Branding Impacts the Brain – Apparently

My friend Thomas has been trying to steal my job of pointing out hype of late, so I thought I better write a quick post to try and reclaim my title. (although this has less to do with hype. . .)

My co-worker, Becky, at Morsekode sent me a link to this BBC article, Brains buzz at well-known brands. This should give Thomas something new to rant about. And the research even comes from Germany!

Basically, the article is saying that

. . .popular brands activated parts of the brain linked to self-identity and reward.

In other words, the research may be getting closer to showing the real impact of branding efforts by companies.

So, we’ll see what my friend Thomas has to say about that. He’s been a little down on the branding in some of his past posts. . .

Changing a Brand Position Takes Time

This morning, at another American Marketing Association event, I listened to Jay Gillespie, Vice President of Marketing at Famous Footwear (USD 2.3 billion company, division of Brown Shoe), give a presentation on Repositioning from the Inside Out.

He talked about the process they undertook to stop the negative impact of

• Declining visits
• Lack of differentiation
• Not listening to customers

A couple things were really interesting from the presentation.

1. In their extensive studying of the customer, they came to a point where the target was more “attitudinal” than demographic. Their target turned out to be “people who love shoes” (or something similar).
2. After massive research and sweeping changes to reposition their brand, it took Famous Footwear 1-2 years to see results.

That second point is worth comment. If you think a couple band-aid changes to your brand will reap massive overnight results, more often than not you will be wrong. Turning around brands takes time.

In fact, Jay said that the 18 months after initiating the changes were the hardest period of his career because they continued to lose market share for the first while and his management was full of naysayers. It takes time for your brand to gain or regain creditability.

Just something to chew on. And, if you need help, contact me, John Pollard, at Morsekode.

Quick Wisdom from Art Fry, 3M, Inventor of Post-It Notes

Mark Morse and I were hanging out at an American Marketing Association event in Minneapolis this last Thursday – actually, I shouldn’t put it that way, but I’ll post about what we were doing later – Anyway, as the event wore down, we found ourselves sharing a beer with Art Fry (he may have been drinking wine, but I digress). Art Fry is the guy that invented the wildly successful Post-It Notes for 3M. If you’re interested, this link will give you more about Fry and the history of the Post-It Note.

We had a really interesting chat with Art about his long tenure with 3M, the history of 3M, and also about some of the leaders that influenced him while at 3M.

As we were all preparing to leave, he said something that I think we all need to hear. This is my rough paraphrase:

“None of us were really geniuses. We were just normal people who were willing to give something new a try.”

Have you been avoiding giving something new a try? It seems like Art’s attempt(s) turned out pretty well. Maybe yours would too?