Five reasons to stay on-brand

The 100 Best Global Brands 2016 were recently announced by Interbrand, and Apple topped the list with a value of 178 billion USD. A brand is certainly a huge asset for a company, if not the biggest. Unfortunately, some brands are not treated with the respect they deserve.

Here are five good reasons why to stay on-brand:

1. Recognition

Brand recognition will affect customers’ choice when ready for purchase. Staying true to your brand attributes, such as color, logos, images, tag lines, etc., enables your brand to be recognized even without mentioning the brand name.

“Because you’re worth it” is one catchy slogan that has maintained international recognition for almost 45 years.

2. Identity

Brand attributes that are easily distinguishable from those of other brands prevent confusion with competitor brands.  Consequent use of strong brand attributes inhibits dilution of the brand’s identity. A quality brand with a weak identity even risks being exploited by similar brands.

Hygiene products such as soaps, deodorants, or shampoo are subject to strong competition and it is difficult for one brand to stick. Colgate has managed to distinguish their brand identity from competition through brand personality attributes such as ruggedness, competence, and excitement.

3. Position

Brand positioning offers an opportunity to create a market place for your brand. A successful positioning helps customers distinguish a brand’s promise from those of other brands and provides reasons to why select this particular brand over others.

Harley Davidson, with brand values such as rituals, masculinity, and toughness, broke their brand promise when launching a perfume.

4. Assurance

A brand is commonly associated with a certain quality. Maintaining integrity of the brand protects its reputation and supports assurance of delivering a consistent customer experience.

A brand is a way to set expectations. McDonald’s Big Mac burger is expected to taste the same anywhere in the world, despite slight changes to the recipe.

5. Launchpad

A well-known brand makes it easier to launch new products. A product of an unknown brand constitutes a risk for the customer. A well-known brand is already associated with a certain quality and can benefit from its reputation. A brand with a good reputation saves the customer’s time and energy.

The strength of customer association to the brand value determines the extendability of the brand. Polo Ralph Lauren, the well-known clothing company, successfully extended its brand to home furnishing.

Driving brand awareness is expensive, but it is almost impossible to make sales without it. To avoid brand failure, the brand must be constantly and consistently communicated.

Be successful in social media

As many of you, I assume, I have attended various seminars on how to succeed in marketing using social media, however, without getting much out of them. Hence, I didn’t have very high expectations on the seminar that was given by Albert Lannerstad either. I was wrong. In addition to sharing great tips, he presented several examples on successful, and some less successful, use of social media as a channel for marketing communication:

Social media should be used as an invitation to communication, so one thing to consider is if you are prepared for a dialogue. Two organizations that have managed to create a dialogue with their customers are Vingresor and Idre fjäll. One less good example is the Facebook initiative ”We call ourselves...” where a company asks for suggestions on what to call the people working there, and got several negative suggestions such as ”slaves”, etc.

Another thing to consider is the aim with the presence in a particular forum or medium. With a clear aim with their presence on Facebook, Skövde University College provides tips and good to know information to their followers. A less good example is Wikiairport by Swedavia that lacked vision, and eventually had to close down web site. 


What to write about needs to be sorted out. Skövde University College, for example, got 12 ”likes” when informing about a price they won, 20 ”likes” when wishing everyone a happy Easter, and 40 ”likes” when informing about that the sun shining on campus and invited everyone to come and socialize. Hallonlakritsskalle also puts a lot of effort on what they are writing about and have more than 300 000 followers. What to offer one’s followers and the benefits with following you in your digital forum need to be obvious. The ”costs” with your presence are user benefits, creativity, and how the content is presented. Gröna Lund ”launched” their opening hours with the call ” Print it out! Frame it! Use it as background on your cell phone! Laminate and put it up on the fridge! Do what you want really – anyway, this is an overview of our opening times 2012!”.

Another way of using social media is in customer support, giving you the possibility to turn difficult situations. Assistancia provides a forum for discussing their services, Dustin allows product ratings on their web site, and SEB answers customer questions on their Facebook site.

Customers want acknowledgement and somewhere to socialize. To meet this, Scania and Fiskars provide communities where their customers can show themselves off.

Key to a successful use of social media in your marketing communication is to focus on customer incentive.

Push up the price

I attended a seminar by Karin Klerfeldt the other day. She talked about taking proper charge and learning the business process and gave these valuable tips.

-Can we raise the price? she asked and answered her own question.

-Yes, a general conclusion is that you can raise the price about 20% - if they can sell! So how is it done?

·      Make a beneficial offer

·      There needs to be a market for you offer

·      Sell!

Some will think that it's too expensive, while others know you and your skills and are willing to pay. There are lots of different pricing strategies, but the most important questions you have to ask yourself are "how much do I want" and "how much do I want to earn." Write it down!

Either you can sell on high volume at a low price or on lower volume at a higher price, but you cannot do both. To stand out, you can not be somewhere in the middle. Entrepreneurs who dare to push up their prices will be tomorrow's winners. As an entrepreneur it is easy to get stuck in a low-price trap, especially if you shoot from the hip when they set prices and do not dare to raise the prices for fear of losing the customer.

