Branding Strategy Insider

How Brands Should Appeal To Women

2010-03-12T00:10:00-05:00

In my work as a cognitive anthropologist I study how the mind works, how people "make meaning," how people form attachments to things (brands), and how people make decisions. Decisions like how to select what to invest in, whether stocks or mates; why and under what conditions, people prefer Coke over Pepsi (or vice versa), Charmin over Cottonelle; why a person believes in one God over another.

In that search I have inadvertently uncovered something about viva la difference: WOMEN CYCLE, MEN CONSUMMATE.

Marketers need to understand the implications of this difference.

The male is oriented to the present, the concrete, the visual, the "hit," the win, the "me." Evolutionarily speaking, the male must bring home the bacon. No Dilly-Dallying. No excuses. The male is in the now and, above all else, is a pragmatist.

The female is oriented the conceptual, to underlying dynamics, to the relationship between things, and to stability over the long-term. The female understands and sees patterns over time.

Males act and say things like: "You've got to act, you can't wait too long." "You must know how to look at the environment, know what the data and specs mean. Then pounce." "My goal is feeling powerful and getting peoples' attention."

Females act and say things like: "It takes time to have things in order." "I want to feel good about where I am and what I've done." "My goal is continuity, building positive relationships, and long-term stability."

A Seattle couple that started a small business together have different ideas about inventory. Wife: "I live to reinvest in inventory when I have cash, so I can buy stuff off-season and sell it next year at a bigger profit. I also like to have inventory just as a customer service." Husband: "Get rid of inventory as fast as possible."

Male: Do what you set out to do and finish the job. Female: Evolve.
Male: Achieve. Female: Experience.
Male: Stay on top of things. Female: Create good relationships.
Male: Get the biggest piece you can. Female: inner peace.

Females want to understand things and want to be understood. Males are more focused on explanation.

Explanation entails seeing the world as governed by finite laws that humankind can direct through successive approximations. Understanding requires comprehending meaning from the inside out, in its unfolding. To understand, the world can't be approached from solely an intellectual stance.

In general, the two genders have different ways of perceiving causality, time, and power. This implies seven principles for making your brand more appealing to women:

1. PATTERN, not just point. Recognize that women have the ability to perceive more than the metric of a product attribute or an instance in time; they appreciate the underlying pattern (idea) that gives rise to the fleeting moment.

2. AUTHENTICITY, not just immediate appearance. Recognize that persona, biography (or history), and current contingency must all be factored in, and that universal principles underlie particularities.

3. QUALITY, not just quantity (size). Recognize that for women bigger and more is not necessarily better; and that a steady build is often better than an impulsive response.

4. CONNECTEDNESS, not just individuals. Recognize that communality can reign over dominance. We are all bound together.

5. SOCIETY, not just markets. Recognize that markets are numbers, and that markets can be counted and the goodies duly noted. But numbers are not people. Women are people and people have personal feelings and social intentions.

6. QUALITY OF LIFE, not just accumulation. Recognize that there are material and spiritual needs made up of individual wants and musts, but that are cast in the context of a social matrix.

7. REASONABLENESS, not extremism or absolutism. Recognize that all issues have grays, and exaggerations to one side or the other only cover-up the reality of subtlety and nuance.

Marketing to women is not as easy as 'pretty in pink' or 'basic black'. But knowing the inner reality of women can help marketers feel more in the pink and put them in the black.

Contributed to BSI by Dr. Bob Deutsch, Brain-Sells

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

Seven Critical Factors Of Brand Strategy Success

2010-03-02T17:23:34-05:00

The following seven factors continue to rule the day for building leading brands:

Organization Support

•CEO leadership & support

•Distinctive corporate culture that supports brand promise

•Ability to obtain support from a broad spectrum of employees

•Alignment of brand messages across functions

Brand Presentation

•Strength of brand identity system

•Effective use of visuals/imagery

•Ability to capture the brand in a slogan

Source: The Conference Board’s 1998 “Managing the Corporate Brand” study

Measuring The Strength Of Brand Identity

2010-02-24T00:10:00-05:00

Ever wonder what is really behind this thing we call "identity? "

It's one of those words that attracts a variety of meanings, ranging from a company's name and logo, to its business definition (Fuji: We're a digital imaging company), to its image in the marketplace, to its values.

Sometimes, executives manage to go a level deeper and talk about identity, their company's, and even their own, as the unique characteristics that define how they create value in the world. From this vantage point, identity provides the seeds of differentiation. Ahhh. I think these guys may be on to something.

It doesn't matter what business you're in; if you're going to successfully re-shape your brand, you need to start by knowing who you are. This imperative isn't just a nice-to-have; it's a must-have, which we discovered recently through a research study, the Identity Impact Survey, that quantitatively demonstrates the impact of identity strength, organizational and individual, on employee engagement and business performance. The key findings of the survey, which included nearly 2,000 participants across five diverse companies and industries, were dramatic.

Increases in identity strength translate into predictable increases in revenue and other economic benefits.
Organizational identity strength is more influential than individual identity strength in driving employee engagement and business performance. Their combined effect, however, is greater than either one alone.

Although organizational identity emerges as a prime performance driver, employees don't typically think that their organization actually has a strong identity.

The last finding made me shudder: Organizational identity strength has a major impact on performance, but most people don't believe their company has a strong identity. Now, there's a gap to be reckoned with! The implications get worse. What we found was that for all the innovative workplace activities companies use to boost engagement, better relations with one's boss, more recognition, more work-life balance, none of them can make up for low identity strength. What's a smart executive to do?

That question brings me back to brand. If there's one management portal companies have for building identity strength, it's their brand. Not brand as a measure of consumer attitudes, but brand as the vessel that links the company's identity to how it goes to market, starting with how employees contribute to building brand success. Call it branding from the inside-out, rather than outside-in.

Our research offered many insights into the power of identity as a performance lever that executives can actually control. One of the most useful analysis in this regard was determining where identity strength comes from. What we learned is that it comes from eight building blocks, which constitute the primary "muscles" that account for identity strength and resultant business performance.

These building blocks of identity include: autonomy, differentiation, change, stewardship, purpose, alignment, brand and sustainability. While brand is ultimately only one of eight factors, it is still the best place to start when seeking to build identity strength. That''s because brand reflects, and affects, all parts of the business, simultaneously. (Just ask Starbucks, Toyota, IBM or Disney.)

