Brand Messaging: Do You Talk To Your Real Customer?

30 Second Sales Seminar

Did you see the 30 second sales seminar on reaching the real decision maker during the Christmas shopping season?

Insights for the Complex Sale

The lesson came in the Rad Mom TV spot pitching the Nintendo Wii.   The commercial provides valuable insights for any company that needs to impress a group of people in the sales cycle, whether you’re flogging video games or a multi-million dollar software installation to a major corporation.

A Contrarian Work of Genius

The commercial is a contrarian work of genius.  It steers clear of the standard, predictable script used in most video game commercials.  The usual approach is to focus on users and fuel adolescent males’ rabid cravings for super hero combat and napalm explosions.

These flashy, but run of the mill commercials (like this promo for the Xbox Crackdown 2 game) do a good job of getting kids excited, but by no means win the sale.  Frequently they set the stage for ill-fated lobbying efforts and family conflict.

Here’s the scenario they create: excited teens with fire in their eyes and testosterone pumping through their bloodstream put the latest video game at the top of their gift list.  They expect their parents to become infected with their enthusiasm.  But it doesn’t spread.

The Real Customer

Instead they run into the objections of Mom, who barring an intervention by Santa, determines what presents make it under the tree.  Mom is very powerful.  She makes more than 80 percent of household buying decisions.  As the holder of the purse strings, she is the video game makers’ real customer.

Tough Objections

But asking a Mom to buy a video game is an uphill battle.  A lot of Moms, maybe even most Moms don’t think highly of video games.  Do any of these complaints sound familiar?

Video games promote violence.  They turn teenagers into zombies.  Kids lose all track of time, playing them for hours on end.  Homework gets neglected.  Grades suffer.  Kids emerge from a gaming binge showing aggressive, anti-social conduct.  Video games foster addictive behavior and erode our family dynamic.

These are tough objections.  Most video game makers don’t equip their users to refute the real decision maker’s arguments.  All they can do is hope that the teens have the necessary dogged determination, debating prowess and whining skills to wear their parents down.

Doing the Unthinkable

The Wii commercial removes the need for this family strife by doing the unthinkable.  It makes Mom the star of a video game ad.  It proactively answers each of the motherly objections, using Rad Mom as the spokesperson.

The Real Customer Becomes the Star

The spot opens with the very attractive, genteel Rad Mom having a coffee conversation with the camera in her spacious, nicely decorated kitchen.  She is surrounded by a poinsettia, a nutcracker figurine, a Father Christmas doll and an advent wreath.  Dressed in a cozy-looking snowflake ski sweater she diffuses the poor family dynamic objection by proclaiming “Family time is Wii time in our house.”

The commercial then cuts to the living room, where Mom, Dad and two young teenagers are on the couch engaged in head-to-head Wii competition.  Rad Mom is having fun.  She is good at Wii.  First she triumphs over her daughter in a quiz show bomb game.  Next she smashes her husband to oblivion in ping pong.  Finally Rad Mom gallops over her son in a horserace.

A Jubilant Cry of Conquest

With each victory, the mild mannered coffee conversationalist breaks from her refined demeanour into a jubilant cry of conquest.  She stops just shy of spiking the Wii control into the carpet and trash talking her competitors.

Why all the excitement?  Because in the Rad Mom’s house, Wii is a high stakes game.  The model family isn’t playing for money, but for something far more valuable in Mom currency – chore assignments.  Winners get free time.  Losers do extra work.

Transforming the Product’s Essence

With her Wii success, the Rad Mom got her daughter to do the dishes, her husband to make dinner and her son to put the laundry away.  The commercial transforms the essence of what a video game is in the eyes of Mom.  Wii is not the enemy of family values, it is the platform of honour for Mom, the real hero of the family.

What could be better for a Mom than to emerge from her underappreciated support role and delegate a few household tasks?  It just doesn’t get any better than this.

“Everyone’s a Winner, Especially Me”

In her final appearance, Rad Mom is back in the kitchen, observing that with Wii “At the end of the day, everyone’s a winner, especially me.”

The commercial then closes with special holiday pricing details on Wii systems.

Great Entertainment & Great Example

The Rad Mom commercial is great entertainment and a great example for companies that need to appeal to different levels and roles in a large corporation to make a sale.

Many of the B2B companies I’ve encountered follow the Xbox Crackdown 2 advertising approach.  They focus their brand persona and messaging on the user.  They excel at talking techie to techie, but the message isn’t meaningful to the real and often hidden customer in control of the budget.

Stymied Sales Efforts

Solid proposals enthusiastically supported by users get rejected in the corner office because they don’t address the right issues.  The executives don’t get excited about the product features and buzzwords that wow users.  “Innovative, next generation, cutting edge solutions” are as appealing to the CEO as rocket powered gas canisters are to Mom.

The sales efforts of user-focused brands often falter at the upper rungs of the corporate ladder.  Have you ever had a sure-fire pitch shot down by a nameless V.P.?

Talk to Your Real Customer

The solution is to follow the Wii example.  Give attention to “the Mom,” who has the ultimate power to say yes or no.  Craft your value proposition in terms that are meaningful and hopefully irresistible to the holder of the purse strings.

Talk to your real customer.  Make your real customer the star.

Personal Branding: What Can You Learn from the Brand of the Year?

Happy New Year!  Welcome to 2011.

What’s ahead for your brand this year?  As you plan your 2011 marketing efforts, consider some valuable lessons modeled by 2010’s Brand of the Year.

• Accelerate your sales cycle with a powerful introduction
• Convey style AND substance online
• Unleash the power of story

International Media Attention

The 2010 Brand of the Year is a story of surprising success.  Over the course of a just few weeks it climbed from obscurity to national and international prominence, attracting coverage on every Canadian TV network, plus CNN and the BBC.

40% Market Share

In a crowded market with 15 competitors, the Brand of the Year claimed 40% market share.  The Brand of the Year triumphed over established and much better known competitors in a realm where conventional wisdom states “name recognition is everything.”

The Brand of the Year had a much smaller marketing budget than its major rivals.  It captured loyal followers based on the strength of ideas.

The 2010 Brand of the Year is a person, a previously unknown university professor, Naheed Nenshi, now the mayor of Calgary.

An Amazing Accomplishment

Naheed Nenshi’s ascent from nowhere to the mayor’s chair is an amazing accomplishment.  Going into the race his only political experience was as a fourth place aldermanic candidate in 2004.  He is now the first member of a visible minority to hold the top elected position in a city with an old west, conservative reputation.

In the mayoralty election he beat a popular TV news anchor, a corporate executive and six candidates with City Council experience, including Alderman Ric McIver, a fiscal hawk who was endorsed by the city’s largest and most influential newspaper.

From Unknown to Mayor in Six Weeks

Six weeks before the election, Naheed Nenshi was an unknown with a name that wasn’t recognized by spell check or by the vast majority of Calgary voters.

When I first saw the name in a newspaper headline, I wondered if Naheed Nenshi was the 2010 version of Alnoor Kassam.  In the 2007 mayoralty campaign Kassam, a businessman from Kenya, poured $1.5 million of his own money into an unsuccessful attempt to unseat Dave Bronconnier.

Despite enormous odds, Nenshi emerged triumphant, due in large part to his ability to create and portray a professional and credible personal brand.

Three Powerful Lessons

Nenshi’s campaign triumph offers three insightful lessons for every personal and corporate brand: mastering the introduction, balancing style and substance online, and capitalizing on the power of story.

A Masterful Introduction

My formal introduction to Naheed Nenshi as a candidate came after a business meeting on the University of Calgary campus.  It was mayoralty forum day so all of the major candidates had displays set up in the student centre.

Sensing a personal branding market research opportunity, I chatted with volunteers of several candidates.  At the Nenshi table I told a volunteer that I had heard about her candidate, but didn’t really know much about him.  She responded with a natural sounding, brilliantly scripted introduction.

The Brilliant Opening

“Naheed was born in Toronto, but grew up here in Calgary.  His family moved here when he was very young.  He was educated here at the University of Calgary where he was Student Union President.  Then he went to Harvard for a Master’s degree in Public Policy, where he was a Kennedy Fellow.  After he graduated he went to work for McKinsey.  While he was on an assignment at the United Nations, his father suffered a stroke.  To help care for his father, he soon returned to Calgary.  He is now a professor in the city at Mount Royal University.”

