November 25, 2009

Ingredient Branding

This spring I bought a road bike and spent the summer pedaling my way to health and happiness all around the valley. I tested several different makes and models before reaching a buying decision. Different factors played into the final selection. I had never actually heard of the bike brand before (Time, made in France), so I strongly relied on the opinion of the retailer, but I was already familiar with the manufacturer of the bike’s major components—Shimano.

The Japanese company Shimano, is known for supplying the cycling components to many of the finest bike makers in the world and is an excellent example of ingredient branding, i.e. an essential ingredient or component of a product that has its own brand identity. Chevron’s Techron, NutraSweet and Dolby are other examples of ingredient branding. Each are essential ingredients of the end product and each possess its own independent identity, marked by its own logo.

Because of its unmatched achievement, the most well-known example of a successful branded ingredient originated with an ad agency in Salt Lake City. Before Dahlin Smith White suggested the tagline, “Intel Inside”, no one knew—or for that matter, even cared what kind of microprocessor was inside their computer. With the help of DSW, Intel became the first PC component manufacturer to communicate directly to the computer buyer and eventually became one of the top ten known brands in the world, in a class with Coke, Disney and McDonalds.

Ingredient branding is most useful when it is aimed beyond your immediate customer to a downstream stage of the value channel. For example, Intel’s immediate customer may be Dell Computer, but by communicating directly to the computer buyer, Intel can pull their product through the distribution channel.

A more limited application of ingredient branding is seen in any product or service named, identified and marketed as a distinctive part of a larger brand. modern8 asserts the trademark on its own strategic methodology, the Perception Branding 5D Process™, to bring attention to, and distinguish the service from our competition. Shimano, Intel and even modern8 enhance the value proposition and points of differentiation for all products and services using ingredient branding.

July 1, 2009

My City is Better Than Your City

I was reading tweets in modern8′s new twitter account, when a link caught my attention regarding the city of Melbourne’s adoption of a new brand identity. The article indicated that the Melbourne brand suffered compared to Sydney’s, the better-recognized Australian city. The effort to raise public perception of Melbourne was reflected in a new logo for the city.

Of course, the whole of idea of cities branding themselves would have seemed preposterous 10 or 15 years ago. Not that cities haven’t always had a brand–because brands exist whether you manage them or not–but now we’ve got cities applying the principles of brand strategy, once reserved for commercial products and services, to the very neighborhood in which you live.

It may seem odd at first, yet cities are competitive just like that brand of cereal you had for breakfast. Cities compete for residents, tourist dollars and corporate location decisions. It only makes sense to manage municipal perception so you can affect the behavior of your target audience.

Salt Lake City’s new mayor, Ralph Becker, dumped the logo his predecessor, Rocky Anderson, had used on everything from business cards to meter maid vehicles. Becker returned to a previous seal-like identity featuring an image of the historic City and County building–in my mind, a vast improvement over the amateurish skyline logo used by Rocky.

I suspect neither Rocky’s or Becker’s identity was implemented with any strategy behind it–that is, asking what kind of message the city wants to send with its identity. Clearly Melbourne was striving for progressive modernity in its mark, rather than traditional, homespun values. For Salt Lake, it would be an interesting exercise to do the research and strategy and reflect it in a new city identity. It might be a challenge though, because the city is often divided along cultural and religious lines.

Other local municipalities have sought to improve their brand. South Salt Lake has recently engaged a firm to help the image of their city and distinguish it from their neighbor to the north. The shared name in fact, led to discussion on whether South Salt Lake should consider a name change. I’ve always liked the look of Murray City’s logo, created a few years ago, though it references smoke stacks that are now gone and I can’t help but wonder about the appropriateness of the reference.

While we have yet to be asked to brand a city, we’re confident we can.

May 4, 2009

Searching for a Different Tribe

“The fact is, we need divisions as much as we need ways to transcend them.” —Marty Neumeier

The recent recession has only led credence to the idea that we now live in a global economy. A few dominoes topple over in America’s economy, and the chain reaction is felt around the world. But does a global economy also mean that we live in a global village?

Not if “global village” means we are headed to a society with no economic, cultural or national barriers, branding author Marty Neumeier argues. According to him, as soon as globalism removes barriers, people will erect new ones. They need a sense of belonging he says, and he calls the barriers they build “tribes.”

Internet search engines are, of course, a big business. Google has done so well at this business, that in 2006 its brand name was added to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as a verb. Even so, Microsoft has seen enough potential that it will soon launch its re-branded search service as “Bing.”

The lessons that Microsoft needs to apply to be successful are the same for any company. People align themselves with tribes because they are familiar, and they feel like they belong. Simply trying to “out-Google” Google will not work.

For instance, Ad Age recently reported that Google had conducted internal tests where it branded other Internet search results with their logo and layout. They found that users preferred results with the Google branding, even if the results were not Google’s.

What is the lesson here? The key is to differentiate. It is important to have a good product, or in our example, search engines. But it’s also much more than that. The reason people unite with the Nike, Apple, and Harley Davidson tribes is because they are different. What if these tribes used their branding on someone else’s product? Would it produce similar results to Google?

Without an obvious means to identify, we would say yes. It’s likely because, similar to Google, these brands have personalities, and joining their tribes is more than just buying their products or services. It also speaks to who a person is and what they value.

February 14, 2009

Brand Architecture

The term “brand architecture” may sound like a mixture of widely divergent disciplines. Actually, establishing a strong firm identity and position is often related to successful brand architecture.

There are two different types of brand architecture: corporate-dominant, and product-dominant. Some companies successfully mix the two using corporate endorsement of different product brands. Corporate-dominant architecture is found more often in business-to-business companies, with fewer numbers of products and clear target markets. Product-dominant architecture is more consumer-based.

We have recently been engaged by a local company that designs and manufactures a wide consumer product line, with different target audiences–from Nordstrom’s to Sam’s Club. In our Perception Branding d5 Process we identified the differences in the products, the buying motivation and retail experience. Not surprisingly, the company maintains a distinctive brand differentiation between their three retail divisions. The products that sell at Nordstrom are physically different and separately branded from those which sell at Rite-Aid. For this client we will maintain a product-dominant architecture to maintain the physical and perceptual differences between different retailers.

Last year we created a new identity for Albion, an international company based in Clearfield, Utah. Albion has three distinct markets that are so independent that customers in each are best left unaware of the other two. Our brand audit revealed disparate and struggling product brands fighting for attention, while the corporate brand became lost in the mix. The direction for our strategy became clear: we created a corporate-dominant structure, even though the target markets are widely individual.

As indicated by Phillip Kotler in B2B Brand Management, “A key element of success is the framing of a harmonious and consistent brand architecture across countries and product lines, defining the number of levels and brands at each level. Of particular importance is the relative emphasis placed on corporate brands as opposed to product level brands.”

November 30, 2008

You Have More Than One Identity

We are a brand design agency. The value of our company’s services–in fact for our whole industry–is based upon this single truth: image is a perception, not necessarily a fact. Buyers cannot know in a factual sense all there is to know about your company. What they don’t know, they might assume with or without any real evidence. These so-formed perceptions are influential to a buyer, just as real factors based on hard evidence are, and may well determine the buying decision.

Phillip Kotler of the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University tells us that usually a company has several different identities: the communicated, actual, conceived, desired and ideal identity. First, you need to know where you are—your actual identity (1), in order to find a way to your desired identity (2). Preferably, the desired identity is also the ideal identity (3). However, what you’re communicating (4) and how people conceive it (5) can be two very different things.

Your identity is made visible in your brand image: your company name, logo, tagline and brand story. Your brand identity is, of course, much more. It is a long-lasting strategic asset that represents the timeless values of your brand and exists in the minds of your customer. Your brand image (names, logos, taglines) is a tactical asset that can change from time to time.