One of our aims in conducting the survey was to develop a yardstick to measure identity strength, and its performance ramifications, in one number. Thus, was born "IdentityiQ." Derived from the dynamics of human IQ testing, this simple yardstick gives executives a quick, clear read on performance that can be linked to strength or weakness on several key leadership measures including:

- Current financial performance
- Strategy deployment
- Innovation
- Brand
- Culture
- Investment value

What we've learned about identity strength through our research can reshape how companies approach their branding challenges. And it can give business leaders a new way to address employee engagement and business performance.

Someone once asked me who my heroes are, professionally speaking. After a bit of thought, and naming my usual suspects- Peter Drucker, Abraham Maslow, Jim Collins - I came up with one more; maybe the oldest brand consultant in history: Socrates, who famously said, Know Thyself. He was right. That's where success begins.

Contributed to BSI by: Larry Ackerman, President, The Identity Circle

Brand Research and Neuro-Linguistic Programming

2010-02-23T00:10:00-05:00

Focus group participants are often inspired to articulate themselves more fully and accurately than they could have alone. Any moderator worth his or her salt does this daily, without consciously using Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques. Many focus group moderators instinctually mirror a participant's representational system when asking a follow-up question or eliciting greater depth from a projective exercise.

Want a participant to keep talking? Then probe in the language of his or her sensory modality.

Sensory Modality and Participant Verbatims

Sensory modalities are part of a NLP model that identifies patterns in how people externalize the information they are processing. When participants talk, they often speak from a state of mind that is more closely aligned with one sense over another. For instance:

Visual That's a bright idea. I see how I can use the car's extra space.

Auditory I hear how this makes sense. Let me tell you — this is a winner.

Kinesthetic How fast can I accelerate? I feel like this car was made for me.

Olfactory Smells like a winner. Some ideas stink, but this is coming up roses.

Gustatory That new car looks yummy. It has the fine flavor of elegance.

When you hear someone speak in a particular sensory modality, and you ask questions in that same modality, the person is more likely to continue talking than if you ask a question in a different sensory modality. You are also more likely to get a congruent answer and more likely to keep the participant engaged.

We can see inside participants' minds — and know how they are processing information or which parts of their brain they are accessing — by their eye movement. Have you ever noticed how a participant's eyes move when you ask him or her a question? Try this sometime soon... Ask someone this series of questions:

What did it look like the last time it rained?
What are the lyrics to "The Star-Spangled Banner"?

Then, watch the person's eyes. His or her eyes will most likely go the same direction each time, because both questions solicit a recollection. Chances are good that the eyes will go to the right (the person's left) after each question because approximately 85% of the Western world's population that has been tested accesses memories by looking to their left. If you want to see a more subtle distinction, when you ask someone to recollect a visual, the person will likely look up and to your right. If you ask someone to recollect a sound, however, the person will likely look directly to your right (his or her left) along a horizontal plane. Here are questions that are a little trickier.

Please imagine a purple elephant with big orange spots.
Can you see it?

Most people have never seen such a critter. Their eyes will go back and forth (their left to their right) as they try to remember the components in Vr and then construct the new variant in Vc. Sometimes, an indication of a fib can be seen when a person only looks up to Vc in response to a question that should be easy to recall. Example: What was the party like last night? If the response is all in Vc, perhaps the person queried never attended or was so drunk that he can't remember. You should always test your assumptions. For practical purposes, when you see someone's eyes move, you can often infer how that person is accessing what he or she knows.

As a focus group moderator, if you ask a participant about buying a new car and you see her eyes go up, you might ask what she looks for because her eyes going up revealed that she was seeing pictures in her mind. Similarly, if you ask a participant about buying a new car and you see her eyes go horizontally, you might ask what she listens for, because her eyes going sideways revealed that she was hearing words or sounds in her mind.

Again, you need to test your assumptions. Lefthanded people often have reversed eye movements from the general population. Some people move their entire head instead of moving their eyes. Important note: Someone leaning back with his eyes staring at the ceiling may simply be accessing the visual part of his mind. You can test whether he is tracking with you by asking, "What do you see?" If his head shakes before he answers, he was probably daydreaming; however, if he keeps staring as he talks you through what he is seeing, chances are he needs to look up to fully access his ability to visualize. When you speak into a participant's primary modality, you make it easier for that person to share what's inside his or her head. Sometimes, the results can look remarkable. People reveal themselves in ways they normally would not.

Neuro-Linguistic Programming

NLP is based on the remarkable work of Dr. Milton Erickson, who was widely recognized as the foremost hypnotherapist of his time. Dr. Erikson was able to ingeniously structure sentences full of vague meanings to help his clients discover how to address their problems and the resources that they already had available to them. His success was based on his ability to read non-verbal behavior (sensory acuity), his ability to establish rapport with his clients, his skill with language patterns and his beliefs about his clients. Bandler and Grinder, the founders of NLP, studied Erickson as part of their development of their approach to working with people.

Here's a famous illustration of Dr. Erickson's work. A twelve-year-old boy was brought in to see Erickson about bedwetting. Erickson dismissed his parents and began talking to the boy about other topics, avoiding a direct discussion about bedwetting altogether. Upon learning that the boy played baseball and that his brother had played football, Erickson elaborated on the fine muscle coordination it takes to play baseball, compared to the uncoordinated muscle skills used in football.

The boy listened raptly as Erickson described in detail all the muscle adjustments his body automatically makes in order to position him underneath the ball and catch it. For instance, the glove must be opened at just the right moment and clamped down again at just the right moment. When transferring the ball to another hand, the same kind of fine muscle control is needed. Then, when throwing the ball to the infield, if he lets go too soon, the ball doesn't go where he wants it to go. Likewise, letting go too late leads to an undesired outcome and, consequently, to frustration. Erickson explained that letting go just at the right time gets the ball to go where the player wants it to go, and that constitutes success in baseball.

Therapy with this young man consisted of four sessions that included talks about other sports, Boy Scouts and muscles. But bedwetting (which is often a muscle-control problem) was not discussed, and "formal hypnosis" was not conducted. The boy's bedwetting disappeared soon thereafter. Some of Erickson's tenets appear in the list of NLP Presuppositions. For example:

Every behavior has a positive intention.
This is the best choice available to a person, given the circumstances as he or she sees them.
Respect the other person's model of the world.
Resistance in a client is due to a lack of rapport. There are no resistant clients, only inflexible therapists.

Erickson also used a technique that has been labeled "Pacing and Leading" in NLP. He would start by subtly mirroring a client's physical expression as a way of creating rapport. Think about how a baby delights in being copied. On some level, we all feel "seen" and understood when another person gestures the way we do or uses the same speed of talking and type of language.

