1.
THE BRAND LEADER
Exploring your brand’s potential
functional and emotional benefits
In the new economy, Brand Love is the new currency, with marketing shifting to building big ideas,
leveraging purpose-driven stories that are in the moment, creating consumer experiences that
people talk about, managing ubiquitous purchase moments all helping to steer the brand’s
reputation. Marketing has to focus on creating a brand reputation with consumers, and equally
creating an organizational culture that reflects the brand’s soul. Instead of shouting your message at
every consumers, the best brands confidently whisper to those most motivated by what they do, who
then scream with influence to their friends. In the new world, the best brands now fight for a place in
the minds and hearts of consumers.
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2.
Brands need to be better, different, cheaper or not
around for very long.
One of the biggest mistakes that brands make is “yelling at” the consumer with features (what you
do) rather than “speaking with” the consumer, about the functional benefits (what they get) and the
emotional benefits (how they feel). Watch half an hour of TV one night and you will see brand after
brand yelling at the consumer. Feature after feature after feature. This type of Marketing just forces
the consumer to have to figure out what they get from your brand. In a crowded media world where
consumers see 7,000 brand messages per day, you have just lost out on the opportunity to find a set
of consumer oriented benefits that your brand can use to motivate the consumer and own as you
build the reputation of your brand.
Brands have to stand out or die. If we look the chart below, the Winning Zone for your brand forces
you to think about finding the ideal space where your brand matches up to a distinct consumer need
better than anyone else. If not, your brand won’t be around for very long. You should avoid
competing in the Losing Zone, which goes head to head with a competitor that can deliver the
consumer needs
better than you
can. The area with
the yellow arrow is
the Risky Zone is
a relative tie with
your competitor.
You can win the tie
is by being first,
being more
innovative and
creative or by
finding the right
emotional
connection that
makes the
functional tie less
relevant to the consumer decisions. Avoid the Dumb Zone, where you wage a competitive battle in a
space that the consumer does not care about. When you find yourself competing in this space, you
will find yourself eventually just talking to yourself.
Beloved Brands 2 We make brand leaders smarter
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We make brand leaders smarter.
What
consumers
want
What your
competitor
does best
What
your brand
does best
Losing
Zone
Risky
Zone
Dumb
Zone
Winning
Zone

3.
Finding your brand’s core strength
While the temptation for most Marketers is to do a little of everything, it is the best Marketers who
come to a decision point and make the tough choice by picking one. Most of our tools are forced
decision-making tools that will help the debate and guide your focus. When it comes to the core
strength of your brand, we
give you four choices:
product, promise,
experience or price. Many
brand leaders have their
marketing strategy wrong,
simply because they don’t
know their core strength.
Here’s a simple little
game that we play with
executive teams. We
provide them with 4 chips
against the 4 choices of
product, promise,
experience or price. They have to put one chip on the one choice they believe they have the highest
potential to win behind, two chips at the mid level and then force one chip to be at the low level. Try it
and you will be surprised that your team will struggle to agree. You may also find that you are at one
strength now and figure that your brand has matured and it might be the right time to shift your brand
marketing to become focused on something else. For instance, many brands start off as products
and then move to either building a promise or an experience.
• Product: Your main strategy should focus on being better. You have to invest in Innovation to stay
ahead of competitors, remaining the superior choice in the category. The classic product brands in
the market include Samsung, Tide, Ruth’s Chris, Google, Rolex and Five Guys.
• Promise: Your strategy should focus on being different. To tell that story, you need to invest in
emotional brand communication. You want to connect consumers on a deep emotional level with
the concept. The promise brands in the market include Apple, Nike, Tesla, Virgin and Dove.
• Experience: your strategy and organization should focus on linking culture very closely to your
brand. After all, your people are your product. As you go to market, invest in influencer and social
media that can help support and spread the word of your experience. The experience brands in
the market include Starbucks, Amazon, AirBnB, Ritz-Carlton, Netflix and Emirates airlines.
• Price: focus on efficiency and drive low-cost into the products you sell and high turns and high
volume. You have to be better at the fundamentals around production and sourcing. The price
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What is your brand’s core strength?
PromiseProduct
Price Experience
Highly Competitive
Medium
LowFocus on what you are
best at. Let go what
matters the least.
We give 4 chips, forcing
one at the high, two at
the middle to support
the strength, and let go
of one at the low.

4.
brands include Walmart,
Kia, Expedia,
McDonald’s, Old Navy
and Payless shoes.
Just like any decision, it is
hard to just pick one. Each
has a different focus of
investment and a different
type of selling and
marketing that is required to
be successful. The problem
is that brands that fail to
realize who they are will start to apply the wrong strategy to the wrong brand situation. Many brands
choose to be a little both. These brands end up with a confused internal organization and a confused
external consumer reputation.
Consumer Benefits Ladder
The next decision is the main benefit you want to focus on. Doing a Consumer Benefits Ladder
helps to organize your thinking as a great tool for bringing the benefits to life. The best way to work
the Consumer Benefits Ladder is to hold a brainstorming session with everyone who works on the
brand so you can:
1. Leverage all the
available research to
brief the team, helping
define the consumer
target and get all the
consumer insights and
need states out.
2. List out all the features
that your brand offers,
and the brand assets it
brings to the table.
Make sure that these
features are competitive
advantages.
3. Find the functional
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5.
benefit by putting yourself in the shoes of the consumer and seeing the brand features from their
eyes: start asking yourself over and over “so if I’m the consumer, what do I get from that?”. Ask
up to 5 times and push the answers into a richer zone.
4. Then find the emotional benefit by asking “so how does that make me feel?” As you did above,
keep asking, and you’ll begin to see a deeper emotional space you can play in and own.
What are the functional benefits?
To help brand leaders, we have mapped out 9 functional benefit zones and then expanded that to 50
overall functional benefits. As you look through the list, start matching up those benefits that you
think will be something consumers want, something that can be unique for your brand and something
you can own in the future.
What are the emotional benefits?
From my experience, Marketers are better at the rational benefits than they are at the emotional
benefits. I swear every brand out there thinks their brand should be the trusted, reliable and yet like-
able brand. As a brand, you want to own the emotional space in the consumer’s heart as much as
Beloved Brands 5 We make brand leaders smarter
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We make brand leaders smarter.
Makes you
smarter
Works
Better
Helps
your
family
Helps
you be
healthier
Faster
More
powerful
Safer
Lasts
Longer
Keeps you
organized
Saves
time
Social
Latest
Fashions
Latest
technology
Sounds
Taste
Smell
Sights
Education
Comfort
Life Stages
Mental
Health
Better Home Prevents
Weight/ExerciseLower
Risk
Track
Success
Resale
value
Invest for
future
Advice
Solutions Teaching
Helping hand
Sensory Appeal
Simplifies
your life
Stay
Connected
Hassle
Free
Functional benefits
Easier to
use
Touch/Feel
Good value
Quality
Reduces
Soothes
Cultural
How it is made
Saves
you
money
Experience
Variety
Personal
Service
In touch
Moments
Responsiveness
Memorable
Occasion
Rituals
Updates
Luxurious
Performance
IntegratedEfficient
Subconscious

6.
you own the rational space in the consumer’s mind. It seems that not only do consumers have a hard
time expressing their emotions about a brand, but so do Brand Managers. Companies like Hotspex
have mapped out all the emotional zones for consumers. I’m not a researcher, but if you are
interested in this methodology contact Hotspex at http://www.hotspex.biz
We have taken this research method and created an Emotional Cheat Sheet for Brand Leaders. This
lists out the 8 major emotional consumer zones, optimism, freedom, being noticed, being liked,
comfort, be myself, be in control and knowledge.
To own a space in the consumer’s heart, you want to own and dominate one of zones, always
thinking relation to what your competitor may own. Do not choose a list of emotions from all over the
map, or you will just confuse your consumer as much as trying to own a long list of rational benefits.
Once you narrow the major emotional zone you can own, you can use the supporting words of the
Emotional Cheat Sheet to add flavor.
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Curious for knowledge
Feel
optimistic
Stay in
control
Feel
comfortable
Feel
myself
Motivated
Special
Successful
Inspired
Interesting
Alive
Cool
Playful
Popular
Trendy
Like-able
Friendly Intimate
Happy
Easy-
going
Nurtured
Compassion
Down-to--earth
Relaxed
Honest
Family
Trust
Safe
Respect
Reliable
Informed
Wisdom Smarter
Competent
Feel liked
Feel
free
Get
noticed
Excited
Emotional benefits
Consumer
Values

7.
Build your brands around clusters of benefits
As you are looking for the benefits to that your brand stand behind, we recommend that you look at
clusters of the functional and emotional benefits, that you believe match up with what consumers
want and what your brand does better than other competitors.
Look at our example below, we have mapped out the positioning clusters of three distinct car brands
(Volvo, Honda, Ferrari) to showcase how different the functional and emotional benefits.
• The Volvo brand is notorious for safety, but can also look at quality and how it is made as part of
the “Works Better” functional benefit zone. Volvo also makes you smarter and helps your family.
The emotional zones where Volvo wins is in are being in control and curious for knowledge.
• The Honda mini-van is all about family and value for money. Its functionality also can simplify your
life. As it is a family car, the emotional zones that Honda can win are being myself and comfort.
• The Ferrari brand is built around speed and performance, part of the “works better” functional
benefit zone. The brand also delivers against experience and sensory appeal.
Beloved Brands 7 We make brand leaders smarter
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Build your brand around unique benefit clusters
Helps your
family
Keeps you
organized
Life
Stages
Better Home
Resale
value
Simplifies
your life
Saves you
money
Moments
Efficient
Feel
comfortable
Feel
myself
Easy-going
Nurtured
Down-
to--earth
Relaxed
Honest
Family
Functional
Emotional Curious for
knowledge
Stay in
control
Trust
Safe
Reliable
Informed
SmarterWisdom
Makes you
smarter
Works
Better
Safer
Life Stages
Better
Home
Solutions Helping
hand
Quality
Helps your
family
How it is
made
Works
Better
Faster
Sights
Sensory
Appeal
Touch/Feel
Quality
Experience
Responsiveness
Subconscious
Luxurious
Performance
Alive
Cool Playful
Popular
Feel
free
Get
noticed
Excited
Comfort
Comfort
Memorable
Sounds
Good
value
Stay in
control

8.
Sorting the benefits
When we brainstorm around a given brand, we normally end up with too much information. Building
on the work from the cluster of benefits to the Consumer Benefit Ladder, we see this type of output
for our fictional Gray’s Cookie brand.
Following this brainstorm, there are way too many potential benefits to really begin building your
brand. You can use your working knowledge of the brand to begin looking at which of the functional
and emotional benefits will help your brand win in the market.
Then use Market Research with consumers to sort through the possible benefits to find the ones that
are the most motivating to consumers and own-able for your brand. The grid we use looks at two
dimensions:
1. How motivated consumers are by the benefit
2. How own-able is this benefit for you brand.
Looking at the grid below, you want to focus and build your brand around those consumer benefits
that land in the highly motivating and highly own-able quadrant. This Winning Zone matches up to
the venn diagram we showed earlier. Avoid the losing and dumb zones while any benefits that end
up in the risky zone will require speed to market, more creativity and emotional marketing.
Beloved Brands 8 We make brand leaders smarter

9.
Looking at the Gray’s Cookie example, we can see how “guilt free alternative” consumer benefit has
the highest potential to motivate consumers and the highest potential for ownership by the brand.
The benefits of “new favorite cookie” are highly motivating, but would be owned by the major mass
brands in the category.
Support points to the main benefit
I took one logic class at University and sat there for 13 straight weeks of premise-premise
conclusion. Easy class, but the lesson has stuck with me:
• All fish live in water (premise)
• Tuna are fish (premise)
• Therefore, tuna live in the water (conclusion)
In a positioning statement, the main consumer benefit would be the conclusion. And the reason to
believe (RTB) would be the supporting premise. I say this for a few reasons. First, the RTB should
never be the conclusion. The consumer doesn’t care about what you do, until they get something
from it. The benefit has to come from being the consumers’ shoes to realize what they get and how it
makes them feel. Second, if pure logic teaches two premises are enough to draw any conclusion,
then you really only need two RTBs. Brands with a laundry list of RTBs are not doing their job in
Beloved Brands 9 We make brand leaders smarter
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Sort through the possible benefits to find the ones that are most
motivating to consumers and own-able for your brand.
How OWN-ABLE is this
benefit for your brand
How MOTIVATED
are consumers by
your benefit
High
High
Low
Low
Losing Zone Winning Zone
Dumb Zone Risky Zone
Guilt Free
Alternative
Low
Calorie
Less Fat
All Natural
Ingredients
Lose 5
pound in 2
weeks
Feel
Smarter
about food
Feel in
control of
your
weight
Feel more
confident
Feel more
comfort in
choices
New
Favorite
Cookie

10.
making a decision on what the best support points are. You either force the ad agency to decide what
are the most important or the consumer to decide. By deferring, you’re weakening your argument.
Claims can be an effective tool in helping to support your Reason to believe. We look at four types of
claims: process, product, third person and behavioral.
Process
• Detail how your product works differently
• Showcase your point of difference in the production process.
• What do you do differently within the production process
• What added service/details do you provide in the value chain
Product
• Usage of an ingredient that makes you bette
• Process or ingredient that makes you safer
Third person
• Experts in the field who can speak on the brand’s behalf.
• Past users/clients with proof support of their stories.
Behavioral
• Clinical tests
• In market usage study
• Before and after studies
Bring the 4 elements together to create a winning Brand
Positioning statement
After doing all the homework, you should be able to put together a winning Brand Positioning
Statement that addresses:
1. Who is in the
consumer target?
What slice of the
population will be the
most motivated to buy
what you do? The first
thing to decide is the
consumer target, which
should be your first point
of focus, so that you can
find the slice of the
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4 elements of a brand positioning statement
To
(Target)
• Who is in the consumer target? What slice of the
population will be the most motivated to buy what you do?
Your brand is the
(Category)
• Where do you play? What is the frame of reference
that helps to define the space in the marketplace that
you compete in?
That is the
(Benefit)
• Where do you win? What is the promise you will make
to the consumer target, thinking about the main benefit
(rational/emotional) you are promising to deliver?
That’s because
(Support Points)
• Why should they believe us? What support points
help to back up the main benefit?
1
2
4
3

11.
population that will be the most motivated by what you do. The mistake for many Marketers is
they think about who you want, and they forget to ask who wants you. Who is the most motivated
to buy what you do?
2. Where do you play? What is the frame of reference that helps to define the space in the
marketplace that you compete in? We then frame the positioning by determining the category you
play in, defining the competitors you will position yourself against. No one really operates in a
blue ocean space, as positioning is always relative to some other choice the consumer can
make.
3. Where do you win? We then need to determine the main promise you will make to the
consumer target, in the sense of a benefit for the consumer, both the rational and emotional.
Think about what does the customer get, and how does it make them feel?
4. Why should they believe us? Finally, we will look to understand what support points are
needed to back up the main promise you are making. These support points have to support the
main benefit, not just random claims or features that you want to jam into your brand message.
Moving from the brainstorm of the Consumer Benefit Ladder, using the research to focus on “Guilt
Free Cookie” as the most motivating and own-able benefit, we can see the final brand positioning
statement for Gray’s Cookies.
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A winning brand positioning statement
To
(Target)
• Healthy proactive preventers who want
to do more for their health, working
moms, who are 35-40 years old.
Gray’s is the
(Category)
Tasty healthy cookie option
That is the
(Benefit)
• Guilt free cookie that tastes so good
that you can stay in control of your health
That’s
because
(Support Points)
• In blind taste tests, Gray’s matched the
leaders on taste, but only 100 calories
and 3g of net carbs.
• In a 12-week study, consumers using
Gray’s once a night as a desert were
able to lose 5-10 pounds.

