Etiquette for professional services partners

It’s the same in brandland as in so many other areas of endeavor: collectivity rules. Alliances and networks of small, highly specialized firms can deliver thinking and programs every bit as powerful, if not more so, than the so-called “full service” firms. In our experience (and that of others like us), clients appreciate the honesty and transparency of knowing who, exactly, is doing the work, and where, exactly, the competency lies. They also appreciate the lack of conflicting agendas between, say, Strategy and Design.

On one hand, a “full-service” firm generally touts the benefits of its “integrated model”. On the other, a narrowly-focused “networked alliance” firm (like us) will tout the “best in class” expertise of its allies and friends. We’ve got a stake in this argument, and we believe we’re on the winning side of it (at least, most of the time). But we also know that the “networked alliance” model is relatively new—at least, as a business model that’s been outed and is now publicly okay to embrace. Like all new models, it’s still got some kinks to work out. A few of these are: What are the right rules of the road for working together? Who owns the client relationship? Who should manage the project? And so on.

After dozens of engagements, we’ve arrived at the following etiquette, more or less. We share it as a window into the way we build teams (and collaborative relationships) and as a starting point for further conversations elsewhere. We share it as a way we like to be considered, and the way we like to consider others in turn. Please forgive the lapses into legalese.

If you don’t want to get into details, we can summarize the etiquette into five simple principles:

1. Every firm on the team represents itself as itself.
2. Every firm on the team is acknowledged as the author of its own work
3. Every firm on the team presents its own work.
4. Every firm on the team enjoys direct communications with the client with respect to its own work.
5. All team members will respect the firm that owns the relationship while retaining responsibility for their own work.

INVITATION TO PRESENT WITH A CREATIVE SERVICES COLLABORATOR TO A PROSPECT THAT IS NEW TO BOTH FIRMS [JOINT NEW-BUSINESS PITCH]

When we present with a collaborator on a new business pitch, we represent our company, processes and work, as our own (in our case, “Applied Storytelling”).

In acknowledgement of our collaborator partner as the “lead collaborator” from a business development standpoint, we allow our collaborator partner to determine the time and place of the presentation, and to be the sole point of contact with the client prospect with regard to matters relating to the presentation.

Request for Proposal: If the team is asked to provide a proposal that includes the services we offer, we consider that we have helped to win the business and expect to benefit in a manner commensurate with our efforts. Namely, we do not consider our collaborator partner to be our “client”. Our obligations to our collaborator partner differ significantly from our individual and joint obligations to the client.

Obligation to Collaborator: If the prospect has originally contacted our collaborator partner, then we regard the prospect as having the potential to become the collaborator’s client. We absolutely respect our team member’s right to “own the relationship” with the client outside the specific scope of services that we provide. Any recommendation or request for services that we receive, and that falls outside the services we offer directly, will be referred by us to our lead collaborator partner.

We extend and abide by the same considerations we expect of our collaborator partners.

Proposals: We provide our own proposal and pricing for any brand consulting and naming services we are asked to provide.

If we are presenting at the invitation of a collaborator, we gladly provide our proposal to the collaborator to be packaged with the collaborator’s own proposal, providing the collaborator responds to the client within a reasonable timeframe. In such circumstances, we expect that our proposal will be presented intact as delivered to the collaborator, regardless of any cover letter or “wrap” the collaborator might wish to add. Our collaborative partner agrees not to amend or revise our proposal in any way without our express knowledge and consent.

In the case of a referral from a collaborator (versus a co-presentation), we expect to submit our own proposal directly to the prospective client.

Communications: We copy our professional services collaborator on all written communications and apprise our collaborative team member of all meetings and presentations we will be making to perform the services detailed in the scope of work. We expect that our collaborative partner will not communicate directly with the client regarding our services without our express knowledge and consent.

We actively seek to represent and recommend our collaborator partners at every opportunity as well as to coordinate our workflows and deliverables to strengthen their own work products and client relationships.

Project Management: We expect to manage the project(s) for which we are engaged to provide services. We freely inform our collaborator partners of the steps and approach we are taking, and we may solicit opinions from them, but we remain the sole authority and decision maker with respect to the process, steps, tools and people we use to perform the services for which we are engaged.

Billing: In line with the project management we provide for the work we perform, we establish direct billing with the client.

Representation of Work: We represent our work as our own. Our work is not co-branded with our collaborator partners.

INVITATION TO PRESENT WITH A CREATIVE SERVICES COLLABORATOR WHO ALREADY OWNS A CLIENT RELATIONSHIP [OR WITH COLLABORATOR WHO HAS BEEN ASKED TO RESPOND TO A FORMAL RFP]

Certain distinctions between this situation and the previous situation apply:

Billing: Provided the collaborator partner has a history of timely payment with us, we allow our billing to be run through the collaborator partner. Note, however, that we retain control of project management for services provided.

Representation of Work: We allow our lead collaborator partners to repackage our work in their own format provided our work does not materially change without our express knowledge and consent, and provided that any reformatting does not materially effect project steps and timing. We consent to our work being co-branded with our collaborator partner’s, if desired by the partner.

REQUEST FOR SERVICES FROM COLLABORATOR

Additional distinctions between this situation and the previous situations apply:

Billing: Provided the collaborator partner has a history of timely payment with us, we consent to run our billing through the collaborator partner.

Communications: To be successful, we must hear the client’s voice directly. We agree not to contact the end client without the participation of our collaborator partner—who is, after all, our fellow team member. At the same time, our professional services collaborator agrees to include us on all phone calls of substance relating to our work product, and agrees to allow us to take the lead in presenting the deliverables we develop. Our collaborator/client further agrees to send no deliverable provided by us to the end client “over the transom” (i.e., without a presentation or walk-through to the client) without our express knowledge and consent.

Representation of Work: We allow our professional services collaborators/clients to repackage our work in their own format provided our work does not materially change, and provided that reformatting does not materially effect project steps and timing. We consent to our work being co-branded with our collaborator partner, if the partner desires. We never allow a professional services collaborator/client to represent our work as its own without our express knowledge and consent.

Project Management: We acknowledge the professional services firm as our client, and perform services under their project management lead as set forth in our working agreement with them.

Genoptix introduces NexCourse, a comprehensive approach to solid tumor testing

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.

Spring Design’s dual display Alex enters the fast-growing eReader marketplace.

Winner of best-of-show at CES 2010, Spring Design’s Alex Reader has a lot going for it: It’s the only dual screen reader based on Google’s Android platform to fully integrate web browsing and reading. From the outset, it gives readers access to over one million Google books. And it will be heavily promoted in the US through Borders.

Of course, Alex needs a lot going for it, too. While hardly mature, the eReader marketplace now features entries from all of the major players, with several lesser-known contenders weighing in as well.

Heading the new reader’s brand, name and identity development, San José, California-based Liquid Agency engaged longtime collaborator Applied Storytelling to provide the messaging framework to support the eReader at launch.

Geared to bring clarity and consistency to communications that must be perfectly tuned to create a space for the reader amidst the din of the burgeoning category, messaging focused on Alex’s target: the “real reader” (versus, say, the skimmer)—the individual who reads as a matter of habit, and a way of life.

Beyond individual messages building on the eReader’s distinctive features and benefits, Applied Storytelling also crafted a Real Reader Credo, which begins with the premise of “reading unlimited” and states a belief “in the power of the curious mind unfettered.”

Sample headlines and copy concepts, a common feature of Applied Storytelling messaging deliverables, also gave a boost to pre-launch creative.

The Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County raises the profile of its first-ever capital campaign.

Seeking “to revitalize and expand…so that it may live up to its potential as the region’s indispensable hub for connecting people and nature”, the Natural History Museum has embarked on a capital campaign to re-imagine key exhibits, restore landmark architectural features and inspire visitors and others to make deeper and more meaningful connections to a changing world.

Teaming with Los Angeles-based KBDA, which developed the museum’s overall brand platform in 2008, Applied Storytelling first developed the campaign’s communications framework and has since gone on to collaborate on communications geared to securing contributors as well as inspiring the public. These have included concept development and writing for an overview video that first aired in August on the museum’s YouTube channel as well as an awareness campaign displayed throughout the museum itself. Additional communications are forthcoming.

The public will begin to see the first enhancements to the museum made possible by the campaign later this year, with the effort slated for completion by 2013.

The museum’s NHMNext fundraising initiative comes at a time when charitable giving to cultural institutions has declined, a casualty of the current economic downturn. More broadly, museums are asking hard questions about how to remain compelling, vital institutions in an increasingly media-driven and digital landscape. In this landscape, a strategic approach to communications becomes even more vital to a campaign’s success.

“Ultimately, the museum experience itself must engage many different types of visitor who come to the museum for many different reasons,” says Eric La Brecque, Principal of Applied Storytelling. “But the campaign story has a vital role to play in exciting the imagination—and, to donors, communicating lasting value—long before that experience takes shape.”

Guided by criteria established at the assignment’s outset, the campaign messaging framework builds on the museum’s own overall mission and strategic plan. Messaging elements include a campaign vision, mission and promise as well as supporting value propositions and a call to action. Applied Storytelling also developed the NHM Next campaign name andJoin the evolution slogan.

Elements of a Successful Global Branding Strategy

The successful global brand strategy is relevant and responsive to all audiences (by type, channel, and geo). The strategy enables the creation and use of targeted tools that speak to each audience’s needs and priorities. While a key goal of any strategy is the creation of a consistent impression, the successful strategy adopts an agile approach to achieving that impression.

The successful global brand strategy is easy to implement and manage. The successful strategy builds on a detailed understanding of the resources available to enable it. Where resources are few, the strategy may allow for the use of simpler tools and guidelines. Where they are many, the strategy many involve additional resources and build on greater complexity. The successful strategy also seeks to build effective channels of two-way communication between those who implement and those who manage.

The successful global brand strategy is flexible and adaptable. Changes in technology, society or the marketplace, which can be sweeping and sudden, mitigate against any brand strategy that aspires to be future-proof. Successful strategies acknowledge and accommodate this understanding. They include mechanisms for eliciting feedback, and procedures for acting decisively on this feedback. Fundamentally, of course, brand strategy serves business strategy. As business strategy changes, the brand strategy must change with it.

The successful global brand strategy leverages local resources. Strategies that adopt a center- outwards only approach may forfeit efficiencies and economies, to say nothing of goodwill, which can be achieved by developing creative and strategic resources with specific local understanding and experience.  From our perspective, this does not necessarily mean interfacing with the global monoculture of a worldwide consultancy, but the cultivation, over time, of authentic, independent, locally based resources that can bring true richness and nuance to the brand’s expression.

The successful global brand strategy can be measured. The strategy is built upon a baseline understanding of audience perceptions as well as the extent and nature of communications to date, and routinely measured against this baseline once it has been put into place.

The successful global brand strategy engages its internal audiences and involves the explicit endorsement of its leadership. To achieve its best results, the strategy must make sense to its internal audiences. While not charged with the specific task of communicating the brand on a daily basis, internal audiences must believe in the brand, and feel a personal stake in its success. When they do so, they help to ensure that the audience’s experience of the brand is as consistent and rewarding as possible across every point of contact. The strongest brands have the potential to unify organizations, and to mobilize them.

Areas in Which Corporate Branding will enhance Marketing and Communications Activities:

Corporate branding stands to bring many levels of enhancement, some general, others specific. Most directly, a strong corporate branding initiative delivers real, measurable ROI to the marketing and communications effort. This ROI takes the form of (1) cost savings realized from the re-use of brand assets and from their cost-efficient deployment across communications; (2) time savings through expediting the creative process, providing a clear framework for decision-making; creative throughput; (3) organizational efficiency through expediting training, shortening the learning curve for developing brand-appropriate communications, facilitating brand management, and enabling increased creative throughput; and (4) accountability, by providing a basis for tracking and benchmarking the effectiveness of the brand’s communications.

While direct and tangible, this benefit of corporate branding is in some regards the “small win”. With respect to marketing and communications activities, here is the bigger win:

A general understanding of the broader benefits to the company’s marketing and communications activities stems from a clear understanding of a brand’s fundamental nature and purpose: a brand is a story told in the marketplace. In telling its story in the clearest, most consistent and compelling manner (via the brand strategy), A company stands to enhance its ability to market and communicate by strengthening its connection with its audiences.  While often under-utilized, the benefits of building a strong audience connection should not be under-estimated. When audiences are engaged, they are quicker and more vocal in letting the company know when the brand — the story — is and is not working for them. A successful brand strategy builds strong channels for fostering this kind of ongoing dialog. Of course, the benefits of an engaged audience also go beyond the enhanced ability to build more refined and responsive communications, up to and including fundamentally influencing the company’s product design, product strategy, and delivery of services.

Yes: Newsweek rethinks itself

The previous weeks’ Newsweek may be the boldest fundamental rethink of a magazine we’ve seen in a long time. The update goes far beyond the merely graphic-cosmetic: Essentially, it’s forsaking news in the narrow sense to focus on commentary. Here’s the wager, in the words of editor Jon Meacham: We know you already know what the news is. With original reporting and arguments, we’ll make you think in new ways. I like it a lot. Now let’s see if it’s tealeaf take on relevance in the digital age is right for a wider readership. If the public attention span has shrunk to snippets and soundbites in all instances, Newsweek loses. If the new format not only appeals in its own right but also works in a way that can’t be copied or bettered online, Newsweek wins. I’m still reading, and I guess I won’t subscribe to the online version after all. Eric La Brecque

Brand practice: positioning and promise 101

Incredibly, confusion still reigns about these building blocks of brand expression—so much so that some practitioners even consider them to be one and the same. We certainly don’t, though we acknowledge a close relationship between the two. Here’s how we explain the difference—and define the two terms—in the simplest, most rule-of-thumb way:

Imagine that a product or service could speak. The first sentence it says is, “Choose me because___________.” That because is the positioning. Of course, the product may have many reasons for you to choose it. The positioning will be the one it states first—the one if feels it must state in case it doesn’t get a chance to speak again.

Of course, you’re only going to choose the product if what it’s saying sets it apart in a uniquely compelling way from the clamor of other products asking you to choose them.

Now to the promise. The promise follows from the positioning. Suppose you like what the product is saying. You might then be prompted to respond, “Okay, let’s say I do. What’ll you do for me if I choose you?” The answer, that’s the promise: “Choose me and [I’ll help you to] __________.”

As long as the answer to the sentence is clear, confident, distinctive and relevant, chances are you have a good promise. We arrived at this insight after causing a bit of a debate among the various members of a project team. They were trying to arrive at a normative definition of a promise. They felt they needed to because the candidate we provided was pithy to the point of being catchy—too much so for their liking. At issue was whether a promise so snappy could actually be a promise. The catchiness, we explained, was incidental. The meaning was what mattered. We understood the different between a promise and a slogan. And no, we weren’t suggesting our promise as a slogan. If, however, they accepted it as such, would it have really been such a bad thing? Maybe not, as long as they could say why.

We’re not in a position to share our subversive promise yet, but here’s a good stand-in for coming to your own conclusions: Just do it.