But it’s a rare (as hen’s teeth) brand that benefits from waffle so perhaps Twitter provides a useful exercise in finding ways to trim your brand communications to nutshell size.

Think about…

What you tweet about: Do you stay purely business or do you let some personal stuff through? Do you keep close to home or cover industry news too? Do you tweet about news, information, quirky related virals…?

How often you tweet: Too little and you run the risk of making little impact, too much and you need to be useful/informate/entertaining to maintain your relevance to your followers.

Your tone of voice: An important part of conveying your brand in written and spoken channels and, indeed, it’s a challenge to get it right in such small chunks but think about being consistently professional, funny, irreverent, dry, enthusiastic, calming… whatever your brand values intend.

Who you hang out with: It’s tempting to get excited about the quantity of your followers but their quality is important too. I don’t hold back from blocking and reporting anyone who looks like they’re spamming.  Anyone relevant, interested and/or interesting is welcome to follow me though so please do.

By the way, has anyone else had to overcome the aversion to the Twitter terms “following” and “follower”? It still makes me think of “gurus”, and that’s not really part of my brand.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd, Nottingham
Francine on Twitter

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One of the more frequent difficulties I come up against as a marketing consultant is when dealing with (prospective) clients who want me to tell them the “best way to market themselves”, meaning the (usually) cheapest way to promote their business’ products and services but who have little idea about what their broader marketing strategy is.  Indeed, they often think that the promotional tactics they use are marketing strategies.

What’s the difference?

Strategy is the broad route you intend to take (or, more often, according to Professor Tony Watson, the route you do take and explain as strategy afterwards) to achieve your business goals.

Tactics are the means you deploy in order to follow your strategy.

Strategy without tactics is simply daydreaming; tactics without strategy are merely directionless dabbling.  You’re welcome to quote me on that.

And, without a strategy in mind, it is very difficult to know what the “best way to market” your business could possibly be.

The diagram above shows the consequences of getting the balance wrong:

An inefficient strategy & inefficient tactics
The route to a slow, drawn-out death.  You’ve chosen the wrong strategic path but the fact that you’re dragging your heels along it by using inefficient tactics means it will be a long time before you realise it, if, indeed, you do so before it’s too late.

An inefficient strategy & efficient tactics
The best that can be said of this choice combination is that it will, at least, put you out of your misery sooner rather than later.  The wrong choice of direction coupled with a really efficient way of getting to the wrong place. Ouch!

An efficient strategy & inefficient tactics
All too common a situation, this one.  You get by, tick over, plod along but you’re held back by poor tactical choices.

An efficient strategy & efficient tactics
Jackpot!  This is where we want to be.  Travelling efficiently and effectively along a well-chosen strategic route. No wonder that guy’s having so much fun waving his wad of cash around – I’d be smug too.

This is why my heart sinks a little when business owners think I can “fix” their marketing or come up with brilliant tactical ideas to save their business.  In the context of a strong strategic approach to the business, this is possible.  Without, there’s a danger of taking them to their sudden death.  Please don’t ask me to do that? I’m more than happy to help with your strategy.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing, Nottingham

Creative thinking is also an inherent part of being an entrepreneur, of spotting opportunities and bringing new ideas into the world.  Without the ability to generate creative new ideas, there would be no invention or innovation.

To some people, this might come naturally, but you might be interested to know that the process of creative thinking can be taught and that it works!

A recent brief presentation as part of the Ingenuity Programme at the University of Nottingham introduced to a business audience, the process that has been taught for a few years now to entepreneurship students.  A ripple went round the room as it was pointed out that today’s students are tomorrows entrepreneurs and they could well soon be snapping at the heels of the people in the room – equipped with some very useful knowledge indeed.

As marketers, we tend to be familiar enough with the second part of the Ingenuity Creative Problem Solving Process – what they term Develop-Design-Deploy.  Typically, this is the are where most investment is made.

Creative Problem Solving Process

But by putting time and resources into what should be the prelimary stage – Define-Discover-Determine – it is possible to:

• Identify problems that need solving and so provide a commercial solution;
• Explore the root causes of those problems;
• Using creative problem solving techniques, generate creative ideas for solutions and;
• Determine which the ‘best’ (most attractive, most commercially viable) solution is.

Thus arriving at novel business ideas that can differentiate your business and weeding out inferior ideas that might otherwise have found their way into the market only to fail.

See Lee Martin talking about the creative problem solving process.
Book into the New Business Ideas one-day workshop from the Ingenuity Programme.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing, Nottingham

In terms of things that have made a connection with me – and made me take some action – I’m pretty impressed with the charity sector.

I’ve blogged before about the creative approach taken by Pants to Poverty, ranging from eye-catching marches in central London (particularly catching the eye of a TV news crew), their videoing of stunts at festivals and events, and their great competition campaign against ‘bad pants’ harnessing people’s passion through social media techniques.

I was alerted to the latest charity campaign to catch my attention via Twitter and loved the concept so much I just had to join in.

Adopt A Word is a fantasically synergistic link up between small charity, I CAN, which supports the development of speech, language and communication skills in all children with a special focus on those who find this hard and Collins the dictionary people.  What a match.

For a mere £20 you can adopt a word for a year, with a promise to care for it and give it plenty of exercise.  Give a Word a Happy Home.

Naturally I was pleased to have cottoned on to this idea quickly enough to adopt “marketing”. as my very own.

As an example of great brand values coupled with a distinctive emotional appeal, the campaign must be a winner.

So what can a small business learn from these examples? What they undoubtedly do is to:

• Stand out with original ideas that would be impossible for anyone else to copy without being distinctly “me too” about it;
• Get an emotional reaction, one that makes you want to “get involved” whilst allowing you to express yourself and your own values;
• Create something to show and talk about, enabling their fans to spread the word for them.

Notable are the imaginitive ideas that go beyond the obvious, something that the typical small business could harness to great, and cost-effective effect, in their own marketing.

Do these examples give you any ideas to go beyond the usual brochures and advertising?

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing, Nottingham

His research in businesses shows that strategic thinking is much more significant than simply having a ‘strategic plan’.

Most strategy is developed ‘after the fact’ to explain actions taken rather than actually determined and guided by a plan.  Any ‘strategic plan’ tends to be solely the property of the board/senior management.

Strategic thinking, on the other hand, can be adopted by anyone and everyone within a business – and deployed effectively as long as the business has a broad strategic direction.  Strategy is developed by both thinking and action – acting thinkingly and thinking actingl,y as Karl Weick put it.

You can see and hear some of Tony’s presentation as it was livestreamed.

The presentation made good sense to me in relation to the idea of the marketing mindset – that the ability to understand your business situation as it changes and evolves, and to spot and harness the marketing opportunity it presents is about understanding your broad business strategy and being able to take informed marketing actions to achieve it whilst remaining flexible to the changing marketing environment.

Tony will be running a one-day workshop “Strategic Thinking – What’s It Got To Do With Me?” (the “Me” being anyone and everyone in your business) on 19th January 2010.  It’s some way away, I know, but places are limited and, if Tony’s ideas have been as thought-provoking for youas they were for the audience this week, you might like to consider booking a place soon.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing

I don’t want this to turn into yet another rant about bad customer service (I must have got that out of my system by now) but the experience has raised a couple of questions about how large companies regard customer service.

1.  Do they believe that having someone at a call centre help-line go through their computer-based list of “things to do in this situation” is actually the same thing as helping? 

Even if going through the list results in absolutely no improvement in the fault?  Even if the only result is several hours of the customer’s time wasted (I value my time even if they don’t) which, in my book, makes the situation worse?

The people I dealt with (of course, I was passed around several of them) were all perfectly polite and pleasant – but they were absolutely no help at all.  And yet, they did the job that they’re paid to do and probably believed they did it well.  Ultimately the customer foots the bill for the company to pay people to be utterly useless.  Why do they think that this is good business?

2.  Do they believe that keeping within boundaries of consumer law is the same thing as providing good customer service?

I’m all for customers knowing their rights (see Consumer Direct for the UK) and for businesses abiding by the law but the Trading Standards people are here to ensure customers get a fair deal not to set standards for exemplary customer service. 

How could any customer feel valued knowing that all the company that they were buying from thought they were worth was the bare minimum that they could get away with?

A couple for the Big Boys to ponder but I won’t be holding my breath for an answer.

PS I got my phone back yesterday after being deprived of it for a further week.  So far it’s working.  You can see some of the stuff I can do with this wonderful item at http://qik.com/francinepickering.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd., Nottingham

Look at it that way, and that’s how you’ll feel.  But why not look at it differently, find the creative links between information and opportunity?

I prefer to regard this as a flow of information that could be useful to me and to my clients.  This morning, alone, I’ve noted details for or passed on information to four different clients about items that have arrived in my inbox, including:

• Competitor information;
• Organisations to hook up with for future promotional efforts;
• Useful events to attend;
• Tips that they can apply to their businesses;
• The fact that their information has been passed around by other organisations to a wider base of contacts;
• News from clients’ own market sectors.

In all this lie the opportunities to better understand their markets and ways to reach them.

A tunnel visioned approach might not spot these, deleting those emails without even giving them a quick scan.  If prefer too much information to too little – that’s where I find the opportunities. (But that’s not an invitation to spam me!)

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd.

You can trade mark any “sign” – a name, logo, domain name, slogan, colour, shape, music or “non-traditional” sign, say, human movement.  Toblerone, for example, protects by trade marks, its name, its colour combination, and its shape.

There are, of course, restrictions: using words that are purely descriptive, and being too laudatory.  Mr Kipling’s strapline “Exceedingly Good Cakes” apparently confounds this by being, yes, undoubtedly laudatory, but also so very recognisable by the public.  Yet Gilette’s “The Best A Man Can Get” is not sufficiently well recognised to claim trade mark status – which surprised me because I thought it had been around for ever.

Speaker, Miles Rees, was hugely entertaining and demonstrated his points with some audience participation.  None of the audience failed to guess which brands certain colours are associated with, although few guessed correctly that the most played song in public places over the last 75 years (i.e. still within copyright period) is Procul Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” (and the second is Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, hinting, as Miles said, at a UK fixation on the word “fandango”!!!!).

The upshot was that some ways of protecting your brand through trade marking can be easier and cheaper than others.  The strong association we have between colours and brands (purple = Cadbury’s, turquoise = Heinz beans) has been built up over time and at no insignificant levels of investment – way out of the reach of small businesses.

Choosing a great name – one that is both evocative and distinctive enough to qualify for trade marking – though simply makes good sense.  Any business/brand needs a name anyway so, if you’re aware that you might need legal protection for it, plan that in from your first decision.

How important that is will depend on your business strategy and w likely it is that competitors might wish to imitate your brand (or blatently produce fake versions).

For more information on trade marks, and other types of intellectual property (patents, design rights, copyright) take a look at the Intellectual Property Office web site.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd.

One of the businesses, a recent start-up, was interested to talk about the many ways that social media/Web 2.0 could help build the business and the brand.

A key aspect of the business idea is that it does not have any intellectual property that can be protected through patents and so could be copied – for the right existing set-up there would be low barriers to entry (obviously, I’m not going to be giving any details that could give the game away here).  So how can this business quickly create a market position that would discourage potential competitors?

In traditional terms, we would be talking about creating brand advocates, ‘raving fans’ and such – key enthusiasts for both the product and the emotional connection with the brand who would happily evangelise on its behalf.

