Recognize that passion unchanneled drives a category choice. But it does not, however, channel a brand choice. To make the brand relevant to the passion, you have to meet a set of physical and emotional requirements.

- Does the product improve the users experience, recognizing that no two users are identical in their physical and psychographic make-up? When we market passion brands, we understand that a buyer will not settle for good enough, they will invest in what suits them the best.

- Do people like me use the same brand? It’s not the label that defines the brand. It’s the community of users that represent the label.

- Are your values reflective of your customer’s values? It’s not simply a feature or a benefit that drives purchase consideration. Culture, attitude, corporate goodwill and community involvement all enter into the buyer’s decision making process.

- Are your distribution points my purchase points? Brand credibility is at stake each time the product is placed in a new location. Distribution points impact brand imagery and identity as much as marketing messaging.

We are fervent believers that every brand can be a passion brand, whether the product is laundry detergent or scuba gear. To quote my old friend Joel Carter, “Marketing is not an after-the-fact tactic. Marketing is the core activity that informs the development of needed products and services.”

Summary:
Identify Consumer need > Develop Defining Product features > Connect with Cultural Relevance > Identify Like-Minded Audience Members >Establish A Right-Minded Retail Network > Position the Brand Consistent with all the Above > Deliver message at Points of Discovery, Purchase, Use and Discussion > Rethink. Refine. Repeat . That’s how to connect with prospective customer’s passion to power purchase.

2. Sustainable brands are built upon a set of principles that are not negotiable.
I suspect that the guys at Apple have developed plenty of innovations that they have scrapped not because the products weren’t effective but simply because they weren’t user-friendly. Establishing both what you are and, just as importantly, what you aren’t is a basic criterion for branding success.

3. Your mission statement and your brand positioning must be aligned.
Imagine for a moment that your mission statement is more than a plaque on the wall – that it is a living declaration of your corporate intentions. Southwest Airlines’ “freedom” brand positioning is a clear outgrowth of a corporate vision that is both clear and in alignment with the corporate mission: the mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of customer service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride and company spirit.

4. Successful brands listen to multiple stakeholders but are singular in their direction.
Committees are great for gathering information and sharing ideas. But without a powerful chairperson to establish goals, set direction and manage deliverables, a committee can quickly confuse a company’s true sense of purpose. There are few hard and fast rules to protect a Chief Marketing Officer from intense scrutiny. But if I were to suggest one proven course of action, it would simply be to listen to everyone but take singular ownership of your brand’s identity.

5. Customers discover your brand story like birds build their nests, one scrap of information at a time.
It’s no longer a single-bullet world. We live in an information-rich age. Very few brands today have the resources to be visible at each brand contact point. But maintaining a singular voice at multiple brand contact points is as important today as it has ever been.

Bill Samuels, Jr., the long-time President of Maker’s Mark, has often reminded our creative team that a bad ad is no worse than a bad haircut, it grows back quickly and is soon forgotten. But a bad brand strategy that mismanages all elements – from setting the wrong expectations to wandering from fad to fad chasing stakeholders’ fickle desires – can shut your lights and close your doors forever.

Large budgets have been the cologne that has enabled poor positioning to be overcome by simple tonnage. With efficiency at a premium today, we simply append two ideas to these core principles as we work through marketing assignments.

1. Choose one great idea/execution over the option of doing lots of things pretty well. Fund excellence over mediocrity.

2. No matter what communication tool you are using, make it sticky. It’s expensive to make the contact. It’s unaffordable if that contact doesn’t lead to customer/consumer-driven brand exploration.

The Doe-Anderson Brand Blueprint is an outgrowth of these core ideals. That one wish I mentioned in the subject line: that you will call me to engage us in helping your brand meet expectations.

