Brands

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Brands

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Commentaries on brands and branding, for libraries and in general.

Libraries and brands

How do libraries define and redefine their brands?

Branding 101

by Leslie Dillon, from Leader's Digest June 2007

Jill Stover, undergraduate services librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University, has a great list of tips on her blog for branding your library:

  1. Know your customers: Understand what makes your customers tick by finding out what’s important to them and what they hope to achieve.
  2. Know yourself: Come to grips with who you are as an organization and who you aren’t. By doing so, you’ll see where you and your patrons meet, and where you may need to make some changes to better accommodate their needs. Remember, you can’t be all things to all people, but you can do a better job of being yourself.
  3. Find your inspiration: Great brands stand for something big. What gets you up in the morning? How can you get patrons excited too? If you don’t care about something, you have nothing to build your brand on.
  4. Find your aspiration: What, ultimately, do you hope to become? Great brands connect their aspirations with those of their patrons. Think beyond today to the possibilities of tomorrow. Develop your vision with patrons and involve them in getting there.
  5. Write it down: Everyone inside and outside of your library should know what you stand for. Communicate it every chance you get.
  6. Live it: Here’s where brand-building happens. Some ways you can live your brand include maximizing every point of contact you have with patrons and becoming their advocate in everything you do.

(Jill Stover, Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, Jun. 14, 2007.)

Library marketing--thinking outside the book

by Leslie Dillon, from Leader's Digest February 2007

Recently, I've been following a blog called Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, written by Jill Stover, who's the Undergraduate Services Librarian at Virginia Commonwealth University. Her blog has resources, readings, etc., for librarians looking for marketing innovations for their libraries. I've been really impressed by the breadth and depth of her posts, and I'll be sharing some of my favorites from her marketing tips and tricks with you from now on!

Here are some excerpts from Jill's post on the importance of a powerful brand:

Peter Fisk's book Marketing Genius talks about "Finding the big idea that defines you." Fisk contends that powerful brands resonate with customers' aspirations and derive their value from their ability to engage and inspire people. He states, "A great brand is one you want to live your life by, one you trust and hang on to whilst everything around you is changing, one that articulates the type of person you are or want to be, one that enables you to do what you couldn't otherwise achieve." The foundation of these super-brands is what Fisk calls "the big idea." As Fisk summarizes, "If brands are about people rather than products, then the big idea around which they are formed is more to do with what it does for people rather than the company."

Each brand has three components:

  • Rational ("What you do for people")
  • Comparative ("How do you do it differently?")
  • Emotional ("How do people feel about you?")

(To uncover your unique branding big idea, Fisk maps out a Brand Definition strategy).

For too long, the library brand has been linked to stuff instead of people. Patrons are more likely to associate libraries with books, information and facilities than with community and personal achievement. While there’s nothing wrong with books and information per se, these strong brand associations are limiting, as Fisk points out, "Of course, if you define your brand around your customers, based on a belief or attitude, a benefit or aspiration,... it gives you far more scope and flexibility in the future." Being aligned with objects rather than with aspirations makes [the library] brand static and difficult to adapt to environmental changes.

Jill goes on to ask us about our favorite brands. She believes that the appeal comes from one or more of the sources Fisk mentions, including:

  • reinforcing your self image
  • helping you become what you hope to be
  • enabling you to do something
  • connecting with others

To revitalize [the library] brand, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and ask tough questions. For example, do our communications say, "We want a genuine relationship with you," or "We want to retain formality"? Do our spaces say, "Welcome! Come in and explore your potential," or "If you do come in, you must follow our rules"? How much of our branding efforts originate from a desire to support patrons' ambitions, and how much originate from our desire to showcase ourselves and our stuff? By turning the spotlight on patrons' success, we can in turn build more successful library brands.

Jill's blog also has links to some great marketing resources, both general and library-specific. (Jill Stover, Library Marketing--Thinking Outside the Book, Jan 29, 2007.)

Great library slogan from Better Homes and Gardens!

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest July 2008

The “Healthy You” section of the August 2008 issue of Better Homes and Gardens suggests that in addition to learning a new language or playing a musical instrument, people who live long and live well are “avid, curious readers.” Beside the following blurb is the ALA library logo:

Forget credit cards — the most important piece of plastic in your wallet is your library card.

Is everything a brand?

