How to Win' Customer Relationships and 'Influence' Digital Performance

If the customer relationship is key, how do we build hundreds, thousands, or millions? In 1936 Dale Carnegie wrote "How to Win Friends and Influence People." Many decades later it stands the test of time as one of the most influential relationship self-help books of its time and today. With a mere 15 million-plus copies sold, I turn to Dale and his immutable principles to help us understand the foundations for building digital relationships.
Here are Dale Carnegie's "six ways to make people like you" principles aligned to the B2B company buying journey.

Agility In Action: How Four Brands Are Using Agile Marketing 2

What the company does: CafePress sells themed gifts and provides custom-design services for people who want to create their own merchandise. Many of the products CafePress sells are related to popular culture and current events.
These include items with licensed designs, such as "Mad Men" mugs. But most designs are customer-generated. Dozens, for example, riff on the "Keep Calm" Internet meme.
Why agile marketing important: CafePress wants to engage consumers in conversation and collaborate with them in real-time as they upload their designs. "When consumers say I need to buy a gift for a friend or a T-shirt to wear to the Star Trek premiere, we want them to come to us first," said Jason Falls, CafePress’ vice president for digital strategy, in an interview with CMO.com. Top search terms on the site early this month included "Class of 2013" and "zombies," while "Hillary 2016" was popular among people looking for political-themed items. "Where we can see there are designs around a given topic, we can put those at the forefront of our Web site" or use social channels to promote them, Falls said.

Agility In Action: How Four Brands Are Using Agile Marketing

Talk about agile marketing often references social media. Indeed, Twitter, Facebook, and other social channels are pushing marketers to react in real time to events and conversations among their customers. But rapid response isn't the only benefit, say CMOs who are delving into the approach.

Agile management methods, they say, provide a framework for making better decisions and improving overall productivity.

Branding Ethics Authentically

The Good Steak presents a fresh idea in the world of overwhelmingly high-end and expensive steak houses. Stationed in Barcelona, Spain, The Good Steak does just what its name implies: delivers a good steak meal at a reasonable price with the proper care taken throughout every phase of the farm-to-plate process. Branded by Carmen Virginia Grisolia, The Good Steak takes a light-hearted approach to sustainable and responsible restaurant ethics. Using a friendly typeface in a warm and peaceful purple hue, The Good Steak’s branding creates the intended vibe and an added halo on top of the brand mark for good measure doesn’t hurt. “Good to the bone” is the primary slogan and the halo theme continues with the menu, a document with a heavenly appearance that places a premium on the kind treatment of cows. What Grisolia has created is a lasting brand that conveys the ethics in a soft and subtle way. Companies all over the world want to use their business practices as a part of their branding– when they can –and The Good Steak does so in a transparent and authentic way.

What's in a name?

Have you ever stopped to consider how much impact the name of your organisation has on its success?

 While a strong and memorable name alone cannot ensure a ticket to greatness, it certainly can help catch attention and interest. Similarly, a weak, poorly defined or unpronounceable name can be a turn-off for potential customers - would you invest your life savings with Shyster & Co, for example?

Poor company names are not just the ones that sound bad, they are the ones that confuse potential customers, box in a company, and limit its growth and opportunities.

In all seriousness, just as you (hopefully) gave a lot of thought into naming your kids if you have any, it really pays to spend some time thinking about the name of your business. After all, if things go well it could be around for many years to come...

Clever Convenience Store Branding

Murray Batten’s design work of stationary and an ad campaign for Chinese convenience store Gulp accomplishes one of the primary goals of branding, especially when doing work that will appear in a foreign country. Batten’s neon purple images along with the bold “Gulp” lettering works because it captures the eye, but Batten’s overall concept fits with Chinese culture nicely. Batten also incorporates other words like “Munch” and “Crunch” to represent the tastiness that is Gulp. With his work, Batten achieves the goal of giving a convenience store an image that is desirable and draws people in.

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A Personal Brand

For certain entrepreneurs, creating a personal brand is pivotal, especially when your job is enhanced by a great personality. Mexican chef Gabriela Romero wanted to do just that and the folks at face listened to her closely and presented her with a great brand that captures her essence. Her logo and stationary centers around purple, gold and white in a classy, yet sensible and almost quirky way and it works because it’s a perfect blend of Romero’s heritage and her talent.

Branding For Cupcake Revolutionaries

If someone creative somewhere were to put together a video game around the concept of a life-saving, crime-fighting cupcake, it might look something like the logo creation by Joshua Wills for cupcakery and cereal servers The Shoppe. Denver’s got a nice night life, but there’s always someone who thinks they can elbow their way into it and get customers excited. Cupcakes are a good way to do that and The Shoppe is giving all of Denver an alternative to whatever else they may be doing. Wills created the typeface by hand and it resembles Nintendo game typography, perfect for the vibe The Shoppe is seeking. The logo cupcake man was also drawn by hand and touched up digitally. Cupcakes are fun and therefore The Shoppe needed a fun, alternative image to make a mark in a competitive industry in Denver. Wills came through with a winning branding job for a determined group of cupcake enthusiasts.

