What is a brand?

Growing A Brand Is A Choice: Neatfreak! Chose To Be A Brand

TEC Canada | Leadership Development for the Thinking CEO

By TEC Canada, May 14, 2014

TEC Canada is comprised of the most influential leaders and entrepreneurs from high-performing organizations across the country. These Members have compelling stories to tell about building brands that stick and creating messages that resonate. TEC has partnered with Sticky Branding to bring you these stories about the successful brands of our Members, like the Neatfreak Group. The article first appeared on Sticky Branding.

 

Companies have a choice: be a supplier or build a brand.

Growing a brand is a choice. It’s a choice to challenge the status quo. It’s a choice to create unique and identifiable products. It’s a choice to stand out, and build a name for your company.

In 2008 Neatfreak made these choices. Neatfreak is now the category leader in home organization and storage. They design and manufacture storage products for closets, garments, shoes and laundry. And you can buy their solutions from major retailers like Walmart, Target and Bed Bath & Beyond.

But prior to 2008 Neatfreak was a supplier. The company was founded in 1984 as Varimpo, a private label manufacturer of plastic hangers and other storage products. The company was a successful manufacturer, but to get to the next level they decided to become a brand. 

Not just another supplier
John Collins, Partner and Managing Director of the Neatfreak Group explains, “The home organization and storage category is a $7.6 billion a year industry. 85% of the industry is serviced by private label manufacturers, and 15% is driven by six competitors with brands.”

“We were playing the private label game, but we asked ourselves how do we create a compelling opportunity for A, the consumer, and B, our retail partners?”

Neatfreak was born out of a desire to create more value. A supplier is just that, a supplier. But a brand has more freedom to innovate and design products that delight consumers, while creating programs that move products off the store shelves, which delights retailers. 

Focus on the consumer
Neatfreak’s products are popular, because they are functional and fashionable.

John Collins says, “Our purpose is to help keep the consumer organized, and control the chaos in her life. We bring harmony to everyday life, and we do that through imaginative products.”

Design is at the heart of fulfilling their purpose. The private label companies are effective at manufacturing, but Neatfreak stays a step ahead with their commitment to design. “We design our products, which is what separates our company from the chaff, in Lyon, France,” says John.

That combination of purpose and design is very powerful, because Neatfreak is able to define the standards for their category. And that clearly differentiates them from the masses of private label manufacturers. 

A name people remember
Innovative, well designed products are the foundation of Neatfreak’s brand, but they also have a brand identity that sticks.

The “Neatfreak” name is memorable, and it sums up the consumer experience. John says, “The name resonates so well it’s unbelievable. The name is really memorable, and it conjures up interesting feelings for retailers and consumers.”

The brand name is then enhanced with packaging that pops. “53% of the decisions in this category are decided on packaging. We spent a lot of time and money on repositioning Neatfreak on store shelves, because once a customer experiences a Neatfreak product the repurchase rate is extremely high,” says John.

Neatfreak’s name sticks, and customers seek them out again and again. 

Growing a brand is a choice
It all starts with a choice. In hindsight the decision for Neatfreak to build a brand seems obvious, but in 2008 it was a challenging and strategic decision.

The choice is for your company to make. Do you want to be a supplier, or do you want to be a brand? Both options are viable, which do you choose? 

Author bio
Jeremy Miller is Brand Strategist, Speaker and the President of Sticky Branding — a branding and business development firm that helps companies stand out, attract customers and drive sales. For more information visit http://www.StickyBranding.com. You can reach Jeremy at 416.479.4403. 

TEC Member Profile
Neatfreak Group Inc. designs, manufactures and distributes innovative home organization products to retailers around the world. They provide imaginative solutions that make your life easier, keep things organized and help you control the chaos. Neatfreak’s purpose is to bring harmony to everyday life.

Profit & Leadership Most Viewed Posts of 2013

This is the 1 year anniversary of my blog PROFIT AND LEADERSHIP. Due to supporters like you, the blog has been well received. 

