Marketing Mix: Product / Service Guide #11

A brand is more than image.

For a brand to be long lasting, there has to be substance behind the brand.  The brand really does have to deliver the unique brand benefit that it promises to deliver to its target customers.  Each year a host of new brands are launched.  Many of those brands do not deliver what they are supposed to deliver, and they eventually fail in the marketplace.  Abraham Lincoln was correct in saying, “You can fool some of the people some of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.”  If a brand doesn’t deliver over time, it won’t fool enough people to survive.  What do we call brands that don’t have substance and don’t survive and yet we still remember them?  Fads.  Many fad brands have appeared in the toy product category: Hula Hoops in the 1950’s’; Pet Rocks in the 1970’s; Cabbage Patch Kids and Rubik’s Cubes in the 1980’s; Tickle-Me-Elmo in the 1990’s.  However, other product categories aren’t immune to brands with huge short-term popularity but little substance to survive the long-term:

·      Fashion apparel: LA Lights lighted athletic shoes and

Skinny Jeans (still very popular, but I think that we’ll look back on them as a fad)

·      Household goods: Laval Lamp, Chia Pet,

George Foreman Grill (still popular, but post peak), and Onion Blossom Maker.

 

·      Food goods:  Heinz EZ-Squirt colored ketchups.

A brand is also behavior.  In business-to-business product categories, target customers are economically motivated, and salespeople represent the brand.  Do your sales people just push what they’ve got to sell or do they deliver your brand promise to reduce your target customers’ costs and/or increase their revenues?  Have you prepared your sales people with tools to demonstrate your brand’s economic benefit, such as ROI calculators?

In consumer goods product categories, target customers are motivated by the need to satisfy internal wants/needs.  Where marketers have owned distribution, they have control over the retail behavior.  In my opinion, Apple computers are horribly over-priced; but the outstanding retail experience at their stores provides a value that justifies the purchase.  Unfortunately for most marketers, they are often separated from their customers by intermediaries in the channel of distribution, for example, wholesalers and retailers.  The marketer often has little control over these middlemen.  The retailers represent to consumers both their retail brand -- Wal-Mart, Target, Dillard’s, Best Buy, etc. – and your brand.  Is your retail distribution consistent with your brand’s unique brand benefit and its brand personality?  Influencing the behavior of independent middlemen in the channel is difficult, but a task that marketers must undertake to ensure that retail behavior is consistent with their brand.

Service is one element of the human face of the brand.  In business-to-business categories, service is generally controlled by the marketers and can be a distinguishing feature in their offering.  In consumer goods categories, many marketers often don’t control the service element of their offering; the retailer or a third party does.  Is the service provided by the retailer consistent with your brand’s unique brand benefit and its brand personality?

The learning point in all of this is make sure that your brand really does deliver its unique brand benefit to your target customers in terms of substance, behavior, and service.

Marketing Mix: Product / Service Guide #10

A brand is built through customer experience with the brand.

Each purchase and each use is a customer interaction with the brand.  Through purchase and use, consumers build the experience with the brand that leads to either satisfaction, re-purchase, and brand loyalty or dissatisfaction and brand switching.  In almost all product categories, consumer research will reveal that the number one reason for considering the purchase of a brand is satisfactory prior experience with the brand.  Conversely, the number one reason for not considering a brand in the purchase process is unsatisfactory prior experience with the brand.

Because of the frequent purchase of package goods, the brands of package goods marketers have frequent interaction with their customers.  If these experiences are positive, brand loyalty is built.  Durable and semi-durable goods product categories are not purchased as frequently.  Thus, marketers of durable and semi-durable products have a tougher time building brand loyalty.  In the durable and semi-durable categories, this is compounded by the fact that customers don’t think about the product or the brand during use unless they have a problem.  As an example, consider your home heating/air conditioning system.  You take it for granted.  The thermostat regulates the temperature at a level that you have set and with which you are comfortable.  As long as you’re comfortable, you don’t think about it.  However, when the system fails on a hot day in August or a cold day in February, the system is your top-of-mind thought. 

Since a blog always its author to express personal experiences, let me give you a recent one in our household.  Three years ago, we purchased replacement clothes washers and dryers.  In 45 years of marriage, the purchase was only our fourth.  Three previous purchases over 45 years averaging 15 years between purchases certainly qualifies as a semi-durable/durable product category purchase.  After considerable product category research and expending our allotted shopping effort, we purchased a Whirlpool duet front-loading automatic washer and matching dryer.  I don’t recall the total purchase price for the washer/dryer and accessories, but it was somewhere in the neighborhood of $3,000.  We used the machines with little thought for two years and then the washing machine refused to function.  A service call led to the replacement of an electronic part at a cost of $300.  For another 1½ years, we used the machines with little thought; and then the washing machine started to make a high-pitched squealing noise during its spin cycle.  A service call resulted in a diagnosis of main bearing failure with an estimated repair cost of $1,300.  Would we repurchase the Whirlpool brand?  Definitely not.  Recall that the number one reason for not considering a brand in the purchase process is unsatisfactory prior experience with the brand.

Because customers of durable and semi-durable products don’t think about the product or the brand during use, marketers can’t rely upon purchase and use to build brand experience.  They need to look at other elements of the marketing mix to increase the interactions their target customers have with their brands. For example, outstanding customer service is more important in durable and semi-durable product categories.  When your customers have problems with your brand, their expectations are low.  Problem resolution can be a time that you not only satisfy, but delight, your customers.

In business-to-business product categories, the question is: Do the experiences support the brand promise?  Is the purchase process paper-intensive or customer friendly?  Is billing a cold and complicated demand for cash or a relationship-fostering and dialog-provoking interaction?

Marketing communications is arguably more important in semi-durable and durable product categories.  Lacking the frequency of purchase in package goods, marketing communications can be the brand reminder to customers.  If your brand has delivered its brand promise to customers who have purchased your brand, marketing communications will be the reminder that your brand has delivered a satisfactory experience.  Recall that the number one reason for considering a brand in the purchase process is satisfactory prior experience with the brand.

Marketing Mix: Product / Service Guide #9

A brand must have meaning in the local market.

In this age of globalization, many brands that had meaning to customers in one nation find themselves moving into other nations where they are unknown.  If the brand name conveys benefit or use, it helps among those who understand the language of the country of the brand’s origin.  More often, however, the meaning of a brand name is lost as the brand moves to global markets.

If you’ve studied marketing, you probably read about how Chevrolet had problems marketing the Chevy Nova automobile in Latin America.  Since no va means "no go" in Spanish, the story goes, Latin American car buyers wouldn’t buy the car forcing Chevrolet to pull the car from the market.  Although the story isn’t true and Chevrolet did reasonably well with the Nova in Latin America, the story is often cited as an example of how good intentions can go wrong when it comes to globalizing a brand name.

The European mobile telecom brand Orange was created with a pan-European market in mind.  Orange to most westerners is associated with the brand personality attributes of bright, happy, warm, and friendly.  If the Orange brand were to enter the U.S. market, it may face a problem because to Americans the color orange is also associated with cheap.  To Buddhists, the color orange symbolizes the wisdom of Buddha’s teaching which may be a positive brand personality attribute if Orange were to enter Asian markets.

Recall the discussion of Marketing Mix: Product/Service Guide #2, Customers tend not to remember alpha numeric names.  Some global marketers just give up on maintaining the original home-market meaning of their brand name in international markets.  They revert to abbreviations of their original brand name.  The Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation became HSBC which is a meaningless collection of letters that has no meaning by itself.  To give HSBC meaning, the theme line, “The world’s local bank,” was developed.  The obvious purpose of the theme line was to disassociate HBSC from the two cities of its origin and to make it relevant in local markets.

More often than communicating benefit or use, global brand marketers tend to associate their brand names with the softer part of brand positioning, brand personality.  Globally successful American brands often have a distinctly American personality communicating attributes of the American lifestyle.  Marlboro, Harley Davidson, Levi’s jeans, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s don’t hide their American origins.  Similarly, in the U.S. market, some European brands retain their home market associations as those associations have meaning for U.S. consumers.  Brands such as Louis Vitton and Dolce & Gabbana carry with them the positive associations that Americans have with French and Italian fashion.  The Bosch and Miele brands carry with them the positive associations that Americans have with German engineering.

The learning point of all of this is that if you’re working on a global brand, consider carefully what the meaning of your brand is in each national market that you serve.

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.