Tune in every Monday at 5:20pm to KPEL FM 105.1 on your radio or online at www.kpel1051.com for another installment of Brand Buzz. On this week’s episode of Brand Buzz we will be talking about what branding is, how important branding is and how companies have successfully grown their brands.
Branding is the business buzz word for the past few years. What is it exactly? Why should you care?
Do you have Brand Advocates?
Are your consumers forming an emotional connection to your company and it’s products?
Who are your consumers? No, really who are they deep down? What are their wants and needs?
If you would like additional information, please click here to download the free ebook and learn more about how important branding is to the growth of your company and what you should do to get your brand in order.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions for the show. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to receive the Razor Branding Blog either via email or reader to receive daily updates and information regarding branding.
We often focus on building brands. What organizations should do to ‘get it right’. But this week we will have a five part series on common mistakes that are made which actually destroy the brand.
Part 1 - Discount Sales
Not all advertising spending is beneficial. That probably seems contradictory. You might expect an agency to promote any and all advertising. You would think that we would believe as long as you are spending money on marketing and getting your message ‘out there’ that it will have positive effects.
Not true.
Advertising without a brand message or plan can be very detrimental. Advertising the wrong message can be downright fatal.
The biggest ‘wrong’ message? Quick sales.
All too often, organizations stray away from their brand message. Abandon it in favor of an ‘urgency’ campaign designed to generate cash flow. Sometimes it works. Usually it works too well.
Instead of building a brand and establishing a position in the marketplace that is better than the competition, all of a sudden the target consumer starts to see the product as ‘cheap’. Once that notion has entered the conversation, there is no going back.
In addition to a little bit of short-term cash flow, you now also have a reputation as being cheap. Even companies that have built their brand on being the affordable choice (i.e. Walmart) are spending their efforts building their brand, focusing on their core message and establishing a relationship with their consumer built on benefits (Save Money. Live Better).
Walmart abandoned the focus on cheap and saw their profits rise. Consumers don’t make purchases on rational thought. They make decisions based on emotion. That is why it is so crucial to establish an emotional connection. It is through this connection that you will truly build brand advocates. Don’t be the cheapest. Instead be the one they consider to be the best.
So one of the best ways to destroy your brand - cheapen it in the hearts and minds of your consumers.
Part 2 tomorrow - Budget.
image of Circuit City sales insert via Mad Magazine
How often do you say to yourself, or anyone around you that will listen, “If I could just teach them what we do and explain how it will make their life better, then they will buy it in a second.”
Do you think that if you could just educate them on the intricacies of your product and process then they will be convinced of your greatness?
Stop. Please. There are a number of reasons why your plan to educate the world won’t work. The biggest of which is that your consumer doesn’t care about you. They don’t care about your product. They are way too busy living their life and do not have the time or interest to care about you and your product.
The problem is this: no spreadsheet, no bibliography and no list of resources is sufficient proof to someone who chooses not to believe. The skeptic will always find a reason, even if it’s one the rest of us don’t think is a good one. Relying too much on proof distracts you from the real mission–which is emotional connection.
The emotional connection is the whole point. Stop trying to convince. No list of your features and really great data on your greatness is going to convince them. Focus on them. Talk to their imagination. Appeal to their heart. Establish the benefit to them. That emotional connection is stronger and better than any logic.
Businesses are facing tougher challenges than ever before. More competition from other businesses and more distracted consumers. Add to that the amount of control that consumers now possess and it puts companies, most companies at least, at the bottom of the pile.
So what should an organization do? There are literally thousands of opportunities to grow the brand. New technologies that can be embraced. Conversations that can be joined. Potential consumers that can be courted. Opportunities that can be investigated.
What is the first step?
Admitting that you have to change. And that is the scariest step of all. I sit in a lot of board rooms right now and listen to CEOs tell me that their industry is different. Their consumers are different. They either don’t see, or don’t want to see, that change is here and if they don’t adapt they will die.
I leave those meetings and wonder why they don’t see it. Why don’t they want to embrace the change? Why not start doing something differently and getting a different result?
“Good Enough”
They aren’t in enough pain yet. Their profits haven’t dropped to a low enough point yet. They aren’t compelled to do anything differently because it is still “Good Enough”.
Good enough is the enemy of great. Good enough is the beginning of a loss of brand equity. Good enough is what happens right before the profits start to slide.
