Redefining the Role of Marketing

Addressing a press conference in Chennai on Monday, marketing guru Phillip Kotler, author of Marketing Management (12th Edition) (Marketing Management) and Principles of Marketing (11th Edition) (Principles of Marketing) expressed its opinion on the growing importance of branding in today’s world of Internet and media explosion.

Branding is critical for creating trust in the minds of consumers. The four P’s of marketing — product, price, place and promotion — were the corner stones of building a brand in the past. Today, one needs to redefine the role of marketing as creating, communicating and delivering value to the consumer (CCDV).

Today the consumer would buy a product or service or a combination only if he saw a value in it. So the central role of marketing was to deliver the value to the consumers. The marketing guru said the 4Ps, the most important factors of Philip Kotler’s theory, were more relevant for the manufacturing sector. But in the current economic system, this had been replaced with `CCDV’ marketing, which was creating value (instead of product), communicating value (in place of promotions) and delivering value.

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by Daniel

Top 10 Brands – Harris Interactive “Best Brands” Survey

Sony is leading the Harris Interactive “Best Brands” survey for the seventh year in a row. Apple is the gainer making in the top 10 this year, while the loosers of the year could be considered Kraft Foods which is loosing 6 places (from 3rd to 9th) and General Motors which dropped from No. 8 to No. 17.

“We would like you to think about brands or names of products and services you know. Considering everything, which three brands do you consider the best?” was the question asked and answered by 2,351 U.S. adults surveyed online by Harris Interactive® between June 7 and 13, 2006.

Survey responses were unaided and a list of brand names was not presented to respondents. The results from this survey cannot be compared to results of the Harris Interactive 2006 EquiTrend Brand Study results, as the methodologies for the surveys differ.

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6 Basic Steps to Achieve Brand Credibility

A big brand is a brand that customers trust and believe in. When consumers don’t trust a brand they do not buy or consume it. One of the biggest reasons for people buying a brand repeatedly is the credibility the brand has among the consumers.

In brand building, credibility is vital to the success of any brand.

There are many brands which claim to provide various benefits. However, a consumer does not believe these claims easily. He needs credibility. Here are 6 basic steps for building brand credibility:

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Branding Goes Mobile

Call it m-branding: the use of the mobile channel to create differentiation and build brand affinity as never before possible. When used correctly, it has five key advantages over virtually every other medium:

Immediacy

Consumers can use their cell phones to interact with brand promotions right at the point of impression. This usually involves entering a four- to five-digit code featured in a print, outdoor, or broadcast advertisement. Continue reading →

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Branding News Roundup – 07/07/2006

Death of Mass Marketing

Marketers typically employ online ad targeting — especially through behavioral, contextual, geographic and search methods — for direct response goals more so than for branding ones.

The focus is shifting, however, according to Advertising.com’s ongoing survey of U.S. web publishers. While only 19.2 percent of respondents cited branding as the main objective of online advertisers in 2005, that figure more than doubled to 41.5 percent this year.

Assessing the financial value of brands

Assessing the size or success of something as slippery as a brand involves a great deal of subjectivity. That is compounded by the fact that two competing factions are promoting two very different approaches to measuring a brand’s effectiveness.
On one side are accountants, armed with the financial wizardry of the capital markets. On the other are workers from the creative industries, the people who create and maintain brands and need to judge their own success.

Mark Ritson on branding: GM is risking death by brand overload

GM is economising on front-of-house systems, with many dealerships now merged into cost-efficient, but brand-killing, shared retail points. Target segmentation and brand differentiation are being replaced by cannibalisation and commodification as GM gradually destroys itself.

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MasterCard Re-branding

Following the earlier this year Visa re-branding, Mastercard unveiled yesterday new corporate name and brand identity.

