Brands and branding are responsible for many of the world’s problems today.
Capitalism and globalisation in the form of homogenised corporate monsters rule ok. They get inside our minds and make us do things that, left to our own devices, we would avoid like the plague. Surely brands are therefore clearly evil and almost Orwellian in their ability to change our behaviour to suit their own ends, know our thoughts and actions and brainwash entire social and cultural groups.
But hang on a minute. This view, held high by the anti globalisation, anti capitalism lobby misses one or two rather important points.
Don’t all of us, ‘brainwashed’ and easily manipulated consumers in the free world make our choices BECAUSE WE WANT TO? Isn’t it us who create brands and have the power of life and death over them? No one forces us to do what they want and no one penalises us when we don’t. We choose to pay premium prices for a Nike or Lacoste branded T-shirt but probably couldn’t be paid to wear an HSBC bank one.
We make purchasing choices about almost everything from food to clothes to batteries and insurance and it is brand that allows us to have choice – without it, how would we know what our choices were? How could we differentiate between products? How could we express a preference? How would we know whom to trust? Even the ‘No Brand’ brand has become an influential and recognized…. well…brand.
Brand is now so influential that it is used to promote choices that go well beyond purchasing decisions. Some support football clubs because of associations of style, glamour and success rather than a local affinity or allegiance. We donate to charities because of the worthiness of their cause but also because of our levels of trust in them based on our perception of their brands. The Red Cross is still one of the worlds most recognized and respected brands. Many people in democratic countries base their voting decisions on the brands of politicians and political parties rather than on a good understanding of policies.
Everything from people to countries are described as brands and as individuals we make choices based on how we believe others will perceive our unique brand as a result of our actions and decisions. The word itself is used (and misused) by almost everyone in the free market world
These behaviours are not new, however the positioning of them as brand building activity is. The business of deliberate, planned development in order to change and influence peoples views has, over the last 30 years, become one of the most important and considered aspects of business strategy.
Business owners, leaders and managers, regardless of their organisations size, scope and markets have become the primary custodians of their brands. There is a recognition that although successful brand positioning still impacts heavily on sales and marketing activity, all parts of a business can benefit and improve as a result of carefully constructed brand change and direction. More importantly, brand building is now understood to benefit the smallest SME as much as the largest multi national.
So is brand evil? Definitely not, so long as brand development is carefully and responsibly conducted and implemented and if it creates real change within an organisation and in the beliefs and minds of the people who are exposed to it. If organisations are able to differentiate themselves from their competition in a genuine and believable way and if consumers, donators and information seekers are able to make real choices or gain real benefit, then everyone wins. The trick is to embark on brand activity in the right way and for the right reasons.

2012 resolution: don’t betray your brand; tell the truth, stick to it and don’t try to ‘manage’ your consumers!

So 2012’s just around the corner. Pictures of the year are de rigeur. Two lists of pictures here. Some are worth a thousand words. Others aren’t. They’re here only partly for their worth as pics; mostly for what they tell us about truth and lies.

The first purports to be a list of images free of the taint of photoshop – here www.pxleyes.com/blog/2011/12/these-50-photos-will-blow-you-away/. But as an audience we’re inured to picture manipulation, so we question the pictures on this list from the start. They look too perfect. They look potentially manipulated. The setup, and the relationship we have with the pictures, is tarnished.

The second list, here, http://blogs.reuters.com/fullfocus/2011/11/21/best-photos-of-the-year-2011/, is different. Simply images from our frequently awful 2011. And our relationship with these images is immediately and fundamentally different. They have authority. They are genuinely moving. Because they are true.

And, in a 2012 where we’re looking at a lot of economic stress and business crises are inevitable, telling the truth and sticking to it in a crisis is going to be vital.

Frequently, businesses underestimate the importance of truth to brand perception and overestimate how they can manage their way out of problems. Marketing, PR, campaigning etc can achieve a huge amount to shift, guide and direct perception. But it can’t change things if a business breaks the covenant they’ve made with their consumers and the public. No matter how much they try to spin. Sometimes things are beyond spin, a point made clear here http://colleensharen.wordpress.com/2011/01/23/trust-betrayal-and-brand-positioning/.

