Category: Branding Advice

Twitterloo! How to send Twitter on a hasty RT.

Soldiers at attention: awright Twitter conscript, approved you’ve probably heard that Twitter has finally enabled a feature it calls “Retweet”. Well, after years of hacking together manual ReTweets – cutting and pasting, editing, shortening, and workarounds by Twitter partner applications like TweetDeck, you’d think this would be cause for great rejoicing among the weary soldiers of Twitterland…

We Beg to Differ.

BegtoDiffer-Napoleon invents the RT
The invention of the ReTweet: Napoleon at Waterloo

What’s an RT?

For those new to Twitter (or with no patience for it), basically “RT” is a convention that arose among Twitter users as a way of sharing and amplifying content from other people that they agree with, find interesting or funny, or that adds to a discussion they’re having in some way. Here’s an extreme example of one message from last night:

Tweets from zchamu

Here’s a translation of the post:

  • @brianlj read a blog post by Twitter CEO Evan Williams @eV, and wanted to share the link and to let others  know  he disagreed with it.
  • He added the hashtag #Save ReTweet which made it part of a public discussion.
  • I wanted to share his thought with my followers (I’m @DenVan). So, I copied it and pasted it, and added “RT ” at the beginning, then added a comment at the end “Ditto”.
  • Then, my friend @zchamu did the same, crediting me and adding her comment “Me three!”

Think about how incredible that is. Four people’s thoughts are contained in the tiny, tiny space of just 140 Characters. That’s the power of the RT.

The revolution is ugly, but it works

Now granted, to the untrained eye, it looks a bit messy – okay really messy – so we’ve been hoping for some clean-up from the good people at Twitter for a long time. You know, a few simple tools that would respect the power and intent of the RT but would make it easier to use and scan.

But what happened instead? RT activist Dan Zarella puts it well when he says:

In a stunningly disappointing move, Twitter has threatened to completely eviscerate most of the value out of ReTweets by “formalizing” a feeble version of a format that was already well understood and functional for all users involved.

The leader on a high horse

On Tuesday, Twitter head Evan Williams wrote his first blog post since March, “Why Retweet works the way it does”, with these ominous words:

I’m making this post because I know the design of this feature will be somewhat controversial. People understandably have expectations of how the retweet function should work. And I want to show some of the thinking that’s gone into it…

Uh-oh. Bad sign. When a CEO runs to the battlements so early in a communications piece, you can just smell the restlessness in the troops – and not just in the Twitterati, but among the people working at Twitter as well.

He goes on to describe RT as cool, before listing off a number of “problems” that currently exist with the RT convention that, as he puts it, “emerged organically from Twitter users as a way of passing on interesting bits of information”.

The problems Evan Williams lists (in brief):

  1. Attribution confusion – hard to tell who the “owner” of the originally tweeted content was.
  2. Mangled and Messy – formatting makes message hard to read and author’s intent may be lost.
  3. Redundancy – lots of “RePeets”.
  4. Noisiness – RT @sycophant RT @wanker Blah blah blah
  5. Untrackable – hard to collect RTs of a person or post in one place.

The solution from Twitter :

CEO profile

Let’s say that in the new Twitter RT universe, I wanted to share the incredible insight that Evan Williams actually posted last night (at right), with my followers.

  • A single “Retweet” button would appear under his tweet.
  • By clicking this, I would instantly create an exact verbatim copy of the original. My followers would see this exactly as @ev had written it, and what’s more, his name and avatar would appear beside them – even if my follower wasn’t following him.
  • As the Retweeter, my name would appear in a small footnote on the bottom of Ev’s tweet, but not in the actual Tweet.
  • Without any opportunity for editing or commentary, I couldn’t add context for my followers like “Can you believe this?” or “Me too!” or “What is this dude smoking?”.
  • No “RT” or other prefix will indicate that the is a ReTweet. Only that small footnote will make it appear different from any other tweet….

Our take: the new ReTweet “feature” needs Re-bwanding

Sorry Evan.

You’re a genius, and we all owe you a tremendous debt for creating this Twitter thing, but this new feature you’ve created is not ReTweet. I’ve called it “RePeet”. Or maybe it’s “Copy” or “Clone”, or as one wag called it “Exact Tweet” (ET – and it phones home to Twitter).

Whatever it is, it’s broken.

And we’re not alone in saying so.
(this list is growing, so please send us more!)

To the battlements! What you can do soldier:

  1. Don’t use the new button! Just keep doing what you’ve always done.
  2. Use the hashtag #SaveReTweets to register your displeasure.
  3. Inundate @ev and @twitter with negative traffic.
  4. Sign the petition Dan Zarella has put together.

Brand builders: how to be human in five easy steps

Humans beat dinosaurs every time.

Yesterday, rx our post about how American Airlines fired Mr. X – an employee who had the gall to (gasp) engage with a customer – generated a fair bit of engagement of its own. We were also shocked and pleased that our accompanying PowerPoint deck was chosen as one of the features on the SlideShare home page, cure with more than 950 views and climbing. “Wow, for sale ” we thought: “People are actually paying attention! Crap!”

