Many companies spend thousands on surveys, focus groups, and marketing studies. They want to know what their customers think about their products. But they have a free channel to their customer everyday through their Customer Service Department. As far as brand building is concerned, we think Customer Service is an essential link in the chain. [...]
Tag Archives: Brand
8 Brand Building Seasonal Selling Opportunities – Part 2
Seasonal selling can give your marketing and merchandising programs a “bandwagon” effect that can significantly boost sales if executed correctly. Pull out a calendar and use it as a guide to plan your marketing activities and take advantage of the various selling seasons that are coming our way. The seasons we’re talking about are not [...]
8 Brand Building Seasonal Selling Opportunities – Part 1
Seasonal selling is like sailing with the tides. It gives your salesman-ship the flow and clearance it needs to most effectively get under way. As any seasoned sailor will tell you, if you try to fight the tide you’ll just get hung up on the sandbar. When you move with the flow, can buoy up [...]
6 Elements of Brand Success
Martinelli’s Gold Medal Non-alcoholic Sparkling Apple Cider is a classic example of successful seasonal branding. Billing itself as the perfect alternative to alcohol, this sparkling beverage has defined and dominated its market category, making it a fitting brand success story to study for the New Year. Although sparkling cider is marketed year round for weddings, [...]
5 Elements of House Brands
Whether they are called own brands, control brands, custom brands, or house brands, retailers are increasing the shelf space devoted to their own labels. These control brands, or private labels, have both advantages and disadvantages for retailers, suppliers, producers, and consumers. They are born out of the chain retailer’s desire to cut out the middleman, [...]
Increase Your Brand Awareness with Goodwill toward Your Community
Today the term “cause marketing” has become an overused buzzword. Like “green washing,” much of the substance seems to be lost in the term. Some companies deliver “cause marketing” with a check and a “good luck with that.” Then they are satisfied that they are supporting this group and have done their duty. Of course, [...]
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. [...]
New Brands Must Survive Repeated Murder Attempts
Since it’s Halloween, we thought we’d share a scary brand story. For the first five years of our brand’s existence, we had to survive various attempts to kill it. Even after that, we had to be constantly vigilant to protect it from threats to its very life in every new market. It was pretty scary [...]
Brand Story: Barefoot Wine
On Tuesday, October 16, 2012, we will do something entirely out-of-the-box for the book industry, as far as we know. We will offer a limited number of advance eBooks 90 days before the official release of the paperback, The Barefoot Spirit. Further, we will offer a limited number of packages which will include the advance [...]
7 Brand Killers and How to Stop Them – Part 2
Some brand killers are coming from your competition or the marketplace. Others may be coming from your own office staff. Yes, they are well-meaning, but do they have the knowledge and experience required to make suggestions affecting sales? Administrative and production people have a tendency to discount what the sales team has painfully learned over [...]
HBS Branding Blog by David Aaker
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Panera Bread: A Brand Winner
Panera Bread dominates the bakery/café category. It owns over 60% of the market share, with sales over three billion dollars obtained from over 1,500 units. And just in the last five years Panera Bread has increased its earnings per share by over 24% each year. In 2010, Fortune magazine named it as one of the 100 fastest-growing companies. Operating under th […]
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Super Bowl Roundup: Top 6 Memorable Ads
The 2013 Super Bowl ads were not an impressive group. I was looking for commercials that were memorable, liked, linked to a brand, and were likely to advance the brand proposition. The majority of the ads I saw didn’t qualify. However, here are six that caught my eye. The first four were among the five most popular ads, according to a USA Today survey taken […]
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Six Reasons Why Incumbent Firms Fail to Create “Big” Innovations
One of the empirical facts of business strategy is that “big” innovations that create new categories or subcategories do not come from the leading incumbents - they come from outsiders. Successful incumbents have the resources to lead but, in fact, success breeds complacency, lethargy or arrogance. What is also disturbingly true is that incumbents not only f […]
Brand Week News And Features
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Ad Urging Doctors to Work in Africa Is Audible Only Through a Stethoscope
Africa Health Placements and South African agency Boomtown collaborated on a neat multimedia idea to encourage foreign doctors to work in Africa, where medical professionals are kind of desperately needed. The ad is a mailer rigged with a pressure-activated thingie (in technical jargon, a "doohickey") that plays an mp3 advertisement when a stethosc […]
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Marketers: Carnival Needs A Great PR Video—Now
Carnival Cruise Lines should post a two-to-three-minute PR video to its Facebook and Twitter pages—and pronto—if it wants to repair the brand damage that's occurred after the Triumph ship fiasco of the last few days, according to industry players. From Carnival to its brand competitor Royal Carribbean—which is slated to run a 30-second ad during next we […]
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Zoosk Puts Go Daddy to Shame With Even Gnarlier Kissing Ad
Jesse Heiman kissing God's hands—aka, Bar Refaeli's lips—for Go Daddy on the Super Bowl was one thing. Nasty, yes, but not bestial. For the latter, we turn to Zoosk, the dating site previously best known for its lecherous heart-puppet slobbering on a laptop. This new spot takes shock-kissing to a whole new level, as the girl (after a long pause to […]
