All posts tagged: branding

What do you have: a brand or an identifier?

By Mark Di Somma

Contention #1. A true brand coalesces people around a business model – to buy, to work, to judge, to invest. True, it is, as Adrienne used to say, “the total experience of doing business with you”. But the experience is not the end – it is the means. The experience, just like all the other elements of the business model, works to generate trust, connection and distinction. It must do so deliberately, carefully and responsibly. It does so to deliver a premium. Brands exist to earn margin beyond the going market rate. That’s their role, not their by-product. That margin can of course take various forms. It can be literal, in the sense of what consumers are prepared to pay. It can be cultural, in the sense that people with more talent are drawn to one marque over another. It can be financial, in the sense of enhanced EPS (earnings per share) for investors. A brand that doesn’t generate, or intend to generate, that above-normal market rate is a brand in decline or no brand …

30 things likeable brands do

30 things likeable brands do

By Mark Di Somma

Being likeable is not about being liked by everyone. Likeable brands actually need to be very clear about who likes them and why and how they need to behave in order to continue to appeal to their community. 10 ways to build a truly likeable brand states the principles of likeability and is one of my most popular posts. As a companion piece, here’s my 30 point action list on how brands should systematically accumulate likeability. Order can vary.

How do you keep the magic? 7 ways big companies get it so wrong with long-term customers

By Mark Di Somma

By Mark Di Somma Everyone talks at length about customer engagement and the need to converse. The process is relatively straight-forward for high-street brands. They use the seasons, sales and releases to keep people coming back. There are timely prompts. But how do you keep customers engaged when they’re on a contract, for example, that may span several years or even a lifetime? A while back, my company Audacity was involved in a complex, multi-layered change programme to transit a telecommunications company’s customer communications from paper-based to digital. Over the course of many months, we grappled with all the issues you’d expect: what needed to be communicated; when; how; through what channels … But one of the biggest issues we identified and addressed was how to evolve the tone of the communications over time so that they brought people closer to the brand. We identified this as crucial to developing meaningful, valuable and of course profitable long-term relationships. Utilities, banks, telcos, car companies and insurance companies in particular seem to make seven crucial mistakes in …

Does my brand look big in this?

By Mark Di Somma

As marketers, we’re often encouraged to puff up our brands to look as big as possible so that they appear significant and credible in a global marketplace. There’s a sense that if you’re big, you must be successful and if you’re successful, then there’s a higher than likely chance that you’ll continue to grow. Size matters. But not always in the senses that we have been led to believe. My own view is that the size of your business is actually less critical than the scale and/or extent of your thinking. A big brand on the hoof is a thing of beauty, to be sure. Strong, assured, competitive, resourced and focused on bringing its vision of the future to life. Big brands command presence and respect. But the biggest companies aren’t always the smartest, they’re not always the pace setters and they’re certainly not infallible even though they might like to think they are. I have only to direct attention to the GFC to remind all of us that neither history nor size counts as …

Brand dynamics: the shapeshifting of brand likeability

By Mark Di Somma

Our traditional view of product preference has for many years mirrored our view of markets. A bell curve, where products rise in popularity over time, sustain leadership through a period of maturity and then decline or are overtaken by another bell-curve driven by product development that supersedes the declining model and looks to take it to new heights. That model’s driving dynamic is demand. Its chief metric is volume. And its key pressure is time. The longer you can draw out that curve, and the more you can slow down the roll at the peak of the curve the more likely you are to make money. Recently, two separate pieces of thinking have caused me to believe that this likeability model is now as good as dead. Firstly, two thoughts from a really fantastic guest post by J Walker Smith at the ever-inspiring Brand Strategy Insider: “With social engagement more prevalent and more powerful, every marketing message is now subject to vetting by a crowd. No message finds its way to consumers absent the influence …

Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle …

By Mark Di Somma

Markets today operate in a vicious circle of increasing assumption. The more companies deliver, the more customers expect. Business as expected is all the things you must do to confirm your place in the crowd. All that effort doesn’t inspire loyalty, it doesn’t even change the relationship, because it doesn’t change the way you’re seen. And yet it’s a critical underpin. If this part isn’t right, nothing works. We could probably debate how important this “constant and consistent improvement” element is, and it probably varies according to sectors, but I’m going to suggest that it constitutes 70 – 85% of a deeply competitive brand. The remaining 15 – 30% is less predictable. It has to be, because what really alters how much you are valued is what you deliver that’s surprising. Business as unexpected are those things that your customers actually want but may not even have realised they wanted – until they were presented with them. A surprise could be an idea they agree with that no-one else in the sector champions, an attitude …

Why women are driving the rethinking of the sales model (amongst other things)

By Mark Di Somma

It’s extraordinary how so much has been made of the emergence of China and India and of the impact of new technology on the world’s economic wellbeing – and yet a factor bigger than either of these dynamics has been largely ignored. The rise in the participation of women in the economy through full-time work – an economic force I refer to as “femonomics” – has contributed more to economic growth than either Asia or online globally, and yet the attention this has received pales in comparison to the space devoted to Silicon Valley and the rise of the subcontinent and the Red Dragon. In the US, the input of women in the paid workforce has risen from just 20 percent in the early 20th century to close to 50 percent today, and it is still rising. According to Gerry Myers, American women now earn, control, and spend trillions of dollars annually. In fact, they are responsible for a whopping 80 – 85 percent of all purchasing decisions. So it’s amazing that so many marketers …

Does sponsorship actually work? Driving up likeability through association

By Mark Di Somma

Does the passion and commitment that fans feel for their favourite sports and events carry across to the sponsors who often help make such events financially feasible? Previously I’ve examined how advertisers have woven their participation into the very fabric of Superbowl Sunday and contrasted the sentiments that such engagement enjoys with other sponsorship arrangements where brands are much more sidelined. I’ve also looked at Dow’s involvement with the upcoming London Olympics. Now Kirk Wakefield, Professor of Retail Marketing at Baylor University in Texas and Anne Rivers, Senior Vice President at Brand Asset Consulting in New York, have studied the relationship between brands and fans more closely by looking at the effect of official sponsorship on key aspects of the brand relationship Using key sponsors from the NFL, they’ve looked at what role sponsorship plays in brands achieving knowledge (how well the brand is understood), esteem (how well regarded the brand is) relevance (how appropriate the brand is seen to be), and differentiation (how distinctive the brand is in its point of view from competitors) …

Chemistry or contamination: Dow at the Olympic Games

By Mark Di Somma

Right now a brouhaha is building between the India Olympic Committee and the IOC over the presence of Dow Chemicals at the London 2012 Summer Games. In particular, India is up in arms over Dow’s sponsorship of an $11.4-million decorative wrap to be installed around the London’s Olympic Stadium, according to this post in Brandchannel. The Indian Olympic Committee takes exception to Dow’s ownership of Union Carbide, which Dow bought in 2000, 16 years after that company’s plant in Bhopal had leaked gas killing thousands and injuring hundreds of thousands more. For their part, Dow seem to be saying that they didn’t own the plant when the accident happened and therefore the Bhopal tragedy is not their responsibility. In a letter to the Indian Olympic Association quoted here , IOC President Jacques Rogge explained that “Dow had no connection with the Bhopal tragedy. “Dow did not have any ownership stake in Union Carbide until 16 years after the accident and 12 years after the $470 million compensation agreement was approved by the Indian Supreme Court. …

Market leadership: you can’t lead as a brand if you follow another brand.

By Mark Di Somma

Looks to me from this article like Samsung are going down the same competitive route as others before them in their battle with Apple. They’re looking to out-do them and to build a reputation and loyalty for themselves that replicates the following that Apple has. Here’s the thing. As soon as any brand does this, there’s a very real risk that what it is actually doing is fighting with its perceived nemesis on their terms and therefore, subconciously or not, by their strengths. Because of the underlying references, Apple also becomes a focus and therefore, by implication, an authority. And all this within time and space that Samsung is paying for and looking to own. Unless they are very careful, there’s a real risk here that Apple could be allowed to Occupy Samsung’s marketing real estate – by Samsung itself. After all, Apple is very good at being Apple. And their consumers love them for the brand they are. It’s not smart brand strategy to address a strong brand competitor at their strongest points. If …