BrandDigest

Welcome to BrandDigest

BrandCoach's BrandDigest is a handpicked selection of must-read articles on branding, brand strategy and brand management. In most cases you'll find an excerpt (or a management summary) of the article and a link to the original publication. Feel free to comment or to suggest other reading material you want to share with the BrandDigest community.

How to Formulate A Premium Pricing Strategy

6 tips to earn the right to charge your customers top dollar
By Paul Spiegelman

Customers are constantly looking for ways to save money rather than spend more of it, so companies that position products in the premium price range may struggle. However, with the right formula, you can earn the right to charge customers more than your competitors do. If you’ve been marketing your products or services as low-cost options, it’s difficult to move up the price ladder without devoting significant dollars to aggressive marketing outreach and realistic differentiation between product offerings. The best approach is to launch products as premium offerings from the beginning--if that’s what your business model calls for - because it’s easier to mark products down (and nearly impossible to mark them up) once they’ve been identified with a specific price point. 

Here are six factors that will influence your ability to establish and maintain your premium price position and reap the rewards:

How to Formulate A Premium Pricing Strategy - Entrepreneur.com.

Passive Aggressive Branding

With reports that the oil gusher in the Gulf is nearly kaput, BP's new CEO announced Friday that the company would scale back its cleanup efforts in areas where there is no more oil. Makes sense. Still bad for the brand, though.

via www.dimbulb.net

How great leaders inspire action

Why some brands lead, and why other don't

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Simon Sinek has a simple but powerful model for inspirational leadership all starting with a golden circle and the question "Why?" His examples include Apple, Martin Luther King, and the Wright brothers -- and as a counterpoint Tivo, which (until a recent court victory that tripled its stock price) appeared to be struggling.

About Simon Sinek : In 2009, Simon Sinek released the book "Start With Why" -- a synopsis of the theory he has begun using to teach others how to become effective leaders and inspire change.

For more inspiring talks, go to http://www.ted.com

It's Time To Rebuild Brand Loyalty

Businesses are now dealing with buyers who are armed with both information and harsh expectations.

Technology and good deeds will help.

__________________

By Avi Dan

Brand loyalty is crucial for brand health. Ad agency founder Jim Mullen once said: "Of all the things that your company owns, brands are far and away the most important and the toughest. Founders die. Factories burn down. Machinery wears out. Inventories get depleted. Technology becomes obsolete. Brand loyalty is the only sound foundation on which business leaders can build enduring, profitable growth."

The changes that technology brought to consumers have changed that too. Americans are becoming less loyal. Even seemingly strong names rarely translate into much power at the cash register. Consumers are continually looking--and finding--a better deal, opening the door for companies to introduce a raft of new products and promotions.

The single biggest explanation for the troubled state of many brands is consumers' growing access to technology. This has created a more informed and demanding consumer: Even as the quality and reliability of products have generally risen, satisfaction ratings have not budged. In some cases, they have actually fallen. Businesses are now dealing with buyers who are armed with both information and harsh expectations.

What are smart marketers to do?

1. Learn what consumers are thinking: Technology is an incredibly powerful tool when it comes to learning how and what consumers say when they are talking about a particular brand. The tools that let marketers do this range from a simple search on Twitter to sophisticated software packages that track the sentiment of what's being said by millions. Both offer greater insight into consumers than was ever available before technology became central to communications; and, fortunately, make it easier to understand how to strengthen loyalty.

2. Marketers need to reach consumers on multiple platforms: In a technology-infused age, consumers are constantly shifting and "multitasking," playing a multiplicity of roles simultaneously. The key is for marketers to be where their consumers are on the Web. While targeting people according to their Web-surfing behavior is part of this, it also involves being invited into consumers' increasingly fragmented lives. If a consumer complains about a brand online, the brand should be there, ready to assist. If you build an iPhone app, don't build it just because apps are the hot new marketing tool, but because the brand can offer something useful that can be delivered via technology. A game that has nothing to do with the brand doesn't do the trick; a portable recipe app that a harried mother can use while at the grocery store does.

3. Engage the super influencers: As consumer-generated social media evolves, it has built its own hierarchy, one in which certain users have built powerful distribution channels on which to state their opinions on current events, their passions and brands. These Super Influencers might maintain a well-read blog, hundreds of Facebook friends or thousands of Twitter followers, but the result is the same: They have inordinate influence on how the rest of us think about brands, and on whether or not we might buy them.

