For all those brand managers looking for ways to differentiate their brand, this compilation of ideas, co-authored with brand strategists Derrick Daye, Brad VanAuken and Thomson Dawson, may well be a definitive list.
My favourite saying is “Life is not a popularity contest”. It’s a maxim easily forgotten in these days of convergence. But in my opinion it’s more true in business than anywhere, and most true in terms of how companies need to think about their branding. Every brand should be actively looking to put distance between itself and its competitors. And since true difference of offer is now one of the hardest things to achieve and maintain, the most effective and cost efficient way to do that is through difference of opinion. Pick a fight, make a point Every brand should look to make enemies. If I’m working on a project with Audacity where our client is #2, #3 or further down the pecking order, I start by looking for a way to pick a fight, or at least a debate, with our client’s nearest rival. Because when you do this, you give yourself an opportunity to espouse a “sticky” world view, one that people are drawn to and wish to acknowledge and support (by buying …
This article in Harvard Health Blog in many ways mirrors why consumers take comfort in choosing branded products generally. A brand name means they know what to ask for. They believe in the quality that they associate with the brand. The distribution system believes in the brand.
Every brand wants advocates. Little wonder. According to Janessa Mangone, people who actively promote your brand can be 50% more influential than the average customer in helping you secure new sales. So perhaps attracting them is something best not left to chance. As we head into the busy Christmas season, here’s some simple but timely reminders on how to put some wow! in your WOM. 7 ways to motivate your advocates Give them something to talk about – advocates love to share. Release news, ideas, tips, FAQs, case studies, video and reviews that the people who love your brand can enthusiastically share with others. Use email marketing to give them ‘scoops’ that are not released in the general media, and watch your traffic. It’s a simple way to monitor the amplifying effect of your advocates. While companies are increasingly looking at content marketing to bring new people to their brand, it’s easy to overlook the need to keep your current community involved and excited. A comprehensive piece here by Joe Pulizzi on how to attract …
Some years back, Paul Dunay wrote a post that has always stuck with me. Be what interests people. To me, that is everything a brand strategy should aspire to, captured in four words. And yes, on the one hand, it seems obvious. But don’t let the simplicity of the statement fool you – because whilst “interest” itself is a deeply familiar concept, it is also an elusive one.
1. You’re less connected with your customers than you used to be, or than your competitors are. 2. Your distributors increasingly hold the relationships and the tables are turning. They’re treating you like the supplier rather than the other way around. Or they’re introducing house brands that undermine your margins. 3. You’re past your heyday. There’s a lot of talk about history and the “glory days” of the business and/or the sector. 4. You’re paying too much attention to the wrong metrics. 5. You don’t know as much about your buyers as you need to. 6. You’re increasingly focused on technical excellence at the expense of relationships. My term for this fascination is “redundant excellence”. 7. Your customer base is static. So is your market share. Everyone’s comfortable. 8. You’ve lost the spark that’s got you this far. You’ve run out of ideas. 9. You’re riding a wave (but that’s all you’re riding). 10. You’re fading. Your competitors are less intimidated by you (and less respectful of you) than they used to be. You’re being …
It’s often not hard to see why other brands have died – especially after the fact. There’s also one interesting and abiding constant in all the casualties. What kills a brand, more often than not, is what it lacks rather than what it does: conviction; energy; value; humility; cash; discipline; imagination; focus … Here are 30 signs of trouble that I would look for. 1. Your new product or service tanked. If that’s a continuation of a recent pattern and not just a one-off, then you’ve either disconnected with your audience, failed to hold their attention or been superceded. 2. Customers are leaving. You haven’t noticed, or you don’t care. 3. You’re getting more and more questions about the value you add. 4. You’re being asked to sharpen the pencil on just about every deal, and you feel you have no option but to do so. 5. You don’t feel you’re in a position to take a position (on anything). 6. You keep diversifying in the hope of attracting more business, but all you’re really …
A couple of months ago, Adrienne Bateup-Carlson sent me this op-ed by Roger Cohen. In it, Cohen laments the plasticisation of experience. “The question of genuine, undiluted experience has been on my mind,” he writes. “Germans have a good word for something authentic: “echt.” We have an echt deficit these days. Everything seems filtered, monitored, marshaled, ameliorated, graded and app-ready — made into a kind of branded facsimile of experience for easier absorption. The thrill of the unexpected is lost … We demand shortcuts, as if there are shortcuts to genuine experience.” Anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of a fast-food “service experience” can sympathise. The greetings are anonymous, the requests generic, the answers pat, the actions either physically or mentally automated. This is life on rote, experience in a box. It feels as sincere as the latest apology for downtown traffic delays, the “Thanks for waiting” message from the telco customer service team and the reassurances from an insurer that they will “gladly” pay up in the event of a claim. It …
This is a guest post by Mark Blackham. It’s a huge pleasure to have Mark as my first ever guest blogger at Upheavals. I first met Mark many years ago, and he has been a regular commenter here on reputational and branding issues. I hope you enjoy his perspectives as much as I do. The more I learn about how humans receive information and conceive ideas, the more simplistic most marketing looks. We’re beginning to understand from brain research that a million different experiences, predispositions and feelings go into each human decision. Behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman talks about a ‘remembering self’ that selects the experiences we use to create and define ourselves. Each one of us has this complex bundle of self-selected memories that influence our decisions. Yet marketing is often based on one insight thought to be common across all target customers. When you consider the variance of attitudes possible across individuals, that insight has to be a generality to be accurate. And if it’s a generality, it’s likely to be irrelevant to the …
We don’t always mean what we say in social situations – nor, it appears, in research. That seems to be the key take-out from recent research (delicious irony!) by Chip Walker and the Y&R research team. In their recently released study, Secrets and Lies, (thanks Hilton for the reference and for the introduction to Chip) the team concludes that consumers’ conscious motivations differ markedly from their true deep drivers. In fact, they’re often the opposite of what they say. Those conscious-unconscious biases are also reflected in the brands that people say they like versus those they actually like. Consider this: “The top 10 conscious brands are Amazon, Google, Apple, Target, Whole Foods, Starbucks, McDonald’s, Facebook, AT&T and Prius. That contrasts with the order of the top 10 brands consumers favor unconsciously: Target, Amazon, Facebook, Whole Foods, National Enquirer, Exxon, McDonald’s, Apple, Starbucks and AT&T.” While it’s important to recognise that, for the purposes of the study, people were asked to rank a finite list of brands not to nominate those brands from scratch, the contrast …
