« August 2006 | September 2006 | October 2006 »
Trinidad & Tobago’s Newsday offers this:
Great brands are built by consistently delivering on the brand promise. And that promise is not just for the external public and the consumers who buy the company’s products and services… [T]hose in the trenches, know that just as important are the company’s employees.
We agree. As shared before on these pages, your brand is your promise. How you keep that promise means everything, to every audience you seek to influence.
Recognizing that good branding is not only for consumers, the New York Times also offers a story of how human resource professionals see the opportunity in sharing the brand promise of their organization to cultivate the reputation of their company as an employer of choice.
The focus of this story, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, made up of four healthcare entities in three states, decided to use it’s brand promise to reach out to job seekers.
‘’As an employer, you can’t just say, ‘We’re a great employer, so people should want to work here,’ ‘’ [Wheaton’s director of recruitment] said. ‘’You ought to be able to tell people why.'’
…Human resources officers…find themselves courting interviewees who want, and even demand, a good reason to come on board.
Which is not unlike the key question asked by any audience a brand seeks to attract: Why should I care about you?
Companies that use their brand right…will have the most applicants, thereby creating what the industry calls a pipeline — many people who know that their way of life aligns with your brand. ‘’You get the pick of the crop.'’
Good branding works for any audience an organization seeks to reach and convert, whether employee, consumer, or other stakeholder. And for employers, the payoff?
‘’The most effective…branding is word of mouth — what people say at parties, on weekends — when they get asked, How do you like working there?'’… ‘’That spreads like crazy.'’
[More posts about Brand Management | More posts about Brand Promise | More posts about Employment Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Healthcare Branding | More posts about Nonprofit Branding | More blogs about Employer Branding]
A Fortune 50 company announced an agency review and at the same time cut loose it’s long time ad agency, in this press release:
Safeway Inc. (NYSE:SWY), one of the largest food and drug retailers in North America, announced today that it will conduct a competitive review of advertising agencies for its $250 million account. The business up for review includes broadcast creative, strategic planning, broadcast media planning and buying, and promotional marketing.
No real news here, as companies conduct ad agency reviews everyday. But then the Safeway release offers this nugget:
The review coincides with the one-year anniversary of the company’s brand positioning launch of “Ingredients for life.” This brand positioning has distinguished Safeway within food retailing, is grounded in consumer insights, and has allowed Safeway to add true brand marketing to the traditional mix of retail promotional activities. [Emphasis ours.]
Safeway’s marketing team confuses brand positioning with an advertising slogan. The Safeway slogan, Ingredients for Life, is not at all a brand position, nor does it distinguish the company within food retailing, except in the minds of those who sit in the Safeway boardroom.
The slogan fails to satisfy a number of the Laws of Branding. For example, a functional message such as Ingredients for Life is easiest for competitors to claim or duplicate. The slogan offers no human engagement, but rather reads as a chapter to a grade school science text. It all points to the obvious: a slogan is not a brand.
Labeling Ingredients for Life as a brand is a demonstration of how even a $38 billion dollar company full of otherwise certified smart people skip the hard part of brand creation, and develop instead a forgettable ad campaign reinforcing a slogan rather than a brand.
So, the results of the Safeway agency review to “further differentiate the Safeway brand”? They hired another ad agency.
[More posts about Advertising Campaigns | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Safeway | More posts about Retail Branding | More posts about Safeway Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Safeway Advertising | More posts about DDB Chicago | More blogs about Advertising Campaigns]
We came across a slideshow from Business Week, offering 10 small company brands that have become category leaders, such as ZipCar, Shutterfly, and Craigslist.
Listen to the insights offered here by CEOs of how their brands have become household names.
[More posts about Small Company Branding | More posts about Brand Opportunities | More posts about Competitive Advantage | More posts about Brand Promise | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about Small Company Branding]
Standard Bank of South Africa announced the launch of their new vision and what they refer to as a brand strategy. However, based on news reports, Standard Bank instead created for itself an advertising campaign. The implications to their brand reputation and bottom line are significant.
