Insights for Leaders Navigating
Visibility, Credibility, and Growth.
From media strategy to reputation management, we explore the trends shaping public perception and share the approaches that drive measurable results for growing brands.
If the stock market has got you down, consider this: The conceptualization and launch of new companies, as well as the contraction and consolidation of existing businesses, are tenets of “economic dynamism,” a concept that illustrates the ebb and flow of financial progress needed for economic stability and progress. In a nutshell, fluctuations are necessary for growth.
Yet with the number of new businesses introduced to the market each day, why do 92 percent of startups fail within the first three years? Many say scaling too quickly is the culprit, while others say it’s entering a crowded marketplace. While this varies across industries, company success typically boils down to three things: company innovation (IP), category leadership (positioning), and expected growth in revenue and customer base (valuation). Companies should consider these factors as they look to differentiate themselves from established competitors, not only to steal market share, but to carve out niche markets that properly position them for growth.
Differentiate & Position Your Company for Category Growth
Before a company considers whether or not to develop products or innovate within an established category, it is important to consider the current competitive landscape and the nuances of each player. Will the company be going up against large, established companies with several lines of business and a diversified product portfolio? If so, one option is to introduce technologies or innovations that capture a relevant yet parallel market need, one that will make the new company so valuable that people will be willing to pay a premium for that additional functionality and make the company an attractive acquisition target in the years ahead.
While we associate innovation with major companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, large multi-national corporations typically don’t have the luxury of innovating from within since they are publicly traded, under shareholder scrutiny, and focused heavily on operating efficiently to meet the current market need. Innovation takes creativity and time, and that’s why corporations partner with or develop their own think tanks or incubators to develop and explore new ideas and products. As a way to quickly differentiate, many corporations often take the approach of innovating through acquisition, to purchase smaller companies in the hopes of bringing in fresh ideas and IP into their existing service lines for further development and implementation. For this, they look to the nimble startup world.
For example, take the company Relate IQ (acquired by Salesforce), a company that launched in 2011 as an intelligence layer on top of CRM database and campaign technologies. The company focused on extending the functionality of traditional CRM platforms by providing additional data insights around how often people from within organizations collaborate with each another both internally and externally with sales prospects. Relate IQ aimed to solve the problem of tracking communications from one domain to another so that sales professionals could better understand who last contacted a potential customer, keeping all team members informed about the sales process. This technology was novel, relevant, and complimentary to Salesforce.com, which acquired Relate IQ for $390 million in July of 2014. Now the technology is being offered as Salesforce IQ to help teams manage their business development activities.
Now take former Communiqué PR client VoloMetrix (acquired by Microsoft), a company founded by Bain executives who based their technology on established time-and-motion studies utilized in the consulting world. By understanding people’s roles within a company and how they spend their time, consultants could be armed with valuable information to present strategies for organizational alignment and process improvements. In creating VoloMetrix, the company utilized the backbone communication channels for today’s businesses (email trends to inform business decisions), and helped create the category known as “People Analytics.”
By attaching itself to the Exchange email servers within corporations, VoloMetrix’s technology could anonymously extract the metadata associated with email and calendar items to reveal, in aggregate, who communicated and met most frequently with others internally and externally around parameters like time of day, geography, and within departments and divisions. This new dataset could then be used by consultants to identify correlations about qualities that defined a successful sales person, like the size of internal networks and the frequency at which these individuals contacted prospects. This approach caught the attention of Microsoft, which acquired VoloMetrix last year in September of 2015.
So what does this mean and how can it inform your business decisions?
Well, we know that Microsoft has been moving toward cloud-based technologies with Office365 to compete with Google and desired a way to create a communications intelligence layer, most likely to arm its consulting and data insights practice. Salesforce is investing heavily in data intelligence technologies and clearly has a competitor in Microsoft Dynamics for sales analytics, since their People Analytics technology (acquired through VoloMetrix) can extend both within and outside an organization. Traditional consulting firms like McKinsey and Bain will also be looking to partner closely with Microsoft lest they miss out on this very valuable data set already being used by companies around the world.
When examining this mini case study, key takeaways for companies are to anticipate the market shifts within a particular category – in this case, toward analytics and insights for sales and CRM, and innovate in this domain. As companies work to enter a new category or market, they must first understand how third-party analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester are defining the space. Next, they must pinpoint larger companies within the space, understand their offerings inside and out, and then position their companies well for future growth through differentiated products and services that could easily snap into existing services but are necessitated by proprietary algorithms and datasets.
In many cases, when and where these companies enter the market will ultimately determine their success.
I recently returned from my first major international trip – I spent two months backpacking by myself through Southeast Asia, and it was by far the most adventurous thing I have ever done. Before I left I had a sinking feeling that I was making a huge mistake. I had never traveled further than Canada without my parents, why did I think I could navigate Asia by myself? Beyond concerns about personal safety, I also worried how a two month absence would affect my career. My company generously gave me a two month leave-of-absence, but what if I couldn’t get back into the groove of working when I returned? My job means a lot to me, and I didn’t want to sacrifice it.
