I Can Smell Garlic on You.

My wife and mother-in-law have two interesting (and some might say contradictory) characteristics. First, my mother-in-law has a sense of smell that bests a bloodhound. If you've been chopping onions...say...a state away, she can smell it. She's a pretty good cook, so I imagine the enhanced sense of smell comes in handy.

Here's the rub. My wife's special talent is that if she eats garlic or onions or shallots she smells of them. I know someone smelling of a little garlic when they eat it is not too uncommon, but with Maura, it is nearly instantaneous. Obviously, we have little fear of vampires.

The whole situation has become a bit tense. My wife, self-conscious of the fact that she smells like garlic, gets annoyed when her mother asks who has been eating garlic. My mother-in-law is just annoyed that someone smells like garlic.

As I stated, while impressive, my wife's feat is not so unusual. I've heard that if you drink too much carrot juice you'll turn orange. Only after I learned that tanning beds also turn people orange did I reverse my assumption that our college cheerleaders drank too much carrot juice. My friend Blake claims that if you drink a particular brand of beer from a can it will make you smell like metal, though I am unclear as to whether he is describing the elemental metals or the musical genre popularized by hit band Metallica.

Mr. Slim Goodbody says you are what you eat and I believe him. The things we eat begin to show on us. That's why I have a corkscrew tail, Ho Hos for fingers and a keg for a stomach. But what about companies? Do the things they ingest seep through the skin? Can a company's internal state penetrate its exterior? Let's dive a bit deeper into this.

A good friend of mine turned me on to a training exercise to get employees, stakeholders and friends of a brand to live the brand's essence. I bet you think that's a bit campy, but I have to disagree. It was actually nice to sit in a boardroom and hear people from all rungs of an organization talk about the company's values and how those values inform decisions. In a training I conducted, I once heard lower level employees actually chide the management for not "living the brand" in their decisions. It was awesome.

But should you really live the brand? In a skin-deep sense, I think many managers would agree that it's a good idea. But should living the brand escape the few cubicles that make up the marketing department? Now that's a whole different ballgame. Plenty of people are willing to live the brand by hanging a banner in the lunchroom, but when it comes to living the brand when dealing with suppliers, Wall Street and other non-marketing associates the oft response is, "These are serious business matters not left to the quacks in marketing".

So my bigger question is this: When your company fails to truly live the brand, can consumers smell it on you? If a company tells you they are "raising the bar" or have "higher standards" and then they leave you on hold or talking to someone who cannot pronounce your name (or the company name, for that matter), can you smell it?

This raises another common business question. How many of the things we say we do in marketing do we actually do? If we say we believe in a certain value, would our employees disagree? Do we live what we say or is it just fodder for the sale?

A brand essence and corporate culture seeps through to the outside via customer service, employee conversations, publicized decisions and every other leak in a company's ship.

I am reminded of a story brought to me by a great intern. He had read that a particular car company had announced that it would be repositioning one of its brands to take on the luxury market, hoping to chase down higher margins. In the same article, the company said part of its plan was to build the soon-to-be-luxury brand using parts from one of its several anything-but-luxury brands. My intern was confused and asked me for an explanation. I asked him, "Who would be excited about the prospect of trying to sell a car for more while using cheaper stuff to build it?"

"One group," he answered, "Wall Street".

We found humor in that this car company seemed aloof to the fact that consumers would be reading the declaration as well. Who wants to buy a car built with cheaper parts for more money? Who believes this company's claim of luxury when we now all know it's built with a plastic engine? Who smells like garlic?

So what does your company smell of? Do you truly live your brand? To steal a few words from Gatorade, "Is it in you?" Do you live it or just say it? Here are a few questions to jump start your thinking.


1. What exactly do we stand for?
2. What is our brand's position in the market?
3. How do our values and brand essence inform non-marketing procedures?
4. How good have we been at communicating our brand inside of the organization, but outside of the marketing department?
5. Do we allow people to participate in the brand and make suggestions for improvement and evolution?

To see how your company is living its brand may take some poking and prodding. The whole concept may be a bit ethereal to some hard-nosed managers. You might dig and find the wonderful spirit of your brand's values. Then again, you might find that your organization's commitment to brand values is a bunch of BS. In which case, imagine what you might smell like to prospective consumers. Because you don't need a nose like my mother-in-law to smell BS.

Steve's Advice.

Steve is a man among men. When it comes to reliability of advice, Steve gives my lawyer and accountant a run for my money, both of whom have plenty of my money to run with.

Steve is not my life coach, yoga instructor or some guru helping me center my chi. Steve is oft our waiter at the famous Five and Ten in Athens. Whenever we go there, we request Steve and he makes a special effort to get us a good table in his section.

A few years back Maura and I were having dinner at Five and Ten when we had a question about a particular wine. Steve made a recommendation. Then he brought us a sample. Then he retrieved a dusty old book from the back detailing growing region, good years and recommended pairings.