Consumers aren’t interested in good enough. Consumers want you to work for their love and loyalty. They want to connect with you and they want to know you care enough to work for it. It’s like the early stages of dating. If you aren’t innovating, changing , looking for ways to do it better, then it’s like you stopped opening the car door, bringing flowers, and complimenting her. She will start feeling taken advantage of and will start looking for that attention somewhere else.
Yes, it used to be easier. But it’s not anymore. Start looking for ways to make your brand better than just “good enough”. Or your competition will come along and redefine your space. And then it will never be good enough again.
Tune in every Monday at 5:20pm to KPEL FM 105.1 on your radio or online at www.kpel1051.com for another installment of Brand Buzz. On this week’s episode of Brand Buzz we will be talking about how important branding is and how companies have used social media to successfully grow their brands.
People and companies are all using social media in one way or another. A few have done so with great success. Today we look at the companies that have been able to post revenue growth for their products.
Examples include; BlendTec, Ford, Zappos, Gary Vee and more.
If you would like additional information, please click here to download the free ebook and learn more about how important branding is to the growth of a company and how social media can be used to your advantage.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions for the show. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to receive the Razor Branding Blog either via email or reader to receive daily updates and information regarding branding.
I woke up this morning, on my 40th birthday, and thought about what I would write in the blog today. I had other thoughts as well about age and the passage of time and accomplishments, but ‘what to post’ was a prevalent thought.
Yesterday was Valentine’s Day, and for forty years my birthday has been overshadowed by much bigger events. It’s always been a standing rule that my husband would separate the two. One card or one gift wouldn’t cut it. They need to be recognized as separate events.
Every few years, and this year is one of them, Mardi Gras falls on or near my birthday as well. The year I turned thirteen it was on Mardi Gras day. And this year, Mardi Gras is tomorrow.
On the one hand it is really cool to have such big holidays on my birthday. Everyone is celebrating and there are parades and school is on vacation. But on the other hand, it’s a little tough because then the birthday becomes overshadowed by the other events. The association with the holiday has as many positives as it does negatives.
I started thinking about Brand Association. So often companies look to celebrities or testimonials to get some borrowed glory for their products. But that brand association can really work against them. Just ask all of Tiger’s former endorsements. Very quickly the brand can become overshadowed by whatever is associated with it.
As I spend this day, focused on all that I am associated with, I look forward to the next forty years. The goals and accomplishments still to come. This is an exciting time in our industry and our business and I’m looking forward to what comes next.
This afternoon, as I load a few tons of Mardi Gras beads on a float and then this evening when I ride in a parade through Downtown Lafayette, I will be very glad that I get to celebrate my 40th birthday in such a special way. The whole town and about 350,000 of our closest friends will all be out celebrating with me.
This may be the shortest month of the year, but February 2010 has more events than any other - Saints win the Super Bowl, Winter Olympics, Valentine’s Day, my 40th birthday and Mardi Gras. It’s a great month to celebrate.
This year’s Super Bowl is, and will be, the most memorable of them all in my mind. For the first time, I actually wanted a second tier of commercial breaks between the game and the regular commercials. It was hard to walk away from the TV with the New Orleans Saints climbing to victory and the most anticipated spots of the year being aired, but I survived.
Among the many great spots, and the few not so great spots this year, one of the most clever is that of the Dodge Charger. While directly targeting men, Chrysler did a great job of speaking to a large range of men by covering a wide variety of their thoughts pertaining to compromises in relationships with women, from putting the toilet seat down to watching vampire shows together.
As the list of what these men will do grows, you can’t help but wait to hear what they are leading up to. Then, finally, after the quiet build-up, you see powerful clips of the Dodge Charger racing down the road while the announcer’s voice over says that because he does these things, “I will drive the car I want to drive.”
Instead of just showing clips of the car with energetic music as several car commercials do, Chrysler connects with its target audience by saying out loud what most of them will not say. They are building their brand by connecting emotionally with their target consumer.
For years leading up to the Super Bowl, I anticipated the commercials more than the actual game (until this Saintly year, of course). For me, the game was merely the vehicle chosen to showcase those advertisers brave enough to not only spend the millions to air their spots but those that were confident enough in their creative abilities to try and command the attention of the 100 million viewers that anxiously awaited those “soon-to-be the most talked about TV moments of the year” spots. That patiently waited to be humored, shocked, surprised, dazzled, heart-tugged, challenged and perhaps even charmed.
For me, the “charming” commercial came wrapped up in a cute little game of Punch Dub - a modern-day version of “slug bug” that encourages passengers to seek out Volkswagen Beetles on the road, in parking lots, in movies (you get my point) just so they can punch whoever happens to be close by. Now just hear me out. Before you get all purist on me saying that this game was created for the Bug, with only the Bug in mind and should apply only if you see a Bug, let’s talk about why I connected to the spot.
As consumers, we constantly evolve and hats off to Volkswagen for choosing to take that leap and expand with us. They have braved their way into our homes not by pushing features and benefits of their growing fleet, but by connecting to us through an already established kinship, brought to life by people, places and situations that we can all relate to - a pained woman in labor, a bus driver and passenger, 2 cops sitting in their car, friends on a morning walk, a boy and his grandpa, Amish men in a horse-drawn carriage and even sight-impaired Stevie Wonder - pointing out to us all that our connection to Volkswagen is far stronger than we were probably even aware of.
I grew up wanting nothing more than a convertible Beetle - grew into buying a more grown up Passat and as my life evolves and expands, my eyes set sight upon a more practical and roomier Tuareg. Thanks, VW, for noticing.
Oh, but there was one tiny flaw in their new tagline. Don’t you think Das Auto should really be Dat Auto?
The music, a slight re-write/mix (courtesy of Wil-I-Am) of The Who’s classic “My Generation”, shares the attention equally with the commanding images flashing on screen. Some of the images are solemn, others borderline trivial or pop-culture-esque. ALL are “Where were you when…?” moments - from the 1st Moon Landing to MTV’s Moon Man.
Here’s what happened in my head in about 3.7 seconds after the spot ended:
I found my head wandering away from the pressure of the Saints first Super Bowl, to the events I had just seen - remember where I was when I heard, or saw them first. Who I called first. What I felt. When I revisited those feelings…
Then, I remembered those times when I was away from a television or computer when something was happening that I wanted to see in real time - A true history-in-the-making moment - something to connect to. Then I got annoyed that I can’t see every bit of history as it is happening.
Then I remembered I have an iPhone and realized I probably can see whatever, whenever I want. Then I remembered that the commercial I had just seen was for Flo TV - so I decided to look it up on aforementioned apparatus.
Hmmm…nice job, Flo TV - maker of portable and vehicle-mounted TVs, and service of live TV to select mobile phones. You made me “need” you in less than a minute. (And I’m certainly worth the millions you paid for that airtime.)
Focusing on a bunch of events that everyone connects to, to make them think about what they don’t want to miss - smart strategy.
If you’re the guy or gal left who missed the game (How dare you?) or who hasn’t caught up by watching the spots online by now - check it out here.
There will be a lot of writing this week about the Super Bowl ads, maybe even a little writing about the game that was played in between the spots.
Most of the articles will focus on the high end expensive spots - big budget and big production value. Some of the articles will analyze the spots geared towards men and built a house out of cans. Other articles will analyze the risque spots that use sex to sell. But it will be truly interesting, when the dirt has settled, to see which spots were effective. The spots that are considered successful because they actually made a connection with their consumer. Maybe it will be the Denny’s stunt of giving away ‘Grand Slam’ breakfast meals. Or the really large number of self-serving CBS spots to promote their own tv shows.
In terms of a spot that really changed the conversation, it would have to be this spot, Parisian Love, by Google. It is part of their ‘Search On’ campaign. The series illustrates a story through the steps of a search on Google. The stories are simple and results from the searches tell the tale.
No big special effects.
No famous spokesperson.
Just a compelling relate-able story.
Why is the series so compelling? Here are just a few reasons:
Show don’t tell. There is no voice over telling the viewer that Google is easy to use. It is well demonstrated through the use of Google itself.
Depth of service. The series of searches demonstrates mapping feature as well as street views that are all available when using Google.
Ease of Use. Even when you misspell a word Google knows what you really want and suggests the correct choice.
They aren’t talking about their features. More importantly, they are demonstrating the benefit to you, the consumer.
Then, Google wraps it all up in a bow by making an emotional connection with the viewer. Who knew search could be so romantic.
Branding is all about the emotional connection. People don’t really make choices based on rational reasons - it’s the emotional ones that dominate. Through the emotional connection, Google changes the conversation and makes Bing look like a 2nd rate choice.
This is what Super Bowl spots are supposed to - make you think, make you feel, make you laugh - connect.
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