Branding - Part II of Focusing Less on the Sizzle

In my previous marketing-related post, Focus On The Steak and Not the Sizzle, I discussed the importance of focusing more on the steak and less on the sizzle.

To focus on the steak and capitalize on your brand, forget about working on your logo and tagline for a moment.  Instead, gather your team together and define your values.  Does everyone in the company, at ALL levels know what the corporate values are?  Do they share those values?

Here's the tough part: be honest with yourself and ask your employees and customers if you and your company are living up to those ideals.  Remember: don't kill the message bearer. 

Expect negativity.  Sometimes even the best employees turn negative out of frustration.  Help them to move beyond the negative by giving them something positive to grab onto: the commitment that everyone will be held accountable to live the values, regardless of title or position.

Negative customers can be won back.  It won't be easy.  It will take time, money and highly visible actions.  Start by making things right.  Most people will forgive you if you demonstrate an honest effort to improve, but it starts with a big apology and tangible evidence that you have resolved the company's shortcomings.

Are your employees enabled to accomplish your corporate values? Do they have the necessary authority and tools? If not, stop and focus on enabling your team to make those values tangible and applicable to your products and service.  Put a system of checks and balances in place so that everyone is accountable. 

In a highly competitive market with multiple media channels, today's consumers are bombarded with messages from competing companies to purchase their products or services.  Consumers are no longer fooled by half-hearted attempts and hand puppets who babble the "corporate speak" learned by rote from the management training manual.  Every single day someone is going out of business because someone else is doing it better.

To wit, the Americans may have invented the process of mass-producing the automobile, but the Japanese have certainly improved the systems and the quality of the product, and as such, consumers have beaten a path to Toyota, Honda and ilk while Detroit lies virtually in ruins.  How hard is it to deliver an American car that will outlast the last payment? How hard is it to deliver an American car that is error free when it rolls off the showroom floor?

I remember working for a National builder with a remarkable mission statement and commitment to their customers.  The day we started closing homes without driveways poured was the day I knew that our division had lost sight of the corporate goals.  The day I was asked to lie on a proforma was the day that I knew I had to leave.  I loved that company. It broke my heart because I believed them, I trusted them, and I totally bought into their commitment to the customer.

The moral: Don't lie to the employees.  The good ones will leave, and you will be left with a group of less than scrupulous people that, in reality, even you can't trust.