A recent TechCrunch post reflected on the reasons Facebook and MySpace have failed to emotionally connect with Japanese users, commenting:

Mixi, the country’s biggest social network, positioned itself as a tool for communicating at a distance through diaries and communities to meet like-minded members. It doesn’t primarily exist to make new friends (poking is restricted) or as a platform for public self-presentation.

A perfect example of a cultural misconception: Mark Zuckerberg recently said in Tokyo one of Facebook’s unique selling points is the usage of real names and photos in profiles. This may be true but it’s exactly what Japanese web users usually try to avoid.

Whether or not TechCrunch’s observations are correct, it is a fact that all too often a company cobbles together a brand positioning statement based on superficial or incorrect perceptions of their target audience, whether the users are global or local. The company’s tribal knowledge, assumptions and incomplete or poorly executed research masquerade as insight. This makes it unlikely they will be able to establish a framework on which to emotionally connect with their target audience.

I can’t help you with the first two requirements. But I can suggest some questions that will help you understand your target user’s cultural, emotional and attitudinal perspectives regarding the category and category brands. Keep in mind that you may need to utilize indirect, as well as direct, questioning techniques since the target audience may be unable or unwilling to express their perspectives.

• Identify the lifestyle motivators behind your users’ decisions to help you understand the role your brand can play in their lives, i.e., why do they choose to live where they live? Why did they choose the type of car they drive? Why do they dress the way they do? Try to ascertain what drives their decisions…status, self-expression, security, etc.?
• How do your users wish to be perceived by others? Which brands assist them in attaining the image they seek?
• What are the emotional drivers that influence the target’s use of brands in your category? If your brand is a line of baking mixes, for example, determine what emotions motivate target users to bake. Is it love for their family, self-expression, etc.? What emotional benefits are most important to them? Do any of the category brands deliver the emotional benefits they’re seeking? If so, how?
• What are the specific features and functional benefits that ensure emotional satisfaction with the brand? How well do brands in the category, including yours, deliver these features and functional benefits?
• Also ask users what they dislike about brands in the category and what emotional needs are unmet so that you can understand how well your brand resolves their issues.
• What proof do users need to trust your brand will deliver what it says it will deliver?

One critical result of a well-defined target audience is understanding the emotional benefits that are important to target users and how your brand delivers on these emotional benefits. This does not preclude the importance of identifying demographic, geographic and technographic attributes. But keep in mind that you don’t want to amass a laundry list of information.

Ask questions that reveal opportunities to emotionally connect with your users and you’ll be well on your way to developing a richly compelling and successful brand.

See also:
brand – what is it?
positioning statement
point of difference
pain point
target audience
frame of reference
reason to believe
brand essence
portfolio architecture
commoditization

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According to Brandweek, “Eco Pulse,” a national study that focused on consumer knowledge and attitudes about green issues, found that 42% of respondents said they didn’t know what features a home would need to have before they would consider it green. Another 28% said solar, 12% said compact fluorescent light bulbs and 10% named Energy Star appliances.

Adopting green branding and messaging should be a strategic decision, not a response to media noise. Where to start?  Define what greenness means to your brand---there are lots of definitions of green, and lots of implications. Incorporating green into your brand may require significant changes within the organization; regarding it simply as a communications message is a mistake that may result in a loss of credibility with consumers.

Here's a great post on the subject, "Saying You're Green Doesn't Make it So" by Lewis Green.

UPDATE:

When Neville Isdell became The Coca-Cola Company CEO in 2004, sales were declining. Trends seemed to indicate that the lag in sales was due to shifts in consumer tastes and habits, and a growing belief that carbonated beverages were unhealthy.

As a result, the company had moved away from "anything that wasn't carbonated," according to this article from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. 

Isdell reportedly spent "hundreds of millions of dollars" on marketing for carbonated soft drinks and new cola innovation. The result? "The company's global soft drink sales grew faster last year than they have since 1988, despite falling sales in the U.S."

The company's success suggests this advice for marketers who are promoting mature brands:

• Don't Let Emotion Rule Your Marketing Strategy. Isdell notes that a "lack of belief" in carbonated soft drinks became a "self-fulfilling prophecy" when innovation and marketing support for carbonated brands faltered. New product innovation, such as Coke Zero and added marketing dollars are credited with helping to reverse the negative sales trend.

  True, carbonated beverage sales still declined in the U.S. according to the article. But added marketing support and new product innovation lessened the decline.

• Stand On The Balcony Once In Awhile. A former boss used this expression to reinforce the importance of learning to separate yourself from the day to day issues that cloud your thinking and vision. Being 'on the balcony' helped Isdell to reaffirm the company's vision and coalesce the company's strategy.

• Don't Let Others Define You. Isdell is "reframing the category as"sparkling beverages" from "carbonated," a term that has been repositioned as unhealthy by critics.

• Dance With Who Brung You. Even "aggressive" growth in The Coca-Cola Company's portfolio of non-carbonated drinks won't offset overall sales declines, Isdell points out in the article. It's a mistake to withdraw support from your core while it's still bringing in the lion's share of revenue.

• Stick To Your Knitting. One of Coke's biggest recent successes has been, you guessed it, a carbonated beverage: Coke Zero. Before you abandon a category or product, consider the ways you can innovate the category to meet changing tastes or trends.   

Via Brandsizzle.com

The use of celebrity endorsers is a common---and tricky---brand building strategy. Consider these recent ‘incidents’ involving celebrity endorsers:

Christian Dior dropped celebrity spokesperson Sharon Stone from their advertising in China, after the actress suggested that recent earthquakes there were “karmic retribution for Beijing’s treatment of Tibet.”

Conservative bloggers protested a Dunkin Donuts ad that featured Rachel Ray wearing a scarf that they charged resembled keffiyeh, the patterned and fringed scarf that is the traditional headdress of Arab men---and associated by some Americans with terrorism.

A 2007 print ad for Deréon Girls, Beyoncé’s fashion line for young girls, resurfaced as the target of criticism by a new round of bloggers for oversexualizing and ‘tarting up’ young girls. The label is an offshoot of the Hip Hop fashion House of Deréon.

Celebrity endorsements have the potential to significantly raise sales and market share, and introduce the brand to a new target audience. For example, Forbes reports that Chanel’s endorsement deal with spokes icon Nicole Kidman increased business by nearly 16%, without any changes in fragrance or packaging, because “all of a sudden, younger women took notice of the brand.” (Reportedly Nicole Kidman is being replaced by "Amelie" star Audrey Tautou)

But endorsement deals can turn bad in an instant. Who can forget actor Ben Curtis’ famous utterance, “Dude, you’re getting a Dell”? The consumer campaign, was “hugely successful” for Dell Computer Corp. In 2002 Dell began to transition away from Curtis’ character and it’s just as well since the actor was arrested for attempting to buy marijuana on Manhattan’s lower east side.

As a result, the memorable line and character spawned a host of parodies and late night jokes, many of which were at the Dell brand’s expense. (See the left column for a video of one of the Dell ads. If the ad isn’t visible you can view it here.) After Kobe Bryant’s rape arrest, Nutella and McDonald’s hastily dropped their agreements with the basketball star.

Celebrities are human after all; it’s impossible for marketers to remove every bit of risk from a deal. But here are three things every marketer must to enhance the potential for celebrity endorsement success:

Going Global? Make sure you understand cultural sensitivities.
Blogger Daisy Kong asks why Dior would pick Sharon Stone to endorse their brand in China since her pro-Tibet stance is well known. Good question. Brands need to understand cultural sensitivities if they expect to succeed outside familiar turf.

