Archive for the ‘purpose’ Category

« Older Entries

Book Review: “Linchpin” Our Needed Wake-up Call

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

Way back in December 2009, Seth Godin offered his blog readers a chance to get an advance copy of his new book, Linchpin. The first 3,000 folks who were willing to donate at least $30 to one of his favorite causes, the Acumen Fund, received a book. I jumped at the chance to do so, both because I enjoy Seth’s books and I wanted to participate in this novel form of meaningful book marketing.

Godin’s plan was to get a flood of positive reviews and word of mouth in time for Linchpin to hit bookstore shelves. He even followed up a few weeks later by sending an additional book to people who accepted the original offer. I’m a little more than a year late to the party with my own blog review of the book, but I would be doing my readers a disservice by ignoring the positive impact of reading Linchpin—and I hope Seth benefits from new long-tail sales.

Simply put, Linchpin is a motivational tool for businesspeople who are seeking a new path and need a loving kick in the pants. For years Seth Godin has given us books to help us think about marketing and business positioning in a different, evolved way. But this time he sets his sights on providing individuals with the mentality they need to become “linchpins” in whatever they do. Here are a few of the key points that I underlined in my copy of the book:

  • The “factory contract” of the economy is going away; we can no longer expect to plug into a job, follow the rules, and be taken care of. The future will belong to artists who create something original, interesting, and meaningful. “…History is now being written by the artists while the factory workers struggle. The future belongs to chefs, not to cooks or bottle washers.” “Art” can mean whatever you uniquely bring to the world—a skill, knowledge, experience. It can come to life in a painting, a business idea, or a blog like this one.
  • Education is ripe for an overhaul. “The launch of universal (public and free) education was a profound change in the way our society works…. We trained millions of factory workers.” We need to transform education to teach children two things: (1) Solve interesting problems; and (2) Lead.
  • We must think differently in how we look at success in the workplace or hunt for jobs. “The problem with meeting expectations is that it’s not remarkable…. A resume gives the employer everything she needs to reject you…. Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords, and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine.” It is your visible results that matter in today’s economy: “Projects are the new resumes.”
  • “Real artists ship.” (‘Nuff said.)
  • We must continually learn about the world and ourselves, and have strong opinions but be ready to shift them. “It’s not an accident that successful people read more books.“
  • “One of the fascinating aspects of business and organized movements is that there’s some correlation between the passion and effort that people bring to a project and the outcome…. In great organizations, there’s a sense of mission.”
  • A new model for success is to create valuable art and share it broadly (especially thanks to the power of the Net), and if helps others they will repay you in many ways.

Even if everything here seems that it has been said somewhere before, it’s worth the time to read Linchpin. I know you will find something that inspires you, gets you out of bed in the morning, or refocuses your best efforts. I personally was most moved by Godin’s ability to distill the work I have done around the concept of Marketing with Meaning for nearly three years. It is my passion to help others succeed, and by giving  knowledge and assistance away as much as possible, I have benefited from seeing our company enjoy better business results—but I also get the pleasure of hearing how a blog post, book chapter, keynote speech, or email with advice has helped others.

Sometimes it is difficult to trust that “giving the gift of your art” will allow you to continue to grow your business and yourself. I thank Seth Godin for giving us the manifesto we need to keep creating a new and better future of work.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Organizational Behavior, book, purpose | 1 Comment »

Why Write a Book? For This Guy

Thursday, February 4th, 2010

open letter

This week I had lunch with an old friend who had not yet heard that I recently wrote a book. His first question was: “Why did you write a book?” It’s actually a question that I get a lot. It’s not that people believe that writing a book is a dumb idea. Rather, most people understand that it is a huge investment in time and energy on top of a day job, so they wonder what motivation drove me to make it happen. There are many answers that I give to this question. I usually talk about how I grew up with a father who wrote several books and his experiences struck a chord with me. I mention that it is a chance to help grow the profile of our business and serve as a point of pride for our agency, Bridge Worldwide. But at the end of the day, the reason I wrote the book was for people like Jason Sokol, who last week wrote “An Open Letter to Bob Gilbreath.”

