Little known fact about marketing

[Adam Randall]

Something that blew me away.

We all know the brand names who have turned into an object, get the hoover out, can you xerox that for me etc etc.

Well I thought this would be a good thing for big companies, turns out companies spend millions of dollars a year to prevent their trademarks/brandnames from becoming an object.

Why? I suppose when I can go and xerox something on a HP or Lexmark copier, the power of the xerox brand name is lost, plus if they want to sell the company and another brand takes over, it becomes difficult to get value out of the objectified (is that a word?) brand.

[Avatar Consulting]

Hi Adam

Branding is such a controversial topic, especially for small business owners, because thier brand is often their own name.

Branding a large company takes an average of $60 Million using the traditional promotional methods and a few years for the effects to be noticed.

Small business owners have to use guerilla branding techniques and utilise more low cost (ie free) marketing methods.

1. Youtube
2. Facebook
3. Press Release management

just to name a few that are effective

Thought for the day

Did you know that the word "Quiz" originated as a branding campaign. A bet was made between two people that the public are so gullible that they will take up anything if promoted well.

So during the night one of the them painted the word QUIZ all over walls, buildings, and fences across his town. Graffiti?

Anyway the next morning everyone was talking about it and a meaning was decided for it. He won his bet and we had a new word added to the dictionary.

Paul

[mike@engagemarketing]

I would think that having your brand as the object in most cases, would be a magnificent thing. For example:

who makes photocopiers?
who makes tissues?

who were the first two companies you thought of then?
are both of those companies the market leaders in their respective fields?



Sure, the fact that most people would say Xerox & Kleenex in response to those questions isn't just because people use the brand to describe the task or product, it's because the companies have spent a lot of time and effort (money too, although not necessary) in positioning their brand in the market.

For those that find this topic interesting i suggest reading "Positioning" by Al Ries and Jack Trout

[BB]

When I get to that point - when people use my brand name as the object / service - I think the 'awareness' campaign might be over!

B.B.

[Avatar Consulting]

Branding is about getting the consumer to think of your business name first when considering to make a purchase. This is known as 'top of mind' awareness.

However, the idea of branding is to get increased sales turnover as the final objective so there must be conversion from 'top of mind' to an actual purchase otherwise your branding efforts are being wasted.

For example, you might think of Kleenex first when wanting to buy tissues, but when you are in the store you might buy another brand because of some very important factors.

Top of mind awareness can be defeated by;

1. Signage- if you see a display sign of a competitor that makes them jump on top of your mind

2. A large discount/sale price sticker on a competitors product that increases your price sensitivity and puts you into price comparison mode and risks the top brand losing top of mind

3. Product availability- it isnt available when you make the decision to buy so you buy another product.

So branding is important for businesses but it is only part of your consumer purchase cycle and will fail if your sales cycle has a weak point before a purchase is made.

Regards
Paul

[Danny Boy]

Hi Adam
Liked you thoughts. There are a lot of different ideas out there isn't there?
Dan Cavalli

[No mans land]

Branding yourself as boobs could leave you buried in a long search engine list.

[SteveDavidson]

Once your brand name is deemed to legally be a common-use word, this means that all your competitors can use in in their advertising, whereas you can't use their brand names in yours (generally). Thus, through sheer overuse in areas you can't control, the recognition value of the brand is watered down until people don't even associate it with your company or product any more.

In the worst cases, people may even forget you exist, because you don't have a brand name worth spit any more.

"We need a Xerox machine. Anyone know the name of a copier company?"

If you've poured a lot of money into that brand name, it can cost enormous amounts to either rebrand under a new moniker or 'take back' the name via advertising campaigns.

Of course, if you can manouver your competitor into this position, thus forcing them to waste money on retaining/revamping their market brand, that puts you ahead.

[Lisa Murray - Biz Coach]

hmmm, starts to make you wonder about google becoming a verb doesn't it? Does anyone google on other search engines or is it just me that describes it that way?

cheers
Lisa