All the best names are provocations: Virgin, Yahoo, Caterpillar, Fannie Mae, Gap, Banana Republic, Crossfire, Igor. To qualify as a provocation, a name must contain what most people would call “negative messages” for the goods and services the name is to represent. Get the full scoop on the power of negativity in company names from Igor’s Theory of Negativity.
Horsing Around: As reported earlier this year, Kentucky is among location brands in the United States seeking to cultivate positive images — among residents as well as visitors — with ambitious advertising campaigns meant to speak with one voice for governmental departments like business development and tourism.
We weighed-in on the topic of location branding some weeks ago, and eagerly awaited the results of the Kentucky brand image makeover. The results are in. Kentucky misses an enormous competitive opportunity. Here’s the story:
After months of research and brainstorming, Kentucky is about to let people select a new slogan and logo for the state.
The choices unveiled yesterday are:
Kentucky: Unbridled Spirit.
Kentucky: Limitless.
Kentucky: Where Legends are Born.
Kentucky: Make History.
The new [taglines] and logos are at the front of the state’s effort to “brand” Kentucky — or reinvent its identity. The winner will be used in a $14 million marketing campaign.
A horse is featured in three of the four because it was the overwhelming image that people who were surveyed associated with the state, Tourism Commissioner Randy Fiveash said in a telephone interview yesterday.
“All of the four have the ability to work very well for us,” he said.
Kentucky’s search for a brand has drawn national attention, including jokes about the state on late-night television, capped by Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno” to talk about the campaign….
In our view the jokes should continue. Why is it the well-meaning leaders of Kentucky cannot get it right when it comes to effective branding? We wondered about this too, and found the answer further down in the same story:
[Tourism Commissioner] Fiveash said more than 75 entries were considered. The final four were chosen through surveys of focus groups both in and out of the state and feedback from travel and industry writers, he said….
Rather than relying on research methodologies such as focus groups or surveys of travel writers, Kentucky would have been better served by exploring human emotions.
Instead, the process Kentucky relies upon for their brand image makeover creates banal rather than breakthrough.
Banal branding frequently results from a breakdown of process discipline, often led by firms who explain they understand brand strategy, then demonstrate they know advertising. It follows, of course, that we learn this fact about the Kentucky effort:
[T]he advertising agency New West LLC of Louisville…has been paid about $400,000 so far to develop the brand options.
The good people of Kentucky have been hosed. Not only was $400,000 spent on an effort most any university Marketing 101 student could have developed, with these results Kentucky has been saddled with advertising expenditures in amounts far more than the $14 million budgeted thus far, in the faint hope of someday shoving the brand through the white noise of popular culture.
The reasons for this failed effort are many, including how none of these four tagline/logo finalists provide separation for the brand from competitors, demonstrate to the world why Kentucky is different, create engagement with their audience, become unforgettable, propel themselves through the world on their own, and provide a deep well of mental images tugging at multiple levels.
As a result, none of these options creates for Kentucky a competitive advantage, as each of the four finalists could just as easily be applied to ANY of our 50 states:
Delaware: Make History, or
Wyoming: Unbridled Spirit, or
Texas: Where Legends Are Born, or
Illinois: Limitless
The opportunity with every new image effort is that of identifying a single evocative point of difference to create a lasting competitive advantage. Accomplish this, and grow a balance sheet asset. Miss it, and saddle the client with a lasting advertising expense.
A brand name and tagline are the first public expressions of a brand and the promise it makes. In any branding project these components must be compelling, authentic and relevant to the target audience. If not, the brand is left to explain itself in lines of copy and visual imagery, and becomes less than effective in expanding business opportunity.
For location brands, it is critical the brand tagline be evocative and connective. The tagline becomes the first moment of truth in attempts to differentiate and connect with an audience. Combined with the location brand name, the tagline must work on a stand-alone basis.
A terrific opportunity to grow tourism and business development opportunity for the people of Kentucky has been wasted. What could have been a high return investment will become just another expensive advertising effort.
Saddle up Kentucky. Jay Leno is calling.
Thursday, October 28th, 2004 - 11:43am |
Brand Image/Identity + Brand Rehab + Destination Branding |
Comments (3) As the economy in the United States seemingly groans upward, banks are increasingly worried about losing deposits of those who seek more lucrative returns in stocks and other investments. As detailed in The Wall Street Journal, banks are returning to the use of gift premiums to attract new customers:
As banks intensify their focus on the consumer side of their business, they are dusting off the decades-old strategy of handing out gifts to new depositors. But this time, they are skipping the free toasters and instead offering bigger-ticket items: DVD players, flat-screen televisions, personal paper shredders and Sony Playstations. One bank in New York is even handing out new cars to people willing to put at least $100,000 into a five-year certificate of deposit.
Come-ons such as these are making a particularly strong comeback at small to midsize banks, which are looking for new ways to distinguish themselves from bigger rivals eyeing their turf. But larger institutions also are joining the fray….
Yesterday, Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank unit [began offering up to] $200 to customers who open a checking account online [and] agree to [other conditions]….
When competitors in a business space begin mimicking each other, those with the deepest balance sheets always win. The big balance sheets are able to finance consumer acquisition wars longer than others. Opportunity awaits the competitor who runs in the opposite direction.
Study your competition to find the brand strategy no one else is using, then grab that strategy to develop market traction. It sounds too simple to be true. But it is. And, it’s far less expensive.
Find an authentic, compelling point of difference, and demonstrate that difference during each moment of truth with your consumer. Do this and own a bankable position in the mind of the consumer. Do this consistently, and you have a brand that grows as a balance sheet asset, without the need to give away margin through promotions that do little to promote long-term consumer loyalty.
For a good discussion of how to engage those you want to reach online with precision, take a look at this article discussing Google’s targeted keyword model, AdWords.
While the author speaks of how AdWords could be effectively used for candidate advertising in the United States presidential campaign, by implication the story also demonstrates how this targeting methodology can place you at the keyboard of THE consumer you wish to reach.
Mitsubishi Corporation makes and sells Mitsubishi cars. And Mitsubishi home electronics. And Mitsubishi farm tractors and implements.
That’s a challenge for an international company intent on increasing market share in the United States automotive market.
Mitsubishi Motors is intent on overcoming not only a weak brand but also a series of setbacks creating brand irrelevancy among consumers. To their credit, Mitsubishi executives are openly discussing these efforts, as The New York Times reports:
If no one seems to want to buy your cars, it’s probably a good idea to talk about something else. Like, say, a big fat warranty.
“Nobody stands behind their cars like Mitsubishi,” a narrator says during “Anthem,” a commercial … that will make its debut this week…. The commercials … promote Mitsubishis as “the best-backed cars in the world” on the strength of the company’s new 10-year, 100,000 mile, powertrain warranty - which covers engine and transmission troubles - and a five-year warranty for everything else….
“We want to assure people that we are a high-quality product,” said Ian Beavis, senior vice president for marketing at Mitsubishi Motors North America, in an interview. “It’s a much bigger idea than just the warranty. ‘Best backed cars’ says to consumers: ‘Mitsubishi is here to stay.’ ”
In the United States, the most lucrative auto market, the company has ranked below average in recent J. D. Power & Associates…. [The] company’s market share [i]s just 0.6 percent, half of what it was a year ago.
“We’re trying to rebuild the brand,” said Mr. Beavis…. “We’re trying to get a stronger emotional connection with our customers and give them a more rational reason to buy…. What I’m trying to do here is build a connection with consumers and give them a rational understanding about why they should consider us.”
Advertising does not exist to paper over a brand’s deficiencies. While good advertising will often encourage consumer trial, in selling a consumer product or service the name of the game is attracting the repeat consumer. Repeat comes only by building trust in your brand. As any brand publicly represents your product, and all its attributes, capabilities, and even warts, it is critical the product deliver easily-understood benefits of relevance to the target consumer.
For Mitsubishi Motors, the problem is two-fold. First, the brand name itself lacks even the hint of a compelling point of difference. “Why buy a car from the same company that makes televisions,” one might ask.
Second, if product quality is not at a minimally acceptable level to establish a clear brand promise, over the long term no amount of advertising will move the sales needle.
Mitsubishi is right to pursue emotional branding, but for many an extended-warranty advertising claim communicates a functional product benefit, rather than an emotional one. Mitsubishi needs a compelling point of difference to generate market traction. Functional benefits are easiest for competitors to duplicate.
The best of advertising efforts will ultimately be a waste without investment in upgrading product quality. If product quality remains a liability, the Mitsubishi advertising message may soon devolve to this, “The warranty is a band-aid to compensate for product deficiency.”
As Mr. Beavis indicates, Mitsubishi is attempting to move from image-based advertising to “giving [consumers] a rational reason to buy” advertising. However, to become a thriving competitor in the United States automobile market, Mitsubishi Motors first needs a brand strategy makeover.
Trendwatching.com has an interesting piece about corporations that engage their audience in a conversation, turning them into brand advocates:
Marketing has finally become a conversation. Not, in most cases, as was intended, BETWEEN corporations and consumers (that would make too much sense), but rather a global conversation involving millions of consumers ABOUT corporations. On sites like Planetfeedback.com, thecomplaintstation.com, Epinions, About.com, on hundreds of thousands of blogs, community sites, forums, viral emails, bulletin boards, and what have you, consumers relentlessly exchange views, complaints, opinions and comments about products and services, about brands, about companies, about YOUR company.
Why now? Because they finally can. For decades, consumers have been saving up their insights and rants about the stuff they consume, simply because there were no adequate means to interact with companies, or with other consumers for that matter. No longer. These fickle, wired, empowered, informed, opinionated and experienced holders of a MC (Master in Consumerism) are getting used to ‘having it their way’, in ANY way imaginable, which includes wanting to have a direct influence on what companies develop and produce for them.
Check out the full article. It contains many concrete examples of companies turning consumers into advocates for their brand.
