Branding is the Experience

In the marketing industry, the word BRAND is thrown around daily. Does this or that relate to our brand? Don't worry, this is part of our branding process. We need to freshen up our brand. What the heck is our brand?

The terminology may be one of the most over-used words in the marketing world, and it is often mis-used. A brand is not a logo, which is a graphical representation of your business and your brand. A brand is not a marketing tactic or an advertising campaign. A brand is not a slogan or a happy jingle.

A brand IS an experience! It is how the customer interacts with your business; how your business responds to customer needs and demands; the perspectives the public or target audiences have of your business, products and services. True, a slogan and advertising campaign may help build a brand, but the brand itself is representative of everything your business embodies.

The worst mistake a business can make is to "brand" itself one way -- run an advertising and PR campaign that promotes its superior customer service -- and then have a reputation that completely counters that brand --cranky store reps, exhaustingly long wait times at their help desks, and scores of disgruntled customers spreading negative customer services experiences by the truckloads!

Case in point: US Airways
Marc Brownstein from Advertising Age wrote an eloquent saga of just this sort of branding hardship. His objective is to explain brand loyalty and how customers, understandably, will only take so much before they seek a competitor.

Case 2 in point: Starbucks
Although still somewhat delivering on its brand promise, some -- including Adverting Age columnist Lenore Skenazy -- question whether Starbucks is letting things slide. Mostly, Skenazy argues, there's no better competitor for Starbucks, so they're still a viable outlet for what they do offer.

Part of protecting your brand is to follow through on what your brand promises. Even better, deliver MORE than your brand promises! This will intern amplify the efforts of your brand.

Gorillas Attacking Your Mind

Guerrilla marketing is a buzz phrase in our industry, so it warrants some time chatting about what it is and how it works. Notice the spelling of guerrilla, not to be confused with gorilla, although comparisons between the two can be made!

Guerrilla: Often used to describe a type of warfare tactic, the term means a method of surprise attack, sometimes even luring the enemy into a trap of sorts. Guerrilla marketing, on the other hand, incorporates a much lower death rate and hopefully much higher rate of positive response. It's interesting the once negative and somewhat scary terminology is now being used by firms to describe a method of marketing that is being hailed by professionals across the globe for its ingenuity and out-of-the-box thinking.

Examples may include an airport shuttle service wallpapering the inside of an airport bathroom with information about the benefits of carpooling to/from the airport with a contact number for their business, or a local event planning organization that stages "litter" that announces their next event along a well-traveled sidewalk (don't worry, they clean it up afterward), or a local business owner tucking his business cards into library books pertinent to his business industry, or a hotel that partners with a local singles pub and distributes it's two-hour rates on coasters in the bar. (Examples, people, just examples!)

The idea behind these tactics is that they are aggressive and they are meant to infiltrate the audience's mind and motivate them to action. Meanwhile, the audience doesn't necessarily make the connection that their action is related to the marketing that just "happened" to them. The idea is aggressive marketing, often holding a direct link or partnership between the marketing piece and its environment -- very camouflaged, much like combat attire, eh?

A book aptly decorated in cammo colors by Jay Conrad Levinson (who lays claim to coining the phrase) and Godin, The Guerilla Marketing Handbook, outline the foundation of guerrilla marketing. (yes, I stole this from Wikipedia, which may have been written by Mr. Levinson himself for all I know):

• Guerrilla Marketing should be based on human psychology instead of experience, judgment, and guesswork.
• Instead of money, the primary investments of marketing should be time, energy, and imagination.
• The primary statistic to measure your business is the amount of profits, not sales.
  The marketer should also concentrate on how many new relationships are made each month.
• Create a standard of excellence with an acute focus instead of trying to diversify by offering allied products and services.
• Instead of concentrating on getting new customers, aim for more referrals, more transactions with existing customers, and larger transactions.
• Forget about the competition and concentrate more on cooperating with other businesses.
• Guerrilla Marketers should always use a combination of marketing methods for a campaign.
• Use current technology as a tool to empower your marketing.

All fine and good, Mr. Levinson and Mr. Godin. They also say guerrilla marketing is often a tool of small businesses, but there I would differ with them. I think the movement may have began with smaller businesses, but corporations have certainly stood up and taken notice. And marketing plans from large corporate marketing firms are beginning to show elements of guerrilla tactics. It'll be entertaining -- at the very least -- to watch how this term grows as more and more marketing professionals don their combat attire to take on new marketing antics.

My only worry is that by simply using the word "guerrilla" in my blog, Kinsman Creative may now be closely watched by the Bush administration!

Launching into Blogosphere

Welcome to the first posting of the Kinsman Creative Blog. Here you will find weekly tid-bits of advice and marketing ingenuity.

Rightly dedicated, this first blog is about the force of technology in the marketing world. It'll be short; I won't go on and on about things you already know. (OK, maybe a little bit, but - hey, this is my blog, right?)

The radically rapid change of technology is forcing humanity to be constantly humbled. (Not always a bad thing.) It is essential for the marketing professionals to embrace these changes, even though at times it may seem easier to dinosaur-ize ourselves by doing the same ol' same ol' methods. We, instead, need to commit ourselves to constant education and be okay with hiring individuals who are experts in technological fields.

I suggest exploring one concept per month. Sure, a few hundred ideas pop-up in a day, but why be unrealistic and self-destructive? If this is the first marketing blog you've ventured into - great job. Give yourself a pat on the back. Next month, put on your to-do list to explore widgets or a friend's MySpace page or whatever new gadget comes into the limelight tomorrow that catches your eye.

This spoof article about Mac's launch of "iLaunch" in The Onion made me laugh today. It expresses the ludicrous-ity of the technology frenzy we so often seem to experience. Enjoy!

***Expect a major blogging hiatus during the month of April, since the two founders of Kinsman Creative will be launching a new venture - an 18-day, self-guided rafting trip down the grandest of the Grand Canyon!