Critical Elements to address when thinking about a re-brand?

• Do you really know the audience you want to influence with your brand and what they think of your company? If the answer is, “We think so but are not 100% sure or in agreement,” start with research into your customers and prospects to understand your brand starting point. Determine the channels they use to interact with your brand. Do they visit your site via a mobile device but you have not optimized for mobile?
• Don’t rebrand for the sake of re-branding. What are the corporate goals you are trying to accomplish? Are you launching a new product or service line? Have you slowly transformed your market but your current customer base does not know it? Do you need to energize your employee base?
• Analyze and agree upon your story and message. Many people can design a great logo, but it is the story behind the logo and brand initiative that is critical.
• Use the rebrand as your chance and excuse to re-introduce yourself to current customers.
• Think about all the brand elements to drive consistency. A new logo without a matching website experience, family of templates, new business cards, office signage, etc. can really fall flat. Make sure you design a corporate style guide that is strictly followed across the board, and can be expanded to business partners and other audiences.
• Start with your internal audience to roll it out. Your employees are your number one brand ambassadors. If they are excited about the brand and message you will immediately have a fleet of people ready to share it.
• Measure the impact of the rebrand. What are the key performance indicators you are measuring? Are you getting more meetings? Are you getting more website visitors? Is there a better understanding of your brand six months after launch? 12 months?
• Is your rebrand designed to scale as you enter new markets or expand with new products?
• Are there international considerations now or in the future related to your brand that you need to address?
• As you think about all of these, remember that planning is critical. A strongly mapped out strategy will get you the required results you desire for your brand.

I heard a little story the other day that made me smile. One of our earliest clients, which selected Bluetext for a digital platform and website overhaul as well as marketing and social media strategy, has seen their business go through the roof since executing the campaign with us. What makes me happy is that this client was very hesitant to spend the money, skeptical about the potential results, and had never done any impactful marketing. Thinking back to this early project, I think it’s instructive to explore why working with this reluctant client turned out so well.

First, we did our homework on its industry and competitors, and designed a digital platform that demonstrated to the market that it was serious about the future and committed to the business of its customers. As a rule, when designing websites and digital platforms, you have to understand the user experience, how your customers interact with your business, and what they can and should expect when working with you. Many businesses organize their websites around how they operate instead of how their customers want to consume content. And many businesses think that a new website is merely lipstick on a pig.

Second, the client spent the money on a custom photo shoot, which we strongly recommended and helped to execute, as its products lend themselves to having their customers see them and get a clear sense for what they are going to get (as opposed to, for example, a software product). Sometimes, creating a sense of something tangible in the digital world can be very important.

Third, it got aggressive with social media in a market where it originally believed it was not important to prospects. The client committed for the long haul to develop new content and push it out via all channels.

Everyone wants happy customers that benefit from the work you do for them – in this case, a major investment which was met with skepticism has significantly benefitted the bottom line. That is the kind of success that makes me and the entire Bluetext team smile.

How do you show passion?

I was in a pitch with a very high profile prospect last week and when we asked him what he was looking for in a digital branding partner his response was not uncommon – he said he wanted to work with an agency passionate about his brand.

Makes sense, right? But then you go back to the shop and have to put together the proposal, and you ask yourself how can we showcase our passion in a proposal? Do we sing out front of his building with a big sign saying to hire us? Do we jump out of a cake? As a services business we don’t have the luxury of creating the next gadget that wows an audience – it is our people, our process and our work that showcases our passion.

We showed the amazing work we are doing for our clients. We walked through our process, and we shared how excited we would be to take on this assignment through the lens of other work we have done. But still, I scratch my head sometimes and wonder how to showcase passion. Think about this the next time you have to give someone a written response – how do you showcase passion?

Are you a fan of the network hit, “The Good Wife?” I knew the show was popular, but quite honestly I had never watched it until this Spring, when I was asked to help tutor the show’s writers on crisis management for the upcoming season. I did catch a few episodes before meeting with the entire writing team this month to talk about how crises and scandals are handled by professional damage control experts in the real world.

Without giving away the potential plot line, suffice it to say that one of the characters is going to find themselves in a situation where crisis management will be required. I can say that both the writers and myself learned a few things. The writers learned that handling crisis in today’s internet-driven news cycles is extremely difficult, and that there are few elements of how the story plays that a real person has control over. One of those, I told them, is timing, and the other is location. If you know that something bad is going to come out (and in television, it always does come out), then you can control when it is made public, and in which publication. If you don’t take advantage of those elements, you effectively seed the only things you have power over to your adversaries.

