Demanding the fundamental “why?” behind any business practice can alter the activity, eliminate the extraneous, and emphasize the essential. What is the purpose of your website? What is the purpose of your ad? What is the purpose of your brand?

While imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp, neurologist and psychiatrist Victor Frankl contemplated meaning in life. He would go on to write a book on this topic, and concluded that each person has a task. He wrote, “Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life; everyone must carry out a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment. Therein he cannot be replaced, nor can his life be repeated, thus, everyone’s task is unique as his specific opportunity to implement it.”

Extraordinary things can happen when profound questions of meaning and purpose are asked of a brand.

Two Questions to Ask About Your Brand

1. Why does your brand exist?

At its core, working on your brand strategy is about defining your brand’s purpose, its reason for existing in the world. It asks the question, “Why does this brand matter?” If a company’s leaders and employees can’t easily articulate this with clarity and passion, customers won’t be able to either. And if customers can’t think of any reasons to believe, their loyalty will be based on surface benefits like convenience and price. In short, if your offering isn’t sent into the world as a brand whose longevity is important, there’s a good chance it will not be long for this world. The market preserves brands that matter. Employees fight for brands that matter. Customers are begging for brands they can feel good about giving their die-hard loyalty to. By knowing and living your purpose, the brand becomes a rock in the midst of a changing culture and marketplace, remaining truly relevant and consistently authentic.

In his book It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For, Roy Spence, Jr. shares stories of clients discovering their brands’ purposes. Here are a few brand purpose statements that he helped craft:

Wal-mart exists to “save people money so they can live better.”

The Hilton exists to “be hospitable.”

Southwest Airlines exists to “democratize the sky.”

Charles Schwab exists to be a “relentless ally for the individual investor.”

What need are you uniquely positioned to meet? What do your most passionate customers say about the way you make a difference in their lives? At your very best, what does your offering contribute to the world? What would be missing in the world if your brand just went away?

Put another way, what is important about your brand?

1. What are the reasons to believe in your brand?

Brand faith happens when real reasons to believe are tied to a service-oriented purpose. There is an important difference between brands you like and brands you believe in. When we go to work, we all want to be someplace we believe in. When we make a patronage decision, we want to find places and products that actually mean something to us.

What gets you excited about your brand? What specific activities support your purpose? These activities are your most powerful competitive advantages, your most important stories to tell, because they create faith in your purpose. These reasons have the power to make all of us believers in your brand.

Everywhere around us, we see needs and problems. Find a need that you can serve; the deeper the need, the more powerful the purpose. Find, as Frankl said, the “concrete assignment that demands fulfilling.” What do you offer that no one else does? What can you fulfill that no one else can? It should be something you wouldn’t mind spending the rest of your working life fulfilling. Keep it simple, articulate it clearly, and align all of your practices to it. If you believe in it enough to live it, and make the hard decisions accordingly, employees and customers will believe as well. Will energized employees, passionately loyal customers and a relevant, authentic brand position affect the bottom line? You bet.

In response to the questions we frequently receive about how best to utilize these new technologies, we’ve collected some of our favorite articles on five of the most important new media for innovative marketing efforts.

Take a look, and don’t forget to share any thoughts or questions in the comments section at the bottom of each posting!

1. Digital Signage
Thinking about bringing digital signage into your stores? Here are five key things to consider before it’s installed.

2. Email Marketing
Check out six simple steps for developing an effective email marketing strategy—or improving the one you already have.

3. Maximize Your Website
How well is your website performing? Learn how two valuable tracking tools, from a web audit to GreenTrak web analytics, can help your site achieve optimum success.

4. Mobile Marketing
Would text message marketing be an effective way for you to reach out to customers? Should a branded iphone app be part of your new media marketing strategy? Check out the benefits of mobile marketing, and get answers to your FAQs.

5. Social Media
The benefits of business blogging, plus a few points to consider before you dive into—or dispel the value of—social media.

It’s a different story in your deli department.

