Packaging Design: How It Can Make or Break Your Brand

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In a fast-paced and highly competitive world, packaging design has become one of the most crucial elements for communicating your brand and standing out from the competition. Your brand might be the best in its category, but without packaging that grabs your target audience, customers won’t investigate your product to find out more or see what’s inside. In fact research shows that you have less than 9 seconds to engage your customer and close the sale!

 

  

 

 

What Are The Characteristics of Highly Effective Brand Packaging?

What goes into a fantastic package design? The best packaging engages customers at a multi-sensory level that includes a visual and tactile experience of your brand which communicates your brand promise and evokes a memorable, emotional response.

 

Successful packaging is a combination of powerful shelf impact or standout and a strong visual aesthetic, coupled with other triggers such as additional sensory memorability through its feel, sound, or sometimes smell and taste too.

 

Effective packaging design should deliver the following:

  • An immediate sense of your brand story, promise and core values i.e. ‘What your brand stands for?’ also known as its Brand DNA, Brand Essence or Genetic Code etc.
  • Trigger a positive emotional response through design simplicity, elegance, a sense of fun, mischief, healthiness, honest natural nourishment or whatever sensory experience is appropriate to your brand and what it represents
  • Have a clear, strong call to action with a really significant and compelling point of difference to every other competitor in its category i.e. an incomparable selling proposition backed up with reasons to believe this proposition (note: this must be authentic and honest)
  • Reflect your brand’s primary characterizations and personality whether your products offer luxury, security, environmental awareness, corporate social responsibility, reliability, tradition, or pure unadulterated pleasure etc.
  • Use impactful brand visuals and verbal differentiation that separates your products from competitors on retail shelves or displays, through irresistibly strong brand design that hooks your core target audience immediately

 

  

Elements to Consider in Winning Package Design

Successful branding through packaging design requires more than just reproducing your brand collateral on the container your products come in. Multiple factors must be considered to create a coherent and unified design that conveys your brand message, separates you from the competition, and makes your brand instantly recognizable. Some of these factors include the following:

  

Signature Colours:

Your brands colours should be integrated with your package design in order to maintain brand continuity. Successful FMCG brands make use of carefully chosen colour palettes and colour coding to differentiate their product lines and expedite choice for customers who are often brand or category conditioned by colour application. Colour psychology has a huge bearing on attracting customer attention, pick up and conversion, particularly in the visually chaotic environment of retail. 

  

Logo:

As an iconic representation of your brand, your logo should feature prominently in your packaging design to preserve and promote your brand identity and ensure customer recognition and trust transfer. Conversely if you brand is an iconic one like McDonalds, Marmite or Heinz than your logo on pack may be a less significant requirement because the rest of your brand messaging is so powerful and highly recognizable as an embodiment of the brand the logo is no longer always necessary.

  

 Debranded Packaging 570px

 

Image via www.selfridges.com  

  

Tag Line:

You may have a single strong tag line e.g. Uncle Ben’s Rice – Never Sticks, or multiple tag lines to represent different product lines. Strategic integration of your tag line on your brand packaging can help reinforce your brand messaging and amplify your brand promise.

  

Shape:

The shape of your packaging is a vital consideration. Distinctive or iconic packaging shape designs, such as Coca-Cola’s contoured bottle or Johnny Cupcake’s paint can T-shirt containers, can be powerfully effective as brand assets with instant recognition value which over rides everything else. In fact structural shapes when done well can become valuable intellectual property assets in themselves.

 

Other elements that may be considered in your package design include the materials used, the way the package is opened, the unique rituals around its use or consumption with text to support this message, the on pack messaging and text, and any visual or tactile aspect that will affect a customer’s experience with your product. Each of your package elements should work together to create a cohesive and fully engaging branded experience.

 

The following are some examples of brands that got their packaging right—and one that failed to communicate its brand promise, with damaging results.

 

 

Vivid Water: Differentiation Through Environmental Awareness

Environmental responsibility is a strong selling point for many modern customers. Few products are more environmental than water – a product that generally comes in non-eco-friendly and relatively unhealthy plastic bottles. In 2013, Vivid Water introduced Water In A Box, the first Tetra Pak carton-packaged water product in the UK.

 

 Vivid Water In A Box 600px

 Image via www.waterinabox.co.uk

 

 

Every part of the package design for Water In A Box reinforces the simplicity, purity, and responsibility of the brand, from the clean and uncluttered visual design to the instantly recognized water drop icon. The packaging is made with renewable, responsibly sourced paperboard, and unlike plastic competitors, contains no PET.

 

Water In A Box packaging clearly conveys a brand promise of fresh, pure water that considers environmental impact and promotes health and vitality.

 

 

Toscatti: Simplicity and At-a-Glance Convenience

Toscatti offers premium kitchenware with a very distinctive design and unlike most reusable plastic storage containers, Toscatti is made with food-grade stainless steel. The brand is committed to minimizing its planetary footprint while providing the highest quality food-grade stainless steel containers – independently certified to be free of BPA, PVC, phthalates and lead. The durability, high quality, easy to clean, and aesthetically appealing qualities of this premium brand are reflected in its unique packaging system – which helps reinforce and underpin the brands’ promise.

 

 Toscatti Product Range 600px

 Image via www.toscatti.com 

 

The packaging for this kitchenware product line uses a Pantone™ color scheme, with bright, bold colors to categorize different sizes and capacities of the containers. The minimalist packaging – an easy-to-remove paperboard sleeve, are made memorable with colorful geometric shapes and a rounded typography that appears friendly and approachable.

 

Toscatti Extra Large Container 575 600px 

  Image via www.toscatti.com 

 

This packaging, combined with the unique qualities of the product itself, makes Toscatti stand out on shelves, creating instant recognition and very strong visual impact.

 

 

 

Festina: The Proof is in the Packaging

Packaging can make a bold statement about your brand without saying a word. Such is the case with Festina diving watches. This German company’s brand promise is quality and performance – and their highly unique packaging conveys this promise instantly. Festina diving watches are displayed at the point of sale inside clear bags filled with distilled water, unarguably proving that the watches are indeed waterproof.

 

 Festina Engineered For Water 600px

  Image via www.festina.com

 

The packaging carries only the Festina name and logo, and the brand’s clearly demonstrated promise in a succinct tag line: “engineered for water.” This innovative packaging makes a powerful statement about the quality of the Festina brand while winning high recognition value coupled with instant customer loyalty.

 

 

 

 

  

Tropicana: Fixing What Isn’t Broken

When considering a new package design, rebranding strategy or package redesign, your business can’t afford to ignore your existing brand equity. This was a lesson Tropicana learned the hard way, when a packaging redesign for its Tropicana Pure Premium orange juice line resulted in a 20 percent decline in sales over less than two months, dropping roughly $33 million and sending the company rushing to restore the previous packaging.

 

 Tropicana Before Rebrand Fail

 Image via www.tropicana.com

  

The Tropicana carton design, with its vibrant straw-sporting orange, had become synonymous with the brand for customers. The redesign replaced this iconic image with a juice glass featuring weaker colouring, shrank the bold stripe at the top identifying the juice type to a thin strip, and replaced the conversational product titles No Pulp, Some Pulp, and Lots of Pulp with the starker and less interesting Pulp Free, Low Pulp, and High Pulp.

 

Tropicana Rebrand Fail Reject

 Image via www.tropicana.com

  

The rebranding was an effort to create a more refined contemporary image for the Tropicana brand, but customers clearly demonstrated they weren’t interested in sophisticated orange juice – and further, the complete and abrupt change suggested the contents of the packaging might have changed.

 

  

  

 

Whenever we start work on a new brand packaging design project, or even revitalizing an established brand for our clients, all the key ingredients discussed and various methodologies mentioned are automatically integrated into our brand packaging design process everytime –  to ensure we achieve the best results for our clients.

Effective package design that reflects your brand profile,  brand story and conveys your brand promise collectively helps strengthen your brand, increases customer loyalty, and ultimately supports growing your bottom line.

It’s vitally important that you place as much emphasis and care on your packaging design as you do on your products themselves, to ensure a consistent and memorable brand experience that drives repeat purchase, referability and increased profitability.

 

What do you think?

• Does your current product packaging design accurately reflect your brands’ promise?

  

• How can you reflect the best qualities of your product through your packaging design?

  

• What innovations or brand differentiation does your product packaging convey?

 

• Is your packaging congruent with your overall brand collateral? 

  

• How recognizable are your packaging designs? Do they strongly stand out on shelf from the competition?

 

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

Brand Audit: Tips for Determining Your Brand’s Health – Can It Be Improved?

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Have your sales hit a slump? Are hot new brands drawing your customers away? If your brand seems to have lost its shine, it may be time for a brand audit or brand health check.

  

Brand audits are effectively a health check for your brand. These comprehensive, honest evaluations look at the overall effectiveness of a brand and its current position in the market compared with the competition, as well as pinpointing inconsistencies and weakness, and identifying potential areas for improvement.

  

With a thorough and properly executed brand audit you can halt brand deterioration and refresh or revitalize your brand, giving it a new lease of life and effectively stopping the rot to grow your bottom line.

 

 

When Should You Perform a Brand Audit?

While a brand audit can provide you with valuable insight into your brand’s performance at any point, there are certain times when it makes more sense to have a brand audit done. One is at the peak of your brand’s evolution.

  

Brands typically follow a lifecycle that’s similar to most living things: they begin new and full of potential, enter a growth phase, and eventually reach maturity. At this point, you may begin to see market slippage as your brand loses relevance, or your customers move on to newer brands. Regular brand audits that are timed against your brand’s lifecycle can actually help you identify the signs that your brand is about to plateau, allowing you to refresh or revitalize before you begin to lose sales.

 

Another common time when a brand audit not only makes sense, but can actually be pivotal to success, is prior to a planned rebranding campaign. There are a number of reasons your organisation may be undergoing a rebrand, and a thorough brand audit is a crucial part of any effective rebranding strategy.

 

Brand Audit Team

   

Why Do You Need a Brand Audit?

Having a brand audit done at the peak of your brand lifecycle and prior to a rebrand are proactive strategies for preserving and developing your brand. There are also several circumstances that can merit a reactive brand audit—one intended to diagnose issues and problem areas, and turn around a flagging brand.

 

Brand audits can help you:

  • Determine the actual position of your brand in the marketplace, and develop effective strategies to elevate your market position

 

  • Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your brand, so you can address weak points and capitalize on your strengths for more effective brand differentiation

 

  • Discover the actual expectations of your target markets and align your brand more thoroughly with its intended audience

 

  • Gain a clear perspective on market perceptions of your brand, and make any necessary adjustments to strengthen your brand platform and customer experience

 

  • Address internal issues and repair your brand positioning within the company, in order to strengthen employee morale, productivity, and empowerment

 

A strong and consistent brand makes more money, both through increased sales and decreased market spend as the power of your brand drives more word of mouth, greater customer engagement, and increased brand loyalty.

  

Comprehensive brand audits allow you to strengthen your brand and make it the best it can be, illuminating new growth opportunities and new ways to create resonance with your audiences.

 

 

What Does A Brand Audit Involve?

There are several factors that define the depth and extent of an effective brand audit. These include the size of both the brand and the organisation itself, the power of the brand relative to the industry and market, the required timescale to complete the brand audit, and the available budget.

 

In any event, the first step to a brand audit is to clearly define the objectives of the audit. You may simply want to perform a health check for your brand and gain an accurate measure of your market standing, or you may be in the early stages of a rebrand and require an extensive brand audit. The brand audit’s objectives must be absolutely clear from the start in order to develop an effective strategy for analysis and measured against the desired deliverables.

 

The actual elements of a brand audit vary according to the objectives and the factors mentioned above. These elements may include:

  • Internal elements: Positioning, brand values, culture, voice, USP, product or service positioning etc.

 

  • External elements: Logo and other branded design elements, all brand collateral, website, packaging, social media, SEO, advertising and public relations, content marketing, sponsorships and CSR, videos, testimonials, customer experience etc.

  

  • System elements: Corporate brand standards, brand style guides, customer service systems, sales processes, touch points, HR policies, internal systems etc.

 

Additionally, a comprehensive brand audit will involve strategy reviews, market research, communications reviews, customer research, and employee and HR research.

  

Internal Brand Audit Support: Getting Employees On Board

Without internal support, a brand audit that is carried out for the purposes of revitalising, refreshing, or salvaging a brand will fail. An essential component of a brand audit is ensuring that both your management and employees understand the reasons for the audit.

  

Employee Brand Champion

 

It’s critically important to get their full support and commitment on board, not to mention help get them excited about the upcoming changes. Employees who embrace your brand can become powerful brand ambassadors, allowing you to maintain brand consistency and cultivate a loyal customer base.

Some strategies for engaging employees in a brand audit include:

  • Communicate: Employees who aren’t aware that a brand audit is being conducted can’t contribute to the cause. Inform your employees early and often about the process, and invite them to ask questions and offer suggestions.

  

  • Solicit Input: Your employees are an excellent source of information about customer perceptions of your brand, as well as the business itself. Actively solicit employee input on how they view the brand’s strengths and weaknesses, what changes they would make if they could, and how they see customers responding (or not responding) to the brand.

 

  • Reward Participation: Employees who “live the brand” are powerful assets—and the more you have, the more effective your brand will be. Watch for employees who embrace the brand audit and strive to reflect changes, and reward them by publicly acknowledging their contributions, or even offering bonuses. This can also encourage others to engage in the process.

 

 

Enlisting Your Customers For Your Brand Audit

Public perceptions of your brand are a vital part of a brand audit, and may even be the main reason for performing one. The best way to learn what your target audience thinks about your brand is to ask them directly.

  

Online polls can be a simple and effective way to gauge customer sentiment about your brand. These one-question checks are quick for viewers to complete, they can be promoted easily online, and they can offer an honest starting point for more in-depth elements of your brand audit. If you have a Facebook page for your brand, you can run the Facebook Poll App and gain instant feedback from your fans.

  

For a more comprehensive customer view, you can create an online survey with several questions and multiple answers. Online surveys offer greater potential for detailed data and analytics from a wide sampling of your target audience, and can help you further refine your brand audit objectives.

  

Finally, hiring mystery shoppers is an effective and candid way to gain customer perspective on your brand. Mystery shoppers can engage with your brand at every touch point, and offer a detailed picture of the way customers actually view your brand from the outside—a perspective that is virtually impossible to gain internally.

 

We have found when conducting brand audits for clients using our Auditing Analysis Accelerator™ system that a combination of all these elements, together with face-to-face interviews, field and desk research  produce very insightful and valuable information, often throw up unanticipated surprises which can have a significant impact on the brand strategy going forward.

   

 Eurofound Brand Audit Cover 600px

 

 

ROI: What You Can Get Out Of A Brand Audit

Brand audits show you how your target audience truly perceives your brand, how your brand is actually performing, and how you compare to the competition. A well planned and executed brand audit will benefit your business in myriad ways:

  • Gain insight into your brand portfolio and brand architecture

 

  • Evaluate and refocus your brand positioning to improve engagement with your target audience

 

  • Align your brand collateral with your brand mission, values, and differentiation to strengthen the perception of your brand

 

  • Boost internal brand awareness and drive employee brand engagement

  

  • Refocus and improve your brand management and marketing communications

 

  • Provide direction for your brand into the future to maintain relevancy, consistency, and growth

 

As the success of a brand audit depends on honest, detached assessment, working with an experienced external brand agency is the most effective strategy to ensure a true picture of your current brand positioning, and to best identify areas for improvement to revitalise your brand.

 

What do you think?

• Has your organisation undergone a brand audit in the past?

  

• How could a brand audit help you identify potential reasons for business decline?

  

• If your sales are stagnating, what areas would you focus on for a brand audit?

 

• How would you measure the ROI of a brand audit? How many potential new customers would you need to justify the investment?

 

• What areas of your brand positioning may be slumped and in need of a brand audit?

 

• Would you consider a brand audit to identify potential loss of relevance and proactively refresh your brand to avoid declining sales?

 

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

Rebranding Strategy: Using Premium Repositioning To Increase Profitability

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Repositioning or revitalizing your brand can be a powerful way to gain new market share and boost your profits. One of the most effective rebranding strategies is premium brand repositioning or premiumisation, which is about establishing higher perceived quality or specialness in order to achieve increased profitability by enabling you to charge more for your products and services.

 

Premium repositioning involves elevating demand and customers’ willingness to pay higher prices for your brand by adding value, which may be either actual or perceived. Checkout the following premium brand repositioning tips to help you make your rebranding strategy a success and grow your revenues.

 

5 ‘Premium Positioning’ Rebranding Strategy Tips

  

1. Increasing Actual Value

It’s only natural that improving the quality of your products or services will allow you to charge more. With a premium brand repositioning strategy, adding actual value typically represents a larger financial investment upfront but in turn leads to steady and substantial long-term growth profitability which considerably outweighs the initial investment. Some examples of actual value increase include new innovations, sourcing higher quality materials for product manufacturing, redesigning with new premium features, or delivering higher service quality.

 

Technology companies are a frequent example of adding actual value to achieve premium rebranding, in an industry known for rapid evolution and innovation. One of the most well-known rebranding campaigns involved Apple, which faced near bankruptcy in the mid-1980s before founder Steve Jobs returned as CEO to turn the flagging company around.

  

 Apple Logo

 Image via www.apple.com

 

Among several dramatic steps that included a partnership with primary competitor Microsoft, Jobs increased the actual value of Apple products and the company overall by eliminating a large, money-draining project, and introducing a new, sleek design for Apple personal computers with higher performance—the iMac, which would lead the way for the company’s best-known premium branded products in today’s mobile technology market.

 

 

2. Increasing Perceived Value

Premium brand repositioning that involves an increase in perceived value is a popular strategy because there is often less upfront loading and less ongoing capital investment, compared to the previous strategy mentioned, in order to achieve higher profits.

  

Adding perceived value to your brand requires engaging a rebranding strategy which causes a change in customer perceptions so that your products or services are considered to be worth more—even though you haven’t necessarily changed anything significant physically about the product or service. There are numerous strategies that can be deployed to increase perceived value. Some of them include:

We’ll explore some of these strategies in detail, all of which we’ve deployed with multiple clients over the years when enaging in premium branding repositioning strategies, with examples of brands that have successfully moved and repositioned to more premium markets through increasing their perceived value.

  

  

3. Premium Brand Repositioning Through Packaging Design

Birchbox, a subscription ecommerce company offering beauty products for women and men, underwent a premium rebranding campaign in 2013 that focused on its packaging, together with all its brand collateral. The company created a new global identity which included replacing its logo – with its light, somewhat illegible font and splatter style box – with a stronger modern, elegant sans serif font and a simple diamond, representing the ‘spark’ or ‘aha’ moment of the Birchbox brand experience.

  Birchbox Before After Rebrand

 Image via www.birchbox.com

 

The previous single shipping boxes were replaced with an inner box in a clean sophisticated brown with a silver foil embossed logo on it, designed to set off the boxes tissue wrapped interior contents to their best, and a colour-coded outer box with a large, monogrammed version of the new logo design – fuchsia pink for women’s products, and teal blue for men’s.

  

Birchbox Box Detail Inside 600px 

Image via www.birchbox.com

 

Adding an inner ‘gift’ box not only increased the aesthetic appeal of Birchbox, but also improved customer service, as the outer box tended to become slightly crushed or damaged during the typical rough and tumble of shipping or postage. In addition to the new packaging, Birchbox redesigned its website and messaging across all its brand collateral and communication channels.

    Birchbox Box Customer 600px

   Image via www.birchbox.com

 

Redesigning brand packaging as a premium rebranding strategy can be highly effective in shifting customer impressions of your brand and adding a stronger perceived value to your products or services, provided the total brand and product or service experience is congruent with what the packaging sells or communicates!

You won’t get a second sale or good ‘word-of-mouth’ if your packaging oversells and underdelivers in terms of product or service. In fact you’ll deservedly get so much negative customer sentiment both on and offline you’ll likely undermine your brand and its reputation, not to mention potential profitability even further.

 

  

 

  

 

4. Affiliations and Testimonials for Premium Brand Repositioning

Associations with well-known public figures, VIPs or trusted organizations can enhance your brand identity immensely and help accelerate your rebrand as a premium provider of products or services. A clear example of this theory in action are celebrity endorsements. People are willing to pay more for products or services when they have the perception that celebrities use them, which is why big brands continuoulsy shell out millions for endorsements from celebrities and VIPs, relevant to their target audiences.

 

 Kate Middleton Michelle Obama

 Image via www.stylist.co.uk

  

And some brands just have the good fortune to be chosen by the much admired. High street brands such as LK Bennett, Reiss and Whistles when worn by the Duchess of Cambridge are well know for selling out of the favoured items in less than a couple hours – as are items from brands such as J.Crew when worn by the First Lady of the United States, Michelle Obama. In fact Michelle Obamas’ endorsement of J.Crew has helped the fashion brand rebound from plummeting sales enabling it to reposition itself as a premium line of casual wear.

 

 J Crew Michelle Obama

 Image via www.jcrew.com

 

However aligning your brand with premium affiliations doesn’t have to cost your company millions either. Local celebrities can have a significant, positive impact on your brand positioning and contribute to a more premium perception too. For some companies, professional certifications and ties with trusted organizations also work to create premium brand repositioning and enhanced brand credibility.

 

 

5. Brand Messaging and Premium Brand Positioning

Your brand can achieve a shift into the premium market through refined messaging that targets a more discerning marketing demographic. Many luxury brands use this strategy to increase perceived value of their products or services, by conveying their brand as a desirable “must have”.

 

Stella Artois is among the most in-demand beer brands in the UK. However, in 1976 when the brand was introduced, it was considered too strong, too different, and too expensive. When Frank Lowe took over marketing for the company, he launched an innovative campaign that transformed the perceived disadvantages into strengths. Using the tag line “Reassuringly expensive,” and a focus on the experience of the brand, rather than the taste, Stella Artois was effectively repositioned as a premium brand that still holds strong today.

 

   

  

 

Whether the focus is on increasing actual or perceived value, premium brand repositioning can be a powerful strategy for boosting your brand’s visibility, demand levels, and profitability.

  

Creative brand repositioning can revitalize a flagging brand and give new customers reasons to try your brand and existing customers new reasons to remain loyal to your products or services for years to come. As a rebranding strategy, repositioning is one of our most requested services from clients and one which has reaped them the most rewards, assuming everything else in the mix lives up to customer expectations or ideally exceeds them!

 

What do you think?

 

• Does your brand have a viable way to increase the actual value of your products or services?

 

• Would you focus on production values, customer service values, or both?

 

• What types of perceived values could you increase in association with your brand?

 

• Could your products benefit from a packaging redesign? How would you add premium value through your packaging?

 

• Are there any affiliations or professional organizations that would create a good premium association or match for your products or services?

 

• How would you shift your brand messaging to appeal to a higher value customer?

  

Brand Resurgence: 4 Lessons Learned from Amazing Brand Comebacks

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Brands fizzle out all the time. From historic flops like the Ford Edsel to problematic launches from established brands, such as Crystal Pepsi and the disastrous introduction of Apple Maps, brand disintegration can hit any company for any number of reasons. But some brands are agile enough to adapt, adjust their strategies, learn from their mistakes, and re-emerge stronger than ever.

 

Brand revitalization can generate a powerful response for any business, whether your brand is guttering out completely or simply losing steam. Here are some lessons to learn from amazing brand comebacks that have revitalized some of the most successful brands in the world.

 

 

4 Lessons Learned from Amazing Brand Revitalizations

 

1. Apple: An Unconventional Partnership

Despite the company’s problem with its map application, Apple is among the most powerful and well-known global brands today—but they weren’t always. It’s a well know story, the company started out strong in the 1980s with a decisive and profitable position in the computer industry. But following Steve Jobs’ resignation in 1985, performance dwindled, and by the mid-1990s the organization faced imminent bankruptcy.

  

Apple Newton Messagepad

Image via www.apple.com 

   

Jobs returned as CEO in 1997 to face the daunting task of restructuring the company and salvaging the brand. After scrapping the expensive Newton, Jobs took a bold and controversial step by entering into a partnership with Apple’s biggest competitor, Microsoft.

  

  

Apple’s customers weren’t thrilled with the idea of sleeping with the perceived enemy. But the $150 million investment from Microsoft not only allowed for the development of popular Microsoft programs like Office for the iOS system, but also paved the way for the iMac—Apple’s sleek, innovative all-in-one PC that represented the new brand positioning and served as a landmark for the company’s signature products, including the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

 

Jobs’ risk-taking may have met with initial resistance from his primary audience, but the partnership paid off and ultimately helped Apple claim the dominant position in the mobile device market.

 

 

2. Old Spice: Shifting the Target Market

Classic American brand Old Spice introduced its grooming products for men in 1938. The brand experienced steady growth, and by the 1970s was the top brand in its product class. However, the Old Spice brand aged along with its customer base, and by 1990 it had lost its appeal—Old Spice was an old man’s staple, and brand loyalty was at an all-time low.

