Bo Bäckman: IN/OUT – inner and outer Loyalty

There are many beautiful words about quality. Many goals about customer satisfaction.  Many programs for inner participation. Few combine the two in a systematic way to understand the connections that drives a Superbrand.
The key is to analyze the two simultaneously: Customer satisfaction and Employee engagement.

This article gives the foundations for a systematic fact based analysis of the two: Customer and Employee.

•    The Scope
•    The Tools
•    The Action

The Scope: in/out matrix
The input is web interviews with customers and employees. The questions are about experiences as customer and employee. In the analysis we identify what drives customer loyalty and employee participation – more specifically “What drives the feeling that you as an employee contribute to reaching the goals”. More about the drivers in the Tool section

The standing of the company is classified in the In/Out-Matrix

Feeling of Contribution: Internally anchored goals and a feeling of being needed
Loyalty: The ability to create loyal customers.

Interpretation of the 4-fields

Confused: Internally you do not know where you come into the company´s goals. The customers are disloyal and notice the irregular way they are met by the personnel.

Prepared: The business focus is anchored internally and you understand where you as employee come into the customer process. So far the customers are disloyal. They have not gained the new experience, they are not informed.

Ready: Everything works. The business idea is internally anchored and externally accepted.

Looser: The customers are still loyal but the flow of new customers is dying out. They do not want to pay for what we are trying to sell. Reality/the new market situation has run away from the company.

The tools
The goal is to identify the the factors that will drive change in the IN/OUT-matrix (or develop further what is already good.)

The results can be described  as: Leverage – It’s profitable to improve these factors as they drive both customer loyalty and inner participation.

The Action
Can basically be described as a Hitlist

You measure, take action and follow what is:
Important in order to drive improvement in the IN/OUT-Matrix. The Leverages that  form a Hitlist. What to do by whom to create a Superbrand. A Superbrand is a people business.

Bo Bäckman

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Personal Branding of an Artist.

17/2 2010

My first love was music.
I started doing shows and touring in my early teenage years.
We were underground rap.

Back in the 90’s the Swedish hip hop scene was booming, so it was all eyes on us, the newcomers. I had found a movement who accepted all and based your success only on your ability to create, this was all I knew, all I cared for. As a rapper, graffiti artist, DJ or break dancer, image was important, but the nr 1 ground rule was being “real”. So any image you would wear was never to be fictional, never more than an amplified version of your own persona. To this young boy growing up in his beloved culture of hip hop, this pointer was perceived more like a law than anything else.

This image, or public persona, of an artist who was one side of me, grew to be who I was, and in many ways, who i still am.

Hip hop culture introduced me to graffiti and street art which became the gateway to my second love: art, design and all kinds of creative language through graphics and imagery.

My inevitable wish to be seen, heard and well respected for my work was a driving force but what had me striving too obtain every goal I set up for my self in this new career was the love I felt. The love I have for translating what I see when I close my eyes and showing it of to them I love or whoever wants I glimpse of it. This became more and more important to me while my reputation as an artist grew. And as it is now, nothing is more important. I have always, since childhood, sought attention, but never wanted it unless I had accomplished something, it was my award. This was why the rap game was a perfect fit, and why later art and design became my way of expression.

What I am getting at is this: My career choices were based on personality and curiousness, so, much of my success was, to many ends, not by chance but a bit unintentional. Well inspired and experimenting with any technique I could get my hands on, I found several new arenas for expressing my self in my work. I carried a little bit of fame with me from rap when I made the transition to art and design, and the image I had became a sort of brand. My public personality turned into my company’s branding.

Being overly social and attending every and all functions was something you had to do as a musician and as an artist/designer I continued down a similar path. My connections in the music industry overlapped into my new field of work. Also with this social network the social medias was a natural tool. To keep all my geographically scattered friends updated on my work was my motivation, but seeing how my name grew with this too made me take it more seriously as I reached a new audience. Or stumbled over a new audience as it really were. The outlook on image, that was so well imbedded within me from rap, forced me to be true to this audience and not only show the work but to be personal with it.

Somewhere down this line, I turned out looking more and more like a public figure with my visual adventures, viral videos, live painting and much more. This wasn’t planed, but it works well for me. It’s not so much fame as it is reputation and to be honest I don’t know how to duplicate or make any kind of business model out of it, since it’s based on being real. Being the original of me.

It’s real simple: if they like me, and they like what I do, than they’ll hire me.

Simon Diamant Silfverberg

CEO of Fantasimon / co founder of Heart&Dagger / co founder of Galleri Silfverberg Silfverberg & Silverberg
www.fantasimon.com
www.fantasimon.blogspot.com

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Superbranding online conversations

10/2 2010

Will there be superbrands also in the future? Will we see the Coca Cola’s, the McDonald’s, the Apple’s or the Google’s in a future where the brand experience will be more personal and digital than ever before?

It’s a reasonable question, I think. The horisontal conversations and the formation of groups are unparallell to anything we have ever seen in human history. Evrything becomes individualised, personalised, diversified, distributed, and disrupted.

Scattered.

At the same time we look upon the giants. Honestly, do we see Apple or Google participating in the so hyped online conversation? One might argue that conversational marketing is nothing but binary cosmetics, and when push comes to shove, that it is all about the products and the services. Others might argue that these supernova brands don’t have to state their case – their ambassadors is doing it for them.

I would argue, that it comes natural for us as a species to state our independence and uniqueness as individual, but when it comes to our everyday lives, we are just creatures of habit.

Google are an amazing company and an amazing superbrand, but what would they be without the millions of people using their search engine? Every single innovation and long-tail line extension of the Google brand is part of an on-going forward motion, but mainly so becuse it reinforces the user’s habits.

Tell me, how often do you google something? How often do you listen to your Ipod?

You and I and everyone – we are creatures of habit since not everything can be a rational decision.That’s why it’s so easy for me to grab lunch at a McDonald’s restaurant I’ve never visited before, even though I’m sure there might be better local fast food around.

And that’s also why we will have superbrands in the future. And that’s why the online converation must add indirectly to the habitual behaviour or emotional triggers that connotes to the brand’s core business.

Jerry Silfwer

Jerry is a PR pro working at Springtime, Stockholm. Interested in PR for your brand? Check out his blog, Doktor Spinn and follow him on Twitter.

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The brand, The audience and The message

3/2 2010

When creating communication there are three things to consider, the brand, the audience and the message. Of course you cannot separate these three but depending on which one you focus, the outcome can be anything in a 360 environment, basically any concept in any media.

However if we focus on the digital world are there 3 pillars equal, or is one more important that the other when creating a concept and solution? Lets briefly look at an example of each of the three in practice.

When the brand pillar is high

Absolut have successfully taken their ‘no advertising’ brand communication one step further on the web by creating an Absolut world online. Online ‘In an absolute world’ focuses on creating experiences rather than running campaigns. Allowing their audience to engage in the brand and create their own messages, just as a long line of creators have done before them. In doing so Absolut have successfully made interacting with the brand reward enough.

When the audience pillar is high

Apple has long used the engagement of their almost religious audience, to create a somewhat unprecedented buzz for a product, even before any of them have even seen it. As we have just seen, with the recent pre-launch fever of their iPad, Apple are now benefiting from the wealth of new communication channels open to their audiences. In effect the results turn not only the end consumers but also respected media outlets into brand champions.

When the message pillar is high

When Spotify sparked to life they did not have a known brand or for that matter an audience. In fact they pretty much shut out their audience, allowing only people who received an invite to gain access to their service, for free. You could pay of course but why pay for it when you can get it free. This just drove the message home even harder, and a frenzy of invite hunting ensued. This in turn empowered the few audience members they had, making them guardians of the message and spreading the access to a chosen few.

We are constantly hearing how brands are now in the hands of their audience, and that the message is now a conversation and evidence of this can be clearly seen in all three examples above. However, I have seen many digital campaigns get so close to success, but somehow fail. Sometimes this is due to a lack one of the pillars and sometimes because they place equal weight on all three. The relationship between these three pillars is a fragile balancing act, and in the digital environment, is one that needs to be reviewed at the start of every campaign. Digital communication above all, needs to hit the nail on the head first time; there is little room for forgiveness out there.

Steinar Danielsen

Steinar Danielsen is the co-founder and Creative Director of Supernative, a digital communication agency based in Stockholm. He works with providing analysis, online strategies, creative concepts and digital identities, for a range of international brands.

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