Brand Positioning is More Than a Tagline or a Logo

Every once in awhile, when we are retained to help an organization with its brand strategy, participants in the process are thinking that we will help them come up with a cool new logo, an amazing tagline or a memorable advertising campaign. While all of these are possible byproducts of the project, we primarily focus on helping organizations develop a more robust business model and unique value proposition. This may include embracing a new set of values too. While these will likely result in a new brand identity, messaging and marketing communication, they may also result in organization changes including culture changes. Additionally, they may result in new hiring criteria, performance objectives, customer service processes, employee training and products/services. Further, they will have implications for budgeting, including capital investments. The purpose of crafting a new brand strategy and positioning is to gain a competitive advantage that will decrease price sensitivity, allow the organization to charge a price premium and develop more loyal customers. This starts with the strategy but is then translated into a customer promise, which must be communicated and especially delivered upon. So brand strategy is just that, a strategy. But it must be translated not only to identity and communication, but also to tough decisions and real action. People who don't have this broader understanding of brand strategy formulation may be in for a shock when they retain a genuine brand strategist to help them with their brand strategy.  

Brand Research a Must for Brand Positioning

Our primary focus is brand strategy and repositioning based on deep customer insight. Many organizations will ask us to reposition their brands but are reluctant to conduct the necessary customer research at the beginning of the brand repositioning process. They will say, “We conduct ongoing customer satisfaction research,” or “We do product research quite frequently” or “We measured our brand’s equity five years ago” or “We talk with our customers all of the time.” But, do they know which brands have the highest top-of-mind unaided awareness within the relevant product categories? Do they know how their brand is perceived? Do they know the top-of-mind associations for their brand? Do they know their brand’s personality? Do they know if their customers can relate to their brand emotionally? Do they know how attitudinally loyal their customers are to their brand? Do they know the most important brand and category benefits and how their brand stacks up against the competition in delivering against these benefits? Do they know their brand’s perceived strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis the competition? Have they identified their brand’s positioning vulnerabilities and opportunities? Do they know whether their brand is perceived to deliver a good value for the price paid? Is their brand perceived to be vital or resting on its laurels? Is it perceived to be innovative, responsive, trustworthy, reliable or friendly? Do they understand how these perceptions vary across various customer segments?

Successful brand repositioning requires intuition, creativity, insight, analysis and a deep understanding of the customer and his or her perceptions. The insight, analysis and deep understanding are largely informed by rigorous brand research. Repositioning a brand without research is akin to painting a masterpiece with one’s eyes closed. Neither is a very good idea.

© 2015 by Brad VanAuken

Brand Problems: Small vs. Large Companies

© 2015 by Brad VanAuken, Excerpted from Brand Aid, second edition, available here.

The 10 Laws of Branding

A brand must...

1.      Stand for something.  It should know its customers well and its values should align with its customers’ values. It should epitomize specific customer values so well that customers will want to use the brand as a way to express their values to the world.

2.     Strive to be unique in relevant ways. Forget about claiming to be the quality, service or innovation leader (all of which have been greatly overused). Be unique. Be different. Be unique and different in ways that really matter to customers.

3.     Make promises and deliver on those promises. Yes, promise relevant differentiated benefits to your customers. But, even more importantly, consistently deliver on those promises at every point of customer contact. Consider designing brand promise proof points into every customer touch point. For even greater impact, consider creating new customer touch points.

4.     Interact with its customers, not sell to them. With the advent of various technologies, including the Internet, customers are now in control. They will filter out anything that they do not find entertaining, interesting or informative.  Interact with them as a friend would. Find ways to help them.

5.     Constantly anticipate customer needs and innovate. Brands cannot rest on their laurels. Become the Apple within your category. Don’t be risk adverse. Take your category by storm.  Leapfrog the competition through relevant innovation.

6.     Co-create itself with its customers. Work with your customers to evolve your brand and its products and services according to your customers’ needs and desires. Harley-Davidson executives go on H.O.G. Rallies with their customers to experience the brand with its customers.

7.     Create a unique purchase or usage experience. People pay more to Build-A-Bear themselves. Consider the iPhone (smartphone) experience versus the typical mobile phone experience.

8.     Find ways to become more and more important to its customers. Most brands have discovered that is far easier and more profitable to meet an increasing number of needs for existing customers than to try to appeal to new customers. Become an expert in meeting your target customers’ needs.

9.     Be consistent in its identity.  There is usually no need to change names, taglines, logos, etc. People need to recognize and trust brands over time. Don’t confuse their ability to do so.

10.  Build awareness. A brand can offer the best products in the world backed by the best service at the lowest prices, delivering the best overall value, but if no one has heard of the brand, then all of this is for naught.

The 10 Proven Ways to Align Your Organization with its Brand's Promise

I have helped many organizations build their brands from the inside out for over ten years. In the process, I have learned what is critical to the success of those endeavors.

1) RIGHT RESEARCH-INFORMED PROMISE: Your brand’s promise must be based upon customer, competitor and internal insight. This can be achieved through qualitative and quantitative research and an honest assessment of internal strengths, weaknesses, core competencies and strategic intent. The promise must be unique, compelling and believable.

