FMCG Branding: Top 4 Tips For Competing Profitably Against Own Label Brands

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The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market is one of the most competitive and aggressive in the world. Whether your products are foods or beverages, toiletries, cleaning products, household or office supplies, or consumer electronics, your customers have a vast array of brands to choose from—and it’s up to you to build a brand platform, with a sustainable business model, that attracts, retains and grows your target market.

 

As every FMCG brand owner or manager knows, today’s FMCG brands are not only competing against comparable brands at equal retail pricing levels. In fact, the stiffest competition comes from private label brands offering similar products with significant price discounts, which your business may not be able to match. In a suppressed global economy where customers are looking to make every dollar, pound or euro count, you need a multi-pronged branding strategy that addresses the price fighting battles and enables your brand to flourish more profitably, at higher price points.

  

 

4 tips to help you increase your FMCG brands profitability and take market share from private label brands

  

1. Highlight Innovation

Customers are always hungry for something new and different—as the long lines or queues at Apple retail stores whenever a new iPhone is released can attest. Building a brand promise around innovation can also work for FMCG products. Innovative brands have inherent value to the customer, and can therefore command higher prices.

 

To bolster sales in its flagging UK and European markets due to damaging competition from private label brands, Unilever has shifted its brand strategy emphasis to innovation. The company has seen early success in UK markets with the introduction of compressed deodorant cans, presented as an environmental innovation in sustainable living across its Sure, Dove, Vaseline and Lynx brands and, the recent introduction of a new toothpaste brand called Regenerate Enamel Science NR5 which highlights a “unique enamel science formula” for rebuilding tooth enamel. This highly innovative new brand has achieved a significant price premium for the category, retailing at $17 /£10 / €13 per tube—much higher than regular toothpaste prices.

  Regenerate Enamel Science Nr5

Image via www.unilever.com  

 

The innovation lies in the formula they came up with which combines calcium silicate and sodium phosphate to regenerate enamel by up to 82 per cent in three days, while also making the tooth three times stronger. When you consider 80 per cent of tooth problems in adults are caused by enamel erosion Regenerate Enamel Science NR5 is a very compelling brand innovator.

 

However the brand didn’t just stop at this one highly innovative $17 / £10 / €13 Regenerate Enamel Science NR5 toothpaste for daily use, to achieve the best effect is has to be used in conjunction with a second product, a ‘Boosting Serum’ if you want to achieve the full 82 per cent effect, which retails at a further $51 / £30 / €38 and gives the user just the ‘once a month’ required 3 day usage amount! The consumer has to spend $51 / £30 / €38 per month on the ‘Boosting Serum’ plus $17 / £10 / €13 on the Regenerate Enamel Science toothpaste, requiring a monthly expenditure of $69 / £40 / €51 per person on their ‘at home’ dental care! So where the average humble regular toothpaste with an RRP of around $7 / £4 / €5 or less endeavours to prevent erosion, Regenerate Enamel Science NR5 is the first to reverse it. Similar to Apple this is a superb example of brand innovation with premium positioning achieving a premium pricing strategy.

 

  

  

2. Focus On Your Brand Story

Stories hold a timeless attraction for everyone, and brands with strong stories behind them are much more memorable and compelling with customers. Tradition, heritage, and history are classic elements for many successful brands, allowing companies like Burberry, Rolls Royce, and Smythson to cash in on higher price points by emphasizing the timeless qualities and standards of their brands. The same principles apply to FMCG goods, with brand heritage delivering a promise to customers that the extra cost is worth paying for. Note: Your brand story must be authentic, irresistible and consistent in a way that’s relevant to your target audience throughout every touch point of your brands’ existence and engagement on or offline.

 

Fairy Liquid Royal Wedding 

Image via www.pg.com

  

The UK brand Fairy Liquid has effectively utilised history and heritage to increase market share and surpass competition from private label brands. Beginning in 2010, Fairy Liquid launched a commemorative heritage campaign celebrating the iconic brand’s 50th anniversary, and a consistent brand vision of mildness and domestic harmony. The nostalgic hark back to simpler times, including a re-launch of its original white bottle packaging, drove impressive year-on-year growth of 13.1% in the hand dishwash category and 24.2% in the auto dishwash category.

 

 Fairy Liquid Diamond Jubilee

 Image via www.pg.com

  

In 2011, Fairy Liquid once again realized sales growth with the launch of a commemorative bottle to celebrate the royal wedding and another to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012. Further, the brand is the most popular for parent company Procter & Gamble on Facebook, with a strategy of frequent engagement on social media through nostalgia-based topics. With the right brand strategy, even newer brands can employ history and heritage to add value to their FMCG products.

 

 

3. Inspire Customer Loyalty

Customer loyalty is a driving force behind the power of a brand, particularly for FMCG brands. Customers who are loyal to your brand will buy your products every time, regardless of cost – but you’ve got to consistently give them a compelling reason for their loyalty! When you develop a loyal customer base, you enjoy not only repeat business, but coveted word-of-mouth advertising as your brand fans tell their family and friends that they’ll only use your products.

 

Procter & Gamble, the parent company to dozens of FMCG brands, creates customer loyalty for not only individual product lines, but the corporation’s umbrella as a whole. The company’s loyalty-driven ongoing Olympics campaign is one of the most notable and effective in the world, with a series of commercials celebrating international mothers and their everyday work in raising Olympic champions. Each of these inspiring, heartstring-tugging commercials ends with a series of brand placement images, and the campaign’s tag line: “P&G. Proud sponsor of Moms.”

 

 

  

  

4. Create Exclusivity

Many luxury brands rely on exclusivity to maintain sales and customer levels at premium price points. Creating exclusivity can also be an effective strategy for FMCG brands in two ways—by developing the perception of exclusivity for customers, and by building retailer relations for exclusive product distribution.

   Grey Poupon Mustard

Image via www.kraftfoodservice.com  

 

FMCG brand Grey Poupon has built a brand on exclusivity. The “luxury” mustard brand has always catered to a higher end customer, creating a brand that is synonymous with discerning tastes. Early in 2014, Grey Poupon applied the exclusivity concept to social media marketing with a unique Facebook campaign that only allowed customers to “Like” their page if their application was approved and they were able to “cut the mustard.”

  

Grey Poupon Facebook Application 

  

The ‘Like Applications’ were weighed using several factors, including education level, number of friends, and books read. Those who failed to hit the mark were offered tips to improve their standing and invited to try again.

 

 

  

  

In 2013, Duracell rose to 46% of the alkaline battery market share after developing an exclusive distribution relationship with wholesale retailer Sam’s Club, a Wal-Mart company. While the wholesale deal required a slight discount on bulk sales, Duracell was still able to maintain a higher price point than private label battery brands and realize an additional $140 million in sales.

 

As the competition increases between FMCG brands and private label discounters, companies must develop multi-faceted value-added branding strategies to differentiate their products, attract new customers, and earn customer loyalty at higher price points. As always, a consistent brand promise built on delivering incomparable ‘perceived’ value remains essential to long term success in the FMCG arena.

 

What do you think?

• Does your brand have an innovative element you can highlight in your marketing campaigns?

 

• How can you highlight your brand story in a way that adds value for customers?

 

• Are there any traditions or heritage stories you can tie to your brand to invoke nostalgia or pride?

 

• Who is your ideal loyal customer? How does your brand marketing strategy reach them?

 

• Can you develop exclusivity around your brand, either through customer perceptions or distribution and retail relationships?

 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

 

World Cup Branding: What Can You Learn from the World Cup Campaigns?

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Much like the Olympics, every four years the World Cup captures the attention of the globe—and global marketers. World Cup branding is a powerful way for businesses to elevate their brand profiles and strengthen brand visibility on a global scale.

  

But the branding techniques used by companies during World Cup fever don’t have to be confined to once every four years. Here are some branding lessons your business can take away from the latest World Cup marketing campaigns.

  

Take A Risk With Something Different

World Cup advertising sponsorships aren’t easy to come by—they’re highly limited, extremely costly, and competed for fiercely. Only a handful of big brands manage to score these coveted sponsorships. Non-sponsor companies, therefore, usually arrange for star-studded branded advertising that conveys support for the game and suggests affiliation.

