Bright logos in a sea of dull things

The other day, as I was driving through a bleak suburban stretch of malls, parking lots and highway on-ramps, I was struck by the power of a good logo. The logo in question, a big bold letter on a bright blue background, flooded the area with a sense of possibility and made me want to shop at the mall it was touting. That, to me, is the power of a good logo.

We often hear that logos and brands aren't the same thing. Logos are the graphical representation of a brand, but do not contain the promise, experience and offer of a company's brand. A brand, of course, is built up over years. It shines when all of a company's pistons are firing properly (from the person who answers the phone, to the quality of the product, to the news in the investment section of the newspaper, and so on). It seems sometimes that in saying these things about brands, that we relegate a logo to some lesser place, say piston 7 of a V8.

My experience viewing this bright letter on a blue backdrop, in a drab location where there are many shopping malls to choose from, shows that this is not entirely the case. That bright letter had value. The shops in this mall, I said to myself, must be of a higher calibre than those across the street.

If your logo is the face of your brand, would you not want it to have the effect of this big bold letter? I believe in times where the economic news sometimes seems as austere as the area I described, a bold logo can provide a competitive advantage, a call to action that inspires and invites your target audience to engage with you (and not with the other place, that has a lesser logo).

I've since gone to the mall in question, and it is of a higher calibre than the one across the street.

Magic 2008-Ball

Open any newspaper in the English-speaking world at the threshold of a new year and, invariably, you'll find loads of predictions for what's to come. In my view, it's wise to keep a couple of things in mind when it comes to predictions.

The first is that they tend to be either so vague that, while correct, they lack any real prognosticative power, or so precise that they have little chance of accuracy. The second is that they tend to say more about the person making the predictions than they say about the future. For example, a pessimist is likely to see dire outcomes. An optimist is likely to see positive things coming up. But this is as it should be.

And with those two caveats out of the way, this blogger will make some of his own predictions about brands and social marketing:

1. Most business models based around social marketing platforms that do not yet exist will be a tough sell. This is simply because of human behaviour — how many social networks can you really be a part of? With one in four (!) Canadians on Facebook - and so many of those Canadians spending A LOT of time on Facebook - you tell me how easy it will be to convince them of another, better social network (this year, anyway).

2. My parents' generation is about to start finding old classmates from the fifties and sixties through Facebook. That means baby boomers will soon be swarming all over Facebook if they aren't there already.

3. Products and brands will start to sponsor successful Facebook apps, and even start coming up with some of their own. There are two business plans to look out for in 2008. The first involves those savvy marketing departments (and their savvy agencies) leveraging the fun and sometimes silly apps that make Facebook what it is. The second is the makers of said apps going after cool sponsorship opportunities.

4. A fourth prediction far away from Facebook is that more brands will get busted for "greenwashing" (greenwashing is when you try to paint your brand green without actually doing anything for the environment), and yet more brands will start to get green product development right. Is the latter my hope for 2008? It is decidedly so.

Customer Experience and Branding

The other day I had to do some banking with a bank I don't normally deal with. I was speaking with a customer service person, who said to me: "Well, I don't know what YOUR bank's hours are; but we're open till 8 o'clock."(it sounded nicer when she said it).

It struck me that this person had internalized her bank's new brand expression and had personalized and expressed the brand differentiator in a very concrete way. Put simply: her bank's brand is all about extending operating hours to meet the needs of customers. She is evidently proud of this fact. She communicated this to me. In addition to seeing the bank's big green chairs on billboards around the city, I got the brand message first-hand from a customer service person. This is effective branding.

It speaks to the power of the customer experience and how pride in your company's customer service motivates staff to be brand messengers. It's human nature: you're proud of what your organization does, so you shout it out. And it means that knowledge of the brand and the notion that customer experience is important, have to run deep in your organization. As a marketer, you can't simply state, "We offer excellent customer service". You need to back it up with real action. The nice thing is, once you do, the message has a way of getting out, from the ground up.

Your brand is a person. A person on Facebook

Sometimes when we talk “brands” with clients, we refer to them as "people". It's a way of helping clients understand what is at stake in their brand, how to manage its growth and direction. A brand, after all, has a personality, it acts in the world and it makes promises. Referring to a brand as a person is a way of bringing it right down to earth.

So I’ve had this thought: “if brand X is a person, what kind of presence would brand X have on Facebook? And would Facebook be a good place to understand brand X?

What if you used Facebook to better understand your brand?

I don't mean that your brand needs a real Facebook profile - unless of course Facebook is part of your marketing mix. But the Facebook model could be used to flesh out many important aspects that drive brand strategy.

Consider some of the core features of Facebook:

1. A Facebook profile has an image (could this be a logo?)
2. A Facebook profile supplies answers to a number of questions that reflect the person's personality and interests (what makes your brand different? what is your unique sales proposition? what is your unique selling language?)
3. Facebook invites networking (what is your sales force doing?)
4. Facebook includes e-mail (how do you communicate with your customers? does your brand reach consistently across all touch points?)

So here is a test you can try:
- Create a hypothetical Facebook profile for your brand
- Fill in all the blanks using the various features offered
- See how your brand behaves from the highest strategic level down to various brand touch points.
- See what you learn, and apply that learning to your brand.

Camping: a user's experience

Camping is a great way to see places, to meet people and to be in the great outdoors. But not all campsites are made equal.

I began to wonder - having recently spent a couple of weeks in campsites that ranged from terrible to terrific - whether my user experience there could apply to brands, and if so, how.

One thing at a time.

The product:
Campsites provide space for campers to set up tents, park their cars or RVs, and provide additional features like electricity, water, toilets and play structures for kids. Beyond this, campgrounds provide access to sites, activities and scenery.

The differentiators:
If I could bring it down to one thing that differentiates one campsite from another, it's probably the resources available to start and maintain them. Public campsites tend to be infinitely better than private campsites. The differentiator leads to the success of the public camping "brand."

This differentiator has a huge impact on the brand promise. Before even getting in the car to go on a camping trip, I plan my itinerary around the accessibility of public campsites. I'm not the only one. While in the Gaspé on a family vacation, I spoke with countless people who had stopped at Parc au Bic (A provincial park about three hours east of Quebec City), then at Parc de la Gaspésie (Another provincial park about 3 hours further on) to finally end up at the majestic Forillon National Park.

In the case of camping, then, the brand promise gains something significant through association. And the user gains something through trusting the importance of this association, sight unseen.

User experience:
The user's experience at a campground almost completely determines the success of that campsite's brand.

How do provincial and national parks do such a good job of delivering on the brand promise? Obviously they cover the basics very well. They provide clean, well-maintained and campsites that aren't jammed up against each other. They provide excellent facilities. Forillon Park has a band of roving "naturalists" who describe natural phenomena in a way that kids and adults can understand. Beyond this, national parks offer consistent graphical references - even the roads are paved in a way you'll see nowhere else. You know you're in a national campground whether you're in The Pacific Rim, Banff or Forillon.

The parks are a holistic example of branding done across a wide spectrum.

What does all this mean for your company's branding? Too many times it seems companies believe a brand is a logo, a wordmark, and an attitude. A good brand is much more than that: it resides in the experiences of end users.

A brand in a crowded marketplace must differentiate itself through consistency across channels, relevancy and quality. Associations can be valuable to boost credibility. Consistency of graphic designs (like the brown and off-yellow signs in national park). Consistency of user experience (think of your website the way a national park architects its campsites). The quality of service. The relevancy of the offer. And nice added touches, like those nice narrow two-lane roads that meander through wooded areas leading to beaches, mountains, and other sights. If you look at your brands the way our national parks look at their layout, you're on your way.

Search marketing and your brand

"Memo to brands: fear the wiki," states Sandeep Krishnamurthy frantically. I don't agree.

Krishnamurthy's point is that when you search your brand, one of the top results is the Wikipedia entry. And Wikipedia, given its aim to be the online user-generated point of reference encyclopedia, might say something you don't want to hear about your brand. After carefully crafting your image, turn of phrase and vivid brand personality, the supposed objectivity and authority that Wikipedia exudes can "muddy" your brand's waters.

Well, yes, of course the brand waters are muddied. You might create your brand, but you don't own it. Your customers, clients and the public at large do. Say, for example, you put a lot of work into a new wordmark, colour choice, motto. But your customer service people don't stay on message when they answer the phone. What is your brand then? "Nice logo, shame about the folks on the phone." That's your brand.

Your brand's Wikipedia entry can be an excellent research tool. It can tell you what matters about your goings-on in the world. Read it, engage with it. And work on fixing what Wikipedia says is broken through a combination of pro-active communications and changes to the fundamentals.