As someone who spends her time thinking  a lot about marketing, I can’t help but notice those unfortunate moments when the intentions fall short of the mark. Here are just a few of the examples I’ve picked up recently.

Tiny Market—Big Fat Ad

I seldom get to watch TV. So it was a rare moment that found me staring at a TV installed over the treadmills at my gym. The channel was set to a local network channel and the time was about 4:00pm so one can only imagine what the viewing demographics of that program and hour (Stay at home moms? School age kids just home from school? The unemployed? The elderly?) Given that likely market, imagine my surprise when a commercial for a “Crime Scene and Trauma Cleanup” company come on the air. The visuals featured a SWAT style truck alongside a bulleted list of specialties: “homicide, suicide, trauma, crime scene cleanup.” I about fell off of my treadmill. How many in the general, mass-media viewing market have regular need of a homicide cleanup? Is that kind of thing happening often enough that the average citizen should have this company on their speed dial? Should I be concerned?

Well. I am concerned. Less for the sanctity of my city but more for the poor owners of that company who got duped into spending their limited marketing dollars on an ad that’s going to fly right over the heads of the majority of people who see it.

Theirs is a specific, niche product and their marketing channel choices should be as well. When I do a marketing plan, I tell clients that as tempting as it is to rush to tactics (what should we do!?), we first must start with goals, then proceed carefully to identifying and prioritizing audience segments and then AND ONLY THEN begin identifying the right tactics to target the right people and accomplish the right goals.

Big Fat Brand Position—Little Distinction

This is one I see more often than I’d like to admit. It happens when well-meaning, inclusive-thinking leaders declare a brand position that is so broad it couldn’t possibly leave out anyone. My favorite example of this was the slogan at my favorite grocery store in South Bend, Indiana: “Quality. Value. Service.” Now that says it all doesn’t it? Is there anyone who doesn’t want those things? Is there anyone who would say: “No, no. Please, give me the expensive, rotten lettuce and make sure to be mean and surly to me when you do.” Obviously not. However, couldn’t this position just as easily apply to the competitive grocery store? Couldn’t it just as easily apply to ANY OTHER FREAKING INDUSTRY? Here’s the thing: In order to have a compelling and recognizable brand position, you will have to declare yourself. You will have to be clear about who you are and who you are not—clear enough that the right people will find you when they go looking, and the wrong people will move on.

High Hopes—Crushing Reality

One question I often get asked as a brand strategist is this: When we decide upon our brand strategy, how strongly should we root it in our past and present, and how far should we reach into the future? Good question, right? It would be a mistake to root your strategy too deeply in the past and miss the opportunity to keep up with the market. On the other hand, I find that leaders are usually more excited by the future and all too happy to ditch key elements of their legacy or even present realities in favor of the shining hope of the future. And I get that: that’s what inspires us and keeps us working. The problem is that the communication of a brand promise needs to be credible enough to paint an inspiring and yet accurate expectation of the likely experience the customer will have. I use the rough estimate that brand strategy should be about 80/20: 80% based on the past and present, and 20% based on future aspirations. It should be true to who you are with an eye peeled for who you’d like to become. If the promise is too far out of touch with reality, you end up disappointing people.

And here’s my example. I often travel with a smart, fun woman I’ll call Brenda. Brenda is an accomplished road warrior who typically spends more time on the road than at home. As a result, she has learned what works well and what doesn’t and tends to opt for the reliably workable. Not me. I like a little adventure. I frankly love it that other people pay my way as I try out new places and spaces. So, with an impending trip to the South on the calendar, I did a little research on the lesser known hotels and found one that looked cool and funky. I pitched the idea to Brenda—let’s stay here this time. She checked out the website and said she was game. So we went and let’s just say this: Swing and a miss. I’m not sure I’ll ever successfully pry Brenda’s hands off a Hampton Inn key card again. Among the many mishaps, this was the hotel restaurant they advertised on the website…

…but this is the restaurant they had:

What gives? Where are the funky pod chairs, we asked? Oh. Those? Yeah, those are coming; they’re building that new restaurant. I hadn’t heard a line like that since the days when I lived in Ecuador and was told by a restaurant owner that although they had fish yesterday, today they only had eggs. Keep it real people—hopeful but real. In marketing, too much hope is just lying.

Your turn. I know you’ve got horrific examples of marketing gone wrong. Let’s have them.

(And for those of you who prefer to email me your comments–you know who you are–share  the wealth and post them!)

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation, LLC

Last night, we watched as Bronco’s fresh new quarterback Tim Tebow lead his team to a thorough spanking in a 10-45 loss to the Patriots in the AFC playoffs. In my—and perhaps Saturday Night Live’s heathen opinions, it would seem that reverential “Tebowing” isn’t enough. Victory might just come down to a decent offensive line.

It was a slow night at my house so shortly after the Bronco defeat, we watched the end of the Miss America pageant where Miss Wisconsin clinched the crown with her answer to the question: “Do you think Miss America should be allowed to declare her political affiliation?” Her answer surprised me slightly with the reminder that the contestants know their audience—the judges, not the public—when she said that “Miss America represents everyone,” (implying that Miss America should keep her political mouth shut). I found this surprising because as a member of the public, I sat there pandering to my mild curiosity, wondering yeah, which are you? Republican or Democrat? But as a pageant professional, she’s likely been trained to think: What does the Miss American organization want me to say?

And that’s where I started thinking about branding and customer service (as I often do and not just on slow Saturday nights). I was reminded of a book I read in the mid-nineties when the notion of customer service was becoming a “thing” in management literature. One of my favorite sociologists, UC Berkeley professor Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote The Managed Heart: The Commercialization of Human Feeling. In the preface, Hochschild describes her experience as the child of diplomats:

“I found myself passing a dish of peanuts among many guests and looking up at their smiles; diplomatic smiles can look different when seen from below than when seen straight on. Afterwards I would listen to my mother and father interpret various gestures. The tight smile of the Bulgarian emissary, the averted glance of the Chinese consul . . . I learned, conveyed messages not simply from person to person but from Sofia to Washington, from Peking to Paris, and from Paris to Washington. Had I passed the peanuts to a person, I wondered, or to an actor? Where did the person end and the act begin? Just how is a person related to an act?”

In The Managed Heart, Hochschild proposed the notion of “emotional labor” which is not only the culturally conditioned response to feel the right thing (i.e., sad at a funeral, happy at a party), but “the effort to seem to feel and to try to actually feel the ‘right’ feeling for the job, and to try to induce the ‘right’ feeling in certain others.” In other words, employers expect their employees not just to sell their labor, but their feelings as well.

So let’s bring this back to brands. Mac has built a brand around hip creativity. Harley’s is built around rough-around-the-edges  independence. Would you feel right buying a Mac from an Amish dude? A Harley from an accountant?

Let’s go back to Papa John’s, Tebow, and Miss America. Clearly, each of them represents a brand. If I were to plot them on a continuum, I would put the racist on one side—clearly undermining the tenets of the Papa John’s brand. Tebow might go in the middle because although we in Colorado Springs, Colorado don’t need the help of our state’s quarterback getting branded as evangelicals and I personally don’t think God cares as much about football as say, peace or malaria, Tebow seems to be a generally nice and generous kid. On the other end of the spectrum there’s shiny Miss America who has clearly drunk the organization’s Kool-Aid and is prepared, no “honored” to be their go-to girl for the upcoming year.

What right do we as brand practitioners to expect or demand certain behaviors from employees? I mean, this is America dammit; we the people are allowed to have and express our opinions freely and bless the people who have fought for that right. And. This is America dammit; arguably the leader in consumer culture; we’ve got brand reputations to build and we need good people to help us build those brands.

