All businesses have an identity, the thing customers and stake holders think of when they hear your business name. Not to be confused with brand or product, identity is something that gets less attention than it deserves.

Identity is the first association that a customer evokes when they think or hear of your business. It’s not something that you can instill or tell customers, however it can be controlled. In fact i’d say that at least 50% of businesses that fail do so because they have schizophrenic business identity because they have let the customer dictate their identity. If you don’t have a clear goals, strategies, rules of conduct and healthy boundaries; then you’re leaving your identity to chance – in the same way a kid in the school yard does not choose to be known as the shy one (etc), but after a few weeks it becomes a self full filling prophecy.

Marketing Your UPS

Take for example the restaurant business. I love the restaurant business; they are fascinating case studies because they have the highest proportion of failure, hence the most mistakes to learn from. Many restaurants open with nothing more than the stereotypes associated with the food and some aspirations to be great. If a customer takes a chance and tries the restaurant the owner will try so hard to make them happy they will literally kill their own business to make the customer happy. After a while their target customers will no longer be interested in the identity that the customers gave the business, even though the owner didn’t want that identity in the beginning give to his business. Prices drop to battle competitors who offer an equally unremarkable experience, eventually they are in a price war with a company that didn’t do the math right, both businesses lose money and go bust (or worse they survive on the bread line).

So what can be done?
First off you can’t force your story on potential customers, in today’s low attention society – no one cares about your business agenda. However if you show them or tell them a story – then maybe, just maybe that’s a worth their attention.

Take this picture from a restaurant, In a glimpse you know their story and what their identity is.

So decide on what you want your customer’s interpretation of your business to be and then put procedures into place to make it happen. This could be not serving certain types of drinks, enforcing a dress code, having a large bouncer in a dark suit with a headpiece at the door. Obviously take customers comments on board, but be sure to screen them through the question “will this bring me closer or further from where i’m trying to get to”. Remember if you don’t know exactly where you’re going then don’t be surprised when you end up somewhere you didn’t want to be.

Mitch Joel made a point that really resonates with me in the below speech. “Negative reviews can have a higher conversion”.

The conversation is being had, it always has been, just nowadays the conversation is easier to find and bad companies are easier found out. What really becomes important is how a business deals with this shift. Do you embrace the community and join in, or do you operate a them VS us mentality and hope you can swim against the crowd.

Trust is a huge part of an online brand, if a customer isn’t sure about the vendor, the advice is clear - go somewhere else you do trust. So it’s therefore obvious that if you have a brand that chooses to restrict speech, pick and choose customer comments that you publish on your site so that only the favorable part of the conversation is had on your domain - you can be sure the unfavorable other half of the conversation will be had elsewhere.

It’s a question than i’ve been asking myself for sometime now. Unlike other industries say food serving or a pub where you have to have a license many companies can break major laws and endanger their clients.

Take for instance someone who stumbles on to this site - CompanySetup.ie. The site looks very professional and it makes claims that they have 14 years in the business and are the choice for accountants and Solicitors. They must be very credible right?? WRONG.

First of all any person with the schooling of an accountant or solicitor will know that if you want to register a business name, its a simple online form with the companies registration office - and it costs 20 Euro - not 85 Euro!

But there’s nothing wrong with offering a service and making money, even if it is a bit cheeky its not illegal. What is MASSIVELY ILLEGAL is risking their customers personal information including their credit card info, because they are not the professional set up they claim to be. And unless you have a basic understanding of online security, you’ve done the online equivalent of giving your ATM card to a complete stranger and telling them the pin.

This site has No Security which you can tell by the lack of the “s” in the URL (SSL security), which appears on the check out pages of credible sites:

They then ask for your payment info including your CCV, which means that they have your privileged information and so does anyone that hacks their site.

But surely they can’t do this, no online payment processor would allow this to happen? I hear you say. If you look at the code, they don’t use an online processor. It looks like they receive your full personal information, credit card number and CCV VIA EMAIL and then use a manual terminal to put it through. Ofcourse its massively illegal to do so, you don’t know if they have the latest anti virus or anti Spyware on their computers. Frankly speaking if they are willing to break PCI DSS regulations you can be sure they don’t know the consequences of security at all.

Its not that i have a personal dislike for CompanySetup.ie but as a fellow online retailer, it is infact me that suffers from their ignorance. If your card is stolen and someone buys Bikinis or Costumes from one of my stores - the person who’s data has been stolen will infact receive back their money from Visa or Mastercard - If you used Laser then we’d give you your money back, but as your not entitled to it under law most stores wouldn’t. So essentially we end up sending a fraudster some product and receive no payment, because of amateurs like the above company. Often who cannot be traced back to due to low volumes of sales and they continue to operate illegally sending fraudsters more personal information and card details. How long could this go on? Well the above site has been in operation since December 2005.

Really i think the “.ie” domains need to be closer monitored, so that customers can trust them.

Another thing that really gets my goat, sorry if i’m ranting on, is claims that sites are things they are really not. Not just the above, but in the Fancy Dress business this practice is ripe. For example a new site launched this week which is claiming to be “Ireland’s Largest Online Store” on its first day launched. Not just the largest in its industry, but the largest of every industry. Not bad for a business which is seemingly run out of a garden shed.

If you want to make such a claim on Radio or Television you better have the data to back it up, so why shouldn’t online businesses have to substantiate their claims to be the cheapest or the biggest.

Also it would be very embarrassing to be LYRATH ESTATE Hotel, who’s credible name will no doubt be dragged down in some peoples eyes due to this association with a rogue business.

########### update 24/07 11.30pm ############

In a conversation on Twitter about this post with Brian Honan of Security Watch pointed out that PCI DSS is not a legal requirement only an Industry standard and that the article may confuse readers. To clarify what i meant in terms of legalities is the data protection act section 2(1)(d) which states that “appropriate security measures shall be taken”, which factors in the potential harm caused and the nature of the information store. But really you don’t need to be a genius to work out that when taking something as important as a credit card number you need to factor in special care.

Also if (when) the merchant becomes aware of this practice heavy fines can be implemented for breach of contract.

########### update 03/11/09 15.41pm ############

Got a lovely Email from Alan from the Data-Protection agency who’s been looking into the above story. The above company were unaware of the dangers of what they were doing. And have taken steps to get more secure by adding SSL.

Had to laugh though, they put up a big sign on their site saying how UNSECURE they are! Hopefully though the people at data protection will get them to contact their bankers for some advice before the bankers get on to them with the fines.

Courier DHL are to increase Prices from the 1st of August, creating another strain for struggling business.

The move has been accredited to them loosing money for sometime now in the Irish Market, after focusing on their non core market - home deliveries.

The move comes at a time when FastWay Couriers have announced new favorable rates to the UK and intend to announce some further new developments in the coming weeks.

Plans for the 2009 Christmas FM are getting off the ground already. In truth the plans for expansion have been growing ever since Xmas FM closed down last year, we really didn’t expect such a massive audience and to raise as much as we did for the ISPCC - Christmas Fm received over 10,000 text message during its one month on air!

This year were ramping up the operation. Plan’s to expand the broadcast to Cork this year as well as in an even wider range in Dublin and the surrounding commuter belt are underway. This years charity is the Simon Community, who’s work in the current climate is more important than ever. Sometimes the whole issue of homelessness is so difficult to even comprehend its effects on those that are involved - its easy completely avoid the issue. It’s something that Simon are committed to change and we want to get behind them to help.

At the moment were searching for new sponsors who would like to sponsor the whole station, a single show or even a little part of the website. If your in a position to do so please leave a comment below and we’ll get in touch, but if your not in a position to sponsor we’d love to hear suggestions of what businesses we should approach. I’ve mentioned this before on the blog last year but this in my opinion is the best leverage of a charity donation a business can do - Giving a donation that is a tax write off and then letting us use that donation and multiplying it over and over to a point where Simon can really change lives.

The below example of how EBS used leveraged its money and teamed up with Simon to add real tangible. Now add over half a million listeners, non - stop Christmas music and some great presenters and you’ll agree everyone wins.