In a post on his blog (please read it above or at this link), Jason shares the story of working at a large company and working to make changes in how the business does its marketing and sales. He writes about how the book was an inspiration, and he used it to craft a manifesto email for his senior leadership. The ideas in the book gave Jason “the leverage [he has] needed to make a difference.”

For me, this story represents the absolute height of personal satisfaction. When I got up at 6 a.m. every Saturday and Sunday for months to write the book, I was always thinking about people like Jason. I remembered being in his shoes, struggling to make changes in a big company that had been doing the same (broken) things for so long, and drawing on the words and suggestions of authors such as Seth Godin. I wanted to write a book that brought great ideas, along with tips on how to convince an organization to go along with them. My goal was not to sell a bunch of books, or even to have lots of people talk about it. I knew that I would fail if the book was unable to actually effect change in how companies work.

Ironically, last week Seth Godin wrote a post titled “Why write a book?” In this post he writes about the many reasons to write a book, and mentions that articles, blogs, and even tweets can all have some power to benefit others. But books can do something more:

“The goal isn’t always to spread an idea. Sometimes the goal is to make change happen…. If you want to change people, you must create enough leverage to encourage the change to happen.”

Godin’s point is that books are powerful tools that give great leverage to ideas. A book takes time to read and absorb; it is a journey into the mind of the author. The publishing process helps ensure that only a relative handful of the best ideas make it to the shelves. This power of a book is that it gives ideas more leverage to impact people’s lives and make change happen. Jason takes the idea of “leverage” further, by showing how a book can serve as the leverage he needs to make change.

This really represents the Purpose of my life: I want to figure out how the world works, and give as many people as possible ideas and tools to make positive change. I know that more than 10,000 people have purchased and read the book so far, which is great sales-wise for a marketing book after only a few months. But now I know that at least one person has been able to use my book to make positive change. That alone is worth everything that I put into it. My thanks to Jason for sharing his story—and I hope many more readers write their own meaningful marketing stories in the years to come.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Agency Marketing, Organizational Behavior, book, purpose | 2 Comments »

Coke Captures a Moment of Happiness

Thursday, January 21st, 2010


I believe that one of the biggest opportunities for Marketing with Meaning lies with brands that are used to spending a lot of money on traditional advertising campaigns that have historically been launched mainly to remind people that the brands exist. Instead, they have an opportunity to create marketing that people choose to engage with and advertising that itself adds value to people’s lives. A few weeks ago I wrote about how brands that lack innovation can win by adding value, and last year this article I wrote in Adweek showed how brands such as Gatorade and Ask.com have hurt sales by continuing to trot out new ad campaigns. One company that is gradually moving forward on the meaningful marketing scale is Coca-Cola—and the video above is just its latest chapter in its next evolution.

Coca-Cola has been one of the biggest traditional advertisers out there, but I do believe it is turning itself into a meaningful marketing machine. In my book I included the examples of its Happiness Factory mini-movies, and its industry-leading Coke Rewards loyalty program. The company got into entertaining iPhone apps quickly. And in Cannes in July I wrote up the example of its new interactive vending machines.

I believe the biggest lesson here is that Coke has focused its Brand Purpose on “Creating Happiness.” If you step back and think about what the Coca-Cola product aspires to do, it tries to create a moment of happiness in an otherwise regular day. Traditionally the company has tried to inspire happiness through its marketing by showing carefully crafted ads with actors playing out scenes in commercials. In truth, this viral video is not too far away from an “ad”—but the key difference is that we see Coca-Cola doing something fun in the real world, and we smile, LOL, and forward this video to friends.

