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Brand Advertising
Advertising can be broken up into two categories: product advertising and brand advertising. Both types of advertising have their uses and inherent strengths and weaknesses. Brand advertising can pave way for a new product release, and product advertising can enhance existing brand marketing strategies. Brand advertising is a powerful tool in marketing. Like product advertising, brand advertising is a great way to communicate the features and comparative advantages of your brand to your customers. Unlike product advertising, brand promotions fail to mention specific products or services. They just highlight what makes the brand superior to the competition and pave the…
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What’s the Point?
When I tell people I am in marketing, they assume I am in either sales or advertising. In fact, most websites that ask you to enter your profession lump advertising, sales, and marketing into the same category. In a world where few understand the differences between these three disciplines, what is the point of trying to distinguish them? Sales Selling is an art form. It pairs a deep understanding of the customers’ pain points with the ability to match a product or service to the customer. There are salespeople who push products just to make their quota, but a good…
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Negative Space
I read an interesting article in November’s issue of Marketing News. “Learn to Use Communication’s Negative Space,” by Prophet’s Kevin O’Donnell is a great piece on how to pull your marketing message out of the clutter of every day life. O’Donnell encourages the use of “negative space” in advertising. His most illustrative example was Charmin (yes, the toilet paper company). They offered “clean, upscale bathrooms, baby changing stations, stroller parking, seating areas and, naturally, lots of Charmin-branded toilet paper in New York’s Times Square.” This targets consumers in a non-traditional way and gains the brand far more real estate in…
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‘Tis the Season
The last two days featured a case study on targeted marketing and rebranding. A fictional bait & tackle shop tried to target its “perfect customer.” The first attempt was a miss and actually hurt business for the shop. However, it also yielded a great deal of information about the market and helped determine who the real perfect customer was. The problem now facing the bait & tackle shop is rebranding. The shop has established a brand – its way of doing business and professional image – that is not nearly as profitable as it could be. To fix this problem,…
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Story Tellers: Part II (con’t)
Yesterday, I gave you a hypothetical marketing situation. We run a bait & tackle shop. Having defined our perfect customer, we changed our store layout and image to fit them and waited to see how this changed our business. Today, three months later in the thought-experiment, we see business has declined in two of our three market segments and remained unchanged in the one we thought was our perfect customer. What do we do to fix this? There were three comments on yesterday’s post, and all three touched on part of the problem. Prof. Geranium, you correctly identified the Dock…
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Story Tellers: Part II
Once again, you need to evaluate who your story tellers are. We did just do this a few days ago, but keep in mind that this must be an on-going process for your brand. Here’s an example… We run a bait & tackle shop near a popular fishing shop. Obviously, our customers will be somewhat seasonal. During the on-season, we see three different kinds of people in our store: Dock Dwellers, City Slickers, and Locals. The Dock Dwellers are the ones who come in once a week, buy a lot of bait, maybe a candy bar or two, and spend…
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Design
Arguably, one of the most important elements of a brand is its avatar or logo. This image is the most recognizable part of the brand; it appears on the product, its packaging, media advertisements, and possibly your storefront. Building an avatar is a task and a half, and the process involves many steps. Step 1) Decide what message the avatar should stand for. Is the avatar merely a way to distinguish your product from your competition, or should it represent a part of your brand story as well? Mitsubishi, for example, used its name to create its avatar. “Mitsu” is…
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Animation
Successful brands speak for themselves. This takes a lot of work from the marketing department, but it is possible. An animated brand can stand by itself; an inert one needs the constant weight of the company behind it and remains more a sub-brand than a brand in its own right. I was asked the other day to include concrete examples if possible in my discussion. While it can be difficult to find truly illustrative examples, there are several good ones in this case. For an animated brand, look at Mountain Dew. Look at ThinkPad for an example of an inert…
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Avatars
Yesterday, I wrote about the importance of branding. Unfortunately, we have yet to define exactly what I mean by “branding.” Branding is a process of developing the corporation’s or product’s character and image in the market. This is a simple definition, but a brand itself is a very complex machine. There are three key aspects of a brand: the product, its reputation, and its avatar. (Most of us call logos and word-marks “brands.” I chose to use the word “avatar” instead to avoid confusion with the overall brand concept). We can best illustrate these dimensions by analyzing a brand already…
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Branding
Many people have asked me why branding is important. In a previous post, I said branding was a means of simplifying communication. Coca-cola is distinguished from other colas by its unique taste. Rather than describing for a waiter what kind of cola you want with your meal, you ask for a Coke. This is a brand. Brands are important because they eliminate confusion. A brand is also the promise of quality, whether in product satisfaction or the experience enjoyed. The vast elements of a brand make it difficult to imitate, allowing us to trust messages delivered through the brand’s channel.…