ETD: 907 Advertising Plan; A Final Word on Branding; Top 100
Global Brands Scoreboard
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Wed Jul 27 18:30:05 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0907 July 28, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Advertising Plan
[3] A Final Word on Branding
[4] Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
What is the most overworked word in the business world
today? Branding! Everywhere you go you hear people talking about
branding, including cute variations like "emotional," "primal," "sensory,"
"musical," "internal," "external," "holistic," "vertical," "abstract,"
"nervous," "invisible" branding. What is it all about? Today we have an
article on branding and the top global brands.
List members John Shulte and Javilk offer some input to our post on
advertising. Very informative.
What are you doing to promote your business? Do you have a business
plan? Marketing plan? Advertising plan? Are you trying to build a
brand? How successful are you with your efforts?
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Advertising Plan
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Two things. First concerns the advertising post.
One other thing that should be considered when creating an advertising plan
is, what action you want readers of your ads to do, i.e. Visit a retail
store, website, or dealer, request more information, call a toll-free
number to order, etc.
Many advertisements are what we in direct marketing call "two-step." For
retailers almost all advertisements are two-step ads. You want people to
visit the store to make a purchase, so the duty of your ad is to entice
them in. This is mostly done by specials and sales. Once in the store, it's
the sales persons duty to sell.
In mail order, many ads, especially for more expensive items, are also
two-step. The ads duty is to entice the reader to call, mail, or visit a
web site for more details. The ads duty is simply to grab the right persons
attention and provide just enough information to get them to say; "yes, I'm
interested in that, tell me more."
That then get's them into the database for follow-up sales efforts.
Other mail order ads, ask for the order right from the ad. So all the
details someone would need for making a purchasing decision must be in that ad.
The main point is that you must know what you want your readers "to do"
before you create/write the ad itself. The action you want taken, dictates
how the ad should be written.
I have written a good article on creating and buying advertising that
readers receive at no cost when they register with www.MediaBids.com, a
discount advertising buying service. This is a free service, and anyone
that buys advertising should absolutely register and use it. I can't
recommend it enough.
And since most advertisements I see are not so good, a book I also
recommend everyone to read is "Creating Successful Small Business
Advertising" by Jerry Fisher http://www.nmoa.org/catalog/fisher.htm It's
easy reading with lots of advertising examples--pictures!
The second portion of my post is that the NMOA has just introduced its
latest advertising guide, and it covers reaching the Hispanic Market.
There are many research reports in the marketplace about how great the
Hispanic market is, but where ours is very different, is that we have
compiled all the media for reaching Hispanics and Latinos. Included are
Hispanic magazines, newspapers, radio & television stations, and some 350
mailing lists.
You can see the full details here:
http://www.nmoa.org/catalog/hispanicadguide.htm
--
Best regards,
John Schulte
President and Chairman
National Mail Order Association (NMOA)
http://www.nmoa.org
Email: schulte at nmoa.org
Tel: 612-788-1673
http://www.nmoa.org/schulte
+++ [Next Post] +++
Our moderator wrote...
> How, when and where are you going to reach them?
That's all fine and good. You really do need to identify your target
market, etc.
BUT -- How are you going to SELL it?
Or more specifically: How are you going to ASK THEM for an ORDER?
I search the web for all kinds of things for myself and clients. Number
one question -- HOW MUCH DOES IT COST??? It's a vital part of asking for
the order.
Gee, this frammis looks really good, but are we in the ball park with
respect to price? Or even worse, when they don't even give you any
specifications."This Anubis wax makes your car shine -- look at all the
shiny cars we have on our site." "We were the leading wax used by 80% of
the cars at the Carnutopica Car Show" So what? Can _I_ buy it, or are you
selling to auto detailers in lots of four 55 gallon drums?
Or my latest quest, polyethylene flooring mats.
Groundmaster (used for horses, so it's really tough) looks interesting...
but the page I saw didn't even have a contact address, never mind a
price. And the home page link linked back to itself!
Then another site showed how you can spin an army tank on their flooring
system, how some utility tosses it over the back of a truck so they can
back up over muddy ground, etc. (Gee, we could have used that with my
friend's surplus army tank 30 years ago. We spent two days filling in the
ruts after he drove it across his lawn!) Looks fantastic for my current
application! Price? It's nice you have GSA approval for purchasing, and
it's really nice the militaries of the USA and UK use it on occasion. But
what's the Price? Helooo??? Are we even in the ball park? Guess not.
Price lets the suspects differentiate themselves from the prospects. Do YOU
want to winnow through 100 calls from suspects to find one prospect?
If you get the feeling I might be frustrated when people don't put prices
on their products, you're right! It's been a theme I've harped on for the
past 35 years. And a theme master marketers echo as well:
"If you have to ask how much, you can't afford it." I forget which
multi-millionaire said it, but that's the default assumption if we can't
see a price somewhere to get a clue.
And if I can't order it or a sample of it when I'm hot to go... someone
else will get the nod, and the order.
If I or my client is your target market, What are the vital specs, What's
the PRICE??? (It's ok to say about $2,000 per, with price breaks starting
at 200 units.) And HOW DO I ORDER IT??? Dealer links? Retail chains? Or
your order form?
-javilk- mall-net.com
------------------- IMAGINEERING --------------------
-- What people want: http://www.SitePsych.com/free --
----- Advice, Analysis, Strategies, Development -----
---- Got a problem? Give us a call! 408-705-2284 ----
Serving the World for three generations, since 1933
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[3] A Final Word on Branding
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Naseem Javed reports in E-Commerce Times....