Once he established that connection, he would begin to lead the client into a different space, generally what hypnotists call a trance or downtime, where the person is encouraged to explore his inner world. (In NLP terms, uptime is when your senses are focused on the outside world, while downtime is related to your inner thoughts.) As we go through our daily activities, we are continually cycling through uptime and downtime and are often somewhere in between.

So, to pace a respondent, begin by matching her postures and gestures, choice of verbs, tone of voice, etc. Once the connection is made, you can change the tempo and sensory system to elicit responses from all senses — e.g., what did you see, hear, feel, smell, taste or think? This is particularly helpful in any guided imagery exercises you may design. Clients are amazed when respondents report on the colors they saw and the scents they smelled in their reveries.

Contributed to BSI by: Dr. Sharon Livingston, President, The Livingston Group

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

Brand Building and Emotional Benefits

2010-02-22T00:10:00-05:00

People buy benefits rather than features.

For example:

Time-release (feature) products are purchased because they are long acting (benefit).

Clear bottles let us see the purity in color and consistency of waters.

Dissolving tablets allow us to take medicine on the go.

Roller ball pens write faster.

Rubberized handles on scissors provide a sure grip.

And many marketers would agree that we buy products and services that enhance our positive sense of self-esteem, in some way. They believe that all brands, products and their features are associated with a rewarding emotional payoff. Moreover, all features and benefits are linked to emotional end benefits.

Think of iPod, BlackBerry, Fiji Water, Poland Spring, Mercedes, Ford, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts, Hershey, Godiva, Tiffany, Kay, Disneyland, Maui. We seek out these brands with their USPs, features and functional benefits because we like the way they make us feel and what they allow us to communicate about ourselves.

Claritin quick-dissolve tablets ladder up to sharp thinking and insightfulness.

Fiji's clear bottle and purity communicate a sense of spirituality.

Time-release analgesics allow us to accomplish more.

Alarm systems sell because people want to feel safe and secure.

Mercedes appeals to a need for recognition.

iPods sell because people want to feel a sense of belonging.

iPods also sell because people want to show how smart they are.

Woody Allen appeals to people who like feeling sophisticated, brainy and unique (if not uniquely neurotic).

But let's backtrack for a moment. People get confused between emotions and emotional benefits. There is an important distinction between them.

The Differences between Emotions and Emotional Benefits

An "emotion" is best defined as a state of physiological arousal to which we attach a cognitive label. There are only four core emotions " mad, glad, scared and sad.

Of course, there are various gradations, combinations and shades of gray regarding all of the four core feeling states. Sad includes disappointed, gloomy, heart broken, distressed, etc. Mad includes frustrated, raging, bitter, annoyed. At an even simpler level, we either feel "good" or "bad." (How often have you been frustrated in a research project when someone responds to your sensitive plea for his or her feeling response by energetically answering, "It makes me feel good/better/great/wonderful!")

Knowing how our brand, features and functions or brand activity (concepts, advertising, names, taglines, etc.) makes someone "feel" is only minimally useful. We definitely want to know if our new commercial makes people feel "glad" or "bad,"but that is ONLY a measure of valence; it does little or nothing to lend direction to our creative efforts. It tells us nothing about how to set the mood and tone for our advertising or even necessarily how to FIX any bad feelings that emerge.

It is the "emotional benefit" and not the raw "emotion" that is most informative, motivating and useful for brand development. An emotional benefit, not a physiological state of arousal with a simplistic label, is an often complex, positive, cognitive statement that our respondents are able to make about themselves due to their use, display and attachment to our brand and its features.

More succinctly, an emotional benefit is nothing more than "something nice I can say about myself because I use your product or service."

The critical differences between emotions and emotional benefits are:

Emotional benefits are entirely cognitive, whereas emotions include a state of physiological arousal.

Emotional benefits are specifically attached to brands, their particular features and marketing applications. In contrast, emotions are more diffuse human physiological reactions with a limited set of simple labels.

Emotional benefits relate directly and powerfully to enduring self-concept, while emotions are more closely associated with temporary and instinctual physiological reactions.

This last distinction is most important, and it most closely identifies the reason that emotional benefits are so vital to branding.

Emotional marketing helps us link our brand to our target's enduring self-concept. We want a lifetime relationship with our target, and this is possible only if we understand our target's core values.

A vital brand has a "relationship" with loyal users not unlike a healthy relationship between two people. People maintain ongoing affiliations as long as each person in a relationship feels as though the other contributes positively to his/her positive sense of self. Relationships fall apart when perceived negatives begin to outweigh the rewards of the association. For example, being coupled with a successful friend casts a positive halo onto someone who values success.

Of course, in branding, we are a little more limited in providing emotional benefits than we are in our actual human relationships because there are only certain elements of self-concept that we can viably support with a brand. Our self-concept is admittedly constructed of much more than just the brands we buy or the brand features that attract us. Nevertheless, it is this very ability to support self-concept that is the most potent glue available for branding.

The Impact of Emotional Benefits

Now, armed with this more precise definition of an emotional benefit, let me proceed to discuss exactly how emotional benefits influence purchase and branding. Emotional benefits, although mostly unconscious, are attached to specific elements of a brand and to the brand itself as a whole.

You can actually think of them entirely without reference to the word "emotion" and remain fully in the rational sphere, if you prefer, because really it is just the "kind of person" that a particular rational feature supports. The emotional benefit/ value is the adjective describing the self:

I am an attractive person because I chose this particular long-lasting lipstick.

I am a productive person because I because I purchased a BlackBerry with a fast microprocessor.

I am a sexy person because I drive an aerodynamic car.

I am a powerful person because I bought a rowing machine from an infomercial with that muscular guy.

I am an energetic person because I replenish electrolytes after exercise with Gatorade.

A brand, then, becomes nothing more than the profile of self-concept-supporting statements that people make via their attachments to its features and advertising/messaging.

There are two more important points.

The first is to answer an extraordinarily common objection to emotional brand research. The objection is that certain categories are purely rationally driven and preclude emotional branding. This is highly debatable, given our above understanding, because EVERY rational feature is desired for the support of some aspect of self-concept. EVERY LAST ONE!

Let me prove this to you by taking the most extreme example. Consider, for a moment, a market that is known to be driven entirely by price sensitivity (we shudder to think!). In such a market, according to the "I don't need to do emotional branding" theory, competitors believe they need to compete only via their respective abilities to keep their cost structure low and progressively out-bid each other in a pricing war. (Disastrous, of course, but that's another topic.)

