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Brand Ambassadors

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 by Gretchen Reed

A recent negative experience with an ISP installer reminded me of the often-overlooked role of employees as brand ambassadors.

Especially in service businesses, employees are not only the company’s “face,” but, to some extent, its “product.” The way employees perform reflects directly on the reputation of the business, for better or worse. This interaction is often far more powerful than any advertising campaign or PR effort.

We often encourage our clients to enlist their employees as brand ambassadors, but in order for this to happen, there must be both management commitment and employee receptivity.

First, management must make a considered effort – not just pay lip service to – sharing the company’s goals, vision and values. They also need to lead by example by not only saying what they will do, but actually doing it.

On the employee side, employees who are treated fairly, rewarded for excellent performance and, just as important, called on inferior performance are much more likely to behave in a way that makes their employers proud – and customers happy.

In the case of my ISP experience, the next time a competitor’s direct mail piece arrives or commercial airs, you can bet I will be paying more attention. I guess that makes the installer a brand detractor, rather than ambassador. And just how many of those can a company afford to have?

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Posted in Branding, Communications, Corporate communications, Employee communications, Hudson Valley, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, PR, Public Relations | No Comments »

What Are You About?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 by John Mallen

I just revisited a blog by Steve Rubel called “How the Leading Social Sites Describe Themselves” Steve’s piece is well worth the read. He observes that when one reads how major social Web sites describe themselves — Twitter, digg, Friendfeed and others — it would be difficult to tell them apart by simply relying on the descriptions themselves.

It’s an observation that applies too often in multiple segments and in many vehicles ranging from brochures and videos to ads and even exhibits — maybe especially exhibits.

One of the products most in demand from our marketing communications firm is the JMC Messaging Platform(TM). The platform takes shape as a document in which we distill the essential elements of a brand — things such as how it should be positioned in the minds of stakeholders, or what the value proposition is to a customer group.

But the first and most debated element in virtually every JMC Messaging Platform process that I have worked on is the definition of the business — how the organization describes itself. One would think that such a straightforward statement would be the simplest. Not so! It doesn’t seem to matter whether the organization is a closely held business or part of a multinational organization. When we meet with the leaders in our facilitated brand messaging workshop and begin with that fundamental question, most of the time it opens a lively debate.

When there is little debate, the reason is typically that an official milquetoast-like definition has been developed and the language is, as Rubel observed, so bland as to be meaningless.

No reason to delve into the organizational psychologies at work. That could take forever. But there is good reason to suggest that it does pay for the leaders of any organization to wrangle through a process of clarifying how the company or its brands describe or define themselves. If the message is muddled to those of us on the outside, how must it be to the people on the inside? And contrarily, if the people inside are clear about the definition of the organization, how much more likely are they to relate to and resonate with the publics that enable success?

I’m with Steve Rubel. Describe yourself! It’s job No.1 for any customer-facing activity.

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Posted in Best Practices, Branding, Corporate communications, Marketing, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, Social Media, differentiation | 2 Comments »

Making Communications Part of the Value You Deliver Through Customer-Linked Communications

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 by John Mallen

Many of us recognize that communicating to our markets can augment success. “Advertising sells,” right? But how often have we considered that marketing communications - public relations, online Web communications, and advertising - can be part of the value you offer customers?

In a recession economy where competition is sharper than ever, distinguishing your brand and adding strategic value can be great way to help accelerate your own growth.

I discovered this some years ago as business in advanced materials grew to become a significant part of our client portfolio. Whether metals, technical textiles, plastics and composites, we realized a common opportunity : the advanced materials our clients sold as ingredients delivered significant value and even pizzaz to their customers and, further, to the people who ultimately bought the end product.

Thus a nylon fiber that some time ago had received a U.S. Government “mil spec” for use in ballistic armor - though eclipsed by Kevlar - brought terrific value to soft-sided luggage and became the darling of top brands like Tumi, Hartmann, Samsonite and others. The nylon not only brought direct value to luggage manufacturers, because it was not only tough but took in dyes better than anything else, but became part of the value proposition that led consumers to select  products with “Tru Ballistic” nylon fabric.

