March 2009 E-NEWS
from Steven Donaldson and Michael Zinke, the Brand Guys

Creating the Visible Brand in a multi-channel world—web, retail, print and electronic media. Radiant sends these brand "bites" monthly to give you insights and tips on building value, uniqueness and loyalty for your brand. Your brand's critical differentiation helps your customers find you, remember you and come back to you.

In this issue:

1. Brand Icon Sears Tower, Now Willis Tower? — What the … ?
2. The Value of Brand Touchpoints: Customers know you through simple but consistent brand connections
3. Radiant Work: Pet Food Express, Smart stuff for pets — a new line of in-store products for Pet Food Express

Brand Icon Sears Tower, Now Willis Tower? — What the … ?

The Sears Tower in Chicago will soon be branded with a new name. International insurance broker Willis Group Holdings announced it will be buying the rights to naming the 110-story skyscraper, the tallest building in the world when it was built in 1973 by Sears. A spokesman for the London-based company said it was able to negotiate a deal with the building's owner that included renaming the building Willis Tower.

The irony here is that Sears Holding Company moved out of the building when it sold it over ten years ago. The puzzling part about this is the incredible expense invested in "rebranding" a landmark that no one will acknowledge as the Willis Tower.

Interviews with the average Chicagoan showed the most people felt this was silly at best and others were actually angry. They said no one would suddenly refer to this landmark building as the "Willis Tower" and it will always be known as the Sears Tower.

One of the keys to brand recognition is that customers own the brand. You cannot take 36 years of strong association and suddenly change it. Ultimately, this new owner may not retain the naming rights long enough to ever get an average Chicagoan to say "meet me at the base of the Willis Tower".

The Value of Brand Touchpoints:

The familiar chime when you turn on your Windows computer, the simple swoosh on the running shoes: Nike; the repair guy with the horn rimmed glasses, the crowd and windbreaker jacket: Verizon; everything blue, including the blue potato chips: JetBlue. All these are simple but familiar touchpoints of branding that connect us back to the unique experiences we have with products and services.

The key to building touchpoints: define the core attributes of a brand, what makes it different and unique, and how, within consumer level experience, does it stand out? How do customers interact with the brand?

We all forget that each day we are touched by hundreds, sometimes thousands, of sound bites, visual images, tactile experiences that we take in when we do things. It's almost below-the-radar subconscious information, but these experiences can and do build brand awareness. Humans are actually hard-wired that way from our good old hunter-gatherer days 10,000 years ago. We had to know, without the slightest error, that this mushroom was an excellent meal and this one that looked almost the same was going to kill us in about 30 seconds. Gerard Diamond, in his book Guns, Germs and Steel, proposed that this highly-developed survival skill allows human beings to collect thousands — millions — of small associated visuals and experiences that connect us back to things we like and need.

The key to brand touchpoints is that you don't have to have a million dollar ad campaign to create extremely high awareness in the market you are targeting. You need to create the key touchpoints you know your market will repeatedly see, connect with and remember in association with your unique brand benefits. This can even be subconscious but it becomes real in the experience of the customer.

Trader Joe's is associated with the experience of casual, simple shopping with a limited range of products, the personalization of chalkboard signage, the casual village feel of the Hawaiian/tropical theme, the red logo, the old 19th century reuse of lithographic images. What the heck do these have in common? They connect you back to the experience of getting great food at a discounted price in a friendly, casual environment. It all seems genuine and authentic, delivers on its promise and leaves you with visual and auditory memories of the experience.

Some simple recommendations in building brand touchpoints:

1. Define your core characteristics that make you unique among competitors
2. Create language, taglines or simple associated phrases that represent this
3. Build visual elements around your brand that can leave with the customer
4. Create experiences that reinforce your brand values
5. Keep it consistent and simple; get feedback on the customer's experience
6. Choose venues to communicate this that make the most sense for your brand

Radiant Work: Pet Food Express Packaging

Challenge: Pet Food Express, with 35 stores in Northern California, is the fifth largest pet products store in the United States. For the past five years RadiantBrands has worked with PFE to develop the store brand, distinguishing them as a leader in natural and holistic foods and products. With the success of this brand-building effort, Petfood Express asked RadiantBrands to brand a line of house products to expand its reach with customers.

Solution: Radiant created vibrant packaging for this line of all-natural odor control and cleaning solutions for pets. as part of the "smart stuff for pets" series of branded products. Radiant develop the name Smart n' Clean as well as the branded look of the label, carrying through the animal icons created for the store brand. The product series includes easy to read descriptions and color variations that position the products for clear recognition on the shelf.

Result: Launch of the product line in Spring 2009 into all Pet Food Express stores with immediate success.

Services:
Product naming
Brand extension to packaging
Package and label design

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