BRAND MANAGEMENT

Brand and corporate names as vital assets to organizations

Brand and corporate names as vital assets to organizations

Introduction

Effectives practices are critical if a brand wishes to avoid getting lost in the clutter of an over communicated society. The four key steps to differentiation are as follows: find a logical and strategic difference “then use it to set up a benefit for your customer”; create a differentiating message that makes good sense in the context of the relevant category; make the differentiating idea real by demonstrating the necessary credentials to support it; and convey the difference to prospects by utilizing “every aspect of your communications”.

Furthermore, attributes such as quality, creativity, price, and breadth of line are considered poor ideas for a differentiation strategy. In contrast, the authors proposed the following as effective paths to differentiating ideas: being first into the prospect's mind with a new idea, owning a significant product attribute with focus, forming a leadership position or owning a category (the most powerful differentiating idea), highlighting a brand's heritage, specializing in a particular product or market, emphasizing significant others who prefer the product, stressing how a product is made, and being the hottest or latest in some significant way. Commenting on differentiation and how over communication presents great challenges to marketers aiming to ensure that prospects receive and process the new information sent to them.

The mind has no room for what's new and different unless it's related to the old. This view means that it can be highly effective to penetrate the prospect's mind by retying the connections that already exist and determine the best way to “[hook] your product, service or concept to what's already there”. Countless contemporary ads offer vivid evidence of this approach.

Relaunching your brand

Considering the incomprehensible amount of clutter people face each day, any approach in combating over communication must also consider what types of messages are most likely to cut through. In developing approaches to position one's product, the best solution to battling over communication is utilizing “the oversimplified message” as part of the positioning process.

First, you build on what you have got. As always, that starts with questions such as:

What is your current customer base?

What are their demographics?

Why, to the best of your knowledge, do they choose your product or service rather than your competitors'?

When they choose your competitors' product, why do they do so? What are those guys offering or doing that you are not?

Can you - or should you - replicate their offer? (Improved, of course.)

Once you have your baseline information, then you start asking next-level questions, such as:

What demographics or customer groups currently out there are we not pursuing?

What do we have or offer that might be of interest to them?

Lf they are not buying from us from whom are they buying?

From that viewpoint, you start looking at your future:

When we look at other companies and the ways they are building their businesses - In and out ...