Advertising Fuelosophy 101

Secret Shopping: Considerate or Crisis?

I'm taking a short break from brand leadership because I'm positively fascinated by one of this year's shopping trends: Secret Shopping. Forget about Secret Santas. This holiday season, Secret Shopping was the new chic. According to The Daily Beast, the Fifth Avenue crowd chose to conceal luxury purchases in unmarked bags. Translation: they clung to the goods but ditched the logos. OMG, marketing people! What does this mean? Where's the brand identity? Where's the sense of pride and unsolicited advertising that comes with parading trademark packages up and down the boulevards? All this traded in for a white paper bag! What?

Honestly, I'm dumbfounded. From a branding standpoint, this is a huge complicated deal. Because the moment a customer asks for an "unmarked" bag is a moment of brand abandonment. What to make of this?

My first reaction was to feel absolutely worthless about what we do. Forget about brands. Brand value is a sham. People just want their cashmere throw pillows. They don't care how they get them. Wrap them up in newspaper. Whatever.

Then something else occurred to me. A brand is NOT a logo. It's more than that. And doesn't Secret Shopping prove exactly this point? Here we see how brands transcend logos. We see that loyal customers are loyal to brand experiences, even during uncertain economic times. People will flock to favorite stores, services and products, give or take the logo. Because they know and trust a repeated brand experience. The experience is the essence, the heart and soul, of the brand. The logo is nothing but a visual button. 

And yet, should logos be so easily disposable? Is it "okay" for people to want logos off their favorite brand bags? I don't think so. Because ultimately, this indicates people harbor negative feelings about the brand: guilt, shame, embarrassment or the like. This is not good. What horrible negative brand associations. And these feelings also become a part of the brand experience. How long can they go on before they wreck the customer's relationship with the brand?

Now I have to ask: Was there a missed opportunity here? 

I think it's great luxury retailers were so helpful and hospitable as to stock and pass out generic bags upon request. Anything for the customer. But just because they made way for customer satisfaction does not mean they made customers happy. They simply provided the means to hide the shame. They didn't help to overcome it. Could some great PR effort or charitable act or program turned the tide in their favor and made customers actually feel good about their purchases this holiday season? Or is something like that "off brand" in the luxury sector? Do you want to draw attention to the out-of-work families in Des Moines when someone is picking out a diamond tennis bracelet? Do you avoid (unmarked bags) or address the issue? Either way, you can't escape recession. If it doesn't live in their pockets, it still lives in people minds.

Is Secret Shopping then luxury retailers' answer to being relevant? If so, is it the right answer? I do know this. Repeated brand experiences should result in repeated good feelings and therefore healthy brand relationships (aka brand loyalty). 

So what can we learn from Secret Shopping? Does it prove that healthy brand relationships flourish beyond the logo, beyond the brandmark? Or do unmarked bags mask symptoms of a severe brand headache? 

Christmas Wishes for the Marketing Community

First and foremost, I want to shout out to all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year with a healthy dose of wishing you a joyous holiday season.

Secondly, I truly hope we all take this brief time (Christmas to New Year) to count our blessings, enjoy our families and just have a few fun moments before we hit the ground running in 2009.

Third, I desire for us all to decompress over the pressures of campaigns, projects and deadlines by relaxing a little with a "tomorrow will be another day" attitude.

Finally, I want all to remember, what we do matters ... there is great value in helping clients communicate properly, build a brand solidly, and generate business success. This value may not always be recognized, but it still exists, and truth be told behind every great company, there is someone creating ideas and pursuing wow on their behalf ... and it is often the great folks in this wildly fun, creative community.

From the gang at Fresh Fuel to all ... our best wishes!

Does Your Brand Have a Weak Heart? Health Tips To Make It Better.

Heart problems afflict millions of people every year. Heart problems also afflict many brands. In both cases, a lack of treatment can lead to disabling consequences, even death. Of course, we're not doctors at Fresh Fuel, but we do know something about brands.

What exactly is the "heart" of a brand?

Ask fifty companies this question and you'll likely get one or more of these typical answers:

Photo credit ~ CarbonNYC

1. "Our logo."
2. "Our product/service
3. "Our customers."
4. "Our name."