Buy or Build? How Your Customers Decide

You are an experienced sales leader. It is Monday morning and you are on a forecast call. You know a few big deals determine if you make the number. You ask for the update on the Acme deal.  Neither the Sales Manager nor rep speaks. The line goes quiet. You repeat your request. And then you hear:
 “The customer thinks they can do it themselves” 

You mute the line. You swear. And then you realize this is reality. A common hurdle you face is overconfident customers. They think they can solve their problem on their own. The customer asks “Can we do it ourselves?”  The buy vs build guide will help your team. The guide will enable your customer to quantify the choices and answer this question. Four benefits you and your team will receive:

Loyalty, Friends, and Work: Mad Men Philosophies

Loyalty and work in advertising. This is not the standard norm that it once was. Loyalty in this business — in any business, for that matter — is more of an old value that sits on the shelf, used occasionally but most often forgotten. Mad Men’s latest installment in their Emmy-winning series titled “The Collaborators” brings us three major instances of challenged loyalty in business. Let's not even get started on their personal lives. 

Personal Branding Is A Leadership Requirement, Not a Self-Promotion Campaign

Developing your personal brand is essential for the advancement of your career and development as a leader.  Unfortunately, personal branding has become a “commoditized” term that has lost its intention as people have irresponsibly used social media as a platform to build their personal brand and increase their relevancy.   They believe social media can immediately increase their market value for their personal brand rather than recognizing that the process of developing their personal brand is a much bigger responsibility; a never-ending journey that extends well beyond social media.

This is why I always advise those who want to have a social media presence to think carefully about their intentions and objectives before opening an account.  Why?  Because the moment you start – you must not allow yourself to stop.   Challenge yourself to think about what your intentions are and what you are capable of delivering to the communities you are serving – both in and outside of the workplace.

The coming era of ‘on-demand’ marketing

Digital marketing is about to enter more challenging territory. Building on the vast increase in consumer power brought on by the digital age, marketing is headed toward being on demand—not just always “on,” but also always relevant, responsive to the consumer’s desire for marketing that cuts through the noise with pinpoint delivery.

Sales and Marketing: Can't We All Just Get Along?

You know the saying “plays well with others”?  Well, a study by the Corporate Executive Board found that Sales and Marketing don’t.  In fact, they say 87% of the terms Marketing and Sales use when describing each other are negative.  You read that right.  Almost 9 out of 10 times, we talk bad about the other guys.  Pretty amazing when you consider we both play for the same team.

Tradeway invests in the future of our youth

Leading experiential activation agency, Tradeway, has announced the launch of its Tradeway Academy, which will focus on equipping the South African youth with essential life and business skills to increase their employment opportunities in both the formal and informal job sectors.

 Tradeway are specialists at recruiting, training and managing resources for experiential activations, direct consumer engagement and field services. Their main resource pool for retailers, brand ambassadors and demonstrators are matriculants, tertiary students and unemployed youth seeking job experience through part-time work. Through the academy, Tradeway envisions up-skilling this group beyond pure 'job experience' to create better opportunities for employment and advancement in the workplace.

Jumping on the b(r)andwagon - exploit the link between HR and branding

Businesses can achieve better branding power by investing in HR as brand custodians, says the CRF Institute's South Africa manager, Samantha Crous.

 

Social media and other technologies are ensuring that employees are more empowered than ever to share whatever they think of the organisation they work for - but rather than fearing what might come out if their staff were to speak up, business leaders can let this work in their favour.

Employee engagement - a non-negotiable

Bear with me as I state the obvious. Business is about maintaining and growing a healthy bottom line. Satisfied customers are what make that bottom line possible.

The missing piece in this puzzle is the motivated employees. It's only motivated and engaged employees who are able to attract, and more importantly retain those critical customers.

Nurture Your Most Profitable Customers

Profitable growth is more achievable if you focus on identifying your most valuable customers--and keeping them happy.

One of our clients in the security business found itself facing significant headwinds to achieving profitable growth. The company's customer portfolio was eroding due to low customer satisfaction and many of the customers that were still around were unprofitable. The organization needed to focus on its large, recurring customers, and become more systematic about driving value for these customers.

Don't Aim to Be Popular, Be Effective

Managing your employees is not a popularity contest. When you remain focused on real goals so will they.

 As the leader of my online marketing company VerticalResponse, I wear a lot of hats and do many things. The one thing I'm not down with is being in a popularity contest because this isn't high school, it's my business and my No. 1 priority is to serve my customers and my investors. But, this doesn't mean I'm not in service to my team, because I'll be the first one to tell you, I work for them and I'm here to help them be more effective.

Don't Grow Your Business Into Failure

Growth is good, right? For the most part, yes, but too much growth can doom a business. Here's how to avoid that peril.

Whether you are an entrepreneurial CEO or an investor, you are probably focused day-to-day on the basics of growing your business.Growth is about defining and penetrating your core customer base.It's about scaling your operations profitably.It's about making the right investments.

Sometimes, however, growth is also about slowing down.Too much growth, or growth with the wrong customers, can lead to failure just as quickly as a lack of growth.

Why Networking Doesn't Work

Working a room and shaking dozens of hands? Forget it. Re-think your networking to make lasting connections.

I used to dread attending networking events and crowded conferences. I'm a bit of an introvert and it always felt awkward walking up to a stranger and trying make small talk.

It wasn't until I realized that some of my greatest opportunities have come because of a chance connection made at a conference or networking event that I started appreciating that dreaded networking. I realized I needed to think of networking differently to make it work for me.

With the Spring networking season entering full swing, it's a good time to think about how you approach networking, so you can get the most out of your time spent.

hiking the customer decision journey

Like a hike with surprising twists and turns, today’s better business model pivots away from the traditional linear funnel by drawing customers into a circular, multi-dimensional “loyalty loop.”

