Tyrone Pardue

Even at a very basic level, business owners and senior managers understand that brand equity is vital to the success of their business. Without knowing all the jargon associated with branding, they do know that being different, standing out from the crowd, is how you define your brand and build recognition. When your customer experiences this positive differentiation time and time again as they purchase your products and services, you are building brand equity with that customer. This experience becomes indelibly linked to your brand and deeply embedded in your customer’s mind.

Think of brand equity as a kind of capital. When everything is going smoothly, you are growing that capital. When something goes wrong, the more capital you have, the more likely it is that your customers can forgive any small mistakes your company may make.

For a small business, branding can often seem like a daunting task. Particularly when you compare your small business to the brand giants like Google, Microsoft, Mercedes etc. They enjoy enormous brand equity built up over years of heavy brand investment and advertising, but it all boils down to a few easily identifiable steps. These simple steps apply to businesses both small and very large.

1. Positioning

Positioning is all about knowing exactly where your business is now and where you want it to be within the competitive landscape. If you have not already discussed this with senior sales and marketing management, or with your board, it is something you should do as a first step to growing your brand equity.

You don’t need an expensive branding consultant to do a meaningful and effective evaluation of your positioning. Here is a really easy way to do it, as easy as A, B, C.

"We are the only A that fills B’s need in C different way."

• Think of A as the business category or the actual product/service type that you are selling.
• Think of B as your customer’s demand or a problem they have that needs to be solved.
• Think of C as your unique advantage over your competitors. This is where the differentiation comes in.

2. Become a Story Teller

Mission statements are so ‘80s! If you want to really bore your target audience, just grind out a new mission statement. While they can be valuable from an internal managerial perspective, they have little or no value in the mind of your customer. People respond to brands emotionally. And nothing touches the emotions quite the way a good story does. Tell a story about how your vision evolved and developed into what the brand is today. The people involved, their lives and their belief in what they are doing. The product development story and how you have improved it over the years and why. Telling this kind of story helps to create authenticity, probably the most important characteristic for any brand that intends to be around for a while. A brand story well told will be remembered, and at the point of purchase will help your brand close the deal.

 

3. Be True to Your Story

You never want your target audience to think that your story is nothing more than a Fairy Tale! If you are not living up to the essence of your story, you are probably doing more long-term damage to your brand than if you never told the story at all.

Reflecting your story throughout your entire brand presence is critical. Simply put, that means that all points of contact where your customer encounters your brand should be properly aligned. From your logo and colors to your fonts and image library. Your stationery, brochures and Website must all be aligned and consistent with each other.

A great way to take this second step of being true to your story is to complete an audit of all your company’s materials, advertising, Website and printed collateral. Spread it all out on a big table, or across the boardroom floor and see if it is consistent and easily identifiable. Another good test, and one I learned from one of the world’s best newspaper designers is to cut the logo off all your materials, Web page print outs, brochure covers, letterheads, business cards and advertisements and look at them again! Would you know they were from the same company?

 

4. Build Trust

Many companies are too transaction orientated. That means their focus is almost entirely on selling more products – now. They invest heavily in sales promotions, advertising, merchandising etc. But they don’t often think about building trust in their company before the point of purchase. But this is where the real brand building starts to happen. If you can develop a relationship with your customer before they ever come to the store, go to your Website or pick up the phone to buy from you, their experience of your brand will be so much deeper.

You do this by giving something of yourself away. Take this blog post as an example, I don’t ask anything from my readers in return for the advice I give or the stories I tell in this blog. I enjoy a high readership with an almost zero unsubscribe. I have had new customers tell me that while the presentation of sample projects and portfolio pieces on my Website was important, it was not the clincher. It was receiving a little free advice, an interesting brand story or just hearing a different perspective, without strings attached that convinced them. They were able to engage with me in an unthreatening way that allowed them to form an opinion about my personal brand.

The internet provides an easy way for brands to give a little something away to a wide audience. One of my clients, Joffrey’s Coffee & Tea Company in Tampa, Florida recently won shelf space in Publix Supermarkets, the biggest supermarket chain in the Southeast. Since Joffrey’s was not widely known, we offered a free sample of Joffrey’s coffee on their Website and a $2.00 store coupon. This allowed potential customers to try before they buy, and get to know Joffrey’s a little before spending $9.99 on a full pound of gourmet coffee. And judging by the coupon redemption rate, consumers have not been disappointed!

5. Keep Your Finger on the Pulse

Get feedback from the marketplace so you can adapt if needed. Customer surveys, social media and search rankings all reveal critical information you need to stay focused on building brand equity.

Initiating a customer survey is not as difficult as you may think. There are online resources like www.surveymonkey.com and www.keysurvey.com that are free or very low cost. Once you review your survey results you will see why customer surveys are so important to the life of your brand.

Finally, building brand equity is a long-term proposition. Brands evolve just the way target markets and trends do. Now is a great time to begin building your brand equity. But leaving it to chance is a sure way to deplete it!

Interested in talking with me about your brand? Feel free to call me at (727) 480-4343 or email me here.

The current economic climate has affected almost every brand. Main street has more empty storefronts than any time in the last 30 years. Starbucks closed over 600 coffee shops, the banks are redefining themselves, and the car industry is being changed beyond recognition. It’s time for every business to take a step back and re-evaluate its brand and product offering.

A good example is Cox Communications. Their business services unit is using the recession as an opportunity to offer voice and data services, targeting small business customers who have contracts with the big telecommunications companies. Spotting the potential early in 2008, Cox began planning to extend its media brand into this profitable niche, with a quality, economical service to meet anticipated demand.

"The economy is opening up the minds of smaller and medium-size businesses," Kristine Faulkner, Cox Business vice president of product development and management, said in an interview. "Now they're saying, ‘Maybe I should look at the cable company.' Our call volumes are up because businesses are looking to save money."

Faulkner was one of Multichannel News' Women to Watch for 2009. She said Cox's business services unit is on track to see double-digit growth year-over-year and will bring in close to $1 billion in new revenue this year. The company expects to exceed that number in 2010.

Another good example is Ultima Car Care, one of America’s leading manufacturers of car detailing products sold online and in stores. Last year, company owner, David Ostroff, knew the oncoming recession would take a bite out of profits unless he found a way to extend his brand into new target markets.

Thinking out of the box, David realized that thousands of his loyal car care customers’ households also had motorcycles parked in the garage. So he developed a sub-brand called Cycle Armor aimed specifically at bike enthusiasts who, like his car care customers, maintain their bike with great pride. His manufacturing plant in Florida developed the exclusive range of products that are sold in kit form so they can easily fit into a motorcycle gear bag. The new sub-brand allows the company to generate more sales form its existing customer base while attracting completely new customers.

To successfully enter a new market niche, create a sub-brand, or develop a new product, it is wise to evaluate your existing brand by carrying out what is commonly called a brand audit. The purpose of the audit is to understand where your brand fits into the competitive landscape, and how your plans for expansion might affect your customer’s perception of the brand.

This sort of analysis is usually not something that you can do yourself, but is best done in collaboration with a brand specialist that has experience with all aspects of brand management as well as a broad understanding of sales and marketing. Different consultants have different methodologies but the end result should always shed light on how your brand is performing against the competition, how it matches up to your brand promise and what the opportunities are for future development.

For more information on my Brand Audit service, email me.

In the current environment, shoppers are naturally cost conscious. Just walk down any supermarket aisle and notice the plethora of cost-cutting tactics being used in just about every category. This is a result of the growing belief that in a recession you should cut back on Brand Awareness Advertising and shift the marketing dollars to ‘Shopper Marketing.’

Wal-Mart pits retailers against one another in a death match for shelf space week after week. As any Wal-Mart shopper knows, the store is full of point of purchase offers and incentives like, buy-one-get-one-free, on-pack coupons, discounts etc. Naturally, Wal-Mart loves the competition because it keeps consumers coming back week after week looking for the best deal – but just how good a deal is it for the brands? Over the years, this trend has grown, particularly since the recession started, causing other retailers and brand managers to become obsessed with Shopper Marketing tactics at the expense of Brand Awareness Advertising.

