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How social media enables brand resilience - customers & brand promise

redicting brand resilience is no simple thing. When Qantas decided recently to ground its fleet worldwide, at zero notice, it was obviously fully aware of the potential brand damage. Qantas made the decision as the lesser of evils in the unfolding and unrelenting contest between the unions and management. What followed next wasnt quite so predictable as Qantas flew straight into a Twitter debacle which topped the 2011 PR Disaster List and many pundits predicted that the brand had suffered irreparable damage. At that time, by deploying our social business intelligence, we found that the brand sentiment wasnt in good shape by one measure the sentiment surrounding Qantas stood at 50% negative (16% positive and 34% neutral, measured over 7 days across all news, blogs and social media services worldwide). But surprisingly the brand hasnt seemed to have suffered lasting damage, at least not yet in financial terms nor passenger-share terms, although damage was estimated to their brand value. All-in-all it demonstrates how complicated brand resilience is to dissect and also it highlights how brands have to take a holistic approach to their social presence and reputation as part of their business strategy. Social media can play a crucial role in brand resilience (although ironically in the Qantas case it hasnt). To know how we need to set up a model of brand resilience, and here is one (below) which is no doubt not perfect, but adequate. If you think of customer experience strategy then you think of a coherent blend of brand positioning, marketing, customer experience and employee experience. These

also all reflect on brand resilience, but brand resilience is more because it it effected by non-customer actions e.g. blunders by companys social media or PR people.

http://igo2group.com/blog/how-social-media-enables-brand-resilience/

In Part 1 well explain the brand resilience model, in Part 2 the role of social media, and in Part 3 and 4 how to use the model in a brand crisis.

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How social media enables brand resilience - customers & brand promise

The Brand Resilience Model

Brand Resilience is a lagging function of: 1. Brand Promise; 2. Brand Experience; 3. Brand Friction; and, 4. Brand Stock.
Brand Promise

#FAIL yet another piece of marketing creativity which was detached from operational reality. Traditionally, we think of the Promise being driven by marketing and advertising them telling us what it will be. But perhaps counter-intuitively, given the amount of money spend on advertising, on launching a brand, or on re-branding exercises, brands can build their promise purely through the Brand Experience without spending money on promoting the promise per se. I say per se because a company may spend resources on promoting the Promise by relaying or amplifying positive customer feedback which reflects the Promise. The customer experience alone, without advertising or PR, or even without an explicit Promise, can in fact create an Promise by reputation, by word of mouth and referral. This is especially so with respect to companies which pursue the Breadth part of Brand Experience (see below) through a social business strategy.
Brand Experience Depth and Breadth

Brand Promise is that which satisfies an individuals expectations when delivered. It closes the gap between who and what brands say they are and what and how they delivered its about satisfying the customer experience. We usually think about it as what pops into your head when I say Brand X?. For example, Jetstar = cheap fares. Sticking with airlines, take Porter Airlines from Canada, they say flying refined is their brand promise thats a challenge which theyve largely met although some reviews are

mixed.
http://igo2group.com/blog/how-social-media-enables-brand-resilience/

When I think of Qantas I cant actually think of their Promise but perhaps thats just me. Im aware of some key brand attributes e.g. safety, and Spirit of Australia, which have proven remarkably resilient despite, in my opinion, having no real connection with their extant brand values (not meaning their brand value). Qantas did run a marketing campaign with the theme Qantas makes business travel a breeze. This used to pop into my head those endless times when arriving in Melbourne on the last nightly Qantas flight from Sydney and sitting there cooped up in the cabin waiting for 15 minutes while they tried to find ground staff to come to meet the aircraft to open the front door! Brand Promise

A marketing & advertising-led Promise is only PR until it is operationalised which is the Brand Experience. The Promise creates expectations of future value delivery, whereas the Experience is realised value. Brand Experience, is what some say IS the brand, that is, regardless of the Promise the reality of how the brand is experienced IS the brand. In which case customer experience deserves a lot of attention, and I think a new kind of framework. Its mostly described in operational terms as transactional touchpoints. For example that includes buying an airline ticket online, checking in at the airport, picking up luggage, or getting a refund. Its also becoming more and more challenging with the advent of major outsourcing of many low value add operations

