Recently Go Wichita!, formerly the Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau, held their annual meeting.  The keynote speaker was Peter Yesawich, CEO of the Y Partnership.  The Y Partnership is a leader in the field of travel and tourism marketing research.  Peter spoke, in part, about the dramatic impact that technology is having on the travel and tourism industry.  He noted the following changes:

1. Meta search is changing the game of online travel research. Think sites like Kayak which aggregate a multitude of other travel booking sites, providing the user a wealth of planning information and comparative pricing with a few keystrokes and mouse clicks.
2. Mobile phone use is creating a third screen beyond the television and computer.  Smart phones are rampant and the iPhone has made us all application crazy. Players in this market need to recognize the opportunity to connect via this very personal tool.
3. Social tools and blogs are shaping perceptions. Word of mouth is nothing new.  However, more people are getting their WOM related to travel from social media destinations like YouTube and blogs to gain first hand feedback about destinations and attractions.

The travel and tourism industry is yet another industry experiencing change driven by digital technology that is quickly becoming mainstream.  Peter’s message was, “do not ignore this.”
I’ve seen technology drastically change the advertising industry, both for agencies and the clients they serve. The timeframe between reading about emerging trends like social media, micro blogging and mobile applications to them becoming widely adopted media channels is incredibly short.
I truly believe that we must make a conscious effort to regularly evaluate how technology is changing our businesses, impacting our customers and providing new opportunities.  Three questions to ask:

1. What technologies are my customers using? Ask them if they are on social media sites.  Ask them what type of phone they have. Ask them what blogs they visit.  And don’t just ask what they use, but dig into the how.
2. How can the business leverage these technologies to achieve business objectives and add value for customers? Don’t just adopt a social media strategy or dramatically overhaul your Web site without deciding what outcomes you want to see. Don’t do it because your customers might think you are cool. Do it because it makes their interactions with your company easier.
3. What resources do I have to allocate to make this happen? These initiatives often take three types of resources: people, money and time. Determine what mix of these three your idea requires. Often, you can find resources through reallocation. Do you have a part of your marketing that just isn’t working and hasn’t been working for a while? Stop it and devote those resources to your new idea.

Asking these questions, and answering honestly, can keep you in the forefront of the digital revolution and keep your company looking forward.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simeon_barkas/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

In the last few decades, new stadium construction has been frequent in the world of professional sports. As is common nowadays in the construction of these types of buildings, they often choose to sell its naming rights.

From a marketing standpoint, I can understand why one organization would want to sell the naming rights (additional cash flow) and another buy them (marketing awareness). My personal reaction is two fold: First, I’m a little more skeptical of the long-term benefit to the selling organization. You’re gaining dollars, but losing the opportunity to create a true, memorable community icon. And second, the slow passing of unique, conceptual stadium names is disappointing.

Here are two examples: Before it was demolished, Three Rivers Stadium (named because it was built where the Allegheny and Monongahela Rivers join to form the Ohio River) was home to the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers. It was replaced in 2001 by Heinz Field. And Veterans Stadium (so named to honor veterans of all wars), previous home of the Philadelphia Eagles, was demolished and replaced by Lincoln Financial Field.

The names Heinz Field and Lincoln Financial Field say nothing about their respective cities. They could be anywhere. Three Rivers Stadium reflects the unique geography of the Pittsburgh area, and thus has more personality. Veterans Stadium? For one of the patriotic centers of our nation, the fit is perfect.

Does the name really matter? From a practical standpoint, maybe not. After all, it certainly doesn’t physically affect the venue’s ability to provide a suitably enjoyable experience for eventgoers. The name “Heinz Field” isn’t going to keep people from doing what they really want, which is to go see the Steelers play football.

If Heinz Field remained Heinz Field forever, I would probably care less. But due to the temporary nature of contracts, it’s probable that eventually the Steelers will end up selling the naming rights again. Now, the Steelers have lost the iconic value that has been built up in the name “Heinz Field.” In addition, they have to change all of their brochures, materials, Web site references, everything that says “Heinz Field” to Bud Light Field or Burger King Field or (as famously spoofed in the movie Baseketball) Tampax Stadium.