Leveraging Respected Brands

It was an outstanding introduction.  In less than a minute the script diffused objections, presented positive attributes and leveraged the reputation of respected brands – Harvard, President John F. Kennedy, the U.N. and McKinsey & Company, a top tier, big money consulting firm with a reputation of hiring only the brightest minds from the best schools.

The script established that Nenshi is not a foreigner or an Alnoor Kassam.  He’s a Calgarian, he’s one of us.  He has a long history of contributing and being involved.  He is very bright.  He has the capability to play in the big leagues.  He is dedicated to his family and willing to put family interests ahead of his own career aspirations.

Creating the Desire to Learn More

The introduction elevated Nenshi into a new category – from unknown with a strange name to credible candidate.  The intro script, repeated countless times on door steps and in chance encounters throughout the campaign, set the stage for further discussion.

Every brand needs a powerful opening.  Do you have an introduction that stirs interest for customers to learn more?

Balancing Style & Substance Online

The second branding lesson from Nenshi’s campaign is the skilful balance of style and substance online.

In the online marketing world every brand needs to cater to a customer’s appetite for details and craving for an entertaining presentation.

Depth of Details

In substance, Nenshi had home field advantage.  As a highly articulate professor, and the lead author of a book on the future of Canadian cities, Nenshi had a large volume of clearly reasoned ideas to present.  During the campaign he frequently pointed out that his website had the most detailed platform covering a wide range of issues.

Nenshi was the leader in substance.

An Approachable Style

But substance is only half the battle.  Good ideas poorly presented never get the attention they deserve.  Nenshi’s ideas took the spotlight because of his presentation skills and his skilful use of online video.

Skillful Use of Online Video

The featured videos on his campaign website (nenshi.ca) gave Nenshi major points on style.  The lead video, recorded on the steps of City Hall during the summer, set the tone.

Outlining Nenshi’s main platform, the opening video was positive and approachable.  It positioned Nenshi as solid, reasonable, strong and most importantly, likeable.  He focused on constructive campaign themes while still including enough edginess to make the case for change and differentiate himself from other hopefuls.

The video was a professional production, but it did not come across as overly slick.

Conversational Delivery

Nenshi’s delivery was conversational not authoritative.  His verbal tone provided a sharp contrast to the speaking style of his main rivals, Ric McIver and TV anchor Barb Higgins.

During the campaign, opposing candidates frequently questioned how 20 years of reading TV news qualified Higgins for the mayor’s chair.  Perhaps to reinforce her credibility, she rolled out her polished, authoritative newscaster speaking style.  This verbal cadence with predictable downward inflections, is very effective in the broadcast realm of traditional media, but is a major turn off in the YouTube era.

The Language of We

Nenshi understood this.  He didn’t speak from on high.  His tone was inclusive.  He used the language of we rather than I.  His video was more of an invitation to participate, than a proclamation from someone with all the answers.

How Do You Say Naheed?

Nenshi also used video to overcome the strange name obstacle and to demonstrate he doesn’t take himself too seriously.  The third of the featured videos on the website is a fun exploration of the topic: “How do you say Naheed?”  It stars more than a half dozen citizens representing various ethnic groups, all with exaggerated facial expressions and differing opinions on how to say the candidate’s name.  It is peppered with appearances by Nenshi himself gently correcting mispronunciations and adding moments of levity.

Like the Nenshi introduction and other videos, it is both strategic and brilliantly scripted.  By repeating Naheed Nenshi over and over again, the video builds familiarity with an unusual name.  At the end of the three and a half minutes, the name doesn’t feel quite so peculiar.  The video also includes a variety of faces suggesting widespread support.

A Page From Obama’s Playbook

How do you say Naheed? was likely inspired by the opening video on the obama.com website when another candidate with an odd name was seeking political office in 2008.  And for the record, the correct pronunciation of his first name is NAH-hehd.  The second syllable has a short “E” sound and rhymes with red rather than reed.

The Power of Story

The final branding lesson from the Nenshi campaign is the power of story.

According to Nenshi’s website, his campaign organizers were surprised by the number of questions about his family background.  Rather than just post a webpage that stated the facts – Nenshi is single, was born in Toronto and raised in Calgary – the campaign launched a new video that harnessed the power of story.

