 |
||||||||
|
 |
|||||
|
what is it? Frankly, one of the most over-hyped, over-played, underdeveloped and misunderstood aspects of marketing. Warning: we’re getting on a soapbox here and having a little rant. If you’d like to skip the Sturm und Drang and get back to the main text, we’ll make it easy; the indented stuff below in green is rant. Click here to skip it and go directly to our regularly scheduled text. You’ve been warned, so here we go. Quite a few marketing “professionals” with very little mileage on the odometer like to bill themselves as “brand consultants.” We have found some who use, as a qualification for this, the fact that they’re “good with color.” A recent seminar on “branding” spent the entire time talking about logos, tag lines and color “sets.” The client’s “brand” ends up being defined by the “graphic usage” guide that tells you when you can and can’t use goldenrod ovals as the background for the “simple logotype” vs. when and where you should use PMS 148 as the spot color for the underlines of the product names in the catalog (underlines to be no less than 2pt and no more than 5pt). Logo, tag-line and graphic guidelines are to brand what a black-tie is to a black-tie dinner. Yes, you need them, but you’re still expected to wear pants. If you show up with just the black-tie, you’ll be asked to leave. Sorry, but this makes us mad. Brand is too important an aspect of good marketing to be left to feng shui types who really just want to make things “pretty” and “coordinated.” And there’s a second type of brand consultant who’d have you believe that brand is “all about finding and defining your company’s unique value proposition.” If you ever hear that line, or one like it, from a marketing consultant... run! This idea that every company has some terrifically “unique” “value proposition” is horse-puckey. What’s even scarier is the idea that your marketing should take a lead from this “uniqueness” and somehow be all about proving and explaining it to the public. Let’s be crystal clear -- the term “brand” was first used in a marketing context in the mid 19th century in order to differentiate identical bales of tobacco during the shipping process. The burned-in “brand name” is what made one bale stand out from the others. It is not a “uniqueness” teased out of a block of dried plants. It’s not about a “value proposition.” It’s a way to make your stuff stand out from the other stuff. And you are the arbiter of your brand. If you can make a particular set of ideas, characters, colors, situations and themes relevant to your product or service, you can create a brand. Marlboro cigarettes started out with a red filter tip -- red to hide lipstick traces. Yep, it was originally marketed as a woman’s cigarette. Well, at the behest of his client, along comes crafty old Leo Burnett with marching orders to make the cigarette appealing to men. And so he created the “Marlboro Man” series of ads, one of the longest-running, most impactful brand icons of all time. If Phillip Morris had believed this... rubbish... about “finding a unique value proposition,” they would have lost out on billions in revenue. Mid-rant micro-rant: We think that the marketing of tobacco products is evil. But history provides us with valid examples of created-brand excellence, even if we disagree with the ideology behind the product. Now, back to the primary rant. Should your brand be harmonious with your products and services? Yes. Should it resonate with the actual benefits you provide? Of course. A good brand campaign can not be based on a lie. But to suggest that an effective brand can somehow be “found” is the purest dreck. Like all good marketing, a brand is created. It is researched, it is planned, it is organized, it is executed, it is measured, it is modified over time to produce the best results. You are in control of your brand. It can be a powerful force for your success, but it is yours to create and maintain. Thus endeth the rant. Brand is the “personality” of your marketing. If the clothes make the man, the brand makes the product. How do you want your customers to feel about you? How do you want them to interact with you? What perception should the public have about your organization? Should you be seen as a lone visionary? A hero fighting against the common tide? Or are you a good team-player? Maybe you are a comfortable, friendly confidante or a quiet, reliable councilor. Above and beyond the black-and-white, economic realities of your product or service, your brand communicates what “you are” and how your customers see themselves in relation to you. In many cases, brand has a stronger influence on behavior than product features, price or quality. what does it involve? OK. Enough already with the philosophy. Brand building involves the creation and maintenance of marketing that infuses your products and services with a personality that will provide economic benefit to you, chiefly through improved sales