It seems obvious, brand hierarchy. You have a corporate, or parent brand, then you have product brands, or sub-brands, and sometimes you have ingredient brands.
Like this:
Honda Civic Sedan XM® Satellite Radio
Master brand Sub-brand Product description Ingredient brand
But sometimes it gets more complicated. Like this:
Sometimes an organization creates brands haphazardly, so that customers don’t know how they relate. Or it creates brands that map to internal organization, versus how the customer would want to see them. One of our clients serves businesses, but because its internal organization makes a distinction between large and small business, it has separately branded product lines for each. Yet the customer, large or small, doesn’t make that distinction and wants the same products. Another had separate brand names for its research arm, its foundation and its health delivery service, which made it so the good work of the research arm and foundation didn’t increase the brand equity of the health delivery service.
Brand hierarchy matters, because it signals to the customer, through names and organization, how they should think about your products and services. Your goal is to organize your brand architecture in a way that features your brand assets and makes things easier for your customers.
So what are the five best practices when creating your brand hierarchy?
1) Organize your brands the way the customer thinks about your products and services
2) Keep it as simple as you possibly can
3) Invest in brands where you see future potential
4) Retain and maintain brand equity in existing brands
5) Formalize brand hierarchy and brand hierarchy management to align with customer needs
Other great resources for learning more about brand hierarchies are Wikipedia’s brand architecture entry and this article by Professor Rajagopal.
Parker LePla's complimentary brand consultation can also help you sort out how to formalize and/or develop a brand hierarchy that aligns with your customers needs.
Posted by
Jen Travis on Thu, May 24, 2012 @ 02:55 PM
Mapping the customer experience from the customer's point of view is essential if you really want to design experiences that build brand loyalty. Seeing the world through their eyes is also eye opening--for those on the ground serving the customers and those developing the business strategies that drive that service. But, there are some important things to keep in mind when mapping the customer experience that will help you increase the return on your investment in this exercise.
- Involve the right stakeholders. The right ones are the ones directly involved with that customer experience you are mapping, as well as those who, if not involved, could torpedo the resulting strategies. Think critically about who is at the table, and involve liberally to get both the appropriate insight and ensure stakeholders feel heard.
- Know the customer context. Who are they, what are their goals, what motivates them to seek you out? Without the customer context, you are only guessing, but even worse, guessing from your own point of view. Make sure all stakeholders know the customer's context and is genuinely taking a walk in their shoes.
- Validate with research. Before mapping the experience, get actual input from your customers. Ask them, "how do you go about solving this problem? What areas of the experience could be improved? Where did you go first? Then, what did you do? Was that helpful?" You don't have to do large scale research, but you should ask several representative customers so your mapping is grounded in reality.
Check out our white paper on Customer Experience Mapping to learn more about how to map the customer experience successfully.
Integrated branding used to mean living your brand internally, while communicating it outwardly. Walking the talk, as it were. It was a way to ensure your customers experienced your brand promise and your employees delivered it. And for many years, it was a competitive advantage, one that we wrote books about so that companies could take advantage of the benefits of living a strong brand.
With the digital era upon us, that distinction is disappearing. Today, all companies must act as if they lived in glass houses, since in fact, they do. Total transparency is the only answer when your employees and customers can tell the world about what you do and how well you keep your promises. To quote Bob Dylan: to live outside the law, you must be honest.
So whither integrated branding? Its new form is total integration with the customer. Your brand, and what the customer cares about, must be one thing. There is no “us and them” anymore; there is only the customer’s desires. Your job is to intersect with those desires, meet them, and then infect the customer with delight so they tell others.
So here’s the three-question test to determine if you are living the integrated brand:
1) Do you feel pangs of conscience when reading your ads or your website?
2) Are you frustrated by internal cultural issues getting in the way of doing the right thing?
3) Would you prefer the superpower of invisibility over that of flying?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you have work to do to become one with your brand, and one with your customer.
As everyone is still adjusting to the new Facebook timeline format, we at Parker LePla are happy about the shift; it makes organizational storytelling an easier and more compelling part of your digital brand strategy. Stories are more memorable and bring about an emotional response that creates relationships and personal connections. The new Facebook Timelines format facilitates these connections when you use these new features:
Take advantage of the new cover image. This picture is big—851x315 pixels—which really allows you to amp up your digital brand. By choosing an image that represents your organization’s brand personality you can tell a compelling story that people can instantly connect with. Maybe you have an event coming up or want to highlight a new campaign—you can also use this space for that.
Curate and prioritize your past and present posts. The new Facebook allows you to create a history or timeline for your organization where you can highlight images, posts and milestones that make your organization special and move them to the top of your page. Check out these featured organizations from Fast Company using Facebook timeline to beef up their digital brand strategy.
Highlight apps on the top of your page. Facebook timeline allows you to feature up to four apps that let you further develop relationships with your fans. These apps can vary from videos and presentations to custom built apps highlighting events or calls to action.
You can also use the new Facebook timeline features to engage your internal fans--your employees. Allow your employees to have a personal connection with your fans as well and encourage them to tell their personal stories about your brand (ala Zappos). Doing so will engage visitors of your page even more and build more true fans. Start by enlisting some employees to think about your organization’s milestones and where they were and what they were working on during those times.
How has the new Facebook timeline format changed the way you do business or connect with your fans?
Posted by
Jen Travis on Mon, Apr 30, 2012 @ 11:55 AM
How would you develop brand positioning for a business designed to turn a profit from beyond our planet? It’s a question that will become increasingly relevant as many private space-travel ventures like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic vie for our space dollars. Will the story you tell—how you position your brand—allow you to achieve escape velocity?
SciFi writer, Robert A. Heinlein wrote the definitive work on selling space way back in 1949: The Man Who Sold the Moon. His lead character, Delos Harriman, tries a little of everything in terms of brand positioning—from enlisting the help of billionaire friends to selling the promise of space for the benefit of all mankind to extolling the potential of lunar diamonds.
Fast forward to 2012 and we find Planetary Resources, a collection of billionaires, selling the promise of space and promising to bring back asteroids made of platinum from near-earth orbits. Here’s how co-chair Peter Diamandis positioned this in his announcement speech: “Since my early teenage years, I’ve wanted to be an asteroid miner…The vision of Planetary Resources is to make the resources of space available to humanity both in space and here on Earth.”
What’s compelling here? Unlike the Virgin Galactics, Planetary Resources isn’t just talking about the category—space travel—it’s telling me what the benefit is and how they will make my life better.
What’s the lesson? If you want a sustainable advantage in a new product category you need to do more than build category awareness; you need to explain the role you want to play to improve my life.
--Joe LePla
Posted by
Jen Travis on Mon, Apr 16, 2012 @ 11:02 AM
A great brand experience is made up of several tangible and intangible elements that come together to create a feeling of satisfaction that seems unparalleled. Here are a few of the top components of a great brand experience.
- Uniqueness. Being different is one thing, but being unique in a way that is relevant, useful and engaging, is another. When thinking about your brand experience, think about how it can stand out because it addresses an issue no one else does or provides a surprising or unexpected moment. See a brand-defining experience that wows from SpanAir as an example of a unique experience that leverages the unexpected.
- Consistency. Being consistent is really about delivering on expectations time after time--promising customers that with you, they won't be let down. Think Starbucks vs. independent coffee shops. People know that when they go into a Starbucks wherever they are in the world, they will get the product they have come to expect. People need reliability because they find it comforting. Starbucks provides this.
- Seamless. When one piece of the brand experience falls down, it doesn't really matter how great the other pieces work because the customer only remembers the one(s) that didn't. For instance, when you order something online and your email confirmation states you will receive it in 7-10 days and you still haven't received it on day 11, it doesn't matter how great the product is, the experience leaves a bitter feeling that causes you to think twice about ordering from that company again.
- Validating. A great brand is one that validates the customer's self-esteem, making them feel smart and full of good taste. To provide a brand experience that is validating requires that you look at that experience from the customer's point of view--what are their goals and how do they want to achieve them through your brand? What will make them feel good about their choices? Turn the lens around and do some customer experience mapping and it's amazing what you will discover.
To learn more about what makes great brand experiences, check out our presentation on brand-defining experiences.
