UnBranding

100 Branding Lessons for the Age of Disruption

Scott Stratten, Alison Stratten

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781119417057
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

UnBranding breaks through the noise of disruption.

We live in a transformative time. The digital age has given us unlimited access to information and affected all our traditional business relationships – from how we hire and manage, to how we communicate with our current and would-be customers. Innovation continues to create opportunities for emerging products and services we never thought possible.

With all the excitement of our time, comes confusion and fear for many businesses. Change can be daunting, and never have we lived in a time where change came so quickly.

This is the age of disruption – it's fast-paced, far-reaching and is forever changing how we operate, create, connect, and market.

It's easy to see why brand heads are spinning. Businesses are suffering from 'the next big thing' and we're here to help you find the cure.

UnBranding is about focus – it's about seeing that within these new strategies, technologies and frameworks fighting for our attention, lay the tried and true tenants of good business – because innovation is nothing but a bright and shiny new toy, unless it actually works. UnBranding is here to remind you that you can't fix rude staff, mediocre products and a poor brand reputation with a fancy new app.

We are going to learn from 100 branding stories that will challenge your assumptions about business today and teach valuable, actionable lessons. It's not about going backwards, it's about moving forward with purpose, getting back to the core of good branding while continuing to innovate and improve without leaving your values behind.

Some topics will include:

• Growing and maintaining your brand voice through the noise
• How to focus on the right tools for your business, for the right reasons
• Maintaining trust, consistency and connection through customer service and community
• The most important question to ask yourself before innovation
• The importance of personal branding in the digital age
• How to successful navigate feedback and reviews

It's time for a reality check. It's time to solve problems, create connections, and provide value rather than rush strategy just to make headlines. UnBranding gives you the guidance you need to navigate the age of disruption and succeed in business today.

Lesson 1
Logos Don't Matter

If you've ever spent time designing or redesigning a logo for your company, raise your hand. Don't worry, no one in the Starbucks will notice.

Remember the long meetings, going over and over the tiniest details, deciding which blue better represents your mission statement or choosing a font or two. You're never going to get that time in your life back.

We're here to let you in on a little secret: logos don't matter. And they certainly aren't the be-all and end-all of branding. We spend so much time and money on logos, but our brands aren't in our business hands; they belong to our market. Your brand changes with each interaction—a living, breathing relationship between you and the world.

Let's picture two logos. The first is an apple with a bite taken out of it. You can see it, and you may even be holding it in your hand reading this book. When you picture that logo, you'll think of two things: the most recent and the most extreme (good or bad) experience you've had with the company. For us, we think of how great the laptop is we're using to write this chapter (most recent), and about all the times they've replaced Alison's phone, no matter where she dropped it (most extreme).

The second logo we want you to picture is a circle, within which you'll find a V and a W. When you see it, you may picture the car you drove to Starbucks in, and you may also remember how the company it belongs to was outed for deceiving its market and polluting the environment on a global scale. The smog doesn't even need to be added to the lettering.

That's branding, and you'll notice it had nothing to do with apples or cleverly shaped letters. If the bite was moved to the other side or the color was changed, our brand understanding would remain the same. We love logos because they can be controlled and pushed out, but branding in the age of disruption cannot be.

Our logo lesson from Apple and Volkswagen is that a logo needs to be clear and concise and it shouldn't offend. It should be designed by designers, not by a group of people who can't even get an appropriate outfit together. A logo should be consistent so that it reminds people of the good business you're investing your time and money into providing. You can't redesign it to fix your problems, and you shouldn't try. Instead, focus on the stories behind the logo—create current positive experiences and long-lasting “wow”s to delight and move your market into comfort and loyalty.

Lesson 2
Peanut Butter Branding

Our house is very popular with UPS, and FedEx, and those Amazon delivery folks. Our online ordering addiction aside, people send us stuff. Over the years, we've been sent shoes, doughnuts, Google Cardboard (Alison didn't know what it was until the 13-year-old freaked out and showed her how it worked), a ton of books, and even a knife set. But none of this has ever impressed our children—that is, until the box of peanut butter showed up. After we met him at the National Speaker's Association annual event, Clint Greenleaf (co-founder and CEO of HomePlate Peanut Butter) finally gave us the street cred with our children that has so far eluded us.

Clint and his pro-athlete partners had seen baseball players eating peanut butter, an inexpensive, heat-stable, high-calorie snack, the way college kids ate ramen noodles. They saw a need in the market for healthy peanut butter that didn't separate in the jar, tasted as good as the high-sugar varieties, and was all-natural and no-stir—and HomePlate was born. Using the quality of and need for the product, along with their connections to professional baseball, Clint and his partners got HomePlate into clubhouses, and players loved it.

