The product of a thousand small gestures.

Your brand is a promise, and great brands are promises well kept.

For a business to flourish and to grow, people need to trust you. Your customers and just as importantly, your staff, need to trust that you know what you are doing; that you are committed to doing it with unmatched excellence and expertise, and that you’ll do everything in your power to look after them.

Trust means knowing that you’ll share successes and work together to improve everything you do. Trust means knowing that you’ll fix problems quickly and without fuss, and that you’ll do your best to understand them as individuals (not just as data points or drones).

Trust is about keeping your promises. That’s what your brand is. It’s not your logo or your typeface; they’re just visual signposts like quality kite marks.

Everyone in your organisation from the MD up to the cleaner needs to understand the promises that you are making and how you keep them. The whole team has to buy into it 100%. The very best brands are ones that come from within — they’re rarely hatched in agency brainstorms.

Far sharper minds than mine have defined brands and they’re all right to some degree. I don’t know who originally said, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”, but it’s a good line. Here are some of my other favourites:

“A brand is a living entity — and it is enriched or undermined cumulatively over time, the product of a thousand small gestures.” [Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner]

“What some companies fail to see is that that from their customers’ viewpoint, their products, services and brands are viewed as one entity”[Richard Branson]

“Your brand is created out of customer contact and the experience your customers have of you”. [Stelios Haji-Ioannou, Founder of EasyJet]

The original Mad Man David Ogilvy said, “Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.”

There’s no doubt that creating a great brand takes a long time and a lot of work, but that doesn't mean starting from scratch. If you have had any kind of success in the past it was because somebody liked what you did, so chances are that you've already got a great brand (what do your customers say about you when you’re not in the room?), you just need to remind yourself what it is.

It might be wise to ask your customers, and most definitely your staff, what they think you promise because they’ll probably know in a flash. Promises are usually simple and easy to remember.

The beautiful thing is that a great brand is very simple too. When anyone asks me to define a brand I say that a brand is a promise and great brands are promises well kept.

“Most ‘social networks’ are not really that social any more.”

“They are content distribution networks.” @garyvee

I really enjoy @GaryVee’s posts and I admire his unquenchable desire for the hustle. Not many people can match his relentless New Yorker dynamism, but he is one of those guys you have to pay close attention to. He spits out valuable pearls of entrepreneurial wisdom with amazing frequency.

His post ‘Google + is not dead’ came with a bundle of important points that are worth expanding on a bit.

“There is a small niche group of people that I respect immensely who have been early adopters of Google+ since the start, and I want to make sure I am meeting them on the platform they have chosen to be on.”

Yup, me too. But more importantly, where else are there great communities of people you respect — like your customers and prospective clients? Where do they hang out (digitally)?

One of the hard lessons I learned at my previous company was never to neglect your own forums — if you were lucky enough to have one. We had a thriving community of tech-heads on our own in-house forum, but we let it wither, without giving them the attention they deserved. At the time we had good reasons for concentrating our efforts and resources elsewhere, but some of the forum community were valuable and loyal customers and we probably lost most of them to the competition.

One of our major competitors in the gaming PC sector made their forums the centrepiece of their sales and marketing. They were pretty wild and anarchic communities, but as Gary points out, their loyalty was unbreakable.

Too many B2B companies often mistakenly go looking for customers in the obvious places like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, when there’s probably a specialist forum or platform for your industry.

If you’re in the UK education technology business then you should be spending a lot of time with the Edugeek community. Small but smart companies who specialise in selling computers to schools, like VeryPc have made them a crucial part of the way they talk to, and support, their customers.

The international IT pro community that is Spiceworks started as a bit of collaborative inventory software but their forum morphed into a leviathan that now boasts over 6 million members. If you have anything to do with professional hardware you’d be mad not to join in.

“I want to make sure I am meeting them on the platform they have chosen to be on.”

Birds of a feather flock together, so there’s most probably a community for your sector — no matter how niche it is. In fact the more niche, the more likely that there’s a community somewhere that would welcome the right kind of (gentle, natural and helpful) attention. Don’t rush in with the hard sell. Listen first. And carefully.

Gary also makes another great point: “And let’s not forget that most “social networks” are not really that social any more. They are content distribution networks.”

Facebook is intent on becoming a new kind of publisher and a powerful ‘traffic driver’ (see here and here for example) and seems less concerned now with being a really social network. I have written before that I don’t believe that focussing attention on your own Facebook page and posts is a good idea anymore — especially if you are in a B2B market. Your customers probably don’t want to see you there.

