Marketing Mix: Product / Service Guide #8

A brand should strive to “own” a product category name, a product benefit, or a brand benefit in the minds of target customers.

I’ve missed my weekly blog posting for a couple of weeks due to consulting work with travel.  My apologies to anyone who actually looks forward to reading my weekly posts.  Hopefully, this post will return me to my weekly posting schedule.

It should be the goal of brand marketing to “own” a product category, a product benefit, or a brand benefit.  You want to be so closely associated with one of these in the minds of your target customers that when they think of your brand they simultaneously think of the category, a product benefit, or a brand benefit. 

One could generalize and say that the following brands own, in at least some of their target customers, the following:

If your brand is successful in “owning” a product category, you’ll need to vigorously protect it.  Think about the brands that have been extremely successful in owning a product category:  Kleenex, Band-Aid, Coca-Cola, Xerox, FedEx, etc.  These brands so completely dominate the consumer mind share that consumers often refer to the brand name when speaking about the product category. Instead of “facial tissue,” many consumers say “Kleenex;” instead of “photo copy,” many say “Xerox;” etc.

If your brand name should become the generic descriptor for the category, you may lose your legal rights to your own brand name.  Good brand name protection includes:

• Always use your brand name as an adjective modifying a noun which is the product category; e.g., Acura (adjective) automobiles (noun), Cheerios (adjective) cereal (noun), Cole Haan (adjective) shoes (noun), etc.
• Never use your brand name as a noun; e.g., that’s why you should buy a Dell.
• Never pluralize your brand name; e.g., we have more Chevrolets for sale than any other dealer.
• Never use your brand logo in place of your brand name in a headline, body copy, sentence, or phrase.