Category Archives: Branding

News and observations concerning branding and brand management

Basic Bodhi

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“I wasn’t aware you existed.” Sounds like something my congressman would say to me. Brand awareness is the minimal quantum of connection with customers, and the foundation for every other marketing maneuver. If they don’t know you exist, then there is no hope they will adopt your product. You must achieve brand awareness before customers can even approach brand knowledge, acceptance, preference, loyalty, advocacy and religion (and if you need some religious indoctrination on all things branding, flip to chapter six of the Start-up CEO’s Marketing Manual). However, “awareness” has proven to be a tenebrous term. In branding, “awareness” constitutes being aware that a product exists, what value it provides and a notion of why the customer should give a durn. For example, I’m aware that Lady Gaga exists, but even after multiple brand exposures, I still cannot identify her value or why I shouldn’t change the channel. Granted, middle aged marketing gurus are … Continue reading →

Not-so-great Expectations

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A rather Glassy lady said “I’d rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed.” She should have been in marketing. Marketers and brand managers are in the expectation business. Part of their job entails defining and setting the expectations of their customers or their market. Since expectations are the state of anticipating something, we marketing mavens create the customer’s state anticipation. When reality doesn’t match what is anticipated, odd and dangerous things occur. If you don’t understand this, just think back to your first blind date. When defining the expectations you want customers to have, you can aim too low, too high, just right or aim for something entirely different. Only the last two work and the latter is the trickiest, though often most profitable. Generally speaking, setting customer expectations a little low is a good strategy. Pleasantly surprised people become repeat customers. If their expectations are consistently exceeded, even by … Continue reading →

Mystique Mistakes

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An ounce of image is worth a pound of performance. This is sadly true, and for marketing mavens it is a cursed blessing. The fact is that people buy image. This occurs in faddish B2C markets and function-driven B2B sectors. Image is often the single most motivating factor in a purchase decision. From Louis Vuitton to Barack Obama to IBM, sales are made on the strength of image. Craft a certain image and people will lob lucre at you or elect you to high office. Fail that image and disaster is almost certain. Reliance on mystique is both the essence and the failure of branding. Mystique is defined as “an aura of mystical power … a framework of beliefs constructed around a person or object, endowing the person or object with enhanced value or profound meaning.” In no sense of the word does mystique equate with reality. Many Hollywood stars … Continue reading →

B2B Emotive Marketing

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Emotions are valuable, and value is emotional. Value is what you advertise. Ignore features, benefits, functions, the color of the paint on the server chassis or even ROI. These may help create value or close deals, but they are not value itself, and people buy value. Your boss doesn’t value your protoplasm, and if he does there may be a sexual harassment suit in his future. He values what you can help him achieve, which in turn should be what your company needs to achieve. The marketing question is what is valued? Rarely is it a functional process or a technical specification. Outcome is the center of value. Take AwayFind, a company that alerts you when you have an important email waiting. They have many features which are not valuable. The outcome however – to not be enslaved by needing to constantly check email – is very valuable. It is … Continue reading →

Fiat Folly

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My dictionary defines fiat as “an arbitrary decree,” which makes redundant a recent Fiat motorcar advertising campaign. A stylish bimbette and a bubble car landed in my lap this morning, all combined in a ten panel fold-out mailer from Fiat that pimped their 500 series micro machine, which looks like the bastard child of a Mini Cooper and a Volkswagen Beetle. Therein Fiat attempts to differentiate this vehicle by linking various models of their rolling soap bubble with various luxury brand names (Note to Fiat: It isn’t a luxury vehicle if you drive with your knees in your chin). The Gucci edition was shown with the slinky blonde draped across the hood, her impossibly long legs escaping from abbreviated shorts and her top strategically unzipped. Ironically the photo caption read “European model shown” which could have applied to the vehicle or the vamp. I have no idea from what rented … Continue reading →

The HP (Hard) Way

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The only organization better than HP at losing customers was Heaven’s Gate. I have fond memories of Bill and Dave’s HP, which in no way resembles the current Palo Alto pack. When I wrangled HP manufactured big iron mumble-mumble-mumble years ago, they were reasonably good about customer support though their byzantine processes for achieving such was an exotic form of auto-masochism. Even eating lunch at the HP cafeteria was a rough slog. It has gone down hill since. Let’s keep in mind that service is a product, and like all products must meet the criteria of the customer. This includes price, quality and — most important — availability. The on-site service agreement for my laptop recently expired, and I went to HP’s web site to renew it. This was my first mistake since HP’s various business divisions and poorly integrated web sites are slightly more complex than the federal tax … Continue reading →

Emotion Promotion

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Even heartless people have emotions. Well, perhaps not politicians, but people to who you sell products do. Even battle-hardened CTOs have emotions that can be leveraged to market your wares. Identifying and correctly touching those emotions is a tricky process and one that can backfire fatally if you choose wrong. It is the difference between smiling at the pretty girl at the end of the bar and stalking her … two different emotional responses producing either romance or incarceration. Silicon Strategies Marketing’s most popular white paper is “Selling Empathy – the power of positioning and branding.” In it we discuss how emotions work in marketing technology products to IT people, and how emotional drivers should become part of your brand. Every human brain, aside from those in drug addicts and congressmen, has left and right hemispheres that process all we know about the world around us. Emotions swirling in the … Continue reading →