I’m often asked what the term “verbal branding” means.  Yesterday, the question came up in a phone conference. Here is my take on the important subject:

A brand is all the things (both tangible and intangible) that create your experience of a company, product, service, or organization, and even a destination. That experience leaves you with an impression. And your impression, once formed and reinforced, is the brand.

But where does the verbal part come in?

Verbal branding is far more than just a name. It is how a brand expresses itself in words, regardless of medium. Winning brands pick and choose their words, much like they define a icon system or color palette to represent themselves visually. The result is a very planned style of conversation with consumers.

Our reaction to a brand’s visual presence is complemented by what the company says or doesn’t. When visual and verbal components are aligned, we get the sense that the brand is a cohesive entity with a single personality. When there’s a discrepancy between how a brand looks and what it says, or when the brand fails to engage us verbally, we feel disoriented. And, ultimately, we don’t understand the brand we’re dealing with. That’s a perception no company wants to leave with a consumer.

- Scott Hauman

September 18, 2009, 2:27pm   Comments

I came across a fantastic article posted in Saturday’s NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/16/opinion/16heitman.html

It sheds light on Marianne Moore, the famous American writer, who was asked by Ford Motor Company to help solve their naming challenges in 1955.  She offered dreamy and thought-provoking suggestions, such as, “the Ford Silver Sword,” “Intelligent Bullet,” “the Ford Fabergé,” “Mongoose Civique,” “Anticipator,” “Pastelogram,” and “Astranaut.” Sadly, none of them came to fruition.

Imagine if brands today could open themselves up more and inject fresh thinking and innovation by collaborating often with poets, artists, and designers. I think the brand landscape would be more more interesting, compelling, memorable.  Don’t you agree?

- Scott Hauman

August 17, 2009, 11:19am   Comments

One of the best ways to create sustainable, long-lasting word of mouth is through the building and nurturing of a healthy online community. Here are two tips to help make yours better:

1) Create focused communities

People tend to organize themselves around specific ideas or topics they’re passionate about — not big picture, vague causes. Ensure your communities stay active by creating them based on central themes or popular products that allow the really passionate people to get together without all the outside distractions. If you keep your members focused on niche things they can’t get elsewhere, you’ll have much more than a generic fan club.

2) Reward participation

If you want to see consistent engagement and fresh community content, make a habit of recognizing and rewarding your biggest contributors. While it’s common for the vast majority of members to be “consumers,” it’s your steady contributors that keep things interesting. Give these big talkers credentials, special perks, and leadership roles to keep them going.

- Scott Hauman

July 28, 2009, 11:22am   Comments

We are witnessing the filing and registration of more trademarks and domain names than ever before. The good news is that more and more people are becoming aware of the value of a federally registered trademark and therefore are readily investing in marks that may have millions of dollars worth of goodwill some day. However, in a few recent naming engagements, we have also been getting push back from companies because they feel compelled to cut corners in this challenging economic environment.  As a brand marketer that has seen the consequences of the cutting corners path first hand, the small investment up front to ensure long-term brand success outweighs the aftermath of a retreating brand. So I thought it would be a good time to trumpet why trademarks are so important to both emerging and established organizations.

• A trademark is a sign that distinguishes the goods or services of one trader from those of another.  It is property and something that the owner can license or sell, making trademarks corporate assets on the books, and therefore worth protecting.
• The most effective way of protecting your brand offer is with trademark registration.  Trademark registration provides significant legal and commercial advantages for every business, such as having exclusive rights to use the mark and protecting the reputation developed in your brand.
• Registration entitles you to use the ® symbol in close association with your trademark, serving as a useful notice to other organizations that your trademark is your property. Research reveals that consumers feel more confident purchasing from branded or trademarked goods than non-branded items.

Last, getting professional counsel from an experienced IP attorney is mission-critical for any start-up business or established brand looking to expand into new markets.  We rely heavily on Bodman LLP to provide our clients with expert trademark registration and monitoring counsel.

May 26, 2009, 7:46am   Comments

Being a marketing leader today is like trying to scale Mount Everest every few weeks without the proper support team, climbing equipment and favorable weather conditions.

How has it come to this? The relentless corporate pressure to quickly build brand equity, generate more leads, monitor performance, and outpace the competition, all with shrinking operating budgets and overworked skeleton crews are at the core of this dilemma.

Managing such demanding pace forces marketing leaders to rely on strategies and tactics that have produced success in the past while experimentation and testing is cast aside. We all know that customer desires, motivations, and behaviors are changing all the time. On-demand services, environments, and technologies are fostering these changes, diminishing brand loyalty with every action. The more your brand communicates through the same channels and methods year after year, with the same tone and style, the more likely your brand will lose loyal fans along the way to the new kids on the block. Today’s emerging threats to your brands are trained to be innovative with their client acquisition strategies – they are always on the move, while your brand stays the course.

How do you break this cycle without asking the C-suite for more funding? Focus on user feedback and make it part of your department’s culture. Other departments in your organization, such as R&D, Quality Assurance, Engineering, etc. rely on feedback generation and insight gathering on a consistent basis so why is marketing so resistant? Is it because research has been tagged as a money burning, 6-month long, 200-page binder filled with predictable charts and graphs? There are ways to move in a new direction. As author and brand thought leader Marty Neumeier of Neutron LLC states in his recent book Zag, “when everyone zigs, zag.”

At Daggerfin, we use effective insight gathering techniques to help our clients shape, express and propel their business strategies. Below is a list of methods and techniques that can help your brand breakthrough:

1) A day in the life: When was the last time you walked in your customers’ shoes? Get out from behind the desk and start cataloging activities and contexts that users experience throughout an entire day. This method provides a truly objective measure of a real customer experience at any one point in time and is much broader than a typical mystery shopping experience. It gives you actionable insights by revealing unanticipated issues inherent in the routines and circumstances people (customers and stakeholders) experience on a daily basis. It also provides a clear picture of how and where your brand “fits” in your customers’ lives.

2) Online feedback bank: The most effective approach to growing a customer relationship is by turning your customers into advocates. Empower them to speak and open a direct dialogue on your terms - instead of out in the wild.  Creating a web-based environment, where customers post ideas and comments and then get to vote them up or down, can do this. The best ideas/suggestions float up to the top, pointing you towards the most optimal decisions for your business and marketing practices. There are hosts of cost-effective and sometimes free applications on the web to help you build and maintain an online feedback bank.

3) Character profiling and role-playing: Take your core segmentation data to a new level by developing character profiles to represent archetypes and the details of their behaviors and lifestyles. Develop names and visual identities for each profile. When considering marketing tactics, always ask, “What would Susan, or Robert like, and how would they react to this scenario or that scenario?”

4) Rapid Prototyping: Quickly prototype your next service, product, or idea concept and have various internal teams and external stakeholders use it to learn from a simulation of the experience. This is useful for uncovering unknown issues or needs, while evaluating concept strength and elasticity.

Engaging these techniques and methods will open new ideas and strategies that are grounded in the present, allowing you to break away from formulaic practices. The more relevant and considerate your marketing activities are, the greater the chance you will reach your ROI goals.

According to the Verse Group and Jupiter Research’s study, CMO Priorities for 2009 (released in February this year), the number one priority for CMOs is achieving measurable ROI on marketing efforts and 87% surveyed believe traditional positioning and advertising are losing effectiveness. Now is the time to break your cycles and achieve more.

Source: Jupiter Research/Verse Group Marketer Survey (11/08)

May 20, 2009, 3:55pm   Comments