Is branding dead?

That’s a question I asked not long ago and arrived at a pretty interesting point-of-view.

The bottom line is that branding may not be dead, but it is evolving into something new — and better.

During the 20th century, a brand was considered the position a product or service held in your mind. In other words, it was a static concept with very little flexibility.

But today, a brand is something else entirely. Instead of a brand being a single message or position, it’s actually what people do with your product or service. In other words, a brand is how people engage, interact and use your product or service.

I did a video about this on the 60 Second Marketer YouTube channel not long ago. It’s a short, 60-second piece that outlines this concept in greater detail.

Take a look at the video. Then let me know if you think I captured what a brand is in the comments section below.

If you like what you read today, you can have these blog posts delivered to your in box each morning by clicking here. Or, you can sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter by clicking here.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media.

Is Donald Trump a super-successful businessman who has created a powerful brand around his name? Or is he an egomaniacal boor who has permanently damaged a brand that took decades to create?

Or both?

No matter what your take on Donald Trump, one thing is for sure — his recent antics have done little to help the Trump brand. You could argue that any press is good press, but when journalists are calling Trump a blowhard and a phony, it’s hard to say that that’s a positive spin on a valuable brand name.

Have Donald Trump's recent antics helped or hurt his brand? Let us know what you think in the poll below.

There’s a certain percentage of Americans who will love Donald Trump no matter what. For those people, the Trump brand is untarnished.

There’s another group who see him as an obnoxious boor with a fragile ego. We can assume those people will never be won over by the Trump brand.

But then there’s a third group in the middle. These are the people who can, with the right efforts, be swayed into buying something with the Trump brand name on it.

But if the Trump brand is associated with political sideshows, then who is going to buy into anything with the Trump name on it?

You may be thinking that there’s nothing to be learned from the Trump experience except, perhaps, to stay away from hairspray. But actually, all brands can learn something from his recent political missteps.

Whether you’re selling toothpaste, computers or glitzy hotel rooms, there are three categories of potential customers. Those who will never buy from you, those who will almost always buy from you and those who are on the fence.

Your primary branding efforts should be directed to the middle group — the people who are on the fence. Those are the people who are going to make or break your marketing efforts.

After all, you’re never going to win over the people who strongly dislike your brand. And you’ve already won over the people who strongly like your brand. So you need to focus on the middle third — the people on the fence who can be swayed by the proper PR, branding and marketing efforts.

All other things being equal, it’s safe to say that Trump’s middle third — those who have no opinion or who lean slightly one way or another about Trump — now have a less-than-flattering image of the Trump brand.

The bottom line: In my humble opinion — and I could be wrong about this — it took decades to create and promote the Trump brand, but in a few short weeks, The Trumpster himself has done more to set it back than any other person before him.

What’s your take on the Trump brand? Let us know in the poll below.

If you like what you read today, you can have these blog posts delivered to your in box each morning by clicking here. Or, you can sign up for our free weekly e-newsletter by clicking here.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer, the online magazine of BKV Digital and Direct Response. Jamie is also the co-author of How to Make Money with Social Media.

The other day, I was standing at a magazine rack when I figured out a neat little trick you can do to gain insights into your target market.

As you know, most marketers use demographic data to define their target market. So, for example, they’ll break target market information down into categories like age, sex, income, education and geographic location.

Sometimes, companies will define a primary target market and a secondary target market. If you were selling a VW Bug, for example, your primary target market might look like this:

• Sex: Female
• Age: Between 25 and 34
• Household Income: $50K to $125K annually
• Education: College graduate
• Geographic location: Metropolitan areas

Your secondary target market might look like this:

• Sex: Male
• Age: Between 18 and 34
• Household Income: $35K to $125K annually
• Education: College graduate
• Geographic location: Metropolitan areas

But as you dive deeper into your target market, you’ll want to start using psychographic data. Psychographic data includes information on personality, values, attitudes, interests or lifestyles.

As you can see, demographic data doesn’t provide insights into the emotional being who is buying your product. The problem is that in order to take a deep dive into the psychographic information, you’ll often (but not always) have to hire a research firm to get inside the mind of your prospect.

But the other day, I came up with an inexpensive way to get inside the mind of your prospective customer. I call it the Magazine Rack Test and, while there’s no science around it, it can provide a fun, easy way to gain insights into the psychographics of your prospects and/or customers.