Sitting at my desk a few weeks after returning to Seattle, I can safely say that my all my fears were unfounded (except my concerns about food poisoning – those were valid). Once the jet lag wore off, I realized that traveling alone was the greatest thing I could have done for my career. It shook up my world view, put my priorities in perspective, and gave me a sense of personal confidence that can only be gained from knowing you can navigate the world on your own.
So how, exactly, did traveling by myself make me a better PR professional? Let me count the ways:
Sharper decision-making skills. The ability to make clear decisions is an essential leadership skill in any industry, particularly PR. Public relations professionals often make decisions that could have a long-term impact for our clients so we must evaluate our options carefully by weighing the pros and cons and considering our clients’ overall objectives.
While traveling by yourself, you’re required to make thousands of decisions that impact your safety and the overall outcome of your trip without anyone else’s guidance. Sometimes it’s a quick choice – do I argue with the taxi driver who is trying to rip me off or should I let him keep my money? In other situations there may be more time to evaluate your decision. For example, I spent days deciding whether to go to Vietnam as I originally planned or stay in Cambodia an extra week.
Ultimately, I made the decision to stay in Cambodia, and based on my time constraints and personal travel style I’m confident that was the right choice for me. Over time I learned the importance of sticking with my decisions – once you make a choice and there’s no going back, don’t question it. Trust that you have sound judgement.
More cognizant of cultural differences. In today’s global economy you’re bound to work with clients or partners based in other parts of the world, and the more aware you are of cultural differences the smoother that partnership will be.
Travel immerses you in another culture, pushing you outside your comfort zone by placing you in a world where everyone does things differently than you. I spent the first week of my trip volunteering in a small village in eastern Thailand, and trying to learn the local customs was a humbling experience. As the volunteer coordinators patiently showed me how to use a bucket shower and reminded me to take my shoes off inside it hit me how seemingly small habits can have a big impact on how people live their lives differently.
This is important to remember when working with people from other cultures. For example, if someone doesn’t respond to your email as quickly as you’d like it might be because they have different expectations around timeliness.
Language barriers can also have a big impact on international business partnerships. In the U.S. we’re lucky that people across the globe have taken the time to learn our language. Being able to speak multiple languages is an impressive accomplishment that many Americans don’t possess, so remember to be patient when communicating with people who aren’t native English speakers.
Better at adapting to changing circumstances. If you’ve ever traveled to a third world country, you’ve likely experienced questionable accommodations, confusing streets signs, and a three hour bus ride that turned into an epic seven hour journey. Unexpected things happen when you travel, and you learn to cope. Personally, I think seeing the humor of the situation is the best way to deal with it – you have to admit, arriving at your “hostel” to discover it’s essentially a barn painted blue is pretty hilarious.
In the PR world things can change quickly – your client might have a crisis that you need to jump on immediately or a journalist may leak news that you’ve been carefully preparing to announce for weeks. When these things happen, it helps to be highly adaptable. I feel more prepared to deal with these situations knowing that I’ve experienced far more unexpected scenarios on the road.
More confident. You never truly understand what you’re capable of until you do it. Traveling by yourself is challenging. It can be lonely, overwhelming and, at times, scary. But all of the lows you experience while traveling make the highs even more satisfying.
Knowing that I have the strength to handle the challenges of solo travel has given me a sense of confidence I’ve never felt before. This confidence will help me in all aspects of my life, including my career. Having the self-assurance to stand behind my ideas, speak up in meetings, and push back against clients will go a long way as I look to climb the corporate ladder.
If you have the urge to see the world but feel nervous to go it alone or worry how it will impact your career goals, consider the many way that travel enriches your life – both personally and professionally. From my experience, the benefits outweigh the possible drawbacks, and what I learned through my travels will lead me to more opportunities in my career and beyond.
A good company name defines who the company is and what it offers. The name sets the tone for the business and cues people in on what it does. Sound important? Absolutely, and that’s why it’s critical for businesses to choose a name that’s impactful and easy to remember, but also conveys what the company does. Choosing a name is a lofty task, but a company name is often the first impression of the brand and is therefore a critical consideration for success.
There are a range of methods that can be used to choose a name, but what’s most important is to approach this process systematically rather than emotionally or politically. It can be easy to become attached to a name, but business leaders must evaluate whether that name helps to tell the company story and sets them apart from the competition.
Dos & Don’ts
So where do you start? First, consider tips and pointers from the experts. In an Inc. article titled “5 Things You Should Never, Ever Do When Naming Your Company,” brand strategist Steven Mason shares his Dos & Don’ts for the naming process. Following is a paraphrased list of key considerations:
Don’t:
- Use a name generator because computers don’t understand linguistics or branding.
