CIO Branding

Joel A Manfredo Managing Director, CIO Practice

Acies Consulting Corp.

6-Nov-2012

Take control of your brand: If you don’t, others will!

Branding and Marketing IT:

AGENDA

Background and IT’s risk of irrelevance

•What is a brand?

•The world’s most powerful brands

•Brand blunders

•Why branding is important

Brand Background

•Where do you start?

•Generic approach – Sandra Selllani

•IT specific approach – Gartner strategies in different markets

What to do?

•County of Orange

Example

Conclusions and

Questions & Answers

IT

The Story: Overview

Background…

Environment, Goals and Results:

Organization: 1. A culture built on Heroics

2. Bad relationship w/ vendor (expiring K)

3. Siloed organization

3. Assigning blame

4. Resistance to change

5. No priorities

Goals:

1. GET BETTER

2. GET TRANSPARENT

3. GET CUSTOMERS

Results:

1. Moved to top 10% against benchmark

2. Reduced Budget 27%

3. Increased customer satisfaction 16%

4. Reduced SLA exceptions by 77%

5. Reduced incidents by 38%

6. Improved incident resolution from 5 days

to 2 days

How:

Combination: 1. Leadership

2. Soft skills introduction

3. Sustained “drumbeat”

4. The persuader

5. ITSM principles

Method: 1. Plan

2. Implement

3. Absorb

4. Measure

“Be transparent, or be gone”

The Story: Actions

Background…

The Story: Actions

Background…

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100

Dec-09 Jul-10 Jul-11

Better

Equal

Orange County Percent of Characteristics "At or Better" July 2011

The Story: Results

Background…

Head

count

- 27%

Top 10%

Gartner

Source: “Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond”, Meehan & McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

Risk of Irrelevance

Look at the press…

Risk of Irrelevance

Source: 37 Signals, Feb., 2011

Source: ComputerWeekly.com, August 2012

Risk of Irrelevance – Frightening Dichotomy

Uh oh… Is this where we’re headed?

Necessary evil

Necessary

Unnecessary?

Sources: “The Great IT Freezeout: Is IT Becoming Irrelevant? ”, Unisys Disruptive IT Trends, July, 2011

“Leading Through Connections, Insights from the CEO Study”, IBM Institute for Vusiness Value, May 2012

External forces that can impact organizations

Risk of Irrelevance

Why are we failing?

But, we do good stuff!

Do we run like a business

Is there Marketing? Sales? Finance?

Peter Drucker: “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has

two – and only two - functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and

innovation create value, the rest are all costs.”

What do we communicate to the business?

The network is currently experiencing an outage…

Great brands communicate a

consistent message over and

over and over again

Risk of Irrelevance

Framing the Marketing and Communication Problem

Great brands communicate a

consistent message over and

over and over again

Source: “Marketing IT: Avoiding the Road to Disenfranchisement and Disempowerment ”, Gartner, April 2012

What is a Brand?

A brand is:

“the gut feeling that people have about your product or service”

“the ability to create in the mind of the prospect the perception

that there is no other product quite like yours’

“the internalized sum of all impressions… resulting in a

distinctive position in the customer’s minds eye”

“proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that

you associate with a product or service”

“a promise comprising both a commitment that sets

expectations… and a definition of the provider’s expected

capabilities”… “in short, it’s what users say about you.”

“Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies

one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other

sellers.“

“Brand is strategy conveyed to your target audience”

Marty Neumeier

The Brand Gap

Al and Laura Ries

Duane Knapp

The Brand Mindset

Charles Pettis

Gartner

Wikipedia

Sandra Sellani

The World’s Top Brands of 2012

Source: brandirectory.com Source: Forbes

Brand Blunders: please don’T self - inflict

You’ve got to be kidding Three examples

Legal Practice: Leadership Integrity Excellence

Utilities: Comprehensive Commercial Construction Program

LIE

“From each according to his ability,

to each according to his need”

CCCP - Союз Советских Социалистических Республик,

meaning the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR in English

Transportation: South Lake Union Trolley

GM: Another death related bad translation took GM to a new low. GM translated their advertising campaign’s

tag line ‘Body by Fisher’ as ‘Corpse by Fisher’ in Belgium.

Schweppes: A translation for Italy leads Schweppes Tonic Water to be translated as ‘Toilet Water’.

Nestle: In central Africa, people are used to labels of packaged foods picturing the inside contents. Nestle

caused an uproar when they released their Nestle baby milk with a smiling caucasan baby on the front.

KFC: KFC’s famous ‘Finger licking good’ slogan translated as ‘eat your fingers off’ in China.

Colgate: Market research disregard: Colgate releases a toothpaste in France called Cue which was similar

to the name of a popular porn magazine.

You’ve got to be kidding Learn from the big boys?

Brand Blunders: please don’T self - inflict

Why is branding important?

Four simple reasons:

1. Branding can deliver the message clearly

2. Branding can create business credibility

3. Branding can create a connection between the product and the clientele

4. Branding helps motivate the buyer

1911 Morton starts adding magnesium carbonate

(an anti-caking agent) to salt, creating a table salt

that flows freely, even in humid weather. This

additive has since been changed to calcium

silicate.

