Branding Strategy Insider

Formula For The Right Brand Spokesperson

L'Oreal announced a new addition to their roster of celebrity spokespeople this week, signing actress Julianna Margulies as a new ambassador and celebrity face for the brand. Ms. Margulies currently stars in the critically acclaimed TV series "The Good Wife," for which she won a Golden Globe and SAG award for her portrayal of a loyal yetbetrayed wife of a politician. 

Does it surprise you that L'Oreal (and most other beauty brands (both luxury and mass merchandiser) went the expected route and found a high-profile beauty to front for their brand? We weren't. But just because it's predictable doesn't mean it isn't practicable, and there are two basic ways a celebrity can positively affect a brand. 

The first is by creating what might be called "borrowed equity," when the celebrity causes more attention to the brand than otherwise might be the case, an approach usually used when a brand is seeking high levels of awareness. The second is when the spokesperson association actually increases the brand's equity that is, when the values inherent in the spokesperson significantly reinforce brand values. If successful, the brand is then seen to better meet, and can even exceed, expectations consumers dream about for the ideal in the category.

Marketing Brands To Women

It's an implicit equation that has hamstrung Western civilization for at least 300 years, and harmed the effectiveness of advertising equally. I'm referring to the equation that judges rationality as superior to emotions, with the former being the cherished fiefdom of male executives at major companies and the latter the touchy-feely and not altogether important province of female consumers. But the breakthroughs in brain science over the past quarter century have laid that false duality to rest: we're all primarily emotional decision-makers, and since everybody feels before they think, objectivity is a myth and so is pure, disciplined rationality.

For ad agencies struggling to promote often undifferentiated offers, what a relief. The days of being on-message can now give way to a greater, truer reality. What's most important in 21st century marketing will to be on-emotion, meaning to create the right emotion at the right time, for the right audience, on behalf of the right positioning of a branded offer.

But even with this new freedom to follow their correct instincts (visuals and emotions win), the ad agencies have plenty of work of their own cut out for them. After all, as a law suit from the NAACP alleges, ad agencies have problems with diversity. For instance, as reported by Advertising Age of the 58 Super Bowl spots where the identity of the creative team could be affirmed, 92% of the creative directors were white males.

Here's some help for them in overcoming blind spots:

What Is A Brand?

Today, another request from the BSI Email Bag. Jon, a marketer from Baltimore, Maryland writes...

"Hi Brad and Derrick, I really enjoy reading Branding Strategy Insider, thanks for the resource. I have a question about the April 6, 2010 post "Brand Positioning And The Consumer Mind". I understand that the consumer owns the brand. However, I am a bit confused as to what a brand really is. Is a brand just one word in the mind of the consumer? What is your definition of a brand? What brand is a company such as Disney?"

Jon, thanks for your question(s). First to the definition of a brand. A brand is a personification of an organization or its products and services. In this way, a brand can stand for something. It can make promises to its target audiences. It can possess a specific character and a personality and it can create an emotional connection with its customers. Having said that, most people will only associate one or two things with any given brand. So, people will likely associate Clorox with bleach and Bayer with aspirin and Sunkist with citrus fruits and McDonald's with fast food. The key question of a brand's manager is, "Does that primary brand association in people's minds cause people to want to use our products or services?" Put another way, is it unique and purchase motivating? Or is it neutral? Or worse yet, is it negative? The purpose of brand positioning is to get people to primarily associate the one or two things that will most cause them to want to purchase and use your brand over competitive alternatives.

As or more important than making promises, brands should strive to deliver on those promises. They need to do that through their actions and the way they treat their customers.

Regarding the Disney brand, it stands for "fun family entertainment." Family is a code word for wholesome, something you could feel comfortable doing with your children or your grandparents. Disney is able to deliver this brand promise through movies. theme parks, cruises and other types of products. For Disney to maintain brand coherence, it must make sure that all of its products and services deliver on the promise of "fun family entertainment."

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop 

Top Ten Branding Mistakes

 
1.     Not being consistent in what the brand stands for. Often, a brand’s management does not have the discipline to stick to one message over time. The message changes frequently depending on the audience, the issue of the moment and what competitors are saying.

2.     Not standing for anything. Often, organizations grow through mergers and acquisitions. Sometimes, the acquired companies and brands have little in common.  They can vary significantly in quality and responsiveness and needs met. There is no common thread holding them together.

3.     Not delivering a good value for the price paid. I have worked with more than one brand whose managers have gotten greedy and increased prices while decreasing quality and service levels. This is not the formula for long-term success.

4.     The CEO just doesn’t get or support branding. I have interacted with CEOs that just don’t get branding. Some have said to me, “I don’t see why our brand has to be unique and differentiated if we produce quality products? Isn’t that enough?”

5.     Focusing on product features and attributes rather than customer benefits and shared values.  It is more powerful and sustainable for brands to connect with their customers at the benefit and values level. Attributes and features are less emotionally compelling and much easier for competitors to match and exceed.

Top 10 Brand Licensing Mistakes

                

I. Distorting reality

Licensors interested in licensing a category to a prospective licensee will ask for sales projections by region and by channel along with a sales plan. In trying to "win" the license, the prospective licensee will often provide the licensor with a "best case scenario" instead of a more realistic case. The licensee often ends up accepting sales targets they may not be able to achieve ultimately resulting in a breach of contract.

II. Miscalculating sales targets

Prospective licensees often try to secure multiple regions or channels. The licensee often has only one opportunity to sell the branded merchandise. If that falls through, the licensee fails to meet their sales and royalty targets and may request royalty relief. When the licensee is not prepared to demonstrate how they are maximizing their rights, not only will they not get the royalty relief, they may also be required to develop a plan on how they will exploit their license. The licensee may lose rights to certain channels or regions if they can not comply.

III. Creating unrealistic expectations

Licensees may not fully understand the true strength of the brand whose license they just acquired. The licensee may overestimate the power of the brand believing the brand alone will result in acquiring new clients or larger programs with existing clients. When new sales fail to happen, the licensee may feel like they got sold a bill of goods. A license works best when a great product is combined with a great brand to solve an unmet consumer need.

Rebranding The Asian Carp

 
Think of it as “Extreme Makeover, Aquatic Edition.” Asian carp, scorned as inedible and hunted down as vanquishers of native species, are being taste-tested under new names on menus from south to north.

The background: Asian carp were imported to the southern U.S. in the 1970s to suck up scum from catfish ponds. But they’ve become monsters in the eyes of many as they have migrated North. They can grow to 100 pounds, multiply like guppies, and tend to leap crazily out of the water, bruising and breaking boaters’ bones. 

The fish got a lot of attention once they migrated up the Mississippi River and broke through an electric barrier designed to keep them out of Lake Michigan. 

State and federal governments have doled out millions of dollars to various agencies to eradicate them. But too little attention has been given to a rebranding solution: Eating the Asian carp out of existence, or at least making a dent in the population.

▪      It began in Louisiana, where wildlife officials rolled out a promotion dubbing the fish the Silverfin, and enlisting chefs to create recipes for the tasty white meat of the bighead carp and silver carp, two dominant invaders. “A cross between scallops and crabmeat,” declared one seafood chef.

Questioning Brand Equity Measurement

I recently came across an interesting Q&A with Professor Byron Sharp (pictured above) from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. Byron was commenting on the validity, or lack thereof, of various brand equity measurement approaches: 

Interviewer: But you don’t like these brand tracking services ? 

Byron: There is an industry that provides special scores on brands, based on surveying customers.  These services mostly claim to be measures of things like brand loyalty or brand equity.  They usually have exotic names like commitment model, brand esteem, brand voltage, brand asset evaluator….Essentially they claim to be able to predict whether the brand is about to gain or lose market share. 

I think any claims made for these proprietary products should be subject to independent examination.  It’s the job of academics to do this testing. Some of the claims are so extraordinary, and so important that they deserve to be checked out. If they turn out to be true that would be fabulous. 

Interviewer: And do these proprietary brand health surveys, these metrics, work? 

Byron: Well that’s just the thing. No-one knows… 

Brand Management Success From Within

It's with no surprise that your ability to build a strong brand is greatly influenced by the decision makers around you. The answers to a few obvious questions are very revealing. Is your CEO the primary brand champion? Does your CFO understand the importance of investing in building the brand? Does the head of your Human Resources department support the effort of building the brand from the inside out? I hope you can say 'yes' to each of those. When we look at leading brands we find management teams that have fostered a culture of brand building where every employee understands their brands promise and are prepared to help deliver on it. Within this culture is a framework where specific roles and responsibilities are in place to ensure the brand management function is successful. It looks like this:

Key principles for a successful brand management function:

• The CEO should be the primary brand champion
• The CEO should designate a senior level person responsible for organization-wide, global brand management
• That person should have a brand identity manager report to him or her. The brand identity manager would chair a brand identity council responsible for managing the consistent and accurate identity of the brand across all uses. The council should be comprised of people throughout the enterprise who most often work with the brand’s identity.  That group is likely to include several people from marketing.  Over time, that group would become a self-policing brain trust for the brand’s identity.
• All employees should be educated and motivated to become brand champions. They all should be able to articulate the brand’s elevator speech at a minimum.

Brand Building And Fear

 
As astute marketers have known for some time, fear sells. People, in general, tend to be insecure about many things. They fear that they are not attractive to the opposite sex. They fear that they cannot perform as well as others sexually. They fear that they will be discovered to be incompetent. They fear that they are failures relative to their peers. They fear that their lives do not amount to much. They fear that they will be discovered to be frauds. They fear that they might lose their jobs. They fear that they will not have enough money to pay their bills. They fear that they will not have enough money on which to retire. They fear that they will not be successful in raising their children. They fear that their children will not do as well as they have done in life. They fear that they lack status compared to others. They fear that they will make a mistake or do something embarrassing. They fear that they will not be liked by others. They fear that they are aging. They fear that their country (and society in general) is going downhill. They fear that they will be the victims of crimes. They fear terrorism. They fear that they might get cancer or some other horrible disease. They fear a wrathful God. They fear death. And they even fear that they will be completely forgotten after their deaths. 

Wow, all of those fears make you want to stay safely snuggled up in your bed every morning. Maybe it would be best not to get out of bed at all. Clearly fear works at a very deep level, which is what makes it so effective in marketing.  It is easy to create a campaign that communicates one or more of the following ways for people to address their fears. If you buy our brand...

Top 10 Branding Mandates

  
A brand must... 

1. Stand for something. It should know its customers well and its values should align with its customers’ values. It should epitomize specific customer values so well that customers will want to use the brand as a way to express their values to the world. 

2. Strive to be unique in relevant ways. Forget about claiming to be the quality, service or innovation leader (all of which have been greatly overused). Be unique. Be different. Be unique and different in ways that really matter to customers.

3. Make promises and deliver on those promises. Yes, promise relevant differentiated benefits to your customers. But, even more importantly, consistently deliver on those promises at every point of customer contact. Consider designing brand promise proof points into every customer touch point. For even greater impact, consider creating new customer touch points.

4. Interact with its customers, not sell to them. With the advent of various technologies, including the Internet, customers are now in control. They will filter out anything that they do not find entertaining, interesting or informative. Interact with them as a friend would. Find ways to help them.

5. Constantly anticipate customer needs and innovate. Brands cannot rest on their laurels. Become the Apple within your category. Don’t be risk adverse. Take your category by storm. Leapfrog the competition through relevant innovation.