Corporate Eye

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Archives for August 2009

Niche Brands are Hot

I’ve written before here on Corporate Eye about the need to focus your brand strategy, particularly these days when the economy and world around us are tenuous and consumers are looking for a sense of security.  Rather than trying to be all things to all people, the smart brands are contracting and focusing their efforts on their unique value propositions more than ever.

With focus comes a little thing called niche, and it’s hotter than ever. A niche brand is one that is extremely focused and often fills a gap that larger, broader brands don’t view as a threat or big enough opportunity to waste their time on.  A niche brand is likely to appeal to a highly targeted audience, which means two things:

  1. The potential consumer audience is much smaller.
  2. The economies of scale are greater.

In other words, naturally a niche brand is going to appeal to a smaller audience than a broad brand does.  However, within that concentrated target audience who wants and needs the niche brand, sales penetration should be higher, repeat purchases should be higher, and brand loyalty should be even higher.

The marketing world is all about niches these days.  The economy isn’t the only reason for this shift though.  The social Web also played a part in redefining brand strategy by providing a way for people to connect with others about the topics, products, and so on that matter to them most.  While there are millions of Web sites and blogs dedicated to broad topics, there are fewer devoted to specific niches, benefiting from long tail search engine optimization, and building relationships with consumers who are likely to have already expressed an interest in the brand’s message and promise based on their wants and needs.

History also dictates that brands will broaden and then contract, broaden and then retract, and so on — over and over again.  That’s because history is cyclical.  Think about the mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s, creating giant companies that found it nearly impossible to get out of their own way in the 21st century and therefore, cannot get anything done.  Unfortunately, there are far too many corporations that still fit that definition, but many have become victims of their own size and been forced to sell off businesses, declare bankruptcy, accept government bailouts, etc.

The bottom line is that the hot trend right now is niche branding and marketing.  Are you prepared to refocus your brand?  Have you already done so?  Leave a comment and share your story.

Pay to Play–Intern Style


money

Again, I’m a little bit shocked.  First I found out that aspiring government employees pay to have other people write their KSAs, and no one seems to notice.  Now I’ve learned that prospective/recent college grads (or their parents) are paying to obtain desirable internships.

According to a story in the New York Times, there’s a mini-industry growing up around the unpaid internship market.  The options available to aspiring interns range from matching services to auctions (yes, really), but the big boat in this regatta will take the student from resume to interview to offer to apartment, with tourist amenities thrown in.  All for under $10,000!

Companies say they regard this as a useful service, providing them with better interns while reducing the effort required to acquire them.  Parents say they regard it as a worthwhile investment.  And one assumes that the interns consider it a splendid opportunity–and/or a  way to get something of value without a lot of effort.

Is this okay?  On the one hand, market opportunities are always going to be exploited by somebody, and apparently the demand for internships has been sky-rocketing.  In terms of the fairness question–arguably, only better-off students can afford to spend their summers accruing unpaid experience instead of flipping burgers to fund the next semester anyway.  So perhaps it doesn’t make any real difference if the well-funded compete amongst themselves?

But on the other hand . . . students who can afford to pay for play in the internship market probably already have a lot more connections than their less-fortunate peers.  Should they also get the resume boost of a high-value internship–without an asterisk that says “placed by a paid broker”?

Another thought:  The student who gets ushered into an internship (and doesn’t even need to find an apartment or figure out the city map) may not be getting the full benefit of this step toward professional and personal maturity.

To get the placement side of the story, visit this website for a leading provider.  Then, if your company utilizes interns, you might consider these questions:

  • What is the point of the intern program? Free workers, potential employees, community service, or . . . . ?
  • Is the intern program clearly and effectively presented on the corporate website?
  • Do you know when intern candidates are being “packaged”? Does it matter?
  • Would it be more cost-effective for your company to work with an intern broker? Would that be consistent with your program goals?

In truth, I’m not sure whether this is a big deal or I’m just being cranky.  The program I looked at seemed to promise something like summer camp (take your pick–New York, L.A., Las Vegas, Barcelona, Sidney, Shanghai!) with a bonus of “real world” credit for doing unspecified tasks involved with marketing, fashion, television, finance, etc.

So maybe I just want to be an intern!  Or maybe I just want to think bright, hard-working, un-rich young people have an equal chance to do unpaid work in exchange for undiluted experience.


(Thanks to Daniel/borman818 for the “money shot”!)

Carnival: Send the Lawyers on a Long Cruise

Having just returned from holiday, I thought I would continue my tour of FTSE 100 investor relations home pages by dropping in on Carnival Corporation. I find it’s always best to ease back into the work world after a holiday, and what better way than by visiting the site of a company that makes its living by providing cruises for people. What I found, while presentable, had one jarring inconsistency that set my teeth on edge.

Carnival Investor Relations

The investor home page itself is set up in standard fashion, with all the expected links running down the left hand side of the page. It was laid out in such a standard fashion that it caused me to look up at the web address, and sure enough, I was over on a third party provider site. No great sin there, as many companies use third party providers to run their investor web pages these days, but when the site looks just like a lot of other company sites you’ve seen and a number of the links, such as the Event Calendar and the Webcasts/Presentations section, are empty, it causes you to question the commitment the company has to their Investors site.

These were minor indiscretions however, compared to the opening greeting Carnival gives to prospective investors.

You would think that a company that operates in the hospitality industry would know how to give people a friendly greeting. You would be wrong.

Here is the actual verbiage used by Carnival: “Carnival Corporation & plc operates under a dual listed company structure whereby Carnival Corporation and Carnival plc function as a single economic entity through contractual agreements between separate legal entities. Shareholders of both Carnival Corporation and Carnival plc have the same economic and voting interest but their shares are listed on different stock exchanges and not fungible.”

Does that make you feel welcome? Those two sentences were written by lawyers, for lawyers. I will grant you that the information needs to be on the site somewhere, but not as the opening greeting to investors. And what’s with the use of the word fungible? Only lawyers use (or like) that word. My suggestion is that Carnival send the lawyers off on a long cruise somewhere such as the Antarctic and get someone who can write plain English to write a nice warm greeting to investors.

The Procter & Gamble Logo Then and Now

What would people think of the Procter and Gamble brand if the company still used its original logo created when the company launched in 1951?  Take a look at the original logo compared to the current logo below.

procter-and-gamble-logo

The original logo is about as antique-looking as a company can get as far as logo design goes, but would you be surprised to know that this logo was used until the 1980s?  That was when rumors started flying that the image in the logo of the man in the moon looking over 13 stars representing the original 13 colonies of the United States was actually wrought with satanic symbolism, including at least one hidden “666” in the curly beard.

Still, Procter & Gamble fought the satanic symbolism rumors until finally in the 1990s they removed the beard graphic and later moved from a graphic logo to a wordmark using just the P&G that the company has become known as in the 21st century.

Little did P&G know nearly two decades ago when the company finally changed its logo that it would be one of the best things it could do in terms of building its brand.  The P&G logo and brand name today are far stronger than the old name and logo were.  Of course, Procter & Gamble and P&G will always mean the same thing, but in a world of Web 2.0, when people are busy and looking for shortcuts everywhere, it’s great to see a brand story that could have been damaging turn out better than anyone could have hoped.

It just goes to show that rebranding can work, even when it’s not done by choice.  Sometimes a brand just needs to be updated or needs a kick in the pants, so to speak.

Summer Reading


beach-book-1

Suppose you wanted to take some books to the beach and catch up on the latest ideas and the best practices in corporate website design, employer branding, and online recruiting . . .

Okay, use your imagination!  You might want to do that, and if so, here are some candidates for your bookbag:

The latest edition of a great annual showcase, American Corporate Identity 2008, presents examples from companies that are noteworthy in a variety of categories, from logos to websites to print to packaging.  You can also see examples and browse other volumes online at American Graphic Design & Advertising.

Though I haven’t read Brand for Talent:  Eight Essentials to Make Your Talent as Famous as Your Brand, I respect the authors (brand experts Mark Schumann and Libby Sartain), and I like their rationale for using the much-abused term “talent”:

While the employer brand must resonate with people on the inside of a business, the talent brand must attract segments of workers to join, stay, and engage.

FYI:  There’s a Kindle edition for those lucky folk who can take a thousand books to the beach in one bag.

A book I have read (and love) talks about branding in a much more general sense.  The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes, by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson, takes a story-based approach to the topic of brand creation and offers fascinating advice that can be applied to any aspect of the enterprise.   At the very least, it will make you think about the topic in a new way.

On the cutting edge, I like the looks of Get Connected:  The Social Networking Toolkit for Business, by Starr Hall and Chadd Rosenberg.  It’s not even published yet (forthcoming September 1, according to Amazon) and I’ve never heard of the authors.  But the table of contents covers all the right material and the approach looks both organized and interesting.

Barely off the press is The Green Workplace: Sustainable Strategies that Benefit Employees, the Environment, and the Bottom Line, by Leigh Stringer. Chris Hood, Program Manager for the HP Workplace, says “This is one of the most useful books I have ever read,” and Alicia R. Martin, Sustainability Manager for Sprint, calls it “A must-read for any company, regardless of its place on the green spectrum.”  So I’m cautiously optimistic.

And–you can download a free excerpt at The Green Workplace blog.

If you’d rather close your eyes and tune into the MP3 player, download an interview with Talent Synchronicity’s mastermind, Susan Burns.  Or you could watch this video interview with Susan on your netbook.

Let me know if you love/hate any of these items, and/or if you have other suggestions for summer reading!


(Thanks to Giulio Nepi for capturing the great feel of reading at the beach.)


Banks Shift to a Brand Modesty Strategy

dom-perignonThere was a time in the not so distant past when financial companies flaunted their money like the latest ‘it’ celebrity in Hollywood.  They’d plaster their brand names all over event venues and pay to sponsor pricey dinners and parties in special tents at the hottest events in town.  Since the financial meltdown in the U.S., those days are over.  Or are they?

Despite a bill that sits in Congress that is intended to put an end to banks that received bailout money from sponsoring pricey events, the practice continues — but in a much more hush-hush fashion.

According to an article in The New York Times, banks aren’t steering clear of high price-tagged event sponsorships entirely.  Instead, the new cool thing to do is to pretend they don’t have money to spend on those events at all.  The new cool thing is for financial brands and the executives that represent them to pretend that they’re just like average consumers who can’t sell their homes, are in fear of losing their jobs, and have no health benefits and no money saved for their kids’ college tuitions or their own retirements.  Do you believe them?

Of course, the leaders of these newly modest brands know that no one is going to buy their feigned brand positioning strategy, and it’s hard to give up the pricey event sponsorships where they can schmooze with their friends clients over caviar and Dom Perignon.  So what are they doing to keep the modesty charade going?  They’re still sponsoring pricey events but they’re leaving their corporate and brand signage at home.  Sometimes they’re even going so far as to, dare I say it, share event space to appear more frugal.

So what does this new trend say about these brands?  At a time when consumers are looking for trust in brands, feigning modesty seems to fly in the face of everything consumers want and need, particularly from financial institutions.  What do you think?

I want my bailout money back.

Image: Flickr