Branding Essentials

Branding is no longer just a marketing or advertising industry term; it’s part of popular culture.

Anything can have a brand nowadays—celebrities, television shows, sports teams and even political leaders. However, effective branding is more than just a recognizable face or logo; it requires discipline and insight. No matter what is being branded, it’s important to remember some foundational principles.

one voice

Behind every successful brand is a clear and consistent promise. And every point of contact is an opportunity to communicate that promise. 

Think about “Just do it.” It’s more than a logo and a tagline. It’s a look and feel, a brand voice and an attitude all working together to articulate a unique positioning. It’s your employees, your packaging, your advertising and then some.

With so many variables in the brand equation, staying on-brand is a full-time job. You must ensure that every line of copy and every design element fulfill the expectations you have set and sing in perfect harmony.

You must vigorously protect that precious place in the perceptual landscape occupied by your product or service. If you do, you will be rewarded with one of the most powerful competitive advantages available to businesses today—brand recognition.

embracing synergy

Until a few years ago, integrated branding was essentially the act of assuring that “all brand contacts received by a customer or prospect for a product, service, or organization are relevant to that person and consistent over time.”*

To most marketers, that meant a consistent look and messaging across all of their marketing communications. Today, the most well integrated brand campaigns are all of that and more. They take your brand promise beyond print, radio, TV and other usual suspects of paid advertising. They blur the lines between advertising and PR. The most successful campaigns take on a life of their own—they can appear anywhere, from blogs to daily conversations to the nightly news. The passivity of paid advertising gets you nowhere. Today’s marketplaces want to interact with their favorite brands and are more willing than ever to welcome these brands into every facet of their lives. Yet it’s harder than ever to find the door with a brand promise that is relevant, credible and engaging. Not to mention, far-reaching enough to live in many media.

However, assuming you come up with a campaign that is so compelling that it borders on cultural phenomenon, we must be equally creative in finding unexpected yet appropriate places to bring these concepts to life. Ambient media, social networks, online, events—everything is fair game. And every one of these interactions, from an email to a viral video built around your brand, must create a unified front in fulfilling the brand promise you have made.

getting the brand promise right

Marketers have a tendency to confuse the brand message with the product or service message. They are trained to promote features and benefits rather than the emotive qualities associated with the human interactions and preferences of their brand.

Confusing these two is fairly common. It is a natural and rational approach to promote features and benefits because they are easier to compare and differentiate from the competition. Features and benefits are important and may even be interesting, but they rarely go beyond the surface to make the emotional connection necessary to create preference for the brand. One doesn’t have to invest in audience persona research to create messaging around a feature or benefit—it is readily available and easily communicated. But if the goal is to have your target audience covet your brand, you must look deeply into the motivations that drive their life choices.

Occasionally, someone stumbles on a belief, which then transforms an idea. A few years ago a creative team had the assignment to brand and market the Maybelline line of lipstick. The product line had many features and benefits that differentiated it from the competition: colors were deeper, there were more choices, the lipstick stayed on longer and it was easier to apply. So the creative team focused on these features, thinking that is what women want and need. Did this approach cause a preference? No. It wasn’t until someone realized that they really weren’t selling lipstick—they were selling hope, and that sparked a different approach—one that was based on an emotional preference.

moving forward

Regardless of where branding may go in the future, these ground rules will continue to hold true. A brand that speaks with a single voice, invites interaction, flows seamlessly into daily life and touches an emotional chord, is ready for success.

At TDC, our goal is always to uncover the emotional preference in a brand. It is often a
game changer. The process to find the right answer is not easy or simple, but it is worth
the effort. For those who want to think beyond promoting features and benefits, call us,
we will change everything.

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The Second Act of Print

You’ve been hearing it for years now—the last days of print advertising are here. Social media, online content, e-books, and other virtual platforms are the established channels of the marketing frontier going forward. Magazine and newspaper ads will soon be ink-stained memories quickly disappearing in our digital rearview mirrors, perhaps forever.

Well…perhaps not.

We can all see that print’s dominance as an advertising medium has passed. But there are new approaches to print advertising bubbling up that are injecting a surprising amount of reader engagement and interactivity onto the page.

In the January 2014 issue of Wired magazine, Motorola featured an ad touting its Moto X smartphone. One of the Moto X’s unique features is the ability for users to choose the color of the phone’s body and buttons from a wide palette of colors. To highlight this customization feature, Motorola designed the ad to enable readers to change the color of the Moto X phone shown in the ad. The reader pulled a tab at the bottom of the page to activate a super-thin battery. When the reader touched one of 11 colored buttons on the page, the phone’s body appeared in that color.

Nivea created a print ad for its sunscreen lotion that included an actual phone charger. The ad featured an insert with a small solar panel on one side and a plug-in charger receptacle on the other side. Readers simply connected their mobile phone to the receptacle and turned the insert over to expose the solar panel to sunlight, thus powering the charger.

