Get Out There: Your Brand Beyond the Office

The light turned green, and my car lurched forward with all the others yesterday afternoon. Changing lanes, I looked up to find myself behind a Pepsi truck. Or was it...?

While I could make out the familiar red top of the Pepsi orb, most of it had been plastered over by a bright orange Gatorade logo (which also covered some of the safety tags on the back of the big rig).

Would the good folks at PepsiCo -- Gatorade's parent -- see this as an unforgivable transgression? Probably not. The trucking group was probably doing as it was told from an office hundreds of miles away, using a one-size-fits-all adhesive film.

But at the same time, would the brand managers for both Pepsi and Gatorade have any inkling that, in all likelihood, other trucks across the region or country were displaying the same type of bastardized logo application?

By the same token, does the USAirways marketing team know that its blue and white logo glows hot red at LaGuardia's gate 9 (plus other lovely colors on additional screens, which have long outlived their intended life)?

Never has it been more critical for brand and communications pros to remove themselves from their offices, and get out into the field to see how their products and companies are being represented. I know the arguments against doing so -- travel budgets are being cut, there's too much on the plate already, and that social media provides a good set of alternative eyes and ears.

Without seeing -- experiencing! -- the brand for themselves in its most far-flung places, we can't fully understand where and why inconsistencies might occur. Get out there, and as a bonus, you'll win the respect of colleagues operating in those regions -- the very folks who regularly complain that headquarters knows little about operating in their neck of the woods.

I'm reminded of sitting in San Francisco one evening with the CMO of Kodak's consumer business. The company was in the midst of an identity shift -- a concerted move to digital with a redesigned logo. We'd just been discussing the significant cost to take that on, and how there were so many "legacy" players to reach -- labs, mom-and-pop retailers, and more

At that very moment, the storefront lights of Fisherman's Wharf twinkled on, illuminating the streetscape below. Our eyes both scanned the horizon to see dozens of yellow "KODAK" signs advertising film, instant prints and more -- retailers that weren't even on our radar.

With a deep breath and growing grin, my dining companion -- one of the most brilliant marketers I've ever known -- expressed the situation perfectly: "Well... shit. We have some more work to do."

Enough with the excuses. Get out there, and live your brand in the shoes of your customers.