Brands: The love hate relationship

Marketing magazine ( UK May 14th) has just published a table of the brands we love most and the brands we hate most. Interestingly but perhaps not surprisingly may brands feature in both lists.

I have a new Ford Mondeo - brilliant car - so I was interested in where Ford as a brand was in the tables. Almost in an identical position @ 32 and 33.

Why is this?

Well it goes without saying that the larger the brand footprint the more people will have been exposed to it. But those who have not got a 'new' Ford may still have old views of the product and the brand, and need to justify to themselves that the extra £10,000 they paid for the equivalent Audi or BMW was really worth it. So is that really the value of a brand or lack of it?Yet in understanding brands properly, not simple the using of a name and a logo, we have to engage the emotional values.

The best way of understanding the importance of brand and product is to see

PRODUCTS AS PEOPLE and BRANDS AS FRIENDS

Now with friends the reason we like them is often the reason we don't like some other people.

Marketing Superior thought; You don't have a brand unless people have an emotional bond to it. But remember human emotions are fickle so be very careful how you play with them. That is why brand development is one of the key elements of marketing but it doesn't stop it from being the most mis-understood and the most valued prize.

Ask Ford I'm sure they would like to get an extra £10,000 for every Mondeo!

Branding at the weekend

It is a marketer's lot that we are never really off the job. Take a glorious weekend a couple of weeks ago... 'Let's go to the fair and there is a beer festival on at the pub in the village' Perfect!!
Yet there were marketing lessons lurking there. Firstly at the fair. No ordinary fair, it was Carters Steam Fair. Every show and every caravan consistenlty decked out in a suberb colour combination of ochre and organge with a strong identifaible logo everywhere with a powerful description. No brand manual, I'll bet just a family buisness certain and proud of its's identity.
A lesson to every one of us - pride is one of the most important factors in branding and implementation

Over at the beer festival I started musing where had the phenomenom of the beer festival come from? I reasoned thus...with the headlong pursuit of lagers, cheaper to produce and easier to serve but with the key differentaion being in the expensively won image sustained by TV advertsisng the big brewers did not support their bitter brands. So into the gap came every Tom Dick and Harry with their micro brewery and silly names yet with a good and interesting product self-selected by the publican. By the way the gap may have been widened by the big brewers practice of guest beers.
Marketing Superior thought; In a big market leave a consumer gap and it will be filled.
So that was how I came to have a pint of Old Tom and thoroughtly enjoyable it was too.
Now back to work!

Mcdonalds Monopoly

I don't know about you but I am partial to a big mac and fries!
And...for quite a lot of my working life I specialised in promotions...
On a recent visit, early morning I might add, my tray was transformed into a quasi Monopoly board. So I looked, eventually to see it was a promtion yet one of such amazing complexity that I wondered who would understand it, or who would be motivated by a prize especialy if they could not decipher what it was. Having realised I had not been given a game piece I went to the counter and got one. Not without noticing the A3 sized poster of rules and conditions, reminiscent of those just behind the entrance in NCP carparks!
I then realised it was a game of two halves and I am not that frequent a visistor for it to have any worth.
Obviously some people think this type of promotion has value by the fact the halves are being offered on eBay.
So heavy users with time to spare and a PHD in old board games are the obvious target audience for this promotion from McDonalds.
Surely they must have bigger groups than that to warrant this investment?

A Marketing Superior thought...
A strong incentive offer with an easily understood involvement are pre-requisites for any promotion.
Perhaps I'll just keep collecting for the free cup of Kenco coffee but I can't get the sticker off the side and I've torn the collector card.
I'll just go large then...