Category: News

New York, NY (July 07, 2015) – With the busy summer travel season officially kicking off this week, Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing consultancy, today revealed its ranking of the Top 15 Most Powerful Travel and Entertainment Brands. The Walt Disney Company leads as the number #1 brand, with Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International taking the second and third place, respectively.

The Top 15 Most Powerful Travel and Entertainment Brands are ranked by a unique, quantitative measure called BrandPower. Based upon an annual US survey of approximately ten thousand opinion elites and business-decision makers, BrandPower is a weighted composite of two key metrics that contribute to a brand’s ability to drive long-term growth: Familiarity and Favorability. Familiarity measures awareness of the brand. Favorability is the perception of the brand (among those who are well aware of it), and is based upon three attributes that tie directly to future business performance: Overall Reputation, Perception of Management, and Investment Potential.

Key Findings

• The Walt Disney Company leads as the #1 Most Powerful Travel and Entertainment Brand. With a BrandPower of 75.8, both its Familiarity (degree of awareness) and Favorability (positive perception) increased year-over-year. Across the three dimensions that together form Favorability: Overall Reputation, Perception of Management and Investment Potential, the past year proved to be a strong one for the company, as each dimension reached its highest point since 2010. The company was also a strong performer on Tenet’s 2015 Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, taking the #4 position.

• Hotel & Entertainment brands dominate the Top 15 ranking with a total of eight brands hailing from the category, including Walt Disney (#1), Hilton Hotels & Resorts (#2), Marriott International (#3), Trump Organization (#4), MGM Resorts International (#10), Las Vegas Sands (#11), Caesars Entertainment (#12) and Starwood Hotels & Resorts (#15). While hotel brands are the most represented across the Top 15, most of these brands’ Favorability scores (with the exception of Disney) experienced some of the sharpest declines year-over-year. These findings signal that opinion elites/business-decision makers (frequent travelers themselves) have diminishing confidence in these hotel brands, and in the eyes of these savvy investors – are less attractive financial assets, unlikely to outperform their travel and entertainment peers in the sector.

• Hilton Hotels & Resorts and Marriott International: As overall awareness (Familiarity) of these brands continues to grow, but with Favorability declining, this movement indicates that their respective brand equities and reputations aren’t necessarily moving their brand in a positive direction. While consumers’ are becoming more aware of these companies, their confidence regarding their overall growth, leadership, and ability to secure future earnings is waning.
  
  The past five years proved to be difficult for the nation’s hotel industry. Faced with declining demand for rooms, increased construction costs, and the rising cost of fuel, many hotel companies struggled to grow their brands. However, coming out of the recession, both Hilton and Marriott have moved swiftly to address consumers’ evolving needs and desires. Hilton continues to be on the forefront of social media and digital innovation. Last year, the company was recognized by Travel + Leisure for their award-winning “International Use it or Lose it Week” campaign, in which together with Foursquare, created geo-targeted check-in ads to remind people to take full advantage of their vacation days.
  
  Marriott faced a number of challenges this past year, contributing to its decline in Favorability. From facing stiff competition from peer-to-peer booking site, Airbnb, to falling short on revenue earnings to confronting a public controversy around its decision to block guest WiFi, the company is now undertaking a major shift in its strategy to appeal to the next generation of consumers: millennial travelers. The company’s recent efforts to tap into this growing audience include launching a rooftop picnic pop-up in London and teaming up with Netflix to become the first major hotel chain to offer Netflix-enabled TVs in every room.

• Leading airline brands, including United Airlines (#6), Delta Air Lines (#7), and US Airways (#14) demonstrate the strongest brand momentum across the Top 15, increasing on both dimensions of BrandPower: Familiarity and Favorability. Not only have these three brands grown their overall awareness and improved upon their corporate reputation year-over-year, but have done so consistently since 2010. Southwest, consistently rated as one of the top airlines in customer service, has shown an increase in year-over-year Favorability.
  
  Across the industry, more recent declines in oil prices following the recession have helped airlines add more routes and offer more affordable flights, in turn allowing them to expand their market presence and service networks. When American Airlines (#5), the leading airline brand, and US Airways merged in 2013 it created the world’s biggest airline. Taking the American Airlines name, it absorbed a global network of nearly 6,700 flights to more than 330 destinations across 50 countries. Since 2005, mergers have reduced the US’s major airlines brands from nine to four. American, United, Delta and Southwest now control more than 80% of the US market.
  
  While expanding their market presence, working to provide superior customer service and build customer loyalty, have long been key guiding principles of these leading airline brands. Innovations in in-flight entertainment, product enhancements that include larger over-head storage and extra legroom space, to smartphone apps that allow customers to better manage and plan their travel experience, have all played a vital role boosting consumer awareness, but also in creating stronger brand experiences and associations.

