Brand Repositioning

THis is a good article on the how and why of brand positioning.

How to Unleash Power of Brand Repositioning: A Four-Phase Processby Gregory J. Pollack
Published on May 20, 2008

Many brands and companies today are constantly reinvigorating their businesses and positioning them for growth. There is a constant need to innovate, reinvigorate, update, recalibrate, or just simply fend off the competition in an effort to better explain "why buy me."
To move forward, companies and brands need to first take a look at their current brand positioning. But for a moment, even a brief moment, it would make sense to go back to the brand drawing board to answer the question, "Just what is brand positioning, anyway?"

Simply, brand positioning creates a specific place in the market for your brand and product offerings. It reaches a certain type of consumer or customer and delivers benefits that meet the needs of key target groups and users. The actual approach of a company or brand's positioning in the marketplace is determined based on how it communicates the benefits and product attributes to consumers and users. As a result, the brand positioning of a company and/or product seeks to further distance itself from competitors based on a host of items, but most notably five key issues including price, quality, product attributes, its distribution, and usage occasions.

As companies and brands today look to brand repositioning, they first have to ask, "What are the reasons to reposition my brand?" The answer might be declining sales, loss of consumer/user base, stagnant product benefits, or the competition, including such issues as increased technology and new features.
After having identified the reasons for pursuing a Brand Repositioning, you might now ask yourself, "What do I do?"

A four-phased brand repositioning approach will help guide you through this process and allow your company and brand group to best calibrate based on timing, budget, and resources to get the job done.
Phase I—Determining the Current Status of the Brand
The purpose of this phase is to understand the company and brand, including exploring key issues, opportunities, and challenges. The reason is to obtain a clear snapshot of the company and brand in present terms, which will offer a clear insight to opportunity identification and assessment.

Understanding the brand includes reviewing the complete history of the company and brand, including its current brand positioning, the original positioning, how it has evolved—and, most important, what the company and brand stands for today. Key questions to ask and answer:
What differentiates our company and brand from the competition?
What are the equity drivers of the company and brand?
What are the historical ways to communicate the company and brand equity to consumers and customers alike?
As we dive deeper into the current status of the company and brand, we also need to get a clear understanding of the company and brand, including a review of the current brand customer. Key questions to ask and answer:
Who is the current target customer base?
What is his/her profile?
What are the reasons for purchase?
What are the buying patterns?
What are the user patterns?
Once we better understand the current brand customer, we can then review the company and brand sales history, including revenue, growth, and industry and category market share. Also important to look at are the specific core product or service offerings.
This review should include a review of the current product strategy and mix, with specific emphasis on understanding the current SKU product strategy, if you are a company and specifically a manufacturer. If your business is in the service-offering or professional-consulting arena, this would include a review of the total service offerings and programs offered.
A key questions to ask and answer: "Do all products live under the same brand strategy, or are there different product strategies that fall under one brand strategy?" Here, you'll need to consider whether your business is a category leader, or a player as a secondary brand.
This phase should also include looking at production capabilities and constraints, distribution strength and strategy, top key accounts, key selling points, along with a careful review of all sales and marketing promotional materials.
Finally, review the competitive landscape: the number of competitors, keys to their success, and what they are doing right and some of their key challenges. Key questions areas to look at are market share, industry strength, customer profiles, consumer buying trends, and a review of the industry and category trends and forecasts.

