Reviving a Brand, Revised

Making the brand/marketing blog circuit is Jeff Himmel's Brand Revival Checklist as seen on HBS Working Knowledge article, Second Acts for Old Brands. My take on the list is that it's geared almost exclusively to consumer packaged goods and focused heavily on the advertising component of branding. Often CPGs don't have clear-cut points of difference, and there's no real 'brand experience' as found in most B2B, service, technology, retail or hospitality businesses.

So I created my own Top 12 list for reviving brands that fall outside the CPG sphere.

Mantra Brand Revival Checklist
1. Listen to customers and understand what they want.
2. Determine how your customer experience measures up to what they want.
3. If it doesn’t measure up, fix it. If there’s a list of things to fix, start with what’s most important to customers.
4. Do you have a meaningful point of difference from competitors? If not, create one using the understanding from #1.
5. Create a focused, durable brand position that meshes with the previous 4 items.
6. Communicate that brand message consistently over time throughout every customer touchpoint.
7. Break down internal silos to ensure that all departments are working together to build the brand.
8. Create mechanisms to gather ongoing feedback from customers.
9. Make sure your employees understand how they can build the brand, and make sure they’re happy. Happy employees make happy customers.
10. Happy customers generate referrals. Measure your buzz factor.
11. Now that you’ve built your brand from the ground up, it’s worth spending more money on advertising.
12. Have discipline to follow – and continually reevaluate – all the points on this list.

And here's Himmel's list, if you haven't seen it:
1. Point of difference. Will consumers buy this product instead of another brand?
2. Unique selling proposition. Does the product tell a unique story?
3. Make the brand stand out.
4. Dominant share of advertising.
5. Frequency of advertising. Make sure the message about your product is repeated over and over to the public.
6. Listen to the consumer, and then listen again more carefully.
7. Produce creative advertising that strikes a chord with the consumer.
8. Control commercial production costs. (He tends to only spend about $2,000 producing a commercial.)
9. Use your money to place ads, not make ads, and get a dominant share of advertising.
10. Live in a state of perpetual paranoia and always know what your competitors are doing.
11. Consider the X factors about your product. For example, does it have an existing distribution, or will it have to be created from scratch?
12. Have discipline to follow all the points on this list.

Comments

[mark gorman]

Great blog. Although I am also from an Advertising background, in Scotland I thought Himmel's list was dull and obvious. Yours is much more true to what brands need to be be brands ie consumers.

[Dave Young]

Jennifer, congrats on getting this post picked up by Fast Company Now. Good stuff.

[Michele Miller]

Jennifer,

Great thoughts -- you lay such a good, solid foundation for thinking, which is something I don't always believe a business focuses on. There is such a hair-trigger response to the latest, greatest fad in branding that clear, concise points such as yours are often overlooked.

Love your blog!

Best,
Michele Miller

[David St Lawrence]

Jennifer,

You were doing fine until you went and wrote #7.
You just had to do it, didn't you?

That one is a deal-killer, for sure. I can just see the client saying, "Well, we're going to have to think about that one..." and smoothly shifting gears to discuss something less politically charged.

However, as usual, you are dead on. Without that, the rest is just an exercise.

[John Moore]

Jen, good stuff. I read the original list of 12 and came to the same conclusion,way too image-obsessed. I'd add to it the idea of having a cause, something powerful for stakeholders to believe in...