When speaking with retailers about their differentiation programs, we often hear about their “branded deli” programs, and why their branded deli products are so superior to their competitors’. Unlike the ketchup example mentioned above, you are able to differentiate your branded deli products because (in most cases) your competitors don’t carry the same product lines, and your price isn’t the only attribute that can differentiate you. You need to inform your customers why your branded deli products are better.

Many supermarkets feature branded deli products with Boar’s Head, Black Bear, Kretschmar, Columbus, Thumann’s, Dietz & Watson or similar branded lines. All of these companies spend fortunes developing their brands, but you need to leverage them as “your brand” in order to really differentiate your store. Hanging the branded deli signage kits from these suppliers is fine, but you need to focus on your own branding and not depend solely on their branded materials. All branded deli product lines will promote their superior quality, so how can you explain why your deli products are better than your competitors’?

Forget about the standard “made from the finest ingredients” verbiage to explain how your branded deli is different. If you review your branded deli product supplier’s marketing materials, you’ll see that many of the qualities they describe don’t necessarily differentiate their brand from others.

You need to present your own case to your customers to explain why your deli products are superior. If you succeed, you’ll have loyal customers coming to your deli (assuming that you have an exclusive arrangement with your supplier).

If your branded deli products have any of the following attributes, it would be to your benefit to focus on how these attributes differentiate you.

• Exclusive to your store
• All Natural
• Minimal Processing
• No fillers or soy extenders
• No MSG
• Hand Trimmed Meats
• Low Fat
• Low sodium
• No Trans Fats
• Gluten Free
• Healthy Recipes

What are the most effective ways of promoting these qualities?

Basic

• Signage and materials supplied by your branded deli supplier. This is probably the easiest way to promote the brand, but the least effective way to reach your customers.

Good

• Store posters (22″ x 28″) work great, but you’re limited to a relatively small area to try and explain these attributes.
• Tri-fold informational booklets are great as well, but how many customers are interested in taking a booklet home to read about your deli products?

Better

• Offering samples outside of the deli area can help you educate shoppers, as long as the host/hostess knows the proper talking points.
• Full page, informational ads promoting your branded deli products, explaining the attributes as well as the exclusivity to your store.

Best

• In-store, digital signage with rotating digital messages (10 second clips) explaining the attributes and mentioning feature pricing available on select branded deli items.

Plan to meet with your branded deli supplier to discuss ways to enhance YOUR brand through a partnership with their branded product line, sold exclusively in your store. When customers understand why it’s important to come to your store to buy your branded deli products, it’s a win-win situation for both companies.

1. Value shoppers are here to stay.If there is one long-term lesson retailers should take from 2009, it is the importance of a strong value positioning strategy. Value shouldn’t be the central focus of most brands, but it needs to play a part in any supermarket’s overall strategy. Retailers who have maintained a well-crafted value message through the years reaped the rewards during this economic downturn. Stores that neglected this part of their positioning strategy are now working hard to convince customers of their low prices, as they should. There are a lot more coupon clippers and ad shoppers than there were two years ago, and the new frugality is here to stay. Like generations before them, consumers have been changed by this difficult time, and will remember these lessons throughout a lifetime.
2. Digital signage will become a mainstream marketing solution.Since hardware prices have dropped, the return on investment that digital signage provides makes it a no-brainer for most supermarkets. Digital signage will continue to spread as retailers find proven providers, run pilot programs, and discover the benefits.
3. Social media will be adopted by most brands, to mixed results.Facebook users grew from 150 million to 350 million this past year, and the average age is now slightly over 50. Users now expect to interact with their favorite brands on fan pages. Successful media strategies will transition from one-way websites to an emphasis on interacting. They will focus on authentic, inventive ways to listen to and have fun with customers. Unsuccessful strategies will feature one-way communication on quickly created Facebook and Twitter pages. These will be the companies who say in 2011, “We tried social media, but there’s just no ROI.”
4. Private labels will continue to evolve into fully realized brands.Considering the current state of the economy, an increase in private label sales is no surprise; what’s unexpected is the transition of many private label products into true brands. This new crop of private labels maintains the private label value perception, and has personal meaning to customers in a way that generic store brands never could. Brands like Target’s “Archer Farms”, Safeway’s “Eating Right” and “O” (and most of the products on the shelves of Trader Joe’s and Fresh & Easy) connect to a customer’s lifestyle, and own a strong quality perception. Look for more stores to focus on the development of their private labels in 2010.
5. Stores with strong brands continue to dominate the market.This is cheating, since strong brands have always dominated the market, but it’s a valuable reminder. The recent economic strain has already eliminated many stores with weak brands, and solidified the hold of those stores who have invested in their brands. The market leaders will be those with a unique identity, who relate to customers emotionally and make a compelling, rational argument for shopping at their store.

