 Hello, good evening. My name is Philip Preston and I would like to welcome you to our second online marketing club event Every brand needs a point The marketing club was created primarily to help students get the most from their graduate gateway Accredited degree and prepare them for a career in marketing This club event is one of four online events. We will run this academic year Future dates are the 18th of March and the 21st of April Of course, CIM members and other marketing practitioners are welcome to attend as well as students As you can appreciate right now the club exists online only but when things return to normal We hope to provide networking opportunities for students and marketing practitioners The CIM graduate gateway program enables students to gain a professional marketing qualification by taking advantage of the exemptions graduate gateway provides If you are a student you can sign up now to receive the graduate gateway newsletter Simply use the QR code you can see on this slide Each edition will provide you with content designed to support your studies and actively manage your professional development By keeping you up-to-date with the latest trends innovations and concepts in the marketing industry Presentation will last for approximately 35 to 40 minutes followed by a 10 to 15 minute Q&A session You'll be able to post any questions you have by typing into the questions box in your control panel Which you'll see on the right hand side of your screen if watching on a laptop or on the bottom If you're watching on a tablet or smartphone You can send in your questions at any time during the presentation And we'll attempt to answer as many as we can during the Q&A session at the end If you want to share your thoughts on social media, we are using the hashtag CIM events You'll find in your control panel. There's a drop-down menu which Where you'll find two handouts one is a PDF today's presentation and the other is a list of further reading which you might find useful The webinar has been recorded and it will be available to view on the CIM YouTube channel within three to four working days Okay, I'd now like to hand over to Bruce M. McKinnon who is our guest speaker today over to you Bruce Thank you very much Phil and thank you also for inviting me back to speak at the Chartered Injury Marketing Marketing Club I'm going to spend 35-40 minutes or so talking about brand strategy But before I do I'm going to tell you a story And it's a story that kind of just illustrates from my point of view You know the power and potency The brand strategy can deliver an organisation So I was in Nova Scotia talking to Jeff Moore fittingly we were in one of his company's cafes And he was sitting across the table from me and he was the founder co-founder and president of a coffee company called Just Us And they had a thriving range of cafes around the country Their products were available pretty much in all the supermarkets and I asked him what I thought was a relatively straightforward question and which was The name Just Us Jeff. It's What's what's what's the story behind it? But it seemed as though I'd actually asked him quite a difficult difficult question because he Didn't immediately answer me sort of thought about it for a while and looked at his coffee and And he said yes It's called Just Us because It sounds a little bit like justice and We're a fair trade coffee company. We work With the producers and we pay them a fair price. And so yes, that's that's Just Us Sounds a little bit like justice and that's that's the reason I said I don't think it is Jeff I think there must be a better reason For you to call yourself this kind of unusual name Just Us and by the way, I know you can't see this But it also has an exclamation mark after the word us So he went back to his coffee went back to ruminating on this question And whilst he's doing that I can give you the backstory Jeff and Deb Married couple in about 25 30 years ago They decided they wanted to start a fair trade coffee company. And so Jeff flew down to Chiapas in Mexico and spent some time with A co-op coffee co-op called usiri and after a few days he phoned Debs And they discussed the idea and decided yes, they were going to start a coffee company Deb's got on the phone to the bank Organized a remortgage of their house And a few weeks later A huge container of coffee arrived on their front lawn and Much like a typical entrepreneur. They looked at each other and said well, oh, what do we do next? Anyway, what they did next was great. And as I say they were now running a very successful business and So getting back to to to this question I'd asked asked him He said yes, it's just it's this just us. We're a small company We're up against the big corporates We're up against the kind of consumer indifference to the plight of coffee growers. That's it's it's there We're just a small company up against the big guys No No, no, no, no. I said again. I really think there's a more compelling reason Jeff for this name and Look to be to be completely honest with you This is not something that happens infrequently because as brands and businesses grow Um, you know, they morph they change what seemed like a good idea sort of 25 30 years ago Maybe isn't such a good a good idea now or you know, the reason for something being named something Has been lost in the midst of time. It's very very normal It's a very common thing I found and and so it's a really good idea to sort of question things like your name or your collateral because you're kind of carrying them along with you with you and and um, and my final, you know I had an english accent and always helps in north america. So I get get away with being a little bit rude But jeff what he came back with was so good But I wrote it down and I'm going to read you what he said now word for word. He said You know bruce, we are all on this journey of life together and we are all part of the same human family And as we visit our partners throughout the world and share their struggles successes and dreams This connection has continued to drive us So the most powerful of all reasons for the name and the most concrete Is the idea that there is no them and us Just us That there is no them and us just us and it was a fabulous moment because It was a window into almost the soul of that company, you know, he He captured What's at the heart of of their brand? And it kind of released a direction for us to start to move towards It was the beginning of their story and uh And what he pretty much done is to define the point of their brand And you know, I like points Um, and I like points because they stick into things And every organization needs a point A sharp definition of its focus that's going to stick in people's minds And that means making a choice of course about what that one point is And that could be fiendishy hard You know when I ask clients To define what they do in a single sentence every client Usually responds In the same way, which is it's just not possible Bruce. It depends on on our products. We're focusing on It depends on the audience that we're we're addressing. It depends on the campaign. We're running It depends on the territories that we're in and all those responses are valid and have their place The role of a brand strategy Is to sit above them my new shame and to be relevant to every part of the organization And so to meet this need to to to help solve this problem I've founded my practice back in 2009 and developed a framework called the brand arrow That would help clients to be able to discover And then define their point and in our session today We're going to cover the six big benefits of a brand strategy We're then going to define what a brand strategy is the elements that go into a brand strategy And then we're going to touch on what you can do with a brand strategy What what a brand strategy does and then we're going to hand back to phil who's going to manage some some q&a But before I dive in, um, I think it's very important that we actually define what we mean by the term brand and the term brand strategy so brand You know the reason why I think it's important to define the A brand is there's all kinds of ways of describing it and um, and so If we're going to have a useful conversation then we need to Establish in frames of reference. So a brand Is a product or a service That delivers a consistent and distinctive benefit to a customer A brand is a product or service that delivers a consistent and distinctive benefit to a customer And it's going to contain within it a set of characteristics that it's going to use to differentiate itself from competitors and remain familiar to its customers And a brand therefore can be a product that you find on the shelf in a supermarket It can be a professional service at b2b brand at b2c brand It can be a charity a fashion label for any organization that has a point or a point of view that he wants to communicate Is a brand and a brand is created by or driven by a brand strategy And I like to think of a brand strategy There's simply a framework for you to make good choices about your brand What a brand strategy is going to do is going to help you prioritize the purpose and character Of all the different facets of your organization So your services your products your messaging your values your culture your sales your marketing How you treat your customers your ambitions all those things All those facets a brand strategy Will be able to represent in a way that's relevant for for every every element and true for every element So its role is to kind of discover define and order the key elements of your brand story So let's have a look at What these six big benefits are that I mentioned that we need to look at as the first part of this presentation Okay Well, the first is that It is for everybody is for the whole organization just as I've just alluded to in terms of you know, what a brand strategy is Yes, uh, a cmo or marketing director or or somebody I often actually work with ceo's but But it it can often be brought in by the marketing team But really, you know, the job of a brand strategy is not to represent marketing Is to represent the entire organization because that's the job of a brand, isn't it? The job of a brand is to be to represent all of the organization because all the organization is is job Is is to create and deliver that brand to its customers You know, it stands to reason doesn't it that if everybody in the organization is aligned if everybody You know, he's on the same page. You know, he's headed in the same direction You're going to stand a much better chance of success Than an organization that doesn't have that alignment, you know, and I actually think this alignment Uh, it helps you to be much more efficient in how you use your resources because you're going to uh, have a business have a brand that has Consistency in how it communicates itself across its channels. There's going to be cohesion within the organization Yeah, there's going to be a real sense that, you know, we know what our brand stands for we know where we're headed And that's also going to deliver an accountability Yeah, whether it's our should this new product should we launch this new product? Is it in line with our brand should we engage this? Section of our audience should we you know bring along, you know a new strategy Everyone is going to have the ability to be able to see okay. This is what the brand means. This is what it represents And um going in the same direction means defining a vision, you know A vision actually that you can all understand when I talk about visions and we're going to come and look a little bit more detail and I'm not talking about a mission I'm not talking about a mission or or the dreaded statement I'm I'm talking about being able to define somewhere that you can all understand and somewhere you for you to head to And we'll come on to to look at that very shortly Brand strategy is going to distill your true value, you know that conversation with Jeff Moore. It's um, Just us, you know Was the beginning of a process where we would Kind of unearthing truths About the organization we would kind of sometimes call it, you know digging for hidden treasure stuff that you've forgotten about So that's a distilling or true value and the process will also allow you to be able to really Define in a crisp way Actually, you know, what are our key messages? And you know, I don't look for long lists when I'm developing key messages And I look for a list i.e. What's the first thing? What's the second thing? What's the third thing and we'll come on to look at key messaging In the second part of this presentation And finally, I think the job of a brand strategy that helps the entire company is to make you relevant to your customers and different From your competition and that alludes back to the job of a brand. So so some very significance Benefits a brand strategy will deliver to the entire company so Let's go on to look at the elements that make up a brand strategy and I'm going to look at for the vision Well, I've just very briefly talked about the vision your positioning Which is kind of capturing the essence of your brand Your proposition have your proposition how you express that essence And then your brand values the character of your brand Knowing where you're going Means when you arrive, you'll know you're there When if you don't define where you're going, well, how do you know when you've got there? Um, I'm being playful here, but but it's so important that An organization defines in a clear way where it is headed. I think of it as a destination That for me is the most helpful way You know of thinking about where is it that we are going? Yeah, because we all need to get to that place Yeah, how do you do that? What makes up a a brand vision and why is it kind of different from say for a mission or Well, I think there are three key attributes to a brand vision A brand vision needs to be big broad and long it needs to be big because kind of you kind of You know, you're you're you're defining an ambition for your business. So you kind of want it to be big you want it to be a you know a stretch and And it needs to be broad in so far as it needs to be relevant to the entire organization It's not a marketing or a product Ambition it's for the whole company. So it needs to be broad And it needs to be long Or rather long term And that Depending on the the sector you're in that can mean anything from I don't know 18 months for a startup or a scale up that I clients that I work with Right way through to five to seven years down the line and What we're trying to do is to is to kind of move beyond the transaction Yeah to look at something in the kind of middle distance And what's super helpful about about being able to define a vision beyond knowing where you're headed Yeah beyond all of you going in the same direction Is the fact that it can allow you to discover your barriers and your drivers What I call your barriers and your drivers So let's start with your drivers What assets do we have as a business that is going to help us move towards Our vision because I think that's the job of a brand strategy The job of a brand strategy is to equip you to move towards your destination So we need to know what that is the brand strategy needs to be able to define that vision And your drivers what have we got without changing them? That are going to help us move towards that vision. Yeah, what can we build on so we may well have, you know A fresh round of funding, you know a fantastic leadership team an award-winning product An insatiable demand for our product. We might have an innovation that is unique in the market Yeah, so what have we got that's going to help us move towards Our vision and these drivers are very good at helping us to shape how we create our messaging But frankly, I think even more importantly is to be able to define. Well, what are our barriers? What are the things that are going to slow us down or even stop us from moving towards Uh, you know our vision. What do we have to build up? Um, and and these are kind of the what are the problems that we've got that we have to solve Maybe we've got a team that works in silos, you know, they don't talk to each other Yeah, maybe we've lost our Age we've lost our appetite for innovation and a new a new brand's come along this kind of you know Is taking our market share Perhaps consumer habits are changing. Perhaps we didn't move a fast enough with the times and our barriers are brilliant because what our barriers can help us Deliver create our our marketing objectives. How do we deal with these these barriers because if we don't deal with these barriers if we don't Remove these barriers Then we're not going to be able to head successfully towards our vision. So you can see uh Brand vision has a really very important part to play For the whole company, not just the marketing team. So so that's the brand vision So let's move on to what is the probably the most technical term that I use Is it which is brand positioning? Uh, and um, and so What do I mean by brand positioning? It's how the brand is positioned in the minds of your team How the brand is positioned in the minds of your team? Why is this important? Well, what makes a brand strategy? I think distinct from something like a marketing strategy or an ad strategy Um is that the number one audience for your brand is you? It's your team Because if your team don't get your brand if your team don't understand your brand then what hope do your customers have? Because it's your team's job to communicate and grow your brand Communicate your brand to your customers and grow your brand and head towards that help you to head towards that vision So your brand positioning is how you position the brand in the minds of your team What's the thread that runs through everything think of it? You can think of it as the dna of your business now Every part of our business if we sort of sliced it open whatever we'd see the positioning running through it So just like the dna of our in our in our bodies makes us unique and and kind of shapes how we behave and How we develop so the brand positioning in in a brand is going to shape how it develops and how it communicates And its job really is to steer the brand Yeah So I talked about it being for you being for the team And it absolutely is for the team. It's in it's an internal tool You don't see the brand positioning kind of writ large on a bill poster. Yeah, it's going to it's for your team Yeah, and so just like A rudder on a boat. You don't see the rudder on a boat Yeah, you you but you see the direction it takes the boat. Well, this is the same Principle with the brand positioning it starts to steer the brand. Well, your brand positioning is a single word That sounds frankly impossible. I'm usually told it is impossible But it isn't it's entirely possible because I'm a great believer in Less is more, you know, I'm a great believer that the fewer the words the more potent that they become and and you know I talked earlier on about the idea of A brand strategy being a framework to make good choices You have got to make those choices as the brand owner. That's your responsibility Yeah, it's not the responsibility of the graphic designer or the web agency or the ad agencies that are presented with a whole host of choices Yeah, it's your job to make the choice about what your brand stands for And so I think by kind of Restricting the number of words to the bare minimum You are giving very very clear direction to your team internally to your agencies and of course to your customer Think of it like this You know, if you are You know Boiling a source, you know, you're reducing a source the more you reduce that source the more flavorful More delicious it's going to become and it's the same with the brand positioning the more we can distill Down the essence of our brand to a single word the more potent and the more powerful it will become brand positioning And I've said that the brand positioning is for you. It's an internal tool, which it is The brand proposition is how you express that positioning To your audiences. Yeah, it's a few carefully chosen words that's going to express The essence of your brand in a way that's clear honest and motivating And it's written for all of those who need to understand the brand So what the brand proposition isn't Is war and peace? It's not a lengthy discourse You can think of it if it's helpful As a slogan Although its job goes beyond purely the job of a slogan because it needs to engage your audience as well Think of it as the start The start of your story. Yeah, it's the introduction It's the first few words Of the story that you're going to tell about your brand And these five or six words will appear Um pretty much everywhere your brand appears so they may well appear on your business card They'll maybe appear underneath your logo They'll be on your website And and so the idea is that you are starting to tell This is the beginning of your story. Now. I like to think of your proposition Kind of like as an open door into your brand What you are doing in your proposition is you are helping your customers to seamlessly Walk into your brand to come into your store. Yeah And so you want the you want that proposition to be As as useful as possible for your team to start to have to talk about the narrative of your brand Yeah, you want those door to be doors to be as wide open as possible You know, and if your brand proposition is wrong No, or if you've got something in your the way you describe your brand that you can't quite remember why you You say this always a hangover from a different era or whatever it may be Then what you're going to in effect doing is you're placing a great big boulder In front of those open doors and you're having to kind of Squeeze round the boulder To get into your brand you're and you're having to help your customer. Oh, yeah Yeah, I know that we talk about that but actually we're all about this Yeah, and so a brand proposition kind of gets rid of that boulder and it helps you to be able to very easily Walk your customer into your brand. You know, if you've got a brand proposition that's wrong or misleading Yes, it may be a struggle to get your your customers into your brand But you know what could be worse they don't even see your brand Because your your introductory messaging isn't right. So this brand's not for me. I'll move on So brand proposition and I thought I'd tell another story and being fair to The the tea drinkers of this world. This is a story. You've had a story about coffee so I'm now going to tell you a story about tea and This is a story about a brand of tea called hamster tea It's a it's a sort of super premium brand That is stopped in very high-end stores around the world. You'll find it in harrods in harby nicks and The the the reason for me telling this story Is that they did have a point And you know how obsessed I am with with points. So they did have a point but their point wasn't very sharp Hamster tea is a bio dynamic tea And you may well be asking yourselves As I did Well, what's what's what's bio dynamic? What's a bio dynamic tea? So I asked this question is probably the first question I asked to the team um at hamster tea And uh, let me read out through their responses Bio dynamic tea is about harvesting and planting at the right time of year as the moon rises that type of thing Bio dynamic is an inspiration With an increasing arc of radiance By the ripples of a pebble thrown into a pond It's the weird and a wacky and very very niche, but it brings nothing to the customer So you can imagine how frankly useless It was to have a a point of a brand being bio dynamic if nobody in the team Had a clue what it stood for or if everybody in the team had a different view In fact, everybody in the team did have a different view But what bio dynamic stood for and so um for as this is an educational slot Let me tell you I find this out that it was founded by rudolf steiner back in the 1920s It's kind of precursor to the organic movement and what bio dynamic farming or agricultural is all about Is it views the farm as a single organism? So that everything in that farm, whether it's the But the crops the soil the insects the animals the people They're all part of this same organism And the job of an Bio dynamic agriculture is to make sure that all those different elements Work in harmony with each other that all are as healthy as possible All good so far you're thinking well, this sounds fabulous. However There are some aspects to bio dynamic agriculture that could be described as a little out there for example They store chrysanthemum oil In tin chests in darkened basements and then bring them out When the full moon rises or various other astrological cycles and they spray their crops with them Another example of what they do that might be seen as a little odd is that they bury manure in cow horns and and skulls are small mammals And then after six months they bring them out and again use those for their crops So the problem we had was that we had this rather obscure definition of a variety of definitions of bio dynamic And none of them seem that advertising frankly And and so we had a problem But we managed to find a solution for that problem That was a conversation I had with Mr. Raja Banerjee Who was the owner of the Maccabaritae estate Who who grew the team and he said to me, you know darling, it's all about the soil Now apparently he called everybody darling. I later found out but he was absolutely right and you know what? It's the only thing that The scientists can agree on that actually bio dynamic Bio dynamic farms have more nutrients in their soil than farms that are not bio dynamic More nutrients in the soil grow plants that are healthier And from that we got to the better the soil The better the taste and that gave us a fantastic platform to start to help to get people Into the brand so it was understandable for the team It was relevant to their customers and it differentiated them from the competition So that's just a proposition at work. But let's move on. I'm conscious of time Values, this is not a particularly difficult Concept to understand it describes the character of your brand just as values describe our characters as people And you know, we want to be able to sum up the character of our brand You know, I say that if you can't define your values, you can't use your values And just as values shape a person, they also shape a brand And I think they have two very very important functions I think the first is that they are incredibly influential internally They play a vital role in keeping your team Focused on what the brand stands for I like to think of them as kind of like a benchmark for your team You know, if we are going to create this new product if we're going to do this new initiative Does it reflect our values? Is the the presentation that we've just received from the design agency For a new brochure. Does it reflect our values? Yeah And so they have a very very important role to play both for the marketing scene, but also for the HR team Yeah, because your brand values Shouldn't be different from the values of your company They also play a very important role externally because they actually Kind of help your customers recognize you. Yeah, and this is so important You know that brands that are seen as a hallmark for your customers Because your customers are going to be bombarded, you know It's something like between four to 10,000 messages a day And our brain does a very good job in screening out an awful lot of those messages But what your values do is it helps your customers recognize you? Yeah, because they recognize you by your values and they can also call you up When you don't meet your values So they have a very very important role to play in terms of providing a hallmark for your customers to recognize you by so I've talked about The elements that go into our brand strategy and I now want to talk about okay What can you do and frankly you can do a great deal with with with brand strategy? And but I'm just going to focus on three three things For brevity that that you can do with the brand strategy First is around your key messaging I talked earlier on about this this idea of choices Yeah, and the the role of a of a brand strategy is to help you the team make good choices and so so The first thing a brand strategy can help you is to ensure that You are relevant to your customers And different from your competition So relevant and different now that might seem like the bleed and obvious, but the point here is that You need to be both. So you need to be relevant. Yeah, you need to solve a problem for your client or your customer But you can't just be relevant because if you're just relevant, you're the same as everybody else So you need to be different from your competition. Yeah, but you can't just be different You wouldn't have any customers. You need to be relevant and different And I think this is this is a great way of then thinking, okay Well, how do we decide? What is going to go first? I call it the tyranny Of the first there's always going to be a first thing, isn't there? There's always going to be a first thing on your website, you know There's going to be a first headline on your website or the first chart in your deck How do you know what is going to be First thing now if I if if I asked a client to give me The 10 five things about their business that that they love that have no problem at all But if I asked them to tell me tell me one thing They would have a problem. Yeah, because it's deciding what is the most important. So the other point about Messaging is you need to lead with the benefits not the features. Yeah Why should I care about this brand? What is in it for me? And I think this is so important particularly for technology firms of which I work a lot with you know People are very comfortable talking about how we do things But that's not The first thing to talk about the first thing to talk about this will solve your problem. Yeah This will make you more efficient. This will make you go faster. This will this will reduce cost This will whatever it may be to start with your benefits benefits and follow with features The other great thing about developing a message Messaging hierarchy is it allows you to create an elevator pitch Now the story goes that the only way You'd be able to get a hold of the boss Will be to ride in the elevator down from the the manager and suite On the top floor down to the ground floor And you had the time it took the elevator to go from the top floor to the bottom floor to pitch your idea to the boss And you know, of course, we're not allowed to spend any time in elevators at the moment But there will come a day where we can But it's very very useful to be able to define Concisely Your pitch. Yeah It's very useful for things like social media, for example Or all the front page of the of your you know the