ultra thin and fits nicely into the pockets of your Hugo Boss jacket. Call this the period of late modernity or postmodernity if you wish. We are living in a time when the legacy of the modern era, in which empiricism and utilitarianism rise to prominence. It is simply just part of being human. And that’s why marketing and product design is never a true science despite people come up with useless fancy tools.

Philosopher Charles Taylor has offered an explanation of the meaning of these activities within modern societies. He says that in the modern worldview meaning is sought through concepts such as progress, reason and freedom and a sense of meaning in one’s life. I think technology is a clear sign of “progress”, collective thinking and reasoning in mass and real time code is the redefinition of “reason” and “freedom” is reflected through Facebook and other social media. Let’s see what our anthropologists have to add.

Now back to my day job. It is not so fun anymore when my to-do-list is longer than my blog post.

We Have Proved Once Again That Brand Marketing Can Drive Social Change, Further Customer Engagment And Build Brands. And Won A Gold Award For Best Financial Service Marketing.

Aviva Canada just announced winners to Aviva Community Fund with half a million dollars payout to programs across the country. This is the second year of a very successful campaign created to use brand to drive social change. The Aviva Community Fund, a unique competition designed to lead, empower and support positive change in communities across the country, was first launched in 09 when we presented the idea to the client.

The idea is an open source idea platform for people to submit and decide how to use the money to drive real social change and provide positive impact to their communities. We are grateful to our client's team who worked with us side by side and our design and development team working day and night to accommodate the evolving needs of the program. This is year two and we won a gold award for this campaign. Great work team!

The sustainable impact of the idea or campaign is another proof to show that the world has changed so much since the early days of advertising. The events of the last decade and the Internet has made us aware of the challenges around us.

Advertising has always been the primary mechanism to create awareness and build brand equity, but it is not a question of which 50% of the money is wasted, it is a question of why 80% of the money spent is not building brand equity and merely creating awarness?

Our research shows that 79% of consumers are willing to change the brands they buy or if they believe their actions contribute to making our world a better place, and over 67% would help a brand “promote” (by using Facebook or other social media) if a good cause were behind it and is credible. Also, 73% of consumers (under the age of 35) said it is their mission to contribute to a better society and environment.

Among all respondents, “helping others and contributing to their communities” was cited as the second-most important source of personal contentment, after “spending quality time with loved ones.” Over 54% respondents are not fully convinced that corporate social responsibility advertising is credible when they cannot associate that with real action. The power of PR is diminishing when the program is not designed to engage consumers. This study was part of our ongoing research to look at how social causes can help brands which are low involvement in nature to drive engagement.

One interesting take away point, 67% of consumers are comfortable with the idea that brands can support good causes and improve our societies and make money at the same time. When is Wall Street ready to factor in a second or third bottom line into their valuation of companies? It is time.

Brand Talk on Love, Sex And Emotion. Marketers Love Drinking Their Kool-Aid.

Can a company/brand create such powerful emotive connections to make customers love them? Your advertising agency will be quick to say yes. I am not sure. I can imagine a few scenarios that it happens but is is very uncommon. Marketers like to convince themselves that you can buy ‘love’ and that’s the ultimate goal for great marketing. What's that book name "Lovemark"?  That's an example of advertisers drinking their own Kool-Aid. Yes, many customers can have a level of enthusiasm because we provide them with a great customer experience, is that love? That’s what I want to write about.

Neurologists suggest that the early stages of love are governed by parts of the brain that are used for goal-seeking and reward, and resembles obsessive-compulsive disorder. Such as the first time you look at an Apple iPhone, a Harley Street Bob, a Hermes Kelley, a Mercedes SL AMG and a Patek Philippe Calatrava.

Here's how our brain works, at the early stage of a romantic relationship sparks activity in dopamine-rich brain regions normally associated with motivation and reward. The intensity is proportion to the activity. Advertising doesn’t make them love your brand; they attract their attention and interest.

The part of our brain associated with emotion, the insular cortex and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex, are not activated until the more mature phases of a relationship. In the context of brand marketing, the emotive connections require consistence good customer experiences including the love and hate. Love happens as a result when the sum total of the interactions that a customer has with a company's products, people, and interfaces reach certain threshold. Starting from the moment when customers purchase a product to the moment when they unwrap the box and sharing their joy with their friends on Facebook.

Here's a myth. Love is not emotion, it is a strategic capability to gain happiness. And love by itself has no object. It is some invisible and unexplainable energy of consciousness sometimes we are not even aware of it. It is beyond form, yet inclusive of form. Love is a capability that can be developed, nurtured and learned. We develop this capability when we were very young. Over the years, we develop the ability to love and care for the other person(s) and sometimes even objects.
Emotion is a different animal. It is feelings (or reactions from our brain activity) that aroused as a result of stimuli. When you see something, you want to touch it, feel it and probably own it. Many people marry for the sake of convenience or benefits. The same way we are loyal to certain brands for the same reasons. Either because there is a lack of choice of simply the product category is of low involvement.

Sex, love and emotion are three different things. In an ideal world, they intersect at certain junction. Sex is not the single manifestation of love (although it can be one of them), regular purchase and consumption of a brand is not a manifestation of love for the same reason. Some people are always under the misconception that the manifestation of love is sex; the manifestation of loyalty is purchase frequency. Yes, it may be. But mostly not.

Take away for you for the weekend, emotion often gets us into trouble but we must recognize them as part of being human and accept them into our consciousness, where they need to be cared for and managed. And that cab be learned.

Have a great weekend and please share your thoughts.

My Next Book Will Be Called "The Authenticity Gap". I May Not Get Many Serious Readers. How About "Authenticiy Without Commitment"?

The Authenticity Gap - that should be the title of my next book. Well, I don’t think I have time to write another book, it takes me almost 5 weeks last time. I guess I will need at least 8 weeks. But no. May be a blog post, it takes only 15 mins. I do like the name, but I guess it won't sell well. May be "Authenticity Without Commitment", this is a far better title, I think I can sell 200,00 copies and sell a lot of seminars. Will get sponsorship from BP for sure.

Marketers have been talking about authenticity and brands for a long time and have been trying to be authentic, they are using the wrong tool. And often they don't know what it means. Advertising doesn’t make brands authentic. They build awareness and interest… but rarely building brand equity these days. That was a very different case 20 years ago. Today every individual, organization and brand is struggling with closing this gap.

When you are being viewed as ‘authentic’, people will tolerate your mistakes if they are the results of good intent, understand you’re human and seeing you as ‘real’. Consumers want ‘real’ brands, ‘real’ companies that empathize, and ‘real’ leaders that care. When public relation companies getting ‘real’ in using social media, it simply widens the gap. Sam problems with CEOs, employees want ‘real’ leaders that do not read out from a prewritten piece of paper, they want ‘real’ leaders that understand their needs. It also include saying and doing the very difficults, telling an employee that he is not the right fit for the job in an honest and respectable manner is part of being authentic, helping that individual to find his core is more important that force fitting someone into a job that he/she do not have the passion or the potential to be best.

Consumers also want ‘real’ brands and products that mean they accept the ‘imperfection’ and ‘limitations’ and want the ‘transparency’ to go with it. 90% of advertising out there doesn’t pass the ‘authenticity’ test. I am tired of advertising that trying to be cute and I am sick of those ads that the CEO shows up and talk about how they care about consumers. Stop Botoxing your companies, start changing the core of the organization and start ‘doing’ what is responsible for shareholders, societies and the environment.

All authentic brands are in many ways is the identity reflecting on company culture and leadership. They help that culture become visible and understood both customers and employees. They also embody the values and purpose of the company and giving them a face a personality and a voice that can be seen and heard. The mistake people makes is they try to engineer that from a marketing perspective, from extending that from the core. Icing is icing, it doesn’t change the quality of the cake.

That’s why many organizations are now relying on Corporate Social Responsibility to make organizations authentic, it is not a PR campaign, it is a business strategy that informs the brand, product development, customer service and marketing strategy. It is simply the best thing a company can do – going back to the heart of the company/brand and rediscover that the inner voice and use that to remind the public / employees that organizations can also be human, it is people making decisions, not a machine. We made mistakes, we correct them. We don’t ignore it and turn on a PR machine and hopefully we spin them enough people will forget it.

Can The BP Brand Be Saved? The Logo Is Now The Symbol Of The Worst Ecological Disaster In Decades.

This BP mess is definitely an ecological disaster as well as a brand disaster of the century and it will take us decades to see the real impact. BP has lost half of its market value and there are even considerations for shareholder lawsuits on behalf of BP investors who have lost money because of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

Evidence is mounting that BP's directors, officers and executives missed or ignored numerous 'red flags', which had they been addressed, may have prevented the disaster. These actions also exposed BP to criminal and tort liability, and subjected the company to adverse publicity. Years of investment in the brand equity is pretty much gone overnight.

 

The brand now becomes a liability. Greenpeace launches a crowdsource logo design contest to publicize their cause. They are inviting professional designers and amateur designers to redesign British Petroleum’s logo and are getting an amazing response. The contest was launched shortly after Greenpeace climbers scaled a balcony above BP’s London headquarters to hang a giant flag bearing a reworked BP logo. The contest will run for six weeks, ending on June 28, 2010. I've picked a few that I like here.