• Rental car brands, with only two brands represented amongst the Top 15, demonstrated a wide disparity in terms of their performance. Avis Budget Group (#9) outperformed competitor Hertz Global (#13) by a wide margin, earning a BrandPower score of 40.4, 11 points higher than Hertz. Across the board, Avis Budget Group improved year-over-year on Familiarity and across the three dimensions of Favorability: Overall Reputation, Perception of Management, and Investment Potential.
  
  Despite the wave of auto recalls that hit the auto industry this past year, the rental car industry has fared well. Both Avis Budget Group and Hertz Global Holdings have reduced their fleets, helping them increase their prices. In the wake of splitting its auto and construction-equipment businesses into two companies, Hertz encountered a corporate accounting error, which marred three years of its financial reports, and then released a 3 percent decline in sales year-over-year. Meanwhile, Avis Budget saw shares grow 50 percent in 2014.

“While hotels are well represented on this year’s Top Travel and Entertainment Brands, they are under pressure from weaker corporate reputations,” said Steve Makadok, Partner of Tenet’s CoreBrand Analytics practice. “Benefiting from high awareness in the marketplace, the challenge – and opportunity for these brands is to build on their existing brand equity and focus on creating more meaningful, innovative and compelling customer experiences that will allow them to drive long-term growth and enterprise value.”

The Top 15 Most Powerful Travel & Entertainment Brands

Indicates a significantly lower Familiarity/Favorability vs. 2014

Indicates a significantly higher Familiarity/Favorability vs. 2014

Indicates a change of only +/- .5 year-over-year

Methodology

A company’s BrandPower score is determined by a survey of approximately ten thousand influential people on two key brand metrics: Familiarity and Favorability. This carefully screened audience, representing opinion elites/business-decision-makers at the top 20 percent of American corporations are polled on the following:

Familiarity – Respondents are considered to be familiar with a brand if they state that they know more than just the company name. Familiarity scores can range from 0 to 100.

Favorability – Respondents familiar with a corporation are then asked about three dimensions that together, form a Favorability score, also on a scale of 0 to 100.

• Overall Reputation – Do you have a favorable impression of the corporate brand?
• Perception of Management – What is your perception of the company’s management? How would you assess the way senior leadership leads the enterprise and engages stakeholders? Does leadership have future-forward outlook on the market in which it operates, as well as on the competition?
• Investment Potential – Would you invest in this company?

BrandPower is calculated as a function of Familiarity and Favorability, enabling easy comparison among competitors, against industry averages and against world-class brands.

About this ranking

The starting point for determining the Top 15 Most Powerful Travel and Entertainment Brands is the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) – a quantitative database based on a continuous benchmark tracking survey of nearly 1,000 companies across 50 industries. The study has been in the field continuously since 1990.

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies.

For more information, please contact:
Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (May 12, 2015) – Tenet Partners℠, a leading brand innovation and marketing consultancy, released today its 8th annual Top 100 Most Powerful Brands report, which ranks the top 100 corporate brands in terms of market awareness and reputation.

The Coca-Cola Company continues its lead as the #1 Most Powerful Brand – a distinction it has held since the Top 100 was first created in 2008. Amazon (#65) having jumped 20 places leads as the Top 100 ‘top riser.’ Apple (#5) continues it meteoric rise on the ranking, moving up five places from #10 last year. Since 2010, the tech giant has continued to strengthen its BrandPower score and climbed an impressive fifty-one places over the past five years.

Our findings show that some of the fastest-rising brands: Amazon (#65, +20), Intel (#94, +14), Google (#15, +11), and Apple (#5, +5), are outpacing their peers by reimaging customer experience. Through strategic acquisitions, collaborative brand partnerships, and continued investment in R&D, these leading brands are transforming their offerings to deliver greater value to their customers, businesses, and shareholders.

“The Top 100 Most Powerful Brands demonstrate that value creation stems from sustained investment to drive brand-led innovation and compelling customer experiences,” said Hampton Bridwell, CEO of Tenet Partners. By successfully fueling their business strategies with a more holistic approach to brand, digital and service design to meet customers’ needs and aspirations across diverse channels, the Top 100 brands are spurring growth – and creating market advantage over both the short and long term.”

Each year, Tenet Partners analyzes the data in the CoreBrand^® Index (CBI) to determine the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands based on high market awareness and positive brand perceptions. Business decision makers at the top 20% of American corporations (VP level and above – representing the investment community, potential business partners, and business customers) are surveyed on two key metrics that contribute to a brand’s strength:

• Familiarity – Measures awareness of the brand. Respondents are considered to be familiar with a brand if they state they know more than just the company name. Familiarity scores range from 0 to 100.
• Favorability – The perception of the brand, based on how it performs across three key attributes: Overall Reputation, Perception of Management, and Investment Potential. Favorability scores also range from 0 to 100.

