branding – Page 27 – Johnny Lyle's new brand thinking

The Sheriff of Nottingham in USA – Part Seventeen – Off duty in New York

Our last day in New York and its our first free time since we arrived eight days ago and we’re flying through the night home tonight, giving back our five hour time difference in one six hour flying stroke. It’s a typical British Autumnal morning and I feel very much the Englishman in New York. Its dauntingly big and there’s too much to learn from in too short a time.

I wander up to the Wholefoods Market on the corner to buy my breakfast as I am up early and debating whether to take off on my own for the day or stick with the group. Wholefoods are the people that Tesco said they were taking on with their Fresh & Easy concept that they thought would capture the hearts and wallets of New Yorkers, but has so far, pretty much underwhelmed them.

Wholefoods Market - A beautiful store for New Yorkers

Well, I have to report that having not seen the Kensington branch of Wholefoods, the one I saw on Second Avenue in New York was stunning. It looked welcoming, yet urban, the food looked beautiful and the staff members I spoke to were educated and interested, with one of the team on the till having spent time in the London Kensington store, helping with staff training. Can you imagine Tesco sending there checkout staff from Victoria centre being sent across to New York to show the Fresh & Easy staff how to be surly and cause unnecessary queues to wind people up in a hurry. Maybe they could just show them how they can tell customers that they can only use this queue if they’re buying Lottery, despite no-one else in the queue and people stacking the full length of the store at the self service tills?

Okay, that’s me being cynical and comparing the natural service culture we saw everywhere in the US. In the UK, we assume that it is insincere and below us to be polite, helpful and interested. We seem far more comfortable in being snotty or trying to catch our customers out than helping them enjoy their visit. This is a training issue we discussed an awful lot whilst we were away and whilst we don’t want ‘have a nice day’ all over the place, we do want to be able to deliver service staff who do just that – serve. It sounds simple, and it is in the US, but with a few notable exceptions, we make it look very difficult in the UK.

So after my early morning breakfast of orange juice and a parmesan breadstick (pretty healthy huh?), sitting in the park, next to the hotel, I watched the New York morning unfold before me.

There’s lots of honking, despite the signs threatening a $350 fine for anyone who does it and the driving is aggressive, the pace is hectic. It almost seems the opposite of how people behave when they get to work, or maybe those in cars are a different breed who never work in service positions? It’s a magical place to sit and absorb the atmosphere. I’m surrounded by New York Sparrows, (or their close relative, ‘cos I ain’t no ornothologist) and I share my bread with them and seem popular amongst them.

Back at the hotel, the others are gathering for the day and I decide to stick with the Sheriff and Adela as they are planning to go to Liberty Island. I know this is probably the cliché of all clichés, but I’ve never been and I wanted to take in another audio tour and see how the trip across compares to my favourite river trip – The Ferry across the Mersey.

The first stop is the Metro station at Lafayette and Broadway which we follow down to Bowling Green. This leads us onto Battery Park and our first view of the Statue of Liberty across the water. As we walk across the park, there is a huge damaged sphere in front of us.

The Sphere is another 9/11 reminder and this damaged relic is from the Plaza of the Word Trade Cetre

At first the thought was that it had been vandalised, but when you read the sign in front of it, you begin to understand.

I like the wording of this plaque in front of the damaged Sphere in Battery Park

Again, the feelings of anger rise up at how this could have happened, but I love the Sphere’s symbolism. Its an even more powerful reminder than the slightly cold but informative hoardings at Ground Zero and its simplicity paints a far starker image in your mind than a display of what’s coming next could portray.

The boat trip with a full audio tour of Liberty Island and Ellis Island is $20 (about £12) which seems like good value. You then travel through a full airport security style search and scan, with everything X rayed and shoes, phone, cameras, belts ad even notebooks in the trays. Its something that is hard to begrudge as the symbolism of peace and liberty that the statue stands for is one that must be under constant terrorist threat.

The short boat ride across only stood out for the fact that it was a great place to photograph armpits and other people’s hands. It was like a class full of the worlds most enthusiastic school children with every hand up for most of the trip.

The Statue of Liberty and lots of hands

The silly thing about these shots, was that five minutes later when you landed, it was easy to get a much better image without the hands in the way and without the crowds around you.

We had a cup of coffee to see off the heavy rain and marvelled again at what exceptionally low prices they charge in these nationally controlled attractions. $1.50 (£0.89) for an almost nuclear strength 3/4 pint of coffee wouldn’t be seen at anything but the lowest of cafes in the UK, let alone with a captive audience on a cold wet island full of tourists.

