You Never Owned Your Brand

There may be no faster growing profession than the social media marketing guru. These overly caffeinated, bleach-toothed, wireless-mic-weilding wizards bear a suspicious resemblence to their old-media predecessors in that what they purport to sell (helping you grow your business) doesn’t quite match what they’re actually selling (expensive speaking engagements and $24.99 hardcovers).

Business books typically reach the best-seller list by proclaiming a revolution and inciting mild panic. The line today’s social media marketing gurus are shilling: you no longer own your brand.

Newsflash: you never owned your brand.

Remember when FedEx was called Federal Express? The company rebranded in part to honor the shorthand their customers were already using. The customer has always had a hand on the controls. Your audience was influencing one another’s brand experiences long before Al Gore invented the Internet.

The rise of social media isn’t about losing anything. It’s about gaining — gaining new and more powerful channels to reach your audience, just as your audience gains new and more powerful channels to reach one another. Where “exchanges of influence” once occurred in person or over the phone, they now happen online, right in front of your eyes: transparent, measurable, and (buzzword alert!) actionable.

Time to panic? No way. It’s time to dive in, learn and evolve.

Whether your audience’s media of choice is print, a Twitter feed, or a laser beam, your core belief shouldn’t change: Give your customers the trusted experiences and authentic information they want — useful content to make better decisions — and you’ll get better business results in return.

[Disclosure: FedEx is a long-time and beloved client of Hanley Wood Marketing]

A lesson in customer service…from an unexpected place

Let me preface this by telling you I'm not a car guy. I can change a tire, check tire pressure, wash the thing, replace wiper blades, fill up my windshield washer fluid, and maybe change my oil. That's about it. When mechanics explain things to me about my car, I usually nod and grunt so as to appear manly. But on the inside I feel more like your typical soccer mom, thinking to myself—Like, what does that mean?—while sipping on my venti low-fat, no-whip, double shot caramel macchiato. Well, maybe not that girly, but you get the idea. I'm not a guy car—in fact, I'd say I find car guys slightly intimidating. I'll admit it.

So when I go to places like Welle Auto Supply, or NAPA Auto Parts, I expect to be a little looked down upon. Do you know what I mean? I'm sure you've come across the IT guy who makes you feel two feet tall for not understanding what a startup script is, or the do-it-yourself guy who scoffs at you because you can't put on a new roof by yourself, or the man's man who grunts his disapproval at you because you don't know the difference between an AK-47 and a .357 magnum. You know the feeling.

So...my point. The other night I had to go into NAPA Auto Parts because my bulb went dead on my left headlight. I approached the guy at the counter, and, the conversation went like this:

Me: "I need a headlamp for a 2005 Mitsubishi Galant."
NAPA guy: "High-beams or low-beams, sir?"
Me: "Low beams," I responded quickly, pleasantly surprised at being called "sir."

At this point he taps around on his computer for a while, and then asks, "Do you know if it has one bulb or two?"

I have no idea, really, and I sheepishly admit it.

"No problem, sir," the guy says. "I'll go check." So he goes outside (it was raining, I might add) and checks for me, and discovers that, yes, it is only one bulb. Not only did the guy save me the hassle of potentially buying the wrong thing, but he also did it without making me feel dumb. I was—again—pleasantly surprised. He then told me to have a great night, and thanked me for shopping at NAPA.

Sometimes it's the little things that make or break a customer or client experience—in the case of the friendly NAPA guy, it was probably no huge deal to him, but it left a big impact on me. I left the store a satisfied customer, and I'll definitely go back—maybe even touting a venti low-fat, no-whip, double shot caramel macchiato.