 

 Old Spice Classic

Image via www.pg.com 

At this point, Procter & Gamble purchased the Old Spice brand from parent company the Shultan Co., and launched a brand retargeting campaign aimed at capturing the younger generation. A new deodorant line called Old Spice High Endurance was marketed to teens, and the brand’s performance slowly ascended. Then in 2010, the company released the first of a series of quirky online commercials featuring the “Old Spice Man,” aimed at the younger generation.

 

 

The video quickly went viral, and propelled the Old Spice brand to the top spot in the body wash market. Sales of Old Spice increased by 107 percent in June 2010, shortly after the video’s release.

 

Old Spice Boat Man 

Image via www.pg.com

 

With a package redesign, new product releases aimed at a new demographic, and a video campaign that targeted younger markets by appearing in the channels they frequent, Old Spice created a brand resurgence that is still going strong today.

 

 

3. Dr. Martens: Banking on Nostalgia

Footwear brand Dr. Martens, known for patented air-cushioned soles and trademark yellow stitching, was a UK favorite for years. Dr. Martens boots saw peak success in the 1970s, when British punk rockers adopted the brand and created a craze. But when grunge moved in during the 1990s, Dr. Martens moved out—in a big way.

 

 Dr Martins Patent

Image via www.drmartens.com

 

The brand fell out of favour in the fashion industry, forcing the company to downsize together with production stopping in the UK. In 2003, Dr. Martens’ production facilities relocated to more economically favorable China, leaving just a handful of design and office staff behind.

 

 Dr Martens Metallic

Image via www.drmartens.com

  

But in 2007, the company took advantage of a growing retro movement to relaunch the brand—and pulled off a successful brand resurgence simply by changing the name of its product. The original Dr. Martens shoe was introduced as the Dr. Martens “Vintage” line, with campaigns appealing to their customers’ sense of nostalgia. By 2010, the brand appeared in multiple designer collections on fashion show runways, and in 2012 Dr. Martens was assessed as the eighth fastest-growing company in Great Britain.

 

 

4. Nintendo: Pushing Brand Innovation

The Nintendo Co. has existed for longer than most people realize. The Japanese company was founded as a playing card manufacturer more than 120 years ago, but is better known as one of the first video game companies in the world. Nintendo entered the video game market in 1974, and found incredible success in the 1980s with enduring classic arcade games like Donkey Kong and Super Mario Bros.

 

By the 1990s, the company dominated the home gaming console market with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), Super Nintendo, and handheld Gameboy system. But competition from Sony and Microsoft heated quickly, and sales of the Nintendo 64 system launched in 1996 lost out to Sony’s PlayStation. The next iteration from Nintendo, the GameCube, performed dismally against both PlayStation and Microsoft’s Xbox.

 

Wii Console 

Image via www.wii.com

 

Following the GameCube, Nintendo stopped focusing on improving its existing design, and moved into a new more innovative direction. In 2006, the company released the Wii—an entirely new design that resembled no other system. It was easy to use, highly interactive, and marketed not just to video game players, but to families with children. In addition, it was no coincidence that the name of the product is pronounced “whee,” which strongly associated it with fun. The Wii sent Nintendo surging back to the top, far outselling both of its main competitors’ same-year system releases, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3.

 

 Wii Family 

Image via www.wii.com 

 

A focus on brand innovation and a redirected marketing campaign allowed Nintendo’s fizzling brand to come back stronger than ever. To date, the company has sold more than 86 million Wii units and continues to outperform its competitors.

 

There are many ways to revitalize your brand with a brand resurgence or rebranding strategy, from a simple product name change to an extensive overhaul of brand packaging, brand positioning, and strategic brand partnerships. Regardless of the size of your business, these brand comeback lessons can help you revive a flagging brand and experience greater customer engagement, higher brand recognition, and increased profitability.

  

What do you think?

• Would a strategic partnership with a competitor help you leverage your brand? How about partnering with a complementary business?

 

• What kind of strategic risks have you considered taking with your brand?

 

• Is there a new market demographic you could reach by refining your positioning or brand strategy?

 

• Would you consider relaunching your products under new names to spark a brand resurgence?

 

• What innovations can you implement in your products or promote in your marketing to strengthen your brand?

 

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

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.

 

Rebranding : How To Do It Successfully and Avoid Pitfalls

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One of the world’s biggest brands – Coca Cola – has done it eleven times, albeit in a largely evolutionary manner, since selling their first sugar-laden fizzy drink in its now-iconic bottle. Thousands of other very successful well knows brands have also done it over the decades. It’s a critical and strategic part of all successful businesses regardless of size, be they global giants or much loved more local national players. If a brand wants to stay relevant and connected then rebranding is an essential part of its continued success.

 

The degree of change in rebranding can take many forms from a gentle evolutionary update to a radical overhaul, the decisions for which are driven by strategic business objectives. Done correctly, whether evolutionary or radical in nature, rebranding can have a hugely positive impact on the bottom line, and be responsible for driving a significant increase in a business’s profitability.

 

Equally, a poorly thought out rebranding strategy can pose serious risks to your business resulting in loss of credibility, brand equity and the hard won brand asset value which you’ve painstakingly built up over the years. Successful rebranding must be given careful thought, research and planning to ensure the successful results desired.

 

To give you some further insights into both the ‘hows’, ‘dos’ and ‘donts’ of rebranding we’ve included some examples in this article, which will provide you with some direction, if considering rebranding in your business. Disasters and successes are both learning tools when analysed from an informed perspective, there are always invaluable lessons here for us all!

 

 

Top 3 Reasons to Rebrand

1. Brand Evolution : Over Time We’ve Changed…

Sometimes a company moves on but its brand doesn’t. In other words, it doesn’t represent what that business ‘stands for’ or does any more. This was the case with American Airlines when its executives felt they needed to rebrand earlier this year. The rebrand included a complete re-evaluation of what the brand stood for, and how it was perceived by stakeholders, both internally and externally in the market.

 

Evolution Of American Airlines Logo

Image via Lost Press Marketing ©American Airlines

 

Part of the rebranding process included an update of its visual icon, the brand identity, which hadn’t seen much change since its introduction back in 1968. Its important to note that brand logos are a shorthand way to remind us of a brand’s relevance, associations and reputation in the market and are a by-product of all a company’s brand building efforts over time. They are the visual aid or trigger that reminds customers of all the emotional and rational reasons of why they love (or in some cases dislike) a brand but they are not the ‘brand’ in themselves, merely the visual identifier.