What’s the magazine rack test?

I was standing in an AMTRAK train station and noticed that the magazine rack was set up to appeal to certain interests going from left to right. So, for example, Modern Bride was on the far left. Moving to the right, I found things like Cosmopolitan and Allure, both targeting young, sophisticated women. Then I found magazines like Women’s Health and Shape, again targeting women. Those were followed by Yoga, Fitness and Natural Health, targeting both men and women interested in working on their inner and outer being.

By using the 60 Second Marketer Magazine Rack Test, you can gain insights into the psychographics of your prospects and customers.

As I moved to the right, other publications focused on things like healthy cooking, outdoor living and home decorating. Then I found magazines that focused on science, business, travel and music. The further to the right I went, the more I found things like sports magazines, computer magazines and stereo buying guides.

On the far right, I found magazines like Wrestling Today and Paintball Weekly which I’m pretty sure are read only by cavemen. (No offense to any of the cavemen reading this blog post.)

Before you assume that all men would be on the right side of the magazine rack and all women would be on the left side of the magazine rack, let me confess and say that I found myself standing in front of the magazines that were left of center – smack dab in front of the Yoga, Natural Health and Whole Living.

Which brings me to a key point – just because your primary target market is female or male doesn’t mean you can assume they fall into stereotypical categories from a psychographic point-of-view. I’m sure there are plenty of women who love sports magazines, computer magazines and stereo buying guides. In fact, there may even be a woman or two who reads Wrestling Today, which will please the cavemen to no end.

Putting the Mazaine Rack Test to Use

So, what does all this mean? And how can you use it for your benefit? The next time you’re trying to gain insights into your target market, imagine where they’d be standing in front of a magazine rack.

Is your primary target market 35- to 44-year old women who spend more time in front of Fortune and Business Week than they do in front of Women’s Health or O Magazine? If so, that gives you insight into who they are from a psychographic point-of-view.

Or, is your primary target market 45- to 54-year old men who spend more time in front of Yoga, Natural Health or Whole Living magazine? That will tell you something about their psychographic information, too.

What’s more, you can imagine that your target market might spend some time moving around a little bit, gaining insight into the complexity of the human psyche. Or, depending on a person’s mood, might spend read Martha Stewart Living on one day and Wrestling Today (God forbid) on another.

In our early example for the VW Bug, you can see how the Magazine Rack Test might help VW understand their customer’s mindset. Most of the women who buy VW Bugs would be in front of a certain set of magazines. And most of the men who buy VW Bugs would be in front of Wrestling Today.

(I’m kidding when I say that the men who buy VW Bugs would read Wresting Today. If you fell for that, then you’ve missed my point completely. But if you think men who buy VW Bugs might spend some time in front of Traditional Home, Health and Fitness and Bon Appetite, you’re getting the picture.)

The Bottom Line:

1. Your prospects and customers are complex, multi-faceted, emotional beings.
2. Not everyone can afford expensive psychographic research into their prospects and customers
3. For those of us with limited budgets, there’s the 60 Second Marketer Magazine Rack Test, which can help you gain insights into the psychographics of your target market.

Posted by Jamie Turner, Chief Content Officer of the 60 Second Marketer. Jamie, who is a male, confesses that he spends more time in front of Martha Stewart Living than he does in front of Wresting Today.

By James R. Gregory, Founder and CEO, CoreBrand

Many departments within a corporation will argue the need for accountability in marketing, but none steps forward to take ownership of how to account for brand equity.

Theoretically, the CEO is responsible for the value of the corporate brand. Unfortunately, it is a rare CEO who understands how brand equity value is created. CEOs would love to see their company prosper but few understand how to take command or utilize the tools available to make it so.

Is it time to arrive at a consisent formula to calculate the value of a brand? Yes, according to James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand.

The CFO properly challenges the high costs of marketing today because there is no standard for accounting for the profitable return on investment for brand building activities. In the world of the CFO, marketing is ONLY seen as an expense without any direct connection to ROI. Thus,  creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

CMOs would be wise to step forward to take command of brand marketing accountability. Many would argue that they have done so, but attempts to date to create a unified set of standards have been anemic. Most attempts to build accountable ROI bridges to the CFO or CEO have been misunderstood or at the least unrequited.

