Retooling your branding strategy can be a low-cost way to increase sales and build valuable corporate assets. The process is also likely to lead to innovations to your products and distribution practices.
Your brands are the shorthand consumers use to identify your company and products. The right brands forge an association among your products, your company, and specific attributes of each in your customer’s mind. The trademarks and goodwill which comprise the brand are valuable corporate assets which can be defended against competitors. Through strong brands, you can convey a unique sales message to your customers. Think of it as claiming territory in the market for your company and products.
‘Go-To’ Customers
Begin by examining your target market. Identify, as specifically as you can, the primary end-use customer of each product. This is your “go to” customer, the one most likely to purchase your product. How does this person decide to buy your product? Why? Where do they buy, and from whom? Why buy your product, and not your competitor’s? Ask the same questions for “secondary” end users, those who might buy but aren’t your highest priority customers. Ask them again for your dealers and distributors.
Now examine your branding in light of the market information you have learned. What brands do you use to market your products, and how do you use them? Are they helping your customer form the right associations with your company and products? Do they convey the messages most likely to help the customer decide to buy your product? Do they help distributors choose your product? Are they distinctive enough to stand out, and to defend as trademarks?
Plot your branding strategy on three levels: corporate, product and customer condition. Your corporate brand conveys a company-wide message to the market, and covers all products. Each product or product line should also have a brand, which compliments and reinforces your corporate brand but sends a unique message about the specific product. Customer condition branding seeks to form an association between your company’s product and the specific need for the product, so that the customer comes to associate your company with the fulfillment of this need.
Different Messages
Consider an insurance company offering an annuity product. The corporate brand is a logo that conveys trust, strength and loyalty. The product brand distinguishes the specific product from other available annuities, and conveys a message of stability and steady returns. The condition brand defines a solid foundation as the customer’s need that the product fulfills. Each brand compliments and reinforces those in the other branding levels, yet claims additional market territory.
Now that you have branding concepts tailored to your market information, select the specific trademarks which will comprise your brands. Choose trademarks which best execute your branding concepts, and are unique and can be defended from your competitors. Each branding level requires a different balance between being descriptive of your company and products and being unique in the marketplace.
The strongest trademarks, in a legal sense, are the most unique and the least descriptive of the specific product. Made up words (such as Kleenex) or words used to identify something not normally associated with them (such as Apple computers) are the most defensible trademarks. Neither type of mark describes the product at all, or suggests the nature of the goods or services. It is clear to the consumer that there is only one source for the product. Once established, these trademarks are valuable assets. However, it takes a lot of time and effort to build these marks into powerful brands.
In the shorter term, a mark which more directly describes your product may be more useful to sell the product (though not as defensible or valuable as an asset over the long term). However, going this route requires careful selection, as marks which are too generic or descriptive cannot identify your company as the source of the product and so can not be protected as trademarks. As a rule of thumb, your corporate level brands should be comprised of strong trademarks, while your product and customer condition brands may be less so.
Idea Streams
Now take a step back and consider the branding process in the context of product innovation. Marketing strategy and product development should go hand in hand. The process of building the brand strategy requires you to focus on the competitive advantages of your company and your products and on your customers’ needs and motivations. The results can help you determine what new products to develop or new sales practices to adopt. In turn, your product research and development efforts should be used to develop or change your branding strategy, since your brands need to convey the benefits of your product. Branding and innovation can compliment and spur each other on.
The right branding strategy makes effective use of trademarks to increase sales, claim and defend market territory, and to build corporate assets. Look at each level as an opportunity to communicate with your customer and to build real assets in the form of trademarks and goodwill. Sharpening your branding strategy is likely a low cost way for your company to stay competitive.
Matthew L. Reece is an attorney in the Hartford-based business law firm of Pepe & Hazard LLP. This column is offered for informational purposes only, and is not legal advice. E-mail editor@hbjournal.com to suggest a question.