So what do you think? What’s the line? What’s the line between authentic personal behavior and responsible representation of a collective? What’s the line between a racist employee being rude and awful to a customer while wearing your branded hat, and the young woman who’s not allowed to say if she’s a Republican or a Democrat while wearing the tiara? What if Tim Tebow insisted on including a cross next to the Bronco logo on his helmet? How do you feel when someone who’s ostensibly supposed to represent you does a really crappy job of upholding the values you hold dear?

I have opinions, they are candidly, a little conflicted and I want to hear from you. Bring it folks, let the conversation begin.

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation, LLC

For some time now though, I’ve been a fan of the Kimpton chain of hotels. My first exposure to a Kimpton hotel was in Washington D.C. I was there to do a consulting project for the Australian Embassy and the Rouge was right across the street. After traveling all day, I checked in and was offered a glass of wine; my arrival had happily coincided with their nightly wine hour. And the place was cool! There weren’t muted shades of beige and nutmeg, oh no. This place was a deep, naughty red, floor to ceiling. A seven foot mirror was propped against the wall and the room came with my very own animal print bathrobe. I joined the guest membership program they call Kimpton InTouch. I’m a member of other hotel loyalty programs but they seldom get me anything of real use.  At the Rouge, I got free internet.

After the Rouge, I began searching out and discovering additional Kimpton properties and I began to keep track (informally of course) of the way the Kimpton positions itself and delivers upon its brand. In the months that followed, my InTouch membership yielded the typical e-newsletters, but these were different. Instead of simply promoting themselves, the Kimpton regularly offers fun, themed getaway packages; things like “The Autumn getaway” with fall-themed cocktails at check-in, kid-friendly packages, pet-friendly packages and LGBT couple getaway packages.

I discovered that my own hometown of Denver had a Kimpton—the Hotel Monaco which, true to its theme was boldly decorated and lavishly appointed. My husband and I decided to get away for a night and checked into the Hotel Monaco where we were told we’d been upgraded to a suite—a sumptuous, gigantic affair with twenty-foot ceilings, a Jacuzzi tub and a living room.  After dinner, we returned to our room and found a bottle of champagne icing in a bucket. I was secretly concerned we’d been given the wrong room and some bridegroom was wondering why he got the little bathroom and upset that his champagne hadn’t arrived. But no; it was no mistake, it’s just how Kimpton rolls.

I love them as a customer, but also as a brand marketer. Kimpton’s integrated marketing practices are conceived and executed with perfection.

• Their tagline is “Stay true to you.” And while my support for taglines as a must-have marketing tool has definitely waned over the years, I like this one. I like its double entendre that exhorts us to be true to ourselves and to find a hotel stay that is true to us too.

• As mentioned above, their e-newsletters are welcome reminders that it might be high time to look for an excuse to get away.

• Their InTouch Facebook page is a great example of social media in the way it is meant to be. People post comments, thoughts or questions and get a nearly immediate response from someone who writes with an approachable, upbeat tone.

• And best of all, they pay attention to the types of things that make someone feel welcomed and heard. When I checked into another Hotel Monaco in Seattle recently, I was greeted with the news that I’d been upgraded to a suite, given a certificate for two glasses of champagne and a voucher for a free in-room movie. The room itself was fabulous and came with my own goldfish pet-for-the-night. I called my daughter and asked for her naming advice and we named it “Gold Silverwings.” What’s not to love about a rental pet?
  

  Gold Silverwings the Fish

  What’s not to love about a rental pet that inspires a fun reason to call home and tell my kid about my adventures on the road? I posted a photo of Gold Silverwings on my own Facebook page and when I returned to the room later, I found a bottle of Washington red wine, a bag of Seattle chocolates, and a handwritten note from the concierge thanking me for the nice things I’d said on Facebook.

This is brand execution at its finest; they communicate well, they deliver spendidly. In the early 1990s, Ken Blanchard wrote a customer service book called “Raving Fans.” I’ve gone from being a Kimpton Raving Fan to a Maniacal Kimpton Loyalist.

