What's New in Marketing - Issue 53

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Aiming Higher

Commoditisation of products… shrinking domestic market… consolidation… … increasing competition from abroad … market fragmentation … untapped customer loyalty… the need to exploit global markets…

Familiar challenges that branding and marketing people have been tackling for years. And they are now being faced by UK universities, really for the first time, and seemingly all at once. Welcome to commercial reality.  

The British higher education landscape is nearly unrecognisable from how it was ten, perhaps even five years ago. Change has almost become the status quo. Government funding has been dwindling for years, while student numbers have increased dramatically, driven by New Labour's target of increasing participation levels to 50% of the population. Meanwhile, student grants have been taken away and so-called top-up fees introduced. These are currently capped at £3000 per year but soon the sector will almost certainly become a tuition fee free-for-all. Predictably, private universities from overseas are beginning to circle slowly around what look like richer pickings in the UK market. In other words, the sector has become seriously competitive.

By definition, this situation creates huge financial pressures on individual institutions. So to stave off looming deficits, universities have looked for extra income from just about anywhere they can find it, from flogging conferencing facilities to targeting lucrative student markets overseas. 

It's also meant that universities have begun to take their marketing and branding seriously. They've beefed up budgets in these two areas, brought in experience from the private sector, and have become much more savvy marketeers. A great opportunity to fully deploy what branding and marketing has to offer, you might think - and indeed it is - but achieving this is harder than it looks.

These changes have brought with them some big branding and marketing opportunities. For example, mergers are now a familiar feature in this sector.  UMIST joined Manchester in 2004 to become the largest UK institution; Thames Valley University merged with Reading College in 2005, creating a hybrid higher and further education offer; and this year Luton merged with parts of De Montfort to become the new University of Hertfordshire. These new institutions have new stories to tell, and their new brands have to add up to more than their constituent parts.

However, developing a compelling brand for a university (whether from a merger or simply the need to re-position it in the market), presents some unique challenges. All universities include loosely-linked collections of academics whose identification with their particular specialist discipline normally far outweighs their loyalty to their institution. As one Vice Chancellor we worked for put it, ‘I don't think you could say we have a corporate identity here at all.' So, re-aligning internal identification to the institution as a whole and providing a common sense of purpose around a brand proposition is a pretty tough assignment. Academics are paid to question, so it can require unusually high levels of engagement with staff to overcome their natural cynicism, stimulate their interest and win their support.

Even more difficult for most universities is developing a value proposition that will be seen by external audiences as remotely distinctive from competitors. This is partly due to the simple fact that the underlying mission for almost all universities – to teach and do research - is pretty much the same. This is compounded by the reality that all universities are subject to the same government dictates (for example, to make themselves more ‘accessible'), which over time tends to erode the tangible differences between them. Of course, it's easy enough to distinguish between an ancient research-intensive university and an ex-polytechnic, but the real challenge is finding anything that distinguishes either from their immediate peer group, defined almost exclusively by their place in the league tables. Finally, getting an organisation as complex as university, serving so many different stakeholders, to focus on a single, strong idea to define its value proposition can be extremely challenging, but also immensely rewarding when you can help them get it right.

Design has an important role to play here. The way a university presents itself visually can distinguish it from competitors by expressing what makes its personality distinctive. So, where more tangible differences are hard to come by, with explicit messages about the institution doing precious little to set it apart from others, the university's visual identity can communicate implicitly what makes the institution special. It's about focusing not just on what people think about the institution, but on how they feel about it. Presented here are just a few recent examples of brand identities we have developed for universities with this in mind.

One of the greatest impediments to using visual identity in this way is the sector's pronounced fondness for traditional iconography that often belies their capacity for originality and even radicalism in most other areas. Convincing academics, for example, to let go of their well-loved coat of arms is surprisingly difficult, despite the fact that it is probably indistinguishable from those used by any other university, thereby failing to achieve the most basic requirement of any brand: to simply identify the institution. But worse, heraldry offers a very restrictive expressive palette (suggesting tradition , with possibly a pinch of gravitas ) which may well be the least relevant qualities to distinguish them from competitors. Finally, for almost all universities (those under, say, 800 years old), deploying such a medieval visual language is just plain phoney. Rather like mock-Tudor architecture.

Another unique opportunity for universities is their potential, still largely untapped, to build passionate loyalty and rewarding long-term relationships with their ‘customers'.  Most people look back on their university years with great fondness (if they can remember them). For many it is where lifetime relationships are formed and the foundations for successful careers are laid. What better platform to begin building customer loyalty?

Branding consultants often talk about how close identification with consumer brands provide ‘self-expressive' benefits to customers by helping them define and communicate their own personal identity or “brand” by their association with the respective product; Harley Davidson is often cited as the classic example of this. But a graduate's relationship with a university is, arguably, an even better example of personal branding. It defines in black-and-white a career-critical component of their own identity and accompanies them, via their CV, throughout their working lives, adding value to their own personal brand. The university brand they buy is the one they carry through life. There are very few, if any, brand-based relationships closer than this. Again, the opportunity for universities to build on this intrinsic link is huge. UK universities are now just beginning to wake up to the obvious financial rewards, recognised decades ago by their American cousins, of nurturing rich and richly rewarding relationships with their alumni.

So, it seems that UK universities certainly enjoy some unique opportunities to exploit all that branding and marketing has to offer in addressing the tough challenges they face. The question is whether they are able to continue making the cultural changes needed to make this happen.  

About the author

Jim Bodoh, Director of Strategy at Lloyd Northover, has helped develop brands for more than 20 colleges and universities in the UK .

Tween power

I have some figures at my fingertips that I think will astound you.

Did you know that a full 67 per cent of families who buy a new car base their purchasing decision on advice given by their children? And that 62 per cent of mobile phones are bought by parents who have been heavily influenced by the opinions of their kids? And we're not only talking about American kids. We're talking about kids right across the globe in countries as diverse as India, Japan, Brazil, Spain, Turkey, German, Thailand, and even Denmark. In short, the power that this young generation wields over their parents has been shown to be nothing less than mind blowing. 

The data is a result of the world's largest study of the tween generation – that is kids between the ages of 8-14. This research was conducted for one of my books, BRANDchild , which looks at kids and their relationship with brands. The research was carried out by Millward Brown, and they interviewed thousands of kids in 14 countries, across 70 cities. Among the many startling findings, the overwhelming evidence showed that brand-purchasing decisions were increasingly being made by the children of the household. And this is across the board in almost every product category from snacks and soft drinks to cosmetics and home wares. 

What will this mean for your online strategy? It is vital that you structure your message to appeal to both markets. Obviously some features appeal more to parents, and others to their kids. But the challenge is to find out what appeals to each age group, and then let your site reflect a kind of something-for-everyone while most importantly maintaining the integrity of your core message. 

The BRANDchild survey shows that combining a structured product presentation will appeal to the adult segment, whereas a product presented in its environment will appeal more to tweens. If your brand happens to belong to one of the 80 per cent of all product categories heavily influenced by tweens, then your site should combine both product presentations.

The use of color is an incredibly important feature. This is also dependent on what product category is on offer, as well as the context in which the brand is presented. The colours that you select will need to appeal to both audiences, so for example, it would be a huge mistake to think in greys. 

This sort of dual marketing is beginning to find its mark. Toyota in Australia has maintained its top position by using chicks, puppies and kittens in their commercials. And as strange as it may sound, using cute pets to sell cars has worked.

But marketing to kids is so much more than simply pestering them – and their parents. It's about achieving balance. You have to be totally honest and completely fulfill whatever it is that you promise to deliver. This is a generation that can detect anything phony from miles away. Their youthfulness requires nothing less than the most ethical standards you can deliver. They are our future – and your future brand customers! 

To key into the extraordinary purchasing power of tweens, there's another essential angle to consider: their language. 

Tweens communicate with others all around the globe. In fact 15 per cent do so on a weekly basis. Furthermore, 70 per cent of all tweens in Europe text message – or SMS – each other every day. And the BRANDchild study revealed the emergence of a unique language in which this is happening. I call it TweenSpeak. Our research figures show that close to 60 per cent of all kids across the world have discarded traditional grammar in favour of the far more cool texting language. In fact 25 per cent state that they would prefer to text on their mobile phone or chat on the Internet than communicate “for real”. And this is even if they are sitting side by side.