The one thing you don’t have control over, I reminded them, is the facts. That’s why good crisis managers look for every bit of context that they can wrap around the facts to put them in the fullest perspective. I also told them that very often, damage control experts didn’t have access to all of the facts. Individuals lie, hide information, neglect to tell you important details, and otherwise obfuscate. Never draw a line in the sand that you have to walk back from.

And I learned that a television show must have conflict, tension, uncertainty, and a limited number of characters that it can focus on. Sounds a lot like the real thing. And I won’t really know happens in the show until it airs next season.

When I hear from a client that they have no true competitors, I feign acceptance as my BS meter automatically goes off. What I would like to tell them is that they obviously don’t need marketing and branding support since there must be no market for their product or service. But instead I take the opportunity to walk them through a messaging and positioning exercise to help them identify the market that their company does fit into, and then help them determine how they can be the king of that market. At Bluetext we call this the “Sandbox Exercise,” and it is a critical element for effectively branding or rebranding a company.

You can’t be the king of a sandbox until you can identify and accept which sandbox you play in. When referring to other potential competitors, comments like “they are too big and not focused on our market” or “we beat them head to head every time” may sound comforting, but my immediate response is to ask how often those competitors are scooping up customers and market share when you are not even on the radar. The actual times that we come across companies that have been in the game for a long time without feeling the heat of true competition are few and far between.

So with your feet firmly planted back on the ground, here are a few simple steps you need to think about to find the right Sandbox so that you can be successful in the long run:

• Be realistic about your product or service – this is critical for success. It’s delusional to think that any product that sounds too good to be true is the real thing. (Remember the Segway?)
• Determine your true differentiators. What is your brand promise? It is becoming harder to differentiate with words these days, but every brand has attributes that it can leverage to become the king of a Sandbox. We are working with a client now that is extremely passionate about its brand and business, but is also realistic about its competitors. By identifying reference points for prospects in the form of existing brand name customers, and creating a brand that incorporates beautiful, forward-thinking design elements to relay the passion of the team, they will stand out from the crowd.
• Realize that the best messaging and branding will get you nowhere without creative execution that delivers the brand to target audiences with passion and emotion. Don’t expect every potential customer to automatically know who you are and which Sandbox you play in. Allow your brand to work as hard as it can for your business by letting everyone know which Sandbox is yours, and why you are the king. Take every opportunity to hit prospects with an integrated message that is consistent, powerful and persuasive about your products or services.

Effective message and branding can take many forms, but at the core of your business is a brand promise. You may never have the same brand recognition as Coke or Facebook, yet at the end of the day, if you can effectively execute on the steps outlined above, you will be in a much better position to deliver value to your customers and prospects – and that should be the ultimate goal of every branding exercise.

Imagine if Amazon.com’s home page was a photo of CEO Jeff Bezos and contained only corporate information—they wouldn’t have many customers. Believe it or not, this is the way many Federal government agencies view their digital role—not to create relationship through an engaging experience, but to deliver simple information like press releases.

At a time when organizations large and small are trying desperately to develop meaningful relationships with their customers, it seems that government agencies remain mired in the past, mostly keeping citizens at a distance and not attempting to treat them as, well, valued customers. While this won’t come as a surprise to many Americans who have been frustrated when trying to get help at a government website, a new survey from Bluetext and GovLoop confirms how far behind agencies really are on this score.

Survey respondents, primarily government employees, by wide margins believe that agencies need to develop a relationship with their constituents using online tools. Yet, they overwhelmingly believe that their agencies are not doing so, instead publishing “corporate-type” websites that do not engage citizens. The survey of GovLoop’s members was conducted in December and was sponsored by Adobe.

Here are some of the survey’s key findings:

More than one-third of the respondents gave their agencies the lowest marks for their efforts to proactively reach out to citizens through their websites or through social media;

Nearly half gave the lowest marks for their agencies’ creative use of digital strategies to connect with citizens. Only eight percent found their organizations to be “very creative.”

In perhaps the most telling finding, only a quarter of respondents describe their agency’s website as a place to engage with citizens and develop a relationship to help provide services and solve problems.

Instead, according to the survey, agencies are using their websites to publicize programs and initiatives, or provide information to learn about the organization’s leadership and read press releases and Congressional testimony. Forty-eight percent described the way their agency views its website in relationship with citizens as a marketing tool.

And while 85 percent of respondents regard their agency’s engaging directly with its citizens through social media as somewhat or very important, only eight percent gave their organization the highest marks for achieving this. Forty-six percent gave the lowest scores to their agencies.

