“No great marketing decisions
have ever been made on quantitative data.”

John Scully
Former PepsiCo president, former Apple CEO

The Tree of Knowledge

Marketers commonly use decision trees to assess features and benefits to determine what is most important to consumers. Quantitative results can be obtained by asking respondents a sequence of very specific questions that branch out using if/then methodology.

Unreasoned Response

In a focus group years ago, an outspoken man was asserting himself by speaking out of turn, disparaging the process, and scoffing at the premise that brand had any bearing on his buying decision, ultimately proclaiming, “I’m just here for the money.”

“Control” Group

Experienced focus group moderators realize if unaddressed, dominant individuals can establish control, affect the group and ultimately hinder true and useful input. The deft moderator began to ask a series of if/then comparative questions that challenged the man to reconsider his inherent assumptions. In essence, the moderator drove him through a decision-making process to help him formulate reasoned positions.

Once back on topic the naysayer became the moderator’s most vigilant and attentive advocate – offering considered and definitive feedback. The rest of the group followed suit.

“The only relevant test of the
validity of a hypothesis is comparison
of prediction with experience.”

Milton Friedman
Nobel Prize-winning economist

Overrated Ratings

Similar principles apply to common online qualitative tools such as the five-star, numerical value, or Likert scales used to value or measure a respondent’s level of agreement with a given statement. Although quick and simple for respondents to complete, unlike decision trees, these methods ask subjects to value an attribute or preference without any measure of comparison, which lacks objectivity and is prone to positive or negative bias when respondents rank nearly everything of high (or low) importance.

Minimize Error

In What Do Customers Really Want on the Harvard Business Review site, Eric Almquist and Jason Lee explore Maximum Difference scaling. An extension of the Method of Paired Comparisons where subjects select a preference from two choices, MaxDiff asks respondents to identify their highest and lowest preference from a subset of attributes or statements. Multiple subsets are tested as part of a series. Almquist, a partner at Bain & Company, talks through one MaxDiff study on the relative importance of restaurant attributes in this presentation.

Asking respondents to rate selections is helpful and informative, but requiring them to decide between selections forces them to weigh answers. It inspires considered input, and generates more defined, useful and valuable feedback while eliminating undecided responses and mitigating positive and negative bias.

Maximize Outcome

Qualitative research adds relevance and validity to quantitative findings. In brand marketing research, consider your premise and process carefully from the outset to limit risk and maximize return. Remember, research often drives strategy, strategy drives spending, and spending drives outcomes – both good and bad.

Let well-considered decision trees help you branch out in the right direction.

image: pkeyn

Free to Brand Entertainment

Chanel tells a romantic tale in this 2:22 video entitled Night Train. It’s a familiar story, the same one Chanel’s been telling generation after generation.

No longer constrained by rigid 30 or 60-second ad models and fee-based, one-view, network television slots, Chanel is free to produce branded video content in various lengths and portable formats. They can post that content across an array of distribution channels on the Internet, free of charge—just like every other brand, large and small. And so can you.

There are a million ways to market a product. But I suggest you not try all of them.

-Tim Siedell Fuse Industries

What Price Value?

Quality content and production values still count if you hope to engage your audience and rise above the 10 billion monthly YouTube views. Expertly filmed, cast, scored and produced, the Chanel video is classic branding aimed at maximizing emotional engagement and memorability—right down to the final love-to-logo-to-product morph brand punctuation.

But proper distribution and promotion still rule the day. Television provided an expensive, reliable, direct and proprietary fee-based conduit to customers. And while today’s brand marketers are blessed with many relatively inexpensive options to reach their audience, they also shoulder all the responsibility and cost of standing out amid a crowded in-bound and social media marketing free-for-all.

What Price Strategy?

This multitude of options places a premium on integrated strategies even for the Chanel’s of the world as they compete with every brand under the sun, including yours. Of course, not every brand benefits from an opulent brand equity, a product men love to smell and women love to wear.

But Night Train’s nearly half a million YouTube views to-date proves proper product planning, positioning and promotion strategies are still the best way to create real value out of an ocean of on and offline marketing and medium options.

Videos, blogs, SEO, email, podcasts, microblogging, fan pages, micro-sites, proprietary online communities. As you plan your next marketing foray into these new frontiers, don’t neglect the benefits of integrated strategy, planning, content and production values.

“How much cheese do you take off the pizza until you have no customers left?”

Gordon Bethune, Continental Airlines turn-around CEO (circa 1994)

Defining Value

Financial results and brand experience – the two are inextricably linked in the equation of profitability. Whether or not they are completely understood and embraced, shareholder results and brand value are ultimately both the responsibility of the CEO.

CEOs who place a premium on brand design and brand experience realize the most sustained return on shareholder brand value. While task-oriented responsibilities for creating brand and shareholder value can be delegated, the final responsibility for valuation outcomes can not be abdicated.

“We push innovation
and design very strongly.”

Bob Ulrich, Target Chairman and former CEO

Particularly in an age of socially distributed messaging, if your product is faulty or lackluster in form and appearance, your service is sub par, or your price inequitable, your profitability, brand and shareholder value will eventually suffer.

A Brand-colored Vision

Withstanding the effects of business fluctuations is often dependent upon remaining true to a vision for your brand. Steve Jobs famously refused to relinquish the reins of Apple to an accounting-minded CEO after a product flop.

Investors and Wall Street alike have always recognized that Apple’s stock price is tied directly to Jobs’ final say and his dogmatic defense of brand design and belief in its business value. CEOs who focus on financial responsibility alone myopically neglect and erode brand value.

However, assuming a CEO holds and adheres to a vision for their brand, as filtered through the eyes of their customers, the resurgent moments can be something to behold as the visionary listens, refines, and launches the brand’s design anew.

“Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.”

Steve Jobs, CEO Apple

A History of Brand Design and Business Value

CEOs who embraced brand design as a means to brand and business value abound: Virgin’s Richard Branson; Yves St. Laurent; Continental’s turn-around agent, Gordon Bethune; Martha Stewart; Target’s Bob Ulrich; and Starbucks’ Howard Schultz, just to name a few.

From product design to packaging, usability to interface design, remain steadfast in your adherence to brand design and its importance to your institution’s value.

How do you rate your brand’s design, your customer’s perception of it, and your vision for where it needs to be?

Image: SixyBeast

“The word website
is becoming a misnomer.”

-Ed Illig, Brainstorm

The Importance of a User-friendly Website

Brainstorm’s Ed Illig spoke on the importance of a user-friendly website at a recent Linking Indiana winter event.

He cited three very different market sector website case studies: Anderson University, a higher education site; Lumina Foundation, a non-profit; and RCA, a commerce site.

Using these examples, he described what user-friendly means in different spaces and where he sees things heading in terms of usability, user engagement, brand, metrics, and more.

You can view the talk on Blip.tv in full here:
The Importance of a User-friendly Website [32:21]

Or in three bite-size, lunch-ready segments here:
(Part 1 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [12:40]
(Part 2 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [11:45]
(Part 3 of 3) The Importance of a User-friendly Website [8:47]

United, one of three identities (see below) developed by Brainstorm for Abraham’s Oasis

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct.”

- Jenni Roberts Associate Creative Director, Brainstorm

The Oasis

In a tiny village in the arid and often perilous region of Ethiopia is a refuge called Grace Village, which was featured on NOVA’s A Walk to Beautiful. It is one of several initiatives of Abraham’s Oasis, an organization focused on farming, health and childcare projects in Ethiopia.

At Grace Village, dispossessed women—women labeled social pariahs—find significance in raising abandoned or forgotten refugee children. It’s a symbiotic relationship that offers the children a nurturing and sustaining resource sorely lacking in their lives.

Karin van den Bosch, the driving force behind the village, is emphatic that these are not outcasts and this is no forgotten outpost; it is an Oasis. She doesn’t intend for the women and children who live there to simply survive; she wants them to thrive. But ensuring that happens is a challenge.

“The uniforms and identities Brainstorm provided help the youth ‘belong to a group,’ to be able to play a sport and forget about their problems for a while, giving these children hope and a way to turn their frustration and pain into joy.”

- Karin van den Bosch Abraham’s Oasis

A Hedge Against Uncertainty

Another childcare project of Abraham’s Oasis is a refugee camp, where they are protecting, clothing, feeding and educating nearly 700 minors who fled Eritrea without relatives. With 1,500 more on the way in the coming months, their budget is stretched thin despite funding from UN’s UNHCR agency.

Soccer, Cows and Schoolhouses

During a speaking engagement in the US, van den Bosch was asked whether the children of Grace Village might be rescued by adoption. She replied, “We do not export Ethiopia’s most valuable resource.�

When asked what Grace Village needed most, her reply was “Prayer.” Eventually she was cajoled into disclosing more tangible needs and their relative costs.

“The milk of a single cow currently meets the village’s needs, but two or three more cows would allow us to meet the ongoing operational costs of our schoolhouse facility,� she said. “That and uniforms for three village soccer teams at our refugee camp: Athletic, United and Oasis.�

Athletic. United. Oasis. Brainstorm’s identity designs for the new faces of Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams.

If a Thing’s Worth Doing

Brainstorm wanted to get involved. Our experience in sports branding and connections to soccer made designing logos and providing the teams’ soccer uniforms seem like the perfect first step.

“We’ve developed brand identities for many Fortune 100 companies, but this had immediate brand impact—potent and direct,” said Jenni Roberts, Associate Creative Director at Brainstorm. “We felt like the Abraham’s Oasis refugee soccer teams deserved identities of the same caliber as our corporate clients. Brand identities either add to, or detract from, any organization’s brand equity value. Large or small, we want to do it right.”

A Measured Significance

Playing before an audience of villagers, goats and milking cows, the Abraham’s Oasis soccer teams measure their brand’s significance by the confident smiles of their players. How do you measure your brand’s significance?

For more information or contributions visit the Abraham’s Oasis contact page.