Word Marketing Blog

Brand Strategy Myth 4

Brand Strategy Myth #4-Our Logo is our Brand

Many people mistake their logo for their brand.

The logo, colors, fonts, taglines, jingles, music pieces, etc. are commonly mistaken for the brand. They are elements that provide recognition for the brand. Like an ad schedule, these things can represent the brand. When a consumer sees a logo, they can access the library of memories in the brain which contains every brand they've ever come in contact with, whether directly or indirectly, and immediately can establish some sort of expectation which then leads to or does not lead to a purchase decision.

Reputations and expectations must be based on something tangible if consumers are going to put their trust in a brand.

Some of these elements could include:

• Personality
• Position
• Promise
• Price
• Visuals
• Smells

Plus a few other things. The brand is the sum total of all the consumer experiences when they come in contact with your brand. The process of making these experiences positive more often than negative is vital in the established success of any brand.

The brand must be managed as a tangible asset, not some intangible creative entity.

Marketing Alignment

You're throwing a summer BBQ. You've sent out the invitations and are excitedly awaiting the arrival of your guests. Your invitations say burgers and dogs will be provided, as well as some sides. You say there will be outdoor games to play and plenty of chairs, so bring a friend. It's going to be a great time.

So when your guests arrive, will you be scrambling to come up with a few more seats? Will you have forgotten to purchase the hot dogs or prepare the sides? Have you forgotten that the volleyball net was loaned to a neighbor (who is currently on vacation) and the washer game is missing set?

Aligning your external and internal marketing is a key component to your businesses' success. If your advertising says that you treat each customer as an individual, you must be sure that all associates are trained how to go the extra step to do so. If you dress in a suit and tie in your ad, customers should not come in to find you in khakis and button-down shirt. You may think people won't notice, but they will. And these inconsistencies damage your trust value with them.

Take special note to think about what image you are portraying to your customers externally, and make sure you are walking the walk internally. Your customers will reward you with loyalty for doing what you say.

Brand Strategy Myth 3

Brand Strategy Myth 3-We're branding with our ads

Unfortunately many people believe that running an ad campaign constitutes a branding strategy. Why? One reason is because many media reps have sold what they've called a "branding schedule" and as a result, it's caused folks to think they are branding with an ad schedule.

An ad schedule is a tactic, not a strategy. It's a piece, not a puzzle.

A brand is the sum total of all user experience with a particular product or service, building both reputation and future expectations of benefit. So you can quickly see if you only run an ad schedule and that's it, you are not really executing a strategy concerning your brand. Your ads can represent your brand, but you are not branding with your ads.

Let's say some friends are coming into town to see you. Are you going to put them at the Ritz-Carlton or the Motel 6? There are two brands represented there that I mentioned.

What does Ritz-Carlton say to you?

When was the last time you saw a Ritz-Carlton ad?

What does Motel 6 say to you?

What was the last time you saw a Motel 6 ad?

Chances are, you've never seen or heard an ad for either one. Mentally, however, you may have started separating your friends into groups for the two brands. Why? Because even if you've never been to either one of them, the brand has trained you to instinctively know what to expect-as I said-even if you've never visited one. Their reputation is such that you know that their experience will be the same regardless of geography. That reputation is the brand.

Action

Action is the antidote to apathy.

Website Content

When it comes to your website, what kind of content should be there?

While it's true that your website acts as your personal marketing vehicle, without limitations of size, timeframe or other parameters when delivering your message, it is not the case that anything you decide to put there will be effective.

Good website content must, first and foremost, satisfy one particular objective: it must have all the informaiton your potential customer is seeking. Above all else, if your visitor cannot find what they are looking for, they bounce. But there is some savvy required - you cannot just dump all your information out there.

The content should be well written - easily understandable and with a good flow.

The content should be well-organized - with much thought put into how people's minds will lead them through the site, and multiple ways to get them where they want to go.

The content should be valuable - made up of the information your customer wants and seeks, and not just blathering about you and your business.

Good websites can account for a tremendous deal of revenue for a business, and not just through e-commerce. Give your site a good look with fresh eyes, or better yet, ask some honest friends and family do so for you. And if you'd like some help getting it just right, let us know.

Brand Strategy Myth 2

Brand Strategy Myth 2-We can do it "in-house"

I'll run the risk of offending some Marketing Directors, but the chances that the skills exist to do actual brand management in-house are low.

Typically, the skills which exist include graphic design, advertising lay-out, media experience or copywriting. The skills to effectively execute brand management are few and far between. It's not that they exist at a higher level of management, typically they don't exist at all. If they do, they are very basic, not approaching formative level.

Consultants as we are, exist to help provide the skills that are missing in order to help re-vitalize or re-position the brand.

Do you:

• Have a working model for your brand?
• Have a working Marketing Process?
• Have clear Brand Strategies and Measurable Goals?
• See your brand the way your consumer sees it?
• Have a clear-cut understanding of the Brand across all departments?

Here's a quick 3-step model (ours is more complex)

1. The Brand must be "right"
2. The Brand must be "right" internally across all organizational functions
3. The Brand must be "right" externally across every channel

These are just some of the components to brand management that we notice missing in the marketing strategy of most companies, the list can get more exhaustive.

To Change or Not To Change

When is it, or is it ever, time to change my brand?

