Thank you for taking the time to visit today and thanks for allowing me to share my views with you. I truly appreciate it. And I also appreciate any and all feedback on my posts and on my new book.

Creating an enduring brand is a huge challenge in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace. It requires courage, focused attention, patience and new marketplace insights. I certainly can’t help you with the first three, but if there is ever any way I can help you with a different view of the world of business, please don’t hesitate to ask.

P.S. Stay passionate!

“Just because you can doesn’t mean that you should.”

Scott uses that metaphor when discussing brand extensions or brand “stretch.” Brand extension is another polarizing concept. Some say focus, focus, focus. Here’s what I say (page 125):

“Companies are finally realizing that their most powerful assets are not their buildings, bank accounts, or even technologies. It’s their relationship with their audience. The rpoblems arise when a brand tries to be all things to all people. Instead, develop a core attitude with your core audience and be as many things as possible to them.”

Do you know Curtis Jackson? He’s an entrepreneur. Adam Matthews, in the New York Daily News, said that Jackson (a.k.a. 50 Cent) “may soon be ready for the Fortune 500.>”

50 Cent’s company, G-Unit, produces just about everything – music, clothes ($100 million in sales last year), shoes, watches, water, video games, films, and television shows.

What are your thoughts on brand extensions now?

“It is not the position, but the disposition.”

In Chapter 4 of my book I say that positioning is pass

“We’re living in a marketplace driven by creativity and innovation. The concept of branding is a much more dynamic idea. Standing still and trying to persuade people with clever advertising and image-building campaigns is a self-centered waste of time and money.”

This is the one opinion that has caused me the most blow back. Here’s a recent email that I received from a book reviewer:

“FYI, several of those who have read my review of A Clear Eye for Branding have contacted me re: my remark that I do not agree with you on every point made (e.g. positioning is pass My response is the same and I may add it to the review:

Old Positioing (i.e. Ries and Trout): “Capture” the customer’s mind re her or his perceptions of a given product or service. Product or service is the focus.

New Positioning: “Capture” the customer’s heart as well as mind (hopefully creating an evangelist) re her or his perceptions of herself or himself. Nourish with multi-sense experience. Increasing and enhancing the customer’s sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-fulfillment, self-image, etc. is the focus.

Presumably you agree that the New Positioning is not pass

And here is my email response:

“As far as positioning goes, I suppose it’s semantics. Although semantics may be what it’s all about.

Of course I agree with your new positioning description. Although the metaphor “capture” should probably be changed to something like “continuously attract.”

And the word “positioning” . . . well. It originally meant: my position relative to my competitor. So I still say it’s passGreat brands don’t compete today. The word competition literally means “seeking together . . . choosing to run in the same race.” Instead, great brands step off of the track. They defy positioning.”

Here is an example of classical positioning: “We Try Harder.”

How did it work? The advertiser simply keeps saying it over, and over, and over again. Thus carving out a place in the consumer’s mind (or “positioning” it in the mind relative to its competitors.) Then, when it comes time to choose a car rental business, “We Try Harder” comes to mind and we; a. believe it, and b. go on autopilot and choose it. We don’t check prices on line. We respond to the comparative positioning. How it exists in our mind. “Wow. The other guys must not really try as hard. Why even bother checking.”

Now for the other use of the word “position.” The one I think most people elude to today. Southwest Airlines is “positioned” as a low cost, no-frills airline. So is JetBlue. It is NOT a game of mind control. Simply check their prices. Starbucks is “positioned” as a premium brand of coffee. Ditto.

Now, if your “position” relative to others is, for example, high price/high service, then you must uniquely express that position. How? It depends what type of business it is. If it’s a restaurant, then the aesthetics of everything is supremely important. As is the exclusivity of your guest list, etc.

Forget about trying to carve out a unique position with advertising, pr, taglines, etc. Instead, uniquely express that position.

Here’s another excerpt from Chapter 4 of A Clear Eye for Branding:

“Look, times are pretty strange. People will go out of their way and pay a premium for products and services that are important to them, to their self-definition. But in categories or for things that don’t matter to them emotionally, they’re basically looking to save time and money. Why do you think that brand power has shifted away from fast-moving consumer goods companies and local merchants, to the big-box retailers?

