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Almost everywhere you turn today you hear the term “brand” or “branding” being thrown about. This week I’m attending a trade show in Chicago and heard variations of “brand” at breakfast, during meetings, on the shuttle, and at dinner.

“We’ve got an important new branding initiative…” said one. Another talked about “creating a branding campaign that would…” I even heard about how someone’s “brand needed more traction.”

Truth be told, I’ve always been taught that a brand cannot be created overnight, but rather over time. I’m a firm believer that a “branding campaign” is not about branding at all; but rather about advertising. I become perplexed when I see marketing communications, advertising or publicity that talks about their brand, as if nobody knew about it.

Tragically, these companies miss the whole point. To me, a brand is a set of customer expectations. They expect the menu to be priced consistently from location to location., the place to be clean, the personnel to be observant and ready. The quality to be high. If they are not you can run all the ads you want, but it won’t be true and the customer will either know it, or find out quickly.

So, what’s the point?

Besides holding a brand to a customer’s expectations, it runs much deeper than what you say you do. It’s actually what you do, day-in and day-out. Brand is actually a verb first; a noun second. Brand is the company in action. Brand is what the company sees demonstrated. It is not what the company says that it is.

Case-in-point: I have rarely seen a brand so clearly communicated and demonstrated than by the Hilton Garden Inn here at O’Hare Airport. They so clearly get it that even their comment cards (placed everywhere) don’t take the usual approach of “how can we improve?” but instead “Catch us doing something great…”

In the hotel business, service stands-out above the usual “clean beds” and such. But when you and others talk about the level of attention you’re getting from the hotel, while riding on the shuttle, well, that’s plain amazing.

What this hotel has done is teach every employee that the customer is the most important person, and to do everything in one’s power to accommodate them; often before they actually ask for it. The hotel manager’s business cards are plainly visible (and available) at the front desk, where his cell phone number is boldly printed if ever necessary!

As the shuttle picked us up from the airport, the driver cheerily greeted us, handed us each a fresh and cold bottle of water (on a very hot day) as we entered. He called-ahead with our names, so that we would already be checked-in, with keys ready and waiting.

Rooms had both free wired and wireless Internet (no registration, no codes, no fees). Plus, free printing services from the room.

Need to go somewhere? Anywhere? A shuttle would whisk you to your destination virtually any time of day or night; simply call the driver for a pick-up. No charge.

When boxed materials were sent to the hotel instead of the convention center, the hotel clerk cheerily noted that they had already been put on the shuttle to be delivered to the booth! No charge.

I could go on about the surprises that lurked around every corner. But what this hotel in Chicago did was to live its brand through its actions. You didn’t need a branding campaign to tell others about how good they were; the actual customers would do that by talking to others about their great experience. And, after all, isn’t word-of-mouth the best, most trusted, cost-efficient methods of marketing?

So, when you’re embarking on your next marketing initiative make sure you apply the principles of branding-as-a-verb from the very beginning. As you develop your messaging strategy. As you write copy. As you plan the Web site experience. As you implement touchpoints, forms, processes, follow-ups, opt-ins and such.

Think ahead of what your customer / visitor expects from you and your brand. If you execute on these with flawless precision, your brand will show itself automatically.

Now it’s your turn:

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

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© 2008 Bob Chernet
Reproduction in any manner is unlawful, without the written permission of the author.

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Not that long ago I wrote an article titled Using Web Addresses to Support the Brand to help marketers understand the importance of making a web site’s URL work hard on not only marketing & communications materials, but on product packaging as well.

I’m happy to report that I received a lot of feedback on that topic; it must be on a lot of people’s minds. However, the comments ranged the gamut, from “We think it’s better to drive our traffic to our home page and expose them to all of our product offerings” (or messaging… or specials, or whatever) to how difficult it was getting buy-in from other stakeholders, such as the brand manager, design director, adding (in their minds) “clutter” to their packaging. There always seemed to be some sort of excuse why they couldn’t accomplish it, in this age of why can’t we?

Well, let’s hear it for Heinz Ketchup! The message I talked about seemed to resonate with the “57 Varieties” folks (although I cannot claim that they actually read my words and acted specifically because of them). If you look on the back of their retail squeeze bottles you’ll see that they reserved a significant portion of packaging real estate to publicizing their web site, and creating enough interest to drive users to it.

As you can see they created a specific “active voice” domain name (HeinzItUp.com) that conveys a sense of interest, action and fun. Notice the three specific reasons to visit the site; all benefit-oriented.

Why would they do this, particularly when site users are already Heinz customers? Simple: they’re solidifying a brand relationship they already have, adding user value and providing the potential to upsell their customers to more uses for the product (”use ketchup in your meatloaf recipe…” etc.) Imagine customers who actually want to learn more about the product! These “make-me-interested loyals” may actually increase their likelihood-of-purchase by investigating additional ways to use the product , or being cross-sold to other Heinz brands. Arm & Hammer Baking Soda accomplished this famously years ago by telling users of a “new use” by putting an open box of Arm & Hammer in the refrigerator to kill odors.

Heinz can find great use in the site statistics in order to segregate visits from their other sites, such as Heinz.com and offer an opt-in mechanism to continue the dialog via invited eMail messages. This simple tactic goes a long way towards justifying to management and budget stakeholders not only the value of the unique domain, but efficiency of the packaging message and the new channel for communication to customers who not only use the product but are open to new ideas and uses.

Take a look at your web site; your product packaging, the way you sell your domain to others. Are you simply saying “visit our website at www.oursite.com” or are you giving them a unique way to connect with you, and a demonstrable value exchange?

Hooray for Heinz! Have you seen other good examples? Let me know!

Agree? Disagree? Have a success story? Have a question? Share it with me at: bob_chernet@viewmark.com

View a complete list of Bob’s Marketing Insights articles.

© 2008 Bob Chernet

Reproduction in any manner is unlawful, without the written permission of the author.