Category Archives: Branding

News and observations concerning branding and brand management

Integrated Biased

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We’re all biased, even those who allegedly are not. We come by it innocently enough because our biases were taught to us. Some we picked up listening to our parents. Weaker minds are warped by politicians and pundits. Instincts are actionable biases learned through Darwinian selection. Brand marketing’s primary job is to teach bias to buyers and cause customers to favor one brand over others. But then again, I’m a little biased on the subject. Stripped of fluffy pseudo-psych speech, biasing is a Maslow tool, designed primarily to avoid risk and in more rare cases obtain self actualization or esteem.  Marketing’s job is to determine which direction (safety or self) will motivate buyers and then teach customers their newfound bias. Apple is masterful at instilling self-esteem bias in gadget buyers. IBM remains very good at selling safety bias to CIOs. Donald Trump is biased about his ego, and that manages … Continue reading →

Biasing Buyers

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The oddest request I ever received from the head of a sales organization was “Can you stop promoting the product for a couple of months?” It was an old company with a new product that had gone nowhere before I took the reigns of their marketing department. I established a strategy that relied on precise market segmentation, focusing on the top two segments, then making buyers and strategic partners believe we were the only serious product in the market. Sales jumped 26% in the first year, we chased two competitors completely out of our target segments, and had a sales close rate above 80%. The poor sales folks couldn’t keep up with incoming calls. The strategy was to bias the opinions of buyers. This required them believing that we not only cured the generic problem (which our competitors did too) but we also cured the buyers personal job-related problem (in … Continue reading →

Authentically

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It was an authentic question. I shared coffee last week with a former boss who now is a VP at Google. He was surprised to learn that I founded a marketing strategy consultancy and had been successful at it ever since leaving his employ. He was curious how I promoted the business and was shocked to learn that approximately half of Silicon Strategies Marketing’s new clients come from the web. It all hinges on authenticity. Since the earliest days of snake oil, buyers have been wary of product claims. Anyone who has ever bought a used car is even more sensitive. Inexperienced marketers make unsubstatiated claims, and by doing so trash their corporate brands. The entire product world — both B2C and B2B — at times seem to lack any authenticity. People, pre-programmed as they now are, distance themselves from offerings that appear inauthentic. Which oddly enough explains iPods and … Continue reading →

Faking Authenticity

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It is odd to encounter plain spoken and seemingly honest politicians. Being a professional cynic, I doubt nearly everything. Having been a political animal my entire adult life, I’m doubly cynical about anyone who campaigns to achieve power. To be disappointed in broken political promises is a sign of naivety. To believe any political brand shows trust where there should be none. So to witness a handful of governors and other candidates speaking bluntly, without equivocation, and taking positions normally considered poisonous … and then watch their poll numbers rise … is both a lesson in marketing and possibly a sign of the Apocalypse. Authenticity matters in all matters. If you could not take your spouse’s word, then your marriage would be destined for the dumpster (which always makes me wonder about Bill and Hillary). When corporations promote products that do not deliver, the acquired lack of authenticity becomes fatal. … Continue reading →

Channeling Brands

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A local Sprint store sale punk demonstrated Siri on the new Apple iPhone 4S by saying “Siri, I’m drunk” to which Siri relied “There are 15 taxis in the vicinity …” This demo would kill Steve Jobs. Other customers on the sales floor were a mixture of amused and offended, though before the demo all had come cash-in-hand to see the new iGizmo. Each now wore a creepy expression on their mugs — similar to the ones they likely wore upon discovering the Santa Myth (which is not to be confused with the Santana Myth which claims that Carlos can sing). The iPhone’s image had been tarnished by a frat boy stunt in a place trying to sell iPhones. Apple’s G-rated brand was slammed with an R-rated demo, and nobody left that Sprint store with a 4S. Growing or preserving a brand through channels is slightly more difficult than balancing the … Continue reading →

Cult Brands

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A cult is a religion with no political power. Tom Wolfe Cults are good in the context of marketing, though not so much in real life. Religions are slightly more respectable, though each views the others as large cults. Yet the mechanics of cults, religions and matters of faith are informative in shaping a corporate brand. The difference between fanbois and followers is thin. In the early iPhone era, Apple customers were called a cult. Early adopters of iPhones were evangelical to the point of annoying. Regardless of personal motivation, iPhone fans fawned and proselytized the new portable computer. While their numbers were small and their zeal was large, the cult moniker was apropos. With relatively no market (political) power, the iPhone faithful were as bedeviling as Jehovah’s door knockers. Today, iEverything is a religion because the masses have adopted most, and sometimes all of the doctrine. Cults, religions and … Continue reading →

Badly Branded

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Novell knew how to murder brands. A recent lunch with a long-term friend and SuSE Linux leader reminded me of the problems faced with messaging and branding in both commodity and fragmented markets. Linux is a commodity, and was intended to be such. The lack of differentiation in the core product was Linux’s primary selling point to shops that stayed stuck on one or another UNIX derivative or even proprietary operating systems. Creating unique brands for commodities can be tough, though we did have success with SuSE’s brand before Novell diluted it. The Linux market is becoming even trickier as advances in deployment and scalability expand. Today’s global content start-ups are rushing to EC2, RackSpace and RightScale in order to avoid growing pains while chanting hadoop and nosql. Less data-intensive operations use traditional clustering or stand-alone servers. Some people need real-time Linux, and a few folk want stripped-down distros for … Continue reading →