Government agencies have a lot of work to make up for the gap between where they are and where they need to be when it comes to digital strategy. If they want to be seen as relevant in the eyes of citizens, they need to do a lot more with digital tools to engage constituents.

How do you define success with your federal government PR program? Are you still trying to count clips? Do you need to secure a set number of interviews to make your boss happy? Unless you have been living under a rock you know that the world of public relations has changed, the number of publications that will cover you has shrunk significantly, and unless you have a real game changing technology it is very difficult to get ink. But don’t despair…content is still king, and if you have a good strategy to deliver it via multiple channels to reach your customers wherever they may be, you can have a great PR program.

Last month Mark Amtower wrote a great column in Washington Technology (http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/02/24/amtower-column-march.aspx) that very much aligns with what we at Bluetext have been telling clients. That is why our tagline is “Any Challenge…Every Channel” and why we have built our company with experts that understand the power of different mediums for different messages. So the next time your technology lead clamors that they should be more coverage of your company in GCN or The Washington Post, grab your Flipcam and ask them to start talking – if the story is good there are ample avenues to deliver it.

I speak with executives with lots of technology companies both here in the Washington, D.C. market and around the country– all eager to sell more to the Federal government. If I had to bucket them into ones that I know are successful versus those that are probably just scratching the surface, one of the trends that quickly emerges is how seriously each company takes its PR and marketing to their Washington customers.

The Federal government cannot be viewed as simply another vertical, like financial services or education. Beyond the vast differences between civilian and defense agencies, there are so many intricacies and nuances that must be considered to be successful. I believe that if you have a good sales team in New York you can be successful in financial services. But the Federal government is different, especially with an administration that is 100% focused on reducing costs and making government more efficient. Vivek Kundra and Aneesh Chopra are the most visible technology executives the government has ever had, and they make noise every week. No area of government is safe, so successful companies must be here and part of the conversation.

Flying in once a month just does not cut it, as one of your competitors will be filling the minds of decision-makers with thought leadership content. Campaigns must be course-corrected and messages delivered every day. And of course, the message cannot be episodic. So here is my advice – if the Federal government is an important arena for your business, make sure you are dedicating the time and resources in terms of people and money to do it right. You don’t want your sales team paddling upstream in a market that is difficult to navigate even in calm waters.

Not a week goes by where I don’t see an email about a special offer for some last minute advertising space left in an upcoming publication. While the offers can be enticing and very reasonable financially, my advice to clients before they pull the trigger is to remember the way you need to analyze every activity like this – make sure it is strategic and not episodic. Is this a publication that you have been advertising with recently so the audience is conditioned to seeing your name regularly? Is the message and creative you may develop for this one-off the same as readers may see across other mediums? The point is, when you are executing a strategic communications campaign, every tactic must tie together and continue to tell the same story. You don’t want to surprise audiences, and trying to get lucky by placing one add that will likely get no traction falls into this category. Sure, it may be buying season in the Federal Government, or the entire issue is dedicated to the key market area you want to penetrate.

Despite how enticing this opportunity may be, I would only consider this offer if it is part of a strategic, ongoing plan and it aligns with all the other messages that are getting delivered to the market. If you are going to execute an advertising campaign, then do it right by starting with the goals you are trying to achieve and matching up your buy accordingly. Otherwise, I can think of a lot more strategic ways of spending that money on that “last minute” advertising space.

I was recently running a messaging summit with the executive team of a successful government contractor in the cloud space. Just 13 months ago this company had very little presence and visibility in Washington among key decision makers. Today, through an aggressive PR and lobbying program, they are part of the right conversations.

Now that they are on the map they are ready to aggressively drive sales. So the conversation came around to making sure that all of the management team could deliver the same message, and I asked if we put the top executives into separate rooms and asked for a quick elevator pitch on the company would they all be on message. The immediate response was that they could sure do a better job of it today than when they decided to get serious about marketing and communications last year.

Of course that comment made me smile, and it led to a discussion about one of the fundamental things I tell all clients – the first step in getting the outside world to understand who you are and your value proposition is to align inside your company – ensure that all of the management team (and employees) can tell the same story. Management team and staff are your brand ambassadors – if they can’t easily articulate why you matter then you have no chance convincing decision-makers.

So next time you think about the message you are delivering to the market think about that exercise – if you put all of the members of the management team in different rooms and asked them to describe the company and why you matter, would they deliver a consistent story? If the answer is no then give me a call – it may be a reason why your marketing and communications campaigns are coming up short.