While they're all important, they're all wrong answers. As Charlton Heston famously screamed out in the sci-fi flick Soylent Green, "It's people!!!!!" More specifically, the heart of your brand is your employees.

Before I elaborate on that, let's think about heart problems for a moment. In the form of cardiovascular disease, they creep up on a person over time. Cholesterol and triglycerides go up, blood pressure goes up, plaque begins building on artery walls and eventually, all these things and more can lead to heart failure - often without much warning. In much the same way, the these things can happen to the heart of your brand. And in the same way that people can avoid, or treat and ward off heart problems, so can your brand

Is your brand heart-healthy?

Most companies spend much of their time and money marketing and brand building to the outside world and not much time on internal focus. This is a mistake. Marketing and brand building internally can play a crucial role in defining and growing a healthy business. To diagnose the health of the heart of your brand, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do you have a logo?
2. What's your creation story? Do you have one? Is it written down and have you clearly communicated it to your employees.
3. What's your creed/mission - your reason for being? Is it defined? Is it written down and have you clearly communicated it to your employees.
   
4. What are your values? Are they written down and have you clearly communicated them to your employees.
   
5. What is your brand position and does it clearly differentiate you from your competition? Do you have one? Is it written down and have you clearly communicated it to your employees.
   
6. What is your brand personality? Do you have one? Is it written down and have you clearly communicated it to your employees. 

If you answered yes to most of these questions, skip the rest of this post. Not only is your logo probably outstanding (along with your comprehensive corporate identity usage guide) but you're so far ahead of the game with your brand and branding execution, you could probably give me advice. Heck, You probably work for Zappos and you guys are external and internal branding all-stars.

If you answered yes to most but you're employees don't get it, read on and bear with me.

Worst of all, your whole brand is sick.

First, the worst case scenario. If you answered no to three or more of the questions, you have some serious issues that will be eating away at both your profitability and your heart. I say three or more because first, if you're in business, you probably have a logo. And, more than you might think, many businesses think their logo IS their brand. Second, while a good (compelling) creation story is important, it's not necessarily critical. However all the other items are. If you don't have them and they are not written down, you don't have a clearly defined and differentiated brand.  And if you don't have that, you have nothing special to communicate externally (to customers and prospects) or internally (to your people). The heart of the company, your employees have nothing concrete to rally around, believe in and evangelize. That, in a nutshell, means you have a weak body and a weak heart. The two go hand in hand and here is why.

You can't rally the troops without a cause.

Think about it. Nothing or no one should be able to articulate the message, vision, values and personality of your brand better than your employees. If they are truly aligned around the brand and you have clearly communicated and trained them to understand it, they will become ambassadors and evangelists for you and proudly generate word of mouth and buzz that can be priceless. That can't happen if you have not clearly defined who you are as a company, why you sell what you sell, and what your vision, mission and promise are for your external target audience. That external point of view is what your employees need to live for. It is the foundation for your internal point of view - which provides the energy that pumps the blood to power the heart of your company. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or enlist a brand consultant to help, you need to figure it out - all of it. Define your brand. Then don't just develop a strategy and spend money on a campaign to communicate it to your customers and prospects. Develop a strategy and spend money on a campaign to communicate it to your employees as well. All the best brands do both very well - Zappos, Ikea, Virgin, Apple, you know the names. If all this describes your situation, stop reading and gather your team. You've got a lot of work to do.

What if you do have a cause, but the troops won't fight for it?

You answered yes to most of the questions, but the troops are listless, unfocused and deserting. The body is strong but the heart's not willing. If you answered honestly and you feel pretty good about your brand, its differentiated position and how you communicate it externally, you probably need to work on your Internal POV (if you actually skipped everything to this point, read through the paragraph above for clarification). Once you have the internal POV nailed down, it's time to develop your internal brand strategy and campaign.

What's the difference between an internal and external brand strategy and execution?

