Your CEO: Brand Asset or Liability?

Having experienced four CEO "universes" within the last six months, I couldn't resist but to compare different CEO styles and their impacts on employees.

The CEO impact doesn't stop with the employees though! It extends further, shaping how companies deal with their customers, partners, and other parties.

This seems to be a pretty hot topic for quite a few people, at least in Silicon Valley. After numerous conversations on this very subject, I decided to write this blog, attempting to break down some key CEO characteristics and their impacts. 

Industry Experience and Vision. One of the most important CEO assets is an

in-depth understanding of the industry. This is especially critical for small- and medium-sized companies. Industry experience allows a CEO to avoid extremely costly strategic mistakes. 

The CEO with a strategic vision grounded in industry knowledge can unify and energize his or her employees and quickly earn their confidence and respect.

"Professional” CEOs often lack an understanding of and passion for the industry. They substitute this for "professionalism" and a consultative approach, which  inevitably completely de-energizes companies and can drive them into irrelevance or extinction.

A somewhat viable alternative is having a co-founder or a product executive that is knowledgeable AND passionate about the space.  But the CEO has to be able to own and publicly convey the vision and the strategy.

Huge corporations with multiple unrelated product lines are clearly an exception to this principle. 

Openness of Communications. 
One of the most fatal flaws of a CEO is lack of transparency with executive staff and the rest of the company. This results in employees second-guessing the CEO's intentions as well as their colleagues' relationships and intentions with the CEO.

It breeds mistrust and creates uncertainty at all levels, and it creates unnecessary politics in the executive ranks, which translates into poison for the rest of the company. If untreated, it often becomes a cancer that slowly eats away at the company. The valuable energy is spent inwards instead of outwards. 

Open communications by the CEO, on the other hand, encourage executives to emulate the style and makes the company a better place to work in. It translates into honest and consistent external communications, turning the company into a trustworthy partner, for both partners  and customers.

Actions vs. Words. Some CEOs use actions; some use words. Obviously, it is easier to come up with words. Words like "vision and mission" seem to be favorites with CEOs with management consultant backgrounds. Word-driven CEOs can even convince and temporarily energize companies by using just words.

However, the inconsistency between their words and actions eventually catches up with them and disillusions their employees. It sends a message that double standards are OK and that promises can be broken. 

This disconnect affects external communications, leading to lost sales, lost customers, and brand damage.

Micromanagement and No-management. Micromanagement is my pet peeve. It sends a message to employees that they are not trusted. It breeds fear and kills innovation, and most talented employees end up leaving and growth stalls.

The other extreme is lack of control and accountability, which encourages random or no decisions and breeds politics.

There is a golden middle that I have learned from an executive I worked for early in my career: hire the right people and provide them with the freedom to innovate, but have a clearly defined system of accountability, execution, and metrics.

As a side note, one of the micromanagement (and manipulative) techniques that grates on me is the assigning of ambitious (yet meaningless) tasks with aggressive deadlines that get everybody so wrapped up in them and stressed that they have no time to question the direction and see the bigger picture.

Crisis Management. Crises happen. They are a reality of life in any company. A crisis can be either external or internal. It can be a result of be a competitive move, a product failure, a lawsuit, dealing with the board or investors, employee issues, or so much more.

The way in which a CEO handles these issues sends a message to the rest of the company and industry. Does the CEO panic or become aggressive or play the blame game? Or does the CEO handle the crisis calmly and rationally? Other factors that count when handling a crisis include speed, confidence level, decisiveness, and communications.

Inexperience and lack of confidence in dealing with crises can very quickly turn disastrous both for employee morale and the company brand.

The Kitchen Sink. Then there are obvious virtues that some CEOs bring to the table, such as honesty, fairness, truthfulness, and transparency, and their counterparts: dishonesty, cheating, lying, and manipulation. But these, and many more, are too obvious to write about.

What are your favorite CEO assets and pet peeves? 

Cycling: 5 Branding and Social Media Lessons Learned

Cycling. Is. An. Obsession.

Cycling for me is a combination of exploring the nature, endurance training and creative thinking.  It is also about constantly pushing my physical and mental limits.

It started as casual riding on a hybrid bike.  Then it turned into a regular exercise.  It soon progressed into commuting, century and group rides, cyclocross and climbs.  I have ridden over 2,000 miles and climbed 35,000 feet so far this year.  

