If dog breeds became brands.....ha ha (sorry, woof woof!)

So there we were then, a festive Christmas lunch, the whole family discussing how exciting it was that my daughter and her boyfriend had bought their first flat together in Battersea.

Very presumptuously my daughter started considering about what dog would be viable for them to have in the future, and whether of course their choice would be made easier to make, given that Battersea Dog's Home was virtually next door.

We all started debating about the size of the flat, the location, in fact everything apart from the actual practicalities of having a blooming dog in Central London!

My first suggestion: "A border terrier?"

Astonishingly, my daughter's boyfriend quipped: "Not keen on that brand!"

My wife gently giggled and teased: "How can a dog be a brand?"

My daughter's boyfriends head spun round to meet here gaze: "Of course it can be a brand, anything can be a brand if it has values!"

I quickly quipped in: "So, what values does a Border Terrier have then?"

He took a slow sip of his Merlot, contemplated the question and replied: "Well, a Border Terrier is industrial, nosey, unpredictable, fiery yet loyal and affectionate".

I put my Woodreed hat on and mischievously challenged him "So what would it's proposition be?"

He'd obviously been thinking ahead: "A loyal affectionate servant that would be willing defend and attack when appropriate".

My daughter decided it was time to put her six penneth in: "Yes I agree! A Labrador values would be affable, gentle, endearing, earnest and always peckish!"

And in no time at all we were discussing the brand values of as many breeds as we could! Such a thought provoking and entertaining lunchtime.

Bulldogs, boxers, spaniels, poodles............

Any ideas?

The values – behaviours disconnect, a cautionary tale

Christmas time is here, and with it the usual personal sprint to get all presents bought, wrapped and dispatched to the 4 corners of the globe by the start of December (lovely having an Aussie husband; great for BBQs, super trips to the southern hemisphere etc etc but not a helpful addition to one’s life when it comes to relatives living in inconvenient places for present delivery with frankly outrageously early last postage date – 5th December, honestly? Is it jumping there in a Christmas stocking?)



So, against this non self-imposed crazy Christmas backdrop of stress inducing deadlines I needed what follows like a turkey needs 25th December. 

The edited version…Having somewhat ironically signed up to Amazon’s free trial of its supposedly speedy one day delivery service, I found myself 7 days and various fruitless conversations with the delivery company’s customer services later, still without my order. Here’s my issue -  it’s not  so much that technological and human cock ups caused my order to go AWOL, it’s the fact that the company had ample opportunity to make things right, but, well, just….didn’t.  On the afternoon of the 7th day, the delivery service, much like the Lord, was resting. Nothing we can do, all the delivery drivers have all gone on their merry delivering ways, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow when off they all trundle again.  

No solution at all. 

Never mind that you’ve missed your deadline Ms Customer, ruined your week, wasted your time. Nothing we can do. Their values “Respect, Accountability, Passion, Flexibility, Hard Work and Honesty” . Hmm, simply words on a website. I think so.     

The crux of it is that many organisations are still not using their values to create frameworks of behaviours to empower their people to offer the best customer service. Or if they are, they’re not getting the message through to their people. Pioneers like Pret are leading the way and reaping the rewards as they do. We know it works.

So come on UK businesses, make 2014 the year when you use your values to create meaningful, relevant employee behaviours that are understood, lived, recognised and rewarded. Your customers will love you for it. 

So it's cheers to great British beer advertising.

My goodness, how depressed I was when I turned onto this flat footed piece of creativeness in the Waitrose magazine.

An overused pun, a typical product shot, a white background, an expected piece of dated typography, how much more stereotypical can one get?

Is this all Stella have to show after their celebrated and award winning million dollar advertising campaigns of the past?

And also am I right in thinking that the "head" of a glass of lager is part of the joy of that initial ice cool sip?

Or have I missed a trick, does it consolidate their position of Stella being "re-assuringly expensive"?

When I think and remember all the fantastic beer advertising campaigns that have graced our TV and press over the years, this sadly, reminds me of how creatively less experimental we are in this country today.

I loved "following the bear", I preferred a bit of "no nonsense", but this...... leaves me high and dry!

The service profit chain found alive and kicking in central London

We’re working with a London based client at the moment, helping them put some extra magic and sparkle (no, not that one) into their brand. 

We were up there last week running a workshop with their CEO, FD and their managers as part of the process. During the workshop day they continually struck me as a brilliant example of an organisation whose senior management had genuinely given autonomy to their teams to run their units as they saw fit, trusting and respecting them to make decisions based on their own knowledge and experience, and were reaping the rewards as a result. 

It made me recall US business theorist Dan Pink's thinking about performance at work where Autonomy (the ability to dictate the course of your work, Mastery (the over arching desire to get better at stuff) and Purpose (The reasons you do what you do at work) are more powerful drivers than money in employee engagement and retention.

The impact of this culture was clear to see all over the place. You could see it happening in the workshop - The directors purposely taking a back seat  to give their staff a voice. When split into two groups to think about their brand truths, the groups came up with an almost identical set. Consensus easily reached.  Turnover was low. This group, we found, had been working for the organisation for years, in fact most had been customers in the first place.

Perhaps the most revealing metric came from some research we conducted amongst current customers. It revealed truly stunning levels of loyalty and advocacy, with 95% saying they would come again and 91% saying they would recommend them to a friend. 

A perfect example of the service profit chain in motion where internal service quality = happy staff = happy customers who keep coming back.

Why do strategies fail?

I was asked the question recently "Why do strategies fail?"  So in my usual, contrary manner rather than answer the question directly I turned it on its head and talked instead about what makes strategy succeed.

The answer is brand.

Much more than a logo and based on truth, a brand is an organisational blueprint for growth. Brand shapes and maintains a healthy company culture that works to achieve corporate and strategic objectives. It’s a rallying cry to engage and unite a workforce, a blueprint for the way everyone inside a business behaves.

Authentic brands build trust inside organisations. Build trust and you’ll build engagement. Engaged employees are happy; happy to work, happy to stay. Engaged employees are receptive, they take ownership. Engaged employees understand what needs to happen to make the difference.

People engage with brands emotionally; emotional engagement is four times more powerful than rational in driving behaviour. Strategy succeeds when internal communication is given a human, brand-hearted, voice.

You’ll then have a motivated internal audience open to change, willing to take responsibility for making things happen. Then strategy succeeds.

The answer seemed to satisfy.

A version of this blog first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph, Strategy Execution supplement on 4th November 2013. To view the full supplement click Sir Clive - my 'answer' is on page 15.

Apple’s Core

There have been two seminal moments in the world this week. Firstly, Apple added a trophy to its cabinet by becoming the world’s most valuable brand, toppling Coke’s 13 year reign of Interbrand’s yearly Global Brands Report. The consequent rise in Apple’s stock price and press furore surrounding the result illustrate the importance of brand.

Secondly, this week marked my fourth week as a Graduate Trainee at Woodreed. My time here so far has been a master class on everything brand, focusing in particular upon Woodreed’s belief that getting the brand inside the company right is as important as outside.

A company finding their brand and making it clear to all people within is a great achievement. But one thing that has interested me is how important it is to have everyone within a company understanding and living the brand. When I say everyone I don’t mean just a couple of people from HR, but everyone from the CEO and Managing Directors to the mail boy and person who cleans the loos. And this is where I am worried about Apple. According to Interbrand Apple is clearly passing on its brand outside of the company, but what about the inside?

For the last couple of decades Apple stores have been synonymous with passionate staff, seeing them cheering and celebrating on launch days shows how much they are engaged with the brand. Further evidence of Apple’s past internal brand engagement is Steve Jobs’ Mission Statement for Apple from 20 Years ago, which read:

‘To make a contribution to the world by making tools for the mind that advance humankind.’

I N C R E D I B L E, no wonder Apple employees from the ground up were inspired with this kind of belief from the top.

But what about today? Well the in store staff’s belief in the Brand is currently so strong that they recently managed to sell the highest spec iPad to my notoriously frugal Father. But how about higher up within the company? Steve Forstall and his team with their unfinished map debacle last year-I’m not sure. CEO Tim Cook? Hmm, how about his Mission Statement for Apple?

‘Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world, along with OS X, iLife, iWork and professional software. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store. Apple has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices with iPad.’

To me that is more like an Encyclopaedia description of the company, not the piece of inspirational writing from Jobs. So I advise the heads of Apple to have a 4 week training with Woodreed, read the thought pieces from Woodreed’s website and see the great effects having a full company of people singing to the same tune can have. Then they can prove that they are not just a tech company but once again a company making a contribution to the world that changes mankind.

Reference

http://www.interbrand.com

http://www.forbes.com

http://9to5mac.com/2013/06/11/apple-uploads-its-mission-statement-videos-to-youtube/

http://www.businessinsider.com

Since when did my life become so busy I don’t even have time to breathe?

I am about to start seeing a breathing physio. 

Oh yes, amongst my many skills and talents, breathing apparently isn't one of them.

How on earth can I forget to breathe when at any given moment I only have a wordpress site to build for my blogging 9 year old daughter on a mission to become a discovered poet while getting a 6^th round of toast for my unfillable 7 year old son  while reading the deeply philosophical tome “Bees are Stripy” (so they are) for the 100^th time that day to my 15 month old (who has become rather Father Jack in her single word demands of late ‘READ’ ‘READ’) while thinking about the presentation I am giving tomorrow and the tweet I must send and the text I haven’t yet answered to my best friend, stirring the supper while coming up with the killer 48 point word on the ‘Words with Friends’ app on my iphone to beat my adversary in tennis and words games alike (aka my Dad) while sorting out the uniforms for the morning and testing the middle child on his spellings while googling the address for his match on Friday and musing if we have enough bedding to clean the blasted hamster who seemed like a good idea at the time (whose early demise I secretly fantasise about) while on the phone to Mr D to discuss the progress on the refund for the hire car idiots in Portugal who thought it perfectly reasonable customer service to drag a family party of 6 to an industrial estate in the middle of Lisbon post flight only to inform them they didn't actually have the 7 seater we’d booked AT ALL but here, have a 5 seater, Grandma in the roof-box, no problems and oh could he possibly stop and pick up a bottle of red on his way home and and and…..and BREATHE.

Your 30s are, so the research tells us, the busiest time in a woman’s life. Apparently there’s only 1 hour in every 24 that we have to ourselves. The ever present 21^st century juggle of work and family compounded by the multitude of communication channels we wrap around us leaving us, literally it seems, struggling for breath.

What to do? Employers I think, nowadays, have an even greater responsibility to ensure their staff are allowed to strike the right mutually beneficial balance between work and home, and work extra hard to create positive brand centred cultures in their workplaces. Putting employees first.

Mine? Well JM has happily agreed to let my physio session take place in the office as Woodreed live (and breathe!) the importance of looking after your employees to increase engagement. (Although secretly I think she wants to chuckle at the ‘OMMMMMMMMMs’ that will invariably be emitting from the boardroom as I am finding the time to learn to breathe.)