Brand equity Top 10

According to a recent Harris Interactive poll of 20,289 consumers which asked each respondent to rate 60 randomly-selected brands out of the 1,170 brands in the study, Heinz Ketchup is the number one brand in terms of consumer equity.

Here are the top 10 brands according to the study (rank., brand, brand equity score):

1. Heinz Ketchup 79.27
2. M&M Plain Chocolate Candy 77.79
3. Hershey's Milk Chocolate Candy Bar 77.51
4. Hershey's Kisses Chocolate Candy 77.20
5. Duracell Batteries 76.75
6. Cheerios Cereal 76.53
7. Discovery Channel 76.17
8. Kraft Foods, Inc. 75.93
9. Kleenex Facial Tissues 75.57
10. Neosproin Ointment 75.54

The god of copy

I've got to thank Bob Bly for blogging about and turning me on to The Copy God. This guy states, "Discover how to write copy so potent, powerful, and awe-inspiring, it starts to make money for your clients before they mail it – as incredible as that sounds!"

For those of you interested in marketing and writing copy, this one is great for a laugh. It actually is very well written and a case study in exaggerated claims (as slight as they may be.)

Just make sure you read it to the end...and be sure to click on the button at the bottom to see who is really behind it all.

...and a special welcome to my new affiliate

Check out the Queensboro Shirt Company for all of your logowear needs.

Linking Mission, Vision and Brand Promise

The Branding Strategy Insider Blog has posted an entry that discusses the role of brand promises within the context of organizational vision and mission and why it is important to link them all.

This represents further support for my Top End Alignment branding process.

Book review: BrandSimple

"BrandSimple: How the Best Brands Keep it Simple and Succeed" by Allen Adamson is a refreshingly easy read that boils the essence of brands and branding down to, well, their simplest but most important basics. Anyone involved in business management of any kind should read this book.

Adamson reminds us throughout the book that a brand is a very different thing than branding and that marketers cannot be great at branding without first creating a great brand.

The best brands are different. They promise something different and unique and deliver on that promise every time. They also find a way to simplify their brand message so that just about everyone instantly "gets it" and that the "it" resonates and seems obvious after the fact. Getting to that simplicity can require a lot of hard work and thinking, but making it seem so simple, obvious and intuitive is the key.

As Managing Director of Landor Associates, Allen Adamson peppers the book with real-world examples from his work at Landor and from his previous positions. His case studies show how the best brands work tirelessly to emerge with a simple promise and a simple message that is easily communicated in just a few words.

The real examples are brief yet clearly show the challenges and ultimate solutions from brands like Compaq, Visa, Apple, Aquafina, Baby Einstein, BlackBerry, JetBlue, Timberland, Pixar and many more. He uses these brands to show that often a simple insight that makes your product different is the real power in building a great brand -- as long as that difference is important and relevant to your potential customers.

The book is written at an easy reading level so that any business manager will be able to readily breeze through it without tons of technical branding terminology and grasp the important concepts. This in turn will inspire them to reevaluate and transform their own brands. The book is straight-forward, simple and highly insightful and useful.


On my "Professional Marketer Investment Scale";
($-Poor investment, $$$$$-Great investment)

Rating: $$$$$

Bud goes to InBev

Anheuser-Busch and its flagship brand, Budweiser, have been bought by Belgian brewer, InBev. Not only does this leave us to wonder if a truly American beer brand will play well globally, but it reminds us that distribution (or place) is one of the important "P's" of marketing.

Will InBev be successful getting Bud to be a broader-reaching global brand? Will the purchase by a foreign company hurt Bud's appeal in the U.S.? Will the synergistic savings on the supply and manufacturing side realized by InBev now more than justify the purchase?

Only time will tell, of course, but it will be interesting to watch what effect this has on the A-B and Bud brands.

The question is, will the Budweiser brand still have relevance as a non-U.S. brand or has its essence been fundamentally changed forever?

Can you build a brand without advertising?

You bet you can.

In fact, if a brand is powerful, it might not need advertising at all.

Look at what Smart Car is doing.

http://www.brandweek.com/bw/content_display/esearch/e3i8f0b924c729e72f62fd5acfbb4526b39.

and check out this quote from the article:

"The only U.S. presence [the car] might have is on our Web site," said Dave Schembri, president of Smart USA, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., the exclusive distributor of the Smart Car in North America and Puerto Rico. "But we aren't advertising. We don't need to."

More on High Reach Influencer Value and other marketing tactics

I've just released more information about high reach influencers in my new report, "5 Secret Marketing Tactics That Will Increase Your Revenue." The report is free for the asking.

Please let me know what you think of the report!

Your customer might not be king

High Reach Influencers (HRI's) are people who convince many others to purchase from you. High Reach Influencers often engage in word-of-mouth marketing and lead others to purchase products or services based on their personal recommendations. These people have the personal power to influence many others.

HRI’s might bring more new customers to you who then purchase far more than the HRI’s purchase themselves. In fact, HRI’s might not even purchase anything at all from you themselves. Because they might not currently be your customers, HRI's can often be overlooked by companies calculating customer lifetime value (CLV) or customer referral value (CRV).

HRI’s might be influential bloggers who comment on your brand as a result of hearing a rumor about you. These HRI’s might be industry reporters or trade editors. These HRI’s could be people who want to talk about your brand to others for a myriad of reasons other than the fact that they are your customers and they're either very happy or very disappointed with their experience with your brand.

Don't forget these high reach influencers when determining how to best build your brand. Quantify them as much as possible and seek ways to communicate with them and influence them.

Don't assume your customers are the only ones who refer others to you. By all means, don't assume that your customers are the only ones who matter because your best customers in terms of individual purchasing habits might pale in comparison to others who send much more business your way.

How to Build Your Reputation Online

Here is some great advice in the form of an interview on establishing and building your reputation online using some of the newer social media tools.