The winning participants besides having their winning logo used in various Greepeace campaigns, they will get a day of training on a Greenpeace speedboat (not sure what that training it is), a design Masterclass with design agency Airside, or one of 50 goody bags (curious to know what’s inside).

The BP logo was designed by Landor and is featured as a blossoming flower on BP television commercials. Up until now, the design has been lauded by designers as a good example of a logo that reflects environmental responsibility. It is a pretty nice logo, but a pretty logo can only do so much these days in the age of transparency. Wonder how the original logo designers like the derivatives or are they participating in the contest

Brand Naming - Does The Old Rules Still Apply?

I took this picture a few weeks ago in NYC while visiting a client. I really like the name "Permission To Ger Dirty". Guess what? It is laundry store. I am not 100% sure but will send someone to check it out.

Brand naming – does the old rules still apply? Or brand naming strategists need to learn some new tricks? There are always two schools: one is find something that is cool, aspirational and doesn’t have to mean anything. Like FlickR, Google or Blackberry; or something that is relevant to a category or reflect what the product actually is such as PayPal, Facebook or Playstation etc.

Finding words that are actionable, be remembered easily, ownable, and relevant becomes a lot easier when you start playing with names that describe the product or what it does. Both approaches are not mutually exclusive. It gets complicated when you start bringing in strategic intent and corporate strategy into considerations, that it becomes branding for future business scope/scale versus branding for toady’s products and services.

Generally the same criteria applies, the ability to differentiate, the shelf life of the name, phonetics, domain name, and trademark issues. One very common mistake, people believe that if the brand name cannot be owned as domain name, than they should be take off the list That should not be the limiting factor with the exception that there is a very strong presence from another web company.

We all want to be different. The question is should we rely on the brand name alone to do the job? A distinctive and easy to remember name helps distinguish the brand, the product or the business. But it needs to be supported by delivery of the brand promise and brand economics. Certain brand names stay in our mind even long after the businesses went under. What good is that?  Brand naming is important for sure, but the more important thing is it needs to be strategic.

By The Standard Of The Late Leo Burnett, Many Of Today's Big Agencies Should Have Taken Their Founders' Name Off The Door. Here's A Tribute To The Loney Man Who Spent A Lifetime Behind His Typewriter To Come With The Big Ideas.

This week I was invited to speak on branding and marketing to group graduate students who are studying towards a master degree in branding. I shared part of my Advanced Branding Masterclass material, which covers the future of branding in the world of social technologies and connectivity. Their instructor (an advertising veteran who had a long agency career including Leo Burnett) raised a very interesting point, 20 or 30 years ago advertising agencies were in the business of selling “ideas”, today many are becoming audio and video factories. And he realized that our success is all about ideas. That is very true, who are the creators of “ideas” these days? Idea Couture is exactly about ideas, not only communications but strategic ideas…. be it brand, product, service, interface, interactive, and retail experience.

We have a good chat about the agency scenes in the 80s. I always remember the self-advertising of Leo Burnett in those days. I still keep copies of them including the one I scanned and posted here.  This is one that I really like is “When to take my name off the door” – Leo Burnett 1967. It was elegantly written. He was not only a great craftsman, but understand how to create a strong organization culture. “Creative ideas flourish best in a shop which preserves some spirit of fun. Nobody is in business for fun, but that does not mean there cannot be fun in business.”A lesson I learned from him it is always important not to take the fun away from work.

A while back I was invited to a private event involving top 30 global executives of an agency group. There were so much fear and unknown among them about the future of their business or industry. They struggle with the legacies that they carry but at the same time they know they are too big to adapt flexibly to the fast changing media scene. Media is being redefined on a daily basis and brands no longer have passive, anonymous audience whose behaviors are predictable.

We are moving to "cocoon of rich media experiences that follow us from one place to another and from morning till night. The penetration of iPad will be accelerating the “cocooning” and the open up creative possibilities of building longer pauses into our entertainment mix to allow for double screening or triple-screening. Imagine if future TV production adjusted to the reality of multitasking during long boring bits. This is exciting for many.

Agencies need to throw away these out-dated paradigms of CRM, direct marketing or public relations etc. And forget about integrated campaign and start from a clean sheet of paper. Advertisers were getting MTV lazy for a long period of time as they relied on sexy bodies, sound bites and spectacular effects and forgot about the big idea. Not that those 20 secs sight and sound are not entertaining, but we need more.

Tools change, technologies advance, new behavior emerges, media outlets proliferate but objectives don’t’. We need to engage, intrigue, connect, persuade, amuse, empower and entertain. Advertising agencies need to partake in extensive therapies to cure their MTV laziness and deflate their egos. This problem is systemic.

Agencies don’t understand strategy. They keep hide behind “brand building” and fail to understand the economics of customers and marketing. They overcharge for the execution and incapable of giving clients real strategies to engage customers and create customer value, both tangible customer value and conversational value.