 

 Nike Swoosh Logo

Image via www.nike.com

  

Nike, who wasn’t a sanctioned World Cup sponsor for 2014—though competitor Adidas was—managed to grab an early win by going against the trend. The company created a video, released right before the start of the tournament, that broke all the rules: it’s animated (though some of the characters are futbol celebrities), it never directly mentions the World Cup, and it’s a whopping five and a half minutes long—nearly twice the maximum length of three minutes that’s usually recommended for customer engagement.

  

 

  

The video, which is really a mini-film, uses subtle and strategic product placement throughout. The theme of the video’s story is “risk everything”—and it’s a risk that paid off significantly for Nike, who garnered over 65 million views and experienced more user engagement than its sponsored competitor, with less effort.

 

What can your business learn from “The Last Game”? When you take risks and deliver something unexpected, your brand benefits.

 

Be A Good Sport

When it comes to sporting events, especially global tournaments like the World Cup, passions can run high. Everyone will have their favorites, but not all of them can win. Brands in particular need to carefully monitor their support for one team over another, and be cautious when posting their sentiments in public spaces.

 

KLM Airlines learned the hard way with what happens when you offend your audience with your fan sentiments. The European company tweeted about Mexico’s defeat to the Holland team with a stereotyped picture of a mustached, sombrero-sporting figure next to a departure sign, captioned with the words “Adios Amigos!” The tweet went rapidly viral in a negative way, incurring backlash from the online community that included a profanity-laced attack from Hollywood A-List actor Gael Garcia Bernal tweeting his 2 million plus followers that he’ll never fly KLM again! Though KLM soon deleted the tweet, the damage had been done.

   

Gael Garcia Bernal Tweet

    

The takeaway here is to choose your brand alignment carefully, and be a good sport when it comes to wins and losses. Your brand sentiment should never offend your customers.

 

 

Link Your Offline and Online Campaigns Together

The most successful global brands present a consistent customer experience throughout all aspects and representations of their brands. One of the best ways to maintain consistency is to create links between various campaigns that will drive customer engagement on multiple channels.

 

During the World Cup, several brands strove for integration across channels, from television to social to mobile. Global auto manufacturer Hyundai created a particularly successful integrated World Cup campaign with television commercials that called on a popular internet meme and created a user-friendly Twitter hashtag to continue the theme online.

  

  

The video incorporates the “because something” meme that’s frequently used on social media and pop culture websites. While the subject is the Spanish team and their 2010 World Cup win, the advertisement is universal, with just one line of subtitled dialogue and the rest of the story told in actions and flashbacks. It’s funny and endearing, and the use of the #BecauseFutbol hashtag helped to engage audiences and increase Twitter activity for Hyundai.

 

The lesson here is that a consistent and integrated brand strategy across multiple channels can help your business succeed any time, not just during global sporting events.

  

What do you think?

 

• How can your brand capitalise on global events, even without official sponsorships?

  

• What are some unique ways you can present your brand, or unexpected twists you could deploy over typical marketing themes?

  

• How carefully are you monitoring your brand alliances to ensure you’re not offending your audience?

 

• What are you doing to tie your online and offline campaigns together?

  

• Do you create a consistent customer experience across all channels, on and offline, with your brand?

  

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below. We’d love to hear from you!

 

Personal Branding: The Difference Between Product and Personal Branding

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Branding is crucial for any business looking to be competitive in today’s marketplace. When most organizations mention branding, they’re referring to the carefully crafted perceptions surrounding their products or services designed to create an emotional response in their target audience. But there’s another type of branding that can be equally important in marketing your business—namely, your personal brand.

 

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, a professional or an executive, a spokesperson, marketing associate or CEO, drawing a distinction between your product and personal brands, and working to position each of them, can help you propel your business forward and increase public recognition, customer loyalty, and profitability.

  

  

 

What is a Product Brand?

Defining a product or service related brand is paradoxically simple, yet also quite complex. A brand is what your product or service ‘stands for in people’s minds, what it means to them,’ and ‘branding is the process of executing and managing things that make people feel the way they do about your brand’. What your brand stands for—its values, promise, customer experience, and those associated feelings your brand provokes through its story, and so forth—is what makes up a product or service brand. It’s a combination of all those intangible and tangible elements associated with your products, services, or the organization as a whole that gives your brand meaning in a way that’s relevant to your target customers.

 

Companies endeavor to suggest and influence customer perceptions and predispositions to buy through their branding strategies—and this is where the definition becomes more complex. Defining a product brand on the company side can involve a number of components, all working together to reinforce a desired brand perception. This can include brand positioning, brand values, the brand story, and the brand promise.

 

A product or service brand shapes customer perceptions of the things they purchase, everything from eggs to airline travel! These types of brands can become so powerful that they’re perceived as synonymous with the function of the product or service provided. For example, many people refer to all disposable tissues as Kleenex, all copy machines as Xerox, or all clear adhesive tape as Scotch tape or Sellotape.

 

What is a Personal Brand?

Your personal brand is all about you, as a person, but in the more public sense of how you project your image to the outside world. A personal brand doesn’t necessarily reflect every detail of an individual’s private life, unless an individual chooses to live their life in a ‘reality TV’ way! Just as with product or service brands, personal brands are (or should be) carefully crafted in terms of both perception and authenticity. In a very fundamental sense, your personal brand is your reputation.

 

 

 

  

A personal brand includes the perceptions, qualities, and characteristics people associate with you, your name, how you conduct yourself (professionally and privately) and your professional position. Personal brands can be leveraged in brand strategy terms just as effectively as product or service bands. They too represent the emotional experience others will expect when encountering you in a professional capacity. Your personal brand is a unique promise of value that can be attributed to you as an individual, which can also tie in to your company’s brand promise on some level as well.

  

 Richard Branson Virgin

 Image via www.virgin.com

  

Take Sir Richard Branson and Virgin or Michael O’Leary and Ryanair. Both have very separate, individual personal brands that are distinct from the product or service brands they head up. They are, in effect, the spokespersons and visionaries behind the product brands, with brand personas which are aligned to the brands they stand beside—but neither are one and the same.

  

   Michael Oleary Ryanair

 Image via www.02b.com

 

The most successful personal brands are an authentic reflection of that person’s true qualities, without necessarily divulging every micro detail on a private level in their personal lives.

 

 Marthas American Food By Martha Stewart

 Image via www.marthastewart.com

 

One strong example of a successful personal brand is Martha Stewart. In this instance, her personal brand is tightly linked to her products and services, which typically also carry her name. The public face of a vast business empire, Martha Stewart the person is also Martha Stewart the brand. Customers associate her as an individual with taste, quality, and comfortable living. Interestingly Martha Stewart’s personal brand was strong enough to carry her through a legal ordeal that had her serving time in prison—after her release, her reputation recovered and her business empire continued to grow.

   

 

  

 

Product and Personal Brands: What They Share, What’s Different

While personal and product brands are different, they are not totally separate either. Regardless of your personal brand’s standing in the market in terms of its recognition and associations, the strongest personal brands are often linked in some way to your company’s product or service brand. There are often commonalities—for example, Martha Stewart’s personal style is reflected by the brand promise of her company to lend that style to customers’ home décor, clothing, and other Martha Stewart Living product lines. Richard Branson’s personal brand is reflected in some of the characteristics of the Virgin brand, such as being seen as a game-changer, a challenger of the status quo, and an innovative risk-taker that puts the customer at the heart of everything.

  

   Martha Stewart Crafts

 Image via www.marthastewart.com

  

Generally, product and personal brands are similar in that they stand for something that’s meaningful to their audience, and must be consistent in how they are reflected or presented to the world. Consistency is an important key for both personal and product branding. The more customers experience the same values and emotions through each interaction with you, or your products and services, the more they will trust, expect and value a similar relevant experience every time.

 

There are several differences between product and personal brands, and the most important is one that’s inherent to the nature of what these brands represent. Product or service brands are created by branding and marketing campaigns, which help to shape customer perceptions. On the other hand, personal brands are a deliberate choice by the person who is that brand.

