4 blog improvements in 2010

With the start of the new year, I’ve decided that it is time to make some changes (hopefully improvements) to the ALL In One Marketing Greenhouse.  Admittedly, 2009 was a year of learning, trial and error.  I intend to make 2010 the year of engagement with value to the Greenhouse readers.

With that in mind, I am introducing the following enhancements to the blog:

1. Dear Amy.  Have you ever heard of a little column called Dear Abby?  Well, in 2010, we’ll have some posts that feature Dear Amy.  Any marketing or branding questions that you have can be emailed to me at amy@allinonemarketingusa.com, and I’ll analyze, respond, and recommend solutions in a post (free of charge!). These can be questions on any marketing topic such as how to raise awareness for a local charity you are trying to get off the ground or how do you get 30 million people to try your new product on a $10,000 budget.  No marketing question is too big or small.  I’ll do my best to give you my two cents in a post or two.
2. Book reviews.  As marketing professionals and business leaders, it’s sometimes all we can do to get through our industry journals and Google Alerts each day, let alone stay up to date on some of the latest strategic marketing thinking.  To help you know what’s out there and what you might want to invest time in reading, I’ll do periodic book reviews that will summarize the key points that I take away from these books.  Think of it as Cliff Notes for marketing strategy.
3. Top articles and blog posts.  As a consultant, it is my job to read the latest brand, product, and retailer news daily.  You probably try to do this too — but like the books — it can be very challenging to keep up.  As a result, I’ll be writing posts every couple of weeks that summarize my ‘must read’ blogs and articles.  I hope that you’ll find this useful.
4. Shorter posts, but more frequently.  Okay, this isn’t an enhancement, but this is something I will try to work on this year to make the blog more useful and user friendly.

What else?  What would you like to see covered?  What would really add value to you?  Talk to me…I’m listening.

Marketing & Branding Mistake #4: Lack of Character

*A version of this post originally appeared on Kyle Lacy’s blog where I was invited to write a guest post.

If your brand were a celebrity, who would it be and why?

This is a question that is often used to define a brand’s character, which is a critical component of the overall identity of a brand.  Unfortunately, because it seems abstract, this type of question doesn’t get asked and answered enough.  As a result, many brands don’t have a real character.

Up until recently, many brands were able to grow without having a well-defined and compelling brand character.  As long as a brand provided a consistent set of meaningful, differentiated benefits to a target group of customers, it had a reasonable chance of being successful.  This was because the brand could control its messaging, as it consistently talked to its target customer.  It had its key messages, and it could stick to communicating these.

The communication framework between brands and customers is now very different.  Gone are the days of one way communication of a brand’s message to its customers.  A brand now must engage in a conversation with its customers to stay relevant to and be embraced by them.  A conversation means that a brand can’t just keep stating its key messages.  It has to respond to what customers are saying and asking, and sometimes the key messages just aren’t appropriate responses.

So in these cases, what is a brand supposed to say?  How will it know how to answer its customers’ questions and participate in unscripted dialogue?  This is where the brand’s character plays a critical role.  The brand’s character rounds out the brand into something more than just a set of benefits and key messages.  It gives the brand a life that enables it to talk with its customers without the key messages while still staying true and consistent to what the brand stands for.  It is more than just a tone that the brand uses.  It is truly the brand’s personality, defining its temperament, attitude and behaviors.  The brand’s character differentiates it from other brands with common benefits and it gives customers one more way to develop an affiliation and stronger relationship with the brand.  So while perhaps the brand character could have been an overlooked brand element in the past when differentiating benefits and messages were enough, it is now the critical component that supports conversations between a brand and its customers.  Without it, who are the customers really conversing with?

Can you identify the celebrity that personifies your brand?  If the answer doesn’t readily come to your mind (and isn’t matching what everyone else in your organization would say), perhaps you should take some time to more fully develop your brand’s character.  It will make the conversations between your brand and your customers far richer and more meaningful.