By Robert Wheatley

Image c/o Getty Image

When I first got started in the PR business, I was impressed with our unique ability to bring a higher standard of proof, credibility and demonstration to new products and brand promises. But additionally I was concerned by an all-too-frequent focus on tactics (read: publicity) and what appeared to me to be an absence of connecting the dots between our work and business strategy. You know the old saying, “if the only thing you do is a hammer then the answer to every problem will be a nail.”

Just seemed to me that a stronger business proposition was to help client’s better understand their barriers to growth and success – before applying the cure. And in doing so to make sure the remedy laddered back to specific business outcomes, not fuzzy claims of “increased awareness.”

My first attempt at changing the view that PR was the province of press releases came in the form of a brand guidance plan developed for a regional food company called Nalley’s Fine Foods, based in Tacoma, Washington. My client didn’t ask for the plan, instead I treated this as “extracurricular” homework that might open the door to a larger playing field for our firm. It did.

In its day Nalley’s was a successful brand playing effectively in categories dominated by national stalwarts like Kraft, Frito-Lay and Vlasic – from salad dressings to snacks, canned meals, pickles and other packaged food categories. The platform I worked on was a refined recipe for go-to-market strategy and new product development behaviors appropriate for a business that sat in between generic store brand and large national players.

To get it done I had to study the categories and more fully acquaint myself with the channels of distribution and the growth drivers within each product category my client was competing in. There was no mention of PR in the brief. It was a great exercise and I learned a lot. The client was impressed that a PR guy would come to the table with this sort of perspective. Their opinion of what we did and were about changed. It was interesting to watch the transformation in their views and opinions. The experience had an impact to this day.

Wheatley & Timmons is a unique joining of similar strands of thinking – that the craft of editorial and social media forms of communication are enhanced and our value to clients improved as we marry our great creative work more closely to brand strategy guidance and the consumer insights required to make that leap.

It would probably be easier just to continue cultivating our best practices along traditional lines and devote all of our energies to being great tacticians. We think that’s table stakes. We fundamentally believe the world needs a better, more strategic PR firm and so we’re not satisfied with the traditional scope. My partner, Rich Timmons, shares this view and it’s our collective mission to redefine what a PR firm is all about. Missionary work to be sure given the perceptual baggage we carry with us — that “get me on Oprah” thing.

I couldn’t be prouder of the great people who’ve joined our team and their ability to embrace our calling and to deliver on this promise every day in the services we provide. It’s a challenge, but I think part of what makes you successful is your willingness to embrace a higher calling – to tackle something that goes beyond the communications training you’ve had. Makes you stretch.

Have we got it all figured out? Not by a long shot. Everyday is a learning experience, a chance to grow and refine our premise and our capabilities to deliver. We remain steadfastly determined on this path. Persistence can be a great ally, so we forge ahead and believe it’s by “demonstrating and doing” that all of this comes to life. This agency’s work for Sargento Foods is an example of bringing new perspective and ideas to the table about a brand’s future business opportunities in their category. Much the same as Rich and our team has done to such dramatic effect for Thermos brand and for Crescent in the art framing business.

We’re in the early stages of a new relationship with Crown Imports and the Corona beer franchise. It’s exciting. And not just because we know the beer business, but also we believe we can play a measurable role in helping improve their business outcomes and relevancy to a consumer — who is evolving right now.

The future

We believe that earned media (various forms of editorial media from conventional to digital) will continue to be vital but also see incremental growth for “owned” media – content created, published and distributed by brands themselves. Technology now allows us to leapfrog reporters, editors, producers and other media gatekeepers, to talk directly to consumers in environments that are more interactive and thus seen as honest.

Profoundly we see the mix of media solutions moving to embrace social platforms and other venues where brands and consumers can meet each other on more equal terms. Thus the over-arching need for relevancy between brand propositions and the lifestyle interests of their users.

One lesson remains true, from the days with Nalley’s to our work at Wheatley & Timmons over the next ten years: whatever we do in communications must be tied to a foundation of consumer insight and understanding. It’s what will inform our future and our ability to change and improve the growth path of the brands we represent.