The audio tour used the exact same digital system as the one at Alcatraz, but was far more dull. The single voice talking you through the history was informative at best, but turgid, if I’m honest. By the time we’d walked half way around the island, it was off and we were reading the signage, which had all the information anyway. But the view close up is perfect.

The Statue of Liberty - in all its green glory

We had opted not to take the trip up the monument, which was good as the queue was huge and there was yet another scanning scrutiny. One of the previous blog commenters, Christine from Boston had been helpful in her recommendations and warned us that this was simply not worth the money or the queue, so we gladly took her advice.

So some statto facts about the statue itself. Its 305ft tall from the ground to the top of the flame and was completed in 1886 as a gift from the People of France. It was the tallest structure in the Eastern US when it was built as most of Lower Manhattan was only five stories until well into the 1920’s. She has a 35ft wide waist (like many other people in the US) and a 42ft right arm. Even her fingernail is the size of my forearm and she sees 3 million visitors per year to her very own island.

The ferry took us back via Ellis Island for a further (dull) audio tour and then back across to Battery Park.

Time was pressing on and we were leaving in a few hours, so we opted to walk back to the hotel along Broadway to take in some more of the atmosphere. A good three miles or so along a dead straight road, took in Wall Street. The signage is as we have all seen it, but the state of the roads and paths were awful. The police presence was massive and the crowds even more massive.

The very scruffy pedestrian entrance to Wall Street with Seaport in the far distance

After collecting a late lunch in an immaculately clean and friendly salad bar, where you can choose what you want and pay by weight, we sat in one of the City parks and watched a group playing chess with a form of winner stays on. Quite a crowd gathered and you got the feeling that this was a regular haunt for city types and students alike. Black squirrels ran around us picking up scraps and the feeling was far more relaxed than any other place in New York I had seen.

The final walk took in the Bell of Hope and St Pauls Chapel, back at Ground Zero. The Bell was a gift from the Mayor of London to the people of New York and was created by the Whitechapel Foundry, who also cast Big Ben and the bell on Liberty Island. It is rung each 9/11 anniversary and was also rung after the Madrid bombings in 2004 and on July 7th 2005 after the Subway and bus bombings. It’s a very sombre reminder.

The Bell of Hope - A gift from the Uk, in memory of 9/11

The chapel itself is where the firemen gathered and rested during the recovery mission after 9/11 itself. To most, it is the spiritual home of those who lost their lives.

The table of remembrance inside st Pauls Chapel

It seems like a suitable place to sign off, on what was an incredible trip, full of learnings, stark reminders and world class attractions.

I honestly never thought that the US, would be my thing. I thought it would be too brash. Its big, yes, but it’s so full of genuine people who love our history, curtsey to our Sheriff and respect our country, its impossible to not end up feeling like you’re part of it.

In the words of King Arnie of California. I’ll be back.

branding, Robin Hood

Sheriff of Nottingham London to Los Angeles Part two

Checking in at Heathrow with a Sheriff of Nottingham was always going to be interesting, but it was made more so by the reaction of the press at home and perhaps more importantly, the reaction of the readers of the local press, expressed through their comments. Some of these have been less than favourable, some have been silly and some have been positive, but for me, if Nottingham is to become a world class city, with a world class Robin Hood offer, we have to go and learn from the best in the world. Being insular and assuming we can do it all ourselves is a sure fire way to achieve exceptional mediocrity. Look at Sheffield and their Centre for Popular Music and look at what we mustn’t do. This cost taxpayers a small fortune and closed after six appalling months to become a publicly funded nightclub.

I don’t really intend to address those criticisms here, because I have paid for this trip myself through Purple Circle, in order to completely understand the market for visitor attractions across the US. As a business, Purple Circle already work for BeWILDerwood (rated by its own industry body the Themed Entertainment Association) TEA as a world class attraction and recent winner of a DBA Design Effectiveness award for ourselves) and Go Ape, who have won hundreds of business awards themselves.

If we’re going to advise them how to behave in a branding and innovations sense, how better to do it than to look to the best there is to offer in the worlds biggest market for visitor attractions? So I’m here under my own steam and fully intend to fill my days and nights with opportunities to see everything that the US has to throw at us. I have specific issues I need to address and questions I want answering by the best in the business.

But back to Virgin Atlantic. I’m not allowed to show you pictures of the Sheriff checking in at Heathrow, as we’re not allowed to take pictures at check in, so here’s one of him boarding the plane and turning right towards economy.

The Sheriff of Nottingham and his Lady boarding the flight to LA

But it was smooth and efficient and remarkably short of drama. The first hint of a problem was when I boarded the plane and was given the wrong end of a boarding pass with which to board.

On normal plane with a normal company, this could be a problem, but not so Virgin. Rather than cause any fuss or bother, they had the brilliant solution of sitting me at the bar in the Upper Class section until they could sort it out. excellent plan. I spent the next ten minutes with my feet up and a glass of chilled Champagne. Oh to have problems dealt with like this every day.

Its quite a nice touch being given a glass of Champagne whilst the staff rush off and sort a little probem

The rest of the flight was completely uneventful other than to say that Richard had obviously listened to the voice of the passenger who wrote the world’s best complaint letter as the food en-route was gorgeous.

Our Cabin Crew Becky was full of personality and couldn’t have done more to make her passengers feel at home. I made a comment to her about how lovely the Gü pudding was and a few minutes later she turned up and sneaked another into my hand. This may be in the manual or it may not, but it certainly made me feel like I was a valued customer. This way of working simply has to be completely natural and far and away above mere training. You can teach someone to do a job, but I don’t think you can ever teach someone to smile and enjoy themselves whilst they’re working. This natural friendly openness is one of the reasons, that for me, Virgin has remained a remarkable Lovemark brand.

For the cabin crew, the LA flight must be quite a nice one as they get two night layover in the City of Angels before they have to fly home again.. I asked Becky what they did with their time and it seems like they swim, shop and party. Maybe that’s why Virgin have such happy staff, they have actually planned it so their staff have a life outside of work.

Anyway, LA tonight, no visits other than to a hotel and bed, so I’ll add more tomorrow. Night night.

brand values, branding

The death of the Spanish brand

Spain has always been one of those places that people loved to hate. Torremolinos and Benidorm have been the butt of jokes, sitcoms and the building of concrete jungles since the early 1960’s when widespread air travel bought the sun, sea, sand and Sangria within reach of the masses.

The best ever Icon that completely represents all of Spain's brand values

But when Spain started using the Joan Miró ‘logo’ to represent the Spanish brand, the whole offer started to make more sense. It had in effect, displayed its brand values in one beautifully simple representation to show that it was all about fun, easy living and a lovely relaxed style. For me, it is one of the most beautifully timeless ‘icons’ I have ever seen.

But then it all started to go wrong when they started trying to sneak in a few extra brand values, namely profit and perhaps even profiteering.

One of the attractions for us Brits of a Spanish holiday was always that it was incredibly cheap when we got there. Cheap beer, freshly cooked fish on the beach and change out of £20 for a family of four. The introduction of the Euro saw the first real move away from this with money pouring in from the rest of the Euro Zone and a move towards comparative wealth in the most popular destinations.

But then it all went wrong.

People rushed to buy the cheap apartments, being promised and initially seeing, spectacular growth in value, fuelled by the cheap flights of the low cost carriers. But as we’ve all worked out, there’s no such thing as a free flight and there’s certainly no such thing as a free lunch.

Sun, Sea, Sand and a pretty poor branded investment with a superb view over the motorway

Profiteering was rife. Land that was being bought for comparative buttons, was being converted to thousands upon thousands of Penthouse apartments, and in an exact mirror of the buy-to-let crash in the UK, there soon became a HUGE oversupply and the market tanked.

Where I was staying above La Cala, which was a lovely development, there were only one in eight apartments occupied. Around us in other developments, the figures looked much worse, with one opposite only having three occupiers in over 100 apartments – and that is in the height of their summer season. I personally know three people who are trying to sell (absolutely lovely) places in that region alone and all are now offering them at 40+% less than they were a year ago, with not even a sniff of a viewing, let alone any buyers.

The taxi drivers are reporting a 25% drop in traffic and the one I spoke to said he could not afford to have another summer like it. He had moved from selling timeshare, but he acknowledged, that dreadful mistakes had been made in the property market. Even the taxi market is massively oversupplied with over 400 taxis waiting at Malaga airport on one of the days I was there, for far too few fares.

The restaurants reacted by putting their prices UP, so that a meal for four is a struggle for less than 100 Euro. They too are reporting huge falls in numbers – which is hardly surprising either. The visitors seem to have reacted by staying away and buying from the supermarkets, which still offer remarkable value.

