A Timeless Brand

277px-Pan_Am_Logo_svgWhile vacationing on Maui in April I bought my son a vintage Pan Am ball cap that became a conversation starter over the following weeks. For those of you not familiar with Pan Am or if you have tucked a childhood memory in a corner, let’s just say that it was the embodiment of travel for the better part of sixty years and a cultural icon of the 20th century. The blue globe logo as its mark, identifying each aircraft with the word “clipper” in the name, distinct uniforms that mirrored the style of the time, and the “Worldport”, an architectural tour de force, for its flagship terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport, contributed to its iconic appeal as a timeless brand.

This tattered hat started a conversation with a retired flight attendant, who gently steered me away from that term, and recounted her last flight as a lead stewardess. It brought about a lengthy chat with a retired captain about flying the 747-SP to Japan. Lastly, there were the shared experiences traded between some of the older surfers and sun worshippers parked next to us on the beach or by the pool.

Was it all good? I venture to say no. But the customer experience Pan Am managed to deliver at its height in the 60’s and early 70’s is forever engrained in the psyche of the travelers. A mental snapshot of a by gone era that was innocent and sophisticated at the same time.

TWA brings about some of the nostalgia of Pan Am; however, I think that it was a legacy of the will power Howard Hughes brought to bear that keeps it in the running. He was not trying to out Pan Am with TWA. He just thought that he could do it better.

If you are still reading this post, here is the fun part. What happens when you try to out Pan Am with your own airline? You get Braniff International.

I am not going to go into Braniff’s history…you have Wikipedia for that. Let’s just say that entering the 60’s Braniff was a bit boring and the executives wanted to shake things up. And they did that by hiring Jack Tinker and Partners, with Mary Wells as the account lead (if you’ve watched Mad Men you can figure out who is based on her).

Mary and team differentiate the brand by hiring architect Alexander Girard, designer Emilio Pucci, and shoe designer Beth Levine to launch the “End of the Plain Plane” campaign.

The livery was now a single color on each plane, selected from a palette of bright colors. The fleet eventually used over 15 color with 57 variations of Herman Miller fabrics. The schema was applied to aircraft interiors, lounges, and ticket offices. Girard also designed furniture for Braniff’s ticket offices and customer lounges. Beth Levine developed plastic boots and designed two-tone calfskin boots and shoes and Emilio Pucci designed the Pucci Pant Dress uniforms.

Did it work? No it did not work as a timeless brand unless you are a marketing nerd and fan of fashion.
Even though it did not resonate past the 60’s and early 70’s, the effort that Mary Wells and her team put into differentiating the Braniff brand is legendary. But sometimes it is those who define the market early that set the tone by diligently managing every detail that their brand represents.
What brands that are no longer here resonate with you?

A final note; I was at JFK in 2013 watching the old Worldport being demolished to make way for a brand new terminal for Delta. What a shame. That terminal was unique and timeless.

Digital Spring Cleaning

GarbagecanWe all need to do a little digital spring cleaning. In fact, this blog post could be considered “digital littering” at some point. But let’s quickly explore the idea that every piece of digital content needs to have a “best by” date. We work in a business that iterates at a rapid pace and today’s thoughtful, timely, and useful content doesn’t last forever. Here are some things to consider:

  • Don’t just leave web pages and videos to languish in digital purgatory. Take them down.
  • A PDF produced more than 18 months is probably past its “best by” date. Either take it down or rework it. Look at the content and see if you can recycle it.
  • “I might need the content” you say. It does not need to be on display for the world to see…archive it.
  • “Everybody does it”. In real life and in the digital world, that is not an excuse. In fact, provide timely up to date content. It is everyone’s responsibility to delight the customer.

Take an honest look at what you have out in the digital ether. Is everything still relevant? To make things easier for yourself, adopt an approach where you assign a virtual “best by” date to different types of content (X for web, Y for PDFs, Z for Videos, etc).  You might even end up increasing the frequency of return visits from your customers.

Of course, iterative content like blogs are an exception to this approach. Here you want to build on the foundation that your previous posts provide.

Arby’s Deft Approach To Real Time Social Marketing- or Pharrell’s Hat Is Awesome

Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs
Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs

We watched the Grammys last night, but Diane and I had not planned to be wowed and entertained by a brand taking a real-time opportunity to be nimble and tongue-in-cheek and take the prize for social marketing. Arby’s social media team did a great job reacting in a positive way to Pharrell Williams and the close resemblance of his hat to the Arby’s brand. As of this afternoon Arby’s had over 81,609 retweets 46,489 favorites with the following tweet “Hey @Pharrell, can we have our hat back? #GRAMMYs” . Genius in more ways than one.

Pharrell and Daft Punk took the stage four times and the Twitterverse had a grand time making fun of his choice of chapeaux. It was opportunistic for Arby’s social marketing team to pivot on this and not only engage on Twitter but manage to get a positive response from Pharrell. It showed a real understanding of their brand and the ability to read a live situation correctly.

That last note is the important point here. Being cheeky and highly visible (by using the #GRAMMYs hashtag) could have been risky. Before going full steam ahead and trying to capitalize on live marketing opportunities:

  • Have a thorough understanding of your brand and your brand’s voice. If the brand you are representing has not established a playful tone, this kind of tweet could run counter to your brand’s image and cause some damage (a quick internet search will pull up some horror stories).
  • Does the event align with your business goals and can it provide positive brand recognition?

Above all else, you have to be a good steward for your brand.

Pharrell

Arby’s managed to opportunistically capitalize on Pharrell’s sartorial choice, and quick thinking with a simple tweet bought some real good will for the brand with digital natives. #YMO

Yours, Mine, and Ours.

socialblockHaving a good approach to social marketing in your business means going beyond just posting tweets, pins, pictures, videos, and updates. Our good friend Ted Rubin (@TedRubin) embodies going beyond with his Return on Relationship approach, #RonR, which is about building sustained relationships with consumers, peers, and others in your social graph. A good pivot from that concept to drive continued engagement and relationship is what @dianego and I (@Khodyg) are calling Yours, Mine, and Ours–#ymo.  While it may seem obvious, it’s critical to be mindful about the approach your business takes to social so that you can capitalize on the power of social now and in the future.

Here are some ideas Diane and I will explore in upcoming posts:

  • Understanding how to encourage and teach individuals in your organization to represent their expertise and areas of interest around your business for better customer perception and engagement
  • Striking a balance between using your social platforms for customers and prospects to keep them informed, engage them at the business level, and engage them as individuals
  • Extending the basics of good marketing practices to your non-marketer employees to help them be good stewards of your brand and messages without taking away their credibility and authenticity as individuals.
We’re excited about the idea of Yours, Mine, and Ours as a way for marketers to start to think differently about how to build their social plans to be more inclusive across their organizations and increase customer engagement and satisfaction.

Fourteen Predictions For 2014

I’ve not posted as much as I wanted to in 2013, but I will make a grand effort for 2014…at least that’s what I’m saying now. On that grand note, below are my 14 predictions for 2014 from my twitter handle @khodyg :

  • # 14 mobile marketing will be a bigger portion of the marketing mix #14for2014
  • # 13 3D printing gets affordable. My 6yo son wants @LEGO_Group to upload designs to print  #14for2014
  • # 12 Wearables go mainstream. More startup players come into the market  #14for2014
  • # 11 @TedRubin trades in socks for flip-flops 😊 #RonR  #14for2014
  • # 8 Digital disruption will continue shifting IT spend from #CIO to #CMO  #14for2014
  • # 7 Brands will better leverage user  generated content & community engagement to drive value   #14for2014
  • # 6 Some say boring. I say no. With rich mobile data, Behavioral Analytics goes beyond A/B testing #14for2014
  • # 5 Companies with active blogs have 97% more indexed pages than those who don’t. Good brands blog! #14for2014
  • # 4 With +259M members and 142M visitors/month, @LinkedIn hits the spot for digital marketers   #14for2014
  • # 3 With great Social CMS, content curation over content creation will be the focus for brands. #14for2014
  • # 2 Micro-content driven #mobile marketing… @vineapp like snacks with actionable CTAs #14for2014
  • # 1 it’s about the relationship. The connection from Digital to “In Real Life” gets stronger. #mobile leads #14for2014

Hawaii Social

Kaanapali Maui Honua Kai Resort
Kaanapali Maui Honua Kai Resort (Photo credit: Dave Dugdale)

I was sitting on a beautiful lanai in the breeze of the cooling afternoon trade wind, at the Honua Kai resort just two weeks ago, jotting down notes for this long overdue post. I was thinking about how well the businesses and people in Hawaii have tuned in to social media. This should not surprise me, especially knowing how Hawaii quickly took to SMS and had one of the highest engagement levels with text-based programs like American Idol when I worked in the mobile industry.

Over the last three years, in our trips to Hawaii, I’ve seen the digital footprints of resorts, small local brands, and local shops grow. They are not just using Twitter, Foursquare, and Facebook to broadcast out, but are also using the social web to make a connection with the customer on a personal level.  While on our family vacation, I had the opportunity to have a “talk story” session with Jill Mayo (@JillzBeanz)  who not only drives Social Marketing for several local brands and resort, but is also a hub of IRL—in real life—connections.

Although to Jill the adoption seems slow, to me it seems faster than the mainland. Small businesses are making effective use of Foursquare to drive offers and highlight events. Twitter is used to connect with customer on a hyper-local level to raise awareness around services and goings-on with the brand or resort property. The Honua Kai, for example, leverages their @HonuaKai handle to broadly converse about the resort and share information, and they manage a concierge only handle (@HKConcierge) to raise awareness around concierge services, share local events, and connect with guests one-on-one. This is quite a nifty idea and I wish others would adopt this hyper-local approach. Honua Kai’s marketing manager, Darren McDaniel, is doing a great job curating not only “traditional” kinds of hotel-related content but is also curating the stories of guests, and connecting the online experience with real life.

Jill believes that local brands in Hawaii are still experimenting and there is room for greater engagement. I fully agree. But I am also excited by the spirit of experimentation and not having pre-set ideas about how Social Marketing can drive loyalty. After all, the best sales person is the one that is not working for you; she is the advocate—the one whom others trust to give them the unadulterated skinny.

I like what Jill had to say about taking the brand breaking the fourth wall to connect in the real world and drive unique experiences that foster loyalty and advocacy. Perhaps it’s the fact that in Hawaii the spirit of ohana (family, in an extended sense of the term) allows the opportunity to take a simple 140 character message and make a connection on a human level.

Wouldn’t be cool if we could all get together next year for a Social Marketing conference on Maui? Let me or @JillzBeanz know.

Full disclosure: my wife and I stay at the Honua Kai and actively compete on becoming the mayor on Foursquare the moment we land.

Some interesting handles to follow in no particular order:

Aloha and Maui No Ka Oi

What does all this have to do with Surfing?

Teahupoo, Papeete, Tahiti
Teahupoo, Papeete, Tahiti (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Looking back on 2012, I was remembering what excited me about it and realized that I kept getting stuck on being stoked. To those that don’t know the meaning of the word “stoked”, it is simply to be intensely enthusiastic, engaged, and exhilarated about something. In my small circle of Northwest surfer friends, this feeling is the essence of being alive.

What does all this have to do with marketing, technology, or business? If you are not stoked about what you are doing then you need to make a change. Plus, it gives me the opportunity test out some surfing lingo:

Here’s what I was stoked about in 2012, and will be glad to do in 2013:

  • Catch every wave:  You can just paddle out there and wait for the perfect wave. But my recommendation is that you paddle hard and ride as many as you can. I did that in 2012 and will continue to do it in 2013. From a business perspective this means looking at every opportunity not for what they are at that moment, but for the promise of them evolving into something amazing.
  • Ride to shore: You can always kick over, but I like riding to shore, seeing my family, and paddling back with the full panorama of the ocean in front of me.  In other words, keep sight of what is most important to you and see the big picture.
  • Duck dive: Sometimes you need to go through waves rather than paddling over them. Duck diving is the way that surfers dive under an oncoming wave as they paddle out. This tactic allows you to maintain the progress made by paddling out by not being washed backwards by the wave. Same thing applies to business. Sometimes you have to go through obstacles rather than going around them in order to maintain your trajectory.
  • Paddle out: This is just something you have to do not just in surfing, but in life as well. Don’t stay on the sideline, jump in, take a risk, and enjoy the ride.

Yes, I know it is late January, but I genuinely thought about what I need to do. What are you going to do? Surf, or stay on the beach?

3 Basic Ingredients

Recently I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several early stage business founders. Each of them have amazing passion for the ideas they are growing, conviction about the market segment they are impacting, and are full of energy. The one thing I found surprising was how a couple of them did not realize the value of establishing a digital footprint.

