Tag Archives for Branding

Service brands: vision of the future?

As a marketer and consultant, I always find it difficult to explain what a brand is to people that are not familiar with the concept (e.g. my mom). This task of explaining things becomes increasingly difficult when the brand is not something you can touch or feel like a service.

Service Brands are populating the landscape today and I feel a strong desire to learn from them as many other marketers should. Why? Because the idea of customer engagement, loyalty, or the idea of employees living the brand are old news to the service brands that get it right. Sure, the work is never done, but they are light years ahead of the consumer packaged goods companies.

I have put together the below diagram as an example of how the landscape of product-to-service brands is complex:

Examples Service Brand Landscape

The Bottom Line:

Three brands to take a page from are: Scottrade, Netflix, and Red Hat.

  • Scottrade has mastered customer service in my opinion. I must admit that I have a couple of accounts with them and within hours of making a major transaction on-line the local office (1 mile away) calls to make sure everything went as I expected.
  • Netflix mastered a simple concept of adapting to consumers lives and taking away the hassle of the rental store and late fees. Simplicity is their virtue. The next chapter of on-line and downloads for movies will likely test them.
  • Red Hat sells “free software”. In the early days, they boxed free software and made it easy to buy. Now they are leading and prospering in the enterprise business software arena and wining more than their fair share. The company’s culture of transparency and openness that is shared with the open-source community which fuels the software is Red Hat’s greatest asset. How else could you actually sell free stuff?

Links of interest:

Chris Grams Blog – Senior Director of Brand Communications & Design, Red Hat

The Official Netflix Blog

Scottrade YouTube Channel

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Sponsorships at Amex: the experience is the strategy

American Express Company
Image via Wikipedia

In a previous post, “Choose organic product placements or your brand suffers“, I highlighted a number of criteria to think about as companies and marketers selection product placements or sponsorships.  American Express has an interesting strategy for their sponsorships that focuses on “experience”. This is also a core element of the American Express brand.

Q: What determines Amex sponsorships?
A: We think about partnerships in terms of what overlaps with cardmembers’ passions. Our cardmembers are voracious consumers of entertainment, and music is a big area of interest. First and foremost, it’s about cardmembers and providing value for them. – Courtney Kelso, VP of Sponsorship Marketing at Amex

To get the full Q&A with Courtney Kelso, VP of Sponsorship Marketing at Amex, please read “Amex Sponsorships Give Members An Experience” from MediaPost MarketingDaily.

For American Express, members (a.k.a. customers) and “memebership” are the driving force for their brand and business. By simply being a card member, customers have access and exclusiveness that provides value regardless of the actual service (credit) being provided. Now obviously Amex is smart and has built their business model on the more you use (credit) the more access and exclusiveness you gain.

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Brands go negative, will it pay?

The New York Times ran a story today “Dueling Brands Pick Up Where Politicians Leave Off “. It highlights a recent advertising trend to run negative ads against a company’s competitor to better position products.

Brands that are highlighted include: Dunkin’ Donuts, Apple and the response from Microsoft, Campbell’s Soup and the response from Progresso.

Below is Dunkin’…

McDonald’s has done a similar tactic also with Starbuck’s in the sights.

Will these ads pay?

In the short-term, most likely as consumer spending tightens. The long-term is likely to just lead to increased rivalry in an already tough category (coffee, soup, computers). True differentiation and leadership by a brand is needed to sustain an advantage. The great thing about Apple’s “comparative” ads are that they truly have differentiation in the product and experience and that is what was highlighted as different and exciting. Has it outlived its usefulness? Yes. Time to innovate again…