As many executives now use webinars and conference calls for that direct, personal contact with potential and existing customers, it would be easy to jump to the wrong conclusion  and think that corporate events have had their day. However, having important delegates under one roof, whether for a trade show or charity event, is still a valuable approach to customer relationship marketing. It’s not a case of the new, virtual versions taking the place of the real thing, rather how they can complement each other.

And is such experiential marketing where firms can have quality, face-to-face interaction with customers, still one of the most effective ways to ‘seal a deal’? Or is it more about raising a company’s profile? It’s certainly much trickier to say ‘no thanks’ in person than it is on an email and companies find that one-on-one communication is a useful way to persuade or change the attitudes of those in attendance.

Businesses of all kinds spend millions of pounds on exhibitions, seminars, parties, AGMs and client entertainment each year, and finding an efficient way to measure return on investment would go a long way to justifying their presence in future marketing campaigns.  This is particularly tricky as events are often held to leave people with positive feelings towards the host company; that they are organised, welcoming, creative and trustworthy. As such, attendee feedback and follow-up relationship building are just some of the ways to establish whether an event has been a success.

Events can also be held for the benefit of employees and are an effective way to motivate and congratulate. These are perhaps even more difficult to evaluate, but increases in retention, staff morale and productivity can often be tracked back to internal gatherings where individuals have been made to feel valued and important members of the team.

Whilst traditional in the sense that they have long been utilised as part of a marketing strategy, corporate events are fast becoming prominent within social media. With regards to driving people to an event, some of the most effective methods are via Twitter (by setting up a hash tag), Facebook (by creating an ‘Event’), LinkedIn and through a blog.  Elsewhere, free online listings across the websites of local papers, TV and radio stations are ideal for that quick and easy plug.

Nowadays, marketing and promotion can continue to occur even as an event is in process through real-time updates via Twitter, location-based apps such as Foursquare, live blogging and sharing photos and videos.

In short, corporate events can still be a highly valuable component of the marketing mix and can be the backbone of a highly successful integrated campaign.

NDL Group are a specialist marketing agency, creating prize promotions solutions, events management and motivation schemes

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It’s time to turn-back to tune-in. People are looking for more ways to enjoy life again, simply. Families are finding the importance of sitting down to dinner (this time without cell-phones and remote controls), people are searching for vacation getaways where there is limited phone reception and internet, people want to learn about the past – hence sites like ancestry.com and the show ‘Who Do You Think You Are’ (in its second season).

Classic brands are taking note and tapping into this emotional yearning from consumers. Of course, this only works with brands that ‘we’ grew up with. With the use of throwback packaging, these brands are triggering consumers to think about the past and reminisce about the ‘good ‘ol days,’ even if it was just 10, 15 or 20 years ago.

At Toniq, we believe this trend will continue to grow and be applied across more consumer segments like fashion, food and beverage, entertainment, and even technology. Keep an eye on companies like Restoration Hardware (which is enjoying a comeback), Chevy (yes, that’s how Chevrolet wants you to refer to the iconic brand), LL Bean, Converse and Keds (collaborating with hip new brands to bring the classic footwear to a new and younger audience), and lookout for more shows like Mad Men and Boardwalk Empire.

Here in the US, it’s the return to classic Americana.

This is a Guest Post by Cheryl Swanson. Ms. Swanson founded Toniq (www.Toniq.com) (1999) after leading several design firms to world-class status with her emotions-based, visual approach to brand strategy development. At Toniq, she continues to evolve her strategic expertise by seeking new ways to connect with consumers.

Swanson’s years of trend tracking, design management and research have coalesced in a theory of “Brand Effervescence (TM)” an innovative approach to brand building. This image-based approach is a synthesis of cultural anthropology, consumer trends research, marketing and design, and a study of the psychology of symbolism and color.

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When analyzing your current brand situation there are three elements that should be taken in consideration:

• A. Where is your brand at the moment? – how’s your brand perceived by your audience. Where you stand in the eyes and minds of your stakeholders. This is your Brand Image.
• B. Where do you want it to be? how do you want it to be perceived. There might be some surprises in making the differences between how you wish your brand to be perceived and how it is actually happening. And this is Brand Identity.
• C. What are you communicating? What are you actually doing to move from point A to point B. What part of your brand identity you actually communicate to your audience. What is the value you communicate, how do you do it. How do you translate your identity into valuable propositions for your audience. And this is Brand Position.

