Our gut instinct as marketers is to go with what is working, because everything in the corporate rewards system is geared towards that: lack of risk appetite; the quest for short term results; even performance incentives. The irony for brands of course is that the more you go with what works for others, the less likely those ideas are to work for you.
If brand owners are truly intent on developing brand strategies that cut through, perhaps the best place to start is with stranger questions. Asking the less obvious might push more brands to think more laterally about their futures.
Franchising can be a very powerful way to grow your brand, but it is a way of branding a business that has very specific characteristics and challenges.
Everywhere you look today it seems, there are people and brands only too keen to spell out exactly what they think and what they want you to know, in the loudest terms possible. As the volume continues to climb, can you even be a quiet brand today?
One for my States-side friends. (It’s a little early for most in my part of the world.) Please join Pete Canalichio, Managing Partner at Licensing Brands Inc, and me for a LIMA webinar on May 5 (EST) as we use several case studies to show how top licensors are utilising brand expansion through licensing to help maximize shareholder value and meet their long-term business objectives. Find out more at: http://www.licensing.org/news/new-webinar-420-risk-assessment-management/#sthash.ivAfOiYj.dpuf
Recent conversations have served as a reminder that not all senior leaders regard brands as something they should be involved with. If you’re struggling to get your senior team to put important brand matters on the executive agenda, here’s some reminders by way of making the case for greater consideration.
Brand equity is the added value element of your brand. I often refer to as “emotional margin”. It’s frequently measured as the gap between the price your brand can command through its very presence compared with how consumers value non-branded products in your category.
Much is made of the idea that your brand is what people say about you when you are not in the room. However, brands are defined by more than reputation and stories are told and spread by more than just consumers. Some stories you control. Many you can’t.
In a world besotted with the new, sometimes the most powerful thing a brand can do is take people back to a time and a sentiment that feels comfortable and familiar.
The choice of values and the nature of those values comes up a lot in any team looking to change what it stands for. Sometimes it comes up overtly. More often, it comes out in a reluctance by some to ‘move on’ from what they know because they are concerned that leadership is not up to the task or they will end up compromising their professional integrity.