Thank You!

My motivation for creating P&L was to provide a facility for people who run businesses to access useful leadership tips and improve their individual performance as leaders and the performance of their companies. On the occasion of this first anniversary, I conducted an audit of the blog’s over 500 posts and here are the top 15:

SIX MYTHS ABOUT VENTURE CAPITALISTS

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/05/six-myths-about-venture-capitalists.html

BAD BUSINESS DECISIONS AND FAMOUS QUOTES

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/02/bad-business-decisions-and-famous-quotes.html

NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE CORRELATION BETWEEN CSR AND BRAND STRENGTH

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/07/new-insights-into-correlation-between.html

CASE STUDY: COMPETING IN RETAIL– “DAVID VS GOLIATH”

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/05/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_8834.html

CASE STUDY - ANCILLARY BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/03/case-study-ancillary-business.html

CASE STUDY - ANATOMY OF A TURNAROUND

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/03/normal-0-false-false-false-en-us-x-none_12.html

CASE STUDY: ACHIEVE AND MAINTAIN COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/04/case-study-achieve-and-maintain.html

GOOD STRATEGY/BAD STRATEGY: THE DIFFERENCE AND WHY IT MATTERS

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/04/good-strategybadstrategy-difference-and.html

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: "IT'S NOT IN MY JOB DESCRIPTION"

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/12/employee-engagement-its-not-in-my-job.html

35 QUOTES TO TRANSFORM YOURSELF INTO A LEADER

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/04/35-quotes-to-transform-yourself-into.html

9 HABITS OF PEOPLE WHO BUILD EXTRAORDINARY RELATIONSHIPS

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/04/9-habits-of-people-who-build.html

THE BENEFITS OF BELONGING TO A CEO GROUP

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2014/01/the-benefits-of-belonging-to-ceo-group.html

WHY PRODUCT STRATEGY IS KEY TO INNOVATION AND NEW MARKETS

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/10/why-product-strategy-is-key-to.html

CASE STUDY: TEAMWORK = TURNAROUND

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/05/case-study-teamwork-turnaround.html

HOW TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WAY ORGANIZATIONS LEARN

http://profitandleadership.blogspot.ca/2013/06/how-technology-is-changing-way.html

Why Stellar Customer Service Is Key to Building Your Online Brand

Image credit: djwerdna on Flickr

In his book Tweet Naked, online marketing expert and Social Media Firm CEO Scott Levy provides the critical information entrepreneurs need to craft a social media strategy that will boost their brand and their business. In this edited excerpt, the author explains why the most important factor to succeeding on social media is exceptional customer service. 

Above and beyond anything else, I want to emphasize the importance of providing amazing customer service. If you adhere to the age-old adage, "The customer is always right" (even when you know they're wrong), you can build one hell of a successful brand, especially on social media. Huge brands have been built overnight because of incredible customer service. 

Zappos, the online shoe seller, offers an amazing example of how great customer service can lead to tremendous results. Selling just shoes, something you could buy anywhere and everywhere, Zappos broke the mold. Founded in 1999, under the name Shoesite.com, the Henderson, Nevada, company became Zappos a year later and topped the $1 billion valuation in less than ten years.

Zappos executives recognized that the number-one stumbling block to buying shoes online was the possibility that the shoes would need to be returned and that would cost customers money. With that in mind, Zappos built its brand around extraordinary customer service, offering customers a 365-day, no-cost return policy. It also offered free shipping.

In addition, employees are trained to go the extra mile to help customers on an "unscripted" help line. Zappos employees are taught to do whatever they can to ensure a satisfied customer. It's reported that one customer service professional actually spent eight hours on the phone helping a customer!

Reports of Zappos' amazing customer service spread like wildfire across social media, and word-of-mouth became the number-one manner of marketing for the shoe company, which grew by leaps and bounds.