Does it make business sense? Has treating me nicely made a business difference to Kimpton? Oh yeah. By identifying the elements that it will take to make someone’s stay “true,” they have not only won me over; I’ve recommended the Kimpton to my colleagues, and all my friends, netting the Seattle Kimptons eight additional hotel stays in the past two months alone.

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation, LLC

I only wish this was me

It might have been during an inversion pose when the thought of brand extensions came back to me. The thought had actually started the night before when my husband noted that our pretty new salt and pepper grinders were made by Peugeot—yep, you got it; the French brand of cars. We’d laughed about it. Can you imagine the boardroom scene when that little nugget of an idea was proposed? “Okay, mes amis, we need to leverage the Peugeot brand into new areas. Ideas? What makes the most sense? Let’s see, we French do love to eat, how about salt and pepper grinders!? Magnifique!”

Unlike Honda which has successfully taken its core brand attribute of reliably engineered engines into other product areas, Peugeot’s grinders can’t be a good brand move. What’s the message they’re sending? That their core strength is in gears that grind? machinery that crushes bigger things into dust? No, no; pas bon.

On the other hand, I love Kaiser Permanente’s branding decisions. They’ve successfully warmed up the notion of managed care which, as a concept, typically makes me chafe so this is a real accomplishment. Their “live well and thrive” concept has successfully taken the focus off of the cost-control/disease-management angle of modern medicine and presents Kaiser Permanente as being primarily concerned with helping people achieve overall wellbeing. And here’s the brand-extending brilliance; they’ve taken the “thrive” concept well beyond the walls of a doctor’s office or lab and extended it into sweet bits of advice about how to live the good life, how to be happy. Their e-store sells branded merchandise like reusable shopping bags for the health of the planet and measuring spoons with advice on how to eat well. Their ads talk about the health benefits of kindness. It’s a stretch that makes sense to the tenets of their brand.

In order to ascertain the types of stretches that make sense and those that don’t you a really good sense of your brand position. I suspect that Kaiser Permanente wanted to reframe the negative image appropriately given to managed care companies as uncaring, corporate and cold. Their “thrive” position does this for them. Their brand marketing decisions to offer advice on overall wellness takes that position and extends it, gives it additional reach, flexibility, and strength.

Assessing the good stretch starts here:

• What’s your organization’s brand position? Have you staked your own branded flag in a position that offers something different and valuable to your constituents?

• And, once staked, how do you get that flag to wave in a way that attracts the notice of your customers? What are the brand
  attributes for which you want to be known?

• What are the logical ways you can get that position to stretch and bend?

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation, LLC

My first reaction was: “Okay then, Sweet-Pants. You just refuse whatever you must and good luck to you.”

But the more I thought about it, the more irritated I became. Was this a sample of down-with-Obama rhetoric of some kind? Or just happy delusional thinking? As it turns out, it’s a little bit of the latter. I did a little digging and it turns out that you can get buttons, pins, tote bags, and even flag-themed signs with the refusal sentiment stamped on it—that is, if you still have a job and can afford them.

Just kidding; they’re all value-priced to move.

Apparently, the sentiment is being promoted by Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of the networking giant BNI (i.e., Business Networking International). Dr. Misner’s theory is if you “refuse” to participate in the recession, you can turn that global frown upside-down and convert it into contacts, referrals, and success. Rah, rah, shish boom bah! Let’s hear it for positive thinking! And boo to the fun-haters who lost their jobs or can’t make a sale.

Now it is true that I’m a bit of a cynic. That’s what makes me a good researcher. I’m also, however, a strategist so the part that really bothered me about all the blithe refusal idea was the inability or unwillingness to see the big picture—namely the big, very complicated, system in which we all live and breathe. And while a can-do attitude is a must, it’s best to target that can-doing energy at the sweet spots in the systemic web where it can do the most good.

