Showing posts with label Global Branding. Show all posts

Establishing A Strong Global Brand Voice

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

We can’t say for sure what a brand’s tone of voice consists of, but we know it when we see or hear it.

The brand voice is a more specific and useful way to convey a brand’s personality and tell its story. Brand voice is similar to tone of voice, only modulated. Think of it as a customized verbal strategy that guides and defines the way an organization communicates its particular point of view.

Brand voice is more like a complete music score from which you and your team can play a full-on arrangement of the “song” that is your brand. When done right, it has room built in for improvisation.

In addition to making sure you’re all singing from the same songbook, brand voice is meant to make sure the song you’re singing is the right one for your brand, one that appeals to all your audiences and one they’re not going to get sick of hearing anytime soon.

Think of it this way: brand voice is a strategic tool to help everyone in your organization tell the story of your brand in a consistently compelling way.

Why does brand voice matter? Why do brands require a specific and useful way to tell

a brand’s story?

First, people currently interact with your brand in more venues and touchpoints than ever before.
Second, more people are finding ways to speak back to your brand and about your brand through social media channels and other forums driven by the imperative of transparency.
Finally, more brands are clamoring more loudly for the eyeballs, ears and consumer dollars of your potential audience.

Crafting A Strategic Brand Voice

In today’s noisy marketplace, a strategic brand voice ensures that your brand is clearly heard, quickly recognized and easily remembered, especially in the digital clutter of today’s media environment.

A differentiated brand voice establishes the unique personality of your brand and builds deep emotional connections with your employees, shareholders and customers alike.

Brand Voice As Strategic Storytelling

What your customers are saying, if you listen through the media noise is basically this:

Tell me a story. Your story.

And a story well told is really a strategy. It’s a strategy for deploying words to create an effect. Good brands make an impact when they speak. A really good story can change people’s lives, and if enough people hear it, that story can change the fortunes of that brand.

Brand voice should be flexible enough to cross mediums, moods and audiences while remaining relevant at every touchpoint. For example, the earnestness you find on the Zappos website extends to all its touchpoints, including Facebook and Twitter.

It is even evident in the more functional emails Zappos sends customers about shipping: “ We've enclosed some tracking information, so you can follow your order from Zappos Fulfillment Centers to its final destination”

It’s almost like being a superspy!” By making sure that committed voice is present everywhere you encounter the brand, Zappos keeps customers excited about shopping with them.

Your brand voice also needs to be accessible: clear to all who hear it and easy for anyone in your organization to use.

When people say, “Tell me a story,” the subtext is, simply, “Inspire me.” That’s why your brand voice must be inspirational and exciting. Your language should drive behavior in the marketplace among customers.

AT&T’s “Rethink Possible” campaign, centered around imaginative graphics and playful imagery, comes to life on its website through words like “Explore. Play. Discover.” Even touch points one might consider mundane are infused with the brand voice.

At every step, AT&T is working to bring its brand to life for consumers, because that keeps them coming back.

Just as your language should inspire customers, it should also inspire your employees to embody the values and attributes of your brand. Brand voice can play a vital role in attracting and retaining your people. They in turn will be your greatest brand ambassadors.

There are three phases to building a brand voice:

Establishing your brand’s personality

Understand the larger strategy of your brand - who you are, what you stand for and where you’re going.

Developing your brand voice

Identify communication tactics around viewpoint, structure, syntax and semantics and mapping them to the brand personality.

Socializing your brand voice

Train internal teams on the brand voice and how to use it; providing additional as-needed verbal consultation on writing projects.

In addition, there are six rules of brand voice that should shape your approach.

Six Rules Of Brand Voice

Your brand voice fundamentally defines your brand

It’s an expression of the values that shape your organization - it best delivers the messages you’re trying to send and shapes the perception of your brand not only through what you say but how you say it.

Brand voice, like a singing or speaking voice, has a range

Your brand voice should span several registers, from whisper to shout. Consistency is not the same as sameness and in order to remain consistently compelling, brand voice must adapt to different scenarios such as mood, medium and audience to say the right words the right way at the right time.

Brand voice is more than word choice

It’s about syntax, structure, semantics and style. It’s about sending your messages in the most clear and efficient way by evoking a style that matches what you’re trying to say. That’s why your brand voice works best with messaging as a complete communications toolkit.

Brand voice creates a dialogue

Communication requires a response, and your brand voice brings value to that dialogue. It means you’re able to listen and respond in a way that brings your brand strategy to life.

Brand voice is key to internal brand engagement

Internal brand engagement means everyone’s on the same page, which is easy to do when you’re all speaking in one voice with one shared point of view. Your brand voice helps you deliver on your brand promise from the inside out.

A strong brand voice will evolve over time

Maintaining the consistency of your brand voice across the organization requires review, feedback and discussion: what’s working and what isn’t? By taking a descriptivist view, and stopping to re-evaluate your verbal strategy from time to time, you’ll strengthen your linguistic approach across the board.

In the end, you will be judged on what you put out there. The way you speak and how you tell your story are crucial to making sure people are listening to what you have to say.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Creating Global Brands Through Creativity And Innovation

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

There are world changing brands that ultimately make us willing to pay a premium because we want them in our lives. This is the essence of a highly successful global brand.