 

When American Airlines analysed its brand logo in the context of what the brand stood for now in the current market, the old symbol wasn’t seen to meet current needs or communicate the core brand message any longer. America’s number one airline needed a more streamlined and vibrant visual image to represent the brand in its full context. They also wanted to let go of what they termed the ‘bullying emphasis’ they believed old logo represented, according to one senior AA executive:

 

“The old identity was slightly skewed to a more powerful American image. We needed to move it to [what we call] ‘American spirit,’” he said.  “That’s the side of America people really, really love. People have huge love for the eagle, but not necessarily the eagle in the downward position potentially attacking someone.”

 

 

   

2. Reputation Management : Negative Brand Sponsorships…

Brand sponsorship of significant high profile events, causes or people such as celebrities can reap immense rewards, through the association for the brand. Equally it can also cause reputation risks too, if for example the person concerned suddenly becomes embroiled in a publically unacceptable behaviour or expresses a controversial opinion or becomes aligned to something which is the opposite of what your brand stands for.

 

A simple example from the USA is a Missouri restaurant owner who’d named his restaurant after a Missouri basketball star (Albert Pujols). When Albert Pujols left the Missouri St. Louis Cardinals to play for the Los Angeles Angels suddenly ‘Pujols 5’ wasn’t the go-to restaurant in town anymore. In fact, it became the opposite, the owner received numerous cancellations, his premises were vandalized and a police cordon had to be set up to deter further damage. Sales dropped a whopping 75 per cent and it seemed as if the business was about to go bust. Indeed customers are filmed saying they doubted it would survive even a year.

 

A radical rebrand became critical to the fundamental survival of the business. In fact the rebrand required a complete name change to ‘Patrick’s Restaurant & Sports Bar’. The restaurant re-established itself successfully in the market with the rebrand and most importantly, in the minds of its target market, enabling the business to grow again profitably.

 

Unfortunately, in the case of US family-run firm ‘Ms & Mrs’ their brand wasn’t just broke but demolished – thanks to a much-anticipated promotion in a TV show which turned out to be a definite brand breaker as opposed to booster. The presenter on the ABC talk show, mispronounced the name of their company to Mr & Mrs.

 

 Mr And Mrs Emergency Kit

 

Image via Audrey Lifestyle Magazine  ©Mr & Mrs

 

As a result, all that much-looked forward to thousands of dollars worth of free publicity and increased sales for the firm (it provides a variety of ‘emergency personal care kits’ for for all sorts of occaions) never happened.

 

That wasn’t the only time the name had been mispronounced. Vloggers had accidentally altered it too or even had trouble saying it in the first place. Enough was enough. It was time to do something. So the family rebranded and changed their brand name. In order to avoid any confusion, they chose a new name completely different from the original and became ‘Pinch Provisions’.

 

 Pinch Minimergency Brides Kit

Image via ©Pinch Provisions

 

They also did a brilliant pre-name change video – using humour to make fun of themselves (and no doubt endearing themselves to thousands more customers in the process).

 

 

 

3. Brand Name Translations : Bad Interpretations

One of the key guidelines to brand naming is ensuring the name and its tag line translates appropriately across different languages and cultural boundaries. Sometimes this consideration has been overlooked resulting in unfortunate connotations or interpretations when translated into foreign languages, such as the following examples:

 

A sports drink in Japan, produced by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co and aimed at replacing electrolytes lost in sweating is named Pocari Sweat (which we reckon wouldn’t go down well in English-speaking countries).

 

Pocari Sweat Ion Drink

©Pocari Sweat

In Germany the computer Commodore VIC-20 had to be renamed to the VC-20. The reason for this is that VIC in German would be pronounced fick which means (well, in English you’d put a ‘u’ in place in the ‘i’).

 

The American SciFi channel wanted a new text friendly name. Unfortunately they choose SyFy which in many countries turned out to be slang for syphilis.

 

Online marketing company PinCrusher used to be known as PinBot – until they realised the word ‘Bot’ didn’t have particularly good connotations (being associated with as a web crawler). It could also be extremely confusing considering their business was internet based and involved the selling of a Pinterest app…

 

Rebranding isn’t something that can be taken lightly. It needs to be strategically driven and supported by considerable market research to find out what’s working, what isn’t. Most importantly new potential rebrand approaches should also be ‘tested’ and researched, before full development and launch to market, to get feedback and ensure target audience ‘buy in’. Make sure you find out and know where and why to keep the good stuff, and bin the out of date or compromised, to ensure your rebrand launch is successful and increases your profitability.

 

• If you’re considering rebranding do you really know what works well for your brand and what aspects of it could do with a revamp?

 

• Have you researched your target audience to test brand sentiment and get feedback both at the beginning of you rebranding project and again at an advanced stage of development to test your new positioning/concepts etc.?

 

 

When Is The Right Time for a Logo Redesign?

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2012 could be seen as The Year of Logo Redesign with some of the world’s largest brands taking a fresh approach to their corporate logos. From simplified updates of existing logos to completely new designs, the last few months has seen brand design success and fails from well-known global brands.

 

The evolution of brand logos is far from a new phenomenon and brands such as Coca Cola can track the transformation of their current logo over nearly 100 years. Latest trends in brand logo strategies however show that logo updates signify far more than an evolution in design-over-time.

 

 Coca Cola Logo Evolution

 

 

4 Reasons Why Your Brand Logo May Need A Redesign or Update?

 

Logos are the corporate face of the brand. The logo in itself is not the brand but it acts as the visual hook reminding customers about what the company stands for, its brand personality and values. It is the glue that binds all the brand information together. With the brand’s visual corporate identity at stake a logo change is no small matter. But how do you know when a logo redesign is necessary?

 

1. Change in Company Structure

There are often obvious reasons behind logo redesigns. Mergers, acquisitions or company spin-offs often necessitate a new logo that symbolizes the new company.

 

2. Audience Misperceptions

Sometimes there may be misperceptions and confusion among key audiences about what the brand represents. Powerful brands are ones that have strong values, with an authentic story, which are clearly understood and lived both internally and externally amongst stakeholders and customers alike. If the brand values and story no longer resonates with the target audience or, customer brand experiences differ from the brand promise, then a logo redesign as part of a complete brand revitalization programme, repositioning and re-launch strategy can help realign the brand with the customer and their brand expectations.

 

 Ebay Logo Old New

 

3. Shift in Corporate Strategy

If your company is expanding its offering, such new products, new features etc. then an updated logo can signal the brands evolution and change in the marketplace. Ebay recently launched their refreshed logo to reflect the company’s plans to shift their corporate strategy away from auctions and move towards full-priced merchandise. The new logo keeps the colours of the original logo but changes the letters and streamlines the design to reflect the new direction of the brand.

 

 Band Aid Logo Old New

  

4. Update of old design

Brands that have been around a long time with a extensive legacy often require a careful evolutionary logo refresh to remain relevant in the market without losing any of the much valued old brand provenance. Johnson & Johnsons’ BAND-AID brand has been in existence since the 1920s and, prior to its latest update, the logo had remained the same since the 1980s. Their latest bolder, more distinctive logo was deemed necessary to create something that feels contemporary and modern yet honours the heritage of the brand.

 

 Budweiser Brand Evolution

 

Budweiser has again refreshed its logo. It is hoped the re-evaluation of their brand strategy together with its visual refreshment, which emphasizes the colour red and reflects their ‘continued commitment to quality’, will reverse reduced consumer interest in the brand. Critically the brand’s updated look incorporates the core brand hallmarks that loyal brand followers will recognize.

 

 Twitter Logo Old New

 

Earlier this year Twitter launched their revitalised logo. While still a relatively young brand, the company saw a need to simplify and streamline the iconic blue bird. The new logo is created from three overlapping circles, which according to Twitter head of design is “similar to how your networks, interests & ideas connect and intersect with peers and friends”. The new logo reinforces the brand identity with the customer and strengthens the consistency of the brand image online.

 

 

  

In contrast Microsoft launched their new logo design, which is the first time the brand has updated their logo in a quarter of a century. The new design was created to attract and embrace a younger broader demographic to the brand.

  

 

 

The Potential Risks

 

While logo updates are often necessary to remain relevant in the market it is critically important not to damage any brand equity developed over previous years. The last thing logo refreshment should do is to alienate or confuse loyal customers.

 

 Jc Penny Logo Confusion

 

American retail brand JCPenney has redesigned their logo three times in as many years. The changes were designed to coincide with the brand’s repositioning strategy but have left many customers confused as to what the brand stands for and its identity.

 

 New Old Gap Logo

  

Retail giant Gap suffered one of the biggest logo redesign disasters in decades when they launched a completely new logo last year. The brand made a fatal flaw when they failed to research and explore the influence of the logo on their customer base. The new logo received major criticism from both loyal customers and design critics alike, who slated the company for changing the brand’s iconic blue square.

 

While the brand’s desire to modernize the logo for the digital world was understandable, they missed an critical opportunity to engage with their customers and the online community in the redesign of the logo.

 Maguire Paterson Old New Logo 2008

  

Brands need to constantly manage their engagement, reputation and image in the market in order to remain relevant with their customers. Sometimes it is small updates to the logo, as was the case with the old Maguire & Paterson Matches brand, dating from 1882, that can breathe new life into a brand and update it for the current market to keep it relevant and take it into the future.

 

• Is your brand still relevant and resonating effectively with your target audience or in need of revitalization for continued growth?

 

• Does your current logo meet the needs of both your brand and your target market?

 

• Have you undertaken recent research to identify your customer’s perceptions of your brand?

 

If you’d like to find out more about what’s involved in a Brand Revitalisation and Re-launch Programme, and if it’s the right strategy to support your business growth, then feel free to give us a call. We’d love to talk.

 

Epicom Relaunch Their Very Successful Food Manufacturing Brand

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Epicom, a very highly regarded, specialist food manufacturing business based in Navan, Co. Meath, have relaunched their brand to market.

 

 Ipad Epicom Website Wheat

 

Epicom provides a full turnkey, ambient food manufacturing service for the retail market on behalf of their customers, which typically includes global multi-nationals and large exporters.

  

 Ipad Epicom Website Choc

 

Much sought after for their rigorous operation standards and multi-allergen controlled production units, Epicoms’ service includes every aspect of the manufacturing process from new product development, research and development, full allergen control to bespoke quality control solutions and distribution.

 

The real secret of their phenomenal success though lies in the people behind the brand. They are an incredibly skilled team of highly qualified professionals, who are not only very committed to what they do, but are also very friendly approachable. Theirs is an ethos of complete operational transparency with a ‘can do’ culture, of doing whatever it takes to meet their customers needs. 

 

 Ipad Epicom Website Isaac

 

To find out more visit their new website  http://www.epicom.ie

Risky Business: How to Safe Guard Your Brand

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Over 80% of the Fortune 500 Company CEO’s identified ‘their brand’ as their company’s number one asset. Their brand was valued as being what defined their business and what made them unique in their market.

 

Your brand is what sets you apart from your competition. It is the differentiating factor used by your consumer’s in their decision making process.

 

In our home lives we tend to take great care of our valuable assets. We try to preempt things that can go wrong and insure against them. Not only is your car insured against any potential accidents, you also wear your seat belt, maintain the speed limits, drive with care. You try to identify and reduce potential risks before they occur. If your brand is the greatest asset to your business then what measures have you put in place to protect it from potential risks?

 

 

Brand Risks

Brands face exposure to a huge amount of risk (product or service), many of which will be specific to each individual brand, not to mention industry categories or specific sectors, be they B2B or B2C. In addition to the obvious risks faced from product liability lawsuits or adverse regulatory decisions, other risks your brand could face include:

 

Costa Concordia Runs Aground 600px

 

Structural Risk

These are risks where exposure might affect an entire industry or market segment. The sinking of the luxury cruise liner Costa Concordia may have destroyed the reputation of its parent brand Carnival Corporation but it also damaged the entire industry with numerous cruise liner brands suffering the effects

 

Brand Equity Risk

Brand Equity risks undermine your brand’s ability to maintain desired differentiation and competitive advantage. If your brand identity is the only thing that differs your offering from that of your competitors then the loss of brand affinity by consumers will affect your entire business.

 

Reputational Risk

These risks arise from failure to meet basic expectations that apply to the market in which your company operates.

 

The famous case of Tylenol is a textbook example of how brand risk management can save the reputation of a company and lead to stronger brand loyalty. When faced with a case of product tampering that would de-rail most brands, Tylenol’s excellent foresight about risk enabled them to rapidly implement pre-planned re-packaging that preserved the company’s reputation.

  

 Tylenol 600px

  

Why Brand Risk Management is Important

 

A brand is so much more than a name. The value of a brand lies in the unique emotional and functional benefits it offers its target audience. Often the biggest brand risk is not about new competitors coming to the market, it is about loosing the trust and connection it has with its consumers.

 

Strong well-known brands that are poorly managed can lose their distinction in the market place. Their products or services simply become commodities distinguished only by price. The brand name might prevail but the value of the brand erodes; market share, profit margins, and loyalty all decline. In essence, the power of the brand is lost.

 

The risk of a damaged brand is far more dangerous and costly to a business than risks to tangible assets. A factory destroyed by fire can be replaced with financial investment. A brand with a damaged reputation takes far more investment to repair and in some cases is too damaged and needs complete rebranding. It also becomes a lasting case study in how “not-to-do-it” with is an irreparable legacy association.

 

Rebuilding a brand’s reputation takes much more than just money. Changes in stakeholder perceptions can threaten the sustainability of current and future demand for a company’s product or services.  A risk to brand equity is a risk to a brand’s ability to create value or influence in its market, in short its ability to generate a profitable return.

 

 

Are You Brand Risk Aware?

Managing brand risk is really about running the business effectively and understanding, at the core, the fundamental risks facing the business.

 

Safe guarding your brand from potential risks must begin by developing a clear understanding of the value of the brand to the business. By clearly illustrating the brand’s contribution to earnings, you can gain perspective and properly assess the scale and nature of the risks attached to the brand. 

 

When unanticipated change occurs brands can be hit hard because typical crisis management does not include appropriate brand risk management strategies too. If you have spent time and resources to shape and build strong brand equity then you need to protect your investment and manage your brand’s future. Your brand strategy should also include mitigating potential risks to your brand too. Be proactive, preempt, plan, and safe guard your company’s revenue stream.

 

• Identifying and evaluating the existing practices and procedures that are used to develop, support and track brand performance will help identify potential risks that may contribute to brand erosion. Have you undertaken a brand audit?

 

• Have you identified the risks faced by your brand?

 

• Do you know what your stakeholders expect from you?

 

• Have you a contingency plan in place to protect your brand?

 

 

Can You Streamline and Simplify to Increase Your Brand Profitability?

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Tea or Coffee? When restricted to two options, choosing your preference is simple. However, standing at a supermarket shelf faced with several brands and multiple varieties the choice can be overwhelming.

 

Supermarket Shelf Overwhelm

 Supermarket shelf choice overwhelm!

 

When it comes to building a strong profitable brand sometimes less is more. If your brand aims to deliver then it must make the decision making process as easy as possible for the consumer.

 

Is it Time for Your Brand to Streamline and Simplify?

Sometimes you might feel you are offering the market everything you can: offering multiple products to multiple market segments, and communicating through all the marketing touch points at your disposal.  However, if you are not seeing the returns to match this level of offering perhaps it is time to simplify your marketing strategy.

 

Ford Any Colour As Long As Its Black

Ford: Any colour as long as it’s black!

 

4 Ways to Streamline Your Brand Strategy and Strengthen Your Brand Equity

 

1. Focus

Offering everything to everyone rarely works. Different markets have different needs.  Reassessing and refocusing your brand marketing strategy can help your company identify who your consumers really are, what that market wants, and how best to target them. A highly targeted brand experience offers greater value to the consumer which in turn can lead to greater brand affinity and a more lasting profitable relationship between the brand and consumer.

 

2. Be Selective

Just because you can use multiple channels to communicate with your market doesn’t mean you should. Using multiple channels can lead to noise and increased consumer confusion rather than creating a strong brand message. Being selective with your touch points makes it easier to monitor the consumer’s reaction and responses to your brand, thereby making it easier to structure your brand message to best influence your target market.

 

Being selective should also extend to the marketing message itself. Keep the message clear and concise. You should be able to communicate your brand message in a few short sentences.

 

3. Streamline Product Offering

Streamlining your brand offering can actually lead to increased sales. Eliminating certain brand offerings can also eliminate consumer confusion. A simpler more focused brand strategy can be more appealing to consumers and makes their decision to purchase an easier one. If 30% of your products generate 70% of your sales then reducing your product offering can actually boost sales.

 

Ronseal Wood Stain

 

4. Simplify Who You Are & What You Do

A focused brand strategy starts from the inside. If you cannot articulate who you are and what you sell as a company in a few short minutes then you need to look at streamlining your internal strategy. Analyze why you ‘do what you do’, outline core values, set goals, and perhaps redefine your product offering. Reassessing your original corporate strategy can help focus your brand strategy moving forward. When you started in business what were you selling? Who was your target market? What was your original brand identity?

 

Why it Can Work – The Jam Effect

Columbia University conducted a consumer study offering an array of brands of jam and chocolate for consumers to choose from. Consumers who were given a choice of 6 brands were 30% more likely to make a purchase than those given a choice of 24-30 brands.

 

Toothpast Choice Paralysis

Toothpaste choice paralysis!

 

Decision Simplicity in the purchase process is the number 1 reason why consumers 
are likely to buy your brand, do so repeatedly, and recommend it to others.

 

One of the fundamental roles of a brand is to positively influence purchase behavior. Having a focused streamlined brand offering with a clear brand message that simplifies the decision making process at the point of purchase can be a winning strategy.

 

Consumers faced with multiple brand variations can be overwhelmed. Offering consumers a refined selection can give your brand a point of differentiation within your market.

 

A brand that tries to offer everything to everyone will satisfy some but wow few. Being selective and focused with your product offering, your marketing channels, and your brand message can lead to expanding profits. It’s that simple.

 

 

• Is your level of commercial returns relative to the size of your brand offering?

 

• Do you need to refocus your brand positioning?

 

• Is your brand strategy in need of simplification?

 

• Do you need to eliminate consumer brand confusion?

 

What’s your view on implementing a simpler decision making process for your customer through a streamlined brand offering? 

 

TLTR: Why streamlining your brand strategy can strengthen your brand profitability. Decision simplicity in the purchase process is the number 1 reason why consumer s
are likely to buy your brand, do so repeatedly, and recommend it to others. Sometimes the brand with the smallest market offering presents the greatest brand value to the consumer.