Image credit Charis Tsevis: http://www.tsevis.com/
Branding: Is it Magic, or BS?
There are generally two ways people react to articles about branding:
Either they’re SUPER PUMPED UP about it because the sun rises and falls with branding. They believe that branding can make or break a company, drive demand, cause sales spikes, and are generally drinking the “branding” Koolaid.
Or, if you’re not them you’ve probably rolled your eyes at least once by now…
Luckily, you’re both right! Or at least neither of you are wrong, if you just change the way you think about “brand”.
Stick with me, if you’re part of group 2 you may find a new appreciation.
What is branding?
I think most marketers have misconceptions about “branding” — across both groups.
Branding isn’t just about looks.
Design is definitely a big part of it, but I think people who are very aesthetically/visually oriented (you’re probably in group 1) have a tendency to obsess only on that.
I think the branding “skeptics” maybe only see this face of brand. It’s certainly the flashiest, most visible part of any conversation about it.
But true branding geeks know that there is a lot more to it than that.
A good brand comes from data. It comes from deep strategy sessions on the target market. Often a complex set of surveys are given, and metrics tracked, and branding wizards (or market research magicians) spit out an amazingly comprehensive guide to “the target customer”.
At the same time, good brand comes from the heart. The customers on the other end of the screen aren’t just numbers, and branding geeks need to understand them in a very deep way. Branding wizards can tell you what shows you like, what cars you probably drive, where you like to spend your free time, how you see other competitors in the category, where their product should fit into the mix.
Good branding is actually about knowing who you’re for.
To know who you’re for, you need to be able to tell THOSE perfect customers why and how you’re perfect.
And in that way, branding is messaging.
Why should I care about branding?
“Words are triggers. They trigger the meanings which are buried in the mind… Most people are unsane. They’re not completely sane and they’re not completely insane. They’re somewhere in between.
Unsane people make up their minds and then find facts to ‘verify’ their opinion. Or even more commonly, they accept the opinion of the nearest ‘expert’,’ and then they don’t have to bother with the facts at all. (Word of mouth.)
So you see the power of the psychologically right name. A Mustang looks sportier, racier, and faster than if the car had been called the turtle.”
— Al Ries, Jack Trout (Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind)
Your prospects have their own words that pop up when they come across your brand name too.
Branding wizards look for something called a “semantic differential” to help businesses figure out what words are naturally coming to your prospects mind when they describe you.
I’m sure you see how capitalizing on the words customers naturally use to describe you would be very powerful.
But you can also use it to find your position in your market.
Instead of figuring out what adjectives your market uses to describe you, you’re going to try to see how they talk about your competition.
How can you use this information to help you?
In the book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, marketing strategists Al Ries and Jack Trout introduce a French saying Cherchez le Creneau, it means search for the hole.
You can use this information on how others view your competition to create a “unique positioning statement” (aka “unique selling proposition”) and find a niche for your business.
“Look for the hole”, then fill it.
What’s in a “brand”?
When you’re building a business, you’ve learned that people are sorting you into “one place” in comparison to your competitors.
Everything from the product in the box, to the color choice, font choice, design, to the packaging, to the retailers it’s featured in, to the messaging put out in marketing about the product is a factor in how they’re judging you.
All of those are tools that a skilled branding wizard will use to signal and attract the “persona” they’ve discovered represents your best customers.
As time goes on, your brand starts to symbolize something to your market.
It’s almost like baggage in a way.
The easiest way to see it is in the brands who have gone “generic”. By that I mean their brand names have become the defacto, generic word for the whole product category.
Kleenex. Xerox. Polaroid. Coke.
To understand the power of “going generic”, you just have to look at how Coke capitalizes on it.
In the 1970’s, McCann Erickson crafted the slogan “The Real Thing” for coke. It’s never necessarily great to proclaim “We’re #1!”, especially if you’re not the category leader. Even when you are, as Coke is, it still reads as bragging and can be a turnoff to customers.
“The real thing”, on the other hand is the standard by which all others are judged. In contrast, everything else is an imitation of the “real thing”.
This is the power of “brand”.
How a name can come to symbolize an entire idea.
This “real thing” strategy isn’t only available to Coke, big brands, and category leaders though. It’s really a claim that is available in any industry, you just need to be the first to do it.
Here’s another example of how a brand is using “the real thing” today:
How HUGE Companies Are Killing Their Brands
The true power of a brand is that just by saying a word, or a few words, can trigger a HUGE chain of memories and emotions around that product.
“Coke” doesn’t just bring to mind cola anymore. Coke is America, Coke is happiness, Coke is friendship, Coke is Christmas.
Coke has an avalanche of baggage tied to it from a lifetime of jingles and ad messaging.
Just like you can build up these associations though, you can destroy them.
Many companies are doing irreparable damage to their brands by FWMTS — forgetting what made them successful.
Some big companies are so focused on driving new revenue, that they have turned almost exclusively to creating new products to grow their toplines.
Instead of focusing on building deeper connections with their core customer base, they are brand stretching and watering down their brands.
Brand stretching is using the same brand name to market a product in a different product category.
You see this all the time. Our grocery stores are ballooning with ~20,000 new SKUs coming to grocery stores every year according to the USDA. This is the reason why.
What’s wrong with brand stretching?
The decision to brand extend often looks a little something like this, according to marketing strategists Al Ries and Jack Trout:
“We make Dial soap, a great product that gets the biggest share of the bar soap market. When our customers see Dial deodorant, they’ll know it comes from the makers of the great Dial soap.
Furthermore, Dial is a deodorant soap. Our customers will expect us to produce a high quality underarm deodorant.”
The problem is that the product with the stronger position is going to win, and be top of mind for the consumer.
When your friend says “Hand me the Dial”, you’re not thinking of deodorant.
No longer can the prospect just say “Dial” if they want soap. You’ve just weakened your brand position.
Another problem (although slightly less of one) is line extending.
Line extending is using the same product name to create a product in the same category, usually in new flavors or packaging sizes.
Line extending can sometimes have a good purpose, but I would argue that the closer you stick to the original product — the better.
Let’s look at an example of how Coke could have line extended wrong:
In the 1920’s there were two popular sodas in America: Cola, and a new lemon-lime soda.
Coke as we know has always been the industry leader in colas, and it was already facing a battle on one front against Pepsi through the late 1800’s.
Then a new style of soda came onto the scene in 1920, a lemon-lime soda called 7-Up.
7-Up positioned themselves as the “Uncola”, and this very successful positioning strategy was really taking a chunk out of Coke’s sales.
Now Coke found itself fighting battles on two fronts, and Coke was hurting.
They had a vital decision to make:
How are they going to handle these 7-Up guys???
Would it have made sense for Coke to release “Lemon Lime Coke”?
NO.
Here’s why:
To the soda customer, “Coke” is the liquid INSIDE the can. It’s the sweet, dark cola inside of the glass.
It would have honestly freaked people out if they ordered a coke, and some clear weird looking liquid came out.
Maybe that seems silly, but don’t forget that Crystal Pepsi was universally hated. Like, literally every time they try to bring it back. (Stop trying to make CLEAR happen, Pepsi…)
Fun fact: Actually, Coke did make a “clear” cola product in the 1940’s — but it was by request of the Soviet Union (under some weird circumstances), not a business decision they made because they actually thought it was a good idea.
Anyway, back to Coke’s battle.
Luckily at this point in history, Coke made the right decision to not line extend.
Instead they created…
This was the right decision, because the great “Coke” name carries SO MUCH baggage with it.
Developing a separate brand allows you to become a leader in a new category. When you take one brand, and stretch it too thin you dilute what that brand stands for.
You can still see the consequences of this decision playing out today.