The silver lining on the previous two year’s sales recession has simply been that they have allowed for a “cleanup” on the marketing aisle. Each budget cut eliminated one more “legacy” program from the marketing plan. Fundamentally, many brands are now spending only on items that have proven to be essential to corporate success. With the recession seemingly receding, the question on the table is “where next?” The answer shouldn’t automatically be restoration of all the old programs to their prior spending levels. Let’s be honest, not every program that we deemed essential proved to be that. In fact, if your market share went up while your spending went down, there is some logic that says less is now officially more.

Here’s the reality. None of us know precisely which part of our marketing budget is producing with greatest impact. Much like with a great meal, it’s a combination of the individual elements that lift our brands. Some of those elements are directed at customer acquisition. Some at customer retention. Some at purchase activation. And others at community building. When we stir the marketing pot, we know we need the alchemy to blend seamlessly together to make the brand message relevant, involving and ultimately persuasive.

Here’s a thought for how to rebuild the marketing program now that budgets are once again flowing more freely (or when the budgets flow more freely).

First, align your thinking along the four core points of contact: point of discovery, point of sale, point of use and point of discussion. Develop strategies and tactics to make your brand most visible at each of these discussion points. Challenge yourself (or your team, or your agency) to develop programs that deliver the brand message effectively at each point. Develop more ideas than you can possibly execute. Forget the budget at this point, just find big honking ideas that make your mouth water with anticipation for sharing them with customers/consumers. Once you have completed reviewing all your “what if’s,” put an approximate cost next to each line idea (line item for those of you who don’t follow my clever renaming ploys). Gather your team and, as best as possible, assign a priority to each line item. Then rank the projects in order of the total points that each idea generated from the response of the team.

Now put the budget next to the line items. Reshuffle the deck to make certain that you have each of the four points of contact covered. If you had a hole, or just didn’t think the ideas generated against one of the four discovery points were strong enough, send the team back to solve that problem.

Then stack the selected projects/programs together for the basis for your marketing budget for the upcoming year. If management asks for reductions, your prioritization of projects should allow for a quick and direct response. If management loves the work and expands the budget to allow for additional ideas, the projects that you left behind from the top of your “ranking structure” can be brought forward with relative ease.

I’ve taken to looking at budget cuts as breath mints. They allow us to get rid of the excess that we allow to build up in the traditional expansion modes. (Do everything we did last year, and then add one new initiative to the plan.) How we rebound from the marketing recession in 2009 is going to tell us how well we do in the expansion of 2010.

Go ahead. Complete that cleanup on the marketing aisle. Instead of restoring legacy programs, reapportion the entire marketing plan based on your best prioritization of new tactics. That way, when the manager comes to review the progress of the cleanup, she’ll find a fresh new merchandising approach that elevates the aisle to a higher level instead of the previous mess.

Initially when I applied the analogy to marketing, I saw the heavens as a metaphor for consumer touch points. Consider each star a point of information about a brand. Each random, each believed to be true at that point. Some points are positive. Some points are negative.  My initial thought was that marketing’s mission was to “touch” the conversation at each point. In short, wherever a person went to gather information, marketing should shape the discussion.

Now when I consider the analogy, I choose to see the sky in clusters or constellations. It helps to keep all these touch points from seeming so overwhelming.  Rather than thousands of touch points, I now visualize four specific clusters, each demanding a different style of communication:

> Points of Discovery

> Points of Sale

> Points of Use

> Points of Discussion

As with the night sky, these are not linear destinations. We find brands of interest to us at each touch point. Brand discovery happens randomly. That said, we can shape the discovery process to lead a potential purchaser to our desired outcome simply by applying the 5Cs (Curiosity, Confidence, Connection, Conversation, Community) appropriately at each of the four touch points.

We can’t be certain when a prospective customer will find our brand, but we do know that discovery should increase curiosity. Once I’ve found a product, I naturally want to learn more about it.  So before I decide if the brand is right for me, I am going to find other people who, like me, have purchased it and speak with them about their experience. When possible, I’m going to try it before I buy it … and many times that will bring me into contact with others who are making the same purchase decision. I’m not just going to evaluate the sales materials that tell the brand story. I’m going to consider the sales environment, the sales staff, and the other prospective customers. When I use the product, I’m evaluating it based on my expectations of its performance, through the lens of my prior brand education.

As a marketer, I want to make certain that the picture is painted consistently. At each of the four contact points, branding elements are going to align appropriately to help define prospective purchaser expectations. When prospects turn to the “Point of Discussion,” I’m going to monitor the conversations, accept legitimate criticism, participate only when invited to or to correct an egregious falsehood.  As a marketer, I simply can’t appear to be big brother. Rather, I have to be a resource for information, as opposed to a brand advocate.

That brand advocacy role switches strongly into gear at point of sale. I can’t afford to bury my message there. Somehow the brand must get elevated above the clutter. That execution changes per selling environment, but if the brand message is lost at point of sale, the risk of losing valued customers is heightened.

There are moments in the process for stoking the flames of curiosity. There are opportunities to build confidence. Participating in the conversation appropriately builds trust. Energizing your brand loyalists to actively promote your brand increases opportunities at every level and ultimately leads to the expansion of your brand community.

As the Marketing Director at Skier’s Choice, I worked through those four points of contact daily.  I questioned my visibility at each point. Were we part of the discussion? Were we participating appropriately? Was our message consistent in each area? Did the messaging reinforce our loyalists’ confidence in our brand? Were our “guys” out there swinging the hammer for us? Had we given them the appropriate tools so that they could steer others in our direction?

Nurturing each of those points of light will lift your brand sales, reduce customer attrition and create a force multiplier on every marketing dollar spent. Extending the analogy, perhaps torturously, when we can connect a brand successfully to even a single consumer, that consumer begins the illumination process for others in his/her immediate sphere of influence. With each connection, your brand star burns more brightly, and the much-sought-after brand community begins to take on its own form without the need for corporate Tweets.

Four communication constellations. One consistent message. Delivered with a different tonality in each area. Ultimately empowering your customers to become your best outside sales representatives. Those are the highlight points from this missive.

Here’s to you lighting up your brand sky.

Which would likely be true if it weren’t for unforeseeable events that range from the egregious (product failure) to the frustrating (expectation management) to the sublime (boredom).

In many a retail workshop, I have repeated the line “don’t settle for the sale, reach for the relationship.” Why? Product loyalty is easily shifted. But brand loyalty, loyalty to a person or a group of like-minded people, is a much more lasting bond.

To borrow the cliché, “there are only two kinds of people” … Brand Loyalists and Brand Terrorists. The challenge is that those two groups blend together sharing opinions about products that fundamentally alter the relationship between manufacturer/retailer and consumer.

Left unmanaged, your brand simply is left to fend for itself. Which is why the art of managing Connections is absolutely critical to the marketing process.

First lets understand the context for the word Connection. The first level connection is between the manufacturer and the retailer. The second level is between the retailer and the customer. The third level is between the customer and the manufacturer. The fourth level is between the customer and other customers who have made the same brand choice. And the fifth connection level is between the customer and people who have purchased the same category of product/service from a competitive source.

Each connection requires its own contact strategy. In the short format of an e-blast (I fear that I have lost 50% of my readership at this point), I am constricted by common sense not to address each level solution. What is important to note is that these connections between each of the brand’s aligned audiences must be carefully managed. We simply must nurture  these connections to shape the natural free-flowing conversation between each audience.

Here’s the Litmus test for your marketing plan. Have you put a personal face on your brand at each point of connection? Or put another way, how frequently do you carry on a conversation (not a monologue) at each connection point?

For the record, that gives us three measures for marketing success to consider moving forward:

1.  What percentage of people who purchase a product similar to yours are curious to learn more about what you have to offer?

2. How confident are your current users that your product/service is the best answer to their needs?

3. Are you currently joined with customers and consumers at each of the five  levels of connection? Moreover, are you seeking out new and more interesting ways to connect with these people to cement the relationships?

This is the third in a series of five thought pieces about building Brand Enthusion™ through the application of the 5C’s: Curiosity, Connection, Confidence, Conversation and Community. We know that every brand has the potential to spark powerful word-of-mouth referral. Empowering your most loyal customers to become vocal salespeople for your brand is at the heart of all we do at Doe-Anderson: the House of Brand Enthusion.

We live in an open-platform world. Consumers aren’t simply interested in a product relationship. They want a company relationship. Expectations are not only tied to post-purchase satisfaction but also to pre-purchase information sharing.

I suspect that someone far more intellectually adept than me has likely termed this a “Mass Customization” era. The Dell computer business model is driven to satisfy millions of consumers one-at-a-time. When we built a tournament wakeboard boat at Skier’s Choice, our customers physically shaped it from the bottom of the hull to the top of the tower.

Confidence is established before the purchase has been made. It is shaped by marketing materials that ring true. That deliver the appropriate amount of information at the appropriate time in the appropriate place with the appropriate level of production values.

Confidence is established on message boards, through social media networks and in chatrooms and bar rooms where people gather to talk about a particular brand or service.

Confidence comes from warranties, from post-purchase product support, from brand experience and from interactions between brand users.

Confidence allows people who own particular brands or subscribe to particular services to share their enthusiasm (or disappointment) with others.
As an example, I purchased an IPhone within the first 48 hours of launch. In airports, at restaurants and in a variety of social occasions, people stopped me to ask, “What do you think? Should I get one?”

Advertising made people curious. I provided confidence for others to follow my purchase activity. (By the way, I love my IPhone. I had issues with the original. Apple provided me with a new one – for free. I love the browser. I love the ease of use. I love the wide range of apps available for it. I’m an Apple IPhone enthusionist. Ask me about my IPhone … I’m not scared.)

And there it is. Curiosity leads to purchase. Experience with the company and the product lead to confidence. Confidence leads to word-of-mouth recommendation.

By the way, I’ve now been married for twenty-one years. I guess that makes me a heckuva marketer (see, that humor thing is out there not working for me again).

Confidence is one of the 5C’s … Curiosity, Confidence, Connection, Conversation and Community. At Doe-Anderson, we believe that together, the 5 C’s are the most efficient and effective manner for building a brand … in a tough economy, in an expanding economy, in any and all economic conditions. Our next communication in two weeks time will expand on the value of the 5C’s through a thought piece on Connection.

So you strike up a conversation with the other person.  Mutual interest and availability is established. You grab a table together and start talking. You concentrate on being open and approachable, friendly, but not desperate.

Confession: I wasn’t the best in these circumstances. But over time experience taught me to slow down. To be honest, but not too free flowing with information. Information needs to be shared slowly as trust builds and interest grows.

Works the same way in the marketing world. Honest, approachable, open to sharing information, but allowing that brand knowledge to grow at its own organic pace. Curiosity drives us toward discovery. Maintaining a healthy level of interest without giving away the farm actually increases brand loyalty. The challenge is in developing messaging that continually reinforces our customers’ natural interest in our product or service.

The temptation of every inexperienced brand manager is to tell too much too quickly. Rather than stimulating more interest, macro-burst messaging simply creates brain freeze.

Effectively closing the sale demands that you reevaluate how you open. Are you telling too much too quickly? Have you created a sense of suspense? Did you arouse curiosity and tweak interest? Were you able to confirm plans for the next conversation? 

Too many marketers settle for the ambiguous success of awareness. Next time you field research about your brand, ask the question “Are you curious to learn more about us?” If you’ve got folks curious, you are absolutely on your way to sales success.

If you aren’t a fan of the National Football League, then you probably are unaware that after posting the best record in the regular season of any team, the Titans lost in the second round of the playoffs to the Baltimore Ravens.

The lesson for me in my career was not that the Titans lost, but how they lost. In this game, the Titans were clearly the stronger team. They dominated time of possession. They marched up and down the field like the Florida A&M Marching 100 band. Yet, when the final whistle blew, the Ravens held the advantage on the scoreboard – 13-10. Millions of Titan fans like me were left pondering how this loss could have happened. The only person who appeared more perplexed was Jeff Fisher.

He had put together the right team. He had thoroughly prepared them for the game. He devised a brilliant game plan. And he had the home-field advantage. Virtual lock, dead no-brainer, put the trash in the can and shut the lid.

Haven’t we all been there as marketers? We did the research. We secured adequate funding. We developed a branding strategy and executed the creative flawlessly. Even more to the point, we hit all the touch points, staffed up to meet record demand and waited for the phone to begin ringing wildly. What happened next? The sound of crickets chirping.

I’ve often recounted the story of facing Sid Bass in the conference room of Tradecast Securities. Sid was a principal investor in the software/on-line brokerage firm for which I was the Chief Marketing Officer. The $15 million investment in marketing which we had undertaken had just broken to mixed results. Advertising recall was off the charts. Brokers were using a catchphrase from the commercial on the trading floors of their firms. We successfully conducted a nationwide trading demonstration courtesy of Hughes Satellite and Peterbilt trucks and a group of 20-something guys who lived in a sleep-deprived state for 120 days. It was glorious victory … in every area other than than the scoreboard.

Our expectations of 100,000 new customers diminished as quickly as a fifth of Maker’s Mark in a trendy New York City bar. So as Sid compellingly took me to the woodshed and demonstrated his prowess with a paddle, I was left to consider how my efforts so painstakingly crafted had left me so exposed. Ten years later the lessons continue to ring true.

1. MANAGE EXPECTATIONS: Our vision was grandiose. Unfortunately, so were those of E-Trade, AmeriTrade, TD Waterhouse and ten other firms offering similar services. Too many people fishing in the same pond makes for a poor trip. We knew that the obstacles were great. We simply failed to communicate realistic expectations for our program’s efforts.

2. KEEP THE GUNPOWDER DRY: Like a bad Texas hold ‘em player, we went all-in too early in the game. If funds had been held back, we may have been able to make course corrections that would have allowed us to get closer to the goal over a more protracted period of time.

3. DON’T BE IN SUCH A HURRY: Sure we were caught up in the dot.com frenzy. In truth we were never a company built to last. We were built to be sold at maximum multiples. But time is a marketer’s best friend. Competitors stumble. Market conditions change. Opportunity is always just another few feet down the road. Keep driving.

4. THE DEVIL REMAINS IN THE DETAILS:We didn’t make a colossal blunder. There was no “if we had only done this differently” moment. We simply were nicked to death by a thousand small paper cuts. As marketers, we tend to get swept up by the “big idea” when in truth 100 little ideas may have ultimately generated greater success.

5. BE TRANSPARENT: Marketing directors live in the glass fishbowl. It’s likely the only job in the company that everyone from the receptionist to the billing coordinator feels confident that they can evaluate. For me it was the software programmers from Bangladesh that were my barometers. Twenty-four hours after getting their work permits, they were experts in their judgment of our promotional efforts. I chafed.

I look at the experience differently today. I should have welcomed their input. I should have given ownership of the program to every Tom, Dick and Manmhet interested enough to comment on our activities. I should have embraced their comments and made it clear that every idea expressed was considered and factored back into the effort. I should have made them all the Chief Marketing Officers. United we stand divided we fall.

At the end of the day, Mr. Bass doubled his investment in the company within 12 months at sale to Ameritrade. I had the statistics, but Sid held the scoreboard. Not a mistake I intend to make a second time in this career.

Got thoughts? Please share them in the comments.

IMAGE: Scoreboard by dmperkins on Flickr.

It’s the unresolved issue of the day that deprives me of sleep:  “What will work to grow our client’s business in these uncertain times?”  Not, what do I think will work, not what I hope will work, but with absolute certainty, what WILL work.

Having a healthy understanding of the distinction between “what must be done” versus “what would be nice to get done,” here are my Top Ten must-use marketing tactics in 2009.