It has become increasingly clear to me that TweenSpeak is much more than a new way of writing. It's a new language which operates with icon-based symbols, abbreviations, contractions and numerals – enabling tweens in the US to talk with tweens in Japan with very little misunderstanding. Now that phones come with full-colour screens and built-in cameras, messages are jam packed with cartoons, broken hearts, houses, trees, animals, and a whole host of emoticons.

See for yourself. Ask any tween to give you a glance at their emails or online conversations, and you will see what they call “cute” icons, proving in a whole new way that pictures speak louder than words.

But what does it mean for you? It goes back to the necessity for dual strategies I mentioned earlier. Part of this strategy will mean talking TweenSpeak. This is not to say that you should discard your corporate language, but it is important that you consider the value of communicating to both audiences simultaneously. The challenge will be to integrate the corporate language with TweenSpeak.

Tweens are a unique generation. They are the world's first truly interactive population. They are born with a computer screen as their window on the world and use a mouse to navigate it. Their expectations of their brands are enormous. Their desires need to be satisfied instantaneously. Their influence, as we've discovered, is huge. And for all these reasons, it's important that you rethink your description of your target group. And then redesign the way you intend to appeal to your audience. 

It's a challenge to achieve the balance between conveying your brand message while maintaining all the ethics that are required to speak directly to kids. But if nothing else, it's something you need to discuss internally. Because if you fail to pay heed to the language of tweens, it won't take long for them to persuade their parents to support a much “cooler brand” which may very likely be your competitor's site.

Giving your brand unfair advantages: the staff goldmine

Which of the following two quotations would you like to come from your staff when they are asked about your firm's approach to brand management?

    -  “Our brand is the overall promise we project into the market and the experience we deliver and the two have to be aligned so it's the customer's total experience of the organisation”

    -     “You just need to get the emblem across the place”

A no brainer? Yet both these comments come from employees in two major, retail financial services organisations.  Both have well known brands.  The first comment comes from an employee working on a notably more successful brand than was the second employee.

We contend that there is an over reliance on the classical branding approach in the services sector and this is holding back brands from achieving their true potential.  In the UK nearly three quarters of economic wealth comes from the services sector.  Yet, ironically only a third of the top 100 global brands are services brands.

The Centre for Research in Brand Marketing at the Birmingham University Business School has been working with managers to help them build more valuable services brands.  As part of this process we undertook research amongst six financial services corporations with well known brands – albeit two are successful brands and four less successful.  Due to the sensitive nature of the findings, we were not allowed to acknowledge the corporations' names.

In the services sector we argue that unlike the product sector, brand management is far more of a team activity.  As such, in each corporation we interviewed the brand decider (CEO/MD), brand advisers (Directors of Marketing, HR and Customer Service, plus external agencies) and brand enactors (Managers in Marketing, HR and Customer Service, plus customer facing staff).  We completed 68 depth interviews across these well known organisations, each typically around an hour.  The interviews were recorded, then were transcribed and analysed.  Each depth interview encouraged respondents to talk about their brand and how they were contributing to its delivery.  The following is a summary of some of the key findings.

The brand is a holistic experience

For the successful brands, the organisations and staff recognised that the brand is everything experienced by customers.  There was a lot of emphasis on “joined up thinking” across both the successful corporations.  This was not so dominant in the less successful corporations.  Amongst the successful brands, managers were continually working to ensure consistency between every element supporting the brand.  No matter how or where a customer interacted with their brand they sought to ensure a consistent brand message. By working as cross-functional teams, the successful brands were more coherent.  By contrast a manager working for a less successful brand commented “…..there are lots of examples of decisions that perhaps ought to have been consistent with what we've done and what the brand stands for”.

Staff are highly brand-literate

When comparing the organisations, staff working on successful brands not only had a more comprehensive knowledge of their brand but also understood the implications for their jobs.  Compared to product branding, services branding is more dependent on employees, thus staff understanding and commitment is essential.  Without a strong connection between the internal and external brand, it is difficult for a strong customer relationship to develop.

Successful brands were characterised by short, sharp statements (cf the Ritz as ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen) which resonated across levels and functions.  By contrast very elaborate and sometimes confusing brand statements were apparent in the less successful brands.  Furthermore, in this category staff were more likely to confuse advertising slogans with the brand essence.

Implications

One implication is that managers should encourage a greater cross-functional approach to branding activities, encompassing employees at all levels.  Brand induction and reinforcement programmes should show that brands are more than advertising straplines.  Internal programmes should surface staff's understanding of their brand followed by 1:1 sessions to enable them to better understand the brand's promise and reconsider their behaviour to support it.

Quarterly “brand jigsaw” workshops could help a more coherent branding approach.  In these workshops employees would be asked to bring along/discuss the work they are doing to deliver and communicate the brand.  At each of these cross-functional gatherings staff are asked to find ways of linking each element brought to the table by the group.  Where elements do not synchronise, the group is asked to consider what charges could help ensure a more integrated brand.

It is our belief that organisations need to go beyond emphasising ways of codifying their brands under the classic management emphasis on corporate control.  Yes, there is a need to codify the brand to enable staff to comprehend this intangible asset.  However, this corporate control should then become secondary as employee belief and commitment is engendered enabling staff to internalise the brand, i.e. reconceive it within their individual frame of reference.  Given encouragement, employee behaviour is more likely to naturally be “on brand”, i.e. in an automatic rather than forced style of behaviour.

About the authors:

Leslie de Chernatony , Ldechernatony@bham.ac.uk, is Professor of Brand Marketing and Director of the Centre for Research in Brand Management at the Birmingham University Business School.  A Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Marketing, Leslie is a frequent presenter at international conferences.  A prolific writer, his most recent books include From Brand Vision to Brand Evaluation and Creating Powerful Brands (both published by Butterworth-Heinemann)

Susan Cottam BCom MPhil

Susan Cottam (née Drury) is a Research Fellow at The University of Birmingham.  Her research interests include services branding, trust in branding and corporate branding strategies. Susan is a member of The Centre for Research in Brand Marketing and is currently investigating successful services brands.  Alongside Leslie, Susan acts as a consultant to organisations seeking more effective brand strategies.  She has a number of journal publications and has presented at international conferences

Optimising Brand Equity

Failure to think creatively about brand leverage means that many companies don't capitalise fully on their brand equity. Opportunity gaps exist as firms are too often restricted in their consideration of new ways to grow the branded business. There is too much focus on the functional traits of what their product does, rather than the emotional attributes of what their brand means to consumers. Thus brand extensions, strategies which attempt to leverage brand equity in new areas, tend to follow the more obvious paths, while opportunities made possible by more sophisticated extension strategies go unexploited.

Recently, however, some visionary CMOs and marketing departments have begun to advise their boards on how to better approach the leverage issue, and have started securing the requisite budgets needed to realise their extension strategies. In the face of an increasingly competitive business environment these strategies will be what really make the difference in driving brand and business growth. We advise using a two-stage approach to brand leverage; first exploring the opportunity landscape for brand extension possibilities, and then carefully assessing each opportunity in terms of risk and benefits.

Paths to extension

There are a variety of ways to improve brand leverage. The most common and actionable routes are simple product extensions, entering new markets and extending into new categories. While simple, the incremental value that this can unleash for businesses is not insignificant. The Coca Cola Company, for example, a firm dedicated to focusing on the beverage category, are masters at product extension within it. In the US market over 40 percent of the Coca Cola brand's revenues are derived from extensions to the Coke brand [1] . Anheuser-Busch's most successful product extension, Bud Light, was launched in 1982 and became America's best selling beer in 2001 [2] . Unilever stretched further when extending the Dove brand. Moving outside the soap category to launch a range of products covering hair, skin and body care, and turning Dove into Unilever's most valuable personal care masterbrand.

There are limitations of such product range extensions, however. They tend to sell more products to the same customer segments, which can lead to cannibalisation of the brand and, ultimately, limited growth – since as geographical territories and related categories are gradually exploited, opportunities eventually become exhausted. A more sophisticated approach to leverage considers brand meaning, and how to use it to capture new segments.

Reaching further are companies who are treating brands as businesses in their own right. In these brands' extension strategies brand values are paramount, and can almost become divorced from their original offering. Possible approaches include licensing, joint ventures and launching brands into whole new businesses, as in the case of the Virgin portfolio, or the General Electric consumer finance business. It is also possible for companies to combine and transfer brand equities when entering a new business. Fujitsu Siemens, for example, combined the latter's solid technological capabilities with the former's innovative reputation to enter the competitive PC market, where alone they would not have had the full brand profile necessary for success.

Unsurprisingly businesses usually opt for the most easily actionable types of extension. These are ultimately limited and are less efficient in gaining new customer segments. Too often a good deal of opportunity goes unexplored and unexploited.

Prioritising Opportunities

More creative brand leverage is a key to maximising growth opportunities for brands. This is, however, only one side of the coin. Innovative extension opportunities require strategic planning and careful brand management to succeed. Many companies have fallen foul of the risks that go hand in hand with the opportunity of brand extension.

Burberry, for example, was a brand that seemed to be doing everything right in terms of leveraging its brand and attracting new segments. The overhaul of the brand in the 1990s under CEO Rosemary Bravo saw the brand appealing to a new, youthful, less conservative segment with extensions to the line like the Burberry bikini. By increasing the accessibility of the brand the label saw sales soar. However, there were risks involved by going too far along this route, primarily the threat of damaging the luxury and prestige brand image; in effect becoming too accessible . This became pronounced in the UK where Burberry's cheaper, more accessible items, such as scarves and (the piece that became strongly associated with English football hooligans) baseball caps, served to undermine the sense of exclusivity carried by any luxury brand. By increasing accessibility they had invited new segments to take part in the brand experience but had failed to fully control the process.

By contrast Gucci group's owners PPR have made clear that their strategy is to increase exclusivity of their brands at all levels. Chairman François-Henri Pinault recently explained, “the strategy we are implementing for every brand is to move upwards, so that our entry-priced products will also be more desired” [5] . The results in terms of brand impact are clear. In the UK Burberry's brand contribution is 32 percent below the luxury category average, Gucci's is 9 percent higher [6] .

An extension undermining the attributes of the brand is one risk; another is failure to entirely assess feasibility of the new business leading to the brand being unable to deliver on the promise. One of Virgin's least successful extensions was an ill-fated attempt at entering the PC business. Despite the fact that consumer computing is a category where Virgin's quirky innovation and reputation as a consumer champion would have had real traction, the reality of the situation was quite different. As reported by Fast Company in 2004, in order to make the business feasible the Virgin brand name ended up on an unexceptional product designed by another company. From that day Richard Branson stated " we had decided that we'd never get involved in a company unless we could control it and protect the Virgin brand name." [7]

It is possible to successfully manage these risks to protect brand equity. Starbucks has successfully extended in several directions: entering new territories, using new business models, adding points of access and extending category offerings, but taking care to avoid the traditional traps of brand extension. The company drives substantial revenues from overseas markets, but its licensing strategy is designed to enable protection of the Starbucks brand.

For example, external licensing is considered to be more risky difficult to control, making it difficult to uphold the standards which are the foundations of the brand promise. The company's preferred method of expansion is store ownership, permitting centrally planned store clustering, promoting the ubiquity and accessibility of the brand. As a result Starbucks only licenses when there is a persuasive advantage to using licensing over store ownership. In most cases this will involve locations such as airports and malls where retail operations are run by large licensees.

Despite its global presence Starbucks derives only 5.4% of its revenues from licensing and it steadfastly upholds standards across its international operations, for example rejecting local requests to interfere with the brewing process to increase efficiency. Starbucks also successfully sells Starbucks branded drinks at a price premium through supermarkets using careful brand management to avoid losing the premium positioning. And through the Hear Music service and specially selected music and DVD sales the company has enraged major entertainment retailers by selling CDs at a price premium that home entertainment stores can only dream about.

The key: Spot the opportunity, manage the risk

The three main risks associated with extension opportunities: contradicting your brand values, blurring or confusing brand image through over exposure and failing to deliver, go some way to explaining the reluctance within marketing departments to explore brand leverage opportunities.  Yet this is losing businesses billions of dollars in untapped revenues. Marketers need to be developing strategies for managing risks rather than completely avoiding the opportunity. CEOs will only be able to maximise business growth opportunities when correctly advised by marketing departments in both steps of the process – in identifying the opportunities and managing the risks, in understanding potential and protecting the brand.

About the authors:

Christian Dorffer is Executive Vice President of Millward Brown Optimor in Europe. He specialises in applying both creative and highly analytical approaches to identifying long term growth and shareholder value creation opportunities for his clients. Christian holds a MSc. in economics and business from Copenhagen Business School and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University.

Maggie Boyle is a Consultant at Millward Brown Optimor in Europe. She has worked on a range of brand strategy assignments including Brand Valuation, Sponsorship ROI and Market Entry Assessment and Strategy. She holds a Honours degree from Oxford University.

[1] Source: Euromonitor

[2] Source: Budweiser Marketing Communications

[3] Source: Energy Users News, 2000

[4] Source: Caterpillar 10K

[5] International Herald Tribune , 7 th December 2006

[6] Millward Brown Optimor  study from the BrandZ Top100 ranking 2006

[7] Fast Company , October 2004

Walking the Brand Tightrope

Branding in the charity sector has historically lagged behind the private sector. Many charities have been reluctant to invest in the perceived ‘luxury' of a re-branding programme, sensitive to potential donor charges of spending money on a ‘frivolous' re-brand, given the non-profit making nature of their work.

But faced with an increasingly saturated market (there are more than 200,000 UK registered charities), ‘donor fatigue' and a more critical media, charities are adopting new and more ‘commercial' ways of operating, with all the potential benefits and even risks, this brings.  

Consequently, even the smaller charities are beginning to recognise that ‘brand' does matter – not simply as a consumer marketing tool – but as a key organisational driver that can help define their strategy, help them engage with stakeholders and enable them to realise their objectives.

Charity re-branding has been growing apace, with ActionAid, NCH, Cancer Research UK and The Meningitis Trust just some of the growing list of players that have re-visited their existing brands.  It's hardly surprising that a 2005 Economic and Social Research Council survey found that when people were deciding where to direct their contributions and place their support, key factors included the emotional and intellectual stimulation a charity could give, how much influence the public thought it could yield and the tone of voice adopted throughout all communication.

But it isn't all plain sailing. Critical revelations of the NSPCC spending almost £30 million of its £86 million budget on fundraising and campaigns generated a significant public backlash against its ‘Full Stop' campaign.  People are certainly entitled to question where their money goes, particularly when they hear about the street ‘chuggers' that can swallow up nearly two year's worth of donations.

So, why should charities consider branding as a core activity? And how can they ensure that they retain their charitable ‘soul' in adopting private sector marketing thinking and practices?

In an increasingly saturated and ‘competitive' market, branding will ultimately be the unique differentiator between organisations. The ability to genuinely stand out, even a little bit, means that brands will become more and not less important.

The emergence of the charity ‘superbrand' (such as Cancer Research UK, Oxfam and Shelter) has seen the adoption of private sector disciplines and thinking around campaigning, fundraising and communications approaches and using brand to underpin their marketing activities.

As their size and confidence grow, these bigger brands paradoxically run the risk of becoming too ‘corporate' and effectively losing the very essence of what has made them historically valued. Charities need to perform a careful balancing act: developing a distinctive and compelling brand positioning whilst at the same time ensuring that they remain true to their core aims and causes. Otherwise, they risk losing the very public and financial support they depend upon.

Done properly, re-branding provides a good opportunity for an organisation to engage with all of its key stakeholders, in order to understand whether their expectations fit with what the organisation is planning to do. If there is a dissonance, an organisation can then decide how to position itself in a way that is seen to be both appealing and unique. Equally importantly, it provides a framework within which the appropriate balance between its charitable heritage and purpose, and commercial thinking can be defined.  

The web has a major role to play here. It provides, for example, an opportunity to articulate the charity's brand in an informative, relevant and engaging way to its key audiences. It can provide stories and examples of why the brand is different. It can educate stakeholders on its vision, strategy and activities. And it can increasingly draw in and engage stakeholders as part of an ongoing brand conversation and relationship.

But effective brand delivery requires long term commitment. A ‘big bang' launch may not be either necessary or desirable. What is critical is that the brand should be properly embedded, reinforced and evolved within an organisation. It needs to be made ever present and to become ‘business as usual'.

A charity that really knows and lives its brand over time will likely result from a series of linked activities that together positively reinforce the brand. These can include the recruitment and retention of staff that embody the brand values, rewards for excellence in brand delivery and consistent re-emphasis and training geared to communicate the brand proposition and supporting values.

Ironically, what charities have that the corporate sector would dearly love is a passion and commitment that runs from supporters to volunteers to staff. A charity compromises this passion when it fails to understand what brand is really about. The tightrope is a sensitive one, but it can and should be ultimately rewarding.

Branding in education; as simple as A, B, C?

It was once said that schools and colleges are a marketer's dream, with campaigns such as Tesco's ‘computers for schools' proving successful. But as schools and colleges increasingly turn towards marketing for their own benefit, new challenges are being presented to many creative marketing agencies, especially when it comes to branding.

The identity of most educational establishments has long since been the school shield or crest which depicts historically and socially relevant symbols to the school. However, many schools, colleges and universities are now rebranding themselves and shedding their historical branding references in favour of marks which reflect the establishments forward thinking approach which appeals to students, parents and governors alike.

Under the Government's scheme to bring all secondary schools to a minimum standard by 2010, a vast number of new schools are being built. These new educational centres are in a quite unique position to build themselves a reputation from scratch and are taking influence from the corporate world by employing marketing and design agencies to produce their very own marketing strategy with well defined brand guidelines.

These new schools are presented with the challenge, as much as the advantage of having no preconceptions, of getting parents to entrust their child's education to them, after all reputation can only come after time and in relation to schools, Ofsted reports. By undertaking strategically targeted marketing campaigns, emblazoned with shining new brand and values, these schools have to forge themselves an established groove within their community. To enter communities many of these new schools are employing an integrated media approach, aiming to attain complete saturation within their market and thus establishing themselves at the forefront of education and teaching.

One problem that most B2B or B2C brands don't encounter is the vast range of age groups which to be taken into account at schools and colleges, and to a lesser extent universities. Take secondary schools for example; they have to appeal to students aged 11 and younger for prospective students, up to 17-18 if it includes a sixth form centre on campus. Any marketer, or parent come to that, will tell you that the needs of an 11 year old vary hugely to an 18 year old.

In today's ultra politically correct society and given the plethora of religions, races, cultures, genders and even sexualities educational establishments have to appeal to; one of the hardest tasks of creating a brand is selecting imagery if it's required. Taking age and the establishment's history into the equation of devising a new brand it's no wonder that contemporary, generic symbolism usually ends up being selected as the brand identity of choice.

It has been recognised that more and more universities and colleges are being run as businesses and as such they often have sub-brands for departmental use. This practice is more often employed by universities to promote expertise in a particular department, but for the branding expert this presents yet another problem, how to stay in keeping with the parent brand whilst appealing to more of a niche market of students. One sub-brand that is apparent in all universities and some larger colleges is the fabled Student Union. This organisation plays a vital role in student life in terms of political, sporting and social activity and is often branded like a nightclub, reflecting its vibrant and energetic values, usually adopting its acronym as the union's name.

Schools, like most businesses, employ complete saturation of their brand deploying it across all manner of materials including diaries, newsletters, uniforms, school bags, posters, headed paper, pens, prospectuses and even business cards for staff. With so many uses within the educational sector the brand for the school must be deployable across all these mediums, which presents yet another challenge to designers and marketeers.

In today's increasingly demanding educational sector competition between schools has never been stronger with many parents now moving house to live within catchment area of better schools, which is a shining reflection on the school itself.

Many people, students and parents alike, will argue that the current education progression progress offers them little input as most primary schools inevitably lead to progression to the same secondary school in the town or city. However, by devising a brand which embodies strong values in education and development and applying it across the establishments marketing materials the appearance of professionalism should be achieved and hopefully prevent some negative opinions of the system by making the next step an aspiration. 

About the author

In a decade Sarah-Jane Higgins of Black Pig has built up a £1.25m business, achieving consistent 25% year-on-year growth.  With a 28 strong team, Black Pig is now recognised as one of the Top 100 full service marketing agencies in the UK.

Does branding really get you more sales?

I'm fed up of hearing everyone talk about branding as though it's the one essential item a company needs before it is suddenly promoted into the big leagues.

It's not!

Brand consultants will tell you that branding is essential in your crowded market place.

It's not that either!

The essential strategy is to provide great value, great service and innovation for your customers.

Branding doesn't attract customers

Brand consultants and marketers will claim branding is what attracts customers. Brands don't do that, do they?

Look at all the brands you come up against every day. Do you actually take that much notice? Unless you've had an unusually good experience with a company and you're ready to buy what they sell.

No, you're interested in obtaining goods and services from whichever company delivers on their promise and provides a great service.

Do you remember when that great brand IBM suddenly realised they'd lost a huge operating system market to Microsoft?  So IBM created an operating system of their own called OS/2 to win the corporate market from Microsoft.

The result was that IBM did take some of the corporate operating system market initially.  But in the end Microsoft won the market back despite IBM's huge brand.

Virgin wasn't a brand when it started in the music market until they started to offer something their customers wanted.

What about Google?  They weren't a brand. Yet now they're highly recognisable as probably the most used English language search engine.

As we all know that's what marketing comes down to: giving the customer something they want.

Branding helps recognition afterwards

If your customers like your product or service they'll recommend you to their friends and colleagues. If you were at MacDonald's when they started they might have pointed out the huge “M.”

And that's how a company's brand is born.  Your customers pick on something that they can easily identify about you so they can come back and find you and recommend you to their friends.

It's your customers' short-cut way of remembering you.  We all know the Virgin colour is red and the Microsoft logo is the window filled with primary colours.

Of course it's helpful if we can make it easier for customers to remember us.  But in the end customers choose what they believe is a significant recognisable aspect of the company to help them recall it.  And it may not be that highly expensive branded set of colours of your stationery.

So is branding a must?

Setting out on a long and expensive journey to create your brand is not recommended when you're an SME.

By all means once you become a Coca-Cola, Virgin, British Airways or Ford you've got a vested interest in your brand for a different reason.

If you're that big you want the things customers recognise about your company continually at the Top of Mind Awareness (TOMA) through advertising, PR and other marketing strategies.  Just so that when customers think of a product or service you offer your TOMA strategy pays off and they immediately remember you.

Claude Hopkins, the author of " Scientific Advertising,” says telling the customer to get his better brand didn't work.  Hopkins goes on to note that when the advertiser showed that his product was superior by saying, “try our rivals too” in his advert headline buyers made sure to buy his product because they knew that if he could invite comparisons he must have the best product.

The root cause of buying behaviour

For more years than I care to remember we've heard the mantra that, “your company needs to build its brand to get more X.”  Where ‘X' is more sales, more exposure, more customers or more profits.

The bad news for all companies investing megabucks in branding is that you're looking at a symptom not the root cause as to why customers do not buy from you.

The symptom is the “look and feel”, also known as the brand of the company.  The root cause is the underlying real reason people continue to buy your products and services.

And guess what? It's because they believe that at this moment you're the best for what they want, according to their own highly specific reasons.

It can be any, or a combination, of these factors and more:

• habit
• laziness
• relationship
• recommendation
• try-out
• cheapest
• best service
• best quality
• most expensive
• famous
• fit

And all the time your prospect or customer has their antennae tuned to what's best for them. So if another company comes along and meets their wants in a way they think is better than yours they're going to go with them. Branding can't stop them doing that.

Look at that famous marketing case study: Fed-Ex. When Fred Smith started Fed-Ex he almost single-handedly created the overnight delivery service.  Yet the unique Fed-Ex brand didn't stop other couriers like UPS taking some of Fed-Ex's market share.  So even a highly unique service and well- known brand can't prevent customers using rivals.

Is branding force-feeding your market?

American copywriter Bob Serling once said, “Too many companies think because they have a product or service, they should dictate to the customer how it should be used or what goals it should satisfy or problems it should solve.”

When you create a new brand or “reposition” an old one, you have marketing people, designers or branding consultants (and perhaps a few members of the public working through focus groups) creating the brand.

Think about what you've just attempted to do there. By creating this brand it is force-feeding customers and prospects, telling them how to perceive your product.

Customers vote with their wallets

Too many companies think because they have gone through and branded or re-branded their product or service that a customer obviously should use their product or service because of its strong/new brand identity. Instead look at how your customers vote with their wallets everyday.  Whether you get their sale or not depends if you exactly match what they're looking for.

Does branding get in the way?

After looking at the fourth or fifth professional looking brochure or website, is your prospect interested in the look and feel of yours?  The danger is that businesses think that marketing tactics like white papers, logos, brochures and websites are simply “branding methods” when they should be part of an integrated marketing strategy.

Branding becomes  a resource drain  when  considerable management focus and company money is put into branding or re-branding.

We can use the excuse of a “tired brand” or a “weak brand” or “weak brand loyalty” to explain away poor sales or lack of sales.

Instead we should look at what our market is telling us about our product. It's almost bound to be a common issue such as:

1. No one wants it – lack of research
2. No one believes it – lack of credibility
3. No one knows about it - lack of advertising and marketing
4. No one repurchases it - lack of quality in product or support

Address those issues first and your customers will eventually tell you exactly what your brand is by how they find you and purchase from you.

About the author

Jim Symcox is a marketing consultant specialising in business to business marketing.  For further information please contact Jim at: jim.symcox@acornservice.com

Bridging the cultural divide

In April 2003, when US forces marched into Baghdad, the expectation from Washington was one of scenes of joy.  Forces of freedom sweeping into the occupied city, flower petals and ticker tape falling from open windows and landing amongst the throng of local women and children rejoicing at their liberators' feet.  The reality was spectacularly different.  People, however oppressed, do not always respond to change in the way that is expected. 

It's a dramatic example, but similar parallels can be drawn and put into a business context in determining why so many mergers and acquisitions fail to deliver value.  The volume of M& As in the UK has reached its highest level since 2001 but of the hundreds of M& As that take place, between 40 and 80% will probably fail.  Significantly, the conventional wisdom is changing as to the reasons why.  Opinion formers believe that it cannot simply be put down to monetary, legal and financial issues; rather a lack of cultural synergy, ‘people' problems and a fundamental deficiency in providing direction and communication; an absence of something to believe in and follow.

It seems rather obvious.  In acquiring another organisation, it would seem inevitable that both sets of employees would feel nervous about their jobs, the strategic direction of the organisation and the impact on their reputation in the market.  So why do so many companies ignore this?  The telecoms boom of the late 1990s is a good example.  Driven by bloated share prices and irrational market confidence, companies took to Europe with their supermarket trolleys, snapping up other internet service providers in ‘bargain' deals in order to extend their networks.  But they didn't consider the branding and cultural implications that growing inorganically would have.  For the majority, the sum total of cultural integration involved the acquired company adopting the name of the acquirer, and sticking Deutschland, Italia or Polska on the end just in case they forgot which country they were in.  And like a ‘cut and shut' car, the wheels soon came off.

It is hardly surprising that employees become confused; they lose their identity, have no clear direction or attachment, they are unsure what to communicate to customers and stakeholders, they feel uninspired and have no sense of purpose.  This is why the brand as a symbol and vision of the future is so important.  But, in most cases it gets left behind.  When we talk about change management and business transformation in relation to a merger or acquisition, the majority focus on operational and back-office compliance, systems integration, IT and enterprise governance, knowledge transfer and supply chains.  Inarguably, these are all critical to the success of joining two companies together. 

But all the process in the world will not create a culture that provides employees with a sense of direction, belonging or meaningful contribution in pursuit of a cause that they believe in.  When the statue of Saddam was famously toppled, it was a period of uncertainty and desolation that ensued.  The soldiers and tanks on the streets did not win the hearts and minds of the people.

It also won't shore up shareholder confidence or create sustainable consumer excitement.  The Royal Mail's rebranding to Consignia in 2000 is a classic example.  By ignoring 100 years of consumer loyalty, and just changing the name and logo with no idea of how to drive it and with no roots or foundation to the brand, consumers (and employees) had no clue what Consignia stood for.  We all know what happened next. 

So what is the solution?  It's too simple just to say ‘focus on the brand'; make it central to the deal; make it a symbol of the future; ensure that a robust communications programme is implemented to manage reputation.  There's one major issue:  not many people, certainly the people managing M& As, understand the reality of what brand or reputation actually are.  This isn't surprising for a couple of reasons.  Firstly, there is a lack of clarity between change management and the different areas of specialism provided by a management consultant and those of a brand or marketing consultant; there is inertia with regards to the form of consultative expertise needed and a blurring of boundaries between the two.  Indeed many companies will not even consider retaining a brand or marketing consultancy as brand integration is often ‘tagged' onto the traditionalist's service list.  Secondly, the majority of marketing consultants have spent many years spouting fluffy mumbo jumbo and rhetoric that no-one really understands; certainly not speaking a language that chief executives or financial directors can relate to. 

The woeful reputation that the marketing industry has built for itself has simply devalued the importance of brand and communication.  This is self-evident when we consider that in the commercially tough times of the last two years, one of the first roles to be made redundant is that of the marketing director. The first department to be ‘restructured' is marketing, closely followed by communications.  It's seen as a channel from which to market a product or a service, not for its strategic significance at the core of all business.

But brand is critical.  It is well documented that over 50% of the value of the Coca-Cola Corporation resides in the brand.  Over 70% of the value of the Ford Motor Company lies in the Ford brand.  But fundamentally, the brand, and the key truths and values within it, is what an organisation is founded upon.  It provides identity, recognition, attachment, loyalty and a differentiating proposition.  The classic corporate brand communicates its company's essence, character and purpose, and calls to mind its products and services.  It makes the purchasing choice easy because it lowers the perception of risk.  If you walk into an electronics shop to buy a DVD and the choice you have available is a JVC and an unknown name from Korea at both the same price, which one do you go for?  You'd probably still go for the JVC if it were £75 more expensive.  Heinz still maintains a significant market share despite selling tins of beans at around 35p, when some of the competition is trading at 9p.

Essentially the brand is at the heart of the business; it is what drives it; a constant compass for all business decisions.  It should be represented at the boardroom and disseminated through every department, process and communication.  It should be created from within the entire business, aligning all operational and service areas from R& D to sales, distribution, quality control, HR, after sales and investor relations.  If one department is out of synch, it fails the brand and simply blows the customer proposition out of the water.

An example of how it should work is Innocent Drinks, a company set up by three people who just wanted to make the best fresh drinks in the world. The friendly, honest, natural and simple approach that the company is built on is represented and translated across every key brand touch point.  From its HQ ‘Fruit Towers', every product developed is fresh and simple and focused on natural flavour.  Its packaging is also simple, has one colour and is focused on the natural, honest ingredients.  Its distribution vans are shaped like cows, its website is written in a straightforward tone as is all other collateral such as its booklet ‘Stay Healthy. Be Lazy'. The phones are answered in a distinct way, it runs a free music festival, Fruitstock, for ‘nice people' and it has also made donations to the NGO Women for Sustainable Development in India.  By maintaining a consistent tone of voice throughout all aspects of the brand, Innocent is able to position itself as an easily identifiable, unique and honest brand. 

Critically though, the brand is embodied by its people.  They buy into the values and direction of the business and they personally identify with it.  They understand how the brand and its values are translated into behaviour and the implications that this has on interacting with all stakeholders, from customers, to prospects, to each other.  This is essential when we consider that people encounters are fundamental in shaping the perceptions of brand.  This ethos is encapsulated and emulated by the founders who are responsible for creating an environment and culture where employees are personally connected with the ambitions of the business.

And herein lies the key; if brand is not managed at the highest level in an organisation, or the business is not optimised to deliver it, the brand will fail.  Despite the stigma attached to marketing, there is valid justification for the brand to be represented at board level; there have been calls for the creation of chief brand officers.  Considering the emergence of chief information officers, knowledge officers and technology officers, it is not an unrealistic proposition. 

It takes a brave chief executive to focus on intangible areas and operate outside his or her comfort zone.  An Ipsos MORI survey of captains of industry a couple of years ago stated that 94% of British boardrooms put a strong brand first amongst a business's key assets.  However only 31% said that they would invest in brand to fortify their businesses against a possible downturn.  We can also all probably name and have experience of working in a host of companies that state that its ‘people are its most important element'.  So taking this into account, coupled with the universal agreement to the importance of differentiation and individual identity, surely brand is critical to business success?

From the streets of Baghdad to Wall Street, when you really think about it, how can you expect to walk into another person's country or business and simply expect them to follow a flag or logo without any clear attachment to what it stands for or direction and vision for what it wants to be?

The emotions of branding

I want to start by telling you a story. It's a very short and rather odd story, but it's one that tells you a lot about quite a lot of things. One of these things is how people's minds work – and how brands should speak to them, in consequence. Another is the bizarre antics that postgraduate scientists get up to with their research grants, which – in the final analysis - are paid for by people like you and me.

The Canadian rickety-bridge experiment

Do you often have meetings with members of the opposite sex on bridges? No? But if you did, do you think you would spend time wondering whether the outcome your meeting would be different if you'd chosen a different sort of bridge: a pedestrian suspension bridge, say, rather than a steel-box-girder one? No, me neither. But two psychologists, in Canada, in the 1970s, were concerned enough about the issue to set up a scientific experiment on the subject.

What they found was that when a range of young men met a young woman on various bridges in the Vancouver region, the kind of bridge that they met on made a difference to what happened. And the bridge that made the most difference of all was the Capillano Suspension Bridge, a rickety, Indiana-Jones-like structure suspended over a vertiginous 250-foot drop. In creative writing exercises taken later in the day after meeting on that bridge, consistently more of the men used sexual language and imagery, and consistently more of them called the woman afterwards to ask her for a date.

As experiments go, it sounds completely bonkers; but the implications, as it turns out, are actually quite sane, and important. And if you'll bear with me, you'll see that there is a direct bearing on the world of brands and marketing.

The Capillano bridge is scary. Being scared makes you emotionally aroused. Your sympathetic nervous system – which controls the pumping of the heart and the readiness for action of the organs and glands – is on a state of alert. So when these emotionally aroused men met the woman, their brains kicked in, and created a story that helped them ‘make sense' of how they felt.

And in a significant number of cases, the brain got it ‘wrong' and told them that they felt like they did because the woman was so attractive.

We feel before we think

That, in a nutshell, is how the mind works – we feel first, and think afterwards. However much we like to think of ourselves as intelligent, rational beings, much of what we do when we think is to create stories that post-rationalise (more – or less – accurately) our gut instincts.

But too many brands, and too many marketers, treat it as if things were the other way around, and as if emotion were a nice-to-have-but–not-necessary-to-have afterthought to a rational product benefit. And they're wrong: totally and utterly wrong.

The Future's Bright

“We feel before we think” pretty much sums up the approach taken by Hutchinson Telecoms for the 1994 launch of its Orange mobile phone network.

For believers in the power of reason over emotion, the launch of Orange was a caricature of what not to do. It didn't offer a benefit. It didn't mention the price. It didn't even say what the product was. The first few weeks of the campaign were just teasers that mentioned a colour, a name, some emotional – but unexplained – words like “Laugh” and “Cry” and a sort of vaguely forward-looking positive feeling for a sign-off (“The future's bright, the future's Orange”). On a rational level it was all wrong. On a rational level, it shouldn't have worked. But we're not rational creatures: we really do feel before we think; and the result was that on the strength of this campaign, Orange went from absolutely nowhere to number one in active subscriber numbers in barely six years.

It's also interesting to note that after Orange abandoned its emotionally-based approach in its marketing and joined the price-plan war with all the other networks, it has lost share to Vodafone and T-Mobile.

Charles Darwin and how people got emotional

In evolutionary terms, we had emotion long before we had words or abstract thought. Although our words and concepts differ by time and place and culture, our emotions are the same the world over. Charles Darwin was one of the first modern scientists to propose the idea of universal basic emotions, and universal facial expressions for them. Since that time, study after study has borne him out.

All of the evidence points to the fact that there really are fundamental emotions - happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust and fear and the like – and each one of them has an evolutionary function. You feel fear, you run or hide; you feel anger, you fight…

Each emotion we feel relates to our species' basic animal needs and responses to problems in the environment. More than this, they are not unique to human beings. In some form or other, these emotional states, and the behaviours that go with them, are universal. The face you make when you smell or taste something disagreeable is similar to the face your dog pulls under the same circumstances.

Which gets you into all sorts of odd territories, like can an ant feel sad? The answer – as far as many evolutionary biologists are concerned – is yes… probably . But let's not go there for now.

Brains, emotions and stories

If it is true that we were emotional beings before we were ever thinking ones, it's also true that even today our brains reflect that. The things we see and hear are processed first by the amygdala – the seat of the emotions – before being passed on to the association cortex , where ‘thinking' happens, and where we create the story that makes sense of what we feel.

And when a story becomes established, and gains a hold on the mind, we begin to see things not as they are, raw and unfiltered, but as the story tells us they should be. We pick up on the things that confirm the story we hold, and filter out the ones that contradict it.

It's the wine talking

For many years, Marks and Spencer maintained and profited from a widely-believed story in the minds of its shoppers, about being a premium supermarket. But when times got tougher and more competitive, and when M& S tried to diversify, elements of that story proved remarkably resistant to change, and turned from being a help to a hindrance.

They moved into wine, and sourced a whole range of remarkably good ones; and yet despite being far better than those offered by much of the competition, the sales of these wines didn't live up to expectations.

The story was ‘Premium Supermarket', not ‘Wine Merchant.' For food this is a good thing; for wine it isn't. A good wine merchant is a quirky, esoteric place staffed by experts capable of guiding you to all sorts of potential discoveries – which is what wine is all about. A supermarket, however premium, just doesn't feel credible here. And because every aspect of the look and feel of the store confirmed the supermarket story, people simply filtered out any evidence of M& S having any other areas of expertise. It was as if they were sleep-shopping. And nothing seemed to be ale to wake them up: not getting in better wines; not putting bigger signs above them; not taking out adverts to explain their expertise – people just didn't see.

It was only when M& S created a different visual language around its wines, and its in-store wine section, and presented enough cues to build up a ‘Wine Merchant' story, that people began to ‘feel' the difference emotionally, and sales began to rise.

The extraordinary power of the emotions

Because of the way emotion has evolved, and because of the way the brain is constructed, an idea that connects with us emotionally is far more powerful than one that is ‘intellectually correct', even (and perhaps especially) for intelligent people. The psychologist C.G. Jung described how, on visiting Germany in the 1930s, he found himself so overcome by the emotional power and spectacle of the Nazi state, that he realised he was, for the duration of his visit, a ‘believer' - even though he knew, when he sat down to think about it, that it was all nonsense, and dangerous nonsense at that.

And the rise of Nazi Germany – and much of recent history – is really rather instructive in the question of which side tends to win if ever there is a conflict between emotion and reason. In no particular order: Mao's Cultural Revolution; Princess Diana's funeral; the threat of SARS, Bird Flu, salmonella in eggs and BSE (‘Mad Cow Disease'); the DotCom share boom; and the endless procession of ‘miracle diets' that promise to make you slim and attractive without you actually having to eat any less food or do any more exercise.

The implications for brands

The biggest implication of all of this for brands is that it makes it very clear what the target should be, for any brand operating in any category whatsoever. That target is, first and foremost, the emotions of the people you want to buy what you have to sell.

In everything it does – in its function, in its advertising, in its design and in its packaging, a brand should tell a consistent story with the aim of producing a clear and defined emotional connection with its audience.

This is not to say that rational messages aren't important – in some cases a rational message, like our product is cheaper than theirs , is the single most powerful thing you can say. But the ultimate aim of that rational message should be to just to make people think ‘this is cheap', because ‘cheap' has any number of interpretations (and not all of them good ones). The aim of a rational message about cheapness should be to make people feel , on an emotional level, that buying your product – which is cheap - is the right and fitting thing to do.

When you get this emotional connection right, substantial financial returns will follow, because people will come back to your brand again and again.

And finally

I'd like to finish with a story – or rather, two stories, both of which come from the bizarre ‘what-on-earth-made-them-study-that?' world of psychological research, both of which illustrate truths about the nature of emotion, but both of which I've included mainly because, of all the things I've read on the subject, these just happened to jump out and elicit in me the Darwinian fundamental emotion of surprise .

The first one is this: did your grandmother ever catch you making some particularly horrible grimace and tell you not to do it, because if the wind changes, you'll stick like it. Well, it turns out she was right. Sort of. In research carried out in the USA in 1987 a number of old people were photographed with what they imagined were ‘neutral' expressions on their faces.

The pictures were shown to students, who were asked to describe what emotions the photographs were depicting. The students' descriptions of these emotions matched perfectly with what personality tests had shown to be the dominant emotion of the people in the photographs. Which is to say, if you spend all your time feeling miserable, or happy, you'll end up looking like it.

The second one concerns a particular prejudice of mine, which was described by the 19 th -century psychologist William James as The Gospel of Relaxation . The gist of it is this: if you are feeling unhappy, there is no point moping around or agonising over it: what you need to do is damn well go out and do something to make yourself feel happier.

In England, we have a long tradition of cheering ourselves up through vigorous physical exertion; and – as the social commentator A.A. Gill recently pointed out in The Sunday Times - we are particularly fond of exertion that involves danger; whether chasing foxes on horseback, engaging in fisticuffs with rival villages or football teams, or on the numerous battlefields with which our past is littered. This sort of exertion, as it turns out, is particularly stimulating to the sympathetic nervous system and very good at lifting one's mood.

In 2005, researchers at the State University of Novosibirsk, in Russia (where – Chekhov and Tolstoy notwithstanding – there is a similarly robust attitude to personal problems) reported a remarkable new treatment for depression and alcoholism. Rather than sit and listen to the patients go on and on about their problems, and how unhappy they are, the research team, led by Dr. Sergei Speransky, simply beat the living daylights out of them. Physically. On a regular basis. And, surprisingly, according to the study, it actually worked, and far better than the conventional alternatives.

So where this is all leading to is this. We feel, emotionally, before we think, intellectually; and much of our conscious thought is simply a post-rationalisation of the way we feel. And feeling is a physical thing at least as much as it is a mental one, and it shapes our very bodies and features, and it has its roots in the primitive evolutionary history we share with all other creatures.

For good or ill, the things that succeed in this world, be they ideas or philosophies or personalities or brands, are those which best connect with our emotions. The way in which a brand – or personality, or idea, or philosophy – can succeed is by telling, and embodying, powerful stories that connect with the emotions, and so gaining a competitive advantage over its rivals.

About the author

Warwick Cairns is planning director of brand agency Brandhouse, which has worked with such brands as Tango, Cockburns, Marks & Spencer and many more.

A brand is what a brand does

Tried and tested: ‘Stupid' arrogant brands

As Forrest Gump's mother famously advised: “Stupid is as Stupid does”. And that, unfortunately, is true of many brands today. Recently, the National Consumer Council published the findings from an 18-month study of 2000 consumers that talked about the “stupid” brands it had discovered. According to that study, stupid brands share the following characteristics. They:

• Make inflated expectations and broken promises
• Sell, sell, sell
• Are sneaky and dishonest
• Are impersonal and robotic
• Are incompetent and ineffectual

We're no longer the stiff upper-lip, uncomplaining nation. We're five times more likely to tell someone about a bad experience than a good one. In a recent survey, 77% of those questioned said they thought web journals (blogs) were a useful way to get insights into the products or services they should buy*. We're starting to trust unknown individuals more than brands themselves. And we're voting with our feet and our wallets. A Research International study showed that customers of brands that delivered functionally and emotionally compared to “stupid” brands that did neither would get nearly three times higher indexed loyalty rates; five times higher cross-sell rates and up to nine times the up-sell rates.

‘Is everything ok?'

Brands are short-cuts for consumers. They indicate what can be expected. How a customer feels about a brand is shaped by what they perceive the brand to be, what they hear about the brand, and what they remember from the interactions they may have with it. This has a direct impact on how committed they are – and what they do. What customers say fundamentally affects what other prospects think and believe. It either supports or conflicts with our brand promise. The greater the dissonance between what others say and what the brand claims, the more the brand is weakened.

Anticipating, Experiencing and Remembering

There are three stages to any brand experience:

• Anticipating: what the customer perceives the brand to stand for and expects to happen when they interact with it
• Experiencing: what actually happens
• Remembering: what the customer remembers after the interaction

The wise marketer, however, knows this isn't linear - it's cyclical. Each subsequent experience shapes your perception of what to expect next. And First Impressions count. Get it wrong upfront and it's going to be hard to recover…

Great advertisers know that changing attitudes is hard. It requires sustained persistency. That's why most advertising appeals to consumer's desires. And that's the nub: if a brand can get customer attitudes entrenched through consistent experience, they'll be difficult for competitors to challenge.

Research shows that although companies spend 80% of their resources on influencing Perception, it is Recollection that creates the highest customer loyalty.

So one of the real challenges is to design brand experiences in a way that makes them truly memorable. Of course, creative advertising plays a role - but only if great brand experience design backs it up.

Product and Service Brands are different

Traditionally, brand managers have received the majority of their training focusing on product brands. With a product, barring a new formulation, the customer experience remains constant: it is the advertising, packaging promotion and imagery that varies. Indeed, studies show that today differentiation is more likely to be achieved by altering sensory and perceptual factors. Consumers therefore tend to judge product brands impressionistically .

With service brands, the user experience can vary dramatically from one week - indeed one minute - to the next. Here, it's the consistency, expectation and delight experienced in the delivery of a service which is the greatest determinant of a brand's appeal - not conventional marketing imagery. Hence consumers tend to judge service brands experientially .

Powerful service brands (take Amazon or Google as examples) can grow without conventional advertising support, but great advertising alone would rarely compensate for appalling service. Certainly some of the great success stories for service brands recently, such as Tesco, have been based on incremental service enhancements, where advertising simply amplifies the effect. Indeed, the hallmark of a great service brand is one where promotion comes naturally from its staff because they are proud: they are advocates for its products and services.

Great Brands come in all shapes and sizes

When it comes to characterising a good brand experience, size is not necessarily synonymous with success. Far from it; many niche brands, by differentiating their offering, punch well above their weight. Broadly, there are three different types of branded experience - and, usually, they're driven by very different types of organisations.

Operationally brilliant

This is about people who love process . They are concerned with aligning resources, streamlining and optimising the supply chain. This delivers a core of reliability and reassurance - anything above this is pleasurable. The experience is about sustaining everyday life - reliability in an increasingly unreliable world. The company culture is typically one of control. Examples: Tesco, Richer Sounds, FedEx.

Customer intimate

This is about people who love people . The experience focuses on involving customers to deliver what they really want: it satisfies unique needs by virtue of (apparently) special relationships with the customer. The company culture is typically collaborative. Examples: H2X (that's us!), Four Seasons, Ten UK, lastminute.com

Product leaders

This is about people who love things . They continually push performance boundaries with relentless effort and innovation to deliver anticipation and excitement. The company culture usually centres on developing competence. Examples: Intel, Dyson, Apple, Audi, Bang & Olufsen.

Bang & Olufsen and Richer Sounds.

Great brands - but different-experiences.

Selling electrical audio goods through retail stores as well as online, both brands enjoy passionate support from customers and employees. So both are great branded experiences - but each is very different.

Bang & Olufsen levers the top-end nature of the product and sound experience. With stores featuring minimalist design and a cushioned sound room, nothing can detract from the audio excellence. “The Bang & Olufsen shop is where you can experience the craftsmanship and pleasure that characterise our products, with no obligation for you other than to watch, listen, and be inspired.” The product is King.

Richer Sounds, meanwhile, achieves one of the highest sales per square foot with a ‘cheap and cheerful' approach. “Our stores pile bargains high and don't have fancy shop fittings so we keep our overheads down and pass on those savings to you.” Their passionate staff create a buzz in the store and ring bells when sales are made. Operational Excellence is King.

Understanding a marketplace, playing to strengths, and amplifying these through merchandising, physical design and people delivers a resonant experience. For both brands there is integrity not dissonance. The brand is what the brand does.

Mind the Gap! Promise and Delivery

Clearly what you promise and what your brand actually delivers should match. But all too often, they don't. If there's a Gap, customers soon realise they're being deceived. They don't stay customers for long.

A successful brand aligns its promise with its organisational capability and the people who have to deliver it. The culture and the set of brand experience principles and behaviours all match.

Align what we deliver with what we promise

Organisation

Employee

Customer

Brand Promise

Culture

Experience Delivery

Mind the Gap!

Expectations are key. They're shaped not just by what we promise, nor by what others in the category are delivering (many customers often don't experience the service from others in the category) but by the best companies in other categories. First Direct sets the standard in telephone dialogue, Tesco with ‘one in front' queue management, Amazon in personalisation on-line.

So there are three gaps here. One is against what we expect from the brand based on the specific promise that was made (and our past experience of delivery); the next against what we expect from the category; and lastly, what we expect generally.

How can I make a brand memorable?

Gaining notoriety for the right reasons? That's the million dollar question. I like to look to the West End, Broadway and Hollywood for inspiration here. The previews, posters and reviews build excitement and anticipation. On the performance day, just as with all experiences, you need to deliver the basics – the core category needs. It needs to be easy to collect the tickets. You shouldn't have to queue too long to get to your seats. It should be easy to get a drink at the interval. Of course the play should be delivered seamlessly and with conviction. In some categories delivery is so poor just doing the basics consistently is enough! Patrick Barwise and Sean Meahan described this as “Simply Better”, in the book of the same name.

Great plays and brands both have a signature experience. Something everyone talks about - the thing that the “brand” is known for. In ‘Chitty, Chitty, Bang, Bang' it's the car actually flying…. in ‘The Lion King' it's the animals walking within the audience. Great brands have their own signature, too. At TGI Fridays it's the humour and individuality of the servers and their attire. With Mini, it's the ‘mini adventure' that accompanies all interactions.

Daring to be different

Doing something that is truly different and being seen to be the first to do it is the next thing that can create an unforgettably positive experience. Dell did this when it enabled customisation of PCs; Tesco, when it launched its Club Card; Amazon when it started next day delivery and access to thousands of titles with recommendations; Virgin Atlantic when it started its limo service for its Upper Class passengers. The common denominator is reaching a consumer need around the use of the product as well as meeting the core product needs itself.

But it's not just about big things. A memorable experience is also about all the small details. The hotel concierge that remembers your name, the restaurant that remembers which table you like, the service engineer that takes their shoes off as they enter your home, the contact centre that actually follows up to ensure that your issue was resolved. But it's all too easy to leave these things to chance….. unless you hardwire them into “the way we do things around here”.

Making it happen

Great brands define the emotional outcomes required, the behaviours that will deliver them and the brand voice (tone and language) in which they should be delivered. Defining these is one thing. Getting the brand (and organisation) to deliver them is something else.

So who is setting these outcomes and ensuring that the brand does what we expect it to? Let's return to our theatre analogy. Behind every great play is a great Director, interpreting the concept and ensuring that everything about the performance is true to the original idea. But like all great productions, many people are involved. It's not just the marketers producing the brochure or the actors delivering the play on the night. It's everyone - from the lighting technician to the caterer - who deliver the true brand experience. Often it's the merchandising that creates the recollection and the margin! So the whole production team needs to be galvanised behind the purpose and organised to deliver. Nothing must be left to chance.

Sharing ownership lets everyone deliver more.

 “Life's a box of chocolates, Forrest. You never know what you're gonna get.” Once again, Forrest's mother has a point. In large organisations, much of the spend and control is in the hands of service, sales and product directorates. It is not the direct influence of marketing. How does the wise marketer engage the rest of the organisation to influence the brand delivery?

The key is not about telling or “sheep dipping”; instead, it's about truly engaging and co-creating. Almost all staff want to do the right thing and, given the right encouragement and guidance, they will come up with the right answer. And if they've come up with it, they are much more likely to own the implementation plan.

By involving all who shape your brand, you can leave ‘stupid' competitors behind forever. Your organisation can be proud of what your brand is and does.

*Source: Hostaway, Sept 26 2005: http://www.hostway.co.uk/about_us/pressreleases/hw.pr.26-09-05.pdf

Relationship Measurement, Management and Valuation

Imagine you are James Averdieck at GU puddings. Which relationship is more valuable to you? Tesco or Waitrose? Tesco can deliver the volume, the UK wide reach- but Waitrose backed you and your product concepts at the outset and still enables you to trial and innovate.

Clearly the analysis is not just a simple financial one. It is not enough to look at the revenue, margin and profit in order to calculate the on going and future worth of any business relationship. The reality is complex and has to take account of the strategic value of these relationships.

The growing importance of such strategic business alliances is being widely observed by the management gurus. “ Alliances are where the real growth is”, saidPeter Drucker. “ Among today's more powerful trends is the supplier customer partnership” addsRobert Heller.

They note the rise of “numerator alliances” where two and two are intended to make significantly more than five. These are designed to be interdependent, to fuel mutual growth and business success. One cited by Heller is J& J's relationship with Nypro, the plastics moulders, where they both share access to the other's computer – surely the ultimate in business intimacy and trust?

Within this context now consider the relationships marketing companies typically have with their spiralling number of marketing services suppliers. These suppliers, or partners as they always prefer to be called, can add millions to the value of brands. The Cellnet O2 rebranding is widely quoted as being an example of the power of branding, design, advertising, and use of media.

A more recent IPA Effectiveness Award winner, RK/Y& R's paper on their contribution to the M& S resurgence of fortune, leaves no doubt about the incremental sales generated by their advertising.

But how to emulate these successes?

As the single full service ad agency model has given way to the multiple communication agency headache that is integration, a marketing team's ability to form true partner relationships is under increasing pressure, yet given the fragmentation of communication opportunity, has never been more necessary.

With the cliché “clients get the advertising they deserve” buzzing irritatingly in the background, it is an unusually confident marketing team who can claim they are managing all their varied communication partners in a way which maximises the individual and collective ROI.

They may say they instinctively have a “feel” for which ones are contributing most to the brand's value, to its sales success, but do they know how that success correlates back to the fees paid? Do they also know how much their own behaviour as a client is helping or hindering each agency as it tries to deliver its best, whilst working within its pre agreed hours?

Managing integrated teams effectively demands more than minimising overlap, and reconciling the differences of timeline and bottom line. It demands professional thinking about the business value of the past, current and future relationships. It requires consistent measurement, evaluation and on going management.

Few marketing companies are even handed in the way they work with and assess their agencies. Like parents with too many children, they give disproportionate attention to the most demanding and expensive, whilst devaluing the worth of the quiet diligent working meekly in the corner.

It is possible to map the respective contribution of any roster of communication agencies, by using a disciplined qualitative and quantitative approach to Relationship Management, combined with the accepted financial thinking behind Brand Valuation. This then enables true Relationship Valuation. It creates a strategic framework which allows for the consistent management of the multi faceted communication teams, making it easier to remunerate them in line with value delivered, to determine fair PBR schemes, and to optimise the roster.

The first step is measuring both the agency and marketing team's  performances, using the same quantitative and qualitative criteria and approach. Ask each team to assess their own and each other's performance as obviously this shows particular strengths and weaknesses, but also reveals the team dynamics. Are the two teams working as one or are there wide disparities in perception and expectation? How well are the marketing team briefing the agencies? Conduct it evenly across the roster and take advance bets as to which will be the strongest rated performer- rarely is it as predicted. Subjectivity is stripped out, senior management preconceptions put into a wider context and suddenly the favourite son can be revealed as the young pretender.

Next step, assessing the Relationship Value . Just as that intangible-the brand –now has a value recognised on the balance sheet, so these commercial relationships have a business worth, as well as a business cost, which should be discussed and ideally codified. The rise of Performance Based Remuneration means it is even more important to agree, openly and honestly, how each agency is expected to contribute to business success. He who screams loudest should not get the biggest slice of the bonus pie. Reviewing the business impact of the shrinking design violet alongside that of the strident PR sunflower, can be illuminating. Setting an evaluation framework which draws together newcomer digital and well loved ad agency is not always comfortable, but has to be a part of the integration game.  Long-term value generation needs to be considered alongside short term tactical sales uplift, which leads to the next demand for successful relationship management….

Continuous Management for Continuous Improvement. Unlike strategic alliances, which tend to be a marriage of equals, here we are talking about supplier relationships. The financial dynamic works against partnership, and this, perversely, inhibits the marketing company getting as much value out of the relationship as they should. It is all too easy to fall into the “master servant” trap. The agencies even implicitly encourage this by conducting “client satisfaction surveys” where there is no opportunity for the agency to alert the marketing team about how they could improve in order to get better, more effective work. As we all know from our personal lives, one sided relationships are not healthy- they will not grow and develop.

The marketing team of the future who will have the most productive relationships will take the trouble to create totally honest and objective forums where the strengths and issues within the combined team are regularly discussed, and action plans put in place to correct them. Then the whole exercise will be repeated at least every six months, so the action plan is always… actioned.

It may be time consuming, but it works. Together you will build stronger brands.

In the communication-complex, consumer-driven world of 2007, nobody would question that brands are a marketing company's strategic asset. This in turn makes it a business imperative to create strategic alliances with all the partners who have a stake in building your brands' value.

About the author: Libby Child is the UK CEO of APRAIS