Stories & InsightsCould your brand be remarkable?

NEW AGE TVCreative thinking: Business Communication

An introduction o 25 years in marketing, media & research

– Strategy Director at CAN Media• Company management• Senior Client service and strategy

– Senior Director at Bates UK• Planning and Strategy• Ad-funded programming• Rights and Contract negotiation

– Executive at Taylor Nelson AGB Research/Register Group– Planner/Buyer at Saatchi & Saatchi

Some clients

Branding

• Your brand is your promise to your customer – – Not just your marketing– Not just your customer service– Not just your product– Not just your staff training– And definitely not just your logo!

The Authentic Brand

• Sits at the heart of your company• Is the touchstone for your decision making• It guides your development, your

relationships, and informs that Customer promise

• Your company is brand guided

Why is that important?

• On average, (the survey shows that *) brand-guided companies have profitability margins nearly twice the industry standard.

• *Wolff Olins 2005

What does it mean to be brand-guided?

1. Recognize that the brand is a key asset in delivering your company’s strategic targets

2. Brand is recognized as the key platform to link the company strategy with customers and employees

3. Your brand management processes are integrated seamlessly into the company’s processes

4. Brand delivers success by providing a catalyst for the company’s products, services and employees

5. Senior management is accountable for the brand’s continued health

Source Wolff Olins 2005

What does it mean to be brand-guided?

6. Employees share a belief in the brand as well as a common understanding of it, the power of the brand acts as an incentive to employees, employees’ activities are aligned with the brand values and contribute to building and strengthening the brand, and employees are measured and rewarded by the success of these brand-guided activities

7. Marketers can leverage customer insights to make the most effective marketing decisions, they can also analyze what they know about customers to contribute effectively to strategy in the future, and marketing activities are always closely aligned with the core brand values

8. IT capability is in place to capture data on customers, segment them effectively, respond to their needs, and catalyze marketing techniques to deliver high ROI

9. Assess key performance indicators, such as “share of wallet”, on a regular basis – as a result of these assessments, you take appropriate management action

10. identify your brand equity (the financial value of your brand) – you understand the brand’s value drivers and the levers required to influence these drivers

Source Wolff Olins 2005

How can a company be ‘brand-guided’?

• The ‘Golden Circle’ ref: Simon Sinek

• Can you answer these questions:– What am I doing– How am I doing it

–Why am I doing what I do

What’s your story?

• Every entrepreneur is a great story-teller. It is story-telling that defines your differences Anita Roddick 2005

–What is my purpose, cause or belief?–What is my vision, my values, my

ethics?–How well do I know my own story?

Write your story down

• Your story gives you YOUR authentic, distinctive ‘voice’ .

• So what prompted you to start your company• What do you believe about the world• How do those things work together?

• Interesting that Anita Roddick never really employed marketing and claimed not to understand it and yet she was brilliant at it – naturally – entrepreneurially and very definitely authentically

Where do Insights come from?

Right hand brain• Imagine• Visualise• Applying your

experience

Left hand brain• Research Ask a lot of

questions– Market testing– Customer Research– Public Domain/desk

research

• Analyse – look for patterns & trends

• Conclude

What do insights do?

• Help you figure out who wants what you have• Helps you ensure the way you present your

product is appealing to your market• Helps you find the right way to speak to your

(potential) customers• Helps you to develop ‘brand loyalty’ amongst

your customers

Brand Loyalty

• Consumers who are loyal to a brand are six times more likely to:

• Buy your products. • Buy more of your products, buy more of your products more

often, and/or trade up when buying (more of) your products. • Recommend your products to friends, family, and colleagues. • Invest in publicly traded companies. • Rebuff competitive offers, especially those that are price-based. • Give your brand the benefit of the doubt in touch circumstances

or questionable situations. Source: Superbrands Ltd

Remarkable brands:

INSIGHT:• Work hard, play hard. Sure. These days it's more like work

hard, go home and eat potato salad. We've always found that there's something about modern living that makes it hard to be healthy. That's why we gave up our jobs over nine years ago and started making innocent smoothies. The idea was to make it easy for people to do themselves some good. And to make it taste nice too. We wanted people to think of innocent drinks as their one healthy habit; like going to the gym, but without the communal shower afterwards

CUSTOMER PROMISE• We call them innocent because our drinks are always completely pure, fresh and

unadulterated. Anything you ever find in an innocent bottle will always be 100% natural and delicious -and if it isn't, get on the banana phone and make us beg for forgiveness. In fact, being accountable to our customers is something that is in our blood

Story – and market testing!• In the summer of 1998 when we had developed our first smoothie recipes but were still

nervous about giving up our proper jobs, we bought £500 worth of fruit, turned it into smoothies and sold them from a stall at a little music festival in London. We put up a big sign saying 'Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?' and put out a bin saying 'YES' and a bin saying 'NO' and asked people to put the empty bottle in the right bin. At the end of the weekend the 'YES' bin was full so we went in the next day and resigned. (from the website)

Numbers:

• The company’s exponential growth has been attributed to its straightforward approach to business: “using a simple, down-to-earth communications technique that mirrors the no-nonsense honesty of the Innocent brand and its products”.(from the Telegraph)

• 3 friends invested £500.00 in 1998. Company now valued at over £100m

Remarkable brands- Story

• Camilla made irresistible pies. James built treehouses. James fell in love with Camilla and her pies. So he stopped building treehouses and built her a big kitchen where Camilla's pies could be lovingly baked. So Camilla dreams up creative pies and James makes sure they get lovingly made in the kitchen. The rest as they say is higgidy...

• Some people love dogs. Others love cats. At higgidy we are passionate about pies. It doesn't matter that it takes 187 minutes to perfectly cook the stew for a Beef, Stilton and Ale Pie. They do it. They wait. And when it is ready they make every single pie individually. Each one is hand shaped and hand filled. You cannot make a perfect pie with a machine. Everybody who truly loves pies knows that. So no matter how many people want their pies they still just make them by hand - even if it means staying up all-night. (from their website)

Numbers

• Higgidy:– Higgidy has grown from Camilla making pies in her

domestic oven in 2003 to 134 employees and £8.1m turnover in 2010

Summary

• Entrepreneurs perfectly placed to build a strong brand from day 1

• Know your story and why you are doing what you do

• Involve your customers in your story and find out all you can about them to gain Insight

• Keep your promises and perhaps you could have a remarkable brand