Get Slightly Famous

The Brand Umbrella

I live in San Francisco. For years, I've found it amusing to see a handful of all-over-the-map restaurants selling everything from pizza, donuts, espresso and chop suey...all offered on cluttered signs as part of the same menu!

Although I find it funny, even absurd, someone within these businesses must assume a strategy like this: "If I have everything anyone could possibly want under one roof, customers will have no choice but to give me their business.”

Not surprisingly, this is a flawed strategy. I never see many customers around these places. Why would anyone go out of their way to get their pizza and morning coffee from a business that specializes in neither?

These businesses lack a Brand Umbrella: a central, unifying theme that holds their business identity together. Unfortunately, many businesses present themselves to the world in the same unfocused way as these all-over-the-map restaurants.

Could you be confusing your marketplace with an unfocused message? If so, you may be losing business because people do not clearly see the benefits you provide or how you differ from your competitors.

Are All Marketers Liars?

Are marketers the scourge of the human race? Not exactly. Yet, Seth Godwin's book declares that marketers aren't necessarily in the business of telling the truth.

In his new book, All Marketers Are Liars The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World (http://tinyurl.com/c7trr) makes the case that marketing to today's consumer requires speaking to the pre-existing worldviews of prospects. To do otherwise, marketing fails.

But what about the lie? A snippet from the book sums it up:

"Every marketer tells a story. And if they do it right, we believe them. We believe that wine tastes better in a $20 glass than a $1 glass. We believe that an $80,000 Porsche Cayenne is vastly superior to a $36,000 VW Touareg, which is virtually the same car. We believe that $225 Pumas will make our feet feel better-and look cooler-than $20 no-names . . . and believing it makes it true."

Successful marketers don't talk about features or even benefits. Instead, they tell a story. A story we want to believe.

In an economy where the richest have an infinite number of choices (and no time to make them), every organization is a marketer and all marketing is about telling stories.

The important point behind Godin's book is this: every one of us carries around a worldview…a set of pre-determined preferences, opinions and tendencies. Today, more than ever, you need to understand your prospect's worldview otherwise your marketing message will not get through.

"Marketers succeed when they tell us a story that fits our worldview, a story that we intuitively embrace and then share with our friends. Think of the Dyson vacuum cleaner or the iPod.

But beware: If your stories are inauthentic, you cross the line from fib to fraud. Marketers fail when they are selfish and scurrilous, when they abuse the tools of their trade and make the world worse. That's a lesson learned the hard way by telemarketers and Marlboro."

The Get Slightly Famous marketing approach relies on testing your assumptions and fully understanding the inner world of our prospects.

You come to understand your target market's worldview by getting close. You go where they go, read what they read, and talk to those who understand them. You research and understand your target market and build a strategy around that understanding to ensure that your Ultimate Benefit speaks to their worldview.

Only then do you build a branding strategy that speaks in real, relevant terms to your target market.

To use Godin's assessment:

“That's the way marketing works--you don't persuade people with your story, you just give people who already agree with you the tools they need to persuade their friends.

Either you're going to tell stories that spread, or you'll become irrelevant."

The best-known brands spread with the speed of spicy gossip, jumping from prospect to prospect, community to community. Effective brands get attention, inspire trust, and get members of your target market talking about your business. Good brands inspire referrals. And when prospects hear about you from someone they know, and also see your name in mediums they trust, the effect grows synergistically.

Worth reading:

http://www.meryl.net/articles/archives/003461.php

http://brand.blogs.com/mantra/social_responsibility/index.html

The Brand Called You

Every company has a reputation. Everyone you meet will form an opinion about your company, even if they have not done business with you yet. The challenge is to manage your reputation so that the opinion that people have of you is positive. This is what creates a brand.

Brands have a number of strategic functions, enabling you to:

• Differentiate yourself from your competition
• Position your focused message in the hearts and minds of your target customers
• Persist and be consistent in your marketing efforts
• Customize your services to reflect your personal brand
• Deliver your message clearly and quickly
• Project credibility
• Strike an emotional chord
• Create strong user loyalty

For small businesses, branding is not about slick advertisements. Small-business branding is about getting your target market to see you as the preferred choice. Building a slightly famous brand is not just about what you do; it's about what you do differently from everyone else.