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Category Archives: Brand Purpose

Polluting the Brand Purpose Ecosystem

Posted on November 3, 2009 in Brand Purpose

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” says the Teacher. Utterly meaningless!

–Ecclesiastes 1:2

Responsibility, Integrity, Communications, Excellence

–Core values adopted by the now defunct Enron

I’ve written a lot about brand purpose lately on this blog and for the most part I believe its good business practice for companies & brands to have a distinctive purpose.  Lately, a lot of companies seem to be getting quite good at succinctly articulating their reason(s) for being. I’ve pulled a couple of examples of brands that I like from a book by Roy Spense called It’s not what you sell, it’s what you stand for.

  • BMW:  Enabling people to experience the joy of driving
  • Southwest:  Giving people the freedom to fly
  • Charles Schwab:  A relentless ally for the individual investor

Visionary companies interested in staying around for more than a couple of seasons of profitability are often able to clearly articulate a core purpose that fuels everything the organization does.  As the Purpose gurus Jim Collins & Jerry Porras write in their book Built to Last:

Core purpose is the organization’s fundamental reason for being.  An effective purpose reflects the importance people attach to the company’s work–it taps their idealistic motivations–and gets at the deeper reasons for an organization’s existance beyond just making money

Sometimes, however, companies/brands don’t do such a great job of “tapping the idealistic motivations” Collins & Porras speak about above.  They string together page long statements that use a lot of “business school jargon” filled buzzwords that make you fall asleep when you read them.  Who hasn’t started to doze off after reading through a 900 page boring mission statement that rambles on forever?

MPO brands recently posted a list of least favorite words to appear in what they call “the brand essence process”.  I thought the list captured a few of the buzzwords responsible for so many listless purpose statements, so I reposted it below along with some of the funny MPO commentary.  Enjoy.

1. Professional(ism) - one of series of ‘values’ put at the heart of an organisation’s ethos that raises more questions than it answers. What kind of company or firm wouldn’t say it was ‘professional’? What are you trying to hide? Step away, I’m going to look at what’s in that cupboard…

2. Quality - Good? Bad? Impressive? Laughable? You might as well have the word ‘Thing’ at your core

3. Innovation. Without it, we all die (apparently). And very few services, products or companies are any good at it. It’s a bit like over-promising on ‘air’

4. Service - see Quality. If ‘What popular idioms include the word ‘Service’ featured as a question in Family Fortunes, the top answers would be (via MPO’s in depth research) ‘Senior…’, ‘…Station’, ‘Customer…’, ‘…Till’, ‘Room…’, ‘Church…’, ‘…Charge’, ‘Secret…’, ‘Self-…’, ‘…Industry’. What a versatile little word it is. And how very un-distinctive and un-compelling…

5. Super. No kidding here, we’ve run up against a competitive brand (i.e. not one of our clients) who put ‘Super’ at their very core. Maybe this is fine if you’re a knowing, post-modern and kitch entity, not so if you’re a yogurt!

6. Integrity. See Professionalism. When both these words appear together at the heart of a brand you know you’re in real trouble. Probably most often found in pairs at Football Clubs, the sort who are about to give a vote of confidence to their manager…

7. Indulgence. The darling value of the confectionery sector, it negates itself because any bar of chocolate is bought as a means of indulging ourselves. But then, you wonder that all brands, by lifting a product or service above and beyond a commodity status, stand for added value and therefore…maybe…’indulgence’.

8. Passion. Perhaps this is the word which is most likely to guarantee brand under-performance in the eyes of the customer (particularly in the UK). ‘We have a real passion for pizza / trains / insurance / finance’ never, ever translates into stunning services or products. That’s because brands rarely think through what that word is actually going to mean in the real world. Unless you’re going to create signature pizzas for every customer, or hug every passenger, then leave well alone!

So, there you have it…some great buzzwords that are sure NOT to help any brand or company tap into the idealistic motivations of their folks.

Remember the ENRON mantra:

* Responsibility
* Integrity
* Communications
* Excellence

As MPO notes, the Enron “values” were drilled into the employees and supposedly reflected in every deed and word attributable to it.