I was recently hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains near Malibu.

Specialtys Cafe & Bakery Branding

The studio Hatch is widely known across the US if not the world for great design. Their branding work for Specialtys is no exception. Simple, illustrative and strong. There’s just a touch of classic/traditional vibe to it but stays modern. The strong green/brown color palate touts its earthiness and sets the bar for a fresh experience.

What makes a restaurant logo great?

Restaurants tend to jump into logo designs. Some are great. Some are pretty bad. Our suggestion would be to hire us for your logo design, but we understand that that’s not always in the budget. At the very least, here are some points to take into consideration so you too can have a great logo.

1. Distinctive.
The design idea need not be unique in the world, just distinctive enough so you can “own” it in your particular marketplace.

2. Practical.
Can be printed small, in ink or pixels; works in black on white as well as in colors; works in reverse too, white on black. (Faces, human or animal, usually flunk this last test; the eyes turn white.)

3. Graphic.
Communicates purely in visual terms, to the right brain hemisphere; doesn’t depend on verbal, intellectual interpretation. (Example: Tenneco seriously considered and rejected a “10ECO” logo design. Clever, but it’s not a mark, it’s a pun.) If a wordmark, it can be recognized by form alone (you don’t have to “read” Coca-Cola’s logo more than once or twice).

4. Simple in form.
Contains only one graphic idea, one gimmick, one dingbat. Thus if there’s a symbol, the accompanying name is plain and unadorned. And if it is a wordmark, one idea or device makes it special–like IBM’s stripes. (The more unique the name, the simpler the graphics can be.)

5. One message.
In content too, great designs try to express no more than one attribute (such as stature or speed or dynamism) and support a single aspect of positioning.

6. Appropriate.
In the end, of course, the content’s got to be right. An otherwise-great mark fails if the reputation, positioning, and personality expressed are at odds with management intentions.

7. Rendering
The logo should be rendered in Illustrator or another vector program so you can increase and decrease its size without losing resolution.

8. Fully Explored
What’s the logo look like on a white background? A dark background? What about a full color picture? These all need explored and delivered with a logo design. Especially for restaurants.

Vintage, Not Vintage In Atlantic City

It’s not The Shore, but it’s still the Gambling Capital of the East  and also the city that inspired Monopoly. As it turns out, Atlantic City also inspired a nifty branding job by Mucca for a restaurant at one of the city’s non-gaming hotels, The Chelsea. Teplitzky’s isn’t a name property that would win right away, but all that is needed is a little time to marinate on it and discover the history of the name. Teplitzkywas a hotel in the 50′s that stood on the same site as The Chelsea, also home to the new version of Teplitzky. The restaurant is a 50′s- and 60′s-inspired diner and they’ve got the accents to prove it. With 60′s typography as the focal point of the branding, Teplitzky puts forward a branding image that looks like it has stood the test of time, a relic to the old days when room keys were only necessary if the door slipped closed and eggs were served one way: hot and scrambled. Teplitzky maybe takes a slightly more modern approach to their menu, but branding’s intent isn’t always to tell a potential customer about the food at a restaurant. The essence that Mucca gave Teplitzky creates a certain feeling and mood, a highly influential emotional appeal to the consumer. It’s vintage done so well that you forget it’s vintage.

To extend or not to extend…

Extending your brand’s product or service line seems like a no brainer. More products/services means more income, right? Wrong.

 Extending a brand’s offerings leads to many underlying issues just waiting to pop up and destroy your brand. Before making the leap, run through this quick check list to see if an extension is the right move for you.
 Here are three questions to consider when thinking of line extensions: 

Cleverness is only considered cheating to the losers

Good design isn’t about what’s “prettier” or what’s more appealing.  Sometimes design is tactical. Sometimes design is born of strategy rather than execution (graphic designers everywhere just rolled their eyes).

A natural extension of a brand: West Elm Market

While on a trip to NYC I ran across this excellent cafe. What made it great wasn’t so much the coffee or the food, it was the idea overall. The cafe is a brand extension of West Elm, the designer furnishings company and it is located at the foot of their headquarters. The reason this caught my attention was the natural extension of the West Elm brand into a cafe offering. What better way to sell their wares than by having them in use and in context.
And, yes, the coffee was good, too.

Extending A Personal Brand

Violet Oon and her thoughts and ideas on food are well known in Singapore. She’s one of the country’s prominent authorities on food and when she wanted to open a restaurant that carried on the strong brand of her name, she turned to Bravo company.

Hiring a Sales Manager - External or Internal?

"Should we hire an external Sales Manager or promote from within?" 
It depends. Open Sales Management positions are bad for sales organizations.  Having the wrong Sales Manager (SM) is worse. This post helps you decide between hiring an internal or external Sales Manager.

Cafe Evoke’s Calming Branding

this time with the identity, packaging and interior branding for Oklahoma coffee folks Café Evoke: “A Lovely Spot For Drinks, Eats And Conversation. Come Sip With Us.” The Foundry Collective also designed their print and digital presentations. Evoke is a coffee shop, but it’s the passionate extension of a group of coffee caterers that also work under the name Evoke. They wanted everything about the shop to be an extension of the catering brand, but with new tweaks to help the shop build a new, better brand. Using bright, yet moody colors like dark orange, grey and aquamarine(ish), Evoke establishes a vibe that is one part lazy and two parts cheerful. In lazy, I mean like a rainy Sunday on the couch. The interiors are really warm and the color scheme is balanced with white and a weighty dark brown for the base of the primary counter and flooring. The interior encourages a drop by, but not an extended stay like in a restaurant. This is a great example also of what quality employees can do for a brand. The vibe of what The Foundry Collective help build with Café Evoke is embraced by the good people that run the shop.

