Know-How Exchange : Student Questions

Here's one.
If people CAMP outside your store for 5 days, to be the first to buy a product no one ever saw before or tried before, you have a strong successful brand. Obviously I'm talking about Apple and the iPhone.
But if you spend millions on R&D and spend much more on advertising and no one is interested, you got an Edsel, a lemon, a flop, a bad brand.
Remember branding is all about a gut feeling people have about a brand.

Dear phatsul,

Ordinarily, I've love to answer a question like this, really I would.

But to my mind, your excuse that you're finding it "extremely difficult to find any previous work" sounds nonsensical. It's the equivalent of someone training to be a pilot who does not know where the airport is.

Three years studying marketing (or I'm presuming that's
what you've been studying) and you haven't grasped even
the fundamental concept of the differences between product
(actual object), name (words on the box), and brand (feelings
and emotions)?

Please, as BARQ suggests, take the time to do just a LITTLE bit
of your own research.

Dear Phatsul,

Perhaps my initial comments were a little harsh, so I'll soften my approach. However, what you're about to read is no less honest.

Two weeks' worth of research for a thesis isn't enough. I did a lot less research than that when I wrote my final year thesis and as a result, it stank so much I had to work with the windows open.

So, you'll have to do a lot more reading. A LOT MORE.

But, if you read "PEAK: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo
from Maslow" by Chip Conley, and "Your Marketing Sucks" by Mark Stevens (both easy reads), you'll then know about 1,000 percent more than your fellow students. And I can pretty much guarantee that no one else on your course will have read EITHER of these, much less understood them.

To build a strong brand you need a strong product or solution that fills or exceeds an even stronger felt need, pain, or problem.

To echo Jeff (BARQ), Apple's "problems" in the 1990s had sod all to do with the strength or weakness of their brand. Their problem, and the reason that Microsoft appeared to do bugger all and then took over 90 percent of the market was that Microsoft licensed its software and Apple didn't. Or at least, that's my recollection of what happened.

But, that's an aside.

A consumer's impression of what a brand is is built in the warped and often skewed reality that is the human mind and in THERE, perception (real or imagined) is not just vaguely important, it's EVERYTHING.

To build a strong brand (or to weaken a strong brand), some "thing", some outside element (doubt, fear, desire, demand, trust, angst, love, hate, whatever), or a combination of these things must get inside people's heads and screw with their notions of perception—POSITIVELY OR NEGATIVELY.

This in turn, is the thing that creates the allusion—the mental projection if you will, of a brand being seen or felt as strong or weak, good or bad, problem solving or problem causing.

The packaging? The name? The colour, shape, function, and feel
of the product or service? They all ADD to the impression, to the perception, but these things in and of themselves are NOT the brand.

Read that again.

The brand is the combination of every point of contact, AND
the mixture of people's emotions and personal feelings and experiences. This means that one brand can be many things o many people. The trick to in ensuring that as many people as possible see and feel the same thing, and that they see and feel the same thing CONSISTENTLY, and that this consistency connects with a deeply felt need REGULARLY, and it's here that design, function, colours, typefaces, and logos come into the picture because these things all act in unison to reinforce the good feelings.

They become anchors—visual keys if you will to unlock or secure specific mental doors. Which explains why brand management and brand stewardship are so important.

But, every brand needs its hero or heroine, its champion, its public face, its personification.

Richard Branson's built not just a strong brand but a welcome brand by being genuine, by really caring, and by showing people that he gives a crap.

He doesn't hide behind a veil, Richard Branson PERSONIFIES the brand. There will be no Virgin without Richard. It's as simple as that.

To create a strong brand you:

1. identify a gap or an unmet need.
2. figure out what that gap or an unmet need needs.
3. ask the people with that need what they'd like to see.
4. show people you understand their problem.
5. create a solution to that problem that helps people.
6. give the solution to people for a reasonable fee, or, in the first instance, just give it away.

You also must—MUST—give people more than they either asked for or expected. Brand building is not about just meeting people's needs, it's about reading their minds and it's about giving them things they didn't really knew they wanted or needed, but that somehow make theirs lives easier, more pleasant, more relaxing, or more enjoyable.

A brand is a promise, but a brand is also a stunning surprise, a great gift that exceeds all expectations and that fulfills dreams.

And it's the ability of certain visionary people like Steve Jobs, like Richard Branson, like Martha Stewart, and like Oprah to DELIVER those promises and to ENSURE that those promises are made and that they're kept, on time, every time, that makes the difference between a great and successful brand and a brand that sucks.

Brands stop working—they go wrong—when someone at the top, someone in charge who gets things done and who knows how many beans make five stops caring. Or leaves the company. or moves on in some other way.

When this happens, standards drop, people slack off, things that were working perfectly get tweaked by unqualified, over educated and under informed half wits in shiny shoes who know either little or nothing about the company they're now heading up.

When you send an army (or a brand) into battle (into the market place), you head that army with a great general (a great marketer, someone who knows and understands people and the importance of their needs). You do NOT head that army with a chartered accountant.

It's for THIS reason that once great brands falter and die. True, it's not the ONLY reason, but it's often one of the biggest, the baddest, and the most easily fixed of reasons.

Stunning brands are usually built and championed by one person.

But, much like a gladiator who is the champion of the people but a thorn in the side of someone on high, stunning brands are usually weakened, mortally wounded, and ultimately killed by an overzealous CEO, by a misinformed committee, or by a greedy, clueless board of directors who may well have been fine choices for their roles 25 years ago, but who may now be as useful to the corporate bottom line as a bump on a log.

And often, a generously compensated bump as well.

I hope this helps you. Good luck.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA