Do you ever feel B2B marketing is just a little too clinical? Or better yet, a little too professional?
I’ve been flipping through trade magazines today, and struck by the number of ads that are plain boring. Transportation and logistics firms marketing themselves with glossy photos of trucks and taglines like, “Providing solutions for your mobile transportation needs.” Or HR providers using stock photography of groups of people wearing suits and smiling with crossed arms looking ‘professional.’
Generic images, generic copy and generic calls to action. They all look the same, and they’re all forgettable.
Why? That’s all I can ask. Why would any company blow $2,500 to $10,000 on a full-page ad when the ad is so abysmally boring? It’s a waste of money.
Jim Henson didn’t hold back. He didn’t pitch the features and benefits of the show. He revealed the satirical whimsy of the characters, and how they could dazzle and delight an audience.
The announcer lets it all hang out in this pitch, “Buy this show, and we’ll be famous. So put it on the air.” He goes so far as saying, “And God will look down on us. And smile on us. And he will say, ‘Let them have a 40 share.’”
From the very introduction, The Muppet Show is differentiated from all other comedies and TV programs. It stands out and is remarkable.
Stop being professional
There’s a sharp difference in Jim Henson’s pitch from all the bland, boring ads listed in trade magazines. Henson doesn’t try to come off as reserved or professional. He presents the show for what it is, and takes a clear stance.
It’s easy to get caught up in what is ‘professional,’ but customers need more then a nice suit and platitudes to choose your products or services. They need to know what makes you different.
Joe Friday used to say on Dragnet, “Just the facts ma’am. Just the facts.” Facts might work for detectives, but they don’t differentiate products and services.
How can you share your passions and energy to demonstrate your company is remarkable?
You were probably taught not to judge a book by its cover. But let’s be frank, you do. We all do. We can’t help ourselves. We judge with our eyes.
Not only do we judge books by their covers, we judge businesses by their brands. What we see and experience influences are perspective on a company. A company could deliver amazing products or services, but if their brand doesn’t reflect what’s inside the business then we doubt them.
What does an outdated website say about a company’s expertise?
What does a dirty, dingy office say about a company’s culture?
What does a grouchy employee say about a company’s service?
What does cheap packaging or marketing collateral say about a company’s quality?
These items may be overlooked internally, but your customers do not overlook them.
Does your business “impute?”
I had not come across the word “impute” before reading Walter Isaacson’s book, Steve Jobs. Isaacson wrote,
“Early on, Mike Markkula had taught Jobs to ‘impute’ – to understand that people do judge a book by its cover – and therefore to make sure all the trappings and packaging of Apple signaled that there was a beautiful gem inside. Whether it’s an iPod Mini or a Macbook Pro, Apple Customers know the feeling of opening up the well-crafted box and finding the product nestled in an inviting fashion.”
I love it. The box is as important as the product. It sets the expectation, and initiates the relationship.
Does your business impute? Does the packaging and expression of your brand reflect the quality of your products and services?
Create a cohesive experience
When your brand doesn’t reflect your business it creates dissonance.
Your customer sees one thing, but experiences another. This disconnect creates uncertainty, and causes them to second guess their purchase decisions. If they’re making a major purchase they may do more due diligence and talk to other vendors. If it’s a minor purchase they may just pass over it, and not give it a second thought.
You’ve got to avoid dissonance at all costs. Fear, uncertainty and doubt slow down sales, increases competition and increases price pressure. Price pressure is probably the worst symptom of dissonance. When you’re customers can’t see the value in your products, they fall back to evaluating them on price. And it’s hard to deliver a remarkable brand when your customers can’t see the value in your services.
Until very recently where you worked said a lot about your business and your brand. In the 80′s it was unacceptable to say you worked from home, because it suggested the business was small and unreliable.
Corporate headquarters were built to make a statement. The Chrysler Building in New York, the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Scotia Plaza in Toronto are all very visible landmarks demonstrating the power, success and stability of the companies that built them.
Landmark buildings don’t carry the same meaning anymore. The Internet and globalization has changed our expectations of brands. In the pre-Internet era the size, location and beauty of a building was a heuristic for a brand’s credibility. The building stood as a very visible sign of a firm’s success and wealth. Not anymore. Buildings don’t carry the same influence, because customers use new tools like Google, Twitter, YouTube and websites to assess and evaluate brands.
