Blog Entries for Brand and Promises

The difference between a value and a principle

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

It’s been a while since we talked about values. And I’ve been doing a few projects lately helping organisations look at what they are.

However, in one recent project, we weren’t looking at values. We were looking at principles.

So what’s the difference?

I have a pretty simple rule of thumb for what div [...]

What is a brand?

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:35:21 +0100

I am a Brand.

I am much more than a logo, name or marketing campaign.

I am sometimes a verb (when used on cattle), more often a noun.

You can find me somewhere between a feeling and the organisation.

I can be a promise, a principle, a point of engagement, an organising system, a way to align w [...]

SME brands I like – Sun Bookshop

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 06 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

When I lived in the US, my favourite bookstore was the Tattered Cover and it was amongst the things that saddened me to leave most; in fact, I still miss it. So you can imagine how pleased I was to stumble upon the Sun Bookshop in Yarraville not long after I arrived back in Oz.

And it quickly became my go-to place to [...]

Brand, leadership and saying no

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0100

The role of leaders within an organisation in building the brand can't be understated. I quite simply have never seen a strong and resilient brand result if it is not driven and supported by the leadership of the organisation.

And when I say leadership, I mean literally the CEO, GM, owner, founder, etc, but also other people [...]

Brand of the people, by the people

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:33:42 +0100

Great brands are built by people. But not just any people. They have to be the right people. Right for who? Right for your organisation. And that will be a different mix depending on what you care about and what you do (pretty much in that order).

The connection between building a brand and the people of an organisatio [...]

You can only be great at one thing

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:56:40 +0100

A new campaign by BMW is a timely reminder that you can only be great at one thing.

Finding that one thing. Focusing who you are and what you do around that one thing. Making decisions big and small to support that one thing. This is fundamental to building your brand.

Knowing what that one thing is will help you mak [...]

The expectations vacuum

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 14:00:00 +0100

In the absence of expectations being set about what I can or can't do, it is perfectly reasonable that you as the customer or other stakeholder will apply your own expectations to the situation.

But here's the problem with that.

It dooms me to fail.

Because there is no way that I can know what your expectatio [...]

SME brands I like – Aquabumps

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:17:46 +0100

I'm a sucker for a great photo of anything beach-related (well, actually a sucker for anything beach-related, period). So when I stumbled across Aquabumps (@Aquabumps) I was hooked, and I am far from alone.

It all started when founder Eugene Tan (Uge) sent out a few surf photos to some friends to help pass the time at work. That was 1999. Today it has evolved into the Aquabumps blog feed that goes out free to 40,000 people every day.

The key part of this brand story is the [...]

Let’s not talk about personal brand

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 00:17:40 +0100

After one too many tweets appeared in my stream using the terms personal brand and personal branding I’d had about as much as I could take and tweeted the following:

“Need a twitter filter to auto delete tweets using the term "personal branding" - unless you have a hot piece of metal in hand just stop it.”

I’m not going to rehash previous blogs on this topic (which you can find here), they pretty much cover everything I have to say on that tired old topic. Instead I’d like e [...]

What absolute rubbish! The consumer is NOT in control

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 23:29:00 +0100

This is not the blog I was going to write.

I had a whole different one started about setting expectations. But then while reading an article about the recent promise fail by Domino's, I saw this:

"Phil McDonald, the Brisbane managing director of advertising agency George Patterson Y&R, said the fallout was another example of the consumer being in control.

"Marketers own the brand but they aren't always in control," Mr McDonald said.

"When you're in con [...]

Show me your passion!

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 11 Mar 2013 21:58:14 +0100

If you are starting a new business, I think the key ingredient to success, more than funding, more than ideas, more than planning and strategy, is passion.

If you don't have that you'll never get past the grind. And, even more importantly in the early days, your passion is pretty much what you have to rely on to engage and inspire the people around you.

So what is passion? It's like the old saying goes – I have no idea but I'll know when I see it. That's the key. You can't [...]

