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Branding vs. Marketing

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Many believe that a brand is a function of marketing. Or more specifically, brand building. Marketers and marketing departments love ‘branding campaigns’ or ‘brand-building programs,’ because they are sexier and more exciting than their less attractive cousin, the product campaign. Agencies love them because they think it means big budgets and mass media.

But a brand is much more than a component of marketing. A brand is the promise a business makes to its customers and this promise is often communicated via marketing, but the fulfillment of the promise rests on every aspect of the enterprise. From the CEO to the frontline worker, it’s everyone’s responsibility to make that promise real, top-down and bottom-up, from 60,000 feet to where the rubber meets the road.

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About the Author

JD NormanJD Norman is Executive VP, Strategy and Innovation, at Black Ink. He has nearly 20 years of marketing experience and expertise. His clients served include Fidelity Investments, John Hancock, Maytag, KPMG, Pella Corporation, BestBuy, Iowa Department of Economic Development, Huntington Bank, University Hospitals Health System of Cleveland, Moen and more. Agency experience includes Leo Burnett, MMB, The Integer Group/TBWA, and Ten United.

The Big Picture of Business – Cut the Weeds: Focus on Priorities and Strategy, Avoid the Time Zappers

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One of the by-products of being high-profile is that you get hangers-on. Most mean well and want to associate with someone successful. Some are groupies, and some are outright users. The art is to discern and marginalize the weeds from your path.

One mean-weller kept hounding me. He wanted to introduce me to people to form “strategic partnerships.” Turns out that they were people with their hands out, thinking that somebody (anybody) could magically open doors for them. I tried to set boundaries with that person. He would not respect perimeters.

One of his ‘strategic partners’ called me and conferenced in the introducer. This was not a scheduled conference call, and I felt blind-sighted. Neither one asked if this was a good time to talk or apologized for calling with no warning. In a rapid-fire sales delivery, he proceeded to talk, starting out selling stock in a venture, then shifting from one idea to the next. I patiently listened and tried to get away. This person had already called me weeks before but could not remember who I was or what I was all about. This was a ‘dial and smile’ sales call, and it was one-sided and self-focused, all about him.

The caller then announced that he had a time commitment and that I had one minute to state my case. I explained that they had called me and that I could not tell my ‘story’ in one minute. I said that if he did not remember talking to me before, then that was the problem. He challenged that it was my obligation to ‘make a difference,’ defined as me giving time and money to his pet causes. I suggested that they turn their attentions elsewhere. The caller then got hyper and talked all over me. I stated that I wasn’t interested in his projects and needed to end the call.

People who hound and use you in business are out for whatever they can get, from whomever they can get it. If you resist, they will go on to the next warm body. This is why I have a problem with networking: some are users and others are used by them, while others don’t know what they are doing.

One must be resolute in protecting their most valuable and limited commodities: time, knowledge and resources. Weeds are everywhere, crying ‘gimme.’ One can never cut all of the weeds down because they re-grow elsewhere. I’ve learned the hard way the value of prioritizing time and focusing on the people and projects that matter.

Questions to Ask About Weeds and Networking

  • Is the person making the request a true friend, a business associate or just an acquaintance? Who are they to you, and what would you like for them to be?
  • Will there be outcomes or paybacks for the other person? Will there be outcomes or paybacks for you? If there’s a discrepancy in these answers, how do you feel about it?
  • Are there networking situations which are beneficial for all parties? If so, analyze and align with those situations, rather than with the fruitless ones.
  • What types of ‘wild goose chases’ have you pursued in your networking career? Analyze them by category, to see patterns.
  • Is the person requesting something of you willing to offer something first?
  • Are the people truly communicating when they network? Or, are hidden agendas the reason for networking? Without communicating wants, it is tough to achieve outcomes.
  • How much time away from business can you take? How does it compare with the business you can or will generate?

