Move over Reverend Wright, there’s a new controversy that has the country in an uproar. It’s the risqué photos taken of Disney’s “it girl” of the moment, Miley Cyrus, for next month’s issue of Vanity Fair. Yes, I’m aware that Rosie has already exhausted the issue on her video blog, Access Hollywood has covered every square inch of it and Keith Olbermann has even included it in his top ten. I, like everyone else in this country, have my own personal opinions on this issue. However, I wanted to share my thoughts from a brand manager perspective, so as to demonstrate just how important a consistent brand experience really is.

Miley Cyrus’s alter ego, Hannah Montana, seemed to explode out of nowhere. Parents were paying a fortune to get their hands on concert tickets and before we knew it, she had infiltrated every possible product marketed to the pre-teen audience. Why has she become so popular, so quickly? What I believe makes her so popular is that she is a breath of fresh air to parents everywhere, especially in an age of over-sexed, repeat rehabbing, young, Hollywood starlets. Parents love Cyrus because she acts her age, dresses appropriately and stays out of trouble. This good girl image is her brand and every decision she makes in her professional life should be in line with that brand. Although Annie Leibowitz’s photos of Cyrus were solely for artistic purposes, and one could argue whether or not they were in fact risqué, the finished product contradicts the Miley Cyrus brand. Cyrus’s decision to pose for these photos is inconsistent with her brand and thus the huge backlash from her fans and their parents. Can Cyrus reverse the damage that this decision has caused to her brand? If you were her brand manager, what would you do?

-Hiley Spaet

WalMart, SC Johnson and many other corporate juggernauts are building brand campaigns around their green-ness. Which, they are also trying to equate with social responsibility. Why not? It’s the “it” thing to be doing. It taps into the demand for natural, sustainable business practices and products. However, the untold stories behind these campaigns often paint a picture of stark contradiction. From unethical treatment of employees to products made from toxic chemicals, these companies don’t seem to understand that social responsibility is really an all or nothing effort. Because, if it’s not, you end up with a bifurcated brand that erodes over time due to a lack of clarity of purpose and credibility.

Let’s just all agree that corporate social responsibility is something you do rather than something you say. And, if you do say it, you better be doing it–from front office to back, and production to sales. Now, more than ever, consumers are going to call you out if don’t, because corporate social responsibility means more than green, it means integrity and ethics.

There are plenty of companies that don’t understand this, but what brands do you think do and are walking their talk of social responsibility?

–Jen Travis

Recently I did some spring shopping at my local mall.  I don’t love to shop, but I do enjoy people, so when the cashier began chatting with me I was happy to go along.  After a friendly opening gambit she asked if I’d like to use my store credit card or open an account and save 10%.  Since I realized this is part of her job, I simply smiled and said, “No thank you.”  She then totaled my bill and said I could save $15 RIGHT NOW if I opened an account.  I said no.  When she mentioned it a third time in the span of 90 seconds, I felt defensive and explained that having many credit cards can actually negatively impact one’s credit rating. She then began arguing this point with me, and gave me a big frown as I completed my transaction.  I won’t name the store, other than to mention that there was a huge GAP between my desire to shop and be treated in a friendly manner, and her desire to reap whatever incentive one gets for successfully foisting credit cards on unwary customers. 

Then I was on to a chain bookstore.  The clerk there tried, in much the same manner, to push his brand’s reward card on me.  Again, the main benefit - stated to me several times during our brief interaction - was to save money TODAY.  I escaped with my purchases and headed for my car wondering if customer loyalty programs are really creating loyal customers or just providing short-term financial gains at the long term expense of the brands that push them.  

Having worked in retail myself, I know salespeople have tough jobs.  They work long hours, often take a lot of crap, and, because they don’t get paid very well, it is ridiculously easy for management to incent specific behaviors via financial rewards and a teeny bit of training.  But in the case of both of these organizations, brand managers should think more carefully about what behavior they are incenting at the retail level, and how that behavior impacts customers’ experience of their brands.  In my case, the clothing store I was in had just undergone a major, likely incredibly expensive, remodel making it look much more upscale – no doubt with the goal of reframing my brand perception.  But instead, since I was treated like a wallet to be squeezed rather than an upscale shopper who appreciates good service, I was reminded why I don’t usually shop there.   

