2009 October | brandSTOKE

Archive for October, 2009

Oct

Brand loyalty … for all of eternity

By Kirk 6 Comments

Categories: art direction & design, loyalty, packaging, promotion and retail

In racelrgopen alabama the spirit of Halloween, I share this personal story:

A couple of years ago, my father died unexpectedly. While arranging the funeral, my brother and I found ourselves in a casket showroom adjacent to a funeral home. (My dad’s family favors caskets over urns.)

If you’ve never shopped for a casket, trust me — it is an experience both sad and surreal. Despite the funeral director’s (read: sale representative’s) efforts to make the event comforting and meaningful, a casket showroom is not a place you ever want to be.

I didn’t see that I had a choice, so I bucked up and tried to imagine the type of casket Dad would have preferred.

Wood or metal? The funeral director implied that the (more expensive) metal models last longer in the ground. (Is that the goal? To keep your loved one’s physical remains in as near to natural a state as possible? What about flooding? What about earthquakes? Just imagine the problems caused by seepage, rust and corrosion? See? Sad and surreal.)

My dad enjoyed working with wood, so, despite the advantages of metal, I was leaning toward the wooden models. But which one? Cherry, walnut, mahogany?

Then we turned the corner in the showroom and I saw it. The Last Race Casket by F&F Metal Products. A casket for car-racing fans! A casket shrinkwrapped in an auto-race mural, like a city bus.

“The checkered flag, the trophy, and the roar of the crowd all serve to insure that every auto-racing fan will enjoy the high performance look of the casket.” Really? From … (gulp) … inside?

“Do you sell many of these?”

“Oh, yeah! NASCAR’s huge!”

Turns out specialty caskets have a niche. F&F Metal Products also offers caskets themed for golfers, hunters, fishers, and bikers.

My mind raced. How about a casket featuring the deceased’s favorite brand? Of course, someone had already thought of this.

Eternal Image has a licensing agreement with Major League Baseball to feature your favorite team’s logo and colors on caskets and urns.

And university teams? The Memorial Licensing Company already makes caskets available in your alma mater’s colors. See Clemson’s casket here (or search for yours).

Was your loved one a Trekkie? How could you not send them off to the great unknown in the Star Trek casket, “inspired by the popular ‘Photon Torpedo’ design seen in STAR TREK II: The Wrath of Khan.

It was tempting, but I couldn’t do that to Dad. My brother and I settled on pecan. Dad grew up in North Carolina where they pronounce the word pee’-kan not pi-kahn’. Correcting the pronunciation of the wait staff when he ordered pecan pie at restaurants never failed to amuse him. I thought he might appreciate this little joke.

Which brands do you think would make good casket themes? How would you theme your casket? Share your ideas.

Oct

What every non-marketer should know about branding

By Kirk 3 Comments

Categories: brand essence, loyalty, roi, standards and strategy

The words “brand” and “branding” are thrown around in casual conversation so frequently now that I’m still surprised to find not every business person knows what they mean. (In fairness though, I don’t understand supply-chain logistics.)

Some business managers refer to their products as brands, probably a carryover from the early P&G days. Some still think their logo, package or trademark is the brand.

Some mistakenly believe they have total control of their customer’s brand experience. And many think branding is just another word for marketing.

Here’s a list of the basics for the non-marketers in your organization:

Your brand resides inside your customers’ minds.
It got there through their experiences with your product, service, or organization.
In one way or another, every person in your organization contributes to shaping your customers’ experiences with your brand — even if they don’t face the customer.
Likewise, every dollar spent by your organization contributes to shaping your customers’ experiences with your brand.
Your customers’ brand experiences occur at every touchpoint, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential.
For these reasons, branding is not solely a marketing function. It’s an organizational function.
Maintaining consistency of brand experience is a challenge for most organizations. (No surprise.)
The ROI of branding is 1) trial and 2) loyalty.
Trial results from being intrigued by the promise of the brand experience. Loyalty results from having a series of consistent, singular and favorable brand experiences.
Branding generates results long-term, unlike promotion-based marketing which aims at the short-term.
In addition to consistency, the other hallmark of a brand is differentiation — giving the customer a reason to choose your brand rather than your competitor’s brand.
Consistent use of the brand’s properties (logo, colors, theme, packaging, advertising elements, etc.) is critical for building brand awareness and preference. They are the identifiers of the brand.
Your brand will not be strong unless the entire organization understands and embraces branding, starting at the top.

Okay, there’s more to it than that. But it’s a start. Do you have any basic points to add to the list?

Oct

Apparently we care about cosmetics, not banks

By Kirk 2 Comments

Categories: loyalty, research, retail and strategy

We care about cereal, not insurance. Vodka not water.

Brand Keys, a research firm specializing in customer loyalty and brand engagement, recently released their 2009 Loyalty Engagement Index, a list of rankings of customer loyalty toward 440 brands in 63 categories. In the survey, 26,000 consumers were polled about the degree to which brands were able to meet or exceed their expectations within each category.

The results reveal a number of interesting insights.

First, loyalty and dominant market share are unrelated. JetBlue and Southwest, for example, tied for the lead in the airlines category, beating the majors. Tom’s of Maine outshone Crest and Colgate in the toothpaste category.

On the other hand, Walmart easily won the discount retail stores category and McDonald’s won quick-serve restaurants.

Second, consumers have favorites in every category but feel more strongly about some categories than others. You may be more engaged with brands in the pet food category, for example, than brands of gasoline. Brands in the following categories received the highest average rankings in the survey:

Luxury cosmetics
Kids’ breakfast cereals
Wireless handsets
Luxury moisturizing skin care
Discount retail stores
Mass-merchandise cosmetics
Mass-merchandise moisturizing skin care
Luxury hotels
Vodka (the only distilled spirits surveyed)
Digital point-and-shoot cameras

Brands in the following categories are presumably less engaging to consumers and received the lowest average rankings:

Banks (If only we’d known before the bailout.)
Insurance
Soft drinks (regular)
Casual dining
Bottled water
Soft drinks (diet)
Major league sports
Pizza
Allergy medicine (OTC)
Airlines

Consumers tend to endure rather than embrace their experiences with banks, insurance companies, and airlines. However, it’s interesting that soft drink and pizza brands rank so low given the millions of dollars that are spent marketing them.

Consumers found vodka as a category more brand-engaging than all other beverages surveyed, including regular beer, coffee, light beer, diet soft drinks, bottled water and regular soft drinks.

Third, and as expected, luxury brands rank higher than economy brands, indicating consumers are more loyal to brands that provide value than brands that compete on price alone.

Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys president, says in a BrandWeek article, “There is a price-value formula consumers use to calculate brand differences and to decide which brands to buy. Shopper consciousness has shifted from just trying to ferret out deals to looking for brands that provide value.”

A case in point: luxury hotels in the survey ranked 93rd on average, upscale hotels 140th, midscale hotels 275th, and economy hotels 340th. The same is true for cosmetics and moisturizing skin care — luxury out-engages mass merchandise.

Fourth, numerous competitive brands in a category does not mean consumer engagement is high.

For example, there are 10 brands in the bottled water category yet engagement with the category runs shallow, based upon the average brand rankings.

Which categories in the survey include the most competitive brands?

Automotive (15 brands competing for loyalty)
Vodka (14)
Mass-merchandise cosmetics (12)
Wireless handsets (11)

If you’re looking to compete in a category with only a few competitors, try:

Parcel delivery (Only 3 brands, but be prepared to take on FedEx, UPS and USPS.)
Office supply stores (3)
Electronics stores (3)
Online books and music stores (3)

Why the emphasis on brand loyalty?

Loyal customers buy from you again and again.
They ignore your competition.
They refer to others.
They cost less to retain than attracting new customers.
They are more profitable.

Ask Tom’s of Maine.

Oct

You say tomato. I say Fox’s Fine Gourmet Ketchup.

By Kirk 2 Comments

Categories: brand essence, loyalty and strategy

Mustard is mustard, right? Yellow runny stuff. Although some prefer Robert Rothschild Farm Horseradish Mustard.

At the bar, some order scotch. Others specify 15-year-old Laphroaig.

And gasoline is nothing more than fuel. The brand doesn’t matter — only the price or the location of the pump. Yet some go out of their way for Shell, BP, or Sunoco.

The first are buying a commodity; the second a brand. (By the way, chemists say base gasoline is the same, regardless of brand. The additives account for the variations in performance.)

The difference between brands and commodities is perceived intangible attributes. “Perceived” is key. Some get it, some don’t, and some don’t even care.

We all know consumers who are driven by brands. We accept that some aren’t.

Interestingly, most of us are a mix of the two perspectives, depending upon the brand category. A brand to one is a commodity to another, and vice versa. Moleskine notebooks have a cult following, for example, which procurers of generic office supplies may scoff at.

It’s important to remember for every product and service category there is a segment of consumers that: