As you can see, there is a complex set of interrelated issues that a brand manager has to manage.<\/p>\n
Small businesses historically don’t have a specific brand management plan, it’s generally rolled into the overall marketing plan and with good reason. Marketing resources, both personnel and budgetary, are often scarce. But there is plenty of learning to be had from those bigger companies and today’s blog is going to look at three brand management principles and come at them from a different angle.<\/p>\n
The three brand management principles that we are going to use are taken from an excellent blog post from Victor Gamez at Percolate<\/a>. Percolate connects marketing teams, tasks, creative, data and software tools to accelerate productivity, reduce operating costs and help businesses of all sizes grow their revenue. The Percolate blog<\/a> is an excellent resource and well worth bookmarking.<\/p>\n These are superb examples of companies that defied the core brand principles and ploughed their own furrow, all the way to incredible success. Besides the key leanings available, each example is an incredible story in its own right. Read and enjoy….<\/p>\n Principle 1:<\/strong> Have a brand management strategy that communicates your brand<\/p>\n Case in point:<\/strong> Broken by brewer, Pabst Blue Ribbon<\/p>\n The traditional marketing funnel places \u201cawareness\u201d at the beginning of a customer\u2019s journey toward purchase. The buyer journey has gone through large shifts in recent years, but it still generally begins with someone becoming conscious of the brand.<\/p>\n So naturally, marketers want to champion their brand and get its message \u201cout there\u201d\u2014even if an ad\u2019s intent is less about discussing a product than it is on creating an emotion. The more visible the brand, the larger the top of the funnel and number of potential sales.<\/p>\n But for Pabst Blue Ribbon, championing the brand at all might have chilled its quick resurgence as a major go-to beer.<\/p>\n Source: Pabst Blue Ribbon<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n In 2001, PBR had reached a new low: less than a million barrels of beer sold, a tenth of its peak in 1975. Despite a notable shoutout in David Lynch\u2019s Blue Velvet<\/i>, the brand had seen slumping sales since the 80s.<\/p>\n But in 2002, sales grew by 5.3%, and signs were pointing to almost double that rate the following year, a June 2003 article in The New York Times<\/i>\u00a0reported.<\/p>\n Marketing managers at PBR eventually realized that Portland, Oregon\u2019s growing population of anti-establishment hipsters had taken to the beer. It became, through no deliberate action on the company\u2019s part, a \u201csocial protest\u201d brand, one marketing consulting firm found. \u201cP.B.R. is seen as a symbol and fellow dissenter.\u201d<\/p>\n In light of this customer insight, the company began making the conscious choice to stay under the radar. That\u2019s hard to do for marketers. But this understanding of customers\u2019 need for an \u201canti-brand\u201d meant that the only way to nurture growth was to do it quietly.<\/p>\n This line of thinking contributed to passing up opportunities to get its brand \u201cout there,\u201d including local radio station ads, an endorsement deal with Kid Rock, and sponsoring a snowboarding event.<\/p>\n Instead, it opted for grassroots events\u2014like a small-scale bicycling tournament (featuring beer) at a park with no banners, announcements, or employees that hinted at PBR\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n Over the next ten years, the brand grew rapidly. It ended up selling 92 million gallons of beer in 2012 to Americans\u2014200% more than in 2003\u2014and overtook Coors and Samuel Adams in volume sales, according to Quartz<\/i>. It was eventually purchased for$700 million in 2014, thirteen years after its record-low, with as low-key an ad strategy as ever. It goes to show that listening to customers should dictate not just how, but also whether a brand should interact with consumers.<\/p>\n Principle 2:<\/strong> Have a brand management strategy that rewards customers.<\/p>\n Case in point:<\/strong> Broken by Cards Against Humanity.<\/p>\n By and large, we strive to treat our customers with respect and, when possible, go above and beyond to delight them.<\/p>\n But an exception might be made in the case where \u201chorrible\u201d is a core brand trait.<\/p>\n Cards Against Humanity<\/a> is a game in the vein of Apples to Apples<\/a>; players take turns finishing sentences with phrases printed on their cards, hoping to create the most humorous statement. The phrases and resultant jokes take dark turns in Cards Against Humanity, which takes the stance that nothing is off-limits in the name of comedy.<\/p>\n Fans of the game have a penchant for black and sardonic humor, so it follows that the brand itself should, too. Part of Cards\u2019 attempt to flesh this trait out includes insulting its followers.<\/p>\n \u201cA party game for horrible people\u201d is printed on each game package. Its Frequently Asked Questions page is titled \u201cYour Dumb Questions.<\/a>\u201d And in the description of the Kickstarter campaign that launched the product, the creators wrote that \u201cCards Against Humanity is as despicable and awkward as you and your friends.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Source: Amazon<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n But it goes beyond mere words. The company has garnered a lot of attention for its Black Friday deals, which aren\u2019t deals so much as opportunities to inconvenience potential customers.<\/p>\n Take its 2013 Black Friday deal, which was a normal set of Cards Against Humanity for the unbelievable price of $30\u2014a five dollar increase from its normal price.