Archive for the 'Steal this Idea' Category
In-house Design, Pt 1
The Power of In-house, part 1: Unleashing Design
by Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG
As the drumbeat of innovation grows louder, corporate leaders are feeling the need for stronger internal design. But before a company can even think about building an in-house design capability, it will need to address the problem that has plagued in-house designers since the days of the cave painters. This can be reduced to seven letters: R—E—S—P—E—C—T. As soon as the department is established, its value starts to depreciate. Within months the new group is inundated with low-level tasks and excluded from high-level conversations.
What’s the cure for vanishing value? To reimagine the internal design department as an independent studio. Since respect comes from a combination of performance and proactivity, mimicking a successful design studio can trigger the same level of respect usually reserved for external firms.
How? Instead of expecting work to come in automatically, the internal team can adopt a more Darwinistic model by acquiring skills that rival those of external firms. It can develop its own engagement processes, seek interesting problems to solve, and make “pitches” to internal “clients.” Like an external firm, it can prove its competence through performance metrics and design competitions. It can even institute a charge-back system to attach a dollar value to the work it does.
Here’s a slide to share with your colleagues:
Brand Collaboration
Brand Collaboration
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Brands don’t develop in isolation; they result from the interaction of thousands of people over a long period of time. Branding requires not only the work of executives and marketing people who manage the brand, but an ever-changing roster of strategy consultants, design firms, advertising agencies, research companies, PR firms, industrial designers, environmental designers, and so on. It also requires the valuable contributions of employees, suppliers, distributors, partners, stockholders, and customers—an entire branding community.
Many of today’s brands are too large and too complex to be managed by one person or one department. They require teams of specialists, sharing ideas and coordinating the efforts across a creative network. Brand managers and communication firms are responding to this new challenge in a number of interesting ways.
Today there are three basic models for managing brand collaboration: 1) outsourcing the brand to a one-stop shop, 2) outsourcing it to a brand agency, and 3) stewarding the brand internally with an integrated branding team. All three models are forward-thinking responses to the problem, because they recognize brand as a network activity.
he advantages of a ONE-STOP SHOP model are the ability to unify a message across media, and ease of management for the client. The drawbacks are that the various disciplines are not usually the best of breed, and, in effect, the company cedes stewardship of the brand to the one-stop shop.
The advantages of a BRAND AGENCY model are the ability to unify a message across media, and the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists. A drawback is that stewardship of the brand still resides more with the brand agency than with the client company.
The INTEGRATED BRANDING TEAM sees branding as a continuous network activity that needs to be controlled from within the company. In this model, best-of-breed specialist firms are selected to work alongside internal marketing people on a virtual “superteam,” which is then “coached” by the company’s design manager. The advantages of this model are the ability to unify a message across media, the freedom to work with best-of-breed specialists, plus internal stewardship. This last benefit is important, because it means that brand knowledge can accrue to the company, instead of vanishing through a revolving door with the last firm to work on it. A drawback of an integrated marketing team is that it requires a strong internal team to run it.
Of course, while these three types of collaboratives seem tidy in print, they’re messier in practice. Companies are mixing and matching aspects of all three models as they grope their way to a new collaborative paradigm. Get ahead of the curve and use these slides to help plan your brand collaboration so that all stakeholders are working in concert to achieve the same goals and effect change.
No commentsThe 6 Naming Styles
The 6 naming styles
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
What kind of name will work hardest for you? Should the name literally describe the offering, or should it suggest a benefit? Is it better to imply an idea, or to invoke a brand’s history?
Getting the answer to these questions will help you choose the right name. But before you can do that, you have to know your options.
The 6 naming styles add context so you can see the full landscape of choices. You can use this tool throughout the naming process: analyze the competition, organize your list, or develop more names in a style you hadn’t considered.
Below are the six styles—learn them and you’ll be on your way to winning the naming game.
DESCRIPTIVE
These names literally describe a brand’s offering. Consider a descriptive name when developing a suite of offerings under one larger brand or company name.
SUGGESTIVE
A name is suggestive if it implies a market position (or positioning attribute). This direction allows for more evocative or emotional opportunities.
METAPHORICAL
A metaphor is language that directly compares seemingly unrelated subjects. In naming, it’s a great way to imbue a car brand, for example, with the attributes of an animal.
NEOLOGICAL
Why not create a new word? Another approach is putting together morphemes—the smallest unit of language that carries meaning.