This is not the case, however, because there are emotional benefits attached to price, and these emotional benefits will differ depending upon the particular market and category that you are assessing.

For example, there are two primary emotional benefits we have found to be associated with saving money. One is freedom; the other is security. Doing emotional branding research to understand which one is more important to your market, to what extent this is the case and how these emotional benefits might attach to other aspects of the brand would lead to very different approaches for the creative mood and tone of brand messaging. (Clearly, we would want to talk differently to people who most desire freedom than we would to people who most desire security). Herein would lie the competitive branding advantage in what the rest of the world viewed as a virtually unbrandable, price-driven commodity!

The same argument can be made for the use of emotional branding in pharmaceuticals. Suppose all drugs in a category have virtually equal efficacy; let's say, in antihistamine response. The marketer who knows what emotional benefits underlie antihistamine response is in a competitively better position to set the mood and tone of advertising that will attract the physician's attention. (Physicians of different specialties also tend to have different personality needs, which can also be assessed via indirect techniques and leveraged in marketing.)

The last point (which also answers a common objection to emotional brand research) is this. Emotional benefits are able to wield their influence precisely because they work behind the scenes, beyond the awareness of the customer. It is the very fact that they are so elusive and hidden that makes them so very powerful and persuasive.

If you were to read the above benefit statements (e.g., "I am a sexy person because I drive an aerodynamic car") to a respondent directly and ask for levels of agreement, you would get a much lower level of agreement than is, in fact, the case, and market behavior would differ greatly from what you tried to evaluate in your study. This is because of four major obstacles to asking questions directly.

Social Desirability Bias: the fact that respondents prefer not to reveal certain emotional motives to interviewers, nor sometimes even to themselves.

Rational Purchasing Consciousness: the fact that respondents prefer to believe that they make decisions based upon purely objective and observable criteria about the product or service at hand. Emotional motivation threatens this belief system. (Indeed, this is why so many people say that advertising does not affect them, despite the industry's willingness to spend billions each year.)

Fear of "Hidden Persuaders": many respondents fear that if we really knew what made them tick, we would take advantage of them and sell them things they don't really need.

And, again, the Presence of Emotional Motivation is Beyond Conscious Awareness.

Because of all of the above, emotional motivation usually operates below the surface, beyond the ability of respondents to easily access and articulate. These obstacles hold true even more so for respondents in medical marketing research and business to business, where the professional positions are held by the decision-makers (physicians, purchasing dept. executive, etc.), who are taught to base their decision on the facts and dismiss their emotionality and personal response.

People do not want to believe that they are emotionally influenced towards brands or purchase. They find the idea repugnant and aversive. That is why many qualitative researchers encourage the use of projective techniques to overcome these obstacles.

The fact that people do not want to admit to using brands as a method of partially supporting their self-esteem forces these associations out of consciousness, and it prevents people from cognitively reasoning about emotional benefits or articulating them out loud. And it is THIS fact "that our consumers erect a strong barrier, preventing them from becoming aware of or admitting the influence of emotional benefits" that makes them so incredibly powerful.

Language is the food of the intellect. Without language (cognitive or symbolic representation), logical reasoning is much more difficult, if not impossible. When a thought is put into language and made conscious, a person's adult mind is able to make adult, rational decisions. In our analogy, when the consumer becomes conscious of the emotional benefit, it becomes somewhat nullified because they then say to themselves, "Oh, I'm being ridiculous. Buying this product doesn't really make me a different person."

The point is, though, that most customers don't allow themselves to raise emotional benefits to this level of consciousness, so the impact remains.

In fact, many brands make the mistake of raising the emotional benefits to a level of awareness that takes away their power. They try to FORCE the psychological insight benefit by telling the consumer directly. This doesn't work nearly as well as INDIRECTLY communicating these benefits via an emphasis on specifying the features and functions of the brand that support them, while the creative mood and tone of marketing applications convey the emotional benefit.

The mind likes to have to work to solve the mystery (aiding recall and attention), and by not forcing the consumer to recognize that they use your brand to support their self-esteem, you permit them the grace of ignorance (to maintain their rational purchasing consciousness, avoid admitting socially undesirable motives, etc.). Emotional-benefit motivation is knowledge for marketers, not consumers yet another reason to utilize projectives and psychological exercises to delve beneath the surface.

The ultimate end emotional benefit/ value is always enhanced self-esteem. That, however, does not give creatives and marketers a handle to hang their campaign on. Instead, it is the rung just before positive self-worth that provides insight and gives direction to advertising and marketing.

Contributed to BSI by: Dr. Sharon Livingston, President, The Livingston Group

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

What Is A Global Brand?

2010-02-19T00:10:00-05:00

Today, another request from the BSI Emailbag. Georgina, a student of marketing at Midlands State University in Gweru, Zimbabwe asks…

“What is a global brand? How can an organization build and sustain a global brand?”

Georgina, thanks for your question, we’re happy to answer it. Global brands are brands that are recognized throughout much of the world. Companies intending to create global brands need to do the following:

· Identify the relative attractiveness of each market for your brand

· Conduct attitude and usage studies in each country in which you are considering entering

· Identify the sequence of brand launch by country/region of the world

· Know the category and brand indices in each country in which your brand operates

· Establish a branding scorecard that can be applied country by country

· Agree to which decisions are made centrally and which ones are made locally

· Through research, understand if there are any part’s of your brand’s identity that won’t work in a given country or for a give language. Consider the name itself, the symbols, the colors, the tagline, etc.

To some small degree, with the pervasiveness of the Internet, all brands that are in cyberspace have the potential to become global brands, however being on the Internet does not guarantee top-of-mind awareness or distribution ease. A comprehensive, well-funded and well-executed global marketing plan is required for successful global brands.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Tiger Woods: Rehabilitating A Human Brand

2010-02-18T00:10:00-05:00

It's been announced that Tiger Woods will be sitting down in Florida tomorrow with "friends, colleagues and close associates," not, as some might think to make additional apologies for his off-the-course activities, but to launch a new, 2010 version of Tiger Woods.

Think of it as this year's Human Brand re-launch, a re-introduction into the marketplace of an actual human being who represents 100% of the values, imbued meaning, and differentiation in the category in which they compete. The operative phrase being in the category in which they compete. And make no mistake about it, no matter what you've read or heard about hotel bedrooms, the category in which Tiger's human brandness resounds is still golf.

