A for Effort, B for Execution

Back in my management consulting days with Ernst & Young, I spent a lot of time with my butt in the seat of many airlines. And one of my least favorite, but most frequently traveled was American Airlines. It’s always boggled the mind how American was one of the carriers that succeeded, while more progressive airlines failed. Sure the service sucked, but don’t they all now? But AA never even bothered to try to modernize their branding and marketing (at least not in my lifetime), while all the other airlines, at least have paid some attention to it by upgrading their planes, brands, messaging, etc. 

When I saw on my Twitter feed this morning that AA is going through their first rebranding effort since 1968, I jumped on the opportunity to dig into the announcement. This was a very interesting launch and it does a great job at showing what brand identity really is. I talk about it a lot, but people continue to think brand is just a logo. It’s so much more than that. You’ll see it’s the logo, the uniforms, the product, the services, and much more.

While I would have probably take it much further, for a conservative company like AA, it’s not bad. Here’s what I like and dislike of some of the new brand elements:

Likes

• Logo – I actually like the logo. Clean and simple.
  
• Interiors – CEO mentions the plan to get the exteriors to match the interiors, which is intriguing as it implies they have been upgrading the interiors lately (perhaps after all those seats were falling out of the plans last year) and the images (of no doubt biz class) on the video are pretty cool.
• Plane – I think the aircraft itself looks a bit more modern – nothing as edgy as Virgin or JetBlue, but not bad overall
• Technology – Sounds like there’ll be a better use of technology on the planes, which is great. We’re getting used to in-flight entertainment, and all the AA flights I’ve been on lately still have the big screens in the middle.

Dislikes

• Tail fin – This harkens back to the post-9/11 days when everyone was showing off their red, white and blue. I recall when Tom Siebel wrapped his San Mateo corporate HQ on Hwy 101 in an American flag for all Silicon Valley to view, but after we invaded Iraq, the “America” brand has taken a huge hit, not just internationally, but domestically as well. Sure, Obama has helped our image a lot, but there are still a lot of people around the world who will be turned off by this level of U.S.-focused patriotism, so I think this was a bad call.
• Social Icon – I’ve frequently talk about social networking icons being easily recognizable in the small square format used by most social networks. Sometimes this can be simply accomplished by using one letter (i.e., Huffington post, TechCrunch) to hint at who they are. Given that American Airlines is such a huge brand and the logo does have some reminder of the old one, people will probably catch on pretty quickly, however I would recommend this obscure of a social icon for a start-up.
• Uniforms – come on, if you’re modernizing, couldn’t you give those poor flight attendants some fashion lovin’? You’re still stuck in the 90s here. Take Virgin American, for example who partnered with Banana Republic to give them something modern and stylish, yet still professional.
  

  Same old tired American Airlines uniforms

Virgin American Uniforms designed by Banana Republic

So all-in-all, I give it a “B” which is probably the best they could do given how conservative a company they are. Now if the other Texas-based airline could get a bit of a facelift. I love you Southwest, but your color pallet is looking pretty tired. Attendants in khaki shorts and a polo spoke “fun” 15 years ago, but they’re looking tired and extremely unflattering today. If I worked there, I’d rather wear something more akin to the good old days.

Southwest’s 1970s “hotpants”

Big Oops at Instagram

My Twitter and Face book feeds are filled with folks who are up-in-arms over yet another internet privacy controversy, namely the new Instagram Terms of Use statement.   Now I don’t think anyone wants to prevent the folks at Instagram from making money, but the “Rights” section of this new policy does come across as a bit seedy.

So what’s the real issue here?

1.  While at least they’re not claiming ownership of users’ content, they are claiming they have full rights to use their content. They say “you can control who can view certain of your content and activities,” which really is meaningless, because they’re not specifying which content and activities we can’t control.
2.  (And this is the biggie), “you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you”. This is a very broad statement. Could it mean that their sponsors could see a really cool picture I took and put it into a commercial? Could it mean they could use a crappy picture of me and put it on a billboard? While probably not the intention of the statement, I think there’s argument that this type of behavior is allowable in this new privacy statement.

I really believe there are very few true conspiracies out there, and I doubt that the Instagram folks sat in a room and dreamed up ways to take advantage of their users. Unless they’re really stupid, I’m pretty sure the leadership at Instagram is pretty well aware of the virality of the social network, so any seedy conspiracy will be uncovered pretty darn quick, which is what happened.

Quickly hearing the backlash of users threatening to leave, Instagam co-founder Kevin Systrom’s recently assured us that “we’re listening”  in his blog with the following statement:

Our intention in updating the terms was to communicate that we’d like to experiment with innovative advertising that feels appropriate on Instagram. Instead it was interpreted by many that we were going to sell your photos to others without any compensation. This is not true and it is our mistake that this language is confusing. To be clear: it is not our intention to sell your photos. We are working on updated language in the terms to make sure this is clear.

So what I do think really happened? I suspect some overzealous lawyer did their best to make the new Terms of Use as broad as possible and protect their rights of their clients. This is the lawyer’s job. And typically if you’re a busy business person who’s not so versed on the law, you’ll trust that the lawyer is doing the right thing for the business and sign off on it. In a normal contract negotiation, another smart lawyer would identify any egregious statements and strike them out real quick. But users don’t have lawyers representing them for every Privacy Policy or Terms of Use statement and there’s no back and forth.

The lesson here is that the business users inside a technology company need to become the advocates of their users, especially with their own lawyers. Don’t just sit back and trust they know what’s best. What might be best legally, might be suicide from a business standpoint. I commend the whomever actually took the time to read the new statement and call this to light. And I commend Instagram for listening to their user base and quickly working to rectify the issue.

I admit, as a proud UCSB alumni, I was one of many caught up in the campaign to stop the new University of California logo that was meant to represent all the campuses. That thing was horrendous, and I’m thrilled they listened to public opinion and trashed it. How did they reach a point where they would defend such a crappy logo? I don’t know for sure, but I can make some educated guesses what led to this truly offensive piece of design that even got Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom to chastise the University of California for wasting students’ money on designing this new logo.

1)     Using a generalist to do a specialist’s job

I know, it’s annoying when you get a quote from a design agency that wants $20,000 to $30,000 for a brand. But branding firms don’t just create logos. If they’re good they create a complete identity for a company, that includes logo, general look and feel, and even messaging. Lots of companies, particularly startups, see branding as a waste. But if done well, like Comedy Central recently did, you are a hero, if done poorly, you end up looking like an idiot, like the UC Regents.

According to a recent press release from the UC office of the President (UCOP): “The monogram was only a piece of the visual identity system — a new approach to typography, photography, colors and the like — that was developed by UCOP design staff.  Since it debuted in the past year, this new “look” has served the UC system well, replacing what was a clutter of dated materials that varied from UCOP department to department.”

What’s wrong with this statement? First, they tasked internal people who don’t live and breathe branding 24 / 7 with creating a whole identity system.  That’s nuts. They’re not qualified. Designers are like doctors and they all have specialties. There are print experts, packaging specialists, web experts, illustrators, Photoshop gurus, advertising specialists, and then there are the highly-skilled branding experts. Would you ask your pediatrician to perform open-heart surgery on your dad? Then why would you ask an in-house design team, who likely are great at print or web work to create a brand. It makes no sense!

2)     Branding by committee.

Early on when we were launching the publishing house SmartsCo, despite being discouraged from doing so by our designers, we solicited a lot of feedback from friends and colleagues. If we were given 3 designs to choose from, and asked 5 people their opinions, we’d get 10 different opinions, which confused us even more. We quickly learned to stop asking other people and trusting our designers and our own guts. And this served us well. We knew what worked with our customers and where and when to push back on the designs we were given. Sometimes we’d ask the designers to go back to the drawing board, but most times, we just needed a few tweaks to get to something that would work.

 The University of California took a different approach: they asked everyone, but listened to no one. “Did we consult people and test it? Of course. And we also used it in a mobile exhibit that stopped at all 10 campuses and nearly 30 other locations throughout California from September through November. More than 60,000 people came to the tour stops, letting their voices be heard on what really matters: ensuring that Californians understand the value and commitment UC has to making our state better.”

It seems odd that they pick up on the whole toilet flushing parallel during their “testing” with 60,000 people, because that’s all the local news outlets all over California could talk about for a couple of weeks.

In general I think asking people’s opinion on design is a bad idea, I believe you need to pick a great branding expert who is an expert in branding, and then trust your gut on what they give you. But if you are going to test something, do listen to what people are saying.

