Join Larry Vincent, Group Director, Strategy of our Los Angeles Office for a one hour webinar, sponsored by the BAPTIE Online Marketing Community on Wednesday, Sept. 24th to learn how to effectively transition your organization’s brand voice in an ever-changing Web 2.0 world.

For more information about the webinar or to register:

http://www.baptie.com/liveandonline/show.asp?e=189

Fred Burt, Siegel+Gale Managing Director, London Office examines the opportunities for brands during the Olympics – and some advice to make sure your brand gets the most from any association.

With Beijing in full flight and minds beginning to turn to London, it’s a great time to be thinking about brands, and the role they play in the Olympics.
There are three key types of brand we need to think of when looking at brand building within the Olympics.

The first, and most obvious, are the sponsors and advertisers. Much will have been written about this - I’ll leave aside the need for breakthrough creative, for example, which in my mind is a given.

Here are four key observations however which I think are key strategic issues brand owners need to address.

1. Make sure you have a established, genuinely international brand.

The Olympics is not the forum to launch a new brand. Local market ring holder rights, as well as national team sponsorships can be more cost effective if your brand is regional or local. AT&T, for example, sponsors the US Olympic team as their brand (certainly their consumer brand) is a US brand.

Read the complete article

Business Spectator
Edited by Sophie Vorrath

There’s nothing like a major global sporting event – like, say, the Summer Olympics – to reinvigorate the world of mass marketing.

While marketing was "a dirty word in China less than a generation ago", say Kevin Allison, Geoff Dyer and Patti Waldmeir in the Financial Times, "Beijing is using the Olympics to market itself as a superpower", as well as to shift its corporate image from "sweatshop to the world" to that of a high-quality, high-valued-added and high-technology hub.

"Never before has the market potential of the host country on its own been viewed as possibly worth the significant investment," says Julius Roberge, strategy director for Siegel+Gale New York, talking to MarketWatch.

The challenge, he adds, "is Herculean". And while success would send a strong new message, any missteps mean China "will not soon have such visibility to transform a lagging image."

Read the complete article

Brandcurve
by Susan Gunelius on August 18th, 2008

I’m very excited to publish an interview I was lucky enough to get with branding expert Larry Vincent, Siegel+Gale (part of the Omnicom Group Inc.) Group Director of Strategy in Los Angeles. Larry was kind enough to answer my questions related to the Olympics and how companies use the Olympics to further their brands. Following is my interview with Larry.

Brandcurve: What brand (or brands) do you think is doing a particularly good job of leveraging the 2008 Summer Olympics to promote their brand and why?

Larry Vincent: Adidas has done a very good job. Though at first controversial to many because outsiders thought the nationalistic imagery was pandering, it’s a great example of a brand finding a voice in a special market. The brand work (not just the advertising) really celebrates the Games and the aspirations of the host country.

Read the complete interview

Too many firms use jargon to convey ideas
By Stacey Burling
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER

So you’re at a party getting to know a couple of attractive strangers.

"What do you do?" you ask one of them innocently.

"I’m a market-leading provider of technology-enabled process-optimization tools to reduce and right-size inventory, improve forecast accuracy and service, optimize production resources, and reduce cycle time across the supply chain," your new acquaintance intones.

Whoa, time to get out of here, you think. But you recover your social graces enough to look hopefully at his friend.

"Well," the friend says, "I develop small-molecule, orally administered pharmacological chaperones for the treatment of human genetic diseases."

"How interesting," you lie, edging toward the door. "I’m sorry to run, but I just remembered I have to clean the cat boxes. Nice meeting you."

Obvious as it may be that such heinous assaults on the English language would send people at a party running, this is how real businesses introduce themselves to reporters - and anyone else who reads their news releases on their Web sites - every day.

After enduring this literary torture nearly to the breaking point, we thought it might help to share our pain, plus some thoughts from business experts - dare we say "thought leaders" - about the virtues of clear communication. After all, if potential customers cannot figure out what your company does, that might be a problem.

Read the complete article

As the Olympic Games unfold, the branding experts at Siegel+Gale are available for comment on topics such as how the Olympics are affecting the "brand" of China, how companies are using the Olympics to further their brands, specific corporate ad campaigns, branding through sports events in general, and other strategic branding and positioning issues.

