The Quisenblog

Pretty obvious question, you say?

Once upon a time, naming your competition was pretty simple. Your competitors were the businesses in your market area that sold the same sort of products or services as you. But thanks to the Internet (more specifically Google), all that’s changed.

Now your competition isn’t so much who you say it is. It’s who Google says it is.

When your key word search terms are entered, who shows up? Is it the “usual suspects” you’ve been going toe-to-toe with for quite some time? Or are there new “competitors” (online or offline) that show up in the search?

Whichever is the case, before you can figure out how to take on your competition, you first have to know who they are.

For the sake of simplicity, here are four different types of competitors it pays to consider:

1. Brick-and-Mortar Competition
These are the competitors you have a pretty good handle on. They’re the ones you compete with on a fairly regular basis. If you’re Staples, your brick-and-mortar competitors are mom-and-pop stationery stores, as well as chains such as OfficeMax and OfficeDepot. Chances are you know these guys pretty well, and you’ve gotten quite adept at competing head-to-head.

2. Competition That Ranks For Your Keywords
Thanks to the Internet, it’s not just local companies you need to worry about. You also have to be aware of your search competitors – the businesses that are stealing customers by ranking for the keywords you want to be found for. The Internet doesn’t care if Jenny’s Book Emporium is run out of her parent’s basement in Nogales, AZ. If Jenny’s ranking higher on the page for your search terms than you are, tough luck. There’s a pretty good shot she’s going to steal some business that under other circumstances would likely come your way.

Let’s go back to our Staples example.

If you’re Staples and you want to rank for “hanging file folders,” your competition isn’t just the brick and mortar guys. You’re also up against Amazon, The Container Store, Walmart, Sam’s Club and who-knows-else. There doesn’t need to be a physical location within 200 miles of your storefront. If their website is showing up above yours (or comparable to yours) in the search results, they’re a direct competitor.

3. Competitors Whose Social Media Pages Rank For Your Keywords
Like most organizations, you’ve probably got a website. You might even have a Facebook page. Maybe even a LinkedIn business page. But what about the competitors who are seemingly everywhere in Social Media? They blog, they contribute to industry forums, they comment on articles. They post videos on YouTube and photos on Picasa. Keep in mind that Google indexes each and every one of these pages. And the more dynamic the content (the more frequently it is updated), the higher it will generally rank, usually against the very words you’re hoping to be found with.

This is a whole new category of “search competitor”: those who get in through the side door while everyone is trying to push through the front. This is a big reason why it’s so important to have a meaningful presence in as many social platforms as you can manage, and why all digital assets related to your brand need to be optimized for search.

4. “Share of Buzz” Competitors
Thanks to social media, there’s another class of nagging competitor to think about – the ones who are winning in the “Share of Voice” battle. These are the businesses that sell similar products or services as you but who seem to be involved in every social conversation out there. People are tweeting their stuff, sharing their links on Facebook, talking up their promotions and referencing their videos or SlideShare presentations in conversations all across the web.

Bottom line, your competitors are no longer just the names you’ve always known; your competition is anyone who gets themselves in front of your customer’s line of sight.

Once you’re aware of the volume of competition you truly have, you can take action to come out on top. Yes, a big part of that is to focus on a sound SEO strategy (more on that here). And it’s also important to have a meaningful presence across several platforms. But more than that, it is important that you truly understand the value your customers consistently say they receive from you that is unique and meaningful. And turn that value proposition into a Brand Vision that is reflected throughout your organization and your communications.

Just as you compete with your local brick-and-mortar types by being uniquely “you,” so too can you successfully compete with virtual entities—as long as you narrowly focus on what you do best.

Heck, you might even show up in your competition’s searches and steal a few sales from them.

If you’d like to read more about competing with search engine competition, I recommend checking out this thoughtful blog post from TopRank.

