Branding Strategy Insider

Building Your Brand in Difficult Economic Times

Often, brand marketing budgets are the first to be cut in difficult economic times. This means you must increase the efficiency of your spend or suffer reduced brand awareness, preference and loyalty building. Assuming that your spend was already efficient, this means you will likely sacrifice brand equity building until the difficult economic times have passed.

There is something else that you can do in these times. You can create new brand proof points at each point of customer contact. The way to get there is through touchpoint management design. The Blake Project offer’s a one-day workshop in which the participants generate hundreds of ideas for bringing the brand to life at each point of customer contact. The workshop is highly facilitated with numerous ideation techniques interspersed with many creativity exercises. We follow it up with a culling process that identifies those ideas that are very powerful in reinforcing the brand’s promise but also quick, easy and inexpensive to implement. That is, the final output is a handful of ideas (or more) that deliver a high return on investment (ROI).

While marketing communications, if effective, promise relevant differentiated benefits on behalf of the brand, the output of the customer touchpoint design workshop helps your brand actually deliver on its promise at each point of customer contact.  This is important not only in difficult economic times, but all of the time.

Obama, McCain: Political Brand Analysis Results

Brands are positioned in the minds of their target audiences. While brand managers (in this case, political strategists) can work hard to influence how those brands (theirs and their competitor’s) are perceived, ultimately brands are what the target audiences think they are. The most important benefits for a brand to “own” are those that are extremely compelling to their target audiences, especially if the brand in question (in this case, a presidential candidate) can uniquely own those benefits. With this in mind, we created a survey to understand what was most important to American citizens when selecting a president. We then asked how well John McCain and Barack Obama delivered against these benefits. By comparing the most compelling benefits to the perception of each presidential candidate we are able to determine who is best positioned to be elected president.

Between October 28 and October 31, we surveyed readers here on Branding Strategy Insider regarding the McCain and Obama brands. 100 people responded to the survey. Those people represent 29 states and DC, with a heavier mix from NY, CA and FL. 59.6% were male, while 40.4% were female. Ages ranged from 18 years old to 74 years old. 61.2% were married. The average household income skewed high. The mode was $100,000-$149,999. Political party registration was as follows: 35.4% Democratic, 21.2% Republican, 21.2% none, 18.2% Independent, 4% other. Given the respondent mix and the ending sample size, the data is directional but not projectable.

We explored 27 personality attributes and 35 platform issues. The personality attributes included those most often associated with strong brands (trustworthy, reliable, etc.) and those most often used by the candidates in describing themselves and each other. The 35 platform issues were taken from the platforms of the five largest political parties.

We first wanted to understand which personality attributes and platform issues were the most desired in selecting a president. They are as follows: (Please note: you can click to enlarge all tables)

Related to that, we wanted to understand the least desirable attributes. They are as follows:

Overcoming Common Brand Problems - 40

As we round out our list of the 40 Most Common Brand Problems we see one that the human resources department is called on to avoid...

Common Brand Problem Number 40: Since branding has become widely known and embraced, I increasingly encounter people who can talk the talk, follow the steps in the brand management process and generally take a number of actions on behalf of the brand. What I often find missing though is a true deep-down understanding of what makes the customer tick and a passion for exceeding customer expectations in unique and compelling ways. That is, I see allot of people going through the motions without the depth of insight and the passion for excellence and differentiation. People often think that a new logo, tagline and brand style guide will “do the trick.” Usually, these are not based on deep customer insight and a carefully crafted compelling point of difference. And just as often, business managers are not willing or able to make the changes necessary to actually interact with the customer differently based upon the new brand promise.

Analysis: The art and science of branding is much more difficult than it first appears to be. While many people are labeled brand managers, only a small fraction of them have what it takes to really build strong brands: the research tool set, the deep understanding of human motivation, the intuition, the analytical rigor and the driving passion and savvy to influence the entire organization. Organizations should be much more careful in selecting their brand managers. Good ones are very hard to find and worth every penny you pay them. Mediocre ones are ubiquitous and often not worth the price.

Key Point: I would recommend behavioral interviewing as one of the most effective ways to assess skills and abilities. Ask the brand manager candidates to walk you through specific case studies from their past work experiences. Probe on challenges and how they overcame them, consumer insights that led to breakthroughs, significant accomplishments and stories of how they persuaded others to join them in championing the brand.