The Web democratized talent
You can buy amazing products from big companies and small companies alike. You can work with people face-to-face, over the phone or online.
Services can be delivered almost anywhere in the world. The old paradigm was to hire service providers in your own backyard, but now you can hire a company in Manila, Madrid or Montreal. The choice is yours. The question is not where the business is based, but what it’s capable of delivering.
The global availability of talent and resources changes the branding game. If customers don’t see your office building, they have to look for other cues to assess your brand. And the most logical place to look is online: Google, social media, YouTube and websites.
Craft expertise moments
When your customers are looking for information, how do you help them? What information do you provide? What experiences do you create that demonstrate your business’s strengths and capabilities?
Your job is to feed the Web with content and experiences that help your customers understand who you are, what you do and who you serve. Your brand’s digital footprint should distinguish it from the competition by not only revealing your knowledge, but also your personality and values. A brand’s digital footprint is the new office tower.
Think of your digital content as a distinctive, office tower like the Transamerica Pyramid. The Transamerica Pyramid stands out as a landmark on the San Francisco skyline. It helps position Transamerica’s brand and brand personality.
Even though Aegon acquired Transamerica in 1999, the building still has very strong brand associations with the original company. That’s the power of a well-crafted brand, and you too can achieve that distinctive position through the branded experiences you create online.
Expertise is available everywhere
The volume of content online is overwhelming. You can find service providers and products from around the globe. The challenge is standing out and demonstrating your expertise in a very crowded world.
The old rules of branding are quickly falling apart, but you can predict your customers’ needs: they want information. So feed it to them. Build a magnificent tower with your digital brand.
Many people are quick to respond to this question. They’ll answer with the first thing that comes to mind: their client relationships, a unique product feature, their price point, or their company’s reputation. Their answer can be completely valid, but it always leads me to a second question: did this point of differentiation happen organically, or was it a result of a purposeful brand strategy?
Very few companies are clearly plotting out and managing their brand differentiation. Rather they’re letting the brand evolve organically as the business grows.
An organically created brand will only go so far. The big, distinctive brands have baked their differentiation into everything they do. It’s part of their DNA. Wal-Mart is the lowest cost provider. Zappos and Nordstrom are all about service. Apple delivers design. Whole Foods provides organic and natural foods. What about you?
How do you differentiate?
What’s the one thing you commit to, and bake into everything you do?
When we boil it down, this question is really asking what is the essence of your business. Why was the business created? What is it striving for? How is it impactful?
When you know your essence you can convert it into strategy. From the very beginning of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton focused on value. He wanted to bring the lowest prices to market, and tuned the business’s operations and services to this commitment. A similar energy can be seen in Zappos. Tony Hsieh quickly realized Zappos couldn’t compete on price, but they could thrive on delivering exceptional customer service. And again, customer service is baked into the operations and services of Zappos’ business model.
What does your company value? Figure it out, isolate that point of differentiation, and then bake it into everything you do. In this very crowded market, features and benefits are quickly copied. But a business that focuses its attention on one point of differentiation like design, low price, customer service or a commitment to the environment, is very hard to duplicate.
Customers are looking for brands with clear points of differentiation. The uniqueness and commitment of well-defined brands help customers cut through the clutter, and find the products and services that reflect their values.
Act with purpose
David Aaker wrote in Brand Relevance, “A winning strategy today may not prevail tomorrow. It might not even be relevant tomorrow.” He’s right. If you’re complacent, you’ll get left behind.
Why do your customers choose you? What makes your brand stand out and be remarkable? If you don’t manage your brand’s differentiation then you are being complacent.
It’s easy to get caught up in the latest shiny objects. Right now Google+ is all the rage. A year ago the conversation focused on QR Codes and Twitter. And before that we were talking about MySpace.
We are living in an exciting time. It’s never before been easier to engage our customers. Google makes everything findable; mobile and apps untether us; and social media adds a whole new layer of communication. At the same time, I fear these tools are distracting companies from the real work of branding and marketing.
Leveraging social media or optimizing content to rank high in Google are tactics. Yes they are important, but it’s like talking about how to swing a hammer more accurately. Tools are tools. The real focus shouldn’t be on the tools, but creating timeless marketing.
