As the economy starts to perk up, more visibly in Houston then in other parts of the country, it may be time to measure your customers’ perception of your company. Most companies will know whether they’ve gained or lost market share. But do you know if you’ve lost “mindshare?”

Knowing where you’re positioned in the marketplace relative to the economic recovery is critical to determining how to shift a brand or if any change is needed at all. This is where a brand audit can help.

A brand audit is a holistic way of looking at your business and how your company’s value proposition matches the way it interacts with the rest of the world.

Essentially, brand audits are designed to sort out perceptions about what your company stands for from both internal (your employees) and external customers. Often, the company President or head of HR is too close to the situation to remain objective, so it’s wise to consider an unbiased third party. (hint.hint.)

Mark Healy, partner at Satov Consultants, identifies 4 key components of a basic brand audit:

1. Know what’s included in the scope and what’s going to be left out.
2. Design study areas and questions that will yield results (data).
3. Decide who conducts the interviews and get going.
4. Analyze results. Are there themes or gaps?

The fifth step (which is mine) is assess your company’s brand strengths and weaknesses accurately from the data gathered and apply that knowledge consistently across every communication touch point. Your brand audit is only as good as the strategic thinking behind it.

The complete article can be found at The Globe & Mail.

As the earth’s resources continue to decline or, more correctly, as the world’s population continues to expand, sustainability is top-of-mind for many industries.

Launch: Water is the first in a series of forums NASA formed in partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the U.S. State Department and Nike. Experts will gather at NASA’s Space Center in Florida from March 16 – 18, 2010, to “identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to sustainability.”

Organizers have begun a global search for visionaries whose innovative technologies or programs show promise in making tangible impacts on environmental sustainability including water, air, food, energy, mobility and sustainable cities.

Many in  branding and corporate communications roles know that Savage has been creating sustainability reports for years. They’re often known in the industry as Health, Environment & Safety reviews or Corporate Compliance reports. Not too “exciting sounding” compared to LAUNCH: Water. It could be the name of a new Theme Part. The title grabbed my attention.

“NASA offers a culture of problem-solving, deep technical expertise on sustainable systems such as the International Space Station, and a unique capacity to capture and analyze data about our home planet,” said NASA’s Deputy Administrator Lori Garver and host of the forum.

For those unaware of our work in this area, we recently completed both a print and online sustainability report for Sysco Corp. presenting ways they’re reducing miles driven and fuel consumed and broader corporate responsibility initiatives like fighting hunger.

The sustainability forum will be broadcast live.

UPDATE: The folks at SmartPlanet.com have a list of the 10 entrepreneurial innovators in the water sustainability department.

Tags: HES, Launch: Water, NASA

Five years ago Kodak sold $15 billion of film. This year consumer film sales will be less than $200 million, according to Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO, speaking at a recent Houston Interactive Marketing Assoc. (HiMA) luncheon. How does a 100-year-old company make a comeback when it was identified with a dying consumer product?

Hayzlett started with their core brand message: trust and reliability. He fused that with their historically superb science to a new mission – delivering the soul and science of imaging.

Hayzlett called it “Emotional Technology.”

Their’s a resonance behind that phrase that people can feel. With that value proposition, he captured the hearts and minds of his customers. From there, his team’s purpose was to engage, educate, excite and evangelize its product through every marketing channel, but particularly through social media.

This brand strategy has paid off. With Hayzlett’s laser focus, Kodak has reduced its product-to-market cycle to five months, and 13 of their products rank #1, #2, or #3 in their respective categories, half of which didn’t exist two years ago. One product was launched solely using Twitter at a $70 higher price point and there’s a waiting list to purchase.

Hayzlett said that there’s a lot of talk about ROI when using social media, but his definition is a little different. He measures the “Return on Ignoring.” There’s an old saying, “If you continue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll continue to get what you’ve always got.” Hayzlett, a supreme marketer to be sure, understood that he had to radically re-engage his customers using technology as his driver.

Ironically, having reinvented itself as a digital imaging firm, 80% of Kodak’s business comes from B2B companies today. Consolidated Graphics, a long time client of Savage, is one of their success stories.

Hayzlett admitted that he has “a seat at the table” and his job is “to create tension inside the company,” so you may be skeptical about your ability to create structural change within your B2B organization.

But, if you knew you would enjoy $10 billion in sales, see record profits and double-digit growth, then would you pursue a bold re-branding strategy? Because that’s exactly what Hayzlett got.

Hear Kodak’s Marketing Transformation talk with Jeffrey Hayzlett. Starts about 19 minutes into the video. (Registration’s required, but the video is free.)

Tags: b2bmarketing, Branding

Bing will soon be powering Yahoo! search results, leaving advertisers with just two search networks from which to drive traffic. The European Union and the U.S. Department of Justice, by eliminating one of the Internet’s biggest search competitors, have ignored the costs this decision will impose on businesses as they continue to acquire new customers online.

On one hand, I suppose this is good news for search optimizers because now we have only two search engines for which to optimize. While the vast majority of B2B marketers use Google, driving more advertisers into fewer networks increases the price of traffic acquisition. Bidding wars over finite inventory were a complaint in the early years of paid search. I suspect we’ll hear howling soon.

It’s consumers and businesses, small business especially, who really lose. Consumers lose a unique Yahoo! search brand and point of view and the cost to market online can only increase over time.

The days of 10-cent clicks are long gone. To compete effectively online requires not only the internal fortitude to embrace the new, but also an understanding of the underpinnings of the Internet.

Links = Relationships

The rise of social media underscores the importance of developing relationships online. It’s no surprise that Google and Yahoo! have started indexing content from Facebook and Twitter. Those links to and from followers, bloggers and websites represent millions of conversations. I don’t think people will stop using search engines any time soon, but I do believe that with the Microhoo deal, we’ll see search market share decline and with it profits. When you take away choice, consumers can be fickle.

People, through their desire for connection, have provided an avenue for businesses to reach out like never before. Will the day come when companies will reach out to online communities directly and bypass the search engines?

We may have come full circle in our sales and marketing efforts. Every business is now a door-to-door salesman: engaging prospects, building rapport and following up.

Is your website up to the challenge?

Source: SEO Theory

UPDATE: Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft, states at SMX West that Microsoft does *not* now intend to “kill off” Yahoo! Search – he further stated that within the deal agreement, Yahoo! may increase their search share via a wide number of initiatives.

Thanks to Chris Smith for the counter argument.

Tags: Branding, online marketing

A great idea, executed well, really can be done on a budget.

Case in point. Artist Rebecca Ward uses everyday materials, such as fluorescent gaffers tape, in an unexpected way to create something memorable. Granted, there’s a LOT of tape that got sacrificed as part of the Kate Spade Broome Street New York store installation, but it’s easy to see how the finished installation transcends the actual cost of the tape rolls. It’s how the tape was used that makes it worthwhile.

Creatives tend to look at challenges in different ways. Where one person may just see a roll of tape for its utility – a way to attach or mark off something – a creative sees the possibilities. It’s what is often called “thinking outside the box,” and it’s what we, as designers, do for a living everyday, so we’re rather good at it.

kate spade ny party from Jessica J Schroeder on Vimeo.

Tags: creative inspiration, kate spade, rebecca ward