How concept stores can help build a brand

Brands start opening shops of their own. And there are a couple of possible reasons for that. I already wrote about efforts use the brand to venture into new business.
A second reason, to use this exposure to increase brand awareness.

In all the cases below the concept is the same: open a store on a high traffic location, fill the shelves with your whole product line, advertise your products to the people and give them coupons that can be redeemed in a supermarket.

These moves create a more personal contact with the customer. Which they hope of course translates in supermarket sales. And this is exactly what's behind the recent efforts of Proctor and Gamble Brasil.

• During the past holiday period the company opened two concept stores in a São Paulo shopping mall: Beauty Store Pantene and Olay and Gillette Concept Store
• P&G held an expo in one of the convention centers of São Paulo to show what was new in their portfolio.
• A Gilette lounge was opened in South-Africa during the World Cup. As official sponsor of the Brazilian selection they wanted to be close to the team.
• These past events and concept stores seem to have been successful because now P&G plans to open a new concept store in September in a shopping mall of São Paulo. There they will display their whole product portfolio.

One of the main reasons behind all these actions is the launch of three new brands on the Brazilian market: Olay, Head and Shoulders and Naturella. The shops are a way to familiarize the consumer with these brands while on the other hand connecting them with the corporate brand.

What great design teaches us about designing for the web

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Over at Vitsoe, furniture company they have a good bit of information on design and their products. This in the form of articles or blog posts.

One of the articles is about the 10 principles for good design by Dieter Rams and illustrates every one of them. Of those products only at principle number seven and nine are made by Vitsoe mentioned.

I like the simple call to action that they put on the article. Well integrated into the article.

By the way: both products were designed in the 60s and are still selling like hotcakes. I guess a good product and brand goes a long way!

Positioning masterclasses by Ryanair and Apple

Defining what your company or brand stands for is never easy. And it is even harder to communicate this. It requires a lot of experimenting to find the right voice. That's what makes companies that do manage to carve out their position for their brand that much more interesting.

These last weeks I came across two examples that show some crystal clear positioning.

Ryanair

Over at the brand positioning bastion Brand Strategy Insider airline Ryanair was analyzed.

Ryanair’s brand associations centre on three key themes: low-price, no nonsense and aggression.

And these elements show up their communication, especially with a CEO at the helm who is never afraid to make some bold statements.

On Ryanair's advertising:

It starts with advertising. A very special kind of advertising. Usually black and white. Consistently tacky in tone and execution. And always offensive. It could be a picture of a stripper dressed as a schoolgirl announcing “hot fares”.

Before this article I never really thought about Ryanair in the light of a clear brand position. But I guess thats's the point a brand. Getting the message out seemingly without any effort.

Apple

The second example comes from an article in the New York Times features a video of a presentation by Steve Jobs. The video was made when Apple is at its deepest point in 1997. He calls for a change in communication of Apples values in this "noisy" world.



Some quotes from the video:

The point is not to tell why they are better than Microsoft. Or that their computers have bigger memory and faster processors.

Big brands don't tell you about their product, they talk about who they are, what they are about.

Where does Apple fit in this world?

At its core is: we believe that people with passion can change the world.

And to communicate these values a campaign was created: "Think Different" by TBWA/Chiat Day. The advertisement is shown at the end of the video above or can be found here.

A marketeer's dream job

Many young boys dream to become a fireman or police officer. After that interests change diverge a bit but for many becoming a creator of video games is also a wish. After all, who wouldn't like to play games all day and get paid for it?

But again years go by in which you become more interested in other things. For me at university they changed to marketing and advertising, which offer a more viable career path.

And learning more about marketing, from communication to pricing, it all comes down to one goal, to influence the behaviour or people. Or to put differently: get people to do what we want.

And while we don't always know why people do the things they do, we do know some tricks we can use.

Imagine the excitement when I saw this presentation by Seth Priebatsch. It is called "The game layer on top of the world" in which he talks about using game elements to make activities more fun.

Sounds nice but does it work? A different question can illustrate this:

Would you be willing to send a twitter update every time you enter any bar, restaurant, gym or other building? No?

This location-based services are hugely popular at the moment. The biggest one, Foursquare, has almost 3 million users. And Facebook just announced this week that they will start a similar service.

What makes these things so successful? Because of the game elements built-in. People do task, earn badges and share them ok Facebook and Twitter.

It is called gamification or funware.

And the most interesting part of all this is that it can be used in non-game environments such as businesses to help achieve goals.

The text editor I'm typing this with for example uses a little circle to track the changes I make each time I save. The more changes I make since the last save, the bigger the indicator circle becomes. What happens next is a strange competition with myself to "score" a big indicator every time I save. As a result I'll type more.

While that example doesn't really seem like a game to you, many services have these small "games" built-in.

That progress bar on LinkedIn for example, which indicates how much percent you have completed your profile. Most of us will be challenged to complete this task and get the progress bar to 100%.

Things have just started rolling in this field, and my brain is working full-time to find new possible applications.

This is definitely not the end and might just as well be the start of a new job!

Who does your branding really reach?

Take a good look at the picture above.

How would you feel about owning one of these?

Would owning a Macbook make you feel more creative, expressive and cool?

Classical consumer behavior is based on that assumption. People buy brands because of the associations that come with it, associations they like to communicate to the outside world.

This is still true. But in a new research concludes that this is not true for everybody.

Turns out that there are two types of people:

• Entity theorists who believe personal qualities are fixed and direct effort won't change them
• Incremental theorists  who believe that they can improve themselves only through hard work and learning

The first type is a lot a lot more receptive to branding. As they can't change things themselves, they might rely on external factors, such as brands, to change them.

When I found this out a question came up:

What percentage of the population falls into which category?

You don't want to waste money trying to build your brand to people who aren't influenced by it. Are there other ways to drive their buying decsions? Are they more receptive to promtion or prices?

More news on the upcoming paper.