How to Write an Effective Headline, Part #1

From Dr. Ralph Wilson, a good article that overviews the basics of copywriting and writing effective headlines.

Marketing is soda and branding is scotch

Jennie has posted an interesting take on the differences between marketing and branding over in the BrandTrellis.com Forum. It is definitely worth the read.

Thanks, Jennie!

More on brand awareness

Back in May I discussed brand awareness and how it occurs when people simply recognize your brand as yours. Brand awareness is not necessarily good or bad.

As I discuss in my e-book, How to Build and Manage Your Brand (in sickness and in health), brand awareness does not necessarily mean that people prefer your brand or even attach much value to it. It just means they recognize your brand and can identify it under different conditions.

In my opinion, too many marketers tout the merits of building brand awareness without giving further thought to building strategic awareness that represents positive associations and superior value that in turn make people wish to choose the brand over competing brands in the category.

New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin fell into the brand awareness trap back in August when, as reported by the Washington Post, he stated that the high violence rate in New Orleans was a "two-edged sword" because "it's not good for [New Orleans], but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there, and it keeps people thinking about our needs and what we need to bring this community back".

So if high murder rates and violence build high brand awareness for New Orleans, is that a good thing? I think not.

Keep this in mind the next time somebody tells you that you need to build brand awareness. Tell them you know better and you understand the importance of building the right brand awareness.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Use words wisely in marketing communications

I've been hearing a radio advertisement for the American Stroke Association for some time now and it has bothered me since the first time I heard it.

A transcript of the ad follows:

{Struggling voice}: The First Amendment reads, “the people shall not be deprived or abridged of their right to speak”

Narrator #1: The odds are, the person you just heard is an African-American.

Narrator #2: Because African-Americans are twice as likely to suffer a stroke as white Americans.

Narrator #1: That’s twice as likely a stroke can rob you of your freedom to speak your mind.

Narrator #2: The freedom to shout from mountain tops.

Narrator #1: The freedom to tell your mother you love her.

Narrator #2: And it’s twice as likely a stroke could take your life.

Narrator #1: Therefore it’s twice as crucial for us to do something about preventing a stroke.

{Same struggling voice}: Learn how you can help beat the odds.

Narrator #1: Start by calling 1-888-4-stroke or go online to strokeassociation.org.

Narrator #2: Join the power to end stroke.

Narrator #3: A public service message brought to you by the American Stroke Association and the Ad Council.

Here’s what bothers me about the ad.

Strokes often rob people of their ability to speak, not their freedom of speech. To imply that the loss of the ability to speak due to stroke is somehow related to the loss of the American freedom of speech by referencing the U.S. Constitution is, well, misguided.

As marketing communication goes, the American Stroke Association and the Ad Council could have taken a better approach with an issue directed at a minority population rather than toying with the notion that a constitutional freedom is somehow being taken away.

I appreciate the message that those at higher risk for strokes should know they are at higher risk and inform themselves on the topic. I also applaud the strategy of informing all of us about the risks. I just wish they would have thought a little more about how they conveyed that message.

More information…

Amendment I to the U.S. Constitution

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

About the risk of strokes.

Top 100 Brandz

Millward Brown Optimor has compiled its list of the top 100 global brands as measured by their dollar value.

The top 10:

1. Google
2. GE
3. Microsoft
4. Coca Cola
5. China Mobile
6. Marlboro
7. Wal-Mart
8. Citi
9. IBM
10. Toyota

A direct link to the report with the complete list and description of methodology:
http://www.millwardbrown.com/Sites/optimor/Media/Pdfs/en/BrandZ/BrandZ-2007-RankingReport.pdf

Who or what is the consumer?

“The consumer isn’t stupid, the consumer is your mother”
- David Ogilvy

Who decides what your brand is?

“You don’t decide what your brand is, the consumer does”
- Marty Neumeier

Do you read ads?

"People don’t read advertising, they read what interests them, and sometimes, it’s an ad”
- Howard Luck Gossage

PR and Advertising in Branding

I've heard very strong arguments that public relations is the way a strong brand is truly established and advertising is how the brand is maintained. In fact, not too long ago, authors Al and Laura Ries devoted an entire book, The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR, to reinforce and illustrate this idea (Harper, 2002).

If you think about this theory for a moment, it makes a lot of sense.

If a brand is successful in making a connection with people and communicating its distinct advantage then people will want to tell others about it and word-of-mouth advertising will develop naturally —- not to mention writers in the press will want to write about the brand. Once that type of differentiation and story telling is established in the market's mind, advertising can help maintain and shape the brand.

Just don't confuse organic word-of-mouth with "buzz" marketing or Paid-For Word-of-Mouth. If you have to pay people to talk about your brand, then what you are really doing is investing in advertising. Don't let the new-fangled agencies out there make you believe that it is anything else.

The Top 25 Marketing Blogs

Top 25 Marketing Blogs according to Viral Garden.

As of Nov. 7:

1. Seth's Blog - 8,987 (-27)(LW - 1)
2 - Duct Tape Marketing - 2,264 (-17)(LW - 2)
3 - Search Engine Guide - 1,427 (+72)(LW - 3)
4 - Daily Fix - 1,088 (+2)(LW - 5)
5 - Logic + Emotion - 1,081 (-14)(LW - 4)
6 - Diva Marketing - 991 (+17)(LW - 6)
7 - What's Next - 965 (+6)(LW - 7)
8 - The Engaging Brand - 759 (+2)(LW - 8)
9 - Influential Marketing - 722 (+6)(LW - 10)
10 - Brand Autopsy - 709 (-8)(LW - 9)
11 - Drew's Marketing Minute - 704 (-8)(LW - 11)
12 - Converstations - 669(-10)(LW - 12)
13 - Church of the Customer - 651 (+2)(LW - 13)
14 - Jaffe Juice - 584 (+3)(LW - 14)
15 - Conversation Agent - 567 (+4)(LW - 15)
16 - The Viral Garden - 538 (-13)(LW - 16)
17 - Marketing Roadmaps - 533 (+2)(LW - 17)
18 - Branding and Marketing - 526 (-3)(LW - 18)
19 - Marketing Headhunter - 521 (No Change)(LW - 19)
20 - Customers Rock! - 451 (-8)(LW - 20)
21 - Servant of Chaos - 439 (-16)(LW - 21)
22 - CK's Blog - 436 (-1)(LW - 22)
23 - Experience Curve - 402 (+6)(LW - 23)
24 - Greg Verdino's Marketing Blog - 380 (-3)(LW - 24)
25 - Chaos Scenario - 348 (+1)(LW - 25)

The goal of marketing

A brief review of current online discussion reveals that few marketers can succinctly describe to non-marketing people what the primary goal of marketing is.

The goal of marketing is to drive sales.

Is that too succinct?

Let me try a slightly longer version to clarify.

The goal of marketing is to drive sales over the long-term.

I hope the latter was not too verbose.

Discussions about the marketing function typically involve how to choose the best marketing tactics and utilize and coordinate those tactics to drives sales. Sure there is a lot to it as there is a great deal involved in acquiring new customers and maintaining positive relationship with existing customers and doing so in a way that is profitable over the long-term.

True marketers realize that marketing is a long-term strategy that must also involve product development and an ongoing effort to satisfy customers to ever-higher levels of satisfaction while at the same time ensuring that one's offering represents unique value that cannot be found in competitive offerings.

Marketing to drive short-term sales is termed "sales promotion". Marketing to drive long-term sales is called, well, "marketing", but there should be no doubt that the goal of marketing is to drive sales.

Original knockoffs?

The Oct. 22 issue of Brandweek had an article about how Wal-Mart commissioned an agency to redesign the packaging for its private brands of soda: Choice Cola, Twist Up and Mountain Lightning.

Now, I've linked to the article above and since I don't have the rights to any of the photos of the product, I'll have to direct you to Murray Brand Communication's site so you can see the new designs for yourself. (Murray had enough sense to not show their design for Mountain Lightning at their website but InventorSpot.com has a photo with some great tasting notes from many fine, house brand sodas.)

I'll give Murray Brand Communications a little credit for the new look of Sam's Choice Cola, but their other two designs are a complete joke.

According to Brandweek, the strategy was "not to 'knock off' the national brands" and the ideas was to come up with designs that were "confident, distinctive and innovative".

