Possibly the three most famous letters in advertising, the USP made great ads and made Rosser

Reeves famous. In his book, Reality in Advertising, he laments that the popularity of the USP does not reflect a wide-spread understanding of the term. He defines the USP in three parts: * Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: Buy this product and you will get this specific benefit. * The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique -- either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising. * The proposition must be so strong that it can move the mass millions, i.e., pull over new customers to your product. Reeves recommended thinking of the USP as something the consumer takes from the ad, rather than as something the copywriter puts into the ad

Brand Positioning Basics

Positioning is something (perception) that happens in the minds of the target market. It is the aggregate perception the market has of a particular company, product or service in relation to their perceptions of the competitors in the same category. It will happen whether or not a company's management is proactive, reactive or passive about the ongoing process of evolving a position. But a company can positively influence the perceptions through enlightened strategic actions. In marketing, positioning has come to mean the process by which marketers try to create an image or identity in the minds of their target market for its product, brand, or organization. It is the 'relative competitive comparison' their product occupies in a given market as perceived by the target market. Re-positioning involves changing the identity of a product, relative to the identity of competing products, in the collective minds of the target market. De-positioning involves attempting to change the identity of competing products, relative to the identity of your own product, in the collective minds of the target market.

The Process of Positioning

Generally, the product positioning process involves: y y Defining the market in which the product or brand will compete (who the relevant buyers are) Identifying the attributes (also called dimensions) that define the product 'space'

Collecting information from a sample of customers about their perceptions of each product on the relevant attributes

Continue reading "Brand Positioning Basics" Email this AddThis! Book a Speaker Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Positioning, Branding Basics | Permalink | Comments (1) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Branding NOVEMBER 20, 2008

Discovering Brand Personality

I have helped organizations position their brands through consensus buildingbrand positioning workshops since the mid-1990s. As a part of that process, I have the workshop participants (mostly organizational leaders) select the brand personality attributes for which they want their brands to stand. The organizations with which I have worked span a wide range of sizes and industries. They include manufacturing companies, consumer products companies, aging services firms, wealth management firms, medical supply companies, real estate investment trusts, municipalities, high schools, environmental conservation organizations, public service organizations, professional associations and many others. I thought it would be interesting to identify the most popular personality attributes across all of these organizations. Following are the most popular personality attributes (in decreasing order of popularity): Innovative (45%) Professional (41%) Responsive (36%) Caring (32%) Reliable (27%) Customer focused (27%) Trustworthy (23%) Service oriented (18%)

Others with frequent mentions: Continue reading "Discovering Brand Personality" Posted by Brad VanAuken in Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Personality, Branding OCTOBER 01, 2008

Employee Alignment: A Brand Positioning Mandate

It will hardly be big news for readers of Branding Strategy Insider, but we now live in the era of the brand. Most marketers are fully aware that the ultimate factor that will determine their personal career progression and the general health of their organisations will be their ability to build and protect their brands. But despite a plethora of debate within the industry on the topic, most organisations are still struggling to get to grips with their own specific brands. The problem for most managers comes when they attempt brand positioning. Look across any strategic activity - marketing communications or packaging, for instance, and it's clear that all of these and many more activities depend on having a clear and concise brand position. What is our brand? How does it behave? What does it stand for? These are all questions that must be answered if a brand is to succeed. The problem with most companies is that they miss the central tenet of brand positioning: less is more. Most marketers are driven by their large capital expenditures on brand positioning and the enormous amount of personal time they devote to the project to produce an elaborate and complicated multiple slide presentation. Continue reading "Employee Alignment: A Brand Positioning Mandate" Posted by Mark Ritson in Brand Positioning, Internal Brand Building | Permalink | Comments (1)| TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Branding, Internal Brand Building AUGUST 14, 2008

Consensus: Heart of Brand Positioning

Frequently, the brand design is not embraced by the organization because the leadership team was not actively involved in the process at every step along the way. Typically, outside experts will design the brand based upon separate interviews with key stakeholders. This input does not allow for disagreement, debate, discussion or consensus building among the stakeholders. For this reason, The Blake Project offers what have proven to be highly successful and intensive brand positioning workshops for organizations. These are highly facilitated, very well prepared sessions in which all the key stakeholders (typically organization leaders and marketing executives) are locked in a room until they reach a consensus on all of the key elements of brand design: the target customer and the brand essence, promise and personality. As part of the process and in tandem with brand research we ask key stakeholders (and ad agency personnel, front-line employees, salespeople, customer service reps and marketing researchers with first hand knowledge of you customers perceptions) in-depth questions about the brand and its market to serve as stimuli for the brand-positioning workshop. In addition to stimuli this questionnaire ensures that key personnel with a stake in your brand and those you wish to have input from (that may not be invited into the workshop) are involved in and rallied around the positioning process.

The power of consensus in brand positioning cannot be over-emphasized. Consensus serves as the 'glue' in the coming weeks, months and years after the exercise is conducted. Without it brand focus can be lost. Sponsored By: Brand Aid Posted by Brad VanAuken in Brad VanAuken, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Branding, Workshops AUGUST 12, 2008

Successful Brand Repositioning

You follow the same steps and address the same brand design components when repositioning a brand as you do when first designing the brand. But, brand repositioning is more difficult than initially positioning a brand because you must first help the customer unlearn the current brand positioning (easier said than done). Three actions can aid your success in this process: (1) carefully crafted communication, (2) new products, packaging, etc. that emphasize the new positioning and (3) associations with other brands (co-branding, co-marketing, ingredient branding, strategic alliances, etc.) that reinforce the new brand positioning. You should not rely upon an advertising agency, a brand consulting company, or your marketing department to craft your corporate or organizational brands design. This exercise is so critical to your organizations success that your organizations leadership team and its marketing/brand management leaders should develop it, preferably with the help and facilitation of an outside brand-positioning expert. We have more to share on Repositioning here and Brand Positioning here. Sponsored By: Brand Aid Posted by Brad VanAuken in Brad VanAuken, Brand Positioning, ReBranding | Permalink |Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Branding, Repositioning JULY 21, 2008

Of Success, Strategy and Positioning

Success is not about having the right people, the right tools, the right attitude, the right role models, or the right organization, although all these things help. Having the right strategy is what puts an organization over the top. Strategy sets the competitive direction, dictates product planning, tells you how to communicate internally and externally, and tells you on what to focus. A great business strategy without proper marketing will often fail in a highly competitive world. Killer Competition Strategy is what makes you unique and it is the best way to put that difference into the minds of your customers and prospects. In a world of killer competition, using good strategy is the best way to

survive what I call the tyranny of choice. Whether the consumer is choosing between 260 choices of car models, 38 choices of tire makers, or even 50 brands of bottled water, there are so many good alternatives for customers that companies pay dearly for their mistakes. Competitors get your business and you don't get it back very easily. Companies that do not understand this will not survive. Strategy, as defined in Webster's New World Dictionary, is all about "maneuvering into the most advantageous position prior to actual engagement with the enemy." To do this, an organization must first study, understand and maneuver around the battleground - a battleground that is in the minds of consumers and prospects. Positioning is how you differentiate yourself in the mind of your prospect. The Positioning Process A business strategy's success or failure depends on how well a company understands these five elements of the positioning process: 1. Minds Are Limited. The mind rejects new information that does not compute. It accepts only new information that matches its current state of mind. The mind has no room for what is new and different unless it is related to the old. One way to overcome the mind's limitations is to present a message as important news. Continue reading "Of Success, Strategy and Positioning" Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Management, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Branding, Positioning, Strategy, The Handbook of Social Psychology JUNE 30, 2008

Complexity: Enemy of Brand Positioning

Over the past five years I have observed some outrageously successful brand executions. But for the most part, I have watched large organisations wasting millions of euros/dollars on attempts to position their brands in ways that can never succeed. In this post, I will share one of the great brand positioning lessons I have learned; simplicity - or rather, the lack thereof. Ultimately, if we are successful, positioning will drive the company's behaviour to such a degree that it will appear in customer research as the things customers notice about that company. Unfortunately, most companies have such complicated positioning at the heart of their brands that there is no chance that this simple process will occur. Instead of a simple, tight definition of what the brand stands for, we find brand keyholes, triangles, wheels and dictionaries - layer after layer of complexity that will only serve to kill the brand's execution. It's like the game of Chinese whispers. Whisper a complicated word into the ear of the first person in the group and by the time it reaches the end of the chain it has warped into something different. Whisper a simple word and it stays the same along the line. In most companies the positioning is so complex that even the originating brand manager, on closing the laptop holding the presentation, can't remember what it was. What hope, then, for the consumer at the end of a chain that spans strategy, marketing, sales and retail before reaching them?

Why so much complexity? The main reason is that brand managers believe the positioning is so important, and has taken up so much time and resources, that complexity equals greater impact. In reality, less is more. Finding one word for the brand is much harder than finding eight. Positioning is not like throwing shit against a wall - the more you throw at it, the greater the chance of something sticking. Continue reading "Complexity: Enemy of Brand Positioning" Posted by Mark Ritson in Brand Management, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (1) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Branding JUNE 27, 2008

Worthless Brand Values

Visit any FTSE 500 company and ask the first 10 employees you meet about their brand. Not one, barring the brand manager (if you are lucky), will have a clue what values or positioning they should be delivering to customers. Their attention and potential support was lost long ago when a sea of circles, triangles and keyholes containing brand personalities, traits, values and attributes washed over the heads of an unsuspecting workforce. A correlation exists between the brevity of a brand's positioning and its potential to succeed. That success hinges on ensuring that the positioning is not only tight, but right. It is hard to know whether your positioning statement is right, but it is far easier to determine whether it is wrong. Most companies use the same tired values to position their brand. Three brand values repeatedly emerge. This unholy trinity is generic, worthless and sadly symptomatic of indolent marketers who apply a branding-by-numbers approach to this most vital and unique of challenges. Irrespective of format or length, if your brand positioning contains any (or all) of the values described below, I steadfastly predict imminent failure to build the brand. The first is quality. Quality is a multidimensional concept. It can mean hundreds of different concepts: luxury, reliability, rarity, performance, taste, durability, speed and slowness, to name a few. If the point of positioning is to focus the brand, why do it on something that means different things to different people at different times? If you cannot be specific about your brand in its positioning statement, everything that follows will be equally vague and mundane. Continue reading "Worthless Brand Values" Posted by Mark Ritson in ?Branding Bag?, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (1) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Brand Positioning, Brand Values, Branding, Fallon, Grand Metropolitan,HaagenDazs, Tesco, United Airlines JUNE 12, 2008

Brand Positioning: Remember This

What seven concepts are critical to positioning?

1. Perception (theirs, not yours) 2. Differentiation 3. Competition 4. Specialization 5. Simplicity 6. Leadership 7. Reality To sell concepts, products and services, you have to understand how the mind works: 1. The mind is a limited container. 2. The mind creates "product ladders" for each category (cars, toothpaste, accounting services, hamburgers, etc.) There is always a top rung and a bottom rung in each category. 3. The mind can only remember seven items in a high interest category. Most people remember only two or three items in a category. 4. On the product ladder, Positions One and Position Two typically account for more than 60 per cent of the sales in that category. In other words, Positions Three, Four and Subsequent are not profitable. 5. The mind hates complexity. To the mind, complexity equals confusion. People dont have time to figure out confusion. 6. The best way to enter the mind is to OVER-SIMPLIFY the message. 7. The most powerful positioning is to reduce your message to one simple and easily understood word. 8. Minds are insecure. Most people buy what others buy: this is the "herd mentality." 9. Minds dont changeeasily.

Brand Positioning: Key Questions

To apply positioning thinking to your own company's situation, here are six key questions to ask yourself: 1. What position, if any do we already own in the prospect's mind? Get the answer to this question from the marketplace, not the marketing manager. If this requires a few dollars for research, so be it. Spend the money. It's better to know exactly what you're up against now than to discover it later when nothing can be done about it. 2. What position do we want to own? Here is where you bring out your crystal ball and try to figure out the best position to own from a longterm point of view. 3. What companies must be outgunned if we are to establish that position? If your proposed position calls for a head-to-head approach against a marketing leader, forget it. It's better to go around an obstacle rather than over it. Back up. Try to select a position that no one else has a firm grip on. 4. Do we have enough marketing money to occupy and hold the position?

