Branding Strategy Insider

Branding Retirement Communities

Retirement communities have been springing up across the U.S. for the past two decades. According to the National Care Planning Council, “The NIC National Supply Estimate of Seniors Housing & Care Properties enumerated a total of 46,131 seniors housing properties with supportive services in the U.S. with a capacity to hold more than 3.4 million seniors as of 1999-2000. Of these 46,131 properties (3,411,891 beds), 50% were assisted living communities, 34% were nursing facilities, 7% were in dependent living communities, 4% were continuing care retirement communities (CCRCs), and 5% offered a combination of property types. Seniors apartments (that is, seniors housing properties without supportive services) were estimated at 11,726 properties and 821,173 units.”

A continuing care retirement community (CCRC) is a housing community that provides different levels of care based on what each resident needs over time. This is sometimes called "life care" and can range from independent living in an apartment to assisted living to full-time care in a nursing home. Residents move from one setting to another based on their needs but continue to live as part of the community.

Retirement communities offer products and services ranging from houses, town homes, apartments, condominiums, fitness centers, swimming pools, bowling alleys, golf courses, fishing ponds, hiking paths and restaurants to financial advisors, barber shops, beauty salons, transportation services, shopping excursions, concerts, movies, physical therapy and hospice services. They also offer aging in place (or home care) services such as yard care services, cleaning services, private duty nurses, traveling libraries and meals on wheels.

These communities vary quite widely regarding major services offered (independent living, assisted living, skilled nursing, etc.), payment plans/options (entrance fee/monthly payments, rental, equity/ownership, etc.), amenities offered and number of units. Some (usually older communities) are organized more institutionally, while others (usually newer communities) are organized more residentially or socially. Some communities focus more on “active living,” while others more on assisted living. Some have a special focus on the development of body, mind and spirit.

From my experience, these are some of the branding issues most often encountered by retirement communities:

Mistaking People For Brands

Building brands a hundred years ago was hard work. Back then, consumers were uncomfortable with the idea of identifying with products and companies.

As a result, early pioneers of consumer branding often created a fictional identity to personify the brand to make it easier for consumers to relate to them.

In 1921, for example, US food giant General Mills invented Betty Crocker as the personification of many of its brands. It created a kitchen, a portrait, even a signature for its all-American homemaker. It was a strategy many brands adopted. Consumers were encouraged to form relationships with fictional characters from Aunt Gemima, the African-American face of pancake mix, to the Marlboro Man. In so doing, they also formed relationships with the brands that sponsored them.

As consumer culture evolved, the vocabulary of branding became increasingly anthropomorphic. Consumers 'adopted' brands, built brand 'relationships' and eventually became brand 'loyal'. Words once reserved for personal relationships were increasingly applied to material goods. Consumers grew adept at identifying directly with brands.

Recently, we have entered a third stage in this process. Not only are consumers comfortable relating to brands, they have now begun to use the language of branding to help them relate to themselves and to others.

Marketer Essentials: Hierarchy Of Effects

The first year of study for a PhD in Marketing is a confusing affair.

I vividly remember long days spent at Lancaster trying to decode the journals of marketing with the creeping sensation that I may have bitten off more than I could chew.

The first theoretical model I fully understood was the Hierarchy of Effects.

It was a simple model that had been around since the 30s, but long before I got to grips with the Elaboration Likelihood Model or Existential Phenomenology (don't ask), it provided my first moment of academic clarity.

More than a decade since the completion of my PhD most of the arcane theories that underpinned my thesis have faded from memory. The Hierarchy of Effects, however, stays with me - partly because it was my first, but also because it is still the most useful.

Many marketers know the Hierarchy of Effects, but usually by a different name. Some call it AIDA, others the demand chain, still more the purchase funnel. Whatever the name, it invariably begins with the total potential market for your brand. This pool of potential customers then progress through a series of stages that can include awareness, preference, purchase and, hopefully, loyalty.

It's a hierarchy because we lose people as they move through the sequence.

And it's a hierarchy of effects because at each stage marketers must achieve different communication goals. They might be encouraging trial, rewarding loyalty, or communicating brand associations, depending on the stage the target customer has reached.

Building Emotional Connections with Research

 
The most compelling brands usually connect with consumers at an emotional level. Their benefits are often experiential, emotional or self-expressive.  Certain types of research can help marketers understand which benefits will have the greatest emotional impact.

Following are some of the types of research that one could use to identify these sources of emotional connection:

Laddering – this helps one understand the following links: product or service features and attributes → functional benefits → emotional benefits → underlying consumer attitudes and values →  self-image → self esteem (“I feel good about myself.”). The researcher leads the research participant from brand or product features and attributes to self-esteem through a series of “why” questions. The most powerful levels at which to communicate with the consumer are at the emotional benefit, attitudes/values and self-image levels.

Projective techniques – these help the marketer uncover brand associations that the average person cannot or will not articulate unless asked indirectly. Typical projective techniques include:

o    Sorting (into two piles: “This is the brand,” and “This isn’t the brand” or “This is the brand’s consumer” and “This isn’t the brand’s consumer”) – can be done with the products themselves, images, colors, flavors, textures, sounds, etc.
o    Analogies, including “If the brand were an animal, what kind of animal would it be and why?” or “If the brand were a car, what kind of car would it be and why?”

How to Fix the Advertising Industry

The press is abuzz with stories about big companies moving dollars out of traditional advertising media and into product placements and other newer marketing methods. One expert after another is predicting that the ad industry as we know it has lost its way and is in decline. Stories about TiVo, buzz and the Internet are all the rage. But before everyone packs up their resumes and jumps ship, I think it's time for a more reasoned view of things--or at least one that gets us away from all of the negative hype and the doom and gloom. Let's start with what should be the role of the advertising agency.

Traditionally, the agency's role is to be the objective "outsider." The agency counsels the client on how to best sell their products or services to their marketplace, how to position the brand vis-a-vis the competition, and how to verbalize their message with that "reason to buy." Candor and honesty were always the hallmarks of a good agency/client relationship, as agencies played a major role in developing strategy for their clients.

A true story is in order here: Many years ago, a senior account supervisor was reminiscing to me about the old days in the business. He recounted a meeting in a hotel where the CEO of the client and the head of the agency were lying in bed together discussing strategy. The account supervisor said to me, "Jack, the industry problem is that we're not in bed with the CEOs anymore."

He was right. As the years have rolled by, I've seen less and less of that kind of relationship. Agencies have backed off on pushing strategy, as clients became more assertive in this regard. Instead, agencies retreated to creativity, emotion or humor as their contributions to the brand. The net result: Today, a lot of advertising lacks that reason to buy. Too many people looked at the advertisement and said, "What are they trying to sell? It's no wonder clients are beginning to question traditional advertising's usefulness. As Pogo would say about the ad business, "We have met the enemy and he is us."

Step One: Get Back To Strategy

BrandQuote - June 15

“An organization can only ‘walk the talk' when its managers deliberately shape its internal reality to align with its brand promise…(the brand's) values must be internalized by the organization, shaping its instinctive attitudes, behaviours, priorities, etc.”

Alan Mitchell, “Out of the Shadows” Journal of Marketing Management 15, No. 1-3, January-April 1999: 25-42

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

The Brand Leadership Workshop

Brand education workshops and seminars are a core offering of The Blake Project. Today we're pleased to announce a new, robust workshop with a focus on brand leadership.What does it mean to be a leading brand? What are the benefits of brand leadership? How do brands come to be leaders in their categories? Learn the answers to these questions and many others by studying some of the world’s most successful brands. And then apply what you have learned to your own brands.

Workshop Outline

Module 1: Measures of brand leadership

Measures of brand leadership
•    Position in consideration set
•    Price insensitivity/price premium
•    Customer loyalty
•    Brand asset value
•    Buzz quotient
•    Market share
•    And more…

Module 2: The five drivers of customer brand insistence

The five drivers of customer brand insistence (with brand examples)
•    Awareness
o    McDonalds
o    AOL
o    Amazon.com
•    Relevant Differentiation
o    iPod
o    Toyota Prius
o    bp
•    Value
o    Ikea
o    Hyundai
o    Honda
o    Amazon.com
o    eBay
•    Accessibility
o    Coca-Cola
o    HSBC
o    KFC
•    Emotional Connection
o    Hallmark Cards
o    Harvard

Module 3: The top ten brand differentiators

iPhone Strategy: No Longer A Grey Area

When it was launched in the US in 2007, the iPhone was locked into the AT&T network. The only way to own one was by signing a contract with the carrier. The deal allowed AT&T exclusive rights to the handset and ensured that Apple could maintain premium prices and claim an unprecedented 15% of the operator's revenues from each user. Apple repeated the arrangement with O2 in the UK and Orange in France.

But this ground-breaking strategy also created the perfect conditions for a parallel or 'grey' market. This middle ground, between a brand's official 'white' sales channels and the clearly illegal black market in counterfeit or stolen goods, offers genuine products through non-official channels.

Within hours of launch, the internet was awash with offers of unlocked iPhones that would work with any SIM. It is estimated that a quarter of the 5m iPhones sold to date have been through the grey market – more than four times the number officially sold in Europe. But it's not surprising when you review the factors that turned the iPhone into the perfect grey-market product.

First there was Apple's attempt to maintain exclusivity. Using a single operator in each market ensured maximum control of the offer to the consumer, but it also increased the potential for grey-market activity. The more control a company tries to exert over the way its brand is retailed, the more likely grey markets are to emerge.

Brand Positioning: Remember This

What seven concepts are critical to positioning?

   1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
   2. Differentiation
   3. Competition
   4. Specialization
   5. Simplicity
   6. Leadership
   7. Reality

To sell concepts, products and services, you have to understand how the mind works:

   1. The mind is a limited container.
   2. The mind creates "product ladders" for each category (cars, toothpaste, accounting services, hamburgers, etc.) There is always a top rung and a bottom rung in each category.
   3. The mind can only remember seven items in a high interest category. Most people remember only two or three items in a category.
   4. On the product ladder, Positions One and Position Two typically account for more than 60 per cent of the sales in that category. In other words, Positions Three, Four and Subsequent are not profitable.
   5. The mind hates complexity. To the mind, complexity equals confusion. People don’t have time to figure out confusion.
   6. The best way to enter the mind is to OVER-SIMPLIFY the message.
   7. The most powerful positioning is to reduce your message to one simple and easily understood word.
   8. Minds are insecure. Most people buy what others buy: this is the "herd mentality."
   9. Minds don’t change—easily.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Brand Positioning: Key Questions

To apply positioning thinking to your own company's situation, here are six key questions to ask yourself:

1. What position, if any do we already own in the prospect's mind?

Get the answer to this question from the marketplace, not the marketing manager. If this requires a few dollars for research, so be it. Spend the money. It's better to know exactly what you're up against now than to discover it later when nothing can be done about it.

2. What position do we want to own?

Here is where you bring out your crystal ball and try to figure out the best position to own from a long-term point of view.

3. What companies must be outgunned if we are to establish that position?

If your proposed position calls for a head-to-head approach against a marketing leader, forget it. It's better to go around an obstacle rather than over it. Back up. Try to select a position that no one else has a firm grip on.

4. Do we have enough marketing money to occupy and hold the position?

A big obstacle to successful positioning is attempting to achieve the impossible. It takes money to build a share of mind. It takes money to establish a position. It takes money to hold a position once you've established it.

The noise level today is fierce. There are just too many "me-too" products and too many "me-too" companies vying for the mind of the prospect. Getting noticed is getting tougher.