What a joke!

There is nothing distinctive or innovative about the new package designs for Twist Up or Mountain Lightning. They are completely unoriginal and look like they were the result of a bar mishap where the barkeep mixed Pepsi's Mountain Dew with Coors and Tropicana's Twister with a dash of 7-Up.

And for Tom Kane of Murray Brand Communications to whine publicly in the Brandweek article that "we had only 90 days to develop three concepts for each sub-brand" is shameful. I'm not sure if Murray Brand Communications realizes how bad they look right there in the pages of Brandweek.

Murray Brand Communications ought to be ashamed of themselves for their lack or originality and for their public whining about their client's requirements.

Oh, but I guess if sales increased 10% then all is forgiven.

Maybe to some, but give me a break.

This is an example of the worst that advertising agencies have to offer and I'm not entirely sure how Brandweek chose this case study to hold up as a shining example.

Although, now I have new product ideas for Coors Dew and Sprite Twist. I must go to my lab and start mixing.

Business vision

Identifying and communicating a clear vision is one of the most important functions a business leader can perform. All business leaders should understand the basic elements of visioning and all marketers should know how to communicate that vision to all stakeholders and how to leverage it in brand strategies.

Creating a clear and effective vision delivers many benefits to the business. Not only does a clear, shared vision help define the values of the company and its employees, but it also helps guide the behavior of all employees. A strong vision also leads to productivity and efficiency.

Companies and organizations everywhere invest enormous resources in marketing and selling their products and services. Many of these organizations have a strong sense of who they are and why people should want to conduct business with them. Sadly, however, many organizations fail to have a strong sense of their own guiding principles and cannot clearly articulate their vision or communicate unique aspects of their brands in a way that compels customers and prospects to develop emotional attachments and buy their products and services.

Linking the vision and values of the organization to the brand promises made by the organization can propel the value of those brands into a whole new realm of business performance.

The following two articles expand.

Crash course in visioning

Linking vision & values to brands

Ad agencies and you the client

Ad agencies and traditional marketing firms are most concerned about impressing you with fancy images and slick graphic design because that’s how they make their money. They impress you and you pay them before you can measure the actual results of any given campaign that they create for you. Sweet deal for them, isn't it?

Somewhere lost along the way is the fact that effective marketing must speak to the ultimate customer, offer superior value to them and communicate with words and imagery that resonate and motivate them to modify their behavior in some way. Usually this behavior modification means that you make a strong enough case that somebody purchases your product or service -- and they are happy they did so long after the fact.

Also lost or often concealed from you is the fact that building brand awareness is nearly worthless (even though this is probably counter to everything you've been told by ad agencies) without building strategic brand awareness that differentiates and builds brand preference amongst people who actually spend money for your type of product.

This latter type of marketing is more difficult to achieve but it is precisely the kind of marketing that builds great brands. It is also the kind of brand building that makes cash registers sing. Brands that benefit both you and your customers over the long-term. Brands that ensure your profitability and customer satisfaction. This is the kind of marketing you should be trying to achieve.

Forget about the way brands were built yesterday. Yesterday is gone. Mass media are not so "mass" anymore. Consumers are different. Technology is different. Attention spans are shorter. Cynicism is everywhere. True connections are more important than ever.

Are you ready to step outside of the ad agency box and listen to more effective ways to approach your marketing? Are you ready to embrace the marketing of the future?

Is green marketing smart strategy?

“Green marketing” is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe or that at least represent much lower impact on the environment than alternative products.

Green marketing therefore can incorporate promoting a broad range of activities such as new and improved production methods, product modifications, changes in package design and different ways to conduct business operations, among other things.

Green has always been smart strategy. Think about it for a minute. Does any rational person really strive to willfully incorporate waste and destructive practices into their business operations? Of course not.

Since my very early days in the Boy Scouts developing a love for the natural wonders of this earth I have believed that treading lightly is a worthy exercise, that leaving a natural place cleaner than one finds it is smart practice and that only using as much as one needs is courteous to others as well as the environment. (As a father and parent, I have subsequently learned that teaching such principles to my children also has the side benefit of saving me money!)

Lately, however, there is a growing trend for companies to proclaim their green credentials in their marketing communications and wear their environmentalism on their corporate sleeve. Is this new wave of green marketing smart strategy?

Greenclaiming is not guaranteed to stimulate sales, especially for companies out to make a profit for their owners and shareholders. The risk of backlash is also very real.

I recently came across an article written by Pamela Eichenbaum entitled, “Greenwashing – Ethics Aside, It’s Just Bad Business.” In the article, Pamela points out that with so many companies loudly touting their green credentials, there is a risk of desensitization and there is no guarantee that companies will benefit from the practice. She also states that no matter how green you claim to be, you might just invite criticism that you are not green enough.

I’d like to go even a step farther than Ms. Eichenbaum.

Today’s modern environmental movement is not only a social movement but also a scientific and political movement. There are different shades of green to this movement.

Towards the dark green end you will find anti-capitalists who are opposed just about everything that modern, industrialized society represents. If you are a for-profit concern, you will never win with this group.

On the lighter green end of the spectrum you will find highly-educated, upper-class, environmentally-conscious people who wish to be seen as virtuous through their conspicuous consumption of sustainable, environmentally-friendly, organic and often higher-priced products so they can be viewed, for social reasons, as elites who operate with the proper motives.

Of course, the movement includes people of many stripes in between, but as you can see, the green movement is not a monolith that will guarantee that a capitalist company or organization will be rewarded for flying a green banner. In fact, far from guaranteeing it, it will probably bring skepticism and scrutiny from many. Doing so may also have people questioning whether you are trying to position your brand as morally superior which might, in fact, come across as condescension.

Creating strong brands that make unique promises of value and that deliver on those promises every time is one of the most important things any marketer can do. Not only should brands be differentiated, but they must also represent superior value that cannot be found anywhere else. With so many companies claiming to be green these days, claiming to be green is no longer a point of differentiation and making such claims potentially opens you up to scrutiny and criticism that you are not green enough or that you only claim to be green in order to increase profits or to gain some other selfish benefit.

As a marketing strategist, my advice is to think very hard before you decide to wear green on your corporate sleeve and shout it loudly via your marketing communications.

Yes, I know it is the trendy and politically correct thing to do these days, but doing so will make you just like every one else trying to cash-in on the trend and possibly even backfire on you or make you look disingenuous.

If you are a business owner or manager who truly believes -- and always has -- in conserving resources and treading lightly, then you won’t be able to stop that philosophy from permeating your organization and affecting organizational behavior such that your organization acts in accordance with your beliefs. You will get more satisfaction from walking the walk than you will from talking the talk.

If I could give marketers (and politicians and green activists!) one bit of advice on the topic, then I would advise them to lead by example rather than preach to others how to lives their lives. Nothing speaks as loudly as living authentically.

Chances are that those who have true concerns will ask you about your practices and your green credentials will be a wonderful, hidden value that comes as an added, free bonus along with all the other wonderful and unique benefits delivered by your brand.


Greenwashing - Ethics Aside, It's Just Bad Business by the Kolbrener branding agency.

Don’t let a motorcycle run over your cookies

There seems to be some confusion outside of marketing departments as to the difference between a line extension and a brand extension. Hopefully I can help remove the confusion and help ensure the proper terminology is used.

A line extension is when you develop a new product closely related to one of your existing product brands and launch the new product under the same brand name in the same category. The new product is designed to meet somewhat different needs of customers. By using a successful brand name to introduce additional items in a given product category, line extensions typically represent a less expensive, lower risk alternative for increasing sales. An example of this is Oreo sandwich cookies introducing Double Stuf and Oreo Minis.

A brand extension is when you use one of your existing brands to launch a new or modified product in a new category. A brand extension gives a new product instant recognition and faster acceptance while saving much of the high advertising costs usually associated with launching and building a new brand. The brand extension strategy, however, is not without risk because you run the risk of confusing or diluting the image and value of the original brand. Sure there are successes such as the Honda brand being able to simultaneously remain healthy in several categories such as cars, motorcycles, lawnmowers and generators, but Bic was unsuccessful in launching women’s underwear, Harley Davidson perfume never went anywhere and nobody really wanted McDonald’s pizza.

When choosing a new product strategy , remember that a brand is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value and those promises of value might not make sense in a new category. The same brand name must stand for the same promises.

