Brand Me, I'm Irish

Regardless of where in the world you're reading this (and you'd be surprised how well-travelled my mother is...), you're unlikely to need reminding that today is St. Patrick's Day, which is celebrated everywhere in many more than the proverbial forty shades of green.

Over dinner on Saturday, illustrator Kevin McSherry reminded me that in Ireland we can be harshly elitist in our definition of 'Irishness'. Those who put down their roots in the fertile soil of England, America or Australia are in turn put down by the native Irish as 'plastic paddies' who 'try too hard' to prove their claim to their heritage.

What a pity that we're so narrow-minded. Our cousins across the water have no difficulty in making the American dream all-embracing. This generosity throws our own pettiness into sharp relief. We've been blessed with an appeal that reaches far and wide but are in real danger of squandering it through a misguided sense of purity or authenticity.

This is a sad failure of hospitality. There's not much point in throwing the best parties if our guests are left pressing their faces up against the window, looking in on the merrymaking.

Apart from the social faux pas (that's Irish for putting your foot in it...), there's a huge opportunity being missed to confirm our unique role in the commercial world. No other country has its national day marked in such a memorable way. Our politicians rightly recognise that, come St. Patrick's Day, it's access all areas for a statesman with an Irish accent. This allows us a word in the ear of kings and kingmakers across the world.

Never mind countries, few other brands own a day in the way Ireland does March 17th. Perhaps only Coca Cola comes close in its association with Christmas. We cannot afford to shut the door on those who want to join in the celebrations. Just as the United States appointed Lady Liberty to guide the way to the American dream, we must set our own light in the parlour window for all those who want to join in our unique brand of revelry.

There Are Lies...

On talk-radio during the week, I heard a caller describe how she'd been duped into giving her credit-card details to a fraudulent website, after which a series of unauthorised payments had been made. Since then, she'd been unable to make contact with anyone through the telephone number given on the site.

By her account, there was little to be suspicious about in a well-presented website that offered tickets to international sports events, recorded an address close to Victoria Station in London and apparently counted many well-known businesses amongst its clients.

I suspect I'd have fallen for this particular deception too. All the little details seem to add up (the mention of an address close to a well-known and reputable landmark strikes me as a particularly delicious stroke).

But what astonished me in the course of the discussion was how both she and the talk-show host seemed to hold out the hope that everything would somehow work out and that it was all one big misunderstanding. The clincher seemed to be that the company behind the site was a 'family-business, which has been offering this service for over twenty years'. Even when taken amongst all of the other lies that had been pulled apart during this woman's efforts to track down the people who had taken her money, this deception had somehow remained intact. Victim and counsellor alike seemed to think that wicked deception was somehow beyond a family business.

But ask anyone who's fallen foul of a family firm that goes by the name of Borges, Corleone, Kray or Soprano about family values and you'll likely hear some very unfamily-friendly language in return.

Now there's a lesson in there for any of us who are building brands at a distance (and not only for those of us who are inveigled into handing over our financial details to plausible strangers). In telling the truth to our customers, we can learn from the lies that crooks tell as they wangle their way into our confidence.

Clearly, a sense of permanent location helps; as does some reference to a shared landmark (the old school-network seems to work particularly well in this way). But the thing that seems to reassure us most of all when we're introduced to someone for the first time is that they have ties to the community. And what stronger ties than family ties?

When we buy from someone we don't know, we must be quickly able to situate them in our own landscape. Otherwise, their 'foreign-ness' gets in the way of our building trust and we turn instead to the angel we know or devil we think we know.

Try To See It My Way

A recent article in the Irish Times describes how "in Canada, the Government phone book is organised by products - birth certificates, driver's license, childcare etc", rather than by Government Department as we do it here in Ireland. Anyone who's ever battled their way through a directory trying to guess the proper department home for an activity will appreciate the thoughtfulness of the Canadian Government in this respect.

But governments aren't the only organisations that tend to organise the world as they, rather than their customers, see it.

I've worked in the past with many brands who present their offer in terms of how they produce rather than how their customers consume. People in the food industry prattle on about ambient temperature and chill cabinets and imagine that their customers share their view of the world. Those offering financial services have their customer jumping through all sorts of mental hoops trying to get a handle on matters that need only concern the number crunchers who design the products.

One of the simplest, but most powerful, exercises I do with my own clients is to invite them to step into the customer's shoes and consider the world from that vantage point. It's extraordinary the impact this can have on their thinking.

Try it for yourself. The world looks very different from over here - or from over there, for that matter. The job of the marketer is to see the world in a number of ways and reconcile the demands of the various stakeholders in a single offer that makes sense for the customer.

Because if it doesn't make sense for the customer at the point of purchase, it doesn't matter one little bit how beautifully it adds up for the business.

Barney Branding

How come so many brands insist on making nice?

I'm doing some service work for a client and stripping down a brand that was engineered some time ago in another workshop. I'm up to my elbows in feel-good terms and sentiments which leave me feeling anything but positive about the brand. Gooey expressions of love and understanding ooze out of every part of the motor, leaving a right mess on the floor that someone's going to have to clean up.

There's a creeping tendency towards creating well-meaning and inoffensive brands that's especially pervasive in the lifestyle sectors. In these worlds, everyone's a wellwisher. We're all shiny, happy people just wanting to get along.

There's a touch of Barney in these brands. Remember Barney, the purple dinosaur beloved of children of a certain age?

Barney's great! If you're a three year-old. But most of us outgrow Barney, and opt for characters that better reflect the different shades and struggles of life instead.

"I love you. You love me. We're a happy family" makes for compelling children's television but palls a bit when you reach a certain age. Yet many businesses insist on being Barney brands, airbrushing out much of the stuff that makes life difficult, frustrating and challenging (oops, even that last one's become a Barney-word). In doing so, they erase the stuff that makes life compelling.

Of course, we want to believe in happy-ever-afters, but not at the expense of a little reality. The really great brands know what it's like to live in the real world and promise a happy ending by tackling the difficult bits head-on. The other brands just melt away in a puddle of grease when things get rough.

What Goes Round

I've been hearing quite a lot lately about the people at 37 Signals, whose web-applications (you may have heard of their Basecamp and Highrise products) are proving very popular with small business owners across the world. Jason Fried, one of the founding team, was interviewed on the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast recently and delighted me by praising a competitor and saying that he "liked to see others do well".

This prompted me to look a little harder at the 37 Signals offering (something produced by someone with an attitude like that has to have something going for it) and I was even more pleased to see on their website that 37 Signals aims "for the software sweetspot. Elegant, thoughtful products that do just what you need and nothing you don't". Digging a little further into the site, I came across a blog entry from Jason (see, I feel like I'm on first-name terms with the guy!) in which he describes some 'simple things I've seen this week that make me smile'. This just gets better and better.

Whilst a cynic might dismiss 37 Signals as hopelessly naive, I'm emboldened to try and get to grips with the software they're peddling. Usually, I feel as though the techies are laughing up the sleeves of their cool T-Shirts at hopelessly inept me. But not these people. It's great to see a brand-owner who's prepared to be so open and generous in his approach to the world. It's not surprising that the word-of-mouth on their offering is so positive. I'm sold.

(Oh, for the record: some of those things that made Jason smile included 'a shopkeeper sweeping the sidewalk in front of her store', 'a squirrel deftly de-shelling and devouring a peanut' and a 'handwritten letter'. For more, go directly to the 37 Signals Blog ).