Search results for brand

26 May 2010
Marketing Strategy

Brand Butlers

A recent briefing from Trendwatching.com listed “Brand Butlers” as a trend to watch. This may be the time to consider ‘service as the new sales’ to provide more service and care to jaded, time-poor, pragmatic consumers. Brand Butlers can be defined as providing instant access to supporting services and tools to pragmatic, convenience-loving consumers. This is encouragement to focus on assisting consumers to make the most of their daily lives, versus the old model of selling them a lifestyle, if not identity.

Here’s why consumers are embracing these BRAND BUTLER-style services:

  • For consumers, time, convenience, control and independence are the new currencies: this need requires B2C brands to turn many of their interactions with their customers into broader services. In short: a shift from ‘broadcasting’ to assisting.
  • Relationships with brands are now more down to earth and less reverential. From individualism to eco-concerns to decreased spending power in developed economies: for consumers, the practical and pragmatic rule.
  • Yet, in uncertain times, there’s also a consumer longing for institutions that truly ‘care‘, which is more about showing empathy and providing customers with a status fix than being purely practical. This too requires brands to master more service-oriented personae.

BRAND BUTLER services equal interaction, meaning they can provide brands with valuable feedback, metrics and other learning opportunities about what interests, drives and triggers customers.

BRAND BUTLER service categories:

  1. Transparency & ‘In the know’
  2. Saving money
  3. Finding
  4. Connectivity
  5. Health, nutrition & exercise
  6. Skills & advice
  7. Eco
  8. Tools & amenities

Examples:

  • Since 2006, personal care brand Charmin has been offering New Yorkers access to clean and comfortable restrooms in Times Square. The brand opens the free facilities during the festive period each year.
  • To launch Stove Top Quick Cups, Kraft Foods offered warmth and hot food samples at cold Chicago bus stops. In November 2008, Kraft began heating ten bus shelters to give consumers relief from the cold.
  • 3M’s Airport Privacy Havens aim to create peaceful zones in major American airports, giving business travelers privacy during important phone calls, and hiding their computer screens from the eyes of passers-by.

BRAND BUTLERS is about turning marketing into a service, and thus it is one of the most important branding trends currently out there. A start would be to establish the themes your brand is about, and dream up an integrated ‘suite’ of BRAND BUTLER services. Use the eight categories above (Transparency and ‘In the know’, Saving money, Finding, Connectivity, Health, Nutrition & Exercise, Skills & Advice, Eco, and Tools & Amenities).

When plotting your BRAND BUTLER, your ideas may revolve around existing customers. However, there’s a huge win in services that are open to non-customers, too.

We hope you see these posts in the same light, we want to share knowledge, tips for saving money, ways to find the resources you need, ways to connect you with the people and services, new skills and tools.

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11 Mar 2010
Marketing Plan

Ideas to Define Your Brand

We have posted a few articles about branding and why it is so important in marketing. We thought it might be helpful to suggest some ideas to help you refine and define your brand.

What is a brand?

  • the outside view of the company, product or service.
  • the sum of all relationships between buyer and seller.
  • the most important asset that the organization owns.
  • the symbolic embodiment of all the information connected with a product or service.
  • the set of expectations associated with a product or service.
  • what leads customers to choose you over the competition.

Questions to get your thinking started

  1. What do your employees think sets your company apart?
  2. What is your company best at?
  3. What are your core strengths?
  4. What do you offer that one else offers?
  5. What do you love about your business?
  6. What makes your employees proud?
  7. Why has your company been able to stay in business when others have failed?
  8. If your company were to close, how would you want to be remembered?

Every contact or interaction with your customers and prospects is an opportunity for you to communicate your brand

  • Sign
  • Building
  • Letterhead and business cards
  • Packaging
  • Company vehicles
  • Staff attire
  • Advertising
  • Direct Mail
  • Web site

What do people (customers, prospects, audience) experience with your:

  • Product or service
  • Pricing
  • Customer service
  • Employee attitudes and actions
  • Atmosphere of your place of business
  • Role in the community

Now that you have a clearer idea of who you are and what you are all about, how can we help you share it? Direct Mail is a great way to reach the people who most want to hear from you.

