Branding Strategy Insider

Overcoming Common Brand Problems - 35

Decision making is at the heart of this common brand problem...

Common Brand Problem Number 35: Decisions that adversely affect the brand are made outside of the brand management context

Analysis: Corporate executives, general managers, engineers, production managers, salespeople, and others frequently don’t consider the impact on brand strategy or equity in such decision making.

Key Point: When making decisions (ranging from mergers & acquisitions, product extensions, and cost cutting to outsourcing critical customer services, producing private label products to fill production capacity, and offering price discounts to meet quarterly revenue goals) – always consider the impact on the brand. This highlights the importance of the CEO assuming the role of chief brand champion—and the importance of creating a brand building organization.

The Brand Called "YOU"

First of all. What is a brand? A brand is a name that stands for something in the mind of the customer. Volvo stands for “safety”. BMW stands for “driving”. Red Bull stands for “energy.” FedEx stands for “overnight.” You’re a brand. But what do you stand for? Not an easy question for most people to answer.

It’s important to note that just because a name is well-known, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s a powerful brand. What’s a Chevrolet? A Chevrolet is a large/small, cheap/expensive car. Consequently, Chevrolet is a weak brand. It’s no surprise that Chevrolet has lost its brand leadership to Ford.

The most successful business people consider themselves a brand and market themselves according. And like product brands, it’s not enough to just be well-known. You also have to stand for something in the minds of other people. John Kerry was well-known but he never made his brand stand for anything. He was the alternative to Bush, but that isn’t enough to win an election. Kerry needed to define his brand in a focused, positive way. George Bush defined himself as a compassionate conservative in 2000. In 2004, his brand message was focused on protecting America.

Other interesting brands are Hollywood stars. The best film brands are stars that stand for something in the mind of the movie-going public.

· Julia Roberts = Pretty woman
· Bruce Willis = Wise guy
· John Wayne = Man’s man
· Arnold Schwarzenegger = Tough guy (A brand image that also worked well for his gubernatorial campaign.)
· Adam Sandler = Immature goofball

When a Hollywood star steps out of character, the results can be disastrous. For example

Top 100 Global Brands - 2007

BusinessWeek and Interbrand have released their annual list of the world's top brands. To no surprise Coca-Cola retains the number one spot. The brand ranked equally well in this years EquiTrend brand equity study. The biggest movers in the Top 100 include Chinese banking giant HSBC, climbing five while Kodak made the biggest drop, falling twelve.

Sponsored By: Brand Education Seminars

Branding: Over-Delivery Power

When a customer complains about your product, service, guarantee, or Web site, it's not always because the quality was lousy. It may have been because you didn't manage that customer's expectations.

Even when I was a kid, I noticed when a new LEGO kit came with a couple extra bricks. I loved it! I actually thought LEGO was giving me something extra, an unexpected bonus. A gift! For me! Decades later, I realized those "extra" blocks weren't really special gifts. They were, of course, the result of operational expedience and economy. The number of blocks in a box is determined by optimal running requirements of whatever production line is operating.

Little I knew, yet how happy I was! And how often I spoke to my friends about my joy. The recollection is instructive. How often does any brand actually over deliver? What brand lately has given you more than you expected? To answer that apparently simple (yet actually complex) question, you must analyse what you, as a consumer, expect of a brand.

Expectations vary depending on what a brand communicates to its audience and individual perception of that message. Most companies over promise and under deliver.

Great Moments in Advertising: 1982 Gates and Gibbons

Jerry Gibbons, President of Doyle Bane Bernbach Advertising met with client Bill Gates of Microsoft in 1982. ‘Our feeling is that you’re not spending at a level that’s appropriate for your company right now’ Gibbons told Gates, whose advertising budget was $250,000. Gibbons took a bar napkin, drew a circle – ‘this is your industry today’ – marked out a pie section, saying ‘this is your current share, and as you know, the industry is going to be growing’. Gibbons drew a larger circle to represent the difference between $1.5 billion and $5 billion. ‘This is how it’s going to be growing in the next few years, and good strategy for your company would be to capture as much share of the market as you can now while share points are cheap. Share points are cheap because the market size is small. As the market grows the cost of acquiring share points is going to increase greatly. If you can increase your share, then when it becomes more competitive, all you’ll have to do is protect your share.’

‘He grasped that concept pretty quickly’. Gates went back to Seattle and doubled his advertising budget.

Source: Chuck Pettis, Technobrands, p145

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Sponsored By: Brand Education Seminars

Color & Brand Identity

Color is one of the most important components in creating brand identity. The purpose of a brand identity system is to encode a brand in people's memory and retrieve it from their memory. In a visual system, the two most powerful components are the consistent recognizable shapes and colors. (Scents and sounds are more powerful than visuals as understood by Cinnebons and Harley-Davidson.) It is best if these shapes and colors are distinctive (at least within the product category). Color can have a significant affect on people's perception of a product or brand. For instance, burgundy and forest green are perceived to be upscale while an orange label or package indicates an inexpensive item.

Third, colors can actually have an affect on a person's state of mind and cognitive ability as demonstrated by numerous research studies. For instance, pink has been shown to increase a person's appetite and calm prison inmates. Additionally, if your brand is sold outside of North America, be aware that colors can have different symbolic meanings (not all positive) in different countries and cultures.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Building Winning Brands - 16 of 16

The Sixteenth most important thing to know about building winning brands is creating a sense of community builds emotional connections and loyalty. Communities also facilitate add-on sales. Online, this can be accomplished through Web 1.0 & 2.0 techniques: •Directories (with hypertext links to specific pages on other sites) •Message Boards. They are more cost effective and more controllable than chat rooms. •Chat Rooms •Surveys/reviews •Daily tips, tricks or rules of thumb •Daily quotes (especially related to the website or blog’s main topic) •Personal user lists kept on your site •Guest books •Matching people with like interests (search and browse techniques) •Custom published web magazines •Extranet sections (password protected areas for clients/members with value added services) •Online events •Featuring regularly updated news headlines on topics related to the site’s purpose •Searchable library of articles by subject matter experts •Become a portal site – that is, an entry site for people looking for information and links on a particular topic.

Differentiate Or Die: More Than Words

In the year 2000, I put the word "differentiation" in play, just as 20 years earlier I'd put the word "positioning" into the business language. It was the subject of a book I wrote entitled Differentiate or Die.

Once again, it has proved to become a very popular concept. Just in the one-year period from June 2006 to May 2007, the Factiva database of business, industry and news publications calculated more than 1,600 headlines that used the word "differentiate" or "differentiation." The articles covered every imaginable aspect of business and could be spotted all over the world. Here are some examples.

In financial services: "Retail Banks Failing to Achieve Competitive Differentiation, Study Shows" ( Global Banking News), "Online Brokers Look to Differentiate" ( Nikkei Weekly), "Differentiation Is Called Key to Wealth Managers' Success" ( Investment News), "Little Differentiation Among Insurers in Utilization, Quality Measures" ( U.S. Federal News).

In the construction world: "Tile Roofs Add Value, Differentiate Builders" ( Business Wire), "Differentiate to Stand Out from your Competition" ( Residential Design & Build).

In automobiles: "Dodge Nitro SUV: Company Figures Out How to Differentiate Its Model in a Crowded Field" ( Syracuse Post-Standard/Herald-Journal).

In beverages: "Beer Differentiation Seen as Crucial" ( The Nation-Thailand).

Consumers Don't Love Brands

It's not what most company CMOs and brand champions want to hear. But I have to say it anyway:

Consumers care more about categories than they do about brands.

What? You might be thinking. You’re a branding expert. Isn’t it hypocritical of you to say that brands aren’t that important?

Not really. Consumers love categories, but they refer to these categories by brand names. Inside the consumer’s mind, the brand is just a shorthand device for the category. A consumer thinks, I’ll impress my friends by ordering an ultra-expensive vodka. But that’s not what he or she says to the bartender. “I’ll have Grey Goose on the rocks.”

Brands succeed not because of love but because of location.

Brands are simply an efficient means to an end. And powerful brands are those that stand for and represents a distinct category or concept in consumers’ minds.

In an over-complicated world, we search for simplicity wherever we can find it. And great brands provide that in spades.

You want “cheap chic,” just say Target.
You want an “energy drink,” just say Red Bull.
You want “performance athletic wear,” just say Under Armour.
You want a “professional all-day laptop computer,” just say Lenovo. (Wait a minute, they didn’t use the strategy I suggested in my last post yet. But imagine if they did, how terrific a brand it would be?)

Too many company managers are too much in love with and too focused on their brands. And management thinks, we consumers are in love with their brands, too.

But we’re not. We are only in love with the ideas, concepts and categories that brands represent in our minds.

Branding: Just Ask...

Shelly, a marketer in Cleveland shared this situation:

"I am currently in the process of helping my company develop and implement the concept of Branding. Please know that this company is a quickly growing B2B organization that has previously lacked a marketing or brand focus. As a result of this I am encouraging all senior level members to become actively involved in the development process. This is quickly being met with opposition.

Could you please provide your advice to what parties you would feel are absolutely necessary to include in the brand strategy development process? My specific struggle is determining how much I should push the opposition of participation from other Senior VP's or influential members from areas like our Operations, Finance, and Analytics departments."

Shelly, thanks for asking. Let me begin by saying you absolutely need top management committed to this process. Without this your brand will never reach its full potential.

In selecting this group, you can begin by eliminating anyone who is not a key stakeholder or influencer in the company. (I define an influencer as a colleague who most likely is junior but is an opinion leader in your organization.) For instance, if an analytics colleague is very influential yet is junior to others, they should be included. Generally with the CEO, the CFO, VP of Marketing, and VP of HR should be involved in the process.

As we know, the goal is maximum buy-in, and while there may be those you would like to exclude, the greatest unity can only be forged through maximum participation. Converting those standing in the way is rarely easy, but there is no chance if they are not included in the process. In fact, their resistance will most likely increase.

Shelly, I'll have more thoughts for you later in the week when I touch on this again in an answer to a related question on the brand positioning process.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…