Brand Awareness Advertising happens outside the shopping environment, often right in the consumer’s home, seeking to reinforce a brand’s image in the mind of the shopper. Using traditional methods like magazine and newspaper advertising, TV, Radio and direct mail, marketers hope to engage the consumer with their brand story, trying to make a connection deep enough that their brand will be remembered once the consumer is in the store. Unfortunately, marketers that shift their budgets entirely to Shopper Marketing will eventually realize it has cost them market share and the respect of the consumer.

In an ideal world, there should be a balance between Brand Awareness Advertising and Shopper Marketing. A new report released earlier this year by OgilvyAction found that 60 percent of US consumers make purchase decisions before they get to the store. And only 10 percent change their minds about their purchase decisions while in the store. That means you have to reach your customer in other places outside the retail environment. As these statistics suggest, cutting Brand Awareness Advertising in favor of an exclusively Shopper Marketing strategy would be foolhardy.

But most surveys don’t take into account the shoppers habitual behaviors. Shoppers typically spend only about an hour a week shopping for groceries. People are time-crunched and shopping for groceries is not a leisure activity. They often move through the store quickly working with a list, written on paper or memorized, and are mostly shopping on reflex. In other words, they are skimming over your product to find the brand they usually buy.

Shoppers that are spending time to compare prices, study your offer and think about the advantages of your product in the store are usually on a tighter budget and mostly not as brand loyal. They may switch to your brand this week, but may change again next week. So you must engage the more brand-loyal shoppers who know what they want and typically stay with it unless something disappoints them.

Shopper Marketing works, there is no doubt about that. Other point of purchase factors like packaging design, store lighting, and your position on the shelves are also big influencers. But without the shopper being aware of your product before they get to the store your marketing strategy is weak. Shopper Marketing is not good at telling your brand story which is this important creative component that allows a shopper to form an opinion about the brand before they ever get near the store.

Like everyone else, you are trying to reduce spending and make their marketing programs more efficient. But remember, you probably have competitors who are just as efficient as you but are also out-spending you on advertising, capturing more of the shopper’s bandwidth than you are. It is vital, particularly now in the current economic environment that you do not get drowned out. Shopper Marketing alone can not help you win long-term.

By now, like most people, you are feeling pretty battered by the constant drumbeat of bad economic news. The impact of recent economic events on small business marketing has been huge. Recent survey’s state most small businesses have either cut their marketing budgets, or are busily re-appropriating them. Many companies are reducing their marketing spend on traditional brand building activities and focusing on immediate revenue generation and lower cost, measurable marketing methods like online marketing.

So what are the implications of these sort of short-term tactics? How does it impact on the positioning of your brand in the marketplace? There is a lot of historical data out there that demonstrates companies often do irreparable harm to their brand identity by focusing only on short term gains. A study by the Buchen Agency of marketing activities across six different recessions found that drastically cutting brand-led advertising and promotion during a recession led to an overall decline in sales. The study also showed that these companies were subsequently unable to benefit from the economic recovery due to their loss of market traction and brand positioning.

The big brands like HP, Apple, Google or P& G don’t just survive in recessions, they thrive by following the 7p’s of branding. They know that by staying the course and following these principles, they will be positioned to benefit from the inevitable end of the recession and the ensuing economic upswing.

1. Profit
You can profit from this recession by taking advantage of the reduced marketing noise in the marketplace. Because many companies have pulled back on marketing activities, you can profit from their loss and drive home your brand’s unique value. Capturing enemy territory now will make it much harder for your competitors to take it back during the upswing.

2. Persistence
Resist cutting back on the core initiatives that will keep your brand positioned against competitors. Be persistent in your efforts to stay top-of-mind. Persistence will be rewarded with greater customer loyalty. If you stay with them in the tough times, they will stay with you when times get better.

3. Planning
During a recession companies are tempted to put all their brain-power into developing strategies for short-term revenue generating activities at the expense of the bigger picture. Remember that this recession is going to end, maybe soon. Do you have a long-term plan for your brand to take advantage of the upswing? Start planning now, and be sure that whatever actions you take to increase revenues right now should dovetail into your longer term plans for riding the wave of prosperity that is coming with the upswing.

