By danherman on May 22, 2008
A spate of recent articles about the Obama brand have, in my view as an expert on marketing, neglected the brand’s strategy and focused its verbal or visual expressions. But far more important is the distinction between the short-term brand, “Candidate Obama,” and the long-term brand, “President Obama.” So far candidate Obama’s campaign exemplifies perfect [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on May 22, 2008
During your annual planning ritual – do you study and analyze the current situation in your market and then move on straight to setting your goals? Thought so. Common practice but a big mistake! Chances are that your goals are far less ambitious than they should have been and consequently, so are your financial results [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 13, 2008
By definition, a luxury brand is an outstanding brand, justifiably priced highly and destined, at least primarily, to a select group of the social-economic elite. Luxury is not about unattainability though. After all, you cannot profit from consumers that cannot buy your brand. However, luxury is about the consumer outstretching herself a bit to buy [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 12, 2008
Our starting point is to be clear as to what we mean by “love for a brand”. The love of a brand is more similar to the love of ice-cream than the love for a spouse. Love for a brand is actually a strong feeling of anticipation for something good, pleasant or beneficial that we [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 11, 2008
This is how we, marketers, usually think: “Find out what they want, give it to them nicely wrapped and with a big shiny smile, and let the surveys show that they are satisfied.” Good old Satisfying Marketing, right? Well, not any more. Consistent data from all over the globe indicates that even the most satisfied [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 7, 2008
If you are trying to segment your market in the traditional way, what you may be looking for would be groups of consumers sorted out in such a way that a certain likeness exists within each group, and a difference exists between them. The variable determining the meaningful likeness or difference between those groups would [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 5, 2008
A successful differentiation is not imitated by your competitors, even though it brings you unmistakable success with consumers. It seems impossible? Not quite so. I am about to reveal to you the unexpectedly simple and wonderful secret of successful differentiation: you must think beyond the core benefits of your product category. Think: Off-Core Differentiation. “Core [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 5, 2008
The old customary procedure of strategy development has a pure and sound logic. It has been designed in order to answer the question: What is it that we should do in order to achieve our goals? The process essentially involves three stages: 1. Where are we now? 2. Where do we want to be? 3. [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 5, 2008
The ‘Marketing Strategy’ is the way we have come up with for achieving our marketing goals and it should include two mandatory elements: – Which target consumers whom we can reach, hold a viable potential to buy whatever we intend to sell? – What is the offer (the entire marketing mix) we will be presenting [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
By danherman on March 1, 2008
From time to time the marketing world is taken aback by huge, quick, unpredictable and seemingly inexplicable successes. These hits are products or services, entertainment locales or vacation spots, shopping malls or specialty stores that enjoy puzzling immediate popularity. There are incognitos that become hot celebrities, there are events, festivals or concerts that capture the [...]
Posted in Develop Your Skill