How do these brands use creativity and innovation to create that spark of interest and demand?

The world’s most valuable brands spend a great deal of time and money thinking about the way their brands come to life at every customer touchpoint. They spend even more time keeping on top of what their customers’ desire and they meet those desires in unique and inspiring ways.

Successful global brands have embraced the idea of constant change, evolution and innovation and are able to continually meet the changing requirements of their customers.

It is this kind of investment that has put them in the leadership positions they enjoy and it is continued investment that will keep them there.

These brands embrace change. But more specifically, when examined closely, these brands tend to adhere to the following four principles, an approach that keeps them at the forefront of changing the consumer world.

Anticipate And Create Customer Desires

The most innovative brands have the ability to not only satisfy their customer’s needs, but to create a need that didn't exist. IKEA has forever altered the way millions of people purchase furniture.

Most retail outlets employ an open layout of aisles and departments, so a customer can go and directly select the product they want to purchase. But IKEA changed this construct

by anticipating questions from its shoppers:

What is this sofa going to look like in my house?
What else should I buy to go with it?
And how am I going to get it home?

The one-way store layout that leads its customers “the long natural way” allows them to see how the product looks in staged rooms with various other products that can be part of an impulse purchase. Its flat-pack shipping makes a bookshelf easy to carry on a subway or toss in the back of a small car.

And the always contemporary, stylish good looks of its furniture have positioned IKEA as a lifestyle choice for millions who would not otherwise have access to affordable design. The lesson here can be applied to any brand. What are your customers demanding? And more importantly, what are your future customers demanding? Not just more of the

same.

Incorporate Dialogue With Your Customers

The Jack Daniel’s brand has changed the way it communicates with its loyal customers via its digital strategy and community sponsorships.

As a product that could not be any more rooted in analog traditions of southern liquor distilling, the Jack Daniel’s brand has been able to wisely create a dialogue with its

customers.

It allows its fervent enthusiasts to exchange conversation via social media sites or use its website to learn almost every detail about the Jack Daniel’s brand imaginable. Brands that invite dialogue with their customers must go beyond the ordinary.

They offer substantive stories of what they are doing and how it affects the lives of their consumers. The Jack Daniel’s site goes far beyond exploring Jack Daniel as the man and the myth, highlighting such offline “happenings” as the Sturgis Motorcycle rally, its alliance with the USO support overseas troops, barbeque events and the obvious Jack Daniel’s connection to professional bull riding.

Unlike some organizations that sponsor events that the executives hold near and dear to their hearts (like golfing or yachting), the Jack Daniel’s sponsorships are closely tied to the interests of is customers, helping further fuse the emotional connection they have to the brand.

And when Jack Daniel’s is speaking to its customers in traditional advertising media, it does so in a way that truly connects with their shared point of view. A recent ad during the last French political campaign reads “Champagne is a perfectly acceptable way to celebrate becoming President of France.”

Any brand not thinking about how its can better communicate with its customers is already becoming a dinosaur. A broadcast-based monologue espousing the merits of your brand will leave you talking only to yourself.

Having a relationship with your customers via Facebook, Twitter and the latest social networking platforms is no longer forward-thinking, it’s a prerequisite, espousing the wonderful aspects of their product.

Design A Flexing Brand Expression

In the not-so distant-past, the creation and management of a brand identity were all about consistency. If it was a fun product, it was always consistently fun. If it was a quality product, it was always expected to be solid.

The Big Mac you bought in Shanghai had to taste the same as in London, the e-server you bought in Madrid should operate as well as it does in Los Angeles. A consistent brand look and feel showed the promise of a consistent product experience.

But today, these constructs have changed. Sameness can quickly turn to irrelevance. Consistency can come to reflect a faceless corporation, unable to provide an innovative product or service experience.

As large companies offer a widening range of products, a brand must stretch and transform itself to fit the needs of its expanding consumer base.

Brands that mold themselves in this way to customers’ changing needs should break the shackles of corporate identity manuals and create communications that are culturally relevant and appealing to their audience.

As successful brands continue to grow and evolve, their product offering must widen along with the demographic diversity of their customers. The way a brand looks to its 18-year-old customers buying a $10 product should differ from the $5 million contract it’s selling to a CTO, which should vary from its Olympic sponsorship. Brands must be more flexible than ever before.

Create A Brand Culture That Embraces Change

It is a universal truth that every living organism is in a state of flux, slowly morphing its core DNA to adapt to its outside world, ensuring the existence of its future offspring.

The needs and desires of today’s consumers will surely change and the brands that are meeting those desires will need to evolve and change to meet those evolving needs.

The way a brand is managed and the mentality of the employees must be kept up to date with the evolving needs of its customers. So many once-powerful brands have collapsed in recent years because their employees were unable to evolve their thinking to match the needs of their diverse customers.

Target’s product managers have a knack for being in touch with the latest designers and the constantly changing whims of its customers. Affordable style had always been part of the brand’s core since its beginnings in 1962.

Target has continually created a sense of surprise and delight for its consumers, delivering stylish goods that were previously out of their reach.

This kind of cultural respect for creativity and innovation is often far out of reach of many organizations. When the status quo is deeply ingrained as a culture due to past success, it is often this unwillingness to change that brings a company down.

