Category Archives: Brand

What Great Businesses Do

Which came first, the brand or the business? That’s a trick question. Because in Denise Lee Yohn’s new book, What Great Brands Do, brand and business are one in the same.

What Great Brands Do excellent new marketing book by Denise Lee Yohn

So if you asked me, “What is a brand?” …and I wanted to be clever, I could say “your business is your brand.” At which point you might smack me, so I’ll use the definition from What Great Brands Do: The brand is the central organizing and operating idea of the business. And according to Yohn;

Your brand is what your company does and how you do it. Your brand is not what you say you are; it’s what you do.

Throughout the annals of marketing history, perhaps the single biggest challenge for marketers has been to convince businesses to accept the concept of a brand. Why is this such a tough task?

Brand Organization

Well, first, because It requires us to have a central organizing and operating idea! And that central idea cannot be “I sell this wonderful product with all these great features and benefits at a price lower than my competition, delivered by wonderful people who provide great service.”
Whew!

But just what is that idea and how does it affect your business? One great example from the book is that of Pampers, the disposable diaper business. In the late 90’s Pampers was rapidly losing market share with a product focus on their technologically superior diaper. It was all about the dryness (benefit). But mothers were concerned about their baby’s health and development. Of course, diapers should be dry. Duh!

So Pampers reorganized around the central idea of babies’ well being and development. With that decision they became a great brand and shifted their focus from dryness, to delighting moms and enhancing their babies’ development. Instead of dryness, now Pampers was all about comfort, potty training and a good night’s sleep. That’s the power of a central organizing idea.

And when you have clearly uncovered yours, you take the central idea and build an internal culture around it, then, as Yohn says, “operationalize” your brand. Which means…

Operationalize Your Brand: using your brand as a guide and compass for all activities of your core business operations.

From internal culture to the customer’s experience, your brand permeates everything.

When you can’t see any daylight between what you believe, what you practice, what you offer, and what you say about yourself, you are doing what great brands do.
~ Denise Lee Yohn

Ok, great, there’s the theory, but where’s the practice? It’s in the book, step by step accompanied by helpful tools. And you’re in luck, I managed to grab the author to explain how it works, take a listen to the audiocast below and then check out Denise Lee Yohn’s What Great Brands Do.

Press the play button below and listen to Denise Lee Yohn describe how to do what great brands do.

Get more from Denise’s blog: Brand as Business Bites
Follow Denise Lee Yohn on Twitter

More on What Great Brands Do from these blogs:
Jackie Huba Q&A with Denise Lee Yohn
Phil Gerbyshak with the Secret of What Great Brands Do
The Idea Sandbox: Great Brands Aren’t Display Cakes
Brand Autopsy: What Great Brands Do

Tapping Your Brand Advocates for Word of Mouth

The Internet show about small business marketing. Podcast Episode #84 – Rob Fugetta on Branding and Differentiation Now that all businesses have websites and social media, where is word-of-mouth marketing? About the same place as it has always been. Word of mouth has never been about the platform, it’s been about the messenger. How do

What Your Tagline Says

It says a lot about you. It shows whether or not you’ve put any thought or effort into the mission of your business. It communicates whether or not you have a clear direction or vision about what you offer. Your tagline gives your business a personality and it communicates your purpose. I call it a

The Basics of Marketing: What is a Brand?

When you begin searching for marketing advice on the Internet you get a lot of deep conversations and extended thinking. It’s the natural progression of dialogue among professionals. But if you’re just trying to learn this marketing stuff, it can be confusing. It’s best to start with the foundations and thus, The Marketing Spot occasionally

You don’t need a tagline. (You need a good tagline.)

Guest Post by Jim Morris Sadly, the current tendency on the part of our industry’s brightest minds (including Luke Sullivan and others of my otherwise heroes) is to devalue the tagline. They argue that the tagline is obsolete, extraneous, an element to be dispensed with altogether. Image Credit: Whipple.org “It’s just one more thing to

>Spot On! This week’s best marketing advice.

> Here are some of the week’s best small business marketing blog posts. They are categorized by the four spots of The Marketing Circle of Life. Enjoy and be educated. Photo Credit: striatic Experience: Conducting Market Research by Ben Barry at ReportonBusiness.com. Market research has a reputation for being the luxury of large firms. But

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