Almost all big agencies only pay lip service to digital and don’t understand social media beyond throwing buzz words around. For them, they are just another way to broadcast their messages. They hire and a few digital thinkers who have no real authority, no resources, no real work, and use them as PR figure in front of clients. They farm out the work to little mom and pop development shops that undervalue themselves and lose credit for the work.

Agencies need to put communications aside for a second and start opening up their minds on new creative ways to build long-lasting human connections, between brands and individuals and among individuals. Everything that matters in the future of advertising begins and ends with three things: people and their communities and purpose. Go to slideshare to see some of my slides presentation on this topic. Big agencies need help.

What Is Social Branding? What Makes A Brand Social? What Do You Need To Do To Become A Truly Social Brand Beyond Just Getting Into Facebook And Twitter?

I remembered talking to a group of senior marketing executives two years ago, the topic was “Branding 2.0 Is to get social” and many were scratching their heads and weren't sure what I was referring to. To answer the question "what's social branding?” we need to understand what branding is?  People involved with a collectivity of brands so as to benefit from the meanings they add to their lives. People will look for signs to represent meanings even if we take brands away. If a brand does not have vital consumer meaning, may be it is not worthwhile investing in its leadership both financially and organizationally. So where do they get these meanings?

Where do these meaning comes from? Brands and consumers are interdependence, an attribute that is enhanced to the extent that brands are animated, connected, distributed, networked, humanized, individualized and socialized. (You can read more from my Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass 2007 by clicking on the tag cloud, these pages are from my latest limited edition coffee table version of my 60-minute brand strategy book which has been updated and in its 4th edition. It will be published in multiple languages, you can read the whole book on my slideshare, but sorry download is not available) Consumers demand more from brands and people online are seeking new ways to connect and be social. Social networks and media give testimony to human most basic desire to belong and to be part of a group(s), as we congregate around the things we are passionate about or want to associate with. Thanks to Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social media, we have the opportunity to re-establishing ourselves as the ultimate communicators, spreading the word across the geographical, cultural and political at unprecedented speed.  This is the globalization of meanings. It takes your brand with you.

Brand is not just visual images and tag lines, it is the collective emotional response to images and experiences. In other words, a brand is not defined by the product or service, but rather the person who uses it, talks about and engages other with it defines it.  Mark Jacob does not define me, rather they are defined by me, they form part of my personal brand and mingle and mix with other brands (Hermes, Apple and Blackberry). Brands are not composed of the people who purchase their brands; rather people and communities are composed of the brands they use.

All broadcast businesses are in big trouble, and user-generated videos are just the beginning. There are more to come. The social casting of YouTube will evolve and, and in the process, so too will consumer behavior. Instead of passivity, the experience flow of tomorrow will be characterized by immediacy, flexibility, portability, permeability, fluidity, interactivity, mashability and ownerability (these are Morgan’s words). With the emergence and convergence of the mobile phone, the Internet and location-based-systems, consumers also have immediate access to co-workers, friends and family members, involvement and consumer connections.

Brand Obama, Apple and Coca Cola, What Do They Really Have In Common?

This is a special day in history. Barack Obama sworn in as the 44th president of the United States and the America's first African-American president today, it is a big day. The last 16 months, we learned that Obama had not only vision for America, but possessed the commitment, intellect, strength, character and political brilliance to rise to the top leadership. He is wonderful lift of the human spirit against seemingly insurmountable odds – an inspiration for young people all over the world. Obama's popularity and inspiration will impact the next generation significantly. 

The world is eager to see a great leader in action. Many hope that Obama will address the global climate crisis, by furthering the efforts already made to unite America and the world in working towards being more environmentally conscious and sustainability. His speech was just so inspiring even outside of America people around the world are very much looking forward to this change, especially in the "climate change" position on the past the Bush Administration ignored, a very short sighted and narrow visioned administration. 

What does the young people think of the Obama's brand? Here’s a roundtable of 8 teenagers sitting around in my house. This is not a focus group but just friends of my teenager sons. Let’s hear what these young people have to say about the future – technology, politics and culture after watching Obama’s inauguration speech. 

How important are your cell phone and other communication devices to you? Overwhelmingly, the cell phone is most important (equally as the iPod) , mostly to stay connected to friends and family; taking snap shots; and to a lesser degree for music listening. They’re also really, really fond of texting and is becoming their core communication tool. Email is considered slow and wonder how email in its current form will survive the next generation. Blackberry has a lot of work to do to secure this future. When asked about SMS ad, it is a no no. One said he prefers his parent to contact him through SMS even when he is around at home working in his room. Another person confesses technology in general makes life more stressful, because there is not place to hide. It is the paradox of technology. 