If you’re interested in help with your value positioning, digital signage, social media strategy, private label, or brand development, let us know.

Wishing you a prosperous year in 2010!

Let’s say you want to connect with a group of potential customers who will never open your printed ad. As the iPhone commercial says: “There’s an app for that.”

Apple has sold over 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches—contrast that with the 6 million people on Twitter, and you start to see the power of the platform as a marketing vehicle. The iPhone is the most popular phone in America, but the real strength of the iPhone is the App Store, a collection of over 100,000 applications that do just about anything you can imagine. As David Pogue of the New York Times put it, apps “make the iPhone (or the iPod Touch) do absolutely amazing things… stunts a cell phone has no right to perform.” Now with over a billion apps downloaded since the store opened in July 2008, brands like Target, Whole Foods, and Kraft have discovered the marketing value of a custom app.

Is an iPhone App Right for Your Stores?

Here are three questions to help you decide if an iPhone app makes sense for you:

1. Do you already have a brand strategy and a strong web presence?If you have a well developed brand strategy and a website that supports your brand with rich content and features, then an iPhone app could be next on your list. If not, then a good iPhone app will only lead to increased disappointment with the rest of your brand experience.
2. Are there a lot of iPhone users in your market area?If you’re in an urban area or near a university, the answer is likely yes. Considering the potential loyalty an iPhone app will foster in a customer, 3% or more would be a significant enough percentage of customers to provide a valuable return on the investment.
3. Does an iPhone app fit your brand’s targeted demographic?According to a study by Forrester Research, 49% of iPhone users have a college education, 74% are over the age of 25 and 67% earn more than $70,000 a year. Consider whether or not this demographic segment matches your positioning strategy.

Benefits of an iPhone App

If you answered yes to the three questions above, an iPhone app should be seriously considered as you plan your marketing strategy for 2010. Here’s why:

1. An iPhone app advertises to a hard-to-reach customer.Over 40% of iPhone users get information more frequently from their iPhones than from the radio or their computer. Over half get information from their iPhone more often than a printed newspaper. There are potential customers with discretionary income close to your store that you will never reach through traditional media. They love a good deal as much as your ad shoppers. They appreciate quality perishables as much as your core customer. You just haven’t found the right channel to reach them.
2. A good iPhone app builds loyalty by relating to iPhone users.An iPhone app provides a personal experience with your brand. Striefler and Hanson of Media Arts Lab explain that “apps not only make the device more functional and fun, they make the iPhone a device that changes around you — the things you like, your hobbies and interests, your career, your sense of humor. Although everyone has the same hardware, the apps people choose to add make every phone unique and personal.” It’s no surprise that branded apps have become a fixture of most iPhones, since the brands we love are as much a part of our identity as our hobbies and interests. Do you love your morning caramel macchiato? Use the Starbucks app to build your drink and order ahead. Do you need to discuss your bridal registry with your fiancé? Use the Target app to add items as you think of them. Eating, cooking, and grocery shopping are lifestyle activities, and your customers deserve the courtesy and convenience of a branded app to make the experience more pleasurable. It sends a clear message: “We understand you, we’re interested in being a part of your life. We get it.” Customers will thank you with their loyalty.
3. A custom iPhone app will strengthen your brand.A good branded app should feature a name that supports your brand, and custom graphics that reinforce your overall brand aesthetic. This should include a uniquely branded icon, load screen, and color scheme. Your tagline, and other brand messaging, should be integrated throughout the app. In a crowded marketplace full of brands struggling for attention, your iPhone app gives you a private moment with the user, allowing you to tell your story to a focused, captive audience.
4. A useful app gives iPhone users a compelling reason to habitually choose your store as their primary grocery store.If a customer’s shopping list is in an app with your name on it, they are more likely to shop your store than the store across the street. If they can access your ad with a single touch, and build their shopping list right from the ad, they are more likely to shop your store. If they wonder what to eat for dinner, and can easily browse through cuisines that match their diet and taste preferences, and then add ingredients right back onto their list, they are much more likely to shop your store. Using your app as a life tool for managing their food shopping will reinforce a shopping pattern, and give you the chance to make a customer for life.

