For sheer lameness, nothing trumps a “Coming Soon” placeholder page for a design firm that’s undergoing some kind of a makeover. We’ve noted a few of these lately. Not even a single, high-level message to help us understand what the firm does! With every day, the damnation deepens. (What is “soon”, anyway?) Our advice to clients considering such a firm for brand marketing services: Move on.

For sheer lameness, we’ve encountered only one thing that trumps this: the fairly sizable Detroit-based ad agency that has no web site whatsoever.

At a time of increasingly intense competition between cities and regions for talent, funding and resources, a broad consortium of companies and organizations representing the Toledo Region has adopted a platform communicating the region’s unique appeal from an economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism perspective. Applied Storytelling led the ten-month initiative.

“For those of us who have a stake in this region’s well-being, its strengths have always been clear,” says Joe Napoli, President & General Manager of the Toledo Mud Hens and a member of the Toledo Region Committee. “Until now, however, we literally haven’t been on the same page in communicating those strengths. Now we have the ability to do so.”

A consortium committed to adoption

The newly defined regional brand was introduced to local media and a group of more than 100 business leaders and local media on June 16. The committee is currently developing a plan for large-scale implementation. Significantly, each of the committee member organizations has committed to integrating key messages of the brand platform into their own communications.

Adopting a best practices approach

As part of the development effort, Applied Storytelling conducted a series of six community forums throughout the region, convened six work sessions with regional opinion leaders and conducted a public survey that generated several hundred responses. At the same time, Toledo-based Great Lakes Marketing conducted a research effort geared to gathering opinion and insight from more than 100 regional business leaders.

“From the outset, the committee was committed to pursuing a best practices approach,” says Dave Nolan, President of Destination Toledo, the region’s tourism and convention marketing organization, who convened the committee in early 2009. “We knew that the keys to widespread adoption and long-term success rested in an effort that was as inclusive and transparent as possible.”

The communications platform developed by Applied Storytelling included distinct positionings, messages and storylines for economic development, quality of life, education and leisure tourism, with economic development identified as the lead component of the region’s overall brand story

“On one hand, the region will benefit from a cohesive story that is emotionally engaging and easy to understand,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “On the other, the days of one-size-fits all messaging to serve the many agendas of an entity as complex and diverse as an entire region are long gone.”

Competitive research validated the committee’s decision to focus overall brand positioning around leadership in the New Manufacturing Economy—manufacturing enabled by digital technologies, sophisticated systems and processes, and a highly-trained workforce. In addition to being highly differentiating, the clarity and sharp definition of this positioning reflect a level of brand discipline that relatively few regions have been able to achieve.

Creating an open, accessible content hub

The Toledo Region brand platform will be placed on the initiative’s initial web site together with other background materials. Initial implementation plans call for developing a robust site as a dynamic communications hub and content-rich resource for any individual or organization seeking to integrate the region’s story into their own brand marketing initiatives.

Genoptix Medical Laboratories, a specialized laboratory diagnostics company focused on delivering personalized, comprehensive assessments to community-based hematologists and oncologists, has released its first bundled set of evaluations for solid tumors under the NexCourse™ name.

According to a company spokesman, the new solid tumor offering will play a significant role in the Genoptix’s goal of expanding its customer outreach in 2010.

The company turned to Applied Storytelling to develop a comprehensive brand messaging and naming framework that included the new name.

“Like many companies, Genoptix reached a point where an organic, one-off approach to product naming would no longer suffice,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling.

“The new offering needed to be seen not only as important in its own right but also as part of a meaningful system—and an overall business strategy.”

Supplemented by external insights from Frymire & Associates (Menlo Park, CA), Applied Storytelling worked with a cross-section of company’s C-level executives and departmental leads to arrive at a new product naming and messaging solution. To succeed, the company needed to maintain the loyalty of its existing customer base as it reached out to a broader array of oncologists.

“In the oncology diagnostics space, as in so many other categories of service business, the pressures towards commoditization are tremendous,” says Matthew Kruchko, Managing Director of Applied Storytelling. “Those pressures can increase even further as a company diversifies its offering.”

In the life or death battle between diversification and commoditization, companies must often find ways to port their brand’s core strengths into their new offerings, Kruchko adds. Carefully considered messages, together with a compelling, credible, brand story, can play a vital role in making this translation possible.

A new educational initiative from The Henry Ford, America’s greatest history destination, aims for nothing less than “advancing a culture of innovation” by documenting and sharing the in-depth insights of American innovators past and present. The pre-launch of The Henry Ford’s OnInnovation web site, which went live earlier this month, gives a preview of content and activities to come.