Designed to “bond with its essence” and truly define what the Bank stands for, the group’s new strategy replaces the hugely successful “Simpler, better, faster.” payoff line with the slightly more verbose “Inspired, Motivated, Involved.”
According to…Standard Bank’s group marketing director: “Simpler. Better. Faster. served us extremely well for many years and is a strong slogan, but it must be remembered that in an environment where customers’ needs are continuously changing, Standard Bank as an organisation needs to consistently evolve.”
Standard’s marketing director continues in this press release:
Our new pay-off line - Inspired. Motivated. Involved. - encapsulates the essence of what we are and what we would like to be for our customers, our people and our stakeholders. We are striving to make a real difference.”
Says [the marketing director]: “We have carried out extensive research to develop a greater understanding of attitudes, beliefs and expectations of Standard Bank and the way in which these could best be met. Based on this research, it became apparent that a revised brand promise and pay-off line needed to be developed to align with the group vision and values. The intrinsic value of the brand has also been maximised by aligning a core set of brand characteristics and principles to assist in providing a consistent brand experience.”
These are rationalizations that sound good inside a corporate boardroom, but which are of little relevance to the audience Standard Bank seeks to influence. And, rationalizations like these institutionalize the need for large advertising spends to have any hope of creating consumer awareness of the message.
As poor as the Simpler, Better, Faster tagline was, it at least offered a benefit, a promise to consumers. In contrast, Inspired, Motivated, Involved is all about a Me, Me, Me exercise in self-adulation; evidence that Standard Bank skipped the hard part of branding.
This company would have been better served listening to the brand wisdom of Coco Chanel, by pointing to an authentic, compelling difference in answer to the question implicitly asked by most any banking consumer: Why should I care about you?
In contrast to Standard Bank’s campaign, this example of another South African company with a clear idea of what branding is all about.
[More posts about Advertising Campaigns | More posts about Brand Promise | More posts about Standard Bank | More posts about Bank Branding | More posts about Standard Bank Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Standard Bank Advertising | More posts about Savanna Dry | More blogs about Bank Branding]
As readers of this column know, we comment regularly on the good and bad we see of branding efforts around the world. One column from two years ago weighed in on efforts to rebrand the state of Kentucky. The original commentary appears at this link. We were unimpressed with what was at the time announced as the new Kentucky “brand.” We remain so.
Last month we received a response to our column, in a comment posted on this site, from the firm responsible for the Kentucky campaign, in it’s entirety as follows:
“50% recognition of the brand in target states — more than own state brands. 16% increase in Tourism since the brand was launched. 5500 new jobs plus $1B UPS expansion. $500,000 in branded merchandise sold in year one — up from 0 in previous years. Landed the 2008 Ryder Cup and the 2010 World Equestrian Games. Unbridled Success.”
The author of this comment identified himself as Tom Howell. Mr. Howell is the COO of new!west, the public relations and advertising agency responsible for Kentucky’s attempted rebrand through use of the slogan, Unbridled Spirit.
new!west proudly touts the benefits of their Unbridled Spirit campaign at this link to their website where, as in Mr. Howell’s comment, the agency fails to source the credit behind their claims.
According to Mr. Howell, new!west now also seeks credit for Kentucky’s success in attracting business investment by UPS, and in attracting a major sporting event such as the Ryder Cup.
However, not everyone is as delighted as Mr. Howell, as described in news at this link from the Kentucky Post. And, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, while new!west was paid $2.85 million for it’s “branding” services, the agency distributed another $18 million to media outlets for advertising. The Kentucky Attorney General’s office now believes new!west overbilled the state by some $1.4 million.