When news of a story about basketball players crossed the HomePlate desk—specifically about the Golden State Warriors not being able to get their favorite PB&J sandwiches to the court—HomePlate was sent to the rescue. When Steph Curry ¹ says he loves your product, what else do you need? Here is a great example of active listening and action, creating amazing branding opportunities.

Today HomePlate is still a small company of about six employees, with products in grocery and retail locations in the United States. They handle feedback quickly and deal with negative feedback by the “approach of solving the problem first, and saving face second.” Clint believes customer service is a critical part of HomePlate's marketing. He loves the flexibility that being a small company allows and told us, “when you're all sitting in the same room, you can develop a plan for how to deal with customer service consistently. Branding is easier when you're smaller because we're all on the same page.”

Homeplate also gives back to its community. Twelve-year-old Bella Grace Parker ² (BG to her friends) has been playing softball since she was three and dreams of one day playing in the Olympics. However, after years of suffering stomach aches every time she ate, BG was diagnosed with Crohn's disease. To manage the disease, she had to make radical adjustments to her diet. Her mom began searching for options to keep her healthy, maintain her weight, and keep her softball dreams alive and found the answer in HomePlate Peanut Butter. BG loved the taste, and the product has all the calories, protein, and nutrients she needs to keep her healthy. BG's mom credits HomePlate with changing their lives for the better. In true HomePlate style, the company visited BG's team and brought enough peanut butter for the girls' entire season.

There are many branding lessons to be learned from Clint and HomePlate Peanut Butter. One of the most powerful for us was the importance of recognizing, valuing, and utilizing your strengths. Clint and his partners knew their market and valued the needs of athletes. They utilized their connections and spread the word (and the peanut butter) accordingly by putting their product in as many players' hands as possible. They then took this success and realized that a greater market would value it as well. Throughout our conversation with Clint he mentioned strength after strength, defining his business, his partners, his employees, and his customers by what they brought to the table. The challenges of working with food, of being a small company, and even those of depending on endorsements from celebrities were never his focus. Far too often in business we see only our faults and we are left continually on the defensive. Good branding is about bringing value, and that starts with valuing what you bring to the table, or in Clint's case, what you bring to the table and to the dugout.

Notes

1. http://homeplatepb.com/tag/steph-curry/ 2. http://www.kvue.com/mb/news/local/peanut-butter-helps-girl-with-crohn-s-disease/440745366

Lesson 3
We Know You Think You're Good, but Are You GoodWell Good?

Fast Company recently featured a business called GoodWell that offers an audit for your company. This is not the kind of financial audit we're used to that brings to mind tax evasion and frozen bank accounts (not us personally—what have you heard?). This audit rates your business practices. While most companies claim to be good places to work, few are. Issues of pay discrepancy and a general lack of communication and training are the norm, and these issues travel down the line to the customer, creating poor experiences. GoodWell looks at 11 indicators, ranging from current employee satisfaction to the attrition rate. It collects the data and rates businesses, nonprofits, and even governments, providing a type of social seal of approval where “rather than just being profitable and fiscally responsible, they can earn a certification as a fair, equitable, and humane place to work.” ¹

As we'll see throughout UnBranding, the age of disruption has created a digital megaphone for all things good and bad in your company. We can no longer focus on keeping issues quiet; rather, we are now forced to change. It's one of our favorite things about social media: when you treat your employees and/or your customers poorly, the world finds out. With this increase of access to information, consumers who care about buying from good companies can make educated choices. Good business equals good branding.

Here are the 11 factors GoodWell looks at in its audits.² We ask you to consider each one and think about how your business would rate.

