Let's outlaw 'quality'

I’m calling for the word ‘quality’ to be banned.  At least in marketing circles.

My reason?  It’s simple really – I’m more than a little fed up with brands telling me they offer a quality service or product.  Only this week, a consistently underperforming Marks & Spencer talked about refocusing on the ‘quality’ of their clothing.  What on earth does this mean to the average customer? Will it last longer? Will it be better styled? Will it make the wearer feel better?

The problem with ‘quality’ is that its meaning is so ill-defined it’s open to misinterpretation and disappointment.  What is ‘quality’ to me may well be ‘bog standard’ to the next man.  It’s relative and subjective.

In some circles ‘quality’ has an exclusive ring to it.  Fine, as long as you understand that ‘exclusive’ means some potential customers may feel ‘excluded’.

And, of course, the ‘quality’ of your product may well be adversely affected by the customer experience you create around it. In fact, the higher perceived ‘quality’ of the product, the higher the expectation of service.

The problem with quality is that it’s in the eye of the beholder.  It’s an emotional reaction.  It’s open to personal interpretation and expectation. 

And it’s seriously overused.

Will the real #WorldCup sponsors please stand up?

It appears that 38% of consumers in the UK, US and Brazil are mistaken in thinking that Mastercard is a World Cup sponsor according to research from GlobalWebIndex.  The genuine sponsor, Visa, scored just a marginally higher recognition at 42%.

The confusion doesn't seem to be restricted to financial products.  Other brands such as Carlsberg, Nike and Pepsi also performed well, although not as highly as the genuine sponsors Budweiser, Adidas and Coca-Cola.

These findings raise some important issues for marketers engaged in sponsorship of major international events.

On one level the confusion is understandable.  Let's face it, we're used to seeing these brands regularly paraded as sponsors.  Equally, many will have launched advertising programmes designed to appeal to soccer fans. Let's call it the 'ripple effect' - we simply assume their involvement because we're accustomed to seeing it or we closely associate them with our enjoyment of the event.

But equally, is sponsorship such a blunt tool, demanding an activation budget as great as the cost of the sponsorship itself, that it's value is diminished?  The question for brands considering sponsorship in their marketing mix is whether their money might be better spent elsewhere.

'Share of life' - the new marketing metric?

Not a week seems to go by without a piece of research focused on major brands.  The latest is the BrandZ list of the world’s most valuable brands. In a shock move, Google has displaced Apple as the world’s most valuable brand while Ford has re-entered the list after some time in the wilderness.

One of the keys to Google’s success appears to be its ‘share of life’ – its ability to connect with customers by having many stakes in their lives through a proliferation of products and services.

I’m sure the marketing teams at Google are delighted with the result.  Meanwhile, the rest of us are left pondering what on earth this means for our brands and marketing activity.

From my point of view, ‘share of life’ is just a new, catchy way of saying that to be truly valuable brands need to be relevant to their customers - both now and in the future.  Brands need to keep pace with changes in customer needs/wants and behaviours.  And they need to ensure that their messaging resonates with their target audiences.

It’s a case of ‘adapt or die’ as far as I’m concerned.  In fact history is littered with examples of brands that have failed to keep pace with change.  Perhaps the most notable casualty in recent years was Kodak. With its long history, Kodak was synonymous with photography in much the same way as Cadbury is with chocolate, Hoover with vacuuming and Google with web searching. With the advent of digital photography, I would be amazed if the senior team at Kodak didn’t debate what it would mean for their business.  The reality is they either chose not to act, or failed to act quickly enough. The brand’s demise should act as a wake up call to all brands.

Google has spent a lot of time, money and energy in recent years in building its portfolio of products and services.  I dare say there was a major commercial imperative here – to build a revenue stream and commercialise its free search offer.  In doing so, according to the research, Google has managed to touch the lives of many people in many different ways and thereby grow its ‘share of life’. 

Growing a product portfolio is not an option that all brands have. So, let’s not get hung up on ‘share of life’. The key is remaining relevant your audience.  Something that marketers have known for some time.

Open source branding - 5 ways to manage the process

We're living in the age of "open source branding".  Gone are the days when brand managers could focus on well-crafted advertisements to build and protect brand reputations. Today, the health and wealth of your brand is determined by what your customers are saying in social media. Customers are defining brands now, not marketers.

