Webalue.com Communications » Brand Positioning

Drew Gerber Speaks on PR and your Brand

Ed Roach — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 02:52:43 +0000

PR Guru, Drew Gerber

As part of my interview series with “Thought Leaders,” PR guru and author, Drew Gerber from “Pitchrate.com” shares his wisdom with us. I’ve been following Drew online for some time, so I was pleased as punch that he agreed to this important interview.

Ed Roach: How much does personal branding matter in Public Relations?

Drew Gerber: Personal branding is as important in the world of business survival as food, shelter, and water are to personal survival. If you want to set yourself apart from the competition you have to make a name for your products and services. Chances are someone else is doing the same thing you are, so you really have to find what’s unique about you. The goal of branding is to make it so your target market remembers you. When you’re giving an interview you have to make sure you deliver your message in way that forces people to take notice of your brand. You have to make it like a song they can’t get out of their heads.

Ed Roach: Whenever I speak of corporate branding, I believe a company is smarter to lead than follow. Taking their PR efforts into consideration, how important is “being the leader”?

Drew Gerber: Being a leader is definitely important, but you also have to know what others are doing. I would never advocate following or “riding the coat tails”, but with the Internet and social networking, ideas and thoughts are being exchanged at a very rapid pace. It really comes down to progression these days. How far you can take an idea and how you can leverage it to really make a difference in you company.

Ed Roach: Drew, I’ve heard you say, “When it comes to small businesses, PR is in everything you do.” Since your PR is a part of your brand would you agree that the tone of your brand should be reflected in your PR initiatives?

Drew Gerber: Definitely! The tone of your brand should be reflected in all your PR initiatives. Your brand is who you are. It’s counterproductive to deliver a message in an interview that doesn’t align with your branding. You have to be memorable, not confusing.

Ed Roach: Let’s say a company is in crisis, how can PR play a role in re-establishing brand reputation?

Drew Gerber: PR can be a company’s most effective tool– as long as they are willing to take responsibility and be vulnerable. Crying on camera seldom hurts either. We all watched as Toyota launched a huge PR campaign after all the recalls. They had to reestablish trust with its current and potential customers. They went hard after their long history and track record, and even brought emotion into the campaign, which we don’t see too often from large corporations. When a company’s relationship with the public is tarnished for whatever reason, PR is the most effective way to get the shine back on.

Ed Roach: As a Public Relations expert, how do you believe the Drew Gerber brand is perceived?

Drew Gerber: Well, I always think it’s hard to be objective about yourself, even if you a branding expert. Ever try cutting your own hair? I hope I’m perceived as approachable, passionate, and, above all else, committed to making a difference.

L. Drew Gerber is CEO of Wasabi Publicity, Inc. (www.PublicityResults.com) and creator of www.PitchRate.com, a free media tool that connects journalists, publicists, and experts. Gerber’s business practices and staffing innovations have been revered by PR Week, Good Morning America and the Christian Science Monitor. His companies handle international PR campaigns and his staff develops online press kits for authors, speakers and companies with Online PressKit 24/7, a technology he developed (www.PressKit247.com). Contact L. Drew Gerber at: AskDrew@PublicityResults.com or call him at 828-749-3548.

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Brand As Second Skin

Ed Roach — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 14:54:02 +0000

One ROI for a strong consumer brand is the fact that many people purchase products based on their perceived self-image. Some brands are so strong that individuals identify with them. They believe that they deliver more than the immediate use they were intended. In essence the brand speaks to them.

Does your brand speak to your customers? Is the relationship you share with them go much further than service delivery? We should all be striving to build cache with our audiences.

To many in our society, it is extremely important that their individuality be identified with their favored brands. The clothes they wear, the cars they drive and the smart devices they carry. These are the world brands they identify with. What about the brands closer to home? What financial institutions they engage, or which consultants they embrace? In every purchase decision there is brand decisions. Consumers identify with success. Nobody wants to hitch their wagon to a brand that doesn’t resonate with their self-image. This is the case at every level.

Look in the mirror and see if your favored world brands don’t match your local brand choices. Society views you by which brands you wear in every facet of your life. It is one way that their perception of you is built. Perception is their reality of your brand.