Following are some comments by Larry Vincent, Siegel+Gale’s Group Director of Strategy in Los Angeles, and Julius Roberge, Siegel+Gale’s Strategy Director in New York, most recently relocated from Shanghai:

Why Companies Align With the Olympics – Larry Vincent

• "Most companies align with the Olympics because they hope to borrow equity or transfer goodwill from that of the Olympics to their own brands."
• "Twenty years ago it was a slam dunk. McDonald’s and Coca-Cola measured noticeable lifts in preference, favorability, and attitudes toward the brand during the co-brand window of the Games."
• "1984 was the turning point, however. The Los Angeles Games, in some ways, reinvented the sponsorship model (so much so that LA had a surplus of funds after the Games). It was so successful, that more brands wanted in."
• "Today, sponsors have changed quite a bit: there are more of them and the affiliation competes with branded partnerships in vastly more channels and platforms."
• "The Olympic equity is still strong (although research shows that it is the strongest when the Games are actually in progress), but it’s harder to transfer or borrow the equity."
• "’False reporting’ of ‘unaided awareness’ of Olympic sponsorships is on the rise (meaning, consumers attribute an Olympic sponsorship to the wrong company) and ambush tactics by other marketers are more prolific. In that context, you have to ask, ‘What is the return on investment for a company that spends millions to sponsor the Games, and millions more to purchase the media that activates the sponsorship?’"
• "It still works for some. We expect Adidas, Coca-Cola, and McDonald’s will still do well. Part of that is the legacy. In Adidas’ case, it’s the innovative way they’ve gone to market."
• "We do think the Olympics is a horrible place to debut new brands, however. There is too much clutter and competition."
• "It CAN be an effective place to reposition a brand, particularly if the brand is in the B2B space and the repositioning can occur onsite at the events. Many of the attendees of Olympic events are executives (just like the Super Bowl). UPS is using the Beijing Games as an interesting venue to debut some of their new international brand activity."
• "Intuitively, we should be seeing international companies getting more involved in the Games in the future. It can become the coming out event for large international companies who wish to elevate brand awareness on a global stage. But the challenge is that for many viewers, the brands will be so foreign they won’t know who they are or what they do. It requires the brand to do a lot of seeding work before the Games begin, and very aggressive follow-up work once the brand has launched with the marks."

The "China Brand" – Julius Roberge

• "Until China, never before has the market potential of the host country on its own been viewed as possibly worth the significant investment. Despite the degree of controversy before the Games began, the market opportunity seems irresistible."
• "The Olympics have a clear purpose for the "China" brand: to prove to the world that China is capable of hosting Games at a quality level that the Olympic brand, the athletes and spectators worldwide demand and expect."
• "The China brand today is often correlated with low quality (products), so the challenge is Herculean. With the world watching their every step, success in Beijing will send a strong new message about China as a world power. If it missteps, it will not soon have such visibility to transform a lagging image."
• "It’s safe to assume Americans understand that Olympic sponsorship is not the same as supporting China’s political policies. That said, given the ongoing buzz and interest in how China enters the world stage, how a brand behaves in and/or partners with China may draw more attention in the future from international media, thus elevating the potential for a negative effect on a brand’s image. This may be more of a concern for B2B organizations that deal more closely with the Chinese government or in government monitored sectors."

The issue of national identity cropped up again last week at S+G…..which got me thinking about nation brands.

Europe is a patchwork quilt of different cultures, with difference actually being part of the attraction of individual nations, part of their identity. But cultural friction is rife within many individual countries in Europe, even within the United Kingdom. A leading journalist wrote in the The Times recently:

"Across Europe the shift of sovereign power from nations to Brussels has been matched by a move below the national tier towards regions and localities."

Read the Times Online article.

We are European, but our sentiments towards Europe differ dramatically from country to country. And even at a national level, as the article discusses, a sense of unified identity is often compromised.

Despite the fact that regional or national identity is often hard to hold together, but every country has moments when its people feel proud to be XXXXian (or XXXish….or XXXXese).

Putting armed conflict aside (as the tragic events in South Ossetia illustrate only too well) one of the few occasions that national or regional identity coalesces into something powerful is around sporting events. But these can be limited. The Ryder Cup is the only big Team Europe event that captures the public interest in the UK; and on a regional level, even as a "Brit", I find myself supporting England more often than Great Britain.

This itself brings up the interesting issue of competition. Do we need a competing identity to reject in order to throw our own sense of identity into relief? Does an anti-French sentiment make a Brit feel more British? Do the Scots feel more Scottish when beating England on the rugby field? Do we feel a rare moment of European unity only in the context of a Ryder Cup putt?

And what about this week’s Olympics? I watched both the Chinese women’s archery and women’s rowing teams in action over the weekend. They were impressive and I couldn’t help thinking about whether there was something innate in Chinese people that made them concentrate better, hold a steadier hand, push harder through the pain barrier. And, of course, I had to think about why the British teams had not performed as well, particularly in sports we normally dominate. Are we psychologically fragile? Lazy? Not as driven? A nation in decline, even?

Competition seems to be tightly bound up with national identity, whether directly on the sports field or whether shaping, for example, significant B2B decisions regarding investment, outsourcing and overseas development in general.

And it’s not just about people. Products that can play a key role in shaping national identity. France, Spain, Italy are all strongly associated with distinct and delicious local food and drink…all of which drive an economically advantageous consumer behaviour - tourism. But also think of Egyptian cotton, Sri Lankan tea, cut flowers from Holland. These ‘hero products’ really do drive the perception of a country and can be used to great effect. Think of coffee and Colombia, or cigars from Cuba, which have been both genuinely competitive products on the global market place and have also shaped international perception of the country in question. I’m not sure I’m ready to go to Bogota for the perfect cup of coffee yet, but it’s clearly not all about the drugs trade. And that may be enough to get an adventurous traveler to consider Colombia as ‘safe enough’.

This is a complex topic – and one we certainly intend to look into in more depth. Stay tuned…..

Any company today that practices brand management understands the importance of its touch points with its customers and prospects. As Dr. Paul Temporal puts it:

"Brand management is, at its simplest, managing the consumer experience by managing all the interactions (touch points) that any current or potential customer has with your brand. It is about those "moments of truth" that we all know too well can make us happy or frustrated." (1)

Try searching "touch points" on Google. You should get over 1.4 million results. Refine the search to "managing touch points." You still get over 400,000 results. The fact is, touch point management is a critical issue to companies.

If you read these articles on managing touch points, you likely will be given the advice that one should initially identify those interactions that make the most difference—that is, you should prioritize the touch points. For example, in advising on how to manage digital touch points, Patrick Fleck offers a 10-point action plan with the following as points 4 and 5:

4. "Assess risk. Classify each touch-point by level of business risk. Identify and quantify, if possible, the revenue volume associated with each touch-point. In other words, measure what is at stake at each digital touch-point. Don’t forget intangibles—like brand.

5. Prioritize. Beginning with the highest risk touch-points, perform customer research as necessary to clearly identify customer goals and needs." (2)

This is very sound advice, but it is easier said than done. How do you determine the business risk associated with a specific touch point?

Continue reading this post.

Arguably, the most important aspects of a brand positioning are that it be relevant and credible. While ad agencies talk about "finding the white space" and "breaking through the clutter," if that unique message doesn’t matter to buyers, or if they do not believe it is true, the brand strategy will fail.

To understand what is relevant to a brand’s target audience(s), we must understand how decision makers make brand choices. The figure below depicts the brand decision process. (Note: This gating process applies to almost any type of decision.) While the specific value structures that are used by decision makers in various buying environments may differ significantly (e.g., the scientist purchasing a mass spectrometer versus a teenager purchasing a DVD), all decision makers utilize a remarkably consistent process.

The decision-making process

Gate 1: Awareness
Gate 1 is basic awareness of the brand. It addresses the question, "Has the buyer heard of you?" If the decision maker has never heard of your brand, it plays no role in the selection. This doesn’t mean your brand won’t be purchased. Your brand may be white-labeled or an invisible "ingredient" element that is not customer facing. Business-to-business brands often play this role and debate whether there would be a return on investment (ROI) in becoming a "household" name (e.g., BASF’s mass advertising campaign several years ago to make consumers aware that "we don’t make many of the things you use; we make many of the things you use better"). Or you may produce a classic commodity product (e.g., nails at the local hardware store) that one purchases just because it is what the local hardware store carries. I am a do-it-yourselfer at home, yet I could not tell you who manufactures the nails in my workshop if my life depended on it. Or, one may simply purchase your unknown brand because of the product’s appearance and/or its packaging at the point of purchase.

Lack of awareness simply means that the buyer is neither seeking your brand nor giving you an advantage because he/she has heard of you. Research consistently shows that consumers are more likely to purchase a product from a company they have heard of compared to the same product from a company they have not heard of, even if they know almost nothing about the first company other than its name.

Continue reading this post.

Leaving my house this morning, I spotted a truck pulling out from the local power company facility. The truck read National Grid.

I thought, wow, National Grid is a powerful name. It sounds like this is the company that controls the national power grid…the company that pulls the switch and turns the lights on for the whole nation. Of course it doesn’t, but the name sort of captures this image.

So how do you come by a name like this?

Essentially, there are four kinds of names for trademark purposes–generic, descriptive, suggestive, and fanciful.

