Branding Strategy Insider

Brand Marketing And The Middle

There are two middles in today’s economy, commonly though mistakenly coupled. The middle market is struggling; so is the middle class. These are related struggles, but not one in the same.

The U.S. middle class is under pressure as never before, largely precipitated by the Great Recession, yet long in coming. The eight days of near-doom in September 2008 struck like a lightning bolt, splitting the marketplace in two along an already-weakening fissure largely hidden from view until laid bare by a direct hit from the financial crisis.

In the three decade-long run-up to September 2008, stagnant real wages, accumulating debt and flagging innovation left the middle class imperiled and vulnerable to unforeseen reversals. The financial crisis was the proverbial straw.

A Pew survey last year found almost half of U.S. consumers saying they had “lost ground” during the Great Recession. An analysis of the 2009 TNS Global Economic Crisis survey classified a similar percentage as “financially fragile,” meaning that short of drastic measures they could not come up with $2,000 in 30 days to cover an unexpected emergency.

This abrupt bifurcation of the middle class left a yawning gap where an aspirational middle used to be. Millions of consumers have literally been taken out of the marketplace, now juggling tight household budgets with little to no disposable income for discretionary spending. This is not good news for middle market retailers and brands, but it’s not the main reason that these middle marketers are struggling.

The Impact Of Technology On Brand Marketing

What does technology teach us about how to market brands?

The answer is a way of engaging, not a means of engaging. The digital revolution in brand marketing is generally approached as an issue of platforms, but it is much more. Technology doesn’t just give people a new way of doing things; it gives people a new way of thinking. The biggest impact of technology is the change it creates in people’s perceptions. Certainly, technology expands access, speed and productivity, but technology has much more far-reaching effects. The digital revolution is changing how people conceptualize the possibilities available to them in their lives.

Absent digital technologies, it would never occur to someone that marketers could be engaged in dialogue, much less dialogue at the point of contact. People used to take it for granted that there was no tête-à-tête with ads.  You could watch them, but you couldn’t change them or talk back to them.  People no longer believe that. Even if they don’t interact with ads, they recognize that ads no longer enjoy an exclusive position on the dais.

But the presumption of dialogue created by digital technologies goes beyond the technologies themselves. Once the door has been opened in one area, people want to see it opened everywhere else as well. People now want the same freedom of engagement in every aspect of their lives.  Every point of contact carries the same expectations. People now want it at retail, in customer service, for promotions, with media content, and so forth. People have learned a new capacity from digital technologies and they want to exercise it everywhere, even in low-tech points of contact.

Beyond dialogue, there are three other expectations that have been intensified by digital technologies.  Portability is one.  People can carry knowledge and connections with them. People are weaning themselves from place-based expectations about everything.

Building Trust In Your Brand

What can brand marketers do to build trust in the brands they manage?

The answer is to do nothing.  Not that doing nothing is the way to build trust. Rather, doing nothing means to quit worrying about trust. Certainly, trust is important. But trust is a multi-dimensional dynamic that is largely beyond the control of any individual brand or category and generally unrelated to brand choices in the marketplace.

Admittedly, this answer seems counter-intuitive. Isn’t trust a fundamental underpinning of business?  Yes, in some ways; but, no, in most. In whatever way trust is considered, though, when it comes to managing brands, it is best to approach trust with an eye toward the bigger picture.

It is well-known among academic political scientists that trust in institutions of every sort fell off the cliff in the mid-1960s.  It didn’t happen all at once, but this period of time was the beginning of a precipitous long-term slide.  It marked the turning point for trust in institutions of every sort, from government to politics to religion to media to business, even marriage. And not just in the U.S., but in every industrial democracy the world over.

Brand Packaging: Solving The Mystery Of Shelf Impact

Today’s retail environment is unlike any we have ever experienced. The complexity of brand SKUs and myriad POP materials bombards the shopper, making it almost impossible for individual products to stand out on shelf.

Despite brand marketers’ belief that the words on pack are the most important driver of purchase intent, recent studies demonstrate that they are actually the least important component of the packaging mix. In fact, the operative communications hierarchy puts color atop the list, with shapes, symbols and words following in that sequence. When approaching a package redesign it is this hierarchy of semiotics that ultimately drives sales in the store aisles.

COLORS
Studies show that on average shoppers take just five seconds to locate and select a given product, generally at a distance of from three-to-six feet. Locating that product occurs when it is visible to the passing shopper. Here visibility is measured by contrast and the physiological driver that creates contrast is color. Color is one of the brain’s three visual pathways and, since we process every object within view simultaneously, color is the mechanism that places emphasis on certain areas. In addition to enhancing on-shelf visibility, the appropriate use of color can increase brand recognition by some 80%, while also serving as an important brand identifier.

SHAPES
While color works on one level, it is not the only factor leading to product selection. Memorable shapes also initiate a cognitive process of evaluation and brand preference. Shapes often determine the first impression of a product while metaphorically communicating key benefits and advantages.  In combination, color and shape combinations can signal quality, while enhancing perception.  For instance, symmetrical shapes pair well with passive colors… triangular and diamond shapes with active colors. Color /shape combinations can also communicate brand personality, so like color, the use of shape in brand identity and design plays a role well beyond on-shelf visibility.

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.

Marketing Is Changing, Are You Ready?

It is no surprise that academics and professionals alike are calling for new approaches to marketing, because the old approaches are inadequate to the challenges. New forms of media are showing up all the time. Consumers are faced with a turbo-charged range of choices, and an array of new technology is available to support marketing decisions and programs. According to Phillip Kotler, new marketing requires new financial IT mindsets as well as some additional skills so that systems will better support marketing decisions.

