1. Misunderstanding of the real scope of a place branding initiative. Most of the failed initiatives focused primarily on community promotion. The goal was simply to position the community in the best light possible. Place Branding is first and foremost a strategic exercise requiring the involvement and commitment of community leaders including elected officials.

To help drive this point home, I modified my basic branding formula to describe Place Branding:

Place Branding = Place Making + Place Marketing

I wanted to ensure Economic Development professionals understood how the two concepts are coupled in any place branding effort.

If you want to successfully brand your community, you must align your place-making strategies with your brand promise. That means the choices on asset creation, infrastructure investment and public program/policies must consciously be focused on closing negative points of difference or strengthening positive points of difference vs. competition in delivering the promise of better enabling residents to achieve their American Dream.

2. Under resourcing the place brand initiative. Many of the stories I heard were from small communities with very limited budgets. My feeling is if you can’t adequately resource a branding initiative don’t start it.

Failed branding efforts poison the well for years making it exceptionally hard to convince community leaders to support investing in a second try.

I recall a branding discussion at an International Economic Development Council conference where I was on a panel with three agency representatives. An economic development professional from a small community asked what we thought the smartest use of her $10,000 marketing budget would be. All three of the Agency panelists recommended market research to better understand the community’s competitive points of difference. I recommended investing the funds in ensuring the data in their Geographic Information System was as complete and accurate as possible. My recommendation was different from the other panelists because I knew the community was woefully underfunded to even think about starting a place-branding initiative.

If you can’t get the resources to properly engage in a place branding effort, then hold off on spending until you can. A failed place branding initiative will waste significant political capital.

3. Treating Place Branding as a one-off exercise. My friend Jim Glover pointed this root cause out to me. Many economic development organizations fail to establish multi-year budgets to support their place branding efforts. Even if the initial work is excellent, these communities essentially starve success.

Place branding is a long-term commitment. It is a fundamental driver of strategy and needs both the funding and personnel to support doing it right.

P&G is successful because it understands branding and is organized around the concept. That is why P&G’s success has been sustained for nearly 200 years. If you want your community’s place branding efforts to work, you need to adopt a similar mentality as P&G. Place branding must drive your strategies and your community needs to organize around the concept to ensure it is adequately prioritized and researched. That means your elected officials must understand and embrace their role in delivering the Place Making component of Place Branding.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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For each moment of truth, there are either excuses or results.

While I was at P&G, President and CEO A.G. Lafley applied Carlzon’s model with great success. Lafley concentrated the P&G Marketing Organization’s focus on winning two mission critical Moments of Truth. Lafley. defined the First Moment of Truth as the moment when the consumer is looking at the store shelf and trying to decide which product to purchase. He concluded the Second Moment of Truth occurred when the product was used at home. By simplifying a highly complex decision process, and focusing our attention on winning the most critical moments of the consumer purchase decision, Lafley was able to lead P&G into a period of exceptional, accelerated business growth.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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While on one hand I agree with the notion any investment in a communication campaign should deliver incremental results (at least to a degree to offset the investment), I don’t subscribe to measuring success that way.

Final results are considered an “end-process” measure. They let you know how well you ran the race and what place you finished in. But, that information doesn’t allow you to make any mid-course corrections to either get on track or to positively enhance the results for a maximum return on investment.

Consequently, I advocate “in-process” measures. These are signs of whether you are on track or not. Continuing with the race analogy, “in-process” measures are the equivalent of split times that inform you whether you are ahead or behind your target pace.

The best “in-process” measure in my mind, is a brand equity monitor.

A brand equity monitor provides a quantitative market research methodology to determine changes in target customer perceptions regarding the key “equities or attributes” that drive preference.

Consequently, the first step in creating a brand equity monitor is to gain insights into what those equities are for the category in which your brand competes. An actionable brand equity monitor will capture perceptual data for both your brand and a pre-defined set of competitive brands.

For each equity you have respondents tell you on a scale, typically from 1 to 10, how closely it is associated with your brand in their mind. You need to make sure the sample size is statistically projectable, and you will want to field the brand equity study on a regular frequency (typically annually).

When you have the quantitative results in hand, you can begin to analyze the relative position of your brand vs. competitive brands in the mind of your target customer.

The rule I used is – A statistically significant difference in score at the 80% confidence level was worth a deeper analysis. Note, I used an 80% confidence level rather than the more stringent 95% you often see in publications. For perspective, an 80% confidence level implies there is a 20% chance your conclusion is wrong. In business, many times you make decisions on the proverbial flip of a coin, so I always felt an 80% confidence level was more than adequate.

When you have run the study at least twice, you can then begin looking at how the scores change over time. The key thing you are trying to evaluate is did the brand communication effort over the last year 1) make an overall difference 2) lengthen the gap on equities that are competitive advantages and 3) close the gap on equities that are competitive disadvantages.

If nothing changes in a year, you need to understand why your effort made no difference.

It takes time to get the first brand equity monitor pulled together. And, it is time well spent because you do not want to change the questionnaire going forward. You want as much of an apples-to apples comparison as possible when looking at the data year over year. The sustainability of the questionnaire is directly driven by how well you understand the choice drivers in your competitive category.

You can use a brand equity monitor to also get data on brand awareness, brand recall, and brand loyalty. Gathering these data is a function of the questions you ask in the study.

You could design and deploy a brand equity model yourself, but because of the mission-critical importance of getting the right measures and the reluctance you should have in changing questions over time, I would recommend partnering with a quality research firm.

The agency will not only help you design the study so it has statistical validity, but will also give you an important objective third party review to minimize question bias.

Remember, the value of the data is in aiding decision making. You want it to be as reliable as possible. It is wise to remember the old adage of garbage in, garbage out. The investment in a research firm to help design your equity study is worth it.

Of course, having the brand equity data to look at is fascinating. But if you don’t use it to make decisions moving forward these data are no better than an end process measure. The power in using an in-process measure is the flexibility to make changes aimed at maximizing the performance of your brand.

Professor David Aacker has written a number of papers about brand equity that are worth reading. He defines brand equity as brand loyalty, brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association and other proprietary assets (e.g. logo). His simplest characterization of brand equity is “the value of a brand”.

Professor Kevin Keller has also played in this space and created his own “Customer-Based Brand Equity Model”. Definitely read the work of these two academics so you can be grounded in the subject.

Always remember, data is an aid to not a substitute for judgement.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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I once was a panelist for a place branding discussion session. At the time, I was the executive director of the Ohio Business Development Coalition (a company charged with branding the State of Ohio). My three panel colleagues each represented advertising agencies. During the Q&A, an economic development professional from a small community explained that she had a $10,000 branding budget and asked for guidance on the best way to spend it.

Each of my fellow panelists, in turn counseled her to initiate exploratory research to develop a comprehensive communication campaign that could be rolled out in the future. Their argument was this: foundational work would payout in the long run. My counsel was to invest the money in a highly targeted sales effort to attract a company that would complement their existing industry portfolio.

When I relinquished the microphone, the other panelists respectively, and strongly disagreed with my perspective. I defended my position by explaining that initiating an underfunded branding exercise is a surefire way to waste money and burn precious political capital. I also pointed out I was the only panelist not seeking to put my hand in her pocket.

If you cannot or do not adequately fund a branding initiative you shouldn’t bother initiating one.

The world has too many exploratory branding research reports collecting dust on somebody’s shelf. I am a big believer in action-focused learning. You should seek to gain insight so it can be turned into action. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake rarely delivers a return on investment.

This lesson is just as important for entrepreneurs and small business owners as well. Understand what you need before contracting an agency partner. Remember, hiring an agency is simply a means to an end. You also need to know what that end looks like, how to measure its achievement, and what it is going to cost (time, money, and political capital) to achieve success.

In my three-decade career, I have had an opportunity to speak with hundreds of economic development professionals who complain about how difficult it is to convince management to invest money in branding because the company tried it previously and it failed spectacularly.

Every time I unpacked the details surrounding the failure, the root cause was inevitably a lack of clarity on what was actually contracted for. The experience was tabled as a branding failure when in fact, it was actually a failure in understanding what was needed for success. Unfortunately, this type of bad experience can significantly “poison the well” for any future branding work.

Don’t start a branding exercise without first doing your homework on what is required for success. Don’t invest in another research report that will collect dust on the shelf and never deliver a return. I always think of the late Zig Ziglar’s words of wisdom – “Plan to Win. Prepare to Win. Expect to Win.” You simply can’t expect to win without the planning and preparation. You are better off doing nothing rather than doing the wrong thing.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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After reviewing numerous RFPs seeking agencies that were written by economic development professionals, I realized these terms are not generally well understood. I have often found that agencies are contracted to help with a company’s brand image when in fact, the core business problem was actually one of brand identity.

The work needed to address a brand image problem is very different from what’s required to fix a brand identity issue. Contracting for the wrong work leads to a misapplication of resources, a loss of time and a lot of frustration.

Perhaps the easiest way to explain the difference between image and identity is to think about it in terms of personal branding. If you are not familiar with personal branding I encourage you to read an article written by Tom Peters and published in the August 31, 1997 issue of Fast company entitled “The Brand Called You”. It provides a great overview of why personal branding is such an important concept for your career success.

From the perspective of a brand called You, image is what people think about you and identity is who you really are.

In the context of product, service or place branding, think of image as the current consumer perception of your brand. It may be an accurate perception, or it may include a number of misperceptions. For consumers who have actually tried your product or service, or have visited your location, their personal experience has a big impact on informing their perception. In contrast, identity is what your product, service or place actually is.

I frequently find that written brand identities often have an aspirational feel intended to help ensure the brand realizes its full potential. However, make no mistake, despite any lofty aspirations you may have, your brand identity is what your brand currently is.

Understanding the difference between your brand image and brand identity will help you know how to best deal with many of the market challenges your brand faces. A brand image problem is typically addressed with a communication campaign focused on either creating awareness of your brand promise and/or correcting any misperceptions around what your brand promise is. This type of effort can improve your brand image over time. Advertising and public relations agencies are experts at positively impacting brand image.

A brand identity problem generally means you need to invest in product development because the relevance or competitiveness of your brand promise needs to be strengthened. Addressing an identity problem requires you to revisit your organization’s strategic plan since you may need to make new investment choices to improve your ability to deliver the brand promise. I have found making an investment in new promotional claim development, packaging enhancement, or product performance improvement tends to deliver the greatest sustainable business success.

A brand identity problem can’t be adequately solved by hiring an agency to create a new logo, tagline, or advertising campaign. Nor can it be resolved by launching a public relations effort to strengthen your brand image. Neither of these tactics can fix a decline in your brand promise’s relevance or competitiveness.

Know The Difference Between Image And Identity

One example of how not fully understanding the difference between image and identity can lead to strategic errors, is the Eastman Kodak company. (I will be over simplifying Kodak’s challenge to illustrate a point.)

As you will likely recall, Kodak was a dominant company in its field for almost the entire 20th century. Their brand promise was to make it easy to capture precious memories by using their cameras. They coined the phrase “Kodak moment” to establish this promise in consumers’ minds.

Unfortunately for Kodak, their brand promise relevancy was being eroded by the advent of a radical innovation. Digital cameras were making the end-to-end process of “capturing precious moments” even easier by eliminating the need for film.

You might be surprised to know that Kodak executives were well aware of digital camera technology. In fact, in 1975 it was a Kodak engineer Steven Sasson who actually invented the first digital camera.

However, these same Kodak executives were unwilling to walk away from the lucrative profit stream generated through film sales and as a consequence, refused to invest in strengthening the relevance (and ultimately, competitiveness) of the Kodak brand promise.

Kodak tried to solve a brand identity problem (a decline in promise relevance) with an aggressive promotion campaign to sell more non-digital cameras and film. If we fast forward to 2012, it was easy to see the negative ramifications Kodak experienced because they treated an identity problem as an image problem. That year Kodak filed for bankruptcy.

Admittedly, there are a lot of lessons you can take away from this Kodak case study, including one about the cost of executive hubris. But, the most important lesson is the avoidable penalty you will pay for losing sight of proactively managing your brand.

Not every example of mischaracterizing a brand identity issue as a brand image issue results in the drastic outcome Kodak experienced, though in my experience, it always leads to a loss of time, money, and leadership confidence. In truth, many companies can recover with an expensive crash program on investing in strengthening the relevance and/or competitiveness of their brand promise on an accelerated timeline. The smarter course of action would be to characterize the problem correctly in the first place so the right solution can be identified.

Strengthening Brand Image And Identity

When I was leading brands for P&G, I always had a product development initiative in place to strengthen my brands current perception (image) through additional reasons to believe the authenticity of the brand promise. And I had a separate initiative in place to ensure sustained relevance and competitiveness of that promise (identity) aimed at enhancing benefit delivery. I managed these two initiatives as related but distinct efforts with specific success measures.

A great example of a P&G brand that has applied this approach exceptionally well is Crest. The Crest image enhancement efforts include earning the American Dental Association seal of acceptance as well as investment in and publication scientific research on the health benefits of fluoride.

The Crest efforts to strengthen identity include development and introduction of Crest Whitening Plus Scope, Crest Whitening Expressions, Crest extra Whitening, Crest Multicare, Crest Pro-Health Complete Protection, etc. For perspective, the current Crest website displays 48 different Crest products, each of them contributes to helping strengthen the relevance and competitiveness of the Crest dental health brand promise.

If you aggressively invest in strengthening your brand’s positive points of competitive difference and/or in neutralizing your brand’s competitive disadvantages, potential brand identity problems tend to be addressed before they become marketplace issues.

You cannot cheat though. You need a specific brand image plan to impact consumer perception by better communicating your brand promise, and a related but separate brand identity plan (think product development) to ensure ongoing relevance and competitiveness of your brand promise. You must design and fund unique tactics for each plan. Conceptually it is easy. In practice though, you will have a limited budget and will need to make prudent trade-off decisions between the two. Choose wisely and you win. Choose poorly, and like Kodak you lose.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Ed Burghard and excerpted from his book Building Brands: What Really Matters

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Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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