4. Experience instead of messaging: The best companies of our generation understand how engagement and positive customer experiences create brands. Google and Facebook are experiential brands, as are Zappos, Twitter, Netflix, Amazon, Apple , Starbucks and Nike . These companies understand that we are living in a world where consumer loyalty isn't formed in reaction to a message, but through a series of experiences over time that the brand and company create.

5. Do well by doing good: Marketing is no longer an economic function alone, but a social force as well. Within minutes of the Haiti earthquake, donations requested on Twitter started flowing in via text messages in coordination with the phone company. Pepsi bypassed the Super Bowl for the first time in 23 years, and instead of buying $3 million spots in the game, announced on its Facebook page that it will donate $20 million to worthy causes. Social ideology increasingly reinforces brand loyalty.

Brands need to restore their bond with consumers. The Information Age challenges marketers to become more creative in how they adapt to new realities.

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Originally posted in Forbes.com on Feb. 22, 2010

Avi Dan is CEO of Avidan Strategies LLC, a consultancy specializing in strategy development and positioning; marketing and advertising process design; and agency search and compensation. He can be reached at [email protected].

The 7 Universal Brand-Management Truths

No Matter the Product or Service, Knowing Your Team, Understanding the Competition Are Crucial

_________________________

by Nitish Gupta

Coca-Cola today has a market capitalization in excess of $100 billion because the perceived value of its brand is significantly higher than the sum total of all the assets of the company.

In my years with Procter & Gamble and Heinz, I have come to realize that no matter what the product or service, the key principles for building a great brand remain the same. By staying true to these seven principles, a marketer can weather economic highs and lows while building an iconic brand for target consumers.

1. Leverage information via hypothesis-led data analysis. This refers to leveraging information and converting it into a forceful rationale to take the right action for the brand. Key to this is understanding the issue at hand by anchoring the hypothesis and then looking at the data or information to prove the hypothesis right or wrong.

The pain-relief medicine brand Aleve had been struggling with single-digit market share. The team anchored two hypotheses: Consumers were not aware of the brand Aleve, and consumers were aware but didn't want to try the brand. Through data mining, they found that 35% of heavy pain-relief medicine users had tried Aleve in the past year but had been using other brands as well. Thus the issue was clear that the brand had the awareness and trial but needed to drive loyalty. Then, based on the top attributes that drove preference for the brand (control over pain, and freedom to do things you want), they developed the "Dramatic Difference" campaign, resulting in an almost 10% to 20% increase in sales and shares hitting an all-time high.

2. Understand the competition and maintain your point of difference. Having a broader category-competitive understanding is important because that sets the context under which consumers will be viewing your brand. It's critical to maintain the point of difference for your brand and play to its strengths.

When Coke managed to get sponsorship rights for the 1996 Cricket World Cup in India, Pepsi gauged the competitive threat and stuck to its point of difference (youthful rebellion brand positioning). It launched the "nothing official about it" campaign during the Cricket World Cup, which actually helped Pepsi strengthen its leadership position in India.

3. Be consistent with your positioning over time and across platforms. For any brand, it's imperative to create a distinctive and meaningful position in the mind of consumers for the offering. So no matter what brand extension or innovation you are planning for your brand, ensure that it builds on and strengthens that distinctive positioning.

The Dove brand has extended across categories from skin care to hair care to others like deodorants by positioning itself on the soft/smooth platform and the fact that it contains moisturizing milk. Dove deodorants are positioned as leaving the underarms feeling soft and smooth. The brand has extended itself only in those categories where these soft/smooth and "contains moisturizing milk" equities are relevant, thus staying true to the positioning over time and across platforms, thus strengthening the brand.

4. Know what your target consumer wants. Evaluating all the marketing choices from the vantage point of the consumer will help you to connect with the consumer and genuinely make a positive difference in his or her life. It's important to understand both the stated and unstated needs -- the insights into your target consumers' lives.

Louis Vuitton was launched in the late 1800s by supplying LV-branded suitcases to travelers. Travel then was a luxury afforded to only the wealthiest. Thus the brand became a symbol of status -- it helped consumers showcase their differences from others. By leveraging this core human insight, LV was able to extend to shoes, apparel and bags. It has became one of the most extended brands but has suffered almost no diminishing returns. The brand was positioned not just on a functional need (like storage), but instead it tapped into deeper insights to connect with consumers.

