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Lena Meyer-Landrut is this year’s Eurovision Song Contest winner.

It may not be a Nobel Prize or an Academy Award, but winning is winning, and this was a job well done.  Whatever the field, there are always lessons to be learned from people who excel.

We have a love-hate relationship with the contest in the UK – gathering in houses across the land to bask in its cheesiness, but ever-complaining about the voting system that we believe is stacked against us.

Latvia will always vote for Lithuania and Estonia; Estonia will always vote for Lithuania and Latvia; Lithuania will always vote for Estonia and Latvia; and Cyprus will always, always, always vote for Greece.

Indeed, we have convinced ourselves that it is only possible to win by changing our name to Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On Saturday, Germany disproved that theory, and outflanked the ‘bloc voters’. Indeed, it played the rules to its advantage.

LESSON 1: GET THE BEST TALENT

If you spend too long thinking about the idea of the nation state, it’s possible to end up in an existential conundrum that questions the very nature of “belonging” to anything.

What makes the German entry to Eurovision “German”?

Lena sung in English; no surprise there – it is the lingua-franca of pop music.

What’s more interesting is that the song was written by Julie Frost (American) and John Gordon (Danish). Obviously, birthplace is not a factor defining the National characteristic of Eurovision entry.

This isn’t sour grapes (really!). The lesson here is that the German broadcaster responsible for the country’s participation spread the net as wide as possible and selected the best talent for the job.

LESSON 2: A QUALITY PRODUCT

“Satellite” was the best song of the evening, with a contemporary beat and a memorable hook.

Appropriately, the Germans have a great description of this: they call it ‘an earworm’.

(Unlike many of the other entries which redefined ‘instantly forgettable’, and in a couple of cases proved that it’s possible to forget a song while you’re actually listening to it.)

Contrary to popular perception, plinky-plonky, binky-bonky songs haven’t succeeded in Eurovision for a long time.

The great European public is actually quite discerning.

The track also avoided the Me-Too trap.

Norway won last year with a manic pixie and his electric violin. This year – surprise, surprise – there were more violins on display than you can see at the Last Night of the Proms.

Me-Too is a relevant strategy if you want to take share from the market leader, but it’s doomed to failure in a first-past-the-post competition.

LESSON 3: MAKE THE RULES WORK FOR YOU

While ‘bloc voting’ can appear to stack the odds against certain nations, there is another aspect of Eurovision qualification which is often overlooked.

The “big four” – France, Germany, Spain and the UK – do not have to go through qualification. The size of their TV audiences means an automatic place in the final.

This year, Germany took full advantage of this, selecting its song over two months ago, and then releasing it almost immediately into various markets well ahead of the competition.

(By comparison the UK entry, chosen on the same night as the Germans, wasn’t released until 24 April).

“Satellite” got to number one in several territories, including Switzerland and Sweden, which both gave it the famous ‘douze points’ on the night. In releasing early, and promoting heavily, Germany considerably increased its chances.

From a straw poll of five under-19s Brits in my house on Saturday, four had already heard “Satellite”. None of them knew any other entry.

People buy what they know.

Popularity: 10% [?]

According to the BBC today,  Harrods – the legendary London department store – has been sold to the Qatari Royal Family’s investment company.

Stories of the great retailer are many and varied. This is my favourite from the 1960s. It may be apocryphal. I hope not, because it demonstrates a genius for providing customer service and understanding customer value.

The best job in Harrods was ‘The Man Who Was Made an Example Of’.

He spent most of his day in a small office at the top of the building, drinking tea, doing the crossword and some light filing, waiting for the telephone to ring.

He’d usually get one call a day. Occasionally two.

When it came, the voice on the other end was always a Departmental Manager, summoning him urgently.

At once, he took the lift to the appropriate floor and made his way to the said Department. In this case, China and Glass.

There he found the Manager placating a customer.

“Johnson,” the Manager said, with a groveling gesturing towards the customer. “Do you know who this is?”

No, said the Man Who Was Made an Example Of, shaking his head while examining the carpet.

“This is Lady Dowager Fortescue-St Clair. Lady Dowager Fortescue St-Clair is one of our most important, valued customers. As was her mother, the late Lady Dowager Fortescue-St Clair.”

The Man Who Was Made an Example Of bowed slightly. He knew his place.

“Her Ladyship recently came into our emporium and bought a Royal Dalton, 48-piece dinner service as a wedding present for her niece. She asked for it to be delivered. That, I believe, was your responsibility.”

The Man Who Was Made an Example Of acknowledged that it was.

“Well, you can imagine the distress we caused Lady Dowager Fortescue St-Clair when the said Royal Dalton 48-piece dinner service arrived, was examined, and found to be a Royal Dalton 47-piece dinner service.  Plus a broken gravy boat.”

The Man Who Was Made an Example Of agreed that this must have caused considerable distress. The Departmental Manager continued:

“The cause of the broken gravy boat was you, Johnson. It appears that you had not wrapped it properly, thereby committing it to a damaging fate. What do you have to say for yourself?”

