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At my wife’s coaxing, I finally saw “Juno” the other day (for those living under a rock, it’s a coming-of-age film about a teenager’s unplanned pregnancy). I found myself liking the movie, mainly due to the whip smart dialog of screenwriter Diablo Cody. In fact I started thinking that every character in the movie, and there were a number of them, spoke in the same sassy-witty-funny way.
Clearly Ms. Cody has a distinct style of speak, one that she can rightly call her own (until it is ripped-off ad nauseam by every studio who took note of the movie’s grosses). Essentially, what I am saying is that “Juno” has a brand voice.
A brand voice is one of the most powerful — yet often overlooked — aspects of a brand. While organizations can be rigid in their enforcement of their brand’s visual aspects (logo, colors, fonts, etc.), the same can not always be said of the brand voice. Yet whether it has been articulated in your brand standards manual or not, it’s there…in the way people feel about how your website, ads and collateral speaks to them. Is it consistent? Appropriate? Genuine? It should be.
Reading about “Juno,” one of the character’s many fans declared her to be ”Blunt, brave, chill, caring, hilarious, ingenious, mirthful…totally boss…alive, sparkling…retro…and nonchalantly kick-ass.”
Would your audience be able to be this specific about your brand voice?
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Lately, we’ve had several clients and prospects inquire about "voice of the customer". The concept seems to be making a comeback in popularity after having its day in the mid 1990’s, thanks to some empirical studies and a popular voice of the customer book by Richard Whiteley.
One thing that seems to differentiate the types of voice of the customer programs that we’ve been discussing from their earlier incarnations is that now, the focus is on more than driving new product development or tactical innovation. We are being challenged to reconcile voice of the customer with corporate branding and positioning.
When you think about it, it makes sense to tie voice of the customer to brand definition and enablement. The right kind of voice of the customer research and project outputs can uncover unmet customer needs and the most important perceptual drivers that motivate customers. Using these and other tailored voice of the customer findings can help companies execute their brand and messaging strategies as well as prioritize marketing tactics. A voice of the customer program can even be used to identify brand opportunities and inform brand execution.
More to come…
By: Mark Shevitz, Senior Brand Strategist, Movéo Integrated Branding
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At the iMedia Brand Summit earlier this month, Wenda Harris Millard (formerly Chief Sales Officer at Yahoo! and Executive Vice President of DoubleClick) addressed an audience of senior level marketing executives with her presentation titled "How Did We Get Here?" Currently serving as President, Media for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Ms. Millard presented a perspective on the current condition of the advertising industry.
Quoting Jonah Bloom from a recent article that appeared in AdAge, she suggested that tomorrow’s CMO will be renamed Complexity Management Officer.
At first, I found this merely a clever way of emphasizing her point. As I thought about it more, however, I realized that this is a very plausible notion, especially given the profound changes taking place in media and marketing today.
Today’s marketers need to consider literally thousands of ways their companies can interact with customers. And, today more than ever, they need to continually reevaluate their customer & prospect segments.
The media universe has transformed itself, and it’s imperative that marketers stay informed about all the innovations that are emerging and changing the rules of advertising altogether. And, they’re getting increasing pressure to directly associate an ROI with every dollar spent.
According to David Court in an article he published in The McKinsey Quarterly, "With more countries, more customer segments, more media, and more distribution channels, companies and their CMOs are waging a battle with complexity."
That just about says it all.
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Tom Brady and Eli Manning aside, the Super Bowl is also a shootout of the creative type, with major brands giving it their best shot. This year did not disappoint and there were some real winners. As is also usually the case, there were spots that fell prey to “vampire creativity,” a phenomenon that occurs when creative is too original, too entertaining or too involving – the story of a commercial can be so mesmerizing that it gets in the way of the brand. A perfect example of this was a third quarter spot that showed a car driving at night, first avoiding the proverbial deer in the headlights and then, in rapid succession, Alice Cooper and Richard Simmons (although the driver thought long and hard about avoiding poor Richard). I laughed out loud during the spot, but talking with someone about it the next day, neither of us could remember whom it was for. Can you? There are other creative spots that ran during the game that did not suffer from vampire creativity. Case in point, the “Battle of the Balloons” ad for Coke. This was the one where Underdog and Stewie parade balloons fight over a balloon bottle of Coke). Loved the spot, and remembered the brand (which was, interestingly, the very object on which the spot’s creative revolved, literally). What made the difference? The spot – it was for Bridgestone tires –featured late brand identification (a second or two at the end of the spot). Sometimes late brand IDs are used to build suspense in hopes of capturing attention. However, in this case, by withholding the brand name until the end we are invited to make our own associations during the spot. The result is that we may – post viewing – associate the spot with another brand (Michelin?), another category (was it an ad for how well the car handled?), or worse yet, make no association at all. Next year we’ll see another round of great and not-so-great Super Bowl advertising. Hopefully Bridgestone’s agency will remember the brand, because if they don’t we won’t.
