Is sustainable marketing alive and well in the US?

A while ago I was working on an event for a government body and part of the brief was that it was to be a ’sustainable event’.  Having been involved in sustainable marketing for some time, I was well aware of the principles and techniques but as I am a keen proponent of making use of specialists, I decided we needed a sustainable events consultant on the team.  I searched the UK in vain for somebody with the right credentials so decided to turn my attention to Europe: surely we would find someone – perhaps in the green focused Scandinavian markets?

No, surprisingly the richest source of specialists was the US. Given their attitude to ecology and global warming this bemused me. Looking closely I saw that I was confusing national government issues with those of local activists. At state and city level, authorities are keenly aware of the need for sustainable dimensions. This has stimulated a vigorous sector of specialists and even spawned professional bodies.

Sometimes our generalisations blind us to the specific cases.  I feel suitably chastened and heartened and I will look more closely at individual, sustainable leadership from the US (sorry Mr Gore).

I’m pleased to say that now, just a few months after my original search, there is a lot of help available from UK sources in mounting sustainable events in the UK. There is even a government site providing help and guidance.

Green Brands – Green Values

As I was standing at the supermarket checkout with my fistful of use again carrier bags I was considering how green values have permeated our culture and how brands have followed them.

I hear a lot of cynicism, much of it justified, about companies artificially promoting their green credentials, and mounting specious eco-chumly initiatives.  But lets unpick this for a moment… brands are owned by the greater public, so their relationship with greener brands will be a reflection of their own eco-friendly values. As we respond to green values so they will be promoted.

Most brands embody green credentials I believe, and promote them to a greater or lesser degree. It’s just that we view some brands with more scepticism than others. So why do I feel cynical towards Tesco as I recycle my carrier bags and collect my Green Points? I guess they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t when it comes to adopting sustainable policies.

So I would urge brand stewards to be resolute: adopt sustainanble policies for the RIGHT reasons; be sincere; ignore the cynics. Ultimately I believe honest values will come through and can only be good for the planet and your brand.

The power of intrigue

I was travelling up the M1 this morning and was intrigued by a large mobile billboard. It had a just four big 3D characters jumbled at a crazy angle, reading ‘form’. Beneath was the URL – ‘www.weshapeit.com’.  I was so intrigued, even not having a clue what the organisation did, that I remembered the web-address and as soon as I arrived at the office, I logged on and checked the company out.  They are a supplier of IT services, not of interest to me, but I am willing to bet that some people were equally intrigued and are in the market for those services.

Intrigue is a powerful tool, and I am constantly advising clients not to say too much on their websites – leave the visitors gagging for more and they will hopefully contact you and give you the opportunity to make a real sale.  But it takes a lot of guts for a business to put substantial budget behind a teaser.

For me, the awareness of this brand – previously unknown to me – has leaped. Well done Form.

How many strikes before you are out?

A couple of months ago I ordered a bottle of my favourite wine in a restaurant… and it was foul!  A ‘brand’ (for that is what the label has become) that I could rely upon had let me down.  At the weekend staring at another wine list, I studiously avoided my once favourite.  One of the key reasons we become loyal to brands is that they are reliable… fulfilling their promise time after time. So often, when we are let down once, all that reputation for reliability is gone and the brand is terminal ruined in your eyes.

Some brands seem teflon-coated and can survive numerous errors, gaffs and failures. For others, where the failing is in one of their core values they are out with just one strike.  I’m reminded of Anderson consulting: when they failed in their probity, survival was not an option.  Similarly Firestone tyres catastrophic run of tyre blow outs in the US was the single strike needed.

I guess the lesson is, protect your core values, your critical success factors at all cost – or it may be one strike and you are out.

Time sensitivity

I was looking at a photo today of the band ‘Boyzone’ and thinking how inappropriate their name now seemed – if the were to have lasted as long as the Stones, they might be an object of some derision.  That led me to thinking about other brand names that could have become frozen in time, such as 20th Century Fox, and all those brands that thought it was cutting edge to link themselves to the Millennium or the year 2000. Maybe you have your own favourites.

Sometimes it is good to capture the zeitgeist of a particular moment, to grab a window of opportunity at the expense of longevity; but for the rest of us a moment’s reflection in brand name selection should help avoid us being saddled with a hula hoop of a brand name.

Tell me a story

I have long advocated using archetypes and exemplars to create brand narratives. Demographic and psychographic profiles are essential but we need to understand the stories audiences construct for themselves around the brand. Well here is a great post from Thebrandbuilder on the subject and a valuable contribution to the debate.

Is a brand accessible to study?

The school of psychology known as behaviourism, as exemplified by the famous B. F. Skinner, held that the mind itself was not readily accessible to study, nor a useful subject of study. Instead the view was that all that was available and useful to study was the human behaviour that emanated from cognitive activity. We could apply the same rationale to the study of brands. All that is available to us is the phenomena of the brand communications, the actions and responses of various audiences, and the actions of the brand stewards.

The analogy holds for so far, except that in the case of human psychology, there is something beyond the observable phenomena – there is a mind that is involved in cortical cognitive processing and that ephemeral condition, conciousness. Since the behaviourists, psychologists have increasingly directed their studies to these more difficult areas.  With the brand however, we could argue that what is observable is the sum of all there is… in fact that sum is ‘the brand’. Studying brands could perhaps be more likened to forensic profiling – for brand analysis perhaps we need a ‘Brand Cracker’?

Is your country a brand?

I get involved in a lot of export training, and when looking at a company’s brand proposition I usually ask, “Is Britishness an asset and a help in doing business abroad?”. I was interested to see in the Readers’ Digest Trusted Brands survey they looked at various aspects of countries as brands. By inference, these values can be transferred to products and services originating in, or associated with those countries.

One interesting aspect is the table that looks at how differnt peoples are trusted. Top of the list come the Swiss – though I can’t think of a famous Swiss as an exemplar. Even the few non-famous ones I have worked with were not especially notable for their trustworthiness. Close behind them come the Swedes and the Germans.  UK come below that sandwiched between Austrians, Belgians, Dutch and Portuguese.

Down at the bottom come Russians and Romanians (seems we will never forgive Dracula).

Who needs brand strategy?

Von Clausewitz, the military thinker, suggested in On War, that strategy doesnot really exist, because in battle it depends upon the intuition, initiative and experience of individual generals to respond to events. In many cases I would agree with that – and it applies equally to brands. Brand communications using digital media and social Internet highlight this. Things move so fast, the world changes and events overtake brands – communications must be constantly under review and evolving in an organic matter.

However, this does not mean that we should not have a brand objective. I always use the analogy of walking using a map and compass: you identify your objective, mark it on the map, but you don’t take a compass bearing and walk in a straight line. There may be lakes or hills you have to skirt around, a farmer may have put a bull in a field, or you may have to make an overnight stop for bad weather, and resume your journey in the morning.

In other words, it is vital to have a strategic objective: this may be the product of extensive analysis and distillation. But far from being a multi-page document, it should be no more than a couple of paragraphs, allowing clarity of objective yet the flexibility to achieve it.

Brands and social networking

I have long advocated the use of social networking in brand developent – it seems so fundamental to what brand awareness is about, people talking to each other about the brand.

Well, for uk brand owners and promoters there is an even stronger case for including social internet in the branding mix. It seems we brits top the league in social Internet use.

UK leading social network use

Brits average 5.8 hours per month on social networking sites

Yet still major companies are missing the opportunities:

Businesses fail to tap social networking

Gartner identifies major challenges for corporates