How can you ensure that your brand becomes—or remains—a long-term strategic asset? Brand governance is the new buzzword in managing brand equity, increasingly necessary in an age of fierce competition, growing uncertainty and consumer empowerment. But what does brand governance really mean?

Born of the understanding that strong brands don’t just create competitive advantage but actually have value that can be quantified on a balance sheet, brand governance is the systematic building and nurturing of that value by organizations. This system is built on policies, held together (or governed) by processes, which require tools—technology—to function efficiently.

If that sounds a little too jargon-y, let’s introduce a malapropism here to help you relate to it: Instead of brand governance, think of it as brand “governess” (thus the Mary Poppins illustration)—a brand nanny whose job is to ensure your brand grows up safely, intelligently, and reaches its full potential in the world.

The more important brand equity becomes to an organization’s bottom line, the more vulnerable it becomes to potential hazards along the brand experience path. And what hazards are lurking in the bushes waiting to ambush your brand? The one with the sharpest teeth, perhaps, is growing consumer sophistication that leads to intolerance for any gap between what the brand promises and what it delivers. Couple this with the growing number of distribution and communication touchpoints, then throw in the particular risks of social media, and you’ve got one treacherous path for your brand to navigate.

But, if you have the right policies, processes and tools (your nanny) in place, your brand has built-in safeguards.  Proper brand governance helps your organization develop an ethical framework for decision making, along with the transparency that’s essential for building trust, one of the three pillars of a strong (and valuable) brand.

GEICO Insurance is legendary for its creative television spots, conceived by The Martin Agency (Richmond, Seattle, New York). But at a recent StudioNorth client event (SNth Degree) a diverse cross section of  marketing professionals representing more than 30 significant brands questioned whether GEICO’s inconsistent creative approaches violate branding best practices by fragmenting brand perception. What’s the logic behind it?

Sybil on steroids?

With concepts and characters as diverse as a gecko, cavemen, a Rod Serling (or Jack Webb?) knock-off, and stacks of money with googly eyes, GEICO has managed to gain recognition as one of the most creative advertisers on the airwaves. The branding elite call these different characters “energizers.” No matter what you call them, you could fill a room with the multiple personalities employed by the GEICO brand. If GEICO were a person, would you trust that person to be consistent? So how does all this disparate creative come together to support a single brand?

My hypothesis

Prior to researching the campaign(s), I thought the approach was simply about targeting creative to appeal to diverse audiences:

• Cavemen for 18-24 males with questionable driving records
• “Rod Serling” for doubters
• The gecko for “the rest of us poor oppressed slobs who need simple, inexpensive insurance and can’t beat Mr. Big Pants insurance companies at their game.

And my hypothesis of what holds the brand together is the offer at the end of each spot, “15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.”

The agency’s rationale

But in a 2007 interview, Martin President and Creative Director Mike Hughes told Fast Company “People can now accept more complex brands with multiple, distinct narratives highlighting various aspects of the brand.” The Martin Agency gave multiple creative teams different assignments, with instructions “to tell multiple, distinct narratives that highlight various aspects of the brand.” The strategy: to build deeper relationships on multiple fronts.

The Martin Agency believes it has found a better way to do branding, perhaps even a new media strategy altogether. The ad shop has since begun rolling out multipronged strategies for a variety of clients including UPS and Wal-Mart.

How efficient is this strategy? Is being fragmented in a fragmented world the right thing for results? The success could simply be a matter of media tonnage…a reported $580 million per year in media behind these whacky spots! I’d be curious to see an A/B split test on this commercial collage against a more consistent approach.

What do you think? A gratuitous creative exercise or a new strategy for more efficient, real results?

“Does your brand have a personality type?” Is this the new client pick-up line, or just a question worthy of discussion?

In a just-published Harvard Business School interview with professor Anat Keinan titled, “How Underdog Branding Wins in Tough Times,” Keinan notes how narratives built around an underdog brand personality are “gaining psychological, and real, power in the  marketplace.”

Keinan attributes this rise, in large part, to the current uncertain economic climate, explaining that underdog brand “biographies” speak to the real-world challenges and anxieties today’s consumers face. “Even large corporations, such as Apple and Google, are careful to retain their underdog roots in their brand biographies,” he notes. A classic example of exploiting the underdog brand personality was Avis’s “we’re number 2” campaign, positioning the company as David to Hertz’s Goliath.

