Corporate Eye

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Archives for November 2008

11 Phrases That Destroy Brand Innovation

We’ve all sat through meetings where nothing gets done.  For one reason or another, your team is tasked to come up with innovative new brand programs, but one idea after another is shot down. 

Take a look at the 11 phrases that destroy brand innovation below, then ask yourself if you or someone on your team is guilty of saying one (or more) of them.  If so, it’s time to adjust your thinking cap with an eye toward innovation and away from negativity.

1. We tried that already.

This is a big idea killer.  It’s natural over the lifespan of a business that ideas will resurface.  Just because an idea didn’t work in the past, doesn’t mean it can’t be retooled and be a big success in the future.  Consider Apple which was failing in the 1990s only to revive its brand and product line to become a market share threat to Microsoft.  What if Steve Jobs followed the, “we tried that already,” line of thinking?  Would the new Macbook, iPhone or iPod be available today? [Read more…] about 11 Phrases That Destroy Brand Innovation

Retail, redesign and lost visitors

Thinking of redesigning your site?

For major corporates with big websites, that is a huge task, and not something to be undertaken ‘lightly or wantonly’. This is a plea to those people who have to do that redesign …

Please don’t remove functionality. At least, not without replacing it with something that works just as well for the site visitor.

What’s true for the retail site …

Yet another online retailer lost me as a customer today because their site redesign made it too hard to find what I was looking for:

  • they stripped out the ‘order again’ functionality, which gave me the option of reordering from a list of all the products I’d previously ordered, and replaced it with a list of previous orders, which I could open one at a time, to look for the items I’d previously bought. Can I remember whether I chose this product in September or August? Of course not. Am I going to open every order looking for that item? Of course not.
  • so I tried the search box, which came up with one item. Yet I know they sell more than that, which was confirmed when I (eventually) found the right place in the navigation. If you’re going to offer a search feature, please make it comprehensive, and if I’ve spelled the search term wrong, or used the wrong phrase, offer me suggestions for what I might have meant …
  • … especially if your navigation is complex, and it isn’t obvious to the visitor which section to look in.

So I gave up. Shame really, since my visit was triggered by a marketing email from them. Will they measure that as a success, because they got a visit, or a failure because I didn’t make a purchase?

… is also true for the corporate site

Redesigning a corporate site can have a similar effect on the visitor. True, the immediate sale won’t be lost, since the corporate site usually doesn’t handle sales, but the visitor can be just as lost and discouraged as I was this morning.

If you’re going to redesign – which is great, I love a redesign – make sure you don’t lose anything in the process. Especially customers.

Think about all the stakeholders:

  • will job seekers still be able to filter the job listings by location, type of work or keywords? Do you still give them details of potential career paths and training programs?
  • will journalists be able to find decent images, or contact details, as easily, or will it require clicking across to another site and re-registering?
  • will investors still have access to the same charting functionality? How about the calculators?
  • what about accessibility – are all your old features still there?
  • what about csr analysts … will the CSR RSS feed still work, or have all the news items been bundled together now?

And so on – every group of stakeholders will have different features and functionality on your website which they find useful, and would hate to lose. If you’re not sure what are the most valued features, you could try asking your visitors – but your stats may reveal it.

A redesign should be done for the visitors, to make things better for them, just as much as for the company. Don’t make it more difficult for visitors to find what they need.

People will struggle a little with a redesign, at least until they’ve learnt their way around the new site – please give your lost visitors as much help as you can:

  • the 404 page – does that offer suggestions for where we might try next?
  • the search functionality – does that search everything on the site? Can it handle mis-spellings, synonyms and partial phrases? Do the results offer suggestions for what might have been meant?
  • the navigation should be as simple as possible, using visitor-oriented language. If the words, phrases and titles (job and division) you use in-house aren’t the ones in common currency, or are ambiguous, don’t use them on the site, particularly not in navigation. We won’t know what you mean.

Change brings discomfort, even if only a minor unease, though your visitors may eventually be persuaded that the change is for the better – if it is.

Innovative Branding Through Facebook

I found a great article on Trendhunter today that lists 40 Facebook innovations.  Interestingly, many of the innovations are brand promotions from companies such as Coca-Cola, Adidas, Mazda and more.   It just goes to show that the social web should be an integral part of your marketing plan if you want to stay ahead of the curve.

A few brand-related Facebook innovations jumped out as particularly inspiring for future social media marketing campaign planning:

  1. CokeTag: Coca-Cola launched the CokeTag on Facebook that people can use to promote themselves.
  2. Mazda Design Challenge: Facebook users were invited to design a new concept car for Mazda.
  3. Adidas Celebrate Originality brand campaign: This campaign was supported by YouTube and Facebook videos and content.
  4. Mars Snackfood: Using the Facebook Celebrate application, people can give each other virtual gifts like candy bars.  If they give a Mars candy bar, the recipient gets a virtual gift and a coupon for the real thing.
  5. Clinique, Harley Davidson and more use free gifts as ads: When a user sends a virtual gift of a product with your brand name on it, your brand gets a nice bit of advertising!
  6. PETA2: Peta launched a special Facebook group for youth activists.

The possibilities for brands to leverage the social web, including social networking sites such as Facebook, are incredible.  Is your brand on board yet?  Don’t get left behind!

Image: Flickr

Brands Get Noticed with Microsoft Live Search Cashback Program

In a weak economy, consumers are looking for deals.  There are many websites dedicated to providing coupon and discount codes to frugal shoppers, but did you know Microsoft Live Search jumped on the discount bandwagon earlier this year with the Microsoft Live Search cashback program?

The initial purpose of the Microsoft Live Search cashback program was to boost Microsoft’s position in the online search market as well as to make some extra money for Microsoft.  While it’s unknown if Microsoft has reached either of those goals, new data released by Microsoft does show that the Microsoft Live Search cashback program certainly helps advertisers give their brands a boost at a time when consumers want to save money and retail sales are down industry-wide.

According to The Register, eBay has increased its paid search ROI by 50% using the Microsoft Live Search cashback program and ShoeMall.com has seen an increase of 6-times its previous ROI.  Microsoft Live Search claims that 4.5 million consumers use Microsoft Live Search to conduct over 68 million product or brand searches each month.  That’s a lot of targeted exposure for an ad!

Microsoft also claims (via their own study with comScore in 2008) that, “Live Search referred almost 12% of all U.S. commercial online transactions and about 13% of all U.S. online spending among key retail categories in the second quarter.” 

No one knows how accurate that claim is since Microsoft spearheaded the comScore research, but cashback search does seem like a viable brand marketing option that can easily be incorporated into a brand marketing plan.  What do you think?

Image: Flickr

Expose Your Board, Improve Your Corporate Governance

I remember one of my jobs when I had to organize and send the “Board Package” to members of the Board of Directors. Of course we knew their names, saw some of their pictures, heard about some senior management presentations and even knew of some of their characteristics. But, they always seemed elusive and removed. I’m glad to see that in some companies things have changed.

In the interests of improving Corporate Governance transparency, a few enlightened companies are exposing their Boards and their activities. For example Opnext, a high technology company that makes products for Telecom & Datacom. Defense & Security, Medical, Automotive Commercial & Industrial clients. On the Corporate Governance section, there is a comprehensive display of each Board Committee —

Look at the Audit Committee — not only are members identified, but the menu gives you access to descriptions of the Purpose, Meetings and Procedures and Powers and Responsibilities. Another good feature is that if you click on a members name, say Mr. Kendall Cowan, you are taken to an informative display of the composition of all Committees and Mr. Kendall’s background.

Finally, Sun International, gaming, hotel and entertainment company in the Republic of South Africa, on their online Corporate Governance displays a report card of the attendance history of Board members —

Now that is transparency.

Graduate recruitment: a horror story

For sheer entertainment, it’s hard to beat the horror-story themed Norwich Union graduate careers site:

  • more choice than you can shake a zombie at (discussion of their seven business areas)
  • don’t come to a grisly end; avoid a career horror story (an explanation of what is good about joining Norwich Union)
  • share the horror (get one of the scary Norwich Union office monsters for your Facebook/Myspace page)
  • 10 tips on what not to do in a horror film – yes, we all know that you should never go into the basement alone when the ominous music is playing, but it’s good to be reminded. Not directly careers related, but who cares?
  • zombie screensavers, flying bats, scary usb snakes and staplers … and a laptop that eats the careers calendar a page at a time.

Even the text is themed: they refer to the graduate career profiles as ‘escape stories’ from ‘the good guys’, and the various locations that graduates could live in are described in terms of witch burnings, the Black Death, ghosts and murders.

And, best of all, an invitation to film your own horror movie and submit it to a competition via YouTube to win the best 25 horror films of all time. Now that’s a prize I’m sure many students would love to win.

From an apparently staid industry, this is an entertaining site that goes some way towards changing the perception of the industry – and that has to be a good thing.

One question though: it doesn’t seem to be highlighted on the main corporate Aviva site (though there is a link to the Norwich Union Careers section from the Aviva Careers section), and I think that is a missed opportunity.