The point Gary is making is one that I wholeheartedly concur with and it’s worth repeating again. Facebook is still a very powerful amplifier for any company or organisation, but nearly always that will come from someone else posting your stuff, or writing about you. So, as usual, create great stuff — everywhere you can — and let your friends and fans do the rest.

Gary sums it all up perfectly. “You don’t give up on anything if you have an audience there. Don’t abandon it. If it exists and there is value for you in it, use it. It’s worth your time. It builds equity, communities, and lifelong customers. I promise.”

Go looking in the corners, the quiet places and in the nooks and crannies. In your industry’s niches you’ll find probably a highly receptive audience.

As a footnote it’s worth pointing out the obvious about Google +. It’s hard-wired into Google search algorithms so a post on + probably does a huge amount for your search rankings. Google are still rewarding loyalty.

Blogger is another big community that Google are letting wither, but posts on blogs hosted on Blogspot/Blogger still rate very highly in search results.

“nothing is ever dead till it straight up does not exist any more.”

Well worth a close read. Thanks Gary

Die stockshots. Die.

“Who is the girl who answers your phones?”

I don’t like stockshots. Stockshots lie. They are a big fat corporate fib that no one really believes. They’re not real and they are not telling the truth about your organisation and I refuse to use them. Does that girl really answer your phones for a living or does she sashay down catwalks for Models 1?

Of course that’s a deliberately provocative paragraph and there are lots of ‘yes buts’. If your brand relies on aspiration like fashion or phones, it’s probably wise to make sure that the person wearing/holding your stuff is easy on the eye. That’s partly because usual or ordinary looking people actually stand out and distract from the product, and partly because we've been brainwashed by over a hundred years of advertising, that we want to wear and use what the beautiful people use and wear.

But that’s arse really. ‘People buy from people’ is a cliche because it’s absolutely true. When you’re selling a human product like a service, or you are claiming any kind of authenticity about your work, then yes it damn well does matter if your pictures fib. Doubly so if you’re a B2B company, selling to other businesses. Why? Because it’s all about trust dummy.

My word is my bond, but my brochure is all piffle and piss.

Who the hell are these people and what on God’s good earth are they doing?

They’re sure as hell not having a meeting like any I’ve endured. Why is he presenting so close behind their backs? Wouldn’t it be much more comfortable if he was in front of them? And what’s that graph all about? Or is it art? Is he explaining the nuance of an abstract expressionist painting? “It’s a bit Miro. Quite Mondrian. Ultimately it’s derivative and ….”

It’s tosh and no one relates to it, no one believes it and it doesn't help in anyway to sell your stuff. You’re deceiving people rather than winning their trust.

This one was thrillingly titled “business successful meeting office colleagues have”. It sounds like it was translated into Japanese and then back again by a Google Translator algorithm. And that’s what it looks like too. It’s mangled and doesn't really make sense. I could probably work out what you're trying to imply about your successful team, but it’s visual gibberish.

No one but American senators wear ties like that now do they?

They are real people, yes, but they don’t work at your office and they are not having a business successful meeting for your company. So what are they doing gurning away on your website? What are they doing for your brand?

Stockshots are expensive too and if you use more than a handful they’re far more expensive than a half decent photographer. With a photographer you get two very important things: 1. To keep and own all the shots and 2. Truth.

The very best decision I made at my former company, Novatech, was to hireJoe our in-house photographer. We’d used the talented Paul Hames, who proved that amazing imagery was possible despite our utilitarian premises, but when we needed to expand our creative team we went looking for a graphic designer.

It was another Paul, our head designer, who actually chose Joe and it was down to his photographic portfolio rather than his InDesign skills. Joe was NME’s live photographer of the year and his collection of snarling punks and sweaty stage divers was undoubtedly brilliant, but there weren’t many people building computers.

What Paul rightly spotted was that Joe could give us our own visual identity that would be far more effective than logos, and that it would be compellingly real. We sold computers, but mainly to businesses and schools. For our customers the relationship with their account manager and the knowledge that the hardware was assembled and supported in Hampshire was the key selling point.

The guts of our PCs were the same as everyone else’s but our people were ours and they were why our customers bought from us.

So Joe showed that.

Sure, you shouldn’t put the teenage apprentice with chronic acne front and centre, but I do want my technology assembled by someone who look likes they know what they’re doing, and they don’t often look like Naomi Campbell. No one does.

Of course it’s not necessary to hire an in-house photographer. There are so many talented professionals out there who not only make stockshots totally unnecessary, but also a waste of money. You might think that your offices and your staff aren't attractive enough, but as my photographer friend Paul Hames pithily explained. “You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter”.