Phase II—What Does the Brand Stand for Today?
With a solid understanding of your company and brand, we now need to understand how consumers feel about your company and brand today. In the consumer packaged goods world, this might mean talking to kids and moms and other user groups, to determine what your company and brand stands for among consumers.
Obtaining a clear insight into the way consumers feel and relate to your company and brand will provide the starting point of the repositioning work. First we need to gain parameters, including the following: identifying key growth areas for your brand, marketplace, and industry opportunities; looking at your brand positioning in the competitive landscape; measuring the current equity of your brand; and determining opportunity areas of where to take the equity of your brand.
Your clear objectives are to...
Understand current consumer perceptions and needs of your brand.
Determine how far to move your brand without alienating customers and loyalty base.
Identify how to position your brand to attract new users and ultimately convert them into loyal purchasers/users/buyers.
The first path to travel on the course of brand repositioning is to hold brand equity groups, which will directly ask consumers and users of your brand key questions, including "Why do they select your brand" and "What was the key decision-making element?"
Beyond these general questions, the brand equity groups will seek to understand users' and consumers' reasons for purchase, determine their hierarchy of needs and what your brand currently delivers, understand usage occasions and patters, and showcase brand-equity dimensions.
In addition, one of the most important functions of brand equity groups is to identify similar affinity groups and lifestyle and behavior patterns among your consumers and loyal customers that can translate into better understanding your customer profiles.
From a logistical perspective, the brand equity groups could take place over the course of two days with about four groups total. To ensure a good program read and reach, it would be best to run these groups in three to four cities.
Through this process you will identify needs, both unmet and met, in category and industry, determine the delights and dissatisfiers of your brand, as well as determine current brand equity drivers of your brand. In a sense, it will provide you with a current measure of the value of your brand to consumers or end-users. It will provide not only a snapshot of today and where your brand sits but also an immediate look of where you can take your brand tomorrow.
The end-goal of the brand equity groups is to identify opportunities, including looking at growth areas for your brand as well as unmet consumer and user needs.
Once we can find the current equity value of the brand, the next step would be to run brand-positioning workshops.
Phase III—Developing the Brand Positioning Platforms: Where Can We Take It Tomorrow to Grow the Brand?
Now that we have a good, solid understanding of where the company, business, and brand sit within the overall marketplace, as well as a good understanding of its value to consumers, the next step is to find out how far to grow, expand, and stretch the brand.
The purpose of Phase III is to use all marketing research, brand, industry, and consumer information to reposition what your brand should and can stand for. The key reasoning is that determining effective and successful brand repositioning will help retain current customers and acquire new ones. As we look to begin brand repositioning, we need to keep in mind that it needs to capture "How we want consumers to think and feel about your brand."
This process will develop and create several key "brand positioning platforms" to showcase how far your brand can move to retain customers and acquire new ones. Accordingly, you will answer "Who do we want our brand to be?"; "What benefits will it deliver to the consumer?"; and "How will we promote The Brand product purchase, collection and user patterns?"
The most important guidelines to success will be to ensure that all aspects of where to take your brand are carefully reviewed to ensure that it maintains the core values and essence of your brand. With this in mind, as a general guideline, there are four key ingredients as part of the brand repositioning work. The new brand positioning will be...
Ownable: Unique to the brand
Leverageable: Important and relevant to the target
Sustainable: To other categories in the future
Extendable: Partnership marketing and other marketing programs
There are two key components to the brand positioning workshops—strategic and creative—and should involve two sessions.
The first session would be "Developing The Brand Vision," which includes where the brand is and what it should become tomorrow, as well as mapping out where to take the brand in the short and long term.
The second session would be "Stretching The Brand." Essentially, we would take everything we have heard and learned, and review consumer insights with the goal taking your brand where it should go. This process should include exercises to stretch your brand into the future.
For instance, you might develop different marketing positioning platforms that can take key dimensions as far as possible. For a toy or consumer brand it might include such parameters as fun, mystery, anticipation, taste, usage occasions. However, this process should really center on what consumers think we should explore.
As a result, the brand positioning workshop should determine four to five key benefits and potential platforms that are agreed upon by the entire group. Then it is up to every member of the group to refine and validate each positioning platform. These workshops review key marketing research information and consumer attitudes, and most important... the current purchase patterns. The overall purpose is to determine which areas and brand positioning platforms to pursue.
The final output of the brand positioning workshop is "Developing the Brand Vision," "Developing the Brand Drivers for Future Positioning," and "Developing Brand Alternatives."
Now that we have developed new brand-positioning platforms, we need to test and validate with consumers as well as key customers. The ultimate purpose and goal is to refine the brand positioning platforms.
So, we go back to the focus group format and again talk to key consumers and customers with the purpose of checking back with them to validate the new brand positioning. This essentially allows for refinement of the new brand positioning. It will also help us determine just how far your brand can be stretched. It is also essential to develop visual concept boards to position your brand and its products in a new light in front of consumers and customers.
The final output of this phase includes a concise and clear understanding of consumer views on key new brand positioning platforms as well as the final brand positioning. This will provide and deliver an overview of consumer attitudes toward the new brand positioning, with a focus on retaining existing brand customers and acquiring new users.
Additionally, it will also showcase the final "New Brand Positioning Statement," explaining in detail the reasoning behind the new brand positioning.

