Recap: Holland-Mark’s branding approach is based on the observation that people have a tendency to boil things down to One Simple Thing™ (“OST” for short.) We do this not only for brands (Volvo = Safety,) but for movies (Rocky = Inspired,) musical artists (Elvis = Rock & Roll,) and even political candidates. If you buy that theory (and let’s face it, you really should,) it’s important to remember there’s an upper limit on the complexity and nuance of any brand positioning strategy. Put simply… If you don’t choose an OST for the market, the market chooses an OST for you.

In this corner, Fairness

Barack Obama worked hard to own Change in an election where that was what people wanted, and as a result became the 44th President of the United States. As the incumbent this time around, he needs a new OST, and in last week’s State of the Union address we got a preview of where he’s headed in the re-positioning of Brand Obama.

President Obama painted himself as the optimistic populist last Tuesday night, but since those are both words only East Coast Intellectuals use, I’m going to go with Fairness. Where things have gone wrong, the President implied or flat-out stated that unfairness was to blame. Hapless consumers sold mortgages they couldn’t afford? Unfair. China keeping out US goods and services? Unfair. Billionaires with lower tax rates than their secretaries? Unfair, unfair, unfair.

Unfair is nice because nobody has to be the bad guy. Fairness is also a deeply held American value, and a concept just one heartbeat away from what the Obama camp expects to hear trumpeted from the other side: Competition. And on top of that, solving Unfair is pretty straightforward. Somebody powerful just needs to make things Fair, and that’s in many ways how Obama sees the role of the President.

Fairness is also a positive value, and the President was careful to strike a tone of optimism and confidence in touting his administration’s successes in stopping the economic death-spiral he inherited, the surging US auto industry, a breadcrumb trail of dead terrorists, and the ongoing inevitability of American exceptionalism.

And in this corner, Wrong Track

I was stricken immediately by the contrasting negativism of the GOP response, as offered by Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Where Obama’s wordcloud featured “right,” and “work,” and “new”; Daniel’s showcased ”wrong,” and “government,” and “must.” Such is the nature of the opposition, I guess, and there’s a pretty strong case to be made that America is in dire straights right now.

It’s also unclear whether the eventual GOP nominee will adopt the party’s OST, and depending on how things go in Florida today it might be a while before we even know which team will be choosing that OST.

History shows that in a struggle between an optimist and pessimist in an American election, though, the optimist usually wins. My bet is that the Republican nominee will be smart enough to know this, and that the obsessive Obama-bashing and doomsaying that’s characterized the primary will give way to a more positive message in the general election. This is especially true if the Spring and Summer bring a continuing thaw in consumer confidence, unemployment, and the economy as a whole.

But what will that message be? And will Obama need to pivot from Fairness in light of that challenge?

Stay tuned, sports fans. Stay tuned.

This post originally appeared on Bostinno.com on February 1st, 2012

We even do it for political candidates.

If you’d asked people immediately after the last Presidential election why they voted for Barack Obama, few would have cited specific attributes, anecdotes, or policies. Most people would have said one word: “Change.” Change was what people wanted after 8 years of George W. Bush, with the economy in shambles, our civil liberties in peril, and our reputation in tatters around the world. You can of course argue with that characterization, but you can’t argue that Change is the single idea the Obama campaign spent every nickel and minute on from the time he announced to the time he won. It was who he was by that November – an almost perfect vessel for the Change “One Simple Thing” (“OST” for short) – and as a result he ran away with the election against a man with objectively superior qualifications, who’d lacked focus and communications discipline from the word go.

Now we find ourselves 4 years later, and as a sitting President, Change is off the table for Barack & Co. So where will they go, re-positioning brand Obama for a weary, divided, and universally troubled electorate? How will the opposition respond? What will each side choose as their OST, or – in the case of candidates who lack the insight and discipline to choose – what OST will we the people assign to them?

This will be the first in a series of posts trying to answer these questions, and perhaps more importantly, to use this archetypal and epic battle to explore the power of positioning, the role of emotion, and the power of brands in the way YOUR customers “vote” for you, or somebody else.

Round I: The Early Republican Primaries

Let’s start with the drop-outs:

• Michelle Bachman shot for Conservative, but ended up Crazy thanks to that Newsweek cover shot. Buh-bye.
• Rick Perry’s OST? I’d say Texas. The Texas Economic Miracle, Texas social policy, Texas accent, Texas lack of squeamishness over killin’ bad guys win they jus’ need killin.’ This was dumb on a few levels, not the least of which was Ol’ Dubya himself. More than that, the rest of the country is a little dubious on Texas, so soon after Rick’s media close-up… adios, amigo.
• Jon Huntsman’s failure was never getting to an OST, never focusing his message enough to break through the noise. As a result he left himself open to the OSTs his rivals painted on him, the most sticky and deadly of which was, sadly for Jon, Moderate. And how’d that turn out? Zai zian, Jon.

This last dynamic is common in a political fight, and we’ll see it repeated over and over in the race this year. The game is not only to paint the right OST on yourself, but to paint a deadly OST on your opponent. More on this in later posts.

