The Importance of a Brand Manifesto

Many business owners and business thought leaders take for granted that their vision and idea of their brand is understood and believed by all who work for them.  For the most part, this way of thinking works, if the business starts and ends with you, but what if you build a successful and viable business that outlasts you? How can you be sure that what you envisioned for your brand will continue to live on?  This uncertainty about what happens to our brainchild (business) after we’re gone, is an extreme, but yet still viable reason why we preach creating brand manifestos.  Let me give you an example of a missing brand manifesto; I recently went to Disney Orlando, with the intent to enjoy all of the theme parks.  There were six of us in the family and although I knew the entry price to the theme parks would be expensive, I was not prepared for just how expensive.  Nonetheless, after doing some research I found a location where  I could get discounted park tickets.  I opted for a package that allowed us entry into the 4 Disney theme parks  over 5 days.  The details of this package seemed to fit all my needs, until I found out that in order to purchase these tickets for the family, I would need to shell out  $1,760.  No, that is not a typo –  the cost  was in fact close to $2,000.  When the ticketing agent told me the price, my response was “Your shitting me!”  Yes, I know the language wasn’t very Disney like, but neither was the price as far as I was concerned.  But instead of being shocked by my response or turned off by it, the agent answered back by saying “you’re right.  This isn’t what Walt would have wanted”.  This little exchange and experience then caused me to think of how many other brands have had their core values erased, due to a change of leadership.  We see the shift in thought leaders, all of the time when reviewing consumer goods packaging.  The new guy thinks we should change the packaging to make it more “modern” (whatever that is) and then 15 years later, with another changing of the guard, the brand returns to its original style, look and feel (ie Coke).

Aside from learning the secret if immortality, there isn’t much we can do for certain that will ensure the brand lives on as you had intended.  The most we can do, is put to paper, through the use of text or visual story boards, what your brand represents, how it sounds and how you want it to make others feel – this, we call the ‘Brand Manifesto’.

Elements of a Brand Manifesto

Below are some questions to ask yourself about your brand, when embarking on your own manifesto:

• What is it?
• Who is your primary audience?
• Who is your competition?
• Why you over your competition?  What is the value proposition?
• What does your brand look like? (If it were a colour)
• What does your brand sound like? (If it were a song or a score of music)
• How should others feel after interacting with your brand?

As an aside, I thought I would include a snippet from the book, Walt Disney – An American Original. The piece below is an excerpt taken from Walt Disney’s pitch to potential investors.  Take a read and judge for yourself.  Have Walt’s visions for Disney come to fruition, or…?

The idea of Disneyland is a simple one. It will be a place for people to find happiness and knowledge.

It will be a place for parents and children to share pleasant times in one another’s company: a place for teachers and pupils to discover greater ways of understanding and education. Here the older generation can recapture the nostalgia of days gone by, and the younger generation can savor the challenge of the future. Here will be the wonders of Nature and Man for all to see and understand.

Disneyland will be based upon and dedicated to the ideals, the dreams and hard facts that have created America. And it will be uniquely equipped to dramatize these dreams and facts and send them forth as a source of courage and inspiration to all the world.

Leave A Response

Not Everyone Can Produce Good Copy, But Everyone Needs Good Copy

Not everyone can produce good online copy, but everyone needs good copy.  What we mean by this is that too often, folks who are not copywriters are given the task to come up with online text, just because they work with the product or will be in charge of the group selling the product, once it launches, and this all results in business leaders taking the art of ‘good copy’ for granted.  Let’s face it, it is the engaging copy that encourages us to continue to play with a Web property – right?  It’s when a story is laid out, filled with compelling factors that makes you continue to read that news article or blog post, and it is the same way, businesses and marketers need to think about painting a colourful, but true, picture of their brand, through copy.

When building a kick-ass web product there are a few key positions that need to be filled to ensure success, UI, design, developers, search experts, content strategists, and copy writers.  Some of you may be raising an eye brow, because I have listed content strategists and copywriters as two different roles, and that is because I strongly feel that they are.  A content strategist, will do their due diligence research on a brands target demographic, geography, and tools their target audience utilizes on the Web.  They’ll do all of this research to determine what ‘types’ of content sets will work well with a brands audience and of course get them the success quotient (sales, conversion, subscription rates etc…) they desire.  A copywriter, now given all of the pertinent audience data and the content types, begins to go to work by building engaging copy and stringing together behaviour provoking text.  So these two roles are in deed different, but they compliment one and other.

The challenge with the copywriter role being seen as an essential to an effective Web release, is that many businesses don’t see it as such, and effective copy often falls low on the list of priorities and behind off-site marketing efforts that cost money . If you break down the buyer -to- seller relationship there are two age-old consumer factors:  people often buy things based on emotion, and if they could, they would want to touch, feel and test it first.  Knowing at least these two basic consumer principles, we need to ask why then do we not spend the time and money needed to ensure we fulfill these senses, with the descriptive words used on our Web properties, through the use of a trained copywriter?