If ever there was a company that knew the core value of customer service, Zappos is that company. Its slogan is "Powered by Service," and Zappos' top execs have been quoted as saying, "Everything we do is focused with our customer in mind. In fact, our call center has an entire team, called quality assurance, which focuses on making sure our customers' experience is the best it can possibly be."

What you can learn from the Zappos story is that if you want to build one hell of a brand, it should feature amazing customer service. Even though you know customers can be annoying, misuse products or abuse the return policy, you need to instill in your corporate culture that it's important for everyone to take good care of each and every customer. This way they will become a fan of your business and help spread the word via social media. While you may have more returns and may even have to spend a little more money to hire and train employees on how to provide excellent customer service at all times, that investment will pay off one hundredfold when people are talking about how much they love your brand.

At the root of customer service is caring about people. That's because social media has given customers a voice like they've never had before. The nameless, faceless company that didn't really care what the consumer thought of it can't avoid social media visibility today. A customer or potential customer could have 300,000 followers or know someone who does. Just as rave reviews about a company can travel quickly across social media, so can stories of rude service or a company being unresponsive to their customers.

Therefore, it's your job on social media to care about people and make them your friends and your fans. You want them to love your brand, share your passion for your company, and spread their enthusiasm across their social media channels. That's how brand champions are created and how you can enjoy an incredible amount of free marketing.

One of my favorite social media success stories is one that belongs to my friend, author, consultant and entrepreneur Peter Shankman. Peter was at an airport getting ready to board a plane. A huge fan of Morton's Steakhouses, he was craving some steak and jokingly tweeted about it: "Hey @Mortons - can you meet me at newark airport with a porterhouse when I land in two hours? K, thanks. :)" 

He was joking. He boarded the plane, shut off his phone, and landed at Newark International Airport two and a half hours later. He looked for his driver, saw his name, and waved to him. As Peter greeted the driver, he in turn was greeted by a guy in a tux carrying a Morton's bag.

Peter said, "Alex, from Morton's Hackensack, walks up to me, introduces himself, and hands me a bag. He proceeds to tell me that he'd heard I was hungry, and inside is a 24-ounce Porterhouse steak, an order of colossal shrimp, a side of potatoes, one of Morton's famous round things of bread, two napkins and silverware. He hands me the bag. I was floored."

So Peter proceeds to tweet out this: "Oh. My. God. I don't believe it. @mortons showed up at EWR WITH A PORTERHOUSE!"

Twitter and social platforms went crazy for the story. Peter was interviewed and told this story numerous times, on major news and TV networks, and at speaking engagements. Morton's probably received more than $5 million worth of free PR from this incident.

The moral of the story is that going above and beyond sometimes can give you a hundredfold ROI. Don't expect it to, but if it does, it could make for the greatest customer service story ever told.

Scott Levy

Scott Levy is the founder and CEO of Fuel Online, an online marketing agency that focuses on social media and SEO. He has been specializing in online marketing for more than 15 years and is a respected speaker, writer and consultant. Scott is based in Nashville.

10 Things Every Leader Should Challenge

News Flash – innovation, growth and development cannot occur by pretending we live in a world that has long since passed us by. Leading in the 21st Century affords no safe haven for 20th Century thinkers. Old, static, institutionalized thinking will gate the pace of forward progress faster than just about anything. If you want to expose yourself as an out of touch, dated leader, keep trying to address today’s issues and opportunities with yesterday’s thinking.

Let’s get right to it – history is useful for many things, but the experience and wisdom acquired from days gone by should be a springboard to the future, not an excuse for living in the past.

Smart leaders simply don’t waste precious resources on refining initiatives – they invest in reimagination efforts. Leaders would be well served to apply reimagination to all aspects of their business, but particularly with regard to constantly reimagining how they lead. 

Examine any study on the rate of change, and you’ll find we’re living in an unprecedented time. The rate of change is clearly outpacing most leaders ability to learn and unlearn. Many leaders struggle to remain current, much less find a way to move ahead of the curve. Here’s the thing – if leaders are stuck in the past, their organizations will be forced to travel a very rough road to the future.

