Brand Buzz: Whrrl

Building a brand is all about points of engagement. Finding those places where your consumers can be a part of your tribe. Where they can be a part of the experience.

Whrrl (www.whrrl.com) provides just that opportunity.

As we will talk about during Brand Buzz on KPEL today at 5:20pm (listen online at www.kpel1051.com), Whrrl is an application that provides for people to tell the same story through photos and comments, each from their own perspective.

It's a collaboration tool.

We participated in the first Whrrl use in the state of Louisiana during Festival International in April. It was a great story and you can click here to see how it all began.

To view the Festival story on Whrrl, click here.

For more information on Whrrl, you can find a white paper entitled Whrrl 101 by clicking here.

Let us know if you have used Whrrl before. What did you think? How can it benefit your industry or business?

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

Companies Make Products but Consumers Buy Brands.

Happy Birthday, Walter Landor, who would have been 96 on July 9.

He was a brand design legend and the founder of Landor Associates.

As Wikipedia explains, Walter Landor was a pioneer in the field of branding and consumer research. Landor Associates, the company he founded with his wife in 1941, has brand consulting and design offices all over the world today. His work included brands like Del Monte, Marlboro. Fujifilm,Tab. and Bank of America. He also designed the corporate identities for many airlines, including Alitalia, British Airways, Japan Airlines, Delta Air Lines, Cathay Pacific Airways, and Singapore Airlines.

Max Factor famously stated "In the factory we make cosmetics, and in the store we sell hope."

When it comes to branding, the quote could be "Companies make products, but consumers buy brands."

Happy Birthday Walter. Thank you for the gift you gave to our industry.

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

Do You Want a Sustainable Competitive Advantage?

According to Arie de Gues, “Your ability to learn faster than your competition is your only sustainable competitive advantage.”

Now, to be honest, I am not even sure who Arie de Gues is, but I am thinking he is some sort of a genius. The problem is, far too many fail to heed his advice – regardless of whether they are new to the industry or seasoned professionals.

At our agency, continued education is not only essential, but also required – and no, this does not mean attending night classes at your local community college.

What I am referring to is taking on the responsibility of bettering yourself, whenever and wherever possible. This could mean performing research on market trends, or simply paying attention to the world around you. The biggest mistake anyone can make, is assuming they already have all the answers. If you ever start to feel this way, just take a look up in the rear view mirror and you’ll see your competition quickly approaching.

And make no mistake - there is competition everywhere, whether it comes in the form of another company within your category, or from a fellow employee who wants the corner office at the end of the hall. In the end, the only way to keep your edge is to keep your brain sharp.

Unlike other industries, advertising does not require licensing and continuing education credits, although it could easily be argued that this would not always be a bad idea. That being said, we must take these endeavors upon ourselves, even when it is not required.

Fortunately, all you need for this to happen is an internet connection, a cup of coffee and an inkling of ambition to keep you inspired and moving forward. Ok, the coffee is optional, but ambition is not.

You have to want to be better, want to improve and want to grow. Otherwise, you end up falling behind. This alone can hurt your career, but more importantly, it can hurt your client’s success – something I take very seriously.

One thing you should absolutely not do is learn at your client's expense. Instead, I recommend practicing on yourself, your company, or a pro-bono client. While fake it till you make it practices may have been okay for wanting to be cool in high school, it isn't a good idea when your client is investing millions of dollars for an ROI that increases revenue.

When I speak to recent graduates, I tell them that their formal education is just the first step in a process, a process that goes far beyond what you can get from a book. It has to do with real world experience that hopefully drives you to want more. Without this drive, you will soon find that you are either stuck in a holding pattern, or unable to even leave the ground.

To be successful in today’s world, you have to do more and be more, and most importantly, you have to want it more than anyone else.

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

Does Social Media Matter?

It is almost impossible to open a magazine or watch the news without hearing about Social Media and how it is helping, or hurting, business today.

What can social media do for you and more importantly why should you care?

Well to answer that question properly, we first have to discuss branding, as it pertains to business – not cattle. To understand what a brand is, we have to realize what it is not.

A brand is not a company.

A brand is not a logo.

A brand is not a product.

Quite simply, a brand is a person’s emotional response to a product. It’s the product’s reputation in the heart and mind of the consumer.

Why is branding so important? When consumers are making decisions about a purchase, they can be overwhelmed by too many choices, with no differentiation between products, and have to rely on their feeling about a company when making a selection.

Their gut feeling is shaped by the promise that a company has made and the expectation that the consumer has about the experience. When the expectation is met or exceeded, then trust will be formed. Trust promotes loyalty and loyalty leads to advocacy.

So, what is your brand?

You have to start with Focus – define the one differentiating and powerfully compelling quality that makes your brand razor sharp.

Next is Connection – connect with your audience by establishing your voice and defining your message.

Now you have to tie it together with Harmony – unify your brand by developing branded touchpoints that work to establish trust.