There are typically two extremes when it comes to brand consistency. Some companies believe the brand should never change, and therefore it becomes outdated, stagnant and irrelevant. Others change brands frequently and impulsively, henceforth never establishing any consistency at all. The truth is that brands must evolve over time in order to remain relevant, but what are the appropriate reasons and ways to update a brand?

Visual Relevance
Think Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Ford. These brands have been around for decades, and yet their logos today are not the logos of years past. These companies have updated their logos over time in order to keep them looking fresh and current. But always these updates were done gradually while keeping the main components intact.

Product Development
Think KFC and LG. The former is a brand that evolved to meet changing consumer attitudes, and the latter to meet opportunities of new technology. Other brands have evolved along with changes in market developments. In all cases, the important thing is to never stray too far from the original brand. For example, KFC, formally Kentucky Fried Chicken, did not try to become known for salads. Instead, they simply took the emphasis off "fried" in order to remain relevant in a market newly concerned with health.

Fundamental Promise
Think Sears. In the late 1800's Sears began as a catalog order store that promised better than retail prices to a market primarily of farmers. As more cities developed, Sears began to open more retail outlets in order to meet the needs of changing consumer habits. And over the years Sears has continued to evolve in order to meet these changing needs.

Brands that do not evolve become stagnant. But the trick to successful brand evolution is that it is done slowly and with great care. Much thought is given to how changes will affect the current brand, where the brand will go in the future, and how these things will effect the brand perception in the minds of the consumer.

Brand Strategy Myth 1

Brand Strategy Myth 1-We don't need to worry about brand management, brand strategy or branding

The truth is that every organization will face stronger competition, not lesser as the new economy sets in. No longer is the competition limited to only the product or service you sell. The fact is, every time one of your customers sends a package across the country overnight or visits a restaurant, the compare service, price, product to the others they are using.

If you are in denial about facing up to the competition from AT&T, Dell, Apple, McDonald's, come to the realization that consumers compare all products they use, not just the ones in a particular category.

Secondarily, as the dollars in the new economy are more constricted, consumers will become more selective over where they choose to spend their money. The new economy has not changed the fact that consumers primarily choose strong well-managed brands.

As the new economy sets in, we have seen an increase in surveys and focus groups which indicate that players are interested in seeing the indicators concerning the health of their brands.

Branding is a strategy

I think my first exposure to branding was as a little boy growing up with horses and cattle in Kentucky, our farm and the family farms around us used brands to distinguish one herd's ownership from another.

They say this technique of using hot irons to place a unique mark on livestock goes back to ancient Egypt.

As media developed during the 19th and 20th centuries, marketers started taking this technique and adapting it to establish products for sale to the public. At first, there were only one or two brands in each product category. Being first in a category was a major victory. There used to be a saying, "no one remembers who the second person to do something was". It may still be true, but not so in today's world of branding.

The grocery store aisles are full of similar products in the same category, many of them full generations removed from the original. In today's branding landscape, the truth is, hardly anyone remembers who the original was? Who was the first shampoo? The first toothpaste? The first gasoline?

In today's crowded brand landscape, it's not as much about being first as it is about doing the best job branding. So what is branding today? Let's start with what it isn't.

Today, many folks use words they think are interchangeable.

Branding is not marketing. Marketing is not branding. Advertising is not branding. Marketing is not advertising. Advertising is not marketing.

Branding can be a part of marketing.

Branding is not advertising. Advertising can be a part of branding. Branding is not running a lot of commercials. Branding is not your logo.

Branding is strategic or a strategy. Marketing is a process. Advertising is tactical.

Branding is a long term strategic plan of action aligned with all aspects of your business goals designed to reach a particular vision and it can be part of your overall marketing process and certainly, advertising can be a component of it. It's also important in any strategy to identify the win. The reason many business owners have a hard time measuring their efforts is they haven't spent time deciding on where they want to end up. How will you know when you get there?

Putting an ad in a medium and running it until people want to kill you is not branding. It's what many have done for advertising and called it branding, but frequency is not branding.

Branding is a strategy.  Most people I encounter have not been trained or have the skills to concept or plan strategically, most of their thinking is aligned in the tactical realm, because tactics are what folks are exposed to every day. Tactics are the messages they are bombarded with, therefore that is what has molded their thinking.

Brand Management is not all about advertising and sales promotion. It's about the consumer's experience.

A brand is a distinctive identity providing value and a relevant, differentiated experience and indicating the source of that promise.

Are you doing that?

Media Moldings

The 20th Century changed the worldview of humans on this planet forever.

The 20th Century brought an explosion of new inventive ways to communicate on a massive scale. The ability to broadcast signals of audio and video ushered in a major cultural shift.

The fact is, our culture today worldwide is one of media.

In the last 20 years, the delivery systems in which we not only transit media, but also recieve it, have evolved to a point where anyone with a cell phone with a camera embedded into to it can broadcast anything they want to a worldwide audience.

And....it influences people.

Recently, in our report, The Real Estate Edge, we asked people what influenced their view of the economy.

68% said the media.

We live in a media-driven culture. Researchers tell us we are bombarded with some 3,000 messages per day in all sorts of forms.

Today, the world has changed.

Yesterday a few would be broadcasting to the world and having the world listen.

Now, the entire world is broadcasting to itself. The most important question to ponder is:

What do we say?