Strong brands are not the only key to success
“Building strong brands is the key to success, in our opinion, not better products or better people ” said Laura Ries from Ries & Ries (the other Ries is Al Ries – who once wrote that “line extension has become the marketing sickness of the last decade. It seldom works.” ) (via A Clear Eye – where Tom Asacker clearly disagrees with her).
She also states that: “Because in America marketing is not considered important. Management, human relations, customer service are all considered of higher importance that marketing.”
Marketing may not be important in America, but to compare it as something distinct from customer service and human relations is so…well…20th century thinking and wrong. And it is equally wrong to say that brands are more important to a company’s success than products and people!
Where is the customer in this whole equation? Take Harley Davidson as an example – they truly have “branded” customers as defined by the original meaning of branding. But who owns that brand? And how tightly is it integrated with the product, or with customer service people?
Thinking of marketing as another silo-ed organization is a key to failure, and those who still believe that brands can be controlled and created by marketing departments are in it for a rough ride and big disillusionment.
We are seriously overdue for a new breed of marketers to come to the foreground and eclipse this old school of marketing thinkers.
[Technorati Tags: marketing brand branding]
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January 30th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
Ouch. I feel like I’ve fallen down the Wonderland rabbit hole. After reading Tom’s and now your post – I’ve got to go read Laura’s. How can she be so off base? A brand is people and product! And, silo thinking has got to go!
February 5th, 2006 at 9:25 pm
Laura, is full of balony … she is pushing herself with such talk … I would say that Advertising based brand marketing has consumed Marketing. Customer experience is a distant step child to agency tyoes that are selling the same crap that they sold 50 years ago … ads to demo targets … Customer experience is neglected
March 8th, 2006 at 3:06 pm
Another “old” marketing voice bites the dust
After the Ries statement on branding, we only needed to hear the Trout statement on word-of-mouth marketing to conclude once again that the world is in need of new authoritative marketing voices. Here is what Trout has to say about…