Grow Beyond

The Business of Brand: One Company’s Audacious Approach

Black Friday – the busiest shopping day of the entire year and the official start of the holiday gift-buying season. Eager shoppers line up in droves outside their favorite retailers hours before they open, money in hand, weather be damned, and turkey still digesting. The objective: get deep discounts on the year’s must-have merchandise. Today’s meaning of “Black Friday” came about in the 1980’s because, as people started their holiday shopping, it was often the day of the year when retailers’ profit margins shifted from “in the red” to “in the black.”

As a retailer, you’d be crazy to close your doors on Black Friday, right? Not necessarily.

Though certainly profitable for merchants and a winning day of savings for many consumers, Black Friday also faces its share of criticism. It’s perhaps best known for inciting mass hysteria, selfishness, and unruly behavior just one day after gathering with friends and family to give thanks for the many things we already have.

A Bold Brand Choice
It was for these reasons that Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) made a decision some might consider insane. In 2015, REI decided to close every one of its stores on Black Friday and give each of its then 12,000-plus employees a paid day off. They encouraged employees and customers to skip the Black Friday frenzy, gather their loved ones, and opt instead to spend their day enjoying the great outdoors. And it’s a tradition they’ve continued every year since.

Why would REI make a decision that could potentially cost them thousands of dollars in revenue? It came down to one thing – the values at the core of their brand identity.

What’s in a Brand?
Your brand identity consists of both tangible and intangible aspects, all of which come together to distinguish the products and services you sell from those of your competitors. It includes everything from your logo design, price point, and marketing channels to promises you make to the consumer and the culture and feelings you wish to inspire inside and outside the walls of your organization. Ideally, everything you do should mesh with the brand you’ve established.

For REI, shutting its doors on Black Friday was a daring, attention-grabbing way to reiterate the intangible ideals their company works to impose day-in and day-out.

REI is not only a leading retailer of outdoor equipment, they sell an entire outdoor experience. Their overall motivation as a company is to inspire a love of the great outdoors while also providing the equipment, advice, and opportunities people need to connect to nature and start adventuring. Jerry Stritzke, REI’s CEO at the time, explained that closing on Black Friday was a way to get back to the core of REI’s brand values: “…It was about reclaiming a day that was distorting a time to give thanks for what we have, and re-grounding in what we value most in life as an outdoor community.”

Big or Small, Brand Matters
Sure, national retailers like REI have a little more room to experiment and make bold moves with the actions they take to tell their story. They can afford to sacrifice sales for the sake of making a larger point. They’ve got the resources to offer an extra paid day off to their employees. Just because you operate on a smaller scale, however, doesn’t mean you can’t represent your brand in a big way.

In everything you do, remember where your company came from, where it’s going, and who you want to come along for the ride. This information will guide your branding efforts. Whether your business is large or small, there are no limits to the ways you can show your customers what you’re all about. With a bit of ingenuity and thoughtfulness, your brand’s story, like REI’s, can be a tale told for many years to come.

Brand Survival: Communicating With Your Market While It Goes Into Hiding

The quarantine paradox for the small business owner: You now have all the time in the world and can’t afford to waste a single minute sitting around. As entrepreneurial voyagers, deep down we’re wired to understand nothing is certain – even though from time to time we fool ourselves into believing otherwise. Then a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic hits, and the realities of our risk-taking shake us hard.

An instantaneous, complete stop. All around you, competitors begin closing down. Fast moving economic opportunities freeze. A panicked workforce looks to leadership for answers, and the top doesn’t necessarily have a solution. Customers halt demand, retreating to conserve and protect themselves.

So now what? Simply put, this is the point where you decide. The moment when you weigh the sweat equity of yesterday against the odds of existing tomorrow. Forget how you’ll do it, the shift in strategy, or the stress you’ll endure. First, you must choose – succumb or survive?

If you opted to call it a day, no need to keep reading. Honestly, that’s not always the worse-case scenario. However, if you’re in this to push your brand through the crunch, let’s get to work on a communication’s foundation and make it stronger as a result.

Brand Reassessment
In a life or death situation, the main objective is to find ways to continue forward. The same goes for keeping a brand together during tough times. To do this, you need to run a baseline check of your brand position. You need to reassess its health. How does your customer loyalty look heading into this challenge? How strong is your identity right now? Are your offerings a luxury or a necessity? Do you have a close connection to those who support you?

The answers to these questions can be based on existing feedback or mere intuition. Regardless, you need a starting point to forecast possible outcomes and how to navigate each of them during this new set of circumstances. Do a quick wellness check. Ask yourself:

  • Which client segments likely:
    • Stay
    • Pause
    • Go
  • What drives their actions? Lack of,
    • Need
    • Money
    • Certainty
    • Convenience
    • Interest
  • What does our financial health look like under this new market breakdown?
  • Are there any products / services or reinvented uses for products / services we can offer customers to personally help them through this challenge? What are their new needs and how can we meet them to provide additional value?
  • What distribution channels do we have in place to immediately start addressing the situation? Website, engaged social media feeds, apps, etc. Check out our Brand Checklist to guide you on all the places your brand exists.

Address the Market Quickly
It’s time to work with what you’ve got. You’ve put together a quick brand reassessment, adjusting it through the lens of the new normal. It will now steer you on how to address the situation. First, you need to get out in front of it. Acknowledge that things have changed.

  • Think about those three types of clients – those that likely will Stay, Pause or Go. What do their worlds look like right now? What’s important to them? What are their wants, concerns and needs? How do you fit into that picture – do you, can you?
  • Authentically spell out your understanding of the situation and its impact on each of these three segments. Tell them what you plan to do to help them via your products / services. In some cases, you just won’t be able to. However, customers don’t just buy “stuff” from great brands. They buy thoughtfulness. Now’s the time to think for your market – how can you make their experience with you more valuable than ever?
  • Pump out these targeted messages through your distribution channels. Put them on your website, social media channels, send emails, etc. If you’re a service provider with a manageable client base, personally call them. The point is to get an empathetic, truthful voice in front of them, fast.
  • Regardless of their decision to Stay, Pause or Go, show them sincere interest in continuing the relationship past the product or service. Brands are judged and remembered by how they treat people, particularly in times of crisis. Great brands stand for more than sales. Now’s the time to show it.

Keep Lines of Communication Open
By dividing up your customers into Stay / Pause / Go, we’ve taken a very simplistic view of your supporters’ anticipated behaviors. This by no means is a wise long-term plan. It glosses over too many important customer considerations and is unbalanced. But for now, it’s meant to put energy where it’s most needed during this challenge. Consider it a brand triage to prioritize the necessities of those who stick with you, while also staying fairly engaged with those that drop off. A simple communications outline for this approach looks like:

  • Stays: They come first with attention and actions. Work on adjusted solutions specifically for their new circumstances. Communicate with them through personal, exclusive channels. Facebook groups, texting, calls, social media messages, etc.
  • Pauses: Check-in routinely. If you can, offer some free help with basic, easily implementable needs. For brands that provide product, this isn’t a bad time to start a giveback program for customer loyalty and community. Show them you’re thinking ahead for when they return. You sincerely miss them, and this needs to be shared. Not every day, but in appropriate doses. Educate them on what this looks like through your distribution channels.
  • Gos: This one is trickier. Fact is, you need to figure out why they felt your brand wasn’t essential enough to keep around. You need to show them that you’re thinking of ways to improve your delivery for them and become valuable again, in their eyes. Ask them for feedback and show them you’re using that advice to grow stronger.

Regardless of the customer type, these communications can be done through a series of personal outreach and broader efforts. During this challenge, you need to keep your brand voice active and be responsive to those who want to engage. Blogs, social media, emails, website updates, etc.

The goal of all of this is to position your brand on the forefront during the slowdown and make it top of mind when the market returns, which it will. Remember, brands that hold together through a crisis start with thoughtful, relevant communications as the glue. Keep it sincere, focused, and keep pushing forward!

What’s with the Jar? Branding REAL in 2020

Bon’s Eye talks a lot about being an authentic, human brand.

Today’s consumers want a whole experience – something that connects with them beyond merely product or service specs.

We believe it all starts with how businesses speak to others.

We’ve written plenty of blogs and produced B2B podcasts about establishing a thoughtful, empathetic voice. You’ll often hear us say that great brands build relationships by telling it like it is. They don’t woo with over-the-head jargon, but rather invite others in through a relatable story. It’s less about verbal glitz and more about meaningful narratives.

At Bon’s Eye, we build brands on these principles of realness. So, it only makes sense we apply the same standards to our communications. That’s why in 2020 we’re calling ourselves out when we veer into cliché marketing talk.

Introducing the BEM Jargon Jar.

For the team’s New Year’s resolution, we’re throwing money into this bad boy every time we utter a branding buzzword or trendy industry phrase. It’s about to rain up in here.

No more lingo drops like, Evergreen Content, Growth Hacking, Gamify, Thought Leader, Data-Driven, Design Thinking, Localization, etc. We’re going to do our damnedest to avoid these tempting, but obnoxious gems.

Let’s be really clear here – we will slip! We need you guys to point it out, and we’ll pony up. The money accumulated in the jar will be used to buy Bon’s Eye swag for our supporters, so check in on giveaways.

Cheers to a New Year filled with genuine brand interactions and jargon-free conversations.

Your Bon’s Eye Crew!

Brand Management

Cruising Now, But Who’s Driving?

Over the last few miles, your brand has really picked up speed. You’re turning heads, and a crowd of new customers has flagged down your business for a lift. They want your products or services and are eager to invite others along the way. Yeah, it’s turning into one hell of a ride, but to where?

It’s easy to let the thrill of high-performance, accelerated growth drive you. Still, someone needs to take the wheel and steer – at least if you want to avoid hitting a wall. If your only destination point is, “Until the gas runs out,” the best that can happen is you drift to an idle stop. It’s a scenario that can be a death kiss to a business on the move.

In the world of brand management, someone’s always watching the road ahead while keeping an eye on the rear-view mirror.

They oversee everything from market navigation, speed, mileage, and direction. There’s always a Point A and Point B to each leg of the journey. There’s clear vision, and the brand never runs out of fuel.

If you don’t have someone doing this in your business right now, buckle up. You’re in a moving vehicle without a driver.

How to Craft Effective Brand Copywriting

Develop A Brand Story that Attracts

If you have a brand, it has a story. When crafted properly, this narrative can attract people far and wide for many, many years. The secret to others wanting to step closer and listen to your story relies on its ability to entertain, offer some type of valuable information, or resonate with them on a personal level.

To do this, brand copywriting must follow some basic rules of thumb – all of which require creating outside of yourself. The best ones:

  • Continuously observe, and speak to, their audience’s state of mind – their wants, needs, emotions, triggers.
  • Adapt their tone based on the audience’s personality and mood.
  • Identify the brand’s plot, main characters (including customers), settings, twists, themes, and morals.
  • Throw away useless words and anecdotes that sound clever, but don’t provide any real value to the larger message.
  • Know how to take complex topics and present them in a way the audience can understand.
  • Don’t fall in love with their work. They realize some people will always critique style and delivery.

99 percent of failed messaging comes down to content that appeals more to the creator than the target audience. It’s produced by and for them. We call it ego writing!

It’s much more effective for brands to develop a narrative that welcomes customers into the journey and inspires them to keep turning the proverbial page. After all, if you want people to invest their time and money into your story, it’s best to pen a Choose Your Own Adventure than a single-focus autobiography.

Moving on A Marketing Plan

Willpower Gets You to New Places. Not the Map.

At some point in life, we’ve all had big plans. Big plans to learn a new skill. Big plans to get into better shape. Big plans to try something we’ve never attempted before. In some form or fashion, we’ve all had big plans to advance ourselves on this journey.

Many of us spent quite a bit of time and thought towards this end. We dug deep into our psyche, exploring the “why?” and “what ifs?” of such change. We wrestled with the idea of commitment. We weighed the benefits of potential outcome against the comforts of our current position.

In the end, we formulated a plan – a map – based on all of this data. We outlined a starting point, milestones and desired destination. Now all that stood in the way of us progressing was physical execution.

It’s at this defining moment, so many big plans devolve into colossal energy wastes. In some cases, we succumbed to analysis paralysis. “What foot should I lead with to get the biggest push off?” Other times we become overwhelmed by the breadth of scope, too exhausted to carry out under the weight of our own self-imposed hype. It’s a Screw It point that keeps our feet planted exactly where we stood from the outset.

The real secret behind big plan success isn’t so much adhering to the map, but rather tapping into willpower… staying driven and committed. After all, there are many different ways to reach a destination. Pathways will washout and detours will arise. However, no one ever went anywhere without movement – and that must be frequent and unwavering if you’re looking to go new places.