They Brand Cows Don't They?

When you call our company, you hear “Mosaic Marketing Management, how can we help you?” When you examine any visual materials from our company you see the company name “Mosaic Marketing Management ” in a Baskerville Old typeface with the accompanying mosaic-like square logo all done in PMS color 072. This is our brand. It represents who we are and what we do.

About a year ago we had to protect that brand against a local marketing firm that wanted to use the same name. And while we’re aware that there are other firms with similar names in other states, this closer-to-home conflict could have been potentially confusing to our mutual target markets resulting in crossed (lost) sales. And besides, Mosaic had already worked hard (and spent money) to build a consistent, high quality reputation for the brand and we were not about to let someone else ride on those coattails (however short they might be!)

A lot of work for a little logo? Too much ballyhoo for a small brand? We think not!

A Brand is a Brand
On an extremely tactical level, the reason brands exist at all is so that customers — and potential customers — are able to assign a specific level of various attributes to a particular company’s product or service and be able to easily identify them in the future for easier shopping. “Without trusted brand names as touchstones, shopping for almost anything would be overwhelming,” Business Week Aug.6 -- The Best Global Brands.

Branding also offers a cost-and time-effective way for the seller to ensure that they get the sales that their quality and attributes have earned. Remember ranchers branded their livestock to show ownership and to make it harder for rustlers to re-sell stolen livestock as their own.

At the more esoteric level the consistent delivery of specific attributes by a brand over time develops into what some marketers call "a relationship with the customer." If this relationship is strong it can "act as an ambassador" when companies enter new markets or offer new products. It also shapes corporate strategy, helping to define which initiatives fall within the brand concept and which do not. If you don’t believe that, consider McDonald’s adding filet mignon to their menu.

So How Much Is A Brand Worth? In the current example for Mosaic, at a minimum, its brand is worth as much as a series of future lost sales resulting from confusion with another company and all the money and cost value of the time spent to-date building that brand. For us, that’s a lot! Interbrand, a brand consultancy in New York, tries to figure out “how much of a boost a brand delivers, how stable that boost is likely to be in the future, and how much those future earnings are worth today.” Based on that criteria Coca-Cola’s brand is valued at $68.9 billion, down 5% over last year due to its struggles with Pepsi. Microsoft is valued at $65.1 billion, down 7% due to its antitrust problems and the technology slowdown. Starbuck’s $1.8 billion, GE $42.4 billion. The Care and Feeding of Your Brand Chances are your company’s brand is worth something greater than Mosaic’s and something less than Microsoft’s. But in the markets you compete in it’s probably worth millions. So how do you care for your brand to continue to keep it working for you?
	Decide what your brand stands for and stick to it! Mosaic has a great Positioning Strategy worksheet to help define this part of your marketing strategy. Let us know if we could send one out to you.
	Reinforce the message over time. Only by delivering a consistent set of values and messages over time will your brand begin to work for you. (That means in good times and bad!)
	Treat it with respect. Be careful to stay true to typefaces and colors to insure the integrity of the brand. Don’t bastardize the name for promotional or layout purposes. For a great read on brands, pick up Business Week’s August 6th issue or go to businessweek.com/go/brands.
-- byRosemary Walter

e-This!

Pay-per-clicks could pay for you. While banner ads continue to slip in their ability to deliver click-throughs to the advertiser’s site for the majority of businesses, pay-per-click (PPC) opportunities are delivering. These search word-based opportunities exist in a variety of formats at most search engines and directories. When a potential customer types in “Chicago commercial real estate” either a pop-up ad or paid listings show up along with the others listed normally on that page. These opportunities are paid for on the basis of how many folks actually click-through to the advertiser’s site. (And hence, the name!)

Want more ideas? Call us — we gotta million of ‘em!

This & That

&

Did you know that according to the author of Spin Selling, Neil Rackham, less than half of the business-to-business sales people on the planet today have ever sold during an economic downturn?

&

Use the current economic downturn to leapfrog your competition by continuing to advertise and market your brand. That’s how Kellogg passed up C.W. Post during the Depression and how Pizza Hut and Taco Bell took away market share from McDonald’s during the early 1990’s downturn.