I read with interest David Aaker’s great insight on social media.

Almost 50 years ago Ernest Dichter, the father of motivation research, did a large study of word of mouth persuasion that revealed secrets about how to use social media to build brands and businesses. The study was reported in a 1966 article in HBR.

A major finding that’s very relevant today was the identification of four motivations for a person to communicate about brands:

The first (about 33% of the cases) motivation is product-involvement. The experience is so novel and pleasurable that it must be shared.

The second (about 24%) is self-involvement. Sharing knowledge or opinions is a way to gain attention, show connoisseurship, feel like a pioneer, have inside information, seek confirmation of a person’s own judgment or assert superiority.

The third (around 20%) is other-involvement. The speaker wants to reach out and help to express neighborliness, caring and friendship.

The fourth (around 20%) is message-involvement. The message is so humorous or informative that it deserves sharing.

David observes that same four motivations explain why some brands have been successful in using social media. It suggests that, in the absence of exceptionally entertaining communication, in order to employ social media effectively a brand needs to deliver extraordinary functional, self-expressive or social benefits. That is more likely to be the case when the brand is associated with an offering that is innovative and differentiated in a way that truly resonates with customers. It is unlikely to happen when the brand represents a “me, too” offering in an established category or subcategory. So it comes back to creating and leveraging innovation and differentiation.

David commented that the second relevant finding was that listeners are primarily concerned with two conditions. One is that the speaker be credible with experience and background that is convincing. A person does not need to be an expert, though that can help. People that have an intense interest in a subject resulting in relevant experience and access to relevant people and information qualify as well. Another is that listeners are skeptical of the speaker’s motivation. They want the speaker to be interested in the listener and his or her well-being without a bias. Is the speaker’s intention to sell a product or is it to help me? What is the speaker’s relationship to me? An implication is that a firm promoting its own brand needs to be aware of its status and emphasize facts instead of opinion, represent the right culture and values, and have a balanced perspective.

Another implication is that a firm should promote a dialogue because a listener will be more likely to accept judgments from someone with whom there is an interaction going on. With a dialogue, it is much easier to communicate expertise, interest in the subject matter and the right motivation because there is a chance to build up a relationship and use reassuring cues. In contrast, a one time, one way communication will have a harder time demonstrating credibility and motivation.

A third finding was that recommenders had on average a huge impact on purchase, running to 80% for some products. The classic and even earlier work of the sociologists Katz and Lazerfield reported in their book Personal Influence had already documented the impact of social influence has a two-step flow, but this study brought the ideas to the level of purchase decisions.

It is amazing that the nearly forgotten theory and practice of word-of-mouth communication and influence from more than five decades ago can be so relevant today.

Extract from an article by David Aaker

Which are most critical “to do” tasks for someone charged with creating or managing a business?

What do you need to know to excel at building a brand?

Here is my top ten list:

1. Treat brands as assets. Acceptance of the concept that brands are assets and have equity really changes not only branding and marketing but also business strategy. No longer is branding a subset of marketing to be managed as a communication problem. It becomes strategic, both reflecting and enabling the business strategy. Importantly, a brand is more than image and awareness—it also includes the size, the engagement, and the loyalty level of the customer base. That means that brand strategy needs to be developed in tandem with the business strategy, both need to be clear on the target market, the value proposition, and the investment priorities over time.

2. Show the strategic pay-off of brand-building. Part of the challenge of getting brands accepted as strategic is to demonstrate that they pay off. Unlike tactical marketing which can demonstrate short-term results, the long-term effects of brand building are difficult to demonstrate. One way is to observe the success of a business strategy and show how dependent that strategy was on brand assets. Another is to use surrogates for long-term impact such as measures of customer loyalty. But it is reassuring to know that, on average, brand building does pay-off. I have conducted four studies with Professor Bob Jacobson of the University of Washington which explored the relationship between brand building and financial returns. Our study of brand equity and stock return is typical. A well-known fact in finance is that there is a strong relationship between earnings changes and stock prices. We found that the impact of building a brand on stock return was nearly as great as earnings, actually 70% as much effect.

3. Recognize the richness of brands—go beyond the three-word phrase. Brand building starts with determining the aspirational associations, what associations should come to mind when the brand is cued. In general, this set should be from six to twelve associations. Of this set, two to four should be identified as the most important and the most able to drive effective marketing programs, and the most likely to resonate with customers. In the brand identity model, they are termed the core identity elements. There may be a unifying concept termed the brand essence that provides an umbrella summary of the brand’s thrust but in some cases, it just gets in the way.

4. Get beyond functional benefits. There is a tendency to focus on attributes and functional benefits because they are assumed to be what customers are buying and because market research is often functionally focused. The fact is—customers are not logical and functional benefits rarely provide a basis for sustainable differentiation or a deep customer relationship. Look instead toward emotional and self-expressive benefits. Thus, a customer can feel safe in a Volvo, excited in a BMW, energetic with Coca-Cola around, or warm when receiving a Hallmark card. A person can be cool by buying clothes at Zara, successful by driving a Lexus, creative by using Apple, a nurturing mother by preparing Quaker Oats hot cereal, frugal and unpretentious by shopping at Kmart, or adventurous and active by owning REI camping equipment. Consider also brand personality. Should the brand be confident, competent, fun, warm, or energetic, or some combination of these? Sometimes a brand is best expressed through a personality.

5. Consider organizational associations. While most offerings struggle to be differentiated, an organization will have people, programs, values, strategies, and heritage that will almost always be unique. Further, the organizational characteristics can be meaningful to customers. They can provide credibility with respect to the offering by demonstrating or suggesting that the firm has the capability and will to deliver on its promise. Consider the visible commitment of Zappos.com to Wow! Service. Further, organizational values and programs can provide a basis for a relationship. The SalesForce.com policy of providing one percent of their product, time, and sales to public service. For some, that policy reflects shared values that lead to a respect-driven relationship that goes beyond products.

6. Look to role models. Knowing aspirational associations is a crucial first step, but how to get there is a practical issue. Looking at role models that can be adapted or leveraged nearly always provides useful insights. Suppose a brand aspired to be considered warm and friendly. Find other brands that have succeeded in doing so, including brands in disparate industries. How did they get that reputation? Can anything they did be adapted? Or look within your own firm. What people or programs best exemplify those characteristics to customers? Can their efforts be expanded or extended to other parts of the organization?

7. Understand the brand relationship spectrum. Brand portfolios can be so messy and dysfunctional that a firm’s new product process is paralyzed because there is no concept of which brand to use on a new offering. Customers may be so confused that they can’t even buy. The brand relationship spectrum can help create clarity, leverage, and synergy in the portfolio. The idea is that a master brand may work for a new offering if its associations are consistent and helpful and will be reinforced by the new role. However, there are times in which the master brand will be inconsistent or confining and the new offering requires some separation. The spectrum suggests that a subbrand will generate some separation, an endorsed brand more, and a separate brand the most. The challenge is to find the right degree of separation and to create brands that can perform these roles.

8. Look for branded differentiators. It is difficult to create differentiation especially involving functional benefits because a competitor will quickly copy or appear to copy or otherwise neutralize the advantage. Unless you brand it. A competitor cannot copy the brand. If the innovation is branded and the brand established, the competitor’s task of creating and communicating an enhancement will be formidable. When Westin created a superior bed and sleeping experience and branded it the Heavenly Bed, they changed the way that many looked at the hotel experience and the branded differentiator made it difficult for imitators to get traction.

9. Use branded energizers. We now know that brands across the globe have declined in terms of perceived quality, loyalty, and visibility over the last decade. The exceptions, those brands that have energy, have resisted the decline and still drive financial results. Energy may be the most important imperative for brand builders. The best form of energy, innovative new products, is not available on a regular basis for most firms and not available at all if you your offering is an unexciting one like hot dogs or life insurance. In that case, an option is to find some branded program or person, a branded energizer, and attach your brand to it. Avon’s Walk for Breast Cancer is an example of a program that added energy for a brand that could never achieve it with products.

10. Win the brand relevance battle. The way to gain market position, often the only way, is to develop offerings so innovative that they create new categories or subcategories making competitors irrelevant. The goal is to encourage the customer to select a new category or subcategory for which your brand is the only one with credibility and visibility. In virtually every industry, an analysis will show that market positions are very stable in the absence of such innovation. Relevance is also a threat to the leading brands who must be concerned with having customers — who respect and maybe love their brand — decide that they no longer want to buy what the firm is making, its brand has become irrelevant.

Reposted from Aaker’s blog

Lexis Branding developed the new brand strategy and graphic expressions to reposition Oxygen from being an unfocused brand into a cool, free-spirited label of choice, ready to dominate the fashion scene again.

Video directed by Roy Macam for Oxygen

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In this video, Jack Dorsey outlines three core takeaways from his experiences building and launching Twitter – and more recently – Square, a simple payment utility. 1) Draw: get your idea out of your head and share it, 2) Luck: assess when the time (and the market) is right to execute your idea, 3) Iterate: take in the feedback, be a rigorous editor, and refine your idea.

A great example of how a good, solid, big idea can communicate the “essential” message. Something most brands can learn from.

This seemingly simple but effective concept is masterfully executed by one of Singapore’s best photographers, Clang, who is now based in New York. Savour this wonderful creative work. 

Lexis Branding recently designed and conceived the new range of Sunblock for Belo Essentials, a leading FMCG sinkcare line in Philippines and USA. Lexis developed the name “Sun Expert” as well as the packaging design which adopts a clean, no-nonsense, “look at me” concept aimed at “jumping” off the crowded retail shelves.

