BRANDEblog

Extending Your Brand Through Your Careers Site

2012-01-24T12:37:00.002-05:00

After years spent studying how brands communicate their mission, vision, and values through messaging and design, here’s the Golden Rule: Whether speaking to shareholders, management, employees, new hires, or job applicants, a brand must be consistent and compelling to be effective.

You’ve seen how I’ve highlighted companies that make great use of branding. In contrast, here are two brands that might be missing great opportunities to extend their brand within their Career’s Site:

NBC Universal
NBCU is a media powerhouse with a century of history. Universal produced the classic 1930s horror films and has created some of most beloved film franchises of all time: Jaws, Back to the Future, Jurassic Park, and the Bourne movies. NBC’s contribution to television includes Friends, The Cosby Show, Cheers, Seinfeld, ER, and Law & Order – not counting the shows from its cable channels USA, SyFy, and Bravo. The combined company also includes five theme parks that feature attractions based on Harry Potter and Shrek.

With all that entertainment history, what might they show on their careers site? Are you thinking movie stars, rides, aliens, dinosaurs, or monsters? Nope. Just plain text.

Compare that to CBS, which provides five images of its entertainment properties.

Condé Nast
This publishing house brings you a wide array of magazines: Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Architectural Digest, Wired, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, to name a few. In all, Condé Nast publishes two dozen magazines that feature amazing photography, beautiful locations, and cutting-edge fashion. The titles cover architecture, food, and travel. The company must have millions of visual assets from almost 30 years of publishing.

So what images does Condé Nast show prospective employees on its careers site?

A single window of ten rotating images, which are supposed to evoke passion. I’ll let you decide.

What about your brand? Are you showcasing your brand’s assets on your careers site? Are you displaying your products, exhibiting your office space, presenting your history, or showing off your employees? What do applicants see when they first encounter your brand?

If not, we’d be happy to help. At Brandemix, we love branding.

Why State Farm is a Social Media Superstar

2012-01-16T11:40:00.000-05:00

As many of you know from my speaking engagements around the country, I like to discover brands that are using social media in innovative ways. I honor these organizations with the name “SoMe Superstars.” Recent winners include PepsiCo and Moleskine.

Today I’d like to recognize a company that’s using social media for recruiting: State Farm. I like how the insurance company recently rebranded with its clever “Magic Jingle” commercials, alongside funny ads featuring everything from falcons to giant robots. But the company has continued its transformation with a big push in social media and interactivity as well. Here are the three superstar ways that State Farm engages job applicants:

First, State Farm has a dedicated careers Facebook Page with more than 16,000 Likes, featuring lots of interesting content from both the corporate communications department and individual agents. Responses to questions and grievances usually come within 24 hours. The page’s admins go beyond typical stories of disaster recovery to include posts that are useful to job-seekers, such as asking “What’s the strangest thing you ever sent a recruiter?” and giving “Tips for networking at holiday parties.” This makes the Page a destination for anyone looking for employment, even outside the insurance field.

Second, the State Farm careers site includes eight videos under the title “See For Yourself.” These feature testimonials from agents and employees and great photography of the State Farm headquarters. The company offers a section called “Meet Our Interns,” with videos, written interviews, and “Advice and Guidance from Real Interns.” This is a powerful way to reach out to young people by providing content that’s educational but also fun. It also shows an awareness that Millenials would rather watch a video than read a long corporate mission statement.

Third, State Farm offers a unique interactive website, exploresfagency.com, which the company calls a “virtual job tryout with real-world scenarios.” Job-seekers are put in situations faced by real insurance agents, from marketing a new office and handling staff to dealing with customer complaints. There are no wrong answers; users simply pick the action they’d most likely take, and the one they’d least likely take, from four options. State Farm then evaluates what sort of agent they’d be. It’s a job preview unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

Finally, these career sites add to the overall State Farm online presence, which includes branded accounts on YouTube, Twitter, and Flickr – and an interesting Facebook Page called State Farm Nation, “where fans can get helpful tips, be inspired, and have fun connecting with others.” That Page has more than 1.3 million Likes.

What can you learn from State Farm? First, set up a dedicated careers site, preferably accompanied by a careers Facebook Page and Twitter profile. Then post content that’s useful to anyone looking for employment, not just posts about how great your organization is. Offer photos and videos, showing job-seekers what your office looks like and what your employees love about working there. And, if you really want to stand out, invest in something unique like State Farm Nation on Facebook or the revolutionary “Day in the Life” interactive site.

For communicating with talent in smart, fun, and interactive ways, I name State Farm Insurance a SoMe Superstar!

For the latest on social media, online recruiting, mobile marketing, and other branding trends, please like Brandemix on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and join our LinkedIn group, Your Digital Brand.

Four Signs You're Ready to Rebrand

2012-01-07T07:34:00.001-05:00

It’s January, the time of year to take stock of your business and goals for the year.

Besides upgrading your software or buying a new printer, you also should look at your branding. Whether you want to redesign your website, extend your brand into social media, or align your internal communications with your consumer advertising, January is a great time to launch a rebranding effort.

Are you ready to rebrand? There are four signs that you might be. Do any of these match your company’s situation?

Your focus has changed.

This often happens to small businesses. Sometimes the mission you had when you started the company no longer matches what you’re currently doing. Maybe you opened a deli but found that only cupcakes were selling, so you transitioned into a cupcake shop. Any of your previous branding that mentions, say, breakfast, no longer works…unless you invent a breakfast cupcake, for which I’d be the first in line!

Image via MrMalique.com

You have a new market or audience.

Perhaps you’re speaking to a new demographic now, which isn’t responding to your previous messaging. Both Farmers and State Farm insurance were known as solid, reliable – and boring. Both have launched new ad campaigns that add humor to the usual dire insurance company warnings. Both firms were founded in the 1920s, but realized that 90-year-old branding wasn’t speaking to consumers in 2012’s competitive marketplace.

There's been a merger, acquisition, or expansion.

Circumstances might be forcing you to rebrand. If your company merged with another, or was acquired, or launched a new division that modifies your core mission, you’ll need a new brand to reflect the change. Or perhaps your brand is too close to another’s, and you’re pre-emptively changing to avoid legal issues. Or maybe you need to shed some baggage, which is why Philip Morris became Altria or GMAC became Ally Bank.

It's been a while.

Sometimes branding just becomes stale. Some fonts and logos can become dated; maybe yours fell victim to what Marty Neumeier called the Great Swoosh Epidemic, when every company wanted a curved or circular icon. You may find that your logo doesn’t fit well in the icon space allowed by Twitter, or looks good onscreen but not on paper. These missteps are relatively easy to fix.

Image via Concept Genius

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, get ready to rebrand.

If you’ve never been through a corporate or employer rebranding effort, you may be asking yourself these questions:

How do I create a plan to rebrand?
How long will it take to rebrand?
How much will it cost to rebrand?
What is the ROI of a rebrand?

Unique goals and objectives make these questions hard to answer in general terms, but future blog articles will endeavor to add clarity to your quest. In the meantime, if rebranding is on your New Year's resolution list, get in touch with your friends in BRANDEland.

Happy 2012!

2011-12-28T14:59:00.000-05:00

2011-12-22T14:40:00.000-05:00

Have a happy and prosperous holiday season, from all of us here at Brandemix.

360: Does Your Brand Have What It Takes To Go The Distance?

2011-12-19T21:25:00.000-05:00

One Brand.

At Brandemix, it’s our vision. If you think it’s simple, think again.

Organizations, from healthcare non-profits to global financial firms, actually convey different messages to different audiences. These companies have one mission statement and set of values for employees, another for customers, yet another for shareholders, and possibly a fourth for talent they’re trying to attract. But some customers become applicants; some applicants become employees. Employees are also investors.

Put this in the new marketing landscape, where brands communicate globally to audiences 24 hours a day. It soon becomes obvious that a single, focused brand improves marketing, retention, recruiting, and return to shareholder.

Here’s how the process works:

Most people in your audience are customers first. We all know the reasons why branding is important in the general marketplace: it creates awareness, distinguishes you from competitors, and makes an emotional connection with buyers. Advertising has gone beyond answering questions like “What does the product do?” and now addresses “How does this product make me feel?” and “What does this product say about me?” Good branding creates loyalty and evangelism, as followers sing the brand’s praises to their friends through social networks. Look at the passion for Apple products, Ford Mustangs, or even Oreo cookies.

That love leads some customers to want to work for the brand.

Check your home page, then your careers page.

Is there a value proposition? Are the branding and messaging still the same? If not, that potential employee might wonder which identity is the “real” one – and suddenly the idea of working for your brand doesn’t sound so desirable. It’s crucial that the marketing and HR departments share the same vision and values; otherwise, job-seekers may feel like they’re applying for a position with Jekyll & Hyde.

You passed the first test, now what?

Let’s say that your careers site is branded perfectly and the employer value proposition is consistent with your corporate brand. The customer, who became an applicant, got the job and is now an employee. What happens now? Are they exposed to and trained with the same branding that made them love the company in the first place?

This is an important question; a recent study by Aon Hewitt showed that the companies with the most engaged employees outperformed the stock market in 2010, and the Harvard Service Profit Chain states that engaged employees result in a 22% increase in revenue. So the internal communications office must also be aligned with the HR and marketing departments.

“One Brand” ensures that your customers, employees, and business partners all share a core belief in your brand.

Did your brand go the distance—360 messaging consistent across internal, external, candidate, employee, investor, alumni, and vendor?

If your branding isn’t a singular, consistent message shared by your entire company, maybe it’s time to consider a re-branding effort. Brandemix can help.

This Week in Social Media

2011-12-12T12:47:00.000-05:00

Angry tweets ground Alec Baldwin
When an American Airlines flight attendant chastised Alec Baldwin for playing Words With Friends on his mobile phone as the plane was ready to depart, he immediately took his outrage to Twitter. “Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS while we sat at the gate, not moving. #nowonderamericaairisbankrupt,” he tweeted, referring to the airline’s November 29 bankruptcy filing. His verbal abuse of the flight attendant got him kicked off the plane, prompting him to tweet that American was “where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950’s find jobs as flight attendants.” American responded with a press release on its Facebook page, standing by its employees for following federal safety rules. Hours later, Baldwin suspended his Twitter account.

: Zynga shows its support for Baldwin

The Takeaway: This is another reminder not to tweet when you’re angry, as your words may come back to haunt you. Baldwin joins Ashton Kutcher, Gilbert Gottfried, and Chris Brown who were a little too candid on Twitter. I also find it funny that this entire episode couldn’t have happened a few years ago, before Twitter and Facebook and Words With Friends were invented.

Facebook’s most popular fashion brands are on your feet
The most-liked fashion brand on Facebook is Converse, with almost 21 million likes. This wasn’t a big surprise to me, as I covered the shoe company’s great social media efforts back in May. Second place goes to Adidas, third place to Burberry, and fourth place to Levi’s. I think it’s interesting that a luxury brand is nestled among two brands of footwear and a jeans company. Keep in mind that these are only fashion brands; the most-liked brand of any kind on Facebook is Coca-Cola, with over 36 million likes. Coke, after all, is the most valuable brand in the world.

The Takeaway: Converse does a lot right. Most of its tweets are responses to fans; its Facebook page is filled with great photo and video content; it reaches out to its artistic audience by offering free rentals of a Brooklyn recording studio; it posts music videos on its YouTube channel. CEO Geoff Cottrill’s philosophy is “Know yourself as a brand, be confident in your POV, and act that way wherever you are.” I couldn’t agree more.

Mexican restaurant tweets get spicy
An employee of a Boston restaurant tweeted that her job “sucks.” She then not only named her employer but also @replied it: “I work at this place called @boloco on Newbury Street.” Boloco CEO John Pepper tweeted back at her: “Sorry. Not anymore.” But Pepper took back his Twitter termination, giving the employee her job back without even a reprimand. “We’ll try to help her find more things to enjoy,” he told the Boston Herald. He may have been worried that the employee would sue over cause, or for being publicly humiliated; the law still isn’t very clear on these 21^st-century issues.

The Takeaway: As Alec Baldwin has learned, be careful what you tweet. That goes both for the unnamed Boloco employee and for the CEO, who both looked impulsive and juvenile to the entire Twitterverse. And check with a knowledgeable lawyer about hiring, firing, and interviewing via social media.

Students find safety in social media numbers
The power of social media was shown again during last Thursday’s shooting on the campus of Virginia Tech. The student newspaper, The Collegiate Times, provided updates on its website; when that went down (probably due to traffic volume), the student journalists spread information through the paper’s Twitter account and Facebook Page. As the news changed minute to minute, other outlets were breaking the story on Twitter.