HISTORICAL
If a brand has equity in its heritage, use it. Consider the name of the founder, or the first product ever launched. This method often has great “legs” and allows for meaning to be unpacked for years.
ARBITRARY
These names have almost nothing to do with the brand’s position in the market, nevertheless, people will make meaning of it by connecting your name with what you do. Arbitrary names are among the most legally defensible.
Brand Positioning
Brand Positioning
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Companies need positioning because customers have choices—and if you don’t stand out, you lose. Positioning is what differentiates a brand in the customer’s mind. To win the positioning game answer this simple question: What makes you the “only”?
The problem is, answering such a simple question isn’t that easy. One way to approach it is to think about why your brand matters. At Neutron, we take our clients through a series of steps to discover what makes them the only, which is nothing less than a journey to the core of their business. Remember, you can’t advertise your way to onliness—you have to start with it.
Use this simple slide in your next strategy meeting to get the conversation going about what makes you the only. You’ll be surprised how quickly you start talking about the things that really matter.
This isn’t the only way to find a powerful position in the market, but no matter how you get there, if you can’t say why your brand is both different and compelling in a few words, don’t fix your statement… fix your company.
No commentsBrand Messaging
Brand Messaging
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
Ever wondered how a mission statement relates to a tagline, whom a purpose statement matters to, or what a trueline is?
Developing effective brand messaging is a complex task, but it’s crucial to articulate your brand’s value proposition to everyone—from employees to vendors to customers. Strong, clear messaging emanates from a strong, clear purpose. A carefully considered messaging system allows you to dramatize the uniqueness of your brand and spread the word effectively.
Use this simple slide to help illustrate how your brand’s messaging elements move outward from its core purpose.
Purpose (never changes)
The fundamental reason your company is in business beyond making money.
Mission (can change every 10-25 years)
An over-arching strategy for achieving your purpose.
Vision (can change every 7-15 years)
A bold picture of the future to focus everyone’s efforts on the mission.
Trueline (can change every 3-10 years)
An internal expression of your brand’s most compelling differentiator.
Tagline (can change every 1-5 years)
An out-facing expression of your trueline.
Invisible Branding
Invisible Branding
by Marty Neumeier, author of The Designful Company
These days when CEOs and corporate marketers talk about investing in brand, they’re probably referring to traditionally visible touchpoints such as product design, advertising, or web experience. That’s great, but what they, and most people, don’t realize is that branding is much more than just the stuff you can see.
Invisible branding refers to those stakeholder touchpoints that have little or no visual presence in the market, but can have a huge impact on your company’s reputation. The list includes items such as CEO vision, employee training, pricing strategy, customer relationships, and sales force communications. Each of these items are an essential part of a company’s brand, but because they’re not visible, business leaders often overlook them.
How important is invisible branding to your company? The short answer: it depends. If you’re a company like Apple you probably have bigger fish to fry (hello, tech support?). But, if you’re a B2B company, invisible branding is everything. Why? Most B2Bs operate without the advantage of consumer-style marketing—their reputation is staked one hundred percent on invisible branding.
Does your company invest in this under-appreciated opportunity? If not, here’s a simple slide to help you start the conversation.
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Brand Extension
The 4 Dangers of Brand Extension
by Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG
The thorniest question in brand strategy is how to keep growing. At some point in the life of a successful brand, marketers will feel the pressure to extend its success by “leveraging” the brand into other offerings. Brand extensions can make a lot of sense, if the original brand has positive associations for customers.
The era of the stand-alone brand is coming to a close, as more and more companies understand the value of linking brands together. While brand portfolios can have valuable synergy, they face four dangers that single brands don’t: contagion, confusion, contradiction, and complexity.
CONTAGION is the dark side of synergy. Just as customer loyalty can spread quickly through brand linkages, so can bad news. If one brand has a problem, the rest of the portfolio can become infected too. For example, a number of years ago, 60 MINUTES aired a story on the Audi 5000’s tendency toward “sudden acceleration,” an untrue claim that spread like wildfire. It ruined the reputation of the 5000 and affected the reputation of ALL Audi models. It took years for Audi to restore luster to its brand.
By contrast, if the same fate were to befall Mini Cooper next year, its parent company BMW would suffer less damage. By building a separate brand for Mini, the company has built a firewall between the two brands.
Thus, the choice between building a brand portfolio or stand-alone brand involves the trade-off between synergy and safety.
