Return On Outcome and Brand Sustainability

By Lee Ussher and Iggy Pintado

Branding is all about communicating and connecting, to build a relationship with consumers, with the intent that it will result in an outcome, potentially either directly or indirectly, to revenue.

Most people who decide to invest in developing their personal or business profile are investing time and money with an intent to make money from doing it. 

So, what role does Return on Investment (ROI) and Return on Outcome (ROO) play for people wanting to set up and sustain their personal or business brand?  

I asked Lee Ussher, Founder of digital and social media agency, Buzz Web Media and corporate & leadership branding practitioner for over 10 years for her perspective as follows:

Some businesses who ‘set up a brand’ for themselves have an intent to use it for anything other than a way for people to identify their business. These businesses create a logo, colour style guide, website, email signature and rarely update any of it on a regular basis. 

Despite this basic branding, they still have an ROI expectation (knowingly or unknowingly) because they are usually investing in other marketing strategies to support their brand identity. This could take the form of ad campaigns (print or digital), local networking, sponsoring, or running small events and being involved in industry expos. All which gives them an assumed ROI and access to relevant databases.

There are others who invest time in blogging, email marketing, regularly updating their Google listing with offers or social media with PR news that communicates messages to create an identity that establishes a greater awareness about themselves for a topic, service and/or product and exponentially grows in recognition from the digital footprint they leave behind.

The perceived return is that the brand itself becomes a valued asset.

Then there are other desired outcomes that contribute to brand association. Why we buy is constantly changing based on trends and developing factors such as ethics, sustainability, local products/services. People are emotional buyers, so we don’t choose to work with a business just because they tick a box in having what we need.

If it was a logical decision, we would choose the closest supermarket, hairdresser, or coffee shop to purchase out of convenience - but we don’t. Most of us go beyond to access what we want - which is usually driven by emotive reasons, such as great service, the tidiness of the shop (my grandfather was a butcher so it’s a thing for me) and the presentation of the food delivered.

A great example of outcome-based experiences is in some major brands supporting the environment by moving away from using plastic - bags, utensils, straws, takeaway containers - to retain their customers. These brands took on the additional expense without profit in mind. 

They did it with a return on outcome that was based on the values of what people and communities wanted and to maintain relevance with their customers. That investment was not for a direct return on the investment, but the outcome that will, in the long term, produce loyal customers and consequently, consistent revenue results. 

Most businesses are now recognising they need to ‘do their part’ in some way as part of their branding. If maintaining their brand reputation is the outcome, then businesses need to consider 3 things:

• Social good activity - the social activity or organization they are associating with is actually in line with what they do and what is relevant to their consumers. For example, if clients are predominantly families, then choose to support something that is family focused. Running a customer survey for input on ideas is always a good place to start. 

• Offer support incentives - offer incentives to support a buying decision. Airlines know they cannot avoid emissions, and flying is a travel convenience. When a ticket is being purchased, there is an option to pay a fee towards the gas emissions your flight will cause. 

• Involve staff and clients - walking the talk is the best brand marketing. Smaller businesses can adopt some of what larger companies do who have internal sustainability programs to get their staff involved in a sense of ownership. The outcome from doing something like this is attracting great talent and maintaining staff. Giving staff time to spend a workday in a charity or cause of their choice every quarter is a simple way to build stronger relationships with staff. Making this part of the business culture will result in longevity, loyalty and word of mouth marketing that builds a strong reputation.

The brand builds a reputation through communication and connection. Businesses need to keep reviewing and updating how they are being perceived by their target audience. Because the brand is the front face of communications and reputation of a business, that is where the assessment should start to do things … a little differently.

The Art of Return on Outcome

 

By Robin Dickinson and Iggy Pintado

I’m still perplexed by the premise that business is all about Return on Investment (ROI). The question is: can Return on Outcome (ROO) - a qualifiable, subjective measure of an investment based on the outcome realised - and ROI co-exist in commercial thinking? 

I approached someone who, by chosen professions, needs to balance both.

Robin Dickinson is a Business Development Specialist and an artist. His day job is as lead facilitator in a business development advisory firm with a hardcore commercial focus. His evenings and weekends are spent creating contemporary paintings and drawings in his studio.

By his own admission, he confesses to having a kind of “split personality”. On the one side, purely commercial and on the other, creatively focused. He admits to using this duality to great advantage when it comes to commercialising his art. Here is Robin’s perspective:

As a businessman, my focus is on maximising ROI. It’s all about increasing revenue and minimising expense. Unlike most artists, I include the actual labour costs by measuring how long it takes to create a work and then charging a commercial rate for this creative time. 

I also amortise time taken for promotion, fulfilment, and delivery of works. This gives a true sense of real ROI and helps me to get product range selection and pricing right. I’m constantly looking for ways to leverage my commercial experience to maximise ROI. For example, securing commercial sponsorships for my art exhibitions. This helped my first art sales event to be profitable before a single painting was sold.