Beyond all of this however, the new!west campaign for Kentucky is little more than an advertising slogan. Unbridled Spirit is a cheerleading campaign on behalf of Kentucky, which is fine if the state has the advertising budget of a Fortune 500.
If Unbridled Spirit were a brand, it would tell a story about Kentucky not heard elsewhere; one no other state could authentically claim. A brand would create real long-term competitive advantage for Kentucky over states with which it competes for tourism and business investment. A brand would self-propel, rather than institutionalizing the prop-up expense of year-over-year advertising and PR spends. And finally, a brand would not need an advertising agency as an expensive groupie.
As explained on the Kentucky Tourism website, the Unbridled Spirit slogan describes:
Kentucky is the place where spirits are free to soar and big dreams can be fulfilled.
Unfortunately, as new!west did not rebrand Kentucky, but rather developed an ongoing advertising campaign, another state announced a nearly identical positioning also dressed up as a “new brand:”
In Kansas, our wide-open spaces give people the freedom to dream and make big things happen.
As shared before on this site:
Too often people get snookered into buying a “branding” service that is nothing more than advertising. And, the two things aren’t the same. Advertising can reinforce your brand, but it can’t create it and it most definitely isn’t the brand itself.
Were the good people of Kentucky snookered? Decide for yourself.
[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Destination Branding | More posts about State Branding | More posts about Kentucky Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Kentucky Advertising | More posts about Kentucky | More blogs about Destination Branding]
One university president understands the value of brand in creating competitive advantage for any university.
“Higher education is a competitive industry,” [UT president John Petersen] said. “We compete for students, faculty and staff and must maintain widespread support from alumni and donors, the General Assembly and the residents of Tennessee.”
He is right. As in any industry, universities and colleges would benefit by the use of a well conceived brand strategy.
Here’s the story, and other examples of university branding efforts.
[More posts about University Branding | More posts about Competitive Advantage | More posts about University of Tennessee | More posts about University of Tennessee Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about University Branding]
Coco Chanel, reflecting upon the early days in building her business, of what would eventually become the House of Chanel:
“People laughed at the way I dressed, but that was the secret of my success: I didn’t look like anyone.”
Not looking, sounding, thinking like the competition is the key behind most any successful brand. Gabrielle Bonheur “Coco” Chanel intuitively knew this, long before branding became a topic of discussion.
As usual, and as she demonstrated throughout her life, Ms. Chanel was ahead of everyone else.
[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Coco Chanel | More posts about Chanel | More posts about Chanel Brand Image | More posts about Apparel Branding | More posts about Retail Branding | More posts about Brand Strategy | More blogs about Brand Differentiation]
In 2004 the City of Wichita announced their new brand, summed up by the tagline We Got The Goods.
Wichita’s is a cautionary tale of an attempt at brand strategy that devolves into a cheerleading campaign relying upon adulatory messaging. In a demonstration of skipping the hard part of branding, Wichita created an advertising strategy rather than a brand.
A group of Wichita leaders see the need to correct the error. They traveled to another American city to compare leadership efforts at securing business investment and development. The Wichita Eagle shares the story:
A group of prominent Wichita business and government leaders returned from Richmond…energized…after three days of navigating both the Virginia capital’s hip artist studios and its community politics.
At the end of the trip on Friday afternoon, they came up with a list of five new civic initiatives…
Among the top five new civic initiatives selected by Wichita’s leaders:
…[B]etter internal and external branding.
Selecting better branding as a top priority is an excellent beginning in recognizing Wichita’s golden opportunity. Let’s hope this time the city’s leaders select a qualified brand consultancy to support their efforts, rather than an advertising or graphic design firm offering “branding” as a sideline. As branding is not a job for ad agencies, a skilled brand strategist will uncover the breakthrough story needed for the Wichita brand to effectively go to work for the city everyday, before a nickel is spent on advertising, or logo design, or PR.
