All posts filed under: Likeable brands

Sustainability: Being good, not just doing good

By Mark Di Somma

Historically, corporate social responsibility has put the emphasis on how businesses are doing good. It’s become an increasingly varied checklist of “things we’ve done right”. Today though, socially aware audiences want more. They increasingly make judgments about you based on your overall likeability. They want to do business with brands that are good. And that in turn means that, at a social level, your reputation depends less on your ability to simply highlight good works done in isolation (through community activities or sponsorships for example), and much more on your ability to show that you are inherently principled in your dealings and that you behave consistently across your organisation in ways that align with your social and commercial reputation. That shift in the significance of social actions has a downstream effect on critical social initiatives such as sustainability. In my opinion, they should no longer be seen as nice-to-haves or even as opportunities to improve efficiencies across your supply chain. Rather, the actions you take in these areas are competitive opportunities to distinguish your company …

15 reasons why “no-one else has complained”

By Mark Di Somma

1.     They didn’t have time 2.     They couldn’t be bothered 3.     They didn’t want to interact with you a moment longer than they had to 4.     They didn’t know how to complain (because you didn’t make it easy) 5.     They didn’t feel they could talk to you 6.     They didn’t think you could change 7.     They didn’t think you would care 8.     They didn’t think it would make any difference for anyone else 9.     They didn’t think you’d listen 10.  They thought you’d be rude and defensive 11.   They think you’re incompetent 12.   They don’t like you 13.   They never intend coming back 14.   They want you to fail 15.   They’ve already told all their friends to avoid you via social media More reading 7 Things Most Customers Won’t Tell You – Unless You Ask (thethrivingsmallbusiness.com)

Story myths

By Mark Di Somma

Great brands have great stories. But a great story doesn’t automatically create a great brand. For years we’ve told ourselves a story about what story is and how it works: develop a product; build a story around that product to give it value; sell that product at a greater degree of profit. We’ve allowed ourselves to believe that stories are the lynchpin of competition and that the best storytellers will win. But that in itself is a myth. Ultimately consumers don’t buy a story. They listen to a story. They are influenced by a story. But what they buy is a truth that directs their behaviour, captured in a story. You don’t succeed just because you have a story. You succeed when you have a story that inspires people to buy your brand. The most beautiful, uplifting story in the world won’t cut it commercially if it doesn’t achieve competitive connection – if it doesn’t provide customers with reasons to connect with your brand at the expense of someone else’s. Stories may influence behaviours. But …

The contradictions of eyelashes and data

By Mark Di Somma

Christine sends me this image of a VW with eyelashes attached to its front headlights. And all I can think is “There’s just no way on God’s good earth that big data can predict this.” It’s flirty. It’s girly. It’s extraordinarily popular. And I don’t get it. Thing is – I don’t have to. It’s not for me. I’m the first to admit I’d probably never have thought of this. But clearly someone else did – and they made it fly (probably with every man in the vicinity snorting in disbelief). Read eyelashes on a car in a number of ways. The power of the woman consumer in the car market for starters. The wish by consumers to distinctualise a brand by adding a form of self expression. The opportunity to build a short-term brand on the success of another brand. What you can’t read into it is this. There is no way that a spreadsheet could have predicted this would take hold. In much the same way as no-one would have foretold that putting …

Does my brand look big in this?

By Mark Di Somma

As marketers, we’re often encouraged to puff up our brands to look as big as possible so that they appear significant and credible in a global marketplace. There’s a sense that if you’re big, you must be successful and if you’re successful, then there’s a higher than likely chance that you’ll continue to grow. Size matters. But not always in the senses that we have been led to believe. My own view is that the size of your business is actually less critical than the scale and/or extent of your thinking. A big brand on the hoof is a thing of beauty, to be sure. Strong, assured, competitive, resourced and focused on bringing its vision of the future to life. Big brands command presence and respect. But the biggest companies aren’t always the smartest, they’re not always the pace setters and they’re certainly not infallible even though they might like to think they are. I have only to direct attention to the GFC to remind all of us that neither history nor size counts as …

Affirmation: how to make a brand experience really count

By Mark Di Somma

Everybody wants to feel they got value for money. Sure – but when exactly does something feel like it was “worth it”? For example, Lady Gaga’s just wound up a three concert stint in Auckland. When does a concert experience feel like it’s worth it? Is it when you finally see the star in person as they step onstage days, weeks, months after you bought the tickets? Is it at the end of the opening number as the crowd erupts? Is it at the end of the show as you fight your way home through the traffic, images of the last couple of hours running through your head? Is it during your favourite song? Or is the value for money moment when you’re telling friends your “I was there” story via Facebook or, days or months later, over dinner? When does a film feel worth it? How about the experience of buying a dress? When do you think the keynote speaker at a conference has delivered or is delivering value for money? At what points …

Is the digital economy actually an economy (yet)?

By Mark Di Somma

Some years ago, I wrote a post that took Chris Anderson’s “freemium” model to task. In it I argued that once you had provided services and information freely, the conversion to payment was going to be a lot tougher. Free, I suggested, would become an implicit entitlement. Last week, in a withering attack in the New York Times, Ross Douthat lashed out at what he called “The Facebook Illusion”. Comparing Web 2.0 to the home ownership bubble, he took particular aim at the world’s biggest social networking site. The relative disappointment of its IPO should be read, he maintains, not as an indication that Facebook doesn’t make money, but rather that “it doesn’t make that much money, and doesn’t have an obvious way to make that much more of it, because … it hasn’t figured out how to effectively monetize its million upon millions of users … This “huge reach, limited profitability” problem is characteristic of the digital economy as a whole.” It’s probably a little early to call Facebook. Whether the IPO misfired or …

Brand dynamics: the shapeshifting of brand likeability

By Mark Di Somma

Our traditional view of product preference has for many years mirrored our view of markets. A bell curve, where products rise in popularity over time, sustain leadership through a period of maturity and then decline or are overtaken by another bell-curve driven by product development that supersedes the declining model and looks to take it to new heights. That model’s driving dynamic is demand. Its chief metric is volume. And its key pressure is time. The longer you can draw out that curve, and the more you can slow down the roll at the peak of the curve the more likely you are to make money. Recently, two separate pieces of thinking have caused me to believe that this likeability model is now as good as dead. Firstly, two thoughts from a really fantastic guest post by J Walker Smith at the ever-inspiring Brand Strategy Insider: “With social engagement more prevalent and more powerful, every marketing message is now subject to vetting by a crowd. No message finds its way to consumers absent the influence …

Brands shouldn’t try to make sense

By Mark Di Somma

The flipside of a marketplace where brands encourage people to buy for emotive reasons is that brands also need to counter consumers’ personal reasons not to buy. Some of these reasons may be legacy. Some may seem to be convenient self-interest. Others may look like they’re based on ignorance, bias, selfishness. They probably don’t make sense to you. That’s important because … actually, it’s not. It’s not important at all The problem that matters is not your opinion of why your buyer won’t buy – it’s the fact that they have this opinion, that it’s rational to them and they have every reason to keep thinking it until they don’t want to anymore. Chances are you won’t talk people into liking your brand. The most effective way to deal with an “unreasonable” objection is to counter with a riveting motive. Most people think that means price. But simply dropping your price is no silver bullet. It doesn’t make you a more likeable brand. It may make you a more attractive brand – in the short …