It’s very simple really. Sure you should have a shave and comb your hair, but be yourself. Let people see behind the scenes. Let them see how you tick.

Be real. People like it much better that way.

ALL THE GOOD PHOTOS ARE BY JOE WATSON @ VISIONINCISION

“Find out who you are, and then be it on purpose.”

The wisdom of Dolly and Douglas.

“Find out who you are, and then be it on purpose”

I’m a big fan of a pithy one-liner and I was surprised and delighted that I’d never seen this wonderful bit of wisdom from Dolly Parton. It makes perfect sense with her ‘it takes a lot of money to look this cheap’ schtick, but it’s also a great life motto. So of course it’s a great command for companies too.

Everyone prefers it when you don’t try to be something that you’re not, and when you just relax and be yourself. But defining yourself is one of those radically important things that far too many organisations and businesses neglect to do with the necessary level of commitment. It’s at the very heart of carving out a great brand that people want to buy into, and to trust.

Don’t think for a minute that this is fluffy marketing twaddle — this is a seriously hard-nosed commercial imperative. The first thing financiers assess when they look to buy a company is the value of the brand. If you don’t know your brand down to the last penny, what price will anyone else pay for it?

I’ve recently got to know Neal the founder of Lovehoney, the UK’s biggest and best supplier of adult toys, who told me in no uncertain terms how much he valued defining their brand. He admitted that they paid a lot to do a comprehensive review, but that it was the best money that they’d spent. He explained that the results of the initial customer surveys had not only surprised and delighted them but had given them a shot in the arm that increased sales too.

Their customers were nearly all married couples who thought thatLovehoney brought pleasure and fun to their marriages, revitalising their sex lives and — crucially — making them very, very happy. Everyone is happier when they are having good sex.

Neal explained that this made everyone in the office very happy too. The change in the team’s perception of what they did (and who they were) shifted from being mildly embarrassed to being super-proud. They didn’t just sell sex toys, they reinvigorated marriages and spread joy and fulfillment. The whole process helped the company to feel excited and motivated and that helped productivity and spiked sales.

Once you know who you are, you can really cut loose and BE who you are. The Lovehoney brand work informed everything from website and product designs to advertising campaigns and customer services, and all for the better. They now proudly call themselves the Sexual Happiness People. That’s who they are on purpose.

The Cornish surf apparel company Finisterre have always had a pretty good grip on what they did, and why, but it was only when they honed in on their who they were that they really accelerated. They couldn’t and didn’t want to compete with the huge Aussie, Hawaiian and Californian surf brands, soaked in sun, tans and palm trees. Their people surfed in perpetually cold water and cold water surfers is who they are.

Finisterre defined the category — which had existed, but never been named — and in a stroke spoke straight to a huge population of Northern European water babies, raised on freezing beaches and on icy seas. Cold water surfingis their thing and although megabrands like Volvo and H&M are now riding their wave (so to speak), it’s a party wave and Finisterre are the only ones who are really ‘being it on purpose’.

I’ve been searching in vain for a half-remembered Douglas Adams quote, but the essence was, “He went off to India to find himself. Unfortunately, he forgot to exchange addresses and lost touch with himself again almost immediately. This time forever.”

You’d be surprised how many companies struggle to give a short, truthful and non-jargon-filled answer to the question ‘what do you do?’ That’s the corporate way of saying ‘who are you?’ You might just be an an accountancy practice (“we’re accountants” does work) but your not just doing other people’s sums, you’re giving them financial peace of mind.

There’s no point planning an ad campaign, a PR push or a sales drive if you don’t know who you are, as a company or as an organisation. They will all ultimately fall short because none of it will ring true. You can’t be you.

“Man, know thyself” was the challenge of ancient Greek philosophers because, frankly, you’d never get anything done of value or worth if you didn't get to grips with your own identity first.

So thank you Dolly, for summing up so beautifully everything that I do for a living. That’s helped me to define what DirtMeetsTheWater does.

We help you to find out who you are, and we make sure that you can be it on purpose. Most wonderfully.

A rich digital tapestry really matters.

Put your eggs in every basket you can.

Every January, for the last few years, the lovely people a Valuable Contenthave been kind enough to ask me for my predictions for the important marketing trends in the coming year. I enjoy this kind of crystal ball gazing, mainly because it reminds me what I myself need to concentrate on, but also because it gives me the chance to highlight some great things that the people I admire are doing.

This year I wrote: “In 2015 having a great digital reputation is going to become even more important. Having a rich tapestry of films, conversations and articles across numerous platforms and publications will be essential to building a strong brand and for sales.