There is one retail clothing company successfully using their customer loyalty program in a way which enhances their brand.  Anthropologie just introduced a program that is benefits-oriented rather than discount-oriented.  The salespeople tell you one or two of its benefits at the register, and they don’t bully.  The benefits are compelling enough to stand on their own – like not having to keep track of your receipts for returns – and that’s it. 

My spring shopping lesson was that flouncy pastel skirts are in fashion.  So too should be aligning loyalty programs and retail sales staff’s incentives with core brand values. 

-Peggy Brown

I just read a post on the brand builder blog about the study that showed that air travel complaints are up 60% from the year before. For some reason, this post made me passionately angry. Not because I disagreed with it or felt that it was somehow unfair, but because I was fresh off an airplane with an airline that is cited in this study as being one of the worst in traveler dissatisfaction, and it made me want to tell everyone I know how horrible my flight experience was and then never book a flight with that airline again. This makes me think: how long can these airlines sustain this level of customer dissatisfaction?

Many airlines cite the rising cost of oil and the inability to raise fares comparable to these cost increases, causing them to cut staff, amentities and other service elements that make flying tolerable. OK. From a numbers standpoint that makes sense. Wait a minute. Then, how come other airlines such as Hawaiian and Southwest are able to deliver a positive brand experience within those same constraints? Take Hawaiian Airlines for instance. They have figured out that they are an important extension of their customer’s vacations and have designed their entire on and off-board experience around those positive associations. From their great customer service before you board to their in-flight videos of Hawaiian places and culture, free food (gasp), and their flight attendants’ flowery uniforms, they manage to create an atmosphere of peace and beauty on board a huge aircraft crowded with people. It’s simple really. They just took the time to understand what their customers were buying and then consistently delivered it, making them one of the most profitable airlines in business.

With Aloha Airlines, ATA and SkyBus going under this past week, an important lesson can be learned: if you focus more on the numbers than you do on your brand and your customers, you WILL end up taking a nose dive–it’s only a matter of when. Maybe all the short-sided airlines will weed themselves out and we’ll end up with only the best ones to choose from. Please let it be soon.

–Jen Travis

I’m a big fan of YouTube. I’ve always been impressed by the deluge of quality content put out by amateur video producers. As fun as it is, though, I never really thought about the business applications of YouTube until recently.

We all loved show-and-tell in Kindergarten. We got to see what cool new toys everyone else had, and I was always excited to see the newest Transformer my friends had. It was one thing to see a picture of the robot in a magazine, but hearing about all the cool things it could do and actually seeing it transform brought a sense of real-ness to the toy that no photograph could ever reproduce. I can tell you from personal experience that I was more likely to put something I saw in show-and-tell on my Christmas list than something I saw in a Toys-R-Us catalogue.

Things are pretty much the same now. Reading about the new Ford F-150 tells me it exists. Hearing about it on the radio further piques my interest. Watching Dirty Jobs’ Mike Rowe explain how strong the truck’s tow hooks are as it flies around a centrifuge at 60 miles per hour, though … wow …

YouTube gives you the ability to show your products in the same way on your company’s website. You can record a quick video on any camcorder and upload it to YouTube for free. Embedding the video on your website is remarkably easy, letting you integrate your demonstration into the already rich content your site already holds.

I get excited when I talk about the new things I get to do at work and I’m sure you feel the same way. Can you think of a better way to capture this energy and use it to excite your customers?

-Eric Mann

A recent blog post titled, Brand Work is No Job for Ad Agencies, made an interesting case for strategy separate from marketing communications. It got me thinking about a really basic question, are brand strategists even competing with ad agencies? What makes a brand strategy consultant different than an ad agency?