What’s your attitude towards advertising? Everyone seems to be able to talk about specific funny ads, but overwhelmingly, no one would believe any thing they hear, watch or read. They admit that they often learn about these new products through ads, but the source of information is through forums and communities. They are quick to form an opinion and 2 out of the 6 considered themselves opinion leaders in their social groups. Some believe that after clothing, a cellphone tells the most about their social status, they disagree. No one in the group cares much about the brand of the phone, as long as it has some basic features. It is not a status tool as many have thought. They think that all big advertising money spent by the handset brands is a total waste of money. Wonder what Nokia, Sony Erickson and Motorola has to say.They should start thinking of new way to engage these young people.

Let’s talk about the brands that you love? Everybody picks a different one: Apple, Urban Outfitters, Obama, Xbox, Coke, In-N-Out Burger and Addidas. They talked about how much these companies are willing to listen to uses and respond to their needs. Surprisingly no one likes the Apple ads, although everyone loves the brand. Wonder how much the advertising actually contributed to Apple's  brand equity if any at all. I think the stores are doing more than the ads.

Do you think the world will be change for the better after today? 

“I think Obama is going to bring a much-needed change to the world. His ideas will make people more open-minded, and he will inspire them to get more involved.” 

“With a new US president comes a time for hope and possibilities. Here’s what they say they hope to see happen during Obama’s first term as president of the United States."

“My hope for him is that he will be able to fix the recession and end the messy war in the Middle East quick.” “I hope he cleans up the giant mess and put the focus back into education and out planet.”

“I would like to see actual changes happen, he is inspiring us and many people at our age. You don’t find too many inspiring figures around us today.” 

“I hope that he can sort out the economic crisis and help with global warming. I hope that as president, Obama will make the right choices in fixing the current state of our economy.” 

Obama is probably the most popular brand built in the shortest period of time (shorter than Google). Obama, Apple, Coke and very much same of a kind. They share a lot of attributes the say way the president is presenting himself. They're meant to look transparent, empowered, hopeful, accessible and democratic to a certain degree. Non-intimidating and trustworthy. At its heart, authenticity is about practicing what you preach; knowing about who you are and what you do best. When a brand's rhetoric gets out of sync with customers' actual experiences, the brand's integrity and future persuasiveness suffers.  It is something which is hard to manufacture even with lots of advertising and packaging craft. Being able to project an identity that people are willing to credit with being authentic is a very hard thing to do. But Obama, Apple, Coke are all doing a great job.

Saving Your "Zombie Brands" ?

This is what I hate most, checked online making sure flights are on schedule and only discovered when you get to the airport that it was cancelled. Wonder if the system allows them to send those update to passengers through cell phones. That way I can turn around and drive home.  Anyway this has been a productive week.  If I can keep my travelling to three days a week that’s pretty good, I do need to spend more time at the office.

I have not been written much on brands since our Advanced Branding Masterclass so I thought maybe I should start that dialogue.

“Zombie Brands”, “Dinosaurs Brands”, “Ghost Brands” or “Graveyard Brands”, these are names that people use to call brands that have either customers have completely abandoned or simply hanging in there (often on the bottom shelf or only showing up occasionally in 99cents stores or Costco in totally unrelated product category). Some of them gone through some revitalization efforts that were unsuccessfully and some ended up existing only in some emerging markets. Others have simply lost their relevance in their core market place (Xerox, Oldsmobile) and the brands are used casually on products that are totally outside their product categories (Teac, RCA, Polaroid etc.).

If you happen to own one a “Zombie Brand”, what can you do? You have the following options: 1/ Invest and attempt to revitalize it, 2/ Milk it, 3/ Position it for the emerging market 4) Sell it for whatever it’s worth, or 5/ Dump it. People who have special relationships often have sentimental reasons to give them a second chance.  The cost and risk of bringing a brand back to live is enormous and what is needed to make sure the decision is based on sound logic. If you run a large portfolio, the question will be, “Which brands are worth the revitalization effort?” and “Why?”

Many b-school case studies have been written about of how brands were “brought back from the graveyard.” Unfortunately, however, the lessons are often so idiosyncratic. There 100X more cases where companies tried revitalizing old brands, hiring new advertising agencies and throwing endless amounts of money in advertising hoping to rebuild a great brand even when if there wasn't a relevant product or service or a sound business strategy behind the it. First question is ask is how bad your situation is and here are the three most common ones:

My Brand Is Sick. Market changes direction and the brand become irrelevant. Everyone used to understand what the brand means and they all stick to it -- advertising to product design to promotions -- and they believe it all connects to something larger and more enduring. Until one day they woke up and realize there was a big disconnect. Your brand is stuck in the past. In another word, your brand is IRREVELANT.