As we continue the drive toward making marketing more accountable and scientific, it is important to look at what has changed and what remains of the old model. While marketers enjoy new media and technology enabled tools, the fundamental marketing model itself has not changed. People and businesses still want useful products and services and relevant and entertaining messages. Marketing is still about identifying needs so that people line up to buy. The change is in how consumers learn about products and services and receive the messages. We are entering a ‘post-mass media’ marketing world.

Consumers have new tools, too.
Consumers have always wanted to avoid poor or overpriced products and intrusive messages, but now they are empowered to act on those feelings in unprecedented ways. These consumer-empowering technologies promise to eliminate the concept of ‘mass markets’ once and for all. Proof is everywhere, from declining audiences across most media, to the penetration of TIVO and the explosion of DVD sales – of TV shows no less!

Choose Reality Over Perfection In Brand Building

Is perfect branding really the best way of building brands? Up until recently this might have been true. Asking Martha Stewart fans they would have agreed with me. Year after year the ever-perfect Martha was dishing up one perfect decoration advice after another. And yes they were really perfect – but repeating this session decade after decade made one mistake look so much more dramatic than if the brand Martha would have conducted mistakes, purposely or not, through the years just like us “ordinary” human beings. 

And this brings me to the point. I’m a big believer in the fact that the ultimate brand is like a real person. Needless to say no brand hardly reaches a stage where people perceive it as being a real person, but the fact is, that the more human components we associate a brand with, typically the stronger the brand is.

The times where I’ve been most amazed about a brand have often been where it did something human. Where the service was extraordinarily good – and had a “real” human touch. The cases where the emails I received as a reply on my question sent either in anger or just in curiosity – reflected that a real person, of real human blood – actually were answering my email. But not only that – that the writing – reflected that this person had the authority to be a true individual, either in the tone-of-voice, the writing style…you name it. You see as customers we expect a brand to deliver on expectations. It’s a minimum standard to expect a brand to answer back, often within 24 hours. But if the reply is everything but standard, if it had that special “glimpse in the eye” it added extra brand equity to my brand – perhaps making it my favourite brand.

But making this possible requires a human behaviour.

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...

Building Brands With The Guilt Strategy

 
Forget about depression, fear, angst, anxiety or night sweats. Guilt, that most puritanical of all our human emotions, has resurfaced to become a 21st century emotional social and consumer pandemic. Parents who in lieu of spending time with their adolescent children leave them with a rented DVD or on Facebook; shoppers who care about buying organic, but who can’t afford the higher prices, and then feel immoral afterwards; consumers who splurge on wine or truffle oil, then a day later feel gross and wasteful for spending so much money during a recession; the list goes on. 

Today’s shrewdest marketers have recognized that old-fashioned Pilgrim-era guilt is (with the right twist) one of the secret keys to unlocking a consumer’s Buyology.

Consider a 40-something woman named Louise. For weeks she’s been strolling past a bright yellow jacket hanging in the window of her favorite upscale clothing store. The jacket may be calling out her name, but the price tag isn’t. Ever since the start of the recession, many retailers have reluctantly ignored the truism that if they discount merchandise, it can take up to seven years for prices to return to what consumers perceive as “normal.” But this store doesn’t offer discounts.

One day Louise comes in with an inspired new tack. She’ll haggle. She’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse. She spears a male salesclerk, clears her throat, goes red. Will the store agree to take 15 percent off the listed price? In return Louise gets only the blankest of stares. Still that much closer to buying the coveted coat, Louise’s guilt suddenly kicks in – “My husband will kill me,” and “My friends will think I’m an idiot if I didn’t buy this coat on sale, especially at a time when every store in the world is discounting,” and “Isn’t this a bit extravagant, particularly when my neighbors are having trouble paying their mortgage?” One by one thoughts like these flit through her head, yet are balanced out by her own brain’s dopamine arguing for the renewed confidence she’ll feel wearing the coat at work or at next week’s holiday party.

End of story?

Marketing Lessons Continue To Flow From Apple

Look at how the company executes a pre-launch strategy to build anticipation and generate awareness. Examine closely how Apple uses its retail partners to make the launch events an actual occasion rather than just the start of availability. Study carefully how Apple initially uses premium prices at the outset to maximise profits and communicate exclusivity, and then later as the reference price to discount from in order to drive sales from less involved market segments. But most important, look at how Apple always runs out of product long before the initial launch ends.

Sales managers and finance people must think Apple is insane. Why make less stock than the guaranteed demand? Only marketers, the good ones at least, understand that the success of the iPhone 4 hinges as much on running out of initial supplies as it does on the phone’s sleek new design. By running out of iPhones, Apple actually ensures its product will eventually be more successful. Scarcity keeps its retailers like AT&T, Vodafone and O2 onside by restricting their supply. It also ensures a vital additional hit of publicity as media coverage of retailers selling out of iPhones underlines both the massive demand for the new product and the continued success of Apple.

The anticipated scarcity also drives thousands of consumers into store to pre-order their iPhone – a vital success factor for a product that is actually (whisper it) little more than an upgrade to a phone that most of these consumers already own. It also ensures essential word of mouth from consumers who did manage to get one of the phones before they sold out. Surely someone last week bored you with the news that they had secured one of the precious new machines or gave you a demonstration of their hot new phone? This is wonderful free promotion for Apple and the sort of thing Google’s Android phone, with its buy-one-get-one-free approach, is hardly likely to achieve.

If marketers want their brand to have equity they must avoid the perception that it is available in unlimited amounts to everyone – no matter how many units they actually sell.