12.
Beloved Brands: Who are we?
At Beloved Brands, we promise that we will make your brand stronger and your brand leaders
smarter. We can help you come up with your brand’s Brand Positioning, Big Idea and Brand
Concept. We also can help create Brand Plans that everyone in your organization can follow and
helps to focus your Marketing Execution. We provide a new way to look at Brand Management, that
uses a provocative approach to align your brand to the sound fundamentals of brand
management. We will make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce exceptional
work that drives stronger brand results. We offer brand training on every subject in marketing,
related to strategic thinking, analytics, brand planning, positioning, creative briefs, customer
marketing and marketing execution.
Beloved Brands Training program
At Beloved Brands, we promise to make your team of BRAND LEADERS smarter, so they produce
smarter work that drives stronger brand results.
1. How to think strategically: Strategic thinkers see “what if” questions before seeing solutions,
mapping out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will
play out.
2. Write smarter Brand Plans: A good Brand Plan provides a road map for everyone in the
organization to follow: sales, R&D, agencies, senior leaders, even the Brand Leader who writes
the plan.
3. Create winning Brand Positioning Statements: The brand positioning statement sets up the
brand’s promise to the consumer, impacting both external communication (advertising, PR or in-
store) as well as internally with employees who deliver that promise.
4. Write smarter Creative Briefs: The brief helps focus the strategy so that all agencies can take
key elements of the brand plan positioning to and express the brand promise through
communication.
5. Be smarter at Brand Analytics: Before you dive into strategy, you have to dive into the brand’s
performance metrics and look at every part of the business—category, consumers, competitors,
channels and brand.
6. Get better Marketing Execution: Brand Leaders rely on agencies to execute. They need to
know how to judge the work effectively to ensure they are making the best decisions on how to
tell the story of the brand and express the brand’s promise.
7. How to build Media Plans: Workshop for brand leaders to help them make strategic decisions
on media. We look at media as an investment, media as a strategy and the various media
options—both traditional and on-line.
8. Winning the Purchase Moment: Brand Leaders need to know how to move consumers on the
path to purchase, by gaining entry into their consumers mind, help them test and decide and
then experience so they buy again and become a brand fan.
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13.
Graham Robertson at Beloved Brands
A NEW WAY to look at Brand Management.
Graham is one of the voices of the modern Brand Leader. He started Beloved
Brands knowing he could make brands stronger and brand leaders smarter.
Beloved Brands will challenge you to think strategically so you can create a
Brand Positioning, a Brand Concept and a Big Idea for your brand. Graham
will help write Brand Plans that focus everyone who work on the brand and
make your team of Brand Leaders smarter so they can produce better
work that drives stronger brand results.
Graham spent 20 years in Brand Management leading some of the
world’s most beloved brands at Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer,
General Mills and Coke, rising up to VP Marketing. Graham
played a major role in helping Pfizer win Marketing Magazine’s
Marketer of the Year.
His public speaking appearances inspire brand leaders to
love what they do. Over 4 million marketers have visited his
website,beloved-brands.com with the desire to become smarter.
Graham has served as a contributing author to Advertising Age in the
US and Marketing Magazine in Canada.
To contact Beloved Brands, email graham@beloved-brands.com
or call 416-885-3911. You can also follow us on Twitter @belovedbrands.
Beloved Brands 13 We make brand leaders smarter