Posted by
Jen Travis on Wed, Apr 11, 2012 @ 10:29 AM
Many, many, many service providers, from advertising agencies to OD consultants, say they do branding. So if you have a branding challenge, how do you pick who to work with?
Ask these questions to drill down on whether you’re working with the right type of brand strategy consultant.
1) What services do they lead with? A graphic design firm that says they do branding as an add-on mostly will provide visual services, versus helping an organization figure out its strategic brand difference. If all you need is a simple visual refresh, this may be fine. But if you need to understand how to integrate a new company into your brand architecture, this is a recipe for disaster.
2) Do they think branding is a message or an experience? A brand strategy consultant will look at all your customer touchpoints to see where your brand delivery is falling down or needs to be changed. They will look at culture and employee behavior as a key determinant of whether you can live your brand. An advertising agency or graphic design firm will typically stop at messaging.
3) Do they use research with both customers and internally to help you figure out what your brand promise is? If a consultant makes up your brand, you have no idea if your brand is based on your true assets and what customers care about. So the chances that you a) can deliver on the promise and b) are delivering something that drives purchase behavior, are remote.
4) Can they provide both the strategy and the marketing tools to implement it? Deciding what your brand should stand for is step one. Then you have to make your brand come alive via brand-based marketing. Does the firm you’re looking at stop at the concept, or have the ability to take you through to tactics that make the phone ring?
5) Do they have ways to measure the impact of branding in terms of leads and sales? It’s very easy to say that branding will make a difference, but actually measuring branding’s impact on your revenues is out of scope for many so-called branding firms. Ask if your brand strategy consultant has methods for linking branding messages and actions to the lead generation process, so you can know if the money you’re spending on your brand is driving up profits.
The bottom line: if you need strategy, hire a brand strategy consultant. If you need graphic design, hire a graphic designer. Don’t get the two roles confused. And, learn more about potential mistakes that can be made in branding in the Top 5 Branding Mistakes brief.
The Associated Press reported today that iPad is becoming the default generic name for any tablet computer. They then went on to list other companies whose trademarks had fallen by the wayside as they became more broadly used to describe any product in the category. For example, did you know heroine was a brand name once held by Bayer? Or zipper by BF Goodrich? Naming a business is about much more than the category you're in.
While I could debate whether this is actually a good thing or a bad thing from a brand perspective—after all, who wouldn’t want to become the standard in the industry?—it did remind me that protecting your name by registering its trademark is an important piece of naming your business, along with a few other steps:
1) Memorability: Remember when naming a product or a company that memorability is your first criteria, always! Even the most bizarre names become both familiar and imbued with meaning over time.
2) Internet search: Do a thorough scouring of the internet—use a couple of different search engines to look up not only the name but misspellings of the name, slight variations and the name plus your industry category. This will reveal, more broadly than a trademark search, who’s using the name already.
3) Foreign language search: Use Google Translator or the like to look up your word (particularly if it’s a made up word) in a number of popular languages. Even if your product or company will be limited to the US, wouldn’t you want to know what the name means in Spanish just in case? If you’re going international, look for a translation firm who can do a more thorough search using native speakers who can thinking about potential variations.
4) Legal search: Even if you don’t have plans to Trademark your name, this will help you avoid a scary cease and desist letter down the road and the potential for discontinued use of your name. Hire a lawyer to do this—it’s important.
5) Registering a trademark: While this could cost you $2,000 - $5,000 in legal fees, it does help protect your name from interlopers, even if your goal is to become the Kleenex of your industry.
For more tips on naming check out our branding brief Choosing a Name.
Posted by
Jen Travis on Wed, Mar 28, 2012 @ 04:18 PM
Digital branding, much like traditional branding, is about being authentic and consistently delivering on your promise. As the front door for your prospects, your website and social media presence becomes your brand’s face. From the moment they land on your home page or your Facebook page, visitors make snap judgments about the value you provide, how you’re different from competitors and whether they feel an emotional connection to your brand. So it’s important to consider how well your web presence communicates your value.