Branding By The Slice

In Budapest, there’s a pizza joint named Szelet. The full branding was completed by Kiss Miklos and what he accomplished is a straight-forward and clean branding effort that provides a lot of punch with very little unnecessary swings and misses. Miklos started with the name, one he came up with that means “slice” in English. The simplicity of the job comes from the simple approach Szelet takes to what they do. Their specialty is a simple slice, nothing less or more. The logo has traditional pizzeria elements, including the iconic tail underscoring the logo.Read more

Iconic Mexican Branding In Singapore

Good Mexican in Singapore seems a little needle-in-a-haystackish, but Lucha Loco presents a damn fine dish of Mexican street food and they have super clever branding, courtesy of Bravo Company. Lucha Loco sounds a little like lucha libre, doesn’t it? Lucha libre, they of the Mexican professional wrestling and colorful masks fame. Well Lucha Loco takes the similarities and runs with them.  The entire presentation of the restaurant revolves around imagery from Mexican lucha libre and the things they might say to you. The vibe is raw and intentionally so. Bravo Company wanted the place to feel lived in, not ancient, but around long enough to get some wear and tear and be able to tell good stories. They get extra credit for business cards moonlighting as wrestler trading cards.

Shell producing from unlicensed oil blocks — Investigation

Shell Petroleum Development Company, the Nigerian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell, is producing from some of the five shallow water offshore oil blocks more than four years after the leases had expired.

A source at the company, who pleaded anonymity, due to the sensitivity of the issue, said though the oil major held interest in six shallow water offshore leases, five of them had expired since November 30, 2008 and the Federal Government had yet to renew them.

However,Read more

Kenyan shares fall, shilling weakens

Kenya’s main share index fell for a second straight session on Monday, dragged down by a further slide in power distributor Kenya Power’s shares, while the shilling weakened slightly.

Arms smuggling: Nigerian court jails Iranian 17 years

A Federal High Court in Lagos on Monday sentenced an Iranian, Azim Aghajani, and his Nigerian accomplice, Ali Jega, to 17 years imprisonment each for illegal importation of firearms into the country in 2010.

Justice Okechukwu Okeke found the two guilty of four, out of the five counts preferred against them by the office of the Attorney-General of the Federation.

Reps, CBN disagree over N13.4bn house sale proceeds

The Public Accounts Committee of the House of Representatives and the Central Bank of Nigeria on Monday disagreed on whether or not the bank remitted the N13.4bn it realised from the sale of houses in 2008 to the Consolidated Revenue Fund.

The committee, acting on a query raised by the Office of the Auditor-General of the Federation, had summoned the central bank to account for the money.

US verdict on Nigeria’s anti-graft war

REGARDLESS of what the President Goodluck Jonathan government may say, the United States’ position on the thriving culture of corruption in Nigeria gives a fair representation of opinion about the subject, both within and outside the country. While Jonathan claims that the extent of corruption in the country is exaggerated, the US government and other concerned individuals are of the opinion that the monster has not been tackled with the deserved seriousness.Read more

Brand language

Brand language is the body of words, phrases, and terms that an organization uses to describe its purpose or in reference to its products. Brand language is used in marketing to help consumers connect specific words or ideas to specific companies or products.^[1] When developing a brand language word choice and tone are the two fundamental components. Word choice is the vocabulary that is used in the marketing or advertising, while tone refers to the attitude of the advertisement. Tone is not limited to language, it can also be incorporated through visual elements as well as delivery.^[2]Brand language is a part of verbal brand identity, includes naming of both corporation and the products they sell as well as taglines, voice, and tone.^[3] Another benefit of developing a brand language is the ability for a corporation or product to be recognizable across international borders, while other advertising codes can be misinterpreted, words can be translated to ensure brand unity.^[4]

Information and analytics: Kotler on marketing

A former CEO of Unilever said that if Unilever only knew what it knows, it would double its profits. The meaning is clear: Many companies sit on rich information but fail to mine this information. This has led to an explosion of interest in knowledge management: organizing a company’s information so that it is easily retrievable and learning can be extracted from it.
Many companies, especially those resulting from mergers or acquisitions, have ended up with incompatible data systems. Before they can get a whole view of their customer, competition, and distribution, they have to streamline and integrate their data into a single data system.
Marketing is becoming more based on information than on brute sales power.
 Thanks to the computer and the Internet, no salesperson can say to the boss that he or she didn’t know the prospect’s industry, company, problems, or potentials. Using sales automation software, a salesperson can record each prospect’s and customer’s needs, interests, opinions, and hot buttons. The salesperson can answer questions in the prospect’s office by connecting with the company’s mainframe or other resources on his or her laptop. The salesperson, after negotiating, can print out a customized contract for the prospect to sign. And afterward, the salesperson can look up what any customer bought and figure out further opportunities for cross-selling or up-selling.
Besides sales automation software, companies need marketing automation softwareto help their marketers gain efficiency and effectiveness.
One form is real-time inventory management, where a marketer can tell what the company and its competitors sold yesterday, including features and prices. This not only facilitates more synchronous production planning but also allows real-time tactical responses.

• Some people define Wal-Mart as an information system company more than a retailer. Wal-Mart knows the sales of each product in each store at the end of the day, making it easier to order the right replacement stock for the next day. The result: Wal-Mart carries lower inventory and therefore needs less working capital. Its ordering is driven by real demand, not by forecasted demand. It has synchronized its ordering with the demand flow.
• 7-Eleven in Japan is another retailer making data-driven decisions. 7-Eleven replenishes its stock three times a day in response to orders from individual store managers of what they expect to sell in the next few hours. 7-Eleven not only trains its store operators to capture customer and sales information but also teaches them how to use it.

Another form is real-time selling, where a company has programmed in rules suggesting other products and services that might be mentioned to a prospect or customer on the spot.

• Suppose a couple in their late forties comes into a bank for a home repair loan. Such customers are likely to have college-age children, and the bank might mention a college loan as well.
• A business traveler checks into a hotel that knows from her record that she is a frequent traveler. The hotel clerk might offer to arrange for her stays at sister hotels for known future dates.

Still another form is marketing process automation, where a company has codified its marketing processes that its product, brand, and segment managers need to know to operate more effectively.

• A brand manager needing to do a concept test turns on his computer and looks up the six steps in a concept test; he receives tips and best-of-class examples. A brand manager needing to choose an appropriate sales promotion turns to her computer to get world-class advice.

Yet another form is an assortment of software packages that facilitate handling such processes as new product development, advertising campaigns, marketing projects, and contract management. They are being developed by Emmperative, E.piphany, Unica, and several other marketing automation firms.
In all battles—military, business, and marital—victory goes to the party that has the better information. Arie De Geus, former strategist for Royal Dutch/Shell, observed:
 “The ability to learn faster than our competitors may be our only sustainable competitive weapon.”

At the same time, managers often must make decisions before they have all the facts. If they wait too long, the opportunity may be gone.

Do Display Ads Influence Search? Attribution and Dynamics in Online Advertising by Pavel Kireyev, Koen Pauwels, and Sunil Gupta

Executive Summary — The introduction of online metrics such as click through rate (CTR) and cost per acquisition (CPA) by Google and other online advertisers has made it easy for marketing managers to justify their online ad spending in comparison to the budgets used for television and other media.

Why Isn’t ‘Servant Leadership’ More Prevalent?

With servant leadership, a leader's primary role is to serve employees. Everyone from Lao-Tzu to Max De Pree thinks this a wonderful model. Why then, asks Professor Jim Heskett, is this style so rare among CEOs?

Why Good Deeds Invite Bad Publicity

Many executives assume that investments in corporate social responsibility create public goodwill. But do they? Felix Oberholzer-Gee and colleagues find surprising results when it comes to oil spills.
Do companies with reputations for acting in socially responsible ways receive public goodwill when unpleasant news hits?
The question of how much (or even if) corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies benefit companies beyond the knowledge that they are good corporate citizens is much debated. There is next to no evidence that CSR positively adds to a company's bottom line, according to Felix Oberholzer-Gee, the Andreas Andresen Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. "You cannot find a robust direct link between CSR and financial performance.

"“You cannot find a robust direct link between CSR and financial performance”

It is true that in areas such as environmentally sustainable practices, customers have been willing to pay responsible producers a premium for products; take organic cotton, for example. For the most part, however, companies have had to content themselves with thinking that even if there isn't an immediate payoff for doing the right thing, then at least the goodwill they build up with the public will provide a buffer to offset negative publicity when something goes wrong.
The idea is that corporate social responsibility operates exactly like fire insurance. On any given day, you won't see any benefit. In fact, you could go years shelling out money for a service you aren't using. But on the day that, heaven forbid, your house does burn down, then you will definitely be glad you invested in insurance.
But does CSR "insurance" really pay off when companies need that goodwill from the public? In a recent working paper, No News Is Good News: CSR Strategy and Newspaper Coverage of Negative Firm Events, Oberholzer-Gee set out to test the insurance hypothesis using the real-world example of the 20 largest oil companies in the United States. Along with Jiao Luo and Stephan Meier, both of Columbia Business School, Oberholzer-Gee collected data on several thousand oil and chemical spills (most of them, thankfully, quite small) over a six-year period from 2001 to 2007. The researchers also collected newspaper reports over the same period to see how often companies received negative publicity for those spills, or whether, indeed, they earned brownie points for their superior environmental record when the inevitable accidents occurred. To get a handle on where each company fell in its CSR initiatives, the researchers used stats from the corporate research firm KLD Research & Analytics, which ranked companies on "Environmental Strength," including positive measures such as pollution prevention programs, recycling, and energy efficiency; and "Environmental Concern," which includes negatives such as regulatory fines and emissions of toxic chemicals.

A faulty insurance policy

The researchers hypothesized that those companies that had higher CSR ratings would be more likely to be reported in the media if a spill occurred. After all, it's not news when a company with a bad environmental record is reported to have been negligent; it's more notable when a good company screws up. But if the insurance argument held true, then greener companies should at least see more favorable coverage when spills occur, with the media being more likely to attribute them to chance or bad luck than negligence or malfeasance.
When the researchers ran the numbers, they found evidence to support the first part of their hypothesis: greener companies did receive more coverage for spills. A one-point increase in the Environmental Strength score resulted in a 25 to 35 percent greater chance that a spill would be covered. Surprisingly, however, they also found that companies with the lowest CSR scores were more likely to be reported in the press when they had a spill.
"Both the leaders and the laggards experience heightened media attention," says Oberholzer-Gee. "We didn't anticipate that."
 To explain why companies with a poor CSR record make a convenient target for the media, the authors turned to sociological studies. These show that readers like unexpected news—explaining why accidents at the greenest companies were widely covered—but those same readers also find comfort in stories that conform to already-held beliefs. Therefore, readers might find interest in an oil spill by a company like BP, which for years portrayed itself as a leader in environmental concerns; but they might also find interest in an oil spill by ExxonMobil, demonized by some for its environmental lapses. The companies in the middle, meanwhile, received a pass since their neutral rankings don't fit into an easy narrative.
 “A CSR positioning that says either you are already fantastic or you are trying to be fantastic is a risky position”
To test the second part of the insurance hypothesis—that companies with higher CSR scores garner more favorable coverage when spills were reported—the researchers performed a textual analysis of the newspaper stories, mining the text with software that ranks the tone of the words used in a given story. When they added up the scores, however, they found no difference in the tenor of the coverage for greener companies. Those companies with positive environmental records were criticized just as heavily as those with negative records.
"The idea that if you invested in CSR in the past, then people will think more highly of you in the case of an accident, this idea is not borne out in our data," concludes Oberholzer-Gee.
In other words, at least when it comes to oil spills, the goodwill "insurance policies" weren't worth the paper they were written on.

Lessons learned

One lesson to take away from the findings is that managing media coverage and a company's reputation with regard to CSR programs is not trivial.
"A CSR positioning that says either you are already fantastic or you are trying to be fantastic is a risky position," says Oberholzer-Gee. Such claims raise the public's expectations and make the company a lightning rod for media coverage in the case of an accident or some other negative event. Meanwhile, he says, "those that make less extreme claims either are disregarded by the press or have a far less likelihood of seeing their failings exposed."
While that conclusion may seem cynical, Oberholzer-Gee does point out that there may be other perfectly legitimate reasons to engage in CSR—perhaps consumers will pay a premium for specific sustainably produced products; or perhaps having an environmentally responsible image will help in recruiting top talent.
"And of course," he emphasizes, "there is also the idea that companies should try and be good because they believe it's the right thing to do for the environment or their community."
In such cases, it's important to realize that there are consequences. "Sometimes in my interactions with executives, they say, 'We meant really well and we were socially minded, and now we don't see any return or gratitude,' " says Oberholzer-Gee. "It's important to have reasonable expectations about the consequences of that engagement, and hopefully that makes it more sustainable over time."
In other words, while doing good may be its own reward, sometimes it may be the only reward. It's up to each individual company to decide whether that is enough.

How to Brand a Next-Generation Product

Upgrades to existing product lines make up a huge part of corporate research and development activity, and with every upgrade comes the decision of how to brand it. Harvard Business School marketing professors John T. Gourville and Elie Ofek teamed up with London Business School's Marco Bertini to suss out the best practices for naming next-generation products. Key concepts include:

Getting the Marketing Mix Right

Marketers have a wide array of selling tools at their disposal, but lack an effective method for predicting their success. Associate Professor Thomas J. Steenburgh and collaborators offer a new model for guiding their marketing investments. Key concepts include:

13 Timeless Lessons from the Father of Advertising

In 1962, Time magazine called David Ogilvy “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry.”
In his years as an advertising executive and copywriter, Ogilvy created some of the world’s most successful and iconic marketing campaigns, including the legendary Man in the Hathaway Shirt, plus notable efforts for Schwepps, Rolls Royce, and the island of Puerto Rico among many others.

As content marketers, we can learn a lot from the legendary Mr. Ogilvy. He was, after all, one of the pioneers of information-rich, “soft sell” ads that didn’t insult the intelligence of the prospect. For example, consider The Guinness Guide to Oysters, an early form of what the kids are now calling native advertising — from 1951.
We can study Ogilvy’s successful advertising campaigns to learn how to persuade prospects, influence readers, and create memorable, evergreen content. But “The Father of Advertising” also has plenty to teach us about productivity, branding, research, and ambition.
Let’s look at some things David Ogilvy had to say, and see what we can learn from each of them.

How Sales ‘Hires’ the Best HR Business Partner

First quarter is past. Sales Leaders may want to look for some help outside of Sales. HR may be the right place to approach for better Q2 results. This post discusses what Sales might want in an HR Business Partner.  It discusses the skills and knowledge needed and the preferred activities.  The downloadable tool includes a profile of a highly successful HR business partner to sales.  Also included in the download is a sam
ple scorecard of objectives for the HR business partner to Sales.



Earlier posts talked about how HR Business Partners can provide value to Sales. Consider this post as the ultimate résumé of an HR Business Partner to Sales.  HR business partners for sales organizations have a certain make up.  They should have certain skills and have sales knowledge.  Their scorecard has targets and activities distinct from other HR business partners. Sales leaders can use this post to hire their HR business partner.  HR business partners can use this post to become attractive to the sales organization.
Competencies to Support the Sales Organization
We find there are four key competencies an HR business partner to sales should have.  The downloadable tool contains more competencies to consider.