While my own startup experience predates the social web, we had a great conversation about personal branding in the digital world. Specifically, we talked about the value of connecting their personal brand to help shore-up the value of their new ventures’ brand. This is important for an early stage company because investors are not only buying into your product’s value proposition, they are also buying into your vision and value prop. Do this the right way and capital and customers will come to you. Do it the wrong way or be absent from the social web, and you’ll have to do it old school by smiling and dialing your way to success.

Is there a right recipe for this? Well, it’s like asking if there is one recipe for macaroni and cheese. There are always a few basic ingredients:

  1. Set up Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn profiles for yourself (not your company). Keep it simple, and clearly identify who you are and what you do.
  2. If you have more than 10 employees, set up a social media policy with some do’s and don’ts, agree on a posting schedule, and stick to it.
  3. If you happen to have a live website, connect your executive profiles to the social web. Include all the relevant links (LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.). If, like some startups you list your whole team on the site, encourage them to connect their social links as well. Don’t be afraid of them leaving—exporting talent can be a great thing. They could be the next connection into a partner or customer.

These are the basics. As you grow, so will your digital footprint, and as one of my friends @katrinaklier likes to say, “if it’s online, it’s marketing material, whether it’s a person or a product.”

So get out there. Build your footprint and start participating in the social conversation.

A Missed Local Opportunity- Is Valpak still relevant?

Recently, I opened the blue Valpak envelope that arrives in my mailbox regularly. To tell you the truth, I had not opened one in years; it went straight to the recycle bin. This time around what caught my eye was the QR code on the envelope that promised more offers if I snapped it. I did, and it landed me on a generic Teleflora offer.

I did open the envelope and looked inside. Some good coupons from local restaurants, but no place that we regularly go. There were some OK services offers from plumbing to carpeting, but nothing that moved me to take action.

What most people don’t know is that Valpak is sometimes run by a franchisee locally, rather than from a national headquarters.  To be clear, I have no idea how that relationship works or the mechanics around how Valpak runs operates this model. But what I do know is that I expected local offers when I snapped the QR code with my phone. It was the QR code that got me to engage with the envelope after all these years.

Valpak is still relevant.  After all, they did get me to open the envelope. However, they completely missed the mark by not leveraging the unique features offered by QR codes to present hyper-targeted, local offers down from zip code level to the nearest shops to my phone’s location. One last thing; by effectively integrating mobile into the flow of direct mail offers, there is the opportunity of increasing the pass-along effect by making the offer portable on mobile devices.

Of Tales and Cocktails

It’s hard to believe that the last time I hosted Dot Tales & Cocktails was 11 years ago. The event was part of Seattle’s high-tech “schmooze” circuit, as Manny Frishberg described it in his Seattle Weekly article, “Cash and Cocktails”. The point of this reflection is that short of having an online social network, we were making connections through events, mailing lists, websites, and one on one introductions.

You were vetted and validated as an individual microbrand by your business contacts and friends. And you worked hard to maintain those relationships. A great many of us leveraged these events to raise money, make business contacts, start companies, and sell them, too. At the same time, we transitioned from our twenties to our thirties and started to shift to larger companies that needed entrepreneurial approaches to getting things done. In that moment a lot of us (including me) left those connections behind and our microbrand was integrated into larger ones.

Here are the lessons I’ve learned:

  • Curate your relationships – Nurture the ones that help you move forward collectively and be available to those that might only be one-sided.
  • You will be surprised – Sometimes it is the people on the periphery that come through. Let yourself be surprised. You’ve made impressions on people you had no expectations of.
  • It’s hard work to build your brand – You have to work at it. Meet people in real life, have that phone call, go for coffee, take the lunch meeting. You can only go so far online. Learn to appreciate the face-to-face and try to provide value in your interactions.
  • Return the favor – Always, no matter how small.
  • Be available – There are a couple of people I know who think being mysterious adds to their persona. In reality, unless you are a celebrity, this approach does not work, and may put people off.

One last point, you never know who you will reconnect with. If I had not started Dot Tales & Cocktails I would have never reconnect with @dianego …although she never attended one of my events.

Over the next series of post I am planning to interview friends, business leaders, and entrepreneurs who I believe have done a great job building their microbrand.

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