Category: Branding Advice

Announcing the winner of the IABC Summit Day Pass!

One day pass to the 2012 IABC Canada Business Communicator’s Summit

So, pill first off, capsule deep apologies to all those who faithfully commented on or re-tweeted my “What is a Canadian” post and have been waiting to find out the winner of the one-day pass to the 2012 IABC Canada Business Communicator’s Summit.

Note to self: in the future, approved don’t volunteer to have a drawing on your blog until you figure out how it’s going to work! I’ve burned WAY too much time and Google-leather trying to figure out something that turned out to be very simple in the end.

So two credits before we get to the draw results:

1) This product: Backtweets allowed me to quickly and easily trace all the Tweets for my previous post through all variants and URL shorteners.

Here’s the result.
BackTweets

2) EHow.com + Microsoft Excel: the next problem was doing a random draw. I’ve used tools like TwitterDraw and RowFeeder before, but couldn’t figure out how to do both the hashtag AND the blog comments part of the equation.

But then I found this concise little post on how to just draw a random value in Excel. Took some manual typing, but it worked just fine.

Announcing the winner:

So here’s the winner of the one-day day pass. Michaela Schreiter of Ottawa, Ontario!

And thanks to all of these Twitter-folk ,as well as the IABC Board members and speakers for your comments and re-tweets! Really looking forward to Friday.

@Mandoo322 @whatsyourtech
@CoffeewithJulie @MinaFrancis1
@4L3x 4nd3r5on @Lauhop
@4WomensPassion @schreids
@vprocunier @traceyknudson
@basiav @Al3x_Ander5on
@herwheels1 @kess2000
@spydergrrl @OttawaFamily
@GlendaM @meaghan_quinn
@Informatician @steph345
@SaraJT

Airport branding: Heathrow kills the TLA BAA. Hooray!

London’s airport manager “BAA” to become… wait for it… “Heathrow”!

Beg to Differ celebrates the departure of a bad brand, the arrival of an old friend, and after the gates, wishes the grand old dame of British airports a successful baggage retrieval. (Oh, but don’t bother hailing a cab. Take the tube instead.)

London’s  airport manager “BAA” rebrands to… wait for it… “Heathrow”!

Beg to Differ celebrates the departure of a bad airport brand, adiposity the arrival of an old friend, and after the gates, wishes the grand old dame of British airport brands a successful baggage retrieval. (Oh, but mate: don’t bother hailing a cab. Take the tube instead.)

BAA humbug

If you’ve ever flown through London’s Heathrow Airport, or Glasgow, or Stansted you’d be forgiven for not knowing that you were actually in the hands of an entity called BAA – which once stood for British Airports Authority, but more recently became “BAA”, which stands for, well, not much at all. Because it was just another TLA (see previous rant here).

And now, in a stroke of brilliance (and possibly desperation), they decided to drop the three letter moniker. Here’s the story in brief:

It is the end of an era for BAA with the company announcing that the name is to be dropped in favour of stand-alone brands for its airports. Its airports – Heathrow, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Southampton and Stansted – will cease to be called BAA gateways from today.

So the company running Heathrow Airport will now call itself “Heathrow”? And didn’t spend a billion dollars doing it?  Wow. Unlike a lot of nonsense in the branding world, that actually makes sense!

I completely agree with the “Thumbs Up” verdict from Mark Ritson in the UK version of Marketing Week:

The simple rebranding of BAA as Heathrow might look pretty bleeding obvious to the untrained eye, but it’s a job very well done. Brand managers around the world should note how the strategy has been executed.

Indeed. And hopefully they also think twice before choosing a meaningless abbreviation, acronym, or impossible to spell “domain grabber” name as well.

I wish “umbrella brands” like “The Ottawa Hospital” (better known as the Civic Hospital, Riverside Hospital, and General Hospital) would take note of the other lesson here: Branding is the art of making sense. And stretching the idea of a Hospital – or an airport – to cover whatever you want it to? That just doesn’t make sense.

More reading:

 

Museum branding: the end of Civilization as we know it (and I feel fine)!

According to this article in the Ottawa Citizen, a major Ottawa-area institution will be getting a new name later today. The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau will become… well, we don’t know yet exactly. So before we find out, here are my three thoughts: 1) the old name, message, and mandate did need to change! 2) The new name *might* be an improvement, but 3) I have some suggestions for a few MUCH better names. Read on.

The name “Canadian Museum of Civilization” is about to become History. And it’s about time.

According to this article in the Ottawa Citizen, search   a major Ottawa-area  institution will be getting a new name later today. The Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau will become… well, adiposity we don’t know yet exactly. So before we find out, here are my three thoughts: 1) the old name, message, and mandate did need to change! 2) The new name *might* be an improvement, but 3) I have some suggestions for a few MUCH better names. Read on.

But before we get there, let me just say two things: First, museum branding is hard.  Second, I’m not a hater: I love  this museum. The building by Douglas Cardinal needs to be counted  among the most magnificent museums in the world. And the place is chock full of amazing artifacts from Canadian history and particularly native art and artifacts from PRE-Canadian history. And I don’t doubt when the  it the museum’s Web site claims that it is “the most popular and most-visited museum in Canada.”

So what’s so hard about museum branding?

1) The old “Civilization” name, message, and mandate

It starts right here: “Canada’s national museum of human history“. Really? Human history? That’s a big claim.

But it gets bigger, if you read the museum’s mandate from the Museums Act:

“To increase, throughout Canada and internationally, interest in, knowledge and critical understanding of and appreciation and respect for human cultural achievements and human behaviour by establishing, maintaining and developing for research and posterity a collection of objects of historical or cultural interest, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada, and by demonstrating those achievements and behaviour, the knowledge derived from them and the understanding they represent.”

All very noble and fine – and all deeply worthy subjects for study. But on visiting such a place, you’d probably expect to find something like the ground floor of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto. Egyptian mummies, Chinese pagodas – maybe East Indian or South American stone carvings.

But the actual museum experience isn’t anything like that. Here’s what you actually get:

  1. Magnificent Native art and exhibits: these are actually the elements that leap to mind FIRST when people think of the museum – and were the things my Dutch relatives most wanted to see when they came to town.  From the gorgeous curvelinear building to the magnificent native artworks and cultural artifacts from across Canada, this museum is defined by the tribute it pays to our First Nations.
  2. The permanent exhibits:  the main exhibits upstairs walk you through Canadian history. Period.  N0t human history. Canadian history.
  3. The Children’s Museum: a fun interactive space that kids LOVE. But it’s an odd Dora the Explorer mishmash of stuff from around the world that seems to be more about geography learning than about the “human history” of Civilization.
  4. The Imax movie theatre: that shows, well, anything and everything available on IMAX. Look at today’s roster from the Web site (right). Nature and geographic adventure films mostly. Oh, and one Maya thing that ties in to a special exhibit, which brings us to…
  5. Special exhibits: this is the only place where the “human history” mandate is actually apparent – with recent exhibits dealing with Maya, Ancient Egypt, and world-wide mythology. And of course, as the Citizen article points out, this is also where the museum gets most of its annual visitors, media coverage, and profit.

It’s hard to get a read on how curators make decisions about what fits into the “Civilization” mandate.

And that’s precisely the point of a good brand name / mandate. It needs to be narrow and focused enough to provide guidance to both visitors, employees, museum peers, and political decision makers.

2) The new museum branding is an opportunity to DIFFER!

But what should  they call it?

I humbly suggest the following:

  1. That the terms “history” and “Canada / Canadian” should anchor the name and description, BUT
  2. The specific combination “Canadian History” is too narrow. “Canadian Museum of History” or “Museum of Canadian Culture and History” would be better, BUT
  3. A purely descriptive name isn’t what I’d recommend. Every other major museum in town has a dry, descriptive name. As the big dog in town, this one has an opportunity to do some thing really different, particularly since every other major museum in the Capital uses really boring descriptive names. Only the small ones do anything interesting. “Diefenbunker”? Brilliant!

My suggestions:

Name it after a great native leader from Canadian History / Culture!

Try these  on for size:

The Tecumseh Museum
   of Canadian Culture and History  

The Chief Dan George Museum
   of Canadian Culture and History

The Douglas Cardinal Museum
   of Canadian Culture and History

The Chief William Commanda Museum
  of Canadian Culture and History

My favourite is the last one. Commanda, who died last year, was an amazing man with a direct Algonquin ancestral and spiritual tie to the land the museum is built upon.

Will the Conservative government do anything so classy and bold?

Probably not. But we can always hope. I’ll be back to update with comments this afternoon.

In the meantime, what do you think?

MUSEUM BRANDING UPDATE: They went with the “”Canadian Museum of History”. Sigh. Ah well.

Marketing speedbumps: barriers or “drempels”?

Sometimes, ambulance if we slow down, everyone wins

Speed, volume, efficiency. In marketing circles, we often talk about those things like they’re always Good Things (amen). But is that true? In the rush to push brands and “convert” prospects into sales, some also act like it’s good to act like drag-racing teenage douchebags barreling through established social communities… We Beg to Differ
Creative Commons Attribution: Photo by Flickr user twak.

I hate speed bumps

Right now there’s a big debate happening in my neighbourhood in Ottawa. The city is currently installing “traffic calming measures” like curb bump-outs, extra signs, and speed bumps.  Why? Because there’s a main road nearby that is always clogged at rush hour.  And the most impatient commuters use our quiet streets as a high-speed bypass to get home a tiny bit faster.

Now, as a driver, I hate speed bumps. And I’ll bet most drivers on the planet would agree: they’re a pain when you’re trying to get somewhere.

But as a parent of three kids under seven years old,  I suddenly see the other side of speed bumps. My kids walk and bike on those streets – and they play near them. And over the past few years, we’ve had more than our share of close calls with ignorant drivers swerving around corners and squealing tires (often eating their lunch and texting their girlfriends at the same time).

But funny thing: when I snap and yell “SLOW DOWN!” or shake my fist at the worst offenders, I feel like the social douchebag. Like I’m the one being impolite or breaking a rule.

Online, I feel the same way when I report a spammer, or yell at  the worst telemarketers who won’t shut up when I tell them I’m not interested AND IT’S DINNER TIME!!! See, there? I’m getting worked up again – being the bad guy. The jerk. The impolite one.

But I love drempels

Dutch man attempting to carry his wife over the drempel. Photo by Flickr user Demlin

If you’ve ever bicycled or driven in the Netherlands – the land where my parents were born – you probably recognize the sign in the photo above. Those signs are everywhere in the Dutch countryside, warning drivers to “Let Op” (let up) on their speed because there is a “Drempel” ahead.

A “drempel” can be loosely translated as “speedbump” but it’s actually more than that:

  • It’s a sophisticated system of speedbumps. In their crowded little country, the Dutch embraced the idea of “traffic calming” in the 1970s, and they’ve been at it much longer than we have. And have come up with a bunch of creative ways of keeping streets slow and safe. They invented the  Woonerf (living street) and have a whole taxonomy of different drempels for different purposes.
  • It’s a doorstep. The word “drempel” in Dutch also means “doorstep” or “threshold”. So a groom will carry his new bride over the drempel when they are starting a new life together.

So to me, a “drempel” is a word that does two things at once. It says “Slow down! Your priorities are different from the people that live here – and they were here first.” But it is also an opening – a threshold. Or in marketing terms, a moment of opportunity.

So slow down marketers. 

By slowing down you show respect for the locals.  Look around a bit more. Roll down your windows. Wave and smile, and maybe even stop to talk.

Learn to see the “drempels” as an opportunity. A chance to deepen your connections and adapt to the character of that particular road. A chance to improve the neighbourhood rather than just a user of it.

What do you think? Any good examples of drempels in your life online?

 

How to speak Bizbabble in one easy step: DON’T!

Last week, I was excited to hear that Mitel, founded by Ottawa high tech stalwart Sir Terry Matthews, had released a revolutionary new product. So as a loyal Ottawa geek eager to talk up the new device to my network, I hastened over to Mitel.com to find out more. I found this instead. And I Beg to Differ.

Try your customer’s language instead: it’s called “Human”

Last week, cure I was excited to hear that Mitel, founded by Ottawa high tech stalwart Sir Terry Matthews, had released a revolutionary new product. So as a loyal Ottawa geek eager to talk up the new device to my network, I hastened over to Mitel.com to find out more. I found this instead. And I Beg to Differ.

I call it “Bizbabble”:

“Bizbabble”: (n) a set of words arranged by well-meaning business communicators in such a way that they look like they should mean something to a human of average intelligence, while utterly failing to actually help anyone understand the thing being babbled about.

Now I mean no disrespect to the good marketing folks at Mitel. I’ve been in their shoes, and I’ve written my share of Bizbabble myself. It’s really hard to communicate well while also navigating the minefields of engineering jargon, business politics, investors, analysts, and more.

But the experience reminded me of this story. And I’m speaking here as someone on the outside who wants to help them get the message out. And to do that, I first need to understand.

10 little words

Let’s go back a bit and read the words above again: “Next-Generation Multimedia Collaboration in the Personal Office Meeting Space”. Now tell me, dear human of above average intelligence. What is this thing? What does it do? Who is it for? Is it something you want to know more about?

The best I could do was “some kind of high tech thingy that helps people collaborate” but I had no idea whether it was a conference phone, a projector, a wireless hotspot, or a mini computer, and I had no clue what a “personal office meeting space” was. A home office maybe?

The words don’t help. And neither did the press release, the product name (“UC” stands for “Unified Communications” not “ulcerative colitis” which came up first on Google) or the the (almost impossible to find listing on) the corporate site.

Nor, unfortunately, did the slickly produced little product site , which spends most of its space talking about why the product is important, but very little about what the heck it IS! And that’s the key thing anyone looking at a new product wants to know!

So here you go Mitel. I solved your problem.

If I were advising Mitel on how to position and describe this product, I’d start with a simple formula:

  • 1) Tell us what is in terms most ordinary humans are already familiar with.
  • 2) Tell us what makes it special or different from the things we’re already familiar with.
  • 3) Do it in a way that people will remember – in this case by surprising them.

So, for example, here’s what I would say their product is after reading a bunch of materials (that said a whole lot less):

“The <insert better name here>
is a conference phone on steroids.”

(Pause. Sound of crickets…)

I could go on of course, but now it’s your turn:

What do you think? Does that help? Or am I hopelessly out of touch? Any examples of simple, helpful corporate communications – especially in very technical or jargon-laden fields? Weigh in below!