A big obstacle to successful positioning is attempting to achieve the impossible. It takes money to build a share of mind. It takes money to establish a position. It takes money to hold a position once you've established it. The noise level today is fierce. There are just too many "me-too" products and too many "me-too" companies vying for the mind of the prospect. Getting noticed is getting tougher. Continue reading "Brand Positioning: Key Questions" Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Positioning, Branding Basics | Permalink | Comments (2) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Al Ries, Brand Positioning, Branding MAY 31, 2008

The State of Branding

Dave Goetz from Brand & Strategy interviewed me in May of 2006 on the state of branding. This is the conversation that transpired... What, if anything, has changed over the past thirty years in marketing strategy? Essentially, the only thing that has changed is the level of competition. Competition today is intense. Its what I call the tyranny of choice. There is now so much choice that if you make a mistake, your competitors quickly get your business, and you dont get it back. Its the General Motors problem. They made a lot of mistakes and market share continues to drop. Has your thinking about positioning changed since you coined the phrase? No, not at all. My stance on positioning has become more important in the scheme of things because of the level of competition. My first article in 1969 about positioning pointed essentially to the me-toomarketplace. The concept of positioning was necessary because of the arrival of more and more competitors saying, Me too. My premise was based on the rise of competition. But did I realize in 1969 what it would be like in 2006? Not at all. At that point, there wasnt global competition. Are there a limited number of positions? Remember, were talking about positioning as a science. Its the science of the mindpsychology. One of the things we talk about in positioning is the Rule of Seven. In other words, in any category there are no more than seven brand names that anybody can remember, and those are only high interest categories. Harvard psychologists figured out that generally the finite number of brands that stick in peoples heads is seven. But theres also the law of duality. If you look at every category, only two brands eventually rise to the top. Its Coke and Pepsi, Kodak and Fuji. The remaining brands3, 4, 5, 6, and 7are working in a fairly small market share. Continue reading "The State of Branding" Posted by Jack Trout in ?Branding Bag?, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (1) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Andy Groves, AT&T, Brand & Strategy, Brand Positioning, Branding, Coke,Dave Goetz, Fuji, Intel, Kodak, MCI, Pepsi, Peter Drucker, Sprint MAY 20, 2008

Maintaining the Leadership Position

Historically, the top three brands in a product category occupy market share in a ratio of 4:2:1. That is, the number one brand has twice the market share of number two, which has twice the market share of number three. The success of a brand is not due to the high level of marketing acumen of the company itself, but rather, it is due to the fact that the company was first in the product category. Take Xerox, they launched the first plain-paper copier and were able to sustain its leadership position. However, time after time the company failed in other product categories in which it was not first. Similarly, IBM failed when it tried to compete with Xerox in the copier market, and Coca-Cola failed in its effort to use Mr. Pibb to take on Dr. Pepper. These examples support the point that the success of a brand usually is due to its being first in the market rather than the marketing abilities of the company. The power of the company comes from the power of its brand, not the other way around. With this point in mind, there are certain things that a market leader should do to maintain the leadership position. First, it should not boast about being number one. If a firm does so, then customers will think that the firm is insecure in its position if it must reinforce it by saying so. If a firm was the first to introduce a product, then the advertising campaign should reinforce this fact. Coca-Cola's "the real thing" does just that, and implies that other colas are just imitations. Another strategy that a leader can follow to maintain its position is the multibrand strategy. Continue reading "Maintaining the Leadership Position" Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Branding, Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Haloid Xerox, IBM, Mr. Pibb, New York Central Railroad, Xerox MAY 15, 2008

Getting Into the Mind of the Consumer

The easiest way of getting into someone's mind is to be first. It is very easy to remember who is first, and much more difficult to remember who is second. Even if the second entrant offers a better product, the first mover has a large advantage that can make up for other shortcomings. However, all is not lost for products that are not the first. By being the first to claim a unique position in the mind the consumer, a firm effectively can cut through the noise level of other products. For example, Miller Lite was not the first light beer, but it was the first to be positioned as a light beer, complete with a name to support that position. Similarly, Lowenbrau was the most popular German beer sold in America, but Beck's Beer successfully carved a unique position using the advertising, "You've tasted the German beer that's the most popular in America. Now taste the German beer that's the most popular in Germany." Consumers rank brands in their minds. If a brand is not number one, then to be successful it somehow must relate itself to the number one brand. A campaign that pretends that the market leader does not exist is likely to fail. Avis tried unsuccessfully for years to win customers, pretending that the number one Hertz did not exist. Finally, it began using the line, "Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder."

