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The Branding Process - Adding Value

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By Roger Griffin, Associate Partner
FOCUS Business Marketing Intelligence

Identifying Your Brand's 'Added Value'

Previously, we’ve looked at segmentation, differentiation and brand positioning. Now, let’s look at one of the most important ways of setting your store apart from you competition - Added Value!

All wristwatches provide the same basic function: they tell the time.

So why does the Cartier customer feel so much better about his/her brand experience than the Timex customer does? Because Cartier provides its owner with the ‘Added Value’ of a symbol of success.

In exactly the same way, a diamond engagement ring in the cachet of a Tiffany box brings Added Value to both the giver and the receiver.

Two cashmere sweaters - one from Holt Renfrew, the other from Winners - may be very similar in quality and price, but very different in feeling to the customer - again because of Added Value.

Added Value can be both rational and emotional:

• rational, e.g., trust, confidence, assurance
• emotional, e.g. self-esteem, prestige, status, social acceptability

Two Key Points to Remember about Added Value:

1. The Customer Adds the Value: it’s in their minds, their psyche
2. If there’s no Added Value, then there’s no Brand

Summary

• When do you know your product’s qualities have Added Value?
• When the Added Values are wanted and important to your customer?
• When you can deliver the Added Values with style and substance?
• When your customer responds to these Added Values with not just loyalty but advocacy?

You can debate at length the degree to which various Products, Services and Stores may fulfill a useful, important role in our lives; but the degree of importance of Brands is another matter. The Added Value a brand brings to the end customer beyond the function it provides is unquestionable.

Whether the Added Value is conscious or subconscious, it’s there! Adding a logo to a polo shirt is not branding; adding the charisma of the Ralph Lauren name is!

An 'Added Value' Exercise:

Go through your Brand’s history - including its nostalgia, memorabilia, culture, and heritage.

• Identify areas of superior strength you can build on, e.g.:
  • The Body Shop, and its history of profits with principles
  • Disney, and the magical memories, trust and confidence that its culture creates.
• Think about your Brand’s customers and prospects, and the benefits they receive by being part of the brand community, including the sense of belonging, acceptability, and familiarity.
• Think about your Brand’s aesthetics, the overall feelings of Brand use, its appeal to the five senses, e.g. Four Seasons, Starbucks, and Club Med.
• Consider how your Brand reduces customer hassles and confusion, including the benefits of convenience, saving time and effort, and eliminating stress.
• Think how your Brand makes your customers’ lives better, more successful, and provide real solutions to their problems and opportunities.

Building a winning brand is all about being the best you can be, exceeding customer expectations and doing it consistently.

Special thanks to John Torella of the J.C.Williams Group for his pioneering work in the art of retail branding.

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