This post is part of  an ongoing series that explores the fundamental principles of branding. Please feel free to join the conversation.

What types of people buy a particular product or service? This is one of the most fundamental questions to ask when it comes to establishing a brand. The more narrowly and accurately a brand’s target market is defined, the more likely its marketing and advertising efforts will be successful.

Target markets can be defined in several different ways. The most common ones are geographic (where they are located), demographic (age, income, etc), psychographic (attitudes, values and lifestyles) and behavioral (occasions, hobbies).

While geographic and demographic categorizations may seem more obvious, psychographic and behavioral considerations are often more relevant. And it’s never a good idea to make assumptions about who a brand’s users are. For example, many people would picture the average Harley-Davidson customer to be a rough, rugged, and wildly adventurous man. Yet in reality many c-suite executives and a rapidly increasing number of women have also bought into the Harley values of freedom, self-reliance, and individualism.

It’s important to put a name and a face to the target audience. Will the brand resonate with Trendsetting Tom or Andrew the Accountant?  How about Lazy Lucy? Where do these people work? What do they do for fun? What do they eat? Where do they shop? Do they take risks and experiment or play it safe?

A good target market description might read:

“Lower middle class males between the ages of 20-28 who are socially active but not in a serious relationship. They are working and have an expendable income for the first time. Some of their frequent recreational activities include going clubbing and to the movies. They smoke a pack a day and drink Starbucks quadruple shots. More often than not, their refrigerators are stocked with a six pack of beer and a slice of pizza.”

A specific, clearly defined target market description makes it easy to envision the people within and the brands and values that are important to them.

This post is part of  an ongoing series that explores the fundamental principles of branding. Please feel free to join the conversation.

A brand category is a group of brands that sit in a similar place within a person’s mind. While each person’s list will be slightly different, the industry leaders are typically at the top. For example, when most people think of the soda category, Coca-Cola and Pepsi will typically come to mind first.

It’s long been recognized that the best way to thrive in a category is to create a new one and own it from the beginning. Joe Calloway refers to this creation of a new, niche category a “category of one.” He coined the term in his well-received book, Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison.

The benefit of being an establishing brand in a category of one is that instead of fighting for the consumer’s attention with the myriad of other brands in a category, the category of one brand is the only option. By the time competitors reach the market, the category of one brand has successfully staked its claim in the consumers mind. Brands such as Coca-Cola and McDonald’s were first in their respective categories and they remain far ahead of their competition in terms profit and brand awareness.

Brands that find themselves in crowded categories will benefit the most from reframing themselves in such a way that creates a new category. One of the best examples of this is Red Bull. Rather than facing Coca-Cola head on in the highly competitive soda category, they invented a new one: the energy drink category.

A solid understanding of the category in which a brand falls is essential to any good marketing plan. Who are the competitors? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the brand, as well the opportunities and threats to it? Does the brand offer a distinct benefit around which a new category could be formed?

This is the first in an ongoing series that explores the fundamental principles of branding. Please feel free to join the conversation.

The idea of “branding” in the marketing sense likely stemmed from the agricultural practice of branding. Farmers have branded their livestock to indicate ownership since the times of ancient Egypt. Today, the meaning of the word “brand” has evolved to encompass much more, especially with regard to marketing.

In its most basic sense, a brand begins with a trademark: a name and a logo used to identify a company and its products and services. But fully developed brands are more than just a set of words, colors, fonts and designs. Brands carry various qualities that appeal to specific types of people. Through the relationship between company and consumer, brands can transcend their physical limitations and develop unique personalities of their own.

But how does a brand get to this point? There are three basic premises upon which a brand can be based: attributes, benefits and values. The difference between them is a fundamentally important.

Attributes are the physical properties that a product has, the stuff that it does. Specifications and features. The most important attributes are those that can translate into actual benefits, which can actually make a person’s life better. Values, on the other hand, are the ideas that a brand stands for.

So between attributes, benefits and values, which of the three is best suited as a basis of a brand? While attributes are important to a product’s overall success and identity, by themselves they often lack relevance to the target audience. Benefits make for stronger brands since they are based on what the audience will gain from using the product or service.

Values, however, are the most powerful pillars of branding. Sure, values will polarize your audience but they will also resonate vigorously with the right types of people. When a brand is able to encompass the thoughts and mindsets of a group, its users will quickly turn into ambassadors who embrace the brand as part of who they are and what they stand for.

Regardless of the brand premise, its essence should be summed up in what we like to refer to as a brand promise. This is what the brand will do for you; this is what the brand will always believe in. In order to establish credibility, it’s important that every part of the audience’s experience—from the employees to the advertising to the actual product or service—consistently communicates this message. 

Although so much in media changes quickly, after watching this feature we were reminded that third-party borrowed interest techniques (i.e. imaginary characters) still work. Geico’s gecko offers one of the best examples of a more recent popular and memorable icon. The “return” of Mr. Peanut speaks volumes for effectiveness. Often, these icons derive from anthropomorphized versions of real creatures as in the case of the Tony The Tiger, Geico’s gecko and the Trix silly rabbit. Many win us over with a cute and lovable demeanor as in the case of the Pillsbury Dough Boy. What’s not to enjoy?

Edited from The Washington Post article by Gene Weingarten

He emerged from the metro station at the L’Enfant Plaza Station and positioned himself against a wall beside a trash basket. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.

It was 7:51 a.m. on a Friday in the middle of rush hour. In the next 43 minutes, as the violinist performed six classical pieces, 1,097 people passed by. Each passerby had a quick choice to make, one familiar to commuters in any urban area where the occasional street performer is part of the cityscape.

Three minutes went by before something happened. A middle-aged man altered his gait for a split second, turning his head to notice that there seemed to be some guy playing music. Yes, the man kept walking, but it was something. A half-minute later, Bell got his first donation. A woman threw in a buck and scooted off. It was not until six minutes into the performance that someone actually stood against a wall, and listened.

After 10 minutes, a 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

No one knew it, but the fiddler standing against a bare wall outside the Metro in an indoor arcade at the top of the escalators was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made. His name was Joshua Bell and his performance was arranged by The Washington Post as an experiment in context, perception and priorities.

Just days before he appeared at the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston’s stately Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. The Stradivari violin he played at the metro station has been estimated to be worth $3.5 million.

The questions raised: in an ordinary place at an unbefitting hour, do we recognize beauty? Do we pause to appreciate it? Do we appreciate talent in an unexpected context?

In the fields of marketing and advertising, many studies have been conducted to analyze how context affects overall perception of quality. Weingarten’s findings are a great example of what PeakBiety is all about: the power of perception®.

The results of the Joshua Bell experiment aren’t too surprising to us. The nature of a presentation is closely linked with how it will be perceived. A client’s product or service could be the best available, but without relevant strategy, a strong branding platform and appropriate marketing—the product or service could be easily overlooked.

Part 1 of 5

In today’s tough economic climate, the wellness of a healthcare organization’s brand is more critical than ever. This can mainly be attributed to the complex and highly competitive nature of the industry. Awareness with strong identity and messaging are a good start. But aside from basic marketing, successful branding goes a lot further. It must start from inside a healthcare organization’s core. At its soul. From that point, everything that the organization does—from brand promise, to advertising, to employees working as brand ambassadors—complete brand alignment is essential. Why?

In the 2010 Edelman Trust Barometer: An Annual Global Opinion Leaders Study, trust and credibility in brands exceeded all other corporate attributes. Where else is trust more important than in healthcare? Healthcare decisions are emotional. Personal. Sometimes it’s a matter of life and death. You may wonder, well, where does a brand come in? Brands sound like toothpaste or toilet paper. But that’s also the similarity. Studies show that people are most loyal to brands that are most personal. Brands that you feel, that you touch. Things that comfort you and make you feel better. This is where healthcare needs to see itself today.

So where does an organization start? A brand assessment is a good place. Not unlike a SWOP analysis, a brand assessment will uncover brand strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. However, it goes much deeper than that. With the right research, an effective brand assessment will help your organization uncover desired goals within the organization and contrast those with patient perceptions. The right discovery work will identify what makes your organization different from your competitors. From that key information, branding communication tools with creative signals are developed.

