College and University Branding

I am the proud mother of twin daughters, who happen to be in their senior year in high school. Anyone who has gone through the college search process in the last few years is well-aware of the marketing prowess demonstrated by even the most unknown colleges. If you haven’t experienced it, you would be amazed.

Some of this we brought upon ourselves. As neither daughter seemed to comprehend the importance of good grades, we began visiting colleges after their freshman year–hoping to give them an inspiring glimpse of why exactly they were in college prep schools. Those first tours did not have the desired effect. In fact, they might have boomeranged. But not surprisingly, those early schools began to contact us regularly. Impressive follow-up.

Then my husband discovered the book, “Colleges That Change Lives“, which is a cottage industry unto itself. The book is terrific, uncovering some of the best, smaller schools that connect with their students in meaningful ways. The book came first, then the schools seemed to capitalize on it, and thus a specialized college fair was born. My husband and daughters attended one, and at the Cornell College booth, the recruiter knew of their great-aunt Geneva, who had been an renowned English professor there for 40 years. Then they visited the Ohio Wesleyan University booth, where the recruiter had been a classmate of my husband’s (back then a ne’er do well) brother, and remembered him well and fondly. Each school was more impressive than the next. Now the girls were starting to “get it”. What is so interesting about this group of schools is that they have, in effect, created a branded class that in total begins to challenge the commonly accepted top tier of schools.

As a brander, I applaud them. As a mother, I realized that many of them were beyond the academic reach or geographic interest of my daughters. And so we continued to search.

Today’s college fair (if you live near a large city) is an amazing experience. It’s like a trade show, but what is interesting is that everyone plays on an even field. Each school has a table. What they do with their table is up to them, but there is no change to create a fancy two story, over the top, booth. Business could learn a great deal from the “sales” efforts of the recruiters. The best of them have attended the school they recruit for, and they provide detailed, insightful and personal information.

Another great resource is “America’s Best Colleges for B Students“. It’s not as rigorously researched as CTCL, but there is helpful information about how and where students may access academic support and get the tools for success. We found several intriguing schools, some of which cross-referenced with CTCL, which made them even more interesting.

The best schools understand how 17-year olds today communicate, which is not always in a formal interview or a formal essay. Most have FaceBook pages, and they communicate via email–and direct phone calls. Again, this is evidence of total focus on the target audience.

We are far from done. What were the memorable experiences? High Point University, whose president is a businessman who has both a vision and a deep understanding of marketing. It may look glossy, but it is not fluffy. A surprise finalist is McDaniel College, which is both a CTCL and a “B Student” school. The information session purposely had no fancy PowerPoint or video, just an incredibly intelligent and articulate representative who focused on the school’s commitment to the holistic education of each student. Instead of being put off or intimidated by the academic excellence, my daughter found herself challenged and insprired by it. Bravo!

Right now, we are in the thick of it. The phone rings nearly every day with a recruiter or student representative from a college. Our mailbox is overloaded with post cards and brochures.

If you are a marketer, just think of the challenge. There are the Ivies, the Big Ten, the major State Universities. But there are thousands of schools under the radar, all trying desperately to stand out from the pack. The best have a deep sense of who they are, their heritage, and their vision for the future. The remainder have bought into expensive marketing communications programs, but they still have far to go. As many people say, “There is a college for everybody.” Some make their case far better than others.

How To Start A Business Without Really Trying

About two months ago, I was driving my car on my way to the garden store, and a little voice in my head said, “I don’t want to work for anyone anymore.” I don’t get urgent messages from my inner self all that often, so it seemed important that I think hard about that.

On the surface, I had a pretty flexible situation. I was a freelancer/contract worker at a small brand consultancy. Given the economic climate, I had recently been exploring alternative opportunities, both in consulting and corporate marketing. Nothing really inspired me. And the place where I worked had a cool name, and I had spent the past year doing nothing but represent myself behind that name. That had been a big, serious commitment. And I really liked the guy I was working with. But.

On a Monday, I “quit”. And then I started to think that I didn’t want to be one of those people who just had a business card with my name on it. I’m a brand consultant, after all! I wanted to look–and be–professional.

So I started thinking about setting up an LLC. The web, as always, provided a massive amount of information, especially about the relative merits of the LLC versus being simply “self employed”. And there were lots of companies out there that would do the paperwork for me, for what seemed to be not a lot of money. After some comparison price checking, I selected Incorporate Fast. They lived up to their name!

The major challenge, of course, was the name. Naming is terribly hard because it seems like every real word has been taken. But my little voice reminded me that the word “synthesis” was representative of what I do, and kind of intriguing. I tried to register “Synthesis Group”. Sadly, although it was clear in New York State, the US Tradmark Office said it was too close to “Synthesis International Group”. Happens all the time. Not to be deterred, I decided to amend it slightly to “Synthesis Plus”. Bingo! A real word that wasn’t just my name, that could be registered!

A friend of mine, who has had his own business for years, told me that I now needed a “hosting service” that would give me an email address and domain. He recommended Network Solutions. I found them online, and once again, after putting yet another significant charge on my credit card, we were underway. Then, the dreaded search for a domain name. Can you believe it? Both SynthesisPlus.com and SynthesisPlus.net were totally available for the princely sum of $9 each. Needless to say, I scooped them up.

Upward and onward to the need for a computer. We have four computers in the house, but not one of them could really be used exclusively for my work. Plus I had been working on a Mac for 8 years, and our best computers were PCs. Thanks to my husband’s research, I found a great company in Oregon, PowerMax, that sells used Macs. I managed to find one that didn’t totally break the bank, and put in the order.

I will not bore you with the horror of trying to install an upgrade of our existing Windows for Mac software. Suffice it to say that it didn’t work, and if I wanted help from Microsoft, then I would have to pay to even speak to a human being. Since I had ordered iWork with my Mac, I decided to try to live Microsoft free. Yes, it can be done!

While all this was happening, I was suddenly getting calls about some potential work. I had a name, but no logo, and no templates for documents, and no existing boilerplate credentials, and no past proposals that I could turn to. The Mac Pages, which is their version of Word, was a lifesaver. It lacks some of the technical functionality of Word, but (of course), it creates much more beautiful documents. It’s also very easy to save as Word or Powerpoint so that those trapped in Microsoft can read my documents, and when they send their docs to me, it’s a breeze to swap them out to iWork.

It’s exactly 4 weeks since I first decided to create an LLC, and I have three proposals outstanding. I have some fabulous logo designs to choose from, and a sense of accomplishment and new-found energy that surprises and delights me.

There is much more to be done, of course, like get a website up and running, decide how long I want to work from home, and if I want to hire people to work with me, but that will come in time. Now, excuse me, I have to get back to work.

G.M. Yet Again–Thoughts on Brand Architecture and Corporate Branding

GM recently announced that it will remove its “G.M. Mark of Excellence” logo from all car models.

Let’s see. By my reckoning, it took about 4 years (2001 to 2005) for corporate to persuade its individual car brands to attach the supplemental logo to its cars. It stuck around for about 4 years (2005 to 2009). We will see what they do four years from now. My bet is that it stays off.

What went wrong? This is a case where the intentions were good, but perhaps not fully thought out.

As I have said before in other posts, GM is a “holding company” structure. This is totally different from any other car company, because all of the rest of them share a model name with the corporate parent. 

My guess is that GM was reacting to Ford’s “Quality is Job One” campaign, and wanted to make a similar claim. It may also have wanted some economies of scale in advertising–promoting different marques in the same ads. 

But no matter what GM’s “corporate brand” message may have been, there was no real way to reinforce it visually. Well, actually there was a way. They could have created one master template for all collateral material and showroom signage that made GM more prominent. Then they would have needed to pour a lot of money into it. Not a likely scenario! So, they created a (relatively) tiny logo to be placed on all vehicles. This undoubtedly caused consternation among the different car brand managers and designers in terms of where to put the darn thing. Nowhere prominent, that’s for sure! A car with two logos just makes no sense.

As far as I can see, the only role for the GM corporate brand is among shareholders, employees, government officials, and the media. That’s the way it’s supposed to be when you are a holding company. Since GM is the only such automotive company with that structure, it must be kinda lonely out there.

Why Is The UK More Enlightened About Employee Engagement?

This is a question that has nagged at me for well over a year. So, when I read “Engaging for Success”, a report commissioned by the UK Secretary of State, my idle curiosity turned to amazement and awe. Consider the forward by Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills:

A recession might seem an unusual time for such reflection – in fact, the opposite is the case. Because Britain’s economic recovery and its competitive strengths in a global economy will be built on strong, innovative companies and confident employees, there has never been a more important time to think about employee engagement in Britain. 

This 150+ page report was authored by David MacLeod and Nita Clarke. It is extensively researched, and offers fascinating insights and recommendations. What is most impressive, however, is that it focuses on the tangible and quantifiable business links between engaged employees and business success.

