Circos Brand Karma

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.

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.

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

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.

It’s been a hectic summer at Circos-land.  My wife and I welcomed a new member into our family this summer.  Also, we launched a re-branded Circos.com, and equally importantly, formally launched our b2b service, Brand Karma, which has been well-received, especially by hotel marketers responsible for managing their reputation online.  Brand Karma has been a transformational experience for Circos, and we head into autumn with cautious optimism despite the gloominess brought on by the meltdown in the financial market.

Baby Winston is an infrequent communicator — he’s quiet most of the time because he’s sleeping.  But when he needs something, he’s expressive enough to let us know that 1) he needs something and 2) how much time we have to satisfy his needs before a total meltdown.  WinstonSpeak (TM) gave me an insight into how to explain why the Circos technology is different, and why marketers in particular, should care about Brand Karma.

Many brand reputation monitoring service does an admirable job of counting frequency of mentions on a specific topic.  A smaller set also tries to evaluate valence — namely, using semantic technology to determine whether a brand mention was positive or negative.  These 2 dimensions, used together, can give brands insight into how they’re doing (for example, you can do a simple net brand index by taking the calculating the percentage of positive mentions and subtracting from that, the percentage of negative mentions).

Similarly, I can monitor the frequency of WinstonSpeak.  And depending on whether its cooing (positive) or crying (negative), I can monitor Winston’s general state of being for a specific time period.  The problem is that if the net index is unsatisfactory (i.e. more negatives than positives), neither brand marketers nor I would know what to do because we don’t know what the driver(s) of dissatisfaction was.

To get at the driver(s), we have to understand what kind of brand mention was mentioned (in WinstonSpeak, the parallel would be the type of cry emitted), as well as the intensity of the mention.  These additional semantic understanding helps me/brand marketers’ to be very targeted in addressing complaints effectively (and thereby, improving overall satisfaction).

The semantic engine powering Circos already takes all of this into account, which, when applied to online reviews about hotels and displayed within Brand Karma, tells marketers not only how well their brand is doing, but also, how to go about making it better.

And that, in this economy, is just what’s needed to achieve better ROI on marketing spend.