Really?

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Life is Good: Leaning on Brand Purpose…

Posted on September 21, 2009 in Brand Purpose

It is getting easier and easier to look through a brand in today’s age of transparency.

As P&G equity guru Matt Carcieri puts it “consumers are now looking beyond the brand (both consciously and unconsciously) to discern the values and intentionality of (their) owners”.

Some brands make it easy for people to quickly discover their purpose, while other brands don’t do so well here.  Life is Good, an apparel & accessories company out of Boston, pretty much wears its happy purpose on its sleeve…and gets results.  According to a 2006 Inc. magazine article, Life is Good is now an $80 Million business (probably more like $100 Million in 2009).

Life is Good is really a great brand story.  Apparently, LIG hasn’t used much (if any) conventional advertising to drive their business.  LIG founders (Bert & John Jacobs) have managed to stay quite unconventional and have bucked more conventional advice from business building “experts” who pushed them to grow & get big overnight.  Below are a couple of examples from an excellent Inc. article on LIG:

“People told us…”Don’t waste time distributing through mom-and-pops,” “Don’t locate your flagship store on Newbury Street,” “Do spend money on an advertising campaign.”

Bringing Back Mom & POP?

Interestingly, there is more to LIG than just clever purpose based brand building.  LIG is leveraging a new type of retail concept called Genuine Neighborhood Shoppes.  According to Inc.

A GNS is an independently owned and operated business that sells Life Is Good products and nothing else. GNS owners get some signage, a 10 percent discount on merchandise, a few exclusive products, and as much or as little help setting up stores as they desire. They pay no franchise fees, but they do agree to propagate the Life Is Good philanthropy model (more on that later) in their communities.

Through this Genuine Neighborhood concept, LIG is eschewing the cut and paste franchise approach and instead building a sort of mass customization retail model.  In effect, LIG is not only spreading happiness, they are also helping bring back mom & pop shops (I think?)

How to make Switzerland the happiest country in the world?

I feel like I might have missed some of the Life is Good cultural phenom magic while living in Switzerland over the last few years.  Granted, the Swiss are already pretty happy people (the 2nd happiest country in the world according to BusinessWeek), so they may not need as many reminders to smile from LIG.  BUT, if Life is Good does make a big splash Switzerland, maybe the cool smiling logo dude could propel the Swiss over the top and into the number 1 slot? Denmark beware!!!

Seriously, it will be very interesting to see how this plays out for them over the long term…let me know if you have comments or know more about these guys.  Again, I haven’t seen or heard much from them over here, so appreciate additional thoughts.

Hat tip to Matt Carcieri for the heads up on LIG

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Sloppy Greed: Leadership lessons from the death of great companies

Posted on July 28, 2009 in Brand Purpose, Leadership

You wanted growth — faster. We want to slow down Umair Haque, Gen M Manifesto

In the latest book “How the Mighty Fall” Jim Collins delves into the reasons why promising organizations and countries fall.  Collins outlines one stage of decline that particularly stands out for me, in light of our current economic plight–the “undisciplined pursuit of more”.  Below are the key stages of decline that an organization or nation experiences before the mighty fall, according to the book.

Stage 1: Hubris Born of Success
Stage 2: Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Stage 3: Denial of Risk and Peril
Stage 4: Grasping for Salvation
Stage 5: Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death

Once leaders start believing that their organization’s success is due primarily to their own personal efforts and smart moves (stage 1) the slippery slope to irrelevance gets steep in a hurry and stage 2 begins–the undisciplined pursuit of more.

Sloppy Greed:

Greed is a natural outgrowth of hubris.  As people around an organization become enamored with their own successes, inevitably they must prove themselves again in order to meet shareholder demands.  And, believing they can do anything, they tend to overreach in an undisciplined way to prove their mettle once more.

What is interesting about stage 2, as Collins points out, is that most people would think that stage 2 in the decline of a company would stem from complacency or laziness.  This is not the case.  Instead, Sloppy Greed most often leads to stages 3 & 4.

Sloppy Greed manifests itself in calls for more scale, more growth, more acclaim, more & more of whatever, with a complete lack of discipline.  Companies in Stage 2 stray from their sense of a larger purpose.

As I read the book, one example from Collins that was particularly poignant came from Merck. In 1995, Merck decided to pursue a “growth at all costs” strategy–calling out growth as its number one organizational objective.  Lusting for Über growth, Merck bet on Vioxx without fully investigating potentially worrisome data on cardiovascular risk.  Merck ultimately pulled Vioxx , but the incident led to a huge drop in market cap for the company. Merck learned that when you are willing to grow at almost any cost, you tend to look past your original purpose or reason for being.

Growth of a different sort

Later in the book, Collins observes “The greatest leaders do seek growth - growth in performance, growth in distinctive impact, growth in creativity, growth in people - but they do not succumb to growth that undermines long-term value. And they certainly do not confuse growth with excellence. Big does not equal great, and great does not equal big.

Notice that Collins never mentions top line or bottom line growth in the above paragraph.  Instead, he calls for companies to think about growth differently, focusing on distinctive impact, people, performance and creativity.  By focusing on these areas in a disciplined way, the top & bottom lines should both benefit.

At the individual level:

The undisciplined pursuit of more can be applied to the individual level as well.  Many of us have probably experienced a time when we fell victim to stage #2.  Inevitably, this starts after we begin “eating our own dog food” (stage #1) without ever pausing to consider the purpose or rationale behind our actions.  As always, humility is needed in big quantities to avoid reaching beyond our capacities and falling into decline.  Being overly ambitious is simply not balanced.

Check out the book & let me know what you think.

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A Growth story without the ads: Green Mountain Coffee

Posted on June 5, 2009 in Brand Purpose, Purpose Products

Adage recently posted an interesting article on coffee upstart Green Mountain Coffee.  While other companies have been hammered by the recent downturn, Green Mountain has been on a tear as of late, posting triple-digit earning gains and a 60% sales jump in its most recent quarter.

Impressive numbers…it looks like Green Mountain is starting to become a coffee brand powerhouse, recently acquiring brands like Neumann’s organics & moving their business toward the magical 1 Billion USD mark; how are they doing this?

Building a Billion $ Brand with little marketing spend

Here’s a number that will shock some traditional marketers…Green Mountain says it only spent $17 Million on Marketing on a business that is upwards of $800 Million in revenue. What?   To achieve this, Green Mountain is probably using a smart strategy where they leverage the Product as the ad and customers as the ad agency (see this speech by Jeff Jarvis ).  According to AdAge, Green Mountain has been relying on sustainability efforts to build its reputation & brand.  Historically, the company has avoided traditional marketing, considering itself a "discovery brand." Only recently has (more traditional) consumer marketing become a part of the equation.

With such incredibly low marketing costs, Green Mountain can afford to have ultra-high quality coffee, pay its people well, give back to coffee growing communities, and give back to charity.

And this is exactly what Green Mountain is doing.

A Values & Purpose Based Company

I’ve never been on Green Mountain’s website, so I hopped over for a quick look at what they are up to.  When you click into the sustainability tab, you quickly discover that Green Mountain is a values based company with a strong sustainability driven purpose.  They integrate their values with their business operations and "put their money where their values are" by donating 5% of their pre-tax earnings to social and environmental causes.  Green Mountain has also long been an advocate of high quality, farmer friendly, Fair Trade coffee…it now seems that Fair Trade coffee is gaining more traction in the minds of consumers.  Green Mountain reports that Fair Trade represents a third of their total volume.

Green Mountain’s story reminds me of Gary Hirshberg ’s Stonyfield Farm Yogurt journey.  I recently read Gary’s book .  There is an interesting farming analogy in the book where Hirshberg likens advertising to fertilizer.