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How social media enables brand resilience - customers & brand promise

across many industries. In fact some companies have re-insourced what they previously outsourced in order to regain control of aspects of the Brand Experience.
Brand Depth

airline versus cheap airline whereas the customer relationship can be greatly enhanced through the Breadth, thus significantly adding to Resilience. Having an investment in Brand Breadth provides a potential platform for not only product and service improvement, value creation, and brand extension, but it is an underlying asset to be used in times of crisis and operational difficulties as well discuss in Parts 3 and 4. Brand Experience Depth and Breadth contributes to both Brand Resilience and Brand Friction. And in fact Depth informs further orthogonal reinforcement of Resilience and Friction via the mechanism of Brand Breadth. In other words, a good or bad customer experience in Depth can be amplified or mitigated by behaviours and actions in Breadth which in turn influences brand loyalty. But heres an important point. Brands that systemically or repeatably fail in the Depth aspect of Brand Experience almost certainly lack the capability to recover those failings through their actions in Brand Breadth. Why? Because the systemic failings are likely a symptom of a lack of staff clarity and training about the brand identity and brand promise, and also of a potential lack of alignment between what management say they want and what they do e.g. focusing on cost efficiency and effectiveness at the expense of brand values on the front line. Illustration: The brand promise of Southwest Airlines is Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit. Every single employee of the company is aligned with this brand promise, and SWA is renown for a staff morale is exceptionally high. As a result they deliver strong Brand Depth and they have a firm basis for a social strategy expanding their Brand Breadth,

Where the Brand Experience fails the Brand Promise, or adversely reflects on the Brand or Brand Promise, we usually say that the organisation lacks Brand Depth. Brand Depth represents the collective operational touch-points of the Experience. For example, we fly on a cut-price cheap airline, we accept the rather chaotic boarding process, we accept the lack of knowledge of the cabin crew because they make up for it with youthful enthusiasm, and we accept the wait for our luggage because we value we are seeking is cheap fares Promise delivered! However, when your wait for your baggage turns into lost baggage, and when you finally find someone to ask and they give you a number to call, and the call centre doesnt really know whats going on and cannot make even vague promises, you begin to hate the fact that you choose price over service. The Promise remains true, but the collateral damage caused by a lack of Brand Depth negatively effects Brand Resilience.
Brand Breadth

http://igo2group.com/blog/how-social-media-enables-brand-resilience/

Brand Breadth is a new idea which encompasses all the non-operational touch-points, and especially social media. This concept of Breadth is crucially important today for brands, because it has a significant impact on Brand Resilience. In fact Brand Breadth, in todays world, will build stronger Resilience than Depth, even though Depth is the core delivery engagement with the customers. This is because the operational experience, the Depth, can be very much commoditised cheap

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and every likelihood of it succeeding. Most other airlines do not have this foundation. The bottom line? Building a social strategy to expand Brand Breadth is no panacea for an organisation which is dysfunctional in delivering Brand Depth. Its commonly observed that even after repeated bad experiences a broken Promise, or lack of Brand Depth that some customers are stickier than others. It can also depend on the industry. This is Brand Friction.

3rd party, and we have no voice and no consent needed, and no additional value accrues to members, and all this while there is dispute about who actually owns those frequent flyer miles. Anyway the point is that we are all very familiar with schemes to lock-in customers loyalty. And the key point is that although companies often have extensive personal data about individuals in these lock-in-schemes they almost universally do little with it except direct mailing, dunning and applying marketing techniques from the Soviet era. In order to execute Brand Breadth, in a social strategy, the customer base beholden to Brand Friction is a very particular asset. It needs to be analysed, segmented, understood and then plans put in place for different scenarios with respect to different forms of communication and relationship building. ONLY in that way will it add constructively to Brand Resilience, rather than in the simple traditional way of GOTCHA so what do we care? Of course locking people in does have advantages it means you can operate the organisation in braindead mode. But eventually, even for the most lockedin customers, that will run our of steam, and it will be almost invisible until it happens and then things can happen quickly. Its a run-away bus. What will help give a clue as to how far locked-in customers and loyal customers can be pushed is Brand Stock.
Brand Stock

http://igo2group.com/blog/how-social-media-enables-brand-resilience/

Brand Friction

Brand Friction is best illustrated by the airline Frequent Flyer programs a marketing masterstroke by American Airlines in 1981, universally copied, to make customers think twice before switching airlines. Loyalty Cards are there for the same purpose, although oddly enough many offer precious little value to the consumer and simply act to collect enormously valuable data for the retailer yet people willingly use them e.g. Woolworths Everyday Rewards. For airlines, the customer contact details harvested through their frequent flyer programs have created multi-billion dollar assets in their own right, which some have sold off to finance their airline operations. Thats also interesting these airlines have taken all our personal information and sold it to a

Brand Stock is simply a reflection of accumulated and reflected goodwill. There are many potential measures or combinations of measures, and with social business intelligence we can add some more perhaps more complete and more timely. Its not just about what your customers think, but about what potential customers think. Reputation could be a component of Brand Stock, as might comments and opinions by 3rd parties with reputation. Its an inexact science but whats important is the trend

