MV newsletter - March 2005

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We bet that when (if) you saw our Free Membership for Life offer, your first thought was that the communications consultants had been paying us a visit.

“Give them a knock-out offer, and make it URGENT!”

Well, in a sense you would have been right. We decided to advertise in Larry Chase’s Web Digest for Marketers , and the great man gave us considerable amounts of advice into the bargain, including a couple of re-writes of our insert.

It is also true that, as of sometime this month, there will be a small charge for any strangers who wander into the Valley. Initially it will be a very small annual fee, fixed for life, but this will rise over time.

Whose life? Well, frankly, either ours or yours. It is based on the old UK Scotch video proposition (reinforced by a skeleton) that their products would last longer than their customers. We thought that you might like to know that.

And we have even more good news for you. Not only do you have guaranteed Free Membership for Life (with a new free beta-test tool to play with each month), but as a member, you will be entitled to buy any of our tools, except the Brand Audit Party Pack, for £9.99 each (approx. US$19.99). The Party Pack will cost £129.99 (approx. US$249.99) to members.

Starting-up………………

One of the topics we were asked to cover a couple of months back is how to develop a brand for a new business start-up.

We have been racking our brains ever since as to why this should be different from the classic process, or at least the one we used when we started up.

The first step is to persuade the team that it is worth spending time developing a brand plan. Strategic brand management is usually focused on the medium and long-term, which may seem somewhat indulgent for a business that may have to live hand-to-mouth and day-to-day for a while. Of course, some business start-ups are heavily funded, and so it is the longer term that is most at issue (think, eBay, Amazon, Lastminute.com etc.). Brand management is not the only way to succeed in the short term, but it is critical in the medium to long-term.

Secondly, you are trying to develop a killer deliverable, targeted at a specific audience with a differentiated, compelling proposition. This process is somewhat circular for new start-ups. What is the market segment you are targeting, and what is the proposition? The segment defines the proposition; and the proposition defines the segment. For established brands, the profitable customer segments are probably equally established as the ones that provide 80% of their revenues– it is more a question of keeping ahead of their evolving needs. If you are undertaking a fundamental re-branding exercise, you are in the same position as a start-up, as you want to abandon your current territory for a more promising one (e.g. Lucozade moving from being a pick-me-up for sick people, to being an energy source for sporting ones).

In our case, we envisaged two specific audiences, based on our own experiences. The first we called the “Process People”, whom we believed would typically be tasked by higher management with a three month project to audit the existing situation, and make recommendations for future brand development (which is why we have an aggressive program to develop new leading-edge tools). The second group we called the “Power Brokers” – people who might well be the Process People’s bosses, who do not know a whole lot about branding, and would never get their hands dirty with it, but want to look like they know enough at that next board meeting (which is why we have the searchable articles on brand marketing processes).

In the event, we have actually picked up a lot of a third group – brand marketing and communications consultancies – who seem to particularly like our tools (and probably make some good money from slotting them into their own tool kits). That is the thing about real life – no strategy fully anticipates it.

Once the team is on board, and the target audience and proposition is set, it is down to the nuts and bolts – firstly around the branding essentials (name, logo, trade dress etc.), and secondly around executing the proposition on a daily basis in an action plan.

There is a dispute about the name and identity elements. Some believe that they have to be proposition-specific; others, like us, say that they could be set up in advance, irrelevant of the proposition.

So, in summary, the process for developing a brand for a start-up is the classic application of the brand management process. If you believe that the name and visual identity of the brand is irrelevant of the proposition, then you can agree on these at the very beginning, and save yourselves some time. This will also give your team a name much earlier to identify itself with.

Where things become more complicated is when you are an established organisation already with many different brands, and you develop a new range of products or services. Should you stretch an existing brand or develop a new one – adding exponentially to the complexity and cost of your brand management processes? It is still the same process, with potentially the same steps, but there are many more options.

You don’t need no proposition……….

What characterises most brand marketing commentary is that everyone is agreed about the theory.

However, it is a well-known fact that when all economists agree with each other, they are almost invariably and catastrophically wrong, so this unanimity among branding gurus gives pause for thought.

Luckily, Mike Schultz has come along in Marketing Profs (subscription only) to tell us that we have got our immutable laws all wrong. Since when, he asks, did your local financial services supplier ever have a compelling proposition? He goes on to list a mass of accountants in the Boston area whom he cannot differentiate at all, and for whom he believes that a fresh, compelling proposition would be a disaster. What they need to offer is reliability, not excitement.

We sort of agree with him that reliability/trust/authority is a key element of any brand proposition, but if he is looking at the wider financial services market, could he be so kind as to add Charles Schwab, PayPal, First Direct, Directline, egg, Smile, & more, Virgin and MBNA to his list?

And, if he happens to know of an excellent group of leading-edge creative accountants who are guaranteed to save you thousands off your tax bill over a café latte and a breadless sandwich for a cut-price fee, then we think that might be a compelling proposition too.

The pulpit and the soap box……………

A kindly soul, who is looking to use brand management techniques to promote his local church, prompted us to write an article about how well the established religions have used techniques over the years that we would now recognise as brand marketing.

We are not quite sure that he was expecting what he got from us as an answer, but we enjoyed the trip.

Devoting your whole life…………..

In a January 2005 article in a special edition of the Harvard Business Review on self-management, Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori found that in the Fortune 100 companies 45% of executives have still spent their whole working lives in one company. And if you are planning to get to the top of such a company, you will be glad to know that the average waiting time for those who make it is currently only 24 years.

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© 2005, Mud Valley ™ brand marketing community.

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