Globalisation and the "Australian Made" brand:

Companies that thought they were future-proofing themselves by providing quality Australian made products and services to a loyal, discerning public, are now finding themselves competing against cheaper and often inferior imports. Manufacturers and suppliers relying on a home-ground advantage are finding very little support from their fellow Australians, who are opting for price over loyalty.

The reason is simple. The "Australian Made" or "Buy Australian" brands are familiar, but actually hold little brand loyalty with the consuming public outside of food. The consumers have shown by their support of "cheaper" buying, that there is no preference for Buy Australian.

Business Australia, the Government, have let this opportunity to improve their position against imports, slip through their fingers. On the other hand, investment into "Australia" in sports, has been fully supported and realised by promoters and sporting associations for years. Topped up annually with some $160 million of additional funding by tax payers into elite sports, the brand "Australia" as far as sports is concerned has that loyal public following.

Sport, accounts for at most, 4% of GPD. Manufacturing instead has slumped 25% to just 5% of GDP. Export goods and services still account for 30% of GDP. Why is there not the same rigorous investment into the "Australian Made" brand to assist the business sector with its brand loyalty? If we don't grow our brand loyalty in "Australian Made", consumer spending will continue to be skewed towards imports and supporting business in other countries instead of here. We need to lift our exports. Improving brand loyalty in "Australian Made" will service this need as well.

Stickiness vs Loyalty:

Know the difference between "stickiness" and "loyalty". People's reluctance to move, or fear of trying something new, is how to regard "stickiness". Being a supplier of a service and counting your clients as loyal when all they are is fearful of gong someone else, is just plain denial.

Brands like Telstra and Qantas once powerful leading brands now find themselves in this space by virtue of their positioning. Telstra made their postioning about coverage, Qantas on lack of accidents. But as others catch up to their differentation these brands are left with their behaviour to form bonds. And it ain't pretty on that score. The time cost in dealing with Telstra's customer service is unrespectful. Packing people into a plane like sardines under a sub-brand doesnt work either.

The right brand with the right values offering can undermine your position in a heartbeat. Virgin has become the David of business Goliaths and thrives on going into industries and leveling the playing field on behalf of consumers. First it was air travel, then telecommunications, now insurance. When a brands establish themselves in the right way they can travel in any vertical values market and carry with them all their loyal fans.

What you thought was bankable goodwill for your business could just be a current lack of consumer choice. Know where you stand and shore up your brand.

The Loss of Goodwill:

Far too many businesses still rely on shoring up customer relationships using the personality of staff. The CEO is often barely visible in this relationship, except for the occasional site visit or indirect Christmas gift.

Vital goodwill of the business in the form of customer loyalty is being entrusted to staff. That is like giving the key to your pantry to casual strangers. If your retention rate is like most, on average three years, that means each departing staff member takes with them three years of loyalty instead of it vesting with the business. It also opens up your business to mild forms of extortion as you ensure that key "customer connection" people don't choose to leave and take your clients and goodwill to their next employer, or worse still, use them to start their own business.

Founders and CEOs have a vital role to play in shoring up brand loyalty and are a key player to two of the EIGHT faces of brand influence.

NOW FOR THE REALLY GOOD NEWS ABOUT BRAND LOYALTY

Brand loyalty has just got a whole lot easier for CEO's and brand managers to understand, change and manage. Each one of the above scenarios can be countered by growing brand loyalty.

Take scenario one - When Heidelberg printing machines were faced with faster and cheaper Asian machines entering into the market, they reinvested heavily into their brand and loyalty. They managed to retain both their top end status and their price in the printing industry, even though their machines were much slower and had considerably less features than the competition. Owning a Heidelberg became a statement of status and a club to belong to. They proved that brand loyalty could overcome their threat from globalisation.

Equally, the CEO can become a strong brand support, to brand loyalty as can the founder. To circumvent key staff from gaining a stronghold over the business, the personality of the brand needs to connect to your clients as strongly as any individual staff member.

Brands are more than logos or statements. They are assets you can grow and use to protect your profits and goodwill from being lost or stolen. Brand loyalty is a tangible means for CEO's in the know, to protect goodwill while ensuring business continuity. You need to know what is involved and how. Contact us for an appointment.

Monika Evers, Brand Specialist and Principal Consultant.

The fact that the country didn’t erupt into civil war was a testament to the special kind of transformational workshops that had been conducted with the leaders weeks prior to the public announcement.

Even today South Africa is undertaking more transformational workshops than any other country to support the change required in the perceptions of its people.

Africa has a history of racial hatred. There were enough warring tribes alone, that taking the black and white issues aside, could have escalated the move away from white imposed rule into civil war.

Instead a quiet peace predominated. All eyes turned to a common purpose. The twelve or so, traditional and political leaders were able to lift themselves above their own tribal interests to a common purpose and a common vision. The vision they all chose to uphold was “a united Africa in two generations”.

As one leader remarked with tears in his eyes. “I should have wanted to kill my enemy instead I now stand with him to choose a new vision for my tribe...my new bigger tribe, Africa.”

These leaders put aside their own agendas and called forth a commitment that surpassed their own lives and that of their children.

A Vision for business

Business is no different. People, in any organisation are here to support their family, their centres of influence and themselves getting ahead in life. Leaders concern themselves with getting the job done, meeting shareholders or investors expectations and growing the business.

Unfortunately, most business visions usually describe something around all of this and as a result, buy-in above work ethic, is minimal.

Many a time I have strolled into an organisation to see the vision of “meeting shareholder expectations” proudly displayed above the reception desk. That is not a vision, that is an objective. It’s like that other statement often seen lurking in visions “fulfiling or exceeding customer expectations”. That too can’t be a vision either, because without either of these two, you wont have a business. It’s just like a person saying my vision is to breathe and eat. These are just objectives that must be fulfiled in order to stay alive.

A vision is a declaration that calls a person into being beyond their everyday way of being. It is connected to a potentiality that has yet to realised. Aristotle knew about this.

The Potential for Business

Aristotle held that everything had two states of being, “actuality” and “potentiality”. Entelechy was the term he used for that inherent force that realises or makes actual what is otherwise merely potential.

Derived from the Greek word for having a goal, entelechy is a particular type of motivation, directing all growth to become all that it is capable of being. For example the entelechy within an acorn directs and makes actual its potentiality of being an oak tree.

We use the term “soul” for that type of internal direction. Whether we talk about the soul in ourselves or the soul in our businesses, Soul is that internal entelechy. It literally is the spirit that guides us into bringing into actuality of our full potentiality.