[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Destination Branding | More posts about Place Branding | More posts about Wichita Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Wichita Advertising | More posts about Wichita | More blogs about Destination Branding]
Our commentary making the case for branding a law firm prompted a reader to ask the following:
Smart people keep missing the difference between communication and branding, or advertising campaigns and branding. It is rather amazing. Do you feel there is some hurried sense of urgency to “get out there” and bring in business that leads these bright folk to do the “default” thing and rush into advertising?
We agree. It is amazing. Yet it’s a phenomenon repeated over and over again by otherwise certified smart men and women. Including many holding themselves out as brand strategists who skip the hard part, by instead offering a new logo or slogan and passing off either as a “brand.”
How does this happen?
The answer is simple. Simple is hard.
Branding is a search for the obvious. By far the most difficult process step of any branding project lies in successfully navigating the intellectual and emotional footbridge to find the positioning statement / value proposition in creating a breakthrough tip of the spear. Creating this authentic and unforgettable spear tip is the hard part of branding.
Any worthy brand consultancy would offer up the following four brand fundamentals, the identification of each crucial to developing a value proposition before proceeding with any brand implementation step such as, for example, creation of a new visual identity:
Pain Point and Solution – What is the problem your target seeks to solve, why and how do they experience pain in seeking a solution, and what is the solution they need and even crave?
Key Difference – Your best single point of competitive difference
Emotional Benefit – Identify the emotional payoff to your target consumer; what is the emotion an individual experiences by tapping into what you offer?
Affiliation Benefit - Uncovering how those who access your product or service want to be seen by others, and how the relationship with your brand enhances how your target sees themselves
Stated another way, the hard part of branding is the ability to articulate within seconds the answer to the question asked by the audience you seek to convert to your product or cause: Why Should I Care About You? Getting to the answer involves getting to the root of consumer thinking through qualitative research, and a crisp analysis of the competition.
Too often we see organizations create a value proposition that is little more than a string of instantly forgettable cheerleader statements. Such cheerleading leads to ineffective business outcomes such as this and other brand blunders.
But you don’t have to rely on us for this. Take a look at the March 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review, and see for yourself.
[More posts about Branding Resources | More posts about Brand Research | More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Competitive Advantage | More posts about Branding vs Advertising | More posts about Branding vs PR | More posts about Laws of Branding | More blogs about Branding Resources]
Ohio business leaders proudly announced a new “brand” in hopes of attracting more business investment to the state. Unfortunately, what has been passed off to Ohio’s business leaders as a brand is little more than instantly forgettable advertising at a price tag of $4 million dollars, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
How could this have happened? The story from the Business Wire:
Financial incentives aren’t enough. Executives value lifestyle benefits when considering where to expand a business and locate new jobs, concludes research conducted by the Ohio Business Development Coalition (OBDC), a non-profit organization dedicated to marketing the state for capital investment.
These findings are the cornerstone of a new Ohio brand announced today by Ohio business leaders and the OBDC. Summed up in its tagline, “Build Your Business. Love Your Life.,” the new brand communicates that Ohio offers everything businesses need to thrive and provides ample opportunity for a fulfilling personal life as well.
With research results such as these, this Ohio effort is doomed to failure. Research for every U.S. state would uncover “lifestyle benefits” as a key factor for executives in locating a corporate headquarters or business center. Whether in Kansas, Illinois, or California, brand research reveals the same thing, decision-maker executives are attracted to locales with good quality of life options.
For those who have ever sat through a meeting with state economic development officials, in any state, you know lifestyle is one topic they all talk about. One reason these officials do so is because it is human nature to speak proudly of the state they call home. It’s a form of cheerleading, speaking in a language important to you as an insider, rather than sharing a message of critical relevance with the outside audience you seek to influence.
This outside audience, those relocation consultants and business executives who make the decisions for their respective companies, have heard it all before. And because they have heard it all before, talk of lifestyle benefits becomes instantly forgettable white noise.