The Takeaway: A number of posts were from students, alerting others to the danger or telling their friends and families that they were safe. Between the school communicating with students, students communicating with each other, and the press communicating with the public, it’s obvious how much social media’s speed and scope have changed our world.

The 5 Secrets of a Great Intranet

2011-12-04T16:48:00.000-05:00

What’s an intranet? A site where employees can read their about their benefits? A list of departmental phone numbers? A place where press releases go to die?

You’ve got it all wrong. A good intranet allows a company not just to inform and educate employees, but also to engage and inspire them. In a large enterprise, it might be the only way that employees connect with each other and the senior leaders. If you’re not using your intranet to build brand equity, you’re missing a crucial opportunity to improve employee engagement, satisfaction, and performance.

As the internet has evolved, the important characteristics of an intranet have changed. In fact, intranets don’t have to be accessible only on office computers – how about an intranet app that employees can access on their mobile phones?

To insure that you have an engaging and compelling intranet, make sure it has these five important elements:

Interactive
Intranets should allow communication from employees, not just to them. A weekly poll on the front page is a an easy, no-pressure way to get insights from your staff. A simple question like “How can we best improve our sales channel?” can lead to all sorts of interesting ideas.

Multimedia
It’s almost 2012 – is your intranet still just text? Employees can only look at copy for so long. You should include photos of the senior leadership team, audio of the CEO’s speeches, and videos of company events. You might even allow employees to post their own photos and videos of company parties or field trips. Facebook’s own bloggers have said that sharing pictures is one of the most popular activities on the social network.

: Effective intranets engage employees.

Timely
Nothing turns employees off like old news. No matter what exciting content the site has, if an employee sees “Get ready for Election Day 2008!” they won’t take the intranet seriously. Update the site at least once a month; once a week would be preferable. “Breaking news,” such as an employee getting a major reward through the recognition program, can keep employees checking the site frequently.

Organized
You’re going to archive a lot of information on an intranet: benefits information, press releases, company directory, HR documents. But if the employees can’t find the information, the intranet is useless. Have a robust search system that lets users quickly get what they need. Place navigation at both the top and the bottom, with clear and simple drop-down menus. Use the front-page poll to ask employees what information they’re having trouble finding and rearrange the navigation accordingly.

Customizable
All our favorite sites are personalized, from Yahoo homepages that show local weather to sports sites that feature our favorite teams. Make sure that one section of your intranet home screen has a section that employees can personalize with their preferred links. Someone may want to see the company’s stock price while another might want to see how many sick days they have left. A “quick links” section not only saves the employees time; it also gives them a sense of ownership for the page.

: Time to "reconstruct" your intranet?

At BRANDEMiX, we apply the principles of branding to employer branding, which covers the entire experience. If you’d like to learn how we can create or improve your intranet, visit our website or call 212-947-1001.

For the latest on social media, online recruiting, mobile marketing, and other branding trends, please like BRANDEMiX on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and join our LinkedIn group, Your Digital Brand.

A Very Augmented-Reality Christmas

2011-11-23T12:15:00.002-05:00

The holiday season means big marketing campaigns that often feature cutting-edge technology. I recently wrote about Starbucks’ cool Cup Magic promotion, which uses augmented reality to bring the coffee chain’s products to life. Other brands are using AR to grab attention at the end of 2011. Here are a few, along with the reasons I admire them.

Chanel
The famous French fashion label is promoting its J12 line of watches with an iPad and iPhone app that includes an augmented reality feature. By holding their phones over their wrists, or by holding their wrists up to their iPad cameras, shoppers can virtually try on the luxury watches.

Why I like it: Many prospective customers are too intimidated to go into a store and try on Chanel watches. Augmented reality makes it easy to see what these gorgeous timepieces look like on your wrist. And seeing yourself wearing a Chanel product is a powerful motivator for purchase. Studies have shown that if you touch a product or try it on, you’re more likely to buy it.

Bratz
The Masquerade line of Bratz dolls comes with one mask for the doll and another for the child. The mask launches an augmented reality feature on the Bratz website. While looking at herself via a webcam, the girl can get a “virtual makeover,” adding lipstick, face paint, and a wig to her masked look. The image can then be saved, shared, and printed.

Why I like it: No toy has ever included an interactive element like this, so it stands alone in the holiday gift marketplace. Also, it lets girls play with makeup without any mess!

Debenhams Stores
This British department store added a gaming element to AR. Shoppers visited one of five pop-up stores and used an app to find ten “invisible” party dresses. Once they did, they could take a picture of themselves virtually “wearing” the dresses and then share the photos with friends.

Why I like it: Turning shopping into a game is one great idea. Letting shoppers see what they look like in the dresses is another, since it increases the likelihood of a purchase. And a third great idea was that anyone using the app received a 20% discount on the Debenhams mobile site, which encouraged participation and drove awareness of mobile shopping – a big trend for 2012.

Macy’s
Our Herald Square neighbors have a fun interactive promotion for the holidays that ties in to their “Believe” campaign, benefitting the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Shoppers download an app and point their phones at an in-store camera. The result is a photo that includes a character from the charming animated special Yes, Virginia. The photo can then be shared on Facebook or through a holiday e-card. Shoppers can even post the image on the Macy’s Facebook Page. Each week, whichever photo gets the most “Likes” will become Macy’s Facebook profile picture for that week.

Why I like it: Obviously this campaign brings kids into the store, but the Facebook photo competition keeps the promotion alive days after you’ve left. In fact, you don’t even have to visit the store to participate: by printing out a marker and pointing the app at it, you can see an animation of Virginia ice skating.

Get ready for more AR campaigns as the technology improves, the price comes down, and agencies come up with more exciting ways to use it. Until then, have a happy Thanksgiving and a very augmented-reality Christmas!

P.S. Speaking of Macy’s, we’d like to wish good luck to Katie, our Director of Client Services, who will be a handler for the Uncle Sam balloon in tomorrow’s parade. Stay warm!

: photo by Kevin Harber

Giving Back at Thanksgiving - With Kiva

2011-11-21T10:55:00.003-05:00

All it takes is one person to believe in you.

Organizations across America have believed in BRANDEMiX to develop branded communications that attract, educate, and engage their target audiences.

During this time of year, we feel it’s important to give thanks for that trust and to give back as well. That’s why we make regular contributions to Kiva, a nonprofit organization that enables people like you and me to extend microloans over the web to low-income entrepreneurs in impoverished communities, whether as far away as Africa or as close as Detroit and New Orleans.

We chose Kiva out of many other microlending sites because eighty percent of its recipients are women, who are sometimes single-handedly supporting large families. As a certified woman-owned business enterprise, we believe in strengthening women around the world.

No matter how difficult our lives at the moment, people are suffering far more in many places – too many – across the world. Please take the time to visit www.kiva.org and give to the worthy cause of your choice. It’s not charity; it’s a loan, and more than 98% of Kiva recipients repay the loan with interest.

Lending through Kiva creates desperately needed capital in some of the poorest parts of the globe. It bypasses corrupt governments and predatory banks and ensures that the money goes directly to those who will use it. When the loan is repaid, you can give the money to another entrepreneur, donate it to Kiva’s general fund, or simply withdraw it. It’s a great way to give.

We hope you’ll join our efforts to fight poverty around the world and here in the US. From all of us here at BRANDEMiX, happy Thanksgiving.

Five Reasons Why Starbucks' Cup Magic Is Truly Magical

2011-11-14T11:42:00.002-05:00

You may have read about “Cup Magic,” Starbucks’ augmented reality holiday promotion, but if not, here’s the scoop.

Caffeine lovers are encouraged to download a free app, buy a cup of coffee, and point their smartphone at the character on the cup. Through the magic of augmented reality, the characters come to life, acting out holiday scenes such as sledding and ice skating.

Here’s why BRANDEMiX believes augmented reality will be a major advertising trend for 2012:

It’s social. The Starbucks app easily allows you to share the animations through either Facebook or email. So even people who don’t know about the promotion, or even consciously ignore Starbucks advertising, may find a fun little holiday video in their Facebook feed. Starbucks is letting customers do its marketing.

It’s great for business. Since each Starbucks cup features only one character, customers must buy at least five cups of coffee to see them all. Then again, even non-drinkers can get into the fun, as 47 Starbucks products are involved in the promotion.

It’s great for everyone. Let’s face it, Starbucks doesn’t offer many items for little ones; many locations sell biscottis instead of cookies. With this new promotion, anyone of any age can enjoy the experience. In fact, since the videos have no dialogue, you don’t even have to speak English.

It creates urgency. Assuming the promotion runs through New Year’s Day, that means customers have 47 days to experience it. A short timeline encourages consumers to visit their Starbucks as soon as possible (though some of us wouldn’t last 47 hours without our Frappucino). Compare this to summer promotions, where consumers sometimes have more than 125 days to participate. More time means less urgency.

It’s fun. There are no coupons, discounts, or special offers associated with the campaign. It doesn’t even cost anything to participate, since the app is free and you can activate videos on products that are just sitting on the shelves. Keeping money out of the equation reinforces the idea that the promotion is for fun and for sharing with friends, a perfect theme for the holidays.

: Photo by Liam Gladdy

Starbucks is proving to be a leader in the mobile space. The company’s payment app, which launched in January, has already been used in more than 20 million transactions. Its QR codes give customers an “evolved shopping experience,” letting them hear music from the region where Starbucks coffee is grown or read reviews from coffee experts. Cup Magic looks like it will continue Starbucks’ exploration of mobile technology. What’s next?

Why Your Brand Needs To Be On Tumblr -- And Why It Doesn't

2011-11-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

At BRANDEMiX, when we advise clients on digital branding, we encourage them to create accounts on the Four Essential Profiles: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. However, a fifth social network may be emerging. According to Alexa, it recently cracked the top 50 most popular sites in the world, and the top 25 in the US. The site is Tumblr.

Tumblr is a free, short-form blogging service that combines the publishing ability of WordPress with the social aspects of Facebook and Twitter. Since Tumblr doesn’t replace these other platforms, anyone can use it, whether or not they have another web presence. In fact, Tumblr’s emphasis on short posts make it attractive to brands who aren’t blogging.

But the service is not without its problems – or its controversy. So should you create a “tumbleblog” in this quickly growing community? It depends on your brand, your audience, and your needs.

Why Your Brand Needs To Be On Tumblr

It’s Easy

Easy to set up and easy to use. Yes, even easier than WordPress. The interface is intuitive. It’s no trouble to customize with Tumblr’s variety of themes – or your own, if you know some HTML. You can publish content via email, mobile, or through a bookmarklet in your browser, so you can post new material or share a discovery from anywhere. Tumblr hosts text, photos, video, audio, and links, so if you’re new to social media or don’t have time for elaborate layouts, Tumblr is perfect for you.

It’s Social

Tumblr allows readers to “like” a post, similar to Facebook, or to “reblog” it, similar to a retweet on Twitter. Users can follow other blogs, creating a single content feed like both Facebook and Twitter. Tumblr users love the site’s community, sharing a creative sensibility that you don’t see on other social networks. It’s a great place to engage an involved audience.

It’s Young

According to comScore, 29% of its users are aged 18-24. 20% are aged 25-34 and 20% are 12-17. And the numbers are growing: from 4.2 million visitors in July 2010 to 13.4 million in July 2011. So if your brand is targeting those age groups, you should stake your claim on Tumblr.

It Hosts Some Big Names

Brands with a lot of assets and content are wildly popular on Tumblr. Fashion brands in particular seem to thrive there, including J. Crew, Kate Spade, andAnn Taylor. In fact, Tumblr hosted a special New York Fashion Week page, sending 20 of its most popular fashion bloggers (such as What I Wore’s Jessica Quirk) to cover all the major events. Media companies and publishers are also using Tumblr, from Comedy Central to The Today Show, and from Rolling Stone to Newsweek.

Why Your Brand Doesn’t Need To Be On Tumblr

It Doesn’t Offer Analytics

Tumblr’s dashboard doesn’t include any sort of tracking. How many likes did one of your posts get? How many times was it reblogged? You actually have to go to each of your posts and count the actions by hand. Google Analytics and Site Meter only partly solve the problem because they can’t track Tumblr’s internal links. If you need hard numbers that can be analyzed on a spreadsheet, Tumblr may not be for you.

It’s Not That Social

There are no comments on Tumblr. You can add a sort of semi-comment “note” or reblog someone’s post on your own blog, but you can’t have a real dialogue with visitors or other Tumblr users. Facebook and Twitter, and even Google+, know the importance of conversing and sharing, but Tumblr simply isn’t designed that way. If you want to truly engage your audience, you might find Tumblr disappointing.

It’s Too Young

Almost 70% of Tumbler users are 34 or under, including 20% who are 17 or under. After that, the numbers drop as the ages go up. If your brand is a luxury product or is aimed at middle-aged or senior consumers, Tumblr’s audience simply isn’t there.

It Has Angered Some Big Names

Remember those top fashion Tumblr bloggers covering New York Fashion Week 2011? Tumblr actually charged the designers for coverage, asking for up to $350,000 for promoted content, even though the bloggers didn’t actually work for Tumblr. Based on an expected one million impressions for the week, this meant a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $70, compared to $3 to be featured on the front page of the New York Times website. As I mentioned, Tumblr couldn’t even provide designers with advanced analytics to see if their spend was justified.

Tumblr is simple to use, growing in popularity, and attracting some big brands. It also skews very young, presents problems for marketers, and has some frustrating limitations. Is it right for your brand? That’s up to you. But whether it ends in success or failure, I’m pretty sure the Tumblr story has a long way to go.

Social Media PR Disasters: Moleksine's Logo Contest Has No Winners

2011-10-31T09:12:00.007-04:00

Unlike some of my past examples of social media crises, this disaster is unfolding right now. To my amazement, it’s happening to one of the brands that, just three months ago, I honored as a SoMe Superstar. Let’s see how the mighty have fallen.

The Brand
Moleskine

102,000 Facebook likes
14,000 followers on Twitter
571,000 views on YouTube

The Incident
Through its encouragement via social media, the Italy-based maker of journals and notebooks had built a loyal fan base of writers and artists, eager to share their work and their love of the brand. This combination of brand affinity and design skills seemed to make a perfect environment for a design contest. So on October 10, 2011, Moleskine announced a competition for a new logo. The winner would receive 5,000 euro (about $7,000), but Moleskine would retain the rights to all the entries, allowing it to choose a different logo in the future.

The Problem
While many brands find success with similar contests, such as Doritos asking for fans to create Super Bowl commercials, Moleskine didn’t seem to realize that spec work is a contentious issue in the design community, even more so in this difficult economy. And this competition was definitely spec work, since thousands of designers who didn’t win would be working for free and giving up their copyrights. Moleskine was essentially asking its fans to do their regular 9-to-5 work, for free. Even worse, the contest “devalue[d] the role of the designer and the client-designer relationship,” said ad agency New Kind in a post titledBetrayed by the Brand. “When a company runs a contest like this, it sends a message that a brand is little more than a logo…that can be designed by anyone regardless of their level of knowledge of you and your brand.”

The Response
The backlash was immediate and fierce. Comments on Moleskine’s Facebook wall included “This is unethical,” “Shame on you, Moleskine,” and “I will never buy another Moleskine product again.” On Friday, Moleskine made matters worse by issuing a clarification, without apologizing, that basically said, “Other companies are doing this. If you don’t like it, don’t enter.” As you can imagine, the fans became outraged, to the point that Moleskine began deleting angry comments from the wall. The following Monday, Moleskine posted another response, which began, “Let’s start by apologizing for being so late with our reply” – though fans weren’t complaining about punctuality. The post went on to say “It has never been our purpose to exploit any of the authors” and “we made a mistake.” But Moleskine’s only action was to change a single contest rule, saying it would retain the copyright of just the winner, instead of all the entries. The competition would go on, without apology.

The Result
The competition’s deadline is November 10, and Moleskine seems to have no intention of canceling its inexpensive crowdsourcing strategy and hiring a professional designer. As one commenter put it, “I don't see how someone would actually desire to win this ‘contest’ now. You would certainly not be well-received in the design community.” The backlash continues on Twitter and the Moleskine official site.

The Takeaway
How can you avoid Moleskine’s week of disastrous social media PR?

- Know Your Audience
Moleskine knew it had a following of artists but it didn’t seem to know that community’s harsh feelings towards crowdsourcing and spec work. While this attitude wouldn’t necessarily come up in a customer survey, Moleskine has multiple channels where it could have tested the waters. One tweet like “How would you feel about a logo design contest?” could have shown the notebook company that its fan base was against the idea, avoiding this social media disaster with one click.

- Fix The Problem
The company’s responses have been consistently unsatisfying. For five days, Moleskine did nothing. Then it offered a brusque statement that showed no compromise or remorse. Instead of engaging the commenters, it never mentioned the matter on Twitter and began deleting critical comments on Facebook. Finally, it posted a semi-apology and changed one contest rule, never addressing the issue of the contest itself. That latest post has 71 comments, but Moleskine itself hasn’t entered the conversation.

- Friends Can Become Foes
Hell hath no fury like a fan scorned. Moleskine had built a passionate audience…but that passion is now aimed against the brand. Just because people love you doesn’t mean that they’ll love everything you do. Moleskine fans feel truly betrayed. The latest posts on Facebook talk seriously about a boycott, with commenters promoting notebooks from Moleskine competitors Piccadillyand Canson. Still, Moleskine remains silent.

Can Moleskine win back its fans? If the contest goes on, how will the fans treat the winner? How did a company with so many active social media channels fail at all of them at once? The fallout from this social media PR disaster should be very interesting.

Is Facebook About to Offer Free Job Listings?

2011-10-24T12:14:00.000-04:00

I recently predicted that Facebook will eventually destroy LinkedIn. Today, that prediction came closer to reality as the world’s largest social network announced a partnership with national employment services and the US Department of Labor. According to Facebook’s official statement, the Social Jobs Partnership goal will be “to facilitate employment for America’s jobless through the use of social networks.”

Facebook has launched a page, facebook.com/socialjobs, which features resources and information for job seekers from the coalition’s other partners: The National Association of Colleges and Employers, the DirectEmployers Association, and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, along with the Labor Department. Facebook plans to create public service announcements to promote its services in the ten states with the highest unemployment rates, which, according to CNN Money, are Michigan, Rhode Island, California, South Carolina, Oregon, Nevada, North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska, and Florida.

Included in Facebook’s list of initiatives is this intriguing item: “The partnership will explore and develop systems for delivering job postings virally through Facebook at no charge.” Does that mean Facebook will officially enter the job-search market? If so, well, Mashable’s Sarah Kessler put it bluntly: “A job board that lives on Facebook could put the social network in direct competition with sites like LinkedIn and Monster.com.”

LinkedIn already faces challenges from Monster-owned BeKnown and the startup BranchOut, which have launched recruiting applications for Facebook. If Facebook itself gets into the game, it may make LinkedIn irrelevant even before my 2013 prediction.

And that’s just the start of the dominos falling. Monster would find itself in a particularly strange position as its host starts directly competing against it. Monster may drop its Facebook application and return to its own site – but if that strategy was working, why did it approach Facebook at all? Craigslist would also stand to suffer if Facebook allows free job listings, because the social network could offer more focused targeting than Craigslist’s city sections do. BranchOut, with no corporate “parent,” may simply disappear.

When Mashable’s Kessler pressed Facebook on this important matter, a spokesman told her, “We’re going to invest in research in new technologies that will deliver jobs virally at no charge and expand opportunities for people to create social job searching experiences online.”

That one sentence may alter the future of four different corporations and the entire online recruiting world. You know where I stand; what’s your prediction?

Google+ or Minus?

2011-10-16T19:53:00.000-04:00

Do you have a Google+ account? 40 million people do, according to Google CEO Larry Page. But are you using it? That’s a very different question. Metrics, trends, and public opinion are all showing that Google’s new social network simply hasn’t caught on.

Let’s look at the numbers. Data analytics company Chitika has shown that, after a huge increase in traffic when Google+ went public on September 20, traffic has since dropped back down to the same level as when the service was available only by invitation. This means that a lot of people activated their account, which was particularly easy for Gmail users, but haven’t gone back to the site since.

Perhaps most telling is that Google’s own management team barely uses the service. Mashable’s Ben Parr wrote a brilliant piece breaking down the involvement of Google’s senior leadership. In the first three months of Google+’s existence, CEO Page had only posted seven times; co-founder Sergey Brin had posted 12. Eleven executives, including executive chairman Eric Schmidt, hadn’t posted anything at all. By contrast, Mark Zuckerberg is very active on Facebook and Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has tweeted thousand of times. Schmidt finally broke his Google+ silence with a post about Steve Jobs’ death, 107 days after the service launched.

An informal Twitter poll from ReadWriteWeb asked followers why they weren’t using Google+. Some people responded that their friends weren’t on it, which seems to be a cyclical argument. Others echoed Romit Mehta, who responded, “Twitter is good for ‘fast, real time’ and Facebook is where my friends and family are. G+ solves no problem.”

: Image courtesy of Kenny Strawn

A Google search of “I love Google Plus” returns 207,000 results. “I like Google Plus” gets 1.18 million results. “I don’t like Google Plus” returns 300,000 results, while “I hate Google Plus” returns 20,700 results. My conclusion? While more than a million people like the service, more people don’t like it than love it. And 10,000 people hate it. (These ratios were about the same when I searched for “Google+” instead of “Google Plus.”)

How about one of my favorite topics – mobile? Google+ does indeed come as an iPhone app. The latest version, released October 4, has only 39 votes (not much interest) and a rating of three stars out of five (not much love). One reviewer wrote, “Is it really THAT hard for a HUGE company like Google to make an iPad native version?” Google seems to be missing opportunities at every turn.

Here’s my personal experience with Google+. I have ten “friends” in different circles. Since I joined on July 9 (three weeks after launch, thank you), my stream has a total of six posts by four people. One of those posts is a notification that a friend changed her profile photo. These are people who regularly update their Facebook, Twitter, or both. They’re just not using Google+.

At BRANDEMiX, we recommend that our clients spend an hour a day on social media, which includes Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Is Google+ currently worth that commitment? I have to say no. Will it ever be? That’s the 64-billion-dollar question.

The Business of Design

2011-10-09T18:06:00.000-04:00

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

If you've seen my presentation on Social Media Marketing, you already know what's happening every 20 minutes on Facebook. Today, have a look at what's going on every 60 seconds on the web. Integrate that with real life and the more than 5,000 marketing messages consumers receive each day and you can understand why design disruption is the holy grail of the digital world.

In my homage to Steve Jobs, who the New York Times called a Designer first and a CEO second, lets look at some web design trends and how his genius has sparked them.

No Flash. Since Jobs banished it from the iPods, iPads and iPhones, HTML5 has replaced Flash as the simplest way to code interactivity and motion. According to Jobs: "Flash was created during the PC era -- for PCs and mice... the mobile era is about low power devices, touch interfaces and open web standards -- all areas where Flash falls short."

No Fold. Speaking of falling short, remember when important web content used to be placed above the fold- the imaginary bottom of your 19' computer screen, before you had to start scrolling down? Again, thanks to Jobs' tablets and mobile screens, single page sites and massive images are a better way to make impressions that disrupt.

Beyond Arial. If you've been following the accolades and anecdotes this week, you might have learned that Jobs took calligraphy class during his brief stint at college. As such, the Mac brought fonts to the masses. Thankfully we are moving away from the handful of fonts that web browsers support into more glorious, custom typography that adds style and grace to a digital brand effort.

Just as you can't move forward with an interactive strategy before having a business strategy, you need to capture attention to create buy-in. In today's fragmented digital world, that gets harder and harder to do. Kudos to Jobs who through zealous attention to the details in design, put the emotional connection into interactive.

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” -- Steve Jobs

Make a Better BRANDEblog

2011-10-09T17:59:00.007-04:00

Does Mobile Gaming Increase Sales?

2011-10-03T12:24:00.000-04:00

The recent Business Development Institute conference that Jason attended featured a number of presentations about mobile gaming. With mobile gaming sales reaching $5.6 billion in 2010, everyone agrees that mobile games are fun, popular, and profitable. However, I think there’s still one question that remains unanswered: Do mobile games actually increase sales?

In 2010, Volkswagen unveiled a driving game called Real Racing GTI to promote their new car. It was “the first time someone launched a car on mobile,” according to Daniel Rosen, the head of AKQA Mobile. The game was downloaded over 6 million times and was the #1 free app in 36 countries. But did it move the needle? AKQA reports that Real Racing GTI led to “over 80% increase in sales leads, test drives and quote requests.” They, and Volkswagen, attributed more than 200 car sales to the campaign.

So there’s one example of mobile gaming increasing sales; here’s another. Jason wrote about RadioShack’s Holiday Hero campaign, in which players could unlock a 20% discount by checking in on Foursquare at locations connected to superheroes, such as a gym. The campaign was backed by funny commercials and videos of holiday shoppers in capes and tights. When the promotion was over, RadioShack found that Foursquare users spent 350% more than the average RadioShack customer during the Christmas season.

