Reframing the Issue of a Bad Brand Name

One of the biggest obstacles to brand marketing success is a badly named brand. For both new marcom hires and marketing consultants, it is a difficult issue to raise, but, as few of us are hired to be yes-men, it is not an issue that should be avoided. The problem is compounded if the company’s founders came up with the brand name and little consideration has been given to it since the brand’s launch. How can you break the bad news to company leadership and get approval to embark on corporate renaming?

Make it a strategic naming decision

Embarking on a renaming project should not just be based on your subjective opinion or your desire to put your mark on the company.  Whatever the reasons, the key is to make it about customers, competition and building the brand strategy.  Before blurting out how bad the name is, ask yourself these questions.

1. Does the brand name reflect the brand promise, brand personality or brand position? If not, there may be marketing reasons to raise the subject.
2. Is the name mis-descriptive? Leading customers to the wrong impression? If so, gather some customer data and make it about the customer, not what is a good or bad name.
3. Are there cultural or linguistic issues with the name in current and planned expansion markets? Cultural and linguistic (including slang) issues impact the perception of your brand by your customers and its reputation. It is important for leadership to be made aware of these issues.
4. Can the name be protected and trademarked in current and planned expansion markets? If not, that’s a significant reason to get a change in gear.

Make company naming a business decision

Make the case that your company name is more then just a sign on the building.  A company name is an important element to building the virtuous circle of brand awareness, sales and customer loyalty.

1. A memorable name promotes awareness.
2. A name that is easy to spell and easy to say promotes word of mouth marketing.
3. A strong protectable trademark is a key weapon for business growth and success.

Get permission for a company naming investigation

Rather then try and sell the leadership on a wholesale and costly rebranding, it is wiser to get buy-in for a small study of team members, customers and prospects. Such a study can be done by anonymous emails, or informal interviews, and will help flag any brand name issues, the importance of the name to brand marketing success and lay the ground for informed decisions on renaming.

Canadian Tire Money from the Distility petty cash envelope.

Canadian Tire Money is an Iconic Brand Loyalty Program

Back in 1958, Canadian Tire launched a visionary loyalty program. It started giving its customers Canadian Tire Money equal to a fixed percentage when they used cash at Canadian Tire stores. To this day, Canadian Tire Money can be used like cash by customers on future purchases.

To call the Canadian Tire Money program successful would be an understatement. Canadian Tire Money is iconic. It has long been part of the Canadian lexicon. You would be hard pressed to find a Canadian who doesn’t know about the Canadian Tire brand and who doesn’t have a cache of Canadian Tire money in their wallet, a drawer or their glove compartment.

The Canadian Tire Money program pre-dates the now common brand loyalty programs that feature some sort of a brand currency or points. It has become standard fare for loyalty programs to consist of a points card which tracks spending and offers a discount, rebate, a “free” flight or reward merchandise once enough points are accumulated. Up until now, one distinct feature of the paper Canadian Tire Money program is that, unlike the modern digital age loyalty programs offered by many retailers, customers don’t need to sign up, don’t need to carry a plastic loyalty card and don’t have their shopping habits tracked.

On February 15, 2012, Canadian Tire announced a change to the Canadian Tire Money loyalty program. The changes can be seen as modernizing their brand loyalty program, but, with such a successful program, we do think that it is wise that Canadian Tire is approaching the changes with caution and is introducing changes slowly using a pilot project approach. The new program – Canadian Tire Money Advantage program – launches as a pilot program in Nova Scotia on February 24, 2012 offering customers two options.

• Customers have the option to collect Canadian Tire Money Advantage points electronically with a new loyalty card or key chain fob.
• Customers not participating in the program can still collect Canadian Tire Money in paper form as it has existed for 54 years.

Time will tell if the Canadian Tire brand will be strengthened or weakened by its brand loyalty program change. The key to success of any loyalty program is thinking about customers, and ensuring that customers are kept in mind when implementing significant changes. The Canadian Tire approach to changing their brand loyalty program includes three important aspects for brands to consider before making a change to their brand loyalty programs.

1. Brands need to be careful not to alienate their loyal customers and brand fans.

A brand loyalty program is about customer retention and loyalty, and forcing customers to adopt a significant change risks customers deciding to try out competitors. Giving customers the option to stay with the old is a good way to minimize the risk of alienating loyal customers. Customers prefer to make choices for themselves and not having changes imposed on them.

For the time being, Canadian Tire is not getting rid of paper Canadian Tire Money.  Customers can choose to continue to receive and use the paper Canadian Tire Money. As a result, customers, who don’t want to sign up for the new program, don’t have too.  This will also ensure customers who have a stockpile, drawer or glove-compartment full of the stuff don’t get up in arms about having their money become obsolete.

2. Brands changing a loyalty program are wise to offer customer experience enhancements.

The new loyalty program sticks with the idea of Canadian Tire Money, but offers two enhancements.

• The convenience of collecting and tracking it on a loyalty card or key fob. This is an enhancement since storing, finding and remembering to bring Canadian Tire Money to the store is a customer pain point.

• Canadian Tire Money will be given out at a higher percentage for qualifying purchases collected on the new Canadian Tire loyalty card or key fob, then if the Canadian Tire Money is collected in paper form.

3. B2C brands are wise to get actual customer feedback before a full-scale launch.

Canadian Tire is using a Pilot Program to test before any Canada-wide launch. This is wise. Changing a popular and iconic loyalty program is not without risks. Customers will quickly realize that the new loyalty cards and fobs will allow data to be collected about their shopping habits. The Canadian Tire paper money system did not require customers to sign up, subject themselves to data collection and allowed the paper money to be given to others. This lack of customer data collection lends a real pre-digital age charm to the current Canadian Tire Money program. Overall, we do believe that many brands risk customer back-lash as their personal data is collected, aggregated and used by brands for targeted marketing and sales intelligence purposes; it is insidious how much data is being collected on consumer shopping habits and how little is given in terms of loyalty points (which can also be seen as paying consumers with their own money) in return.

The new loyalty program will be initially launched as pilot program in Nova Scotia. Having devised its loyalty program modernization, it makes sense to get actual customer feedback. A pilot program allows Canadian Tire to do that and make changes or even abandon a full-scale roll-out if customers don’t like it.

Inbound marketing is a marketing strategy that focuses on having customers and potential customers find you.  This approach is a sharp departure from traditional marketing strategy which focuses on finding customers by building brand awareness through advertising, promotion and contacting prospects (that you have identified) directly.

When inbound marketing is effective, it is a fantastic way of harnessing the reach of the internet; it is the dream of your ideal customer seeking you out and your team working to convert the ideal lead into a sale.  However, like all marketing strategies, to be successful inbound marketing requires careful planning, sufficient resources and persistence.

Favourite Inbound Marketing Tools

At Distility, we believe in inbound marketing and we practice what we preach.  The following is a list of our favourite inbound marketing tools which we use to support our inbound marketing efforts.  None of the inbound marketing tool vendors listed are giving us free or discounted subscriptions, services or stuff in exchange for being listed; our love was earned by the usefulness of their tools.

1. Distility 1Page Brand Strategy

Every tool you use, every idea put through the tool, needs to be based on your brand strategy. We use our own 1Page Brand Strategy  as our brand strategy plan which allows us to to keep our team “on brand”.

2. HubSpot — All-in-One Marketing Software

We are in our third year with HubSpot. Their software allows our team to run a big marketing machine with the least effort. Their tools and training are what allow us to get more traffic and web leads then many of our larger competitors.

3. WordPress — Website and Blogging Platform

WordPress is easy to use. Easy to set-up. Our WordPress site is loved by the search engines and built to optimize speed and avoid security holes.

4. Mailchimp — Email Marketing

We use Hubspot for our lead nurturing, but no one beats MailChimp when it comes to email. They have fantastic branding too!

5. HootSuite — Social Media Dashboard

Every day Distility President Margaret Sims, uses HootSuite as our Social Media hub. Setting up tweets and engaging with our audience.

6. Rapportive — Rich profiles in gmail

A plug in for our Google Apps Premium accounts, Rapportive, allows us to instantly get a social media snapshot of people we are emailing. A great way to see the latest from team members, partners and prospects.

7. Batchbooks – Social CRM

Batchblue’s Batchbooks helps us track contacts and deals in our pipeline. Social Media is baked into the product giving the sense you are looking at people, not just data. Batchbooks is intuitive, flexible, and powerful, with an iPhone App to boot! What more could you ask from your CRM.

8. Zippykid.com — managed WordPress hosting

Site speed is a critical ingredient for ranking high in search and giving our audience instant satisfaction. Zippy Kid is optimized just for WordPress sites like distility.com and uses a Content Distribution Network to ensure our content is blazingly fast. Since moving to Zippy Kid distility.com has a Google Page Speed score of 94. What’s your score?

Do you have favourite tools that help you do more with less? Let us know.

Logo & Wordmarks – What’s the Difference?

At Distility, we design wordmarks, not logos. A logo is a graphic symbol which represents a brand. A wordmark is a text-only typographic representation which is built from the letters in the brand name.

Pepsi has a logo-driven design. Cola-Cola is a pure wordmark.

Three Reasons Why Wordmarks are Part of Pragmatic Brand Marketing.

We offer these arguments in favour of wordmark design:

1. Wordmarks are easier to legally protect,
2. Typical customers (not designers) can rarely recall anything other than billion dollar logos, and
3. Of the 2010 Fortune 100 corporate brand signatures, 64 are wordmarks.

Logo Design is a Waste — the Proof.

Logos are never used to brand movies. Only wordmarks. Search “Movie Posters” right now and you will see thousands of wordmarks and no logo designs. And if by some slim chance you see a movie poster with a logo… it is for a superhero movie.

So the question we ask of you, if you have a logo, or love to create them, is “Why would we ever recommend a logo design to a client?”

We’re honestly curious to know your thoughts. (And we have open minds.) Logos can be visually inspiring, and it is too bad that we can’t, in good conscience, recommend them to our clients.

Through our technology clients, we were fortunate to have had early exposure to the new wave of programming that began about a decade ago and prominently features the concept of the “minimum viable product”.

A minimum viable product only has the features that allow the product to be functional but nothing more. This allows it to get early customer feedback before the development team invests in extra features customers may not want. Proponents of the approach believe it is the most efficient way to develop successful software.

We love the pragmatism inherent in this approach, and, in this post, we offer what we see as the key requirements for a minimum viable brand.

Minimum viable brand requirements

Business strategy

• What are you selling?
• Who are you selling to?
• Who do you compete against?
• How do you plan to win?

Brand strategy

• Brand Promise: your team’s passion fused with the customer need.
• Brand Personality: The style with which you deliver.
• Brand Position: The space you seek to occupy in the customer’s mind.

Brand system

• Brand name that customers can pronounce, that has no negative cultural or linguistic connotations, and that will not invite legal challenges from competitors or other entities.
• A basic brand system consisting of:
• A URL,
• A wordmark, even if just the brand name in Helvetica or another chosen font,
• A colour palette,
• A font to be used consistently in all communications, and
• Simple guidelines that detail how to use the brand system.
• Commitment from all team members to use your chosen brand system.

In addition, a tag-line and branded imagery are a high quality addition, but not essential for a minimum viable brand.

Digital System

• A clean, typographically driven, one page website, with the means for visitors to contact the company.

Business System

• Business Cards: Typographically driven.
• Letterhead.

Brand Education

• A meeting to ensure the team understands the brand strategy, and guidelines for the use of the name, colours, etc.

Brand Fidelity System

• A method to learn if the brand strategy is being applied consistently. For instance, someone who approves all customer facing communications.

Brand Monitoring System

• A method to get feedback from customers on their experience of the brand, so that the brand can be continuously improved.

What else?

Depending on the nature of the business, there will be other minimum requirements. For instance, a store-front business requires signage.

What do you think? For your business, is there something we could remove from the minimum viable brand list? Or something that must be added?
 

During our Distiliy 1day1brand events, participants ask: “When we are developing our brand strategy today, should we be thinking of the brand we are now? Or the brand we aspire to be?”

For instance, one client has a multimillion dollar capitol project that won’t be completed for three years. Should that be factored into the brainstorm about the improved brand? Or is that too far into the future? The answer depends on the state of your brand.

The Neglected Brand

For clients with great products but neglected branding, we recommend that they focus on credible capabilities they have now or will have by the brand launch. There is no need to gaze into the future to unlock a winning brand promise, position and personality.

The Brand Transformation

For clients with healthy brands undergoing a major transformation, we still recommend that they focus on current authentic, credible attributes.  However, we will also allow for more forward looking ideas, so that the brand faces more to the future than the past. This allows some stretch room for the brand. Even so, we insist that these clients stress test their brand strategy. It cannot be anything other than authentic and credible to truly succeed.

Don’t begin creating your brand advertising until you are clear on your brand strategy.

Your brand strategy — brand promise, brand position, brand personality — is your strategy for being known in the mind of your customer.  When it comes time to create brand advertising campaigns, it is important to ensure that your campaign embody your brand strategy.  To do that, we recommend that you:

• ensure that you are clear on your brand strategy,
• are explicit in identifying, and deciding on, whether your brand promise, brand position, brand personality (or some combination of these brand strategy elements) will drive the brand advertising campaign,
• ensure your brand strategy is actually embodied in the final brand advertising campaign.

1. Brand Advertising based on Brand Position.

Position-driven brand advertising is all about positioning your brand in the mind, relative to a brand category and other brands in the category. Because the mind remembers differences, this style of position-driven advertising remains a pillar of the advertising world. It is usually feature oriented — #1, first, biggest, fastest, etc. — and so may be more intellectual than emotional at the core.

Classic examples of position based advertising include:

• Avis — “We’re number two. We try harder.” — Against #1 Hertz;
• Pepsi — “The Pepsi Challenge” — Against #1 Coke-Cola;
• Burger King — “Have it Your Way” — Against #1 McDonalds.

Current examples of position-driven brand advertisements include:

• BMW — “The Ultimate Driving Machine” — As #1 in luxury automobile category
• Samsung — the “Next Big Thing is Already Here” against the Apple iPhone (see our post on “Viral Videos“)
• Audi — “Not BMW” — Against other German automobile brands

Audi Positioning – Driven TV Ad

2. Brand Advertising based on Brand Promise.

Promise-driven brand advertising uses the brand promise which — if well formulated — is magnetic to the audience’s need.  Unlike Positioning-based advertising, promise driven brand advertising need not reference the competition. This makes it lower risk in terms of potential legal action from competitors. It can also give these campaigns greater longevity.

Well known promise-driven advertising include:

• Walmart — “Save Money. Live Better.”
• Mastercard — “Priceless”
• Harley Davidson — “Freedom”

Mastercard “Priceless” promising priceless experiences

3. Personality-driven Brand Advertising

Purely brand personality-driven advertising is for firms and products where style — not position or promise — is the driving force behind message. Certain fragrances, automobiles, even insurance companies are using this approach to get noticed.  In addition, one class of brands who often employ a purely personality-driven brand advertising are referred to as “brand-washers”; brand-washers are firms whose products provide little or negative value. For example tobacco companies that use ruggedness or sexiness as personality traits to create brand advertising.

Some examples of personality-driven brand advertising include:

• Charles Shwab — “Talk to Chuck” — Straight-shooter personality
• Mountain Dew — Daring & spirited personality
• Levi’s — Rebellious personality

Your favourite Brand Advertising

What is your favourite brand advertisement? Is it based on a brand promise? brand position? or brand personality?

A company should strive to rebrand as infrequently as possible.

By doing a rock-solid job on brand strategy and brand systems, your brand should be vibrant for at least ten years or more. After that time, your strategy may be the same but your systems (logo, tagline, colours, fonts, imagery) may require a refresh. Even this may not be needed if your brand designer created an original “timeless” design for you. For example, the Paul Rand design of the IBM logo, has remained virtually unchanged since 1972.

IBM Logo as designed by Paul Rand in 1972

When is it time to rebrand? Find out in our post:”When is it Time to Rebrand?”

Is a corporate rebrand in your future?

If you are reading this, then your brand, or the brand of someone you know, is on your mind.
You may be thinking: “Our brand looks dated, at a time when we need to look current.” If this is you, you need to consider a product or corporate rebrand. That means refreshing or rebooting your brand strategy and brand systems — logo, colours, tagline, font, imagery — the overall experience of your brand.

Reasons for rebranding

Before you embark on a costly rebranding journey ask yourself:

• Are you just bored?
• Is rebranding solving the wrong problem?
• Is this what the customer wants?
• Will this surely increase awareness, loyalty and sales?
• Is this just someone’s vanity project?

Here in Toronto, our beloved Toronto Blue Jay’s baseball team spent fifteen years rebranding, only to announce that it will revert in 2012 to the “classic” design that launched the brand in 1977. The National Post piece “Toronto Blue Jays logos through the years” chronicles 25 years of the Blue Jays logo’s history.

2012 Toronto Blue Jays Logo

Branding was never the problem for the Blue Jays. We love the classic 1977 Blue Jays logo. We also love the 2012 Blue Jays Logo. Unfortunately, all the rebranding projects in between were unnecessary. However, this pales in comparison to the 2010 PR disaster the GAP inflicted upon itself when it tried to change its logo.

As much as a product  or corporate rebrand can seem exciting at the time, there is a real risk that it is a waste of money or worse that it can come across as a superficial veneer for a weak brand. A brand is the sum total of an organization’s reputation. A superficial rebranding which amounts to creating a new logo can distract from the real hard work of pleasing customers and employees.

When building your brand, the look of your brand does matter. However, of far greater concern is your business strategy and your brand strategy. Answering yes to one or more of the following questions indicates rebranding may actually be needed.

• Has your audience (target customer) changed?
• Has what you are selling changed?
• Has your competition changed.

An affirmative answer to any of these questions indicates, in essence, that your current business is competing with yesterday’s brand. This is an important reason to rebrand urgently! But here, the change may just be required in brand strategy: brand promise, brand personality, and brand position. Brand systems like your logo may be perfectly fine as they are. In fact, changing your logo may be a waste of resources. Before you rebrand, ask yourself “Brand Analysis, Strategy, Systems: What do you Need?”

Canadians love coffee. Coffee is the #1 beverage for adults in Canada. The average Canadian drinks almost 50% more coffee than their U.S. neighbours. Most Canadians also love Tim Hortons. It is arguably Canada’s most beloved brand. Tim Hortons has built its brand on a well executed brand strategy. Tim Hortons promises freshness. Their personality is small town friendly. Their position is great value. In our Distility 1day1brand workshops, Tim Hortons is one of our go-to examples; Distility 1day1brand participants learn about brand promise, brand personality and brand position by comparing Tim Hortons and Starbucks.

Tim Hortons brand changes make headlines in Canada.

Given the Tim Hortons brand popularity, it is no wonder that its announced cup size change is considered newsworthy. Yes, for our readers outside Canada, you didn’t misread the last sentence, a coffee cup size change is making headlines and even the evening news.

Tim Hortons is changing the name of their hot cup sizes on January 24, 2012, so that extra-large became large, large became medium, medium became small and small became extra-small. In the troubling “super-sizing” trend, it has also introduced a new 24 ounce extra-large size. The change doesn’t include a pricing increase. The price of each size is staying the same – just the name of size is changing. The stated reason for the change is to make room to offer that 24 ounce giant cup of coffee that some customers said they wanted.

Tim Hortons branding change show it is thinking about the Customer Experience.

Beyond the super-sized coffee cup, the change is at its core all about customer experience and ensuring that the customer experience reinforces the Tim Hortons brand position of great value. As the larger size cups of other chains (Starbucks, McCafé, Second Cup, etc.) become the norm, Tim Hortons cups sizes have gotten out of sync with its competition. Prior to the change, a Tim Hortons “large” cup was the size of its competitors’ “medium” cup. The change will make Tim Horton cup size names more in line with its competition.

While it may seem to be an insubstantial change and that cup size names don’t really matter, a brand which is built on great value is not built if customers perceive that they are getting less.

The lesson is that all aspects of the customer experience is important. It is all the aspects of the brand experience (large and small) that can add up to make or break your brand. To endure, a brand must keep its eye on the competition and trends in its category, never lose sight of the customer experience and always deliver on their brand’s promise, position and personality.