I for one am looking forward to it. Cheers…

Some say branding is dead; really?

By Bob Wheatley

A recent post by Sonia Simone of Copyblogger posed a question the other day, is branding dead?. The comments that followed quickly descended down the trail to tactics and thus left the real conversation about brand value and moved on to communication.

• Many interpreted the decline in conventional media platforms as evidence that branding is indeed on the respirator in the marketing ER ward. That, I think, entirely misses the point of brands and branding.

Branding by the way is not about logos, Web sites, events, advertising or any other form of outreach. Just for fun let’s play with this a minute. If brand didn’t matter, what would? In marketing, if all products were essentially generic and stood solely on their features then lowest price would be the primary driver of commerce.

We would naturally gravitate to the cheapest car, toilet paper, jeans, beer and shop the cheapest channels, probably dollar stores. Evolution here would be 50-cent stores or perhaps the return of the old Five and Dime idea our prices are so low you have to stoop to pick them up. Segmentation would dry up as the high end falls away. Efficiency, cost effectiveness, frugality and economy would be the lexicon of product communication.

But that’s not going to happen, is it?

Last time I looked we were still human beings and thus are essentially emotional, social creatures. We love, we laugh, we cry and we care. We get mad and get even. Our lives gain greater meaning when we participate in something that’s larger than ourselves.

We have needs for recognition, esteem and personal pride. We feel good about successes and disappointed at times in failures. We want, we desire. We reach and dream. Some of us have aspirations and drive. Others are content to sit inside their comfort zone, hopeful that the status quo and familiar will remain in tact.

Do products and services play any role in our lifestyles, in our human-ness?

At times we literally wear brands because of the statement or cachet they imbue. Certain brands convey meaning that is at once obvious to others such as Mercedes as luxury auto. And might also suggest social and economic status messages, too.

There are brands that matter to us, that deliver meaning and therefore added benefits. Our experience with them ladders up to a form of joy. I can give you a new take, for example, on my iPhone. I love everything about it — the ease-of-use; it’s functionality and design. But when I started to add App-store games my six-year old daughter could play with glee, delight and a smile, suddenly I had a portable amusement center. What fun. Now it’s value to me has accelerated. Thus my attitude towards Apple grows thicker, closer. The extra investment cost is soooo worth it.

I will admit to a personal indulgence: I love Robert Graham shirts. They are unique, well made, stylish and fashionable. I probably have a dozen of them. They are not cheap. Oddly enough, however, when compared to designer name plain dress shirts, the Graham products are a bargain. I feel good when I wear them, sort of a signature thing. I get compliments, people notice the distinctive fabrics, even the little touches like different patterns inside the cuffs and collars

Probably all of us can tell similar stories about things we enjoy, that matter to us, that perform beyond the utility of their ability to provide warmth or sustenance. Organic Valley dairy products are more expensive. But I like their ethos of supporting family farms and the absence of hormones in the milk is something I prefer for my young daughters.

Brands are indeed conveyed by their names. Many of these ideas however require building, investing, communicating to help us fully embrace their worth and meaning. But the thing itself gains equity in our lives because of the emotions we associate with them. Mostly good feelings for the items we care about vs. the commodities we don’t and wish just to purchase cheaply.

Branding is not dead. Branding will never be dead. Unless of course we’re all replaced by robots. The intersection of commerce and humanity guarantees it. While communications techniques and media forms may indeed evolve, the role products and services play in our lives will endure. The emotional fabric that sits between us and the things we like will continue, too.

Our firm is all about brand building. (I love my work). And while what we do in PR communication is increasingly moving to social media platforms, our efforts to help clients better define brand value and positioning is as right as rain, the sun rising and the world turning.

Makes me happy. Especially because brands now grow on the basis of their ability to define, understand and mine consumer lifestyle associations. Said another way to become enablers and facilitators of their consumer’s interests and aspirations. To earn permission for a relationship. Hey, wait a minute. We just might be in the happiness business.

How about you???

Commodities can be successfully branded…

By Robert Wheatley

Ok, you can stop laughing now. No really. Yes, this is me. I said stop laughing. Anyone hazard a guess on when??

Try 1977. Hopefully that helps explain the hair and stache combo. For those of you not old enough to get the era, the look actually was fairly typical for a guy of my 25 years at the time. This was my first job in PR after a short stint promoting rock concerts. Rocker boy turned farmer? Hardly. The assignment was for the King County government – surrounding the city of Seattle. I was working on a truly innovative project that eventually helped my boss, John Spellman, get elected Governor of the State of Washington.

This newspaper story was about me and what I was up to – sort of a local boy does good treatment. So here I am, standing in a field in front of a tractor, and yes, this farm is in the city. No I did not grow up on a farm and have never milked a cow.

Preserving Urban Agriculture

Not that I’m necessarily the tree-hugging type, but I really thought this project, in its day, was innovative and certainly precedent setting. I had this idea to put a brand identity (King County Fresh) on local produce, honey, and other agricultural products farmed in the urban environs. The t-shirt I’m wearing, a sort of bright Kelly green with reversed out white graphic showcased the Fresh logo, used on POP materials, product stickers and in transit ads to promote the effort. The goal: help create a stronger economic climate that would help keep urban agriculture viable at a time when farmland was disappearing faster than you can say, “Hey, is that a new shopping mall?”

The public policy concept at the time was revolutionary, only Long Island near New York City was also on the same track – to purchase the development rights to farmland, preserving their agricultural use — thus ensuring a steady flow of fresh products into the local market place.

Brands and Value-Added Meaning

I wanted people to know about and be able to recognize locally grown products. The difference in freshness and taste is remarkable. And our research suggested that people (voters) wanted to support local farms and help preserve them. So the King County Fresh campaign was novel in its day –intended to imbue some of the emotional values of branding on commodities like lettuce, corn and melons. The end game: consumers could vote with their pocketbooks to select local products stickered with the Fresh logo or merchandised in a retail section with POP material that showcased the identity.

Media got up for this because statistics revealed local farmland was going the way of the parking lot at an alarming rate. Farmers got excited because they felt it was THEIR brand. Supermarket retailers?? Whole other story because their buying systems had to be interrupted to get local products in the warehouse. Local independent markets were all over it.

It took two trips to the well with the voters, but we eventually succeeded in getting a $65 million bond issue passed to finance the development rights acquisition deal. Spellman, a Republican, got a lot of credit for this and voila, off to the Governor’s mansion, and me off to the agency business with Ogilvy & Mather in 1979.

I have never forgotten the great lesson of the moment, that a profound idea can be captured in an image and then used as a rallying platform to build business and secure fans. In this case, to benefit local farmers and eventually get voters behind an initiative that would keep the fresh cucumbers in those wonderful stalls at Seattle’s unique Pike Place Market.

So are apples, apples? Only if you let them be. Can a head of lettuce stoke emotional bonds? Incredibly, yes. Marketing and communication is such a powerful thing. It’s why I get up in the morning excited to jump into the fray.

Restaurant brands on hunt for fresh territory…

By Robert Wheatley

If ever there was a subject relevant to brands today, elasticity has to be in the top 10 as businesses work overtime to uncover new markets, segments and business opportunities while consumers remain choosy and conservative in their spending habits.

The question marketers must ask themselves – how far can you go from the center of what your brand stands for? Is there a place along the path of stretching where a brand’s core equity is diluted? How do you decide where fresh business opportunities can be cultivated without risking your franchise in the process?

USA Today has an interesting story by Bruce Horovitz that chronicles the wide array of menu moves by top restaurant chain brands to attract new customers. You start to see a sort of food form encroachment begin to develop as brands add new products, adjust mainstays and expand menus to lure in more diners.

KFC goes grilling
Pizza Hut rolls pasta
McDonald’s pours espresso drinks
Boston Market tries crispy chicken
Arby’s re-casts beef sandwiches as burgers
Dominos hits subs and pasta-filled bread bowls

Horovitz wonders aloud, “could sushi at Taco Bell be next?

