The Herd Mentality

My Cousin Vinny is one of the best movies of all time. Two college buddies, Bill Gambini and Stan Rothenstein, are arrested in Wazoo, Alabama, for a murder they didn’t commit. Vincent Gambini (Joe Pesci), a lawyer-cousin from Brooklyn with no litigation experience, arrives in town with girlfriend Lisa (Marisa Tomei) in tow to defend and free the two boys.

Here’s a snippet of dialogue between Vinny and Lisa, from when they first arrive in Wazoo:

Vinny: You stick out like a sore thumb around here.

Lisa: Me? What about you?

Vinny: I fit in better than you. At least I’m wearing cowboy boots.

Lisa: Oh, yeah, you blend.

Sound familiar? This social desire to blend, to fit in, not to stand out, is what has driven so much of our human behavior since childhood. The pressure to conform comes from parents, teachers, clergy, TV, magazines, bosses, movies, and each other.

Look at kids in school. They all feel pressure to dress the same; think the same; listen to the same music; and use the same, like, broken English. To a certain extent, kids never outgrow the herd mentality, as Vinny and Lisa’s exchange above underscores.

When Barack Obama tossed the first pitch in 2009’s All-Star Game, the fashionistas roundly bashed him for wearing “mom’s jeans” instead of in-style, tight low-riders. To his credit, Obama reacted with indifference — unusual because few people ever relish or take pride in standing out.

That’s precisely why so many companies are stuck in the white noise, where one is indistinguishable from the other: CEOs project their personal fears of standing out, their personal desires to blend in, onto their companies’ brands.

Rudov’s Rule: You can brand or blend, but you can’t do both. Make up your mind.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Every CEO must fight the “blending impulse” in himself and in his staff, because it will kill the brand. Branding and blending are mutually exclusive.

• Blend — get stuck in the white noise — if you want a high cost of sales and a long sales cycle
• Brand — be a unique standout — to close business quickly and cheaply.

It might rattle your comfort zone to stand out, but that’s what it takes to win customers. So, are you branding or blending?

Core Pillars

I’ve frequently stressed, and posted on MarcRudov.com, this maxim: If the brand is murky to employees, investors, partners, customers, and suppliers, they’ll redefine it in whatever ways suit them — killing revenues, causing wars between marketing and sales, and putting the CEO’s neck on the line.

CEOs of large and small companies tell me that make-it-up-as-you-go-along branding is indeed one of their biggest headaches. It adds time and cost to closing deals. Alas, few try to fix it — they just spend ever-more money on sales.

To wit: At a recent NBC press conference about Jay Leno’s new show, Angela Bromstad, president of primetime entertainment, and Paul Telegdy, head of unscripted programming, couldn’t articulate NBC’s brand:

Paul Telegdy: “Well, that’s something that we have spent a lot of research and focus on, in terms of core pillars on what is and where is it an NBC show. We refer to certain key identifying characteristics of NBC shows, that they be human first, deal with real people, people that our cast, our viewers identify with, that are fundamentally positive and that embraces our comedy brand but also, an optimism…”

Angela Bromstad: “The returning shows that we have sort of lived up to, that legacy that NBC has always stood for. I think we have fallen short in the past couple of years, and it is our goal to bring back those high-quality, sophisticated drama and comedies and a brand of alternative that fits into that.”

Wha-a-a-a-t? Core pillars? I have no idea what all that gobbledygook means; neither did the execs uttering it nor the media professionals hearing it. This is no way to run a business.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

The CEO must demand a unique, concise, compelling, gut-grabbing, memorable brand — and make it priority #1, not delegate it and hope for the best.

NBC cannot define itself, as Bromstad and Telegdy proved. Why? Its brand’s as clear as mud, and CEO Jeffrey Zucker’s neck is on the line.