2) CONSENSUS BUILDING PROCESS: Your brand’s promise must be developed through a consensus-building process that includes (at a minimum) your organization’s chief executive officer (CEO) and his or her staff and its top marketing executives. Don’t leave this step to an internal marketing department or an external marketing agency (unless they accomplish this through a consensus building process). Brand strategy and positioning is closely tied to organizational strategy, especially for organization level brands.

3) BRAND PROMISE TRANSLATED TO BRAND IDENTITY: The brand promise should be translated into a supporting brand identity, including logo, tagline and elevator speech among other key components. This should be integrated into a system that includes brand architecture and naming conventions. These should then take the form of guidelines that are available to all employees and business partners through an online platform. Digital asset management systems provide for even greater consistency control.

4) CUSTOMER TOUCHPOINT DESIGN: Involve your employees in brainstorming how you can bring your brand’s promise to life at each point of customer contact and how you can create new points of customer contact prior to the purchase, at the point of purchase, immediately after the purchase and on an ongoing basis during product/service usage and beyond. The brand’s promise must come to life in more than just its identity and in its marketing communications.

5) INTERNAL COMMUNICATION AND EDUCATION: At a minimum, you should communicate to and educate employees and business partners about your brand’s promise. This can best be accomplished through a multiple year (2+) integrated communications and education plan and campaign that touches each employee at least seven times. Tactically, one can build key brand messages into all existing employee communication and training vehicles. One can also post the brand promise or elevator speech in the most visible locations throughout the organization’s workspace. There are also numerous ways to put it into each employee’s workspace (screensavers, posters, mouse pads, etc.).

6) EMPLOYEE REWARD/RECOGNITION SYSTEM: Fully customizable online employee reward/recognition systems that can help align employees in support of the brand’s promise are now available to be leased or purchased. They state brand promise goals clearly and concisely and provide rewards (gift certificates, merchandise, etc.) and recognition for employees who are caught bringing the brand’s promise to life. The systems encourage employee involvement and provide a mechanism for manager involvement and oversight.

7) CULTURE THAT ALIGNS WITH THE INTENDED BRAND PERSONALITY: In a seminal study on corporate brand strategy success, The Conference Board discovered that alignment of organization culture with brand personality is highly correlated with brand strategy success. This can be achieved in the following ways:

• Choosing brand personality traits that are both compelling to customers and natural for the organization to deliver upon, that is, ones that seem to be built into the organization’s “DNA”
• Being honest about whether senior management can live in alignment with the intended brand personality
• Where there are alignment gaps, pursuing a culture change project to align employees with the intended brand personality

8) BUILDING BRAND MEASURES INTO EMPLOYEES MEASURES: Peter Drucker said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” This is true of brand alignment as well. Build key brand measures into organization common measures or translate them into individual measures for the positions most likely to impact customers (product development, marketing, sales, customer service, etc.).

9) INTERNAL SURVEYS: Periodically survey employees to understand how well they can articulate the brand promise, whether they know how they can positively affect the brand and whether they have personally pursued actions to enhance the brand.

10) CEO SUPPORT: When the CEO understands the power of strong brands and uses the brand promise to align all of the activities of the organization, you are halfway to your goal of creating an organization filled with brand champions. Assigning responsibility for day-to-day management of the brand to a senior executive also is very helpful. And communicating to employees that they are all expected to be brand champions rounds out brand ownership from the top to the bottom of the organization.

I wish you great success in transforming your organization and its employees into a brand promise delivery machine.

What Makes Your Brand Distinctive?

Can people readily identify your brand when they use its products or experience its services? Can they tell it is your brand just by looking at its products? Where is your brand's logo? Does your brand have a distinctive look or style? Does it emit a distinctive sound? Does it have a distinctive scent? Do its products have distinctive sizes or shapes? Do they have unique colors? Is your brand always packaged in a distinctive way? Does it have a differentiated feature? Does it do something that no other brand does? Is there something distinctive about its texture? Is there something unique about the way it works? Is it configured differently than other brands? Does it perform a unique function? Do your brand's products or services perform with a distinguishing cadence? Does it have a characteristic tone or personality? Does it have an unmistakable attitude or point of view? What elements consistently set your brand's products and services apart? Are its elements bundled in a unique way? If someone removed your brand's logo from the product and put another brand's logo on it instead, would they still know that it came from your brand?

I hope that this line of questions makes it obvious that slapping a name or logo on a product or service isn't enough to create a distinctive brand identity. What elements set your brand apart? What contributes to its distinctive identity?

What is a Brand?

Over the years, I have heard dozens of different definitions of what a brand is. Here are some of my favorites:

1. A brand is the personification of an organization or its products or services.
2. Because of this, a brand can stand for something, have a certain set of values, possess specific personality attributes and relate to people on an emotional level.
3. Also, because of this, a brand can make promises. It should promise relevant differentiated benefits. And, more importantly, it should demonstrate integrity by consistently delivering on those promises.
4. Brands tend to be associated with one or two specific things in people's minds. Ideally, the dominant linkage is with its promise of relevant differentiated benefits (that is, its unique value proposition).
5. A brand is the sum total of experiences and associations with its identity (name, logo, etc.).

Purchase Brand Aid, second edition here.