Category: Brand

Reviving Dormant Brands

August 3rd, 2008 · Stefanie Sigurdson · Brand, New No comments

I have always been fascinated by people who buy nearly bankrupt companies, turn them around, then sell them for a neat profit. Now, there are companies out there that do the same thing for brands. Take River West brands for example. They are bringing back Salon Selectives. Daneen from Spoiled Pretty quotes the following:

“The re-introduction of Salon Selectives represents a great opportunity
for our company,” said Dr. Eugene Zeffren, CEO of SSB, the company that
distributes and markets Salon Selectives. “Our research shows that the
brand still has over 80 percent awareness among our target consumers.
These women don’t just remember the Salon Selectives name, they retain
a host of other positive associations, including the apple scent and
the customized hair care message – they can even sing the jingle.”

So – with its reintroduction, Salon Selectives does not have to start from scratch. It already has 80% awareness! This is every marketers dream to work with (and now that jingle is going to be in my head for the rest of the day ).

On their Brand Properties page, there is a wide variety of options, including Coleco, Underalls and Eagle Snacks. From a business strategy perspective, these seem to be strange bedfellows, but River West goes into an interesting explanation of their value proposition:

What do the brands below have in common? If you’re
looking for manufacturing synergies, you won’t find any. What ties them
together is this: they were all once big businesses and important parts
of Americana during their first runs, all went off the market
completely or close to it at one point in time, and all of them have
returned or will soon return to the marketplace thanks in no small part
to the work we do at River West Brands.

River West does more than simply re-release the brands, it actually creates new value. Jennifer Wells from Report on Business discusses this example:

Take the case of Brim coffee, a dead brand until River West came
along. There was high consumer recall of the product and its
advertising motto: “Fill it to the rim with Brim.” Better yet, says Mr.
Thomann, fewer than 10 per cent of survey respondents remembered that
Brim was a decaffeinated coffee. (“Fill it to the rim” played on the
notion that you needn’t worry about the jittery effects of caffeine.)

That memory gap has left River West free to seek a reformulation of
the beverage, which the company hopes to relaunch no later than the
first quarter of ’09. The new coffee will be caffeinated and pumped
with vitamins and minerals – “Fill it to the rim with Brim because it’s
filled with goodness.”

I find this idea very compelling, since it shows the true value of brand building. Once the mind becomes familiar with a brand, that familiarity is precious psychological real-estate. As the market-place gets more and more cluttered, the value of that psychological real-estate on old brands keeps on growing.

Brand Building for Innovations

June 23rd, 2008 · Stefanie Sigurdson · Brand, New No comments

Condogarage_full_lr_2

We recently released a site for Condo-Garage, a condo built especially for cars. It is a very innovative idea, so I was excited to take on the project. This is the first automobile condo in Canada. The main challenges of the project were:
1. This is a high-end product, so we had to be more aspirational and less utilitarian.

2. This is a new concept, so although we wanted to be aspirational, we still had to describe what the product was.

3. We wanted to use best practices in SEO and usability while maintaining an attractive look on the site.

Marketing to the Affluent

During my research, I found a number of characteristics of affluent consumers (I also added an observation based on my personal experience with affluent Canadians in particular):

Affluent customers want to be distinguished from the crowd: they only want to be seen in
a certain place, using only certain brands. They want to be one step ahead of everyone else.
They seek exclusivity:
‘limited editions’, price is an indicator of exclusivity, want to avoid using popular brands.
They want to feel unique and special: personalization of products and services
They seek convenience: value their time as much as their money.
They are willing to pay a premium: They want the best quality, exclusivity, satisfaction
and outstanding customer service.
High involvement buying behavior: degree of engagement with the client needs to be high.
Make buying an experience.
Canadians: Often take cues from other parts of the world for trends – especially from the US. However, Canadians are less open about conspicuous consumption.

During my development process with partners such as Jar Creative and Arxis, I made sure to show and describe in detail my observations on affluent customers. We created exclusivity by adding images of luxury vehicles throughout the logo, site and rendering and we emphasized personalization and convenience in the copy.

Describing the Product

After years of working in the software industry, I became very frustrated with aspirational marketing, that doesn’t actually inform. Yes, your site looks great – but does your program do what I need? During this project, I made sure that we actually described the product, without appearing too utilitarian. For example, you can see the logo looks very garage-like – emphasizing that you can hold a number of different items inside. We also put a watermark of Toronto in the background, showing where the garage is located.