Once communication tools are in place, the following steps are helpful to the implementation process:

1. Launch the brand strategically. Explain to staff why branding is so essential. Take measures to ensure employee pride and ownership. Employee perceptions trickle down to patients. Customers can sense when there is lack of transparency and empathy. It is crucial for a holistic brand framework to be implemented consistently with genuine care for patients.

2. Make sure your organization is well-informed and consistent with the use of the brand’s identity. Provide detailed brand guidelines. After the launch, continue employee brand education with attention-getting, motivating and inspiring reminders.

3. Consider that your brand and the mediums by which you communicate are ever-evolving. Identify and implement on-gong measurement. Continually reinforce your brand infrastructure. Be consistent in messaging but stay fluid with changing technology.

4. Develop a social media plan to disseminate your brand message and stay connected to your customers. We’ll be talking more about social media on Wednesday.

Over time, strong branding will reap very tangible rewards. We know that people will pay more for a brand name than a generic alternative. This is especially true when it comes to one’s healthcare. People trust brands because of what those brands represent. Whatever the brand distinction in the eyes of consumers, a branded healthcare organization is worth more than a non-branded one. Successful branding will give an organization a big advantage over its competitors. Making a promise known to customers, then living up to it, is key.

Sources:

Edelman, Richard. “2010 Edelman Trust Barometer Executive Summary.” Edelman.com. 2010. 8 June 2010  http://www.scribd.com/full/26268655?access_key=key-1ovbgbpawooot3hnsz3u

Last month, over 250 marketers and small business owners gathered at the Social Fresh conference in Tampa to hear from 32 nationally recognized social media experts. Here’s some of the most common questions we heard.

What should my brand talk about?
Help your target audience find relevant information—not only about your brand, but about their passions. For Fiskars scissors, that passion is scrapbooking.

Maggie Fox from the Social Media Group in Ontario pointed out that “You can’t just aggregate, you must also curate. Help people find valuable information about your brand. Sites that [put lots of social media feeds about the brand on their homepage], but don’t filter them are useless… I have Google for that.”

How do you know when you’ve achieved social media success?
Its not just about having more followers than your competitors. A social media campaign, like any medium, needs a clearly defined strategy that fits in the overall brand strategy. What you are trying to accomplish with a campaign—sales, awareness, discussion or even just goodwill—should define the end goals of any social media effort. It’s more important to find and develop relationships with 5 people who are really passionate about your brand and what it has to offer than to have 5,000 fans who could really care less.

Whats the next big thing in social media?
Chris Barger, the Social Media Director for GM who is responsible for their early and active involvement in the social media realm had two predictions:

1. Combining SM with location awareness
This is mostly applicable to restaurants and other retail locations. Users “check in” on their mobile phones when they are at a location. The person who checks in to that location the most is named the “mayor”. Some stores are offering discounts, etc to the “mayor” of their stores. You can also leave reviews of the store, and discover where your friends are hanging out. The most popular sites for this are currently FourSquare and Gowalla.

2. Brand integration with SM gaming
Currently, lots of time is being spent on games like FarmVille and MafiaWars that are integrated into social media platforms like Facebook. Why not integrate your brand into these games or develop games around your brand that allow users to interact with their existing social media network?

Social Media isn’t everything.
One thing to remember—90% of word of mouth still happens offline. Use social media to help start conversations and engage with consumers—but don’t let it replace good old fashioned face-to-face interaction and other offline approaches.

Pop quiz! What is the most common, yet most easily corrected, mistake small businesses make?

A. Undercapitalization

B. Marketing myopia

C. Lack of branding

D. Failure to diversify

A recent article by Steve Strauss, one of the world’s leading small business experts, posed this question.

Based on his experience, Strauss concluded that the answer was C, bad branding. “To understand why, try this little experiment: Think about a major street that you drive down every day, and think about the row upon row of businesses you see on that street. OK, now, quick, which ones do you actually specifically remember?

If you are like most of us, the answer is zero, or maybe one or two, and that is sad, sad, sad. While every one of these small businesses represents someone’s dream, very few of them are actually businesses worth remembering.”

Finding a real difference that resonates with your target audience is hard work. Most businesses never do it—even many larger ones.

Strauss goes on in the article to talk about the importance of a unique value proposition, or what we like to call, a brand promise. It’s what gives your potential customers a clearly defined reason to choose you over the competition. A big part of that is owning a word or value in the consumers mind.