In their book, “The Hero and the Outlaw: Building Extraordinary Brands Through the Power of Archetypes,” Margaret Mark and Carol Pearson discuss the value of creating iconic identities to bring meaning and profit to a brand. “Finding the soul of your brand and then expressing it in ways that tap into universal feelings and instincts,” they say, can be the key to increasing market share in today’s complex and competitive marketplace.

Brand personality types are not limited to just heroes, outlaws and underdogs. James Archer, Managing Director at Forty design + marketing, recently defined a total of 20 brand archetypes (http://www.fortyagency.com/stuff/post/the-20-universal-brand-types), including the “Maverick” (Harley-Davidson), the “Everyman” (Southwest), the “Sensualist” (Godiva), the “Ruler” (Microsoft) and the “Achiever” (Nike).

Does your brand have a personality type? Post it here.

I’ve never felt comfortable with that marketing mantra, “delight your customers.” Although surely sometimes that’s in order (such as when you’re launching in a competitive market, or in a customer service encounter), delight is fickle and wears off almost instantly. In fact you might say that delight causes a brand to raise the bar on itself with every use. That can get really expensive in brandland.

Most of the time customers simply want your brand to meet their expectations and let them get on with their lives. Just like air. Air is invisible, we take it for granted, but when it’s not there, we get a little upset. That’s what most brand experiences should be like: transparent, yet mission critical.

I don’t know about you, but if I had to be “delighted” with every brand experience, I’d be desensitized before noon on Monday.  Doesn’t it make more sense to simply meet or beat customer expectations with consistent brand performance?

Instead of impressing me with new delights, focus your efforts on keeping me loyal. For instance, if I hit a little snag in my brand experience, make sure customer service comes through with single-call resolution. That’s a pretty cheap solution for the brand and may get me to mention my satisfaction to a  friend or two…and word of mouth branding is “(bleeping) golden!”

Would you agree that consistency is more important and more realistic than delight? OK, maybe you want to inspire an occasional delight…a mild delight….a slight-smile-at-the-edges-of-your-mouth-for-half-a-second delight. But a lot of time that can simply result from a situation in which your customer strays from your brand, experiences dissatisfaction elsewhere, and comes back to your brand…the delight of realizing yours is a brand that can be trusted (“there’s no place like home”).

What do you think about consistently delighting customers? Is it realistic? Blog it here.

For more on this subject, there’s a great article in July’s Harvard Business Review. http://hbr.org/product/stop-trying-to-delight-your-customers/an/R1007L-PDF-ENG

If a friend or business associate were to describe you to a complete stranger, what would they say? Does considering that make you feel a little paranoid?

Many of us professional marketing folks spend a good deal of time working on our commercial brands. But branding isn’t just for business any more. Even if you’re not looking for a new gig, defining your personal brand is seen by many experts as a new “must do” for success in your personal and professional lives. With a solid personal brand, you can be sure how you’ll be characterized, even when you’re not there. But how do you build a strong personal brand?

When you think about it, a personal brand can be a confusing concept. After all, between our personal, professional and family relationships, we fulfill different roles at different times, often switching between them from one minute to the next. But we tend to trust people who behave consistently and predictably most of the time. So how can one person have a unified personal brand that works in all facets of their lives?

Strong brands of any kind are made of three essential ingredients: Focus, distinction, and trust. That means focusing on one central “What do I stand for?” idea; being distinctly different from other brands that compete in the same consideration set; and performing in a consistent way that lives up to your promises.

“Managing Brand U: 7 Steps to creating your most successful self,” by Jerry S. Wilson and Ira Blumenthal presents a well-organized and easy-to-follow process for building a solid personal brand. I like it because it follows many of the best practices we espouse at StudioNorth in our brand-building process for commercial clients. In a 2008 blog post, Wilson writes, “We all have the opportunity to determine how others see us. We are in charge of our own brand. The space between how you are viewed by other people and how you want to be viewed by other people is the place where you begin to build your brand.” We refer to this “space between” as a “brand gap.” Identifying brand gaps reveals the opportunities to strengthen your brand with fine tuning and unity.

Following best practices, Wilson encourages his followers to do some personal brand research by asking several of your closest friends for a candid list of 25 words that best describe you. Then do the same for yourself. Compare, and find your “brand gaps.” We suggest you also do the same in your work life and family. This creates a somewhat more complex brand map, but really helps reconcile the many “brands of you.” And it provides direction for strengthening your personal brand—closing those brand gaps with image, language, and actions that are consistent with your desired perceived brand.

