This document discusses how to build and manage an industry-leading brand. It defines a brand as a consumer's gut feeling about a company based on their experiences, not just marketing claims. Strong brands keep customers loyal, attract investors and employees, and separate a business from competitors. Brands are created by appealing to emotions over logic and satisfying deeper needs. Effective brand management ensures all communications consistently convey the intended brand personality. The document provides tips for developing brand strategies that focus on the customer experience rather than just products or services.

1. Building Your Brand:
How to Position as an
Industry Leader
Copyright 2012 Sabatier Consulting

2. What a Brand is Not…
• a logo (that’s a symbol for your
brand)
• a product

3. Your Brand Is…
• A consumer’s gut feeling about
your company, publication(s),
product and/or service.
• It is not what you say it is; it is
what they say it is.

4. Why Does Brand Matter?
• Keeps you top of mind
• Shapes perceptions into a
tangible image
• Separates you from the
competition
• Directs customer expectations
• Stimulates new sales

5. Why Does Brand Matter?
• Encourages loyalty/repeat sales
• Unifies your current employees
• Helps recruit good employees
• Attracts and reassures
investors
• Attracts the press when they
are looking for experts

6. How are Brands Created?
• Individuals create brands based
on emotion, intuition and
rationale.
• Marketers must tap into the
emotional, right-brain reasons
someone buys before appealing
to the logical, left-brain
reasons.

7. How are Brands Created?
• If you are not selling to emotions,
you are not selling.
• “Killer brands” – promising a
complete experience satisfying far
more than product needs.
• “The secret of our enduring brand lies in
delivering an experience rather than just
a collection of products and services.”
Harley-Davidson annual report

8. Effective brand marketing
satisfies a primary emotional
driver.
• Consumers to people
• Publications, products, services
to experiences
• Honesty to trust
• Quality to preference
• Identity to personality
• Service to relationship

9. Examples
• All the news that’s fit to print
(1868)
• Good to the last drop (1926)
• Breakfast of champions (1933)
• Just do it (1988)
• Fly the friendly skies (1966)
• Finger-lickin good (1952)

10. Examples
• Reach out and touch someone
(1976)
• The ultimate driving machine
(1975)
• Got ? (1993)
• Nothing runs like a (1972)

11. How are Brands
Managed?
• Brands are managed by sending
the right message and having
consistent quality.

12. How are Brands
Managed?
• EVERYTHING you do, print,
publish, create, and say should
match the brand personality.

13. How are Brands
Managed?
• Brands have a tendency to over-
claim, and perhaps need to
place their feet firmly on the
ground if their promises and the
performance they are measured
by are to be more closely
aligned.

14. Brands must think brand,
not publication.
• A publication may be what you
are, but brand is who you are.
• Brands with value messages
can turn commodity products
into premium products and then
help you sustain the leader
position.

15. Build Brand Around the
“How”
• Smart marketers figure out how
someone thinks and how that is
meaningful in their lives and
then build around the how
versus trying to sell the what.

16. Brands Must Be
Pervasive
• Consumers will consume media
the way he/she wants and we,
as information providers, have
to be where the consumer is.

17. Seven Principals for
Brand Success
• Always start with the customer
• Be distinctive and motivating
• Develop and nurture long-term
programs
• Invest through good times and
bad

18. Seven Principals for
Brand Success
• Measure your return on
investment
• Build learning into everything
you do
• Execute with powerful
communications ideas

19. Take Charge
• Connect in emotional,
unexpected ways, while being
seamless across multiple touch
points – giving an integrated
message to the consumer.

20. Marketing Plan
• Media used for campaigns can
vary depending on your
business objective.

21. Marketing Plan
• Media options – touch points
Newspaper Radio TV (cable)
Online Direct mail/email Magazines
Pod casts Mobile phones Outdoor
Apparel Events POP
PR CD DVD
Video Street marketing Kiosks
Novelty Customer Svc Others?

22. Marketing Plan
• Campaigns should not change
every season or even every
year. Expect them to run for 2-3
years at least. (New taglines
and benefit communication just
serve to confuse.)

23. Most media brands
Marketing Editorial/Circ Sales

24. Successful brands
are led by marketing.
Sales Editorial/Circ Marketing