branding

Why, Hightail?

Nader Ashway10 Comments

The very popular file sharing service, formerly known as YouSendIt, has now changed their name to Hightail.  No, keep reading…I’m serious.

This is what their homepage takeover message looks like:

hightail_takeover

So the obvious question is…why?  And let me qualify that question with some color.

Why, if you’re a file sharing service, a service that allows YOU to take a large file and SEND IT to someone else (for free on the basic plan, I might add) change your name from YouSendIt to, well, anything else?

Why, if you’ve invested all this time and money for nine years in the back end cloud storage virtualized pool infrastructure, and invested in acquisitions and technological upgrades, and invested in marketing and advertising, would you change your name from YouSendIt to, well, anything else?

Why, even if you’re announcing broadening your offering from file sharing into digital file collaboration services, would you change your name from YouSendIt to, well, anything else?

Why, when there’s nine years of brand equity built up, when you’ve outlasted some pretty high profile would-be competitors, (including the flailing DropBox,) when you’ve gotten 4 out of 5 stars from PC Magazine, when you’re finally turning a profit on the premium services, when you’ve become the generic term for Internet file sharing services (literally, people verb-ize file sharing as “I’ll YouSendIt to you later,”) would you change your name from YouSendIt to, well, anything else?

It could be a number of things.  It could be new CEO Brand Garlinghouse (formerly of Yahoo!) putting his fingerprint on the company he’s been appointed to run.

It could be that YouSendIt doesn’t sound sexy or silly enough, and they wanted to sound more like Yahoo!, or Hulu, or Etsy or whatever.

YouSendIt could have done a lot of things to refresh – which they’ve done with Hightail.  New, HTML5-coded website.  New features.  New look and feel.  Heck, they could have updated the logo.

And the folks at Hightail know the name thing is an issue.  It merits above-the-fold position on their homepage with a message that says “watch this short video to learn why we changed our name.”  Yes.  Let’s:

Okay, but still, the new name thing confounds me.  In the video, you hear some of the talking heads saying things like “the name YouSendIt constrained us in terms of our vision.”  [Tell THAT to Google.]  And “we don’t want a name that holds us back.”  And my favorite “we finally have a second chance to make a first impression.”  And that’s the quote that really stands out for me.

Because here’s the dirty little secret about branding that nobody teaches you in b-school.  You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression.  You only get one chance to make one impression to one prospect at a time.  And in my opinion, Hightail doesn’t make a bad impression.  It does something far worse.  It makes no impression at all.  It confuses rather than clarifies.

Don’t get me wrong.  I get “hightail” as a verb.  “I’ll hightail it over to you.”  Or “you hightail it over to me.”  But we’re not talking about meetings here.  [Really, “I’ll hightail it over to you” means “I’ll be right there.”  Not “I’ll get you that large file right away.”  So there’s even a semantics issue. Ugh.] Plus, it’s such a hipster-cum-corporate-acceptable piece of jargon. I wonder if they’re now headquartered in Dumbo?

From a pure brand perspective, the truth is that YouSendIt was a GREAT name for a brand.  It was functional.  It was short and sweet.  But mostly, and bestly (?) it conveyed a promise (You.  Send.  It. ) which, after all, is the heavy lifting of a brand.

Let’s watch and see what happens together.

Brands: Are they nature or nurture?

Nader AshwayLeave a comment

I’ve been doing a lot of talking, teaching and pitching around the concept of brands, and it seems that a lot of people – including professionals in the brand business – still have wildly differing ideas about brands and what they are.  And while this post is NOT intended to clear everything up in 500 words or less, I do think that looking at it from a different perspective will help.  So let’s evaluate brands on the simple x/y coordinates of nature vs. nurture.

Let’s take a simple consumer category, like ketchup.  If we’re developing a NEW ketchup brand, we’d have to fit it in the market alongside the primary players like Heinz and Hunt’s and Del Monte, and let’s throw in the niche marketer Annie’s who owns the “all-natural” position.  Aside from the typical line extensions (organic, gluten-free, sugar free, etc.) not a very cluttered market at all.

ketchup_brands

The basic NATURE of brands in this category:

Ingredients
Texture
Flavor

If you were going to enter a competitor into the market, the brand would have to declare itself different by nature (a unique flavor, or a unique combination of ingredients, maybe they only source specific tomatoes, etc.) and then – and this is the important part – have to become different by nurture.

The way brands in this category are NURTURED:

Price
Packaging
Distribution
Merchandising
Advertising (national vs hyper-local)
Social Efforts
Publicity
Partnerships/Sponsorships

So we could develop a brand (let’s call it Kelly’s) and give it a certain NATURE so that it fits in the category and has a chance to carve out some market share.  Let’s suppose Kelly’s is sourced using only organic plum tomatoes from Italy, packaged in a really cool NON-plastic carton, and is frequently preferred over Heinz during blind taste tests.  (Lots of differentiation points there, and also lots of category parody.)

On its own, the brand’s nature should allow it to enter the market and do fairly well (given the right distribution.)

But here’s where you see that brands are NOT just the sum of what they’re made of.

For Kelly’s to survive – and ultimately, thrive – the real work would be in changing the hearts and minds of those who are in the market for ketchup to allow them to make “mental room” for a new player.  With Heinz owning about 55% of the market, Hunt’s about 20%, Kelly’s would be competing with Del Monte and “all others” for a piece of the remaining 25% of the roughly $1 Billion ketchup market.  At first.  But given the right climate, the right amount of time and the right combination of nature and nurture, there’s no arguing that Kelly’s could ultimately unseat Heinz for the #1 spot.

But how much would that cost, and how long would that take?

The answer lies in how the brand is NURTURED.  If the advertising is cool, and the brand selects some pretty cool partnerships and sponsorships, and doesn’t overly rely on price promotion, and does well on the b-to-b side with slotting and merchandising, and doesn’t suck, then it’s likely that nurturing won’t take too long.

However, if ANY of those things is slightly misaligned, and misperceptions ensue, then it will certainly elongate the process of adoption.

Brands are a phenomenon in two important ways.  First, they’re a perceptual phenomenon. Brands don’t actually exist.  As I’ve told my students, there’s no vault somewhere in Pittsburgh where the Heinz brand is “locked away.”  It simply exists in the minds of consumers as a sum of experiences and interactions.  And while all those versions from all those consumers are slightly different, they do share a basic collective complexion.

Second, brands are a cumulative phenomenon.  Meaning that those experiences, interactions and overall perceptions are forged over time – good or bad – and the one-word phrase that you may connect with the brand (“rich,”  “thick,” “sweet,” whatever,) gets more and more embedded over repeat impressions of that initial imprinting on your mind.

Until ultimately, brands are weighed in the moment of truth in the condiment aisle when the consumer ponders whether she wants “thick” or “sweet” or “rich” when it comes to what she’s putting on her next burger.

So – are brands nature or nurture?  Yes.
But the real work begins ONLY after you’ve gotten everything right.

Eat Marketing for Lunch

Nader Ashway2 Comments

Looking for a fresh perspective on your business?
Start by consuming some of what you produce.

Here’s an interesting paradox. I’ve been in and around advertising for my entire 22-year career. And throughout that time, I’ve become increasingly desensitized to the type of work I produce… and that’s largely the result of a sort of self-imposed effort at OBJectivity.

However, over the past two years or so, I’ve been engaged in a new and evolving experiment to become more SUBjective to advertising messages. (In a really objective and observant way. Told you it was paradoxical.)

Since I’m involved in strategic brand activities and message development, I’m trying to avoid myopia. I’m trying to allow messages to sink in. I’m trying to see what strategies really break through, and which ones just get lost in the clutter and the noise. I’m trying to continually become better at what I do, and my competitors provide a mountain of useful information on the subject every day.  I’m consuming a LOT of advertising and marketing messages these days.

Marketers in any category can fall into these I’m-living-in-the-bubble-of-my-business patterns. If you’re a CMO of a large corporation, or the Chief Idea Girl in a lean startup, you’re focused on what’s right in front of you. You’ve got operational challenges. Staffing issues. You’re reviewing the plans. You’re considering hiring a shop to handle your social media. You’ve got a LOT going on. There’s simply not bandwidth to consume more stuff, or to consider more inputs.

But you must. Because it’s simply the only way to gain any real perspective on your own business-side matters. Here are a few simple steps that I’ve been taking that can help you gain some insights and ensure that you’re not operating – or investing in marketing your business – in a vacuum:

Go shopping (or searching) in your category.
This is the fun part. (Warning: it can also be a challenge for certain businesses, like orthodontia for example.) Be a browser. Be a consider-er. Look at your competitors first, and then look at anybody who does what you do. If you’re selling at retail, go to the stores you’re in and see who else is on the shelf. Better yet, go to the stores you WANT to be in and see what’s going on there.

One cool thing I do is pick specific markets far from NYC (where I’m headquartered) and then do online searches there. Why’s the restaurant scene rocking in Reno? Whose hand-made jeans are jumping off the shelves in Joplin? Is there somebody is Topeka who’s peddling test prep? Whatever your category, (b-to-b or consumer,) engage in the art of careful consideration.

Take note of what made you notice: was it the packaging? A promise embedded in the brand? Did you look at the ads?

Consume your competitor’s stuff. And some of your own.
Next, take it a step further. It may seem like sacrilege, but open up your wallet (virtual or otherwise) and buy some stuff made by your competitors, and some stuff made by your company. This is the ONLY way to truly immerse yourself in how your customers might feel when they buy your (or their) products or services. Follow the process from start to finish. Take note of everything, from the customer service if that applies, to the shipping, to the packaging when it arrives. Put it on or boot it up.

How do you FEEL? That’s the ethos you want to capture. There are deep emotional bonds being formed between brands and consumers every day. You must choose and manage the emotions you want to convey and the way you want them conveyed very carefully indeed.

Be brutally honest about your assessments.
One of the things we all like to do is assume superiority. “Their stuff is inferior to our stuff” is a common collective agreement at virtually every organization. (Seriously, don’t try to deny it.) So now, you have to shake that tribal mentality off and really observe what’s going on for you when you consume other products in your category. Is the ride smoother? Does it work better? Are there fun features you didn’t know about? Were you SURPRISED beyond your expectations? Make notes. Make lots of notes. Was it the marketing? What did you experience when you browsed the website? How did you feel when you bought your own stuff? Did you measure up?

Leverage your learning. Hard.
Now that you’ve done this, it’s time to take a good hard look at your own stuff and your own processes for delivering it to customers. If you can honestly you say you kick everyone else’s ass, (and your name is not already Musk, or Zuckerberg, or Brin,) then congratulations. You’ve outwitted, out-efforted and have come to dominate your market. But for the rest of us, you have an opportunity to thrust your organization forward on objectivity. Take the things you learned and put them to work. You’ll be surprised at the ancillary ideas that are sparked. A competitor’s label might jar your memory about a data capture form on your website. A competitor’s ad might help you formulate some platforms for your next product innovations. Your own ideals about your own products might be improved or elevated in some way.

Engage your team (or your partners, or your cat) with your new ideas. If you’ve got one employee or 10,000, your newly found observations can have a profound impact on how things go. They may be threatened at first, but they’ll likely be inspired to go above and beyond and really start to wow people.

Use what you’ve experienced, purchased and learned – on a first-hand, completely subjective basis – about your competitors as a starting point for positioning against and amongst them. Ultimately, you’ll find new ways to move your organization forward in a much more objective and holistic manner. Plus you’ll have a bunch of new stuff to play with in your office.

Brand Guidelines: Sometimes Ya Gotta Cross ‘Em

Nader Ashway6 Comments

We’ve all heard a lot about brand guidelines, and how vital they are to the marketing success of your company.  And in most cases, this is quite true.  A strong brand structure can provide an incredible level of connective tissue between your company’s product or service and the consumers you have and, most importantly, those you hope to reach.

And while a lot of care and thought goes into brand development and brand representation, in some cases, we can overdo it.

Before we get into that, let’s make sure we’re clear on what brand guidelines are.  Many companies entrust their brands to experts to develop guidelines as to how the brand behaves, what it says, what it does, (in some cases what the company produces,) and very importantly, how that brand is represented visually and verbally across the landscape of media in which it may appear.

These guidelines, especially the visual and verbal ones, can get very specific and very detailed regarding how the brand (and the logo, or taglines or images) is reproduced and presented for public consumption.  If you’ve never seen a brand guideline handbook, it’s a cross between a diary of a madman and the exactitude of an aerospace engineer’s drawing book.  In some cases, they can be hundreds of pages long, and stipulate everything from specific color swatches to negative space to how NOT to reproduce the various design elements.

Ultimately, it’s a usage document, in that it instructs anyone responsible for pushing the brand out into the world exactly how the brand should be represented.  (This is true even if the brand is a person!)  All in the name of the venerable core objective:  consistency of perception.

However, this control issue can sometimes become, well, a control issue.  In many instances in my work with brands that my firm hasn’t created, we’ve been saddled with guidelines that have actually gotten in the way of – even obstructed – clear and consistent communications.

In one instance, we were working with a company who (inexplicably) had an extremely long, multi-word URL.  When creating a Facebook application for this brand (targeted to suburban soccer moms, by the way,) we suggested using capital letters to help guide the reader along.  Imagine this url:  thecompanyyoushouldvisitinyourtown.com.  We suggested TheCompanyYouShouldVisitInYourTown.com for clarity.  Our client came back and said “our brand guidelines instruct us to NOT use capital letters in the URL.”  When we reminded them that it was simply easier to read with the caps, (especially online in about 10pt type,) they pushed back.  Hard.  The brand guidelines were scripture, and were not to be messed with.

In another instance, we were working with an important media company whose brand is very well recognized in the consumer marketplace.  In designing a microsite that demanded a rich color background, (ironically, for consistency with the print campaign,) we opted to knock out (make white) their logo, just as we had done in print.  Knocking out was acceptable according to their brand guidelines, but not in digital applications.  So it was okay to trust printers to knock out the logo using ink, but not okay to use never-bleed pixels for the same brand representation.  Strange.

The reason I highlight these examples is because they were actually attempts to arrive at either clear(er) or more consistent communications between the brands and their intended audiences.  We were (we always are) striving to make it easier for the consumer to interact with the company, not the other way around.  But the brand guidelines were so stringent, these simplified communications were overlooked for standards that could not possibly have recognized these interactive objectives.

Don’t get me wrong – there ARE guidelines that are un-crossable. Stretching or tilting the logo is a no-no. Swapping out colors is a no-no-no.  Going off script is a no-no-no-no.  Inserting a new tagline is a triple-dog-quadruple-no-no. We’re clear that some lines shouldn’t be crossed.

Because it is important to have a voice.  It is important to have the brand represented consistently across all touch points.  But when adhering to your brand guidelines, we also have to consider: would it HURT the brand if you drop-capped a URL?  Would it HURT the brand if you didn’t honor the standards to the letter?  If crossing the line a little means engaging the consumer a little more, then maybe it’s time to consider a little tiny brand rebellion.