The Man Who Was Made an Example Of humbly apologised, now looking at his shoes. But the Departmental Manager was not finished:

“This is not the level of service our customers expect from Harrods, Johnson. And certainly not the level of service we should provide to our most valued customers like Lady Dowager Fortescue-St Clair. Therefore, I want you to go immediately to the Personnel Office and collect your cards. Your slap-dash approach shows that you are not suited to a career with Harrods. Good day to you.”

On cue, the Lady Dowager tried to intervene, and said that dispensing with Johnson’s services was rather harsh, and that his apology was quite enough.

“Your Ladyship’s benevolence does her great credit,” said the Departmental Manager, rubbing his hands together like an anxious undertaker. “But it is Harrods’ policy to provide the greatest care and attention to its customers, and Mr Johnson has failed to do so. We cannot risk it happening again, and I can only apologise on behalf of the entire company for this slipping of standards.

“Johnson – why are you still here?”

At which, The Man Who Was Made an Example Of took himself off to the Personnel Office. Or rather, went back to the lift, rode to the top of the building, and returned to his small office, his tea, his crossword and his light filing.

And awaited his next telephone call.

Popularity: 13% [?]

Amazon delighted me last week.

I’ll repeat that: Amazon delighted me.

I want to say it a third time. And a fourth and fifth. Delight is such a rare occurrence, it’s worth embracing  when it pops into your life.

Amazon delighted me.

It was such a simple act – that was part of its power. And the fact that it was wholly unexpected. Actually, it was the surprise that caused the delight.

At the start of the year, I decided to take a break from book-buying. My shelves and my bank balance needed  a rest from my (rather virtuous) addiction, and I wanted to see how long I could go without indulging.

(I’m still going cold turkey, hence the dramatic falls in share price across the publishing sector).

But I devised a sneaky way around this literary Lent by pre-ordering a number of titles at the start of the year. So when they arrived I wouldn’t strictly be buying books, but I still get the frisson of a new title.

I’m not particularly proud of this strategy, but it’s important to the story, so there we are.

A couple of books turned up in February, one at the beginning of March. Then a dry spell until last week when, true to form, Amazon sent me an email to say that the next shipment was on its way.

Except this time it added that demand for the particular book had been so great that they had negotiated a lower price with the publisher, which it was passing onto me.

The saving was just £1. But that’s not really the point.

They passed it on to me.

Had Amazon got it for a better price and not told me, I doubt I’d ever have known. But they choose to tell me, and share in the gain.

A cynic might say that their systems forced them to because the accounting involved would be too complicated. Or that other customers would have noticed the difference on the site and complained, and that the ensuing admin would have been more trouble than it was worth.

There are multiple reasons why this may have happened.

I don’t care.

All that matters to me is that an online retailer with whom I have always had a rather distant, commodity-based relationship changed the game. Suddenly, it revealed a personality to me. It showed a set of values and what it believes to be right.

And I went from a loyal customer to a passionate fan. Hence I’m writing about them today. And once I’m off my fiction fast, there’s no prizes for guessing where my first spend will be. And all subsequent spends.

That customer-to-fan transformation is one of the hardest acts in business. Achieve it, and you have a relationship for life.

And the key is quite simple: share good fortune.

That works because no-one expects us to. There is no legal,  moral or commercial imperative to do so. If we don’t, no-one will think any the worse of us. That’s business-as-usual.

But go beyond those normal boundaries, and the smallest act can leave the greatest impression.

Even the saving of £1.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Great marketing is invisible. Not the results – of course, a business wants visibility to connect with its customers – but the activity itself shouldn’t be noticed.

We’re so tuned-in to brands and communications and media that most of the time it’s the campaign that gets remarked upon, even if the product stays on the shelf. But once in a while someone pulls a stroke that is so bold, so embracing, that we don’t know it’s happened, and just accept its premise as the norm.

At some time over the Holiday Season millions of us will crack open a bottle of champagne to celebrate something. It may be a Bucks Fizz on Christmas morning or to bring in the New Year a week later. A bottle of bubbly – as much a part of the warp and weft of life as carving the turkey or singing Auld Lang Syne.

Well, sorry to disappoint you – but it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, the fact that we think it so is testament to the genius (and I choose the word carefully) of Eugene Mercier, founder of the champagne house that still bears his name, and father of modern marketing promotion.

Mercier wrote the rulebook.

Think Deep, Think Big

Before Mercier started his business in 1858, champagne was, in today’s terms, a niche product, the preserve of the gentry and available in only the most select venues. But Eugene had other ideas; he wanted to reach as many people as possible because he saw an opportunity to build a mass market. All he needed was the capacity to deliver, and to give his customers a reason to buy.

He solved the first problem by creating the world’s largest champagne cellars– 18km of tunnels carved into the chalk 33m beneath Epernay, the champagne region to the east of Paris. Such was the scale of the endeavour, he even built a 800m long rail link to the Paris-Strasbourg line to transport millions of cubic metres of chalk from the site.

When the work was finished, he used the service to transport visitors to the site, to see the results of six years labour. Mercier created one of Europe’s first commercial visitor attractions.

But while receiving the great and the good at his cellars may have cemented his relationship with his existing customers, it wasn’t going to reach the masses. For that, Mercier had another, even grander design.

In that first year of trading, he commissioned Monsieur Jolibois, one of the finest coopers in the wine trade, to make him a cask. There were two extraordinary things about the project:

Dimensions: it was 6.2m long, 5.5m high, and had a capacity of 215,000 bottles. (You can still see it today, at L’Espace Mercier. It’s like a section of an Apollo rocket).

Duration (quarterly-driven executives and investors had better be sitting down): from commission to completion, the cask took 23 years. It was unveiled in July 1881.

And the question of everyone’s lips was ‘Why?’ Digging enough storage space for 18 million bottles of champagne was one thing, but taking 23 years to make a barrel that was big enough to house a family of four seemed, well, slightly mad.

The answer came 8 years later.

Roll out the Barrel

Mercier was playing a long game. While the cask proved to be an attraction at his headquarters, he had a much wider public in mind: the 1889 Paris Exhibition, a sort of World’s Fair and Expo rolled into one.

There was, however, the slight problem of getting it there. When it was full, the cask weighed over 29 tons. It was enormous. Ever the one to turn a problem into an opportunity, Mercier morphed the transport challenge into an event.

At the end of April 1889, a team of 24 oxen (with a support party of 18 horses) pulled a specially built cart with specially built wheels from Epernay to Paris. En route, they destroyed several houses, had to strengthen several bridges, and even removed part of the fortifications around the capital city.

Mercier was on the front page of every newspaper, every day, for over a week.

On the 7^th May, the cask made its triumphant entrance into Paris. Hundreds of thousands turned out to cheer it on its way. During the show, its popularity was equalled by only one other exhibit – a tower built by an engineer called Eiffel.

For the next 20 years, Mercier continued to build his mass market, and create the association between his brand and the celebration of achievement. He was giving his customers a reason to buy.

¶ He paid for (aka sponsored) the century’s largest hot air balloon which, during its lifetime, gave 20,000 people a flight over Paris while drinking his champagne.

¶ He commissioned the first-ever publicity film, called ‘From Grape to Glass’, which was made by the Lumier Brothers.

¶ In 1905, at the Liège Exhibition, Mercier built an arch of 15,000 bottles, representing the daily sales of the product. Nothing succeeds like success.

¶ Mercier sponsored Blériot in his first powered flights. The company was the first to advertise at the Tour de France, and to send out branded vehicles along the route, so creating today’s ‘Caravane du Tour’.

Do you have the Bottle?

Mercier’s marketing nous wasn’t limited to grand gestures. Sometimes it’s seeing the small things that make a difference. Like noticing that people watch the bottle almost the whole time a waiter pours a glass of champagne. This led the company to run its name horizontally along the length of a bottle, and so reinforce its brand at every opportunity.

The business results of such inspired thinking and commitment to the big picture still stand today. In a world where there are over 12,000 brands of champagne (and you thought you had competitor problems!), Mercier is still the best seller in France – a market that consumes 175 million bottles a year.

It’s a classic case study in seeing things differently, making a market and differentiating a brand. While there are others that have found a niche or certain cachet (Patsy’s bottle of Bollinger in ‘AbFab’; Moet & Chandon in ‘Killer Queen’; Winston Churchill’s daily bottle of Pol Roger), it’s thanks to Eugene Mercier that we’ll be raising a glass of sparkling white to toast friends and loved ones in the days ahead. That’s the power of marketing.

Wishing you a very prosperous 2010.

Popularity: 29% [?]

The first casualty of a downturn is  the marketing budget. Despite the best of intentions and the Board’s “commitment to the long term”, it’s seen by many as low-hanging fruit that can be pruned easily.

There are three ways to handle this:

a) go to a seminar on ‘how to protect your budget’ (and spend some of it in the process);

b) go into mourning, tell everyone how your hands are tied and that the company just doesn’t “get it”;

c) think. Necessity is the mother of invention.

When you are down to your last dollar, don’t complain – create. An absence of spend doesn’t mean an absence of marketing. It just calls for a different kind of marketing.

I thought this while walking down High Street Kensington in London. Among the bling-based cacophony (the gaudiness of the Christmas windows is deafening) one shop stands out.

While everyone else has zigged, Terra Plana has zagged.

Its display is a model of modesty, and how marketing will look over the next few years; simple, creative and impactful. It works for six reasons:

1) Product as hero: the store’s reason for being is at the heart of the communication. It’s a very direct way of communicating a proposition;

2) Communication congruence: stylish and innovative, it reflects the values and positioning of the business – a new kind of shoe company with a new kind of shoe;

3) Understatement: it stands out in a noisy market by being quiet;

4) Call to action: rather than a bland, meaningless ‘Merry Christmas’, it empathises with the passers-by, and offers a remedy to their current discomfort;

5) Specific and achievable: the selling will happen in the shop: all the marketing wants you to do is come in;

6) The human factor: there’s a personal scale to this – it’s not hard to imaging someone sitting and threading the laces through the holes. There’s a very clear people component to the story.

As you finalise your marketing plans for 2010, I suggest this is a good checklist with which to judge  the quality of your campaigns and programs.

Less can be more.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Sergio Zyman, the former Marketing SVP of Coca Cola tells a salutary tale in his book The End of Marketing as We Know It. Coke had a new, feel-good Christmas ad featuring a kid, Santa and a grizzled old baseball player.

Everybody loved it.

The CEO of the company loved it; his wife loved it; Zyman’s neighbour loved; the security guard at the front desk loved it. It was going to win awards.

After two days, Zyman pulled the ad. It was having no impact on sales.

B2B OR NOT B2B?

I often mention this story when  interviewing Marketing candidates or discussing Marketing strategies with Clients. It’s the kind of decision that true Marketers dream of making – where creativity, strategy, metrics and market performance meet, to directly impact the revenues of the company and ultimately the share price.

After more than 20 years in  the Tech sector, I’ve come across no more than a couple of examples that really make that kind of  link between ‘Marketing’ and business results.

B2B Tech Marketing has lost its way. The reason is part geographic, part the mind of the customer, part structural:

Geography: In The Hands of the Gods

Like it or not, the vast majority of tech companies are either American or Asian. So that’s where the big, strategic decisions are taken. The current buzz about the Apple Tablet – a wonderful piece of market destabilization – is a strategic play driven by California.

And that means that an entire company is dependent on the person at the top ‘getting it’. Steve Jobs certainly gets it: that’s why he’s Fortunes’ CEO of the Decade. When you think of great marketing in Tech, it’s always Apple – from design and user interface, through pricing and channel, to communications and impact.

Lou Gestner at IBM is the other great Tech marketer. Who’d have thought that boring Big Blue would create  the most memorable campaigns to support its strategic play into services? But Gerstner – dismissed by some  as  a  ‘biscuit salesman’ – brought insight from Nabisco  about the importance of communicating during times of great change.

The company is still reaping the benefits of that today, some 7 years after his departure.

The Customer: Just the Facts, Ma’am

B2B customers tend to be better informed than individual consumers. They are specialists in their niches, with a clear grasp of their subject, and the requirement to justify their decisions to their superiors, so facts are imperative. They rarely buy on impulse.

Account managers may have a vital role to play – and even in the ruthlessly logical world of the corporation, relationships do matter – but the imperative is to provide facts to help support a decision, and that’s the role of the Product Manager.

There’s also the issue of credibility. Tech has a sorry history of over-promising and under-delivering, to the point where the trust agreement may have been damaged beyond repair. Vendors want to be cautious because they think that equals credibility.

Structure: Make It and Sell It

In the Tech sector, Philip Kotler’s classical 4P Marketing bundle has divided into two main camps: Product and Place.

All that goes with Product – product management, product development, product marketing – tends to sit in a separate function, reporting along its own line. This is especially true in the software sector, where – in the apocryphal words of Larry Ellison of Oracle- if you not selling it or not making it, what are you doing in my company?

For ‘Place’ read ‘Channel’ which is usually run by the sales function. Channel isn’t a marketing decision; it’s all about sales execution. And no amount of dressing up of the Channel Marketing function can hide the fact that it gets driven as a tactical sales support role, providing sweeteners to distributors, VARS or retailers to shift more units.

(Interestingly, Kotler’s own website has a section on Tech Industries, in which two out of three service offerings are specifically related to the sales function).

MARKETING LITE?

So that leaves Promotion, or, as it’s now known in most Tech circles, Marketing.

Marketing in Tech B2B is about messaging and communicating. It’s about putting tech people on platforms, and about getting column inches in the trade press or tweets in the mediasphere. It is about enabling conversation.

It could be – should be – energising and challenging and setting the agenda. Not just for technical debate, but social, economic, artistic and educational issues. Indeed, there aren’t many aspects of public and private life that technology doesn’t touch.

So why is so much of B2B Tech Marketing so underwhelming?

Because B2B Tech companies are risk averse. Hence, every marketing program from every Tech company is exactly the same. There may be nuances of audience or twists on the Channel programme theme. But at heart, all B2B Tech marketing is a copy of all other Tech marketing. Because it is what is known.

But when everyone is reasonably competent, the playing field is very level, and the view across to the horizon is very bland.

No one puts their head above the parapet, and no one takes a risk.

The role will always be needed – someone has to run the PR agency and create the lead generation programs – but this isn’t big, brave Marketing with big, brave ideas.

LONG LIVE TECH MARKETING

So is this the end of the road for Tech Marketers – to be consigned to a backroom, writing press releases and sending out invitations to seminars?

Only if Marketers let that happen.

The truth is that Marketing has an infinite opportunity to take the reigns and change the game. Because they sit at the heart of a central paradox: the people who run Tech companies don’t understand the beast they have unleashed.

Many senior Tech execs don’t really understand the Web.

Sure, the company has a website, maybe some e-commerce, perhaps the CEO even has a personal LinkedIn account (although not a fair number of  the SVPs and CEOs I know). But many still seem to regard it as just a Comms channel -  a cheap way of issuing press releases and cutting down on sales collaterals.

So if you’re a Marketing professional in the Tech sector (or anywhere else for that matter), your opportunity is to fill that knowledge gap. We have only scraped the surface of how the websphere impacts our relationship with customers, partners and influencers. What it means to your company and its business model.

Dive deep and drink long. Now is the time for Marketing to reclaim its seat around the table.

Popularity: 36% [?]

Christmas: the time of year when people who don’t like music buy music, and people who don’t read books buy books.

If you’re a music buff (I mean the sort of person who has Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoyos on vinyl, or who thinks the Rolling Stones blew their credibility with the 1966 ‘Aftermath’ album) then you’ll watch the TV ads promoting the new Boyzone covers of Westlife (or vice versa) and weep into your cushions.

Well, here’s the truth. They’re not aimed at you.  The target is people who buy records twice a year – usually for Christmas and Mother’s Day.

Similarly with books: Despite the mind-boggling statistic that the UK publishing industry produces 4,000 new titles a week , book buying is a minority activity.

According to Nielsen Bookscan, 20% of all book sales happen in the run up to Christmas. While the literati may be out in giddy force looking for the new Herta Muller or Elizabeth Strout, the majority of sales that happen in the next six weeks will be to people who usually go into a bookshop for a coffee and to shelter from the rain.

THE LAST HURRAH?

Added to this, the book trade is going through the same radical shift that the music business has experienced over the past ten years. The arrival of Amazon changed the game (much as I try to support independents, for at least five years the majority of my book buying has been online), as did the entry of the supermarkets. So trying to complete with that shift in models has become increasingly difficult.

But, to misquote Bachman Turner Overdrive,  they ain’t seen nothing yet: the Amazon Kindle and Sony e-reader – plus other lesser-known platforms – are about to change the whole paradigm of the industry, in the same way as the MP3.

So the booksellers are having to work doubly hard to wring the most from their peripatetic customers at this time of year – because it might be their last oturn on the swings.

Deep discounting is common, best known as the 3-for-2 offer which has almost become the standard now in the sector (in the same way that furniture stores have an annual sale. Not once a year: ALL year.)

So hats off to my local Waterstone’s branch for this moment of genuine merchandising insight:

Not sure what to buy your husband / son / uncle / nephew / brother this year? But know that he likes watching all those BBC re-runs on that blokey channel.

Well, Waterstones have made it a straightforward purchase. Here, in one place,  are all the celebrity brands and TV tie-ins that you might have heard of, and you feel pretty sure that he’ll enjoy.

Don’t scoff; it may not be the high culture or specialist niche that interests you – but it is a triumph of customer understanding and sales promotion. Helping a customer base that isn’t quite sure about the market, doesn’t quite know what’s acceptable now to buy for a 17 year-old grandson (“they grow up so fast don’t they?”) but who recognise that nice young man off the telly.

It’s a superb example of Sales 101: Selling is making buying easy.

Popularity: 28% [?]

In August 1997,  Fast Company magazine ran a landmark article by Tom Peters. In his usual breath-of-fresh-air style, he encouraged readers to think not like a ‘worker’ or ‘manager’ or ‘employee’ – but as a microbusiness engaged in interesting projects. His big idea was that the continuing flow of customers for that business-of-one (You, Inc) would be dependent on its brand.

Peters extended that notion by stressing the importance of taking initiative, participating in interesting projects, life-long learning, networking through association, personal growth, added value through going the extra-mile and the delivery of results.

In short, he talked about how businesses function and grow – and the lessons that an individual could learn from that. It was a rallying call for knowledge workers at the edge of an economic abyss to make themselves more employable in an increasingly fluid job market.

And it opened a Pandora’s box of flim-flammery and snake-oil promising the easy way to a ‘personal brand’. Most of which is twaddle.

THE COLOUR OF MONEY

I’ve just been reading an article in a recruitment magazine from the senior consultant of a personal branding consultancy. Aside from a series of platitudes about brands adding-value and how ‘popular iconic figures tackle the secrets of human nature’ (including Martin Seligman and Robert E Thayer – yes, those popular iconic figures) her schtick is about dressing for success.

Successful people (quote) “adapt beauty and fashion trends, and manage their body language to enhance their physique. They also develop a unique positioning strategy to enhance their career prospects by harnessing the power of colour, clothes, body language and posture. In short, they develop a unique personal brand.”

To put it another way: ‘Haircut your way to promotion.’ Or ‘Power handbags –  the secret to breaking the glass ceiling.’

Basing a personal brand strategy on what colour jacket you wear is like basing a nation’s economic policy on the colours in its flag.

(For the record, I accept that some people need advice of how to dress – including me, before anyone else leaps in with that suggestion. A well-cut suit can make all of us feel like a million dollars, but that is to branding as the front elevation is to a building; it creates a first impression, but it does not make an entire house.)

ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Branding is NOT about colour. Branding is NOT about look. Branding is about EXPERIENCE. In the same way that a product brand (the logo) is a visual mnemonic – a shorthand for a myriad of other factors – so a personal brand is another way of saying reputation, which is based upon events, not earrings.

A brand is a complex, multi-dimensional construct that exists nowhere other than in the minds of your customers. Consider the following, and what they mean to you:

- Innocent – iPhone – Amazon – Prius – Luis Vuitton – Caterpillar – Duracell – The Rolling Stones

See? I haven’t shown you a logo, a colour swatch, a brochure or even a product, and you already have an opinion. Values, associations, impressions, memories, understandings, data, stories; they may have been formed through direct consumer experience or come second-hand through the intermediation of the press, the internet or other third party recommendation.

Very little – if anything – is to do with look and feel.

The anglepoise lamp in the Pixar logo has some connotations of its own; if you saw the studio’s first-ever short, it’ll bring a smile to mind. But the values of that business, and the ‘meaning’ of that brand aren’t on display here – but your experience of Buzz and Woody and Mike and Scully and Edna and Wall*E bring deep and rich feelings to the name.

AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH

Design has a place, but it is not a replacement for  content – which in the case of a personal brand, is the experience created by you delivering results. As Peters said in his original article:

Ask yourself: What do I do that adds remarkable, measurable, distinguished, distinctive value? Forget your job description. Ask yourself: What do I do that I am most proud of? Most of all, forget about the standard rungs of progression you’ve climbed in your career up to now. Burn that damnable “ladder” and ask yourself: What have I accomplished that I can unabashedly brag about?

There’s a deep truth expressed and implied in every word of this paragraph: that the building of brand is based on work. Old-fashioned, time-consuming, sweat-breaking work.

It can be augmented by customer/colleague recommendation. It can be promoted through comment and the sharing of insight. It can even be leveraged through association with other brands.

But it cannot be created by a new wardrobe.

CLOTHES MAKETH THE WO/MAN?

Peters made it clear that the development of your brand should be a conscious, planned, considered activity. And there is plenty of scope for advice and consultancy here – how you network with third parties and influencers, how you express your core proposition and values, how you attract new business opportunities. All of this needs work, care and attention. (I have sat with many senior people who have achieved extraordinary results in their careers, but who just can’t see the wood for the trees).

And, of course, the current minefield : using social media and the internet  to ‘spread the word’.

The reason is straightforward – the internet never forgets. Every comment you make, every photo you post will be out there, forever, waiting to be found. That can affect the perception of you in the same way that an indiscretion at the Christmas party can hang a big question mark over you for a long time to come.

None of this is a  simple process. Your brand (reputation) is a complex thing, influenced by many factors, including the people you work with, the projects you work on, the results you deliver, the company you keep and the recommendations you attract.

Changing your wardrobe might make you feel better, but as with all ‘outside-in’ activities, it’s a short-term fix. Your brand – your reputation – is a long-term project.

Think deeply. Act wisely. Manage it with care.

Popularity: 27% [?]

There is a wonderful clarity to street markets. Amid the hustle and bustle, the brown paper bags and the downtrodden vegetables, the crockery seconds and the dodgy CDs, you can see commerce being transacted in its most naked form.

You could call it ‘Business Unplugged’; no PowerPoint presentations, no glossy brochures, no excuses of ‘couldn’t get past the secretary’ – street traders have had to perfect the sales cycle and compress it into a real-time transaction.

The man who sold me my most recent set of ‘brush-free paint applicators’ (I am a sucker for this stuff) has been in my thoughts a lot this week. In the past seven days, four different people have said they were worried about the lack of sales awareness in their businesses.

‘It’s not our sales people; it’s everyone else.” They mean the finance director raising investment, who can’t sell; the professional services consultant in front of customers every day, who can’t sell; the engineering director creating technology, who can’t sell.

Selling is Life

At least, they think they can’t sell, or they think it’s someone else’s responsibility. Well, if you are one of these people, I have some good news and some bad news. The good is that you can sell; the bad is that you must. Because, whatever your function or discipline, selling is life.

This post is a non-sales introduction to the sales cycle – the principle steps that ALL sales go through, some in minutes, some in months. Whether you’re launching a complex software product or selling an idea to an investor, follow them. Even if you don’t win – and you won’t every time – the steps will help you identify what you need to change.

And the reason I think we all have so much to learn from street vendors is that their business is pure theatre, and a sale is a 5-act drama:

Act 1 – The Hook

(aka ‘the bar stool test’ or ‘the elevator speech’. Timeframe: minutes) For street vendors, the Hook is their advertising. They know they have to break through your indifference and, in a few moments, open a crack of interest in your mind.

Think that your business is more complex, more sophisticated, than selling tea towels or camcorders (last year’s model)? ‘Probably is – but you still need to grab the attention of your customers. And not just any attention; it must be relevant attention. In those first few moments, you set the stage for everything that’s to follow. You have to be relevant, timely and specific to your business.

You have to make it quick, memorable and utterly compelling. Test it, and keep testing it, to see what combination of words gets heads nodding and pupils dilating. Get a positive response now, and you’re half way to the sale

Act 2 – The Pitch

(aka ‘the presentation’ or ‘the lunch’. Timeframe: hours) The pitch is when you begin to set out your stall, describing the problem you solve, the way you solve it and the benefits you deliver. Think about that for a moment. That’s three slides. Everything else is just padding.

Beware of a major pitfall here. Make sure that the problems you outline are not too generic.

I learned this the hard way. A few years ago I pitched to the editor of a major publication. My first slide began with a list of MAJOR INDUSTRY ISSUES.

“Hold it right there. Let me guess. Your next slide says X, the one after says Y, and the one after that says Z.” Er, yes. How did you know? “Because every vendor in the space says exactly the same thing.”

The answer? To frame the problem in terms unique to your solution. Don’t lose sight of the fact that the purpose of the pitch is to take the customer further down the path towards your solution, not a solution. One of the mantras of professional selling is ABC – always be closing. You should be thinking about how to get to the close when you’re on your first slide.

Act 3 – The Paper

(aka ‘the business plan’ or ‘the proposal’. Timeframe: days) Yes – street vendors do go through this step. “Look darlin’; this is pukka. It’ll cost you FORTY FIVE paaahnds in Selfridges.” He’s not asking for money yet – just putting a stake in the ground to set expectations.

In B2B this isn’t the final proposal, but it is when you document how you’ll fulfil the expectations you set in the pitch. Outline your processes, numbers, activities, list prices, and all variables. Move in from the generic to the specific, marrying the two sides of the equation: the parameters of the customer’s pain, and value you expect for resolving his/her problem.

When there are a lot of opportunities coming your way, it’s tempting to cut and paste from other proposals. Don’t do it. Customers have in-built antennae that spot generic text at a hundred paces. At each paragraph, keep asking yourself: Does this reinforce my Hook and Pitch? Does this take the customer further down my path? Does this offer greater value than anyone else?

Act 4 – The Proof

(aka ‘due diligence’, ‘free trial’, ‘product evaluation’, ‘2^nd opinion’. Timeframe: weeks)

There is only one purpose to this stage of the cycle. Make the customer comfortable. De-risk the risk. Every purchase is a gamble – your product may not work, your business may not survive, the tea towel pattern might run in the wash. You have to prove that you can deliver what you’ve promised in the first three acts.

Show proof, don’t tell. Show, show and show again. B2B buying is a team event; you’ll have to show multiple actors. Have it ready and lined up before you take your Hook to market. You’d be amazed by how many businesses aren’t ready to show Proof when it’s asked for. Do you have your happy customers lined up? Your live product demo? Endorsements from third-parties? Evaluation copy and licence ready to be signed?

Act 5 – The Deal

(aka ‘term sheet’, ‘order’ or ‘contract’. Timeframe: months) There aren’t many variables when you’re buying tea towels. It’s different in B2B, so it takes longer. But street basics still apply; you have to ASK FOR THE ORDER. And as you’ve come this far in the drama, it’s time to haggle how not if.

* * *

Professional sales people hone their craft over many years. They are the leading lights of the 5-act drama, and deserve their ovations when they bring in a full house.

Your stage may not be so visible. You may be playing a ‘supporting’ role. But for the good of your career and the success of your ‘company’, take a couple of hours to watch the sales workshop at a street theatre near you.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Death can be a great career move -- but it takes considerable skill to pull it off successfully.

Elvis is the role model for passed-on profits. The pelvic mumbler may have ingested his last burger in 1977, yet in 2008 (three decades after his ‘bathroom’ demise) he earned $52m. That was 25% more than Madonna.

Having said that,   he’s been seen working the fries at McDonalds in Memphis so, like-for-like, Madge way not be too far behind.

Of course, this is not generated by a flesh-and-blood person; this is a revenue stream for Elvis the Corporation. It’s a brand, a back-catalogue and a devoted fan base determined to keep the man and his music ‘alive’.

This is a global business, and you have to admire the endless creativity of rights owners in fully exploiting both their intellectual property and the gullibility of the public.

ELVIS! LIVE!!

Did you know that you can still go and see Elvis in Concert? He’s touring Europe in 2010. Thanks to a mix of projection technology and the reunion of his ‘former band members’, you can spend an electrically-charged evening (literally) watching the musicians who failed the Cocoon audition try to keep pace with a film of a man on steroids.

A case of sixty, drugs and rock’n'roll.

And while you’re booking your tickets, you can also buy -- “for the first time ever” -- a DVD of the his legendary performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Or how about going to stay in one of the ‘Elvis-accented’ rooms at the Heartbreak Hotel? (Read the small print, and you’ll be disappointed to learn that ‘accented’ means there’s a picture of him in each room.) You might want to splash out and upgrade to one of the Elvis-themed suites. There’s a choice -- the Graceland, the Hollywood, the Gold & Platinum and, of course, the honeymooners’ Burning Love suite.

Ahunk ahunk of Burning Love indeed.

And if you can’t move out of your house (a statistical probability for Elvis fans), then he’ll come to you -- at least, you can sign up for Elvis updates. This is a new definition of the word which the student of career death needs to understand:

In my Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘update’ means ‘the act or instance of updating’; in Graceland it means letting you know that they’ve found another tape in a box in the loft, and that a 52-part series (with never-before seen photos) will be available soon.

All of which can be paid for with you Elvis-branded Visa card.