The best leaders understand the present is nothing more than a platform for the envisioning of, and positioning for, the future. If you want to lead more effectively, shorten the distance between the future and present. Inspiring innovation and leading change call for more than process– they require the adoption of a cultural mindset. Leaders who protect the status quo through control must surrender to change in order to secure the future for their organization. Don’t be the leader who rewards herd mentality, and me too thinking. Don’t be the leader who encourages people not to fail or not to take risks. Be the leader who both models and gives permission to do the exact opposite of the aforementioned – be a leader who leads.

Smart leaders challenge everything – especially conventional thought, best practices, and dominant logic. When I refer to dominant logic I’m referencing existing behaviors/practices, which lock companies into a pattern of once productive thinking that no longer is (false truths held as real). Anything in business can be improved, everything can be reimagined, and many things can flat out be eliminated. The trick is knowing what items to focus on. While the following list is clearly not exhaustive, it identifies 10 things all leaders should challenge:
 

1. Challenge The Foundation – Bad things happen when your foundation is shaky. If the core values, vision, and strategy aren’t sound and aligned, everything else will suffer. If you don’t have a clearly articulated direction and purpose, how can you expect to achieve the right outcomes? The best leaders stand for something bigger than themselves, and they’re driven by more than just profit motive. They understand the value of a purpose driven business. If what I’ve just said doesn’t make any sense, it’s time to start the reimagination process.


2. Challenge The Destination – Leadership isn’t destination based – it’s a continuum. Great leaders think beyond the outcome. They think about what if and what’s next. They don’t get trapped in the journey to a specific destination, but remain in constant search of discovery in order to seek new and better opportunities.

3. Challenge The Promise – Is your brand promise on target? Is it deliverable? Is it sustainable? If you cannot keep your promise to customers, you won’t have much of a business to worry about. Few things hinder the advance of a business like a brand in need of a refresh.

4. Challenge the Model - Not all business models are created equal. Furthermore, just because you have a business model doesn’t mean it’s the right one, or that it’s sustainable. Break the business model down from the revenue engine all the way down to the distribution model and delivery strategy. Does it afford you a competitive advantage moving forward, or does it need to be reimagined?

5. Challenge The Information – Not all inputs are created equal. Don’t think big data – think good data. Smart leaders understand there’s a difference between gut instincts, data, information and knowledge. Furthermore, as much as some don’t want to hear this, opinion and theory aren’t always synonymous with fact and reality. Agendas and bias often pervade the information flow, so trust and credibility must factor in when assessing information quality.

 Always challenge the information, but recognize there’s a difference between being a skeptic and being discerning. Lastly, it’s always worth reimagining how you process information to yield better decisions.

6. Challenge The Organization - I’ve been around long enough to see almost every type of organizational design come and go, only to come again. A great example of this would be Matrix organizations, or what I call the corporate version of the Matrix Trilogy. The Matrix model has been around for nearly 30 years. While many organizations have killed the Matrix, some have readopted it, others have remained trapped in the Matrix for decades, but virtually every large enterprise using it is over-matrixed. I can think of no better target for reimagination than the Matrix. Where’s Neo when you need him? For those of you not trapped in the Matrix, you’re not off the hook. Any organizational structure can be reimagined and improved.

7. Challenge The Culture - Every organization has a culture. Some are carefully created and curated by design, and others evolve by default. Some are toxic; some are barely surviving on life support, while others are healthy and vibrant. The bottom line is culture can be a significant asset or a tremendous liability. The thing about cultural dynamics is they can change very rapidly – either in your favor or against it. Leaders who fail to constantly challenge cultural norms and constructs are failing themselves and those they lead.

8. Challenge The Talent - Many things benefit from compromise, but talent is not one of them. If you settle for anything less than acquiring, deploying, developing, and retaining the best talent possible, shame on you. I’ve often said, leaders deserve the teams they build. If you cannot seamlessly mobilize and deploy the best talent to your greatest opportunities or your biggest risks you have a problem. If succession isn’t an enterprise wide concern there is trouble on the horizon. If leadership development is just a buzzword and not a point of emphasis you won’t remain competitive. The areas of leadership development, organizational development, and talent acquisition should constantly be challenged and re-imagined.

9. Challenge The Complex - Don’t fall into the trap of believing sophistication is synonymous with complexity – it’s not. Great leaders challenge all things complex, and if they’re smart, they look to simplify everything. Whether it’s strategy, organization, process, or execution, if it’s complex it needs to be reimagined.

10. Challenge Yourself - The truth is most leaders are skilled at challenging others, but are woefully inadequate when it comes to challenging themselves, or allowing others to challenge them. When leaders hold themselves to a higher standard of rigor, discipline, accountability, and transparency everyone wins.

 Mike Myatt
 

Why Email Marketing Is Vital To A Brand's Health

Steve Olenski, 

Just a few weeks ago I wrote an article entitled As If They Need It, Another Reason Brands Need To Be Mobile which essentially spelled out the fact that the most powerful brand ambassadors in the world, moms – are a very mobile demographic and if marketing & advertising folks want to succeed, they better be mobile as well. Literally.

In fact one of the things I used to make my point was this chart, courtesy of eMarketer which spells out what the activities moms most like to do via their smartphone. Pay attention to the first two. Then hold that thought.

  

Not long ago I received the results of a survey entitled Shopping with Social Media which was conducted by Ryan Partnership, a behavioral marketing agency. In the online survey of primary household shoppers, which yielded over 10,000 results, consumers were asked which digital tools they were aware of and which they used in the past year.

It is the third year they’ve conducted this study and according to Kim Finnerty, SVP Research & Insights at Ryan Partnership, this year they saw continued increasing penetration for newer, more mobile tools like Load to Card coupons, product reviews, and mobile payments.

No real surprise there as far as I am concerned given the mobile world we live in, of course.

In speaking with Kim, I asked her if should could break down the results to show just one particular demographic. A demographic which accounts for anywhere from 80-90% of all household decisions. A very powerful and influential demographic. Of course I am referring to moms.

The reason I asked for this breakdown is I wanted to see how moms fared compared to the national averages and lo and behold, it seems good old email, the medium many predicted years ago would go the way of fax machines, is not only popular among moms, it outranks other mediums in the eyes of this most sought after demographic.

Go back and look at the eMarketer chart above, then look at this:

Do you see it?
The question posed was “When have you used X to help you shop or plan to shop?”

Retail emails

• U.S. average – 13%
• Moms – 16%

Brand emails

• U.S. average – 17%
• Moms – 19%

Retailer texts

• U.S. average – 29%
• Moms – 31%

So, moms are mobile, we know that. They check email and texts on their smartphones but they are also checking email via other sources as the chart above is channel agnostic.

In other words email marketing is extremely vital in engaging with moms and potentially impacting their buying decision. The words “help you shop”  and ”plan to shop” are the key phrases here kids. Anytime you use and hear the words “help” and “plan” that tells you that whatever topic you’re discussing carries with it an inherent value either in the positive or negative.

Go back again and look at the chart above from Ryan Partnership see how email scores compared to social media and shopping apps. In each instance, moms come in under the national average.

Yet for email, the opposite is true.

Finnerty, in speaking about the results of the survey from an overall perspective says that the biggest surprise that came out of the findings was how high email ranked. “Email is still a very strong tool for changing shopper behavior and satisfying shopper needs,” she said. “While it seems like an old-school tool compared to things like shopping apps and mobile payments, marketers have had years to perfect it so it achieves objectives.”

She very well could have been speaking about the mom demographic only.

5 Brazen Insights on How to Build a Better Small Business

Photo: Indochino.com

 

When it comes to starting a business, sometimes having a great idea is the easy part. Building a successful business around that idea takes vision, knowledge and sometimes a bit of luck in the form of favorable market conditions.