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10 Mar 2010
Marketing Plan

Help Your Brand Stand Out

Andrea Syverson suggested some ideas in Target Marketing Magazine to get you started in your thinking about how to differentiate your brand.

We like to cheer for the underdogs, they try harder. These “underdogs” seem more comfortable in their own brand skins. They are original. They are daring. They are independent thinkers.

What about your brand? I bet your customers know the answer.

Stand Out from the Crowd

What are the differences between the many companies jockeying for customers’ minds and market share these days? Is there a difference between OfficeMax, Office Depot or Staples? What differentiates Barnes & Noble from Borders?

What is different between your offering and your top two competitors? If your brand is sandwiched blandly between others, it’s time to rethink both your brand positioning and your merchandising concept. Don’t bore your customers with this sea of sameness. They deserve better.

There is no formula for authenticity. Either you are authentic or you’re not. Unfortunately, we have become accustomed to living in a faux society, where entertainment is disguised as news, celebrities are disguised as heroes and Internet connections are disguised as relationships. And, yes, there are faux brands and transaction-based companies focused on themselves and short-term profits.

In “Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want,” authors Joseph Pine and James Gilmore propose that authenticity is a completely new management discipline, and they outline three axioms for authenticity:

  1. If you are authentic, then you don’t have to say you’re authentic.
  2. If you say you’re authentic, then you’d better be authentic.
  3. It’s easier to be authentic if you don’t say you’re authentic.

This may seem simple, but it isn’t. Many brands fall back to being faux. It’s easier.

Authenticity in Action

Consumers crave the real deal. They desire companies that deliver on their promises and brands that listen and do what their taglines say they do. They seek independent thinkers, product creativity and originality in solving their problems. They want brands that respect their time.

Authentic companies have one thing in common: They are true to themselves. They beat their own drums. And, most importantly, their customers thank them for it.

Steven Covey, best known as the author of “Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,” writes:

The more authentic you become, the more genuine in your expression, the more people can relate to your expression and the safer it makes them feel to express themselves. That expression in turn feeds back on the other person’s spirit, and genuine creative empathy takes place, producing new insights and learnings.

We believe the same is true of brands. Authentic brands are infectious. They draw people in. Authentic brands stand out. Authentic brands feed people’s spirits. They give customers what they crave today: realness.

So, how can we help you communicate your authentic brand message?

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03 Mar 2010
Marketing Strategy

Strengthen Your Brand

Andrea Syverson recently asked some great questions for readers of Target Marketing Magazine.

Questioning is the precursor to innovation. Alfred North Whitehead, a British mathematician and philosopher, said, “The ‘silly question’ is the first intimation of some totally new development.” After years of questioning, there really are no silly questions.

Even Jerry Greenfield’s (of Ben & Jerry’s fame) lighthearted question, “If it’s not fun, why do it?” is one of utmost importance to its brand. Fun is an attribute at the top of Ben & Jerry’s brand and product fit charts. It is even a tab on the Web site.

In 2003, Frederick F. Reichheld wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review called “The One Number You Need to Grow.” His research showed if brands concentrated on improving just one measure, it should be the answer to this question asked of their customers: “How likely is it that you would recommend our company to a friend or colleague?”

Author James Thurber wrote, “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” What other questions is your brand grappling with, or perhaps should be grappling with, these days?

Try these steps to get things going:

Create an Environment for Questions. First, do you cultivate a question-asking environment? Without the freedom to raise questions or question decisions appropriately, your brand may have a blind spot.

Question to Build Loyalty. Secondly, can you handle the answers to tough questions? Many brands have solid customer loyalty programs in place. These are indeed important parts of retention strategies. But take a moment to turn that question around for your brand—just how loyal is your brand to your customers? What have you done for them lately?

