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Track your Brand’s Twitter Buzz with a new Alert App

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And it’s free! Everyone’s favourite price!

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

A free email service alerts you about your brand (or your competitor’s brand) activity across the internet. This includes results from Twitter, making it an essential tool for any communications professional.

Talkwalker, a social listening and analytics company, today announced the launch of Talkwalker Alerts. It delivers mentions of any keyword (i.e. brand name, hashtag, competitor) across the internet straight to your inbox. The revamped product also features brand mentions from Twitter, making it the only free alerts service that delivers social media mentions as they happen.

“Social media is where the action is today. If you want to stay on top of news and social conversations about your brand or products, you have to constantly check all major social platforms. We’re trying to make that process easier for you by bringing all brand mentions from across the internet to your inbox automatically,” said Robert Glaesener, CEO of Talkwalker. “Our aim is to empower marketers around the world and help make their job easier. This is why we’ve decided to keep the tool free and make it essential for communication professionals by adding the most important Twitter results.”

Users will have access to the tweets that matter most, as the service delivers the conversations with the highest engagement. Aside from Twitter, users can also opt to receive alerts from websites (news), discussion forums and blogs. This will enable digital marketers and PR professionals to keep track of their brands and keywords online, and let everyone monitor the web for their topics of choice, with a special emphasis on social media.

Social media presents a very accurate picture of the buzz generated around a brand or a topic. Talkwalker Alerts is the only product in the market to include alerts from a major social network such as Twitter in its results, thus enhancing the value of the service considerably.

To try Talkwalker Alerts out for yourself, click on this link: www.talkwalker.com/alerts

 

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Want to Make Money Investing on the Stockmarket? Then Ignore Media Experts

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“Experts” in the media get it so wrong so often you have to wonder what’s going on.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Research shows that investing in the stocks least-favoured by analysts yields five times more than buying the most recommended.

But we often defer to experts, especially those in the media. So, we listen to them, then assume taking their stock analysts suggestions would make us better off than doing the exact opposite, right? Well, no.

Recent research by Nicola Gennaioli and colleagues shows that the best way to gain excess-returns would be to invest in the shares LEAST FAVOURED by analysts. They computed that, during the last thirty-five years, investing in the 10% of stock analysts were most optimistic about would have yielded on average 3% a year. By contrast, investing in the 10% of stocks analysts were most pessimistic about would have yielded a staggering 15% a year.

Gennaioli and colleagues shed light on this puzzle with the help of cognitive sciences and, in particular, using Kahneman and Tversky’s concept of representativeness. Decision makers, according to this view, overweight the representative features of a group or a phenomenon.

After observing strong earnings growth, analysts think that the firm may be the next Google. “Googles” are in fact more frequent among firms experiencing strong growth, which makes them representative. The problem is that “Googles” are very rare in absolute terms. As a result, expectations become too optimistic, and future performance disappoints.

“In a classical example, we tend to think of Irishmen as redheads because red hair is much more frequent among Irishmen than among the rest of the world”, Prof. Gennaioli says. “Nevertheless, only 10% of Irishmen are redheads. In our work, we develop models of belief formation that embody this logic and study the implication of this important psychological force in different domains.”

So it looks like the talking heads in the media needs to give us better advice, or we need to forget them and trust our instincts.

 

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You Will Sell More to Millennials and Centennials by Personalisation of Your Marketing

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A new report finds that nine out of ten marketers need help improving their personalisation strategy.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers

Personalisation is a good strategy for engaging consumers of all ages, BUT younger consumers find it especially important. Nearly half of centennials, age 18-21, (45 percent) and millennials, age 22-37, (49 percent) make purchases because of the level of personalisation within a brand’s email content, meaning that personalisation translates into revenue

This is according to a new study, which shows that two in five marketers don’t tailor their initiatives to audiences of different age groups. So, marketers potentially miss out on substantial engagement opportunities as consumers demand more customised content.

The report found that just 11 percent of marketers claim they can personalise all content. The study also found about only 27 percent can execute basic personalisation tactics, such as using a customer’s name or birthday. Another 26 percent can personalise based on browsing or purchase history, but say it’s tedious to do so. And 17 percent of marketers state they cannot personalise content because they still have trouble collecting and analysing data.

“Personalisation isn’t limited to a customer’s name; and marketers who go beyond this simple data point in order to customise communications will reap the benefits,” said Michael Fisher, president of Yes Lifecycle Marketing. “Marketers should tailor content to their customers’ habits and demographics. Fairly easy-to-implement adjustments, such as triggered campaigns and lifecycle messaging, will go far.”

Of the brands that personalise content based on age, two-thirds do so via email. Social media (38 percent) and website (35 percent) are the three channels that marketers are most likely to personalise content based on age.

“The takeaway from the data is obvious: consumers want marketers to personalise content based on their individual characteristics and attributes, and marketers still struggle to do so,” said Michael Iaccarino, CEO and chairman of Infogroup. “To alleviate personalisation woes, marketers need a partner that can help them enhance and leverage their customer data in order to improve personalisation, and as a result, increase revenue.”

Additional findings from the report include:

  • Less than a quarter of marketers personalise display (24 percent) or direct mail (23 percent) content based on customer age.
  • Driving revenue (40 percent), acquiring new customers (24 percent), and engaging customers (17 percent) are the three biggest priorities for marketers heading into 2018.
  • Only 16 percent of marketers believe millennials are most influenced to purchase by the email channel; yet 67 percent of millennials report finding email valuable when researching products.

To learn more about how marketers can personalise content by age, download the full report here.

 

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Is Your Brand Crushworthy? Here are 5 Actions to Take to Make Sure It Is

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By Sunny Bonnell

One of the most important things you can do to succeed in business is to uncover how you stand out from all of your competitors. But how do you know if you’ve built a brand that’s crushworthy? And, how do you get your audience’s attention? If there’s one question I get every time I speak to potential branding clients, it’s how to evoke cult-like loyalty and carve out a meaningful place in the minds of their customer.

Here are a few tips that might just help you do so.

1. Go from ordinary to extraordinary.

Just like every superhero, every company and business has its own origin story. The tale of how you came to be is different from every other company out there, so make it your differentiator. For example, Johnny Cupcakes created the world’s first t-shirt bakery inspiring legions of fans to wait outside for days at a time to get his limited edition t-shirts. He got his start selling t-shirts out of an old, beat up Toyota Camry. Take every ordinary thing you’re doing and figure out how to make it extraordinary. It’s a sure way to attract people to your company.

2. Do your research.

As you launch a company, it’s important to make sure that you do some market research and that you look into similar companies who are offering similar services as you. Finding your own niche in the market is crucial. You need to figure out why those companies’ customers would switch over to you instead and what exactly you offer that they don’t. Study trends. Do shop-alongs. Get a focus lab together. Talk to people. Be aware of what’s going on in the market to ensure you stay ahead of the game.

3. Make your brand cohesive and consistent.

Everything you produce represents your brand – it isn’t just about making sure that your logo looks good or your website rocks. You also need to make sure that you train your staff well and that they understand the ethos of your brand. Everyone you work with should understand your unique business philosophy that underpins your company and your branding, whether that’s originality, warmth, edginess or novelty. You should make sure that this cohesiveness and understanding runs through all elements of your company, top to bottom.

4. Invest in your efforts.

You can’t build a crushworthy brand by throwing pennies at it. In fact, you need significant amounts of money to not only build a brand but to market it and make it stick over time. Startup brands we work with often invest $150,000 to $300,000 to just get their brand off the ground. These are usually funded startups and they’ve done their research. Making something crushworthy takes more than just a great idea. One of the biggest mistakes we see companies make is invest all their money in product development and then pinch pennies when it comes to their branding. Don’t be that company.

5. Give it personality.

Finally, give your brand a distinct personality. Very few people enjoy working with companies that seem huge, vague and faceless. Make sure that your social media accounts reflect who you are. If you’re a funny company, be funny on social media. A great example of this is the last Blockbuster. At Motto, we encourage our clients to show their personality through their brands. Remember that great branding is the best way to make sure that you stand out from all your competitors.

Feature Image: Johnny Cupcakes store. CREDIT: Getty Images

By Sunny Bonnell

Co-founder, Motto

Sourced from Inc.

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A Framework For Building Admired Brands

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Achieving brand admiration requires keeping the company’s end game— creating brand equity— in mind. Our brand admiration framework offers unique causal insights into how brand managers can strengthen the equity of a brand, regardless of where in the company’s business hierarchy the brand resides (e.g., a branded product variant, a branded product, a branded business unit, or a branded company). Admired brands induce brand loyalty and brand advocacy behaviors, creating opportunities for efficient profit and growth. Brands that commit to the following have the best chance of reaching the status of the most admired brands.

1. Brand managers should focus on building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration because it (1) represents the most desired brand-customer relationship state, and (2) it has enormous payoffs for a brand and a company.

2. Building, strengthening, and leveraging brand admiration is relevant to all types of brands— regardless of whether they are in a B2B or a B2C market, or whether they are products or services, celebrity brands, place brands, or entertainment brands. Some markets (such as B2B markets) will have the most to gain by thinking through the 3Es and identifying opportunities to drive brand admiration, since many are blind to the critical role of enticing and enriching benefits in building and sustaining brand admiration over time.

3. Marketers control the extent to which they build, strengthen, and leverage the admiration of their brand by the extent to which their brand offers benefits that are known to underlie human happiness; that is, the extent to which the brand enables, entices, and enriches customers.

4. Building brand admiration is not limited to external customers. It starts with building brand admiration from within. Given companies’ ongoing efforts to attract and retain talent, internal brand admiration building efforts are critical.

5. Brand managers need to think carefully about customers’ need profiles and how to offer enabling, enticing, and enriching benefits in a consistent and complementary way. These activities build the two foundational components of brand admiration: brand-self connections and top-of-mind recall of a brand.

6. Brand admiration ranges on a continuum from high to low, with some brands being more admired than others. But even the most highly admired brands can use a set of value-enhancement strategies to continually enhance admiration for their brand.

7. Once a brand is admired, companies have the opportunity to leverage brand admiration using product and brand extensions for efficient growth. Good extensions reinforce the brand’s core identity, broaden it to include other associations, and facilitate future growth options.

8. Brand managers have a variety of brand-naming choices when extending their brands. Ideally, brand-naming decisions will be made within the context of the company’s entire brand architecture.

9. It is possible to measure brand equity. Our novel brand equity measure has powerful conceptual and measurement advantages over other financial measures of brand equity.

10. Finally, companies can and should construct a brand admiration dashboard to map brand health over time and identify and prioritize areas in which continued efforts at improvement should be made.

Following this framework will help you reach that precious goal of building and strengthening brand admiration, fostering brand advocacy and loyalty behaviors, and enhancing the financial value of the brand to your organization.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: C. Whan Park, Deborah MacInnis and Andreas Eisingerich, excerpted from their book, Brand Admiration with permission from Wiley Publishing.

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How are Branding and Positioning related?

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Sourced from INKBOT DESIGN

Graphic designers, business owners, marketing experts – everyone is aware of the importance of branding for the success of each startup.

With all that focus on branding, it seems we are forgetting about something: brand positioning.

Many of us confuse positioning as an aspect of branding, but it is an entirely different concept that requires a unique approach.

Let’s clarify things once and for all.

What’s the difference between branding and positioning?

How do these two concepts work together?

Do you need both or can you get good results by focusing on one of them?

Here is the most straightforward explanation that helps you make a distinction between the two concepts:

Branding is all about creating positive user expectations.

When you engage in branding, you focus on the users.

Positioning is about making your brand the preferred option among all competitors.

When you engage in positioning, you focus on the way your offer competes with all other players in the industry.

What is Branding Exactly?

 

In its most straightforward definition, branding is a design process of establishing the personality of a product, service, or company.

When you start a company, or you launch a new product/service, you know how you want the audience to perceive it.

Then, you take various steps to influence the opinions of your target customers regarding this brand.

Your brand conveys what your company is, what you want it to be, and what people perceive it to be.

Effective branding helps you set a price your customers are willing to pay.

It convinces them that you are offering great value for their money.

The brand is distinguished by a few elements:

When you combine all these elements, and you come up with methods that help you promote the brand, you get your brand strategy.

Through this strategy, you will plan a specific branding campaign via various distribution channels.

Several steps lead you to a successful branding strategy:

  • Setting a purpose and making a promise that corresponds to that goal.
  • Establishing a promotion that’s consistent with the brand’s message.
  • Triggering strong emotions with the target customer.
  • Involving all employees in the brand’s promotion.
  • Altering the campaign concerning latest trends.
  • Staying aware of the competition.

Competition awareness, which is an integral part of branding, is precisely what brings this concept close to positioning.

Why Is Branding Important?

A consistent branding strategy will get your target audience to develop positive impressions about your product/service and company.

This will add value to whatever you are selling, so you will be able to charge more.

A strong brand will justify the price, just like Estée Lauder can easily sell facial creams at a higher rate than the one random company sets, even if this unpopular company uses similar ingredients.

Estée’s consistent and robust strategy built a powerful brand equity.

The customers are willing to pay the higher price.

 

Most of them do not even bother experimenting with other brands since they know they will get what they expect from this one.

The added value comes not only from perceived quality but through emotional attachment as well.

This luxury cosmetics brand, for example, associates its products with Hollywood stars and beautiful people.

It is not just the cream that sells the cream.

It is also its status.

If a branding strategy helps you get a higher status for your brand, it is clear why it is so essential for the development of your brand.

It would be crazy not to invest in it.

What Is Brand Positioning?

For the process of positioning to start, you need a product or service that you are going to place.

Through these efforts, you are going to manage the way your users perceive your brand.

You will imply that they cannot get that experience from competitive offers.

In some cases, the company can decide to start a new positioning campaign for an already existing brand.

In most cases, however, the positioning process comes before branding.

Reebok, for example, was already an established name when it started shifting its brand positioning strategy.

This company had a hard time to convince its target audience that it is a better choice than Nike and Adidas.

After the exclusive deal with CrossFit, Reebok’s positioning strategy was reinvented.

 

It started developing its niche market, with customers who would pick this brand before any other option on the market.

Effective positioning is about creating a unique emotional benefit that makes your brand different from the competition.

It involves several stages:

  • Creating a brand positioning statement.
  • Comparing the brand to the competition to identify its uniqueness.
  • Analyzing the competition.
  • Determining the current position.
  • Analyzing the position of competitors.
  • Developing a unique positioning strategy.
  • Implementing the plan and testing its effectiveness.

As you can see, this is a different process from the one you undertake for branding.

Instead of being focused solely on your users and their experience with the product, you are focused on the competition and finding ways to rank higher.

Why Is Positioning Important?

In its essence, positioning is much more than identifying and improving your position in the market.

It is also about seeing how your product or service is significant and encouraging to the niche market.

It is also about making your offer sustainable, so you can continuously deliver it and beat the competition across all points of contact with the customer.

With that, your offer will occupy a distinctive place and value in the mind of your target customer.

Let’s take Estée Lauder as an example again.

It is not just a brand.

It is a brand that its target audience prefers among all competitive offers.

It is evident that the creators of the positioning strategy have identified and determined points of comparison and contrast with other brands.

Then, they developed a compelling brand promise, and they gave us reasons to believe it.

That is why the target audience chooses this brand over competitive offers.

I recently came across a compelling new brand: Fedor.

It is a small family business focused on producing all-natural shaving products and soaps.

 

You will see an excellent positioning strategy all over its website and social media profiles.

We can see how these products compare to the competition and we know believable reasons why we should choose them.

Without such a strategy, this would be yet another small business from a country most of us have never heard of.

Thanks to the smart positioning, however, the brand is an international success.

Brand Positioning is not only important.

It is an absolute necessity!

When you start offering a product or a service, you have to claim your spot in the industry.

Otherwise, you will just get lost in the crowd.

How Are Branding and Positioning Related?

To make the difference easier to understand:

Branding focuses on a user’s reaction to using the product, and Positioning focuses on a specific benefit that sets the brand above the competition.

With this logic, you need an establish a strong brand before you start the positioning.

In reality, however, these processes are closely intertwined.

Great positioning will help you establish a stronger brand, and great branding will help you set up a position.

If you start with the positioning strategy, you will lure your market to the brand.

The question is: do you need both?

Yes.

With effective branding, your company will stay profitable because its users will be willing to pay the price you ask for.

Through the positioning process, you are implying that the user cannot get your brand’s experience from competitive offerings.

Let’s examine Reebok’s campaign again.

First of all, it repositioned itself.

Instead of competing with Nike, Adidas, and other brands in the way it did before, it found a unique market to position itself on – CrossFit.

Then, Reebok came out with a new logo, which reflects this change.

That is branding.

Reebok also started a new marketing campaign, based on consumer-focused events and influencer marketing.

That is positioning and branding combined.

Here’s an interesting fact for you: the positioning will occur whether or not you develop a proactive positioning campaign.

Every brand has its position in the market.

However, this position will not be impressive if you are not working on it.

If you take an intelligent and proactive approach, you can influence the way your target customers rank your brand among all that competition.

 

Now You Know the Difference. It is Time for Action!

 

Branding and positioning have few elements in common.

When creating a logo design, for example, the graphic designer has to convey both the position and the emotional appeal of the brand.