 

There’s another thing that is often the difference between a successful and unsuccessful business venture: savvy business advice. Whether you hear it from specialists in the field or personal connections with industry knowledge, it’s important to weigh the wise counsel of experienced business minds.

In that spirit, let’s look at five key insights from leading professionals on how to build a better business.

1. Keep your financial house in order.

   When you start a business, it’s not uncommon to wear many hats — often by necessity. One area where it’s easy to make a critical mistake is finance. There’s more to it than making payroll and meeting tax obligations. Not that paying taxes isn’t important. Steve Klitzner of Florida Tax Solvers says, “One of the most important things for small business owners to do is to pay their quarterly taxes on time.”
   
   Klitzner says not doing so “can lead to penalties and cause the business owner to pay more than they already owed on their taxes.” Business owners should also consider that they may miss out on favorable tax deductions simply from lack of experience. While handling your own taxes saves money in the short-term, it may end up being far more costly in the end, if not handled correctly.

2. Protect your brand.

   In business, the health of your brand is almost everything. Be more than a brand caretaker — be an ultra-vigilant brand watchman. This goes for everything from online reputation management to potential trademark infringement. Concerns about infringement cut both ways.
   
   If you accidentally find your company infringing, it could lead to potentially ruinous legal bills. Trademark attorney Josh Gerben recommends business owners perform a top-to-bottom trademark search prior to starting a business. An experienced trademark attorney will ensure your proposed trademark is free for use– and give you peace of mind.
   
   Gerben suggests, “Instead of spending a lot of money to build equity into a brand that may be infringing on someone else’s trademark rights, it is highly recommended that you hire a trademark attorney to do a professional trademark search.”"A trademark search performed by an attorney will help to ensure your trademark is truly clear to be used in the marketplace.” By following Gerben’s advice you can avoid a potential legal minefield — which is the last thing any new business needs.

3. Protect your company with small business insurance.

   Insurance is one of the costliest aspects of running a business; involving paperwork and administration. So many business owners pass on business insurance and hope for the best. Ryan Hanley says entrepreneurs should avoid that approach at all costs. Hanley, author of the Albany Insurance Professional blog, suggests that “skimping on insurance — especially health insurance — is like playing Russian Roulette with your future.”
   
   While bypassing insurance will save money upfront, the incurred costs of unexpected medical care is often catastrophic to a business. If you or your employees aren’t healthy, chances are the business isn’t healthy either. Hanley encourages business owners not to consider insurance a luxury. He says it is best viewed, not in terms of current price, but in terms of future cost.

4. Market your business effectively.

   Even the best managaed small business doesn’t get very far without effective marketing. On the other hand, great marketing can sometimes compensate for other areas where a business is lacking. For businesses without a large marketing budget, it’s sometimes difficult to know where to deploy your resources.
   
   One way to market economically is through an online presence. A well-designed company website is critical for all businesses. Internet marketing strategist Jeff Shjarback says that your company website “is an excellent way to increase sales and generate new leads. A website not only draws people in, but offers you a space to communicate with possible customers, current customers and post content pertaining to your business.”
   
   Once you’ve mastered the basics, optimize online marketing efforts through the savvy use of social media platforms. Building fans through services such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram helps generate the best kind of awareness — word of mouth. Other techniques such as search engine optimization (SEO) and e-mail marketing can also build your brand and customer base.

5. Plan for future success.

   It’s never wise to enter into any situation without careful consideration of the facts and circumstances. It’s even less wise to enter into business that way. A well thought out business plan is vital for success. It helps you design your business approach and gives you a chance to consider variables that are certain to pop up later. It will also give you a good read on the true feasibility of your business model.
   
   Business plan specialist Dick McCormick believes that startups “don’t have to develop a written business plan to start a business. But a comprehensive, realistic plan will greatly increase your chances of being successful. Would you build a house without a blueprint? Would you drive cross-country without a map?” Starting a business without a well-reasoned plan is a good way to seriously diminish your odds of success. A thorough plan will guide you and make sure your business has the solid foundation it needs to flourish.

