Thinking About Branding

And yet, McDonalds have been so successful by creating a consistent, easy to roll out experience; so why wouldn’t they be able to do the same with an airline (if they got the prototype right in the first place that is!)? Are we confusing the concept by thinking about McDonalds food being served on the plane and thinking that defines the brand? Virgin launched offering a no frills service kind of like the McDonalds of the airline industry and it worked. Maybe the Richard Branson / Virgin ‘make a success of nearly everything’ brand is more transferable than that of a company with a specific product.

Or maybe it is just our own individual expectations that determine the brand anyway. So one person’s McDonalds airline provides consistent, excellent, and therefore deemed to be safe, service; another provides cheap and cheerful, and therefore deemed to be unsafe, service.

So, yes I think it is about expected behaviour – but very much dependent on who is expecting the behaviour in the first place!

A brand is the perception a consumer has in their mind of you or your product.

Branding is the process on strengthening or weakening that perception.

A market place is the location consumers decide which brand to purchase/consume or associate with.

Marketing is the process of positioning your brand (hopefully at the expense of all other brands) as the dominant choice for consumption or association.

It is within Marketing we attribute the aspects of behavior in the market place, not the brand or branding.

Good Hunting,

I think behaviour is just the manifestation of underlying core brand values. Brand connect with people on emotional and rational levels and people associate a set of values, and expectations with the specific experiences behaviors that they have when they engage with the brand. Many brand extensions (like your MacDonald airlines example) just don’t fit with the experience and values you might associate with with that brand. Virgin made the leap from music to airlines because the underlying value set was about fun, excitement and hip experiences – whether music or travel experiences.

Sarah
http://sarahmontague.wordpress.com

I think behaviour is just the manifestation of underlying core brand values. Brand connect with people on emotional and rational levels and people associate a set of values, and expectations with the specific experiences behaviors that they have when they engage with the brand. Many brand extensions (like your MacDonald airlines example) just don’t fit with the experience and values you might associate with with that brand. Virgin made the leap from music to airlines because the underlying value set was about fun, excitement and hip experiences – whether music or travel experiences.

Sarah
http://sarahmontague.wordpress.com

Hey, Chris.
Great observation. I’m not sure if branding *is* a behavioral expectation, but certainly branding *creates* a behavioral expectation. It is certainly the biggest part of the practical application of branding.

The word competencies also comes to mind when I think of branding – the deep skills that a company uniquely holds. When you hear of a brand expanding into new products or markets, you probably think of their competencies first… do they know that space? Are they good at that?

McDonald’s provides fast service; it is a known behavior associated with the brand. You expect that behavior, but is it their core competency? If McDonald’s announced a drive-through oil change service would that make sense to you as a natural move for them? Not likely. Yes, “fast” is a behavior you expect from them, but not their core identity or competency.

So what if Bose announced its new mobile phone, what would you expect? Or what if Apple partnered with Porsche on the iRoadster? One of Apple’s core competencies is user-centered interface design. Porsche’s core competency is performance automotive engineering, but they are also really good at designing a remarkable end-user experience, like Apple.

In business school, they’re teaching us that a brand is a perception. It’s something usually intangible that is hard to summarize in words. So, it’s not a stretch to say it is a behavioral expectation as well, as you have an “image” in your head that develops this perception expectation.

In higher education we struggle with developing our individual brands – and trying to put faces and voices to these perceptions being developed. Corporate brands have similar issues (Geico/Getgo, etc.). Can university’s have “behaviors?”

I don’t think behaviors are the main purpose of branding, but certainly play a big role.

Brand-building is conducted with the presumption that it will lead to more “purchase behaviors” such as buying and loyalty. It’d be hard to justify, otherwise.

And while I think it’s useful to consider desired behaviors as part of the branding process, I struggle with how to square this with the “social media” tenets of transparency and relationship-building.

Some have said that the brand IS the relationship – and if so, isn’t there a disconnect between the core values of social media and traditional model of “driving of behavior?”

I’ll be diving into this topic on my new blog (which is not quite ready for prime time.)

One day I went shopping for vitamins and saw a Dove brand item on the shelf. It startled me to see the name of the soap I use attached to an item I consume. My first thought was to wonder what do they know about producing vitamins; my second thought was that they produce good soap and may also make good vitamins. They earned my trust once, and that fulfillment of promise made me open to trying them again.

McD’s has been around a very long time now. If they put their name on a wrench, I’d check it out.

I agree with the statement. I think of it this way: a brand is to a company as character is to a person. With a person’s character – once you know them – you know what you’re going to get with them – for good or not.
What a lot of companies miss is how far choices and actions (again positive or negative) go to establish a brand in the minds of people. Brand is way beyond the right color, the right font, the right typeface. Brand is the whole of a companies actions, what kind of citizen they are in the world, CEO pay, etc.

I think it is so important to push for brand behavior expectations. Isn’t that what you are doing when you push for a stronger brand? Raising the bar in what people expect when they hear “Southwest Airlines” or another brand. It is a GOOD sign when people expect a higher level of performance from your brand. This goes right along with customer service ideas as well. When you go to WAMU, do you expect to get the very best service? If the folks handling WAMU’s PR and brand are doing their job, then you should be expecting the very best service from the girl at the counter, the manager, etc. This is a new and different way of looking at what it means to strengthen a brand. Raise the bar for what people expect from your BRAND behavior. Great idea, great perspective.

I think it is so important to push for brand behavior expectations. Isn’t that what you are doing when you push for a stronger brand? Raising the bar in what people expect when they hear “Southwest Airlines” or another brand. It is a GOOD sign when people expect a higher level of performance from your brand. This goes right along with customer service ideas as well. When you go to WAMU, do you expect to get the very best service? If the folks handling WAMU’s PR and brand are doing their job, then you should be expecting the very best service from the girl at the counter, the manager, etc. This is a new and different way of looking at what it means to strengthen a brand. Raise the bar for what people expect from your BRAND behavior. Great idea, great perspective.

Hi Chris.

Google, for example, is stretching its limits too hard by moving into the mobile business. The brand is associated with content not stuff. It may be all right in the short term, but it’ll cause brand dillution in the long run…

It takes a lot of time to fix an idea inside the prospects mind. Why should we play with it?

I like very much Al & Laura Ries’ point of views about extensions. At the end of the day, it’s the concept of Positioning applied.

Thank you

Gabriel Rossi- Brazil

A large part of branding is setting expectations. There are some far more knowledgeable than myself about this topic, but I liken brands to human personalities.

You have a look and feel (logo, website, stationery, etc), a personality (Who do you speak with? What is the culture like? What does their website say? What language do they use?) and you have a demographic to place that look and feel and personality within (Has the company been around? What is their primary industry? What are their core competencies?).

With Virgin – Branson has done an amazing job of creating the expectation that Virgin WILL branch out. Virgin WILL create new companies, spawn new ideas, and experiment with new technologies. The expectation IS innovation.

McDonalds hasn’t created the same personality, and innovation isn’t something we associate with McDonald’s. They can move into new areas, but it would require a leap of faith for the public to trust them in a new area, as their brand does not represent innovation. It’s unexpected.

I think brands have safety zones. Much like you can try on that new style of clothing that isn’t “tradionally” you, brands can move a bit and experiment, too. If it works (looks good, you should buy it!), then it sticks. If not, they return to center and begin anew.

Great post!

To begin with, yes. Brands are a set of expectations. Rather like setting the bar. When you’re the company *doing* the branding, you’re telling people what you stand for, what they can expect from you, and the contract you’re inking with them for the long haul.

But a brand is a living, breathing thing. It’s amorphous, and it splinters, changes, evolves based on the customers’ *real* experiences with that brand. In other words, the brand becomes more about the delivery than the expectation. If you’ve ever been to Brand Tags, you know that Amazon is as much about “awesome” as it is “books”. Budweiser is nearly as much “bad” as it is “beer”.

Brands are collaborative. It’s like an agreement between company and customer. Here’s what we as the company want our brand to be. Here’s what you as the customer say it is. The truth is always somewhere in between.

Amber,

I have a slightly different perspective about brands being between company and customer. I honestly think brands should be what they think instead of what we think. Even mixing both parts, We get a cross signal if we don’t apply branding from the outside always.