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Back in 1947, the then-Creative Director of Grey Advertising in New York fired off a memo that began the biggest metamorphosis the advertising business has ever known. It read:

“There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately, they talk the best game. They know all the rules. They can tell you that showing people in an ad will get you greater readership. They can tell you that a sentence should be this short or that long. They can give you fact after fact after fact. They are the scientists of advertising. But there’s one little rub. Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”

The Creative Director that composed that memo was William (Bill) Bernbach (1911-1982), who two years later would co-found an agency that would become the first to demonstrate the success a marketer can attain by fully serving the interests of the reader or viewer.

Bernbach would have celebrated his 100th birthday this weekend, and this provides a fitting time to pay homage to the man who single-handedly saved us from the hacks of the “Mad Men” era.

Bill not only supervised and championed great creative work for clients like Volkswagon, Avis, American and El-Al Airlines, Polaroid, Ohrbach’s and many many others. He elevated advertising into an art form that people actually enjoyed, critiqued and talked about.

He proved that smaller clients with smaller budgets can outperform industry leaders just by forming a human connection with the audience. He changed the way agencies worked. His model of creating teams of writers AND art directors to tackle creative assignments has been the standard in the industry for going on 50 years. And above all, he inspired tens of thousands of creative people to get into the business (yours truly included) by demonstrating the ad business to be a place where creative ideas could be championed.

Bill was a storyteller. His team worked endlessly to discover the “story” DDB’s clients had to tell. Then they told them in a way that was relevant, respectful, and above all, true.

Despite being associated with some of the most attention-getting advertising of his or any era, Bernbach never gave short shrift to the business disciplines behind it. He famously said “good ideas build sales, but great advertising builds factories.”

Bernbach’s point of “art vs. science” in his memo of 64 years ago is also of relevance to marketing practitioners of today. Endless articles, ebooks and webinars are published that fill us with “best practices” and “how-tos” for the various new media and social platforms. But what often gets lost in all this is the importance of the art of persuasion.

Today, we might give such thinking a haughty name such as “permission marketing.” Bill just called it “treating the customer with respect.”

What do you say we pay that respect forward?

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Google’s recent launch (to a beta crowd, of sorts) of Google+ has been greeted by Social Media bloggers and critics variously as Social Media’s Next Big Thing, as the quintessential way to integrate search and social, and in typical SocMed bluster, “A Facebook Killer.” (Social Media types are nothing if not hyperbolic.) One writer even described Google+ as a “Purpose-Built Annex,” whatever the heck that is.

As for me, I’m not sure exactly where Google+ fits in. But I sure feel like I could do without it.

That must sound like heresy coming from someone who spends quite a bit of his day working with and advising clients regarding Social Media. Especially since it comes from such a proven heavyweight as Google. But truth be told, I’m involved up to here in Social Media. My personal Social Media ‘Inbox’ is currently full. I’m active on Twitter. I participate in a variety of LinkedIn groups. I blog. I get notifications up the yin-yang from Google Alerts. I’m active in online discussions, and regularly contribute to industry sites or comment on articles.

I have a SlideShare page, a YouTube channel and an RSS reader. And yes, I spend at least as much time on Facebook as the average 16-year-old. So excuse me for not doing cartwheels about nurturing and keeping up with one more platform.

Sorry, Google+.

I can’t help but wonder if the world at large is sort of in the same boat. Do we all suffer from a form of Social Media overload? Recent statistics show that aside from time spent on Facebook, the average American actually spends less time online than she did last year. A lot less (9%, to be exact). Part of this I surmise to be because we’ve narrowed down our online world. But another could be we’ve reached the saturation point.

So while the social media pundits seem intent on comparing Google+ with Facebook, my stance is that its true competition is the status quo. Remember how your mother used to wisely say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” Unless most folks find that something is “broke” in their Social Media worlds, I suspect they won’t be in a hurry to fix it.

Who knows, I could be all wet. Maybe the world is salivating at the chance to join Google+ and create “circles.” Maybe this is the “Social Media Magic Bullet” marketers have been waiting for.

Or, maybe it will collapse under the weight of its own hype.

