Don’t be fooled. Just because people are talking about your brand in public forums, it doesn’t mean you’ve lost control. As a marketer, you still steer the perception of your brand. The ‘conversation‘ is merely the consequence of your brand building efforts.

- Offer a good product
- Be consistent with your brand message
- Be pervasive
- Make promises you can keep

By doing these things right, you have your hands firmly on your brand’s steering wheel.

friends

So, it’s your first day at school. You don’t know anyone and nobody knows you. You need to build up your brand and hiding behind the teacher won’t help you. So, you go out to the playground and start chatting to the other kids. You might quickly find a group of friends that match your brand or it might take a bit of time. Don’t go sit in the corner and think nobody likes you. Go out there and make them notice you!

Here are a few pointers that you can use to shake off that invisibility coat you are wearing. Branding has been a business buzzword for a while now but the term ‘Branding’ is much more than corporate logos, glossy packaging and catchy jingles. There are tips you can follow, and steps you can take posted all over the web but they all boil down to the same thing and that is to making use of social networking, blogging and micro-blogging.

However, before you can start branding yourself or your company you need to know a few things. Our CEO at World Wide Creative, Fred Roed, breaks it down into three little (but very important) details that you need to look at.

“You need to figure out:
1. What you’re REALLY good at
2. What you REALLY love and,
3. What you REALLY can make money doing”

“Tell everyone who cares to listen, that that’s what you provide. That way, you’ll come across as authentic and consistent. You’ll be able to keep your promises, and good branding is all about making promises that you can keep.” The next thing is to make your voice heard.

The world we live in today is all about social networking. Fred highlights the latest trends that you should take part in such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and, of course, “business meet ups where you throw your online profiles at people”. To brand yourself or your company best, I put together three little words to remember: SHARE, ASK and COMMENT!

Sharing is caring: You need to share anything with anyone. Things that you find interesting like a video on Youtube or a strong quote. Share these links and resources that you know people will enjoy on platforms like Twitter, Fickr and Facebook.

Don’t be afraid to ask: Follow other people in your industry and anyone else who can teach you how to get your message out there. People like to help and that’s how you can also build up connections with people in your industry. Ask them questions, start a discussion or simply learn something new. This also counts for answering questions.

Comment – Comment – Comment: Leave insightful comments on related blogs. This includes participating in other online initiatives to get noticed and once again, it is important to follow-up. When creating a brand for yourself, you want to be known as someone who cares and likes feedback.

The online sphere can be a cold, mechanical place. These three little words will also help you and your brand to remain personal and “human” as Bob Baker puts it. People still enjoy a ‘human touch’ to a company and a brand. Now, run out onto the playground and show them what you’ve got!

Someone called us ‘World Wide Cremators’ yesterday

Let me explain the context. Over the past 6 years or so, since we’ve been in existence, we’ve been called all kind of things. It’s funny how people can get your name wrong – especially when repeating it back to you over the phone. The wierd thing is, people get it wrong almost every time with us. I don’t know what we’re doing wrong, but it seems no one can get our name right.

Trying saying it yourself. ‘World WIde Creative.’ Three simple words. Not that hard to get right… right?

Wrong!

Here are some examples from over the years:

• World War Creators
• Woolberg Creditors
• World Wide Warlords
• Worldwide Creators
• Worldly Wide Credit
• Woolly Widespread Distributors
• World Web Creators
• World Word Creatives
• World of Warcraft
• World Watercoolers

It’s gotten so bad that now, when I repeat our name, I spell our name immediately afterwards, since I know that there’s a 99% chance of the person on the other end getting it wrong.

World Wide Cremators?

Awesome stuff.

heavy chef

I stumbled across this cartoon from Tom Fishburne – “Evolution of Marketing“:

It’s evident for me that product-owners, companies and brands are relinquishing more and more control over to the consumer – not by choice, but by evolution.

Taking this into account, it has become our mission as a web marketing company to challenge companies that in order to succeed with their marketing initiatives, they will need to put A LOT more effort in:

1. Understanding their customers
2. Creating opportunities for their customers to speak & interact with them
3. Finding avenues to grab (AND HOLD!) their customer’s attention
4. Identify high-potential brand advocates and spoil them
5. Critically review their own marketing initiatives and internal marketing custodians
6. Thinking long-term i.e. where do I want to go with this?

Lastly, in order to succeed in an increasingly challenging business environment, companies and brands will need to create marketing strategies (NOT campaigns…strategies…there’s a difference!) that make use of various communication (read: media; read: technology) channels that have a common-thread running through re the message that you want to convey to your customers.

It’s not rocket science. It’s marketing 101… only, this time, your customer is listening, thinking… maybe advocating…

- Is it worth doing?

- What was my impact?

- Will it matter in the long haul?

- What sort of connections did I create?

- Wherever you live, whatever you do, you have an obligation.

Now, think of your brand, think of your marketing tactics, think of your online community, think of the community you are thinking to launch, think… are your remembering??

brand owned

I’d like to bring your attention to a not-so-unique, not-so-flashy, but well thought out online community. An online community that is championed by a specific brand and that I think has some very interesting lessons for all involved in this space… first, the background:

One of the largest cinema/entertainment companies in Canada, Cineplex, has recently launched its very own – and I quote: “online social networking movie and entertainment community” (jeez, that was a mouth full!) called mycineplex (all lower-case letters; very creative, I know… also, btw, mycineplex will soon be available in french moncineplex – impressive).

According to Cineplex:

“Movies and entertainment news are a central part of the social experience and mycineplex provides entertainment and movie lovers with a new community to exchange their views. mycineplex is really a community built by movie fans for movie fans”

As part of the mycineplex experience, it gives community members the opportunity to rate, review and comment on movies, become fans of members and theatres, tag and bookmark interesting content, upload photos etc etc. Also, it offers members some cool contests, promotions, entertainment blogs and e-newsletters as well as online and mobile ticketing.

Now, some key things that I would like to point out from this initiative – lessons I think that can be learned from mycineplex:

1. Cineplex already has a “captured” audience through their various databases of movie-goers. Thus, they already have a good base for getting people to join the mycineplex community. A dream scenario for any starting online initiative.
2. mycineplex now offers Cineplex an excellent platform to diversify its revenue streams – offering more innovative and, often more measurable, marketig options to potential clients.
3. The one trait that mycineplex seems to display, the one trait that will most likely lead to its success, is the fact that they have concentrated on what they do best – movies. And this links directly to Cineplex’s core customer – passionate movie buffs.
4. mycineplex now offers Cineplex a very unique tool to garner customer insights, to build and/or improve customer profiles (demographic, psychographic, behavioral patterns etc), as well as being used as a platform to test and share some new innovations Cineplex might be thinking off.
5. mycineplex also now offers Cineplex a platform that can be easily merged with various other marketing initiatives, whether online or offline.
6. Purely as tool to build and increase brand loyalty, mycineplex’s offerings makes sure that every community member will stay loyal to the mycineplex brand – and, most likely, loyalty towards any other initiative with the Cineplex brand attached to it.

Again, mycineplex isn’t a unique online community (see Flixster) but fact is the Cineplex brand has now extended itself and has taken hold of an opportunity to send a message to their customers: “We understand your passion”.

If you have an established community or are looking to possibly build one, give mycineplex a visit, play a bit, test things, observe – chances are that you can only understand online community building better.

Not bad for an “online social networking movie and entertainment community”!