Steve Yastrow

Outtakes

Things are rarely perfect the first time.

I used to write songs with a good friend of mine.  We had a problem. If an idea wasn’t perfect, the first time we played it or sang it, he focused on how the idea wasn’t good enough to be in a song.  He couldn’t move forward. He had to discard the idea.

I think it is important look at imperfect ideas in a different way.  The trick is to see the possibility in the idea, and then make it a little better.  After many iterations, these possibilities become real, as a substantive idea starts to take shape.

I remember learning, in college, about Beethoven’s obsessive rewriting of phrases.  Over and over, note by note, he would tweak, change and edit until he got it just right. At first I thought it was just his obsessive perfectionism, but then I realized it was something more.  He could see when the possibilities in an idea had not yet been realized.

Outtakes are critical to the creative process.  “Take 22″ is not necessarily a sign of failure, a lack of creativity, or poor execution.  In a strong creative process, Take 22 is 22 steps better than Take 1.  You must be willing to take what’s good about an idea and improve upon it, and take what is bad about the idea and extract it, without killing the whole idea.

Iteration is the path to idea improvement.

Posted in Creativity | 1 Comment »

Brand Entropy

Entropy is one of the most powerful forces in the universe. It is the tendency for systems to move from states of order to states of disorder.  Line up all of the toys on a child’s shelf, and soon they will end up scattered all over the floor.  Clean up your to-do list, and by the end of the week you will need to re-organize yourself.  It’s easy to see why entropy is so powerful when you consider that the ordered state is only one of millions of possibilities for the system; disorder is much more probable than order.

Entropy can dilute your customer experience, if you do not have a strong brand essence that acts as a glue to hold together all of the elements of the experience.  The reason for this is simple – there are thousands of different ways a particular customer interaction can happen, but only a few of these possibilities will reinforce your brand story and add to the sense of Brand Harmony that your customers perceive.

Consider a very simple example.  You own a athletic shoe store, and you believe that you can differentiate your store by asking a customer to describe his personal exercise habits, and the aches and pains he gets from exercise, in order to find the perfect pair of shoes to fit his needs.  Your website and in-store signage describe this brand promise, and you, personally, deliver this promise when you wait on customers.  Now, think about what happens when another employee serves a customer. The “right” ways to interact with a customer make up only an infinitesimal portion of the possible ways to interact with a customer.  So, if this employee doesn’t have a strong sense of your brand promise, and doesn’t feel the essence of the brand in her bones, it is highly likely that she will not support the brand when she interacts with customer.  The result:  It is more likely that a customer interaction will dilute your brand promise than it is likely that it will support your brand promise.  Brand entropy is more likely than brand reinforcement.

If you want a strong brand, you need to be one of the (few) companies who define their brand essence with great richness and detail, and ensure that everyone who works in the company understands the promise, with equal richness and detail.  This takes a lot of effort, but, then again, entropy is one of the most powerful forces in the universe.

Posted in Brand Harmony | 5 Comments »

Recalibrating customer interactions

Today I’ve been thinking a lot about recalibrating the approach to customer interactions.

The day started off with a meeting with a client about a potential project.  Our discussion explored how this very successful company can develop more business from current customers, especially in these tough times where it is harder to find new customers.

As we talked, it became clear that the best answers lie not in more lucrative promotions, better offers or a new loyalty program.  It’s much more fundamental than that.  Interacting with customers during this time of economic uncertainty and turmoil requires, more than ever, an approach based on the customer interaction principles that have obsessed me for years.

• It’s not about customer service.  It’s about the relationship-building encounter. Customer service is not what you strive for; it has become basic hygiene. (Yes, some companies still don’t brush their teeth.)  The goal of every interaction between a person in your company and a customer is to make sure that the relationship with the customer is better at the end of the interaction than it was at the beginning.
• Stop shouting already! People hear Brand Harmony. This is the worst time to dial up the brute-force marketing techniques, trying to out-shout, out-promote and out-sizzle your competition.  The world is way too noisy and your customers are way too scrutinizing.  Interact with customers in a way that matches how they form impressions of you: By creating a strong sense of Brand Harmony that communicates a clear, compelling, comprehensive story.

How much better would your business be if your organization, with the talent of virtuosos, adhered to these principles?

Posted in Brand Harmony, Customer Encounters, Recalibration, Thrive in a tough economy | 2 Comments »

The Great Fallacy of Marketing

The great fallacy of marketing is that it can be delegated to a few people in your company and to inanimate objects, such as ads, brochures and web sites.

The most effective marketing is human to human; everything else is a compromise.

Advertising should be the last thing you consider in your marketing plan.

Think Brand Harmony, not brute force.

(This isn’t my opinion.  It’s your customers’ opinion.  It’s how they evaluate you.)

Recalibrate your approach to marketing.

Posted in Brand Harmony | 4 Comments »

It’s the Brand Story, Stupid!

