Steve Johnson
sjohnson@pragmaticmarketing.com

At a conference in Costa Mesa, Kristin Zhivago said:

"Branding is the promise you make; your brand is the promise you keep."

In recent years we have seen the dot-coms make incredible promises in broadcast ads. Further, sometimes they haven't been incredible promises at all but "in your face" ads that are supposed to impress but only annoy. What promises do they make? And what promises do they keep?

Branding is the activity of promoting your company identity; your brand is the identity that exists in the minds of the buyer. Nowadays, branding is often what you do when you cannot differentiate. So much of the current marketing communications is shouting but with nothing special to say.

"We're better" and "We're here" are not messages that speak to buyers.

Further, what works for consumer marketing just doesn't work for industrial marketing. The techniques that we learned from classical marketing don't seem to apply to high-tech. Instead, tell people clearly what you're going to do for them and why you're uniquely qualified to deliver it. In effect, tell people your unique buying proposition and your distinctive competence, and they'll decide in your favor. Otherwise they'll choose a more appropriate solution from another vendor.

Check out the screen shot from the web site for FusionOne (current site is http://www.fusionOne.com)  to see a good high-tech marketing message. It clearly states what the buyer achieves with their product. They tell us "FusionOne is a free service that automatically syncs information across your Palm, all your PCs, the web, and your mobile phone." Nothing cute here; just the facts with a compelling message.

To see it done wrong, see this screen shot from Partminer's web site. (See also Partminer's current site at http://www.partminer.com). They make some vague claims--but who can figure out what they're selling? "PartMiner launches the Free Trade Zone, a new network for the procurement of components built upon a unique understanding of the electronics marketplace." A unique understanding? Meaning what? Oh, "you are huge!" Huh? What does this mean?"

Advertising is so expensive that most of us can only afford to brand one thing. Choose one: the company, the product line, or an individual product. To do more diffuses your precious marketing expenditures, meaning that instead of one tight message communicated often, we have two messages each delivered much less often. As a result, we waste our communications budget on a weak message strategy.

How much of your advertising is wasted? Probably all of it. Focus your message to a single, simple message, communicate it frequently and for about twice as long as you want to, and you'll get a return. IBM has been promoting the IBM brand for a century at a cost of billions of dollars. GE has been "bringing good things to life" my entire lifetime. So running a campaign once, or until the executives get tired of it, doesn't work. I imagine that IBM and GE execs are tired of their campaigns but they realize that the execs are not the target of their advertising. Who are you advertising to?

So if you want to do brand advertising, pick a single message and spend money on that one focused message.

Do you want to change your brand perception? Get your checkbook out. To re-position a brand takes three times the cash that the original advertising cost. Think about it. First you have to spend as much as all the money from past promotions to return to neutral. Now spend another equal amount to get to where you now are. Then spend that amount again to get more than you had before, which presumably is why you're re-positioning.

Unfortunately, this money may still be wasted. After all, people already "know" who you are--or think they do, which is the same thing. The trick to good marketing is not to CHANGE people's perceptions of you, but to LEVERAGE that perception to meet your strategic goals.

Branding is important is helping the customer understand who you are. Your brand is result of keeping the promises you make in your branding program. Keep it simple, consistent, and repeated often.