Page 309 - Marketing Management

286 PART 4 BUILDING STRONG BRANDS

difficult to discern what could have been the rationale behind the deal to start with. Moreover, because of
the broad exposure of the characters in the marketplace, many consumers had begun to feel Disney was
exploiting its name. Disney moved quickly to ensure that a consistent image—reinforcing its key brand
associations—was conveyed by all third-party products and services. To facilitate this supervision,
Disney adopted an internal brand mantra of “fun family entertainment” to serve as a screen for proposed
ventures. Opportunities that were not consistent with the brand mantra—no matter how appealing—
were rejected.

DESIGNING A BRAND MANTRA Brand mantras are designed with internal purposes in
mind. A brand slogan is an external translation that attempts to creatively engage consumers.
Although Nike’s internal mantra was “authentic athletic performance,” its external slogan was “Just
Do It.” Here are the three key criteria for a brand mantra.
• Communicate. A good brand mantra should define the category (or categories) of busi-
ness for the brand and set the brand boundaries. It should also clarify what is unique about
the brand.
• Simplify. An effective brand mantra should be memorable. For that, it should be short, crisp,
and vivid in meaning.
• Inspire. Ideally, the brand mantra should also stake out ground that is personally meaningful
and relevant to as many employees as possible.
Brand mantras typically are designed to capture the brand’s points-of-difference, that is, what is
unique about the brand. Other aspects of the brand positioning—especially the brand’s points-
of-parity—may also be important and may need to be reinforced in other ways.
For brands facing rapid growth, it is helpful to define the product or benefit space in which
the brand would like to compete, as Nike did with “athletic performance” and Disney with
“family entertainment.” Words that describe the nature of the product or service, or the type of
experiences or benefits the brand provides, can be critical to identifying appropriate categories
into which to extend. For brands in more stable categories where extensions into more distinct
categories are less likely to occur, the brand mantra may focus more exclusively on points-
of-difference.
Brand mantras derive their power and usefulness from their collective meaning. Other brands
may be strong on one, or perhaps even a few, of the brand associations making up the brand
mantra. But for the brand mantra to be effective, no other brand should singularly excel on all di-
mensions. Part of the key to both Nike’s and Disney’s success is that for years no competitor could
really deliver on the combined promise suggested by their brand mantras.

Establishing Brand Positioning
Once they have determined the brand positioning strategy, marketers should communicate it to
everyone in the organization so it guides their words and actions. One helpful schematic to do so is
a brand-positioning bull’s-eye. Constructing a bull’s-eye for the brand ensures that no steps are
skipped in its development. “Marketing Memo: Constructing a Brand Positioning Bull’s-eye” out-
lines one way marketers can formally express brand positioning.
Establishing the brand positioning in the marketplace requires that consumers understand
what the brand offers and what makes it a superior competitive choice. To do so, consumers need
to understand in which category or categories it competes and its points-of-parity and points-of-
difference with respect to those competitors.
Category membership may be obvious in some cases. Target customers are aware
that Maybelline is a leading brand of cosmetics, Cheerios is a leading brand of cereal,
Accenture is a leading consulting firm, and so on. Often, however, marketers for many other
brands must inform consumers of a brand’s category membership. Perhaps the most obvious
situation is the introduction of new products, especially when category identification itself is
not apparent.
Category membership can be a special problem for high-tech products. When GO
Corporation created the first pen-based tablet computer in the early 1990s, analysts and the