One of the biggest opportunities I see in the world of start-ups and entrepreneurs is a greater focus on Brand Building.  I don’t mean a bigger focus on advertising or PR.  And I don’t even mean a bigger focus on the broader term “marketing.”  I mean a bigger focus on putting the time, money and sweat into taking a systematic approach to…

…treat your company like the brand it really is.

Now the entrepreneurs among you might scoff at this statement.  You might even be thinking that the guy writing this hasn’t lived the life of a start-up so what does he know.  After all, a career spent at the world’s largest Consumer Packaged Goods company means a world where there are plenty of resources available to “build the brand.”  Start-ups do not have time for this when they are trying to keep the lights on, just trying to survive and thrive.

I’m sorry to say, but if you are thinking that, you are missing the point all together.

Over the past two years, my work has thrown me head first into the world of Consumer Internet.  On any given day, my meetings are as likely to be with an entrepreneur or Venture Capitalist as they are to be with another Brand Manager or Advertising Agency.  Ironically my degree from college was in Marketing AND Entrepreneurship so these contrasting interactions are actually comforting.

And it is in these interactions that I have started to form my opinion about the need for start-ups to invest in building brands, not just products.

First a definition: what exactly do I mean by “building brands?”  Keep in mind that brands really came to prominence in the wake of the Industrial Revolution, where brands were a way for people to tell the consistency of a product.  So by one definition, a brand is…

a set of perceptions and images that represent a company, product or service. While many people refer to a brand as a logo, tag line or audio jingle, a brand is actually much larger. A brand is the essence or promise of what will be delivered or experienced.

Think about that for a second. You and a colleague have an amazing idea for a company.  You figured out the name and your co-founder created what you think is a pretty cool logo. And you even came up with a tagline that you just love the sound of.

But have you really thought about your start-up, your idea as if it was a brand?

Have you thought about how your “brand” will be a promise to consumers?  Have you crafted the Brand Visual Identity?  Have you outlined the Brand Equity that you want?  These things aren’t just buzzwords that keep Brand Managers and Agency Executives employed.  They are the tools that a great Brand Builder uses to create and sustain iconic brands like Nike, Coca-Cola and Tide.

With this in mind, I think there is a need in our industry for translators, people that can apply the principles and discipline of Brand Building to the world of entrepreneurship.  Examples are out there for sure.  Pete Blackshaw was one when he left P&G to start Planet Feedback.  And Bessemer Ventures just hired a translator (whether they realize it or not) as they bring Jason Putorti on-board to be a Designer in Residence and help portfolio companies build “simple, intuitive, and engaging web sites.”  And Dave McClure was calling for the need for translators in his self-proclaimed rant that “More than half of all startups, and easily 9 out of 10 investors have no clue regarding .) user experience or 2) internet marketing.”

Brand Marketers realize that a brand is more than a name, fancy logo or marketing plan. A brand is about the product AND the user experience AND the marketing AND many, many other things.

Simply put, when Brand Building really works the way it is suppose to, the sum is greater than the parts.

So if you are a start-up, I would encourage you to start thinking about your brand today, not tomorrow.  If you are VC, I would push you to sit down with your portfolio and ask how they are thinking about their brand.  The opportunity is ripe for the leaders out there to embrace brand building in the start-up world.

And in full admission, traditional Brand Builders can learn plenty from start-ups as well.  We need our own set of Translators to help us in the journey.  But that is a subject for another post all together.

I have to admit,this is one of my favorite print ads out there.  But then again, I seem to have a soft spot for great liquor advertising.

In the world of Consumer Packaged Goods, Knob Creek is going through what we call “allocation.”  And allocation is usually a bad thing for a brand… a really bad thing.  But the marketers at Knob Creek have taken the high road and used the shortage to reinforce their equity of “uncompromising quality.”  It would have been easy for them to start using some product that hadn’t aged the “full 9 years”.  But they did what is right in the long run for both their fans and for the brand.  That type of commitment to a brand is admirable and should be a role model for all Brand Managers.

BTW – Special thanks to Jason Falls for helping me get a digital copy of the above ad.

In the Spring 2009 issue of strategy+business, Christopher Vollmer writes a piece that every Brand Manager, Advertising Agency and media company should take notice of.  Entitled Digital Darwinism, the article looks at how “in the new marketing and media ecosystem, some will fail, some will thrive, and all will have to evolve.”

As a partner at Booz & Company and lead of the firm’s U.S. media and entertainment team, Christopher Vollmer knows a thing or two about this changing marketing ecosystem.  In fact, his recent book Always On: Advertising, Marketing, and Media in an Era of Consumer Control, explores that very subject.  In my eyes, those are good reasons we should all be listening when Vollmer gives this call to action for the industry:

Digital platforms and capabilities are transforming the ways in which consumers experience advertising …It is a dynamic, complex, and interconnected community in which marketers, advertising agencies, and media companies depend on one another, to a certain extent, to survive and thrive. But it is also a brutal, competitive arena, where a kind of “digital Darwinism,” or survival of the fittest, holds sway, rapidly distinguishing winners from losers. Companies that possess certain preferred traits in their organizational DNA or that have superior skills of self-adaptation are positioned to flourish in this ecosystem.  Those without either face almost certain extinction.

To make his point, Vollmer starts with a case study about how Hewlett-Packard has been able to gain the upper-hand on Dell. In particular, Vollmer focuses on how “HP stopped engaging Dell Inc. in a price war it could never win and changed the terms of the PC marketing debate: Your personal computer is not a bargain, it’s your autobiography, and it matters that it’s an HP.”  They accomplished this by embracing Digital Darwinism with moves such as:

• The company has dedicated 50 percent their marketing budget to digital media — compared with an average among national advertisers of 5 to 10 percent.
• HP has turned the brand over to consumers, such as a 2007 online contest to design the skin of HP’s new special-edition entertainment laptop.  In that contest alone, HP received more than 8,500 entries from 112 countries in just over a month. The contest site got more than 5 million hits, prompting HP to re-forecast sales to five times its original estimate.
• HP is also trying out new models for its relationships with agencies and media partners, including pilots that bypass agencies and work directly with media companies.

These efforts are best described by Mike Mendenhall, HP’s Chief Marketing Officer:

As marketers, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to drive change within our companies, because all public touch points — increasingly digital — now impact our brand and our revenue. Brands aren’t defined by campaigns anymore, but by the consumer ecosystems we nurture to support them.

Vollmer proceeds to describe how all companies in the Marketing Ecosystem must change in this time of Digital Darwinism.  To support his point, he includes some interesting facts & figures that really caught my attention:

• Whereas newspapers took 127 years to reach US$20 billion in ad revenues in the U.S., and cable television took 25 years, online media have garnered that amount in just 13 years.
• 88 percent of marketers expect to spend more on digital ads, and 82 percent believe insights into consumers’ digital behavior and related targeting tools will only become more important.  Yet only about one-quarter of marketers regard themselves as digitally savvy, and half claim they lack the support at senior levels to substantially increase the marketing dollars allocated to digital media.
• 42 percent of national advertisers have set up in-house ad agencies, according to a recent ANA survey.

There are also 5 behaviors that all players in the Marketing ecosystem must follow in order to thrive and survive in this time of Digital Darwinism:

1. Turn consumers into “prosumers”: Brand evangelists, equipped with the right tools and motivation to extol brands to family, friends, and casual acquaintances, can be core elements in a campaign.  Marketers have extensive experience observing consumers at the retail shelf, but they are still trying to identify the equivalent “moment of truth” on the Internet.
2. Build bilateral brand experiences: Brands today must go beyond simply broadcasting their message; they must beckon the consumer into a conversation. When consumers use digital media to search, shop, blog, socialize, or seek entertainment, their actions create opportunities for marketers not only to gain insight but also to gather ideas to improve their brands, marketing messages, and media mix choices.
3. Place context on par with content: The distribution of marketingmessages—their timing, context, and relevance — is becoming as important as their creative execution in today’s ecosystem.
4. Master the new calculus of communication: The lack of reliable and standard metrics is the principal impediment to the entire ecosystem’s transition to a new marketing and media model. More standard metrics would give marketers and their partners permission to move beyond experimental spending and toward lasting innovation and change.
5. Collaboration is king: Marketers, ad agencies, and media companies need to partner in conceiving, executing, and monitoring winning marketing strategies.

While these 5 behavior changes are vital in the age of Digital Darwinism, Vollmer makes one point that I think is particularly important for all Brand Managers, especially those that are not yet fully embracing digital.  He writes that:

The marketing function, equipped to broadcast brand messages to consumers, has now become a center for dialogue, geared to gleaning what consumers want, and when and where they want it. Advertising has evolved from an interruption— grabbing attention for a product or brand— into an experience, an application, a service that the consumer actually wants. This new marketing model doesn’t shout; it listens and learns. And relevance, interactivity, and accountability are its essential ingredients.

Is your company ready for this change?

Aki Spicer over at Fallon Planning put together this great summary of 6 ways that brands can play on Twitter. Given my previous thoughts on Twitter, it’s nice to see someone summarize the opportunities for brands.

(Click the image to enlarge or grab the PDF)