Disruptive CMO Marketing

How to make creative decisions for high tech products

In general it is already difficult to make consistent great creative decisions. I believe in a number of ways to ensure this happens:

1. Provide ownership and autonomy to the leaders of the creative projects
This allows for a vision to come through without it being watered down. It allows for a cohesive piece to be developed

2. Involve a number of different people in making important decisions.
This is not contrary to #1  but rather a feedback mechanism. No one has all the answers and there are so many different scenarios that are possible that it is necessary to expose creative work to a wide variety of people. It is still up to the leaders to decide what to do with the information.

3. Ensure various processes are being used to evaluate the work.

The power of marketing your brand believes

 A lot of brand messages come across as not believable. Why because they feel like a hook to sell something. If you stand for something, if you truly believe something and consumers feel that, then it will feel genuine. If you care about Freedom and you make Harley Davidson, you will make different choices. If you are about the quality of beer, you will make different choices. This approach goes deep to the core and showcases your brand soul.

 

Here are some examples of marketing brand believes.

1. Harley Davidson

   

2. Honda - The Impossible Dream

 

How to increase brand loyalty?

In marketing, brand loyalty is the golden ring for which everyone strives. However, attaining and holding onto the loyalty of consumers is very difficult, and only a few will succeed. It takes more than luck to bring success; it requires skill to understand consumer needs and determination in precise communication that a product will deliver on those needs.

Brand loyalty is still underrated. A lot of marketeers envision growing their products by increasing penetration. But that may come at eroded prices as more and more price sensitive consumers are lured in with promotions. Have a look at using the concept of brand loyalty and how it can improve profitablity.

 
 

There are a lot of digital tools to drive loyalty, but I want to illustrate the above with a location-based service, group discount sites and Facebook. Check-in sites like Foursquare’s have the ability to create brand loyalty but are falling short by not offering consumers any real value. The problem with the Mayorship paradigm is that it rewards a select few and does not offer enough So What?

Group buying sites like Groupon offer consumers real values as they clearly play on the left side of the above graph. So good luck with building brand loyalty using Groupon. Facebook on the other hand is build to generate a loyal fan base. It starts with liking a brand, then following the brand newsfeed to participating to surveys and questions. In the end, when it comes to creating brand loyalty, the emphasis must be on creative engagement and interaction to ensure long-lasting customer relationships.

In technology, loyalty is shifting into an ecosystem adoption where once locked in, there is an increasing level of stickiness.

I stumbled upon this video, which introduces an interesting perspective on the relationship between high involvement products and brand loyalty. Love to hear what you think?

 

Do not accept for mature brands to just grow above category trends!

When you work on a mature brand in a mature category, it is of course difficult to get above category trend performance but is this an enough benchmark. I think that that growth in mature categories is indeed possible, but you need to overcome the mindset that beating ‘average’ is good enough.

 

Brand building in a museum?

A museum dedicated to the world of marketing and celebrating more than 200 years of packaging design, branding and advertising, opened in London. The Museum of Brands, Packaging and Advertising will feature more than 10,000 consumer products and promotional items. The venue showcases posters and innovations for magazines, fashion, design and popular culture including "brand of the month" and "latest brands from around the world". A time tunnel takes visitors through the Victorian era, the beginnings of radio and television, the war, the Swinging 60s, the punk 70s and right up to modern marketing in the new millennium.

The museum is based in Notting Hill, London and will open from 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Saturday and 11am to 4pm Sunday.

Can your declining mature brand be rescued?

Many classical brand managers believe that brands--like people--follow predictable, irreversible life cycles: they grow, they mature, they decline, and they die. When sales fall, they respond by cutting back on marketing activities and reallocating funds to new brands. This is not always the case. It is possible to change this traditional point of view and revitalize mature brands or ghost brands.

Is your big, mature brand not performing then maybe you can apply one of the following strategies. If your brand has been around for a long time but is now in trouble and you are wondering how to revitalize it, then first have a look if it fits the below criteria for successful revitalization. These have been found in past mature brands that have been revitalized.

The best candidates for revitalization seems high-margin products with few shelf-keeping units (SKU). SKUs are assigned to each size and variety of consumer packaged good on the market.
Now that we can check whether revitalization is possible, the key question is how much investment will be needed to revitalize your mature brand and what will the return be?

How to line-extend a brand?

What is important to consumers when line-extending a brand?

The first thing to do when considering to launch a brand extension is to evaluate how your current brand portfolio is satisfying the identified need? Before jumping to the decision to line-extend, maybe you can stretch an existing brand or license a brand.

When you indeed move forward with brand extension you need to evaluate the brand extension fit. There are four underlying constructs which consumer’s evaluate individually, to formulate an overall judgement as to whether or not the brand extension fits with the core brand.

Relevance:

is the extent to which the core brand attributes are relevant or important to the brand extension category. For example; (1) the core brand attributes of Starbucks are clearly relevant to the sale of coffee grinders, but not relevant to the sale of other kitchen equipment such as microwaves or fridges, (2) the core brand attributes of Coca-Cola are relevant to the sale of other soft drinks and sodas but not the sale of fruit juice such as orange juice.

Recognition:

is the extent to which consumers understand the reasoning behind why the brand is conducting the brand extension as well as the logic of the brand extension. For example; (1) the core brand attributes of McDonalds make it easy to understand / logical in the eyes of consumers for McDonald’s to extend its brand into another restaurant concept, however not easy to understand / logical the eyes of consumers for McDonalds to open a chain of grocery stores, (2) the core brand attributes of Nike make it easy to understand / logical in the eyes of consumers for Nike to extend its brand to sell golfing clothing, but not easy to understand / logical in the eyes of consumers for Nike to sell highly fashionable clothing.

Credibility:

is the extent to which the core brand has attributes which are credible and acceptable to conduct and sell the brand extension. For example; (1) the core brand attributes of Sony make it credible and acceptable for Sony to extend the Sony brand into laptops and digital cameras however they are not credible and acceptable to extend the Sony brand into sports clothing, (2) the core attributes of Budweiser make it credible and acceptable for Budweiser to extend the Budweiser into new beers however they are not credible or acceptable to extend the Budweiser brand into wine or spirits.

Transfer:

is the perceived ability of a brand to transfer their skills and experience to the brand extension. For example, (1) the skills and experience of British Airways are transferable into other areas of air transportation such as domestic flights and low cost flights, however British Airways’ skills and experience are not transferable into coach transportation, (2) the skills and experience of American Express are transferable into travel insurance and foreign exchange services, but not transferable into car rental.

The most crucial component of consumers' brand extension fit judgements is the relevance construct. However all the constructs are important and consumers must perceive all constructs to some degree to perceive a brand extension to fit.