I mailed Google last week. A technical question about geo-targeting in AdWords. They mailed back. No complacency. No avoiding the question. No generic waffle. Sure they are a sales orientated organisation but you feel like they are listening and they care about what you are saying, thinking and feeling. Like it or not they do that and a whole lot of other things brilliantly.
Afterthought one.
I remember someone telling me a while back that the single most important factor affecting whether a business is still in business 10 years after it starts is the strength of its brand. Yep, that makes sense.
Afterthought two.
But what determines the strength of a brand? Branding people talk about the core idea – the thing that drives an organisation, is what the organisation is about, what it stands for and what it believes in. Successful brands project that core idea across everything they do – their products, their environment, their communications and the way they behave. It drives consistency of purpose.
Afterthought three.
It’s all about people. It doesn’t matter how technical or digital your business is – people really matter. Your customers. Your staff. Your suppliers. I think if you can put that somewhere close to the core it’s going to make a big difference. Now more than ever. I think it’s going to be the single most important thing in determining the success of your brand in an open and networked economy. If not it should be.
Tags: branding, organisations, people management
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Following my recent blog posts about stuff like Agile marketing and ‘give it a go and see what happens’ and Developing a digital marketing strategy in the real world here’s something a bit more random and based on the stuff which rattles around in your head. My head anyway!
On my way into the office I cross a busy road junction and four pedestrian crossings. Sometimes the man is green … but sometimes the man is red. When the man is green I walk and so does everyone else. When the man is red I sometimes walk but more often than not everyone else waits for the man to turn green. That’s the rule. That’s the procedure for crossing the road safely. Sometimes the road is reasonably clear and with good timing and appropriate care you can still cross safely. Sometimes the road is entirely clear of traffic. But people still wait. Because that’s the rule.
Rules and procedures are there for a reason. They provide us with a prescribed direction and a basis for progressing a particular course of action. But we must think and make sure we apply the rules appropriately – in a way that does not prevent us from reaching our end goal, take us an unnecessarily long time to get there or even undermine the very thing we are trying to achieve.
But often people don’t think. In fact some rules are there so people don’t have to think. A pilot’s pre-flight checklist for example. But not all rules are like that. Not all rules are to be applied blindly and indisciminately. Sometimes it is safe to cross the road when the man is red.
Tags: organisations, process, random thoughts
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