Brand Families

Kin from Microsoft, part of the family?

rosler — Mon, 17 May 2010 02:05:20 +0000

I’m really curious what people think of Kin, the new phone from Microsoft that’s endorsed by Windows Phone + Sharp+ Verizon. Microsoft has been struggling in the mobile space for many years now. But there’s been recent great news. The announcement at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Feb that MS would come out with a new, long-awaited Windows Phone 7 was well received and phone very well reviewed. But in advance of this new promising phone, here comes the Kin. Clearly Kin is targeted for the younger segment with a mind toward power texting. But it’s not everything the Windows Phone 7 is anticipated to be. So it makes sense that it’s not branded fully as a Windows Phone– as doing this could deposition the promise of Windows Phone 7. So did Microsoft get it right? http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/KIN/Default.aspx

Eagles right demo for American Express Cardmember Exclusive?

rosler — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:30:49 +0000

In today’s The Seattle Times (www.seattletimes.com) a full page ad announced advance ticket sales available only to American Express cardmembers. This presents a great example of co-branding and affinity programs. Clearly, American Express believes that fans of the Eagles are among its prime demographic. This passes the immediate gut-check, but how does American Express really know this to be the case? How did the managers of this AmEx program gain internal approval to give up some marketing dollars in sponsorship of a rock concert? How did they make the convincing case that the ROMI (return on marketing investment) was sufficiently positive? Well, if they did it right, they had the research. Today, it’s not acceptable for sponsorship opportunities to be awarded because the CEO of the sponsoring organization was college roomies with the CMO of the company getting those sponsorship dollars. What’s demanded today is a data-based case that proves the demographic is right, the psychographics are a match, and the brand attributes of each company are giving and getting what each needs from the association. Landor Associates www.Landor.com, a fine agency I used to work for, has a large research program called Brand AssetValuator (BAV for short). This study does a great job of matching up brands via their desired attributes. Works like this. AmEx is strong on trustworthiness and prestige (both attributes help drive brand choice in the credit card market). But what if AmEx is weak on relevance to its premium card holders. And what if the Eagles concert is highly relevant to that same segment. Voila! Numbers can be crunched that make the claim that an Eagles brand association raises the relevance attribution to AmEx. And by extension this increase in relevance associates to a potential increase in brand loyalty to AmEx which in turn equates to a specific revenue amount.

The co-branding world has evolved from execs doing one another a favor. Today’s it’s all about gives and gets that can be quantitatively justified. So enjoy the concert. But know that while you may have won the pick of the seats, AmEx wins by gaining your loyalty and the Eagles win by getting lucrative sponsorship dollars and access to a motivated fan base — with cards handy to purchase those tickets.

Mobile phone category a prime example of brand families

rosler — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 23:56:44 +0000

Brand Families is the friendly label for this new blog covering any topic related to brand architecture, portfolio management, co-branding, endorsements, or any bringing together of two or more brands. Any combination is fair game. From the inspired, such as Expedia’s (www.Expedia.com) ownership of Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.com), to the media savvy, such as The Colbert Report’s sponsorship of US Speed Skating team (www.colbertnation.com), which itself is sponsored by Verizon, to the curious at best example of Google creating its phone available only from Google but serviced on the T-Mobile network.

Today, no brand is an island. Brands pretty much go to market in a “Brand Ecosystem.” A high brow way of saying that contemporary branding is a web of interrelated brand experiences. Some of these relationships are entirely within one company, some pair the brands of two or more companies. A great example is mobile offerings. Consider your trusty cell phone. How many brands are united to bring you your mobile experience? Let’s count ‘em out.

One: the device manufacturer–LG, HTC, Nokia, Samsung and the like.

Two: the software that runs the phones applications–Windows, Simbian, WebOS and more.

Three: the carrier that provides your service–Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile.

Four: App developers that give you access to thousands of apps that make your smartphone do all those nifty things.

And here’s where it gets really fun. Consider anyone of these brands above, look under the covers and more brand relationships reveal themselves. Take Windows which is the operating system within Windows Phones. Windows is also the brand that drives Windows 7 that runs computers around the world. It’s attached to Windows Azure which is setting the new standard in cloud computing. All of these are businesses of Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) which is home to dozens of powerful brands including Office, Xbox and Sharepoint and SQL Server. The brand threads are endless and those threads combine to form fascinating brand fabrics.

So here’s to brand families. Let the discussion, critique, celebration and analysis begin!

For the latest on the mobile phone category, see the following WSJ article:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061253074391256.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews

Hello world!

rosler — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:28:25 +0000

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!