Branding Tips

Just Do It is an example of a brand campaign that tapped deeply into the authentic character of Nike's brand values and brand purpose. But, few people know about the internal conversations that led to the ad brief that went to Nike's agency Wieden+Kennedy (W+K) to create the campaign.

We often talk about "brand" as if it is one thing. It's not of course - in fact, the meaning and the use of the term differs, quite markedly, depending on the context. By my reckoning, brand is categorized in at least 18 different ways. (So much for the single minded proposition!).

The single most important piece of brand theory of the past quarter century was published in the California Management Review in 2000. 'The Brand Relationship Spectrum' was not especially revolutionary and yet the paper, by academic legend Professor David Aaker and his co-author Erich Joachimsthaler, became an instant classic.

When I was a young professor stalking the corridors of American business schools there were certain courses you could rely on to be popular with MBA students: financial statement analysis, corporate strategy and international marketing. Yes, international marketing.

A sizzling brand purpose sets out how a company intends to change the world for the better. Its role is to unite customers and culture alike in the pursuit of that intention. It's a statement of belief, of hope, of pursuit. It's born of a wish to see the world put to rights.

1. Remember your roots Strong brands come from people, places and times, and they remember it whether they are luxury brands or not. Brands too often forget about or ignore their origins, and marketers in the English-speaking world are the guiltiest of it.

Considering a luxury brand strategy? Begin with the fundamentals. Luxury brands don't start with prestige and premium - they begin with a founder who inevitably comes from the middle of society rather than the top. Madam Chanel was an orphan, Guccio Gucci a merchant's son from Florence - founders are artisans not aristocrats.

We talk a lot about the pressures on brands to perform and about the difficulties of staying competitive in huge and rapidly changing markets. Nevertheless, global brands experienced a 12 percent increase in value in 2014 - and there are powerful lessons for all those responsible for brands in how they did that.

Everyone's torn this way and that. It's easy to lose concentration or to find yourselves prioritizing the wrong things. If your brand feels like it's drifting, here's 7 sure signs that you're not focusing on the right things. Obviously most brands aren't looking to take their eye off the ball.

A powerful brand strategy combines 'the logic and the magic' - that mix of rational and emotive elements that, together, combine to give a brand engagement, connectedness, distinction and focus.

Short answer - yes it is, but not in the way it was. I haven't met a brand manager yet who didn't tell me that they had a differentiated product. I'm not surprised. It's part of the job description of any brand owner to be marketing something that is disruptive, market-changing, blue-ocean, category-killing ...

Emotional connection is one of the five drivers of customer brand insistence as outlined in our BrandInsistence brand equity system. (The other four drivers are awareness, relevant differentiation, value and accessibility.) The consumer must first know your brand, then like your brand, and finally trust your brand and feel an emotional connection to it.

Marketers love what they do and with good reason. It's exciting, stimulating and inspiring to work on a great brand. But the rise of ad-blockers proves something no-one wants to admit. Brands are failing to maintain interest. Consumers want out of the messaging. Literally.

Strong, enduring brands are built upon a rigorous understanding of themselves, their customers and the competitive marketing context. The following brand development strategy is one that I've used across different categories and industries with great success. It offers a process for going deep into each of these three areas.

As this article in Entrepreneur reminds us, plenty of brands try to re-set the market's understanding of their brand and are well and truly spanked for doing so.

In January 1996 after ten years of leading Nike's Global Marketing Insights & Planning I accepted the VP of Brand Planning position at Starbucks. In my initial interview in 1995 with CEO Howard Schultz, Arthur Rubenfeld, VP of Retail Stores and VP of Marketing Scott Bedbury we discussed some of the hopes and concerns surrounding how to grow the Starbucks brand with integrity.

Playing to win is a sports metaphor that describes discernable action on the court or field by a team putting out extra effort to close a gap, come from behind and win the game. It is characterized by bold play calling, players making unusual moves to break free, get open and score.

Stories add to the humanity of brands. They help consumers think through and act upon a narrative that is fundamentally rooted in human truths. Stories generate empathy. We see ourselves in the tale. Or we see a side of ourselves. Or we see the 'me' that we would like to be.

Not much has been written about integrating business strategy and brand strategy. It is surprising to me because this is the arena in which I most often find myself consulting. When I was at Harvard Business School my largest concentration was in business strategy.

Years ago, I worked for Hills Bros coffee. We were the #3 brand having a tough time competing against the market leaders (Folgers and Maxwell House), struggling in many markets to keep our product in distribution. But we had one market, Chicago, where we were runaway market leaders with 4x the share of anyone else.

Alphabet, Google's self-created holding company on Friday, has decided not to adopt the "Don't Be Evil" clause in its code of conduct. It's settling instead on the less distinctive and vague instruction for employees to "do the right thing" effectively choosing not to go down this path as a way of differentiating itself.

The key point for brands is that they need to make it very clear to their customers what the trade-offs are. Most don't. They don't carry storylines that explain why consumers are paying what they're paying and why they're getting what they pay for.

When brands think of digital or social as "media" they err when they approach consumers as they do with other types of media. This is the wrong point of departure. Digital is an integral component of how we experience life, not a 'media'.

Barry Williams literally grew up in front of America as Greg Brady, the oldest of the Brady sons on the hit TV show The Brady Bunch. We sought him out to find out more about what it was like to grow up Brady, what brands can learn from a show that has never stopped airing and what opportunities exist with his iconic brand.

If you need to shift your culture from where it is to a different viewpoint and value set, is there any incentive for change without a crisis? Will a culture make changes on its own or do people need a fright in order to seriously disrupt business as usual?