Click here to explore the other 39 most common brand problems in our countdown.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

12 Causes of Bad Brand Advertising

The following will likely result in bad brand advertising:

1.    Design by committee
2.   Opinionated reviewers and approvers who don’t understand marketing
3.    Writing ads that appeal to you rather than the target consumer
4.    Using flowery language that sounds good but that means nothing.  (This is a common ailment of neophyte copywriters.  Substance is good.  Using an economy of words is good.  Simple, persuasive copy is good.  Fluff and filler are bad.)
5.   Squeezing as many features and benefits into the ad as possible (unsophisticated advertising clients often request this)
6.    Revising an emotional or metaphorical ad to make it more literal (another common ailment of unsophisticated advertising clients)
7.    Focusing on reach versus frequency.
8.    Assuming that business-to-business advertising is significantly different from consumer advertising (“It needs to be factual and informative, not emotional.”).  Don’t forget, business decision-makers are people too.  And people are ruled as much by their hearts as by their heads.  Harding’s 1996 study of buyers in ten corporations demonstrated that corporate buyers overwhelmingly rely on personal and emotional reasons over rational ones in their purchase choice.
9.    Jingles.  Unless they are very, very good (and most are not very, very good), they will distract from the brand message. 
10.    Celebrity endorsements tend not to be believable
11.    Making claims that your brand can’t support

And, while this may not result in bad advertising, for consistency’s sake, the following is not a good idea:
12.    A new marketing manager, feeling the need to “make his or her mark” on the brand, hires a new advertising agency and creates a totally new advertising campaign (whether the old campaign was working or not)

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Successful Advertising Approaches

Today's topic - the many keys to successful advertising based on research for my book Brand Aid.

Effective general ad techniques:

•    A good ad will always dramatize your brand’s most important benefit.
•    Simpler ads are usually more powerful. 
•    Create copy in smaller chunks – sentences, paragraphs, etc.   
•    Natural and “real life” writing or dialog
•    Subtly tapping into peoples’ fears and anxieties

Here are some print advertising techniques that have proven to be effective:

•    Try to evoke the reader’s curiosity. Begin by asking a provocative question and/or feature an image that piques the reader’s curiosity.
•    Put quotes around your headlines.
•    Romance/dramatize your product or service.
•    Try to trigger multiple senses – use words that help people feel, hear, smell and taste your product
•    Tell a story.
•    Communicate “news.”
•    Provide information that is useful to the reader.
•    Always write in the present tense.
•    Be as specific as possible.
•    Include customer testimonials (they should seem natural, not scripted or polished).
•    Know how readers read (from right to left top to bottom in the U.S.) and place your headlines, illustrations, captions and copy accordingly.
•    Use white space to focus the reader’s attention on something important
•    In his book Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams indicates that savvy photographers and graphic artists have known for some time that there is a spot on a piece of artwork to which the eye is irresistibly drawn, roughly between the middle and upper right corner of the artwork.
•    Use words that sell: at last, now, new, introducing, announcing, finally, limited, save, free, win, easy, guarantee, breakthrough, wanted, etc.  (Keep in mind that as consumers become more sophisticated and savvy, there may be instances where these words might be cliché or overused and, thus, may not be as effective.)

Evaluating Print Advertising Effectiveness

When evaluating the potential effectiveness of different print campaign ideas, I use the following questions:

•    Does the headline immediately “grab” the reader? (In advertising guru David Ogilvy’s book Ogilvy on Advertising, Ogilvy states that five times as many people read headlines as read body copy.)  Ideally, the headline is nine words or less.
•    Does the headline promise an important benefit? (Ogilvy also states in Ogilvy on Advertising that ads with headlines that promise benefits are read by four times more people than those that don’t.)
•    Is the body copy long enough to provide the reader with useful information and ample proof points for your brand’s promise?  Long copy is more effective than short copy.  This is particularly true for business-to-business advertising.  (Alternatively, Roper Starch Worldwide, which maintains a database of more than 2,000,000 print ads, has found that excessive copy reduces the effectiveness of ads and recommends keeping ad copy to 50 words or less. With whole generations having now grown up on “sound bytes” of information, some cohort groups will respond better to shorter copy.)
•    Increasing white space around the ad or the headline increases the ad’s effectiveness.

Print Advertising offers several benefits: good reach and frequency, can handle complicated propositions, reaches consumers in a receptive context and can be very targeted.

In the days ahead I will share my thoughts on other advertising vehicles here on BSI.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Specifying Your Marketing Objective

A key step in advertising development is specifying the marketing objective for the advertising. That is, what do you want the advertising to achieve?  Do you want it to increase brand awareness, attract new customers, increase brand loyalty, encourage add-on purchases, motivate people to switch from competitive brands to your brand, increase frequency of use, reinforce ongoing use, etc.?

As an example, the marketing objective for Hallmark’s brand insistence advertising campaign in the mid 90’s was very simple and tactical: to get consumers to flip the card over and look for the brand name on the back cover.

Make sure the objective is quantifiable and measurable.

During your brand positioning work, you should have developed the brand promise including identification of the brand’s relevant differentiating benefit.  Next, augment the brand promise with proof points or reasons to believe. 

Proof points may include the following:

•    Product features and attributes (including the design itself or its formula or ingredients)
•    Performance features, statistics and research results
•    Performance guarantees
•    Service claims
•    Side-by-side comparisons
•    Third party endorsements

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Advertising Rules of Thumb

•    Try to budget between 8 and 12% of revenues on advertising and other marketing activities.  (This obviously varies significantly by company and industry.  An average company spends approximately 6% of sales on advertising alone.  Advertising expenditures for computer and office equipment are as low as .09% versus 16.8% for toys, dolls, and games. [Source: Paul A. Scipione, “Too Much or Too Little? Public Perceptions of Advertising Expenditures” Journal of Advertising Research 24, 6 December 1984/January 1985: 23-26.] Industrial companies tend to spend less on advertising (1% to 5% typically) than consumer products companies.)
•    You should spend more on advertising and marketing if the following conditions exist:
•    You are building a new brand
•    You are launching a new product or service
•    Your product offering is large and complex
•    You charge premium prices
•    You sell products and services in a “low involvement” category (typically low priced items for which there is little risk of failure)
•    You are selling commodity products (advertising will be the primary differentiator)
•    Spend approximately $1 on proactive publicity for every $10 you spend on advertising.  (PR budgets are 1% of a company’s revenues on average. )  It will multiply the effectiveness of your advertising. (Advertising in trade magazines also gives you a relationship with the publications, alerts you to editorial opportunities, and sometimes will impact your brand’s presence in articles.)
•    Production costs are usually 10% of the media buy.
•    Know what your brand’s “share of voice” is – or the amount of advertising (or consumer communication) dollars your company spends compared to competitors for a given product category.  It is a good rough measure, despite its flaws that include:   
•    its focus on traditional advertising spending only
•    competitors are usually in different portfolios of businesses and it is difficult to break the spending out for the same categories across all competitors

The Brand Identity Checklist

What will our checklist reveal about your brand identity standards and systems? Simply answer yes or no to the following:

•    As St. James Associates says, some brands are “all symbols but no soul.”  First and foremost, does your brand have a soul?               
•    Is your brand’s name proprietary?  Does it differentiate the brand instead of just describing its products and services?               
•    Is your brand’s name suggestive of a key differentiating benefit, but not too narrow so as to decrease the brand’s ability to claim new benefits in the future?               
•    Do consumers like your brand’s name? Is it memorable?               
•    Do you avoid generic sub-brand names?               
•    Do you have comprehensive brand identity standards and systems that address all uses of your brand’s identity elements?               
•    Are those standards and systems actively in use?               
•    Are they available in manuals, on CDs, and through your Intranet?               
•    Are all business units and sub-brands subject to those standards, with none outside the jurisdiction of the standards?               
•    At a minimum, does the system include standards for the visual identifier, color, typography, backgrounds, contrast, staging area, relative size, positioning, key applications, and unacceptable uses?   

Media Planning Insight

It is best to leave media planning to media planning professionals. The following are some of the things that they will consider when they develop a media plan for you:

•    Reach (percentage of people – or target audience – exposed)
•    Frequency (number of times, on average, a person is exposed)
•    Impressions (the number of times the target market comes in contact with a media vehicle)
•    CPM (cost per thousand exposures) – measures efficiency
•    CPMTM (cost per thousand target market exposures) – measures effective efficiency
•    Identifying the most appropriate media vehicles (audience fit with target market, environmental fit with advertising message)
•    For instance, websites and trade shows provide a high capacity to process information when customer information needs are high, while short TV spots are best used when information processing needs are lower.
•    Some media are more appropriate when the purchase decision is based primarily on facts while others are more appropriate when feelings and emotions are the key influencers.
•    Evaluating vehicle effectiveness (clutter, distractions)
•    Adjusting potential exposures to actual exposures (for television, it has been found to vary from 50% to 70%)
•    Developing a media strategy and schedule that maximizes advertising response (against the advertising objective)

When we conducted laddering* research at Hallmark, we discovered that most product and brand benefits ultimately supported the underlying need to preserve self-esteem. Different benefits may have followed different paths to that end, but ultimately, the need that they fulfilled was the same fundamental one – to preserve self-esteem. Some emotional end benefits that we explored: