A Clear Eye.

Maybe "Your people are your brand" was already taken?

Good stuff Tom...I read her post last night and thought the same thing as you.

Are you kidding me Laura???

What planet are you from???

I'll admit.. I looked forward to reading her posts as most of the time they are meaningful and well-thought out. You can tell she is definately an intelligent person. At least until I read her last post.

How can you brand a bad/mediocre product or service anyway? I guess she also believes advertising is the other key to success. Here's an idea...let's sell shit to people and market it as the "browniest shit around." It has to be a hit right? After all, we'll own the position in customer's heads of the "browniest" shit around. Now all we have to do is advertise the traditional way and we'll be set.

Gimme a break....

No wonder the conference was held in India. No American in their right mind with half of a brain would buy that marketing hogwash.

Someone needs to tell her Daddy's concepts are just a little outdated for today.

I think someone should call GM and tell them the solution to all their problems is a strong brand, forget about building cars that can leave the lot without falling apart or designing models that people want to drive.

All I can say is she was writing the post 30,000 feet, the air is thinner up there.

Tim, very nicely put.

Is Google a "better" search engine? Is Red Bull a "better" energy drink? Is Microsoft a "better" operating system? Or did these companies build better brands? Building a brand means standing for something in the mind of the consumer. What gets you into the mind? Usually it is by being first in a new cateogy? Being first gets you PR, word of mouth and credibility. It earns your brand the top spot in the mind of the consumer. Having a great company, with great people and great products is great. But I don't think you will succeed long term unless you also get the marketing right. Of course, GM needs to build better cars, but they need to first work out the marketing issues. Saturn should work on being a simple, entry level car. Not a bigger, more expensive car or SVU. Would just a "better" Pontiac solve the problem? Or it the brand also at fault? GM needs to decide what each brand stands for and then fix the engineering problems.

Tom, Laura

I can't help but feel that the branding tail is in danger of wagging the business dog here.

Sure, brands are important, that goes with saying. But the nature of brands is changing; from an inside-out artefact created by marketing men & women, to something more real created with customers in mind, or increasingly, co-created with customers.

The nub of the matter is this evolving power-balance between the inside-out brand and outside-in customers.

As little as 5 years ago, I would have argued that the brand was generally perceived as being more important than customers by most businesses. Today, I no longer believe this to be the case. I think they probably have more or less parity in the minds of most businesses, particularly service businesses. And who isn't in the service business today?

This is largely due to the reduced effectiveness of many brands to deliver the goods(or marketing communications to be more precise) and to the increasing power of customers to have their say and to insist that they are heard. Sadly, the majority of brands fail to deliver their expensively communicated promises. Research by the English customer experience consultancy Beyond Philosophy shows that over 80% of customers do not expect brands to deliver their promises. And over 80% are still dissappointed!

At the end of the day, real brands exist only in the mind of the customer. You only have to look at the problems of GM & Ford versus Toyota, to see what happens when you leave the customer behind. We would do well to remember this when planning our next branding campaign.

Graham Hill
Independent Marketing Consultant