Insights from b-school

[danispinardi]

Defining and promoting your personal brand

Last year I attended to a personal branding workshop hosted by the SWIM club where I had the opportunity to know Nacie Carson and her book "The Finch Effect, the five strategies to adapt and thrive in your working life".

I found the presentation really interesting because it opened my eyes to the importance of thinking about our image in a structured and coherent way. We talk a lot about selling ourselves and promoting our ideas, but we usually don't have an approach to do so.

She gave us some interesting tips about how to develop our personal brand. Those were my notes from that day: 

1. Find the words that describe your brand (.. and I believe that the points-of-differentiation and points-of-parity we learned could be a good starting point)

2. Create a tagline, one short sentence that describes you 

3. Create the short history version, the elevator speech

4. Create your long story version, the case you make for you

5. Make sure you apply what you learned from 1 to 4 to all your marketing materials - Linkedin, Resume, facebook, twitter, visual look

I hope I'm sharing the right concepts. I haven't the opportunity to read the book, but after taking Branding classes I'll definitely review her ideas and try to link the concepts.

[danispinardi]

Social media marketing fails

Like McDonalds and the #McDStories , other experienced companies also didn't have a happy ending with social media initiatives. The idea that the company does not own it brand is even more challenging in the social media. Asking the opinion of your customers (or of anyone who would like to express something about your company as in the case of using twitter) can be very very risky.

Business Insider identifies the best and the worst social media marketing. You can find the 2013 rank in this link:

http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-social-media-marketing-fails-of-2013-2013-11?op=1#ixzz30Szjf4s9

Among the worst, this is my favorite:

#3 J.P. Morgan thought it could engage its consumer base through an enlightening Twitter Q&A session. Except they were completely ignorant of what their brand represented to the trolling masses of the Internet. Even respected journalists joined in on six hours of harassment fun.

They announced the incoming Q&A and the result was of #AskJP was people calling JP Morgan financial gangers, asking what they would do when they go to the jail, and ironically asking for jobs.

In the same day they cancelled the Q&A in a way that I liked

"Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board."

They quickly recognized the fail and moved on!! It certainly would be even more terrible if they have continued with the plans. In an age that everything is so dynamic and it's so easy to loose control of your marketing actions, I believe that being flexible is key.

[danispinardi]

Branding what is Inside

The Intel Inside case reminded of an interesting Brazilian brand. The company is called Catupiry and it has been producing only one product since 1911: catupiry, a special kind of cream cheese that I haven't tried in any other country. The best way we describe this cream cheese is by saying "Catupiry"... Its flavor, consistency and smell are very particular.  The name origin is the native Brazilian language tupi-guarani and means "Excelent"

This product is so traditional that it became the ingredient of many traditional Brazilian dishes (even our version of pizza). But its price is relatively high compared to the income of most the population. This, associated with its popularity made most of the restaurants use similar products and called it catupiry. One of the most famous Brazilian snack - Coxinha - is called "Coxinha com (with) Catupiry" in almost all bar or restaurants. Trying to combat this over popularization of the brand, the real Catupiry company created a seal and granted it to the restaurants that use the original product. And the restaurants are also using it to differentiate themselves from competition - especially in the pizza business that is very competitive in Brazil.

Catupiry brand

Brazilian pizza with Catupiry

Coxinha com catupiry

Pizza restaurant building its reputation upon the catupiry brand (while Catupiry ensure that the customer will have the original product)

Fortunately Catupiry has a english website. Check this out: http://www.catupiry.com.br/index.php/home

[danispinardi]

More on Burberry

Interesting article about how Burberry is trying to increase the control over the brand in China http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304788404579521270892066030?mobile=y&mod=dist_smartbrief

[danispinardi]

Fragrances and brand positioning, a consumer/student perspective

From my perspective, to produce fragrances as a brand extension can be a great idea for luxury brands (since there is consistency between the brand positioning with the product per se, of course).

I believe that even though fragrances are sold at a cheaper price range, they can also transmit the brand image and restate what a brand want to communicate. Taking Chanel for instance. I'm sure that Chanel is a reference of glamour, classiness, and luxury to most women in the world -even those that are not their customer targets and that would never buy it.

However the ambassador Chanel N.5 five in my opinion has a terrible scent that I relate to women over their 50's or 60's putting a lot of powder foundation or laqué (I know they don't advertise this, but its what the scent and people that use it communicate to me). But I believe they made a great job positioning themselves to younger women through their make up and new fragrances. The "Chance" line (which contais Eua Fraîche, my favorite fragrance in Earth) is fresh and represents a modern women without missing the Chanel myth and the Parisian glamour. And chance still indicates that Chanel is a superior brand - the 5oz version costs around USD 120 while other fashion brand's fragrances can cost from 20-80.

Thinking about Burberry and the Brit fragrance, I believe that they could have thought about this product as strategic to restate their brand's image. Looking Burberry's campaign I feel confused about the massage they want to transmit. They have campaigns with a classic style that communicates the Burberry classy tradition. In other hand they have cool advertisements with a more casual appeal. The last made me feel that Burberry positioning is closer to Hugo Boos (even to Armani Exchange) than to Prada, Emporio Armani or Gucci in terms of luxury perception. 

