Developing the Right Brand Affiliations

When people ask me what I do at Geyser Marketing, I say that "we create strategic brand affiliations that help our clients sell more and keep their customers loyal, longer". For the most part, I usually have to follow that up with a specific example starting with the words "you know when....." Because unless they are well versed in marketing jargon, they usually look back at me like I am speaking Chinese or some other foreign language.

We see it everyday. Brands partnering together for a short-term tactical promotion or a longer term strategic relationship in which they share customers, communications and budgets to help each other with their marketing objectives. And should you be wondering.... Here are some of those "you know when......." Examples:

• Dell Computers are often bundled with special offers from related companies like AOL
• Samsung MP3 Players come pre-loaded with Digital Music Tracks from companies like Puretracks.com
• Papa Johns Pizza partners with Blockbuster to promote free Videos to those who order
• CIBC gives 10,000 Aeroplan miles as a signing bonus when you open a credit card account with them.

The aforementioned marketing partnerships have been developed with a goal to sell more and lose less to competitors and you know what? They Work. Some of them are extremely strategic and often form the foundation for their overall marketing strategy. If executed correctly, marketing partnerships can be extremely rewarding for your business. The key is to have some answers to the following questions before engaging in a Marketing Partnership:

1. What target audiences are you after?
2. What Assets does your Brand bring to the table?
3. Does the Brand that you want to Partner with see the Value in the Relationship?
4. What do you want to make visible by your association to the other Brand and what are you looking for them to give to you in return?
5. Does the Brand that you want to Partner with reinforce your Core Brand Values?
6. Is the brand Relevant?
7. Does the Brand that you want to Partner with have the ability to Execute the program that you are putting together?
8. Have you outlined all the fine points of the relationship in a Joint Agreement and are both sides on the same page?
9. Have you set some targets and defined key success metrics for how the relationship will be evaluated and measured?
10. Have you agreed on who is responsible for what when it comes to launching the program?

Finally, strategic brand affiliations or marketing partnerships can work for companies of all sizes. You don't have to be a multi-million dollar company to affiliate to another brand and create a program that delivers mutual benefits!

Contact Me (ron@geysermarketing.com) if you want to discuss how we can help you develop great marketing partnerships for your brand!

Brand Values: How do your employees impact them?

I was sitting outside my Toronto home yesterday afternoon in an effort to get a change of scenery and catch up on some reading when a Canada Post delivery truck drove up and parked directly across the street. The driver was young, and was obviously unaware of his actions, yet the blaring 'death metal' music that was coming from the open windows of the truck did much more than unleash an unwanted soundtrack to my leisure time. It actually started to make me question whether or not the Postal Service has policies for how their drivers should behave when on their delivery route.

As Canadians, we all use Canada Post and interact with them just as much as, if not more, than with any other brand. They are the brand that we trust to get our correspondence, packages, gifts and other bits from our hands to others. Over the past few years, Canada Post has positioned themselves as the most reliable delivery service for Canadians who need to send items from point A to B and have reinforced the power of their network which reassures consumers that what they are sending will get there without interruption or delay.

Strategic partnerships with companies like Ebay.ca illustrate that they are innovative and in touch with Ecommerce trends and as time goes on, I am sure that they will do their best to be on-trend and offer Canadians the services that they need and want.

Still, that blaring 'death metal' music coming from the Canada Post vehicle was providing more than a soundtrack to my afternoon on the front porch. As the vehicle stayed parked and the driver got out and started to walk towards the homes to deliver the packages, I really started to get annoyed and began to wonder if anyone else was feeling the same way? Personally, I like all genres of music, yet this felt more like an intrusion than an enhancement. Should drivers of Canada Post vehicles cruise through neighborhoods throughout their work-day blaring such music? Should they raise the volume on any sort of music at all? Is Noise Pollution really what they are after here? I would think not, but who really knows for sure......

The end result is that as good a job as marketers can do to deliver communications and messages that reinforce brand values and position their brands, they still have to contend with employees who represent the brand and can have a positive or negative impact on what they are trying to do. This particular case is an obvious one. Employees who wear the uniform and drive the truck that is all decked out in Canada Post branding should represent the core values when doing their job. Blaring 'death metal' music while en-route impacts the brand negatively. Branding must be done on an internal and external level and it's important to communicate the values to those that work for the company, not just marketing partners and your customers. That is why employees need to be briefed and reminded of the core brand values of the brand and how that brand should be represented when they are on duty.

I just might give Canada Post a call to see how they feel about this sort of thing. Stay tuned...

Gotta love what you get in the Mail

What do Rogers , Bell Mobility and Loblaws have in common? All of them are leading Canadian consumer brands, yet more importantly, all of them continue to fall short of meeting my expectations as a customer. I don't know about you, but it's becoming more apparent to me like a fair percentage of the time that I spend interacting with the aforementioned brands results in what I would call 'bad customer experiences'.

Lets start with Bell Mobility . Earlier this month, they sent me a letter about a change to my prepaid mobile service. Normally, this would be fine, yet this time around, it was anything but OK, and here is why:

• The letter had the wrong address on it (I moved recently) and even though my monthly statements had been coming to the new address, for some reason this particular letter was still going to my old address creating cause for concern on my part, right from the start.
• The letter mentions "an upcoming change to the price of my prepaid service", but wait a minute... I don't have a prepaid service - I am on a monthly plan, aren't I?
• The letter then mentions that the "price of the Prepaid 911 service will increase from $0.75 to $1.00 per month" leaving me even more confused.
• Finally, after getting to the end of the letter, I make my way back to the top of it just to read it through again and notice that I am being addresses as "a valued Bell Mobility customer" which is now making me wonder about the relationship that I have with them because if I am "a valued Bell Mobility customer", then why don't they know where I live or what type of business I have with them?

As a result, I decided to give their Customer Service department a call and discuss the letter with them. After waiting on the line for almost 10 minutes, I finally got through to someone. I explained that the letter was sent to the wrong address, that the information was not accurate and that I was concerned about it. The person on the phone stated that the address that they have on file was in fact my correct address and that I got the letter "by mistake". Mistake? OK, everyone makes mistakes, but how can you make so many mistakes in just one piece of communication? The Customer Service agent didn't have much to say on the matter and offered me the opportunity to file a complaint, which I took her up on, yet somehow I don't think that I have seen the last of these mistakes.

After about 30 minutes of dealing with that, it was time to move on to my next piece of mail. This one came courtesy of Rogers . I opened the envelope and saw my monthly statement for the Cable TV and Internet services that I subscribe to. After looking at the details, the billing amounts did not seem to make sense to me, so I gave their Customer Service Centre a call. After almost 8 minutes of waiting on the phone and dialing through several options (because these companies sell everything now, soon they will sell bread and milk), I finally got thru to a young fellow at their call centre in New Brunswick. I explained my concerns with the billing amounts for the time period stated on my statement and he said that he would need to open my account in their system and have a closer look. He started off by telling me that because I recently joined the service, that the first bill would be for a longer period than the normal 30 day span. I then asked him to explain what I would normally be billed going forward to see if it corresponded to what I was originally told when I signed up with their services. After several minutes on hold, The Customer Representative advised that he could not provide that information because the system was frozen. As a result, he elected to transfer me to another representative. I agreed to stay on the line, yet what was particularly concerning was that when the other representative got on the phone, he did not know what I was waiting for or who I was? So, I had to re-explain why I was on the phone and what information I was looking for. After a few minutes of voicing my concern (for the second time now), he attempted to look in to the system to get me the answer I was looking for. After trying for a few minutes, he confirmed that the representative that I was on the phone with earlier, had locked the system and as a result, he could not access my account and would need to call me back later with the information that I was looking for. This was getting frustrating, yet what choice did I have? I asked him to get in touch with the representative that I spoke with earlier to see if he could have him unlock his system, yet he didn't know who that person was. As a result, I had no choice but to hang up and wait for their call. Well, it's been almost two weeks since I had that conversation and guess what - nobody has called back. Guess they have better things to do than to deal with customer concerns. Here are some key "take-aways" that the people at Rogers might want to consider:

1. When you bill a customer for the first time and the amount is more than what it will be going forward, you might want to clearly indicate that on the statement somewhere in plain and simple English.
2. If there is more than one Customer Representative working on a customer call, then they should know each other in case they need to get in touch with each other after transferring the call from one to another should they need to deal with a customers concerns and provide the best possible service.
3. If a customer representative says that he is going to call back the customer to address a concern, then they or someone from the organization should call back.

As you can see, my day was going great so far, so why not pursue another piece of mail? I glanced at the weekly circular from Loblaws and was happy to find Freeze Pops on sale. My wife loves those things and hey, it's summer time and nothing beats a good Freeze Pop on a hot day. I pointed the ad out to my wife when she got home from work. As we do most of our shopping at Loblaws, we figured that we would just pick them up the following day as we were heading out there anyway. The flyer was dated July 8th to 14th promoting the special on Freeze Pops and we made it to the store on July 9th. After making it over to the Freezer section of the store, we looked around for several minutes, yet the Freeze Pops were not there. I then went back to the front of the store to get another copy of the flyer because I wanted to confirm that I had not mistaken their flyer for a competitors. I was correct, the Freeze Pops were in there. We looked around the section over and over again, and to our disappointment, there was no display of Freeze Pops. We asked one of the floor managers about it and he came over to the section with us, and he could not explain why there was no Freeze Pops, yet he confirmed that they did not have them in stock and never have had those particular Freeze Pops on on the floor. "OK then", I said. It makes you wonder why companies advertise products and then don't have them to offer to customers, but this was clearly a case of misrepresentation. I was not impressed and once again, my experience at the store was not a great one. How about the guy working for Loblaws - do you think her was impressed? Will never know for sure, but it certainly provides food for thought.

Gotta love what you get in the Mail.