Ehrlich has 12 years of experience in PR and journalism, including LEWIS PR San Diego, NASDAQ OMX, the San Francisco Chronicle and the social content hub NewsSpark. He holds a B.A. in English and Political Science from Denison University.

“Chris will direct the strategy and implementation of PR and social engagement programs for both owned and earned media channels,” said Lynne Hartzell, agency president. “Chris’ focused media experience and social thought leadership are great additions to our team.”

In his spare time, Ehrlich enjoys music, road trips and tennis. He also enjoys hiking and spending time with his wife and three kids.

About Alexander Marketing

Alexander Marketing is an integrated business to business marketing agency with four decades of experience serving national and international brands. We focus exclusively on helping science and engineering companies to build their brands, grow profits in current channels and create attractive new ones from offices in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Chicago. To get in touch, email social@alexandermarketing.com.

At today’s speed of business, brand complacency is not an option. A brand that stands still for just a moment can quickly fall prey to the aggressive challengers around it. With an expanding array of media and other channels lending speed and power to new or reinvigorated entrants, there’s a good chance you may not recognize the threat until the damage has been done.

The early warning signs of brand decay may already be present: An influx of new competition poised to feed on your hard won market share. Fractures in customer loyalty as engagements become clouded by conflicting messaging. Eroded perceptions of value as others seek to establish offer equivalency. Once rewarding customer relationships reduced to haggling over the low bid.

For those lucky enough to ride demand driven by advances in technology, new regulations, or global megatrends, brand development and preservation may not seem to be a first priority. While it’s true your markets and your market share could continue to expand without a lot of brand building effort on your part, it’s likely that others have identified the same opportunity. That makes establishing competitive differentiation and market advantage early in the game an important part of your near- and long-term marketing plan.

Branding: The Anti-Venom

Branding is, at its essence, the creation of competitive differentiation. It is the anti-venom that protects businesses in poisonous competitive environments that erode the value of your business one bid at a time. By creating and tirelessly maintaining a powerfully relevant brand, your business won’t be dragged into the morass of commoditization. Existing customer relationships can remain vibrant, healthy and mutually rewarding, not just a means to a P.O. New business acquisition can remain focused on value, reputation and staying power, not just the low bid. And your business can remain true to your goals for investment, people, and financial reward, not driven by the need for cutbacks, reduced expectations, and pleasing the banker at the door.

A healthy, living and breathing brand is the foundation that supports your company and its product and service offering, attracting customers, convincing them to buy, and retaining their loyalty after the sale. A brand that is uniquely meaningful and valuable to customers can help you resist the forces of commoditization, overcome the perception of equivalence in the marketplace and allow you to compete on terms favorable to your business and not those that favor others.

Making it Real

Some criticize branding as superficial decoration, applying a veneer of messaging and graphics to a product. It’s true that some branding efforts aren’t much deeper than a coat of paint, but successful branding brings the richer, innate value of a product or service to life for the customer. Upon exposure to your offering, they can envision almost immediately the solution they are seeking.

Great brands are only possible when product or service quality is indisputable, where innovation continues to keep pace with evolving customer needs, and where customers can actually be convinced that competitive differences exist. The customer is king in branding. Far from decoration, successful branding is based on an in-depth understanding of the customer and a genuine focus on building a business driven to serve customer needs. It doesn’t take long for any customer to detect a phony. It’s why superficial brand embellishment rarely makes a meaningful contribution at the bottom line.

Brand Creation  

We can all name brands that appear to have grown up organically as unique offerings holding a special place in the hearts and minds of consumers. Coke, Nike and Apple are all examples of brands that established a strong relationship with consumers early in their histories and have sustained that relationship over time. The power of effective branding is just as evident in B2B markets. Honeywell, Caterpillar and Cisco are just a few examples of brands that have achieved an elevated status in the hearts and minds of specifiers and buyers in their specific business categories.

But successful branding – even for leaders like Honeywell or Apple – didn’t begin magically at the outset of corporate or product life. Many of today’s most successful brands are the products of conscious midlife branding or rebranding efforts. In almost every case, the branding process is both aspirational – “What do we aspire to be as a company or a brand?” – and investigative – “How do we add value and achieve success with customers today?” To get to the bottom of your brand story, it is important to invest in the diligence necessary to define aspirations and understand or decode where the brand already enjoys its greatest customer relevance.

While all of this may seem obvious to some, those closest to a brand are often least able to clearly define the attributes that create the essence of a strong brand. A disciplined immersion process conducted by experienced third-party B2B experts can help ensure that the most-relevant attributes are identified and understood before the branding solution is formulated. The process doesn’t “create” the brand.  Instead it draws the brand out from within the business where it already resides.