Procurement officers, whose mandate is to dissect every transaction and shave off another percentage point from the already impossibly tight margins of advertising agencies and marketing communications firms, are reluctant to open their view of the total value of a transaction to include the impact of growth (or potential loss) of brand value. To acknowledge that brand building is a two-way street that creates or destroys value with every communication would open an entirely new avenue for evaluating the performance of vendors.

Investor relations, which could help the CEO add billions in market capitalization, is usually focused only on the next earnings release. While they have the attention of the CEO, it is rare to find an IR professional who is willing to suggest that the corporate brand might need tweaking or that corporate clarity is a bit soft. Shouldn’t this department have its finger on the pulse of the corporate brand?

And, why aren’t advertising agencies and public relations firms demanding accountability? They have the most to gain by understanding consistent accountability measures for valuing product and corporate branding. Yet, the agency industry is too frail due to decades-long cost  containment pressures or too afraid of the results to demand accountability.  So, most seem happy just to survive another year.

Most unfortunately, the accounting profession has ignored the undeniable growth of brand value. GAAP standards don’t account for the value of brands until a company is bought or sold, which doesn’t accurately reflect the changing value of the living brand. Brand value fluctuates daily based on the decisions and communications of management and the impact on key constituencies. It can be easily identified, readily measured and valued on an ongoing basis in comparison to its industry or specific competitors. Accountants should embrace this process and shareholders should demand to better understand and to see brand equity reported on financial accounting statements.

Only one association has come forth ready to take on the issue of marketing accountability. The Association of National Advertisers, under the leadership of Bob Liodice, has been pursuing the concept of generally accepted brand valuation principles. The ANA represents the largest advertisers so it is logical and commendable that such an organization lead the discussion.

A group of academics and practitioners have also been in hot pursuit of brand accountability standards. It is aptly called the Marketing Accountability Standards Board, under the leadership of Meg Blair.

I believe the creation of consistent and reliable standards formarketing measurement is the single most important business issue of this decade. If you agree with me that marketing stands to gain tremendously by connecting the brand to accounting standards then you should join with the ANA and MASB and add your voice to the discussion.

James Gregory is the Founder and CEO of CoreBrand. He can be contacted at jgregory@corebrand.com.

10 Steps to Create a Successful Brand

Smart businesses develop a special brand – a strong personal message that stands for something meaningful in the eyes of their customers.  But how do you create a magnetic brand that motivates customers to buy?  You must focus on figuring out what motivates your best customers, according to  BJ Bueno of The Cult Branding Company.

He has developed a set of guidelines for businesses seeking to create and establish a successful brand. Here are ten of them:

1) Build your business around your best customers instead of trying to aimlessly drive sales. Over time, your return on your marketing and innovation efforts will rise.

2) Listen to what your best customers are telling you. Don¹t be a transaction-making machine. Be a real person and build a business to serve real people. This is the key to cultivating customer loyalty.   

3) Focus on what your brand does best. If you try to be all things to all people you¹ll end up being nothing to everybody. Be bold. Be unique. Differentiate your brand around your strengths. 

4) Understand what makes your customers tick. Learn how they think, feel, and behave toward your brand. This isn¹t easy, but if you can decode these drivers, you¹ll be better positioned to create long-term customers.   

5) Identify your customer¹s drivers of choice. Why are your current customers buying from you instead of your competitors? Knowing the answer to this question can define the future of your enterprise. 

6) Be relentless in serving your best customers better than anyone else. Give them plenty of reasons to stay with you and no reasons to leave. Push your business to continually find ways to make your customer¹s lives easier and better. 

7) Find ways to wow and surprise your best customers. Do something extraordinary and unexpected for your customers. Instead of playing with “word of mouth marketing” programs, focus on better serving your customers  – word of mouth will happen naturally.   

8) Determine what your brand stands for and deliver on your promise. You must become relentless in your devotion and dedication to delivering on your brand promise each and every day.   

9) Build a brand model that identifies the psychological motivators, key characteristics, and emotional connections your customers have with you. An effective brand model will describe your customer¹s mindset, attitudes, and behaviors toward your brand. 

10) Use your brand model to make all business decisions. If your new ad doesn¹t hit on what¹s important to your best customers, don¹t run it. If you¹re innovating in a direction that isn¹t relevant to your brand lovers, change directions.

Most businesses struggle because they don¹t identify who their business is especially for. These consumer insights will provide the business lens needed to evaluate marketing strategies, advertising campaigns, and product innovations.

