Brand Masterclass

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Feedback wanted 02

I need your help refining the Unison brand message.

Since a brand is what the customer really thinks it is, not what the company thinks it is, I'm inviting you to answer three questions in the most candid way possible:

1) Tell a story about a situation you've experienced where what we do at Unison might have helped improve the situation.

2) In a very short sentence, how would you describe to a friend of yours what Unison does?

3) What would you do differently on the site? What else would you like to tell us?

Post a Comment below and join the conversation. If you'd like to keep up with the journey, subscribe to in tune at the top of the page.

Thanks,
Paul

Feedback wanted

I need your help refining the Unison brand message.

Since a brand is what the customer really thinks it is, not what the company thinks it is, I'm inviting you to answer three questions in the most candid way possible:

1) Where on the site do you find clarity about the essence of Paul?

2) In a very short sentence, how would you describe to a friend of yours what Paul does?

3) What would you do differently on the site? What else would you like to tell me?

Post a Comment below and join the conversation. If you'd like to keep up with the journey, subscribe to in tune at the top of the page.

Thanks,
Paul

Changing the world of non-profits

Tom Suddes tackles the increasing dissonance between the archaic goals of typical not-for-profits and the realities of business. Suddes challenges us to think differently about these organizations.

Suddes sights Tim Kight’s “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results they are getting,” and Einstein's definition of insanity: “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results,” as inspiration for change.

Stop defining in the negative (not- non-); focus on impact.

Let impact drive the income. Change the goal of the organization from fundraising to increasing size and scope of impact.

Ask for whatever it is that you want to accomplish. Just ask for help. Just ask for involvement. Just ask for feedback. Just ask questions.

Suddes' 9 guiding principles are outlined in a ChangeThis manifesto.

Bootstrapper's Bible

Missed Seth Godin's manifesto, The Bootstrapper's Bible, the first time around? It's available again at ChangeThis.

There's never been a better time to start a business with no money. This manifesto will show you how.

Download the pdf document.

Rush at the Met

Jaws no longer drop at the thought of paying $375 for a prime seat at the Metropolitan Opera. It's the $20 orchestra seats that have people gaping.

Read The New York Times article.

What business are you in?

In the October 2006 issue of Harvard Business Review comes classic advice from Theodore Levitt.

Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.

The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.

People actually do not buy gasoline. They cannot see it, taste it, feel it, appreciate it, or really test it. What they buy is the right to continue driving their cars. The gas station is like a tax collector to whom people are compelled to pay a periodic toll as the price of using their cars. This makes the gas station a basically unpopular institution. It can never be made popular or pleasant, only less unpopular, less unpleasant.

Reducing its unpopularity completely means eliminating it. Nobody likes a tax collector, not even a pleasantly cheerful one. Nobody likes to interrupt a trip to buy a phantom product, not even from a handsome Adonis or a seductive Venus. Hence, companies that are working on exotic fuel substitutes that will eliminate the need for frequent refueling are heading directly into the outstretched arms of the irritated motorist.

In order to produce these customers, the entire corporation must be viewed as a customer-creating and customer-satisfying organism. Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization. It has to do this continuously and with the kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it. Otherwise, the company will be merely a series of pigeonholed parts, with no consolidating sense of purpose or direction.

What business are you in?

Read more from Theodore Levitt.

Bank as lifestyle and music producer

Umpqua isn’t just a financial institution. It’s a lifestyle. And now a music producer.

Certainly the message you would get if you were to visit the Umpqua branch in Portland’s trendy Pearl District neighborhood seems only vaguely related to the mundane business of certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans. With free wi-fi access, Umpqua brand coffee, a spacious seating area and flat-screen television monitors, the place has been designed to suggest a stylish hotel lobby where you’re tempted to hang out (and, perhaps, read a tastefully printed brochure about certificates of deposit, checking accounts and loans). This and other Umpqua branches also serve as the setting for things like sewing groups, yoga classes and movie nights. Actually, the word “branch” is not used in Umpqua’s official internal terminology: the bank operates 127 “stores” in Oregon, California and Washington. As Lani Hayward, who oversees “creative strategies for the company,” explains, Umpqua sees itself as a retailer.

The reason for this strategy is the same one that leads companies across many sectors to play the lifestyle card: a proliferation of competitors peddling largely interchangeable wares. If a bank wants to stand out, it’s fairly difficult to do so with the financial products it offers. It can, however, differentiate the manner in which it sells and packages those products.

According to Hayward, the central idea of Umpqua’s image is “community hub.” The company trains its employees through a program offered by the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, with the goal of providing service that’s better than what you might expect from a bank. And it gives its managers the autonomy to, for example, stay open during a snowstorm if the manager thinks the customers will want that. But the community-hub notion also plays a role in the curious-sounding decision to start selling CD’s (the kind with music on them) through a program called Discover Local Music.

Read The New York Times Magazine article.

Authenticity in the experience economy

"Authenticity is the thing consumers respond to the most," says Diego Scotti, VP of Global Advertising for American Express.

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore are working on their next book, focused on authenticity as a new consumer sensibility. Gilmore writes:

In the Agrarian Economy, the dominant purchase criteria was Availability (price being set by supply-and-demand, and only influencing the quantity of materials purchased in the marketplace). In the Industrial Economy, Cost became the dominant driver of purchases as Mass Production made more and more goods affordable to the masses. In the Service Economy, Quality came to dominate, when the performance of offerings became most important as consumers increasingly rely upon others to perform certain activities on their behalf.

And now, in the Experience Economy, in an increasingly unreal world of staged places and mediated events, consumers want Authenticity. Thus AMEX desires to "be associated with people of substance, whose success is based on real achievement" and entices celebrities with the opportunity to craft their life-stories (as a commercial) and not just monetary compensation. (Indeed, selling out for the big bucks is not "being real".)

"My Life, My Card..." Diego Scotti on making the directors' series commercials for American Express.

Fast Company features guest blogging by Experience Economy's Jim Gilmore.

Remarkable experiences building Starbucks

“You still have to be remarkable if you want to get remarked about,” writes John Moore in his new book, Tribal Knowledge: Business brewed from the grounds of Starbucks corporate culture.

Starbucks is an experiential brand that strives to be interesting in order to get customers interested. Because the customer experience at Starbucks is the marketing for Starbucks, everything matters.
Not just one thing…E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.
Everything matters because everything is an act of communication with customers. And, E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G includes the following:

The package design of whole bean coffees matters.
The hours of operation signs on the front door matters.
The way the chocolate-covered espresso beans are merchandised on the shelves matters.
The music playing in-store matters.
The way baristas dress matters.
The way your espresso drink is prepared and delivered matters.
The promotional sign placed at the main cash register matters.
The lighting in the restrooms matters.
E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G to Starbucks matters.

You’d be hard pressed to find a Starbucks employee say, “That doesn’t matter. No customer will ever notice it.” Because chances are a customer will notice. And that’s why EVERYTHING MATTERS to Starbucks.

Read a pdf excerpt from the book. Go to ChangeThis.