What makes where I work different from an advertising agency is the depth and reach of our brand work within a company. The brand strategy is a set of tools that a company will integrate into every aspect of what they do. It encompasses HR practices, decisions about new products and services, training and budgeting decisions, and even how they answer their phone. The visual identity and marketing campaigns flow from this as well, and in fact many of our clients come in through that door, but it is only a portion of what a company’s brand promise is. We are not trying to compete with advertising agencies but see them as vital partners when we get to that step.

~ Krista Joy Johnson

I came across an interesting article today that addressed “fear-based branding.”  You might find it to be an intriguing topic, too.

http://www.editorialemergency.com/content/view/181/51

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If there ever was a proof point for the importance of brand management, this is one. On the one hand, you have Yahoo! whose profits have fallen 23% just in the last quarter, and who has been all but replaced by Google in the search engine space. On the other, you have Microsoft. The behemoth whose efforts to join the search space have been thwarted by Google and who needs to make a sizable investment in an existing brand to even try to compete in this space. In today’s Business Week article, the author points out that Yahoo’s decline of Microsoft’s buyout offer is a highly risky move — one that may end the brand as we know it.

Maybe that’s a good thing. The brand as we used to know it was actually quite different. If you remember, Yahoo helped pioneer the search engine revolution, but with a different spin that they seemed to have forgotten: their communities. Yahoo built communities around search that started the whole Web 2.0 ball rolling. They offered one of the first examples of micro-targeting for advertising. They created brand evangelists that didn’t even know they were brand evangelists, just by being members of Yahoo sponsored affinity groups.

Their brand differentiation is still relevant today. Google hasn’t really gone down this road in a major way, and other search engines don’t have the brand equity that Yahoo has to become major players. Yahoo has both the brand equity and the momentum around their role as search community builder, that only they can really own this. It will require them to quickly reclaim this in a major way, but it is a way out of their free fall. By focusing on their core value and point of differentiation, they can demonstrate to Microsoft, Google and the world that they are still a brand to be reckoned with. But will they? That is the billion dollar question.

–Jen Travis

Heard of guilt by association? How about brand by association? We call it co-branding. No one understands this concept better than Barack Obama this week, securing the support of politico extraordinaires, the Kennedy family. In this case, their press announcement [read the Yahoo! announcement]was more than an endorsement—that’s Chuck Norris campaigning for Huckabee. This was the transfer of equity from one celebrated American hero to the next generation. This is saying there isn’t just a semblance of Kennedy in Obama’s tone, message and values; JFK’s own family thinks he’s the next best thing. This week marks, in our opinion, some of the best co-branding in American political history.

If you’re contemplating your company’s own version of the Kennedy family announcement, consider these questions:

What does this brand bring you in terms of awareness, distribution and credibility?
Does this potential partner bring more baggage than it does advantage?
How do we continue to build our own brand equity with customers in this partnership?

 -Briana Marrah

The question is whether your brand is a clearly structured asset to the company, or a confusing jumble of antiquated internal corporate practices.

In many cases, a company’s brand develops over time by pure accident and can, over time, become more of a liability than an asset.

Compare this with a clearly defined and managed brand. The enterprise’s entire decision-making process is more streamlined and on-track. Customers remain loyal to a company is seen a partner in their everyday lives. Competitors look at an ever-rising bar for performance and become less competitive as they mimic your success.

A more organically-grown brand can actually be damaging to corporate strategy. If you lack a solid description of your brand, you are a ship lost to a storm of market forces. Employees make decisions based on personal arguments inconsistent with long-term corporate goals. Customers are easily swayed by inferior products and brands that have more consistent communication strategies. Competitors who study you closely are likely to know more about what you plan to do than your managers.

An integrated brand helps drive your company from the present towards a future of sustained success and market leadership. It serves to both guide and structure decision-making and ensures tomorrow’s achievements actually accomplish today’s goals.

How proactive has your brand development process been? Do your employees represent your brand principles in every aspect of their work? Are your customers loyal because your brand aligns with their values? Does your competition follow your lead in the market?

-Eric Mann