Seeing that, we developed tags and end-consumer literature that customers could attach to products in the retail environment. We also produced a training campaign for use in retailers’ sales training programs. Salespeople on the floor could answer questions and help guide consumers to value purchases.

We called this and many other approaches “customer-linked communications.” CLC is more than featuring customers in case studies or arranging for third party testimonials. CLC is communications for, about, and on behalf of a customer. It may involve tangential mention of your brand or no mention at all.

CLC makes sense when:

-  You need to move out of a commodity trap and featuring your customer’s products and services not only helps stimulate and support your sales, but also helps move you from commodity to specialty.

-  You want give priority to certain segments or application niches, and your customer’s success is an efficient way to accomplish this goal

- You want to generate a rush to your product or service from a group of customers who intensively monitor one another, so communicating the success of one customer showcases the value your brand contributes – the value proposition you bring to that customer – and also triggers a barracuda-like feeding frenzy among look-alike customers.

Successfully mounting a CLC initiative is a strategic marketing move that requires coordination among the marketing team, the ad-PR-promotions people and sales. Once organized properly, it can become a dynamic component enthusiastically embraced within the company and among the customers involved.

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Posted in Communications, Corporate communications, Customer relations, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, Value Marketing | No Comments »

Toyota’s Safety Muddle Signals Need for a New Era of Trust Communications — Not the Crisis Communications of the Past

Monday, February 8th, 2010 by John Mallen

On Jan. 27, The Wall Street Journal reported that Toyota Motors’ President Akio Toyoda is worried about how the growing safety recall of more than 8 million vehicles will affect the company’s reputation for quality. Just yesterday, the Bloomberg Business Week’s Insider Newsletter editor Katherine Davis reported that he’s ducking the press as he swishes cockails with the global elite in Davos. “You can’t buy this kind of publicity - nor would you want to.”

Being in the publicity business, I have been drawn to Toyota recall reports like a bug to a bulb on a summer’s night. After all, we in the PR business are always probing “crisis communications” and explicating how they were carried out and what we could have done better. Truth is, crisis communications, crisis management and similar terms are proven to be some of the most popular Web searches for PR. Toyota is on its way to being one of the “big ones” when it comes to crisis commuincations, right up there with Tylenol for J&J and Bhopal for Union Carbide.

What’s surprising to me is how a corporate icon for quality, embracing notions of consumer safety, fell so low. I saw a similar display in the late 1970’s as our client McDonnell Douglas avoided confronting media questioning what was going on with DC-10 aircraft falling out of the sky. We’d been working on behalf of the company after the issues with cargo doors were resolved, when DC-10s around the world were grounded following the crash of American Airlines Flight 191, killing 273 people. Unwilling to discuss details after the bloody negative publicity earlier in the decade, I recall pleading with our account director who was at headquarters as I held The Wall Street Journal’s aviation writer on the other phone threatening to “go” to print with a page one-article based on comments he had gathered from outside the company. It was a dramatic example of, “If you don’t speak for the company they [critics] will.”

That was my PR indoctination into the rules of engagement for crisis communications — a set of principles devoted to guiding institutions away from garnering even worse public opinion and, sometimes, even helping them deflect the blame. Some of this deflection may be underway as information from Toyota points to the flaws being in materials from CTS of Elkhart, Ind. which are used in the brake systems.  Deflection doesn’t really work. In  the end, the best crisis communicators help companies navigate through stormy waters, without sinking the whole ship. I think there is another, more basic role that communications can help with.

Total quality?

What happened at Toyota?  Having gone through years of B2B communications for many manufacturers, Toyota’s “total quality” focus had become legendary and highly respected.  How many hours have I sp

ent with clients from around the world talking about Kaizen (continuous improvement), Kaiban, Genchi Genbutsu (go and see for yourself)?  All of these are more or less part of the larger Toyota Production System (TPS) which led to the company being a hallmark for quality writ big. I recall some years ago receiving a call from a senior VP at then AlliedSignal, telling me one of his businesses had received an award fro

m Toyota for quality and being asked to stiumlate coverage in the Wall Street Journal. The fact is the Journal, as a matter of policy didn’t cover awards, but this was the exception — an all-American brand being annointed by the global leader in quality!

Dig into the Toyota legend and you’ll discover a systematic and passionate commitment to improvement of the product and the production process. But what is going on that such a premier global leader in one of the most competitive economic segments could find itself as today’s successor to the likes of GM (and the Corvair) and others of the mighty American motor industry featured in Ralph Nadar’s “Unsafe at any Speed” blockbuster of 1965?

Too big to care

How does such a great company like Toyota, with an intense focus on quality, find itself skewered in public opinion on the issue of safety?  After all, safety would seem to be a strategic byproduct of safety. Indeed, the issue is not over unsafe designs of the 60s, like chrome dashboards that cause injuries in seat-beltless vehicles. These are brake components that allegedly don’t work all of the time.

The root is far more profound than the CEO cowering in Davos versus confronting the media (though he should have been more up front). The root is an internal view, a culture that has reacted slowly to reports of safety failings, as reported in the New York Times. They have gone a little “safety deaf,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said.

We in the PR field can help companies set the record straight, as the latest television commercials from Toyota attempt. We in advertising and marketing communications can attempt to shift the attention of consumers from the economic havoc of the past two years to the potential of the future under the guidance of smarter and wiser investor advisors. We can help try to focus attention on one or another perspective in a health-care debate that seems to have more revolutions than Macy’s front door in the peak holiday shopping season. But we cannot affect the fundamental business problem.

The culture of insititutions that take strategic aim at the perpetuation and growth of these organizations may, along the way, have lost touch with the basic purpose of the business and the customers they were founded to serve.

The foundation of trust

A recent PR forum ask people in the practice to come up with ideas about how to restore trust in our institutions. My take is that the communicators can no longer successfully serve their organizations with reactive crisis management campaigns. We need to move in a more fundamental way. Toyota’s recall problem was only a blip, if that, when the trust question was raised. I said then and still believe that the issue of trust cannot begin with a PR or advertising campaign.  It must begin with the culture within an organization, and with that culture enabling members to speak out and be heard when a quality or safety issue is first observed. Such a culture begins with the customer in mind. How does what the company is doing affect those who buy and use our products?

The new role of communications

Professionals like me are hired to help our companies or clients put their best foot forward. Looking to an increasingly competitive future with growing complexities from the integration of advanced technologies, and the new needs to care for the environment and sustainability, I suggest that communications must place an intensive focus on fundamentals — including the fundamental of giving employees a voice, an opportunity to use their voices, and a cultural freedom to hold the organization accountable to its principles.

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Posted in Advertising, Communications effectiveness, Corporate communications, Crisis Communications, Current Affairs, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Public Relations, blogging | No Comments »

Feedback

Friday, February 5th, 2010 by John Mallen

Looking into SuperFreakonomics,” the “explosive follow-up to Freakonomics” we receive this wisdom from the authors: “Good feedback is hard to come by and extremely valuable. Not only did we receive feedback on what we’d already written but also many suggestions for future topics.”

Authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dinner are reflecting in essence on an enterprise that began as a partnership where the economist (Levitt) and writer (Dubner) began packaging stories that illustrated and underscored a law of economic behavior which says people respond to incentives, though not in a predictable way, thus ushering in the “law of unintended consequences.”

Indeed, as they explain, the book was published before these powerful laws were associated with the freaky way people behave.

The outcome led to great ideas e-mailed in from readers. The book’s success also led to a strategic by-product – the authors as (paid) speakers on the lecture circuit and, in that context, to more reader recommendations of content for number two

These suggestions from readers brought about an enrichment of the content in book number two, which the authors claim to be better than book number one.

They claim to benefit from the economic phenomenon of cumulative advantage – “that is the prominence of our first book produced a series of advantages in writing our second book that a different author may not have enjoyed.”

So the lesson is about the value that arises from listening is bigger than the value of using the feedback to tune your operation so every year you get better and better – like Toyota does. In addition, you can get strategic by-products like the authors’ speaking gigs – the readers came to them – and useful ideas for a new-generation product or service.

The key point – it really pays to listen!

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Posted in Best Practices, Communications effectiveness, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking | No Comments »

Are Tactics Wagging your Marketing?