Naheed Nenshi: A Family Journey stars the candidate’s older sister, Shaheen Nenshi Nathoo, a mother of two young daughters.

The Classic Immigrant’s Story

It is a personalized portrayal of the classic immigrant’s story – a young couple, desiring a better life for their children, takes the courageous step of leaving their home country of Tanzania and moves halfway around the world.  Faced with significant challenges, they work hard to make ends meet and give their children the support they need to succeed.

Personal, Conversational & Heart-Warming

The Family Journey video is personal, conversational and heart-warming.  Filled with pictures from the Nenshi photo album and shots of Naheed interacting with his two young nieces, the video does far more than just present the facts.  It gives the viewer the opportunity to get to know the candidate as a person through the eyes of a proud and appreciative family member.

The video provides some inside information that would never make it onto a fact sheet.  When Naheed was with McKinsey in New York, he tired of having a cramped apartment with only ketchup in the fridge.  He paid off his student loans.  He serves as baby sitter and chauffeur to his nieces.  Naheed’s parents live half time with him and half time with his sister.

Family Values & Dr. Seuss

The video capitalizes on a story’s ability to create rapport, hold attention and engage emotions.  It models family values, an appreciative spirit, respect for parents and community service.  It closes with Nenshi reading Dr. Seuss’ Cat in the Hat to his young niece.  How can you not like a university professor candidate who takes time to read Dr. Seuss?

The Family Journey video was designed to build an emotional connection between voters and the candidate.  After viewing the video, voters ended up liking Nenshi as a person.

An Example Worth Emulating

The Nenshi campaign did a phenomenal job of building and presenting a credible and appealing personal brand.  It is an example worth emulating whether you’re trying to sell widgets or ideas.

Implement these ideas from 2010’s Brand of the Year for your 2011 success.  Happy New Year!

What’s Your Most Important Marketing Decision?

There are a myriad of decisions that must be made in bringing a company or product to market.  Out of all the vital issues, one decision stands above all others as the most important.  The decision of what to name your company, product or service.  What makes the name so important?

Crucial First Impressions

The name is the first piece of information customers encounter in the sales cycle.  It plays a crucial role in forming first impressions.

In our communication overloaded age, customers don’t wait until the end of a formal sales presentation to begin forming opinions.  From the point of first contact customers start making judgements:

Is this product interesting?  Is it appealing?  Is it worth buying?  Is it worth a premium price?  Is it worth the time of day?

Names that make a great first impression open the customer’s mind to the products they represent.  They earn a place on the customer’s radar screen and create momentum for your sales efforts.

But if the name fails to communicate a pertinent message, the name and the product are swiftly cast aside as irrelevant.

Names Form Thought Patterns

When christening a product or service, you have the opportunity to plant ideas and images that command attention, pique curiosity, build emotional rapport or claim a strategic advantage over competitors.

Some Good Examples

In six short letters, Acura conveys a message of accuracy and exacting standards – excellent qualities for a luxury automobile.

Ben & Jerry’s uses personality-rich names to promote calorie-rich ice cream.  Imaginative names like Chunky Monkey, Chubby Hubby, Neapolitan Dynamite and Jamaican Me Crazy surround the high end frozen treats with a spirit of pure fun.

Spark Buying Demand

Names can also spark buying demand and accelerate the sales cycle.  Hertz entices customers to buy its GPS upgrade option with the name NeverLost.  In just three syllables, the name offers a solution to the common fear of straying into a rough neighbourhood in a strange city.  NeverLost is far more effective in the up-sell process than the accurate but boring title of GPS Mapping System.

Choose A Name Worth Repeating A Few Million Times

The name is not only the message customers encounter first, it is the message they encounter most.

The name is present every time a customer sees the product, uses the product or talks about the product.  The name is at the core of every sales pitch, webpage, video, blog post, social media page, brochure, email campaign and public relations initiative used to promote the product for years and often decades.  Over the life of the product, the name will be repeated millions of times.

An engaging name presented a million times will yield substantially better sales results than a bland name repeated a million times.

Not Just for Consumer Giants

Huge consumer goods companies have leveraged the power of naming to earn billions.  But you don’t have to be a giant corporation selling to the mass market to reap the rewards of effective naming.  Naming offers tremendous benefits for business-to-business enterprises and even start-ups.

The story of one of my clients is a great example.  A seasoned CFO contracted Identicor to name his new business – a boutique consulting firm that advises corporations on mergers, acquisitions, and other complex financial transactions.  The client needed a name that would portray his start-up company as a credible entity when competing head to head for business against international accounting firms.

A thorough, professional name development process led to the name Corplan Advisors – with Corplan being an abbreviation for corporate planning.

This concise, direct, confident-sounding name positioned the new consulting firm as a solid, trustworthy organization from its first day of operations.  The Corplan name has been very well received with clients in the target market and continues to play an important role in the firm’s growing reputation.

Not Just Any Name Will Do

Naming offers an impressive array of benefits.  But capitalizing on the possibilities is by no means automatic.  The results you’ll realize depend on the quality of the name you choose.  Not just any name will do.

If you select a name with a compelling message and engaging imagery, then every time the name appears, you’ll create a sales opportunity.

But on the other hand, if you select a name that conveys a non-message or the wrong message then every promotional piece you create will have to compensate for a missed opportunity or waste energy correcting the naming deficiency.

Naming is your most important marketing decision.

Branding Lessons From The Ranch – Part 2

Anytime we venture into the realm of the intangible, there is a natural tendency to look back to the physical world for context and direction.  The familiar metaphors of windows, desktops and folders make the virtual environment of personal computers more familiar and approachable.  A popular personality profile tool taps into the imagery of lions, otters, beavers and golden retrievers to make the characteristics of various temperaments easier to understand.

Metaphoric Support

In the essential but intangible marketing discipline of branding, the cattle ranch can be a valuable source of insights for marketers.  In many ways branding a company in the marketplace is like branding a cow on the ranch.  Part 1 of Branding Lessons From the Ranch explored how the two forms of branding are similar.

But if you take the ranch concepts of branding and transplant them wholesale into the business world, you’ll make some serious mistakes.  There are some key differences between the ranch and marketplace forms of branding.

Is Brand Just Another Word For Logo?

In the ranching world there is a huge focus on the physical brand – the mark that gets seared into the backside of calves.  In cattle country there are entire museums dedicated to these brand marks and the irons used to produce them.

The ranch’s physical brand fixation might tempt you to think that a marketing brand is nothing more than a company’s logo.  Logos are incredibly important elements in a company’s overall identity.  Great logos are like pictures – they speak a thousand words.  The Golden Arches instantly communicate McDonald’s even to preliterate preschoolers.  The profile of a common piece of fruit with a missing bite identifies products as coming from Apple.

While logos are important, they are not the brand.  If you have an appealing logo, you have an appealing logo.  Don’t be misled into thinking that paying a graphic designer to concoct a corporate moniker is the same thing as developing a brand.

Dig Deep To Discover Identity

Your brand does not exist in the bright colors and smooth flowing lines of a logo.  Your brand is a much deeper and more emotional entity.  If you want to develop a bona fide brand, you need to do some corporate archaeology and dig deep into the principles, concepts and personality traits that your company genuinely possesses and holds to.

Once you’ve thoroughly discovered your company’s inner identity and expressed it in a one page Brand Identity Statement, then you’re ready to enlist the services of a graphic design professional.  If the first discussion of your brand doesn’t take place until you’re talking logo design, then you’ll have a shallow, surface level brand at best.

Outside-In

Cattle branding is one of the annual rites of spring on the ranch.  The calves that were born over the winter months and early spring are rounded up.  Each calf has a personal appointment with the ranch’s branding iron that has been pre-heated on a nearby campfire.  The mark that identifies ownership of the calf is applied from the outside in.

Inside-Out

In the marketplace the best branding is always Inside-Out, not Outside-In.  Inside-Out brands have a clear set of core values and a consistent philosophy that drives their business.  Inside-Out brands are committed to something beyond the company itself and as a result deliver more than just a product.

Outside-In companies on the other hand, are driven by external events, not internal values.  They discover the flavor of the month and then wrap a new advertising slogan around it.  They live in the world of “me too.”