My cycling obsession got me actively working on myself and my bikes.  It is amazing how much the Web and social media can tell about brands.  Combine that with brick and mortar presence, and it is fairly easy to put together a realistic brand image.

Below are 5 key elements of telling a brand story online, engaging the target audience and growing the customer base with examples from my latest experiences with bike companies.


1.  Product Info On The Web.   In this day and age it is common for almost all companies to have at least a generic web site.  Majority of bike brands are no exception -- they seem to have decent web sites and product pages describing bike details and specifications.  At the surface, however, most of these bikes can look similar. Same frame materials (carbon, aluminum, steel and titanium) and same components (Shimano, SRAM and Campi).

This said, some brands find ways to differentiate themselves by telling a unique story behind a brand or a product.  Video is a great media for that.  For example, the following video from #Specialized tells an informative and credible story:

This story accomplishes a lot.  First, it comes from a product person that has a very similar profile with a target buyer.  He appears very straight forward, honest and passionate.  Second, the story covers everyday usage, feature descriptions and championship pedigree.  It is very down to earth and believable.


2.  Brand Story Over Social Media: Social Media is a great way to tell a brand or a model story.  For example, people that "like" a brand on Facebook are usually very interested in following the brand and finding out what's new on an ongoing basis.  One can't get a much more captive audience for telling a great story that Facebook page followers.  But there has to be a story to be told and it has to be interesting.

On the contrary, one of the worst things to do in that case is to post generic, quick sale-oriented, useless posts with images like this one from #RaleighUSA:

The problem with this post is that there is no story.  It is a blank and a lazy statement.

Raleigh makes decent bikes.  I own one and I like it a lot (photo on the left).  I am confident there are plenty of stories out there that can really connect with people that follow this brand.

For example, why not break down the  post above into a series of 5-10 real life stories about interesting people in these races, their achievements, their struggles, along with some engaging images?




Why not take a page from #Bianchi's book?

They posted a fun photo (on the left) that grabs attention, inspires re-posts and drives people to the brand.

It doesn't scream "buy me", it looks really cool and invites people to explore and experience new and cool things.













Here is another good post on Bianchi's Facebook page that tells a story:

3.  Social Media Posting Frequency and Timing.  It is important to find the right frequency of social media posts to avoid fatiguing the audience with too many of them or getting forgotten with too few.

Timing of the posts is critical as well.  There is only a small window of opportunity for the target audience to notice an entry and get engaged.  You can have the best content at the wrong time and it will be ineffective and may go unnoticed.

A/B testing is really useful in identifying days of the week and times of the day when the message is viewed most and when the audience is really engaged.


4.  Support Via Social Media.  This is a big one.  Once a brand has a social media channel that is open for anyone to post, it is important for the company behind that brand to stay on top of it.  Timely response and useful help is critical.  It can  influence a buying decision, elevate or damage the brand.

For example, Specialized does a fantastic job supporting its community.  Here is a screenshot captured by CanProve tool.

If you read the comments, you can see what an excellent job Specialized did responding to this thread.  BTW, they handled a problem I had with one of my bikes the same way.  This type of response instills confidence that the company stands behind its products and its customers.


Contrast that with a response from Cannondale.  Here is a link and a screenshot from their FB page:

Based on this (and other similar posts) and lack of any response from Cannondale on their own Facebook page, I would never buy a bike from them, especially an expensive one.

The math is simple here.  If Cannondale loses 1 customer per day due to their Facebook screw-ups, with an average bike price of $1,000, their loss is over $350K per year!!!  That number can grow into millions if you factor in the negative word of mouth this creates.


5.  Content Strategy & Company DNA

Like in many other industries, it is critical for bike brands to have a solid content strategy and content / social media manager that oversees online communities and serves as a customer ambassador.

It is a relatively easy task when the company DNA supports it.

However, it is almost an impossible task in a large corporation with many brands, yet no particular passion towards any single one of them, and a focus on revenue and margins only.

Most of people I know want to deal with brands that share their passion for bikes, companies that employ cyclists and are in sync with their customers.  Specialized is a great example of such a company.  Their products, employees and online communications tell a consistent story of excellence and great customer care.

With all this in mind, when the time comes for getting my next bike, Specialized (Roubaix SL4) is definitely going to be my choice: