Branding Reminders - Do You Deliver?

Branding is one of those words that gets everybody excited.  But marketing professionals consistently fail to live up the detailed-oriented management that makes a brand into a promise.  This article reviews some ways to rethink or re-energize your branding strategy.  They are simple but important lessons. 

One more glaring example of why marketing is easy to understand and extremely hard to do!

Comments

[Beth Anne Whalen]

This article makes a very important point. Companies often budget large sums of money to push their marketing message "outward", yet some forget to take care of the message being sent in their own front yard. To share a recent example: I am currently in the process of selecting an e-learning infrastructure, a product we will likely spend tens of thousands of dollars with in the coming year. In doing my research I came across a company with a very sophisticated website. Savvy graphics, targeted content - and more than enough to get me fired up to learn more about them. Naturally I grabbed the phone to call their sales department. This is where the promise was broken. The receptionist said there were no sales people there, and gave me another phone number to call if I "felt like trying another sales office." Hang up. Redial. New receptionist, still no sales people around. Okay, can ANYONE there help me spend our money? Ummmmm – no, actually. 4 days later and still no call back.

So congratulations to the other companies vying for our business. You now have one less competitor in the mix.

[petewhalen]

Sales and marketing so rarely communicate or work together. It doesn't seem that hard given their similar purpose but the reality is that almost NO organization integrates the two at an acceptable level. Phillip Kotler and company wrote an excellent piece in Harvard Business Review's special edition on Sales and Marketing Integration last year. They give some great insight to the problem and offer some logical solutions.

Again, the problem is not in understadning marketing (and sales) but doing it well!