Here in the US, as a lonely traveler seeking to provide enlightenment to companies, I have led numerous brand engagement programs. This is not the same as “classic” engagement because instead of working with Human Resources, I work with Marketing or Corporate Communications, and the focus is on brand strategy and execution. Historically,  my clients have rarely wanted anything to do with Human Resources or their programs. The opposite is also true. Many large companies have established “employer brands” programs that focus on recruitment and retention–and ignore the external brand.

But I haven’t seen the kind of holistic perspective on engagement as expressed by MacLeod and Clarke here in the U.S. Lisa Wojtkowiak, who specializes in employee research for ORC, says that the most exciting statistical research is being done out of their London office. There is finally concrete support for the Sears service-profit chain model, with other companies showing similar correlations between engaged employees and greater profitability.

Why does the UK get it and U.S. companies do not? Here are some theories:

1. The intangible value of engaged employees is not well-understood or quantified by financial executives.

2. Human Resources and Marketing have rarely, if ever, partnered together. Each have their own models, budgets, programs, KPIs, and preferred vendors, and sharing may mean loss of the power inherent in owning data. (As I understand it, HR executives wield much more financial power in the UK).

3. In many UK corporations, there is an officer who is in charge of employee engagement, and this person has access to the CEO. In the US, similar roles tend to be put under Human Resources, with little power or budget.

4. Maybe the UK workforce is just less mobile than the U.S. It’s much harder to lay people off, and with a greater investment in long-term employees, it may heighten the need to develop active, meaningful engagement programs.

I think we may be at the tipping point here in the U.S., and look forward to more meaningful conversations with my clients in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

Hooray for Kashi

There is a lot to admire about Kashi, both the company and the individual products. 

I was in the grocery store recently, and was impressed to see that Kashi is starting to have some real shelf impact. The cereal variety has expanded and I saw their pilaf in the rice section for the first time. And their products taste good, too.

That’s not unique, of course. Many companies can make the same claim. What is brilliant is the clarity and consistency of their positioning and message: “7 Whole Grains on a Mission”. In a world when companies want to be all things to all people, and wordsmith their messages to death, Kashi is refreshing by comparison. 

Their packaging is attractive and clean, but far from generic. They are obviously focused on healthy eating, but not as lecturers and finger-waggers. Instead, they reflect health infused with fun. The website is simple, easy to navigate, focused on people, community and environment. The tone of voice is modern, straightforward, human, young. They are quite transparent in terms of ingredients and nutritional analysis. So it’s a nice balance of style and substance.

Here’s where the going may get tough, though. How successful can–or should–Kashi become? How many product extensions are in the works? Here is the boilerplate that they use in their press releases:

As a pioneering health food brand, Kashi is dedicated to providing great

tasting, healthy and innovative foods that enable people to achieve optimal health and

wellness. Its products are natural, minimally processed, and free of highly refined sugars,

artificial additives and preservatives.

 

So far, so good. Yet, they are moving into frozen foods, like pizza, which may be pushing the envelope a bit when it comes to the ingredient list. 

 

But compared to what else I see in the supermarket these days, Kashi has a big leg up. They are more expensive than the usual highly processed, sugary cereals that dominate, so it will be interesting to see if their message outweighs the current trend to pinch pennies. My bet is that Kashi will continue to grow. My hope is that they don’t grow too much.

Five Suggestions for Bob Lutz

Dear Mr. Lutz,

Congratulations and condolences on your new role. It’s exciting and fraught with peril. This is the chance to do things right, and show the world that the “new” GM is something more than a hollow, feeble version of the old company. You don’t know me, and you never will, but I would like to offer some free advice. You see, I really want you to succeed. Although I am not an automotive marketing expert, it occurs to me that GM has done nothing but listen to automotive marketing experts for decades, and where did it get you?

So here are a few ideas that you might want to consider as you begin to turn this battleship around:

1. Simplify. What is Chevrolet? There are 19 different nameplates, and that doesn’t count all the hybrid versions, varieties of horsepower and coupes vs. sedans. You have beginner cars and mid-price cars and SUV’s and muscle cars and sports cars. And now you want to bring in the G-8 from Pontiac. Who can keep track of all of those? And who can afford to market all of them? GMC = trucks. I get that. That works better.