In the coffee world, Starbucks is the Inside-Out brand that sets the standard in taste and customer experience.  Your local convenience store may have upgraded its beans in response to Starbucks, but it offers an imitation product at best and as a result commands imitation prices at best.

Inside-Out brands lead the way in experience, innovation, price and profit.  Outside-In companies are chameleons, forever destined to be imitators who compete solely on price.

A One-Time Event?

On the ranch, branding is a one-time event.  Once a calf has been marked with the ranch’s brand to establish ownership, there’s no reason for a repeat engagement.  It’s also highly unlikely that you’d ever get any self-respecting calf within searing distance of a hot branding iron for a second time.

Cattle brands are static, permanent physical things.  Marketing brands need to be living, evolving entities that remain relevant in a changing world.  In the marketplace, brands, just like the companies and products they represent, need to respond to changes in technology, changes made by competitors, and changes in customer expectations.

Back in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s Cadillac was the de facto standard in the luxury car market.  Cadillac land yachts, with suspension systems inspired by the pillow top mattress, ruled the day.  Then Mercedes, BMW and later Lexus redefined what a luxury car should be.  According to the new philosophy a luxury car should be tight, powerful, responsive, sporty and painstakingly engineered.  Affluent motorists bought into the new ideas and stopped buying Caddies.  Cadillac’s market share went into free fall.

How Cadillac Got Its Groove Back

Cadillac spent a decade trying to catch up by developing new models that would zig and also presumably zag.  Customer response was decidedly under-whelming.  The Cadillac brand became as relevant as the Commodore 64 is today.

By the late 90’s it was time for a bold reinvention of the brand.  Cadillac embraced a radical new “Art and Science” design concept that featured stacked headlights and sharp angular lines.  In 2002, the first new look Cadillac, the hyper-stylized CTS, hit the streets and instantly turned heads.  Today the CTS tops its category in the Consumers’ Most Wanted Vehicles survey.  So does its larger look-alike sister model the STS and the Escalade SUV, a favorite choice among rap stars and affluent suburban moms.

Cadillac is no longer imitating or following.  It’s leading the way.  And if you take a look in just about any new car showroom today, you’ll find models that have borrowed heavily on the “Art and Science” design.

If Cadillac had followed the ranch philosophy of one time branding it would be on a deathwatch.  Instead, it has reinvented its way back to prominence.

One time branding makes sense on the ranch.  In the marketplace it is a recipe for disaster.

Applying These Ideas In Your Company

What’s the status of your company’s brand?  Has it fallen into some of the traps of ranching concept branding?

Do you have a crystal clear one page Brand Identity Statement that captures your company’s essence?  Have you clearly articulated your philosophy and core values?  Is your brand up to date?  Does it need of an update?

If your brand suffers from any ranching concept branding woes, or if you just want to make it stronger, register for the Branding Breakthrough Workshop taking place in Calgary on Tuesday September 18, 2007.  You’ll learn powerful strategies to make your brand and marketing messages much more targeted, appealing and effective.

Branding Lessons From The Ranch – Part 1

As is fitting for a branding expert, I live on a ranch.  Or at least it used to be a ranch.  Up until a half dozen years ago the ridge overlooking the Elbow River Valley was home to a herd of 250 Herefords.

Today the former rangeland is a thriving subdivision of jewel box bungalows and two storey walkouts surrounded by Kentucky Bluegrass lawns.

The cattle have left the land, but if you think back to the days of the ranch, there are some valuable branding lessons to ponder and profit from.

Branders in the marketplace can learn a lot from branders on the ranch.

A Brand Is A Declaration of Ownership

First and foremost, cattle branding is a declaration of ownership.  Singeing a distinctive mark into the backside of a calf permanently proclaims who it belongs to.

In the days of the old west, owners of branded cattle could confidently allow their herds to roam the open range knowing they would be able to identify their animals at round up time.

In the marketing world a brand is routinely used to identify the manufacturer.  A swoosh on the side of a tennis shoe announces the runner was made by Nike.  A three pointed star in a circle signifies the car is a Mercedes.

Own A Set Of Ideas

But the ownership lesson of branding goes much deeper than simply stamping your logo on the products you make.  Branding offers the sales-boosting possibility of owning a set of ideas.