SEO and Usability

Most condo sites are built in Flash, but I moved away from that, trading a flashy presentation for a better ranking on search engines. Having additional text also helped us with #2, describing the product. We also added a news section, where we write regular articles that would be of interest for Condo-Garage prospects. We did this mostly for SEO purposes, to continually add new content and be revisited by search engines. To my happy surprise, users are saying that they enjoy the articles and find them helpful.

Conclusion

We are still very early on in this release but so far the results from our AdWords and other campaigns have been successful. I feel that creating a brand based on market research and product needs and making it consistent makes it stand out to the users that we want to impress, while describing the concept. I feel very fortunate to be a part of this project, and I am looking forward to seeing its success continue to grow.

The Danger of Using Stock Photography

May 18th, 2008 · Stefanie Sigurdson · Brand One comment

From engadget, MSI and Asus both Photoshopped in their laptops from a stock photograph… where the original image was a MacBook! You can see the original pic on the link. This is always the fear in using stock photography since you never know where else it will turn up. A competitor using it is the worst nightmare come true for these marketers since obviously they want to differentiate from their competitors, not be the same.

The danger of using stock photography is not only about finding the EXACT same image as in this case, but also that we DON’T differentiate and we ALL start to look the same when we are all getting photos from the same image libraries. Investing in original photography and illustration can be a longer process, but can add a lot in terms of differentiation and originality.

My Reptilian Brain Buys My Starbucks Lattes

April 10th, 2008 · Stefanie Sigurdson · Brand No comments

Usually, after watching a few hours of TV, most people immediately
forget it – using their mind-space for more important endeavors. But
sometimes, there is that one show that just sticks with you and keeps
coming up in different contexts. For me, that show was an interview with Clotaire Rapaille on Frontline
a few years back. This French man turns traditional Marketing Research
on its head, saying that you can’t ask people what they think, since
most people have no idea why they make certain decision (eg. they don’t
know why they want to buy a Hummer).

Rapaille is a Child Psychiatrist turned Marketer, and he uses
psychoanalytic techniques to analyze the codes associated with certain
products. He believes that it is something that he calls the “Reptilian
Brain” that makes decisions on products, rather than logic.

When
we [are] born, we have the reptilian brain. The reptilian brain is
there already. It’s part of survival; it’s breathing, eating, going to
the bathroom.

He says that when it comes
to the Hummer decision for example, traditional market researchers look
for logic, which has nothing to do with the decision:

Why
do you need a Hummer to go shopping? “Well, you see, because in case
there is a snowstorm.” No. Why [do] you buy four wheel drive? “Well,
you know, in case I need to go off-road.” Well, you live in Manhattan;
why do you need four wheel drive in Manhattan? “Well, you know,
sometime[s] I go out, and I go — ” You don’t need to be a rocket
scientist to understand that this is disconnected. This is nothing to
do with what the real reason is for people to do what they do. So there
are many limits in traditional market research.

He says instead, it is the reptilian brain at work:

How
can I decode this kind of behavior which is not a word? My theory is
very simple: The reptilian always wins. I don’t care what you’re going
to tell me intellectually. I don’t care. Give me the reptilian. Why?
Because the reptilian always wins.

Rapaille’s
techniques are very unusual. He gets his subjects to lie on the floor
and brings them back to their first memories of their interaction with
different products in order to understand the true essence of the
product. He then “cracks the code” about what drives the buying
decision and consults Marketers to emphasize those aspects of the
products in ad appeals and design. He has consulted to companies such
as P&G and Chrysler on this. Here are his conclusions after
analysis on the Jeep Wrangler:

When I
worked with Chrysler, for example, we discovered that Jeeps should not
have square headlights. That’s a very practical thing: no square
headlights. Why? I don’t want to go into anything secret, but let’s
suppose the code for a Jeep is an animal like a horse. You don’t see a
horse with square eyes. The Jeep people didn’t say that; they said,
“Yes, I want round headlights, like a face.” And we use the face of the
Jeep with the grille as a logo for Jeep. So when I discovered that,
that was like a very reptilian dimension. And since then, no Jeep
Wranglers have square headlights.

Can you see why he is hard to forget? He has recently published a book called The Culture Code.

All quotes are from Frontline – The Persuaders. Pic is from the New York Times.

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