The world's only online exchange about branding?

OK. Let's discuss something.

BrandChannel.com uses the tagline, "The world's only online exchange about branding, produced by Interbrand".

If there are other online exchanges about branding (such as this one or BrandTrellis.com), does this mean Interbrand has chosen a poor tagline or positioning statement for their website brand? Should they change their tagline? Would they be OK if they simply removed the comma?

I'm very interested to hear your thoughts.

Top 30 Customer Loyalty Brands

It's time for the annual list of the top brands according to consumer loyalty, from Brand Keys:

1. Google
2. Yahoo.com
3. Avis
4. L.L. Bean
5. Coors
6. J. Crew catalog
7. Samsung cell phone
8. Sam Adams
9. Hyatt
10. Verizon Wireless
11. Amazon.com
12. Target
13. Lowe's
14. Sears catalog
15. Marriott
16. Fairmont hotels
17. Netscape.com
18. Canon office copiers
19. Miller Genuine Draft
20. Panasonic plasma HDTV
21. True Value
22. Eddie Bauer
23. Victoria's Secret
24. Land's End
25. H&M
26. Apple
27. Blackberry
28. Sony LCD HDTV
29. Treo
30. Samsung analog TVs

Some marketing definitions

If the circus is coming to town and you paint a sign saying "Circus Coming to the Fairground Saturday," that's advertising. If you put the sign on the back of an elephant and walk it into town, that's promotion. If the elephant walks through the mayor's flower bed, that's publicity. And if you get the mayor to laugh about it, that's public relations. If the town's citizens go the circus, you show them the many entertainment booths, explain how much fun they'll have spending money at the booths, answer their questions and ultimately, they spend a lot at the circus, that's sales.

The best way to brand?

There is no universal single best way to brand product(s), of course, but the best way for ~you~ to brand your product(s) depends upon many factors.

The first thing to study is your competition. Who is your competition and what are their positions in the minds of consumers? What is your vision for your company and what are your core values? How do those compare with others in your industry and what advantages, tangible and intangible, do you hold over your competition? What unique qualities will you bring to the marketplace? What are the benefits associated with doing business with you?

The answer to these questions can help lead you toward determining a strong brand position for you that is defensible and profitable over the long-term.

Co-branding or joint promotion of adjoining businesses

An interesting discussion over at http://www.BrandTrellis.com that discusses how or whether to co-promote two separately-branded restaurants that are adjoining and owned by the same owner.

http://www.brandtrellis.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=9cd9d57f67850d5d9162035127d216ca&topic=11.0

The cart and the horse

For heaven's sake, do not let your ad agency get back to you with several concepts from which to choose and then change your message to match the winning concept. This happens all too often when somebody thinks of a clever statement after seeing an image or photo.

Graphics, photos and images are there to support and reinforce your core message. Make sure your message is clear before you ask for creative concepts and then only choose concepts that stay directly on message.

A brand that is not crystal clear about what it is saying is not much of a brand at all. If your message can be swayed based upon graphic design, then you must re-examine the messages you are sending.

All advertising agency employees should read this article

Tom Collins has a great ad makeover and article in the current issue of Direct Magazine. Perhaps even more valuable than the article and makeover are his quotes of David Ogilvy like:

"Advertising agencies…are now infested with people who regard advertising as an avant-garde art form. They have never sold anything in their lives. Their ambition is to win awards at the Cannes Festival. They bamboozle their unfortunate clients into paying millions of dollars a year to exhibit their originality."

and

"On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar. The headline is the ‘ticket on the meat.’ Use it to flag down readers who are prospects for the kind of product you are advertising.

What you're really doing with your headline, then, is separating out the readers who would be interested in what you are selling from those who wouldn't.

If they aren't prospects for what you sell, you don't want them reading your ad. Period."

Anyone involved in creating ads should read this article.

Why do I blog?

I was recently interviewed and asked why I blog about marketing and branding.

Why do I do it?

I believe that the best way to improve the quality of all marketing is to help educate as many people as possible about marketing so not only will marketers get better at what they do but consumers will demand better marketing, recognize it when they see it and reward those marketers who get it right.

Therefore, blogging about marketing and branding is a very good way to help marketers and consumers alike benefit from better, more ethical and value-driven marketing tactics.

iPhone pricing scandal? Think different(ly)

Apple seems to have upset many of its customers by recently dropping the price of the iPhone by a couple hundred dollars a mere couple months after its introduction. Is this outrageous behavior on Apple's part?

Let's look a little deeper.

Price skimming is a well-known pricing strategy whereby a product is introduced and the company charges the highest possible price that buyers who most desire the product will pay. Demand for products tends to be inelastic during the introductory stage of the product life cycle--especially if the product is unique with little competition.

Not only does price skimming strategy help offset development costs that might not be recovered if the price is set too low, but it can also help companies keep demand in line with their initial production capabilities. Also, once competition enters the market, prices will be driven downward making it even more difficult to recover development costs.

Apple knows that it has a powerful brand whose loyal followers will rush out to purchase just about any product they launch (at just about any price). These loyal customers understand that they are not rushing out to buy the product out of absolute necessity, rather they are fulfilling a desire to be trendy and have bragging rights because they are one of the first to own the hot, trendy, new Apple product. Yes, they even understand they are paying a premium to own the product a few months before the rest of the masses.

To those iPhone users who now complain about the recent price drop I say this: You are not unhappy that you overpaid. I saw you standing in those long lines to happily plunk down your $600. You aren't upset that you had the phone before the masses either. You are simply unhappy because you think the masses will now catch up too soon.

Don't get upset with the Apple brand. Just examine what the brand means to you and be happy that you are able and willing to pay for that feeling that obviously makes you feel so good.

How to Build and Manage Your Brand (in sickness and in health)

My newly updated e-book, "How to Build and Manage Your Brand (in sickness and in health)" is now available. New sections include: How to uncover the warning signs of an unhealthy brand, The 13 warning signs of an unhealthy brand and When and how to kill or retire a brand.

In this work, I discuss image, identity, awareness, brand preference, brand equity and more critical-to-understand branding concepts while also describing the brand management process. Includes a thorough discussion of "The 10 Steps in Building a Powerhouse Brand", outlines the Brand Audit process, and reveals why you must educate people about your brand with both emotional and logical appeals. Two special bonus sections: Positioning Workshop and Integrated Marketing Communications are also included.

On customer-driven marketing...

"This may seem simple, but you need to give customers what they want, not what you think they want. And, if you do this, people will keep coming back."
- John Ilhan

Wal-Mart, brand killer? Maybe not.

BrandChannel.com has an article that discusses the prospect of Wal-Mart as a brand killer.

Some claim that Wal-Mart is a brand killer because of its enormous buying power and ubiquity. Wal-Mart can buy for less because it has such power and therefore sell for less than any competitor. Wal-Mart represents such a wide distribution channel that some brand managers think they cannot afford for their brands to be left off the retailer’s shelves.

So the brand managers think.

If you are a brand manager, you must stop to ask yourself, "Does my brand belong in Wal-Mart?"

Many people realize that Wal-Mart is not always the smartest choice. It is not the trendiest. It is not the most exclusive. It is not where you are likely to find the highest quality. It is not the place to go if you are hoping to find products that deliver a bit more than you expect. It IS the place to go if you are looking for a functional product at a low price.

Think about your brand in those terms. Do you consider your brand a commodity item where you can compete almost exclusively on price? If so, then maybe Wal-Mart is a good channel for your brand.

If your brand, however, is highly differentiated from its competition and promises superior value, then perhaps your brand does not belong in Wal-Mart right next to a generic alternative selling for less money. That might actually hurt your brand.

Just because you can get your brand in front of millions of shoppers per day does not mean it is the right thing to do for your brand.

That being said, there will always be room for other retail outlets to find ways to successfully compete against Wal-Mart with highly differentiated brands.

Certainly, there is room for all and the symbiosis will only be a benefit for all consumers.

What's up with the teeth?

And while we're on the topic of oral health, Ken Magill over at Direct Magazine mysteriously got subscribed to an e-newsletter about toothpaste thus proving once again that just because marketers can talk about something and they can do so cheaply and directly using the Internet doesn't mean that they should.

(Free Clip Art Provided by Artclips.com. Copyright 2007. All Rights Reserved.)

