This week I have been working with a new client, a marketing company with a pretty impressive portfolio. For the purposes of this discussion I will call them Company A.
Company A came to us with a very impressive design brief for a new product that they were launching. They needed a web agency to develop a website for them to use primarily as a sales tool to sell the concept to their clients. In their proposal they had I feel correctly identified their target market and designed a brand and corporate identity that played directly to the aspirations of that market, an example of very good targeted branding.
However, a committee came in and looked at the website we had developed for them and decided that the design was too target market specific and they wanted us to broaden the general appeal of the website. After spending thousands of pounds on a new website, the company seriously wanted us to look at their core design and make it "More commercial", This was a delicately designed very pretty website; full of lifestyle, aspirational imagery and perfect for its original target market. Making it more commercial in this case was like plastering sponsorship decals on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Where did it all go wrong?
The first step in branding is to identify your target market. Do your research in phase one. If you have a product idea, establish who is most likely to buy it and focus your branding and marketing effort on them.
This is where mistake one is usually made.
The temptation is to try and design your brand with as broad appeal as possible. This is common sense the more people who like your brand and are attracted by it, the more potential customers you have.
But this is flawed thinking.
The best way to grow a customer base is to have a strong identity that really speaks to your desired audience. People however are all different, even the most popular and powerful mass market brands like Coca Cola and Google have detractors. To reach the mass market, a design or marketing message has to be so severely watered down that it looses the ability to compel it's primary market.
This situation is all too common and it can really slow the progress of a new brand. A good way to illustrate this scenario is to imagine that you in an orchard full of (insert favourite fruit here). If you look at one tree you will notice that it is full of fruit and if you have an hour you can pick it bare of 100 lovely juicy (your favourite fruit).
So you commence picking, within five minutes you will have picked all the fruit within arms reach, lets say 20 fruit.
At this point you will start to struggle reaching the fruit on the top half of the tree. They are tantalisingly close so you exert more and more effort in the struggle to reach each fruit.
Sure, morally this feels great. Each freshly picked fruit is a small victory and no doubt will be all the sweeter for it. In the end you may reach the last fruit on the tree. Feeling very content you climb down from the ladder pleased and fulfilled with your hard days work and your just rewards. It may have taken 3 times as long as you originally thought but you are probably most pleased with the few surprise fruit that you hadn't even seen. 120 fruit for 3 hours work, well done.
Compare that to the targeted picker. He knows that he has 1 hour to pick as many fruit as he can. Realising that each tree has about 20 low hanging fruit it will take 5 minutes to pick those low hanging fruit he can hit 12 trees in his hour delivering 240 fruit and plenty of time to enjoy them.
Our targeted picker did not work as hard but gut better results because he knew how to target his low hanging fruit.
A growing brand will benefit massively from the same approach. Identify your low hanging fruit, there should be enough of them out there to keep you busy.
Watch this space as the saga continues with the second reason a brand goes wrong.
For some examples of good branding visit our website here.
Indeed, quite true.
ReplyDeleteBMWs current problem.
Apple is a very good example of NOT screwing it up, whatever you think of them.
An even better example is a Swedish company called Handheld, just spent a whole day at one of their conferences. They made more money in 2009 than 2008, amazing considering what happened to the IT market during the “Great Recession”. They are almost fanatically target market only and screw everyone else.
I want to read this article. Too bad it's white text on a black background. Maybe I'll go copy and paste it into something I can read it in without straining my eyes.
ReplyDeleteIf you are serious about having people READ your content, may I humbly suggest a dark type on a light background?
Thank you for this. I hate diversification (see TLC, Cartoon Network and "syfy"). There are enough people in the world that niche markets can succeed and not be everything to everyone.
ReplyDeleteMike, I really like the white on black aesthetically however since I have received a handful of complaint I am seriously considering changing. Not too soon thought I want to get the look right.
ReplyDeleteOff-line Comments
ReplyDeleteBranding is nothing like fruit picking.
The discursive nature of the article introspectively negates the point it appears to be trying to make. "Low hanging fruit" - appalling branding.
A brand is "a story that people want to be part of". This means the orchard, the type of fruit growing in it, the quality of the fruit; the elements an individual identifies themselves with. It is important to clarify that a brand is not solely the logo, design etc. There is content, depth, ethics, philosophy and integrity.
Picking the lowest hanging fruit is an old school sales metaphor that has minimal short-term gain and no real long term strategic value. What if the lowest hanging fruit is also the lowest quality?
When you’ve invested time and effort into maintaining an orchard full of fruit trees, what’s the point in just picking the lowest hanging ones, or in fact any of the fruit. Why not make the brand so attractive that there would be a queue of “Pick Your Own” customers to collect ALL the fruit, making them happy and you a greater profit.
Focussing on Brand Equity, having a clear objective and intelligently implementing a solid strategy will yield a greater harvest.
Check out Magners’ TV advert featuring the cricket team, where working strategically together they achieve their objective, and think about what the story says to you; even if you don’t drink cider, do you connect with the brand?
Matthew Jensen
Business Development Manager at Reckless New Media
I realise the article did begin to ramble. That probably because I chose to segment the story into a number of instalments after getting half way. I t also started as a rant about a frustrating experience. But I apologies as neither is ideal.
Thank you however fro reading it and taking the time to comment.
While I agree with some of your points, this blog was aimed at start up companies and micro business and In my experience failure to stick to the 80-20 principle, the target market or the low hanging fruit is still one of the biggest mistakes people make at this phase in their business.
I have to defend the notion that in most situations (90% of UK businesses employ less than 10 people) The low hanging fruit principle is the simplest and most effective way to grow a business. Similarly too much investment in expanding the audience can be counter productive and distracting.
Once a company has what they consider their target for market-share, that would be a useful time to begin to research other markets and how to make the existing branding/product speak to them.
Very few new brands instantly have mass market appeal. I am sure Magners went on a long journey with their branding and marketing before they managed to get most of us to aspire to their Irish Ideal. Similarly Apple spent years in the wilderness before the iPod and lately the iPhone opened the floodgates for them.
I will concede that I was a little proscriptive and that there are examples of exceptionally appealing branding out there. Too much focus on the ideal can distract the SME from the ultimate purpose of their marketing and sales effort. To sell as much as they can, for as much as they can, as quickly as they can.
Brand equity will develop if you take good care of your target market. It is most important that they love your brand, if they do, other people will begin to love it too.
The core message remains, avoid design by committee, stay true to your company/product values, focus your efforts and do your research well.