Привет вам всем! Ну наконец-то я перевел на английский пост-статью от февраля 2011 года; и ведь не скажешь "и года не прошло"; просто уже неловко стало перед моими зарубежными друзьями.
"How To Build Brand: What Should, What Can, And What Must Not Be Done".In these notes I will talk about projects which play strategic role for promoting/building a brand; canceling them, whatever reasons to explain such a decision, means a strategic mistake of the company.
What “brand” means.First, let’s understand what is brand.
Brand is a trade mark under which a product or service is promoted in the market [from manufacturer to consumer/buyer]. As a sidenote, brand mark is a graphic expression of brand name; hence, logo is brand mark; that’s from the point of view of English. In Russian “trade mark” is a more comprehensive notion which covers both brand name and its graphic expression. Now that we are through with “formal” definition of brand, let’s try to answer the main question: what is the main thing in conjunction with building, and consequently, promoting a brand. The answer to this question, on the first glance, is pretty straightforward:
it is the complex of associations and emotions which come to life when a person contacts the brand, whether the contact is by ear (hear the name of the brand) or visual perception (see the brand logo). 
Multimillion dollar question – «WHAT?»This brings us to the first conclusion of utmost importance: every brand (or to be more exact, its owners) must first of all define for itself what are the desirable associations that it wants his target customer to have [from contacting with the brand]. In other words, the question (from the first person/from the brand) worth millions of dollars is:
WHAT do we want to communicate to minds and hearts of our target audience? Please note that the cost of an erroneous answer to this question is extremely high – simply because the process of impacting minds and souls of big quantities of people is very long and costly (but this is the theme of another article). It is important to understand that the answer to this question depends on strategic vision of the brand, its essence and its key values. Since in this article the famous English automotive brand Land Rover is used as an example, let’s address it without further ado.
Strategic Vision, Essence and Values of Land Rover Brand.For many years strategic vision of Land Rover brand was formulated as:
To be a leading brand in the world that inspires for and creates spirit of adventure.Now let’s see what the essence of Land Rover brand is. For years it was expressed by the phrase Because You Can; it was replaced with the expression Go Beyond. Understandably, both messages are very close to each other. And it is quite clear why: the essence of the brand needed to reflect the unique specialty of the product, and such a unique specialty of Land Rover vehicles is the breadth of capabilities – i.e. simply put, «they are unmatched off-road, but at the same time on-road they are as comfortable as passenger cars (in contrast to other serious off-road vehicles). Winding up the conversation about the essence of the brand I should mention that in 2008 management of the company decided to formulate the essence of the brand as “Vehicles with incredible breadth of capabilities”; obviously, the essence did not change, but it was no accidence that many people within the company were against this change – simply because a phrase that expresses essence of a brand, must be emotional, i.e. the idea of breadth of capabilities must be expressed creatively, rather than bluntly/directly; and, of course, because brand – more complicated, more broad a notion than the product itself, it covers also people who use the product, their lifestyle, character etc.
Now that we have looked into the essence of Land Rover brand, let’s turn to the brand values – i.e. to what the brand stands for, what it believes in, and what it should never give up.
The Land Rover brand values were (I am writing in the past tense because Land Rover marketers could well have changed “what should be believed in”, but it is not critical for the purposes of this article):
Supremacy – ability to do what others cannot do; natural leaders, respected, influential, still accessible.
Authenticity – faithfulness to traditions, masterfulness, “the real thing”; ahead of its time, doing what we believe in.
Guts – courage, powerfulness, unbendable will; inner strength to cope with challenges of life.
Worldly – travel, readiness to accept other cultures; naturalness of manners in any environment.
Spirit of Adventure – free spirit: desire to learn what the world can offer.
If we recollect now what the strategic vision of the brand is, it becomes obvious that among the brand values
Spirit of Adventure holds a special place.
Now we can revert to our multi-million-dollar question:
WHAT do we want to convey to minds and hearts of our target audience? It is only now that we know what strategic vision, essence and values of the brand are, we can try to answer this question. Whatever versions of marketing communications we consider, we must always turn to the main one – ask ourselves: “would the communication [we are considering] strengthen associations between the brand and its essence and values, or not?»
The question «HOW?»Once we answer to the question «WHAT?», we must answer to the question «HOW?» –
HOW would we convey “WHAT” to minds and hearts of our target audience. Let’s mention upfront that despite this question is also very important, still the cost of error in answering it is way lower than in the case of question “WHAT”; it can be explained by the fact that the answer to the question “HOW” can be corrected much quicker and, importantly, at much lower cost. When we answer to the question “HOW” we make decisions regarding what channels of communications we would use in ATL and BTL etc. Getting back now to the point of cost of error: obviously, if we decide that, for example, the weight of outdoor advertising in our marketing mix it too big, and the weight of advertising in Internet is too small, such a mistake could be corrected relatively easily. BUT if we for some time communicated to our potential consumer a wrong message, to correct it would take a long time and a lot of money.
What can and what shall not be done under any circumstances. Nonetheless, among decisions regarding “HOW” there are ones of strategic nature. It is time now to recollect what sustainable competitive advantage is; the key word here is «sustainable». The idea is that your competitor would not be able to replicate this advantage of yours. For example: the location of McDonald’s restaurant in the Pushkin’s Square in Moscow – is it a sustainable competitive advance? Absolutely, because if tomorrow Burger King wants to start its restaurant there, they would not be able to do so (or if they would it might cost them a fortune). Another example (from US business practice): company that installs anti-hijacking satellite tracking systems on autos, works in close contact with police, was founded by retired high-positioned policemen – is it a sustainable competitive advantage? The positive answer to this question is obvious. And here is the example which fits more to the theme of today’s discussion: a big advertising board close to the White House (House of Government; at the intersection of the embankment and the New Arbat) or “unipole” construction at the intersection of the 3rd Ring and Kutuzovsky Pr.: to be able to advertise on those sites – is it a sustainable advantage? Definitely, because the locations of those sites are unique.
Now, getting back to the theme of our article: similarly to the way a wolf “marks” its territory, a brand trying to answer the question “HOW?” must decide what would be “its territory”, in ATL and in BTL as well. Speaking about Land Rover, I won’t focus on ATL: after all, if you work with a professional media agency, it would, upon getting a strategic guidance from you (Marketing Director), compose “right” communication channels; in case with Land Rover it looks like this: the strategic guidance (simply put) is given as: “Land Rover is a status premium brand, hence it should be advertised on appropriate advertising space: if it is OOH it should be not just ordinary advertising boards but rather, so called “supersites”, if it is a TV advertisement, there should be spots in prime time etc. etc. And so, in the end of the day your media agency would find for you prestigious “supersites”, book “right” spaces in “right” magazines etc. Now imagine: economic crisis has hit, sales have slumped, marketing budgets have been cut; at this point in time it is critical to clearly understand what can and what must not be cancelled. What must never be cancelled is what constitutes your sustainable competitive advantage. Unfortunately, both Land Rover and Jaguar (both brands belong to the same company and directed from the same central office) «have left» such ATL, from such “supersintes” in particular, from where they should not have left. And, as they say in Russia, «a holy place will not remain vacant»…
Intersection of the 3rd Ring and Kutuzovsky pr.: it is Lexus here now.
And here is an example from BTL area – it is even more typical and important (more important because if in ATL the company could use other advertising spaces comparable in value, in BTL area there are no analogues to the project described below). So: in 2003 Land Rover launched the
Land Rover G4 Challenge project (global adventure-competition).
It replaced the famous Camel Trophy. I will not talk in detail about reasons for a peaceful “divorce” of Land Rover и Camel brands, neither will I focus on how Land Rover G4 Challenge and Camel Trophy are different (for it is beyond the theme of this article). I will mention the main thing only: Land Rover G4 Challenge – IS that particular «territory», which allowed the company to demonstrate the unique breadth of capabilities of its vehicles and its commitment to Adventure idea (now you might want to get a bit back and look once again at the Land Rover brand strategic vision and values). The essence of the project – crews of 2 people each made incredibly interesting and difficult travel/expedition in Land Rover vehicles in delightfully beautiful places of the planet, completing different physical and mental exercises on their way. It is really hard to come up with a more effective and efficient event, to further promote Land Rover brand strategically, to demonstrate vehicles’ breadth of capabilities and the brand values.
As it has been stated above, the first G4 Finale (preceded by National Selections events in different countries; can you imagine how valuable it was for promoting the brand?) was conducted in 2003 in 4 phases – in the East of the USA, in South Africa, Australia, and in the West of the USA. The company spent circa 80 million US dollars to conduct it; but let’s not forget that it was a PR event; the PR value for the company – the value of coverage of that adventure-competition in world media in advertising equivalent turned out to be close to 180 million US Dollars! And that was only direct return, without taking into account the main thing! And the main thing was of course further building, strengthening, positioning of Land Rover brand in heads and hearts of millions of people around the globe! Well, in 2006 the second Finale of Land Rover G4 Challenge took place. And although the scale of the event became more modest (if we can talk modesty at all here) – the competition was conducted in 2 phases on 2 continents: Thaliland-Laos and Brasil-Bolivia, the event was again more than successful. It is worth while making a special note that the Land Rover G4 Challenge, already a brand in its own right (or brand extension rather, to be more exact), had been in the process of its creation for already several years. So what happened next? In 2007 and part of 2008 huge work was done, to prepare the Finale scheduled for 2009. In the countries-participants of the project National Selections were held; in Russia the National Selections event was conducted in Sochi area. The Finale was planned to take place in spacious Mongolia and Russia (by the way, to make it real, special decisions were made at the level of Vice-Primier of the Russian Government; I think the importance of such decisions is quite obvious for everyone). And after the economic crisis had hit, the company made the decision to halt the project. It is possible that it was a temporary decision, I don’t know. I do know that it does not change the essence:
that decision was a strategic mistake of the company. Here is a good example: famous Ferrari brand and its participation in Formula 1; is it possible to imagine Ferrari going out of Formula 1? And there were voices in Ferrari HQs which suggested it in 2009. But luckily business sense prevailed. The whole point is that just to proclaim, just to make a statement «we are #1 company when it comes to auto races and racing cars» (Ferrari) or «spirit of adventure – it is us, it is our territory» (Land Rover) – is not enough! Companies must back up such statements with concrete actions: that’s exactly why Ferrari invests millions into its participation in Formula 1, that’s why Land Rover invested big bucks into Camel Trophy, and later into Land Rover G4 Challenge. That’s how brands are built, that’s how desirable associations with brands are planted and fixed in the minds of millions of people. Ask anybody «give an example of brand-company manufacturing sports/racing cars» and you will see that absolute majority would give and example of “Ferrari”. Ask «what vehicles have incredible off-road capability, take part in travels and expeditions» and from very many you would hear “Land Rover”. But if one’s territory is not protected, if the statement-claim for such a territory is not backed with concrete and consistent actions, then sooner or later the brand would loose this territory. So much so when the territory is so appealing to human nature apriori – “adventure, travel, opening new horizons”. It is no accidence that such well-respected automotive brands as Toyota and Volkswagen allocate so much attention [and such big budgets!] to organize different expeditions.
Winding up let’s reply to a hypothetical opponent from Land Rover, who might possibly say: “not only was it a forced but also a temporary decision”: as far as its forcefulness is concerned, I would debate it – it is just Land Rover senior officials could not (or did not want to) present such arguments that would have persuaded new owners of the company (since 2008 the company belongs to Tata Group, India) in absolute erroneousness of such a decision; and as for its temporary character, the laws of influencing/impacting peoples’ minds are such that after consistently impacting minds for some time one must not all of a sudden go silent for several years; it would be naïve to think that when you resume the impact after the pause, you would do it from the same level where you left/”went silent”; phrasing the same idea in a simple language: “the money that was spent during 2002-2008 for building Land Rover G4 Challenge brand and thus strengthening the Land Rover primary brand, to much extent were spent in vain”.
It is just the time to sum it all up:
- Marketing [and PR] communication should always be based on strategic vision, essence and values of the brand you work with;
- Answer to the most important question – «WHAT do you want to convey to your target audience?», and after that to the question «HOW will you do it?»;
- Define the most important initiative/projects, which you should try not to cancel under any circumstances.![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
