Creative Theme – Gambling
A Gambling theme was used for a management consulting member organisation to communicate with both prospective members and encourage membership and potential clients, with the main messages being:
Brand Positioning
Here is a mix of examples of logos, brand names and positioning statements that we have had the pleasure of working with and/or developing for our clients.
Most importantly, note how easy it is to develop creative, campaignable marketing communication for these brands.
Take a look at the websites of 2 similar categories at different stages of maturity:
1. The General Home Services category and
2. A sub-segment of this category ‘Cleaning’
The first is much more mature in terms of marketing communication. Its’ websites project a much more professional and corporate image.
The second is less professional and looks like it is a “small” business, which it is compared to the larger Head Office Marketing driven Franchise!
Why is it that some of our society’s brightest minds have no idea how to translate their “no holds barred” skills from the courtroom to the public domain of marketing communication in a battle to win more clients?
Maybe they just don’t need the extra business, maybe they don’t know how, or maybe the truth is a combination of arrogance and ignorance steeped in tradition! If you want to know the historical reasons why the legal profession is the way it is when it comes to marketing and advertising then you’ll see an excellent exposé here:
http://www.law.com/jsp/llf/PubArticleLLF.jsp?id=1181207138051 by the (American) National Law Journal.
Here’s an example from the Real Estate category for one of our clients.
Using the ‘Pepsi strategy against Coke’, we have used the principal of taking a leading competitor’s strength “Hardest working Real Estate Agent” by Hocking Stuart and developing a positioning statement that capitalizes on their weakness:
The result was “Working Smarter – For You”
It is interesting to note that Hocking Stuart, the very firm that became the marketing thought leader in their field has since changed their positioning twice since I first wrote this and now has no slogan or positioning statement at all! Do they now think that they are all grown up and don’t need one? I wonder how this will effect them…only time will tell and unless something drastic happens only they will know! What I am confident about is that they would have been much better off by sticking to and reinforcing their original slogan “Hardest Working Real Estate Agent”. Their size in the market (number of franchises / outlets) together with their marketing budget would have ensured their prominence and top of mind awareness in the minds of their customers and prospects.
For in depth exploration of the laws and principles of Positioning in the marketplace, you can’t go past Al Ries – http://www.ries.com/.
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