When a vision resonates with people on a deep level, when a vision connects to its soul, like “a united Africa in two generations”, it calls people to a potential way of being.

It also has inherent, a special kind of truth that connects others to it as well. It’s like we know that what they have chosen is truly in line with their higher purpose and potentiality. We “know” their vision to be true and are drawn to support it. That’s what happens when people hear truth and look at all the support this country is now generating.

Africa is a soul brand. It is a brand that is connecting its people to a higher purpose and greater potential than their current state of reality.

Soul brands are businesses that keep generating their way forward from their potentiality. It is all about orientation and the transformation supports, like visions, brands, myths, positioning words and characters that they use to keep it alive in their everyday reality.

Every business has the potential to be a soul brand. Our business is about connecting you to yours and inspiring business as a result.

While the GFC did impact the liquidity of a few European countries like Iceland, Hungary and Greece the brand damage that US trust swindle did to the mighty “greenback” was just as enormous as market trends are now showing.

In this Evers Report I want to explore the notion that business and consumer markets outside of the US are talking with their feet and brand USA is starting to get left on shelf. What is required by the US is not a not just an elaborate PR exercise but a major rethink in its values.

What started me on this wave of thought recently was that one of the fastest growing Australian websites, now in the top 120,000 of the planet, according to Alexa the internet rating organisation, is calculating everything on their website in Euros not USD. It is doing this even though it is a global business with branches into Europe and the USA.

Customer trends just released from the UK are showing that “fair trade”, “local” and “cruelty free” are the rising factors in food purchasing trends by customers in UK, Europe and Canada. While, “organic” is lessening as a trend in some sectors, it is still strong. Cheapest is no longer the automatic decider. This is according the latest research out of Cambridge University.

You need to think about this a little deeper. “Fair trade,” “local’ and “animal free” as trends could be seen also as a backlash against US farming practices. Practices that have seen individual, local farming being taken to a mass production level. Monoculture farming, GMO crops and even growing animals behind closed doors is now part of the accepted American way of doing “farm business”. Joel Salatin is the exception in the US farming industry not the rule. Even “organic” under this light, can be seen as a trust issue about the safe use of pesticides and herbicides in food crops.

So when consumers start “going green”, choosing “organic”, “free trade” and “local” these are signs of a cultural values shift. The big motivator behind these trends is a lack of trust in the mass market farming systems. Unfortunately, the champion of these entrenched farming practices has for the most part been done under brand USA.

The trend against brand USA was also reflected in the unrelenting support for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Wikileaks was like a modern David and Goliath story. It produced USA’s first, untouchable, finger-pointer. Julian defended by a public outcry that held him safe from the US government. It also showed that Brand USA no longer held the respect or the leverage in the outside world. This to me was even more interesting.

Just this week we also saw Osama’s death celebrated by Obama and Americans alike. In my cynicism, perhaps I have watched too many reality shows or read too many exposes, I just didn’t believe it was true. Too many lies, too many scandals to believe it couldn’t happen again. What am I talking about?...a cover-up…a lie…a deception. Is that really Obama’s body lying at the bottom of the ocean or was it just a look alike, a fake or even another person altogether. That is where I now find myself, standing in disbelief, unable to join into the celebrations of the death of an enemy of one of our closest trading partners. That was my wake up call to how hardened I had become to my listening around USA.

This has a lot to do with the way that corporations are now being set up across the world. CSR should be more than just looking good for the media. It covers off on the behaviour of every individual involved in the organisation, department or business. It is one of the things clients discover when they do the “Spinach Test” with me. Your brand lives and dies by the action of every last person in the business, the suppliers you use, who you associate with. The truth of the matter is that the public has become cynical and not trusting of big business especially American big business and it will have more ramifications in the future if these issues of trust are not addressed.

From a big business perspective it is simply not enough to “assess risk” based on the fiscal ramifications, if you are not factoring in the intangible factor called “trust”. Every US based business when it does a risk assessment on a business “opportunity” can’t just assess risk according to the company’s bottom line from a fiscal perspective, when ramifications of that risk could impact the country of origins brand as well. That too needs to factored into all risk assessments.

I personally feel that the US government has not done enough to protect the people’s brand especially after the GFC. They are no longer operating in an insular US marketplace. Brand USA needs to maintain its standing in a global social marketplace. Wikileaks was a testament to its lack of standing. Wikileaks was a modern David and Goliath story around trust and the majority of the public sided with Wikileaks against the USA. It was a protest vote on many levels.

Recently even brand Japan took an immense brand dump as a result of its poorly enacted nuclear program. This time it will be the government affecting the sales of its industry.

Trust in markets is hard to gain. Once broken it spells a death to any brand and that include countries. Brand USA needs a brand makeover and it doesn’t have a Tony Abbott or a royal family like the UK to come to the rescue.

That rescue will have to come from the same mindset that brought it into disrepute, corporate and business America. Funnily enough if you have watched “The Social Network” the story of Facebook, you will see the kind of turnaround in thinking required. That story is ultimately a story about the restoration of Trust. It’s a big pill to swallow but then again that is what builds character. Johnson and Johnson once did. Does today’s Corporate America have the character to choose guardianship over profit again? We shall have to sit back and see.

Life and business is full of people who answered the call of their dreams and imagination. They are all on a journey, the “Hero’s Journey” and as Joseph Campbell found out, it is like a human operating system that steers us to maturation as social beings in every cultural group.

The Hero's Journey

Every story starts at the beginning. Unaware of his greatness the hero lives his life in innocence (the Innocent). Life is good, life is today, life is now. Then something happens in their world to change all of that. It is the call of their destiny. Either its from a person they may want to be like or a great idea awakens something inside of them...something they know is their call to destiny.

Our Hero decides to go on a journey of exploration not committing to anything but simply wanting to know little more. What they have learned in the past is no longer valid. They have to learn new ways of thinking and new skills. Life is new, different and interesting. They find someone who has been on this journey before. It is also a choice point. Do they take the journey and commit to it, or do they go back to their old life? Many return to the way things were at this point.

But for those that choose to proceed just how to get this dream or idea to work is the goal, until they find their first client or Investor. This spurs on the Hero into full commitment. Their actions are to achieve more sales. more clients and more success.

And so life continues until...he faces the challenge. This is the test in every business. It could be a rival comes into the picture, cash flow issues, key staff leaving... lack of supply. The challenge may seem insurmountable. Our hero is cut from his perch. It is a challenge of the spirit, for not overcoming this will take him back to the start of his journey, back into hiding, back into not following his greatness.