There is another smaller, yet important lesson here around how in-person, guerrilla marketing efforts can go viral and gain scale when you capture them on video. This mirrors the approach by Burger King in its award-winning Whopper Freakout campaign. In both cases the production quality and editing of this piece is fantastic, we see real people and reactions rather than scripted actors, and we actually can see and feel the fun for ourselves.

Of course we have no way of seeing if this video sells six-packs, but the YouTube results suggest this effort was worth the cost of a video crew and handful of props. When I first saw this video on its first day, Tuesday, January 12, there were about 40,000 views. Writing this post on Sunday, January 17 it was up to 400,000. That’s a lot of people choosing to engage with an ad, and coming away with a much more positive connection with the brand. And it’s even more evidence that billion-dollar traditional brands can make the move to Marketing with Meaning.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Connection, Entertainment, purpose, video | 1 Comment »

Southwest Airlines Profits from Free Bags

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

southwest bags

My friend Matt Carcieri is one of the key leaders at P&G charged with helping the company move to “Purpose-Based Branding.” If you haven’t read about this before, the central idea is that brands must turn their equities and marketing toward the pursuit of higher-level goals. In his book on the topic, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, Roy Spence writes that brands must challenge themselves to wholeheartedly focus on this purpose for existence. At P&G, people such as Matt Carcieri and Jim Stengel helped Pampers, for example, shift toward a Purpose of improving babies’ development. Over the holidays, Matt shared a story of how Southwest Airlines—one of the central case studies in Spence’s book—is continuing to profit from its purpose.

In his book, Spence tells the story of how Southwest Airlines rose to leadership in the late 1970s and 1980s on the heels of the government’s deregulation of the airline industry. As the skies opened up to new competitors, Southwest took an underdog mentality up against the big, entrenched, oligopolistic players such as American, Pan Am, and TWA. The company’s entire employee base embraced the underdog label, and rallied around their Purpose:  to democratize air travel. This mentality drove the company to embrace shorter, point-to-point flights, enabled it to expand without unionization, and even showed in the high-quality, high-fun flight attendants and pilots. Southwest was not just another airline; it was a company on a mission to make flying more affordable and accessible. Today, Southwest is just behind Delta in total market capitalization, and did it without major mergers or dips into bankruptcy. The company was profitable again in 2008, while Delta felt a 40% net loss.

Based on Southwest’s purpose, it is no surprise that the company decided not to go along with the rest of the industry crowd and add baggage fees to the price of a ticket. According to its CEO, Gary Kelly, Southwest was giving up $300 million in revenue by not simply joining its competitors in charging a fee that fliers hate, but can do little about. But the underdog, democratic blood still pumps through Southwest’s veins, and it bucked the trend and risked angering shareholders by just saying “no.”

What’s more, Southwest saw the opportunity to promote the hell out of its commitment to “Bags Fly Free.” Baggage fees can add up to $100 per flight per person, so Southwest’s television commercials and print ads tout their fundamental competitive difference. The ads feature smiling Southwest employees talking about how much they love bags—itself an example of a strong, purpose-driven culture.

The results? Well, Southwest claims that it has captured an additional 1% of the market because of its lack of baggage fees so far. That translates to $800 million to $900 million in additional revenue. Yep, as much as three times more revenue than baggage fees would generate. And please don’t forget how this meaningful marketing choice adds to the brand equity and loyalty of travelers. We all feel a great deal of anger for airlines that use their market power to gouge us on fare prices and continually pull back on service quality. But with Southwest, we have a hero in an otherwise villainous business. This very visible issue around baggage fees further cements the good and evil brands in the business, and translates into more sales for Southwest over time.

Thanks to its strong, guiding brand purpose, and its ability to make meaningful marketing decisions, Southwest continues to be the bright spot of success in an industry that continues to look at its customers as cattle. My only problem with Southwest is that it still hasn’t come to free Cincinnati from the oppressive shackles of Delta!

