It’s funny how some people take extra care to select the right shirt and tie combination to make a well crafted impression and yet continually overlook something. Maybe awful socks that don’t work with the suit, or forgetting to trim their nose hair. Maybe they put a mismatching overcoat with the entire ensemble. But what’s worse is that they don’t even think twice about how the weakest link in their image stands out.

Companies are no different. In fact, they are worse. A new logo is equivalent to a shiny new suit for the company. A company’s corporate identity is vital to its brand image; however, if the person answering the phones isn’t well presented or if the web site doesn’t function properly or if the unique selling proposition isn’t clear and well crafted . . . the company’s nose hairs show and the effect of the new suit is lost. Everything counts when a company crafts its brand image. The weakest link in the chain of brand image is the heights to which the company can aspire. Every touch point at which a company connects to its customers is an opportunity to enhance the customer-relationship. Whether it’s the sharing of a business card, a customer service phone call, a web site page view or a package design the customer derives a portion of their total brand experience from every interaction. Companies with outstanding brand images know this - companies like Apple, Nike, Guinness or Virgin Atlantic.

These companies understand that you must be proactive, consistent and creative in all aspects of your brand image. The smallest connection point to a customer is vital and should be well thought out. An inventory of your customer connections is a good place to start. If you see points that haven’t had much or any attention. . . it’s time to review them because every point counts.

Knowledge is power. A tad cliché, but clichés exist for a reason and this one is particularly relevant in today’s business environment. The challenge in recent years has shifted from obtaining information to sorting and analyzing what appears to be an endless supply. Countless articles have been written on the subject. Now the questions consist of determing which information is important enough to be focused on, is the interpretation free of bias, and how does an organization translate the context into targeted action?

I have seen organizations dedicate a marketing resource to review web portals or publications an hour or two a week and they call that competitive analysis. Some will occasionally check a competitor’s website to see if they have shipped, released, patched or provided new product or signed a new partner agreement. I have also seen a multi-national corporation which generates nearly $1B in revenue annually create a group of employees focused solely on understanding the competitive environment. The result? A daily onslaught of email links to competitor’s press releases and occasionally a sentence or two on how employees should respond if questioned about the press release. In my opinion, both approaches demonstrate what I call “organizational arrogance”.

When an employee of a company engages in analysis of any description, they bring to the study a set of preconceived ideas and perspectives. This is part of what makes primary market research so difficult – removing the bias. Everyone is interested in seeing their team win. Employees have a vested interest in the outcome. Everyone will ask - how does this move affect us? Will this change our product roadmap, sales strategies, branding, positioning, revenue opportunities, forecast, etc. While such an approach can provide benefit to an organization, biased competitive analysis alone can lead to poorly developed strategies. Need I remind anyone of “New Coke”? How about “Beta vs. VHS”? Or even more recently “HD-DVD vs. Blue-Ray”?

True competitive analysis relies on a broad set of tools – trade journals, publications, governing associations, market and/or financial analysts, a personal network, and, most importantly, the ability to be truly unbiased and assemble the “puzzle” free of a preconceived notion of a desired outcome. This is where true marketing consultants and services add significant value to an organization, assuming, of course, they will present the facts and not simply what their client wants to hear.

By leveraging all the data sources available, an unbiased, slightly removed individual without investment in the outcome can assemble a true picture of the competition – not only their product set, but their business practices and models, their hiring preferences, their distribution models, their financial performance and detect the hints which provide insight into their strategic direction. The effort to accomplish this is not trivial, but the result should be a succinct report which provides an organization with a true sense of context from which they can plan their next strategic actions. If the context is tainted, the resulting strategies or organizational actions will be tainted as well and all plans spawned as a result suffer from a decreased probability of success.

Knowledge is power. Unbiased knowledge is the power source. All areas of an organization – financial, sales, marketing, product management, research and development – can benefit from accurate competitive analysis if they are willing to invest in finding the truth, accepting it and responding accordingly. To ignore the need for it, the importance; organizations destabilize their own possibilities for growth and waste time, money and resources on countless course corrections.

If you let your imagination work a bit you can envision contemporary businesses as a savanna of sorts. This savanna is populated by all sorts of beasts in a circle of life or food chain. Now, granted, it may take a significant amount of imagination to do this but the perspective this will provide is interesting.

If we start at the top of our food chain we’ve got ownership. These are the lions. Whether the pride is made up of board members, stockholders, or personal owners. They live on top - waiting for a kill to be brought to them. Lots of power, but not much contact with the final business customer in most instances.

Next step down the chain brings us to the C-level executive. These folks are running the company. Here we have busy leopards, cheetahs and the like. Not quite lion level but still influential and generally, nearly as far away from the customer as our pack of lions sitting up on pride rock.

Take a little trip up river and you run into the wildebeests, or Vice level execs. These are the folks in charge of the hands on work of crafting strategy and finding areas for increasing revenue. While we can dwell on all of the different divisions of Vice level wildebeests our interest today is in the marketing-type. This is where our journey moves a bit closer to the customer. . . but only slightly.

A little farther into the jungle we find a pack of monkeys swinging in the trees. . .meet the marketing director and his pack. They are the implementors, the ones who push tactics and actually have some contact with customers. . .although their influence with customers tends to be indirect.