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We’ll get to that…
I have just returned from the 2008 Net Promoter Score Conference with many thoughts buzzing. It was fascinating to see the breadth and depth of attendees, NPS evangelists and practitioners, from B2B and B2C and B2B/B2C companies, business insurance providers to makers of kids toys, research wonks to CEOs, global Fortune 500 brand names to American middle-market manufacturers…
Speaking of global… companies who have employed NPS around the world put forth an interesting insight. And this finding impacts and informs all global marketing research, customer satisfaction and CRM efforts: Beware of making cross-cultural, international comparisons.
If AON Insurance, Symantec or GE finds they have lower NPS scores in Japan or Germany compared to the rest of the world, this doesn’t necessarily mean these regional units are underperforming. Why? Based on reams of NPS data collected by NPS methodologist Satmetrix (and just the common sense of anyone who has been involved in focus groups or studies conduced internationally), we know that customers in different countries respond differently to uniform NPS and brand perception questions, based on local cultural norms.
The big body of data says that Japanese respondents are less likely to recommend a company than their Chinese counterparts (and they tend to be more reticent in focus group settings). Other Asian respondents are more inclined than Western subjects to offer positive feedback on brands in surveys. Europeans, especially Germans, tend to rate brands they use less favorably than Americans. Latin Americans give he highest Net Promoter Scores globally.
So the big takeaway here: Use NPS to measure your company brand within a region or country, over time, vs. competitors, but not to compare your sales or customer service unit performance by geographic area. Each country and region has its own unique environment which impacts NPS performance. Actions taken based on NPS feedback need to be localized. Also, pitting country against country within a company, score vs. score, ala World Cup soccer, is not the best way to build a powerful, unified global brand, inside and out.
So when developing an NPS strategy around the world… “think globally, act locally”—a famous comment that has been attributed to many including John Lennon, a strong Net Promoter of World Peace, as well as Buckminster Fuller, renowned visionary, designer, architect, poet, author and inventor. (Remember though that NPS is a proven, effective business tool not a utopian vision).
Author: Kevin Randall, Director of Brand Strategy & Research
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User experience design, AKA UX design is hot topic in web design and rightly so, but I want to take moment to blog a bit about an unsung area that is often overlooked and misunderstood yet critical to UX design–browser experience design.
For years web developers and web producers have been including browser support requirements in their scope documents and programmers have been pulling their hair out trying to replicate the same experience across all browsers. Many in the web development community, Movéo included, believe in and push for increased compliance with web standards, but unfortunately not all browsers comply with or support these standards. So, try as we might to comply with web standards, developers have to “hack” their code to support multiple browsers. What’s most troubling is the fact that MS Internet Explorer, the most widely used browser, is the least compliant.
So what do we do? The answer, browser experience design. Instead of hacking code in an attempt to deliver the same experience across all browsers, web developers should seek to build a stable and accessible foundation that ensures accessibility across most, if not all, browsers and then increase the richness of the user experience as the browser’s compliance to standards increases. Think of it like you might television, you can watch the super bowl on a B&W TV but the experience on a hi-def TV is just way better.
Want to see how your browser stacks up? Take the Acid 2 test below:
First, click here to view a rendering of what a standards compliant browser should output.
Now, click here to test your browser’s compliance with standards.
The good news for MS Internet Explorer users and all the programmers who have to “hack” their compliant code for it to “work” on Internet Explorer is that they are continually working on updated versions. The bad news, most end-users won’t upgrade right away as they are not aware of how bad their browser is and businesses are typically slow to rollout upgrades . But who knows I could be wrong. Here’s hoping!
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One of the things I do on a regular basis is follow Google. It’s not just because I am a Google Advertising Professional, but really a fascination with the Calculus with words and sociology that pay per click advertising is. With real dominance in the PPC/Search industry Google, Inc. is constantly trying to innovate and expand their offerings across media platforms. Not a week goes by that some new way to advertise doesn’t seem to be popping up in my client center.
When I first began in Internet Marketing it was less than six months after the first massive Google slap that forced many adsense revenue earners to take out a second mortgage and rethink their entire business model. Since then several Google dances have stood out. The introduction of the google quality score and many others have rocked the internet marketing community which claims to be white hat, but all to often has a small black hat hiding underneath. Google has been so proactive in tying up loopholes they have left us the users and searchers of the public and business to business world with a results because of it. Even competitors Yahoo SM, MSN, and Ask.com look more like the dominant Google everyday. The new media giant google is dead. Long live the emerging media king, Google.
Come back to this Blog weekly and check the category “Search Marketing” for my weekly Google Headlines Report where I will break down the most important development to hit Google that week.