An iPhone app will not work as a shortcut to brand credibility, but for the right stores, it will complement the brand, strengthen relationships with customers, and be a key component of a successful marketing strategy. If you’re interested in a branded iPhone app, or any other marketing solutions, give us a call at 1-800-253-7146, or send us an email.

Concept 2
Map
Map 2
Billboard
Billboard 2Right about now, you may be thinking, “Our stores are strategically positioned; what can this guy tell us that we don’t already know?” But it’s all in how you define strategic positioning.

Strategic positioning means different things to different people. We define strategic positioning as the creation of a unique and valuable position, supported by a system of activities distinct from those of your competitors. The key words here are “unique,” “activities,” and “distinct.”

Anyone can claim they’ve positioned their store. But is it really a unique position, or just a knock-off of your competitor’s? What is your unique position? Your competitor’s? And is your strategic position supported by every activity the supermarket carries out, from pricing to signage, product assortment to employee training? And have you developed a distinctive way to carry out these activities?

While our approach may sound like common sense, very few retail food stores actually perform strategic positioning this way. In fact, many companies simply imitate one another in a type of herd behavior, each assuming the competitors know something they do not. Some modify a few of the more obvious activities to support the strategic position, and they think they’re done. But that’s just the beginning. Those businesses that create a complete system of distinctive, integrated activities are the ones that achieve a long-term competitive advantage. And often, the most successful businesses are those that have created formats that previously did not exist (we’re all familiar with alternative formats’ negative effect on supermarket revenues).

Determine your strategic position

Rather than copying formats similar to your own, focus on differentiating your store from them. Competitors that make their living in the same way cannot coexist — no more in business than in nature. Each must be different enough to have a customer-attracting distinction — a unique advantage. The most dangerous competitors are those that are most like you. The differences between you and your competitors are the basis of your advantage. The object is to enlarge the scope of your advantage, which can happen only at someone else’s expense. That’s why it’s so difficult to compete with alternative formats and why it’s so important to differentiate your store from those of your closest format rivals.

Focus, focus, focus

A strategic position is not sustainable unless it is focused. Because you can’t be everything to all people successfully, you must purposefully limit what you offer and to whom. When you are identifying your strategic position, choices about what not to do are just as important as choices about what to do. Your success depends on the trade-offs you are willing to make. Simply put, a trade-off means that more of one thing necessitates less of another. A supermarket can choose to offer more service departments, adding labor costs and higher retails, or it can choose not to, offering less service and lower retails, but it cannot do both without bearing major inefficiencies.

Differentiate your activities

Your strategic position drives which activities to perform, how to configure the activities, and how to integrate them. You need to look at all the operational and promotional activities your supermarket performs and determine what you can do to differentiate your activities from those of your competitors. Competitive advantage results when activities support one another and fit well. It is useful to think in terms of creating a theme which links activities, such as low cost, a particular notion of customer service, or a particular conception of the value delivered. Strategic positions built on integrated systems of activities are far more sustainable than those built on individual activities.

Summary

Successful strategic positioning boils down to this: identifying a unique and valuable position, focusing your efforts on a specific segment of the market, and supporting the position with an integrated system of operational and promotional activities.

Satchel Paige once said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up somewhere else.” But if you position yourself strategically, you’re sure to wind up with a competitive advantage.

“But change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency.”
—Ron D. Burton

Brand consistency must be maintained throughout all areas of an organization in order for a brand to achieve long-term success. Consistency builds credibility and consumer trust, allows for clear ownership of a brand’s differentiated positioning, and inspires a culture of development and innovation. It is essential for any organization to attain enduring strength and relevance.

To remain consistent in a landscape that is notably inconsistent, flexibility is also imperative. Consumer preferences are ever evolving, market conditions are exceedingly dynamic, and the competition is always changing. Customization and creativity are crucial. The goal is to capitalize on the benefits that consistency provides while leaving some room for a brand to adapt and evolve appropriately. To do this, it is necessary to identify what specifically about a brand can—and cannot—change.

This critical first step begins with a brand strategy, and the establishment of a clearly communicated, detailed set of standards and guidelines utilized to ensure uniformity in key brand elements, clear communications, continual deliverance of the brand promise, and ongoing relevance in an ever-changing marketplace.

Every action, communication and decision must be intentional, evaluated according to the standards that have been set and understood by all who are responsible for the management of your brand. There should be no room for misinterpretation or miscommunication, as everything from graphics and messaging, to marketing strategies and operational activities, to employee policies and procedures, will be guided by the strategic standards that, once determined, must be continuously maintained. The elements of a brand that can’t be changed without compromising trust or eroding brand equity should not be changed. Brand elements that can be modified must be done so consistently and intentionally in order to provide improved support of the brand as a whole.

The consistency with which a brand is delivered and experienced should always be assessed. Consider evaluating these key brand elements:

If you’re interested in finding ways to achieve and maintain brand consistency across your organization, please contact us for a complimentary assessment of graphics and typography and recommendations for improving visual cohesion and consistency.

So, what is a brand? Here’s an Old West analogy from your friends here in Arizona:

In the days before Microsoft and McDonalds, a brand was an indelible mark of identification used by cowboys and ranch owners to prove ownership of stock animals and provide a point of distinction; it was also the process in which this lasting impression was made.

Every brand was different because every ranch was different. A unique brand differentiated your cattle from your competitors’; in a brown sea of seemingly identical animals, your cattle would always stand out.

Today, a brand does for products, companies and services what it’s always done for livestock: it makes identification, recognition, differentiation and connectivity possible.

A brand is an entity that forms an impression, and the process by which that impression is formed. It is an identity, the sum of all of the thoughts, feelings, beliefs, perceptions and associations that consumers have about a product, company or service.

As it appears on the backside of a cow, a brand is a symbol. In today’s competitive marketplace, however, a brand is more than just a logo, icon or name. It is inclusive of the many unique attributes—product, service, name, logo, packaging, color palette, typography, graphics, tagline, etc.—that enable a consumer to identify, connect to and choose one product, service or company over another. With these unique attributes come the brand values, associations, identities, images, personalities, promises, experiences and communications that separate the good brands from the great.

In this way, branding is about identifying and combining brand attributes, and effectively managing everything else that comes along with them. The branding process is the single most important objective of the marketing process. It determines how your brand is presented to the world, and how the world perceives it. Your brand is the glue that holds the broad range of marketing functions together, and, ultimately, all operations must support it.

The true power of a brand lies in its ability to influence purchasing behavior. A successful branding program, systematically developed by a comprehensive brand strategy, creates the perception that there is absolutely no other product or company in the marketplace like yours. It’s what turns “I need a new car” into “I want that car.”

And once you’ve made consumers desire a partnership with your brand, you’ve created an emotional connection that spells long-term success.