Posts Tagged ‘Branding’

Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

Photo Credit: Barry Libert/John Spector - WeAreSmarter.org

Companies are in an interesting position.  Customers are demanding new forms of interactions through social tools, mobile, online and service.  Organizational designs are set up to manage external engagement in a couple of ways, Public Relations or Customer Service.  Both of which are highly trained and highly scripted.  Interacting with customers on their terms means lifting the corporate veil to reveal new corporate “voices”.  The new voices are typically experts in their respective fields or simply young enough to not be scared to interact via social media (think Interns).

Within industry though, there is something larger happening.  Something that is beyond havign to deal with new talking heads.  A new model is beginning to emerge that  places importance in knowledge process management.  In the 80′s we placed importance on Cost Arbitrage through IT management, in the 90′s focus shifted to Labor Arbitrage through Business Process Management.  Now we appear to be shifting into a stage of Intellectual Arbitrage placing importance around Knowledge Process Management (KPM).  This shift brings new challenges. 

As social communications proliferate, there is a stronger focus on content.  Content is an asset and should be able to be re-purposed or re-used across other parts of the enterprise to be most effective.  If we expect our employees to become advocates as knowledge managers of our Brand, then where does the corporate brand and the personal brand come together.  If an employee builds a following as a likeable, intelligent ambassador then who owns the intellectual property (IP) around the information?  Better yet, how do you transform the IP into reusable assets across the rest of the organization. 

With this shift into Knowledge Management, companies need to look at hiring practices, employee policies and begin to update.  Should companies look to hire people with strong personal brands or build them after hiring?  There’s not a consistent answer as it will depend company by company.  The real trick is to develop your organizational models on purpose rather than by accident.  So IP issues, strong personal brands, how does a company begin to tackle these new challenges?  This is certainly a conversation worth having and to help moderate, we brought in Daria Steigman to manage the discussion.  Daria has done a masterful job at developing her own personal brand that has become her company’s.  for the discussion, we will use the following topic and questions:

Topic: Can a Personal Brand Coexist Within a Corporate Ecosystem

Q1. Personal branding — good idea or bad idea?

Q2. Can a personal brand coexist within a corporate ecosystem? Can your stars be stars and keep your brand intact?

Q3. Is it okay for companies to ban their employees from blogging?

Q4. Should companies have a succession plan around star employees?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, August 9 at noon ET.  Follow #sm122 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Branding | 2 Comments »

The Rise of the Brand Experience

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

If you look at the top global brands of 2010, you will find traditional brands at the top of the list.  With so many emerging brands across the globe, what does a brand have to do to become a top global brand?

1.  Brand Messaging continues to be a strong driver for marketers.  Where a Brand is the personality that identifies a product, service or company (name, term, sign, symbol, or design, or combination of them) and how it relates to key constituencies: Customers, Staff, Partners, Investors etc.  The messaging is what I refer to as the communications that is distributed around the aspects of branding like:

  • Corporate slogan
  • Products and services
  • Product names
  • Product features
  • Positionings
  • Marketing mixes (including pricing, distribution, media and advertising execution)

All of this messaging culminates in developing the Brand Promise.  Effectively what the brand stands for or has stood for in the past.

2.  Brand Experience is the what the brand actually delivers.  It’s the culmination of all the touchpoints a customer, partner or employee may have with your brand including your website, social media touchpoints, point-of-sale, post sales service, mobile, and actual use.

The point of this post is to point out the impact that social can and has had that impacts a brand and it’s conversion.  I point out conversion as the driver here because, in my experience, a great product that does not sell simply does not last long.  The same goes for brands.  Where a brand has always been defined by it’s product, social media allows you to redefine what your brand can actually stand for.  It allows you to be entertainers, educators, and more for your followers.

A recent BusinessWeek article discusses GM’s old guard and their approach to building cars in the modeling room without any customer feedback.  The article goes on to praise Dan Ackerson’s (new CEO of GM) customer centric approach to building cars.  The difference of Brand Promise in the past (pre-bailout) and the recent move towards Brand Experience (post-IPO) in the future.  Interesting.

Digital’s impact on brand expression and experience is significant.  Leading companies are still trying to figure out what this new world looks like now that a Brand can expand it’s breadth of what it stands for and now that customers are armed with a whole new set of expectations and capabilities.  To help us sort this out is Michelle Tripp, a Creative Director / VP of Account Strategy at Idea Worldwide.  She will lead our conversation this week around the rise of the brand experience.  The topic and questions follow:

Topic:  The Rise of the Brand Experience

1. Who should be front and center in conversation: The brand name or the brand’s communicator?

2. Are consumers more likely to buy because of the brand promise or the brand experience?

3. How can brands create experiences in a social world?

Please join us in this online chat on Tuesday, February 1 at noon ET.  Follow #sm96 from your favorite Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The format will stay the same with the first question starting at noon and a new question coming every 20 minutes at 12:20 and 12:40.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Branding | Comments Off

Measuring Social Media Influence Versus Popularity

Tuesday, August 31st, 2010

Am I looking for popularity or influence?  It’s almost a quality vs. quantity.  Do companies or individuals actually understand the difference?

