I’m speaking at ACHE (American College of Healthcare Executives) in Chicago in a couple of weeks with client Neighborcare Health, on the subject of branding and how it can help smooth the merger process. Our key message? You can’t do successful fundraising or service delivery if the various clinics aren’t bought into the larger promise of the umbrella organization. And a branding process is a great way to get newly acquired clinics to see they share culture: they are all providing the same value, for the same reasons. At Neighborcare, branding helped the staff work together in harmony, with the benefits of more efficiencies, increased donor engagement, and better teamwork.

-Lynn Parker

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An epiphany is a sudden insight into reality—something you might have known all along, but simply didn’t see. It’s the big “aha!” moment clients have as a result of our work. One of our recent clients described it as, “Wow. It’s the first time I’m hearing it, but it’s like I’ve lived this all my life.”

How does the branding process uncover epiphanies?

Companies get entrenched in their thinking. They lose outsider perspective as cultural norms and groupthink take hold.

Branding, when you start with external research, brings in a new perspective about your organization’s value. There are all sorts of barriers keeping your brand from being its best: an organization’s bureaucracy, negative cultural norms, lack of focus. There’s something very elegant in how we help organizations make simple shifts to set them free.

That’s my favorite part about this job. Lifting the veil and delivering the epiphany to help organizations say, “Wow! That makes sense. A lot of sense.”

- Bianca Abate

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Trader Joe’s has carved out a strong niche in the market with their quirky, socially and nutritionally responsible brand that is best described by a fan who said:

“There’s this kind of feeling when you go there that you’re partaking in a sort of secret club.  Like you and the folks that run the store are kind of winking at each other, showing off little treasures found off the beaten path.”

Trader Joe’s delivers on this promise in almost every aspect, creating an atmosphere completely counter to that found in any super-chain grocery store.  Their easy-going spirit paired with their organic products offers an inexpensive choice that their target audiences—the health food segment, environmentally concerned, and the weekend gourmet chef— have been craving.  The perfect formula for creating die-hard brand loyalists.

My beef: Although they’ve mastered nutrition and fair trade, I’m disappointed by their excessive use of plastic and paper packaging.  What’s the purpose of wrapping three zucchinis on a small polystyrene tray and sealing it in plastic? To prevent a veggie coup d’état?

If your brand is based on a commitment to social responsibility, this sort of disconnect will only tarnish what you’ve worked so hard to create.

My New Year’s resolution for Trader Joe’s, and other brands alike, is to create a new standard of packaging that is:

1. Reusable
2. Recyclable
3. Made from recycled materials
4. Biodegradable

Or, just avoid unnecessary packaging altogether.  Happy 2010!

-Bianca Abate

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The brand that’s made me the happiest this year is Wolfgang’s Vault. I go there on a regular basis, often on Friday afternoons when I’m finishing up administrative tasks and need some ear candy. The more I listen, the more often I return. I’ve heard concerts by artists I wish I’d gone to and concerts from the same tours I saw “back in the day” by artists that hadn’t made it big yet. I started going to the site a couple of years ago to relive some great musical moments in my life—but now I’m getting much more.

I love that the Vault has branched out to newer artists and more recent concerts. Their A to Z list of performers is huge and inclusive, so I can experiment. There are artist interviews as well as concerts. There are lots of free downloads as well as ones you have to pay for. Plus concert listings in my area.

The website has improved steadily. It’s become increasingly easy to use and what Wolfgang’s Vault is adding, I’m enjoying. I must be in their target demographic—they’re hitting me in my soft spot and I love it!

What’s the brand lesson? Do one thing really well and build from there. Innovate around what you know and give your customers and fans an easy path to follow as you lead the way. If the substance is there and you demonstrate that you’re listening, you’ll keep your die-hards and win new ones.

Have a great 2010!

Beth Woolley

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I’m a member of BEAN, a scrappy young professional network constantly innovating new ways to make a positive difference in the community. We donate our time and effort to engage an often fickle demographic, 25-35 year olds, and as any thrifty club or nonprofit can relate,  it’s often a challenge to get the dollar bills flowing.

This year, we  learned about a local nonprofit called Roses and Rosemary that  supplies medication to HIV-positive orphans in Africa and decided to support their cause. With absolutely no budget, we focused our efforts on a fun event—a bachelor/bachelorette auction. Yes, we put ourselves on the auction block for a good cause and only used the web (because it’s free!) to spread the word.

The results?

We sold out 200 tickets within the first 20 minutes of opening the door and ended up raising $16,000. Not too shabby for $0 in marketing, no fancy ads, no press release—just a group of kids with a fun idea, some excitement and a lap top.

