Four Ways to Improve Your Brand Strategy

You might remember the classic 1979 movie Being There with Peter Sellers and Shirley MacLaine.  When working on brand strategies I like to focus on four ways of "being there" --  Befing different, Being seen, Being where customers are, Being where competitors are not. 

Being different requires a unique point of view and differentiation from competitors. Being seen includes public relations, an on-line presence, social media strategies and traditional media like advertising and promotions. Being where customers aremeans knowing where, when and how to reach customers.  If your clients or customers use Facebook and Twitter, be there.  If not, don’t follow a fad.  Being where competitors are not.This may include expansion into new markets, developing new products or services or simply finding unique avenues to reach customers and developing ideas that can be ownable.

Tide for red and blue states

With the primary elections underway it has struck me that soon we will need to have separate versions of basic products such as Tide formulated to appeal to the Red and Blue states.  In the recent primary the citizens of Kentucky (my home state now) decided to select the most liberal Democratic candidate and the most conservative Republican candidate to run against each other in November.  What ever happened to working together and compromise?  Will television advertising and its unifying message keep us focus on what keeps us together?  We all use soap.  Stranger things have happened!  I saw a documentary where the Russian Baby Boomers said their love for The Beatles and desire to purchase their albums helped to bring down Communism.  

What Al and Tipper Gore Teach Marketers

No one saw this one coming and it is a good reminder to marketers.  It is very hard to predict consumer behavior.  All of the demographic and psychographic data in the world would not have had an indicator for this.  Having survived life in the political fish bowl, the near death of their son and a tragic presidential election, what would precipitate the close of this long-term marriage?  Time will tell I suppose.  I don't know about you but for me this will always be a vivid reminder that the consumer is a mercurial beast.

What great films teach marketers

The cable TV went out and so I was forced to find entertainment from my selection of videos.  Mostly old musicals and of course the Audrey Hepburn collection – but I wasn’t in the mood for Sabrina for the 10th time and under a dusty pile I discovered The Best Years of Our lives with Myrna Loy and Fredric March. It features stories of the men returning to the US from WWll and trying to adjust to being home. (Best Picture in 1946)  The most significant moment for me was the scene where the Fredric March arrives home unannounced.  He hushes the children and from the kitchen Myrna Loy calls “Peggy who is at the door?”  Suddenly she knows that it is him.  She stands in the hall, he stands in the hall and then -- they rush to embrace.  There is tension and a full gamut of emotions expressed in that very short scene.  Marketers wanting to create an emotional response from their target audience should learn from this – the message can be in the pause.

Resilient

So I attended a new year’s celebration service at New Thought Unity which like its name promotes new thought.  At these services they have you think of a word and then you select a word.  The two together become your mantra for the coming year.  The word I thought of was resilient.  The word I picked was power.  I have the power to be resilient.  After thinking of that word suddenly I found resilience everywhere.  And coming out of 2009 resilience was required.  Marketers had to be fleet of foot and flexible.  Campaigns had to have a certain spirit and toughness.   Hyundai claimed “We are all in this together” and Allstate asked “Was it the great recession or the recession that made us great?” Lo and behold – optimism back in style.