Potential customers, who have never had any contact with your company, may still possess a strong image of you. Without a purchasing experience, image may decide whether they use you at all. That’s why one of the most important goals in brand management is to reduce complexity. Inasmuch as buyers cannot know all there is about your company, and you can’t be all things to all people, it is essential to concentrate your brand message to what is critically important.

August 8, 2008

Marketing-Driven or Design-Driven

Years ago we were working with a marketing executive who managed to repeat the same phrase in every single meeting we attended. She would always work in the phrase “marketing-driven solution”, often in the form of a question. Was our proposal a marketing driven solution? What about the headline? It got to be a joke around the office. Does this color look marketing-driven? This paper stock? What about that typeface?

That was fifteen years ago. Today, design-driven companies are the topics of conversation. I.D. (International Design) magazine published a list of the 40 most “design-driven companies in America”. Obvious selections were on the list: Apple, Gillette, IBM, Patgonia, 3M. But as business management guru Tom Peters says, “More interesting to me, fully half the companies were service companies. Amazon.com made the list. So did Bloomberg. Also: Federal Express. CNN. Disney. Martha Stewart…even The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.” (Note to local readers: that’s the actual quote.)

Coca-Cola’s Vice-President for Design, David Butler, avoids using the word “design” as much as possible. Though he has written up a 30-page manifesto laying out a design strategy for the company, when he is meeting with manufacturing people, he’ll say, “How can we make the can feel colder, longer?” Or “How can we make the cup easier to hold?” He talks about the benefits of smart design in a language to which those he’s talking to can relate. According to Business Week magazine, this surreptitious approach seems to be working. The new Coke identity work won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions awards program in June.

Mohamed Samah, a design socio-psychologist said, “The design discipline itself is expanding beyond ‘form and look’ to include processes and business strategy in general. Organizations are using design as a tool to stimulate creativity and to foster innovation in the market”.

Successful marketing-driven companies are in fact design-driven companies, attested by the success of such divergent companies as Harley-Davidson, Target and Nike.

January 2, 2008

Commiting to Your Brand

Last week we presented D3: Depict, the conclusion of our strategic, pre-design services to a large Salt Lake architectural firm. The presentation included our recommendations for brand strategy, including the Brand Promise and new tagline. We now begin the design of a new identity for the firm. In the question and answer period following our formal presentation, someone asked, “Though we have 18 principals here, there are many employees not here. How do we get everyone on board?”

It’s a good question.

Tom Peters, the management guru who wrote In Search of Excellence in 1982, and a highly-regarded business thinker, said that developing a Brand Promise was important and made sense, but unless everyone in the company buys into it, the whole exercise is a waste. He asks, “Does this Brand Promise make sense to you? As individuals? In your daily work? With your clients? Is it genuine, dramatic, an inspiring departure from the past? Does the new ‘story line’ give you goose bumps? Yes, branding is about the logo, the slogan, the marketing campaign, the advertising. But, in the end, branding is about credibility. Do the 99.9 percent of your people who work in the trenches buy the act? Do they live it, with vigor? Do they convey it with passion?”

You always launch a new brand identity internally first. As brand guru, Marty Neumeier says, “The secret of a living brand is that it lives throughout the company, not just in the marketing department. Since branding is a process, not an entity, it can be learned, taught, replicated and cultivated. Continuing education programs can get everyone in the company onto the same page, while seminars, workshops, and critiques can keep outside collaborators singing in tune.” At Ernst & Young an interactive brand quiz was developed to help employees become brand savvy. When employees answered 80% of the questions correctly, they receive a Global Brand Ambassador certificate. At Citigroup, a thought book communicates the central unifying principles of the brand identity program. A brand education program, whatever its form, distributed throughout the company (and with creative partners), develops brand ambassadors and long-time survival of the brand.