Promoting a Brand - Some thoughts from Richard Branson

I have recently discussed the product aspects of the Nike 10K Night Run. One of the issues that I raised was the value of a brand and how the race was designed to enhance and promote Nike as a sports brand. I also mentioned that Adidas managed to get in on the act by taking advertising space along the route.

I am reading “Screw it – Let's Do It” by Richard Branson the founder of the Virgin group. It is a fascinating book describing how he started out as a school boy entrepreneur and how he developed Virgin. The book itself will be the subject of a future blog.

However, in this blog I want to discuss Branson's insights into branding. The chapter is called Sex Appeal and true to the title he discusses how to make the brand irresistibly attractive. His concept of sex appeal is “A good brand has sex appeal .... the customer falls in love with it, desires it, wants it and buys into it. Sexy is youthful, fun, trendy, cool whatever your age.”

Now at the outset I will concede that I don't think that Branson is just a regular guy doing a regular marketing job – he is a real visionary (there are over 330 Virgin companies) and now that he has success he commands marketing budgets that are, well how shall we say it? – Enough to completely fund the development and launch of 5 or 10 of our best ideas, and a certain fame that brings attention (if not success) to almost whatever he attempts.

Branson also admits that he has enjoyed the stunts he has pulled – from record breaking hot air ballooning to being suspended above Time Square in nude bodysuits. He recounts how one of the pioneers of alternative air travel Sir Freddie Laker encouraged him to be the face of his product, and make the personal commitment.

So I accept that for all of these reasons Branson is not just a regular guy. He is frequently promoting consumer brands rather than the next new killer widget; and so there are many many differences between what he does and what many of us do day in and day out. None the less there are some clear lessons in his messages.

Branson says that he advises all entrepreneurs

“whatever your field, you must be passionate about it and create excitement in everything that you do. Beat your drum, and look beyond the obvious. .... I fully believe that the presentation and image of one's business should reflect the fun as well as all the hard work behind it. In my opinion there are no limitations on what is possible or what should be attempted.”

I think that in 2 or 3 sentences Branson has summarised what Nike were trying to achieve with the night race (notice the similarity between the Nike slogan and the title of Branson's book.)

Of course the brand has to act as a real differentiator the product has to be instantly recognisable - “I will stretch the parameters every time because there is so much competition, you have to stand out from the herd.” However, the promotion and branding must remain faithful to the product - “be true to the product. Don't make it something it's not. Take a good luck at the image you want to promote and go along with it”

Branson also discusses that the products must back up the brand. Having brand alone without the products to match will not work. He describes how he is constantly taking a personal interest in what both the customers and the staff think (“... it is real market research...”) and how the potential for damaging the brand is substantial with poor products. “At Virgin we want to create the most respected brand in the world... but a brand is only as good as your products.”

Part of his philosophy is accountability and engagement – he believes that people need to acknowledge their mistakes, but to engage in the debate and not be debated with no defence or leadership. He comments “it makes me angry to see organisations in crisis that with tens of thousands of employees hiding behind 'no comment.'”

So it is actually pretty clear what the race was all about. It was engaging the customers and making them part of the fun, passion and commitment that they are trying to achieve for their brand and for their image. It was a way of leading the debate, getting their customers involved and trying to stand out from the crowd (ironically, since with 15K runners there was a very strong herd effect!!!)

I think that here are some of the secrets of successful product development and especially product marketing – it needs to be fun, passionate and full of hard work and we need to break down the barriers – so that there are no limitations. Sure there are budget issues and product readiness status, but, we need to work to make sure there are no limits.

Our brand needs to be true to the product and the product needs to be true to the brand. Both the product and the brand need to stand out.

It is critical to listen to our customers to ensure that the brand and the product continually live up to their expectations. A race is one of the rare situations where you can get the customer to offer the commitment and passion in partnership with you, but, you must always get the customer involved.

As product managers and marketeers we must offer a personal commitment to our brand and product, our energy our commitment and our responsibility.

In one sentence - the secret of branding is to offer a personal commitment and work hard to develop and promote a great product that breaks barriers, engages and excites the customers and have a great time in the process.

Finally in Branson & Sir Freddie Laker's words - “If you are starting your own company, a good lesson would be to think very hard about your image and how to brand it. ... get out there and use yourself.”

Screw It – Let's Do It Expanded – Lessons in Life and Business – By Richard Branson 2007 – published by Virgin Books.

The analysis and opinions are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Branson or of Virgin Books.

