Benjamin Bidlack is Brand Strategy Director at RiechesBaird

In the first of two parts we explore what is a Brand Audit and why tech companies choose to conduct them.

Remember the fantastic scene from “A Few Good Men” where Lt. Daniel Kaffee (played by Tom Cruise), an inexperienced military trial lawyer, confronts a seasoned Marine Colonel Nathan R. Jessep (played by Jack Nicholson) about the facts surrounding the apparent murder of a fellow Marine? “I want the truth!” exclaims Kaffee in the courtroom. “You can’t handle the truth!” shouts back Jessep.

Although it is sometimes hard to ‘handle’ or swallow, the truth is the idea behind conducting a brand audit. More so than some other industries, tech companies need to know the cold hard truth of how they are perceived in the marketplace. Even if the results hurt the technology brand ego. Because the first step in strengthening brand weaknesses or vulnerabilities is learning precisely where the brand value stands now.

This year, some tech companies won’t need a full-tilt, top-dollar rebranding. They may have just finished a complete rebranding last year, or recently merged or acquired other brands. They might just need a brand audit to help them with this year’s strategy and resourcing decisions.

What is a brand audit?

A brand audit is a thorough, multi-dimensional analysis to understand a company’s brand(s), its internal and external perceptions, and their strategic implications. Brand audits often include rigorous competitor brand evaluations to deliver strategic context and recommendations to its findings.

A brand audit answers questions such as:

-  How do prospects really view the technology brand?
-  Which brand attributes and personality does it and its competitors ‘own’?
-  How much ‘permission’ does the brand have to offer new products or enter new markets?
-  How cohesive and compelling is the tech brand story and promise?
-  What internal and external challenges stand in the way of developing and strengthening brand to drive business forward?
-  Which touch points have the most impact for building this technology brand?
-  How should brand position change to be most effective against competitors?
-  Is it wise to go ‘head-to-head’ with primary competitors? Why or why not?
-  What differentiators do the brand offer that cannot be easily copied?
-  How relevant is the brand in today’s marketplace? How believable is brand promise? How differentiated?

In many cases, technology brands ‘lead with the tech’. They believe it will be compelling enough to drive the trial, preference, and repeat business that drive future revenue. Technology is only part of the value offered by Apple, Google or Microsoft. These technology leaders all carry brand value and associations far beyond the technology they offer: prestige (or ‘everyman-ness’), cool (or not-so-cool) ‘geekiness’, self-expression, social or economic status, values, etc.
Top technology brands also carry associations related to value delivery, service quality, and relative pricing, whether it’s their products or stock. The brand value goes far beyond a technological development.

Unfortunately, executives do not always want to hear the truth about their brands. Lack of honest insights can cause uninformed decisions and leave them wondering why the numbers or performance of their brand is not improving.

Can your team handle the truth? Let us know how you uncover the honest data that leads to informed decisions.

Next time, we’ll look at the specific elements of a brand audit, and why it can be a relatively inexpensive and extremely effective tool.

Why category positioning is paramount to building a successful technology brand.

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

During the first part of this series we spoke about the importance of defining your business category and brand positioning. The second part focused on the approach and type of insights you must acquire before entering the strategic phase. To finalize this series, we need to explore ideation; defining your category, crafting a winning position and establishing brand strategy.

First of all, ask yourself and your team a very simple question. Does your current and future business model/strategy and offering fit into an existing category that is clearly recognized and defined by your audience and qualified industry analyst (such as Gartner or Forrester)?

If the answer is yes, then you can craft a well-defined category description base upon the current interpretation and competitive considerations set, but more importantly you must now clearly understand who already owns what in the category and determine what positioning will give you the greatest value and differentiation.

Clearly if any of your competitors already own a positioning space that’s seated in the mind of your audience, stay away from trying to take it over. In our experience this is a losing proposition. Remember how your customers think. They will know you for ONE thing (as the accompanying video so poignantly points out).

So pick something you can own long term. Something fresh. Something new. And that usually starts with being first at something.

A good way to start thinking about a winning position and brand strategy is to ask yourself a few questions to generate ideas. Here’s a few things to think about:

1. What are you good at?
2. What do you love to do?
3. What can you be famous for?

(Thank you to Tom Peters for providing this wonderful way to explore brand positioning.)

Once you’ve articulated these thoughts, put yourself to the test of trying to narrow it down to one word or simple idea. Remember, the more narrow the focus the stronger the technology brand. Throughout history most great technology brands can be articulated in a word or two.

Dell owned personal (before it was commoditized). Linksys owned networking before they were bought by Cisco. And Cisco is trying to own Human Network. And the list goes on.

So you see, it must be simple. It must be believable. It must be relevant and most importantly it has to be defendable! These are always good criteria to put against your thinking.

But what happens if you don’t fit into a category? What happens when Gartner or Forrester don‘t recognize or have a category that fits your business? Well, that’s a little tougher.

Basically you’ve got a few options:
1. Work with Gartner or Forrester to co-develop the category (this takes time and money).
2. Identify the category you are closest too and tweak the definition slightly so your audience understands but gets a refreshed view and new spin on it.
3. Create a new category. This is the most courageous/interesting and potently valuable. However, it’s also tricky and takes considerable thinking, making it a great idea for the subject of a future blog.

Technically speaking, understanding what business you are in and defining your category and position is fundamental to growth and building value. But that’s just my opinion, what’s yours?

I hope you enjoyed this series, please submit your comments, experiences and suggestions on other topics you’d like to discuss. Best of luck with your businesses.

Why category positioning is paramount to building a successful technology brand.

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

Last week we spoke about the importance of defining the category in which a technology company competes in order to develop an effective brand position. This week we are going to focus on how to approach the assignment and what you need to know to make it successful.

First of all, timing is everything.

If your tech company does not see an immediate need, the likelihood for the project to be successful will be slim. Basically, you have a few options.  Wait for some major change that invokes the discussion of re-examining the positioning (like a merger/acquisition or new product/market direction) or you can create evidence (quantitative or qualitative) for the need.  Take caution when developing the latter. In our experience, technology brands must take individual opinions out of the equation and use research to justify the need.

A sure fire way to create internal buy-in is to conduct the questioning we discussed in Part 1 of this series. Having your executive team reveal their understanding and thoughts as it relates to brand positioning usually gets the group talking about the need to re-examine.

Another suggestion would be conducting a simple survey to existing customers and prospects. There is nothing like fresh research to help understand the current perceptions of your brand positioning and category considerations. Lastly, if your organization is consultant friendly, it’s never a bad idea to have a third-party organization come in to give you an assessment that roles up both internal and external perceptions. Remember, if you don’t get buy-in from the executive group, you are in for a big challenge. You must develop the need.

Developing your category definition and brand positioning is not just a marketing exercise. It is a business exercise and decision that must involve your executive leadership in order for you to be successful.

Once you have buy-in from your team, it’s critical to establish a specific process with defined deliverables that everyone understands and agrees upon. Timing will be critical. Once the project starts it’s extremely important to keep momentum going for the group to stay engaged because you need to have the executive group involved throughout the process. Basically they need to commit to a few meetings and an hour-long, in-depth interview.

A typical brand development assignment of this nature generally takes around 90 days from start to presentation of final recommendations. Our brand consultants suggest getting brand strategy going with a simple kickoff meeting to familiarize the group with the process, expected outcome and their roles in the project. Fundamentally you and your selected technology brand experts need to guide the group through the assessment and discovery phase.

Here are the core pieces of the research. Make sure you not only roll up the findings into insights, but also suggest what the research will mean to the project.

1. Internal Insights: Personal interview with executives and survey of management and employees to capture strengths/weakness/gaps
2. External Insights: Customer/Prospects and industry experts (like Gartner) perceptions and driving influences
3. Competitive Review: Mapping of competitors positioning and brand strategy
4. Market Dynamics: Clear understanding of the current dynamics and future considerations/influences

Once armed with this insightful information you are fully prepared to discuss the strategic paths to developing a well-defined category definition and brand position for differentiation and growth.

In the final installment of this series, we will explore what it takes to develop winning positioning and how to build a technology brand for optimal performance.

Category positioning is paramount to building a successful technology brand

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

During the last several months, I have had the opportunity to work with several well-known technology brands. Interestingly enough, although they are distinctively different in size, business model and longevity in the market, each technology brand shares the same business challenge: defining what category best describes their business, and how to position themselves within the competitive environment.

Our team of brand experts believes if you don’t get the category right or cannot arrive at a differentiating position, nothing else matters. So often, we find corporations throwing massive amounts of budget and resources into category positioning that is off-target and irrelevant. They are often left wondering why their branding and marketing is ineffective. Does this sound familiar?

