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7 secrets of brands that sell

July 1st, 2010

Ever wonder why some brands just sell more easily than others? Why some brands are just more memorable than others? Why we like some brands more than others?

Consider the following seven secrets of successful brands, does this sound like your brand?

1. Compelling Story: Your buyers attach meaning to your brand because they truly understand your brand’s platform (i.e. the essence, promise, differentiators and proof points).

2. Reputation: You don’t settle for “me too”. Instead your brand is positioned on a reputation idea that reflects where your organization excels, how you’re different, special and relevant (i.e. innovation leader, fun leader, knowledge leader, are a few examples).

3. Core Values: Your brand is based on 3-5 core values which your organization unequivocally defends (even when it costs you more money).

4. Humanized: You don’t settle for a “vanilla” brand personality. Instead you’ve developed a unique personality for your brand which may be based a universally recognized brand archetype (ex. hero, rebel, powerbroker, creator, siren and others).

5. Owning Color: You’ve developed a color palette for your brand’s identity and consistently use 1 or 2 colors primarily (ex. Susan G. Komen’s pink, UPS’ brown, IBM’s blue).

6. Strong Stewardship: Your brand has clear brand standards (ex. Do’s and don’ts regarding your logo, colors and typography). And you’ve made your brand assets accessible to those who use them. Brand assets include digital files of logo, photos and graphics.

7. Living the Brand: Because a customer’s experience with a brand will cement their perceptions, you deliberately work to align employee’s attitudes, knowledge and behavior with the desired brand experience. You leverage, in this order, people, programs and “propaganda” (aka internal communications) to help everyone “live” the brand each day.


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Do-It-Yourself does not always translate into optimal outcomes

December 30th, 2009

Why do the lessons we learn usually come from our mistakes not our victories? And why do optimal outcomes usually come from our doing things within our core competencies while outsourcing the rest?

Recently, I had two different conversations with prospects who sold rather complex consulting services, both of whom were in significant pain in terms of marketing their businesses effectively. The issues they spoke of included struggling to explain what services they provided in a compelling way and generating qualified leads for their sales folks to convert into business. These, by the way, are the most common struggles I hear from prospects so if that sounds like you, don’t feel bad and consider calling me to talk.

Anyway, in both cases, these two prospects had not yet learned what their marketing struggles were costing their business or costing them personally.

Yet they both admitted something needed to change, a sign they are moving closer to resolution. One went so far as to say he needed to “stew in it” (his marketing struggle) a little longer before he would seek outside help– translation the pain of paying someone for help was greater than the pain of wrestling with it himself.

All of this perfectly illustrates: Opportunity Cost.

Business Dictionary defined opportunity cost as: Benefit, profit, or value of something that must be given up to acquire or achieve something else. Since every resource (land, money, time, etc.) can be put to alternative uses, every action, choice, or decision has an associated opportunity cost.

In the case of the two prospects, their time as a valuable resource was not being considered as part of the cost of their business problem. Their executive time could be put to better use rather than stumbling around with their brand’s positioning strategy, marketing outreach plan and even graphic design.

The example I remember from business school was the opportunity cost of changing the oil in one’s car. Sure we may all be somewhat “capable” of changing the oil but considering the time (and learning curve) involved, our time is actually worth more than the money we would pay someone else (a car care expert) to perform this service.

You may also hear opportunity cost associated with build or buy/outsource decision-making. I have a healthy outsourcing mindset, for example, I outsource advertising and graphic design, SEO work, some copy writing, computer repairs and web hosting, among other things. Why? Because at my hourly billing rate, it simply does not make sense for me to try and do all of these things myself— the opportunity cost is too great. Plus there’s usually an intangible cost for folks like me, the frustration level that comes with knowing that “do-it-yourself” does not always translate into optimal outcomes.

As you plan for 2010, think about how you will create YOUR optimal outcomes and if you need to make a few mistakes along the way, that’s ok they’re not really mistakes if you learn the opportunity cost lesson.

About Pecanne Eby, MBA
Pecanne is an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience, she helps clients become fearless about their marketing decisions through one-on-one consulting engagements and group Brand Boot Camps.


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Does Social Media Yield Any ROI?

October 5th, 2009

I get this question a lot, even over this past weekend when I served on a social media panel at the annual conference for the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

Here’s the deal, social media is still proving itself in hard numbers but intuitively most of us recognize that the social media revolution has opened up new avenues for how we relate and build relationships with our constituents.

For those who need to be able to offer up a good “why” for investing any marketing budget into social media and have a hard time remembering all the benefits, use this business vernacular with a twist: Reach; Online engagement; and Insight (or ROI to help you remember it).

