We all know a brand means, in essence, what its customers say it means. A company can shout from the rooftops what it stands for and bellow the fine-point details of its customer-centric promises, but all the best marketing and PR in the world can’t save a brand from lack of follow-through on the part of customer-facing employees. Am I right?

In Branded Customer Service, by Janelle Barlow and Paul Stewart, the authors turn the equation upside-down and pose the question, “What do brands think about their customers?”

Barlow and Stewart offer as an example, Rolex. What does Rolex think of its customers – in my case, me? Their conclusion: I’m not good enough for a Rolex. While I might be tempted to quibble with the notion of falling short of a standard of good enough, there’s no doubt I’m not wealthy enough to drop $10,000 on a luxury watch. Nonetheless, The point is well taken: Rolex’s demographic is limited, I’m not in it, and the brand is perfectly comfortable with me knowing it.

That got me thinking, what does Best Buy (my employer) think of its customers? [More]

All this social media chatter about personal branding reminds me of the dot-com bubble-and-burst of the late ’90s and early double-nots, when entrepreneurs put marketing and advertising in front of anything resembling business fundamentals and watched their stock prices skyrocket … until someone said, “Hey, wait a minute …”

Fast forward to today. Social media is on fire with advice for staking out your little place in the spotlight and promoting your personal brand via personal websites, blogs, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. It’s not terrible advice if that’s your thing, but as was the case in the dot-com era, the focus too often is marketing and advertising, with fundamentals again getting short shrift.

If you need evidence, check out the Twitter widget at right. Read the personal branding tweets as they appear. You’ll see things like, “7 key ways to promote your personal brand,” “10 indispensable tools for personal branding,” “Building personal brand within the social media landscape,” and on and on.

Someone needs to say it, so it might as well be me: “Hey, wait a minute …” [More]

Harvey Greisman

I was saddened to learn of the death of an old boss of mine last weekend.

Harvey Greisman, a long-time New York-area PR guy, and former IBM communications vice president, died suddenly of a massive heart attack in Florida (even more sadly, on the same day his own father died in the hospice facility where Harvey was paying a final visit). Harvey was just 61.

I worked for Harvey when he was comms veep for IBM Global Services in 2001-02. Harvey could be a tough guy to work for. I remember one particular teleconference where he wanted to ask a question of one of his reports who was talking through a presentation on the phone. Harvey couldn’t get the guy’s attention to break in, so he began aggressively punching buttons on the phone - beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep-beep – and eventually the speaker stopped speaking. Harvey asked some tough questions, told the guy to go back to the drawing board, and the next speaker rose to the virtual podium, a bit more apprehensive than he had been.

[More]

Can people in your company or work group tell the difference between good work and great work? How about lousy work? More importantly, does it really matter to your leaders and colleagues which they get? [More]

It’s true. I’m proud and unabashed about trumpeting our customer service successes and I’m always happy to call out helpful Blueshirt employees by name (via Twitter) when they live up to the promises of the Best Buy brand. But, if I hope to have any credibility at all, I have to be willing to talk about less-than-stellar experiences, don’t I?

Before we dive into the details of my experience heavy on the lousy, I am going to say that the vast majority of interactions I have at Best Buy are overwhelmingly positive, and make me feel good about the company for which I toil.

Far more often than not, the Best Buy person I encounter on the sales floor takes the time necessary to answer my questions and help me find the product(s) I’m looking for (one went so far as to go out back and pull a CD off the delivery truck before it was unloaded; another consulted the store product map to find an obscure cord I wanted that was “21 feet from the aisle”), to make sure I’m fully and completely satisfied with my shopping experience.

(I should point out that I never tell store employees that I’m a Best Buy employee – until it comes time to claim my discount – so there is no “favoritism” of any kind. I am a regular Joe looking for something cool).

But for every rule, there is an exception.

[More]

Got a call from the local chapter of the IABC (International Association of Business Communicators) several weeks ago, asking if I’d be willing to be interviewed about the communications job market for an article in their monthly News & Views publication. They must have figured since Best Buy is a big local company with a well-regarded communications function they could pass even me off as a subject matter “expert.”

I must say I was uneasy playing the role. [More]