Mobile gaming can work for cars and consumer electronics. How about shoes? Fresh Networks ran a Foursquare campaign in London for Jimmy Choo, calledthe Trainer Hunt. Foursquare allowed a pair of Jimmy Choo trainer shoes to check in at trendy spots around the city. Any Foursquare user who checked in at the same location before the trainers left received a pair of shoes in any style or size. The mobile game became a real-time treasure hunt. The result? During the campaign, daily trainer sales increased 33%.

Speaking of treasure hunts, mobile game maker SCVNGR has achieved success with its Diamond Dashes, citywide quests for a diamond engagement ring. SCVNGR has brought this technology to communities in North Carolina, Montana, and Philadelphia, among others. The marketing company claims that its fun, romantic searches brought “positive TV, print, radio, internet and word of mouth attention” to its retail partners. But what about sales? SCVNGR’s case study provides impressive numbers in Facebook Likes and website traffic, but is silent on financial matters. Still, I bet that all that news coverage of laughing couples chasing clues and solving puzzles was probably worth thousands of dollars in advertising.

After all this research, I’m prepared to say that mobile gaming can, in fact, increase sales. From sports cars to RC cars, and from footwear to diamonds, a number of different brands (and ad agencies) have found measurable success with mobile games. My agency is excited about this technology and working on several mobile projects for different clients. If you want to learn more, or share your own mobile gaming story, then post a comment, tweet us @BRANDEMiX, or write on our Facebook wall.

Getting Socially Mobile at BDI

2011-09-26T10:00:00.000-04:00

As Director of Interactive Branding at BRANDEMiX, I attended the Mobile Social Communications 2011 conference, presented by the Business Development Institute. This fascinating event featured both case studies and roundtable discussions about how brands are achieving their business goals by using mobile social strategies and new mobile platforms in their marketing campaigns.

For those who couldn’t make it, I’ll recap the highlights. There were some very cool insights, important lessons, and fun facts that I’d like to pass along.

Corcoran and Foursquare: Check Out A Neighborhood Before You Move In

Matthew Shadbolt from the Corcoran Group started things off. His real estate company’s goal: going “beyond the four walls” in providing apartment information. Since the most important part of real estate is location, Corcoran partnered with Foursquare to provide New York City neighborhood tips, submitted by residents, to help homebuyers determine if a particular area was right for them. This would let homebuyers “shop like a local, find hidden dining gems for restaurants, [and] seek out local deals and coupons.” Shadbolt made clear that this information was aimed not at tourists but at residents and newcomers. Many real estate sites show you what it’s like to live in a particular house; Corcoran now shows you what it’s like when you step outside.

The lesson: Foursquare wasn’t designed with real estate in mind, but Corcoran saw the potential in combining local reviews and apartment shopping. I’m sure that a number of real estate companies, especially in New York, will follow Corcoran’s lead.

Fun fact: According to the National Association of Realtors, 90% of people start their home search online, “months before speaking to an agent.”

American Express OPEN: Promoting Small Business Over Thanksgiving Weekend

Laura Fink from American Express OPEN showed us how the company is reaching out to small businesses. AmEx created Small Business Saturday, a movement to make the Saturday after Thanksgiving a day of patronizing local, brick-and-mortar businesses. Fink pointed out that Black Friday is for the big box retailers, and Cyber Monday is for online stores, but no one is championing the mom-and-pop shops, which are especially vulnerable in this economy. SBS was promoted through a website and Facebook Page. The first Small Business Saturday, last year, brought a significant increase in sales to small businesses, and American Express is hoping to keep the momentum this year. It’s a great idea—and how many corporations have created a national holiday?

The lesson: Since any American Express cardmember who spends at least $25 on Small Business Saturday also earns a $25 statement credit, the card company is backing up its message with actual savings. American Express, consumers, and small business owners all win.

Fun fact: 41 elected officials, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, declared November 27, 2010, Small Business Saturday.

Foursquare and RadioShack: Rewarding Users For Checking In Somewhere Else

Not surprisingly, Foursquare came up frequently at this conference on mobile social media. Here, Eric Freidman talked about RadioShack’s Holiday Hero campaign during Christmas 2010. A month before the big day, users could earn the badge by checking in at two “Holiday Hotspots”: gyms (where superheroes stay fit), coffee shops (where they recharge), and transit locations (“where they can zoom to unknown destinations”). Anyone who unlocked the Holiday Hero badge received 20% off their RadioShack purchase. This marked the first time a retailer had issued a badge that led to a store discount. RadioShack has embraced Foursquare for some time: mayors of individual RadioShack stores receive a 20% discount, while just checking in gets users a discount of 10%.

The lesson: I think this is a perfect example of “gamification,” using game-design techniques to engage consumers. Lots of businesses offer discounts for users who check in, but RadioShack rewarded users for checking in to places other than RadioShack. This shows just how compelling game mechanics can be.

Fun fact: During the Holiday Hero promotion, Foursquare users spent 350% more at RadioShack than the average customer, making the campaign was a heroic success.

I’ll have to save the other informative speakers for another post. Thanks to the Business Development Institute’s Special Events Coordinator Jennifer Brous, Director of Events Maria Feola-Magro, and CEO Steve Etzler for a great event.

Social Media PR Disaster: Too Fat to Fly

2011-09-19T11:37:00.031-04:00

I’ve received great feedback on my series of Social Media PR Disasters. This week, let's look at the lessons learned from last year's "Too Fat to Fly” incident involving one of BRANDEMiX fav brands: Southwest Airlines.

The Brand: Southwest Airlines

Over 12 million monthly visits to its website
Over 1.1 million Twitter followers
1.6 million Facebook likes

The Backstory: In February 2010, the irreverent filmmaker Kevin Smith was removed from an Oakland-to-Burbank Southwest flight because, the airline claimed, he violated the company’s size policy and would have to buy a second seat, which wasn’t available on that flight. Smith replied that he could put both arm rests down, proving that he hadn’t violated the policy. One flight attendant told him that the captain himself had deemed Smith a “safety risk.” After removing Smith, Southwest offered him a $100 voucher, which he said was little compensation for being humiliated in front of the entire plane.

The Backlash: Smith immediately took to Twitter, where he has 1.8 million followers—about 700,00 more than Southwest Airlines itself. In more than 200 posts, Smith was merciless to Southwest, calling them “the Greyhound of the Air” in one of his less crude tweets. He said the airline tagged him as "Too Fat to Fly," likening his case to discrimination. He also spent hours recounting the story on his podcast, exposing thousands more of his fans to Southwest’s controversial actions.

: Kevin Smith tweeted this humorous photo on his next Southwest flight

The Response: Just as Smith’s fans took up the cause, Southwest's fans made sure to alert the company via Twitter. Southwest responded with tweets like “Hey folks – trust me, I saw the tweets from @ThatKevinSmith I’ll get all the details and handle accordingly! Thanks for your concerns!”

The airline then misstepped by issuing a statement on its blog, which included the line, “Mr. Smith originally purchased two Southwest seats on a flight from Oakland to Burbank – as he’s been known to do when traveling on Southwest.” This is the filmmaker’s private travel information, which the airline released without his approval.

The Result: Linda Rutherford, Southwest’s Vice President of Communications, spoke to Smith on the phone and personally apologized. She posted an entry on the airline’s blog stating “I for one have learned a lot today. The communication among our employees was not as sharp as it should have been and it’s apparent that Southwest could have handled this situation differently. Thanks, Kevin, for your passion around this topic.” However, Rutherford also contradicted the earlier claim that the captain had singled out Smith as a safety risk, illustrating that communication among Southwest did indeed need improving. Between Smith’s rabid fan base and Southwest’s continued stumbling, CNET called the incident “about the worst scenario imaginable” for the airline.

: Southwest Airlines' official blog

The Takeaway: So what lessons can be learned form the incident that Kevin Smith called “Too Fat to Fly”?

- Be Prepared

Smith’s flight was on a Saturday, and he began tweeting about the problem as he waited for the next flight (on Southwest, in fact) and while he was in the air. Imagine almost 48 hours of uncontested bad press if no one at Southwest had been monitoring the company’s Twitter feed or Google Alerts until Monday. Luckily, a marketing rep was on social media duty and mounted an initial response very quickly.

- Train the PR Department in Customer Service – and Vice-Versa

Where does customer service end and public relations begin? Customer service, previously a private interaction between a company and an individual, now takes place in public, via Twitter and Facebook, and in real time. Southwest’s PR team needed to coordinate with the customer service department in order to evaluate the problem. If the two divisions are destined to become one, your company would benefit from cross-training.

- Admit When You’re Wrong

It soon became clear how much Southwest mishandled the situation. The airline claimed that the pilot made the decision to remove Smith, when in reality the pilot never saw him; it said that Smith’s seatmates complained, when they actually never spoke up; and it claimed that Smith violated its size policy, when he didn’t. Southwest thus had little choice but to apologize. “I told him we made a mistake in trying to board him as a standby passenger and then remove him. And I told him we were sorry,” Communications VP Rutherford wrote in her blog. For his part, Smith described Rutherford as “very sweet, warmly compassionate, and apologetic.” Sometimes the high road is the only road to take.

Read my recent article about what happened when Chevrolet gave a little too much power to its critics and faced a similar Social Media PR Disaster.

Campus Recruiting? Remember, It's One Big Brand.

2011-09-13T08:07:00.001-04:00

In honor of back to school time, let’s check out what’s new on campus. I’ve long-advised clients who desire to keep ahead of the technology curve to follow the trends in campus student enrollment. Now there’s another reason to head back to school.

If your responsible for your company’s campus recruiting efforts, Natasha Singer’s recent article for the New York Times is a must-read. The story highlights ways companies are using student Brand Ambassadors to promote products and services, and generate loyalty via social media, in-store events, and on-campus buzz.

Traditional marketing efforts like print advertising and TV spots are yielding fewer and fewer tangible results, but did you know that this fall, an estimated 10,000 American college students will be working on hundreds of campuses as Brand Ambassadors?

By illustration, Singer’s article cites efforts from three American Eagle student marketers who solicited 50 volunteers to take part in a move-in event at the University of North Carolina. Wearing A.E. Move-In Crew T-shirts, they helped with lifting boxes, handing out swag, and creating a welcoming branded experience for new arrivals, as just one of AE’s 50-campus events.

Target opened up its wallets for a freshman welcome dinner, and its doors for a private late-night shopping experience, complete with DJs and dancing through the aisles.

Mr. Youth, a youth marketing agency, published its list of brands who were best at communicating with freshmen. They included Nike (design your own shoes), Xbox (engage, connect and compete with your friends), and of course Apple (‘nuf said.)

So advice to the campus recruiting teams: Plan together and plan ahead.

Check in with your marketing department and find out if they are launching any guerilla marketing events on the college campuses. If yes, get in on it. If no, this is where you can shine. Help them plan something and then work together (isn’t that a great concept) to promote a seamless brand experience from consumer through employee. Give them the list of your target schools (you have that right?) and start there.
Work to infuse an employer value proposition that is aligned with the consumer value proposition into all your messages, and don’t sound like anyone else.
Make sure you’re careers site has been recently refreshed, is up-to-date and mobile friendly (QR tags are optional), and your social media sites are integrated with your career/jobs information.

Remember: the brands that swim together,win together.

The Latest in Social Media for Retailers

2011-09-05T07:01:00.002-04:00

With the big Labor Day shopping weekend behind us and retailers already planning for the holiday season, I thought I’d spend this week’s blog looking at the recent developments in social media for retail.

Not Such A Great Deal?
The biggest news came from Facebook, which eliminated its Deals feature after only four months. Just a few days later, Yelp announced that it was scaling back its Daily Deals service, cutting that department’s sales force in half. These unexpected moves signaled that the trend of retailers using daily deals and online coupons may have peaked, probably due to market saturation. MSNBC’s Technolog says consumers are suffering from “daily deals fatigue,” citing a 7% decline in industry revenue between June and July.

: Image courtesy of Yipit

Social Media Isn’t Going Anywhere
But retailers aren’t giving up on social media. A recent survey conducted by audience research company Bizo revealed that 65% of retail marketing executives think social media is “most important” for the upcoming shopping seasons. And 96% thought that social media marketing is more important, or as important, to their marketing in 2011 versus 2010.

Does that mean social media marketing leads to sales? In the Bizo survey, 41% of respondents said the most important aspect of social media was simply “creating general awareness.” In fact, only 14% had actually tracked the business results of their social media efforts. So many companies are finding it either difficult (likely) or undesirable (unlikely) to measure social marketing’s effect on their sales.

