The 7 Universal Brand-Management Truths
No Matter the Product or Service, Knowing Your Team, Understanding the Competition Are Crucial
by Nitish Gupta
Published: January 05, 2010
I have come to realize that no matter what the product or service, the key principles for building a great brand remain the same.
1. Leverage information via hypothesis-led data analysis.
Anchoring a hypothesis and then looking at the data or information to prove the hypothesis right or wrong to understand the key issue at hand.
This refers to leveraging information and converting it into a forceful rationale to take the right action for the brand.
Aleve (Pain-relief medicine brand) Struggling with single-digit market share.
Hypotheses:
Consumers were not aware of the brand Aleve
Consumers were aware but didn't want to try the brand.
Data mining:
35% of heavy pain-relief medicine users had tried Aleve in the past year but had been using other brands as well.
Issue:
Brand had the awareness and trial but needed to drive loyalty.
Relevant brand attributes:
Important emotional triggers which drove Preference for the brand:
Control over pain
Freedom to do things you want
Consumers were interested in minimizing the number of pills they took to relieve pain.
Consumer insights:
Aleve users suffer from arthritis and back pain more than the average analgesic user. Users juggle many commitments in their lives, and are passionate about their accomplishments
Actions:
"Dramatic Difference" ad campaign launched in 1999, with spots designed by BBDO Chicago.
Results:
In 2000, sales of the medication were 16 percent higher than in 1999. In a flat category, Aleve's market share climbed to 7 percent, its all-time best.
Unaided brand recall increased by 8 percentage points between 1999 and 2000 - to 44 percent in 2000.
Unaided recall of Aleve advertisements went up 7 percentage points, to 33 percent in 2000.
Empowering women to rid themselves of pain seems to have been just the medicine that Aleve needed
2. Understand the competition and maintain your point of difference.
Broader category-competitive understanding sets the context under which consumers will be viewing your brand.
It's critical to maintain the point of difference for your brand and play to its strengths.
When Coke managed to get sponsorship rights for the 1996 Cricket World Cup in
3. Be consistent with your positioning over time and across platforms.
Create a distinctive and meaningful position in the mind of consumers for the offering.
So no matter what brand extension or innovation you are planning for your brand, ensure that it builds on and strengthens that distinctive positioning.
The Dove brand has extended across categories from skin care to hair care to others like deodorants by positioning itself on the soft/smooth platform and the fact that it contains moisturizing milk. Dove deodorants are positioned as leaving the underarms feeling soft and smooth. The brand has extended itself only in those categories where these soft/smooth and "contains moisturizing milk" equities are relevant, thus staying true to the positioning over time and across platforms, thus strengthening the brand.
4. Know what your target consumer wants.
Evaluating all the marketing choices from the vantage point of the consumer will help you to connect with the consumer and genuinely make a positive difference in his or her life. It's important to understand both the stated and unstated needs -- the insights into your target consumers' lives.
Louis Vuitton was launched in the late 1800s by supplying LV-branded suitcases to travelers. Travel then was a luxury afforded to only the wealthiest. Thus the brand became a symbol of status -- it helped consumers showcase their differences from others. By leveraging this core human insight,
5. Manage budgets with a "scarcity" mentality.
"Is this the best way to spend dollars on marketing my brand, or is this money better spent elsewhere to generate greater returns?"
Starbucks, instead of spending money on TV advertising, clusters an area with its stores, increasing total revenue and market share. This was contrary to what established retailing houses did, which was to avoid placing stores near each other so as not to cannibalize sales at existing outlets. For Starbucks, doing so resulted in reduced supply costs and made management of the stores cheaper, which more than made up for sales lost to cannibalization. Thus, funding for expansion from internal cash flow was a judicious use of money. Until recently, Starbucks spent just 1% of its revenues on marketing and advertising (compared to more than 10% for companies of the same size).
6. Get the right pricing that offers value in the eyes of consumers.
Perceived consumer value equals perceived brand benefit/price. Thus it's critical to decide the pricing strategy for your brand so that there is a net positive value for your consumers.
Gillette's pricing strategy for its flagship men's razors and blades brand focuses on regularly upgrading them, and hence pricing up on their newest offerings. The innovations are consumer significant, so that they are ready to pay a premium to upgrade to the latest offering. Right from their twin blade to triple-blade Mach3 to Mach3 Turbo (with vibrating motor) to Gillette Fusion (with an additional trimming blade), their upgrades have been significant, and as a result they've been able to charge a more than 10% premium with them.
7. Motivate the team via thought leadership.
Building a successful brand requires dedicated support, not just from the leader but from the whole multifunctional team -- sales, research, R&D, finance. To do the same, the brand leader needs to have a clear vision for the brand and enlist the team toward the same.
When it launched, Cosmopolitan had been positioned on a broad "for the family" platform. However by the mid-1950s it was suffering from declining readership. In the 1960s Helen Gurley Brown took charge. She sharply defined the target audience (progressive, career-oriented and open-minded women) and then rallied the team to deliver a product that would appeal to the target. They came up with innovations like a glossy format, inspirational articles and writings, and talking frankly and honestly about various issues and needs of women. The first print run of about 350,000 was sold out by the end of publication day, and the Cosmopolitan of today was born.