Tags: , , ,
Posted in airlines, purpose | 5 Comments »

Sam Adams Supporting Craft Brewing

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

I believe Sam Adams has been the most consistently meaningful beer marketer that I have come across. Last year I wrote about its launch of specially designed beer glasses that—at least in this beer drinker’s opinion—really do make the amber ale taste even better. Today I want to share some things I’ve learned about the company’s dedication to encouraging home- and craft-brew competitors.

As a subscriber to the Sam Adams email newsletter, I’ve had a chance to learn about its annual LongShot challenge among home brewers. It is an annual competition with judging events around the country that gives people the chance to have their beer mass produced in a special promotional six-pack. What I love about this contest is that it is much more than simply a “name our next flavor” or “make your own commercial” marketing promotion, which many brands have done with little personal engagement or connection to the product itself. Instead, this challenges the most dedicated brewers against each other and offers up the special reward of possibly seeing their years of investment pay off in peer admiration and distribution across the country.

My only disappointment is that Sam Adams doesn’t make the LongShot contest a bigger deal. After looking for the SKU in stores for years, I only just found it last weekend in a dusty corner of a local liquor store. There are actually three different winners in each six-pack: Cranberry Wit, Traditional Bock, and Double IPA (my favorite of the three with tons of citrus from the seven different types of hops). The Cranberry Wit was actually created by a Sam Adams employee, Carissa Sweigart. Giving employees the chance to participate is a pretty neat cultural build for the company. In total there were a little more than 1,300 entries from about 1,000 home brewers.

Last week I found another great story of Sam Adams support for small brewers. In a video at Fast Company I found an interview of Sam Adams founder Jim Koch. He tells the story of a recent national hops shortage, and how he ended up selling excess hops to competitive craft brewers who did not have access to this key ingredient. Koch put the reason simply: “They are my colleagues.”

The question is: Why would a mass marketer such as Sam Adams do small things like this that only touch a handful of their consumers? Where’s the scale, right? Well some might argue that these brilliant marketers realize that their positioning in the market as a legitimate microbrewer means that they must stay close to their roots and do things that the big players find too small. True, but I think Koch and his team are making these “small” efforts first and foremost because they want to. After all, Koch first brewed Sam Adams in his kitchen sink, and today they continue to behave like a bunch of passionate believers who want to make great-tasting beer. That’s just the easiest way to do the right thing for the business.

By sticking to their brand purpose and retaining a personal, hands-on engagement in the product, the marketing stuff comes naturally, and Sam Adams continues to be one of the best big brands in beer. Actually, with Anheuser-Busch’s takeover by foreign-based InBev, Sam Adams is now the largest American-owned brewery. I can think of no better beer representative for our country, and no better representative of where I hope our country’s brand marketing is heading next.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Contests, purpose | 1 Comment »

FedEx Adds Value on Facebook

Wednesday, August 5th, 2009

My good friend and our Chief Technology Officer, Mike Wilson, is one of the smartest people I know. One of the comments he made at a presentation last year is that FedEx should have gotten into the email business long before Yahoo! or Hotmail. His belief is that FedEx should have followed its higher-level purpose—to transfer information with speed and security. Instead of allowing a few guys in a garage to build ad-supported email with all of its limitations and spam, FedEx could have done it right, earlier. At best it might have created a powerful new revenue model, and at worst created a meaningful marketing tool for millions of people. Alas, FedEx thought it was in the physical package delivery business, and now it must pay other people to put banner ads on the websites of Yahoo! Mail. But I recently discovered one way that FedEx is attempting to make up for this miss.

I was recently reading a great paper by one of my favorite bloggers, advergirl (aka Leigh Householder), and William Faust from the Design Management Review. The article, “Get Real and Prosper: Why Social Media Demands Authentic Brands,” is an outstanding read. In fact, there are several case studies that show Marketing with Meaning in action. One in particular that I discovered was that of a FedEx Facebook app that was launched in May 2008. Called “Launch a Package,” this was a value-added way for the brand to engage with the large social-media platform. From their article:

One of the limitations of Facebook is that you can’t attach a document or image to a message the way you can in email. So FedEx built an application called Launch a Package that met that need and fit its core brand perfectly. Members who download the application can add an attachment to any Facebook message in one click.