A brand is a person’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. At the end of the day, a brand is defined by individuals, not by companies, markets etc… When enough people have the same gut feeling, then we have a brand.

Surely we can influence it by transmitting signals, but yur real brand is what THEY think.

Thanx.

Gabriel Rossi- Brazil

Gabriel,

To a great extent, I agree with you. But we need to have goals for what we want our brands to be. We need to understand what we’re trying to achieve in order to have something to benchmark against. If *we* don’t know what we stand for as a company, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to communicate it, or to appreciate the input and insights of our community to help us refine it. That’s why I say the brand is setting the bar. It’s sticking a flag in the ground and saying ok, here’s what we want to bring to you.

The brand from the company standpoint is the start to the discussion, but it’s not the endgame. How open we are to the discussion that ensues, well, that’s another post entirely.

Amber

The idea that’s working for me is that a brand is the some total of what your taget audience thinks regarding you, your business or product. I agree with Alisandar’s sense of identity shaping that occurs through the consumer choice, and constantly see the affiliations folks are making in social media to play that out. To that end, the difficulty of branding is the effort to shape the thing that resides in mind (even if the choice a pair of shoes, with Grace Slick the issue : “Feed your head.”

So, making a brand: the efforts to form the image of what you want folks to think.

As a media person for 30 years I can tell you this, most ad agencies totally miss the mark. The evidence is in how many ads are actually memorable, period! The good ones always stick with us.

Too many have not paid attention to the client, the customer, the consumer and just forge ahead and try to be funky creative, even if it totally does not relate to the product or the target, the consumer.

Keep it simple man! We all have some sort of ADHD in our distraction era. We all have it! We are multi-level multi-taskers. And the worse off for it!

Keep it simple “I’m lovin it” .. “It’s the real thing” .. “Just do it” .. come to mind quickly. The more you expect the customer to do to figure out your message, the more they just fade away from you.

Marketing is not advertising, marketing is the research that becomes the fuel to do the ad properly & precious few do any serious marketing & thus ad campaigns fail over and over.

Research what the customer wants in a shoe, in a hat, a cell phone .. whatever. The common threads are likley the truest, purest ways to position yourself, provided your survey was broad enough.

It’s just not complicated! I didn’t say simple was easy, but simple is usually brilliant!

Mike,

One of my favourite books of all times is called “Brand Simple”. The argument made by the author is very much related to what you have stated above. Basically, the best brands keep it short, simple and straight. Why? There’s too much clutter nowadays and consumers want brands to work as short-cuts for their buying decisions.

By applying similar brand names in a complete different category, aren’t companies missing exactly the point?

When i think about MCDonalds, fast-food comes to my mind. Rolex is watch. Coca-cola is cola. Kotler is Marketing…

I reckon that the fundamental principles of branding hasn’t changed with social media. We still have to listen to our costumers, be close to them and keep our promises. Also, the digital landscape hasn’t changed one of the most important laws of Marketing: Focus.

It’s just an opinion…

Cheers

Gabriel

I tend to oversimplify things… But I think branding is a set of rules, boundaries, and criteria for how a company should behave and respond publicly and internally.

In discussions there always seems to be a lot of grey area with brands and branding. Design is part branding, marketing is part branding, copywriting is part branding, etc. That’s way too complicated!

If there was a good brand “document”, or “manifesto”, or whatever you want to call it that all designers, marketers, copywriters, interior designers, and so on all played by, there would be a consistent message across the board. And the designers can be designers, marketers can be marketers, HR can be HR, and they could all work with a lot less confusion and ambiguity.

Simple as that! Making that “document” would be extremely hard, but if you have a good reason for being a company and stayed disciplined to your own brand rules, the expectations should work themselves out. Your “brand” would be strong.

In my opinion anyone responsible for a brand would be more of a policing role. Serving the company and it’s fans, protecting the company and it’s fans, and enforcing the rules of the brand for the company and it’s fans.

Well here’s another rant of mine & I think it relates. The amount of outsourcing is doing us all in. And I don’t mean to suggest we defer to a protectionism mode at all. But something just has to give!

I mean come on, the bean counters have slashed everything the “company” is about these days & that includes the heart, soul and company spirit. All to save a dollar. This mentality is now going to cost everyone big time.

CEO’s used to always come from sales, hey who knew the product and the company mission better than the people charged with selling it to the street every day. Now all CEO’s used to be CFO’s .. WRONG WRONG WRONG.

CFO’s are spreadsheet guys & gals & good at what they do, running a company is NOT what they do! They should advise CEO’s and that’s it. Someone has to be challenged to maintain the vision & mission of the company. That vision & mission if you will, is not about dollars. I mean it is but that can’t be the only mission! It’s new products, customers, opening new markets, 5 year strategic plans etc. it’s alot more than just budgets!

What’s this got to do with outsourcing you say? Giving the reins of the company to an accountant is like outsourcing the entire plan and vision to a foreign country. Missions & visions are very foreign to the bean counter. Ok Ok so I’m ranting, deal with it!

So the accountant mentality has found reason to outsource virtually every aspect of a company. Reducing the head count as an example is not always in the best interest of growth and sustained profitability.

Again, keeping it simple .. the more you outsource, the more control you in fact give up. Now isn’t that brilliant! Give up control and in house continuity in order to save a dollar. It’s sheer madness I say.

Bring marketing & advertising back “in house” and I’ll bet you a dollar, they will spend less and get more results. Ad agencies will never ever know what you know about the company, how could they? The feel, the spirit, the history, the good the bad and the ugly. Staffers know this stuff!

You want to rebrand, a better brand, an enhanced brand .. ask your own people for ideas and you`ll be amazed what they say.

I am a huge fan of professional third independent party coaching. But only limited to coaching and NOT running the business!

Chris, though I agree with your list; branding is subjective. Whay may work on one consumer does not wokr on another. It’s like politics. OR MotrinMoms.

I am at GreenBuild this week, and though consumers are being smacked daily with green branding efforts; in a research piece shared today in a session, when consumers were asked if they were green 49% said yes; when pushed further to name a product only 21% could come up with one; when they were pushed even further only 7% could name a “green” brand. It’s possible to think the brand wave is gone and only the historical brands have a chance to take over airlines and hotels. If I were travelling with my kids, a McDonalds Hotel might be as good as a Marriot, as long as they had a pool and McNuggets.

Maybe it is time to think less about brand and more about what that brand does for the customer; what do they need? What will make them feel comfortable happy and secure? What will embrace them?

In terms of green building; the industry can’t survive on brand…they need tangible benefits they understand.

Kimberly Lancaster
http://www.CasterBlog.com / http://www.greenlifesmartlifeblog.com

What a great conversation!

I’m still convinced, however, that the answer to Chris’s original question — is the purpose of branding to manage people’s expectations of our brand’s behavior? — is that behavior — yours, your customers, and your friends and critics — IS the brand.

Branding is the outcome of those behaviors, whether as explicit narrative or color commentary. It’s organic, real-time, and constantly changing. And it’s not a communications or marketing conceit. It’s a reality phenomenon, not the product of anyone’s imagination.

So talking about ‘the brand’ as if it’s something with which people engage, or is somehow outside or apart from what they or a company might do (a set of rules, standards, emotional associations, whatever), is kind of like saying that the Universe is ‘a thing’ instead of being EVERYTHING.

I’m also fascinated by how our own experiences and language factor into this debate. We marketers tend to see circumstances in terms of communications and mental states because that’s what we know. There are such a diverse range of definitions for ‘brand’ evidenced in this string, and lots of different definitions for the definitions we use.

Did anybody here ever read a short book called “Flatland?” I ask because I sometimes wonder if we’re missing other dimensions of brands that we simply can’t see because of our communications bent.

Anyway, I’m learning a lot from this conversation, and I’m honored that Chris referenced my book at the start of this give-and-take.

“Branding is the outcome of those behaviors, whether as explicit narrative or color commentary. It’s organic, real-time, and constantly changing. And it’s not a communications or marketing conceit. It’s a reality phenomenon, not the product of anyone’s imagination.”

Jonathan, I think I’m going to put that on my wall in Sharpie marker. You articulated beautifully what I was muddling through above. Thank you.