Get Abstract Summary of "The Edge"

The EdgeAllen P. Adamson
Allen P. Adamson and Foreword by Steve Forbes, The Edge, published 2013 Copyright © Allen P. Adamson, 2013. Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan
getAbstract © 2013

Rating (10 is best)

Overall: 8
Applicability: 8
Innovation: 6
Style: 7

Take-Aways

• Branding is more than marketing or ads. It is the sum of everything that communicates a message about a brand.
• A brand is the meaning consumers attribute to the name of a product or service.
• Consumers should consider your brand different, relevant and valuable.
• Customers should know what to expect from your brand and should always get what they expect.
• Make sure that all of your customers’ “points of touch” with your brand are positive.
• “Brand drivers” are short, memorable marketing messages that provide buyers with information about a brand.
• For consumers, one negative experience with a brand is more memorable than 100 positive encounters.
• What your company does defines your brand.
• Heed what consumers say and improve your brand accordingly.
• Select and use the communication channels that best support your brand.

Relevance

What You Will Learn

In this summary, you will learn: 1) What a brand is, 2) What branding is, 3) What factors make brands long-lived and successful, and 4) How you can define your brand.

Recommendation

How do Apple, GE, IBM and Procter & Gamble remain successful brands? Branding expert Allen P. Adamson explains strategies these companies use that you can adopt to sharpen your branding edge. He details how to deal with branding challenges in today’s hypercompetitive marketplace and outlines 50 tips your company can utilize daily to stay ahead in the never-ending branding race. In a rare slip, Adamson says Super Bowl ads are sold in 30- and 60-minute chunks; think of 30 and 60 seconds instead, and don’t hold the typo against him – that would be bad for his brand. getAbstractrecommends his sound, worldly advice to marketing professionals, entrepreneurs, start-ups, home businesses and anyone trying to stand out in an overheated, overcrowded marketplace.

Summary

Branding

Some people mistakenly believe that a brand’s success depends on a clever, compelling advertising campaign. Such promotion is vital, but another consideration matters more to marketing professionals: What do consumers think about their brand, and what makes it special to them? Successful products and services benefit from powerful advertising and other branding activities, as well.
A brand is the meaning consumers attribute to the name of a product or service. Branding is embedding that specific idea in the minds of consumers. It includes the brand’s marketing messages, logo, packaging, where and how it is sold, its tweet references and Facebook “likes,” its placement in movies and everything else that communicates a message to consumers. Marketers who understand what type of branding works best for their specific goods have a competitive advantage. Brands must always fulfill their promises, which in the consumer’s mind are stated or implied in stories they’ve heard about the brand. Marketers must create “brand drivers” – that is, “a simple, sticky set of words or a phrase” – that best communicate a brand’s message.
Branding encompasses your company’s messages and consumer experiences, product functionality and customer service, and your social media presence and corporate social responsibility quotient.

“Relative Differentiation”

To gain a competitive edge, brands must be different. They must establish a “relative differentiation” that sets them apart from their rivals. Brands need consumers to discuss them in positive terms. Only products with energy and momentum can earn that crucial buzz. Like any successful person, a powerful brand must have a personality that explains, “who it is and why it’s motivated to do what it does.”
You must inspire consumers to tell positive stories about your brand. Authentic word of mouth generates powerful brand loyalty. Companies with great stories to tell can exploit social media in today’s “transparent, talkative marketplace.” Study and discern which branding channels you should leverage to promote your brand in this dynamic medium. Only utilize channels or networks “where [you] can play and win.”
Contemporary consumers – particularly young people – want to do business with companies that manifest a noble purpose. Consumers no longer care about purely commercial transactions. They want what they buy to matter. Brands that promise to make a positive contribution to solving some of the world’s problems will sell more – if they keep their word.

Special, Relevant and Energetic

The ad agency Young & Rubicam created a useful “proprietary, diagnostic tool,” the BrandAsset Valuator, to measure how a brand performs compared to “all other brands in the market,” not only those in its category, based on five criteria:

1. “Differentiation” – Your brand must be “unique.” Interact with your consumers to find out how they regard your brand differently from others in your market.
2. “Relevance” – How much does your brand differentiation matter to consumers? Your product or service must make the lives of your customers better over the long term.
3. “Esteem” – How much do consumers value your brand? Procter & Gamble (P&G) is a brand champion that consumers respect. Tide Dry Cleaners, which are retail operations, have succeeded, in part, because they can trade on the famous P&G product name, which evokes decades of proven experience in fabric care.
4. “Knowledge” – How familiar are consumers with your brand. Do they know and appreciate it? Engage them with stories that are simple, direct and easy to remember.
5. “Energy” – Is your brand “dynamic”? Can it “adapt and evolve”? Does it generate buzz on the web? Does it excite people? Those are your goals. As authors Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum state in their book That Used to Be Us, “Average is over.”

Who? Why? What? and How?

“Who stands for ‘truth, justice and the American way’?” It’s the comic book hero, Superman, who is “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.” The memorable, universally popular image of Superman, like any super brand, is a simple, focused, “sticky” idea. Superman’s persona and abilities fully define his brand.
Superman is a character and a brand people identify with immediately. Consumers – those who buy comic books and watch movies, and even those who don’t – understand exactly who and what the Superman brand represents. They support the elevated values the brand and the character exemplify. Superman is authentic. Define your brand and a “well-rounded set of character traits” that best describe it. Ensure that your staff understands, hones and never deviates from your brand traits. Those attributes make your brand promise a reality.
Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Barbra Streisand and Madonna are brands many people know, like and understand. Dylan, Jagger and Streisand exemplify the traditional approach to branding: Develop a carefully defined idea of what your brand represents, and consistently deliver on that concept. Consumers should know what to expect from your brand and they should always get it. During the course of her career, Madonna routinely reinvented her brand, her “musical self.” This regular transformation is part of her “brand’s DNA.” Madonna provides quality entertainment with an edge. Her own ultimate brand, she is always true to the values, aspects and identifiers she defined as intrinsic to that persona.

What a Brand Does

Every brand makes a promise to consumers; its actions define whether it keeps that promise. Brands that do not deliver on their promises fail. Companies must communicate their brand’s primary “intent through action.” Consumers care about that intent.
For example, Procter & Gamble demonstrates its good intentions. Through its popular Pampers-UNICEF program, P&G donates the cost of a child’s tetanus vaccine for every package of diapers it sells. “People are definitely embracing brands that are purpose-inspired and benefit-driven,” says Marc Pritchard, P&G’s global brand-building officer. “As such, over the years, we’ve taken the mantle of corporate social responsibility and put it into brand action.” The program works because P&G matches Pampers’ brand purpose – healthy babies – with protecting children from disease. Consumers understand and appreciate the link between Pampers and its “social purpose.”

Communicate Your Story

To ensure that your brand’s activities communicate its story, heed these tips:

• Make sure that consumers understand your brand’s purpose.
• Consumers’ experiences with your brand must align with that purpose.
• Hard research data can help you “guide your branding initiatives.” Trust your gut feelings about what works for your brand and what doesn’t.
• Your brand’s meaning matters a lot. Therefore, teach your workforce “what it means to ‘be the brand’.”
• When it comes to branding, execution is far more important than strategy.
• One negative experience with a brand lingers longer in consumers’ memories than 100 positive experiences.

Satisfied Customers

Word of mouth is a powerful promotional medium. Social media amplify word of mouth. Brand messages that go viral on the Internet become popular with millions of consumers. However, don’t think that you can just dial up a viral video on YouTube. That’s not how social media work. Attention spans are short, so getting people to pay attention to any single message is a challenge. Getting millions of people to do so online, eagerly, is infinitely more complex. Therefore, catching lightning in a bottle should not be your goal. Instead, “Do the right thing all the time.” Make sure that “every point of touch with your brand” is uniformly wonderful for consumers. Issue newsworthy branding messages that people will want to pass along.

“Branding Channels”

You want to tell consumers that your brand is different and special, but where should you communicate that message? Consider where your brand comes into contact with consumers. Which touchpoints have the most potential to make consumers feel good about your brand? Where can your brand create the maximum amount of brand awareness? With so many branding channels now available, these questions are hard to answer. To determine the best channels for your brand, do the following:

• You need a clear branding objective.
• Choose the right channels that reinforce your branding message. You must also develop your own branding channels, like packaging for your products or truck signs for your fleet vehicles.
• Quality branding requires careful planning. Make sure that “the medium, the moment and the message” work well together.
• Communicate your branding message to mass audiences through classic media options, such as television.
• Using coupons and placing your brand on the shelves (“end-caps”) at the end of a store’s aisle can contribute to your branding strategy.

Social Media

Consumers control the communication of your story. Get them on your side by delivering authentic information that interests them and that they’ll want to share. To communicate your brand message via social media, remember:

• You don’t control word of mouth. Benefit from it by heeding what others say about you and improving your brand accordingly.
• Make your branding story short and sweet so people can quickly and easily pass it on.
• People won’t share commonplace “branding experiences,” so be extraordinary.
• When you receive or intercept positive messages about your brand, thank the senders.

The Long Haul

Plan and prepare your branding campaign for the long haul, not just a short sprint. Never become complacent. Your competitors are right behind you, running as fast as they can to pass you. Maintain your focus on that race. Successful brands “never lose sight of their core meaning to people, but they need to keep identifying ways to stay competitive as the market moves forward,” says Stewart Owen, chief strategic officer at the mcgarrybowen advertising agency. To keep your eye on both the immediate bounce of the ball and the long-range game, remember:

• Don’t expect consumers to communicate precisely what they think brands in your sector should deliver. Do your field research.
• Even brands with a decades-long marketplace position must fight to remain continually relevant.
• Adopt a beta-mode mind-set for your brand – routinely improve and reinvent your brand to stay current and competitive.
• Maintain your balance during this constant evolution. Do not stray from your brand’s core meaning.
• You are not racing for a finish line. The branding race never ends.

About the Author

Allen P. Adamson, managing director of the New York office of global branding strategists Landor Associates, writes a bimonthly column for Forbes.com.

Quotes

• “The most powerful companies...are smart and acute enough to see what’s coming up next, what consumers want and need, and nimble enough to cover the turf...keeping in mind who they are and what they represent as brands.”
• “The marketplace is being rapidly and overwhelmingly commoditized, pushing innovators and manufacturers to turn things upside down and inside out in their search for the next new thing.”
• “A company’s purpose is to help people understand not just what sells, but what its brand stands for.”
• “To survive, let alone gain a leading edge, identifying something that consumers have never seen before and that they can really use is essential.”
• “Brand success takes a long-term view and is built on what consumers really want and can genuinely use to make their lives better in some substantial way.”
• “Mass marketing, when you do it right, is still an incredible opportunity, and remains a crucial part of brand building.”
• “Companies want their brands to be seen as having a purpose beyond the products or services they provide.”
• “Purpose is not simply a marketing program and should not be perceived or communicated as such.”
• “Consumers can see behind the curtain and want to align themselves with brands that align themselves with initiatives that make the world a better place.”
• “Who a company is and what it stands for can play a significant strategic role in helping consumers make purchase decisions.”
• “If a brand stays relevant but starts to lose what made it different, it will become a commodity.”
• “A brand’s persona must be genuinely relevant to the brand.”
• “Authenticity is one of the benchmarks of brand success.”
• “In branding there is no final destination. It’s a journey.”