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Editor's Introduction:The majority of upstart-brands, even the solid, dependable ones, toil along, achieving less-than-expected results. The problem­ They are plagued with a variety of difficulties, ranging from profitability issues to concerns about extending a brand into new product categories. By recognizing and learning to resolve these trouble spots, organizations can extract the greatest value from their brands.

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The brand increasingly is becoming the key source of differentiation that guides customer purchase choice. It is the focal point around which an organization defines how it will uniquely deliver value to the customer for a profit - effectively embodying the "heart and soul" of that organization. The brands promise is delivered through its products, services, and consumer communication - the total customer relationship and experience. If the brand is well conceived and consistently delivered through all business processes and customer contacts, the organization will grow and prosper.

Not too long ago, marketers at consumer product companies seemed to be the only ones interested in talking about brand management and branding. But, these days, all kinds of organizations are recognizing the importance of branding.

Why has this marketing discipline become so popular­ In an age of increasing product commoditization and choice, the brand is an easy way for people to break through the clutter. It helps them simplify certain choices in their lives. And brands are increasingly fulfilling peoples' needs for affiliation and identification - needs that traditional institutions are struggling to meet as well as they used to.

If brand management is new to you or your organization, you most likely need a quick but comprehensive overview of the key barriers to successful brand building. Awareness of the problems and pitfalls brands can encounter is an important step in maintaining a strong, healthy brand.

1. Focusing on short-term profitability at the expense of long-term revenue growth. This problem is driven by the organization's reward systems. If brand managers and general managers are compensated and promoted on delivering quarterly or annual financial results without a focus on longer-term business growth, this is sure to occur. This problem is most acute in publicly held companies that are pressured to deliver quarterly financial results. The solution is to create a balanced scorecard that integrates growth objectives into common and individual performance measures.

2. Limiting the brand to one channel of distribution or aligning the brand too closely with a declining channel of trade. Have you heard much about Tupperware lately­ Although that brand was one of the pioneers of the network marketing approach, it hasn't extended its distribution much beyond that. In contrast, Rubbermaid-branded products are available in many popular distribution channels.

The lesson: Don't ever become too dependent on one channel of trade. Always look for the best new opportunities for distributing your products or services.

3. Reducing or eliminating brand advertising. When it is time to "tighten the organizational belt," advertising is always a likely source of savings. The budget is usually big enough to contribute significantly to cost savings, and it is often difficult to tell advertising's return on investment. Finally, even if there is an ill effect, the brand won't immediately suffer from an equity withdrawal (or so goes the all-too-common logic).

However, recent studies have shown a positive correlation between advertising spending and revenues, earnings, market share, and stock price. Tod Johnson of the NPD Group indicates that a decline in brand loyalty has two causes. One is erratic advertising or advertising that does not keep pace with the competition. The other is "cannibalization" caused by brand extensions.

Set specific objectives for your advertising and tack results against those objectives. Copy test all of your ads to make sure they are effective. And, finally, constantly and vigilantly sell the importance of advertising to key internal decision makers.

4. Applying branding decisions at the end of the product development process ("Now, what will we name this­") versus treating brand management as the key driver of all of your enterprise's activities. You are probably working for a manufacturing company that really doesn't understand brand management and marketing. They design, manufacture, and sell products and services. They don't market brands, or if they do, they leave that function to the advertising or communications department or to the advertising agency.

A brand is a source of a promise to the consumer. Everything a company does should support that promise. Start with the target consumer and the brand design (essence, promise, personality, and positioning) and then decide what the products and services will be. (This may be an organization design and staffing competency issue.)

5. Confusing brand management with product management. Brand management and product management are not the same. Brands, if well managed, should have a much longer life than individual products and even product categories.

Brand management is much more holistic than product management, encompassing all of the marketing elements and many of an organization's other functions. Consumers do not develop relationships with products nor are they loyal to products. Brands and what they stand for establish the emotional connection with consumers. As Jim Speros of Ernst & Young put it, "Products are manufactured in factories… brands are created in the mind of the consumer."

6. Defining your brand too narrowly, especially as a product category (for instance, "greeting cards" versus "caring shared"). One of the key advantages of a strong brand is its ability to be extended into new product and service categories. It is a growth engine for your organization. It helps you transcend specific product categories and formats that may become obsolete.

Define your brand's essence and promise in terms of what key benefits your brand delivers to consumers (independent of the specific product or service). Then continue to find new ways to deliver against that essence and promise. General Electric (GE) successfully broadened its frame of reference by moving from "General Electric: Better living through electricity" to "GE: We bring good things to life." (GE just adopted a new slogan: "Imagination at work.")

 

7. Failure to extend the brand into new product categories when the core category is in decline. "It is our core category. It is our cash cow. We must focus all of our resources on preserving it." Sound familiar­

It is one thing to prematurely walk away from your core category. It is yet another to myopically focus all of your organizational resources on a flat or declining category in the misguided hope that you may be able to revive it, especially if you are not trying to radically redefine or re-engineer it. Try and try again, but also know when it is time to "quit" (that is, when it is time to do no more than maintain and "milk" the core category and reinvest the profits in new, more promising ventures.) Often, realistic financial projections are the best wake-up call in these situations.