Phase IV—Refining The Brand Positioning and Management Presentation
Now we have a great start, a new thinking, and most important the beginnings of the New Brand Positioning for your company, business, and brand. The purpose now is to review and refine the new brand positioning and communicate to all function departments in order to align efforts.
The main reasoning is that it is important that everyone on the Brand Team and all function areas understand, buy into, and support the New Brand Positioning. Essentially, this will become the umbrella strategy for the brand group dictating marketing programs and tactics.
As part of this final and very important phase in brand repositioning, we need to refine the positioning. This includes finalizing the brand by incorporating all feedback from consumers, customers, vendors and agencies, as well as the brand group, to ensure achievable positioning vs. aspirational positioning.
The ultimate final stage results in building a strong team to carry the message to senior management and leaders within your company. This includes developing and presenting to the brand group and senior management the new brand positioning.
Once the entire senior management and leadership buy into and endorse the New Brand Positioning, there is still much work to be done. The main focus now shifts from research and development to solidifying, marketing, and communication.

Therefore, we need to create a "Brand Identity Manual," which provides a clear direction on the New Brand Positioning. Most important, it describes how the New Brand Positioning will deliver growth for the business. The "Brand Identity Manual" showcases industry, competitive trends, and consumer attitudes that resulted in the New Brand Positioning.
Its purpose would be to communicate all marketing research and findings, the reasoning for the New Brand Positioning, as well as deliver clear and concise brand messaging for all subsequent brand function areas, support groups, agencies, etc. The result is that the "Brand Identity Manual" ensures unifying and agreed-upon brand positioning for the entire company and support groups and functions.
The final output for Phase IV is the production of a "Brandscape." This includes a visual imagery and musical score combined to bring the New Brand Positioning to life. It can be shared with entire brand group and brand support groups to communicate new brand positioning and is a core way of communicating the New Brand Positioning to anyone in the company or anyone connected to the brand group.
The reasoning is that the "Brandscape" could be used by all future brand departments as "Brand Communication Guidelines," including packaging, marketing, sales, communications, etc. The overall purpose is to ensure consistent communication of the brand equity across any medium and by any partner.

6 top reasons why you need a marketing plan

I read this on the web the other day and I liked it because it put marketing in layman terms. I thought I should share it.
The Top Six Reasons - by Jap Lipe e-merge Marketing


#1 A marketing plan formalizes ideas
Nothing is more forceful than committing your ideas to paper. If you say to yourself “Gee, I’d really like to upgrade our website this year”, that’s just an idea, without any course of action.
But, if you write on a piece of paper the:
Objective (“We will upgrade our website”)
Rationale (“because our site is looking outdated versus our competition.”)
Project leader (“I will take the lead on completing this project”)
Timeline (“by December 31, 2003”) and
Budget (“for under $3,000”).
Now you have a plan that commits time, people and dollars to the project, and its likelihood for success has grown exponentially.

#2 You can hang it in front of your nose
After you’ve finished your marketing plan, I recommend taping parts of it up all around you—on your cubicle wall, on a computer monitor or over your phone. The goal is to hang it where you’ll see it every day. There are two reasons for this. First, seeing it every day serves as a conscious reminder to accomplish this week’s tasks. Yes, it’s a subtle form of nagging, but I guarantee you’ll get more done because of the subtle pressure you feel.
Second, having your plan in plain view helps sink the plan into your subconscious mind. As your eye passes over the plan, your subconscious mind notices and starts converting your plan into action. You don’t consciously know it’s happening, but it is.

#3 A plan breaks down tasks
After completing your marketing plan, you’ll know every Monday morning exactly what needs to be accomplished to stay on track. If written correctly, your marketing plan breaks down seemingly huge tasks (e.g. develop a website) into smaller, more manageable tasks.

#4 A plan gives you hope
With a completed marketing plan guiding your efforts, you’ll be amazed at how much more confident you feel. Now amidst all the day-to-day fire fighting, you’ll know you have a plan, a path to follow, and a quiet assurance that you’re building momentum for your business. That positive attitude alone goes a long way towards steering a company in the right direction.