The instructional farming analogy

I (Gary) consider advertising to be the fertilizer of traditional business.  You spray it on a field of consumers to grow their awareness and hopefully incite them to try your product.  Then, you hope that a trial leads to a purchase, then to repeat purchases, and finally, if you are fortunate, to true product loyalty.  But just as with conventional farming practices, where petroleum-based fertilizer is needed to grow each succeeding year’s crops, a fairly high % of your revenue has to be plowed back into buying more advertising to keep next year’s crop of product users growing.  That money thus becomes unavailable for enriching your product and deepening your relationship with the consumers you already have.  You’re left to depend year after on what your advertising can deliver.  The day that a competitor runs an ad challenging your product, you have only a very thin top layer of customer loyalty to sustain you.

It’s great to see that you can build a Billion dollar consumer brand behind an inspiring purpose and very little marketing spend.

This is a business to watch…

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CEO of Dynamic Logic discusses Brand Ideals, Personal Branding & Social Media Marketing

Posted on August 10, 2008 in Brand Purpose, Interviews

Nick Nyhan, the CEO of Dynamic Logic, A Millward Brown Company, gave an inspirational presentation at P&G a few weeks ago.  Recently, I asked him if he could provide a few of his thoughts to m-cause readers.  In the interview below, we discuss a range of topics (Brand Ideals, Personal Branding, & Social Media Marketing).  Some good nuggets in this one.  Enjoy!

Can you tell us about Dynamic Logic and the services you offer customers?

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] Dynamic Logic is a research company that serves as an independent evaluator of marketing effectiveness. Basically, clients use us to measure the performance of their messaging activities in both digital and traditional platforms and its impact on their brand. Brand metrics serve as a good ruler to measure across different media platforms and we think that is where the big questions are. Our vision is to teach people how to be “tradigital” brand builders globally. We collect own data but can also work with other data sets for linkage.

Today there is a lot of buzz around branding from the “inside-out”.  You believe that by putting brand ideals first, everything else (product innovation, brand messaging, etc.) will flow from there.

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] The main idea is that while product, packaging, marketing strategy are all important, great brands - or great companies for that matter - stand for something more than what they sell. They can articulate an ideal, and more to the point, their customers can articulate that ideal as well. Sometimes ideals are used in taglines (Apple: Think Different), but generally they are part of an assumed personality of the company. For example, there aren’t many people who can articulate a Google tagline, but many people would feel they could personify Google and guess what they would do or not do. A simple test would be if you were to ask a CEO what matters beyond profits, what would they say? And then, if you were to compare what was said to how the company or brand comes across - is it consistent?

What are the Dynamic Logic Brand Ideals and how did you build these from the ground up?

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] For my own experience, I didn’t know I would create a research company. But I knew I what situation I wanted: to be part of a group of smart, diverse, hard-working people who were able to “see around the corner” and build accordingly. Those were the characteristics of a company that were important to me and the DL business fit those concepts (but could have been a lot of things) . Our brand challenge was to build credibility so people would believe in our research. We chose a focused path that was limited but also made us experts quickly. Our first ideal was “to save the free internet”… sort of goofy but also true because our research was showing value in unclicked-ads at a time when the whole industry was under-fire. It also made the research seem more noble and I actually heard staff members saying it to other people. [After 9/11, when what we did seemed really insignificant, this helped a lot.] Along the way, our ideals evolved: 1) respect ideas more than titles (this was important internally and instead of using the term we called them “coaches” in that they should support (coach) staff to perform well, not the other way around); 2) challenge and grow again (more internal give junior people opportunities above their title and promote from within); 3) Do the right thing even if harder both internal and external: not looking for easy shortcut and sticking true to vision). 4) Today, I think an emerging ideal for us is about teaching - teach our clients, but also people on our team. I like it also because teaching is implicitly caring about the knowledge and well-being of others, versus trying to hog all the expertise for yourself.

You believe that we should “Tap into our own personal ideals” by pushing ourselves, pushing our company & taking inspired risks.  By doing this, we will make ourselves interesting to others. How have you seen this play out in your own career?

