Your administrative and production folks can be well-meaning when they offer their suggestions, but they can unintentionally kill your brand. Because they don’t have street experience in the marketplace, they can make decisions that can undo years of brand building. In their desire to understand the nature and success of the brand, non-sales staff want [...]
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Brand Building Requires Constant Vigilance
Many producers, especially of consumer goods, get excited when their brand is for sale in some far away city across the country. They act like it’s some kind of an achievement to have placed their product there. They may even brag about all the places their product is “sold.” The fact is, their brand may [...]
7 Factors Affect Customer Loyalty
When your customers first buy your product, they likely were previously loyal to another product. Something happened that sent them shopping. Maybe it was the price, or maybe they just couldn’t find it anymore. So they tried yours. For whatever reason, you now have an opportunity to make them loyal to your product – but [...]
When it comes to Brand Development, Reputation Trumps all Else
When the Exxon Valdez spilled crude oil into the pristine Prince William Sound in 1989, years of building their name recognition instantly worked against them. Their high profile brand was a household word and the incident became a daily topic of conversation. Even though Exxon took responsibility and voluntarily committed massive funds to the clean [...]
Building Customer Loyalty is Critical to Brand Survival
Over the life of your business, either you will build an ever-increasing loyal following, or your business will end. There’s no treading water when it comes to building customer loyalty. If you are not constantly growing your customer base, you are losing it. Satisfied customers, singing your praises to their friends, neighbors, co-workers and family, [...]
Measuring Customer Loyalty is Critical to Brand Survival
We’ve all heard about the contractor who says “It looks fine from my house,” but the home owner who has to live with it will never hire that contractor again. Sometimes bridges burn so quietly, you may not realize you are losing customers, especially when you are new and there seems to be an endless [...]
Brand Marketing Strategies Have the Same Goal
Every Brand Market Strategy is aimed at selling more product, plus gaining and maintaining customer loyalty, but they go about it in different ways. Is it the best or the least expensive? Does it provide superior service, or is it the only one of its kind? As brands distinguish themselves, they consider the landscape between [...]
Branding Services Abound – Know What You are Looking For
They say the folks who made the most money during the gold rush were selling shovels. The branding “gold rush” of today is no different. If this was written twenty years ago it would be called Marketing Services Abound. As we advance into the twenty-first century, we continue to see the definition blur between marketing [...]
Worthy-Cause Marketing
There’s a secret Madison Avenue doesn’t want you to know: Worthy-cause marketing can beat conventional advertising for many products, because it gives buyers political and social reasons to buy your product and remain loyal to your brand – and it’s more cost effective. Worthy-cause marketing is different from charitable giving or cause marketing. It is [...]
Building a Brand – 11 Essential Building Blocks
Today there is a lot of talk about building a brand. It seems like brands pop up over night, especially on the web. Most brands, however, take years to become established. Some companies even buy up defunct brands because they may still have some brand equity that may be harder to build than acquire. Gaining [...]
HBS Branding Blog by David Aaker
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Why CMOs Fail, and Why They Don’t Have To
The average tenure of a new CMO, according to one study, is less than 24 months. And in a recent study, 60% of respondents thought that this failure was not due to the CMO’s failures but to the fact that the company was not as open to change as they thought. CMOs are hired to drive a change agenda, but just can’t get enough support.My take is a bit more nuan […]
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Should Your Brand Unsell its Product?
If a firm believes that one of its products is bad for its customers or bad for the environment, what should it do? If the product is contributing to youth obesity, to alcoholism, or to energy waste, is there a responsibility to “unsell” that product in order to get people to use it less? A firm can make product or program decisions that will be a win-win. T […]
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Points of Parity
Most brand strategists focus on developing points of difference that will give consumers good reasons to prefer their brand. The key to winning is assumed to be differentiation.However, if there is a key “must have” dimension on which your brand is perceived to inadequately deliver, your brand will not be considered. You will not be a player, which means you […]
Brand Week News And Features
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Consumers Like Brands That Are Family-Owned
In the large and largely anonymous world of home cleaning products, it would probably come as a surprise to most consumers that the Bissell brand is a family-owned company that’s been run by Bissells for 137 years. And while the Bissells are obviously proud of their vacuums, they never saw family ownership as a marketing tool—until now. The company’s new ad […]
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Can TV Buyers Adapt to a Digital Model?
Beyond just getting a seat at the table, digital buyers are suddenly finding themselves at its head—and the love of data, optimization and acronyms they’re bringing with them could seriously shake up traditional media buying where a steak and a handshake still rule. Indeed, a growing number of agency media executives who grew up in digital are finding themse […]
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Our Selection of the Most Eye-Catching Ads on Billboards
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