Is Your Brand Connected?

Recently, I went to a half-day business conference put on by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce. One of the most informative speakers was Lisa Johnson who is an award-winning marketer.

Not unlike Marty Neumeier, author of THE BRAND GAP, president of Neutron, Lisa, compared the old way of marketing a brand, which she called pushing, to the new way, pulling. Both Marty and Lisa believe that brand identities reside in people who use the products and services of a company - they create meaning for the brand, for themselves.

To illustrate the point, Lisa talked about how Harry Potter's young fans had started writing their own stories about Harry Potter creating new adventures for him and posting them on the web. Instead of embracing this upwelling of love and support for Harry Potter, owners of the Harry Potter brand send out lawyers to remove all unofficial Harry Potter fiction. Talk about a killjoy. That would be push marketing - "our brand means only what we say it means."

In another universe, when Star Wars fans started posting their Star War videos on line, George Lucas celebrated his fans. He even made Star War sounds, clips, and graphics available to his fan base so that they could create better movies. Then, he created a contest for the best Star Wars fan movie. That would be pull marketing - "our brand means what you say it means."

Pull marketing is much more expansive and can grow in unexpected ways.

Lisa thinks that a healthy brand has equal parts: commerce, content, and community. Her books look at breakaway brands and what differentiates them from most other brands. Her focus is on the younger generation and their total connectivity to each other and the world around them via blogs, my space, you tube, text messaging, rss feeds, and cell phones.

She notes that now, when people make notably good or bad purchases they not only tell their friends but they tell their web community, by posting notes on their websites, blogs, and review sites such as E-Opinions, and TripAdvisor (one of my favorites). That means good and bad product and service news travels faster than ever before. If you aren't monitoring a blog or two about your industry, now is the time to get involved.

For more information, see Lisa's site: reachgroupconsulting.com, and/or buy her books:

Are Your Employees Getting the Recognition they Deserve and Need?

Last month I went to a Human Resources workshop given by the Seattle Chamber of Commerce called Performance Recognition and found myself ducking toy carrots. Yes, carrots.

Chester Elton puts on a very entertaining, and thanks to his good aim, fun presentation. If I didn't have a fabulous presentation coach (Connie Miller) who advocates throwing questions or things out to the audience to keep them involved, I might have been more surprised at the flying carrots. Chester and Adrian Gostick have written a book called The Carrot Principal. It's all about employee recognition.




Do your employees know how much you value them? If not, read his book pronto! Ever wonder why some companies have employees who work way past 5pm without complaint while others struggle to prevent constant turnover? The answer is recognition. If employees feel valued they'll go the extra mile, if not, they won't. And, you can only imagine what this means to your company's bottom line. Chester showed a number of convincing charts illustrating the difference in company profits if employees feel they are appreciated -- approximately 35% more than companies that did not show any employee appreciation.

What can you do?

In the short term make sure you recognize employee accomplishments (not efforts, which should be encouraged but not rewarded) in a timely fashion. If someone puts out a perfect report and stays late to make sure it's done in time for tomorrow's meeting, make sure they receive recognition the next day. To properly recognize an employee's accomplishments you need to do the following:

1) Be timely.
2) Be specific (e.g., "I really appreciated your accuracy in developing those reports." Don't just say, "hey, good work.")
3) Reward accomplishments not effort. While you want to encourage a good effort, you need to make it clear that results are what are needed and what will be rewarded.

In the long term, find out what your employees really want. Studies have shown that money isn't always the best reward. Chester has a survey to help you that I'm posting with permission (click here to download a Word doc. survey from Carrots.com).

Be Greener! Recycle Your Stuff Online

I've been amazed at the kind of stuff that is available in the recycle section of the Bainbridge Review classifieds - washers, dryers, cars, sofas - all free. Getting rid of stuff is a whole lot less fun than getting it in the first place and sometimes "you haul" is worth a lot, even more than the item itself.

I believe in reducing our impact (us humans) on the earth, and so I was relieved to see that Freecycle had taken the concept of recycling personal items online. It's great if you're cleaning out the garage or if you're looking for a particular item. And, like craigslist, you can search for items by city, so you won't have to haul your new free stuff very far. It's like one giant continuous garage sale without the exchange of cash -- too cool, or what??

Email Signatures

Email Signatures at the bottom of email messages are a great place to list your contact information as well as a tagline or a line of news and/or links to your website, blog, and wiki. In fact, I'm surprised everyone doesn't have one.

I love the convenience of having my phone and fax number at the bottom of each email I send out - now you can too!

If you're one of those people who would like to have an email signature but isn't sure how to create one, here's a quick step-by-step for Outlook users.

First, click on the New button as though you're going to send out a new message then click on the arrow by the Options button. It's important that you click on the arrow so that you see a list of options (note red arrow). Click on E-mail Signature.

A popup window will display. If this is your first email signature, follow these steps:

1) Type in a name for your signature into the text box at the top of the popup window.

2) In the bottom box, type in your email signature.

3) Once you've typed in the content, highlight it and select a font face and size from the pulldowns at the top of the text box.

4) Next, highlight specific type you'd like to bold, italicize or underline. You'll see options for left-justify, justify and right justify, click which is ever appropriate for your email.

5) If you'd like to add color to your type, highlight words that you'd like to color then select the arrow by the A symbol. Select the color that best suits your branding. If possible, enter RGB numbers of your corporate branding to give your email a polished look.

6) Finally, highlight text you'd like to link to your website, blog, or wiki and click on the link icon to enter the URL.

Also, you have the option to add images to your signature. I don't recommend this as some people don't have HTML-enabled email clients and will just see a blank box, whereas text will always display.

Click OK and your signature is saved and will display each time you send out an email. If you'd like to edit your signature, just go through the same process after selecting your signature name from the E-Mail Options popup window.