Having worked for many years in upscale travel & hospitality as an employee or consultant for some of the world's finest companies (Mountain Travel Sobek, Virtuoso, TCS Expeditions, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, Wildland Adventures), I confess to having a love/hate relationship with 'inside out' brands. Nearly every adventure travel operator and boutique hospitality company are inside out brands, built from scratch driven by the spirit and personality of a founder (or founders) and a unique internal culture that evolved over the years. Contrast this with brands that are built mostly—or sometimes exclusively—on marketing. The dot-com's in the heyday of Silicon Valley being perhaps the most extreme example.
The inside out brands I've been associated with all have wonderfully unique brand stories, defined by vision, passion and purpose. Some inside out brands literally created new categories or product lines; a great example dates back to 1969 when Leo LeBon, Allen Steck and Barry Bishop founded Mountain Travel and introduced trekking in the Himalayas to North Americans. As a marketer and brander, that's the part I love. You've got so much work with. And as your company grows and you meet and exceed the expectations of your customers, you begin building a true brand tribe…people who are passionate about you and love to talk, blog and Twitter about you.
But the reality is many inside out brands don't really understand their brand story and thus cannot define or describe it, let alone communicate it in a way to be meaningfully different and truly stand out in an increasingly crowded and digitally noisy marketplace. The fundamental essence of a brand—essentially a brand's DNA—is where the real buried treasure lies, waiting to be uncovered. Until you discover it, your branding and marketing efforts might still be good, possibly great. But you will miss the big opportunity to truly set yourself apart and build an iconic brand. It's like looking at a beautiful iceberg and thinking you're seeing it all when in reality the majority of it is hidden from view.
If you're an owner, founder, CEO or senior marketing person with a company that has an inside out brand, I urge you set aside some time and reflect on your brand story. Do you honestly know it, understand it…and live it? Equally if not more importantly, do your customers get your brand story? Too many companies have shallow or unfocused brand stories, or they continue to operate with a brand story that needs to be refreshed or they think is being sufficiently communicated when in reality it's not. Chances are, your true brand story is deeper and more vibrant than you realize and it is waiting to be unearthed.
Investing the time, resources and money to do this type of brand research 'archeology' can pay huge rewards. If done right, every aspect of your business—operations, traditional marketing, social media, sales, PR, training, partnerships & alliances, etc., will be enhanced significantly. You might update (or re-do) your web site, change your tag line, revise your product offering, re-think how you train your office staff, field staff, etc. By translating your brand DNA into creative and strategic marketing, you will be different, you will stand out and stand a much better chance of building enduring emotional bonds with customers.
I've gone on a brand 'dig' with both Kimpton and Wildland Adventures. And in both cases I worked with Storytellings™, a proprietary research process that collects and analyzes stories in order to uncover the deep brand story of a company or a concept. StoryTellings is an amazing right-brain focused method that delivers far more than a traditional focus group.
Here's a small but profound example of applying what we learned in unearthing the Kimpton brand story with StoryTellings. For many years, their tagline has been "Every hotel tells a story™." A good line considering each Kimpton property is unique and often does have a wonderful back story. But the tagline is focused on the company, not the guest/customer. After doing our dig, the copywriter of the agency we retained to translate our findings into marketing reality came up with a brilliant new tagline: "Stay True to You℠." I love it! It is customer focused and the word true works on a number of levels.
Another example from my client Wildland Adventures. Kurt Kutay, Wildland's founder, is deeply committed to ensuring the Wildland brand story is understood and delivered by the many guides, sales agents and other personnel they contract with all over the world to operate their trips. As Kurt and his home office staff know, their brand is literally in the hands of the people on the ground. Just this month, Kurt flew to Peru and gave a presentation to Wildland's local operator, highlighting what was learned from our brand dig and it also gave him the opportunity to hear feedback and ideas directly from guides and reservation staff.
I started by saying I have a love/hate relationship with inside out brands. Truth is, there's a whole lot more to love then hate. But I'd hate for anyone running a travel or hospitality company that has an inside out brand to not fully leverage the incredible power comes from really knowing who you are, where you're going, why you are meaningfully different and then communicating it to the right people.
If you've read this far, thank you. I welcome your comments, questions and suggestions.
Mark Campbell
Principal
Solaia Consulting
www.solaiaconsulting.com
206.910.4790
www.linkedin.com/in/markmcampbell