5. Manage budgets with a "scarcity" mentality. Working with a scarcity mentality will help you maximize returns for every dollar spent by answering the question, "Is this the best way to spend dollars on marketing my brand, or is this money better spent elsewhere to generate greater returns?"

Starbucks, instead of spending money on TV advertising, clusters an area with its stores, increasing total revenue and market share. This was contrary to what established retailing houses did, which was to avoid placing stores near each other so as not to cannibalize sales at existing outlets. For Starbucks, doing so resulted in reduced supply costs and made management of the stores cheaper, which more than made up for sales lost to cannibalization. Thus, funding for expansion from internal cash flow was a judicious use of money. Until recently, Starbucks spent just 1% of its revenues on marketing and advertising (compared to more than 10% for companies of the same size).

6. Get the right pricing that offers value in the eyes of consumers. Pricing determines the value that your consumers get for your offering: Perceived consumer value equals perceived brand benefit/price. Thus it's critical to decide the pricing strategy for your brand so that there is a net positive value for your consumers.

Gillette's pricing strategy for its flagship men's razors and blades brand focuses on regularly upgrading them, and hence pricing up on their newest offerings. The innovations are consumer significant, so that they are ready to pay a premium to upgrade to the latest offering. Right from their twin blade to triple-blade Mach3 to Mach3 Turbo (with vibrating motor) to Gillette Fusion (with an additional trimming blade), their upgrades have been significant, and as a result they've been able to charge a more than 10% premium with them.

7. Motivate the team via thought leadership. Building a successful brand requires dedicated support, not just from the leader but from the whole multifunctional team -- sales, research, R&D, finance. To do the same, the brand leader needs to have a clear vision for the brand and enlist the team toward the same.

When it launched, Cosmopolitan had been positioned on a broad "for the family" platform. However by the mid-1950s it was suffering from declining readership. In the 1960s Helen Gurley Brown took charge. She sharply defined the target audience (progressive, career-oriented and open-minded women) and then rallied the team to deliver a product that would appeal to the target. They came up with innovations like a glossy format, inspirational articles and writings, and talking frankly and honestly about various issues and needs of women. The first print run of about 350,000 was sold out by the end of publication day, and the Cosmopolitan of today was born.

____________________________

Nitish Gupta is a Dubai-based regional brand manager at Heinz handling marketing and brand management for ketchup and condiment brands in the Middle East and Africa markets. Previously, he worked in Singapore for Procter & Gamble as a brand manager handling beauty care brands for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Australasia and India. He can be reached at [email protected].

First published in Advertising Age CMO Strategy on January 5, 2010.

Reposted with kind permission of the author.

 

How CMOs Can Also Be Chief Responsibility Officers

More companies are recognizing the need to have a chief responsibility officer. Maybe someday every company will have a fully defined CRO role, but until that day comes, more often than not, that duty falls to the chief marketing officer.

________________________________________

It's Your Job to Create and Promote Your Company's Socially Responsible Agenda, Culture and Behaviors

by Andrew Benett and Greg Welch

The situation presents distinct challenges for CMOs: How can one successfully drive the reinvention of the corporate brand while still balancing the shorter term challenges around sales and customer relations? Moreover, given current economic headwinds, are companies truly prepared to reallocate precious corporate resources to such activities? Obviously pushing them can also prove somewhat risky for CMOs -- and today, no marketer wants to become part of our annual tenure statistics.

...

The real question is not, "Why should a CMO institute a culture of responsibility?" but "How?" Smart CMOs will stack the odds in their favor by taking these three steps.

1. Be real. Before anything else, the CMO needs to take stock of what the company is already doing and can credibly talk about (we've all witnessed the backlash against claims that ring hollow). In some cases these practices are so intrinsic to how a company operates, they can be difficult to recognize as anything beyond the ordinary. Catalog everything, and you'll have a chance to spot patterns and areas of achievement that will come as a surprise to even your most attentive stakeholders. Then work with your team to determine those areas of focus that promise the greatest return. Is it a good thing that Home Deport supports breast cancer research? Absolutely. But think how much more value accrues to Avon courtesy of its Walk for the Cure and other women-centered efforts. This area of focus works because Avon is a company that has long espoused female empowerment, self-sufficiency and mutual support. The purpose beyond profit is intimately aligned with its business, its brand and its customer base. And that makes it far more believable and effective.