In the always-on, brand-saturated environment where we all live and work, many of us are trying to tune out and turn off the cacophony of brands screaming

for our attention.

Within a split second of assessing a product or service, or having gleaned reviews online, consumers are now able to mentally classify a brand as something of interest or something to forever ignore.

Global brand managers must think of their brands as living, evolving entities that must develop and grow as they strive to meet the needs and desires of their growing customers.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Building Brands For The Future Global Market

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

In the current global environment, market conditions have changed and will continue to do so in the years ahead. The current economic situation will reinforce this trend and ultimately make the effects of this change permanent.

In this new market paradigm, it is not advisable for global companies to make abrupt changes to established brands. Even in cases involving a solid brand positioning and a coherent brand identity, brand management methods should be thoroughly evaluated.

Establishing Future Brand Success

There are eight key points that brands managers will need to keep in mind when devising a brand strategy in the years to come.

Efficiency

Inflated demands, growing cost-consciousness, increasing complexity and communication overspill all result in a need for branding efficiency. Investments in optimized brand management structures and processes provide the efficiency that is needed.

These investments are also worthwhile because they create value at a time when sales pressure is increasing and it is necessary to exploit cost synergy effects and enhance efficiency.

Convergence

Brand worlds often collide when innovation cycles merge with new technologies. This demands a great deal of flexibility and foresight on the part of brand managers.

Multi-channel

The increasing diversity of new media and formats means brands can no longer be visible everywhere in equal measure. At the same time, the line between communication channels and distribution channels is becoming increasingly blurred.

Brand builders need to provide sustainable, adaptable answers regarding the scope and type of exposure they want their brands to have in selected media/channels and they need to manage them within an integral system.

Self-segmentation

Like communication, distribution is also no longer a simple one-way, top-down undertaking. In the future, clients will increasingly decide on a case-by-case basis, at each point along the experience chain on how much proximity or interaction is desired. The brand builders of tomorrow will do well to adapt their expectations to specific market environments, while always remaining true to their brand values.

Diversification

In addition to the trend toward increased integration of branding measures, strategy-driven diversification is also becoming more and more important in the branding arena. This is due to expansion into new markets and the acquisition and the creation of additional brands designed to make the portfolio more resistant to crises.

Future brand-building activities will include analytic processes that provide quantifiable decision-making tools to help minimize risk, as well as structural models and decision trees for efficient management.

Individualization

The trend toward the individualization of product offerings continues unabated. Branding activities must ensure that brand strength is not diminished by the sheer quantity of variants. At the same time, it would be necessary to integrate stakeholders into the service performance process.

Globalization

Globalization has been embraced not only by large corporations, but by small-to-medium-sized businesses as well. However, there are still no simplistic answers to issues of global brand management.

Answers to questions such as:

Do branding activities have to be managed the same way the world over?
Should the brand identity be exactly the same in every region?
Upon what basis can the decision for or against a global brand be made?

Social and Economic Change

The world is changing. Multiple global issues are effecting fundamental, long-term changes in the way society thinks and acts. Brand-builders of the future will be called upon to react to these changes, and in some cases take the lead in shaping the world of tomorrow.

Existing brand management structures have often been inadequate in meeting the complex demands of the future. In the area of integrated communication, there are organizational and structural barriers to successful implementation of branding strategies is an area in which management will continue to be challenged, and will be.

Brand managers will continue to be challenged in this area. In the future, managers will need to establish organizational and decision-making structures that transcend theory-based “either/or” considerations and instead allow for pragmatic “both/and” solutions.

Looking Forward: Thinking Outside The Box

When facing these new challenges, brands must avoid traditional solutions and instead think of innovative and far reaching ones. Below are four new ways to think about brand building.

Centralized And Decentralized

Previously, centralized brand management was considered fundamental to successful branding. However, currently market and business realities point in another direction. There is now a need to be close to markets.

More global factors influence brands than was previously believed. As such, brand building and brand management require more decentralized structures that would engender efficient management.

This requires clearly defined responsibilities between central and decentralized departments, as well as authoritative entities capable of ensuring that coordination processes facilitate cooperation on clear, common objectives.

Responsibilities must be assigned on the basis of a brand’s experience chain and the relevant communicative focal points, including their relevance for the brand’s business. Establishing rules for dealing with conflicts can turn disputes about power and resources into constructive solutions.

Interactive instruments such as brand management portals and brand filters will enhance the exchange of information as well as facilitate consistent, efficient brand-building activities, even in companies with decentralized organizational structures.

Integration And Differentiation

In global branding, the issues of integration and differentiation have always been salient one. In light of the increased significance of brands as a factor for creating added value, they are more crucial today than ever before. Up until now, companies have had to choose one of the two models to the exclusion of the other.

Today, however, it is no longer possible to adhere to a purely integrated brand model. The need among companies for more differentiation is putting pressure on the integrated brand model.

In the world of business, gut decisions are simply too dangerous. The risk of damaging a successful brand through integration is too great. At the same time, there is tremendous pressure to take advantage of the alluring effects offered by integration. Brand management must find a way to respond to these trends and enable both flexibility and stability.

The future of brand building requires decision-making tools for processes such as these. First, it requires a clearly defined brand model for managing the portfolio, which sets out peripheral activities in addition to the brand’s core areas. This makes it is possible to bring all the various options, from integration to differentiation into alignment.

Second, it requires necessary tools and methods to perform quantitative analysis. They make it possible to raise the value, customer preferences and stretch of the brand. They develop and bring to fruition strategic scenarios that add value to the brand.

National And International

As a result of globalization, many companies see their brands facing unknown challenges in diverse foreign markets. National brands that led the field in their domestic markets must confront unfamiliar socio-cultural conditions and communication channels in foreign countries.

A national brand in a foreign country is not automatically one that’s international. And an international brand is not automatically the same in every country. The spectrum of issues requiring strategic steering decisions is broad, from different languages and tastes to local customs and cultural aspects.

Brand builders with a long-term strategic vision must respond to these challenges with an international brand management structure - a set of clearly defined responsibilities, ranging from global development and decision making to communication and regional implementation, including any adaptations that may be required in respective national operations.

All these must be established on the basis of a clear brand vision and brand personality, with the help of ongoing coordination among all divisions and individuals involved. And it must all be done by a competent, preferably intercultural team, and from a strategically chosen location.

Cross-media And Cross-channel

The blurring and merging of communication and distribution channels can be seen as one of the most important developments of the past few years. In the future, communication with indirect references to sales offerings will be even more crucial than today, when it comes to establishing customer loyalty, identification with the brand and proximity to purchase decisions.

On the other hand, distribution is increasingly becoming a key facet of brand communication. Here again, strict separation between the two categories hinders the exploitation of the brand’s full potential.

From now on, efficient interaction between brand management and sales management will be a decisive factor for brand success.

So to make optimal use of brand management and add value to the company, it will in the future be necessary to analyze all of the diverse brand touchpoints. Once the most important touchpoints have been determined, it will be necessary to formulate the brand themes and define how each of the brand’s various appearances can work in concert to create a coordinated brand identity.

The crucial point here is to think beyond traditional “advertising media.” In the service sector in particular, where customers can’t “touch” what they are buying, customer service and therefore employees themselves becomes a key medium for transporting the brand identity. Once again, there is great potential for success through carefully coordinated interaction between the two disciplines.

Future Branding

The future of brand-building and brand management lies in defining, integrating and steering all of the above requirements. In addition to a more flexible understanding of brand management structures and state-of-the-art instruments, this will also require a new self-image.

Because the relationships are so complex, brand management must demonstrate a high degree of intelligence and competence in the area of relationship management. Successful brand-builders will not simply rely on existing, static organizational structures but create new, more suitable ones.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Smart Global Brand Management

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

For organizations of all kinds, consistency in brand expression is one of the most important benchmarks for global success. As touchpoints increase and consumers become more sophisticated and perceptive, brand managers play an increasingly essential role in ensuring a cohesive experience at every stop along the customer journey.

Consistency is defined as the degree to which a brand is experienced without fail across all touchpoints, formats and locations. In a perfect world, a brand is expressed exactly the same way in New York City as it is in Amsterdam.

In reality, implementation is a constant challenge, sapping both time and budgets as mistakes are fixed, best practices are put into place and employees are trained on the importance of staying on brand.

When a company operates in multiple categories and geographies, the chances of an inconsistency hurting brand value rise exponentially. Globally, many companies are yet to fully appreciate the importance of effective systems to maintain a consistent brand.

Brand managers need to learn that the simpler it is to access and navigate an online platform, the more likely users are to embrace it. As such, they need to explore implementing Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems.

Similar to a company’s intranet, these online platforms provide a centralized resource for employees at every level of an organization to learn about the brand and access the tools needed to deliver on it efficiently and effectively.

Brand Mistakes

It takes years of effort to build value in a brand, but only moments to diminish it. Something as seemingly minor as using a previous version of a logo or the wrong typeface in a piece of signage can suggest a company that lacks discipline and doesn’t pay attention to the details.

In a world rich in backlash through blogs, Twitter feeds and photo-sharing sites, the damage can be instantaneous and immense.

DAM systems are designed, however, to prevent mistakes like these and countless others by providing a central repository of the latest identity assets, as well as guidelines and templates on how to use them.

Easy to access and navigate, these platforms can provide valuable assistance by eliminating guesswork and freeing brand managers from fielding countless questions on what is approved and what is obsolete.

Operations Advantage

The advantage of a digital asset management system is that its size and structure can be precisely tailored to the needs of the brand. By eliminating unnecessary sections and functionality, users find it easier to navigate content and locate only the assets they need for their project or their role.

As a company expands its portfolio or moves into new markets, the system can scale proportionally to meet a greater range of needs and assist more employees in delivering a consistent brand experience.

For companies launching or re-launching brands on a global scale, DAM systems are essential to ensuring rollout is seamless and by the numbers, saving precious resources and extending implementation budgets further.

Maintaining Focus

A well-implemented DAM system can fundamentally change the way brand management staff works by providing a centralized workflow management tool. By hosting essential documents, tracking project phases, updating delivery schedules, monitoring resources and more - often on a minute-by-minute basis - it can become a master resource that focuses every employee’s efforts.

With this greater transparency, it is easier to spot inefficiencies, and with them money-saving opportunities meaning a brand can get to market faster and enjoy a significant advantage over the competition.

