We have our Winners!

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Crowdsourcing experiment:

Name my client’s software.

I recently decided to try a little experiment. One of my clients has a major piece of client-facing software, which they…

1. Use to enable their services
2. Offer freestanding as a licensed product
3. Offer as Software as a Service (SaaS)

One of the things they’d like for me to do is rename this piece of software. I have a few ideas that I’m going to throw into the mix, but overall, I’d like to try this as a crowdsourcing experiment.

What’s in it for me?

I’m going to give out Amex gift cards in the amounts of $100, $75, and $25 to the top three finalists.

So what do I do?

1. Read the description in the section below
2. Comment on this blog post with your suggestion. Make sure there’s a way to contact you in the comment, or…
3. Use the contact form on the Realize web site and send your suggestion. Make sure I can identify it as a suggestion for the contest, or…
4. Add your suggestion to the discussion on the Realize Facebook page. (It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you decided to like us, too), or…
5. Send me a direct message via Twitter. (@johncloonan), or…
6. If there’s any other way you can think of to contact Realize and leave us a suggestion with your contact info, go ahead.

Then what happens?

After reaching a critical mass of suggestions, I’m going to submit the most-frequently-suggested to the decision makers at my client. Whichever one is chosen will receive the $100 Amex gift card. The $75 and $25 cards will be awarded to the person who first suggested the next most-frequently-suggested names. I’ll also publish a list of the best of them here.

Description

The Client:

Core brand values:

• Agile
• Innovative
• Objective
• Efficient

What does the client do?

They manage the workforce supply chain, but what does that really mean? It means they provide services and solutions designed to save clients money and time on acquiring and managing their workforce, but don’t provide staffing services.

How about the software?

In short, the software automates the purchase and processing of professional services and labor, and provides near ERP-level data back to the client for decision support.

The value propositions of the software include:

• Creates process simplification and efficiency
• Provides data for management decision making
• Creates visibility into workforce supply chain processes

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I was talking to an executive from a background check company that had been acquired by one of my clients, who is trying to make a decision about how to deal with the acquired brand – basically, keep it or roll it into the current brand as a product line.

During this conversation I asked the exec what he thought should be done. His response was “Well, there are some of our brands that have some brand equity – we have websites and good rankings on Google.”

Before I get endless comments about the importance of a good website and SEO, understand that I both realize and believe that SEO is important, and a good website is important. However, neither of these things directly equate to brand equity. Are they influencers? Certainly. Are they enough to create brand equity by themselves? Nope.

First, brand equity as a concept is widely misunderstood. True brand equity is the financial value of your brand. There are a variety of measurements that are used to yield this value, but they all have to do with your brand as an asset. What most people are talking about when they speak of brand equity is visibility. And brand visibility is an influencer of brand equity. A highly visible brand with positive brand associations will likely have more equity than a similar brand with less visibility.

SEO and a good website will certainly help create visibility, but what about the other piece – positive brand associations? Where do those come from?

Another client of mine just illustrated this perfectly. Charted Path, LLC is a start-up organization, and the owner, Mike Cleland, literally just got off the phone with me about 5 minutes ago to tell me that he realized what I’ve been trying to help him with all along – building his brand through both traditional marketing and getting his feet (barely) wet in social media. His website and blogging efforts are paying off, but only because his brand is authentic, and can survive social media transparency. He very quickly has built positive brand associations by establishing himself as an expert in his field through his website and blog, but also through positive client interactions on the projects he’s completed. (Of course, it probably doesn’t hurt that he’s a genuinely nice guy who truly knows what he’s talking about.)

Mike has a nice website, and is currently doing reasonably on Google ranking. But those things aren’t brand equity. The combination of those things and positive brand association are helping him create brand equity.

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I love articles like this one. I think Kievman has missed the point of doing social media for business and of marketing in general.

Marketing is about ROI.

If companies haven’t been able to find the real-world results of their social media efforts, there are two distinct possibilities. Either they’re not doing social media effectively, or they’re not measuring it correctly.

I’d be willing to bet that DemingHill’s largest Fortune clients care about ROI as the first thing of importance, but they understand that all the activities that Kievman mentions in this article are tied to strategies that bring measurable ROI.

Relationship building creates ROI by creating brand equity and increasing net promoter score. Kievman mentions “creating communities of key constituents.” Why do you do that? Those key constituents are either going to be influencers or buyers. Another point Kievman misses is that customer service, brand monitoring, brand awareness, and crisis management can all be performed or influenced via social media.

This statement is really problematic to me: “…if you are not converting outside of social media, social media will not help you convert and improve your ROI.” If an activity has a net zero effect, that’s truly money for nothing. The whole raison d’etre of marketing is to increase conversion. Does it have to be direct? No – very few marketing activities are direct.

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Yesterday evening was another big first for us – our first official Realize-sponsored event, ‘Food (& Wine!) for Thought’. Knowing that most businesses are in the swing of planning and budgeting for 2010, we wanted to gather a group of business owners and decision makers in the north Atlanta area to share our thoughts on marketing for the upcoming year.
We partnered with a fantastic restaurant in Flowery Branch, GA called Grapes & Hops Bar & Bistro, who was very welcoming and provided a wonderful facility along with great food and drink. Also, Salon Greco in Suwanee attended and very graciously provided all of our guests with gift certificates for free massages or facials.
After a bit of networking and introductions, we all settled in to watch John present a 20-minute slideshow on what we believe are the absolute ‘must-dos’ for marketing your business in 2010. After the slideshow, we all joined in and discussed the challenges of marketing in our current economy, how best to balance traditional and social marketing, brand authenticity, and what to plan for down the road.
We’ve already received quite a bit of favorable feedback from this inaugural event and hope you can join us for the next one! If you’d like to check out the presentation, we’ve also uploaded a PowerPoint version onto our website. Check it out and let us know what you think!