The ultimate goal is to change the conversation to make an emotional connection that will drive consumers to choose you.

Companies used to have only traditional media to broadcast their message. Now you don’t have to just broadcast it anymore.

With social media you can have a conversation, create a connection, develop a relationship, form a tribe, most importantly, you can build a brand.

Maybe you think that your consumers aren’t on the Internet? According to Inc. Magazine, January 2009, “In 2008, 90% of purchases were made after research online.”

So, when your consumers are researching an upcoming purchase, what will they find when they Google your name? You should find out.

Keep your ear to the ground, proverbially speaking, and listen for your name and your competitors through the use of Alerts. Utilize an RSS reader to subscribe to industry blogs and stay up to date.

Engage with your consumers in the places where they spend their time – Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn, Plaxo and so many more. Learn to speak their language and have conversations with them.

You can recruit new employees and use social media to get to know more about them, what they are doing and who they are doing it with before you ever have the first interview.

Social media is revolutionizing business the same way that the invention of the television changed advertising.

What will you do with these new tools today?

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

Brand Buzz: Craig's List

Tune in to Brand Buzz every Monday at 5:20pm on KPEL 105.1 or online at www.kpel1051.com.

We discuss branding and best uses of social media tactics.

Branding is one of the most misunderstood terms in marketing.

A brand is not a logo.

A brand is not a business card.

A brand is not a company.

A brand is not a product.

Because humans are emotional, a brand is how the consumer connects with a company or product.

Social media applications are great tools to market a company or product because you can connect with a consumer on an emotional level. Truly engage with them.

Each week we discuss a different application and dive into how a business can best use that application.

We have prepared a white paper that reviews Craig's List and aggregated a few articles that dive further into how to use it best.

Please let us know if you have any questions or if there are specific topics that you want us to feature.

Thanks for listening.

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

Are You Ignoring 1/4 of Your Potential Consumers?

Do you know your target audience?

Not just the demographic profile but the psychographic profile as well?

Focusing on consumer insight is an important first step in branding. Once you have figured out what you are saying, you really need to identify to whom you will say it.

Your current consumers. Your lost consumers. The consumers that aren't aware of you yet.

Who are they? What makes them tick?

Have you asked them yet?

A great article in Ad Age, "Millennials Are Evolving; Are You Keeping Up?" (reg. req.), recently discussed this very topic. MeganMeagher, a 25 year old Account Planner for Taxi in New York, analyzes her generation from a first hand perspective.

She realizes that there are very few companies that are actually targeting Gen Yers with their marketing. Even fewer are doing it well.

Millennials should not be ignored. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, they will be the largest segment of the population in 2015.

So, what are Millennials looking for in a job, in a product, in a country?

New York Magazine, "Class of '09", decided to ask them directly and were surprised by the answers. As Gen Yers prepare to enter the workforce with personal and national debt at an all time high, it was refreshing to hear that the people surveyed weren't bitter but actually optimistic about the future.

How can you better target Gen Yers? Unless you sell memberships in AARP, you need to focus on this segment of the population. Don't ignore 1/4 of your potential consumers. Find out what appeals to them.

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group

photo credit: genystartup.com

Is Free a Strategy?

In May, I posted a blog called "To Be Free or To Be Premium, That is The Question". I wrote about the new book that Chris Anderson,Wired Editor-in-Chief, has written, called Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business.The blogs' main point being that a premium product can always command a premium price. You don't have to give it away.

There has been quite a bit of discussion around the book and where the business models should be heading.

Malcolm Gladwell's column in the July 6th issue of The New Yorker is titled "Priced To Sell" and reviews Anderson's book.

The article is a great read and does a very thorough job of dissecting the book and drawing the line from Anderson's theories to what is happening today with content providers - be it newspapers (NYTimes does not charge for content, Wall Street Journal has a million paid subscribers) or television (broadcast networks are struggling with only advertisers to pay the bills, yet cable networks offer specialty content at a premium price).

Now, Seth Godin has jumped into the conversation with a blog post entitled, "Malcolm Is Wrong". Godin's blog asserts that Free is where we are headed and there is nothing anyone can do about it so jump on board.

Mark Cuban has weighed into the discussion and thinks there is a big difference between "Free vs Freely Distributed".

You can take a look at the whole "Free Debate" on Squidoo and add your two cents (pun intended) to the discussion.

I am going to have to side with Malcolm Gladwell on this.

Free is not where we are headed.

Really, it seems pretty ironic that Free costs $17.81 on Amazon. Wouldn't it make more sense to support the theory of the book by giving it away as an e-book?

After reading all of the comments, and there have been plenty, I am sticking with my original point which is that a premium product can command a premium price. If you give it away, or discount it too deeply, it will lose brand equity in the hearts and minds of consumers.

But, what say you? Is the future going to be free?

Jaci Russo

Sr. Partner/Brand Strategist

The Russo Group