How positioning works for multiple stakeholders

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

Positioning is a strategic concept that’s been around for decades, but most people get it wrong. In the healthcare industry, it can be even more complicated with very different types of stakeholders: Payers, healthcare providers, patients, caregivers etc. How do you use positioning in the healthcare space? Or in any space where there is a complex web of stakeholders? (I use stakeholders, because not all of them “buy” from you, but all of them influence and have a say in deciding and paying for your product or service) Should you have one positioning or multiple positionings? In this blog post, I’ll break it down for you and at the end of it, you’ll be able to wield this tool to help you in your marketing and communications efforts as you build your brand.

Definition

You know this, but it’s worthwhile to get on the same page about its definition: Positioning is capturing a specific place in the mind of the consumer (in our case, the stakeholders). And since brand is the feeling and perception anyone has about your product, service and company, positioning is THE strategic tool to build that brand, to create that feeling.

Positioning principles

By adhering to these four principles, it gives you the greatest opportunity to capture that position in the minds of your stakeholders.

1. Specific

   Your positioning needs to be concise and sharp. When you are trying to be known for everything, you will become known for nothing. So the key here is to cut things out, not pile things on.

2. Relevant

   Whatever you stand for, it needs to be what your stakeholders care about. It needs to fit into their current context and what they are trying to accomplish. So instead of me, me, me, think them, them, them.

3. Differentiating

   The key point of positioning is to stand apart from your competition. Lean into something your competition is not being perceived as and have the courage to zig when everyone else is zagging.

4. Sustainable

   Long term defendability. Whatever your positioning is, it needs to be continuously defendable. So whether it’s adequately resourcing your positioning or a bullet proof portfolio of patients, base it on something that can withstand the test of time and competition.

Brand level positioning

At the highest level, you need to have a positioning that spans all your stakeholders. Yes, ONE positioning that go across all your stakeholders. By looking across your stakeholders and finding a common, homogenous need, you can position your brand accordingly. In healthcare, while payers, healthcare providers and patients have specific needs, you can start to create one segment by defining the collective issue they all grapple with that your brand uniquely solves. Iterate until you can find the most specific, relevant, differentiating and sustainable positioning.

Example:

1st iteration - an infectious disease test for those in need of a diagnosis

2nd iteration - a quick turnaround infectious disease test for those who are the most vulnerable

3rd iteration - the most direct route to an infectious disease diagnosis for the immunocompromised

Stakeholder level positioning

Once you have positioning at the highest level for the brand, you can then focus on each stakeholder group. In order to make your positioning uber-specific, you will want to target specific segments within each stakeholder group, addressing each specific issue:

• What type of immunocompromised patients? How far along are they in their diagnostic journey?

• What kind of lab directors? What kind of tests do they currently have? How do they make their decisions?

• What kind of infectious disease physicians? What is their approach? What kind of decision making power do they have?

• What type of payers? Are these integrated delivery networks? What about employers? Which types of employers?

By understanding these target segments, you can then operate within the brand level positioning to craft something very specific for each segment. This will then guide messaging and campaigns to communicate your offer distinctly, while still aligning to a higher level brand positioning.

Conclusion

Positioning as a tool and strategy allows us to capture that specific place in the minds of our stakeholders, and by going this process, you can be targeted to each stakeholder group and yet build brand equity at the highest level.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

The 5 principles of a healthy brand

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

The purpose of a brand is to achieve the highest perceived value possible and a healthy brand is able to sustain this kind of performance amidst external forces. In this blog post, I’ll share the five principles of healthy brands, after helping build brands in healthcare for almost a decade.

A healthy brand may or may not be in the health & wellbeing industry, but the health & wellbeing of a brand is key to be continuously high performing.

Principle 1: Stability

Everything begins with a strong foundation of the brand. From positioning to personality and purpose, the core of the brand needs to be an unwavering north star so decisions can be made consistently in service of building brand equity. The market and the competition is going to fluctuate and change, but without a stable core, your brand is going to go where the wind blows–average, bland, uninspiring… Consider iconic brands you know (the Nikes of the world), they are unwavering, and because they lean into a human truth, they are timeless.

Principle 2: Congruency

Brands are like people. If you are incongruent where your actions don’t match your desires, you feel uneasy, your gut tells you something is off, you are unhappy. Brands are the same way. If its actions don’t match its promise, if its expression doesn’t match its personality, your audience and your customers can sniff it out immediately. Congruency is also where a brands memorability and power comes from. Patagonia is congruent–from its backstory to how it communicates, to its CSR programs, it seeks to match its outside with its inside as much as possible, as often as it can.

Principle 3: Tenacity

For a brand to be healthy, it needs to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Why? Because standing apart from the competition means you need to zag when others zig. It’s uncomfortable to stand out from the crowd. And if god forbid you need to do something different in order to stay relevant with the prevailing culture, that’s really painful. But no brands can be loved if it doesn’t do something true to their purpose even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it means sticking to your guns. When CVS renamed to CVS Health in 2014, they pulled tobacco products from their shelves, the investor and business community called it suicide, immediately losing billions of dollars in revenue. It was uncomfortable, but guess what? It was on brand and it delivered real impact.

Image from: https://causemarketing.com/case-study/cvs-health-last-pack-case-study/

Principle 4: Adaptability

In order for the brand to stay relevant, it needs to be constantly listening and adapting. The why remains constant, but the how can change. When a brand is so full of itself, drinking its own “Kool-aid” and blaming its customers for not doing what they are “supposed to do”, it’s in trouble, the ego of the brand is taking over. Much like people, when ego drives decisions, disaster awaits. Brands like Toys’R’Us, Blackberry, Kodak… the list goes on where the lack of adaptability dooms the brand. When you are not willing to change with your customers, you will be left behind. It’s that simple.

Principle 5: Grow-ability

Ok, I made this word up, but it doesn’t mean it’s any less important! A healthy brand is constantly seeking improvement, serving more people and serving them better. Tony Robbins says it best “If you are not growing, you are dying” and this applies to brands so well. Even if a brand seeks to maintain its brand equity, it has to grow, because nothing around it stays the same.

Conclusion

By putting together the right people and leaders, the right processes and governance, the right technologies and competencies, these five principles can be used to build a healthy brand that will drive peak performance even in the worst of times.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

How to get your sick brand healthy again

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

Your sales numbers are not on target.

Your audience is not engaging or taking action, let alone buying.

Your content have not been working.

Your target segment is bouncing from your website.

Your media pitches are not landing.

What is going on? It can be very frustrating when it seems everything you are doing makes sense, but the metrics tell you that it’s not working. Instead of trying to fix everything, it’s necessary to pinpoint the real issue. Here is a three step framework for you:

The Healthy Brand Diagnostic Framework

STEP 1: COLLECT

Taking the time to look at all the metrics so far sets the stage for us to understand how the brand is performing. Pull together information across all the dimensions of activity:

• Pre-purchase

  Advertising, landing pages, content marketing, PR, anything that comes before a purchase. Is your audience coming into the funnel? Is a healthy percent of them progressing towards purchase? You’ll want to scrutinize the metrics across all the pre-purchase activities.