Does the endorser/endorsee relationship make sense?
Seriously, when you think brand extensions for sexy, R&B star Beyoncé, do you immediately think children’s clothing line?  Strategically smart celebrity/brand pairings enhance the core brand equities of each partner---and this doesn’t work for either.

Put fires out quickly. Despite a marketer's best efforts, sometimes stuff just happens. In the case of Rachel Ray’s scarf, most critics were also fans--- even the most vocal doubted she was trying to make a political statement. (Personally, the only reaction that I had to Ray’s scarf was that it was unattractive. The connection between it and a keffiyeh didn’t occur to me.)

While it's absurd to suggest that Dunkin Donuts was promoting a terrorism symbol, the company was right not to provide fodder for those bloggers who live for controversy. The company simply pulled the ad and got back to making donuts.   

Credits
Rachel Ray photo from AdAge
Dereon Girls Print ad from BrownSista
Dell Dude Screen Shot from YouTube

Just about everyone who’s ever reached for an artificial sweetener knows the color code: pink is Sweet’ N Low, Splenda is yellow and Equal is blue. At least until recently. According to AdAge, NutraSweet plans to introduce their packets in the pink, yellow and blue colors of its competitors.

That’s not to say that they will have an easy time of it. Aspartame has its own vulnerabilities. Sucralose sweeteners, such as Splenda, have overtaken aspartame in market share, and the artificial sweetener category is commoditized. It will be tough to generate market share based on substantive brand differentiation so NutraSweet’s strategy to grab share from competitors is smart. Hopefully, they've planned additional smart strategies as a follow-up.

Are you tired of companies who prattle about good service as if saying it is the same as delivering it? Here’s an online retail brand built on great service, not lip service.

Zappos.com was founded in 1999 by twenty something entrepreneurs Nick Swinmurn and Tony Hsieh, founder of LinkExchange.

In addition to a gargantuan selection (3 million shoes, handbags, clothing items and accessories from over 1,100 brands) Zappos.com offers free shipping and a 365 day return policy.

From the beginning, the founders wanted the Zappos brand to be a “service company that happens to sell shoes.” 

Providing great service requires a customer-focused culture. So all new hires at Zappos.com Las Vegas headquarters, "including accountants, lawyers and software developers," are required to go through Customer Loyalty training.

After a week, trainees are offered a $1000 bonus to quit, plus their salary. Why? To weed out the ‘wrong’ people. “If you want to create a memorable company, you have to fill your company with memorable people, says a Harvard Business article.

The 1500 employee company expects $1 billion in 2008 sales, primarily through repeat business and word-of-mouth. Hsieh says the company" will continue to build our brand and our culture, because in the long run, brand and culture are the same thing.” (Speaking of culture, when was the last time you read about a CEO forgoing his bonus to provide bigger employee bonuses?)

That isn’t to say that the road to success hasn’t had its speed bumps. The company’s recent decision to discontinue their price protection policy prompted customers to post a few dozen complaints, such as the one below, on CEO Hsieh’s blog:

“…For me, the price matching was critical for shopping at Zappos. I find Zappos to charge full retail or even more than full retail for the shoes I've looked at, probably to cover for the "free" shipping. I was happy to give Zappos my business when they could give me a good price, but since the elimination of price matching, I won't be shopping at Zappos anymore.”

 “Creating strategy is easy, but implementing it is very difficult, “ says Wharton management professor Lawrence G. Hrebiniak, author of  Strategy Work: Leading Effective Execution and Change. One challenge is that traditionally, MBAs were trained in planning versus execution, and in many organizations, strategic development and execution are siloed.

One way to ensure that your strategy achieves its objectives is to understand that “execution is a process, and not an action or a step,” says Hrebiniak. Make sure your strategy is planned in tandem with execution and ensure that execution isn’t simply a lower-level responsibility. Becoming skilled at “coordinating decisions and actions across organizational boundaries” is another criterion for success, says Rick Lepsinger coauthor of Flexible Leadership: Creating Value by Balancing Multiple Challenges and Choices.