In addition to new uses of print as an experiential medium, there are several other reasons for its staying power. As a new generation has become firmly entrenched in online communications and virtual experiences as established norms, there is a growing desire for more permanent and tactile engagement with the world. While the Web offers timeliness and wide dissemination of content, it also lacks intimacy and a physical presence, both of which print offers.

Another argument for print is that while it may no longer be seen as the lead dog in most marketing campaigns, it can still be a highly valuable member of the pack. Rent the Runway, JackThreads, and Birchbox are online-only lifestyle and fashion retailers that are embracing catalogs as a part of their marketing arsenal in order to be at more of their customers’ touch points during the day. Whether you’re a traditional marketer or an e-retailer, it always makes sense to spread your message across multiple channels than to rely solely on one platform. And with more marketers cutting back on print advertising, this naturally means that there are more opportunities to stand out in print as well.

Finally, sentimentality is a factor that shouldn’t be underestimated. Often, niche audiences gravitate to the past—look no further than the resurgence of vinyl records. If a segment of your customer base embraces traditional media and/or is skeptical of online communications, there’s no reason to look past print. And given the almost daily occurrences of major security breaches and hacking scandals involving digital media, it’s understandable why people would want to take refuge in the analog world.

So talk about print marketing communications shouldn’t be in the past tense just yet. It’s a perfect example of how something that’s perceived to be old, when used intelligently, can be new again.

The Right Handle

In 1945, Southwestern College in Memphis, Tennessee changed its name to “Southwestern at Memphis College” to distinguish itself from other schools with the name “Southwestern.” Few people noticed or cared.

In 1984, the school changed its name again—this time to “Rhodes College,” in hopes that the prestige of the renowned Rhodes Scholarship Award would rub off in the minds of prospective students. Boy, did it ever. Since the name change, Rhodes College has grown in reputation from a regional school to a nationally ranked liberal arts college. The student body, which prior to the name change was made up primarily of Tennessee and Mid-South residents, is now comprised of young scholars from almost every state in the nation and a dozen countries.

That’s the power of a really good name.

Many marketers believe that the merits of their product are enough to overcome any obstacles in making the sale. Most branding agencies believe that a big creative concept and a social media component are all you need to win people over. Obviously, these aspects are important. But far too often, the impact of a name gets less attention and scrutiny that it deserves.

In the past, products were often first stuck with a name that came from its inventor (usually a scientist) who wanted to demonstrate how important the product was. Hence, the first match was dubbed a “sulphuretted peroxide strikable.” The first lie detector was called a “cardio-pneumo psychograph.” And the first computer was called an “electronic numerical integrator and computer.”

These cumbersome names can be excused in light of the fact that market appeal was not the highest priority when these products were invented.  But how do you explain “666 Cold Preparation,” a medication for cold and flu symptom relief that’s still available today? Or the appetite suppressant “Ayds?” Even when awareness of the AIDS virus became commonplace by the late 80’s, the makers of Ayds thought that they could save the brand by simply renaming it “Diet Ayds.”

You’d think tech companies would be savvy enough to avoid naming blunders. TrekStor, a German manufacturer of portable storage and audio devices, came up with what it thought was a hip name for its sleek, black MP3 player. However, the name was so cringe-worthy, you couldn’t even say it out loud—the iBeat.Blaxx.

Sometimes even simple ignorance of history can result in a terrible name. Umbro, the British sportswear manufacturer, introduced, and then immediately withdrew, a new sneaker model called the Zyklon. Surely, it wouldn’t have taken long to find out that Zyklon B was the name of the chemical used by the Nazis to murder millions of Jews in concentration camp gas chambers.

There’s a simple rule of thumb to follow when it comes to developing a name with at least a fighting chance of being successful. A good name should convey, or suggest, a positive quality or benefit, either through its spelling or pronunciation.

Here are a few examples of memorable names and the qualities they bring to mind:

-iPod (personal, small, simple, cute)

-Walkman (“this thing is portable”)

-BK Whopper (“this is huge”/”I get a lot for my money”)

-Ford Mustang (freedom, wind in the hair, open road)

-Snapple (brisk, refreshing, fruity)

-Swiffer (fast, easy, smooth)

-Absolut (the best, the ultimate, clean)

Good names can come from real, composite, or even made-up words. But no matter what form it takes, a strong name helps you instantly see the product in a favorable or unexpected light. Take the time to understand what you want your audience to feel or think upon seeing or hearing your name. It’s the first impression people have of you. And you don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to see that it’s usually the most important one.

Does Your Creative Truly Measure Up?

Years ago, I worked with a creative director who had stints at several agencies around the country. One day, as we were filling out creative award entry paperwork, he made an offhand remark about how refreshing it was to not get ulcers over awards.

Because applying for industry honors is normally a stress-free proposition, I asked him what he meant. It turned out that at his last agency, a well-regarded regional shop, his job security was tied directly to the number of creative awards he and his department won. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. Snag X or more awards—congratulations, you get to keep your job; fail to do that, and you better have a good reason why you shouldn’t be sent packing.

When I asked him whether such trivialities as, oh, let’s say, clients’ sales, market share growth, direct response rates, customer acquisition success or any other yardsticks possibly linked to creative effectiveness were at least partially taken into account for his job performance evaluations, he chuckled. “Those things were non-factors when it came to my review,” he said. “It all came down to how many statuettes I won for the agency, period.”

This sad but true account explains, in part, why companies have a nagging mistrust of marcom agencies. When hunks of lucite and gold-plated figurines take priority over business results, who can blame them? It’s why we’ve all become familiar with the creative department stereotypes, as perpetuated over the years by pop culture. The “bow-down-before-my-layouts” art director. The “change-a-word-and-you-die” copywriter. The “angels-sing-when-I-enter-the-room” creative director.

The good news for you is that those days are over.

In the past, when precise customer behavior metrics and response mechanisms weren’t an integral component of every campaign, the creative product was cut some slack when it came to bottom-line accountability. If you couldn’t accurately measure the effect of the creative on customer behavior, you couldn’t totally blame the agency, right? But, hey, isn’t it awesome that the print campaign won an Addy?

Well, now that the marketing communications landscape has made a seismic shift to online and electronic channels, there’s no more hiding. EVERYTHING is measurable. Computable. Trackable. And, because marketing budgets today are being squeezed like never before, clients expect to see tangible results from every penny spent.

Agency creatives today understand that. Accountability is no longer anathema to them. It doesn’t take a genius now to see that creativity is only as good as the lift it generates in web site hits, click-through rates, “likes” and “dislikes,” conversion rates, Facebook friends, Twitter followers … you get the idea. Heck, just fire up YouTube and you can see exactly how many folks viewed your video of the flash mob at the mall last week, the number of thumbs up or thumbs down it got, as well as all the snide comments people made (as well as who made them).

Because of all this hyper-granular measurability, agency creatives today are finally getting to be as results-focused as you always hoped they would be. The “artiste” mentality has given way to a “salesperson” perspective. Instead of just getting you to think about and admire this product or service, what can we do to help you purchase it? Get a free sample? Visit your nearest dealer? Refer three friends who might also be interested?

In short, what gets measured gets done. When sizing up your agency, be sure that it’s measuring the right things. Creative that gets attention from industry peers is good. But creative that delivers quantifiable results is necessary.

Every Client Relationship Should be a Working Relationship

Contrary to what some folks might believe, branding and marketing communications professionals don’t have magic wands. Account managers, designers and writers almost never have telepathic powers. And none of us can perform even a single Jedi mind trick.

In other words, if an agency type sidles up to you and says, “My shop can create branding nirvana for you without you having to lift a finger–all you have to do is sit back and let us do our thing,” there is only one proper response: run.

The truth is that great branding—and great bottom-line results—can only happen when client and agency roll up their collective sleeves and work together consistently, talk constantly and share information selflessly. Thoughtful, relevant work simply can’t be conjured up in a vacuum.

The more insight and access to customer behavior and perceptions that clients provide, the more knowledge its agency has to develop big ideas and breakthrough executions. Smart agencies understand this and, as a result, welcome and encourage client input all the time.

Now that’s not to say the agency should sit back and expect clients to be the first to provide strategies or concepts. Agencies need to always be proactive in advancing their best ideas. The thing to remember is that those ideas will be stronger if they’ve gotten an early reality check or genuine buy-in from clients. And that comes from working collaboratively with them.

We understand that times are tough, and that clients want more out of their marketing dollars than ever before. But the only route to success involves equal amounts of engagement from the client and the agency. Once that is established, you’ll see real magic happen.

Value Pricing

Recently I sat in on a conference call presentation from a professional consultant who was discussing the topic of “value pricing” for creative services firms. The consultant was trying to make a distinction between selling creative services based on “time or hours” versus selling creative services based on “value” to clients. Further, when one adopts a philosophy of selling value there is the opportunity to actually increase the payoff.

It was a confusing topic…because it seems to me a client relationship is first and foremost based on a value proposition and the time element is just a means to calculate and quantify the amount of effort that will go into delivering the services associated with the scope of work. The perceived value from a creative services firm can be based on interview questions and answers, past experience, portfolio of work and case studies, references and general billing rates.

The consultant made a specific point about clients. Who when he or she is presented with a proposal for delivering creative services will tend to view pricing based on time or hours in a skeptical manner. The premise being, a firm’s hourly rates will give clients a point of comparison to their own and other professional service providers—thereby setting up potential questions of worthiness.

I am interested in your reactions to this topic and perceptions about value pricing vs. hourly rates for creative and marketing services.