1. Branding and Marketing IT:
Take control of your brand: If you don’t, others will!
Joel A Manfredo
Managing Director, CIO Practice
Acies Consulting Corp.
6-Nov-2012

2. AGENDA
Background and IT’s risk of irrelevance
Brand Background
•What is a brand?
•The world’s most powerful brands
IT
•Brand blunders
•Why branding is important
What to do?
•Where do you start?
•Generic approach – Sandra Selllani
•IT specific approach – Gartner strategies in different markets
Example
•County of Orange
Conclusions and
Questions & Answers

3. Background…
The Story: Overview
Environment, Goals and Results: How:
Organization: Combination:
1. A culture built on Heroics 1. Leadership
2. Bad relationship w/ vendor (expiring K) 2. Soft skills introduction
3. Siloed organization 3. Sustained ―drumbeat‖
3. Assigning blame 4. The persuader
4. Resistance to change 5. ITSM principles
5. No priorities
Method:
Goals: 1. Plan
2. Implement
1. GET BETTER 3. Absorb
2. GET TRANSPARENT 4. Measure
3. GET CUSTOMERS
Results:
1. Moved to top 10% against benchmark
2. Reduced Budget 27%
3. Increased customer satisfaction 16%
4. Reduced SLA exceptions by 77%
5. Reduced incidents by 38%
“Be transparent, or be gone”
6. Improved incident resolution from 5 days
to 2 days

4. Background…
The Story: Actions

5. Background…
The Story: Actions

7. Risk of Irrelevance
Gartner
Source: “Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond”, Meehan & McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

8. Risk of Irrelevance
Look at the press…
Source: 37 Signals, Feb., 2011
Source: ComputerWeekly.com, August 2012

9. Risk of Irrelevance – Frightening Dichotomy
Uh oh… Is this where we’re headed?
External forces that can impact organizations
Necessary evil
Necessary
Unnecessary?
Sources: ―The Great IT Freezeout: Is IT Becoming Irrelevant? ‖, Unisys Disruptive IT Trends, July, 2011
―Leading Through Connections, Insights from the CEO Study‖, IBM Institute for Vusiness Value, May 2012

10. Risk of Irrelevance
Why are we failing?
Great brands communicate a
But, we do good stuff! consistent message over and
over and over again
Do we run like a business
Is there Marketing? Sales? Finance?
Peter Drucker: “Because its purpose is to create a customer, the business has
two – and only two - functions: marketing and innovation. Marketing and
innovation create value, the rest are all costs.”
What do we communicate to the business?
The network is currently experiencing an outage…

11. Risk of Irrelevance
Framing the Marketing and Communication Problem
Great brands communicate a
consistent message over and
over and over again
Source: ―Marketing IT: Avoiding the Road to Disenfranchisement and Disempowerment ‖, Gartner, April 2012

12. What is a Brand?
A brand is:
“the gut feeling that people have about your product or service” Marty Neumeier
The Brand Gap
“the ability to create in the mind of the prospect the perception
that there is no other product quite like yours’ Al and Laura Ries
“the internalized sum of all impressions… resulting in a Duane Knapp
distinctive position in the customer’s minds eye” The Brand Mindset
“proprietary visual, emotional, rational and cultural image that
you associate with a product or service” Charles Pettis
“a promise comprising both a commitment that sets
expectations… and a definition of the provider’s expected Gartner
capabilities”… “in short, it’s what users say about you.”
“Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies Wikipedia
one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other
sellers.“
“Brand is strategy conveyed to your target audience” Sandra Sellani

13. the World’s top Brands of 2012
Source: brandirectory.com Source: Forbes

14. Brand Blunders: please don’t self - inflict
You’ve got to be kidding  Three examples
Legal Practice: Leadership Integrity Excellence LIE
Transportation: South Lake Union Trolley
Utilities: Comprehensive Commercial Construction Program
―From each according to his ability,
to each according to his need‖
CCCP - Союз Советских Социалистических Республик,
meaning the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or USSR in English

15. Brand Blunders: please don’t self - inflict
You’ve got to be kidding  Learn from the big boys?
GM: Another death related bad translation took GM to a new low. GM translated their advertising campaign‘s
tag line ‗Body by Fisher‘ as ‗Corpse by Fisher‘ in Belgium.
Schweppes: A translation for Italy leads Schweppes Tonic Water to be translated as ‗Toilet Water‘.
Nestle: In central Africa, people are used to labels of packaged foods picturing the inside contents. Nestle
caused an uproar when they released their Nestle baby milk with a smiling caucasan baby on the front.
KFC: KFC‘s famous ‗Finger licking good‘ slogan translated as ‗eat your fingers off‘ in China.
Colgate: Market research disregard: Colgate releases a toothpaste in France called Cue which was similar
to the name of a popular porn magazine.

16. Why is branding important?
Four simple reasons:
1. Branding can deliver the message clearly
2. Branding can create business credibility
3. Branding can create a connection between the product and the clientele
4. Branding helps motivate the buyer
1911 Morton starts adding magnesium carbonate
(an anti-caking agent) to salt, creating a table salt
that flows freely, even in humid weather. This
additive has since been changed to calcium
silicate.