ROI for Social Media

ROI for Social Media

Reach is fairly self explanatory, social media will help you reach your target audiences either directly or through the online grapevine. Social media can help you reach your audience for the first time or multiple times. Naturally that reach can be measured by the number of members in your network (often called followers, friends or fans).

Online engagement is a critical cornerstone to the social media culture since this culture highly values being heard (i.e. dialog over marketing monologue). Online engagement means being willing to take risks, like allowing people to comment on your content, your services, products, mission and anything else that may attract their attention. Sometimes you’ll have to agree to disagree, but it’s usually a good and healthy thing in the social media world and it generates a sense of relationship. Online engagement can be measured in terms of traffic to your primary site from the social media platform, comments and of course the overall growth in the size of your network.

Finally, insights about audiences— the lifeblood that drives all strategic marketing. By using social media we have the opportunity to do a unique kind of observational research. We can observe so many things about our audiences including their conversations, their topics and their level of passion around those topics. Sure, at first it can look like unorganized chatter but as you spend more time with social media, learn the networks’ search tools, try some new applications and interact with those in the social network you’re building, you will get better at distilling the input into insight.

Happy networking!


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Unforgettable Brand Positioning- The Four C’s

April 12th, 2009

If there’s one song to sum up what I want my clients’ brands to be, it would have to be “Unforgettable” made famous by Nat King Cole. It’s powerful, heart felt and of course unforgettable.

Yes, positioning a brand to be “unforgettable” is a tall order for anyone. And it’s no longer enough to simply throw a lot of money into the marketplace to “buy” awareness for a brand. Today’s consumer has become too savvy at blocking irrelevant marketing messages. So brands, more than ever, need to have relevant ideas behind them in order to establish and protect their positions in the marketplace.

What’s positioning strategy?

Positioning strategy is one of the greatest challenges clients face. It’s not because they don’t have great ideas, it’s usually because they cannot pick ONE overriding idea and commit to it.

Many call the positioning the proverbial “stake in the ground”. It’s how you intend for your target audience to see your product, service or cause relative to competing alternatives. Committing to a brand’s positioning strategy means having a focus. And by focusing, it means admitting that their branded product, service or cause is not intended for everyone. This can be scary because we fear leaving out a critical audience. But when we don’t stand for something, we end up standing for nothing. We end up being quite forgettable.

Where are you now?

I just moderated focus groups last week for an association client who is evaluating what to do with a newly acquired brand (another membership organization). I used a car metaphor question to get a quick thumbnail on how the participants perceived the client’s market position relative to competing organizations. If there’s one thing focus group participants always seem to know, its car brands (thank goodness!).

The car question goes like this, “If X organization were a car, what kind of car would it be and why?” This question ignited a fury of excitement for both the participants and the client. And the answers solidified for the client where their brands (old and new) really stood in the marketplace, what they really symbolized. It’s now the jumping off point for us to refine their brand’s position in the marketplace.

Evaluating your strategy- The Four C’s?

When forming (or evaluating) brand positioning strategies, I like to use the four C’s to help vet and eliminate the forgettable options. The four C’s are…
1. Clarity
2. Compelling
3. Credible
4. Contrasting

Clarity- Does the desired positioning strategy make sense to the audience? Is it singularly focused? Can they easily and accurately repeat back the main idea (or is it more like a game of “telephone” where the idea exponentially deteriorates as it passes through more and more hands?).

Compelling- Is the desired positioning strategy based on something your target audience actually cares about? Or is it based on something safe, vague or “me too”?

Credible- Does the positioning strategy come across as believable coming from your organization? Remember you can’t be all things to all people. Don’t give consumers yet another thing they can roll their eyes at.

Contrasting- Does the positioning strategy contrast you enough with your biggest competitor? Since consumers are not especially good about sorting out shades of gray, it’s very important to be as opposite of a competitor as possible. Being opposite should not stop with the positioning statement, it continues on with other brand decisions, such as brand personality, color palette and the desired brand experience.

Using the four C’s will help you challenge, narrow and brand’s unforgettable positioning strategy. And once you get the positioning strategy right, you’ll have a solid platform upon which to create that unforgettable marketing.

Listen to Nat King Cole’s “Unforgettable” for free.

About Pecanne Eby, MBA
With 20 years of marketing practitioner experience, Pecanne is an independent Marketing Consultant in Denver, CO. As the founder of Brand Mentoring, Pecanne teaches, guides and supports her clients in their efforts to leverage branding as a powerful differentiation strategy.


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Customer Pain is North Star in Down Economy. Find Out What You Don’t Know.

March 13th, 2009

I went to a networking lunch last week in downtown Denver, the mood was friendly and understandably a little down. As expected, conversations centered on things like spouses losing jobs, managers losing staff, and the unemployed losing their minds! Interestingly, there was also a new openness to changing how we do things, an air of, “let’s get back to basics.”

For those of us in marketing, now is a clear opportunity to “get back to basics” by realigning our marketing messages to better attack our audience’s real pain. It’s time to reexamine our target audiences’ pain to make sure we are truly TUNED IN to what is happening right now. Don’t assume your market research from one year ago still holds water. And if you don’t have market research from a year ago, don’t wait any longer.

It does not matter if you’re marketing for a private sector company, a nonprofit, a trade association, professional society or even the government, your message had better be crystallized around your audience’s primary pain, otherwise it won’t register as a priority during this down economy. People are looking for solutions from people (or brands) they know, like, trust AND who appear to “get it”.

How do we really understand our audience’s pain?

We only have to ask, with a detached heart, what their greatest challenges are and they will likely filibuster on it. Why? Because chances are they are probably spending a lot more time isolated and are happy to unburden themselves by talking about it.

My sales coach, Debbie Scott of Achievement Dynamics/Sandler Training (I call her the Queen of Pain, that’s a compliment) would call this discovery process: taking someone through the “pain funnel”. The pain funnel is part of a sales process developed by David Sandler. It’s about asking your audience a series of questions to allow them to discover the breadth and depth of their pain.

The pain funnel starts out with intellectual questions posed as if you were a nurturing doctor, like: tell me what’s happening, how long have you been experiencing X problem and what have you done to try to fix it? That’s the “warm up” before moving into more emotion provoking questions that uncover the financial and emotional impact of their problem (this is where the real pain comes out!).

From a market research perspective, I find the pain funnel a fascinating technique because it breaks down those intellectual walls and gets our audiences spilling their guts about all the things that are REALLY bothering them. This catharsis can provide invaluable insight to marketers as it brings us closer to messaging strategies that will really connect our audiences to our brands (as solutions!). Just like the best friend who listens intently to an anxious friend or the doctor with the good bedside manner.

Once you’ve got a handle on today’s pain (or the “pain inventory”), look at your overall brand promise and your promotional messages and see if there is opportunity to refine either of these to be more pain/solution oriented. People are hungry for answers to their pain right now, use this as your hook to get their attention. Your customer retention and new customer acquisition could be dependent on making this critical shift, and it may be now or never!

P.S. If you want to learn more about the “pain funnel” or high performance selling, Debbie Scott would be happy to invite you to a complimentary Executive Briefing (valued at $150), just send her an email at debbie@achievemoresales.com.


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Writing Creative Briefs– What not to do!

January 29th, 2009

Who enjoys writing creative briefs… raise your hand?!

I know writing creative briefs can be challenging because the process will force you to be comprehensive, very specific and oh, yes….BRIEF!

As much as you may struggle to write these marketing documents, consider your audience (copywriters, creative directors, art directors, production mangers, web developers) and how they may struggle to read creative briefs that are far too long or worse yet, painfully incomplete.

So here are my top 5 “what not to do” in a creative brief, along with an outline of what a good creative brief should include.

#5 Do not be long winded. Remember it’s called a creative brief for a reason. Creative staff usually bill by the hour so they are counting on you to cherry-pick and synthesize the critical marketing information they need into a concise creative brief document.

Fortunately creative briefs do not need to follow AP style or read like term papers. So be generous with bulleting your content, breaking topics into smaller paragraphs and using sub-heads to help your readers skim the brief.

Avoid cutting and pasting massive amounts of content from your client’s website, aim instead to thoughtfully net things out for your creative team in a succinct manner. Yes, this means thinking about what really matters most to the creative team relative to this particular marketing project.

If the client has results from a market research study or survey, pull out the salient findings and include only a few charts to visually reinforce those key findings. Often the research findings report will have an executive brief and this is usually plenty for the creative team to chew on.

#4 Do not forget to state what you want your marketing project to achieve. This seems obvious but it can be overlooked as we are distilling down so many other pieces of the puzzle. Stating what your client wants to achieve should be as specific as possible. Consider short-term and long-term achievements to put this into perspective for your creative team. Consider talking about the desired behaviors you wish the target audience to pursue or the perceptions, attitudes and beliefs you wish to shape in your target audience’s mind.

#3 Do not leave out relevant background data. Information about key competitors is very important so your creative team can be aware if their big idea will sound just like your client’s competition! Include meaningful descriptions of target audiences by market segment, such as demographics, psychographics, geographic location, how and why they buy your clients’ product/service/cause. And of course include, brief descriptions of your client’s good/services, their mission, core values and current positioning strategy is also highly relevant. Since background data can take up a lot of real estate in your creative brief, organization is key (see the recommended outline below).

#2 Do not start the creative meter until the client has read and approved the creative brief. I know it’s tempting to let the client off the hook and get the creative work going as soon as possible but I’ve found that short-circuiting this step only leads to trouble. You don’t want to be the account executive who is always begging your creative team to review a revised creative brief, which in essence appears to be “starting over” to your creative team. Nor do you want to be the person who has to write off billable hours because there were no clear upfront agreements, via the creative brief, with the client.

#1 Do not assume your creative team has read your brief. So you may be tempted to think that once your masterpiece of a creative brief is in the job jacket, your job is done. However following up with your creative team is essential in order to discuss the creative brief, answer questions and clarify anything that may have been overlooked. I usually call a “start-work-meeting” to review the brief with the creative team and send the signal that a) I care that the brief has been received and understood and b) that I expect creative work can now commence.

Your creative brief should contain some basic components, see below for an outline to get you started. Happy brief writing and remember what an important role your creative brief can play in guiding your creative team to that perfect creative deliverable!

Creative Brief Outline

Project Name:
Client Name:
Due Date:

I. What do we aim to achieve?
What is the purpose of this project; short term and long term goals/objectives of this project (ex. desired response rates; lead generation goals; desired calls to action/resulting behaviors; shaping target audience’s perception, attitudes beliefs; building brand awareness; building brand preference and loyalty).

II. Client Background
About our client, who are they, what do they provide/do, what is their philosophy, their core values, how do they currently market themselves.

III. Target Audiences
Who are they, how does the client segment/categorize them (i.e. by industry, behavior, demographics, psychographics, personas, geography, a combination of these attributes); do we have any research insights from marketing studies or secondary research that highlights current perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and why do they buy from our client.

IV. Competitive Landscape
Who are the top direct and indirect competitors our client faces; how do they position themselves; how does our target audience “see” them relative to our client; how do their sales compare to one another and to our client—who is the market share leader; what are the major strategies competitors are using to market themselves.

V. Messaging Strategy
What does our main message need to convey and how do we support that message?

Convince (target audience):
That (what’s the main message or benefit):
Because (supporting facts):
Other copy points (secondary elements/facts to include):
Tone (brand personality traits):

VI. Production, Timing, Budget Considerations
What does the creative team need to be aware of about budget, formats, brand guidelines, client pet peeves, hard deadlines, distribution, media specs, other marketing materials which may “live” alongside the creative deliverable from this project.

VII. Additional Relevant Research
What market research or competitive intelligence do we want the creative team to be aware of (i.e. competitors’ ads, web pages, promotions).


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Creative Briefs- Marketers’ Playbooks

January 23rd, 2009

A few months ago I had the good fortune to lead a marketing effort for the Colorado Nonprofit Association called Generous Colorado. It is a consumer campaign to build awareness and support of Colorado’s 19,000+ nonprofit organizations. Participating on the client side were the acting CEO, staffers and a handful of volunteers from the membership ranks.

When I first met with this client there was a lot of excitement since they had secured donations of television airtime and a template website tool to support their outreach effort. Like most campaign start-ups, there were lots of ideas about what the TV spots should say, who should be in them, could we get any Colorado celebrities to lend a hand or maybe even the Governor? It was a very typical marketing campaign start-up where most everyone jumped into the tactical and art direction details.

I knew for us to get anywhere we needed a creative brief to focus our thinking and provide a “playbook” to the creative team who would be tasked with coming up with the deliverables– two television PSAs and a website that could facilitate online donations. So playing the role of account executive, I suggested we collaboratively develop a creative brief (a standard best practice in the ad agency world). This of course did not sound as exciting as a brainstorming session with creative directors and copywriters but it appealed to the clients’ strategic sensibility and took them off the hook for having the big creative ideas.

We talked about what should be in our creative brief, including: what we hoped to accomplish overall; who we intended to reach; how we intended to reach them; our brand strategy, desired image, attitude and core message. I know, pretty sexy stuff! But it’s important stuff if we want to give our creative team the information and strategic thinking they absolutely need to do their jobs!

The creative team, which consisted of a copywriter, creative director, graphic designer, and film editing folks, embraced the creative brief and I think were relieved we had some specific goals and an actual message, all committed to in writing. The pressure was intensified by the fact that most of this team had never before worked together and we only had 6 weeks to develop this marketing campaign, the first of its kind for the Colorado Nonprofit Association (no pressure, right?!).

I credit the client for getting out of the tactical thinking trap and taking the creative brief development process seriously. And I also credit the creative team for following the creative brief as their North Star. It proved to me, once again, the absolute power of this very simple technique.

The results? It’s too early to know the 4th quarter donation results but we do know it helped raise the issue of Coloradans giving at a time when the need has never been greater. And as the industry advocate for nonprofits, the Colorado Nonprofit Association now has some powerful evergreen marketing tools in its arsenal.

Take a look at the resulting PSAs entitled Essential Services and Philanthropy which are airing in Colorado.

To view the website (and make a donation if you feel moved to) visit www.generouscolorado.org.


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