Two left brains?

I recently had a client who I swore had two left brains. This incredibly smart client was very good at “brain twisters”. His team would go into “brain jam” sessions to untangle and resolve complex issues. Logic was their natural habitat.

And while logical thinking served them well in their consulting engagements, it was detracting from their marketing message and their brand image.
I knew this client would need to understand the logic about what I was going to recommend to them (which was more emotional engagement). So I turned to Parick Renvoise and Christophe Morin, who do an excellent job of explaining the latest consumer brain science in their easy-to-read book, “Neuromarketing, Understanding the ‘Buy Buttons’ in Your Customer’s Brain.”

I routinely recommend this book to my left-brain-dominate clients because it gives them the logic behind employing emotionally engaging approaches to their brand identity and marketing communications. Once they get the logic, it’s easier for them to make changes in their marketing.

The book is based on the fundamental principle that the oldest part of the human brain, the primal or “reptile” brain, has the ultimate “veto” power in buying decisions and therefore it should be the marketer’s PRIORITY audience.

Morin and Renvoise outline six key things our primal brains respond best to:
1. Self-centeredness | The primal brain is wired for self-preservation so it’s always on the lookout for “what’s in it for me?” So, your marketing needs to be buyer-centered, not seller-centered.
2. Contrast is your friend| Speaking in high contrast terms, not shades of grey, is more readily understood by the primal brain. So high contrast words and ideas are important, like slow vs. fast, broken vs. fixed, before vs. after).
3. Speaking in Tangibles | The primal brain doesn’t easily process abstract concepts. So being more concrete in your ideas helps your message to be understood more quickly.
4. Focusing on beginnings and the endings | The primal brain will have a tendency to pay more attention to the beginning and the end of communications, thus forgetting whatever falls in the middle. So, your opening and closing statements are really the most critical, one engages the other is often a call to action.
5. Being visual | The primal brain is wired to make decisions based on visual input since the optic nerve is directly connected to it. So visuals, or visual words, are very helpful in communicating ideas.
6. Getting emotional | The primal brain has been shown to have electrochemical responses to emotions (i.e. hormones flood our brains) and as a result we actually remember events better when we have experienced them with a strong emotion. Think about those vivid memories or song lyrics that “move” you. So putting emotional triggers in our marketing helps cement our messages in our audiences’ memory.

If you know anyone who is trying to be a steward of more right brain approaches to their marketing, order this gem through Amazon, it’s a bargain at under $15!

I like how my fellow brand consulting friend Judy Leidy puts it, “A brand promise is communicated internally but experienced externally.”

It’s important to note that a brand promise is an internal statement and usually the tagline is based on the brand promise.

A key challenge when writing a brand promise is making it lofty yet believable and achievable. How much “stretch” do we put in here? Can we really be all that? Can this apply to ALL of our customers? These are common concerns.

Some of my favorite brand promises are from Coke, Google, Patagonia and the Ritz Carlton and they’re only 6-9 words each.

Coke, “To inspire moments of optimism and uplift.”
Google, “Provide access to the world’s information in one click.”
Patagonia, “We provide for environmentally responsible adventure.”
Ritz Carlton, “Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen.”

Those 6-9 little words are some of the hardest words you’ll ever write in marketing. Why? One word: commitment.

Some clients have a real fear of committing to something higher and more permanent than advertising or a blog post. But when they do, a lot of things suddenly come into much sharper focus. And marketing the brand becomes easier.

Four things a brand promise must be:

• Compelling to your buyers. The brand promise has to be something that paying customers actually care about.

• Clear with no room for misinterpretation. It has to be so crystal clear that anyone hearing or reading it will “get” it without explanation. This includes the newbie employee who may know little about the brand, to the organization’s most seasoned veteran.

• Concise in language. In order for employees to remember a brand promise, brevity is critical. I worked for a cruise company almost 20 years ago and I STILL can recall their brand promise, “A spirit cruise is a different way to have a good time.” This brand promise was translated into their marketing tagline, “Something Different. Something Fun.”