This entertaining video was intended to show how Google+ will enhance your Social Media experience.

My takeaway was one of dread. There’s even something a little Big Brotherly towards the end, the idea that “You don’t have to choose Google+; Google+ has already chosen you.”

Ick. But judge for yourself. And let me know if this is something you’re planning on joining.

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Raising prices is never something a business looks forward to. Even the smallest, most easily-justified increases will receive some customer backlash, especially in economically challenging times. Yet, from time to time, organizations find themselves with no other choices other than to raise prices. So is there a “less painful” way to raise prices and communicate it to customers and prospects?

As with just about any marketing-related decision, the decision to announce a price increase deserves to be focused around a plan to help minimize customer pushback, cut customer churn, and mitigate bad stories circulating about the way your price increase was handled. So how’s the best way to go about it?

Following are a few considerations that might help customers better swallow an impending rate increase.

1. Be transparent. If there are legitimate reasons why you must increase prices (and most times there are), be clear about them. Cost of materials going through the roof? Transportation costs eating you alive? Let customers know. Make that information readily available on your web site. Arm sales people with information they can share with their clients. Script Customer Service Reps so they’re able to share this with customers. Give customers plenty of notice. And be as empathetic and specific as possible. Don’t fall back on corporate-speak or lawyer-approved boilerplate pap to justify an increase. Instead of saying “Due to the fact that our costs have gone up, we’re forced to raise prices,” try being just a little more human: “Over the past few years, our cost of materials have gone up 64%. While we’ve found ways to increase efficiency and have held the line on prices as long as we could, we’re now in a position where we need to raise prices. Through efficiencies we’ve enacted, we’re fortunate enough to only have to pass a percentage of those costs on to you, our valuable customers. While we understand our 20% price increase may not be easy for some of you to absorb, please understand we are doing all we can as an organization to optimize efficiencies and control costs.” There. Customers might not be happy about a price increase. But at least they understand why.

2. Point out the value that your customers are getting from you, or better yet, use the event of the price increase as an opportunity to help them get more value from your services and products. It’s human nature to feel somewhat dissed when you get charged more but are not getting more. A key role for every marketer should be to help customers get the most value out of your products and services as they possibly can. Ideally, this is an on-going process that allows for plenty of user feedback and contribution. An example of one company that used this as an opportunity is Comcast. While research shows cable subscribers generally limit their viewing to ten or fewer networks, Comcast delivers in excess of 200 different networks. Therefore, it’s safe to say there’s a lot of content Comcast delivers that you’d like, but you haven’t discovered yet. So to help customers get more “value” from their service, Comcast can curate that content, and recommend viewing options based on your personal preferences. Delivering communications such as “If you like ‘Sex And The City’ on HBO, you owe it to yourself to check out ‘Mistresses’ on BBC America” elevates Comcast from strictly being the “pipe” that delivers media to being a partner that is helping me get discover new favorites.

3. Be clear about the business reasons—and the consequences—involved in a rate increase. This past week, Netflix announced a whopping 60% price increase to their core DVD-by-mail + video-streaming service (from $9.99 a month to $15.98 per month). Apparently, Netflix executives didn’t anticipate how much flak from customers a 60% rate increase would generate. Reportedly only 30% of callers who tried to reach the company by phone were able to speak with a Customer Service Rep. And the Netflix blog post announcing the new pricing structure has already reached its 5,000-comment limit. This from a company that up to now was seen as being a very customer-centric organization. A 60% price increase, no matter what your category, is a game-changer, and there’s no excuse for the company not anticipate that. The “value quotient” has changed so radically, there is no accurate way to predict the net results of that move. While the justification for the increase has been muddy at best, one could speculate that the company is finding the DVD-by-mail part of their business more expensive to operate than the video streaming portion. If this is the case, Netflix could have used the specter of an impending price increase to actually add new users. Once the decision was made to raise rates, they could have made the new rate applicable to all NEW accounts, effective 90 days in the future. They then could have promoted the fact that for a limited time (90 days), new subscribers can get the “grandfathered” rate (winning over the “fence-sitters”), and remind existing customers they get to keep the grandfathered rate, while utilizing tactics to move more of them to online streaming.