Because of a larger selection and lower prices?

Exactly. An expectation – based on experience – of saving time and avoiding a bad decision on stuff that simply doesn’t matter much. Stuff that’s “good enough.”

Yes, but I’ve even noticed some of those retailers getting into high-end stuff. Luxury items and designer products.

And why shouldn’t they? They’ve earned the customers’ trust, and now they’re going to try to go deeper into those relationships with stuff that does matter – whether it’s aesthetically pleasing items or a range of services.”

And now this from a recent USA Today article: Wal-Mart aims to clean up stores, improve goods

“Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) said Friday it needs to clean up its stores, treat employees well and bring in more upscale goods like organic food and trendy clothes to revive sales and profit growth. Executives at the world’s biggest retailer said their “game plan” for this year involves targeting wealthier shoppers who may buy basics like food at Wal-Mart but look elsewhere for fashionable items like clothing and housewares.”

Once you get a visceral understanding of what a brand is all about and why people choose the ones they choose, you’ll be able to see this kind of thing coming. Hurry up, before it’s too late.

“It is not altogether wrong to say that there is no such thing as a bad photograph – only less interesting, less relevant, less mysterious ones.”

The same is true with brands. And there are many that are boring, irrelevant and/or ordinary, which spells death in a marketplace driven by ever increasing customer expectations.

Now, am I saying that every new brand has to wow the heck out of you? No. Don’t believe all of the hype about the death of ordinary and the birth of “purple cows.” There are no absolutes in this crazy game. For example, would you call bagged salad greens a purple cow? C’mon. But, it was highly relevant to people and thus has grow to over a $4 billion category. And I predict a hit for Unilever with their new packaging innovation for Wish-Bone designed for the diet-conscious called Wish-Bone Spray.

On the other hand, there’s a purple cow called WashingSacks, which are laundry bags infused with detergent that dissolve in the wash, that is probably destined to the dust bin with the thousands of other new products released each month.

For the record I don’t believe in the death of ordinary, or anything else for that matter. Take advertising. If I hear someone predict the death of advertising one more time, I’m going to throw up. Advertising is a huge brand enhancer. Sure, it needs to evolve to keep up with today’s skeptical and sophisticated audience. But it is certainly not dying.

The key to brand success is to understand the desired feelings of your audience and deliver that feeling with unique and relevant products, services and communications. If you can bring your diet conscious audience those feelings through innovative packaging, then do it! If you can bring your beer drinking audience those feelings through advertising, go that way.

Uniqueness and relevance. You need both! Refrigerator with a see-though glass door . . . unique! But irrelevant . . . and a marketplace loser. High quality, fuel efficient cars from GM and Ford . . . relevant? Sure. Unique? Nope. And so they compete by slashing prices (and margins) and suffer the devastating effects.

I know what you may be thinking: “Refrigerators, cars, salad, detergent. Branding is all about consumer products.” It may appear that way, but far from it. It’s about why and how people choose what they choose. And whether it’s a consumer product or business consultant, people go through the same, feeling-driven process. Perhaps you can share a few examples.

“All our work, our whole life is a matter of semantics, because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.”

Okay, here it is. MY definition of brand. Are you ready for it? Are you prepared to blog battle me over it? I really hope not.

A brand is the expectation of someone or something delivering a certain feeling by way of an experience.

I’ve heard that a brand is an idea, and I’ll buy that. But what kind of idea? I’m interested in the economics of the word “brand.” Why do people exchange their money and/or time for an idea – be it a product, service, place or person? And the new buzz in the world of marketing that declares that a brand is a promise? Puh-lease. Do you honesty think that customers believe your promises? Get real.

The rationale for my definition is simply that people expect something in return for exchanging their money and/or time and attention. And since we are emotional creatures by nature (Don’t believe me? Read some work in behavioral economics.), that something is a feeling.

I don’t care if it’s B-to-B, B-to-C, C-to-C or XYZ, there is always an underlying feeling that drives each purchase decision. Therefore, the impetus for all business leaders (not just marketing) is to viscerally understand that expected feeling, and work diligently to align every single word and act around it.

In Executive Update magazine, business researcher Marcus Buckingham takes the vast topic of leadership and hacks it down to size. Here are a few excerpts:

“The trick for leadership doesn’t lie in being right. It lies in being clear – and that means picking and choosing.”

“The thing about a good leader is that he will look at the complexity of the world and, no matter how many truths there are, he’ll pick one and orient the whole organization around that one.”

“You’ve cut through all those ridiculous platitudes about ‘we’ve got to serve our customers;’ ‘we’ve got to wow them;’ “we’ve got to turn them into raving fans” – all of which are nice and uplifting, but they’re terribly vague.”

In Virginia Postrel’s August 11, 2005 article in the NY Times titled Adding Social Norms to the Usual Methodology Mix, economist and Professor Rachel E. Kranton explains the effectiveness of workplaces like Federal Express and Southwest Airlines:

“Part of what a good firm does is make those expectations very clear. Then you want to live up to the expectations both of yourself and of yourself as part of the firm.”

And before you can define internal expectations you must viscerally understand external expectations: those of your audience. So to become a great brand like FedEx, Southwest, Harley Davidson, Toyota, et al, you must:

1. Understand the feelings desired by your audience (and remember, sometimes they don’t fully understand them);

2. Communicate those feelings such that they expect it from you and only you; and

3. Deliver those expected feelings via an experience.

If you do it all better than the other guy, you win . . . temporarily. Because people’s desires and expectations are rapidly evolving due to changes in marketplace offerings, media exposure and new technologies. Branding is a never-ending game of innovation and communication. Brand is a verb, not a noun.

“The higher the truth, the simpler it is.”

What, exactly, is a brand? Ask ten seasoned business professionals that one, simple question and you’re likely to receive ten different answers. The concept of brand (and branding) is either the most vague and confusing one in business today, or it is conveniently misinterpreted to fit each marketer’s agenda and expertise. Take your pick.

The true tests of a business definition or concept are logical consistency, agreement with experience, and economy of explanation. Given that people exchange their hard earned money for “brands,” in many cases paying a premium for them over competitive alternatives, a brand is obviously more than a logo, trademark, or tagline.

“Concepts, like individuals, have their histories and are just as incapable of withstanding the ravages of times as are individuals.” – Kierkegaard

Why does a Google search of the word “branding” return close to 14 million results? Why is there a web site dedicated to “developing a common definition of the term ‘branding?’” Simple. The concept has not survived the ravages of time.

In one of his excellent On Language articles, NY Times columnist William Safire jumped onto the brandwagon. He referred to the word “brand” as “the hot word in the field of sales – indeed, pervading the world of perfect pitching.” He also wrote:

David Ogilvy, the advertising executive, was dubbed by the author Martin Mayer in 1958 as an “apostle of the ‘brand image”‘ who sought to persuade the consumer that brand A, technically identical with brand B, is somehow a better product.

And there you have it. The 1950′s concept of branding, which most people are still stuck on – and stuck in – today. Branding = Manipulating minds through modern marketing. Right?

In my new book I refer to branding as “today’s most powerful business concept.” Why? Because I believe that the proliferation of products and services requires more and better mind control? Hardly. Rather it’s because said glut of options and information requires a new way of looking at how and why people make marketplace decisions. After all, for a brand to exist in any practical way it must eventually be chosen.

In The Practice of Management, Peter Drucker wrote, “Because it is its purpose to create a customer, any business enterprise has two – and only these two – basic functions: marketing and innovation.” The execution of those two functions is what I’ll be referring to as “branding.” The effect – in the mind of the customer – is what I’ll mean by “brand.”

The key to understanding the concept “brand,” is to understand its value. How it shapes and encapsulates organizational ideas and initiatives, how the marketplace understands and values it, and how we wish to represent our attitudes about it (manipulative marketing technique or organizing business principle). As I dig a little deeper into the concept, and highlight some real world examples, I look forward to your thoughts.