After launching the campaign, Avis quickly became profitable. Whether Avis actually tried harder was not particularly relevant to their success. Rather, consumers finally were able to relate Avis to Hertz, which was number one in their minds. Continue reading "Getting Into the Mind of the Consumer" Posted by Jack Trout in ?Branding Bag?, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: 7-Up, Avis, Beck's, Branding, Coke, Hertz, Lowenbrau, Miller Lite, Pepsi MAY 11, 2008

Positioning A Follower
Second-place companies often are late because they have chosen to spend valuable time improving their product before launching it. As my former partner Al Ries and I wrote in Positioning: The Battle for your Mind, it is better to be first and establish leadership. If a product is not going to be first, it then must find an unoccupied position in which it can be first. At a time when larger cars were popular, Volkswagen introduced the Beetle with the slogan "Think small." Volkswagen was not the first small car, but they were the first to claim that position in the mind of the consumer. Other positions that firms successfully have claimed include: age (Geritol) high price (Mobil 1 synthetic engine lubricant) gender (Virginia Slims) time of day (Nyquil night-time cold remedy) place of distribution (L'eggs in supermarkets) quantity (Schaefer - "the one beer to have when you're having more than one.")

It most likely is a mistake to build a brand by trying to appeal to everyone. There are too many brands that already have claimed a position and have become entrenched leaders in their positions. A product that seeks to be everything to everyone will end up being nothing to everyone. Sponsored By: Brand Aid Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Al Ries, Beetle, Brand Positioning, Branding, Geritol, Leggs, Mobil 1, Nyquil,Schaefer, The Battle for your Mind, Virginia Slims MAY 04, 2008

Is Brand Positioning Still Relevant?

M. Anand from Businessworld, India's leading business publication interviewed me in 2005 on the relevance of positioning in a changing world. Here's the conversation that transpired... Is positioning still relevant 35 years after you first wrote about it?

It is more relevant now. The original body of work on positioning was made on the premise that the United States was an over-communicated market. There was too much noise and lots of competition for the mind. The mind was the battleground. Then, the question was how do we get into the consumers mind in an over-communicated society. Little did we know that it is going to become an even more over-communicated world. In fact, we thought over-communicated was nothing. Now, you have the Internet, satellites etc.. All that has made positioning an even bigger deal. That is why the book continues to sell even now. Many contemporary marketers believe that positioning is now outdated. In fact, McDonalds chief global marketing officer Larry light said: Identifying one brand position, communicating it in a repetitive manner is old-fashioned, out of date, out of touch. What is your response? I had a big fight with Larry light and I wrote several counter articles. Larry Light doesnt know what he is talking about. He has jumped up and said positioning is obsolete. The problem with Larry light is that he has not been able to understand positioning. He never has. I know Larry. And I told Larry that he has not been able to do a good job of positioning accounts. So I told him here is your deal: if you want the answer to what you are, I will give it to you. I said, in essence, here is your (McDonalds) positioning. You are the worlds favorite place to eat. Thats your concept. That is it. That is a leadership position. And thats a very powerful idea. And I published that idea. But I know he wont use it because I wrote it. Thats why I gave it to him. I think Larry has no clue to what positioning is all about. But other voices like The Economist (in its April 2, 2005 issue) has argued that positioning is not working with sophisticated and knowledgeable consumers. It is argued that consumers now buy on research and personal value, not on how companies seek to position. Continue reading "Is Brand Positioning Still Relevant?" Posted by Jack Trout in Brand Management, Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (0) |TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Branding, Businessworld, Larry Light, M. Anand, McDonalds, Positioning, The Economist APRIL 17, 2008

Creating a Winning Brand Promise

The goal of any brand positioning exercise is to develop a brand promise that is unique, compelling and believable. Any successful brand positioning project must evaluate all potential brand promises against these three criteria unique, compelling and believable. The winning promise must deliver against all three criteria or it wont work. The only way to assess this is to measure each of these for each brand promise option with each key target audience. As an example, we explored the following potential brand promises for Rochester, New York. This is how one target audience, current residents, evaluated them: Continue reading "Creating a Winning Brand Promise" Posted by Brad VanAuken in Brad VanAuken, Brand Positioning, Brand Promise | Permalink |Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Bausch & Lomb, Brand Positioning, Brand Promise, Branding, GM, Kodak, New York, Rochester, Xerox

MARCH 08, 2008

Capture the Mind. Win the Day.