As an artist, ROO is more relevant. Creatively, the outcomes I’m focused on achieving are:

• Purpose: to have an impact on the viewer emotionally and aesthetically. To stir a response.
• Truth: to be true to the inner creative force that is striving to be expressed, rather than be opportunistic around a popular or trending genre or style.
• Uniqueness: to further my mission to create original, ‘unseen’ works
• Fulfilment: to feel the immense sense of joy and satisfaction that comes from creating works that matter to me personally

Before an artwork is ‘released’ for sale to the commercial guy (my alter ego), it’s essential that these outcomes are achieved. Yes, they are highly subjective, and I have yet to develop any kind of quantitative measure to ‘quality assure’ the works. 

That said, as an artist, I intuitively know if the ROO is achieved. I just feel the inner buzz every time I look at the picture. For now, that’s good enough.

In Robin’s experience, both ROI and ROO work together. If the ROO is achieved, then he knows that the ROI will follow. It makes sense that the higher the ROO, the higher the sales price. The more passion and purpose that an artwork engenders in him, the easier it is to sell.

Robin’s artwork is available for viewing at www.artbyrad.art and you can connect with Robin on LinkedIn.

Knowledge Sharing and Return on Outcome

By Jaqui Lane and Iggy Pintado

We’ve heard much about the great resignation, which has morphed into the great realignment. Recently, I caught up with Publisher and Book Adviser, Jaqui Lane who offered up another perspective, which she calls ‘the great reconnection’. We discussed this and how it relates to knowledge sharing and ultimately, return on outcome (ROO). Here’s her view:

Many business owners and executives have had more time to reconnect with their passion - what has been driving them to achieve their goals. They realised that they have knowledge and insights to share and want to do something about it. For me, that meant I received more calls and emails from business leaders about how they could write and publish their knowledge and insights in a book.  

The 2020s is the decade of intellectual capital not financial capital. Real meaning and power belong to those who share knowledge. The more knowledge is shared, the more it grows and works to advance society. Real leadership is not a matter of having the most knowledge it’s about knowing how to share it. 

The first question I ask any potential business book client is ‘What’s the purpose of your book?’ The overwhelming majority respond that they want to help make a positive impact on their readers by sharing their knowledge and insights, and they want to do this at scale. 

They are not driven by return on investment (ROI), quite the opposite in fact. They’re focused on the return on outcome (ROO). This is not to say they are uninterested in the time and dollar investment they’ll need to make, it’s more that they assess success by the outcomes they want to achieve less by the financial return.

The motivation for most businesspeople in writing their book is primarily to share their knowledge and insights with more people. If that’s millions, that’d be fantastic. If its 1,000, 2,000 or more that’s pretty amazing. I’ve had several clients say to me ‘if I can help one person with my book, I’d be really happy with that.’ One person, one book!

So what are the outcomes business people are looking to achieve with their own business book? There are many, but here’s the top six.

1. Share my knowledge and insights

2. Build credibility and authority in my area

3. Position myself as the ‘go-to’ person in the media on my industry/subject

4. Increased brand awareness for me and for my business

5. Generate more clients/retain more clients

6. Secure more speaking engagements

Note that the focus is on outcomes not a straight ROI. Many of the outcomes would be hard to put a simple dollar figure on and many are mutually supportive and, indeed, reinforcing. Let’s take one example, securing coverage in your specific industry media or more general media (whatever platforms you’re focusing on). The more visibility you have to a wider audience on a consistent basis the more visible you are, the more potential and current clients contact or re-engage you. Can you say that X media coverage resulted in Y business? In some cases, you can, in most, probably not.

And here’s another example. You’re a senior executive/partner in a law firm/consulting firm who wants to build a level of personal credibility and authority to stand out from the crowd and gain wider visibility in your industry or outside it in preparation for the next stage of your career. Investing the time and money in writing and publishing a business book is mostly about building your profile NOT about ROI. ROO is the objective.

If your driver is ROO, it is, therefore, important that you are very clear about what those outcomes are for you. You might just have one key outcome and two-three secondary ones or you might want to achieve all that I’ve listed – many of my clients do. It’s important though to prioritise your ROO goals as achieving them will take time and consistent execution to achieve.

In the business book writing and publishing arena there are two main investments, time, and money. For most businesspeople/executives time is money whether you are trading time for money as a consultant or running a multi-million-dollar company. Interestingly, this is where the great reconnection has had a major impact. Many businesspeople have had more time – more time to think, reflect, reassess, and recalibrate. Certainly, some of my clients were quite clear that they wanted to use lockdown time to achieve their long-held desire to write and publish their book. One of my clients shared that they were going to allocate their previous commuting time to writing their book.

Looking at the straight return on financial investment, I share with my clients that cost recovery is possible but not a given, and that it will take between 12-18 months to achieve, IF they are consistent in terms of their marketing and engagement around their book. If they are not interested, willing or able to market their book (i.e. generate visibility) or delegate someone else to do this, it’s unlikely they will cost recover their financial investment. 

This, however, is not a significant issue for them as they’re focused on the ROO not the ROI. Sure, they’d like to cost recover at worst and make some money at best, but ROO is significantly more important to them.