The secret however he will discover is found within. The inner wisdom that guides our hero into transforming his current circumstances into a new approach, a new lease of life that he can then take out to the marketplace. As a result of overcoming and transforming this adversity he becomes the expert in this field and reaps the reward at the same time claiming his birthright.

Joseph Campbell, found that The Hero’s Journey is in the cultural myths of all peoples. The personalities contained in the journey are known to us all so intimately that each personality has cultural significance to us.

Put in another way. Each personality is emotionally charged.

Application to business

Because our staff are trained in market values we can assist you to uncover those values that will allow you to align to one of these archetypes in the marketplace—Marketypes TM. Innocent for example is how Coke tends to portray itself. Virgin on the other hand is more The Outlaw.

Our staff can also map your existing competitors to uncover the gaps and opportunities that are open to be owned by you.

The Hero's Journey is a psychological and emotional approach to market dominance. It still requires the various market approaches to consolidate your ownership. Owning the Marketype just adds another level of influence that is as palpable as it is authentic. Positioning then becomes even more compelling. Culture lives the values create the promises and and realised into your systems.

It is an entirely different prospect however, to discover through the media, that the manufacturer of your car knew of a dangerous fault, one that could possibly endanger your life and the lives of those travelling with you, and decide not to do or say anything about it to you. That is a betrayal of trust and that is the kind of reputation damage Toyota is currently fighting.

When the US committee for Energy and Commerce asked Toyota to explain when they began investigating the issue of the sticking accelerators, they disclosed to the committee that they knew seven months earlier that there was a problem. They had received over eleven reports from both the UK and Ireland about sticking accelerators, but had chosen to consider them as isolated examples. When the same issues started appearing in the US the Obama administration decided to get involved.

Now Toyota is at the forefront of one of the biggest recalls in motor manufacturing history. 26,000 cars from Ireland, 1.8 million from UK and Europe, plus another 2.6 million from the US and that is just one side of the globe.

The repercussion for Toyota are already being felt with sales figures reported by the company to have dropped 23% below January targets.

Certainly the recall by Toyota has been thorough and swift inspecting all cars from 2005 onwards. The question is, will it be strong enough to sway the public into believing that the company did really care all along but simply got it wrong?

The one thing that can be said is that it has certainly taken the apparent oversight firmly on the chin. There has been no cover ups, no shredding of the reports before talking to the authorities, no shirking from their global responsibility.

However, “Oh what a feeling”, does seem to have lost a bit of its innocent lustre, at least for now.

Vladas Griskevicius from the University of Minnesota and a team of social scientists have just completed a research project on this topic. They tested the effect various emotional states of viewers had on ads and found the effect was dramatic both ways. Those with the right positioning won more interest. Those with the wrong one, lost influence

In this research, researchers showed participants short clips from either of two movies. “The Shining” which represented something quite fear provoking. The other movie  “Before Sunset” which was a romantic movie. In other sessions participants were asked to read a short stories that evoked the same kinds of emotions as the movie clips. (There was also a control group.)

Immediately, after seeing a series of movie clips or articles, participants were shown an advertisement. There were four ads used in this study. They had been designed to use either one of two different influence positionings namely “scarcity” or “social proof”.

Scarcity is principle of influence where you disclose what is unique or rare about your product or service offering. For example a secret that no one knows that you can share, or a limited supply perhaps.

Social proof is another principle of influence that offers security to prospective buyers from being proven by other purchasers before them. This could be couched in your experience. For example we often refer to having developed and launched over 100 brands, or being number one in Australia in influence. These are both examples of social proof.

In the study one advertisement promoted a Museum where the “social proof” positioning read “Visited by over one million people every year” whereas the “scarcity” positioning read “Stand out from the crowd”.

Alternatively another group was shown a restaurant review where the positioning read “many people gathered there” and it was “a most popular restaurant” (social proof). While the other group were shown reviews that positioned the restaurant as a “one-of-a-kind place that is yet to be discovered by others” (scarcity ).

What the study revealed.

The study clearly showed when people experienced feelings of fear prior to seeing the ads they were more influenced by the advertisements that used social proof as a positioning.

However the opposite was true of those that had feelings of romance. They were drawn to ads  that described features that were unique and scarce.

This has enormous implications for the web, advertisers, marketers, business people and even speakers. Not only do you now have to consider how you position you business or product but also where and when it will be advertised.

The research showed that the effectiveness of your communication relies on the emotion that your readers experience beforehand. Timing is everything if your ad is going to work.

Consider the Yellow Pages. Imagine the emotional states of people wanting to use your services. Buying a kitchen would be more of a dream romance kind of experience and scarcity might prove a better influence positioning. But on the other hand, finding someone at a moments notice like a plumber or personnel may need to use social proof as the influence principle for your positioning.

For those working in management and sales this research should make you consider how you are going to structure your communications.  Spend just a few moments describing a case study, a situation or even another persons's experience to create an right emotional response in your communications might just be a worthwhile thing to consider.

One way of improving the effectiveness of your communication would be to create your own emotional lead in. You could use an emotional story or image to reinforce the positioning of your campaign especially with web pages or email campaigns. Remember, even in writing internet copy. It all depends on the emotions that you create first up, that causes the eventual positioning you must take. Social proof comes off the back of fear. Scarcity on the back of warmth.

Similarly managers could also first understanding and assessing the emotional state of their teams before framing their communications or requests in terms of “social proof” positioning or “scarcity”. For example, consider the current uncertainty created by the GFC. People are uncertain and perhaps fearful of the future so they will be more persuaded and guided by messages that employ the social proof positioning.

Again make sure it is ethical to your business promise and uses the right positioning (scarcity or social proof) to follow.

The quality of their product or service didn't change, their sales people haven't lost their edge. What happened was that consumer confidence was lost. People now feel nervous about purchasing. Fear has entered into the selling equation and the whole sales process has just got a lot more emotional.

Granted, it will take plenty of reassurance to get back that 40% loss of consumer confidence. However, as a driver of a business you now have the task to make sure that your business is in the 60% of successful sales that do get the order.

This is not a conversation about bigger, cheaper, stronger, longer or fatter products or services. It's about getting chosen and that's emotional.

Find your story and win more business.

A web-based business came to see us recently with an expertise in online Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems. They were comfortable claiming that they could improve existing online sales by at least 30% using their know-how. This is a fact that they had found dealing with a certain type of online business.

But are they really going to sell anyone with that fact. How often do were hear promises like that and start wondering about the loopholes. Even I found myself wondering how much I had to really outlay to get that kind of return. Features don't make the sale.