But, many organizations fail to do this. Here are some of the most common mistakes we see when it comes to digital branding:
1. Treating your website as an online brochure--not an extension of your brand.
Even though your site should tell visitors what you do, that shouldn't be the only thing it does. Smart business owners get this, but they often respond to this imperative by spending a lot of time on their site’s design, colors and images. That’s a good start, but design is only part of a prospect’s online experience. Equally important are:
- The type of content you have
- How the content is organized for each of your target users
- How it drives them to a deeper level of engagement with you through useful and relevant experiences
- How well it delivers on your brand promise.
People won’t watch your YouTube videos, visit your website, read your blogs, comment on your Facebook page or download your apps if they don’t immediately get value. From your website architecture to your content strategy to SEO, your brand’s digital experience needs to align with your off-line experiences and engage users through differentiated and relevant experiences. Check out the 3 secrets to creating powerful digital brand experiences that lead to sales.
2. Forgetting your website and social media pages are also lead generation tools.
Gone are the days of putting a website up and hoping the leads just roll in. Your website and your social media pages should be working much harder than that for you as inbound marketing tools--actively pulling leads in and helping you convert them to sales. Lead generation online from inbound marketing costs 62% less than traditional, outbound marketing and generates more traffic to your site and up to a 14.2% close rate on leads (vs.1.7% via direct mail). Everything you do online—advertising, e-mail marketing, social networking—should include a call to action that moves visitors up the engagement scale. Once the visitors arrive, you need to pay off the promise with an experience or value added content.
The keys to inbound marketing and online lead generation are:
- SEO--on-page and off-page
- Blogging--frequently and strategically
- Social media--cross-linking from social media to website and allowing for sharing and commenting
- Value-added offers--to drive interest and capture lead information
Learn more about how Parker LePla can help you develop an inbound marketing program that increases lead generation and helps you close more sales.
3. Not knowing who you are targeting on your website or social media pages.
Targeting the general public is NOT targeting. If you are trying to talk to everyone, you're really talking to no one. The key to a powerful digital brand is knowing not only what segment of the market your brand is the best fit for, but also what their challenges, needs and goals are so you can design a digital brand that delivers on those.
We recommend starting with focused audience segmentation--what types of people/user/customers will most likely be seeking what you have to offer and how are they alike and not alike. Then, from that, we help our clients create personas--archetypes of their best-fit customers that they want to target, that help them drill down on specifically what these types of people are looking for, what they need and what gets in their way. Personas are the key to designing a digital brand that is relevant, useful and compelling.
Check out the anatomy of a persona to learn more.
4. Designing a website from the company's point of view--not the customer's.
Many companies decide they need a new website and then go straight to design, making sure it has the right colors, images and messaging about their company. They forget a very important step--a strategy. A website strategy (as well as a social media strategy) help you think about two things: a) what business goals are we trying to achieve?, and b) what goals are our customers and prospects trying to achieve?
We recommend turning the lens around and looking at your website and social media pages through the eyes of your target audiences and then identifying the opportunities where you can uniquely provide an experience or solution that intersects with their needs. We do this through a process of experience mapping. It looks at each of your unique user groups and maps out where they are online, what paths they would take to get to your site, what they would do there and the choices they would make as they navigate through the site. This is a key step in developing your strategy because it points to all of the important components of online experience design: your social media presence, your online marketing presence, your keyword buys and your website.
5. Thinking you control the conversation about your brand online.
Branding is no longer about companies pushing out messages, images and ideas in a one-dimensional way. It is about opening the brand up to a dialogue. By changing branding from a one-dimensional experience to a series of conversations, social branding turns the company—collectively and as individual employees—into participants finding ways to fuel meaningful conversations that can evolve the brand. While your company will experience this
as losing some control over the brand, the upside is a much more powerful and meaningful brand experience. A strong social brand builds preference through peer endorsements as
well as positive product and company experiences. By creating this broad network, you will also build a defense and extended support team in times of crisis (think about all the loyal
Toyota owners chatting on Facebook some months ago).
Check out our social brand manifesto to learn more about what it takes to become a social brand.
Posted by
Jen Travis on Thu, Mar 08, 2012 @ 05:02 PM
Not to toot our own horn, but our new logo and visual brand identity is getting some mention by MarketingNW.com in their article: Design: Conveying an Experience.
We wanted our new visual brand to demonstrate both the approach we take with our clients and the end result--an experience that is engaging and reflects who we are.
We think our new origami business card does that. What do you think?