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] Tapping into what makes life interesting to you and then weaving that into work will, I believe, make work more interesting to you. This is not ground-breaking thinking, but it is so simple that it is easily over-looked. For myself, I was working in research and marketing after being an English major and then working in politics. What did I like in those pursuits that I could also find in market research? A lot, it turns out. English was about seeing, writing, expression of ideas. Writing and expression is important in any field (especially when you are trying to raise money for a new company!). And story-telling is a huge part of research (what is story the numbers tell). One year I hired a professional story-teller to come into our DL All Staff retreat to teach the elements of story-telling. And on the political front, for me that was always about trying to get something done that is big. What we were doing in our own little world of online advertising, was big. And it took a lot to get people to buy into a new company, an unproven methodology, to get publishers, adserver and agencies to work together for a common good - those are same things I dealt with in Washington DC for a few years.

Were there also some difficult times along the way?

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] There were many times, where I went home frustrated, thinking I was wasting my time on something that wasn’t very important. And honestly, it wasn’t. But what was important was the skills I was learning - and teaching - to others. Learning HOW to take risks and be comfortable with it. Pushing myself and motivating others. Breaking the mold a bit and finding creativity in the day to day of business (it can be there). There were times when we we wold go through a re-org or when we were re-shaping our budget - and when you push yourself and others - it becomes exciting. But on the days when I would get down on what I was doing, I would tell myself that this is practice for something bigger. One bigger thing is children - being a parent is really big and some of these same skills apply (but kids care less than staff). But in another way, because of the risks we took and bets we made, I am now able to work for Obama campaign for a few months, so maybe some of this can be put to the test.

As Dynamic Logic measures digital marketing effectiveness, you must find it very challenging to deal with the current social media marketing explosion. How will social media measurement evolve from your perspective?

[Nick Nyhan (DLNYC CEO)] Social media is really cool phenomenon, not just the great success of a bunch of web sites. It is unique in that the consumers of the content are also the producers. A funnier side is how it automates the processes of maintaining many friendships in a time-compressed world (aka take the name “friendster” for example). Imagine, software that helps you keep in touch with a lot more people but with less effort - big idea. (Now I can have so many more shallow relationships!) Kidding aside, I hear from people under 25 that if they are not on a good social network, they have no social life. The impact is two sided: on one hand, I like how empowering it is so regular people can be heard and be influential just based on the strength of their ideas. On the other hand, it generates more blather that is not of high quality. I wonder if truly caring editors will get drowned out - or just more people linking to them. As it increases, it may cause a resurgence in the importance of a good idea and creative (versus the algorithms and targeting phase marketing is in now) - when everyone is a publisher and there is so much content/clutter - only stellar ideas will stand out or get passed along.  From a measurement perspective. You have to measure it in comparable ways to traditional marketing just so you can compare on some apples to apples way (reach, brand, behavior). But then there is an added element of the very simple but super powerful “pass-along from a friend” element which is the greatest marketing in the world. Someone you (probably trust and like) telling you to check out something. To measure that requires a way of quantifying not just the impact of a message/creative/campaign but also the contribution of the source. That is something we are working on. I think it is doable, but not simple. Yet, we don’t need to overcomplicate things everytime a new approach emerges. Sometimes in digital there is a tendency to declare “new rules” and want to re-invent. Sometimes, the most revolutionary thing is not throwing everything out and starting over with new metrics and methods, but simply tweaking what you have to incorporate the new platforms.

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Abundance and “Go-Givers”

Posted on August 4, 2008 in Brand Purpose

“Everybody can be great because anybody can serve.”–Martin Luther King Jr.

If you watch too many episodes of The Apprentice, you might fall into the trap of thinking that in business, you only have to look out for #1.