• Credible coming from you. If your brand promise is so “out there” that no one will take you seriously, there’s no point in making the promise. Vet your brand promise candidates by determining if there are at least 3 key reasons (based in facts) to believe that promise.

My challenge to you is to consider, what is YOUR brand promise? Look at your mission and vision statements as starting points; these often have the essence of the promise already in them.

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne (yes, that’s her real name!) founded Brand Mentoring so she could teach clients how to build buzzworthy brands and STOP looking and sounding like everyone else. Her motto is, “Great marketing always begins with a great brand.” Her favorite subjects include brand positioning, brand promise, brand essence, value propositions, brand archetypes, brand families and graphic brand identity! Pecanne is always open to conversations with potential new clients and speaking to groups about brand building. Her latest talk is, “How to escape the marketing commodity trap” Call 303-482-2753 or email Pecanne@brandmentoring.com for more information.

He was frustrated that had “wasted a year just talking” about it. Then he enthusiastically refreshed my memory on his expansion plans, but this time in more vivid detail.

It occurred to me that something HAD happened during that year— he had gotten much clearer about his vision, the potential pitfalls and what he really needed from a consultant.

Now, I’m not justifying procrastination; I’m confident if he had hired me a year earlier he would be doing business in his new market right now. But it did illustrate the point that getting clearer about anything is a process, not an event.

I call it, “The Law of Clarity.”

When we get clearer about any subject, it bolsters our confidence and fuels our actions. From a marketing perspective, The Law of Clarity accelerates our success because we get clear about our endgame. We get clear on what success will look like and how we’ll measure it. We get clear on what we’ll say, to whom and how.

I’ve seen it many times, when clients experience The Law of Clarity, they enthusiastically re-engage, they feel inspired and they press forward knowing that success is inevitable. You stop “just talking” and you start doing.

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne (yes, that’s her real name!) founded Brand Mentoring because she got tired of seeing SMART people doing lousy marketing. She helps her clients build buzzworthy brands so they can stop looking and sounding like everyone else.

Her motto is, “Great marketing always begins with a great brand.”

Her favorite subjects include brand positioning, value propositions, brand DNA, brand archetypes, brand families and graphic brand identity!

Pecanne is always seeking new clients and speaking engagements. Her latest talk is, “How to escape the marketing commodity trap” Call 303-482-2753 or email Pecanne@brandmentoring.com for more information.

Let’s face it, our clients and prospects are all time starved. They’re “weeding out” the extraneous in their lives. If they don’t immediately “get” you, then you’re deemed a commodity and promptly forgotten.

But take heart, some will not be “weeded out” and that may as well be YOU. I’ll warn you though, it takes more than stellar marketing and sales skills.

It starts with your brand (not your marketing). Your brand is actually the foundation to everything and its either being enhanced or it’s being under minded by your choices (or lack thereof).

Choice #1. Choosing to LEAD in something.

For my brand, I aim to lead in being an ultra, clear brand teacher. This idea drove my business mission and company name, Brand Mentoring. It reflects my innate gift for teaching. It’s something that I still feel passionate about, even after 20 years in marketing. And it acts as my “north star” when I work with clients and workshop participants. I just love to teach, so it’s key to my brand.

So now, think about whatever it is you are trying to brand (i.e. yourself, a service, product, company, cause). Where can your brand LEAD? When does your brand SHINE its brightest?

To get your mind moving, download my brand-leadership-idea-starters below. Pick 2-3 and mind map each one separately to explore how the concept actually relates (or doesn’t relate) to your brand. You might be surprised where mind mapping takes you. And if you’re feeling stuck, come to a workshop or give me a call to talk more.

Choose to lead so that your brand is not the one “weeded out.”

Brand Leadership Idea Starters

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne (yes, that’s her real name!) founded Brand Mentoring because she got tired of seeing SMART people doing lousy marketing.

By consulting with clients FIRST on their brand strategy, she helps them clarify, simplify and unify their marketing efforts. Her motto is, “Great marketing always begins with a great brand.”

Her favorite subjects include brand positioning, value proposition statements, brand archetypes and graphic brand identity!