front page of your brochure or your website, whatever You know, it's going to that brevity that Cutting to the the chase is going to help you to cut through all the cacophony of noise that surrounds your your customers because although Bosses customers whatever are now, you know more accessible. There's more people talking to them So uh key messaging a brand strategy that delivers key messaging will also deliver you your elevator pitch Briefly the curse of the brand name, you know, they're both very important and not important at all They're important because they're everywhere. You know, um, there's a lovely story of a brand called Carl's hill I don't know if anybody's heard of Carl's hill. It's a very famous brand It was founded by Jacob Jacobson He was a collector of art a passionate believer in science A very successful business person and he decided to put all those skills together to create the perfect beer he bought a brewery and uh He built it up top of a hill and casting out for a name He decided very nicely to call it after his son Carl So and as the brewery was on a hill the brand was called Carl's hill I forgot to mention The brand of course, uh, uh, was in it was a Danish brand and so the hill was a burg And hence the name Carl's burg was born Fast forward to this century, you know, and it's a testimony to the power of that name that when the brewer recently Changed every aspect of the brand from its formulation to its packaging The name stayed the brand is the most visible feature Other brands so think carefully before changing The name of your brand and I think brands very briefly and there's more of this in my book Going to fall into three categories. How do you know what sort of brand you've got there? Well, there were good bad and ugly names A good name, of course, is going to help you with that, you know, keep those wide open doors to your business It's going to help you seamless. You talk about the benefits of your brand Um, a uh, you know an ugly Name is a name that's a bit clunky. It's not wrong, but perhaps it needs some help It may need a word after it or may need a new identity or logo or whatever or a new colorway to help it sing But a bad name is Like having that boulder in front of your store You need to change it so good bad and ugly names Of course, we all know this don't we that a brand is not a logo A logo is an expression of your brand and They are very very important and very being Graphically being able to communicate Your brand and your brand strategy will really ensure that your logo, you know is working correctly and Here's a quick pop quiz with two minutes left. Who can recognize the brand on the left? Of course It's a bottle of bass you can see from the the the red triangle there on the bass beer bottle That's one of the oldest logos in existence We can see our two mini logos here one from the 50s when it was owned by british leil and one from When the brand was relaunched by by bmw and the reason for them Staying together was they wanted to make sure that people understood that there was a relationship between the new mini and the old mini So logos need to be distinctive relevant and memorable Roller color has an extremely important role to play In brands in supporting You know where a brand is headed and where's a brand headed? Well, your brand strategy will tell you And so so color plays a very important part in subliminally communicating things that customers looking for and if you want to be Kind of recognized as being part of a sector Then you choose the color that is most red and in that set. I was talking to a colleague yesterday. Who's the head of brand at Diaggio and They're using a blue strip To to represent their non alcoholic Products because that's now the kind of de facto color blue happens to be a very calming color. Yeah, it's very stable It's very ordered. So a lot of banks and corporates use blue red very fiery You know most buy buttons on websites of red, you know, it has a it's a real call to action You know, each color has a different role to play. I'm not saying that consumers say, ah, this brand is orange Therefore it must be creative, but they do have a very influential role to play as does shapes you know most Rectangle squares are what we see most of In our daily lives and so they are familiar. So brands that want to deliver familiarity will have will use shapes that are familiar So shapes and colors have a very important role to play I put all this into a book called. What's your point? I'm delighted about to say that it's on On offer at the cim bookshop And if you have questions for me that we don't get through tonight do please Drop me an email. I'd be loved to hear from you bruce at the brand arrow com And you can find all kinds of stuff on my website or my youtube channel that goes into brand strategy So it's been a pleasure to talk to you. I'm now going to Hand back to phil who's going to manage our q&a. Thank you Okay, many thanks bruce We'd now like to have a short q&a session with you as a reminder You can still submit your questions by the question box in your control panel First question bruce then is What could be some examples of a broad long vision versus narrow vision Oh, okay Well, the broad long vision I think two sentences is is is plenty for a vision Um, if you make it too long, then people get lost and they what bit should we focus on? Yeah, so so I think more than two cents I say 50 words when we do brand strategy development with clients Kind of the discipline online is 50 words and the discipline when we're working together Over a conference room table as you can only use a post-it note So two sentences is an example of a of a the correct length for a brand vision Okay Okay, are all elements of the brand strategy fixed for the duration Are there any elements that open to pivot? Really good question. Thank you The floor of my business is that you don't tend to do brand strategies that often So I would say I'm just doing a brand strategy for a client Where we we lasted it seven years ago. They're really built for the medium term. Yeah And and so and again, that's what differentiates for example a brand proposition from say a slogan Slogan can change with the