Integrated Brand » Parker LePla

New Year’s Resolution for brand community building: Stop procrastinating
January 29th, 2010

Social media yahta-yahta-yahta. I think the last time that the business world was overtaken so completely by one innovation was when computers started appearing on desktops a couple of decades ago. Social media is just as revolutionary and takes just as much planning to make it work for you. But it’s critical because it’s where brand communities are built. And it’s overwhelming.

Most of us don’t have the resources to pull off intricately orchestrated marketing campaigns like Coca-Cola’s Expedition 206 or for a full-time engager like Lee Aase, Mayo Clinic Social Media Manager .

I say, so what! You can do some Internet research on your own to see what’s going on in your market space and what (if anything) is being said about you. You can start a Facebook page and build it up over time. You can join the throngs on Twitter and tweet when there’s something relevant to say. Start with a goal, create a plan and then stick to it. Be realistic about how much resource you can devote—even if it’s only 2 hours a week.

Why now? Because the world isn’t going to come rushing to your door the minute you get engaged. Just like any new friendship, it’s built in phases. First you meet, then you go out for coffee. If there’s chemistry and they find you interesting enough, your new friend might invite you to meet some of their friends…and so it goes. Brand community-building is the same. One-by-one steps that deepen the relationship.

If you don’t get out there now, your competitors will be out there tempting your customers to have coffee with THEM. You’ll have to dive in at some point—so why wait?

Your friend, Beth Woolley

New Year’s Resolution for Trader Joe’s: Rethink Packaging
January 8th, 2010

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:

Reusable
Recyclable
Made from recycled materials
Biodegradable

Or, just avoid unnecessary packaging altogether. Happy 2010!

-Bianca Abate

Battle of the Brands: 2009’s Very Best
December 10th, 2009

We’ve handpicked this year’s best brands to bring you a list of our personal favorites—from coffee to the web and everything in between. Please join us as we get to the heart of their value and pick apart what makes them unique.

And to wrap up this series and ring in the New Year, we’ll review the shared commonalities between these brands to gather insight for 2010.

Murketing—viral marketing in a new disguise?
December 8th, 2009

How often does one market its products by not marketing them? When you are “murketing” them: murkily marketing. Pabst Blue Ribbon does it, Scion does it; even furniture makers are doing it . So is murketing the new viral marketing? Or is it a new beast?

I think it’s different. Murketing can only work a few times before people start looking for it, when it then becomes obvious marketing and loses its luster. Viral marketing, on the other hand, takes creativity or cleverness and uses that as the carrying meme; attention is the currency you pay for hearing the message, versus no message.

-Lynn Parker

Managing the dark side of social media
November 25th, 2009

A colleague of mine has a great printing company—having worked with many printers, they are the best of them all at customer service and helping people figure out the best way forward with their printing needs. So imagine a scenario when they made a mistake, and thought they had resolved the issue to the clients’ satisfaction, only to find out that the disgruntled client used every social media venue, from reviews on Dex and Google Maps to Yelp, to flame and rant.

This is the dark side of social media: the ability to really hurt a good company. So what are the best practices when your reputation is under attack?

First, listen. My friend, Kevin Sullivan of CCS Printing, said:

“I had no idea these reviews were on Google (maps) and being seen by hundreds of customers a month until I did a search yesterday and saw the low star rating. So we’ve probably been losing some opportunities for 90 days due to our lack of inspection on reviews online. So, multiple morals to the story; First, take care of problems promptly (very promptly), second, inspect your brand online everywhere all the time, and third, have a plan in place to drive positive reviews from your willing and happy customers. The vocal minority often seem to outshout the happy majority. Happy customers don’t feel a need to take the time to say good things. But they might if they were asked nicely. One unhappy customer can assume multiple online personalities and trash your brand if they are vindictive enough.”

Kevin went on these sites and explained the situation in a reasonable and transparent way, a good response to a negative event.

So, if you’ve used CCS and had a great experience, take a couple of minutes online to say so. And keep listening to what the market is saying—and respond when you need to.

-Lynn Parker

A Story of Personal Triumph from the Facebook Frontier
November 12th, 2009

bachelorette auction

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:

Created a Facebook event and sent out invites.
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)
Created fan pages for each bachelor/ette. See our example.
Created a landing page with bios to generate excitement.
Sent out reminder messages to people who accepted the Facebook event invitation.
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

Follow me on Twitter

Social media players must differentiate in order to survive
October 15th, 2009

According to a new report from Knowledge at Wharton, there is a shake out going on in the social media space. It will continue to happen, but what strikes me as important in all of this is that it is not just going to be about advances in technology. The players that survive and thrive are going to be the ones that differentiate and provide a user experience that people can’t get anywhere else. For instance, if MySpace wants to thrive (not merely survive like it has been), it needs to decide how it wants to be different from Facebook and then deliver that differentiated experience (like it currently does for the music scene).

-Jen Travis

Beware Sub-brand Fever
October 12th, 2009

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?

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.
Clarify (for both employees and consumers) the roles that the various brands play and how they interplay.
Lastly, use your website’s navigation as a visual guide to communicate this road map.

-Bianca Abate

Survey Drawing Winner
September 8th, 2009

Thank you to all who responded to the survey we posted on August 11th. We received some very insight responses and feedback and greatly appreciate the time and thoughtfulness of your responses. We’ll continue to address your thoughts and questions in this month’s blog posts and look forward to you joining the conversation.

As you know, respondents were entered into a drawing for a Flip Video Camera, and we are happy to announce that Jeff S. is our lucky winner. Thank you again to all respondents for participating in our survey!

Sincerely,
The staff at Parker LePla