- Vote on names – people tend to vote for what they personally like, not because it has anything to do with the business or because it is evocative.
- Confuse your preferences with those of your target market.
Do:
- Consider both positive and negative attributes of the business, product or service. Ensure that potential names embody the positive and do not reflect the negative.
- Measure the names against linguistic and branding criteria. Is the name easy to spell? Is it easy to pronounce? Is the name evocative?
- Consider intellectual property – it’s wise to enlist the support of an attorney to manage the due diligence associated with the naming process.
Best Practices for Naming a Company
Next, outline what’s important to convey in the name and begin the brainstorming process. We’ve played a role in helping companies craft compelling names and through our experience we’ve found the following process to be the best strategic approach to naming a company:
- Hold a brainstorming session with executives – This initial meeting helps bring the story of the company to life. By unearthing the company values and the product/service it plans to sell, you’re helping the stakeholders outline the key attributes of the company and are beginning to define the criteria to judge potential names against. Once buy-in is secured on what these key attributes are, move to the next step.
- Determine the top contenders – Use the brand attributes, competitive differentiators, and key messages the company wants to convey to its target audience(s) as fodder for the name brainstorm with the key stakeholders. Hone in on three to five names and then move to the final step to evaluate each contender.
- Evaluate the names based on criteria – Now that there are a few names in the running, rank the strength of each name by measuring it against criteria—have the executives define what’s important to communicate through the name and rank against these criteria. Using measurable evaluators reduces the possibility of naming a company based on personal preferences, internal perspectives, emotions or politics.
Understanding Different Types of Brand Names
Finally, if you’re stumped after defining the key attributes and looking for some inspiration, Lorraine Carter at branding firm Persona Design provides an overview of the top brand name creation categories in her blog post, “Brand Naming: Top Ten Methods for Brand Name Creation.” Following is a summary of types of brand names:
- Acronyms and Initials – brand names that stand for something longer, such as KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), GE (General Electric) or HP (Hewlett-Packard).
- Alliteration or Rhyming Names – these are often particularly memorable and fun to say (Piggly Wiggly, YouTube and Dunkin’ Donuts).
- Derivative Names – these names are similar to something you have heard, but have been changed to sound different (Nespresso, Zappos).
- Descriptive Names – these describe the products/services offered (Whole Foods and Internet Explorer).
- Evocative Names – these are designed to evoke an image for the customer (The Body Shop, Amazon).
- Founders’ Names – examples include Cadbury (after John Cadbury) or Disney (after Walt Disney).
- Geographic Names – this style associates a region or landmark with a product/service (Patagonia, Cisco—drawn from San Francisco).
- Hybrid Names – these names are combinations of current words or recognized syllables which send the right message when combined (Swissair).
- Neologisms (new, made-up words) – these can be unique and memorable, but require more initial marketing resources to become highly recognized (Omniplex, Kodak and Twitter).
- Personification – these names are based on a persona or a real person who is not the founder (Betty Crocker, Aunt Jemima).
As mentioned previously, there are a range of methods for selecting a name, as well as various considerations to take into account. That being said, having a process for measuring names is crucial to success as it removes emotional or political bias that too often comes with such processes. What tips do you have for crafting a compelling name?
It’s Super Bowl season and that means it’s time to dust off the playbooks and review those stat sheets. With the New Year underway, companies and teams alike are assessing their results from the previous year– what worked? What didn’t? Where did we strive, where can we grow? Are just a few of the questions going through executives’ minds while planning for the months to come in 2016.
Unfortunately sometimes these answers are not so clearly defined, maybe there was a business strategy that worked in one way but caused some pain in the process. PR professionals face this dilemma with the need to stay up to date with the trends of a company’s industry before the flame simmers, build new relationships with journalists beyond the existing lists, all while executing a strategy that will spread awareness of a company and present a fresh angle. Luckily for all marketing executives out there, John Zagula and Richard Tong, former leaders of Microsoft Windows and Office marketing have uncovered a way to choose both — a strategy called ‘Best-of-Both’ that allows companies to run up the middle between opposing alternatives and deliver a solution that will gives them the best field position in a converging market.
Knowing when to run up the middle and create a new business category can be tough, the opportunity needs to be present and serious research and evaluation of your options needs to take place to determine if the conditions to run this play are likely to achieve success. Creating a new category allows a brand to achieve a leadership position and pioneer a new industry. Communiqué worked with VoloMetrix (acquired by Microsoft) to research analytics trends to help them dominate the people analytics category. Also Communiqué worked with Mobidia to support the emerging category of app analytics. The playing field for these companies was made possible through attentiveness to news, playing off existing consumer trends and applying them to the enterprise – specifically, the concept of the quantified-self applied to businesses around the globe.