#5 A marketing plan sifts ideas
Over the course of 12 months (we’ll assume you’re writing an annual marketing plan here), you’ll probably stumble across a marketing opportunity you didn’t foresee when you wrote the plan. Maybe you field a call from a magazine offering you discounted advertising rates. Or, you meet the president of a call center who offers its telemarketing services to your company. Should you do these things?
With a written marketing plan in place, you can sift each idea through it. If you’ve spent thoughtful time developing your marketing strategies and committing them to paper, you’ll know quickly if any of these ideas are on-strategy.

#6 A plan gives you something to go back to in slow times
If your business is like most others, it has a seasonality to it. That is, some months are traditionally slower than others. During those slow months, instead of wringing your hands and worrying about slow sales, you know what to do. Crack open the plan, and review it cover to cover. Are your assumptions about the market still valid? Do your strategies still make sense? Which tactics do we need to implement?
At a glance, you’ll know whether you’re ahead of schedule or behind, and turn passive statements like “I don’t know what I should do” into active ones like “We planned for a newsletter in the 2nd quarter, now I’ll get started on that.”

How long does it take to write a marketing plan?
How long it takes to write your marketing plan depends on these factors in your business. Its:
Revenues
Geographic scope
Distribution channels
Markets served
Number of products or services offered
Number of employees.
The larger the number for any of these variables, the longer it will take. As a general rule of thumb, a sole proprietor can write a marketing plan in one to four weeks. A larger company will need eight to twelve because it must account for more input.
Whichever company type you are, budget for enough think time—that is, time away from the planning process itself where you can ruminate, cogitate or (if so inclined) meditate about the major questions you face.

A marketing plan lays the foundation for well-thought-out action. If you are serious about your marketing, start with a plan.

Touchpoints a key to understanding how to shape your brand.

There seems to be a consensus that we need to understand how a brand is build today to help manage it. To do this we need to understand that the process begins with identifying each point of interaction, or brand “touchpoint,” between the company and its customers. Here, a company can uncover the various opportunities for its brand to be positively upheld or negatively represented.

As Mark Ritson explains in Professional Marketing Magazine July Sept 2008, touchpoints for a bank can have many more negative impacts on a customer's perception than positive. ie statement of account, letter from the manager, out of work cash dispensers, and long lines to speak to a bank teller. If you think about it from the customer's view how many opportunities does your brand have to disappoint them?

Ray George from Prophet.com explains: each activity falls within the three touchpoint experience categories: pre-purchase, purchase (or usage), and post-purchase.
Pre-purchase experience touchpoints represent the various ways potential customers interact with a brand prior to deciding to do business with a company. Some typical pre-purchase touchpoints include Web sites, word-of-mouth, direct mail, research, sponsorships, public relations and advertising. Cymbic.com adds that most marketing dept of B2B companies spend most of the marketing budget on the pre-purchase part of the customer interaction when most of the customers experience is spent in the other two areas.

Each pre-purchase touchpoint interaction should be designed to shape perceptions and expectations of the brand as well as heighten brand awareness and drive its relevance, while also helping prospects understand its benefits over competing brands and the value it brings in fulfilling their wants and needs. As the pre-purchase experience for prospective customers is examined, the focus should be on refining those touchpoints that most effectively will drive customers to put the brand into their consideration set.

Purchase (or usage) experience touchpoints are those that move a customer from considering a company's brand to purchasing a product or service and initiating a brand relationship. Examples of purchase touchpoints include direct field sales, physical stores and contact with customer representatives.

The main objective of these points of interaction is to maximize the value that prospects see in offerings and instill confidence that they have made the right decision in choosing the brand. During these interactions, it's critical to instill trust in the minds of prospects by demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that a company's product or service offerings are better than those of the competition.

Post-purchase experience touchpoints come into play after the “sale” and maximize the customer experience. These can include loyalty programs, customer satisfaction surveys and warranty and rebate activities. These touchpoints are frequently under-leveraged or ignored as brand-development opportunities, even though they offer the potential for businesses to drive sustainable and profitable growth. Three goals of post-purchase experience touchpoints are to deliver on the brand promise, meet or exceed customer performance and usage expectations and increase brand loyalty and advocacy.

