A new brand world
#1 All aboard the brandwagon
Relying on brand awareness has become marketing fool’s gold
A brand is the result of a synaptic process in the brain.
Pavlov: Pavlov wanted to see if external stimuli could affect this process, so he rang a metronome at the same time he gave the experimental dogs food. After a while, the dogs – which before only salivated when they saw and ate their food – would begin to salivate when the metronome sounded, even if no food were present.
Maslow:
Branding is about taking something common and improving upon it in ways that make it more valuable and meaningful.
A coffee bean is just a coffee bean until someone like Howard Schulz and Starbucks comes along, and creates from it a branded product.
A brand is the sum of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the off-strategy. Brands are sponges for content, for images, for fleeting feelings. They become psychological concepts held in the minds of the public, where they may stay forever. As such you can’t control a brand. At best you only guide and influence it.
A product is no more than an artifact around which customers have experiences.
Brands are defined by the experiences and actions of their lifetime.
#2 Cracking your brand’s genetic code
You have to know it before you can grow it
Tom Paine:
• What are our goals?
• Where – and what – do we hope to be in the future?
• What do we do if and when we get there?
• How will we measure success?
Brand essence/ Core brand values: every brand has at its core a substance that gives it strength. You have to understand it before you can grow it.
Brand mantra: capturing the irrefutable essence or spirit of brand positioning. They are not slogans but touchstones that help shape what kind of products and services companies create. (i.e. Nike, authentic athletic performance, Disney, fun family entertainment, Starbucks, rewarding every moments)
#3 Building brandwidth
Just because you can doesn’t mean you should
Methods for building intelligent brandwidth:
• Co-branding and Strategic Alliances (synergy)
o Brand’s strength (risk of dilution of the brand’s image and value)
o Control Issue
o Costs and benefits (long term benefits)
o Purpose (existing or new market, problems)
o Measuring success
o Getting out (exit strategy)
• Brand extensions (just because you can doesn’t mean you should)
• Transcending Distribution Channels
In creating brandwidth, always look around your core product category position before looking elsewhere, particularly when taking the brand into a new distribution channel. If you do it right, the new growth will strengthen, rather than dilute, your brand.
• Transcending Product categories
Ways to enter new product categories through careful leveraging of core brand values
• Sub-branding
The practice of combining an existing brand with a new brand to brand a product is called sub-branding, as the subordinate brand means of modifying the super-ordinate brand.
• Acquisition
3 things to avoid when growing your brand:
• Never close your eyes
• Never ignore the effect of profit improvement programs on your brand
• Never expect success in one area to guarantee success in another
#4 Show some emotion
Transcend a product-only relationship with your customers
I.e. Harley Davidson and its sense of community
Belonging – Longing – Rugged Individuality and Freedom
Some establish a powerful connection to an aspect of a culture defined by a country or a geographic region. Guinness is a good example of this. Besides forging a link to all things Irish, it is connected to an age-old institution: the Irish Pub. Guinness is as much a state of mind and place as it is a drink.
Effective brand building requires making relevant and compelling connections to deeply rooted human emotions or profound cultural forces.
#5 Brand Environmentalism
Everything matters
Brand environmentalism means accepting the responsibility to protect your brand and present it in the best light whenever and wherever it may be found.
Brand environmentalism means undertaking a commitment to constantly improving and safeguarding the integrity and associative value of everything that surrounds the brand in all phases of development: where it is conceived, where it is made, where it is seen, and where it is sold. It means leveraging every opportunity to tell a more complete, more consistent, more unique, and more compelling brand stories.
When thinking about ways to cut costs, begin with areas that customers cannot readily see, touch, smell, or hear. Then work from there. And above else, be consistent across all customer contact points. You are only as good as your weakest presentation – or your restroom.
#6 Brand Leadership
All brands need good parents
Creativity can never be organized. At least is shouldn’t feel organized.
A great creative brief has 3 attributes:
• Concise – no more than 2 pages
• Tight – containing 2 separate focused statements, of where the business and the brand are today and where they must be tomorrow in order to achieve success
• Loose – let them figure out how to get there
#7 Branding and the corporate goliath
Big doesn’t have to be bad
#8 Brand future
Relevance, simplicity, and humanity – not technology – will distinguish brands in the future
7 core values:
Simplicity
Patience
Relevance
Accessibility
Humanity
Omnipresence
Innovation
Based on the book Emotional Branding, written by Marc Gobé
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Written by Loic Bonnaillie, http://bonnaillie.com , a blog on the best practices
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