The quantitative Familiarity and Favorability metrics are then combined into a composite score called BrandPower – and are reported on a 100-rank scale. In order to be in the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands, companies must be considered a corporate brand and have been publicity traded and tracked by the CoreBrand Index for more than five years.

“Good management – both of the brand and of a company – results in two outcomes: strong familiarity and high favorability,” said James Gregory, Chairman of Tenet Partners. “By uncovering these two critical dimensions that contribute to brand health, business-decision makers can gain important intelligence in all the areas that define business success.”

Key Findings

_BrandPower is growing significantly across the board_
Five years ago, the average BrandPower score for the Top 100 was 60.7. This year, the average BrandPower is 63.1. This momentum is the strongest since the recession, suggesting that as corporations continue to invest in strategically building and managing their brand, they regaining the confidence of business-decision makers.

_Consumer Cyclicals made the strongest showing in the Top 100_
Companies that depend on the business cycle and economic conditions – such as automotive, entertainment and retail – are the single largest group in the Top 100, representing a total of 37 brands. Hailing from the Hotel & Entertainment industry, Walt Disney (#4) leads as the strongest consumer cyclical. Within the sector overall, Retail is the most represented industry with 14 ranked companies. Barnes & Noble is the top retail brand, rising to #29 this year.

_Communication spending is up overall, with bigger spenders reaping the most benefit_
The ten brands that moved up the most in the rankings this year have increased spending to drive familiarity at a much greater rate than the ten brands that declined the most. This demonstrates that the right level of investment, strategically allocated, will produce significant results.

Notable BrandPower Winners for 2015

The Coca-Cola Company (#1) – The #1 Most Powerful Brand of 2015

The Coca-Cola Company continued its lead as the #1 Most Powerful Brand. The 125-year-old Coca-Cola Company never rests on its laurels and continues to evolve around the ever-changing needs and wants of consumers. After falling yeas in a row, Coke’s U.S. soft-drink volumes rose 2.5% last summer, thanks in part to the hit “Share a Coke” campaign that will return this year. Also, last year, the company responded to health-conscious consumers by introducing Coca-Cola Life, a reduced-calorie cola naturally sweetened with cane sugar and stevia leaf extract.

Amazon (#65) – The Top 100 ‘Top Riser’

Amazon’s BrandPower has been on the rise since 2010. The company jumped 20 spots from its previous 2014 #85 position to enter at #65 this year. The brand excels at responding to, and often exceeding, consumers’ expectations of convenience, selection, and price. Built on a culture of innovation, the company spent upwards of $9.1 billion in research and development in 2014. Data-driven content and email marketing is a key success factor for the company. By leveraging rich information about its users, Amazon is able to create exceptional and intimate customer experiences.

Apple (#5) – Fastest-rising brand amongst the top 10

Apple jumped from #10th to #5th this year– becoming the fastest-rising brand amongst the top 10. Both its Familiarity and Favorability scores have increased, due in large part of its innovative products and outstanding market performance. The tech giant is bringing diverse elements together – talent, brands, new technologies to maintain its reputation for outstanding, relevant customer experiences.

Intel (#94) – Top new entrant to the Top 100

The California chipmaker is a new entrant into Top 100, having jumped fourteen places from #108. In late 2013, Intel created a new business unit specifically aimed at the Internet of Things (loT). Although the loT business only accounted for about 4% of Intel’s sales and operating income, it exceeded the company’s struggling mobile division, which posted an operating loss of $4.2 billion. This move promises to make Intel an important part of what should become a multi-brand experience embedded in the everyday lives of consumers.

Key Sector Trends

Three industry sectors tracked in the CBI – Technology, Financial Services, and Automotive – have experienced profound shifts and changes following the 2008 financial crisis. By building dynamic brands that defy industry norms, these leaders are delivering new experiences and driving value through innovation.

Technology

Brands hailing from the technology sector stand out as Top 100 ‘top risers.’ Of the top 10 biggest risers on the ranking, tech brands make up the five biggest BrandPower movers: Amazon (#65, +20), Intel (#94, +14), eBay (#32, +13), IBM (#32, +13) and Google (#15, +11). Amazon’s rise over the last five years is remarkable; up 74 places since 2010. Although CEO Jeff Bezos is not one to shy away from disrupting the status quo – from experimenting with delivering drones (and making a splash by talking about them on CBS’s _60 Minutes_) to acquiring Internet of Things platform 2lemetry – his vision for the brand has remained intact: to be the most customer-centric company on earth. Google follows close on Amazon’s heels, rising 73 places since 2010. The company is continuing to invest enthusiastically, from acquiring Nest, to experimenting with self-driving cars, to its most recent collaboration with Johnson & Johnson to help develop a robot-assisted surgery platform. These initiatives are helping Google extend its reach not only in the marketplace, but also in consumers’ minds.