Fundamentally there are many similarities between internal and external branding. It's just that many companies don't spend the time or resources to build their businesses from the inside out. Most of what has been hammered into us over the course of our marketing careers is focused on the outside; strategies and tactics to reach our prospects and customers through advertising, PR and the myriad other tools at our disposal. But the same thinking and focus can be applied inside your business and that's exactly what companies like Zappos and Southwest Airlines do to create an internal culture that fosters employees who are raving fans of their own brand... a heart that swells with pride! How do they do it?

1. They define their story - their brand.
2. They define and understand the target (their employees).
3. They then develop a strategy and tactics based on desired vision and measurable outcomes (ROI applies here, too) to align the brand and the culture.
4. They understand employee touch points and use multiple channels to reach them.Then they communicate continuously, especially as the brand evolves over time, with methods and materials that show as much excitement, passion and brand persuasion as their external marketing vehicles.
5. Before executing, they make sure senior management and all key stakeholders are on-board with the strategy and objectives - in other words, they involve everybody that matters in the process and ensure they buy in.

It sounds fairly simple, but then so does external branding (or just about anything complex) in bullet points. Many companies enlist the aid of experts to help them get it right. However you choose to do it, it requires careful consideration and thoughtful execution to achieve success. Following are some basic tactics you can consider for executing your internal brand strategy,

• Develop an internal point of view. This is essentially a cultural doctrine - a dynamically expressed mantra that clearly defines your mission and how your employees will live it every day at work.
• Celebrate often - the big successes and the little one.
• Develop an internal branding campaign - identify all employee touch points and develop materials to reach them with compelling, engaging materials that reflect your desired culture and brand personality (just like you would for prospects and customers). Even the employee guidebook can be fun, entertaining and persuasive. If you can get them to show it to their family and friends, you're on the way to becoming a breakaway brand!
• Develop an intranet - better yet, an internal wiki for easy sharing of information and collaboration.
• New employee training and orientation - cultural assimilation begins here. make it fun, make it engaging, put on a show. get them on board and then devise regular steps to keep them there.
• Internal newsletters.
• Regular team building events.
• Recognize achievement, publicize rewards.

There are many more tactics you can use for the health of your business and the heart of your organization. You've heard it a million times, "It's what's inside counts." Too many companies forget this and suffer because of it. To be the best your brand can be, you must take a holistic approach and nurture the heart of your existence. Your employees should be your best messengers, your biggest fans and the pump that primes your profits.

In these tough economic times and as the year comes to a close, all of us here at Fresh Fuel wish you and yours happy holidays and the best of luck! We hope this information can help make your business or someone else's better in 2009.

Have we left anything out? Can you add something? Do you have an internal branding success story you can share? Do you think we're nuts? Let us know. We welcome the conversation!

Hey Corporate World is Your Blog Trustworthy?

I recently read in a blog by Mark Walsh of Online Media Daily that Forrester Research released a study citing that only 16% of people surveyed say they trust corporate blogs. That makes them the lowest-rated source of reliable information among 18 categories Forrester asked about including Web portals, print newspapers, radio and personal blogs.

The report went on to say that the lack of credibility stems from corporate blogs' focus on self-promotion, pushing products and services at the expense of two-way communication with customers.Walsh characterized the corporate blog as the equivalent of a used car salesperson. And we all know the credibility and respect they garner. Ouch!

So what's a corporation to do? According to Josh Bernoff, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, "The blogs that people do trust are the ones where people say: 'Oh, but I don't think of it as a company blog.'"

After reading the blog by Walsh and the Forrester Report by Bernoff, here's my thoughts on how a corporation can use a blog effectively:

1. Just like in any marketing activity, make sure the blog has a plan with objectives and then stay the course.
2. Be committed to regular, timely postings (a once a month blog doesn't work).
3. Respond when spoken to; if someone takes the time to comment on the blog, make sure someone has the responsibility of responding back (it's called engagement, folks). And this is particularly important if the person is commenting about your service, product, thought leadership, etc.
4. Share the thought leadership; I think it is particularly engaging to visit a corporate blog and discover different people regularly share their thoughts/expertise for my benefit.
5. Be interesting, make connections, pass on information from other smart people; in other words become a hub of information that is related to and on strategy with the objectives set forth for the corporate blog (I always find the thread of information fascinating and it has been helpful in my own development in this industry).