Businesses that have broken that covenant in recent times are obvious. They’re all typified not only by a catastrophic event, but by mealy-mouthed attempts to weasel away from the truth.

BP and News International, amongst others, have failed to understand that marketing, PR etc can’t stop us making up our minds. It’s not that these brands will fall. But their relationship with us will never be the same again. Because these businesses imagined they could ‘campaign’ their way out of a problem, rather than truly opening up, admitting colossal error, and engaging in reconciliation.

There are other stories of brand betrayal out there. In the runup to Christmas, we all get a bit too focused on gratification, and businesses that can’t fulfill are always likely to take a kicking http://www.brandrepublic.com/news/1108574/.

There’s plenty of meat at www.mallenbaker.net too – some excellent analysis of how brands that play fast and loose with their reputation and try to gloss over major problems face worse ones down the road. And take a look at how Moleskine managed to annoy most of its loyal base here http://appliedpoetics.com/2011/10/25/betrayed-by-the-brand-how-moleskine-made-enemies-of-the-people-who-loved-it-most/. And who could forget the Netflix debacle? http://thechrisvossshow.com/netflix-failures-and-lessons-from-betrayal-of-brand-loyalty/

Of course, there’s a distinctly different point here. There’s a big difference between companies that annoy their fans (who, through new social channels, have new ways to gripe) and businesses that truly blunder in the wider world and break a much deeper moral (and legal, or even global) promise.

But the warning is still there – truth and telling it, whatever the pain, is enormously important. Everyone, after all, still talks about the Tylenol recall of 1982 – and how it the reaction enabled Johnson & Johnson to stay on top – as seen here http://iml.jou.ufl.edu/projects/fall02/susi/tylenol.htm. It’s given J&J a reputation for truth, and the strength that comes with that, ever since (though they’ve done their best to undermine themselves with more and more product recalls…). Again, a lot of great work has been done on www.mallenbaker.net to look at good, as well as bad, crisis management.

Telling the truth is increasingly important in the very ‘interesting’ times we’re facing. Especially with the tools and awareness consumers can access and which mean that dirty laundry will always, always be found. The effect is to make us both extremely cynical and on the other hand, desperate for truth. Because truth is something we’re desperate for. In business, marketing, and everywhere else. Because 2012 is looking like a year where a lot of chaos is going to play out.

In the debate over truth, we keep talking in the strange, unreal business-speak way about new norms, changed landscapes and ‘constant dynamic change’. And we do that because we want to be able to codify the chaos we’re in. Read order into it. But maybe we just need to think about, tell, and embody the truth. That doesn’t mean we expect the chief executives of businesses to us a lie detector all the time (though not a bad notion). But we want to believe.

In 2012, we can expect belief to be of increasing importance to everyone; in the wider world, in economies, and in business. As a species, we need to believe. So businesses that find a way of expressing simple truths will become even more important. And those that break their covenant with us will be more likely to pay the price.

So really, there’s only one New Year’s Resolution for brands who want to thrive. Worry about cost, productivity and agility as much as you like. But tell the truth, not just in what you say, but through what you do – and if you screw up, tell the truth about that as well. It might just what makes you different, and what lets you survive.

Running a tone of voice session soon. Because like many in our world I am obsessive, it’s made me dive into one of those discussions (mostly internal) about ‘what is marketing for’? Admittedly, that’s just like when a small child keeps asking why the sun works: after enough recursions, we try to ally marketing to curing world hunger or defeating gravity. All you need is one too-enthused conversation with the mirror about how you’re a ‘tone of voice tiger’ and you think you’re changing everything. However, voice is critical to the way we do our jobs and it’s worthwhile looking at how changing your tone changes your marketing potential.

For many in the corporate world, marketing doesn’t mean attracting interest or pulling attention closer to what we do. It means ensuring materials are checked off and out the door as soon as they can be put together. The original idea is the same – to ensure we have ways of talking about the things we do – but the system has lost its life. The measurements are nothing to do with how effective something is – because that effect is only felt far, far away from the people and systems that produce the materials. Instead, the measurement is what have we produced.
At least, that’s how it can feel to the people stuck in a large corporate structure: they can feel utterly divorced from what’s really happening. They haven’t got any real tools to change anything. And they can’t talk clearly about it anyway; they’ve been strangled by a massive root-growth of corporate speak, business clichés and technobabble. Marketers hate this, because most of them didn’t get into their jobs to chuck stuff out there: they like getting close to ideas and understanding them; really helping people.