In The Marketing Playbook, Zagula and Tong share five “battle-tested” plays with the potential to capture and keep the leading position in any market. Below is list of how to implement the grand-daddy of them all, number five: The Best-of-Both Play.
- Identify a key trend that promises to shake up your category. The trend you select must be familiar among your target audiences. The trend needs to be strong and difficult for people to discount. And above all, you must be committed and convinced that you can execute the Best-of-Both.
- Target the current most annoying trade-offs and drive them to the extremes. Since you are focusing on two categories already available, you must perform a situation analysis that will expose the current dissatisfaction customers feel from having to choose between these two opposite options. Your findings will present the audience and need your new category will satisfy.
- Capture the best of each end while discarding the worst. After you have identified the trend and an argument strong enough to overcome the current gap, you must label your differentiator. Do not try and create a new category until you have outlined this irrefutable differentiator.
- Once you have a real Best-of-Both offering, trumpet it to high heaven. Since you are aiming for the Super Bowl trophy, you’ll need to present an offering that was thought to be an impossible match before your announcement. After you have accomplished the impossible, share it. Educate the customers you discovered were feeling the pain from your situation analysis.
- Target one end first and then drive right up the middle. Do not wait to go after your target audience. Once you have announced this new third category, competitors will try to place themselves next to you. You are the pioneer, establish your position and defend it passionately.
With that being said, the Best-of-Both play is an ambitious strategy with many risks. Your approach and activities following category creation must clearly outline the differentiators that you can claim beyond your competitors. Since you are borrowing from two already existing categories, originality is a must. In order to hold credibility as the pioneer in this space, you will need to follow your “run up the middle” with effective marketing. Integrating public relations and social media are just two of the ways to raise awareness and communicate the associated messages for the category and your brand.
Every once in a while, I run into a senior executive or manager who has a bias about public relations and marketing professionals. Because PR or marcom professionals may lack specific in-depth industry or technical expertise, this person believes, PR professionals cannot possibly be as knowledgeable and therefore will not be as effective in telling the company’s story.
“Bias is an inclination or outlook to present or hold a partial perspective, often accompanied by a refusal to consider the possible merits of alternative points of view.” – Wikipedia
This bias often exists for a reason. While the PR pro is likely adept or expert at messaging, understanding the media landscape, and working with journalists, analysts or other key constituents, he or she is not likely to possess the same industry or technical expertise as other managers. Clearly, a PR professional is going to have very different expertise than a CEO or engineer.
The key is to remember that this difference is an asset, not a liability. Wouldn’t it be unfair to hold a bias against all engineers, simply because they don’t have classic marketing experience?
As Steven Johnson points out in his national best seller, “How We Got to Now,” there is often a benefit to working at the margin of a field, or “at the intersection point between very different disciplines.” He explains that many of the innovations that shaped our modern world were conceived by people who “borrowed metaphors” from other disciplines. Take, for example, Edourad-Leon Scott de Marinville, one of the first people to conceive of the idea of recording sound. He borrowed the idea of “writing sound waves” after drawing on the ideas he gleaned from the fields of “stenography and printing and anatomical studies of the human ear.”
Experienced PR professionals, writers, and content creators frequently have worked (or work at) the fringe of many industries or functional areas such as engineering, human resources, and finance. Remember, these professionals often help with earnings announcements, staff reductions, announcements of executive appointments, or have to explain new engineering feats, and many of us do this work for companies in an array of industries.
This broad experience gives PR professionals a significant advantage that executives and managers can and should harness. PR professionals can take a campaign idea that worked in one area and apply it in another area. For instance, a well-crafted survey of consumer perceptions of the connected car may be newsworthy and help position a software vendor as a thought leader. Similarly, a maker of point-of-sale terminals could talk with retailers about their needs and publicize the results, thereby positioning themselves as a thought leader.
PR professionals, therefore, can see the “aesthetic possibilities” to which other executives or managers may be blind.
Johnson reminds us “that working within an established field is both empowering and restricting at the same time. Stay within the boundaries of your discipline, and you will have an easier time making incremental improvements, opening the doors of the adjacent possible that are directly available to you given the specifics of the historical moment.”
Executives and managers sometimes can see the incremental steps that the company and its representatives can take, but they fail to see the big PR moments that are directly in front of them. This happens because they are focusing on other areas of responsibility such as designing products, recruiting talent, or raising money. The value that the PR professional can bring is to help remove blinders to the bigger ideas that can help the company make significant strides in increasing awareness with key stakeholders.
Finally, it is important to remember that there are pros to the outside or external PR or marcom agency perspective.
PR agencies have an advantage over in-house marketing teams because they exist outside the confines of other functional areas within an organization. They typically employ individuals with different years of experience, varying skills, and they come from a variety of backgrounds.
What is your perspective on the bias that sometimes exists toward those in marketing and PR?
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