What Makes A Good Brand?

What do you think of as a good brand? Why is the Nike swoosh so successful or Apple's apple? Some would say its the visual appeal others would say the product itself. My guess is in the short run the brand makes the product and in the long run the product makes the brand. The brand is a symbol of the company not just the product. Think about it what comes to mind when you see the BP symbol or in contrast the Red Cross. Therefore you can have a good brand but, you better back it up or it wont be good for long.

Rapid Product Growth

What causes a product to be introduced to a market then receive huge amounts of demand? For me I think of innovation, a new product that finds a niche in the market. At least that is an obvious way to look at it. But is there other considerations, ones that do not rely on a extremely creative unique idea. I think there are strategies for this.

One I came up with is better production. For  example you plan to introduce a brand competitor into the market. Lets say the already established product has some monopoly power in its market therefore they have upped the price and with no real competition they haven't been producing efficiently. When you introduce your product you make it considerably cheaper and of equal to or greater value. You can make it cheaper because unlike your competition you have figured out a less expensive way to make it. Then what happens you create ill-will for your competition's product and boom your product received rapid growth because you have just taken your competition's market from them.

The monopoly is an extreme example but I think the concept still stands if you can produce a product more efficiently then the competition and you introduce it to the market at a much lower price you should see rapid product growth.

Here are some examples of how a product grows:
http://www.ehow.com/way_5240458_product-growth-strategy.html

Product Recognition is Everything

Changing your image can have bad results. Reorienting your market strategy can help save a company or it can make it loose a bunch of money.

The first example is when Pepsi came out with a clear caffeine free Pepsi. For what ever reason this was a failure. Its main difference from regular successful caffeine free Pepsi was the fact it was clear. For some reason consumers did not not buy into that image, clear cola it is just weird.

Another example is Redstripe beer a Jamaican based beer company. This beer is widely available throughout the Caribbean, gulf of Mexico and in a great deal of areas its the only available beer so naturally the american consumer would see it at some point vacationing. It has an iconic red stripe on its label and comes in a short stout brown bottle. When it was first imported into the U.S. the company tried to market it in a green bottle because they thought it would have better results instead it failed. Then they tried importing it in the regular brown bottles and now it is a big success. This is just product recognition. Imagine if Coke changed its label green kind of freaky huh.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Stripe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Pepsi

Consumer Personalized Products

Have you used a service that lets you customize the product that you were buying. Examples of this are usually online like how Nike lets you design your own shoes.

I have done this before and I see it as a potentially powerful marketing research tool. For example what better way to decide what colors will go into a specific shoe line then actually seeing what people given real a choice of multiple colors will use for their shoes. After collecting data on the most popular colors you can see what statistically was most sought after.

Although this service could be costly for companies it can provide real life information. Seeing what people choose when they actually are spending money is different than asking them the hypothetical. It is much more accurate.

Example:

http://store.nike.com/us/en_us/?l=shop,nikeid

Pepsi and Coke Eternal Enemies?

Both Coke and Pepsi announced that they will put over 600 million each into advertising not to long ago. When I look at the Cola market I am reminded of the Butter Battle mentality or the Cold War mentality. Obviously these are the two cola super powers  competing for the same market. Really this is a oligopoly with two brand competitors.

That being said do these market conditions lead to the butter battle mentality this tit for tat decision making process. Meaning, what one side does has to be matched by the other or is there an alternative to competing like this. I think they will match each other till it no longer is economically practical and then they will still have the same proportions of the market as they always have had.

I relate this competition to the Cold War. Advertising is like their military's, it is the most obvious show of power but, what will win eventually for one side is what it does besides promotion, the other aspects of the marketing mix. Just like how the U.S. won the cold war it was because of success with everything else besides the military which led to the soviet union not being able to afford keeping up with the U.S. military.

Reference

http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/14/10383732-coke-and-pepsi-may-be-readying-another-cola-war?lite

Promotion

Maybe the most obvious aspect when we think of marketing is promotion. I like to think of it as the means in which your product or service is placed into the consumers thought. Think of it as a way to plant a seed, you can use a shovel, tractor, lay it on top of the ground, kick some dirt with your foot or any other way to plant a seed if you ponder it you can actually think of a bunch of ways.These all will have initial influence on the seeds success. After that the success of that seed will be determined by mainly a few things. These include location and the support it will receive in that location. To put this into promotional terms say you want to sell skateboards. If you advertise them in lets say Martha Stewart Living you are planting the seed in a terrible way and will not have much success to begin with. Now lets say you plant the seed in a better way like Thrasher Magazine a skateboard magazine that will be much more successful to begin with.. Next we consider location which isn't the actual place of the promotion but, the consumers mind. Since the planting process went well and the seed was planted in a good location it now is in a successful place to grow. A skateboarder is going to give far more consideration and thought to buying a new skateboard as time passes and eventually that plant will grow big enough to be harvested.