In my blogs about branding I have previously written about “Using Color to Brand Effectively” (March 2, 2012) and “Selecting A Trademark and Creating A Brand Identity” (April 15, 2010). In that latter post I discussed the differences between descriptive trademarks, e.g., “HOTELS.COM,” which marks immediately convey to potential customers the nature of the product or service offered under that mark and which will go to work right away and sell your product (In the case of “HOTELS.COM” it does not take a great deal of creative thinking to identify the subject of that website, which is a place where you can book hotel rooms.) and arbitrary or fanciful marks, e.g., Apple, Google and Amazon which have no immediate significance to consumers (The owner of an arbitrary or fanciful mark needs to supplement it with advertising so that customers know what it refers to, e.g., in the case of Amazon, that it does not refer to a river but, instead, refers to an on-line retailer.) As I wrote previously, the problems with selecting a descriptive mark include, should you seek to register it, the high likelihood that the United States Patent and Trademark Office may refuse to do so on the ground that it is merely descriptive and require evidence of widespread consumer recognition of that mark as a brand name before reversing that refusal, and because descriptive trademarks are considered to be weak, a competitor could adopt a closely similar mark, and once this occurs, divert traffic from your website and business from your enterprise. For example, in the case of HOTELS.COM, just by thinking of related terms to “hotels” I found a site called TRAVEL.COM that offers some of the same functions as the former site.
So, in “Selecting A Trademark and Creating A Brand Identity” I recommended that you select an arbitrary or fanciful mark, build a strong brand recognition for the product or service that you offer in connection with that mark and create a mark that will not only become easily remembered but one in which your rights will be more readily enforced and given greater protection by a court not only against competitors using the same mark on the same products but against competitors using the same mark on related, and depending on the fame of your mark, possibly unrelated products.
This brings me to the point of this blog entry, that in creating a brand identity, you want to have an elevator speech that evokes that identity that you can quickly bring to customers’ minds. An elevator speech is a short summary used to quickly and simply define a person, profession, product, service, organization or event and its value proposition. In other words, you should not only have a trademark, a service mark or a logo to identify your product or service but you should also be able to give that product or service a short descriptive identity that can quickly convey to consumers why they should buy that product or service. That identity can be created by the product or service itself or by the advertising for that product or service but, like an elevator speech, it should be accurate and easy to remember and may be incorporated as part of a secondary trademark. Here are some examples and associations that come to mind:
APPLE-Innovative, easy to use, attractively designed
BMW-The Ultimate Driving Machine (The BMW 3 series has been on Car and Driver’s 10 Best List 20 times.)
VERIZON-(Cellular Phones) – Reliable Network
MERCEDES-BENZ-Luxury Automobiles
GOOGLE-Accurate, complete Internet search results and maps
TOYOTA-Reliable cars
When those associations become muddled or can’t easily be made anymore; when the consumer no longer can quickly call up the brand and mentally obtain a clear, positive message about what that brand, that trademark, represents, the brand, and in many cases, the business associated with the brand is in trouble.
Here are some examples of the latter;
SONY, which formerly was associated with such innovative products as the Walkman and the Trinitron television. What commercial impression does that brand evoke now?
MICROSOFT-If one thinks of it as identifying easy to use multi-function software, then the brand still has value. If one relates it to such failed products as the Zune or the “blue screen of death,” then that brand is in trouble.
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY-Its website describes its mission as, protecting national security interests by adhering to the highest standards of behavior. It was perceived as a super-secret agency that had the ability to see where our enemies had their missile placed or could listen in on terrorists’ plans. Now it’s perceived as listening in on our telephone calls and those made by foreign leaders for reasons unknown and invading our privacy.
BLACKBERRY-Once known as the wireless communications device favored by the President and leaders of business and finance and depicted in the movies as such; it may no longer exist by 2014, it’s phones perceived as being obsolete and unfashionable. Yet its Blackberry Messenger service has been downloaded 10 million times on Android devices and on the iPhone in the 24 hours since it was made available to users of those devices. Unlike Twitter, where messages are usually public, and Facebook – whose privacy settings are not used properly by many users and which for technical reasons is easier for authorities to access at a later date – Blackberry Messages are private to recipients and encrypted during transmission. See http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/dec/07/bbm-rioters-communication-method-choice and for that reason this service was used by both British rioters and Arab spring activists.
So the lesson here is not only do you need to create a positive identity for your brand, but you need to monitor it, maintain it, and reinforce it in people’s minds. When Toyota’s cars are viewed as unreliable or Apple fails to keep coming out with innovative products, those brands will be in trouble too. If BlackBerry can change its brand identity from that of a maker of cellphones to that of a provider of reliable highly secure communications (See “National Security Agency” above.) its brand identity and business may survive.