We should keep in mind that the target audience for your brand should be either your current customers or potential new ones, your employees, your partners etc. You should carefully consider appropriate ways to communicate with each of them in order to have a message that converge to your brand identity.

Since you have to start with the final purpose in mind you should, first of all, correctly have a clear vision of what do you want your brand to be. How do you want it to be perceived? Defining a brand identity should be step one. In his “Building Strong Brands” book, David A. Aaker identifies four traps you can get into when you approach the development of the brand identity:

1. The Brand Image Trap

The brand image trap comes up when the brand image becomes the brand identity rather than just one input to be considered. Creating a brand identity is more than finding out what customers say they want. It must also reflect the soul and vision of the brand, what it hopes to achieve. While brand image is usually passive and looks to the past, brand identity should be active and look to the future.

2. The Brand position trap

The brand position trap occurs when the search for a brand identity becomes a search for a brand position, stimulated by a practical need to provide objectives to those developing the communication programs. The goal then becomes an advertising tag line rather than a brand identity. There is a need for a rich and complete understanding of what the brand stands for in order to create an identity.

3. The external perspective trap

Most of the brand strategists position the brand identity creation as an entirely external oriented process, something that gets the customers to buy. The external perspective trap occurs when firms fail to realize the role that a brand identity can play in helping an organization understand its basic values and purpose.t is hard to expect employees to make a vision happen if they do not understand and buy into that vision.

4. The product-attribute fixation trap

A brand is clearly more than a product or a service. Focusing your entire strategy and brand identity on the attributes of your product is an erroneous strategy, especially on a long-term.

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In an era of slow growth, tight margins, and fckle consumers, the key to success is to differentiate. One critical element in successfully differentiating is communicating that difference to consumers. Hence, branding will require special attention from retailers who want to stand out from the crowd. 

Aside from specialty apparel and luxury retailers, branding has not always been seen as important for retailers—especially those that sell food and other mass products. Yet for these retailers, branding has never been more important. 

Today’s most successful retailers typically have one of two attributes. First, there are those with the most effcient supply chains, which translates into lowest costs and prices. However, there are those retailers that do not attempt to match low-price leaders and have succeeded by managing their brands and demonstrating to consumers why they are different.

Read all Deloitte reports on retail in 2009 here

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In general, the leader should never attack or name the competition. Instead the leader should promote the category. By attacking a competitor or responding to an attack ad, the leader only legitimizes the competition and the existence of a choice. Neither is good.

If under attack, a leader should instead address any problems with PR. Never with advertising. When Apple says consumers are frustrated with Vista in its advertising, Microsoft shouldn’t run ads saying everybody loves Vista.

That above, is just a quote. More, with examples and details on Ries’s blog here.

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Here is an interesting list, Michele Schermerhorn President of Online Business Institute Inc. has put together:

1. Know Your Customers Better Than You Know Yourself
2. Understand Your Competitive Environment & Competitors
3. Define Your Brand Personality
4. Make A Brand Promise
5. Define Your Brand Strategy
6. Identify Your Branding Game Plan
7. Be Consistent in Action

Now, the second point is not the most commonly use when setting-up such branding rules lists, but I find it very true and usefull:

Your competitive environment has a major impact on how you brand your products or your company. For instance, retail is a highly competitive environment. There are companies that deal in the high end of the market and those who don’t. WalMart has chosen to compete in the low price arena of retailing. They work hard to build a brand of “low price, friendly company”. They obviously do it well. All one has to do is look at their financials to draw that conclusion.

You need to understand your competitive environment as well as WalMart understands theirs. But how can you do that effectively, without WalMart’s budget?

Start by asking your existing customers, “If you weren’t working with us, with whom would you be working?” Identify the companies to whom you most often lose business. Learn as much as you can about these competitors, including how customers perceive them, what makes them unique, and why they win the business they do.

