Now booking: Build A Brand In 30 Days one-day intensive open course

January 25th 2010 - London

30% discount for subscribers to this newsletter

The most accessible and inspiring brand training course you have ever attended: based on my unique book Build A Brand In 30 Days

A powerful one-day learning experience which will:

* give you a thorough and practical grounding in brand and branding today
* provide you with content-rich learning that you can put into practice immediately in your business or organisation
* arm you with a critical path to developing a brand that is distinctive, compelling, authentic and sustainable
* deliver understanding and skills in crucial brand elements including: Brand Purpose, Narrative, Values, Customer Experience, Brand Behaviours and much more

This unique one-day programme brings brand and branding powerfully to life for marketers and non-marketers alike whether you're an entrepreneur or part of a larger organisation. In the most challenging environment of recent memory, your brand is your most powerful business asset. This course will be the best training investment you make this year (or next). Book now: max 30 delegates for real interactivity.

The book Build A Brand In 30 Days is published in April 2010 by Capstone. All delegates receive a copy of the book plus an exclusive DVD of my TV series The Brand Effect.

To book: call today on +44 (0)1603 305800, or email info@brandstrategyguru.com

Date: Monday January 25th, 2010 from 9.30am to 5.00pm

Venue: London's coolest location Wallacespace, near St. Pancras, King's Cross and Euston stations.

Price: £495 per person plus VAT (£347 plus VAT for BSG newsletter subscribers)

Includes: Course notes, book, DVD, outstanding breakfast, lunch, refreshments.

Want to send eight or more people? Your own in-house course might suit you even better. Email info@brandstrategyguru.com for details and prices.

Confessions of a brandaholic

What do you do when you’ve created your brand, tweaked it, honed it, marketed it? When you’ve worked hard for months doing whatever your particular brand enterprise demands, and it appears, when you examine everything, that all the stuff you need to do is done?

My confession is that by nature I’m inclined to just continue tweaking, trying to improve things a bit here and a bit there. There’s nothing wrong with a degree of that and I remain a strong advocate of continual nurture of your brand. But there is a line between nurture and obsessive meddling. It’s a line that workaholics like me can cross too often.

Healthier for you the brand protagonist, and indeed for the brand itself, is to leave things alone for a little while. Let things settle a bit, maintain a weather eye of course, but avoid the temptation to keep adjusting. Instead take some time out to reflect on what you’ve created. Genuine reflection (which takes time) is not frequently practiced in the heady rush to bring a brand to market, nor in the day-to-day battle to keep your brand ahead of the pack. But I have discovered (against my obsessive nature) that reflection is not only healthy but vital. It is also enormously productive.

This seems contrary to common sense, and indeed it might be called uncommon-sense. When I've taken time out (proper time, not minutes, but hours and days) to reflect, to muse, to ponder, to meditate (call it what you will) on my brand and business then it has invariably been the case that a new and powerful idea has emerged (often fully formed) from the apparently random meanderings. Take some time out, for your brand's sake and you own.

Bring back the optimism

Almost a decade ago Robert Jones, (a consultant at brand agency Wolff Olins, and course leader of the UEA's new MSc in Brand Leadership) wrote a slim, straightforward and compelling book called The Big Idea. Published in 2000 at the height of the dot com boom, in the heady days of brand optimism, the book was concerned (as I am always) with the ‘meaning’ of brands. In fact it was one of the first books that I read when first delving into the meaning of brands and has been very influential on my approach ever since.

To put its case simply, The Big Idea argued that businesses (organisations, products, services, brands of every kind) had to have a 'big idea' at their core which was distinctive, compelling and inspiring. In other words brands had to stand for something which was above and beyond their obvious product advantages, or benefits, or even values and vision.

Jones’s examples of brands with a big idea include Orange (idea: optimism), First direct (idea: banking to suit customers), John Lewis (idea: a different kind of capitalism).

Nearly ten years on from original publication, with a massive global recession in between, The Big Idea was republished at the beginning of this year, with a new and reflective foreword by Jones. It makes a fascinating read today. Some of the examples in the book GO (the British Airways budget airline) and Fannie Mae (the US mortgage provider) have been overtaken by history.

So there is an inevitable sense of looking back through a messy decade when reading the book, but Jones's core notion that it is an idea which makes a brand stand out is still valid and powerful, notwithstanding the fortunes and misfortunes of individual companies and the general state of economies.

As he comments in the foreword to the new edition: "...pure myth no longer works. The most admired brands now are the ones that do something well."

But 'doing something well' (really well) is still a big idea. Google, Amazon, Apple all do their thing really well. But the thing they do is still based around a strong individual idea for each.

I talk frequently about the power of story in branding, and that remains for me at the heart of the matter. But Jones is right: your brand story had better reflect the reality both of something that your brand does really well and a powerful distinctive idea.

What do you do really well? What’s your big idea?

It’s in the tag

Looking at the words companies are using in their taglines to describe themselves gives an interesting insight into current trends for branding strategy. Tagline Guru analysed more than 150 corporate taglines for 2009 in a recent survey aiming to discover the most frequently used words and see how companies are casting their brand message.
Here are most commonly used words or concepts (in alphabetical order):

1. believe
2. far/further
3. future
4. imagine/see
5. innovate/innovation
6. more
7. new
8. save/savings
9. together
10. you

The use of the word ‘you’ in taglines – as seen in the recent Yahoo adverts where ‘it’s all about Y!ou’ – has become particularly prevalent as more brands position themselves as being whatever the consumer wants them to be. However, the danger is that in trying to be everything to everyone, a brand can end up completely lacking a clear identity and not stand for anything at all. Then the consumer could be more compelled towards a competing brand that does have something to say.

Luxury loses its shine

Pre-recession, most of the luxury market's power came from lower-income aspirational buyers. Now they can no longer afford to shop that way, luxury brands are looking for new ways to sell to the actual wealthy. However, according to a recent survey by the Luxury Institute, many affluent consumers said that they're primarily interested in quality and service, which they consider hard to find in luxury goods. The survey also found that the rise of discounting has damaged people's brand perception of luxury items as it has revealed how big the margins are. This has confused shoppers and made them forget that luxury items are more expensive because they are of higher quality.

Avon calling

The Avon lady is proving to be the beauty brand’s saving grace in weathering the tough economic climate, as the one-on-one customer interaction that initially built the brand is helping Avon to stay in tune with consumers. That’s why Avon plans to cut back on its broader blanket advertising in favour of hiring more sales reps next year, as it recognizes that these customer-facing employees who use and love the products are its most vocal brand evangelists and also help give Avon that personal touch.

Mickey Mouse makeover

With Disney concerned that Mickey Mouse is seen as more of a symbol for big bucks corporatism rather than a fun-loving cartoon brand these days, it is planning to makeover its mouse for a new generation of children. Mickey's popularity has begun to wane due to growing competition from Nickelodeon, Pixar and Dreamworks characters so executives believe the rebrand is to remain relevant in the marketplace. The new Mickey will be first be unveiled in the video game Epic Mickey for the Nintendo Wii, released next year. The game will apparently reveal a new darker side to his character, showing that Mickey can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic.
However, Disney will have to tread carefully in playing around with its $5 billion cash mouse as there is always a risk of alienating core consumers when you tinker with such a sacred character. Not to worry though: 'Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing people,' Epic Mickey's developer reassures us!

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