Figure Out Your Product Brand First

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard, get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hi, this is Tracy Hazzard with Product Launch Hazards and this is Brand U. I'm kind of inviting you to do this at any time. I think, though, that if you really were to do this properly, you probably want to try brand you first because it's the foundation by which you can do all kinds of product development and have a big brand and build all of that. This is kind of the foundational conversation about what your brand is, about who you're talking to. And I just want to make sure you have an idea about some of the best ways to go about building that brand. So if you don't have a brand already, don't this is the place to start. So what is branding and why do you need it? Branding is not who you are. Branding is actually how people perceive you. So what do they think when they hear your brand name? What do they think about what you stand for? So while some of it is you deciding what that and controlling what some of that market perception will be, the reality is that you do have to check it, because sometimes what you're putting out there is not what they think. So we have done a bunch of research and I have written a couple of articles on it. And the interesting thing is there's really about a. I would say a 40 to 50% differential between what brands think of themselves. And these are big brands like Procter and Gamble and Coca Cola and all of those, what these big brands think of themselves and actually what the market thinks of them, what they stand for, what they mean. It doesn't mean they have any less sales or anything in that process, but. But maybe they could be doing better if there was a better match between their mission and what their audience thought of them. So that's really what I want you to get to set good groundwork when you're starting a brand, when you're brand building, right, you want to set a plan for where that's going to go. What does that mean? And I also wanted to find that when we're talking brand, we're not really talking about logo and colors, and those are just a visual expression of your brand. We're going down deeper. We're going down to the meaning behind all of those things and a way in which you can either guide designers to create those things for you or have them be more meaningful to you as you choose them, or meaningful to your brand. So those are the visual impact, the visual expression of your brand and how people see you. So really we got to start with what our end game is. So if we want to be a brand that is in the mass market, on the shelf somewhere, and I'm going to talk about the channels in just a minute because understanding your channel means a different market. But where do you see that? What is your business goal? And it needs to match that. Because if your business goal is to be an on the shelf brand someday, competing against many, many other big brands on the shelf, then you have to have an even deeper and more meaningful and more understanding of what brand you're building. So it's best if you really sit down and spend some time here. This is as critically important as having a brand plan, as having a business plan plan, because the two things can go very awry. If you don't have a plan for where you're going and seeing what that end result is, you can make many, many decisions along the way that head you in totally the wrong direction. So let's talk a little bit about what some of those ends in mind. Be it might be licensing, it might be you don't care really about the brand in the visual expression of it, because at the end of the day, you're going to sell that off and you just want to get someone else to be the brand behind it. So you're going to sell into a bigger brand. Okay, that's great. That's no problem. It doesn't mean that you don't have to spend a little bit of effort on figuring out your brand, because if you don't get traction in early sales, you may not have the market proof necessary to get licensed or acquired. So that is important enough to realize. It's like, how can I be positioned so that bigger brand that I want to buy me? Have them in mind when you're designing your logo, when you're designing that, make them feel like you fit them. That's always a really good way. So it gives you a mission and a goal and a way to determine your brand messaging and your brand style. If your mission is mass market, I want to be on the shelf at Target and Walmart. That's really great. Keep in mind, though, that they care just as much about their own core brand. And so it really takes a lot to ramp up and get seen within their store. So there needs to be as much quality synergy or so kind of like making sure that your product is a great match for the target customer, understanding a target consumer, understanding Walmart's consumer. When you get and understand who they are and your products and your brand resonate with them, then you're more likely to be an acceptable match. So in other words, thinking about it this way, if let's say you designed this fancy like high end logo that was just really boutique and cool and maybe belonged at like a very high end beauty product, should be, you know, at Neiman Marcus behind the counter or something like that, and you were trying to sell that into Target. While it might seem logical to say, well wow, look what great perceived value I'm giving you, it also might be be such a mismatch with their audience that they wouldn't even consider it and they would already rule it out just based on that brand perception. So you really got to make sure that there's not a mismatch between the quality level of your brand messaging and the visual that goes along with that and the types of products you're creating or the market that you're going to sell it. This channel that you're going to sell it in. You also want to have in mind if you're going to go the E commerce route that for most part on a Amazon model it's just a name, there really isn't a logo associated with it, there's no visual reference representation, but there is post sale. So in other words, I buy something, I get it and the box has branding on it, the product might have a logo and branding on it, there might be messaging within it and there's a really good place to have some personality here and attract people to your brand. So we have a great coffee company that we just absolutely love. And when they do it, they know that they're going for coffee aficionados, people who really care deeply about their coffee. And so when they go and they put out all of their materials, they everything just has that sense of like, oh, it belongs in a coffee shop. It's like a flyer that I would see there. Everything has that sense, the color palette, the feel of it, the words are worded in this nice soothing way and it just really