Conspicuously Private Branding

Ivy Lee was one of the very first to manage a corporate crisis by writing a press release. By taking a proactive approach, Ivy Lee could write his version of the story in order to take control of the facts. Many journalists then took the text of the press release verbatim as the material for news article.

Ivy Ledbetter Lee (July 16, 1877 – November 9, 1934) is considered by some to be the founder of modern public relations. The term Public Relations is to be found for the first time in the preface of the 1897 Yearbook of Railway Literature.

Many historians credit Ivy Lee for being the originator of modern crisis-control communications. His principal competitor in the new public relations industry was Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud.

In 1914 Ivy Lee entered public relations on a large scale when he was retained by John D. Rockefeller Jr. to represent his family and Standard Oil, ("to burnish the family image"), after the coal mining rebellion in Colorado known as the "Ludlow Massacre". Upton Sinclair dubbed him "Poison Ivy" after Lee tried to send bulletins saying those that died were victims of an overturned stove, when in fact the Colorado militia shot them.

Anyone familiar with U.S. history knows that the Ludlow Massacre occurred when Rockefeller "bought" the  state militia and ordered them to squelch the union protest for better working conditions. The militia did its job and killed women, children and fathers--workers in the mines.

Ivy Lee's main goal was to maintain Rockefeller's image, or brand, as an moral, God-fearing family man and a ethical businessman.

This was the fundamental meaning of public relations. Though today's PR is seldom so dramatic as its origins  Lee revised the facts in an attempt to cover up what had happened in the massacre. Lee proactively wrote the story of what had taken place by explaining to the media that a stove had caught on fire causing the deaths of so many poor people.

A blog article, from BrandCulture.com, sheds light on this fundamental aspect of Public Relations as a similar approach in our current politics and media. In this case, a current example shows how a proactive public relations and branding helps the Koch Brothers achieve political goals. The case of the Rockefeller PR practices at the beginning of the 1900s illustrates how effective PR and branding can affect people's perception of reality and feelings for a person or an organization.

The Koch Brothers have done little, if anything in the way innovation in their business or even with their lives other than just being born as the heirs of an enormous company and its conglomerates, worth into the billions if not trillions, with an annual revenue over $100B.

The blog article by brandculture demonstrates how a brand cannot be all things to all people. It is revealing how powerful PR and branding can be in motivating people to do surprising things. In the PR and branding developed by the Kochs…or whatever branding firm is serving their designs, we discover how people can be led to believe just about anything.

The Kochs' PR firm uses branding tropes and images like “Path to Freedom” while pursuing extreme right-wing political goals through their numerous “grassroots organizations” like the Tea Party. Most members of the Tea Party do not realize that the Kochs are funding and promoting the it and many other organizations like it. By using effective branding and PR, the Kochs have become successful in their extreme, elitist politics.

The Kochs use these “American pie” phrases to inspire gullible Americans. And these naïve Americans serve the Kochs’ interests while these Middle Class Americans volunteer their time and money unwittingly to deserve their own political interests.

By using effective branding, the Kochs are motivating Middle Class Americans to work for “free” for the Kochs’ Political Agenda, and at the detriment of their own middle class interests.

This reveals how powerful branding and classical rhetoric can be. It can manipulate gullible people into doing the complete opposite of their own intentions. It is ironic, comical and tragic all at the same time.

Target the Segment -- Launch a Product

While working as I do now, as a marketing and branding consultant, I took the opportunity to help a software company in Southern California by drawing up the Market Requirement Documents and the High-level Technical Requirement Documents. The company needed a redesign and update for their CRM product, which was old and based on the Microsoft Access. Yes. It was time for a serious revision, if not a complete reinvention.

When designing a product, whether software or most any other product, it’s a good idea to make it flexible enough to meet the general functions and features required

by clients in various market segments. Also, it’s a good idea to design the product to accommodate the peculiar and unique requirements of the various segments or markets.

Likewise marketing managers need to consider which segments are more important than others when planning the launch of the new product or a new version.

The table presented here, below, enables marketing managers to consider the priorities of each segment. This table provides a clear and explicit way to analyze the segments. This helps marketing managers to choose which segments (markets) to start in the product launch. This table aids also in considering the priority of the segments in which the product will be sold. The table draws out a more explicit view of the various targeted segments by certain criteria: profitability, grow, in-depth knowledge of the segment, and such.

If you sale and market your products by prioritized vertical markets, this can be especially helpful. In this case, you probably prepare promotional, marketing campaigns to sale the product for the specific needs of the vertical segment.

This chart can help you to visualize and analyze what success factors are important and how they reflect one segment over another. This allows you to make strategic decisions. What segment do you want to penetrate first? Also, it helps to decide how much expenses are reasonable to penetrate and dominate a segment. How much will the product launch cost versus how much revenue is expected to make a profit and the return on the investment to develop the product? How much budget can we allocate for a Market Campaign to launch the product for a specific segment?

As for most any product or service, it seems that the best way to launch is to pick on viable segment and focus on it.

		Segment Analysis & Priority
	Analyzing and prioritizing the attractiveness of each segment for your business
	A prioritizing tool for launching a new business model, one segment at a time.
	Attractiveness
	Attributes		Weight		Segment1			Segment2			Segment3
				score	total		score	total		score	total
	Profitability		20%	8	1.6		7	1.4		8	1.6
	Growth		15%	6	0.9		6	0.9		6	0.9
	Size		25%	9	2.25		5	1.25		6	1.5
	Inside knowledge		30%	9	2.7		7	2.1		5	1.5
	Competition		5%	7	0.35		7	0.35		4	0.2
	Cyclicality		5%	2.5	0.125		3	0.15		2	0.1
	Segment Totals		100%	41.5	7.925		35	6.15		31	5.8
	Attractiveness: these are the attributes that interest you as you develop your business
		You can change the attributes as you learn more about what is attractive to your business
		For example: I add "Inside Knowledge" as an important attribute because
			your knowledge of on Segment over another makes a
			Critical Success Factor in penetrating / dominating that Segment.
			And for this reason, I give this attribute a high Weight.
	Weight: how much importance do you place on any one of the attributes of attractiveness.
			For your business this year.
	Score: on a scale of 0 to 10, how do you grade the Segment for its attractiveness attributes.
	Total: the Weight X the Score = a total for each attribute in each Segment.
	Segment Totals: helps you to prioritize the importance of each Segment or Market.
			Each Segment has its peculiarities.
			You can add more Segments into this chart and use the chart
			to lay out a handful of Segments to see which ones
			are more attractive relative to the others.

Some companies have concerns about launching a product or service in a way that all segments are penetrated by storm or blitzkrieg or even “shotgun” approach, and thus surprise any of the competitors. However, this concern about the competition will always be there. The competition will always look for ways to crush the other businesses. That’s just part of doing business.

Developing marketing strategy enables your business to encroach certain segments in ways to ward off the competition. There is no other way around it. You have to develop a product and service that responds to and even exceeds the requirements of the segments.

Nevertheless we have to launch a product or service in a business and start turning a profit. That is commonly the main goal. As the competition tries to move into the selected segment, we will have to wage war and fight those battles as they come. Preferably we need to develop a strategy that foresees and prepares for the competitive fight. Meanwhile we have to move on.

You need to show the world that once you enter into to a segment, your business model and strategy allows you to penetrate and dominate it.

You have to show that your business model, your product and service, works and is successful one segment at a time. Once you show success in one or two markets, you gain “street cred” or the reputation of a solid, credible company with attractive products and services. This is what fortifies the brand. By succeeding in penetrating and dominating one segment and the next, it becomes easier to move into a long list of markets. Success breeds success like little bunny rabbits.

Show Success to Create Credibility

By taking baby steps, you create success. That success translates into credibility in the sales teams, the engineering teams, and other teams gain enthusiasm as a company community. The positive attitudes strengthen the momentum.

Once you show the world that you are growing in terms of paying customers, other potential clients or customers will begin to notice you and your brand waxes. As your credibility increases, the more people, sales partners, agents, affiliates as well as clients will want to jump on this new and innovative business. They will want to sell this revolutionary product and service you have to offer.

Setting a goal would be useful, say for example, using milestones in terms of larger and larger numbers of converted clients per month, and this growth reflects a percentage of the market share.

But setting up a goal like this raises the question: what elements do you need to develop a robust Marketing Campaign for the new product or services to take hold on the targeted segment?

You will have to create a complete Project / Schedule for a Marketing Campaign per segment. Make a list of all the items you need to make the Marketing Campaign a great success specifically for the targeted segment.

From this Detailed Project/Marketing Campaign, you can develop a list of all the Cost Items. How much is it going to cost to set up a full blown campaign?

You list everything possible. Once you have a complete list for the campaign, you can discover that your budget might be sufficient for everything on your list. Or it might be too expensive, more than you can afford.

So, you prioritize. What types of Promotion, Advertising and Sales costs make the most impact given the cost constraints? You work with the resources you have. You implement the campaign and move the business forward. No fears.

Fundamental Marketing and Online Marketing, SEM, SEO, and More

Strategy Deals with Why. Tactics Deal with How.

Vantive Corporation was one of the first providers of CRM (customer relationship management) software. When I joined Vantive at the tail end of its life in 1998, their marketing was weak. At that time I was employed as Senior Product Marketing Manager for the CRM products.

At the time it was obvious that the company was floundering without a rudder in the rushing currents that soon became the ocean called the Internet. During those last couple of years of the company, most of the marketing executives had cashed in their stock options and moved on to greener pastures.

Many so-called marketing executives spun in and out through the revolving door. Without any consistent marketing guidelines or plans to navigate the company, the engineering group took the helm by default.

The Internet was just taking off. The engineering group took the initiative to begin redesigning the products for the Web. They were on the right path, but so much more was required to gain and retain customers. Competitors, like Siebel, were raising their flags on the horizon. The engineering group worked to solve technical challenge, but they didn’t know how to deal with clients needs or how to ward off competitors. Many engineers were eager to explain this to me. They were clear minded about the situation.

That’s the sort of thing that happens when marketing leaves the building. Everyone begins to guess what the customers want and need. The engineers were smart guys, but they lacked knowledge about marketing. How did clients break down into groups? The engineers knew the closest competitors, but they did not know how to identify the value propositions of the products and services and to develop them into unique competitive advantages.

Vantive lost its goals and focus. It lost its fundamental principles of marketing. The strategy told the Story of Why—the purpose of the company, its goals. The Story of Why faded away quickly. The marketing tactics lingered on for a while longer. The tactics told the Story of How—the hands on work of gaining and retaining clients.

There were several tools remaining to maintain the tactical aspects of marketing. Most obvious was their own CRM that the sales team used to keep track of the Vantive clients. The sales teams still had the support of the marketing collateral, some PR. What they no longer had though, was a consistent set of marketing methods and guidelines—the marketing plan with its strategic view and its tactical guidelines.

Now, fast forward to today’s marketing in general. We enjoy a whole new set of marketing tools like Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. SEO (search engine optimization) is also become more sophisticated in helping clients or customers to find companies on the Internet and to learn about products and services.

Now we also implement SEM (search engine marketing). SEM offers an entire toolbox full of methods to market a company and its products and services via a company Website, including search engine optimization (SEO), and the use of many other tools (http://www.support.google.com ). The prominent search engine companies provide many tools for Webmasters: Microsoft’s adCentral or (www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster ), and Google’s adSense and adWords or ( www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ ), and now Yahoo’s Search Marketing Tools have merged into Microsoft’s Bing Webmaster tools.

These toolkits offer Website analytics for tracking visitor behavior and even for tracking pay per click (PPC) or pay per sales, which focus on online sales components.

By the development of these online marketing and sales tools, marketing as a profession has taken on a new dimension. The trends show how traditional advertisers are beginning to spend more money advertising on the Internet than on most other channels of communications.

Despite these new tools, though, traditional marketing methods still hold the foundations for business strategy. There are no software apps that can develop marketing plans. The plans have to be developed by thinking marketers to achieve unique and innovative advantages in the market.

To avoid the failures of companies like Vantive, marketers need to pay attention to the basics of marketing methods while creating the strategic plans as well as the guidelines for the tactics. The new and wonderful online marketing capabilities deliver fantastic means of tactics in advertising and communications and sales. Nonetheless, they are tactical tools.

Strategy focuses on the why. This is the realm of innovative marketing. It guides us to prevail in a competitive battleground. The new online tools provide us with new tools for tactics in a whole new set of communication channels. Tactics deal with the how.

How to Develop the Right Marketing Plan

In my previous blog entry (October 12, 2012), I described the benefits and importance of a marketing plan for almost all businesses, small and large. A marketing plan can save a business by adapting to changing market forces. The plan leads business managers to look at many more points of view than otherwise considered. If done right, the plan can lead a business to growth and prosperity.

