Guy Richards / Ordinary Life with a Brand Strategist

Brand Throttle

Most lawnmowers have a turtle for slow and a rabbit for fast on the throttle.

Once you have clarity on the direction your organization has to go, where do you position your throttle?

What’s Needed / Relevant Brand Positioning

An insightful strategist will create a plan to stay relevant with the generations coming up the ranks (the youth) without losing the loyalty with the brand’s aging market.

It’s a fine balancing act to keep a support base while drawling younger generations into the sales funnel.

What’s needed is:

1. An external strategist who can see the whole picture. Inside perspective, outside perspective, breakdowns, the sweet spot, possible value propositions and how this brand compares to the competitive landscape.
2. A leadership team that can make quick decisions when asked.
3. A great design team that can translate the strategy to tangible pieces.
4. A management team that encourage excitement through the business shift.
5. Most importantly, an offering and experience that is “Positively Talkable.”

Primary Message- Pain, Health or Inspiration?

Most marketing messages in a bad economy focus on pain, where in a prosperous economy they focus on health.

The reason is because most people can’t see past their toes when things are bad, or when fear creeps in. But when things are good or seem to be, the mountain ahead of them is in clear perspective.

It’s like my friend Bobb Biehl says, “Imagine if a world class body builder nicked off the tip of his pinky finger. What do you think his focus would be on? This little piece of his body that reasonably stated doesn’t mean much to his everyday life. Or, the body building event of the century, that he has worked his whole life for that takes place in a week?”

I believe it’s just better to inspire! Who is coming with me?

The Height of your Brand

The height of your brand is only as tall as the sum of its deeds.

Brand – More Reach, Better Content, Or Both?

About 95% of brands focus their efforts on reach without content. Reach is executed through punchy headlines; huge twitter followings and media blitzes. Reach drives response.

But reach without content breads consumer resentment. A better formula is to focus on delivering great content and then develop a reach program to direct the market to it. This will multiply your efforts through pleased consumers who will decrease your “price per sale” by doing the recruitment for you.

Can a small business build a brand?

I often hear the question “can a small business build a brand?” The truth of the matter is, every organization has a brand. The question should be, “how does a small organization leverage its brand?”

If you focus on delivering excellence to your market (defined by your markets viewpoint) you will be growing your brand. You don’t need a flashy logo, matching stationery or a Twitter account. These are not bad but for every organization, across every industry the primary component of building a strong brand relies on providing more value than your competitors. 

In the area I live you can ask almost any local for a great sub shop and out of the thousands, they will point you to either Sugar Hill Subs or White House.

They both have great subs but still have flaws. Their signage is not much better than a mom-and-pop shop, inside they are both laid out like small delis and the employees are not in uniforms. But they are not building a reputation on anything else than what they do best… delicious subs. 

Yes, they may be able to expand their market and accelerate their reputation through more relevant marketing and design, but they are still the best without it.

It doesn’t matter if you are Al’s Pizza or AT&T… if your service or product can out deliver your markets top competitors your reputation/brand will grow.

The Value of the Antagonist

Anything worth achieving has someone, something or a group of someone’s and something’s standing in the way. This is the problem that must be hurtled to achieve the vision you set out to complete.

Apple has PC, Salesforce has software applications, General Mills has Kashi, older organizations have change and David had Goliath.

Opposition is the great catalyst of community movements. It gives the community a reason to stick together.

I have heard people say… “tell me what your for not against.” This is good because you should never lose focus of your cause, but even this statement communicates that you are against something. Why else would you be stating you’re for something unless there was a problem?

The goal for the community is just as much the process of being against something as it is achieving the vision.

Accelerate your cause… define what’s standing in your way!

Top 20 Mistakes Marketers Make When Rebranding

This is a list of mistakes published by my friend Anaezi Modu, the founder and Executive Director of ReBrand. ReBrand recognizes the world’s most effective rebrands in its annual ReBrand 100® Global Awards. This program has become the benchmark award for the brand development community over the last 5 years.

They'll make you smile...enjoy!

1. Clinging to history.

2. Thinking the brand is the logo, stationery or corporate colors.

3. Navigating without a plan.

4. Refusing to hire a branding consultant without industry experience.

5. Not leveraging existing brand equity and goodwill.

6. Not trying on your customer’s shoes.

7. The rebrand lacks credibility or is a superficial facelift.

8. Limiting the influence of branding partners.

9. Believing rebranding costs too much.

10. Not planning ahead for adaptation.

11. Bypassing the basics.

12. Not calling the call center.

13. Forgetting that people don’t do what they say.(They do what they do.)

14. Getting strong-armed or intimidated by consultants.

15. Putting the wrong person in charge.

16. Strategy by committee.

17. Rebranding without research.

18. Basing a rebrand on advertising.

19. Tunnel focus.

20. Believing you’re too small to rebrand.

For the full explanations on each…

Coke's pushing the envelope

Sooner or later a top brand will have to raise the anti so that they don't blend in with the rest of competitors.

Here is a newly designed line of Bottles by Coke. Very differentiating and fun. Definitely out of the norm.

And notice that the value is not in the product itself but in the wrapper/packaging. This speaks volumes on presentation. I'm excited to watch as the compition plays catch up. They have just started a whole new era of soda packaging.