This is definitely not what Bob Burg and John David Mann preach in their book (I need to add this one to my summer reading list) called The Go-Giver. The book was recently discussed by John Jantsch on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast.  The Go-Giver is organized into short chapters & uses a parable to get its message of abundance and “giving to get” across. The Five Laws of Stratospheric Success (which I pulled from an Amazon review) shared in the book are:

1. The Law of Value: Your true worth is determined by how much more you give in value than you take in payment.

2. The Law of Compensation: Your income is determined by how many people you serve and how well you serve them.

3. The Law of Influence: Your influence is determined by how abundantly you place other people’s interests first.

4. The Law of Authenticity: The most valuable gift you have to offer is yourself.

5. The Law of Receptivity: The key to effective giving is to stay open to receiving.

I especially like #3 because it is not intuitive, but very true.  It is easy to get overly caught up in trying to measure the value we are providing to others (so we can put a price tag on that value).  Indeed, no one wants to be “taken advantage of” or put into “lose-win” situations…but #3 seems to point to the idea that we should go out & abundantly provide value to others in advance of them ever wanting to purchase from us.  The abundant mentality helps us consider how we can add life and light to the world with every business transaction.  Of course, our abundance must be authentic (see law #4)…we must place other people first because it is who we are and what we are all about.

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The Purpose Paradox

Posted on July 28, 2008 in Brand Purpose

I am currently reading a philosophical business book called:  Purpose, The Starting Point of Great Companies by Nikos Mourkogiannis…the book is a bit different from your standard “10 points to success” blueprint.  Nikos builds his arguments on the classic philosophical ideas of Aristotle, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Hume.  So if you are looking to grab a business book that does some dabbling in philosophy, then go pick this one up.  Below are a few points from the book that caught my attention:

1.  Purpose is a paradox:  Purpose builds and boots profits, but it will only do so if it is pursued for its own sake.  It will boost morale, build brands, help quickly assess the strategy–but it can never be just a tool.  It is this duality that makes it difficult to harness–and hence so valuable.

I love this point because it is counter-intuitive.  Nikos makes purpose sound almost “other-worldly”…like an invisible cloud of Purpose scans the intentions of a company, looking for necessary levels of “purpose purity”.  If it finds this purity then it sticks, if not, then it moves on.

2.  Four Moral Purposes:

1) Discovery - The existentialist ethic of choice that is rooted in intuition that life is a kind of adventure. Example: Apple
2) Excellence - The Aristotelian ethic of virtue Implies standards and purports the belief that excellent performance in our role in life represents the supreme good. Example: Warren Buffett
3) Altruism - The ethic of compassion (Hume).  A purpose built on serving customers in a way that goes beyond standard obligation. Example: The Body Shop
4) Heroism - The Nietzschean ethic of power.  Demonstrates achievement.  Example: Ford

3.  Purpose is your moral DNA. Purpose is what you believe without having to think.  It’s the answer you give when you’re asked for the right–as opposed to the factually correct–answer.

4.  Purpose provides Energy:  Indeed, when people really subscribe to the purpose of an organization, it provides them with energy and makes them feel as if their work really matters.

Building purpose into companies is so critical for success in this uncertain 21st century world where job loyalty no longer seems to exist.  It gives people something to hold on to…something to strive for every morning.

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Personal branding & brand purpose…more to come

Posted on July 11, 2008 in Brand Purpose

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of sitting in on two inspirational presentations at P&G.  Hopefully, I will get to tell you much more about these presentations over the next couple of days.  To get you ready for what is coming, I will set the stage for you below…

1st UP:  Lessons in Personal Branding from a P&G VP…

As I wrote in P&G wins (gasp) advertiser of the year and laughs, P&G has been characterized by some in the advertising world as being somewhat “dry & data focused” in the past…however, that perception is changing.   Markus Strobel, an outspoken Prestige Products VP, embodies another “perception smasher” at P&G (Side note:  if you make VP, you are in about the top 1% of all employees at P&G) .  Markus is not afraid to “buck” the mainstream corp. trend.  Indeed, if you meet him in the hallway, he may not be dressed in the standard executive ”business casual” fare.  Markus also has a great deal of enthusiasm and passion for what he does…and he definitely has a well-defined personal brand internally.  In addition, Markus is a blog fan and in touch with “new marketing.”

2nd UP:  Nick Nyhan from Dynamic Logic, a Millward Brown company

Nick Nyhan from Dynamic Logic also delivered a very inspirational presentation today…a good part of his presentation (to my delight) was centered around Brand Purpose/Ideals and how important it is for brands to communicate inspirational “reasons for their existence”.  What I liked about Nick’s presentation was that he delivered more than your normal “big crowd buzz-word-fluff”.  Indeed, Nick had the courage to throw out a few tangible ideas around brand purpose…and these ideas related directly related to our category.

