Go-To-Market Strategy 101: Own a Product Category Through Invention
Objective: Position Todi Shoes to be the "Apres Athletic Footwear" product category.
Most often to own a product category, the brand has to invent the market category itself. Red Bull is a case in point for the "energy drink" category. Reebok launched its brand with "aerobics footwear". Lululemon Athletica is identifiable as a "yoga-inspired" brand in athletic apparel. We are positioning the Todi brand to own the product category "Après Athletic Footwear" for aggressive, hard charging athletes. It's the brand you wear in to and out of the locker room. Just as Lululemon's "yogo-inspired" apparel product category was unclaimed, the "Après Athletic Footwear" product category is not owned by a competitive brand. It is a market niche for the Todi brand to stake its claim and, more importantly, own in the minds of today's athletes. The practice is not without precedence. For example, Rand Sperry invented the computer; IBM didn't. But IBM entered the market, raised awareness, and became identified as another label for computers, ultimately claiming the category. The closest success of an athlete shoe being known as an Après Athletic shoe is exclusively with soccer players. This two-decade long success is the Adidas Samba shoe and the Adidas Soccer Flip Flop. Our go-to-market strategy to build the Todi brand is to narrow the focus and to actually invent, define and claim the "Après Athletic Footwear" product category. This strongly positions Todi to be the brand name people equate to the product category. [e.g., Kleenex, FedEx, J&J Baby Shampoo, Coke, Xerox, IBM and iPod]. To accomplish this, we must initially focus on a word or concept Todi can truly own in our athlete-consumers' minds. Specifically, this word is what we want to come to mind when people utter the Todi brand. Moreover, it is the reason our market will buy Todi over our competitors. [For example, for a long time, Volvo equaled "safety" in the minds of car buyers. And safety was the reason people bought Volvos.] Owning a word In our case, we can invent and own a new product category for Todi. Aggressive Athlete™ If we set the standard, a shoe can only be called Todi if an Aggressive Athlete is wearing it. What's more, if everything we do with our product and our brand messaging vehemently pays off the concept of "Todi. Exclusively for Aggressive Athletes", then over time, the Aggressive attribute will become an inherent part of the Todi identity and therefore will be shortened to simply Athlete. Hence: Todi = Athlete A prime example of this is when FedEx invented the category, "guaranteed overnight delivery" and delivered on its promise. The result now is that the brand name FedEx is synonymous with "Overnight." A laser focus today will allow us to build meaning behind the brand itself and the brand strategy will allow us to effectively extend the Todi brand equities into new product categories. An adjacent and valuable brand extension from footwear is into apparel, "Après Athletic" apparel of course. At this point, it is clear we are launching more than a footwear company and expanding into an apparel company. We are creating a valuable brand ™ a global brand aimed at owning a valuable concept of "I am a aggressive athlete" in the minds of our consumers. Our go-to-market strategy aggressively focuses on building this valuable perception around the Todi brand. Initially, we are implementing a combination of guerilla tactics, Internet PR, social media, street teams and "exclusivity tactics" to effectively bring our brand message to market. Our team is fired up to own this category and deliver success on behalf of the Todi brand.
Labels: brand design and development |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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8.21.2008 @ 8:35 AM |
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Retail Package Design
Retail Package Designs: 6 Tips to be your consumer's first pick:
+How do you stand out on a crowded store shelf? With consumer sophistication growing along with the number of packages on the shelf, it is important that your consumer brand grab the attention of consumers walking by - and quickly! Consumers are becoming more and more weary of false claims and it's important to create believable brand positioning that can quickly resonate with consumers. Six tips to help your brand differentiate in the minds of consumers:
1. Simplify
a. The point is to let consumers know why they should buy your product and why it's superior to the competition, keep this simple to reduce the amount of confusion. Also, overly complex designs may be perceived as too expensive.
2. Differentiate
a. Be sure that your retail package design stands out on the shelf. If your package doesn't differ from the competitors, you'll be lost in a sea of similar designs and messaging. Build a brand that differentiates your retail package design in the mind of the consumers. Also, if your design and messaging is too close to that of the competition, you'll cause confusion in the market.
3. Clearly communicate
a. It is important to communicate clearly and quickly to consumers. Pay attention to the appropriate hierarchy and allow the most important information to be displayed on the front of the package clearly. The messaging should be understood easily and it should be clear to the consumer why your brand is different and superior to the competitors.
4. Communicate to your target market
a. Are you targeting the right person? Understand your target market and communicate the appropriate messaging and graphics. Make sure your communication to your target market makes sense visually, differentiates from the competitor's offerings, is linguistically correct and appropriate for the culture it's being sold in.
5. Grab attention
a. Color, type, iconography, imagery and the physical structure of your packaging, used effectively, will help you stand out on the shelf. It is important to use these attention grabbers, along with clear, targeted messaging to stand out on the shelf and quickly grab the attention of consumers to make the sale.
6. Own your retail package design
a. Your package design needs to meet both government and regulatory standards, understanding these regulations early in the process will save a lot of time and money. It is imperative to make sure you've trademarked everything you're using on your package (logo, name, color, symbol, shapes, etc) to ensure that your competition can not use your intellectual property and to make sure you're not infringing on someone else's trademark. See more about trademarks at: http://www.uspto.gov/main/trademarks.htmLabels: consumer packaging design |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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7.17.2008 @ 8:37 AM |
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SEO Strategy: Adding value with every link.
Gaining links from other sites to help promote your business and improve your SEO is no secret. In fact, some people choose to do this in the form of trading links- which is one of the most widely known, yet unsound, SEO tactics out there. Most overlook the fact that simply adding links doesn't necessarily add value. It's even ill advised according to Google and other search engines when it's done solely to try to increase search engine ranking. So how do you truly add value by linking?
What Google, and other search engines, want you to do is to approach the situation as if search engines didn't exist. For example, if you have a partner who has a website who wants to link to you, then you should first ask yourself a few questions. Think about your answers from a strategic perspective and remember a true link should add value to the user experience on both sides of the click.
- Does your partner's site complement your site?
- What reasons do people have to visit my partner's site?
- Would those people, as part of their experience on that site, be likely to follow a link back to my own site?
- Does the link relate to your site? This can be categorically, horizontally or vertically as long as an intuitive connection exists.
- Can you identify a piece of content or place on the site that your link could exist as part of it and make sense/add value to the user experience?
- Is the site professional and would you like to be associated with it?
- Is the site credible and doesn't practice any black-hat or malicious SEO strategies and tactics?
If you have a hard time answering any of these questions, you may want to re-consider and possibly avoid getting linked with the site in question.
If, on the other hand, the answers lead in a positive direction, make sure your partner uses a descriptive hyperlink--something more than "click here"--and make sure the link is to a relevant portion of the site. (It might make sense for to link directly to a product page, for example.) If you do get linked, and think you should link back, you should perform the same exercise. Don't link back to someone just because they linked to you! Only link if it adds value.
Our approach
MicroArts has had proven success following these guidelines with our own network of partners. As a company specializing in aligning brand design, positioning and development and seeding it online as part of our clients' websites, it is not uncommon for site visitors to ask themselves, "Who made this?" So oftentimes, our clients will include a single hyperlink to our website with a label along the lines of "Website Design by MicroArts Creative Agency" or "Brand Design by MicroArts." This example of a descriptive hyperlink sends curious and interested visitors in an intuitive and linear manner to our website. This has three primary benefits:
- We get a relevant traffic flow of potential prospects, who have already seen our work and are interested to learn more.
- Search engines naturally recognize these links and assign us higher ranking on results pages
- We can ask our partners to change terms and tweak terms within each descriptive link as we evolve, our work evolves and search engines evolve. This flexibility provides a great way to test certain relevant link descriptions within different spaces to see what works best.
To find out how we can develop and deliver value adding SEO strategies and tactics to boost your online presence and drive traffic to your site, please call 603.430.1110 to learn more.Labels: complex website design and development, social media influence marketing |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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6.20.2008 @ 2:31 PM |
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Brand Development: The Little Things Count
This morning our Principal Brand Director, Peter Getman shared a quote with our team and provided some thought food as his breakfast offering. Here is the quote that he shared with us written by Tom Peters.
"Branding is the hard-earned certification of True & Cool Distinction
within the organization's sphere of influence, enormous or minuscule." -Tom Peters
Why did this quote catch his attention? Here is the additional insight he shared with us...
