WHEN BRANDING DOESN'T WORK
Are you putting significant effort and significant resources into developing a coherent brand for your product? Researching the marketplace and analyzing competing brands? Establishing strategy sessions to review and select the best brand identity? Mobilizing all the forces at your disposal to launch, promote and solidify the brand in the marketplace? Putting continual effort into analyzing the brand's effectiveness over time? Allocating significant budget to the whole effort?

If you are, you're probably wasting a lot of time and a lot of money. Branding, we believe, is very likely of no value to you.

What, after all, is the purpose of branding? Here's my definition:

"Branding is a way of helping non-knowledgeable customers make a low-risk buying decision for a commodity product with little inherent differentiation."

You know, like laundry detergent. There is no inherent differentiation between Tide and Cheer and Downy (all Proctor and Gamble brands). So P&G-the master of brand management-creates brands to reach market segments. And they promote the brands at significant expense. Now, when customers walk into the market, they head over to the detergent shelf, spot their brand by the packaging and logo, plop it into their shopping carts and move on to the dog food. If you stop them at that point and ask things like "what are those little green crystals" or "why does Downy make your clothes smell fresher than Tide," I daresay you're not going to get much of an answer.

That's branding at its most effective.

But have I described your marketplace? Does that customer profile I've just described apply to you? Are your customers uninformed? Is your product devoid of any inherent differentiation? Is it a low-risk purchase?

If the answer is yes then by all means, brand away.

But we suspect the answer is no. We suspect that your customers know a great deal about your product, and about your competitor's product, and how those products satisfy their needs. (That's what a sales cycle is for, isn't it?) We suspect that your product carries with it significant inherent differentiation-code base, architecture, installation process, support services, and of course features . . . all sorts of things you don't find in a box of soap suds. And as far as risk goes-your customers are in all likelihood risking significant business processes on your product, taking a significant standardization risk, and quite likely risking a fair amount of money.

Your brand means nothing to them. Your reputation in the marketplace does, and your installation base does, and customer testimonials do, and the kind of press and analyst coverage you get does. But that isn't brand. That's core company credibility-something you earn, not something you create.

I mean, have you ever heard any of your customers tell you "Oh, I don't really bother to go through all that buying process nonsense-I mean, it's just EAI isn't it? Heck, I just look for your logo and write a PO. You're my brand of middleware solutions!"

So now tell me-if the answer to that question is "never", and I bet it is, what are you bothering with branding for? Why are you wasting your time and your money trying to apply commodity marketing practices to significant business sales and buying cycles?

The most common answer we get when we ask that question is: "well, it's part of the marketing mix."

Not your marketing mix it isn't.

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