The word "branding" is dangerously overused. Many people use branding as a
cure for all kinds of problems in all kinds of businesses. To lay claim to
a deeper understanding of this elementary word, branding agencies all over
the world have developed some cute variations of it, from "emotional
branding" to "primal," "sensory," "musical," "internal," "external,"
"holistic," "vertical," "abstract," "nervous" and all the way to
"invisible" branding. However, to see these distinctions, you will need
special 3D spectacles.
Branding is often presented as a culturally, emotional or lifestyle crazy,
sugarcoated packaging process. Sometimes it is like rap music, with
spinning colors or psychedelic pastel overtones accompanied with hip-hop
idea drivers. Other times it comes with esoteric concepts to camouflage the
products or services just long enough to get the customers' attention. Most
of the time, it comes as juicy ideas under some new blanket term of
branding that is designed to create a safe and secure feeling for the
corporation while waiting for the thunder from the charge of anxious customers.
For some reason, if the highly anticipated traffic doesn't show up, then
the term is changed immediately to the likes of "primal branding," with a
twist or a new style dance added to the circus. The same single promotional
process is re-named repeatedly.
The idea is that when share prices fall, call the branding team and let it
apply its "fiscal branding" to fix the stocks. When products fail, let the
"visual branding" section take over, and when elevators don't work, give it
to the "yo-yo branding" unit, as they are real experts in north and south
mobility.
Today, branding is a mixed bag of basic, traditional advertising tools,
simply waxed and packaged to appear as intellectual advice with an
expensive price tag. It is targeted to fit any hungry frame of mind, and is
designed to make corporations feel ever so comfortable with terms like
"verbal," "digital," "audio," "smelly," "silent" or "loud" branding, as all
these terms are designed to offer great safety and invisible lifelines to
sinking ships. But does it work?
Just Promotional Tools. At times it does, as corporations do need solid
and real branding. However, it most often fails, frequently due to lack of
substance, quality, intelligence and experience. What is now being offered
as branding includes perfumed stationery at the banks, jingles and chimes
for the funeral parlor -- just branding tricks.
These approaches fail because they are just basic promotional tools and
skills and because they are trendy quick fixes. Branding has been defined
so many times by so many experts that it is almost useless to redefine it.
Like beauty, it is in the eye of the beholder.
Most of the time, the creative powers overtake the process, and fancy
jargon becomes the Band-Aid while the Laws of Corporate Global Image, Rules
of Corporate Nomenclature and Name Identities, Cyber Domain Management,
Principals of Marketing and Global Branding are all completely ignored as
being too rigid, too serious and too formal.
Solid Training, Thorough Skills. Let's face it, these branding rules are
very hard to learn and very difficult to apply because they require solid
training and thorough skills. Simple, raw promotional skills backed by big
budget fireworks are only "accidental branding" at play, where everyone
becomes happy as long as there is some noise. In the recent past, this is
how "high volume" or "intense" branding got the center stage. Today, in
this budgetless environment, it is only a dream for most agencies to get
such mega breaks.
U.S. businesses are still very much overdosed with over-branding. Massive
turnover in the advertising and branding industry, compounded by the
Internet , e-commerce and outsourcing , has created a large glut of
branding consultants with too many faceless, nameless consulting services
and Web sites.
The market is simply glutted. Western branding agencies are losing their
grip by not producing world-class standards and are becoming a laughing
stock by adopting, in a panic, monkey-see-monkey-do campaigns.
In reality, you definitely need proper branding today; the type is not the
issue. However, first you must have something very good to offer. You also
need highly specific and proven branding with highly tactical positioning
skills, under proper corporate and brand name identity and image laws,
rather than raw graphic and promotional tools.
'Useless Branding?' Empty concepts and poorly designed and beaten up
products and services can't be resurrected with some abstract branding
terms along with some flashy campaigns. Big money spending will not buy big
image anymore. It worked in the past, but times have changed. Today, the
latest cyber-branding techniques are in big play. Corporations are opening
up to a debate on this subject among senior management and ignoring the
old, traditional branding methodologies.
The blasted, useless messages are instantly forgotten. The 15-minute fame
suggested by Andy Warhol is now only a 15-second blip on the global
e-commerce landscape. What was previously shoved on 24-7 ad campaigns and
lasted at least a year is now completely forgotten the very next day.
Should we now re-define branding all over again? Should this word be
re-branded? How about "useless branding?" No, not yet.
Details at...
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/story/44938.html
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[4] Top 100 Global Brands Scoreboard
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The best brand builders are also intensely creative in getting their
message out. Many of the biggest and most established brands, from Coke to
Marlboro, achieved their global heft decades ago by helping to pioneer the
30-second TV commercial. But it's a different world now. The monolithic TV
networks have splintered into scores of cable channels, and mass-market
publications have given way to special-interest magazines aimed at smaller
groups. Given that fragmentation, it's not surprising that there's a new
generation of brands, including Amazon.com, eBay, and Starbucks, that have
amassed huge global value with little traditional advertising. They've
discovered new ways to captivate and intrigue consumers. Now the more
mature brands are going to school on the achievements of the upstarts and
adapting the new techniques for themselves
The top 10 global brands are below. The list is from Business Week's
ranking of 100 global brands that have a value greater than $1 billion. The
brands were selected according to two criteria. They had to be global in
nature, deriving 20% or more of sales from outside their home country.
There also had to be publicly available marketing and financial data on
which to base the valuation.
1. Coca-Cola, U.S.
2. Microsoft, U.S.
3. IBM, U.S.
4. GE, U.S.
5. Intel, U.S.
6. Nokia, Finland
7. Disney. U.S.
8. McDonald's, U.S.
9. Toyota, Japan
10. Marlboro, U.S.
http://bwnt.businessweek.com/brand/2005/index.asp
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