In 1972 Jack Trout and Al Ries wrote three seminal articles on brand positioning that were published in Advertising Age. Thirty-six years later the merits of their thinking holds steadfast. This is an excerpt of their article The Brand Positioning Era Cometh. Remember the Mind Is a Memory Bank To better understand what an advertiser is up against, it may be helpful to take a closer look at the objective of all advertising programs - the human mind. Like a memory bank, the mind has a slot or "position" for each bit of information it has chosen to retain. In operation, the mind is a lot like a computer. But there is one important difference. A computer has to accept what is put into it. The mind does not. In fact, it's quite the opposite. The mind, as a defense mechanism against the volume of today's communications, screens and rejects much of the information offered it. In general, the mind accepts only that new information which matches its prior knowledge or experience. It filters out everything else. For example, when a viewer sees a television commercial that says, "NCR means computers," he doesn't accept it. IBM means computers. NCR means National Cash Register. The computer "position" in the minds of most people is filled by a company called the International Business Machines Corp. For a competitive computer manufacturer to obtain a favorable position in the prospect's mind, he must somehow relate his company to IBM's position. Yet, too many companies embark on marketing and advertising programs as if the competitor's position did not exist. They advertise their products in a vacuum and are disappointed when their messages fail to get through. Seven Brands Are Mind's Limit The mind, as a container for ideas, is totally unsuited to the job at hand. Continue reading "Capture the Mind. Win the Day." Posted by Derrick Daye in ?Branding Bag?, Brand Positioning, Derrick Daye | Permalink |Comments (0) | TrackBack (1) Technorati Tags: Advertising Age, Al Ries, Brand Positioning, Branding, George A. Miller, IBM,Jack Trout, NCR FEBRUARY 15, 2008

Brand Positioning: Choose Your Words Carefully

I had a depressingly familiar experience last week. A brand manager took me through their fresh brand strategy, and it was terrible. It was, like most brand positioning, pointless. About eight out of every 10 brand strategies have no impact whatsoever on brand equity. And this was going to be another addition to that big book of pointless branding for two reasons. First, there were too many words in the positioning statement. Three concentric circles confronted me. The central red circle was called the brand essence. In the middle was a blue circle called brand personality. And then around the edge was a circle in yellow, called brand identity. Too much. I have never seen a great brand positioning strategy that needed more than three words to define the brand. Any more than that and the probability of achieving any kind of impact on the market turns almost immediately to zero. Continue reading "Brand Positioning: Choose Your Words Carefully" Posted by Derrick Daye in Brand Positioning | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack (1) Technorati Tags: Brand Equity, Brand Positioning, Branding JANUARY 04, 2008

Beware: Tinkering Marketers

Not too long ago reports had Peter Brabeck, the departing CEO of Nestle, putting the company on a diet. He discovered that the food maker was churning out 130,000 variations of its brands--and 30% weren't making any money. He has launched an aggressive plan to jettison weaker brands and simplify the organization. It's bye-bye to low-carb Kit-Kats and lemon cheesecake-flavored chocolate. (Can you imagine?) Nestle faces a predicament that haunts many companies that have acquired other companies to a point that its subsidiaries are almost impossible to manage. When you're into dog food, chocolate, baby food, ice cream, coffee and on and on, you can easily see the problem. But what's even worse is that these mega-companies end up with hundreds of marketing people sitting around cooking up new ideas that aren't very good ideas. Or they sit around and try to figure out how to improve things. They just can't stop tinkering. What top management fails to understand is that the road to chaos is paved with improvements. In all my years in the business, I've never seen a marketing person come into a new assignment, look around, and say, "Things look pretty good. Let's not touch a thing." To the contrary, all red-blooded marketing people want to get in there and start improving things. They want to make their mark. Just sitting there wouldn't feel right.

The 10 New Rules of Branding

1) Brands that influence culture sell more; culture is the new catalyst for growth. Look at Google. They are changing the way we behave online. Nike is a brand that has become a part of all culture. If you get into that split screen, you become part of the lexicon of life.