But Human Brands - Tiger Woods IS still a Human Brand no matter what you think of his record for fidelity whether coasting along or under assault, do better in the milieu that represents their values and skills best. Closure and contrition is come to against a background that resonates with the Human Brand's skill set. Kitchens for Martha Stewart, construction sites (highest floor possible, please) for Mr. Trump. Places they can be themselves or, more accurately, be the brand they are. For Woods, the setting is a golf course.

The golf course was the one place (aside from sponsorship and promotional and advertising venues that showed Tiger playing golf) that Tiger captivated the world, until the world was captivated by the stories of how he cheated on his wife. Think of it as his outdoor rehab facility, very effective for refurbishing images and mending marketing fences.

Because for most of the people out there who watch or play at golf (including the ones who slap palms every time a new lover of Woods shows up in a supermarket tabloid and those who find his extramural pursuits repugnant), there are enough people who only want him to come back, play golf, and start winning tournaments again.

In a recent study we conducted in the UK updating our Commodity-to-Human-Brand Continuum we included Tiger in the mix to see where he'd end up. For fans and foes alike, we can report that consumers still see him as a Human Brand, which provides a good deal of flexibility when it comes to sponsorships, promotional opportunities and marketing.

For anyone who’s played the game before they know that there are lots of Rules in Golf. In professional golf there are very few when it comes to rehabilitating a Human Brand: Be contrite, find closure, and work on that 375-yard drive.

Contributed to BSI by: Robert Passikoff, President, Brand Keys

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

What Are The Basics Of Branding?

2010-02-17T00:10:00-05:00

Regular readers of Branding Strategy Insider know we welcome and answer marketing questions of all types. Today, Kristen, a marketer in Milwaukee, Wisconsin writes…

"I am in the process of trying to explain to the upper management of my non profit (pastors) that branding runs much deeper then the brochure, business cards, and stationary. Branding is composed of the entire experience of the end user (people who attend our church).

Do you have any resources laying out the different components of branding? (customer service, first experience, follow up, perceived content value). The leaders are not taking my word for it, they think I am throwing out my opinion. I just need some hard evidence or facts or reports to point to."

Kristen, thanks for asking. A brand is the source of a promise to its customers. It promises relevant differentiated benefits and then it must deliver on those benefits. So, branding starts with brand identity (name, logo, tagline, colors, etc.) and marketing messages, but it is reinforced over time by the total brand experience that is actually delivered at each point of customer contact. The brand is the sum total of each customer's brand experiences as they are encoded in that customer's mind. Brands can offer a wide variety of benefits ranging from fully functional benefits to emotional, experiential and self-expressive benefits. My guess is that churches mostly deliver on the last three types of benefits. And by definition, brands are positioned against other brands, so your church is competing against other local churches within and perhaps outside of its denomination and perhaps even with nationally televised/broadcasted churches and individual spiritual practices.

On any given Sunday morning, it also might be competing against an extra hour or two of sleep, an early round of golf, a leisurely cup of coffee and reading of the newspaper or even a hike in the woods. I would recommend the book "The Varieties Of Religious Experience: A Study In Human Nature" by William James as a starting point for understanding the types of benefits that churches could deliver to their parishioners. Churches are likely to be more or less unique in delivering any or all of the following:

Hope for the future

Reassurance

Support through difficult times

Physical, mental and spiritual healing

Encouragement to be a good person

Intellectual stimulation

A space for silence

Camaraderie with people of like values

An hour or two of beauty (stained glass windows, music, etc.)

A feeling of closeness to God

Reinforcement that "I am a good person"

Guilt

Fear of hell

Fear of stepping outside of their denomination's "box"

The sense of fulfilling an obligation

The feeling of belonging

Self-improvement - challenging me to be a better person

Increased self-esteem -- I am loved by God

A broadened view of the universe

A narrower view of the universe

A sense of well-being

A sense of order in the midst of perceived chaos

Feeling separate from others

Feeling more connected to others

Personal empowerment

A feeling of spiritual union with God

An avenue for community (or world) service

A deep sense of peace

Grace

Gratitude

Joy

Expansiveness

Constriction

Inspiration

A sense of mission or purpose

It all depends on what your church wants to stand for and which benefits it deems to be most important.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

The Fall Of The Purchase Funnel

2010-02-16T00:06:00-05:00

Once upon a time people lived in a state of positive expectations. There were relatively few products, great demand and most products enjoyed high brand differentiation. This was circa 1960, when most marketing models in use today were developed, like the purchase funnel, which measures advertising effectiveness.

The world has since changed dramatically. And, despite the rise of digital and the economic downturn, most old marketing axioms are still operative, miring marketers in an approach designed for a bygone era.

Take the relationship between supply and demand - its reversed. Today demand is scarce, supply plentiful. Second, over the past half-century we have learned so much about how people engage with brands.

We now understand that people are not two-dimensional datum to be manipulated by coupons or the latest hot-button offer. Current anthropological, linguistic and neuro-scientific evidence demonstrates that humans attach to things (product, person or idea) through a process of identification that coalesces longings at the personal, social levels.
Human behavior cannot be comprehended by the old-school logical conceptions of action. What Don DeLillo said about how he writes a book is true for life, "Things begin to happen just outside the range of the immediate action. There's very little sense of logic behind it.''

Life, No Straight Line
Now that we agree life is not a straight line, marketers need to accept tools that address reality. Case in point, the Purchase Funnel, a guest that attends most new business meetings: Awareness, Consideration, Preference, Action, Loyalty. But people Are Not Linear.

When one considers consumers as people, one immediately appreciates that logic is a puny force in the face of emotion and belief. Identity trump interests and narrative transforms products into relevant stories crafted by one's own brand of meaning. In this cuisineart-like, improvisational, non-linear process, awareness does not precede consideration, then tumble into preference and finally into action.

Zig-Zagging to Attachment
In actuality, the attachment process carves a zigzag route in the service of emotional reasoning as people make symbolic associations with what is familiar, participatory and self-expansive in their image of the product. Only if and when the product is successfully transformed into a personally meaningful idea, does manufacturer reap the benefit of one's loyalty to self. This process can take time, or immediately convulse, but the best a marketer can hope for is a spasm of sentiment that bears no logical relationship to product attributes.