My Brand Is Dying. The brand is becoming boring. It doesn't create excitement for the customers or even employees anymore. Younger customers think of us as their Parents’ brand. This is quite common for brands that have made their successes and achieved market leadership. This is in fact the result of being too successful. Remember every business success laid the seeds for business failures. Don’t remember who said this. In another word, your brand lacks customer ENGAGEMENT.

My Brand Has No Vital Signs. Or it’s just a walking dead. You ignore your brand for way too long, or simply let it ride for too long, and at some point, it just expires. Every drop of goodwill has been squeezed out. It loses all of its mystic, energy, its power to capture your customers' or even your own imagination. In another word, you brand has been reduced to just a LOGO.

The interesting question is can social media save the "Zombie Brands"? The Social Media Generation has phenomenal impact over determining the fate of brands. These digital communities are vocal, active and mobile. They would share their joy, anger and frustration of their daily experiences with friends and anybody. These web 2.0 tools that allow continuous and immediate connectedness at all hours and regardless of location and geography. Brand Communities are formed as a result of the connectivity. What is a brand community? A brand community is a brand-centered, non‐geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand. These brand communities include four core markers of community:

- Shared hobbies and interests

- Shared consciousness

- Shared rituals and traditions

- Shared purposes and destinies

The commercial and mass‐mediated ethos in which these communities are situated affects their character and structure and gives rise to their particularities. This is the most disruptive trend from a brand and marketing perspective. I wrote about the service episodes regarding my Lenovo experience earlier this week, I received responses both from Lenovo and from national publications like the NY Times who is interested in my story. Just as Mark Hopkins (Social Media Specialist from Lenovo) wrote in his email to me “I think write ups like yours are actually very constructive to the long term decision making of global companies. Creating tangible evidence of marketplace damage, in a visible fashion helps to sharpen focus on the customer at all levels. Thanks to the web, visibility to customer experiences is no longer geographically limited.”

A customer community has now become the collective “sources of truth” for brands. It is also a possible cure for "Zombie Brands".

(Photo: Toronto Annual Zombie Walk- a group of some 200 Torontonians setting the Guinness World Record for the Largest Performance of "Thriller" - in full zombie ensemble.)

Advanced Brand Stratgy Masterclass - Week Seven - Global Branding

This one is long overdue and I apologize for the delay. Between airports, clients meetings and running workshops there is not much time left. This is the last of the series and next week we will conclude our masterclass.  This week we will focus on global branding, I remember we did touch on this subject during week two and three, so we can now revisit this again.

While many consumer goods markets in the Europe and North America are stagnating, 65% of the world’s population is living in societies that are experiencing economic growth of 5% or more a year. While the baby boom occurred between 1945 and 1960 in the US, much of the rest of the world is still experiencing a baby boom that began in 1975. The average person has seen his or her standard of living double in the past 15 years, far surpassing that of the US or Western Europe. Put very simply, the majority of the growth potential in consumer markets exists outside of the US and Western Europoe.

Here's an excellent piece by John Quelch, Prof Quelch is the Senior Associate Dean and at Harvard Business School where he taught markeitng for decades. I remembered one time when he was lecturing he presented a marketing positioning diagram of the royal family members, it was hilarious. He is also the non-executive director of WPP Pepsi and a few other companies and has published probably half a dozen books on global marketing.

How To Build a Global Brand - by John Quelch

Ford has finally woken up to what Toyota knew a long time ago: the power of a single global brand. Over twenty years ago, Harvard professor Theodore Levitt praised Japanese manufacturers for their focus on "what every consumer in the world is seeking: world-class modernity at affordable prices." Either because they didn't understand regional differences in consumer preferences or out of self-confidence, Toyota, Nissan and Honda sold standard products under a single brand umbrella. For decades, Ford adapted its manufacturing platforms, features, and model names from one country to another. The results: added manufacturing and supply chain costs that strained consumers' willingness to pay; a balkanized bureaucracy in which regional managers exaggerate the need for local adaptations to defend their turf; and a deteriorating market share, financial performance and stock price. Ford was once one of the ten most valuable brands in the world. They’re no longer on that list, but Toyota now is. How did Toyota—and the other nine companies—do it? There are five characteristics that all top global brands have in common:

1. The same positioning worldwide. This provides a combination of functional product quality and innovation with emotional appeal. Think Coca-Cola and Disney.

2. A focus on a single product category. Think Nokia and Intel.

3. The company name is the brand name. All marketing dollars are concentrated on that one brand. Think GE and IBM.

4. Access to the global village. Consuming the brand equals membership in a global club. Think IBM's "solutions for a small planet."

5. Social responsibility. Consumers expect global brands to lead on corporate social responsibility, leveraging their technology to solve the world's problems. Think Nestle and clean water.

