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Archives for January 2010

Most Relevant Brand Identity Work of the Decade

I love the Brand New blog for its insightful critique of brand identity work.  If you love branding and haven’t checked that blog out yet, then I highly recommend that you visit.  This week, Armin from the Brand New blog published a recap of the most relevant identity work of the decade.  It includes commentary about some of the most interesting identity work unveiled during each year of the first decade of the 21st century.

Here are a few of my favorites:

cingular logo

Cingular — 2000

I miss this logo.  I loved how it was cleverly used in a variety of way to give the brand a personality.

obama_logo

Obama — 2007

The Barack Obama campaign identity was brilliantly put together by Sender LLC and will undoubtedly become the standard for future political campaign branding efforts.  You can read more about the Obama brand strategy here.

walmart_logo

Walmart — 2008

I’m still not in love with the little yellow burst, but I think Walmart has integrated it into its identity well.  The best part of the new Walmart identity, which was unveiled in 2008, is the omission of the dreaded hyphen that used to plague the Walmart name.  I was thrilled to see that hyphen go!

tropicana_packaging

Tropicana — 2008

Sometimes ‘relevant’ can be negative, and Tropicana’s brand identity faux pas brought us exactly that in 2009.  The lesson to learn from the Tropicana packaging mistake is this — don’t fix it if it’s not broken and do NOT replace a solid identity with a Plain Jane, generic package design.

Be sure to check out the entire decade identity recap on the Brand New blog.  What brand identity stories of the past decade resonated with you? What are the most important lessons you learned from other identity work during the past ten years? Leave a comment and share your thoughts!

Tweet for Points – How Clever Brands Tie Social Media to Loyalty Programs

tasti_d-liteHow to effectively use Twitter and other social media tools to boost sales and brand loyalty?

That’s the million dollar question that has companies investing large sums of money on social media marketing efforts.  The recipe to success is still unknown, but while we wait for someone to crack the secret code, we’re able to experiment with a lot of really interesting social media marketing ideas.  One of the most interesting I’ve heard about recently is actually very simple, but it could prove to be very successful.

Tasti D-Lite is a frozen dessert chain.  In an attempt to boost both brand loyalty and brand awareness, Tasti D-Lite is running a program where members of the Tasti D-Lite rewards program can earn additional rewards points by connecting their rewards cards to their Twitter profiles.  Each time a participating customer makes a purchase with his rewards card, a tweet about Tasti D-Lite (along with a link to the brand’s Web site) is automatically published in his Twitter stream.  The program also works with the mobile social networking tool Foursquare.  Members can also post their own updates to their Twitter or Foursquare profiles (separate from the automated updates that occur when they make purchases) to earn additional rewards points.

I think this is a great social media marketing effort that integrates well with offline marketing activities for Tasti D-Lite, and it could work for a wide variety of brands and businesses (both large and small).  I like that the effort works to raise both brand awareness and loyalty at the same time.  It’s this type of creative thinking that reminds us that social media marketing is about more than just talking at people.  You have to engage them and give them something useful and meaningful to want to share and discuss further with multiple audiences.

This social media marketing effort by Tasti D-Lite could integrate seamlessly with ads in various media, special discounts, contests, and other promotions, event marketing, point-of-sale collateral, and more.  It’s a perfect example of creating a simple marketing effort that can grow to surround consumers with your brand messages.

Could you create a similar social media marketing effort for your brand?  It might not be that difficult to do, and the ‘rewards’ could be significant.

What do you think?

Source: BrandWeek; Image: Flickr

What Makes for Effective Investor Relations Sites? Part 9: More on Providing Context for Your Financial Information

The job of a financial analyst is often described as one of assembling a mosaic of information into good investment ideas. Therefore it is often surprising that companies do not do more to help investors find the appropriate pieces of information. Too often the company’s position seems to be, “This is what we are required to disclose. You figure it out from here.” Yet this misses a significant opportunity to help frame your company in the larger context of its industry, markets, trends and external factors affecting performance

In my last post in this series, I pointed out how Total, the French energy company, displays data on external factors such as the dollar/euro exchange rate and the price of Brent crude oil. Today’s example, BT, the telecom company, takes a different tack. As a big, complicated company in a highly regulated industry, what BT does is pull together relevant links to information for investors both from the company’s web site, and from external providers. Of particular interest on their page are the links to Industry Bodies and News and Research, both shown on the bottom of the screen shot below.