Note what two people say about Apple's iPhone. "Apple is a smile. It makes me smile. I'm a happy person. Apple and me are the same." "The iPhone, like Apple, is a circle, it's smooth and glides. It's easy and feels good. All other phones are boxes; they have corners and squares, are highly structured, have many rules, are too technical and linear. The iPhone is fun and natural and let's me do my own thing."

Purchase Funnel vs. Yellow Brick Road
The emotional logic of human longing is as merciless as the laws of gravity, but more curvaceous. The time is right for marketers to come to terms with the meanderings of authentic life, and reflect back to people their true nature: poised and unsettled, majestic and mundane, courageous and hesitant, marooned and moored, tough and tender.

Only then will marketers share in attracting people while, at the same time, having people soar.

Marketers must respect people as curvaceous souls, and supplant the purchase funnel with the idea of The Yellow Brick Road. This will both re-humanize advertising and make it, again, a cultural act. Then people may incline towards more products and once again love advertising as they did in the era of Bill Bernback and David Ogilvy.

Contributed to BSI by Dr. Bob Deutsch, Brain-Sells

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

The Chief Marketing Officer – A New Boardroom Role

2010-02-15T00:10:00-05:00

The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) has become one of the more commonly talked about corporate designations in recent years. Given the tremendous marketing potential offered by the new media and proliferation of distribution channels, companies have begun to realize the huge potential of marketing in guiding corporate level strategies and substantially contributing to the financial bottom line. In spite of such an understanding, it is startling to note that the average tenure of a CMO is merely 23 months compared to a CFO that typical lasts 4-5 years on average.

Further, not many companies have a senior marketing representative in their C-suite. This begs the question – do companies need a CMO or is the role of a CMO a mere hype? This article probes this question and offers companies some guide posts for better strategic directions.

Why do companies need a Chief Marketing Officer?

As the business landscape evolves, marketing also evolves into an organization wide strategic discipline. Given marketer’s knowledge of the customers, it is imperative that the CEO and the corporate board have a representative of the customer to continually educate them. Additionally, companies need a strategic CMO to benefit from:

Align marketing with the corporate business strategy: Newer technology, powerful channel partners, and empowered customers have made the competition highly intense and marketing a very involved and strategic discipline. Marketing can no longer be confined to the 4P framework. Marketers, with their in-depth knowledge about markets and customers, should act as a major resource for strategy formulation. In all issues of corporate strategy – what markets to compete in, what segments to target, what entry mode and strategy to adopt, which partners to strategically ally with – marketing offers substantial information. In order to convey these holistic perspectives, it is imperative the marketing is represented by the CMO in the corporate boardroom who can speak to the directors and the CEO in their language.

A classic example is of the iPhone from Apple. Given the tremendously successful iPod and iMac, Apple could have become complacent. But the marketing acumen of the executives recognized the need to constantly excite the customers. Further, they built their growth strategies on satisfying the unmet needs of the customers. Marketing played a crucial role in guiding Apple’s corporate strategy.

Connect the corporate boardroom with the customer: As Peter Drucker said, the only two functions of any organization are innovation and marketing. Irrespective how innovative a company is, how committed the employees are, and competent the top management is, unless the company connects with the customer, success will be elusive. The top management should constantly evaluate their strategic decision in the context of customer feedback - what do the customers’ value and how can the customers help the company in co-creating value.

CMO plays a crucial role in constantly updating the boardroom and the CEO about latest customer preference, how well the corporate resources are aligned to meet hose evolving customer needs. Companies such as Levis Strauss, Sony, Toyota, Nike and Singapore Airlines are some of the pioneering companies that manage to constantly feel the pulse of their customers. As such, the marketing takes a central role in guiding the corporate strategy by having the top management team and the CEO regularly updated about customers and markets.

Create a customer centric organization: Given the innumerable choices that customers have, ensuring long term customer loyalty and sustainable competitive advantage becomes highly challenging. The difference between the successful companies that achieve those objectives and those who fail is the corporate orientation. Customer oriented companies design and operate every aspect of the company with the customer in mind. To build a customer centric organization requires a highly concerted effort of all functions within a company along with every employee becoming a customer champion.

These issues deal with organizational culture, organizational structure and corporate policies. The CMO can influence the boardroom and the CEO to implement measures that would allow to build a customer centric organization. Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts is a classic example that showcases such a customer centric philosophy. The founder has managed to instill a culture that allows constant interaction between marketing and other functions with the company. Such an emphasis has resulted in world class resorts that always manage to delight the customers.

From this discussion, it is evident that CMOs are strategic requirements of any corporate boardroom. But in spite of such a significant role played by the CMO, companies have not completely embraced the concept of a CMO. The next section discusses some of the main challenged faced by CMOs which make them vulnerable to boardroom dislike.

Challenges faced by the CMO

The challenges faced by the CMO are the problems increasingly faced by marketing as a discipline off late. It has been long argued that one of the fundamental challenges of marketing that has undermined the credibility of marketing, threatened the standing of marketing within a company, and even threatened the existence of the very discipline as a distinct entity is marketing’s failure to quantify its outcomes and justify investments into marketing activities.

The three main impediments in this regard are: (1) Relating marketing activities to long-term effects; (2) Separation of individual marketing activities from other actions and (3) Use of purely financial methods for justifying and benchmarking marketing investments. As such, CMOs are not given the opportunity to participate in the strategic decision making of the company. Two such daunting challenges are:

Measuring marketing outcomes: Marketing fundamentally differs from other functions with a company like finance or operations in a couple of aspects. As marketing deals with people, their attitudes and eventual behaviors, they are not as predictable as a machine process. As such, there can be considerable time lag between marketing actions and the intended outcomes. Further, measuring these outcomes will have to involve both financial and non-financial metrics. Given these underlying challenges, it is often challenging for the CMO to convince the top management of marketing’s ability to competently allocate resources and significantly contribute to the company’s growth.

Explaining marketing’s centrality in a company: Many companies continue to equate marketing with advertising and sales. But marketing has long evolved from being a tactical departmental function to an organization wide strategic discipline. Given marketers’ knowledge about customers and other stakeholders, marketing plays a central role in leveraging the internal capabilities. But to assert such a central role within any company, marketers should be able to understand the different aspects of the company, its strategies, its resources and its limitations. Marketers usually are involved in their own jobs and fail to leverage their centrality in a company. CMOs face immense uphill task in educating and convincing the C-suite of their capabilities and their rightful status.

The CMO and the corporate boardroom

Given the rather strong antipathy towards marketing within any company and especially within the top management team, CMOs should keep up with time and optimally utilize every resource at their disposal to address some of the fundamental complaints against marketing.