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How social media enables brand resilience - customers & brand promise

over time, and Brand Stock guides actions which might impact on Brand Resilience. If youre wondering how this concept of Brand Stock relates to say Interbrands brand value then consider their role essentially the same. The underlying differences is only in the timing they measure the same concept. Interbrands brand value is a lag indicator on a long trailing cycle, and Brand Stock can be used much more regularly and compiled internally to inform operational and organisational decisions. Clearly if a companys Brand Stock is low, then it needs to think carefully about a whole range of potential impacts of changes, strikes, lock-outs, or social media marketing campaigns. For example Apple at this time can afford brand-wise to take many more risks than say Nokia because Apples Brand Stock is sky-high and Nokias is trashed. Qantas had a social media campaign which backfired at the very time that its Brand Stock was being battered due to the worldwide passenger lockout and union lockout. Knowledge of our brand model may have prevented this from happening, or at least highlighted the risk for open consideration.
http://igo2group.com/blog/how-social-media-enables-brand-resilience/

In summary, Brand Resilience is a function of Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock and a social strategy focused on Brand Breadth can play a major role in increasing Resilience. Having explained the brand model, in Part 2 well explain the role of social media, and in Parts 3 and 4 how to use the model in a brand crisis. What is your interpretation of brand promise? What experiences of brand depth succeeding or failing do you have? What aspects of brand resilience might our model have missed? Please comment below. WalterA Follow @adamson http://xeeme.com/walter Tweet to @igo2 PS: So how about brand value, brand values, brand attributes, brand equity, brand valuation? A: Glad you asked! They are all connnected to each other and brand resilience, but not the subject of this post.

Low Brand Stock means that a coordinated multi-functional review and effort is needed, along with Marketing, PR, Advertising and Operational plans, and to determine the role of Brand Breadth in helping raise Brand Stock. Its that role of Brand Breadth, along with others, that well discuss in Part 2.

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Brand Resilience 2 - social strategy and brand breadth

n Part 1 of three four posts on how social strategy enables Brand Resilience we outlined the brand resilience model which included the notion that Brand Experience comprised two components Depth, and Breadth. In this post we illustrate how Brand Breadth can be used to enhance Brand Resilience, including examples of how it could have been used in recent brand dramas. Resilience is the ability of a brand to withstand shocks and to maintain its value and customer loyalty during and after adversity. These days, having a strong social strategy is a key element of the ability to build resilience, whereas in the past it was necessary to rely on mainstream media Marketing and PR. McKinsey said recently, that Push marketing has been subsumed by a complicated twoway relationship that begins well before a product is ever purchased and then continues indefinitely. We add that Brand Experience has been subsumed by a complicated multi-way relationship that begins well before a brand is experiences and then continues indefinitely! This is why Brand Breadth is a necessary new part of the equation. In Parts 3 and 4 well explain how to use the Brand Resilience model in a brand crisis.

rience. The Promise creates expectations of future value delivery, whereas the Experience is realised value. Where the Brand Experience fails the Brand Promise, or adversely reflects on the Brand or Brand Promise, we usually say that the organisation lacks Brand Depth (examples are given in Part 1). Brand Depth represents the collective operational touch-points of the Experience. Brand Breadth is a new idea which embraces all the non-operational touch-points, and especially social media. This concept of Breadth is crucially important today for brands, because it has a significant impact on Brand Resilience.

Definition of Brand Breadth

Brand Depth is transactional. Depth represents the core delivery engagement with the customers, such as booking an airline ticket, travelling, collecting luggage, altering a booking, finding lost luggage etc. Depth is essentially transactional. But the concept of Breadth is focused on structural engagement not transactions. Brand Breadth is structural. It encompasses all the social contact points with customers, and all their social contact points, and the level of engagement think about an engagement score which has been built up with those customers. It embraces the roles of social strategy, social architecture, and social governance, and ultimately social CRM and the socialization of internal systems and processes. In a nutshell Brand Breadth is enabled by the transformation to a social business. A key component of ultimate Brand Breadth, but perhaps an overlooked one, is the ability to commu-

http://igo2group.com/blog/social-strategy-brand-experience-depth-breadth/

Recap the Brand Resilience model

Brand Resilience is a function of Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock. We define Brand Experience as containing two components Depth and Breadth. A marketing & advertising-led Brand Promise is only PR until it is operationalised which is the Brand Expe-

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nicate with customers in the channels and times and formats perhaps what we used to call the protocols which they expect, nominate and are present. After all, for straight old-fashioned marketing we used to ask whether customers had a preference for email, fax or SMS, and in what order. We now need to know that about social. Knowing that, and using it wisely, will enable the ultimate delivery of Breadth.

