Who is your brand?

We’ve started working with a new client this week, one I’ve known about for a fair amount of time and one where I am good friends with the owner of the business.

It’s come to the point where we need to position the brand correctly – up until now it has grown fairly organically under its own steam, but as it reaches the next phase of its life cycle and is called upon to directly engage with the consumer, it needs to ‘grow up’ and set out its stall of who it is and what it stands for.

Most initial conversations I have with brand owners revolve around how to engage, and some of the time, identify their target markets. In this case, the target market is pretty evident and very well understood by the operator. What is not evident however, is the personality of the brand.

Again I’ve run workshops were we analyse the behaviour of a brand in order to understand how it would engage in its marketplace, but this one was different, and so we took a different approach: we actually took the step of turning the brand into an actual person and giving them a life history, personality, likes and dislikes. It was only a first step – with the description running across a couple of pages – but it was a start. As we expand and work with this brand further, we’d look to personify it even more – maybe even create a physical image of it as a human being.

The result?

What we created gave us the chance to see the brand in a much clearer light, allowing us to understand not only how she (turned out she was female!) would act with consumers, but also how she would act with different target demographics. Next steps in building the marketing plan around this new found life history became a whole lot easier – especially when looking at establishing aspects of the plan like brand pillars.

So next time you’re struggling to work out where to take your business brand, where to advertising, how to market or how to engage your consumers, maybe spend an afternoon workshopping your brands personality and see if that reveals any new paths. Even if it doesn’t, it can reveal some hidden depths to your brand that you may not have previously thought about or explored.

1. Release new product with no name.

2. Get publicity for people naming it. Watch sales grow.

3. Pick worst name ever.

4. Get publicity for worst name ever. Watch sales grow as people are ridiculously divided and many column inches devoted to stupid journalists who missed the point.

5. Apologise to public for stupid name, and give it a less stupid name.

6. Watch sales grow as everyone *hugs* Kraft for being sensible and buys now limited edition iSnack.

7. Count extra coins in boardroom.

Epic FAIL, by everyone missing the joke

We’re looking for a talented, reliable illustrator to work on a short-term project with us (and potentially other projects in the longer term). There are a number of conditions:

1. Ideally, you’ll be based in Brisbane. Or able to come to Brisbane on a frequent basis. Or if you’re REALLY good, then well-versed on Skype and in a similar time-zone to Brisbane.

2. You’ll be talented at drawing illustrated/cartoon dogs. Specifically two dogs in a variety of positions. You must be able to convey them at various stages of growth and have them able to deliver a variety of expressions. We’re looking for simplistic, yet full of personality. Think Family Guy’s Brian. Or Mutley. The appeal needs to be balanced between adults and children.

3. You’ll be happy signing an NDA.

4. Age, experience, taste in music is irrelevent. Although it gets pretty crazy with 80s Friday in our office.

5. You will need to show us what you can/have done before. If you fancy sketching up an example then feel free.

6. Project could last a few weeks; could last a few months. Not entirely sure. So if you’re flexible and you’re happy to work from home for the most part, then coolio.

That’s about it for the moment, although more will probably come to us. If you think you’ve got what it takes, drop us a line with a link to some examples of your work: skd@straightedge.com.au

Thanks

Now, lets just look at that statement in context. 45% profit jump in just nine months. And not just ANY nine months, but the nine most horrifying months in recent Australian and global economics. The nine months that have seen every other retailer issue profit warnings, make substantial losses, or in the case of major competitor, Strathfield, collapse into administration back in January 2009.

Sure, the comparison between JB and Strathfield isn’t exactly like for like – JB offers a broader range of goods than Strathfield did/does. But there are enough similarities to be able to offer some key learnings of what to do, and what not to do between the two stores. Personally I shopped in a number of the JB stores in Queensland, and a couple of the Strathfield stores too. I’ve also visited one or two of the Wow Sight & Sounds too, which will also be worth a mention later on.

