From Advertainment To Buzz Branding.

To borrow a phrase, it’s not your father’s branding anymore. Long gone are the days when a brand strategy equated to a new name, look or even advertising campaign. And even tried and true approaches like brand extensions (new products or add-ons) to hang on the brand hat are becoming almost old hat.

So what is branding all about today? Prophet, a consulting firm that integrates brand, business and marketing strategies, has identified four branding trends that are reshaping the practice. “Branding has evolved into an exciting and business-driven discipline that goes well beyond product or service, taps into increasingly unconventional messaging vehicles, and whose influence pervades the entire organization,” said Prophet Chief Executive Officer Michael Dunn.

Among the branding trends that Prophet says market leaders are most successfully leveraging are:

— Advertainment. More credible and entertaining than infomercials, “branded entertainment” is one of the latest, most intriguing developments in branding. Advertainment allows advertisers to gain viewers’ attention more discreetly than through commercials by weaving a brand into storylines of movies and television shows. American Express effectively employs the approach by integrating itself throughout NBC’s reality series “The Restaurant.” Not only is it a commercial sponsor, but visual cues play up the brand (patrons flashing their AmEx cards), and it also is incorporated in the dialog: Facing a cash crunch, the restaurant owner tells his bookkeeper to “call our account rep at American Express” to tap into a line of credit.

— Buzz Branding. Especially for Gen Y (ages 8-27), traditional media holds less sway in building a brand than less tangible approaches. Creating a brand buzz through peer influence – or word of mouth – via more public relations-like programs than mass marketing approaches has been highly successful for savvy smaller businesses. BellyWashers, the cartoon character juice bottles made by Atlanta’s In Zone Brands Inc., created a national Kids Board and sponsors members’ community relations projects. Their combined activities have gained substantial media coverage that spreads positive buzz – and BellyWashers are flying off store shelves. Cost to In Zone Brands of managing the Kids Board is only $60,000 a year, a small investment for its 100% annual compounded growth over the last three years, with sales of over $75 million expected this year.

— Differentiator Branding. The “Intel Inside” campaign helped fuel the popularity of ingredient branding; promoting a component of a product otherwise invisible to the consumer. Its next iteration involves branding an aspect of an offering that differentiates it from the pack. This has been Westin’s approach with its “Heavenly Bed” brand initiative that plays up its “unique” ability to meet travelers’ No. 1 concern: to get a good night’s sleep on a comfortable bed. Branding its specially designed bed – featuring “ten layers of comfort” from 900 individual mattress coils to three sets of sheets with the highest thread count – has worked well for Westin, which saw an immediate gain in customer satisfaction of 12% upon the brand initiative’s launch. It has extended the concept with its Heavenly line of bed, bath and gift items, and competitors are scrambling to jump on the same differentiated brandwagon.

— Experience branding. Strategists are increasingly thinking beyond product to the full extent of the brand experience, which is consistently reinforced organization-wide in all customer interactions – not just in advertising and marketing messaging. Jet Blue has been wildly successful at creating a unique and compelling branded experience that’s reinforced at all customer touchpoints, offering compensation for late flights, up to 24 channels of in-flight DIRECT-TV programming and play areas for kids at its main hub. The experience – and the brand – is further reinforced through its loyalty program, True Blue Flight Gratitude, and such quirky touches as its in-flight yoga card, co-branded with Crunch fitness centers.

Prophet’s Dunn pointed out that the common element tying these trends in branding together is the deep insight they require into customer behaviors, desires and choices. He explained, “From our perspective, that is what makes today’s branding far more strategic and impactful than it was even a decade ago.”

For more information at http://www.prophet.com