8. Frequently changing and positioning and message. New brand managers and marketing executives often feel as though they need to make a name for themselves to continue the climb up the corporate ladder. Don't succumb to the temptation of doing this by changing the advertising campaign or the brand slogan, especially if the current ones are working well or haven't been in place long enough to assess their effectiveness.

Consistent communication over time is what builds a brand. After all, Hallmark has used its "When You Care Enough to Send the Very Best" slogan since 1944; the Marlboro Man has been Marlboro's icon since 1955; and Absolut Vodka has featured its bottle's shape in consumer communication since 1978. If you do make changes, make them gradually in an integrated fashion based on sound consumer research.

9. Creating brands or sub-brands for internal or trade reasons, rather than to address distinct consumer needs. There is nothing more inefficient or wasteful than creating a new brand or sub-brand for a purpose other than meeting a different consumer need. Brands and sub-brands should exist to address different consumers and consumer-need segments. It is expensive to launch a new brand (and very expensive to maintain multiple brands that meet similar consumer needs; it also adds unnecessary complexity to your organization). Worst of all, it dilutes the position of your original brand. This problem often results from egos and organization structure.

People head up divisions or business units that deliver specific products or services. They create a name and identity to put on business cards and to rally their employees around, whether the products or services are similar to products or services other divisions create or not. (This has resulted in the following printer lines for Hewlett-Packard: DeskJet, OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro, LaserJet, DesignJet, DeskWriter, and PhotoSmart. It is unlikely that consumers understand many of these distinctions. They are likely to think of them all as Hewlett-Packard printers.)

Sometimes, companies create separate brands or sub-brands for trade reasons - for instance, to offer something different to specialty stores versus mass channels of distribution. (Hallmark created the "Expressions from Hallmark" brand to offer mass channel stores while specialty stores continued to carry the Hallmark brand. These two brands don't meet different consumer needs and I'm not sure consumers perceive differences between the two.) This problem can also result from mergers and acquisitions in which the brands are neither rationalized nor strategically managed after the enterprises are combined.

10. Overexposing the brand to the point that it becomes tiresome. Occasionally, a brand can become so ubiquitous through aggressive marketing and distribution that it seems to be everywhere. While brand awareness soars, the brand loses any uniqueness or mystique that it once had. The brand seems to no longer make a unique品牌命名公司 statement about the individual who uses it. It becomes common. People tire of it.

This is particularly true if the brand is mostly hype, logo, and identity, with no strong underlying idea or compelling point of difference. Nike has struggled with this. Its abundant success has also been its downfall: While Nike does stand for something, the brand's overexposure made it too common.

The lesson here: Focus more on the core consumer and maintaining relevant product/service differentiation and less on brand and logo ubiquity.

11. Not delivering against the communicated brand promise. This is a symptom of viewing brand management as a communications exercise. For example, United Airlines' advertising campaign, "United Airlines Rising" backfired on them. While they were trying to communicate that their service was rising to meet consumers' expectations, their flight attendants were involved in a labor dispute, and threatening CHAOS ("Creating Havoc Around Our System"). Their customer relations department was so unresponsive to complaints that it prompted a disgruntled customer to create the Web site, www.untied.com, featuring United Airlines passenger complaints.

The communicated promise must be delivered in product, service, and the total customer experience. Internal brand strategy education and communication may be necessary to ensure all employees are helping the brand deliver its promise. Tying employee compensation to delivery against the brand promise also will help ensure the promise is delivered.

12. Not applying the latest product and service innovations to your flagship brand because it is getting too old and stodgy (a self-fulfilling prophecy). It is a tragedy to walk away from a brand into which you may have invested millions of dollars, over time. It is better to reposition, revitalize, and extend an aging brand than to ignore it. You should carefully monitor consumer opinion to ensure the brand is perceived as relevant and vital. Also, track the brand's consumers to make sure they are not a shrinking or aging group. Often, new sub-brands can make the parent brand more relevant to new consumer segments.

Brand management aligns organizations with value-adding activities. It keeps organizations focused on meeting real human needs in compelling new ways. And, at its best, the brand defines how the organization best meets its customers' needs in unique and compelling ways. It serves as the organization's unifying principle and rallying cry, infuses the organization with a set of values and a personality, and holds an organization's employees to a consistent set of behaviors.

The brand stands for something. It establishes trust and a certain level of assurance and creates expectations that must be fulfilled. The brand can bring an organization to life in a very real way.

In the end, brand management is all about meeting people's physical, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, and other needs in unique ways. It is the application of free enterprise to the timely and timeless needs of mankind.

Excerpted from the book, "Brand Aid: An Easy Reference Guide To Solving Your Toughest Branding Problems and Strengthening Your Market Position" by Brad VanAuken. Copyright(c)2003 by Brad VanAuken. Published by AMACOM, a division of the American Management Association, International, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

Copies of the English-language edition are available through McGraw-Hill Education (Asia), Singapore.

Brad VanAuken is the founder and president of BrandForward, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in brand building, Internet branding, brand positioning, brand equity measurement, and brand extension strategy, among others.