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Brand Damage? A Wal-Mart use case

Wal-Mart is a great brand which seems impervious to damage, almost Teflon coated like the skillets you can find in aisle 6 in housewares.  Low Prices as a brand promise appears to not only be valid in tough economic times, but also in not so tough.  I know their tagline is different, but the promise is the same.

The recent Black Friday death and miscarriage in a Wal-Mart store more than likely will have no impact on the choices consumers make, neither will the numerous YouTube videos about the incident.  Wonder why that is? Is consumerism solely price based?  A professor I had would say that price is the biggest P, as a product guy I think Product is, but we all have our own view.

Can a Wal-Mart avoid damage to their brand over the recent events?  Sure they can – the brand’s value has to be like eleventy billion dollars and most folks care only about what is in it for them more so than how things are working out overall.   Think about it – Wal-Mart has had a Wal-Mart sucks movie made about it, nasty t-shirts abound and countless discussions have been had about the ruining of main street America based on it’s geographic focused site selection and extended assortment of goods which no mom and pop retailer can counter, in price, service or in value.

photo by you.

As an aside, service doesn’t appear to be that important to the US shopper, but in other markets it does and the Wal-Mart brand doesn’t “live” in other markets.  Wonder why?

What is kind of interesting is that in more conscious based markets, like the EU, Wal-Mart is a different brand – ASDA and their message is more or less – We are your friend, let’s do good together.  In fact their tagline is People, Prices, Planet – completely different promise than Wal-Mart, below are some shots I took about a year ago while in the UK to back it up.  I knew I took these for some reason…

IMG00134 by you.

ASDA is also service focused, there are more associates in any given ASDA I have been in that most Wal-Mart’s I’ve entered and they even want to make sure your car works, as you can see from this sign from the car park of an ASDA in Preston, UK:

IMG00133 by you.

I guess in the end, a well developed brand can avoid most situational brand blights, as long as they deliver on the promise they make to the marketplace.  Wal-mart never said they were going to help your town, keep you safe while shopping or provide you assistance in the parking lot – only that you Save Money and Live Better.

PLEASE NOTE: Live Better apparently doesn’t mean you will survive a shopping experience/day at work.

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November 29, 2008 by
(2)

From the Stream: Lost and Found

Oh the holidays are here and I now know exactly what is going on in my hometown thanks to Facebook.  Well, maybe not exactly, but a good deal thanks to what I can get from my network via their status, invites, picture uploads and mocku-groups, at least for my home town Gaylord, MI.   For my Georgia readers Gaylord is a good deal like Helen with skiing.  Yup the things and people you find when you actively engage your network – apparently your past is central to that, at least on Facebook.

What are you looking for in a network? Do you actually participate? Do you just watch?

No matter what you do, Social networks continue to proliferate and continue to make it just a little harder to manage from my perspective regardless of the value they are providing.  I find that I can really only manage 2 networks and only do that sorta well, nevertheless I have a bunch of ID’s all over the place to make sure I keep my Spatially ID on most platforms.  Can’t have someone brand jack/squat on spatially.

For these other “land grab” networks, I participate mainly thanks to syndication tools for about another 6, but it really isn’t active participation more of an echo of other conversations.  I occasionally log on to the other networks to only to find out that I have effectively lost conversations, conversations which appeared to be fairly interesting, if I was able to keep up on it.  I even find that my two primary networks, Facebook and Twitter have stranded conversations as well.   So if you make a connection, ask a question and don’t follow up with the responses how does that impact your personal brand?

I wrote a little bit about this frustration a while back, but it continues to be a point of concern, as I push statuses and content which effectively ping out and are left lost when it comes to follow up.  So I’ve deployed some new tools to see if I can be just a little more responsive – Twinkle and Tweetlater.

The Right tool for the Right Job!

I’m sorta all tool out, tools I use, tools I test and tools I ultimately abandon, but I still keep trying to find the right application for a given micro-function or management function.  I’ve used several different iPhone interfaces for Twitter and Twinkle is perhaps the best iPhone client out there and has a geospatial feature which allows me to meet folks while I travel or at least better engage locals for places to eat and things to do.    What if marketers could leverage this for promotions?

Local promotions or interaction aren’t a far flung option with this tool, but it would require active use.  I recently used Twinkle recently to find a very small hole in the wall which I never would have found without the folks on my Twinkle/Twitter network.  Small important point –  this cool restaurant recommendation was in my hometown of Roswell, GA – I’ve lived here 4 years and the place was not findable on Urban Spoon.  The power of a geographic based network.

ANOTHER Network?

The challenge with Twinkle is I think I’m creating yet ANOTHER network – arrgghh!  Will this be another place I strand conversations?  Probably not, since it will be my main mobile interace.  The fact that I am creating a new network is ok, since it is location based – not just twitter.  To that end, I’ll deal with it since it is a great app and one I will actually communicate with, at least when I have my phone, which is like always, but I wish data portability was here in earnest – after all it is my data.

My key networks are Facebook and Twitter and twitter is my main interface for updates, so finding the right tools are important for me. 

Tweetlater has become a great tool to acknowledge folks which add me with a welcome message and a direct default message which allows them to find my blog and thanks them for the add.  This is a good thing, I think as I would NEVER acknowledge adds and only catch up say 2 times a month with reciprocal adds.  The other feature I use on Tweetlater is the keyword feature, I don’t use the public Welcome message any longer because it just pollutes Facebook stream.  It wouldn’t if it started with the @ symbol, since those are demoted to not be statuses, but that’s not how it works and typically not how humans speak. I will say that I am getting behind the eight ball on deleted direct messages, not on the Brogan scale, but behind.

I may turn it back on, I just don’t know yet…

A Value Network

Clearly there is value to a person or brand being present online, but it requires that you engage.  Lost folks, friends and even randoms are part of your network and provide you access and knowledge that you just don’t have alone – the wisdom of crowds indeed.   To that end, I continue to proactively manage my Twitter network and random into 10 or 15 folks a week as I try to change up the twitter stream a little every week, some folks I know just keeping adding – not sure how that works.   I would like to highlight 1 of the randoms I personally added in the last week was @debraseifert – her tweets were protected, which always adds a little interest for me – so I added her on sheer luck.  Her follow up response was super interesting to my add and shows that she is fairly particular in her network usage:

So it appears that Debra actively tends to her network a bit more than most, but it’s her network right?  So I’m not sure how long I’ll be conversing with Debra based on the type of tweet I put out there, but I will say she has some very interesting content which is shared with her network.  I clearly glad I randomed into her on twitter, so that’s one of the clear bonuses you find sometimes.  Luck appears to play a part in at least some of this network thing, but so does what each person is looking for in their network.  @BarbaraNixon recently decided that my conversations weren’t that quality or could have been lost responses regardless – your network has a choice and will continue to change.

There are two more adds this week which require a little acknowledgment, first is @Twitter_Tips, always a little suspect of such user names, but her auto-tweet was entertaining and interesting, she provided me links to some Twitter jokes on her blog and the photo below, which was listed as her favorite twitter pic – very cool item to share, so I also added her as @SarahJL, which appears to be her personal account – Two cool adds thanks to Tweetlater, one manual and the other automated.

Two hands at last light by controltheweb.

The other apparent Tweetlater, SocialToo or other automated tool user I wanted to highlight was the one below which immediately got an unfollow since I don’t thing advertsing FREE stuff for online riches is very credible, below is automated response to my automated DM via Tweetlater:

Who’s are these?

Social networks aren’t just good for getting input, keeping in touch, finding lost folks and generally goofing around at work, they also improve productivity and generally save time.   I recently had to pack a bunch of gear in my van, so I actually had to move stuff around.  During the reswizzle of the van, I found a stack of live music that wasn’t mine.  I literally had no idea who’s it could have been since a bunch of people stopped by the tailgate from other cities so it could be any of 15 or 20 folks – some that I had phone numbers for, some I didn’t.  I definitely didn’t have all their emails either, so I used Twitter.

I put a snippet online and within the day the shows were claimed, as show below.  I invested less than 10 seconds, found the owner and got to interact with a couple of folks along the way, not just folks who could have left them, but folks which couldn’t have possibly left them.

(identity protected, but only enough for those that don’t know claire strowd)

Found things to do

The use of Tweetlater and the auto welcome message which was published to my facebook status was the catalyst for a long time friend to invite me to lunch on Friday when he was in town.  Of course his response was completely out of context, but it was just the needed ping for him to engage.  My travel goofed that up so I went and caught up with him in Columbus, GA with Dave and a bunch of Nuns.  It’s been almost 2 years since we caught up in person, so it was a very useful tool since it continues to ping my networks.  I was also able to get an update on the good things he and the organization he works for, the Adrian Dominican Sisters.  Those crazy Nuns in Adrian continue to amaze me with the good things they do, as does Chris.

photo by you.

Pragmatic Networking

The more my network grows, the more it seems to deliver increased value and interesting iterations which enrich my life.  In somewhat of a counter intuitive fashion the larger the network gets the more it provides streamlined communications and develops key relationships. No matter how many networks you use the value is ultimately determined by how you use it.  If you listen, learn and engage you just might find more than you thought.  I think I’ll keep doing this whole social media thing, since with FB’s offer of $500M for Twitter it has to be staying around.