  

     Howard Schultz Starbucks

 Image via www.starbucks.com 

  

A cup of Starbucks coffee can’t choose to be a social status symbol, representative of discerning cultural tastes and community responsibility. But Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks, can choose to launch an initiative to create more jobs and encourage entrepreneurs, and kick-start that initiative with a $5 million donation.

  

Establishing Your Own Personal Brand

One vital realisation in personal branding is that, no matter who you are or how you comport yourself professionally, you already have a personal brand. If you’re known to people in a professional capacity, you have a reputation and a set of expectations that surrounds your involvement—good or bad. And you can allow others to continue establishing your personal brand according to their own perceptions, or you can take control to actively shape, promote, and grow the personal brand you want to project.

 

Sir Richard Branson, founder and CEO of Virgin Group, takes an active role in shaping his personal brand. Branson is widely perceived as pioneering and inventive, which has led to the formation of an array of diverse, yet wildly successful industry groups—from Virgin Records to Virgin Mobile, Virgin Airways, and Virgin Trains. Branson’s business pursuits are continually evolving, and they continue to succeed based on the strength of his personal brand as much as the aggressive effectiveness of his business decisions and the perceived value of the Virgin brand itself.

  

 

   

  

Building a personal brand involves first defining the perceptions of yourself that you want others to expect, and then remaining consistent in your presentation of those perceptions throughout your professional appearances, both online and in person. Creating central pieces, such as your biography and professional photo, and using them to identify yourself consistently wherever you appear online or in more traditional media are important tools to manage and reinforce your personal brand.

 

In general, your personal brand won’t require as much research, campaigning, and analysis as your product or service brand—but the effort to shape and maintain personal branding can be highly effective in supporting the growth and success of your product or service brand or indeed your career!

  

What do you think?

• Is a personal brand important to you as a professional?

 

• Have you developed a strongly established personal brand? When did you last audit how others perceive your unique personal brand?

 

• How can you tie your personal brand to your product or service brand and maintain authenticity to yourself?

 

• What opportunities can you identify to showcase your personal brand?

 

• Will your personal brand evolve separately from, or in tandem with, your product or service brand?

 

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you!

 

 

Entrepreneurial Branding: 5 Top Tips For Brand Success

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Entrepreneurs typically face an array of challenges with a failure rate which is dauntingly high. Estimates range from 75 to 90 percent of startups failing within the first few years – those numbers are enough to give even the most stoically resilient and determined entrepreneur pause for thought.

 

The good news is that a strong brand strategy can vastly improve your chances for entrepreneurial success. If over 80% of the Fortune 500 Company CEOs, rate ‘their brand’ as their company’s number one asset, then maybe you should be giving the planning and thought around your brand a lot more consideration than merely tokenism. When building a brand, it’s vital for entrepreneurs to realize that brands are not solely visual. The most common misperception is that many think their brand is just their logo and not much else! A logo is not a brand. This one of the most prevalent mistakes business owners, and designers alike make – much to their detriment.

  

A brand is what your product or service ‘stands for in peoples minds, what it means to them’ and ‘branding is the process of executing and managing things that make people feel the way they do about your brand’. What your brand stands for, its values, promise, customer experience and those associated feelings your brand provokes through its story, and so forth, are what determine the creative design brief for what you logo, and all your other visual materials, actually look like. Your logo is merely the visual idnetifier for your brand, assuming it is well designed enough to appropriately convey your brand meaning in a very distilled visual representation. In short you need to build your brand profile first, before you start designing your logo.

 

If you define what your brand is all about from day one, through your brand profile, it will provide you with absolute clarity on the direction of your brand strategy in parrallel with your business strategy and overall business plan. It will provide you with the right direction for all the different choices you will need to make such as suppliers, communications, online interactions and marketing activities etc.

  

The question here is what’s different, really different about what you’re offering? Slightly different is not good enough. If you want to stand out, you’ve got to be brave and think bigger – dare to be different with your brand in a way that is really relevant to your primary customer. This is what gives your brand substance and potential sustainability – not a logo. You can have the most beautifully designed logo but that still won’t make it into a brand.  

 

    Jeff Bezos Amazon

 Image via www.financialpost.com and Patrick Fallon/Bloomberg

  

One entrepreneur that has defined a brand very succinctly is Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, when he said: “Your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.” Successful branding is about winning and keeping customers, about influencing choice, and ultimately about finding and dominating your place in the market.

 

 

Checkout these top five branding tips to help you achieve a stronger start and give your budding business a better chance of success.

 

5 Foundational Branding Tips to Support Your Brands Success

 

1. Start Early, Brand Consistently and Congruently

For any entrepreneur or startup, it’s never too early to begin building the foundations of your brand. In fact, you should have your brand well developed and thought through so you can put it to work for your business long before you interact with your first customer. This can be summed up in Simon Sinek’s quote ‘People don’t buy what you do, they buy ‘why’ you do it, and what you do simply ‘proves what you believe’.

 

  

Understanding is the first step to building a successful brand. You must know, as a company, exactly who you are, what you stand for, why you do what you do, and what you have to offer your prospective customers that they can’t experience or get anywhere else. Your brand must emotionally and intellectually have the power to engage, motivate and inspire both your prospective customers and your people internally.

 

Dedicate committed time and effort to determining your brand vision. Challenge your thinking, don’t settle for second rate ‘me tooism’ or hybrids of what’s already out there. The greatest sin is to be bland, obvious and ordinary. You must be different, distinctive and memorable for the right reasons if you want success. Be rigorous and thoroughly challenge yourself. Be able to answer questions such as:

  • What is your company’s mission? What will you deliver to your customers—not just in terms of products or services, but emotionally and as an overall customer experience?
  • What benefits and features of your company’s products and services are unique to your business?
  • How will your brand enhance your customers lives and/or solve their problems?
  • What qualities do you want your consumers to equate with your company?
  • What should your business be synonymous with in one year, five years, ten years?
  • Will it still be relevant and powerful in one year, five years, ten years or twenty years plus?
  • Would you fight to protect what your brand stands for? Do you believe in it so strongly that you simply won’t compromise on it? Is it fundamental to your core belief system?

 

Once you have fully fleshed out your business brand vision and values, you can begin distilling your core message into a powerful and captivating brand communications strategy that puts your brand to work effectively.

 

However this can only be done authoritatively when you have a very clear picture of who your ideal core target audience is. Do you know what their needs, wants, loves, hates and aspirations are? How and where do they live, what age and gender are they?

 

You need to build your customer persona or avatar because its only when you have absolute clarity on what this is, that you can create a brand that will truly resonate with your core target audience. You need to create a brand that meets their emotional needs because when people buy, be that a product or service or into your ideas, they buy with emotion – not rational. Think about it, you can’t build something of substance and compelling meaning if you don’t know or understand who you core customer is and what matters most to them.

 

  

  

2. Create the Right Visuals

While a brand isn’t just about visuals, your brand collateral or visual materials are far more important than most entrepreneurs often realise. Think about all the brands you know that are instantly recognizable: the BP flower, the Nike swoosh, the red Coca-Cola can, McDonald’s golden arches, and Apple’s…apple.

 

 Apple Logo

Image via www.apple.com 

 

For any entrepreneur or startup, a well-designed logo can become a powerful hook for your brand. It’s your brands identifier and like a tattoo, not something you easily or readily change once you start establishing it – so it needs to given some serious thought and investment from day one. In short it needs to be invested in properly as does all the rest of your brand collateral be that your website, brochures, PowerPoint or Keynote Presentations, packaging, direct mail, advertising, social media presence and videos etc. Your brand collateral is the tangible evidence of your brand and it must be designed to congruently reflect and tell your brand story, its values and personality properly. Every single touch point or piece relating to your brand must be consistent and properly designed. They are the tactile materials of your brand, an extension of your reputation and part of your branding strategy.

 

3. Dare to be Different

Every business has competition, and as an entrepreneur, your startup must stand out from not only the established companies in your industry, but also the thousands of other startups launched every year. This means that having absolute clarity on what your brand stands for, what your ‘big why is’, and how you’re going  to communicate your message and that distinction to your customers, is crucial to your brands’ potential success.

 

Distilling your brand values, what it stands for, its personality, the do’s and don’ts of how it will behave and the experience it will create for your customers through all the various ‘touch points’ of its interaction with them is critical to its potential success.

  

It can be challenging to properly and fully develop your ‘brands’ profile’, but once done becomes vital to the fundamental success of your business and part of your ongoing business strategy and plan. It’s integral to your business model.

  

As an example, many entrepreneurs around the world have built their success through a brand profile that has been strongly rooted in the provenance of their unique geographic location. The hospitality and restaurant industry is particularly crowded, but with enough differentiation from other restaurants in the same locality and an authentically lived and experienced brand story, you can attract a loyal customer following.

 

The world you create around your brand must be authentic with an almost theatrical piece of escapism, from a customer experience perspective. From the moment they stand outside your door, metaphorically speaking, to consider a purchase from you, your brand must offer them something they can’t get or experience anywhere else. It must richly express its own personality in a way that’s truly relevant and compelling to your target audience.

 

L'etoile Restaurant Usa 

 Image via www.letoile-restaurant.com

 

One restaurant owner in Madison, Wisconsin, USA, not only created success with her brand proposition, but also used it to elevate her status from entrepreneur to icon. Odessa Piper’s vision led her to launch a fine-dining establishment, L’Etoile, in the middle of a large farming community, which became successful due in large part to her brand vision and commitment to serving only the highest quality, locally sourced food. While sustainable dining may be nothing new today, it’s important to note that Piper opened L’Etoile in 1976, making her a pioneer of the farm-to-table movement and earning her the title of “First Lady of Cuisine” in Wisconsin.

 

4. Brand Promises: Make Them and Never Break Them

Every successful brand comes with an unshakeable promise—in fact, your brand promise is a core part of your brand. You don’t have a meaningful brand without a brand promise. Having a brand means that your customers can and should expect certain rewards whenever they interact with your company. Whether that promise is incredibly great quality ingredients “using only the really good stuff”, exceptional customer service that “goes beyond just the good to an exceptional and unforgettable experience” or “social distinction in a class of its own”, the key to sustaining your entrepreneurial business is to deliver on your brand promise – every time congruently and consistently without question. Your brand promise must be non-negotiable in its delivery and fulfillment all the time.

 

 Ruby Hammer Recommends Lip Gloss

 Image via www.rubyhammer.com and www.debenhams.com

  

International makeup artist and successful entrepreneur Ruby Hammer understands and capitalizes on her brand promise. Hammer co-created and launched the now-discontinued Ruby & Millie makeup brand in partnership with Boots—but she’s also responsible for the launch of other successful brands in the UK, including Aveda, L’Occitane and Tweezerman. She was awarded an MBE in 2007 by the Queen, and she’s recently launched a new line called Ruby Hammer Recommends.

 

In an interview with the Female Entrepreneur Association, Hammer states that promising and delivering quality is vital to the success of a brand. “The key to developing a successful brand is first, you’ve got to have something worthy of success,” she says. “You can’t do it with a bad product.”

 

Successful brands not only give customers the expectation of a unique perspective and a valued experience, they deliver on that promise to provide something undeniably and irresistibly desirable.

 

 

5. Branding: A Solid Foundation for Startups

The majority of new businesses may fail, but yours doesn’t have to be one of those sorry statistics. Strategic branding with a clear message that communicates the unique experience and attributes of your offering can help you win and sustain your business from day one. Commit to building a strong brand foundation to attract and underpin a loyal customer base. This will in turn inspire your brand advocates who in turn will help you spread your brand name and reach much further, and most importantly, help you build an ongoing profitable empire.

 

What do you think?

 

 • Does your business have a strong brand profile? If not, how can you create one?

 

• Do you understand what your target audience wants, and exactly how you can meet their desires?

 

• Does your logo really stand out in its uniqueness and distinction, capturing the essence of your brands’ mission, vision, and qualities of your business at a glance? If not, how can you improve it?

 

• How can you measure the effectiveness of your startup’s brand?

 

• What channels are you using to spread your brand, both visually and conversationally?

 

Drop us a line and share your thoughts in the comments, we’d love to hear from you!

 

 

Destination Branding: The Key Essentials for Success

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Travel is one of the largest industries in the world, with several trillion dollars spent globally by travellers each year, and within that mix, destination branding has become an increasingly important part of the marketing strategy for locations and the businesses that serve their area’s tourist demographic.

 

Destination branding, or place branding, can be complex. There are a multitude of brand strategies specifically related to the needs of products or services – but location branding is effectively a combination of all those offerings collectively. Building a destination brand strategy can focus on several top line or key targets, depending on the area and the offerings, which may include:

  • Understanding and highlighting the market perceptions of your destination
  • Capturing the unique essence of your destination and its special attributes
  • Building on media and cultural references that link to your destination

  

  

Creating and Amplifying Market Expectations

When it comes to destinations, many people already have a certain perception in mind. Everyone “knows” that if you’re visiting England, there’s a high likely hood it might rain and the royal family with its historic associations (pomp and circumstance, events or historic locations) might also feature on your radar, and in Egypt first time visitors might expect to be surrounded by pyramids and camels wherever they go! Of course those clichés and people’s perceptions aren’t always right!

 

The first step for any successful destination branding campaign is to understand how your destination is perceived and then either change tired expectations, or amplify more unique positive ones. The expectation of the experience is all in the brand promise of destination brand, and your branding needs to really ‘dial up’ the experience that you want your destination to reflect, and be associated with, in a way that’s truly unique and relevant to your primary target audience.

 

Fáilte Ireland, the National Tourism Development Authority of Ireland, does this very well through one of their more recent marketing campaigns of the Wild Atlantic Way where you can experience one of the wildest, most enchanting and culturally rich coastal touring routes in the world. Wherever you travel along the Wild Atlantic Way you’ll find magic, adventure, history and beauty in abundance. Divided into five main sections each part offers you memories that will last a lifetime. The brand story and video are very compelling – whether you’re native Irish born or an overseas visitor!

 

 

  

Another example of a successful image-changing campaign based around expectations comes from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA), the official destination marketing organization of Las Vegas. When tourism declined in “Sin City” following the 9-11 attacks and a number of unsuccessful attempts by some businesses to position themselves as “family friendly,” the LVCVA developed a massive campaign called “What Happens Here, Stays Here.”

 

 

 

The branding campaign, which included a dedicated website and several brief and humorous TV commercials, worked to recapture audience perception of Las Vegas as a place for adults to have slightly risky fun with no lasting consequences. Overall, the strategy was successful at driving tourist traffic and creating a strong brand for Las Vegas.

 

New Zealand has been highly successful at capitalizing on audience expectations that were created through the worldwide hit movie series The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, based on the classic fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien and filmed in New Zealand.

  

 

  

Air New Zealand cashed in on the Hobbit craze with its safety video and Tourism New Zealand embraced the idea that their country was now seen as “Middle-Earth,” and created an ad campaign around that perception to reinforce the brand.

  

    

Aside from the country itself, some New Zealand businesses have also capitalized on the worldwide fame resulting from the movies—such as The Green Dragon pub, the original film set for the Hobbit pub in The Lord of the Rings movies, which became an actual pub that’s open to the public.

  

Green Dragon Pub Hobbiton Nz 

 Image via www.dailymail.co.uk and London Media

  

  

Capitalizing on Personality and Character

One of the most effective strategies for destination branding is the ability to define, articulate, and convey the unique qualities of your particular destination. This strategy delves into the primal mindset of the traveller – people head out on holiday to get away from their everyday lives and experience something completely new.

 

Successful destination branding is all about that tangible experience at every touch point for your primary audience. This starts from the moment they start thinking about visiting your location, possibly prompted by your successful marketing campaign, to the moment they arrive. Every one of those ‘brand experiences’ must positively reinforce what your brand stands for and what makes it different to your competitors, reaffirming they made the right choice and your destination is even better than they expected! You want them to leave ‘wanting to come back’ and enthusiastically referring your destination to friends and family or better still extolling ‘your destinations virtues’ on social channels.

 

Australia is most assuredly a unique location, and Tourism Australia has found incredible success with their destination branding efforts by highlighting the characteristics of the land, the people, and the wildlife that can be found nowhere else. The organisation’s advertising campaign, “There’s Nothing Like Australia,” uses powerful visuals and dramatic music and narration to project the excitement of Australia directly to viewers.

 

  

In addition, Tourism Australia offers multimedia presentations through their Bringing the Brand to Life website section, which explore their branding concepts and strategies through video series and a book.

 

 

Hitching Your Wagon to the Stars

Media tie-ins are a powerful branding strategy, and there are plenty of resources for destination branding. One particularly strong example can be found with the UK and VisitBritain, a tourism organisation that is working to change the sometimes slightly grey or stuffy perceptions some of the world associates with the UK, and highlight the beauty and excitement to be found throughout this stunning and incredibly culturally rich country.

  

For example, VisitBritain created an international commercial that was shown in theatres around the world in conjunction with Skyfall, one of the more recent iconic James Bond movie series. The commercial shows the evolution of Bond through various actors who have played the British superspy, and brings it all together by urging audiences to visit Britain and “live like Bond.”

 

  

VisitBritan has also launched a series of celebrity commercials, in which globally recognized Brits explore what they love about the country. Dame Judy Dench performs a spot that revolves around Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, one of King Henry VIII many wives! Other commercials in this series star Rupert Grint of Harry Potter fame, prominent English model and actress Twiggy, and celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

 

 

  

 

  

Bringing Them to You

At its heart, destination branding follows the same principles as any other successful branding strategy, though typically on a much larger scale. One of the keys to successful destination branding is to be very clear on ‘what your brand stands for’, what makes your brand different to your competitors and to follow through on this with a very clear and compelling picture of how you’re going to fulfill that promise and meet those expectations. 

 

You’ve got to connect with your audience on their terms at a very personal level, maintain consistency through every aspect of your branding – from the distillation of your branding promise throughout, to your brand experience at every customer touch point and how everything ‘looks and feels’ from a brand style perspective. It must all look and feel like it all unmistakably comes from the same ‘stable’ and be irresistible to your primary target customer in a way that’s truly relevant to them.

 

What do you think?

 

• How does your potential audience currently perceive your destination?

 

• What are the perceptions you’re looking to create for your market?

 

• How can you develop an expectation of your unique experience, and follow through on your brand promise?

 

• What makes your destination unique and worth visiting and how can you leverage that more powerfully?

 

• Are there any global media tie-ins you can connect with your destination brand?

 

 

Private Label: Branding Tips for Own Label Brands

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Private labels used to be seen as the second rate offering in the retail world with a majority of consumers shying away from these alternatives to major brand products. They were viewed as knockoffs, cheap substitutes or poor quality ploys only purchased if you were trying to make your weekly shopping budget stretch a bit further. However the market view on private label brands has shifted considerably, especially with the recent economic downturn, and more consumers are willing to forgo the big brands in favour of lower-priced private labels—as long as the quality is maintained.

 

 

 

Time Magazine reported that since the latest recession, 93 percent of grocery store shoppers have changed their buying habits and now stock up on own label, also often referred to as private label store brands. Major chains stores have seen significant increases in consumer purchases of private label brands according to Bloomberg. In the USA, Safeway’s store brand has shown a 3-to-1 growth margin over major brands, and Kroger’s store brand sales accounts for 27 percent of total grocery sales.

 

 Kroger Logo

 

Image via www.kroger.com

 

Of course, in order to sell private label brands successfully, retailers must promote their own label brands to their customers and make them just as appealing compared to major brand names. It’s not enough to simply stock them high and sell them cheap, as in the early days of own label branding.

  

Brand positioning, the brand promise, brand values, the brand story and category segmentation together with consumer mindset and so forth, must all be very carefully developed and fully integrated into the brand strategy for private label items to be most successful, with the same level of intricacy as major brands, and perhaps more so, because they’re competing with the automatic perceived quality of big, familiar brands.

 

In fact it would be fair to say that private label branding has become extremely sophisticated in some of the retail groups with their ‘private label’ brands carrying significant weight and authority amongst their target audience consumers.

 

 

The Importance of Superb Private Label Packaging

As every marketer knows, presentation is key to selling products. In fact people’s willingness to buy, recommend, refer, work for and invest in an organization is driven 60% by their perceptions of the brand and only 40% by their perceptions of the product or services (source: Kasper Ulf Nielsen).

  

Perhaps one of the primary reasons for the underperforming sales of private label brands in the early days was the bland, generic packaging and questionable quality. Many retailers felt that a lower price would sell these own label brands so few bothered to give any significant thought to packaging. In fact private label products were noticeable, for the wrong reasons, with their generic and non-descriptive packaging that looked completely underwhelming next to the carefully designed major brands. Also plagiarism of major brands was a notorious problem in the early days until legal channels flexed their muscles accordingly.

 

Today’s successful private label brands incorporate appealing packaging design into their branding with a very clear focus on who their target audience is and how they’re going to grab attention and engage with them effectively, through their packaging design. Gone are the stark, single or two-color boxes that simply state the name of the product inside.

 

Waitrose Love Life Range

Image via www.waitrose.com

 

Many retailers are creating entire lines of own branded products carefully segmented and tied to their “brand name” such as UK grocery retailer Waitrose’s impressive portfolio of store brands including Seriously, Heston, Menu, Duchy Originals, Love Life, Good to Go and Essentials, each with its own specific brand strategy and distinct look or brand style.

  

Waitrose Seriously Range

Image via www.waitrose.com

 

These proprietary Waitrose brands are not always directly comparable to any other ‘brands’, be they national or private label, thereby making them unique all of which helps support growing consumer Waitrose brand loyalty and increased wallet share. Some don’t even mention the proprietary store owner, such as department store chain Target’s Simply Balanced health foods and beverages.

  

Duchy Originals From Waitrose 

 Image via www.waitrose.com

These private label brands and their relevant product lines feature distinctive packaging styles and well defined brand propositions with clear target audiences that are competing with major brands on the shelves. In fact, many are indistinguishable from standalone major brands as they’ve become ‘brands’ in their own rights, with the exception of the lower price segments.

 

The best private label brands are blurring the lines of ‘major brand’ or ‘own label’ brand distinction through ensuring superb product quality, creative brand packaging and compelling brand offerings all of which attracts consumers to choose the own brand product without compromises on quality or price. Many are now brands in their own rights without any of the old stigmas of the early days.

  

 

Embracing Environmental Causes and Sustainability

Sustainability and environmental consciousness in both food sourcing and packaging is another major brand selling point that some private label brands are adopting. For example Waitrose has made several changes to its private label products that reduce packaging waste significantly.

 

Recent changes to the packaging of a number of Waitrose’s private label brand lines is estimate to have saved the company almost 100 tonnes of packaging annually. Among other changes, the company’s line of prepared meals, Menu from Waitrose, now features a reduced-width package sleeve and a recyclable, lacquered aluminum tray that allows consumers to cook and serve the meal right from the packaging.

 

Waitrose Menu Beef Goulash 

 Image via www.waitrose.com

 

It’s effectively a ‘win win’ for all concerned, rubbish is kept out of the landfills, the packaging changes make life easier for the consumer – who now has less waste to deal with and less space used in their refridgerator. Waitrose has also raised consumer awareness of their rebranded, environmentally conscious private label packaging through a marketing campaign in which they pledge to reduce packaging by half, by 2016, all of which helps generate a very positive engagement with the Waitrose brand.

 

 

Encouraging Consumer Interaction

Just as with any form of branding, interaction and a personal touch can help to promote private label brands. Several companies have launched innovative campaigns that aim to introduce consumers to their brands, and give them the opportunity to experience high quality at a lower price—therefore earning repeat business and private label brand loyalty.

 

Co Op Tweet4a Table 

Image via www.co-operativefood.co.uk

 

As an example, business group The Co-operative in the UK recently launched a Twitter campaign called “Tweet for a table,” which offered a grand prize of a free, gastro-style meal for up to 4 people, served in one of the company’s pop-up restaurants. The winning meal was created entirely with private label products from The Co-op, introducing potential shoppers to a number of brand lines during a fun and memorable experience.

 

 Dm Foto Paradies

Image via www.produktdesigner.fotoparadies.de 

 

German drugstore DM uses an innovative way to personalize the shopping experience with private label brands. The company teamed with a product designer to create a website called “Foto Paradies” where customers can create their own custom labels for a range of private label items—choosing their own text, and even including photos.

