Jonathan Schwartz recounts his wedding night:
So we went to another hotel. Just down the road, we ended up marching
in at 10:30 at night, in full wedding garb, still. The restaurant was
closed, as was the bar. Everything was. And I went up to the clerk at
the front desk and asked if they had any room. He was kind enough to
notice the wedding dress, and asked if we’d been at a wedding – I
explained yes, I’d just gotten married, and he said he’d take care of
everything.
He opened the lobby, turned on all the lights, and recruited a couple
employees to reopen the bar, and make us feel at home. They served us
until the wee hours of the morning, put up with our noisy reunion, then
put my wife and me in a beautiful room, and found other rooms for our
friends. They managed to put a handwritten note in our room,
"Congratulations," it said, next to a bottle of champagne. I don’t
remember what they charged us – I remember feeling like it was nowhere
near their going rate. The following morning, fresh faces at the
checkout desk somehow knew to offer their best wishes.
He concludes:
What’s a brand?
It’s not a logo, an ad campaign or a money back guarantee. At minimum,
it’s a promise that helps to define those items. Beyond that, it’s a
cause that gives definition to the ill-defined, that tells you how to
deal with the unexpected or the uncomfortable. It’s what motivates you
to hire that fellow at the front desk, and to foster his instinct to
feel, "Eureka, I found an opportunity to build an evangelist!"
That’s not about money or resources or training or contracts.
It’s a cause. One your employees – and more critically, your customers
- willingly join.
Yes and yes again. It seems to me that branding has lost its meaning. How can a concept created by someone outside the company, detached from and then imposed on people who work for it become their cause? It wasn’t the ‘brand’ that salvaged Jonathan’s wedding celebration and turned it into a pleasant memory. It was the people who worked in the hotel. Their understanding, compassion and care, which no brand guru or campaign can inspire.
Justin
on Apr 19th, 2007
@ 15:32 pm:
The brand is seen as a badge, a badge you slap on that works a little like a meme. A badge that manifests itself in the god awful uniform designs and the false smiles of employee’s as they half heartedly blurt out some lame phrase that pops up several times in every bit of literature….. Or at least that’s what it’s become…. There’s still room for a brand guru… but not the type we all know and love, they’d be top down types or badge sellers.
The trouble is the really effective guru’s would need to directly infect each and every employee with “it” which may be why start ups and what Hugh MacLeod call’s microbrands are so effective, everyone working at them gets what “it” is and quite often become rabid evangelists for “it”.
Brian Phipps
on Apr 19th, 2007
@ 18:15 pm:
I totally agree, and you are not alone in feeling that the concept of “brand” has gotten way off track. In large part it’s been hijacked by ad agencies to help sell advertising. That’s why so many brands are artificial constructs, completely divorced from the real value that employees and their companies can provide. A company’s brand should translate employee value into customer value. That’s where real connections occur. In other words, it’s far more productive to envision brands as programs to create value and to create customers, rather than abstract “campaigns.” And brands are a mutual endeavor from they get go. They’re powered by customers as much as they are powered by the company. When brands are conceived as “company potential X customer potential” many new market opportunities arise. [Sorry for the screed, but I write a weblog on this very subject
; ) ].
Nick Buckley
on Apr 20th, 2007
@ 8:57 am:
I agree – it’s both true and eloquently communicated.
At the risk of crashing the cultural gearbox – this was exactly the theme, and almost verbatim the content of the closing narration, in the final episode of the recent series of Hotel Babylon! (BBC1)
[Still figuring out why I like that programme so much - but I do!]
Michael Wagner
on Apr 24th, 2007
@ 15:48 pm:
Really like this; “How can a concept created by someone outside the company, detached from and then imposed on people who work for it become their cause?”
You own the brand when you act on what believe will bring the right value to the right person in the right moment.
No one can impose that on you.
Thanks for expanding the conversation.
Keep creating,
Mike