Marc Benioff, 1999: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?”

Marc Benioff, founder of Salesforce.com, posted an article on Techcrunch today titled “The Facebook Imperative“. In it he writes about what drove him to found Salesforce.com:

I quit my job at Oracle in 1999 because I couldn’t stop thinking about a simple question: “Why isn’t all enterprise software like Amazon.com?”

More than a decade after Benioff asked himself this question, it is still timely. Why is so much enterprise software ugly and difficult to use?

Benioff had a point and Salesforce.com has been a firebrand for Software as a Service since 1999 – and still is.

Benioff’s phrase sounds like a mission statement for Brand Capital: Software that makes Brand Asset Management as easy and painless to use as Amazon.com.

Internal branding

Making a successful brand starts within the organization. The values of your company, internally and externally, should be in sync. That is why getting your employees to represent your brand, is extremely important.

A few weeks ago I wrote about Kaupthing and the Icelandic banking crisis. Kaupthing actually used internal branding to encourage their employees, to emphasize on their superiority and how successful they were. Here you can see video that was made for the eyes of Kaupthing employees.

What do Martin Luther King, Albert Einstein, Mother Teresa and Neo (you know, The One in The Matrix) have in common with Kaupthing? I don’t know but looking at this comparison while listening to U2, I got to admit, I AM PSYCHED!

This video has similarities to the propaganda movies the Nazis used to promote their ideology. According to Goebbels:

“The essence of propaganda consists in winning people over to an idea so sincerely, so vitally, that in the end they succumb to it utterly and can never escape from it”

If you replace the word propaganda with internal branding, and Goebbels with David Ogilvy this would be a great quote, a little excessive, but still great.

Does the Apple logo you shaved on the back of your head comply with the official brand guidelines?

In a previous blog post, Agnar discussed celebrity brand ambassadors. Another kind of brand ambassador however is the grassroots volunteer: The passionate user who constantly sings praises for a brand they love.

When Steve Jobs founded Next Computers, before rejoining Apple, he had the branding legend Paul Rand (who designed the IBM logo among others) design the Next brand and provide the company with its brand guidelines. The brand identity cost $100,000 and was delivered complete with a 100-page guideline brochure. There is little doubt that the brand guidelines for today’s Apple are even meatier.

One application of the Apple brand we doubt is covered in the brand guidelines however, is shaving the logo on the back of a brand ambassador’s head. Or applying the brand as a tattoo.

You know what I’m going to say next, don’t you? Although tattoos and hairdos will probably not be set as default Brand Capital “toolboxes” as we’re calling them, Brand Capital is easy to customize. With Brand Capital, you can make sure that brand ambassadors, celebrity or otherwise, are complying with the brand guidelines when they decide their loyalty is undying and they invest in a tattoo – with your logo.

Sonic branding

Even before I did work for Nokia I was amazed by the free marketing done by all those Nokia owners turning on their phones the moment a plane landed. You know the tune, it’s ringing in your head now.

The Nokia tune is played more often than the Coca Cola tune and the Birthday song combined (or there abouts). Just take every Nokia phone out there, assume that at least 20% don’t change the default ring tone and multiply that with the number of calls. Whola, the most played sonic branding in the world…

This got me thinking that Apple might have missed a trick by not incorporating the famous boot up sound that they have on the computers into the iPhone as well. Would that classify as a big branding blunder?

Sonic branding takes many shapes and forms and a good friend of mine studying this topic informed my that for instance Audi takes great care to design every sound in the car. Including the closing of doors, clicks of buttons and swipes of wind screens. It all helps building that feeling of quality and enhances the brand experience.

Have you ever wondered how many takes are required and how much it costs to get that Tssschhh sound just right for a Coke advert? I also wonder if the old classic Christmas song is still played outside Iceland :p

Managing a sonic brand for your average company might just include audio files created as background music for video presentations, background music for telephone service or jingles for radio advertising.

Brand Capital will support all major audio formats and help you organize and redistribute those files where needed.

Buying and selling brand asset management – what’s going on?

It’s a very messy industry, the one we are entering with Brand Capital. I kid you not.

Some things are moving forward, along with the times. I am seeing content and digital asset management vendors moving up from selling purely to IT clients to selling to marketing and brand clients who are the actual business owners of brand assets. At the same time, IT clients are collaborating with internal marketing and brand teams because in these economic conditions budgets get slashed so easily and even most acutely needed projects are frozen without a rock solid business case to defend them. Every person is accountable to the highest degree, and most of us have to prove our worth every 6 months if not more often. Having to think about what you are doing and why exactly is a good thing.

However, I am also seeing marketing and brand clients with digital asset management and marketing resource management needs still predominantly surpassing any talks with their IT team and going directly to their digital creative agencies. And then the IT folk going mad trying to integrate all these bespoke solutions that can be brilliant for their purpose but mostly unsuitable for any integration without pretty much reinventing the wheel. And then the brand or marketing client despairing over the sky-rocketing costs for the project that was meant to be straight-forward and low maintenance. Sound familiar?

So where is it all going wrong? Why aren’t demand and offer meeting? There are an extremely clever group of individuals, consultancies, and vendors in this industry who are doing a great job in educating clients and industry alike, but their work seems most appreciated amongst those forward-thinking companies who already know the value of good brand asset management tools. On the other hand, business is actually booming for some who are working hard to adjust their proposition and to offer not just process efficiency and financial gains, but also support for engaging and inspiring the brand communities they are serving. But even they are struggling to find the right clients to sell to.

What else is needed? There are 4 core groups that need educating about each other’s needs and requirements: the brand clients, the IT clients, the vendors, and the creative agencies. Even with the best of efforts, one of these always gets to join the conversation after decisions have already been made, and then it’s too late.

How will it ever happen? Through open discussion and debate about the role and value of brand asset management to different parts of an organisation, to a company’s creative agencies, and most importantly, to the brand itself.