One week later, the Big Branding Story from the election is so obvious its not worth much more ink.  Even more than the branding disparity between Clinton and Bush in 1992 (“It’s the economy stupid” vs. a mish-mash of who-knows-what), McCain’s pathetic use of Brand Harmony gave the hyper-clear Obama story lots of room to take root.  (For more, see the New York Times Magazine story on October 26, “The Making (and Remaking) of McCain)

So, let’s not waste more time on the obvious.  Instead, let’s focus on what we can learn from it.  I see hundreds of executives every year in workshops, where I ask them to evaluate their brand stories.  I can’t tell you how underwhelmed I usually am. Is there a more important question for a business than, “What do you want your customers to believe about you?”  Well, my empirical evidence shows that most brand stories are as loose as that of 2008 McCain or 1992 G.H.W. Bush.

So, no matter who you voted for (i.e., does this situation make you gloat or vomit), I encourage you to see the power of a clear, compelling story, communicated with a fully-integrated sense of Brand Harmony. Your customers’ lives are so busy and crowded, and your customers are so savvy and discerning, that you can’t not create powerful relationships with them without a solid brand story.

To paraphrase the Clinton campaign in 1992: “It’s the story, stupid!”

So, what kind of shape is your brand story in?

Posted in Brand Harmony | 2 Comments »

What Colin Powell says about McCain’s marketing efforts

This is not a policitcal blog.  It focuses on connecting with customers, forming strong customer relationships, and related marketing issues.

So … read this as a marketing commentary.

One of the pillars of my beliefs about marketing, as captured in my book Brand Harmony, is that today’s customers are too savvy and self-reliant to believe everything they are told in marketing messages.  Marketing communication isn’t about what you say.  It’s about what people believe after you say (and do) it.

Yesterday, Colin Powell credited the negative tone of the McCain campaign and specious claims McCain’s team has made about Obama as key drivers in his decision to endorse Barack Obama.  He also criticized the McCain campaign’s lack of clarity and consistency in their approach to the economy, saying, “Every day there was a different approach.”

In addition to other, policy-driven reasons, which are not my subject here, Powell’s endorsement reinforces this key idea of modern marketing.  Customers are highly scrutinizing, and all aspects of your message need to blend in Brand Harmony if you hope to create a powerful, motivating message.

McCain should have looked at the key marketing lesson of the 1992 Clinton-Bush race: “It’s the economy, stupid.”  By having an incredibly clear focus, Bill Clinton out-marketed Bush Sr., whose messages were more muddled and harder to hold in your hand.

Maybe this is why an Ad Age poll selected Obama as marketer of the year, beating out Apple, Nike and, yes, McCain.

Posted in Brand Harmony | 6 Comments »

Mozart’s Brand Harmony Lesson

Last Sunday, after a weekend that included two trips to the theater, I wrote a post about how Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater inspired me to think about capturing the opportunity for personal encounters. In the post I said I also wanted to write about a passage from Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s production of Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus, also seen that weekend, but couldn’t find the text.  Thanks to Jeff Pasquale for sending the text, which teaches us lessons about Brand Harmony.

At one point, (I found a picture of the scene!) Mozart is talking about how he can create harmony in an opera in a way that can’t happen with spoken text in a play:

Sire, only opera can do this. In a play, if more than one person speaks at the same time, it’s just noise. No one can understand a word. But with music, with music you can have twenty individuals all talking at once, and it’s not noise – it’s a perfect harmony. Isn’t that marvelous? But it’s new, it’s entirely new. It’s so new, people will go mad for it. For example, I have a scene in the second act – it starts as a duet, just a man and wife quarreling. Suddenly the wife’s scheming little maid comes in unexpectedly – a very funny situation. Duet turns into trio. Then the husband’s equally screaming valet comes in. Trio turns into quartet. Then a stupid old gardener – quartet becomes quintet, and so on. On and on, sextet, septet, octet! How long do you think I can sustain that?

This passage teaches us a lesson about how customers listen to our businesses.  If we’re not careful, the different voices our customers hear will be “just noise.”  Or, if we craft it well, the different voices can blend “and it’s not noise – it’s a perfect harmony,” as Shaffer’s Mozart tells us.

As I wrote in a recent newsletter, Brand Harmony describes one of my most fundamental beliefs about branding, marketing and connecting with customers.  As customers interact with your business, they are listening for how all of the different interactions blend together, creating a story.  What would Mozart hear when listening to your story?

Posted in Brand Harmony | 1 Comment »

Whose brand is damaged?

I am a very satisfied subscriber to Audible.  Their selection is great, the system is easy, and I always have an active audiobook on my iPod.

Tom Segev is a great writer.  His books on modern Israeli history, while controversial, are well-researched, well-written and captivating.