By employing a little creativity to the process, Netflix execs could have achieved their goal of creating more revenue while stemming churn and reinforcing its position as a category leader, instead of sitting back and hoping 1/3 of their customers don’t decide to take a powder.

Bottom line, if a rate increase process is planned for like any other marketing initiative, an organization will likely suffer fewer lost customers, less bad press and fewer bad stories that make their way across the Internet.

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In the 1993 movie Groundhog Day, Bill Murray portrays a TV weatherman who suffers the existential crisis of reliving (literally) the same day over and over and over again. There was nothing he could do to break the cycle, until he learned to relax, live in the moment, and be totally present to the moment in which he found himself.

Today, fast feeder Burger King seems to be going through it’s own version of Groundhog Day. Except for BK, here’s what their “day” looks like: franchises lose ground to industry leader McDonald’s; antsy franchisees march on corporate with pitchforks and torches, demanding a fresh direction; client blames ad agency for loss of market share and fires it; client then hires a new agency; proclaiming said agency exhibited “unique insights” into the business; after honeymoon period (that includes development of some head-turning work), once again sales begin to slide; antsy franchisees march on corporate with pitchforks and torches, etc., etc.

Rinse and repeat.

Burger King must have lived this “day” something like ten times over the past 20 years. And at the end of it all, it finds itself stuck in the same position, awaking to the proverbial clock radio blasting “I Got You Babe.”

This go round, the sacrificial agency was Crispin Porter & Bogusky, who in the half dozen years they had the account managed to do some fairly edgy stuff, including the Whopper Sacrifice, the Subservient Chicken and the memorable-though-somewhat-creepy bobble headed King. And now that Burger King has jettisoned CP&B in favor of McGarryBowen, we can expect Burger King’s fortunes to reverse themselves, right?

I can answer that in two words. Titanic. Deckchairs.

It’s a lot easier to blame an ad agency for your woes and send them packing than it is to look at your organization in a holistic way to determine the true issues. It’s a way to be seen as “doing something” that in the scheme of things may mean little more than put a band-aid on a tumor.

In a well-written article in FastCompany, Cliff Kuang points out what the real issues that have traditionally dogged Burger King are: the fact that, unlike McDonald’s, Burger King does not own the land its franchisees use, so it has little control over the stores, plus the fact that BK franchisees have historically been reluctant to embrace and promote a “value menu,” instead opting to push more expensive items during a time of economic downturn (remember “Meatnormous”?). As Kuang summed it up, “Advertising is a weak lever to effect change in a sprawling, franchised operation like Burger King.”

Yeah, but it’s awfully easy to fire your ad agency.

Whether McGarryBowen has the huevos to stand up and point out the 800 lbs. gorilla in the room is yet to be seen. History shows us that many times, as soon as an agency gets the scent of millions of media dollars wafting up its nostrils, it ceases to become the “truth teller” its client so badly needs and instead starts running out the clock.

If that’s the case, be warned, McGarryBowen: Sonny & Cher are waiting right around the corner.

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In this “micro-post,” we give an “attaboy” to a marketer that’s done a fantastic job figuring out “what business they’re really in.” That marketer is the electronics retailer Best Buy.

If I were to ask “what business is Best Buy in,” you might be tempted to talk about “what they do” rather than “who they are.” You could talk about how they carry the latest technology, have well-versed sales and support people, and even note how they have a liberal return/exchange policy. But all this would be missing one key component—understanding what holds a customer back from buying.

Talk to anyone who’s about to part with hundreds or thousands of dollars in order to get the “next big thing,” and you’ll hear one over-riding concern: the fear that what’s “new” today will be obsolete tomorrow. That’s the way it goes with technology. And most times, that investment you put out for the latest and greatest is gone with the wind.

Best Buy obviously gets this.

