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Each of these is a call to action. We marketers put ‘em everywhere.

The call to action is the punctuation at the end of our advertising message sentence.

Dear Customer, now that we have conveyed to you how great and valuable this product or service is… Here’s what to do to get it.

The quick answer to our topic is No. Not all marketing activities need a call to action.

The marketing we do related to sales? Yes. Make it as easy as possible for customers. Show them the way. If you’re so lucky that they find your offerings will suit their needs – by golly – remove as many barriers as possible so they can buy what they need.

But, marketing is more than just trying to get other people to do things. Marketing activities also support things like your brand/reputation, customer service, and what you do to be locally relevant.

I define marketing activities as strategies and tactics to support your brand. These could include customer service related activities as well as programs to help you be more relevant in the neighborhoods you do business.

Word is getting out that it takes too long to buy at your store because there aren’t enough sales people? Adding more staff may be something your Operations team implements, but that also a marketing activity… it affects your brand. It is also, obviously, a sales-related activity.

In short, if you are asking customers to do something, providing them with information on how to use a coupon to when your store is opened for them… Make things crystal clear. But remember, marketing is more than sales-driving tactics.

The post Do all Marketing Activities need a Strong Call to Action? appeared first on Idea Sandbox.

POINT: John Moore

Give employees a mantra to follow and not a manual to read.

Every retailer gives training sessions to employees on how to deliver customer service, which is another way to say, “living the brand” at the store level. Trainers for these sessions walk employees through a manual about the do’s and don’ts of living the brand through delivering “legendary customer service.”

However, manuals don’t inspire action. They are too long and too pedantic for employees to follow.

Mantras, on the other hand, are quick to read, simple to understand, and easy to follow.

The true school Starbucks way to getting employees (baristas) to live the brand was to give them two mantras to follow:
1. BE NICE. BE CLEAN.
2. JUST SAY YES.

1. BE NICE. BE CLEAN.
The two most important factors in delivering upon the brand to retail customers are having happy smiling employees and having a clean store. Starbucks research backed this up as customers said nice employees and a clean store were more important to them than the price of their beverage or the quality of the coffee.

In the early 90s, Starbucks instilled the “BE NICE. BE CLEAN.” mantra to give employees something to act upon with every customer. Every employee knew what was expected of them in order to live the brand: smile a lot and keep the store clean.

2. JUST SAY YES
Long ago Starbucks instilled a “JUST SAY YES” company culture at the store level. The mantra asks employees to find ways to say YES and not NO to customer requests.

If a customer wants her Tall Gold Coast in a Grande cup… just say yes (and do it). If a customer wants her Grande Vanilla Nonfat Latte Extra Hot… just say yes (and do it even though you know the milk will taste burnt).

The advice here is simple: to help employees live the brand, give them a mantra to follow and not a manual to read.

COUNTERPOINT: Paul Williams

The first consideration, do you have a brand worth living?

You need to first have an environment that treats both customers and employees with respect and dignity. If not, fix that first.

It is easy to live the brand at a small company – especially when employees have access to leaders who model the brand in their actions and words. As you grow, and the organizational chart expands, people move further from the core example.

At Starbucks Coffee back in 2004, one of the brand’s key areas of focus was enhancing customer service. Compared to the competition Starbucks was doing a pretty good job, but they weren’t consistently delivery Legendary Service.

A core component of the Starbucks brand is “The Starbucks Experience.” Going beyond commodity ‘service’ to deliver an experience. As we looked into ways to eliminate inconsistency, we made a huge discovery. While the entire organization knew providing the best service was important, we were not all calibrated on what “best service” was.

Every department used different term: world class… five-star… best… award winning… And each department had a different standard. This meant, the Human Resource team asked a different set of questions to measure ‘delivering great service’ than a store manager or district manager might ask. This also meant what was considered ‘superior’ by one group may only pass as ‘average’ by another.

Starbucks had a language problem.

Before partners could “Live the Brand” at Starbucks, it first had to be clearly defined. Consistent language needed to be crafted. The behaviors needed to be modeled. And, when partners demonstrated the right behaviors, that needed to be recognized and rewarded.