While the dynamics may have changed, it doesn't mean that your brand has to be thrown to the mercy of vociferous commentators on social media. Here are 5 ways in which you can support and enhance your brand reputation online:

1. Understand that social media is a conversation.  Too many organisations see social media as the opportunity to disseminate brand messages and fail to understand the need to engage in a dialogue with their customers online. Great brands engage in the conversation, pose questions and respond to feedback.
2. Encourage brand communities. Recognise that your brand advocates may want to sing your praises in their own forums or communities and support them when they do so. While building your own brand communities may be the optimum approach, recognise that attempting to control other communities can damage brand reputations.
3. Listen to and respond quickly to complaints. Monitoring customer sentiment online is essential but achieves little if you're not prepared to react. Respond quickly to both positive and negative comments, encouraging your critics to engage outside social media to get to the root of the problem and then ask them to return to social media when you've resolved their issue to express their satisfaction.
4. Avoid corporate speak and know when to step back. The well-crafted corporate response to criticism or complaints can stand out a mile if you're normally chatty and engaging when dealing with positive feedback. Maintain your tone of voice throughout. And recognise that repeating the same message in the face of a barrage of criticism may simply fan the flames and shows you're not really listening or understanding. 
5. Continually check that your service or product is aligned with your brand messages. Use the feedback you get through social media to identify and address issues in service delivery, product quality or customer service. This means being the voice of the customer internally - something marketing professionals should aspire to as a matter of course.

Whether we like it or not, social media presents customers with the opportunity to comment quickly on brand experiences. Protecting a brand means adopting similar behaviours and engaging in the debate.

Great brands instil emotional connections

Research out recently ranks UK brands on happiness and how they instil an emotional connection with their customers.

According to the study by advertising agency Isobel and Cog Research, the happiest brands are Cadbury, Andrex, Google, Fairy, Nivea, You Tube, Amazon, Mars, Walkers and Heinz. Brands were rated on five core characteristics: whether they were playful, happy, trustworthy, generous or optimistic. Amongst those in the bottom of the rankings were most of the red top newspapers, Ryanair, the three main political parties and, perhaps unsurprisingly, several retail banks.

While the research was undoubtedly designed as a PR exercise for Isobel, it does emphasise the importance of building a brand around an emotional connection with customers.  A well crafted visual identity, snappy straplines or flashy advertising simply isn't enough to win customers' hearts, minds and share of wallet. The brands that did well in the research came out as more 'human', were consistent in their delivery and offered value for money.

So, what should the average business take from the research?

The key message has to be that if you want your brand to achieve standout and resonate with customers, you need to be clear about the emotional reaction you want to instil in them.  It's about being clear what benefits you deliver, how you want your customers to feel and the value you offer. And then ensuring that your product/service, promotional activity, customer experience and people are fully aligned.

This isn't just an FMCG issue. In fact, most service brands have failed to understand the importance of emotional engagement, preferring instead to focus on functional and rational attributes. This is why so many of them are indistinguishable from each other or, in extreme cases such as recruitment, estate agency and banking, seen as 'necessary evils'. Not an emotional reaction to aspire to.

More information on the research can be found here: http://www.isobel.com/happybrands/

Forget your USP, it probably isn't 'unique'

Ever been asked what your USP is?  Difficult isn’t it?  You may well have one but can you honestly say it’s something that you genuinely believe in, deliver against and is compelling for your audiences?

Far too often sales teams latch onto what they think is a USP without really thinking it through.  Several years ago I joined a sales-led business as marketing director and made the point of asking everyone I met what the USP was.  There were several responses but the most common was “we were founded in 1980”.  It was a clumsy attempt to show that the business had critical mass, a good track record, some really valuable know-how and was a much safer bet than many of the one-man bands that had been established in the sector.  But unfortunately it hadn’t been thought through and no one seemed able to answer my follow up question:  “that’s great, but I see that one of your immediate competitors was founded in 1948.  Does that make them twice as good as you?”.

The problem with USPs is that nothing is really ‘unique’ in business, at least for long.  Yes there is first mover advantage but what is potentially ‘unique’ today is more than likely to be copied tomorrow.  The net result?  You and your competitors suddenly start looking very familiar.

Instead of spending time agonising over your USP, focus instead on your ‘brand value proposition or promise’ (BVP) and ‘brand story’.  Ask yourself and colleagues some searching questions:

• What is it that we do particularly well (beyond the purely functional)?
• What do we stand for and believe in?
• What is our culture?
• What tangible and intangible benefits do we deliver to our customers?
• How do we make our customers feel?

Out of this process will come the core of a BVP and brand story – a clear statement of what your business is all about, how you deliver real value and what your customers feel about doing business with you.

And then of course comes the real work:  making sure that your interactions with customers and prospects really bring your BVP to life.  Oh, and of course, convincing your sales teams that they really don’t need a USP.

More on BVPs and how to develop yours coming soon.