Us: “How would you describe your brand?”
Client: “Well, our logo is very simple. It’s just our name in a distinctive font.”
Us: “We’d like to talk about things beyond that. What are your brand attributes?”
Client: “The font is large… if that’s what you mean.”
Us: “But that’s not really your brand is it? I mean what do you stand for, what do people think about you?”
Client: “Well, here’s our Vision statement. Does that help?”
Us: “Let me put it a different way: if I mentioned your organization’s name to a regular customer, what would their first thoughts be?”
Client: “Hmm. I guess they’d think of our logo. It’s our name in a distinctive font…”
And so began a week of amazingly painful meetings.
I was working for a professional services firm at the time, and we were attempting to help a client establish a stronger presence online – something consistent with their traditional and “real world” brand.
I’m paraphrasing in the above conversation, but not really exaggerating.
This client clearly didn’t understand even the definition of “brand”, let alone have any understanding of what their’s might actually be.
This is the first entry in my first attempt at blogging. I’ve been doing lots of stuff online since the early days, but I’ve been a bit of a late-bloomer in the wide world of blogs. Maybe I’ll eventually write about why I think that happened.
What prompted me to start this was simply a desire to vent a little. Probably a common reason for many many blogs, articles, Web sites, books…
I work in marketing for a living, but I also find myself naturally drawn to evaluating, critiquing, and conceptualizing about the various things I see companies doing. Some of my greatest pet peeves are related to bad branding, and I get a bizarre level of enjoyment out of seeing a brand do things well.
- Why won’t the company that keeps screwing up the order for the bathtub I bought six months ago just make things right? (I’ll definitely write more about this one later)
- Why do airlines (with a couple of notable exceptions) think that their customer experience only occurs during the ticket buying process and during the flight itself? What about all the time in between? What about when I arrive at the airport? Or after touchdown? Guess what, airline people: I don’t care if it’s the airport’s fault that bags always take FOREVER to arrive at a certain airport, I’m going to associate the problem with the company whose toilets I just had the pleasure of sitting two rows away from for the past six hours.
- Why do certain industries insist on calling every sales promotion an “event”? You’re not fooling anyone, guys. We know what a sale is. (Is this a recent change, or have I just started to notice it in the last few years?)
- How come one movie theatre can make me feel excited about going out for a show, while another makes me think I’m walking into some sort of 1984-esque re-education centre?
- How is it possible that some people can be completely ignorant of the changes taking place in their industry, or completely unwilling to adjust to those changes?
Anyway, I guess we’ll see where this ends up going. Hopefully your experience reading my posts will even have a positive impact on my “brand”.
B
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