Zack Kirchin is the senior author at TheTechFortress, a blog that references the latest technology, gadgets, news and more.

A Great CEO Is The Chief Experience Officer

The title “Chief Executive Officer” doesn't really say very much about what the person is supposed to do. Yes, they're an officer. Got that. They're an “executive” — got that too, whatever that means. And of all the executive officers, they're the “chief”. Sure. But, I'd still argue that overall, the title doesn't really work anymore. It doesn't convey anything. CFOs are about finance. CMOs are about marketing. CIOs are about information. But, a CEO? They're about being an executive?

Instead, I propose that the CEO should be the Chief Experience Officer.
If the CEO can make the following set of experiences amazing, she will have created an amazing company — and done her job.

1. Product Experience: What is the experience like using the product and getting value from it? Does it solve the problem simply? Does it make users happy, productive and hopeful when they're using it, or does it make them frustrated, angry, agitated and depressed?

2. Purchasing Experience: What is it like to go through the sales process and buy the product? Was it easy to figure out whether the product was the right fit? Was the pricing straight-forward? Was the buying process smooth without unnecessary steps and complexity?

3. Brand Experience: What is it like to interact with the company's brand? Does talking about the company with others ignite passion? What kind of emotions does it evoke? When people see the logo online or offline, what's the visceral reaction?

4. Support Experience: What is it like to receive support from the company? Do people dread having to call in and get help? When they do make contact, do they feel like the company cares not just about appeasing and pleasing — but that the actual problem is addressed?

5. Exit Experience: What is it like to leave the company, return the product, or cancel the subscription and no longer be a customer?

Sometimes you can tell more about a company by how it treats customers on their way out, than on their way in.

6. Employee Experience: What's it like being recruited by the company? Working for the company? Being let go from the company? If you have a terrible employee experience, you will not attract the kinds of people that will make the customer experience amazing. It just doesn't work.

Notice that most of the above experiences are all about the customer. How does the customer experience the company? I think that's the primary set of experiences the CEO should worry about. The reason is simple, by improving the overall customer experience, everyone wins. Including the investors/shareholders (and yes, the CEO also needs to manage the shareholder experience too).

What do you think? Am I over-thinking the importance of the overall experience? Any lessons learned or tips on how to measure and improve the experience?

Posted by: 
Dharmesh Shah

5 Principles of Convergence: How To Work Better At The Intersection Of Tech, Creativity, And Media

Convergence is both buzzword and marketing reality. Razorfish CEO Bob Lord outlines 5 ways creative companies can adapt to a converging world and create better brand experiences. 

The word convergence has been picking up steam in the marketing world. It may even be the “big data” term of 2013. Yet, the word means different things to different people. At Razorfish, we use convergence to describe the coming together of three irresistible forces--media, technology, and creativity--to create experiences that enrich the consumer’s relationship with the brand.

Convergence is a constant process, not an end point. Technology, creativity, and media are constantly evolving, and so is the converged company. It is a never-ending challenge to adapt a customer experience that, in our digital age, will always be in flux. Too often, businesses are far behind consumers in embracing technological change, a problem that has everything to do with how the organization is set up. My new book, coauthored with Razorfish Global CTO Ray Velez, Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology, describes in detail how enterprises and teams must adapt for an age of disruption.

Here are five key principles: 

Put the Customer at the Center.

Being ready for convergence isn’t about building an innovations lab, spending marketing budget on Facebook and Twitter ads or about hiring a social media “guru” to respond to online complaints. It’s about embracing a customer-centric mind-set and making your entire organization responsive to the customer journey. This isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially for larger, well-established companies where scale has mandated the creation of a complicated organizational chart.