QR is OK
Meanwhile, mobile marketing is growing. ComScore, a digital analytics company, just released the results of a study on mobile QR code scanning. Almost 40% of the 14 million Americans who scanned codes on their phones in June did so from a retail store. 25% scanned a code from a grocery store and 8% scanned from a restaurant. That’s more than ten million people using mobile technology to enhance their shopping experience in just 30 days.

When Customers Play, Retailers Win
Retailers are also using mobile games to drive sales. The iMedia Connection blog recently listed 15 ways brands are using gamification, such as points and rewards, to increase business. Several retailers made the list, including Target, which uses the ShopKick mobile app to incentivize shopping. Customers receive points when they enter a participating store and when they scan select product barcodes. Customers can then redeem the points for Target gift cards. A number of other retailers, including Home Depot and Sephora, are using a similar app calledCheckPoints.

So deal-of-the-day websites are declining while QR codes and mobile discount games are on the rise. Looking ahead, retailers should beware “daily deals fatigue” and concentrate on loyalty programs, scannable in-store codes, and ways to “gamify” their shopping experiences. The next step in this mobile retail evolution is the exciting world of augmented reality – but that’s a topic for another day.

Use Employer Branding Secrets to Create Your Personal Brand

2011-08-29T10:26:00.000-04:00

Employer branding. It distinguishes an organization from its competitors and makes itself irresistible to job applicants. As I’ve traveled around the country teaching companies how to create employer brands that attract top talent, I couldn’t help but wonder: What if job applicants applied the same strategies to build their personal brand?

How can they stand out in the marketplace? What is their unique value proposition that will get them in the door of top organizations? No surprise, I’ve found that the same rules apply.

1. Determine your mission. Forget for a moment about job titles and experience. What can you do well? What do you want to do? After all, plenty of branding is aspirational.

2. Decide how you stand out. Next come the differentiators. I discover these through research and focus groups, and you’ll have to be as honest with yourself as those groups are with me. What are the four or five things that set you apart from everyone who else wants to be, say, Director of Sales at Disney Consumer Products? Perhaps your experience points overwhelmingly in the direction you want to go, which is a great advantage. If not, what other skills could be applicable? Be candid about both your strengths and weaknesses; you may be surprised about which is which.

3. State your case. After the research, I create a single-minded proposition that encapsulates all the differentiators in a cohesive way. How do you want employers to perceive you? Maybe instead of a marketing manager; you’re a “communications specialist with international experience”? Or, instead of a receptionist, you are a “Director of First Impressions.” How about conveying your passion for accounting by branding yourself “I love numbers”? Or flaunt your credentials, such as “Serving entertainment clients like HBO and Paramount for over a decade.” Whatever you decide, your brands should match your mission, summarize your differentiators, and convey a concise yet big idea to employers.

4. Spread the word. Lastly, a brand identity has to be visually compelling. You can use a number of free or low-cost tools to do this. Create a logo or find a headshot and use it on everything from your Facebook profile to your business cards. If you’re looking for a job in environmental engineering and brand yourself as “The Green Technician,” you should create a Twitter profile with that name. Make sure your brand is not just visible but highlighted on your Facebook and LinkedIn profiles. Join professional and affinity groups on LinkedIn as well, or even form a group of your own!

: Stand out from the crowd!

If you have a blog or a Tumblr, re-design it to match your new brand. Buy www.[yourname].com, and the domain of your brand (if it’s short enough), so internet searches for your name will bring up your brand, and vice-versa.

A distinctive, credible, engaging personal brand will put you at a great advantage over your competition. Follow these steps for creating an employee brand and start attracting top companies today!

Facebook vs. LinkedIn: Round 2

2011-08-22T08:17:00.000-04:00

I’ve been overwhelmed by the response to my prediction that Facebook will destroy LinkedIn. The debate has continued on the article’s comments page, on Twitter, and on the Recruiting Animal radio show.

: Image courtesy of Gino21410

I’d like to address some of the many good points made on both sides of the issue.

In the comments at ERE.net, Martin Snyder wrote “For my part, I don’t think social is in the DNA of LinkedIn (or they could have BEEN Facebook)” and concludes that “Products and services that enable that evolution will thrive, and recruiting, or the act of hooking up people and opportunity, will be more and more central to everything.”

I agree. Facebook combines social interactions, openness to third-party apps, and brand engagement to create a very compelling environment for recruiters. LinkedIn has many of the same capabilities, but little apparent willingness to innovate.

Which leads me to my next point. Andy Headworth of Sirona Consulting, who calls my post “utter rubbish,” pointed out that “BeKnown didn't choose to bypass LinkedIn; it had its API access revoked by LinkedIn because they were trying to use the valuable LinkedIn data to populate the BeKnown personal profiles via Facebook.”

So LinkedIn wasn’t just bypassed by Monster, it actively chased Monster away? That’s a perfect example of LinkedIn’s lack of vision. That decision to cede an innovation to not just one but two rivals may go down in corporate history alongside Borders’ decision in 2001 to let Amazon handle the store’s online book business. Ten years later, who came out on top?

Even recruiters who don’t agree with my prediction that LinkedIn will be irrelevant by the end of 2013 still see that the professional site is in trouble.

In an article titled “Why Facebook Will Not Destroy LinkedIn,” LatinOcean founder Jorge Albinagorta wrote, “I am not saying it will never happen; rather I am arguing that the social links – which can nurture professional links (e.g. I want to work at Adidas ‘cause I love the brand, and my cousin tells me training for salespeople is great) – are at this stage a huge haystack to look for needles.” He goes on to add, “I am looking forward to seeing a network, environment, app, etc. giving LinkedIn a run for its money.”

On the lively and entertaining Recruiting Animal show, I was challenged about numbers. “Animal” suggested that many of Facebook’s 750 million users weren’t of working age or lived outside the US. Let’s take a closer look.

According to CheckFacebook.com, a daily tracker for the social network, 153 million users are in the United States. LinkedIn states that 60 million of its members are US residents. So Facebook provides an American audience more than two and half times as large as LinkedIn.

According to the Pew Research Center, more than 24 million American Facebook users are between the ages of 18-22, the demographic either thinking about internships or summer jobs, or about to enter the workforce. The same study says 3.6 million American LinkedIn users are between the ages of 18-22. Facebook wins by a margin of more than six to one.

Factor in the National Association of Colleges and Employers survey of 20,000 graduating seniors. Ninety-one percent had Facebook pages; only 32% had LinkedIn pages. How will LinkedIn capture that other 59% as they enter the job market? What is LinkedIn doing to appeal to them? If they do nothing, won’t those grads just stay on Facebook and conduct their job searches from there?

: Image courtesy of Kazukiokumura

As bleak a picture as I’ve painted, however, many think LinkedIn still has a chance. Fellow ERE.net blogger Ernest Feiteira wrote that “[Facebook] is not LinkedIn’s real competitor. BranchOut or BeKnown are. If LinkedIn realizes this too and they launch an app on FB, LinkedIn will wipe out BranchOut, BeKnown and other LinkedIn clones.”

Is LinkedIn up to the challenge? Will Facebook let its opportunity slip away? Can Google+ change the game? The conversation continues.

Why Facebook Will Destroy LinkedIn

2011-08-16T13:09:00.000-04:00

This week, the Wall Street Journal published a story by Joe Light that highlighted certain employers, such as Waste Management, finding more recruitment success on Facebook than on LinkedIn.

“Facebook hires account for less than 1% of the total hires companies are making,” Light noted, quoting Jobs2Web’s recent analysis. “But if current growth trends continue, Facebook could rival traditional job boards in 2012.”

But it isn’t just the job boards that should be worried; Facebook will destroy LinkedIn, too. Here’s why:

LinkedIn has 120 million members; Facebook has 750 million. Employers understand the concept of fishing where the fish are.

The perception that Facebook is made up of flaky teenagers while LinkedIn includes only business professionals is wrong; the two sites’ average ages are just two years apart (38 for Facebook, 40 for LinkedIn). So there are plenty of 30-somethings on Facebook with years of work experience who are considering a career change.

LinkedIn is under attack by a major job board. In June, Monster launched BeKnown, an application that turns Facebook into a recruiting platform. It has 760,000 active monthly users after just two months. Instead of joining forces with LinkedIn, Monster chose to bypass the professional site and ally itself with Facebook.

LinkedIn is also drawing fire from a startup. BranchOut, founded by former SuperFan CEO Rick Marini, is a similar application with 2.7million monthly users. Like BeKnown, BranchOut overlays employer information on top of the Facebook interface while shielding personal data (like embarrassing photos) from recruiters’ eyes. The success of these apps shows that millions of job seekers don’t want to leave their favorite website when looking for work.

LinkedIn can’t compete with Facebook’s social marketing. A major part of job searching involves personal references and word of mouth. Facebook is designed for just such interactions, as its “Recommended Pages” on a user’s home page shows. Instead of “Three friends like Pepsi,” users might soon see “Three friends applied to work at PepsiCo.” This sort of peer-to-peer marketing, effective in virtually every other field, will be impossible to duplicate on LinkedIn.

Facebook has more people, spending more time on the site, using innovative technology and getting personal referrals. LinkedIn has only its reputation and clean—bordering on empty—interface. I predict 2011 will be a tough year for the professional networking site. 2012 will be brutal. And, sometime in 2013, Facebook will finally destroy LinkedIn.

Social Media PR Disasters: The ’07 Chevy Tahoe

2011-08-08T12:20:00.006-04:00

In today’s digital world, customers now have access to the same mass communication tools once enjoyed by newspapers and TV networks, allowing regular people to broadcast their messages to the world. And sometimes those messages aren’t very positive.

How do brands respond? My ongoing series of Social Media PR Disasters finds the lessons not only in brands’ failures but also their successes. Today I’ll show you how a brand deftly navigated a disaster and came out looking both smart authentic.

The Brand

Chevrolet

The Incident

In 2006, Chevy promoted its 2007 Tahoe by posting video clips of the SUV, along with graphics and music, and invited fans to create their own commercials. The car company assumed the interactive element would draw a lot of participation, and that anyone who made a video would promote it to their friends.

The Problem

The editing application allowed users to create text that accompanied the images. Critics of SUVs’ notoriously low gas mileage and poor environmental impact began crafting commercials with captions like “We deforested the hills and strip-mined our mountains,” and linking Chevrolet to the Iraq War. The fact that these attacks accompanied official Chevy imagery made the commentary brutally effective.

The Response

As the negative videos became more popular than the positive ones, Chevy’s marketing team had to decide whether to pull them off the site. To its credit, the company chose not to take any action. A spokesperson told the New York Times: “We anticipated that there would be critical submissions. You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it’s part of playing in this space.”

The Result

The carmaker claimed that 20,000 positive videos were made, compared to 400 negative ones. By allowing the latter to stay online, Chevy silenced critics who would have certainly called foul if the company had resorted to censorship.

The Takeaway

How can you avoid a social media PR disaster the way Chevy did?

- Acknowledge the conversation. You’re starting a dialogue, so be prepared to give up control. Two months after the campaign, Chvrolet General Manager Ed Peper posted on GM’s Fastlane blog: “Early on we made the decision that if we were to hold this contest, in which we invite anyone to create an ad, in an open forum, that we would be summarily destroyed in the blogosphere if we censored the ads based on their viewpoint. So, we adopted a position of openness and transparency, and decided that we would welcome the debate.”

- Think before you act. The urge to pull down the negative videos must have been very strong throughout Chevrolet’s marketing department. Doing so would have solved one problem but undoubtedly started another – and a larger one, as the story would have shifted away from the videos and focused on Chevy’s censorship. Luckily, Chevy brand mangers didn’t give in to the panic and realized the best course of action was to let the videos remain online.

- Be patient. Believe it or not, the bad press had no effect on sales of the Tahoe. In fact, in March of 2006, AutoBlog reported that “While nearly every other manufacturer suffered a decline in full-size SUV sales during the month of February, Chevy sold 15,431 Tahoes, a 42-percent improvement over [2005].”

Read my recent article on how United Airlines didn’t fare as well in avoiding a similar disaster.

Why Moleskine is a Social Media Superstar

2011-08-01T10:29:00.001-04:00

As many of you know from my presentations and webinars, I’m always looking for brands that are using social media in innovative ways. I honor these organizations with the name “SoMe Superstars.” PepsiCo, with its brilliant social recruitment marketing, was the most recent winner.

Today I’d like to recognize another company that’s interacting with consumers in exciting new ways: Moleskine, the Italy-based maker of fine notebooks and journals. Rather than seeing its products as simply blank books, the company brands itself as embodying creativity, bringing tools to artists, writers, and travelers. To further this branding, Moleskine has created a number of social media channels that celebrate painting, drawing, writing, poetry, and scrapbooking, and encourages users to post their work. The result is a remarkably loyal fan base that consistently uploads and shares new content. In fact, BrandChannel recently declared that “If any brand name seems to be loved by all who come in contact with it, it is Moleskine.”

Here are the three superstar strategies that Moleskine uses to engage with its audience in a branded way:

* Moleskine has profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and Tumblr, each with active communities and lots of user-generated content, from artwork to fiction to videos.

* For “old-fashioned” content, the company runs a blog, Moleskinerie, that integrates many of its social efforts while also providing unique content.

* Moleskine has just launched a mobile app that allows users to write or draw on their iPhone or iPad as they would in an actual notebook.

As the New York Times recently reported, Moleskine’s social efforts are immensely successful. 91,000 people are fans of the company’s Facebook page, while 12,000 people follow the company on Twitter. On both Facebook and Flickr, Moleksine encourages its fans to post their sketches, paintings, and collages, creating a community of user-generated content and supportive feedback.

Moleskine’s YouTube channel has 3,800 subscribers and more than 235 videos, both from fans and the company itself. The videos range from actual footage of artists drawing in the books to short films that celebrate the company’s creative spirit. The company also posts videos of its traveling art exhibitions and its workshops, which allow fans to meet and collaborate, making the Moleskine customer base feel even more like a community.

Most companies have a blog, but the Moleskine blog stands out by serving as a companion to its Facebook and Twitter accounts, rather than simply duplicating them. “Tweet” and “Like” buttons atop each post make it easy to share the content on users’ social networks. Moleskine also made the bold decision to stay distinct from the company’s website, giving the brand a platform to focus solely on its community. The blog includes a link to a very cool beta application, myMoleskine, which allows users to upload their own written or visual content, or images from a gallery, and create a virtual notebook, complete with turnable pages.

Even while it embraces its product’s low-tech charm, Moleskine is moving into the modern era with a clever new mobile app. Users choose a Moleskine notebook paper style, create a new “thought,” and then type or draw, using different colors and sizes. These “thoughts” can be geo-tagged, catalogued in different categories, and shared with others through social networks or email.

Art by Jinho Jung

In speaking to the New York Times, Moleskine America president Marco Beghin said “We let our fans speak for themselves. We wanted to create a relay of stories to become the ambassadors, interpreting the message.” Moleskine knows that its customers are creative and gives them an outlet for them to express themselves.

What can you learn from Moleskine? First, find the positive and compelling aspects of your brand, company, or product. Then learn who your market is and how they relate to those aspects. Finally, find ways of connecting with that market that utilize your strengths and are on-brand.

For fostering creativity in creative ways, I’ve dipped my quill and inscribed Moleskine in the honored list of genuine SoMe Superstars!

A Day in the Life of a Social Media Expert

2011-07-18T13:44:00.000-04:00

A quick search of the phrase “Social Media” on Indeed.com just now served up 1,923 jobs with that phrase in the title. Actual opportunities range from Social Media Managers, Coordinators, Strategists and Specialists to Social Media Community Managers. Ever wonder what these people actually do? Great news, today you’re in luck. I’m Jason Ginsburg, the Director of Digital Branding at BRANDEMiX and this is my story.

At BRANDEMiX, we teach companies how to go from Social Media Starters to Social Media Superstars, and you might say that I’m the guy that puts the star in Superstar. I’m a social media strategist and addict, plugged in to cyber conversations 24/7 and continuously working to find new ways of keeping those dialogues going, for us and for our clients.

Half of my day involves listening. I track what people are saying about the brand or company, and monitor where they’re saying them. Then I respond.

I comment on whatever is happening in the industry or region, or refer to world events, or even just the weather – sometimes just to prove that a real person is running the show. I retweet and re-post anything interesting from the incoming stream, and I’ve set up special news feeds just for relevant keywords. I express sympathy towards someone who experienced poor customer service and show encouragement if someone wants to share a video. I engage with the audience wherever its mood leads.

The conversation can be quite lively and always keeps me on my toes. When a matter gets serious, I make sure to pass it along to the client for immediate attention.

I also run the social sites for BRANDEMiX, where I discuss online branding and marketing with other professionals.

All this time, automated posts that I scheduled earlier in the week have been going out. That’s when I go into research mode. I scour the web for the latest online trends and tools that can help connect our clients’ and employer brands with their desired audience.

This week I discovered Roost before the New York Times did. I got my Google+ invitation weeks ago. Today I’m following developments in augmented reality and watching how Chatter and Yammer are changing companies’ internal communications. I also take this time to read the smartest, most innovative blogs for inspiration.

Hold on a second- it’s time for another quick check of the livestream – I never want to let a question or complaint sit for too long.

Let’s move on to the multimedia part of my day. Some contests (we call them Sweeps) and campaigns require photos or videos, or even PowerPoint presentations. I upload media to multiple sites, tag them for the best SEO, and respond to any comments on the existing photos and videos. This week I was stymied by the inability to do a bulk upload of some pics. I expressed my frustration in the form of a tweet to the company, and in 5 minutes, I had a reply tweet that said the bulk uploader is in development. Things like that make my day.

OK- time for blogging. I create content for our clients, either consumer-facing or internal, such as an employee newsletter. After writing, it’s back to – you guessed it – the social sites, to make some final posts, follow some last links, and schedule some content for the coming days.

Despite what you’ve just read, the mercurial nature of social media ensures that no two days are the same. My success is measured in business results and I am constantly refining my strategies and tactics based on desired outcomes and pre-established objectives, whether that’s friends, fans or followers.

What else is on the horizon? Well, I can’t reveal all my secrets.

Want to know more about my exciting social media life? Connect with me at @BRANDEMiX or our Facebook page.

TALENT MANGEMENT PROFESSIONALS FALL BEHIND IN SOCIAL MEDIA USE

2011-07-11T08:44:00.000-04:00

A new nationwide Social Media study reveals surprising news: Talent Management professionals have been slow to take advantage of social media in their personal lives, which may indicate a reluctance to use the same channels for business. The survey, sponsored by BRANDEMiX, was conducted last month by the New Talent Management Network, a global network of more than 2500 talent management professionals founded by consultant, author, and speaker Marc Effron.

Not surprisingly, only LinkedIn stood out among the four major social media channels. Almost half of respondents stated that they posted on the professional network “at least a few times per month,” and 39% read information posted by others “more than a few times a week.”

However, when asked if LinkedIn influenced respondents purchasing decisions, only 25% said “yes.”

More than half of respondents stated that they used Twitter either “less than once a month” or “never.” Only 8% of respondents stated that they used Twitter “to keep current on talent management trends and developments.”

Similarly, while a third of respondents read other people’s Facebook pages “more than a few times a week,” 43% posted content on their own pages “less than once a week.” Another 13% “never” posted on their own pages.

As for YouTube, though 85% of respondents reporting watching others’ videos at least once a month, that same percentage also claimed that they “never” posted their own video content on the world’s second-largest search engine.

Compared to general human resources professionals, whose use of social media to engage job applicants has been steadily increasing, talent management professionals have yet to embrace these new channels. Even those in talent management who use social media are less influenced by its content and rely on it less for information than other populations in human resources. A copy of the complete survey can be downloaded here.

Social Media Starts to Sizzle

2011-07-04T17:42:00.000-04:00

I just wanted to express a few quick thoughts before the holiday weekend.

It’s an exciting time at BRANDEMiX. We have new projects, new clients, new staff, and a new, larger office space that’s designed for collaboration.

Things are changing in the social media world as well. Foursquare's recent partnership with American Express shows that mobile marketing has a big future. Google+ hopes to compete with Facebook at the same time that Skype, now owned by Microsoft, is integrating more closely with the social network giant. Amidst all this, MySpace’s sale to Specific Media at a $545 million loss closes a major chapter in the history of the internet.

Many of you will be enjoying the holiday weekend but still updating your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn profiles, still checking in on Fourquare and uploading videos to YouTube. But is it for work or pleasure? Are the borders between the two coming down?

That’s something I’ll explore in the coming weeks, along with more spotlights on Social Media Superstars. I’ll also introduce you to my own superstar, the Director of Digital Branding at BRANDEMiX.

Until then, have a happy Independence Day.

This Week in Social Media

2011-06-26T17:08:00.000-04:00

- Mobile marketing took a big step forward when American Express announced a new partnership with Foursquare. The social networking app allows cardholders to link their Foursquare profiles to their cards, giving them access to specials without the need for coupons. When a cardholder sees a special they want, they check in to the location and “load” the discount onto their card, and their credit card statement confirm it. While only available at three merchants so far, I predict this innovative partnership will spread to other credit card companies and to other social networks, including Facebook.

The takeaway: Mobile is the next great frontier in shopping, socializing, and job searching. Is it part of your social media strategy?

- UP2U, a new stick gum from the makers of Mentos, launched an aggressive social media campaign ahead of its product launch. Though the gum isn’t yet sold anywhere in the US, the UP2U Facebook page neared 100,000 likes this week. Mentos offered free gum to the first 1,000 people who liked the page, but even after that milestone was hit, the promotion continued to go viral. The campaign should hit a whole new level next month when Mentos asks its Facebook fans to provide the name of friends who would like free samples.

The takeaway: Even without a product, UP2U has created fun, opinionated community by asking questions on its Facebook wall, all of which include the phrase “it’s up to you.” Chew on this smart blend of branding and engagement.

- Jason Valdez, an ex-convict in Salt Lake City, found time during a 16-hour police standoff to update his Facebook status. Friends and family members responded to him in real time, offering everything from pleas to “do the right thing” to, in one case, alerting Valdez to a SWAT officer hiding in the bushes. The standoff is over and the hostage is safe, but SLC police are still trying to determine if anyone who commented on Valdez’s Facebook wall should be charged with obstruction of justice or hampering a police investigation. Authorities are also debating whether Valdez’s posts themselves are a crime.

The takeaway: Social media is changing every type of interaction, and no one is totally certain what the new rules are. We’re all pioneers, so don’t be afraid to try.

- Lastly, this week my company BRANDEMiX partnered with the US Open to promote their July 7 job fair, where the National Tennis Center and all its hiring partners will be accepting resumes and conducting interviews to fill thousands of positions at this year’s tennis tournament. For this project, we created a microsite, a Twitter account and a Facebook Page.

The takeaway: Check out our Team US Open sites and tell me what you think!

Social Media Superstar: PepsiCo

2011-06-17T13:32:00.000-04:00

As I travel around the country giving my presentation “Socialize Your Talent Strategy,” I’m always on the lookout for companies using social media in innovative ways to attract job applicants.

My latest unbiased SoMe (if you don't know what that means, sign up for my next Webinar) Superstar discovery is PepsiCo, the family of brands that includes the famous soft drink, Quaker Oats, Frito-Lay, Gatorade, and Lipton. True, a few weeks ago, Pepsi lost out to Coke in my head-to-head competition of consumer-facing social media. But when it comes to social recruitment marketing, Pepsi has some fizz.

Here are 4 reasons why:

The company maintains one digital employer brand.
The company offers iPhone, iPad, and Android apps solely for job-seekers.
The company manages a separate Twitter account just for job-seekers and a fully optimized LinkedIn Careers tab.
The company speaks to the next generation of workers by posting in Spanish, highlighting PepsiCo’s jobs perks, and emphasizing its environmental and charity efforts.

Employer Branding: “The Power of Possibilities,” and four value propositions: Culture, Benefits, Diversity, and Development are featured on their Careers Site. (Memba when I called them out on this:http://bit.ly/mrhzNr?) Job-seekers can also watch four well-crafted videos that each tell a story about a different employee. This section includes download options for Pepsi’s mobile jobs applications (which I believe is the future of best-practice recruitment).

Many members of Generations X and Y claim that salary isn’t as important to them as working for a company that does good. PepsiCo addresses this issue on their YouTube channel, with videos such as PepsiCo Feeds America and PepsiCo’s Global Water Goals. The employee profile videos are also here, for candidates who don’t visit the main site.

PepsiCo’s careers Twitter profile has over 4,700 followers and continues the “Possibilities” branding. True to my philosophy of providing interesting content, the company’s tweets include recipes (“Spice Up Your Snacking with Mexican Shrimp Cocktail Fritos Pie”), answers to applicant questions (“Hello, Gunther. Make sure your contact and work history are current...), and even posts in Spanish, which broadens its applicant pool.