Library branding may deserve a little cautionary thinking: Will you serve your patrons, your community and your future better by creating a distinctive brand or by establishing your library as a great resource that's just "our library"?

Related to that question is whether everything should be a brand--which comes up when various gurus push the idea that each person should "build their own brand."

Some related commentaries follow.

Applying a "brand" aid?

By Doug Johnson. Edited and excerpted from this May 2, 2009 post at The Blue Skunk Blog.

I find it a little troubling that we are beginning to take our values from marketers. I'm speaking specifically about our concern over personal "brands."

After reading Jeff Utecht's post about helping his students create personal "brands," I decided I ought to look the term up to see what it actually meant, having no background in business. The website buildingbrands.com has a variety of definitions, but opens with this interesting observation:

What is a brand? Too often even marketing professionals don't have an answer, and too many have their 'own' answer. Which makes life very confusing!

Indeed. But the article quotes The Dictionary of Business and Management as:

"a name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors."

While I certainly understand and agree with the advice that we need to help all Internet users be aware of their online (and I hope offline) reputation and history, I am concerned that we are stepping too far into the realm of image rather than accomplishment.

Are we about style or about substance? Is it in our student's and our own best interest to simply think of ourselves as products that should be made as marketable as possible? To what extent do we truly encourage individuals to purposely develop unique identities online, especially when being true to oneself may not be appealing to mainstream society and work against traditional employment or "successful" career paths? (What if a student should decide to "brand" herself as the foremost authority and practitioner of devil worship on the planet--following a probably passing adolescent interest?)

Are we making sure that students understand that an image alone has little value? A clever brand might get attention, but unless it's backed up by a body of meaningful work and experiences, reliability and consistency, of positive values and thoughtfulness, it might work against an individual as well as for him. (Edsel, Thalidomide and Nazi were all brands, after all.)

I'm not sure this topic deserves the kind of attention I've given it, but something didn't set right with me about teaching self-marketing to seventh graders. Have we all drunk of Seth Godin's Kool-aid, and developed a 24/7 neurosis about being purple cows in order to survive in tomorrow's society?

Oh, do consider the source: if this writer has a "brand" it may be a small, smelly mammal that is either very cold or depressed.

Brief excerpts from the cited post

Jeff Utecht's The Thinking Stick makes a point of asserting copyright, so only a few sentences of this post appear here. Read the whole post; it's not long, and Utecht clearly favors branding anything and everything.

Some digital savvy parents start branding their children early on. [Colleagues] set up gmail accounts for their kids when they were born. They have already started the brand that will be their kids when they are older...

There is power in branding your classroom and getting students used to branding their thinking...

Teaching students to use the web for their benefit early on allows them to brand their thinking, their sites, themselves...

Excerpts from comments on Doug Johnson's post

  • lpbryan: While teaching marketing to 7th graders may seem reprehensible on the surface, perhaps a discussion of "branding" could be held within a wider context, such as teaching adolescents how companies use branding to create unrealistic images that these kids try to live up to every day. Perhaps having the students establish a brand for themselves early on will allow them to explore alternate identities, something we encourage as we recommend books to kids...
  • Dean Shareski: I think today the idea of branding is much more about authenticity than it is style... I hope the language doesn't get in the way of the intent. The fact that our work and lives will be largely online, changes the game and changes they way we think about teach kids about reputation... I think the connotations of the word "brand" are different in many ways today than they were 20 or more years ago.
  • Kate W: I've been finding almost everything for about the 10 last years to be much more "about image rather than accomplishment." And as a school librarian, it really troubles me... I don't remember ever having difficulty differentiating between ads used to sell me things and content of magazines, books, or television shows. Now I notice my fifth grade students have great difficulty telling the difference between an ad and not-an-ad, and I think "branding" one's self just feeds that difficulty. Also, I'm finding more and more people excusing their propensity to judge a book by its cover by suggesting that "that's just how people are." They feel it is the government agency's/school's/person's/company's responsibility to show them depth that they can't be bothered to find out about themselves. They don't feel like they have time to get beyond first impressions...
  • Susan: I'm all for teaching about branding and having kids look at it carefully to see what they are being sold, by whom and through what means. I think it would be an interesting process to then think about what choices you make as you figure out who you are and what you want to be and how you want to be seen. If that means I want kids to figure out their 'brand' then I can support it but if it is about 'selling' yourself I have concerns. I think we do our students and ourselves a disservice when we think about the world only in terms of commerce. I am more than what I buy and what I sell and I want students to know and become more than buyers and sellers...

Branding in general

How important are brands anyway--and how do you create them? Is a brand what you define or what your users see?

Where's my juice? Tropicana's marketing folly

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest March 2009

I love Tropicana orange juice. And recently I had a grocery store experience similar to the one described below by Peter Merholz, an internationally recognized thought leader on user experience:

My standby, Tropicana Orange Juice (with Some Pulp) was no longer there. In fact, I didn’t see any Tropicana juices. In disbelief, I looked around for another option, and it was only after this second look that I realized they did have Tropicana, but in newly-designed cartons. The new design wasn’t bad, but it lacked the distinctive personality of the orange-with-the-straw image, instead favoring a cool and generic aesthetic.

Apparently there was a massive public outcry about the new cartons, and Tropicana’s owner, PepsiCo, scrapped the new look and returned to the iconic orange.

Merholz goes on to examine how Tropicana came up with this $35-million brand error. The problem wasn’t the new carton. It was “the carton in context,” and it explains in part why branding plays such a critical role in a shopper’s experience.

For the shopper, the brand image serves as a shorthand for their desired product—you can quickly cut through all these choices and grab exactly the product you want. Now think about these new Tropicana carton designs—with their generic typography and more abstract imagery, Tropicana no longer stands out. You now have to stop and think about which juice you want to buy, and…you end up frustrated trying to decide between so many options.

Tropicana’s new packaging created a usability problem. Tropicana buyers love their Tropicana juice. The new packaging made the juice hard to buy. Tropicana was so focused on renewing its brand, “they totally lost sight of the experience their customers have in the supermarket.”

The Tropicana marketing folly has relevance for library leaders. As they’re forced to rethink the library brand, library leaders need to remember the context of that brand, ensure that it’s easy for our customers to get what they want, and to keep in mind our customers’ experience when they come to the library (whether it’s to the building or the web site).

(Peter Merholz, "Tropicana’s marketing folly," Harvard Business Blogs, Feb 24, 2009.)

Editor's comment: "forced to rethink the library brand"? Who's forcing such rethinking? Libraries can certainly go badly awry by losing the strong identification they already have in the pursuit of new ideas--but who's forcing the issue? (And why should patrons of a nonprofit, prepaid institution be called "customers," a wholly mercantile term?)

How to maintain your customer service brand promise

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest July 2008

Outstanding customer service “has become an imperative” according to Anand Subramaniam, VP of Worldwide Marketing at eGain, a major developer of customer support software (used by some early virtual reference systems). Your “customers will not hesitate to defect to competitors if your business does not deliver on its service promise.”

While the article is intended for companies with call centers, Mr. Subramaniam lists several ways to deliver on your customer service brand promise that are particularly relevant to today’s libraries:

  • Align customer service operations with brand strategy. “Don’t mix a 'Wal-Mart-style' operational approach with a 'Nordstrom-type' brand intent…”
  • Set service levels based on rigorous strategic and operational criteria. Your “customer relationship intent” should be “a foundation for setting service levels.” Service levels should be based on things like evolving customer expectations.
  • Manage expectations through proactive communications. “Setting the right expectations is critical in making the right promise and keeping it.”
  • Enhance staff experience for better customer experience. To “increase the probability of delivering on the customer service promise,” route requests to the right people. Include “customers’ ’state of mind’ or emotion to the routing framework.”
  • Provide staff with a complete view of customers. “Forcing the customer to be the contextual “glue” is one of the most cited sources of customer frustration…” A “unified customer interaction hub…can help achieve quantum improvements in customer experience and loyalty.”
  • Eliminate knowledge and best practice silos. “Service resolution and fulfillment often span multiple people” and work areas.
  • Leverage robust workflow management. “Implementing robust workflows to eliminate service…gaps across people and [work areas] will maximize the probability of meeting service levels.”

“[P]roactive expectation setting can sometimes make a big difference in retaining unhappy customers.”

(Anand Subramaniam, [http://www.managesmarter.com/msg/content_display/marketing/e3iac49c752f1f09871ed11f8ee870ff02c "Eight ways to maintain your customer service brand promise," Sales & Marketing Management’s ManageSmarter, Jun. 24, 2008.)

Don't confuse reputation with brand

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2008

Corporate reputation and brand are not the same and should not be confused. Brand is "customercentric"; it focuses on the promise a product or service makes to its customers. Reputation is “companycentric”; it focuses on an organization's credibility and respect.

A brand's strength depends on how well it has kept its promises. An organization's reputation is affected by many factors, such as management strength, treatment of employees, ethics, diversity efforts, etc.

There are several reasons for the confusion between the two: both reputation and brand are "valuable intangible assets that manifest themselves in a company’s operations"; and both "rely on strategic communications to shape people’s perceptions..." A third factor, the Internet, means that organizations can no longer maintain distance between different constituencies.

"A strong brand does not necessarily equate with a good reputation." (Think NIKE and Wal-Mart--allegations of sweatshops and discriminatory employment practices.) But a good reputation doesn't always mean a strong brand either. And while they're not synonymous, brand and reputation are "tightly interrelated. Damage to one can easily weaken the other. And both are crucial..."

Every organization needs three critical qualities to succeed—"legitimacy, relevancy and differentiation..." To establish them, the organization must focus on both reputation and brand.

(Richard Ettenson and Jonathan Knowles, "Don't confuse reputation with brand," MIT Sloan Management Review, (49:2) Winter 2008.)

Connecting with consumers using deep metaphors

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2008

Famous brands (e.g., Coke or Hallmark) tap into consumers' deepest thoughts and feelings. Research into basic orientations people have toward the world reveals seven deep metaphors, among which are transformation, balance, journey, and connection. Deep metaphors can tell us a great deal about how people will think and react to goods and services.

Researchers Gerald Zaltman and Lindsay Zaltman, authors of Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors Reveal about the Minds of Consumers (HBS Press, 2008), believe marketers must learn to speak the language of deep metaphors "if they are to understand and connect meaningfully with their customers."

Much of our thinking occurs without awareness. Therefore marketers need to be aware of the "role of emotions in decision-making." Deep metaphors are "part of this unconscious language of thought" and have these implications for marketers:

  1. Deep metaphors are the best way "to learn about the content of emotions," which is critical. They let us discover what feelings produce certain reactions to an ad, brand name, etc.
  2. Deep metaphors provide the foundations for the brand stories developed by marketers. They "are fundamental building blocks for developing customer relationships."
  3. Deep metaphors are shared by a broad range of consumers. They help us discover the "common yardstick" among consumers who may otherwise vary greatly. "That common yardstick--or deep metaphor--is far more important to understand than the various positions taken on it..."

The high failure rate of products and services indicates that marketers lack deep insights into their customers. Recent advances will help marketers "dig into what consumers don't know they know."

(Martha Legace, "Connecting with consumers using deep metaphors," Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, May 5, 2008.)

The shrinking advantage of brands

by Leslie Dillon, from Leader's Digest March 2008

What’s the world’s most recognizable brand? Google! You may have gotten the answer right, but do you know why?

Unlike Proctor & Gamble, Coke, and others who’ve worked decades to build their brands and spent 5%-10% of their annual revenues on advertising, Google has built the world’s most powerful brand in less than a decade without ever advertising.

Umair Haque, who helps organizations craft business models and strategic innovation, explains that the success of the Google brand is an example of how cheap, ubiquitous interaction is driving orthodox branding into decay.

A brand is a promise of costs and benefits that shapes your expections of a product’s value.

Formerly, interaction was so expensive that information about the benefits of a product had to be squeezed into a slogan. Today, cheap interaction lets consumers be connected. The more they talk to each other, the less they need to listen to the “often empty promises” of advertising.

And talk they do! Traditional brands are decaying because of “the massive defection to hundreds of thousands of social networks and microcommunities, where connected consumers endlessly discuss, debate, and validate brands and their promises.”

How has Google built the world’s most powerful brand? By “investing in consumers – instead of investing in advertising…” There are no ads on Google’s home page; Yahoo did what standard branding orthodoxy would suggest: they advertised on theirs. (And look what’s happening to them now!)

Haque believes that “advantage begins in the DNA. The radical strategic decisions Google has made didn’t happen by chance. Rather, they happened because Google has radically different DNA – and investing in consumers is an almost inevitable outcome of this DNA.”

(Umair Haque, “The shrinking advantage of brands,” Feb 15, 2008, and "The new economics of brands," Feb. 29, 2008, Edge economy, Harvard Business blogs.)

Leadership brand

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest November 2007

Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, authors of Leadership Brand: Developing Customer-Focused Leaders to Drive Performance and Build Lasting Value (Harvard Business School Press, 2007), believe that demonstrating the requisite “personal characteristics” is only half the battle for successful leaders. “The other half is ensuring that these competencies really deliver results...to stakeholders.”

These are the stakeholders and what they want:

  • Employees. Employees want to work where they can meet their personal needs. “Leaders who create job assignments, work environments, and visions help employees be both competent and committed to their work.”
  • Customers. Customers want “compelling products and services” that they can trust.
  • Communities. Communities want leaders to build socially responsible organizations.
  • Investors. Investors want “leaders to keep their promises, develop a compelling growth strategy, align core competencies to the strategy and then to ensure that people are committed to delivering on [them].”
  • Regulators. Regulators want leaders to govern themselves with high ethical principles, consistent with professional and legal standards.

“Effective leaders start by asking how they can add value to what each of these stakeholders needs. Once this is clear, leaders map these needs against their existing strengths, identifying shortcomings and making plans to develop personal competencies that deliver on stakeholders’ needs.”

(Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, “A leader’s five key stakeholders,” Harvard Business, Nov. 11, 2007.)

Branding fundamentals for leaders at all levels

by Leslie Dillon, from Leader's Digest September 2007

This article, which is excerpted from Lessons on Leadership by Jack Stahl, Revlon CEO and former president of Coca-Cola. Although Publishers Weekly found the book disappointing, this excerpt has some useful insights on marketing and branding. Here are some of Stahl’s key points:

  • Creating value “for most organizations is the ability to design and develop a product or service to serve a targeted group of end users.”
  • A “brand” represents a promise to your end users of what they can “expect from a product or service.” “Brand positioning is the process of establishing that promise” in the minds of your end users.
  • Powerful brands are those that deliver on their promise.
  • The brand promise guides your marketing decisions and actions.
  • How does your brand help its users? What does your brand deliver--physically or emotionally--to those consumers? The sum total of your marketing actions (advertising, packaging, promotional materials, in-store merchandising, etc.) should answer these questions for your consumers.
  • “Always think about your product as a potential solution for the consumer... This focus is entirely different from being centered on the internal attributes of your product, such as its technical makeup.”
  • “Your brand positioning must be clear and straightforward. You should be able to define for others what your brand represents in a simple statement. It must ring true to you and be stated in a way that consumers understand. Only then will your people have a clear positioning around which to build effective marketing programs that strengthen your brand in the eye of your target consumers.” “One way to define what your brand delivers to your consumers is to have a clear understanding of those consumers’ habits as they relate to your product.”

(”The seven fundamental management skills for leaders at all levels,” managesmarter, the online home of Sales & Marketing Management, Aug. 24, 2007.)

Emotional intelligence on the front line

by Leslie Dillon from Leader's Digest May 2007

Managers need to focus on the interactions that are important to customers--and on how their frontline staff handle those interactions.

“Many consumer-facing businesses perform poorly on the front line.” What’s missing is “the spark between the customer and frontline staff--the spark that helps transform wary or skeptical people into strong and committed brand followers. That spark and the emotionally driven behavior that creates it explain how great customer service companies earn trust and loyalty during ‘moments of truth’: those few interactions (for instance, a lost credit card, a canceled flight, a damaged piece of clothing or investment advice) when customers invest a high amount of emotional energy in the outcome.” Superb handling of these moments requires a response that puts the customer’s emotional needs ahead of the company’s.

One study showed that after a positive “moment of truth” at a bank, over 85% of the customers surveyed bought additional products; but when things “turned sour”, 70% reduced their commitment.

(Marc Beaujean, Jonathan Davidson, and Stacey Madge, “The ‘moment of truth’ in customer service,” McKinsey Quarterly, 2006, No. 1, and “Emotional intelligence on the front line,” The McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter, May 2007.)

Related articles

Your turn: Talk about it

Does a stress on branding and "the library brand" turn the library into just another business? Is that ideal, or potentially corrupting? Your comments and responses welcome.

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