Brand Love Hate

Employer Brand Advertising in Time Magazine

I was surprised and impressed to see two employer brand advertisements in the front of a recent Time magazine (June 1 issue, Michelle Obama cover). One, for Verizon Wireless (VZW), promotes a new recruitment Web site called Who We Are and focuses on teamwork:

At Verizon Wireless, we're all part of a team. Whether it's cell technicians working together to make sure every call gets through, or sales reps collaborating to help a customer, teamwork is a top priority.

While I have a hangup with posed diversity group photography, I like the ad and the Who We Are Web site as a way to promote the company and its opportunities. It does a nice job of mixing hard-sell employer brand messaging ("a great place to work") with community outreach content and ties into the consumer brand ("world's best wireless service"). It says work for the leader, because we have the best people and the best technology. Interestingly, Sprint has an ad a few pages later, but it's exclusively for its consumer wireless phone service.

The second ad, for Starbucks, is much more of a consumer ad with an embedded employer brand message. The headline, "It's not just what you're buying - it's what you're buying into," applies that concept to many aspects of Starbucks, from the beans it buys to the farmers it supports to the staff it employs and insures:

...the little extra you pay for our coffee lets us hire and train people who know the difference between a macchiato and a cappuccino. Our people are valuable. So, in return for their dedication, we offer full healthcare coverage to everyone who works at least 20 hours a week. We continue to do this, even in hard times, because it's the right thing to do.

To me, this one is a tougher sell to the job seeker, although I like the copy. It says work here - we'll take care of you; we put the extra dollars back into our people.

Now we all know that it's each of our experiences with VZW and Starbucks that will influence and decide what we think of these companies. And it's the real work experience that will determine their employer brands. But I like these efforts - you don't see a lot of employer brand advertising in major magazines - tucked between ads for watches and banks and hotels.

Starbucks on TV

John Moore has a great post with also-great comments regarding Starbucks' new TV advertising for the holidays. I am a huge Starbucks fan pretty much across the board (brand, experience, product, Web site), but to me, any advertising not focused on the Starbucks customer experience is off-brand. Starbucks has always been the prime example of how the user experience defines the brand relationship, not advertising. However, I think it's wrong to say that because SBUX built its brand on great experiences and word-of-mouth advertising (WOM), it should never run a TV advertising campaign. But the cartoon angle just seems fluffy for a brand as strong and experience-based as Starbucks. How about a 5-second spot using just the red cups?

Client Service is Branding

Every interaction with a customer or potential customer is a brand experience. Regardless of what your advertisements say - if you even have any - it's via real interactions with you and your company that people's opinions of the organization will be shaped. My current clients range from major job boards and Fortune 100 employers to small staffing firms and individual recruiters, so when I hear, "Thanks for taking the time to work with someone like me," I know that I've done my job and made the most of that branding opportunity.

Conversely, every missed connection, every neglected e-mail, every customer blown off as "not important enough" is a ding in that person's perception of not just me but my entire company. Working with the "impossible" client - while often hard as hell - is not a joke. It's an opportunity to break through with a detractor and even convert a negative brand perception to the positive.

Word-of-mouth marketing (big surprise) is not exclusively positive. At a recent trade show, I watched two recruiters from a huge company walk away from a vendor's booth shaking their heads and essentially laughing at the presenter. What do you think they told their team upon returning to the office? No matter how great that company's product may be, or how slick its sell sheets are, it took a brand hit that day. Those two ladies cared about how they were treated for those three minutes - that was the brand experience - and nothing else.

Rewarding Brand Fanatics

On a trip to San Francisco last week, I was sitting in SFO waiting for my JetBlue flight when I heard the boarding announcement for a nearby Virgin America flight. Everything seemed normal until the gate agent said that passengers wearing red - Virgin's brand color - could board first. For some new customers, this appeared to be a surprise, but others who clearly had flown the airline before were ready to be rewarded for their fandom. Previously during the week, I happily had lunch at In-N-Out Burger and witnessed something similar - fans of the burger joint ordering from a secret menu to secure eats like "Animal Style" fries and "Flying Dutchman" burgers. In both cases, those brand loyalists were rewarded by the companies they admire with special treatment, bonuses that are insignificant in terms of cost for the corporations, yet huge for the relationships with those dedicated customers.

Mini Experience Makes Me Want One

While I'm incredibly brand loyal to Volkswagen, the other day I rode in a Mini Cooper and it was a lot of fun. Even though I love the Mini advertising campaigns and considered the Cooper before I purchased my VW Golf, neither was enough to physically get me to a Mini dealership. But actually riding in one made me reconsider and think about the resale value of my Golf... Maybe the next Mini ad campaign should just say "Try Me."

A Clean Dell PC

It seems rare to read a positive blog post about someone's new Dell PC, but Ed Bott at ZDNet has one regarding Dell's decreased level of "crapware" on its computers. Last year, I purchased a Dell Dimension 3100 PC for work and experienced the nightmare that was Dell crapware, with AOL being the most pervasive application, along with assorted music and photo management software. That process degraded the new computer experience as well as my opinion of Dell, while just being generally frustrating.

But as Bott documents, Dell has changed its ways. With a new Dell Dimension E521 in the office to set up, I found no AOL and not much to uninstall or configure. The only third-party applications I had to worry about were Google Desktop and Norton Internet Security, and the latter could have been excluded in the configuration process during purchase. I agree with Bott that AVG is a good, free alternative.

For the new PC, setup was fast rather than frustrating. A good change and conversion by Dell. It's nice to see a company (other than Apple anyway) recognize that a computer belongs to its new owner, not to advertisers.

Quote: Word of Mouth Marketing

Some people discount the value and impact of word of mouth marketing, and think that seeing an advertisement or TV spot about a company or product inherently makes the brand "known." That bugs me, so I was happy to see this quote recently:

"Create something cool, and people will distribute your brand for you. And content will become the new forum for advertising.

Users will tell you if you’re doing it right."

– Sanaz Ahari, Lead Program Manager, Microsoft
Fast Company 114

Amen.

AT&T Brand Hate

I have been catching up on my InfoWorld reading and came upon an interesting Enterprise Insight column about AT&T and its customer service practices. David's phrases near the end - "gotcha approach" and "negative brand equity" say it all - no matter how much a company advertises or says it's new, its brand is defined by the experiences and relationships it fosters - or ruins - with customers.

Apple Store Fifth Avenue Facility Brand

BusinessWeek and the Architectural Record included Apple's Fifth Avenue, New York City store in their combined 2006 Architecture Awards. The simple, elegant design of Apple's outdoor cube and 24/7 open hours make the store a great representation of the Apple brand. In New York City, both the Fifth Avenue and Soho Apple retail locations are as much tourist attractions as computer stores - a great way to introduce potential switchers and sliders to Apple products.

From a jury member quoted in the article about the Fifth Avenue store:

A "preeminent example of the power of architecture on business, and how the public understands and experiences a brand."

I was impressed that the Apple store was the one consumer-facing location to receive the award - the others were company headquarters, where the "users" are employees. While facility branding is important with both customers and employees, it's great that Apple can deliver a mix of elegance and functionality that works for such busy retail outlets.

Flickr and Blog Search for Brand Experiences

As someone who still enjoys video games, I was interested and intrigued by the recent launches of the Nintendo Wii and PlayStation 3 "next-generation" video game systems. I wanted to track the events, but ideally from the warmth of my home and my laptop, rather than from the front lines. Enter Flickr and Google Blog Search. I watched and searched the sites to hear (and see) the success and horror stories of gamers (and eBay profiteers) who were standing in line to secure their systems. I was really impressed with the results. On the days of and shortly after the systems were released, Google Blog Search included stories from gamers who blogged their experiences, from successful purchases to retail store snafus. Even better was Flickr, which via cell phone cameras and wireless broadband-enabled laptops, delivered photos right from the waiting lines themselves, including the launch events here in New York City.

While this "news" is not as refined as what comes off the wires via the online news sites, it's much more immediate and incredibly more real. Hearing about the Sony Store experience in Boston and seeing gamers in line live from the Toys R Us in Times Square was much more compelling than the boiled-down stories from the mainstream media. There was a lot more to wade through, but I got a real sense of the launch experience fandom and fanaticism from actual gamers - more than just an article.