But it’s on LinkedIn where PepsiCo really stands out. The Careers tab is branded with the “Possibilities” logo. There’s a video message from the CEO, a list of employee benefits (including an on-site gym and café), three testimonials from employees, introduced by a particularly powerful employer value proposition for the marketing and communications positions that PepsiCo is trying to fill:

We entrust our marketing and communications experts with creating our message, positioning our products in the right markets, understanding what consumers want and building demand for our products. They are the curators of our message and the guardians of our brands.

So, we raise our glass of soda to Pepsi, BRANDEMiX latest unbiased example of a SoMe Superstar!

Social Media PR Disasters: "United Breaks Guitars"

2011-06-11T07:11:00.001-04:00

Social media has given brands unprecedented access to its customers, but we may forget that the customers also have access to those same communication tools and are able to broadcast their messages to the world.

Sometimes those messages are critical of a company. How do brands respond? Over the next few months, I’ll look at the way brands have missed, or exploited, opportunities for good publicity. This week, we'll see what happens when a little-known musician takes on a major airline.

The Brand

United Airlines

The Incident

In 2008, on a United Airlines flight at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, the Sons of Maxwell, a rock group led by David Carroll, witnessed baggage handlers throwing their guitars on the tarmac. When Carroll arrived at his destination, he found that his $3,5000 Taylor guitar had been broken. Carroll pursued compensation from United for nine months, but the company never took responsibility and ultimately denied his claim.

The Problem

Carroll wrote a song about the incident and posted the music video on YouTube. After three days, it had received over 500,000 views. (It currently has over 10 million). The song became a hit on iTunes as well. Carroll promised that two more songs about United’s poor customer service were on the way.

The Response

After just 18 hours, United began offering apologies through Twitter. However, the airline’s Facebook Page made no mention of the incident, and the Page’s press release tab, an obvious platform for communicating the company’s official response, provided no additional information. The United Airlines YouTube channel quickly filled up with negative comments, which the airline neither replied to nor removed. Eventually, the airline made amends by donating $3,000 to the Thelonious Monk Jazz Institute (at Carroll’s request), but that action didn’t indicate an improvement in baggage handling or a change of policies.

The Result

Carroll’s second song, a faux love ballad for a United customer service rep, was less successful but still a modest hit. His third song, in which Carroll describes being contact by other passengers who had had poor experiences with United, was more conciliatory. Carroll eventually began giving speeches on customer service to corporations around the country. He even flew United again – though on a flight to Denver to give a presentation, the airline lost his luggage. And Social Media Today, following an analysis of the story, concluded that “United Airlines did follow the first rule of crisis communications by apologizing and trying to make amends. It's their failure to leverage and integrate their online channels that is at issue.”

The Takeaway

So what are the lessons from “United Breaks Guitars”?

- Drive people to your own turf. United had the platforms to control the flow of information, but neglected its own Facebook Page and YouTube channel, letting critics take over.

- Respond immediately. How many views must a critical video get before a company responds? Carroll’s song became popular so quickly that many companies would have struggled to keep up. But United had at least some of response before two days had passed.

- If necessary, make the change: Look at how Delta changed its baggage policy for military personnel after an Army reservist posted a video about having to pay a fee to check a fourth bag on a flight home from Afghanistan. Other airlines quickly eliminated their own fee. The entire story took only a few days to be resolved.

As “United Breaks Guitars” shows, while great customer service rarely stays with us, bad customer service drives people to vent their frustrations online. Some of the most vicious – and popular – content on the internet involves consumers taking their revenge against brands that have wronged them. But brands can swing public opinion back in their favor by acting with speed, grace, and humility.

The Navy Markets to, and Redefines, Women

2011-06-04T05:45:00.000-04:00

I often give presentations on social media marketing, where I preach transparency, casual friendliness, and acceptance of negative feedback. One organization not known for those qualities is the United States military. Which is why I was so surprised to see that the US Navy had a Facebook page that encouraged recruits, and potential recruits, to openly discuss their concerns and challenges.

Even more surprising is the fact that the page isn’t for everyone considering a career in the Navy; it’s specifically for women, who have had a difficult history in our country’s armed forces.

The page is called “Women Redefined,” and it provides an interesting example of gender branding and recruitment.

Women Redefined offers as its mission, “Applauding women who define life on their own terms. Intermingling the stereotypically feminine and masculine. Women in the Navy are amongst those paving the way in redefining femininity in the 21st Century. Show your support or share your story.” Clearly, the Navy isn’t shying away from women’s concerns that joining the military would make them less feminine.

They’re allowing women to ask some pretty tough questions, too. “How is it for you when you leave your boyfriend?”… “Did you have regrets in the beginning?”… “Do single mothers enlist in the navy?” Women in the service, or in training, reply to these queries, and the conversation is posted online for all the public – and all the world – to see.

It’s not just potential enlistees that are raising the questions. The page administrators recently posted on the Wall, “What are your biggest concerns when thinking about joining the Navy?” The query garnered 90 responses, such as “I’m too old” and “I won’t get the job that I want.” Interestingly, the administrators never responded; the question was most likely an exercise in market research. Perhaps soon we’ll see an ad that tells women “You’re not too old to join the Navy.”

In my opinion, this takes engagement of job candidates to a new level. By allowing women to ask each other questions, share their stories, and support each other, the Navy is fostering a community like any other brand. And they’re doing it well.

Women Redefined points those seeking more information to navy.com/women, whose front page offers a live chat feature, where women can speak online to a recruiter. Such open and proactive communication would have been unheard of a few years ago. In fact, navy.com/women also features over a dozen individual Facebook pages for the Navy, including one titled “Navy Latinos.” That branding deserves an article of its own.

Connecting the Tissue Between Health Care and Branding

2011-05-29T07:54:00.000-04:00

Hospitals face a number of challenges in recruiting physicians. Smaller facilities and those in rural areas find it difficult to compete with high-tech hospitals in major cities. Some states, like Nevada, are burdened with high medical insurance costs. Lastly, and most surprisingly, the large number of specialties and sub-specialties means that the candidate pool for each position is surprisingly small.

How are hospitals standing out in the crowded marketplace? By branding.

You would think that branding would have no place in health care – the environment is too clinical, the stakes are too high, and the workplace is too busy. But hospitals have been using social media to become thought leaders and experts in their field, allowing them to polish their brand, attract new patients, and recruit top talent.

Consider Children’s Hospital in Dallas, where the public relations department live-tweeted a kidney transplant between a father and his three-year-old son. After the dramatic event, the hospital’s Twitter following jumped by almost 400%, twenty people had contacted the hospital to inquire about becoming organ donors, and dozens of media outlets conducted interviews with either the surgeons or the patients. This enormous response (from what is actually a rather routine procedure) raised the facility’s profile with both patients and physicians, who sought out what was now a brand that symbolized cutting-edge technology and heartwarming success stories. Since then, six other hospitals have live-tweeted surgical procedures, ranging from a hysterectomy to brain surgery.

Another great example is St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix. Its Facebook page features a health tip every day, and the organization allows anyone to post on the Wall. Whether it’s a patient thanking their nurse for great care or a staffer quickly responding to a bad ER experience, St. Joseph’s has created a brand around customer service and quick response time. It’s no wonder that the hospital has over 2,300 Facebook likes.

While Children’s and St. Joseph’s demonstrate pure branding, some hospitals are even using social media directly for recruitment. The famous Mayo Clinic, for example, has its own careers Twitter: @mayoclinicjobs. The organization has almost 1,900 followers and posts jobs openings at its Arizona, Florida, and Minnesota campuses throughout the day. Clearly, the HR department at the Mayo Clinic is aware of the 2008 New England Journal Medicine study that revealed that 71% of physicians searched for jobs online.

We’ve seen branding applied to consumer products, sports teams, and celebrities. Now the health care industry is using branding to connect with consumers and job applicants. These practices also help hospitals demystify their field and focus on their medical triumphs instead of the uncertainty and paperwork that many associate with medicine.

It should be clear by now that every industry can benefit from branding and recruitment through social media. Are you using social media to brand your company and recruit top talent?

So Long Average Joe, Hello Diversity.

2011-05-22T10:51:00.000-04:00

What the new demographics mean to branding.

According to the recent Census findings from over 20 states, the concept of the average American is over. As a nation, we are becoming a more diverse population and in fact, in our 10 largest cities, no one segment forms a majority.

Throw out your cookie-cutters because the impact of this information to marketing, branding and talent acquisition is significant.

· The concept of a value proposition, which by definition means creating a targeted strategy aligned with the wants and needs of your audience, is expanding in direct proportion to our audience segments.

· Adding complexity is the fact that for the first time in history, we have four generations existing side-by-side in the workplace.

· Social networks have fragmented our audiences even further, creating smaller clusters of niche groups with fewer members.

In today’s world, building relevant and authentic messages that appeal to multicultural and multigenerational professionals means more market research and message testing. The good news is that the internet has provided us with a greater variety of ways to launch these plans.

Sites like GutCheck and Quantcast bring innovation to qualitative research. And survey tools like Survey Monkey and Zoomerang make Quant a breeze.

Sadly, these tools and technology will not help in analyzing the data and creating truly unique messaging and marketing plans that resonate with fragmented groups.

That can only be accomplished by people with experience, insight and creativity. Fortunately for you, I know a few of them.

A Brand, A Blindfold, A Birthday and The Bottom Line. Coke Turns 125

2011-05-14T08:41:00.000-04:00

Valued at more than $70 billion, Coca-Cola’s brand is ranked # 1 in the world. Its nearest competitor by category, Pepsi, is not next in line, not even in the top 10. They’re a whole 23 steps away, worth only a mere $14 bil and change. Yet since 1975 when The Pepsi Challenge blind taste tasting events began, consumer preference trended towards Pepsi.

What’s up with that?

First, lets take a quick look at the difference in branding- the emotional connection consumers have with both.

What do you think about when you think Coke?
Maybe it’s Santa Clause. Maybe it’s Norman Rockwell. Coke credits their advertising with creating the modern image of big Nick himself. Or how about diversity- and the beautiful commercials about teaching the Whole World to Sing, that had America humming.

Now think Pepsi
Maybe Madonna comes to mind. Or Michael Jackson’s hair catching on fire during the filming of a Pepsi commercial.

Or maybe I’m too old.

Let’s go social to see how the two companies use the social network differently.
Pepsi’s Facebook page looks downright sparse compared to Coke’s two dozen features.

Some Stats

Who Created the Page
Coke: Two fans, who were given a tour of the headquarters in Atlanta and whose video of the trip is prominently displayed on the site.
Pepsi: The PepsiCo marketing department.

Immediate Call to “Like” the Site
Coke: “Like Coke? There’s a button for that.”
Pepsi: “PHFFFT. MMM. CLICK.”

Number of “Likes"
Coke: 24.6 million
Pepsi: 3.8 million

Number of Photos
Coke: 13, 319
Pepsi: 1,774

A Social Media Gaffe?

The Pepsi Refresh project, with a promise of $20 million in donations for "refreshing ideas that change the world," is being revamped though the response was spectacular: 80 million votes registered; 60,000 followers on Twitter; 4 million “likes” on Facebook.

Only one problem- many voters and grant winners say they don't generally buy soda. Perhaps that explains why last month the Wall Street Journal reported that both Pepsi and Diet Pepsi had each lost about 5% of their market share over the past 12 months in the US.

The bottom line is that after 125 years in business, the future still looks bright for Coca-Cola. That’s because no one buys soda with a blindfold on.

If The Shoe Fits: Social Media Lessons from Converse

2011-05-07T06:27:00.000-04:00

Mashable just published an interview with Geoff Cottrill, Chief Marketing Officer of Converse. One passage jumped out at me:

One day he discovered that Converse had 8 million [Facebook] fans and was asked what the brand should do. “Nothing,” he replied.

How counter-intuitive! While the interview goes on to show that Cottrill’s philosophy isn’t quite that meager, his strategy for Converse is very simple and effective. Here are the lessons you can take from the shoe company and apply to your own brand.

Listen More Than You Talk

Cottrill explains that he actually meant “Do nothing special,” meaning Converse should allow online conversations to go on without any assistance. “The bottom line is that in social media you have to let go,” he tells Mashable, pointing out that the era of one-way communication is over. Studies have shown that people “Unlike” brands on Facebook when they post too often and broadcast too much promotional material. Allow your customers to come to you and address their concerns. If you just link to your own press releases, people will stay away.

Give Things Away

Knowing that rock musicians have a history of wearing Converse shoes to express their “individuality and independence,” the company is about to open a recording studio in Brooklyn, which it will rent to new bands for free; Cottrill promises that the musicians won’t even be asked to promote Converse in their work. You may not be able to offer a recording studio, but you can still hold giveaways and contests on your Twitter feed, Facebook Page, or blog. Give everyone who votes in your online poll a chance to win a small gift card or one of your less expensive products. You can also give away white papers, e-books, or other premium content.

