Ever hear the term, "Live the Brand?" At Siegel+Gale, we not only deliver great service to our clients, we Live Their Brand! Happy Halloween from the American Express Team at Siegel+Gale! Can you identify which team member represents the following elements of the American Express Card?:
Who has taken a hit, and who has remained strong?
"The banks have lost a lot of credibility," said Alan Siegel, the chairman of the New York branding firm Siegel & Gale LLC. "The whole financial sector has, but particularly the banks."
The trouble is not just general industry news, he said; as companies are responding to the crisis, some are undermining the customer relationships they once worked so hard to build.
Many people are losing their homes because of inappropriate loans. Credit is getting harder for businesses and individuals to find. Onerous terms on credit cards raise interest rates for missed payments on other bills. Home equity lines of credit are being withdrawn, even for those with excellent credit who never missed a payment.
"The key to branding is: It’s not what you say. It’s what you do,”" Mr. Siegel said.
Go to www.americanbanker.com for the full story in the Tuesday, October 14th issue.
The Wall Street Journal: The Man Behind the MLB Logo
Every night when Jerry Dior sits down to watch the baseball playoffs in his Edison, N.J., home, the television reflects his life’s most enduring handiwork.
Forty years ago, Mr. Dior worked as a graphic designer at Sandgren & Murtha, a New York City-based marketing company. In 1968, Major League Baseball commissioned the agency to design an original logo. The mark was to serve two purposes: to signify that MLB was placing league-wide merchandizing rights under the auspices of a new umbrella company, and to commemorate the national pastime’s upcoming centennial.
" Baseball was going through a bad period," says Tom Villante, an advertising executive who helped choose the logo. " The NFL was gaining rapidly, and baseball was viewed as my grandfather’s sport. We needed something to give the sport a boost."
Siegel+Gale, one of the world’s premier strategic branding firms, announced today the appointment of Lee Rafkin as Global Director of Simplification.
"Simplification is the founding philosophy of Siegel+Gale – and a powerful strategic tool in differentiating and transforming brands," says Alan Siegel, Chairman and CEO. "Lee Rafkin has over 20 years of global experience as both a marketer and a brand strategist. He will lead the Simplification practice across all of Siegel+Gale’s disciplines and offices, and will expand the scope of the practice from designing functional communications to optimizing customer experience in all channels."
Prior to joining Siegel+Gale, Mr. Rafkin was Founder & President of Rafkin & Company, a strategic brand consultancy he founded in 2002, and worked with such blue-chip clients as AOL, Discovery Networks, Reuters, The Tribune Company, SPEED Channel, and shopping-center developer Mills Corporation. Previously, he was an Executive Director at FutureBrand, where he led the Latin America region and was the global client executive for AOL International. He has extensive global branding experience working in China, Europe, and Latin America.
"We live in a complex world full of information overload. Brands that simplify their customer experience in all touchpoints are more likely to win in today’s marketplace," says Rafkin. "There is no firm better positioned to deliver simplified customer experiences than Siegel+Gale, the pioneer of Simplification. I’m thrilled to join the team, and I look forward to growing this essential practice area."
Mr. Rafkin began his career in investment banking at Merrill Lynch. In 1991, he moved to the packaged goods industry as a brand manager at Pillsbury and Nabisco. In 1996, he joined Nickelodeon, where he was director of marketing for the consumer products and licensing division. In 1999, he co-founded Savos, Inc., a wireless Internet startup, and served as its chief marketing officer until the company was sold. He joined the global brand consulting firm FutureBrand as Executive Director in 2001, where he helped acquire a branding firm and establish a brand consulting practice in Brazil, and led engagements in China and throughout Latin America. For the past six years, Mr. Rafkin has led his own strategic brand consultancy, where he worked at the senior level with clients in media, entertainment, news and information, health care, financial services, consumer products, and real estate.
Mr. Rafkin graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in International Relations, magna cum laude, and holds an M.B.A. in Marketing from the Kellogg School of Management. He lives with his family in South Orange, N.J.
Delivers Keynote Address at HiBrand 2008 International Conference on Branding
"Many global brands project brand voices that are predictable, uninspired, unintelligible, and incoherent," says Alan Siegel, Founder and Chairman of the leading strategic brand consultancy Siegel+Gale. "People pay lip service to brand voice, but it is really getting watered down to strategy decks and pages of over-used words like innovative, collaborative, and integrity that really aren’t driving distinctive and effective brand voices."
Mr. Siegel, who coined the terms brand voice and corporate voice more than 25 years ago, will speak on Brand Voice Today at the HiBrand 2008 International Conference on Branding in Moscow on October 24, 2008. Mr. Siegel’s keynote address will open the HiBrand 2008 program.
HiBrand 2008 is a three-day gathering of 400 global leaders in branding, marketing, design, advertising, and communication from Russia and several European countries. The conference is organized by Identity, the first Russian magazine about branding and commercial design.
"Russia has evolved into a first-rate economic power with rapidly emerging domestic, regional, and global brands," says Mr. Siegel. "Now the country has a community of branding professionals who are looking for the latest trends and insights in branding from around the world."
According to Mr. Siegel, used correctly, "corporate voice" and "brand voice" describe fusing strategy, corporate values, messaging, and identity to communicate a company’s distinctive personality, culture, and value proposition. Mr. Siegel will share his insights into:
Why Most of the Media Market Will Weather The Looming Recession – Sort of.
In the face of gloom, doom and justifiable concerns about the health of the global economy, there are some potential bright spots that, while still not fully in the clear of a looming recession, may fare better than others.
To be sure, certain media brands (not all) will likely be the recipients of spending and behavior trends that reinforce the idea that even in economic down-turns consumers still seek out entertainment, in spite of, and sometimes because of, their depressed state. To wit, during the early 1990s trend forecasters, such as Faith Popcorn identified "Cocooning" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocooning) as a trend where consumers, especially during recessionary times, retreat to the comforts and confines of their homes, engage in less socializing and generally insulate themselves from the often harsh realities of the outside world. During this time it was predicted, that people will engage in more electronic commerce, watch more television, rent or download more movies and play more video games.
Today, Cocooning looks to have reemerged on the world stage, aided clearly by the global economic downturn, but also pervasive trends such as the ability of people to work from home, the ubiquity of communications devices that provide 24/7 access, and the demographic reality of an aging Boomer population.
So what does Cocooning imply for media brands? Well, most believe that all brands are going to take a hit over the next 18 months, but some will prosper better than others. Of late, cable programmers such as, SCI-FI (http://www.scifi.com), have posted their best ratings and strongest advertising results EVER. Here, it is reasonable to believe that Cocooning is at work, manifesting itself in viewers desire to transport themselves to an alternative, fictional place, well away from their 401K statement. In this spirit, it is logical that other cable nets such as Discovery, ESPN, National Geographic, Animal Planet and Food Network, will likely benefit from the same phenomena –it makes sense.
Also likely to at least hold their ground during this tempest are cable operators such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Cablevision who, having been so successful in bundling their brands into the everyday lives of consumers, now find themselves with very strong and projectable cash flows driven by large, diversified armies of triple-play (Digital TV, Digital Phone and High-Speed Internet) subscribers. However, it is worth noting that all is not rosy for cable operators who, pitted against telcos, face a very competitive environment for the hearts, minds and wallets of consumers (http://money.cnn.com/2008/05/08/technology/cablecompetition.fortune/index.htm). Still, while some consumers will definitely pare back their premium services, today’s cable offering has become consumers’ essential lifeline to the "rest of the world" – the conduit for all home communications. Absent the full deterioration of our economy, which we seem to have avoided, Cocooning 2.0 would indicate that massive churn and defection among cable subs is not a likely reality.
But as some will survive, albeit with challenges, some sectors will not fare as well. Box office sales, for example, are likely to be depressed for the foreseeable future, as an excess of average movies, many financed by hedge funds, (http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/16/business/fi-hedge16), begin to flood the theatres at a time when people have much cheaper, and arguably better quality entertainment options at home, as evidenced above. Finally, the jury is still out on how major broadcasters such as NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox will adapt as they see their advertising revenues fall in favor of more targeted media, while at the same time theoretically benefitting from improved ratings, due to viewers opting for "free", ad-supported content versus pay-per view, Netflix and other on-demand pay services.
As a final axiomatic thought there is this: Strong Brands Tend to Survive Bad Times. And as the media industry navigates itself through this economic headwind, marketers must invest in brand building activities that underscore the brand’s necessity to the lives of ’shaken consumers’ closer to home, while also harnessing the brand’s core points of differentiation to the exclusion of competitors.
One of the world’s most aggressive growth economies, Indian corporations are navigating a whole new frontier: How do they build their brands to successfully extend their reach, capture market share and compete head on with the world’s most well-known companies. Co-President and Chief Creative Officer, Howard Belk on India’s Brand New World.
"As Indian companies begin to make their global foray, there are lessons to be learnt on re-branding their existing brands to suit the new conditions.
India’s family controlled conglomerates are facing a brand conundrum: How can they transform brands that are weighted with history and meaning in one market and re-launch them onto the global stage? Given the rapid pace of growth, diversification, acquisition, and investment – and the decision by many companies to go public – Indian businesses are in the midst of a critical decision point about their brands. A customer base that is ever more diverse globally and sophisticated domestically has challenged companies to rethink brand strategy and how it is communicated both, at home and around the world."
India has always been known for its holistic approach to health and well-being. From Ayurvedic medicine, yoga and organic foods, India is finding there is a larger untapped global market for wellness brands than ever before. Fred Burt, Managing Director of Siegel+Gale London comments on Wellness Branding both in and outside of India and how Indian companies can position themselves for global growth.
"It’s a holisitc approach to balancing the mind, body and spirit. The Mind — mental balance, clarity of thought, ability to sustain concentration and focus; the Body — preventative actions, particularly in terms of what we eat and physical exercise, to keep the body in as good a form as possible: and, the Spirit — the desire to ‘feel’ better and more at one, connected with the world around you. For some, this has a religious purpose while, for others, it is simply a sense of well–being that transcends the mental and the physical. None of these components of wellness are to do with getting healthy, to fixing a health-related problem. So, I think there is an element of wellness that requires health to be in place. Without health, the consumer doesn’t really have the inclination to worry about wellness."
Pizza or pasta? Seems as though Pizza Hut is rebranding itself in the UK market as Pasta Hut? Quick fix to a broader issue? Fred Burt from our London office comments on this story in Marketing Week UK.
"Many believe that Pizza Hut needs to change consumer perception rather than rebrand. Fred Burt, managing director of branding agency Siegel+Gale, says the move “risks squandering years of brand equity”. “This feels like a strategy-by-focus-group. Research should inform the brand strategy, not lead it.”
He adds: “The brand issue with Pizza Hut is not its name but its relevance. The product offer has changed but the experience is much as it has been for 20 years. That’s where the chain should spend its money.”"
Banks get bigger while some of the world’s most prestigious financial services brands RIP. What are the repercussions for both retail and commercial customers? Will they ever trust again? Alan Siegel comments on how brands that survive the global financial meltdown should best interact with their customers.
Go to www.adage.com to read the full story in the October 13th issue.