How to make brands portable across borders

Expanding into new geographical markets can be a minefield for brands.  History is littered with stories of successful brands that have failed miserably to convert their brand promise to different markets. Tesco’s recent foray into the USA being a case in point.

So, can brands be ‘portable’ across borders? The answer has to be a qualified ‘yes’. 

News reports today would indicate that fashion brand New Look has successfully broken into the mammoth Chinese market, following on the heels of Zara, H&M and Marks & Spencer. It’s done so by applying some basic, yet fundamental, marketing principles:

• Know your target market inside out:  New Look has did extensive research into what Chinese consumers expect to find on the high street before opening its first stores.
• Adapt your offering to meet local needs and cultural differences: armed with the research, New Look has adapted its range to suit Chinese tastes and requirements.  This has meant a focus on bright colours and clothes that cover shoulders, for example.
• Do not lose sight of your heritage: New Look has focused on its fashion-conscious, design-led approach but stressed its British heritage through the tagline “Designed in London, styled for China”.
• Stick to what you know and do best: in New Look’s case this is fashionable clothes at reasonable prices.  And for the time being it’s sticking to ladies wear, reflecting the strength of this sector for the brand in its home market.

There’s no rocket science here – it’s about applying a common sense approach to each market, while not losing sight of the core brand proposition.  It’s something that brands like McDonald’s, with its subtle cultural differences in menu, have known about for a long time.

Open source branding - 5 ways to manage the process

We're living in the age of "open source branding".  Gone are the days when brand managers could focus on well-crafted advertisements to build and protect brand reputations. Today, the health and wealth of your brand is determined by what your customers are saying in social media. Customers are defining brands now, not marketers.

While the dynamics may have changed, it doesn't mean that your brand has to be thrown to the mercy of vociferous commentators on social media. Here are 5 ways in which you can support and enhance your brand reputation online:

1. Understand that social media is a conversation.  Too many organisations see social media as the opportunity to disseminate brand messages and fail to understand the need to engage in a dialogue with their customers online. Great brands engage in the conversation, pose questions and respond to feedback.
2. Encourage brand communities. Recognise that your brand advocates may want to sing your praises in their own forums or communities and support them when they do so. While building your own brand communities may be the optimum approach, recognise that attempting to control other communities can damage brand reputations.
3. Listen to and respond quickly to complaints. Monitoring customer sentiment online is essential but achieves little if you're not prepared to react. Respond quickly to both positive and negative comments, encouraging your critics to engage outside social media to get to the root of the problem and then ask them to return to social media when you've resolved their issue to express their satisfaction.
4. Avoid corporate speak and know when to step back. The well-crafted corporate response to criticism or complaints can stand out a mile if you're normally chatty and engaging when dealing with positive feedback. Maintain your tone of voice throughout. And recognise that repeating the same message in the face of a barrage of criticism may simply fan the flames and shows you're not really listening or understanding. 
5. Continually check that your service or product is aligned with your brand messages. Use the feedback you get through social media to identify and address issues in service delivery, product quality or customer service. This means being the voice of the customer internally - something marketing professionals should aspire to as a matter of course.

Whether we like it or not, social media presents customers with the opportunity to comment quickly on brand experiences. Protecting a brand means adopting similar behaviours and engaging in the debate.

Great brands instil emotional connections

Research out recently ranks UK brands on happiness and how they instil an emotional connection with their customers.

According to the study by advertising agency Isobel and Cog Research, the happiest brands are Cadbury, Andrex, Google, Fairy, Nivea, You Tube, Amazon, Mars, Walkers and Heinz. Brands were rated on five core characteristics: whether they were playful, happy, trustworthy, generous or optimistic. Amongst those in the bottom of the rankings were most of the red top newspapers, Ryanair, the three main political parties and, perhaps unsurprisingly, several retail banks.

While the research was undoubtedly designed as a PR exercise for Isobel, it does emphasise the importance of building a brand around an emotional connection with customers.  A well crafted visual identity, snappy straplines or flashy advertising simply isn't enough to win customers' hearts, minds and share of wallet. The brands that did well in the research came out as more 'human', were consistent in their delivery and offered value for money.

So, what should the average business take from the research?

The key message has to be that if you want your brand to achieve standout and resonate with customers, you need to be clear about the emotional reaction you want to instil in them.  It's about being clear what benefits you deliver, how you want your customers to feel and the value you offer. And then ensuring that your product/service, promotional activity, customer experience and people are fully aligned.

This isn't just an FMCG issue. In fact, most service brands have failed to understand the importance of emotional engagement, preferring instead to focus on functional and rational attributes. This is why so many of them are indistinguishable from each other or, in extreme cases such as recruitment, estate agency and banking, seen as 'necessary evils'. Not an emotional reaction to aspire to.

More information on the research can be found here: http://www.isobel.com/happybrands/

Why not all brand extensions make sense

The Social Market Foundation (SMF), a cross party think tank, has called upon Transport for London to apply for a banking licence for its highly successful Oyster card.

SMF argues that the trusted pre-paid Oyster card, used to pay for rail, underground and bus journeys throughout London could become a real competitor to the retail banks.

Transport for London (TfL) has given the proposal a chilly reception, arguing that while Oyster is a tremendous success, its focus is on ‘making the journeys of our customers better’.

TfL is ruling out a significant brand extension for its Oyster card and cutting off a potential source of revenue by declining to seek a banking licence.  On this occasion I think TfL has got it right.

TfL’s primary purpose is to facilitate the travel of its nine million customers across the capital.  And, let’s face it, it has some way to go before it can rightly claim to have solved all the issues commuters face.  To seek to extend the Oyster brand might well look attractive on paper, but TfL has rightly concluded that it should ‘stick to the knitting’.

While Osyter might well be a convenient way for commuters to travel easily across London, TfL must be well aware of both the limitations of its own reputation and, perhaps more importantly, the reputation minefield that getting into retail banking entails.

Some brand extensions – where brands seek to leverage their reputations to move into new categories - make great sense.  The Virgin brand has successfully embraced air travel, financial services and health.  While Nescafe has used its strong heritage in the coffee market to move into coffee makers.  But both brands have a strong core reputations and values and have a loyal customer following.

In this case, TfL is right to draw the line

Up close and personal - 4 simple things an airline did to impress

I recently had the opportunity to travel long haul in business class with Singapore Airlines.  The experience was one of the best I have encountered in many years of flying.

Here are the four things they did to impress me:

1. I was taken to my seat when I boarded rather than sent off on a mission to track it down alone. 
2. All the cabin crew I encountered seemed to know my name without looking at the manifest.  Spooky at first, but also reassuring. 
3. When refilling my wine glass, the crew knew the wine I had selected first time around, irrespective of whether the individual had served me or not. 
4. On my return flight I was greeted like an old friend with a genuine ‘welcome back’. 

These four very simple actions show that personalisation doesn’t have to be complicated or stunningly innovative.  A simple recognition that I’m an individual passenger, not a number, and a willingness to remember my preferences made it a memorable experience and so very different to the 'conveyor belt' approach of many others.

If there is a downside, it’s that the personalisation ended with the flight.  No follow up communication to get my feedback.  In fact, radio silence.  

What a wasted opportunity to keep a memorable brand experience alive.

'Passionate' about your sector? Prove it.

Google ‘passionate about property’ and be prepared for the long list of estate agents who claim to be so.  In fact, you’ll find businesses everywhere proclaiming their ‘passion’ for what they do.  How lucky these people are to work in a field they’re passionate about.

I’m all for brands being clear about what they stand for but I’m also clear that any such assertions need to be explained and then demonstrated through consistent action and behaviour.  I read such assertions and have one response: prove it.

If you’re making such assertions in your business and you’re serious about keeping the statement, ask yourself the following:

• What does this mean?  Make a point of asking people inside and outside the business what they understand the meaning of your statement to be.  You may be surprised to find an array of different interpretations, not all of them what you intended.

• Who says we are? Of course you do, but does anyone else?  What third party recommendations/commentary do you have to prove your passion?  What are the results of your customer satisfaction programme?  What do customers say – not just the last time you asked them, but now.

• What’s in it for our customers?  Ask yourself what this means for the average customer and make sure you explain it to them.  In the case of the estate agent, does it mean that you know all the properties in your catchment area incredibly well?  Does it mean you’re able to advise on what makes a property saleable to a particular type of buyer?

• How can we demonstrate our passion every day?  It seems to me that people who are ‘passionate’ about something live and breathe it.  They never cease talking enthusiastically about their favourite subject.  They’re borderline obsessive.  So, if our estate agent is passionate, I’d expect to see them talking regularly in the local media about property and their website should have lots of really useful information about the subject, for example.

• How do we get all of our people passionate?  This is probably the most important question but may be the most difficult to answer.  Consider appointing role models to champion the cause.  Revisit your reward/commission structures and ask yourself whether they encourage different or counter behaviours.  Look at training options.  Consider how you communicate and behave internally – are you continually talking about the subject and providing your people with the necessary data, tools and know-how to build their own passion?

The key is, whatever you say about your business will be meaningless unless you’re able to bring it to life in a meaningful way for your customers and prospects.