SOTB: Brand definitions edition

Photo: m.gifford (Flickr CC)

Instead of my usual roundup of recent noteworthy articles and posts, this edition of Six of the Best is inspired by brand expression consultancy BLACKCOFFEE and its great idea to invite readers to complete the sentence: "A brand is...

1) A brand is..... BLACKCOFFEE
Here's the link to that page where you can see the many varied definitions. A couple of the more interesting/unexpected responses: "A brand is like a person at a cocktail party. You want to talk to them or sleep with them or wish you never met." (Amy) and: "A brand is what my teenage son is always talking about when he wants my money." (Eric)

2) an analysis of “a brand is” brand as business bites
Denise Lee Yohn decided to try and categorize all the responses from the BLACKCOFFEE poll. Quite the challenge. Still, she gave it the old college try and put (what was then) the 170 responses into categories such as: Historical definition (e.g. "A brand is an iron tool heated in the fire and used to indicate ownership of cattle.") and Negative (e.g. "A brand is a set of lies we convince ourselves to believe in and hope the public will to.") Her conclusion: "There are a lot of definitions and interpretations of what a brand is. This makes brand-building ripe for confusion – which is a barrier when we talk about it with business leaders and try to make the case for investing in it." Yes.

Different Schools of Thought on "a brand is..."

So, I thought that I might also try and help tidy up this mess of definitions by describing four different brand schools of thought and link to some posts that represent them:

The focused promise brand school

3) The Demise of Dell: Ries' Pieces
Laura Ries represents the brand school that wants focus, hates line extensions and the one most likely to use the "Volvo = Safety" gambit. In this post, Laura argues that Dell's demise came once it tried to expand from its original low cost, direct sales business model: "In the business world today there are dozens of Dells, all trying to expand their way to success when the only thing that really works is exactly the opposite. Narrow your focus. Build your brand. Rake in the dough."

The customer rules brand school

4) You Don't Own Your Brand -- Your Customer Does: The Social Customer Manifesto
This school is the home of social media/word of mouth pioneers and those who extol the virtues of Zappos.com. What can be better than a company that's taken customer service to a whole new level and that has a CEO who tweets? School purists contend that social media has so completely changed the rules of the game that, as Christopher F. Carfi says in this post: "The old, top-down hierarchy of searing brands into the consumer psyche is done. Over. Finished." In this new world, he says, our role as marketers is to engage in transparent, authentic conversation and accept that we no longer have any control or influence.

The we hate branding brand school

5) Transformation Interrupted: Jonathan Salem Baskin
Jonathan's book: "Branding only Works on Cattle" makes the case that branding is a waste of money. The kinds of things he really doesn't like are: goofy mascots, logo redesigns, cute tag lines, anything that marketers do that does not directly create value or a fresh experience for the consumer. Only tangible, concrete actions count. In this post, Jonathan talks about research results from the Hartman Group which show that consumer loyalty is shifting -- from products and brands, to the experiences offered by retailers. His conclusion: "People aren't willing to buy based on the intangibles on which brands have relied for almost a Century. Reality is the new imagination, providing the context in which actions can assert truth (if not simply immediacy, and thus clarity) to consumers."

The brand as feelings school

6) What is a feeling? a clear eye
Tom Asaker's answer to the "a brand is" poll was: “A brand is an expectation of receiving a feeling by way of an experience.” In this post, he explains his definition considering: 1) Control: whether we marketers like it or not, we can't control what people think about our brands. But we can influence people by the experiences we deliver and 2) Feelings: People make brand choices based on a variety of feelings from indifference and inertia to desire. Tom believes that changing feelings is what brand-building in the 21st century is all about.

Building on Tom's thoughts, as I compare these four schools of thought it looks to me like their assumptions in a couple of key areas help explain their different perspectives:

- Marketers control over their brands (strong = focused promise, weak = customer rules)
- The rationality of consumer decision making (high = we hate branding, low = brand as feelings).

Meanwhile, for those who like visual schematics, I've always liked this brand model from Dubberly Design Office which maps out the connections between a brand promise, product development, experience and perception. If the brand world is as complex as this chart implies, perhaps it's not no wonder that the range of one-sentence definitions is so wide and there are still so many different schools of thought.

That's it! Back soon with more stories from the world of brand strategy. More thoughts and comments also available on Twitter (@martinjbishop).

What if we did away with the brand model?

In the 11.01 edition of Marketing News, Kevin O'Donnell laments what he perceives to be a branding backlash. "Was there ever a concept that was so misunderstood?" he asks. He challenges those that would criticize brand by saying: "Rail all you want. But brand is a fact of life."

That sounds like a challenge. What if brand was not a fact of life? What if we were all to collectively agree not to use the words: "brand" and "branding" ever again? We could do all the same things we've always done (or failed to do), just not use the words. How bad would that be?

Let's start with the activity of branding. What would our options be? Perhaps we could fold all "branding" activities under the general title of marketing using sub-categories like positioning, design and innovation where necessary. Maybe we'd have a new activity called experience delivery or experience management to make sure that what sometimes used to be called the brand promise gets translated into appropriate action.

