When CEOs Are Part of the Brand

Branson, Gates, Jobs and the examples of CEOs that are part of their corporate brand equity can go on and on. Business Times has an insight on this:

A study by global communications company Burson Marsteller showed that the CEO’s reputation is responsible for approximately 50 per cent of a company’s reputation, which translates into achieving key business objectives and increasing sales.Like it or not, CEOs are part of a company’s brand equity. In other words, the leaders inevitably reflect on the company.

Today, consumers expect a consistency between a company’s brand message and the behaviour and image of its key executives. Brand validity can only be fully achieved if the CEO embodies the brand and its values to meet the new challenges of an increasingly critical and demanding marketplace.

The CEO is often said to be the brand leader or guardian of the company’s brand. Consequently, all CEOs need to clearly understand the value and importance of the powerful, clearly defined corporate and personal brands. They need to ensure that there should be a clear brand strategy in place and that all stakeholders in the organisation understand and embrace it to deliver the brand promise.

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6 Basic Qualitites of Brand Positioning

The right positioning incorporates strong values and differentiators that are important to your customers. Brand positioning is important in deciding where you want to position your brand within its category and relative to the competition. We mentioned here before nine positioning types you can think of:

  1. Quality positioning
  2. Value positioning
  3. Feature-driven positioning
  4. Relational positioning
  5. Aspiration positioning
  6. Problem/solution positioning
  7. Rivalry-based positioning
  8. Warm and fuzzy positioning
  9. Benefit-driven positioning

Positioning is an act of seeking, placing and optimizing something in relation to the competition in surrounding environment and is based on customer-company-competitor relationship triangle. In order to move up the ladder in the customer mind, management must follow the rules of positioning. Basic qualities of brand positioning include:

Relevance: Positioning of brand must focus on benefits that are important to people or reflect the character of the product.

Clarity: Brand should be positioned in such a way that it is easy to communicate and quick to comprehend.

Distinctiveness: In current market situation there are reasonably good number of players vying for a share in the market, forcing them to compete on the basis of price or promotion. To overcome such a situation, company needs to offer distinctiveness in its products or services.

Coherence: A brand should speak with one voice through all the elements of the marketing mix.

Commitment: Management should be committed to the position it has adopted. Once a position is adopted, it takes commitment to see it through.

Patience: Patience plays an important role in the success of brand as branding is not a one-day wonder – it takes years to position a brand in consumers’ mind.

Courage: Adopting a strong brand position requires courage as it is much easier to defend an appeal rather than generate sales pitch.

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4 Steps To Start-Up Your Brand

Where do you start building up your brand? Steve Strauss author and speaker who specializes in small business and entrepreneurship. answers for USA Today‘s readers:

Step 1: Understand how you are perceived: How do people perceive your business now? Is that how you want to be perceived?

Step 2: Decide upon your Unique Selling Proposition: What makes you or your business unique, different, special? What niche is available that only you can fill?

Step 3: What are customer expectations? What do your clients typically expect of you? What unique attributes do you offer that best fit client expectations?

Step 4: Make it personal, if possible: Who do you trust more, a corporation or a person? Whom would you expect to give you better customer service – a corporation or a person? What about honesty – whom do you think is more honest? The answer to all three, of course, is a person. That is why, if possible, it is often a good idea for a small businessperson to tie his or her own name/personality in with the brand. People like and trust people more than businesses.

The fourth point is probably the strongest and really recommended especially for small businesses cases. Interesting reading here: Time for some brand aid

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Cornerstones of branding strategy

Tampa Bay Business Journal has an interesting article on branding putting up a list of five cornerstones of a brand strategy.

It’s time to get moving, step up to the plate and get your business ready to rock and roll in this new year. Your branding can simply make your business forgettable or unforgettable

Great brands can be worth their weight in gold. Just as ineffective names can make you just another noodle in the bowl of soup.

  • Determine your organization’s Unique Selling Advantages.
  • Research and solidify your customers’ Unique Buying Advantages.
  • Craft your Big Idea to get attention.
  • Hold everyone accountable through Integration.
  • Marketing Integration is essential

Read full Your brand belongs on the asset list article

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Branding News Roundup – 01/27/06

Dell – The Accidental Brand
The corporate name was Dell, but the original trade name was PCs Limited. But the company ran into a problem when it began selling in the United Kingdom. It couldn’t call itself PCs Limited Ltd, or, as Michael Dell put it, “really limited Pcs.” The folks in Britain asked headquarters what they should call their operation, but got no reply, so they just decided to use the Dell name. And eventually, that became the trade name for Dell worldwide. Michael Dell’s verdict: “It worked out OK.”

The problem with (famous) brands
These days so-called ‘famous brands’ need to take dramatic measures just to secure their share of the market, never mind grow it. They risk being stuck in the middle of the market with private label products snapping at their heels and the premiumisation trend making them look dowdy.

Viral Marketing Gaining in Popularity
A study out this week by interactive marketing agency Sharpe Partners shows that a strong 89% of adult Internet users in the U.S. share content with others via e-mail. And while jokes and cartoons make up 88% of the forwarded material, a full 24% of business and personal finance information is also shared.

Branding with a Song
We must concede the celebrity endorsements increases brand awareness and ultimately sales. Of course, not all celebrity endorsements are overt advertising. In fact, if you are lucky, a celebrity songster will mention your brand name in the lyrics to a chart topper. Check a Top 10 most mentioned brands in the Billboard Top 20 tunes for 2005.

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What’s in a Brand Name?

Naming a new brand without taking enough in consideration the main target market may lead you to unexpected surprises. Here is an interesting NYT article on such a case:

What better way to honor the brash origins of this city, the owners of Houston’s new professional soccer franchise reasoned, than to name their team “Houston 1836,” a nod to the year when two entrepreneurial brothers from New York arrived here to build a city atop the swampy bayous of southeast Texas.

Many Latinos in Houston, though, greeted the unveiling of the team’s name this week with a shudder. Eighteen thirty-six also happens to be the year that a group of English-speaking interlopers waged a war of secession that resulted in Mexico’s loss of Texas, ushering in more than a century of violence and discrimination against Mexicans in the state.

Read full article here. (via)

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9 Components of Corporate Identity

Marcia Yudkin author of Internet Marketing for Less Than $500 Year and 6 Steps to Free Publicity has an interesting list of 9 components of small business identity:

1. Values.
Do you stand for stability, like Prudential insurance? Innovation, like 3M? Educational curiosity, like the Discovery Channel? Social consciousness, like Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream?

2. Personality.
From the company’s personality can flow ad campaigns, kinds of special events to sponsor, company colors and typefaces, corporate gift selection, even the talent chosen to record company voice mail messages.

3. Behavior.
Your company’s image includes not only how you promote yourselves but also how you act toward customers and the public. Things like how you answer the phone, how you greet shoppers, how cheerfully you correct mistakes or accept returns, how aggressively you negotiate contracts all become bound up in one composite image.

4. Price.
How much you cost in comparison to competitors often becomes part of your image. If you’re tempted to keep price out of the equation until someone expresses a desire to buy, think twice.

5. Range.
Customers should understand the spectrum of products and services that you sell.

6. Geographical roots.
Where did your company come from? If you’re a locally owned family business competing with multinational giants, make sure people know that. If you’re selling nationally but rooted in a picturesque corner of the country, make hay out of that.

7. Longevity.
Moody and Regan, a printing company in Waltham, Massachusetts, wisely and impressively uses as its tag line, “Established 1898.” Whenever you’ve been around much longer than competitors, you can profitably incorporate that into your image.

8. Slogan.
Which brand “tastes good like a cigarette should”? Which car is “the ultimate driving machine”? Even local or specialized companies can achieve this kind of awareness with their clientele.

9. Benefits.
What do buyers get when they purchase from you? Most companies provide intangible, emotional benefits as well as tangible, practical ones (Burger King: inexpensive, satisfying meal; Boston Pops: a fun night out; Kodak: photos with true-to-life colors).

Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and ten other books hailed for outstanding creativity. Find out more about her new discount naming company, Named At Last, which brainstorms new company names, new product names, tag lines and more for cost-conscious organizations, at http://www.NamedAtLast.com.

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Managing a Brand Under Fire

Even though is dealing with pharmaceutical industry branding, I spotted a very intersting article, over BrandWeek, that deals with how to manage your branding when your company, or even your whole industry is under fire, and has to face negative reactions to some aspects, whether from the public or the media.

Strategically, a shift is needed throughout the industry—from corporate brands to their agency partners—toward a better understanding of consumers. The industry must know how consumers truly feel (as patients, as caregivers and as family members), what they want, how they react and what drives them to action.

Well so far, is a little general, but here is a list with some practical strategies ideas that help: Continue reading →

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Key Branding Trends in 2006

Robert Passikoff is president/founder of Brand Keys, which has published the Customer Loyalty Index of leading companies in 26 product and service categories since 1996., has an interesting article over at Chief Marketer about what he calls the five key trends that will determine the difference between success and failure for brands and marketers for 2006:

1. An emphasis on “engagement.”
Inserting itself between traditional marketing activities and an increasing demand for return on investment assessments, engagement will become the Holy Grail for marketers and advertisers. Defined as the outcome of ad and marketing activities that substantively increases a brand’s strength in the eyes of the consumers, engagement will be used more and more to allocate marketing budgets. Continue reading →

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Instant Branding Through Viral Email

Martin Lindstrom, author of several best-selling branding books including his latest, including Brand Sense : Build Powerful Brands through Touch, Taste, Smell, Sight, and Sound provides some information on what he calls instant branding key ingredients, here are some of them:

  • Values. Define the values your brand’s communication is based on, if you didn’t when you designed the brand. Your brand’s values are what define your brand’s identity. These values will lead you to discover interesting instant branding opportunities and enable you to make the most of them when the opportunity arises.
  • Insight. Dedicate someone in your organization or agency to identify breaking news stories or news-driven trends. Be prepared to grasp opportunities as they appear. The faster you react, the better the distribution you secure. So, select people to keep an eye and ear on popular culture, current affairs, and personalities.
  • Courage. Create an instant branding team of two or three creative people. The team should meet, brainstorm, and generate five or six ideas to propel news-driven instant branding campaigns. Then, be prepared to accept the consequences of whatever they come up with.
  • Judgment. Be extremely critical. Can the idea create the right momentum and generate the right distribution for your brand? Always ask yourself: would your competitor send the e-mail on because of its irresistibility? Be critical about the message. Test the idea among a range of friends who represent a spectrum of personalities, religious persuasions, nationalities, and backgrounds.
  • Prudence. Don’t be overtly promotional. If your message is tainted by even a fraction of self-promotion, no one will forward it. The message must feel authentic.

Read more here

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