Sarah Palin’s Alaska: An Exercise in Re-Branding

,

Last night I watched as much as I could manage of Sarah Palin’s Alaska—the new show on TLC.  It’s basically Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom meets The Brady Bunch (but without good old Alice). If you are as old as I am, then you remember watching Wild Kingdom and wondering “will Jim be swallowed by the giant croc or mangled by that charging lion?!” And on the Brady Bunch side, we pondered “whatever will happen at the Big Dance if Jan can’t get her hair to look right?!”  Well, that’s pretty much the way it goes on Sarah Palin’s Alaska, where you can’t help wondering if Sarah might plunge to her death in a crevasse on national TV or whether Willow will ever finish getting dressed in her room while her boyfriend waits downstairs.

So why is this harmless show the subject of this branding blog?

Because it’s a brilliant move in the re-branding of Sarah Palin.  It’s entertainment that puts her in a much better light that most of her media appearances and political rallies. It makes her human. It shows her dangling uncomfortably from zip lines and doing her homework on the home computer for a Fox TV appearance. It shows her with popular hubby Todd taking their kids fishing, and the kids can’t catch any.  It reveals she’s just like every other working mom, getting chewed out by her daughter for being on her Blackberry too much.

What’s the impact?

Hard to say, when the show has many more weeks to go. But paired with her new book “America by Heart” coming out in a few weeks (already available for pre-order, of course) it could be a nice re-direct and a good way to make a tidy sum (did you see the size of that RV??!!).  And when Republicans take over the House in January, she can also stay on her political soap-box to keep them on task and herself in view. All without being involved in the actual ugly sausage-making of public policy and governing. Sounds like a great re-brand to me.  What do you think?

/0 Comments/by

How to Succeed at Brand Changes

, , ,

©2010 Barbara DeLouise

One thing’s for sure about GAP’s recent logo debacle (if you missed it, here’s a quick summary by Huffington Post): they got a lot of visibility for their brand. Hmmm, maybe that was actually the point?  Hard to know, but when changing your corporate logo in this era of social media, it’s important to consider more than what your brand consultants tell you. You need to consult your users.  When considering changing any key aspect of your branding—colors, logo and/or tag line—consider these four points of input:

1.        Current customers/clients/donors.  Organizations that already have deep roots into social networks can use them for feedback. But it’s also good to use old-fashioned focus groups, with a trained professional to run them. However realize that all of these sources are subjective and subject to change from a variety of external pressures you can’t necessarily control.

2.       Prospective customers/clients/donors.  This one is always a bit harder to pinpoint, but a firm specializing in both quantitative and qualitative survey data can help you hone in on key submarkets and assess the resonance of your new branding with them.

3.       Vendors.  I know, on first blush this seems odd. But as one of the people who often has to deal with people’s new logos (for multimedia/video production), I’m often struck by how they don’t work across multiple mediums.  Check in with your favorite printer, video producer, webmaster and be sure the font and color can work in their medium.  See how the logo looks when it is faxed, projected, and seen on various screens (LCD’s being different than some TV screens, for example).  And especially, what happens when you view it on a Blackberry or iPhone?

4.       Your mother.  I know, it’s totally unscientific, but if your mother would hate this logo, you might want to reconsider it.  Call it the “gut check.”  If there’s something bothering you about it now, imagine when it is imprinted on everything around you!

While I don’t fully agree with GAP’s post-logo plan to use crowd-sourcing to design a new logo–and they ultimately pulled the plug on that unwieldy idea–I do agree with the concept that in today’s era of “dialogue,” you need to include the customer in your decision-making. That said, it’s pretty hard to create good design by committee. So ultimately you have to trust your own process. Just be sure to have one.

/0 Comments/by

Correcting the Record: When Social Media Does You Wrong

, , ,

c 2010 Barbara DeLouise

The recent uproar created by the Forbes Obama article–and no, I’m not going to provide a link!–reminds anyone functioning in the public space how important it is to know how to react to information you deem factually incorrect, mis-informed, or downright salacious.  The echo chamber of social media means that anything that is published gets instantly amplified through re-purposed media, tweets, Facebook mentions, and news aggregator sites.  So when and how do you respond?

1. First, determine how loud the negative voice really is. That is, does this person/entity have a significant and established following? Will what they say be re-tweeted and picked up by major news organizations?  In the case of the Forbes story, the answer is clearly yes. In the case of one angry person responding to one of your blog posts, maybe not so much. Depends who s/he is and who’s in their network. Responding could just feed the echo chamber and make it worse.