If every state pulls out the superior lifestyle benefits card, and Ohio plays that same card, how does Ohio create for itself the competitive separation needed to become unforgettable? The answer is, of course, they cannot.
But back to the initial question; how were Ohio’s business leaders snookered into thinking they were buying a “brand” solution? By a design agency of the year passing themselves off as a “brand consultancy.” It’s the same agency that pawned Focused Passion off on an unsuspecting Madrid, sold Asia’s World City to Hong Kong, hoodwinked Cincinnati with All Together Surprising, and bamboozled Baltimore with Get In On It. The answer, again from the Business Wire:
The Ohio Business Development Coalition engaged the Cincinnati office of Landor, an international branding firm, to assist in the research and development of the brand positioning, tagline and logo.
As any good brand consultancy will tell you, if a brand does not identify your unique difference wrapped in emotional immediacy, you have not a brand message, but rather an advertising slogan. An advertising slogan such as Build Your Business, Love Your Life, because it is meaningless, could apply equally to Ohio or any state. And if the same advertising proves inauthentic, as the Detroit Free Press indicates the Ohio ads are in part, in addition to wasting $4 million dollars spent on advertising, the brand loses precious reputation capital. That’s a balance sheet equation any business leader understands.
True, there is far more to the story of Ohio than one unique difference. However, to tell the broader story of the state, to own the conversation, Ohio must first stand for a single uniqueness, prompting any audience to care long enough to stop, and stop long enough to be influenced.
At least one Ohio business leader is “skeptical that an advertising campaign is going to make a meaningful contribution to the state’s growth prospects.” From the Columbus Dispatch:
Advertising makes sense only if the state tells businesses “something about Ohio that is not generally known,” said [Ken] Mayland, president of Clear-View Economics near Cleveland.
Mr. Mayland is right.
An authentic story of a brand that is engaging, not heard elsewhere, and that matters, is by itself unique. And that remains Ohio’s golden opportunity; one sadly not realized in this effort.
As the new Ohio advertising campaign headline says, Why Ohio?
Why indeed.
[More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Brand Positioning | More posts about Destination Branding | More posts about Place Branding | More posts about Nation Branding | More posts about Ohio Brand Image | More posts about Brand Strategy | More posts about Ohio Advertising | More posts about Ohio | More blogs about Destination Branding]
In following the hype over Katie Couric’s jump from NBC’s Today Show to the CBS Evening News, we breathlessly awaited Ms. Couric’s September 5 debut to see what a different evening news broadcast would look and sound like. The results are in, and the answer is nothing, in this from Variety:
Not to be a killjoy, but the most notable aspect of the “CBS Evening News” in Katie Couric’s much-ballyhooed debut Tuesday was that the new news looks quite a lot like the old news.
Indeed, beyond the minor cosmetic changes, the revamped “Evening News” — at least in this long-awaited first view of its work-in-progress format — in most ways mirrored the traditional template, down even to film composer James Horner’s theme, which sounded much like the previous fanfare…
The…intriguing question was whether CBS would make good on early pledges to try to reinvent the wheel, to which the answer is an unqualified “No.” Instead, they have simply put a new and undeniably expensive face behind it.
With Ms. Couric’s arrival, the CBS Evening News misses a rare opportunity to rethink it’s brand. The power of brand differentiation points the way in most any effort to own the conversation within the television news industry, even in today’s popular culture. Rather than, for example, mining their heritage for a unique and authentic story to create competitive advantage, CBS instead plays it safe by mimicking their competition, as demonstrated by the mind-numbing similarity of opening screen graphics:
To stave off audience erosion suffered by every U.S. broadcast network evening
news program, the CBS Evening News must demonstrate rather than explain a difference of relevance to their audience. A solo network anchorwoman, by herself, is not a difference upon which to build a long-term brand promise.