Listen Up. Thirdly, what are your customers’ pain points? What makes them mad, frustrated or just plain tired in relation to your product, service, category or overall brand experience? If you spend time uncovering these issues and then creatively addressing them, both your customers and your competitors will take note.

There are many examples of product/service/experience rage out there. Are companies listening? Do they care?

So, take some time to question your culture, your customers and your results.

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02 Mar 2010
Buying Behavior

Brand Experience Matters to Consumers More Than Loyalty Clubs

In a recent message from the Harvard Business Review’s Daily Stat, some 52% of people in a survey said their memberships in loyalty clubs (from credit cards, banks, and other companies) influence their buying decisions; but 54% said they’d give up their memberships if they had a negative product or service experience with a brand, according to the Chief Marketing Officer Council. The average U.S. household is enrolled in 14 loyalty and rewards programs.

Can we help you strengthen your ties with your customers? Is there a way that we can help you strengthen your brand?

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24 Feb 2010
Direct Mail • Marketing Strategy

What does your brand stand for?

Deliver Magazine provided some thought provoking questions for many organizations and their marketing teams.

You spend hours crashing through strategy documents, pulling out nuggets of customer insights, determining differentiators in the industry and understanding what it is that makes your corporation unique. And in the end, you have a vision of who and what your company is about. It’s that vision that helps establish relationships with customers, win over prospects and get your company noticed in this increasingly chaotic and fragmented world.

Then, after all of that strategic work, comes the execution part of the marketing plan and you decide to go digital. You send an e-mail — which looks just like any other e-mail in your best customer’s inbox.

Oh, we know, you finely tune the colors to match your brand (despite the fact you can’t calibrate how that color appears on any one monitor) or you include photography and graphics (which don’t download until the users request them) or you include the all-important link to your heavily branded Web site (although fewer than 10 percent click through).

So, maybe it’s not the optimum branding experience, but it’s cheap. Boy, is it cheap. And it’s efficient — you can reach hundreds of thousands, even millions in a single blast — and really, you’re getting the word out there.

Then the economy picks up, but your sales don’t jump as much, and at the next marketing meeting, as you’re puzzling over the numbers, someone asks why your customers aren’t so loyal anymore. What’s happened to that great relationship your brand used to have with them? And there’s a lot of this and that around the table, mutterings about “empowered consumers” and “everything’s a commodity,” and the meeting rolls on. You shrug your shoulders and concentrate on the next campaign. There’s work to do.

We understand. It’s not an uncommon problem. It’s just that, well, you could stand for something. You could put something in your customers’ hands, something branded. Imagine that: those finely tuned colors, the carefully selected images, the perfectly worded summation of what your brand is all about sitting right there in the hands of the people you most want to reach. It’s right there at their fingertips.

And inside that package, something amazing — something they could never get digitally. A sample, a tchotchke for their desk, a magnet for the fridge, a baseball bat, a brick, a salami — who knows? Something that’s amazing and brilliant and relevant, just like your brand. A piece that says “Hey, I know you,” and reminds that customer why he or she came to you in the first place and what your brand is really all about.

You could do that. But that’s direct mail, and some say that is old. No point in doing that, right?

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20 Jan 2010
Marketing Strategy • Tough Times Marketing

Branding

Now is a great time to take advantage of direct mail and other underused marketing channels.

Many businesses have shifted advertising to online efforts. Maybe this is the time to see our current economy as an opportunity. What a great occasion to increase brand advertising!

Successful brand advertising is all about building a connection with your customer, this establishes your business or product as something which is known and trusted. Brand marketing helps us trust a company and buy when we see their ads later on. One of the greatest challenges for smaller businesses is to establish a name for themselves, and a downturn actually provides an opportunity to do that because it tends to suppress brand building advertising. What a great chance to be able to jump over your competitors, especially if the market leader has curtailed their advertising spending during the downturn.

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10 Dec 2010
Advertising • Marketing Strategy

High End Consumers Don’t Like Splashy Logos

Low- and high-end fashion products tend to have less conspicuous brand markers than midprice goods, according to a paper published in The Journal of Consumer Research. 87% of sunglasses priced $100 to $200 carry a brand name or logo, the same is true for only 28% in the over-$600 price range, according to research by Jonah Berger of Penn and others.

Maybe this information will help you as you craft your direct mail and other marketing messages.

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17 Nov 2010
Advertising • Buying Behavior • Direct Mail

Paper Beats Digital For Emotion

According to a study by branding agency Millward Brown retold in a Neuromarketing blog post, physical media left a “deeper footprint” in the brain, even after for controlling for the increase in sensory processing for tangible items.

Images comparing Brain Scans of Paper vs Digital

Images comparing Brain Scans of Paper vs Digital

The study concluded:

  • Material shown on cards generated more activity within the area of the brain associated with the integration of visual and spatial information.
  • Physical material is more “real” to the brain. It has a meaning, and a place. It is better connected to memory because it engages with its spatial memory networks.
  • More processing is taking place in the right retrosplenial cortex when physical material is presented. This is involved in the processing of emotionally powerful stimuli and memory, which would suggest that the physical presentation may be generating more emotionally vivid memories.
  • Physical activity generates increased activity in the cerebellum, which is associated with spatial and emotional processing (as well as motor activity) and is likely to be further evidence of enhanced emotional processing.

Paper has advantages over digital media. To maximize these concepts:

  • Think about the touch and feel of the piece. Heavier stock and a textured finish could emphasize the “tangibility” of the mailed item.
  • Seize the advantage of the brain’s emotional engagement with tangible media and craft a message that will make an emotional connection.
  • Find ways to maximize your brand imagery and perhaps feel, brand recall may be enhanced by the paper medium.

We talked about the power of touch and how that can increase how likely people are to purchase an item because of the increased connection.

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29 Oct 2010
Advertising • Buying Behavior

A Tribute to the Underdog

As a tribute to cute costumes and a way to help you consider a possible branding message, we want to share some highlights from Harvard Business School professor, Anat Keinan.

The weaker party is often more attractive to many people. The reason might be due to consumers wanting to identify with the underdog. In today’s economically difficult times, it appears, underdog brands are gaining power in the marketplace.

Stories about underdogs overcoming great odds through passion and determination are resonant during difficult times. They inspire and give hope when the outlook is bleak. They promise that success is still possible. Throughout history Americans have embraced the American Dream, which proclaims that through hard work and perseverance anyone can be successful.

Underdog brand biographies (that highlight the companies’ humble beginnings, hopes and dreams, and noble struggles against adversaries) are being used by both large and small companies and across categories. Even large corporations, such as Apple and Google, are careful to retain their underdog roots in their brand biographies.

The common themes that link these brands’ underdog biographies are

  1. a disadvantaged position in the marketplace versus a “top dog,” a well-endowed competitor with superior resources or market dominance, and
  2. tremendous passion and determination to succeed despite the odds.

Marketers can use underdog narratives to positively affect consumers’ perceptions of and purchase of brands. “Underdog narratives are often delivered to consumers through the rhetorical device of a brand biography, an unfolding story that chronicles the brand’s origins, life experiences, and evolution over time in a selectively constructed story.”

Many contemporary brand biographies contain underdog narratives. Product packaging, corporate Web sites, direct mail advertising, blogs, and marketing communications tell the biographical stories of brands.

  • Avis’s classic slogan “we’re number 2” emphasized that it was playing second fiddle to a giant in the rental car business.
  • Brands such as Google, Clif Bar, and Apple celebrate their garage origins. Hewlett-Packard recently bought, and has a whole section on its Web site dedicated to, the garage in which it started. It is now a historical landmark.
  • Starbucks, in an effort to reverse declining sales, recently launched Pike Place Roast, which emphasizes the brand’s humble Seattle coffee culture beginnings.
  • Adidas’s “Impossible Is Nothing” campaign emphasized the underdog stories of famous athletes.
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