Trial Run

Trial

[qhtony14]

Define Your Personal Leadership Brand in Five Steps

You probably already have a personal leadership brand. But do you have the right one? The question is not trivial. A leadership brand conveys your identity and distinctiveness as a leader. It commu...

I am googling around the web about leadership branding and found this HBR article. Whilst I am not 100% convinced by its “five steps” methodology, I simply cannot agree more on the first step that “Leadership brand is outward focused; it is about delivering results”. I have seen a quite a few leadership branding failure in my last role; often times people tend to blindly brand whatever they have in their inherent strengths, rather than selectively branding those relates to their goals. Branding should not be blind, based on delivering results (Another way of describing it is: regardless how much efforts you pour into the branding, it needs to be backed by results).

A typical example that illustrates the failure is one of the directors in the company I used for. She’s from UK (no offense to UK leadership style), typically diplomatic, traditional and sometimes ruthless. She branded herself excellently that everyone knows that’s her leadership style; however, the vibe that the previous director left for the office is easy-going, honest and frank, for which people are used to work under this atmosphere for more than 10 years. The abrupt change of the management style caused incompatibility between the new director and the rest of the office, and she failed to motivate people to work towards achieving results and was eventually asked to leave.

[qhtony14]

It's not the consumer's job to know what he wants!

Mum To Be ™- Luxury organic skincare for pregnancy and newborn bubs. All proudly Australian made...

In reading the “Ignore the Human Element of Marketing at Your Own Peril” article, I was struck by Steve Jobs’ explanation of not conducting market research during product development that “It’s not he consumer’s job to know what he wants”. The branding project our team currently carrying out is about branding strategy on maternity skin care products, which are some purposely designed and formulated skin care products such as toning mist, night/day cream, cleansers, etc. for pregnant women. During our customer research, we interestingly found that nearly 63% of our potential customers (who were previously pregnant, are currently pregnant or plan to be pregnant within next two years) have never heard of this kind of products. These make me think: are there too much uncertainties in commercializing these products because not many people know about them, or there exists a huge opportunity to educate your customers about the products with new concept, hence facilitating the brand building? 

[qhtony14]

The company might finally have a decent mobile chip with its 64-bit Merrifield and Moorefield designs, but its competitors have a huge head start.

It is almost certain you see “Intel Inside” logos on every laptop or PC; but, where is the spare space for these stickers on your cell phones? The answer is: none. In answering should Intel extend its “Intel Inside” Campaign to its mobile/PDA processors, I would say no.

“Intel Inside” has now been known not only for its brand, but also a statement of “leading technology”. The reason why Intel has its “Intel Inside” logo appearing on all PCs (hence amplifying its brand image), it’s not because Intel is so kind, or the PC manufacturers are so kind to offer marketing collaboration, it’s all because Intel has the bargaining power to force PC manufacturers to do so. And this, this based on the technological advantage Intel has on its PC chips others cannot compete (technological experts state Intel is roughly 10 years ahead of its closest competitor).

If we look into the mobile processor space, Intel is no doubt a late starter. Instead of Intel heading the league, ARM is the one who leads the market and technology and trying to catch up with ARM. Whilst I have no doubt that Intel would want to overtake ARM to be the chip leader in the mobile processor, for now, it’s too uncertain and risky to extend the brand of “leading technology” to  a set of products that have no technological superiority over its competitors. When things go north, it’s all well and good. But if Intel’s mobile processors are going south, it’s going to destroy the “Intel Inside” brand that Intel has been building for decades. 

[qhtony14]

Brand Positioning - Country of Origin Matters

There may be many elements of competitive advantages that Burberry has; but the one I consider will make the Burberry brand long lasting is its precise brand positioning – something that matches the fashion image of Britain among many other competitors. The case mentions about two American brands Polo (Ralph Lauren) and Coach and two Italian brands Armani and Gucci.  Burberry positions itself in between the two by “focusing on a particular price point and a particular bracket”. Bravo had a very subtle sensation knowing that, in the perspective of country of origin, British fashion is perceived inferior than Italian (and French, of course) but superior than American. She understood customers would implicitly value a fashion brand higher if they are made in Italy or France; as well as not over-pay for American Fashion brands. Rather than simply pursuing the “super luxury” brand image as LV and Gucci, she clearly understood the “perceived” value of the country of origin and position the brand to match customers’ expectation. Correct brand positioning is the key for Burberry, as long as the management does not do something stupid to try to bring the brand up to the “Louise Vuitton” or “Chanel” level, they will continue to succeed.

[qhtony14]

Singapore Airlines: Why its Branding is Successful?

As one of the most successful brand among all Asian companies, SIA went through a cyclic and structured branding strategy/management as follow:

Branding strategy and implementation directly decided by the top management group (the 16 members of SIA management committee), unlike many other Asian companies where the branding departments are in charge of branding. This enables a quick and efficient decision making process and making the branding strategy aligns with other company level strategic directions

Find the right niche and be innovative: when the rest of airlines in the world are compliant to IATA regulations; SIA broke the ground and sought a customer experience (technology, customer services, etc.) - oriented way of doing its business.

Communicating a consistent branding message: Using the Singapore Girl as the iconic symbol for SIA, the customer experience based branding has successfully propagated across the world.

Using brand to drive revenue – unlike low cost carriers, SIA used its established brands to boost revenue, targeting the long haul international flight (business) customers who value services

Branding to in turn support branding – branding itself is an expensive excise; SIA is able to drive branding through its large revenue (owing to successful branding campaign), achieving a healthy cyclic investment-return-reinvestment process.

[qhtony14]

For some products, customers are naturally more biased towards country of origins than other aspects such as actual qualities. Products that fall into category include wine, luxury handbags, prestige cars, etc. However, if we scrutinize this range of products, one could see that the brand value for country of original large exists for products of higher end or premium segments. For instance, people will probably not be fussy between a Chinese made or German made microwave (maybe some people do); but they will if they decide to purchase a luxury car. Concha y Toro faces exactly the same dilemma, “Chilean made” just does not sound associated for upscale wines –a long-time perception that consumers have. This phenomenon just will not be changed easily – irrespective of what Concha y Toro attempts to do. If one wants to chance the world’s perception about it, it will take a long time and one should not under-estimate the reluctance of consumers to change their behaviour. As a result, a “top-down” approach may be wisest for the company to adopt – exploring a market that is compatible with the perceived brand value of the “country of origin”.  

[qhtony14]

Predicting Diffusion

I would answers five fundamental questions before ranking the ease of diffusion of these products:

Are these products “new-to-the-world” or existing product improvements?  - For a completely new-to-the-world product, the diffusion would take much longer than existing product improvements.

What’s the upfront cost to try the product? – Consumers are more likely to try new products if the cost to try is lower. Whilst a new products would incur a significant cost to buy before realizing its true value to consumers, its market diffusion would be more slowly.

Can these products be purchased easily? – New products also need to be readily available for purchase if they want to reach to consumers.

How applicable are these products to consumers’ long term need? - Would consumers buy them because of one time excitement or these products possess real long term value? One typical example is 3D printer, whilst everyone including household consumers is excited about it and want to purchase for a try, at the moment, it has little real application for household consumers.

How well consumers are educated about the product and its usage? New products, or its usage, needs to be effectively communicated to its potential consumers.

In addressing these five questions, I would rate the diffusion of these products as follow:

Sliced Peanut Butter (it has analogous products, low cost to try, can be purchased easily in Wal-mart, satisfies consumers’ everyday need and consumers need little education about this product in terms of usage).

Silver Band-aid (whilst it has all similar attributes as the sliced peanut butter, but it may take efforts/money/time to educate customers about its usage)

Satellite (very attractive product but its cost-to-try is not low; they need to really communicate the value to its consumers and persuade them to buy)

PC Scent (well…perhaps another 3D printer story…)

[qhtony14]

Heineken’s branding shortcoming lies on its inconsistent marketing activities. For instance, the 1987 advertising campaign requires “a way to communicate to younger drinkers without walking away from a message of product quality”. The issue with this requirement is that younger drinkers’ focus did not align with the “quality” concept. Younger generation cared more about stylish, innovative and abstract advertising concept, whereas older generation would prefer “quality”. As opposed to Heineken, Corona has consistently branded itself as “fun, sun, beach” of the vacation element.

[qhtony14]

The introduction of the first Lexus global branding campaign, Amazing in Motion, is a pleasant surprise. Lexus is already a very successful global brand as it is ranked among the 10 largest Japanese global brands in market value.

Clearly the B&D has created a very distinct brand image as “family” power tools, as shown its 45% dominance in this segment, in contrast with the 20% and 9% in professional-industrial and professional-tradesmen segments, respectively. The case brought up Toyota & Lexus as an analogy as a mean to overcome the low-market-share issue for B&D; as a long time Lexus car owner, I consider this as meaningful and constructive in many ways:

-          Both Toyota and B&D have the same problem: they possess strong brand image to one particular segment of customers – families

-          It does not seem that product quality or useability is an issue for both companies; Toyota and Lexus products are pretty much equivalent in quality and it can be assumed that B&D and its possible sub-brand would also have comparable quality. This means it’s not the product that matters, it’s about changing customers’ perception

As a result, I see the value for B&D to study (or even copycat) Lexus’ brand strategy in order to make distinguish itself in the professional power tool segments.