So Spain has completely trashed its brand values. It has stamped all over them and probably ruined them forever. Unless they can rebuild their business case with far fewer visitors and go back to their original values, their situation will get worse and worse and worse – and they already have 25% unemployment in some areas.

Spain is a lesson for any brand owner. Know your brand values, keep them steady and keep looking after your customers. Give them reasons to fall in love with you over and over again and never, ever put profit before quality.

Anyway, Turkey for me next year. If that’s not a Spain waiting to happen, I don’t know where is!

branding

Giving blood the easy way

give blood the easy way by taking the collection points where they're needed

I was in Peterborough yesterday waiting the four hours for my passport to be renewed as I’m off to the US next week and only had a few months left to run on my existing one.

Peterborough is not an easy place to spend four hours without an agenda, so I thought I would have a wander around the town.

There in the middle of a busy shopping arcade was a blood van. Not a van covered in blood, but one where you can roll up and hand over a pint or two.

I would class myself as a lapsed blood donor. I’ve given a lot over the years but because the donation centres never seem to be where I am and they seem to insist on giving you appointments at times that suit them rather than those that suit you I just got out of the habit of giving.

We all know that the opposite of love isn’t hate, its apathy, so my apathy towards giving blood must be very typical of many, many people like me. The same principles apply to any brand in any industry.

So anyway, whilst I was giving my armful of the red stuff, 25 or so people arrived at the door asking if they could give blood, only to be told that it was an appointment only session and that it was fully booked for the day. I asked what the capacity for the van was and on a good day they can collect 30-35 packs.

For there to be quite that much latent demand, to me, proves that giving blood has become a ‘spur of the moment’ decision rather than a ‘planned’ decision and as such, the business of blood collection, like any brand or organisation needs to evolve to survive and thrive.

Rather than spending fortunes on TV advertising creating a demand they can’t easily fulfil, why not mobilise a much greater proportion of their collection capacity and take their brand to the people rather than asking the people to come to them.

And, in the meantime, do something amazing – Give Blood

Thanks to UK Emergency Website for the image which is a slightly geeky collection of all of the know emergency service vehicles in the UK

branding

If Howies, Innocent and Rachel’s Organic are the star brands now, well what’s next?

Are all of our mega brands becoming a but samey?

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and flattery will get you everywhere, perhaps that’s why all of the best brands of our age are all becoming a bit, well, samey.

And, If green is the new black, organic is the new everyday, and hybrid is no longer just for those who prefer to knit their own yoghurt, I have to ask, what will come next as the real differentiators for our current mega brands that we all look up to?

There is no doubt that any trend is just that, a trend. And trends come and go. I’m not even slightly saying that Howies, Innocent or Rachel’s have copied each other, it’s just that as these are at the front of the curve, the rest of the market will be following. Every new brand we are being asked to look at, needs to add a little hug here and there, a bit of planet kissing and some stout green nosing for good measure.

They are all drifting towards a level of sameness that will slowly see the current heroes be caught and potentially overtaken. Unless they move their own cheese and get themselves into a new and worthwhile position before the others even get there, they will no longer be the top brands in their own sector, let alone any other sector.

I think a change is a coming. I believe that brands grow so fast these days that they are likely to die just as fast. In the perfect market that we now live, where all of the people have all of the information a new brand can literally come out of nowhere and achieve the status of our current heroes.

So where will this brand come from?

A few pointers that have been gathered over lots of episodes of Trendwatching and lots and lots of reading around the subject.

1. It will be from the quality end.
This recession ain’t ending fast, so people will buy fewer things but better quality things, that give them the status they seek.

2. It won’t be needed, just wanted
Everyday is mundane. It will be a treat that is a little naughty and a bit of a backlash against the goody goody era in which a 4×4 is the work of the devil. Once we all survive the Swine flu myth, we’ll want to kick back and live a little.

3. They will restrict their supply
If you achieve worldwide distribution overnight, you kill the golden goose. Leaving them wanting more, works.

4. It won’t be green
Like any normal distribution curve, the green revolution will fall off and the responsibility for greenness will be thrown back to the manufacturers. The public will simply expect them to do the green worrying for them.

I’d love to know what people think this new brand or new market could be and whether they agree with my four points above.

Answers on a patent application would be most welcome.

Thanks for the image of his niece Sobrina to Corre Madrid. See more work here.

branding

The cleverest ‘simple’ TV ad ever made?

I am totally captivated by this ad for Johnnie Walker. It looks so massively simple and yet has a huge production team behind it. Robert Carlyle is an amazing brand spokesman who hits every cue, every line and every nuance perfectly.

I’ve always admired the work of BBH (And we have one of their ex copywriters working at Purple Circle!) but this has to be up there with one of the best pieces of advertising I have ever seen.

Thanks to Tony Long at Cultural Exception for showing me this ad on the front of his site.

branding

Where do ideas come from?

One of the things that has always amazed me when working with brilliant designers is where they get their ideas from. How do they rock up every day and create brilliant work that meets and exceeds the brief we set before them?

So I asked some of those in our team, and the answer seems to be everywhere and anywhere. Which is obvious I guess, but it is the main reason that we only look at designers who have a life outside of work and have done (and continue to do) interesting things when they are not at work.

If you stare at a computer all day, great ideas won’t come rolling out, but safe ones will. Ones that you are pretty sure will be good enough to get through, not those that are brilliant enough to really stand out.

So I started thinking about how we know whether it is a good idea or not. For me, that comes down to really making the effort to getting a brilliant brief in the first place – as you then have something to compare the results against.

There will always be two schools of thought about which is best. Dealing with designers directly, or account handlers doing the running to keep the designers designing. Neither is best as it depends on who the people are involved in the process.

Clients invariably get the work they deserve. Lazy briefing breeds lazy safe work. Spending the right amount of time to really get to the bottom of what makes the brand different, and what values it is to be built on, is never wasted work. No automatic branding system or $50 logo company in the world will generate brilliant branding, it will generate safe and possibly usable logos.

In the famous book ‘The seven habits of highly effective people’, Steven Covey tells a story of two bosses. One who is totally prescriptive and tells him what to do by when and the other who says he is only there to help him open doors and remove barriers for him. He works considerably harder for the latter, who gives him the trust and the latitude to do great work.

The same comes true when you are briefing designers to work on your branding. If you work with them and trust them, you can deliver great things between you.

Great branding comes from great thinking and great graphic design. One cannot exist without the other. Whether that thinking comes from client, account handler or designer, is irrelevant – and needs to be seen as such by all parties – but get them all working together and you have the potential to create truly outstanding work.

Thanks for the Excellent robots shot to Neato Coolville who’s work you can see here.

Brand Experience, brand values, branding

Buildabrand – Automatically generated branding?

I noticed a huge number of Retweets in one of my followed areas about a new beta experiment called Buildabrand.

Buildabrand – automatically generated branding?

According to their own blurb, it’s ‘an online branding system that allows entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals to create, manage and apply instant and personalised branding to their business.’

Wow, that sounds clever. Maybe even too good to be true.

You tell it what your name and values are and then it automatically generates a brand for you.

So, referring back to my previous post about what branding was and what branding is, it clearly isn’t a system to build a brand, it’s a system to sell you merchandise with logos on it.

Ever the cynic about systems like this, I have registered to se whether it will generate a new brand for me or for Purple Circle, so I’ll let you know if I get ‘accepted’ into their beta programme.

It seems like it could be a progression from the plethora of $50 logo sites out there, but it certainly won’t generate you a brand or anything close to a brand using their automatically, powered ‘algorithms’. (A pseudonym for seeing which logo they have in stock which seems the least wrong when compared to your values)

Years ago, I was on a TV programme called Love at first sight, which was quite like a low rent Blind Date. The idea was that you said some comical things about yourself and then Cupid, the Love Computer matched you to one of the three lovely ladies in front of you. What actually happened was that you wrote down on a piece of card which one irritated you the least and if they picked you too, you won a prize.

I suspect that the Buildabrand algorithm uses similar technology.

Building a brand is far more than throwing a logo at a set of values. It’s about living them in everything you do and the logo showing people they have arrived at the branded experience.

UPDATED

I added a link to this piece on Twitter and it obviously got picked up by the people at Buildabrand, who posted the following reply.

Buildabrand – reply via Tweetdeck

I think they do have a point in that they are lowering the barrier to entry for start-ups in that they may be able to produce decent logo design on the cheap. What they will not be able to do however is build a brand. They can possibly do one tiny element of what constitutes a brand.

My issue with this as a service is that they are claiming they can sell you something worth many thousands of £££’a for a few pence. Anyone who thinks they can shortcut their way to a brand is deluded.

Branding takes time effort and consistency, not throwing a few values into a computer and seeing what pops out.

UPDATED AGAIN

I have to give great credit to the people at Buildabrand in that they have clarified their position a little further in what is quite a brave piece directly responding to some of the criticisms that myself and others have levelled at them. You can read that here.