But instead of marketing, they’re in a factory. A system that, for the marketing team living in it day-to-day, is dead: and they REALLY hate that – they want to work with sales teams, put brilliant plans they all have to open up opportunities to work. NOW.

So when a major corporate really makes a serious decision to change the way it talks and looks, it’s genuinely exciting. A complete rebrand is a chance to clear house, start putting everything in order and get something done.

BUT!…a lot of the time, when companies ‘rebrand’ they basically mean ‘redesign’. And that’s fab. You get the designs through and go ‘hey…they’re really serious about this. Great!’ But often the words aren’t treated the same way. Brand agencies might rethink words, but mostly as typography. The actual language and tone gets left behind and, in a 100-page brand manual, left to page 98.

That can be too little, too late – because the marketers in any major company are producing immense amounts of material, with the same speed and budget constraints that they had before. There’s an argument that you can’t be prescriptive with an emerging and evolving brand – just create ‘seed material’ to grow the brand language and let it breathe. Which is true and all very nice. But the marketers still need to cope with seemingly infinite content owners, all of whom have very different and complex ways to describe extremely complex solutions. They have to have the way to treat words, not just pictures and typography, to be able to channel those resources – and meet the demands of content without losing control of that brand through undirected, disconnected language.

Creating a coherent, absolutely certain tone of voice does not have to take hundreds of pages of acceptable terms, keywords or ways of saying X amazing business benefit in Y material. In fact, that’s probably going to kill it stone dead.

But it is going to take more than a couple of paragraphs about writing more colloquially or simply tagged on to the end of a typography guide the size and weight of a bison. Marketers need concrete advice, real ‘attitude’ about how their tone of voice can be used. That means working with them, ‘workshopping’ (to use a horrible business word) with them: because that’s how they feel confident enough to use, own and defend that tone against legions of materials and business owners.

When you’re running this sort of workshop (yuck), don’t act like you’re Martin Luther King, but do interact with a bit of preacher-like call and response. Get them to attack the lead-lined, impenetrable materials most businesses use as copy. Open up old brochures and redo them. Find absurd clichés and make them write copy with them in, just to get the poison out and make them sensitive to nonsense. Make them write like they mean it, and forget what the content owners say, and not worry themselves to death about the rules of grammar. After all, their business is expert, insightful and poised – isn’t it? It’s a leader – isn’t it? How many business giants made their name through using the word ‘synergise’ ten times in one sentence? How many times have you heard Steve Jobs say he was ‘across’ anything?

So get in with them, mix it up and show them how that simple voice guidelines can be used practically to give them infinite ways of using words. Instead of one tone of voice tiger, talking to a lonely mirror, you’ll have a roomful talking to each other – and when they get back to the office, to everyone else. After all, if you teach a man to fish you feed his entire family; if you teach a marketing team to talk with clarity, sense and purpose, you might have a rebrand that matches powerful pictures with precise, smart words.

That way a rebrand can be complete, be compelling, and rejuvenate the business.

Can we do it? Yes, we can!

The phrase “the New Normal” gets used a lot. It just serves to remind us (a) that business has changed at a fundamental level, that the world is more complex, etc. and (b) that this is a new set of rules and (c) that people are happy with cliché.

But even if we leave aside natural disasters, recent events have revealed that a new set of rules is exactly what we don’t have. There are no real playbooks, currently, to interrelate the changes in the way we live, the changes in the conditions we live under, and the changes in the tools we use to live in and understand the world. We’re not looking at a narrative we understand any more.

As the riots last week demonstrated, all it takes is one factor of life stretched and twisted to warp others out of shape. And globally, locally, and in every area of life, we are being assailed by multiple changes to the fundamentals. This isn’t the New Normal. And we aren’t just looking at the Squeezed Middle. This is the Squeezed Normal: where all the rules are permanently changing and the forces that govern us are mutating at every level. And unlike a “New Normal” you can’t really predict when or whether it’s going to snap back to something you understand.

