Thhe convvenient n MSA 161 T spe p ci c al a corrddless s chain saaw w sets new standards s in n the e field of o professsio i nal l trree maint n en e annce Th T an a ks to o its s weigght of f 2. 2 1 kg (4. 4 6 lb lb), it t fa f cilitates s both an ergonnomic working n possitioon and d a high g level of f ag a ilit y when the e job ent n ails climbinng or o wor o ki k ng from m a bucket e truck The e MSA 161 T, with t state-of-th t e-ar r t STIHHL L ba b tter y T te t chnoloogyy, , al a lows qui u et e and n emiss s ioon-fr f ee wor o kiing at t the e touc u h of f a but toon. It t is s ide d al l for usse e in noise-ssen e siti t ve areeas and n ear a proteectioon n is s not requi u reed. d
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Exercise caution when operating
steers 07 | In the news Emerald ash borer makes its way to southern N.B.
GTI’s new location is working out fine Move to Guelph’s Arboretum a blessing in disguise.
Buyers’ Guide 2020
A directory of the turfgrass industry’s manufacturers, distributors, dealers and consultants, listed by province.
COLUMN
06 | From the editor
Top 10 Under 40 program goes audio
78 | Duffer
I’m telling you the ‘tooth’
By Mike Jiggens
Top 10 Under 40 program goes audio
Turf & Rec’s second annual Top 10
Under 40 promotion was another success . The program recognizes some of the most talented young individuals across Canada who have contributed to their respective sectors of the industry through leadership, innovation, community involvement and other qualities that set them apart from others who have yet to reach their 40th birthdays.
Our first foray into this program was a little bit of a shot in the dark. We weren’t sure how our readers would respond to the call for nominations of worthy candidates, nor could we predict with any accuracy the number of nominations we’d receive. Would the response be too golf-heavy? Would Ontario dominate the number of nominations, since that’s where most of our subscribers reside? Would there be any women nominated?
As it turned out for our inaugural program in 2018, about half the nominees worked in the golf sector, but, surprisingly, most of our nominations came from Western Canada. And, yes, we had women nominated.
The response this year was much more pleasing. We had nominations from coast to coast, all sectors of the industry were represented, and we
doubled the number of female winners.
The positive response has prompted us to take this promotion to another level. With the sponsorship of The Toro Company, we have produced a series of podcasts that – we hope – will be added to our website by the time this issue reaches our readers. These podcasts are in the form of recorded telephone interviews with our selected winners, with the thoughts of at least three of these individuals comprising each podcast.
T his was a fun project to tackle. Questions were tailored to each winner’s own curriculum vitae so that they weren’t simply cookie cutter responses. I found what these
I would grade my performance as passable. I’m no Walter Cronkite, but I believe I can at least be understood.
individuals had to say particularly interesting, and I’m confident our readers will agree once they click onto the podcast link on our website. I also found that each of these recipients came across as extremely mature, as if they were much more experienced than they really were.
Unfortunately, I was unable to track down one of those from our honour roll. As we
were going to press with our April/May issue, in which we featured this year’s top selections, it was announced the Bearspa w Country Club in Calgary had shut down operations for the year, catching ever yone off guard, including its staff. The club’s assistant superintendent was one of this year’s top 10 selections, and my amateur detective skills in attempting to track him down have proved fruitless.
If he’s reading this and wishes to reach out to us, I’m sure we can still include him in this series of podcasts.
When I took on the editorship of Turf & Rec many, many years ago, I never thought I’d see the day when my job description would go beyond the printed word to the spoken word. I did have a little bit of broadcasting training during my college years, but never did I think it would ever be put to use. Upon playback of these podcast interviews and introductions, I would grade my performance as passable. I’m no Walter Cronkite, but I believe I can at least be understood.
It’s likely these podcasts will be done again in 2020 as we celebrate the accomplishments of our third crop of top 10 under 40 recipients.
There’s no time like the present to think about who might be worthy of such an honour for 2020. To nominate a deserving individual, please visit our website at www.turfandrec.com and click on the “Top 10 Under 40” button.
www.turfandrec.com
Editor Mike Jiggens mjiggens@annexbusinessmedia.com
National Advertising Manager Rebecca Lewis 519-400-0322 rlewis@annexbusinessmedia.com
Group Publisher Todd Humber 416-510-5248 thumber@annexbusinessmedia.com
COO Scott Jamieson sjamieson@annexbusinessmedia.com
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Health & Safety
By the CCOHS
The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS) promotes the total well being of workers in Canada by providing information, training, education, systems and solutions that support health and safety programs and injury and illness prevention. www.ccohs.ca
Exercise safety when operating skid steers
In September 2017, a construction worker at a housing development in Alberta was killed by crush injuries while operating a skid-steer machine. Skid-steer loaders are small, compact machines with a heavy bucket design that are easy to maneuver and are particularly useful in construction and agriculture. However, the very features that make these machines so effective and agile also put workers at risk for injury.
Use the following tips to help prevent accidents, injuries, and fatalities.
Safely exiting the machine
Drivers should never leave the operator’s station of a skid loader when the engine is running, or the lift arms
are raised because of the potential to activate one of the vehicle’s controls. A study from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) shows that many operators have been killed or suffered crushing injuries trying to climb out of the cab without observing safe shut down procedures.
Employers can help protect their workers by fully tr aining them in skid-steer loader safety before they operate the machine, as well as by sharing these tips:
• M ake sure that you park the machine on a level surface.
• Enter and exit the loader safely and only when the bucket is flat on the ground, or when the lift arm supports are in place.
• Befor e leaving the machine.
• Block the wheels if there is a chance the loader will roll.
Safe operating
• Keep your feet on the pedals when operating the loader.
• K eep other people away from the work area.
• Drive with caution and check behind you before backing up.
• Travel with the bucket or attachments as close to the ground as possible to maintain equipment stability. This gives the operator an unobstructed view.
Employers can help protect their workers by fully training them in skid-steer loader safety before they operate the machine.
operator’s seat, lower the bucket to the ground, set the parking brake, and turn off the engine.
• Make sure the controls are locked (if so equipped).
• R emove the ignition key when not in use.
• U nbuckle the safety belt and raise the safety bar.
• When getting on or off, face the machine and use the steps on the loader and the grab handles for support.
• N ever jump on or off the machine.
• Never attempt to mount or dismount a moving
• Load the bucket evenly (i.e. weight should not be lopsided) and do not load beyond the limits or rated capacity of the equipment. You can lose stability and steering control.
• Load, unload, and turn on level ground.
• Go straight up and down slopes, keeping the heavy end of the loader pointing uphill – back down slopes slowly. Avoid driving forward when going downhill with a loaded bucket.
• Look out for holes, rocks or obstructions that may cause a rollover or loss of control.
• I f you become confused about the operation of controls from having to perform too many functions at once, remove hands and feet from the controls. All machine functions should stop when pressure on the controls is released.
Allturf Ltd. acquires Dol Turf Restoration
Allturf Ltd. of Innisfil, Ont., a leading distributor of golf turf supplies, pesticides and fertilizers, has acquired Dol Turf Restoration of Bradford, Ont. Dol Turf Restoration is a leading turf management and maintenance contractor, specializing in outsourced maintenance and repairs of athletic fields, commercial properties and golf course cultural sites.
Dol has been servicing customers for more than 25 years.
Joyridden car goes up in flames on golf course green
A green at Dundas Valley Golf & Curling Club near Hamilton, Ont. was destroyed in July when a car was driven onto the course and set ablaze on the putting surface. The course superintendent said it looked like a “bomb went off.”
Jamie Cutting added the green was “basically destroyed,” but noted things could have been much worse. It will take until next spring to restore the green, he said.
Homeowner told ‘remove artificial turf lawn or pay hefty fine’
A Toronto homeowner is reluctantly converting her artificial turf lawn to natural grass to avoid being fined $1,400.
The synthetic surface, installed in both her front and back yards, was put in three years ago and earned her a beautification award last year.
The homeowner said the artificial turf lawn was a good investment that kept her yard green and weed-free. She added she has never encountered any negative feedback about her lawn and was surprised to learn someone had complained about it.
Emerald ash borer makes its way into southern New Brunswick
The emerald ash borer’s eastward journey through Canada has reached Oromocto, located in the southern third of New Brunswick.
The destructive insect had reached the Maritime province last year, appearing in Edmundston, and has made its way another 300 kilometres southward since then. The ash borer has been responsible for the destruction of millions of ash trees throughout North America since its arrival on the continent.
insect’s movement.
The emerald ash borer is capable of traveling 400 to 700 metres annually, but its movement can be spread much further when hitching rides on firewood and other material transported by people.