So how do you determine what your brand promise should be? Often, talking to current customers can provide important clues. You also need to understand what prospects are looking for, and study competitors positions to see what, if anything, they have aligned themselves with.

Small businesses can get bigger… the key is managing perceptions.

by Glen Peak

In a recent blog article, What Kind of Agency Are You, an ad agency owner observed his struggle with how to “categorize” his agency, e.g. digital, creative, branding, etc. Lots of varied services and talent no doubt led him to describe such a struggle.

I was struck by the author’s observation that they never use the word “traditional” to describe the agency and wondered aloud if even “traditional” agencies use the word. Well…we don’t currently put the word “traditional” in the descriptors of our 4A’s advertising agency but this discussion prompts me to think that we should proudly include this word in our messaging. Perhaps someone would actually ask: what does the “traditional” descriptor mean?

I don’t believe that many of today’s clients understand that ad agencies were once considered to be true marketing partners (a term that has since been beat to death and misused). Better agencies were involved in high level marketing strategy, new product development, market research, package design, media planning and buying, collateral material (yes… even that stuff), promotional programs and, oh yes, advertising that worked. In short, the agency was viewed as a business-building partner and expected to bring ideas to the table that could make a difference regardless of the medium. To achieve that, agencies had to have the marketing capability and passion to understand the client’s business as well as examine trends.

If “traditional” is about being generally recognized, customary and even long-standing, I really want to incorporate this label into the characterization of our agency.

by Amy Phillips

Good brand management is supported by a strong and strategic brand identity. For a brand to stand out in its field, a brand’s online identity is becoming increasingly important. One of the most essential support systems for strong online brand identity is good search engine optimization (SEO).

To examine a brand online, the obvious first place to start is the brand’s Web site. An optimized site, with page titles, clean URLs, good content, headers, descriptions, alt tags and navigation will help with SEO. A very comprehensive checklist can be found here. But is that enough?

For high search engine ranking, the answer is no.

Paid advertising with media such as Pay-Per-Click through services such as Google AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter, is helpful but can be expensive. Organic SEO costs nothing but the time to build and maintain it. Some knowledge of the ever-changing search engine criteria for ranking algorithms helps.

But are an optimized site and paid advertising enough?

Many organic (as opposed to paid) SEO strategies today call for only 25% of effort given to “on-page” (the website) as opposed to 75% for “off-page” efforts (in-bound links and social media).

Social Media, according to Wikipedia, is composed of three things:

• Concept (art, information, or meme).

• Media (physical, electronic, or verbal).

• Social interface (intimate direct, community engagement, social viral, electronic broadcast or syndication, or other physical media such as print).

If social media is to be used to help SEO, all “concepts” must be strategic and brand-reinforcing. Anything else could actually be damaging. So, a brand’s social media presence with outlets such as Twitter, Facebook and YouTube among others, needs to be carefully crafted, controlled and monitored. Never underestimate the power of perception.®

The social interface component of social media presents the most challenges. What does it entail? Meeting people and talking. Asking questions and answering them. Engaging to add value. So how does a “brand” do this successfully?

The first place to start is to create a voice. A company needs to decide whether to set up separate Twitter accounts or one company account. How do you determine the right voice? For the pros and cons of all to consider, check out “The Right Voice for Your Brand is…”

Once your company’s voice is established, make sure that it is consistent from brand image to brand experience. Make sure that expectations are aligned. Create a strategy. Have a plan. Make goals and create timelines. Involve your advertising agency. Outside consultants can give valuable advice from a “fresh” perspective. Consider an integrated advertising campaign. You can’t pay for the publicity of something that goes viral. The more publicity your brand receives, the higher its search engine ranking is, organically.

When advertising legend Leo Burnett died in 1971, a book simply titled, Leo, was privately printed and distributed by his associates. Those lucky enough to have worked with the man received a coveted copy. Glen Peak was among the fortunate few.