So, what can we do to help the businesses we are here to help to forge their way through a world of permanent chaos? The only way, really, is to make a stab at emphasizing what the real ‘permanent’ changes will be.

Technology isn’t a permanent change. Or rather, it is, but it’s going to mark you out as different or help you survive. It’s a weapon you need and it enables everything you do – but the same’s true of the other guy. The same goes for social strategies, mobile. They’re all great. We need them. They’re operationally critical. But they aren’t fundamental. The big lessons are twofold, and they apply to us and to every client we have:

(1) Not every challenge is balanced by opportunity precisely. In every conceivable piece of marketing collateral or web bumph I’ve read on the subject the tired old saw is “The challenge is great, but the opportunity is greater”. This is not true. There are opportunities, of course. But we live in a world that’s a closed system – and potential opportunities are, in general, roughly the same as they always are. Let’s fight this idiotic cliché and look at what’s real: you want to stay competitive, and it’s likely that you will be (if you do everything right) just a bit more successful than others – not a game changer. And you know what? That’s OK. Most businesses do not change the world or the market or the industry. Constantly telling clients or customers that opportunities are infinite, after a while, is promising the earth and you can’t deliver.
(2) The world of the future is a world of individuals. Every technological change and every behavior change is showing us that if businesses want to survive (let alone ‘seize the opportunity’) they have to act more like people. That means having a real personality, not simply a brand. It means treating customers as people of equal importance to you. And it means having real values that you can defend – and that you believe in. Because it’s easier and easier for you to be found out if you don’t. The future belongs to businesses that treat customers as citizens, not just customers.

OK, essentially that boils down to just one rule that’s best expressed as another dated cliche. In the current state, where all else is in flux and everything from global markets to business strategy to individual behaviour in the street is chaos, businesses will do best if they keep it real. It keeps you ahead of the technology, keeps you plugged into your customers, and ensures that you are always the moral lead. And morality – or at least good behaviour and manners – in a world where normality is being squeezed out of shape, could just be the differentiator you want.

I’m not the greatest parent in the world. I’m not even the greatest parent among the parents that I know. And I’m saddened by the fact that I know people who would be better parents than me, if only they were able to have children of their own.

But I do make sure that I LIVE every moment, every hour and every day that I am privileged to spend with my children. By living, I mean full, undivided attention, on their terms and in a way that we can ALL grow and benefit from, regardless of how ordinary or exciting the time is.

This is sometimes challenging and tiring but never boring or frustrating because I go into this time naturally, without any preconceptions, barriers or thoughts about how I SHOULD behave or what other people might think. Sometimes it gets me (and them) into trouble. Being told off in Sainsbury’s for trolley racing springs to mind.

The reason for sharing this is to say that because I live and breathe the time with my kids, loads of good things happen.

1)   There is real, deep mutual trust that allows all of us to be open with our thoughts and feelings. This makes dealing with some of the more tricky issues of parenting much, much simpler and with correspondingly better results.

2)   All of us are content, happy and rewarded. We value the time, understand the boundaries but naturally and without fear, explore new things and experiences – we all get more out of the moments.

3)   By always reminding myself that I am privileged, I recognise and respect what I have and am more committed and passionate about preserving and developing it. The more I put in, the more I get back because the kids sense the effort and the rewards too.

4)   We are each, and collectively, setting up a very strong long-term future relationship – hopefully, sustained for life.

The point behind wearing my heart on my sleeve is to say that brands are like children (without the nappies). They are born, sometimes with difficulty, and after the initial celebratory euphoria, brand owners have to knuckle down to the business of nurturing (and responsibly growing) their charges in all the many and varied ways necessary for them to successfully reach maturity and positively contribute to the world.

Brands, like children, need to be LIVED with not DEALT with or tolerated. They need the same deep levels of commitment, passion, care, respect and understanding. They need protecting from harmful influences, but they also need help to find their own path. They benefit from a devotion of time and consistency of thought and input from everyone around them.

For MTD, the role of brand custodian, developer and champion is as rewarding in our professional world as parenthood is in our personal ones. We approach each in very similar ways and LIVE every moment spent with the brands that we are responsible for.

