NORTHERN PLANNER

Brand babblers do my head in.

It may sound a bit rich, someone who gets paid to build brands saying this.

Except I don't paid to build brands.

I get paid to help people sell things.

The answer to that is rarely brand stuff. It's dealing with barriers to selling more. 

People don't think about brands that much.

People with brand in their job titles do. 

The brand babblers do my head because they think brands are intangible things that exist in the customers' minds.

They are not.

They are extremely tangible.

Our impressions of people and organisations are made of our most common experiences with them. 

Just like you probably only know me through a series of badly written blog posts.

But the people I work with know me for great tea, too much dry humour and too much lycra.

We all know that our opinion is really governed by experience. 

Amazing food can de destroyed by a crap waiter.

The joy of buying a new bike destroyed by a shop who treats you like an inferior species.

The 5 star hotel experienced ruined by a room that isn't clean.

The e-commerce site that is hateful to navigate.

Your relationship with a client can be obliterated by putting your most junior person on it, after promising the earth.

The most creative thing you ever got signed off can be hateful if its a nightmare to get made. Or if everything is always late. 

It doesn't matter who you are, if you hire people who don't care, they will show it to your customers. 

All the effort put into everything else gets crushed.

So when you recruit someone ask this.

Do they care about what you do?

Even tougher, will they have any reason to?

The first is OK, just don't hire them.

The second is a catastrophe. Fire yourself.