Smaller budgets create an opportunity to brand differently
by F. Joseph LePla

Like few before it, this current downturn has taken a toll on brand and marketing budgets. Business magazines, once fat with advertisements, are much thinner these days as brand campaigns are replaced by activities that will generate instant revenues such as direct sales.

Does this mean that your brand and, by extension, your best customer relationships, must be put at risk to keep the lights on?

While it is true that you can buy short-term awareness through expensive campaigns, the dot com experience demonstrated that you can't buy loyalty. At the same time, other companies with relatively small advertising budgets (such as jetBlue and Avis) are building a base of committed customers. How did these companies achieve loyalty without big budgets? By first understanding and then marketing their best customers' experience.

In his article, "New Brands Up Value, Pass Leaders" in the October 28, 2002 Marketing News, Tyler Simpson observes, "By setting a higher standard for customer satisfaction with low fares, friendly service, live DirecTV at every seat, leather seating and Volvo-esque commitment to safety, jetBlue differentiates itself from its competitors." Fueled by a brand experience goal of bringing humanity back to air travel, jetBlue is both profitable and expanding routes.

Avis focuses on how customers feel about every step of the rental car process, and then applies that knowledge to the process of renting a car. Knowing that its best customers care most about a convenient, speedy process, Avis concentrates on aligning all company actions to create a customer experience of stress-free transportation. Recent brand changes include: training counter agents to observe and anticipate customers' needs, reducing perceived ambiguity by putting headphones on counter agents and providing Internet connections and posting flight information in its lounges and rental offices. As a result, Avis has posted increases in both margins and market share.

What you can do right now

Getting your brand to do the heavy lifting demands that you first put it into language that your CEO cares about. Here's one suggestion. How would your CEO respond if he or she learned that your high-revenue, repeat customers were at risk? If no one in your company knows what experience got them into the fold or has kept them there, then any change you make from marketing to product direction may put you at risk of losing your best customers. At the same time, if you know whatís been keeping them loyal, you can fine-tune your brand -- your communications, products and customer service -- to more consistently reinforce this experience.

7 questions to branding efficiently Answering these questions can help you create a plan for branding that impacts the bottom line: 1. Who are your best customers? 2. What percentage of annual revenues do they account for? 3. What are their most frequent touch-points with the company? 4. In your opinion, are they receiving a consistent and compelling experience right now? (You might want to ask this question of others as well.) 5. If they aren't, what would you change? 6. If they are, what would you do more of? 7. Whose support (in terms of time and money) on the executive team will you need to test your hypothesis?

Once you've convinced the higher powers to try a different approach, you can start on the road to branding differently by conducting a simple brand audit of customers. Audits can be set up to determine which company messages and actions are most valued by customers and which might send them to the competition. Once you've determined these ìbrand assetsî you can reconfigure your marketing actions to become the jetBlue of your industry.

And that's when the fun begins.[24x7]