2) A brand with no point of view has no point; full-flavor branding is in, vanilla is out. Love or hate Fox News, you know where it stands on issues. And Ben & Jerry'sis more than just ice cream; it's a company that stands for a cause. Younger consumers have grown up in a consumer world. They're flexing their muscle, and they want their brands to stand for something. 3) Today's consumer is leading from the front; this is the smartest generation to have ever walked the planet. Today's consumers are more discriminating and more experimental. They have very strong opinions on brands, and a lot of brands are getting consumers involved. Take Converse and the Converse Gallery, where consumers can make a 24-second film that will run on their site. It's consumer-generated creativity and a natural savviness. 4) Customize wherever and whenever you can; customization is tomorrow's killer whale. The second advent of the Internet has consumers wanting something all their own. Consumers say, 'I need something that is mine, not mass-produced for everybody.' The best example is Apple's iTunes Website. Instead of buying a CD, consumers are buying the tracks they want and putting them on their iPods. Look at Starbucks, which creates whatever beverage a consumer wants, and Nike, which allows you to design a shoe online. 5) Forget the transaction, just give me an experience; the mandate is simple: Wow them every day, every way. Apple and Coach found that the best way to give consumers a brand experience wasn't just to sell product in store but to control the entire experience. This is why they build stores in major cities. Looking for the other brands to soon be involved in the experience. Continue reading "The 10 New Rules of Branding" Posted by Simon Williams in ?Branding Bag?, Brand Management, Brand Positioning, Branding Trends | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) Technorati Tags: Apple, Ben & Jerrys, Branding, eBay, Fox News, GE, Google, Nike, Procter & Gamble, Sterling Group, Target, Timberland, Trends, Walmart DECEMBER 19, 2006

Branding: The Simple Truth

Earlier this year I touched on the definitions of a brand. After some recent emails and prospective client meetings around the nature of branding I'm inspired to revisit the topic. The simple truth about branding - A brand is a source of a promise to the consumer. It promises relevant differentiated benefits. Everything an organization does should be focused on enhancing delivery against its brand's promise. Combining a few different definitions, a brand is the name and symbols that identify: The The The The The source of a relationship with the consumer source of a promise to the consumer unique source of products and services single concept that you own inside the mind of the prospect sum total of each customer's experience with your organization

Leading organizations have discovered that brands are their most valuable asset (along with their people) for a number of reasons. Strong brands deliver substantial benefits: Increased revenues and market share Decreased price sensitivity Increased customer loyalty Additional leverage with vendors and retailers (for manufacturers) Increased profitability Increased stock price, shareholder value and sale value Increased clarity of vision Increased ability to mobilize an organization's people and focus its activities Increased ability to expand into new product and service categories Increased ability to attract and retain high quality employees Simply put: Build your brand. Win the day. Posted by Derrick Daye in Brand Management, Brand Positioning, Brand Promise, Branding Basics, Derrick Daye | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (2) Technorati Tags: Brand Benefits, Brand Definitions, Branding, Strong Brands DECEMBER 14, 2006

Achieving Brand Differentiation

If properly designed, brands should promise relevant differentiated benefits to their target customers. Carefully choosing the most powerful benefits will not only result in brand preference, but brand insistence. That is, the brand will be perceived to be the only viable solution for the customers need. Put another way, the customer will not pursue substitutes if the brand is not available. The brand establishes a consideration set of one. The optimal benefits for a brand to claim are those that are: (1) very important to the target customer (2) supported by organizational strengths (3) not being addressed by the competition Ideally, the brand tries to own only one or two key benefits, as that is all a customer will remember. The benefits should be understandable, believable, unique and compelling. A brands promise can be stated as follows: Only [brand] delivers [unique differentiating benefit] to [target customer]. Following are the most common sources of brand differentiation [unique differentiating benefits]: The brand stands for something important to the customer oIts values align with the customers values

oIt reinforces the customers self image or how the customer aspires to be perceived oIt can serve as a badge or other form of self-expression It possesses admirable qualities It provides unique or superior customer service It delivers a unique product purchase or usage experience It is entertaining It delivers superior performance It is venerated, has heritage (continuity, trustworthy leader, since ) It is the technology leader It has noble aims/values It tells an engaging story about itself Its founder has unique, admirable qualities It was first -- a pioneer -- in its market