Our solution was to create a pocked-sized Green Apron Book.

After a lot of work, research, input from across the company, and back to the company’s foundation – this booklet served as dictionary and customer service user’s guide.

This may sound counter to what John mentions in his article. But, it wasn’t full of long-winded language. Rather, made-up of mantras to model. We called them ‘behaviors.’

It narrowed delivering “Legendary Service” to five key behaviors:

1. Be Welcoming,
2. Be Genuine

3. Be Knowledgable,
4. Be Considerate, and
5. Be Involved.

When a partner demonstrated these, they would be doing the things that create the experience that keeps customers coming back. They would be living the brand!

We shifted the language too. In the olden days at Starbucks, we talked about ‘empowering’ partners. That’s like empowering your teenage son to cut the grass by having the lawnmower gassed-up in the garage. We knew empowerment wasn’t enough. We removed ambiguity by declaring partners were accountable to emulate these behaviors – with each and every customer… and to each other.

The secret to getting employees to live your brand is to equip all with the proper filter to make decisions and act in accordance with the values of your brand.

The post How do you get Employees to “Live the Brand”? appeared first on Idea Sandbox.

POINT: John Moore

To me, a “brand promise” is what customers expect to experience with a business. Anytime a business delivers something different, it breaks its “brand promise” with customers.

Whole Foods, for example, promises its customers the grocery store will not sell foods with artificial additives, sweeteners, colorings, and preservatives. Suppose a Whole Foods store decides to sell Coca-Cola. That action would break the “brand promise” of Whole Foods and would create a DISCONNECT between what a customer expects and what a company delivers.

Business operations can best support its brand promise by making sure disconnects do not happen.

Every Christmas, Starbucks sells a Cranberry Bliss Bar as a limited time offering. In the late 90s and early 2000s, Starbucks ran print ads, aired radio spots, and used direct mail to drive even more traffic into its stores during the Holidays. We used to feature Cranberry Bliss Bars in many of these ads.

To help ensure a disconnect didn’t happen when a customer visited a Starbucks during this time, the Marketing Dept. kept the Operations Team informed about the need to always have Cranberry Bliss Bars in stock and featured prominently in the pastry case.

The last thing we wanted was a customer coming into Starbucks and expecting a Cranberry Bliss Bar with their Peppermint Latte only to find out the store was sold out of Bliss Bars.

For retail businesses, it is the operations team’s responsibility to deliver upon the experiences customers expect. If the operations team fails to deliver on these experiences, a DISCONNECT happens.

And, it’s the marketing team’s responsibility to deliver products and programs in ways customers expect. When they don’t do that, a DISCONNECT happens.

Disconnects are promise breakers in the retail business.

The fewer disconnects a business has, the more success it will have.

COUNTERPOINT: Paul Williams

How can business operations support the brand promise? While marketing may craft the brand promise, the Operations team is responsible to deliver that promise.

I agree with John’s points completely.

Eliminating Contradictions

One of the most challenging environments in which operations has to deliver a brand promise is within Disney themeparks.

Not only do they have the standard operational challenges of wait times, quality of service, cleanliness, and product quality… They do all this in an artificially, themed environment.

Disney’s promise is delivering magic and fantasy in a family friendly environment. Every aspect of the artificial world they’ve created needs to deliver on that promise or the spell is broken.

Through scene elements, costumes, theming, and more, Disney must make you feel as if you’re truly walking down the Main Street of a typical city in the early 1900s. Then in the jungles of Adventureland, and the wild west in Frontierland, etc.

When Disney Imagineers design and build locations, they make sure they do so in a way that Eliminates Contradictions.

That is, eliminating any elements that could break the spell and ruin the experience.

Walt Disney taught his team to be attentive to details and to think things through to the end. They go to great lengths to avoid contradictions. They don’t leave the experience to chance, it is all calculated.

For example, they have taken care to ensure you can’t see the future of Tomorrowland while standing in ye olde Frontierland. Cowboys and Astronauts don’t mix.

They built ‘utilidors’ – a basement beneath the Magic Kingdom in Florida – that allows cast members (employees) to travel directly to their attraction from beneath the scenes in their themed costume.

If Disney can operationalize magic, we can surely do the same in our businesses.

The post How Can Business Operations Support the Brand Promise? appeared first on Idea Sandbox.

POINT: John Moore

The true purpose of a mission statement is to help a company make appropriate business decisions. It’s a decision-making compass for a business and not a marketing blueprint.

For example, the old Starbucks Coffee mission statement included six guiding principles to help the company make appropriate decisions. One principle stated: “Provide a great work environment and treat each other with respect and dignity.” That helped guide Starbucks to make better business decisions about internal company culture matters and H.R. stuff.

Another principle in the old Starbucks Coffee mission statement stated “Recognize that profitability is essential to our future success.” That helped Starbucks make more responsible financial decisions as the company grew its business.

If a company’s mission statement shouldn’t serve as a marketing blueprint for a business, what should play that role?

A company’s Brand Style Guide, which we’ve previously discussed, should serve as the marketing blueprint for how a company expresses its Identity, Personality, and Authenticity.

COUNTERPOINT: Paul Williams

A mission statement is company’s declaration regarding the reason they exist. The overarching goal of the company. A mission statement is typically aspirational, yet realistic and goes beyond the notion of “selling more of our stuff.”

A mission statement should serve as a company’s Ten Commandments – the set of laws that guide’s company behavior. A compass pointing towards the company’s true North.

The problem many companies have is that their mission statement isn’t active. It serves nothing more than words on paper.

The marketing (building awareness and trial) of a brand should be conducted in a manner consistent with the mission statement.

If marketing efforts are not aligned with the mission statement compass, the company isn’t being true to itself or its declared purpose.

Among the reasons company’s may falter include:
(a) not having a mission statement, and
(b) not following the mission statement they have.

The post Does a Company’s Mission Statement Play a Role in Marketing the Brand? appeared first on Idea Sandbox.

A brand, doing its job well, shows personality in all it does, not just marketing.

The way they greet customers. The wording on their packaging. The way they answer the phone. All should show that personality.

Problems arise when brands do things that are not congruent with their perceived personality.

For example, when you say one thing (“We put service first!”), but act different (10-minute phone delays in customer service phone number), you’re not delivering on the promise you’ve made to your customers.

A better label for a brand’s personality is probably “brand promise.”

Not only are our customers expecting us to be consistent, they want us to promise to support that personality.

COUNTERPOINT: John Moore

YES. A brand’s unique personality should be reflective in all its marketing.

Earlier we addressed the ins/outs of creating a Brand Style Guide. My advice in that series of posts included creating a style guide with three sections: Identity, Personality, and Authenticity.

In my explanation, Identity deals with logo consistency and Authenticity is about not making compromises to the brand as the business grows. For the Personality section, I wrote this:

“Every brand has both a look and a feel. The look is its visual identity. The feel is its emotional identity. Every brand has both.

To help make sure you are consistent in showcasing your brand’s emotional identity, I recommend creating a list of personality traits you want the brand to always convey.

In your Brand Style Guide, list out and detail five personality traits you want your brand to always convey.

For example, some personality traits we attached to the Starbucks brand back in the day included: Delightful, Quick-Witted, Encouraging, and Welcoming.

By outlining these personality traits, it served as guardrails to help us design and deliver marketing activities that were true to the emotional identity of the Starbucks brand.

As a marketer, I clearly believe a brand’s personality should be showcased in all marketing activities because it helps to forge more of an emotional connection with customers.

When a unique brand fails to showcase its unique personality, we can see it and feel it.

For example, here are two examples where Starbucks failed to showcase its unique personality in an in-store poster and from a billboard.

IN-STORE POSTER

This promo poster for mini donuts has no soul … no emotion … no style … no creativity … NO PERSONALITY.

BILLBOARD

CrackerJack Marketers know there is not a faster, better, or cheaper route to commoditizing a brand than using unemotional language like: Faster … Better … Cheaper.

When a brand loses its emotional connection with customers, it also loses it ability to differentiate itself from competitors.

The post Does the Personality of a Brand Need to Be Reflective in All Marketing Activities? appeared first on Idea Sandbox.