In nearby Fredericton, which has thousands of ash trees, the insect is being closely monitored. Traps have been set up throughout New Brunswick to capture individual insects to help map their movement.
$1400
Amount of fine for failure to comply
In mid-July, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency confirmed the presence of the ash borer in Oromocto. Additional surveys are being conducted to determine the extent of the insect’s establishment in the town. Restrictions have been placed on the movement of all ash material, including firewood, branches and wood chips to help curtail the
The insect’s larvae burrow into the trunks of ash trees, disrupting their ability to feed. Once infected, the trees are destroyed.
The species of insect is native to China and eastern Asia. It made its first appearance in Canada in 2002. It has also recently been found in Saint-JeanPort-Joli, Que. Near the New Brunswick border.
Time Dol Turf Restoration has served customers
Catholic Church cries ‘sacrilege’ over mini putt golf course
England’s second oldest cathedral has installed a nine-hole miniature golf course in its medieval nave, sparking outrage among Catholics who are calling the initiative a “sacrilege against the Temple of God” and a “mockery of Christ.”
Defenders of the golf course idea at Rochester Cathedral – which was founded in 604 A.D. – say the plan is to present an enjoyable experience for churchgoers and to foster growth at the cathedral.
But not everyone – especially the Catholic Church – is in agreement.
Soggy music festival takes toll on turf at Edmonton park
A weekend music festival in Edmonton turned Kinsmen Field into a mud pit when a sudden storm hit, soaking the field. The festival was moved to another location, but resumed later in the day. Sporting events were canceled afterward due to the turf damage that will be paid for by the festival organization.
An estimate on the amount of field damage was not available.
Former Blue Jays field turf installed at Sudbury diamond
A big part of yesteryear at Toronto’s Rogers Centre has made its way to Sudbury, Ont. to serve as the city’s showcase baseball field at the Terry Fox Sports Complex. The complex has laid down the former artificial turf surface that Joe Carter and Roberto Alomar once roamed.
The artificial surface will allow the city to begin its baseball programs earlier in the spring, putting the municipality on even footing with competitive cities further south.
Soggy fields not ready for play earlier in the season puts player safety at risk.
604
A.D.
‘Turf’
surface at off-leash park injuring
dogs’ paws and bellies hospital.”
The turf at a Vancouver-area dog park is injuring the feet of unleashed pets, sending many to the veterinarian. Except it’s not actually turf, but a weed called foxtail barley or spear grass.
Several dog owners have appealed to the City of Richmond to mow a large patch of the plant at Dyke Trail Dog Park, claiming the spike-like plant is embedding itself into their dogs’ paws and bellies.
At least one local veterinarian has addressed the problem on its website.
“When bringing your dog out for a walk, be careful of foxtail grass,” its post read. “There is a huge amount of this type of grass at the No. 3 dog park. Coco came in to see Dr. Yvonne as a piece was in her ear. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hestitate to contact the
A dog owner said her pet’s behaviour has changed while at the park, suggesting her threeyear-old Yorkie won’t fetch a ball on the grass anymore because it fears the dry, rough foxtail barley coming into contact with it’s face.
One of the disgruntled pet owners said only about a third of the park has been mowed. The concerned dog owners’ group is requesting the entire park be mowed frequently.
Municipal staff plans to see if the offending part of the park can be mowed shorter to make it more visible for dogs and their owners.
Staff has claimed they didn’t realize the park’s weed cover was a problem for dogs.
The park is part of a trail system that is cut three times per year and has already been mowed twice so far this year.
The year Rochester Cathedral opened in England
Former Blue Jays outfielder Joe Carter once played on Sudbury’s new artificial surface
The foxtail barley weed has proven injurious to dogs.
GTI’s new location is working out fine
In many ways,
the GTI’s
move to the Arboretum has been a blessing in disguise
By Mike Jiggens
The writing was on the wall six years ago that the Guelph Turfgrass Institute would likely have to relocate from its longtime site on Victoria Road. Originally built in 1987, the GTI has served as arguably Canada’s foremost centre of turfgrass research.
The facility is located on Guelph Research Station land owned by the Ontario government. Although most of the city’s research stations are controlled by the Agricultural Research Institute of Ontario, jurisdiction of the Victoria Road site is given to the Ontario Realty Caorp.
“That generally means they’re looking to maximize provincial benefits from these lands,” Dr. Eric Lyons, director of the GTI said. “And they see that development is a natural benefit to these lands.”
Guelph has been recognized as a key place for population growth among urban neighbours of the Greater Toronto Area.
Lyons said there was always hope that the GTI’s lease would continue to be renewed and that the Guelph Research Station property would always be there in perpetuity, but it was clear a plan needed to be devised in the event renewal of the lease was to no longer happen.
A number of options were considered for the GTI’s new home, but it became clear that property at Guelph’s Arboretum
was the best possible choice. In fact, the GTI’s new location couldn’t have been more practical or convenient. It’s closer to the University of Guelph campus, is next door to the Cutten Fields Golf Club and features trees and grasslands that emulate natural golf course and park characteristics.
In many ways, the GTI’s move to the
Arboretum has been a blessing in disguise.
“It became clear very quickly that the home for the GTI was best served here on campus, and the reason for that is because if you’ve got faculty with offices and grad students with offices and labs here on the main campus, it doesn’t make sense to have their research field trials out in Elora (another relocation option) because it’s
Dr. Eric Lyons, left, director of the Guelph Turfgrass Institute, and Cam Shaw, communications and outreach co-ordinator for the GTI, take a closer look at a turfgrass plant sample.
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just inefficient,” Cam Shaw, communications and outreach co-ordinator for the GTI, said.
Lyons added that if he wanted to bring his second-year turf students to tour a particular trial plot, transportation needed to be organized to visit the Victoria Road property. At the Arboretum location, students can walk to the plots.
“One thing that was recognized is that the GTI is not just a research facility,” he said. “It’s a teaching facility. The connection the GTI has to the diploma program, the short course program and the undergraduate programs on campus is crucial, and we need to be here.”
The centre for teaching is a still-to-be-constructed new building designed to perfect on the current G.M. Frost Building at the Victoria Road site. The new facility will provide more office space for the GTI’s association partners, will feature a larger boardroom and will have two classrooms instead of the current single classroom. It will be built as a two-storey structure.
“ The best part of the new building versus the current one is that the design makes a lot more sense,” Shaw said. “It’s a well-designed, well thought-out building that had stakeholder input meetings that went into it.”
Less-than-ideal teaching environment
Shaw said that when the turf manager’s short course was taught in February each year, the single-classroom setup at the original Frost building turned the environment into a “zoo,” with students
Trial plots at the GTI’s new location at the Arboretum are strategically located next to the Cutten Fields Golf Club.
creating noise issues for those working in adjacent offices. The boardroom and offices will be located on the second floor, comfortably away from the noise created by students coming and going on the ground floor. Not only has traffic control been addressed with the new building’s
more efficient design and the doubling of classrooms, all rooms will feature full connectivity to accommodate better conference calls and video conferencing.
The extent of teaching tools at the current building consisted of a white board and projector screen, Lyons added.
Dedicated class space will soon be available to the diploma program, short course and other university classes such as environmental science.
The greater classroom space will provide better exposure to turf, Shaw said, noting that other groups of people who may not have given much thought to turf will have the opportunity to spend more time connecting with the subject and will have an advantageous learning experience at the GTI.
Plans are to have the new building ready by the summer of 2020.
The provincial government is footing 80 per cent of the GTI’s estimated $15-million relocation cost while the remainder will be left to the university and turf industry to fundraise.
“It will be the pre-eminent turf research facility around,” Lyons said.
The new site’s proximity to the university’s researchers is seen as a particular boon.
“ Turf is not like corn, soybeans or wheat,” Lyons said. “So we need to be in closer proximity to the researchers in order to facilitate us being on campus with our students and being able to do research. Turf is a very unique research endeavour in that way.”
He said unlike agricultural research –which will have its busy days when various treatments are put on, not requiring the
Cutten Fields superintendent Bill Green, seated, and his staff have been a crucial help to the GTI’s golf plots. Here, he and the GTI’s Cam Shaw discuss the plots’ latest updates.
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‘One thing that was recognized is that the GTI is not just a research facility, it’s a teaching facility’
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daily presence of researchers – turf plots are manipulated daily, and the absence of researchers on an ongoing basis could result in turf death.
One of the most significant blessings in disguise associated with the GTI’s relocation is the partnership and ongoing synergy with Cutten Fields, Lyons said.
