Have you ever played the old parlour game of ‘Whispers’ where one person whispers a phrase to you and you pass it on, by whisper, to the next person. After 6 or 7 rounds ‘I have a square’ becomes ’a star’. It’s a demonstration of how the intent behind a message can be lost in transition if there is not someone standing between the individual whisperers correcting them.
Just for the fun-of-it
There has been plenty of debate over the years (some of it with readers commenting on this site) about the validity and value of brand gestures that do not have an immediate and specific selling proposition. In many ways this represents the difference between the crafts of advertising and branding.
As a young direct marketer I was taught that in terms of the impact on response to your communication the ‘Offer’ is the most critical element. That doesn’t mean that the media you use, the format of your communication, and the creative idea are unimportant, just that getting the offer right has more impact on response than those factors do. After my recent musings on the eFuture of direct marketing I started to think about how that golden rule might play out on line. How effectively are offers being presented?
We recently received the mailing below from our bank and it looked old and tired because it’s effectively the same format that’s been used for the last 20 years. I first saw this format of DM in finance when I was working with Lloyd’s bank in 1998 – back then we copied an American bank (MBNA) in using this format. It begged the big question; ‘Where’s direct going to?’
The Difference Between Message and Value
In the past week I’ve had several conversations with clients, colleagues and our creative staff about the difference between brand messages and brand value. Brand is still a relatively young business concept and continues to evolve, mature and become more valuable to companies with each passing year. When I think back even just five years ago to the types of brand briefs we were working with, they were mostly Brand Message Centric – ‘what can we tell the market about our products or services that will compel them to choose us over our competitors?’ Typically these days our brand projects have a very different philosophy, our clients are rightly more focused on “What must we be delivering through our products and services so that our market can’t wait to include us in their lives?”. This is the compelling and critical difference between brand Value and brand message.
Apple, a brand obsessed with building customer value from the inside-out. Read the rest of this entry »
Word on the Web
As the rumor-mill turns into a tidal wave of anticipation for Apple’s new tablet, we take a snapshot of what’s being discussed, tweeted and mentioned on the social networks and blog sites. A glance at the Social Sentiment word cloud below shows the on-line universe abuzz with the rumored product name of ‘iSlate’ following a leak onto the net of URL and trademark registrations by Apple for that name. As always, it’s the interesting reading is between the lines (literally) – the smaller words often tell the story of current sentiment – and the further you look, the more intriguing the narrative. Click on the wordcloud pic to see a larger version.
David Ansett, Brandamentalist
If you’d like daily updates of our brand thinking, you can follow me on Twitter here.
I got home one evening recently and I had 4 envelopes in the post box. They were all pretty much the same size, but there the similarities ended.
The first envelope was plain, brown and unaddressed, except for the ominous warning ‘To the Home Owner’. The second was a plain white window envelope addressed to me. The third had the brand mark of my mobile phone provider and the fourth the logo of the travel agent we went on holiday with six months ago and carried a message ‘Exclusive offers and packages for our VIP customers’.
So I took out my ‘stethoscope’ and listened for a brand heart beat from each envelope.
Building your business through brand extension
During tough market conditions, brand or product line extensions might just be the best way for your business to stay healthy, especially if they’re not something you spend much time thinking about. When done right, brand extensions can either be a positive way to build stronger and more profitable relationships with your clients and customers. When done poorly, brand extensions can be expensive experiments that drain cash flow and confuse your market’s understanding of your business’ proposition.
Loyalty and Trust
One of the greatest benefits of building a strong brand is the loyalty and trust that you build with your clients and customers. As purchasers of products and services, people will always prefer to deal with someone they have a trusted relationship with, over forming a new relationship without established trust. Adding a product or service offering to your brand that is relevant to the needs of your customer can not only have a positive effect on revenue, but also further enhance the relationships your customers have with your brand.
Real estate agents extends themselves
Melbourne real estate agent; Marshall White recently developed a value-add service for clients preparing their homes for sale – huge removal and self storage trailers. Parked out front of a house sporting an ‘upcoming auction’ sign, the over-sized blue and gold trailer not only drew attention to the house on behalf of the vendor, but also provided a high traffic billboard – all for the benefit of Marshall White.
What makes a great offer, what does it say about your brand, can it damage it?
My interest was aroused by the recent Kmart price promise TV ad – it’s set up in a way that has none of the usual retail frenzy of Kmart ads, being more akin to a political party crusade. It attracted my attention because it shows everyday people talking about an important promise – later it’s revealed this is the Kmart Price Promise – find the same item cheaper elsewhere and we’ll match the price. Kmart is an important and iconic brand, it successfully provides for the needs of millions of Australians, I should make it clear I like Kmart.
I saw the ad at least 4 times, which suggest a fairly sizeable media spend. Interestingly over the next few days a number of friends also mentioned the ad. Unfortunately, for all of us, we were underwhelmed by what the promise actually involved. It seems to me that having decided to strongly promote this offer Kmart missed a chance to deliver a really strong message for the brand.