This is part of the revamped of the entire line of Belo Essentials skincare line. A new men’s line has also been designed and will be launched soon. Watch this space.

Lexis also recently repositioned and rebranded Belo Essentials’ parent company, Belo Medical Group, Philippines’ leading beauty and skincare expert that specializes in cosmetic surgery and non-invasive skincare procedures. (See http://www.lexisbranding.com/belo)

The chart encompasses 10 different cultures, and 62 emotions (!!!). The cultures are represented by concentric rings, and the emotions are represented by slices of the circle. Thus, if you want to understand about Japanese color sensibilities, you read around the graph. And if you want to learn what colors mean “danger” across cultures, you just read vertically, down section 15:

This article first appear in Fast Company, “What Colors mean across 10 cultures” by Cliff Kuang

An exemplary brand that continues to inspire and move hearts and souls with good designs is none other than the legendary Issey Miyake. Beyond fashion, IM’s products are simply breathtaking. This 2-in-1 for Him Deodorant and Eau de Toilette designed by Karim Rashid in 2002 is just timless.

In the strides of Evian and fashion brands such as H&M or Uniqlo, Coca-Cola has just teamed up with designer Karl Lagerfield to make a limited edition package for Coca Cola Light to be sold at Colette starting April 28. Designer prices included: the $80 boxed set comes with one bottle of Coca Cola Light, display box and bottle opener. 

The packaging design is simple and effective combining two icons via simple typography and Karl’s unmistakable profile. Gorgeous, and what a price for sugar and water. The power of brands.

When my client, Pak Budi Hananto of Gunung Slamat, Indonesia, invited me recently to join on Facebook as a “Fan” for the Tasseo Fine Teas, it brought back wonderful memories of one of my first projects in Asian branding and design. And that was almost 18 years ago, and one of my first attempt at creating an “Asian” brand with an unique flavour, reflecting the rich local culture and Asian touch.

The client then was Boh Plantations, one of Asia’s oldest tea makers. Caroline Russell, daughter of the founder, one of the most intelligent clients we have worked with, briefed me and my team at Addison Design (sadly this pioneer of branding and design agency in Asia has now been dissolved) to develop a range of fine Asian teas for International Export market. One of the first targeted retail outlets for the launch was Harrods, UK, and all the duty free shops at the best airports in the world.

Using a prioprietary Naming Programme, NameBreak, that I have developed, we decided on the name Seri Songket, a beautiful hand-woven fabric famously created by the indigenious Malays especially in the region of Sarawak. Inspired by the enjoyable tea tasting sessions (yes, we even helped to select the flavours to market) and the beautiful Songket fabric, the resultant packaging design turned out to be a piece of Asian art. Today, you will still find the exact same tea and packaging being retailed in all good supermarkets and specialty stores. Good design truly become an art that can stand the test of time.

Fast forward to 2008, time seems to have stood still when I was tasked to develop yet another range of fine Asian teas for another leading tea maker in Asia. It was one of my last projects as Managing Director at the brand union, Ogilvy/WPP, and I was as excited as ever — the same brief as one I received almost 18 years ago? It was truly deja vu.

In my (nearly) 20 years of developing brands both in Asia and for the global market, I’ve picked up one of the most potent tools in Asia - Feng Shui. It’s practically impossible to do branding and design in Asia if one does not understand this complex, intriguing yet a deeply embedded cultural phenomena that has even swept the west (just ask my clients in Vertu, UK). (More on that later when I write about Feng Shui and Branding in Asia).

With my knowledge in Feng Shui, I have learnt that Tasseomancy is one of the tools in Feng Shui — reading tea leaves for fortune telling. Tasse, in French, incidentally refers to a cup. The name was immediately obvious to me: Asian art of reading tea leaves (Gunung Slamat is an expert in picking the best leaves from around the world) + a cup (of quality fine tea) = Tasseo.

Needless to say, Pak Budi and his CEO loved it, as did customers when we tested the names and packaging design in a FGD. Once again, I asked one of Singapore’s top designers, Tom, now Design Director of Lexis Branding who was then a freelancer and engaged him to help develop this award winning packaging (TBU had no packaging design capabilities in the team then) to use the patterns of Songket (which is incidentally also a locally produced fabric in Indonesia) for inspirations.

The resultant design output is almost strikingly similar yet different. Asian tea, Asian art and packaging design. And my pride and joy of being able to help our local companies become more global by creating world-class brands with a distinct and rich Asian flavour. I am now looking forward to Tasseo being on the retail shelves 18 years from now — 2026!

Tasseo is reproduced with kind permission from Pak Budi Hananto, the Marketing Guru of Gunung Slamat.

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