Year: 2005

Develop an effective branding strategy

Branding used to be the preserve of the consumer goods manufacturers, but today even the smallest business organisation, or not-for-profit organisations, must be aware of their brand image. This is how your customers see you, and sets the operating style for the organisation. A badly handled enquiry, or a hard to use website, may kill a sale long before you get an opportunity to bid for the business.

Re-branding?, with a new name or logo, does not come cheap and may prove to be a waste of money. It is not a quick fix for deeper problems. The value of a strong brand lies in the impression left with anyone who comes into contact with the organisation.

The issue is that people often only see the brand as the image that is used by the marketing communication department. This is a big mistake ? particularly if there is a mismatch with the culture. It can be a reason why staff from other departments feel that the marketing department is in a world of its own.

Posted on by Daniel

Branding & Packaging – a little history

Continuing somehow the previous post, I found yet another valuable resources, with loads of pictures and stuff, of us brands and packages. The American Package Museum site claims that:

it’s primary objective is to preserve and display specimens of American Package design and branding from the early decades of the 20th century. The secondary objective is to establish a community for those interested in such endeavor.

Posted on by Daniel

How-to kill a brand. Successfully

Branding is one of the most scintillating topics in business today. Any brand is clearly more than just its name. Brands are the values, beliefs, and service experiences that underpin them.

An interesting article about how-to “kill” a brand when you need to do it. Arguing that businesses earn almost all their profits from a small number of brands-smaller than even the 80/20 rule, there comes the need of “shutting-down” some of the brands in their portfolio at a certain moment.

First signs of a brand killing:

  • Constant cuts in ad budgets year after year.
  • More sales promotions than advertisements
  • More emphasis on “push” than on “pull”.
  • Little or no emphasis on consumer research and contact.
  • Non-marketing people in charge of marketing.

Some tactics used:

  • Merging Brands: Companies often prefer to merge brands rather than drop them;
  • Selling Brands: Despite the instinctive organizational resistance, wise companies sell brands that are profitable when they don’t fit in with corporate strategy;
  • Milking Brands: If selling them is not possible because of either strategic or sentimental reasons, companies can milk the brands by sacrificing sales growth for profits;
  • Eliminating Brands: Companies can drop most brands right away without fearing retailer or consumer backlash. These are the brands for which they have had trouble getting shelf space and buyers in the first place.

First priority will be to get managers at all levels of the organization to back you because brand deletion is a traumatic process. Brand and country managers, whose careers are wrapped up in their brands, never take easily to the idea. Customers and channel partners defend even inconsequential and loss-making brands. There will always be pressure from senior executives to retain brands for sentimental or historical reasons. Indeed, brand rationalization programs have often become so bogged down by politics and turf battles that many companies are paralyzed by the mere prospect. It doesn’t have to be that way.

An interesting article on Killing brands succesfully.

Posted on by Daniel

The Seven Highly Effective Habits of Brand Champions

The ability to operate effectively within the ‘Experience Economy‘ is one of the key differentiators distinguishing winning brands from the rest of the pack.

‘Ensuring an ‘on-brand‘ experience for all your customers, regardless of where or how they interact with your company, means ensuring that the company itself – its people, its systems, its products – is always ‘on-brand‘. And therein lies the challenge…

  • Know Thyself
  • Top Level Evangelists
  • The Brand Council
  • The Marriage of Marketing and HR
  • The Touch Point Analysis
  • The Segmented Organisation
  • Measure and Manage

Read the full story at BizCommunity.com

Posted on by Daniel