Corporate Eye

...compare, compete, excel

Archives for September 2014

The Evolution of the Coca-Cola Brand

coca-cola signJust last week, I published an article here on the Corporate Eye blog about leveraging company culture for brand storytelling. A couple of days later, Fast Company published a perfect example of using brand history for storytelling that I want to share with you today.

In its 2-minute and 11-second video, the team at FastCo Studios tells the 128-year history of Coca-Cola using words and images.

It’s not just a great example of brand storytelling, it’s also a great example of visual storytelling through short-form, social content. The video is brief, laser-focused, fun, interesting, and highly shareable.

You can take a look at the video below.

What makes this video work so well? As a brand storytelling device, it includes two ingredients that brand marketers should take note of:

1. The Nostalgia Factor

The video includes some well known stories from the history of the Coca-Cola brand like the 77-day lifespan of New Coke and the iconic “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” commercials. The video is filled with nostalgia that will surely evoke emotional reactions from many viewers.

For those of us who are old enough, did you remember that Kim Carnes and Michael Jackson appeared in Coke commercials? Sure, we remember the Michael Jackson hair-on-fire Pepsi commercial, but how many people remember his Diet Coke commercial?

2. The Trivia Factor

At the same time, the video includes some lesser known facts that make viewers sit back and say, “I didn’t know that!” For example, did you know that the original Coca-Cola recipe, one of the most guarded trade secrets in the world, was originally developed by a pharmacist? Did you know that the pharmacist’s bookkeeper designed the Coca-Cola logo using his own handwriting? Did you know that Coke sales doubled during the 1920s prohibition in the United States? These aren’t boring facts like how many awards the company has won or who its executives are. These facts are actually interesting, and that’s why they work so well in this video.

As brand marketers, we have to step back from the companies behind the brands that we promote and look at the brand story from consumers’ perspectives. What parts of the brand story would actually be interesting to consumers? Effective brand storytelling needs to tell the stories that consumers want to hear, not the stories that the company wants to tell. While these two things could be the same, they are far more often not.

Image: anyjazz65 licensed CC BY-2.0

Dealing with unsuccessful candidates – without damaging your brand

unsuccessful-candidate
Being rejected in life is a normal thing that happens to everyone once in a while.

It’s not much different in the corporate world. I remember when I received rejection letters in the past. Somehow the content was always very similar, they included words such as “unsuccessful”, “unfortunately”, “unable to consider you for this position”, “regret to inform you” etc. That’s surely something that nobody enjoys reading. Therefore, I would like to provide you with some tips on proper etiquette when dealing with job candidates who have not been chosen for an interview.

Do’s:

  • DO reply to every candidate who expressed their interest in a position including those who seem not to fit, for whatever reason.
  • You could write it by following these steps:
    • Acknowledge and appreciate the person’s time and interest in applying for a certain job at your company.
    • Explain that the company decided on someone else, in a respectful and considerate way.
    • Finish on a positive note (for example by adding “Never give up!) and wish the person success.

Now here is the dilemma: There are companies who receive hundreds or even thousands of applications a year. Google, for example, gets well over 2 million job applications a year and can only hire a tiny percentage of those great talents. Thus, writing to each of them would surely be a time consuming task. One might therefore wonder what the best approach would be to deal with a high volume of applications without damaging a corporate brand.

The answer is to try to reduce the number of inappropriate applications, and to use automation wherever possible.

Consider:

  • Trying to reduce the number of inappropriate applications by:
    • Making the pre-screening criteria visible and clear.

      • If people fail these, but still apply, send an automated reply

  • Making the culture clear, perhaps including self-test tools and employee interviews, to discourage applications from those who wouldn’t fit.

    See, for example KMPG, whose self-test tool makes the culture clear.

  • Use automated assessment (CV filters and/or psychometric tests)

    Again, if people are deselected at this stage, send an automated response to explain why
  • Use automated responses wherever possible at the various stages of application, including after interview
  • Resourcing appropriately

    With careful planning, the number of remaining applicants should have been sufficiently reduced through the filtering process that the number of personalised communications becomes far smaller.

Don’ts:

  • Don’t be brutally honest by telling them what the real reason for your rejection was (even though every job applicant would be interested in knowing it!). Bear in mind that you could be sued for your personal statements. Therefore, do it in a polite, diplomatic, thoughtful and professional way.
  • Don’t let candidates wait too long for a reply. As mentioned earlier, explain the timescales for responding, and write a letter/email within a reasonable timeframe. Don’t make them think that they have to chase you in order to find out if there is a chance for a job interview.
  • If you think that writing rejection letters to unsuccessful job candidates is a waste of time and doesn’t make any difference, I would like to highlight the benefits that your HR Department can receive in taking the extra time to respond to candidates. Your company will be perceived as an enterprise that:
    • takes their job applicants seriously and respects their valuable time
    • works in a professional and efficient way and
    • cares about their reputation and image (offline and online).

Some companies might not realise that by ignoring job applications they can severely damage their company’s reputation. It leaves an impression about the way a company operates and cares about other people. The question is: Can a company nowadays in such a competitive world really afford an approach like this?

Unfortunately many companies do not take the time and make the effort to reply to potential employees. In today’s technology driven world we need to remember that social media can be very powerful. Every upset candidate who might feel disappointed about not hearing back from any company (after investing time in writing tailor-made CVs and cover letters) might be tempted to vent their anger online. This can happen with a comment, an email or a video going viral. Just imagine…. A candidate can easily do it within seconds, from any device, from all over the world and most importantly at no cost!

Companies need to think about what impression they want to leave behind. Here I’m not just thinking about the job applicants themselves but also all those people that they are going to share their negative experience with, such as friends, relatives, acquaintances and strangers online. And by the way, it is a fact that negative comments are being spread more often than positive ones. It would be advisable to not underestimate the power of “many ordinary people” because it can have a dramatic impact on your bottom line.

Instagram Tips for Brand Marketers

selfie smartphone instagramDo you use Instagram for brand marketing? While it’s not the top social media tool used for marketing, it can be very effective in building brand awareness, communicating brand experiences, and developing brand perceptions among consumers.

Recently, Dan Zarrella of Hubspot conducted a study to try to determine how to get more followers and likes on Instagram. Brand marketers, listen up. There is some really useful information in the data.

Zarrella studied nearly 1.5 million images from more than 500,000 Instagram users to come up with his conclusions. You can see the details in the infographic at the end of this article. Here are the highlights that should help you improve your brand marketing results on Instagram:

1. More Hashtags Lead to More Engagement

The study found that as the number of hashtags used in an Instagram photo posting went up, so did the number of likes and comments. The lesson for brand marketers is to use more hashtags on Instagram.

2. Fewer Filters Lead to More Engagement

The data showed that photos on Instagram that use no filter effects get the most likes, follows, and comments. The lesson for brand marketers is to stop using filters on Instagram.

3. Stronger Calls to Action Lead to More Engagement

Here the data gets really compelling. Instagram photos with the word “like” in the caption got 89% more likes. Photos with the word “comment” in the caption got 2,194% more comments. The lesson for marketers is simple. Remind your audience to like and comment on your Instagram photos within every caption.

4. Colors Lead to More Engagement

The research found that photos which are desaturated (meaning the colors are very dull and washed out) get fewer comments and likes. In fact, highly saturated photos got 598% more likes than desaturated photos. Furthermore, photos that have higher levels of luminance (meaning they’re brighter), get 592% more likes than dark photos. That’s not all. The data also revealed that photos dominated by cool colors like blue, green, and gray got more likes than those dominated by warm colors like yellow, orange, and red. The lesson to brand marketers is to embrace bright colors on Instagram but stay cool.

5. Faces and “Busy-ness” Lead to More Engagement

The research corroborates what most other marketing research has found for decades. Images with people’s faces in them lead to higher levels of engagement. In this study, Zarrella found that the number of likes increases by 35% when faces are included in images. In addition, busy photos got higher levels of engagement than stark photos. Zarrella analyzed the number of edges in photos and found that images with more edges (i.e., more stuff in the photo that makes it busier) got 125% more likes than very simple and stark photos. The lesson for marketers is to avoid going minimalist on Instagram, and be sure to takes lots of pictures of people. Instagram is the one place where selfies are not only accepted, but they’re also expected.

instagram likes and followers infographic

Image: Rob Owen-Wahl

Only 1 in 7 Companies are Highly Customer Centric

customersNew research from the Chief Marketing Council (CMO) and SAP reveals that most marketing executives agree on three specific things.

First, nearly 3 out of 4 of them (73%) agree that customer centricity is critical to success for the business and for their own roles.

Second, nearly 9 out of 10 of them (86%) agree that customer centricity is not high for their businesses.

Third, nine out of 10 marketers agree that their customers would not say their businesses are customer centric.

This is bad news and reveals a significant gap in business strategy.

In its Mastering Adaptive Customer Engagements report the CMO Council found that the gap exists due to three core challenges as revealed by the quantitative insights collected from over 300 senior marketing executives and from qualitative interviews with 20 marketers from leading brands like MasterCard, Sony Electronics, SunTrust Bank, Thomson Reuters, Nine West Group, Sears Holdings, Western Union, Apartments.com, and more. Those challenges are:

  • People = 22%
  • Processes = 22%
  • Platforms = 5%

More importantly, 52% of marketers said that their biggest challenge to customer centricity is a combination of all three factors—people, processes, and platforms. Considering that people develop the processes and choose the platforms being used, all roads lead back to people. In other words, employees—including leaders—bear much of the responsibility for keeping companies from being customer centric despite the fact that the majority of leaders believe it’s critical for businesses to be customer centric.

Customer centricity and brand stratetgy go hand-in-hand. Why should consumers believe your brand promise if brand experiences aren’t centered on their wants and needs? In its report, the CMO Council identifies five gaps that marketers are looking to close in order to become more customer centric:

  • Establish a customer-centric company culture
  • Align cross-functional teams to work together
  • Establish processes to track customer experiences
  • Prioritize customer experience strategy
  • Hire the right talent to execute

These are all important steps, but one very important thing is missing—accountability. Creating cultures, aligning teams, tracking process performance, and hiring the right talent will fall flat if every employee—from the top down—isn’t held accountable for living the customer-centric culture and brand promise in every decision that they make on a daily basis. Employees have to be empowered to make decisions that support the company culture of customer centricity at the lowest possible level. In other words, they have to be given the opportunity to walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

The full report is available for purchase from the CMO Council. Below is an infographic with highlights from the study.

Mastering-Adaptive-Customer-Engagements_Infographic_600

 Image: Svilen Milev

Leveraging Company Culture for Brand Storytelling

brand storytellingHow do you come up with ideas for brand storytelling? Buyer personas can become characters and consumer problems can become story conflicts, but brand stories should cover external and internal stories. To effectively communicate your brand promise through brand storytelling, you need to tell the whole story.

This is where your company culture can become a source of many brand story ideas. A powerful company culture that executives truly live and which trickles down through all levels of the organization can become a story unto itself. Just look at Zappos to see how a company culture can become the brand story.

Company culture must support the brand promise and it must permeate into every consumer experience with the brand. If your company culture runs counter to your brand promise, then consumers will be confused and turn away from your brand.

With that in mind, company culture isn’t just a Human Resources function. It’s every department’s and every employee’s responsibility. If your organization effectively communicates its culture to employees, holds leaders and employees accountable for living the brand promise, and empowers employees to make decisions on a daily basis in support of that culture, then employee and company performance should improve. This improvement positively affects your brand and how consumers perceive it.

Think about your company culture. Does it support your brand promise? If so, consumers want to hear about it. They want to know that the brand they’re loyal to is backed by a company they can trust from end to end. Therefore, company culture should be included in your brand storytelling. It re-affirms what consumers perceive of your brand and deepens their emotional connection to the brand and thus, deepens their loyalty and advocacy of the brand.

Bottom-line, company culture can be a powerful marketing device if it truly supports your brand promise and the company actually prioritizes it. If your company does, then start leveraging that company culture for brand storytelling as soon as possible. If your company doesn’t, then talk to leadership about reinventing your company culture to improve results, boost employee morale, jumpstart marketing, and spark brand storytelling.

Remember, consumers want to understand the entire brand story. It’s up to you to find those stories and company culture is one of the most important.

Image: stockers9

British Consumers Have Little Tolerance for Technical Problems

online bankingNearly three out of four British consumers avoid companies that regularly have technical problems. That data comes from research by Delphix, a data virtualization company. In fact, ongoing technical problems will motivate 42% of British consumers to switch their business to a different company and another 40% will consider moving their business to another company.

Not only do British consumers have little tolerance for technical problems, they also have high expectations for the type of technology that companies provide in consumer transactions and interactions. Nearly three out of four British consumers expect companies to use the latest technology in customer interactions.

This expectation is particularly high among banking customers. Nearly four out of five British consumers expect banks to use the latest technology in customer interactions. Furthermore, one in four banking customers believe that online banking or payment processes should never have a technical problem. That doesn’t mean the other three out of four banking customers will accept technical problems. The other three in four banking customers will only accept a technical problem once per 10 month period.

Outdated technology also motivates British consumers to move their business to a different company. The Delphix survey found that 49% of British consumers will switch their business to a different company if technical updates are not made in a timely manner.

User Experience as a Strategic Imperative

Bottom-line, user experience in all digital interactions must be a top priority, because a negative user experience has a direct effect on sales and profits. Nearly one in two consumers will switch from your company to a competitor if they experience technical problems when trying to complete a transaction or another activity. There is no room for failure. Not only do you need to ensure there are no problems, but you also need to use the most current technology possible. The research data shows that outdated technology delivers a user experience which doesn’t meet consumer expectations. As a result, your brand image suffers, and ultimately, you lose sales and profits.

With the increase in mobile shopping and brand communications—where consumers are quick to update to the latest devices with all of the latest capabilities—it’s even more important to keep up with evolving technology. Consumers know what capabilities are available, and they expect your brand to offer them in all consumer touch points.

Of course, the danger is adding all of the technical bells and whistles possible, which ends up negatively affecting the user experience. Visit the Disney website and try to book a dinner reservation or reserve passes for attractions and you’ll see what I mean. It looks nice but the site is extremely frustrating to consumers when you actually want to do something. With that in mind, be very careful to exercise restraint. The best user experience doesn’t need to have every bell and whistle available. Simple design can be far more effective in terms of meeting consumer expectations based on their transactional needs.

How do you prioritize user experience so your customers maintain a positive perception of your brand and remain loyal? Leave a comment and share your thoughts on the prioritization of user experience in 2014.

Image: Kip Curry