Resilience and Brand Breadth Example Retaining brand value when the brand promise changes

Some time ago I noticed Jetstar ads started saying Where low prices are just the beginning wait, no! that was Bunnings wasnt it Jetstar said Low fares, good times and a bit of blah about exceptional service etc. Now think that through: 1. Nothing has changed in the operational chain, has it? All thats apparently happened is a brainstorming exercise with our creative friends; 2. The TV ads illustrate Good times as being the good times to be had at the destination, but Jetstar has no control over those; 3. Brand Promise is now mixed, or could we say diluted, or perhaps more charitably enhanced but with nothing but PR and advertising to back it up; 4. The collective operational touch-points of Brand Depth havent changed, in fact theyve probably suffered because Jetstar staff have recently been striking in protest against management demands; 5. So, the Jetstar staff arent having any good times, and in the service business that almost guarantees that the customers are not either.

http://igo2group.com/blog/social-strategy-brand-experience-depth-breadth/

When a brand promise changes, how do you retain the strength of the previous Brand Promise? How do you manage the risk of diluting both the old promise and the new promise and delivering on neither? Think of Jetstar, the low-cost carrier of Qantas. When Qantas started Jetstar its advertising and messaging was all about low cost. No doubt, the costs were much lower than Qantas fares, and Jetstar not only grabbed a good share of that segment but helped expand the segment. The operational customer experience was OK. It was erratic and unpredictable at times, and at all points you were left in no uncertain terms by the staff that you were flying cheaply so get used to it, but the money saved generally made up for the supercilious service. In other words Jetstar delivered on their brand promise.

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Extensions of Brand Promise can place Brand Resilience at risk, and effect Brand Breadth can mitigate that risk.

More Examples in Brief

Here are some general examples of how Brand Breadth can support Brand Resilience: If a brand with a strong national flavor, which it has used in its branding themes, moves manufacturing offshore then existence of social touchpoints, and an aligned social strategy, would help get out the rationale, monitor the reactions, and help to underwrite the brand value; If an organisation was facing a change of majority shareholder and the acquiring group was viewed negatively, hence potentially impacting on Brand Resilience, then an enterprise with a strong Brand Breadth would be able to gauge the resistance, the emotion, the issues, how that was being propagated, who was doing the propagation of positive and negative messages and be able to communicate with all stakeholders including staff to clarify the future prospects and brand position; If an organisation had suffered some shocks in the market e.g. strikes, lockouts, Chapter 11, and IF it had effective Brand Breadth in place, it would be able to reach out to a wide range of opinions, facts, sentiment, customers, partners, influencers etc in order to judge the optimum channels, timing and campaigns it might want to run in support of the brand. Doing this, for example, would avoid the string of Bashtag disasters we have seen recently. Perhaps even Zappos, rightly a poster child of social business, could have done better in using their Brand Breadth to manage their recent hacking incident as opinion among

In fact, the good times may be a delusion. A quick bit of social research shows that over the last 6 months, in News, Blogs and Forums, the negative sentiment around Jetstar is quite strong sitting at 27%. If however, Jetstar had build on the idea of Brand Breadth from day 1, to develop a social strategy, a social architecture, a solid set of relationship-oriented engagements with its passengers and then used that to solicit brand extensions which aligned with the customer experience, then imagine the different outcome which may have been achieved. Perhaps they would not have even chosen the good times theme. Here are some clues: 1. It could have engaged with customers to learn of their perception of what extra attributes or value Jetstar was delivering beyond cheap fares no creatives needed, just facts; 2. It could have engaged with key influencers in the customer base to prototype, test, give feedback and spread the word about any brand extension; and, 3. In fact it could have used the Brand Breadth that it might have nurtured to help mitigate the negative Brand Depth consequences from the staff industrial action.

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some well credentialed folk is mixed about how well it was handled some complimentary although not all the comments, and some less so. Mind you, thats no small task when you have a customer list of 24 million, so some forward planning in crisis management is needed. Having an investment in Brand Breadth provides a potential platform for not only product and service improvement, value creation, and brand extension, it is an underlying asset to be used in times of crisis and operational difficulties as well discuss in Part 3. Brand Experience Depth and Breadth contributes to both Brand Resilience and Brand Friction. And in fact through the actions of Depth it provides a platform for further complementary reinforcement of Resilience and Friction via the influence and outreach of Brand Breadth. Whats your take on the concept of Brand Breadth how useful? What is your most striking example of how Brand Breadth many have helped Brand Resilience? How do you see organisations embracing Brand Breadth what are the key challenges? Please comment below. WalterA Follow @adamson http://xeeme.com/walter Tweet to @igo2

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Why building Brand Breadth important for Crisis Management

n previous posts we introduced and explained the how social strategy enables Brand Resilience and how Resilience incorporated several brand elements including Brand Depth and Brand Breadth and in particular how Brand Breadth can be used to enhance Brand Resilience. The theme of these posts is Brand Resilience, and how that aids during a brand crisis the subject of this third post in the series (the final one is the How To). There are two keys to how Brand Breadth helps in a crisis, the first is in pre-engagement - with customers and beyond in social media. The second is in triaging or segmenting the pre-engaged customer base and and the social media presence and working with those segments pro-actively in different ways, with different strategies, to achieve a common goal of restoration of brand trust. But before we get to those two key activities, its important to understand how social assets and crisis management are linked, and how the risks and exposures in social can be developed as positive assets to be used in the times of a brand crisis.