Well, here's to making corporate blogs more trustworthy and maybe, just maybe, they can rise to the level of a politician (the second most least trusted profession) ... oh hasten the day. That's my thought, what's yours?

Leading Advantages: Meet Bill Bowerman, Phil Knight and I think you already know Nike

“If you have a body, you are an athlete.”

This observation was made by former University of Oregon track coach and entrepreneur Bill Bowerman. His track teams boasted 33 Olympians, 38 conference champions and 64 All-Americans. In the 1960s, he co-authored the best-selling book Jogging, credited with igniting this fitness craze in the U.S. Bowerman is a member of the National Distance Running Hall of Fame, the USA Track and Field Hall of Fame and the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame. But if you know Bowerman at all, it is probably as a founder of Nike.

Bowerman is most famous for ruining his wife’s waffle iron. He was experimenting with waffle-ironed rubber as the sole for a new kind of shoe, one that would grip but also be lightweight. The rest is history.

Or should I say distant legend? Because Bowerman is hardly a household name and his story occupies a modest place in Nike’s brand story. And this brings us to another type of brand leader: the unknowns.

Visit Nike’s website and you have to do a little digging to learn about Bowerman at all. And you'll find no mention of Bowerman’s long list of accolades or hall of fame status, despite their obvious implications of expertise and accomplishment. To the world at large, Nike’s brand leadership is about as lightweight as their running shoes. Especially in the case of Bowerman’s co-founder Phil Knight (who?).

On January 25, 1964 (six years before the waffle-iron incident) Phil Knight shook hands with Bill Bowerman to form Nike forerunner Blue Ribbon Sports. Blue Ribbon would distribute Onitsuka Tiger running shoes from Japan to the western United States. And it was Knight’s business foresight that got the whole enterprise started.

At the Univeristy of Oregon, Knight was a mid-distance runner under track coach Bill Bowerman. Knight later attended Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he needed to develop a business plan for a class. His paper posed the question: “Can Japanese Sports Shoes Do to German Running Shoes What Japanese Cameras Did to German Cameras?” Apparently, yes.

During a post-graduate trip to Japan, Knight first secured the U.S. distribution rights of Tiger running shoes and sent a pair to Bowerman in hopes of an endorsement. Bowerman offered more than words of praise, he offered a partnership. Now the two were in business. But a bigger brand was yet to come.

It was Knight’s friend Jeff Johnson who suggested the name Nike, after the goddess of victory, and Knight had the good sense to take the recommendation. The logo was then commissioned from Carolyn Davidson for a mere $35. And this is where we really start to see Knight’s progressive thinking. “I don’t love it, but it will grow on me” was his response to Davidson’s swoosh design. I guess it grew on us all.

This is remarkable in terms of marketing! Knight didn’t rework the logo a gazillion times. He just approved this plain, abstract, dynamic hint of a wing. Okay. Just do it!

In fact, the more you study Knight’s decisions, the more you recognize his genius behind the Nike brand. Bowerman may have spurred product innovation, but Knight kindled product image. Bowerman gave Nike sole. Knight gave it attitude. Because Knight gave his brand a voice and a face far beyond his own. He bet on the talent and star power of others.

If we think about it, Knight could have used his own story, his own background in track and field, to promote his running shoe distribution. But he didn’t. He sought out a bigger story, a bigger star. He went after Bowerman. And this is something Nike continues to do until this very day.

From Ilie Nastase to Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods, Nike has established a legion of endorsements and alignments with athletes, pro and amateur alike. To the public, they’re the brand leaders. Not one success story, but many. His, hers, theirs and yes, yours. A string of victories. A brand without a face. At times, without a name (thanks to the iconic swoosh). But always this "Just Do It" attitude, this presence. And in this way, the spirit of the Nike triumphs eternal.

Bill Bowerman passed away in 1999. Knight resigned as Nike CEO in 2004, but stayed on as chairman of the board.