What they are now saying is that they are not trying to replicate what true branding agencies provide, but offering a low cost solution to those who need a quick and dirty logo for a project they are looking at but can’t afford to do properly. They say they have a bank of 1800 logo ‘solutions’ built up ready for the onslaught. Maybe I’m being unkind in saying that sounds remarkably like an adaptation of clipart (which is exactly what the likes of $50 logo do), but only time will tell.

I’ve applied for the beta, so lets see if I can get onto their scheme (now extended to 200 freebies from the original 50) and then set them a worthy challenge. I’ll let you be the judges, by sharing the results here – when and if I get selected. They are now following me on Twitter, so it will be a test for them to decide whether they want me as a customer.

branding

What branding was and what branding is

When I started out in this industry back in 1990, I used to work on projects that were broadly in the area of corporate identity. This used to be about designing a new logo and then applying it to stationery and occasionally putting the logo on a jaunty angle on the side of a van.

This has slowly morphed into the black art of branding, which seems to have its hooks into every aspect of a business and its public face.

So whilst I was writing a presentation this morning about what branding now encompasses, I was surprised to see quite how far it had come in those 19 years.

Branding is about everything, including the kitchen sink

Branding is now about every aspect of the way an organisation presents itself, both internally and externally. You first have to win your staff over, to allow them to sell the message of what you do, and how you do it, to the rest of the world.

So this is a list of what we have worked on under the guise of a branding:

Brand strategy, naming, design, management and implementation covering all physical aspects such as signage, van liveries, staff uniforms, office and retail interiors, point of sale, packaging and exhibitions.

Literature, newsletters, annual reports, white papers, direct mail.

Advertising production, photography, image management, illustration, print management, copywriting, tone of voice and language guidelines.

Website design and production, social media marketing, search engine optimisation (SEO), email marketing, DVD and training film production, TV graphics.

Online PR, marketing research and brand insight, staff engagement programmes, public speaking on Brands and social media.

Merchandise management and strategy

Have I missed anything?

The real danger here is that working in a small agency you end up being mediocre at everything and many, many practitioners do (which is why you still see lots of dreadful work out there!), but I believe you have to have the confidence to hold the brand to its absolute core values and then work with close partners to deliver the specifics in areas you have less than expert knowledge.

Our role moves more towards the brand management and less to do with the specific deliverables.

Any brand that doesn’t cover off all its public and internal facing touchpoints is leaving itself open to problems of inconsistency from the outset, so it may be a good idea to use this checklist and refer back to your brand values.

Are all of them as good as they could be, or will a little bit of new brand thinking help get your brand properly branded?

To be a brilliant brand, you have to be brilliant at everything, not great at some and barely okay at others.

Thanks to Hoppetossen for the lovely Kitchen sink image. You can see more of his good work here.

brand values, branding

WordPress is a brand that lives what it promises

Earlier today, I was helping a friend get a blog site set up, and as I have done before with my colleagues Mich and Abi, recommended that she do it using WordPress. I was telling her about how easy and foolproof it was to use and in the very best spirit of pride coming before a fall, I fell over. Big style.

I registered her blog, in her name, on my account.

That should be simple to move, surely all you need to do is delete it and then set it up in her name from scratch?

But you can’t. You have to contact customer services and I was dreading this. They were bound to be some faceless corporate who ignored my pleas for logic and common sense, who undid all my faith in their brand.

But no, just like all of their other brand behaviours, they were incredibly simple to use.

At 10.49 am I filled in the form, making it clear I was a bit embarrassed that you can see here. Even this is more nicely worded than almost any customer service contact form you have ever seen.

WordPress customer contact form – showing my grovelling plea for help

13 minutes later, the very clever Hanni, replied back, having already sorted it, using the exact language you will find almost anywhere else throughout the WordPress site.

The helpful reply from the very clever Hanni at WordPress

Any brand that can be this consistent in delivering its brand values, deserves huge success. I’m not just a fan any more, I’m a raving fan.

Thanks Hanni.

UPDATED

Many online brands are absolutely awful when it comes to working offline, but just to continue this story one stage further, WordPress have again proved they are the most human of online businesses. As is my usual trick, I let Hanni know that I had blogged about her and I even got a lovely reply. I am now a raving fan with bells and whistles on.

I’ve made Hanni’s from WordPress’s day

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

UPDATED

UPDATED AGAIN

Share this:

Share this:

UPDATED

Share this: