What’s the purpose of your brand?

I was on a panel with Karthik Siva at the Asia Luxury Travel Market in Shanghai where we discussed traditional vs. “new wave” branding.  Karthik is the visionary behind Global Brand Forum.  The panel was moderated by Siew Hoon Yeoh of Web-in-Travel (aka WIT), the conference where we launched Brand Karma last year.  Though he represented traditional marketing and I represented “new wave,” I found much in common with his thinking.

One such common perspective revolves around the purpose of a brand and its importance today.  Luxury brands have long understood the need to define a unique purpose and have been fulfilling it by manifesting features to not only justify their price point, but also to retain customers.

But what about non-luxury brands?  Does price trump all?

I don’t think so.  Some of the businesses that have filed for bankruptcy actually used price as a key differentiator (e.g. Mervyns) or resorted to using price as a tool to stimulate volume (e.g. General Motors, Eddie Bauer).

Hoteliers around the world are dropping prices.  At the same time, in the eyes of travelers, hotel stay experiences have become more generic.  I hear a lot more statements like “I can’t tell the differences between these hotels,” and “the rooms are all pretty much the same.”  I also see it on the trend graphs in Brand Karma.  If customers don’t feel passion for their product, hoteliers may have to use pricing as the strategy because it typically has an immediate impact of driving volume… at least for a while.  But that’s not sustainable in the long run.  Both General Motors and Eddie Bauer created products that customers didn’t want to buy… eventually even lower prices didn’t work because both brands failed to inspire or stand for something that consumers cared to spend any money on.

Hence hoteliers, if you haven’t already done so, now might be a good time to do a quick check up on your brand purpose.  You don’t need to hire a consultant to do this.  Just answer these questions honestly:

1. Why does your brand exist?
2. How is that relevant today?
3. What are you and your staff doing to deliver on the brand promise?
4. How is what you’re doing different from what your competitors are doing?
5. Would your customers agree with your answers?

The answer to question 5 is critical, and the impact of a “no” or “I don’t know” could be devastating.  Check out AT&T’s change in its upgrade policy for the iPhone and also the site about consumer credit card rules for a sense of how things could evolve.

As a starting point, take a look at what’s been publicly expressed about your brand.  This will give you a pretty good idea, whether you agree or not, at how your guests really felt about their stay experiences.  Because their reviews are public, their words also shape potential customers’ impression of your brand when they research your brand — which has a direct impact on whether consumers book a room at your property or not.

Finally, even when not reviewing your brand, users express strong opinions about what ought to happen, echoing general consumer sentiments or raising expectations.  This may have a significant impact on the relevance of your offering.  For example, Gary Arndt recently tweeted something I’m sure many travelers think of:

• “So many places say they have ‘internet’ but do not mention if it is free or if it is just a computer in a common area”
• “I know free wifi is becoming the deal breaker for me and a lot of other people. Hotels should take note”

How influential will people like Gary Arndt be?  His tweet currently reaches over 72,000 followers.

Filed under: Brand Karma, branding, conferences, marketing, social media, travel, trends, user generated content (ugc) , asia luxury travel market (altm), at&t, eddie bauer, general motors, mervyns, twitter

To Bing or Not

Bing is exciting because Microsoft did a good job in integrating various pieces of technology across the company to create a great value proposition for consumers — namely moving search results away from web pages that might contain answers to the actual answers themselves.  This is no easy feat and when you consider that they created Bing by integrating technologies from across their internal groups as well as companies that had been acquired (e.g. Farecast, Powerset), the achievement is even more astonishing.  As an ex-Microsoft guy, I really hope they pull it off, and it seems like there’s momentum behind them with a lot of initial positive reviews.

If the launch hype translates into repeat users, Bing will change the travel landscape yet again in the next 12 months.  The OTAs and meta-searches will have to deal with a new breed of mashups following the trail of Bing that not only looks for the best price but also, the best personal fit.  These types of “decision engine” or “recommendation” services have existed in the past, but Bing has legitimized the approach.  Many startups in this space probably just got a call from their investors with renewed interest.  Some people may see Bing as a natural evolution of meta-searches, but if it’s job isn’t to present you with the most number of options, but the least number of best options, then I think it warrant its own category.

As an early Bing user, I got the promise but was not blown over by the execution.  Microsoft has the right idea and an opportunity to be relevant in search, so I hope they don’t screw it up by over-promising and under-delivering.  I worry because Bing has a lot of exposures in the press and through advertising, but it still delivers imperfect results a lot of times.  Also, I personally stopped following Bing on Twitter 2 days ago because I was being over-tweeted.  Nonetheless, there is general goodwill towards Bing, and I believe that the value proposition is different enough that people will give Bing a chance to iron out its kinks.

Finally, I wouldn’t be surprised if Bing compels Google and Yahoo to aggresively look for acquisitions and/or accelerate their mobile offerings in travel if Bing lives up to its hype.

Filed under: meta-search, search, semantic search, technologies, trends , bing, google, microsoft, yahoo

Another successful viral video campaign

Last week a well-respected hotel chain stumbled in creating viral videos that were insensitive instead of funny.  Enough’s been said about that so let’s move on to something more positive.

Gillette’s new campaign surrounding the idea of “manscaping” is funny and effective. In research they found that 1 in 3 men shaved parts of body other than their face, and before they ran the campaign they tested the videos for with both men and women to ensure that they wouldn’t be offended.  The videos have a cartoon character teaching you how to shave different regions of the body.  The result is a viral video home run, of which the most popular in the series has already garnered over 600,000 views in 2 weeks.  You can probably guess which region that particular self-help focuses on.

The campaign is clever and brilliantly help Gillette establish their brand with younger males at the time when Gillette is expanding its product line beyond shaving to personal hygiene.  By using YouTube, Gillette is where these consumers are.  To draw them to Gillette, it focused the content of the video on something younger males would relate to (when you factor in age, I’d bet younger men shave other body parts more than older men, so the figure is likely more than 1 in 3 younger men could relate to the videos).  Finally, by making them short and funny, Gillette enabled the early discoverers to then spread word of the video through their social networking channels such as Twitter and blogs.

It’ll be interesting in the following days to see how the humor of manscaping translates across cultures.

Filed under: branding, marketing, viral video , gillette, manscaping, youtube

We’re hiring software engineers in Singapore

Circos is hiring software engineers in Singapore and we invite qualified graduates to apply.  We’re looking for smart technical students who can think out of the box.  If you make it, you’ll work with a team of talented developers building innovative technologies to make the web even more useful than it already is.

Email your resume to: career.sg@circos.com.  You can check out what we’re hiring for at http://www.circos.com/careers/

I want to spend a little bit of time explaining the type of software engineer we’re seeking.  To succeed at Circos as an SE, you need to have strong CS fundamentals and excel in writing code.  The interviews that you will go through will primarily test your technical aptitude.  To help you prepare, here are 5 tips:

1. Know your fundamentals!
2. Be prepared to prove your “expertise,” in other words, don’t BS about what you know.
3. Don’t expect to know the answer to every question.
4. Knowing the right answer but not being able to explain how you got the answer is worse than not getting the right answer.
5. Listen to the question and understand what we’re asking before attempting to solve it.

We recently just considered over 100 students who applied to work at Circos and did not make a single offer because everyone who had applied encountered problems in one or more of the areas above, with the great majority not advancing because they failed the “knowing the fundamentals” test.

We understand that personality and fit is important, but at Circos we want to make sure that you’ve got the right level of technical aptitude before we consider personality and fit.

A final word of advice (and for interviewing with any company): arrive on time, leave your cellphone at home or on silent, and be professionally presentable.

Filed under: Circos , computer science, hiring, jobs, recruiting, singapore, software developers, software engineers

T-Mobile UK is a Brilliant Web 2.0 Brand Storyteller

From time to time I get asked to cite examples of a brand that does a great job of leveraging Web 2.0 to enhance its brand story.  With the ease in which anyone can post something about their brand experience, its easy for brand stories to get fragmented.  Recently the impact of social media on Domino’s pizza, as well as the instant fame that Susan Boyle from Britain’s Got Talent, are examples of how influential social media has become.  Susan Boyle’s video on YouTube has been viewed more than 51M times — which has not only established her as an overnight brand but also cemented the show (and people like Simon Cowell) as the de facto talent discoverer worldwide.

The examples above are accidental in that something extraordinary happened and the parties were accidental victims or benefactors of the ensuing buzz.  But what about a brand that has actively embraced Web 2.0 as part of its strategy?  A few months ago I saw the t-mobile commercial that featured a dance in Liverpool station in London.  That video has been viewed more than 11M times and generated a lot of buzz for the brand to make it fresh.  T-mobile just followed up on April 30th with a live singing at Trafalgar Square.

The video itself undoubtedly will be as viral as the first commercial, but its the user-generated content from the event itself that will not only further the buzz but increase the specificity through which t-mobile’s brand stories can be “narrowcasted” by the participants to achieve even further impact.  For example, when I searched for “t-mobile trafalgar” on Flickr I found over 300 results, and there are already over 150 results on YouTube.

The “Life is for Sharing” campaign is right for t-mobile because the inherent nature of what t-mobile does is to connect people together so they can share — hence the tagline isn’t a stretch.  But the campaign they’re running to leverage Web 2.0 makes the sharing real.  By creating these singing and dancing events t-mobile also created a platform for participants and passerbys to experience something extraordinary, and the very devices and services they use to tell their friends and family can all be easily linked back to what t-mobile has to provide.

In a brilliant twist of “in-the-know,” the singer Pink is also in the Trafalgar video.  Her brief “just one of the crowd” presence, in addition to the perfect product placements of participants taking pictures/videos using their cellphones while the event is going on goes to show how well t-mobile and its ad agency understand how to leverage Web 2.0 to enhance its brand story.

Similar to the participants of Trafalgar and Liverpool, hoteliers should expect their guests to share their (hopefully extraordinary) stay experience.  Some will do this in text, others will further enhance with pictures and videos.  Each new post will either contribute to or detract from the brand story.  It’s unwise to ignore what these customers are saying, as unlike guest satisfaction surveys which can be seen only by the hotel staff, these posts are publicly available to anyone.  At a minimum, all hoteliers need to be aware of what is being said.

For hoteliers who have a communicative customer base, a business strategy that incorporates Web 2.0 and social media as part of the brandstorytelling will lead the brand to have better awareness, favorability, loyalty, and ultimately, profitability.

Incidentally, I will be speaking about this topic at the China Travel Innovation Summit, an event that is sponsored by China Travel Daily in association with PhoCusWright.  Hope to see you there.

Filed under: branding, conferences, marketing, social media, viral video , britain's got talent, china travel innovation summit, domino's pizza, phocuswright, susan boyle, t-mobile

Business Analytics and Intelligence Move to the Forefront

PhoCusWright just released their top 10 trends for travel technology for 2009-2010 and I couldn’t agree more with what they said about Business Analytics and Intelligence becoming more important in the current economy.  We’ve heard many people who have expressed similar sentiments, particularly as the expected ROI on marketing dollars gets closely scrutinized.

Brand Karma is a business analytic tool for social media.  Social media’s true impact on a brand’s bottom-line must be understood for businesses to remain current, credible, and relevant.  Much of the data warehouses that have been built over the years focus on transactional business data — i.e. how has your business performed after sales.  But what about why?

How your brand is perceived in social media will increasingly hold important answers as to why your business is performing a certain way as more people rely on social media to inform their purchases.  Hence brands that understand the linkage between its performance and its perception will understand the true purchase drivers, and can therefore be very focused in aligning their organization to deliver superior value on those drivers.

For a look at the industries whose consumers are researching social media prior to making a purchase worldwide, you can check out this report from Universal McCann.