The $30, 000 toothbrush

Mike Wagner at www.OwnYourBrand.com tells an interesting story about how a forgotten toothbrush on a business trip and subsequent brand dereliction on the part of a hotel employee could result in losses of $30,000 to the hotel.

This should serve as a simple reminder to all brand owners that often it is the little brand promises that make a huge difference. All brand owners and brand managers would be wise to instill in their organizational cultures the importance of delivering on all brand promises every time. Even the little promises.

Often, your brand is in the hands of that employee on the front line who might be having a bad day, might not care or just doesn't understand the importance of delivering on band promises.

Do U.S. news media outlets have a branding problem?

It used to be that news outlets in the U.S. were viewed as fair, objective, politically-neutral and fact-based. Do they now have a branding problem?

Check out the article at:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=070809222839.jzdcwmy8&show_article=1.

It seems that news media outlets have a branding problem. Their core values are perceived to be forgotten and it seems to me that yes, I trust news much less than I used to and many "news" articles are written and reported from an agenda-driven angle.

What do they need to do to fix their brands? Can they fix their brands at all?

Please update your feed to this branding and marketing blog

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The relationship between brand values and organizational mission

One often sees organizations whose messages and brand values are so far removed from the overall organizational mission that, if viewed in isolation, they reflect no connection to the core values of the organization. This disconnect represents a missed opportunity to build stronger, more valuable brands and organizations.

This gap between brand communication and organizational mission can be understood by analyzing the traditional way brands are managed.

Many traditional brands are individually guided by managers who compete for resources and a greater stake in the power structure of the organization. When brands are managed in such territorial silos, it is far too easy for them to drift further and further away from the company's core mission.

In never-ending initiatives to make their own brands stand out and get noticed within the organization, brand managers are lured into adjusting and "refining" brand communications so they attract attention. These brand managers often fall prey to the temptation to create edgy and progressive brand messages that capture attention and stir passion-but do more overall harm than good because they fail to foster organizational goals or promote core brand values.

In contrast, the goal of solid brand communication strategy should be to support and echo strategic goals and communicate core brand values both internally and externally in a manner that resonates with all stakeholders and sells brand value.

Branding e-books with free audio book on branding

For only a limited amount of remaining time, get a free 25-minute audio book on branding with the purchase of either of my e-books:

How to Build and Maintain A Powerhouse Brand
and/or

How to Brand and Market A Commodity

Get
both e-books together and save over 20%

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Self-branding/Self-introduction

Have you ever had a chance encounter with someone who could help you achieve your career goals? Were you satisfied that you made the most out of the opportunity to talk with that person?

If you are like most people, every once in a while you have an opportunity to talk with someone that can offer you a job or help your career in some fashion. Sometimes this meeting is a 30-second encounter at the coffee pot in the morning. Other times it is an introduction at an informal gathering or meeting. Still other times, you have the opportunity to introduce yourself to another person and rather than make the most of it, you avoid the situation altogether.

What stops us in these situations? Is it fear? Is it shyness? Often times, we take a pass on these great opportunities because they occur at times when we are not expecting them and they catch us off guard. There may be only a few brief moments to take action and we don't know what to do or say.

I would like you to prepare in advance for these situations. Perform the following exercise to help you take advantage of such situations.

Imagine that you are in the middle of a job search. You and a friend agree to meet for lunch one day. Your friend happens to work at a company for which you would very much like to work. You made arrangements to meet your friend at her office and then go out to lunch together.

As you are walking down the hall together, a person comes walking down the hall the other way. As this person approaches you, your friend stops and briefly introduces you.

"Dr. Hutchins", she says, "I'd like you to meet my friend". Dr. Hutchins happens to be the VP of the department for which you would like to work.

You shake hands with Dr. Hutchins---and then what?

I would like you to think about what you would say. Let's call this "The 10 Second Drill".

The 10 Second Drill is simple in concept, more complicated in practice. Develop a brief yet powerful way to introduce yourself that tells someone a little bit about who you are and what you can do to help them in 10 seconds or less. Come up with an introduction that "hooks" the other person, draws them in, and makes them want to know more about you. Make a lasting impression! Once you develop a strong introduction, practice it with your friends and ask them for feedback. Perfect your self-introduction so that it comes naturally to you when you say it. Consider the following examples:

"Hi. I'm Joe Smith. I love to help people get the most out of life by showing them better ways to manage their time".

"Hello, my name is Janet Johnson and I'm an expert in helping organizations make sure they hire the right people".

"My name is Robert Zimmerman and I have found new ways to increase revenue by designing successful online marketing campaigns".

These introductions all tell us a little bit about these people and what they do. These introductions also make us want to ask a few more questions to learn more about these people. That is exactly what a good introduction should do.

In the field of marketing, we talk about the importance of Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, all the time. The 10 Second Drill is really a strong introduction that communicates the unique selling proposition of your personal brand in just a few seconds. Think about this introduction in terms of it being a headline or just a few bullet points that describe who you are and how you can help others.

Think about how to best sum up yourself in this 10 second introduction. Practice "The 10 Second Drill." A strong and powerful first impression might launch your career or your brand to higher levels of success than you ever imagined.

Until next time...quick...I have to get to a meeting...tell me a little about yourself.

Self-Marketing

Are you looking for ways to get that next promotion or make yourself more marketable within your profession? If so, a great way to have a more successful career is to wisely promote your accomplishments and use effective self-marketing techniques to make yourself more visible and let your accomplishments be known.

In order to understand how important self- marketing is, think beyond your current position. Think about what your next career step will be and how you can start positioning yourself for it now.

Do you think you would have a difficult time providing evidence that supports your qualifications for your next job or assignment? If so, then you need to start promoting your accomplishments and begin your self-marketing efforts immediately.

Self-marketing is a learned skill. It is never too late in your career to teach yourself effective self-marketing techniques. One of the keys to successful self-marketing is clearly identifying your goals and knowing what direction you are taking your career. Firmly understanding your career direction will dictate the most important accomplishments to promote and also dictate *how* you should go about promoting them.

As leading management consultant Tom Peters states, "you must advertise". You must create a "brand". That brand is you. Become known as the guru in your specialty then advertise and sell your brand. The more well-known you become, the easier it gets.

Here are few self-marketing and promotional tactics you can employ to promote your accomplishments and improve your career:

1. Let people in your organization know when you meet with success. Send out an email, memo, or project report outlining the process you used and report the measurable results you obtained. One bit of warning if you choose to use email: Assume your e-mail can and will be forwarded outside your department and organization. You should never disseminate proprietary information or divulged any company secrets.

2. Convert your accomplishments into tip sheets by documenting the process so others can repeat for themselves what you did. Can you convert your success stories into one-page "case studies" that would have an appeal to a broader audience?. This type of document can go a long way in enhancing your credibility, creating awareness, and highlighting your professional standing.

To create your case studies, a) Outline the process giving an overview or scope of the project. Then b) List the major steps you executed and describe the rationale behind those steps. Most importantly, c) Quantify the results and the positive impact they had on your organization.

Tip sheets and case studies are great to circulate at association meetings or when meeting new prospects or existing customers. They might even come in handy during your next job interview. You should not overlook the possibility of submitting these case studies to trade journals, professional magazines, or newsletters. If you can help others by reporting your results, they will be grateful and remember where they got the information.

3. Conduct an ongoing campaign to make others aware of your successes. Avoid being overtly boastful, but assertively tell others about your accomplishments in terms of the actions taken to support organizational goals and objectives. Winners can always tell you about a very recent success so be ready with your own stories of a recent "win" you were responsible for in your organization.

4. Look for opportunities to get published. You can do this by writing articles or contributing to company or industry newsletters, submitting tips to trade publications, journals, magazines, or local newspapers and business journals. Getting published will increase your visible and provide you professional credibility.

5. Look for opportunities to speak to groups. Public speaking is one of the best ways to let other people know what you do and how you do it so they may benefit. Presenting to groups establishes you as an expert and gives you an avenue to network and increase your visibility.

6. Always put your team's accomplishments ahead of your own. Try to get as much done through others as possible and share the credit. Your name will soon be associated with winning teams and people within and outside your organization will notice.

7. Network with others in your profession and industry. Keep track of who's doing what and who's going where and make sure others know exactly what you are doing. Cultivate a strong, effective network and share war stories.

