Growing Your Business-A Five Point Approach to Branding
A Five-Point Approach to Branding
1. Defining your Dominant Selling Idea (DSI) Our DSI is a unifying, energizing, focusing, trust-building, clutter-removing, lean-value-creating notion – a motivating difference at the moment of the purchase decision – that communicates our #1 position in a ‘desirable specialty’ that’s important to our target customers. That’s a mouthful, but unless we’re able to define our DSI, we won’t be able to ‘attach it’ to our name… a requirement for branding. Our DSI fuses our name to a #1 specialty in the customer’s mind. Remember, our customers must ‘cut through the fog’ of competing suppliers in an instant, hopefully as follows: Industry Category Specialty #1 in Specialty Our Brand Name
First, we must articulate our clear ownable specialty. To view us as #1 at something, customers must first relate us to a specialty category, even if we have to invent it! When internal combustion engines became commonplace, Evinrude coined the term ‘outboard motor’ and dominated its growing niche. After airplanes became pervasive, proliferating specialty categories enabled leadership positions to be carved out in jets (vs. propeller-driven), fighter jets (vs. passenger/freight/corporate), supersonic (vs. subsonic), and stealth (vs. radar detectable). Boeing became #1 in the ‘jumbo jet’ category, just as many automakers now hope to be #1 in ‘hybrid cars.’ Within the global auto industry, little Subaru has become #1 in the “SUV Wagon” category and Volvo is branded as “the world’s safest car.”
After defining our clear ownable specialty, we can now develop our DSI. Imagination helps. For example, Rolaids invented the term “Acid Indigestion,’ Hall’s coined “Vapor Action,” and Metamucil renamed flea seed fiber as “100% Natural Psyllium.” To be powerful and memorable, our DSI should be as concise as possible (e.g., M&Ms–Melts in Your Mouth not in Your Hands; Allstate–The Good Hands People).
Ideally, our DSI will possess five ‘selling attributes’:
◊ Superlative – we’re best-in-class at something
◊ Important – that ‘something’ really matters
◊ Believable – there are logical reasons why this is the case
◊ Memorable – an emotional, easy-to-remember, ‘hook’ related to needs and wants
◊ Tangible – real and trusted based on our actual performance
Once we have a DSI, we can use four vital supporting elements to bring it to life.
2. Your Company or Product Line’s Name When our name accentuates our DSI, we’ve got a powerful one-two punch! A descriptive and memorable name is best. Initials, family surnames, and innocuous labels can, of course, become familiar and meaningful in time (e.g., Toyota, Sears, IBM, etc.), but it’s far better to have a name that’s:
◊ Directly supportive of our DSI
◊ Descriptive, memorable, or evocative
◊ Ownable and protectable
◊ Easy and pleasing to say
Consider these communicative names that seem to have a built-in DSI: DieHard Batteries, Invisible Fence, Home ATM Software, Egg Beaters, Ball Park Franks, Super Bowl. Compare their marketing power to generic names such as Acme, Universal, Smith, etc.
3. Your Tagline This valuable selling tool supports your DSI by clearly ‘promising a difference’ that customers want to buy. Like your name, it will ideally be concise, colorful, evocative and memorable. Here are a few famous ones:
◊ Timex – Takes a Licking and keeps on Ticking
◊ Bounty – The Quicker-Picker-Upper
◊ Prudential – Get a Piece of the Rock
◊ Black Flag Roach Motel – Roaches Check In, but They Don’t Check Out.
◊ Visa – It’s Everywhere You Want to Be
4. Key Visuals While graphic design gives a brand consistency, key visuals demonstrate the performance and proof of your DSI at a glance, demonstrating that “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Many are, in effect, instantaneous selling demos. A few examples:
◊ Masterlock – rifle bullet blasting through
◊ Tropicana – an orange with a straw in it
◊ Milk Industry – white milk mustache
◊ Crazy Glue – helmeted guy stuck to football goal crossbar
◊ Michelin Tire – secure smiling baby sitting in tire
5. Making it Real We either perform in such a way to make our DSI real or we don’t. Nothing kills a great brand message faster than poor follow-through.
Strong marketing creates great anticipation that can quickly turn into anger, a sense of betrayal, and a dead brand! Team unity and alignment, consistent with our company’s purpose and values, is essential to success. Assess how customers experience your DSI and evaluate your performance at each ‘touch point’ to ensure each element of the customer experience resonates with your promise.
What have we learned? Brands really matter! They’re accessible to all types and sizes of companies who consistently communicate their Dominant Selling Idea using readily available tools. Finally, they involve leadership focus and teamwork more than money to implement.
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