2. Get out your set of facts. You can’t change someone else’s information, but you can put out your own. If you don’t have your own version of Robert Gibbs (hopefully more cheery), get your followers/supporters to put out your side of the story through their own social networks.

3. Make sure you are getting good advance intel of what could be brewing on your issue/company/clients. Use the Twitter subject hashtag (#) to search for tweets that are relevant. Set up Google Alerts not just on yourself and your organization, but that of important donors/clients/thought leaders in your industry.

4. Don’t forget to follow competitors and folks with an opposing viewpoint. Trying to understand where they are coming from and to whom they are speaking is helpful in crafting your response (or lack thereof).

5. Don’t panic. The nightmare of social media is it promotes the 24-hour news cycle. The bonus is it’s only a 24-hour news cycle. How soon they forget.

Finally, a note about disabling discussion on YouTube and Facebook sites. When my clients do it, it concerns me. They always have valid reasons–typically really nasty, obscene or racist comments. But I always prefer to see the community self-correct. Also, when comments are blocked, you have many fewer hits to your site (thus potentially promoting the antagonist sites). Just have a thoughtful discussion if you feel the need to stop comments, and re-consider after a brief interval.

/0 Comments/by

Back to School: Knowing How People Learn Makes You A Better Communicator

, ,

The following is a guest post from one of my favorite people–Katherine James, Founder of ACT Communications, who shares a unique understanding of how to communicate effectively.

Back to school. It conjures up feelings and memories for everyone – many of them less than thrilling.  When I suggest that you conjure up your worst school memory, chances are it has something to do with feeling “stupid” in class.  That time the teacher pointed out that you were twelve different kinds of an idiot for not “getting” her point.

Notice how it doesn’t get any better if I ask you to conjure up a bad time while learning something at work?  The time that boss or colleague made you feel like a dolt because you just couldn’t get the concept or the process?

Now I want you to think of the last time you were explaining a concept or teaching a process to someone as a part of your work life – and that person just “didn’t get it”. Didn’t it seem obvious to you?  Wasn’t that person ridiculous for not understanding your clear and expert demonstration and/or explanation?

Why does this happen?  Why do we believe that we teach perfectly and yet sometimes people don’t understand what we are teaching?  Why do we believe that we learn perfectly, and yet some teachers leave us feeling like idiots?

The answer is simple: because different people have different learning styles. And if you want to communicate information as well as you can to the people you meet in business and in life, you need to learn about the different ways in which people learn.

There are many learning theory gurus in the world of Education.  The one that I find the most useful in my work is Bernice McCarthy whose 4-Mat System of Learning is easily adaptable to communicating in business and life.  I have been using her shorthand system for years, with great success in my business as a litigation consultant.  I use it when teaching attorneys a new concept, when working with witnesses, when “selling” a new lawyer on my business, when creating a presentation at a national conference – I am even known to use it with friends and family members.

McCarthy divides the world into four different learning styles (1, 2, 3 and 4).  It doesn’t matter what makes up the person’s culture, age, religion, socio-economic status, level of education, or life experience. This is very helpful because it allows you to put aside your own prejudices about the person in front of you and listen for the clues that will tell you how this person will learn best what you have to teach.  Why is this important?  You, too, fall into one of the four categories – which means about three-fourths of the time you are going to have to adjust the way you teach, since you are probably used to teaching to the “perfect” learner – yourself!

Let me give you an example of how I use this system in my work as a litigation consultant. I am working with a witness who I am meeting for the first time.  An attorney and I are in a session to prepare this witness to give testimony in court. I ask the witness one question, “What concerns do you have about testifying in court?” I will get one of four answers:

1.      “I am afraid that no one will believe me. That they’ll think I’m lying when I’m telling the truth.”

2.      “I am really nervous that the footnote in the contract on the bottom of page 45 is confusing.”

3.      “How is this going to work?  Where do I sit? How long is this going to take?”

4.      “I’m not really worried.  I’m just going to say whatever comes to me off the top of my head. I find things work out best if I just ‘wing it’, you know?”

Each of the answers puts the witness into his or her learning category.  Let me break it down for you into the 1, 2, 3, and 4.

The first group of folks I call “Emotional”. They are often fearful of new experience. They often need to know “why” they are being asked to learn something new – what it has to do with them.  Once they are on board, they learn more quickly than anyone else.  They do not respond well to being told “just do this and you’ll be fine.”  Slow down.  Be patient.  Take your time. If you rush teaching, not only will no learning take place, you are establishing that they will never be able to learn – especially not from you.

The second group of folks are “Fact Based”. They believe that the answers to everything in life are in the details.  They will often ask you to “just show me what you want me to do.” They aren’t lazy. They aren’t going to do it exactly the way that you do it – but they really benefit from demonstration. Teach them first through detail – they aren’t going to learn from you if they don’t believe you “know your stuff”.

The third group of folks are “How Does It Work?”. They learn best through doing.  They love agendas.  When they say, “How long is this going to take?” and you think, “That’s an insulting question!” think again.  They just need to know how the next minutes or hours of their life are supposed to unfold.  If you teach them what you want them to learn as a “system” they will embrace it.

The fourth group of folks are “Rule Breakers.” They don’t like it if things have been done this way a million times over a million years – they need it to be brand new in order to respect it.  I find it best to emphasize the uniqueness of the situation: “I have never had a case exactly like this before!  This is going to be really interesting for us to figure out together just how to put your testimony together!” It doesn’t matter that the situation and case are far from unique – I know that this is how this kind of learner best gets information.

Good luck in your journey back to school – it will really pay off as you learn how to communicate and teach “perfectly” to the learning style of everyone you meet.

Katherine James is the founder of ACT of Communications a litigation consulting firm in California.  She can be reached by emailing katherine[at]actofcommunication[dot]com.

/0 Comments/by

Your Media Library is a Gold Mine

, , , ,

I’ve got a client who has been unable to find key video interviews and archival photos for an important history video project.  These content elements were created with multiple staff and vendors during varioover many years, but were never catalogued into a central indexing system. As a result, the client will spend significant amounts of money either looking for them, recreating them, or working around the missing elements.

This situation has reminded me once again how vital a media library is in a digital age, when content is king.   Whether you invest in content for marketing, donor relations, education or outreach, it’s vital to invest just as much in content management once these elements are created. And yet this is generally where organizations miss the mark.  Understandably, the immediate focus is on the finished product and the deadlines at hand.  And it’s hard to explain an expense line-item for content management. But if you can show it as an asset—as a plus to the bottom line—it may be more clear why it’s so vital.

Here are some key ways to save thousands of dollars with a solid content management system, regardless of which software you use to help you:

  1. Assign a central content manager.  Depending on how many photos and videos you produce every month, this person may need help to get it all indexed, but there should be one point person in the organization who reviews every piece of new content and directs the catalogueing process.
  2. Treat all elements and departments as equally vital to your content mission. For example, if photos are taken of your summer interns, don’t forget to catalogue them just the way you would your board photo. One day you may do a student outreach piece and need to find them, stat!
  3. Let others know when you are investing in new content, in case you can cover additional material that will help their departments or initiatives.  So, for example, if you are taping interviews, you may ask a couple of additional questions that will prompt answers usable for another video.
  4. Advertise your content within the organization. Sometimes the right hand doesn’t have time to know what the left is doing, so be sure people know what content you have acquired that might be useful to their efforts–perhaps in a quarterly internal content update.
  5. Keep track of rights and permissions. For example, for video, make sure you get signed release forms from interviewees and keep PDF’s of these filed digitally along side any video clips from those interviews. For photographs, be sure to keep track of copyright or photographer information, as well as who is pictured.
  6. Keep a master file of all interview transcripts. So many times when producing videos, I rely on sound-bites from a prior interview. This saves my clients time and money.
  7. Use library science standards to create your indexing system. It’s great to have interns and vendors handle your content management work, but be sure they understand the proper way to identify photos or clips. A misfiled piece of content is essentially a lost piece of content.
  8. Get source files/photos/video from vendors as soon as a project is complete! I can’t tell you how many times I have to call around to vendors to see if they still have the masters from XYZ project. Be sure you get this material into your system promptly, while you can still remember who and what it represents.

Video and photos assets are vital tools for organizations to convey what they do, how they do it, and how successful they are. Treat this like the gold mine it is, and you’ll maximize your impact and reduce your costs.