8. Keep score of your accomplishments using a written list or by updating your résumé frequently. Your accomplishments will soon be forgotten if you don't write them down and keep track of them.

One of the best ways to know you are executing your promotional and self-marketing tactics properly is when you can create a powerful 10- second introduction. Your succinct introduction lets others know who you are and what you do. You should be able to state your introduction within the first 10 seconds of meeting a person and word it in such a way that it "hooks" them so they want to ask questions in order to learn more about you.

If you promote yourself properly and use effective self-marketing techniques, you will make yourself stand out above the pack and get noticed. Diligently practice these techniques and you will put yourself on the career fast track.

Stay tuned, that 10-second self-introduction will be my next post.

(Originally published in 1999 by Dave Dolak)

How to communicate your brand

Do not underestimate the importance of strong copy and do not overestimate the importance of graphic design when creating marketing communications materials for your brand. Focus on the message, not the image. People choose substance over style -- regardless of what your ad agency might be telling you.

An effective headline is critical.

The headline:

- Attracts attention
- Communicates a strong benefit or your most compelling one
- Appeals to the self-interest of the reader. It answers the question, "What's in it for me?"
- Sets the tone for the offer
- A headline acts like a marquee does for a movie theatre and selects the right audience

In short, to effectively convey your brand,

Say the right things
to the right people
in the right way
at the right time, and
do it consistently over time and
across many different communication channels.

Then you are on your way to to effectively telling the right audience about why they should prefer you brand over every other brand in the category.

Blog Marketing

As a follow-up to my previous post, Jeremy Wright has a blog in support of his book, "Blog Marketing" where he posts large portions of the chapters from the book in his blog for all to read. There is some great information in there on the basics of using a blog for marketing and promotional purposes.

If you are reading this you are ahead of the curve

Thanks to Douglas Karr, we are able to put this blogging thing into perspective. Outside the blogosphere, most corporations are still struggling to understand blogging. Please click on the link above to read Douglas's great responses to these questions.

Top Ten Questions on Blogging from Companies:

1. What’s blogging?
2. Why should we blog?
3. What’s the difference between blogging and a website?
4. What’s the difference between blogging and a web forum?
5. How much does it cost?
6. How often should we do it?
7. Should we host our blog on our website or use a hosted solution?
8. What about negative comments?
9. Can more than one person blog?
10. How do we control our brand?

Riblet pancakes?

So IHOP is buying Applebees, eh? It will be interesting to see what they do with this suffering brand.

When Applebees started out, it was positioned as a neighborhood, casual restaurant but recently has tried to go slightly upscale with a newer menu.

In my opinion, Applebees could use a bit of an update. With lots of casual dining options out there, Applebees has not made its case to me recently as to why I should eat there. They ought to focus on the one or two superior experiences or features they can offer and then tell everyone what those are and why they are important. Sure, they have a diverse menu, but it is not clear to me what they offer that I can't also find somewhere else.

What do you think IHOP could do with Applebees to strengthen the brand?

Writing taglines: The good, the bad and the ugly (but mostly the bad)

Nick Wreden has a great blog entry at http://fusionbrand.blogs.com/fusionbrand/2007/06/how_to_write_a_.html that describes how NOT to write a tagline.

He points out that forming consensus through a committee and confusing your tagline with your brand are huge mistakes when writing taglines. It is definitely worth the read.

Read this and you’ll never drink from a STYROFOAM TM cup again

I was intrigued back in April when I saw a full-page ad from Dow Chemical Company in Brandweek magazine that was intended to do nothing but clarify the STYROFOAM^TM brand, counteract any consumer confusion and avoid possible generic attachment of the STYROFOAM^TM brand name to the broader foam category.



You see, STYROFOAM^TM brand insulation is the trade name for Dow’s extruded polystyrene foam that is most commonly blue when used as an insulating building material and less commonly green or white when used in the floral or craft markets. It turns out, STYROFOAM^TM is not used in the manufacture of disposable foam products, such as food packaging, cups, plates, coolers or egg trays. Therefore, foam cups are actually never made from STYROFOAM^TM.

The last sentence of text in the Brandweek ad states, “We appreciate that STYROFOAM^TM is a household name. But since we’ve worked so hard over the years to produce the best insulation in the industry, we kindly request proper usage. Please join us in the effort to put the lid on misuse of our intellectual property."

Wow.

Here is a brand that understands that it is so universally recognized (and mistaken for the broader category) that it runs the risk of committing genericide and it is trying to set the record straight. This is exactly what one needs to do to prevent one's brand name from becoming generic.

Not only is there a lesson for branders to learn from STYROFOAM^TM (see my previous post), but the brand is asking for our help in stopping misuse of the trade name. I am happy to oblige.

So maybe the next time you hear somebody ask for a beverage in a STRYOFOAM^TM cup you’ll help protect the brand by setting the record straight.

For a list of trademark guidelines for STYROFOAM^TM brand products, please visit:
http://craft.dow.com/profcr/trademark.htm

Hand me an Aspirin, my brand just committed genericide

Superb brand promotion and category dominance can actually lead to your brand being declared "generic".

While this type of success is unlikely for most brands, Trampoline, Escalator, Thermos and Aspirin learned the hard way that genericide is a very real thing.

Here's a short article that describes how marketers can avoid the genericide trap for their brands.

In short, be ready to legally defend the misuse of your brand names, run periodic campaigns to counteract any consumer confusion and manage the marketing mix to avoid possible generic attachment of the brand name to the broader category.

In my next post we'll take a look at a powerful brand making the right moves to avoid genericide.

Do you really want brand awareness?

Brand awareness is when people recognize your brand as yours. This does not necessarily mean they prefer your brand (brand preference), attach a high value to, or associate any superior attributes to your brand. It just means they recognize your brand and can identify it under different conditions.

If you are trying to establish or build your brand then, you must stop and ask yourself, "Do I want to build high brand awareness or do I want something more?"

What is brand equity?

Brand Equity is the sum total of all the different values people attach to the brand, or the holistic value of the brand to its owner as a corporate asset. Brand equity can include: the monetary value or the amount of additional income expected from a branded product over and above what might be expected from an identical, but unbranded product; the intangible value associated with the product that can not be accounted for by price or features; and the perceived quality attributed to the product independent of its physical features.

A brand is nearly worthless unless it enjoys some equity in the marketplace. Without brand equity, you simply have a commodity product.

Brand equity is completely different from brand awareness.

Hmm. I guess you know what post will come next...

Why is branding important?

A brand is an identifiable entity that makes some specific promise of value.

Branding is used to create emotional attachment to products and companies. Branding efforts create a feeling of involvement, a sense of higher quality, and an aura of intangible qualities that surround the brand name, mark, or symbol.

Successful branding efforts build strategic awareness where people not only recognize your brand, but they also understand the distinctive qualities that make it better than the competition. Branding is more important today than ever due to ever-increasing advertising clutter, media fragmentation, the commoditization of products, and the seemingly limitless choices we are offered in just about every product category.

As marketers, we need to work hard to ensure that we are offering our customers strong brands that are clearly differentiated and that offer clear, real value and unique benefits. The need for branding has never been greater.

Here are just a few benefits you will enjoy when you create a strong brand:

• A strong brand influences the buying decision and shapes the ownership experience.
  
• Branding creates trust and an emotional attachment to your product or company. This attachment then causes your market to make decisions based, at least in part, upon emotion-- not necessarily just for logical or intellectual reasons.
  
• A strong brand can command a premium price and maximize the number of units that can be sold at that premium.
  
• Branding helps make purchasing decisions easier. In this way, branding delivers a very important benefit. In a commodity market where features and benefits are virtually indistinguishable, a strong brand will help your customers trust you and create a set of expectations about your products without even knowing the specifics of product features.
  
• Branding will help you "fence off" your customers from the competition and protect your market share while building mind share. Once you have mind share, you customers will automatically think of you first when they think of your product category.
  
• A strong brand can make actual product features virtually insignificant. A solid branding strategy communicates a strong, consistent message about the value of your company. A strong brand helps you sell value and the intangibles that surround your products.
  
• A strong brand signals that you want to build customer loyalty, not just sell product. A strong branding campaign will also signal that you are serious about marketing and that you intend to be around for a while. A brand impresses your firm's identity upon potential customers, not necessarily to capture an immediate sale but rather to build a lasting impression of you and your products.
  
• Branding builds name recognition for your company or product.
  
• A brand will help you articulate your company's values and explain why you are competing in your market.

What's in your mind?

Can a ThinkPad be from a Chinese company named Lenovo or will ThinkPad forever be something from IBM?

I'm curious to hear from readers how they view these brands.

Marketing & Branding professionals: Speakers wanted

There is a new service over at www.BrandTrellis.com where professional speakers on topics of marketing and branding can post an online profile at no charge so that those seeking such speakers may find them. There is already the beginning of a very impressive list of speakers and we hope you'll join in the efforts to continue to build this resources.

Whether you are a professional speaker looking for engagements or you represent a group seeking a speaker, this resource will only become more valuable to you as more people participate.

Defending your brand...against the devil?

Procter & Gamble has won a lawsuit to the order of $19M USD against 4 people who were spreading rumors that the brand supported satanic worship. These folks intended to damage P&G's brand because they worked for a rival company.

We've all heard the urban myth about the P&G logo, but it is comforting to know that in this day and age of people saying just about whatever they want about brands--especially online--that some brand stewards will defend their brand equity and fight to protect their brands against slander.

Way to go P&G!

New branding forum

There's a new forum with discussion threads dedicated to brands and branding topics over at www.BrandTrellis.com/forum.

Message boards currently include the topics:
Branding Blogs & Websites
Branding Basics
Jobs & Employment
Advertising & Media
Logo & Identity Topics
Entrepreneurial/Small Business Branding
and
Brand Rants & Raves

Hopefully the forum will catch on and be a great meeting place for brand marketers and those with an interest in business branding.

Consumer-generated ads

Is it just me or are there others of you out there who believe that consumer-generated ads are a result of marketing and brand managers who either have no clue how to manage their brands or are just plain lazy?

The Brand Pathway

Denise Lee Yohn has developed a very useful model for understanding your brand and then translating it into customer experiences. Her model is called The Brand Pathway.

On the continuum from Company Mission to Customer Experience, her steps are to answer the following questions about your brand:

1) What is our mission?
2) What business are we in?
3) What is our core belief?
4) What are our essential equities?
5) What are our differentiating attributes?
6) What is our persoanlity and style?
7) What is the customer experience?

Denise's pathway is certainly a solid model to help you understand the bare bones basics about what branding is all about. Start with a deep understanding of who and what you are, make specific promises of value, and then translate it all into exceptional customer experiences. This is truly a refreshing, back-to-basics take on banding.

Authentic branding

I've heard and read too much about how to strive to be authentic in order to help build your brand. The path to achieve branding Nirvana, according to self-proclaimed experts, too often journeys through the need to understand your brand values and then act in "authentic" ways to support those values.

I think maybe the people putting forth this drivel are 180-degrees out of phase.

Have they ever stopped to consider that perhaps strong brands arise from living authentically according to values that are core to the organization before any marketing is considered?

Strong brands naturally flow from adherence to clear organizational values, beliefs and behavior... not the other way around.

Revitalize your brand and refine your communication strategy

Luth Research and MiresBall in conjunction with the American Marketing Association have recently released a "State of the Brand Report" that reports some interesting information about the current state of branding. According to the report, branding has become more important to companies than ever before and marketing spending, on average, is up to 11% of annual revenue. Of the companies surveyed, 8 out of 10 brands were revitalized in the last 5 years thus underscoring the need to keep brands relevant.

As I discuss in my e-book, "How to Build and Maintain a Powerhouse Brand", regular brand audits are necessary to assess the health of your brand. Your brand equity constantly changes in comparison to your competition just as society's values and perceptions change constantly. When the image and brand equity of your brand in the marketplace is not consistent with the image you are trying to create, then you must refine your branding strategy and project the newly refined identity.

The "State of the Brand Report" stresses the importance of being committed to the ongoing maintenance of brands. Brand owners are also encouraged to break away from traditional brand communication strategies due to the explosion of new communications outlets and subsequent media fragmentation.

The study, among other things, reports that the most important brand communication vehicles currently are (in order):

1. Word-of-mouth
2. Web & interactive
3. Customer service
4. Public relations
5. Print advertising
6. Internal communications
7. Corporate communications
8. Promotional events
9. Co-marketing
10. Community and affinity groups
11. Direct mail
12. Sponsorships
13. Broadcast advertising
14. Packaging and POP
15. Outdoor advertising

The report is well worth your time to read.

A simple brand test

Are you confident that everyone in your organization knows and understands what it takes to build your brand?

Tomorrow at work, stop everyone you meet in your organization and ask them this one simple question: "What do you have to do to deliver on our brand promise?"

Ask the question and then remain silent and listen.

When you get back to your office, write down all the answers you hear.

You might just gain a better understand about your brand and how to better communicate it to the outside world. I'll also bet your next action plan will focus within your four walls before you worry about that big, nasty outside world of customers.

Small business & entrepreneurial branding

Have you ever wondered how small business owners and entrepreneurs might have an advantage over large companies when it comes to building a powerful and successful brand?

When it comes to building a powerhouse brand, the little guys have a huge advantage over the big guys because small businesses and entrepreneurs do not suffer from organizational inertia and usually the vision of the founder of the company is closely linked to the essence of the brand and embedded in the organization. Entrepreneurs have a chance to build entire businesses based on a powerful brand promise while large companies tend to drift away from the original promise that made them compelling and then they foolishly spend millions to try to "re-brand" which may or may not be possible.

I'm researching my next book on small business and entreprenuial branding and want your questions, feedback and case studies now! You can participate in the writing of this next book by letting me know what information about small business and entrepreneurial branding you think is most important to cover. Also, if you have a small business branding case study, please share it with me and if it is appropriate, it might just make it in the book.

Please fill out my brief questionnaire at www.BrandTrellis.com if you have an interest.

Top 150 Marketing Blogs

Todd And is currently tracking the top 150 marketing blogs by using a variety of rankings plus his own weighting system to make the determinations. Check it out because you'll find a wealth of quality marketing blogs on this list.

Online branding

Rich McIver has written a very good piece about how to build your brand on the web. His article, "Little Known Ways to Brand on the Cheap: 99 Tips for Poor Web Startups", offers excellent tips on how to build an online brand whether you are a blogger or simply trying to build your brand online.

A brand is an identifiable entity that makes some specific promise of value. Those brands that need to communicate that value online will almost assuredly find something useful in Rich's tip sheet.

Are all marketers dumb?

We hear a great deal these days about the latest "buzz" effort, viral ploy or over-the-top publicity stunt to get a brand noticed. Are marketers dumb? Do marketers stress the importance of style at the expense of substance? Maybe.

The marketers who resort to using tricks for a one-time sale are the dumb ones.

Consumers are very sophisticated today and good marketers not only realize and accept that fact but they embrace it.

Marketers know that they must demonstrate the value of a brand in front of very smart and very sophisticated consumers who will quickly buy an alternate brand if there is no compelling reason not to. And what if a consumer tries a brand and it does not live up to the marketing hype? Then kiss that customer goodbye--and count on them telling dozens if not hundreds or thousands of others about their bad experience with the brand.

Marketers need to be extremely knowledgeable about their product or service and know what value it represents to their target market. Beyond that they must know how to clearly and articulately communicate that value to consumers. Smart marketers set out to build a powerful brand, not make a one-time sale or simply boost short-term sales performance.

If there is no compelling value to offer consumers and one must resort to tricks or intrusive advertising gimmicks, then it should be a warning sign to the marketer that he or she must go back and modify the product in some way to ensure there is superior value to sell to consumers on an ongoing basis. The only way to do this is by having very good market intelligence by understanding what consumers really want.

Are all marketers dumb?

No. Just some of them.

2006 Brand Keys Brand Loyalty Leaders

For the second year in a row I'm pleased to report on Brand Keys study of brands with the most loyal customers.

The Top Ten (with last year's ranking in parentheses):

1. Avis (2)
2. Google (1)
3. L.L. Bean (24)
4. Samsung mobile phones (5)
5. Yahoo! (3)
6. Canon office copiers (8)
7. Land's End (74)
8. Coors (13)
9. Hyatt hotels (12)
10. Marriott hotels (10)

It seems the price of gasoline had an impact on the way people shop as we see two catalog retailers skyrocket into the top ten this year which makes me wonder if these brands really have the most loyal customers. Will their "loyal" customers stick around if the price of gas drops? Have they truly added loyal customers who will stick around with them over the long haul or have they added customers who are loyal out of economic convenience?

I guess we might find out next year.


Last year's Top Ten list at http://davedolak.blogspot.com/2005/11/high-tech-brands-enjoy-greater-loyalty.html

Z-List marketing bloggers

Mack Collier at The Viral Garden has started an interesting project.

He's come up with a list of "Z-List" bloggers who are bloggers who write very informative and insightful blogs about marketing and who are worth reading but who do not rank highly in terms of traffic. He is attemtping to get marketing bloggers to take the list below, add their own favorite blogs on the topic and post it to their blogs in an attempt to spread the word about quality sites about marketing and branding that might otherwise go unnoticed.

Here's my iteration of the list:

Shotgun Marketing Blog
BrandSizzle
bizsolutionsplus
Customers Rock!
Being Peter Kim
Two Hat Marketing
The Emerging Brand
The Branding Blog
CrapHammer
Dave Dolak's Marketing & Branding
Drew's Marketing Minute
Golden Practices
Viaspire
Tell Ten Friends
Flooring the Consumer
On Influence and Automation
Kinetic Ideas
MSCO
BrandTrellis.com
Buzzoodle
NewsPaperGrl

Big, bad box retailers or thoughtful local suppliers?

The October 30 issue of Brandweek had an interesting Top of Mind column from Bain & Co. partners, Darrell Rigby and Vijay Vishwanath.

In the column, the authors describe a relatively new strategy employed by large retailers known as localization. Localization is the use of sophisticated data collection and analysis to determine what consumers in local markets want.

Large box retailers like Wal-Mart and Lowes are using customer data to analyze local demands and preferences and then tailoring their store shelves at the local level to supply products based on the local area’s unique characteristics such as ethnicity, wealth and lifestyle.

Localization is an offshoot from standardization where large box retailers have offered the same products in every store nationally. Oddly enough, it was the size and power of these large stores and their ability to gather enough data from consumers over time that now allows them to be in a position to offer products that appeal to local preferences.

We can learn lessons from localization.

Brands can no longer rely on standardization of products to appeal to large, vast audiences. Not only has media fragmented to the point where customer niches are increasingly more difficult to reach while at the same time becoming smaller and smaller, but consumers demand products and services that cater to their unique preferences.

Is there really even such a thing as mass media anymore that reaches the majority of people? For years huge, national brands have been able to rely on saturating a few mass media outlets with advertising so much that simply getting a name to stick in our minds worked. Those days are over.

Offering a one-size-fits-all widget to ‘the masses’ will only lead to commoditization of your product. Once your brand has been commoditized, your selling advantage will disappear as soon as a supplier with a lower cost structure comes along.

Big, powerful brands in the future will be those that appeal to individual preferences and prove that they uniquely satisfy consumers’ wants and desires.

Strange, isn’t it, that the big, faceless retailers seem to be leading the movement?

Free subscription to Inc. Magazine

OK. I'll admit it. This blog entry is a bit off-the-wall.

However, Inc. Magazine just sent me an invitation to renew my subcription and they are offering a free, 12-month gift subscription to the person of my choosing. Well, here's where you come in.

The first person in the United States to email me their name and address gets it placed in the "free gift subscription" portion of my reply card. Yep, if you want a free 12-month subscription to Inc. Magazine, be the first one to send me your name and address.

Ready?.........Go!

Interested in building strong brands?

An interesting site that deals exclusively with brand building just re-launched at http://www.BrandTrellis.com.

If you are interested in building business brands then there are some good articles for you and if you are a marketing/branding professional, there are ways for you to participate in the project.

It's worthwhile to check out the site.

Who is a professional marketer?

A professional marketer is at his or her heart a student of behavioral science. As marketers our fundamental goal is to change human behavior in some way.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking about being deceptive or manipulative or tricking somebody into buying something they don't want.

A marketer understands that he must deliver superior value to his customers.

A marketer understands that the best product in the world will not sell a single unit unless the value of that product is clearly understood and clearly communicated to those who might want it.

A marketer is not after a single transaction but is interested in a long-term relationship with customers in which both parties benefit and continue to provide value to one another over the long-term.

A marketer is an experimenter. She is a methodical tester and a constant measurer.

A marketer always tries to learn from her mistakes so she can come back tomorrow to build even greater value into her offering.

A marketer is a strategist, a scientist, planner, a creator and a bit of a dreamer.

A marketer is a concise communicator who can tap emotion and tell a compelling story through a variety of media.

Lastly, a true professional marketer clearly demonstrates that acquiring a product or service is more beneficial than living without it.

Marketing and Branding articles added

Over this past weekend I created a compilation of the best informational posts to this blog and added it to my list of marketing & branding articles at http://www.davedolak.com/articles.htm#startlist.

I've added them under the sub-head, "Best of the Blog Articles". Please let me know if you find this helpful and I'll do more of it in the future.

Use your sales force to build your brand

There's an interesting paper in the September 2006 Harvard Business Review, The New Science of Sales Force Productivity, that talks about focusing on sales force productivity to boost the performance of sales people.

The authors describe 4 levers that can increase sales performance, boost sales and improve performance of top reps while having the greatest impact on moving laggard sales people toward the middle of the curve.

Briefly, the 4 levers described by the authors to boost sales force productivity are:

1) Target offerings
Tailor offerings to the needs of target markets and make sure your sales reps are selling the right way to the right prospects.

2) Optimize automation tools and procedures
Bolster technology and productivity tools while bringing discipline and careful monitoring and review to a clearly-defined sales process.

3) Performance management
Incorporate metrics, skills development and incentives while properly and fairly rewarding high-performing reps in a differentiated way.

4) Sales force deployment
Strategically distribute sales reps and organize sales assets according to customer needs and the requirments of complex sales rather than simply by geography.

The days of "putting more feet on the street" to reach ever-increasing sales goals are over. Managers no longer can simply take a sales goal increase and evenly spread it across products and/or sales reps. They must evaluate how and where they can get the greatest gains.

This is a good paper that focuses on improving the performance of your existing sales force. I especially like this approach as it focuses on investing in your brand by investing in those who present your brand to the outside world. The paper also advocates seeking out new customers rather than focusing on selling more to existing customers. Although the authors do not specifically call this what it is, they are prescribing a fresh approach to expanding brands beyond traditional target markets by focusing on investments in the sales force.

The approach also injects more science into sales.

I champion the effort to label marketing a science with a relatively small portion of it being art. Since sales is part of the marketing function, doesn't it make sense that the scientific approach should trickle down to the sales force?

This paper is good reading for anyone interested in more effectively utilizing their sales force to help increase the value of their brands and increase sales. As we all know, branding should also live outside the walls of the marketing department.

The Poor Man's Shortcut (or small business's) Way to Measure Brand Strength

As I'm sitting at my desk this evening continuing to tweak an equation I'm developing to measure brand strength in an easier and more straight-forward manner than other complicated methods currently available, I'm struck by one factor in my equation that looks like it will make the cut.

This factor can readily and easily be used by just about any organization to help gauge the strength of its brand(s).

And what is this factor?

The ratio of customer complaints to customer kudos.

If you do no other brand-based measurements, then at least use this simple ratio to track your brand's strength over time.

Upset customers will contact you to complain about your brand. Extremely happy customers will contact you to let you know how thrilled they are with your brand. Of course, the vast majority of all customers will fall somewhere in between and you will never hear from them.

Truly outstanding brands will have significantly more unsolicited kudos than ordinary brands. Conversely, weak brands will have a much higher occurrence of complaints.

Strive to constantly improve this ratio and you will find yourself aligning your entire organization around building a powerhouse brand.

The advertising myth

Marketing is a function and a process for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and managing customer relationships in ways that benefit both the organization and its customers.

The marketing mix or promotional mix consists of Advertising, Public Relations, Personal Selling, Promotion, and Direct Marketing.

As you can see, marketing is all about creating and delivering value to customers. This includes developing products that meet needs, promoting those products, monitoring customer satisfaction, managing the sales process etc.

Advertising is just one small part of the marketing process. Marketing is strategic. Advertising is tactical.