Cables, Parts, and Batteries

Ft. Worth-based RadioShack announced that it will rebrand itself simply as The Shack. Lee Applebaum, the company’s chief marketing officer, called it a way of “contemporizing” perceptions of the brand:

“Our customers, associates, and even the investor community, have long referred to RadioShack as ‘The Shack,’ so we decided to embrace that fact and share it with the world. The Shack speaks to consumers in a fresh, new voice and distinctive, creative look that reinforces RadioShack’s authority in innovative products, leading brands, and knowledgeable, helpful associates.”

“We have tremendous equity in consumers’ minds around cables, parts, and batteries, but it’s critically important that we help them to understand the role that we play in keeping people connected in this highly mobile world. You will see a real focus on mobility and wireless products from leading brands in our new advertising.”

There are comparisons between this situation and when Federal Express became FedEx — because that’s what customers called it. I disagree. FedEx had a strong, crystal-clear brand; nobody was confused about its value proposition; and there’s no negative connotation with that moniker.

The Trash-80

The Shack’s a different story. The Shack? Nothing positive or cool or unique or compelling or contemporary about it. When people referred to RadioShack as “the shack,” it wasn’t a compliment. Remember the company’s PC, the TRS-80? People used to call it the Trash-80 — also not a compliment.

So, just because lots of people are using a term, it isn’t necessarily a good thing. What’s critical is the image in their minds and the feeling in their guts when they invoke or hear or read a brand. The Shack? I think of junk. I feel like avoiding it.

Applebaum admitted that people currently associate RadioShack with cables, parts, and batteries. Whose fault is that? Applebaum’s stated objective is to change that perception to one of mobility. How does rebranding each store as “The Shack” conjure mobility? It doesn’t.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Everybody already knows the RadioShack name. OK, it’s not a great name or currently a crystal-clear brand, but a familiar one. With some clever creativity, RadioShack could have become what the company wants it to be, needs it to be.

Instead, it has chosen to take a terrible name with a negative connotation — The Shack — and invest big bucks to make it into something powerful. It’s putting itself inside a shack, where cables, parts, and batteries are luxuries.

That “fresh, new voice” you hear is just white noise emanating from a broken radio inside The Shack.

What Is Microsoft?

You are driving down a country road with a friend. A few hundred feet away, on the right-hand side, is a billboard. It doesn’t grab your attention, breaking the cardinal rule of billboards.

As you edge closer, still unable to make out the message, you spot a suit-wearing crocodile chewing on a keyboard. To the right of this strange croc is a question: Trouble with your computer? Below that is the exhortation: Fix common PC problems in a few easy steps on your own.

Now, almost passing the billboard, you notice the Microsoft logo in the upper-left-hand corner. Across the top, on the billboard’s other corner, is the registered trademark Your Potential. Our Passion®. What does that mean? Quizzically, you look at each other, shrug, and continue driving.

Is Microsoft, a $67B corporation, now a self-help center for diagnosing PC problems? What is Microsoft? You and your friend, based on this billboard’s messaging, are clueless about the Microsoft brand and will remain so — one, 10, and 1000 miles later. This is a gargantuan branding failure: a brand they can’t understand is no brand at all.

Wasting Branding Dollars

I created this billboard from Microsoft’s homepage to illustrate a key point: the same rule applies to a homepage and a billboard — it must be crystal-clear in 15 seconds. Is Microsoft’s brand unique? No. Crystal-clear? No. Compelling? No. Gut-grabbing? No. Concise? No. Memorable? No. Repeatable? No. Yet, there it is, in plain view, for the world to see.

At MarcRudov.com and in my other articles, I stress that a company’s homepage is its primary branding platform and must be treated as such. If the brand is weak there, it’s weak everywhere.

According to Alexa, 45.4% of traffic to Microsoft.com lands on its homepage and drops off precipitously from there. Microsoft is wasting branding dollars, meaning that it needlessly increases its cost of sales.

