How Branding is Like Sex

If comparing something to sex doesn’t make it more interesting, then we’re not doing it right. Take branding, for instance. Here are the three most important ways that branding is like sex.

#1: It’s simultaneously ubiquitous and mysterious. Like sex, branding is everywhere. And like sex, we’re all convinced that branding is what sells. Do a simple Amazon search on “branding” and you get 50,840 results. Whether you’re one of the “dummies” or a Harvard Business School grad, you could spend the rest of your life reading up on Effective Branding, Simple Branding, Personal Branding, Corporate Branding, Emotional Branding and Digital Branding, just for starters.

To paraphrase Winston Churchill: Never was so much written by so many and understood by so few. Yet despite all this information, the currents and eddies of attraction between products and buyers remain as elusive as the tendrils of desire between individuals.

#2: Everyone thinks they do it better and more often than they actually do. Five years ago, just having a website was a big deal. Now a website is just the beginning. We’re also Twittering, blogging, Facebooking, MySpace-ing and YouTube-ing. In other words, there are lots of opportunities to make some noise, but very little real communication.

Much of the clamor in the marketplace is companies talking to themselves. Putting a logo or company name everywhere isn’t branding, it’s marketing. Marketing doesn’t become branding until it evolves into a meaningful conversation between you and your customers. Like sex, talking is also something you can do alone, but it’s more fun with other people.

#3: Mad skills are great, but nothing trumps true love. You can’t fake passion for very long. And you certainly can’t fake a genuine investment in your customers’ happiness. All beloved brands share a common trait: the value they bring to their customers’ lives exceeds the value of the particular product or service they offer. That value may be convenience, glamour, humor, beauty, or something else. And it’s that intangible enhancement in quality-of-life that creates nearly unbreakable brand loyalty.

So what’s the bottom line here? First, comparing branding to sex actually does make branding more interesting (surprise!).

Second, like love, successful branding transcends the sum of its parts to become something greater.

And third, an Amazon search on “sex” yields over a half-million results, with a recommendation for “Amazon’s Madonna Store” highlighted right at the top of the page.

Now that’s some powerful branding.

Ciao for now!

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Photo credits: Free Textures Set by Saul Landell via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

Denny's: Half-Baked

In marketing, there are few things worse than almost getting it right.

If you’re a Denny’s denizen, you’ve probably ordered from a menu whose back cover invites you to “Join the conversation!” and directs you to its website, its Facebook page and its Twitter account. Impressive! Who knew Denny’s was so cutting edge?

Unfortunately, the Twitter address—twitter.com/dennys—belongs to a Taiwanese man named Dennys Hsieh. 

Filter Creative Group handles Denny’s social media initiatives, and they actually do a terrific job. Denny’s has a robust Facebook page with nearly 33,000 fans and two Twitter accounts: @DennysGrandSlam (for early birds) and @DennysAllnightr (for normal people). Both accounts have thousands of followers and do a good job of engagement, customer service and promotional marketing.

Mistakes happen. But it’s odd that such a “connected” company would ignore the error. The incorrect menus were distributed to 1,500 Denny’s locations last October and Matthew Petro called the error in November. Yet Denny’s hasn’t so much as put an explanatory note next to the Twitter link on their website.

It looks like their mistake might cost them. 

Twitter has a policy that after six months of inactivity an account may be deemed inactive and released to another party. Dennys Hsieh stopped posting updates last July and Denny’s has now petitioned Twitter to have the account reassigned to them. Dennys Hsieh then began posting again on February 19^th, including a link to CNET’s excellent report on the same date.

If only someone had fact-checked the menu. You don’t need your spidey senses to detect the brewing soap opera that’s bound to keep Twittizens entertained in coming weeks.

Ciao for now!

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Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

Google: Impress a French Girl

These days, when Google is starting to look a lot like Microsoft in its quest for total world domination—CNBC’s Inside the Mind of Google makes the search giant’s happy logo seem a bit disingenuous—this ad reconnects us to the beauty and purity of Google’s original value proposition.

So wonderful! (Was that a tear I saw in the corner of your eye?)

This is a great example of what can happen when you approach legacy media from a social media mindset. If you connect with what your customers really want from your company and your product, social media will take it viral.

And that’s the kind of reach and frequency that no amount of ad dollars can buy you.

Ciao for now!

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Let's Twitter: @WanderNot

It's Not Personal, It's Business

There's a marketing mindset that believes social media is a waste of time. These are the people who tend to say things like, “It’s not personal, it’s business.”

These are the same people who approach social media as an additional channel for their hard sell. You know the type: 

• They immediately DM you with a pitch for their product, their blog or their seminar as soon as you connect with them on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn — or anywhere else, really.

• They offer you a “free” white paper in exchange for your contact info, then bombard you with phone calls and emails demanding an appointment.

• They invite you to a “free” 1-hour webinar where they refer to their (wildly overpriced) ebook no fewer than 14 times, and then follow up with three emails in three hours pitching said ebook—which you ceased to care about after the third mention.

What they don’t get is that the hard sell never actually worked to begin with. When you live and die by your quarterly results, always focused on the next three months instead of on the long-term, then you’re moving your product in spite of yourself. You may meet your quarterly goals, but if you haven’t built a relationship with your customer then you’re starting all over again the next quarter.

The outbound, always-be-closing, hard-sell marketing style is a dying dinosaur. Social media isn’t a new marketing gimmick, nor is it a passing fad. “Relationships first, business second” is actually the tried-and-true inbound marketing formula of the old-fashioned mom-and-pop store on Main Street.

The only thing that’s new about social media are the tools.

Ciao for now!

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Photo credit: “The Salesman” by Pete Williamson via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons license.

Let's Twitter: @WanderNot