Ford has a proud history. Its name recognition is strong worldwide. The chairman is committed to the environment. Many consumers are no longer considering Fords when buying their new cars, but they are predisposed to giving Ford another chance. Fords worldwide should henceforth have a common look, feel and brand essence. Low volume management distractions including Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo will be sold off; they’re now meaningless. US-based models like Mercury will be discontinued.Can Ford recover? The answer lies in whether the common vehicle platforms developed for the new strategy prove to be truly global in design or merely more of the same Detroit-centric product that have caused Ford's market shares around the world to erode.

Branding In the Post-Modern Culture When Consumer Transcend The State Of Being The Subject In A Society

Brands are transforming themselves and I would argue they are becoming more and more important. They exist beyond the ads and the products, they are trying to find new ways to get inside your home and be part of your life in the form branded content, branded entertainment, branded utilities and branded space. L’Equipe, the Parisian based daily sports newspaper invented the tour de France only to sell more newspapers, its branded content with a pinch of engagement.

New social forms have emerged from all kinds of new network-based social behavior.  These conversations between customer that are previously unknown to each other to the extent where over 50 million people are able to interact in a single online space, generating billions of web site page impressions every month.  The question is how should brand play a role here. These social webs are exploding everywhere and this can no longer be ignored by any brand. 

The structural nature of consumption of information and content are in a state of flux as we enter a world where content will be increasingly delivered through all kinds of networks that can be personalized and entirely self-scheduled. In that world, the viewer – not the broadcaster – whoever that may be, will decide what is consumed, when, how, when, and with whom you share it with.

We are in a transition from interruption and intrusion to engagement. When distribution is trivial, unlimited, and available to all comers, marketing to a captive audience sitting on a cough in front of a box is the thing of the past and creating "quality" product/service/content is paramount. Content is now a part of any product (and its experiences). Consumers will consume only what‘s relevant and what entertain them most, not what is marketed to you them in a repetitive fashion. By providing branded experiences, brand can extend engagement rather than disrupts it, by doing so it strengthens its contextual involvement and connection with the consumer.

With the emergence and convergence of the mobile phone and the internet and location-base-system we suddenly have immediate access to our co-workers, our friends and family members and know where they are at any point of time. We are getting used to living in a connected age where we naturally and increasingly draw on our participation in various networks for information, assistance, information and support.

The language of our post-modern world is not broadcast-branded-content pushed to our TV box that we consume passively. This kind of traditional marketing has become adversarial in the eyes of customers. Customers have changed and adapted to this new always-on, always connected, media fragmented world, where they seek value by searching, where they are not waiting for you to interrupt them with unwanted messaging, where they look to their peers for voices of authority. The behavior of sharing user-generated-videos will evolve and new behavior will emerge.  What we are seeing in YouTube I called it “socialcasting”. Does this signal the end of broadcasting? Consumer will spend more and more time interacting with each other and mashing-up content rather than passively watching low quality content. I think we have yet to see the full impact of this phenomenon. This will determine the new of our post-modern culture which I define as follow:

- Immediacy

- Flexibility

- Portability

- Permeability

- Fluidity

- Interactivity

- Mashability

- Ownerablity

This postmodern culture is characterized by the density, the intensity, and the fragmentation of the instances of communication, by hyperreality that continuously creates fresh vidoes and meanings based on the same signifiers, and by the incredible array of brands and products that impose their own rules and procedures as a way of life. The postmodern consumer thus transcends the state of being the subject positioned in society to satisfy one's individual needs. And everything seems so hyperreal's. Please share your thoughts.

Advanced Branding Masterclass Week Six - Customer Experience Design

This has been one busy week and I am back with week six of our Advanced Brand Strategy Masterclass. We are continuing on the second part of brand strategy development framework which focuses on brand identity, brand images and brand delivery. The delivery one is probably the most important and interesting aspect.

Two of the key drivers to building brand strength are creating a distinct brand identity and developing a unique brand personality and their associated images. Unfortunately, semantics quite often gets in the way of understanding how these two factors can influence brand strategy. Brand identity, for example, is often used in a limited, graphic-centric manner or used interchangeably with brand image. All too often, identity is seen as just the graphics, logos, colors, and symbols that generally make up corporate identity. Those elements are the appearance (which is very important) but not the substance of a brand, just as the clothes you wear are an important, even distinguishing, part of your identity, but not the substance of who you are as a person. An obsession with image tends to attach greater importance to appearance than to inner reality. But brand identity is a richer, more substantial concept to embrace. The two concepts are quite different. There’s also a simple way to sum up and understand the essence of the two terms: image is how the marketplace perceives you; identity is who you really are. We recommend that companies focus on building brand identity as the driving brand-strategy component. Brand image is not to be diminished at all.  It is, after all is said and done, how a company is perceived. But don’t make the mistake of thinking your brand image is your identity. The challenge for brand strategists and champions is to align image and identity. That happens—and can only happen—by careful, proactive management of your brand identity components.

The next big goal is the translation of the Brand Promise into Customer Experience Strategy for brand delivery. It is easy to make the mistake of developing a grandiose brand promise that one cannot deliver. Although you must combine vision with realism, one should not take weakness in any particular dimension as an excuse to do nothing. No company gets it right all the time. The customer experience strategy is used to align the brand promise to customer expectations. It describes the service characteristics objectively. It is important to depict these service characteristics so that employees, customers and managers alike know what the service is, can see their role in its delivery. (One of my business partners Scott Friedmann is a big believer of this, he is trained in service managment at Cornell grad school and believes the crossover of tradtional service deisgn principles and software as services can spark unlimited innovation). Services are delivered through integrated systems consisting of three basic elements. First are the steps, tasks and activities necessary to render the service; in other words, the service process. Second are the means by which the tasks are executed, typically some combination of people, technologies and products. Third is the evidence of the experience and how customer relates to the experiences. All service systems can be visualized by understanding these elements and their interrelationships. This is where things break down.  The people who create the brand are not the people who develop the brand. The people who design services and operation standards are not connected to those who develop the brand. The people who design the interfaces are not connected to those who create the ads. Sure we've all seen that.

The customer experience strategy gets complicated these days. The deployment of machine-dominant (automation) interfaces on the front lines drastically improves business economics, but creates a new set of challenges. People are good at conveying empathy and handling exceptions but are challenging to manage and costly to deploy and maintaining consistency, especially in scaleable businesses. In effect, the front office needs computers to compensate for people's shortcomings and people to compensate for comouter' shortcomings. Today businesses are using a hybrid approach. Then comes Web 2.0 and brings a whole new element of disruption. So the interfaces, the communities, the content and the connectivity all becoming part of the band and brand experience.

But that doesn’t stop here, with the success of Starbucks and many are experimenting with the launching of hundreds of Brand Spaces, all those large flat-screen TVs, WiFi and comfy lounge chairs, and are finding ther ways into banks and clinics etc. These are the most tangible physical manifestation of any brand. Here are some interesting examples: from launderettes turned ‘wasch.salon.lounge’, like German Clenaucum, to the boom in private clubs in London or NYC.  Even hotel chains such as Hyatt (Hyatt Place) and Sheraton (Sheraton/Yahoo) are waking up to the fact that their long ignored and depressing lobbies could be converted into brand spaces. Others include LG Washbar (Paris, pictuer below) ING Direct (picture above), Nokia (picture below), Apple and Nintendo. Expect this is become the latest experimental front for brand experience innovation.

Brand Vision - Is It Only About Winning Market Shares?

Should the brand vision be limited only to the business? Is there a different way of thinking about a brand vision? Patragonia was the first one that came to my mind, I know it's the same case for Bart. "Their environmentally based brand vision is very visible in everything they do." according to Bart. I am in full agreement.  A brand vision needs to be connected deeply o the brand and what the company belivies. Should brand vision go beyond winning in market shares and create shareholder wealth? How about brand vision is something more.. how about changing the world? (Patagonia, Body Shop, Google) It is the essential dream that inspires people inside the company to keep striving even when the financial rewards are uncertain(i.e. stock options under the water). Brand vision need to survive even the loss of a beloved founder. It is not something to be framed on the wall but quietly whispered inside the heads of each employee, from brand managers to service personnel, it is embedded in the companies that are bound for greatness, the dream that only every employee believes is possible. And once the dream becomes reality, once you’ve achieved the vision, the brand vision is fully realized, then it's time to expand the vision or lose the troops to complacency. The human spirit loves (and needs) a good challenge – especially if it is directed at an attainable and meaningful ideal.

Brand vision provides the focus that ensures a stable, cohesive foundation through the rollercoaster ride of growth and industry cycles. Who’s job is this?  As Flavio puts its, “…someone should be really taking care of the job of transforming vision into reality on the shelves. And not only on the manuals.” On this note about “manuals”, that reminds me of fast food and restaurants.

So here’s another one for us to think about. I remembered in 03, McDonald launched a brand new brand vision: "our customers' favorite place and way to eat," a theme they wanted their ad agencies to embrace. McDonald's marketing chief challenged 14 of its biggest agencies from 10 major world markets to brainstorm new ideas based on this brand vision. "This was a meeting about brand direction," according to Larry Light, McDonald's global marketing chief, "We're going to reinvest in local store marketing...we are going to be passionately focused on the customer."  The question for you is ..What does this brand vision has to do with customers?