Welcome to the OneBrand blog

At OneBrand we live and breathe branding and often share thoughts with each other on the latest campaigns and news. We realised it was wrong of us to keep all this interesting debate internal so have created a blog where we can not only share our views, but engage in conversations with other like minded individuals.

We welcome comments and insights on anything we have written and, if you would like to discuss anything further, please feel free to contact one of the blog’s authors.

Let’s hear it for the hashtag

After inadvertently writing my first text message last week containing a hashtag (it was ‘#wetjeans’ since you ask), I was struck by the power of this simple device.

Chris Messina initially invented the hashtag (#subject) for use on Twitter to help users label the topic of their tweets. Seen this way, it seems like a simple update of the keywords that have been used to tag web pages since the early days of HTML coding.

Dig a little deeper however, and the differences are huge. Now adopted by other short messaging sites and search engines, these are tags that are not defined by marketers, created by programmers or hidden away in source code.

A truly social tool, hashtags belong to the people, since they can be created and used by anyone* – from celebrities to staff nurses. In terms of visibility they’re upfront and in your face, even appearing on print media – the increasingly stuffy-looking uncle of the web.

As a civilisation it’s the first time we’ve ever had the power to tap into the themes people are talking about right now (what’s ‘trending’), anywhere in the world with one click.  We can follow current events as they unfold, seek out like-minded individuals and join global conversations.

As a business owner you can instantly discover where you’re being praised—or panned—by real-life customers. Hashtags make it simpler than ever to share good feedback, or act to put things right.

Even the style, with its no-space, case insensitive syntax seems perfectly suited for today’s text and instant messaging generation. Immediate, infinitely-flexible and to the point: let’s hear it for the hashtag.

* This makes the hashtag system a ‘folksonomy’ apparently.

Image by rpbzand via flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/robzand/4661210969/

About the author
You can follow Richard Whitehouse on twitter using @ThatBrandGuy

Can Oil Companies Brand Themselves Green?

Energy and environment, a difficult balance...

The steady rise in environmental awareness during the last two decades has meant that every business must now demonstrate green credentials in order to satisfy customers, regulators and an increasingly watchful public. Even the conservative and slow-to-change oil and gas industry has had to respond.

First off, no-one would claim the category is ‘environmentally friendly’. It is, after all, based on finite reserves, and consumes vast amounts of energy, materials and natural resources on a daily basis. Burning fossil fuels also represents the biggest single man-made contribution to greenhouse gases. Oh, and the implications of an environmental incident can be both wide-ranging and long-lasting.

Is being green always black and white?
‘Going green’ is not simply a case of pulling the plug on oil and gas. The shift away from the current ‘carbon economy’ has to be a gradual one. To safeguard our economies and our civilisation we have to find replacements not only for all of our fuel sources, but safe, affordable and effective alternatives to the petrochemical by-products that give us medicines, plastics, detergents etc. When you start to unpick this tangled web, you quickly realise there is no single quick-fix solution.

It all means that fossil fuels – and the oil and gas industry – will be with us for some time yet as we make the transition. In the meantime, the most successful companies will be those who can respond to public pressures and show they truly are as green as possible within their operating parameters.

While the term ‘environmentally friendly’ sits uneasily here, there are many innovations in the oil and gas sector that can legitimately claim to offer a more environmentally-responsible, environmentally-sensitive or environmentally-acceptable alternative to traditional methods.

In this space that being greener, rather than green, really matters. And this is where brands come in.

The greener revolution
We’re working with companies that are making some real tangible progress towards helping the oilfield clean up its act; Innovations that help operators to literally squeeze every last drop of oil out of their reservoir; Technologies that cut the huge volumes of fresh water consumed by shale gas operations by four-fifths; Systems that treat produced water offshore so that it meets zero-discharge regulations and can be safely returned to the marine environment.

Importantly in all of these instances being greener is not a compromise for operators. Whether it’s cutting the need to drill new wells, taking thousands of water transport trucks off the roads or avoiding the delay and expense of shipping waste to shore for treatment, it’s value added: a true win-win.

Promoting greener product and service brands helps oil and gas companies to demonstrate a response to environmental concerns in a more practical and realistic way. And it also avoids staking the whole business on the absolutes of a green brand promise: ‘Beyond Petroleum’ anyone?

After all in oil and gas, as in every area of business, there are many shades of green.

Footnote:
Here at One Brand Group we help develop well-rounded brands that aim to address the true spectrum of customer needs – whatever colour they may be.

About the Author

Rich Whitehouse has worked in B2B marketing and branding since 1996. In his current role as Creative Head at One Brand Group he has worked with a diverse range of energy brands including small-scale renewable, national nuclear and global oil and gas businesses. He is also solar powered, which may explain why he can’t relax on sun loungers.

Letting go of your brand online

A while back Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, suggested that to be successful in the digital age, businesses must relax control of their brands online. Let your customers become creators of content for your brand online, he argued, in the same way that has helped Wikipedia grow to become the fourth most visited website on the planet.

User-created content isn’t new. Wikipedia is, after all, a Wikimedia project; a non-profit foundation with the altruistic mission of bringing ‘free content to the world’. But it’s an ethos that seems to run counter to businesses looking for ROI from their online efforts, and still searching for ways to make social media pay.

Let customers tell your story
Yet Wales insists his advice is relevant for any brand concerned with their online perception. Rather than devoting time and effort to trying to manage a brand image online, companies should instead focus on ‘making good products and services’. The idea being that, with so many users quick to share their experiences with the world – be they good or bad – happy customers quickly become what Wales calls ‘hardcore super evangelists’. Quite.

In this model, the role of a brand online alters from the conventional one-way push of marketing messages to something quite different. Suddenly brands find themselves on the sidelines of other peoples’ conversations about them, having to respond to concerns or complaints in a very public way: 24-7, 365 days a year.

But while there are many advantages to this approach in consumer markets, can it work in the B2B arena?

There are fundamental differences. B2B products and services are seldom purchased by individuals; but by buying groups containing influencers and specifiers, procurement departments, and often through tender processes.

Because of this it’s hard to imagine business customers grouping together to create a ‘fan site’ to sing the praises of an industrial air conditioning system, for example.

So should B2B organisations ignore Wales’ advice, and leave customer-created content to consumer brands?

I don’t think it’s an option anymore. Customers are already telling your brand story somewhere online, whether you’ve given them the platform or not. (Remember the fake @BPglobalPR Twitter account following the Deepwater Horizon tragedy?)

The principles are sound enough. It’s simply a question of establishing a few ground rules.

1 Stay connected
The search engines are your friends. Assign someone in marketing, PR or even your admin department with a clear brief to keep an ear to the ground for online mentions of your brand – good and bad. For example: set up alerts on Twitter for relevant tweets. Then respond where appropriate.

2 Reach out
The web is the home of ‘organic’ phenomena such as viral ads, spoofs and mash-ups (bringing seemingly unrelated things together). Let’s face it, as well as being immensely popular, they’re also things that just wouldn’t get sanction inside a B2B company.

So if their work passes your test then give it your blessing, and link to them from your Twitter account or blog (with the appropriate disclaimer of course). As well as an instant way to reach a new audience, you’ll help show a different side of your business to existing customers – more open, less stuffy. And very now.

3 Be encouraging
There are some pretty smart people outside of your business too. They may see brand opportunities or issues you missed. Their ideas might ultimately be brought in-house to create brand extensions*, or even new service innovations. Letting them in might be as simple as encouraging them to blog for you, or setting up a whole development channel to show you’re open to their insights. Just make sure their efforts are rewarded.

4 And make it rewarding
Make sure there’s something in it for advocates who add value. Can you include them in product development? Could they get sneak previews, product demos or exclusive discounts?

Of course there are always potential pitfalls to letting customers get their hands on your brand. But it’s happening anyway, so now’s the time to get involved. The trick is to find ways to inspire and influence it; and then you can finally try relaxing the reigns a little…

* I always thought Thermos should make duvets (cool in the summer, warm in the winter). Maybe I’ll drop them a line