1. As an employee, how likely are you on a scale of 1 to 10 to recommend working at your company to others?
2. What is the ratio between the salary of your highest-paid employee and of your average employee? (To pass the GoodWell audit, the ratio cannot be higher than 100. So if Scott makes $1,000 per year, the cats can't make less than $10 a year on average.)
3. What is the ratio between your executive team's average salary and the average salary of your employees? (See the previous example, but now average ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• The Usual UnIntroduction
• The Moral of the Brand Story
• Lesson 1: Logos Don't Matter
• Lesson 2: Peanut Butter Branding
• Lesson 3: We Know You Think You're Good, but Are You GoodWell Good?
• Lesson 4: Selling Cookies Is a Dirty Job
• Lesson 5: Complacency and ADT's Lame Season's Greetings
• Lesson 6: Pizza Saves Lives
• Lesson 7: The Diet That Crossed the Line
• Lesson 8: Leadership in Action
• Lesson 9: Hubris and Using Brands You Hate
• Lesson 10: Creepy Disruption
• Lesson 11: That Time We Newsjacked
• Lesson 12: Guacamole Is Extra, but Using Your Image Is Free of Charge
• Lesson 13: The Kidz Are Alright
• Lesson 14: Online Theft and Why It Should Matter to You—Yes, Even You
• Lesson 15: Confessions of an Old Grumpy Guy
• Lesson 16: Gender Gap
• Lesson 17: The Roof Is on Fyre
• Lesson 18: A Cup of Goodwill
• Lesson 19: Whatever Fake Doesn't Kill You Doesn't Always Make Your Brand Stronger
• Lesson 20: pH Branded for Her
• Lesson 21: Man Cold Marketing
• Lesson 22: Stop and Thinx
• Lesson 23: Happy Hot Sauce Accidents
• Lesson 24: A Lesson in Getting That Dream Job
• Lesson 25: The Value of Content-First Media
• Lesson 26: How to Go from One Star to Four
• Lesson 27: Quenching the Brand Thirst
• Lesson 28: Samsung Swansong
• Lesson 29: Doctor Wanted: Must Not Have Facebook
• Lesson 30: InSuencer Marketing
• Lesson 31: UnLove Shack
• Lesson 32: What's in a Name
• Lesson 33: Loyalty Makeup
• Lesson 34: Skee-Ball Is Forever
• Lesson 35: You Can't Please Everyone
• Lesson 36: This Oatmeal Is Just Right
• Lesson 37: The Pooptastrophe
• Lesson 38: Scott Spratten, Kitten Killer
• Lesson 39: The Emperor Has No Juice
• Lesson 40: The Kind of Branding Soulmate You Don't Want to Be
• Lesson 41: Keeping the News en Vogue
• Lesson 42: Send Loyalty Sky High
• Lesson 43: The Cheesy ROI of Tattoos
• Lesson 44: Loyalty That Will Never Lego
• Lesson 45: Ludicrous Speed Innovation
• Lesson 46: Kickstarter Scrappiness
• Lesson 47: When Crowdfunding Fails
• Lesson 48: Don't Make It Weird
• Lesson 49: Integral Wealth Lacks Integrity
• Lesson 50: T.G.I.S' Monday
• Lesson 51: When Everything Goes Up in Flames
• Lesson 52: Sears and Our Right-Handed Chair
• Lesson 53: Branding through Service
• Lesson 54: #GoForTheLawsuit
• Lesson 55: Wells Fargo and Why Elizabeth Warren Is Our Hero
• Lesson 56: The Secret to Going Viral
• Lesson 57: Cookies and Apple
• Lesson 58: Ad UnBlock
• Lesson 59: The Definition of Awesome
• Lesson 60: A Degree in Community
• Lesson 61: Pepsi Cause Jacking
• Lesson 62: UnSelling Is the Bombdiggity
• Lesson 63: Because the World Needs More Parent Shaming—Get Off Your Phone!
• Lesson 64: Freestyle Your Brand
• Lesson 65: When Charity Flows
• Lesson 66: Romantic Atlantic
• Lesson 67: More than a Gimmick
• Lesson 68: Medium-Rare Data
• Lesson 69: Hack Your Hiring
• Lesson 70: Kind, True, Helpful, and Refreshing
• Lesson 71: Ghost Restaurant
• Lesson 72: Sort-of-Okay Western
• Lesson 73: There Is No Urgency in Mediocrity
• Lesson 74: Are You a Seeder or a Leecher?
• Lesson 75: Peyton's Pizza Palace
• Lesson 76: The Cadillac of Coffee Shops
• Lesson 77: Peloton, Fitness, and Creating Motivation
• Lesson 78: Opening Up the Brand Crate
• Lesson 79: Time Will Tell
• Lesson 80: Razer's Edge
• Lesson 81: No, We Can't Get You Tickets to Hamilton
• Lesson 82: For the Love of Animals and the Hatred of Animal Hair
• Lesson 83: That Week We Sold Socks
• Lesson 84: Burger Shop Gives Back
• Lesson 85: Fighting Racism Next Door
• Lesson 86: Great Culture Has No Expiration Date
• Lesson 87: Ethics Exchange
• Lesson 88: Too Much of a Good Thing?
• Lesson 89: Work Life Balance, en Français
• Lesson 90: Pet-Not-So-Smart
• Lesson 91: One Flew Over the Loyalty Nest
• Lesson 92: Gimme a Break-In
• Lesson 93: Stone-Cold Success
• Lesson 94: Charming Pretend Lines
• Lesson 95: The Stench of Going Above and Beyond
• Lesson 96: United We Fall
• Lesson 97: Hook-and-Ladder Stratten
• Lesson 98: The “All-Natural” Lawsuit
• Lesson 99: Brand Values Are Cool
• Lesson 100: Isn't Yelp the Sound a Dog Makes When It's in Distress?
• Conclusion
• Index
• End User License Agreement