Brands benefit from a wide variety of sources of differentiation. While many components can contribute to the differentiation, often there are only one or two dominant ones. For instance, Absolut vodka benefits from its unique bottle shape and the promotion of that unique shape. GEICO insurance benefits from its huge advertising budget and it unique and quirky advertising including its charming gecko character. On the other hand, Amazon.com benefits from from being one of the first brands to adopt the online retail model, including its very powerful search and browse technologies. Also, the fact that it plows all of its profits back into business improvement. Uber benefits from a breakthrough business model and the technology that supports it, which drives costs down substantially while improving the customer experience. Robert Graham clothing benefits from its bold product designs, coupled with its highly unusual product features (i.e., custom designed Swarovski crystal buttons) and its interesting tagline - Knowledge, Wisdom, Truth. Tesla Motors automobiles benefit from a visionary product concept (all-electric luxury car), supported by leading-edge high quality luxury features and a relentless pursuit of excellence. Opaque restaurants benefit from a unique restaurant concept - dining in the dark.
While all of the benefits listed above might be classified as some combination of functional, emotional, experiential or self-expressive customer benefits, those benefits derive from different sources. In some instances, it is the result of product design, marketing strategy or advertising genius. In others, it is the result of radical new business models or organizational cultures driven toward excellence.
The point of this is that sometimes marketers create the primary source of differentiation, while in many instances it is something that is typically outside of the marketer's control - visionary leadership, business model design, product design, organizational design, the organization's culture, etc. - that leads to the brand's differentiation.
Think about what differentiates your brand. Visionary leadership, disruptive technologies, radical new business models and cultures of unrelenting excellence often can have a much greater impact than what a marketer can control. What do most all of these have in common? They are are based on a design and innovation mentality, whether it applies to business model design, organization design, product design, product packaging design or marketing strategy/tactic/campaign design, there is some level of design and innovation in each of these examples.
Problem 8. Overextending your brand into different categories and markets so as to completely blur the brand’s meaning and points of distinction
Analysis. You can always make more money in the short term by licensing your brand out for use on a variety of products or by extending your brand into a myriad of new categories. The long-term effect, however, is detrimental. People no longer will be able to tell what your brand stands for. It will lose its meaning and its point of difference. Extend your brand based on a clear understanding of its essence, promise, archetype, and personality. And make sure your consumers “get it.”
Problem 9. Frequently changing your brand’s positioning and message
Analysis. New brand managers and marketing executives often feel as though they need to make a name for themselves to continue the climb up the corporate ladder. Don’t succumb to this temptation by changing the advertising campaign or the brand slogan, especially if the current ones are working well or haven’t been in place long enough for you to assess their effectiveness. Consistent communication over time is what builds a brand. After all, Hallmark has used its “When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best” slogan since 1944; the Marlboro Man has been Marlboro’s icon since 1955; Absolut Vodka has featured its bottle’s shape in consumer communication since 1978. Since 1921, General Mills has used Betty Crocker as its face to the public. Her portrait has changed in subtle ways eight times since then. If you do make changes, make them gradually in an integrated fashion, based on sound consumer research.
Problem 10. Creating brands or subbrands for internal or trade reasons, rather than to address distinct consumer needs
Analysis. There is nothing more inefficient or wasteful than creating a new brand or subbrand for a purpose other than meeting a different consumer need. Brands and subbrands exist to address different consumers and consumer need segments. It is expensive to launch a new brand (and very expensive to maintain multiple brands that meet similar consumer needs; it also adds unnecessary complexity to your organization). Worst of all, it dilutes the position of your original brand. This problem often results from egos and organization structure. People head up divisions or business units that deliver specific products or services. They create a name and identity to put on business cards and to rally their employees around, without considering whether the products or services are similar to products or services other divisions create. (This tendency has resulted in Hewlett-Packard having multiple printer lines: DeskJet, OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro, LaserJet, DesignJet, DeskWriter, and PhotoSmart. It is unlikely that consumers understand many of these distinctions. They are likely to think of them all as HP printers.)
Sometimes, companies create separate brands or subbrands for trade reasons— for instance, to offer something different for specialty stores vs. mass channels of distribution. (Hallmark created the Expressions from Hallmark brand to offer mass channel stores while specialty stores continued to carry the Hallmark brand. These two brands don’t meet different consumer needs, and I’m not sure consumers perceive differences between the two.) This problem can also result from mergers and acquisitions in which the brands are neither rationalized nor strategically managed after the enterprises are combined.
Three of thirty-five common brand problems excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.
A brand's identity system helps people recognize the brand. It helps people encode the brand in their memories and quickly extract it from their memories. The system incorporates a number of identification triggers. These almost always include visual components but can also include other sensory components such as Cinnebon's cinnamon scent and Harley-Davidson's engine sound. Several hotels are exploring distinctive aromatherapy scents. The visual components can include a shape or icon such as Nike's swoosh, McDonald's arches or the Olympic rings. Often packaging shapes are a part of the system such as Coca-Cola's distinctive bottle shape or Absolut vodka's unique bottle shape. Colors are usually a part of the system such as John Deere's green, UPS's brown or Southwest Airline's vibrant color palette of blue, red, gold and orange.
Consider personal brands. I am known by my name. Sometimes people associate me with my Brand Aid book. Many people know that I earned an MBA at Harvard. People who interact with me in person know that I usually wear a bow tie with a jacket. People that know me well expect me to arrive in a Toyota Prius as I have owned three of them since 2000. And friends know that I am a passionate sailor. Each of these are "brand" associations that may also serve as triggers for people to think of me. My brother associates me with scary clowns, but that is another matter entirely.
The more distinctive elements that you can build into your brand identity's system the better. They may include names, shapes, colors, patterns, type fonts, visual styles, sounds, scents, textures, flavors, spokespeople, jingles and feelings. You can also associate your brand with occasions, events, situations, product uses, lifestyles or particular types of people.
The system should be rich but not overly complicated and flexible enough to be effective in every media, use or application. And here is the most important part - you must use the elements consistently over time once you have decided what they are. This is key to memory encoding and decoding.