 

 

Broadening Private Label Brand Distribution

Recognition and visibility is an essential component of branding, and some retailers are branching out by offering their private labels for distribution in other markets. Once again, Waitrose UK is demonstrating private label innovation in this area, offering several of its lines through international grocery corporation Dairy Farm’s retail locations in Singapore.

 

French mass retailer Groupe Casino is expanding its private label brands to the Asian market. The company works with Rustan in the Philippines, and A.S. Watson in Hong Kong, to distribute and sell several store brand lines through the retail chains Shopwise and Taste.

 

 

Expanding Your Private Label Brand Revenue

Consumers are no longer ignoring private label brands, they’re actually seeking them out, and often preferring them over major brands. In fact, shoppers are willing to pay more for store brands than they had previously. The Wall Street Journal (via Time Magazine) reported that average prices for private label brands have increased by 12 percent, compared to an 8 percent increase for major brands in the same time period—yet store brands still cost an average of 29 percent less than major national brands. If you’re a independant brand owner maybe supplying ‘private label’ along side your ‘branded’ product could also be a significant part of your growth strategy.

 

Its the combination of erasing the perceived quality gaps between private and major brands together with solid brand strategies underpinning ‘eye popping’ great packaging design, excellent customer experiences and consistently engaging customer campaigns, alongside maybe broadening distribution through strategic partnerships, that can collectively help increase sales of own brand for more profitable long term growth and increased customer loyalty.

 

What do you think?

  

• Is your private label brand packaging comparable in quality to major brands? Is it time for a redesign?

 

• What kind of consumer experience are you offering for your private label brand?

 

• Are your private label brands developed with the capability of range extensions, or are they simply single-shot offerings?

 

• Are there any markets you could investigate to broaden your private brand distribution?

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you!

 

 

FMCG Branding: Going for Gold with Fast Moving Consumer Goods

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The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector is one of the most volatile and toughest categories in which to succeed and sometimes considered the birthplace of modern branding. The competition has always been fierce and the fight for wallet share never more challenging then it is now.

 

Today’s FMCG industry is a multi-billion dollar sector that’s typically dominated by well-established household brands around the globe, from Coca-Cola to Kraft to Henkel. Breaking into that market as a new brand can be a serious challenge, particularly when you’re up against global powerhouses that have ruled their respective niches for decades with deep pockets. Having said that though, smaller brands have more opportunities to make their impact with limited resources than they ever had before, which helps level the playing field a little!

 

 Kraft Logo

Image via www.kraftfoodsgroup.com

 

The question is how do you move from a ‘C’ or ‘D’ tier, largely unknown, consumer product to become a recognized household brand? Success in the FMCG sector is no longer epitomized by just ‘nice’ logos and good packaging alone—modern consumers expect far more.

 

The most successful brands are consistently creating an authentic customer experience around their consumable products, one that is worthwhile and personally engaging. These brands give their core target audience a more compelling reason to buy and create brand perceptions through their brands personality, promise, values, story and total brand world per se, which their customers find irresistible.

 

The following is an insight into what some of the most successful FMCG companies are doing to maintain consistently captivating brands. What keeps them front of mind in terms of customer preferences, and how you can incorporate these strategies into your own brand building efforts.

 

 

Aligning With And Focusing on Your Core Target Audience

While it may seem counterintuitive, the key to becoming a household brand is not to try appealing to a broader audience—it is to be desirable to the right core target audience. You need to know your market, your competitors, and your sector’s environment intimately, so you can focus on developing your branding strategy specifically tailored towards your primary customers – those who are most likely to buy fully into your brand and what it stands for.

 

Understanding not only what your ideal customers wants, but also how your offering can enhance their lives is hugely important. It’s only when you truly understand their needs, wants, loves, hates and aspirations that you can really craft a concise and focused brand message that cuts through the noise.

 

Consumers are bombarded with thousands of messages from multiple channels 24/7. Your challenge is to deliver the right message, on target to catch their much sought after attention, at the right time and then, most importantly, to hold their attention. You need to develop a customer avatar which you then use to underpin your brand proposition and profile.

 

 Johnsons Baby Logo

Image via www.johnsonsbaby.com

  

Your brand should clearly indicate why and how you’ll meet your customers needs and that you understand what really matters to them. If yours is a family orientated brand then broadly speaking it might be important to communicate reliability, safety, and trust. However you need to dig deeper beyond just the general to the specific and identify more detailed characteristics to bring your brand alive in a way that’s meaningful, distinctive and different to your audience.

 

Millennials might enjoy quirky humor that helps mark your offerings as innovative but you still need to add something more unique to your brand story to help it standout and stick. Overall luxury brands focus on quality and prestige but they still need to develop other attributes, messages and stories that make their brand experience exclusive to them alone.

 

 

Developing Brand Loyalty

Returning customers are the heart of every successful company—and this is especially true in the FMCG sector where products are typically consumed quickly and frequently. Brand loyalty is critical to your long term success and you need to develop a brand strategy that helps ensure your customers become tunnel visioned with regard to your brand when they go shopping.

 

You want them to become blinkered to see only your brand offering so they buy it automatically because they aren’t even open to considering others. When you continue to meet their needs your loyal customers will not only continue to purchase your brand, they’ll become brand advocates encouraging family and friends to switch to your brand too.

 

How do you create brand loyalty? Many businesses make the mistake of trying to compete on price alone where only those with the deepest pockets can win. Customers aren’t necessarily looking for just the cheapest product. Cheap rarely engenders ongoing brand loyalty. Customers typically look for the right blend of quality and value, and many are willing to pay more for a brand they can trust and meets their needs on multiple other levels too. It’s also important to note that value doesn’t mean just price, it’s the complete mix of what the brand has to offer – your brand promise, brand values, brand culture, corporate social responsibility, customer experience, your way of doing things in your brand world etc. that collectively all add up to enhance perceived brand value.

 

 

One strong example of this is Johnson & Johnson, the global leader in baby care products. Johnson’s Baby has been helping parents and doctors give babies a healthy, happy start in life for more than 100 years – what a brand legacy. This company understands what its primary customers want – to give their babies a healthy, happy start in life because ‘every moment with your little one is precious’. 

 

 

 

Saving money might feature somewhere in the mix with parents but babies health and happiness is the primary focus, and not at the expense of their child’s care. They are looking for products with safe, gentle ingredients, backed by a company that genuinely cares about the well-being of babies. Everything Johnson & Johnson does is done to reinforce that message, be it through the products themselves, its CSR strategy or advocacy in baby skin care or baby sleeping advice etc. This is an ethical, quality-focused ‘caring’ brand, successfully engaging its audience by pulling at the heart strings through all its communications strategies – which all but the cynical and hard nosed would find hard to resist. 

 

  

Telling Your Brand Story in a Way That’s Relevant

Storytelling is more than just a buzzword. Creating authenticity with an emotional connection and an element of curiosity is very important to help distinguish your brand from the barrage of the external market. When you communicate your own brand journey, your growth and your message to potential customers, you’re able to connect with them on a more meaningful level.

 

 

 

The Askinosie chocolate brand story shows how its really important and worked for this relatively new confectionary company. Their target market consists of environmentally aware customers who typically shop in organic health food stores. Askinosie sets their brand apart through their packaging and their brand story which really resonates with their customers. Each of their chocolate bar wrappers relates personal stories about the cocoa farmers that supply the company with raw ingredients. The focus is on their relationship with Askinosie as business partners who are well compensated with prices that are higher than Fair Trade.

  

 Askinosie Chocolate Packaging

Image via www.askinosie.com

   

Great brand stories can help you elevate your products into the top tier and are a critical part of the successful brand mix and keep your customers coming back for more. A note of warning though – the brand values from your story and the promise it articulates must be consistently lived and demonstrated throughout the business at every level of interaction internally and externally every day.

 

Changing With The Times

The market is constantly evolving, and your brand must be flexible enough to keep up with the changing times. Successful FMCG brands understand how to recognize trends and implement shifts in strategy that will help them continue to stay relevant and meet market requirements over the years and decades.