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Is Your Brand Image Up To The Challenges To Come?

Ed Roach — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 15:35:44 +0000

Use of Colours in Branding

Your brand image is the face of your brand. It is the first thing your target audience sees when first introduced to you. What do you suppose goes through their mind when they see your brand image? Are the colors and imagery resonating by correctly representing your brand values and personality? How about consistency, are you showing one message?

At the first introduction everything is riding on your brand image. If a business’s image is amateur, then they are doing immediate damage to their sales goals. Their efforts to save money and get an image on the cheap, only shows their lack of understanding as to how the buying public formulates buying decisions. Their perceptions are the reality in the world of a brand. If a business looks like a small player, a person will have a more difficult time building a belief that the business can deliver for them. These perceptions and reactions happen in seconds. Building trust is huge in the sales cycle and so any distraction from that effort is critical.

Your brand image should also differentiate your company. Choose colors that not only represent your personality, fit psychologically but also are different than competing companies. Every aspect of your brand must be compelling to a prospect. Your brand image mustn’t be simply window dressing either. You have to walk the walk. There are so many things you have to remember in order to succeed, your image should be the wonderful wrapping to a tremendous gift inside.

Make this New Year an opportunity to look objectively at your brand image. Ask friends and customers for their opinions in a short survey. Use the results to address any deficiencies and make your job a little bit easier.

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Why AOL Rebranding process may not succeed?

Meheer Thakare — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:08:11 +0000

Corporate re-branding is sometimes seen as an inevitable exercise while it appears to be a normal practice for global trendsetters moving away or making alterations to their brands. AOL, a longer version of American Online is an American company that provides internet services and social media networking. The internet company has announced its ongoing process of re-branding itself. AOL will spin-off from Time Warner which has been operating it since the year 2000. The merger between AOL and Time Warner, was a destined ill-fated journey on account of bad advisory. Finally, AOL shares will start trading independently from early December 2009 in NYSE.

Aol. New Corporate Logos

Trading as a separate identity called for a new corporate identity to help revive the company’s tail spin journey. As a part of the re-branding process, its brand, ‘AOL’ will now be symbolized as ‘Aol.’ with an essential dot in the end. A view master, a high heeled shoe and a kissing couple are but few background features that are set to be replaced with some other weird backgrounds like, a gold fish, some four abstract scrawls and an obscene hand gesture. The logos were designed by Wolff Olins, the agency that came up with the logo of London 2012 Olympic Games.

Commenting on the Re-branding process, Tim Armstrong, the chairman and chief executive of AOL, said the branding was “uniquely dynamic”, while his marketing team added: “The identity … is a platform for expression and creativity reflecting the content, products and services Aol offers.” Yes, we at Webalue.com, agree to some extent but there are larger issues that ought to be attended. I formed three easy interconnected steps for Aol. To follow,

Step 1. Global Brand: Let’s face it. We all know AOL has been trying to establish itself as a global brand. The company has yet failed to shed off, ‘American Online’ as a spot on alternative to ‘AOL’. Non-U.S countries have thus not proved to be as profitable to the company.

Step 2. Being Global, Acting Local: AOL will need to kick off major campaigns, to integrate its brand within foreign cultures. Until the day, these cultures (or countries) adopt AOL into their lives, this company aint going anywhere. In emerging countries like India, where Internet usage has been achieving record growth year-on-year, AOL has a great opportunity. But a major chunk of the market would rather opt for Yahoo or Rediff.com (an Indian portal). AOL is still largely perceived to be American Online, which straight away disassociates non-US consumers.

Step 3. Cultural Dimensions: (This one’s funny) How many times a year do we come across companies committing cultural blunders. Some brand names sound offensive in some countries, while other logos find themselves emitting wrong gestures and signals. Well, here we go again. ‘AOL’ (oops.. or should I say, ‘Aol.’) is all set to be a classic cultural blunder in ITALY. One of their new logo background, has a rock-concert-like hand gesture (See in the Image above) which in Italy indicates a man whose wife has been unfaithful. (Gulp…!!!) Hope Aol(dot) addresses this before launch in Italy.

Apart from these 3 steps, there is another concern that I feel is worth a review. The company recently announced a major lay-off of over 1/3 workforce accounting to cost-cutting measures. This could have well been a gist of actions taken during the AOL-Time Warner’s bad divorce. But, it might have left a bad scar on the retained employees of Aol-dot. As a new company, establishing new and some changed brand values, it is important for the management and the employees to bond together and work as team. Cost-cutting may have been essential, but the timing could have well been wrong. On the flip-side, though it is also possible that the management has foreseen this internal branding risk and would have wanted to leave all negativity with AOL while starting afresh with Aol-dot.

We’ll keep a watch on ‘Aol.’, and keep you updated. So, do we think this company is all-set to take up new highs? Well… uhhh.. Nope not yet. Unless ofcourse if it looks up into addressing the above mentioned 3 steps in one way or the other.

Update (11th December’ 2009)

Shares of the newly independent AOL Inc. (Aol.) opened at $23.39 on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as the Internet company officially separated from media giant Time Warner Inc. (TWX) AOL (oops… Aol.) shares slid after opening, recently trading at $23.09, giving the company a market value of $2.44 billion.

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Have you forgotten to integrate your original Brand Values to your Online Marketing activities?

Meheer Thakare — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 08:32:56 +0000

Internet is a new medium of communication; it has changed the way we market our products and services. It has managed to challenge several marketing processes pushing a new way of implementing the same techniques with a different approach. Off late with the rise of interactivity in the guise of Web 2.0, the way we market products and services has encountered great levels of dynamic approach.

Brand managers conveniently forget application of the basic principles of Branding. It is important that they do not consider Interactivity as an alternative to Branding. Interactivity is simply a new channel that is largely misinterpreted. Several brand managers believe that they are required to portray and re-create different brand values for their presence on the Web with something that relates to Interactivity. On the flip side, there are still a lot of organizations that exist with merely putting up their offline brochures on display in the website thereby killing the interactivity and blending. Webalue.com’s Marketing Head, Vipin Patil, who has spent a decade in web development agrees, ‘Most companies looking at developing their identity online evidently misunderstand the characteristics of Internet. In the past 10 years I have had a few clients who even refused to display their email IDs on the website citing them as an unmanageable added source of enquiry management (They would only display their physical office address and telephone numbers on the ‘Contact’ pages). ‘Interactivity’ still has a long road to cover before such businesses adopt them on right lines.’

The right approach is to adopt interactivity as a new channel to branding (just like TV and Radio) and creatively align this new medium with the current offline brand values. This also ensures consistency constituting to brand strength. M&M did this quite fabulously. Their customers can actually order a customized bag of M&Ms where messages they create can be printed on each piece of the candy with any of the available colours and delivered at the comfort of consumer’s home. And Interactivity doesn’t end their consumer’s can even send in a photo and have their face printed on every M&M candy. This is interactivity and brand attachment at its best. Result?? Brand’s Consistency remains INTACT and Brand’s Interactivity seems Fabulous. Another example of this could be SUNSILK Gang of Girls initiative, which we recently covered on Webalue.com Communications.

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The Most Common Mistake Brand Managers make: Golden Rule

Meheer Thakare — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:47:15 +0000

Today we are looking at addressing all those Brand Managers who have continually faced failure within their campaigns. This may have well been the greatest drawback of all your branding campaigns. How often, do we hear of million dollar campaigns gone wrong due to unseen and unaccounted for errors? We have ourselves, at Webalue.com Communications, regularly pointed out several real time examples of huge companies failing to effectively conclude their big-budget branding campaigns. Sometimes, thus, it is wiser to rely on credible veterans to answer the reasons of failures, rather than depending on our new generation instincts.

It is difficult to believe that the most common mistake Brand Managers commit is, ‘to lose the focus of their target market and consequently spending their campaign budget across so wide that they eventually cannot attract the individual or consumer effectively’.

The other day I was engaged in a very constructive discussion with Ed Burghard, a retired Harvey Proctor Marketer about Branding (Thanks to Ed Roach, who introduced me to Ed Burghard ). Ed is the CEO at The Burghard Group, LLC operating from Cincinnati and is also the Executive Director at Ohio Business Development Coalition. He has previously held positions at P & G designated as the Director of Marketing. Do visit his website, http://www.strengtheningbrandamerica.com to know more about him and his work.

We were specifically discussing some unique ideas to promote Brand Ohio and America, when he swiftly pointed out to me one of the most common mistakes committed by Brand Managers. He quoted, ‘just wanted to give you some insight into the balancing act brand managers need to master in order to successfully compete in the market. Too often, they don’t say no to good ideas and spread their budget so thin across a number of tactics that collectively nothing is achieved. The other thing they do is mistakenly assume that it is sufficient if some of their target is reached by a tactic. In reality though, it is a game of individuals. The overlap of individuals reached in the communication tactical plan is what matters most. Focusing on creating this overlap is critically important.’

Ed has been exposed to quite a large number of brand managers throughout his career which makes his comments extremely credible.

Webalue.com’s Branding Panel Expert and Adviser, Ed Roach has similar ideas. Ed has 25 years of experience in branding, where he helps small businesses position their brands to showcase the differentiating factors. Visit Ed’s website at http://www.thebrandingexperts.ca, to know more about his services. According to Ed, ‘Individuals=stakeholders. Each “individuals” agenda should be accounted for and play into the overall success of the brand promise as much as it can be, given the assortment of personalities.’

The extraction of both these successful branding veterans suggest that brand managers often focus on too many channels to promote their brand during a campaign in the bid to reach a wider audience. In the interim of such campaigns the individuals meant to be reached are not effectively communicated with, resulting in a clueless failure. The insights of both these experts further clear the air, strengthening the importance of market research in Branding. Brand Managers cannot make a campaign successful without profiling the target market and then imposing the promotions and advertising to sustain the focus. Concluding, if you’re a Brand Manager or an Owner, make sure you address the most common mistake of ‘loosing focus of your Target Market before your campaign succumbs’.

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LUX Comes Back

Lata Vijaybaskar — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:14:14 +0000

The latest ad on the Indian television screen will be the hot and sizzling Ash and Abhishek one for LUX. With this star couple, Lux has come back in style. World over for almost a century, Lux - the beauty soap from the Unilevers have been positioning with the ‘Brings Out the Star in You’ advertisement campaign.

Lux toilet soap was introduced as bathroom soap in the US in 1925 and in the UK in 1928 as a brand extension of Lux soap flakes. Subsequently Lux soap has been marketed in several forms, including handwash, shower gel and cream bath soap.

Lux soap was launched in India in 1929. The very first advertisement in 1929 featured Leela Chitnis as its brand ambassador. It was branded in India as “the beauty soap of film stars’.

: Vintage Ad for Lux

Since the 1930s, many well-known Hollywood actresses have marketed the soap to women as a beauty enhancer. Advertisements have featured Dorothy Lamour, Joan Crawford, Laurette Luez, Judy Garland, Cheryl Ladd, Jennifer Lopez, Elizabeth Taylor, Demi Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Rachel Weisz, Anne Hathaway, and Marilyn Monroe, among others. The first male to star in a Lux advertisement was Hollywood actor Paul Newman.

As of June 2009 Lux is sold in over 100 countries. (this information is found on the Unilever website and Wikipedia).

Now the question that arises in my mind is why this now? The personal care products of HUL are facing heavy competition from P&G, ITC and many regional brands as well. In such a scenario should it not leverage on its original LUX theme? The couple’s ad seems irrelevant unless the company plans to change its positioning strategy but then again such a thought doesn’t seem to be communicated in the advertisement. Yes! It is a good ad. But will that make me go down to the supermarket to buy the product??

For Reference also read this article on the Most common Mistakes Brand Managers make.

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Is Your Brand Tone Deaf?

Ed Roach — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 04:57:29 +0000

Brand Tone is also the personality of your brand. Take a moment to think of the Apple/PC ads. Apple’s personality is that of a youthful, creative person with a distinctive image. If you also happen to own a Mac, but were also once a PC owner the set-up in the commercial will resonate with you. You get it. Exclusively Mac owners also get it because they always “got it” ( a bit of snob appeal). But the reality of the situation is the accurate portrail of Mac’s personality or tone.