The results were immediate: 100,000 installs in 48 hours and more than 50 percent of users returning more than 10 times after install. The tool became the first branded app to hit #1 on Facebook’s Most Active page.”

An Adweek article on the tool went on to show that two weeks after launch the app had been installed by 258,000 members and was actively used by 15,000. Steve Pacheco, director for advertising at FedEx, seemed to recognize the need for the brand to think bigger about delivering on its brand purpose through digital communication: “We want to own virtual delivery. It’s the next logical step for FedEx.”

Alas, what could have been a great launching pad for more meaningful marketing seems to have fallen apart for FedEx. According to the app’s page, only a little over a year after its launch there are now only 723 active users of the Launch a Package app. There are only 28 reviews, and the average review is 2.6 out of 5.0 stars.

What happened? I don’t know for sure but can guess a few things. First, it’s not the greatest user experience as a tool. The priority of design seemed to be on marketing experience, with Flash actions, virtual gifts, and a form to fill out that looks like a package. While cool, these bells and whistles distract from the core utility of the tool. I also disliked the limit on file size and inability to send .zip files. So likely many people tried the app a few times, had a so-so experience, and moved on.

The second limit I see is that this seems to have gotten little focus from the core FedEx business. It’s a fun tool from the marketing department and advertising agency, rather than a real “product” of FedEx—and certainly not something that is “owning virtual delivery” today. I’d bet it would be much better if the entire company got behind using digital tools to better transfer important communication.

I hope that this experiment has led FedEx to do more thinking and strategizing around social media, digital services, and meaningful marketing. My fear is that the rapid decline in usage of the Facebook app frightened the company away from doing more. Either way, this makes a great case study for those of us trying to figure out how to make marketing meaningful in the social-media space.

Tags: ,
Posted in Applications, Needs Improvement, Uncategorized, purpose | 1 Comment »

Book Review: ‘It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For’

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009

Last week I trekked down to Austin, Texas, to spend some time with a fellow leader in the campaign to elevate the role of advertising, Roy Spence. I first wrote about Roy in a blog post a few months back. Our initial phone conversation then led to this trip to continue the dialogue about how we might partner up. We were able to spend some great time with Roy, his Chief Purposologist and co-author Haley Rushing, and a few other quality folks from their agency, GSD&M Idea City. We met the day after it was announced that Roy was handing his CEO role over to Duff Stewart, and he seemed extremely charged up to focus on the new Purpose Institute.

The purpose of this post is to convince you to purchase Roy and Haley’s book, It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For. Overall, it’s a must-read if you are a fan of this Marketing with Meaning concept and wish to drive your organization and yourself to higher-level work.

I believe the act of proclaiming a Brand Purpose is really the best way to start down the path of creating meaningful marketing. When a brand makes the decision of “Why We Exist,” it becomes much simpler to begin thinking about how you can create marketing that people choose to engage with, and marketing that itself improves people’s lives.

What is particularly insightful about It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For is that it provides an inside view of some of the most successful businesses in terms of profit and purpose. The advertising agency Roy founded out of college, GSD&M, has been fortunate enough to attract and help shape great companies such as Walmart, Southwest, Whole Foods, and BMW, all of which have stayed close to a higher-level purpose. For example, the purpose of Southwest is to “democratize air travel,” and BWM exists to “enable people to experience the joy of driving.” I agree that being on the inside of an advertising agency offers the chance to see “lifetimes” worth of the good and bad of many organizations. It’s very easy to understand which companies “get it” and which are hopelessly lost, no matter what print ad or website we create for them.

Roy and Haley weave decades of personal history together with these brands’ most recent activity, and provide a nice step-by-step guide for brands to uncover their own purpose. There are a few specific sections of the book that I underlined heavily:

Life Is Too Short to Work Without Purpose

This is something I first began thinking more about after reading The 4-Hour Workweek. In this book, author Tim Ferriss encourages cubicle dwellers to escape the office, become Internet entrepreneurs, and focus on personal hobbies for the rest of their lives. He almost looks down on for-profit, 40-hour-a-week work. I enjoyed his book in many ways, but believe that a full workweek itself can and should be rewarding and exciting. Roy and Haley remind us that:

Bookstore shelves are now fully stocked with books about finding your personal purpose. But the reality is the vast majority of your time is consumed by your work life… Whether you’re a CEO or a secretary, the majority of your time, energy and talent will be spent in the service of your work. So why not make it worthwhile?”

They go on to suggest that you find the work you love best by paying attention to “the meeting on the calendar that you’re actually excited about going to” and to “notice when your heart speeds up just thinking about an issue.” In other words, finding personal purpose is the first step in moving your company or your career toward brand purpose.

Great Takeaways from Whole Foods

While I enjoyed the deep case studies on Walmart and Southwest Airlines, I especially enjoyed two lessons from Whole Foods. First, there’s the fact that the company continues to commit to donating 5% of its sales on five days a year to nonprofits chosen by each local store. Stock analysts and some investors complain about so much of Whole Foods profits going to charities, but who can argue with a 3,000% increase in stock value over 14 years?

A second interesting observation is that Whole Foods admits that it is never going to be perfect in delivering on its Vision Statement, as seen in its “Declaration of Independence“:

We do not believe [the Vision Statement] always accurately portrays the way things currently are at Whole Foods Market so much as the way we would like things to be. It is our dissatisfaction with the current reality, when compared with what is possible, that spurs us toward excellence and toward creating a better person, company, and world. When Whole Foods Market fails to measure up to its stated Vision, as it inevitably will at times, we should not despair. Rather let us take up the challenge together to bring our reality closer to our vision. The future we will experience tomorrow is created one step at a time today.”

(On a side note, after meeting with the folks at Idea City we headed across the street to the Whole Foods headquarters store. We spent about two hours exploring the amazing selection and had a wonderful lunch in the seafood cafe.)

Conclusion

One of my favorite passages in the book is the challenge for people to be willing and able to communicate their personal+brand purpose into the dinner-party conversation. Imagine the usual first exchange when you meet someone new and he or she asks, “What do you do?” You know you’re onto something when you can proudly proclaim the higher-level drive of your work. For me, the answer is: “I create marketing that improves people’s lives.”

What’s yours?

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Agency Marketing, book, purpose | 1 Comment »

Value Tips from Food Retailing Forum

Monday, May 4th, 2009

I received a lot of attention from my recent posts about how to improve the value equation through meaningful marketing, so I assume that this is a very relevant topic for readers and Googlers. A few weeks ago, our friends at MVI hosted a Future of Food Retailing Forum here in Cincinnati. I was unable to attend the event, but one of our star Client Service Managers, Andrea Bollin, provided our agency with a nice summary of the event, which hit again and again on consumers’ value needs.

The main purpose of the conference was to hit many topics that are useful for vendors and suppliers of all types that serve retailers—and we attended to get more perspective for Bridge Worldwide’s major food retail client, Kroger. There were two main takeaways from the two-day conference that hit on both value and meaningful marketing:

1. “The New Premium”—The concept of what consumers expect in a “premium” brand is shifting dramatically due to the economic downturn, a concern for environmental sustainability, and an overall desire by people to make a more positive impact in their purchases. According to MVI, the new premium brands are transparent and have a focused purpose. New premium brands also never mention price, but instead show added value through their social, sustainability, and health/wellness contributions. In a world where premium brands are less and less better performing than low-cost store brands, they must differentiate along other lines that people care about. I’m very excited to see the future of marketing when leading brands innovate and create marketing along these lines.