So what have JB done well? Well, a number of things, but these are the key areas they succeeded in that will offer a lesson to other retailers.

1. The brand is strong. An obvious statement, but for those who don’t understand branding or investing in brand awareness, JB are a great example of how a strong brand makes more profits.  They invest in their image, the tag-line – the famous ‘JB, you’ve done it again’, the look and feel and their communication. Brochures they produce are visually engaging, religiously consistent and packed full of things the consumers want to buy, rather than the manufacturers want to sell (although, that’s probably not the case but as I always say, perception is reality). Even the fonts they use in promotions are cartoony, appealing to the right people
2. They understood their target market. A certain demographic goes into buy DVDs, audio equipment, plasma TVs and so on. They researched that demographic and they talked to them. They talked to them
3. They’re experts. And I mean experts. They employ people who know what they’re talking about and know the items that they’re selling. And if they don’t, they fake it pretty well. Pick a random CD out of the racks and take it to the counter and you can pretty much guarantee the person taking your cash will have a comment about the quality of the band that you’re buying.
4. JB look carefully at their locations. High volume traffic passing them by is vitally important to the success of their business, be it on main roads or in the middle of major shopping centres.
5. Much has been mentioned about store layout too. Whilst it never seems to be the most pleasent of shopping experiences, many commentators have noted that its hard to leave a JB store without having bought anything. Once you’re in, they’re not going to let you leave with taking some of your cash! WoW Sight & Sound seem to operate the same concept but the environment in their stores is horribly enclosed and personally I feel very anti-shopping.
6. They looked at social networking, how it worked and they killed it. Actully, they didn’t. They have let that one slip. Believe it or not, their Facebook fan page has 15,000+ fans. Yes. 15,000+. That’s a lot of people. And they’ve posted two status updates. 15,000 people are waiting to hear from them and they’re silent! Maybe they don’t have control of that site? But either way, FAIL.

All in all, the JB story is one worth listening too. When your marketing department are delivering a ROI like JB’s have then you should be patting them on the back or giving them some sort of hefty bonus.

Go back to your business and look at the following things: location, understand your target market, be experts, check your location, layout your goods properly (either in retail or online) and invest in social media. Get those right, and you’re on the right road to emulating JB’s success.

TownMe has a fair bit of competition, obviously from the likes of Google, WikiTravel, MySpace Local and Diddit. Never heard of that last one.

But outside of the jokes, these kind of maps are vital tools now for business. Before you open your next shop/store/restaurant, you can check the local area to make sure the demographics are condusive to your clientel. Alternatively, you can find places that perhaps you may never have thought about before. Even if you want to advertising on a billboard or a bus-shelter, this will give you a perfect tool to think about where you do that.

Cougars. Wherefore art thou?

(from TechCrunch)

Quite rightly, and about time, someone picked up on my point about the Cascade recovery being driven solely by marketing. Anyone would know that PR would play an important part in it too. Fortunately someone pointed that out on this forum:

Simon, you are clearly talking out of your a***.

And I quote:
“Erm, no it doesn’t. Read it again. My story is fact. Cascade led with PR, and used a big marketing push to pull them out of the hole. It is a fact. There is no disputing it. Ring up Cascade if you like.”

You are COMPLETELY wrong. I don’t have to ring up Cascade – I know the full facts – because I designed the communications strategy in reverting the bottles back to 375ml. It was led by PR – specifically social media. It was a huge success.

Good night.

This was written by Con Frantzeskos who, unlike ’stu’ had the guts to leave his full name. He has his own website too which actually has the hilarious Jeff Goldblum eulogy on it if you missed that, so definitely worth a look. And with any luck I might get a mention. But I digress…

Let’s just look at the ’social media’-led Cascade campaign:

• Twitter – 645 followers now – 1 comments about reversion of bottle size back in Oct and one Feb. And one @ comment about change in size too.
• MySpace Cascade Beer page – 385 friends (including Tom!) – last log-in: July 2007
• Facebook Fan page – 467 fans. No comments, no info, nuffin.
• Facebook Group – ‘I Love Cascade Beer’ – 62 members – one comment by Dominic Bury, GM of Sales about size reversion
• Facebook Group – Cascade Beer appreciation society – 28 members. No comments
• Facebook Group – ‘Cascade. You Deserve It.’ – 293 members. One comment by Dominic in Oct, and another, noting the price issue in Feb.

So all things being equal, this stratgey reached 1,000 people. I won’t even go into how horribly ineffective Facebook groups are as a communication tool, or how a Twitter feed with one outward Tweet is next to useless. (note: one outward tweet about THAT subject…its not the only Tweet)

Now, throw into the mix that Cascade have made THREE seperate attempts to communicate to the public about the reversion back to 375ml – Oct 08 (PR), Feb 09 (bit more PR again) and May 09 with the giant billboards ‘A leopard CAN change its spots/stripes/whatever it was’ tagline – you have to wonder whether the first two communication attempts in Oct and Feb actually did the trick? Because if they HAD worked, what was the need for giant billboard on Kelvin Grove Road in Brisbane SIX months after the change back? In comparison to the social media strategy, how many cars a day must have seen just that billboard, let alone the others? 5,000?

I’m happy to accept that there might have been more social media activity that I could have missed but, well, I’ll leave it to you to decide if this was a successful PR-led social media exercise.

Anyway, I suspect that won’t be the end of it….

Come on...you know you think it sometimes...

I really should post something marketing/strategy related sometime soon…

I won’t say much more because you can see the lengths I went to arguing with this guy called ’stu’, but suffice to say I don’t agree with the premise of the original article. Not one little bit. Not that I don’t appreciate and understand the benefits of a good PR team, but to put them in charge of everything is akin to giving lunatics control of the asylum.

Sadly, ’stu’ was unable to provide details of where he works, leaving me unable to work out if he was a PR-wannabe, bitter ex-journo or just a lonely drunk.

Footnote: I had the piss taken out of ‘SKD’ (which I always used because its so much easier for EVERYONE to write/type), my hair, two mis-spellings in my site, the over-use of a capital ‘P’ and my hyphenated named. Remarkable activity for a public forum. Felt like I was back in my school playground again.

Footnote: Apparently potential clients won’t be impressed by my ‘dummy spit’. Hmmm. If that’s the case, none of you go and read my Twitter stream!! lol

A PR worker and journo, yesterday...

I did note that on average, Brisbane visitors to my website spend over five minutes here. That, my friends, is huge. Massive. So I’m doing something right.

It's a fine line between cool, and P Diddy...

And so is Kanye West. See how I segued that there?

He recently teamed up with author, J. Sakiya Sandifer, to “write Thank You and You’re Welcome, an entertaining volume of Kanye-isms used in creating his path to success.” So basically a management/marketing guide from Kanye. And which is why I have decided to skip my normal policy of ignoring inspirational management-speak and take the learnings from the Fast Company slideshow (which is TERMINALLY slow btw, hence why I have stolen it all to put here) to deliver to the Straight Edge people.

Sure, some of them are fairly hackneyed, but it’s Kanye. So you WILL sit still and listen to what he has to say as he now owns fashion labels, designer lines, restaurants and he sells lots of records. My personal favourite is number 2.

1. ‘Know your worth’

2. ‘Would you rather have 100% from an average person or 10% from someone who is outstanding?’

3. ‘Believe in your flyness, conquer your shyness.’

4. ‘You can learn more from a critique than a compliment.’

5. ‘If everybody thinks its right, then you’re doing something wrong.’

6. ‘Love your haters – they’re your biggest fans.”

7. ‘I question anyone who questions me, but I question myself all the time.’

From Fast Company.

Now, it might just be me, but really whether this is a marketing ploy/gimmick or not, is this the stupidest, more pointless and less environmentally sound thing you have ever seen?

Although…goddam it…he got space on my blog. Lol.

Not available at Borders...