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I find myself continually faced with the same problem, and it’s a marketing classic. How do you measure brand equity? Or more to the point, how do you communicate it in a way that makes sense to non-marketers, particularly those in small business?

brand equity – the monetary value of a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or manufacturer beyond any amounts spent building it.

I’d argue that most businesses aren’t really interested in the asset value of the brand, particularly the small and medium businesses that make up the majority of my clientele. The question most of my clients would love to hear answered is this: “How much market share, revenue, or profit will be contributed by this campaign beyond that which we can directly measure in conversions?”

To quote a friend of mine: “I’m sorry, but I’m fresh out of clairvoyance.”

There are some pretty simple rough measurements you can do periodically that will give you an idea of what your brand is worth in revenue terms. At the simplest level, it’s the difference between the stock value of your company and the book value of your assets. If you don’t have stock, it’s still not terrifically difficult. Assume a growth rate based on historical figures and do a net present value calculation of your forecast revenue for the assumed life of your business. (20 years is a common figure.) The difference between that and your asset value is the value of your intangible assets. For most small to medium businesses that don’t have significant technology or R&D, that’s roughly equivalent to the incremental revenue generated by the brand. But that still doesn’t help with the clairvoyance problem.

Here’s what I’m getting at – while brand equity is a good reason to do some projects that don’t have significant, measurable ROI, it’s important that you look at those projects closely, as marketers will frequently use brand equity creation as an excuse to do questionable projects. If you hear a marketer making brand equity claims, ask a few questions.

• Is brand equity creation a priority for me right now?
• Are there other projects with more measurable returns that are more valuable to me?
• Am I willing to make an attempt to measure my brand equity over time? If not, am I willing to trust this marketer to create brand equity that neither of us are likely to measure?

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I was sitting in a branding interview yesterday, and had a bit of surprise. The gentleman I was interviewing was one of the principals of the company, and the evangelist for the company’s services.

The thing that surprised me was this – he knew his company’s place in the industry. He actually knew and could explain their value proposition. If I had handed him a blank Bowman strategy clock, he could easily have placed his company on it. I’d be willing to bet he could have easily explained to me his positioning relative to Porter’s Five Forces.

This type of thing shouldn’t be unusual, but it is. I interview more people within more companies who know themselves well, but are lost as to their industry and position within it, especially within service industries. For example, the employee assistance program who doesn’t know their market is commoditized and how to deal with that.

Therein lies a problem. If you don’t know your industry environment, you can’t create marketing strategies to deal with that environment, and it’s easy to fall for whatever some slick ad salesman throws your way. I even catch some of my clients in that act – they’ll get a spam promising them the world, and consider it as an option, in spite of the fact we have a solid, planned, measurable marketing strategy for them that is getting results. Luckily, my clients are all smart enough to forward it to me first and ask if it’s a good idea to pursue.

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This above all: to thine own self be true…

When Polonius says this to Laertes in Act I, Scene 3, I can’t imagine that he knew he was talking about branding. (Sorry, you have to indulge me once in a while. My undergrad was in English.)

This thought came to me during a Web conference where I was presenting the results of a brand study I had recently completed. I knew during this call that I was to be the bearer of bad news. Before hiring Realize, this company had paid a graphic designer to redo their logo. And while the logo was well-done from a design standpoint, it was completely wrong for this company’s brand. But what transpired during this call was a bit of a surprise.

We had arrived at the point when I was delivering the bad news. I made a number of conceptual suggestions regarding their logo, all of which were diametrically opposed to the logo they had just purchased. After the groans had subsided, we moved on to some specific color suggestions. Then the surprise began:

“Those are exactly what we told the designer.” 

This client knew themselves. They had told a designer what they wanted and needed to reflect their brand. The designer had delivered just the opposite, and they accepted it anyway. Why?

They decided that since they weren’t designers, that this guy must know better than they what was good for their company and its logo.

What they didn’t realize was this – they knew themselves. They knew what they needed. They intuitively knew what their brand was about. And yet they allowed an outsider, someone who knew nothing about the company, to convince them they were wrong.

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During my guest appearance on High Velocity Radio, I talked about using event marketing to build your online community, but that’s only a small part of the story. Your offline and online communities should feed each other in an infinite loop.

I attend a lot of offline networking events, and the first thing I do when I get home is go through whatever business cards I’ve gathered and try and find those people on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. For large events, this can be pretty time consuming, which is why I can’t wait for the future that Cory Casciato of Westword postulates, where social media is completely integrated. If I find them, I invite them to connect.

If they connect with me via whatever channel they choose, they’re going to receive notifications of new blog posts, my media appearances, and probably see what events I’m attending on my profile. I’ll frequently meet with people from my online network at real-world events they’ve seen on either my social media profiles or those of my online connections. I’ve also gotten anecdotal evidence from people that they’ve seen or listened to one of my media appearances after seeing it on one of those outlets.

This is where your own events come in. Realize is hosting Food (& Wine!) For Thought on October 28th. We started promoting online earlier today, and already we have a pretty respectable number of attendees, all through social media channels. Interestingly, some of them have already passed the online invitations on to their friends, who have signed up for the event, and will likely join my online community. They’ll then get invited to future events, and get notified of offline activities.

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Check out my guest post on the High Velocity Blog  about Building Online Communities… Offline. This is a brief preview of some of the material we’ll cover in the radio show on Monday.

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