1. Customer focus – This refers also to the end customer, not just sales as an HR customer.  The effective HR business partner maintains a customer perspective.  This means that communications, discussions and other behaviors have the customer in mind.  It is an outward-in mentality balanced with the company position.  Through this, he/she can better understand the context of the sales reps role.  This helps them align with top sales reps.  For sales reps not yet using customer focus, appropriate training can be developed.
2. Drive for results – Top Sales Reps normally have a keen drive for results.  HR business partners with the same competency better understand sales Rep motivation.  By contrast, lacking this competency could cause bewilderment – the HR business partner doesn’t understand some Rep behaviors.
3. Discovery/problem definition – Sales Reps and HR business partners frequently need to discover issues.  Sales reps uncover customer issues and HR business partners work force or developmental issues.  If both roles have strong skills here, solutions come easier and with higher quality.
4. Social networking – Sales has definitely become more social.  In fact all roles have become more social.  HR business partners with advanced social agility understand how the sales organization must evolve.  Appropriate initiatives can be introduced to make the Sales Reps more social.
   Responsibilities in Supporting the Sales Organization
   
   Again the downloadable tool has a list with more responsibilities.  However, here are three critical responsibilities in supporting sales.
   
5. Stay on top of talent needs – One of the worst things for a sales leader is an open territory.  Be proactive in working with sales to keep territories filled.  Since buyers and Sellers are changing so quickly, keep the Rep role profile updated.  This will help both sales and HR in recruiting candidates.   Also stay in the loop with product and sales to know strategic changes.  Changes in strategy could require more or different talent in sales.  As well, understand through assessment the skill gaps that exist in the sales force.
6. Keep Learning and Development materials current – This requires a constant scan of sales and industry trends.  When you detect trends the same as skill gaps, ensure development of appropriate training.  You also have to stay abreast of new, applicable learning methods.  Leverage what works for your sales organization.
7. Own the sales onboarding program – This is critical for maintaining momentum if Sales Reps leave.  After initial implementation, ensure continuous improvement of the activities and learning content.  Even more importantly, continue to monitor Sales Manager use of the Onboarding program.

Sample Scorecard for the HR Business Partner to Sales
Here’s a sample scorecard to draw ideas from.  Use these activities and objectives to augment or replace existing scorecards.  Of course, the values you use should be appropriate for your company.  The downloadable tool has more line item ideas.

J.C. Penney Faces Brand Identity Crisis on Multiple Fronts

Like an awkward Hollywood love triangle, the J.C. Penney, Martha Stewart and Macy’s saga continued last week as the three fought over Justice Jeffrey K. Oing’s April 5^th decision to temporarily allow J.C. Penney to sell Martha Stewart-designed products under the JCP Everyday label.
Macy’s appealed the Justice’s decision, which temporarily blocked J.C. Penney until Thursday afternoon when the New York State Supreme Court Appellate Division ultimately denied the appeal, allowing J.C. Penney to move forward with selling Martha Stewart unbranded goods. (However, Macy’s already filed another appeal, so whether or not this sticks is to be determined.)
 Appeal or not, a favorable ruling isn’t necessarily a victory in the overall scheme of things for J.C. Penney. This battle has cost the company dearly, and I suspect members of executive leadership and shareholders are also realizing that more harm than good has come to the company and its brand.
 What is J.C. Penney Now?

Why Brand Experiences Matter

This year I made a promise to myself. Each week I would try something new that expanded my view and forced me to step out of my comfort zone in some way. In other words, I would become a collector of experiences. At first I started small, trying out new restaurants and then I moved into bigger things. I learned to surf one week. The next week I had dinner with a Buddhist monk in a Buddhist monastery. I tried out capoeira. I had my astrological chart read.
 I went to a saloon jazz club on my own. Each experience expanded my view and helped me grow as a strategist and a marketer.

As marketers, it is important for us to be able to empathize with multiple, diverse audiences. We need to understand their mind-set, their goals, their challenges and their lifestyle in order to shift perceptions and to help our clients’ brands resonate. In other words, we need to connect to our target audience’s lifestyle in a way that fits into their natural behaviors.
Here are some recent strong examples of connecting target audience interests to brand experience in unexpected industries:
 Sephora Sensorium recognized the need to connect the importance of scent with the value of tactile experiences. The “pop-up” museum set in the fashion-oriented meat-packing district of Manhattan mixed education and entertainment in an appealing manner for their fashion-conscious key target audience.
 To promote itself in reality life, online glasses retailer Warby Parker launched the Warby Parker Class Trip, an old yellow school bus retrofitted as a Warby Parker show room and taking a six-month cross-country road trip to nine cities. The pop-up shop is decked out to bring the brand and its vintage-inspired mode of transportation with a contemporary twist aesthetic to life for their hipster target.
Aloft’s Play and Stay campaign connected their guests’ love of music, their passion for discovering new talent, and their excitement for live performances with emerging music talent. The campaign enabled Aloft to further solidify the brand’s image as a brand that “gets” and celebrates the lifestyle of their guests through helping them explore music and find cool new artists.
 Connecting these dots is necessary for marketers to generate brand engagement and ultimately, loyalty. This approach remains especially important among harder-to-reach targets. For example, adidas needed to address the fact that sales of running shoes in France among its hard-to-reach target demographic of 14-to-19-year-olds were down. Through research they learned that not only did this target not like to run, but they were also so uninterested that they weren’t even trying on the shoe and were definitely not purchasing them. However, they also learned that this was an audience that loved action movies. Traditional ad campaigns weren’t resonating, but an out-of-the-box experience might. Partnering with Sid Lee, adidas realized the need to connect this love of action movies to the young audience’s Climacool shoes and created an experience that gave teenagers in France a reason to run — by making them the hero of their very own Mission Impossible-esque adventure. And the results show the success of focusing on the experience: adidas saw a 500 percent jump in Climacools tried during the campaign.