“ They’ve been invaluable during this process. Cutten Fields has always been a great supporter of turf research and the endeavour because they see it. They’re right here on campus.”
Cutten Fields’ maintenance staff grew in the golf research plots at the Arboretum location. Plugs taken from the golf course were used for the pushup plots at the west end of the research area.
Lyons said the synergy the GTI has with Cutten Fields allows the institute as a teaching facility to say to turf students, “Let’s walk off the research plot where research is done and the data you learned about is created and go over to this golf green right across the fence line and talk about what’s different between where we did the research versus where the research is implemented and why there could be flaws in that research.”
Core of environmental urban research
The Arboretum, he said, is becoming a core for environmental urban research. In addition to the relocated GTI, the property is also the site of a bedrock aquifer research facility and a honeybee research centre.
The move to the Arboretum property hasn’t cost the GTI anything in terms of research plot space, with both sites having upwards of six acres of research ranges. One of the drawbacks associated with the relocation, Lyons admitted, will be the eventual loss of historical infrastructure at the Victoria Road site. One r esearch plot he cited is the heavily thatched green that won’t be part of the new facility unless one of the new grownin greens is purposely allowed to develop excess thatch.
But there are plenty of advantages associated with the GTI’s new location, he added. The biggest, perhaps, is the con-
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struction of the different classifications of sports fields. Since the construction of the original GTI, Sports Turf Canada has created a classification system for sports fields with numerical category designations of one through four. The sports field plots represent the typical portfolio of playing fields maintained by municipalities, ranging from those built of 100 per cent sand to fields that are more than 50 per cent silt and clay.
One of the sports field plots is situated against a massive slope, enabling research to be done on the fate of pesticides and nutrients leaching down slopes and providing data about the important role turfgrass plays in runoff situations.
Its array of research golf greens includes pushup, California (calcareous and non-calcareous) and USGA (calcareous and non-calcareous) varieties.
The GTI’s goal is to be fully moved into its new site by the fall of 2020.
“We know we’ll be here (at the original location) next season, doing research on both sites,” Lyons said. “When we knew we were moving, there was an insistence upon the researchers that there would be significant overlap between the two sites. It looks like we’ll have two years of overlap.”
New research projects expected to run a year or two are being conducted at the new site. Research being conducted at the original site was initiated before the move to the Arboretum site began in 2017, in which second and third-year data is being collected. Some research projects are being simultaneously conducted at both locations in order to compare data.
The unusually cool, wet spring this year has had a negative impact on work initiated last fall. Bluegrass seeded in the fall
should ordinarily be fully grown in by now, but only a 67 per cent catch has been realized. A cultivar trial seeded in the fall saw only a 35 to 40 per cent fill-in in June among slower growing cultivars that are stress tolerant. The seeding had an ideal take in the fall when conditions were optimal, but below average spring soil temperatures stumped growth.
A tall fescue cultivar trial was planned for the new site in the spring, but poor growing conditions prevented plots from being seeded.
“If we had seeded it first thing in the spring, it never would have germinated because it needs heat to germinate,” Lyons said.
He said there is no dependence yet on the new site because it’s in a transition phase, noting that it isn’t the end of the world that the trial has been delayed.
The cool spring also affected a Turfgrass Water Conservation Alliance Kentucky bluegrass cultivar trial that had yet to fill in by June. A solid start was realized at the outset, but no progress had been made late in June.
Shaw said the cool spring has produced an important take-home message to those who have toured the plots to suggest that the growth that was hoped for but not realized can also happen at golf courses.
“Kentucky bluegrasses just do not do well in the spring, and it hasn’t been a favourable spring, so you may be able to communicate that a bit better,” he said.
Because the research plots were put in first before construction began on the new Frost building, research and teaching endeavours won’t suffer due to any delays with the building’s construction because of the transition period.
New study plots at the GTI are well underway for research initiatives.
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How a strong brand makes a company money
A well-defined brand increases profitability in several ways
Many company owners go about their business without thinking much about brand. They either ignore it altogether, hand it off to marketing (or maybe a talented graphic designer), or make strategic decisions based on an incomplete understanding of what brand really means. If one of these describes you, Lindsay Pedersen says you could be making a big financial faux pas: A strong brand can be a huge moneymaker.
“Your company’s brand may not be a dedicated line item on your P&L, but your profit will absolutely increase based on the strength of your brand,” says Pedersen, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide (Lioncrest Publishing,
April 2019, ISBN: 978-1-544-51386-7).
“It’s too bad so many leaders think brand is ‘squishy’ or insubstantial, because it serves a very pragmatic economic purpose.”
In fact, she points out, a recent study found that 87 per cent of business value among the S&P 500 is intangible value, including brand equity. Another study valued S&P 500 companies’ intangible assets at 74 per cent, with brand comprising 20 per cent of that.
So, what exactly is brand? While Pedersen admits the concept can be tough to pin down, she defines it as “the interconnected web of what our business means and how we deliver that meaning, all made possible by our special position in our customer’s universe.”
Pedersen says brand should be a company’s North Star. Every decision you make should be filtered through it. Forging what she calls an ironclad brand lets you occupy the single best position in the hearts and minds of your customers. When you pinpoint this optimal position, you’ll be able to create value, maximize scale, and lead with purpose.
That said, here are six ways a strong brand creates immediate value: It creates a high “willingness-to-pay” factor, which translates directly to better margins. In a recent study, strong brands on average commanded a 13 per cent price premium over weak brands. Look to your own purchasing behavior. When you love a brand, aren’t you willing to pay more for it than for an alternative
A company’s profit will increase based on the strength of its brand.
brand? Renowned brands like Apple, Mercedes-Benz, and Williams-Sonoma – or niche brands like Lululemon, Campagnolo, and Vitamix – are examples. It commands attention and makes it easy for customers to choose you.Consider the infinite stimuli competing for your customers’ attention. To break through and secure a place in their minds – and their wallets – you need to make it easy for them to notice you. The solution is not to shout the most loudly – most lack the marketing budget to shout loudly enough. The solution instead is bracing clarity. Be crystal clear about what your business is and why that matters to customers. This way the customer’s mind has to do less work to grasp your offering. It enables you to hit that sweet spot between old and new that persuades people to buy. Wharton School marketing professor Jonah Berger writes in his book Invisible Influence that people like a blend of similarity and difference. When it’s the right blend, he refers to it as “optimally distinct.” For a brand position to be compelling to customers, it should be similar enough to something a customer already knows so that the person will feel its “warm glow of familiarity,” as Berger has called it – yet it should be different enough that it stirs the customer’s curiosity and desire to be different themselves.
“When selling something new, it helps to piggyback it on top of something else the customer already understands,” notes Pedersen. “This is why automobiles were positioned as ‘horseless carriages.’ It’s also why Airbnb referenced the familiar B&B idea, with its associations of belonging and safety and psychological comfort, when trying to persuade people to embrace the dramatically new idea of sleeping in non-hotel beds they find on the Internet.”
It sets the groundwork for customer loyalty. Your brand strategy enables you to focus on what matters to the target customer – on that which produces customer desire for your business. Once customers have found it easy to see you and buy you, and those customers value your big benefit, they will love your business. In this way, great brands deepen and lengthen your customer relationships, increasing customer lifetime value. Brands set the conditions for loyal customers who come back again and again because you singularly bring significant value.
“Starbucks brings a big benefit – good coffee, uplifting thirdplace space, human connection, consistency across locations,” notes Pedersen. “This fills a deep need and delivers meaningful value, which spurs loyalty. It makes somebody a customer not just once, but countless times.”
It “digs a moat” around your business. A great brand is good defence. It protects what you have, helping you to survive and defend, as well as thrive and grow. If you have built a powerful brand, your competitors cannot credibly copy it, and this uncopy-ability protects your business’s long-term value. Pretty much everything else can be copied, given enough time. Patents expire; features obsolesce. But it is hard to copy an emotional territory that your brand occupies in the mind of your customer.
“A strong brand is the only truly sustainable competitive advantage,” notes Pedersen. “Consider that Brooks Brothers has been around since 1818, DuPont since 1802, and Jim Beam since 1795 – and our country (U.S.A.) goes back to only 1776!”
Finally, it guides strategic decision-making. When your brand is well defined, you can look to it to filter where and how you can innovate, or what categories you can expand into, with confidence in your ability to grow. In this way, it prevents you from making costly mistakes.
“If I am the CEO of Brooks Running and I’m considering areas for innovation, I look to my brand, represented by the tagline of ‘Run Happy,’” says Pedersen. “My brand is about the joy of running – not the joy of skateboarding, not the joy of sports in general, not even about running for the sake of things other than joy. This lens puts into sharp relief where I can or cannot grow, making my decisions easier and more accurate.”
Keep in mind that all of these money-making benefits hold true only if your brand is strong.
“A weak, anemic brand simply doesn’t command the same value,” says Pedersen. “Make sure yours is customer motivating, distinctive and ownable, simple and singular, and that it leverages your unique competencies. The strength of your brand is just too important to leave to chance.”
Seven layers of brand and how they fuel business
We all use the word “brand” as though everyone else’s understanding of it were the same as ours. Yet chances are it’s not, says Lindsay Pedersen, author of Forging an Ironclad Brand.
“Logo is part of brand,” she says. “TV and social media are parts of brand. Naming is part of brand. So are your product, your customer experience, and your SEO tactics. So are your font, your tagline, your business’s personality, and the colour of your employee uniforms. But none of those are, by themselves, brand.”
To make smart decisions around shaping and communicating your brand strategy, it’s important to understand all the aspects. In her book, Pedersen identifies seven layers of brand:
Brand Is what you stand for. It’s what you mean to your customer. It’s the place you occupy in his or her mind. Everything your business does either reinforces your meaning, solidifying and growing its place in the customer’s mind – or it weakens that meaning, blurring its place in the customer’s mind. If you sell shoes that enable customers to run fast, everything you do reinforces or blurs your meaning of fast shoes.
Brand Is a relationship between your business and your customer. These relationships have existed for millennia. The pre-Industrial Age, small-town butcher made a promise and
faithfully fulfilled it time and time again, making his relationship with his customer ever more meaningful for both. Today, with the web and social media and the countless ways customers can communicate with a business, it’s even more important to deliver value.
There was a time when the business with the most spending power had the loudest megaphone and, therefore, the most powerful brand. Now, the customer has a megaphone, too, and once again carries clout in the relationship.
Brand is your promise and your fulfillment of that promise. When a brand has integrity, its promise is true. The business makes a promise – to deliver a scrumptious-tasting dinner, or eliminate a software system’s downtime, or make a home-buying experience more enjoyable – and delivers on that promise. It is not merely what you say you do – it is what you actually do, how you do it, and why.
As Don Knauss, previously CEO of Clorox and head of North American operations for Coke, puts it: “A brand is a promise of performance. Any transaction between two parties requires a promise of performance.”
Brand is a filter. A brand captures and guides attention. It serves as a filter for customers as they perceive your business,
Ad Index
shaping how they see you and believe you. We humans need these filters. When faced with too much information, we use cognitive shortcuts as filters to tame sensory overload. Brand ties your business to something already in your customer’s head, making it easier for the person to engage with your business.
Brand strategy is the deliberate articulation of your business’ meaning. While brand is the meaning you stand for inside your customer’s mind, your brand strategy is the deliberate articulation of that meaning. Brand strategy distills your promise so you can make choices across your business to carry out that promise. It answers the questions: What kind of business are we, and what kind of business do we want to be? What do we want to mean to customers?
Brand strategy is about getting to self-knowledge. It’s about defining your business as its best possible self, so that it can become its most purposeful self.
Brand fuels differentiation. Consumer packaged goods leaders, like those at Clorox, Procter & Gamble, General Mills, and Nestlé, have been using the power of brand for decades because they have to. Consumer packaged goods companies are bastions of excellent brand building, because the largely undifferentiated products force brand excellence. When your products are pretty much the same as those of your competitors, you better have an outstanding brand.
A bottle of Clorox bleach contains essentially the same bleach as store-brand bleach – six per cent sodium hypochlorite, 94 per cent water. But the consumer price of Clorox bleach is often double that of store-brand bleach, and Clorox bleach still wins 65 per cent market share of the bleach category. That’s because the Clorox brand stands for something different from the others.
Brand is your north star. When every element of your business is aligned around a single brand strategy, you leverage human nature to work for you, and all parts of your business work in concert. It lights your way to creating purpose, value, and scale.
I’m
IDuffer
By Rod Perry
telling you the ‘tooth’
recently developed a toothache –my first in about 25 years – and that meant booking a visit with my dentist. I’m not a particularly dentist-friendly guy and rank dental appointments only slightly higher on my list of fun medical procedures than digital prostate exams.
This was a throbbing pain that I couldn’t ignore any longer and I knew it meant having to see a professional. I had probably gone an entire decade without actually having to see the dentist himself. I had run up a nice streak of cavity-free checkups with the hygienist twice each year and hoped my luck might continue forever.
Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. The x-ray confirmed my biggest fear. It wasn’t just a cavity, but a gaping hole. The dentist said the cavity was so deep I would need root canal work done, but since this was an emergency visit I would have to do with a temporary “medicated” filling until a proper window of time necessary for a full blown root canal job could be arranged.
Once the local anesthetic took effect, out came the drill. It’s not so much the feel of the drill that petrifies me as much as it is the sound. Comparatively speaking, the sound of fingernails being raked across a chalkboard is downright soothing. While he was working away on me, the dentist decided to engage in some small talk, even though there were two or three pieces of apparatus in my mouth at the time.
“Does your mouth feel fully frozen?”
“Ah-muliw-doh.”
“Oh, good, I didn’t want to start too early. Are you comfortable?”
“Ug-wusn-heq.”
“Excellent. Well, let’s take care of this little problem.”
I guess dental schools must teach students how to understand patients speaking with their mouths full of dental instruments. It’s quite a skill, I must say.
This wasn’t my worst experience with a dentist, not by a long shot. About 12 years ago, I had an abscessed tooth that needed pulling and I was sent to a specialist. As I
It wasn’t just a cavity, but a gaping hole
sat in the chair waiting for my mouth to freeze, the dentist re-entered the room with a tray of instruments of various shapes and sizes. By the looks of these tools, I thought he had borrowed them from the mechanic down the street. These were the dental equivalents of monkey wrenches, heavy-duty pliers and ratchets. I was actually looking for the Stanley or Snap-On logos on these things.
With all the bedside manner of a serial killer, the dental specialist warned me that there was a strong possibility my jaw could break during the extraction. The tooth in question was the last molar on my bottom left side, just before my wisdom tooth (all four of which to this day still remain in my mouth). Because of its position, he forced my mouth open beyond what I was capable of doing myself to the point where I could hear the telltale creaking sound that suggested a fracture was imminent.
He then locked onto the tooth with his vice grips and began to pull…and pull… and pull. Believe it or not, he even put one foot up on the chair to gain some additional leverage. Even though we were well into the 21st century, I couldn’t help but think this procedure was more akin to 200 years earlier when barbers did double duty as tooth pullers. I was beginning to think the man who cuts my hair could have done a better job.
After what seemed like an eternity, the specialist finally hit pay dirt. But then he said, “By the way, while pulling out that tooth, I accidentally chipped the tooth beside it. You’ll have to make an appointment with your own dentist to have that fixed.”
Huh? This guy who nearly broke my jaw while yanking away at my tooth with reckless abandon wasn’t going to own up to the damage he caused?
“Can’t you do that yourself while my mouth is already frozen?” I asked.
“Sorry, I have no time. I have other patients to see.”
With that, he wrote up a prescription for painkillers until my own dentist was able to repair the damage the specialist caused.
At another appointment a couple years later, I was fitted with a couple of false implants to temporarily replace my own front teeth that had been knocked out as the result of an unfortunate accident. These temporary teeth – which I had to wear for about five months until crowns were permanently implanted – were not only plastic, they were yellow. What kind of sadistic dentist would place yellow teeth in someone’s mouth and expect him to wear them for five long months? We’re talking lemon yellow, not just an off-white shade. Any smiling I did from that point on was done with my lips sealed shut, and I tried my best to speak with my upper lip completely concealing my top teeth.
As the years continue to pass, I’m starting to wonder how much longer my original teeth can continue to hold up. With time, they’re apt to become more brittle and open to various problems. I hope the day doesn’t arrive anytime soon when I may have to wear dentures and place them in a glass atop my bedside table when it’s time to sleep. I’m pretty sure I’d freak out in the middle of the night if I awoke and saw a bodiless set of teeth staring back at me.
On the positive side, dental practices have come a long way since I first visited a dentist in the late 1960s. You no longer have to spit into a sink every five minutes. That archaic process has been replaced by hanging a suction tube from your bottom lip. And today you lay prone and wear sunglasses while you’re being worked on. In fact, I’ve fallen asleep in the dentist’s chair on more than one occasion.
As my root canal procedure looms, I suspect a nap won’t be part of that coming process. I expect I’ll be doing more wincing than relaxing when I hear that drill at work.
Rod Perry, aka Duffer, is a Niagara-based freelance writer.
