Does Your Brand Suffer from IDD (Identity Deficit Disorder)?
It’s a pervasive problem. Identity Deficit Disorder afflicts many brands. Do you suffer from IDD? Here are some of the most common symptoms:
- 1. Lack of focus – it’s not clear what the brand stands for.
- 2. Has trouble organizing – can’t seem to look at the big picture and ensure that a coherent identity and message carry across all brand communications.
- 3. Inattention - can be told, by clients and others, how best to grow the brand, but can’t seem to listen.
- 4. Impulsivity - today, the message might be one thing, but the next day, that’s forgotten because something new has come up.
- 5. Impaired performance – cannot reach potential in the marketplace, because it’s not clear where it belongs.
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Brand Identity: What’s Your Threat Level?
The most secure and successful brands are so clearly differentiated in the minds of clients, and give such value to them, that their identity is easily “passed around” in the marketplace.
What’s the “threat level” of your brand? How can you move to a position of market security?
Think about brands that, in your own experience, occupy the green “low threat” zone. These are companies or people that you naturally and enthusiastically recommend to others. What makes them powerful in your mind and heart…and how can you arrive there?
Branding at a Trade Show
I just returned from a conference, which had over 100 exhibitors in the exhibit hall. In over 20 years of both attending and displaying at trade shows, I marvel at how badly many companies manage the opportunity to promote their brand. Here are a few tips for more effective branding on the exhibit floor:
1. Make your booth presentation simple and uncluttered. People are drifting past, making decisions in seconds about whether your booth is worth stopping at. A graphically appealing, open, and readily understood booth presentation will tend to draw people forward. A cluttered, boxed-in look, without any clear message about who you are and what you offer, will guarantee lots of walk-bys.
2. Concentrate on one message in the (visual) booth presentation. Tell who you are and what you do – one thing! – in the booth wording and graphic(s). Many companies fall into the trap of creating panels that are essentially static Powerpoint slides – bullet points of everything they do. Remember – you are trying to grab attention in seconds, not provide a written sales pitch. Save the additional words for when someone actually stops.
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Collaborative Branding: Announcing BrandingWire
How do you harness a dozen creative marketing minds – most of whom have never met each other – into a collective branding project?
Answer: BrandingWire. A blog-based, live experiment in collaborative branding.
Marketing bloggers have begun to develop quite a spirit of mutual respect, encouragement, and cooperation. Growing out of some recent collaborative projects (such as the soon-to-be-released Age of Conversation eBook, involving over 100 volunteer authors), a dozen branding gurus decided to launch an ongoing project – taking on one marketing challenge per month, and focusing our creative talents to showcase some great branding ideas.
Most branding blogs – including this one – involve one or more authors writing on a variety of topics and issues. The concept behind BrandingWire is to pull together a variety of skill sets, talents, and perspectives, while collectively addressing a single challenge.
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Does this Tagline “Get it Done?”
I noticed this week that the big financial group Citi has launched a new campaign. It’s actually quite well done on many fronts (I saw it first in a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal; however, you can see an on-line version at www.citi.com/letsgetitdone).
The tagline is “let’s get it done.” The premise: Dreams are good (now, visualize the Citi red rainbow-like arc connecting to…) Realities are better. Then they go on to explain that, if this were the day you were to go ahead with one of your dream goals, Citi has all the resources to help you “get it done.”
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Re-Branding Chrysler
It’s been high up in the news columns of late – the U.S. car company Chrysler is being split off from its unfortunate marriage to the German company Daimler, and will return to its status as an unwed manufacturer. In fact, the Cerberus Capital Management purchase will give Chrysler a very interesting opportunity – re-asserting the Chrysler brand into the marketplace, unfettered by its Daimler connection and “Dr Z” messaging.
Chrysler has had a very up-and-down, cyclical market experience. After its near-death brush with bankruptcy, it swung back by introducing the minivan. It has had some market hits (“cab-forward” car design – remember that? and Jeep, of course), and it has had unprofitable seasons. The jury is definitely still out on whether it can overcome some of its legacy cost disadvantages and compete in the market, against the slow, steady, successful onslaught of Asian brands.
Here is Business Week’s take on the challenge that Chrysler faces.
But now, it can at least re-launch itself as a company. So, readers, put on your thinking caps. If you were given the responsibility of creating a new marketing message for Chrysler, what would it be? What theme(s) would you choose? How would you appeal to a (perhaps) skeptical market? Would you emphasize engineering? Design? Patriotic themes? How would you position Chrysler in the marketplace? What tagline(s) would you suggest? Fill the comment section with your ideas, and let’s come up with an ad-hoc campaign right now!
How To Be Unremarkable
It’s doubtful that any small business owner sits down to compose his or her Business Plan, and starts the list with a #1 priority such as this:
Get lost in the crowd
Yet, it would almost seem that many, when naming their companies or coming up with a tagline, actually adopt that as a goal! Therefore, here are the Top Five Rules for those who would prefer not to stand out – who’d like to be undistinguished, unremarkable, and easily ignored…
1. Come up with a business name that means nothing. Ah, yes, Global Business Solutions – that tells me a whole lot about what you do! Or, how about A & B Associates – catchy, definitive, truly memorable! Or, to memorialize the two partners who so brilliantly launched the enterprise, let’s go with Froghammer and Smith! That’ll tell the world what’s being offered! Remember – the goal is to keep the audience guessing – we wouldn’t want those pesky potential clients to immediately understand what the business stands for, would we?
2. Describe your business in the most generic way possible, so everyone will think they need you. “We supply business improvement products and services to the Fortune 5,000.” Hmmm…that’s unique. “We’re striving to improve healthcare around the world.” Wonderful – you and 50,000 other companies. “Our business is going about the business of helping your business gain more business.” Got it – you’ve just defined your niche neatly into the circular file.
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