BT

By providing links to external information providers, BT is helping to point investors to where relevant information may be found, either about the industry, relevant trade associations, research companies and outside experts. (I’m a bit surprised that I didn’t see a bit of legal boilerplate here disclaiming responsibility for the content of outside sites linked to the BT site, but that may be an abundance of caution on my part.) Even professional investors, when they pick up coverage of a new company or industry, spend a considerable amount of time trying to figure out appropriate sources and benchmarks. so pointing them to good sources is quite helpful. More companies should do this.

In this series:
Previous post: Provide context
Next post: Graphs

Consumers Rank Ford as Most Improved Brand in 2009

Brandindex-chartAccording to a BrandIndex poll, which based results on over 1.2 million online interviews throughout 2009, consumers voted Ford as the ‘most improved’ brand of the year.  Based on those results, I guess it’s not surprising that Ford saw a 33% increase in sales in December, and Ford’s 2009 market share grew by 1% over 2008.

One of the reasons consumers might have a positive view of the Ford brand could be attributed to the company’s refusal to take money from the U.S. government’s TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) in 2009.  Furthermore, the company made some overt attempts to adjust its product line to meet consumer needs rather than focusing on the ‘easy money’ sales automobile manufacturers had come to rely on in the 21st century.

Facebook ranked number two in the BrandIndex list of the most improved brands of 2009, and two more Ford-owned brands, Lincoln and Mercury, took the third and fourth spots.  The top 10 most improved brands are shown in the image above.

BrandIndex also provides an annual consumer ranking of the ‘healthiest’ brands, which are defined as the brands that consumers perceive to be the strongest.  Not surprisingly, brands like Google, Johnson & Johnson, M&M’s, Campbell’s, and other brands that people have learned to trust over the years ranked high in this list.

I’ve written about the importance of building brand trust here on Corporate Eye before, and the BrandIndex ranking supports that line of thinking.  Without a doubt, consumers are looking for brands that offer transparency and trustworthiness in 2010 and the foreseeable future.  At a time when consumer perceptions are easily shaped by the speed of social media conversations, brand managers have to work harder than ever to set, meet and exceed consumer expectations through every marketing touch point.

Consider Ford’s ranking on the BrandIndex list of the most improved brands of 2009.  It’s unlikely anyone would have predicted that ranking a year ago.  However, by setting consumer expectations (not taking the TARP money), meeting consumer expectations (revising the Ford product line), and exceeding expectations (let’s face it, expectations were low a year ago so Ford had a lot of opportunity to exceed them), word spread among consumers both through word-of-mouth marketing and social media conversations, and consumers began to see the brand as being more transparent and trustworthy than some of its competitors.

Take a look at your own business, consumers and competitors.  Knowing that consumers want transparency and trustworthiness from the brands they choose, how can you capitalize on opportunities where you competitors are not delivering on those needs and create the perception that you can deliver on those needs.

Source: BrandWeek

And the Onrec Goes to . . .

 

LV Home

Liverpool Victoria!!  (Better known as LV=.)

After spotting news of the Best Online Career Website 2009 Award handed out at the recent Onrec Expo 2009, I zipped right over to the LV= site, and had a really fun visit.  It’s quirky without being gimmicky—which is tough to pull off.

Onrec (“The Magazine for Online Recruitment Around the World”) didn’t offer any specifics about their award choice, but here’s my reaction to the LiverpoolVictoria site.

What I loved:

It’s loaded with real people.  They do seem to skew toward the extra-attractive, but not so much that it seems staged.  And they are identified with first names and titles, so there’s a feeling of authenticity. Nice touch:  The people are actually interacting with one another—sharing activities instead of just staring into the camera.

It’s tongue-in-cheek.  The banner at the top of the page looks like a bumper sticker, and there’s a continuing theme of lime-green hearts . . . and umbrellas . . .  and—well, you just have to see it.  In general, there’s not a lot of playfulness on corporate websites, because there’s always a risk that not everyone will “get it,” and it doesn’t wear well for long.  (Novelty has to be updated.)  But done right, whimsy can be very engaging.

It’s obvious, but not in a boring way.  That means you can easily find what you’re looking for (so it’s intuitive), yet you don’t feel the need to rush because wherever you are, there’s something of interest.

What I liked:

This was a total surprise.  I usually don’t like sound (music, speech, or otherwise) on a website.  But LV= is awash in sound–peppy music, people talking, etc.–and it seems to work.  I think that’s mainly because the sound supports the visuals and fits the personality of the company.  Plus:  You can easily turn it off, so it’s user-friendly.

The basic options are there, in the sense that you can you can easily locate and apply for vacancies, and you can also create a job alert.

What seemed to be missing:

I saw zero social media connection.  Although that’s not a deal-breaker, it does imply that the site is a bit behind the curve.  It’s interesting that Onrec (which is focused specifically on online recruiting) gave the top award to a site with no Facebook and no Twitter.  But on the up side:  If LV= hasn’t committed to a social media strategy, at least they are not trying to fake it.

I couldn’t find a link to the main corporate site.  That seems odd.

It doesn’t appear you can upload a CV proactively—just for a specific position. However, their description of the employment process (which is clear, helpful and easy to find) indicates that resumes will be compared against all open positions.

That’s the end about LV, but–

Did you notice that the bold words above represent all five vowels?  (Leaving out “sometimes W and Y.”)  They are borrowed from a nice presentation by Matt Adam, Chief Talent Strategist for NAS Recruitment Communications.  Not groundbreaking, but a good summary, plus lots of examples—and the “vowels” offer an easy way to remember some basics of best practice for the Careers website.

Social Networking: What About the Men?

 

Pingdot

Royal Pingdom recently figured up the ratio of men to women on nineteen social network sites, and the results are both not surprising and very surprising.  Also very important for those companies wishing to reach potential job candidates through social media.  Not in absolute terms (as pointed out at the end of this post) but as a reminder of the subtleties involved in social media strategy.

The “not surprising” part is that women significantly outnumber men in the social networking arena.  Even though men were the earliest adopters of online activity and continue to lead in overall Internet use, women have taken more territory in the social networking landscape.  The obvious explanation is that women are (in general) more social than men, and more interested in interpersonal communication—which is true in the aggregate, though not necessarily in smaller slices.

The “very surprising” parts are (a) the extent of the disparity in 2009, and (b) the enclaves that men have apparently chosen to occupy.  Some details:

  • Sixteen out of the nineteen sites included had a majority of women.  MySpace is one of the most heavily female sites, with 65%.
  • The two major sites had almost identical ratios:  Twitter users are 59% female, Facebook 57% female.
  • Men take over on the social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot.  In fact they really take over, with 82% male users on Slashdot, and 66% on Reddit.
  • The most nearly balanced sites are Delicious, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon, and FriendFeed, all with just a slight female preponderance at 52%.

Several Pingdom commenters offer interpretations, pointing out that the male-favored sites are more about competition than sharing—that is, they focus on who’s got “the most” and “the best.”  Also that the often snarky tone of Slashdot lacks feminine appeal (which definitely rings true) and that women may be less interested than men in content labeled “news for nerds.”

There are a number of caution factors to be considered in looking at the Pingdom summary, which is based on data from Google Ad Planner.  First, it uses only U.S. data, which probably cannot be reliably extrapolated to other countries.  Second, the data is not weighted, so “users” can range from people who merely have accounts (but never interact) all the way up to power posters.  And third, many of these sites do not really figure into a recruiting strategy—or at least not obviously, not yet.

One Pingdom commenter points out that the best way to utilize these (and most) statistics about online activity is comparatively.  Excellent advice!  A lot of factors—such as fake profiles—may skew the numbers in absolute terms, but there is no doubt that the general indications are correct:  lotsa men at Slashdot, lotsa women at MySpace, and so on.

Crafting a social networking strategy involves significant challenges—and obtaining the statistical information needed to evaluate various channels is just one of them.  I found the Royal Pingdom info in a fantastic round-up from Jeremy Owyang, pulling together sources for a wide variety of statistical views.  I’ll follow up on a few more and post further highlights soon.