2. Build your bench. No one can bring about institutional change on his own. Don't even try. Take a cue from "Survivor" and identify not only those people inclined to support you, but also those most likely to undermine your efforts. First, go for the low-hanging fruit, whether that be a sympathetic member of the C-suite or a group of junior colleagues passionately committed to the change you espouse. Don't forget that you'll need buy-in from above and below.

...

3. Deputize your employees. It's an irony of the Web 2.0 era that just as companies are trying so hard to spark conversations with consumers online, so many continue to clamp down on employees' public utterances. Don't dismiss the potential benefits of informal communication online: Encourage employees at all levels to engage the public in the inner workings of your company's culture and values. You might even push to make such communications a parameter in performance assessments. Based on our recent investigation, we believe that almost every company has pockets of passionate employees who would welcome the opportunity to jump on this bandwagon.

...

Whether you are a CMO or a CRO, it's your job to both create and promote your organization's socially responsible agenda, culture and behaviors. Don't miss the opportunity to let others help you with this critical imperative.

This is only an excerpt. Read full article here.

Originally posted in Advertising Age, December 08, 2009 

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Andrew Benett is global chief strategy officer of Euro RSCG Worldwide and co-CEO of Euro RSCG New York. Greg Welch is global leader for the consumer goods and services practice at executive-search firm Spencer Stuart. They are coauthors of the recently released "Good for Business: The Rise of the Conscious Corporation" (Palgrave Macmillan).

Is Your Fighter Brand Strong Enough to Win the Battle?

Five Steps to Ensure Success.

Fighter brands can be tempting, but their history is a discouraging roll-call of failed campaigns that inflicted little damage on targeted competitors and resulted, instead, in significant collateral losses for the company that launched them.

_______________________________

By Mark Ritson

It's an increasingly common dilemma for CMOs with brands in the middle or top end of the market. Should you tackle the threat head-on and reduce existing prices on your premium brand, knowing it will reduce profits and potentially damage brand equity? Or should you maintain prices, hope for better times to return, and in the meantime lose sales from customers and support from your CEO? With both of these alternatives often proving equally unpalatable, many marketers have decided on a third option: launching a fighter brand.

It's one of the oldest strategies in branding. Unlike traditional brands that are designed with a set of target consumers in mind, fighter brands are specifically created to combat low-price competitors that threaten to steal market share away from a company's premium brand. When fighter brands work, they not only defeat low-priced competitors, they also open up new markets for companies to pursue. My research into fighter brands reveals five key strategic steps you should take to ensure your fighter brand will emerge victorious.

The first step is to ask yourself if a fighter brand is really what your organization needs. Can you afford to spend precious resources on a new, low-priced brand at a time when perhaps you should focus investment and management attention on your existing portfolio of brands? Too often companies must embark on significant cost-cutting and re-pricing strategies for their premium brands after acknowledging that their respective fighter brand strategies have failed. These crucial strategic transformations are usually delayed for years while organizations conceive, execute and finally retract their fighter brands. Start your fighter-brand campaign by questioning whether you even need one in the first place.

If you decide to launch, the second step is to prevent cannibalization. Most fighter brands are created explicitly to win back customers who have switched to a lower-priced rival. Unfortunately, once deployed, many have an annoying tendency to also acquire customers from a company's own premium offering. The best fighter brand strategies, like Procter & Gamble's use of Luvs in the diaper category, not only factor in the degree to which the brand will steal from its sister brand, they also include strategies to minimize the amount of cannibalization incurred. P&G specifically removed innovative features from Luvs and invested heavily in premium brand Pampers to ensure that they attacked their respective competitors more than they fought with each other.

Third, create a fighter brand strong enough to bury the competition. Fear of cannibalization often leads companies to overprotect their premium brands at the expense of the combative potential of their fighter brand. Make sure you market-test your fighter brand, and be prepared to recalibrate its price and performance so it finds the sweet spot between cannibalizing your premium brand and failing to damage your rivals.
(...)