We do this because we know that we are privileged to have such wonderful and responsible jobs – ones that many people would wish to have for themselves. We also understand that the role of brand custodian can be very challenging and tiring, but that if the attitude is right, it should never be boring or frustrating.

Ultimately, if brand owners, custodians and managers live their brands constantly, believe in them passionately and engage with them naturally, everything else becomes easy. The work stops being hard work, starts to become fun and everyone who contributes begins to grow and benefit.

Finally, there are tons of books on parenting, loads of people keen to offer advice, anecdotes, evidence, rules, ‘best practice’, watch outs, horror stories and ways of achieving certain success. Parents are analysed, observed, bench marked, criticised but rarely praised. Some parents get so concerned about how to be a good parent that they stop being a good parent. They over complicate, compensate and even allow inertia to set in. In other words, lose their ability to be natural, keep things simple, enjoy themselves and reap the rewards.

It’s exactly the same for brands and brand custodians.

I’ve recently returned from 4 months embedded in a private sector client business. They have become the leading player in their markets, have a truly global operation and multiple businesses serving a very broad range of audiences. A $5bn turnover is testimony to their success. So why was I there?

Well, like many corporate entities they are a big machine – growth and success does that to you. As a consequence, they are slow to think, make decisions and act. Their infrastructure, whilst capable of servicing the machine is not so great at creating or dealing with change – deciding if the machine is still fit for purpose and if not, how they change it and with what.

T’was a time when organisations of this size either chose to not think about change (if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it) or could devote huge resources, budgets and time to defining how to evolve and then enacting evolution. Leaders and decision makers could wait for ‘the plan’, be given all sorts of indications, research and evidence that would insulate them and have teams define implementation plans that could last for years.

Not now – try and operate in today’s world in this way and the world has changed again before you’ve evolved to meet the previous changes. The result? Small, lean and fast organisations start eroding your position, demanding members/customers can’t be bothered with you and you become a tired old dinosaur trying to survive on past glories and stories.

The complexities of inter-dependent teams, workstreams, logs, programme meetings, ‘brown paper’ meetings and meetings about meetings all seem to conspire against really dynamic forward motion. Sure things get done. In some cases there have even been real ‘outcomes’ but everything runs at a pace that erodes the ability for keen minds to resolve, create, plan and deliver in a diligent, inspiring and efficient way – barriers are built not removed.

Some organisations have tried to address the inevitable inertia that gets created within cultural and operational systems that are essentially bureaucratic. Meetings without chairs, brainstorm/blue sky sessions etc. Others create brand values designed to motivate lean thinking and action (to a greater or lesser degree successful – usually lesser) but the real answer is to create environments where the people that want to speak up, move forward, create and inspire – even if this means rubbing the status quo up the wrong way – can flourish rather than becoming suppressed.

Somebody said to me recently that the trick in meetings is to avoid asking questions that require debate and answers. Better to keep quiet, let the agenda run its course and then everyone can leave on time and go about their business. This is the priority over defining purposeful direction and action or resolving issues. We at MTD agree with the age old but still relevant quote - “This is no way to run a railroad”.

Everyone understands the world is going through a period of change. The changes are profound and fundamental. They are also irreversible. The economic downturn has been a catalyst – the straw that broke the back of doing things the way they have always been done, but the writing has been on the wall for ages. People’s access to knowledge and increasing comfort with online technology has combined with dissatisfaction with their lot, their choices and their leaders. People are questioning more, contributing opinion more and creating powerful movements for change themselves rather than waiting for leaders to create change for them. They are now increasingly impervious to traditional communications, marketing and spin.

Some managers and marketers view the changes as things to be suffered or tolerated where survival is the priority, where shrinking or adapting accepted practices is the only option. Others see opportunity and need to change but are unable to do so because the accepted status quo creates insurmountable barriers. A few see opportunity to change themselves and their organisations, to address new challenges in new ways and are finding ways to achieve this.

Have a guess who the winners will be?

Where are your leaders?

Organisations need to change in order to be successful in the brave new world. Leaders create change – they are the mavericks, the purveyors of uncomfortable truths. They have the passion and conviction to drive change and to bring others along with them. Leaders invite opinion and ideas because they recognize that they can’t do it by themselves.