 

 Starbucks Logo

Image via www.starbucks.com 

Starbucks in spite of all its ups and downs has largely maintained a strong grasp of its market combined with a willingness to change, and has managed to remain one of the most recognized global brands. The Seattle-based company began as a local retail coffee store, and grew into a worldwide chain that caters to customers looking for an upscale coffee experience. By combining quality coffee with a diverse range of related products, a pleasant relaxing environment in which to enjoy their coffee and engaging with their customers more personally—and treating their employees better than other coffee chains—Starbucks has dominated its niche. 

 

 

  

However, there is a fine line between staying relevant and incorporating new trends versus losing sight of what your brand really stands for by inadvertently ‘muddying the waters’ so to speak with an excessive plethora of confusing brand messages. You must always remain true to the core of what you stand for, whether yours is a well established brand or more recent launch to market.

 

Hershey Logo 

Image via www.hersheys.com

 

Hershey’s has seen a decline in recent times compounded by overenthusiastic trend-chasing activities. In recent years, the company’s brand promise of simple, tasty chocolate has been lagging behind in their efforts to anticipate changing tastes. Extreme diversification has resulted in a confusing tangle of confectionery varieties: milk, dark, and white chocolate with a variety of fillings, coatings and new flavours—all of which is somewhat confusing in its marketing to customers who just want an original Hershey bar.

  

 

Developing Your Brand Message

Strong branding is a vital factor for long term success in the ultra-competitive FMCG industry. In order to create a strong and compelling brand message, you need to fully understand your target customers, including:

  • Who they are: Demographics, motivations, trends, and demands
  • Why they buy: Specific needs and wants (rational and emotional)
  • What they buy: The look and feel of the products they prefer
  • Where / how they buy: Channel preferences, point of sale activities
  • How they consume: Key usage situations for your products

 

Pinpoint your target audience, and develop your brand strategy to focus on the things that matter most to them. Transform your offerings into an experience that will keep your customers returning, and create brand ambassadors who will recommend you to like-minded customers. Focus on what helps elevate and grow your brand and your customer base will expand with you.

 

What do you think?

 • How does your FMCG brand differentiate from your competitors?

 

• What message are you conveying with your brand? What should you convey?

 

• How can you tell the story of your brand more effectively?

 

• What steps are you taking to create brand loyalty?

 

• Has your brand evolved to stay relevant with the changing market—without losing sight of your core?

Brand Promises: Are You Consistently Delivering Yours?

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A brand promise is what your company or brand commits to delivering for everyone who interacts with you. Your brand promise is a pledge, an assurance, or a guarantee that identifies what your customers can expect each and every time they connect with your company—whether it’s through your people, your marketing materials, or your products or services.

 

What makes a brand promise compelling? An effective brand promise must create distinction for your company’s offerings, and connect your purpose, positioning, and strategy. It must describe what customers can expect to receive beyond your product or service. It is more than a purchase—it is an experience, engaging your customers emotionally and allowing you to differentiate from your competitors. When working with our clients to help them develop their brand promise successfully we use our ‘Personality Profile Performer System™’.

 

Your brand promise presents a compelling reason for customers to buy from you, to return for repeat business—and most importantly, to become brand ambassadors, spreading the word about your company organically and enthusiastically. 

 

 Virgin Logo 600px

Image via www.virgin.com

  

 

What Your Brand Promise Should (and Should Not) Be

Organizations often make the mistake of conflating brand promise with marketing. At one end, they may trot out clinically dry descriptions of products or services, on the premise that a brand “speaks for itself.” And on the other, they might make grand and ultimately meaningless statements, replete with abused superlatives such as “best practice”, “world class”, and “market leader.”

 

However, what truly works as a brand promise is not something in the middle, but rather a presentation that takes an entirely different approach to your offerings. A strong brand promise describes how people should feel when they interact with your brand, how your company delivers its products or services, and what sort of character your company embodies.

 Nfl Logo 600px 

Image via www.nfl.com

 

To illustrate this idea in action, here are some powerful brand promises from highly successful brands:

  • The NFL: ‘To be the premier sports and entertainment brand that brings people together, connecting them socially and emotionally like no other’

 

  • Virgin: ‘To be the consumer champion while being genuine, fun, contemporary and different in everything we do at a reasonable price’

 

  • Apple: ‘To make insanely great, imaginative, cool, easy-to-use, cutting edge products that enrich peoples lives’

 

  • Coca-Cola: ‘To inspire moments of optimism and happiness’

   

 

 

  

Typically, a strong brand promise will achieve three key objectives:

  • It must convey a compelling benefit and emotionally resonate
  • It must be authentic and credible
  • The promise must be kept…every time

 

Any brand can create a compelling brand promise. However, the best and most successful brands will also demonstrate a proven track record of delivering on those promises. A powerful brand does not simply “talk the talk” — it “walks the walk,” consistently and reliably.

 

 

The Brand Promise At Work

McDonalds is the brand heard ’round the world. With over 33,000 restaurants in 119 countries, the company has to be doing something right—and the core of their success is their brand promise. They are the first job for many, involved with local communities and always seeking new ways to improve what they do best. When customers see the Golden Arches, they know what they can expect: simple, easy enjoyment with great service, cleanliness and value.

 

This is the brand promise McDonalds stands behind. Their more recent slogan, “I’m lovin’ it,” is a simple phrase in itself, one that can be translated easily within every international market the company serves. The McDonalds brand promise is effective, because the company consistently delivers uncomplicated fun with value and service to customer after customer.

 

Mcdonalds Im Lovin It 600px

Image via www.mcdonalds.com 

 

Effective brand promises aren’t limited to the inexpensive and widely available, either. Successful luxury brands are also making a promise—that customers are paying a higher price, and in return receiving exceptional quality, value, and prestige.

 

European hotelier Kempinski has a stated purpose of “serving guests who expect excellence and value individuality.” As Europe’s oldest luxury hotel group and a five star prestigious brand, Kempinski promises more than lodgings—the company delivers an unforgettable experience for each and every customer by providing “luxurious hospitality in the grand European style.” They believe life should be lived with style!

 

  

 

Start Where You Want To End Up, and Watch Your Brand Take Off

If your brand is already successful, chances are you’re already clear on what you promise your customers—and you’ve managed to consistently keep your brand promise.

On the other hand, if…

…then its time to conduct a brand audit, do a little research, and or re-evaluate your branding strategy.

 

It’s essential to define exactly what your brand promises to your customers. This process begins with research into your market, your target audience, competitors, and business environment. What do your customers really want? How are they getting it now—and how can your offering add even more value to those desires?

 

Your brand promise should deliver something your target audience really wants, but can’t get elsewhere. Remember, you’re creating an experience for your customers. When you define a unique brand promise first, and then consistently deliver, you’re making it easier for your business to keep that promise and realize branding success.

 

Earning Your Brand Promise

Once you’ve defined your brand promise, you need to focus on ensuring that you’re delivering on that promise—every time. Every aspect of your business should reflect what you stand for in your brand, from marketing to employee-customer interaction.

 

A brand that keeps its promises is virtually unbreakable. This is what kept Microsoft from knocking Google off the search engine throne with its “Bing It On” campaign, which attempted to convince consumers that real people choose Bing’s search results over Google.

 

 

 

The campaign failed to make a dent in the search engine giant’s market share—because Google’s brand promise is too strong. Their search engine consistently delivers what people want.

 

 

You Don’t Have to be Huge

Many smaller businesses make the mistake of thinking that only large corporations have the resources to consistently keep brand promises. The truth is, great branding is powerful enough to carry any business model successfully—when it’s done right.

 

Take, for example, The Ginger Pig. This London artisan butchery uses the brand promise of quality meats that taste great due to the care and effort they put forth in raising farm animals. The company emphasizes this brand promise through The Ginger Pig website, which opens with a brief and intriguing story about how they came to be—and their philosophy that well looked-after livestock simply tastes better.

 

Ginger Pig 600px 

Image via www.thegingerpig.co.uk

 

Is your company still looking for that perfect branding strategy? Prepare for success by taking the time to really think about your brand promise—and to ensure that you can, and do, deliver. Whether you’re a brand new start-up, a local supplier, or a national or global business, decide what will make your brand distinctive and memorable—something that’s worth talking about—and focus on delivering every time.

