As I dive deeper into the topic of branding, I’m gradually meeting more exciting experts on the topic – and Marty Neumeier is definitely one of them. His books are proof enough.
Both “The Brand Gap” and “Zag” are experience-style books. The way the information is presented is definitely unique, but that’s not all. The format is there to drive the author’s points home.
I’ll share with you the key ideas from both of these branding classics:
- Core brand concepts
- Naming brands
- Brand differentiation
- Testing brand equity
- Keeping the brand alive
- Growing the brand
Let’s dive into the notes!
What is a brand?
I love comparing the definitions of common terms. And here’s what Neumeier has to say about brands.
In “Zag,” he states:
What exactly is a brand? Hint: It’s not a company’s logo or advertising. Those things are controlled by the company. Instead, a brand is a customer’s gut feeling about a product, service, or company.
While this is a punchy enough explanation, here’s the reasoning behind it, from “The Brand Gap”:
It’s a GUT FEELING because we’re all emotional, intuitive beings, despite our best efforts to be rational. It’s a PERSON’S gut feeling, because in the end the brand is defined by individuals, not by companies, markets, or the so-called general public… When enough individuals arrive at the same gut feeling, a company can be said to have a brand.
And while each person creates their own version of this gut feeling, companies can influence its formation. They need to communicate the qualities that make their brand different from the rest. And Neumeier, much like Al Ries and Jack Trout in “Positioning,” points out that brand management is about “the management of differences, not as they exist on data sheets, but as they exist in the minds of people.” We can’t create completely new meaning. We need to use what’s already in the customer’s mind and shape it.
The Brand Gap
We live in a terribly cluttered world. In Zag, Neumeier points out five types we need to suffer through.
Marketplace clutter takes 5 forms:
- PRODUCT CLUTTER. Too many products and services
- FEATURE CLUTTER. Too many features in each product
- ADVERTISING CLUTTER. Too many media messages
- MESSAGE CLUTTER. Too many elements per message
- MEDIA CLUTTER. Too many competing channels
And, as we learn in The Brand Gap, the answer to clutter is trust. It’s “the ultimate shortcut to a buying decision, and the bedrock of modern branding.”
But building trust is no easy feat. You need to be both creative in your communication and strategic in your message. This doesn’t work well in many companies because creative and strategic experts are often working in their own silos. This rift is the brand gap between logic and magic.
Charismatic brands
Bridging the gap means you can “shrink the “psychic distance” between companies and their constituents.” And this relationship is the basis of what Neumeier calls “a charismatic brand” – one that’s embedded in the cultural conversation and builds a tribe around itself.
A charismatic brand can be defined as any product, service, or company for which people believe there’s no substitute. Not surprisingly, charismatic brands often claim the dominant position in their categories, with market shares of 50% or higher. They also tend to command the highest price premiums-up to 40% more than generic products or services. And, most importantly, they’re the least likely to fall victim to commoditization.
The key word in that paragraph? “Believe.” There are viable substitutes for the brand, from a functional perspective. But its character and meaning are hard to match.
Brands and tribes
Brands are the little gods of modern life, each ruling a different need, activity, mood, or situation.
Nowadays, there’s no shortage of “functionally excellent” products. So features alone don’t cut it anymore: “the attention of marketing has shifted from features, to benefits, to experience, to tribal identification.” Eugene M. Schwartz and his stages of market sophistication point to the same thing. Neumeier highlights the shift from features and benefits to personal identity.
A charismatic brand wins because it helps the customer express a desired identity. It helps customers state they’re part of a tribe. Here’s what it means:
Better advice for companies is to focus their communications not on a USP but on a UBT—a Unique Buying Tribe—that has a natural affinity for the company’s products or services. USP was about PUSHING products and services. UBT is about PULLING people into a tribe they can trust. In a marketplace of me-too offerings, people don’t seek features and benefits so much as tribal identity. “If I buy this product, they seem to ask, “What will that make me?”
Naming a brand
I don’t think there’s a branding book that doesn’t address the topic of brand names. And there’s a good reason. “Customers will always want convenient ways of identifying, remembering, discussing, and comparing brands,” Neumeier explains.
In both books, he consistently focuses on a set of seven criteria for a good name:
- DISTINCTIVENESS. Does it stand out from the crowd, especially from other names in its class? Does it separate well from ordinary text and speech? The best brand names have the “presence” of a proper noun.
- BREVITY. Is it short enough to be easily recalled and used? Will it resist being reduced to a nickname? Long multi-word names will be quickly shortened to non-communicating initials. Ideally, stick to four syllables or less.
- APPROPRIATENESS. Is there a reasonable fit with the business purpose of the entity? If it works as well or better for another entity, keep looking. While appropriateness is vital, the name should not be so descriptive that it sounds generic.
- EASY SPELLING AND PRONUNCIATION. Will most people be able to spell the name after hearing it spoken? Will they be able to pronounce it after seeing it written? A name shouldn’t turn into a spelling test or make people feel ignorant.