/0 Comments/by

Email, Social Media and Positioning Your Brand

, , , ,

According to Neilsen Research, the percentage of online time Americans are spending with email has dropped 28% from June 2009 to June of this year. Overall time spent on social networks and blogs has increased 43%.  Yet email clearly isn’t dead.  In fact from what I see, its volume is growing exponentially. I’ve noticed an interesting trend among my clients lately–many prefer to be texted about certain projects, presumably because their email boxes are full and they might miss the information.

But as we change our relationship to email and social media, how should organizations respond?  What can you do to use these tools wisely to position your brand and create a good experience for your customers.

Email is still a great way to reach large numbers of customers, prospects, donors or volunteers. Successful email campaigns can drive traffic to your social networking sites, where more personalized interactions can take place.

Make sure everyone in your organization has an email signature that includes your Facebook, Twitter and YouTube locations. It’s common for people in the communications department to have this, but often others in the organization do not and it’s a major missed opportunity.

Use in-person interactions to promote your social media presence. So, for example, your hold phone message could include “please join us on Facebook,” and your receptionist could say the same thing as she says goodbye to someone who’s been visiting in your office.

In your next e-Newsletter, include links with additional information can be accessed through your social media sites.

Encourage feedback to new content or campaigns–people love to comment!  Create a feedback mechanism so that you can then let your customers/donors/volunteers know what the response was.

Contests are great for driving eyeballs to websites and social media sites.

Include polls in your blog posts and tweet them.  Polls tend to get circulated and re-tweeted.

The most important takeaway from the Neilsen’s August research data is not that email is declining and social media is on the rise. It’s that this amalgam of communications tools is evolving. For those of us in the business of creating and promoting brands–both personal and corporate–we’ll need to keep evolving too.

/0 Comments/by

Reaching the Growing Hispanic Market

, ,

It is widely expected that the new census data will show 1 in 6 people living in the United States is hispanic. The Arizona immigration law case has only presented one view of this fast-growing population. Here’s another.

22 of the top 50 hispanic advertisers increased their media budgets last year, despite the disasterous recession.  12.6% of Google users and 11.4% of Facebook users are hispanic.  Hispanics are also the nation’s second-largest consumers of goods and services.  Their median age is “young and generally living in large, traditional, married-with children families” according to a recent analysis by Advertising Age.  As the boomer generation ages, this coming-of-age hispanic generation will lead the way in consuming goods and services.  But thanks to the rise of the internet, Skype, and relatively inexpensive global travel–at least as opposed to what was experienced by past immigrant generations–this population remains connected to countries and cultures of origin, even while they are becoming more Americanized.  So reaching them must recognize and respect these connections.

Are corporations and nonprofits effectively reaching prospective customers and donors who are hispanic?

Some large companies and nonprofits have been proactive about advertising and multi-lingual outreach.  Recognizing that 2.5 million Hispanic Americans suffer from diabetes or insulin resistance syndrome that is considered “pre-diabetes,” last year the American Diabetes Association launched an oral care program aimed at this market with corporate partner Colgate-Palmolive, which also happens to be among the top 50 advertisers to this market segment. But other groups are sluggish, relying on diversity initiatives that are geared primarily towards women and African-Americans, and often target prospective employees more than prospective customers.

Part of the key to reaching hispanics is, as with any group, connecting to prospects through the communications tools they themselves use.

According to a new Pew Research study, when it comes to socializing and communicating with friends, young Latinos (ages 16 to 25) make extensive use of mobile technology. Half say they text message (50%) their friends daily, and 45% say they talk daily with friends on a cell phone.  Only 10% use email.  Recognizing this trend, Nestle recently launched an iPhone app that promotes use of Carnation Evaporated Milk by pulling recipes and content from its MiCochina Latina site.

Whatever happens in Arizona, the American population is changing and people selling everything from nonprofit causes to consumer products must adapt to reach the growing hispanic market.

/0 Comments/by

Reaching Out to Mobile Users

, , ,

According to a new Pew survey , the use of non-voice data applications on cell phones has grown dramatically over the last year. Compared with a similar point in 2009, cell phone owners are now more likely to use their mobile phones to:

  • Take pictures—76% now do this, up from 66% in April 2009
  • Send or receive text messages—72% vs. 65%
  • Access the internet—38% vs. 25%
  • Play games—34% vs. 27%
  • Send or receive email—34% vs. 25%
  • Record a video—34% vs. 19%
  • Play music—33% vs. 21%
  • Send or receive instant messages—30% vs. 20%

But what’s most interesting about the study is that African-Americans and English-speaking Latinos continue to be among the most active users of the mobile web. Cell phone ownership is several percentage points higher among African-Americans and Latinos than among whites (87% vs. 80%) and minority cell phone owners use more mobile phone features than their white counterparts. In total, 64% of African-Americans access the internet from a laptop or mobile phone, a seven-point increase from the 57% who did so at a similar point in 2009.