Marketers may agree what distinguishes brands from one another is their category leadership and distinctiveness in the restaurant trade with a particular menu item as Starbucks is to gourmet coffee. McDonald’s believes they can be effective in this space because the brand pioneer Starbucks has sufficiently elevated the espresso experience. The democratization of gourmet coffee arrives at a moment where broad market tastes have expanded far enough to embrace the richer espresso brew.

This is tricky territory. The annals of marketing are filled with attempts by brands to expand their markets that have eventually led to various forms of implosion. Once thought to be the grand experiment in the automobile industry, Saturn – a new kind of car company – makes the error of trying to trade up from its core competency as an inexpensive entry level auto brand and thus dilutes what made it famous in the first place.

Owning the reference standard for your category…

Al and Laura Ries excellent book, “War in the Boardroom” reminds us of the fundamentals of successful positioning and the goal to own key words or a concept in the consumers mind.

Energy drink = Red Bull
Driving machine = BMW
Heavy motorcycle = Harley
Search = Google
Books = Amazon
Never loses suction = Dyson
Athletic shoe = Nike

When brands in the name of innovation move too far afield of what thy stand for, the consumer gets confused, the core equity is diluted, the brand becomes less meaningful to its devoted fans.

Navigating the call for stretch…

The starting point in this conversation begins with asking this question: what do you stand for? And within that conversation remaining clear that all things to all people is a proven recipe for trouble. The consumer world today appreciates expertise, craftsmanship and uniqueness more than they desire predictability and uniformity.

Short-term gains should never be bought by mortgaging the legacy of a strong brand. So in this conversation less will always be more. Stretches must be handled with care and once on that path great discipline will be required to steer around further moves that go beyond the arena you own in the consumer’s mind. If your path remains emotionally relevant to your core competency then consumers are more likely to accept your ability to deliver well in the new business you’re entering.

The second level of assessment has to do with credibility and believability in terms of what you do best. Will the consumer accept your playing in a new segment naturally? If it feels forced or you’re treading into waters owned by another that gives question to your adjacent category competence, it may be best to forgo the potential balance sheet pluses in favor of longer term franchise building.

The preeminent goal for all successful brands – being highly differentiated. Will your plans support that objective or detract from it over time?

What’s your view on stretching?

Talking to consumers like a friend opens the dialogue

By Robert Wheatley

Seth Godin had a terrific post today. It begins with the premise that most marketing is aimed at recruiting new customers — thus the object of a brand’s obsession is very often going to be a stranger. He compares this to the paradigm of friendship where openness to an exchange of ideas is organic. Strangers are harder to talk to and convince of anything than a friend – whom you have motivation to listen to.

Let’s expand on this idea to describe a basis for effective brand communication strategy…

What are the characteristics of a good friendship? Perhaps mutual respect and affection are evident. When you interact with a friend you listen. Intently. You are patient. You care about their aspirations and concerns. You look for ways to be helpful. You give before you get. There’s a bond there that operates in parallel with some measure of compatibility – like-mindedness that serves to energize and put forward momentum into the relationship. Compatibility by the way usually arises from shared interests.

More often than not, business and marketing plans treat consumers as objects to sell to. The communication is built on a presumed clinical exchange – I make a great product and use my marketing plan to inoculate you with reasons why it is better than the other options, then you believe me and buy my stuff – and so the great cycle of consuming life continues. But now for the most part consumers have learned the tricks of the trade and remain systemically skeptical of push-style messages of self-proclaimed benefits, preferring mostly to ignore them.

So what are the fundamental underpinnings of effective communication in today’s wired and transparent world? How do you create the kind of communication that results in brand preference leading to a sale?

Talk and walk like a friend…

Sounds simple enough but to actually do this has tremendous implications for how you go to market, how you view the customer relationship in your operations and certainly in your communication – both content and channel.

Here’s the short form recipe for brand/consumer friendship:

To create and foment compatibility you must understand the personal interests and passions of your target consumer.

You need to identify ways your brand can help enable and facilitate those passions that can breed connective tissue between the consumer’s lifestyle and your brand – we call this finding your brand’s Higher Purpose.

Start a conversation. This has implications for use of social media platforms. It impacts the manner and tone of your messaging. It invites openness, feedback and discourse.

What about the experience the consumer has with your business and brand, is it friendly, is it fair and based on acknowledging the shared goals of a friendship?

There has to be genuine care for your consumer’s welfare – you can’t fake it. You give to get. Reciprocity is at the core of how a brand earns a place in the consumer’s life.

By Robert Wheatley

Motivated humans not processes build brands and business

In the end all brands and organizations are led, developed and built by people. It is our expertise, vision and decisions that impact what we do, what we sell and how we go to market.

All processes and tactics aside, behind every business are the individuals who pilot the ship and make things happen. Sure businesses have a certain amount of inertia and momentum based on their history and other “entrenched” conditions that seem to push things forward no matter who is in the drivers seat. But I see this always as a glass half full or half empty proposition.

People can take something that’s successful and make it much more so. Witness the deluge of press about Steve Jobs, his influence on Apple’s progress to date and thus the alarm over a leave of absence. He is an inspirational, iconic figure and no doubt a driver within the company for innovation and ideas.

However, we ALL have the capacity to make a difference, to be extraordinarily influential in defining a new destiny for the businesses and brands we’re helping build. Sure you can see yourself as a functionary, an important cog in a good machine. For the most part I think it is human nature to enjoy, seek out comfort and to resist discomfort. So fear holds many people back from doing the extraordinary. Why? Because there is risk involved. There is always potential for a mistake to occur. Compounded further by the thought that criticism of a bad performance may be lurking in the wings.

There’s that little knot in the pit of your stomach when you believe your head is out there, exposed.

Head Liners

I say it’s time we all step up to be Head Liners. To put ourselves out there. To enjoy and embrace the discomfort and purposefully disrupt the environment around us when we feel the natural tug to get too comfortable.

That said there is also a magic ingredient underneath that helps this process along!!

Empowerment…

Our organization is in the thralls of change as we make improvements in our structure to help position the agency for incremental growth. Two of our key people have been asked to step up and take more responsibility. In parallel with this added charge comes empowerment: permission and authorization if you will to make key decisions and implement them without inordinate oversight or interference.

The idea of empowerment springs from trust, confidence and faith in the individuals who receive it. The effects are fascinating to observe. Empowered people move with palpable enthusiasm, with dedication, with ideas, with strength, with passion, with grace under pressure, with confidence and wisdom. It’s a form of “permission” that can unleash the limitations we self-impose at times.

All this is vital and important in a business driven by the ideas and experience of people. So who knows, if we continue down a path of empowerment, what could happen? What do you think?

“>Raising the bar on fundamental skills and services in our tenuous relations with the press

On any given day, people bearing the moniker of PR consultant reach out to reporters and editors with story ideas. This process will yield results based on the quality of what is presented, how it is packaged and its relevance to the media channel approached. Unfortunately, on occasion, minor league “professionals” in the field demonstrate that cliched views held by some reporters about PR people are indeed true – as often feted in the laughable fictional portrayals of movies and TV shows.

At a basic level, clients expect their investments in public relations services to result in effective translation of their brand or corporate messages in editorial media channels. Our role in the media relations and publicity process – what we often refer to as media placement activity – is to re-cast brand messages within a defensible, salient and newsworthy story idea. Media is not in the business of doing commercials for business – a story can bear a commercial quality that achieves the client objective – but, most likely, it will be positioned inside a broader problem/solution presentation or other vehicle that meets the news value and reporting requirement that drives the editorial media business.

At its optimal level, media relations should revolve around constructing a trustworthy, symbiotic relationship between PR and the press. We, in the PR arena, should be reliable sources of well-packaged and properly researched content. A strong outsource of material that helps feed the “media monster” with its un-ending need for top quality story material. All interests are served when the product in question is built on story telling that is interesting, relevant, truthful, entertaining and assembled in a manner that is also respectful of editorial sensibilities – such as the use of outside third party quote-able sources.

