The Fork In The Road

Four Myths of Branding to Forget

Brand building has been making a comeback. As one of the current marketing buzzwords, it’s thrown around in phrases like: “we need a brand expert” and “we want to build our brand.” While the term is used – or misused – outdated or just plain wrong, assumptions about branding persist. Here’s a list of five to forget immediately:

1)   Brand is only advertising/graphical

Although I often think common sense will remove these assumptions, unfortunately I’ve seen this repeatedly in very painful ways. Not too many years ago, I attended a sales and marketing kickoff that included the unveiling of a new corporate brand. The “Why should anyone would care?” and “Why is this relevant?” were missing. The CMO, who only had an advertising background didn’t have the experience or possibly the desire to bridge the gap between visual image and what was being sold.

There are great CMOs that have come from the advertising discipline, but each that’s been successful has embraced the full business environment. A company’s brand cannot sit separately from the rest of sales and marketing. Like an integrated marketing program that leverages themes to create a greater impact, a good brand program pulsates through every aspect of the company. 

2)   Quality technology wins over a strong brand

You silly, silly engineers. Don’t kid yourself into believing if you have a better product, people will naturally pick it. The reality is most people purchase what they know, not what’s the best after thorough side-by-side comparisons. Of course, the perfect company has the best product and a strong brand, but if you have to pick one, pick the strong brand. Just ask Syncplicity. What, you’ve never heard of it? Now owned by EMC, Syncplicity may be a better option than Box.com, but its market share is a fraction of its competitors.

3)   Brand development is a one-way communication

This was never true, and in a world with social media is even less so. In 2012, McDonald’s tried to promote how good it was for farmers and the freshness of its produce with a paid Twitter campaign - #MeettheFarmers. How could the McDonald’s marketing team not see what was coming when it morphed to #MDstories? While McDonald’s wanted to promote its quality, instead the brand was overwhelmed with individual negative experiences, nutritional facts, and ugly rumors. 

4)   Global brands and positioning are the same worldwide

I’d like to say that only a fool would think they can use the same brand attributes and messaging globally, but it would be rude to call so many people fools. Instead, let me give two simple examples. Marketing automation is a widely-used term in the US. However, when starting to sell in Europe, Marketo used the much simpler term of email marketing. How did it know to do this? By monitoring social media and general business conversation, the Marketo marketing team learned what terms where used and understood in the local marketplace.

Conversely, at this same time, I began working with Luma, a Belgium-based company that originally used the term marketing automation to describe its SaaS tool. Luma’s offering had nothing to do with email marketing and thoroughly confused US marketers. Even though technically Luma’s offering was automating part of the marketing process, it was more aligned with localized web-to-print offerings than what most marketers now define as marketing automation. Without listening and understanding what is being said in each region, companies are doomed to at best have missteps and at worse alienate potential customers.

All marketing trends are cyclical. Branding won’t stay the sought-after buzzword. That’s fine. What all marketers need to learn and embrace is branding’s role in an effective overall marketing approach.

Branding Roadmaps - The Overlooked Path

More than 10 years ago, I canceled merging my consulting practice with another successful boutique consulting practice.  We had already met with the attorneys twice and were about to start drafting the agreements.  I did this when it hit me what the new company would mean to my personal brand.  Frankly, the other managing partner had a habit of fighting with everyone: her own consultants, vendors and even clients.  In fact, my role with our joint clients was already starting to be “the fixer.”  

Canceling the partnership after we had already met with attorneys was a little expensive and a little painful.  I’ve never regretted it.  If we had gone forward, it had the potential to be very expensive (potential lost clients) and I’m certain very painful.  More importantly, I was in danger of having my personal brand damaged with negative general statements about the firm.

Brand perception, whether personal or corporate, is hard to change.  It is doable, and I’ve spent much of my career changing perceptions, but it is so much easier to get it right the first time.  Too often, companies think they’ll get their product where they want it and afterward possibly think about their brand.  Knowing what your brand is doesn’t mean you ignore the product; in fact, it supports the product roadmap.

Your company’s brand must be about the value and emotion you provide now as well as what it will be in the future.  If you plan to make a major switch in your product offerings, you need to build that into a brand roadmap so you don’t make a bold claim now that will come back to bite you in the arse later.

I’ve found people are much more forgiving – within reason – with product features needing to evolve.  But if your stated brand stands for one thing, but everything you do implies something else, your prospects and customers either won’t believe you or will assign their own definition of your brand.

The most successful companies boldly define their brands, then all company actions and marketing efforts support that positioning.  It doesn’t need to be overthought, but someone needs to be the company’s internal voice that says Does this make sense if we are an X company? For example, I couldn’t tell you what Burger King’s brand positioning was during The King advertising phase a few years ago, but I’m fairly certain it wasn’t “Creepy Fast Food Company.” Clearly, its advertising didn’t match what the company wanted its brand to project.

Another question to ask is Should we be doing this if we know in a year we will be doing Y?  Some companies, particularly tech companies, have the wrong assumption that you don’t need to transition brand positioning.  “Today we are this.  Starting tomorrow, we will be this other thing.  Don’t mention what we were before.”  This is confusing at best.  It’s possible to go from point A to B, but you need to connect the dots.  Just like with a product roadmap, you need to show the evolution, even if it is onto a new plain of existence.   

If you cringe when you meet with a company that doesn’t have a product roadmap or plan for how future offerings will be developed, what do you think of companies who haven’t defined who they, what they stand or where they are going?