Strategies need to be based on data from actual consumer activity, not abstract gut feeling. That data should dictate not only what experiences you serve consumers but where, when, and how. Brand communications must engage the consumer in social platforms and ecosystems and open APIs. And the retail experience must be made omni-channel, giving shoppers the same experience whether they’re in-store, online, or on the phone. 

Think of Your Brand as a Service and Experience.
You’re no longer in the business of selling stuff; you’re filling consumers’ needs. As a marketer, you’re creating new products and apps and always-on ecosystems, not just a series of campaigns based around a calendar of product launches. Nike is the classic example, with its ecosystem of fitness apparel, gadgets like FuelBand and services like Nike+ that immerse the user in the company’s innovation and create an end-to-end fitness solution. Special K, one of our clients, is still in the cereal game and it sells a ton of it. But it’s also in the health, fitness, and weight-loss games. It took its Special K challenge and turned it into a digital weight-loss platform.

To create and maintain this ecosystem, you’ll be investing in marketing operations, not just working media, and bringing in more designers and developers. In the past, marketing ops were largely limited to the maintenance of an internal marketing team and hiring and firing agencies that produced the creative work. People were accountable for spending the dollars, not how effectively they were spent. In a converged world, it will be about those activities, and also about investing in people and systems to ensure that the marketing spending is optimized. 

Reject Silos.
Media, technology, and creativity are no longer discrete problems. Let’s take the most fundamental example of this: the creation of an ad. A few years back, a new ad campaign was simply a creative challenge that was solved by coming up with a new flight of TV spots. These days, a new ad will likely involve some technological and media challenges. Are you tapping into the API of a hot new social media platform? How are you getting your brilliant campaign in front of a demographic that’s no longer watching TV?

The traditional, silo-based organization is ill-equipped to answer these questions. So what you need to achieve is better collaboration between marketing and IT. To get there, your C-suite might have senior roles like chief digital officer and chief marketing technologists, filled by experts in both functions catalyzing innovation throughout the organization and fostering collaboration. Or you might try bottom-up solutions like internal account management. In this structure, marketing folks have counterparts in IT and vice versa. 

Act Like a Startup.
There’s a set of common misconceptions about how established enterprises should learn from startups. It’s not about moving into flashy new digs or setting up Ping-Pong tables or having free sushi for lunch.

Like customer-centricity, the startup mentality requires much deeper and more meaningful change. It requires uprooting many old assumptions and habits, especially those around tech infrastructure, and doing things the way a newer, leaner company might.

Acting like a startup in this sense means the following:

--Your enterprise deploys--or at least experiments with--cheap, fast, and flexible tools like cloud computing, social media platforms, and open APIs.

--You employ product managers who are accountable for particular aspects of the consumer experience, just like Facebook has tasked someone with oversight of the newsfeed. As one of our clients describes it, product managers have to understand the customer and constantly prioritize and re-prioritize what’s best for the customer.

--You employ Agile methodology and rapid prototyping.
And look, no Ping-Pong.

Embrace Diversity
Every organization needs specialists and experts, but in the place of environments where everyone fills one role and thinks about nothing besides that role, there needs to be cross-fertilization, a coming together of various fields, disciplines, personalities, and cultures.

In practice, it’s important to get a wide variety of expertise and perspectives around the table—marketing and technology, of course, but also HR, legal, and finance. We call this building a big boat, and it’s vital to building a convergence-ready organization.

But there’s more to it than just getting all the right people around the table. You also have to incentivize collaboration, getting multiple functions to rally around a shared set of objectives and a shared method of measuring process--that’s a big change and it has to be tracked cleanly and carefully. This entails getting your systems to feed a dashboard that tracks a manageable set of metrics. Then you have to get the team to check in regularly, or at least pay attention to the readouts they’re receiving.

Adapting your organization for convergence is never over. It’s a constant cycle of testing, learning, building, and destroying. All the more reason you should start now. The winners of this era will be the companies whose main focus is constantly improving on the customer journey. If you follow your customer, you can’t go wrong.

By:  Bob Lord, Global CEO of Razorfish.