Fourth, give your fighter brand a sustainable business model. While a fighter brand is designed to attack a low-price rival, it also has to do so profitably, or it won't maintain those attacks long enough to eventually defeat its enemy. This was the key mistake General Motors made with Saturn, which successfully stole market share from Toyota and Honda, but incurred huge operating costs. With GM losing $3,000 for every Saturn car it sold, the company was forced to cut production costs. In turn, Saturn lost its edge, and Japanese imports resumed their domination of the U.S. market. (...)

The final step to fighter-brand success is early and frequent consumer focus. Normally, a successful brand has its genesis in the recognition of an unmet consumer need. But fighter brands originate with a competitor and the strategic success it has achieved, or threatens to achieve, against your organization. The DNA of a fighter brand is therefore potentially flawed from the very outset: It is derived from company deficiencies and competitor strengths, not a focus on consumers. To avoid a potentially fatal competitor orientation, apply the same degree of consumer focus for a fighter brand as you would any other launch.

(...)

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These are only a few excerpts. Read the full article here.

Originally published in Advertising Age CMO Strategy, October 13, 2009

Mark Ritson is a visiting associate professor of marketing at MIT Sloan School of Management. His article Should You Launch a Fighter Brand? appears in the October issue of Harvard Business Review.

An analysis of “a brand is”

A Brand Is a bundle of values and attributes that define a product or service’s value which is delivered to its customers, and the way of doing business which is the basis of a company’s relationships with its stakeholders

_______________________

By Denise Lee Yohn

The folks at BLACKCOFFEE have been inviting folks to complete the thought, “A Brand Is…” 

I was so fascinated to read the range of responses that I decided to take a closer look.  I wanted to see what common themes emerged among people’s definitions of “Brand” and what we could learn from them.

(...)

Here’s what I found:

1.    Some used the historical definition of a brand when branding was used on cattle, or suggested a brand is something which functions like a brand on cattle.

A brand is a label created by a company.—lix
A brand is a mark made by burning with a hot iron to attest manufacture or quality or to designate ownership—Bill
A brand is a different name for the same product—yo
A brand is a mark made by burning or otherwise, to indicate kind, grade, make, ownership—@SIGEPJEDI
A brand is a logo, a font, a long-standing celebrity spokesperson. It’s a memorable commercial. It’s a quality product with quality ingredients. It’s consistency.—Jocelyn Geboy
A brand is an iron tool heated in the fire and used to indicate ownership of cattle.—Stephen

2.    Some chose simply to say what a brand is not. (...)

3.    Some responses were negative towards brands. (...)

4.    Some people spoke of the financial value of a brand.

A brand is something you pay extra for—Mark
A brand is the difference between a 99¢ cup of coffee $4 venti, foamy, ristretto, doppio expresso con panna cappuccino.—Ken Peters
A brand is your most important asset if you own it or rely on it for income.—Kendall Langston

5.    Many people suggested a brand is “in the eyes of the beholder,” not under the control of the companies or marketers who promote it.

A brand is something companies try to control but often can’t—Jordan
A brand is perception—accidentalthinking
A brand isn’t what you say it is, it’s what consumers say it is – and you’d better listen, because they’re vocal.—Ken Peters
A brand is a set of associations the audience has and how they see your business activities—@alexisvandam
A brand is a user generated meaning—Luis Miranda
A brand is the sound of your voice coming out of someone else’s mouth—Bill Gathen
A brand is what people outside a company perceive it to be based on everything they hear, read and see about that company.—Lewis Green
A brand is a recipient built by marketers but filled with people’s thoughts, frustrations, use, likes, dislikes… experience.—Rafael Lizárraga
A brand is perception—@kandacehudspeth
A brand is a collective perception in the minds of consumers—@faris
A brand is whatever I perceive it to be—Arvind
A brand is perception—Kandace
A brand is the sum of audience associations and expectations, both tangible and intangible, that surround your offerings.—@ericbrody
A brand is what everyone else sees—vera
A brand is how you are perceived by others and you get the opportunity to build your brand up – or tear it down with every customer interaction.—Stephen Lynch
A brand is the perception of a product.—David Mitchel
A brand is what they say about you after you have left the room…—Rob Levinson
A brand is everything people believe about your product, real or imagined, true or false.—Roger Dooley – Neuromarketing
A brand is the collective views of the people who care.—David Meerman Scott
A brand is the idea held in the minds of the customers of the experience they’ll have, and in some case what they will become, by purchasing your product.—Steve Farnsworth (@TheRealPRMan)
A brand is your reputation, your legacy. It is how you are perceived by an audience that must find you relevant.—Lida Citroen, LIDA360.com
A brand is how you are perceived by others—Stephen Lynch
A brand is useless without consumers.—Bryant Florez
A brand is what the public believes it is, not what companies say it is.—Jonathan Moore
A brand is what customers buy, not what businesses sell.—David Brier
A brand is all that stuff in the head of people ‘out there’ that you often have very little control over—Jon Howard
A brand is about people’s reactions to an organization’s actions.—Mark Gallagher—Brand Expressionist®, BLACKCOFFEE
A brand is a perception in the minds of others. It’s what they think you are, not what you think you are. It can be an image, a voice, a personality or a product/category, but it boils down to whatever people think when they hear the name.—Janice Dottin
A brand is [mine]—Kevin Gatta