In “Branding a Behemoth,” I discuss the challenges huge companies face to maintain their brands as they grow and diversify. In “Never Rest on Your Brand’s Laurels,” I caution against presuming that customers know what your company does. In today’s issue of the San Jose Mercury News, columnist Chris O’Brien explains that Google has expanded so rapidly that it now suffers from the same disease: murky brand.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Message to CEOs: Treat your homepage like a highway billboard. If you wouldn’t display your message at roadside, knowing that passersby won’t grasp it, don’t put it on your homepage, either.

Microsoft has one stock symbol (NASDAQ: MSFT) to represent its value to investors. It also must have one brand to represent is value to customers. What is it?

Conglomerate: Branding Nightmare

While earning an MBA at Boston University’s Graduate School of Management, I wrote a thesis for my advanced-finance course on the value of conglomerates — huge firms, like ITT, composed of unlike businesses. My quantitative analysis proved that such mashups did not benefit shareholders, who could achieve better returns by creating their own diversified portfolios.

In addition to being a subpar investment vehicle, a conglomerate is a branding nightmare. What is it? What is its core value proposition — to whom?

Hard to Put a Single Label On It

Look at the Fortune 500 of 2008. Huge companies. Behemoths all, from Walmart at $379B in annual revenues to Scana at $4.6B. Most of them grew to their current sizes by subsuming other companies. Growth, whether organic or via acquisition, serves one of two competitive goals: deliver more value to existing customers or serve new ones.

Regardless of expansion goal or method, the strategy must be sound and the new brand easy to articulate. Yes, the new, updated brand. Once the composition of a company changes, its identity changes. That means new brand, too. Why? Brand is identity. Instead, what I usually hear from execs is this: “We’re in so many lines of business now, it’s hard to put a single label on it.”

Really? That’s your job. When I hear that excuse, I deduce that this behemoth has become a conglomerate. Talk about lacking uniqueness and being stuck in the white noise!

As I’ve repeated ad nauseam, if one cannot articulate his brand in customer language (never vendor language) — uniquely, concisely, compellingly, memorably — there is no brand.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Branding a behemoth, like a startup, is a critical responsibility of every CEO. There’s no getting around it. Size and complexity are not excuses for a weak brand.

If your behemoth struggles to convey a unique core brand, there are three possible reasons:

1. It became a behemoth for growth’s sake, via wild acquisition binges, not to enhance the brand
2. The wrong people are assigned to branding the behemoth
3. As an inexplicable conglomerate, your behemoth is simply unbrandable.

Customers — consumer, industrial, military, or commercial — buy from vendors whose brands they understand. Do they understand your brand? Test it. Ask your biggest customer to explain it to you.

BEHEMOTH POSTSCRIPT

On July 22, 2009, Amazon.com announced the $850M acquisition of Zappos, an online shoe retailer whose brand I analyzed previously. When questioned about it, Amazon CFO Tom Szkutak said: “This deal was not about synergies. This is about growing in categories that we think are interesting.”

Interesting? Mr. Szkutak: Invest your money — not the stockholders’ — in categories you think are “interesting.” This is the recipe for building a behemoth!

One Million Acts of Green

Imagine Tiger Woods announcing that, because he won the US Open in 2008 and is ranked #1, he would win again in 2009. Tiger’s too smart for that (by the way, he didn’t win in 2009). He knows that presumption — resting on his laurels — would kill his brand and ultimately backfire.

Now, envision a sales VP telling his CEO that, because their company is ranked #1 and a big customer purchased their products last year, that customer will buy again this year. The CEO would fire him. Resting on one’s laurels in sales also backfires!

When a rising, aggressive company begins to achieve critical mass and buzz, customers and prospects flock to its new brand. There’s an electricity in the air, as business flows over the transom. Often, though, presumption of success sets in like rigor mortis.

Recently, I told a marketing exec at Cisco Systems that I no longer understand the Cisco brand. In fact, there is no Cisco brand. The company has become a giant purveyor of many networking products for a wide span of customers. With all that diversity and complexity, it needs to have a simple, compelling, unique brand that ties it all together. It doesn’t.

Instead, Cisco’s homepage contains messaging about “the human-network effect” and “one million acts of green.” Sorry, I don’t get that and certainly can’t fathom it in 15 seconds. Said this marketing exec: “Our Website has nothing to do with our go-to-market strategy. Besides, everyone in the industry already knows what we do.”

1. The Website is fundamental to a company’s go-to-market strategy. To say otherwise indicates a paucity of marketing expertise, savvy, and priority in the company
2. Presuming that people know what your company does epitomizes resting on your brand’s laurels. Cisco is a fine company, but CEO John Chambers must end this attitude of presumption: it weakens the brand and needlessly raises Cisco’s cost of sales. Ultimately, it will backfire.

A Gasping Patient

Have you ever noticed that, in any economic downturn, CEOs cut marketing dollars first? It’s true. This is akin to a doctor cutting oxygen to a gasping patient. Ludicrous.

In general, CEOs have difficulty quantifying the value of a brand — they think it’s nebulous gobbledygook. Is this true in your case? If so, cut the gobbledygook, and its authors. Invest more dollars to create a strong, unique brand that will attract customers, like moths to a lightbulb, and lower the cost of sales.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

A company must keep its brand strong to remain unique through the constantly evolving industry, marketplace, and market forces. What your company achieved last week, last year, or last decade is nice, but it’s history. Today is what matters.

Next time you catch yourself thinking, everyone in the industry already knows what we do, stop. You are resting on your brand’s laurels. Now, visit your largest customer to deliver that message, with that attitude. I dare you.

If you wouldn’t communicate with presumption to one customer, don’t let your Website do it to thousands or millions of them.

Never rest on your brand’s laurels — or, eventually, you’ll be sleeping on them.

Delete Your Website

Have you ever sold products or raised capital over the phone? What you realize quickly is that, if you don’t grab the listener’s attention in 15 seconds, you fail. As you dial each successive number, you iteratively tailor the pitch until it works.

This is the essence of branding — yet, so few executives draw that association. Imagine that every viewer of your Website will “hang up” if your brand fails to grab him in 15 seconds. That’s exactly what happens. Brand matters.

In previous articles, I’ve posited that nebulous brands confine their owners to the white noise of me-too competition. Nowhere is a weak brand more obvious than on a company’s Website. How a CEO can incur the expense of designing, posting, and maintaining a site that doesn’t clearly and quickly (in 15 seconds) convey his company’s brand — like a well-honed telephone pitch — is a mystery to me.

Many executives tell me, to my surprise, that they place little priority on their Websites — choosing instead to confer on their salespeople the job of branding. Huge mistake. Salespeople can’t brand, and it’s not their job to try.

Here’s an idea: If you don’t view your Website as the chief branding platform, delete it. Why not?

Backwards Priorities

But, before deleting (or deprioritizing) your site, remember this: Prior to a sales meeting, the prospect looks at the vendor’s Website to: 1) assess its ability to articulate a value proposition, 2) verify that its marketing and sales orgs are in-sync. If the site’s brand messaging is murky or impossible to decipher in 15 seconds, the prospect worries that the meeting will take too much of his time.

To use a horse & cart analogy: brand always pulls the revenue cart. Never, as they say, put the cart before the horse. How often do companies subordinate their brands to other revenue-acceleration activities, like SEO/SEM and hiring more salespeople? Answer: all the time. Backwards priorities.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

The #1 priority, in every economy — especially a recession — is to feed, water, groom, and exercise your branding horse, so that it will pull your revenue cart.

Putting the cart before the horse always fails — in every situation and venue. Where is your horse?

Stringent Labyrinth

Have you ever applied for a trademark? I have — to officially register my unique brand and protect it from copycats. That’s key to emerging from, and remaining above, the white noise.