Knight may be a brand leader, but he leads from the sidelines. A nameless, faceless visionary, largely unknown to the masses. He makes room for the dreams, ambitions and achievements of others. But does this mean Bowerman and Knight should play such obscure roles in the public identity of the Nike brand? Does their story offer more value to the brand than what is currently being utilized within their corporate culture? Which brings us to the brand strategy conundrum. Would you make Bowerman and Knight more prominent on Nike’s website, ads or other? Could they or should they be more famous? 

How will Online Advertising Fare in the Worst Advertising Recession since 2001?

Today reports were released by two advertising industry forecasters -- WPP's Group M and Publicis' ZenithOptimedia Group -- both predicting the growth and/or change in ad spending by medium in 2009 and beyond. The forecast from each group has one thing in common: online up, all others down. Is that a surprise to anyone? Surely not.

However, there may have been a bit of a surprise in the slowing of internet advertising. The rise in internet advertising was approximately 22% in 2008 and Group M thinks it will be 10% in 2009 while ZenithOptimedia thinks 18%. They also predict overall advertising spending (all media) is expected to decline 0.2% in 2009. The share of internet advertising continues to impress and its influence continues to grow. And if you look at the forecasts, I can only say -- sorry radio, sorry newspaper but the freefall continues for you.

No matter how you slice it a business has to develop an internet strategy and it applies to any size business -- small to mega and every size in-between. Every business (bar none) must navigate the opportunities using the internet, both efficiently and effectively (many a mistake has been made and a lot of advertising dollars wasted doing internet advertising poorly).

Now, if you are a smaller to medium sized business the good news is that the forecasts support my last two blogs, "Wake Up Small Business, It's Time to Connect" and the follow up, "If They Find You, What Do They Find." It's time to pay attention to your internet strategy -- it's really the great equalizer. That's my thought, what's yours?

Share Of Worldwide Ad Spending By Medium
	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011
Newspapers	27.1	25.4	23.8	22.3	21.2
Magazines	12.0	11.5	11.2	10.7	10.4
Television	37.3	38.0	38.3	38.5	38.5
Radio	8.0	7.6	7.1	6.9	6.7
Cinema	0.5	0.5	0.5	0.6	0.6
Outdoor	6.5	6.7	6.9	7.0	7.1
Internet	8.6	10.3	12.1	13.9	15.6
Source: ZenithOptimedia

Feed Your Reader With Wit & Wisdom - The Top 50 Marketing Blogs!

Entrepreneurial motivational inspirer type dude Evan Carmichael at evancarmichael.com has posted his list of the top 50 marketing blogs for 2009. If you're into the subject (and if you're here, you are... or you're cursing Google's misdirection) this is a good thing . Better yet, it shows I have good taste since I already subscribe to many on the list and attempt to devour a few snippets of wisdom from my favorites every day.

Not surprisingly, Seth's Blog tops the list at #1 (17th in 2008). If you haven't read it or don't on a regular basis, you're missing out on great insights from one of the smartest marketing masters on the planet. Hey, Madonna, Beyonce, Jack,Tiger, Britney... Seth - when everyone knows you by one name, you've got it going on.

#2 DUCT TAPE MARKETING BLOG (16th in 2008)
#3 MARKETING SHERPA (Rank N/A 2008)

There are 47 more insightful, inciteful, inspirational and yes, invaluable blogs to check out. So if you, like me, are interested you can find Evan's list right here. Read, learn prosper!

By the way, we'd love to make that list, too. Read us. Tell us why we're good, useful, deserve to be there... or don't. We love criticism as much as kudos.

Mobile Tuesday: The Hallmark of the Shopping Season

Raise your hand if you've heard of Black Friday. Good. Now raise your hand if you've heard  of Cyber Monday. Good. Now, raise your hand if you've heard of Mobile Tuesday. Oh that's right you don't have any hands left. And by Tuesday, you probably wont have any money left either.

Seriously, some marketers are pushing for yet another way to get people to spend more this holiday season. Mobile Tuesday is an attempt to get people to sign up for deals/coupon strategies which people will get on their phones. Will this work? I don't know, but I do know that both Black Friday and Cyber Monday were "organic" and came about naturally. Mobile Tuesday is artificial. It's just another marketing ploy that is being used to drum up more business.

Only time will tell if this strategy will work.