It should be easy to sell and easy to buy:

·      Make a price list

·      Put together a package solution

·      Get yourself some business confidence

Forget the cold leads! When you get an idea for a potential business:

·      Schedule a customer visits with someone who might benefit from your idea

·      Make a sketch of your offer

·      Ask Questions

o   Is this the right person for the decision and who sits on the budget?

o   Is there room in the budget?

o   What is the time frame?

Follow-up with a tactics email within 24 hours (I’m pleased to hear that you feel we can do this together... I was thinking about what you said about...). Then:

·      Visit your customer

·      Present your offer

·      Go for closure

Follow up with an order confirmations immediately after your visit. This should contain a summary of what has been determined.

·     Invoice 

The motivating leader

It is asked a lot of today's leaders: they need to have subject knowledge, be able to manage collaborations and work relations, be strong in action and able to manage changes. In addition, they should be coaching and motivating in their leaderships. But, what is it that drives a person? How do you get an employee to perform. A small business is not always able to attract employees with so-called external driving forces such as fine educations, high salaries and exciting career opportunities. So, how do you motivate your staff long term? How do you access a person's internal driving forces?
Today I attended a seminar by Richard Rejsjö. He believes that one should begin by asking "if you could do what ever you want, what would you do". Perhaps the answer would be "then I'd be a writer." Then he suggests you ask the question "why" three times to get to the core. The answers might be "because it's free," "because I can work from home" and “then I would not feel the stress of picking up or leaving my children at daycare at a certain time point". For this employee maybe flexible working hours could be the solution. For another employee perhaps responsibility is the key driving force. The solution for that person can be an own area of responsibility.
However, what do you do if an employee has no motivation at all and underachieve? To begin with, you have to analyze if the situation is temporary and if so, if you can help and assist the employee for a period. If the situation is of a more constant nature, perhaps you should look over the employee's duties in whole. Perhaps there are other tasks at the company that would fit better. Maybe there is more suitable work at another company. Punishment has never proved successful as a driveing force. Instead, it is important to highlight the positive features of the employee. Important is also as a leaders to lead by example.

Be true to your company profile

One company profile is not more “right” than the other; they are just different and may be appropriate for different target customers. For example, a closer look at two different style magazines will make this very obvious. Let’s compare People StyleWatch and Vogue.
At a fast glance, the cover of People StyleWatch appears very busy. I assume that this is a strategy to give the impression of being the one magazine in which you may find everything. On the cover you are informed that the magazine will include information on where to shop for the best bargains, secret beauty tips will be revealed and you will be educated in how to shape your body the best way.
The cover of Vogue has a more unadorned appearance and gives an impression of that this magazine will only convey the best of the very best. This magazine will bring you a selection of the top brands, how to look good in every life situation and articles on stylish celebrities that you can identify with. The strategy here, I assume, is to attract an audience with a greater purchasing power.
These two magazines are true to their profile; every cover, issue after issue, year after year will give a similar expressions. As a result the reader audiences of these magazines differ. Bearing this in mind, it is important to analyze your brand with regards to who you are, what you supply and for whom, and what your benefits are. Most important of all is to generate a company profile that conveys this and stay true to your profile for long-term customer identification for your brand in the target group.

Effects of price adjustments

This is the time of year, at least in the western part of the world, when we are looking over our price lists for the upcoming year. We either increase our product prices to cover for increased costs or decrease our prices in order to be more competitive. Either way, it is important to know how a price adjustment will affect your profit.
Imagine you have a product with a list price of 1000 EUR, a cost price of 800 EUR and of which you sell a volume of 100 units. This will generate a turnover of 100000 EUR with a profit of 20000 EUR from that particular product. A decrease in the list price with 10%, by adjusting your list price downwards or giving a discount, will affect your turnover in that way that you have to sell 12 more units to reach the same turnover. However, for you to gain the same profit on this product you have to double your sales.
If you instead decide to increase your list price with 10% you can sell 9 units less and still obtain the same turnover. With a 10% list price increase you only need 2/3 of your current sales to gain the same profit.
You can go in for being the cheapest on the market and hope to by this way generate a greater sales volume. This strategy will make a smaller business very vulnerable. In tough times of decreased sales due to customer budget austerity, a small business will be left with significantly reduced profit. For a small business it is of more importance to keep good margins in order to cope with sales fluctuations.
Whatever strategy, it is important to keep in mind how a price adjustment will affect your turnover and profit.

Message for success

I am not very interested in cars and do not know much about car brands. Marketing from the automobile industry towards me must therefore be crystal clear. In fact, I am a potential customer. By comparing two car brands with their backbone in the Swedish automobile industry, Volvo and SAAB, makes the importance of a distinct message to succeed very obvious.
With Volvo, I get a family car with an emphasis on safety. I know that from many years of a distinct and consistent marketing message from Volvo. But what do I get when buying a SAAB? Do I get a war machine like SAAB Jas 39 Gripen? Do I get a truck like the ones formerly produced by SAAB Scania? I have no associations to SAAB cars. Who is driving a SAAB? Is it a car that brings me high quality-to-price ratio or is it a car that makes me feel luxurious when driving it? I don't know. To me it's just a car that takes me from A to B. However, I want more than that. I want my car to be an extension of my personality. A sporty outdoor lifestyle would perhaps fit well with Jeep, whereas a Porsche gives more a feel of career and performance.
Personally, I drive a Toyota Yaris. It's small, economic, fun and it never gives up - just like me. ;-)