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3 August 2009/
‘Brand-building’ à la Saffron
by Tina Mehta at 6:00 am 3 August 2009
Filed under: Branding
Brands used to be a guarantee of good quality. A product that did what it said on the tin laid a foundation of trust between consumers and a product. The likes of Disney, Coke and Sony built their reputation on consistently delivering quality products. ‘Sophisticated’ marketing, advertising and tag lines followed much later.
Things have changed. Some companies abuse the trust people put in their brands. Often, they spend more time and money on promotion than they do on developing a better product/service. Their marketing department over-promises and their products/services under-deliver. The trust between consumers and brands has suffered as a result. AIG, not so long after near financial collapse, claims ‘the strength to be there’. All too often, brands have been reduced to shiny sales mechanisms. Seduction has replaced substance.
It’s time to revisit the basics of brand building. Forget the sales brochure, toss out the 60-second spot. Remember that customer relationships are built on producing better products/services than the competition. This means faster innovation, better service, nicer ingredients, stronger materials, superior craftsmanship. Spending another million on an even better animation film will do much more for the Disney brand than a new ad. This is textbook stuff – yet it sounds surprising in a world of consumers that have grown wary of ‘new-and-improved’.
Ask your marketing team to start telling the truth and work harder on making that truth worth telling. Consumers don’t expect your brand to be single handedly the most innovative, have the highest quality and provide the best service. Apple products are infamous for caving in. But Apple doesn’t sell durability. Apple concentrates on simplicity.
Do the same: choose one thing to get right and put everyhing behind living up to that promise. Customers will buy into your brand for delivering that one thing. And they’ll start talking/blogging/recommending. After a while, they’ll start trusting you. That’s what we mean when we talk about brand building.
[...] The likes of and built their reputation on consistently delivering quality products. Today, too many companies believe they can do the same using taglines and TV spots. It’s time to re-visit the basics of brand building. [...]
Comment by Saffron Brand Consultants » Blog Archive » Brand à la Saffron — 8/3/2009 @ 6:04 am
Hi Tina
What happens though when firms produce/deliver identical products/services? A lot of branding experts claim that coca-cola is one of the greatest brands because it has managed to deliver on its brand promise through its product (refreshing and what not) but I haven’t seen any fervent brand insistence from the customers. They are happy to buy any drink as long as it is cola (I’ve been told that the story is a somewhat different in the US though and I have no way of knowing!)
I have been arguing for a while now for the need to separate brands from products/services. In my opinion, products are from Mars and brands are from Venus. And you don’t necessarily need to have a great product to build a great brand. Products/services today are just a small part of a much bigger brand story.
Red Bull, Harley Davidson, McDonald’s, Virgin… the list of brands with decent products but an exceptional brand experience is growing rapidly.
Cheers!
AD
Comment by Ashish Deodhar — 8/6/2009 @ 2:49 pm
This article points out some obvious, yet important and forgotten marketing truths and echos the books I studied on my MBA.
As we have all seen with the global credit crunch, people, corporations and governments for some time now have been trying to get something for nothing. First it was the dot.com boom, where money was thrown at start ups that didn’t produce anything of solid value. Then the global credit crunch crisis where banks lent out money to ‘NINJAS’–No Income No Job [or] ASsets. And in 2006 the rise of social media brands being driven by consumer content, which again does not really add any real value to peoples’ lives, it can be argued it is just a fad. Many companies, as this article points out, have succumbed to this ‘something for nothing mentality’–however, as with most things, people, companies, markets and economies–there is an automatic correction mechanism–in time the poor performing brands will disappear, while the real ‘value adding’ brands will prosper.
Great article!
Comment by Aaron — 8/6/2009 @ 10:13 pm
Congratulations, I couldn’t agree more. It’s a valuable honest approach since as a designers we live creating brands. Working as an innovation consultancy I’ve experienced the disappointment of clients canceling product innovation projects while spending a fortune in advertising. Brands cannot solve it all.
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Comment by Maximina Mcgahen — 3/25/2010 @ 2:35 pm