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"Target, Toys R Us, Sears and Kmart are just a few of the big retailers that have launched mega-sales in recent weeks to tempt increasingly cost-conscious shoppers to their stores. This phenomenon -- known as the seasonal sales shift, or "Christmas creep" -- is not new. But in today's uncertain economic climate, it has bigger implications than ever -- both for the retail sector's growth strategies and for consumer spending habits, say Wharton and other business experts." Knowledge@Wharton 8/18/10
New campaign for 8th Continent soy milk focuses on moms to play up the brand’s family roots. The campaign enables 8th Continent to reinforce their family roots without directly attacking category leader Silk which is sold by Dean Foods.
Co-branding is the practice of using two or more complementary brands to create new goods and services that are more appealing to potential purchasers than if they were branded by a single brand.
An attempt to damage a brand by associating it with individuals and situations that are not consistent with the brand’s values and image.
Counter branding may also describe the strategic creation of a brand based on repositioning of a competitive brand or product, i.e., positioning 7Up as the Uncola.
Customer Lifetime Value is a metric that represents the potential revenue of a customer over the average length of their relationship with the company.
Marketers are encouraged to identify the CLV to help them market more effectively and cost efficiently by prioritizing target segments.
Costs to acquire the customer and manage the relationship, profits generated during the relationship, and relationship length, are examined as part of the calculation of CLV.
Sure, Accenture and other companies might be feeling a little burned by Tiger Woods but pairing a brand with celebrity endorsements, attractive imagery or event sponsorships can help create positive feelings about the brand say the authors of a study published in Science Daily.
Writing a successful creative strategy is tough because there are often many directions it can take. So, part of the job of the strategist is to provide focus to the strategy by making decisions about what information is relevant based on the advertising objective and their analysis of the information available.
If a creative strategy cannot be expressed in a single, focused sentence, then it’s not an effective strategy. And the result could be a creative execution that fails because it tries to do too much, as depicted in this painfully funny video.
One of the reasons this blog focuses on brand positioning strategy is that an effective brand strategy is at the heart of a successful business plan.
The brand strategy identifies the target, the target’s ‘pain point’, the product, the product’s differentiated benefits, and what the company must do to ‘prove’ the differentiated benefits to the customer. A well constructed strategy provides guidelines on all aspects of the business plan, including how the product is formulated, distributed, and priced, and, yes, how the product is marketed. Advertising, of course, is just one element of a marketing plan.
The presentation below was created by a former agency planner to illustrate why an effective marketing plan is about more than good advertising. He illustrates how the development of an effective positioning strategy guided the planner’s clients to make business decisions about their product. It also, ironically, resulted in the loss of the agency’s advertising business because the strategy the agency developed helped their clients identify the actions beyond advertising they needed to employ to be successful.
Take a look – it will make you think about your role as a marketer and how that relates to your brands’ success. Via Servant of Chaos.
Economic Recession Creates Opportunities As Well As Challenges
Brand Guru Kevin Lane Keller, author of Strategic Brand Management (3rd Edition), and Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, spoke with Nielsen about the challenges and opportunities for brand marketers during the current economic crisis.
What’s key for brand success?
”Perhaps the most important branding consideration in tough economic times is to establish perceptions of good value. Being seen as low priced or less expensive is not necessarily the answer, the more important consideration is that consumers feel that they are getting appropriate value from a product or service.”
Also critical is marketing investment: “Research has shown that in past recessions those firms that have been willing to invest in their marketing have emerged in a stronger position than those firms that have cut back spending and reduced their marketing investments.”
Read PDF of Nielsen’s full interview with Kevin Lane Keller.
The New York Times asks, “Can Bulgari Sell Glamour While Cutting Costs?” Wary of damaging the brand’s image of “opulence and exclusivity,” Bulgari is trying to “cut costs and diminish expenses without negatively affecting the image of the brand or the quality.” New York Tmes 12/08/08.
According to Chain Store AgeTarget (TGT) is one of the first retail brands to build an iPhone application. The application is a virtual snow globe that enables digital snow to fall and a gift idea from Target to appear. Chain Store Age 12/04/08
Discounters including eBay (EBAY)and Costco (COST)are fighting a 2007 Supreme Court ruling which allows manufacturers of brands such as Sony (SNE), Black & Decker (BDK) and others to prevent retailers from selling their products beneath minimum advertised price (MAP). Manufacturers say MAPs protect profit and brand image; opponents say they keep prices high and diminish consumer choice. Wall Street Journal 12/04/08
J.M. Smucker Co. (SJM), is reducing prices on its Folgers brand coffees from 3.5% to 7.8% and on its Dunkin’ Donuts retail coffees by 35 cents because of decreases in the costs of green coffee used in the products’ forumulations. The MediaPost article also notes that Starbuck’s (SBUX) plans to close stores and provide consumers with added value through loyalty cards to manage costs and build sales without undermining its premium brand position. MediaPost 12/08/08.
A “large-scale, one-day Web campaign” via display ads on the Google Content Network across entertainment, food, news and sports sites, enabled Papa John’s (PZZA) to reach large numbers of people and boosted online weekend sales 15% - 20% versus a typical weekend. The ad offered a free medium cheese pizza to people who signed up for Papa John’s emails. MediaPost 12/09/08.
Frequent price promotions that reduce the perceived average price of a brand damage brand equity, says a study published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS®). Because price is the most important signal of brand quality, a temporary price cut can result in increased sales short term, but reduced future sales. Science Daily 12/8/08
One of the reasons this blog focuses on brand positioning strategy is that an effective brand strategy is at the heart of a successful business plan.
, and Professor of Marketing at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, spoke with 
