Branding Strategy Insider

Facing The Discounter Dilemma

Emma Smith (not her real name) is the UK marketing manager for a well-known perfume brand. The brand has been on the market for eight years - an eternity in the fast-moving, constantly changing world of fragrances.

Each year it becomes harder for Emma to reach the aggressive sales targets that her US bosses set for her. In fact, she is struggling even to maintain the existing retail distribution and sales levels, let alone grow them.

Many of her key accounts are giving the brand much less prominence in store and some are even threatening to delist it because of slowing sales.

So when the merchandising team from TK Maxx called her earlier this year, she was intrigued. The senior buyer came straight to the point. He knew she had excess perfume in stock and he wanted all of it, immediately.

If they could agree on a price, he could arrange for an anonymous logistics team to collect the inventory the next day. All of Emma's sales problems for the year would be solved.

Place Branding for Small Municipalities

Place Branding is a regular topic here on Branding Strategy Insider. We have covered the process as well as other angles of the discipline. Admittedly, the focus of our blog posts and our consulting work has been on large municipalities. A recent inquiry from a small town in South Dakota (USA) inspired us to design an approach specifically for smaller municipalities with limited resources.

We are now offering an inexpensive and proven turn-key approach to successfully branding small and medium sized municipalities to residents, businesses and tourists. The output is a brand promise that is unique, compelling and believable for your municipality and a tagline that articulates that promise.

The process includes the following steps:

•    INFORMATION REVIEW: Information gathering with key stakeholders including mayor, city manager, visitors and convention bureau, economic development agency, business improvement districts, business owners and cultural institution leaders
o    Includes review of research, websites and marketing documents/presentations
o    Focuses on identification of strengths/assets
•    DEVELOPING BRAND PROMISE OPTIONS: Development of up to 25 brand promise options based upon strengths/assets
•    TESTING BRAND PROMISE OPTIONS: Testing of brand promise options with the most important target audiences (residents, businesses, tourists) through an online survey
o    Evaluation criteria include relative appeal, uniqueness and believability for your municipality
•    SELECTING BRAND PROMISE: Recommended brand promise/positioning

Killing the Weakest Brand

I have just started working with a new client in London and we have just completed the Day One briefing. This is the moment after all the non-disclosure agreements have been signed when you get a full and frank overview of the company, its brands and strategies. My client is in awesome shape. It has five key brands and I spent the day learning about each from its respective brand manager.

As I learned about them and the opportunities ahead I got more excited - until we got to the final brand. It was projected to generate healthy sales in 2008, but the more I poked, the more I started to think that, unlike its sister brands, this one should be shut down. It had limited growth options and was in a very tough category. For an hour I argued that this brand should be killed.

It may sound bizarre to suggest a brand that is selling well should be axed. It may sound even stranger to spend your first day as a brand consultant trying to kill off one of your client's brands. But marketing has changed. We no longer celebrate brand extensions and brand creation as we once did. Today, the emphasis is on 'less is more'. If you want to help a company, don't encourage it to expand its portfolio - help it to reduce it.

Look at the big boys. For the past five years, they have been dramatically reducing the number of brands in their portfolios. Kraft is in the middle of a deal that will see it sell Post Cereals (which has sales of $1bn a year in the US) to Ralcorp Holdings, a private-label manufacturer. Unilever recently sold much of its frozen-food business, including the Birds Eye brand, to private equity group Permira. Meanwhile, rumours abound that Procter & Gamble is seeking buyers for three brands that each exceed $1bn in sales - Pringles, Folgers and Duracell are all tipped for sale in 2008.

Why sell big, profitable brands?

Creating a Winning Brand Promise

The goal of any brand positioning exercise is to develop a brand promise that is unique, compelling and believable. Any successful brand positioning project must evaluate all potential brand promises against these three criteria – unique, compelling and believable. The winning promise must deliver against all three criteria or it won’t work. The only way to assess this is to measure each of these for each brand promise option with each key target audience.

As an example, we explored the following potential brand promises for Rochester, New York. This is how one target audience, current residents, evaluated them:

The Truth-in-Advertising Movement

The advertising industry ranked lower in public opinion than other businesses in the 1920s. Its practitioners were apt to be considered charlatans and hucksters. The Truth-in-Advertising Movement was the industry's attempt at self-regulation. It arose out of efforts by the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World to respond to public fears that advertisers would observe no limits in the claims they made for their products.

Critics felt that while certain kinds of consumer deception had been brought under control, others more insidious and basic to the nature of advertising persisted. The ethical goals of self-regulation and truth in advertising allowed members of the advertising industry to present themselves as professionals while also enhancing their credibility with the public. The Associated Advertising Clubs' activities gave rise to the National Better Business Bureau, which replaced the National Vigilance Committee.

Long live ethical advertising.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

In Search Of The Obvious

Whenever I travel around the world, I'm often asked the same question: "What are your favorite books?"

Well, I'm going to let you in on a secret. The best book that I have ever read on marketing is one that was written 90 years ago, in 1916. And here's the good news: It is only 40 pages long, and it contains no jargon or graphs or complex research. In fact, it's more like a pamphlet. Now the bad news: It's not easy to find and could be called a collector's item.

The book is titled  Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Businessman. It's written by Robert R. Updegraff. The book was an instant hit.  The New York Times wrote, "The young man who is going to seek his fortune in the advertising business should have  Obvious Adams for a handbook. Indeed, any young man who is going to seek his fortune in anything might be aided by the common sense and business acumen displayed in this little volume."

Why do I like this book so much? Well, because the search for any marketing strategy is the search for the obvious. Consider the dictionary definition of the word "obvious": easy to see or understand, plain, evident. With that definition you begin to see why an obvious strategy is so powerful. It's simple, easy to understand and evident. That's why it works so well.

Interestingly, when presented with a simple, obvious strategy, many clients are not impressed. They are often looking for some clever, not-so-obvious idea.

New Marketing Defined

Get a dictionary and look up the word media. It will contain several different definitions, but this is the meaning that, as a marketer, you will probably be most comfortable with - media, n. : The main means of mass communication, esp. newspapers, radio, and television, regarded collectively.

This is what marketers mean, and have always meant, by the concept of media. It is the classic agglomeration of channels that they consider, plan, buy and evaluate in order to communicate their messages.

In recent years, many marketers have spoken of the media mix or medianeutrality, implying that they no longer prioritise any one channel over the others in their campaigns. Most marketers have added interactive, too, because that is the modern thing to do. But, generally speaking, their definition of media fits nicely with the one the dictionaries have offered us for the past 100 years.

Building an Emotional Connection

 
To achieve brand insistence the consumer must trust your brand and feel an emotional connection to it. People become emotionally connected to a brand for a number of reasons:

•    The brand stands for something important to them.
•    The brand is intense and vibrant.  It connects with people on multiple levels across several senses.
•    The brand is unique.
•    The brand is admirable.
•    The brand consistently interacts with them.  It never disappoints them.
•    The brand makes them feel good.

There are many innovative ways to achieve this emotional connection – from advertising and the quality of front line consumer contact to consumer membership organizations and company-sponsored consumer events.

It is especially important to ensure that all of your employees with front line customer contact are Boy Scouts –that is, that they are trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind and cheerful.  Add to that list empathetic, good listeners and reassuring.  Accomplish this by establishing the appropriate hiring criteria, training and organization culture.  Remember, good service is all about creating positive feelings, treating people well and solving people’s problems.

Ultimately, emotional connection will come from positive shared experiences with the brand over time.  While this trust is built over time, offering an unconditional guarantee is a quick way to reduce the risk of a new unknown brand and to generate some minimum level of trust immediately.

BrandQuote - April 12

"Creative people often resist positioning thinking because they believe it restricts their creativity. And it does. But creativity isn't the objective in the '70s. Even "communications" itself isn't the objective.

The name of the marketing game in the '70s is "positioning." And only the better players will survive."

                                     - Jack Trout & Al Ries, Circa 1973

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

From Urban Legend to Brand

Can you name the iconic luxury brand that began life as an urban legend and only later became a reality?

The answer is the American Express Centurion card or, to use its more colloquial title, the Black Amex. During the 90s, a rumour spread about a fabled black Amex card that had an unlimited credit limit and was available only to an ultra-rich, uber-exclusive membership. The rumour became so prevalent and powerful that American Express eventually decided to capitalise on it. In 1999, it launched the Centurion card, by invitation only, to its highest-spending and biggest-earning customers.

To qualify for the Black Amex, customers must spend about £100,000 a year on their existing Amex, have a perfect credit record and travel extensively. If the member is offered the card and agrees to pay the annual £650 fee, they receive the titanium card in a mahogany box.

The additional benefits of the Black Amex are almost as legendary as the card itself. Aside from an unlimited credit limit, cardholders can enjoy a complimentary business-class ticket for their partner whenever they fly, a personal 24-hour concierge service, free personal shoppers in many of the world's major department stores and additional free nights of accommodation at top hotels - simply by paying with their cool black card.