Thursday, September 17th, 2009 by John Mallen

I like how this article in yesterday’s Fast Company draws attention to the importance of the corporate brand ( where the corporate brand is needed) and reminds us that strategy not glitzy tactics should be guiding the marketing.  Tactics are great, but need to be marshalled toward an end.

” … With the growth of the Internet and social technology tools, personal branding activity and opportunities have exploded. On the other hand, in some ways, the arc of Web 1.0 to 2.0+ (not to mention this current economy) has seduced many marketers into being focused on tactics at the expense of strategy including branding. Hot media tactics often substitute for the “strategy.”

Thanks to Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research at  Movéo Integrated Branding for these words.  The remainder of the article is also a great primer on the  important elements of a brand.

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Posted in Branding, Marketing, Marketing Communications, News & Thinking, Social Marketing, Social Media, Web 2.0 | No Comments »

When Customers are a Village

Monday, September 14th, 2009 by John Mallen

Christopher St., Greenwich Village by Beulah BettersworthI have just read a blog essay called “Finding Your Village of Customers” by Sonia Simone, senior editor at Copyblogger .  This is must reading for the micro-businesses among us.

Such firms, like my own, may have a global band of customers who not only know those who serve them, but delight in the relationship. She is spot on. In this space you really do listen to your customers, really understand them and respond to their needs — before you’re asked!  The village is your market, the regulars who love your offerings as well as the status of being a “regular,” like the Beacon Hill bar in TV’s “Cheers.”

Simone’s post is short, so I won’t go on except to summarize the key needs (besides listening, understanding and taking action). Every village needs:

“A leader. (That’s you.)

“A purpose. (That’s your market position or winning difference.) . . .

“And a place to come together.

“You might create a membership site for your best-loved customers. Or organize special conferences, user groups, and gatherings. You might build something as simple as a private online forum where your village can share their experiences — good and bad.

“But give your village a place to get together. To know you better, and know one another better. A place where everybody knows their name.”

And that’s one powerful way to use communications to amplify success. The “place” is likely one you develop on the Social Web.

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Posted in Best Practices, Business development, Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Describe Yourself!

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 by John Mallen

I have just been led to a compelling piece “How the Leading Social Sites Describe Themselves” by Steve Rubel. Steve’s piece is worth reading, but his view applies to far more than the social Web, and touches on a favorite peeve of mine.

Rubel’s blog follows his return to the City from the Bay Area where a high penetration of Digerati (I love that term) is accompanied by a parochial focus of these tech-savvy folk, as evinced by how popular social Web sites introduce themselves. It really would be difficult for someone who is not a member of the cognoscenti to make an intelligent choice from among Twitter, digg, Friendfeed and others.

I find the same condition far too often in too many places. Take trade shows, where in my experience the more high-tech the exhibitor the more undifferentiated their presentations. Glitzy to be sure. Clarity of what they are, not much. The same carries over to brochures, videos, Web sites and other marketing materials. You really need to dig to understand just what they’re about.

I’m with Steve Rubel. Describe yourself! It’s job No.1 for any customer facing activity.

Need help? Just call us or any of our 39 colleague firms in the Public Relations Global Network.

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Posted in Communications effectiveness, Marketing Communications, New Communications, PR, PRGN, Public Relations, Social Marketing, Uncategorized, differentiation | 1 Comment »

College Marketing - A Big Challenge

Monday, May 25th, 2009 by John Mallen
Sometimes there are no readily available elegant strategies for using communications to drive success.

That becomes abundantly clear in the case of college recruiting.

We have a fully empowered social-media equipped market comprising teens who shun most of the vehicles many of us think of as being new and cutting edge, like blogs and Twitter. They are deeply rooted to Facebook and texting as their preferred media.

Teens, the research tells us, don’t use mainstream media except maybe TV as background, don’t e-mail, and basically leave Twitter to adults. Their facebook activities and texting are confined to their circle of friends.

Of course parents and high-school advisors have influence — because many teas are driven to get into college — the right college. Of course they have tremendous on line resourcers including reference sites and digital match-making tools.

So how do admissions offices avoid producing messages the kids don’t pay attention to, and effectively reach out to their potential freshmen? It’s looking more and more like the answer is strategic buzz.

 

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Posted in Marketing, Marketing Communications, Social Marketing, Social Media, Uncategorized | No Comments »

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