We really want your input, not just in terms of donations. We need businesses to play the station in their stores and workplaces. We need bloggers to link to Christmasfm.ie and help spread the story - And most importantly we need your idea’s of how to make this so much bigger.

Focus groups are dead! Today better results can be achieved much faster using the internet and people who actually care. Want to find out which of four ads is better?? Put them on You Tube and let thousands of people who care about the brand enough to watch it tell you. Want to find out what people perceive as your brand? Type your name into Google and see what people are saying about you. Want to see where you can make improvements type your name into Google with “sucks” after it!

In a recent conversation with… well lets just call him an “academic entrepreneur” i realized something that i take for granted in my line of work. In the conversation he was outlining the use of the capital he’d raised for his new business. He was making the standard mistakes all new entrepreneurs tend to make - but one above all else stood out.

“What the hell are you spending money on focus groups for I asked?” I’ll save you the conversation that followed but here’s why focus groups are extinct for intelligent businesses.

Focus groups consist of a group of people paid to give feedback in a seemingly unbiased field - after all who would possibly guess that the big mirror oddly shaped and hung taking up the majority of the wall is a two way mirror? Is that really smart or telling the people you want to be honest with you that your not being honest with them to start. Big companies, for some reason big drink brands are a massive culprit for this wastage, hire a middle man to bring in a selection of target audience who test / taste the product. View the material for say a new advert and debate its potential.

I used to love focus groups when in college, you would get some free beer go along and discuss new products! In my case on the way in you’d be told by the woman organising that today your supposed to be x age and prefer x brand over y brand - apparently she could find students who wanted free beer! But lets not assume that all middle men are that inept at their jobs. The issue with the focus groups was that they were (/are) expensive time spent on results that were usually way off mark. The four ads had already been professionally produced and they would only air one! The loudest person in the room would influence the conversation and usually people would be polite, giving the brighter side of their opinion - after all the nice people were paying for their time and had incentivised them up. Noone ever stopped to ask why they bothered making up 4 ads in the first place. Today if you put the story boards up on Google, the customers who own the brand will be quick enough to tell you which one they associate with and you can use part of the massive savings in not producing the three (or all four) lemons.

The conversation has moved from a fake setting to a real time live feed of people talking on their own terms. Whether you choose to engage with it is up to you but the conversation will be had on blogs, on forums and social media groups.

So What Can Companies Do To Take Advantage In This shift?

Well firstly they need to be aware about what the current perceptions are. Every company should have and be monitoring the noise on the net about them using Google Alerts or other medium. They should be engaging with customers, openly discussing and fixing problems, rewarding people who take the time to care about them even if it is negatively and even having their own blogs to making it easy for customers to interact.

For example if a customer has a bad experience with a firm maybe pre-internet they would tell 10 people who may tell 10 more - so the text book college talk used to say. In today’s faster pace economy if, for example, an accountancy firm sucks, then there’s a good chance that the community that hears about it will reach much further. Worse still if someone looks up that company with a view to doing business in the future the experience of their customers are much more likely now to find customer experiences - be it good bad or indifferent.

Its easy for a customer, focus group, friend or family member to tell your product or business is great. Its easier than telling you its not great for sure! If you want to honestly find out if you have potential customers, set up a web page, drive traffic to it with adwords, offer benefits / rewards, but ask them to buy or tell you their opinions in exchange for these benefits / rewards and see what really happens.

For those that complained that wind farms are an eye sore, I reckon they are a beautiful display of how far our engineering minds have come. Ireland should focus even more resources on becoming the world experts in the field because its fascinating what they can do harnessing natural renewable sources.

Cian and Renewable Sources in the background

I had the pleasure of being taken out on a cruise over the bank holiday, when we got on the water the first thing everyone wanted to do was to get out close to the wind farm and to get to see up close. Give me efficiency and effectiveness any day over a plain horizon.

Last night i checked out the new Yo Sushi restaurant in Dublin. I love the Yo Sushi story, the entrepreneur behind and in general sushi - so i was looking forward to it and massively disappointed. In Ireland its run by the same group that run Abrekababra and alas, it has some of the flavourings of the 3.30am popular fast food joint.

It was a Total FAIL. We were pointed to our seats, nice ones in front of the sushi preparation area… that was it from our waitress. Seriously! not even offered a drink or Miso soup. At any one time there were less than 4 different types of food on the conveyor belt. Often the conveyor belt was almost completely empty and there wasn’t a free seat in the house. Realistically they could have done with double the staff.

The food preparation wasn’t what you’d expect from a sushi restaurant either. A machine made the rice squares which fell apart when the met with soya sauce. The only time we saw the food preparers with a knife was to open the cling film on the cooked prawn toppings. And if you wanted raw fish… the choices were slim.

The waitresses’ would complain to the sushi makers that customers wanted their orders / were annoyed there was no food on the conveyor belt and they would argue back that they would have to wait. Understandable but not what you want to see as a customer.

Granted its a new restaurant and hopefully they will get their act together, god knows Ireland needs a good sushi restaurant - I miss AYA in the early days when the chefs were really chefs.

The final nail in the coffin was us leaving, there were no deserts - which was the majority of plates when we started so we decided we’d go somewhere else for desert. I got near the front door and found a queue to pay - but no-one at the cash desk. The staff were busy seating new customers in our seats already but none were available to collect the money. One group who were walking out after 2 dishes just left cash under a stapler in frustration. Eventually a girl came over to the desk and apologized nicely, then went on to explain there would be no receipts as the till wasn’t working. I explained it was a work related trip and needed a receipt. Sorry was the reply. So i handed over the credit card, five minutes later i was told sorry our line isn’t working either. Again i explained that the very least i needed was a visa receipt. A blank smile. the customers in the queue who could pay cash jumped ahead and escaped the restaurant. “Sir, your just going to have to pay cash…”

Massive FAIL on the management part in YoSushi, Major FAIL.

An independently organized TED event is being planned to take place in Dublin. With the Announcement taking place on face book and sweaping Twitter by storm there is going to be massive excitement about this even.

TED is a concept of bring the smartest minds and speakers together to share their knowledge, in three categories Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED). With a mission of spreading Ideas’s they decided to share this knowledge and insight from the best the world has to offer, to everyone, free online. Anyone at any time can download and watch any of over 400 presentations of world changing ideas.

Aaron Quigley Is one of the organizers for the Dublin Eveny. - A lecturer in UCD and with the support of the online community 100% behind him this is bound to be a success.

Speakers and venue are yet to be announced, Date is June 12th, but keep in touch with the newly formed TEDx Facebook page for more info as it gets released. Thanks to the Science Gallery for hosting the event.

Business seems to have turned on itself in the last year, big companies now face problems and small businesses are either sinking or swimming. For those that are swimming, this time of uncertainty and cost cutting opens the door to clients that wouldn’t have considered them before.

Alan Keane Launched www.GuidedRelaxationMeditation.com an online download for stress reducing meditation and relaxation MP3 and CDs. A mixture between expensive therapy and Yoga, all done in the comfort or your own home - with ease and tranquility.

Realex did a 5 year deal to process payments for Virgin Atlantic. Awesome Irish company and Colm Lyon (CEO) is a great man to make it all happen.

Boards.ie are showing massive growth - I have to admit i find myself checking it more often there as the conversation gets more interesting.

Mike Hogan on Dublins 98 has become a sleuth detective and reporting new that really matters - are clown shoes really dangerous? I’d rather hear that then another nut job saying property will rally soon!

The guys in Entertainment Direct seem to be going from strength to strength - and growing fast with referrals and just doing a great job all the time.

www.TheBikiniShop.ie is going from Strength to Strength with some big news in the pipeline. Not far off meeting our goal of becoming Irelands biggest niche bikini store by the end of the year.

Ebookers gave us an amazing deal on Flights to LA! 50 quid plus taxes (337 in total) - Nice. Anyone who wants to meet up August 19 in LA drop me a mail.