Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Strategy And The Paradox Of Different

In a world of ubiquitous choice in every product category, brands no longer compete with each other rather they seem to be melting in to each other. It’s time to rethink different in a world predisposed to sameness.

In category after category, the more brands strive for differentiation, the more alike they become. This is the paradox of different. Never in the course of human history has there been more abundant choice and consumption. There are more upgrades, add-ons, flavors and features between brands in a category that many have become indistinguishable in consumers minds.

The rise of the category connoisseur.

In her provocative and quirky book Different–Escaping the Competitive Herd, Harvard Business School professor Youngme Moon describes how consumers navigate product categories and discern differences among brands within categories. She uses (to great effect) a low involvement category like breakfast cereal to illustrate the process. It goes something like this:

You’re standing in the middle of the breakfast cereal isle in your local grocery store. Your mission is to select a cereal you’ve never tried before–ideally one you will end up enjoying. How would you go about it?

If you were a breakfast cereal category connoisseur, you would simply walk down the isle instantly eliminating whole batches of cereal types from your consideration– kid’s cereals or anything with lots of sugar. You might begin to narrow your focus down to granolas or high fiber cereals. Maybe you would eliminate raisins or walnuts from the mix. Until you make your selection. The whole exercise would be over in less than a minute.

Four Methods Of Strategic Brand Building

Building successful brands is not a one-size fits all activity. Brand building is both art and science, and the method of creating brand strategy is never the same for every brand.

Brand strategy is an obsessive and often the most misunderstood discipline in marketing. It’s of critical importance to know beforehand what will be the most effective strategy for building your brand. Brand owners and managers who desire brand innovation often end up with brand imitation. In a world predisposed to sameness, there’s nothing worse than clawing your way to the middle with a brand strategy that doesn’t fit the realities of your business strategy.

It’s extremely difficult to build a brand that breaks through the slush pile of images and messages consumers are drowning in today. Not only must brand strategy differentiate your proposition from others, but more importantly, this differentiation must also be highly valued.

Most contemporary brand managers would agree -– we’re way past the traditional thinking and point of view that brand building is an activity that endows a product or service with a catchy name, snappy slogan, pretty logo, compelling packaging and advertising.

Brand strategy is like creating mythology -- stories people care about and remember. People don’t buy products, they buy personalities and meanings associated with the story of those products. People will only find meanings in brands with personality.

Communication Gives Brand Marketing Teams The Edge

In the marketing world of we often think of the “brand” as the impression of a product, service, company or person held by existing or potential customers.  Marketers go to great lengths, rigor and sometimes pain-staking efforts to develop a particular brand strategy.  As a result of this due diligence many brands are successful. On the other hand many more brands exist in mediocrity. 

How do great brands become great brands?  There are many factors, some obvious, some not so obvious. Today, I would like to explore the not so obvious.

If you are a leader of a brand team the answer to that question may be found by looking at your communication process. What are the common threads that help lead products to success across verticals?  Simply put it it’s the people that are on the team and their level of commitment to the strategy. For example in the next staff meeting without notice ask your team to write down and then recite the core brand strategy. If they do know the strategy ask them how and why it was developed.  In most cases at least half of the team will not be able to give thoughtful answers to these questions.  That’s because often brand leaders don’t take time to get their team bought in to the strategy.  The cause and effect circumstance is that half the team is rowing the boat at a different cadence or worse yet in a different direction. Leaders often give transactional orders and assignments and then check to see if the assignment has been completed.  If brand managers don’t know why and where their assignment fits into the strategy then the assignment becomes a task without meaning. As a consequence the brand manager starts to play the do the task, hit the deadline to check the box game. 

Translating Brand Strategy To Creative Messaging

Managing the translation of brand strategy to creative messaging is a delicate process of enabling the polarized thinking archetypes of the engineer, economist and artist to form a singular voice.

Seemingly the intersection of brand strategy and creative messaging is an area where many marketers struggle. Developing a brand strategy is a top-down introspective process driven by a business strategy, while creative expression is a downstream activity centered in marketing communications. In many organizations, these two disciplines occupy different levels on the value chain.

In several LinkedIn discussion groups, I presented this question to gather some outside insight for this post.  I was amazed at the diverse opinions this conversation stirred up. From the discussion thread, one can easily conclude brand strategy often times gets lost in the creative translation. Does this surprise you?

Brand strategy is not marketing.

Brand strategy can’t be created from the outside in.  Brand strategy is not a decorative or promotional process either. All leading brands represent a single, compelling unifying principle that drives business performance from the inside out.

Brand strategy illuminates the brand’s behavior in every internal action taken by stakeholders, and in all mental and physical interactions customer/consumer’s experience.  Strategy and messaging are two sides of a coin.

Translating brand strategy into creative messaging is a complex process.  To be effective, the process requires more than a thoughtful “hand-off” between left-brainers and right brainers. It’s too messy with lots of moving parts. When markets change in six-month increments, something more transcendent is required to close the gap.

Reconsidering The Brand Strategy Toolkit

Abraham Maslow, the man famous for formulating one of the most ubiquitous tools in the marketing toolbox, the Hierarchy of Needs, was also famous for admonishing against over reliance on one tool.  His caution has come to be known as the law of the instrument or “Maslow’s Hammer”.  “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail”.

Evolving competitive market places have placed enormous pressure on brand strategy.  Competition changes perceptions of the existing options by default.  Maintaining differentiation then is more than a matter of updating positioning.  It requires layered and nuanced approaches rooted in the customer experience, shared community,  and brand purpose.

Positioning is indeed a powerful tool, especially when the competitive landscape is well demarcated, consumer targets are identifiable, and advantages reside largely in product performance or functionality.  But over reliance on positioning can lead strategists to overlook other means of differentiation and possibly even spell disaster for their brand.

The Case of Blockbuster’s TOTAL ACCESS

Blockbuster may be a case where over reliance on positioning lead to failure. In September 2010, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in order to reduce its debt to $100 million from $900 million and its shares are trading for 8 cents.  The reasons for its downward slide are generally attributed to failure to adapt to changes in technology and consumer needs which were exploited by upstarts Netflix, Redbox, Vudu, and Hulu as well as non-traditional competitors like YouTube, Vimeo, video on demand, and the DVR.  In retrospect, the story seems almost inevitable.  After all,  TIME magazine wrote off the Blockbuster brand as early as 2005. (“Blockbuster to Remake Itself Under Creditors,” Wall Street Journal, September 24, 2010.)

But the script didn’t need to run that way.  Blockbuster had its chance and came closer than most people know to actually beating Netflix and the other new players at their own game.

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.

The Brand Strategy Of Over Delivery

For most manufacturers this initially would sound like a nightmare – but is it? 

Recently I checked into The Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. Knowing the brand your expectations are by default tuned to the highest level – still I’ve time after time managed to be surprised. When I wished to access music in my room, I was told that the CD library didn’t exist in this particular hotel. The apologetic concierge however asked me out of curiosity which CD’s I was looking for. Listing all my favorite artists I hang up wondering the reason for this curiosity. 20 minutes later the bell rang on my door. The same person as I’ve been speaking with over the phone handed over a bag with three CD’s purchased by the hotel, all my favorites – and given as a gift to me. 

I bet you’ll never forget this story – neither do I. But the case is that the extra $20 the hotel decided to spend on my account makes me spread the story – just like now. Would you still claim this wasn’t worth the investment … hardly! 

The story is very much in line with another experience taking place in a Louis Vuitton store, the maker of luxury leather goods, which explicitly does not offer a lifetime warranty on its products. In fact, the company's documentation states a charge will be applied for repairs. The salesperson to whom you return your faulty product further reiterates this when you take it in for repair. But when you come back to collect your item, you'll almost never pay for the service. The salesperson assures you this was done especially for you. 

Fighter Brand Strategy: Cure For Low-priced Threats?

When Jill Little, merchandise and marketing director at John Lewis, recently announced that the retailer was to introduce a value range, it was widely seen as a smart move.

The homeware products line has been specifically designed to help John Lewis defend its 'Never knowingly undersold' slogan against supermarkets that have moved into its territory.

At the launch, Little said the value range would be 'benchmarked' continually against Tesco's own-brand products to ensure it remained competitive.

Targeting the competition

John Lewis may or may not be aware of it, but it has just rolled out a fighter brand - a lower-priced offering introduced by a company to take on specific competitors. It is one of the oldest strategies in branding, and one that is making a reappearance during these tough economic times.

Brands like John Lewis, which typically occupy middle price points, are experiencing tough conditions as the recession forces their customers to trade down to lower-priced offers from the likes of Tesco.

Managers such as Little are then faced with a classic strategic conundrum: should they tackle the threat head-on and reduce existing prices in-store, knowing it will reduce profits and perhaps cheapen the brand? Or should they maintain prices, hope for better times to return, and, in the meantime, lose customers who may never come back? Offered two equally unpalatable alternatives, John Lewis has, like many companies, decided on a third option, and launched a fighter brand.

Seven Critical Factors Of Brand Strategy Success

 
The following seven factors continue to rule the day for building leading brands: 

Organization Support

•CEO leadership & support

•Distinctive corporate culture that supports brand promise

•Ability to obtain support from a broad spectrum of employees

•Alignment of brand messages across functions

Brand Presentation

•Strength of brand identity system

•Effective use of visuals/imagery

•Ability to capture the brand in a slogan

Source: The Conference Board’s 1998 “Managing the Corporate Brand” study

Sponsored by: The Blake Project

When To Launch A Second Brand

Whenever a fashion or technological change occurs, an existing brand, no matter how dominant, faces a choice.

Should the brand be ‘stretched’ to encompass the new fashion or technology or should the company launch a second brand? If the change is significant enough, the better answer is almost always ‘launch a second brand.’

* The rise of casual clothing in the workplace led Levi Strauss to introduce Dockers which has become a billion dollar worldwide brand.

* The success of Mercedes-Benz and BMW led Toyota to introduce Lexus which has become the largest-selling luxury vehicle in the U.S.

* The success of Makita, a Japanese professional-tool brand, led Black & Decker to introduce DeWalt which has become the dominant brand in the category.

* The success of Costco led Wal-Mart to introduce Sam’s Club which is now neck and neck with the category leader.

When it comes to launching successful second brands, you rapidly run out of case histories. By far the majority of marketers prefer to expand their core brand to cover the new category. With mediocre success. Some examples: