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What would you do
Thoughts about Marketing on May 16, 2008
Last Monday, a father inadvertently left his 23-month-old son in Vancouver airport; a story which should remind you of Home Alone 2. No, the son didn’t thwart a midnight heist of Duncan’s Toy Chest, but nonetheless, Air Canada generously offered to fly the father all the way back from Winnipeg and to Vancouver again, which, given the minimum $438 round-trip fare, is something they weren’t obligated to do, let alone in 2008.
The question I was recently asked of a similar situation was how I, as a shareholder of the company, would have reacted to the news. Even if you put aside the warm fuzziness and consider the chip off the company’s bottom-line, the answer’s still obvious – I’d be proud. As a customer, you’d be silly to expect them to do it again, but at least you’ll know that they have a heart, which in turn builds brand empathy.
It goes against everything you may have learnt in B-school, but it works. For example, while most airlines throw in bonus reward miles and levy second bag surcharges, Air Canada offers its customers an alternate $22 discount for forgoing reward miles, checked baggage and date flexibility. Honest.
I can’t quite put my finger on it, but for some odd reason the only thing that comes to mind when I hear the word PR is Prentiss McCabe. Air Canada has shown that by focusing on genuine customer satisfaction, that they’ve spent a fraction of what they would’ve paid their PR agency and achieved so much more.
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The incredible Brandini 2
Thoughts about Marketing on February 13, 2008
Even as children back in grade six, we knew there was something special about the swoosh or those three stripes we found on our desks. They were brands that inspired. Brands that inspired you to make every last segment of pencil lead count, as your chemistry teacher turned to the periodic table on page 345.
While some companies have the luxury of throwing bags filled with Benjamin Franklin at the likes of Landor and The Brand Union, figuring out a brand on your own brings its own satisfaction. In this particular case, I’ll use the example of Musafir – a brand I’ve been working on these last few weeks.
If you’ve read the first post in this series, I’ll skip having to discover the brand for obvious reasons and jump right into defining it. Now there are books that ramble on about procedures to define your brand, and animated slides that make even less sense. In all honesty, all you need to do is look at your competition, look at your market and find your niche.
I’ve personally seen brand pyramids that can go as far as nine tiers and rarely do they share the same terminology, but it’s relevance that matters at the end of the day. We found our nirvana in understanding our brand’s benefits, personality, values and essence.
With the definition locked in, the abstract moves to the tangible – creating the brand’s visual identity. You’ll have noticed that a bit of color theory went into the brand pyramid above; and with good reason too. The two weeks it took to define this particular brand were overshadowed by the four it took to approve a visual identity.
This is obviously the most subjective step in the entire process, with the only boundaries being those set by the brand pyramid. However, ten rounds of archaic, indistinguishable and complex artwork later, we finally reached a consensus.
And that in a nutshell is defining and creating a brand at its simplest. There’ll be more about cultivating and communicating a brand in the posts to follow.
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The incredible Brandini 1
Thoughts about Marketing on September 22, 2007
With three weeks of meetings, pyramids and snide comments behind me, I’ve come to the conclusion that anyone who has anything complex to say in a brand exercise meeting either hasn’t the faintest clue of what they’re talking about or is trying to mask their own uncertainty. I know this to be true because I did it twice, and at lightning speed, I might add.
So, over the next few weeks, I’m going to reduce the process of creating a new brand to its basics. For starters, here’s how the process should look from afar.
- Discover
- Find out about the company, the people that drive it, what makes them unique and why they need a brand.
- Define
- Form and test five statements about the brand – what it represents, its benefits, the values it stands for, how it should be perceived and how it fits with the brands it works with.
- Create
- Build the brand’s physical manifestation – the colors, shapes, images and words which will help reinforce the brand’s statements.
- Cultivate
- Educate the people that drive the company about what the brand stands for, what their role is conveying its benefits and why it’s important to the company’s perception.
- Communicate
- Share the brand with the rest of the world.
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I’m confounded
Thoughts about Marketing on March 2, 2007
Microsoft just launched an interesting little drive to spread the word about Windows Live Messenger 8.1. Yes, I’m just as surprised that they didn’t limit the terms to a build and release number, but the good news is that for every time you begin a conversation with the word “i’m”, they’ll chip in “a portion of the program’s advertising revenue” to help causes from the American Red Cross to UNICEF.
Sounds generous, right? Wrong. Not only do you need to check off those two boxes, but you also need to suffix your messenger nickname with one of the nine carefully selected text codes to determine which cause you’d like to contribute to. I’ll bet teenagers in the United Kingdom are just dying to suffix their nicknames with *naf. Add the fact that Microsoft doesn’t really tell you how much they’re willing to chip in, that it’s only available in 33 countries and voila.In all honesty, it’s quite a bit more likely that Microsoft ran a usability test on the number of people who’d be willing to bend over backwards to contribute this way, and figured, what the heck, let’s go for it! Besides, there’re probably only 500 users who’d follow the instructions either way.
If you’d like to prove them wrong, take out 5 minutes from your schedule, download and install Windows Live Messenger 8.1, suffix your nickname with the text code of your cause and begin every conversation with an “i’m”.
Personally, I’m satisfied with the advertisement-free Windows Messenger 4.3 that shipped with my computer back in 2004, and will more than gladly chip in the extra 2 dollars Microsoft could’ve chipped in to UNICEF on my behalf by the end of the year.
The drive only goes to show that even the best of intentions can be tarnished by poor usability and worse still, a poor understanding of your audience’s capability.
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Global warming
Thoughts about Marketing on February 14, 2007
Phenomenal success aside, Apple and Google share something in common. You could belittle it by calling it brand empathy, but it takes more than just brand empathy to turn the “I want an iPod this christmas” to “my iPod will keep me warm this winter”. There are no lovable ad campaigns and their taglines don’t need the word “human” – it’s all about products which you and I see genuine value using.
Organic brand affection can be difficult to culture in an ad agency’s studio, but that doesn’t stop marketers from trying to graft in a branch or two. Recent campaigns range from Toyota’s well-choreographed human touch to Cisco’s unconvincing human network and Budweiser’s pointlessly extravagant, login-driven Bud TV.
The latter two probably did their work as brand awareness and recall exercises, but that’s where it ends. The problem is that most of Cisco’s advertised value has nothing to do with Cisco as far as you’re concerned, and we all know how good Bud and his buddies are for you.
The question isn’t quite about how you plant organic brand affection. The dummies won’t be rolling out a guide for that anytime soon. It’s about whether your brand is worthy of affection in the first place.