2. Teach People New Skills—One of the conference sessions shared some emerging themes in consumer messaging. One specific example is the opportunity for brands to help consumers learn or rediscover new skills. A few things are driving this: (1) People are increasingly interested in “doing it yourself” to save money and enjoy an experience, but they need to learn how; and (2) young adults today spent less time in the kitchens, yards, and garages with their parents learning how to bake a cake, landscape, or change the oil, respectively, so there is a skill gap waiting to be filled. Teaching a skill is one of the big opportunities for brands that I explore in the upcoming book, using examples such as Home Depot’s in-store classes. The idea is that brands can close a sale and earn long-term loyalty by helping people better themselves.

Overall, it’s great to see more and more industry minds triangulating on the importance of marketing that itself adds to the value equation by improving people’s lives.

As a special offer to readers of this post, you can read Andrea’s brief summary of the event by downloading it here.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Achievement, Cause Related, Conferences, Sustainability, Uncategorized, Value, purpose | 1 Comment »

Book Review: The Brand Bubble

Friday, April 3rd, 2009

As I’m sweating the final details to prepare for a launch of our book this fall, probably the last thing I should be doing is reading other authors’ books right now. But after meeting John Gerzema, co-author of The Brand Bubble and Chief Insights Officer of Young & Rubicam, I felt compelled to find the time. One benefit of being on airplanes a lot lately is that there’s no shortage of time for catching up on my reading. In this case I was rewarded richly with a killer book that dovetails nicely with our Marketing with Meaning concept.

Like any compelling story, The Brand Bubble begins by scaring the hell out of the reader. In trolling through historic BrandAsset Valuator information, which tracks consumer opinion on thousands of brands, the authors found that nearly every major brand has seen declining equity value in recent years. They pair this with data that suggests people are much less brand loyal and are more indifferent to advertising than ever before. But what’s even scarier is that the valuations of brands in stock price have steadily increased (even allowing for the recent nosedive in stocks). Hence, the “brand bubble” is the next to pop.

Through the rest of the book, Gerzema and Ed Lebar focus on an analysis of the handful of brands in their database that are growing brand value today. The key factor that winners share is energy; in the brand sense, energy is “the consumer perception of motion and direction in a brand.” And just as a shark must keep swimming to stay alive, brands must keep moving forward to maintain their energy and strength.

These brands create a constant sense of interest and excitement. Consumers sense they move faster, see farther, and are highly experiential and more responsive to their future needs. In terms of our correlations, we saw a definite pattern: the more energy a brand has, the greater the consideration, loyalty, elasticity, pricing power, and brand value (as a percentage of firm value) it commands. This unique measure establishes a direct link between brand momentum and creativity, financial earnings, and stock performance.”

Using the BrandAsset Valuator as a guide, the authors walk the reader through examples of these high-energy brands (such as Lego, IKEA, Virgin, and Whole Foods) and share the keys to success in bringing forward momentum to your brand.

Overall, I found The Brand Bubble to be one of the smartest business books I have read in some time. It is intellectually challenging without being wonky. It hits on very big points but remembers to bring things down to the level of a brand manager trying to deliver his cases each week. I believe any marketer of big brands must read this book and get her entire team to do so as well.

I also was happy to see clear consistency with the direction of Marketing with Meaning. This book does a lot to promote the idea of “purpose brands”: Decide what higher-level goal or reason for existence that your brand has, and then choose marketing accordingly. Once your brand has dedicated itself to a purpose, the next step is to create meaningful marketing that delivers on that purpose.

So order The Brand Bubble today and buy copies for your entire team. It’s great reading to prepare you for our book launch in the fall.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized, book, purpose | 2 Comments »

Two Office Spaces That Inspire

Monday, March 16th, 2009

In the past few weeks I’ve had a chance to reconnect with two old friends who recently joined two of the coolest brands in business. Both are having a blast creating terrific products with energetic, passionate coworkers. And both companies are doing very meaningful marketing. In each case, the moment I stepped into their offices, I noticed that the environments pay off the brand as much as the product, and likely help the people behind the brands step out of the old ways and fashion a new approach. Let me share my experiences at OXO and Red Bull.