resonates with their brand all throughout. Everything that they do and attracts more and more customers to them. So you still have to pay attention to that even in an e commerce model. And then the last one I kind of want to touch on is like this idea of going VC angels or equity crowdfunding. And here's the case really is at the end of the when you're trying to get capital, they are consumers at the end of the day if they think your brand doesn't look valuable enough. And here's the very first article I ever wrote for Inc magazine was million dollar companies don't buy $5 logos. And it's not like I have anything against Fiverr and 99designs. You can get really great designs there if you know what you're asking for. But the reality is is that if you want to be perceived as having a valuation in the multi millions, then you better have a brand that can scale up to that. They better believe beginning. It doesn't mean that you don't rebrand later or that you don't spend some more money and it doesn't mean you spend a fortune on branding. It just means you spend some time thinking about it and making sure you're putting good guidance into whatever designer you can afford to hire to create that visual expression for you. So now let's talk about really the essence of a brand and that is who do I want to attract? What's my message? That is going to attract them and draw them in and we need to make it match. And here's where I see a lot of inventors and engineers go wrong. They're all about like features and consumers are all about benefits. So when you have a mismatch in that, you think I just need more charts, I need more expressions, I need more checklists, that there's all these features in this thing that will help it sell better. And actually it's the reverse that happens. It's the reverse that happens because there's less story, there's less about what it's going to do for me, there's less benefits to me. I don't understand it more that way or it scares me off because there's too much detail. It now looks complicated. So getting out of your own head and hiring a consultant is a really good idea to make sure that the message that you're delivering is copywritten, is written to resonate with the right type of audience. We have a great guy who is going to be on the membership group. He's going to be guesting there. He'll put in an office hour every couple of months or so. His name is Bill Sterle and he has an amazing way of just twisting and tweaking your messages so that they resonate with the right audience. And I think I'm a Good writer, but Bill makes me so much better. And he's always able to just say, oh, you want to attract those visionary audiences. Oh, okay, great. If you take out this word, then you're going to attract them better because that word makes questions happen in their head. So a lot of times our words that we choose because we feel comfortable with them are actually blocks to the sale. So I'll post up an article that I wrote about him and you'll get to see that. And please make sure you don't miss product Launch Hazards podcast, because you'll hear an episode with him. And also go to the membership group so you can do an office hour with Bill because he's amazing at tweaking your titles, your sub lines, all of those things, your subheadings. So all of those things can really be helpful. And you don't want to miss someone like that in our group. And you're getting him at the price of membership, which is just amazing. So going back to who you want to attract. So now that you know who you are, who you want to reach, and you've got that messaging starting to dial in, then you really also have to get to making sure that there isn't that branding perception gap. And for most often, there's a 25% negative differential, meaning that while there is a big difference that can be up to 50% different between what your market thinks of you and what you believe you are inside, there's actually a 25% negative. So in other words, usually it's more negative than you think you are. Like, you're more proud of your brand, you're happy about how you're doing and all of that than the market is. And so not to be, you know, not to scare you off about that, but that negative perception is something that you then have to really look at your entire way you're dealing with your brand. It involves customer service, it involves instruction sheets and package design and all of those types of things that people read and touch and hear. And a video that they might watch to how to assemble if there's an assembly video, all of those things, your Facebook posts, your live streams, all of those things have a resonant effect. And if they do not have the same kind of brand synergy, and by that, I don't mean they look exactly the same, I mean they message exactly the same, they feel exactly the same, they are sending back the same messages to your target market. If they do not have synergy, then you're actually wasting your money and sort of adversely affecting your brand. So you're counteracting what's going on with your brand in the marketplace. So you definitely don't want to do that. So there are tons of resources and lots of people who are great at various parts of branding. There's some of my favorite people, like I mentioned, Bill Sterley, Wendy Lipton Dibner. She's amazing at impact brands. So how can I have a brand that does social good, has social impact, can do more for the world? The reality is, is that if you focus on impact, statistics indicate that you will actually have a better business. So if you provide more value, more resources, more services, and it does more for my life, I'm going to reward you with more business and more referrals and more recommendations and endorsements and all of that. So it comes back and pays you dividends. So that's really where having that impact business is so critically important. Wendy's great at talking about that. Rick Cesare has been an amazing branding expert and he's definitely going to be participating in multiple areas within our membership group, so you don't want to miss that. There's a 7P branding sheet, so there's a way for you to decide what's your passion, what's your plan, what's your people, and started thinking about it in, of course, our 7P way here at Product Launch Hazards. But there's a way for you to just outline that in a kind of a quick one sheet. So it doesn't have to be a more formalized business plan or marketing plan, but it's a brand plan just so that everybody's on the same page of what you mean and what you intend to express out in the marketplace. So there's lots of these things all over the place and I really want you to take advantage of them. So make sure you're heading back to the membership group at Product Launch Hazards and make sure that you really understand how you're branding new.

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