Be A Better Speaker - Tips from Steve Jobs

As PMM we are all often called upon to make presentations or to speak. We need to enthrall our customers, motivate our team and convince our management (or sometimes we need to enthrall management, convince the team and motivate the customer.) Effective communication is part of our day to day activity.

So we prepare a few slides, work through our basic arguments and stand up. I once went to a customer meeting and whilst we were waiting in the lobby my colleague was still busy making changes to the presentation - let's just say that overall that meeting was not our finest hour!

We have discussed some of the common mistakes that happen; even at a relatively senior level, and I also shared a neat time limited presentation style. In this post I want to share a few insights from one of the world's communication masters - Steve Jobs. Most of the key information can be found at this link from Business Week - watch the video and the slide show - well worth the time.

So a few thoughts from the master -

• Jobs prepares his story thoroughly and apparently unlike most of us a long time before he opens Powerpoint
• He focuses on the benefits and engages the audience by showing them why they should care
• Jobs is brief and succinct and also he breaks his pitch into 10 minute sections to stop boredom
• His slides are elegant and often devoid of all words - he captures you with his visual images
• He sells dreams not products

Some of these concepts are hard to implement in a mundane meeting discussing the finer points of our design which seem far removed from a vision, but with some effort they can make all the difference.

It has just been announced that Steve Jobs has had to take a second period of medical leave. JET wishes him a speedy return to health.

The Importance of Documentation

As PM&M we spend a huge part of our working day communicating both internally and externally. Despite this, we often get far into a product process and discover that somehow we don't have documentation or that we have very poor documentation. It may not, therefore, come as a complete surprise that we have a poor product definition and a weak customer engagement.

Sure, our creative skills and leadership mission don't leave much time for hacking away producing long word documents, but, as we will discuss in this post good functional documentation is an essential part of our mission and the craft, that can help or hinder the overall business success.

We welcome a guest blogger - Larry Lester - A Sales & Marketing Documentation Guru to discuss

There’s a host of reasons why small, emerging companies (aka start ups) should take documentation seriously. The problem is that most of those that I have worked with – don’t.

First and foremost they should take it seriously for all the reasons that larger companies take it seriously – it is a way of keeping your marketing, development, operations, and sales efforts – and the also the customer – in alignment.

However, for a start up the lack of good technical and marketing documentation – with the emphasis on good, or not having something basic at least – makes survival more perilous than usual. My phone usually starts ringing when these guys are about to crash land. If they have had the good fortune to make a sale, the customer is being nasty and delaying a milestone payment because a full set of technical documentation was supposed to be delivered and has not even been written. Or, if they have only got their foot in the door, discussions are about to collapse as the only marketing material they have to give to potential customers are a few pages of incomprehensible gibberish and a dreadful PowerPoint presentation! “We thought we could pull it off”.

The situation is, in fact, more serious than that. A company that does not maintain product requirement documentation is openly toying with suicide. There are two aspects to this assertion.

1. Poorly documented development is bound to result in a bug-ridden product. If you don’t write about it (requirements) then you don’t talk about it, and if you don’t talk about it, you brush aside the problems. Lack of a standard process and workflow causes product decisions to be made in an ad hoc way. At best, it is inefficient. At worst, it will kill your efforts to make a sale.
2. A good product requirement or a spec can serve as the basis for installation, operation and maintenance documentation. The saving in time, energy and money can be substantial. Somewhere down the road, you will need a technical writer, whether you like it or not. The more solid information you have to provide, the easier your lives will be.

The bottom line: give both technical and marketing documentation the same priority you give to development and sales. All of these processes are fully entwined - together the product should succeed; without any one of them it will be a struggle and potentially a product failure.

A New Way to Present

In a recent post I discussed some of the common mistakes that we all make from time to time when presenting. I described the experiences of Jim who spoke at a recent meeting. I recommended that when preparing and delivering presentations we need to focus on some core techniques - clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.

In this post I want to introduce you to a presentation concept known as Pecha Kucha - here you limit yourself to 20 slides - each slide can only be shown for 20 seconds - & here is the key - you are not in charge of the slides - either you put it on auto pilot or hand the control to somebody else.

I am grateful to my good friend Larry Lester for drawing my attention to this concept. Larry writes in his blog

"I discovered an interesting method for the delivery of presentations, totally different from anything that I have previously encountered. It is called Pecha Kucha - within 400 seconds you must make your point. This is very intriguing stuff. Just think how different it is from the prevailing norms of presentations. And Pecha Kucha has real added value – it is an excellent way to start discussions and business relationships."

I am personally fascinated by this technique & plan to try it out. I think that there is a real challenge here - remember that one of the hardest things to do when speaking is to PAUSE - people need time to absorb what you have to say - so in just over 6 minutes you have to get the audience's attention, develop your ideas and communicate your message and allow the listeners to understand your message.

Write in with your comments on the idea and if you try it out for yourself let us know how you get on.

Larry Lester is a highly-experienced marketing writer who has been involved in the sales support process in Israeli high-tech companies for many years, participating in the development of customer-directed documents and responses to RFPs. You can read the full blog article here

Be A Good Speaker

Recently, I attended a sales conference trying to promote interest in a relatively new technology trend. This was a large production – I am guessing over 1000 technologists enjoying the hospitality of 3 of the very largest international technology companies (together their market cap is just short of $200B.) –The companies flew in some of their best sales stars from abroad, so we assumed that we were in for a real treat. Unfortunately one of my main take away messages was that the skills of being an effective presenter are in short supply.

I want to focus on one unfortunate presenter let’s call him Jim (not his real name) who had flown through 10 time zones to be given the middle slot in a 3 person breakout session – just before a late lunch. So Jim has my every sympathy – he got a really rotten deal – I just hope that he was really in country for some excellent one on one meetings, to at least justify the time it took him to get here and return home.

However, Jim made pretty much every possible presentation error known to the PMM world – no small feat in only around 15-20 minutes. Let me state at the outset that I and at least several others only managed to figure out what the presentation was about in the last slide or so. It was very informative seeing Jim up there - here are a few of his mistakes – I hope it gets you cringing with shared embarrassment, find some sympathy for Jim who sacrificed himself for the greater good, and please firmly resolve not to make these mistakes next time you are up there.

Know your Audience & Speak to Them – Jim assumed that everybody in the room knew about his company, its product and the reasons why it had just been acquired by one of these huge companies hosting our lunch. WRONG – most of us had never heard of them; and were either passively learning or intrigued by title on the agenda. This is a really common problem that happens in webinars, at sales meetings and at internal briefings. Unless the session is very clearly understood to be at an advanced level you probably need to assume a much less savvy audience than you would like or intuitively expect – you need to find a way of getting them interested without insulting the people who have the background.

Never, never start a presentation with the Competition – Its negative, very negative and completely pointless until I understand who you are – tell me what you do, why you are good and why you are what I need – at the end maybe tell me about the other guys – but generally why give them free advertising?

Get me Interested at the Beginning– Jim’s last slide was a case study & it was wow! If only that had been the first slide he would have captured our attention & to be honest he would have got 90% of his message over whilst people were still in the room and still listening.

Timings – So we all do it – we need to share our knowledge and passion and give a complete picture. We need to share everything right now. I don’t know what Jim expected and what he really got in terms of timings, but he was literally panting from slide one, in a desperate rush to get through the slides. He wanted to get through the slides – what he should have been doing is focusing on his message. In any meeting like this you need to be ruthless in trimming the presentation and ideally you should have an emergency plan in mind about how to cut it even further if you are left racing the clock. Less is really more in these situations.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words – So we all know this one too – but for most of us it is so much easier to throw down 1000’s of words. The problem that Jim had was that it was a large room, a huge projection and he had a small font so for most of the room it was like trying to read the newspaper of the guy 20 rows in front of you on the plane – it was just not happening. We all like having the info on the slides – it reminds us and lets the audience read and learn for themselves. WRONG – you need to know your message and the audience should be listening to you – that’s why you travelled half way around the world! For further information on this I recommend http://www.presentationzen.com that has many interesting tips and refreshing ideas on skills and approaches to presentation. Explore the ideas of the naked presenter. Guy Kawaski (http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html#axzz1637iAUyr) who has a rule that the smallest font should be no smaller than half the age of oldest person in the room (and ideally 30 points).

Bob spoke after Jim – he was the session that should have been lunch and he was a techie and clearly also not a gifted public speaker, but, he was really engaging – he had some pictures, in the first couple of slides we understood the main messages and he used humour – not the stand-up variety, not vulgar, but just basically dumb engineer jokes. But most of the audience were there in their capacity as engineers and so he vey successfully connected with the audience, he got their attention and made an impact.

So Jim – thanks for being such a good sport (if it is any consolation you were not the only lousy presenter) and for giving us this opportunity to remember the principles of good presentations – it’s all about clarity of messages, good graphics, effective time management and speaking to your audience.