Listen to the brand

I do a lot ot work with companies introducing their brands and products into international markets. Their are a lot of potential problems, but today most marketers are aware of the obvious ones and check, for example, that their brand name does not mean something risible or obscene in the language of their target markets, or that the colours and images will not cause offence. But we should also consider the auditory communication of the brand – does it depend upon colloquial pronunciation for example?

My parents were brought up in the pre-commercial television days. In many cases, particularly for brands and products of foreign origin, they had never heard the names pronounced. Products produced by Nestlé for example, they called ‘Nestles’.  They came from a generation with little exposure to foreign languages and in what seemed like a closed market it made little difference.

The world has moved on now and few English people will have problems with Peugeot or Stella Artois. But as much as anything this is because these are well established brands for whom broadcast advertising means we are familiar with hearing the names pronounced. For lesser brands we may still struggle with difficult names. So, when we are looking to take brands into international markets it is worth thinking about whether the brand name depends upon what may be irregular pronunciations from the English. The English ‘ough’s are obvious enough, but also look out for the final modifier ‘e’ – the one that changes the vowel sound from ‘can’ to ‘cane’ for example. In most European languages it does not modify the vowel, and is often pronounced at the end of a word.

Acronyms also fall foul of pronunciation: If your company is known as, say, HBW in England, in French it is pronounced ‘ahsh,bay,doobleuh-vay’; in German, ‘hah,bay’vay’. Having worked for many years in advertising where we love acronyms, I quickly learned the problems when announcing myself to clients’ receptionists in France and Germany.

These may seem like niceties, but for small to medium companies who are now exposing themselves to global markets without the budgets to indulge in broadcast media a moment’s thought may ease market acceptance. Would you feel comfortable asking for a product that you were unsure how to pronounce?

The brand United

“Manchester United have been rated the eighth most valuable sports brand in the world in a new study which for the first time has assessed the comparative worths of 200 brands across the sporting spectrum” (Guardian.co.uk 18 June 2009)

My mind goes back to being a small kid growing up in Manchester and being aware even then of the of how ahead of the game (no pun intended) Manchester United were in recognising the power of the brand. ‘The Red Devils’ and ‘The Busby Babes’ were already enjoying the benefits of a strong brand identity. It is easy now for fans of other clubs to dislike the success that the team and brand has had – unlike many other brands, loyalty does not engendered competitive polarisation: because I drive a Volvo it does not breed hostility to BMW drivers… nor because I shop at Sainsbury’s would I chant at Tesco shoppers (you only sing at the checkouts…). But that is the nature of sport – it is competitive. I have often usd the example of football clubs when explaining and discussing brand identities and their assets. Names, colours, badges, nicknames, songs and locations are all the trappings of identity – and importantly they are a means by which supporters define their own identities.

It is interesting to consider how the brand values of a team can transcend the issues and internecine struggles of brand stakeholders. It’s similarly interesting to reflect on how even the managerial failings of Woolworth’s owners and it’s ultimate demise could not fully erase the customers’ emotional connections and empathy. It is another example of how emotional investment in a brand can transcend the pragmatic understanding.

United are valued at $1.495bn: the valuation and the table was compiled by SportsPro Magazine. I’m not sure what methodology of brand valuation was used, but I’m sure that if a model based upon brand profile investment was used it would reinforce the power of United’s early recognition of the importance of the brand.

What is a brand?

It’s easy to come up with any number of definitions of a brand – as a simple online search will provide. Most often quoted is Philip Kotler’s: “a name, term, sign or symbol or a combination of these, that identifies the maker or seller of a product”.

I’m not totally happy with that as it is putting too much emphasis on the signifier rather than the signified in my opinion. I prefer a more experiential definition along the lines of : “a mental construct of the values, information and expectations an entity, created by experience”.

But whatever definition we use, the question of what we consider to be a brand remains. The term ‘brand’ is being used with increasing frequency in the media and is applied to all manner products, services, organisations, political parties, religions and even people.  But what do you think are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be considered ‘a brand’?

Santander rebrand – a case for brand evaluation?

So, megabank Santander is to rebrand its UK subsidiaries, gobbling up such old high street names as Abbey, Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley. Gut instinct says it must make all kinds of sense. The sub-brands no longer have he profile they once did, nor I would guess, attract the same loyalty they once did as mutuals. Santander is not a completely alien name in the UK, and the economies of scale and reach the bank can achieve in mounting global campaigns and butressing the status of the main brand seems eminently sound.

I just find myself wondering whether the great and good at Santander also just worked on that simple, empirical logic?  Or did they do a brand evaluation and really but some figures against the value of their brands. I say this out of my experience of major financial institutions.  Where their whole ethos is built upon numbers, values and calculations, strategic brand decisions are curiously more often made without such rigorous calculations of brand values.  Looking at the £12m they say the exercise will cost, I am sure they know exactly what savings they will make in stationery and marketing communications… but have they really worked out the value of those brands? When such decisions are made the oligarchic structure of the bank tends to kick in and corporate egos take over.

That said, my gut feeling is it is the right thing to do for an international brand… but moving from an endorsed identity to a monlithic one is a brave step and not without its hazards.  In today’s climate, especially for financial institutions, putting all your eggs in one brand basket may be a risky endeavour.

Location, location, location…

How much is location a brand asset? Cosmetic manufacturers often used to ad the ‘Paris, Rome, New York’  line to their corporate signature. Being located in a region or district famed for particular manufacture or production has long been seen as a strength – Sheffield for steel, Stoke for pottery or Northampton for shoes: even though some of those regions have seen almost terminal decline of their traditional manufacturing.