While CONFUSION isn’t as dramatic as contagion, it’s much more common. It happens when companies extend their brands past the boundaries their customers draw for them. A customer may love Crest toothpaste, but now that there are 17 varieties of Crest, it’s unclear what Crest means anymore. Rather than analyze their confusion, the customer may simply reach for Tom’s Natural—at least they know what it stands for. Customers want choice, but they want it AMONG brands, not WITHIN them.
Brand confusion can be avoided by understanding the trade-off between stickiness and stretchiness. Stickiness is a brand’s ability to own a distinct meaning in people’s minds. Stretchiness is its ability to extend its meaning without breaking. For example, Dyson is closely identified with expensive, brightly colored, high-design vacuum cleaners. The brand has a high degree of stickiness in its category. If Dyson were to add a line of expensive, brightly colored, high-design wristwatches, however, the brand could eventually forfeit its position in vacuum cleaners. It would be equally dangerous if Dyson decided to stay with vacuum cleaners but market an inexpensive version alongside its original high-end version. The company could find its brand defined by the low end, not the high end; the high end would then be vulnerable to a more focused competitor.
The temptation to stretch is nearly irresistible. Companies need to grow, and in the short term, most brand extensions make money. In the long term, however, extensions can confuse customers and create a doom loop: 1) the company needs revenue growth, 2) so it adds brand extensions, 3) which increase revenues in the short term, 4) but un-focus the brand in the long term, 5) which leads to decreased revenues, 6) which leads to a need for revenue growth…and around and down it goes. The way to avoid the brand-extension doom loop is to focus, align, and think long-term.
CONTRADICTION can occur when a company tries to extend a brand globally. Because brands are defined by customers, not companies, customers in one culture may have a different view of a product or company than customers in another culture. The Disney brand, for example, may signify “wholesome entertainment” in one culture, “American entertainment” in another culture, and “cultural imperialism” in yet another. By extending its brand portfolio geographically, Disney risks cultural backlash from contradictory meanings.
One way to avoid contradiction is to build a separate brand for each culture, with a different name and a different set of associations for each discrete entity. Another way is to focus a global brand on a common denominator. Hewlett-Packard’s “Invent” position allowed it to travel easily around the world without contradiction or cultural backlash.
The last danger is COMPLEXITY. As a brand portfolio grows, what began as a way to simplify the brand-building process often ends up complicating it. Multiple segments, multiple products, multiple extensions, different competitive sets, and complex distribution channels can easily create an overgrown, hard-to-manage, inefficient brand portfolio. While the human mind is better at addition than subtraction, subtraction is the key to building strong portfolios—pruning back brands and subbrands that don’t support your zag.
Managing a portfolio requires establishing clear roles, relationships, and boundaries for brands. It requires the sacrifice of lucrative revenue streams that unfocus the portfolio. And it requires a strong sense of what customers will allow the brand to be. “As provocative as it sounds,” said CEO Helmut Panke of BMW, “the biggest task in brand-building is being able to say ‘no.’”
No commentsScissors, Paper, Rock
Scissors, Paper, Rock
by Marty Neumeier, author of ZAG
If you’re repositioning a brand, or if you’re curious about where to take your brand after you launch it, this tool will help you understand how and when to renew your zag as it moves through the three stages of the “competition cycle.”
Whenever our brand coaches give a workshop on brand positioning, this question always comes up: If focus is so important to success, how do so many unfocused companies grow so large? In other words, how can you explain the success of a company like General Electric, which markets everything from power plants to plastics, insurance to entertainment, and light bulbs to light rail systems? Or Mitsubishi, which puts its name on 23,720 offerings from automobiles to aerospace, textiles to tobacco, and banks to broccoli?
The fact is, as powerful as the principle of focus is, companies with different degrees of focus can coexist in the marketplace. Perhaps the easiest way to understand how this can happen is through the children’s game of scissors, paper, rock. Remember how it goes? Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors. Each position has its strengths and weaknesses, creating a balanced cycle of competition.
Business history suggests that companies thrive best when they settle into “stable states,” conditions in which the business environment is fairly predictable and employees have confidence in what they’re doing. In self-organization theory – the part of chaos theory that studies how order seems to arise spontaneously in complex systems – these stable states are called “attractors.” As a company grows, it’s attracted to one of three main states, which we can call scissors, paper, and rock.
A “scissors” company is a startup or small business, often having only one brand. What distinguishes a scissors company is its extremely sharp focus. It competes by cutting out a small area of business (white space) from the market dominated by much larger “paper” companies, who are too slow to respond.