Well just review what Brand Resilience is, and for the fuller definition take a quick look back at Brand Resilience 2 social strategy and brand breadth.

Recap the Brand Resilience model

Brand Resilience is a function of Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock. We define Brand Experience as containing two components Depth and Breadth. A marketing & advertising-led Brand Promise is only PR until it is operationalised which is the Brand Experience. The Promise creates expectations of future value delivery, whereas the Experience is realised value. Where the Brand Experience fails the Brand Promise, or adversely reflects on the Brand or Brand Promise, we usually say that the organisation lacks Brand Depth (examples are given in Part 1). Brand Depth represents the collective operational touch-points of the Experience. Brand Breadth is a new idea which embraces all the non-operational touch-points, and especially social media and the social presence of a brand. This concept of Breadth is crucially important today for brands, because it has a significant impact on Brand Resilience. One of the pillars of Breadth is social, but it is not about social media marketing, rather its about extending the power of social business, as a business strategy, into brand protection.

http://igo2group.com/blog/why-brand-breadth-crisis-management/

Firstly lets be clear about what we mean by a brand crisis. We dont mean a flood or a earthquake but rather the type of events which led to Qantas being awarded 3 places in the Top Ten Biggest PR Disasters of the Year (in Australia) #1 for the grounding of its world-wide fleet at zero notice, #2 for the Qantas Luxury bashtag debacle, and #5 for the golliwog social media promo. There are a multitude of others and in fact SimplyZesty seems to run a weekly roundup, and the infamous Dominos YouTube event epitomises the potential brand damage. These are events which are initiated in social media by a company, its employees, or the public.

How a crisis plays out in the media

When such a crisis occurs it develops in a predictable way as insightfully researched and laid out by Australian PR consultant and author Jane Jor-

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dan-Meier in her book, The Four Highly Effective Stages of Crisis Management: How to manage the media in the digital age. There are clearly defined, identifiable stages that the media, both old and new, report a crisis: Stage 1, where the spotlight is beaming squarely on the incident the breaking news stage where people want to know more about the event itself; Stage 2, where the beam broadens from the event to the victims and the response how could this have happened, how is the organisation responding, who is responding, who is the perpetrator? As JordanMeier explains it: This stage is key. This is the make it or break it stage, the reputation forming stage, the stage where the rallying on social media sites, both negative and positive, becomes a focal point. The spotlight, with widening and growing intensity, points at the organization and persons who appear to be at the center of the storm. It will roam around and catch whoever will talk about whats just happened. Experts start to appear on CNN, victims start talking in-depth about their experiences, and the organization starts to give its side of the story. Stage 3, is the blame and finger pointing stage, with the key focus being why, and everyone has an opinion. The spotlight has become a floodlight and your crisis is beamed everywhere in every channel by the informed and the uninformed; Stage 4, the spotlight begins to dim as youve reached the fallout / resolution stage. The caveat being that your sin is forever recorded and discoverable you cant take it back and a crisis might flare anew again if you slip up.

Thats the predictable pattern, and the good news is that you can prepare for it. The bad news is that it now happens at lightning speed, which means that you need to prepare ahead and to sow some fertile ground which is one of the key elements in preparation and Brand Breadth. Weve seen that many brand crises are where social media marketing has backfired clearly in the case of social media marketing a Crisis Management review stage can easily be incorporated into the planning stage.

Brand Breadth and social presence

Being advocates of social business as a business strategy were using social presence to mean something in that context, and relatively prosaic. Firstly we mean the assets comprising your visibility, currency, reach and influence in the social media what wed call your social architecture. Add into that activity, relevance, content, people, coordination, consistency and you generate a social presence value, which is a core element of Brand Breadth. In other words you can build a social presence, but to elevate it into social presence value and hence Brand Breadth you have to be able to do something with that social presence relative to your business objectives and relevant business strategy. That means that it is not just engagement per se, for the sake of it. And it also means that the internal processes, people and platforms have to be suitable, synced and aligned in order to make use of the social presence value. The combination of social presence value and the internal social business strategy and processes is the infrastructure of Brand Breadth. Were building on these ideas in order to be able to demonstrate how they are used in a brand crisis so bear with us and check the next post.