Where do you start?

Three questions:

1. Who are you?

2. Who do you need to be?

3. Who do you want to be?

“Be transparent, or be gone”

Who are you?

1. Who are you? – four questions

2. What are your brand elements?

3. VRIO Analysis

Where do you start?

Survey: Southwest Airlines is USA's 'most desired' brand

Feb. 22, 2012

Who are you? – Brand Archetypes

Where do you start?

ARCHETYPE EXAMPLE

Dove soap, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream

BBC, CNN, Gallup, PBS

Indiana Jones, Jeep, Marlboro

IBM, Microsoft

Lego, Sony, Crayola

Mother Teresa, Johnson’s Baby Shampoo

Disney, Dreamscape Multimedia, Oil of Olay

Nike, Superman

Harley-Davidson, Apple also called “Outlaw”

Victoria’s Secret, Lady Godiva

Motley Fool, Muppets

Home Depot, Wendy’s

Who are you? – Brand Archetypes

Where do you start?

Motto: The truth will set you free.

Driving desire: to find truth

Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world

Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.

Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and

understanding thought processes

Weakness: can study details forever and never act

Talent: wisdom, intelligence

Also known as: expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher,

academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher,

contemplative, guru

Sage archetypes in the wild:

•provide expertise or information to customers

•encourage customers to think

•based on new scientific findings or esoteric knowledge

•supported by research-based facts

•differentiate from others whose quality or performance is suspect

Archetype examples: BBC, CNN, Gallup, PBS

Who are you?

1. Who are you? – four questions

Where do you start?

“Southwest is a customer service organization that just

happens to fly airplanes” – Colleen Barrett, President

Who are you?

2. What are your brand elements?

Where do you start?

Who are you?

3. VRIO analysis - it’s about THEM (customers)

Where do you start?

- Valuable

- Rare

- Costly to Imitate

- Organizational Leverage – every part of the organization

communicates the brand

Piano Works example:

Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact

Source: “Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond”, Meehan &

McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact SEE

Shine in captive IT markets Captive markets comprise the traditional back-office IT services and support: HR, finance and operations (such as

supply chain). Strong IT brands shine in the back office, going beyond merely delivering on expectations.

Expand into adjacent internal IT markets The key to enabling the business to engage adjacent markets is IT’s ability to move its own capabilities

from back-office support to those that will increase front-office digitization. This requires expanding IT’s

brand as a shining back-office innovator such that it also becomes a credible provider of market-facing

business solutions.

Externalize IT’s brand impact IT branding is not solely internal; though IT’s external brand impact is often the sum of its

internal efforts in the front office, leading CIOs have a plan for external brand impact. In other

words, they can answer the question, How does our IT brand help the enterprise keep its

promise?



Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact



Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact – Key Strategy Mechanisms in captive IT Markets

Branding strategy at this stage demands excellence in products, user satisfaction and

efficiency; mechanisms:

• Product-focused branding strategy differentiates IT based on the products it

delivers to internal customers, as when IT acts as a broker for third party providers

• Service-focused branding strategy differentiates IT based on the quality of service

interactions

• Intimacy-focused branding strategy resembles one that is service focused, but it

concentrates on knowing the end user, anticipating user needs and behaving more

like a business consultancy.

CIOs must select one branding strategy to excel at while maintaining a high level of

competency in the other two.



Gartner Approach



Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact – Key Strategy Mechanisms in adjacent internal IT Markets

Three adjacent market strategy mechanisms:

• Examine your stakeholder base to determine where your power base lies, e.g.,

third-person spokesperson

• Look for holes in business strategy where a CIO can make an impact by lowering

business risk and organizational resistance

• Understand new channel opportunities for the business

Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Building IT Brand Impact – Key Strategy Mechanisms externalizing IT’s brand

Answers the question: How does our IT brand help the enterprise keep its promise?

Map your past impact on the external enterprise brand:



Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Communication: (this is a quiz )

Source: “Redefining “Marketing IT” From Telling to Engagement”, May 2011

Gartner Approach

Building IT Brand Impact Communication: Old school, New school

Source: “Redefining “Marketing IT” From Telling to Engagement”, May 2011

Example

County of Orange – Marketing Brochure

Tag line

Logo

County of Orange - Marketing Brochure

Example

County of Orange – Marketing Brochure

Example

Example

County of Orange – other materials… The Brand is Always There

PowerPoint Presentations Service Catalog

Conclusions

Where do we go from here?

• IT is at risk of irrelevance

• Branding IT can help

• What should I do?

• Start with the generic approach – it doesn’t take long or cost much

• Move to the Gartner framework for captive IT markets

• Leverage strengths and bolster weaknesses

• Become transparent, a necessity

• COMMUNICATE especially to the business folks

• Establish a “drumbeat” – always on message from the whole IT

organization

• Look into other branding resources such as the 12 archetypes

• Have fun!

Questions?

[email protected]

Joel A Manfredo

mailto:[email protected]

Documents

CIO Branding