But are minority outreach communications programs geared towards mobile web?

With 72% of mobile phone users sending or receiving text messages, texting seems like the best place to start. And yet few corporate or nonprofit communications programs regularly incorporate text messaging for customer or donor outreach. One of my nonprofit clients uses texts during its annual conference to notify attendees of program changes.  This is a good start. Since 9-11, many schools have gone to text notification of parents for emergencies. But what about corporations?  Couldn’t they text customers about urgent issues like product recalls? The recent water emergency in Washington, D.C. area was a great example. As a customer, I never heard one peep directly from WSSC, even though they could have texted me, or frankly even used the robo-phone technology so prevalent with our local schools and political campaigns.

And if you’re interested in reaching older adults, the Pew study has some interesting data for you. While young adults still dominate mobile data applications, cell phone owners 30-49 aren’t far behind, and were found to be much more likely to use their devices to send text messages, take photos, record video or access email, among other uses.

We are part of an increasingly mobile society. Good communications plans need to mobilize, too.

/0 Comments/by

Is BP’s PR Plan Working?

, , ,

According to SearchEngineLand.com CEO Danny Sullivan,  BP’s latest PR tactic was to purchase all the Google links for any search that includes the words “oil spill” or “BP” or “gulf oil,” among other keywords. Type in any of these and the top result you see is BP’s special Gulf of Mexico Response website.  Interesting brand-in-crisis move.

Part of the reason BP did this was to control the message. Controlling the Message is of course Rule #2 of Crisis Communications 101.  (Rule #1 is Full and Immediate Transparency/Disclosure.  BP hasn’t quite gotten that one down, no doubt because it is in conflict with all of the rules of Avoiding Lawsuits 101).  BP was smart to try the Google search word approach since they got major blowback from the TV ads they purchased, which featured their lambasted CEO touting all the great work BP was doing on the cleanup.   They really didn’t have many options for getting out their message, since BP was not well established in social media prior to the crisis and wasn’t positioned to respond (take note, SM slackers!), they had to go this route.

The ultimate question is:  is it working? Since the new top-of-the-Google-charts BP link clearly says “Sponsored Link,” people know it’s not a clean search result. Or do they? And even so, are they tempted to click on their site and scan it? It would be interesting to learn if the company is getting increased hits and any positive spin from that. BP stock prices just dropped another 4%, so that may be one indicator this plan isn’t working.

/0 Comments/by

Positioning Your Post-Recession Brand

, ,

The recession’s not in the rearview mirror yet, but some indicators show it is receding. And after 18 months of triage, companies and nonprofits alike are assessing the damage.  Here are key areas to review when considering any impact the downturn has had on your brand.

Employment Brand

Those who froze hires but didn’t let anyone go will come out ahead, as their employment brand got a boost. In addition to keeping a good reputation for future hires, your existing staff felt you stood by them in tough times and will reflect that to others.  Regardless, you can still take advantage of the volumes of talent still out there—in all age and experience categories—and snap up some great new hires before year-end.

Customer Brand

If you retained the consistency and value of what you provided throughout the downturn, now is a great time to remind customers and clients of that fact, as well as what makes your organization unique.  Let stakeholders know what steps you took to reign in expenses and overhead so that you could continue to deliver a quality product or service.

Donor Brand

Many nonprofits maintained and even increased donor giving during the downturn because they a) knew their donor base well enough to know who to turn to in a crisis and b) focused on their core values and services. Remind all donors of the value you continued to deliver, and the mission you succeed in every day, even in uncertain times.

Brand Communications

Naturally, some companies had to trim their sails when it came to communications and marketing campaigns during the recession.  Websites are looking a bit tired. Skeleton communications teams are overworked. But wise organizations made ample use of “free” tools like social media. (We all know staff time isn’t free, of course.) Now’s the time to ramp up long-term campaigns, while still leveraging cost-effective measures like user-generated content, print-on-demand, and social networks.

If your brand suffered during the downturn, there’s still time to ramp back up. Look at all the pieces and be sure there are no cracks that could rupture and cause you to miss the next economic boom.

/0 Comments/by