Focus on Core Marketing Truths

For Cottrill, that means “Be relevant, make a connection, and be useful.” A quick check of the Converse Twitter feed shows that a significant portion of the tweets are @replies to customers and fans. You can emulate this strategy by keeping straight promotion to a minimum and actively engaging your followers with answers, fun facts, surveys, and links to content that matches their interests and lifestyle.

Don’t Duplicate Content

Cottrill says that he modifies his messaging based on the platform. The example he gives involves posting videos of rock bands on YouTube, while asking for band member interview questions from followers on Twitter. Duplicating content may save time, but you’ll pay for it as followers get tired of seeing the same links three or four times in one day. I’m very aware of this phenomenon and I created the Four Essential Profiles to ensure that your four main messaging sources work together instead of against each other.

Ultimately, Cottrill compares his social media campaign to being a good party guest: bringing your unique voice to the medium, letting go of the urge to manage the conversation, and trusting your customers. The result is that Converse has four times as many Facebook fans as its parent company Nike -- and over three times that of Pepsi, which aggressively advertises its brand. “The key is to know yourself as a brand, be confident in your POV, and act that way wherever you are,” he says. Good advice.

Read the entire interview here.

Happy Birthday, BRANDEMiX

2011-04-22T11:53:00.000-04:00

Good Morning Readers.

Today, on the sixth anniversary of BRANDEMiX and the BRANDEblog, it seems like a good opportunity to look back on what I’ve accomplished and share with you all that I’m thankful for.

2005 was a very different world, and not just because everyone’s mortgage was secure and Barack Obama was still the junior senator from Illinois.

The internet in April of that year would hardly be recognizable to us now. Facebook existed, but it was available only to students at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Columbia. YouTube’s first video had just been uploaded. It would be another year before Twitter, another two years before the iPhone, and another four years before Foursquare. This rather empty social media landscape was ruled by MySpace, which was only a few months from its $580 million sale to News Corp.

Into this environment came BRANDEMiX and the BRANDEblog, and I was seen (not all that favorably) as an agent for communications change. My crime? Advocating the use of blogs!

Thankfully we've moved on (and by the way moved physically 3 times)!

I’ve been amazed to watch the scope of BRANDEMiX services expand from recruitment marketing, website development, and of course, employer branding to managing complex consumer branding projects, advertising, digital marketing and social media campaigns for wonderful clients in all industries and locations.

I’ve also had the privilege of speaking and presenting all over the world, bringing my workshops on the Four Essential Social Media Profiles and my “One Brand” philosophy to conferences and organizations of all kinds. Six years ago, we were all “SoMe Starters,” but now I get to consult and help create “SoMe Superstars.” Nothing makes me happier than watching someone who didn’t know a hashtag from a hash brown look at me and say, “I get it now.”

From internal communications projects like onboarding, benefits and wellness, and employee rewards, to public efforts like consumer branding and marketing, We have assisted companies with both their employer brand and their consumer brand, bridging the gap from marketing to HR.

And I’m supported in my endeavors by the finest designers, writers, service professionals and marketers, not just in New York City but perhaps the entire country. So big thanks to Jason, John, Katie, Anita and Stacey for leading the teams that bring the magic to the mix.

And thanks to you A-man for reminding us of the celebratory day. And shout-out to all the FOB's (Jayne, you were the first Friend of BRANDEMiX) for believing.

Looking back at the past six years, I consider myself a success…until I realize that I started my company at the same time that Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook.

Maybe I haven’t quite arrived at his level yet, but I’m sure enjoying the journey. Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Just when you thought you were cool, augmented reality bites HR

2011-04-19T13:30:00.001-04:00

You’ve already created a careers page that’s separate from your main site. You’re posting news and photos on your Facebook careers page and talking to applicants on your Twitter careers profile. You’ve set up your company’s Careers tab on LinkedIn and put videos of your office life on YouTube. What’s next?

Get ready to add AR to your HR. AR stands for augmented reality, an exciting new technology that will change many of our interactions with the world, including job searching. What is it? Applications that use augmented realityoverlay links, images, and information onto whatever you’re viewing on your mobile device’s screen. In a way, it’s no different than the scoreboard superimposed over the live broadcast of a baseball game. But in other ways, it’s a whole lot more.

Review sites such as Yelp! forsee using augmented reality to get information on whatever restaurants are around you. You’ll be able to simply point your smartphone at a restaurant’s storefront and see information displayed over the image, such as reviews, menu prices, or even the restaurant’s history. Point your phone at a crowded bar and you may be able to find people who are currently tweeting, or logged into Facebook – or looking to date.

The possibilities for recruiting are obvious. With the right app, a job-seeker could point their phone at a building or office and immediately see what positions are available. Links would appear that lead to videos of employee testimonials. The job-seeker would be able to have an application form sent to them by email, or even to schedule an interview – after all, they’re already holding their phone! Both the ease and the “wow factor” of such an innovative process will make sure that your company stands out in the crowded employment marketplace.

In fact, CareerBuilder is already pursuing this technology, as is CompanySpot in the Netherlands. The Dutch employment firm, which provides information on salaries and benefits to job-seekers, declares on its website, “What exactly is happening behind the large glass door of the headquarters across the street? Point your mobile at the building and you’ll know.”

Augmented reality applications for talent recruiting aren’t quite here yet, but they’re coming. Just as companies that scoffed at marketing on Facebook and Twitter eventually realized their mistake, recruiters who dismiss AR may soon find themselves scrambling to keep up. I’m excited about the possibilities that augmented reality offers and I’ll track its progress, both here and at my LinkedIn group Your Digital Brand.

So enjoy “regular” reality while you can – it’s about to get augmented!

Do Facebook Pages Work?

2011-04-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

A recent report from Forrester Research has concluded that Facebook is not a major force in e-commerce. After surveying over 20 technology retailers and marketers, Forrester found that having a Facebook Page provided “little benefit” to the companies involved.

According to the Wall Street Journal coverage of the report, a Facebook presence “was less effective at customer acquisition and retention than email and paid search.” The report compared email marketing’s 11% click-through rate and 4% conversion rate to Facebook Pages’ 1% click-through rate and 2% conversion rate. Many technology and marketing sites have taken this to mean that Facebook Pages don’t work.

Not so fast. The naysayers are forgetting some important details. Let’s make sure you don’t fall into the same trap.

First, Forrester’s premise is questionable. Facebook Pages are geared towards brand awareness, not conversion, so comparing their conversion rate to email marketing’s is unfair. This difference is highlighted by Forrester’s lead researcher, Sucharita Mulpuru, who stated that “You go to Facebook to find other people, not to find a product.” But Facebook Pages provide “other people,” through an online community of like-minded consumers. And a smart company offers a “person” in the form of a friendly marketing professional who responds to questions, comments, and complaints.

Which brings us to the next reason why the report underestimates Facebook Pages: interaction. A Facebook Page isn’t a retail site, though companies such as Best Buy and JCPenney are experimenting with selling products directly on their Pages. Most companies, large and small, use Facebook Pages to communicate with their customers and allow customers to connect with each other. Die-hard fans love talking directly to their favorite brands, while those with questions or complaints can receive quick resolutions. This acquisition and retention of consumers eventually leads to sales that Forrester didn’t track.

Another problem with Forrester’s report is that it was probably conducted too early. Many companies don’t have Pages yet (just as, fifteen years ago, many didn’t have websites), so the survey pool is much smaller. More importantly, a lot of brands don’t understand how to use Facebook Pages. They post copy verbatim from their press releases; they broadcast promotions but don’t reply to comments; or they post far too frequently, filling up their Fans’ newsfeeds and quickly getting “Unliked.”

Marketing scientist Dan Zarrella recently found that companies that posted more than once a day received fewer “Likes,” while those that posted every other day received the most “Likes.” This discovery is still filtering down to companies that are still figuring out how to maximize their Facebook Pages. Until they do, and until more companies join Facebook, Forrester’s report shouldn’t be taken as gospel.

Don’t let the low conversion rate fool you; Facebook Pages do, in fact, work. They create brand awareness and loyalty, they give a voice to a company, and they inform Fans of special offers and new products. The key is knowing how to use them and what to expect from them. The added value and interactivity they generate is something that email marketing, paid search, or print ads – and maybe even Twitter – can’t duplicate.

Share
|

Exit Laughing: How to Reject Candidates But Keep Customers

2011-04-03T11:06:00.000-04:00

   Let's face it: nobody likes rejection letters. HR managers don't like writing them and job-seekers don’t like receiving them. But is it possible to turn a rejection into a positive experience? I think it is. The right kind of letter can compliment an applicant, reinforce your brand – and convince them to apply again.

   Always Be Branding
   How can you write rejection letters that will keep them coming back? With "ABB" – Always Be Branding. Remember, you're representing your brand even when you're rejecting job applicants. If they were already a customer, you want to retain them; if they weren't, you want to turn them into one.

   Tell Them Nothing
   Many companies write a terse note explaining that a more qualified candidate was chosen, they'll keep the applicant's resume on file (a lie, isn't it?), and thanks for applying. This prevents the applicant from finding a specific complaint against the company, such as the hiring manager not liking them. A polite but vague letter conveys that there was no single factor that disqualified the applicant and that they lost to someone who was truly superior. This can be frustrating for the applicant, but it avoids lawsuits.

   Tell Them Everything
   Some companies take the opportunity to do some coaching, by highlighting areas that the applicant can work on. After all, many people prefer a clear reason for the failure over a mystery. You could go the other direction and actually praise the candidate, referring to their work in a particular position or their success with a specific project. This shows that you did, in fact, "like" the applicant, which eliminates another of their concerns. This strategy can backfire, however, as applicants may disagree with your reasoning; rejection lawsuits are rare, but they do happen. Keep this in mind when considering how honest to be.

   Tell Them Something
   The middle way is the smartest. After all, the goal of a rejection letter is to give the applicant a positive experience, much as you would with a customer or employee. To personalize and brand your company, you should tell the applicant something more than the standard three-sentence "no, thanks." Say that you hope they apply in the future, which implies that they have potential. You can admit that the applicant simply wasn't the right fit, which exonerates their qualifications. Say you hope they keep enjoying your product or service. In fact, you might even include a coupon or discount code in the letter; getting rejected by a food manufacturer or restaurant chain would mean getting a free meal!

   Job-seekers know that how a company treats its applicants is a reflection of how they treat their employees. But with a rejection letter that handles the unpleasantness with wit, grace, and style, you can make applicants love you even as you reject them…and guarantee they exit laughing.

Share
|

Brand Unified Theory

2011-03-27T17:53:00.000-04:00

Everyone who interacts with your company, whether it’s customers, employees, or job applicants, is exposed to your brand. A brand conveys not just your mission and values but also your attitude and your position in the marketplace.

A single consistent message makes marketing simple. It conveys a sense of purpose to everyone in your company and a sense of identity to everyone outside it. We call it the “Brand Unified Theory.” Here’s how it works for each group listed above.

Employees

If your advertising is saying one thing and your internal communications say another, you’ll soon find that your employees are working towards the wrong goals.

When employees share your core beliefs and values, it informs everything they do. Even if an employee never interacts with a customer, she can still use your brand’s principles to guide her business decisions. Employer branding makes everyone on your team realize that their actions contribute to a goal, and that they’re working not just for a company but for a way of life.

Customers

Some CEOs are comfortable with a basic motto like “We’re simply the best telecommunications company.” But that leaves many questions unanswered: The “best” for whom? Does “best” mean best prices, best selection, or best customer service? Why are you the best? How will you stay the best?

Studies have shown that consumers consider brands when making decisions, so branding becomes crucial when you’re trying to distinguish your product from others. Matching your customer brand to your employer brand makes both stronger.

Job Applicants

In a way, job applicants are both customers and employees at the same time. But you won’t be able to attract the talent you want, and job seekers won’t consider you, if you’re not clear about your brand. A survey of over 1,300 job seekers in the Gallup Management Journal recommends “caring about prospective employees as much as you do about your customers and current associates.” To go further, a study by talent assessment specialists SHL warned that applicants who were treated poorly during the interview process tended to share their frustration on blogs and social networks. Clearly, you need not only to communicate your brand to job seekers, but also live your brand so that they come away from the application experience happy.

The Brand Unified Theory ensures that your customers, employees, and business partners all share a core belief in your brand. Put the theory into practice and turn your people into your brand’s believers, supporters, and advocates.