The OXO brand is a small, high-growing business. A few choices in OXO’s office help to direct its people and thus both product and marketing. The company makes high-quality, very well-designed kitchen tools. You will find OXO products often at Target, where the brand has helped defined the unique “cheap chic” that powered this retailer’s growth and customer passion. For a great view of the company’s belief in design, check out this video of its President, Alex Lee, from a recent Gel conference.

The OXO office is headquartered in the neighborhood of Chelsea in Manhattan, considered one of the trendiest and artiest neighborhoods in the city. When I walked into the building I noticed several attractive 6-foot or taller women speaking in multiple languages. I later learned that this was the Starrett-Lehigh Building, home to fashion designers and modeling agencies, as well as Hugo Boss, the School of Visual Arts, and Martha Stewart’s brand. This setting helps OXO attract and inspire the great designers that it needs in order to stay on the shelves of Target and in the hearts of its consumers.

Inside, I found the OXO office to fit well with my impression of the brand: lots of clean, clear space, a large kitchen, and a group of people who fit a combination of artist and architect. But I was specifically drawn to one of the walls of the office, where there was a vast collection of various gloves hung upon it. I learned that Alex Lee asked employees to bring in gloves that they found discarded on the streets of New York City, and he posts them on the wall to remind everybody that they are here to design quality tools for real people with many diverse needs.

 

It is a very interesting visual reminder of the purpose of the OXO brand. It does not exist to “move product” but rather to be a helpful part of people’s lives.

My second interesting trip a few days later was to the North American headquarters of the Red Bull brand. As you no doubt know, Red Bull is a beverage brand that has charged onto the scene in the past few years with a rebellious, action-oriented attitude. The brand is a huge believer in the power of events as marketing tools, as it owns several motorsports and soccer teams, helps big-name athletes train, and has created events such as the Red Bull Flugtag.

Red Bull HQ is located in Santa Monica, CA, nestled close to the shore and near media companies such as MTV and Yahoo!—a very inspiring location if you love the outdoors but want to hit the hottest clubs in L.A. in the evenings. That’s a bit of what the Red Bull brand seems to wish to be—powering your morning mountain bike ride, and then keeping you up at the bar scene until 3 a.m.

The Red Bull building itself has what you would expect if you are a true fan of the brand: a gigantic wooden skate ramp that the entire building seems to revolve around.

In doing some digging online I discovered the company hosts skating events at its office on the weekends, of course. A giant 40-foot glass door can be raised or lowered to make the ramp accessible for the inside and outside (more details here and here if you’re fascinated like I was). Clearly it focuses perspective on what your brand stands for when there is a massive skate ramp over your head. And if that doesn’t do the trick, try to ignore the guy pedaling his bike down the hallway, or the handful of people who refuse to wear shoes of any kind. It’s the combination of rebellion and athletics that the brand stands for in our hearts and minds.

These are only two examples of the many great product and marketing companies in the world. But many others are out there. Go back to the coolest companies you have visited and I’m sure you will agree that their office space often lives up to the brand buzz. Another example I love is Pampers, which years ago chose to follow a purpose of improving babies’ development. A key step in this shift was to completely redesign the office space of its employees, decorating it with oversized chairs and brightly colored walls to help people see the world through babies’ eyes.

Perhaps you can do meaningful marketing and design killer products in a boring building with bland conference rooms and cookie-cutter cubes… but I doubt it. At the end of the day, brands are built by the people who work on them. Success starts with convincing your employees that your brand is special, and inspiring them to share that specialness with everything they create.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Organizational Behavior, culture, purpose | 4 Comments »

« Older Entries