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THERE IS A BREED OF STRONG NAMES THAT IS SOMEWHAT DESCRIPTIVE AND SUGGESTIVE AT THE SAME TIME, AND SEEMS TO CAPTURE THE BEST OF BOTH.

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A generic name would be Energy Company. Many companies in the field use this term to define themselves (we’re an energy company). Sometimes, this is known as the industry-standard name.

Continue reading this post.

5 Tips for Parents Baffled by College Aid

If you’re confused about what makes Pell different from Stafford, Perkins, PLUS and everything in between, you’re not alone.

A new study finds — not surprisingly — that most parents don’t understand the terms of their children’s financial-aid packages for college. More than three-quarters of those surveyed by branding firm Siegel+Gale didn’t know there is a big cost difference between subsidized loans and private loans, which come with higher interest rates.

View complete article

Introduction
Customer loyalty continues to be a hot topic among marketing professionals. Much of this discussion centers around getting customers to recommend your product–in your case, a hotel–to someone else.

The question is: Why should a guest recommend your hotel? Why should they want to come back? How do you create fresh and engaging ways to make a guest stay special? After all, service and accommodations at your hotel should not only be high quality, they should be distinctive and memorable.

The answer: think brand. A clear, compelling brand represents a rich, proprietary source for creating a distinctive guest experience and for making guests want to come back.

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HOTELS SHOULD USE THEIR BRAND AS A PLATFORM FOR CREATING FRESH, DISTINCTIVE WAYS OF CREATING A PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCE THAT MAKES EACH GUEST FEEL SPECIAL.

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Here are five ideas for using brand to drive guest loyalty.

Idea #1: Think outside the cookie
How can you make your hotels stand out from the competition…and from one another?

That’s yours, this is mine. In the ever-expanding world of hotel chains, it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish one hotel from the next. Sure, there’s the sign and the name, and, oh yes, the occasional baked good for each guest, but is that all that separates one hotel from the next?

Continue reading this post.

Parents Confused About Aid Options, Siegel+Gale Study Finds

The parents of this fall’s college-bound freshmen may be breathing a collective sigh of relief that their children have cleared the admissions hurdle. But few parents understand the terms necessary to make fully informed financial aid decisions, says a new survey conducted by leading global strategic branding firm Siegel+Gale.

"Parents really don’t understand the true cost of college and the financial help that is available," states Peter S. Cohl, Siegel+Gale’s Higher Education practice leader, "nor do they understand the difference between loans, grants, scholarships and work-study funds.

"We found that more than three-quarters of survey respondents did not know the difference between cheaper government subsidized loans and unsubsidized loans, which are more expensive. And shockingly, 40 percent of working class families surveyed didn’t realize that Pell Grants are not loans, but federal grants, which do not have to be repaid."

Siegel+Gale surveyed 202 parents of college-age children who have applied for financial aid in the past two years and who have evaluated financial aid award letters from schools. Yet according to the survey, the two major types of federal student loans, Stafford loans and Perkins loans, were correctly identified by only 53 percent and 33 percent of parents respectively.

More than three-quarters of parents (77 percent) do not know the difference between a subsidized loan and an unsubsidized loan. (Answer: A subsidized loan is based on financial need and an unsubsidized loan is not. With a subsidized loan, the federal government pays the interest incurred while the student is in school, and for a grace period after graduation.)

Continue reading this post.

Larry Vincent, group director of strategy in the Los Angeles office of the brand strategy and design consultancy Siegel and Gale, said effective Super Bowl advertising does apply when there is a direct call to action. He cautioned against participating when the ad simply says "something about the brand values or trying to communicate with the personality and the voice of the brand. [The point is] you want to get as many people as possible to understand that you have something new that you have put into the marketplace. It can be very effective in that sense — not otherwise."

Continue reading this post.

Defining Your Voice. Engaging Your Audience.

On May 13th, Siegel+Gale got together with communications partner Fleishman-Hillard to deliver an interactive webcast on the future of healthcare marketing and the critical role the Internet channel will continue to play.

Jason Cieslak, Managing Director of Siegel+Gale’s Los Angeles office, together with Emily Downward, SVP of Digital Healthcare at Fleishman-Hillard Global Communications discuss how audiences find and interact with healthcare brands online, what they expect and how they are demanding that companies evolve from telling their stories to engaging their customers.

Download the Podcast to hear Jason and Emily share insights, best practices and trends to include key challenges facing healthcare organizations today, including:

+ Meeting the needs of diverse audiences and business goals online
+ Online communications myths and realities
+ Tips for getting started with social media and digital PR
+ And more…