The key trick, however, will be sharing useful information and great entertainment that is not your own. Marketing teams have to become curators of interesting and intelligent content, so understanding your customers’ tastes will be vital. Harnessing the dark-sharing style of “saw this and thought you’d enjoy it” will be a killer skill. Very few will do it well, but those that do will be the year’s winners.”

I’m going to write more about the importance of being a curator another time, (The masters are Hiut Denim) but the secret of a rich tapestry is in the variety of platforms you use to tell your stories. It’s no longer enough to just have a great website or a great blog. Anyone can be great on their own turf and on their own subject (and that’s of course essential too), you’ve got to be seen and heard in lots of unexpected places.

At my former company, Novatech, we used most of the usual platforms, but we also went wider and started using things like Spotify.

Initially the idea was to help with a graduate recruitment drive, but our regular playlists — crowd sourced each week on a different theme from the Novatech team — became really popular with our newsletter subscribers and customers. It was of course intentional (?!), but it allowed friends and fans to see behind the scenes and into our culture, and showed that we weren’t just tech-head geeks. Our Spotify channel added another dimension to the way people perceived Novatech and our brand. [NB: I recommend theSuperhero playlist and the far gentler Sweet and lowdown]

Like most companies we also experimented with Tumblr, Instagram,LinkedIn and other networks, but valuable as those all were, they were our property. It’s the foundation of all PR that you need to be seen and quoted in other people’s publications and that’s doubly true online.

We encouraged the sales teams to get involved in discussions in forums and on social media where their prospects spent their time. As a B2B PC manufacturer Novatech always had good coverage in the tech media, but it was branching out into management, accountancy, legal, design, architecture and engineering titles that really helped our sales teams.

These are old networking skills and it’s not a new idea to spread yourself wide, but too many organisations still misguidedly believe that simply posting regularly on Facebook and Twitter is a strong social media policy. If the analogy that social media is like a pub is true, then it follows that limiting yourself to one popular network is like standing in the corner of a very busy Wetherspoons on a Friday night yelling about your services. No one will hear you, and if they do you’ll sound a bit sad and you’ll probably just annoy them. Unlike.

I also added a footnote to my Valuable Content predictions, because there’s another important reason why focussing too much on one social channel isn’t a good idea.

“PS: Unless you’re a megabrand your Facebook page will become a ghost town. Facebook’s management have admitted that less than 10% of your followers will see your posts, so you might as well concentrate on generating and curating great content elsewhere. If your customers share your content on their Facebook timelines, it will still have huge amplification, but don’t look to your own page for traffic and conversations. The Facebook behemoth is only interested in your advertising spend now.”

At Novatech we noticed some time back that our Facebook posts weren’t having the impact that they once had, but if you sprinkled in a few ad dollars they magically spiked — and then some. Stop the ad spend and they dropped off again. That’s not surprising. Possibly advertising works, but actually in revenue terms that just wasn’t true. The ad-driven traffic was pretty superficial (and often strangely foreign considering we didn’t ship to SE Asia). Unsurprisingly, organically generated engagement was far, far more effective, but it was dropping off badly without ad support.

We guesstimated from the analytics that less that 5% of our followers were seeing our posts. Stretching the analogy a bit, it’s like we were in that crowded pub. It’s chock full of our kind of people, but most of our friends had no idea that we were hidden away in the corner amiably sipping a pint and Wetherspoons weren’t about to tell them. Why would they when the big alcohol companies were paying them to shout about their presence?

Here’s the rub. Facebook is too big for most organisations to be effectively heard above the din. Remember Bebo? MySpace? Napster? These were huge communities for a while, but for various reasons they aren’t anymore. Facebook was once a great to hang out if you were a smart organisation — but they’ve grown and evolved and they’re not really interested in your organisation now.

So whilst you should maintain your Facebook page (you never know if you’ll meet someone good in a corner, even of a Wetherspoons), but head out to some smaller bars, cafes and restaurants. Go to the working men’s clubs, the cricket club, the gym and of course hang out on the beach. That’s where you’ll find the best people.

As a footnote, I should clarify that Facebook is still a very powerful amplifier for any company or organisation, but nearly always that will come from someone else posting your stuff, or writing about you. So, as usual, create great stuff — everywhere you can — and let your friends and fans do the rest.

Besides, as a wise wag once said “social media is where people go to waste time. Brands need to be respectful of that”.

The original Valuable Content article with much more sage advice, from wiser heads, is here: http://www.valuablecontent.co.uk/marketing-trends-for-2015-predictions-from-those-who-know/