 So whether it’s adventure or astrology, it’s important for marketers to expand the brand experience. The only way to do this is to develop a real understanding of the target audience. So what are you planning on doing first? Maybe it’s time for that skydiving lesson, ceramics class or trip to the Cézanne exhibit.
 Judy Abel is a Senior Strategist at gyro New York.

Be Your Own Brand Champion - Or Get One Now

Whether your goals are to build your business brand or your personal brand, there is one role that you can’t afford to leave unfilled. That is the role of brand champion and brand guardian.
The best brands have a person who continually advocates the brand, guards the brand against negativity, protects the brand, and is the living embodiment of the brand promise. Well-known brand champions include:

• Hugh Hefner for Playboy
• J.K. Rowling for Harry Potter
• Steve Jobs for AppleWhen you think of Hugh Hefner, J.K. Rowling or Steve Jobs, you automatically think of the brands they champion. An immediate perception of the brand comes to mind when you hear any one of their names. They are three of the most powerful brand champions in the world.
  If you’re trying to build your personal brand, then you need to play the role of brand champion. You need to be your own best advocate. If you’re trying to build your business brand, then either you need to fill the role of brand champion or you need to find someone to fill it. Corporations are creating Chief Brand Officer positions in an effort to create internal brand champions and guardians. No matter what size your business is, you need someone in a similar role to ensure your brand is always going in the right direction.
  A brand can be an extremely valuable business asset. A powerful brand can sustain a company through micro- and macro-environmental challenges and can open new doors for growth. The Playboy brand is a perfect example. Who would have thought when the brand debuted in the 1950s that today it would survive thanks primarily to merchandise sales to women. Did you know that the vast majority of Playboy-branded merchandise is purchased by women? It’s true.
  
  Investing in your brand, being your own best brand champion, or hiring a brand champion should be strategic imperatives. Give consumers, colleagues, clients, business partners, and employees a brand they can believe in and advocate by demonstrating how important the brand promise truly is to you. After all, if you can’t demonstrate how much you believe in your brand, why should anyone else believe in it?
  Who do you think is the best brand champion? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Google To Pass News International In Traditional Media Spend

This little speech that Sir Martin Sorrell (head of WPP , one of the world’s largest ad agencies) gave contains a couple of interesting little factoids. The first one is obvious, if one is looking at what the businesses actually do, rather than how they do it. The other is something of a crossing point: where Google looks likely to pass News International in terms of traditional media spending.
The obvious point first:
The boss of Britain’s largest advertising company has slammed Google, Facebook and Twitter for being “media owners masquerading as tech companies”.
 I do regard Google as a media owner, yes. These are media owners masquerading as technology companies. Google sells Google, Facebook sells Facebook. Twitter sells Twitter.”Strip away the way that the companies do it and look at what it actually is that they do. The sell eyeballs to advertisers. And that’s really all they do in a business sense. In this they are exactly like any other ad supported business, like a newspaper or a TV station. So Sorrell is clearly correct here. Journalism is a way of filling in the gaps between the ads that pay to keep the newspaper in business. Sure, journalism is good too: but the business function is to bring eyeballs to see the ads. The same is true of TV shows: they’re to bring the eyeballs to see the ads in the gaps between the shows (or on American TV, the shows are in the gaps between the ads it sometimes feels like). So it is with search engines, blogging platforms and social media. As ad supported businesses what they do to attract the eyeballs is one thing, the business structure of depending upon attracting such eyeballs makes them very similar.


The other fun point he makes is that Google is now approaching News International in terms of traditional media spend:

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, said his company spent $2bn on buying advertising from Google last year, up 25 per cent from the previous year……….

These figures are only likely to increase, he said, predicting that by 2014 WPP will spend more on buying Google advertising than it currently does on purchasing space from Rupert Murdoch‘s media empire.

Of WPP’s $73bn annual advertising spend, News Corporation gets $2.5bn, more than any other company.

By traditional media spend here I’m not referring to spending in traditional media and obviously not to money spent by Google and News International respectively. Rather, to the way in which one of the traditional media bookers is now expecting to spend more on Google than on that most traditional of medias, newspapers and TV via News International. Sure, Google has created a new advertising market with AdWords, there are small companies out there that would never have entertained a traditional media campaign who will swear by the program. But when the advertising agencies themselves are expecting Google to become their largest supplier of ad space I would submit that we’re reaching something of a turning point.

New Glo Ambassadors

I told you guys a few weeks back that Glo has signed new ambassadors from the Nigerian music genre and will soon cut ties with some of their old ambassadors from Nollywood. These here are some of the ambassadors at Globacom office this week to collect their goody bags. From left: M.I, Omawumi, Lynxxx, Bez, Waje and Naeto C. Flavour and Burna Boy are missing in the photo..

Has D'banj signed Olamide to his record label, DB Records?

There have been rumours that D'banj has signed Olamide to his record label DB Records, but no official confirmation...well, until now. D'banj's younger brother, Kay Switch just welcomed Olamide to the family. Baddo is Olamide's nick name. The music star is currently in Atlanta with D'banj. They will perform at a show tomorrow at AYVA Centre in Houston.