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BJ Bueno is founder of The Cult Branding Company, a brand loyalty research firm.  His company helps businesses use humanistic psychology, archetypal imagery and cultural mythology to identify the patterns their best customers share. He is the author of Cult Branding Workbook (2008) and co-author of The Power of Cult Branding (2002). For more information visit http://www.cult-branding.com/

Never Underestimate the Power of Color

By Jeanette McMurtry, Principle, e4marketing

As marketers, we spend a great deal of time and money crafting strategies, messages, catchy headlines, or compelling offers in hopes of capturing the attention and business of our target consumers.  Yet according to several different studies on what most influences purchase decisions at the point of sale, the above components of a marketing campaign pale in importance to the choice of colors we use in our design. Research conducted by the Institute for Color Research reveals that we consumers make an unconscious judgment about a product, person, and our environment within 90 seconds of introduction, and that color influences up to 90% of our assessment.

While color has different meanings in different cultures, e.g., yellow is caution, cowardly or fun in the U.S. and represents royalty and prosperity in parts of Asia, color is universal in its influence on our reactions and attitudes towards products, messages, and brands, and even people. Most often, according to Diane Roggow, principal of Market Illumination and an expert in how color impacts marketing, color dictates how we feel about a brand without our realizing it. Yet when it comes to color choices in marketing, they are most often made according to personal preference rather than strategic reasoning, and this can negatively affect a brand’s image and sales.

For example, says Roggow, many brands use red and black, as they are clean and bold, yet when used together they can create feelings or attitudes of hostility or unfriendliness. “If you use red and black in your logo and combine it with a tagline stating ‘great customer service’, you’re likely sending mixed signals to your consumer as their conscious mind sees ‘friendly’ in your words while the unconscious mind feels threatened,” says Roggow.

Another example Roggow cites is Black and Decker and their use of black and yellow. Per Roggow, these colors are predatory colors and create a sense of dominance, or “top cat” if you will. As a consultant, Roggow has seen clients move inventory that sat idle for a long time generate significantly higher response or desired awareness of brand attributes by simply changing the color of products or brand iconology.

Color not only taints our perception but our responsiveness to marketing materials as well, or so says independent research by Jan Whit, Ronald Green, and Virginia Johnson, which collectively state:
* Color versions of the same ad are read up to 42% more than their black and white counterparts
* Color is 80% more likely to be read than black and white marketing materials
* Consumers tend to find information in color up to 80% faster than information in black and white only
* Communications materials produced in color increase leaning and retention up to 78%

And according to research by Frank Romano for the Digital Printing Council, when you add color to a direct marketing piece, the response rate can increase by 45%.

These are no small numbers. Yet I think it’s safe to say that most marketers spend far less time planning color schemes than messaging themes. Roggow has seen many a sound color strategy rooted in psychological research killed by a CEO who simply wanted something else.

So what does this mean for you and your marketing programs?

1. Make Changes Slowly: It may not be prudent to go about changing your corporate identity overnight because you discover the colors of your logo don’t represent your brand attributes. But you can perhaps apply some color psychology to your advertising and direct marketing materials.

2. Do Your Homework: Find out how colors have different meanings for different cultures both in and out of the United States, and how even different tones of the same color can change meanings.

3. Examine Color Combinations: Also, per Roggow’s suggestion, find out how combining colors can hurt or help you.

Some examples:

• Direct Mail: If you are trying to create a sense of status or privilege for your brand and those that use your products, try using tones of purple as it symbolizes wealth, nobility, luxury and extravagance.
• Display ads: If you want your brand to stand out on the page or in a publication as the stable, trustworthy choice for your business category, use blue, as it symbolizes all of the above. As Roggow says, it is no mistake that many banks use shades of blue in their company color palettes.
• Brochures/Annual Report: If you want to communicate growth, harmony, safety, security, and even stability, use shades of green and blue.

There are many resources available to help you get a better understanding of how to use color to visually create the power of your brand.  Whatever resource you use, use something. The visuals you use to promote your brand are no small matter. The total imagery, not just your color palette, defines your brand’s level of sophistication, expertise, quality and success immediately to your audience, and creates a first impression that cannot easily be redone.