Take a page from Shakespeare
Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet sometime between 1591 and 1595 – over 400 years ago. And since then the play has been reimagined and recreated in countless ways. You can see it on stage, on TV, on the big screen or even YouTube. West Side Story, High School Musical and Shakespeare in Love are all adaptions of the play.
Romeo and Juliet stands the test of time, because it focuses on the human condition. Even if the words sound funny and the social mores foreign, the story is timeless. Shakespeare wasn’t talking about the political woes of his time; he was talking about love, desperation and growing up.
There’s something really powerful in creating works that withstand the test of time.
Great marketing speaks to the human condition
Timeless marketing doesn’t speak to features and benefits, or play to the latest technologies. It speaks to human needs, wants and desires. It speaks to us at a deep emotional level.
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is an excellent example of timeless marketing. Dove broke the mold for a cosmetics brand and featured real women, not models, in their advertising. The campaign has a clear point of view that all women are beautiful, and portrays smiling women in all shapes, sizes and complexions. Each portrait is beautiful in its own right.
The campaign was originally launched in 2004, and continues to grow and evolve. What started as a traditional ad campaign has morphed to include digital, social media and mobile. Dove blends traditional and digital advertising together well, because their point of view and message is timeless.
New isn’t always better
30 years ago marketers had pretty limited options. They could push their message through TV, radio, print or direct marketing. All options had tight restrictions, and only facilitated one-way communication.
But the restrictions also led to impactful, creative marketing. If you only have a single page in a magazine to convey a message, it’s got to resonate. That’s where campaigns like Avis’ “We Try Harder” came from. A feature or a benefit will be lost in the pages, but a timeless message stands out and resonates.
Today is an exciting time to build and market brands. The choices are endless, and the technology is very democratic. But don’t forget your roots. I’ll take timeless over new and cool any day.
No doubt about it, speed sells. We live in a time-starved, productivity obsessed world. Every second counts, and saving your clients time is a fantastic value proposition.
Advertisers have been playing to consumers need for speed for decades. Just look at some of the classic brand slogans:
“30 minutes or it’s free” -Domino’s Pizza
“The quicker picker-upper ” -Bounty
“For fast, fast, fast relief” -Anacin
One of my favorite speed slogans is FedEx’s, “When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.” It’s brought to life in their classic 1981 commercial with John Moschitta, the fast-talking man.
The final voice over does a good job summing up our relationship with speed. “In this fast moving, high pressure, get it done yesterday world, aren’t you glad that there is one company that can keep up with it all?”
Speed is sizzle
Here’s the dichotomy. Even though speed sells, results take time.
The Atkins Diet claims you can “Lose up 15 pounds in 2 weeks.” Why bother changing your eating and exercise habits with a service like that? Losing more than a pound a day for two weeks sounds very appealing, but it’s hardly sustainable. True weight loss requires lifestyle changes otherwise you’ll find yourself yo-yoing between weight loss and weight gain.
Even though results take time and investment, many still hope to short circuit the process and find an easier way. It’s instinctual.
Results are substance
Dr. Anders Ericsson demonstrated it requires 10,000 hours of conscientious practice to become an expert. The notion of the 10,000-Hour Rule was popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book, Outliers.
Ericsson studied classical violinists at the Berlin Acadamy of Music. He discovered that virtuoso violinists were not born that way. They worked their tails off, and practiced 2 to 3 hours a day for 10 years to master their skills. By age 20 the virtuosos had acquired 10,000 hours of practice.
The accomplishments of the virtuosos cannot be short circuited with speed. There is no substitute for hard work and practice. The students in Ericsson’s study who practiced only a few times per week did not become virtuosos. They became music teachers!
It’s a brand choice
Time is a commodity we could all use a little more of. Linking your brand to saving time and increasing speed makes a lot of sense. For example, FedEx is rated in the Top 100 Most Valuable Brands by Brandz with a brand value over $11 billion.
But before you link your brand to speed, determine what your products and services really deliver. Are you helping your customers change, or are you helping them manage and save time? Both are perfectly fine. The only challenge is you can’t do both.
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Posted by Jeremy Miller 