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Expanding the assets you bring to bear in a crisis

Traditionally in a brand crisis you have just your internal organisational assets and capabilities to bring to bear. The manner in which you are able to effectively marshal external assets and resources to assist depends on planning, preparation and practice, and relationships and their strength and value are part of that. Today you need to be able to use social media and social business practices as assets and get beyond the fears and doubts, otherwise they will surface as liabilities, particularly in Stage 2 of a crisis. Building Brand Breadth requires planning, preparation and practice across the organisation and in developing the social presence, more specifically the social presence value. Thats because the latter comes down to people to people connections and that is not done overnight, and its not something that you can do without having practiced it in social media. Think of it this way a business has customers, and a crisis potentially impacts on Customer Lifetime Value. Typically a firm with a brand crisis will communicate through the old mainstream media, through emails to customers, and by using social as (just) another channel for the same form of communication, the latter possibly tailored to specific issues raised or posted in social media. If things get particularly grim the business might also email its shareholders a soothing story. Now, in this era of social, customers and shareholders form just two subsets out of a wide spectrum of stakeholders and even pseudo stakeholders the latter being those who hijack any media hyperactivity to promote either the general rage or their own cause (call them professional social media protestors). All these groups need to be dealt with in real-time, transparently and with the knowledge

that whats said to any one group will be spread to all other groups, whereupon any inconsistencies will be amplified yet again. This extended stakeholder community is potentially both an asset and a liability. Having effective Brand Breadth turns it into a positive asset, and minimizes the liability, which is the whole point of this series of posts.

Summary
Regarding your social assets and connections as a positive force in crisis management and planning for them to support that objective is an essential step in moving towards Brand Resilience, which in turn utilizes Brand Breadth (Resilience = Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock, remember). The good news is that if you are on track with a social business strategy then you already have this positive view of social, so your cultural journey is easier. If not, its a little more of a rocky road. In the next, and final post, well explain in precise detail how to build that Brand Resilience, with references back to the stages of a crisis. How have you seen brand crisis play out how consistent with the Four Stage model? How does your organisation plan, build and monitor its total social presence value? Please comment below. WalterA Follow @adamson http://xeeme.com/walter Tweet to @igo2 Heres a quick link to The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management: How to Manage the Media in the Digital Age on Amazon.

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Quick link to Post #1 How social media enables brand resilience Quick link to Post #2 Brand Resilience 2 social strategy and brand breadth

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Brand Breadth, how to build it for crisis and brand management

n the last post we explained how Brand Breadth helps crisis management, and promised the how to. In this post, well explain in precise detail how to build that Brand Resilience, with references back to the stages of a crisis. In previous posts we introduced and explained the how social strategy enables Brand Resilience and how Resilience incorporated several brand elements including Brand Depth and Brand Breadth and in particular how Brand Breadth can be used to enhance Brand Resilience. The theme of these four posts is Brand Resilience, and how that aids during a brand crisis the doing part of which we explain now in this last post in the series. We summarised the last post as follows: regarding your social assets and connections as a positive force in crisis management and planning for them to support that objective is an essential step in moving towards Brand Resilience, which in turn utilizes Brand Breadth (Resilience = Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock).Forthefullerdefinitiontakeaquick look back at Brand Resilience 2 social strategy and brand breadth.

Breadth is social, but it is not about social media marketing, rather its about extending the power of social business. By social presence we mean the assets comprisingyourvisibility,currency,reachandinfluence in the social media what wed call your social architecture. Add into that activity, relevance, content, people, coordination, consistency and you generate a social presence value, which is a core element of Brand Breadth. To elevate social presence into social presence value and hence Brand Breadth you have to be able to do something with that social presence relative to your business objectives and business strategies. The combination of social presence value and the internal social business strategy and processes is the infrastructure of Brand Breadth.

The core tasks pre-engagement and segmentation

Today you need to be able to use social media and social business practices as assets, otherwise they will surface as liabilities, particularly in Stage 2. BuildingBrandBreadthrequiresplanning,preparation and practice across the organisation and in developingthesocialpresence,morespecifically the social presence value. Thats because the latter comes down to people to people connections and that is not done overnight, and its not something that you can do without having practiced it in social media. There are two keys to how Brand Breadth helps in acrisis,thefirstisinpre-engagement with customers and beyond in social media. The second is in triaging or segmenting the pre-engaged customer base and and the social media presence and wor-

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Recap Brand Breadth and Social Presence

Brand Resilience is a function of Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock. We define Brand Experience as containing two components Depth and Breadth. Brand Breadth is an idea which embraces all the non-operational touch-points, and especially social media and the social presence of a brand. This concept of Breadth is crucially importanttodayforbrands,becauseithasasignificant impact on Brand Resilience. One of the pillars of

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Brand Breadth, how to build it for crisis and brand management

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king with those segments pro-actively in different ways, with different business strategies, to achieve a common goal of restoration of brand trust.

