These are some notes based on four presentations I attended at the Said Business School, Oxford University by various brand strategy organisations. I've typed them up because I think they are quite relevant to Pylons

Branding Background

Let me start with an explanation of what a brand actually is.

Creating a brand is simply about creating a reason for you to be chosen. A good brand should answer two questions:

• Who are you?
• Why should I care?

Brands are about making people choose you. Put another way it is about "the highest order customer need that you are willing and able to deliver in a differentiated way".

A brand is about giving a reason to be chosen, not looking good.

Creating a Brand

In order to create a good brand you need exceptionally clear thinking. Here are two techniques to help with the thinking process.

The Brand Cycle:

1. Where the hell are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How do we get there?
4. Monitor Progress
1. Where the hell are we now?
2. Where do we want to be?
3. How do we get there?
etc.. this cycle continues and as conditions change your direction might change too.

Brand Axes

This technique involves defining two parameters which separate you from your competition. For example, if you were a drinks company you might decide that one parameter was whether your drink was made from chemicals or totally natural. Another might be whether it was designed to help your well being or give you energy. Once you had decided that these two parameters were the most important ways drinks differentiated themselves you could lot a graph and position each of your competitors on the graph based on whether they were chemical or natural and whether they claimed to aid your well being or give you energy. Reb Bull would then be in the chemical energy quadrant whereas Evian might be in the natural well-being corner.

Once the competitors are plotted out the rule of thumb is that you should position yourself in the space where all your competitors aren't.

This is a surprisingly useful tool and of course you can plot lots of maps based on different criteria to help decide where you are.

One way to help find out where your brand is at the moment is to ask companies or people where they think your brand is positioned at the moment.

Having a Single Focus

One of the "laws of branding" is this:

A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus.

If you want to know for your cakes it would be hard to create a strong brand since there are so many different types of cake. If you want to be the best known cherry cake maker it becomes a bit easier. Being the best cherry cakes in London becomes much easier and you could quite easily create a brand "London's Best Cherry Cakes". "London's Best Cherry Cakes" would still sell in New York and if they really wanted could probably sell lots of other cakes but they would be known for being the best cherry cakes in London.

Another way of looking at this is to ask "What is the conversation you wish to own?". 37signals own the conversation around web usability. This means that if anyone wants to write an article on the topic they will ask 37signals. Ask yourself which conversation you want to own.

Authenticity and Passion

Your brand has to be based in reality in order for people to trust you. It is no good claiming things you can't deliver. Your brand might be as simple as:

"we are quite good and you can probably afford us"

This brand wouldn't work for everyone but it is grounded in reality and works for the small company who use it. Of course a good brand should also convey the passion the company or organisation has for the product they are offering. People pick up on passion and want to become a part of it.

Values

I think creating brand values is perhaps the most important excersie to carry out when creating a brand. Values are things that your brand adheres to. For example, the brand values for my company 3aims are embodied in these values:

• Simplicty over complexity
• Collaboration over competition
• Technology over tradition

They probably aren't perfect brand values because the implications of the statements needs a little explanation but they are OK. Really bad choices of brand values would be:

• Technical Excellence
• Great Customer Support
• Value for money

After all, which company wouldn't want these things? The important point is summed up in this box:

Your brand values should differentiate you from the competition

It is no good having brand values that make you the same as everyone else, your brand values should tell people how you are different from the competition so they can make a choice. Of course, it also helps to have a great product in the first place.

Once you have decided on a brand, you should apply it to all your thinking. If you have a decision to make you can ask yourself "does it strengthen or dilute the brand?". If you want to hire someone you just ask "Does this person fit our brand?".

As another example if Evian water sponsored a F1 race team it might dilute the well-being brand, whereas if they offered free yoga classes it might strengthen the brand.

Get Hated

Another useful tip is to identify who hates you and turn them off. At first sight this might seem counter-intuitive because surely you don't want to turn away potential clients/buyers do you?