Many organizations are populated by managers rather than leaders. Managers maintain the accepted practices and processes. They keep the machinery well oiled. They may question whether the machinery is still relevant. They may question whether the organization needs the machinery at all any more. But many are not encouraged to voice change related opinions or believe that to do so would upset the accepted way of doing things. So they carry on managing rather than leading.

So in many organizations today there is a gap between the need to create change in order to engage with staff, customers and other stakeholders and the capability to do so. Which is a shame because we think that creating change, although demanding, is ultimately much more beneficial, rewarding, exciting and fun than just struggling through.

Have you heard of the recent Gap logo saga? The original navy boxed Gap imagery had been pulled from the website in place of a newer more modern logo when the company was hit with a backlash. Whether you agree or not, Gap have rescinded their rebrand plans and are going back to their old Gap imagery.

I would like to think that the decision makers at Gap are smart enough to only move forward with a change in imagery after some careful consideration and with the help of supporting research, but who can tell? The reversal did provide the company with a great deal of publicity this week that they wouldn’t have received otherwise and it demonstrated that many of their customers are still passionate about their brand.

Whether you agree or not with their change in direction, the company is being very quick to respond to criticisms and as the Twitter account shows, (I can’t tell if it’s an official Twitter response or the clever and quick workings of a fan) they are certainly laughing at themselves.

The press release issued by Gap Inc. acknowledges that the company neglected to consult their passionate online community and says that moving forward it will engage with the audience before making future rebranding decisions.

Based on the MTD approach, whether the new logo was created internally or externally, the decision did not consider customer relationships and customer perception, some of the very important branding considerations. How has this move alienated or supported their brand champions?

The decision by Gap to revert back to their old logo also demonstrates that internally the company must not have been fully committed to this change. When companies and organisations rebrand there will always be bloggers that respond negatively but rarely do such large companies like Gap release new imagery only to then revoke it due to customer feedback.

The release and revoke of the new imagery have sparked some entertaining Twitter conversation, although it is difficult to tell whether it is coming officially from Gap or from clever and interested fans.

Here’s a snapshot of the humour:

I wonder why Gap decided to change the imagery in the first place?

In addition to being humorous, Gap’s (potential) use of the light-hearted Twitter as a PR tool is very clever, if they in fact came up with it. Perhaps they should move some people from communications into research!

1. The Power of Narrative

When you tell a story, it’s like the audience can’t help but inject themselves into what is being described. Think about some really meaningful presentations that you’ve attended or even watched online. The ones that you remember, the ones that stick in your brain most likely told a story. Our brains store information in narratives, which is why if you think back to something you did last week or last month, you will remember the experience, what you did, how you felt, not just one specific detail.

Your life adventures become stories in your mind, which is why you can remember what you were doing, what the weather was like, or other contextual seemingly insignificant details of the day when something important happens. I personally remember every last detail of my day on September 11, 2001 and I also remember what I was doing when I found out that the late Princess Diana was in a car accident. I was younger and living in Canada and I wasn’t quite sure who she was. I remember telling my mum that this person had been in a car accident, and I can still see the expression on her face as she ran into the room and watched the television with me.

What did I just do? In trying to communicate my point and to demonstrate the power of narrative, I just told a story. While you were reading my story, you also went back in your mind and pulled out some stories that you remember vividly from important days in your life.

2. Emotion

In the same way that emotion propels people to share videos that become very popular, storytelling allows companies to reach their audiences emotionally.  I remember reading about some research that had been conducted about storytelling in fundraising. A group of research subjects had been paid £20 pounds each to participate in a research study. There were some questionnaires that the participants filled out, then after they were finished, they were handed a package, and asked to open it before they left.

Each person involved in the study received their £20 payment in pound coins in an envelope, and were given a letter. Half of the participants received a letter from a charity, describing need. They provided facts and statistics to document how great the need was and were asking participants to contribute some of their newly earned participant money to the charity. The other half of the participants received a letter from the charity telling the story of a boy. The story of the boy recounted a brief summary of his life, how he got into the situation and how he would get out of the situation. This letter also asked participants to use an envelope provided to make a donation to the charity with their earnings.