In Leo, a compilation of famous speeches, we find timeless words of wisdom, amazingly relevant today.  In about 1950, Burnett wrote about “the brand” in a speech called, “The power of frequency.” He almost sounds like a modern branding guru when he explains, “Whether it is an impulse purchase like a candy bar or a package of cigarettes or an infrequent and highly deliberated purchase like a washing machine, a refrigerator, a vacuum cleaner or a mattress, the biggest single thing that advertising can contribute is a friendly predisposition toward the brand—a whole complex of thoughts and emotions which give the purchaser peace of mind in the choice he [or she] makes. We shun the unknown. We are naturally drawn to the familiar. You might call this simply ‘friendship for the product.’ Your best friends are people whose qualities you like and admire and whom you enjoy being with—but they are usually people you see frequently. The principle of frequency in advertising has long been recognized. Several great brands have been built around rigid adherence to this principle rather than through the content or power of any single advertisement.”

The idea of a “whole complex of thoughts and emotions” about a brand sounds like modern branding building, doesn’t it? And, Burnett’s emphasis on the power of “friends” seems almost prophetic in this era of social networking.

Although the concept of brand friendship and loyalty hasn’t changed much over the past 60 years, media choices dramatically have. As marketing experts today, we ask ourselves. how much advertising is too much? How much is too little? The battle between reach and frequency is going through seismic shifts in perspective and is altering everything we do.

In light of the changes occurring almost daily, it is beneficial to review some basic concepts in media strategy and examine how those concepts are evolving. To read more about our perspectives on media planning, click here to request our White Paper 3.

from the Brand Strategy Insider

“Call the law enforcement officers. We’re being robbed.”

Not a likely scenario. What the average person is much more apt to say is: “Call the cops. We’re being robbed.”

Unfortunately, marketing people are not average persons. Marketing people are much more likely to elevate their languages until, in some cases, they lose their meanings.

A few years back a senior marketing person at United Parcel Service asked me what I thought of the company’s trademark.

I like it, I said, but what UPS really needs is a motivating idea or rallying cry, something like: UPS delivers more parcels to more people in more places than any other company in the world.

UPS, he said, is not in the parcel delivery business.

Huh. That came as a big surprise to me. We’re a customer and I always thought that UPS was in the parcel delivery business.

No. UPS is in the logistics business.

He wasn’t joking. At the time UPS was in the process of repainting some 88,000 vehicles with its new theme: Synchronizing the World of Commerce.

A serious impediment to communications is this constant upgrading of the language. No aspect of life is left untouched by the upgrade police. Not only does a term have to be politically correct, it has to be as long and as complicated as possible.
Maintenance men are now physical plant managers.

Janitors are now custodial engineers.

Garbage collectors are now sanitary engineers.

A business strategy is now a business model.

Accounting firms are now professional service firms.

The purchasing department is now the procurement department.

The personnel department is now the human relations department. (At Electronic Data Systems, the HR department has become the Leadership and Change Management department.)

Fireworks are now pyrotechnics.

A jail is now a correctional facility. Anyone setting off the pyrotechnics illegally will be sent to a correctional facility.

It would be amusing if the problem hasn’t become a serious impediment to marketing. Many firms, for example, call themselves financial services companies. What’s a financial services company?

If you want to buy banking services, you go to a bank like Bank of America.

If you want to buy insurance, you go to an insurance company like State Farm.

If you want to buy stocks, bonds or mutual funds, you go to a brokerage firm like Merrill Lynch.

Let’s go to a financial services company to get our finances serviced, is not the way people talk. People talk in terms of specifics, not generalities.

As a matter of fact, it’s easier to go from the specific to the general than vice versa. People know that a drug store sells a lot more things than just drugs. Toiletries, candy, soft drinks, stationery, photo supplies, etc. Should a drug store (pardon me, pharmacy) describe itself as a personal services store? I think not.

Boston Chicken was a huge hit when they first opened its doors. It was the first fast food restaurant chain to focus on rotisserie chicken for the take-home dinner market. But then it added turkey, meatloaf, ham and other items to the menu and changed its name to Boston Market.

Everybody knows what a chicken dinner is, but what’s a market dinner No wonder, the company went bankrupt.

The same principle holds true among marketing companies. You probably know of many famous advertising agencies and many famous PR agencies, but how many famous marketing communications agencies do you know of? Name one.

When in doubt, use the narrowest possible term to describe your category. Let the mind do the upgrading, not your marketing.