Brand Benefits

With more effective systems in place, systems that take into account the exact needs of the brand and employee usage, brand managers can foresee a dramatic rate of adoption and with it, greater consistency in their brand expressions as a result.

One of the benefits is a stronger, more authoritative brand, one that is clearly differentiated from its competitors and whose offerings are preferred in the marketplace, a brand worthy of the loyalty of its customers.

There are more immediate benefits as well, especially Return-on-Investment (ROI). Through a well-designed DAM system, process and output efficiency can increase dramatically, preserving operational budgets from the constant drain of traditional implementation and management processes.

Once in place, a DAM system can even bring about cultural changes by promoting internal understanding of the brand, its goals and how to deliver on it. With the brand playing such a central role in everyone’s day-to-day work, it becomes easier than ever for brand managers to ensure the consistent expressions that are so critical to a successful brand.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Building Global Brands For A Seamless World

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

To be successful in a communicatively seamless world, marketers must create global brands: brands that continuously engage with consumers when they want, where they want and how they want, particularly through social media.

To achieve this, companies must first reconcile the gap between changed modern consumer behaviors and their mostly outdated marketing tactics. Then they will have to incorporate social marketing into their global brand-building strategies.

Today, too many marketers are beholden to the purchase funnel, an outdated model that inaccurately reflects the reality of today’s consumer purchase journey in three significant ways.

The journey must be described from the consumer’s point of view, not the marketer’s
The journey to customer loyalty is not linear, but rather is a continuous process of communication and interaction
The journey is not isolated to just one person at a time; entire consumer communities facilitated by social media influence it

Building Global Brands

Companies must use organizational structures, processes and cultures to allocate brand-building resources globally, to create global synergies and to develop a global brand strategy that coordinates and leverages country brand strategies.

The trend towards increased globalization has had a major impact on the branding strategies of international companies. In the past, global firms developed brands that were adapted to the needs of local markets, under a multi-domestic marketing approach.

They now tend to favor the development of global brands that ideally have the same product, the same name and the same positioning in all markets, under a global marketing approach.

Global Brand Creation Strategies

International companies have traditionally followed two types of strategies to create their global brands. One strategy consisted of expanding successful local brands on international markets. This strategy has been followed over decades by many multinational firms.

For example, a brand like “Evian” was first a successful local brand in

France

before it was expanded on a worldwide basis. Evian has now become the leading global brand in the worldwide mineral water market. This is also the case of Barilla that was initially a strong local brand in

Italy

and is now the successful worldwide leading pasta brand. Nivea from Beiersdorf in

Germany

was also first a successful local brand before becoming the European cosmetic leader. Coca-Cola is also part of this first group of brands.

The second strategy has consisted of creating global brands from the start. These brands are launched on a worldwide basis at the same time. This is the most recent strategy adopted by certain multinationals such as Procter and Gamble. The creation of global brands such as Pringles, Swiffer or Kangoo are good examples of this strategy.

The key advantage with this strategy is to rapidly build a world brand with the same name and positioning in every market and benefit from substantial economies of scale. The risk is that this strategy requires massive investment on a worldwide basis without surety of a worldwide success.

The majority of existing global brands have been created following the first strategy. These brands were first strong local brands in their home country before being expanded internationally. Only a few numbers of most recent global brands have been global as from the start. Most global brands have therefore a country of origin.

Building Global Marketing Capability

Despite intensifying local and global competition, many leading global brands have seen their sales grow steadily as a result of their ability to create one global voice and make that voice relevant to the local consumer.

Success is directly pegged to an important quality of the leaders of these brands: implementing their strategy with a global mindset. Instead of just focusing on developing effective global marketing mixes for their brands, the most successful marketing leaders also focus on building a global marketing capability for their organizations.

New global brand leaders are typically quite comfortable developing three key components of global marketing: insights, innovation and communication. The new challenge they face is that of global leverage, the “how” of global marketing: developing a single global brand strategy, enabling marketing of the global leverage, enabling disparate marketing team alignment, improving speed to market and building brand expertise across multiple countries.

This is about leveraging global economies of scale and competition-mandated cost-efficiencies, satisfying consumers’ increasing demand for customized products and services and satisfying local marketing and talent needs. The rewards for solving these challenges are substantial, including sustainable growth for these global brands.

Succeeding globally means that it is crucial for global companies to ensure that all players share a common understanding of the market realities at local and global levels.

Connecting is about building understanding, trust and interdependence. Local teams want to know that their market’s success is what drives the global team’s work and global teams want to see that looking for similarities, rather than differences, is the prevailing mindset among local teams.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Effective Components Of Global Branding

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

The success of a product, service, individual, business or organization is based on being perceived as unique. Branding is creating that individual niche in the consumer’s psyche and owning it. More than just marketing, branding is the entire effect that creates a memorable identity.

A successful branding program should be based on differentiating your company as unique. Effective branding should create a perception that there is no other product, service, organization or community quite like yours. Whether the distinction is a result of function, form, ease of use, price or prestige, the consumer has to be convinced you offer something exceptional.

Consequently, your brand is your image as seen from the outside. Your brand is who you are - your strength, your integrity and your reputation. It’s not simply how your logo looks, but rather the emotional and intellectual response your logo elicits from your target audience.

Brand yourself well. Take control of your image. The next time your name comes up, it will evoke the brand qualities you have established and achieve the desired perception in the mind of the consumer. That's the power of branding.

Keep Your Branding Simple

In branding, do not say too much. People are overwhelmed with excessive sales pitches. The reality is that if you say too much, no one will listen.

The only other effective way to separate your message from the noise is to be focused, personal and simple. Consumers must choose to pay attention. Your message must be a simple message, because the consumer attention spans don’t last very long.

Generate Word-of-Mouth To Build Your Brand

Most brands are built through word of mouth. It is very difficult to build a brand through advertising alone. The goal is to build confidence and market awareness.

The most effective way to do this is to engage customers in conversations through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Support these social media efforts with strategic and targeted digital public relations activities.

Focus Your Brands

The objective of a powerful branding program is to create a memorable concept. To stay in people’s minds, you must first get inside. This requires focused, sharp and to-the-point branding. Focused branding are more powerful than diffused brands.

Loss of focus can occur in two ways. It happens with emerging companies that don’t yet know what product or service is going to sell best, or established companies that once had a focus and are now trying to corner the market on everything. In both cases, this lack of focus becomes their downfall.

Differentiation Is Key To Successful Branding

Your product or service is what sets you apart from your competition. Whether it functions better, looks nicer or rides smoother, these qualities can serve as the catalyst that separates your brand from your competition. Sometimes, however, this differentiation is not so obvious or perhaps not present in a functional way.

If you have no apparent distinction, find something different and connect that to your product or service.

Avoid Sub-Branding

One of the most common mistakes made by marketers is relying too much on sub-brands as a means for introducing new products or services. Often referred to as line extensions, this marketing strategy not only usually fails to create a market for the new product or service but the parent brand also suffers as a result.

Sub-brands usually benefit initially from the parent brand recognition as the trust is initially transferred. The problem is that the goal of branding is to create a special, singular identity that people can connect in their mind with your product or service.

Using a sub-brand not only dilutes the focus of your parent brand (it’s no longer special), but the new brand never has a chance to have a truly focused identity (it’s never special).

Perception vs. Quality

While quality is important, quality alone does not win in the marketplace. Quality is important, but not as critical as the perception of quality.

It is often the quality of the service, not the quality of the product that matters. The reality is that most buyers equate the quality of what they’re purchasing with the way they aretreated.

For success to be real and lasting, the perception of quality must be a reflection of actual quality. A key to good branding is to communicate the important qualities that are actually experienced by the user or buyer. If you are selling quality, there had better be real quality to sell.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Gaining Competitive Edge With Emotional Branding

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Today's marketplace is so crowded and fast-paced that very few people have the time or the inclination to search through claims of product or service superiority. Parity rules and acceptable performance is the price of entry. This is increasingly true in global markets as well.

Buying decisions are made on promises that transcend products, and promises are rooted and embedded in human emotions. It's all about human feelings and how they emotionally connect with a particular brand.

For marketers, it’s about marketing vision and creativity in managing the brand and in building trust by keeping promises to customers. It's looking outward toward your customers and their needs.

It's trying to find a meaningful difference that will set your brand apart within its market category. It's thinking less about what you can make in your factory and more about what your customers want. It’s about realizing the fact that customers do have feelings about and can develop attachment to what we purchase.

The reality is that most marketers still do not understand the power of a brand. Branding, the one thing that has the most dramatic impact on the success or failure of a modern-day business is also the least understood.

Brand building isn't a skill mastered in business school; in fact, it isn't even taught in most business schools. It's not as black-and-white or empirical as most want to think about business.

Your Brand Is Your Business

A company’s name is not a brand and neither is its logo. It's what these symbols mean and the feelings they engender from customers that makes the value of the brand.

Brands and the equity they engender are not the sole responsibility of the marketing department. The science of marketing is not a department. Everyone in your company is responsible for marketing the company. Your brand is not part of your business. It is your business.

Your product isn't always your brand, but your entire company and what it stands for is. Coke's fixed assets are worth about $17 billion, but according to one recent analysis, its brand value is worth $104 billion. Brands are the real assets companies own. Without their brands, they virtually have nothing.

Emotional Equity

The real value of a brand should be thought of in terms of its emotional equity, the way it makes customers feel. A brand is like an emotional bridge between a company and its customers. Branding your products sets them apart from all the other products in their category.

A great brand is a story that's never completely told. A brand is a metaphorical story that's evolving all the time. This connects with something very deep within the fundamental human appreciation of mythology. People have always needed to make sense of things at a higher level.

We all want to believe that we are part of something bigger than ourselves. Companies that manifest that emotional sensibility in their employees and consumers invoke something very powerful about their brands.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Emotional Branding: Maximizing Appeal Of Your Brand

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Emotional Branding is a strong branding philosophy as well as a best practice standard. The philosophy is based on the premise that emotions are always involved when people establish and build connections with brands. Emotional branding is about people, emotions and relationships.

The philosophy of emotional branding is infinite because it is based on a universal principle that states: people’s emotions come first, communication medium second. Marketers realize that emotions are important. But they’re not quite sure why or what to do about it.

