Art Of Branding

Harvard Business Review Video

 

Is Mark Zuckerberg a CEO for All Seasons?

It’s not easy to stay at the helm of your company as it moves from small idea concocted in a college dorm room to breakthrough brand. As an entrepreneur, you need to make the transition from early stage start up to rapid growth to a more mature public phase, transitions that not that many entrepreneurs can navigate. (See my new book, Breakthrough Branding.)

The Early-Stage Brand is the domain of the enterprising entrepreneur. It’s an unstructured period. And Mark Zuckerberg thrived here. For years, he ran Facebook with a loose tribe of programmers who created new products at all night “hackathons.”

His personal brand was pretty unstructured too. We’re all familiar with his hoodies and flip-flops.Your key tasks as an early stage entrepreneur is to figure out what the brand is and what needs it fulfills in the marketplace.

Phase 2 of entrepreneurship, the Rapid-Growth Brand, is the time in which you navigate the hurly-burly of rapid growth. It is an exhilarating ride. You’re trying to break through as a big brand, and Zuckerberg handled this phase extraordinarily well. The key tasks are attracting the right talent, developing the brand’s products and setting up the systems to propel growth for the business, and, I should add, developing a personal brand to build the business brand.

Now, Zuckerberg is in Phase 3 what I call the Leadership Brand. He has a user base of more than 900 million and just made a blockbuster stock debut. Already, Mr. Zuckerberg has shown signs he might well be the guy for this phase as well.

Stay tuned.

 

Who Doesn't Love "Bunny" Mellon?

If you’re looking for enduring role models who keep their brands alive over the decades, well, move over Betty White (90 years old) and make room for Bunny Mellon (101 years old).

Bunny has been the unseen force behind the John Edwards trial. Before all the publicity of the Edwards trial, Bunny was a reclusive philanthropist living in luxury on a farm in Virginia. But the trial has given the feisty dame a spotlight, and she’s quite an independent lady. 

Many of Bunny’s relatives (and others no doubt) feel that Edwards took advantage of Bunny and tarnished her legacy. Yet, Bunny has her own ideas of what she wants to do and does it. 

As you probably know from the media coverage. Bunny gave Edwards aide Andrew Young over one million dollars that was used to hide an affair Edwards was having with Rielle Hunter. 

According to trial testimony, Mellon didn't mind that Edwards was having an affair, her confidant and decorator Brian Huffman testified. But she was irked at times because "she thought that you should probably pay for your girlfriend yourself."

In a Newsweek interview this week, Mellon comes across as a woman who’s still sharp and has her own ideas.  “‘If you are 100 years old, you get to like who you like,” says gardening writer Mac Griswold, Mellon’s friend for a half century.’ “

Even her grandson, Thomas Lloyd, who disapproves of Edwards relationship with his grandmother had to admit to the grand jury, “I don’t think she’s been gullible.” Lloyd said with a laugh, “You can’t tell my grandmother what to do. She’s going to do what she wants, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

 

 

The Cookie Monster

If you’ve ever eaten a Black and White Cookie, and if you live in New Yor you no doubt have, you know that it is a good product. Today there’s an interesting small business article in The Street about the Black &White Cookie Co’s plan to revive the brand. The reporter, Laurie Kulikowski, interviewed me about its branding. You can read the article for some of the highlights of what I said, but here are some additional thoughts:

 

Strong Visual Identity

The company has a strong visual hook in the cookie itself. The black and white cookie design is different and memorable, and serves as a “visual hammer” locking in the brand name. 

Having a strong visual look that is memorable is powerful for a brand like the “swoosh” for Nike, the pink ribbon for Susan B. Komen race for the cure, Christian Louboutin’s red soles or Tiffany’s blue box.

 Likewise, when you say the name Black and White Cookie, everyone sees the visual hook.

Verbal Identity

While the name conveys the meaning of the brand, there’s no brand story. What’s the creation story? How were the cookies first created? What’s the tagline? The one message you want us to associate with the brand? Brands that become big brands wrap themselves in story, clever taglines and messages.

Brand Personality

Brands try to create a personality for the brand that helps to establish a consumer bond. They convey that personality in the advertising, website, packaging and every touchpoint where you come into contact with a brand. This is something that the company can develop further. 

Brand personality leads to emotional branding. The website should be fun with lots of customer interaction and engagement. It’s a cookie brand after all.

Brand Engagement

 The company did a Lady Gaga-designed black and white cookie that is wonderful for attracting attention and getting customers involved with the brand. It’s a natural to do more fun things like that. 

The black and white idea should lend itself to a lot of creativity: devil or angel, variations for the holidays, Mother’s day, corporations. 

Other ideas?

 

A Moment of Truth: Branding Lessons from the Scott Thompson Bio Flap at Yahoo

There’s a personal branding adage that’s important to remember: reputations take a long to build and a moment to come crashing down as Scott Thompson, CEO of Yahoo discovered last week. 

Thompson’s brief four-month tenure as CEO of Yahoo ended over a flap about a flawed biography that became a distraction and embarrassment for a a company in turmoil. Thompson’s biography on Yahoo’s website and in its regulatory filing claimed a degree from Stonehill College in computer science and accounting. When a dissident investor investigated, he discovered that Stonehill did not offer computer science classes until after Thompson had graduated. He first made the discovery when he did a simple Google search.

Initially, Yahoo and Thompson claimed that it was an “inadvertent error.” But Thompson didn’t have a lot of internal support at Yahoo! During his brief tenure he had laid off 2,000 employees, and after the bio misstatement, the internal employee message boards  lit up with detractors demanding that he be ousted.

There’s another personal branding adage that Thompson failed to learn. When there is bad news, be the first to comment on it and tell the whole story. As a person in control of your brand, you want to be the leader of your story, not reacting to the slow dripping of news put out by others. 

At first, Thompson claimed not to have noticed that a computer science degree was included in the PayPal and Yahoo! websites. He later apologized for the “distraction” it had caused by his resume but not for the mistake itself. Then, Thompson blamed the recruiter, Heidrick and Struggles, for botching his resume. The recruiter responded with proof that Thompson had suppled the resume with the phony computer science degree, not the other way around.

The crazy thing is that it was all so unnecessary. It wouldn’t have mattered whether he had an accounting degree or was a double major in accounting and computer science. At this stage in his career, what matters is his leadership and his track record, which before this faux bio flap was impressive. Two of the most famous leaders of high technology companies were college dropouts, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

Now, Thompson will have a hard time finding employment because this “resume lie” will be forever attached to his brand.

 

The Vision of the Entrepreneur

Brand entrepreneurs have a vision, and it’s more than just making money and being a CEO.

They want to make a difference in some way and they have the savvy to sell that vision. They have a knack for personal branding—or they acquire it.

They learn how to harness the power of words, symbols, and story not only to build their business but also to position themselves as the leader of the business.

As a budding entrepreneur, you need to create a unique brand that resonates with your business idea, values, and culture, and that will help drive your business success.

Taking charge of your business brand and intertwining it with your personal brand pays off.

At its core, branding is about taking even something common like water or food and making it valuable and uncommon.

 

Brand Entrepreneur: A business owner who thinks strategically and creatively about creating a brand —for the business and personally

Brand entrepreneurs have good gut instincts about what people really want, even if market research tells them otherwise.

For example, no research study anticipated the popularity of the Internet or social media, but some super savvy brand entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos with Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook positioned themselves well ahead of the curve in these areas by envisioning what was to come.   

What Does Your Subconscious Have to Say?

    Let your mind wander.

Then write down whatever comes to mind about a business idea:

What has caught your attention over the last year - even if you’re not sure why?
How might that lead to a business idea? If you could run any kind of business you wanted, what would it be?

Write down your thoughts!

 

From Out of Nowhere

Scientists believe that big breakthroughs often seem to come out of nowhere, when we’re doing something else. The unconscious mind takes over and makes connections, helping us solve problems we haven’t been able to crack consciously—maybe because we were trying too hard. I call this “peripheral thinking” because it is analogous to peripheral vision. You’ve probably noticed that something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye can make a clearer impression than something you are staring directly at. Try it and see if a light bulb goes off. Maybe you think that light bulb line is a cliché—but you know what? And it’s kind of like that – a “light bulb” does go off in your mind when you come up with a new idea. New ideas really are like light bulbs.

Studies have shown a kind of that there is a burst of light in the brain that accompanies a new idea. This phenomenon is actually gamma waves emanating bursting out from the brain’s right hemisphere. That’s the area of the brain involved in handling associations and assembling elements of a problem. The only difference between you and me and all those serial entrepreneurs who come up with more than one business idea right and left is that they have the courage to act upon their own bursts of insight.

Set the Stage for Ideas

While you can’t make a business idea come to you on a schedule, there is much you can do to impel the creative process and open your mind for insight.

Think about your business idea, then leave the subject behind and do something different.
Forget about the question at hand for a while and let your mind wander.
Sleep on it. (My most fruitful time for breakthroughs is early in the morning, when I’m half asleep.)
Take a walk.
Soak in the tub.

What Do You Know?

 Whether or not you want to start a business in an industry that you have already worked in (and that is something you should certainly consider), it makes sense to examine business areas that you are familiar with. Look at what you know well. What rules have never been questioned in your industry or area of expertise? What would happen if they were? What are the problems that everyone complains about? How could they be solved? Could this lead to an opportunity for you?

When you start paying attention, you’ll find lots of areas ripe for exploration. If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be? What other businesses and entrepreneurs do you admire? Why is that? As we all know, successful entrepreneurs look at the same things that everyone else looks at and see something different. They see opportunities. Then we all look at what they’ve created and say, “Why didn’t I think of that? It’s so obvious.”