Why Your Brand Onion Makes You Weep

How can marketers turn their insights into credible and compelling brand platforms?

Defining your brand
Recently, I have been meeting more and more marketers who are no longer able to hide their frustrations when it comes to brand definition.
Brand onions make them weep in exasperation. Workshops quickly turn into brand counselling sessions. Brand plans embrace expansive theories on the comparative merits of attributes, values, personalities, dimensions, benefits and reasons-to-believe.
Common sense must now prevail where so many models and methodologies have failed. It seems that the old adage about drunks, lampposts and research should now be applied to defining our brands.
Segmentation, targeting and positioning represent the fundamentals. But the key question facing marketers is how to translate this understanding and insight into the credible, compelling and consistent platform essential for the success of your brand.
Every brand is different. That said, there are nevertheless some universal truths that can help us in defining our brands, regardless of your preferred — or most despised — framework.

Unlock your brand’s equity
The two simplest growth codes for a brand are relevance and differentiation. Make customers an offer that fits with their needs and that cannot (easily) be replicated by a competitor. The more relevant you are to your customers, and the greater degree of clear water you put between you and the competition, the more likely it is that your brand will be successful.
Nudie’s combination of a relevant message — “A day’s fruit in every bottle” — with a distinctive and appealing personality has been a great success, breathing new life into the otherwise dull and commodity driven bottled juice market.

Make your brand first, best and only
Brands that are able to pinpoint and focus on their unique appeal maximise the depth of their relationship with their customers. Food that tastes delicious and cars that get you from A to B might only be sufficient for your brand to enter the market, but not necessarily to lead and shape it.
Apple claims to have captured 50% percent of the market for digital music players and 70% of all songs bought online respectively(1). The Apple brand and its products are unique in combining technology and design with an understanding of how consumers want to interact with their music. iPod and iTunes are not simply changing the music industry, rather they are leaving them behind.

Consider style and substance
A brand without style can be a bit dull. Likewise, a brand without substance is inevitably not a particularly compelling proposition. A balance of the two, however, clicks with your customers in a way that does not simply draw their attention, but sparks their imaginations.
Aussie Home Loans — together their CEO John Symond — has a style all of its own when it comes to financial services. But it is also a promise that is backed-up by great products, and has stirred the industry giants, and consumers, from their slumber.

Focus on your customer, but lead with the idea
In a world of constant change, our customers are not equipped with the time or the tools to see what is coming over the horizon. As a result, the marketer as customer champion can only provide an insight into their behaviour today, whilst the idea champion opens the door to tomorrow and inspires customers to follow.
LG’s lifestyle-led idea of the future is their true north, and keeps them one step ahead of both their consumers and the competition across a broad range of white and brown goods.

Keep your brand’s promises
A successful brand is only as good as its last interaction and, like any relationship in life, the best ones are mutual and built cumulatively over time. A strong brand promise will give you a strong head start in the race for the hearts and minds of your customers, but the failure to deliver on that promise will drive them to despair, or worse, to the competition.
Bakers Delight has a meticulous system of checks to ensure that each of its franchises is committed to bringing to life their promise of “Real Bread, Real People, Real Delight” everyday for their customers and their staff.
Marketing “is not rocket science” — enough people have told me this over the years for it to be true by default — so it does not make sense that we should react by trying to introduce endlessly complex layers to our brands’ definitions.
Our brands and our customers — not to mention our dear selves — would inevitably be far better served by making virtues of clarity, utility and ease of understanding.
That means brands built on a platform of four attributes not forty, workshops with outcomes, not whatever comes out, and brand plans that ensure a definitive direction not simply derivative discussion.

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JUNE 13, 2005
BY RICHARD CURTIS
DIRECTOR, BRAND CONSULTING, LANDOR SYDNEY
B&T MAGAZINE

1. REUTERS 19 JULY 2004
THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN B & T MAGAZINE (27 AUGUST 2004).