Archive for the ‘Branding’ category

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What is the brand, the company or the product name?

January 12th, 2012

Company product brandingI got a lot of feedback in regards to my post on the importance of categories in branding and why you need to create a new category if you really want to set yourself apart from the rest of the pack.The feedback I got was more to do about the basics of branding which I tried to explain in an earlier post. Most people understand that the company name is the brand but don’t understand that the actual product name is also a brand. So the brand is Apple, so too is iPad or iPhone, Gillette and Match 3 etc.

Angry birds; strong brand name but who is the company?

What is the brand name, the company or the product? The answer, both, the question is which do you want to push more? At a strategic level the company brand might be very strong and it might give additional klout to the product name or it might actual take away from the product brand. Long story short, any name is a brand, depending on the strenght of the name and how it is perceived in the market you might want to push the company brand or the product brand more or less. Case in point, Angry Birds. What is the company brand? Rovio Mobile! I actually had to look that up. Here the product brand is much stronger than the company, this is not the case for Apple and it’s products.
So in the case of Angry Birds, it’s logical that Rovio Mobile will push the product brand and not the company’s as the company name does not add value you to the product. Another good example of this is Venus, the women’s shaving product line. Who is the company behind the products? Gillette. However, the Gillette brand is very much associated with mens shaving products so strategically it was important NOT to push the company brand and only push the product brand, Venus.

Conclusion

So both the product and company names are brands. If you are commercializing a product you will always need to push the product brand but sometimes it is also important to leverage the company brand as it can add additional value and in some cases you may wish to hide the company brand as it may not add value or even hurt the product.

 

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The Samsung Note; no category = poor branding. Apple did the same!

January 5th, 2012

Samsung galaxy note poor branding? No category..Is it a smartphone, is it a tablet?This is the new marketing campaign for the Samsung Note. One of the goals of marketing, if not the most important, is to dominate a category. If you cannot dominate a category you should create a new one and dominate it. So, you need to create a product that enables you to create a…new category.Samsung does seem to have created something different with their Note, it’s not a traditional smartphone or tablet, however, they haven’t created a category. They just ask the question “Is it a smartphone? Is it a tablet?”. This would appear to me to be poor brand management, where is the focus? Where is the category? How do you get PR to leverage that? How will a customer source that product, in the tablet category? in the smartphone category? or both.

Apple made the same mistake, remember Newton MessagePad?

This is not new. I know I am a big fan of Apple and I have been criticized for only find stating the virtues of the company, however, today I break with tradition:-) Apple also made the same mistake with the Apple Newton MessagePad, they didn’t manage the Category correctly and asked potential customers in an ad campaign; What is it? There where also technological convergence issues here but the branding was also important.

I have seen on other posts that Samsung could carve themselves out a small niche with a new size category, maybe, but they need to directly define that wether that means calling it a “Mini-Tab, Mini-Tablet” etc it needs to be defined.

Conclusion

Only time will tell. Besides the branding issue I think Samasung has also another issue with the product; it doesn’t seem to address any new market problems that are not already resolved either with the Tablet or the Smarthphone.

 

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Are YOU a risk to your brand?

December 20th, 2011

Taking it personallyA few weeks ago I had the good fortune and pleasure of attending an excellent personal branding seminar given by personal branding Guru Oscar Del Santo in ESEUNE business school. To put this in context, I work in marketing, work with brands so the value add for me was to get to know Oscar and learn from a master, however, I never thought he would totally change my understanding of my personal brand.

 

I mentioned good fortune before as Oscar reviewed my online presence; Blog, Tweeter, Linkedin etc and gave me feedback. I did not expect to get too much feedback but what I got sent my head spinning. I was violating the most basic rules of branding and marketing, such as not focusing the brand, I had not set goal and I was trying to keep everybody happy and did not define my target audience ..so on and so forth.

The problem with my brand was me

I thought about it for sometime, how could I be so blind and contradictory to concepts and basics that I myself preach and teach in a market driven context. The reason was “I”. I was the brand, being more specific I had lost objectivity. This was an important lesson to learn, for which I am extremely grateful to Oscar, as the lesson is much broader than the scope of personal branding it is applicable to all brands, once you take it personally your brand is at risk.

To evolve you need to be objective

As a Product Marketing Manager I do not have a lot of dealings with the actual development of the products which I think is very important as it allows me to keep the product at an emotional distance which maintains my objectivity. Loosing that objectivity can cloud your judgement, feedback can too quickly be mistaken for skepticism or what is worse cynicism. I have often heard people say that you should “create the product and defend it till the dying end”, while being full of energy I think that mentality is inherently dangerous.It is important to believe in the product / brand and transmit that but you must always be able to listen to what is being said about the brand / product, weight that objectively and then adapt if necessary. Products need to evolve but you need to listen to the market to be able to make that happen.

The fact that somebody does not agree with you does not mean that they did not understand you

I got a serious wake up call from Oscar and in general it can be so easy to get wrapped up in a subjective way with products, brands, launches etc. The fact that somebody does not agree with you does not mean that they did not understand you. You must work hard to understand why others do not agree with your approach, marketing plan, branding program etc and take it into considerationand weight it with and against other opnions.
You can only do this if you are being objective about the product / brand in question and distance yourself from all the effort, personal implication / sacrifice, sweat and tears you have invested to create the product, then and only then may you see other alternatives. That is one of the aspects that Oscar talks about, the necessity to not make it so personal and I believe that the same goes for all products, brands, where personal implication can cloud otherwise straight forward thinking.

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Posted in Branding, Market Driven, Marketing