times it can change with the products But you want your proposition to have legs. Yeah, because you know to to allow a brand strategy to take root in an organization Takes time. Yeah, so but I think you can you can nuance you can change how your brand is presented Um as your market develops, but it's a very very good question. Thank you Okay, thanks. Um some one or two questions around brand name. So Because I will head you choose a brand name what makes a brand name memorable and The importance of the brand name. Could you please tell us some tips for creating a brand name? Well, yes. Yes, I I do quite a lot of naming and I do naming based on brand strategy. So think of your brand strategy as the kind of a pool of knowledge That you can draw on to give you really good inspiration for things like how we're going to represent ourselves with our name Yeah, and so you kind of don't want your brand strategy to be over long So and I've said it I'll say that again It's around this idea of creating a framework to make good choices So if you if you're creating a new company, uh, or you want to sort of check the the viability of your name Get your brand strategy and ask yourself what name would capture The values for example that we have defined the way I do is I take your six our six values Up my positioning my proposition And I usually end it with about eight or ten words. Yeah, let's just say for example one of them is Cohesion as that's where cohesive is an organization. Yeah, I would deliver occasion Then I'll look to see okay. What are the ways? Can I describe cohesion? Yeah, and I'll come up with a list of five six seven I use a saurus and and by the time you've done that you've got a great big a a one piece of paper With your dozen or so key words at the top and underneath that you've got a you know another 20 or 30 words that Are correct. Yeah, they're right because they're from the brand strategy And then it's a job of saying which words do we think? You know have the right mouth feel feel right for the sector You know feel have a monodernity or reflect the tone of the of the brand And then it's a question of well looking to see what's available to buy as a as a url, etc, etc Okey-dokey What questions tools do you think are useful to ask use in order to dig deep into what brands True values and mission are So there is a process that I go through in the brand arrow Uh that that Helps clients and teams to be able to be in the right frame of mind to answer to answer those questions Because the brand strategy that I have a the brand arrow Framework that I use is an actual arrow And the point of the arrow is is the brand strategy itself here But you leave that to the end so I do four sessions and And what that allows you to do is to draw on your vision Your drivers your key messaging. What makes you different? Yeah, how uh your audience we haven't talked about audience We haven't had time to date But I always say well, let's look at our audiences and then let's look at what characteristics they all share So that tap that kind of um platform allows you to then Go into the key question for me, which is What is it that runs through everything? What's the thread? Yeah, what's our DNA if we cut this open what are we going to see? Yeah, I find that the hardest and when I get to the positioning Sorry, I should have said positioning when I get to the positioning I do a little jig normally because for me It's the key that unlocks the brand. So that's what you need to go for that's the most potent And persuasive element of your brand strategy Um, and of course it's for you it's for your team. Hope that helps Um, Bruce just talked a lot about consumer brands and um this question here, which really relates to B2B So is it difficult to develop a brand identity for a contractor? In a construction industry that provides multiple services across different service categories And if not, what are the key points to consider? Thank you so much, um for that question. And yeah, I recognize both my examples for all three of my samples of consumer facing brands, so I think I may well have used them because they're a bit of fun But I would say probably 90% of my clients are B2B clients And it's much more important. I think for a B2B brand to have a really really good clear idea about its brand Because it doesn't have the kind of resources that a lot of B2C brands have for marketing. Yeah So whatever it does it has to be sure that it's right Um, so when I get told listen, we've got um, 20 different products, you know, or 20 different markets How can we have some you know, we need something that's going to be represented You know for each of those different ones. I say well, you've got one brand Yeah, you don't have a separate brand for all those different you've got one brand So we need to make sure that when we develop our brand strategy that it is inclusive that it is relevant to every part of your business And that means elevating You know, if we find we're getting stuck in the detail, you know, then we move it up a level Yeah, so we can get a more holistic view. Um, I I'm having to be working with um an architectural firm and a A firm in the construction sector. I don't have it I don't work on any with any particular sector in a brand strategy crosses sectors because the truths of the brand are the same Whatever your brand is, but thank you very much for pointing that out and I hope That's cleared it up that all all the things I've been talking about throughout this session are as appropriate to b2b as they are to b2c Okay, when a brand is supposedly stuck with a negative stereotype i.e. gap Being old fashioned 90s fashion How can they effectively adapt to reshape themselves or can its stereotypes be marketed positively effectively to act as a strength? It's a very good question the you know, what what brand strategy isn't is marketing strategy And what the brand strategy is doing is is getting to the truth of a brand you know, why was gap successful and Uh, there's some of that success would have will be down to catching the zeke geist But there will be principles in that within that organization That may well have been lost Or forgotten about or that are dear to but they're