I’m not the greatest parent in the world. I’m not even the greatest parent among the parents that I know. And I’m saddened by the fact that I know people who would be better parents than me, if only they were able to have children of their own.

But I do make sure that I LIVE every moment, every hour and every day that I am privileged to spend with my children. By living, I mean full, undivided attention, on their terms and in a way that we can ALL grow and benefit from, regardless of how ordinary or exciting the time is.

This is sometimes challenging and tiring but never boring or frustrating because I go into this time naturally, without any preconceptions, barriers or thoughts about how I SHOULD behave or what other people might think. Sometimes it gets me (and them) into trouble. Being told off in Sainsbury’s for trolley racing springs to mind.

The reason for sharing this is to say that because I live and breathe the time with my kids, loads of good things happen.

1)   There is real, deep mutual trust that allows all of us to be open with our thoughts and feelings. This makes dealing with some of the more tricky issues of parenting much, much simpler and with correspondingly better results.

2)   All of us are content, happy and rewarded. We value the time, understand the boundaries but naturally and without fear, explore new things and experiences – we all get more out of the moments.

3)   By always reminding myself that I am privileged, I recognise and respect what I have and am more committed and passionate about preserving and developing it. The more I put in, the more I get back because the kids sense the effort and the rewards too.

4)   We are each, and collectively, setting up a very strong long-term future relationship – hopefully, sustained for life.

The point behind wearing my heart on my sleeve is to say that brands are like children (without the nappies). They are born, sometimes with difficulty, and after the initial celebratory euphoria, brand owners have to knuckle down to the business of nurturing (and responsibly growing) their charges in all the many and varied ways necessary for them to successfully reach maturity and positively contribute to the world.

Brands, like children, need to be LIVED with not DEALT with or tolerated. They need the same deep levels of commitment, passion, care, respect and understanding. They need protecting from harmful influences, but they also need help to find their own path. They benefit from a devotion of time and consistency of thought and input from everyone around them.

For MTD, the role of brand custodian, developer and champion is as rewarding in our professional world as parenthood is in our personal ones. We approach each in very similar ways and LIVE every moment spent with the brands that we are responsible for.

We do this because we know that we are privileged to have such wonderful and responsible jobs – ones that many people would wish to have for themselves. We also understand that the role of brand custodian can be very challenging and tiring, but that if the attitude is right, it should never be boring or frustrating.

Ultimately, if brand owners, custodians and managers live their brands constantly, believe in them passionately and engage with them naturally, everything else becomes easy. The work stops being hard work, starts to become fun and everyone who contributes begins to grow and benefit.

Finally, there are tons of books on parenting, loads of people keen to offer advice, anecdotes, evidence, rules, ‘best practice’, watch outs, horror stories and ways of achieving certain success. Parents are analysed, observed, bench marked, criticised but rarely praised. Some parents get so concerned about how to be a good parent that they stop being a good parent. They over complicate, compensate and even allow inertia to set in. In other words, lose their ability to be natural, keep things simple, enjoy themselves and reap the rewards.

It’s exactly the same for brands and brand custodians.

This past week the teams were tasked with creating a new brand of cleaning product. The teams had to create a look for the product itself, as well as a television and radio ad to support the product.

In recognition that the products of both teams were similar, let’s take a look at the campaigns of both teams from a strategic corporate image perspective.

Alex’s Team: The Germinator

Key Elements:

• Black bottle, a red label with the image of a tough female.
• Tag line: “It terminates germs and dirt”.
• Television ad: A little boy can use the Germinator to clean gravy better than a strong man, because he has the Germinator product.

Chris’s Team: Octi-kleen

Key Elements:

• Orange bottle and pastel label with the image of a smiling octopus.
• Tag line “Eight hands are better than two”.
• Television ad: A mum can clean the house like an octopus, very quickly, as if she had eight hands.

The scope of this task was very unrealistic, the teams had to create product packaging and two supporting ads.  Unfortunately this Advertising task only asked the teams to consider a very limited scope of deliverables, and did not portray an integrated marketing cycle.  Although product packaging is important and most products, especially new products, benefit from television and radio ads, neither team discussed a strategy, a potential target demographic or even a corporate image as a whole.

As well, neither team developed a great brand name. Some of the questions to be asked when developing a strong brand name (Cow and Baack, 1997 p. 40):

• What are the brand’s most compelling benefits?
• What emotions are elicited by the brand either during or after the purchase?
• What one word best describes the brand?
• What is important to consumers in the purchase of the product?