Winnowing of the above got us to the current field, which I’d handicap as follows:

• Ron Paul. Tricky, but I’d say he’s shooting for True, and ending up in the neighborhood of Purist. True doesn’t stick because most people don’t understand what he’s talking about. But you know he believes it, that he always has, and that he’s in no mood for compromise. Ron believes, whether he’s right or not. Hence Purist, which I don’t think is going to serve him well. We’ll see.
• Rick Santorum - Conservative. Period. We’ll see how that goes down in the GOP, but it’s a guaranteed loser in the general election. You heard it here.
• Mitt Romney’s OST is the easiest of the bunch, and it’s CEO. Mitt’s kind of come to terms with it, and is trying to leverage it as a credential for getting us out of the mess we’re in. Trouble is, most Americans don’t like CEOs. And most Republicans, it seems, don’t like Mitt.
• Newt Gingrich is another easy one: Fight. Newt is just spoiling for a fight, always. And you know… so are a lot of Republicans these days. It’s the only explanation for the Newt phenomenon, which the mainstream media seems still trying to unpack.

Getting the flow here? Am I right? And either way… What’s your take?

Stay tuned for next week’s installment: Round II: The State of the Union

This post originally appeared on bostinno.com on January 26, 2012.

Mike

There is a constant conversation taking place between marketers, strategists, creatives, and brands about the differences between branding for B2B and branding for B2C. There is the debate about color palette. (When in doubt, go blue!) What colors feel safe? What tone feels “business-y”? Is it okay to be serious and be clever?

To us, the truth lies in answering a question different from whether you’re a B2B company or a B2C company, but rather one that focuses on the individuals comprising the Bs and the Cs. Chris has often been heard remarking about the “magic consumer transition” that we sometimes believe takes place while commuting from home to work. The underlying consideration there is whether we truly do think that a CEO thinks or responds differently to words and visuals whether he’s behind a mahogany desk or taking a call from his (or her) deck on a sunny Saturday.

Focus for a moment on social media and the effect it’s had on the formality of our communication. There are no longer ivory towers or hallowed halls, and the businesses who continue to subscribe to this method of engagement (or lack of) are quickly losing share. As people we value warmth and competency as much in our business interactions as we do in our more colloquial, consumer lives. You may be drawn to the stability of specific bank, insurance company, or institution, but your experience is determined by the individuals you encounter within that organization, whether it be a teller, mortgage broker, financial planner, teacher, professor, or administrator. Individually they may present as buttoned-up business people, but behind the pleats and tweeds they are human beings who have a significant impact on the image and engagement of a brand.

Increasingly, we find that consumer loyalty and advocacy is built upon the relationships to individuals within an organization. Restaurants provide good food and a charming ambiance, but it’s the chef who stops by or the bar tender who chats with you while you wait for your dinner date who create that experience. There is no aspect of big M marketing that isn’t influenced by the blurred line between B and C. The way you position, message, and iterate product should focus on the one thing we all share: being human. Creating value for customers– both in communication and product– hinges upon understanding human nature above the nature of business.

There is no debate as to whether the rules are more stringent when you cross into B2B, but it has less to do with how people make decisions and more to do with red tape and legal constraints. The brand emerges when you find the humanity within your audience and then craft a story that appeals to them and passes the “business appropriate” test. It’s then the job of the organization to empower employees to embrace this balance and create experiences that are at once true to the brand and relevant to the customer.

Anecdotally, I live around the corner from one of the finest hotel chains in the world, the Taj. The brand stands for luxury and unparalleled experience. And while for guests this manifests in exquisite amenities and superb customer service, it’s adapted to meet the needs of the friends and neighbors of the hotel, as well. There’s no caviar offered as I pass by, but on a rainy day the staff is always ready with an umbrella, or a bottle of water when I jog by after working out. And this morning, after trying fruitlessly to hail a cab, it was a ride to work in their car service. So while I may not have the opportunity to lay my head upon those delightful pillows, or experience the luxury of tubs the size of my apartment, the luxury is tailored for me by a staff who knows my life and does everything they can to make it that much more luxurious.

Related articles

• Which Is The Best Business Model For Your Startup – B2B Or B2C? (entrepreneurs-journey.com)
• Why does B2B customer experience get the short shrift? (customerthink.com)

Here’s the full video of his presentation:

He left attendees with some time-tested advice about the value of being imperative: “all four of these things [relevance of offering, clarity of message, consistency of experience, and driving of engagement] must come together to create an imperative relationship with your customers or your prospective customers, and really the translation of all that is about getting to love. It’s about getting to a place where your customers don’t just buy what you’re selling, they actually promote what you’re selling to others just like them.”

Related articles:

http://masschallenge.org/blog/bootcamp-day-2-recap-points-clarity

http://bostinnovation.com/2011/06/30/inside-look-at-masschallenge-bootcamp-2011-photos-mcbootcamp/

Related articles

• One Simple Thing (talkofthecampus.wordpress.com)
• Social Business Bootcamp for Startups (oneforty.com)
• Are You Ready For The Next Social Media Marketing Boot Camp? (socialtimes.com)
• Former students pumping it up with MassChallenge (paulgsilva.wordpress.com)

The formulation we use includes the following elements:

• target – an actionable universe of buyers,
• segment – the key, predisposing attribute of likely buyers within the target,
• brand – a name you call yourself,
• category – a competitive frame that helps the buyer understand what you do,
• distinction – what makes you unique within that competitive frame, and
• proof – perceived evidence that your claim of distinction is true.