This television spot cites an initiative called the “Buy Back Program.” Essentially when your new doo-dad gets outdated, Best Buy will buy it back when you trade up to get the new stuff.

Technophobia may have met its match.

A marketing exec I know once compared obstacles to purchase to the baggage on an airport carousel. The buyer isn’t going anywhere until all the bags are removed.

Best Buy just removed a huge steamer trunk.

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It’s not a great time to be a “gate keeper.”

Real estate agents. Travel agents. Book publishers. Music and electronics retailers. Web developers. The Classified Advertising manager at the newspaper.

These guys were formerly gatekeepers to a product or service you needed, and the only way to get to it was through them. They were the only game in town. You wanted to play, you had to pay.

“Cutting out the middleman” used to be an old advertising saw to make a low price believable. Today, it’s an accepted way of doing business. The Internet and instant availability of cloud-based technology has thinned the herd significantly. Less and less do we need the guy in the middle who was merely a broker and added no real value to the transaction.

As endangered as gatekeepers are, they are by no means extinct. Today there are still some real estate agents who are having their best years. Last we checked, high-end web people are also doing quite well. And anyone who thinks the music retailer is dead has never paid a visit to Amoeba Records.

How do they do it? The simple answer is by adding value. A few years ago, Stohl Research Group released a study that showed only 27% of purchasers across all categories named “Price” as the dominant factor when choosing where to buy. So taking the POV that “If our customers can find a lower price elsewhere, they’ll take a walk,” you’re walking through life with self-defeating blinders on.

Price is important. But it is not the total of the story you’re creating for your customer. Performance, reliability, peace of mind, support, selection, personal contact, follow-through all help form the story of your brand in your customers’ minds. The key is to view your number one purpose not to sell stuff, but to understand the consumer and be a resource and empower them to make a satisfying decision they’ll feel good about. Every transaction provides the opportunity to create a “branded experience”—one that is not only satisfying to your customer, but is also not replicated by any other competitor.

In his book “Outliers,” Malcom Gladwell tells the story of a Realtor in New York state who is among the most successful in the country. He doesn’t win sales by holding open houses or circulating glossy brochures to a large mailing list. He does it by being buyers’ “portal to the neighborhood,” introducing prospective buyers to the community and making them feel at home—before they’ve ever been shown a house.

Today’s technology tools are time-saving marvels. And, yes, you can book the entirety of your Italian vacation online yourself. But also know you could go through the travel consultant who visits Florence every year and can point you to the gems that will make your Tuscan holiday memorable.

There is a market out there for both.

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Evidently a lot of folks out there think creative briefs are a waste of time.

That’s the conclusion you could draw from the response to this article over at AdAge.com. Why would so many feel creative briefs have become irrelevant, and who is to blame? Some blame clients for cramming too much information in them, or for being too “boilerplate.” Others blame agencies for not being creative enough in their approach to briefs. Others say briefs don’t take into concern the prospect’s point of view. One commenter even went so far as to argue “The brief is dead.”

It’s true the “traditional” brief leaves much to be desired in these days when marketers are pushing more and more initiatives, talking to more different audiences and being involved in a variety of Social Media platforms that require creative decisions to be made on the fly. The tightly-defined “packaged-goods-era” creative brief (that spelled out everything from the exact size of an ad to what “mandatories” need to be addressed) is way too confining when it comes to developing integrated multi-platform campaigns and programs. What if, for instance, the creative team determines the best solution to a client’s problem isn’t necessarily a print ad, but a web video series? Will the brief let them consider it?

Yet without a brief, how will agencies and clients stay on the same page?

For an industry that supposedly embraces “change” and “bold moves,” it’s interesting how a lot of us have gotten locked into approaching problems the same old way, even when we have evidence that way is no longer working. It’s time agencies and clients reconsidered the brief to once again to make it a useful tool in these days of multi-channel dialogue.

Is there a prescription out there to make the creative brief relevant once again?

Our view is that the traditional agency creative brief is a throw-back to a time when it was assumed that we could manipulate consumer behavior by crafting the “right” message. The overriding question behind every brief was “What do we have to say to make you buy from us?”

Today, the consumer has access to many sources of information (not just the marketer) and in general, she puts less weight on what a marketer says than what she hears from friends, family and her community. As a result, successful marketing is not primarily about communication anymore; it is about transparently demonstrating an understanding of a consumer’s problems and concerns and addressing them in a unique, meaningful way. The question for marketers today is “Who do we have to BE in order to attract you as a customer.” It involves operations as well as marketing, as well as an on-going communication stream. In order to lead to success, any iteration of a creative brief must acknowledge this truth.

The next generation creative brief should start with the organization’s Brand Vision, which answers the question “What’s the one thing we want people to feel (and think of) when our name is mentioned, that is unique, meaningful and true.” Putting this thought at the forefront of every brief, whether for a branding ad campaign, a social media promotion or a price-and-item ad, assures that whatever the communication, it will be crafted with the intention that receivers will walk away with the same emotional take away. The brief itself needs to be acknowledged as a flexible document that serves as the “starting point” for both agency and client.

Yesterday’s “campaigns” have given way to today’s “content platforms.” As conditions on the ground change, and as new opportunities or obstacles surface, so, too does the nature of communication.

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Social Media naysayers have been having a field day these past few weeks. Last month, after Beverage Digest reported that Pepsi’s flagship brand slipped into third place (behind Coca Cola’s Diet Coke brand) in the cola wars, a meme started making its rounds that money spent in Social Media was a waste, at least as far as major brands are concerned.

As proof, Social Media detractors point to two prominent marketers who cast their lot in Social Media and (apparently) came up losers—Pepsi and Burger King.

Some background: this past year, Pepsi opted not to advertise in the Super Bowl, instead embarking on the ambitious “Pepsi Refresh” project in Social Media. And Burger King, in lieu of matching McDonald’s dollar-for-dollar in paid media, instead leaned heavily on such noted Social Media campaigns as the Whopper Sacrifice and the Subservient Chicken.

And here we are, with Pepsi sales down 5% year/year, and the brand mired in third place. And Burger King having just experienced its sixth consecutive quarter of declining sales.

Some of the loudest voices in the room would have you believe it’s all Social Media’s fault.

If only things were that cause-and-effect.

The truth is, looking at the situations from the 10,000 foot level, just as you’d suspect, both marketers have challenges that go well beyond the decision of whether or not to tweet regularly or start a Facebook page. Both entered the recession #2 in a market with a strong dominant leader (in dicey economic times, market leaders can be expected to outperform the category to everyone else’s detriment). Both marketers suffered unsettling turnover in marketing and management. And most telling, both have made questionable marketing moves beyond the scope of Social Media. Pepsi, once the choice of the “new generation,” lost that mantle to emerging products such as Mountain Dew, Gatorade and the assorted energy drinks, then compounded matters by going through its much-lambasted multi-million dollar Peter Arnell logo redesign (exemplified by the much-mocked memo which infamously equated the new design with “the Earth’s magnetic fields and the sun’s radiation”). And Burger King? The marketer used nearly 60% of its ad budget in late 2010 in an ill-fated attempt to unseat McDonald’s dominance in the breakfast daypart. That fiasco made Gallipoli look like a stand-off.

And interestingly enough, at the current time, both marketers are operating without a Chief Marketing Officer. I’d wager that the lack of a strong visionary marketing leader has more to do with the brands’ struggles than decisions as to where it spends its marketing bucks.

Not to totally absolve Pepsi and Burger King’s Social media efforts of all blame. For starters, Social Media proponents were way too ebullient about the efforts, and heaped much praise on them before they ever generated an inkling of a result. And the strategies of both (if you can call them that) were questionable, in my opinion.

Regarding the Pepsi Refresh Project, the marketer seemed way more interested in the “crowdsourcing” part of the project than the actual good works being done. It seemed more like a marketing ploy than an authentic “cause marketing” campaign. Pepsi didn’t focus on a single unifying cause, like safe drinking water to the world or shoes for kids in developing nations. The emphasis on the crowdsourcing element proved controversial as well. There were well-publicized allegations of cheating. The projects touted by well-organized and well-connected non-profits benefited at the expense of average grass-roots consumers. Nowhere was this more evident that in the Gulf Refresh Project launched just after the BP oil spill. You can read about the issues we found with that project here.

And for Burger King? While its Social Media efforts were entertaining, product-focused and well-integrated into its media advertising, it all had a very tactical feel to it. Burger King has long lacked a cohesive strategic platform. What does the brand stand for? I’d bet if you asked 10 consumers, you might get 10 different answers.

Sorry, but “If only they’d have been in the Super Bowl” is not a grown-up response to the ails of Pepsi and Burger King. Marketers who think in terms of “either/or” when it comes to paid media versus Social Media are embarrassingly out of touch. Social Media, when used correctly and integrated into offline efforts, add depth to and amplify a winning strategy. (Great examples of this include the recent Evian “Rollerskaing Babies” and Old Spice “Man on a Horse” campaigns). Conversely, without a winning strategy, Social Media (as with any other media) are reduced to a series of “throw-it-against-the-wall” tactics. Just like an aimless logo redesign or a tagline-du-jour.

And speaking of Content Strategy (how’s that for a segue?), that will be what I’m covering in the upcoming intensive Social Media workshop through GSI’s BizStreet on April 28. If you’re interested, find out more and register here. Hope to see you there.

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There is a famous story about President John F. Kennedy’s first visit to NASA’s headquarters back in 1961. While touring the facility, the President’s entourage reportedly came upon a man mopping the floor in one of the hallways. The President stopped to chat with the man, shook his hand, and asked what he did at NASA. The janitor proudly addressed the young President by saying, “Sir, I’m helping to put a man on the moon!”

This story illustrates the idea that everyone at NASA, regardless of his or her position, was in their own way contributing toward the ultimate mission of the organization. Is the same true in your company?

As managers, too often we’re tempted to treat team members or departments as “cogs in a bigger machine,” rather than allow them to share in the mission of the company (what we refer to as your “Brand Vision”). Too often our “greater purpose” never makes it beyond our executive suite (or worse, out of our own heads). By allowing everyone in the organization to take ownership of the Brand Vision and bring their own special “mojo” to it, it makes it much more likely the customers and prospects we deal with on a daily basis, regardless of where in the operation they reside, will see us as we intend them to.

The first step in building this camaraderie and getting buy-in from everyone in the organization is to share how your Brand Vision was arrived at, what it means to your customer, and why it is meaningful, unique and true. Then, turn your employees and departments loose in determining how they can contribute to the expression of the Brand Vision, and ultimately, how they can surprise and delight customers through fulfillment of the Brand Vision.

A few well-known examples that come to mind of companies that give their team members freedom in expressing the organization’s Brand Vision in their own unique way are Zappos (”Beyond-Exceptional Customer Service”) and Starbucks (”Welcoming”). A specific example of how one employee’s actions can elevate an entire organization comes from this previous post we had on Southwest Airlines.

Is knowing the mission of the organization is to put a man on the moon going to affect how a janitor mops a floor? Who knows. But just the fact that he felt a part of that mission surely paid benefits to NASA in some form, probably in a way that NASA management couldn’t have imagined.

The same can be true for just about any forward-thinking organization. Allowing employees and departments to determine for themselves how they can meaningfully bring the organization’s Brand Vision to life in their day-to-day dealings will unleash a collective creativity that will be inspiring to witness. Rewarding ideas and initiatives developed by staff, and sharing successes with all in your organization, are excellent ways management can perpetuate the growth and consistency of the Brand Vision.

Posted by Mickey

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Mickey On Clients, On Customers, Ramblings, customer experience brand vision, empower employees, janitor, john F. Kennedy, NASA, Southwest, surprise, zappos