Pecanne is always seeking new clients and speaking engagements. Her latest talk is, “How to escape the marketing commodity trap: Being remembered.” Call 303-482-2753 or email Pecanne@brandmentoring.com for more information.

Hearing about the GAP logo, took me back to 2002 when Price Waterhouse Coopers announced it would rename its consulting practice to “Monday” and the immediate outcry that followed that announcement.

AdAge reported, “The logo, created by New York agency Laird & Partners, was intended to be a long-term commitment for the brand with a nod to the future.”

Marka Hansen, president of Gap North America, initially defended the decision as “[The new logo] honors our heritage through the blue box while still taking it forward,” Hansen said. “Our brand and our clothes are changing and rethinking our logo is part of aligning with that.”

And all of that kind of makes sense from a corporate perspective, GAP sports a traditional typeface and sounds like leadership thought “modernizing” was in order. But consumers did not agree and ultimately they buy the stuff.

What this really demonstrates is the popularity a mark itself can have…the power and ownership consumers feel over the brands they truly like, buy, wear, drink, eat, use and talk about. And it doesn’t hurt that GAP is one of those highly recognized, classic identities…we can thank their skillfully produced TV spots, blue drawstring shopping bags and most recently actor Jesse Eisenberg wearing a GAP hooded sweatshirt in The Social Network.

So where does this leave branding professionals? Do we have to rethink our consumer input process? Will we be asking for permission more verses forgiveness? And how will brand boutiques really feel about crowd sourcing alternative logo ideas online?

No doubt the GAP logo episode will be one replayed by marketers for a long time to come.

Think about it, the secrets to really successful brands are really very simple:

a) The product, service, cause they represent is sound, good, relevant, in other words NOT fatally flawed and

b) The brand is defined and executed to a very high level of specificity.

Michael Eisner, former CEO for Disney, said it best, “A brand is a living entity— and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.”

When you think about your brand as a living entity, let’s say like a person, your brand really needs:
1. Core values to guide it and live by,
2. A personality to create rapport and endear itself,
3. A promise (purpose) to deliver on,
4. A core message to convey what it can do,
5. Target audiences to engage with,
6. Market positioning to show how it’s different and
7. A role within its brand “family” (ex. parent, child, sibling, cousin)

If you’ve not defined the above, it’s time. I see it with clients all the time, the longer they “hang out” in limbo on these decisions, the more frustrated and confused they become. Gaining clarity will free you from reinventing the wheel about how you talk about your business, where you market it and how you design your touch points.

I have two workshops coming up that deal with these topics in great specificity:
• September 9, 2010, we’re hosting “How to Build a Brand that Sells”
• October 16, 2010, we’re hosting “Brandtopia: The Secrets to aligning Your Personal and Business Brands” (note: this one is exclusively for women business owners).

Until we meet, all the best to you in life and in brand building!

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne is speaker and an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience (many of those years in the fast-paced advertising agency world), she helps clients clarify, simplify and unify their brand strategy so that their marketing “sticks” in their audiences’ long term memory banks. Pecanne regularly speaks and facilitates a variety of marketing workshops including: Brands that Sell and Brandtopia.

Many business owners start defining their brands when developing their logo…but before the ink is dry on the business cards, they often move onto other things and their brand strategy remains partially defined, in a “fuzzy wuzzy” state.

Failure to deep dive on the brand strategy usually results in a lot of tail chasing for years to come. In contrast, a PRECISELY defined brand will act like your compass, it will keep you (and your marketing) pointing in the right direction.

Most brands live in one of three stages:
Stage 1: Fuzzy wuzzy
Stage 2: “Me too”
Stage 3: Uniquely you!

Stage 1
The “fuzzy wuzzy” brand is still uncommitted to deciding who it really is. It’s still in contemplation mode but usually is already marketing itself. This is a fruitless stage since you are asking the marketplace to interpret and clarify for themselves what your brand should mean to them. Consumers are simply too busy for this, they need you to figure out who your brand is and then telegraph this message back to them via their preferred communication channels.