Marketers have been conditioned to grow brands by popularity over the years.  Show enough TV spots and billboards, add a catchy tagline and consumers will recall your brand when they are in stores.  This has worked well for many consumer goods products for decades.  Until now!  In the world of push marketing where consumers had no choice but to trust what you were saying (it was your brand why would you lie?), popularity worked.  If more consumers knew your name, the more you came up in general conversation, the check-out line and in your home.

The world is different now though.  The web and all things digital have changed the game on us.  Influence is quickly becoming the currency of choice on the web.  So what changed?  Now there is the expectation of a conversation not just a press release or a slogan.  Some of the most popular brands in the world have been smeared in the social dust (think Nestle, United Airlines, & Dominoes Pizza).  But these are all the most popular brands in their respective markets, right?

Let’s look at this issue from the perspective of individuals not businesses.  Everyone is in a rush to get the most followers on Twitter, the most friends on Facebook and the most viral views on Youtube.  That would equal popularity for most people.  Yet according to a recent study by ForeSee Results, Facebook ranks at the bottom for customer satisfaction.  What?  500m people and no one likes them?  That, my friends, says very clearly that you do not need popularity to have influence.

Or another example from the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that in 2010 the most popular job (by volume) is that of a shop clerk.  The $20+k job has more than 4.2m people doing it, yet some of the least popular jobs (actors 40k and athletes 14k) carry the most influence.  When is the last time you saw a shop clerk with a Nike contract?

Whether an individual or a brand, what is it you should aspire to online, Popularity or Influence?  To help us with this discussion is Chuck Hemann.  Chuck is a social media director at WeissComm Partners and has been in the space for many years.    He is going to lead the conversation for the 75th #socialmedia event this Tuesday.  The topic and questions are as follows:

Topic: Measuring Social Media Influence Versus Popularity

Q1:  How do you define influence and popularity?

Q2:  What metrics can help define influence or popularity?

Q3:  Which (popularity or influence) is more important?

Join us for this event Tuesday 8/31 at noon eastern by following #sm75 from your favorite Twitter client.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Branding | Comments Off

Building Your Reputation Using Social Media

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

The three most important components of who you are: reputation, reputation, reputation.

The social media industry spends a lot of time talking about the brand.  Whether it’s your corporate brand or your personal brand everyone has an opinion of how to market yourself.  That’s what it is afterall is marketing.  The branding police come in and say the product will conjure images of…..”being a kid again” or “going to the county fair” or (you get the pictures).  What happens after you buy the product and decide the packaging is hard to open or that it really doesn’t perform as advertised?  Well, they make television shows for that (PitchMen).   The same goes for your personal brand.  how many times have you “heard” about the accomplishments of someone then when you actually work with them only images of SnakeOil come to mind.  Once you “out” the product or the person, you will not use them again no matter how good the markting message is for them.

I have a hard time with spending so much time on your “Brand” for that reason.  All of it is glossy brochure-ware unless you can actually do something.  My preference is to push people and/or client’s brands to focus on their reputation.  Autos are a good example of what I mean, you don’t buy a Lamborghini for comfort and you don’t buy a Lexus to go fast.  Both are remarkable cars in their own right however the Lambo’s reputation is built around speed and the lexus around comfort.  That’s what you get when you buy them irrespective of whatever kind of marketing stuff they put in front of you. 

I pulled a couple of thoughts on personal reputation from the website Brand-Yourself (horrible name, I know).  They defined your reputation as this:

It’s the iconic who, what, why and how principle.
It’s developing, celebrating and using that internal and external persona, that is already there and a part of our DNA!

Who are you?
What do you stand for?
Why should you serve?
How can you better the community that supports you and the world you live in?

Who you are is the combination of your external appearance or image and your internal essence.
Whenever you are out professionally, make sure you are dressed appropriately and groomed. People do notice the fine points and that can say a lot about you. Ask any professional etiquette coach about how important style, flair and appropriateness is in making a first impression!

What you stand for is about your values, attitudes, demeanor and how you express your unique qualities.
Show people that and they will make a connection with you because we all look for those commonalities in our relationships with others. Kindness, sense of humor, integrity, generosity, creativity, caring all speak volumes about you to others.

Why you serve is how you want to be remembered.
Whatever causes or social leadership you are passionate about will not only drive and motivate you naturally but draw people to you. Step up, volunteer, join a cause, initiate an action, support one that needs some help.

So what does all this mean?  It means that it doesn’t matter if you have 3,ooo followers or 300,000 if you can’t articulate your strategy for a client.  It means, if you can’t legitimately help a client then refer them to someone who can.  It’s substance over talk, results over industry stats.  Our moderator this week knows alot about reputation as she has one of the best in the public relations industry.  Kami Watson Husye is the president and COO of Zoetica Media.  Kami is well respected for her work and her missions and will lead our discussion around managing your reputation.  The topic and questions this week are:

Topic: Building Your Reputation Using Social Media

Q1:  Is reputation more important than a “personal brand” in #socialmedia?

Q2:  Be it a personal or professional crisis, what is your plan for handling a negative backlash in #socialmedia?

Q3:  How do you scale online success for an organization or individual as your reputation grows?

This chat will take place on Tuesday August 24, 2010 at 12 noon eastern.  Follow #sm74 from any Twitter client or simply go to our LIVE page at www.hashtagsocialmedia.com/live.  The event will start at noon with the first question and Kami will move to the next question every 20 minutes for an hour. 

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Branding, social media | 3 Comments »