17. Where do you start?
Three questions:
1. Who are you?
2. Who do you need to be?
3. Who do you want to be?
“Be transparent, or be gone”

18. Where do you start?
Who are you?
1. Who are you? – four questions
2. What are your brand elements?
3. VRIO Analysis
Survey: Southwest Airlines is USA's 'most desired' brand
Feb. 22, 2012

19. Where do you start?
Who are you? – Brand Archetypes
ARCHETYPE EXAMPLE
Dove soap, Ben & Jerry‘s ice cream
Indiana Jones, Jeep, Marlboro
BBC, CNN, Gallup, PBS
Nike, Superman
Harley-Davidson, Apple also called ―Outlaw‖
Disney, Dreamscape Multimedia, Oil of Olay
Home Depot, Wendy‘s
Victoria‘s Secret, Lady Godiva
Motley Fool, Muppets
Mother Teresa, Johnson‘s Baby Shampoo
Lego, Sony, Crayola
IBM, Microsoft

20. Where do you start?
Who are you? – Brand Archetypes
Motto: The truth will set you free.
Driving desire: to find truth
Goal: to use intelligence and analysis to understand the world
Biggest fear: being duped, misled—or ignorance.
Strategy: seeking out information and knowledge; self-reflection and
understanding thought processes
Weakness: can study details forever and never act
Talent: wisdom, intelligence
Also known as: expert, scholar, detective, advisor, thinker, philosopher,
academic, researcher, thinker, planner, professional, mentor, teacher,
contemplative, guru
Sage archetypes in the wild:
•provide expertise or information to customers
•encourage customers to think
•based on new scientific findings or esoteric knowledge
•supported by research-based facts
•differentiate from others whose quality or performance is suspect
Archetype examples: BBC, CNN, Gallup, PBS

21. Where do you start?
Who are you?
1. Who are you? – four questions
“Southwest is a customer service organization that just
happens to fly airplanes” – Colleen Barrett, President

22. Where do you start?
Who are you?
2. What are your brand elements?

23. Where do you start?
Who are you?
3. VRIO analysis - it’s about THEM (customers)
Piano Works example:
- Valuable
- Rare
- Costly to Imitate
- Organizational Leverage –
every part of the organization
communicates the brand

24. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact
Building Brand Impact
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

25. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact
Building Brand Impact SEE
Shine in captive IT markets
Captive markets comprise the traditional back-office IT services and support: HR, finance and operations (such as
supply chain). Strong IT brands shine in the back office, going beyond merely delivering on expectations.
Expand into adjacent internal IT markets
The key to enabling the business to engage adjacent markets is IT‘s ability to move its own capabilities
from back-office support to those that will increase front-office digitization. This requires expanding IT‘s
brand as a shining back-office innovator such that it also becomes a credible provider of market-facing
business solutions.
Externalize IT’s brand impact
IT branding is not solely internal; though IT‘s external brand impact is often the sum of its
internal efforts in the front office, leading CIOs have a plan for external brand impact. In other
words, they can answer the question, How does our IT brand help the enterprise keep its
promise?
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

26. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact
Building Brand Impact
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

27. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact Key Strategy Mechanisms in captive IT Markets
Building Brand Impact –
Branding strategy at this stage demands excellence in products, user satisfaction and
efficiency; mechanisms:
• Product-focused branding strategy differentiates IT based on the products it
delivers to internal customers, as when IT acts as a broker for third party providers
• Service-focused branding strategy differentiates IT based on the quality of service
interactions
• Intimacy-focused branding strategy resembles one that is service focused, but it
concentrates on knowing the end user, anticipating user needs and behaving more
like a business consultancy.
CIOs must select one branding strategy to excel at while maintaining a high level of
competency in the other two.
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

28. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact Key Strategy Mechanisms in adjacent internal IT Markets
Building Brand Impact –
Three adjacent market strategy mechanisms:
• Examine your stakeholder base to determine where your power base lies, e.g.,
third-person spokesperson
• Look for holes in business strategy where a CIO can make an impact by lowering
business risk and organizational resistance
• Understand new channel opportunities for the business
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

29. Gartner Approach
Building ITIT Brand Impact Key Strategy Mechanisms externalizing IT‘s brand
Building Brand Impact –
Answers the question: How does our IT brand help the enterprise keep its promise?
Map your past impact on the external enterprise brand:
Source: ―Building the IT Brand: Impacting the Front Office and Beyond‖, Meehan &
McMullen, Gartner Executive Programs, October 2011

30. Gartner Approach
Communication: (this is a quiz )
Building IT Brand Impact
Source: ―Redefining ―Marketing IT‖ From Telling to Engagement‖, May 2011

31. Gartner Approach
Communication: Old school, New school
Building IT Brand Impact
Source: ―Redefining ―Marketing IT‖ From Telling to Engagement‖, May 2011

32. Example
County of Orange – Marketing Brochure
Logo
Tag line

33. Example
County of Orange - Marketing Brochure

34. Example
County of Orange – Marketing Brochure

35. Example
County of Orange – other materials… The Brand is Always There
PowerPoint Presentations Service Catalog

36. Conclusions
Where do we go from here?
• IT is at risk of irrelevance
• Branding IT can help
• What should I do?
• Start with the generic approach – it doesn’t take long or cost much
• Move to the Gartner framework for captive IT markets
• Leverage strengths and bolster weaknesses
• Become transparent, a necessity
• COMMUNICATE especially to the business folks
• Establish a “drumbeat” – always on message from the whole IT
organization
• Look into other branding resources such as the 12 archetypes
• Have fun! 

37. Questions?
Joel A Manfredo
joel.manfredo@aciesconsulting.com