[More posts about Brand Promise | More posts about Brand Differentiation | More posts about Media Branding | More posts about Katie Couric | More posts about CBS Evening News | More blogs about Media Branding]
According to the India Times, one mobile phone manufacturer wants to drop their umbrella brand strategy in naming it’s products:
What’s in a name? Ask Nokia. After the roaring success of the Moto[rola] RAZR, PEBL, SLVR and ROKR series, the Finnish mobile handset manufacturer feels that consumers find names easy to remember compared to the usual mundane numbers.
…[B]arring few exceptions , numbers have been the only way its phones have been branded so far. Remember [the] 1100, 2600, 3310, 6020?
…Nokia global marketing head Keith Pardy [recently] said: What you will see coming from us in the future is not just a numbering system, you are going to start to see names that carry a meaning and are important to consumers.
Perhaps Nokia’s problem has little to do with the use of numbers, and more to do with the use of a naming architecture that makes little intuitive sense and worse, offers no human connection to Nokia product.
To do it right, Nokia could have taken a lesson or 6,620 from others who know how to do numbers naming correctly, such as this company.
Here’s a partial list of Nokia product names. Compelling stuff, if one is a product engineer:
1100
1101
1108
1110
1220
1221
1260
1261
1600
1610
1611
1620
1630
1631
2010
2100
2110
2110i
2112
2115
2115i
2116i
2118
2125i
2126i
2128i
2160
2160i
2170
2180
2190
2220
2255
2260
2270
2280
2285
2300
2600
2650
2651
2652
3100
3105
3108
3110
3120
3125
3128
3152
3155
3200
3205
3210
3220
3230
3250
3280
3285
3300
3310
3315
3320
3330
3350
3360
3390
3395
3410
3510
3510i
3520
3530
3560
3570
3585
3585i
3586i
3587i
3588i
3589i
3590
3595
3600
3610
3620
3650
3660
3810
5100
5110
5120
5125
5130
5140
5140i
5160
5165
5170
5170i
5180i
5185i
5190
5210
5500
5510
6010
6011i
6012
6015
6015i
6016i
6019i
6020
6021
6030
6060
6090
6100
6101
6102
6102i
6103
6108
6110
6111
6120
6125
6126
6130
6131
6133
6136
6138
6150
6155
6155i
6160
6170
6185
6190
6200
6210
6215i
6220
6225
6230
6230i
6233
6234
6235
6235i
6250
6255i
6256i
6260
6265
6270
6280
6310
6310i
6340
6340i
6360
6370
6385
6500
6510
6560
6585
6590
6590i
6600
6610
6610i
6620
6630
6650
6651
6670
6680
6681
6682
6800
6810
6820
6822
7160
7190
7200
7210
7250
7250i
7260
7270
7280
7360
7370
7373
7380
7390
7600
7610
7650
8110
8148
8210
8250
8260
8265
8265i
8270
8280
8290
8310
8390
8800
8801
8810
8850
8855
8860
8890
8910
8910i
9000
9000i
9110
9110i
9210
9210i
9290
9300
9300i
9500
[More posts about Brand Naming | More posts about Umbrella Branding | More posts about Nokia | More blogs about Umbrella Branding]
From the U.K.’s The Independent:
“Brand promise is created by a name, especially where fragrance is concerned,” says James Craven of Les Senteurs, a specialist perfumery in Belgravia. “Scent itself is ethereal and almost subliminal, so good names are powerfully suggestive; do they conjure up an image or suggest emotional implications or attributes?”
For Craven, the best perfume names summon up a “story” to back up the scent; Guerlain’s Shalimar, for instance, with more than a hint of the Orient. Its name means “temple of love” in Sanskrit, and it was inspired by the Indian emperor Shah Jahan, who built the Shalimar garden in Lahore as a tribute to his wife (and went on to build the Taj Mahal as further homage after her death). Or the same company’s L’Heure Bleu, which, according to Craven, calls to mind “twilight, the reflective hour, when you meditate on transience and lost love.”