Leveraging the new media: Even as the Internet and other new media channels continue to challenge many of the fundamental ways of doing business, it also offers some tremendous advantages hitherto not within the reach of companies. As a majority of the companies compete to create a presence online, they also should establish structures in their websites that would help measure many a marketing variable. Softwares allow companies to track their customers’ footprints, the stickiness – the amount of time a customer stays on a site, the click through rate of online advertisements, effective optimization of layout design and feel to measure changes in attitudes and behaviors and so on.

These tools can be effectively leveraged by the CMOs to begin the process of quantifying marketing outcomes. These early experiments also allow companies to gradually design their own set of useful metrics. Such an essential first step not only brings credibility to marketing, but also allows marketers to make a strong impression with the top management teams and the CEO.

Internal training: In order for marketing to rise up to the boardroom level, marketers should be thoroughly able to understand the strategic imperatives of the company across functions and be able to speak the boardroom language. Such a state can be attained through formalized internal cross disciplinary training. Such a training system would allow marketers to understand the dynamics of corporate strategy and also enable marketers to effectively leverage the collective internal resources towards ensuring profitability and optimal results.

On the horizon

This blog post has raised some very fundamental questions about the way the companies should be run in the future. The role of marketing within a company is only going to become even more central as managing customer interactions and co-creating value become the building blocks of any corporate strategy.

In the future, the CMO will emerge as the strategic connection between the corporate boardroom, the top management team, the CEO and the customer. Companies should offer the CMO the requisite status and power within the company. Furthermore, companies must create an organizational structure where CMOs can guide the company’s vision and mission by integrating the myriad functions within the company. The time is not too far when the success of the company depends on the strength of its marketing and the CMO.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

Maximizing Research Budgets in a Recession

2010-02-13T00:10:00-05:00

Clearly, this deep global recession has taken it toll on marketing departments and market research and competitive intelligence budgets. Senior executives, strategic planning and marketing departments face the following challenge of how to continue the following initiatives with a reduced research budget:

Global expansion plans

Customer satisfaction tracking

Competitor intelligence monitoring

Market opportunity/market sizing projects

Customer and brand loyalty projects

New product development tests

Ad tests

The Challenge and Opportunity of a Reduced Research Budget

A reduced research budget forces executives to re-think their long term and tactical strategy. It also forces them to prioritize initiatives in this downturn. To this end, global expansion plans may be curbed. On the other hand, this presents a risk as their competitors may still move forward into global and emerging markets, thus putting them at a strategic disadvantage when the market turns up. The key is to prioritize and to “get the most from your reduced research budget” so your firm will not fall behind in the next few years. This paper will discuss general strategies on how to efficiently utilize a reduced research budget and to provide this intelligence to senior management during this market downturn.

Competitive Intelligence Monitoring

It is important to consider not cutting the competitive intelligence monitoring budget. Companies should still be monitoring your competitors’ movements in the global market place. To this end, the following are examples of cost effective competitive intelligence monitoring techniques that companies can utilize from either internal resources or research suppliers.

Ongoing CI Monitoring and Tracking Programs

This can be accomplished by monitoring the web, blogs, and the media. This information can be validated by outside research suppliers with people on the ground. Research suppliers can offer ongoing tracking programs to cost effectively yield the maximum amount of CI intelligence tracking for the budget.

Focused Competitor Profiles

Rather than commissioning multiple competitor profiles, it may be possible to prioritize budgets with the top 1 or 2 competitors that can be covered for the budget. It is important to share the intelligence that resides internally with the research supplier to save time and money to avoid their reinventing of the wheel.

Conducting Business Intelligence Prior to Commissioning Qualitative and Quantitative Field Work

Companies can first consider conducting Business Intelligence, prior to costly qualitative and quantitative research projects. Business Intelligence reports include a mixed methodology of desk research and interviews with key opinion leaders. This snap shot of market intelligence, will provide a road map for qualitative and quantitative research budgets.

Ways to Get the Most Value for the Price of Qualitative Market Research

1. Focus Groups

From the business intelligence report, companies may likely be able to target the geographical area and respondent profiles for the development of their research design for focus groups. This leads to a more “streamlined rifle” approach rather than focus on a large scale geographical coverage approach to country research.

2. In-Depth Interviews

In-Depth Interviews [IDIs] can be conducted cost-effectively with a higher degree of emphasis on the profile of the respondents over the number or quantity of respondents. Secondly, IDIs can be conducted in sequence. Rather than conducting all of the IDIs at once, they can be phased in 5-10 increments and evaluate the intelligence gained from each set, prior to continuing with the rest of the interviews.

Ways to Get the Most Value from the Price of Quantitative Research

Large scale quantitative research is most often the most expensive to commission. With a reduced budget, companies may be tempted to reduce the sample size. However, this reaction often produces results with a lower confidence level.

Some companies may consider the following:

1. Rethinking research objectives and consider prioritizing [or phasing] research objectives.
2.    Reduce the scope of the project
3.    Select high priority market segments or countries
4.    Consider online interviews [where they can be successfully completed] rather than CATI [computer assisted telephone interviews] or face to face interviews in less developed countries
5.  Utilize your sales offices and international offices to gather competitive and market intelligence. You can utilize this information and share it with research suppliers to reduce their research costs.

What to avoid in a Recession with a Reduced Research Budget

Reflecting on 25 years of experience with reduced research budgets in recessions, I have noticed that the following should not be done during a recession for the vast majority of cases:

1. Cutting out ALL qualitative and/or quantitative research

2. Reliance on secondary reports which have limited scope and to which competitors have access.

3. Cutting out all of the trade shows, conferences and place whereby you interact with customers and stakeholders. Often, these venues are great sources of competitive and market intelligence.

Contributed by: Ruth Stanat, President of SIS International and research partner of The Blake Project

Building Brand Momentum

2010-02-11T00:10:00-05:00

Owned for many years by H&R Block, CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It was founded in 1979, dominated the field in the 1980s and was still a major player through the mid-1990s. Prodigy, the second major online service provider, was founded in 1984 as a joint venture between CBS, IBM and Sears. It offered its subscribers access to a broad range of networked services, including news, weather, shopping, bulletin boards, games, polls, expert columns, banking, stocks, travel, and a variety of other features. In 1990, CompuServe had 600,000 subscribers and Prodigy had 465,000 subscribers. But then AOL entered the scene and quickly dwarfed both companies. Begun as Control Video Corporation and focusing on games using specific computer platforms in the early to mid-1980s, the company altered its strategy over time and changed its name to AOL in late 1989. Positioned as an online service for people unfamiliar with computers, at its peak, AOL had more than 30 million subscribers worldwide. How did it do this?

AOL was infamous for saturating the market with its FREE CD-ROMs and diskettes containing computer software for accessing the America Online service in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I recall personally receiving at least 20 of these disks during that time period through multiple distribution vehicles. Each one offered 700 or 1000 free hours of service. They featured such a wide variety of designs (more than 4,000) that people began collecting the disks. This is the momentum that pushed AOL over the top. (Unfortunately, AOL began a steady decline soon after its merger with Time Warner in 2001.)

Amazon.com also experienced huge momentum that has brought the company to its current size today. It was the darling of the business press and rode a wave of increasing publicity throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 1999, Time magazine named Jeff Bezos “Person of the Year” for Amazon.com’s pioneering and popularizing of online shopping. While Amazon.com’s business plan allowed for four to five years of red ink before it became profitable, its constant publicity built its brand name quickly not only among the business community but also with the general public.

When I took over as marketing vice president at Element K, a leading e-learning company, our intent was to be one of the first companies to “cross the finish line” in the very new and crowded e-learning space. In less than two years, we emerged from one of thousands of e-learning companies to one of the top four due to aggressive and unrelenting awareness building among our primary target audience, chief learning officers of Fortune 1000 companies.

These are three examples of brand momentum, something we measure in our brand equity studies. Think of brand momentum as the general perception that the brand is an exciting up-and-coming brand, a brand to be watched and a brand to be tried. It is the opposite of a legacy brand that “rests on its laurels.” A brand with momentum will receive high scores on the following measures:

I seem to hear and see more about this brand lately
I feel like this brand is changing for the better

It will also be perceived to possess the following personality attributes:

Dynamic
Up and coming
Leading edge
Progressive

And not the following personality attributes:

Boring
Traditional

We have found that brands that are perceived to be vital and possess positive momentum will have sales that exceed those predicted by purchase intent scores, while legacy brands that are perceived to be the opposite will have sales that lag those predicted by purchase intent scores.

The trick is to create the perception of strength, vision, forward momentum, popularity and thought leadership without breaking the bank or running out of capital. This can be best accomplished by laser like focus on the primary target audiences and then through aggressive and relentless communication to those people. Investing resources in substantial public relations efforts, keeping industry and financial analysts and other industry experts well informed, writing white papers, authoring popular blogs, dominating the most important industry trade shows and conferences and other such activities are critical to building and maintaining this momentum, as is delivering legendary service whenever possible to generate “buzz.”

In a way, this goes back to the evergreen advice, “Fake it until you make it” or “Act as though you are what you aspire to be.” That is, be confident and assume the leadership role in the industry even if yours is the smallest organization in the industry. Perceived momentum creates the conditions for further momentum. That is at the core of the concept of momentum. A caution: an organization will not survive in the long run if it is all hype and no substance. Ultimately, you will need to bring something unique, fresh or superior to the market, but the perception of momentum will attract more confidence in and resources to your organization while it is on its path to industry leadership in a crowded market.

I wish your brand significant perceived momentum in its industry.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project

Trademark and Brand Naming Q & A

2010-02-10T00:10:00-05:00

Choosing a new trademark is a thorny task for many companies. So we asked Tara Benson, Esq., a seasoned intellectual property attorney, for her thoughts on how to avoid the most common pitfalls. Benson is a senior member of the trademark practice group at Giordano, Halleran & Ciesla, P.C. During her career, she has handled trademark work for such clients as Tazo Teas and Amazon.com; and also served as in-house counsel for Library Video Company/Schlessinger Media, the leading distributor and producer of educational media.

Q: Tara, it often seems that tension between marketing and legal departments is the start of trademark troubles. Do you agree?

Absolutely. In my experience, marketing departments often gravitate towards a mark which describes the product or service. Descriptive marks ensure that the customer can easily identify the product. Unfortunately, descriptive marks will not likely win the right to be registered and probably don’t do much to distinguish your product in the marketplace.

Q: So does that mean you should avoid descriptive marks at every turn?

In short, yes, it is best to avoid them whenever possible. The strongest marks (and those that are able to achieve trademark protection) are fanciful, arbitrary or suggestive marks. A fanciful mark is a word, which has no meaning aside from its use as a trademark, such as Kodak or Exxon, while arbitrary marks are existing words with meanings that are generally unrelated to the product with which they are used, such as Apple for computers. Finally, suggestive marks are those which suggest the identity of a product, but do not merely describe the product (e.g. Coppertone for suntan lotion). It is important that a marketing department be aware of these necessary qualities while brainstorming names for new products or services.

Q: Do clients become emotionally attached to names they are considering?

Yes, often companies will create an internal development name for a product or service. Sometimes people will become so attached to this development name that they are not willing to part with it once the product or service is ready to be launched. Falling in love with an internal development name prior to completing a full trademark search and legal review is one of the most common problems which companies encounter. I always stress the importance of completing a trademark review on a mark before company employees become too attached to a name.

Q: What other pitfalls do you see?

One is the selection of a name that is simply too confusingly similar to that of a competitor. Selecting a name that is too similar to a competitor not only impairs a company’s ability to federally register that name, but also may result in a trademark infringement lawsuit against the company. Companies should always strive to select names that are easily distinguishable from those of their competitors.

Q: Our surveys show that 20% of large companies use employee naming contests as one way to generate new names. Good idea, or bad idea?

There are a few famous names that have been the result of an employee naming contest. But this is not the norm. While organizing an employee naming contest for a company’s newest product may be a fantastic morale booster, it rarely generates protectable marks. Employees may not understand the legal issues that exist such as avoiding trademark infringement, generic or merely descriptive marks and foreign equivalence issues. Foreign equivalence issues include avoiding marks which may be offensive in another language or those marks which may otherwise be culturally insensitive. Instead of hosting a naming contest, companies should consider hiring a naming company, using naming software or relying on the input of its internal marketing professionals.

Q: What about the use of consultants to generate new names?

Third party naming companies can be a tremendously useful tool if utilized properly. If a company opts to engage a third party naming company for its new product, I recommend that the naming company work closely with an employee who has a strong working knowledge of the product, as well as with the company’s legal team. This will help ensure that the proposed mark not only enhances the marketing strategy, but also is legally protectable.

Sponsored By: Brand Aid & The Blake Project