Year: 2005

Branding News Roundup – 10/05/05

KGB: The Brand You Can Trust
 Who knew secret police were so attached to branding principles? Next thing you know, the Belarussians will sue Green Bay Packer DE Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila for unauthorized use of their initials as a nickname.

Sneak Preview: Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds
The Ogilvy PR BlogFeeds which we are distributing and publicizing at the conference tomorrow are an attempt for us to share a list of blogs that we consider influential …

The Yin and Yang of Car Naming and Car Sales
I am sure you are all aware of the sharp fall off of SUV sales and the corresponding rise in subcompact sales due to rising gas prices…

Marketing lessons learned at Starbucks
Developing a loyal customer base at Starbucks is not overly complicated. As Howard Schultz says, it’s nothing more than greeting customers in a friendly manner and making a drink exactly to their desires…

The ABC of Great Brands
Great brands encompass three characteristics that possess a winning combination when executed correctly. The road to branding success requires a unique discernment of the value proposition being offered followed by vision, patience, and perseverance.

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Posted on by Daniel

8 Reasons for Branding

Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and ten other books hailed for outstanding creativity has an interesting post, presenting eight reasons for which even the smallest of enterprises have to jump in the branding wagon, and get back great rewards out of it.

Branding is the process of creating distinctive and durable perceptions in the minds of consumers. A brand is a persistent, unique business identity intertwined with associations of personality, quality, origin, liking and more.

Time, money and effort spent on branding comes back many times over when the process plays out intelligently. Here’s why:

  1. Memorability. It’s easier to remember the branded company than the “what’s its name?” one.
  2. Loyalty. When people have a positive experience with a memorable brand, they’re more likely to buy that product or service again than competing brands.
  3. Familiarity. Psychologists have shown that familiarity induces liking, and this makes even non-customers more likely to recommend a brand they know.
  4. Premium image, premium price. Branding can lift what you sell out of the realm of a commodity, with customers willing to pay more for the well-branded product or service.
  5. Extensions. With a well-established brand, you can spread the respect you’ve earned to a related new product, service or location more easily
  6. Greater company equity. Making your company into a brand usually means that you can get more money for the company when you decide to sell it.
  7. Lower marketing expenses. Although you must invest money to create a brand, once it’s created you get a bigger bang for every marketing buck using it.
  8. For consumers, less risk. People tend to choose the brand-name supplier over the no-name one when afraid of the consequences of a messup

Tag: Branding

Posted on by Daniel 1

3 Important Elements of a Brand Strategy

Brand strategy is one of the most fraught areas of marketing, though clearly also one of the most important. There are many problems with definition. The key point is you can’t have a strategy without a clear objective. Restating a goal is not strategy, execution is not strategy, and tactics are not strategy. A brand cannot function without a strategy and the function of brand management is to implement brand strategy.

A brand’s longevity and strength has to be built less on price and more on differentiation. In markets cluttered with messages, and where a certain level of quality of product and/or service is expected by customers, brand owners have to find ever new ways to foster loyalty.

Targeting

In order to decide how best to choose target customers for your brand, you need to answer questions, such as:

  • Which customers are important to the market?
  • Which are important to my brand?
  • How can I get more customers or do more business with each of them?

The current preoccupation, rightly, is analysing which customers deliver the most value and hence profit the company most. These may not necessarily be the largest number of the brand’s customers – in fact it rarely is. In most brands, there is some variation of an 80/20 rule, where the minority of most loyal customers deliver most value to the company.

Advances in technology have made it easier to collect, store and utilise more reliable data on who your customers are, how much and how often they buy from you, what else they buy etc. The key strategic choice to make here is whether you are targeting the most valuable customers to keep their custom, targeting infrequent customers to make them more brand loyal, or trying to gain new customers?

All those targeting objectives are important to building a strong brand, but the emphasis may vary depending on the lifecycle of the brand. A new brand needs to establish itself in the marketplace, but over time customer loyalty will grow and the brand should reward its most valuable customers. Recruiting new customers, however, is a never-ending task and one which will ensure the brand’s longevity.

