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David Tinsley reports: <<I have been given the task of trying to
convince a group of product managers (who each serve a different
market) that adherence to a corporate marketing "look and feel" is a
good idea.>>
One word... or perhaps two: "cross-selling" and "branding". You might
remind them that while it's all very well to pimp their own products,
they'll do better as a whole if they make the overall company
healthier, and one way to do that is to establish a sense of brand. If
all the company products have a similar public perception, at least in
the ways that establish brand identity, and are quality products,
customers learn to purchase other products from the same company.
Of course, if your managers don't understand either term, you may be in
some difficulty here... From what you say below, it sounds like your
company doesn't have a Marketing manager. Though many of us tend to
look at this as a utopian situation <g>, it can actually create some
significant problems. A _good_ marketing manager can add significant
value to your company and make everyone's life easier. A bad one? Well,
at least you can write to Scott Adams and ensure a long series of
marketing jokes in Dilbert.
<<Currently each product manager goes their own sweet way with the
result that there is very little consistency between product lines.>>
At least superficially, that's not inevitably a bad thing; Nike shoes
and Nike eyeglass frames don't have an awful lot in common other than
the infamous swash logo. Different products, and particular those with
largely different markets, do require different strategies. The problem
comes at a deeper level, when you lose opportunities to establish and
strengthen a brand and to use that brand to cross-sell.
<<The latest gem is that something as fundamental as our website URL
has been changed by one product line!>>
Again, so long as you don't lose some of your visual identity and don't
lose ties to the main Web sites, this isn't a problem. Consider, for
example, the "Campaign for Real Beauty" site
(http://campaignforrealbeauty.ca/): there's no obvious tie to the Dove
family of products until the page actually loads and you see the
unmistakable Dove logo.
Then there are movie Web sites, most of which are now named after the
movie rather than the studio, and the same is true for theatre. Hunt
down just about any current movie online and you'll find it has its own
Web site. But somewhere on that site, and certainly in the movie
trailer (usually the first thing you see), you'll clearly see who
produced the film or show.
The similarity in each case? The site name and the product may be very
different from the producer's name, but there's always a clear
presentation of the corporate brand, not to mention a link to the main
company's Web site and thence to other products.
<<Of course, each product manager can see nothing wrong with the way
they are doing things and tell me "It works for my market".>>
It's tremendously difficult to change something that is working well.
The trick here is to find out whether it _really is_ working as well as
the managers think. One way to find out might be to talk to the Sales
department to find out whether they have statistics on cross-selling
and information on how well clients for one product know about other
products ("the brand"). If Sales is having difficulty in these areas,
they could become an unstoppable ally. After all, love sales staff or
hate them, they're the ones who pay your salary.
<<I have no experience in marketing, other than knowing that we need a
consistent approach to layout and style so any help or advice would be
most welcome.>>
Who are your company's main competitors--and most particularly the ones
who are eating your customers for breakfast? Demonstrating brand
consistency and cross-selling by those competitors is a great way to
make a point. You can see this at any computer or software Web site.
<<I am also thinking that I will present the idea of a marketing
literature style guide, similar to the TechComm style guide we have for
manuals. Any thoughts on that idea?>>
Like any style guide, it only works if someone has authority to enforce
it (usually the Marketing manager) and even then, you'll have an easier
time if your colleagues buy into the idea. To get buy-in, you need to
make a compelling case for the advantages (see above for some
thoughts), but you also need to make the style guide so easy to use
that it's actually harder for them to develop their own solutions than
it is to simply adopt yours. For some insights:
http://www.geoff-hart.com/resources/2000/dynamicstyle.htm
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