 

When you deliver on your brand promise, you build customer trust. This translates into brand loyalty that markets itself. Word-of-mouth, particularly through social media, will carry your brand promise to an ever-widening audience. As new customers realize they’re actually getting what they were promised, you’ll find more brand ambassadors out there recommending your offerings, all of which will help increase your profitability.

 

The earlier you establish and maintain your brand promise,

the more successful your branding will be.

  

What do you think?

How is your brand walking the talk?

Can a brand exist without brand promise?

Is your brand promising something you can’t deliver?

How can you communicate your brand promise to your customers?

 

Share your thoughts in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you.

 

Top 14 Branding Trends for 2014

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The concept of branding has come a long way—from a near-mythical corporate buzzword attainable only through massive infusions of marketing euros, to a vital and achievable goal for any company, big or small. And like all things branding and marketing related, the methods that work for branding continue to rapidly change and evolve with the times.

 

As we rapidly advance into 2014, branding trends reflect a tighter, more focused approach that increases effectiveness and return on investment by reaching precisely targeted audiences. Effective branding strategies are moving toward more and improved visuals, meaningful company brand visions, and an outreach that brings customers more personalized experiences.

 

Read on to find out more about some of the critical branding trends for businesses seeking a successful return on investment in 2014.

  

Top 14 Branding Trends for 2014

  

1. Aesthetically Stunning & Functionally Performing Websites 

Your website is the hub of your online brand. It’s also competing with a landslide of other websites for the attention of your target customers—so if you’re not standing out visually, you’re losing out monetarily.

 

How long has it been since you last audited and redesigned your website? Even over the past year, web design trends have experienced major shifts, with the most successful businesses moving away from the flashy and complex towards the simple elegance of less cluttered designs and beautiful typography. Navigation is simplified too, with a rapidly growing, dominant preference to access websites on mobile devices which means your online presence has to be designed to meet that customer need.

 

Make 2014 your year to invest in a stunning website in both aesthetic, branding and functional terms. Take the time to choose a talented branding partner, designer and developer who can create visual marketing magic for your business.

 

2. Choosing National Over Global

Think about it: Does your company really have the resources to market your brand to the entire world? Unless you’re bringing in more than $5 / €4 billion annually, the answer is probably not. Trying to build a global brand out of the starting blocks is not necessarily the best use of your time and resources.

 

Depending on your product offering or service type it’s sometimes far easier and more affordable to grow your business locally or even nationally initially. Once you’re known and respected in your local or national geographic region you can leverage off that success to expand further afield. The loyal customers you’ve gained will also spread your brand through referral, social media and global connectivity too.

 

3. Social Media: Less is More

Speaking of social, the idea that your business needs to be active on every existing social media network, from AgentB to Zebo (yes, those really are social networks), is finally losing ground. The fact is, spreading your social marketing efforts across multiple networks only succeeds in making them all weak and ineffective.

 

It’s far better for your branding to choose one, or two at the most, where you can create the best engagement with your target audiences. If you’re B2B, LinkedIn is likely to be your top choice. Visually oriented businesses can find success on image or video-centric social sites like Pinterest, Vine, and Instagram. In a general sense, Facebook and possibly Google+ make fine focal points for most types of companies.

 

Social Media 

4. Being Authentic

Brands are at their core the relationships between companies and customers, the glue that joins the two. And just like any relationship, it’s less about what you say—and more about what you do. Today, successful branding involves putting your proverbial money where your mouth is, and demonstrating that your business truly stands for the brand you’re selling.

 

This means you need to make sure that everyone on your team understands, authentically lives and promotes your brand. Every customer experience with your company should reflect your values and beliefs, so you’re consistently living what you stand for—not just telling people about it.

  

Toms Logo

Image via www.toms.co.uk

 

5. Initiatives Over Monuments

Corporate social responsibility and sponsorship is an important facet of branding. In the modern market, its statistically proven that customers place a much higher value on brands that give something back to the community compared to those that don’t e.g. sponsoring a public service carries much more substance than just hanging a brand name in lights above venues and stadiums.

 

One good example is the New York City bike program sponsored by Citibank. This is effective branding, because the program offers a healthy, environmentally friendly alternative to the subways and taxis most city residents rely on.

 

 Citibike

Image via www.citibikenyc.com

 

6. Environmental Consciousness in Packaging

More businesses are making a branding impact by reducing excess packaging, using sustainable material resources and offering double-duty products, with packaging that can be reused instead of thrown out. This concept appeals to consumers who are conscious of environmental impact—and their budgets. For example, a Dutch light bulb company has come out with packaging that becomes a decorative lampshade and Puma’s reusable packaging is a key part of its brand message.

 

Puma Clever Little Bag 

 Images via www.puma.com

 

Clever Little Bag 2

  

7. Category: The New King in Town

Cross-category appeal has been a popular branding strategy for years, due to the perception that the more target markets you can appeal to, the more money you’ll make. But with more consumer choices than ever, buyer demand is becoming more specific.

This is good news for brand marketers, who can now find success by targeting a narrowed set of category values—which in turn boosts branding effectiveness.

 

8. Content Has Not Been Dethroned

Marketing experts have always trumpeted “content is king,” and with good reason. Great content is still a cornerstone of effective branding—businesses simply need to understand how to leverage it.

 

Today’s content marketing is less about keywords, and more about contextual relevance. Striking a balance between paid, owned, and earned media with engaging and relevant content can produce branding goldmines for any company.

 

9. Luxury Branding Makes a Comeback

On the heels of the economic downturn reversal, more consumers are looking for luxury. High-end brands are now blurring gender lines and marketing to broader categories of consumers—such as Johnnie Walker, a traditionally masculine brand that is building a gender-neutral and contemporary tone.

In the luxury market, boomer women are the dominant target, with millennials expected to rise to the top by 2016.

 

 Johnnie Walker Where Flavour Is King 600px

Image via www.johnniewalker.com

 

10. Differentiating Through Emotion

More consumers are reacting to how a particular brand makes them feel, and marketers are responding with emotionally driven campaigns that help them differentiate from the competition. Budweiser’s heartstring-tugging Super Bowl commercial this year is a great example of the emotional brand at work.

  

 

  

11. “Made for you” for Everyone

There’s no shortage of consumer information out there. Companies that capitalize on the massive streams of data, and find ways to personalize the customer experience, will come out ahead in the branding jungle. Personal outreach and detailed customization will delight your audience and elevate your brand.

 

12. Conquering Digital Diversification

With so many digital channels available, brands can find themselves being talked about in online spaces they’ve never heard of before. It’s essential to shift the focus from whether you should have that presence to what you should do with it.

 

Digital and social monitoring will help you keep up with online brand management, and push differentiation and emotional engagement through multiple channels.

 

13. Viral Visuals

Consumers are becoming much more visually literate. Arresting images, engaging video, and informative infographics are far more likely to go viral than long, tedious text-based pieces. Brand marketers looking for increased exposure should look toward image-sharing initiatives with the potential to spread quickly across social media.

  

  

14. Sales Funnels Become Connect-The-Dot Paths

The purchase funnel, or sales funnel, is a long-standing marketing staple that many brands concentrate on. However, with increased category specificity and narrowed targets, the mouth of the fabled sales funnel isn’t as wide as it once was.

 

Effective brands will look for and focus on path-to-purchase channels, and often find multiple paths that lead to the same purchase. Rather than opening up the funnel and hoping consumers fall in, the savvy brand marketer will find concentrations of potential customers, start building the relationship as early as possible and lead them from point to point until they reach the sale.

 

Branding in 2014 is an exciting field of opportunity for businesses, regardless of company size or revenue. With the right focus, any business can build a stronger brand through targeted outreach and authentic representation.

Here’s to building a strong, successful brand in 2014!

 

• Have you audited your brand values, what your brand stands for and what makes it different to your competitors – to see if they are still compelling and resonating with your ideal customer?

 

• Are you living your brand authentically throughout your business top down and bottom up? What can you do in 2014 to ensure you give your customers and clients an incomparable and unmistakable, consistently superb brand experience.

 

• Does your brand packaging design grab attention in a couple of seconds, sell your message succinctly and effectively while also delivering on sustainability?