In brand strategy, one must consider the system in which the organization lives and breathes. I run across a lot of marketing and advertising companies who claim to do “strategic” marketing, But what they mean by this is that they will conduct a two-hour exercise in which the client-company leaders are gathered into a conference room and led through a flip-chart SWOT analysis. It goes like this: “What do you think are our Strengths? Okay, how about our Weaknesses? Great! Now onward to Opportunities…” At the end, everyone feels good about having teased out some “strategic “points. The problem is that it what the leaders consider to be their strengths or opportunities are likely influenced by their own day-to-day triumphs and headaches. They’re too close, too enmeshed in history and habit.

I’ve sat in on many a strategic session that began with leaders describing their strengths in exactly the same terms as the leaders of another organization. I routinely hear things like: “Our key strength and primary differentiator is that we really care.” Okay. That might be true. However, what the leaders need to realize is that this message won’t sound true if it’s one of a jillion messages saying the same thing. And, ultimately, the message isn’t true until or unless their customers say it’s true. So, while it might be “cynical” to admit that your organization operates in a tough economy or a crowded marketspace, it’s true if your customers think or feel it’s true.

What are the systems-oriented questions you ask yourself and/or your clients to help them grasp the complexities of their environment? Some of my favorites are these:

• Who do your customers see as your competitors?
• Your customers live in a system too. Other than your direct competitors, what else competes for their attention, commitment, and enthusiasm?
• What’s the point when their need for your services rises above their own level of distraction so they begin to hear what you’ve been yelling all along?
• When customers choose among vendors, which features or attributes do they consider?
• How do they rank the relative value of those features? What are the deal-breakers and deal-makers?
• Do you prioritize and promote the deal-making interactions or leave it to chance?
• If it’s true that your competitive strength is the extent to which you “really care,” what does that mean to the customers? How do they define and experience your care?

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

• What are the brands you search for by name?
• For whom have you willingly and happily handed over your email address so it can be included in a mailing list?
• For which companies are you willing to actually open and read those emailed newsletters, sales and updates?
• What are the companies or products you’ve considered promoting to your own network? (OMG! Check out ________, they are the very best for_______!)

One of my favorite brand strategy books is The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers by Douglas Atkin (2004). In it, Atkin compares the dynamics that draw people to cults with the dynamics that make “true believers” out of ordinary consumers. It’s fascinating psychosocial stuff and if you haven’t read it, run out and pick up a copy post haste. Or, in the meantime, check out my summary here.

Atkin begins by saying that “the sacred and profane are bound by the essential desires of human nature.” As evidence of this, he shares that the people who participated as his research shared the same kinds of reasons for joining either a religious cult or a consumer oriented cult-like following. Their reasons included “profound urges to belong, to make meaning, feel secure, have order within chaos, and create identity.” “This is the stuff,” he says, “of the human condition.” Atkin’s research also found that unlike popular conceptions of cult-members as flawed and gullible people, the majority are, demographically speaking, “from stable and financially comfortable homes and are, above average in intelligence and education.”

So how do they, and we of the brand-believing sect, get drawn in? Atkin identified these dynamics:

Belonging to the group of believers paradoxically makes individuals feel self-actualized and more free to be and express themselves.

Harley Davidson provides a bad-boy outlet for people who occasionally need to stick it to “the man” by revving their throaty engines in suburban cul de sacs.

The group is a “beacon of difference” that operates in a distinct and sometimes fringe element of the otherwise unwashed masses.

The group takes on its own culture, terminology, and customs that all signal to its members “You’re different, but we’re different too.” Strategically, this means organizations have to be willing to exclude people who don’t fit in order to be clearly differentiated enough to attract the right fit. This takes courage and focus. Apple provides creative people a community of creative, hip, arty types where they and others who feel disconnected from an uncreative world can come together and celebrate their quirkiness. Remember the iconic Mac ad of drones and the anvil throwing liberator? Now envision a bunch of quirky, anvil-toting, Mac-lovers.

People buy people before they buy things.

Or in other words, people buy into the feeling they get from a cult or company. In retrospect, they might rationalize their decision by pointing to the ideology or the product-features, but it’s the “staff not the stuff” that really drives results. Build relationships.