Just because you see lots of advertising for a product or service does not mean it is marketed well.

Please pass this on to anyone who thinks Advertising = Marketing.

Advertisers run amok

Earlier this year I reported on how product placements are creeping their way into television content as a reaction to technology advancements that allow television viewers to skip traditional television commercials (i.e. zap commercials). The logic on the part of marketers is that they must expose their brand to consumers one way or another and if traditional television commercials don't work then they must find ways to get their brands worked into the content of the shows.

Gary Levin has a story in today's USA Today entitled, "The newest characters on TV shows: Product plugs", that also discusses this relatively new form of advertising. Advertisers are paying large sums of money to have their company and product brands featured in the content of television programming.

After you read my previous blog post and the a USA Today story, I have three questions that I'd like my blog readers to comment on.

1) If you are conscious of brands either obviously or overtly featured in television content, does that create positive or negative feelings toward those brands in your mind?
2) Are you more likely or less likely to buy certain brands if they work their way into programming in this manner?
3) Do you believe there should be full and obvious disclosure in television programs when advertisers pay a fee to have their brand featured in the content?

We are on a slippery slope here, folks.

Soon marketers will find a way to bombard us with commercial messages in every imaginable fashion and we will be forced to tune it all out. How can we trust the integrity of anything if we do not know what is creative content vs. what is paid-for promotion?

A word of advice to marketers: Make the strength of your brand and your message be so compelling that consumers will want to hear your brand's message without you ramming it down their throats. If you have to sneak the message in somewhere, then you probably are not very confident in your brand's promise or value proposition.

And, hey, as long as I'm talking to marketers and television advertisers, let me ask you a question. Just exactly how are you going to measure results of product plugs in television content?

That is one ROI calculation I'd like to see.

Haven't I heard that before?

I'd like to up the ante by making one last ditch effort to do an about face and go back to pick the low hanging fruit. Once I think outside the box I'm sure I'll be able to level the playing field and get out of the red and into the black.

Our friends at Factiva recently released a study that used its text mining technology to search the most commonly used words and phases in publication. They found some phrases so common that it turned them into a special list.

The Factiva List of Most Overused Business Cliches

12. Up the ante
11. Clean bill of health
10. Low hanging fruit
9. Last ditch effort
8. Think outside the box
7. Wealth of experience
6. About face
5. Time and again
4. A level playing field
3. In the red
2. In the black
1. At the end of the day

As marketers and communications professionals, let's remain keenly aware of these cliches so as to avoid them in our marketing communications. Find new ways to express your thoughts and communicate about your brands. Avoid phases that are so overused that they actually don't communicate very much at all.

At the end of the day, we don't need any more cliches.
;-)

Can brand value be measured?

With several available methods and approaches to measure brand value with the most prominent among them being proprietary (Interbrand and Young & Rubicam), BrandChannel.com has a debate going about what is the best method to measure brand value.

Join the debate over at BrandChannel.com.

One of the best discussions of the topic that I've seen is in a presentation over at The Chartered Institute of Marketing website at:
http://www.cim.co.uk/mediastore/Brand_eGuides/eGuide7.pdf#search=%22measuring%20brand%20value%22

I believe that every brand is unique with emotional components that are difficult to measure using any standardized approach. I further believe that in any brand valuation it is important to define a model or equation where all the factors to be measured are clearly identified along with the weighting factor applied to each.

Just like any economic model, once all the players agree to what gets measured, how the measures interact with one another and what weighting gets applied to each factor, then the parties know what goes into the model and can reach a value that they agree on.

When anyone states the value of a brand, the first question asked should always be, "How was it measured?" If you agree with the method and measures used then you can agree on the value.

Buzz Brands

I don't like the use of the term "buzz" when used in marketing circles to describe word-of-mouth advertising. In fact, I don't even like the term "word-of-mouth advertising".

Let's review the definition of advertising.

Advertising is any paid form of non-personal presentation and promotion of ideas, goods, or services by an identified sponsor.


Unlike advertising which relies on purchasing power to get a message across, publicity relies solely on the quality of content to persuade others to get the message out.

Therefore, I favor the use of the term "word of mouth publicity" to describe genuine buzz. You know, the buzz that happens when people start talking about your brand without you directly greasing the skids or without you investing resources of any kind to directly propagate the discussion.

If you are blogging or directly encouraging bloggers to talk about your brand, then I don't believe that is genuine buzz.

When marketers launch a campaign to get the blogosphere talking about their brand, then it is no different than advertising. Resources are being invested to directly get people talking about your brand. That is artificial. That is paying for advertising. It is also potentially misleading because you are not making it clear that you are paying to get people talking.

The difference is the shift in focus of who is driving message about the brand. The difference is also where you are investing your resources--into the product or into the discussion about the product.

Strong brands focus on the quality of the product to get people talking on their own. Strong brands generate grass-roots buzz. Strong brands cause people to talk based purely on the quality of the product.

If you are paying for buzz, then it is not really buzz at all.

Now that I've got that off my chest, let's talk about a recent study that seems to have identified the top 10 brands that enjoy genuine buzz.

The Keller Fay Group recently released a market research study that identified the top 10 brands that enjoy positive word-of-mouth publicity.

The Top 10 positive word-of-mouth brands are:

1. Toyota
2. Wal-Mart
3. Honda
4. iPod/Apple
5. Chevrolet
6. Target
7. Sony
8. Home Depot
9. BMW
10. Verizon

Keller Fay's methodology reviewed 30,000 organic word-of-mouth brand mentions that include email, blogs, telephone and face-to-face conversations.

It is important for all marketers to keep in mind that focusing on creating a truly strong brand will generate word-of-mouth publicity as a by-product.

Focus on the product offering and the buzz will follow. Focus on the buzz and you will just be another advertiser.

American Marketing Assoc. M-planet conference

The American Marketing Association is holding a first of its kind marketing conference Nov 29 - Dec 1, 2006 in Florida. It appears as though this should be a very informative conference for marketers covering most aspects of marketing.

Details at:
http://www.mplanet2006.com

Brandweek Caption Contest

...and just when I thought life couldn't get any better...

Tonight I'm getting caught up on this week's pile of mail and I opened up my current issue of BrandWeek to see that I won the caption contest (in the August 21 issue). The ad for TechnoMarine watches shows the following picture:



A few weeks ago BrandWeek editor, Jim Edwards, asked readers to submit captions that best fit the photo. My winning caption, "Sometimes I just want to cuddle" beat out the other entries.

Now if I could only figure out that world peace thing.

;-)

Thanks, Jim!

Brand Awareness: What's The Deal?

A customer of mine with whom I've been corresponding recently asked a question that I think is cogent to the point of being worthy of posting to this blog.

Question: "...[Y]our thoughts are clarifying and as you know I read your book (How to Build and Maintain A Powerhouse Brand) with much interest. I very much like the concept of "Strategic Awareness"-- it makes sense.

However, I am still intrigued about the importance and relevance that is given by marketing professionals to the concepts of "Awareness" and especially "Top of Mind - Awareness". I have always been a bit skeptical about their correlation with market performance.

How come so many professionals tout "Awareness/Top of Mind" so much????"

Answer : In my opinion, it is because traditional ad agencies and marketing consultants can relatively easily measure awareness and can demonstrate to their clients their ability to increase brand awareness. Further, ad agencies tout awareness as the ever-important metric because that is how they make their money from clients.

Agencies create very creative and catchy ads, spend lots of client money to get the ads out there by saturating the media and then, not surprisingly, consumers can recall the brand because they've been exposed to it many, many times.

Creating strategic awareness and brand preference, however, is more difficult and they are also more difficult to measure. To do both while simultaneously increasing profits is extremely difficult. To do so is also the core of what good brand builders do.

To quickly review some definitions, Brand awareness is simply when consumers recognize your brand. Top of mind awareness occurs when you ask a person to name brands within a product category and your brand pops up first on the list. Strategic awareness occurs when not only does the consumer recognize your brand but they also understand the distinctive qualities that make it better than the competition. Brand preference happens when those consumers then prefer your brand over competing offerings.

If ad agencies promised increases in strategic awareness, brand preference and increased profits, then most of those agencies would go out of business because their clients would fire them. The agencies simply could not deliver on their promise.

Awareness is a much easier--and much more certain--needle to move so that's what agencies promise.