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About the Author

Jeanette McMurtry specializes in emotionally-relevant marketing and sales training for health care and other businesses, and presents frequently at international conferences on marketing and sales. She is the principal of e4marketing and can be reached at jeanette@e4marketingco.com or 970-390-6909.

Which of these means Burger King to you?

• Free paper crowns.
• The scary king commercials.
• The Whopper Bar.
• ‘Have it Your Way’ campaign.
• The Subservient Chicken.
• The BKlounge on Twitter.

If you answered all of these, you’re right. Now, add one more:

• The new futuristic redesign of its stores.

Burger King is planning a world-wide change in its current store model. The new restaurant design features flat screen TV menus, red flame chandeliers floating overhead, brick, and corrugated metal. “I’d call it more contemporary, edgy, futuristic,” Chairman and CEO John Chidsey told The Associated Press. “It feels so much more like an upscale restaurant.”

So far, remodeled restaurants have seen sales climb about 12 to 15 percent, Chidsey said. Restaurants that are torn down and completely rebuilt at the same location have seen sales climb by as much as 30 percent.

Russ Klein, President, Global Marketing Strategy and Innovation for Burger King, has been rebranding the company since 2004. He brought back the “Have It Your Way” campaign, in fact. Integral to the rebranding process are four principles that “most branding experts would agree make up a brand,” said Klein.

• Relevance. How the brand fits into the consumer’s life.
• Differentiation. The brand’s point of difference.
• Esteem. How well the brand is regarded.
• Knowledge. An intimate consumer understanding of the brand.

Am I right to be confused by their campaign(s)? It seems there are so many variants in the Burger King brand, that I’m not sure exactly what it is that I’m supposed to think about it. To me, Burger King is a fast food Whopper, so here’s what I think:

• Relevance. BK’s relevant to me since I eat there once in a while when traveling.
• Differentiation. It’s different from other fast food because, well…it isn’t, really, is it?
• Esteem. I regard Burger King as a plain old fast food chain.
• Knowledge. I’m really confused about what the brand is supposed to be other than a fast food chain.

I do understand a company like Geico, that started with a caveman, moved into the gecko, and then to the money-you-could-be-saving. One moved smoothly into the other, so each had its own distinct image in my mind. But BK seems to have ALL of their campaign running at the same time. Maybe I don’t watch TV enough and I’m missing all the ads that are supposed to be telling me these things. Or maybe I’ll have to go to one of the redesigned stores to get a new feel for the place, and the campaign(s) will all come together. If I had it my way, there’d only be one distinct message. We’ll see.

There’s an age-old rule of branding that all good marketers are aware of. That is, you can spend all the money in the world marketing your product, but if the brand doesn’t live up to the promise, no amount of money will work.

New York City is living proof of that fundamental rule in marketing.

For years, New York suffered with a reputation that it was a cold, brutal place to live and that the people there were unfriendly and unhelpful. But all that has changed. Today, New York — and its citizens — have done a complete 180 and are doing everything possible to make the city enjoyable to live in and wonderful to visit.

One member of The 60 Second Marketer team lived in New York about 25 years ago. On a recent visit to America’s largest city, he noticed all of the dramatic changes that had taken place. Restaurants were exceptionally accomodating, taxi drivers didn’t lay on their horns at stoplights and the citizens went out of their way to be helpful.

It’s not just members of The 60 Second Marketer that have noticed. Apparently Readers Digest has done a global study on The World’s Most Courteous Cities and New York City came out on top.

New York City?

You betcha. Things have changed in Gotham. It’s no longer the dark, foreboding city it once was. Today, New York is bright, acomodating, friendly and good-spirited.

All this leads to a lesson in marketing and branding that everyone reading this should remember:

If you really want to see your brand grow, you have to be sure that its being true to itself. In other words, you have to figure out what it is your brand is all about and then make sure that brand essence is communicated in everything from your brochures to your employees.

If you’re interested in learning how to uncover your brand essence, check out “How to Differentiate Yourself: 20 Questions to Help You Knock the Socks Off Your Competition” in The 60 Second Marketer Articles section. It’s a great way to help you get started on becoming the next New York City.

Gosh. Who’d of thunk that becoming the next New York City would be a good thing?

Once again, Coca-Cola has taken the top spot in Interbrand’s list of the world’s most valuable brands. As is often the case, IBM and Microsoft followed closely behind. Google had a good run of events as well, jumping from #20 to #10 in just one year.