Closer to the jungle floor we find the wily fox. This would be the agency contact. We’ve crossed a river here and gone outside the business and into the realm of the creatives. This river represents the real line between the business and the customer. This is where direct effect can take place with the customer. And while the fox helps to craft creative plans and oversee them, he is still removed a few steps from the customer. But rest assured, our safari is nearing its end.

Next we run into a few of the midsize creatures in our food chain; snakes (creative directors), anteaters (copywriters), zebras (art directors) to name a few of the creative pack. These folks get to think up the ideas that represent the business that, in theory, connect with customers. And in the case of the writers - they “speak” directly with the customers. But even they are dependent upon the final link in the food chain.The lowly rat.

The rat is the lowest member of the food chain. He feeds off of the scraps left behind by the animals residing above him in our marketing circle of life. Our rat is the designer. Far below the lofty heights where the lions and leopards roam, the designer crafts the image of the business and presents it to customers in the form of identities, packaging, web sites, print all sorts of media. The rat is, in some ways, the member of the food chain that is closest to the customer. Strange that such a seemingly insignificant animal could have such a close and intimate impact on the business’s biggest asset. . .their customers. Strange that, while typically not thought of as vital to success or impactful in their efforts, the rat plays a truly important role in crafting and maintaining the business’s identity and brand image.

If you let all of that sink in, it is a rather interesting irony that is presented in our business food chain. While the lions, leopards and wildebeests rarely have time to entertain the notion of rats or design and its effects, it is just those same rats who are closest to their customers in so many ways. So while imagining what next steps your business may take, make sure not to forget to include a rat or two in your plans. . . they may just be the link your chain is missing.

GUEST BLOG: On a recent flight to California, I had the opportunity to enjoy the feature story in the April 2007 edition of Wired magazine. Entitled Get Naked and Rule the World the article is an excellent synopsis of an emerging trend in corporate America radical transparency “ the art of airing a company’s problems, plans, strategies and partnerships as openly as possible in an attempt to make the corporations more human. Although the feature is actually composed of multiple articles, the one which caught my attention was written by Clive Thompson and entitled The See Through CEO. The article focuses on the company Redfin and then spins into a philosophical take on the impact of the “always on” world we live in and the effect of technological innovations and giants like Google on the business world.

While I won’t spoil the article, what I find extremely interesting is the lack of discussion, both in Wired and other areas on the Web covering this story, about the difficulty in actually making this strategy work. Now, I am a firm believer in full disclosure and for years, the marketing and public relations professionals worth anything have always instructed their clients to face any situation with nothing but the absolute truth. Case studies taught in business schools around the world applaud examples of this both for the courage it takes to be so open and honest, and for the rarity of such occurrences in the past. In the fall of 1982 the Johnson & Johnson brand Tylenol experienced most corporation’s worst nightmares and the way they handled it has become an example of some of the most effective public relations in business history. Johnson & Johnson did the right thing and they were rewarded for it. Now, nearly 25 years later, companies and their CEOs are doing the same thing and throwing themselves on the mercy of public opinion. And they are getting a great deal of press for it (Microsoft’s Channel 9, jetBlue videos , Marriot’s CEO Blog). But will it last? Should it be trusted? And is there a way for SMB’s to learn valuable lessons?

First, there is a part of me that finds the fact that words like “honesty” and “openness” are getting so much press to be slightly disturbing. Have we come so far as a society that these traits, once valued so highly, have become so rare as to warrant extensive press coverage when they are discovered in the business landscape? (That is a rhetorical question, peppered with a little sarcasm.) In my opinion, opening the doors and being willing to talk honestly about all aspects of the business are excellent strategies for building not only brands, but more importantly a sense of investment and involvement in your consumer base. Removing speculation and demonstrating the human side of an organization combined with a willingness to listen to suggestions from your customers, allows a company to benefit from a more detailed perception of their market, their company and their offerings. But do companies have the ability to do what so many individuals do not?

True, there is strength in numbers, but to be honest, to truly be transparent in a business sense means talking frankly about the positives as well as the negatives, the warts and dysfunction and insecurity that so many companies attempt to hide. Then, once a company has made the decision to be transparent, can they do it without coming across as trite or being viewed as using these “new” terms as little more than the latest evolution of human marketing? Perhaps I am too skeptical of large corporate CEO’s, but I do know that if Bill Gates had attempted to do what his employees did at Microsoft, I would not have believed it. From my experience the most difficult aspect of such a move, of embracing transparency, is ensuring that the company and those in management are secure enough not to flinch if the going gets tough. Any perception that a company is not being as honest as the masses feel they should be will have much larger ramifications for the company. In a world that is “always on” and almost completely wired, any hint of hesitation allows large groups of people to question everything.

Now, having said that, I believe if this latest trend really takes hold the positive impacts not only in business but also in society will be greatly beneficial. But I would strongly advise some planning before throwing up a blog and running around with a digital video camera. Management needs to spend some time taking a harsh look at the company and themselves. They need to put together a plan so their move to transparency is consistent and truly integrated. Such planning can not be done in a vacuum, outsiders must be brought in, given access as a test to see if management can truly stick to their ideals without crumbling under the stress of constant observation. With a plan and some preparation, I highly recommend that companies take this approach sooner rather than later. But take the time to prepare for it, to ensure everyone is behind it. In the end, transparency demonstrates just how human we all are, even if “we” are a multi-million dollar company.

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