The Norman Rockwell vision of small town communities might be going away or gone; the primal need for community has not.

People desperately need to belong. Atkin illustrates that belonging in a community provides for us a filter with which to determine what’s real, what’s meaningful, and gives us a sense of identity. And while people may no longer find those community benefits in their geographical locations, they can find them in membership with consumer sects of other likeminded people. And the good news about consumer communities is that unlike family or neighbors, we get to pick them and/or opt out at any time.

At this point, you might be thinking, “Sure there are those whack-a-do consumers out there who get all into their stuff, but not me. I have a life.”

I had the same thoughts when I snapped this picture of a Mac-nut camped in front of the Mac store. He was one of about thirty people waiting for HOURS to be the first to get some Mac product (was it the Mac Pro? A new iPod? Who knows? I’m a PC). I thanked him for posing for my photo and told him I hoped his wait would be worth it. He assured me it would be. I walked away tsk-tsking to myself and feeling both self-righteous and impressed by the machine that is Apple.

Of course, I’ve been known to tell my kids that I’m busy “working” while I surf online sales at Anthropologie so it’s a slippery slope.

Where’s your brand devotion?

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation 

I have less of a problem with visually-oriented terms than I do with the words that aren’t actual words. I’ve heard people’s behavior described as “integrous” and there are some who insists on “languaging” the wording of a document until they get it right (or the words just roll over and die).  Seriously, just writing those two examples gave me the shivers and sent my spellchecker into a seizure.

How many of you can honestly say you’ve used phrases like this in meetings, in conversations or even in reports because it’s the language of the day and something you picked up from your peers? I ask because even though I am a linguistic snob, I am guilty of using office babble. It makes me wonder how much of what we say is really our own. How much of it is language that is true to our own linguistic styles and how much is just a borrowed business language template filled in with a few original thoughts. 

And then the problem becomes one that isn’t limited to words, but to voice. And this brings me to the other event that conspired to produce this particular blog rant. I was sitting in a meeting, probably using words like “synergy,” and we were talking about prospective college students. We were talking specifically about some of the research results I had recently uncovered and how to translate those findings into “actionable” (hah!) marketing communication tactics. One of my insightful meeting-colleagues made the observation that although the research gave us a good sense of the way the students described their own style and voice, we would be deluding ourselves—and ultimately unsuccessful—if we tried to borrow that same voice and make it sound credibly like our own.

A wise caution indeed because grown-ups like myself manage to sound linguistically flabby enough when we use worked-over business lingo, but it gets much worse when grown-ups try to get down with the young folk. Suddenly, you have a wool-cap wearing, grunged out, 40-year old father of three who’s trying to be “dope” with his “sick” attire while shopping for life insurance and rocking to Phish or Rick Astley…or whatever it is the young people like these days.

So the question remains: How do we speak? Whose voice do we use? Hopefully, the lesson here—particularly in these marketing-cynical times in which we live—is always use your own voice. Research the hell out of your market segments by all means, learn the nuances of their sub-culture, and the stylings of their voice, but then let them use it.

Now let me hear your voice.

• Whose voice do you find the most annoying?
• For you marketing professionals, whose voice do you find the hardest to understand?
• Whose voice do you find the hardest to engage in a meaningful dialogue with your own (real) voice?

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

Over the course of the project, we talked about the difference between advertising and marketing—or perhaps more specifically, where advertising fits into marketing. For those who don’t spend their waking hours thinking about brand and direct marketing strategy, it’s easy to mistake the most visible extension of marketing as the whole of marketing. It’s fall around here so I’ll provide a seasonally appropriate example.

Envision a beautiful maple tree.

Within the tree is its maple-specific cells are the little maple-flavored genetic coding bits necessary for growing maple roots that thrive in specific maple-friendly conditions and produce maple wood, bark, branches and leaves. You might look at the maple leaves in fall and say “Those are pretty. They make me happy.” Or, for those of you less inclined to sanguinity, you might see them and say “Oh crap. Gotta get out that old rake or hope there’s a stiff wind that blows those leaves into the neighbor’s yard and out of mine.” Either way, the tendency is to look at the most colorful, waving, outward extensions of the tree and forget about the structure beneath.

