Brand is important even when not changing your name.
If your goal is to grow your market share and your category is relatively mature then
re-evaluating your brand is as important as your advertising messages. Eighty
percent of our clients change their brand but never change the name of their
product, service or company. The only other thing that changes is their bottom line.
Brand Is A Contract
Think about the dollars that you spend on marketing and advertising and compare
that to the allocation you have made on your brand strategy. If your fiscal goals are
not being met it is possible that the problem is not in your ad copy, media mix or
sales force but in your brand permissions. In the DNA of your brand resides its
permission to be important to the customer you wish to influence. Without a full and
complete understanding of your brand, much of your marketing dollars are being
wasted.
Because we are all business executives, we understand that more often than not, the
profit we will make on a new business deal is decided when the contract is signed.
For this reason, we have our legal departments pour over the fine print before we
affix our signatures and we sign it only when we are sure that every “i” is dotted and
every “t” is crossed. Your brand has the same importance as that legal contract in
influencing your marketing fortunes. As a matter of fact, it would be helpful to
think about your brand charter in exactly those terms — a contract — because it is a
contract with your target market. If you don’t have a brand charter my point has
already been made.
Permission
Your brand is an umbrella and all that you can rightfully promise to the target
market needs to fit nicely under that umbrella. Your advertising certainly needs to
be different and it needs to be important but it also needs to be believed as “lawful”
within the permission of your brand. Think about Toyota — they have enjoyed long
reputation as a reliable builder of solid automobiles and they have successfully
marketed low cost vehicles all the way up to the pricy 4Runner. However, when they
decided to build a luxury automobile they realized that the Toyota brand could
never command its rightful price-point if it was sold as a Toyota. The brand did not
have permission to sell it. As a result, they launched Lexus, a new brand with
permission to do exactly that and in less then a decade, Lexus has gained entry into
the considered set of luxury car purchases right next to Mercedes and BMW. The
same Toyota designers might very well design the Lexus automobile and it might
even be built in the same factory but from a brand perspective it is “a different
beer.”
If you can gain a clear understanding of your brand from the perspective of your target audience and if you can define you brand’s permission in stark and definite
terms, you will come face-to-face with all of the opportunity and limitations that are
inherent in your brand today and limitations are important. EXCLUSION is the price
of brand clarity and it is the currency you need to bank on.
A great brand tells the target audience who it is for AND whom it is not for —
because a brand that is for everyone is not a brand at all; it is a description of your
category. Clarity is your ally and brand management is its cost. Get it right and you
can grab market share right out from under your competitor’s nose. Miss it and you
might just as well change your name.
|
Tom Dougherty |