When Coke introduced Sprite in 1961, 7-Up had a few decades head start.
Today, the Wall Street Journal reports that Sprite is one of the most valuable brands.
Sprite has completely overtaken 7-Up as the leading American lemon-lime brand, and 7-Up has all but disappeared.
So, What’s a Brand?
Brand is knowing what you’re about, who you’re for, and how to get those people jazzed up about you.
I think branding can be overlooked by some harder “numbers” marketers, but it’s not “all flash and no substance”.
Proper branding is being able to understand, and harness the power of the concepts that people naturally tie to you — and being able to talk right back to them in their own terms, on their own time.
The bigger you try to stretch that, you’re no longer THIS for THOSE people. You’re devolving into SOMETHING for ANYONE.
The fact is that when you stretch yourself too thin, you are rarely successful.
Reece’s has nothing on General Mills.
Dial is NOT a leading brand of deodorant.
These extensions are only sucking attention and resources away from their successful core products.
Instead of focusing on selling soap better, or peanut butter cups better, they are focusing on peddling trinkets as a side hustle.
What should you do instead?
REVERSE Line Extension
The key to successful reverse line extension-ing is “same product, same package, same name, same label” says Trout. Only a different use.
This is called broadening the base.
Johnson’s baby shampoo applied the benefits of its gentle formula and it’s now also a leading brand of adult shampoo.
If Johnson & Johnson had line extended, and introduced an adult shampoo — do you think they would have beaten out Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders brand?
NO.
They would be dividing their attention (and resources) between their base baby product, and this new less successful venture.
You’re not saying that your product is for “everybody”, just using the benefits of your core group (babies) to communicate with another group (adults) by drawing parallels between their needs.
You also have to be the first of your category to reverse line extend in this way, if another baby shampoo brand attempted to do the same it wouldn’t be nearly as successful. It’s also obviously easier when you are the industry leader of your original category, like Johnson’s baby shampoo was.
Putting it All Together
So you need more sales.
Before you just up and create a new product, for a different audience, and slap your name across it — check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Do you know who you serve?
A surprising number of business owners don’t.
Before you try and make a new product, invest some time in getting to know your existing customers better.
- What problem(s) were they trying to solve with your product?
- What solutions have they tried before?
- How do satisfied customers specifically describe how the product helped them?
- Do your unsatisfied customers have anything in common? (Maybe you can change your messaging to speak more towards your core group, and less to this group)
- Where do they “hang out”? What personalities do they follow, are they podcast listeners or YouTube viewers, what websites do they go to, do they read any magazines, what stores do they go to, what brands do they like?
- Have clear demographic information. Is your customer more commonly a man or a woman? What’s their job title? How many people are in their households?
- How are people finding you? (You can spend a LOT of time on just this step)
Find out who you serve, and what they’re saying about you.
Pick out which concepts you want to keep, plan content to emphasize those characteristics.
Are there concepts you don’t like? Plan to remedy it, replace it with an opposite (more positive) adjective (and be prepared to emphasize that characteristic in your communications), or double down on only the aspects you like.
For some people, marketing begins and ends with brand. They can endlessly tinker with the colors, the feel, the look, “the vibe” even before the product is ready to be shipped.
For other people, brand is the last thing on their mind. Sure it’s nice if everything looks shiney and cohesive, but building out a funnel or calculating the market size is WAY more important than putting together a brand style guide.
Really, branding is a pretty holistic approach to marketing — applied to a specific area.
Start with who you serve. Understand the network of concepts and ideas they have surrounding your product. Use that to communicate.
When you want to serve someone else? Create something for them.
Instead of slapping your logo across a different problem, for a different market, develop a unique solution.
You can’t be the “leader” in 2+ categories. When someone says “YOUR BRAND”, the strongest association will always drown out the other weak extensions.
Start with who you serve. Create a unique positioning statement. Develop a new branded product to have the best chance at becoming a leader in that category.