How can Brand Breadth helps and how you build it

TouseBrandBreadthinacrisisyouhavetofirst have it! If you dont have it then you cannot use it. Here are the core steps of how to built it: Hygiene Step #1 You know all the basic social touch points of your customers. Youre collecting this right, just like you collect their emails and phone numbers? Hygiene Step #2 You understand which of your customers are Social VIPs for the sakeofthishygienestepyoucandefinethat simply, as you wish. Hygiene Step #3 You are able to coordinate and integrate social interactions with your customers with your overall objectives and other customer engagement objectives. You do have social engagement with your customers, right? Hygiene Step #4 You have a social architecture which is aligned with your social strategy which in turn aligned with business strategy. You do know where you are present in social, and why, and who is interacting in those places and how, and how well they are performing in terms of engagement and communication with all other relevant parts of the business? Hygiene Step #5 You know how the whole digital online world perceives you at any point in time and you integrate this into your business decisions and communications actions. You do monitor, analyse and measure sentiment, brand mentions, competitor activity and relevant risk across social media?

If you have all the above in place then you have the social business process and communications systems linked with business objectives and social presence giving you a basis for building Brand Breadth. You can next ensure that you have some of the basic things in place, those that go beyond the elementary listed as hygiene above meaning that if you dont have the hygiene steps then you best go back and set them up. There are no shortcuts to effective Brand Breadth. Here are the next set of foundation steps: Basic Step #1 You have triaged, segmented, sliced & diced, your customer base, into relevant whatever segments marketing, behavioural, life-stage, next event, CLV, implied NPS, at risk, price sensitive, vanity, loyaltyetc.Youdohaveaqualitysegmentation of your customer base? Basic Step #2 You know the social presence of your customers and their social presence value (as compared to their basic social touch points in Hygiene Step #1). You are measuring the authoritative bloggers, those runninginfluentialforums,andthosewith massive twitter reach? Basic Step #3 You know, from all corners of your social presence, those within it which haveinfluence,authority,reachandstanding and who are not current customers. They are not current customers but you know what they do, and have engaged with them in a way, and because, it is relevant to your business objectives and brand management strategy. Basic Step #4 You know how to use all of the above in a cross-functional cross-business-unit coordinated way accurately, completely and aligned with current business initiatives. You understand that this is not about social media marketing?

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Brand Breadth, how to build it for crisis and brand management

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With those steps in place you have a nice foundation of Brand Breadth, which you now need to activate and shore up. Activation Step #1 You are listening, networking, contributing, participating in the social realms of your customers in a style and manner which adds value accordingtotheiridentifiedsegmentedcustomers needs (review Basic Step #1). That is, you are pre-engaged; which is one of the key elements of preparation youve made it! Activation Step #2 You are doing the same as above across your entire non-customer social presence, which means having relevant coordinated content and real people each of whom has their own real social media presence another key component of preparation. Activation Step #3 You understand not only the social presence value of each of your key customers and key social contacts (as per Basic Steps #2 & #3) but also how that maps into business strategies, plans and potential actions, for example, how this maps on to the scenario of a brand crisis? Do you see where we are heading? Activation Step #4 You have content ready, social business training done, protection plans in place, risk management understood, crisis management trained for, and communication plans for all stakeholder and social media groups in place, operating, and where appropriate rehearsed. Congratulations you have a new asset Brand Breadth, which will you will be able to effectively deploy to help mitigate the damage from a brand crisis.

Do you really need Brand Breadth?

Well it depends on how much you need to transform into a social business, and how much social media could potentially damageyourbrandandequity value through an unforeseen crisis. Without Brand Breadth, its hard to manage the risk, with it, there is a important part it plays in your risk management processes. But of course, its value also extends far beyond risk management and a brand crisis, and thatswherethebusinessstrategyquestioncomes in of how much you need to be a social business in order to succeed in the future. To achieve Brand Breadth appears to be a massive amount of work, and it is at face value. You have to have clear business objectives, and the brand elements form just one business strategy of those serving those objectives. The strategy of transforming to a social business is also delivering to those business objectives, and not an objective in its own right. However it you transform to a social business then the related additional work to develop effective Brand Breadth and Brand Resilience is a marginal but non-trivial addition to your people, processes and platforms - thats the key point. Brand Breadth outside the context of a social business transformation is meaningless, just as social business outside of clear business objectives is meaningless.

