In a world full of clutter, creating a winning brand message is key to success. Product life cycles are becoming ever shorter. There is no time to do it right the second time. We only witness success stories because the failures are not spoken about that often. Success and failure are to be treated carefully. Don’t celebrate the success of a brand too long as the competition is playing catch up. Failure usually is not fatal, but we have to learn from them to avoid them.
A winning brand message must express a brand’s strategic position in ways that connect with its target market. Your brand message must do three things: be different, relevant, and memorable. Achieving all three things is essential to creating a winning brand message.
Offering your target audience a product or service that is different from what they are used to or have never experienced before requires that you know your market well. Your product must be relevant to consumers, making their lives more enjoyable. Your message must be memorable, top of mind, and become synonymous with the product. Let’s look at the roadmap to creating a winning brand message in more detail?
Get Everyone Wanting Your Brand?
The three golden rules for creating a brand that people must have are:
- Be different by creating a key difference to the competitors in product offering or experience.
- Be relevant by solving problems that consumers have to contend with. Offer products and services that will set the benchmark.
- Be memorable by creating a “Wow” first impression with your consumers. The truism that first impressions last applies. Consumers can become your best brand advocates.
Creating Product Differentiation – Example
Power-steering was first fitted to the 1951 Chrysler Imperial, and the competition quickly followed suit. The benefits of power-steering were significant. The effort of turning the steering wheel of a large luxury car was big. Power-steering eliminated the steering effort greatly and allowed engineers to make the cars more responsive and fun to drive.
The power-steering feature offered the driver a more engaging and pleasurable driving experience. It was also a winner with women drivers as it made the steering wheel feather-light.
Customer Focused Problem Solving – Example
In the 1940s, cars were becoming larger and became difficult to drive due to the steering effort required by the driver. The tires had to be narrow and bigger in diameter to overcome this steering effort. The problem created by these narrow tires was that it led to poor vehicle handling and instability due to the smaller tire contact surface to the road.
The Chrysler brand was the first to introduce power-steering on large luxury models, enabling the engineers to fit tires with a broader footprint and lower side-wall profile. Power-steering offered drivers a significantly improved driving experience.
Memorable Brand Marketing – Example
In 1985 BMW introduced power-steering on their mid-range 3-series as a standard product feature. The television commercial explained the advantages of power-steering so well that the TV commercial itself became a much talked about success.
The thirty-second commercial featured a white mouse running on top of the steering wheel, causing the wheel to turn. The commercial was awarded the highest accolades in the advertising industry and was listed in the advertising hall of fame. After more than 35 years, the commercial is still used as an example of the power of memorable advertising.
Know Your Target Audience?
The marketing experts in an organization must clearly define who their target market is. Understanding the lifestyle standards of the target customer is critically important.
The definition of the targeted customers and what they expect in a product needs to be well defined. The engineers need to refer back to this definition constantly. Don’t give the customer a product that meets the minimum criteria. Give them something that they can be excited about. If the customers are excited and proud of the product they have purchased, they become the brand advocates.
Create Relevant Products
Understand what your target market wants. Customers in the affordable mobility segments are looking for affordable, reliable daily commuting. They need to go from home to work and back again. They want to go to the market once per week to buy food and essentials. They may not be considering a car but rather public transport. This demographic will also find the BMW TV commercial interesting, and it may create an aspiration to be able to afford a BMW 3-series.
The key is to know who you want to buy your product. Would you please get to know your target customer? Please find out how much they are willing to pay for specific product features. Find out what will excite them and what will disappoint them. Your product has to support the promise of your brand message. If the consumer feels let down by a mismatch between your brand message and the product experience, they will lose interest in your brand. They are prone to share a negative experience with many more people than a positive experience.
Test your product with the target market before product launch. Ask the pilot customers what they like and dislike. What could be made better? Try to make your product different from other products of similar price or function. Try to be the first or the best don’t be the same as other products.
Create a Memorable Brand Message
Go back to your product design brief. Where will you find your target audience? What media do they consume? Are they readers of magazines, newspapers, or what media do they consume? Coming up with a memorable message yourself is unlikely. Exceptionally few people can be experts at product development, market research, and brand building.
Engage with a creative advertising agency and brief them about what your product is all about and who your target audience is. Please give them the freedom to come up with a creative idea of reaching your target audience. Also, please give them a budget to work with. Your business plan needs to allow for a sufficient budget for brand-building activities.
Memorable brand messages need to connect with your target audience and result in them seeking out your product or service. Great products can become the best-kept secrets if their brand message does not reach the target audience. Trust your creative advertising agency to come up with a memorable message communicated to the target audience on a platform that reaches them.
Conclusion
Creating a winning brand message that will break through the clutter of messages consumers are bombarded with is not easy. Creating a winning brand message is the exception and not the rule. There are a lot of brands and products all vying for attention. Make sure that you know your market and your product very well.
Having a successful brand supported by excellent products is not a hit-and-miss affair. It requires detailed product planning and customer research. Speak to people and learn what they aspire to. Engage with creative and media experts to help you to connect with your market.
