Chapter 8 Create a Strategy: SS+K Puts Its Research to Use as the Agency Creates the Brief

Characteristics of a Solid Branding Strategy

Creating a Corporate Image

Corporations often engage in image advertisingCampaigns aimed at enhancing a corporation’s image and promoting the company’s public identity rather than selling a specific product. to enhance the public perception of the firm in the eyes of its most important constituencies—typically the firm’s customers, employees, and local communities. Although these campaigns aim to promote the company’s public identity rather than sell a specific product, a corporation’s image is intimately tied to its brand personality. The image of the firm reflects on the image of its brands.

In 2007, for example, Dow Chemical Company allocated over $25 million for a corporate ad campaign it called “the human element.”Rance Crain, “Dow’s Corporate Ads Have Great Chemistry, but Will Respect Follow?” Advertising Age, August 6, 2007, 13. The campaign was meant to appeal to local communities (who may or may not welcome Dow into their backyards), as well as legislators, journalists, environmentalists, employees, and shareholders. The idea behind the campaign is to show what the “human element” can do to solve some of the world’s problems, such as countering climate change and providing clean water, decent housing, health, safety, and an affordable and adequate food supply. Dow’s goal for the campaign is “to be acknowledged as the largest, most profitable, and most respected chemical company in the world.” Its CEO, Andrew Liveris, will consider the campaign a success “when a Dow employee in a bar anywhere in the world can tell the guy next to him where he works and get the response, ‘Oh, Dow. That’s good.’”

The Holy Grail: Brand Equity

Brand equityThe value of a brand name over and above the value of a generic product in the same category. is the extent to which a consumer holds strong, favorable associations with a brand and is willing to pay more for the branded version of a product. Differentiation, accountability, consistency, and personality all support brand equity by creating a clear sense of the brand’s value propositionThe clearly identifiable benefit that a certain brand provides relative to competing brands.: the clearly identifiable benefit it provides relative to competing brands. As Roger Adams, senior vice president–CMO of Home Depot, said, “If you go to a grocery store or department store, there are brands on the shelf that have fundamentally the same function and one is 20 percent more than the other one. But people are paying that because there’s a belief in the brand or there’s an experience with the brand that builds trust, or they know if there’s a problem they can get service, that type of thing. And people do it every day.…That’s pretty much what brand marketing is about.”

Summary: Benefits of a Brand

The benefit of a brand for advertisers is higher profitability: it is less expensive to attract repeat buyers than to find new customers. Moreover, satisfied buyers may pay a higher price for a trusted brand.

Brands have benefits for the buyer:

• Signals known properties (quality, performance, cost, etc.)
• Simplifies decision making
• Simplifies repeat purchase with a memorable name or logo

Brands have benefits for the manufacturer:

• Offers legal protection (through trademarks)
• Creates a barrier to entry for competitors
• Translates to financial benefits (both for the company’s bottom line and to impress Wall Street)

Situation Analysis

Before you can decide where to go, you need to understand where you are (the current marketing situation or environment). Use secondary and primary research as discussed in Chapter 7 "Decide What You Can Afford to Say: msnbc.com Sets the Budget" to inform your assessment of the full situation. The situation analysisAn assessment of where the brand currently is, including the competitive situation, customer situation, and economic and cultural trends. is an important tool to help you with this process.

Brand Audit

A brand auditAssessment that examines the health of a brand and identifies areas of additional value and ways to improve brand equity. helps a company understand the health of its brand, identify areas of additional value, and improve brand equity. A firm should conduct brand audits regularly—at least yearly—to ensure that the brand stays relevant, unique, and strong.

The story of Nortel, a telecommunications equipment maker, offers an example of the importance of a regular brand audit. Nortel was struggling during an industry downturn and an accounting scandal. Its chief competitor, Cisco Systems, had an advertising budget almost six times the size of Nortel’s. Nortel’s new chief marketing officer, Lauren Flaherty, decided it was time to undertake a global brand audit to get a feel for how customers, employees, and shareholders perceived Nortel and what the company needed to do to reshape its brand.

Before the audit, Flaherty met with marketing executives throughout the company to assess Nortel’s marketing communications capabilities, as well as the capabilities of its ad agency and public relations firm. “The first priority is to understand, by target audience, what is the communications challenge with each constituency,” she said. “We will create a very systematic blueprint for who we communicate with, how we communicate, and the whole marketing mix.”Kate Maddox, “Nortel CMO Begins Global Brand” B to B, May 8, 2006, 3. Nortel’s audit allowed the company to get a more realistic feel for its market position so that its advertising could more precisely communicate its value proposition.

Identifying a competitive opportunity. The picture was a bit muddy: although the marriage between Microsoft and NBC made the news service unique, there was confusion about the best way to tell the client’s story to consumers. Was the site about cutting-edge technology or unique content? Should it focus on breaking news or on in-depth feature stories?

Further probing with consumer focus groups, however, revealed an opening. When asked to compare the client’s personality to other news Web sites, people described msnbc.com as more friendly, colorful, and younger—if the site came to life, they thought it would be the characteristics that popular news anchor Katie Couric represented. This was a more positive personality description than the groups gave for the serious demeanor of CNN.com (who would have characteristics of an Englishman) or of the nondescript Yahoo! + Google News (whose traits would be like a traffic cop!). As a result, msnbc.com saw an opportunity to position itself as entertaining news.

Further probing revealed that people regarded msnbc.com as less biased than other news sites—either to the left (CNN.com) or to the right (Fox News). Compared to CNN.com, people felt that msnbc.com offered more variety, emotion, and potential to discover interesting things. In other words, the competition provided plenty of information, but not content that excited the imagination. At last, here was an advantage SS+K could run with: let’s think of the core customer as a News Explorer who enjoys the experience of discovering and unearthing new pieces of news and information from what he or she reads.

SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

Agencies typically synthesize the results of situation analyses and brand audits into a SWOT analysisAssessment that organizes internal and external factors affecting the product or business into separate categories (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for study., which organizes internal and external factors affecting the product or business into separate categories for study. A SWOT analysis gives a company a quick overview of its competitive situation and helps it decide which actions to take that will address trends in the environment in ways that are consistent with its capabilities.

Marketing Objectives

Objectives state what outcomes will be achieved, while strategy defines how each objective will be achieved. Once you understand the marketing environment, the next step is to develop specific marketing objectives. Marketing objectivesStatements of what the marketing function must do so that the company can achieve its overall business objectives (such as growth, expansion of its market share, or increasing profits). state what the marketing function must do so that the company can achieve its overall business objectives (such as growth, expanding its market share, or increasing profits). Marketing-related objectives are specific to the firm’s brands, customer segments, and product features. These might include “Grow sales of product X by 30 percent over the next twelve months” or “Increase market share among affluent consumers aged forty-five to sixty-five.” Samsung, for example, sells fourteen product categories in more than two hundred countries, which yields 476 category-country combinations. Samsung collects data systematically on each combination and uses that brand data to set better marketing objectives by country and product.Thomas Davenport and Jeanne Harris, “Competing with Multichannel Marketing Analytics,” Advertising Age, April 2, 2007, 16.

Advertising Objectives

Advertising objectivesThe specific communication tasks that an advertisement seeks to achieve. are the specific communication tasks that an advertisement seeks to achieve. These tasks include trialInforming the consumer about a product. (informing the consumer about a product), continuityReminding the consumer of the product. (reminding the consumer of the product), and brand switchingPersuading the customer to change from one brand to another. (persuading the customer to change from one brand to another). Often, the advertising objectives are tied to the product’s life cycle. For example, trial is usually employed at the start of a product’s life cycle to encourage customers to try the product. A firm pursues continuity objectives when a product is mature in order to remind current customers to continue buying the product. Brand switching, or switchback, occurs at later stages of the life cycle—particularly the rejuvenation phase, when the company highlights new product features or lowers the price of the product.

DAGMAR Objectives

The DAGMAR modelDefining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results: a way to set objectives and measure the results of advertising, developed by Russell Colley, involving four steps: awareness, comprehension, conviction, and action. (Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results), developed by Russell Colley, is a way to set objectives and measure the results of advertising. Colley stated that the process of achieving an advertising objective can be broken down into four phases:

• Awareness. Consumers must first be made aware that a particular brand or offering exists (“I’ve heard of it”).
• Comprehension. Consumers must understand what the offering is and how it will benefit them (“I know what it is”).
• Conviction. Consumers must decide to want to buy the product (“I want it”).
• Action. Consumers must actually buy the product (“I’ve bought it”).

Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategyThe activities a company must take to achieve its marketing objectives, including the Four Ps (product definition, pricing strategies, promotion strategy, place [distribution] strategies). consists of the activities a company must take to achieve its marketing objectives. For example, one step it must take is to decide on the appropriate mix of the Four Ps:

• Product definitionOne of the Four Ps: description of the features a product should have, its packaging, and any support services.. What features should the product have? What should the product packaging look like? Should there be accompanying support services, such as maintenance?
• Pricing strategiesOne of the Four Ps: description of how much retail and wholesale customers will pay for the product.. How much are customers willing to pay for the product? What should be the selling price for retailers and wholesalers?
• Promotion strategyOne of the Four Ps: description of the methods to reach the target market, and the goal of each promotion.. What methods will the company use (e.g., advertising, PR, direct sales) to reach the target market? What is the goal of each promotion—to entice new customers, to boost repeat sales, to increase sales volumes?
• Place (distribution) strategiesOne of the Four Ps: description of how the product will be sold—directly to consumers or through retailers or wholesalers.. Will the product be sold directly to consumers (such as via the Web) or through retailers and wholesalers? For decades, airlines sold tickets through travel agencies, but now most of them sell e-tickets over the Web. This distribution strategy saves the airlines money (by eliminating commissions to travel agents) and lets customers buy tickets any time of the day or night.

Advertising Strategy

The Brief

The creative briefDocument that outlines the information and objectives to inspire the creative idea, including what the advertising is trying to achieve, the main idea to be communicated, and the target audience. is a document that outlines the information and objectives to inspire the creative idea. Creative briefs may take different forms and include a variety of elements, including describing what the advertising is trying to achieve, identifying the main idea to be communicated, and outlining the target audience for that idea.

Proposing the Big Idea requires client agreement that the idea is right. Thus, both the advertising agency and the client must agree upon the final brief. The best briefs are written by account planners collaboratively with input from the client, account team, and creative director. One of the key functions of the SS+K brief is to come up with a single essential thought that summarizes the idea that will convince consumers to do what it is that the communication aims to do. Every agency has a proprietary brief template it uses to spell out the types of content it will need to include, such as specifying the audience, the product features, media placement ideas, and key point.

Briefs provide a foundation that allows all decision makers to provide initial input and subsequently gauge how well the chosen communication ideas, from advertising to media and PR, stay true to the strategic plan. In this way, clients rely on creative briefs as much as copywriters and art directors do.

SS+K uses only one brief, and the creative director has input on that brief. Other agencies may use different briefs for different purposes depending on the needs of the client. For example, a retailer may have a brief for its national campaign, and other briefs for local ads that may have different emphases. It is important to remember that there is no standard brief across the advertising industry, but most of the information found on briefs is fairly similar.

The first step in the SS+K brief is to use consumer and brand truths to establish the client’s noble purpose. The noble purposeExpression of the brand’s “true north,” its reason for being; a single-minded, concise statement, written to excite the imagination. expresses the brand’s “true north,” its reason for being on the earth. It is single-minded, concise, and written in such a way as to excite the imagination of the reader.