The end result of the experiment was that the test group that had received and read the story of the boy, instead of receiving the letter containing facts that described how urgent the demand for need was, donated 50% more of their newfound earnings to the charity than the group that received facts.

3. Brand Personality

What better way to communicate your brand personality than through a story? You can create the ideal atmosphere, dialogue and tone. One fun and notable example of brand personality in a television commercial includes the Apple vs. PC ads. Apple literally picked a person, as if they represented the entire company and also picked a person to play the opposing character, someone who embodied a stereotype and who could contrast with the main character. The series of these commercials told a story so that eventually, we all knew that there was prior conflict and disagreement, allowing the style and content of the commercials to change as audiences became more familiar.

4. Blogs and Microblogs

Although the most popular blogs today are information driven (such as this one), blogs began as a medium for people to communicate their stories. Blogs communicate people’s daily lives, and now no example is more relevant than microblogging in Twitter and Facebook. People have turned their entire lives into stories, and in turn, these same people love to consume and be entertained by other people’s stories, even if they may be limited to 140 characters at a time.

5. The Storyteller

The storyteller that you choose is both the message and the medium. Are you communicating a story online? Is it a radio ad? The medium is critical to the message as we all know, and using a creative means to communicate the story will have a powerful impact on the message.

6. Experiences

Storytelling becomes especially effective when the audience and their friends or peer group are involved. Shared experiences will be recounted many times and can provide even more life to your idea. Instead of telling an audience a story, it can be even more effective if they experience or live your story. Maybe you have a very specific target audience who have some similar challenges and successes. Involving them and their experiences in the story will further reinforce this.

7. Conviction

If you hear something, you may or may not believe it to be true. If someone tells you a story about it, it’s much more believable. The same works for information received through the moral of a story. For conviction, it is also imperative that the medium doing the storytelling, whether a person’s voice, text or through movements and actions, that it is appropriate for the medium. Mediums used effectively for storytelling will increase the conviction and the authenticity of the message.

8. Testimonials

Why are testimonials used so frequently? People find comfort in stories and look for stories from others in order to create a context for a potential business opportunity or potential purchase. With a testimonial you not only get a seal of approval that reduces your perceived risk, but you also get a story about the company or product. The story, introducing characters and having a setting will increase the value of the testimonial to the audience. The customer will remember the story long after they remember the kudos, and along with the story will remember the message that comes with it, maintaining top of mind awareness.

9. The Story Evolves- The Brand Story

What do we mean by brand story? Your brand story is the story that makes your brand come to life. How you would describe your brand in 60 seconds if you were talking to a potential investor for example. Do you know what you would say? It’s competitive advantage and it’s something that you’ve identified to be unique and relevant to your organisation, product or service. It’s putting into words or images why exactly you are an amazing company and why you have a unique offering. There is no limit to how you tell your brand story, but it’s imperative that you do. If you are unable to tell us the story in 60 seconds, you should take some time to think about it.

Once you have the brand story, it should be communicated and lived throughout your organisation. Every customer, employee and client should know what your brand story is, so that they see you in narrative form, not just as a brick and mortar shop, or as a website. Your brand needs to be friends with your community, and the best and most effective way of doing that is to tell your brand story. As varied, magical and unique as stories can be, so can be the story of your company.

Your brand story should have the personality of your brand, be indescribably convincing and persuasive, and be creative, original and authentic.

10. Lasting Impression

As mentioned in the beginning, one of the most important benefits of using storytelling in your marketing efforts is the lasting impression it leaves with your audience.

The purpose of this entry was to provide some insight on storytelling, and to hopefully spark an idea in your head of a way that you can incorporate storytelling into your marketing efforts. Of course storytelling is not the only way to communicate and depending on the context, it may not be the most effective for the medium or audience. Just a thought! We would love to continue the discussion on Facebook.
Marketing Team Direct

Promote Your Page Too

If your audience participates in one of the popular social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare, then it is important to be engaged in that online environment.

The easiest and most effective way to gain and keep a social media following is by providing value to your audience. If you can provide value to your audience in these new social environments, they will become loyal followers.

Here are some of our favorite examples of companies using social media to engage their audiences by providing value.