For those of you who don't love wine, this might seem like a bit much. But you should understand this situation in context. Five and Ten is a restaurant for people who love food. The menu is incredibly inventive. The atmosphere is classy yet homey.
Steve's actions were those of a person who truly lives their brand and it made an impression on us.

In subsequent trips, Maura and I always asked Steve's opinion. We trust him because he has earned our trust. To us, he is as much of the brand as anything else.

When I started writing this, I had originally thought of writing it about customer service or living a brand's values. While I have written about the latter subjects, however, I have neglected to write about what I believe to be one of the most crucial people in the success of a brand. Like Steve, these brand champions embody their brands and carry them out with enthusiasm and joy. Their actions may seem over the top. Their dedication to the brand might seem obsessive. But they inspire great things like loyalty, creativity and communication, just to name a few. They are the tipping point for a brand success. They are the inspirational brand managers.

Perhaps the best, and definitely most entertaining, way for me to tell you about inspirational brand managers is for me show some contrasts between good marketing management and tomfoolery. With these examples drawn in negative space, you might begin to see the potential of a positive figure.

We all have a story or two of blunder and high jinx on the high seas of industry. I once had a brand manager who was an executive assistant before "leading" the marketing department and whose job was more to cover incompetence than to market anything. Her best sell was the idea that she knew what she was doing, which was still unsuccessful as it failed the maxim of truth in advertising. I had one manager who pingponged between our firm and the client's 12-member marketing committee, whose only standing commitment was to agree to disagree about everything. Before that job she had been in charge of setting up special events and, in a rare moment of agreement by the marketing committee, that was the job to which she promptly returned. I once had a client rep, working as the brand manager, who spoke as if he was dictating a memo. Honestly, few things I've experienced in client relations are as marginalizing as someone saying, "Jeff...Subject: Quarterly sales result...Participants: You, me, my assistant Susan...Conducted: via conference call". I thought he was perpetually whacked out on psychotropic mushrooms.

Then again, I've also had some great ones. I've had a few brand managers that after meeting them for five minutes you want to be part of their team, because whatever they do will be innovative and successful. I have worked with brand managers who make and maintain perfect teams, where they foster great collaborative work and in which they participate, rather than looming from above. I have had a few marketing managers who have walked through fire for their people, ideas and company. It is truly something to see when you witness a marketing manager stand up, look down the boardroom table and tell the CEO, "With all due respect, we're right about this".

I don't know if great marketing leaders are born or made. Of the truly great ones I have met, their education did not play a dominant role in their success. Every great one I have worked with had a particular uniqueness about them that bordered on eccentric. Every single one has an excellent sense of humor. They always have raucous stories about seemingly innocuous things and I suspect their keen interest in people and situations makes such possible.

To detail out the characteristics that made my favorite marketing leaders so great is impossible for me. But what proves helpful is looking at a few similarities they share. And perhaps through understanding these interesting people, you and I might better equip ourselves and our companies with their approach.


More egghead than blockhead.

My favorite marketing directors are all voracious consumers of information. They read about trends and case reviews and techniques. They use information as leverage and the upper hand they often get on a competitor might have been gleaned late one night from a book rather than some grand strategizing on the 60th floor. That's not to say they aren't great at strategy; they are. But their approach to strategy formation is always evolving, which is how they bring fresh perspective to each effort. For at least a few of them, I have wondered what remarkable professors they might have been or one day be.


Quarterback, head cheerleader and coach in one.

I have always been amazed at how great marketing directors can help facilitate a discussion, participate in it, and yet also lead it, all at one time. The truly great ones make leadership something that their team desires rather than resents. And when you have worked for a great marketer, you're tempted to follow them wherever success might take them.

This team member/leader role empowers others to give the best of their abilities. When a staff member feels valued and respected, they can create approaches that stretch beyond competitors' restraints because they no longer fear irrational reprisals from their team leader.


Want to be paid with success.

I have never met a great marketing director who works solely for the money. Great marketers want to succeed and I have seen them get very angry when things unnecessarily get in the way of achievement. Those who hire great marketers are wise to not try to put them in a box of outdated constraints. Sure, a place exists for people who go about doing what always got done. That place, however, is not for great marketers. Great marketers are driven to achieve and they will go where they feel the best opportunity is to do such.


From good to great.

I think we can all learn important things from great marketers. The affectionate relationships they build with customers and the loyalty they inspire from their teams are things that every business needs more of. Through them, I have learned the power of creativity. I have learned the value of solid team members. I have learned that winning is everything when you define winning the right way.

And I've learned that the first step in a great marketer/consumer relationship is not quality or value, but a mutually respectful relationship. Once you truly respect the customers and their needs and their perspective, everything else needed for a great relationship seems to follow.