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 What is it that separates brand leaders from others? Is it spending?  I believe that myth has been disproven many times over – how many brands have spent millions, only to fail (Pontiac, anyone?).  Perhaps it’s time/longevity?  Again, that hypothesis is easy to disprove.  How long did it take the iPhone to become the leader in the mobile device market, one week? 

The reality is that no one thing creates a brand leader.  Such status cannot be bought, but neither is it free.  Last month Trone updated our consumer study on brands and the economy, and the news was indeed grim .  Consumers have made serious changes in their shopping behaviors and for the most part, brands have suffered and will continue to do so.  However, there are brands that consumers are going to stick with, even when money is tight.  Kraft was mentioned by an astonishing 13% of all respondents (N = 1,638) to the open-ended question, “What 3 brands won’t you give up, no matter what?”  To be sure, Kraft spends money on it’s brands, and it’s been around a long time.  But how do you explain brands like Fisher Price making the top 20?

Brand leaders follow several key strategies:
1) They invest in their brands – note to marketers, this isn’t code for “advertising.”  Rather, they seek to understand their consumer and work to meet their needs.  This is not about “selling” products.  It’s about giving your customer what they want. 

2) They know who they are.  A favorite quote of mine is “A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money.”  Brand leaders know who they are and what they stand for.   Brand leaders not only delight their consumers, they also don’t confuse them.  Whether through product, price, distribution or promotion, they stay true to themselves. 

 In today’s economic climate it’s all to tempting to abandon your core brand principles, or to stop communicating with your consumers.  But brand leaders, the brands with staying power, know who they are, what their consumers want and nuture those relationships, even in times like these.

EVERYONE!

What would you do if all your data was suddenly gone? I know many people would have a nervous breakdown including me. Over the weekend a hacker was able to exploit a UK web host’s servers and erase as many as 100,000 websites’ data. Many of those customers had no backup solution in place and thus may never have the ability to recover their data due to the finality of UNIX’s “rm -rf” command.

Some 50 percent of Vaserv’s customers signed up for unmanaged service, which doesn’t include data backup, Foster said. It remains unclear of those website owners will ever be able to retrieve their lost data, he said. As a result, at least half the websites that were hosted on the site remain offline.

Which leads me to ask, “what kind of backup solutions are in place for both your computers and your web servers (if you have any)?”

Personally, I have a two-tiered backup solution for all my computers.

1. All my Macs have time machine enabled and back up to an external drive. This is a local backup solution and would be the fastest to recover data if something was lost. Time machine makes it very easy to “undelete” something that was accidentally removed from the system. However, if my house burned down, my data would most likely be unrecoverable.
2. I use an online backup solution. My service of choice is Mozy, which offers unlimited backup storage space for about $5 a month per computer. They also have a free 2gb backup solution. Mozy works with both Mac and PC. This is a secondary backup solution for me and is my “safety net” in case anything were to happen to my local backups.

My web server is another matter. Like the folks in the article above, my web host doesn’t back up my data. So I’ve set up an automated process whereby all my databases are compressed and emailed to me every night. Periodically I’ll go through and delete the really old ones to conserve space on my Gmail account. This doesn’t include the filesystem. I know that this isn’t ideal and I really should upgrade my account to include automated backups.

How do you ensure that your data isn’t lost? Do you even have a backup strategy? Tell me in the comments below!

A small bank based in Fort Worth Texas went after the big guys. And so far, it’s working. One billboard at a time, they are riding the wave of consumer opinion that the banks must have done something wrong if they needed TARP money. By letting people know that Worthington Bank didn’t take any of that money, they are creating a halo effect. People are feeling more comfortable putting their money into Worthington. But comfort isn’t the only motivating factor. It’s pride. Most people have worked very hard for what savings they have and take pride in knowing that they’ve been able to survive on their own without much help from others. They relate to a bank that does the same. It’s not that they wanted the economy to go into a tailspin or that they don’t think people should get help when they need it. But banks are not exactly an easy institution to sympathize with. And consumers understand that no matter how small their account is, what they do with their money is in fact a vote for what they stand for. Understanding this consumer insight has proved to be priceless.

Billboards saying things such as “Just say no to Bailout Banks. Bank responsibly,” “Did your bank take a bailout? We didn’t,” and my personal favorite that was placed next to the local zoo “Don’t feed the animals” with the word animals crossed out and “big banks” scribbled in.

And while big banks are crying foul saying that TARP money was important and helped a lot of people out, this little bank is growing rapidly. To the tune of $5 million in new deposits since the launch of the campaign. In their own little way, consumers are saying enough is enough with the poor me mentality of big banks.

After all, if we’ve learned anything from the automobile manufacturer Ford lately, it’s that stability is still part of the American dream.

Here is a video about the work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SNCuQ04ang.

Some of the back and forth about the campaign:
http://www2.snl.com/Interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-9218440-12642
http://www.bizpress.net/display.php?id=9849