The long-term benefits of assessing a brand's touchpoints are tremendous. This knowledge can help build a strong, powerful brand that keeps its relevance in the minds of customers. But even more important is how this exercise fully equips an organization to better control the most important interactions customers have with the brand.

Here's what typically emerges as a result of a touchpoint assessment:
New Opportunities. Many of the identified touchpoints won't fall in the category of typical “brand-building” activities, but if they're aligned with the company's current brand message, they can instill strong customer preference and loyalty. By demonstrating how they impact customer perceptions, they can be used to give the company a fresh perspective on its brand-building activities.

Control. It's a common misconception that brand development is the sole responsibility of the marketing department; in reality, the responsibility for the development, execution and ongoing maintenance of each touchpoint may fall within several different functional areas of the company. In fact, some touchpoints—word-of-mouth, for example—may seem to be impossible to control altogether. In such instances, analysis of what's driving word-of-mouth exposure may reveal a greater degree of control over this touchpoint than initially thought. The tactical importance of minor touchpoints
that are not typically considered within the marketing domain. The automated phone answering experience. The product User Interface. The monthly invoice. However you can see the potential impact they can have on the perception of the brand of a company.

Complexity. Managing all the different points of interaction customers have with a brand is a multifaceted and interdependent responsibility.

Ted Mininni is president of Design Force adds: It really is about all the intangibles around those products and services that form customer perceptions, thoughts, emotions and attitudes based on repeated, interactive experiences with corporate brands. This mix of intangibles transcends actual products or services—all of which can be purchased from a number of competing companies. Meaningful brand experiences are unified experiences; that is, they are corporately designed, properly managed and aligned across all customer touchpoints.

Examples:

Pre-Purchase: Borders, smell of coffee,quiet, sections of books to easy to find. Information centre, large variety, cafe to enjoy while reading. Entertainment value. Meet friends.
Purchase: Quick and streamlined, discount for valued customers. Staff all dressed in borders black t-shirt, easy to identify.
Post-Purchase: Follow up with email offers, vouchers in your black bag with logo - status bought book at borders or CD or whatever.

From within the offices of Starbucks, a branding guru had summarized the Starbucks brand into an extremely concise brand statement: A great coffee experience.
This brand statement encompassed the Starbucks store design, bean selection, barista personalities… even its toilet paper. 2 ply for Starbucks.

A lousy experience with one touchpoint can negate all the brand equity you build in other touchpoints. When Microsoft releases a security patch that creates more openings for hackers, its brand is diminished.

They are marketing the experience and the brand as much as the products they sell and doing it effectively through every touch point.

What are the distinctive, heritage elements of your brand that resonate with customers?

Once all current and potential customer-experience touchpoints have been identified, the next step is to determine which are the most important, and why. Trying to control every touchpoint can be an overwhelming and costly endeavor. However, prioritizing the touchpoints and identifying which have the greatest impact on customers ensure that customers are being spoken to where and when most relevant. Additionally, prioritizing the touchpoints maximizes the use of corporate capital and human resources.

Consider the following factors in prioritizing the touchpoints:
Value in decision-making. What impact will the touchpoint have on the overall customer decision-making process? Ability to control. To what extent is the touchpoint within an organization's ability to control?
Degree of misalignment. How is the touchpoint diluting or contradicting the brand message, and how quickly must it be aligned?

Achieving business objectives. Does the touchpoint support the underlying business objectives?
Companies across the board are facing numerous challenges that require leadership to take a hard look at how well their brand strategies position them with customers. Competition is fierce and growing and customers are both wary and confused, particularly in the face of largely undifferentiated products, services and messaging.

Businesses that intend to successfully stand out from among the competition would be wise to scrutinize the core of where and how they interact with customers and communicate the essence of their brands. That sort of thoughtful and measured assessment is what will lead to brand investments that are most likely to create powerful results.



If you want to do some touchpoint analysis for your company here is a good url
www.marketingdriven.com/userImages/touchpoint_analysis.pdf

Branding for small business

Think branding is only for large multi-national corporations? Think again. Here are 9 easy tips you can use to grow your brand with your customers. by Nick Rice.

