Fitting Group Account Coordinator Molly Schaefer blogs about branding & books.
Before I became a Brand Spanker here at Fitting Group, I was a graduate student studying literature at Carnegie Mellon University. People who know this often ask me how I ended up at a branding agency and if I’m able to apply my degree to my job. There are lots of answers to these questions – my education has made me an effective communicator and a strong writer and researcher, important skills in my field. And, while marketing and literature are very different, if you’re in tune with both, it’s easy to find instances where they overlap. Here are a few of my favorite examples:
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use focus groups, but it does lead to an important point: Apple is sure of its brand.
Apple has had a tumultuous history. Today, the company has a solid brand, direction and products that people clamor for.
Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates and Noah Wyle as Steve Jobs in the 1999 cable movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley"
The 1999 made-for-cable movie Pirates of Silicon Valley is worth a rental or even purchase. Two statements from it stand out to me at the moment. One, from Bill Gates, I can only paraphrase: “a good product with great marketing can overcome a great product with good marketing.”
And, from Steve Jobs, “Real Artists Ship.” (more…)
Companies that are not the market leaders in their industries need special advice about how to compete. For example, when a Challenger Brand company like K-Swiss, a shoemaker with 3% of the athletic shoe market, looks for an agency, they need three important qualities. First, they need an agency that understands their prime customers. Second, they need an agency experienced in image-driven products.
K-Swiss exercises its voice clearly through this video.
There are currently over one billion people online. There are only 6.865 billion people in the world (for an up-to-the minute count see this), so that’s about 1/7 of the global population. Wow, are you as amazed by that as I am?
Well it’s no wonder then that with the potential for 1/7 (or 14 and a half percent) of the world population to all communicate with each other at any given moment, one person’s opinion matters so much. Many branding and marketing experts are awakening to this phenomenon. Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell have called it the Church of the Customer or Citizen Marketing. Trend spotters call it the “tyranny of transparency.” Whatever you call it though, the fact remains, whether your product or service is the best ever or a total disaster, millions and millions of people will know about it in real time. I think of this observable fact as “word-of-mouth on steroids with a Star Trek transporter.” Anyone, anywhere, can trash you or sing your praises…and they do!
And as if that weren’t thought-provoking enough, soon online critics will be able to save 1,000 words or two by including the audio track they just recorded with Skype-recording or the picture they just took with one of their camera phones. Scared yet? If not, maybe you don’t know about YouTube, where every brand’s a star…or not. Now there are even sites that encourage real time uploading of video like comvu or ustream.tv.
Ah, finally. The 2008 presidential election has come to an end and all of America can go back to watching “not so” reality TV. But before we forget all about it, I want to share my story of how branding can effectively move people to action. I’m going to apologize up front for jumping on the “Obama as a Brand” bandwagon, but it struck me when my father said “I’m voting for change.” You see, my 69-year-old father voted for the very first time in his life when he cast a vote for Barack Obama, and that was his reply when I asked him why he finally decided to vote.
Regardless of which side you were voting for, how did Barack get to my father? My father, who lives in rural Pennsylvania, is not an Internet user, so the social networking campaigns that the Obama campaign has become famous for weren’t a factor. My father doesn’t subscribe to any magazines or newspapers, and he rarely puts on the radio. I will admit my father watches TV; usually between the hours of 5am to 9am and 3pm to 6pm – which means he didn’t see any of the debates or SNL skits. My father voted for change because the messages he did receive were consistent and compelling, and he believed them. He believed them because they came from credible sources, as they were discussed on TV programs he watches regularly, and from friends and family who engaged him in conversations. He believed them because they were coming to him from someone other than Barack Obama himself. And he believed them because they spoke directly to him.
So what can we learn from this famous Challenger Brand campaign? First, make sure your message is consistent and true to what you believe. Second, make sure you’re communicating in a language your target understands. And third, follow the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid).
Fitting Group Account Coordinator Molly Schaefer blogs about branding & books.