1. Lululemon

Lulumon is little known in Europe, but has taken North America by storm. The luxury-priced high quality yoga and sport apparel is fashionable and has taken over gyms and airport waiting areas. Part of their success can be attributed to how they stealthily became part of every twenty to thirty-something’s lives through social media.

Lululemon has corporate Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare accounts, and then each store also has their own. The value provided by each is different. The corporate brand accounts provide value in uploading pictures of soon to be released products, and by sharing information and special stories about the products, fabrics and about the people who work with Lululemon. Each new employee gets a bio and a warm welcome over the internet to their 175,000 fans on Facebook or their 37,000 followers on Twitter. The corporate pages also have contests where fans or followers submit pictures of themselves and friends doing various challenges in their Lululemon apparel. The best entries are then featured on the main pages, and on the website’s blog.

The Lululemon store pages provide value to customers in a different way. Any time you enter a Lululemon store, you could find 10 or even 30 people stretched out on mats all over the store participating in a free yoga class. The stores also offer free yoga classes outdoors all through the year, which provides a great deal of valuable information for followers. New products in store, new employees and answering local yoga and sport questions allows each Lululemon store’s social media presence to be successful.

Some examples

As you can see, there is a team dedicated to ensuring that each reference of @Lululemon and Lululemon in Twitter receives a reply. Lululemon’s Facebook page is as equally successful.

As you can tell, there is a great deal of discussion on the main page, which is every companies dream. This subculture has such a devoted following that although the page is moderated and you can expect an answer from the company within an hour during working hours, fans will stick up for the brand and will ensure that any negative comments get put to rest.

Ok. I guess you’re sick of Lululemon now.

2. Old Spice

Old Spice sticks to their brand, and provides value to customers through humour.

This type of humour is geared towards their target audience, and is mimicked on Old Spice’s Facebook page.

Although it may seem cheesy or silly, each comment that is posted on the Facebook page is “liked” by well over a thousand people, many of whom also make comments. On Facebook whenever someone likes a page, unless they have tweaked their settings, all of their friends will receive a notice in their news feed indicating that “John” has just liked the comment from Old Spice. Not only are Old Spice creating value, but they are also maintaining top of mind awareness with all of their fans and with their followers on Twitter, and with many people who are friends with their followers and fans.

This low cost brand reinforcement is certainly strengthening the brand relationship between this audience and the company.

3. Dell

On Twitter through @DellOutlet and @DellOutletUK, Dell provides value to their target audiences that are on Twitter. Although @DellOutlet the US version, has many more followers than the UK partner site, both provide value by offering refurbished one-off discount computers for sale. Both these social media sites also provide codes for discounts off hardware and software products, which keeps customers engaged and keeps them planning about their next Dell purchase.

One interesting thing that Dell also does with these two outlet sites, is it has the picture and information of the person who will be responding on their Twitter background. This ads a personal touch, and it helps to remind customers that you are not speaking to an automated system- you are speaking to Stephen or Stephanie.

4. Disney

Although their Twitter feeds are simply news and don’t provide anything special to fans (I guess Disney’s audience aren’t on Twitter- their parents are!) they do have a Facebook page that can keep fans occupied for hours.

The value that Disney provides to their audience in Facebook is providing a new way to interact with their favorite characters. Showing trailers for upcoming movies and letting fans share them with friends, they creating a custom Disney experience where their audiences are.

5. Oxfam

Oxfam has created a unique Facebook page, recognising that their supporters are spending time in Facebook. This interactive page allows fans and visitors to get information about races and marathons.

The Sports Events page on the Oxfam Facebook page is an example of a utility very fit for the medium. Using such a social online platform such as Facebook, it provides an easy way for teams to get together, for friends to plan, without sending e-mails, without making calls. It can all be arranged in Facebook.

These are some of our favorite examples of companies using social media to create value for customers. Just to have a page is not enough if you really want to take advantage of the medium and really engage with your audience.

Taking advantage of social media platforms to reach your audience, as in the examples shown, really strengthens brand relationships, and can help to clarify a brand personality to the audience. Showing brand personality to an audience is best demonstrated by the funny, quirky Old Spice messages. What is your brand personality? How are you providing value to your audience?