Part 1: Turning users into evangelists, and losing your ego

Hi Rob, thanks for talking to us. Tell us, why is branding misunderstood?
Branding is the most misunderstood concept in all of marketing. Branding is on the surface important because without a strong brand nobody knows why he or she should remain loyal to you. Without a strong brand, you can't turn your users into evangelists. And that's just the top part of branding that people really think they know. But in truth, it touches every single aspect of your business.

And done properly it can increase your customer retention, can lower your customer acquisition costs, can increase your amount per transaction. It can keep your employee turnover low, because if you have a really good brand, you have a really good brand culture.

Branding falls into two categories: external branding (which everybody thinks they know) and internal branding, which nobody knows about. The fact of the matter is that it is way more important to build brand culture on the inside than on the outside. If your people understand your brand culture, then everybody they come in contact with on the outside gets turned on by it because they are legitimately enthused by it.

Have you had clients for whom branding didn't work? Do you think that branding can be applied successfully to absolutely anything?
Well, I'll take the first part of that and say: I've had clients who did not implement branding recommendations, so they weren't successful. As to the second part of your question, branding can be applied to everything. It doesn't matter if it's a product or a service, a one-person company or a giant company, online or offline, branding absolutely does work.

As a matter of fact, there is something that I call my Laws of Big Time Branding; if you follow these properly, you're going to be successful. This is especially true if you're on the Web, because the Web tends to equalize everything and the big guys tend to have pretty rotten brands. So you have the level playing field of the Web, and this big huge company who has a rotten brand. If you're a little guy who knows or follows my laws of branding, you're going to win every time.

Why are brands about customers?
Because the brand needs to communicate articulately and compellingly to the people who don't know why you are the best solution to their problem.

Can you brand a bad product, and what happens if you do?
Of course you can - people then try the product, hate it and never try it again. You've got to remember that branding is 100% emotional. Let's say I call you up and say, "I've got US$100,000 in cash I want to get to you overnight, do you want me to send it to you UPS or FED-EX?" And you're going to say?

Fed-EX.
Right - even though UPS only charges US$8.00 and FED-EX costs US$14.00, you're going to go with FED-EX because you and I are both going to feel better going with the FED-EX brand. It's the same product. If you look at that example from a rational point of view you would go, "Why would you pay someone twice the amount of money to do the exact same job?" That's the proof that the brand is an emotional connection.

But you can't really have everyone experience an emotional connection to every product.
Why not?

Well, how am I going to feel an emotional connection to a lamp?
Ok, let's change the vocabulary - instead of saying emotional, let's put non-rational. Because you're not going to run up and hug and kiss a lamp, but you may feel better about a certain lamp. And the fact that the choice of that lamp is not a rational decision means that it's a non-rational decision. It comes from someplace other than price value, you just feel better about going with it for whatever reasons. And the thing is everybody out there tends to overlook what they cannot quantify in charts, graphs, numbers and ledgers, but the human condition is completely on the other side of that.

So branding is not quantified, but it works time after time?
I possess the particular gift of tying the qualitative properties of something with a quantifiable rational in a way that appeals to the using public in a very compelling way. And one of the ways I do that is by recognizing the mistake almost every brand makes: they beat their chest, get up on a rock and tell everybody how fabulous they are. This is instead of saying, "Come here, I'll help you find a size six. Don't worry about how fabulous I am. Let me help you. What do you need?" That's what they should be saying. All of my brands do that.

So you're really saying the company and the product lose their ego in exchange for the customer's ego and the customer's ego is the one that's important.
Bingo, right! And that comes down to Frankel's Prime Directive, and that is "Branding is not about getting your prospects to choose you over the competition, branding is getting your prospects to see you as the only solution to their problem." You'll find this on my site, on my tapes and in my books. It's one of the most important concepts to understand in branding.

It's not your problem (the company's problem), it's not about what you sell, it's about what they buy. And that's the biggest problem these guys have and that's why they need people like me to come in. I do all the branding from the outside in, I don't need to know all about their company, I merely need to know why I should believe in their brand in terms that it means something to me.

Continued...