Back when the first wave of Baby Boomers entered their cavity-prone years, Proctor & Gamble added fluoride to Crest toothpaste and transformed dental health forever.

Crest TV commercials featured an excited grade school child emerging from the dentist’s chair proclaiming “Look Mom, no cavities!”  P&G used the ads to brand Crest as the cavity prevention toothpaste.  By owning the concept of cavity prevention, Crest outsold every other toothpaste on the market.

What set of ideas does your company need to own to move to the top of the market?

A Brand Must Be Distinct

In the ranching world brands must be distinct.  A lack of distinctiveness breeds trouble.  If two adjacent ranches have similar brands a nasty feud is sure to follow.  The same holds true in marketing.

Trademark disputes are becoming ever more common.  Exxon and Kellogg’s have squared off in court over the use of tiger cartoon characters.  Exxon puts a tiger in your tank, while Kellogg’s uses Tony the Tiger to pitch Sugar Frosted Flakes.  Apple, the Beatles’ record label and Apple, the maker of the Mac computer and the iPod, have a long standing dispute over the use of the word Apple in music related services.

You’ll stay out of trouble if you select company and product names, logos and taglines that are hard to confuse with others.  However, there’s more at stake in brand distinctiveness than just reducing the risk of a legal battle.

If You Don’t Stand Out, You Compete On Price

If a product doesn’t stand out from its competitors, if it looks like other products and makes similar claims as other products, then the product is not a brand, it is a commodity that will always be relegated to competing on price.

Think About The iPod

Products that present a distinct message and personality, on the other hand, command higher prices and win a larger share of the market.  Think about the iPod.  Like all other MP3 players the iPod allows you to carry around hundreds of songs in your pocket.  But the iPod is different.  It has a one of a kind style and a hip personality that has captivated millions.  Devotees see the iPod, not as a music playback device, but as an extension of their own personalities.

The iPod dominates the market, especially in the hard drive category where it has commanded a market share of greater than 80%.  And the people buying iPods pay a hefty premium.  iPods typically cost 50-70% more than models with similar song capacity from other manufacturers.

How About Your Company?

How distinctive are the essential identifiers of your brand?  Take a look at the names you use to label your company, products and services.  Take a look at your logo, your tagline and marketing messages.  Then take a look at your competitors.  If the essential identifiers of your brand aren’t distinctly different, you have a problem.

Maybe you once led the market and your competitors have caught up or have copied you.  Cavity prevention was a key differentiating factor for Crest in the 50’s and 60’s.  Today cavity prevention is common to every toothpaste.

If your brand has lost its distinctiveness, it’s time to blaze a new trail.  Don’t tumble into the mire of commodity status.

Branding Is A Long Term Decision

On the ranch, branding has life long implications.  Once branded, the calf will bear the mark for the rest of its life.

The Memory Of An Elephant

In the marketing world, branding isn’t necessarily permanent, but it is long term.  Once you get known for a certain product, service or attribute, the reputation will stick for years, maybe even decades.  The marketplace has the memory of an elephant.

Make sure that you choose brand level messages wisely.  Cultivate a reputation with customers that will stand the test of time.  Make a clear distinction between enduring brand defining values and tactical responses to current market dynamics.

Back in the late 90’s I encountered a number of companies that were adamant the official name of their fledgling organizations had to end in .com.  Most of those companies vanished when the bubble burst.  They made the mistake of tying their identity to a passing fad.

Getting It Right For Decades

There is also a valuable upside to the long term nature of branding.  When you hit the mark with the right company name, product title or tagline, you can run with it for a long time.  The investments you make in professional branding services can keep paying off for decades.

P&G has been selling soap under the Ivory name for more than 125 years.  Nike is still using the Just Do It tagline, which was first launched in 1985.  One of the longest enduring taglines still in use is the familiar slogan for Maxwell House coffee.  Maxwell House has been telling coffee drinkers it is “Good to the Last Drop” since 1915.

Branding in the marketplace is a lot like branding on the ranch.  But be careful how many cattle lessons you take into the marketplace.  In part 2 of Branding Lessons From The Ranch, I’ll explore the ways that branding a business is not like branding a cow.