"The miniscule portion of that quote is the special insight he offers. The proper execution & delivery of a brand's miniscule 'communication' and brand's miniscule 'customer experiences' imparts a believability to a brand's enormous claims of value. A simple concept that too many brands are 'too busy' to pay attention too. Individual's... People*, should consider this as well in their own behaviors, as they too are 'brands'.
*Every brands communication plan should have a part called "the little things" where the execution is laser focused and results are tracked. These miniscule measures of experience can have a majorscale impact on your long-term success. The makeup of a brand extends far beyond its traditional assets, it is walking, talking, and possibly sitting next to you right now. It is the devoted listener of the iPod on the train, the guy reading the paper every morning in your cafe or even the person taking the time to share your idea with world like me.
At MicroArts our Communications team dials into every level of brand communication and has the eyes, ears and senses to be a part of the experience of the people it touches in the world surrounding us. Call us to learn how the "People" can work on behalf of your brand.
603-430-1110.Labels: brand design and development |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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5.27.2008 @ 1:20 PM |
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The rise of Social Media: Top Brands in the Conversation Bubble
There are hundreds,thousands and millions of new, user-generated conversations happening online every single day. Individuals are joining social networks, posting comments on a blogs and forums, adding their thoughts to a wiki or sharing media with others through various content sharing sites like YouTube and Flickr. The rise of conversationally oriented content and collaborative hosting environments has grown so rapidly that according to Datamonitor, in just three years time 70% of online content will be user generated. Even Technorati the mammoth of blog monitoring covers less than half of the estimated amount of blogs worldwide of 171 million.
So amidst this growing user driven conversation bubble what Brand's are truly making a splash? We recently stumbled across an excellent study called "The Top 100 Brands" by Immediate Future. They did a comprehensive study to find out what brands have the most "share of voice" within popular social networking sites and other social media mediums.
Here are some of the specifics on how they performed the analysis as written by Immediate Future.
Social network group sentiment analysis
To gain a measure of the overall sentiment of brand-focused groups set up on Social networks, brand name searches were conducted across three major social network sites Facebook, Flickr and MySpace. All groups focused primarily upon a brand were recorded and split in accordance to whether the overall tone was positive, negative or neutral.
Brands share of voice in social media
Discovering share of voice provides a snapshot of brand mentions in social media. It does not take into account the influence of the mentions and therefore measure the impact of the conversations. It is the first step in the discovery and mapping of a brand's social media landscape and it enables brands to identify the noise or buzz about them online.
By measuring the number of times the Interbrand top 100 global brands are mentioned across the most prominent social media sites, it is possible to determine which brands are the most talked about. The bigger the noise, the more important it is for brands to examine who is talking about them, what they are saying and if they are influential. It is the first step in engaging with social media and participating in the conversation." (Immediate Future)
Here are the top 25 brands in Social Media and their Share of Voice in popular Social Mediums.
As you can see the majority of the top brands operate within the online technology and include search giants Google and Yahoo! No surprise they get a significant amount of conversation and content sharing occuring within YouTube as well as have a large blog swell surrounding them. What is kind of interesting is that the two leaders Google and Yahoo! have a relatively small share of voice within MySpace when compared to that of Cannon, Disney, Ford, Samsung, Gap, MTV and many others. Exactly why is this occurring? Here are two possible reasons for this occurrence..any to add?
Technical communities vs. evangelism groups- Google and Yahoo! are surrounded by very focused conversations and topics about search strategies and specific inquiries. MySpace is comprised of typically unfocused activities and conversations about a particular thread....
Producer vs. Aggregator: As search destinations, not product "producers" Google and Yahoo! are widely adopted and therefore don't have an "elite" group of supporters around them. Users assume that Google and Yahoo! are the staple of search already so why bother joining a group about it? On the other hand organizations producing multiple products can garner early adopters through a social mediums like MySpace.
Why is it important to know your share of conversation in the Social Media sphere?
Knowing where relative conversations around your brand are occurring can not only tell you a lot about your online presence it can be a personality check regarding your actual brand. Is it being perceived as conversational, engaging and shareable? Why is it only showing up in certain places? How does its current perception and online dispersion possibly affect future social media initiatives? If you haven"t taken a "deep" dive into the conversations currently surrounding your brand we strongly recommend in doing so. Let our social media and online PR division "Umunngo" show you how to create and be a part of the online conversations occurring around your brand.Labels: social media influence marketing |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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3.28.2008 @ 1:35 PM |
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The Real Essence of SEO: Effective Communication
MicroArts' approach to search engine optimization (SEO) isn't about complicated terms or hype about beating the search engines at their game, instead it's all about good communication. This is because, in the end, search engine optimization techniques are actually just a subset of good online communications techniques.
Since SEO is only a part of good communications techniques we never apply it solely for the sake of ranking higher in the search engines' organic listings. This is especially true if it's at the expense of good writing and communication. Why not? Well, let's say for argument sake that "your widgets are the best widgets anyone in the widget market could hope for in a widget." And let's say that sheer repetition gets you the recognition you want from people searching for "widgets." The fact remains that your message is weak and you're not going to compel anyone to buy widgets from you. Besides, trying to game the system like that just doesn't work.
Google and other search engines dedicate large portions of their budget to make their engines behave and classify information more and more like a person would every day. Therefore, trying to trick the system would require Google-eqsue budgets and constant vigilance as the algorithms change. So it's a risky and expensive move at best to try to play that game.
Further, Google's own guidelines for SEO say to do what you would if search engines did not exist. They say that if you are effectively communicating with your users then you are effectively communicating with search engines and this is the best way to increase your search engine results page rankings.
What are effective communications on the web?
To truly communicate effectively online, you need to reach all users-regardless of their technical savvy, practices, and equipment. That means you have to accommodate all types of browsers and all types of user abilities. It means graphics and flash have appropriate text-based representations backing them up. And it means you always connect with the lowest denominator of technology while reaching for the highest. Some examples of how to do so include:
Make sure everything is labeled
Complete all labels in a way that is most relevant to the user-telling them where they are and where they can go.
Act like a newspaper; put the most important things at the top of the page and make the most important information on the page stand out with larger text.
If you do all that, and create great content to boot, then you are on the path to great success. The next step is to tell the world about your website, which we'll cover in a future blog post.
In conclusion, concentrate on your story rather than search engine spiders. Reach out to your audience and engage your users. Make sure you are clearly communicating with all types and all technologies. At MicroArts Creative Agency, we know how to develop websites that effectively tell your brand story and enhance your brand experience. And as it turns out, that's the way to draw users in and achieve a higher ranking.
Give us a call. And let's get started!Labels: complex website design and development |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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2.25.2008 @ 11:16 AM |
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Nine no-nonsense attributes of a kick-ass creative agency
Besides healthy debates of "Pirates vs. Ninjas," there are a few things that enhance and improve the culture of creativity here at MicroArts Creative Agency:
1. Intimacy. There is no behemoth Madison-Avenue bureaucracy here. MicroArts is a small and nimble creative brand agency. The designers and developers sit together in one room. No cubicles. No walls. No secrets! Everyone knows what the other is doing. And because of this, our people truly get to know each other personally.
2. Collaboration. A creative agency our size needs to practice teamwork. We complement each other. We need each other. We nurture creativity by making ourselves available to bounce ideas off, pitch in, and take on new tasks. More than a practice, this is an ideology. Teamwork defines us. And when everyone pitches in, everyone takes greater pride in all creative and online projects.
3. Focus. Everyone concentrates on common goals and deadlines. We share a collective purpose to create tangible deliverables and success for our clients.
4. Commitment. We are as dedicated to our creative agency as we are to our clients. We understand that if the company wins, the individuals win.
5. Empathy. Creative teams are made up of diverse personalities. We need to respect other's opinions and points of view. With that understanding in place, we all can be comfortable speaking our mind.
6. Accountability. This is a two-way street. Be accountable for your actions. And hold other's accountable for theirs. Do the right thing all the time.
7. Derring-do. OK, this is a blatant shout out to the pirates out there. But a creative agency can't be afraid of changing seascapes. We must face the future with courage and self-confidence.
8. Optimism. Negativity is a toxin that can destroy any organization. On the other hand (and although it's often described as "contagious"), a positive attitude is a strong panacea that heals, strengthens, and invigorates entire projects or companies.
9. Trust. Believe in your skills. Believe in the team. And when it comes to a pirate versus a ninja, believe what you want. ... But a Viking could kick their drunken and stealthy butts eight ways to Sunday. Labels: company culture |
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MicroArts Creative Agency |
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2.13.2008 @ 11:13 AM |
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