- LIKABILITY. Will people enjoy using it? Names that are intellectually stimulating, or provide a good “mouth feel,” have a head start over those that don’t.
- EXTENDIBILITY. Does it have “legs”? Does it suggest a visual interpretation or lend itself to a number of creative executions? Great names provide endless opportunities for brandplay.
- PROTECTABILITY. Can it be trademarked? Is it available for web use? While many names can be trademarked, some names are more defensible than others, making them safer and more valuable in the long run.
While there’s a decent focus on naming here, the core of the brand goes way beyond the name.
Beyond the name
As a business, you must ensure you manage the “creation of the gut feeling,” not just through the brand name but also other brand attributes. Colors, imagery, and iconography all need to create a consistent feel.
Neumeier points out five areas all brand expression elements need to score high on:
- Distinctiveness – can it stand out from competing messages? Is it clear enough and unique enough to pass the swap test (more on that later)?
- Relevance – is it appropriate for its goals? Does it grow naturally from the DNA of the brand? It’s possible to be attention-getting without being relevant, like a girly calendar issued by an auto parts company.
- Memorability – can people recall the brand or brand expression when needed?
- Extendibility – how well will it work across media, cultural boundaries, and message types?
- Depth – can it communicate with audiences and create meaning on several different levels?
That’s a pretty serious list, right? I would’ve loved it if Neumeier had provided a process for ensuring each point. But I guess even having the checklist is a good starting point.
Differentiation
Whenever we talk about branding, we come to differentiation. And Neumeier focuses most of Zag on that topic, explaining how to create a distinctive brand.
Differentiation […] is about finding a whole new market space you can own and defend, thereby delivering profits over years instead of months.
Neumeier’s recipe for brand success has four components:
Most of Zag is focused on developing these four components. The more practical of the two books, Zag presents us with a 17-point blueprint for differentiation. Here’s a look at it – click the image to view it in a new tab in full size, and I have a work version for my readers.
I won’t go through every point on the list here, but I wanted to highlight some smart ways to develop a few of them.
Purpose
I always struggle with abstract branding concepts like purpose. Here are two ways to make it more concrete:
- Create your brand’s obituary: imagine it’s 25 years in the future, and your brand is gone. What would you like people to say about you?
- What’s your core purpose – the fundamental reason your company exists beyond making money? Try to articulate it in 12 words or less.
Vision
While a company’s purpose can be abstract, a company’s vision should be concrete. It’s a picture of the future you’re striving to create. To make it clearer, produce “vision deliverables”: a brochure, a script, an important speech… It can be anything that forces you to articulate your vision to the outside world. You don’t need to distribute these – but it’s a great exercise!
Trend
When talking about building on top of a trend, Neumeier says, “You can certainly build a brand without harnessing a trend, but you won’t get the raw, youthful energy of a zag.” While I see the value of this, I’d assume this is the varnish on top of a well-defined basis. A brand needs to be consistent in the long term – it should have its own core before you connect it to a trend.
Choosing the right trend is also important – otherwise, you may opt for the same trend your competitors focus on and end up looking the same.
Onliness
The litmus test for a clear differentiator, a well-built Zag, is the onliness statement. “If you can’t keep it brief and use the word Only, then you don’t have a zag,” Neumeier says.
The onliness statement should sound like this “Our [offering] is the only [category] that [benefit].”
To create a more detailed onliness statement, you should answer the following questions:
- WHAT is your category?
- HOW are you different?
- WHO are your customers?
- WHERE are they located?
- WHEN do they need you?
- WHY are you important?
Here’s what Harley Davidson’s extended onliness statement sounds like:
“The only motorcycle manufacturer that makes big, loud motorcycles for macho men (and macho wannabes) mostly in the US who want to join a gang of cowboys at a time of decreased personal freedom.”
I’m personally not a fan of this mad libs style of brand statements. But this is an interesting workshop exercise for brand building. And it’s not about the statement itself but about what you can do with it. “By checking back against your statement, you can quickly see whether any new decision will help or hurt, focus or unfocus, purify or modify your brand.” It’s essentially a litmus test for future decisions.
Neumeier adds the concept of a trueline – “the one true thing you can say about your brand, based on your onliness statement.” This needs to be something your competitors can’t claim and something your customers find valuable and credible. Truelines can’t be reduced, refuted, or easily dismissed.
Truelines are internal statements (as opposed to taglines that are “sexy” formulations designed for the public), and you probably haven’t seen many, so here are a few examples of truelines and taglines:
- Southwest Airlines lets you fly for the same cost or less than it costs to drive. > You are now free to move about the country.
- ChapStick is the secret to healthy lips in extreme weather. > My lips are sealed.
- Disneyland is the world’s favorite amusement park. > The happiest place on Earth.
- Nike helps you find your inner athlete. > Just do it.
Enemy
Picking an enemy can strengthen your position and clarify your brand offer. So Neumeier advises us to “step right up and pick a fight.” And while it’s appealing to talk about your competitors as your enemy, he reminds us: “Sometimes the enemy is not a competing company but the old way of doing things.”
Testing a brand
If you’ve gone through the 17-point checklist of Zag, you will probably end up with a clearly defined brand. But an internal notion of your brand doesn’t cut it. You need feedback and validation from the market.
Neumeier suggests a few cool tests to validate your brand’s fidelity.
The swap test
Wanna check out the effectiveness of your brand icon? Here’s a simple test you can perform without leaving your office. Swap part of your icon—the name or the visual element—with that of a competing brand or even a brand from another category. If the resulting icon is better or no worse than it was, your existing icon has room for improvement.
The hand test
While the swap test focuses on the brand icon, the hand test works well for messaging and copy:
Take any piece of visual communication and cover up your trademark with your hand. Can you tell whose piece it is?
The concept test
This next test is suitable for brand icons, colors, taglines, or headlines. It requires you to create a range of prototypes of the brand element in question and present them to at least ten members of the real audience (not company insiders) individually. The questions you’ll ask are all about confirming understanding, not liking. It’s about clarity.
A brand promise, for example, might be illuminated by questions like these:
- Which of these promises is most valuable to you?
- Which company would you expect to make a promise like this?
- If company X made this promise, would that make sense?
- What other type of promise would you expect from company X?
You might test a brand icon with a slightly different set of questions:
- Which of these icons catches your eye first?
- What made you notice it? Does it remind you of any other icons you’ve seen?
- What do you think this particular icon means?
- If it’s really supposed to mean X, do you think one of these other choices expresses it better?
The field test
Field tests go one step further and put the prototype in a real environment. For example, if you’re testing packaging, put the product on a shelf among the competitors.
Field tests can also be used to preview the success or failure of a new product. The experiment serves as an “opportunity test.” “If the product looks like a winner where it counts most, in the customer’s gut, then it can go to R&D for development,” Neumeier explains.
Field tests for digital products can take the shape of the so-called “smoke tests,” where you create a landing page for a product that’s still not developed and direct targeted traffic. If visitors click the signup button often enough, this means there’s an opportunity to build the actual product.
Keeping the brand alive
Based on his extensive experience, Neumeier knows that creating the brand narrative once is just the start. Making sure that the brand ethos permeates the company is an ongoing project.
The secret of a living brand is that it lives throughout the company, not just in the marketing department. Continuing education programs can get everyone in the company onto the same page, while seminars, workshops, and critiques can keep outside collaborators singing in tune.
Brand education needs to start with onboarding and continue without a finish line. If every new person learns about the brand, there’s less risk of “evaporation” – “the tendency for decisional wisdom to disappear as experienced people leave the company.”
Growing the brand
Building a single brand for a single product is easier than building brand extensions. But if this is where you are, Neumeier’s “Zag” has some good pointers.
Extending the brand
Building on top of the original brand’s positive associations through extensions is just smart. New extensions can help build brand equity in their own right. There are two main models for organizing brand portfolios:
- a “house of brands” with separate brand names for each product. “Here the individual brands are given the spotlight, while the company stays behind the scenes (Procter & Gamble).” Each brand can grow on its own path, but each brand needs its own budget, team, and effort.
- a “branded house” where the company itself is the brand, and its products or services are subsets of the main brand (Hewlett-Packard). All brands can share the same budget, customers, and market position, but brands won’t get individual treatment.
Creating a set of extensions opens the brand up to risks:
- contagion – if one brand has a problem, the rest of the portfolio can become infected.
- confusion – it happens when companies extend their brands past the boundaries their customers draw for them.
- contradiction – customers in one culture may have a different view of the brand than customers in another culture, diluting the brand.
- complexity – create an overgrown, hard-to-manage, inefficient brand portfolio that sucks money and effort out of the company.
Keep an eye out for these risks and think about them in advance when you’re planning your brand expansion.
Evolving the brand
As the company grows, so does the brand. And Neumeier defines three stages of that evolution.
Here’s what each stage entails:
- A “scissors” company is a startup or small business with an extremely sharp focus. It starts by cutting out a small area of business from the market dominated by much larger “paper” companies.
- A “rock company” is a medium-sized organization that typically has more brands and less focus but a lot of momentum. Rock companies crush “scissors” companies, who don’t have the resources to compete with them.
- A “paper company” is big and survives by using its network and resources to smother “rock” companies and matching any new offerings they have that may be less disruptive and have mass appeal.
The progression is not set in… well, stone, but it’s usually how companies grow and win market share.
If you’re not zagging, you’re lagging.
Building a tribe, creating meaning, designing differentiation – it’s all complex brand play that needs both strategic premeditation and some creative magic. Based on what I read so far, Marty Neumeier knows it all. And, thankfully, shares it with the reader.
“The Brand Gap” and “Zag” are definitely worth your time – even if just for the joy of experiencing the book.