not executed well That will allow that and if you call those out if you recognize those and Express those in a way that's understandable Then you can shape How you can shape how those are expressed to meet your different audiences your different Trends in the market your different demands But brand strategy is about defining and refining the truths of an organization and those truths will be long term Um, you may already have asked asked this question to some extent Bruce, but we were talking earlier about b2b Does branding differ for charities? No, not at all. Um, it doesn't differ. I mean the messaging That you use from your brand strategy will obviously be reflective of their audience um, but you know if charities, um I don't want to I don't want to you know to characterize charities as being resource strapped, but many are and so again It's much more important that it was so it's not much more important. It's very very important that whatever resource they do Use in marketing or product development They can be absolutely sure that that it's strategically sound so I think The the the relationship between between brand and marketing is a very close relationship Uh, and and I always characterize marketing as how you shape the brand How you present the brand to engage with your customers and so I think for charities a brand strategy is very very important Particularly if you're going to also engage with for example, very it may be a large volunteer A network you really need to understand what the brand stands for Okay, great Please can you explain again the difference between brand positioning and brand proposition? Sure Positioning is an internal tool And your proposition is used externally one way of thinking about it your positioning is one word Your proposition is a sentence. Maybe like six or seven words. Think of your proposition as a slogan Yeah, your position sums up the dna It's like kind of like what runs through everything that you do your proposition is how you express that to your audiences So it's I appreciate that that this is terminology and an approach that isn't necessarily that well known And that's again one of the reasons I wrote the book Because I just think that that each has a role and each over each each role is very important For the success of a business because I do believe that a brand strategy can Help grow a business And so so that's the difference positioning is is the kind of dna And your proposition is an expression of that dna Okay, um, Bruce you worked on lots of brands. So can you give us an example of a brand? No, give it. Let us know what their positioning and proposition Actually is Well, I could talk about orange. I was head of brand orange, but um, as they as they don't belong anymore to the uk. Um, I don't feel like But um, I can let me talk about, um Well, I think I think we talked about I'm just thinking about b2b. Um Yeah, I work for a brand called blue yonder. Um, and they're a german What well, they were german based um, ai brand they are they Provide predictive analytics for the retail trade And they were recently purchased by jda software Which is a very multi billion dollar software business supply chain business in the us And um, I work with them to refocus their brand On the retail sector up to that point they worked across sectors Um, and they wanted to focus on retail because retail they thought was the biggest market for them and so What we had to do was to we refocus the brand to give it a retail Um, a retail shape, you know, uh to make it feel like it was part of the fabric of retail Because the retail market is very insular retail is only really like to kind of deal with other retailers um, and so The positioning that we developed for blue yonder was leading decisions Now, um, you're immediately going to say to me hang on a minute bruce. You said there was only one word And now you're you're you're you're giving us a positioning with two words Sometimes I think I must have been feeling generous that day, but no joking apart sometimes if you need Slightly slightly more. Um richness you can Add you know add a word and leading decisions did two things Firstly, it recognized that they wanted to be a leader in their sector And the hallmark of a leader is that you need to be able to be followed Yeah, you can't be a leader if you don't have followers um, and so They needed to recognize that I needed to to to stand to stand up and be more leader But the decisions piece was the key because unlike pretty much every single one of their competitors What they didn't provide was a dashboard that clients could use to sort of improve things They simply told them the answer. Yeah And so for example, morrisons is that one of our customers and morrisons Get every every day. They get a list of things to buy from lou yonder They don't get choices. They get told what the decision is And this was what was what made them distinct and that ran through everything they did So their positioning was leading decisions um, and their proposition was best decisions delivered daily this idea of um How they kind of retail fields with best decisions delivered daily and the idea that was we're saying we are delivering new decisions not delivering you the means to make decisions. We are delivering those decisions on a daily basis and The brand was very successful was bought by jda and jda liked the brand so much they renamed themselves blue yonder So so there we are brilliant, okay um Bruce we run out of time for the questions now So, um, thank you very much for that. There's some there's some really fascinating questions and some great answers So just like to say thank you to bruce for today's presentation and a thank you to all of you for attending Um, I hope you found it interesting and worthwhile um Our next online marketing club event takes place at 6 30 on thursday the 18th of march When cim course director abigail dixon will talk about developing customer insight to drive marketing strategy You'll find further details listed on the cim website events page where you can also book for the event So it just leaves me to say on behalf of cim. Thank you for joining us and we hope you enjoy the rest of your evening. Thank you