OnInnovation is the most recent in an ongoing series of strategic efforts geared to building awareness, relevancy and revenues for The Henry Ford that have involved Applied Storytelling since 2002.

“We have embraced advancing innovation as our signature cause,” says Patricia Mooradian, President of The Henry Ford. “We believe we have an important role to play in this regard: Our content and collections are nothing less than a gold mine of insight waiting to be unlocked, shared and put to use—and added to, as well.”

The new web site is the centerpiece of the institution’s initiative, adds Carol Kendra, Chief Marketing Officer for The Henry Ford.

“When it launches this fall, the site will be a content hub for educators, students, business leaders and the public at large to gain firsthand insights from some of the greatest innovators living today—and many past innovators as well,” she says.

“Ultimately,” adds Kendra, “We look forward to creating a place where innovators of all kinds, well-known and unknown alike, share their insights and help to inspire each other.”

From naming the initiative and messaging to concepting and writing the multi-phase web site, Applied Storytelling has played an instrumental role in helping to bring OnInnovation to life.

“Creating compelling content and a great user experience is only half the challenge,” says Applied Storytelling Principal Eric La Brecque. “We are also working to insure that The Henry Ford is fully dialed into the existing conversations around innovation that are taking place in business, education and government every day—and vice versa.”

“In a very real sense,” he adds, “there’s no longer any such thing as a ‘dark period’ before you go live: You’re live the minute you state your intentions.”

Marketing continually impinges on the vulgar, which imparts a whiff of wiseguyness or trendiness or badassedness to writing destined for export. It’s all too easy to lose sight of the vulgar quotient in light of the fun factor, or to do whatever we must to get an A for Attitude. Right? Two recent examples:

Geezers 2.0: Secrets of Longevity. This appears on the cover of Newsweek (December 15, 2008). A name that’s sure to make older people feel good. Why not Hos 2.0: Secrets of Femininity?

Name coined by staffers for the ethos of the Obama campaign. Sharply contrasted from the McCain campaign, itself nicknamed the McCain Drain, or from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, both of which essentially imploded from within.

The Obama campaign also gave birth to the Obama Mama, a passionate female follower of the Illinois senator. Here and there, various Obamaramas cropped up, too. One was a blog that apparently sputtered out in February. Ralph Nader used the term, somewhat pejoratively, to describe “the politics of the smooth mood” that he witnessed on the campaign trail with Obama in New Hampshire.

Looking to reinforce the North American International Auto Show’s pre-eminent position among other U.S.-based auto shows, in 2007 the Detroit Auto Dealers Association (DADA), the show’s owner, launched an initiative to adopt a more strategic approach to the way the Auto Show communicates.

The organization engaged Applied Storytelling to spearhead the effort, which has yielded a series of tools and insights that show organizers are now setting in motion. Attendees will notice the first changes when they come to the 2009 Auto Show. Additional changes will follow in 2010.

Insights that helped to shape the new communications blueprint came not only from Detroit Auto Dealer Association members and staff but also from dozens of interviews with manufacturers, media and Tier One suppliers worldwide conducted by MCorp (San Rafael, California) in conjunction with Applied Storytelling.

“The new brand platform is much more than a creative campaign,” says NAIAS Executive Director Rod Alberts. “It provides a filter and guide for looking at just about every aspect of the experience we provide and the value we deliver.”

Some of these changes will be obvious and highly visible. For example, the first phase of the Auto Show’s new web site, which debuted in late October 2008, introduced the world to a new look, feel and tone geared to conveying a stronger sense of the Auto Show as a top international automotive event. The new site and identity were developed by Cincinnati-based Openfield Creative.

Acknowledging the show’s strong media focus, the new web site has also been upgraded to provide more press information in a more timely and convenient way. Prior to the January event, site content will also appear in several languages in addition to English. Additionally, the Auto Show’s ShowTalk and NewsFlash publications are migrating to a digital format in response to media preferences.

“At a time of sweeping change in the automotive industry, the Auto Show has securely positioned itself around unique strengths based on real substance, not sizzle,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “In this category as in so many others, the strongest brand is ultimately the most responsive. That’s the premise from which our work has begun.”

The basic premise of this book is that the very things that make successful companies with established products successful tend to work against them when new, disruptive technologies appear on the scene. For someone in an established company, this message is bound to be disquieting, even though the book offers some reasonable-sounding courses of action.

The author observes that the companies that are most successful in commercializing disruptive technologies view the primary development challenge not as a technological one but as a marketing one.

And what a challenge it is: Christensen demonstrates pretty convincingly that with a disruptive technology it’s not possible to know what the customers want beforehand: a process of mutual discovery must follow. This suggests that many kinds of market testing or validation may be useless or, worse, seriously misleading. It also suggests that marketers must design messages and campaigns that can be light and nimble, easily torn down and rebuilt, perhaps multiple times.

Another gem of insight, with regard to commoditization: “A product becomes a commodity within a specific market segment when the repeated changes on the basis of competition...completely play themselves out, that is, when market needs on each attribute or dimension of performance have been fully satisfied by more than one available product.” And its corollary: “It may be...that the product offerings of competitors in a market continue to be differentiated from each other. But differentiation loses its meaning when the features and functionality have exceeded what the market demands.”

Positioning with the gears stripped.

Set aside, for now, other facets of Foote Cone & Belding’s new brand-building initiative for Hilton, many of them highly commendable, to consider Hilton’s new tagline: Be hospitable.

Very problematic.

First, there’s the question of who’s being addressed. Me, the customer? Why should I be hospitable? Isn’t that your job, Hilton? The second person form doesn’t work here the way, say, Nike’s timeless Just do it does. It’s one thing to be enjoined to do something, another to be told to besomething.

Part of the problem arises, I think, from the conflation of hospitableness, always understood as a virtue, and hospitality, understood here as the business category in which Hilton competes.

Or, Hilton, are you letting us in on your own inner mantra — that which lives at your core, that which you value most? If so, why are you talking to yourself? Do you need this constant reminder? Seems like this tagline might be better suited to an employee-focused effort.

Then there’s the question of exactly what Hilton means by "Be hospitable" in the first place. Of course, if you read the one-page statement that accompanies the corporate image ad itself, you understand a number of very real and very good things that Hilton is doing in the spirit of being hospitable: helping to educate children, focusing on music education, working to save U.S. landmarks and encouraging support for the homeless. All very relevant endeavors that help to explain the tagline. [To really dive in, go to www.beinghospitable.com.] However, without this context — and I fear most individuals won’t get it — the tagline risks coming off as simple in the head: For a company in the hospitality sector to say “Be hospitable” seems a little like an airline saying “Fly the plane”. Or maybe a restaurant saying, “Eat what’s on your plate.” As a customer, I might’ve preferred something like, “Be considered. Feel loved.”

Doritos asks consumers to name a new flavor of chip. What’s the harm in that? It’s fun! Who better to name the chip than those who will eat it? What better way to engage them in the brand? For a flavor name, okay, this may be harmless enough. Ben & Jerry’s has certainly secured some zingers from its cadre of loyal lickers. But too often we’ve seen companies create contests for employees to name a new brand or even company. The results invariably disappoint. The vast majority of entries have the feel of a lark — See how cute? See how clever? — without regard for what the brand represents or what the name should convey. Or, for that matter, whether some competitor is already using it. Heaven forbid the company should ask for, or any contestant should provide, a rationale for the name. We’ll know it when we see it! Those candidates that seemed clever to the individuals who thought of them seem less clever in light of the spate of similar entries from their co-workers — and less clever still in light of what’s already in general circulation. In the end, the relatively paltry reward offered by the companies almost always goes unclaimed, and a more rigorous process replaces the original, feelgood effort.

At this point, though, the name team is working at a disadvantage: Management has created the expectation that native genius will triumph. Management has created the expectation that everyone’s involved in the creative process. Management has signaled its lack of understanding of, or awareness of the need for, a rigorous process. Management has reinforced that naming is inherently non-serious and artsy-fartsy. And the new candidates are likely to be viewed with inherent dislike by a newly disenfranchised team.

Back to Doritos. At the time of the news item that appeared in BusinessWeek (6/25/07). The company had received 100,000 suggestions. According to the article, the company has not stated whether it will use any of the names, or even whether it will release the flavor. Maybe it’s all so darned fun nobody cares. But it’s also the ultimate diss of the customer one claims so fervently to respect.

At a time when Qualcomm’s BREW wireless services brand is expanding in scope, reach and capabilities at an accelerated rate, Applied Storytelling has developed a conference theme to match. “Into the New” is the watchword and hallmark of the BREW 2007 global conference—and the driver of a bold identity developed by San Diego-based MiresBall. The conference, slated for June 20-22 in San Diego, will attract some 2,500 developers, operators, manufacturers and brand marketers from around the world.

In collaboration with MiresBall, Applied Storytelling has helped to shape and define the BREW brand since its launch in 2001. Applied Storytelling has been responsible developing the BREW brand architecture and articulating the BREW brand story — not just once but through two follow-on iterations as BREW has responded to fast-paced changes in the global wireless services marketplace. Applied Storytelling has also provided naming as well as a communications and identity foundation for a number of BREW Signature Solutions as well, including BREW Gaming and its tagline— The game has changed™—as well as its sticky, high-profile “Broogs” mascot.