Claiming the Future of Your Brand

It’s October, and do you know what that means? Christmas! Yes, that’s right – head into any department store or big box retailer and you can clearly see it’s Christmas time. My kids even know this and so have begun the annual ritual of compiling their Christmas wish lists. For my eldest, it simply means writing down every Wii game or pop CD ever produced. For the youngest, it’s easy; his big sisters point out a variety of trucks and little guy sports equipment to which he nods yes or no. Then they write it down for him. But for my middle child, this is a process that involves careful study, research and even strategy to achieve the desired outcome (aka: get the present.) She will spend weeks scouring every catalog that comes to the door. Poll her friends to find out what they are asking for. Analyze every commercial on the Disney Channel. And then carefully compile a list of the most desirable dolls and stuffed animals. The next part is what’s interesting though. Somewhere in her little head, she came up with the idea that she could determine the fate of her list with shear mental fortitude and in fact will her wish to come true by acting as if it already has.

Here’s how it goes: this year, one of the things she wants is a “Bugli.” It’s a hideous little fleece stuffed animal whose catalog caption boasts “It’s so ugly, it’s cute!” I disagree. It’s just ugly. But, whatever. So she’s selected this toy and now comes the strategy – the “Bugli Campaign” if you will. Instead of showing potential Bugli buyers the catalog and saying “I’d like to get this for Christmas” she confidently whips out the picture and says “Have you seen the Bugli that I am getting?” or “Have you seen my new Bugli?”

Now, I guess you could say she’s just employing the power of positive thinking, but I think there’s more to it. She has altered her language and action to set her own course and actualize her goal.

Flipping over to the PR side of things, this same skill must be applied when branding your organization or yourself. Since a brand is a long-term proposition, not short-term, like an ad campaign, it must consider the future as well as the present and past. This brings us to our:

PR Tip of the Day: Identify and Voice what you will represent in the future to engage customers today.

I’ve worked with a variety of organizations from non-profits to governmental bodies and corporations to identify and advance their brands. They all knew, going into it that their brand would need to represent who they were at that point in time, but few considered it a way to voice who they would be tomorrow.

In many ways, your brand is your contract with your constituents. Through your brand, you make a commitment – you clearly state what others can expect from you. You let them know that when they work with you they can expect reliability, quality, innovation, or whatever it is that you embody. Don’t you want to let them know that you will be around past the close of business today and that they can expect those things in the future as well? Or maybe, you’re scraping the old play book and in the future you will be providing a whole new experience for you constituents. Claim it! Once you have identified what your tomorrow looks like, actualize it via your words and actions.


In doing so, you engage with your customers in two ways:
1) By providing them insight into who you are and who you aspire to be – this allows them to feel more personally connected to you.
2) By letting them know you view your relationship to be long-term and as such are focusing on how you can better/continue to meet their needs in the future.

This works. Just ask my daughter. (Yes, she’s going to get the Bugli.) It is about more than just positive thinking. It’s about being deliberate and aggressive in achieving your identified goals and it requires that you communicate your brand’s promise for tomorrow as part of your efforts today.

Being your Brand

I am the mom of a pre-teen (soon to be 12) girl. As such, I wear many different hats. I am a counselor, a teacher and a chauffeur. When her hormones flare, I am a referee, an arch nemesis and sometimes a probation officer. But, I am constantly surprised at how often I don my own trade hat in my relationship with her. Whether I'm in crisis communications mode, helping her deal with the middle school rumor mill or creating compelling message points that will influence her decisions (hopefully) I often find it helpful to draw from my PR experience. It happened again last week.

Like I said, my daughter is a pre-teen, so she is right in the midst of trying to discover who she is and how she wants other to see her. She is exceptionally bright (straight A student in advanced classes) and athletically gifted (a blue belt in Tae Kwon Do and one of the stars of her soccer team.) She is creative, analytic and above all: independent. She is trying very hard to convey to others that she is unique. Unlike many of her friends, she doesn't want to blend in - her style is distinctive and she likes it that way. But sometimes she tries to be a little too different, to the point that many adults would just read her appearance as odd. So, we started talking about how she communicates who she is: behavior, appearance, academics, athletics, etc. We talked about each area and then I asked her if the way she portrayed herself in each of those categories was consistent with who she was and who she wanted her friends, teachers and coaches to think she was. In short, we talked about branding. As we talked, she came to the conclusion that she was staying true to her personal brand in most areas, but that she might want to tone down the "uniqueness" of some of her outfits so that first impressions wouldn't detract from who she really is.

And so we arrive at our...
PR Tip of the Day: Be consistent if you want to build a strong brand.
Carefully consider and identify everyplace that your audience comes into contact with your brand. These are your touchpoints. Now most people automatically think of their advertising, but what about your place of business, your online presence, your frontline staff, and your phone systems? Any place your customers come into contact with your business is an opportunity to Be Your Brand. By the way, do you know what your brand is? Who are you and who do you want others to see you as? If you claim to be customer friendly, is your lobby inviting and warm? Are your customer service people helpful and knowledgeable? Is your phone system easy to navigate or is it nearly impossible to get in touch with a real person? Each touchpoint must deliver to the user an experience that is consistent with who you claim to be. An unidentified touchpoint equates to a missed opportunity to connect with your customer. And a touchpoint that fails to live up to your stated identity equals a weakened brand.

It is up to you to establish and maintain your brand, and luckily, it is fairly easy to do so.
1)Identify it.
2)Be it.
If you follow step 2 consistently, you'll be able to convert your consumers to brand zealots: individuals who are both loyal clients and great word-of-mouth marketers who can help you to further grow your brand.

Getting Heard Over the Noise

With 3 active kids, a dog the size of a small pony, and enough hard surfaces to create a veritable echo chamber, you can imagine that our house can get a little chaotic and noisy on occasion. Ok, who am I kidding - this is a regular occurrence. When in the midst of this chaos, my two youngest kids have a couple of "go-to" techniques that they employ to get my attention: volume and frequency (aka nagging.) The first technique is simple: yell louder than your siblings. The motivating belief behind this technique is similar to "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" - I think. Usually it doesn't elicit the parental response the technique practitioner was hoping for. The second technique my little ones use in this situation is nagging. It comes in the form of "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, MOMMY!!!!" Again, the technique does not usually produce the desired result.

My eldest, having the benefits of age and experience, employs different tactics. Her approach might come across the hub bub something like this:

1. She crosses the room and stands directly in front of me.
2. She addresses me directly to get my attention, "Mom"
3. She tells me what she wants, "Can I go to XYZ with Ashley?"
4. Sometimes she even includes information about the greater impact of her request, "I wouldn't be home for dinner."

Now, only one of these techniques gets my attention consistently and I'm sure you can guess which one it is. So, let's translate this over to the world of PR. Only, you're the kid and you are trying to get the attention of a very specific "adult," the media. You are competing for attention against a variety of other organizations who are also trying to get their stories heard. This brings us to our...

PR tip of the day: To get heard,you first have to get noticed.
Journalists are bombarded by constant "noise" from news releases - ones that fail to consider the interests of their recipient, grab the recipient's attention, or tell a compelling story. This is what you are up against and what you have to distinguish yourself from. Like my kids, organizations try different techniques to get their news release picked-up by the media. Some folks send out blanket releases to every media contact they have ever made in the hopes that a few will pay attention. Not only is this highly inefficient, it lessens the potential impact and reach of your story. With a little extra thought and effort on your part, you could create multiple angles for your story, target your pitch to select reporters and end up having your story told from different perspectives in numerous media outlets - end result: bigger impact for you!

Another unfortunately common practice is the "regularly scheduled release" approach in which some executive dictates that the organization will send out a release every month, every week, or every day that _____ (you fill in blank.) This equates to the aforementioned "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, MOMMY" approach to getting heard - highly obnoxious and a sure-fire way to increase the odds that all future releases from your organization will be forwarded directly to the circular file. If the timing of your releases can be easily predicted, you are not writing about news, you are doing a creative writing exercise and trying to fabricate something that will be mistaken for news.

In sending out a news release and trying to garner media attention, look to the example of my oldest daughter. Here are a few suggestions:

• Make it specific. Avoid relying on blanket releases and chance. Identify the different angles of your story and then identify the best media outlet for each of those angles. Is your story industry specific? Warm & fuzzy human interest? Geographically exclusive? Pitch accordingly - get in front of the right media outlets and specific reporters.
• Get to know your reporters. Find out what interests them and cater to that. I once worked with a reporter that was only interested in numbers: budgets, populations, statistics. I never sent her a story that didn't include cold, hard numbers front and center. As a result, she covered almost everything I sent her.
• Get their attention. Once you know what interests that reporter, make it stand out in the headline of your release. Remember your release has a lot of competition, so if you don't grab their attention up front, the reporter may never read past headline.
• Identify the impact. So you've just developed the latest, greatest widget. Wonderful. But why does your reporter care? How will it impact them or their audience? If your headline opened the door, this is where you need to close the deal in order to get your story heard.

Develop your reputation as a "media friendly" source of information by following these steps every time you have a story to pitch and over time, you will see your coverage rates increase.

In short: if your story is newsworthy, it deserves to be heard. Make sure to tell it in a way that will make your media contacts want to pass it on.