Cut the weeds by seeing your time for networking and volunteering as a commodity. Budget it each year. Examine and benchmark the reasons and results. Set boundaries, and offer your time on an ‘a la carte’ basis. Associate with those who feel similarly. Show and demonstrate respect for each other’s time. Be careful not to pro-bono yourself to death.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

The Big Picture of Business – Visioning Scope: Applying Vision Toward Your Organization’s Progress

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Visioning is the process where good ideas become something more. It is a catalyst toward long-term evaluation, planning and implementation. It is a vantage point by which forward-thinking organizations ask: What will we look like in the future? What do we want to become? How will we evolve? Vision is a realistic picture of what is possible.

7 Steps Toward Strategic Vision

  1. Analyze the company’s environment, resources and capabilities. Determine where the Big Picture existed before, if it did at all. Crystallize the core business in terms of viabilities to move successfully forward to some discernible point.
  2. Clarify management values. Usually, management has not yet articulated their own individual values, let alone those of the organization. This process helps to define and develop value systems to create success.
  3. Develop a mission statement. It is the last thing that you write, not an end in itself. In reality, the Mission Statement is rewritten several times, as the planning process ensues. The last draft of the statement will be an executive summary of collective ideas and works of the Visioning team.
  4. Identify strategic objectives and goals. I ask clients to do so without using the words: ‘technology,’ ‘sales,’ and ‘solutions.’ Businesses fail to grow because they get stuck in buzz words and trite phrases that they hear from others. Technology is a tool, which feeds into tactics. Sales is a tactic, one of dozens of tactics which an organization must pursue. Tactics feed into objectives, which feed into goals, which feed into strategy, which feeds into Vision.
  5. Generate select strategic options. There are many ways to succeed, and your game plan should have at least five viable options. When the Visioning program matures and gets to its second generation, you’ll find that winning formulas stem from a hybrid of the original strategic options. Creative thinking moves the company into the future, not rehashes of the earliest ideas.
  6. Develop the vision statement. It will be action-oriented and speaks from the facts, as well as from the passion of company leaders. It will include a series of convictions why your organization will work smarter, be its best, stand for important things and be accountable.
  7. Measure and review the progress. By benchmarking activities and accomplishments against planned objectives, then the company has a barometer of its previous phase and an indicator of its next phase.

7 Biggest Visioning Challenges

  1. Settle the organization’s short-term problems. Otherwise, they will fester and grow. Many organizations fail because they deny the existence of problems, proceed to place blame elsewhere or hope against hope that things will miraculously get better. Unsolved problems turn into larger roadblocks to growth.
  2. Never let the vision lapse. Keep the vision grounded in reality through benchmarked measurements. Keep the communication open, and the people will keep the enthusiasm alive. Renew the vision every five years with a formal process, thus including newer employees, the latest in business strategies and, thus, the advantage over emerging competitors.
  3. Effective visions are lived in details, not in broad strokes. If the mission evolves from the process, then so do the goals and objectives reformulate by changing tactics. The smallest tactics and creative new ways of performing them tend to blossom into grand new visions.
  4. Be sure that all sectors of the organization participate. The Big Picture cannot be top-down, nor can the embracing of corporate culture be only from the bottom-up. The Visioning committee should represent all strata of the firm.
  5. Periodically, test and review the process. Understanding why the organization ticks, rather than just what it produces, makes the really big gains possible. Success is a track record of periodic reflections.
  6. Never stop planning for the next phase. The review and benchmarking phases of one process constitute the pre-work and research for the next. From careful study (not whims or gut instincts) stem true strategic planning.
  7. Change is inevitable and 90 percent positive. Individuals and organizations change at the rate of 71 percent per year. The secret is in benefiting from change, rather than becoming a victim of it.

Your company’s future relies on your people sharing this vision. Determine if your team understands your vision, if they can see the possibilities, if they know how they fit into the picture and if they are motivated toward action.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.

Women Are Today’s Brand Champions

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Women have been long known to be holding the purse strings when it comes to the majority of household purchases. According to Monique Nadeau, President and CEO of Hope Street Group, “Women overwhelmingly hold the consumer purchasing power in our country, whether we’re talking about individuals or households. Their understanding of the market allows them to start businesses with a high degree of insight about both their potential customers and competitors.”

Then, you might wonder why so many companies are getting it so wrong when it comes to how they market to them. They are so far off base that one recent article noted that 91% of women believe that advertisers simply “don’t understand” when it comes to the female consumer.

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About the Author

Michelle PattersonVisionary and lauded business accelerator Michelle Patterson is President of the Global Women Foundation and The California Women’s Conference – the largest women’s symposium in North America that has featured esteemed First Ladies, A-List Hollywood celebrities, and high caliber business influencers. Michelle is also the CEO of Women Network LLC, an online digital media platform dedicated to giving women a voice and a platform to share their message. Michelle may be reached at WomenNetwork.com.

The Big Picture of Business – The Fine Art of Failure: Benefiting from Mistakes to Assure Success

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Success and failure… it’s a matter of perspectives. Out of every 10 transactions in our lives, five will be unqualified successes. One will be a failure. Two will depend upon the circumstances. If approached responsibly, they will become successful. If approached irresponsibly, they will turn into failures. Two will either be successful or will fail, based strictly upon the person’s attitude.

A 90 percent success rate for a person with a good attitude and responsible behavior is unbeatable. There is no such thing as perfection. Continuous quality improvement means that we benchmark accomplishments and set the next reach a little further.

Throughout our lives, we search for activities, people and meaning. We venture down roads where we find success. Other activities bring us failure… from which we learn even more what to do to achieve success the next time. We learn three times more from failure than from success. The longer that success takes to attain has a direct relationship to how long we will hold onto it.

7 Degrees of Failure… Plateaus in the Learning Curve

  1. Education-Growth – Didn’t know any better. Made some dumb mistakes, based upon incorrect assumptions, insufficient information or lack of sophistication to “see beyond the obvious.” Beginning to learn better approaches by analyzing the wrong ways of doing things.
  2. Evolution – Tried some things that worked and some that didn’t work. Beginning to understand that things do not fail without a reason or cause. Learns constructively from trial and error. Visualizing patterns of failure… as barriers to success.
  3. Experience Gathering – Circumstances within and outside your control caused the projects to fail. Learns which external factors to trust and which cannot be controlled. The importance of research, due-diligence and marketplace understanding surface.
  4. Grooming – The team let you down. Learns what you are capable of doing. Learns who to work with and in which capacities. Success-failure is a function of seizing-creating your own opportunities. No individual or organization can have success without experiencing and learning from failures.
  5. Seasoning – Understand outcomes before they transpire… and the myriad of failure-producing factors. Most people and organizations fail due to never having control over certain ingredients, improper planning and the inability to change.
  6. Meaningful Contributions – Attitude is everything, affecting the approach to problems. Develop attitudes, behaviors and skills as the motivator to create bigger successes.
  7. Body of Knowledge – Develop profound insights and life-long perspectives into the teachings of success and failure (learning three times more from failures than success).

7 Benefits of Success, Stemming from Failure

  1. Immediate Feedback – It is far better to succeed or fail. Not knowing where you’re going or how we’re doing causes us to make many more mistakes.
  2. Starting Over – Without being hampered by systems/processes that haven’t worked, you can create as you go. After you’ve done it, you feel richer for the experience.
  3. Learn What Not to Do Next Time – Gives you a clear frame of reference, assuming that you understand factors behind the failure, rather than blaming someone else.
  4. How the Pendulum Swings – One succeeds much more than one fails. By studying swings of the pendulum (likelihoods of failures), one better understands their progress.
  5. Failures Make the Best Case Studies – Case studies of success and failure form the basis for planning, improvement, training and other business practices.
  6. Lessons Learned But Not Soon Forgotten – One succeeds 5-9 times more often than one fails (depending upon the individual’s attitude, resources and insights).
  7. Qualities of Achievements – The more sophisticated the understanding of failures and their factors, the more successful in business and life one will be.

About the Author

Hank MoorePower Stars to Light the Business Flame, by Hank Moore, encompasses a full-scope business perspective, invaluable for the corporate and small business markets. It is a compendium book, containing quotes and extrapolations into business culture, arranged in 76 business categories.

Hank’s latest book functions as a ‘PDR of business,’ a view of Big Picture strategies, methodologies and recommendations. This is a creative way of re-treading old knowledge to enable executives to master change rather than feel as they’re victims of it.

Power Stars to Light the Business Flame is now out in all three e-book formats: iTunes, Kindle, and Nook.