Value branding calls for a bigger boat

If we go by traditional marketing definitions, it’s not difficult to dismiss brand management as a mainstream strategic tool, especially for smaller companies and organizations. But this is a matter of definition, and traditional categories no longer cover the full spectrum of branding practice.

In the older, traditional view a brand denotes a consumer offering; it can be Skippy Peanut Butter, the Mercury Milan, Hershey bars, Holiday Inn hotels, and so on. No wonder there`s a bit of confusion among the leadership of some not-for-profits and associations when we talk about value branding. As many of them see it, brand management is a discipline practiced by manufacturers and distributors of package goods and consumer-durables companies. If you're supporting a cause or an institution, branding is irrelevant. 

Happily, this outmoded view is fading away today as a broader definition of branding takes hold. Even so, the distinctions between "old" branding and value branding are critical, and enough decision-makers still confuse the two to justify a brief explanation of the older branding model here. In this approach, big companies customarily deploy MBA-educated brand managers to support their package goods and consumer services brands. These executive planners are responsible for keeping tabs on customer satisfaction and loyalty through sophisticated quantitative means. They are also charged with devising continual improvements in distribution, promotion, and formulation for their brands. The goal: hold the company’s most productive and valuable brands on a steady or rising trajectory of usage and popularity.

Similarly, as aging brands fade, commercial brand managers focus on spinning out new products (or services) that their research tells them are more likely to ring the bell as consumer needs and "life styles" evolve. And so we see entirely new brands or new wrinkles on the formulation or distribution of established products.

This latter cycle, sometimes called brand extension, brings us evolution and growth in brand families: Coke begets Tab begets Diet Coke begets Coke Zero, and so on. The Jell-O brand family, dating back a century or so, is another great example. You can click on the illustrations of Jell-O’s extensible brand family above right and below to enlarge them, if you`re interested.

Still--despite its sophistication and importance in the consumer marketing arena--this approach doesn`t convey the whole picture. While its tactical foundations--precision research and assessment--are highly relevant in Brand Vistas` work, it still doesn’t take us quite far enough in strategic terms, notably in two instances:

 + when we set out to brand an institution or workplace, rather than a consumable product

+ when we attempt to understand the way certain brands seem to trigger a powerful (we might say mysterious) loyalty that runs deeper than just the immediate satisfaction of concrete and practical needs by an organization’s offerings.

In both instances, the tools and assumptions of traditional brand management are still relevant and useful, but they somehow prompt us to think, like Chief Brody in Jaws, that we need a bigger boat.