Haters gonna hate. But not here. This is an optimistic and happy place. One week since I told anyone about this blog and I have over 500 page views. Yet folks are still reticent to pop their head out of Internet anonymity and start talking. I only have 3 comments, and they are all from Teresa who happens to be in my family.* However, many people have contacted me by email. Fascinating, right? But not surprising. That's partly why I am here.
But when it gets closer to their professional lives, I can see many people are largely voyeurs hiding behind names like @BunnyBunny99. With an open social graph, if you are going to be a marketing leader and do it like it has never been done before, you have to put yourself out there. You can't just be a follower. Writing a comment is a start. I am standing naked on the Internet with every future employer now knowing I have iffy syntax and an inconsistent use of commas. You can at least take off a sock.
Or even better...a guest blog post. Yes, send me a guest post. For those of you who want to toe dip into this professional dialog, the water is warm and shallow here. I will +1 your post. My mother will write lots of smiley faces. Others who don't know what to comment or haven't gotten comfortable with the fact their "likes" and Tweets are going into the ether can just write "snaps" to support you. We'll take those snaps. Next you can start your blog and learn some code (see beautiful Twitter favorites widget at right, oooh ahhhhh). Being brave to put your real voice on the Internet is like public speaking. You just have to do it and keep doing it. 140 characters, 90 seconds. Start doing. I welcome this as a platform to help you find your voice and confidence.
We perfectionists have to get over our fears of permanence or its gonna hurt us translating our power and ingenuity further into tech.
What is the one thing you have been dying to tell other marketers? What is the thing that "if marketers only knew" you could stop throwing your frayed 1998 copy of Dilbert cartoons at your cube wall in irony? The thing you want to change for marketers of the future as you come out of school? Those 200 words of wonderful marketing, branding, leadership wisdom that you wish someone had told you before you had to learn them the hard way? I would be so proud if this was the first place a new marketer published their opinion.
All I ask is that the guest post is about marketing and things that will help the next Steve Jobs be a woman, a corporate misfit toy, or a "shaking in their boots introvert" who need us to shine the light on their brilliance. I have a lot of light to give, and I think you will help me.
PS Thank you Omar Noory for one of my favorite memes of all time "Haters Gonna Hate"
PPS For new Twitter-ers, about 5 days into your social media adventure you will receive a personal message from someone you know that says "Someone said a really bad thing about you on this blog" with a link. Before you have a heart attack and crawl so far back into your snail shell that I can't find you, it is a scam. Their Twitter account has been hacked. Get back on that horse.
* Thanks, T. Also, there is one comment from me so I didn't count it.
Taking a sock off here…
ReplyDeleteI’m intrigued by case studies, where in hindsight the best brands followed the best practice rulebook and did everything right. Meanwhile, I look at what is now rated as one of the most trusted brand in the U.S. – Amazon.com. They seemed to be breaking all the rules with a quest to “get big fast,” which in the midst of the dot com era, seemed like a recipe for a quick death. I wondered what the overall vision of this brand was going to be and what was it setting out to embody.
Contrary to the “rules of good branding” where we’re continually refining and crystallizing the brand by making sense of the product offerings and architecture, Amazon quickly added to its original bookstore offering with new lines of business -- from toys to power tools -- that didn’t even seem to align with its core offering. I remember people talking about the questionable staying power of the brand, wondering how the brand was going to morph, and how it was going to eventually build meaning with customers. It started gaining a reputation for being a category killer, but not a Brand (with a capital “B”) with long-term staying power.
Skip forward after a decade of being fiercely competitive and getting close to the customer, it branded it’s service and consumers would probably say the Amazon brand stands for convenience, efficiency, low-prices, friendly customer-service, and personalization. AND, it’s #26 on Interbrand's Top 100 brands this year!
Sometimes brands start out with a master plan, and sometimes they break all the rules.
I’d love to hear of other Branding “rule-breaker” best practices if you’ve got some to share.
Thanks for the shout-out, Pat! :D
ReplyDeleteI wish I had something constructive to add to the dialogue on branding, but I'm drawing a blank. But, hey . . . if you ever want to hear the perspective of a random consumer, I'm all yours! ;P
Hi Shiro,
ReplyDeleteI think you make such an interesting point about Amazon breaking all the rules, diversifying their offerings yet somehow still coming out clear and strong in terms of their Brand. While I can’t think of a company that was as successful as Amazon in terms of keeping its brand image, it is interesting look at some of the mega-conglomerates in Asia such as Mitsubishi and how it’s able to offer such a wide range of electronic supplies, yet maintain its branding.
I always found it intriguing how Mitsubishi can offer products from pens to cars to air conditioners. In the States, it almost sounds silly if someone says, “I own a Ford refrigerator” or “I’m using my Chevrolet blender.” It seems like the best thing a company can do in the States is to specialize in a product and produce the product well. For example, when you think of a brand such as Windows, you automatically think computer software. When you think about NBC, you think about media content; when you think about facebook, you think about social networking.
However, companies are slowly starting to move towards the Mitsubishi and Amazon model of diversifying their offerings. Look at Apple and Google. Apple was originally best known for their music listening devices (the iPod), but now Apple not only sells electronic devices, it is also selling content such as podcasts, music albums on iTunes, Apple TV and a suite of innovative laptops and tablet devices. The same changes are happening with Google. Google originally built its brand around its search engine and exclusive email service. Today, however, Google has expanded its suite of products to social media (Google Plus), mobile payment services (Google recently acquired Motorola Mobility), and smartphone software (Android).
By using Apple and Google as examples of companies that are strategically expanding, it seems that the future trend for companies is to start selling many more products so that they can become a one-stop shop for the consumer. Imagine if electronics companies were to do the same in the coming future?
A Whirlpool laptop anyone?
@Shira & @Lucia - you guys bring up very good points! To be honest, I have yet to learn enough about "branding best practices" to give my opinion or provide a good example like yours.
ReplyDeleteHowever, as a consumer myself, I've always been awestruck by the different strategies companies use to garner brand loyalty or to be "ahead of the game."
For example, I admire Coca-Cola. They got their brand associated with "happiness." When I drink a Diet Coke, which I know is not great for me, I am very happy. No joke. Brand titans like Coca-Cola associated their brands with emotions and have reinforced that to a point where I can't even tell if Coke "brainwashed" me to feel happy or I truly am happy with its products. (I have the same weirdly nostalgic feel when I think Disneyland, the "happiest place on earth." I still don't know if it's because it is the “happiness place on earth” or because I was taught to think that since elementary school days.)
On the other side, or maybe in a different area, are the brand/marketing geniuses like Apple's Steve Jobs, who pretty much told the world, "I'm going to tell you what you want because you don't even know it yet." Hence, my dad forcing me to get an iPod when it first came out because it would make me "cooler"… and then a few years later my telling the world to get an iPhone because (obviously) Steve Jobs said we should.
Anyways, my question to all the tenured marketers out there is: What's better? Aligning a brand with an emotion that hopefully never goes away? Or creating the idea that this brand is beyond the "now" and is way into the "future," in terms of idea, coolness, and whatever else?
Shira,
ReplyDeleteI also think it's fascinating how companies and brands can evolve. You definitely jogged my memory when amazon.com first appeared on the scene.
I can remember buying textbooks off of the site thinking that this was a great new way to buy things. Not only did I not have to lug 25lbs of bound paper from the bookstore, but it was also much cheaper than the university's monopolistic prices! I also remember that when Barnes & Noble finally came online, I thought that Amazon was doomed, since B&N was so strongly associated with books to me and everyone else I knew.
What I think Amazon did was realize that they developed expertise in selling books online - and also convinced a generation of customers that buying online wasn't such a hassle either. And so they became "The Internet Marketplace".
Two of my favorite products/services also started out in more of a niche - then leveraged that expertise to expand into adjacent functions. The first is ESPN. 15 years ago, they were the leading sports reporting and broadcaster - but only the best among other providers of sport (publishing, college sports, olympics, fantasy sports, etc.) However, in the last decade, they've used the strong association with sports broadcasting to extend to publishing (vs Sports Illustrated), fantasy sports (vs Yahoo), etc.
Or even more divergence - Hong Kong's Octopus card for metro/subway payments, which was one of the first smartcards for metro payments in the world. It quickly deplaced paper tickets in the city. To refill, you could either go to the stations, or at the local 7-11s and Circle-Ks. The organization thought outside the box - and allowed commuters to pay for purchases at 7-11 and Circle-K, too - which soon extended to pretty much most small payments throughout the territory. Now you can use the Octopus card for things like parking, McDonald's, bakeries, security badging in/out of office buildings, etc.
Just a great reminder for me to keep an open mind.
Snaps :-)
ReplyDelete@Lucia. So true. Korean brands are the same. LG is everything from semiconductors to toilet paper in Korea. However, it's an older company with a legacy to leverage into new product categories, along with a very different competitive environment. It is interesting though. Don't think I'd ever want LG toilet paper in my bathroom though.
ReplyDelete@normanleung. I love the Octopus card example! Similar to Amazon, it just needed to change behavior -- oh, SO not easy, which opens the door to unlimited possibilities. It's like Steve Jobs telling me I could toss my CD collection (WHA?!) in favor of MP3 files accessible on a little device. The MP3 player market was already mature, but it was going nowhere until Apple came along and changed behavior.