The reality is that your brand will never appeal to everyone and trying to do so will just result in your product staying in the wilderness for ever because no-one will understand how it is different from its competition. It is essential to be able to differentiate yourself from your competition and what better way of doing that than actively turning off people who your product won't appeal to anyway?

There is another benefit to being hated. You will get loads of publicity. Publicity is good, especially if it differentiates you from your competition.

A good example of why it is good to be hated is Levis jeans. Levis noticed that sales were declining and young people were wearing more cargo trousers. After undertaking market research they realised it was because part of their market was people who has been wearing Levis since their teens but were now middle aged. This demographic tended to have their wives iron their jeans and they mainly wore them at weekends. These middle aged men were making jeans uncool so Levis deliberately bought out the "engineered jeans" which had a twist in them= leg so the older demographic wouldn't like them because their wives would complain they were hard to iron. The middle aged men didn't buy them and so the younger generation loved them and Levis market share was restored.

Brand Image

Strong brands have fans not consumers. Consumers filter out brand messages but some brands can cut through. Why is this?

Good brands are like people. They have a personality and a strong set of beliefs. They have an identity that people can buy into.

A brand can be considered as follows:

1. The brand proposition - ie what you promise
2. What you back up the brand with and what you deliver

It can be broken down into 4 areas:

Vision

What are you going to be famous for

Values

3 or 4 values that guide the way you do things, eg Audi: Sporty, Sophisticated, Progressive.

Externalisation

How you come across.

Identity

The art work, logos and stationery people associate with your brand.

Lots of people focus on the identity without having the other 3 parts in place.

These four areas come across through people, products and processes.

The One Hand Rule

After you've had a thought about the brand you want to create there is a good test for it: write an explanation on the back of your hand.

If you can write your brand on the back of your hand then great, you have a good brand. Otherwise you have to go back and re-evaluate the brand. The bottom line is this:

If you can't write your brand on the back of your hand you won't understand it

Another test of whether a brand is any good is "Would you wear it on a T-Shirt?".

A good brand should be like an old friend you are always pleased to see.

Quality

A very important rule is this:

Everything you do needs to be of the same quality.

If you create two brilliant products and one poor one, the poor product will devalue the brand and undo the good work of the first two.

Getting Other People To Share Your Brand Story For You

The very best brands are ones that people share themselves.

The analogy is this, imagine there is a girl sitting at a bar.. Senario 1: Dan works up to the bar and proceeds to explain how he is a famous actor, has lots of money, points out what a nice suit he has and offers to buy the girl a drink. Which offer do you think the girl accepts? Senario 2: A young man walks in. One of her friends whispers "look, that's George, he's west-end actor, I've heard he's particularly good at playing Shakespearian roles". He walks over and asks if he can buy the girl a drink. Whose offer do you think the girl accepts?

The point here is that it is much better to get other people to explain your brand. In order to be able to do this your brand has to be very straightforward and understandable. It goes back to the "can you write your brand on the back of your hand" idea.

So here's what you should do...

1. Equip them with the information
2. Create a media fan club
3. Build excitement and anticipation
4. Let them tell your story

To create news:

• Court controversy eg Death Cigarettes paid for a transplant
• Champion an issue eg Public transport is too expensive
• Share facts. A published survey reveals...

The key is to think people. Stop talking product, start talking human beings. People aren't interested in your product but they are interested in stories about people. Why not make a story about a person.

Associate with others whose reputation compliments your brand (it is a very easy way of getting around the fact you don't have a reputation yourself).

Host a meeting on a particular issue -> You get the gravitas of the people who speak. eg BT hosted a conference on the web and invited Sir Tim Bernes-Lee and so instantly positioned themselves as experts on the web.

The most important point it:

Reputation is the power of third party story tellers -> Equip people to tell your story.

Perhaps the most important point is this:

Look at what everyone else is doing and do the opposite