Dino
How not to do it: the American Airlines approach to humanzing communications (image from www.dinosaurlive.com)

Why I said “Crap”

Because even though I’d spent an hour and a half yesterday morning putting the deck together, there were a few things I left off at the end – some important stuff about the difference between a) treating people and social media like a lumbering corporate dinosaur (American Airlines, that’s you), or b) like human beings (the un-American Airlines approach).

So we added a few thoughts to the deck, along with 5 simple steps you can follow to make your brand more friendly to humans. Please read on.

Surprised when corporations don’t act human? Don’t be!

Sadly, rumours of mass extinction have been greatly exaggerated: American Airlines isn’t the last dinosaur.

Thousands of others are lurking out there, hiding in hierarchical “Lost Valleys” around the corporate landscape. They’re scary, and they still have big teeth if you get close to them. And they roar, stomp, intimidate, and generally pretend with their pea-sized brains that they can throttle and control communications the same way they did (or thought they could) in the Jurassic era.

But the world has changed.

The new boss has arrived (and it’s us).

And the new masters of the planet have opposable thumbs. And emotions. And big brains. They talk to each other; they form families and tribes.

And they don’t even try to control the message.

Instead, they listen, and build the conversation in ways that are real, helpful, and yes human. Want evidence? You’re reading this aren’t you?

How to humanize your brand in five easy steps:

1) Don’t pretend to be perfect.

You’re lying. We know, because we’re human too. So don’t even bother faking it.

2) Listen (critically) to critics.

They usually see you better than you do. Then conscript the helpful critics as team-mates, or call them out if they’re just snipers.

3) Speak Human.

Because here’s a secret: nobody ever understood “Corporate-ese” in the first place. Just use normal people-friendly words, a helpful tone, and don’t brag about your big accomplishments / hard drives / pointy teeth. If it’s true, other people will say it. If it’s not, you’re just a roaring fossil.

4) Encourage your people to speak Human

But remember that many of your employees think that roaring and stomping is the only way to behave. Gently work with them to show a better way. Give them access to the right tools to speak to customers, and teach them to find the opportunities and boundaries for themselves (oh, and share that learning with everyone).

5) To clobber your competitors, be more human

And this is the great part: all this touchy-feely human stuff is the best way to win in the battle of the brands! So go on big guy: listen harder; be more lethally generous (thanks again Shel Israel); earn some Whuffie (thanks Tara Hunt) and build real human relationships with your customers, influencers, staff, and yes, even the competition.

And if you’re an airline but you’re not American Airlines, congratulations: you’re already ahead!

Click here to see the whole PowerPoint deck on SlideShare

American Airlines meets Mr. X – a tragic tale of brand failure

And you thought breaking guitars was bad? How about careers?

I won’t go into a long spiel today, order since almost everything I want to say is in the PowerPoint deck on SlideShare embedded below. But if you agree that this kind of narrow-minded corporate foot-stabbing is insanity, I want to hear about it!

Fail Plane

The story in brief

  1. Blogger has bad experience with American Airlines online,
  2. Blogger blogs about it,
  3. Blogger is contacted by helpful American Airlines employee,
  4. Blogger writes how impressed he is with this employee’s candor,
  5. Happy ending! There is much rejoicing in the executive offices of American Airlines…

Sadly, only the first 4 points above are true. The ending isn’t happy at all.

Visit my SlideShare deck to find out what really happened:

Click here if the SlideShare deck doesn’t appear below.

View more presentations from Dennis Van Staalduinen.

Props: Thanks to friend and writer Alison Gresik for alerting me to this. And of course, props to Dustin Curtis and Mr. X for courage under fire.

Protecting your brand’s crown jewels.

5 tips for covering your most precious bits

Today Beg to Differ is reflecting on three clients that Brandvelope is currently working with. One is looking for a new name, pharmacy one is developing new “flagship” marketing materials, and a third is defining / refining their corporate Vision / Mission / Values. But all are looking for the same thing: the simple words, symbols, and phrases that will symbolize their power – or as I like to call them, the “crown jewels”.

Polish_crown_jewels[1]
The Polish Crown Jewels - replicas created in 2003 (photo by Kristián Slimák from Wikimedia Commons)

Branding is all about  your crown jewels

All right, all right, enough smirking dear readers. I’m not talking about “family jewels” – although those are precious in their own way and need to be well protected. I’m talking about the kind of Crown Jewels that they keep in the Tower of London, or as Wikipedia defines them:

Crown jewels are jewels or artifacts of the reigning royal family of their respective country. They belong to monarchs and are passed to the next sovereign to symbolize the right to rule. They may include crowns, scepters, orbs, swords, rings, and other objects.

Protecting your brand symbols - and the people inside them
An iconic Disney brand symbol learns how important - and difficult - it is to protect the crown jewels. Don't forget: there are humans behind those things!