• Purchase

  How is your product or service bought? What is the contracting process? What are all the touch points needed for a customer to buy? Mapping these out and understanding what’s working and whats not will help us make decisions on what to do about them next.

• Post-purchase

  Once the product or service is obtained, are they being utilized? Are you retaining your customers or are they buying more from you? Is the experience of the product and service matching the expectations before the sale? This is where the rubber meets the road.

STEP 2: CONSIDER

Once you have all the qualitative and quantitative data in place, it’s time to consider and figure out what is actually happening. Generating hypotheses is the key activity in this stage.

1. Is there an awareness problem? (meaning we are not getting many people into the funnel, but once they are there, they are progressing nicely)

2. Is there a targeting problem? (meaning the “wrong” segments is receiving your ads and message, so you don’t see any pull through)

3. Is there a messaging and consistency of content problem? (meaning the audience is not clicking through, or when they do, they don’t stick around)

4. Is there a technology problem? (meaning the tech stack you have in place is not working, where the complexity or disjointedness of the system is letting customers fall through the cracks or receiving non-relevant messages)

5. Is there a training problem? (meaning customers buy it but fail to utilize it consistently)

6. Is there a visibility problem? (meaning customers use it and love it, but that experience is invisible to non-customers)

7. Is there a positioning problem? (meaning the product or service is great, but doesn’t meet the expectation of the target segment or it fails to be distinguished from the competition)

8. Is there a brand personality problem? (meaning the tone and the creative expression of the product and service just doesn’t fit with the target audience’s own persona)

9. Is there a product/ service problem? (meaning the experience of the product or service is just poor)

STEP 3: CLASSIFY

This is where we focus on the key problems to solve. By mapping all the problems on a 2x2 matrix (Figure 1 below).

Figure 1: CLASSIFICATION MATRIX

On the Y-axis is IMPACT and the X-axis is RESOURCES. The four quadrants will help you to focus.

1. ACT NOW: these are the problems that have high impact and low resources, where it doesn’t take a relatively heavy lift and solving it would mean making other problems easier to solve or sometimes even a pre-requisite. (For example repositioning a product or service, since all the messaging and creative expression will depend on the new positioning).

2. PLAN: these are the problems that have high impact and may require high resources, where you need to solve them, but it will take relatively high financial and time commitments. (For example retooling a product or improving a service) One consideration is to brainstorm ways to solve the problem in a less resource intensive way, pushing it to the ACT NOW quadrant.

3. OPPORTUNISTIC: since these are problems that have low impact and require low resources, look for ways to solve them as part of the current work. How can we get them resolved through the work we are already doing? (An example is updating digital copy or design).

4. ABANDON: say no more, if it’s relatively resource intensive and doesn’t really do much, don’t worry about it!

By going through the three step framework, you will arrive at a set of key problems to solve and when to solve it. Good luck on building healthy brands!

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

Your logo is not supposed to tell the whole brand story

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

Logos are extremely important when building a brand. When you think about brands that have achieved iconic status, the mere mention of the brand name will conjure up the logo.

Apple

McDonalds

CocaCola

Nike

But notice that every one of these logos do not tell the entire story of the brand. Logos have a very specific purpose. It needs to be memorable. It’s the symbol that will evoke all the memories, feelings and perceptions accumulated in your mind from every touch point it has with you. From advertising (polar bears sharing a coke at Christmas time), product packaging (lifting a tab and the ipad delightfully falls into your hands), to celebrity endorsements (Lebron James dunking a ball with his new kicks), the logo is meant to capture all of that everytime you see it or think about the need it fills.

The best logos:

1. Scale to difference sizes

Billboards, websites, favicon, social avatars, hoodies, mugs… your logo is/ can be used across different mediums and should scale appropriately without losing resolution. If a logo is too complex, it makes it very challenging to be used, which limits it’s visibility and thus defeats its purpose.

2. Are simple, yet differentiated

The ones most memorable are the ones people can draw. Ask anyone to draw the Nike swoosh and you’ll probably get it them 90% right. Ask people to draw the Puma logo and you’ll probably get more wrongs than rights. The challenge with a simple logo is the ability to be differentiated. This is where you have to think about the category and industry, making sure that it stands out from its competition, not from all the brands in the world.

3. Reflects the essence of the brand

It is in the end THE symbol for the brand. Understanding the essence of the brand and making sure the logo reflects that is fundamental, but it’s not always the case. It requires first of all the uncovering of the brands essence, a strategic process that most brands skip… going straight to design -> FAIL.

4. Surprise and delight

In neuroscience, anything that evokes an emotion or additional senses help the mind to more likely create a long-term memory. Reinforcement of that memory through repeated recall keeps the memory from being erased. When logos have an easter egg, a hidden surprise, it becomes more memorable. Go look at the FedEx logo (find the arrow) and the GM logo (find the electrical plug). Be delighted.

5. Make a point

Instead of telling the whole story, the logo can be designed to make a point. ONE POINT. It could be the legacy of the brand, it could be the personality of the brand, or it could be the value proposition of the brand (look at the Amazon logo -> everything you need from A to Z) is in the logo! If there is a very specific point you want the logo to make, design it into the symbol, but don’t forget the other points!

Your logo is not supposed to tell the whole brand story, it’s job is to remind people of THE BRAND STORY.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

Why branding fails

If you want to get notified of new posts and get a free bonus, click HERE

A brand is the feeling and perception somebody has about your product, your company, and your service. Branding is an intentional and consistent process of imprinting your brand story into the marketplace. And it's using every single touch point, but branding cannot solve everything. Sometimes branding does fail, and here are the top 10 reasons why.

Full transcript:

#10: NO BRANDING INSIGHTS

Your branding fails because there is no substantial insight to stand on. If you do not understand the audience you're trying to serve, and there's no core insight to make the decisions that you need to make, I can't help you.

#9: SALES, MARKETING AND COMMS ARE MISALIGNED

When these important channels of your company are frankly not connected and going in all different directions. It is very difficult to have the audience come back with one message. It is very tough for you to push a message through that helps everybody understand what you're trying to be known for. So fix the organization, make sure they're all aligned. Processes matter, people matter, organization matters.

#8: BRAND ONLY SEEN AS A LOGO, FONT, OR COLOR

Now, when brand is diminished to that level where it's only just about design, you really take away the potential and the ability of the company, product or service to be loved because brand strategy is the face of business strategy. So when it's pushed down to that level of just design, you're taking away its ability to be steering the company at that highest level.

#7: HR IS NOT SEEN AS A STRATEGIC PART OF THE ORGANIZATION

A large part of your brand strategy is getting your employees to be brand ambassador. They're the first group of people that really needs to love your brand. If they don't love your brand, how are your customers gonna love your brand? And so HR is such a strong component of the branding process and the branding activities, because they're the ones that help attract the best, retain the best, but also, enact your brand strategy internally, so you can turn everyone into a true brand ambassador.

#6: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE IS NOT ALIGNED WITH CUSTOMERS

This is a huge issue where you're trying to have a persona and personality towards your customers that is absolutely different from what your culture is in the company. That disconnect and that gap can cause your brand to fail. Think about this. If you are a very highly technical scientific company and that's the culture, but you're really trying to help moms or help caregivers care for their children, or you're entering a pediatric space. That disconnect is something that can be very hard to overcome.

#5: FOCUSED ON TACTICS, NOT STRATEGY

Now we all know that we have to execute the strategy, but if all of the focus is on creating tactics, that's really just throwing spaghetti on the wall. When you don't have an insight, when you don't have a strategy, and you're not spending time to decide what you're going to do and what you're not gonna do, it's wasting resources and it's creating spin. That can be a reason why branding can fail

#4: SHORT TERM OVER LONG TERM

Now, if everything that you're trying to do is short term, and you're looking at metrics at the short term, it can cause your branding efforts to fail. It can sabotage it because branding takes a long time. Creating that perception, owning that position in the consumer's mind or in the audience's mind takes time, give it time to win, give it time to be successful.

#3: ROI IS EVERYTHING

When every activity is measured based on the revenue it's supposed to bring in, you're really limiting the channels. You're really limiting that to a marketing function because everything else is trying to improve the reputation, trying to inject that feeling into the marketplace. And frankly it takes the air out of all your branding efforts–knowing that brand is a feeling, and branding is not a rational process.

#2: CEO DOESN’T UNDERSTAND OR CARE ABOUT BRAND

We can help make your brand matter, but if the top of the organization doesn't believe in building brands, it is an absolute uphill battle. Branding requires alignment. Branding requires leadership and branding requires bold moves. If leadership is not all in about zigging while everybody's zagging, taking this strategic directions that can take your brand to a different level to really make it loved. It's difficult.

#1: THE PRODUCT OR SERVICE SUCKS

It's hard to hear, but no matter how good your brand efforts are, no matter how good you're aligning all your channels, you're telling that one story, it, you can't deliver the value. If you can't have people fall in love with using the product, the service, all hope is lost. Your branding will fail.

Now that you understand what the top 10 reasons why branding can fail, you can put a plan together, address them, address them so you can really build the brand that is loved and truly capture the hearts and minds of your audiences.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

How to build a brand from scratch

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

You want to launch a product, but have no idea where to start when it comes to building a brand.

Three stages of building a brand:

1. Position

   Find the truths in the category, customer, competition and your product. The intersection of all of these is the positioning of your brand.

2. Personify

   Establish traits and an archetype for your brand. People relate with people, not things.

3. Produce

   Create all the assets you need for your brand and activate a funnel to get people to buy and become true fans.

You are in luck! I’ve condensed the full process into three stages in the video below.

Full transcript here:

So you have a fantastic idea for a product and you want to build a brand from scratch. How do you do that? In this video, I'll show you the specific steps to building a brand that resonates, that gets you sales and really develop the kind of visuals, verbals and experiences that your audiences will love.

Before we start. It's important to align on what is a brand. A brand is the feeling and perception someone has about your product and/or service. And branding is an intentional process of building that feeling and perception through every touchpoint. So today, when we go through the steps, it's really about building this brand strategy in which you can put it out to the market place, put it out to your prospective customers, to provide and gain that feeling and perception. And so what happens then is through marketing and communications, you drive them through a funnel and you are able to convert them into customers for the long term.

In this video, we're really focusing on your brand as a product. While most companies start out using their brands for both their products and company, as you have the foundation for this brand as product, you're able to build in behaviors and different ways in which culture can be instilled into your employees, but at the early stages, I'm going to assume that is not gonna be a big part of your goals because you're not starting out and building a brand from scratch with 20, 30, 40, 50 people. It's probably gonna be a handful if any. Maybe it's you and your partner trying to build a brand from scratch. So we'll focus on that. And then later on, you can absolutely come back and check out other videos about how do you build that culture. But right now we're gonna give you the tools and the processes to really have that foundation for your product brand.

Three steps

Three simple steps: position, personify, and produce. I'll go through each of them so you really understand and get clear about what are the steps to building a strong brand strategy and start to create these foundational elements.

POSITION

To build your brand and to find your position, it's really the intersection of four key things: the category, the customers, the competition, and your product. When you look at the category and the customers, you start to understand what is that tension? What is that pain? What are they trying to do? What's unresolved when customers try to get what they want, fulfill their goals within that category? And when you have an understanding of your competition, as well as the deepest benefits of your product, you then understand what is differentiating. What is that unique thing? What is that secret sauce that you can really tout as something that's truly different and unique? And so when you put the tension and differentiation together, that intersection is your positioning.

Category

The first thing you need to do is to define your category. It is to figure out what are the dynamics within that category. How do you do that? So let's take, for example, you have found out a way to manufacture and make water that helps a person think quicker, better, faster. So your category is water. That's sort of the biggest category that you can define your product. Once you understand that, it's also about what might be the subcategory. Is there already an existing subcategory in which your product can fit in? Or are you creating a new subcategory in this case? Is your subcategory brain water or smart water? So think about what that subcategory is and really define in the smallest possible category in which your product can fit in. Now, when you have defined a category, you need to think about what are the truths within that? What are the dynamics in that category? Which means are people having a hard time within the category to find the products, or what are the new technologies and products within that category? I think once you start defining what that is, you have a clearer picture about where you are operating in.

Customers

The second important piece is customers. So the first thing to do is to understand and write down who is your ideal customer. So again, if you are selling this water that can make people become smarter think better and faster. There's so many groups of people that you can sell this to. And maybe a segment, a customer segment could be young professionals in which they're starting out in their career, or it could be students, students who are really needing this water because they're under constant pressure to perform and do well in school. And then if you look closer, perhaps there's even a smaller and tighter segment, maybe it's medical students or law students, the most important thing is to find a customer segment that can help you really break into the market. And in this case, perhaps you pick medical students. They need a lot of help in terms of being able to constantly be clear and think on their feet. So you decide that's your ideal customer segment. That's your target customer segment. And once you understand that it's time to then dig in and think about what are their pains, what are their problems? What are you trying to solve? And also understand what is their mindset, what is their feelings towards being able to perform in the high level that they wish to,

TENSION: Category X Customer

Once you under understand your category, the dynamics of that, and your ideal target customer segment, you can start to understand at the intersection of that, what are some of the tensions today, maybe for this example about the water that can help people think better faster is that these med students, clearly don't even think about water as a source of nutrients or as a source of performance for them. And that could be your truth, but what's important is to really have the intersection and really write down what is that tension and what is the truth when you put these two things together,

Competition

Next up, competition. This is really important for us to understand. Who is our direct competitor, who is our indirect competitor and are there any alternative competitors? Most likely the question is yes, to all three, you don't really operate alone. But sometimes you might not have a direct competitor because you're creating a whole new subcategory or even a whole new category. So from a direct competitor perspective, in this case of our water that can help you think better and faster, are there other water products that claim to do the same thing? That's a direct competitor. Indirect competitor is something that they would rather use or they're using today. So if there's no water that can help you think better and faster in the market today, what are they drinking? As, as something that can, that's peripheral to that, maybe it's Vitamin Water. That's an indirect competitor. Alternative competition is something that if they're not even drinking water, what else are they drinking? In this example, maybe it's drinking juices or other types of beverages. That's your alternative competition.

Product

The last thing here, but very crucial, is look at everything there is about your product. And we call this a product ladder. You go from the bottom, which is attributes and features, the specific things and descriptions about your product. And as you go up the ladder are benefits. What are the benefits of these specific features and attributes? And as you go up another level, it's going into more of the emotional benefits. When you have these benefits, these functional benefits, what type of emotions are your customers gonna feel? And ultimately at the very top, is there some sort of self expressive benefit that when someone uses this water, they feel like they're becoming this ideal person or ideal archetype in their head. That's product ladder.

DIFFERENTIATION: Competition X Product

So once you understand your competition and what is your product’s features, functional benefits, emotional benefits, and perhaps even self-expressive benefit, at the intersection of those should be your most differentiating and powerful end benefit. That's where you really start to understand how you can push against the competition, but also provide something that's very special and unique from your brand.

POSITIONING

So now you have the tension between the customer and a category. You have your differentiation between your product and the competition. When you put those things together, you will have a good idea of what your product positioning is. And the framework is actually pretty simple.

For who: who is the target it segment, and what is the problem, and what is that tension?

Your brand is what: what is the description of that solution?

By how: what is the differentiation and a secret sauce?

In order to: what is that functional, emotional self-expressive benefit that is really pushing towards a purpose of what ultimately can happen?

So, do we have an example? Sure. We do. So let's take that example of the water that can help you think better and faster. And here could be a positioning statement.

For medical students looking to get ahead of their peers

Brain water is proven to boost, focus and memory

By providing electrolytes designed for the brain

In order to amplify potential for a smarter and healthier world.

So once you have your positioning statement, you really conquered and achieved a large part of how to build a brand from scratch. Congratulations. Now that you have your positioning, it's time to get into personification.

PERSONIFY

So how do you personify your brand and why is it important? It's important because people don't have relationships with water. For example, people don't have relationships with inanimate things. People have relationships with people. So it's important to personify and think about your brand as a person.

So how do you start? You start by thinking about your brand as a person. So start collecting all these characters and personas that you've encountered in the past. It doesn't matter whether it's a movie character or book character, or a celebrity. Start writing down all these different people and what are the specific traits about them that you feel portray not just your brand, but also your ideal target segment. And so what's the most important thing you want to reflect? What is a personification of your brand that your ideal target segment wants to become? So in our case of brain water and smart water for medical students, right, that's looking to get ahead of their peers, what type of people are they striving to be? They are competitive, they wanna win? Start putting all these things down and that becomes the foundation of personification.

If you really wanna geek out on this in terms of personification, there is a panel of 12 brand archetypes that brands typically fall into. I'm not gonna describe them here, but you can use them as a way for you to describe the persona of your brand.

PRODUCE

The last piece is really the culmination of your brand strategy into what is gonna be expressed into the market. And this is produce, which means you're really trying to make these things now. So the first part of it is really about the visual and verbal expression of your brand strategy: the positioning and the persona that you've laid out.

Visual Brand Language

So the visual manifestation is really looking at your visual identity. So this is your logo, color palette, typography, graphic elements. This is really where you put these foundational assets in place, and you really wanna adhere to them so that you can have a consistent look and feel of your brand moving forward. And you ask me how do I do that? I'm not a designer. So go out and find a designer that can help you put these things together. With positioning and personality in place, you have the foundational elements to give to a designer so that they understand exactly what they need to produce, and even have options for you that adhere to the guidelines or adhere to your needs from a brand strategy perspective. And it helps so much because then they know what to hit. They know what to look for. They know what to actually produce so that you get what you need. Fiverr is a great platform and that you can really find freelance designers to help you do this.

Verbal Brand Language

Messaging is your next part, right? So this is really putting all the ideas up front and your brand strategy into words. What is that headline that's gonna really hook your audience into the offering, right? What are other types of reasons-to-believe and proof points? You can get people to understand: wow, this is a fantastic offering for me that I cannot refuse. Some other things that you might want to write down is your purpose, which is why do you exist beyond money? The description of very specific and short and concise description about your product and your brand and also start to write out what are some phrases and words that you feel can really bring about the personality and positioning that you're trying to portray.

Activation

And the last part is activation. This is really putting it out there. This is the marketing and the communications to really get your target segment into the funnel and start going through the process of converting and make them to be the most loyal customers that you can get.

I'm not gonna go through the details of activation, but let me walk through a simple four part funnel for you to start putting together your plan.

So the first one is, is awareness. This is really getting into where is your ideal target segment? So for your med students, where are they not just in physical location, but also where are they getting information? Are they hanging out on TikTok? Are they on YouTube looking at videos? What are some of the places in which they're getting their information from?

The next one is consideration. So what do they need to it even consider about you? So what kind of information do you need to give them so that it can really consider brain water as, as a product that they wanna buy.

Conversion, you need to help them buy, like, where are they gonna buy this? Is it through an app that you're gonna deliver straight to their dorm room? Is this through distribution in their cafeteria? How can you help them buy? Where do they actually pay? Where is that conversion point?

Lastly is engagement. How are you gonna get them to buy from you repeatedly and become true fans? How do you get user generated content so that they can influence their peers to buy brain water from you?

So there you have it, the three parts of building a brand from scratch position, personify produce. These three buckets will help you really build your brand and put it onto the marketplace and start to get traction, you know, for your customer segment that you're targeting. Thank you for watching this video. I really hope you got something from it. And you understood the three main building blocks of building a brand from scratch. I wish you the best of luck. And until next time, my friend be safe, be well and build an awesome legendary brand.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

How to avoid typical traps in healthcare branding

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

Building brands in healthcare has its own set of nuances and challenges to overcome. It can be very easy to fall prey to seemingly positionable territories–in other industries it may be so, but in healthcare, brands have to dig deeper.

Full transcript:

In today's video, I'll share with you six common traps that healthcare brands fall into. As they're trying to build a relevant, sustainable and differentiating brand. Hey everyone, this is Howard Chan and I help build he brands.

The first trap is we are patient focused. If you actually tell me that you're not patient focused, Hey, maybe there's a territory that actually makes sense. We're gonna Zig while you Zag, but every healthcare company is patient focused. The problem is not whether you are patient focused. It's about how are you patient focused. Are we able to talk about what is actually differentiating in the way that you're focused on patients? Well, if you think about all the things that you do, is it how you help patients access care? That’s table stakes. Is it about how you provide support programs for your patients? Table stakes. What about the way in which you educate patients on disease or educate patients on your therapy? Again, table stakes. What are things that you are actually doing with the patient that makes you differentiated? Actually puts you in a whole different category of healthcare companies that's actually focused on patients.

The second trap is we follow the science. Now, if you are a company in healthcare that's providing some sort of therapy, some sort of treatment, you’d better be following the science. Now what about following the science? Are you differentiated? Are you different? And if you have a particular mode of action, a particular technology, that's so different by all means dive deep into the specifics of what that is and use that as a way to position yourself from the rest of the competitors. But if that's not really something that the company can stand behind, don't use this as a territory. Don't use science as your key positioning element because everyone in your category is following the science.

A third trap here is we are innovative. It's a funny thing. This is kind of like a comedian telling you. I'm really funny, trust me. If you are funny, you don't need to tell people about that. Just like if you're innovative, you don't tell, you show. Companies that are truly innovative don't have to tell you they're innovative. They merely put out products. They put out solutions that help you understand how innovative they are. So that's a trap that particularly ensnares healthcare brands. When they say hey, we are all about innovation, we are very innovative. Let your actions tell people, and don't put it as a part of the way that you message. It's all about what are you gonna actually show in terms of value? What are you gonna actually show in terms of solutions so people understand that you are innovative. Like Dyson, for example, they don't tell you “we are super innovative”. No, they put out products that are just a tier above the rest. Just like in a healthcare space, how do you manifest that idea into the products, into everything that you deliver so that people can see and feel your “innovativeness” as opposed to that being a thing that you tell people.

The fourth trap here is we don't have competitors. Sorry to burst your bubble, but everything and everyone has competitors. If it's not a direct competitor, it's an indirect competitor. If it is not an indirect competitor, it's an alternative competitor. People are doing something as opposed to using your product. It might be not taking any decision at all. So if you are a completely new drug in a rare disease, what could be your competitor? Sure. There's no direct competitors because there's no treatment for that patient population, but a competitor or alternative competitor could be opting out totally from the health system or traditional sort of healthcare realm, because there have been no treatment. So what do you need to actually pull them back into the system? You need to reach them in a totally different way. Again, when you think about competition in a broader sense, it allows you to think about the solutions. But once you say we have no competitors, it makes you be in this space of complacency and customers will just flock to you. Well, if you build it, sadly, they might not come.

The fifth trap is we want to be a household name. Well who doesn't want to be a household name? It's cool. Who doesn't wanna be a brand that's known by everybody, but going broad, direct to consumer costs a lot of money. And if you can actually get the awareness and transform that awareness into tangible value, by all means become a household name. But think about, do you need to have a prescription for your product? Do you need to have insurance pay for it? Do you need to have adequate supply? Does the product or treatment apply to every household? So it's actually more tangible to focus on the specific stakeholders and parties that you want to be known for and go from there. Instead of doing something large scale, we wanna be known by everybody program. It's gonna cost a ton of money and you're not gonna be able to recoup or translate that into tangible value for your company and brand.

We have a disruptive technology. This is a trap where healthcare brands want to be known for bringing disruption, but it's not really about, we have a disruptive technology. This is a trap where healthcare brands wanna show up as being innovative and they talk about disruptive technology. It’s really more played out in a tech world where these technologies are disruptive and a leap forward. I think in healthcare, we have to be very mindful of that because the last thing anybody wants is disruption, especially in today's world where healthcare providers are stretched so thin. Their workflows, everything that they're doing, they're already putting so much work and effort into caring for patients. Anything disruptive will be deemed as a negative. I think what is more important is to take a look at how that technology actually delivers on the experience, the improved outcomes, but also the improved experience of how these products are being used or how patients are being treated or how even the provider's lives are made easier.

Now you know the key traps in healthcare branding, you can hopefully better avoid them!

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

Branding vs. Marketing vs. Communications

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

It can be confusing out there, where branding is confused with marketing and communications don’t even get mentioned.

Full transcript:

Is branding a part of marketing? Is communications helping with your branding? There's a lot of confusion out there about what is branding, marketing, and communications. When you think about how a business makes it money, there is the cost of its products and service. There is a price that's sold at and between those is the profit. Now the ultimate goal of branding is to increase perceived value. And you can capture that value, whether it's increasing the price. So you have new profit or more profit, or you can get more share of the market. In order for us to define and clarify what is branding, marketing communications. We have to start from the beginning.

What is a brand? What is branding? Brand is a perception and feeling anybody has about your product service or even a person. In other words, everything has a brand. Now branding, that's the intentional process of creating and making that feeling across every single touchpoint. In other words, branding is everything. In fact, when you consider the process of branding, there's six different pieces and components to it.

1. The first one is research, that's really diving in understanding what your audience needs are and coming out with truths.

2. The second piece of it it's strategy. Once you understand your audiences, you can create a brand strategy to really hone in on the truths and the positioning, the personality of your brand.

3. The third piece is design. It's getting into the, the artwork, the verbals, the voice, and, and all that to kind of bring that to life.

4. The fourth piece is to activate, put it out in the marketplace or launch it within your company for your employees.

5. The fifth piece is measurement. Making sure that you measure, you understand what's working, what's not working well, lending you to tweak or change some of the activations.

So now that we understand brand and branding, let's see how marketing communication plays its role. So you might see out there Venn diagrams of marketing and branding. Most of the time, communications are left out. But when you really look at it, marketing and communications, they are a part of branding because if branding is every single touch point, marketing and communications sit within that. We've gone through what the goal of branding overall is. But the goal of marketing as to drive sales, it's conversions, it's funnels. It's doing what it takes to get the word out to your potential customers, get them into their system, get them into the funnel, convert them into customers and through loyalty programs continue to engage them. So they become lifelong customers. Now that's marketing. Now for communications, the goal is to increase reputation. The tactics and channels might blend and blur with marketing as they get into paid ads, whether it's social or sponsored content. But the goal of communications is to really increase that reputation

In a recent survey on LinkedIn, I asked who owns branding and 78% of respondents said, it's all employees. It's true, every employee needs to own branding because they need to be advocates for the brand. But 12% of respondents said it is the CMO or CCO. And 10% says it's the CEO, which then lies to a conundrum. If everyone owns it, nobody owns it. And so when you think about the confusion in branding, marketing communications, it's really about how organizations are structured. Typically organizations are not structured in a way to pull through the definition of branding, where branding is everything. So who really owns branding? Who does sales and marketing and communications and all those different functions report up to? It's the CEO. And so the CEO needs to be a strong proponent of this idea. That branding is everything. Even though everyone needs to be a steward, who really pushes and makes sure that the brand permeates throughout organization, sometimes it is the CEO, but sometimes there can be an interim or different layer. Maybe it's the chief operating officer. But regardless of that, what is important to note is that marketing and communications both contribute to branding because branding is every interaction and touchpoint. Now you might ask, what about customer service? What about sales? Yes. They are a part of branding. Anything that interacts with the audiences you're trying to influence, whether it's a customer as a prospect or a potential recruit for the company is part of branding.

Before we conclude, the sixth thing, you thought I forgot that didn't you, it's governance. Besides research, strategy, design, activation, measurement, governance is the last but really important piece to hold it all together. It's the people, it's the process to make sure this is a well-oiled machine. You never want your delights and your wows to be accidental. You want them to be intentional, build it into a system and govern it so that you can deliver the promise again and again and again, that's brand building. And so this is where the brand council comes in. Every company needs to have a brand council, and this includes all the different heads of functions, of all those that touches the audiences in terms of brand, but also think about a crucial component of this, which is your HR. You need all leaders to be infused into the brand so that they can bring it to life across all.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

How to organize your brands for maximum impact and efficiency

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

Brand architecture is the reason why some companies have to pour money into a gazillion brands and some companies just focus on one brand. In this post you will learn about brand architecture and how to decide on a strategy to house all your brands today and guide brand decisions into the future.

BONUS: A deep dive into Pharma and Medtech brand architecture considerations.

So why is it that when you buy sticky notes, you know, it's from 3M, but if you buy AXE, deodorant, you have no idea who manufactures it unless you dig deeper. That's brand architecture. 

Why is brand architecture important? Every brand that you introduce might be fun, but it costs money. It takes a lot of resources. Time. It takes gut evidence. It takes a lot of management to keep it in place, to build the equity that you really wanna build. So let's avoid brand palooza. Please stop the madness, establish a brand architecture to help you today and use it as a frame work for your future growth And brand architecture is not just about the logo. It's not just about where you place the product logo, the company logo. That's a part of it. That's a tip of the spear. That's what people see. But outside of that are all the things that you would do to either place the brands closer together or place the brands further apart.

But first, let’s rebrand/ rename an architecture type!

There's a lot of nomenclature that describes brand architecture, but there's one that we should really strike from our language and dictionary. Master brand is now leader brand.

Brand architecture types

1. Branded house/ leader brand

2. Sub-brand

3. Endorsed brand

4. House of brands

1. Branded house/ leader brand

So the leader brand or branded house approach is where you have one key brand where all the brand equity really rolls into that one brand. So FedEx is a great example. We talked about Virgin. These are all great examples of master brands, where you're building equity in one brand. Everything that you introduce in terms of a product or a service is mainly a description of what that thing is. So like FedEx, ground FedEx office, for example, even BMW as they introduce new series of cars. Now, when we think about the next type, you start to get further further away where the products and services start getting detached and, and, and further away from that parent company brand.

2. Sub-brand

The sub-brand model is where you have a new name or even sometimes identity that sort of showed up side by side with the company brand. So Toyota Prius is a great example. Prius is a brand of its own, but when it was launched, it showed up side by side with Toyota that you kind of know, and have equity from Toyota into the Prius brand. 

3. Endorsed brand

This is where a product or service is endorsed by a parent company brand or even sort of a brand that lend its equity to that brand. So Courtyard by Marriott is one. You also see examples where it's by something or from, or powered by. This is endorsed brand. 

4. House of brands

This is where the product brands are really separated from the parent company brand. The company brand is invisible. So you don't really know who's behind it, like Dove, for example. That's very typical of the consumer packaged goods world and the pharmaceutical world. 

I'll dive deeper into the healthcare realm later, but these are the four main types of brand architectures.

Deciding on a brand architecture

So how do you decide on a brand architecture? There's really no right or wrong answer. This is strategy. And so is about making decisions on one end of the spectrum. Is it a, a one ring that rules them all approach ala leader brand or branded house, or do you want to have a specific superpower for every superhero, that’s your house of brands approach. And so there's really no specific way you need to go about it. What is the most important is do you want to have a brand experience that stretches across all of your customer segments or do you want to have a very specific brand introduced for a niche and specific customer segment? And so it's really about synergies and efficiencies for me. When I think about companies introducing brands, especially at the outset, especially for startups, think brand at house, think one brand there's not enough resources to go around to all these different brands anyway, and you can always shift.

Brand architectures can shift

For example for Microsoft Windows. It was a leader brand model (or sub-brand model) for the longest time until Xbox came along, for example, where that's a totally different brand, that's very specific for a specific customer segment. That really is apart from the equity that Microsoft has gathered. But for Virgin, the same fun, entertaining hip, that same positioning is used across a multitude of different brands. It could be for the hyper loop. It could be for finance banking, that one brand stands for a specific thing, but across multiple customer segments. Could they have been successful introducing sub-brands? Perhaps, but it's so efficient to leverage the equity and the snowball effect of that one brand across all your products and offerings.

5 steps to establish a brand architecture

1. Audit your brands

2. Establish scenarios and options

3. Plan for brand transitions

4. Govern through style guides and decision trees

5. Measure and optimize

1. Audit all your brands

What are all the brands that's floating out there? What is happening to each of them? What's working? What's not? The first step is to understand the landscape of all the brands. 

2. Establish scenarios and architecture options

Establish scenarios and hypotheses and start putting together the brand architecture frameworks, and really test and look at how they would act in different scenarios. Is it a scenario where you'll go into a totally different customer segment? Is it one where you might be introducing a brand within the same category in the next year? What are the scenarios? How does it play out? Get people comfortable with a specific architecture and a specific framework. 

3. Put together a transition plan

This is where you put together a transition plan. Are you changing your architecture? Or do you need to transition brands? Is this the FedEx Kinkos example where you're acquiring a brand and you're transitioning it to a branded house? Establish that transition plan. 

4. Put style guides and decision trees in place

Governance. It is absolutely important to create style guides, decision trees, anything that you can put in place, so people can follow and your brands don't run away. Remember, avoiding brand palooza is important. 

5. Measure and optimize over time

Measure, get your feedback. Every brand is an evolution. It's not static. It's dynamic. So review what's happening to your brands. What's going well, what's not going well? And really have the lens towards your customers. Are you confusing them? Are they getting what they need? Are you helping them buy things together or pointing them to a direction or a brand that's really standing out for them? Make changes based on that.

Brand architecture in the healthcare industry

Let's dive deeper into healthcare, brand architecture in healthcare. It is already a very complicated industry, but what you typically see if we think about the pharmaceutical world, there's all house of brands and it's so ingrained into the nomenclature and culture that when you say the word brand in pharma, it's only products. They don't even think about their companies as brands, because a lot of times the company is invisible. So that's the house of brands architecture. What's also really interesting is that within the world of pharma, they are unbranded and branded programs. And when you say unbranded, these are usually disease awareness sort of programs, and it's actually sponsored by the company, but they call it unbranded. Whereas branded campaigns or branded programs, that's all about the product. So you see brand architecture has a very strong influence on how people operate within that realm. And again, within the pharmaceutical land, it is so ingrained that when you say brand, it's nothing to do with the company at all.

Changing the brand architecture in pharma

Could this change, should it change? Like any strategist, I would say it depends. It really depends on what is the strategy of the business. And the first thing is, do you want your brand to stand for something that can serve as a why across all the products that you put out. And that becomes a reason for why they consider your product. And the product brand itself perhaps could just help you understand when to use it. And so if you think about moving towards a branded house architecture or leader brand architecture, pharmaceutical companies can expect some benefits to that, which is the new drugs that you continue to launch can take some of that equity from the parent company, and you don't have to build it from scratch all over again. The other thing is the consistency of the experience. Today, if you have 10 different products, you have 10 different reps. And so you might have sales reps, each representing a product brand, knocking on the same door of the same physician or the same clinic. What if you are able to put it all into one bag where you have a company brand representative talk about the benefits of each of those products? And what about patients? When patients get access to a product, there are support systems, education. There are a lot of things that the patients can receive from the company. And today it's a mixed bag. It can come from the product brand, it can come from a support brand and it can come from the company brand. So moving towards a branded house model can simplify, but also reduce confusion. 

Feasibility of introducing a new brand architecture in pharma

But is this actually possible? Can you actually do that? Well, legally, you can't have the company name as part of the drug, but it's nothing stopping a brand from showing the two brands together. So it's not a true leader brand, but is a step in the right direction. It's almost like a sub-brand model. And in healthcare that's already played out. You have companies like Medtronic and Abbott that's medical device, but Abbott also has a myriad of different products. And they spread across multiple customer segments, but they lean heavily into the leader brand model. Now, again, if you dig into the, the depths of what they do, they do introduce sub-brands, but really they have captured so much equity into that company brand. The sub-brands don't really mean much. They devices and the products are referred to mainly through the company brand. So the analog is already there for the pharmaceutical industry to take hold, but we shall see because change is hard. And if there's not a business imperative to change your brand architecture, it shouldn't be done. And it will probably fail.

Brand architecture in the Medtech industry

I've worked in medical devices for quite some time. And within that industry, I would say most of the time when new products are introduced, they have a sub-brand that goes along with it. Now, when I think about brand architecture and the way that these, these brands are put out there, for me, it doesn't make sense because of three things. The first thing is when medical device companies introduce brands, we all know that continued generations of those brands would come. So if you introduce a new name and brand a year and a half later, you're going to have a new product to introduce. And it's a phase in phase out strategy, meaning none of these products are going to last forever. They're going to be retired at some point. So there's not even enough runway for you to build brand equity into that. So why do it in the first place?

When I was working in these companies, the majority of it is driven from: Hey, we need something fresh, we need something exciting to talk about. And they put all of that into the name of that product. In fact, you probably don't need a new name. You can probably take the previous name or the name of that platform and introduce generations. Much like the iPhone does, and you can actually brand the algorithms. What’s really special about that device? The truth is if you have something special in that new product introduction, it is gonna be communicated, not through just the name, but it should be communicated through the actual benefits of the device. But if you keep introducing new names, you don't actually build equity into that platform, or you don't build equity into, you know, the type of algorithms or the smart technology that's in there.

So instead, I propose that Medtech companies brand their platform, ala iPhone. You still have Apple, which is your company brand, but just like the Apple iPhone introducing different generations. And if there's a specific technology that would carry throughout time, that you can continue to build equity on, make it a new brand, introduce an ingredient brand that you can put effort, resources, communications, marketing into it, so that it builds along the way.

Today what's happening is you have all these new brands and new names of products where people don't even get a chance to to recall or remember, because it's too short and they get phased out. 

And that's my spiel on brand architecture. It is a passion of mine to avoid brand palooza and companies putting out brands for the sake of it. It is a specific strategy and it is imperative that you can make your decision, have a framework that helps you out to be the most efficient as you can.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

Position or be positioned

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

What is positioning? Does it matter? Does everything need one? Is it just for products? Before you communicate anything, before you write messaging and a narrative, you need to start with positioning. Positioning is really owning that specific association in the mind of your audience, and it is a core part of any brand strategy.

Positioning needs to be:

1. Relevant

2. Differentiating

3. Sustainable

Five Cs to help you build a positioning:

1. Culture

2. Category

3. Customer

4. Competition

5. Company

Full Transcript:

What is positioning? Does it matter? Does everything need one? Is it just for products? Before you communicate anything, before you write messaging and a narrative, you need to start with positioning. Positioning is really owning that specific association in the mind of your audience, and it is a core part of any brand strategy.

Take for example, you wanted to buy a car and you just had a baby, and safety's important. What pops up into your head? Volvo. Immediately, Volvo is part of your consideration set. They've done a tremendous job positioning that brand in the safety realm. So whenever anyone thinks about safety and in automobiles or cars, Volvo comes up.  Safety equals Volvo. And Volvo equals peace of mind, well-designed, solidly built. All this as part of the branding strategy and brand strategy, but it all starts with positioning.

Positioning as a concept has been made popular by Al Reis and Jack Trout back in the sixties. And at time it was very focused on product. But since then, it has really evolved over time. And when I look at positioning, it's an approach. It's a concept that obviously has been embedded and cemented in marketing and branding history, but I'm using it in a broader context. Brand is really not just about a product, brand can be a company, for example, Pfizer. Brand can be a product, for example, Dove. But brand can also be both product and company, for example, 23 and Me, Nike and so on.

Every brand needs a positioning.

How do you develop positioning? It is really a fit between the audience, what they need, what they care about, their goals, and what you can deliver. How can you uniquely give them the thing that no one else can, it's really an exercise in decision-making. I always say that strategy is about making decisions. If everybody has to do it, that's not strategy. You have to decide what's important enough. You have to decide what rises to the top. It has been always very tempting for any business to want to be known for everything, that's typically the mindset of most people. But if you want to be known for everything you in the end become known for nothing.

Ultimately positioning needs to fulfill three main criteria:

1. Relevant: It needs to be relevant to the audiences of the customers in which you hope to influence.

2. Differentiating: It needs to stand apart from the other competition from the other folks, that's trying to influence those same audiences.

3. Sustainable: It should be hard for other people to copy what you're doing. It serves as a moat to prevent other competition or new entries from immediately doing what you're doing.

How do you build positioning? Remember the Five Cs

1. Culture

Culture is really the context around the people that you're trying to influence. So if you were to start a company in healthcare, you need to understand that one of the trends is that people are viewing healthcare just like they view Uber or streaming Netflix. It needs to be on demand, on their time, wherever they are, whenever they want it. And so that is a key piece of context or culture, in the world of healthcare you need to take into consideration.

2. Category

Category is really important because it starts to set the frame of reference from which your brand will operate. It also gives you an understanding who the competition is. But when you think about the idea of solidifying a category, it's tempting to just look at one, you need to look at the tangential categories, other categories that might start to encroach on your category. But also when folks think about categories, it's also tempting to say hey, I want to create a totally new one. New category creation can be sexy, but it's also daunting. It's resource heavy. It is not simple. And the benefits of that typically does not come into other companies come into your category because when you think about new category creation, it's also probably educating your customers are or audiences about a problem they never thought they have. Think about the very successful brands–Facebook or Tesla, they did not create their categories. They simply made it better. They simply take their specific category and tweaked it. And so think very carefully about what category you're in. And if you're thinking about creating a new category, you damn well have the resources to back it up.

3. Customer

The customer for me is going to be broad. It might not just be the folks that buy your product or service. It’s also your audiences. It's all the people that you hope to influence and change along the way. So what's important about them? You need to understand what their goals are, what are they trying to do? What job are they really trying to accomplish? And what's in their way, what are the barriers. What's really getting them to be in a frenzy when they are not meeting the goals and the challenges that's ahead of them.

When you think about the category and the customer, and you put them together, you really start to understand the gap and tension faced by the people that you hope to influence day in and day out.

4. Competition

It is very important to understand your competition. As I said before, differentiation is so important.  There are three different types of competitors that you need to look at: Direct competition, indirect competition, and alternative competition. I'll give you an example. So let's say you are offering a taxi service and more specifically, going from the airport to the hotel, a direct competitor might be other taxi services. They might even be Lyft or Uber. Indirect competition could be a rental car company, or it could be Zipcar.  An alternative competition could be the hotel transport service. It came from a totally different industry. It's the hospitality industry rather than transport. So you see, when you start to consider the different sets and types of competition, then you have a good understanding of actually what is the white space and what you can own.

5. Company 

Companies in this sense, it's really your brand. It could be a product, service, solution or portfolio of products. What's important here is to look at the unique value that your brand provides. What is the thing that your customers or the audiences would come to you for? What could be your secret sauce?

Once you start to understand that and the competition, you can create something that's differentiating, something that's unique to talk about and be part of your positioning.

When you understand your five Cs, it is time to put all the components together to write your positioning. It's really deciding upon what is that most important thing that's going to help your audiences do what they need to do for positioning. I don't really care about what a specific template is going to be, but it should accomplish three different things. 

The first one, it needs to talk about your audiences or customers for products. It might be very specific. It might be a very specific target segment for company. It might be more white. You're talking to investors, you're talking to media, you're talking to, uh, your employees, but what is that red thread? 

The second piece is the differentiation and the value. What value are you providing that is unique that is going to solve their problem? That's going to help release that tension?
And number three, if there's a core piece of information, in terms of a proof point or a claim, it should be in the positioning.

So next time before you write any type of messaging or communicate a narrative, or if someone asks you to refresh a website, you need to ask this one question: What is the positioning? Start with that.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

Why should you care about brand and branding?

If you want to get notified of new posts, click HERE

What I'm about to tell you will change how you view the world. I'll tell you why everything is a brand and why branding is everything. It is the fundamental way we make decisions as humans.

Full transcript:

One of the things that we do a lot of as humans is make decisions. A number that's floating around the internet is 35,000 on average, and a doubt human makes 35,000 decisions every single day. And that's a lot of decisions to be made. Although we don't know a lot about how our brains think. We know that it tries to be as efficient as it can.

And Daniel Kahneman an award winning psychologist, actually a Nobel prize winning psychologist proposed a way or a mechanism in which our brains think. There's two systems: system one and system two. System

one is quick. It's almost involuntary. And system two is deliberate. It's focused. It takes a lot of effort. And so when we make these decisions, when we go through our thinking process, the brain really defaults in most typical situations to system one. System one leads most of the time.

And that means we make very quick decisions. It proposes a recommendation to system two to take action. And how does system one do it?

It's through feelings, intentions, impressions, using associations to knowledge and memories that form. And that's the realm of brand because at the end of it, a brand is that feeling and the perception your audience has about a company about a product, about a service, really about anything. When you think about all the things that you come across, a pit bull, milk, they all have brands because they all conjure up a feeling and a perception.

So when I say Nike, when I say Patagonia, Oprah Winfrey, the Ritz Carlton, a feeling and an image comes to mind and expectation comes to mind, and these brands are built intentionally.

But if it's not done intentionally, you have what you call an accidental brand. Accidental brands are unhealthy and subpar. Think about the DMV, for example. And for those of my, my non U.S. friends, the DMV is a place where you get your driver's license. And it's not about the logo. It's not about the color palette. That's not what a brand makes. It's the experience. Every time you go through that process, you cringe because you'd never wanted to ever again, the infinite lines, the really slow arduous process to get your driver's license. It doesn't have a good brand. And if you view it through that lens, in that context, brand and branding will exist as long as that's how we as humans make decisions.

So how do you make an intentional brand? It's through branding. Branding is that intentional process of going through the research to create the strategy, but eventually building the visual, the verbal, the experiential. It's every touch point. Again, it's not just the logo, not just a specific piece of ad. It's everything. It's the zoom call. It's how your customer service rep picks up the phone. It's what they say. It's the way a sales person shakes your hand. All of that encompasses your brand. And so branding is so important, but it also means that it covers a lot of ground. Is marketing branding? Yes. Is communications branding? Yes. It's all of the above. And so when you're thinking about building a brand, please think about all the different touch points. It's not just one thing. It's not just a specific style guide that you're trying to build. It's that, but everything more.

So there you have it. Everything has a brand and branding is everything. So the next time when you're making a decision or someone is trying to convince you of something and influence you as something, think about whether you want to be led by system one, which is more of a brand decision–very quick. Or is it something that's really important to you that you want to dive deep and you want to conjure up system two and put some effort into it?

And if you're trying to influence somebody else of something, think about how that brand is being perceived. Did you do a good enough job in branding to make sure that that whatever you're trying to sell has a great brand? That it conjures up a specific feeling and perception that you want to have?

Brand and branding is important because that’s how we humans make sense of the world to help us make decisions every day.

Ways I can help you

1. Download free guides (Healthy Brand Blueprint & Branding 101) to help you build healthy brands

2. Work with me as a fractional CMO/CBO or through Healthy Brand Consulting (Schedule a 15 min intro call)

References:

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman-book-review.html