Branding Blog

Tough times don't last but tough brands do

We're getting great results from an adaptation of our highly successful Brandmap workshops… our new half day workshops focus on how to take advantage of these financially tough times.

The first thing I would do in a crisis period is to appoint a cost reduction task force, to develop a recession business plan. Please don't let it be only in the hands of the finance department. They will cut everything that counts - and tell you to stop marketing, when marketing is the only prop that you can turn to, to sustain demand.
   - Philip Kotler, Kotler Marketing Group

While everyone else stops spending, stops employing and stops brand building, how does your company leap ahead and grab market share that was previously too hard to get?

In a client's own 4-6 hour workshop, we use our Degrees of Focus© model to work out the position of your brand and where it can get to during the next year of turmoil. We discuss how your brands or overall business can move to a higher degree of positioning that will improve your emotional connection to your consumers. The workshops also spend time testing industry norms and they look to new ways of doing things – nothing is taken for granted – "if it ain't broke, we'll break it." We spend time brainstorming closer customer relationships and New Media phenomenon's that could revolutionise the way you do business.

Clients walk away from this tailored workshop with techniques to assert a stronger connection with their consumer and an action plan for tough times from analysing revenue and developing new streams of income. Call me for more information.

What Every Good Marketer Knows

Seth Godin published this list three years ago; which was very much a riff, not a carefully planned manifesto. As he says, it still holds up well…

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
• Marketing begins before the product is created.
• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That's not marketing, though, that's efficiency.
• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
• Products that are remarkable get talked about.
• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
• You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you're viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
• People don't buy what they need. They buy what they want.
• You're not in charge. And your prospects don't care about you.
• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
• Good marketers tell a story.
• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
• Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
• Good marketers measure.
• Marketing is not an emergency. It's a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn't end until you're done.
• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

10 things I've learnt about business

1. Truth is the most important value. If you’re having problems, admit them. Sure paint a positive tale but be honest. Colleagues, suppliers and clients will reward your sincerity.
2. You make your own luck. If you don't blame your bad luck on others, and take it on the chin as self created in some way, then you can also claim your good fortune all for yourself.
3. Bank on dollars, not percentages. Cash and cash-flow are more important than high margins. Don’t star gaze over great GP% when its dollars that you bank.
4. Measure everything of significance. Anything that is measured and watched, improves – sales, profits, employees and relationships.
5. Narrow the focus to build the brand. This is a principle focus of our Brandmapping techniques. Don't try to be all things to all people. Own a simple idea in your clients mind. Wasabi Advertising is the only agency that provides a degrees of focus Brandmap.
6. Differientiate. Our brains are programmed to notice things that are different.
7. Get out of your comfort zone. Not much happens of any significance when we're in your comfort zone. Continually push your barriers. Constantly strive for more innovation, more differentiation and more edge.
8. If you’re not moving forward you’re going backwards. Never stop looking for improvements and new ways of doing things. Never stop trying something new. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.
9. It’s better to be almost right, than perfectly wrong. A good plan executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.
10. They can’t eat you. No matter how bad it gets you still have you. You’re lucky to be alive. We're not here for a long time; we're here for a good time.

Influenced by Bob Parsons, Go Daddy