Consumers make buying decisions based in part on their feelings and emotions about particular brands. And marketers have long recognized the fact that emotions play a key role when consumers are talking about or purchasing products in categories as disparate as those represented by brands like Lexus, Sony and Hermes.

Emotional Connections: Long-Term Links

The result of strong consumer emotional attachment to brands is long-term loyalty to that brand. To reap the enhanced financial benefits that can result from customer loyalty, marketers need to enthusiastically pursue strategies intended to keep customers coming back.

Indeed, marketers must move beyond customer retention, which is merely a behavior, to generating customer commitment, delight, and even evangelism, all of which represent enduring psychological bonds that link a customer to a company.

There are four critically important emotional states of consumer emotional attachments to brands. Together, these states represent the strength of the emotional connection existing between a customer and a brand:

Confidence in the brand’s promise | Belief in its Integrity | Pride in being a customer and Passion for the brand.

Analysis of responses to the individual items in this set of feelings has revealed that customers develop emotional attachment to a brand in a cumulative way, with confidence as the foundation of a brand relationship and passion as the pinnacle.

Here are the definitions of the four components:

Confidence reflects the belief that the company can be trusted, always and everywhere, to keep the promises that it makes.
Integrity reflects the belief that the company will always treat its customers fairly and can always be counted on to stand behind its products and resolve any problems that might occur.
Pride reflects the degree to which consumers feel appreciated by the company and are proud of their personal association with the brand.
Passion reflects the belief that the brand is essentially irreplaceable and represents a seemingly perfect fit with the customer’s personal needs.

Consumers’ emotional connections with brands have a specific and fairly simple structure, regardless of the nature of the particular emotions involved. The structure begins at the foundation of the customer relationship with Confidence, then proceeds through Integrity to Pride to and at the pinnacle of the relationship, Passion about the product, service or brand.

Emotional connections are not merely warm and fuzzy, nor are they simply interesting to contemplate. They have powerful financial consequences for marketers, ranging from share-of wallet to frequency and amount of repeat business. Fully engaged customers spend more and return more frequently than those who are disengaged.

Retailers that have taken action to enhance their customer engagement by capitalizing on the engagement-building skills of their own customer-facing employees have been rewarded with double-digit increases in both sales and profit, both in the

United States

and around the world.

Emotional brand connections are universally important, and managing those emotional bonds pays off handsomely.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Strategic Importance Of A Brand Architecture

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

A brand architecture provides a strategic hierarchy of the brand’s key dimensions and outlines the way in which each of the brand drivers fits into the overall matrix.

As a result, the brand architecture is the most crucial document in your entire marketing plan.

In the simplest form, the brand architecture informs you which benefits will be most effective, which will be the least effective, and which will be ineffective at driving the purchase intent of your target consumers. Consequently, it must guide all company activities related to the brand.

Great brand architecture can be used to formulate communications and make investment decisions related to the entire marketing mix and every element of the brand experience. What are the key messages that you are sending? How do these messages reinforce what your brand stands for?

When properly used, your brand architecture becomes the ultimate tool for making sure that your marketing tactics are strategically aligned to produce the best results.

Brand Equity Drivers

Once you’ve got the basic framework of your brand architecture, establish the unique attributes that sets you apart from your competitors. These brand equity drivers encompass the sets of benefits whereby your brand has an advantage over all others in your sphere. If no one brand holds a sustainable advantage in your marketplace, it’s an open opportunity for you.

Key equity drivers are those that give you direct leverage against your competition. Quite simply, your business performance is higher than that of your competition and you can use this strength to take new ground, building new equities in areas that were previously open opportunities.

Minor advantage drivers are those benefits whereby your brand rates are statistically stronger than the competition, but your business performance is actually lower than that of the competition. Your brand is intrinsically strong, even if your performance is weaker than that of your competition. And in this case perception is reality. If your target customers think you’re a stronger company than your competition, in the long run, you will be.

Parity equity drivers come into play when your brand ratings are statistically equivalent to those of your competition, but you have a higher level of business performance. In this case, it’s to your advantage to highlight your own strengths and your competitors’ weaknesses.

Potential vulnerability drivers are those benefits whereby your brand rates at a statistical dead heat with the competition, but your performance is actually lower than that of your competitors. This could be dangerous territory; it’s only a matter of time before the competition seizes on your vulnerability and reveals it to your target customers.

Although there are parity equities with the category leader, there also exist open opportunities to take share from other competitors based on key drivers.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Architecting Your Brand

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

Your brand has to have a positioning strategy and everything you do with regard to that brand must communicate it.

Brands are the most critical value-producing asset for your business enterprise and they are the only true source of preference and differentiation for your business from your competition.

As such, the starting point for the new paradigm enterprise marketing management is to develop a deep understanding of your target customers and architect your brands to secure strategic market positions that will drive sustained profitability for your business.

Every brand that’s ever had great success has managed to communicate its company’s core beliefs and attitudes - what the company stands for to its target customers. Architect your brand to do the same for you.

Brands allow you to clearly define and communicate what you stand for, whether you’re the lowest-cost provider, the most innovative, the best total solution or the preferred choice. You've got to decide what your brand stands for and communicate that value proposition effectively and repeatedly.

Additionally, you need to maintain constant control over the perception of your brand, because if you don’t, your competition will. The brand should help customers navigate their way to your business even in the face of competing enticements.

Under ideal circumstances, brand perception can even help bring your customers back again and again to your door without them even considering your competitors. Keeping a tight rein on your message ensures that your competition doesn’t siphon off your customers.

Just as you can’t stand still and let the competition over-whelm you, you also can’t spread yourself too thin and be all things to all consumers. You cannot have a productive, profitable relationship with your customers unless you bring clarity to what you stand for.

This applies to both your target customers and every other player in your competitive set. Your brand is the focal point, the repository for both the intrinsic and the extrinsic benefits associated with your offerings.

The Architecture Of A Brand

Like a human being, a brand has individual values, physical features, personality, and character. Like a story, a brand has characters, setting, and a plot. Like a friend, a brand offers a personal relationship with customers, one that, in the best-case scenario evolves as they do.

Building brands, like marketing itself, is a science, not an art.

A brand architecture, comparable to the architecture for a building, lays out the key elements of your brand in detail and reveals specific messages and important take-aways for the target audience.

A brand architecture can include emotional benefits, functional benefits, physical benefits, product attributes, occasion appropriateness, user imagery, and a variety of other intangibles.

The brand architecture represents the structural integrity of your brand, delineating how it is built, how it works, and how the components fit together to deliver meaningful benefits to the consumer.

A brand architecture, grounded in the science of understanding why customers purchase and use products, provides direction about which combination of specific emotional and functional benefits can generate the greatest amount of customer purchase intent.

Once completed, a brand architecture produces a strategic marketing framework visible to the entire organization. You can then use this framework to begin communicating and delivering these benefits to your customers.

Key Components Of A Brand Architecture

The key components of a brand architecture are its foundational attributes (or product features), functional benefits, and emotional benefits. You can determine the structure of a brand architecture by focusing on the key purchase intent drivers - the attributes or benefits that influence customers’ overall decisions to purchase or use a product.

Purchase intent drivers are often intangible qualities. Marketers can measure these drivers by determining how much a given emotional benefit, functional benefit or brand attribute drives a customer’s desire to purchase a brand in ascertain competitive frame.

The most compelling purchase intent drivers often reflect underlying emotional benefits associated with the competitive frame and the brand. Differentiation purchase intent drivers are the benefits that begin to positively separate you from the rest of the

competition. These are capabilities or equities that you possess that others in the competitive set may not.

Preference drivers are benefits that can propel a brand to category leadership. These benefits are crucial in the minds of customers as they consider various brand alternatives in your competitive set.

These types of benefits represent significant points of leverage with customers and can become the source of sustainable advantages.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Creating A Preeminent Global Brand Part I

by Oseme Group | 0 comments

By M. Isi Eromosele

The era of the preeminent world brand is here, driven by the connection that has developed in the interconnected global markets. For companies that are striving for global success, achieving global brand dominance could become the ultimate competitive weapon.

State-of-the-art technologies and Web 2.0 as well as political and economic trends have merged to produce unprecedented opportunities for companies to build global brands. As such, big companies should look to capitalize on this world economic environment. At the same time, smaller companies have the opportunity to reposition themselves as global models.

A strong brand carries a huge influence on the global marketplace, reflecting all about a company and its products or services that are communicated in the company’s name and related symbols. Your brand plays a large and direct role in convincing customers to select your products or services. Your brand is your biggest asset.

Quite often, companies confuse the strategy of global operations with the model of global brands. A company can accomplish the former through sufficient capitalization, while the latter involves developing a brand that has a clear and consistent message that builds up its value.

Great brands are generally positioned with a single message across various countries. The brand delivers the same benefits, uses a consistent promise concept. However, there must be room to adapt to local needs.

In trying to go global, companies will have to face the fundamental reality that world consumers in many countries tend to prefer domestic brands over foreign ones. Despite the challenges, the potential rewards of achieving global status are phenomenal.

In order to realize the desired results, companies must rigorously analyze and manage their brands and demonstrate a clear and consistent commitment to growing their brand. This is an imperative foundation for a preeminent global brand strategy implementation.

The foundation that anchors a global brand lies in an integrated approach to brand management in which growing the brand equity is directly linked to key economic critical success factors such as price, market share and brand value.

This approach results in information that is truly beneficial in recognizing targeted marketplace actions that need to be implemented as well as strategies that will result in improved brand equity and business performance.

Brand equity is the total value of all the qualities and attributes entailed by your brand name, thus impacting the decisions customers make. All brands have equity. The equity can be of positive or negative value, depending on how well it convinces customers to buy. The equity can range from weak to strong.

Brands influence customer buying decisions because they act as signals to consumers, conveying what is called brand image information.

M. Isi Eromosele is the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance

Global Branding

Oseme Creative

Establishing A Strong Global Brand Voice

Creating Global Brands Through Creativity And Innovation

Building Brands For The Future Global Market

Smart Global Brand Management

Building Global Brands For A Seamless World

Effective Components Of Global Branding

Gaining Competitive Edge With Emotional Branding

Emotional Branding: Maximizing Appeal Of Your Brand

Strategic Importance Of A Brand Architecture

Architecting Your Brand

Creating A Preeminent Global Brand Part I

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