What’s your personal brand in 10 words or less? Blog it here today. Then ask your friends and family for a few words on what they think you stand for. Compare and find the gaps. You may be surprised!

For more on this directly from Jerry Wilson, visit http://bit.ly/9v5AHK

The phrase “making it go viral” speaks to some hard facts about social media marketing. Guiding and launching viral efforts takes a lot more than a well directed sneeze. The excerpt below from ReadWriteWeb reveals a behind-the-scenes look at what it took to make the enormously successful Old Spice campaign go viral.

July, 14, 2010
“A team of creatives, tech geeks, marketers and writers gathered in an undisclosed location in Portland, Oregon yesterday and produced 87 short comedic YouTube videos about Old Spice. In real time. They leveraged Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and blogs. They dared to touch the wild beasts of 4chan and they lived to tell the tale. Even 4chan loved it. Everybody loved it; those videos and 74 more made so far today have now been viewed more than 4 million times and counting. The team worked for 11 hours yesterday to make 87 short videos, that’s just over 7 minutes (production time) per video, not accounting for any breaks taken. Then they woke up this morning and they are still making more videos right now.…You can already get an Old Spice Man voicemail message generated for your phone. The coolest thing about that? That system wasn’t even created by Old Spice or (the agency) – it was built by a crowd of users at social news site Reddit this afternoon.”

The Stats

• Number of videos made: 180+
• Number of video views: 5.9 million
• Number of comments: 22,500

These guys were making videos in real time and posting them as responses to live comments from social media conversations. They selected the most visible or highest-rated respondents to the campaign (such as the likes of Alyssa Milano) to leverage the exponential effect of their huge social network followings.

This campaign follows a formula that seems to be emerging in social media: Find an issue or create one, use entertainment as the sticky stuff, leverage social media influencers to spread the word, recognize some high-profile influencers in your responses – and do it all in real time…or as close to it as you can.

Sound like a big commitment? You bet. Social media can be the most demanding of all media and we’re still not sure of the payback. In the case of Old Spice, awareness and a change of brand image were top goals. My grandfather used to wear Old Spice. I still won’t wear it because of that. But my kids are crazy about it, because to them The Most Interesting Man in the World 2.0, Isaiah Mustafa, is now the embodiment (in all ways) of Old Spice…the most edgy brand in the category, thanks to an exhausting and explosive social media play. I’d like to see the awareness and brand metrics on that.

Any other examples of a peek behind the scenes of a successful viral effort?

For the complete story, see http://bit.ly/bkUHfH

In his groundbreaking 2009 book, “The Shift,” Scott Davis identified a pivotal shift in brand strategy, from “controlling the brand message” to “galvanizing your network.” Much of this shift is due to the emergence of social media as a powerful new customer advocacy platform.

Social media has given consumers and B2B customers unprecedented power to reshape brand messages without guidance or consent from the brand. Because of this power, the brand must “galvanize its network” to be in touch with its customers every second: gaining awareness of their issues, taking them seriously, and taking decisive action to achieve customer satisfaction and maintain loyalty. In other words, it’s more important than ever before to be vigilant about brand alignment, continuously assessing and addressing the gap between brand promise and brand performance

Does this shift imply that brand messaging as we know it is dead? Or instead, does it mean that it’s time to get serious about addressing the true scope of brand: not just brand promise, but the entire customer experience from awareness through loyalty. It may even mean that the customer AIDAS model (Awareness, Interest, Decision, Action, Satisfaction) now works both ways. The brand needs to allow for the fact that customers will use this model in the “back channel” of social media to publicly evaluate the brand’s promise vs. performance.

With today’s digital media, it is now possible to achieve what we refer to as “real time brand alignment metrics.” A future version of 9align Message Mapper software will incorporate real time brand alignment metrics capabilities, where users can actually see the alignment gap (what your messaging says v what your stakeholders say) on a near-real-time basis.

What do you think? Is brand messaging dead? Or will it continue to be essential to help guide customer conversations and galvanize networks? Is the objective of brand messaging changing from “puffed and buffed spin” to education, relevant information, and customer-driven positioning? Will this shift force brands to take more seriously alignment between brand promise and performance?  Blog it here, on frenchonbrand. Feel free to retweet!