|
October 2008
Google the word branding
and you'll find 49,700,000 results. Go to Amazon.com and do
a search for a book about branding. You don't come up empty
there either. You'll find more than 42,400 books on the
topic. There are even numerous magazines dedicated to
branding, including Brand Week and Personal
Branding to name a pair.
With an abundance of
information readily available, the average Joe business
owner may ask, "Why is branding so difficult in today's
local market?" Good question. While much information exists
about the topic of brand building, most of those resources
are geared toward national products. When I open up one of
my favorite books, BrandSimple by Allen Adamson, I
read great stories about HBO, Pixar and Target to name a
few. When I peruse another favorite, The Brand Gap by
Marty Neumeier, I find a plethora of brand talk with
examples ranging from Coca-Cola to American Express. Or,
when I soak in a refresher course from another of my
favorite authors, Al Ries, I find wonderful discussions
about various national brands, such as Kleenex, Federal
Express and Mercedes-Benz.
These are all enlightening
books with invaluable information dedicated to the process
of branding in today's ultra competitive market. Yet, does
this really help the local guy? If I'm a little old lady
running a flower shop with three locations in the greater
Happyville area, do branding strategies from American
Express really apply to me? If I'm a manager at Big Jim's
Chevrolet in Peaceville, how do I work with the Chevrolet
branding strategies while establishing my own distinctive
and relevant brand identity in a market with six other Chevy
dealers? Do learning the strategies of the Pepsi's and
Visa's of the branding world really help me when branding my
community bank, law firm or mattress dealer? Well, yes and
no. The principles involved in the branding strategies
employed by national companies should definitely be noted.
However, incorporating branding principles from a national
scope and applying them to local situations where unique
factors typically exist is quite tricky.
Set Your
Sight's focus over the next several months will be an
application of
branding strategies to local marketing challenges. I firmly
believe that the foundation of my approach to brand building
will, for the most part, work across the board. Whether
you are selling widgets to a nation or manage a local flower
shop trying to sell more roses than a competitor on
Valentines Day, the basic approach of: BrandFocus...BrandTraining...BrandVision
still very much applies.
I started BrandVision
Marketing in 1993 as a part-time venture and it's been my
exclusive focus for the past ten years. In the past
decade, I have seen some interesting challenges. I have had
projects with goals that included everything from "create a
waiting list" for a day care's after school program to
building a distinctive brand identity for a new financial
institution and others where the goal was to flat-out make
the phone ring with prospective calls for a law firm. The
point is simple: local marketing challenges are quite often
very distinctly different from those posed to national
companies. Retail challenges in brand building are very
different from those experienced by product manufacturers.
Hopefully, these thoughts that make their way to paper as
well as the net will be a helpful resource to many. After
all, when it comes to branding your local business, the
resources are not nearly as a plentiful...just ask Google.
Remember that search for 'branding' that yielded a pool of
49,700,000 results? Try a search for 'local branding' and
the pool better resembles a puddle that is 77 percent
smaller.
© BrandVision Marketing.
2008. Matthew Scott Trueblood. All rights reserved.
TO READ ARCHIVED SET
YOUR SIGHTS ARTICLES CLICK HERE!
|
Call BrandVision Marketing Today! |
(865) 531-5874
STrueblood@brandvisionmarketing.com
Home About Us Services Brand-Building Set Your Sights About the BrandPoll
Take the BrandPoll
Our Philosophy Compassion Initiative Contact Us
Inquiry Center |
