A Brand Launch Strategy
Brand Launch. Planning and executing it.
Rules for A Successful Brand Launch
A successful brand launch is an intricate dance number. Launching a brand requires the marketers to have identified the highest emotional intensity available. Claim that space, define the brand personality in terms of an emotional promise. (Read about repositioning brands here.)
That should not be as revolutionary as it is. But, other brand companies don’t believe that when creating a brand that it needs to own high emotional ground snd they think that only the marketing needs be persuasive.
So we became a rogue brand agency. Pushing back the old-school rules and launching brands in the age of micro-targeting and the cacophony of noise. SPAM filters are up. A brand launch today must disrupt the market. We use our groundbreaking behavioral model to find that emotional juggernaut.
When launching brands, there are things you can do to ensure success. And there are things to keep in mind even during the earliest planning. All too often brand launches fall victim to a few common errors. Here are five common brand launch errors.
The five most common errors when launching a brand
- Making assumptions with faulty reasoning or poorly developed market research.
- Believing the bias and preconceived ideas already codifying in the marketing department itself.
- Time, effort and R&D resources focus on product advantages or features but neglect the emotional triggers that excite trial and loyalty.
- Using language to describe the new brand in launch materials that lack importance. Cliched phrases are meaningless.
- Coordination between the advertising agencies, brand companies, public relations firms and internal marketing departments are poorly executed. Turf wars surface. No one fosters clarity.
Hire us first
We believe hiring a brand development company is necessary to ensure a successful brand launch. While not all brand companies are talented and capable, a good one brings something rare and valuable to the table. It brings dispassionate objectivity to the brand task at hand.
As a result, no company entertains and funds a project to launch a brand frivolously. But all too often, the launch itself hordes inside-out agendas and weaves them into the process.
These agendas get in the way of a launch’s effectiveness. Because, unless they are REAL and important to those you must influence, they are destructive.
At Stealing Share, we caution all clients that communication without purpose is at its best not constructive. At its worst, destructive.
The margin of error between a successful brand launch and a failure is slim. This means candor saves everyone a lot of time and a brand company should provide that candor.
The term of engagement is finite and there is no conflict of interest. Conflicts like an advertising agency or PR agency would have. Because their agendas are always a long-term engagement complete with monthly retainer costs. As a result, they are prone to tell you what they believe you want to hear and not what you need to know.
A brand launch demands you leave preconceived notions behind
Projectable market research is key in any brand launch. The keyword here is projectable. It must not be a series of focus groups where nothing is projectable to the market.
Because research in a successful brand launch is so crucial, we formed our own in-house research company. This allows the brand strategists to work side by side with the researchers.
We carefully construct the research. You must identify the target most likely to covet the new brand and then survey them in a projectable manner. So, uncover the triggers to switching behaviors. Those are the barriers to acceptance and the best pricing strategies. Too often overlooked, however, are the belief systems that define the target market.
Oddly, open-ended questions never reveal the secrets. Ask beer drinkers why they prefer the brand of beer they drink. And they will overwhelmingly state, “I like the taste.” Yet, we know from direct experience that beer drinkers can rarely discern the difference in beer brands in blind tastings.
To get at the root of behaviors, model the activity. Then ask for agreement on a series of direct statements. These intense anthropological questions demand a blend of experience and smarts. As a result, we spend as much time developing the questions as we do fielding the research itself.
The power of a brand launch
The power of your brand launch resides in the importance to which the correct target market invests. It defines the newly launched brand. It’s a great asset to have a product feature or benefit that differentiates the new brand from the competitors.
But the most successful brand launches go much further. They feature an emotional intensity that represents the greatest importance to the target market. This emotional intensity adds a powerful magnetic value that attracts the target audience to the brand even without the benefit.
Think about Jif peanut butter. The brand promise is “Choosy mothers choose Jif.” This promise reinforces the value of choosy as a self-descriptor of the customer and prospect. Being a “choosy mother” is an aspirational self-reflection of the target audience. The product benefit is that Jif “tastes more like fresh peanuts.”
The Jif example is a simple representation of the magic of developing a brand message. A message that creates space between the current market and your new brand launch. Optimally, it represents the highest emotional intensity. The most emotional one available in the market space. And proven true by the benefit or feature.
Stealing Share is highly experienced in launching brands all over the globe. If you are considering a brand launch, give us a call. We can reduce the barriers to your own success.