Branding Strategy Insider

Creative Strategy: Visual versus Verbal

Have you ever been asked which is more powerful, the eye or the ear? Probably not, because the answer is obvious. I’ll bet that deep down inside, you believe the eye is more powerful. Call it "visual chauvinism," if you like, but it's a preconception held by many marketing people.

I’ll bet, too, that you share a related preconception, first expressed some 500 years before the birth of Jesus Christ. Confucius says: "A picture is worth a thousand words."

Those seven words--not pictures, mind you, but words--have lived for 2,500 years. And the way things have been going lately, it seems like those seven words will never die. What agency president, creative director or art director hasn’t quoted Confucius at least once in his or her career?

After analyzing hundreds of effective positioning programs, we ran into a surprising conclusion: The programs were all verbal. There wasn’t a single positioning concept that was exclusively visual. Could Confucius have been wrong? We have come to the conclusion that the mind works by ear, not by eye. A picture is not worth a thousand words.

Branding and the Gen X Factor

There is a fine line separating too many brands from too few. If companies are lazy with the brand shears they end up with the marketing confusion and poor economies of brand exemplified by General Motors and its overgrown brand architecture. In contrast, if firms are too conservative with brand creation and acquisition, they end up with the risk-averse culture and limited market penetration illustrated by Kodak.

The secret is to be somewhere in the middle. The fewer the brands, the better, but you have to make sure there are enough to target all the valuable segments in the market. So it is always interesting when a savvy company such as Hyatt decides to create a new brand. The hotel operator recently launched a hotel chain named Andaz. Personally, I would have followed in GE Life's footsteps and named the brand 'Tonight'. Alas, this time the Indians have triumphed: the name means 'personal style' in Hindustani.

Andaz's parent company, Global Hyatt Corporation, is no stranger to brand creation. The firm already owns and operates seven distinct hotelbrands. But on closer inspection, these existing brands - Park Hyatt,Grand Hyatt, Hyatt Regency, Hyatt Resorts, Hyatt, Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites - are all clearly aligned as sub-brands of the parent. Andaz, in contrast, will take only a shadow endorsement from the Hyatt brand and will be very different from its portfolio brethren.

Celebrity Endorsements: Selling and Unselling

In a recent post I raised the issue of people and brands licensing their names. My general conclusion was that for the most part, it's a waste of money and could be a problem for the brand itself.

It might be worth some words on the use of celebrities in the brand business: the good, the bad and the ugly.

What prompts my further thoughts on this subject is Macy's major celebrity effort to try and restore some luster to its recent and somewhat unsuccessful effort to build a national chain of 825 stores under the Macy's brand. Their television ads feature such celebrities as Martha Stewart, Sean "Diddy" Combs, Jessica Simpson, Donald Trump and Emeril Lagasse. All have something in common: They sell name-branded items at Macy's.

Will this do the trick? Will this jazz up the department-store category under attack from the mass merchandisers or the specialty retailers? My feeling is that the answer to this question is: not likely. Here are the reasons.

First of all, successful celebrity brands have to have a very direct connection to the celebrity. It has to make sense to the prospect. Michael Jordan selling Nike sneakers is the Mount Everest of marketing.

Brand Naming Pranks and Blunders

There was a bit of branding mischief taking place earlier this month.

Most of the major papers reported a storm brewing over IKEA's brand names. For years the furniture retailer has used Scandinavian towns to name its products. But a recent study by two Danish academics revealed a bias in its naming approach. All its low-end products, such as toilet seats are named after Danish towns. In contrast, higher-end products such as sofas are named after Swedish or Norwegian towns.

Professor Klaus Kjoller from Copenhagen University, who was reported to be one of the co-authors of a study into the naming abuses, accused IKEA of 'Swedish imperialism', claiming that 'doormats and runners, as well as inexpensive wall-to-wall carpeting are third-class, if not seventh-class, items when it comes to home furnishings'.

IKEA was quick to reject the accusations. 'It was a pure coincidence, and it happened many decades ago,' said IKEA spokeswoman Charlotte Lindgren. 'The employee who chose Danish names for floor coverings retired long ago.'

It made for a great story but, alas, it is bogus. In February, a journalist from Nyhedsavisen, a free Danish tabloid paper, called up Professor Kjoller asking if he had noticed the anti-Danish bias in the latest IKEA catalogue. Kjoller, who had not seen the catalogue, let alone completed an empirical study of it, played along with the journalist because he assumed, correctly, that the article was being written with a Danish tongue firmly planted in cheek. Since then, however, Kjoller has been deluged with media enquires and found himself repeatedly explaining that the whole thing was just a bit of fun.

Brands, Reality & The Remarkable Chimera

“Remarkable is necessary to market today, because unremarkable products don’t get talked about, they just fade away.” - Seth Godin

The chimera is indeed a remarkable beast, with the head of a lion, body of a goat, and a serpent's tail.  It’s also a myth that has faded away.  But that’s not what I’m referring to in the title.  What I mean is that “remarkable” is a chimera.  The popular notion that today’s brands must be Blue Ocean, purple cow, over the top, pulse-quickening magic to have a chance at engaging the attention and loyalty of the finicky and skeptical masses is the biggest chimera going.  And for the very simple reason that it doesn’t match reality. Don’t take my word for it.  Sit down and make a list of the products you own, the establishments you frequent, the TV shows you watch, the sales professionals you work with, the books you’ve read, where you buy your gas, drop off your dry cleaning, grab a sandwich, work out, etc., etc., etc.  Now, next to each “brand”, write down the last time that you can remember raving about it to your family and friends.  Done already?  Right, and that’s because “remarkable” brands are a very, very small portion of your marketplace choices.   

The Chosen Few
Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Cirque de Soleil, Harley, Virgin, Build-a Bear, Jet Blue, and Google are all special brands that were fortunate enough to have entered the zeitgeist and are, therefore, continuously remarked about in business books, on blogs, during keynote speeches, and in the popular press.  And all of that earned and social media have contributed much to their marketplace achievements; increasing awareness and sales while helping to lower marketing costs.  So make no mistake: Being remarkable is a very smart business goal.  However, being unremarkable is not a path to obscurity, and it’s certainly not the curse of brand death.

Great Moments in Advertising: The Commercial Break

In the 1950's, unhappy with the ethical compromise of the single-sponsor show, NBC executive Sylvester Weaver came up with the idea of selling not whole shows to advertisers, but separate, small blocks of broadcast time. Several different advertisers could buy time within one show, and therefore the content of the show would move out of the control of a single advertiser - rather like a print magazine. This became known as the magazine concept, or participation advertising, as it allowed a whole variety of advertisers to access the audience of a single TV show. Thus the 'commercial break' as we know it was born.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

The Language of Branding: 'Brand Identity'

Brand Identity is a combination of visual, auditory, and other sensory components that create recognition, represent the brand promise, provide differentiation, create communications synergy, and are proprietary. Some marketers define brand identity more broadly to include most everything in a brand’s design: essence, promise, personality, and positioning. The more specific definition used in our blog reflects the most common usage of the term, especially by firms focused on the creation of brand identity standards and systems.

Names and nomenclature, logotypes, symbols and other graphic devices, distinctive shapes and colors, brand voice and visual style, sounds, jingles and other mnemonic devices, typography, theme lines or slogans, and characters that are uniquely associated with a brand are all components of a brand’s identity. Textures, scents, flavors, and other sensory elements also can be components of a brand’s identity.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Place Branding Q & A

Today we are sharing some of the questions and answers from recent interviews regarding the place branding process. We hope our insight helps you in your place branding endeavors.

*How is branding a city different from branding a product?

In some respects, branding places is no different than branding anything else. Finding the most powerful and unique image for the place (“unique value proposition” or “brand position”) is the most important activity. After that, building awareness is next most important. Both of these activities assume that the requisite research has been done with the most advantageous and receptive target audiences.

Beyond the basics, branding places becomes a more interesting and complex activity than branding a typical product or organization. The target audiences are myriad and disparate, including at least the following:

•    Residents and potential residents
•    Businesses and potential businesses
•    Tourists/visitors
•    Meeting and an event planners (including convention planners and major sporting event organizers)

Each of these audiences has its own distinct issues and needs.

*What does a city – or place need to discover in the branding process?

Ultimately, a place must find those one or two things that will get the target audiences excited about living, visiting and conducting business in its geography. Those one or two things must be unique and compelling enough to cause those people to choose it over all of the other increasingly compelling options that residents, tourists, businesses and meeting planners have. And, most importantly, those one or two things need to be authentic and believable. Finding these one or two things is much easier said than done and requires rigorous research among the target audiences.
 

Brand Naming: Creating Decision Trees

Organizations with more than one brand should develop decision trees to aid people in naming new products and services. The decision tree should outline when an existing brand should be used and when a new brand is necessary. (One of the more exhaustive branding/naming decision trees that I have seen is in Nicholas Ind’s book, Living the Brand.) It should also identify the type of brand to be created (sub-brand, endorsed brand, etc.) and the naming convention for that brand (coined, associative/descriptive, etc.). This should be based upon the following factors:

•    Importance of the new product or service to the market and to the organization
•    Projected life-span of the new product or service
•    Unique differentiating benefits delivered by the new product or service
•    Intent and capacity to communicate the new brand in a significant way over time

In general, new brands should be created only when a new product or service delivers on a different brand promise from one of the organization’s existing brands. To do otherwise would be costly and confusing to consumers.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Exclusivity: Brand Equity Power

I have always been a working smoker. While I never touch the evil weed at home, I accept the occasional one when I am consulting, for a very simple strategic reason: you can learn more from a fellow smoker in five minutes outside headquarters than you could glean in three weeks with the chief executive.

I am currently in Shanghai, where my professional smoking routine is pushing me to the edge. Rarely does a break, meal, or drink pass here without a five-minute session of mass inhalation. True to form, my dirty habit has not been in vain. Over the past week I have learned a lot about an impressive luxury brand: Panda cigarettes.

Perhaps we have been too quick to assume that the flow of brands and branding expertise is all heading East. The Shanghai Tobacco Corporation, which produces Panda, could teach many marketers a thing or two about building brand equity.

For starters, Panda understands the importance of dynamic targeting. The real art to this is more like dominoes than archery: an initial small, influencing segment can often have more success in bringing others to a brand than a more obvious attempt to reach everyone immediately.