Power Brand Experience: create greater value for product research with earlier brand innovation

On the occasion of my 8th year of "BRAND INNOVATION," I'm reflecting back on the convergence of advancements both in science and technology, and in the science of branding.

Over these years, we’ve seen medical breakthroughs in biotech research, as well as more sophisticated marketing discipline. It is because of this convergence that we now stress the value to research companies of branding earlier in the developmental cycle.

Earlier branding of science and technology products accomplishes two important financial objectives:  one, it can significantly move the product adoption curve to the left, which means a measurable acceleration of pre-launch awareness and launch sales uptake; and two, it can create greater value for future potential transactions, including co-promotion rights, licensing royalties, or even acquisition.

In a six-month series of interviews in 2004, I documented five BALANCING factors faced by executives of research-based companies.

1. Because so many discoveries are being made by small and start-up firms, they face the daunting scale of a blockbuster launch. This is true even in traditional “specialty” markets that now have billion-dollar potential.

2. When it comes to managing investor expectations, the discovery company is often pressured to grow or build its brands alone. On the other hand, if a larger company licenses or acquires a product, stock analysts expect to see rapid indicators of highly likely returns.

3. Timing the shift of resources from product R&D to brand marketing can be quite difficult. The typical research company CEO has spent years seeking capital resources to fund development, but knows a product launch will require a new level of human resources — particularly for a sales and marketing organization that researchers have less experience in building.

4. Most independent research companies find themselves walking an autonomy tightrope. There is an intense desire for self-reliance by product inventors, but the involvement of new funders or licensors inevitably leads to some shared control.

5. Perhaps the most surprising is that many discovery company executives still think a breakthrough can literally “sell itself.” They usually imagine unquestionable trial results in every phase of commercialization, an indisputable ability to publish in the best-reviewed journals, and an incontestable groundswell of support leading to an almost universal change in behaviors.

There has been even more evidence in the years since — and too many examples of disappointment when the old approach fails to achieve success. It is now commonly believed among the most successful brand marketers that “blockbusters are made.”

It is within this environment of convergence that I began offering product managers at science and technology companies a process called BRAND INNOVATION.

I called it Brand Innovation in order to connect to the scientific product innovation that drives the company’s efforts. And we demonstrate how to extend the innovation into brand positioning, packaging, put-ups, user programs, public relations, and more.

A creative innovation model that leverages the science of branding

This BRAND INNOVATION model has been developed using a thorough review of academic journals, trade publications, and branding books. It also draws from the conclusions of market research conducted in more than 36 U.S. and global launch programs. Moreover, it capitalizes on my experience with about 100 different medical, science, and technology brands developed and/or supported by my consultancy.

The model has been shown to be effective in both large multinational corporations and in small biotech start-ups.

The first step in the complete innovation process is called “C.H.E.M.®” — a verbal and visual nomenclature created to communicate a product’s performance and promise. It represents an expression of the product’s strategic direction and a blueprint for brand building (graphic above).

In this creative innovation model, a manager can reach the goal of captivating customers in ways that go beyond traditional “interruptive assumptions” of advertising. By applying the tool, brand marketers can truly create brand CHEMistry with customers.

Consider these areas of application for Brand Innovation

In my experience, there are a number of potential areas of brand construction during the early phases of research and development. These include creating the branded names, copy, graphics, and symbols for the product’s:

• Molecule/generic

• Methodology of research

• Manufacturing process

• Mechanism of action

• Medicinal class or category

• Mode of delivery

• Market segment

• Medical promise

How to begin now increasing the value of your research

For the research company executive interested in exploring this approach, begin now to add branding experts to your circle of advisors.

Invite science and technology brand consultancies to present to your management team and board early in the developmental cycle. You may also find that companies with whom you’re already collaborating (such as material suppliers, industrial designers, and testing organizations) have brand resources they could share with you.

Finally, if you are planning a co-marketing arrangement, assess the partner company’s Brand Innovation experience, key evaluation criteria beyond market experience and sales force size.

In conclusion, the convergence of technology and branding advancement creates an atmosphere well suited for increasing value of product research through earlier branding. Brand Innovation is an approach than can significantly move the product adoption curve to the left and can create greater value for future potential transactions.

 

Every song tells a story

The Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago's Lincoln Square has celebrated various forms of music and other cultural expressions for more than five decades.

Now, it's making its first foray into the world of theater with its commission of the world premiere of "Keep a Song in Your Soul: the Black Roots of Vaudeville."

Set in the Great Migration era of 1910 - 1930, "Keep a Song in Your Soul: The Black Roots of Vaudeville" tells the story of a young woman who is lured from the rural South by the promise of a better life in a northern city, followed by her devoted boyfriend. There, the two encounter further challenges, finding the realities behind the city's false gleam.

The show was developed by the Grammy Award winning Carolina Chocolate Drops, MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award honoree Reginald R. Robinson, best known for his performances of Ragtime era music, and legendary Chicago tap icon Reggio "The Hoofer" McLaughlin, all of whom will perform in the show. Featuring more than 20 historic songs written and performed by African-Americans between 1830-1930 on the Chitlin' Circuit, as well as original music and new arrangements of the classic songs by the creative team, the production explores Vaudeville's African-American heritage through music and dance to reclaim the spirit and substance of this rich taproot of American entertainment.

I constantly look at all mediums and senses to express a brand through my technique called, C.H.E.M. (Connect, Honest, Easy, Motivating). Thinking about the insights from vaudeville, what song (or what kind of music) could be used to better communicate the story of your brand? 

10 feel-good songs to work on your C.H.E.M.istry

1. Islands in the Stream, Dolly Parton & Kenny Rogers
2. Lost in Love, Air Supply
3. Up Where We Belong, Joe Cocker & Jennifer Warnes
4. Cruisin’, Smokey Robinson
5. Somebody’s Baby, Jackson Browne
6. Louisiana Rain, Tom Petty
7. Hungry Eyes, Eric Carmen
8. Feels Like Home, Randy Newman
9. I Think We’re Alone Now, Ritchie Cordell
10. One Rose/ Hot Buttered Rum, The Red Clay Ramblers

What’s on your feel-good playlist?

4-part model to create brand CHEMistry with customers: presentation to Asia-Pacific regional business meeting in Cebu

Here’s a summary of the talk I gave yesterday to the conference attendees:

Life science and technology brands make personal connections with consumers beyond that of many other products. This connection goes beyond mere advertising. Marketers must create brands, experiences, and relationships that embody the intricate balance between the research customer’s needs and the company’s business objectives.

This presentation offers a creative innovation model to help the customers accelerate their research – and help the company accelerate sales.

Presenting C.H.E.M. – our tool to truly create brand CHEMistry with customers.




Overview of C.H.E.M.

C = Connect Purpose: Fit in their world, not try to disrupt it.
Action: Identify your true target audience(s). Then determine how to connect with these individuals through meaningful and relevant messaging. This connection is the start to the most effective brand efforts.

H = Honest Purpose: Utilize your best data, not distort it.
Action: An honest information exchange allows external points of view into a discussion and enables your audience to open up and share their issues, concerns, or complaints. This allows true understanding of the customers’ circumstances. By initiating the conversation, then listening, you create an open and honest dialogue and valuable customer response. In this step, also examine claims to ensure the most accurate data is presented.

E = Easy Purpose: Simplify communications, not make it more difficult.
Action: Not only ensure that your customer materials are easy to read and understand, but also introduce “easy” potential solutions relevant to the customers’ needs. Helping customers understand the value of your solution and how it positively relates to them, creates positive associations and brand loyalty.

M = MotivatePurpose: Show customers how to take action, not demand it.
Action: Encourage action by offering your audience a clear, simple first step toward a goal in every communication. This step ensures you show how and where to take action. Ongoing, active participation from customers, as well as clients and consultancy, will lead to more proactive communication, meaning brand longevity.



Applying C.H.E.M.We facilitated 6 groups workshops to put the C.H.E.M. model to work – and benefit from greater control over brand development, communications, advertising, public relations, web marketing, personal selling, service, and more.

We began to apply C.H.E.M. to move the brands forward...fast
• Define both a quality offering and a quality experience
• Understand what positive brand associations to create
• Learn what the brand really stands for – and the attitude it projects
• Shift from brand memorability to brand loyalty

4 biggest shifts in pharma SALES strategies coming in 2009

When PharmaVoice editor Taren Grom asked me, “What will be the biggest strategy shift related to sales forces in the next several years?,” my answer was guided by C.H.EM.

I replied:

Finally, the interruptive model of detailing will be dead. The only sales forces – and representatives – to survive will be ones that truly add value to the physician’s practice.

1. Reps will learn to fit into the doctor’s world, not try to disrupt it;
2. They will know how to use their real data, not distort it;
3. They will communicate meaningful information, not slick scripted pitches; and
4. They will help physicians and their staffs show patients how to get the most from therapies.

5 questions to ask yourself to cut through the clutter – and why C.H.E.M. is better than shouting.

I was always taught that great brand creative has “stopping power.” It stopped the reader. It caputured the viewer. It grabbed the listener. It cut through the clutter.

But what about moving the customer? What about connecting? What about creating chemistry?

Even as customers are constantly bombarded with advertising messages, they are getting progressively better at tuning out the endless stream of come-ons. Companies then typically up the ante and try to out-shout their competitors to draw attention. All of which just leads to more shouting, and everybody is drowned out.

So, what can a company do to get noticed?

Here are 5 questions compiled by two professors of marketing at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, that marketers should ask themselves as they craft new strategies to capture customers' attention in an increasingly noisy marketplace.

1. Can the marketing stimulus be delivered at a time when the customer has few other distractions?

Marketing messages should target customers at times when they are unoccupied, perhaps even actively seeking some sort of information to process. Consider, for example, an airplane on the landing path into an airport. Sitting upright, with in-flight entertainment and electronic devices switched off, passengers have little to do but to look out of the window and wait for the aircraft to land.

Seeking to capitalize on this opportunity, London-based Ad-Air Group PLC places advertisements flat on the ground over an area as large as five acres alongside flight paths in and out of the world's busiest airports. Depending on their landing approach, passengers are provided with an unrestricted view of an ad for more than 10seconds.


2. Can the marketing message be designed to pique the customer's curiosity?

Piquing customers' curiosity can be more effective than inundating them with information. Stimuli that are carefully placed, so that they are encountered in sequence, can be particularly successful at this task.

Consider a series of billboards along a busy interstate proclaiming the approach of a business, but not really saying what the business does. To find out what the business is all about, travelers have to take an exit off the highway. While some may be disappointed with what they find and may not plan a second visit, there are always millions more of the uninitiated coming down the highway. This technique has been used to good effect by South of the Border, a Mexican-themed shopping and food cluster on I-95 near the border of the Carolinas.


3. Can the marketing message piggyback on another brand?

With television and newsprint media being increasingly saturated, marketers need to seek out new and interesting formats and media for their messages.

Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., for example, has teamed with Adidas AG on a range of motorsport-inspired driving and sports shoes. The soles of these shoes are made of rubber with tread patterns designed by Goodyear. If customers viewed the shoe purely as an Adidas product, Goodyear's contribution would remain unnoticed. However, the Goodyear brand is prominently displayed on the outsoles of the shoes. The result is that every person wearing the shoes is now a messenger for the Goodyear brand.


4. Can the product or service occupy a piece of the physical environment that the customer frequently interfaces with?

Consumers today tend to spend inordinate amounts of time interfacing with just a few objects -- for many, it is their computer screen at work. Marketers must consider how they can capture the customer's attention when they interface with these objects. Customers, however, guard access to these objects zealously.

Southwest Airlines Co. has figured out how to do this, using a small software application called DING! This application, which customers can download, occupies a space on the icon bar of a desktop computer. Limited-time offers and news from Southwest are announced with a sound and highlighted by an envelope that displays over the icon. Customers can react to the offers by booking trips to their favorite destinations.


5. Can your company build into its messaging a consistent stimulus that affects one or more of the five physical senses?

Successful marketing messages excite customers not only when they first encounter them -- they ingrain themselves into the customers' permanent memory. Once a message is embedded, customer resistance to processing it drops when it is encountered in the future.

Cough-drop maker Ricola AG, which uses herbs cultivated in the Swiss Alpine regions for its products, invokes the image of the Alpine mountains and meadows in its advertising, which often features herders who harmoniously sing out the word "Ricola" into open, echoing meadows. The singing is accompanied by the blowing of an alpenhorn -- a long, curved wooden wind instrument with a distinctive, booming sound that was used by Swiss herders to call their cows from the pastures. The company has employed the sound and the imagery with such remarkable consistency that today, for many people, the sound of the horn alone is sufficient to invoke the rich imagery and heritage associated with the brand.

Not each of these five questions will necessarily generate a great idea for every company. But they do provide a common language for comparing, debating and improving managers' proposals.

7 deadly sins of social networking – and how to avoid them using C.H.E.M.

It’s one thing to say you want to be “social,” but it’s quite another to commit yourself – to engage in a truly community exchange and contribute to the environment of trust.

Social-media expert Muhammad Saleem says you must avoid these pitfalls:
1. Don’t be a spammer. Seek out people who will be truly interested in what you have to say.
2. Don’t be a stranger. Social networking thrives on relationships — the more the better.
3. Don’t be noise. Once you have people’s attention, focus on adding value.
4. Don’t be lazy. You have to participate to get anything out of social networks. Don’t just build a profile and let it gather dust while you wait for people to notice. They won’t.
5. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Diversify your efforts. Seek out specialized social networks for advertisers and in the fields you serve.
6. Don’t be fake. Don’t pretend to be a satisfied user of a product, for example. When you’re found out, the backlash will far outstrip any short-term gain.
7. Don’t be selfish. Social networking is about the community, not about you. “You must contribute more than you want to get out of it,” Mr. Saleem says.

By applying our C.H.E.M. tool, our teams and our clients can connect with customers in honest ways, communicate easily, and motivate to action.

4-part C.H.E.M. model presented to Rotary International today

I had the privilege to speak to the Boise Metro Rotary Club this afternoon. I shared with them the application of our C.H.E.M. model to ignite more excitement and involvement of members. Thanks to the members and guests who attended.