Marketing

DESIGNING A BRAND MANTRA Unlike brand slogans meant to engage, brand mantras are designed with internal purposes in mind. Although Nike’s internal mantra was “authentic athletic performance,” its external slogan was “Just Do It.” Here are the three key criteria for a brand mantra. Communicate. A good brand mantra should clarify what is unique about

PERCEPTUAL MAPS For choosing specific benefits as POPs and PODs to position a brand, perceptual maps may be useful. Perceptual maps are visual representations of consumer perceptions and preferences. They provide quantitative pictures of market situations and the way consumers view different products, services, and brands along various dimensions.

Firms should broaden their competitive frame to invoke more advantageous comparisons. Consider these examples: In the United Kingdom, the Automobile Association positioned itself as the fourth “emergency service”—along with police, fire, and ambulance—to convey greater credibility and urgency. The International Federation of Poker is attempting to

In assessing potential threats from competitors, three high-level variables are useful: Share of market— The competitor’s share of the target market. Share of mind— The percentage of customers who named the competitor in responding to the statement “Name the first company that comes to mind in this industry.” Share of heart— The percentage of custo

One of the great comics of our time is booked for a gig in New York City. His agent isn’t paying attention, though. The comic shows up at the club; he’s in a good mood. He brings his best material. He’s up there, working the room, and no one is laughing. Not a peep. He’s bombing. After the show, he’s beating himself up, thinking of quitting comedy

The most important lesson I can share about brand marketing is this: you definitely, certainly, and surely don’t have enough time and money to build a brand for everyone. You can’t. Don’t try. Be specific. Be very specific. And then, with this knowledge, overdo your brand marketing. Every slice of every interaction ought to reflect the whole.

A great analogy allows a customer to instantly grasp a difficult feature and then describe that feature to others. That’s why “1,000 songs in your pocket” was so powerful. ... it let people visualize this intangible thing—all the music they loved all together in one place, easy to find, easy to hold—and gave them a way to tell their friends and fam

Fundamentally, marketing must refocus away from selling product and toward creating relationship. Relationship buffers the shock of change. To be sure, the specific product or service provided remains the fundamental basis for economic exchange, but it must not be treated as the main event. There is simply too much change in this domain for anyone

But the messaging architecture is only the first step. For every version of the Nest story, we wrote down the most common objections and how we’d overcome them—what stats to use, what pages of the website to send people to, what partnerships to mention or testimonials to point to. We figured out which story we could put on a billboard all the way d