Reading: Brandsimple

I did a presentation years ago at the Michigan Credit Union League's Annual Convention on how to use your web site to drive growth. One of the things I talked about in that presentation was positioning v. branding, which I described as:

Positioning is...

• the process of conveying your value to your members
• the mental space that you can "own" with an idea that has compelling meaning to your members and how you help them with their most important needs

Branding is…

• a reason to care
• the promises you keep
• how your members experience what you do

To me, it boils down to positioning is the promises you make and branding are the ones you keep surrounded by the other things (good and bad) you do and convey.

These ideas were certainly influenced by many others, including a blog post (that I can't find anymore) from ProductMarketing.com.

Brandsimple, by Allen P. Adamson, picks up the concept of brand and carries it ten steps further. Adamson defines a brand as:

something that lives in your head...a promise that links a product or service to consumers...you feel something...you react in someway...positively or negatively

One of the many things I learned about from the book was about Young and Rubicam's (Y&R) BrandAsset Valuator (BAV) that measures brand based on:

• differentiation-what makes your brand unique
• relevance-how appropriate is this difference to the market you want to reach
• esteem-how well regarded is your brand in the marketplace
  
• knowledge-how well customers know and understand your brand
  

It is used to figure out how well your brand is performing-the health of it-in comparison to all other brands, inside and outside your vertical. The "pillars" above are listed in priority order with intention of building on one, then the next and so on.

Other key point include the stepped process of building successful brands:

1. Establish your brand idea - your simple and meaningful point of difference (know who you are talking to, who you want to beat and how you want them)
   
2. Capture the essence of your idea - a single sentence that captures the core meaning of your brand idea
   
3. Get your employees engaged-understanding and buy in
   
4. Consider your brand's name-the label for your brand idea, which can be abstract, associative or descriptive.
   
5. Create branding signals beyond the name-other things that convey what you stand for and why they should care about it.

Last thought on and from the book:

brand building is a marathon event

Reading: POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd

POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd, by Sam Horn, is a general marketing book that caught my attention while browsing the racks at the library. Easy, light read on making your ideas and words stand out that I kicked through in a couple of hours. POP stands for making your message:

• Purposeful
• Original
• Pithy

Horn suggests asking and answering the following nine questions (she calls them W9) to help formulate your POP message:

• What I am offering?
• What problem does my idea or offering solve?
• Why is it worth trying and buying?
• Who is my target audience?
• Who am I and what are my credentials?
• Who are my competitors and how am I different from them?
• What resistance or objections will people have to this?
• What is the purpose of my pitch?
• When, where and how do I want people to take action?

Bonus question – What core words do I use to describe my business or brand?

I heard Susan Packard, co-founder of HGTV, call the above a “brand lens” at the 2008 Credit Union National Association's America's Credit Union Conference and Expo in New York. She described it as words you use to talk about, describe and give meaning and value to your brand.. CU Magazine (a web site CU Village re-developed for CUNA in late-2008) has an article entitled Cable Conqueror: Transform your CU on Packard that describes the brand lens further.

Getting back to and wrapping up on POP, it is filled with lots of great quotations (the ones that I liked best I posted to my personal Twitter account) and gives good all around marketing and writing advice. It is not going to satisfy the super sophisticated marketer, but provides good reminders, tools, examples and reinforcements we all need from time to time regardless of experience level.

If you are vague in "asking for the sell," people won't know what the are supposed to do.-Sam Horn

Reading: Groundswell (part 2)

Groundswell is definitely a book that has influenced and refined my thinking on the social web.

Beyond what I wrote in my last post, groundswell is about engaging with your members/customers in a way that is more about them, than it is about you.

“Your brand is what your customers say it is" (page 79)

It is more about listening to them and allowing them to interact with each other and with you, than about delivering well-crafted marketing messages and hosting highly-scripted events. It should be more you listening than you talking. More about what they are interested in and want to learn, than what you have to sell.

It is scary because it means giving up some control. But the pay off is that you'll get insights into your customer/member needs, thoughts and emotions that might not have been possible to get otherwise. Those insights can and should feed into the thinking of how you run your organization, develop products and provide service.

P.O.S.T. Planning Process

People	Who you want to target and how you expect to engage them
Objectives	What you expect to achieve and what consumers/members expect to get
Strategy	How you will connect with consumers/members
Technology	What applications you will use

If done right, groundswell is a direct feed of what is in the hearts and minds of customers/members to you.

Reading: Groundswell

Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, is a book about social technologies.

Groundswell is defined as:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations. (page 9)

The book focuses on helping businesses understand the impact of the social web on them, what they need to watch out for and how to leverage it. The key take aways so far are:

• it is about people, not technologies
• clear objectives have to be defined before jumping in
  
• you have to know who want to reach and the kind of online relationship they want to have with you
• it is more about enabling your members/customers to interact with you and each other than you making pronouncements to them
  
• the social web is not fad or going away, but only going to grow because of the level of empowerment it gives to people to collectively influence what they want to see happen
• start small and work on getting it right, then expand your efforts - it is an evolutionary endeavor
• Six types of users: 1) Creators, 2) Critics, 3) Collectors, 4) Joiners, 5) Spectators and 6) Inactives
• Reasons for participation: relationships, desire to contribute, curiosity and desire to be recognized

More to come as I work my way through the book....

Also, see my post on CU Village social web strategies, more to come on that too.