Brand Strategy
In marketing, we always want to promote something distinct about our brand. It could be low price (if we are the low cost producer) or it must be about something for which buyers will pay a premium. This is a lesson from years ago from Michael Porter.
Mass marketers embarking on a big campaign start with television and then move on to social media. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are no longer merely afterthoughts, but they are not typically the centerpiece for the effort except for smaller brands targeting younger people. And, while we have a lot of brands that are and always were Internet-focused (Amazon, E-Trade and Facebook itself come to mind), we don’t yet have m-brands, but we will.
One of my recent posts was about the virtues of not targeting because we don’t do it particularly well and actionably enough. I am content with that perspective – for brands that are built and budgeted to sell millions of units each year.
But, what about smaller brands?
Targeting is the key to good marketing. Figuring out who to appeal to is often the critical ingredient to a successful campaign.
The target specification is always there – in media buys, in research specs, in strategic plans. There is always a demographic aspect and often a behavioral one. Sometimes there are attitudes or psychographics. A great deal of thought and research dollars go into these decisions…and yet, how sound is the thought?
Who owns the brand?
I have been looking at this issue from the perspective of the media coverage, which focuses on the marketing and communications aspects in the age of social media. Any consumer can put your brand in the spotlight and often does so in a negative way after a bad experience. The examples are legion – starting with angry cable subscribers and PC buyers.
Reading The Culture Cycle (by James Heskett), an excellent and interesting book, reminded me of the overarching importance of a business’ culture in maintaining success – or not.
Leadership often is a matter of fact – a championship team or an elected official is, by definition, a leader. A CEO or department head is a bit less clear. While they are in a leadership position and have managerial and operational responsibilities, they may not be seen as a leader in fact. They have people who work for and report to them, but they may not have the qualities that make people want to follow or emulate them in some way.
I call it the sin of success: an early domination which makes the business feel like a champion, able to take on all comers. Time and again, this vanity blinds the conqueror to the real and growing presence of a threat. Sears somehow missed WalMart; AOL somehow missed everybody (but particularly Facebook, which also was ignored by Friendster).
Corporate brands often run into trouble, or into a strong new competitor, or simply run out of steam. Companies then put significant effort into rebranding or developing a new corporate brand positioning, sometimes with a new corporate brand name, often with a new visual identity. Too often, once these efforts are complete, they move immediately into telling the world what the brand (now) means.
How should we separate the winners from the losers in Super Bowl advertising?
Some advertisers measure success via social media mentions for USA Today’s public, semi-scientific poll. But these ratings may have little relationship to how one would rationally try to assess the ad’s real impact.