Isn’t that a great metaphor for your logo, trademarks, and other core identity elements? And shouldn’t we treat those basic-but-critical words, images, and concepts with the same respect that a monarchy will apply to its crown jewels? After all, both kinds are intended to act as enduring symbols of your identity, purpose, and direction.

That is, they are if you treat them right…

How to treat your Crown Jewels

1) They are more than symbols

A crown is never just a crown; it stands for a country, its people, its ruler, and all the powers those things project into the world. Likewise a name is never just a name, and a logo can never just be a logo. These jewels have real power in the real world because they are proxies for you, and all the associations people have with your company and /or products .

2) They deserve care and respect

These jewels are the most precious assets that you have, and like crown jewels, they are the shared responsibility of executives, Board members, and brand managers. So I’m often surprised how badly the crown jewels are treated by the very people who are supposed to be caring for them – paraded around like costume jewelry, stored in shoe boxes, re-designed at will… I could go on.

3) Collect them together

Identify the 5-10 most important assets that define your brand. Then bring them together under the same person or department, and make sure they are managed as a set, not as individual artifacts. That is, you can’t change one without considering its impact on the others – then making those changes if they are worth making.

But note that most marketing assets are not crown jewels: an ad slogan that you only intend to use once or twice is not a crown jewel. But a tag-line that you attach to your logo for years at a time is.

4) Display them for all the people to see

Crown jewels belong to the people, so they lose their power if they are totally hidden away. Show them, celebrate them, build ceremonies around them.

5) Protect them (but keep a human face)

Nobody likes a brand cop. But everybody loves a London tower guard. Find ways to be inclusive and build real brand standards into your corporate culture in a way that doesn’t seem oppressive or heavy handed – so that everyone becomes part of the brand building process. That is, so you don’t have to protect them alone.

Beefeaters

Brandchannel breaks guitars – or at least its own definition of “brand”

Branding blog implies a brand is all about “logos and ads”

Beg to Differ was shocked this morning to visit the usually reliable brandchannel.com and find this article: United Airlines Loses Bag, viagra Finds Branding Opportunity. In it, salve Brandchannel updates the story of Dave Carroll, the Canadian musician behind the brilliant United Breaks Guitars. But it’s what they say about how this might affect the United brand that made us want to call Dave Carroll: United ain’t the only one dropping the luggage here…

The article as it appears on Brandchannel's site.

Smash their bags, ignore their pleas, then try to “make nice”…

Here’s how Brandchannel – which is a product of Interbrand, the same company that produces the annual Best Global Brands– describes Mr. Carroll’s situation:

When Dave Carroll was refused payment of $1,200 by United for his guitar, which turned up broken after a flight, the Canadian musician write (sic.) a song, with an accompanying video, called “United Breaks Guitars.” To date, nearly 6 million have watched it. The song led to Carroll becoming a speaker (i.e. stunt act) at customer service seminars. It was just such a customer service seminar that Carroll was on his way to when United lost his bag. For three days.

Now granted, as a performer, Mr. Carroll has certainly parlayed this event into both attention for his band the Sons of Maxwell, and into a successful second career speaking to companies about how they can avoid similar problems. But to dismiss him as a “stunt act” is to miss the point. But Brandchannel continues to miss bigger points with this:

But in the end, does this attention damage the United brand? Unlikely. Recent Forrester research shows that 75% of all air passengers “choose the airline they fly most often because of the airports it serves” and that nearly 70% hold convenient schedules to be of the most important criteria. Today, airline brand wars are fought almost solely over price, not branding.

United will take a few lumps; but ultimately, by doing the right thing and making nice with Carroll, the experience could even be a PR boon for the brand.

What’s wrong with that? Where do I start?

I’ve written a lengthy critique in the Comments for the Brand Channel article (it’s the first comment) so I won’t go on at length here. But in brief, four quotes of note:

  1. “Airline brand wars are fought almost solely over price” runs utterly counter to the spirit of holistic branding that Interbrand normally champions;
  2. “Doing the right thing and making nice with Carroll” misses the point that this “making nice” only happened after a year of NOT making nice, and then they screwed him over again;
  3. “The experience could even be a PR boon for the brand” this comes from the “no PR is bad PR” school of logic which runs completely counter to human logic (which is also brand logic); and finally
  4. “Several major airline brands have survived decades of service complaints simply because they’re too big or well-positioned (as to routes) to avoid and… because these airlines emphasize strong branding in their ads and logos. (emphasis mine)” This is from the author’s response to my first comment.

Some (rhetorical) questions for Brand managers:

  • Is “strong branding in their ads and logos” the reason United has managed to survive decades of service complaints?
  • What do you think: do Dave Carroll-style viral critiques ultimately help a brand like United by giving them more exposure?
  • For a brand are today’s ticket sales ultimately more important than forging a long term relationship with customers?
  • Does this article reinforce the Interbrand brand equity formula of strong brands 1) commanding higher prices, 2) positively influencing customer decisions, and 3) creating repeatable success through customer loyalty?

Beg to Differ says “no” to all of the above. But what do you say?