Certain brands have woven authenticity into their products, delivery and message. These brands have a distinctive look and feel about them that says, “This is the original,” or “This is the genuine article.” Over time, they have carved out a place at the apex of their category. A couple times a week we enjoy John [...]
Tag Archives: Brand promise
4 Pillars of Brand Promise
A friend who is a Fortune 500 exec asked us recently, “What really makes a brand?” We knew he was an experienced and knowledgeable guy, and we owed him a thoughtful reply. What initially came to mind were all the elements that affect a brand: its logo, its catch phrase, its positioning, and so on. [...]
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, [...]
Retail Packaging Must Serve Many Masters
Your retail packaging must play by the established rules for labeling, dimensions, weight, units-per-pack, packs-per-box and so on. Your product must make it through the entire distribution system without getting crushed, marred, broken, misplaced, or misidentified. If your package can actually make it to the retail shelf or floor, only then do you have the [...]
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 [...]
Product Branding – 5 Keys to Success
The results of successful product branding are all around us every day. Certain icon brands became synonymous with their products, like Kleenex with facial tissue, and Xerox with copying machines. Other brands imply high quality, such as Tiffany and Mercedes. Still others bring to mind speed and dependability like, FedEx and The Bullet Train. What [...]
Branding Your Business is a Multi-faceted Challenge
The cowboys used branding in the old west to identify their cattle and horses. When particularly excellent beef was identified with a brand, the brand itself gained value. After a while it was expected that beef under that brand was going to be excellent. The repetition of quality delivery over time developed the brand “promise.” [...]
HBS Branding Blog by David Aaker
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Killing Giants: A Relevance Interpretation
Killing Giants is a provocative book written by Stephen Denny in which he outlines 10 strategies that have worked when small firms took on the giants in their industry - firms with marketing scale, distribution clout, buying power and strong brands. In looking at these strategies, it appeared to me that nearly all had a relevance interpretation. They were re […]
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Lincoln Attempts to "Reinvent the Wheel"
Lincoln, has an incredible heritage, nearly a century old, as a premium brand. It had a long run with prestige owners and classic designs. But no longer. For several decades, Lincoln has been perceived as a boring car for very old people who are into cushy rides and waxing nostalgic. The brand is now attempting a break-out reinvigoration to again become a to […]
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A CEO Style to Admire
Tom Aaker, a friend and relative, is a CEO with an exemplary professional style very different from that of Steve Jobs whose style I recently wrote about, and a personal lifestyle that rivals that of Richard Branson of Virgin or Larry Ellison of Oracle. The combination has worked as he has advanced at Standard Chartered, a British banking company operating m […]
Brand Week News And Features
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What People Will Really Pay for a Game When They Can Pay What They Want
Ever wish you could buy 1,000 liters of boar sperm? How about a condom for every resident of El Paso, Texas? If so, you might want to create the next popular card game. Each of those purchases would set you back $70,000—which is the approximate net profit that the makers of Cards Against Humanity recorded from "pay-what-you-want" sales of a special […]
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Brazilian Fast-Food Chain Puts Burgers in Edible Wrappers
Brazilian fast-food chain Bob's has come up with edible packaging for its burgers, just to make the point that people love its food so much that they can't even wait to unwrap it before digging in. That's kind of cheating, isn't it? Making the wrappers tasty enough that no one threw them out rigs the game a little too much, don't you […]
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A Cappella Singing Is Harder in Backseat of a Speeding BMW
Ho ho ... hum. Guess how "Jingle Bells" sounds when sung by an a cappella choir riding in the backseat of a wildly speeding and skidding BMW driven by a professional race-car driver. If you said "Pretty bad," you'd be right! In Switzerland, the automaker buckled four caroling members of the Zurich Acapella Group into a BMW M135i driv […]