We agree. Any great brand name offers a great story, mining the stories, myths, and imagery we each learn at a young age.
Today’s perfume names often dispense with such poetic niceties and settle for “globally appropriate” haikus. These can be po-faced - Truth, Eternity, Angel - or vaguely transgressive - Opium, Addict, Higher, Crave. “Will we soon have Junkie by Cacharel or OD by Dior?” wonders Craven. “Names are chosen more by global branding marketers these days than by the perfumers themselves, which is why they’re becoming ‘edgier’ and, paradoxically, duller.”
But companies ignore “globally appropriate” names at their peril. Givenchy’s latest launch, a perfume named Ange ou Démon, is meant to invoke “the two sides of woman; the angel and the devil that lurk within”, to British ears, it sounds more like a chav-tastic couple named Ange and Damon.
Despite other shortcomings, Auge ou Démon is a two-sided, positive and negative name the Law of Negativity loves. As for another fragrance product name satisfying this theory, one of our laws of branding, the story continues:
Image-obsessed celebrities are usually too canny to fall into these traps when launching their own perfumes; Liz Taylor’s White Diamonds suggested opulence, while Britney Spears’s Curious certainly reflects her parenting techniques. But, while Alan Cumming’s image may be that of an omnisexual Puck, his Cumming: The Fragrance is perhaps a little too upfront. “It certainly conjures up an image,” says Craven, with some distaste, “but a rather unsavoury one.”
Learn more about Alan Cumming’s new business venture, by watching the commercial here.
[More posts about Brand Promise | More posts about Emotional Branding | More posts about Fragrance Branding | More posts about Perfume Branding | More posts about Alan Cumming | More blogs about Fragrance Branding]
Co-op Islami offers Halal food products throughout the Middle East. The company, based in Dubai, announced a new brand initiative in this story from The Peninsula:
Representing a significant milestone in its history, Coop Islami, the region’s leading provider of quality Halal products, unveiled its new dynamic brand identity – as part of its strategy to reposition its marketing efforts and to strengthen its market penetration in Qatar.
The company is now known as Al Islami Foods and the brand identity further signifies the company’s evolution as a leading provider of quality and healthy ‘Halal’ food products.
Saleh Abdullah Lootah, Chief Executive Officer of Al Islami Foods, pointed out: “The new brand identity incorporates an appealing design while celebrating our leadership position and modern marketing approaches. In the coming months, we intend to grow the value of the brand and further communicate our brand mission to our consumers.”
Following a two-year consumer research process within frozen food packaging, a refreshing logo design has been created to project the company’s ambition to become a global presence.
A vibrant logo with global appeal enhances the strong brand equity already established by the company’s product line-up. The new logo will be featured prominently on the attractive product packaging.
Lootah described the new logo as a perfect balance between the company’s FMCG legacy with its future vision.
This CEO is kidding himself in thinking this new logo conveys anything compelling or memorable to the consumer public his company seeks to influence. The adulatory explanations he relies upon are relevant only to those inside an organization. Those outside the organization, including the all important customer, could care less.
In explaining this new logo, this CEO forgets that branding is about demonstrating your single, authentic difference, through every component of your brand tip of the spear, rather than relying upon the language of cheerleading, which quickly fades into ineffective white noise.
Get out from behind the desk and see yourself as others see you. It’s the essence of effective brand strategy. Without it, rather than a brand what is left is an ineffective logo, passed off as effective branding.
Al Islami Foods needs a world class brand consultancy, rather than this new logo, if it truly hopes to become a global brand.
[More posts about Branding vs Advertising | More posts about Brand Management | More posts about Branding Resources | More blogs about Branding vs Advertising]
« August 2006 | Home | October 2006 »
Thursday, September 28th, 2006 - 7:15pm |
Brand Management + Brand Promise + Foundations/Nonprofits + Pharma/Health Care |
Comments (0)