4. Performance
Simply cutting costs and competing on price alone is not going to do your brand any favors. You must remember that while price is important, value is too. If you want to keep customer loyalty strong for the recovery ahead, you have to reinforce the value and performance of your brand.

5. Positioning
During this recessionary period, it may be necessary to adjust brand messaging to fit shifting consumer needs, but not at the expense of the brands core values. Keep working on quality, innovation and product development to build a strong relationship with your customer. Recessions come and go, like price cuts and sales. But it is your brand’s unique positioning that will win and retain customer loyalty.

6. People
Your competitors may be cutting staff without understanding the need to retain the talent that contributes to the strength of their brand. Take advantage of this mistake by hiring and retaining the best people, those that help you build your brand. Big brands like Microsoft, Apple, Proctor & Gamble and Google are busily searching for and hiring the talent that can help them maintain and grow their market leadership positions.

7. Principles
It is impossible to build customer loyalty if you are not true to your brand’s principles. Company leaders should work with staff to ensure that everyone knows and understands the basic brand principles on which you business is being built. To be authentic, it is vital that your team understands and lives by these principles for as long as they are with your company.

When Ronald Reagan signed his $750 billion stimulus plan into law in 1981, it pulled the U.S. out of a deep recession and ignited an economic revolution that turned smart small businesses that built their brands properly during tough times into massive successes almost overnight.

Now President Obama's stimulus plan is even bigger, laying the groundwork for another epic economic boom. How will your brand be positioned? 

Stories about dying brands that re-invented themselves and rose to new heights in the marketplace are a favorite of marketers. Think of how McDonald’s made the shift towards healthy eating, or how Hewlett Packard used design and innovation to make a dazzling comeback in the computer market and how Dunkin Donuts captured huge market share in the coffee business.

But for almost every brand re-invention success story, there is another brand failure to match it. The landscape is littered with dying brands that may have already faded too far to resuscitate. So why do brand managers and CEOs wait until the last minute to renovate their brands rather than evolve strategically over time? One probability is that they don’t understand the changes happening in the marketplace. While their brand may have enjoyed success in previous years, and perhaps is still enjoying success right now, they fail to recognize the implications of these demographic changes and generational shifts. This is why once great names like Radio Shack, GM, 7-Up and many others, are suffering today.

There is no question that in order to survive and thrive, your brand must evolve with the times, and that usually means some brand rethinking. Here are four best practices you should consider building into your brand evolution:
 
1. Take a brand 360

Don’t just see things from your own perspective; try to get inside the head of your customers. Learn how your customers feel about the brand, what role it plays in their lives, and the value it brings to them. What are the benefits of your brand to the customer? It’s not what you think people need or want but what they actually need and want that’s important.

2. Learn to surf

Before a new trend becomes a threat to your brand, be aware of the kinds of segment shifts that are happening so you can move early enough to ride on the wave rather than get swept underneath.

For instance: how do changes in people’s lifestyles like the recession or the move towards green living and the growth of social media effect your brand? How can your brand play a role in this new reality? And what about all the potential customers that have never considered buying in your category? Maybe you should also be thinking about who might become a customer in the future and how you might reach them now ahead of the competition.

By the time most brand managers spot important trends, they are already threats. That's not surprising, since it's difficult to identify the early impact of trends among the general population of brand users. Great brands always find a way to be absolutely relevant within a broader cultural context.

3. Don’t play zero sum games

Sometimes brands are so focused on a very narrow set of competitive issues that they don’t see how trends are affecting customer behavior. This narrow focus can lead to a lack of differentiation in a category. Further leading to the entire brand category becoming less relevant, driving down sales. This contributes to increased price based competition and tighter margins. The consumer begins to see the product as a commodity, putting further pressure on pricing and brand loyalty. It’s a zero sum game.  

Don’t get drawn into the trap. Although price based competition is unavoidable in this current financial reality, your brand should find a way to offer more than just a better price. Price is only one factor that customers consider to make a buying decision.


4. Think strategically

You shouldn’t only focus on tactics like advertising and promotions. Building your brand solely on gaining short-term advantages without increasing the emotional connection between your brand and the consumer only leads to further commoditization.

The strategy should be based around differentiation and developing a truly relevant brand story. I am not saying you shouldn’t compete on price, but working your way into the emotions of the customer will help to build the trust needed to convince them to buy your product. You have to make an emotional connection!

Strategically, keeping your brand image fresh is vital to its success. But too many marketers think that refreshing the brand is just about renovating their logo. Just freshening up the logo will yield few results. A true brand refreshing will begin with an analysis of all the brand’s imagery like graphics, fonts, colors, photos and illustrations. It would also include copywriting and text based content.

In summary, it is the consumer, the brand user that must ultimately drive your brand evolution. You must be aware of the changes that are occurring both in society in general and at the level of your customer’s buying experience. Make the connection with the customer on an emotional level. Your brand’s survival depends on it.

I first became aware of the tremendous contribution made by London Transport to the graphic design and art world while studying art in Dublin during the early 80’s. Since the late nineteenth century, London Transport had been showcasing English artists both on its station walls in the form of posters and in it’s printed passenger information. On a trip to London in 1980, I visited the London Transport museum that had just opened that year, and fell in love with the company’s collection of posters designed for both advertising and informational purposes.

Many years later in 1996, working on the corporate identity redesign for Ireland’s national public transport company, CIE Group, I returned to the museum for inspiration. I bought a great little book on London Transports design and art history and fell in love once again – with the posters of London Transport.

Although the graphic posters of London Transport had come into use in the late eighteen hundreds, it was not until Mr. Frank Pick began to implement a comprehensive corporate identity system in 1908 that the graphic poster became a central part of London Transports visual identity. In the 1920s and 30s, London Transport posters had become extremely high quality with many well-known contemporary artists being commissioned. The collection of work spanning almost 120 years represents the finest representations of cubism, futurism, and vorticism.

London Transport’s commitment to art and design succeeded in bringing an awareness of art and design to a much wider audience than art galleries could ever have done. The company’s continued efforts to showcase the very best in contemporary art and design is obvious when you travel around London.

Next time you’re there, the London Transport museum is a must! Here is just a small sampling of posters:

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Humanity has pursued perfection and symmetry through the arts since time began. In the West we tend to look for the smoothest finish, the most balanced composition and the most pleasing color harmony. We have a desire to standardize, and genericize (is that a real word?) everything from cars, buildings, fashion and even the food we eat. There is little room for the unique and imperfect.

Look at the picture of this little tea bowl by Richard Milgrim. Look at how imperfect and unbalanced it is. And yet, it is strikingly beautiful.

It is a perfect reflection of the concept of Wabi-Sabi. This concept is the basis for the Zen aesthetic, and is present in nature itself. Wabi roughly translates as sense of loneliness and solitude, like a distant mountain, or rock exposed in a forest clearing illuminated by a shaft of light. Sabi translates as ordinariness, something that is not trying to be special in any way at all other than to be itself. This is the concept of ‘suchness’ or the ‘matter-of-factness’ of being. It is absolute uniqueness. It is not trying to be anything other than what it is.

Look at this photograph of rocks in water by John Daido Loori Roshi (See his web site here: www.johndaidoloori.org), they are alone amidst the perfect reflection of the sky in a still pool of water. Lonely, calm, strong and imperfect; yet could anything be more beautiful?

We are surrounded by style, from this years fashion trends to advertising styles, architecture, art and even martial-arts. Virtually everything produced is subject to some kind of style imprinted on it by it’s creator.

Alan Fletcher (pictured here), one of the greatest designers and innovators of the twentieth century sadly passed away late in 2006, leaving behind much wisdom. Well known as the designer of the V&A (Victoria & Albert Museum, London) logo as well as being one of the founders of Pentagram (one of the world’s leading design companies) says, “The solution to any visual problem has an infinite number of solutions; that many of them are valid; that solutions ought to derive from the subject matter; that the designer should therefore have no preconceived graphic style.” This is sound advice for anyone attempting to solve a problem whether it’s a visual communications problem or indeed even a martial-arts problem. Alan Fletcher’s no-style style stands the test of time.

As a designer, it is impossible not to be influenced by ephemeral design trends that bubble into the visual world from time-to-time. Even artists are prone to become influenced by concepts and ideas appearing in the work of others. From an artists point of view, I can see nothing wrong with developing an idea to try and go further with it than the last artist. But in serving the needs of the corporate client I can see nothing worse than the imposition of a personal style or using the client’s work as a stage on which to act out ones artistic ambitions.

As a martial-artist, I am undoubtedly influenced by the styles of other martial-arts. No martial-artist would be true to himself if he did not admit that he sometimes compares what he is doing to the arts of others wondering if what his style is effective or not. Todays media including such technical wonders as YouTube and On-Demand Cable TV allow us view, over and over again the techniques of other styles at the click of a button.

The trap that sticking to a particular style sets (and remember I am talking about the perpetuation of a ‘mold’) is one of impurity. Both message and motion will be tainted by impure intentions (trying to stick to a style) rather than respond directly to reality of the problem as it is now presenting itself.

Myamoto Musashi (Right) was an excellent swordsman with with a style all of his own. In those days, his style was considered odd, but it was extremely effective. Folklore suggests he never lost a battle. And yet, he was never attached to his style and was quite prepared to drop his sword if the branch of a tree or the oar of a boat suited the occasion.

To quote Alan Fletcher once more: “Style is a curious word because it can mean all sorts of things, from mannerism to charisma. However, as far as I’m concerned, either what you’ve done has panache or it hasn’t. You can’t design panache."

Read More About Alan Fletcher >>

What could be so obvious and yet so elusive? Working on some annual report designs this morning I became totally blocked. Everything is overworked. So I took a breather for some Kata practice in the back yard, by the relaxing sound of my lovely waterfall (there's a picture here).

In the practice of design and the study of martial-arts, I am beginning to realize that too much effort, strength or power just ruins the ‘feel’ of a form, and in practical terms, does not have much to offer in terms of representing exactly what has to be said.

In the much repeated one-stroke ink painting of a circle called an Enso (widely seen as the ‘logo’ of Zen) the painter executes the painting of the circle in a single stroke, presumably from a meditative state, creating a living, breathing and beautiful mark on the rice paper (picture below shows work by Nantenbo). The best renditions are full of movement and yet empty of any unnecessary movement or thought. They express the message or feeling so clearly.

I am seeking the same thing in my work and my practice: looking for the most compelling way to tell a clients story without over doing it. Using less effort and a more powerful presentation of the message itself. Today, practicing martial-arts Kata (forms) was relaxed and felt natural because I was just letting the Kata tell their own story rather than try to force my ego on to it.

Now if I can match that with my design work, I will be getting somewhere. So, I remind myself that this is the whole point of this blog. To focus on integrating the universal lessons of continual creation with no-mind. Simplicity and emptiness.

The only problem is, from a designer’s point of view, what do you do if the client has no message! In other words: “Just make it look nice.”

Makes me crazy…

I am fascinated by the power of empty space. Empty space controlled with the correct technique, and used in emphasis of or in counter balance to the space that is full, is beautiful. Swiss typographic design of the 20th century emphasized the use of white space to emphasize the beauty of the letterform and the tone of voice speaking through the text and graphics.

The great designers of the early to middle 20th century such as the Jan Tschichold (Swiss), El Lissitzky (Russian) and Paul Rand (American) all used the power of white space in their design to create a beautiful tension that served to emphasize the message itself. Tschichold, widely accepted as the father of modern graphic design, espoused the belief that graphic design and in particular, typographic design, should be purely functional and bring the utmost clarity to the content.

During this time, across the world in Japan, a Jujitsu master was refining

his martial-art based on the theory that all unnecessary movements, force and techniques should be stripped away. His art called Wado-Ryu emphasized the simple notion that you cannot hit what is not there, and thus the martial-artist simply moves out of the way using what is called Tai-Sabaki. To me this is the martial-arts equivalent of white space.

There is a very interesting passage in the Tao Te Ching (The Book of Changes) that speaks of the usefulness of what is not there:

Thirty spokes meet at a nave; Because of the hole we may use the wheel. Clay is moulded into a vessel; Because of the hollow we may use the cup. Walls are built around a hearth; Because of the doors we may use the house. Thus tools come from what exists, But use from what does not

Artists, graphic or martial, should consider the value of white space in everything they do.