Heidelberg has been the leader in printing machines for decades. Even though they are nearly twice as expensive as most of their Japanese counterparts which incidentally, deliver twice the speed of print and heap more features. People don't buy Heidelbergs for the features they buy it because of the emotion they feel. The Heidelberg name and brand makes them feel safe. It comes with prestige and trust. That is what creates the sale in this instance.

Yet, we all fall into the trap of creating facts around our product or service believing that bigger, cheaper, stronger, longer or fatter products or services is going to make a difference to being chosen. The truth is that it's either not believed nor significantly rated when the purchase is being considered.

Let me prove my point to you by continuing on with this same company. You notice if and when your opinion changes.

The story that positions

The Head of this CRM firm is a guy called Joe Matthew. He is an American now living in Australia.

When he was over in the States he headed up the online Customer Relationship Management team for Dell Computers. Over a period of 5 years, as he and his team were improving their CRM experience, actual online sales for Dell grew from 5 million sales per day to $53 million per day.

Are you impressed? I know I was when we uncovered his story. Joe then went to MicroSoft to work with them on their CRM system.

This is massive social proof and would put anyone at ease buying his services. Joe knows how to create paying customers, online.

Two years ago after getting married, Joe came out to Australia and began offering his services to medium-sized businesses that wanted to make the jump to being a bigger online business. With modest success, because he didn’t have his story in place. He was still going off the features of his teams expertise.

Now add Personal Branding

Never underestimate the power of personal branding to help you get noticed and differentiated

Our story continues...

It took a long time for Joe to adopt and use his personal brand in his business (SEO-Joe). Like most business owners he felt he would want to eventually sell the business and thought that building a personal brand would take away from the goodwill of the business.

In the short term that is true, but in the long term you can transfer the goodwill into the business. Think about Richard Branson and Virgin. Virgin exists without Richard even though he has a well developed brand himself.

Having a personal brand like SEO-Joe reassures the market of his enormous expertise and brings certainty to his personal brand.

His first month online with Twitter for example, his mantle, SEOJoe, caused 3,500 people to sign up to receive his feeds, because of the inbuilt "authority" in his name. Note, he does have the expertise to back it up.

If you follow this link you will uncover that "Australia's 8th most connected person on twitter, after Kevin Rudd, with the handle of seo_joe." (http://twitterholic.com/top100/followers/bylocation/Australia/ ).

In other words when he writes on Twitter he is the 8th most followed person online in Australia. That is because his handle SEO Joe says he knows what he is talking about in the realm of internet SEO and customer retention strategies.

Personal branding is a powerful way you can empower your business to own a bigger piece of the marketplace.

By the way did you find yourself reassured about Joe and his business by the end of the article?

From our perspective each person and every business has a story waiting to be uncovered and exalted. That is really what creating you brand is really about.

It has always been more than just a logo. Your brand is your story. It should inspire the imagination of your customers, internal and external. It also stands for your market promise and so positions the goal posts on what you are going to deliver.

Influence and brands in a changing marketplace

In these tricky times ahead you need to make sure that you don't go back on the market promises of your brand. Whether your brand has always stood for prestige or value you need any business innovation ensure that your brand promise is maintained.

Dell going into shopping centres like Chadstone is risky as they have always been able to use the online lack of shop front to justify holding your money for two weeks. Going into shopping centres makes them compete with stores that have computers ready to go.

Pierre Cardin I notice is trying to re-launch its brand again through luggage. Personally I don’t think they will have any hope of restoring it to its former glory. They killed the brand in the 90’s when it actually stood for prestige. The brand was sold off. A company started selling cheap underwear through it and used the prestige brand for a few quick cheap sales until the market realised that it had gone back on its market promise of exclusivity. All that work to build a brand over decades decimated in under three years.

Final Note of creating your personal story

My recommendation for businesses during these times is to find the story behind your brand that will grow your business through engaging the emotion, imagination and trust of your clients.

In Australia we like to deal with people and businesses we know and trust. Many years ago there was a survey done across the world on the word "quality". In Australia, unlike any other country, quality meant "mateship". In other words, a product and service  you know something about, can tell a friend about...endorse as a referral.

That's the story we need to find, something someone else can say about you. The problem is, that we don't think to structure our influence in that way. Instead we let others come up with how they talk about us. Most people don't really know what you do or your point of difference. That is what creating your story and personal brand is all about. It's finding an authentic way others cant appreciate and talk about you in the marketplace. Secondly, it also about ensuring that what they say you can deliver.

Influence is not only in the sale but also in the referral.

What I have noticed in my practice of influence is that creating a personal brand in addition to your business brand, vastly differentiates you from you competition. Together they could keep your business out of price wars and still gain more business even in a shrinking market.

After all...goods and services are still being sold, you just need to be the one they prefer and choose.

Warm regards,

Monika Evers

on Influence

Who can blame the banks. It is just like catching one of your neighbour's kids robbing your house. Their whole family somehow is disgraced, tainted by the values you assume, that they must all hold in common as a family unit. That is what happened to brand America. One of their kids brought down the banking system and now all of American banking is suspicious.

American capitalism stood for everything that was white, male power tinged with a touch of arrogance. That is why in this Presidential election everything fitting that description has been pushed under the covers. (Even President Bush was kept well hidden during last weeks of the Presidential campaign.) There just had to be a new face to brand "America" and the more distance from the family that caused the woes, the better. 

Obama, the “twenty dollar president”, had his campaign funded by a mass of twenty dollar donations from ordinary Americans. Their small donations easily matched the contributions from bigger business interests. Then, this campaign was put to work online in a manner never before seen in a Presidential campaign. Obama’s internet campaign, for example, was rumoured to have cost around $4.5 million. "Obama Everywhere" showed that he was featured on all the online networks like Linkedin, mySpace, facebook, youtube, Flickr, twitter, Eventful, BlackPlanet, Faithbase, Eons, Glee, Migente, MyBatanga, AsianAve, DNC Partybuilder. Now, that is one sophisticated online social networking list.

Obama has given a new image to American politics. In those live debates he never lost his cool. We learned about his ties to both his roots in Kenya and  the families in Indonesia where he lived for four years during his student days. Both places he  visited in the final two years of his campaign sending a very strong message to all peoples about his views and personal links.

Many people outside of America actually started to get interested in the elections once they realised that Obama might make President. At the same time we all knew that like other American leaders in the past, that there was also a possibility that that he could be assassinated before he made Office. However, fortune was on his side and Obama became president and the world breathed a sigh of relief and rejoiced at the prospect of a new broom. (Although, the bookies are still not paying out until his inauguration.)

Can Obama rebuild brand "America"? I believe he can because he represents a substantially different image for America than any of the administrations before him. The effect of electing Obama for brand "America" was just like hanging the sign “Under New Management” in the window of a business that desperately needed a change of hands.

