Polaris partners with companies, consultants and advertising agencies to more effectively support brand strategy in each phase of development Consumers, businesses, and the market appreciate and reward brand strategy leaders that project quality, competence, value, and reliability. Now, more than ever, strong branding strategies are the key to a company’s successful marketing plans.
Branding Strategies Provide Footholds to Successful Competition – Polaris supports strong branding strategies by providing the quantitative research information and data platform needed to work through key brand identity, positioning and strategy decisions. We collect the information through one of our in- house data collection methods (out-bound telephone calls, Internet surveys, or Interactive Voice Response Interviewing). We design program according to customers segments (commercial, industrial, or residential) and customize it according to specified parameters (e.g., profitability segments, demographic or marketing groups). We typically conduct enough surveys to be able to project our findings out onto the entire population or target market. After the results from the brand strategy research are collected, we develop a detailed summary of findings, issues and opportunities for use in creating branding strategies as well as determining what the brand is perceived to be today and help you plan for tomorrow.
Brand is the Best Growth Strategy
Making coffee the other day, it occurred to me that too many New Zealand companies were playing the role of the beans. They were being ground down to dust in a desperate search to extract the last drop of value.
This leads me to believe that the expectations of shareholders and markets have a lot to answer for. Right now, too many of them are hindering our public companies. And that’s because everybody it seems, is working in the short term. This quarter, the next six months. And they’re pressurizing senior decision makers to constantly deliver to that timeframe.
The intriguing thing about this approach is that companies get to look “busy”. They appear to be doing things. Shareholders feel like things are happening. It’s good stuff to read about over the morning newspaper and a latte. But this approach doesn’t create value so it can’t grow the business. Sure, KPIs will be hit, bonuses will be paid and dividends will go out in the post. All thanks to being more lean and efficient. But longer term, these measures don’t differentiate any
Actions rarely work in isolation, and efficiency-hunting alone is a cop-out. It’s relatively easy to continue to find fault, to churn people, to chip away at expenditure. Negativity is something anyone can become good at, with practice. It has to be done – but it can’t be all that is done.
Companies need more balance, spending less time thinking about what they can rationalize less money on the consultants they pay to “lose weight” and more time thinking about growing businesses that actually appeal to customers. Being recognized is one thing – being valued and consistently chosen is another. The best way to deliver value to shareholders is to generate it.
Brand is an effective growth strategy because brand is the only stand-out strategy directed at the people who matter – the people who work for you and those who buy from you and continue to choose you. Strong branding is how every great organization defines its purpose, is known and remembered. It delivers top of mind and emotional connection. In fact, great branding does something that defies logic. It gives you personality.
No other growth strategy does this. No other aspect of business forges this level of relationship, recognition, under- standing successfully. Embedding brand within an organization requires multiple integrated actions, not merely a veneer of image to do this. You must constantly work to close the gap between reality and your staff and customers’ needs and aspirations. To do this, brand must be a central mechanism to focus and drive forward your organization on the power of its relationships. Dismiss marketing as fluff if you want to, but in coffee terms, branding is the difference between a cappuccino and a flaccid white. Which would your staff and customers rather stomach?
Branding Brief 11-9cleaning Up The Philip Morris Image Philip Morris, a company best known for its tobacco brands such as Marlboro and Virginia Slims, drew a significant amount of negative publicity during the state lawsuits against tobacco companies in the 1990s. In response to the publicity crisis, the company initiated an image campaign in 1999 using ads that detailed the company’s commitment to one of four issues –
Hunger, disaster relief, underage tobacco use, and domestic violence Philip Morris has donated $60 million a year to support these causes, and its annual $100 image campaign advertises its involvement using the tagline “Working to make a difference. The people of Philip Morris.” The ads also emphasize the humanitarian efforts of two other companies owned by Philip Morris – Kraft and Miller Brewing. With the campaign, the company hoped to communicate to consumers that it is more than a tobacco company
In a separate program, Philip Morris spent $100 million on its “Think, Don’t Smoke” campaign against youth smoking. Philip Morris also developed a website (www.philipmorris.com) that provided information on the links between smoking and health problems like cancer and heart disease. The site contained links to U.S. Surgeon General’s reports, the World Health Organization, and the American Cancer Society “This is going to go on for a long time,” said, Victor Han, vice president, corporate communications at Philip Morris. He added, “We expect people to be skeptical.” Indeed, some critics were skeptical. Martyn Straw, president of In0074erbrand said, “There’s a difference between doing something and telling people you’re doing something.”
In 2001, Philip Morris announced plans to change its name to Altria. A new logo, a multicolored square resembling a mosaic with the word Altria imprinted on it, was to replace the old Philip Morris crest. The name Altria, a coined name derived from the Latin Altus, or “higher,” was seen by many as a calculated move by Philip Morris to distance itself from its heritage as a tobacco firm. A marketing executive with Interbrand applauded the move, saying “it’s about time.” Another expert cautioned that the company would face the challenge of convincing people “that their new brand is meaningful.”