Based on how human beings interact and subscribe to brands, it is clear the better the picture you paint with words, the better your conversion.  This is primarily why people see such success when they roll up their sleeves and do A/B testing or niche product page redirects.  The average  Web page engagement uplift, when strategic processing is placed behind what your customers see is 40%!  The data around ad effectiveness can also be used as a copy parallel.  Studies show that the higher the quality of an ad, it’s effectiveness increases by 50%.  Knowing all of this should make you wonder how much money you’re leaving on the table, by not investing in good copy.

We’ll close by saying that we just came from attending the Manhattan Cocktail Classic and they did a fabulous job with their copy.  Take a look at some of their copy and know that their pre-event emails were just s engaging, if not more so.

Image courtesy of: MonKeyArtAwards

With location based services (LBS) and couponing being as popular as they are, you are undoubtedly going to come across a slew of stats that either speak their praise or demise.  So seeing a post yesterday from the Business Insider, with a title that would lead a reader to believe that location based services provide no value to business owners was not surprising, but it was disappointing. In fact, BI was referencing a set of data released by Fast Company that says they’ve seen Applied Predictive Technologies data and the revenue lift seen by business owners, participating in location based services, amounts to only 2%.  Publishing such findings that lead to thoughts either far left or right is concerning, unless we have all of the facts.  No where do we see how long the test data was collected, the proprietor types and verticals (were they fabric stores or restaurants), and relation to city centre geography.  All this to say to our business owner friends, don’t let things like this sway you from getting involved with different types of user engagement, especially mobile engagement, which is really what your location bases services are set up to be.  Instead, let’s talk about how a business owner can make services such as Foursquare, Gowalla, and Facebook Places (my least favourite of the three), work for them.

Waiting until you crown me to talk to me: many benefits to ‘checking in’ are not recognized until you become mayor of a location and depending on the foot traffic into some of these locations, that could take a mighty long time.  So, what does this mean for lowly me who only gets to the location once a week?  It means the business may never treat me as a special Foursquare customer.  My suggestion, instead of waiting until someone becomes mayor to show them some love, start looking at what can be done for folks who just plainly check in.  Foursquare allows business owners to choose from a bunch of different offering types and some even promote group checkins and smell a lot like a group buying service.  Regardless, allowing more of your check-ins to participate with you on location based services will increase your resulting revenues.

Analytics: if you utilise Foursquare as a business, be sure to review your checkin analytics.  Take a look at time of day trends and even activity on days when you’ve changed offerings and promoted them.  All of these elements will give you insight on as to what is or isn’t working so well and prompting action from you to either repeat the good ideas or tweak the bad.  I think some believe that participating in location based services type programs means it will work right out of the box, and that’s not always true.  Think of it as you would merchandising.   That top of the line salad spinner to brought in-store in December doesn’t seem to be doing well, but you remember stocking it last May and moving it like hot-cakes, May to August.  You now recognize that the salad spinner works spring/summer, but not fall/winter and as a result, will elect to stock only a few in the winter but a whole bunch in warmer weather.  We can go on with examples, such as when store owners move items from the back of the store to the front, or even the changes made to staffing after looking at walk in traffic over the past few weeks.  It is that forecasting and planning approach that you need to apply to your location based services analytics, in order to optimize your experience.

Old and dated things get moldy: meaning, keep your offerings fresh and timely.  Play on seasonality or even special holidays.  Take  a page out of Foursquare’s book – they encourage users to check in on certain holiday’s  to gain additional points for that week.  The fresher the concept, the more interest you will get.

Promote it: let your users or walkers by of your location know that you are active on location based services and would love to engage with them there too!  If you don’t let them know of your fab steps to mobile engagement, they’ll may never participate with you and your LBS store front.

It’s still new: Aside from Foursquare and to some extent Gowalla (especially their events handling), location based services groups are still new.  For as much discussion and mind share we give to Facebook Places, it is still in beta and not available in many areas and some of the geo-targeting advertising one would think you’d be able to do with Facebook Places, still doesn’t exist.  So those of you looking to Places to give you a major lift, because of the ‘Facebook’ brand, your a bit ahead of your time.

In no way should businesses be encouraged to turn away from utilizing location bases services.  It’s a great way to reward your loyal, new, group and or even fair-weather customers who return from time to time.  Mostly, it gives you another way to engage, in a smart way, with customers using mobile methodology.

Related Posts

24 Handy Social Media Stats And A Video That Sums It All Up!

1 Comment

Recording Now Available: Content Strategy

No Comments

Leave A Response

Today’s blog post is a little different than I had originally intended.  First, it was going to be a positive about how Expedia led me to spend 15 minutes taking part in a contest via Facebook, but as my contest experience continues, it worsens.

