Market Summary - Brand Strategy Insight
Media Update:
Brand Strategy Insight
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Date:
QTR 2 2012
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Sponsor:
Siegel+Gale
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Hot Topics
1.Simplicity
The world is a complex place and getting more and more complicated. This is not just about media fragmentation, this relates to data overload and the inevitable tuning out that the human mind undertakes when hit with too much information. Brands that make it simple for their audiences, will be chosen more often. And the ability to make it simple will become more and more valuable.
2. Insights not information
With the data that comes with digital, marketing is measurable like never before. But while this helps structure marketing programmes and can measure historical success, very little of this really helps brand managers set the strategy for the brand itself. How can we get true customer insights that provide the real reasons why brands are chosen in certain marketplaces?
3. People, not just communications.
Brands are often delivered through people. This is particularly true of B2B brands, where a sales or account relationship is key to the success of the business. Where people are your key touchpoint, how do you deliver a brand experience that goes beyond just ‘good service’. How can you make it unique? How can you ensure that your employees get it, believe it and live it?
4. Customer experience is more important than ever
With word of mouth and social networks combining with owned digital media, the reality of what you actually deliver drives brand perception much more so than the expectation that you set through communication. This means brands are focusing on aspects of the experience which previously weren’t even considered central to brand building: call centers, statements, loyalty schemes. Coordinating this experience so that a single, consistent and coherent impression is built up is critical to success.
5. A clear picture on what your brand is and why people should care
Brands have always needed a clear promise: one that is relevant to their audiences, differentiated from their competition and credible. But with so many more people involved in the brand – employees, intermediaries, consumers, everyone – strong brands need to be instantly and clearly recognisable. Increasingly the ‘why care’ question is bring in questions of business ethics, and the best brands are developing what we call ‘purpose’, a strong sense of what they are on the planet to achieve.
View the Siegel+Gale blog here
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How Does it Work?
Building a world-class brand doesn't happen by chance. It’s a purposeful endeavor that is rooted in the fusion of disciplined, strategic thinking and unencumbered creativity. The result is a brand strategy, story and experience that’s elegantly simple, unexpectedly fresh, and an asset that drives your business ahead.
Strategic platform
Great brand strategies are grounded in the truth of an organisation—its legacy, unique capabilities and opportunities. A strategic platform uniquely captures who you are.
Brand architecture
Coherent brands are built to last. They optimise for today and plan for tomorrow. Building a coherent brand architecture to your brand make the full breadth of your organisations offerings clear and accessible, ensuring your brand stays focused over time.
Brand alignment
Effective brand alignment turns every colleague into a brand evangelist. It helps get your people pointed in the right direction and working toward a common goal.
Brand voice
There's a tone and style that's all your own—your organisation's unmistakable character.
Naming
A name is the gateway to your brand experience—helping to shape people's first impressions, associations and connections to what you do. The right name helps you to set yourself apart from your competition and truly stand for who you are.
Visual identity
First impressions matter—and a first impression is almost always visual. Identities and visual systems should illuminate, enhance and expand the core tenets of your brand.
Messaging strategy
Every organisation has multiple audiences, internal and external. Each of these are different and have specific interest – you need a clear strategy for your brand to help tell your story to the right people in the right way.
Retail environments
Your brand lives in the real world. When your customers encounter it in their daily lives, your environment affects their thoughts and emotions—which, in turn, influence their behavior.
Engaging environments help customers understand where to look, what to do, how to complete transactions and where to get help. They understand what you stand for and what you do, and they immediately see how they can find, access, use, or buy your offerings to their best advantage.
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How can a branding partner help?
1.Increase revenue
Organisation may feel tempted to deploy quick-fix tactics that provide short-term boots to revenue…but no long-term growth in your brand value. Today’s investment in a strategic branding programme can lead to tomorrow’s revenue growth. Developing a strategic platform that acts as a foundation for global expansion, new product launches and any other business ventures will contribute to your organisation’s long-term brand health and financial gain.
- Expand globally
- Forge an M+A brand
- Establish category leadership
- Expand your customer base
- Introduce a new company Launch new products
- Increase customer retention
- Cultivate customer loyalty
- Uncover customer insights
- Boost conversion rates
2. Improve Market Size
Globalisation and the proliferation of new products, services and technologies have created a fiercely competitive environment. Only careful management of your brand’s positioning and assets can ensure your brand’s success across channels, audiences and product categories. In particular, today’s digital environment caters to customers who live online and on the go. Help your brand meet your customers wherever they are, and increase your chances to capture new corners of the market.
- Strengthen a brand
- Transform your customer experience
- Extend a brand
- Re-define a brand
- Refresh a brand Create a new brand
- Develop branded environments
- Take your brand online
- Make your brand mobile
- Prepare your brand for social media
3. Strengthen relationships
Service-oriented organizations rely heavily on their employees and their functional communications to represent the brand. Improving brand expression, therefore, means improving all service-oriented touchpoints—and that happens from the inside out. We provide tools and training that can turn your entire workforce into brand ambassadors, as well as strategies for touchpoint prioritization, simplified communications and consistent brand management.
- Coordinate your brand’s touchpoints
- Energise employee performance
- Provide brand training
- Provide brand management tools
- Clarify communications
- Turn regulation into opportunity
- Transform legalese into plain language
4. Save Money
Of course, every organisation seeks to control costs. While it may not be the first place that managers look, a strategic branding programme can deliver remarkable ROI. Streamlined brand architecture can generate significant cost savings by revealing brand equity between business lines, partners, products and services, making it easier for customers to find the offerings they need. And simplification offers savings in the form of reduced customer service costs, increased operational efficiencies and migration to more cost-effective formats and channels.
- Rationalise your brand architecture
- Lower production costs of communications
- Integrate organisational cultures
- Simplify communications
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