Often clients stuck in fuzzy wuzzy land are afraid of declaring any “specifics” for fear of “leaving out” large portions of the marketplace. The first thing every client has to admit to themselves is that they are not a fit for everyone, accepting this is extremely liberating.

Stage 2
Unlike the fuzzy wuzzy brand, the “me too” brand has decided something! Unfortunately those who find themselves in this stage have decided (consciously or not) to be on par with their competition— making the same claims and similar promises. In other words being a “me too” brand is just playing it safe but not doing anything extraordinary in its marketing message, marketing tactics, product design or customer experience. As consumers, we see “me too” brands daily and we’re adept at tuning it all out. But “me too” is a step in the right direction as it’s at least giving some definition and shape to the brand.

Stage 3
The “uniquely you” brand is where you want to land as this is the place where you know what makes your brand so brilliant.
And you get there by PRECISELY defining WHO your brand really is.

I say “who” because brands are a lot like people, they have names, values, personalities, aspirations and “friends”.

You know your brand is on its way to being “uniquely you” when you can honestly answer the following:
1. What is my organization passionate about (aka my brand’s core values )?
2. Who do I best serve (aka my target audiences)?
3. What can all my customers consistently expect from us (aka my brand’s promise)?
4. How do I boil down our promise to 2-3 words so my employees and partners never forget why we’re in business (aka my
brand essence)?
5. How do I tell my story so it separates me from my competition (aka my market positioning strategy)?
6. How do my employees and I “show up” as our brand when interacting with our customers (aka my brand experience)?

A “Uniquely You” Case
One brand that has really broken out of “me too” and into “uniquely you” is Ally Bank, the 24/7 online bank. This is a masterful example of branding since Ally Financial is part of the former General Motors Acceptance Corporation (GMAC) dating back to 1919!

In 2009 Ally Bank began running humorous television commercials featuring kids as bank customers and the discrepancy in how some bank customers are treated better than others. You’ve likely seen the 30 second TV spot featuring a little girl who is asked by a man in a pinstriped suit, “Would you like a pony?” And when she nods, she’s given a toy pony. Then her little friend is asked the same question, she nods and voila she’s given a REAL pony.

When the first girl protests, “You didn’t say I could have a real one,” the pinstriped fellow says, “Well you didn’t ask.” Morale of the story, Ally Bank is not like every other bank, they don’t hide behind the fine print…they’re straight talkers who do right by their customers and strive to be obviously better than competing banks.
Ally Bank Pony TV Spot

Ally is a vivid example as the antithesis of “me too” brands. And they did it by first defining who they really want to be in the marketplace (the straightforward bank people). You can read about their brand story on their website

Remember, the STARTING POINT to all great marketing is defining your brand strategy FIRST. The world is already full of fuzzy wuzzy and “me too” brands, dare to be uniquely you!

About Pecanne Eby, MBA

Pecanne is speaker and an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience (many of those years in the fast-paced advertising agency world), she helps clients clarify, simplify and unify their brand strategy so that their marketing “sticks” in their audiences’ long term memory banks. Pecanne regularly facilitates a variety of marketing workshops including: Brands that Sell; Building a Buzzworthy Brand and Brandtopia.

Consider the following seven secrets of successful brands, does this sound like your brand?

1. Compelling Story: Your buyers attach meaning to your brand because they truly understand your brand’s platform (i.e. the essence, promise, differentiators and proof points).

2. Reputation: You don’t settle for “me too”. Instead your brand is positioned on a reputation idea that reflects where your organization excels, how you’re different, special and relevant (i.e. innovation leader, fun leader, knowledge leader, are a few examples).

3. Core Values: Your brand is based on 3-5 core values which your organization unequivocally defends (even when it costs you more money).

4. Humanized: You don’t settle for a “vanilla” brand personality. Instead you’ve developed a unique personality for your brand which may be based a universally recognized brand archetype (ex. hero, rebel, powerbroker, creator, siren and others).

5. Owning Color: You’ve developed a color palette for your brand’s identity and consistently use 1 or 2 colors primarily (ex. Susan G. Komen’s pink, UPS’ brown, IBM’s blue).