Filed under: Brand Karma, branding, business analytics, social media, travel, trends , phocuswright, universal mccann

What if Kleenex and Generic were the same price?

Which would you choose?

I think most of you would select Kleenex if it were the same price as the grocery store generic.

And in that question lies the importance of brand equity in these times.  As more and more hoteliers drop rate to sustain volume, some of the sacrifices that they make come at the expense of upholding their brand promise.  The problem with this is that while the price tactic might drive volume in the short term, it may not necessarily increase the number of loyal customers if the sacrifices comes in the form of service or other features that has been associated with the brand.

Hoteliers have wonderful opportunities when deploying price cutting campaigns to win customers.  Their focus shouldn’t be just on driving volume, but attracting and developing loyal customers.  In a contracting market, to maintain the same volume the customers must come from somewhere else (e.g. your competitors).  Therefore, if you reduce price to increase volume, a portion of those customers will be new ones that came from your competitors as a result of your lower price.  What will you do to get them to come back a 2nd time … nth time in the future… and at a higher price point?

The answer lies in what is the brand promise you present when these customers come in through your doors.  You must love them to win them.  Brands that do not compromise on their brand promise in these times have the opportunity to win new loyal customers if they take the loyalty factor into account when planning their campaigns.  Just focusing on volume and not loyalty is short-sighted; this tactic makes the numbers now, but when the market recovers what the customers associate with your brand is just low price, i.e. just as it’s hard to make people pay (the good-time) Kleenex prices for generics, it will be hard for people to pay a higher price for a hotel that has lost its brand promise.

With social media and user generated content having persistence and being publicly accessible, compromises in brand promise experienced by customers will be documented and become part of the brand story –and brand marketers will have a difficult time regaining control over the story.

Filed under: branding, marketing, revenue optimization, user generated content (ugc) , kleenex

Conde Nast Traveler’s Gold List 2009

I read today about a few hotels being nominated to Conde Nast Traveler’s Gold List 2009, a high honor to be sure. Among them are San Antonio’s Watermark Hotel & Spa, Portland’s Hotel Lucia, Bushman’s Kloof Wilderness Reserve and Retreat in the Western Cape South Africa, and Bay Point Marriott Golf Resort and Spa in Panama City Beach, FL. Conde Nast Traveler compiles the list by surveying over 32,000 readers. Congratulations to all of the selected hotels.

We always find it interesting to compare a hotel’s rankings in editorial media publications like Conde Nast and others, with its social media performance in blogs and communities across the Web. Check out the links above to see a preview report from Brand Karma on any of these hotels’ social media statistics. For more information, drop us a line.

Filed under: social media , bay point marriott gold resort, bushman's kloof wilderness reserve and retreat, conde nast traveler, gold list 2009, hotel lucia, panama city beach, portland, san antonio, south africa, watermark hotel and spa, western cape

Obamas Stay in DC’s Hay-Adams Hotel

The Obamas will be moving to Washington this weekend, and will temporarily be residing at the Hay-Adams Hotel on Lafayette Park. While I’ve never been there, Brand Karma shows it having pretty strong social media in a competitive market like Washington DC. Maybe the incoming first family will write a review after their stay

Filed under: Brand Karma , hay-adams hotel, obama, washington dc

Vitamins and Painkillers

Last week Mario and I attended Web in Travel in Singapore, and then its companion conference, ITB Asia.  We met a lot of people, showed them Brand Karma, which we’re very proud of, and made lots of new friends all over the travel industry.

One major concern on several travel executives’ minds is: how will social media affect my brand reputation  and how do I manage it?  After demoing Brand Karma, we received warm receptions that we hope will turn into fantastic partnerships.

One of the reasons that these conferences went so well for us was because of a meeting we had with a prominent VC as the market fell apart.  VC meetings can go any number of ways, especially in this market, but this one, I have to say, was world class awesome.  My favorite nugget:

• Don’t sell vitamins; sell painkillers

Thank you.  That made a world of difference.

Filed under: Brand Karma, venture capitalists , itb asia, web in travel (wit)