FAB FOUR AND MORE

You don’t have to be entirely dead to benefit from no longer being around. Half The Beatles are still with us, and yet we now have another re-issue of The Beatles back-catalogue: “re-mastered, re-packaged and re-discovered”. And to much acclaim. Read the customer reviews on Amazon, and it’s 5-stars all the way. Then again, if you’d just paid £170 for 12 albums that you already owned in two previous formats, you’re not likely to say ‘I wuz robbed.’

Also this week, the launch of ‘The Beatles -- Rockband’ on Sony PS3, dutifully supported by wall-to-wall Beatles coverage on the BBC -- an entire weekend on Radio 2, and a week of programs on BBC Four. Even my daughter had the good sense to ask why: “Did someone die, Daddy?”

No darling. But one of them is now a pension salesman and the other got divorced.

To be fair, those in the know say that Rockband is beautifully produced and very engaging -- if playing plastic toy guitars and pretending to be a pop singer is your thing. It just isn’t mine.

But don’t think that making money from being dead is a foregone conclusion. The holders of the Presley and Beatle brands are (despite my cynical tone) very, very good at what they do. Wild horses couldn’t drag me to Heartbreak Hotel, but you have to admit -- it’s an obvious ‘brand extension’, and probably serves its target audience very well. Stick of Jailhouse Rock anyone?

The Michael Jackson Estate could learn a lot from Graceland and Cavern Club.

TICKET TO (BE TAKEN FOR A) RIDE

How black must the mood have been in the AEG offices the day that CEO Randy Phillips heard that Jackson had shuffled (moonwalked) off?  Phillips’ company was promoting the 50-date concert series at London’s O2, and 750,000 people had paid up to £75 each. AEG would have to pay it all back.

Or not. In a stroke of genius -- and commercially, I don’t think the word is too strong -- Phillips re-invented the very nature of ‘ticket’.

Consider the usual purpose of a ticket: it is proof of purchase, a receipt for a transaction that is not yet complete. In effect, the purchaser is exchanging one promissory note for another: ‘I promise to pay the bearer…if you promise to provide a service that will entertain me’.

(As a Southampton fan, I’m not sure how that works…but that’s for another day.)

Not so, said Phillips. It’s not a ticket at all; it’s a souvenir -- albeit of an non-event. In a stroke, Phillips created an entirely new market: the virtual memento. So what if something doesn’t happen? There’s still a merchandising market opportunity for it. To join in the fun, I am open to offers for my Led Zeppelin 2009 World Tour jacket.

Anyway, this wasn’t just a common-or-garden ticket. This was a MJ ticket. The man himself had hoped that people would ‘keep it as a reminder of the memorable evening that they would share together’. He had personally been involved with the design. And it had been produced using a Lenticular printing 3D process.

So fans had a choice: refund or non-ticket.

PRECIOUS MEMORIES

Websites and blogs were hot with indignation. Out of respect for Michael, and out of respect for Michael’s  fans (and their respect for his respect for them), how could AEG do this? It was immoral. And anyway, “I bought a £75 ticket and my friend only bought a £50 ticket, so I’m paying 50% more than her for a memory of an event that didn’t happen.”

Yes -- but your non-existent memories would have a clearer view.

Despite the absence of respect, AEG later claimed that ’40%-50% of ticket purchasers had taken the option to receive their tickets’. Worst case, that’s 300,000 people who are now spending time thinking about the evening they didn’t spend together. With or without Michael.

(If that wasn’t enough, at the end of October Sony Pictures releases a film of the concert that never happened. Remember that 30-second rehearsal clip that Phillips showed as evidence of Jackson’s well-being? It’s now going to be a motion picture event, and ‘a gift to Michael’s fans’.)

It will give them something to cling to while they wait for the next non-performance.

Just yesterday, the much-heralded Vienna Tribute concert collapsed, with many of the promised stars failing to commit an appearance. It’s now being rescheduled, to London in June 2010.

Tickets start at £44 -- although no-one seems to know what you’ll get for your money. Not that an absence of content seems to stop any of the riders on the Jackson bandwagon.

DEAD CERT?

This looks like a chronic case of ‘more haste, less speed’ in the Jackson camp, but with an army of would-be Colonel Tom Parkers out to make a buck or two, Jermaine and Co obviously think they need to strike while the body’s still warm. (Fancy buying the Jackson Opus, and 38-pound book with -never-seen-before-photos? Yours for just £109).

Whatever your opinion of the man (repugnant) his music (infectious) or his dancing (the best on film since Astaire and Kelly), watching this soap opera play out could some day become a business case worthy of Harvard or LBS. The Wacko side of Jackson won’t be a hurdle: as pop-commentator Paul Gambaccini pointed out shortly after Jackson’s death, Judy Garland was a washed up, alcoholic mess when she died. Today, she’s an icon.

The collective memory will paper over Jackson’s cracked behaviour, and remember only the performances. More difficult to call will be the management of the core material -- the ownership of which will become a bloodbath. There’ll be some very rich lawyers at the end of all this, and probably a very bitter family.

Meanwhile, the man in the mirror will either become a billion dollar enterprise, shadowing all that has gone before, or a forgotten footnote.

It’ll take 30 years and a generation to decide.

Popularity: 17% [?]