Category: marketing

Books that matter: Kim Campbell reviews BrandSimple

For the latest in this blog’s “books that matter” series, reader Kim Campbell offers her take on the one book she recommends any higher ed marketing or branding professional read. Kim describes herself as “one of those ex-corporate America types who now calls higher ed home.” She works with a small marketing shop at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kan., and survives on unmentionable amounts of coffee.

BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed

Review by Kim Campbell

BrandSimpleYou might say that Allen Adamson knows a thing or two about building strong brands. As a managing director at Landor Associates, he’s worked on brands such as Sephora, Verizon and PepsiCo. Adamson’s book, BrandSimple, is a quick read that might jolt your marketing or communications team back to reality. While written from a broad perspective, Adamson gets right to the point – the best brands are different.

It somewhat goes without saying that in higher ed: We all think that our college or university’s brand is, well, different. Different than the other private or public institution down the street, different than the community college in our metropolitan area, and different than our brand used to be 20 years ago. We sometimes do things just for the sake of being different. But is our school’s brand, or the brand we’ve created for a certain campaign, really different? Does it stand for something that emotionally engages people with our institution or cause?

This is where BrandSimple offers some wisdom that stands the test of time. The best brands are built on difference, but this difference must be both meaningful and relevant.

Through Adamson’s DREK process, he lays out four pillars that successful brands are built on:

  1. Difference – what makes your brand unique
  2. Relevance – how appropriate is that difference for the audience you want to reach
  3. Esteem – how well regarded is your brand in the marketplace
  4. Knowledge – how well consumers know and understand your brand

Together, these four pillars are an excellent diagnosis tool when it comes to taking stock of your school’s institutional brand or perhaps the brand you’ve created for a particular campaign.

Too often even the best of us go all in on a creative concept. We get caught up in an idea and forget that there are thousands of good, creative ideas competing for the attention of key audiences. We forget that it’s typically the simple, different ideas that resonate – ideas that are built on an appropriate difference.

Books that matter: C.K. Syme reviews ‘Groundswell’

Welcome to the third installment of this blog’s “books that matter” series of book reviews in which I ask a fellow higher ed marketing or communications person to review his or her pick for the most important book all people in our field should read. This review comes from C.K. Syme (@cksyme), an expert in crisis communications and the author of a nifty little ebook titled Listen, Engage, Respond: Crisis Communications in Real-Time.

Groundswell: Living in a World Transformed By Social Technologies

Review by C.K. Syme

groundswell“The groundswell is a social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.”

So begins the 2011 expanded and revised version of my first social media bible: Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. There is no other book I’ve read in the last 16 years that has shaped my strategic communications philosophy more than this book.

Understanding how to work with the groundswell and influence it will give you a voice there. And this book is deliciously rich in research and case studies.

The first edition was written in 2006.  It doesn’t seem like long ago, but social media years are like dog years — it was ages ago.

Two huge takeaways I learned when I read the first edition in 2006 that are still true today:

1. The groundswell isn’t the tools. The tool du jour is just the channel the groundswell uses to do life. Knowing the tools isn’t power. Understanding the groundswell is.

2. The world of personal data is changing. The power of traditional demographics is not enough. The new kid on the block is psychographics, or social technographics. Using data from the social graph, I can now access much deeper and more impacting data than demographics ever gave me.

My biggest takeaways from the new version (quotes or paraphrases from the book):

  1. The groundswell is a collision of three forces: people, technologies and economics. And on the internet, traffic equals money.
  2. The groundswell is inside organizations as well as outside. The same principles and practices engage internal and external constituencies.
  3. Technologies come and go. Concentrate on the relationships. Chasing technology is like trying to jump on a speeding merry-go-round.
  4. Listening to the groundswell is critical to engaging it.
  5. To understand the groundswell, you need to know the dynamics of the participants. A strategy that treats everyone alike will spell failure.
  6. The social technographics ladder is the key to content strategy. To ignore it is to invite failure (see #5).
  7. When trying to tap into the groundswell, clarity of objectives will make or break your strategy.
  8. Always consider your customers and what they will participate in, not the coolest and latest stuff you think will bring them in.
  9. The groundswell trend is unstoppable.
  10. Your brand is whatever your customer says it is.
  11. To profit from listening, you need a plan to act on what you hear.
  12. Online buzz can lead directly to sales.
  13. The marketing funnel has outlived its usefulness as a metaphor.
  14. Engagement pays off.
  15. Every business operation is enriched by understanding and working with the groundswell.

If you’ve read the book, please feel free to add to the list in the comments. I’d like to hear what you think.