At best ‘brand’ is a useful word. At worst, it’s a dangerously misleading management tool. It’s hard to talk about marketing without using the word brand (or one of its derivations). Believe me, I’ve tried! But in spite of (or, perhaps, because of) its useful nature, the word brand is functionally bankrupt. More often than… “The myth of brand equity”
My friend Jamie Hayes (whose Sydney gym was featured in edition 4 of AdVerb) likes to remind me that people don’t visit fitness centres any more. “The truth is,” he says, “they never did!” Jamie’s point is that, while almost all gyms have been calling themselves ‘fitness centres’ for the last ten years, their customers… “If it quacks like a duck!”
A message for those business people who insist on competing on price: go ahead! That’s right. If you have a cost advantage, flaunt it. Cut your prices, build marketshare, consolidate that cost advantage and annihilate your competitors. So what’s the catch? Well, to successfully compete on price, you need to be able to manufacture, market… “Go ahead. Compete on price!”
Why mysticism and marketing are incompatible bedfellows Imagine the reaction of your local doctor if you presented yourself with a cough and a slight fever and proceeded to inform her that you were suffering from tuberculosis! Can you imagine her obediently writing a prescription for Isoniazid and reporting your bad news to the relevant health… “‘Doctor, I think I’ve got tuberculosis!’”
It’s a conversation I’ve had time and time again. JR-M: Does that advertising campaign work? Marketing manager: It’s a little hard to say. JR-M: How do you mean? Marketing manager: Well, the phone doesn’t ring, but at least we’re getting our name out there. There they are, those nine terrible words: but at least we’re… “The nine most terrible words any marketing manager can possibly utter … and how you can avoid the need ever to use them”
In her third term as Prime Minister, Margret Thatcher famously said,”… there’s no such thing as society.” She went on to say, “There are [just] individual men and women and there are families.” (Thatcher was responding to a special interest group that was casting its problems as those of society.) A few days ago I… “There’s no such thing as The Market”
So many service providers treat it as a given: that their businesses are fundamentally different from those that sell physical products. On the surface, it seems an innocuous enough assumption. There must be an essential difference between the sales processes of firms that sell physical products and those that sell intangible services. When I’m asked… “The essential difference between product and service companies: nothing at all!”
I’m often asked by clients how to cope with the ‘appeal to brand equity’ made frequently by (some) marketing people (particularly those selling advertising) in defense of promotional activities. (To review my position on ‘brand equity as a management metric’ you might like to read this article. The marketer’s position is typically as follows: We… “Countering the ‘promote to build brand equity’ argument”
My first piece of advice is simple: treat the Internet as an opportunity for your business — rather than as a business opportunity, in and of itself. The fact is, there’s more mileage in using the Internet to better execute your existing strategy than there is in treating it as an entirely new business model.… “The Internet: ‘business opportunity’ or ‘opportunity for business’?”
Now here’s a common concern. How do you harness the obvious revenue-generating benefits of discounting – without damaging your corporate image? If, like Super Cheap Auto, you are positioned as a discounter in your particular industry category, promoting reduced prices may enhance your corporate image. But, if you wish your market to perceive you as… “Discounting: how to ‘buy’ new clients without selling your corporate soul”