SME brands I like: Pana Chocolate

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 14:00:00 +0100

It all started with a treat offered to me by my hairdresser. "You've got to try a piece of this chocolate," she said, almost like she was offering me some illegal substance. And, yes, it was that good.

I had to have some more.

And let's be clear, while I like chocolate, I'm in no way a chocoholic (that distinction belongs to my husband). So, many bars of Raw Cacao Pana Chocolate later, friends were visiting from the US and, of course, I couldn't let them leave without intro [...]

Everyone is not your customer

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 22:25:11 +0100

I'm going to make it short and sweet this week. I've recently had a number of conversations with people where my brand advice to them ended with the following statement:

Everyone is not your customer.

It should be obvious and some companies do get it. Too many don't.

There are plenty of ways you can start to look at who is your customer or not and it usually begins with my caring on some level about what you care about. Don't try to please everyone. Pick something t [...]

Not so dumb

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Something strange happened last year. Metro Trains, who are not especially known for effective communications, decided (were convinced) to make a video.

The video was a fun little ditty called "Dumb Ways to Die" and targeted the stupid things people do that get them killed, some of which were stupid things people do around trains and train tracks that get them killed.

And decidedly unlike every other communication that Metro has produced, this one went viral (for all the ri [...]

It must be love, brand love

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

It's coming up to the big daddy Hallmark holiday of the year, Valentine's Day, so it seemed appropriate to share some love.

Last week I talked about an SME brand that I like. There are a lot of brands that I like. I like what the organisations do and how they do it and that they stand for something.

There are also a few that I love. Not many, mind you, but a few. To anyone who reads this blog regularly you would recognise the names because I often use them as examples of wh [...]

SME brands I like: Griffin+Row

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 23:50:29 +0100

Last year I did a feature on SME brands that I like and got such great feedback I decided to make it a monthly thing.

It's easy to look at the big guys and forget that every major corporation started somewhere. They were all SMEs once and as I noted last week the things they did (or didn't do) in those early years continue to have an impact today.

So for the first cab off the rank this year I want to introduce you to skincare company Griffin+Row.

The website states: [...]

It's time to preach evolution not revolution when it comes to brand

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:44:13 +0100

In the 2012 Interbrand survey of world's most valuable brands three of the top 10 have been around for more than 100 years each; three for more than 70 years each; and technology rules the day for the remaining 45 years and under, with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Intel rounding out the list.

(As a note, I don't totally subscribe to their methodology of valuation but the list is a useful illustration for my purpose today.)

Here's the top 10 list (with founding year in brac [...]

When a foot is really 11 inches

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:38:22 +0100

Subway is famous for their "foot-long sub". It is one of the promises the brand stands on. They have talked about their "foot-long subs" for years. They've run ads about it. They have even trademarked the term, so we could be forgiven for expecting that the subs that carry that name would be – well, a foot long (that's 12 inches or 30.48 cm for the metrically minded amongst us).

But not so fast.

It seems a Perth teenager took the time to measure his sub and it came up short [...]

Be "super-human" or else: Twitter, lingerie and the quest to engage

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:42:11 +0100

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. A clever hashtag. A tweet. And then faster than you can say RT it all comes unstuck.

I am of course talking about Kayser Lingerie and the somewhat infamous #kaysermaleinsider tweets. But it was one in particular that really sent things off the rails:

@kayserlingerie: #KayserMaleInsider If a guys invites you over to watch a movie, you should know what they're expecting.

Cue social media pile on and condemnation in 3 [...]

Measure twice and cut once

mhogan@startupsmart.com.au — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:36:26 +0100

Welcome to 2013.

Playing a bit of email catch-up over the past few days I came across an article from Inc. magazine. While not directly related to the topic of Brand and Promises, it triggered my thinking about today's topic.

The article was titled "Want to grow fast? Then slow down" and was talking about the pitfalls of trying to grow too fast, too quickly and finding that you end up going backwards not forwards.

The same is true of brand.

When asked what [...]