Marketing Talks

If you personally know me, you will know how excited and hooked I get when someone talks about marketing and ads. Last week in my marketing class, my professor showed a documentary which basically asked the question -- where do you draw the line between branding and the actual product?

An example of successful inner branding in my opinion is the BMW and its awesome ads. BMW is not just a car, it is so much more --  "At BMW we don't make cars, we make Joy." Cheesy? Yes. Or maybe even Burt's Bee's new line of product named Güd who embraces the idea that women are not happy because they're beautiful, but that they're beautiful because they are happy. Simple? Absolutely. But most importantly, it works. Other companies that successful used this concept of love marks are Cheerios and Coca-cola. These ideas strike right back to the essence of human emotions and even being.

However, it is argued that at the end of the day, the product is just a product. The branding is only an idea. It's only a laptop (Apple), and it's a only a pair of running shoe (Nike). And it's only detergent (Tide) -- as long as it can make your clothes clean, that's all that should matter. And to back this argument, the documentary showed the process of how Song was created by Delta to compete with Jetblue. One of the co-founder of Kate Spade worked with Song's marketing team to artistically brand Song with the idea of leisure, hip, and entertainment. On the other hand, investors of Song wanted advertisements to focus mainly on their low-cost position. In the end, Song failed.

So do ideas sell? Or will creativity and out of the box ideas take you so far? I believe that a successful product is when the brand and the benefits or features of the brand are seen as inseparable to the consumer. Personally, I fall easily in love with ideas. But there is an important lesson I took away from this documentary: have your head in the sky while keeping your feet grounded.


Carol