Steven Donaldson, President, BGDI

Building Equity in a Brand

When developing a company name and tagline that will communicate the nature of your customer relationship, how your product functions or the customer benefits, it's often difficult, with one word or one phrase, to say what business you are actually in and what differentiates your company in that market.

When a company like Nike says "Just Do it" or shows only the "swoosh", they are making use of the brand equity they have already spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build with their customers through advertising, endorsements, retail presence and sponsorships. These efforts clearly define their product as athletic shoes and associate athletes using them with their performance. Nike can afford to say little or nothing about the company and totally focus on differentiation. The use of a descriptor identifying the industry and business is not necessary with this high level of customer awareness already built for the brand.

The vast majority of companies doing business today do not have this equity or the resources to create it. The nature of the technology arena, where companies have very narrow markets, specific buyers and global customers, does not lend itself to such a broad effort. How do you create awareness and differentiation efficiently, with every contact with potential customers?

It's critical to include a core description or defining reference with every appearance of the name so an accurate awareness of the company is built directly and quickly, allowing instant recognition of what the company is trying to sell, to whom and in what market. The descriptor fills this role: it can add more than just an industry reference; it can claim dominance, speed or efficiency in a given market. But the primary purpose of the descriptor is to act as a key reference point for the brand name. This is why it's critical to make sure it always appears with the brand logo/name.

An example would be Overhead - Quality Roofing Installations. It's a synergistic relationship. The meaning communicated through both elements working together is obviously more either element standing alone.

THE TAG LINE

Using a tag line with a company name is often seen as the ultimate differentiator. The problem with the tagline, in many cases, is that it actually creates more obscurity instead of clarifying the reference. If you saw this company name and tag line- AAANetworks -Power tools for the web- would you actually know what this company did? Do they make routers, wire networks, provide software, do an asp solution? build web sites or what?

The goal is always to convey more specifically what you do how and how you do it better (differentiation).

THE SOLUTION

A telemarketing company recently went through a name change to clearly signal their mission and what segment of the market they specialize in. San Francisco-based Tactical Tele Solutions had developed an expertise inbuilding sales leads for higher-end enterprise software companies. Their customers were seeking SVP or C level decisionmakers for products ranging from $25,000 to $250,000. TTS' staff was highly trained and their process very refined, using proprietary software tools that enabled them to track and monitor leads and manage the process.

In working with them on a naming and brand study project we came to the conclusion that their name needed to reflect the relationships they were building for their customers. The leads they generated were the right ones at the right level in an organization.

Their current name clearly did not work-they wanted a name that clearly differentiated them from the vast masses of nighttime telemarketers, where volume is king. The name we developed- RAPPORT -came from identifying the nature of the relationship required to build real, actionable leads. Yet this name did not clarify to the potential customer what they actually did. From this point we developed two additional key components - the descriptor, to immediately define their core business operation and the tag line, to show the unique value they brought to their customers.

The descriptor is Integrated Telemarketing Solutions. This says they are a telemarketing firm and that they have several products and approaches that "integrate" into one offering. This descriptor always appears with the name in the logo "lockup". It's a key component of the logo. The tag line Making Intelligent Contact says what their objective is for their client -the core value proposition in one simple phrase.

CLEAR POSITIONING

The grouping of the RAPPORT logo with the descriptor and tagline gives the potential customer an immediate recognition of who they are, what business they are in, what they bring to the table as unique specialization and what their value proposition is for the client.

This clear brand positioning gives customers, marketers and other stakeholders the ability to understand what the company offers almost instantly. With the huge volume of obscure marketing hype being thrown at most markets and particularly in the technology arena, clarity of mission and clear value is a breath of fresh air.