6.    Yet, others responses spoke about a brand as a company’s values and/or corporate culture.

A brand is vision-led culture.—Steve Barnett
A brand is much more than a logo. It should represent the core values of your company, product, or service. A good brand should lead your organization internally, and clearly represent what you stand for to consumers.—D.K. Smith
A brand is your company’s DNA.—Nicho Valadez
A brand is a set of values you agree with.—Michael Ancevic

7.  A lot of people’s responses were about feelings – either saying a brand evokes feelings or that a brand is a feeling itself.

A brand is the feeling I get when I think about a company.—Jon
A brand is my connection to the product.—Missy
A brand is a gut feeling—luke
A brand are the hopes and expectations you have of a product and the company that makes it.—edward boches
A brand is the emotion invoked by a product—Mansi
A brand is a feeling evoked by simply thinking of the brand name.—Greenwala
A brand is an evocation—http://sidere.wordpress.com
A brand is how it makes you feel—Ld
A brand is butterflies or knives in your stomach—David Armano
A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or organization.—Marty Neumeier, Neutron
A brand is a perception and lingering feeling that lives in the minds of your market. It’s based on emotion and defined by the experience people have with your brand.—Carol Chapman
A brand is an emotional short-cut to feeling good.—Anthony
A brand is what captures a consumer’s heart, not just a mind—Heidi Foreman
A brand is a collective emotional response.—Michael Troiano
A brand is something that evokes everything from DESIRE … to HATE.—Stephen Cocca
A brand is an expectation of receiving a feeling by way of an experience.—Tom Asacker

8.    Many people offered up answers describing what a brand does – e.g., generate demand. (...)

9.  Some explained a  brand functions like a memory tool.

A brand is something people remember.—EV
A brand is what you would want another person to remember first thing in the morning and think of just before he or she goes to bed.—Strategic Growth Advisors
A brand is the scar left behind on a person’s brain.—Zach K.
A brand is a concept seared into the mind.—Mark
A brand is like knowing exactly what to reach for when you cut your finger.—Jordan Julien
A brand is a product idea/vision that gets burned into consumers’ minds.—RcSim

10.    Others described the differentiating function of a brand.

A brand is what you have when everything else is equal.—Michael
A brand is unmistakable and unique.—@bradleyphoto
A brand is a developed and distinctive concept—-unknown
A brand is all you put on something that is equal to everything else in order to make it different—sg
A brand is a how people identify and differentiate goods and services.—Bobby
A brand is a token of difference.—Minko Dimov, creative director at protobrand
A BRAND IS THE RECOGNITION THAT ADDS SUPER-VALUE TO A PRODUCT THAT COULD DEFINE THE UNIQUENESS IN IT!!—Naveen Kumar
A brand is your face in this world to differentiates you from others—Karl Varley
A brand is a unique and deliverable claim of distinction supported by evidence of performance.—Ro Breehl

