Think About It

As customers have become savvier about marketing, some critics have suggested that brands don’t matter anymore. The modern customer supposedly sees brand marketing as mere hype pushing one product that’s really no different from another.

But in these days of toxic toys and poisonous peanut butter, we see that yes, brand does still matter.

Beneath the slick campaigns, a brand – a well-developed one anyway – really is a promise. That’s how brands were born in the first place, as a quick reference point for quality and reliability.

And no matter how sophisticated customers become, they still want promises they can count on. In some cases, they want those assurances more than ever. For example, the typical Generation Y consumer is deeply concerned about how products are grown and manufactured, how a company treats its employees and so on. (Read more about marketing to Generation Y in a previous post.)

The critics say it isn’t so, pointing to the increased popularity of store brands. But look deeper into this growth area and you’ll see another story. Store brands are succeeding because they’ve shed the old generic image. We no longer find big white boxes emblazoned with “CORN FLAKES” on the grocery shelf. Instead, we see the emergence of private labels such as Target’s Archer Farms. The current Archer Farms ad campaign, complete with bucolic farm scenes and poetic copy (“a masterpiece made for every palate“), is proof that even the store brands are building true brands, brands with promises that go beyond the traditional “lower price” position.

If customers do think that brand marketing is just fluff – and yes, sometimes they do think that – then as the brand stewards, we have to do a better job. We have to communicate our brands in a way that shows we are different.

How do we do that? We go back to the three key building blocks of Point of Vision's Brand Framework

1. Define the brand position. Who are we? What does our brand stand for?
   
   
2. Pinpoint the brand promise.  What can a customer can count on us to do or provide? Ideally, our promise is different from our competition’s.
   
   
3. Back it up with brand proof. Give the customer a reason to believe you can deliver on your promise. Examples of proof are a unique business process, the talent and training of your human resources, or quality control measures. This is where you build credibility, and that’s invaluable. Even if your brand promise isn’t too different from a competitor’s, if you have the proof and they don’t, you can win the brand battle.

We find that when our clients nail down their brand position, promise and proof, they discover a new clarity in how to communicate the brand to others. And with this new perspective, they can show their customers, beyond a doubt, that the brand they choose really does matter.

What do you think? Post a response to this entry – or any previous Think About It item – by December 31, 2007, and we’ll enter you into a drawing for one of two pairs of tickets to see the Atlanta Thrashers in Blueland (that’s Philips Arena for the uninitiated).

For more reading, download our Brand Framework Brief (48k PDF)