Formerly known Mastercard International has a new corporate name, MasterCard Worldwide. The company is also unveiling a new corporate signature and adopting a new corporate tagline, The Heart of Commerce, to reflect the company’s globally integrated structure and its strategic vision of advancing commerce worldwide.However, the familiar consumer brands such as MasterCard credit and debit cards and the advertising slogan “Priceless” would stay in place.

The new corporate positioning will serve as a unifying business-to-business platform, and lead to global efficiencies in the way MasterCard Worldwide connects with customers, merchants and shareholders through all communications channels.

The three circles of the new corporate logo build on the familiar interlocking red and yellow circles of the MasterCard consumer brand, and reflect the company’s unique, three-tiered business model as a franchisor, processor and advisor.

More here.

UPDATE: More about MasterCard brand history.

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Brand Names Turned to Common Nouns

Whether we’re talking about Sony’s Walkman or a 3M’s Post-it Note, there are some of the landmark brand names that made it so far that their trademarks turn into common nouns. And this should be the good part of branding: a brand name on everybody’s lips.

Meanwhile there are cases that we use such a noun without even thinking that the word itself used to be a registred brand name, say escalator for example. This is the downside in terms of branding.

Well, these words are called eponyms.

An eponym is a general term used to describe from what or whom something derived its name. Therefore, a proprietary eponym could be considered a brand name (product or service mark) which has fallen into general use.

So, what leads a brand name to become eponym? Well, for one thing, other brands of similar nature must exist; but even more importantly, the original product, even if discontinued, must still function pronominally. In other words, a specific can be used to designate a class of generics with no loss in meaning. A usual result: lower case transcription of the brand name.

In this matter there is the American Proprietary Eponyms website, which have some of the most common eponyms in english language.

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2 Deadly Sins and 2 Golden Rules in Branding

Inq7.net is publishing an interesting interview with best-selling marketing author and brand strategist Al Ries, co-author of “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” and “The Origin of Brands : Discover the Natural Laws of Product Innovation and Business Survival” on the common mistakes in branding and marketing products.

According to Ries there are the two deadly sins most commonly made by companies in the branding and marketing of their products:

1. Line extension — putting the company name on every product. You can’t stand for something if you put your name on everything.
2. Lack of focus — trying to sell too many products to too many different markets.

Accordingly, there are also two golden rules:

1. Be first in a new category
2. Keep your company focused.

These are simple, conceptual ideas, of course, but not easy to execute. Many people think marketing is nothing but common sense, but it’s not. Marketing is a highly complex discipline that takes decades to learn.

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(Another) Top 10 – Strongest Brands in America

Harris Interactive released the 2006 results from the EquiTrend Brand Study. Despite all expectations, I would say, the strongest brand in America came to be Reynolds Wrap who scored highest among more than 1,000 brands whithin 39 categories in a survey of 25,666 consumers

EquiTrend has been designed to be a concise and efficient way of obtaining quality, well-rounded information about the critical elements of a brand’s health. Its seven key measures help determine a brand’s stance amongst competitors, within other categories, and in comparison to world-class brands. The study measures brand health using the following seven key measures:

1. Equity
2. Familiarity
3. Quality
4. Purchase Consideration
5. Overall Relevance
6. Brand Expectations
7. Distinctiveness

The final top 10 looks a little odd for me as none of the brand-icons made it in the first ten, actually I would rather name it Top 10 Grocery/Convenience Store Brands. Or as AdAge put it:

Reynolds also topped such icons as Coke, Pepsi and McDonald’s. It blew away the ubiquitous Nike. It outclassed Mercedes and Lexus. It left the hip iPod in the dust.

But well here is their top 10:

  1. Reynolds Wrap Aluminum Foil
  2. Ziploc Food Bags
  3. Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Candy Bars
  4. Kleenex Facial Tissues
  5. Clorox Bleach
  6. WD-40 Spray Lubricant
  7. Heinz Ketchup
  8. Ziploc Containers
  9. Windex Glass Cleaner
  10. Campbell’s Soups

The official Harris Interactive announcement here.

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