Re: Branding and marketing

From: Geri Stunz Konstantin <geri_at_virtualadv.com>
Date: Fri 05 Jan 2001 12:52:31 -0500

MARK MYERS <mmyers_at_loislaw.com> WROTE:
> I strongly disagree with John about what "brand"
> advertising is about. You mention the Lexus ads. The
> "Brand" IS luxury at a great price. Ephemeral Zen-like
> ads are cool, but they are not brand building in the
> end. Rob is on point about the cost-only advertisers
> being out on a limb. IMHO, branding is about creating
> the "I use X" loyalty that makes everyone else go
> "ahhh...he/she uses X!"

I think this Digest needs to go back to basics. The
reason why so many dot coms are failing (including
priceline.com) is their failure to understand basic
marketing. This talk about "branding" is apparently the
latest misconception.

Firstly, you do branding for products, not services.

Branding for a product (hence a "brand") encompasses
doing advertising/marketing whose strategy is purely to
establish or strengthen brand awareness of a product.

Examples of successful branding:

1) A blue rectangle on a shoe subliminally makes you
think of a Keds Brand Sneaker.

2) When you walk down the aisle in the supermarket and
see an orange cereal box, you don't even have to look,
you know it's Wheaties Brand Cereal.

3) When you see something wiggle on your plate you
automatically assume it's Jello Brand Gelatin.

Branding is usually associated with existing,
established products.

Now that the term is used loosely, it apparently has
lost it's real meaning and hence its effectiveness.

With regards to Lexus, sorry Mark, the "brand" is NOT
luxury at a great price. The brand is Lexus. The
advertising concept/strategy conveys that consumers
will get luxury at a great price. It doesn't mean you
actually do.

Lexus does not do Brand advertising per se - at least I
haven't seen any. In fact most auto advertising now is
so poor that I can't even call any to mind. Shows how
well the ads work...

(and before I get any comments, I have over 30 years in
advertising, much has been automotive-related,
including being an integral part of the team in NYC
that brought Chrysler out of bankruptcy in 1980)

Brand building and branding are not one and the same
either. Brand building encompasses a variety of
advertising and marketing techniques. Branding
encompasses specific and usually visual or audible
techniques to in essence create a Pavlovian response to
certain stimulae to impress a Brand name product in
someone's mind. You think Tide you think clean. Tide
owns "clean". No one else can touch it.

Priceline.com's miserable failure to market a new
service properly and to it's real target audience was
probably due to people who considered that "branding".
I call it a real waste of the client's money.

Whoever came up with the Captain Kirk idea with the
beatnik theme ought to strung up and hung out to dry.
I've seen a lot of horrible advertising in the last 8
years, but that campaign ranks number one in
ineffective, pretentious bull someone tried to pass off
as an ad campaign. It's embarassing to our industry.

Back to branding - brand loyalty is not branding
either. Brand loyalty is built up through favorable
price points, superior products and tangible consumer
benefits. This can be accomplished more quickly than
branding.

I get the feeling that the discussions in this Digest
about branding should have been about building name
recognition for companies. This too is not branding...

Lastly, the comment about "oh he/she drives brand "X"
or uses brand "x"meaning it is good" is not branding,
that's simply being able to successfully use the
psychology of advertising. After all you can say that
about a Ferrari, a Porsche, a Lexus, a Rolls Royce,
and.... see what I mean? It has no reflection on a
specific brand. Just on consumer perception in general.
Favorable consumer perception is NOT branding
either....

Branding is slighly elusive in it's definition, but is
specific in it's goals. It is not an easy thing to do.
To do it well takes years of experience and a lot of
planning.

Geri Stunz Konstantin
Principal
Stunz | Konstantin
Advertising | Website Development| Search Engines
Boca Raton, FL
Geri_at_StunzKonstantin.com





Received on Fri Jan 05 2001 - 11:52:31 CST