Year: 2007

Seven Branding Secrets

In today’s competitive business climate it is important to differentiate your brand. A sound investment is defining and communicating what is truly special about your business. Your brand will bring you the success of your business and financial results through loyal and happy customers. Your brand will tell the world why they would be crazy not to do business with you.

Here is an interesting list, Michele Schermerhorn President of Online Business Institute Inc. has put together:

  1. Know Your Customers Better Than You Know Yourself
  2. Understand Your Competitive Environment & Competitors
  3. Define Your Brand Personality
  4. Make A Brand Promise
  5. Define Your Brand Strategy
  6. Identify Your Branding Game Plan
  7. Be Consistent in Action

Now, the second point is not the most commonly use when setting-up such branding rules lists, but I find it very true and usefull: Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel

Approaches to Brand Valuation

Interesting article on brand valuation on 4hoteliers.com website. First off all the author is corectly placing the brand as a independent category among the intangible assets of a company:

Brand and relationship intangibles: these include trade names, trademarks and trade symbols, domain names, design rights, trade dress, packaging, copyrights over associated colours, smells, sounds, descriptors, logotypes, advertising visuals, and written copy. In addition, associated goodwill (the general predisposition of individuals to do business with one brand rather than another brand) should be included.

Then the article si focusing on several approaces to brand valuation:

Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel 1

UK’s 07/08 Superbrands Top Announced

Microsoft is the UK’s number one brand for the second year running according to the UK public. Microsoft took pole position beating a resurgent Coca-Cola, which re-entered the top ten following a one-year absence. Google finished third with the BBC and BP making up the public’s top five. Brands falling out of the top ten included Porsche, Marks & Spencer, Heinz and Duracell.

The Top 10 UK brands according to the public looks like this:

1. Microsoft
2. Coca-Cola
3. Google
4. BBC
5. BP
6. British Airways
7. LEGO
8. Guinness
9. Mercedes-Benz
10. Cadbury

Is interesting that the parallel study with media and marketing experts on the independent Superbrands Council disagreed with the public, placing Google in the number one slot. Innovative brand Apple, its sub-brand iPod, car icon Mini and online auctioneers eBay completed the experts’ top five. Only three brands made both top tens, namely Google, the BBC and Coca-Cola. Here is the Expert’s Top 10: Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel

9 Responsibilities of a Marketing Department

Rob Engelman is putting up a list of nine core activities / responsibilities a Marketing Department must handle.

1. Focus on the Customer
2. Monitor the Competition
3. Own the Brand.
4. Find & Direct Outside Vendors.
5. Create New Ideas.
6. Communicate Internally.
7. Manage a Budget.
8. Understand the ROI.
9. Set the Strategy, Plan the Attack, and Execute.

As per the 3rd point in the list Rob is saying:

The perceptions and feelings formed about an organization, its products / services, and its performance is what is known as its “brand.” The Marketing Department is responsible for creating meaningful messages through words, ideas, images, and names that deliver upon the promises / benefits an organization wishes to make with its customers. Furthermore, the Marketing Department is responsible for ensuring that messages and images are delivered consistently, by every member of the organization.

I cannot agree more with the this, with only one point to add. While it’s true that the marketing department is usually the one that gets the praise or blame for a good/bad branding I believe that both the ownership and message delivery of the branding message / image are the responsibility of the entire organization.

Read detailed list here.

Read more on the subject:

Your Marketing Department: Its Organization and Structure

How to Evaluate and Improve Your Marketing Department

Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know

Posted on by Daniel 14

Top Brand Extensions

Brand extension is a marketing strategy in which a firm that markets a product with a well-developed image uses the same brand name but in a different product category. Brands use this as a strategy to increase and leverage equity.

Product extensions, on the other hand, are versions of the same parent product that serve a segment of the target market and increase the variety of an offering. An example of a product extension is Coke vs. Diet Coke

A successful brand helps a company enter new product categories more easily.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel 5

Country Brand Index 2006

Principles of branding apply in equal measure to countries as they do to corporations. But methods are different. Countries will compete daily with neighbors or block regions for tourism, inward investment and export sales. There’s only so much business that can go around. Those countries that start with an unknown or poor reputation will be limited or marginalized. They cannot easily boost their commercial success. Consequently, they will often languish at the bottom |of the ladder of influence. No voice or even worse, they are the butt of jokers at every regional summit.

With toursim as the world’s second largest industry, and countries spending more to promote themselves, their product and their assets, FutureBrand feels it is time to look at countries in a whole new way – as brands. Since I presented here the 2005 Country Brand Index, is time now the 2006 Top 10 (number in brackets are representing last year standings): Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel 4

Advertising vs. Branding

Excellent article in current edition of Business Week, by Marc Gobé, the Chairman and CEO of Desgrippes Gobé New York, a brand design firm and the author of Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People and just released Brandjam: Humanizing Brands Through Emotional Design.

The conclusion of the article tells it all: It’s time to remember that advertising needs brands more than the brands need advertising. A good product creates its own relationships.

Understanding what the consumers want and bringing solutions that will inspire them is the most powerful way to support any business strategy. Putting consumers and the product at the center of the equation is fundamental to a brand’s success. Design then becomes the message and the advertising, as it’s proof of a company’s commitment to people and to innovation.
Continue reading →

Posted on by Daniel 1

More on Brand and Authenticity

Quite a discussion is taking place on several blogs on the matter of branding and authenticity.

Starting with William Arruda on his excellent Personal Branding blog:

All successful branding is based in authenticity – that is – what’s true and genuine and unique about you. Brands are uncovered, not fabricated. The myth that branding is about spin or packaging and image management needs to be replaced by the truth that “you can’t be someone you are not.”

More on Bobby Lehew in Your Brand – Authenticity rules:

I think the field has been covered well, but to state (again) the obvious: branding is not about conveying something you are not but about revealing who you are.

Last, but not least on ThinkingSparks, excellent point raised by Pepita:

Authenticity isn’t necessarily good. Nor does it mean good. I think of Al Qaeda, IRA, ETA, the mafia, street gangs etc. They would qualify as an authentic brand

Posted on by Daniel 1