2. Think about women. A lot. My 17 year old daughter doesn’t think that cars are for guys. When she turned 16, she spent countless hours on-line researching cars. And she wasn’t just looking for cool colors. She had makes and models down cold. My niece had no fear of a manual transmission, because for her it meant she could get more car for less money. As for me, I am addicted to the Cars section of the Sunday New York Times. Women have huge purchasing power, we know how to do our homework, and we don’t like the perception of  a “boys club”. Make sure you have women in senior roles at each of your ad agencies. Believe me, when campaigns are created by men, for men, it shows.

3. Forge a new path. Don’t say that you want Buick to be “like Lexus”. Maybe the world doesn’t need another Lexus. Explore new categories. Surprise and delight us.

4. Worry less about “crafting messages” and more about having a conversation with your customers and prospects. This is hard for marketers who are used to owning the brand. Let go. It’s a transparent world and one individual opinion–good or bad–can literally be heard around the world. Good brands are essentially tribal. Find your tribes and tap into their enthusiasm. And for heaven’s sake, remember your employees. We have all seen what bitter, overworked, stressed-out employees can do in the airline industry .

5. Think service. Long after the sale, the car owner’s only contact is with service people. To the extent that you can control the service departments at dealerships, ensure that these experiences are good ones. You probably can control your corporate customer care centers, and these should be staffed with people who adore your cars, know how to tap additional resources, deal with cranky or frustrated people, and are empowered to take action when it is warranted.

That’s all for now. Five things is all anyone can remember anyway.

We’re rooting for you!

Warm regards,

Carol

The Five Keys to Employee Brand Engagement

I have a bit of an obsession on the subject of how employees, the corporate brand, and “engagement” all fit together–or not.

First, a definition is in order: Employee brand engagement is the positive emotional connection between employees and their company through the brand, and the extension of the brand experience to customers.

This can be confusing, because in any given company there are so many different initiatives–employee engagement, employer branding, corporate values, marketing taglines, brand attributes and positioning, and so on. It’s a welter of unconnected concepts. In the US, in particular, these different initiatives are “owned” by different silos. HR, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Internal Communications. What I am talking about is the emerging need to connect the dots between employee engagement programs (which tend to be inward-looking) with the delivery of an on-brand experience to customers (the outside view).

In my experience, there are five keys to success in Employee Brand Engagement:

1. Make sure your CEO is on board, and ensure cross-functional commitment  If senior management considers employee engagement something that belongs to HR or Internal Communications, the program will have limited success at best. Employees look to leadership to reinforce messages and behaviors that are introduced in the engagement initiative. And engagement doesn’t happen overnight, so leadership must show commitment strategically and financially. These programs require a close working relationship among HR, Organizational Design, Training, Marketing, Internal Communications. Unless your company has a designated Employee Engagement unit, no one group can “own” the program.

2. Use employee AND customer data to create program metrics Traditional engagement focuses on recruiting and retention. Traditional marketing focuses on sales and customer satisfaction. But there are some exciting new ways to link improvements in employee attitudes and behavior with improved business results. The Sears service-profit model has been around for a long time, but it’s only now that statistical models can bring it to life. And while you’re doing that, uncover other useful metrics. Like an internal communications audit that measures the value  and impact of different types of communications. And a deeper dive into employee attitudes by region, line of business, job band, etc. It’s a noisy world out there in employee-land.

3. Fewer rules, more brand ownership I’m talking to you, marketers! Brand strategy and brand management is often closely held. Just as today’s customers feel a sense of ownership of your brand, so do employees. Employee’s front line experiences are valid and revealing.  Rigid rules, impenetrable “dashboards”, complex messaging matrices are often built in an ivory tower. Let employees challenge your assumptions. Let them tell you about the real world. That is, however, only after you have let them see and hear what real customers and prospects actually say about your company and products. It’s eye-opening on all sides.

4. Market to employees like customers Just as strong advertising programs are cross-platform, a successful brand engagement program must consider each employee touchpoint. Don’t rely on posters and employee publications to do the work. Think viral. Think interactive content. Think hands-on experience. But I have to offer one major caution: often, employees react poorly to “expensive” looking material, particularly in an environment when resources are tight. Be sensitive to your corporate culture.

5. Give your program time We live in a world of instant gratification, but behavioral change doesn’t happen overnight. All too often, my clients dive into a program without realizing that they are committing to a multi-year effort. You don’t just set up a network of brand advocates, and dust off your hands. If you have a network, they will require regular care and feeding. Brand training is the beginning, not the end. If you set up your metrics appropriately, you will have specific check-points along the way.

There is much more to say on this subject, but not today.

The Dowser

The act of dowsing is a useful metaphor for the work of a brand strategist. 

A quick aside, in case you aren’t familiar with this term: Dowsing is a practice related to the location of underground water sources, and, less frequently, metals, ores, gemstones, or radiation fields. Dowsing is generally done with a simple tool–an L- or Y-shaped tree branch, or a similarly shaped metal rod.

Skeptics of this practice abound, of course. I would be skeptical too, except that when I was a small child, my father successfully dowsed a new well when our old one began to deliver more sand than water. I still remember his amazement when he told us that he felt a strong and unmistakeable force, pulling the rod to the ground. He drilled at that point, and water has flowed from it ever since.

So it is when a brand strategist seeks the essential truth of a corporate brand. It is our task to wander across a wide territory of information, data, opinion, emotion, and identify the force that reflects the brand.

Clients can be skeptical of us, too. At this point in my career, I have written hundreds of proposals, and always when I reach the point of explaining how we come to the positioning, I lack the words, the “steps”, the “processes” that so easily describe the rest of our work. It is impossible to estimate in advance. The proper brand idea can bubble up in the first few days of our work, or it can only be wrestled to the ground after months of agony. There is no telling in advance.

But when it is right, there is no mistaking the power that draws us to the ultimate brand idea.

Microsoft Comes Up With A Great Name–Bing

I was very pleasantly surprised to read in today’s New York Times about–not the new search engine from Microsoft–but its choice of a name.  Bing. Naming is one of the very hardest things to do in branding, which I have obviously mentioned before, and I think this one is a winner.

Early commentary on AdAge is negative, but it’s more about Microsoft the evil empire, than it is about anything else. I’m just taking a moment to revel in a real word that is clearly the result of an actual creative brief! Bravo to Microsoft’s marketing team as well as their agency, Interbrand. What is not known is whether or not this is the same team that came up with the original name, the unfortunate “Kumo“. (If so, well, congratulations on a good recovery.)

Clearly, I have not seen the brief, but can infer some of the criteria:

Short, Memorable, “Verb-able”, Evokes a sound, Easily pronounced, Upbeat (?)

For all I know, it took 18 months of torture to come up with the solution. But it doesn’t look that way. It’s a completely non-tortured, non-coined word. It’s a fun word, which is a departure for the massively literal Microsoft.

And yes, of course, the actual product must now deliver on a rather delicious promise that suggests “aha”, “eureka”, etc. But right now, it’s delightful to recognize some very very nice work. 

 

Bank as Ally? A Novel Concept

GMAC announced that it has changed its name to Ally Bank. As someone who has been involved in corporate naming, I have no interest in quibbling over whether or not it is a good or bad name. Naming is notoriously difficult. If the naming team did it right, there would have been specific criteria around the name type, a clear target audience, and, presumably, testing.

Ally is a decent, in fact, a strong word. The meaning is nice. It’s a little uncomfortable at first, because it’s similar to a woman’s name (pronounced all-ey) and of course the weight loss medicine alli. But it seems to have been “clean” in trademark screening and they were able to obtain the domain: www.ally.com.  A simple domain like that is rare indeed. And there is a bank in the Phillipines, Allied Bank, which uses the tag-line, “Your ally. Your bank.” Legal wrangling must have occurred over that one.

The corporate color is a refreshing shade of purple, and the identity is simple, modern, but somewhat sterile and impersonal. The swooshy things don’t do much for me. But they seem to be trying to avoid the usual happy, smiley, diversity-centric Getty images that we see in bank branches, websites and ATM’s.

 

This new bank is doing and saying all the right things: big print, limited product array, differentiation from “traditional” banks, simple interface, etc. And I applaud the company for this.

Ally Bank is different from other banks right now, though, and it’s an important difference: as far as I can tell, Ally is currently in the business of only taking deposits. They are way overextended on the credit side from their heritage product–car loans. I have worked in banking, and believe me, it is much easier to be open, friendly and transparent about deposits than it is about lending money, which requires deep scrutiny of an individual’s creditworthiness. And significant documentation (even if the print is large).  And an ability to say no. And an ability to repossess. Icky stuff. In other words, when it comes to lending, a bank cannot always be an ally. 

I’m not trying to be jaded or negative or skeptical. I just have a memory of another fresh face that was going to reinvent banking by being friendly, open, convenient, and available to all. That bank was called WaMu. We know how that story ended. Let’s hope for a better outcome here.