The Underdog Effect

What is your brand made of?

Rolling Stone magazine is changing its size. Going from its trademark tabloid size to traditional mag size.

A lot of people claim that this is a major mistake. They say that RS is losing a piece of what makes it distinctive. That it changes the reader experience and, therefore, the brand experience. That they're selling out to get some better locations in magazine racks.

I'll leave it to others to debate whether this is a good move or not. But it does raise an interesting question: when does the physical brand experience outweigh your brands distribution strategy?

I understand that RS is (theoretically) different mostly because its content. Attitude. World-view. But the size shouldn't be down-played. The tabloid size signaled that what was inside was more important than JUST music and pop-culture interview. It is clearly important. Possibly the most important meme RS had.

But is it more important than being able to get onto the check-out racks at Wal*Mart? Does it matter that it is a mature brand? Does it matter that it is a dying industry? Does it matter that soon more people will read RS on their iPhones than in a hard copy purchased at Albertsons?

What is the RS brand made of? And how tied in is its print size? Newspapers having been shrinking for years. And there's a pretty easy argument to be made that we don't need them at all.

What is your brand made of? Is it your personality? Your market? You? The physical experience? Your people? Which of those are you willing to give up if they conflict with your distribution strategy.

Apologies for the long list of questions. I don't have the answers. Wish I did.

Why impressions matter.

A recent study underlines what many of us already knew: generally, the more familiar we are with a brand, the more we like it.

This small study (I read about it in FPO magazine) showed that strong brand elicited activity in parts of the brain related to positive emotions, while lesser-known brands got the negative emotion zone firing. Not only that, lesser-known brands made the brain work harder. And no brain likes to work harder than it has to.

This is not a license to scream louder or chase brand impressions no matter the cost. But I do think it it buoys your efforts to sponsor target events, participate in online forums and other "branding" efforts. Yes, even brand-building advertising.

It also supports my assertion that you should always choose frequency over reach when it come to media buying. Put another way: focus your audience, focus your message, focus your product.

Positioning against the competition. Tale of a successful underdog brand.

There are several methods to use when positioning your brand.

A Woman's Touch, a UK home improvement company founded and ran by women, does a great job of positioning against the competition.

It starts with their headline: "The cowboys are quivering in their boots."

This strategy is often extremely effective. For one thing, most big companies don't have the guts to do it -- to go directly at their competition. So you can easily play in it without coming off as a "me too." Secondly, this strategy means you will probably sacrifice trial by a few fans of "the competition." Done right, you'll alienate some of them. But so what? As underdogs, we know that focus pays off in countless other ways.

So go check out the web site of A Woman's Touch. Notice their language. Their tone. Learn something.

You are going to screw up. Now what?

It is is a truism: we all screw up. But the measure of a (wo)man is not whether or not they screw up. But what they do to make it good.

Cliche, I know. But important.

Scrap mission statements. Think purpose.

Mission statements have become wrought with baggage. They don't mean anything. They're too often too verbose. They don't pin you down. So let's toss them out...

Instead, try defining your brand's purpose. Answer this simple question: why do you exist?

Or think about it another way: what would the world be missing if you didn't exist?

Most mission statements (contrary to their original intent) have become victims to worthless buzz words like "increasing shareholder value" or "stakeholders" or "quality, service and value."

Your purpose won't let you off the hook that easy.

Recently, after working with a client to define their brand purpose, I was, as always, nervous as hell about how we (the rizen team) settled on articulating it. As we presented the sentence -- our working version of the company's purpose -- to the  founder/CEO, for a moment it seemed I was right to be nervous. He just stared at it. Then he turned to me and said that I was missing a  word that described a key product difference. He was right. It wasn't there. We intentionally left it out. I explained that a purpose is bigger than a product difference. It is all about the deeper value you provide to customers and society. The stuff that made you decide to be an entrepreneur.

He got silent.

We all got silent. We sat. Stared. Thought.

After about a minute (which, it turns out is an excruciating long period of silence in a conference room), he spoke. "Yeah. Yeah. I fuckin' love this. At first I hated it. But I love it. It really says it."

It was a sentiment he continued to express throughout the meeting, even after we'd moved on to other discussions.

Over time, I'm sure the sentence will be changed. Improved. That's OK. It was never about the sentence. It was about developing a core understanding of your brand's purpose. Articulating it. Then...and this is the most important part...acting on it.

Hugh wisdom.

I'm posting a lot of other people's stuff lately. Apologies. But here's one I had to share. Hugh on ideas, success and just doing it.

http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004670.html

Say yes.

I was just reading Seth's new Change This manifesto. Pretty good. You should read it. At a minimum, I thought I should share little section about a few famous underdogs:

In my experience, leaders don’t need to wait. There’s no correlation between money, power or 
education and successful leadership. None. John McCain was fifth in his class (from the bottom) 
at the Naval Academy. Howard Schultz sold kitchen gadgets and ended up at an underfunded 
three-store coffee bean chain before he turned it into Starbucks. Ghandi was a seemingly powerless Indian lawyer in South Africa during apartheid. Waiting doesn’t pay. Saying yes does.

Say yes.

Well said.

I always find myself coming back to the genius of Ben Franklin:

"If you're not to be forgotten, when you're dead and rotten; write something worth reading, or do something worth the writing."

            -Ben Franklin

Basic branding reminder for B2B underdogs.

A lot of B2B underdog brands manufacture kick-ass, cutting edge stuff. Much of it is custom-made for custom applications.

Because the most innovative equipment in the B2B world often comes from engineers (either by training or trade), sometimes one of the most fundamental rules of branding can be missed in the quest for mechanical excellence: visual differentiation.

You can visually differentiate your products by adding a logo, distinctive color or other cues that immediately distinguish your product from everything else out there. Say you make a "Semi-Automatic Platform Stretch Wrapper with Powered Pre-Stretch." Why not paint it bright orange? Or include your logo in dramatic fashion? Or pay crazy-attention to creating a distinctive interface that is yours and yours alone? Or make all or part of it an odd shape?

Most golfers can't name their brand of tee because they're all identical. For years it was the same with frozen peas. Then came the Green Giant.

It's time to remove the invisibility cloak. To make your product seen and immediately recognizable. That's as true for B2B underdogs as it is for any other brand.

Dry spell.

I've been so focused on client work that I haven't had the opportunity to think in blog-land. Lame, I know. I'm working on it. In the meantime, here's some stuff worth reading:

Seth on competitive advantage.

My wife's new project, Cancer Mommy.

A look at customer vigilantism. I've wanted to do that sooo many times.

Obsessed with web metrics? Watch this.