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When form meets function, creative takes direction
By Elizabeth Boineau
Marketing Matters
In the best marketing endeavors, an array of various talents and skills are required to find just the right tonality and strike all the right notes for a show-stopping campaign.
Successful marketers must constantly manage the brand and, just like an orchestra conductor, must forcefully yet gracefully guide the troupe to a standing ovation.
Why can’t you just send your creative team off to come up with a beautiful design, write a catchy slogan or craft a snappy jingle? Why must the words not only work together to compel the reader, but also be grammatically correct? Why must they have emotional appeal and pass the cognitive test?
In part, it’s because just like Budweiser, the brand is king and that means always having a strategy that will hit the target right at the core of what matters to them. In fact, brands reign as No. 1 because the customer has come to expect that the stakes are high, and everyone is watching to see how the “name” brands prance down the runway and take home the prize again.
The standards get higher the closer you come to wearing the crown, and the brand works all the harder to balance that tiara, even if it gets a tad heavy at times. So much responsibility and so many expectations are simply not for the faint of heart. It can be tough and seem thankless at times, but it’s not too lonely at the top of the brand chain, because when your brand connects with the consumer, they keep coming back. When your brand reigns supreme, even the competitors may seek you out.
Since a choice brand promises that the level of quality people come to expect from it will continue, sales should grow and the company should be able to charge more for the product or service. The value of the brand is determined by its profitability, over time and once the core foundation of the brand has been established, the result is a combination of increased sales and ideally, better price.
When you act, think, feel, talk, design, deliver and execute in a way that exudes consistency and predictability and that all important credibility that every significant brand in the marketplace strives to maintain, then you are counted among the elite brands. Just like other assets on the balance sheet, maintaining brand equity takes work, dedication, investment and, yes, diligent brand management and compliance to keep that invaluable resource just that.
Where did all the focus on directing the brand originate? Brand management got its start at Procter & Gamble PLC, where it’s aptly defined as the application of marketing techniques to a specific product, product line or brand. Increase the perceived value to the customer and you increase brand equity. The true value of a brand resides within the mind (and hopefully the heart, when you succeed at having customers become passionate about yours) and is tough to measure, but important to evaluate as best we can.
Listen to the customer, meet their needs, consistently deliver high quality, superior service and stick to the brand game plan. Learning from a team of Procter & Gamble brand managers who, en masse, were recruited by Florida Power & Light around the era of energy deregulation in the late ’90s, was a career-defining moment. They are the masters and the lessons were invaluable.
In addition to having a person in charge of each brand, there was a substantial team of people devoted to thinking about every aspect of marketing it. This dedicated group would attend to one brand and it alone. The concern of these managers would be the brand, and it was to be marketed as if it were a separate business.
In this way, the qualities of every brand would be distinguished from those of every other. In ad campaigns, Camay and Ivory would be targeted to different consumer markets, and would become less competitive with each other. Over the years, “product differentiation,” as we’ve come to know it, would develop into a key element of marketing.
Proctor & Gamble has remained an ambitious, marketing-obsessed company with tremendous sales goals. Job postings on their site challenge the prospective employee to become marketing’s best, come discover unmet needs, create a brand to answer needs, be one that is referred to friends, become an expert at what your customer wants that the competitor doesn’t get, and trumpet your success. Following these proven brand-management tenets may require a little tough love to be sure your brand has form, substance, character, meaning and sizzle, but if you do, chances are good that the customer will be singing your praises, and you’ll be taking a bow.
Elizabeth L. Boineau runs E. Boineau & Company, a Charleston-based strategic marketing communications and public relations firm. She can be reached at eboineau@eboineauandco.com.
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