I succeeded in getting my trademark, thanks to my lawyer’s skill in navigating the USPTO’s (United States Patent & Trademark Office) rigorous approval process, which takes about one year:

1. Examination: USPTO lawyer reviews for: a) likely confusion with a registered mark, b) merely descriptive of product or service, c) primarily geographically descriptive, d) primarily geographically misdescriptive, e) merely generic, f) primarily a surname, or g) scandalous/immoral. Applicant has six months to respond to a refusal or abandon the process.
2. Publication for Opposition: If step #1 is successful, USPTO lawyer publishes mark in Official Gazette — after which any party believing it may be damaged by mark’s registration has 30 days to oppose. In that rare event, trial determines validity of opposition (e.g., applicant’s mark is confusingly similar to opposer’s mark).
3. Registration: If step #2 is successful, and mark is currently used in commerce, USPTO attorney registers it and issues a registration certificate.

As you can see, getting a trademark requires enduring a stringent labyrinth — jumping a huge hurdle. One never should attempt this feat cavalierly. The same rule applies to branding.

Lazy Dartboard Branding

In essence, I paid a nontrivial sum, collaborated with my lawyer to execute a deft application strategy, and waited one nail-biting year to acquire my circle-R protection — all for a three-word moniker.

It stands to reason — in light of the money, effort, and time invested — that I required my trademark to add significant value to my brand. No whimsy here. I traveled the path deliberately and purposely, with reason and calculation.

Imagine my incredulity, then, when on 15 June 2009, IBM’s homepage greeted me with this inexplicable brand messaging:

More transparent. More efficient. And, above all, more citizen-centric. In other words, smarter government. See how the planet’s getting smarter.

Huh? What does all that mean? I have no idea. It certainly doesn’t pass my 15-second branding test, and it certainly garners no GutShare™. Yet, there it is for millions to see. Lazy dartboard branding: If today’s message doesn’t stick, throw another one tomorrow.

Had the marketing exec who posted this gobbledygook on IBM’s homepage tried to trademark it, he would have failed. In fact, he never would have submitted it to the USPTO, knowing that it doesn’t merit a trademark. Why use it at all, then? Good question.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Marketers must treat each brand like a trademark, as if the USPTO will scrutinize it. The results will amaze. No more incomprehensible slogans and meaningless jargon that neither attract customers nor sell products.

Make your brand pass both the GutShare™ and trademark tests. The trash will end up in the trash, instead of on your homepage. And, the surviving gem will do its job: attract paying customers.

A Boatload of Emotions

It always astounds me when people opine that branding is for consumer products and that industrial purchases are made with pure logic. Neither opinion is even close to accurate. So, why would anyone attempt a “cerebral” sale? Good question. But, it happens all the time.

Branding is the act of creating a unique identity for a company or product. The resultant brand, by definition, must contain a huge emotional component — even for purveyors of industrial, scientific, commercial, and military goods and services. So, when you hear “XYZ Corporation” or “Intelli-widget” and don’t feel a strong interest or desire to own the firm’s product or stock, its brand is a failure.

Every business executive wants to be a hero, to avoid being labeled a chump, and lies awake at night in fear of a botched decision, a lost sale, or a rival trying to usurp him. That’s life in a political nest. Accordingly, any business decision — even signing a purchase order, or recommending that it be signed — carries with it a boatload of emotions.

As I explained in “GutShare vs. Mindshare,” all decisions, in all aspects of life, are made with the gut, which combines the logic and emotion of every issue and produces a visceral feel for whether the decision at hand is correct or incorrect. Anyone who tells you that business execs make logic-only decisions is either naive or possesses a low EQ.

Clogged Sales Funnel

The sales funnel, home of dealflow, is a company’s chief revenue bottleneck. A clogged sales funnel, the consequence of weak branding and poor management, is the bane of every CEO.

In the ideal world, the CEO creates a strong brand, makes his company unique, and employs a salesforce of ordertakers. In the real world, however, most brands are weak, buried in the white noise, and salespeople become the default branders — each with his own product messaging. No wonder the sales funnel is clogged!

The diagram below shows that strong branding — being a unique standout — accelerates the sales process and yields higher revenues. A strong brand, which is like a lightbulb to a moth, reduces closing time and, therefore, the cost of sales — because salespeople easily move prospects from awareness to interest to desire to transaction.

A Result of Strong Branding

Awareness, interest, and desire aren’t cerebral words; they’re emotional words. Buying is, at the end of the day, an emotional/logical process. Cerebral selling doesn’t sell because customers don’t make cerebral purchases.

There are those who believe that, if a customer isn’t moving fast enough to buy a product, he needs more data. Wrong. Either the product in question is blatantly inferior, or, more likely, the customer’s not identifying personally with its benefits — if he even knows them. In essence, he fears that owning the product will lead to personal failure. Can one assess a customer’s fear by peppering him with “logical” arguments? Hardly. Cerebral selling doesn’t sell.

Oracle Corporation, the world’s largest purveyor of database software, succeeded by selling to CEOs while its rivals sold to engineers. Likewise, EMC Corporation, a global leader in storage systems, leapfrogged its competitors by selling to CEOs instead of engineers. In both cases, these vendors understood how to unclog the sales funnel by making technical products indispensible business tools to boards of directors — a result of strong branding.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

If you’re in a sales situation and find that the dynamic with the prospect is totally logical, you have one of three problems, maybe all three:

1. Weak branding
2. Little knowledge of the prospect
3. Not talking to the decisionmaker.

Result: no sale or slow sale. Cerebral selling doesn’t sell.

Vendor-Centric Agenda

Words — love, hate, lawsuit, bailout, bankruptcy — elicit strong emotions and behaviors in and from us. Selling is no exception: it leads to defensiveness, where a purchaser feels that an unneeded or unwanted product will be pushed on him. This dynamic is both a mood killer and a sales killer.

There often is a huge disconnect between vendor and customer — originating with words. As I illustrated in “Your Product Is Not a Market,” vendors falsely equate markets with products. Wireless market? No such thing. Markets contain purchasers, not products. Misusing these words, consequently, causes branding dissonance.

By the same token, the words “selling” and “sales” cause branding disconnect and dissonance. Any user of these words tends to focus inward — on the vendor-centric agenda: product, quota, bonus, commission, output, inventory, profit, and stock price.

Guess what? Purchasers don’t think or care about your vendor-centric agenda. They have an agenda to acquire value — employing metrics like ROI, security, cost of ownership, and ease of use. Therein lies the conflict: one party is selling, the other seeking value.

Each vendor strives to create a unique selling proposition, or USP, a simple phrase designed to capture the essence of its product. Notice how many USPs — We run the tightest ship in the shipping business (an old USP of United Parcel Service) — are product-centric, devoid of the customer.

Vendor/Customer Vignette

A few years back, I was consulting for a producer of trader turrets used on the massive trading floors of investment banks. I visited several of my client’s customers and asked each (typically a VP of trading administration) to articulate the biggest problem he faced every day — not necessarily related to technology or my client’s product. Surprise: No one had ever asked such a question! Why? Vendors tend to focus on products and selling.

The complaint: my client’s salespeople were constantly bypassing these decisionmakers, selling directly to “star” traders. Back in the heyday of Wall Street, star traders were untouchable and incorrigible, wreaking budgetary havoc on their employers, and my client was totally unaware of it. Why? Focused on selling.

Because I brought back new information about nonproduct problems, my client resolved the issue and increased customer satisfaction. Focus on value increases sales.

Rx from The WhiteNoise Doctor™

Customers seek value, not products. CEOs, therefore, must become value executives, not sales executives. And, by the way, customers know the difference.

As long as your company exhibits a palpable “selling” orientation, while your customers have a value agenda, the result will be branding disconnect and dissonance. This is how selling kills your sales.

I’m not suggesting that you eliminate your sales organization — just all evidence of a selling orientation: product/vendor focus and branding. While you’re at it, replace your unique selling proposition with a unique value proposition, and your customers will respond accordingly — as will your sales.