When creating a marketing campaign, you will get content that combines both these concepts.

An owner of a new business has to identify the brand image they want, as well as the position they want to hold in the marketplace.

If you first identify the factors that make your business different from the competition (in other words – you position it), it will be easier to build a strong brand on that foundation.

Learn more about Branding and Positioning

 

COMPETITIVE POSITIONING: Best Practices for Creating Brand Loyalty

by Richard D. Czerniawski & Michael W. Maloney

It takes good brands to succeed in today’s chaotic, fast-moving, competitive marketplace. Marketers are confronted with, and their organisations are contributing to, an age of sameness, where products and services are virtually indistinguishable. The result is that customers are commoditising categories and discriminating principally on price. Offering more and enhanced features is not enough to win customers and create loyalty. It is high time to move beyond product marketing to embrace branding and positioning. COMPETITIVE POSITIONING – BEST PRACTICES FOR CREATING BRAND LOYALTY empowers marketing managers by sharing proven principles, insights from leading marketing practitioners, practical tools, and real-world examples, all of which will help you to successfully build your brand a brand that will connect emotionally with the heart, and remain uppermost in your customer’s minds. Step by step, you will learn best practices that will enable you to develop a competitive positioning.

 

Author Bio: Over the years, William has worked for a variety of marketing companies. He specialises mostly in visual marketing and is often tasked with teaching new staff how to market visually in an online world that is dominated by social media and fake news on Facebook and CNN. William also gives lectures on visual marketing in an online world too.

Sourced from INKBOT DESIGN

If you wish to discuss how we can develop your brand or provide graphic design for your product or business, email us at: [email protected]

Inkbot Design is a Creative Branding Agency that is passionate about effective Graphic Design, Brand Identity, Logos and Web Design.

T: @inkbotdesign F: /inkbotdesign

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Putting a Human Face on a Product: When Brand Humanisation Goes Wrong

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Branding was never an easy task, but here’s something new to look out for.

By MediaStreet Staff Writers.

When companies put a human face on their brand, the public usually responds positively. This advertising approach has brought us alarm clocks with sleepy faces and colour-coated chocolate candies with legs and arms.

But a study conducted by Oregon State University showed that there is a greater backlash by the public when a product branded with human characteristics fails.

Lead author of the study, Marina Puzakova, said even though consumers can tell a camera designed with human characteristics such as little eyes and legs isn’t a person, the very act of humanising a product can be a powerful tool.

A humanised product (left) versus a non-humanised product.

“Somehow, now the product seems alive and mindful, and therefore can be perceived as having intentions and its own motivations to act in a certain way,” Puzakova said. “This perception of intentions can be extremely strong – consumers now see the brand as performing bad intentionally and therefore consumers develop more negative sentiments toward the brand.”

Puzakova conducted five experiments with products that had experienced negative publicity. As a general procedure, participants saw advertisements of both existing and fictitious products, where “human” characteristics, such as arms, legs, or facial-like features were manipulated. Then Puzakova showed participants news reports about how the product had failed in some way, not lived up to its advertising claim, or did not function based on consumer expectations.

In every instance, participants reported that they had stronger negative reactions to the products that were given human characteristics, also known as “brand anthropomorphisation.”

“Brand anthropomorphisation can be a very powerful advertising tool, so I am definitely not saying that companies shouldn’t use it,” Puzakova said. “However, they need to be aware that when they imbue their products with human-like characteristics, any backlash when something goes wrong could be stronger.”

Puzakova’s study found that the strength of negative reactions depended on consumer personality differences as well. Based on a personality test she gave participants, she found that people who believe in “personality stability,” or that personality traits are always the same and don’t change over time, tended to have stronger negative feelings towards anthropomorphised brands.

“Broadly speaking, men tend to believe in personality stability more than women, and seniors as well,” Puzakova said. “Also, some cultures tend to believe in this more than others. This can be important for advertisers to know, depending on who their target market is.

Having a deeper knowledge about their target markets, companies can also design their advertising communications tailored for different types of consumers. For example, marketers may want to emphasise flexibility and change in an ad campaign in order to reverse negative attitudes by male consumers, who tend to believe in personality stability.

Puzakova’s research also has a lesson for companies whose brands fail because of a product malfunction.

“As consumers who believe in stability of personality traits react to product failures more negatively, our research finds that companies need to provide either monetary compensation or give away coupons,” Puzakova said. “Offering a public apology is not enough. For instance, companies that have a humanised brand marketed heavily towards seniors may need to be prepared to generously compensate those consumers if something goes wrong.”