The advent and growth of various social media has made it possible to harness this enthusiasm as a community: we see this on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Second Life and so on where the business can create its own presence and the space for its community to interact with the brand, with each other and with newcomers.  It’s an approach that means leaving behind the traditional monologue directed at customers and, instead, creates ongoing conversations – which means listening as well as talking.

Social media platforms and tools are perfect for promoting products that have a strong visual component and/or experiential element.  Both lend themselves to use the use of photographic, video and audio tools on the web to spread excitement about a product.

But no one is going to do that unless they are excited in the first place, which is where you need to consider how to use social media – and, indeed complementary ‘real world’ activities – to generate that brand engagement and ‘talkability’ that will prompt and sustain conversations amongst your community.  And, whilst getting ‘stuck in’ is a good way to develop your understanding of how these media work, you really do need to have a clear idea of:

• Where your market – your community - hang out online and how they behave there;
• What you them to talk about;
• What you want them to say and do;
• How you are going to create that ‘talkability’ – a stunt, a competition, something simply funny, what?

Ultimately, your goal should be to create such a buzz around your brand that customers wouldn’t think of going anywhere else for a similar product.  Your product is the product to buy.

To do so using social media requires planning to ensure that you create the most effective means to get that buzz started.  It also means being prepared to let go and give your plans a life of their own to grow throughout your community.

To many business people this still seems a risky strategy – lose control of your promotional plans?  Shock, horror! But the greater risk is in sticking with simply selling a product – rather than selling an emotional experience - and leaving yourself with no protection against more savvy competitors. A real shift in marketing mindset is called for.

Jamie Huskisson shed some light on this by flagging up Pants to Poverty who’d kick started their promotional campaign with a pants-wearing march in central London.  Just google ‘pantstopoverty’ to see how they are cutting across all kinds of media – from this week’s ‘You ask, we answer’ section in The Guardian to a YouTube endorsement from Miss Congo at her X-Factor audition – not to mention their own campaign against bad pants. Strewth!  It seems like a random selection and yet their key messages and brand values stay true throughout – serious and still fun.  Sure, anyone can make pants – but Pants to Poverty give you many good reasons to buy Pants to Poverty pants.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd.

These are the kind of services that you want to be reliable, trustworthy, professional, consistent, accurate, and dependable.  Not words that get the blood racing with excitement but then no one really wants their solicitor to get too creative with their legal advice and their accountant would soon lose credibility if they came across as a bit wacky.

So how do businesses like these differentiate themselves when:

• The fundamentals of the service they perform are the same as their competitors (all working to the same legal system);
• ‘High quality’ is the only kind of quality that anyone would actually want to pay for (half a set of annual accounts, anyone?);
• Values such as trustworthiness and reliablility are required as the norm, not as differentiators?

How do they convey all the values of security that their clients want without appearing bland, conservative and, indeed, dull?

In these discplines there is often, quite understandably, a fear of going to the other extreme – and damaging a reputation in the process.  So a more subtle approach to developing and conveying a brand personality is in order. 

 And you’ll need to find more subtle ways to communicate that personality than a choice of emoticon!

The key is to ensure that whatever brand personality is identified is comfortable for the business and that it used as a guide when making all types of decisions.  There’s little point in deciding that your brand personality is friendly and informal and then equipping your reception with traditional-style furniture, serving aftenoon tea in the best china, addressing long-standing clients as Madam or Sir, and insisting on an overly-formal style of writing in your brochures.

Your clients will certainly notice the dissonance between what you say you’re like and how you actually behave – if you claim to be the most progressive firm around, you need to be bang up-to-date with the way you communicate with your clients as well as with ‘knowing your stuff’.

Really, this applies to any kind of business – getting the culture right is vital to ensuring your brand values and brand personality are at the heart of everything you do.  But the more you need to hold on to the necessary values such as being  reliable, trustworthy, professional, consistent, accurate, and dependable the more subtly creative and consistent you need to be in communicating the extra personality traits that will make you stand out from the crowd credibly.

Francine Pickering
Clarity Marketing Ltd.