Neither team discussed the relative benefits of the brand in comparison with others, or even attempted to portray an amount of competitive advantage. The Germinator had packaging that made it appear as though it belonged in another aisle, but neither team had any idea of what their brand equity would be.

Neither team actually considered the needs or desires of the target audience. Considering that the majority of consumers who purchase cleaning products are female, neither product or campaign targeted females specifically. Alex’s Germinator was a very masculine looking product, and Chris’s Octi-kleen television advert was very old fashioned and focused on the man of the house relaxing while the wife cleans up with her eight hands.

Lord Sugar certainly imposed on the team that there is much more to an effective campaign than making a snappy commercial. As he used the Titanic movie as an example, it won many Oscars but it was a poor advertisement for a cruise ship.

Ultimately, the critical failure of the Germinator was that the goal of the use of the product in the television commercial was to clean gravy, whose core function does not match with the name Germinator. Considering that a product is the most critical component of a campaign, the Germinator name was ill suited to a product that removed stains and removed kitchen grime.

Overall we were very disappointed by the efforts and results of the advertising task!

Did you catch last week’s episode of The Apprentice? If you did, I would imagine that you would agree with us that it was somewhat of a joke. Neither Apollo nor Synergy performed well, no matter how experienced these professionals are.

The episode opened with the teams meeting at Fortnum and Mason, and were tasked with selling bakery goods to large clients and to individual customers around London. In addition to selling the baked goods, the teams also had to produce all of the goods that were to be sold.

One team was led by Melissa, and she was chosen as project manager due to her background in managing food distribution and food production. The second team was led by Shibby, a surgeon and business owner. As the episode progressed, Melissa’s team fumbled and were almost unable to provide prices to the large clients, while Shibby’s team were much more comfortable in the pitches but ultimately fell short on the production side. Christopher, the military expert led Melissa’s team in the bakery, ensuring that the operations were as efficient as possible.

There were a few critical aspects to this task. The first aspect was pitching and negotiating with large clients. The second aspect of this task was in managing production and ensuring that the team could produce the supply to meet the demand. The third aspect of this challenge was to sell the product around the streets of London. Melissa’s team ultimately won by a small margin, even with her poor performance in the pitches. Both teams did an acceptable job selling on the streets, both teams had strengths and weaknesses in terms of their pitches to large clients, but Melissa’s team won in the end , thanks to efficient production in the capable hands of Christopher.

If Team MTD were competing in Lord Sugar’s Apprentice, we would have been more focused on strategy. Now strategy in this instance is less about the product to sell, and more about the flow of the business. The competitive advantage of the team that ultimately won wasn’t in their image or their sales technique but was about being more efficient as a team. The winning team had far better internal communication, resulting in lower costs by actually meeting production targets. Shibby was a poor project manager, unable to produce the committed amounts and was ultimately fired.

As we expressed in last week’s Apprentice blog, hopefully the challenges will be more encompassing in the coming weeks. The tasks are variably testing different skill sets as follows:

Episode 1 – Bangers: teamwork, deciding on an appropriate product for a certain market, selling.

Episode 2 – Beach Accessory: Innovation, creativity, pitching/speaking.

Episode 3 – Bakery: Pitching/speaking, production, communication and selling.

The tasks are getting more complex, and we are looking forward to applying the MTD process to future Apprentice tasks. We’re holding our breath for the branding, integrated marketing and advertising tasks!

There are more dangerous and risky activities to partake in than posting a Facebook or Twitter update after you’ve had a few too many at the pub. We all understand the dangers associated with texting while driving, so how can we still enjoy our favourite pass time and stay connected while our mind is otherwise occupied on driving?

I bet the posh-sounding lady who speaks to me through my Tom Tom would sound extremely funny reading out my friends’ status updates, but that’s exactly an idea that General Motors has. An article from Advertising Age describes a potential solution very similar to that.

OnStar is a service offered by General Motors on vehicles sold in the United States, Canada and China. This service allows you to ring up an attendant or an automated system by pressing a button, depending on what kind of information you need. Primarily designed as a means of automatically alerting first responders in case of an accident, it is an upscale feature usually offered by subscription. This service will soon be upgraded, as described in “OnStar Looks to Connect Drivers With More Than Their Stolen Cars” in Advertising Age. In an effort to make the OnStar service seem less old and more hip, the company is looking to attract new audiences by modifying their core offering.

OnStar will be targeting younger audiences who would usually be tempted by practising unsafe social networking while driving, and will do all the hard and dangerous work for the driver and passengers. “The traffic on the M42 is a bloody nightmare” you say, and OnStar will automatically use it to update your status. This feature certainly brings new potential to the recent location integrations in social networking.

It sounds great in theory, and the automatic voice will also be able to read you the recent news or updates of your friends or followers. I do have some questions, which I’m sure will be answered and addressed before the service is launched in the future. For example, how will the service be able to confirm the identity of the user? Would you speak your password into the system? What’s to stop your friends from changing your status to something funny or embarrassing while you’re busy pumping petrol?

This is a very smart strategic move for OnStar, which has typically been a luxury service for those older than average or the extra-precautious with children. They will be opening up their target demographic, which will require fundamentally different marketing and communication strategies and messaging.

Although it is a new offering for OnStar and General Motors, is it a competitive advantage? OnStar has traditionally been a subscription-based service, so will they be able to convince their audience to sign up? Since this demographic already have a smart phone of some sort, what’s to stop the iPhones, Blackberries or Androids from offering the same service for free on the platforms that people already use? In fact, Facebook, Twitter and other social networking big shots could offer the service for free as a product extension, or could a social networking component to the already popular sat nav systems. All you have to do is listen to a 20 second audio ad and you could peruse updates and do your daily friending in the car.

Sitting here writing a blog on branding, I am surrounded by brands. I’m working on my MacBook Pro, and next to me there’s a Sharpie pen. The Gap blazer that I wore yesterday is hung over the back of the armchair. I’m wearing Lululemon and there’s a Burt’s Bees lip balm on the table next to me. I can see Tuesday’s Guardian and Telegram which I’ll read on the weekend and a box of eco-friendly tissues next to me for my soon coming head cold, although I have no idea what the brand is.

Every time we see a brand that we recognize, we immediately paint a picture in our minds and have a positive, negative or neutral impression of that brand. In most instances your impression of the brand is largely shaped by your experiences with the brand, which is why it is critical that brand promises match a customer’s experience. I recently read that people get greater happiness and satisfaction from experiences than they do from buying and consuming products. Whether that’s true or not, it does speak to the importance of your customers’ experience with your brand, whether that’s with your product, service or as the intended recipient of strategic communications.

This is the first blog post from the upcoming series on branding. If there are any branding topics that you are interested in seeing in the series, just let us know!

Each business and organisation faces unique challenges when it comes to branding, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Unless you engage with an integrated agency to work with you to analyze your current and ideal brand positioning, you’ll have to make due with our top 5 branding aspects to consider, and add this blog to your RSS feeds to check back a few times in the next few weeks to keep up with our branding series.

1. If your brand was a person, would you be their friend?

Would you look up to them, or would you want to help them out? What kind of car would they drive? How old would they be? Would they have a big house, or live in a modern, open concept flat? Would they wear glasses? How would they vote? Although this question asks “would you be their friend”, the more important question is “would your target audience be their friend?”.

2. I have a brand. See- here’s my logo.

Tricked you! A logo isn’t a brand. A logo is often used as a visual signature, a visual mnemonic or cue that is used to represent the company. This logo is in alignment with your organisations’ brand identity and graphic standards (hopefully), which all help to create a cohesive and consistent way of communicating internally and externally. A logo is essential, it’s something to put on your company letterhead, to put on your website and something to have on your business card, but it’s not your brand. It’s important that your customers and potential customers and clients recognise your organisation visually, but each time someone hears the name of your brand, sees an ad for your brand, or communicates with someone from your organisation they are building an impression of your brand in their mind. Hopefully this impression will be exactly what you want it to be. If you’re confused, you should visit this blog every day for the next two weeks to learn all about branding.

3. Everyone in our company loves the brand.

Internal buy-in is important in ‘living’ the brand. In making important brand related decisions, it’s important that the decision-makers are trusted to make the best decision for the company. When there is a group of people making a decision, there are many different, varied, opinions involved. Once a consensus has been reached, the resulting decision usually satisfies all varied opinions. This direction, this consensus, in satisfying all parties, is suddenly a less committed version of the strategy. I’m not suggesting that consensus based decisions are not effective, just providing a message of caution. When something so important as brand is concerned, a consensus based decision is not always what’s best for the brand. Caution is good in preventing poor decisions, but not always in the case of brand strategy. Once everyone around the board room table agrees on how to move forward, suddenly your customers may mistake your direction for that of your competitors.

4. Measurement

Although not all of us are numerically oriented, measurement is an important part of branding. In order to accurately know where you want to be in terms of a customer’s perception of your brand, you need to know where you are. If you have the resources, it is important to understand how your customers perceive your brand. For advertising and future communications purposes, knowing how effective your efforts have been also demonstrates how you need to proceed.

5. Copying your competition

In the world of branding and competitive advantage, recognizing that your competition are moving in a certain direction and mimicking that direction will certainly result in your brand having a lesser-than version of your competitor’s brand. If you want your own brand, it’s important to know what your competitors are doing, and it’s important to know how your brand is different.

Stay tuned for the rest of our blog series on branding.

“If all you’re trying to do is essentially the same thing as your rivals, then it’s unlikely that you’ll be very successful.” Michael Porter

Competitive - well suited for competition; having a feature that makes for successful competition.

Advantage –  any state, circumstance, opportunity, or means specially favorable to success, interest, or any desired end.

Why is competitive advantage important? Not just because Michael Porter says it is.

If you’re an employee, you have a competitive advantage. Maybe you’re nicer than everyone else, you could be a specialist in your area, you could know more about the company than anyone else, or maybe you are a specialist because you’re a generalist. When you apply for, and ultimately get a job, it’s because you offered something better than the other job seekers, even if it was because you had special knowledge, a friend of a friend perhaps, because you had top grades, went to a top school, or you had the best combination of skills for that job. Any and all of these reasons would have contributed to your differentiation- your competitive advantage, which led to you ultimately landing that job.

As an organisation, what is your competitive advantage? If you don’t have one then you should create or identify one now, otherwise you’re just trying to do what your competitors are doing. There is nothing more fundamental to marketing and business strategy than competitive advantage.

Say you have a competitive advantage. You know what it is, and your employees know what it is, but just because it’s so clear to you, that doesn’t mean for one second that your customers have the slightest idea. What’s the point of having a competitive advantage that no one knows about?

Michael Porter first developed the idea of competitive advantage for business. As Porter describes, there are two main types of competitive advantage, cost advantage and differentiation advantage.

If you have a cost advantage for a product or service, then you can communicate that advantage with your audience and potential customers. Taking brand image and familiarity into consideration, the hardest part is over, you’re cheaper than the others, congratulations. If you’re ASDA, one of the leading companies employing a cost advantage strategy, you need to communicate that with your audience and you’ll be on the road to riches. Offering a lower cost for a similar quality product or service is a surefire way to generate sales.

The problem with cost advantage is that it’s not for everyone; it can’t be for everyone. Our customers have such varied values, are looking for specialised and customisable products and services, and because only a select few organisations have the infrastructure in place to have a cost advantage, the rest need a differentiation advantage to be successful.

As a consumer, when you are choosing a product or service, what do you look for? It could be a low price, but other factors may influence your decision such as the values of the company, a particular product color available, or that one of the businesses is a large employer in your area.

When searching for a hotel for a future holiday, what factors help you make your decision? Price certainly isn’t the only important factor in everyone’s decision making or else we would only have low budget hotels. Consumers want the best value for what they can afford- but again, that all depends on the customer’s values. Due to the wide range of value sets, thankfully there is room for a wide range of areas of differentiation among businesses. As long as there is an audience who values that area of differentiation, they have an awareness and level of familiarity with your brand, and finally, that your brand communicates that area of differentiation, you will have customers.

Although it may sound simple and logical reading it in a textbook or on this blog, it’s not, trust us.

Along the road to differentiation, there are a number of challenges. Is your brand really any different? If all universities branded themselves using words and phrases such as excellence, innovation, high quality research, world-class professors- how does a student decide where to go? Of course people that already attend and work at X University know that it’s different, and better then all the other universities. Just because you know that your brand is different, or better than the competition, doesn’t mean that the audience will know, and that the audience will easily understand.

Once you’ve identified what that magical area of differentiation is- what makes your product or service unique from the others, Step 1 is complete.

Step 2 is to identify an audience that shares the same values as your brand.

Step 3, and perhaps the most difficult task on the journey to making the most of your differentiation strategy, is communicating it to your audience. The final step is to become one of the brands that your potential customers think of when deciding which product to buy. It’s having the right information available to them to help them make their decision- that your product or service best matches what they are looking for.

Think this is easy? It’s not.