11.    A brand is an image or personality to some folks.

A brand is PERSONALITY!—Trish
A brand is the face you put on when you go out in public—Doug Besser
A brand quite simply is your voice, your vibe, your essence. It’s how you’d like to be perceived you in your ideal reality. There are three views: How you see yourself, how others see you and how you really appear. In many instances, companies use the equivalent of plastic surgery, attractive lighting and couture to craft their personae. Standards and guidelines aside, Few rarely “live” the brand, which in itself is a somewhat overused term.—David Weinstein
A brand is like a purpose-led person’s personality.—Harasha Bafana
A Brand is Attitude. It’s what you stand for, illustrate in visuals, sound like, how you act, what you stand for and how you communicate. It’s the sum of all impressions perceived in every brand channels.—Karsten Kjems
Very simple…an IMAGE of what your product/service is conveying to the masses.—Judy
A brand is your first impression—Joel Beukelman
A brand is what people see when they look at you and your product—Aaron Irizarry
A brand is more than a logo or a website. It’s a complete personality. One that drives the focus of the audience and engages them on a personal level.—Troy

12.    It’s an identity to others.

A brand is who you are.—John Turmelle
A brand is…expressing your own identity.—Kim Brown Irvis
A brand is establishing your sense of identity—MIke B
A brand is a part of someone’s identity—Mark Begin

13.  And a story or drama to still others.

A brand is a fairy tale.—@issamheddad
A brand is a story in which the author and the audience are both in control.—@mattquint
A brand is story or association in the mind of consumer.—Ritu Sinha
A brand is performance art.—Mike Wagner, CEO White Rabbit Group
A brand is part theater, part magic, part inspiration and whole-hearted passion. The stage is the mind of your audience. Let the production begin.—David Brier, Chief Gravity Defyer
A brand is a story told in the marketplace. Customers are telling your story with or without your help. Align the right brand message to the right channel of the consumer’s social grid to provide a multi-touch experience.—Matthew Kruchko, Applied Storytelling

14.    Some responses spoke of a brand as a promise.

A brand is a promise—@brennahanly
A brand is why I keep coming back, when that brand keeps its’ promise.—Dave Bradley
A brand is a promise, not something that happens when you spend mountains of money advertising.—Restaurant Marketing
A brand is delivering on a promise – perhaps inspired and initiated by a Company – but driven & actualized by the customer.—Robert Collins
A brand is a promise which when kept creates preference—Justin Basini (although not my defnition but I love it)
A brand is promise delivered to your customers.—Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO, Kodak
A brand is a promise fulfilled—Lauren Hughes
A brand is a promise of performance in the mind of the consumer.—Jack Birch
A brand is the equilibrium between people’s emotion and a company’s product, service; in short, a brand is the value a company promises to its clients—Colin
Some thought a brand is more of a relationship.
A brand is meaning & relationships—Juanjo
A brand is a mutual friend.—farfariya
A brand is a relationship driven by the customer experience—Fred Page
A brand is a relationship.—Dave Bradley
A brand is a long term profitable bond between an offering and a customer. This relationship must be based on economic, experiential & emotional value. Backed up by operational excellence & consistently monitored, measured and improved.—Marcus Osborne, Malaysia
A brand is a connection between the company and it’s customers—Stephan Lenting
A brand is a proxy for a relationship.—Ben Kunz
A brand is an experience to be shared with others or kept to ourselves. A brand is the personal interaction we have with a product, service or person. A brand is as fragile or as strong as friendship. If it breaks its promise, the relationship may be in jeopardy.—Kneale Mann

16.    And some offered that a brand is an experience.

A brand is what i experience when i get in touch with its products and with it communications efforts—maria
A brand is something you trust because it gives you lifestyle experience—http://scratchvertise.blogspot.com/
A brand is a customer experience — including perceptions, like, dislike or apathy — of a product or service.—jeff
A brand is the reaction one has to a company, product or service based on the sum total of experiences, directly or indirectly, said person has had with company, product or service.—Joel Mier
A brand is the entire experience a consumer has with every touch-point of your brand, the emotional connection they have with it and the interaction itself represents the opportunity for a brand to transact an experience with the consumer that will not only deliver the delight they expect but also provide them with unexpected value and satisfaction that is unique unto your brand alone.—John Walsh – FlyLite
A brand is a summary of thousands of touchpoints.—Tyrale
A brand is the aggregate of all the tangible and intangible interactions one can have with it.—John Schneider
A brand is the emotions, feelings, and thoughts generated from the experience of a place, idea, or product.—Seth Hosko
A brand is an experience that is shared between customers.—Kneale Mann

17.    Some responses didn’t fall into one of the above groupings – either because they spanned multiple themes, or because they introduced a different thought. (...)