So it is with the role of advertising in marketing. Many of the preliminary activities of strategic marketing happen behind the scenes and within the vital, but plainly dressed, trunk of the marketing tree. There is a progression to strategic marketing that starts inward and proceeds up and outward and typically includes activities like these:

• Clarifying the salient parts of the organizational culture that serves like the DNA and provide direction to questions like: What do we do better than anyone else? Are there products or processes we need to fix before going public with more marketing and advertising?
• Defining the strategic goals (sales, cultural or otherwise) that steer the marketing activities and answer the questions: What are we trying to do more, better or differently? How will we measure this?
• Doing the market research to answer questions about the customer’s demographics, decision-making process, access points (e.g. the media they use) and emotional trigger points.
•  Selecting the marketing tactics which will lay a solid foundation of brand awareness so that when you do advertising, people have heard of you and associate the right attributes with your name.
• Defining a reasonable number of direct marketing tactics—such as advertising—that will reach out to the customers and draw them inward.
• Taking care to establish collection points that track return on investment (you can call them the giant black trash-bags of advertising leaflets if you must; either way the point is to ensure that your activities are measured against the goals to assess efficacy).

For those of you who find models more useful than metaphors, this is the (oversimplified) one I used with my client.

Strategic Marketing Approach Model

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

In those intervening 18-odd years, of course, technology and technology-facilitated communication has taken the world by storm. We used to have a phone whose long cord was always hopelessly tangled. The only phone with a cord my children are likely to experience is the Fisher Price phone that also has eyes that open and close when it’s pulled along by a string. We used to pass notes in high school. Do they still do that? My nephew isn’t supposed to (but totally does) text during his high school hours. When was the last time you sat down and handwrote a letter and then mailed it? Now most of my correspondence happens through email or through FaceBook. I’m told that email is considered too slow by many modern high school students who are exclusively available via text.

Occasionally old folks like me will sit around and tsk our tongues at the new-fangled technologies. Damn kids and their music and their cell phones and all that. Back in our day, we had to look each other in the eye. Back in our day, we had to talk to each other even as we walked uphill in the snow for six miles (both ways). We oldies sit around and gloomily wonder if communication technologies have outpaced our ability to meaningfully relate.

But there was something my long lost, techno friend said during that wedding weekend that really stuck with me. It was this: he believes that technology is getting very close to catching up with humanity. He said that in his view, we’ve always had to retro-fit our communications into awkward technologies and as a result, we were always simultaneously focused on the technologies and their limitations even as we tried to communicate with and through them. Our communication was always limited as we were forced to attend to the clunkiness of the medium and work around its deficiencies. Now, however, as he experiments with educational technology in a higher educational setting, he said, technology might be approaching the point where it can catch up with the way people really communicate, with the way people absorb and relay information. Technology, he said, might soon be advanced enough to fade into the background and simply be the tool it’s been intended to be for us all this time. Here’s a tech guy who’s really a people-person with tech skills.

And he might be right. My smart phone is way smarter than I. It anticipates my moves with uncanny insight. I’ve had it for about a week and frankly, I’m still a little creeped out. I find myself asking it (yes, I talk to it) How did you know I was about to end that call? How do you always know where I am? Can the guys at Google Maps see me naked? Soon, I’m sure; I’ll get used to my phone’s genius and simply let it help me.

But what I’d like to pose to you is this: Where does that leave marketing? Will marketing communication technologies open avenues that allow us to communicate with one another in a way that facilitates greater relationship? How will our humanity shine through as the technology takes its place under our feet? What will that look like? Are there organizations that have effectively harnessed their technology so that it fades to the background and ceases to limit real human connectivity? What did they do and what results have they seen?

 Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation

Who are we? How are we known? How do the attributes by which we are known help others understand and connect with us?  

It’s not a novel concept to note that we are all different and that our differences derive from the particularities or our genetics, past experiences and choices. The same is true organizations of people. Over the years, I’ve worked with more than thirty colleges and universities engaged in the same types of work with the same basic sets of people and yet each institution is different—sometimes vastly different—from its peers as a result of its own strategic genes, legacy and choices. Each has its own personality.

I was reminded of a tool I developed and used with for-profit clients several years ago. Each of these clients had been in business long enough to have developed their own corporate personality. I had been called upon to clarify and focus their brand strategy and so I developed a brand personality assessment as a part of the research we did with their existing customers. It was a fun and insightful way to get at the relationship an organization has with its constituents in a manner that goes much deeper than simple conversations about advertising campaigns, recognition and recall.

Want to try it? This is how the brand personality assessment works. Think of your organization as though it were an individual person. For example, if you worked for the powerhouse athletic apparel company Nike, try to envision “Nike” as a friend of yours; what do you know to be true of Nike? What types of things would be authentic expression of who Nike is? What would seem false?

Now it’s your turn. Instead of “Nike,” conjure up the name and associations that come to mind when you think of your own or another organization you know well. Remember to try to think of the organization as though it were an individual person, than answer some of the questions from the original brand personality assessment.

1. Where in the line-up of siblings was this person born?

Oldest      Middle     Youngest     Only Child

2. What kind of vehicle does this person drive?

_____SUV (that actually gets taken off-road from time to time)

_____Mini-van

_____Buick

_____Harley

_____A hybrid car

3. What kind of living space does this person have?

_____A downtown loft

_____A home large enough for a guestroom for elderly parent

_____A townhouse

_____A modest brick home

_____A teepee on a commune

4. What is this person’s favorite place to eat out? 

     _____IHOP

     _____The cool new bar downtown

     _____The artsy new bistro with tiny portions on large, oddly shaped plates

     _____Chiles

     _____Somewhere organic and local

5. What is this person’s favorite music?

     _____Jazz

     _____Pop

     _____World music (i.e. foreign music)

     _____Classic Rock

     _____Classical

6. This person was born in ________ (pick one of the following cities that best represents the company’s personality.)

     _____Des Moines

     _____Seattle

     _____Venice, Italy

     _____Minneapolis

     _____Boston

7. On a major holiday, this person would be most likely to:

     _____Host the traditional meal at their home, make all the food from scratch

     _____Go to Aspen for a ski vacation

     _____Agree to come to your house for dinner and ask what they can bring

     _____Drink too much and get a little sloppy

     _____Do their holiday shopping at the last minute at 24-hour drugstore

8. It’s your birthday, this person…

     _____Bakes you a cake

     _____Surprises you with an adventure road trip

     _____Treats you to lunch

     _____Sends you a belated card (as usual)

     _____Completely forgets

9. You have a personal crisis, this person….

     _____Comes right over to your home with a meal and a card

     _____Takes you rock climbing to get your mind off of it

     _____Sends flowers

     _____Listens to you talk, but gets distracted

     _____Doesn’t return your call

10. You haven’t seen each other in a while. Who calls first?

     You       Him/Her

11. When you communicate with this person, you usually feel:

     _____Included in the discussion

     _____Like he/she expects you to read his/her mind

     _____Like he/she won’t shut up and let you get a word in edgewise

     _____Stupid! You feel you struggle to understand what he/she is saying

     _____Other (please explain)

12. If you were back in high school, this person would best be described as…

     _____The popular kid that everyone admired and/or hated

     _____The intelligent kid that had a circle of friends and no specific enemies

     _____The class nerd that everyone made fun of

     _____The druggy/stoner that broke the rules and scared people a little

     _____Who? (The loner no one really knew)

Interesting, isn’t it? What did you learn as you thought about the organization’s brand personality? I’d love to hear your insights. I’d also love to hear any new questions you’d like to see added to the assessment.

Kyndra Wilson, KW Brand Translation