Love at First Sight

Your heart starts beating faster, you start sweating, your pupils dillate, you feel a bit euphoric. Love is in the air and you want to give in. The expectation has been built and when you finally meet, you fall in love.

I'm not talking about love between people, but love for a product or service. This is what a brand does. It sets the stage, it builds the expectation and when you finally meet you have to give in. You want this euphoria to last forever, you know how better your life will get. You give in and you buy, and everything becomes better.

Build your product so it delivers what it promises, and build a brand so people can fall in love with it.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

A Mouse in a Salad and Owning Mistakes

About a week ago I was listening to a Freakonomis Radio episode called A Mouse in the Salad. What’s the Worst Restaurant Experience You’ve Ever Had?

To cut the story short, what happened was that at the restaurant where Stephen Dubner and James Altucher were having lunch, someone found a mouse in their salad. The shop where this happened is called Le Pain Quotidien, and it's famous for a selection of organic food and well crafted beverages.

When something like this happens, it really challenges the values of the brand. The reality was that this was a mistake, and a big one. What brands usually do when this happens is try to pay their way out of the mistake and keep the noise to a minimum level. What did Le Pain Quotidien do? They acknowledged their mistake. They explained their thinking, stayed honest and really tried to make sure this will never happen again.

The lesson to learn from this is that we are all human and mistakes happen. How we deal with them can make or break our brand. If one of your values is honesty (organic food can be associated with honest food) then when a mistake happens you need to acknowledge it and discuss with your customer why it happened and how you are going to make sure it won't happen again.

How did this play out for Le Pain Quotidien? Not only did it not stigmatise their brand, the lady that had the incident still eats at their shop on a regular basis.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

The Problem with Generic Names

Continuing from Tuesday's post on simplicity in names, today I want to talk to you a bit more about generic names.

To put it simply, generic names suck. Think about it, are you loyal to a brand with a generic name? We buy books from Amazon, well designed gadgets from Apple, furniture from IKEA and search the web on Google. When you come to think of it, most popular brands don't have a generic name. There are still some old brands with very generic names, but now they present a shortened or abbreviated version of it. Take General Electric for example, their brand name is now GE and you will rarely find a reference to the original name.

Last Tuesday I was at an event on Social Innovation, I was really surprised with the lack of creativity and uniqueness of brand names from the companies that were attending. A lot of the names were very descriptive, difficult to remember and very generic. Imagine me coming up to you at a crowded event and saying that my company name is "The Brand Consultancy That Focuses on Simplicity", would you remember it? But people still fall for this trap, as I witnessed first-hand on Tuesday.

The solution is simple, whenever a generic name comes up during your naming sessions either park it or shut it down. The best you can do if someone insists on it, is morph it to a unique name. Abbreviate it, shorten it, keep the parts that you like and morph it into a single word. Better yet, come up with something unique and follow the advice on Tuesday's post. You won't regret it.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

The Brand Gap - What We Believe In

The Brand Gap

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

Brand Protection Redux

Two weeks ago I wrote about how far Abercrombie and Fitch went to protect their brand.

A few days ago Lacoste did something similar but for a much more substantial reason. They asked the Norwegian police to stop Anders Breivik from wearing their brand in court.

Anders Breivik is responsible for the attacks in Oslo in July, that resulted in the death of 77 people. The association of the far-right extremist with the Lacoste brand could be very damaging. Lacoste's value has always been "relaxed elegance" something that is not reflected by a far-right extremist.

We know that clothes are a way of expressing our values and the wrong association can be very damaging to a brand. To our view Lacoste has taken the right decision, making their audience aware of their beliefs. What do you think?

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

Brand Protection

Photo credit: Abercombie & Fitch

How far would you go to protect your brand's image?

Abercrombie & Fitch went as far as offering to pay the cast of Jersey Shore to not wear its clothes. They believe that the cast's behaviour is contrary to the company's values and it can damage their image. Ok, it was probably a publicity stunt but there is still a lesson to be learnt from this.