[danispinardi]

Trader Joe's impressive brand equity

When I was reading the 3-words hypothesis in the article "Viewing Brands in Multiple Dimensions", the first brands that popped up in my mind were Zara and Trader Joe's. In a world in which ads are crucial for the success of a brand, those companies are known for having outstanding brand equity without advertising,relying only on the customer satisfaction and WOM.

This video shows people waiting in line for more than 15hours to be the first customers to shop in a new Trader Joe's store. One of the women in the line says that her mother has been sending TJ letters asking for a store in her town for more than 10 years.

Trader Joe's Grand Opening

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FYKgzTxJ38

Going back to the 3-words, Trader Joe's is a great example of a company that does a great job on satisfying the world's 1 necessary provisions (unique products, motivated employees focused on customer service, stores with a special "aura"), creating an impressive customer perception of quality, differentiated food and fair prices (world 2) and then building a brand community based on trust and customer value (world 3)

[danispinardi]

Singapore Airlines' outstanding customer service

In september/2011 I traveled to Singapore for a project. Flying from Brasil to Singapore, I had the opportunity of flying SIA business class from Spain to Singapore and from Singapore to London.

Everything was great, the flight crew was extremely helpful, the seats were very comfortable (better than Air France's and KLM's business class's seats), and food was very good. Actually, one of the best meals I had in Singapore was a Thai dish I had in my flight (I am demanding with food and I had good food in Singapore, so I can say that SIA's onboard food was really good).

Flying back home, I flew from London to Brazil with British Airways. The flight was overbooked and was granted with a first class upgrade - very lucky :). Then I got even more impressed by SIA's quality and service. My flights with SIA business class were as good as the BA's first class. The service was equally good, but I had a better experience in terms of food and comfort with SIA.

I felt that SIA was more concerned about my overall experience while BA was more focused on the appearance of the first class. For instance, while BA's first class seats had fancy double windows and individual pepper and salt mills, SIA offered more seat space and more delicious food. 

The pictures below show examples of British Airways first class and SIA's business class seats.

British Airways

Singapore

[danispinardi]

Wine consumption: perception versus actual quality?

How much of wine consumption is perception versus actual reality?

This question reminds me of a budget wine that received a relevant award at a respected International competition.Toro Loco was a supermarket chain own-label red wine -  Aldi (www.aldi.co.uk)-  priced at 3.69 euros per bottle.

At the International Wine and Spirits competition it scored more than 80 out of 100 in blind tasting tests, and was awarded a silver medal. It was tested alongside wine costing 10x as much and beat recognized french grand crus. As a result, the wine was sold out in one month.

I believe that before the competition neither judges nor most of the customers that run to Aldi would buy this cheap wine. 

Nowadays it has been exported to many other countries, for instance Brasil, where it is priced at ~USD 12, which is equivalent to Concha y Toro Casillero del Diablo pricing point.

More information about Toro Loco:

http://www.theolivepress.es/spain-news/2012/05/26/cheap-aldi-wine-from-spain-wins-international-award/

http://metro.co.uk/2012/06/07/budget-wine-flying-off-the-shelves-at-record-speed-after-scooping-award-459468/

http://www.vivino.com/wineries/toro-loco/wines/tempranillo-2012

[danispinardi]

Product adoption for game start-up

After having read the theory on Bass model, I was wondering whether the model would be still valid for more "modern" products such as social media websites and apps. Then I found an article from a game startup explaining how it used the bass model to predict sales (refer to the link in the end of this post).

The company found a comparable game and analyzed its sales to predict the parameters. Comparing the theory (Forecasting the Adoption of a New Product, HBS) and the article, I concluded that tech is a promising industry to apply bass model since we have many examples of similar products to analyze (vs. 2-3 products in the radio satellite radio case) and that for this industry the imitators are relevant (contagious and network effects). However, since many apps and games fail, I believe that the game start up would benefit from considering more comparable cases in the analysis.

http://www.hollywoodandwall.com/wordpress/forecasting-the-market-of-a-social-game-start-up/

[danispinardi]

Strategies for brand challengers

The article "How to win as a challenger brand", recommends an approach for brand challengers to build their strategy to compete with market leaders . It discusses some topics that are relevant to Corona's challenge of competing with Heineken in the US market.

Based on Kotler's theory, the paper explains that a brand challenger should first define the strategy to gain share from a competitor and then choose one approach (direct, indirect or radical).

As for the branding-building challenge, it recommends 6 steps:

1.Building a lighthouse identity

2.Assuming category thought-leadership

3.Creating symbols of re-evaluation

4.Willingness to sacrifice

5.Leveraging advertising to penetrate the public conscious

6.Focusing on ideas

Check this link out for more details. 

http://kleberandassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/KA_ChallengerBrand_WP.pdf