String those things together, and you get a blurb that looks like this:

For [target] who are [segment], [brand] provides the [category] with [distinction] because of [proof.]

Examples from established brands:

• - For drivers who value automotive performance, BMW provides luxury vehicles that deliver joy through German engineering.
• - For people around the world, Coca-Cola is the soft drink that is the real thing since 1886.
• - For industrial manufacturers who are challenged to differentiate, BASF is the raw materials supplier that makes products better through engineering depth.

Can you articulate the hypothesis of your startup – the core value proposition on which you’re betting your livelihood – in the form of a positioning statement like that? If so, can you get your team to agree on it? And if so… Does it hold water?

Give it a shot. Worst case, you’re likely than not to get some clarity from the attempt.

The dialogue boiled down to a debate about what marketing really is in a startup environment, and what it’s becoming more generally.

So what is marketing in a startup? Well, bottom line, it’s a lot more than advertising. Most people agreed, and yet the two words are often used interchangeably in the panel, as they so often are in the wild. When someone talks about how marketing doesn’t matter much for a startup, they’re really talking about marketing communications… the importance of which seems to have declined precipitously not only for startups, but for businesses and brands across the board.

5 Levers of Startup Marketing

Advertising – marketing communications, really – is just one lever of Marketing (note capital “M”) in a startup. And it’s often the least important one.

Inbound marketing, to borrow a phrase from the HubSpot juggernaut, is another lever. Call it social marketing, content marketing, blog/twitter/facebook marketing… It’s the place most startups begin, in large part because it’s powered by passion instead of cash. But more than a cheap advertising, it’s also a great toolkit for pulling the other 3 levers.

Lead generation, or more specifically Funnel Development is the third lever. Dave McClure put this idea on the table a while ago, and David Skok has since taken it to a whole new level of science. It’s rooted in the belief that marketing is really just a process of breaking the bottlenecks in your sales funnel. If you can instrument your marketing process in a way that finds those bottlenecks, then execute to bust them open, you win. It’s interesting to me how much momentum this idea seems to have in VC circles right now, and that’s probably equal parts because it works and because it’s reassuring to the engineering types that lead most startups.

The fourth, and I would say most important lever of startup marketing is Product Strategy. Alex Bogusky’s Baked In really brought this idea into focus for me, but it boils down to the idea that, today, your product is your most important marketing vehicle. It needs to tell your story in a way that resonates in the marketplace, and if it doesn’t, no amount of “bolt-on” marketing is going to solve the problem.

The fifth and final lever, and the one which polarized the audience most intensely, is that of Brand Strategy. On one hand was the cheap logo crowd, noting the availability of great crowdsourcing options where all you need to get a logo is a dream and a $100. On the other were those who felt equally strongly that understanding the emotional value proposition of your offering, and placing that at the core of your entire marketing program, is the absolute key to success.

I closed the panel with a variation on a simple question: If you had $10 to spend on marketing an early stage, tech-oriented B2C startup, how much of it would you spend in each of these five dimensions of Big M Marketing?

Answers from the panel and the audience varied widely. So what’s yours?

Related articles

• Startup Marketing Meetup (holland-mark.com)
• 12 great tips for digital media startups (from Startup 2011) (cyberjournalist.net)
• Meetup: How To Build A Sales & Marketing Machine (sellingthedogfood.com)
• Why I’m Never Going Back To Entrepreneurship (businessinsider.com)

6 months ago World Energy was a victim of it’s own success. They’d come to dominate the market for auction-based procurement, enabling companies to buy energy the way consumers buy loans on LendingTree.com. And to coin a phrase, “When energy suppliers compete, you win…”

Problem was that as the energy business became more complex, more diversified energy management companies started to paint World Energy as a one-trick pony. Drat.

Enter Holland-Mark. We helped them shift from a product-focused marketing model powered by insight, to an insight-focused marketing model enabled by products. We drove a dialog that created some raw but substantive intellectual property, and polished it into the “7 Levers of Energy Management.” From there we worked shoulder-to-shoulder with consulting team members inside the company to develop an online calculator that prospects could use to quantify their energy management upside, and tied it all together with a shiny new sales deck and the web site you see here.

The dynamic core of that site is a library of Resources focused on helping businesses understand how World Energy’s comprehensive approach to energy management can help them. And as always we made sure people can consume that content in the context of their choosing, via Twitter, LinkedIn, or RSS.

Behind the scenes is a listening station cued into the most influential voices in the energy business, Pardot’s lead management automation platform, and Salesforce.com to manage the workflow of leads through the inside and outside sales teams. Boom.

This one has been a real collaboration from day one, and I’ll be the first to say that Shellie, Dan, Melissa, and Phil are as responsible for this transformation as we are. But we’re happy to have been a part of the team that made it happen, and look forward to stretching the legs on this bad boy to see how it runs…