The design of your logo really doesn’t matter. Would you choose MSN as your search engine over Google because of their logo? No, having a nice professional logo is great, but it very rarely increases sales. I’m all for a professional logo, but don’t think you need to spend a fortune on it. It’s more important to include your logo on every piece of communication. Put it on business cards, letterhead, envelopes, invoices, yellow page ads, building signage, newsletters, etc…
Have a professional website. It’s not just good enough to just have a website, you must reflect your brand image. If your known as a top notch photographer, the last thing you want is a website designed 10 years ago. It doesn’t reflect well on you. Everyone, yes everyone, uses the web today to check references. If someone recommends your service, you can almost guarantee that they will go online to look for you. Your website design should be updated at least every two years to stay current.
Blogs are good. Blogs help your business on multiple levels. First off, valuable content on a consistent basis will make you look like an expert. People are looking for experts, not apprentices. The software that powers blogs has multiple advantages. It’s very easy to publish. It’s a database driven environment where style is separate from content so you will not need to go back to your web design agency for every little change. And use of tags and sitemaps make basic search engine optimization easy. But the real reason blogs are great is that they enable conversation. Two-way dialog is much more valuable than a company that just dumps messaging and collateral on their customers.
Blogs are good, but they’re just one tool. A blog should not be your sole marketing strategy. You should have a comprehensive multi-touch marketing plan to get your value proposition in front of your target audience. This can take many forms. You can launch a direct mail campaign, email campaign, host a webinar, sponsor a local event, attend a trade show, attend networking events, cold call prospects, win awards, etc… There are a thousand different ways for you to be noticed. You have to find the best combination of methods for your strategic goals. Data shows that people need to be exposed to a brand at least seven times before they buy. If you simply do one touch and stop, you’re wasting valuable budget dollars and probably wondering why your efforts are not successful.
Prepare a one page corporate overview. This one pager will be vital as a leave behind when you meet a prospect. Use short sentences in short paragraphs - people like to read quickly. Also make it very conversational; it’s not a white paper. Your one page overview should include your value proposition, target audience benefits, previous audience experience and a mini-case study - and don’t forget your contact information.
Participate in local business events. And by participate, I mean be on a committee. Just showing up at events is great, but you’re just a face in the crowd. Ask to be on one of the committees. Believe it or not, it’s as simple as just asking most of time. Groups are looking for volunteer help and it’s a great way to elevate your status and visibility among the entire organization.
Do what you say you’re going to do. I know it may sound like common sense, but one of the primary drivers of brand loyalty is a consistent experience. If you say you’re going to have the photographs ready on a set day, be sure they are ready. Nothing leaves a bad taste in someone’s mouth like missed expectations. Positive experiences lead to good feelings which lead to telling their friends. But don’t forget that bad experiences spread much faster and are harder to overcome - if you get a chance at all.
Stand for something. People latch on to something they can understand and appreciate. If you’re trying to be everything to everybody, chances are you’ll attract no one. If you think it’s too controversial to choose a niche, remember the power of being seen as an expert. Experts are not good at everything, they’re awesome at one thing. This allows you to better position yourself and charge more for your services. People seek out experts, not generalists.
Realize that you’re not in control of your brand. That’s right, you only set the direction for your brand. Your actual brand image is determined by your audience. You can use these tips to ensure alignment between your desired brand image and your actual brand image in the minds of your customers. Branding isn’t a one shot deal, it’s an on-going juggling act of marketing, research and conversation. If you’re not tapping into those conversations with your audience, how do you know what their real impression of you is? How will you know how to address it? Brand growth comes from alignment. You have to ensure that your actions, stationary, website and marketing efforts put out the right image. But you cannot stop there; Those are pre-sales activities that get you noticed and hopefully bought. You also have to ensure that all actions and engagements during the sale and post-sale are positive and in line with your desired brand image. If your audience has a different view of you than you’d like, then you need help. And it’s probably best to bring in an outside perspective.
BONUS TIP #10: Branding is as much about your people as anything else. Never forget that the best interactions come from one-on-one conversations between executives, employees, suppliers, and customers. Employees that want to help and do the best job possible go a long way.
Proper branding is critical to your long term success. A lot of people think of branding as logo development. But in reality, branding is managing the thoughts and feelings of your customers to ensure that you are what they desire. If your desired brand image isn’t what’s in the minds of your target audience, you’ve got to figure out where the gaps are and how to address them. And fixing those issues is hard work because the old adage still rings true - the customer is always right.