Vintage Coca Cola mural in Greenville, SC
The topic of “what is a brand” or “what do we mean when we say brand” comes up pretty often, so I am always on the lookout for a clear explanation of the term… or at least an explanation that can help frame it for people who aren’t 100% clear what brand really is. (Is it a logo, symbol or mark? Is it a promise? Is it a marketing gimmick?) Depending on whom you talk to, you might get a completely different answer.
This time around, let’s have Tom Asacker share a few insights on the subject:
“A brand is not a logo, and branding is not a communication strategy. A strong brand is a strong bond, and branding is your business.”“To those with a dated, mass-market mentality, branding is still all about image and awareness. It’s about tag lines, logos, cute little animal mascots or clever jingles. It’s about spending megabucks on Super Bowl commercials, hiring celebrities to sing your corporate praises, and covering cars with advertising banners. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that awareness is unimportant. (…) But, does well-known equal strong? Not any longer. The rise of the global economy [and] the rapid adoption of the Internet have ignited commercial innovation, and put an end to those days forever. Today, like just about everything else, brand logic has been turned on its head.”
“And please, don’t get hung-up on the word brand. Today, the word brand is shorthand for the gut feeling people have about something, some group, or someone. It’s a kind of Platonic Ideal, which stands for the essence of a business, school, organization, person, or even place. If you add up the tangible and intangible qualities of something – the gestalt – and wish to represent the meaning and distinctive character this greater whole conveys to its audience, today we call it . . . brand.”
“Think of your brand as a “file folder” in your audiences’ minds (not a perfect metaphor, since memory is malleable, but stick with me anyway.). When they’re exposed to you (e.g., through advertising, design, a salesperson, word-of-mouth, etc.), a feeling is immediately filed away in that “brand file folder.” As time passes, much of what your audience has filed away – the details – will become inaccessible. However, they will remember where they stored the folder: in the front (positive feelings) or pushed to the back (negative feelings). Given the sheer volume of brands trying to find a place in your audiences’ overloaded “brand file cabinets,” you must not only get their attention and be relevant (a file folder labeled with your brand name), but you must also get it placed in the front of their file cabinet (elicit strong, positive feelings of intense personal significance).
“(…) Despite what the Madison Avenue folks may tell you, the strength of your brand lies not in the fact that you own a folder with your name prominently displayed on it. Repetition does not create memories, relevance does. The strength lies in your folder’s position in your audience’s file cabinet (the emotions that linger in their memory). The strength lies in the bond! So make your brand about feeling, not just familiarity. Make it about shared values and trust. About honesty, vulnerability and presence. A brand is not simply a promise. How can it be, with everything changing at breakneck speed? A brand is a living, breathing relationship. Revel in the messy world of emotions and create a brand that’s about leadership and differentiation; about customer insight and radical innovation; and about clarity of purpose, passion and a sense of humor.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Wow. Is it really Friday already?
Technorati Tags: brand, Tom Asacker,customer service, marketing, advertising, creative, authenticity, branding
Tom was quick to point out that our memories are “malleable,” so the “file folder” illustration isn’t a perfect metaphor. I think this understanding of how our brain fills in the gaps and connects the dots when we don’t all the information isn’t there (unknowingly forgotten) is important to understand when we are thinking about brands. (This is discussed in depth in the book “Brain Rules.” Great Book.)
It just illustrates how crucial it is for brands to create memorable experiences that surprise and delight – things that make your brain say, “wait… this isn’t typical. I’ll pay special attention to this.’
I think repetition does create memory.
http://www.supermemo.com/english/ol/background.htm
As much as I hated them, I remember some songs just because I’ve heard them many times on radio in a situation where I didn’t have any control over hearing/not hearing.
But it takes a lot of the same messages to be remembered if not relevant.
Relevance works much better. It creates a sort of a cognitive snap. It takes one relevant message to be remembered.
And now that we have more control over what they read/hear, messages that aren’t relevant, sent at the wrong time or the wrong way are being tuned out. At the same time, relevant ones travels quickly, at the right time in the right way, following a natural path of influence where relevance and trust are key.
btw Oliver, would still like to talk if you’ve time
Laurent
As the article says “Repetition does not create memories, relevance does”
I can remember adverts that were not relevant to me. It was only because I loathed the advert so much that it became memorable to me. You know – that horrid jingle you can’t get out of your head. Any UK readers can identify with that hideous ‘Moon Pig’ advert.
The post continues “The strength lies in your folder’s position in your audience’s file cabinet (the emotions that linger in their memory).”
So in the case of the horrid advert, it got close to the front of the cabinet only because the emotion of hate still lingers. As both comments have said before, memorable experiences stick.
What then do we think of branding that is memorable, but perhaps for the wrong reasons? Is this is a ‘creatively moral’ tactic to be used? IOW, are horrid jingles immoral?
Repetition does create memory… but what kind of memory? Scott makes a good point: A really annoying ad might stick, but at what cost? A memorable ad that happens to be annoying could actually hurt a business.
A current example here in the US is an ad campaign for a company called Yellow Wood. I hear a lot of people complain about how obnoxious the ads are. (This yellow John Wayne cowboy character rides into a town and mayhem ensues.)
The campaign is clever because it is episodic: Every week, the narrative moves forward. And the ads are also very recognizable. Everyone knows the Yellow Wood ads now.
BUT…
1. No body knows what Yellow Wood does. No one cares what Yellow Wood does or why they should care. In other words, it doesn’t drive business to Yellow Wood.
2. The campaign is so amateurish and obnoxious that if I wanted to do business with Yellow Wood before the ads, I would probably think twice about doing business with them now.
This isn’t a dig on Yellow Wood and I wish them the best (they’re probably a great company to do business with) but the fact that their ad is very memorable doesn’t mean it is effective. It may actually be hurting them.
If you’re going to be memorable, make the memory positive and engaging. That’s my word of caution to advertisers. Too often (especially since CP+B started throwing relevance out the window in favor of “viral”) advertisers forget that their goal should be to advance a brand and the business behind it, not just be the loudest, most “memorable” ad in a 4-minute commercial break.
Great comments!
“Too often (especially since CP+B started throwing relevance out the window in favor of “viral”) advertisers forget that their goal should be to advance a brand and the business behind it, not just be the loudest, most “memorable” ad in a 4-minute commercial break”
So how much advertising and marketing should be allotted to building brand awareness vs generating sales?
Some of the best adverts and marketing does not make me buy that product, because I don’t want. But it does make me respect / trust it.
I agree Olivier (and thank you for providing a good way to deal with this in my mind), that a memorable ad can have a negative effect. I have a saying that in marketing, ‘every experience counts, because your last experience maybe your last experience’. I myself have made inner vows to never by certain brands based on one bad advert.
I’m not sure how I missed this today. This is a really good article and comments. I agree about those Yellow Wood things – nasty. I just hate them. I have a theory that brand attachment and longing to own has to do with “aspiring up” in many cases and those Yellow Wood ads just annoy me – they are not what I want to relate to, silly in an UNcool way and watching them actually makes one feel uncool… perhaps I should be twittering instead of watching Two and a Half Men at night???? But I digress…
You mention that a brand is more than a promise – it’s a living relationship. That is so true, and crucial. A brand cannot and will not always live up to its promises, despite best intentions. Where social media and genuine engagement with brand fans can help companies, is in the area of human frailties, when times are tough or customers are mad. Things happen – if the brand is in a relationship with the people who define themselves by it, they can create the kind of bonds that will last a lifetime.
OR else, they have to rely on being extremely cool at all times! Then maybe customers won’t be so needy and will buy despite the lack of a relationship. LOL!!
Great points – you always make me think, which is why I am a big BrandBuilder fan.
Great question, Scott. The awareness factor is priority one in advertising in my opinion. You could also call it discovery.
Example: Apple is releasing a new iPod or iPhone: It’s going to put out an ad that helps you discover that product for the first time. 1) It creates awareness.
But then two more things have to happen:
2) It triggers an emotional response. This emotional response has to be positive. It can’t be negative and it can’t be neutral. Either of those will actually hurt not only the product but the brand behind it.
3) It fuels desire. Not necessarily for the product or the brand, but for something. It makes you long for a new watch. A new wardrobe. A new car. Whatever.
So to your point, brand awareness is the #1 objective, but the awareness alone isn’t enough. You also have to create context and you have to create desire.
Screaming monkeys in cubicles may create awareness for a job site like monster.com, but it doesn’t create context or desire. The result: Zero impact or traction. In one ear, out the other. Total waste of media dollars.
A really annoying commercial = awareness for a brand too. And a negative image of it to boot. Result: Next time you drive by that business, you point at it and go “hey, that’s the company with the annoying commercial…” and you keep driving.
Nike, however creates awareness, context and desire. Nike may not even advertise a particular product (it usually doesn’t). What it sells instead is a lifestyle. A fantasy. It sells you the image of you as a dedicated athlete who gets up before dawn to go run in the cold or rides his bike in the rain, or trains hard in a dirty gym for hours on end. It creates brand awareness by conjuring up images that appeal to your sense of self worth. Then it bridges the gap between you on the couch and the image of the idealized you training in the rain. The vehicle to get you from couch to track? The Nike brand. THAT’s awareness done right.
Kris, that was really good. What you just wrote about relationships with brands is total genius. I am using it for my panel discussion at Clemson University next week.
Thanks!!! (No worries, I’ll give you props.)
Olivier,
Thanks for the quick lesson in branding 101! Very good sentiments that brand awareness comes first, but must be leveraged otherwise it is wasted.
The formula I use with communicating to clients (remember, this is now marketing and creating experience) is:
Idea + Strategy + Media = Experience
In my very linear way of thinking this works as a good rule for me. Recently I have been thinking over how to communicate brands and branding to clients using a similar method.
So far I am thinking;
1. the foundation of a strong brand is trust
Kris, there’s your relationship… either I trust the brand because their advertising was relevant to me, or I was referred it by a friend (in which case, the brand ‘borrowed trust’ through the referral), or the trust has been built over continuous quality experiences
2. the foundation of trust is consistency
wherever, whenever, however I access the brand, it *feels* the same (or, if we talk relationship, it *behaves* the same)
My angle from ‘holisitic marketing’ is that the whole marketing mix has to be consistent, else there is an incongruent experience.
So I’ve taken things a little off topic, but I sure could do with some feedback… ;-D
Olivier, you may use anything I say, anywhere, anytime if I mumble out something of value, no credit needed. LOL!
Scott, the thing that jumped out to me in your formula is the lack of People here: Idea + Strategy + Media = Experience
People drive the experience more than companies either like to admit, or have the wits about them to realize. I offer Vonage as a bad example. They have ads that make sense on TV and online, and they meet a need some people have at various times, of providing long-distance for a flat fee. Their promotions are effective as far as direct mail goes – professional and whatnot. But getting involved with them is like entering Hotel California… you can check out anytime you like, but good luck leaving! Their customer service people are not based in the US, you can’t talk to a manager, and I know all this because I spent over 5 hours trying to cancel a new account I had never used, in 4 phone calls with “support” because they simply refused to just cancel the damn account, already. I actually hung up on them in the 3rd phone call because I was so furious, then spent my entire mani/pedi refusing to yield on the 4th phone call, before getting them to agree to cancel. (So that ruined a normally pleasant task for me, as well.)
So now I beg people NOT to use the brand that is Vonage. Talk about a bad consequence (and yes, that has to do with their business strategy as well.) But it is the People before, during and after a sale that build a brand relationship – you can’t buy a Jaguar without a salesperson, you obtain that rockstar watch from a timepiece expert, you get an Apple computer somewhere, you visit the Nike store and it matches or does not the experience Olivier beautifully describes with the ads – the music is loud, all the elements of “getting fit” are there to get you geared up to do what you saw in a magazine or television ad… so will the person you interact with “spoil” that brand for you, or extend it and turn you into a raving fanatic who tells friends “You HAVE to go to Nike!!! It’s the ONLY stuff I wear.”
And if your experience with the brand and purchasing comes from an online site they have to jump the hurdle of NOT having people directly interacting with you. The people they MUST have employed are user experience people, to make sure buying something is flawless, impeccable distribution people to make sure you’re impressed with delivery, and awesome customer service people and a toll-free number so you have someone to talk to if needed, who is an extension of that brand experience, PLUS access to managers with decision-making power (without getting the run-around!)
I think you can see where this conversation then starts involving social media… *people* create brand relationships that are going to live, fall dormant, or die.
P.S. I said all this and then think about Coke, the image in this post. I am a die-hard Coke drinker and shun Pepsi – there is no substitute. I have been more impressed with Coke’s advertising than Pepsi’s, and it is a point of pride for one and disdain for the other. But I have never had a Coke *person* extend the brand for me, although I have looked for them on Twitter (they aren’t there.) So obviously there are some exceptions to what I said, and I think most of the exceptions are grocery-related. I always buy Aqua Fresh toothpaste, Jif peanut butter, etc. and people are not involved — except for my Mother who introduced me to Coke, Jif, etc. as a child.
Scott, the fact that my Mother purchased certain brands only and I do too now, must have to do with the ‘foundation of trust’ thing you mentioned. Hmm… interesting!
Great analysis folks! And to be clear, the reason why you remember those stupid ads is because they were relevant to you when you were exposed to them. Perhaps they were relevant because you are in the advertising business and you are curious as to why someone would spend their money in that manner. If they weren’t relevant, you would not have heard them at all.
Haven’t you ever noticed that when you are in the market for a product or service you suddenly see and hear every commercial about it. And then the day you make your decision, they stopped running the ads. How did they know?
Tom, relevance, relevance, relevance.
One thing I discovered for myself is that when a friend/colleague mentions a product/brand to me, suddenly I pay attention to the ads on them (though I tuned them out before). Its like my friend planted a seed of relevance in my brain. Oh and usually a friend will also water the seed with his emotion, like: I didn’t like this wine. Not just I drink this wine.
Kris,
Agreed there is a fair absence of people in my rough formula approach, and certainly people are what everything is about.
I will rethink this!
Tom and Ecarin, thank you for helping to make clear more and more the importance of relevance and the lynch-pin for advertising and branding.
The thoughts on suddenly noticing a brand because a friend alerts you to its possible relevance… and the ‘disappearance’ of a brand due to decision making in favour of the brand – two very good observations.
This post and the comments have been bookmarked and I’ll be mulling them over and bringing them back to another blog near you soon!
Thanks guys – this conversation is what social media is all about.
Since there has been a lot of items brought up that I agree with 100%, the one point that Kris mentioned that I think is valuable to expand upon is the idea that branding is everything from the logo and name through to how you interact with the brand (sales or quality of product).
As advertisers, we’re often looked to in order to provide pieces of this puzzle, but there is a definite need to have your client on-board completely for your advice and recommendations in terms of HOW they manage customer experience, especially if it is crap.
No good ad campaign or even social media interaction can fix the fact that you have a sleazy salesperson you deal with when you enter a store, or have to spend 20 hours trying to figure out a manual to install software or something.
A brilliant ad might keep a brand top of mind and connect on an emotional or rational level enough to get people in the door or to purchase a service, etc – but that is not where the brand experience ends.
I think the brands that get this are the ones that will be forever successful. Sadly there are not a lot of great examples.
Also, to Scott’s point about irrelevant ads – maybe it’s just me, but they are all starting to blur together now (BK, Skittles, Snickers, etc) and losing their effect. Different doesn’t have to be strange or bizarre for the sake of being so…it can make you think differently about a product or brand overall. As much as I dislike Mircosoft, I find their “I’m a PC and I’m a fetus- type ads extremely demonstrative of the fact that they stand out by showing how digital natives at very young ages are using technology that many of us did not have available when we were the same age, as well as the simplicity of their products (so easy a fetus can use it).
Ok, I think I rambled for long enough on a Saturday.
I am seriously impressed by the quality of the comments and conversation on this post.
The danger of branding: any one element (bad ads, bad customer service, bad shipping) can ruin one person’s entire experience with that brand — and then they’ll tell others, rendering all of your millions of advertising dollars useless.
I agree that relevance provides a bond that can transcend the occasional bad experience, but it takes more effort (and exposure) to create that bond than it does to destroy it.
Maybe instead of establishing and protecting a “brand image,” companies should focus on providing the relevance and trust that will empower their customers to tell that company’s story FOR them.
(Great post, btw. I found it via a retweet from @GabrielRossi.)
Justin, I’ve been saying that for years.
This reminds me of a horrible interview with a fairly large PR firm some years ago which made me realize I didn’t want to work there. The honchos I was chatting with were 100% about “messaging” and poopooed the notion of EVER giving their clients’ customers a voice.
They absolutely did not understand the power of a user community, the power of word-of-mouth, or really the power of brands outside of their old school “image and message creation” model.
Thanks for the great observation.
Caff,
I completely agree with your statement:
“the one point that Kris mentioned that I think is valuable to expand upon is the idea that branding is everything from the logo and name through to how you interact with the brand (sales or quality of product).”
It is what my company as a Holistic Marketing agency deals with. Anyway this isn’t a self-plug so I’ll move on quickly…
Justin and Olivier – totally agree. I have a saying “Every experience counts, because your last experience could be your last experience”
For me, consistency across every channel that the brand is experienced is a must. Like Caif said – one bad salesman, one bad customer service rep – and a brand can loose a client forever and gain negative word of mouth.
Olivier I like the observation of “image and message creation” models which are removed from where people actual live.
This ties in to a conversation happening on Kris’ blog ATM about the place of real connection within social media…