6. Strong Stewardship: Your brand has clear brand standards (ex. Do’s and don’ts regarding your logo, colors and typography). And you’ve made your brand assets accessible to those who use them. Brand assets include digital files of logo, photos and graphics.

7. Living the Brand: Because a customer’s experience with a brand will cement their perceptions, you deliberately work to align employee’s attitudes, knowledge and behavior with the desired brand experience. You leverage, in this order, people, programs and “propaganda” (aka internal communications) to help everyone “live” the brand each day.

Recently, I had two different conversations with prospects who sold rather complex consulting services, both of whom were in significant pain in terms of marketing their businesses effectively. The issues they spoke of included struggling to explain what services they provided in a compelling way and generating qualified leads for their sales folks to convert into business. These, by the way, are the most common struggles I hear from prospects so if that sounds like you, don’t feel bad and consider calling me to talk.

Anyway, in both cases, these two prospects had not yet learned what their marketing struggles were costing their business or costing them personally.

Yet they both admitted something needed to change, a sign they are moving closer to resolution. One went so far as to say he needed to “stew in it” (his marketing struggle) a little longer before he would seek outside help– translation the pain of paying someone for help was greater than the pain of wrestling with it himself.

All of this perfectly illustrates: Opportunity Cost.

Business Dictionary defined opportunity cost as: Benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost.

In the case of the two prospects, their time as a valuable resource was not being considered as part of the cost of their business problem. Their executive time could be put to better use rather than stumbling around with their brand’s positioning strategy, marketing outreach plan and even graphic design.

The example I remember from business school was the opportunity cost of changing the oil in one’s car. Sure we may all be somewhat “capable” of changing the oil but considering the time (and learning curve) involved, our time is actually worth more than the money we would pay someone else (a car care expert) to perform this service.

You may also hear opportunity cost associated with build or buy/outsource decision-making. I have a healthy outsourcing mindset, for example, I outsource advertising and graphic design, SEO work, some copy writing, computer repairs and web hosting, among other things. Why? Because at my hourly billing rate, it simply does not make sense for me to try and do all of these things myself— the opportunity cost is too great. Plus there’s usually an intangible cost for folks like me, the frustration level that comes with knowing that “do-it-yourself” does not always translate into optimal outcomes.

As you plan for 2010, think about how you will create YOUR optimal outcomes and if you need to make a few mistakes along the way, that’s ok they’re not really mistakes if you learn the opportunity cost lesson.

About Pecanne Eby, MBA
Pecanne is an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience, she helps clients become fearless about their marketing decisions through one-on-one consulting engagements and group Brand Boot Camps.

Here’s the deal, social media is still proving itself in hard numbers but intuitively most of us recognize that the social media revolution has opened up new avenues for how we relate and build relationships with our constituents.

For those who need to be able to offer up a good “why” for investing any marketing budget into social media and have a hard time remembering all the benefits, use this business vernacular with a twist: Reach; Online engagement; and Insight (or ROI to help you remember it).

ROI for Social Media

Reach is fairly self explanatory, social media will help you reach your target audiences either directly or through the online grapevine. Social media can help you reach your audience for the first time or multiple times. Naturally that reach can be measured by the number of members in your network (often called followers, friends or fans).

Online engagement is a critical cornerstone to the social media culture since this culture highly values being heard (i.e. dialog over marketing monologue). Online engagement means being willing to take risks, like allowing people to comment on your content, your services, products, mission and anything else that may attract their attention. Sometimes you’ll have to agree to disagree, but it’s usually a good and healthy thing in the social media world and it generates a sense of relationship. Online engagement can be measured in terms of traffic to your primary site from the social media platform, comments and of course the overall growth in the size of your network.

Finally, insights about audiences— the lifeblood that drives all strategic marketing. By using social media we have the opportunity to do a unique kind of observational research. We can observe so many things about our audiences including their conversations, their topics and their level of passion around those topics. Sure, at first it can look like unorganized chatter but as you spend more time with social media, learn the networks’ search tools, try some new applications and interact with those in the social network you’re building, you will get better at distilling the input into insight.

Happy networking!