Values

Consumers buy brands because their values align with the brands’ values.
To keep brands fresh, relevant and at the forefront of customers’ minds, it is vital to be able to have strong links between core brand values and positive customer experiences,which are brought to life in innovative
products using the best technologies.

Core brand values are what differentiate you from your competitors and can be expressed in a small number of words, although the words have to be meaningful in terms of the context of the brand. Positive customer experiences are the fulfilment of the brand promises. To maximise the impact you make on customers, it is important to explore the full richness of the context in which the product is being used, focusing particularly on the benefits which customers experience.

Proposition

A proposition is what you choose to communicate about your brand to the market and various stakeholders in your brand.

This communication entails more than just the physical product or advertising. All the intangible communications of the brand, its customer service, its availability, its pricing policy, have a bearing on how the overall brand proposition is viewed by customers.

Tag: Brand Strategy

Posted on by Daniel 1

5 Dimensions of Brand Identity

Brand identity is composed of various shares that trigger particular responses in consumers in addition to filling the afore-mentioned functions. These shares build on one another; the more shares a brand has, the stronger and more positive the relationship with consumers.

Mind

At the very lowest level, mind share must be created in the consumer consciousness (cognitive level). This means that, as a complex perceptual and conceptual construct, the brand evokes an internal neural representation in the minds of consumers, leaving behind certain brand impressions.

Heart

This refers to the emotional relationship a consumer should develop with a brand. Heart share is less a matter of a product’s functional utility and more a matter of its symbolic attributes. The buyer of a Ferrari, for instance, will not develop an affection for the car based purely on functional attributes, but rather as a result of the values associated with the brand and the brand environment it operates in.

Buying intentions

Brand identity must trigger a buying intention share in consumers. After all, despite the importance of a brand’s mind and heart share, it only makes sense for a supplier to invest in brand identity if consumers will also want to buy the brand.

Self

Brand identity contributes to self share, which means that the brand functions as a manifestation of the self, a tangible expression of self-image within the social environment. In this context, brands serve self-expression and self-design purposes, differentiating the individual within the social group. Brands can easily serve similar ends in the realm of business-to-business, where they bolster self-image in terms of a company and its functions.

Legend

Here, the brand shares in the existential search for meaning conducted by a consumer in a world enlightened to the point of meaning-lessness and takes on a virtually religious character. This aspect sheds light on the cultural-sociological proposition that brand management is worshiping the customer. Brands allow consumers to achieve social position or status, to partake of cultural expression, to create mythology and shape meaning, and as a result, to weave themselves into the social and metaphysical fabric of the world. In this context, a loyal customer is a member of a community and an individual loyal to that community not just a customer who makes repeat purchases. A brand is a tool for building a sense of community and belonging, for building the community itself.

Posted on by Daniel 1

Branding’s “Periodic” Table

Talking about elements in the previous post just sent me straight to a nice visual periodic table of brand elements. It is bassically a small branding glossary and here are some quotes out of it:

20 – Brand Evolution – Adapting a brand to align a company’s promise, or value proposition, with its growth over time; a company’s brand must reflect its current position to ensure that it keeps its promises and is accurately “known” by customers

36 – Brand Identity – The outward manifestation of a corporate brand, product brand, service brand or branded environment including name and visual appearance.

37 – Brand Integration Plan – A proactive, structured and disciplined plan, with clear strategic objectives and detailed implementation steps that helps merged companies build a new, integrated brand and value proposition. Ideally this planning begins prior to completion of merger or aquisition

See full branding “periodic” table.

Posted on by Daniel

Brand Elements

Martin Jelsema, marketing consultant and freelance promotional writer, graphics designer and founder of Signature Strategies has an interesting list of elements that should be considered and incorporated into any company’s branding strategy. They will take on a different mix of importance depending on factors such as product life cycles, competitive activity, importance to consumers, loyalty patterns of consumers, commodity/custom perception and others. But within this product environment, these elements will all have to be addressed.

  • Existing perceptions of the product category by target market segments.
  • Existing structure and infrastructure in this product category.
  • Competition for the same dollar from other product categories.
  • Product attributes deemed important to target market segments.
  • The positions currently occupied by you and your competitors in the collective minds of target market segments.
  • Product differentials, real or perceived by target market segments.
  • Corporate images of the marketers of products in your category.
  • Expectations of buyers about products in your category.
  • The programs, activities and policies in support of your brand. They include names, logos, packaging, slogans, ad content, ad media, ad specialties, trade shows, contests sponsored, public relations, literature, promotions, events sponsored, distribution channels used, charities and causes supported, web site activity, guarantees, return policies, co-branding activities, graphic standards, customer relations policies and personnel, audio symbols/themes, trade association and standards committee participation, and any other activities that provide exposure of the brand to your markets by you and by your competitors.
  • Relation of a particular brand with other brands from the same company (line extensions, brand adaptations, co-offerings etc.).
  • Budget and financial considerations.
  • Product expectations for volume, profit, longevity.
Posted on by Daniel

Internal Branding – 8 Principles

In terms of branding, companies need to learn to run at the same pace internally as well as externally. Building a truly world-class brand requires that the company makes sure that all of its internal processes, practices and symbols, fit its brand values. If the company’s brand is playing the role it should in creating value for the company, it should be viewed as a simple cohesive framework for organising all of the internal practices and processes and making sure they work towards creating the desired customer experience.

Succesfull companies do not see one single department as custodian of the customer relationship and do not rely only on market reasearch data to get to know their customers. They seek a better understanding of customer’s values, and the ways to customer relates with their brand. Then, they seek to spread this understanding at an intuitive level throughout their organisation. They build a shared understanding of the desired brand experiece and how it delivers value to the customers, emphasise trust among employees and what people must do not what people must not do.

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Posted on by Daniel 3

Trends in Brand Naming

TippingSprung, a Manhattan-based brand consultancy, observed that few regular surveys focus on trends in brand naming. Consulting with a panel of branding experts, TippingSprung designed a brand-naming survey to help answer key questions: Which names are most popular? Which are most effective? What are some of the major trends in brand naming today?

Results from TippingSprung’s first annual survey of brand names revealed the top brand names in a number of key categories. Major trends in brand naming were also uncovered. The survey focused on names and products that had been released within the prior 18 months.

Choosing a name is one of the most important decisions a company can make when launching a brand. While packaging, taglines, or even product formulation can change on a regular basis, the name is the one element of the brand that remains constant.

said Martyn Tipping, president, TippingSprung.

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Posted on by Daniel

Re-branding the Right Way

Rebranding, is the process by which a product or service developed with one brand or company or product line affiliation is marketed or distributed with a different identity. This may involve radical changes to the brand’s logo, brand name, image, marketing strategy, and advertising themes. On the other hand, it might involve merely superficial changes. Rebranding can be applied to either new products, mature products, or even unfinished products as well as to the corporate itself. (source Answers.com)

Some re-branding exercises have been evolutionary, developing over time and in response to feedback and change in business requirements. But also, a lot of re-branding efforts fail, and fail expensively. Why is it that while some re-branding exercises succeed, others are left licking their wounds? The main reason for failure stems from the complexity of the task. Companies often jumps unprepared into an ill-conceived consolidation, leaving customers puzzled and business associates confused.

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Posted on by Daniel

Laws of Personal Branding

No one wants to believe the need for their services will become obsolete. Whether business is booming or tough times are looming, branding can position you in the hearts and minds of your clients so you stand out and are remembered longer. It’s the most important form of insurance an entrepreneur can have.

By defining and promoting yourself in a way that makes you rationally and emotionally appealing to a targeted demographic by filling a specific need for them, the demand for your services will never expire.

[tag]Personal Branding/tag] works whether you are a professional ready to catapult to the next level in your career or an entrepreneur embarking on your first business venture.

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Posted on by Daniel