In-depth internal interviews across a full range of stakeholders capture aspirations and important cultural attributes. External interviews with customers, channel partners and others, market and other research findings, competitive analyses and other tactics are employed to fully understand the organization’s business environment and, most important of all, the company’s successful interactions with customers today and in the past.

This process helps business managers understand why their products or services are most relevant to customers and how their organization interacts most positively with customer organizations. They can use this fundamental but informal brand “DNA” to build a formal, differentiated brand that truly resonates with, and serves the needs of, customers. One that stands apart from your competition. One that your business authenticates every day. And one that resides and is sustained at the most basic level of your corporate culture.

Why is this last point important? Because branding, no matter how carefully created, is only an academic exercise if your business organization cannot “live” the brand at every touch point in the customer relationship. A “real” brand is the body and soul of your organization. Behind the logo, tag line, and other visible elements of your organization’s identity, the behavior of every employee and representative provides convincing evidence to customers that your brand is real. If your people can’t live it, your customers won’t believe in it.

Customer Intimacy

When you build and support a powerful brand, you invent, promote and deliver your product or service in such a way that an intimate connection with the customer is established. This connection is both rational and emotional. Particularly in the business-to-business world,  buying decisions are made more deliberately and with the full knowledge that they have to be defended or at least justified to secure management approval. A “reasons why” messaging approach is often critical to arm customers with the information needed to defend a purchase decision.

But also at stake is the reputation of the customer within his or her organization. With a career or even a job on the line, you need to earn the customer’s confidence and trust.  That requires more than reasons why; you need to make a deeper and more emotional brand connection. While pure emotion doesn’t drive most business decision making, these decisions can be strongly influenced by the intangible value associated with a particular brand. While managers who have risen from the financial, engineering or R&D ranks may bridle at the thought, product specs as well as purchase and delivery terms are often only door openers. The real sales conversation begins as the less tangible, more emotional brand dimensions are discussed. When customers perceive the value of a product as greater than the sum of the tangible product and service attributes, the brand makes a deeper connection and there is a better chance that – everything else being equal – higher margins, increased customer loyalty, and lasting competitive advantage will follow.

Proactive Attention

In a fast changing business environment, it’s never a good idea to address your brand reactively. By the time you identify a problem, it may be too late to repair the damage to your business. Vigilance and proactivity are required. Be alert to changes in your business that could or should have an impact on the brand you take to market. Changes to monitor include:

• Expansion in the competitive landscape
• New or evolving market opportunities
• Shifts in customer profiles and personas
• New customer expectations
• An expanded product or service offering
• Misunderstanding or confusion in the marketplace
• Low awareness of your solution and capabilities

Today’s markets are changing rapidly – if not at the speed of light, then at least at the warp speed generated by expanding media channels, social networks, global competition, and the accelerating pace of innovation. Under these conditions, constant care and feeding of your brand has never been more important. The price of inaction is steep:  lost differentiation, commoditization, and shriveled margins. If you have read this far, you can’t say you didn’t see it coming.

The agency set aside one afternoon in December for its 27-member staff to break into five teams and commit “random acts of kindness,” said agency President Lynne Hartzell.

“So many members of our team volunteer in the community, and we wanted to make giving back this year more direct and personal for everyone,” Hartzell said. “We know we didn’t make a dent in the community’s needs, but we did our best to go out and make a positive impact on people’s days.”

Each team was given a cash allowance to commit random acts of kindness during the afternoon. The five teams never crossed paths as they traveled across the city on impromptu missions.

“We learned a bit more about the many opportunities to do good work all year long and shared some special moments,” Hartzell said.

Each team visited various organizations that serve the region and donated goods, food, cash or an extra set of hands to members of the community they met along the way.

Some of the random acts of kindness included paying off bills, delivering flowers to seniors, making Christmas come true for a single mom and feeding a group of homeless men in a local park.

For more information on the organizations each team visited, click the links below.

A-Team

Kids’ Food Basket

Mission Impossible

Guiding Light Mission

Degage Ministries

Quantum Leap

Cherry Street Health Services

Saint Ann’s Home

MacGyver

Dwelling Place, Liz’s House

Blues Brothers

Consumers Energy

Kent County Animal Shelter

Unemployment Insurance Agency Problem Resolution Office

For more information on the many nonprofits in Kent County, visit the Grand Rapids Community Foundation’s nonprofit directory: http://www.grfoundation.org/npodir/grcf/.

About Alexander Marketing

Alexander Marketing is an integrated business to business marketing agency with four decades of experience serving national and international brands. We focus exclusively on helping science and engineering companies to build their brands, grow profits in current channels and create attractive new ones from offices in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Chicago. To get in touch, email info@alexandermarketing.com.

Engleman has 12 years of experience driving key agency accounts at DDB/OMD Chicago, Lowe, Lintas & Partners, YH, Inc. and Hanon McKendry. She holds a B.S. in Communications, Advertising and Public Relations from Grand Valley State University.

“Lissa will leverage our integrated marketing assets to direct strategy and day-to-day workflows for key accounts,” said Lynne Hartzell, agency president. “Lissa’s experience working with major brands across practice teams makes her a great fit for our team.”

In her spare time, Engleman enjoys reading, yoga and collecting wine. She also enjoys cooking and discovering new Michigan beers.

About Alexander Marketing

Alexander Marketing is an integrated business to business marketing agency with four decades of experience serving national and international brands. We focus exclusively on helping science and engineering companies to build their brands, grow profits in current channels and create attractive new ones from offices in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Chicago. To get in touch, email info@alexandermarketing.com.

“Wendy will help extend our 40-year history of growth by igniting new relationships with prospective clients whose businesses can benefit from our specialized expertise in developing integrated marketing solutions that deliver clear and measurable results,” Hartzell said.

“Wendy shares our passion for serving the needs of business-to-business marketers whose products and services are rooted in science and engineering. That specialty makes us unique, especially when combined with our broad and diverse marketing support capabilities – from branding, advertising, direct marketing and public relations to digital communications and social media.

“We’re excited to apply the talents Wendy honed in her earlier customer-facing roles with Canon Business Services and Creative Merchandising Systems. With her help, we expect to rapidly extend our services to additional leading brands. Please join us in welcoming Wendy to Alexander Marketing.”

Fischer holds a B.S. in Psychology from Aquinas College and M.B.A. from the University of Phoenix.

In her spare time, Fischer volunteers for Paws With A Cause and Kids’ Food Basket. Fischer enjoys exercising, boating and being outdoors, and she has her sights set on completing a triathlon and volunteering abroad.

About Alexander Marketing

Alexander Marketing is an integrated business to business marketing agency with four decades of experience serving national and international brands. We focus exclusively on helping science and engineering companies to build their brands, grow profits in current channels and create attractive new ones from offices in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Chicago. To get in touch, email info@alexandermarketing.com.

Hartzell assumes the role of President having most recently served as Alexander Marketing’s Vice President of Business Development where she was responsible for the agency’s nationwide new business efforts, mentoring client service staff and leading one of the agency’s largest national accounts.  As President, Hartzell will be responsible for the growth of the agency with a strong focus on developing long-standing relationships with the agency’s clients.

“I’m very pleased to have someone of Lynne’s extensive Fortune 500 background and highly regarded business acumen to lead Alexander Marketing,” said Steve Schmieder, Owner and Chief Executive Officer of Alexander Marketing.  “I am confident that with her strong leadership skills and focus on growth that she will successfully navigate the waters of the ever-changing marketing industry and lead the agency into the next chapter of its storied history.”

Hartzell brings more than 25 years of Fortune 500 business experience to Alexander Marketing.  She began career with Toledo, Ohio-based Owens Corning where she held a number of critical roles, including the position of Director of Strategic Marketing Communications and Global Brand Strategy where she oversaw a $40 million budget.  In addition, Hartzell played a key role in Owens Corning’s global remodeling strategy to drive new business and was a member of the E-Business leadership team.

“This is a great opportunity for me to leverage both my corporate and agency experience to help Alexander Marketing take the next step in its ongoing evolution as a trendsetter in the growing digital marketplace,” Hartzell said.  “The agency has a rich history and I plan to continue the traditions of providing unparalleled client service and forward-thinking that have made Alexander Marketing what it is today.  At the same time we will focus on raising the bar on success to take advantage of the numerous growth opportunities we see on the horizon.”

Hartzell received her B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Toledo and is a graduate of the Ram Charan designed Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.  She also completed the Gallup Executive Leadership and Tashigan’s Women in Executive Leadership Programs as well as a number of GAP International’s (a global management consulting company) break-through leadership development programs.

About Alexander Marketing

Alexander Marketing is an integrated business to business marketing agency with four decades of experience serving national and international brands. We focus exclusively on helping science and engineering companies to build their brands, grow profits in current channels and create attractive new ones from offices in Grand Rapids, Mich. and Chicago. To get in touch, email info@alexandermarketing.com.

I thought I’d take a moment to pay homage to the brilliant campaign that has brought so much attention to all the cities worth visiting in “the mitten.” If you’re from Michigan, hopefully you draw some satisfaction from it as well, and if you’re not… well hey, at least you can appreciate what a prime example Pure Michigan is of what branding can do.

In 2009, a $30 million budget enabled the Pure Michigan message to be broadcast nationally for the first time since its 2006 inception. The campaign highlighting Michigan’s assets was narrated by our own Tim Allen, and brought 680,000 trips to the state with visitors spending $250 million at Michigan businesses and providing $17.5 million in state taxes.  The campaign’s commercials have been viewed by an estimated 60 million Americans. And those who choose to flock to the Great Lakes State are greeted by signs and billboards welcoming them to Pure Michigan.

Since we like to talk so much about the importance of social engagement (or social media) and how vital it can be to particular markets and organizations, I want to point out that in October 2010, Michigan ranked #1 for the sixth consecutive time in Gammet Interactive’s study on ‘How Social is Your State?’  With Michigan boasting the most visitors of any state website (www.michigan.org), the active engagement on social sites such as Facebook and Twitter is no doubt partially to thank for the traffic.

Unfortunately, due to budget cuts, Pure Michigan, like many businesses, is having to face the reality that it may miss its chance to promote the winter season Michigan has to offer (which I have a love-hate relationship with…) and its activities such as ice fishing, skiing, and snowmobiling.

Seasonal gripes aside, as a marketer and Michigan native, I’d hate to see budget cuts set back the momentum the Pure Michigan campaign has gained.  I love hearing Tim’s voice on the radio reminding me of what a great place I get to call home, and without the campaign my friend’s Facebook statuses would certainly be far less witty when broadcasting their weekend visits…  For that reason, and for the good of the state’s reputation, here’s hoping for the continued success of the campaign and here’s to Pure Michigan.

Nikki Probst

As I mentioned, we see the term “social media” as a broadcast function, not something that really engenders a working relationship.  “Social engagement” on the other hand, the development of a multi-faceted conversation, is what we find most clients really want when they say “social media.”  Though I’ll be totally honest, when a client says they want to explore social media options, sometimes the answer isn’t what they want to hear.

And while it’s slightly off topic, it’s important to remember as communications professionals part of our job is to tell our clients “no” when we don’t think an initiative is in their best interest.  Social media – or social engagement – seems to fall heavily into that category of late.

But there I go, you got me off on another tangent, you really have to stop letting me do that.

Back to engagement.

Most social media/digital media platforms broadcast, they don’t connect.  It’s my biggest complaint about them, even though you’ll never get me off my Twitter account; though I do occasionally wonder with the amount of information flowing across it – often things that are meaningless – what’s the real value.  On the other hand, if you’re able to build a strong platform for engagement, through traditional social media or another vehicle, you’ve taken the first steps toward being more relevant than the competition.

That’s why I’m a big proponent of purpose-built, online communities.  I think these are the next iteration in the growth of online communications and networking.  By establishing a place for people with similar interests and needs (advice, technical information, product support, peer-to-peer product reviews or whatever) and by providing a slate of activities and reasons for them to keep coming back, we’ll have created a community that will generate its own content and take on a life of its own.

And that’s the goal of social engagement.

I’ll often point to two communities in my day-to-day (and yes, I know this is selfish, don’t give me that look) that are evolving – The Innovation Lab and The Fox Den.

Yes, we had a hand in building them and yes, we have a hand in managing them, but I don’t think that diminishes the message here.  Two-way…no…multi-facetted communication has to be the key to social engagement; we have to do more than just broadcast.

After all, if we’re just broadcasting information, it’s just another website.

Not only has the Apple entry in the tablet computer segment gained a strong foothold in the consumer market and a predictably robust following among Apple fanatics, it has now also registered some surprisingly strong relevance for business users – this is the  trend, in my view, that qualifies the product as a game-changer. Consider some anecdotal evidence:

- A colleague who is a certified Apple Reseller (in a geographic market that HAS an Apple Retail Store) reports the product is, somewhat unexpectedly, flying out of his business…not to consumers, but in large clusters to his corporate clients

- At radio-show taping before a live audience where I noticed the teleprompters had been replaced by iPads for each performer; they scrolled through the scripts and content; and apparently also received production instructions on their devices

- The filmmaking industry is reporting that iPads are an excellent tool for storyboarding entire films; and there is an App already for mapping camera placements for shooting scenes

- A myriad of companies have begun equipping their sales forces with iPads because of the device’s capabilities to easily and dynamically showcase products and services

In the interval between the announcement/demonstration of the iPad and its availability for sale, someone observed to me, “I don’t know why this is big news, the iPad is really just an iPod Touch with a big screen.” Exactly. And we’ve now all learned a fundamental lesson (at least for display surfaces): SIZE MATTERS. The visual field provided by the iPad changes everything… what you can do, how you can do it, and how you will integrate that new capability in your life, business or personal.

Business is telling us there are plenty of wonderful ways to use the iPad as a business tool. This device is energizing an entirely new category of computing power and potential. Stay tuned to see how the game changes.

Bill Wittland