Brand Story

Lessons from The Rural Utah Business Conference

Earlier today I spoke to a small group of rural business owners who were participating in the Rural Utah Business Conference. In many cases, these business owners face an enormous challenge—building a business and communicating a great brand story in a small town (or no town at all). Often they have few local customers, few resources, and a very small support network.

While there, I had the opportunity to see a presentation by Kendall Card from Backcountry.com about how they have used blogs to build traffic to their main site. Kendall is at least partly responsible for the content posted to the various Backcountry.com blogs, including Backcountry and The Goat.

And while I tend to shy away from blogging about blogging, two things Kendall said caught my attention. Backcountry invites its customers to post on company blogs about their outdoor experiences. By opening up the posts (and not just the comments) to their most engaged customers, Backcountry builds a lot of content (including photos and video) and attracts lots of new page views from potential customers. And every post is a micro-brand story featuring gear available from Backcountry.com. It's tough to read this post about a trip to Madagascar without thinking, I could use a set of these and one of these the next time I go trekking off to Ranomafana (or the Uintas or Moab)—better stock up now. Even if readers don't buy immediately, they know exactly where they can get their gear when they need it. It's a great way to share a brand story.

Perhaps most importantly, Backcountry can attribute sales north of six figures  back to links from its blogs (sorry, I don't remember the exact number). That may not be a lot to some, but to many small businesses that's a difference maker.

Hmmm... sharing relevant brand stories and making money at the same time. No wonder Liberty Media was so interested in these guys.

The Value of a Good Story

On Tuesday Apple's CEO and master storyteller, Steve Jobs, announced a "revolutionary" new mobile phone with a wide screen touch pad, Internet browser, built-in iPod, visual voice mail, Google maps feature, and much more. The reviews so far have been very good. Time writes: "Apple's new iPhone could do to the cell phone market what the iPod did to the portable music player market: crush it pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority. This is unfortunate for anybody else who makes cell phones, but it's good news for those of us who use them."

It's even better news for Apple's share holders. On the day of the announcement, Apple's share price increased more than 8% or $7.10 a share. And shares of both Palm (maker of the Treo) and Research in Motion (maker of blackberry) fell, 5.69% and 7.85% respectively (a collective loss of more than 2 billion dollars).

But here's the kicker. Apple doesn't even have a completely functional model yet. Those lucky few who have seen it report that some features are not yet ready for prime time. The demos are cool. The pictures are cool. But Apple won't have a phone ready to deliver for almost 5 months.

So all Apple really has is a well-designed model and a terrific story, worth more than 6 billion dollars. True, Apple is very good at delivering products that change categories. And that's what investors are betting on. Given their track record, it's a pretty safe bet.

But until the iPhone starts shipping, all Apple has is a very impressive, very well-told story.

What's your story worth?

Hat tip: tuaw.com.

The Thunderbird Presentation

On Tuesday, this week, I had the privilege of speaking on the subject of Branding and Design for Small Businesses to a few of the students in Thunderbird's MBA program. I got to spend a few hours on campus and was impressed with the facilities and more especially with the caliber of students at the school. If these students are any indication, the future of international business is bright. Thanks to all the students who made my visit possible, but especially to Josh Sherwood who made the arrangements and took the time to show me around.