I attended the first ever SF Agile Marketing meetup the other night to learn about this new concept in marketing. Listened to Kirstin Falk,  President @redbricksmedia, Jascha Kaykas-Wolff, CMO @mindjet and Paul Willard, CMO @atlassian share how they are using Agile Marketing in there organizations.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical before I showed up as I feared it would be some buzz word traditional marketers are trying to use to keep engineers happy. But I was pleasantly surprise to hear how these people actually using Agile in the true sense of the term.  Engineers have been using Agile for a while and as a result, we’re seeing more and more innovative software and apps coming out of the gate quicker and quicker. But many markers have been left in the dust as engineering releases in 2-week cycles. Moreover, there are constantly new marketing channels popping up every day, and long-term traditional marketing plans just can’t keep up.

So what is Agile Marketing? Johnathan Coleman of REI actually does a great job at explaining it on the SEOmoz.com Whiteboard Friday post:

To learn more about Agile marketing, check out the Agile Marketing Facebook Group or read the Agile Marketing Manifesto.

I’m not a huge fan of sites such as 99 Designs and Logo Tournament, in part because I’ve often been asked to put some lipstick on some pretty ugly pigs my clients got through these services. Cutting corners on the branding front early on can be much more costly in the long run.

That said, I think it’s possible to get a professional design done cheaply if you understand how to get the most out of these designers. Check out a recently workshop I did for the Women’s Initiative (a very cool organization that supports women entrepreneurs) that will help you learn how to do it yourself. Hopefully you’ll have a pretty piggy.

Ahh – my favorite topic- the pitch. I heard a great article on NPR’s Morning Edition about how the NewME Accelerator is helping startups perfect their pitch. In the piece, Amy Standen talks about how the “pitch is everything”. It’s how you sell your company, how you create buzz and how you get investors. But lots of startups continue to really stink at this.

Listen to the story on NPR’s Morning Edition or listen here: 

The “if you build it, they will come” is prevalent in the Silicon Valley. I’ve heard several folks from the valley tell me that they truly believe that all they need to do is build the product and people will flock to them, just like the Harvard kids did with Facebook in the first month. In reality, it’s not so easy. As I blogged about recently, “cut the crap.” Spending time working on the pitch is a critical first step in getting your business off the ground.

I love Simon Sinek, but ….

… I fear some entrepreneurs are missing the boat on his “Getting to Why” message.  In his popular Tedx Talk,  Simon explains his philosophy of starting with Why, then explain How, and finally give the What. He gives the example of the inspired way Apple Computers presents itself to the world.

This is how most people would do it:

“We make great computers. They’re beautifully designed, simple to use, and user friendly.”

Then he explains how they actually do it:

“Everything we do – we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly.  We just happen to make great computers. Wanna buy one?”

 “People don’t buy what you do,” he says, “they buy why you do it.”

For the most part, I agree with this, but I do think you eventually have to get to the “what”, and I highly recommend that everyone read his book, Start with Why and you’ll get a better idea of what he’s talking about. However, big dreams about why you want to change the world, will only get people so far. For companies like Apple, everyone knows the products they make, so focusing on the “why” is important for them to garner market share in a very crowded market.

It’s a much bigger challenge when you’re blazing new trails with complicated innovations that are difficult to wrap one’s brain around. As I said in a recently blog, you have to articulate what you do in a way that makes sense to the average person you’ll meet in your everyday encounters. Not just people in your industry, but other people matter to – be they funders, insurance folks, lawyers, marketers, etc. – you need to articulate what you do in a way everyone understands.

“Why” you’re doing something certainly is important, but if you’re a start-up nailing the “how” and “what” are equally important.

Learning how to pitch from Science Fair Teens

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time at Tech Meetups in SF and the Silicon Valley and I’ve met lots of tech founders who really struggle with how to describe themselves. On my drive home from a meeting with several folks with particularly confusing elevator pitches last week, my faith in was rekindle while listening to Science Friday
program featuring young science fair winners ranging from age 10 to 20.
Take a listen to these inspiring kids, and see what a great job the science fairs scene must be doing a great job prepping these kids on how to give their pitches, as these young people were so much more effective at describing their inventions and many of the more seasoned entrepreneurs I meet hanging around the Silicon Valley.

The bad pitches I’ve been listening to lately brings back bad memories of the Silicon Valley in the late 90s  when none of the language surrounding tech companies made any sense. Part of the problem was that the companies would use their aspirational goals rather than their products in order to increase their valuation for the upcoming IPO. Today, few founders are worried about pretending to be more than they are with a looming IPO, so let’s cut the crap and speak English.

Here are some of the bad ways to do it:

• Bury me in jargon. When I was a product manager with a startup back in the day I’d often struggle at trade shows to use this company approved description:

“XYZ acts as a virtual sales advisor, guiding customers through needs analysis, product validation, sales promotions, cross- and up-selling opportunities, and pricing to a complete solution. Built specifically for selling on the Web, the application delivers the speed, scalability, ease of maintenance, and flexibility required for e-commerce success.”

Which typically resulted in a glossy-eyed “huh?” And then I’d whisper “we’re a kick-ass configurator” and people would be thrilled to talk with me.  If your marketing staff can’t understand your marketing description, why on earth would you think anyone else will?

• Tell, don’t show. Today, everyone’s building an app, so it’s just easy to pull out your phone and give a quick demo. However, pulling out your phone is not possible or appropriate all the time, and doesn’t work when you’re talking with the media, on Twitter, etc. Show and tell is fine, but that should only be after you’ve hooked them with a compelling verbal intro.

Here are some good ways to do it:

• Comparison One of the best pitches I heard recently: “You know Kahn Academy? We do that for Latin America.” Sweet – I get that! (Of course I forget the name, so there’s a small problem).
• Problem-based “Are you struggling with interpreting your Hadoop data? We offer a great business intelligence solution that’s optimized for Hadoop and other big data solutions.” There’s some jargon in there that may not make sense to a lot of people, but will connect with the people that matter.
• Storytelling Nancy Duarte’s storytelling approach of following a story-telling structure and creating drama in your presentation.  By building the hero’s journey, you set up the situation – complication – resolution, and take us from “what is” to “what could be”. Now here methodology is more geared towards presentations, but I think the same theory can be applied to your pitch.  

Coming up with your pitch isn’t easy. It took me years to come up with something I could live with for my old media company, but eventually, we found something that clicked. For startups it’s something you need to spend some time and energy on. I for one, am sick of listening to a bunch of incomprehensible jargon.

(Stay tuned for my next installment on this subject on what I like and don’t like about the lovely Simon Sinek’s “Getting to Why”)

A brand is much more than a logo and hiring a “branding agency” only gets you half-way there.Often you need a team of designers, writers, attorneys, etc. to make sure you have a everything in place to launch your brand. You need to manage the big picture.  Here are the minimum 8 things I believe you need to launch your brand.

Basic needs

1)    A name

It’s true, most of the good names are already taken, so startups often have to make up funky names. But you can minimize the randomness by bringing in an expert (such as my friends at Eat My Words) who can help you create a name you’ll be proud of . That’s fine as long as you can secure items #2 and #3.

2)    A domain that matches the name

This may go without saying, but domains are perhaps the most difficult part of getting your name these days. Take Off The Ground for example, I couldn’t get the .com domain, so went with .biz (someone was squatting on the .com on it for years and I tried to buy it , but never heard back from them – now are finally using it – grrrr. I’m not trying to build a national brand, so it’s not a huge concern for me). But if you’re looking to become a large company, you need to nail this. Fortunately, it’s becoming more and more common to have a non .com ending for your business often doing what’s called a name hack (i.e., visual.ly, del.icio.us (which ultimately was able to acquire delicious.com once they had the cash).

3)    A Trademark

I recently ran into trademark attorney Molly Garhart, who told me that many of her startup clients come to her too late in the game. She said she finds that they often start doing business with a brand name, only to find that it’s already been trademarked by someone else and they have to go back and relaunch their company / product with a new name. While you may have done a Google search on a business / product name, that doesn’t mean someone else hasn’t already trademarked it, but they just don’t have a lot of traction. So it’s well worth it to do a trademark search early on.

4)    A logo

So once you’ve got a name, a domain and a trademark, now you can finally hire the “branding agency” (in quotes, because typically you just get a logo, not a complete brand). The trick is finding the right agency who will create a logo that will meet all your future marketing needs (i.e., social networking, promotional products, etc.). At a minimum, you’ll want your logo designer to provide you with:

• EPS version of your logo (1 color & 2 color)
• jpg / gif versions of your logo in high res and low res
• a version with a clear background and one with a white background
• a square logo option for social networking
• a 16 x 16 pixel favicon for your webpage tab

Designers can be expensive, so it’s tempting to put a placeholder using one of those $10 logo agencies online. 99% of the time, this is a huge mistake because the cheap designers make a ton of technical mistakes (see Top 5 Logo Mistakes). You’ll end up paying a LOT more downstream to replace your logo with something professional than you would by just spending a bit more at the beginning and having something that will last.

Advanced needs

But wait, there’s more. The first four elements of a brand are the bare minimum you need to start doing business. The next 4 are what you’ll need to start marketing your business.

5)    A tagline or short company description (elevator pitch)

I’m a big fan of institutionalizing tight language to describe a company. When I was at startup called Onlink, we had a very vague and confusing company elevator pitch (in part to increase the valuation) we were all instructed to memorize: “We provide an online guided selling solution that helps companies show options and features available to them and enhance their up sell and cross sell opportunities ….” This resulted in blank stares until I whispered “we’re a really great online configurator”. And then I got very positive responses “Oh – cool, we need one of those”.

For SmartsCo, we spent years before we finally settled on marketing language that clicked with folks.

Tagline: Explore Life’s Greatest Pleasures

Description: Games and Guides that make learning about life’s greatest pleasures easy and fun.

Tech companies in particular struggle with this aspect of their brand because they are by nature creating something very innovative and different. However, you have to brand yourself in something people connect with.

6)     Fonts

When it comes to design agencies, you get what you pay for. Any good agency when building out your brand should provide you with suggested fonts that compliment your logo. It’s important that you test out what they’re recommending and make sure they’re readily accessible on the average person’s computer. 9 times out of 10, I’ve found designers choose obscure fonts which you can’t really roll out to your employees or web fonts that you can’t use in many of your online marketing tools (such as your email marketing tool).

7)    Color Pallet

Another important aspect of brand is to test out the colors and make sure they look equally good in an offset printer as they do on your color inkjet (i.e., orange in particular can be a problematic color to get a consistent match on). You also might want to create a broader color pallet to choose from beyond the 1 or 2 colors used in your logo. When you ask your designer for a color pallet, make sure they provide you with each color spelled out

• Pantone (basically custom ink)
• CMYK (4-color process match to your Pantone)
• Hex (HTML version of the color)
• RGB (color equivalent used in most desktop applications)

8)    “Go to” photos and / or illustrations

Another important decision I recommend you get your branding designer to work on is creating some go-to images you can use throughout your marketing. This may be some custom illustrations (see Off The Ground airplanes and balloons) or photos you purchase from a iStock or Getty that you can use throughout all your marketing materials. Choosing these early on, makes the production work much easier down the line.

In a nutshell

I could talk forever about what a brand is and isn’t, but in a nutshell, these are the minimum 8 elements you need to launch a solid brand. I’ve said this many times before, it’s important to do branding well the first time, as becomes more and more difficult and costly to change it as the company matures.

After the death of Curt Cobain, Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl tooled around with starting another band. Not realizing his band would enjoy instantaneous success, Dave has been stuck with a band name that was really intended as a placeholder. And it’s his biggest regret.

Lots of startups make similar strategic marketing mistakes that they regret down the line. Be it a product name, a logo, or company name, web platform, or other marketing investment. I’ve encountered several startups who threw a odd name on the wall that “will do for now” or have an engineers cobble together a logo as a temporary placeholder with every intention of rebranding once the VC $ starts rolling in.

That’s all well and good, but as you wait for the cash, you still need to create business cards, trade show booths, a website, data sheets, promo items, etc. and with each piece of marketing  material you create, it becomes more and more ingrained in your brand and more costly to replace. Soon enough, you realized that you’ve spent $20 – 30K marketing a brand that you hate. And when you do finally get that VC cash, you quickly realize that you’d be better spend your cash on more engineering resources than replacing a brand that’s kind of working.

And lo and behold, you’re another Foo Fighter.

Marketing sometimes gets a bad wrap in the startup world, but that’s often because when it’s time to hire full-time marketing staff, we come in and ask for lots of $ to fix these early mistakes. If you make smart marketing decisions early on, then you’ll have a solid brand your marketing team can leverage once your ready to take the company to the next level.