Countries as with business, people eventually will come back to give it a second go. As a result, Obama now has the eyes and ears of local and foreign public opinion. With an ailing economy the last thing America needs is her overseas clients to turn their backs on her completely and trade only amongst themselves. This is where the hope for rebuilding brand "America" now hangs in anticipation of something new and different. So here are the issues as I see it from a brand perspective:

Even though the majority of the American public chose Obama, there is still a part of their culture that doesn’t want him in Office and are committed to removing him by what ever means possible. Obama like Mandela represents a complete re-branding of the American brand. If American's can't protect Obama they will lose what I see as the only opportunity in the near furture to redeem the esteem for brand America.

Secondly, nothing kills public esteem faster than a new brand that heralds no change. Re-brands cause the public to look again at what is new in your offering. A re-brand or re-image is a strategic public relations exercise.

In the case of America, electing a coloured man couldn't get more noticed by the world. It is the closest thing to an apology from the American public that the last elected administration didn't quite get it right. Unfortunately, the press has also jumped on board and dubbed George Bush "the worst President in American history"—a label no leader would want to own at the end of his tenure.

So, a second opportunity that exists for Obama to bring about policy changes that could re-inspire confidence in the of world of business, banking and the media. By far the strongest adversary to his success and yet, at the same time ally in increasing public confidence is the media.

In the past the media maintained consumer confidence, when our spending went spiraling out of control. Now it seems hell bent on sending us into a depression with its wonder lust for stories of economic doom. If I was Obama one of my first agenda items would certainly be paying Murdoch a call, if his election coverage was any indicator of his position towards him.

"Change we can believe in"—we certainly watch with interest in Obama coming up with the goods to fulfill this promise of this positioning statement of his election campaign.

 Responses by email:

'I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around the banks will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.'
Thomas Jefferson 1802 — C.P. 14/11

80 years ago the USA enthusiastically elected a new president, who was expected to turn around the 12-month bear market and set the country back on its feet. If the racial situation had been more advanced they may well have elected an African-American, but it wasn’t, so they did the next best thing – they elected a geologist!
 
Herbert Hoover failed to turn things around during his term, instead we had the Great Depression. Some years later he wrote:
 
Our reconstruction from the war had proceeded with such steady success, and the other impulses to progress were so very great that, with the growing optimism, they gave birth to a foolish idea called the New Economic Era. That notion spread over the whole country. We were assured that we were in a new period where the old laws of economics no longer applied.
 
The Federal Reserve Board had deliberately created credit inflation.  The government contended that by the control of discount rates, open market operations and currency issues, business crises could be eliminated. A contribution to optimism and the belief in a New Era was the illusion that the economic system was thus completely immune from financial crises. Bankers, accepting this illusion, neglected many of their own responsibilities.
 
One trouble with every inflationary creation of credit is that it acts like a delayed time on them is an interval of indefinite and sometimes considerable length between the injection of stimulant, and the resulting speculation.
 
Our overpriced stocks and real estate were bound to come down, and the degree of down is influenced by the degree of up, which means they descend from overvalued to undervalued. The boom had lifted securities and real estate far up and to this degree was to deepen further the slump by the downward swing.
 
(OK, Hoover’s career was as a mining engineer, but his qualification was in geology).
—P.H. 14/11

Three of the businesses participating in the program chose to review this aspect of their Intellectual Property and as a result have now expanded both development options and exit strategies.

A context for naming
Names have a bit of the chicken and the egg syndrome around them.  If you take the Shakespearian perspective “a rose by any other name would still smell as sweet” actually only applies if you have had the experience of the “rose” first. In business this relates to meeting a person, liking them, and then asking about their business. This is how we often experience people and their businesses through networking events, referrals or introductions.

Just like Romeo smitten with love for Juliet, does he really care what she is called when those hormones kick in? Alternatively, do people in business care what the company is called when they are at the other end of an good deal...of course not. Still, I can't help but wonder if even Romeo would be so brave, as to pursue a girl whose name was “John” or “Gertrude”?

An interesting study was conducted a few years ago, on the emotional impact of names. Particularly, it sought to understand the influence a name could have on attractiveness.

The first part of this study concerned itself with finding two women that were rated by some 100 people as equal in attractiveness. The second part of the study was to take these two identically rated women, simply apply the names of “Jennifer” to one and “Gertrude” to the other, and send their photos out again to another 100 people in order to rate their attractiveness.

If the Shakespearian perspective was true, you would expect the addition of a name, to have little bearing on the attractiveness of either woman. However, the two names, did change people’s perceptions of attractiveness of the two individuals. The study revealed a whopping 400 percent difference towards the person “Jennifer” and away from the person named “Gertrude”. (Remember, these women were rated the same in appeal before those names were applied.)

For any business who wants to use non-personal means of introduction, whether through advertising, billboards, signage, marketing campaigns and/or the internet, then your name must be considered as a factor of influence to your business success.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) experts have long known the difference a change in domain name can have, along with ad copy, to increase the click through rate for advertisers on Google adwords. (They are the advertisers you find mostly down the right hand side of a search page on Google.).

How we take on information
My second guiding principle relates to the way we as humans take in information. Recently, I was sitting down to coffee, when a truck went past with the name “Lyre Company” and the tag line “we put your interests first”.  

We take in information visually through what we see, how it makes us feel and by hearing. When coining a name, make sure that its meaning doesn’t alter visually, over the phone (orally) or when experienced as a word. Now, back to our “Lyre” example, there is no difference between the sound of “Lyre” and “liar” over the telephone. 

“Lyre” would definitely not be my choice of a name for a security transport business because it sounds like “liar”. Even apart from this, is the marketplace really going to believe a tag line like “we put your interests first” from any company that calls itself “liar”, of course not and the company loses its potential for influence as a result.

I wrote about a similar situation, last Evers Report, concerning the National Australia Bank changing its name to “nab”. We all know what “nab” means in slang. However, here is a quirky fact. If they would have kept their new name in caps, as in NAB,  that would have changed our perception in a different way. Another study reported in New Scientist on names showed that names in caps have higher credibility and influence than names in lower case. Unfortunately, not only did “nab”  lose in the oral name stakes, they lost in the credibility stakes by going lower case as well.

Naming for Business Continuity
The third principle for any business though when naming is around succession planning, diversification and the overall exit strategy for the business.

As part of your business naming process, you need to decide whether your exit strategy is to sell or pass on the business, diversify your business interests or franchise it in some form. Every one of these has an impact on your choice of name and has intellectual property ramifications as well.

