All posts filed under: Language

Would you be a fan?

By Mark Di Somma

What would you do with your company’s mission statement? Would you tweet it?, Brian Solis asks in this article. Just as importantly – would you retweet it? In other words, does it carry enough meaning for you, and is it personal enough to what you strive in life for that you would literally want to put your name to it and circulate it? I love this thought because it’s a great reminder to all of us that purpose isn’t about what you’re told to do, or believe or say. It’s about what you choose to share with others. Or at least it should be. The “BBQ script”, “elevator speech”, “picket fence précis” whatever you want to call it can’t just be a set of words that you roll out on cue. It can’t just be marketing. Not if you really want people to believe you, and therefore the brand you represent. Speaking of belief, let me ask you this. How much of what you talked about, thought about, met over, reviewed, presented, rationalised, advocated, defended, …

Every brand must dream

By Mark Di Somma

Positivity comes with benefits if this article on the optimism bias is anything to go by. While, collectively, our view of the future can swing in synch with the news, the budget or the crime stats, a 2007 study found that 76% of respondents were optimistic about the future for their own family. According to the author, “Even if that better future is often an illusion, optimism has clear benefits in the present. Hope keeps our minds at ease, lowers stress and improves physical health.” It gives rise to phenomenon like talk of ‘green shoots’ in the midst of terrible financial depression because, it seems, we are compelled to find them. The take-out for brands is obvious. Clearly, there is merit in espousing a clear and positive view of the way forward. It’s not enough to just inform. Brands need to inspire, because that optimistic prognosis of what lies ahead holds real opportunities in terms of engaging and involving people. It humanises brands. Optimism, I surmise, also aligns directly with our worldview. In other words, …

Be happy

By Mark Di Somma

Not the best of days yesterday. Put my back out, and retired to a lie-flat position. Brain racing, body stopped … Aaaargh. To pass the time, I mused on getting my understanding of the purposes of business and branding down to their most basic forms. It led me here: What if the purpose of business, particularly a service business, is as simple as this: to make people happy. Imagine if that was the metric for your product design, your standards, your customer service, your innovation programme, your culture, your brand, your competitiveness. And what if the purpose of branding is to let people know how you intend to make them happy. Here come the objections: most of them variations of ‘we do that already’. No you probably don’t. If you did, you wouldn’t have effective competitors, you wouldn’t struggle to maintain market share, you wouldn’t find yourself locked in a pricing war. Perhaps you think they’re happy or hope they’re happy, or you word your customer satisfaction surveys so that you can tell yourself they’re …

Well, well, well

By Mark Di Somma

When place branding specialist Simon Anholt explains in a podcast why nations need a carefully thought through brand strategy to which all players in the economy subscribe, he quotes the legendary David Ogilvy who once said, “If all you want to do is attract attention, then you put a gorilla in a jockstrap”. As Ogilvy himself explained it, if you want to get recall, you then put the brand on the jockstrap itself. You will certainly get buzz, and people will remember the stunt. But will anything meaningful, in commercial terms, happen beyond that? Doubtful. And the reason is that having got people’s attention, you need to do something with that energy. You need to direct it somewhere. You must provide a meaningful story and experience that links what people have seen with what they do. It’s not enough just to give them something to look at. It’s as meaningless in branding terms as a carrot, a jumping trout or just another pretty logo. Badges aren’t brands. Of course Wellington’s already done a lot more …

What do you do?

By Mark Di Somma

What do you do? – I write. Doesn’t just about everyone? – What do you mean by that? If you can form a letter in any language, you can write. What do you really do? … Here’s where this goes. Writers don’t write. Writers give people reasons to read. That’s what distinguishes them from people who can put things in writing. Speakers don’t talk. They give people reasons to listen. That’s what distinguishes them from everyone with the gift of speech. And photographers don’t photograph. They frame a moment in the world. That’s what makes their work different from someone with a mobile phone. The differences have never been more important in a world where so many people have access to technology that allows them to design, publish, print, record, point, click, template … What do you do, when anyone looks like they can do what you do? So often we want to base those differences on techniques. We do it better. Or history. We’ve done it longer. Or experience. We know more. Or frequency. …

Upsizing the impact

By Mark Di Somma

Interesting isn’t it how we perceive messages. 50,000 jobs on offer at McDonald’s sounds huge, but it actually averages out at around 3 – 4 positions at every restaurant in the U.S., which suddenly doesn’t seem anywhere near as impressive. I have no doubt that McDonalds could have quietly filled those positions by advertising locally. But that would have significantly pixelised the effect. Instead they chose to offer all those tens of thousands of positions on one day across the nation. All that hope, all at once. A dollop instead of a glimmer. A chance for the applicants themselves to be part of something that felt so much bigger, so much more powerful, so much more universal. A chance for McDonalds to make its presence felt and to reinforce its credibility as an employer brand. An event big enough to set social media abuzz. The next time you’re planning to a “soft” release, maybe ask yourself this: What could we do to upsize this? And how big would we have to make it to get …

The difference between less and off

By Mark Di Somma

If I buy something on sale, what should I get? 40% less – or 40% off? They are very different things. If I purchase something for 40% off, that means I get what I would have got if I’d paid full price but I get a 40% reduction on the asking price for the very same goods or services. The result, as we’ve discussed many times, is that the brand’s perceived value deteriorates and, if enough retailers participate, the actual market value of the brand also drops. 40% less on the other hand means I pay a lesser price but I get less for that price. How can that be? Surely a pair of shoes is a pair of shoes, right? Not necessarily. One of the first rules we were all taught in direct marketing is that it is much more economical to give than to take away. In other words, it is much more economically sensible to add services to a product in order to make it more valuable than it is to discount …

Little jewels

By Mark Di Somma

Last night I attended the launch of my latest “book” – this one, the story of the Victoria Cross with particular emphasis on the 22 New Zealanders who have been awarded the country’s highest military commendation. It was a commission for New Zealand Post, one of a number I’ve done for them over the years on a range of subjects. In fact, last year was a bit of a year for these larger writing projects because I was also involved in a beautifully-finished corporate history of the Pryde Group, a Hong Kong based company which owns the world’s largest windsurfing and kitesurfing brands. People have asked me over the years why I get such a kick out of this kind of work. It seems such a long way from the strategic and communications work that Audacity does. And I think it’s because projects of this scale require you to be so curious, to look for the smallest humanity in even the broadest story. You need to find a structure that is robust enough to hold …

Going, going, Groupon …

By Mark Di Somma

You know what you think you’re worth. But what are you really worth? Some great points about company du jour Groupon in this article originally posted on Forbes. Most interesting perhaps because the article helps explain why and how value can so rapidly commoditise. Here’s what I got out of it: Success quickly generates a wolf pack – 425 competitors and counting have simply copied Groupon’s model. They did so because they could. There doesn’t seem to be any specific IP here that prevents duplication. After the rain comes the flood. Lots and lots of competing sites in turn could well create “deal fatigue” – once customers have too much of a good thing, they quickly start to feel glutted, effectiveness drops and with it market share. Why get married? Big businesses can probably replicate this process themselves rather than go via Groupon – or as close as makes no difference to the consumer. Time for the big fish. Bigger opportunities attract bigger players. As you succeed, your competition also scales. In this case, Facebook …

Which north?

By Mark Di Somma

Yesterday St John asked whether north meant true north or magnetic north. Good question. As I said, most people have a sense of what the company they work for should be like. It’s natural for people to look for tangible ways to improve things. As we all know, it doesn’t take long for employees to offer a multi-point to-do list. Listen very carefully to what you are being told. But, at the same time, be careful how you treat this information. Chances are what you are hearing is, at some level, a variation on today. It is magnetic north – the reality they are naturally drawn to. Taken literally, it’s probably an improvement on the reality people are part of – rather than an indication of where you truly need to be heading in order to be competitive. As Henry Ford so rightly pointed out, if he had asked people what form of transport they wanted before he delivered them the automobile, they’d have asked for a faster horse. Don’t get me wrong, many of …