1. Re-fall in love with your current customers.
   There is no better determiner of the future of your business than the relationship you have with today’s most ardent supporter. Chase them off and you’re done.  If you wonder if that’s true, try and buy an Oldsmobile.
2. Shut up and listen.
   If you’ll spend time talking with your current customers, and not behind a focus group screen, they’ll tell you exactly what you need to know to hold their loyalty and, if you have any sense about you, what you’ll need to say to attract others to the brand.
3. Ignite people’s curiosity.
   Truth is you can’t bore people into being interested in what you have to say or sell. Think about it, the people who you’re most attracted to are the ones who piqued your interest. The friends you keep are the ones that keep you interested.
4. You can buy a transaction but you can’t buy loyalty.
   Look, you can get anybody to do anything if the price is right. Think “Indecent Proposal.”  The effort should be spent in figuring out how to reward loyalty. Loyalty is built over time and it delivers you two crucial things: Forgiveness when you screw up and resistance to competitive pressures. Loyalty, like a good personal relationship, takes time and commitment.
5. Fall out of love with brand awareness.
   It’s nice that people are aware of your brand. But the true value of your marketing is when people TALK about your product.  If what you’re doing doesn’t create buzz then the odds are it won’t create recommendation and recommendation is the most powerful weapon you have.
6. Think groups, not target audiences.
   We are a society of demographic mutts and our passions and actions define us far more clearly than our demographics.
7. Stack groups to build a brand community.
   People tend to form communities. Their interests define their actions.  When we can track consumers’ DNA into a few confined cells — for instance: go to church, play golf, bilingual — we can sharpen the message to people who share those same interests. Their touch points become far more relevant. And the message can become more specific so that its chance of igniting curiosity and TALK is much greater.
8. Don’t brag.
   The guy who always boasted about how many “girlfriends” he had is also the guy who couldn’t get a date to his senior prom. Prove that it does what you say it will do. And better yet create an environment where third-party recommendation becomes the proof. Wonder if that works? Think of all the products sold under the “Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.”  We know of one spirit brand that went from virtually nowhere to the largest super-premium vodka brand in the world with no more than being declared the highest in quality by The Beverage Testing Institute.
9. Never, ever underestimate the power of a handshake.
   There simply must be some form of high-touch effort in your marketing plan.  Getting into new buyers’ heads often requires putting the product in their hands. More than that, consumers want to touch the manufacturer, not just the retailer.  Physical touch is as critical to a brand relationship as it is to an interpersonal one.  Create events that allow for trial, discussion and contact between manufacturers, retailers and prospective purchasers. That level of personal contact can and should be a key driver in creating buzz and recommendation. Mind-numbingly expensive, crummy ROI and a budget dogfight every year, but the truest way to form a bond with consumers new and old.

   One of my personal favorite commercials from the 90s was a spot done for American Airlines. In it, a troubled CEO handed out airline tickets to his senior management team and exhorted them to get out from behind their computers and go press flesh.  Activating a brand takes more than a promotional coupon or a sales event. Activation requires human connection.

10. Focus on the moments of truth.
    Point of sale.  Point of use.  In a tight economy when the competition for each product sale is a dogfight, make absolutely certain that your brand has put its best foot forward at point of sale. Be particularly diligent about your brand message remaining consistent with your retail messaging.

    Point of use is critical for more than the obvious reason (walking the walk).  Advertising isn’t dead. It’s a strategic tool complementing your other marketing resources.  My recommendation to you is to bring your advertising message in closest proximity to when/where it is most frequently used. That moment is when receptivity to your messaging will be greatest.

Let me take this moment to wish you and your company all of the best in 2009.  We believe that well-positioned brands will thrive despite the economic downturn.  I would love to hear what marketing tactics you are moving ahead with in the new year. Please let us know what you think in the comments below.  Let me know what resonated with you or where you think I came off point.

I would love to learn from you.

All the best in 2009.