How about brand itself? It seems like no-one can agree on a definition anyway so anything we come up with here might be an improvement. It should have something to do with consumer perception, something to do with expectations and ideally connect with the names and logos that represent this thing that shall no longer be named. Any ideas?

The point is that brand is a construct, a model that serves or ought to serve a purpose. Brands don't exist in the real world and it's not absolutely mandatory that we keep using the model. If the model doesn't work, we should replace it. If we brand practitioners can't agree on a basic definition and confuse ourselves and our clients maybe we need a new approach.

My vote though is to keep it. I don't want to change my business card and the name of my blog for one thing. But apart from that, we know (with empirical certainty(1)) that brand strength is closely tied to consumer ratings of relevance and differentiation. This gives us a way to measure success and a way to figure out what we should be doing.

So let's keep brand alive for now. But let's keep tabs on the situation. If it looks like we are all collectively wasting too much time arguing about definitions and not using this model to deliver effective business activity perhaps we will have to pull the plug. Or do you have a different perspective?

Notes:
1) How do we know that relevance and differentiation are the critical measures? We have great data from BrandAsset Valuator® (BAV) to support this. BAV is a global database of consumer perceptions about brands. It has plotted data against revenue growth, margin, NOPAT and economic value added (EVA) over a ten year period. Its consistent results show that:
a) Differentiation is the margin driver - brands that grow differentiation have about a 50% higher operating margin on average than those which allow differentiation to decline.
b) Relevance is the key to market penetration. Those brands that grow both their Differentiation and Relevance report the greatest increase in operating earnings.The relationships between these measures reveal the true picture of a brand's health: its intrinsic value, its capacity to carry a premium price and its ability to fend off competitors.

2) For a comprehensive visual map of brand and its relationship to experience, logos, take a look at this chart from Dubberly Design Office. It even includes a bit of semiotics for those with that inclination.

Legal Marketing Association event

I was a panelist today at a Legal Marketing Association Bay Area Chapter event discussing the topic: Brand Valuation: Does Size Really Matter in the Real World?...and how does it relate to law firms? Here are some quotes from just one of the topics covered:

Why brand? What does branding mean to you?
"A brand is a sales tool. A brand is going to help a business grow." (Daniel)
"Brand is about being consistent, it's about getting everyone on same page and it's about a call to arms"(Daniel)
"Brand is about perception, it's about what people think of you...people will have a perception whether you think you're branding or not" (Martin)
"Brand is what's left over in client's brain long after you have left the room" (Jeff)

Links to information covering some of the topics discussed:
1) Brand definitions: Brand Mix
2) That Future Is Gone: Jeff Yerkey’s blog on "design, tech, politics… the usual junk"
3) Managing Millennials: A BNET Survival Guide
4) Ideastorm: Dell's 2.0 suggestion box
5) That's What She Said: A legal analysis of The Office (with claims estimates)
6) Legal Blog Watch: An assortment of legal blogs from Law.com

Fellow Panelists:
Jim Stapleton, Fenwick and West LLP (Moderator)
Jeff Yerkey, Right Hat/Charette Communication
Daniel Grace, Creative Mint

The Evolution of Brand Definitions

There's a well-worn joke that if you put nine economists in a room you'll get ten different opinions. But, in the branding community, we are sometimes further back up the trail, still arguing over basic definitions.

I talked in a previous post about why this is--that there's a continuing quest for a simple way to talk about what is, in fact, a number of moving parts.

Those parts being:
1) The name/logo: How the brand is represented
2) The promise: The story that brand managers want to tell
3) The experience: What a brand's products/services deliver
4) The perception: What people think about a brand, influenced by their experiences and expectations

Over time, there has been an evolution of shorthand definitions from the representative towards those that focus on experience and perception. It's certainly become something of a mantra that "brand is not a logo," even though that is still a commonly held view in the business world.

Starting to also fall out of favor is talking about brand as a promise. This definition tends to be favored by brand managers* because it's action and control oriented--implying that they can shape their brand to achieve business goals by the right combination of message, product and service.

But the idea that you "own" your own brand is being challenged as being too "inside-out" and not focused enough on the realities and expectations of customers. As Marty Neumeier has said: "The brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is."

Which brings us to brand definitions that focus on experience and perception. Here, for example, is Tom Asaker's definition: "A brand is an expectation of someone or something delivering a certain feeling by way of an experience."

Definitions like this one bring us closer to the challenge that brand managers face, especially in these new marketing days. It's more than designing a logo or making a promise. It's even more than doing things consistently to keep a promise. It's about figuring out how to deliver experiences to customers that fit into their lifestlye and their needs which you can deliver better and more credibly than anyone else.

* Brand managers: I'm using this term in the most general sense to mean anyone who has responsibility for the management and development of a brand (whether that's their actual job title or not)

Links:
1) The Very Definition of Branding: Brand Mix
2) A Model of Brand: Dubberly Design Office's brand map
3) What is a Brand?: The Marketing Fresh Peel
4) Pithy quotes: AllAboutBranding
5) Why a brand is not a promise: Tom Asacker
6) BrandSimple: Allen Adamson (Landor)