Your name captures, along with the brand, the goodwill of the company. Nothing is more disheartening than to see years of goodwill unable to be fully realised in the sale of a business or leveraged into new products or business opportunities because of a poor naming strategy.

Take Rentokil as an example. Rentokil is a great name for pest control business, but Rentokil Plant Hire, doesn't quite cut it for a business that hires out healthy plants. Something about kill and plants doesn't quite go together. I keep thinking that it was the "rento" part that should have been transported to the plant hire business. They could have called it Rentoplant or Rento Tropical Plant hire, still can and would change the take-up of this franchise business overnight.

You can uncover even more examples of this, with businesses that use a form of technology or service in their name that are now becoming extinct such as typewriters or analog now in telecommunications. Names that leverage off current technology can often end up with a limited life span.

Own your own name
Finally, your name has be able to be owned by you. That means you need to be able to trademark it as well has having the logical .com or the extension for your country as your domain.

Domain names are in themselves becoming big business. I noticed while I was doing the research for this report that www.planting.com has the hefty price tag of $58,000 on it. Not a bad return for an initial $10.00 investment in an internet domain name.

These four guiding principals do set the stage for right thinking around names.

In creating a name of influence there are at least nine approaches you can use to come up with the right name. As well as a nine point checklist that has taken us years to compile, to make sure it will be effective.

The good news is, that we will be covering both of these aspects, in detail, in an Accelerated Influence course we plan to release later this year, online. We realise that there are challenging times ahead and business people will need these kinds of resources to empower their business within reach.

So, until our next report, I wish you well on your journey to greatness.

Regards,
Monika Evers

To my mind it has less to do with performance and more to do with intangibles. Let me explain.

National Australia Bank was always been the pillar of the business banking. As an "Achiever" linked brand, it literally owned business banking and the “Achiever” brand and image as a result.

Recently however, we have been witnessing a great bank with massive brand value, slowly eating away at its market strength through naive changes to the way it is being positioned. These changes are killing its credibility and showing itself through the only tangible register of brand value...its decreasing share price.

Like many others in business, I was quite surprised at the announcement of the downsizing of its great National Australia Brand  to "nab" on February 13, 2006. Even though the press releases claimed it was done in order to "support the needs and aspirations of our customers".

Quite adventurous, I mused at the time...."owning" what you did with your clients uncleared funds (nab them!). After all, we suspected that banks used our money during those 2-3 days our incoming funds remain "uncleared" in the short term money market.  Actually renaming a bank based on this dubious feature of banking was quite refreshing, even though personally I had misgivings that it would not work for the National Australia Bank, long term interests to say the least.

It now appears my concerns have been vindicated. The move to "nab" has signalled more to the market place than a friendly banter around honesty or being in touch with the common use of the bank's name.

The influence stakes between the big banks has been an interesting watch over the past 6 years all round.

From my perspective ANZ made a few disastrous influence mistakes early on. There was the "crying baby campaign" that outraged women and was quickly replaced by the "we'll pay you $5 if you have to wait in line" campaign. It took many years to recover their lost esteem in the marketplace, including a not so successful repositioning in 2003, aimed at the women's market. However the repositioning had elements that did lay the foundations for its current position and the bank has finally found its feet in the past 18 months as the new "Achiever" business bank in the banking sector. This too has been reflected in its share price of late.

For the past 5 years Bendigo Bank too has been making a steady claim on its position in the banking marketplace. It now is the true “peoples" bank. Yet, with facilities like the ability to do a TT to anywhere in the world from your personal internet banking account, I would have to say it is truly the “modern people’s” bank.

Commonwealth is still floundering for dominance after fighting with the marketplace for years over its contentious image change. Now as time moves on...all is forgotten and forgiven. Image works that way given enough time but the bank is still lagging behind the true potential of its name.

In the end the share price says it all. NAB is weakest and under performing bank share compared to its rivals.

NAB 18% down on CTB Commonwealth shares for past 3 years
NAB 22 % down on BEN (Bendigo) shares for past 5 years
NAB equal to WTC  (Westpac) after a history of 20% superior performance.

Why did I even bother to look up share performance you may ask? It is because, this is the exact result I expected to find and it’s time to start writing the story of the power of Marketypes on share price.

Marketypes control marketplaces and share price

MarketypesTM are what I term the collected perceived values of brand, reflected in a "personality metaphor" that is known and held by your marketplace.

Metaphors are and have always been, the easiest and fastest way to change the  consciousness of a group, deliver change or learnings on mass.

So it makes sense that these Marketypes can capture and transform marketplaces, brand value, market understanding and hold the esteem of any business.

While there are some 84 submarketypes there are only 12 main marketypal groups in any given marketplace. Once you own a Marketype in any market space it is literally influence suicide to move from it or go towards another, like McDonald’s did.

They dictate and hold your market promises but also couch the values of the brand, the esteem of the services and the expectations of the customers and shareholders of performance. Change it and you lose a good proportion of the value of your goodwill along with it. 

Share price is the true indicator of market confidence and the tangible value of any listed company. Therefore if you want to see how successful the marketypal standing of a business is, then look at the changes in their share price.

Take yesterday...driving around I glanced up to see another billboard with "nab"'s new campaign..."know your enemy". I even can't remember the line underneath, but I vaguely remember it was a about some course they were offering. I found myself wondering why a bank would run a headline like that especially when it calls it self "nab"?

“Enemy” and “nab” is an automatic influence, negative cross-match or did they not connect the dots on that one.

Everything that goes out to your marketplace either confirms or detracts from your marketypal positioning. Most of the time correct marketypal positioning is made more by accident than the calculated strategy by Board or CEO that it should be.

What we are currently seeing playing out in the banking marketplace is the dynamics of marketypal positioning.

NAB is divesting itself of its "Achiever" business marketype for a confused offering that covers everything from "mateship" to a "mentor" offering.

"Everyman or the mateship" marketype though is taken, Bendigo Bank has already successfully claimed that and now exclusively owns this space.

"Achiever" is now slowly being taken over by ANZ.

Macquarie Bank now owns the “Creator” marketype and innovative business banking market.

Reserve Bank owns the "Ruler" space but doesn’t really trade like a normal bank, but it sets the interest rate, so who cares, it rules!

Commonwealth by name alone occupies a kind of deputy ruler status, but is still underdeveloped.

It begs the question is brand and influence really so intangible, when you can actually log its impact in share market performance?

NAB is losing its influence and it is sad to watch such a great business mismanage one its greatest influence assets, its Marketypal status.

In their recent annual report NAB stated their goodwill had increased by 3%. I hate to break the bad news, but goodwill isn’t tied to CPI. It is dynamic and reflected in consumer confidence and in also in share value, which in NAB’s case is currently 20% down compared to it’s banking peers.

The other way to think about "nabs" predicament is that they have a 20% share value deficit that they could begin to reverse by simply re-addressing this issue.

The same market forces that affect businesses also play out in the personal arena, especially if you are a CEO, business consultant or corporate adviser.  Recently, a consultant approached me about their personal brand. Their counterpart overseas was on a five million dollar annual income, yet they were only receiving a small recognition of that in Australia. It soon became apparent to both of us that it was a combination of their personal style, positioning and social proof mechanisms that had been undermining their personal brand and costing them the recognition they should have seen in income.

They are not alone. In my experience the majority of personal brands in Australia are underdeveloped.

The rules of influence apply just as much to personal brands as they do company brands. Being able to differentiate and position yourself in way that makes it easy for a Board or employer to understand your relevance, or recommend you to others, is vital in this time poor world. Therefore, preparing yourself to be recommended or endorsed in as few words as possible, needs to be as much a part of your personal preparation, as your business attire and cards.

Recently, I was impressed by a venture capitalist that used the first hour of our meeting to story tell his way through his social links that extended to royalty on two continents, major share holders of some of the biggest companies here and abroad and of course his own family background. He used them to establish his financial and social influence so he could strike a more effective deal for himself and his investors in the boardroom.

Here is the second point to this story. He was the one with the money, so he could take as long as he wanted. When the shoe is on the other foot you had better be succinct. What makes you great in 21 seconds or less is where you should be aiming. After eight seconds, fifty percent of your audience have already made up their minds about you and tuned out. To turn around any counter impressions you will have to make two extraordinary comebacks, not just one in that remaining time.

Lack of time reduces us to being in a commodity marketplace. Your job in influence conversations is to become differentiated, memorable and easy to recommend. Creating that kind of influence should also be the major focus of every resume and business profile and where many people fall short.

Social proof is just one of the six ways you can increase your personal influence. It can be the kudos you gain from being employed or engaged by the big guns or rising stars of your industry. Consider how many consultants use their stint at Deloittes or PWC  to boost their credibility and launch their personal consulting careers.

Leveraging from influential brands immediately transfers some of their brand's value onto yours. Although I wonder how many consultants owned up to working at Andersons after their collapse...and that is always the problem with brand leverage, you live and die according to a brand you have no control over.

Degrees, MBA’s and grades while they are an indicator of a standard of education wade into the brand leverage stakes, with an MBA from Harvard or Melbourne University I am told by graduates, having more influence and prestige than an MBA from other institutions. (An interesting form of marketing, using graduates to deliver social proof.)

Who you know, testimonials, recommendations, press, books, even who you breakfast and lunch with, all fit into a version of social proof that allow you to leverage onto your personal brand and increase your influence.

I remember eating at Café del Sol in Bologna, Italy. While we were feasting on what I have to admit was the best meal I have ever tasted, period, I was informed that staff there were prepared to forgo wages just to be able to say they had worked there. This form of social proof impressed me as much as the food and the 3 Michelin star rating.

CEO’s and celebrity Board members are now becoming the other big brands of business. Every CEO has the potential to add to shareholder confidence and therefore add value to its share price. Remember when Jack Welch resigned from GE after his meteoric stewardship. The best indicator of the value of his brand happened on the day of his retirement announcement. The share price of GE halved overnight from around $60 per share to just over $30.00 (where it still travels today).

Celebrity branding has become a global phenomenon, even in share markets. Just like the movie stars that can influence box office sales, big business, will pay more for a CEO that can increase a share price just for coming on board. Therefore CEO’s are not only responsible for the growing the value of the brand of the business they steward, they also need to manage, grow and leverage their own brand as they develop in their careers. Their personal brand can make a difference of millions to their income when it develops that influence to increase a company's share price.

Consultants, advisers, CEO's and employees can increase the success of their personal brands. Future Evers Reports will continue the conversation of the additional Principles of Influence to support that journey, so stay tuned.

Understanding these aspects of our dual natures go some of the way to explaining why we value gossip and news. They are both methods by which we add in information into our understandings on the strata of relationships in our life.

Malcolm Gleadwell in his book “The Tipping Point” has researched that the maximum number of people we can have a genuinely social relationship with is limited to 150.

It is also the magical number he suggests that work groups, organisation departments and communities need to limit themselves to keep that genuine community/small business feel.

memory stacks create layers of influence

When people talk about a brand or person they use the name so it makes sense that names hold a strong social bias.

People who have already seen the "Anatomy of Influence" will know that name alone can skew a preference for a similar person or product by 400%.

Names influence and increase Brand influence as they become connected to the relationships and events of our lives. Often when the name becomes strongly associated with a brand mark logos or other design devices, they begin forming a "stack" of memories and influence. These "stacked" memory parcels are also referred to as stacked "memes". They are formed when two or more recall devices images, names, music, smells, emotion..." work together to recreate an experience in recall which can then influence a current behaviour.

For example when people say the name Disneyland, it brings back a flood of memories that include the way it is written, the castle logo, Walt Disney singing..."When you wish upon a star" and so many good memories of childhood of sitting in front of TV with my cousins on a Sunday night at 7.30pm

That is one massive stacked meme that is loaded with social experience and data. Does this memory stack (meme) have sway on adults like me buying for videos for children. You bet it does.

The nine layers of Influence

BRAND building is about creating memory stacks (memes) that can influence buying behaviour towards your company or person.

Over 20 years in the business of influence, I have been able to uncover the nine layers behind "stacks of influence" that when combined accelerate the influence of businesses and their BRANDS.

Businesses and personal brands that miss anyone of these layers, shave off a percentage of influence, sales and opportunities that should be yours.

If you know your sales cycles are long, losing sales, margins are being reduced, or your business is just not getting the credibility for its product or services, then I invite you to have a look at our presentation "The Anatomy of influence". Discover the nine essential factors that optimise influence. Then you can decide if this is, just what your business needs. How knows...for the same amount of effort you could be doubling your sales.

Call me direct on +61 3 9252 0609.

1. what happened when the drinks were presented anonymously (taste only)
2. what then happened when the subjects knew and saw the brand of the drink they were about to consume (cultural influence);
3. any correlation between either preference and areas of brain activity.

Because of the nature of the testing environment the subject were presented with only non-carbonated versions of the drinks. The sampling was always done in pairs to force choice. (About 6 months later the subjects were called back to complete the study and verify that carbonation held no influence on preference, which they did.)

Anonymous Delivery
When they did the anonymous delivery of the drinks, the results matched the Aussie version of the 80’s study into the Pepsi^®/Coke^® Challenge. They was no preference overall by the group for either Coke^® or Pepsi^®. Individual preferences were strong and showed activity in the VMPFC (ventromedial prefrontal cortex), an area the study attributed to reward-based learning due to appetite.

Brand Knowledge
Next, the scientists decided to label (brand) one of the pair of cups and leave the other unbranded. They also told test subjects that the other cup may or may not contain the same drink. They were testing specifically for brand influence.

The Results and I quote…“unlike the Coke^® label, the existence of the Pepsi^® label did not change the distribution of choices significantly relative to the anonymous taste test.” “no brain areas showed a significant effect of brand knowledge. (p<0.01) ”.

Brand Pepsi^® had no influence on their choice.

Coke^® on the other hand registered a 0.43 in the hippocampus area and a 0.41in the DLPFC (dorsolateral region of the prefrontal cortex.) Both are areas that are known to bias sensory judgment but act independently. The hippocampus is recruited to recall the cultural information that ends up biasing judgment.

Which is exactly what happened with the Coke^® brand. More people chose the Coke^® brand even over previous, alternate, taste preferences.

The influence for the brand “Coke^®” biased preference by 70% compared to Pepsi^® (which held no bias in these areas of cultural influence). 

The final count (out of three trials), was on average Pepsi^® 1.2 and Coke^® 2.25 (almost double).

The Point
What the experiment showed was that when the subjects were shown the brand Coke^® it influenced their choice over any previous taste preference. When brand Pepsi^® was shown to the test subjects it held no influence over taste.

Implication for business
Pretty tricky for the Pepsi^® marketing department wouldn’t you say. All that money spent and in the end people choose Pepsi just based on taste. The brand apparently holds no real sway. This means it has little ability to leverage other products or product lines in the marketplace. Has some pretty interesting implications on sponsorships as well.

The problem is, that they are not alone when it comes to this factor of 'long term stickiness'. One of the many gripes of companies is that after the marketing campaign the company and their products revert to previous sales revenues.

What it shows is that the quality of stickiness or ‘influence’ as I prefer to call it, is often not increased by the marketing campaign. In Pepsi^®’s case, it seems, from these studies at least, by any campaign.

We have uncovered from our research and experience, which includes the launching of over 100 brands, that there are some nine factors that increase brand influence. 

Month by month we will introduce more about these factors of influence, as part of the Evers Report, so stay tuned.

He got the names of 160 people at random who lived in either Omaha and Wichita. To each person he mailed a packet. Inside of the packet was a letter explaining the study and the name and address of a Stockbroker who worked in Boston and lived in Sharon, Massachusetts.

Each person was instructed to write his or her name on the packet and send it to someone they knew (on a first name basis), that could get the packet closer to the stock broker.

The idea was that by the time the packet arrived at the stockbroker's home or work address, it would show how many people's hands it came through to get there.

The study revealed that it took on average 5.5 hands to get there, hence the "Six Degrees of Separation". However, that wasn't the big deal of the study. It revealed something far more significant to people in business, today.

Of the 24 packets that arrived at the stockbroker's home in Sharon...16 were hand delivered by the same person. That is 66% of all the letters to his home came through just one person. Of the ones that arrived at his office in Boston, the majority were hand delivered by just two other people.

Imagine, 160 letters were sent out to friends, relatives or work colleagues, totally unrelated to each other. Yet in their journey across the country the majority of the final letters would eventually end up in the hands of these three people.

What the study really showed us, was not that everyone in the country is linked through six degrees of separation, rather the reverse. It was that these three people had links to everyone else in the country.

The people who are the connectors

You will find these people peppered through referral networks, social groups and business clubs. The easiest way to uncover who they in your circle is to do this simple test.

Write a list of 40 friends (excluding work colleagues and family), or even 40 clients and trace back the contact points to find out how you got to know each of these people. Often the majority of your connections originate with one or two people.

Don't be surprised if you also discover that you are actually part of their network rather than in one of you own. At the very least your search may reveal a person you should be appreciating a whole lot more. When I traced back my business clients, I ended up with two people. Gary Schuller's and his Breakthrough Connection and indirectly Rosalyn Neville and her Entre Nous Agency for an introduction to a business connector now living abroad.

Both Gary and Rosalyn have utilised their skill as connectors, to create businesses that specialise in connecting people to each other. Gary's connections are to do with connecting businesses and people in business, while Rosalyn's are more on a personal level.

A stuffed polecat was dragged near a mothering turkey and understandably it rendered a vicious attack on the polecat. Next, it placed among the newly hatched turkey chicks with a tape recorder inside of it playing the "cheep cheep" sound of a turkey chick. When the tape was playing the turkey happily mothered the polecat as one of its nest of chicks, tucking it underneath her. As soon as the tape stopped playing the turkey began attacking it viciously.

The study showed that turkeys had a set of mothering behaviours that were automatic and unconscious. If it cheeped it would mother it, if it stopped cheeping it would murder it.

Many other studies since have shown that while these patterned ways of being maybe for the most part innate in animals, humans have sets of unconscious patterns of behaviours as well.

We use these sets of behaviour to bring more simplicity to our complex world. We learn skills like using a knife and fork to eat, which after a while become what we term an unconscious competency. We are able use a knife and fork without even thinking about it. Driving, at first for most is an incredible conscious challenge. After a while we can arrive at our destination and hardly be aware of our journey.

We learn to make decisions the same way and develop unconscious shortcuts so we don't have to think too much about what we may be buying. This is where brands live in these unconscious shortcuts. For example I buy Pura milk in a dark blue carton. Do I review all the milk containers every time I want milk. No I just buy “my Brand”. (Actually, I just switched to organic, but that was because  the word “Organic” is a far stronger influencer on my purchasing than any specific brand..)

“If an expert says it it must be true” is another automatic influencer. That is why the gold medals on wines holds sway with more people as do Awards for films.

“Expensive equals good” is another automatic influencer for those seeking quality.
That is the reason why when the store owner told her assistant to 1/2 the price of her slow moving jewelery and the assistant instead mistook the instruction to read x2 (double) the price, it took the glass jewelery into the “expensive equals good” price category compared to her other stock. Those clients seeking quality would have been influenced to buy those pieces because it initiated the automatic influencer around price.

In our practice we have found that automatic influencers even affect brands. Look beneath our conversation on the MetaBrand DNA process and you will see that it is all about mapping unconscious and automatic influencers that underpin our ongoing success with brands.