Professional development is a big thing at Wheatley & Timmons. We believe our reputation with the media – as a reliable source of news content – is just as important as our reputation with clients. In an effort to continually improve our work in editorial placement, we recently invited a panel of reporters/producers to participate in a media relations roundtable at our offices for the purpose of discussing the ins and outs of what they need, and how best to build an effective working relationship. We heard familiar stories of ham-handed efforts by the untrained or oblivious novices who harangue reporters with stories that are devoid of news, lack of responsiveness to reporter queries on deadline and other assorted miss-steps. As a professional this can be agonizing to hear.

We should work together to exorcise our profession of fluffy, self-serving publicity efforts that immediately fail the time-honored “so what and who cares” test. Or the absence of doing basic homework on media properties, their specific audiences and editorial slant – without this knowledge stories that are not relevant to a news organization’s preferences are pushed their way without regard to its usefulness.
Or worse, marginalizing this important work by moving the activity far down the internal food chain to relatively inexperienced people – even interns – who are made to “dial for media dollars” in an attempt to remind reporters over and over again about a story they simply can’t and won’t use.

Standards of practice should be maintained that demand professionalism and integrity at all times in the work put out there for editorial consumption. This is ultimately respectful of the role reporters play in reporting, as well as our role as communications experts, In the end, clients are better served when their media relations team truly understands what those two words mean and how to walk the fascinating line between the needs of commerce and the requirements of news organizations. These two worlds can be bridged successfully, but only when the developers of news material and ideas make the effort to build the story the same way a reporter, editor or producer would handle it themselves.

I love this quote from Bob Greenberg’s most recent column in ADWEEK magazine: “Newly empowered consumers, equipped with all the consideration tools the new marketing era affords them, will vote irrelevant brands ‘off the island’ at a quickening pace. Avoiding this fate will require nothing short of reinvention – of brands, of client organizations and of agencies.”

Brand relevance is front and center the most commanding and also perplexing challenge businesses face. It forces us all to think differently about the roots and fabric of what a brand is, what it stands for and how it interacts with consumers.

Redefining your destiny

The pathway to relevance, I believe, begins with your soul. Yes, most brands have them, some certainly more than others. But soul is about a higher calling, a more broadly defined purpose that gets beyond features and benefits and into things that matter most to consumers. What makes life interesting isn’t so much about the goals and achievements as it is the journey itself. So what higher purpose can a brand aspire to that reaches beyond the core aspects of the product itself?

A diaper brand understands the compelling importance of successful parenting as a predominant theme with new mothers and fathers, and moves to intersect with that driving interest. The food brand sees the passions some people have for creative expression and experimentation in the kitchen, and works hard to help their consumer realize the road to tantalizing food adventures. Identifying a higher purpose is about moving the focus from navel gaze to consumer-centricity. It’s about them, not us. The more we think about them, the more we open the door to reciprocal behavior – earning the right to a relationship.

You get me, understand me, know me

What is the happy intersection of interest, passion and compatibility? You might say it’s a good marriage, and right you would be. Not far a-field from this relationship metaphor, the same rule applies to successful brands. If a brand puts itself in a league with the interests and passions of consumers, by defining first its higher purpose, there is a shot at that magic moment when a consumer says quietly to themselves: they get me. We should all be so fortunate for this moment to occur early and often. Relevance is about knowing and maybe even loving the consumer. If we truly love them then the relationship isn’t just transactional, it’s about meaning that connects with what consumers actually care about.

Relevance, meaning and value

Remember the old retail axiom, “the customer is always right.” Stretch that a bit further, and more globally, and it should read – “the customer is it, period.” Business is no longer about sales and market share, it is about securing and keeping fans. The onus is on brand stewards to find and mine the touch points of emotional resonance that creates the basis for a real relationship.

For a fashion brand it is recognizing that powerful sense of self, expression of personal style and creativity – as seen through the eyes of those who appreciate fashion and fashion-able-ness. For an adult beverage brand it’s seeing beyond the bottle to embrace the social connections to people, relationships, laughter, memories and personal adventure that the product could help facilitate. Too often we’re down in the trench focused on ourselves and our competitors, and not enough on finding the love. Either we start investing in this kind of thinking, or as Bob Greenberg says, it’s going to be “off the island” – and sooner rather than later.