and customer loyalty. A strong brand strategy will help you decide how to handle many different marketing situations. How? By being “true” to the brand. Perhaps an example will help. The product? Snacks in the mall. There are 12 different snack vendors in the food court, so you decide that you need a brand to help you differentiate yourself. That’s a good start. The people who want your particular snack badly will come to you no matter what you do. Those that are allergic to your product will avoid it at all costs. You want to influence the people who haven’t decided. Brand is a great way to do that. You do a little poll, and find out that the one thing that people really want (beyond quality food at a good price) is friendly service. So you decide to be the friendliest dang snack kiosk in the mall. That’s a good brand stance. Friendly. You can hang all kinds of programs on “friendly.” How does this help your marketing efforts? Let’s start with customer service. Regardless of their ability to make change, you should make completely sure that your sales clerks know that “friendly” is the name of your game. If they want to be sullen, they should go elsewhere. Cheeky need not apply. Sarcastic, bored, hurried, frantic... nope... go get a job elsewhere. Wait a second. That’s an operational issue, though. Right? Yes it is! And your brand needs to permeate your operations even more thoroughly than it does your marketing. What happens if your ad promises “friendly,” but Katie McGoth delivers “grouchy?” You lose, that’s what happens. It’s even easier when it comes to advertising. Time to pick a mascot for the mall’s “parade of vendors?” Better pick something friendly. Maybe a cute dog or a teddy bear. Shark’s are right out. As are snakes, mice, birds, bugs and ibex. They’re all fine animals (except ibex... they just ain’t right), but they don’t resonate a “friendly” vibe. Every marketing choice you make will need to be balanced on the “friendly scale.” If everything you do is geared in that direction, your customers will come to think of you as friendly, and they’ll like you more than other choices that are, in their minds, less friendly. Are your cookies inherently more friendly than the neighboring stall’s doughnuts? Of course not! You have to work to make them friendly. That’s your brand. So. A brand strategy will involve many aspects of your marketing. It may involve the creation of “corporate identity” materials, which are things like logos, tag-lines, etc. That’s the tip of the iceberg, though. The crux of your brand marketing lies in defining to yourself what position you want to occupy in your market and then making sure that all your marketing materials, all your operational processes and every single one of your employees is steeped in that brand. why do this? People want their lives to have meaning. People find strange meanings in combinations of numbers, in their names, in their breed of dog... all kinds of stuff. There is nothing wrong with wanting the products and services you use to have a personality. It makes things more fun. Maybe it helps you retain a state of mind that you like. Maybe it’s a bit of color in a grey world. Maybe it’s a feeling of comfort or home or friendliness. For whatever reason, people like to believe that their choices have meaning. The brand you develop for your company helps give meaning to your customers, your employees, and even to you. In economic terms, a strong brand provides a reason for people to use and recommend your products again and again. It can help sustain a price premium and retain customers after a negative event. A great brand can be worth more than your real estate, physical assets and patents. From a legal standpoint, your brand is also much more protected asset than many product and price attributes. You can’t patent puffed, frosted flakes of corn. But you sure as heck can trademark Tony the Tiger. why do it with sanestorm? We know this stuff nine ways from Sunday. Our consultants have been involved in national brand building campaigns, brand change-outs, brand creation strategy and corporate identity on many levels. We can help you figure out if you really need a brand (some products and services don’t), how it might help you, and what you’d need to do to make it a reality. We can identify how your brand strategy should interact with your operational, HR and sales areas. We can develop your corporate identity materials, or work with your agency on their creation. We can help you train your employees on how your brand is important to them and to their interaction with customers. We can tie your brand into your PR plan, your advertising and event marketing. We love this stuff. It’s a true value-add for companies that do it right. And when it’s done wrong, it’s a money pit that ends up creating more problems than it solves. Which is why we’d love to help you get it right.
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
brand development