18.    And some offered up definitions similar to mine:

(...)

My response:
A Brand Is… a bundle of values and attributes that define:
•  a product or service’s value which is delivered to its customers, and
•  the way of doing business which is the basis of a company’s relationships with its stakeholders

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This is only an excerpt from Denise Lee Yohn's original post.

Read more here.

Published on Brand As Business Bites (TM), on Sept. 6th, 2009

BruTwestival

Be sure to be there ... !

True Marketing Doesn't Just Sell the Story

If CMOs are truly to be growth champions for their corporations, they can't simply rely on traditional marketing and brand-building techniques.

To Achieve Top-Line Growth, CMOs Must Design New Businesses

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by Robert C. Wolcott

In nearly a decade of research, my colleagues and I have found that established companies increasingly are successfully building new businesses on a repeated basis, a process we call corporate entrepreneurship. Marketing -- true marketing, not just selling the story but helping create it -- must play a central role. True marketing is about understanding current and potential customers better than anyone else, translating those insights into powerful new offerings and experiences, and creating ever more effective and efficient paths to market.

In other words, marketers must design new businesses, rather than just launch new products.

Business design is the essence of marketing. It is also the most vital component for successful, game-changing innovation. Apple understands this. It doesn't just create new products. Marketing prowess played a much greater role in the iPod and iPhone's success than technology, and I don't just mean great ad campaigns. With the iPod, Apple showed it understood better than competitors what customers would demand. It created an exceptional (and legal!) music-downloading experience and built the marketplace infrastructure, such as iTunes and Apple retail locations.

Our research shows that innovation can apply to any aspect of how a company does business. While that's not surprising, what should be most impressive to marketing professionals is the range of factors marketing organizations can affect when it comes to creating new businesses.

Obviously one of the most commonly thought of types of innovation is a breakthrough new product or service. P&G's Crest SpinBrush was introduced in 2001 and became the world's best-selling electric toothbrush by 2002 based on its ease of use, portability and affordability. New products and services are still fundamental.

But there are other, perhaps more subtle and equally powerful ways companies can create new value. Starbucks, of course, convinced Americans to pay $4 for coffee, and it didn't invent anything, at least not in terms of technology. Its innovation was about an exceptional customer experience, for which customers paid a premium. It was a whole new mission that changed American culture.

Here are types of innovation where marketing should play a central role:

1. Customer experience
   Customer-experience innovation isn't limited to consumer companies. If you have customers, you have a customer experience, whether you know it or not. Global cement behemoth Cemex created a satellite GPS dispatch system to radically enhance its responsiveness to customer orders, taking the industry standard from more than 24 hours down to 30 minutes in many markets.
2. Customers
   Customer innovation involves discovering new customer segments and/or uncovering unmet or unarticulated needs. Virgin Mobile became a successful late entrant into the U.S. cellular market by focusing on the underserved segment of Americans under 30. Within three years of its launch, it had attracted more than 4 million subscribers in very competitive markets.
3. Value capture
   Value-capture innovation involves discovering new revenue streams, innovative pricing mechanisms and new ways to get paid by customers or partners. Google's paid search and Allstate's accident-forgiveness feature on auto-insurance policies are innovative ways in which companies have captured value in unique ways. (Allstate charges more for the original policy, while consumers no longer feel victimized when accidents send their rates skyward.)
4. Presence
   Presence innovation creates new distribution channels or innovative points of presence. Health clinics in Walmarts and pop-up retail stores are current examples of innovating presence.
5. Networking
   Networking innovation entails the enhancement of intelligence, flexibility or effectiveness through technology-supported networking. McDonald's Moms' Quality Correspondents community offers selected mothers the opportunity to communicate with the fast-food giant and each other both online and in person.
6. Brand
   Brand innovation leverages or extends the brand in creative ways. Virgin is probably the most-recognized example.

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Robert C. Wolcott is the founder and executive director of the Kellogg Innovation Network at the Kellogg School of Management, where he teaches innovation management and strategy. His book, with Michael J. Lippitz, "Grow From Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation" (McGraw-Hill), will be available this fall.

This is only an excerpt. Read Robert C. Wolcott's full article here.

Published in Advertising Age / CMOStrategy : September 02, 2009