If you don’t believe the possibility of a stadium with a naming rights deal reaching absurd proportions, then consider the case of Sun Life Stadium, home to the Miami Dolphins. Originally constructed as Joe Robbie Stadium in 1986 (named after the entrepreneur who led the financing campaign to get it built), the rights to naming the stadium were sold to Fruit of the Loom in 1996, who then named the stadium after its Pro Player athletic wear division.

In 2005, that deal ended, and the team reverted the name to the simple Dolphins Stadium. In 2007, it was subsequently shortened to Dolphin Stadium. In 2009, a sponsorship deal was once again struck, this time to promote to Jimmy Buffet’s new LandShark Lager. That deal lasted just year, however, and in 2010, the beginning of a new five-year deal will lead to the stadium being named after Sun Life Financial.

If you’re counting, that’s six name changes in 23 years. No marketing consultant in their right mind would recommend that. Maybe it’s different in the world of professional sports, where there’s enough television exposure on a weekly basis that people discover quickly that names have been changed.

Reality is that people adjust to name changes and accept it, whether they like it or not. But does “Heinz Field” carry the iconic resonance of, say, Arrowhead Stadium or Soldier Field, which instantly make you think of Kansas City and Chicago, respectively? I say no. And that’s why, ultimately, for the image and awareness of the surrounding community, the dollars earned by the seller in a naming rights deal may not be worth quite as much as the contract states.

Several times during the past few months I’ve noticed the advertising campaign announcing that Brink’s Home Security has changed its name to Broadview Security. Each time I saw one of the ads, I asked myself why they would do that. And each time I saw one of the ads, I was reminded that I had not remembered their new name in the time since the previous viewing of the ad.

The name Brink’s has equity. Broadview, not so much.

As it turns out, there is a reason behind the name change, nicely summed up in a 2009 article at Forbes.com. “The publicly traded security company spun off its alarm system unit, Brink’s Home Security, from its armored truck division last October in an effort to fight competitors and boost earnings for shareholders. Part of the spin-off agreement was a branding makeover aimed at driving more business to the home security outfit.”

I still don’t get it. Obviously there are more variables involved than the above sound byte gets into, but this sounds like the same reasoning that network executives must have used to pitch Joanie Loves Chachi.

In their defense, if you are going to rebrand, an economic downturn is probably a good time to do it. Smart brands invest heavily in marketing during tough times to reposition themselves in an effort to gain market share over competitors. Pepsi did it, so did Holiday Inn and countless others — many with considerable success — but most focused on changing their image, not a wholesale reinvention that leaves behind little to nothing in the way of brand equity.

Rebranding isn’t cheap. Everything from letterhead and business cards to the signs they stick in people’s yards to the vinyl stickers on the sides of vehicles to the stenciling on the control boxes and a bazillion other things have to be changed. So with a budget not to exceed $120 million (which is how I like to portray my personal budget to anyone who will listen), Broadview Security has been trying to get the word out with a television campaign that mostly just says, “Hey, we used to be Brink’s, now we are Broadview,” while the world collectively shrugged and said, “Who?”

And just about the time I have seen enough of these commercials to remember that I was going to write a blog about it, Tyco, the parent company of ADT Security, their biggest competitor, comes in and buys Brink’s, I mean Broadview Security for a cool $2 billion, and they get to rebrand yet again. Somebody probably came out of all this making a nice chunk of change, but I think Joanie Loves Chachi may have had a longer run than Broadview Security.

We got up early this morning to spend some time with fellow members of the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce. We were invited to present at the Chamber’s Sunrise Scrambler on the topic of selling value, not price. Sometimes it seems that everything boils down to low price. We attempted to show that companies and brands do not have to compete on price to be successful.This is because, people will pay more for something that has a higher perceived value, as illustrated in the video.

In our presentation, we covered the following (download your own copy of the slides here):

1. Uncovering key features of your business or products through exploring shared equity. Shared equity is made up of things that your organization identifies as key features that you do well, which are also key features that your customers say they value.
2. Using key features to find your unique selling proposition. Once you have your features identified, determine the customer benefit that is derived from the features. For example, a feature might be your years of operation. The benefit of this feature may be security, continuity or even trustworthiness. Once you know the benefits, find those that are unique to your business and those that set you apart from the competition. These make up your unique selling proposition.
3. Branding and image advertising is important. This type of advertising, which communicates your unique selling proposition, is key to building perceived value, or equity. Multiple studies have shown that companies with more brand equity experience success where it matters most: profitability.

This is just a portion of what we covered in the presentation. Overall, we hope that we helped people see the value of building their brands, focusing on their unique selling propositions and engaging in the right level of advertising to support their growth.

(Video from Showtime’s “Penn & Teller: BullS@$t!”)

Recently, several of our clients have asked us to create a name for their product or service. It’s a challenge that can be fun, fascinating, frustrating and fulfilling. Sometimes logical approaches work, sometimes it’s more art than science and sometimes you just have to wait for it to fly in out of nowhere and plow you over.

Of course, you can never know which way you’ll find your name at the start of the process. So, in order to simplify the process for you, we thought we’d provide a few things to remember when finding a name that works for your product or service.

1) It must be memorable: As one of our past creative directors used to say, “You can’t bore people into buying something.” And a name that people can’t remember won’t help sales. Good example: Amazon.com. Named after the world’s largest river, Amazon.com is easy to remember and implies that it is teeming with products. Another good example is Monster.com … which … uh … well, I’m not exactly certain what the concept is with that one.

In both cases, the name doesn’t explicitly say what services they offer. But they’re both more memorable than, say onlinebookseller.com or jobsearch.com. Relevance can be important, however, so try and maintain a balance when creating a memorable name.

2) It must be protectable: When we have a naming project for our clients, we always double-check with our attorneys to ensure that there aren’t any trademark conflicts with an existing name. The unfortunate reality is that a name doesn’t even have to be exactly the same as an existing name to warrant potential legal action. The attorney we rely on is thorough enough that if there is even a slight chance of conflict, he recommends not using the name.

The legal fees incurred in double-checking that a name is available to be trademarkable can add up quickly, however. Discuss with your attorneys the possibility of sending multiple names for review at the same time, and you might be able to get an “economy discount,” so to speak.

3) Try to anticipate unsavory connections: Try your best to look out for negative connotations of your name, or obvious similarities to unfortunate words. Not that it’s completely avoidable. If someone wants to make fun of your name, they’ll find a way to do it. Even Apple — who excels at keeping their names simple — is victim to the occasional mockery, as evidenced by “iTampon’s” appearance as one of the top trending topics on Twitter shortly after the release of the iPad.

4) Envision how it will work as a domain name: Sometimes when two words run together, there can be an unfortunate result. My favorite example is when I was doing online research for insurance, and found a company named Youngs Insurance. Perhaps they were afraid that YoungsInsurance.com was too long, and tried to shorten their Web address to youngsins.com. That particular Web address is no longer live, so apparently they’ve since changed it … for the better, I might add.

5) Patience is a virtue: We’ve named a lot of products, a lot of services and a lot of babies around this office. Believe us when we say we know how difficult it can be. My favorite anecdote is from when my parents were opening a coffee shop. In addition to the stress of finalizing menus and finding vendors for their food and coffee, they found themselves struggling to find the right name. Nothing quite captured those harrowing months like this humorous name suggestion from my dad: “Grounds for Divorce.”

If you stayed awake in your college businesses classes, the name W. Edwards Deming might ring a bell. He was a genius at improving manufacturing and management processes. Consulting with Japanese and American companies throughout his career, he helped improve the quality of products, limit defects and boost profit margins. A big part of his scientific philosophy involved developing and refining processes. He once said “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

That statement doesn’t just ring true for manufacturing widgets. It also applies to Web design and marketing. One of the big objectives we have at Webstratics, and something we have been working on for a long time, is developing better processes for the work we do. With Web design, this means we are looking at each project and asking how the process can be improved. We want to produce great sites that get results. That starts by creating a process that results in great work.

We realized that the process starts long before a Web designer fires up a program. We we start by laying out specific objectives, identifying key audience groups, thinking through desired visitor actions, assessing the creative necessities, identifying key technology requirements and laying out an executable plan. It is quite a bit of work, but the results make it worth it.

Web design is just one example, but really all advertising and marketing activities should have a describable process of how you get from where you are to where you want to be. If you can’t figure out the process, then, Deming would say, don’t spend money on it.

How about your marketing? Do you have a process? One way to find out is to try writing it down, step by step. If you can’t do that, you don’t have a process. And if you don’t have a process, the man so cool that his middle name is plural says you have a problem.