Tag Archives: Brand

February 12, 2016 · 11:37 am

Delivering

This Foodie Friday, we’ll return to the land of Top Chef.  Not only is it my favorite show on TV (House of Cards isn’t really TV now, is it?), but it almost always inspires broader thinking about business for me.  Last night was the conclusion of the annual restaurant wars competition in which two teams of contestants have 24 hours to conceive and execute a restaurant.  The losing team (and they really did deserve to lose) made some key errors, from which I think we can all learn a couple of things. 

First, their menu had no focus. Some of it was Asian inspired, some of it was Italian, some of it was influenced by the chef’s ego and nothing else.  There was no cohesiveness to the meal.  Any restaurant – and any brand – makes a promise.  I like this explanation:

A strong brand promise is one that connects your purpose, your positioning, your strategy, your people and your customer experience. It enables you to deliver your brand in a way that connects emotionally with your customers and differentiates your brand.

With no focus to the items being served, there was no connection – emotional or otherwise – to the diners. The next issue was execution. As incoherent as the menu was, had the dishes been prepared extremely well and had the service been spectacular, the dining experience might have been saved. Unfortunately, most of the dishes the losing team served were awful, led by a salad of strawberries, pickled cucumber, roasted beets, and arugula with a strawberry champagne gazpacho. The gloppy “gazpacho” was more like a desert sauce and the judges hated this dish. There was a pork belly served in a consomme that apparently was almost all vinegar. You know there is a problem when every shot of someone tasting it shows them looking like they’d just bitten into a lemon.

Great execution can make up for many flaws.  That too is part of delivering on the brand promise.  I’ve certainly been to restaurants where the food was just ok but excellent, personable service and reasonable prices made it someplace to which I’d return.

It’s one thing to make a promise.  It’s quite another to deliver.  Are you doing that?

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September 16, 2015 · 10:08 am

Changing The Weather

There was a piece on CNN’s site last week that dealt with some changes happening at The Weather Channel. I don’t know about you, but that’s one of the channels I find pretty indispensable, even though my cable service provides a 24/7 local traffic and weather channel too. Over the years, I’ve noticed that the folks at Weather have been adding weather-related programming, and it’s frustrating when you turn on the channel to get an update only to see “Fat Guys In The Woods” or some other canned stuff in lieu of live weather. Apparently, other have noticed as well and Weather is reacting. What they had to say is instructive for all of us, no matter what our business.

Winter of 1946–1947 in the United Kingdom

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to the article, they just announced layoffs:

About 50 of the channel’s 1,400 employees will be leaving. The plan calls for a singular focus “on our unique strength — and that is the weather.” With the cable channel bundle coming under increasing pressure, and “skinny bundles” becoming more common, “it’s inevitable that channels will be cut,” Weather Company CEO David Kenny said in an interview. With this in mind, “we need to be really clear who we are,” Kenny said.

That’s the business point.  There is always the temptation to expand the meaning of our brands.  As we’ve discussed before, we’re not really in control of that meaning anymore: the consumer is.  What The Weather Channel did was to dilute the meaning of the brand, which in this consumer’s mind was live weather and analysis.  I realize that when it’s a sunny day everywhere there isn’t a lot to say, but it’s possible to bring in non-live segments (not programs) while preserving the core identity.  When the channel was taken off DirecTv for a few months, suddenly someone realized that they were no longer indispensable and the basic business model of subscriber fees was put in jeopardy.  Not good.

Ask yourself what is working for your brand.  What does it mean in consumers‘ minds?  You can’t alienate or confuse them while you try to grow the brand’s meaning.  As the man said, be really clear about who you are.  Make sense?

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April 9, 2015 · 11:29 am

Signal To Noise

One term you might have seen when you’re looking at stereo systems is Signal To Noise Ratio. It’s exactly what you’d think – the relationship between the desired signal and whatever background noise is present. I like what Wikipedia has to say about a variation on the theme: 

Signal-to-noise ratio is sometimes used informally to refer to the ratio of useful information to false or irrelevant data in a conversation or exchange. For example, in online discussion forums and other online communities, off-topic posts and spam are regarded as “noise” that interferes with the “signal” of appropriate discussion.

Part of what we do as marketers and business people generally is to gather information. We listen (at least I hope you do) to all of the sources of data, especially social media. In theory this allows us to gain insight into the concerns of our customers, the opinions of our brand, and the actions of our competition. However, as it turns out, these social signals have a huge signal to noise ratio, at least when it comes to brands.

The folks at Networked Insights did a study for Fast Company.  You can read the results here but the fact that blew me away is that in some cases as much as 95% of the social buzz on Twitter about a brand was spam.  They defined spam as tweets from fake accounts, social bots, coupon offers, the brands themselves or celebrity endorsers – basically anything that isn’t a true consumer writing.  The categories most weighed down by spam are those in which consumers make a lot of purchases, such as shopping, finance and tech. Significantly less spam occurs in categories such as religion, sports and science.

Most importantly, the nature of the conversation changes dramatically when the signal to noise ratio improves as the spam is removed.  More granular and nuanced topics emerge from the background noise (spam) and you get a better sense of what really is important to consumers along with how they’re feeling.

It’s critical to listen.  It’s just as critical to do whatever you can to improve the signal to noise ratio so that you’re gaining valuable insights and not just more data.  That’s true whether it’s social, analytics (is your data filtering out bots, your own employees, etc.?) or any measure you use to make important business decisions.  Got it?

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