For financial institutions being located in, say, London or Frankfurt can be seen as a real brand asset, supposedly giving reassurance. Some organisations or industries are often as well known for their location as they are by their name: Langley, Detroit, Whitehall, Wall St, Dagenham. Madison Avenue, or ‘The City’.

Sometimes, not being in the generally recognised location can also make a strong statement about the brand and its values. The financial institution that shuns the city, or the IT company that chooses a rural barn for its HQ sends a message that they are not conformists and perhaps embody alternative values that some clients may find more in tune with their own.

For manufacturing companies, the globalisation of production has made the location of the head office, of central control, something to be nurtured and promoted.  I do a lot of work with exporters who, although they may now do a good deal of their manufacture in the far East, find the fact that they are British companies with all the perceived values of probity, reliability and quality, still a valuable and important quality in many markets.

For new and growing businesses, spend a few minutes to consider your location: what does it say about your company now, and what will it say in the future? Is it where you want to be, and more importantly, is it where your customers will want your brand to be?

Sorry my brand won’t be in today… it’s down with a virus

A client of mine has a horror of any social Internet activity and was rocked to his core when his new ad turned up on Youtube and went viral. There was nothing bad or contentious and I would have been quite pleased, but his problem with this was the ‘lack of control’.

Of course that is an issue and one that scares many businesses off anything to do with social media. But let us be realistic, all we have no control over is what people say or think about our brands… and this was always the case! The only control a company can exert is the way the company and the brand actually performs in the market place.

As I have stated many times brands are not ‘owned’ by the companies, they are owned by the public. If the company manages them well, with good stewardship they should have little to fear. I would be seriously worried if my brand was not strong enough to cope with a little gentle fun poking on a social Internet site.

Museum of Brands

As it’s a holiday, I just thought I would mention the Museum of Brands in London’s Notting Hill. If you didn’t know about it it’s well worth a visit.

Strong brands buck the trends in recession

Okay, what all of us involved in branding have been telling clients for years is true. Brands add value despite despite slowdown (BBC News, 29 April 2009).

Every year Millward Brown Optimor publish their Brandz Top 100 survey which compares the balance sheets of leading brands with public sentiment about those brands.

“In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times,” says Millward Brown Optimor’s chief Joanna Seddon.

It’s paradoxical that for many companies when times are getting tough, they tend to cut expenditure in just those areas that can give value to and sustain brands, supporting the sentiment that the public feel about them.  There is the natural response to cut anything which s not going to show positively on the balance sheet. But perhaps CEO’s should also look at the ‘brand balance sheet’.  That is brand leadership… look after your brand and in hard times your brand will look after you.

Tesco, Virgin and the emergence of the ’super-brands’

So, Tesco are to open physical bank counters in some stores and we hear of their record profits. But is there something more subtle happening in the emergence of super-brands? Tesco, for example, as well as groceries and consumer durables will also sell you telecoms,broadband, insurance,banking and much more. There seems to be no limit to what we will accept from our trusted brands.

Of course there has always been the principle for retailers to add to the range of products they sell – if you have the premises and the distribution, and it fits with your market strategy it makes a good deal of sense to diversify and maximise floor space revenue. It is the philosophy that gave rise to the department store. Similarly, the ’70s brought us the growth in ‘vertical’ integration.

What is happening now though is something rather different I would suggest, and the catalyst may well be the growth of virtual channels.  The growth of Tesco’s brand offer has not been driven by maximising distribution or floor or shelf space: indeed the expansion has been in services rather than physical product. They are moving the revenue centres away from the shelves. But what is critical is the growth of the brand and brand-trust. The brand has moved beyond food retailing and is exploiting the goodwill, reassurance and trust with which customers have imbued it.

We can see a similar phenomenon, but delivered in a rather different manner from Virgin. A record retailer that now sells telecoms, financial products, rail travel, air flights and even space travel (well, projected). But the foundation that makes this possible is a set of brand values that the public understands and shares across the various products and services on offer.  Virgin is a rather more quirky brand than Tesco and owes a lot to customers of the same generation as Richard Branson.  Somehow the values of a company that started in the music business have left their traces throughout the organisation. Like Tesco, the brand and its intangibles transcend the limitations of physical delivery and creates these opportunities.  The interesting project will now be to observe the growth of the next ’super-brand’… who will it be?

The signifier not the song

When looking at brand semiotics all the usual signifiers are there in the form of names, logos, colours etc. but sounds are rather less common. Perhaps the most ubiquitous use is in branding nation states – national anthems. Wally Olins noted this in his book Corporate Personality, where he pointed to the newly formed Confederate States, who in 1860 quickly assembled all the signifiers of a nation state, including a flag, corporate colour, capital… and notably a song. ‘Dixie’ immediately communicates a whole set of values.

Theme tunes are an intrinsic part of movie and TV series branding, and in radio and TV station ‘idents’,but in the more general world of consumer product branding sound and music is far less common.  Occasionally music from ads become brand assets, but due to the necessarily tactical nature of advertising, these are usually time constrained and short lived. Perhaps new technology will change this: two audio signifiers that spring to mind are the Windows sign on notes (Bill Gates’s door bell) and the Nokia default ring tone. With the spread of electronic devices, all it seems with in built audio capabilities, perhaps sound will move more centre stage when developing brand identities and their signifiers.