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But, there are some branding constants that will remain critical for establishing and maintaining brand awareness with your target audience. Regardless of the medium chosen for distribution, you must:

• Ensure your brand promise is clear. Be simple, be direct, and by all means, be consistent.
• Focus on creating a well-conceived brand name. Even the cleverest branding strategy will fall flat if the name you seek to brand is poorly conceived.
• Understand the competition. No one operates in a vacuum. While originality is important, it’s critical to be aware of your competitors’ branding strategies.
• Set branding goals. You can’t very well determine your success if you don’t have a benchmark against which to measure it. Know where you want to go and when you want to get there.
• Remain committed yet flexible. Branding success doesn’t occur overnight; it takes commitment to maintain focus and build loyalty. But that doesn’t mean strategy changes might not be necessary along the way, so be open to tweaking your approach as necessary.

Read more in the Entrepreneur.com article Branding Trends: Delivery Channels Take the Lead

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Whether shaping the branding strategy of a start-up or optimizing the strategy of an established company, the key to maximizing goodwill is in closing the gap between organizational culture and organizational brand. Sometimes we see wonderful brands that resonate with the market, but are undermined by the internal culture as in the case of marketing an image of customer service, but having sales clerks who are untrained or unhelpful. In that case, the challenge is to correct the organizational culture over time to effectively support the brand. Typically this management issue can be resolved through a process of adjusting the focus of existing employees while working to make sure new employees match the needs of the evolving culture.

As consumers, we sometimes see a great company culture anchored to a lousy brand, what I call “the best kept secret” syndrome, such as finding a wonderful product in unattractive packaging. Typically, this marketing issue can be resolved by investing in creative communication services to more accurately share the story of the organization. In both reconciliation processes, there will be an investment of time, money, and emotion. These investments should be made with a strategy to leverage and protect that investment, which is where the intellectual property enters the picture.

Read full article in the Kevin E. Houchin’s Creativity and Law Blog.

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While the summed importance of branding (of the carrier and the phone) in purchasing decision seems to remain constant at a total of 59% it is worth noticing that 19 percent of customers cite the type or brand of cell phone as a key factor during the initial process of selecting a wireless service, up from 11 percent in 2004. While the brand of wireless provider is still the most popular reason influencing the initial selection process, it has decreased significantly in importance, down 8 percentage points from 2004 to 40 percent in 2006.

Other key factors that influence the initial selection process are price/promotion (29%) and retail location (12%).

While this strategy is adopted due to high competition in the field, I honestly don’t find it sustainable on the long term because promoting the cell phone instead of the service plan and the carrier that provides that service may lead to sales growth in the short term, but it can potentially have a negative long term impact with higher churn rates.

The study actually shows this. As such, among customers who are most influenced by the cell phone brand, the likelihood of switching carriers in the next 12-month period is 60 percent higher than among customers who cite the brand of the wireless provider as their key factor in the selection process.

On the other hand study shows that among major wireless carrier-owned retail stores, T-Mobile ranks highest in customer satisfaction for a fourth consecutive reporting period. T-Mobile receives particularly high ratings in all four factors that determine overall satisfaction. T-Mobile is followed in the rankings by Verizon Wireless and Alltel, respectively.

Volume 2 of the 2006 Wireless Retail Sales Satisfaction Study is based on experiences reported by 7,530 wireless users who completed a retail sales transaction within six months prior to being surveyed. The results are from the two most recent reporting waves, which were conducted in April and July 2006. More about the study here.

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Consumers interact with brands locally every hour of every day. With expanded creativity around media from agencies, brands and media owners, these media touchpoints are expanding rapidly. How do large organizations managing a brand across different regions, markets and locations do so while ensuring flexibility across their local markets?

Once upon a branding time, local branches were free-wheeling with their marketing practices and the Bank of America logo was “wantonly” emblazoned on diverse products. When a national marketing exec saw the Bank of America logo stamped on a “piece of cake,” a memo went out advising: Local branches will no longer be allowed to “eat the brand!”

Bank of America’s solution? Centralize the development of consistent, national brand messaging and collateral and enable local markets to “attach” them to local marketing initiatives and sponsorships.

via.

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