What tone does your brand send out? Are you even consciously doing this in your marketing? Just like every company has a brand whether they want one or not, brands are also exhibiting a personality/tone whether they are aware or not. The tone many companies sent out is a that of a selfish person where the message is all about them. A big picture of their location and flashy offices, how successful they are, that you should be dealing with someone so influential. NOTHING about how they will address your company’s pain points and deliver on a solutions based promise.

This is how many advertising messages go down – and let’s not forget the flashy graphic to round out the creativity by rubbing the ego of the person who signs the cheque.

Your tone should epitomize your brand promise and compliment your customer’s brand experience. Like Apple, I know I will not have to deal with viruses and it’s going to be very easy to use AND look pretty darn cool as well!

Think about your brand’s tone. It will make your marketing resonate more powerfully with your target customers.

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Automobile Branding – changing times

Lata Vijaybaskar — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:44:26 +0000

Vroom! The sound of a car igniting can bring in varied emotions to its passengers – Thrill, freedom, adventure, luxury, doubt, safety… it is these emotions that the marketers use to position themselves. These emotions make the brand attributes of the cars.

Cadillac and Mercedes-Benz say luxury and a lofty station in life. Jaguar and Porsche say excitement and swagger. Toyota and Honda say practicality and value. And Volvo of course is the ultimate car in safety.

Yet consumers today want safety as the most important attribute and hence manufacturers have made it as an important feature than a positioning attribute. Of course with so many players and the omnipresent web 2.0 the romance of the brands is over. Customers no longer buy for nostalgia and manufacturers need to address this. Today the focus is on value – customer value. With the use of social media many companies are making inroads into the customer community, but there is more to social media than Flickr and You Tube. Research says German automakers dominate the social media presence while Japanese and American brands are largely absent.

The other day Meheer had written on crowdsourcing and the automobile industry has come up with a new model based on crowdsourcing. Fiat Brazil is now bringing the same principles to the automotive industry and is designing a concept car using crowdsourced ideas collected through a dedicated project website as well as via social-networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Orkut. This initiative is dubbed the “Mio” project and the Fiat Concept Car III will be presented at the 2010 International São Paulo Auto Show in Brazil, though it is still to be determined if it will be commercially launched.( source: Brandchannel)

While there now seems to be a lot of importance on crowd sourcing, it needs to be recognized that crowd sourcing may not guarantee quality. Yes there is a lot to be said about the amalgam of many minds. Just make sure it is not a case of too many cooks!

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Branding in this festival season

Lata Vijaybaskar — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 06:00:35 +0000

Happy Diwali! This has become the most popular welcome and goodbye chant the last few days. Well it is that time of the year. From Dusshera to Christmas it’s a very festive 3-4 months. So would the marketers and brand managers let this opportunity pass? Festive season calls a highly lucrative audience which a huge amount of brands try to connect with.

The consumer durables market, telecom service providers, textiles, jewellery, even the hospitality industry is placing its bets on the festive season, to end this year on a bright note. But here is the paradox. While all the promotions and advertisements make a lot of noise and even enable good sales, the question of whether they have created the brand any long term impact lingers. Is your product only a commodity sold at a lesser price during the season? Will customers remember your brand attributes post the festival?

In the words of brand guru Aaker (1996), “developing the strength of a brand is not deemed to be easy.” The response to – ‘what is the best approach to branding during the festive rush’ is filled with alternative methods and contradictions.

Branding during a festival or event is an unique opportunity to connect with your customers through every point of interaction and create an emotional connection between the festival, customer emotions and your product/service. The challenge here of course is to stay within your brand identity and still connect to people. For e.g.; Airtel gives online priests and puja hyms for festivals like Ganesh Chathurthi. Staying in line with their identity to “live every moment” they make customer’s festivals momentous.

The concept of festival branding is multidimensional, with cognitive and affective spheres. An amalgam of ideas, beliefs, opinions, expectations and impressions. Thus the festive branding attributes are interactional and strongly based on emotions. It needs to build on the brand value of the festival itself and reflect the essence of brand promise of the product/ service.

With these in mind the brand strategy should start with identifying the values or importance of the festival and articulate this to the brand’s promise. When positioned thus in the minds of the consumer the brand would gather better image.

Festive Brand Promise

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