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Example of using Brand Breadth

How would having an effective Brand Breadth work in practice in a brand crisis? Lets think of a generic Qantas brand crisis, along the lines of any of those that they had last year. What happened in those events was that Qantas went into crisis management mode as those crises evolved exactly along thelinesoftheFourStages.Theyhadafirehose of activity to deal with on Twitter and then had to deal with Facebook and all that overwhelmed their

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Brand Breadth, how to build it for crisis and brand management

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small social media team, who at face value seemed to be the only people handing the social presence, the social storm. Each of those PR disasters was pre-planned they were premeditated actions with unexpected consequences.Theonebigeventthatwasntpre-planned was an engine exploding on an A380 over Indonesia and the aircraft having to return to Singapore enduring dire systems problems, but landing safely. Qantasranthateventupthesocialmediaflagpole and saluted it as a great success, an opinion not universally shared. While the planned events offer the chance of using Brand Breadth for prior analysis and communications planning, the unplanned events also totally benefit from it by way of the role that Brand Breadth plays in an organisation and the preparation and practice which is a routine occurrence. This how a planned event, e.g. a social media marketing campaign, would utilize Brand Breadth as part of risk management and mitigation:
http://igo2group.com/blog/how-brand-breadth-crisis-management/

Pre-Event Step #1 Understand the mood and sentiment of your customers and non-customers in social throughout your social presence. If you have a past history of behaving badly and you are the likely contender for the perpetrator title in the current crisis (Stage 3), you need to know it, and to think super carefully about your planned event and any potential adverse reactions this idea is encapsulated in our

Brand Resilience formula = Brand Promise + Brand Experience (Depth & Breadth) + Brand Friction + Brand Stock. The fabulous thing about social media is that you can get this Brand Stock reading from your social presence network loud and clear. Pre-Event Step #2 Understand across your entire customer and non-customer social presence which people are likely to be strong advocates, advocates, neutral, detractors, and strong detractors. In particular understand this for each segment of your segmented customer base now you are getting into the realms of big data and more importantly the meaningful analysis of big data. Pre-Event Step #3 Select or prepare content for each of the groups above, and for each of the segments in your segmented customer base, and select and train the people who will be dealing with those different groups in social according to the findings of steps #1 & 2 above. You have to be prepared for the mood of the reaction according to your analysis of your Brand Stock. Pre-Event Step #4 Test market the planned actions with different groups in social, through the selected people, and assess feedback. Forget focus groups, thats looking backwards. Pre-Event Step #5 Map the different reaction scenarios to the resources needed to engage through your current social presencewiththevariousidentifiedsegments, and to cope with any extra levels of engagement which might erupt. Pre-Event Step #6 Review and make sure that your cross-functional and cross-business unit coordination, escalation, communication and decision-making processes are in place and work.

Then push the button!

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In the event of an unforeseen brand crisis you can now activate the operational plan built upon your established Brand Breadth: Operational Action #1 Listen, analyse, understandandreflectonthesocialfeedback. Operational Action #2 Categorise the feedback in to your customer segmentation and social analysis of them and your noncustomers.Arethereanynewinfluencers and authorities who are participating, and why, and what are they saying and what are their possible objectives? Operational Action #3 This is the core of the value of Brand Breadth in this crisis utilisethespecificcommunicationsandengagement plans (a la Pre-Event Step #3) for each of the customer segment groups and the breakdown of the non-customer social presence, and in particular focus additional resourcesonthosewhoyouhaveidentified as potential advocates. Additional resourceswillberequiredforthislattergroup as the approaches have to be by people and personal that takes time and effort and people! Operational Action #4 Once the crisis hits itisgoingtomoveveryquicklyintoStage 2, and this includes the reputation repair process. This needs careful attention, and monitoring the role of listening out for, listening to, and nurturing those in your customer base and those in your social presence withauthority,influence,andreachbecomes critical. If you have effective Brand Breadth you will be able to focus resources on those key groups, and be less distracted by other groups, and stand the maximum chance of managing any brand damage.

effective social presence, and you need to be organisationally capable of utilising that information effectively, selectively and personally when a crisis hits. The value of that extended resource in defending and protecting your brand is what will reduce the risk of brand damage and hence increase its resilience, along with the other factors of Resilience Promise, Breadth, Friction and Stock. What might you do differently in harnessing social assets in a brand crisis? How much value does the concept of Brand Breadth add to your approach to managing brand value as a business strategy? Please comment below. WalterA Follow @adamson http://xeeme.com/walter Tweet to @igo2 Heres a quicklink to The Four Stages of Highly Effective Crisis Management: How to Manage the Media in the Digital Age on Amazon. Quick link to Post #1 How social media enables brand resilience Quick link to Post #2 Brand Resilience 2 social strategy and brand breadth Quick link to Post #3 Why building Brand Breadth is important for Crisis Management Here is the COMPLETE SET of this post and the three previous posts on Scribd as a PDF.

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Summary
The nub of a Brand Breadth plan for a brand crisis is this you need know your customers social world, and that of the people which you reach through your

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