The Ink Blot

A Brand and Branding

Harvey Jenkins — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:58:04 -0700

So what exactly is a brand? I’ll give you a hint: it’s not a company’s advertising or logo. Those things are controlled by the company. Instead, a brand is the customer’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company. People create brands to bring order out of clutter.

There really is no other word that can truly encapsulate the richness and complexity of this concept. “Reputation” is the only word that comes close. Your personal reputation, like your company’s brand, lies outside your control. The best you can do is influence it since it’s not what YOU say it is—it’s what THEY say it is.

Now, if a brand is a customer’s gut feeling, then what in the world is branding? In short, it’s a company’s effort to build lasting value by delighting customers. Although the formulas for measuring brand value are complex, the goal of branding is simple: to delight customers so that MORE people buy MORE things for MORE years at a HIGHER price. There is a karmic side to branding. Say, for example, a company promises more than it delivers, its brand will suffer, which will cause the opposite effect: FEWER people buy FEWER things for FEWER years at a LOWER price. Companies serve at the pleasure of their customers.

Clutter and Barriers to Competition

Harvey Jenkins — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:56:41 -0700

Today’s competition—competition that’s so pervasive we can’t even see it—doesn’t come from direct or even indirect competitors. It comes from the extreme clutter of the marketplace. There are five forms of clutter: (1) product clutter which is too many products and services, (2) feature clutter which is too many features in each product, (3) advertising clutter which is too many media messages, (4) message clutter which is too many elements per message, and (5) media clutter which is too many competing channels.

So how does the human mind deal with clutter? Simple—by blocking most of it out. Stuff that does manage to get in, those items that seem most interesting and useful, are labeled and stored in little mental boxes. Once a label goes on and a box is filled, the mind resists making changes to it. This simple fact has a profound effect on how businesses now compete.

To sustain success, companies have always needed to build barriers to competition. The barriers to competition have moved from the physical to the intellectual, and from within the company’s control to outside of it. Let me explain.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution ownership of the means of production was the favored barrier. If a company had a knitting machine and its competitors didn’t, the company with the machine usually won.

When most companies had machines, the barrier to competition became the factory. If a company could afford to own and manage a large factory with conveyor-belt efficiencies and trained employees, the company with the factory won.

Later, when many companies had factories, access to capital became the barrier to competition. If a company could raise capital by putting its factory up as collateral or selling shares, the company with capital won. As the economy began to shift from manufacturing to information, the barrier moved from monetary capital to intellectual capital. If a company had copyrights and patents to keep competitors from reproducing its products and processes, the company with patents won.

Today, there are cracks in the intellectual capital barrier. As companies leapfrog each other in a constant race to innovate, yesterday’s patents are losing their value. Not only that, using intellectual property as a barrier can sometimes hurt companies rather than help them, since it can slow the growth of the business ecosystem s that allow them to thrive. An example of this is Apple Computer’s early decision to keep its operating platform closely held while Microsoft’s standard platform swept the field.

Now, the battlefield is moving again. While intellectual property, access to capital, and manufacturing efficiencies are still important, the newest barrier to competition are the mental walls that customers build to keep out clutter. For the first time in history, customers, not companies, control the most powerful barriers to competition. The boundaries of brands are determined by those little boxes they erect in their minds.

Made is America?

Harvey Jenkins — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 06:43:13 -0700

My wife is expected to bring our first son into the world any day now so as you can image the past few months have been filled with lots of baby shopping. Being a marketer I look at store displays, ads, labels and even materials while shopping and I can’t help but notice how many of our products come with “Made In China” branding. I’m from the Pacific Northwest, a place known for good seafood. Where I grew up there was a shallow creek that you could catch salmon bare-handed. A few days ago I was preparing a fillet of salmon for my wife and as I’m reading the packaging I notice that my salmon is a “Product of China”. That’s extreme, I thought to myself. I’m living in California and with my home state of Washington a hop way and here I am eating salmon from China.

It seems to me that some executives do not have a good understanding of long-term profitability. It’ll take me just a few more sentences and a simply diagram to sum it up. In grade-school we all learned about the cycle of life. That same cycle applies to the flow of money in any community. The flow can’t just go one-way or the resource will eventually dry-up. Buying locally is vitally important to a healthy community. It keeps resources in the place of consumption so that it can be recycled. If the resource is consumed in American and then transferred to China’s cycle then it is not recycled and it cannot be reused. If it is not recycled then it will eventually be transferred completely to a place that does not benefit the community or nation in the long-run. In short; if the resources leave the community that support the company then eventually the company will cease to exist because the community will no longer have the resources to support it. If we’re displacing a penny every time a dollar is cycled through the community then after a hundred revolutions we won’t have anything left. This analogy is missing other variables that make that dollar last a little bit longer but you get the picture.

A Brand is Built on Love

Harvey Jenkins — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Why does your organization exist? Is it to make money by any means possible? Are you in the business of reaching for your clients’ wallet before you reach their trust, hearts or mind? I doubt that any organization would admit that they are in the business of earning a quick buck by creating a lust for products and services that are of no value and serve no purpose. I’m sure that it’s not intentional but that is what happens when businesses look first at the wallet of potential customer instead of looking at the need of the individual. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even hard. It’s a change in the way you think. It’s treating human-beings with the respect and care deserved at every level and at every opportunity. If you offer a product or service that fulfils the need of another human-being why not act like it. Genuinely present your product or service in a way that shows how much you care. Be genuine and be respectful. Love your customer, client and neighbor and watch how much your brand will grow.