Branding Strategy Insider

Building A Category Of One Brand

“Category of One” brands tend to be exceptionally successful.  A brand that finds itself in a crowded market with too many competitors and too few viable positions would do well to reframe its business so that it becomes a “category of one” brand within the new frame of reference. So rather than being one of many brands in the consideration set with few meaningful points of difference, the brand becomes the only alternative within a new category. Many brands have successfully accomplished this.

The Strong Museum expanded significantly, becoming the third largest children’s museum in the world and the second largest in the USA. But rather then claim being number two or three in children’s museums, it decided to preemptively name itself the Strong National Museum of Play, becoming the only choice in the new category of play. More recently the brand renamed itself simply “The Strong” and created the following sub-brands: National Museum of Play, International Center for the History of Electronic Games, National Toy Hall of Fame and Brian Sutton-Smith Library & Archives of Play. The Strong has achieved an international reputation as the expert in play.

Top Ten Branding Keys For 2011

 
1. Learn everything about your customers. Understand them at a deep level. Know what motivates them. Know what they aspire to and what they fear.

2. Stand for something important to your customers. Let them know that you share their values.

3. Interact with your customers as if they were your partners. Respect them. Listen to them. Collaborate with them. Co-create new products and services with them.

4. Grow with your current customers. Identify how you can meet more and more of their needs. It is much less expensive to sell a current customer one more thing than it is to gain a new customer.

5. Innovate. Don’t rest on your laurels. Anticipate your customers’ needs. Give them something that they would really appreciate but perhaps had never conceived of before.

10 Considerations For Crafting Place Branding RFPs

We have received and responded to hundreds of Request For Proposals over the years. Many of those RFP’s have come from municipalities and that are interested in community branding and destination marketing. It has been my observation that municipalities in general are less certain about what they are seeking and how to ask for it.

Here is a guide for municipalities that are seeking branding help.

1. DIFFERENT TYPES OF MARKETING SERVICES FIRMS: Know that there are significant differences between marketing research firms, brand consultancies, brand identity firms and ad agencies. Each has a different focus and each has different skill sets. There have been more than a few Place Branding RFPs in which we were competing against all of those firms at once. This made us much less certain about what the municipality was seeking and how they would know whether they got what they needed.

• Marketing research firms specialize in helping their clients gain customer, competitor and marketplace insight. At a minimum, brand consultancies help their clients position their brands and craft brand strategy. They may possess brand research and brand identity capabilities as well. Brand identity firms focus on creating brand identity (names, logos, taglines, etc.). They may also have brand strategy capabilities. Ad agencies tend to focus on developing integrated marketing campaigns, though some may specialize in digital media, direct marketing, print ads, media and other specific marketing vehicles. Many ad agencies have some brand strategy capabilities but usually not nearly to the degree that brand consultancies do. The best question to ask to understand an organization’s capabilities is “What percentage of your staff is focused on each of the following: marketing research, brand strategy formulation, brand plan development, copy writing, creative development, media planning/buying and account management?”

2. PRIORITIZE TARGET AUDIENCES: Determine the order of priority of your target audiences, including the rationale for that priority. Target audiences to consider are current and potential residents, current and potential businesses, tourists/visitors and meeting, convention and event planners.

3. COMMUNICATE YOUR BUDGET: Let the companies bidding on the branding project know what your budget is. We have bid on some projects only to find out that the municipalities only had a fraction of the resources required to accomplish what they had hoped to accomplish. We would have approached the proposals much differently if we had known the budgets up front.

Brands Must Stand For Something

Brands that stand for something connect with customers on an emotional level. Does your brand scream status? Does it value generosity? Is it elegant and refined? Does it care about the environment? Is it a rugged brand? Does it support family values? Does it love the outdoors? Does it cater to children? Is it open minded and progressive? Is it a brand for achievers? Does it believe in survival of the fittest? Does it scream creativity? Is it non-conventional? Is it rebellious? Is it fun loving? Is it naughty? Or is it nice? 

People connect emotionally with brands that stand for things that are important to them. They become loyal to those brands and they become advocates for those brands. They also often use those brands as a way to say, “This is what I stand for.” That is, people use brands to express themselves. 

Organizations that work with their customers to further common values become almost like trusted friends to those customers. 

We work with brands to help them identify their values and their personalities and their character and their archetypes. For instance, a brand whose archetype is Healer heals or attempts to heal or restore others to full health. A brand whose archetype is Achiever is driven by accomplishment, while one whose archetype is Guide is driven by helping others navigate through obstacles to particular destinations. Archetypes identify the underlying motivations of the organization. 

It is well worth the time and effort to determine what your organization stands for, what it values, how it behaves and what motivates it to behave in those ways.  Then it is important to systematically reinforce and communicate those values inside and outside of the organization.

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Domain Naming Reaches New Heights

It’s a boom time for domain names as more people and more marketers flock to the Internet. Domain names have grown 7% in one year, with more than 41,000 new ones added each day, on average, last quarter. Online ad revenue in the U.S. is expected to reach $25 billion this year, according to reports from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

So we asked Pat Kane, Assistant General Manager for Naming Services at VeriSign, Inc., for the latest information on the boom. VeriSign with 2,200 employees worldwide, is the global registry operator for .com and .net, and is the leading provider of Internet infrastructure services.

With the company since 1999, Pat Kane is responsible for product development, marketing and management for VeriSign’s Naming Services business unit that includes all Top-Level Domains (TLDs) operated by VeriSign under contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as well as emerging domain name spaces.

Q: Pat, we understand domain names around the world have now passed a milestone -- the 200 million mark.

Correct. According to our latest quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, the third quarter of 2010 closed with a global base of almost 202 million domain name registrations across all TLDs.

Brand Strategy Decision: Masterbrand or Sub-brand?

We are happy to answer marketing questions of all types here on Branding Strategy Insider. Today, Heather, a Marketer in Detroit, Michigan asks… 

"Hi Brad and Derrick-

I'm a new reader of Branding Strategy Insider, and I have a branding question for you.  I just began working as a marketing manager at an automotive aftermarket company. There are two main consumer segments:  a) truck/SUV owners (age 35-65) who use our product to enhance ride and performance  b) 18-34 year old men who buy our product because it's functional but it's more of an "image" product.  The first group very much views our product as a product/solution purchase, ie, very functional.  The second group buys our product as more of an image purchase.  Over the long term, as the buyers in group B become older, we want to keep them in our corporate family and have them buy our products for their trucks/SUVs.

So the question becomes:

1) Do we keep one master brand (with different consumer segments), and just change the way we talk to each group?  From a master brand perspective, I'm thinking we position ourselves in a way to reflect our product quality.  That's a competitive advantage and something that's important to both segments. One concern is how to talk with these separate consumer groups via social media.  If we had a master brand (option 1), we could have separate social media efforts for each segment perhaps (ie, different Facebook groups for each segment).  We run the risk of possibly offending consumer group A with the way that the consumer group B is marketed to (much more edgy)

2)  Or do we have two separate brands? 

3)  Or do we have a separate sub-brand for group B? (ie, Dockers by Levis)  This group could have its own identity, positioning, website and social media."

Building A University Brand

At least two universities are on to something big in their brand positioning: my alma mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and American University. Both focus on their students’ and prospective students’ aspirations.

Rensselaer chose the tagline, “why not change the world?^SM” as its service mark in the late 1990s.  The tagline reflects the university’s intention to market itself as a place where people can change the world through technological innovation. It uses as its proof points alumni who have invented life changing things – microprocessor, television, pocket calculator, email, etc. It also cites its environment of interdisciplinary innovation, innovative pedagogical techniques and extensive support of student entrepreneurship. The tagline has attitude and builds confidence. Most importantly, it attracts students and faculty members that want to change the world and increases alumni pride in the school. 

American University recently announced its intent to own the category of educating “Wonks.” Their new campaign states “When you know something backward and forward, you’re a wonk. It’s a term Washington insiders use to describe their experts, people who are focused on creating change—people like American University’s students, faculty, staff, and alumni.” Again, this is an aspirational term and appeals to students and faculty members alike.  It also makes a strong reference to its location in the midst of our nation’s capital and its politics and policy making.

Trust: Lifeblood Of Brands

Over the years, we have conducted brand equity measurement studies for hundreds of brands and over the years, we have also helped leadership teams position hundreds of brands. What is the number one quality that people look for in brands? – Trustworthiness. What is the number one quality that management teams want to build into their brands? – Trustworthiness.

A brand is nothing if not trustworthy. If your brand is not capable of consistently earning its customers’ trust over time, it is doomed to failure. A brand must be predictable. It must be dependable and reliable. It must deliver on its promises. It must be responsive to its customers’ requests. It must be transparent in its business practices. And it must not lie to its customers.

It is that simple. If your brand is not there, you have work to do. There is nothing more to say.

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop 

Influencing Your CEO To Support Brand Management

The number one reason branding projects fail is lack of CEO support. The number one reason they succeed is CEO support. If you are in charge of brand management for your organization and you have a CEO that is less than 100% supportive of brand management, here are some things you can do to help nudge him or her along:

• Send him or her articles/blog posts that talk about the value of the brand as an asset. Studies have shown that a significant portion of a company’s value (and stock price) is due to the strength of its brand. I talk about this in some detail in the Brand Equity Measurement chapter of my Brand Aid book.
• Bring Interbrand or Millward Brown representatives into your company to talk about their brand valuation approaches. Invite your CEO or members of his or her staff to that meeting.
• Initiate a brand management speakers’ series at your company. Invite chief marketing officers and brand managers from other companies to talk about the successes of their brand management practices. Invite all employees to these presentations.
• Ask your CEO how you and your brand management department can best help him or her achieve his or her highest priority objectives for the company.
• Let people in your organization know that strong brands have been shown to result in the following:

Brand Disasters of 2010

We are unfailing in our belief that brands should be the beneficiaries of their branding and marketing efforts, and see positive consumer behavior in the marketplace: Sales; Profitability - things like that.

Happily, we have metrics that provide a consumer's eye view of the categories in which brands compete and because those metrics are emotionally-based they are predictive of what will happen, good or bad, in the months ahead.

When it came to 2010's brand and marketing disasters, we reviewed the balance sheet and offer the following: 

1. BP

The brand fell from 1st to 7th (of 7) on the Brand Keys Customer Loyalty Index when the well exploded. UK's YouGov polls indicated no negative affects to the brand, while the financials suggest the brand has lost all of its value in one year. 

2. Toyota

The recalls - and attendant negative PR allegations that top execs knew, but failed to do anything - and liability suits resulted in a loss of nearly one quarter of the brand's value. 

3. Johnson & Johnson

Recalls can kill a brand, especially when you're talking about medicine for infants and children, having to shut down plants, and stop distribution of your biggest names. Harder to swallow is a brand hit of nearly 30%.