Financial Services

Morgan Stanley (#57, +9), Charles Schwab (#64, +10), Wells Fargo (#97, +13) all experienced significant increases in BrandPower, as the United States banking industry continues to recover from the global financial crisis. A key strategy for financial services brands has been a renewed focus on customer experience. For example, a hallmark of Well Fargo’s corporate vision is its “One Wells Fargo” initiative. With a diverse range of products and business – banking, investments, mortgage, and insurance – One Wells Fargo serves an enterprise-wide guiding principle. It offers a roadmap for engaging with customers across multiple business lines in addition to providing collaboration strategies across business units.

Automotive

After years of soft performance due to the recession, consumers are giving in to pent-up demand and are purchasing cars with a vengeance. According to tracking company Autodata, 16.5 million new autos hit the streets in 2014 – the highest number since the record of 16.9 million in the pre-recession days of 2006. Despite rising sales, the majority automotive companies slid in the BrandPower: Harley-Davidson (#10, -5), BMW (#21, -4), Volkswagen (#31, -4), Honda (#36, -6), Toyota (#42, -5), Volvo (#44, -8), Ford Motor (#49, +2), General Motors (#61, no change), Nissan Motors (#83, -6). Ford (#49, +2) is the uncontested industry leader, increasing its BrandPower year-over-year. Former President and CEO, Alan Mulally, has described Ford as being a technology company as much as a car company. The automaker is a leader among American car companies in hybrid technology, with its Fusion Energi winning 2013 Green Car of the Year. The company also pioneered enhancing the driver experience through technology with one of the first integrated connectivity systems, Ford Sync. Since its debut in 2007, the technology has continued to evolve and become more customer-friendly

The Most Powerful Brands of 2015 Website

View the full list of the Top 100 Most Powerful Brands. The full report is available to download by visiting tenetpartners.com/top100.

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies.

For more information, please contact:

Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (April 27, 2015) – Tenet Partners, a leading brand innovation and marketing consultancy, announced the appointment of Steve Makadok as Partner of its CoreBrand™ Analytics practice.

Makadok, who brings to Tenet Partners more than twenty years of experience driving strategic business transformation, will play a pivotal role deepening and expanding new client relationships stemming from Tenet’s CoreBrand Analytics capabilities.

For 25 years, CoreBrand Analytics has provided corporate leaders with a robust suite of benchmarking and diagnostic tools, quantifying the link between brand strength and financial performance. Leveraging the CoreBrand Analytics portfolio and database, Makadok will help senior leaders gain valuable insights into how they can better measure – and enhance the impact of their brand-building efforts. These capabilities and unique insights include:

• Benchmarking the health and vitality of their corporate brand relative to competitors and aspirational peers
• Monitoring the impact and resilience of the corporate brand during a crisis
• Forecasting the optimal level of marketing investment to drive business performance and shareholder value
• Determining the financial value of the corporate brand to help in decision-making around mergers & acquisitions, joint ventures and licensing opportunities

“Today’s CMOs, CCOs and brand marketers are increasingly being asked to quantitatively support the rationale for their corporate brand investments – and truly require a multi-dimensional view of how their brand is driving financial performance.” said Makadok. “Tenet is a proven leader in corporate branding and brand measurement and I’m thrilled to be working alongside some of the brightest pioneers in the industry.”

Makadok comes to Tenet from the Reputation Institute where he served as Managing Director and Partner of North America. During his tenure at Reputation Institute, Makadok drove significant growth and oversaw relationships with world-class companies including Harley-Davidson, Fidelity Investments, Cigna, and Amway. Prior to the Reputation Institute, Steve held management positions at a number of brand consultancies, advertising agencies and marketing research firms, including Siegel & Gale, FutureBrand, Synovate and J. Walter Thompson. He earned an MBA in Marketing from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business and a dual Bachelors degree in Economics and Political Science from Stony Brook University.

Stepping into this new role marks Makadok’s return to CoreBrand Analytics. Prior to Brandlogic and CoreBrand joining forces and forming Tenet Partners in 2014, he served as Group Director of CoreBrand’s Brand Intelligence and Strategy practice from 1999 to 2002.

Commenting on the appointment, Jim Gregory, Chairman of Tenet Partners, said: “I am delighted to welcome Steve to Tenet Partners. Having previously been part of the CoreBand team, he brings with him proven success helping C-suite leaders drive growth and innovation at their organization. As we look to the future as Tenet Partners, Steve will be an instrumental part of our continued success, helping to solve some our clients most pressing challenges.”

About Tenet Partners

Formed from the merger of Brandlogic and CoreBrand, Tenet Partners is a brand innovation and marketing consultancy that helps companies create brand value and unearth business opportunities by putting customers at the center of their business strategies.

For more information, please contact:

Russ Napolitano
Chief Operating Officer
Tenet Partners
+ 1 212 329-3035
rnapolitano@tenetpartners.com

New York, NY (April 07, 2015) – Original article at: Clutch

The new research identifies leading firms with a demonstrated focus on Branding and Naming.

Today Clutch published its first report on leading Branding and Naming agencies in the US. The research identifies marketing and advertising agencies with a demonstrated focus on branding and/or naming services.

The leading Branding firms are:

Ologie, Bulldog Drummond, Matchstic, Salt Branding, Brandjuice, Tenet Partners, Your Majesty, UnitOneNine, Sensis, and Basic.

The leading naming firms are:

Zinzin, Namestormers, Brighter Naming, Bulldog Drummond, and Matchstic.

“A company’s brand is, without question, its most valuable asset.” stated Chandler Dunklin, Research Analyst at Clutch. “These agencies have a proven track record of enhancing a company’s ability to tell its story to the customer.”

Clutch analysts reached out to North American companies with significant experience strengthening brands for a variety of clients from startups to enterprise firms. The top agencies were selected based on numerous quantitative and qualitative factors, including company experience, market presence, positive client feedback, and industry recognition and accolades.

Clutch’s effort to identify leading Branding and Naming agencies is ongoing, and the firm encourages companies to apply to participate in future research updates. Upcoming publications will highlight other areas within the marketing and advertising industry.

The full reports and reviews can be found at:

https://clutch.co/agencies/branding/research

https://clutch.co/agencies/branding

https://clutch.co/agencies/naming/research

https://clutch.co/agencies/naming

New York, NY (March 27, 2015) – Original article at: Business Observer

I have loved JetBlue since the beginning of time — JetBlue’s time that is. I thought the concept of founder David Neeleman was simply ingenious — to offer a low-cost airline, but also a pleasant customer experience. JetBlue managed and nurtured that customer experience from the first time you visited its website to look for tickets to the time you got off the plane at your destination. It was brilliant, differentiating and successful; it earned the airline “most admired” status.

Neeleman often flew on these flights to actually experience “the customer experience.” Not only that, but he served beverages and snacks to the travelers and talked to them all — every single one on the flight. I know because that is how I first met him. He sat in the last row of the plane. Why? Because that is row 27 and it doesn’t recline. He wanted to make sure he understood the experience. Pleasing the customer was paramount; pleasing the CEO was not so important.

The idea of giving reasonable legroom to customers was more important than losing a row of revenue. Putting video monitors at each seat to allow streaming of 36 television channels was a novel idea at the time. If a monitor didn’t work and you couldn’t get another seat, then you would get a refund for a portion of your trip. Unbelievable.

JetBlue was an airline that understood customer experience, and it earned my brand loyalty. Its “True Blue” rewards program was a relatively quick way to get free tickets for loyal customers. It was a simple and easy way to get miles and to cash them in. Everything operated through the company’s website, which was intuitive and easy to use.

Not only did Neeleman put customers first, he also put employees at the top of the pyramid — one of the first airlines to do so. In 2002, he put his entire salary and bonus into the JetBlue Crewmember Crisis Fund, which was established for employees who had fallen on financial hardship. Employees loved, respected and wanted to work for him.

Unfortunately, when an epic ice storm stranded JetBlue passengers on the runway on Valentine’s Day in 2007, it led the company’s board of directors to oust Neeleman as CEO in what seems to be a bit of an overreaction. Certainly there were operational deficiencies, and Neeleman’s response that he was “mortified” didn’t help. In any event, with new management in place, changes started to come to JetBlue…slowly at first, but the pace of change picked up and like a jet reaching takeoff the acceleration is continuing.

Under the new management, prices started inching up at a steady pace. JetBlue was known for very competitive fare, but that was changing and prices went from inexpensive to downright steep. If a customer wanted to make changes to an itinerary it used to cost only a minimal amount. After all, what does a change truly cost an airline when the customer does the work online? Now, changes to itineraries were becoming significantly more expensive. Exit rows were long sought after by the taller passengers, and the airline decided to charge more for the “extra legroom seats.” While just slightly more expensive at $10 in the beginning, they became much more expensive over time at $40 — a 400% increase.

When many of the other airlines added baggage fees, JetBlue resisted. But rumors persist that they will begin charging for checking bags in the near future. Shareholders have been demanding revenue and cash flow improvements, which is fine, but it shouldn’t be coming at the cost of the brand. These nickel and dime changes are having an impact on the atmosphere of the customer experience. The fun is fading on JetBlue and it is becoming a generic airline. With each change the brand is becoming a little more tarnished and a little more pedestrian. In the past I always talked about and promoted JetBlue — I even featured it in one of my books. Unfortunately, my brand loyalty is fading.

You can always tell when a company’s brand is going through a brand inflection point. It begins to hype things that don’t seem natural to the brand. JetBlue is currently promoting a concept called, “Flying it Forward,” which feels a little more like a publicity stunt than a genuinely altruistic good deed. Decide for yourself here:

The most painfully obvious move of its desperation is JetBlue’s plan to add a first-class section to its seating. This destroys the last vestige of its original, simple and brilliant brand concept of egalitarian seating. JetBlue is losing what got it to the party — its differentiated brand.

How do all of these changes affect the bottom line performance? JetBlue (JBLU) stock is up 100% over the past 52 weeks. The shareholders are clearly pleased with the changes. Butif JetBlue’s all-important on time arrivals start slipping, then I’m definitely going to look for airline alternatives for my travel.

New York, NY (February 27, 2015) – Original article at: Business Observer

Knowing your customer and managing the purchasing experience is so important that an entire business marketing science has been built around the process. Customer Experience Management, or CEM, is about understanding your customers and the journey they travel to enjoy the products or services you have sold them.

When you initially think of customers, the “consumer” comes to mind. But the ultimate consumer can be different depending on the complex needs of businesses today.

Customers come in two basic varieties. One group consists of the customers who generate revenue by purchasing goods and services — these are at the top of the food chain. These revenue customers are essentially the individuals or businesses who purchase from your company.

The second group is composed of the internal customers who make the selling possible. They include employees, investors, management, vendors, etc., each with a stake in the company’s success.

When these internal teams pull together, they create a bond with the revenue customer that is the essence of brand loyalty. These bonds are created by a deliberate building of relationships at the smallest element of trust. Wal-Mart’s founder, Sam Walton, described it: “The goal as a company is to have customer service that is not just the best, but legendary.”

Here are some tips to getting to know your customers and starting the journey to the best customer service.

Know your customers as well as they know you
OK, it may be impractical to know each one individually, but you should make every effort to know the basic demographics and motivations of your customers. “Big Data” is everywhere within your company to inform you about your customers’ buying habits. All you need to do is mine and organize the data to get useful and actionable insights into your customers.

Customers want to know more about your company
What do you stand for? What do you believe in? What are your hiring practices? How do you treat employees? What nonprofit charities do you support? What are you doing to make your company more sustainable? All of these things matter more now than they did in the past ,and it is helpful to have a written policy that addresses each of your supporting pillars.

Customers love to be acknowledged
In the TV show “Cheers” there is a line in the title song, “Where everyone knows your name.” That says everything about how to keep your customers coming back. Train your employees to remember customer names and your loyalty ratings will skyrocket.

Customers love a thoughtful surprise
I was recently passing an upscale jewelry store on a crowded sidewalk and asked a young man near the entrance of the store if he could replace batteries in a Swatch Watch. I felt a little embarrassed to even ask since the store carried only upscale watches. The young man said, “Yes, we can do that for you,” and took the watch and came back in a few minutes with a new battery. I asked how much I owed and he said it was a gift from the owner. I then went into the store and spent the next several hours doing my holiday shopping.

I learned later that the young man was the owner of the store; he was the grandson of the founder, who believed in great customer service. His friendly investment of a few minutes time and a watch battery resulted in a significant ROI and a new customer who would be telling his friends about this great store.

Know your customers personally
Take the time to visit with them for a few minutes. Try to understand how their experience with your company and your brands fit into their lives. How far did they travel to make this purchase? How did they hear about you? How long have they been purchasing from you? What role does their experience with your company and products fulfill for them?

If you can’t do this one-on-one, then consider hiring a professional research firm to better understand your customers. This research can be the source of expanding to new territories and the development of new products and services for your company.

The bottom line with customer service is that customers want someone who will listen and solve their problem and deliver what they promise. If customers see you as someone who cares about their needs, you will no doubt be rewarded with their business the next time they make a purchase.

New York, NY (February 23, 2015) – Original article at: Levick Energy

Over the past decade, the energy industry has been impacted by countless significant events. While some were the result of human forces and others were natural occurrences, in all cases they changed the way that the public perceives the companies in charge of extracting, producing, and distributing energy resources.

During this decade, we’ve seen the largest-ever marine oil spill, the biggest power outage in U.S. history, and questions about nuclear safety post-Fukushima. We’ve seen activists seize control of our energy dialogues and turn the tide of public opinion on promising domestic energy sources. We’ve seen the impact that companies with only tangential intersections to the energy industry can have on the overall perceptions of the industry and its component sectors. And today, we are experiencing a major collapse in the price of oil due to many interrelated factors including the fracking revolution, reduced demand in Asia and Europe due to weakening economies and new efficiency innovations.

In some cases, these sectors have suffered significant reputational and financial damage by events outside of their control. In collaboration with Tenet Partners, the leading brand measurement and valuation firm, we will dig into these trends and explore the factors that can impact the crude oil and petroleum refining segments of the energy industry. Our goal through this project is to understand the ways in which events can impact the “brand power” and short- and long-time influence of corporations and energy industry sectors. In so doing, we can better understand how industry can prepare and respond to events in ways that effectively mitigate the damage and preserve – or increase – their reputational assets.

Methodology

Each year, Tenet using CoreBrand Index^® surveys 10,000 business decision makers from the top 20 percent of US businesses with annual sales above $50 million to arrive at scores for familiarity and favorability, which reflect company size/recognition and quality, respectively. Familiarity represents a weighted percentage of survey respondents who recognize the brand being evaluated. Only respondents who are familiar with a brand – knowing more than just the company name – are asked to rate the three dimensions of favorability on a four-point scale: overall reputation, perception of management and investment potential.

Familiarity and favorability scores are then combined into a single BrandPower score and then used to calculate the brand equity value (BEV) – comprising BrandPower, familiarity and favorability – of each company, both as a dollar value and as a percentage of the company’s market cap.

With data extending back to 1990, Tenet is able to measure changes in a company’s BEV from a specific event, such as a major oil spill or major regional power outages. This lets Tenet determine the magnitude of the impact the event has had on BEV, both as a dollar amount and as a percentage of market cap.

Part 1: Crude Oil Producers and Petroleum Refiners Both Demonstrate High Reputational Sensitivity to Market Disruptions

For background on this project, including a summary of the methodology used to create the data, please see the Introduction to Energy Branding Trends.

CRUDE OIL: Familiarity and Favorability 2000-2013

PETROLEUM REFINING: Familiarity and Favorability 2000-2013

Analysis:

This is an illustrative case study of how different links in a supply chain can show startling differences in how they are influenced by given events over time – and how their brands and reputations are impacted.

Sample companies in Crude Oil: Anadarko Petroleum, Apache Corporation, Baker Hughes, Canada Southern Petroleum, Enterprise Products, Halliburton.

Sample companies in Petroleum Refining: Ashland, BP, Citgo Petroleum, Exxon Mobil, Hess, Murphy Oil, Occidental Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Tesoro Corporation, Valero Energy.

Since 2000, both the crude oil sector and the petroleum refining sector have seen wide fluctuations in price and other major news and political events. Consumers have been impacted more directly by price and market gyrations in these sectors as prices they pay at the pump, to heat their homes, and for many of their energy needs are subsequently affected.

The corporate brands of both sectors – petroleum refining and crude oil – are highly sensitive to market conditions, price fluctuations and accidents, which make reputation management an important component of corporate governance. Understanding the long term trends of each segment of the industry combined with an individual company performance within an industry is fundamental to managing the impact of the brand on corporate enterprise value.

Corporate communications officers can use this information in their long-term strategic planning as they look to develop communications and government affairs plans. Given the fluidity of consumer opinions in the crude oil and petroleum refining sectors, companies have to be more reactive in the short term to protect and promote their reputations. Failure to respond quickly to events – or significant delays in doing so – comes with a much steeper reputational cost. As a best practice, companies should adopt a long-term strategy to consistently increase their brand valuation year after year.

New York, NY (February 17, 2015) – Original article at: International Business Times

Revelations that the National Security Agency implanted spyware into hard drives sold by top American tech manufacturers stand to further damage the international sales of those vendors and further degrade the U.S. government’s diplomatic relations with countries, many already stinging from previous NSA spying programs, abroad.

“This is yet another instance that has led to building this viewpoint that the U.S. government and U.S. companies cannot be trusted, and whether that is correct or not, it’s harder and harder to combat that idea,” said Jake Laperruque, the Center for Democracy & Technology’s fellow on Privacy, Surveillance and Security. “That’s going to cause problems for U.S. businesses.”

The spyware, which has been dubbed “Equation,” was discovered by Kaspersky Lab, a Russian security software maker that over the past few years has built a reputation for uncovering American cyberespionage operations. Kaspersky Lab revealed the operation late Monday evening.

It is strongly believed that the NSA is behind Equation and has been building spyware directly into the firmware of hard drives sold by companies like Western Digital, Seagate Technology, Micron Technology and many others since 2001. That spyware was then used to monitor the computer activities of top foreign targets in countries like Iran, Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, China and others, according to Reuters.

“Short of something major like Congressional action, it’s going to be hard to break that narrative that we can’t be trusted,” said Laperruque. “The trust has been withered away so significantly.”

Since the revelation of PRISM in 2013, countless cyberespionage operations have been tied to the NSA, damaging the U.S. government’s relationships around the globe. Equation is the latest example of that and the “icing on Snowden’s cake,” said Igor Baikalov, chief scientist at Securonix, a security analytics and intelligence firm.

“While Kaspersky stopped short of attributing ‘Equation Group’ activities to any specific entity, the list of clues discovered and especially the list of targets leaves little doubt that eventually it will be tied to NSA,” Baikalov said. “The question is: does the U.S. government care anymore?”

Since whistleblower Edward Snowden came out two years ago with revelations of widespread cyberespionage by the NSA, American businesses have been negatively impacted as countries around the globe lose their trust U.S.-made tech. Qualcomm, IBM, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have been among companies who’ve reported diminished sales in China as a result. In Brazil, Boeing missed out on a $4.5 billion jet contract due to the NSA’s activities. The total damage to American tech businesses could amount to as much as $180 billion, according to an estimate by Forrester Research’s James Staten.

“This will most certainly have a long-term impact on the brands of the companies involved — Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital — at the very least tainting their products as suspicious,” said Jim Gregory, chairman of Tenet, a brand innovation and marketing firm. “Their corporate brand will be impacted and the damage will last from three to five years depending on how actively they manage the crisis.”

As for companies that are concerned with what Equation could mean for their own computer systems, there really isn’t much that can be done other than having an expert go through their computer system code and manually ensure there is no spyware installed. “One cannot simply install any antivirus product off the shelf and expect to be fully protected, even if you have Kaspersky,” said Brett Fernicola, chief information security officer for STEALTHbits Technologies, a provider of data security solutions.

“Hackers today are writing new viruses and malware that are extremely complex that go months without detection,” said Fernicola. That, apparently, may include the National Security Agency.

New York, NY (January 30, 2015) – Original article at: Business Observer

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is often confused with other terms such as sustainability, good corporate citizenship, ethical business practices, environmental responsibility, philanthropy, charitable giving, etc. Although each of these is a form of CSR, they are collectively a set of tools available to convey a leadership mindset focused on managing a corporation as part of a larger social fabric.

Even the term itself, “Corporate Social Responsibility” sounds like a nuisance that those who are too busy with running a small business may prefer to avoid if possible. But when CSR is woven into your corporate DNA, you will find it one of the best ways to build your corporate brand and customer loyalty.

In an excellent article entitled, “The path to best in class CSR: Deloitte” published in the Jan. 10 issue of Business & Leadership, Deloitte managing partner Brendan Jennings captures the essence of the issue. “What I don’t want is for our staff to hear CSR and just think of volunteering or something relating to the environment. Those things are all very important, and our people want to do them, but CSR is a much broader concept than that.”

For Jennings, Deloitte’s CSR positioning is a key component of its business strategy. “Organizations that are clear in their purpose achieve more. Our purpose is to be a quality provider of services … one that does its best for its clients, its people and the wider community, and one that can stand over everything it does.”

Jennings goes on to say, “In relation to the clients we serve, it means doing our very best, for a fair fee. When it comes to our people, who are our greatest and, indeed, only asset, if they believe in doing things the right way, good corporate governance is easier to ensure.”

To identify the kind of CSR projects that bring measurable ROI to your company, you need to give it the same kind of thought that goes into building a marketing plan or a media strategy. You need to be certain that it fits within your larger business strategy. Think about the essence of your company. What does it stand for? What do you believe in? Do some CSR programs resonate better than others? Is there one that clearly fits your business model? If you are lucky enough to find the perfect CSR fit, then you need to develop a plan to create differentiated positioning — after all the key to branding your company is differentiation.

Consistency, commitment, and communications are also important to getting the most value back for the effort you make in CSR. I worked with The Reader’s Digest Association prior to its initial public offering and reviewed its many and generous CSR activities. One example is, the company provided funding for the massive beautiful vase of flowers at the entrance of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York — but it never attached its name to the action. I pointed out that while an anonymous gift is admirable, it is also somewhat selfish. Even a small unobtrusive plaque in my opinion is generating goodwill among key audiences such as employees who would also like to share in the good feeling achieved by your company’s CSR program.

CSR benefits to remember:

Employees care about your CSR programs and want to be involved;

Include CSR activities as part of your recruitment package to help to attract the most desirable candidates;

Consumers are increasingly aware of sustainable business practices;

Consistent CSR practices lead to customer loyalty;

If possible, you should own (brand) your signature CSR activity;

Know your suppliers and their CSR policies to avoid issues that could reflect poorly on your company;

Monitor social media to understand how your company’s CSR policies are seen by others; and

Train your management and employees how to speak about your CSR programs to maximize the goodwill created by these activities.

Deloitte’s strategy was summed up: “When your people know why they are doing what they do, that helps protect not just the organization but the brand and the client, too. That is what makes CSR so hugely powerful, and about far more than fundraising or volunteering.”’

Corporate Social Responsibility is a key component of the best long-term business strategies for companies of any size. Corporations must be ever mindful of the impact they have on the world in which we live. Understanding the immediacy of communications today and the impact that they can have on your corporate brand means that CSR needs to be a fundamental part of your communications platform and your corporate DNA.