What's in a name?
What’s in a name? In today’s competitive world, a name is everything. A name, often, is the first thing that a potential customer sees of your site. It’s everything. Naming also relates to brand positioning: what your business offers and who it’s trying to get to take up that offer. At its very core, brand positioning is the impression you want your business to create in the consumer’s mind. You want your business, and what it does, to ‘build a home’ so to speak with your consumer. This is identifying a niche market and then utilising it through typical marketing techniques. This includes setting it apart from the competition; making it (at least seem) better than the other products in some way.
The best way to begin is with a Brand Positioning Statement, which you should organise like this. Note: while this is an important inception, don’t worry too much about it. You should know the answers to these questions naturally; this is just putting it down on paper.
WHO — who are you selling to? What demographic are they in? What are they interested in, and why are they interested in your product?
CATEGORY — what is your product? Try to write this in five words or less — you can extend this later. For now, just stick to the core idea behind your product.
WHAT — what does your product do? This is where you get to extend the idea from CATEGORY. For instance, do your milkshakes allow consumers a guilt-free and healthy treat that is the best around? Include the benefits of your product, and the promises your business makes behind these products.
WHY — hopefully this isn’t the hard part. Provide evidence to support your WHAT.
Continuing the milkshakes example: all natural, organic and locally sourced ingredients? Taste tests?
Now think of this as the heart of your business. Your brand branches out from here. For more information on brand positioning, give us a bell!
Now — where are some good examples of brand positioning? The best examples are the ones that associate perfectly with the product.
Apple’s ‘Think Different’ differentiates both the brand, and its products, from the competition. Additionally, this creates a relationship and psychological connection with the consumer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwXdGm89Tk
Mercedes-Benz is based on quality and high price.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lwWR3vLq_E
Now...some bad examples.
Colgate once tried to expand into pre-packaged food under the guise that people would trust it more. You guessed it — that didn’t work. Minty fresh and lasagne aren’t really killer marketing facets.
Chevrolet, believe it or not, spent a little time trying to make their brand more consistent. Seemingly fair enough, except for the fact that they saw this as trying to reduce the usage of the term ‘Chevy’ and instead go for the full Chevrolet.
When Panasonic extended into computers they associated a cartoon character with the new product. As if this wasn’t stupefying enough, they wanted to extend the ‘theme’ associated with the product. Therefore they did the following… They named the device ‘The Woody’, its touch screen functionality ‘Touch Woody’ and the automatic Internet browsing technology ‘Internet Pecker’. We’re not kidding! That actually happened.
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