Here were our tactics, which can be easily mimicked by any nonprofit:

1. Created a Facebook event and sent out invites.
2. We each posted the event to our personal profiles periodically and talked it up. (To do this: A. Click the “share” link on the event page. B. Write a comment. C. Click the “share” button)
3. Created fan pages for each bachelor/ette. See our example.
4. Created a landing page with bios to generate excitement.
5. Sent out reminder messages to people who accepted the Facebook event invitation.
6. Posted on other free websites such as IloveSeattle.org, Craigslist, and Twitter.

Kudos to the TGAL committee, Roses and Rosemary and everyone who played a part!

–Bianca Abate

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A recent client of ours has almost twenty loosely related sub-brands, making their website difficult to navigate and leading to confusion in the marketplace.  The company was pushing the master brand, but consumers were left clueless as to what the master brand actually did and how it all fit together.

Purchasing decisions are complicated enough without making it hard for people to understand who you are and why you do it. If you can zero in on the specific role you play, you make the decision making process one step easier.  A defined brand strategy and brand architecture can enhance focus and clarity. As an added bonus, you can internally focus your budgets and energy more strategically.

So, how to get focused?

1. Ask yourself the fundamental questions of brand architecture:  is the right strategy to create a strong corporate brand or is it to create a portfolio of strong sub-brands—or a combo of both?  Always look at your brand architecture from the point of view of the customer, not how you are internally organized.
2. Clarify (for both employees and consumers) the roles that the various brands play and how they interplay.
3. Lastly, use your website’s navigation as a visual guide to communicate this road map.

-Bianca Abate

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Here are a couple of questions posed by takers of the online brand survey:

Would having an online forum at this stage of our development (early-stage startup) provide any value add for users visiting our website?

We are just starting to push our new solution. What should we be talking about to start building a community?

The sooner you engage customers, the better. If you can engage prospects—even more better. Value add will occur if you referee an honest dialog about your product/solution—which includes incorporating feedback into product development and customer service, and calling that out via online communications. When customers experience that their opinions and needs result in actions, they experience you as a full participant in their community. This tends to make them stick with you—and tell others about you in their online and offline travels.

That said, how do you start building that community? Community-building online is as much about where as it is about what. Here’s a good, high-level article on the subject: http://mashable.com/2009/08/25/whole-foods/. It doesn’t matter how big or small your organization is, the key is to focus in on where your audience hangs out and add value to those conversations (whether it’s commenting on someone else’s blog or starting a Facebook page for your business). You can’t control a brand community but you can help shape it by delivering something of value to its members.

Anyone out there have some additional suggestions? Please comment.

And, we’re closing the survey at noon Wednesday, 9/2—so if you want to get your two cents in and have a chance to win that Flip video camera, take a few minutes to complete the quiz (scroll down a couple of entries and you’ll see the whole thing).

Beth Woolley

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Hi IntegratedBrand.com members and readers!

Check out Briana Marrah and Joe LePla’s presentation from their recent workshop at the ALI’s Internal Branding Conference in Chicago.

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Everything most people need to know about branding, you can get in 156 marvelous pages in Branding Like the Big Boys, by Martin Thoma. One of the founders of Little Rock branding agency Thoma Thoma, Martin has written a succinct page-turner about one of the more confusing topics in marketing today. In clear language, filled with examples, he walks you through the whys and hows of successful branding, useful whether you’re a 10-person hair salon or a mega-corporation.

See more about Branding Like the Big Boys at http://www.brandinglikethebigboys.com/.

Watch my testimonial forBranding Like the Big Boys.

-Lynn Parker

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I met someone at a networking event who told me that branding couldn’t help him, because he was in a commodity market. In my belief system, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I said in my book, The Reluctant Entrepreneur, “If they can brand water, or salt, (and they have!) any company can find its unique approach, role in the market, or other secret sauce and build it into a competitive differentiation, even in markets where there are many people who buy on price.”

It just takes creativity, like CCS Printing, positioning itself as the guide to lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) printing, offering workshops, and using an Indiana Jones-like fedora image to demonstrate their consultative approach to ink on paper. Like Silver Cup Coffee, packaging their retail experience into products and services that take their coffee beans out of the commodity world. Like Ethos water that turns hydration into an act of philanthropy.

If you think you’re in a commodity market, I challenge you to question that assumption. Why do people buy from you, above and beyond your product and price? And even if they buy on price, why would your prospect choose you to supply the product?

-Lynn Parker

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