Why is this a common problem amongst technology brands?

Unlike other established traditional consumer markets, technology is always evolving—it’s a moving target. New markets are constantly emerging enticing companies to forge into areas that are outside of their defined consideration set. Additionally, technology companies think in terms of technology rather than branding and marketing. However, category and brand positioning are not just a marketing decision; it’s a business decision that must be embraced and aligned with company executives.

In addition, research companies like Gartner and Forrester define categories that often influences technology brands. Yet these innovative technologies and companies do not always fit into an existing consideration set, which can present a challenge.

The bottom line is the technological industry is always changing, but does this mean your brand positioning needs to change? In order to answer that question, start by asking yourself or your team a few simple questions. This will determine if your company is internally aligned. You might be amazed at the response:

1. What business are we in? Describe.
2. Define the category of business in which we compete.
3. Are we positioned correctly against the competition? Describe.
4. What does our brand stand for?

If you cannot clearly articulate answers to these questions, or if your team is not aligned, imagine what your customers, prospects and market must be thinking?

Do not fret, for you are not alone. These are common issues that most brands deal with when change has occurred. The bigger question is how to develop a brand strategy and process? What is the best way to team up in order to deliver the type of thinking needed to develop the right brand strategies and path to move forward?

Next week, in part two of this three-piece series, we will explore how and what you need to think about when developing your moving forward brand strategies.

Ray Baird is President of RiechesBaird

“What’s the biggest challenge to creating a successful B2B brand?” I am often asked this question, and without a doubt it’s the decision of what not to be— let me explain. So often, companies want to try and be everything to their customers. Does this sound familiar? Many times when we are working with a client to find their sustainable point of differentiation they will say that it’s many things and not just one; “We’re innovative but have great service at a value price.” Does this sound familiar?  There in-lies the challenge. Yes, companies may have differentiation at many different levels, but customers and consumers think differently than businesses do. Your customer’s brain is wired to retain information that is new and different or important to decisions that they are making—everything else gets lost in the sea of sameness. And most importantly, buyers immediately categorize brands based upon their first impression, which means you better be prepared to understand what you can own in the marketplace and what’s most relevant. And that’s where most companies struggle. So often, corporations don’t spend enough time to really understand what makes them different in the minds of their buyers. They  resort to value propositions that are confusing, uninteresting, and lacking in singularity for maximum intention—“One Thing”. Trying to build a brand on everything will leave you with nothing.

So if you are in the process of developing a brand position, here are two critical things to consider:

1. Get the brand strategy right.
If the strategy and value proposition has not been created or agreed upon, how can you create a successful brand? Finding the “One Thing” is really a strategic exercise more than anything else. It cannot just be delegated to the marketing department. It needs to be developed with the brain trust of your organization. Only then can the brand team go to work on developing a long lasting, successful brand and delivery strategy.

2. Be the Brand voice of reason. Take the test.
As you begin the strategic branding development process consider using these three elements to make sure you are  building a lasting brand strategy.

a. Is it relevant? If what you are saying does not resonate with your buyer, go back to the drawing board.  Ask yourself the question, “Will they care?”. Remember , if your customer is not ecstatic over the promise or doesn’t get it, you will be building a promise on a false foundation. And remember, focus on “One Thing”.

b. Is it believable? If you can’t come up with strong reasons to believe, you need to start over. In most cases your employees can tell you immediately if  your value proposition will fly. The last thing you want to do is announce a new positioning that people cannot believe. Do yourself a favor, always test your future brand promise with both employees and customers. If it’s not resonating with them and if it’s not credible, you’re in for a rough ride. And remember, focus on “One Thing”.

c. Is it defendable? You need to step back and look at your ecosystem and determine if your new position is defendable. So often, companies build brand promises that are short lived because they did not do the proper homework to understand the competitive environment and market dynamics. The last thing you want is to introduce a brand position that someone can knock down or will become irrelevant in short order. And remember, focus on “One Thing.”

If you start with a clear strategy that’s agreed upon by your executive team and use this criteria to develop brand, you’ll be in great shape to create a long lasting successful brand. And remember, focus on “One thing”. If you try to be known for many things, you‘ll be remembered for nothing. But that’s just my opinion, what’s yours?