The bottom line, Puzakova said, is companies need to know their audience and the possible dangers of humanising a brand when a product malfunctions. It can be a powerful advertising tool, but if the product fails in some way, the damage control could be costly and timely.

 

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It’s all in the name: luxury is about signalling status

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By Rob Wilson

Brands are the engines of the luxury market. The red-soled Louboutins, the Mulberry tree, the Ferrari horse… without them, would people still buy the products they are emblazoned on? Maybe, but certainly not as many.

Luxury has always been about signalling status. Therefore, as a concept it is always evolving as people’s ideas about what confers status change. From the opulent luxury of most of the 20th century, recent years seem to have shifted to less conspicuous forms of consumption. This presents a challenge to luxury brands. Now they not only have to emphasise their quality, but also demonstrate their credentials in other ways that will appeal to the less conspicuous luxury consumer.

Marketers have often targeted campaigns at people based on broad demographic factors – their age, their gender – but we have found a much more effective way is to connect with people through their passion points. Whether that’s football, food or fashion, if you can connect to people through one of their passions it will create a much stronger connection between them and the brand. Through connecting with these communities of shared interest, you can also have a more effective influencer strategy. Whether you work with more traditional celebrities or social media stars, by targeting a particular community of interest you can ensure your influencers feel truly relevant to your target consumer. When we worked with Breitling to launch its flagship store, we worked with celebrities that were truly relevant to its target audience, whereas when we launched Garnier Moisture Bomb we worked with everyday women as that is who was relevant for its brand and the community it wanted to talk to.

Luxury brands need to appeal to younger audiences or risk falling sales. Luxury brands can often be seen as outdated to younger generations because of product perceptions or the heritage they celebrate. We are working with Johnnie Walker to help it change perceptions of whisky as a drink that isn’t for everyone and open it up to new audiences. Delivering campaigns globally, we are helping it highlight the different ways and different occasions to drink Johnnie Walker, emphasising that it is a drink for everyone and anyone.

To recruit younger audiences, luxury brands need to respond to our changing spending habits. We are living in the experience economy. The latest figures from Barclaycard, which processes around half of all of the UK’s credit and debit transactions, show a rise of 20% in spending in pubs in April this year compared to last year, with restaurants, theatres and cinemas also seeing rises. More than ever, the experience a brand delivers is key to convincing people to part with their cash and when your product has a luxury price tag, people expect a luxury experience.

Through research we conducted for one of our luxury clients, we found that the retail experience is a particularly important part of the buying journey for luxury consumers. Across the range of different people we spoke to, most expressed a desire for a personal experience, where needs could be openly discussed, as well as a rich experience where they could learn about the brand stories and values underpinning a product. If a brand can achieve both these things they are much more likely to convert.

Every bit of the brand experience, from in-store to brand communications, online to packaging matters, is an opportunity for a luxury brand to damage its luxury reputation. Whether that’s a bad retail environment or a piece of packaging that doesn’t feel as hand crafted and special as the product it contains, it is very easy for brands to lose their luxury status in the minds of potential buyers.

Delivering a total luxury experience wherever a consumer interacts with your brand is a difficult task, but it is a must for luxury brands. Some luxury brands are embracing the experience economy already – this summer Cartier partnered with the London Design Museum to curate an exhibition called Cartier in Motion, telling the story of their unique approach to watchmaking and the evolution of the modern wristwatch. We will see more luxury brands turning to experiential marketing in the future.

Luxury is a highly emotive concept. It is all about the experience, the touch, the taste, how it makes you feel. And it is all too easy to break the luxury feel at some point in the experience a consumer has of your brand.

By Rob Wilson

Rob Wilson is strategy and creative director at RPM.

This article was originally published in The Drum Network luxury special. You can get your hands on a copy here. To be featured in the next special focused on the charity sector, please contact [email protected].

Sourced from THEDRUM

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Brand Launch: Creating a New Professional Services Brand

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By Lee Frederiksen

Branding a professional services firm comes in two flavors:

1) Rebranding an existing firm or service line, and

2) Launching a new one.

These two approaches to a brand launch are similar in overall process but distinct in their twists and turns.

brand_launch.jpg

Brand Launch Defined

Brand launch is the process of creating a professional services brand where none currently exists. Since you are starting from scratch, you have a unique opportunity to choose how you wish to position your firm in the marketplace, which clients you want to serve and what services you will provide to them. It is the perfect time to develop a compelling value proposition.

Rebranding, on the other hand, involves an existing firm that already has clients, staff and at least some equity in its brand. Rebranding involves updating your identity, marketplace positioning and/or messaging. These changes can apply to the entire firm or a single practice or service. Of course, you have to consider how the new brand will affect existing client relationships, any brand equity your firm has accumulated over the years and your marketing momentum. That’s not the case with a brand launch, where you are starting from scratch with nothing but that big empty flip chart. Your brand equity is zero. And cash is almost always tight.

Both brand launch and rebranding are distinct from a brand extension, in which you add a new service line to an existing firm’s offerings. For example, if XYZ Systems introduces XYZ Cloud Services, that’s a brand extension.

How to Botch a Brand Launch

A brand launch offers a golden opportunity to make a great first impression. Yet many firms manage to botch it — beginning with their firm name. A lot of professional services take a time-honored approach and name their firm after their founders. Or they use a generic service-related term (such as “professional,” “systems,” “technology,” “services” or “associates”) in their name. The resulting moniker is usually long and clumsy, and it soon gets abbreviated into a forgettable string of letters. A long name is a liability on the web, too, where it spawns a domain that’s hard to type and remember.

Speaking of the web, many firms disappoint prospective buyers up front by underinvesting in their most important marketing tool — their website. A cheap-looking, undifferentiated website is a big turnoff. In fact, our research on referrals shows that a third of prospective buyers rule out a firm that was referred to them on the basis of its website alone.

When they need credibility the most, many startups miss all the opportunities to build it. It’s the equivalent of showing up at a formal event in your sweat pants. Yes, there is a better way.

Brand Launch Benefits

It may not seem that a new brand has many benefits to offer. With no clients, no track record and no cash, what’s to envy? But a new professional services brand does offer three compelling advantages:

  • The thrill of new. In many cultures, and especially in the US, people are attracted to things that are new. It’s no coincidence that “new” is right up there with “free” as a killer marketing word.
  • Strongest positioning platform. It is far easier to introduce a radically different positioning with a new brand. You don’t have to worry about how existing clients are going to react to the change, so you are free to shape your market positioning as you wish.
  • Less brand equity at risk.If your positioning is not quite right out of the starting gate, it is much easier to adjust it without confusing the marketplace. This is why an existing firm may choose to launch a separate brand for a radically different positioning rather than put its existing brand equity at risk.

These advantages can be very helpful as you consider a strategy for your new brand launch.

Brand Launch Strategy

Launch strategy is very different for professional services than other types of businesses. In most cases, you have a reduced set of considerations to deal with. For example, service firms rarely use product packaging or need to convince retailers to carry their product. There are no storefronts or end cap displays to worry about. So a lot of the literature on launching a new brand doesn’t really fit your situation.

Unfortunately, just because you have fewer issues to contend with doesn’t mean that a launch is easier — just different. Most of those differences arise out of the nature of professional services.

For example, the way a consumer experiences a restaurant, hotel or clothing manufacturer is very different from the way a the client experiences a trial layer, accountant or computer security consultant.

In the professional services world, your brand is your reputation (what you are known for) multiplied by your visibility within your target audience. It is built more on trust and expertise than customer experience. If you want exceptional service or a “wow” experience, you go to a spa or a fine-dining restaurant, not to your auditor or structural engineer.

Expertise is the number one selection criteria of professional services buyers and it is the factor that “tips the scale” in about 74% of final selections. But there is a problem with expertise. It’s invisible. You can’t see it, feel it or tell if someone has it by looking at them. That means you have to make it tangible and visible to your target audience.

Given these differences there are a few key considerations to address when crafting your brand launce strategy.

  1. What is the key value proposition for your target client?

Why will they choose your firm over the many other alternatives? Is it price alone? This is always risky unless you have a sustainable cost advantage. For most new professional services launches, the answer revolves around offering some sort of superior expertise.

  1. How will you make your expertise visible?

If you are competing on expertise, visibility is essential. If you are competing on price, you at least need to position your expertise as equivalent to the competition’s: “We do the same work at the same quality level only it costs less.”

There are lots of techniques to build visibility. From books and webinars to videos and networking, you can use an educational approach to get the word out and demonstrate your firm’s expertise. To learn exactly what techniques work best and how to implement them, check out the Visible Expert course in Hinge University, our online training resource.

  1. How will you pace your brand launch?

Will your launch be a gradual build or a “big-bang” rollout? The decision should be driven by the marketplace and the resources you can afford to put toward it. Some services have short time windows because they can be easily copied by competitors. Others have short lifespans because they address issues that come with a sunset date (think Y2K consulting services at the end of the last century). Both of these situations favor a big-bang introduction. In most other situations, however, a gradual build makes sense. Gradual builds eliminate the need for a large outlay of time and money before revenue has a chance to accrue. Big-bang introductions, on the other hand, often come with large up-front expenses.

Your decisions on these key strategic choices will become the backbone of your brand launch plan.

Building Your Brand Launch Plan

Much like the rebranding process, a brand launch has three phases. But with a launch, those stages tend to play out over a shorter time period. Think days and weeks, not weeks and months, as you build the key elements of your plan.

Phase1: Get the Brand Strategy Right
This phase is aimed at making sure you have positioned the firm properly and have a compelling, easy-to-understand value proposition. As with any branding exercise, it starts with research. Since you don’t have existing clients, you must rely on interviews with prospects and influencers.

Often, your initial positioning will be built around the founders’ reputations and experience. In this case, you can research clients from past engagements to uncover key positioning elements.

Next, you will develop a core set of brand documents. These include a positioning statement and your messaging architecture, which identifies your primary audiences, the key messages to each, barriers to overcome and the proof points that equip you to defend each message. Together, these documents form the strategic foundation for your new brand.

You will, of course, lack case studies — a deficiency you will need to address quickly as you build a base of clients.

Phase 2: Build the Brand
In this phase, you develop your firm’s name, tagline, logo, website, marketing materials and identity tools. It’s fine to develop the most essential pieces first, then add the rest later. This allows you to conserve cash and (because you are not locked into an expensive set of business collateral) gives you room to evolve your messaging as you gain more experience.

In most cases, the most useful tools will be your website, a pitch deck and a single-sheet overview of your firm and its story. Since you are unlikely to have a wealth of case studies, you may want to talk about why you founded your firm and what compelling benefits you bring to your clients. That may not be enough to build critical mass, but it should give you enough material to convince a few initial clients.

You may also want to consider exploring online video, which can be an excellent medium to tell a new firm’s story.

This stage is usually capped off by the development of a brand rollout plan. This plan lays out exactly how the brand will be introduced and developed, including which audiences you will target with your rollout, and in what order. A detailed launch calendar is a great tool to use in your planning process. In the context of a brand launch, the rollout plan takes on a lot of significance, so be sure to allow sufficient time to do it right.

Phase 3: Brand Rollout
Next, you’ll need to implement the plan and introduce your brand new brand to the world. In our experience, most folks are excited by the initial reception of a new brand. If your new brand is well positioned, it will appear fresh and innovative to the marketplace — and offer prospective clients a benefit that is both unique and compelling. That tends to get people excited.

When new brands stumble at this stage, their problems can often be traced back to a failure to get the strategy right. These firms rush to market with a “me-too” market positioning that fails to deliver any real differentiation or competitive advantage. Attempting to be just like your competitors without the benefit of a track record is not a formula for success.

Minor adjustments to the messaging and positioning are quite common during rollout. These adjustments are a normal part of the evolution of a new brand and not a sign of failure.

Building the Strength of Your New Brand

Success can be a double-edged sword. If you have tapped into a healthy market and are offering a compelling set of new benefits, you very well may experience a surge in demand for your services. That’s when delivering on your brand promise can become a challenge. More than a few firms have stumbled at this stage.

The other major challenge is retaining your focus. As you help clients with their critical problems, they may ask you to take on issues that lie at the periphery of your core offerings. Do you accept the assignment?

It’s tempting. After all, diversifying risk is important, right? Be careful. You can easily dilute your brand by taking on too many non-core tasks. While there may be short-term financial benefits to stretching your service offerings, the real value of a brand comes from its distinctiveness and clarity.

A Final Thought

A brand launch is the perfect time to set your firm or practice on a course of lasting success. You have maximum flexibility and the advantage of being novel and exciting. However, while a brand launch offers many potential benefits, it comes with significant challenges, as well.

The most important thing to remember is to concentrate on getting the strategy right. Do your research well. If you can offer a compelling value proposition to an appreciative group of target clients, everything else is easier.

This article originally appeared in Hinge Branding and Marketing Blog.

By Lee Frederiksen

Sourced from BLUE

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