Articles
Branding
: A secret weapon to make your catalog or direct mail effort stronger
Brand is a tool which, when developed using
accurate and up-to-date market research, is an unbeatable tool for building
sales and loyalty in a catalog environment.
A primary advantage to using brand consistently is in how your customers
recognize you when you appear in front of them again and again. Here’s
why: If you pleased them in your first contact, they will look forward
to seeing you again. And your brand is the first thing they see, recognize
and respond to if you've been using it consistently. Remember, it’s
often said that you can’t REALLY call someone a customer until they
have ordered from you the second time. To bring your customer back, use
every tool at your disposal, including brand elements.
This is where you offer a real presence of who you are, so that your customer
remembers and feels good about visiting you again, rather than going to
a competitor who offers the same thing. In addition, It also is a strong
lever for getting customers to try you to begin with, but again, it’s
the returning customer where direct marketers and catalogs really make
their profit.
Historical compliance -- and non-compliance -- to brand elements:
Direct Marketing and Catalog Creatives historically
problem-solved from a place of autonomy. That is, when given a creative
problem to solve, they have traditionally solved the problem based on
the budget, the product being sold, the number of pages allowed, and so
on. They rarely have had anything to base their new creative on that has
been more than just someone else’s version of what the brand looks
like!
It’s only been over the past few years that the concept of brand
as another very strong tool for the catalog marketer and direct marketer
has been embraced.
It follows, then, that a big challenge in maintaining brand consistency
between your catalog and other materials is in the recognition of brand
as being more important than the autonomy of the people working on the
varied elements.
One solution to this challenge is getting complete buy-in from each creative
who works on your various elements, as to the brand strategy. It’s
not enough to just show someone prior samples and say “this is how
I want it to look,” because in many media such as space ads or the
web, the shapes and design parameters change dramatically from one to
the next.
Don’t forget, too, that the VOICE of your brand is equally important
to the APPEARANCE of your brand. So buy-in with your writers is going
to help it work better, too.
When educating your creatives about your brand, written items such as
your creative brief for the project, your marketing brand statement and
examples of ‘how you got where you are’ can all be a help. This
is an investment in your brand’s consistency so it is well worth
the time. Allow room for questions and dialogue, and if you have any graphic
standards guides, be prepared to provide them at the beginning, not after
design has been started.
In an in-house environment, there is more chance that brand looks and
voice will be consistent and strong, since usually it’s held together
by a unified marketing team and a group creative director. Bear Creek
Direct is a perfect example of this – CD Estin Kiger maintains a
strong and steady hand in every kind of correspondence that Harry and
David sends out, from direct mail gift solicitations, to their catalogs,
to their website. This is because the brand look and language of Harry
and David is something Estin spent a lot of time with over the first few
years of his tenure as CD. He communicates it very clearly when they farm
work out, and internally it’s total buy-in at the creative AND marketing
level.
I like how TravelSmith catalog carries through their branding in the catalog,
their lead generation space ads and on the web. The catalog’s brand
identity is very clear in the design and voice, and it’s also clear
from the fact that their famous little black travel dress is actually
part of their brand.
Using that dress as their lead-generator in their ad is also a brand-consistent
move on their part, and they also place it prominently on their website
for browsers to latch on to right away.
( I feel pretty certain they test other items in their lead-generation
ads and on the website, but this must be the epitome of their brand position
– convenience, light and easy travel, no fuss, ready-to-go.)
Brand in direct mail:
Other companies who are not thought of as catalogers
also share this challenge. American Isuzu Motors, with whom I have worked
for about 6 years, has done extensive brand research via their general
agency, Goodby Silverstein, and it’s supported in the database research
that M\S Database Marketing has done for them. The teams who create their
ads (Goodby), their catalogs (Designory) and their direct mail (msdbm)
all are on the same page as far as the creative rules and brand are concerned.
We have maintained a steady consistency between the mail, which is quite
different from the website, the catalog and the ads in format and medium,
because we understand HOW they came upon the ‘Life is too big for
cars’ and the ‘Go Farther’ brand positions.
In direct mail and catalog there are some style rules we bend (serif font
for bodycopy instead of less-responsive sans serif), but the strength
of the brand position shines through all the work. The voice is very very
consistent although we sometimes wish there were a little more flexibility
since we feel it occasionally hinders our selling effort. But in a world
overrun by SUVs now, Isuzu is maintaining a unique position because the
branding is accurate to the personality of the vehicles and the company.
In terms of brand supporting response numbers, The massive response and
return on investment we've gotten for Isuzu while dealing with very small
budgets shows that we can get a lot of "bang for our buck" when
brand is applied effectively.