More to come!

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Marketing as customer service…thoughts from Switzerland

Posted on July 5, 2008 in Brand Purpose, Geneva, Marketing

Photo Credit:  Ian Lord

I currently live in Switzerland…while I love most aspects of living here, customer service in restaurants is oftentimes less than stellar (to put it mildly).  I am not alone in this assessment (I hope I get a couple of comments on this post from friends backing up my claim in this area).  I realize that this is partially due to the way the incentive structure is set-up (e.g. waiters don’t receive nice “American style” tips).  In any case, a couple of recent LONG trips to Swiss restaurants, without much in the way of service got me thinking once again about the importance of customer service.  Over the past few months there have been some pretty good discussions on customer service and marketing in the blogosphere.  Some have even asked if customer service is the new marketing…while others have panned this notion.  Click here for a lively discussion on the topic (read the comments as well) courtesy of Ron Shevlin.

Indeed, as every customer now has the opportunity to evangelize products/services or rant against them via the net, customer service better be a key priority for companies.  Great customer service can drive customer loyalty…and if it is ultra-good, both “customer-bloggers” and the general public will amplify this, leading to broader levels of awareness and positive sentiment around the brand in the minds of people (see this example from customer service wizards Zappos). If customer service is really bad, you may see negative posts from angry consumer-bloggers online and elsewhere. In the absolute worst case, an entire grassroots movement (see Jeff Jarvis Dell Hell) may spring up around an issue.

So while customer service is very important, the marketing function should be held responsible for creating winning strategies to ensure marketplace success now and in the future.  The Marketing function has to stay on top of business results and coordinate the rest of the functions to ensure results are delivered.  Indeed, Brand managers within the marketing function in some companies play a big role in the coordination of production, sales, advertising, promotion, R&D, market research, purchasing, dist., package development and finance.   Finally, there needs to be someone to ensure that budgets are allocated properly across the increasingly unwieldy number of customer touchpoints.   Having said all of this the marketing function is interpreted differently within companies…and the world is definitely changing.  Marketing needs to become more collaborative and less controlling (more organic in a sense) to win in today’s marketplace.

Purpose:  Driving a service mindset across the org…

Ultimately, it would be great to see marketing thinking going beyond the function, becoming an almost “organization wide focus”, with every employee (janitors, cust. service reps, etc.) fully engaged behind the company/brand.  This could be more easily achieved if companies focus on providing products/services that have real value (not just another line extension) and humbly adopt a service mindset in everything that they do.  Adopting this service mindset will help create amazing experiences for consumers in the marketplace, helping the company/brand win the war for $’s in this brave new (and increasingly difficult) marketing world.

Somewhat related recent article:

Pete Blackshaw also recently wrote an AdAge article called How Apple Is Blurring the Line Between Marketing and Service as they increase the level of service at their stores by adding more “concierges” who greet and direct shoppers when they walk into the door.

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Spreading the (marketing) love: Marketing with Meaning

Posted on June 26, 2008 in Brand Purpose

No one has written the book on meaningful marketing…this area is quite new and “post-mass”.  (Brief disclaimer:  A mouse is currently running around my foot at a Starbucks in Cologne, Germany–no joke–so if I stumble around in this post, please excuse me).

Indeed, everyone is tired of interruption marketing…and marketers are often respected just a little more than politicians.  I recently posted about this here.  There is a crisis in marketing…BUT, the winds of change are blowing!  In that context, check out marketingwithmeaning, a project intending to share insights/examples/cases on meaningful marketing.  The guys at Bridge Worldwide are behind the project; it is great to see a pretty big agency putting up some real effort in this space.  It will be interesting to see how the terminology evolves here as well…meaningful marketing is a broad space and can include a lot of areas (as I have discovered while writing this blog).  Either way, I am very excited about this project/blog.  Good luck guys!

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