Your customers are an important part of your brand's image. The ones that choose your services and products show the rest of the world that they believe in your values and that others in their group should follow. The difficulty is that you cannot directly control your customers.

What you can do is identify who has chosen you and then focus your promotion in the "group" that best fits your image. Taking the Abercrombie & Fitch approach is an extreme, as you can turn the group against you. Instead, put your money and effort in getting closer with the group that will represent your brand values and in return it will make your brand stronger and popular.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

Listen Closely

Shhhh. You hear that? It's all the people talking about you and what you're interested in. We are living at a great time, it has never been easier to listen to what people are saying about you, your company, your brand, your services and products. It has also become very easy to listen to what people have to say about your industry and what you're interested in.

This comes with a drawback, the channels are available and are free so there is a lot of noise. When the channel is free, open and almost anonymous it's easy to vent and talk poorly about others.

What you have to do is listen closely and develop the right filters so that only valuable information comes to you. Having that information will help you understand what people need, what they like, what their problems are and what are the underlying causes. This will help you gain insight into their lives and come up with solutions to help them.

If you have something that can help them, know how they communicate and what "language" they speak, then it is very easy to promote your products to them. Just learn to listen closely and carefully, and pay attention to the valuable information filtering out everything else.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

Gaining Insight

I've mentioned insight sometimes in our posts, and I realised that I never took the time to talk about what insight is and how you gain it.

By definition, insight is "the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing". When you have an insight you will have a deep understanding of the consumer's attitudes and beliefs, and be able to identify what they need even before they actually need it.

Gaining insight is not an easy task. You need to understand the "user" and get into their shoes. You need to see the world through their eyes and face the same problems that they are facing. You need to almost literally live their lives. Doing this will allow you to gain this deep understanding of what's troubling them and where things can be improved.

Once you've gained insight on something, then what you can do is incredible. You can create product and services that not only solve problems people have but also those they didn't even know they have. 

I will close this post with the famous quote of Henry Ford "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.". Henry Ford had an insight and he was able to start a new industry and a revolution. Now it's your turn.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

First Step to Recovery

Starting work on your brand or re-branding, is very similar to overcoming an addiction. The very first step is that you need to realise that your brand has a problem.

Working on it, without realising and admitting that you have a problem will not lead to any success. First you need to realise that there is a problem and then get help to overcome it. The best thing is to seek help from a professional, that can help you identify the root of the problem and then fix or put in place anything that is missing.

Doing this will help you build a stronger brand that communicates effectively what your company stands for.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis 

You Can't Please Everyone

Here's a dillema that every start-up faces "Should I offer a product/service that pleases as many people as possible, or should I offer it to a few people that get what I'm trying to do?". We've all been there, and if you are currently in this situation you have a big decision to make.

The fact is that no matter how much you try, you cannot please everybody. If you want to introduce something that is game-changing and challenging the norm, then people will protest. If you are solving a problem that people don't know they have, they will tell you to go away. This doesn't mean that you should change your product or service so more people like it. This means that you need to focus and serve the market niche that understands what you are trying to do and believes that you can do it. As your company grows, so will your market and slowly more people will get what you are trying to do and join your fan base.

What you need to look out for is trying to please everyone and in the end not doing something differently. If you become just another software company, or just another coffee shop then people will buy and judge you based on price and as we all know, this is not a nice place to be.

One last thing I want to add to the above, is that although the input from outside is important, it should not define what you do. Let's take branding for example, if while developing your brand you ask for feedback from your users and everyone that you know, then everyone will say a different thing. That's the nature of the beast, everyone has an opinion and if you try to incorporate everything and please everyone then you will end up with a Franken-brand. What you need to do is listen carefully to what people say and want from you and understand how you will communicate to them what you are trying to do in a way they can relate to.

Don't try to please everyone, be unique and stand out from the crowd. You will have a smaller market but they will be your fans and it will be worth it.

Posted by Harry Mylonadis