C Notes Newsletter Issue 15

Cognition. Calculation. Campaigning.

Branding at the Cellular Level. A Leveraging of Resources.

Quick – name your company’s most valuable intangible assets. Chances are, you thought of ideas and experiences, both your own and those of your people. If you’ve already taken that enviable first step toward branding yourself, you might have thought about the brand you’re working on and what you’re building it into.

Whether you’ve begun that path or wish to, Caler&Company can help. We will show you how to leverage those other intangibles to create, maintain and strengthen your brand.

It’s a process called Cell Branding™, and it’s a truly innovative way to build the most valuable brand possible. Best of all, it utilizes the resources you already keep at hand.

We approach the challenge in three distinct yet completely interrelated and equally important steps that represent the path from conception to realization… Thinking, Planning, Doing.

In the thinking (cognition) stage, resources are identified and marshaled. Employees are enrolled and encouraged to focus their attention on brand development. Company culture, its history and best practices are considered in order to answer, what makes this company unique? In the course of these discussions, and by virtue of the company’s own brainpower, a brand is conceived.

The planning (calculation) stage is where you envision your brand in the marketplace and strategize its impact on customers, potential customers and competitors. This is where all considerations are weighed, polished or left behind. Will the plan evolve? Yes, constantly. One of Napoleon’s generals was among the first to observe that no war plan remains intact once the battle is engaged. This holds true with a branding plan. Planning visualizes a brand in action… with built-in flexibility for inevitable change.

Finally, doing (campaigning). This is the culmination of everything that comes before. This is the implementation of thinking and planning. This is the action phase and the launch of a brand.

Finished? Not at all. A brand is a living, evolving entity, just like your company. 

To realize your brand’s best value; indeed, to keep it from turning into a liability, ongoing brand management is a must. 

Caler&Company’s Cell Branding provides the tools to build that brand and also weather it through all the changes sure to come. Cell Branding by Caler&Company is designed to help you overcome branding obstacles and all the inevitable obstacles you will face. 

Cell Branding by Caler&Company. It’s the smart way to build and better your brand.

It's Worth Repeating: Relevancy Trumps Repetition

Repetition. It’s based upon the theory that if you repeat a message often enough, the consumer will believe it.

It’s a nice theory, and based on the millions of advertising dollars spent on it every year, it clearly has its proponents. Unfortunately, its flaw lies in its drastic underestimation of the consumer’s intelligence. 

Suppose you decide to market a new diet drink. Instead of investing in research, you opt to bottle fizzy water and spend the bulk of your money on advertising. You go with the repetitive technique, inundating the consumer with ads in every medium, assuring them that they never need exercise… drink a bottle every day, and watch the pounds melt away!

Repeat that as often as you like, but customers are too savvy for nonsense like that and don’t like being beaten over the head with false messages.

Instead, try relevancy. Try using advertising as a vehicle to deliver useful and accurate information about your product or service.

Sound a little too straightforward? Well, consumers appreciate relevancy. Even though the diet drinks do not melt away pounds, consumers often perceive them as a healthier choice. The message… more tilt, less guilt, is relative to making a healthier choice. 

And don’t think relevancy yields boredom. Any message can be spiced up with a healthy dose of creativity. Talk to your marketing consultants. 

Let them know you want to speak to your customers honestly and relevantly, in the most creative format they can muster. 

You’ll quickly find you don’t need just repetition to make your message memorable. Your message sticks because it demonstrates the respect you have for your customer’s intelligence. They’ll return that respect, and reward you.

Guerilla Marketing

Creating a Sales Insurgency

Statistically, each one of us sees about 3,000 advertisements per day. That number isn’t terribly surprising… until you try to remember those 3,000. Or 300. Or even 30.

Clearly, a few thousand advertisers are wasting their money. As John Wanamaker, who many consider to be the father of modern advertising, once said, “I know that half of my advertising dollars are wasted... I just don’t know which half.” An alternative exists that offers two advantages that were once thought to be mutually exclusive: low cost and demonstrated effectiveness.

Jay Conrad Levinson, who coined the term “guerilla marketing,” defines it this way: “Unconventional marketing intended to get maximum results with minimal resources.” And the focus on resources has indeed been the initial attraction for many who have tried this new approach. They’ve seen it as a chance to escape the traditional battle of the advertising budgets. Smaller companies, in particular, have embraced it as their only real chance to stand up to their deep-pocketed competitors.

But a funny thing happened in the marketplace, and it didn’t just involve the costs of unconventional marketing: the guerilla approach was shown to work.

An emphasis on low-cost unconventionality requires the advertiser to think beyond traditional media and try something new. In doing so, one comes at the audience from an unexpected angle and breaks through the filters built up through a lifetime of marketing bombardment. 

Of the 3,000 ads, it’s a sure bet none of them were of the guerilla variety. But you probably would have noticed if you’d walked past a giant bottle of Wite-Out™ sitting inexplicably on a busy downtown street. FedEx Kinko’s recently waged this guerilla campaign by surreptitiously placing those bottles in several cities, right next to the zebra-striped crosswalks, coyly planting the image that the massive brushes had painted the stripes on the road. Sure enough, office supplies were on consumers’ minds.

But a cautionary example occurred in early 2007, when a guerilla campaign for the Cartoon Network show Aqua Teen Hunger Force went a bit awry. Throughout the country, marketing insurgents employed by the network mounted neon representations of the show’s characters on buildings, bridges and in other public areas. These harmless magnetic lights were mistakenly thought to pose danger, triggering a minor stir in Boston when anti-terrorist police bomb units arrived at the scenes. The marketers were arrested (charges  were later dropped). Although  that outcome wasn’t anticipated or intended, a national audience that had previously never heard of Aqua Teen Hunger Force, was now hearing about it for days on end with their nightly news… even though the slant of those news stories suggested that the network’s actions had been irresponsible. Luckily, Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is branded as risqué and edgy and known for mischievous acts of rebellion against the norm. It worked for them, more or less, but another company could very well have damaged their brand beyond repair.

To be effective, a guerilla marketing campaign should be overseen by consultants who are experienced in this emerging strategy, and also know and understand the brand that’s being promoted. Those consultants act and think unconventionally… but they also know enough about the conventional marketplace to discern when the out-of-the-box approach might backfire. As the old saying goes, you have to know the rules to know when to break them.