<\/p>\n Not the most buyer-friendly tactic\u2014but it resonated with the game\u2019s followers. \u201cAnyone can do a sale for Black Friday, but nobody but us could get away with raising their prices and risking a ton of sales just to make a joke,\u201d co-creator Max Temkin wrote in his personal blog.<\/p>\n Moreover, it got the attention of several news outlets and community forums, like\u00a0Reddit<\/a> and AdWeek<\/a>. \u201cI was pretty sure that our fans would be into the \u2018$5 more\u2019 sale, but I had no idea that it would turn a day where we\u2019d normally be totally overlooked into a huge press hit for the game,\u201d Temkin wrote.<\/p>\n Last year, the deal was just six dollars\u2014for a box of bull excrement<\/a>. \u201cBullshit,\u201d the only item available for sale on the website, sold out thanks to 30,000 purchasers who may or may not have believed the company was selling actual feces.<\/p>\n This again got the attention of the press. But it\u2019s important to realize that it wasn\u2019t simply a media stunt. Removing the ability to purchase the game, increasing its price arbitrarily, and insulting its fans are all tactics that would normally sink a brand.<\/p>\n In this case, the company was attuned enough to its customer base to know it would appreciate the humor in hampering a purchase.<\/p>\n Principle 3: Have a brand\u00a0management\u00a0strategy, period.<\/strong><\/p>\n Case in point:<\/strong> Broken by Huy Fong Foods.<\/p>\n You\u2019ve probably heard of Heinz, Helleman\u2019s, and Tabasco. You\u2019re less likely to have heard of \u201cHuy Fong Foods.\u201d<\/p>\n But if you hear \u201csriracha\u201d and think of red sauce in a bottle with a rooster and a bright green cap, you\u2019re one of the many who conflate the entire category of the Thai-style hot sauce with Huy Fong Foods\u2019 specific brand of it\u2014without ever having seen an advertisement for it.<\/p>\n Source: Al Jazeera<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n Huy Fong Foods has become a leader in the hot sauce space without any thought to brand management strategy.<\/p>\n Founder David Tran, originally from Vietnam, couldn\u2019t find palatable hot sauce when he moved to Los Angeles in 1980. So he created his own<\/a>, placing a rooster (his astrological sign) on the packaging.<\/p>\n Since then, he\u2019s seemingly only been focused on production. \u201cI started the business with my eyes closed. There were no expectations at all,\u201d he told Quartz<\/i><\/a>. Tran hasn\u2019t raised the wholesale price of Sriracha since 1980, has used the same 10 distributors for a decade, has relied on the same farm to procure chilies since 1990, and has no detailed record of where exactly his product is sold. Moreover, he\u2019s never spent money on sales or advertising.<\/p>\n Still, Huy Fong\u2019s dominance has withstood the test of other companies who\u2019ve piggybacked<\/a> on the popularity of sriracha. For instance, McIlhenny Co (the company behind Tabasco) has created its own brand of sriracha\u2014but admitted to the Los Angeles Times that Huy Fongs\u2019 sauce was the \u201cgold standard.\u201d Tran told the Los Angeles Times that he thinks the rise of other sriracha sources is free advertising, and that sales have grown from $60 million to $80 million in the last two years.<\/p>\n It\u2019s thanks to a growing base of fans\u2014many of whom think \u201csriracha\u201d is the name of the company, rather than a type of condiment. Huy Fong Foods has essentially created and driven the growth of the sriracha market, to the point where the category of hot sauce is in nine percent of households<\/a>. \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing among consumers is demand, not just for heat, but more complex, regional flavors,\u201d a food and drink analyst for Mintel told the Los Angeles Times. \u201cWith Sriracha, Huy Fong introduced a new style and a whole new category of hot sauce.\u201d Huy Fong Foods\u2019 prize-winning sauce<\/a> has come to define \u201csriracha,\u201d and the memory of its flavor is inextricably tied to the clear bottle with the rooster and the green cap.<\/p>\n That means that building deeper memory structures for its customers is all about creating sriracha. Growth, he told Quartz<\/i>, is limited only by his ability to buy chilies, and he isn\u2019t interested in plans or offers from investors for more money. Just in his ability to produce more sauce.<\/p>\n Gamez comments that “Each of these examples\u2014PBR, Cards against Humanity, and Huy Fong Foods\u2014may have seen success by subverting a brand management principle. But they adhered to the most important and most fundamental brand management principle\u2014to build memory structures that resonate with your target audience.”<\/p>\n And Gamez finishes with sound advice,”We don\u2019t recommend trying those specific tactics at your company. We do, however, recommend staying attuned to customer preferences. PBR\u2019s marketing of no marketing worked because it realized its growing consumer base was re-purposing the brand to fit a need that didn\u2019t exist. Cards\u2019 seeming disrespect toward buyers is effective because it meshes with fans\u2019 mocking sense of humor. And Huy Fong Foods knows that the people just want more hot sauce.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Today we’re going to turn out attention to brand management. Brand management is a complex marketing function but essentially it…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9581,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-small-business"},"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/bigredcloud.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/pbr-bottle.jpg\")
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