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You brand is defined by the consumer, not by you - I think everyone can agree with that. In the same breath, most marketing pundits will add the fact that you can no longer control your brand - an assertion I am not sure goes hand in hand with the first one.

You brand gets defined by the UI (User Interface) of your company, the interface through which your customers and prospects interact with your company. That interface gets determined by pre-sale activities - i.e., advertising, retail layout, retail personnel attitude, telemarketing, sales people’s knowledge of the industry, etc -, as well as immediate post-sale activities - i.e., packaging, ease of use to set up the products, available help options, etc. -, and the long term post sale activities - i.e., telephone support, return policies, warranty policies, on-site support, etc. That makes up a lot of links in the chain that determines your brand in the mind of the consumers which your company controls.

So in effect, you do control the brand in the mind of the consumer. If some link in the chain is broken, meaning not supporting the overall brand promise you are trying to establish for your company, that is when you lose control of your brand. That is when people will start talking with one another about the fact that what you promise and what you deliver is different. Once that starts, you should focus on fixing the overall UI of your company instead of getting into communication fire-fighting mode or crisis communication mode.

You would think it would be a clear-cut answer, right? The one that wins the most delegates through the two-tiered election process wins…

Yesterday CNN announced “Texas Caucus Win Estimated” (for Obama), the New York Times today is still talking about Clinton’s big win in Texas (they do not even specify that the win was in the Texas primaries, which would technically be correct), and the Boston Globe keeps talking about her big win in the Texas primaries as well (as late as Monday). Yet as early as Thursday of last week it looked like Obama was going to win Texas with more delegates than Clinton - a ratio that even party officials were agreeing would hold through the ongoing tally for the caucus part of the election.

If a simple story, which can be backed by straight calculus, can get distorted to the point of confusing readers and voters by some of the best known media outlets - how do you think you are ever going to control the message around your worldwide innovative feature-rich, robust and scalable widget?

Let’s face it marketers, you just cannot count on people to retell a story the right way… It’s not just that you are not in control of the message (which is not a new thing) - you have to plan for it going seriously wrong.

There are some great lessons to be learned in the world of politics!

Confirming a recent survey from Arketi, a new survey commissioned by Brodeur from Marketwire found that:

• Blogs are a regular source for journalists: Over three-quarters of reporters see blogs as helpful in giving them story ideas, story angles and insight into the tone of an issue
• Nearly 70% of all reporters check a blog list on a regular basis:
• The majority of journalists said blogs were having a significant impact on news reporting in all areas tested - except news quality.

Note to PR people - an increasing share of reader attention is moving to social media, and that is why you need to engage in the social media space. Two recent surveys now show that if traditional media is still your main goal, then an increasingly effective way to influence traditional media is by engaging with social media. So one way or the other, you can no longer ignore social media!

Oh, one more point - creating anemic, corporate-speak-laden, CEO blogs does not count
(via Marketing Charts)

A new report jointly produced between Forrester Research and Heidrick & Struggles paints a bleak picture of the (d)evolved CMO (Chief Marketing Officer). You can download the report here, but only after agreeing to become a “lead.”

While two thirds of CMOs want to get a higher involvement with business strategy development and increased P&L responsibility, the reality is that far too many of them are in fact disconnected from where the real action is.

Some of the findings are mind-boggling:

• Only 45% of CMOs have responsibility for product, service or solution development. Only 37.5% are responsible for pricing.
• Only 27.5% are in charge of sales  training.
• Only 25% are responsible for in-store buying experiences.
• Only 12.5% are accountable for the activities associated with customer service and support.

How can you be the Chief Market Listener and not be in charge of what customers say after they buy your product? If you are the Chief Market Officer, how can you not be in charge of deciding what gets sold in the marketplace and how much it will cost the buyer to acquire it? And if you are the Chief Customer Officer, how can you not be in charge for the in-store customer experience? The sales training issue is either a cause or effect for the ongoing rift between most sales and marketing department…

But wait, it gets worse…here is some data about their top objectives:

• Only 27.5% have “increase customer life-cycle value” as one of their top objectives.
• “Innovate” is an objective for only 40% of the survey takers
• Only 27.5% have “increase customer retention” as an objective

And just when you thought you got the extend of the sorry state of CMOs, you find this:

• Only 12% consider “personal knowledge of your customers” as one of their top 5 competencies to their personal success.
• Only 17% consider technology savviness to be one of those top 5 skills

Thankfully (sarcasm intended), more than 65% see people management as one of those top skills. But wait a minute…isn’t it leadership characteristics that get you into the C-suite? Management skills are so Industrial Revolution/last century skills…

Other interesting tidbits from the report include:

• On a scale from 1-3, with 3 being the most important, CMOs found marketing measurement (2.55) to be way more important than customer community development ((1.89) and social computing/web 2.0 tools (1.73).  That goes hand-in-hand with the fact that 92% have advertising as one of their main responsibilities.
• There is room for new industry marketing organizations, conferences and publications. Those three resources come in dead last in a list of 16 resources that CMOs ranked most valuable to their professional career development.

 The recommendations from the authors to improve the situation?

• Spend more time on career development
• Seize the opportunity to lead the organization towards customer-centricity
• Build credibility through the marketing team and leadership contributions.

How about not accepting the CMO job if it does not mean you are really the Chief Market Officer, or the Chief Customer Listener, or the Chief Voice of the Customer Officer, or the Chief Customer Lifecycle Value Owner?

Many companies are still confused about what role social media should play in their PR strategies - wondering whether social media impacts buyers or whether social media strategies can help with traditional PR efforts.

The first question relates to the information consumption that leads to buying decisions - and nobody will question that there has been a tectonic shift from traditional media to consumer generated media in this area.

The second one relates to how traditional media writers and journalists source their information. And a new survey from the Arketi Group shows that the role of social media in influencing traditional media continues to grow as well (via Shel Holtz - granted, delayed, but we never claimed to be a news service).

Some interesting tidbits from the survey:

• 84% of journalists say they would or already have used blogs as primary or secondary sources.
• 54% of journalists report to get their story ideas from blogs, 51% from RSS feeds
• 60% of journalists say they spend more than 20 hours on the Internet

So it sounds like if your company does not make a conscientious effort in trying to engage with social media channels today, you will likely find yourself the winner of an award in stealth marketing in a few years time - an award given to companies that manage to make their companies totally invisible in the marketplace.

Johnson & Johnson is suing the Red Cross and other parties over the use of the Red Cross. Talk about one heck of a juicy story. The reality is that J&J is suing the Red Cross because it is licensing the use of the Red Cross symbol to for-profit organizations, while J&J holds trademarks to the Red Cross symbol since before the Red Cross actually existed.

So what is a VP of corporate communications at J&J to do in response to such a corporate public affair’s nightmare? Send out press releases, hold press conferences, use all the traditional tools available to corporate communicators in crisis management mode? Not so for the J&J corporate com VP, Ray Jordan, who took his story to the J&J corporate blog, where he wrote up J&J’s point of view in an everyday and personal voice.

The result? A large number of comments and stories generally providing broad support for J&J’s point of view. While there are negative comments, the blog achieved what no other crisis communication’s vehicle would have delivered.

(via Johnnie Moore)

[Tags: Red Cross Johnson & Johnson J&J corporate communication crisis management]

I was lucky enough to host PR guru Larry Weber and interactive marketing pioneer Lois Kelly for a great conversation on the future of marketing. You can listen to the conversation by downloading the MP3 of the session here.

Some random snippets from the discussion include:

“…the first thing marketers should do is stop spending so much money on traditional media - it’s like throwing water into the boat, and not out of the boat…”

“…many marketing departments embrace the new marketing platforms but it’s amazing to see how they organize themselves like they did 25 years ago…”

“…I would organize marketing from the bottom up….innovation still never comes from the top down….I would look at things less in categories like PR, advertising, direct marketing….and start looking more in campaign orientation….”

“…the weaker the dialog the weaker the brand…the stronger the dialog the stronger the brand…”

“…Madison ave hijacked the browser in the last 10 years…we need to reclaim it…”

“…marketing should be at the center of everything…because the center of dialog will be at the center of a company’s success…”

“…the “idiot of the month” award goes to the Disney Corporation…” talking about their TIVO proof technology.

I will publish a more thoughtfully digested version soon, but wanted to give you some snippets to entice you to listen to this great conversation asap. And don’t forget that Lois and Larry will be having a live conversation at our marketing innovation conference next week - so make sure to join us there!

[Tags: skypecast larry weber lois kelly marketing corante cmarketing future new marketing]]

The Sunday New York Times had a great story on how Lenovo has gotten under fire by a bunch of xenophobes including Lou Dobbs, a couple of people from the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory body to Congress, and other politicians.

The gist of the story is that Lou Dobbs and a few others, including some members of congress, are “suggesting” - based on mostly unfounded insinuations and allegations - that Lenovo computers currently being sold to the State Department as part of a competitive contract won by Lenovo “could provide shadowy spooks in the Chinese government with an ideal means of conducting espionage.”

Being framed in the context of “buy American” and also in the context of “national security,” the story inevitably took on a life of its own. It does not matter that it is virtually impossible to “buy American” when it comes to PCs, as most PCs are manufactured and assembled, at least in part, overseas. Nor does it matter that it is extremely unlikely that the Chinese could put “spook” software in the Lenovo PCs as they are assembled in North Carolina and as the PCs have to pass the State Department’s two computer security groups, which oversee the administration of their own test suites and install firewalls and other security software. It also does not matter that the company has historically been a meritocracy - now run by Americans. The fact that the story is framed in the context of cultural anxieties will ensure its rapid spread.

Regardless of whether you believe that xenophobia like this is bad or really bad for the economy as a whole (there are some good lessons to be learned from some European economies on that front), it goes without question that it is damaging the Lenovo brand. And while articles like the one in the New York Times, exposing the fact that there is no substance to the points being raised, and undermining the legitimacy of the claims being made, are necessary - from a brand perspective they only add fuel to the fire. In the long run they could potentially cause more harm than good to the Lenovo brand.

So what is a company to do when faced with rumors that either appeal to fundamental cultural anxieties or that are framed in popular worldviews? Rebutting while staying on the same playing field is a losing proposition - a fact proven over and over in the world of politics. Could there be an opportunity to reframe the debate or start a new one on a playing field that is more advantageous to the company? Or should they just paint themselves in green and lay on the grass ’till it all blows over?

Other blog post on the subject:
Brad Feld at Feld Thoughts - “Maybe Penn and Teller should do an episode on Bullshit! on Dobbs and the current “security issues” ”

[Technorati Tags: Lenovo xenophobia crisis management lou dobbs public relations PR]

I have always been against “people announcements” in companies - not because I think that people are not interested in some “star announcements” but because I believe that “personality cult/promotion” is not reflective of how a company really works and it can negatively impact morale - especially when less known individuals or teams are having a disproportionate impact on the company’s success.

All that being said, I also believe that most people could care less…

Well I maybe wrong on that last point. According to a little test done by McClenehanBRUeR Communications and as reported on their blog (via Amy Gahran at Contentious), they sent out an email newsletter on behalf of one of their customers that contained all kinds of seemingly interesting content - including white papers and the like - as well as a few links to press releases at the bottom of the newsletter. The item with the highest number of click-throughs was a little news item about a couple of new people joining that company’s advisory board.

While there is too little information to draw any serious conclusions (make sure you check the comment exchange between Amy and Jeff - the author of the post), it triggered a couple of interesting thoughts (at least I think so).

First off, promoting external advisers or board members is not the same as “personnel announcements”. They are an indication that you are trying to open up another channel of market feedback into your strategy - be it your go-to market strategy, your product strategy or any other strategic issues that you are dealing with. And the most valuable proxies for good feedback/advise (=advisers) will also likely enjoy somewhat of a good reputation in your markets.

The second thought that I had when reading this is that most companies that do hire advisory boards do so for news-generation purposes only instead of for getting the great advise that such boards can deliver if managed properly.

[Technorati Tags: pr public relations advisory board personnel announcement]

There are two good posts on how PR folks and marketers are still clueless when it comes to using the blogosphere in spreading their message.

First is Jeremy Zawodny over at Yahoo - who writes about the PR agency, who also happens to represent Six Apart (so you would expect them to know better), spamming the Yahoo! Search Blog email contact for some new AOL video format.

Next is Bruce Fryer - who writes about how he lost a consulting gig after he would not guarantee a startup that bloggers would indeed pick up their story.

Are people truly clueless? Or is it just all too new and we’re doing something wrong in communicating what this new social media is all about?

…personally, I vote for clueless…

[Technorati Tags: pr public relations blogs]