First let me say this, I use Expedia for all of my travels, primarily because of the special access you get as a return customer and of course from time to time, the obvious savings you get from using their travel service.  So, when Expedia sent me a link to participate in their contest that would give me a chance to win a free trip, I was interested.  It’s a brand I use regularly and trust.  In addition, they were conducting the contest through a handy Facebook app., which is obviously right up my work alley.  As an interested and loyal Expedia customer, I signed up and signed up a few friends to travel with me.  In order for my entry to be processed, all of the friends I had selected to accompany me on this free trip had to accept my invitation, which was sent to them via Expedia.  Most of my friends were able to do so, with ease – so far so good - but I have a friend who is travelling at the moment, and like most of us light travellers, they chose to travel with their iPad and iPhone only.  Makes sense as I normally travel with those two devices as well.  Nonetheless, when my travelling friend tried to accept the invitation, this is what they got:

Needless to say, I was surprised, considering the facts and statistics that are readily available to marketers and brand owners:

• There are more than 250 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices
• Apple is now seen as the most valuable brand
• The iOS market share is 27%

Knowing all of the above, making your Facebook application not workable via mobile, is a major faux pas.

Just another word of truth around understanding your audience and the tools they use before you go to market, with an audience generating campaign.

LinkedIn, to me, is that social network that never dies.  (In 2007, I announced on Twitter that I thought LinkedIn was doomed – I am not afraid to admit it and I think many others agreed with me then).  Just when you think its loosing its relevance, it does a 180 and embeds itself, in some fragmentary reinvented way, into our professional lives.  So, given LinkedIn’s comeback kid-like nature, I thought I would post this infographic from Ellie Koning here, to show the networks now strength in our competitive social sphere.

If you know us, you’ll know we endorse and support any organization or business striving to be open, transparent and inclusive, via the digital Web, and  when trying to communicate with their customers, employees and partners.  There – good – Insular statement made and now I can move on to the rest of this post. Now as said before, we support businesses taking the leap into digital and social media, but we do caution them to review their strategies closely, before embarking on their first public display of digital socialness’.  A great example of a business who we are happy to see entering social media aggressively, but we’re not so keen on the strategy however, is Tupperware.

The New York Times posted a great piece about the brands plan of reinventing themselves, to be seen as more than just yesteryears homemakers source of entertainment, at an in-home party.

Tupperware executives thought, what better way to express their vibrance and attract a younger demographic, than to head to social media and utilize social personalities, with great followings.   We agree with utilizing social media and including popular social personalities in their campaign, but that won’t be enough to get the Tupperware group to where their success quotient says they need to be – making the best effort possible to attract that younger demographic.

Things We Can Learn from the Tupperware Campaign:

Guilting Users Into Liking You – If you’ve got money in your corporate funds to give to charity, then do just that – give it to charity.  Avoid using campaigns that give to charity only if we the public like your brand, product or page, as Tupperware is doing.  On the other hand, if you have money to give to charity and you want the publics help in deciding,  for example, which of the “Red Cross” initiatives you should focus on, ask away.  That kind of approach to social media and charity works for all: the company/brand is seen as good corporate citizens giving back, the community feels as though they are a part of aiding, and the charity in the end gains additional funding for their initiatives.

Consumer Products Make the Best Inventions – consider Tupperware’s quest to reinvent themselves and go after a younger demographic, you would then wonder why their entire campaign does not include asking the target demographic for their input – on design, campaigns, ideas, suggestions.  The campaign does not include the targeted demographic in a crowd sourced initiative and as a result, misses the mark in fostering dialogue between the brand and the target demographic.

Get Creative with eCommerce – working in the realm of the target demographic, could Tupperware adopt their own Groupon mentality around their online parties program or specific catalogued items?  They are a consumer goods company who, in addition to mind share gains in a younger demographic, are interested in selling product. So we should be asking: What can we do with offers to make them attractive and how do we utilize digitally and socially engaging platforms to promote them?

What Is the Brand Saying? – Great!  You want to embark on reinventing yourself.  Tell me why?  Why would I, the younger demographic, be interested?  Aside from taking out pricey television ads, consider a corporate blog.  There is no better way of personalizing a brand and making it’s intent transparent, then providing its potential and incumbent customer base with blog content and posts that humanize the brand.  We would also encourage a group like Tupperware, interested in targeting a new demographic, to mix up the blog content.  A blog does not have to consist of only text based prose.  Video and photo can be just as informative and sometimes more engaging than 500 characters on a page.

How Social Were Canadians During Election Night?

As we all know, the Canadian Federal Election took place yesterday, and if you follow Canadian politics, the results were filled with many first times, namely being that the New Democrat Party is now the official opposition to the Conservatives, leaving the Liberals behind.  In addition to our marvel at the results, we were also tremendously impressed at how Canadian utilised social media to keep on top of our polling trends, to ask questions and to remind and encourage all to vote.  Below are a few snippets of what we were able to find on last nights election:

** At its peak, the election was mentioned on social sites every 7 seconds

Top election keywords found on social sites and blogs:

Top Election Hashtags:

Top online sources for Election chatter:

Graphed election mention on Twitter over the past month:

Google Trends Web mentions of election keywords:

Google Trends new reference graph:

Image credits: Globe and Mail

Leave A Response