The question is: How do we develop a useful, practical marketing plan? There are commercial Web sites that provide template marketing plans. All you have to do is change the name of the company and revise some of the numbers and other facts to customize the plan for your own business. That is an example of how not to create a functional marketing plan.

Following best practices, business managers need to designate a marketing manager in charge of the marketing plan. However the marketing manager should have a rank high enough to gain the authority and the credibility to succeed. The job of creating a plan requires digging deep into your market, your close competitors, your customers, and all other dimensions of your business.

Your business deserves this kind of authentic and original research and analysis. There are many methods for accomplishing this goal. Most all methods include the need to get all the stake-owners, the managers of other departments from accounting to operations and sales and so on. Buy-in from all these managers and many of the employees is important for the plan’s implementation to become a success—one that yields results.

Beyond this, you develop a structure for the way to think and view your business’s position in the market. This structure ought to broaden and deepen your view of your business. Below are just a starting point of basic, essential deliverables for your plan. This set of questions offers a baby step toward a completed marketing plan.

Market structure and categorizing:

• Do you know clearly the market you serve?
• Have you mapped your market for your products and services and their total values, volume, and key factors for your business?
• Have you identified the distinct groups of your clients or customers and prioritized them?
• Have you clearly categorized the groups among your clients or customers in terms of their distinct needs?

Differentiation:

• Did you analyze how well you satisfy client or customer requirements beyond what your close competitors do?
• Have you identified opportunities and threats for each group of clients or customers?

Scope:

• Have you categorized each client or customer group by its potential for profit growth over the next three years?
• Have you charted your company’s competitive position by each group of clients or customers?
• Have you drafted objectives based on value, profit, market share?
• Based on the information compiled above, are the strategies in line with the objectives?
• Are key success factors pegged as milestones for each department?

Capturing Value:

• Do your goals and strategies align with the profit goals?
• Does your yearly budget support and aim at the same goals and milestones drawn out from the marketing angles above?

A Couple of the Benefits of a Marketing Plan

Without a marketing plan, a business manager could walk right on competitive land mines.

While working currently to set companies on a solid marketing track, I am surprised how few organizations take the time to consider their practical goals and how to achieve them. Many managers at the top of companies, small and large, often skip over the task of rationally laying out a plan or analyzing their position relative to other similar businesses. Many managers say that it is merely academic exercise. I hear that phrase often.

Managing a company can seem to be an easy task when your business is prospering in a growing industry. Some industries can thrive for years in an economic slump.

Consider a case or two or three.

1) During an economic down turn, many consumers tighten their budgets and look for ways to fortify their trade or professional skills by taking

college or trade school classes or seminars. When unemployment is high, people have more time to learn how to hone their careers.

So, managing a trade school might seem like a breeze in such circumstances.

2) Likewise manufacturers of low-priced, utilitarian cars can enjoy a relative upturn in sales compared to manufacturers and sellers of luxury cars.

3) Or consider a defense contractor just before or during a war. Selling the services and products in such times can seem like a piece of cake. When business is up as an industry trend, a manager may not care much about sustaining a strong position compared to competitors. If business is good why bother?

In such a situation, trade-school managers can sit back and let students line up to enroll in classes, desperate to pay to learn.

Likewise small cars, motorcycles or even motor-scooters will attract people. But without looking at the industry trends, a manager might slip into a dangerous sense of complacency. What if a business manager of a motor-scooter shop runs his business thinking this trend will continue? What if a manager is doing great, but she doesn't realize that her sales rate is less that the industry’s rate of growth?

That could mean that a motor-scooter shop manager is

actually conducting less business than most other shops in the same market. This means that her competitors are stronger in ways she has not cared to consider. The customer services, the quality of a repair and maintenance crew, or any other such attractive advantages can make her competitors stronger.

Some day the upward trend for motor-scooters will turn down. The weaker motor-scooter shops will lose customers and lose their footing in the market.

Meanwhile other, more competitive motor-scooter shops will be in a stronger position during a market change so that they can adapt by developing more competitive advantages.

This reveals some of the practical benefits of a marketing plan. It is not academic. It is like putting together a battle plan before rushing out to war. It can save any business from ruin. A marketing plan, when done right, can set your business on a track to prosperity despite the wild changes in your market.