Aside – did you notice a couple of forced brand references?  Well, that’s because I’ve been added to frickin alltop @ http://branding.alltop.com, towards the bottom. YEAH.  So apparently what was a brand piece a month, needs to be 60% of my writing.  I’m ok with that.  I’ll do a formal notice shortly, but this is clearly something to be thankful for.

November 29, 2008 by
(5)

A Presidential Brand: Effective Campaigning

So with all of the excitement over the last week with the presidential election over there has sure been a good deal of open interaction, discussion and apparent hope which the election brings. The most interesting theme in all of the discussion is that with the election over everyone, regardless of the vote they cast are optimistic about what lies ahead – even with a 6+% unemployment rate (rumored to go MUCH higher), compressed 401K’s and the risk of increased taxes for some. So a friend of mine John put it best “While I’m not sure how this will all work out, the fact that folks are focusing on the minor increase in taxes in my circle of friends is a little off the mark, they should be focusing on the 32% loss in their portfolio’s.” Interesting how the election reflections change when it’s over, since before the election John was MOST concerned about the incremental taxes he was going to pay. So why are things a little different now, then they were a month ago in folks’ eyes?

The Message is the Man

After a lengthy discussion with Sheryl, an alleged blogger here as well, but she is WAY overwhelmed with her marketing consulting workload of late, I think it is basically brand management by each candidate which determined the outcome. As an aside, for a down economy, consultants are getting a good deal of work and it makes sense, since it is always an interesting business proposition to turn fixed costs into variable costs and the marketing space is no different. Sheryl’s thoughts are along the lines that running a successful political campaign, at least in this year’s election, had a lot to do with effective application of key marketing and brand management principles. She thinks that staying on message was a key differentiator for Obama in the campaign. The story and vision portrayed by Obama never changed. Things suck and need to change, not sure I have all the answers, but let’s work this out together and things just might change. Yes, grossly oversimplified or is it?

Keep it Simple – Keep it Constant

For 21 months, the drum beat of the Obama campaign was consistent, constant and simple. That’s not the case with the McCain campaign. The McCain campaign struggled with the message, and it was evident with the multiple changes in staff, message and his change in addressing the populous. Back to John’s comments who definitely voted McCain “Man, at the end I had no idea who McCain was. His change in position and posture almost made me forget I was a Texan and vote Dem.” His position is very similar to my take on this as well, along with Sheryl’s – not so much the wife’s opinion, but at least a shared concept by more than a few of my friends and myself — The guy who won the republican nomination was NOT the same person who ultimately lost the election.

The core values of being a maverick, a person that can reach across the isle and drive change were left somewhere along the way in campaign staff changes, negative ads and quirky debate rhetoric and behavior. Think about if you were to do a negative marketing campaign – what do you think the results would be? I guess it all depends on how you define negative, but let’s say calling out a competitor for “X” and declaring “X” to be bad. Would it damage your brand? Would it add new attributes to the brand? Would it just move the brand? It could do all three, which ultimately could impact success in the marketplace, not unlike what we saw in the election.

Vision: Emotional Execution

Everyone wants to be the part of something good, something big and something innovative and this is what Obama created – a path forward for everyone to participate in. For many the message was not just an idea, but also an emotion – a positive vision forward. It may not be the right path, it may ultimately be a bumpy path, but the message was we will be doing this together which was ultimately embraced by the voters. Inclusiveness as a core attribute to Obama’s vision is another delta in the messaging platforms during the election. The initial McCain platform was about bringing together folks towards a common goal and then it changed – not sure what you do when you are down in the poll, but this may be an interesting case study for politicos to look back on. The McCain messaged moved from hope and security to fear and exclusion – not a very compelling or differentiated message and ultimately may have been a key driver to the loss.

Taking your brand to the marketplace requires consistency and dedication toward a single vision and if you are unable to sustain that it is typically just a little harder to get where you want to be, when you want to be there. I guess core branding principles could be as applicable to politics as it is to products.

November 13, 2008 by
(1)

Common Thought, a brilliant day and giving back!

I clearly meant to write this earlier, but been busy trying to figure out what the status of the day is with Heuer. I still kinda don’t know what’s up, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t honor the good work Creative Commons is doing. So while it is Blog Action Day and the kick off of the fund raising campaign for CC, I’m going to focus Fabiana Zonca’s photo below which I found via a “Thought” tag on Flickr.

Thinking of you by Fabiana Zonca.

Thinking of you

Also you can create a video on WHY it is important/you like it, you could also put up a widget up like I have or just donate via the widget on the right to Creative Commons.

October 15, 2008 by
(1)