Segev’s latest book, 1967, as I reach chapter 2 of the audiobook, is  really interesting and informative.  It was translated by Jessica Cohen.  It’s got the sign of a good translation: I’m confident I’m getting the whole story, but the narrative sounds like it was written in English, not Hebrew.

The 1967 audiobook was published by Tantor Media, who list 731 titles on Audible.

James Boles, the narrator of 1967, has a good voice and reads well.  However, his pronunciation of the Hebrew or Arabic words in the text (place names, peoples’ names, names of organizations) is atrocious.  It’s almost impossible to listen to him.  Even worse, he’ll pronounce the same word different ways, each time he comes to it.

So, does this poor performance reflect only on Boles, or also on Audible, Tantor Media, Segev, 1967, and Cohen?

It reminds me of my days, just after business school, wholesaling vacations to Las Vegas and Hawaii.  If a United Airlines flight attendant sneered at one of my customers, I had to deal with a complaint letter.  There was also the irate customer who wanted me to return his money because he walked into his Maui hotel room, which he had chosen from my brochure, and the housekeeper was sitting on his toilet.

Customers use Brand Harmony to evaluate us, meaning that every point of interaction influences a customer’s brand impression.  I guess you could say that James Boles and Tantor Media are responsible, but I’ll certainly think twice about my next audiobooks from Audible or Segev.  Wouldn’t you?

Entrusting our products to others is a risky business.  Be cautious of those who influence your brand.

Posted in Brand Harmony | 3 Comments »

You touch it, you bought it!

I just checked into a beautiful, spacious suite at The Venetian hotel in Las Vegas. This room is four times the size of any hotel room I would choose for myself; thank you to the folks at Subway, for whom I’m speaking tomorrow, for the nice room.

Before sending me up to my luxurious suite, the very nice front desk clerk, Anna, warned me about the mini-bar refrigerator. “It’s touch-sensitive,” cautioned Anna, “So if you open it and pick anything up to look at it, you’ll be charged for it.”

What if I want to read the label on the Pellegrino to see how many calories are in it? Or closely study the logo on a can of Budweiser?

I arrived in the suite, and got lost for a few minutes finding my way around, marveling at all of the amenities I would not have time to enjoy during my short stay. Remembering Anna’s admonition, I located the refrigerator and looked at the outer door. (No way was I going to open it and risk maxing out my credit card) A sign on the door said that “For Your Convenience” you will be automatically charged if you grab anything.

Wow. The Venetian is offering me all of this comfort in my suite, but I was feeling like I better be careful or they might reach in my wallet while I’m not looking. What else shouldn’t I touch? What other secret charges are lurking in wait for me?

Suddenly, I thought of the hangers in the closet. I went to look. Sure enough, they were the kind that have the extra-small loops, to go over the extra-thin rod, so you won’t steal them. Nobody has closet rods in their homes that can fit these types of hangers. Like a Motel 6, The Venetian wants to make sure I won’t walk off with their clothes hangers.

So, after initially feeling pampered by The Venetian, I now see that they look at our relationship as if I were an adversary. This is where Brand Harmony meets We relationships … a few small dissonant cues reveal that we are not We.

Posted in Brand Harmony, We relationships | 10 Comments »

The Brute Force Myth

What is the biggest change you need make in your marketing? Embrace new media? Embrace social media? Switch spending from traditional media advertising to other options? Yes, most companies need to do those things, but these changes are secondary to the one really big change you should make, if you haven’t made it already.

The biggest change you need to make in your marketing is to abandon the mindset of “brute force” that has ruled marketing since the mid-20th century. Brute force is the belief that the key to winning customers is to interrupt them as frequently as possible with messages that are as powerful as possible. The brute force philosophy implies that customers are easily swayed, and they are eagerly waiting to receive your communications after which, lemming-like, they will change their behavior.

Listen in on most marketing planning meetings, and you will hear the religion of brute force being preached. “We need a more powerful message to cut through the clutter,” or “we’ll need to increase spending to reach our audience more effectively.” Sales people, also, have been sucked into the brute force vortex. They can be regularly be overheard talking about “getting at bats with a customer” or “giving a pitch.”

Guess what? The days of brute force are waning. The main reason: Customers are not as impressionable as they used to be. They don’t buy your product just because you interrupted them more effectively than another company. The second reason brute force doesn’t work well anymore: Unless you work for Annheuser-Busch or McDonald’s, you don’t have a big enough budget to shout louder than everyone else who is also shouting at your customers.

As Tom Peters once said, “Learning is easy, but unlearning is difficult.” Do your best to unlearn what you’ve been taught about brute force as a marketing strategy. Focus, instead, on what really works: Creating a powerful sense of brand harmony for your customers that helps them hear a clear, compelling story as they interact with your company. Brute force falls on deaf ears, but brand harmony is the first step to creating motivating brand impressions in the minds of your customers.

Posted in Brand Harmony, Brute Force Branding | 17 Comments »