As a scissors company becomes successful and begins to grow, it morphs into a “rock” company, a medium-sized organization that typically has more brands and less focus. Its defining characteristic is no longer focus but momentum. Rock companies thrive by crushing “scissors” companies, who don’t have the resources to compete head to head with them.
As a rock company grows, its momentum begins to fade, and eventually it turns into a “paper” company. What distinguishes a paper company is its sheer size. With even more brands and even less focus, it survives by using its network and resources to smother “rock” companies.
And round and round they go.
There are three observations you can make about the competition cycle: 1) companies tend to grow clockwise, from scissors to rock to paper; 2) they tend to compete counter-clockwise – paper covers rock, rock breaks scissors, scissors cuts paper; and 3) the spaces between the stable states are “unstable states” – periods of time when change is not only possible but necessary. It’s during these unstable periods that companies often need to reposition their brands.
What can you do with scissors-paper-rock? Tons. Seeing where you fit in the competition cycle lets you 1) exploit your company’s strengths and minimize its weaknesses; 2) exploit your competitors’ weaknesses and better prepare for their attacks; 3) use the unstable states to reinvent your zag; and 4) renew your zag during the stable states to block a competitive move or simply remain vital.
Renewing, repositioning or reinventing your brand? Start with scissors-paper-rock.
No comments7 Books To Zag By
7 Books To Zag By
Even today, books are the primary means by which business ideas are spread. Which books have had the most influence on modern brand strategy? For our money, it’s these seven. While none of them is strictly about brand, every one is about strategy, and every one is built on a surprising insight that can help you succeed in a super-cluttered marketplace. If you’ve read ZAG, you may recognize a few of these.
POSITIONING: THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND, Al Ries and Jack Trout (McGraw-Hill Trade, 2000). Positioning started as a brochure in the early 1970s, then grew into a book, and has been continuously updated without ever losing its salience. Ries and Trout pioneered the concept of positioning, the Big Bang of differentiation which soon they expanded into a dozen or more books, each viewing the subject from a different angle. If you can grasp the simple truths in this body of work, you’ll understand what 90% of what marketing people don’t—it’s the customer, stupid!
SIX THINKING HATS, Edward de Bono (Little, Brown and Company, 1985). When executives try to brainstorm the future of their organization, the discussion can quickly turn to confusion and disagreement. Edward de Bono, acknowledged master of thinking skills, shows how to get the group’s best ideas by focusing on one kind of thinking at a time. He organizes the session into a series of “hats,” (red for emotions, black for devil’s advocate, green for creativity) so that ideas aren’t shot down before they’re proposed. We at Neutron have used this system with our clients many times with gratifying results.
BLUE OCEAN STRATEGY, W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne (Harvard Business School Press, 2005). A blue-ocean strategy is directly analogous to radical differentiation. It’s aimed at discovering wide-open market space (blue ocean) instead of going head to head with entrenched competition (red ocean). The authors’ tool for mapping a brand’s “value curve” against those of competitors is especially useful for adding clarity and rigor to big-picture thinking.
BUILT TO LAST, James C. Collins and Jerry I.Porras (1994, HarperBusiness Essentials). Brands may not last, but companies can, say Collins and Porras. The key to longevity is to preserve the core and stimulate progress. What’s the core of your business? Your values? Your promise? This is the place where differentiation must start, whether your company is a house of brands or a branded house. The authors spent six years on research, which gives the book a certain gravitas.
THE FIFTH DISCIPLINE, Peter M. Senge (Currency, 1994). Senge brought systems thinking—what he terms the fifth discipline—to the business management dialogue. Other disciplines include personal mastery and team learning. He encourages employees and managers to examine the mental models that at first allow organizations to codify their successes and later keep them from evolving with the market. Senge offers his own mental models, based on archetypal systems thinking, to help companies look at their businesses holistically.
THE INNOVATOR’S SOLUTION, Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor (Harvard Business School Press, 2003). The authors show how innovative companies can disrupt incumbents with products and services that seem “not good enough” compared with those of competitors, while setting the table for future success. They also show that large companies don’t have to sit idly by while scrappier upstarts reposition their business. A seminal work.
LEADING THE REVOLUTION, Gary Hamel (Plume, 2000). Hamel issues a call to arms for would-be revolutionaries, saying it’s not enough to develop one or two innovative products—in the 21st century you need to create a state of perpetual innovation, not just with products but whole business models. Once an innovation becomes a best practice, he says, its potency is lost. “If it’s not different, it’s not strategic.” Highly recommended for provocateurs on every rung of the corporate ladder.
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