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You are here: Home / Archives for Branding

Branding

Launching a Co-driver sub brand

Last Updated on March 20, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

The economic strains are causing your end-users to trade down, resulting in that the mid-tier and premium brands are losing share to low-price rivals.

You face a classic strategic conundrum:

  • Do you tackle the threat head-on by reducing prices, knowing that will destroy profits in the short term and brand equity in the long term?
  • Or do you hold the line, hope for better times to return, and in the meantime lose customers who might never come back?

Given how unpalatable both of those alternatives are, you now must make a decision of how to combat manufacturers and distributors of lower priced and inferior products, to avoid losing additional market share and eroding margins.

There are four ways to battle your competition.

  1. Launching a true fighter brand
  2. Launching an endorsed sub-brand
  3. Launching a co-driver sub-brand or
  4. Launching a driver sub-brand

Co-driver

Definition:

The parent brand and the sub-brand act as co-drivers with roughly equal influence on consumers.

Business Handshake
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

Examples:

United Express (United Airlines)

The United Airlines brand provides United Express, a commuter line, with the convenience of connections to United flights and a reputation for safety. There is no cannibalization because the flights do not compete.

United Express is differentiated from its parent brand by its lower level of on-board service, its use of smaller planes, and its less formal personality.

Good News (Gillette)

Gillette Good News also illustrates a successful co-driver relationship. Gillette Good News disposable razors are a definite cut below ‘the best a man can get” that is the Gillette legacy in shaving. But disposable razors are qualitatively different from the upscale razors such as Sensor and Atra with which Gillette has long held a technological edge.

Gillette could provide a rationale for a disposable brand by being the best in the disposable category. But the Good News user’s personality – younger and more carefree than the traditionally masculine and sophisticated Gillette persona – plays a key role in distinguishing the disposable brand from the rest of the line.

Both brand names – Gillette and Good News – influence the customer’s decision to buy the product.

Kompani Group’s Approach on Data-Driven Branding

What provides an unrivaled return on investment, and is safer than investing in Gold?

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

We have always thought that most companies are missing the boat in terms of how much their brands are really worth, because they don’t understand how much a small investment in their brand quickly multiplies the perceived value when going public or when attracting growth capital. In most cases a small investment in their brands immediately translates into a competitive edge for products sold off/on the shelf or on the web.

Since all businesses have a number of case studies that are relevant to their target audience, we suggest that you establish a CSS style web site, with a blog and content management backend where posting a new page or new blog is as easy as writing a word document or an e-mail. If you take a closer look at your competition, you will also realize that they aren’t effectively using the social media and other means of SEO friendly web sites, which in turn will send you scores of inquiries from new prospects.

Building a well designed and professional site, writing content and educating you on how to maintain or update the site is fairly inexpensive, and can be done for about $7,500 – $10,000.

Even though our own site www.kompanigroup.com and www.ActiveServe.com are more complex than what you may need, they represent the web 2.0 CSS type of web site we are talking about. Both of these sites are receiving new hits and leads every week, mainly because they both are optimized for SEO and because we are active in posting blogs.

Launching an endorsed sub-brand 2/4

Last Updated on January 28, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

This is the second of 4 posts about how to combat manufactures and distributors of inferior products that are being reverse engineered and produced in China and sold at much lower prices to your existing clients. You are losing market share fast, and it is time to do something about it.

The economic strains are causing your end-users to trade down, resulting in that the mid-tier and premium brands are losing share to low-price rivals.

You face a classic strategic conundrum:

  • Do you tackle the threat head-on by reducing prices, knowing that will destroy profits in the short term and brand equity in the long term?
  • Or do you hold the line, hope for better times to return, and in the meantime lose customers who might never come back?

Given how unpalatable both of those alternatives are, you now must make a decision of how to combat manufacturers and distributors of lower priced and inferior products, to avoid losing additional market share and eroding margins.

There are four ways to battle your competition.

  1. Launching a true fighter brand
  2. Launching an endorsed sub-brand
  3. Launching a co-driver sub-brand or
  4. Launching a driver sub-brand

Option Two – Endorsed Sub-Brand

Definition:

A sub-brand is a brand with its own name that uses the name of its parent brand in some capacity to bolster equity.

In the case of downscale offerings, the role of sub-brands is to help managers differentiate new offerings from the parent brand while using the parent’s equity to influence consumers.

The idea is both to maintain the parent’s credibility and prestige regardless of how the sub-brand performs and to protect the original brand from cannibalization.

Photo by 🇨🇭 Claudio Schwarz | @purzlbaum on Unsplash

Endorser

Definition:

The parent brand acts as the endorser of the sub-brand. In this case, the sub-brand is the more dominant of the two, and drives end-users’ decisions to purchase the product as well as their perceptions of the experience of using the product.

When a company offers an endorsed sub-brand, there are three brands at work. The parent brand itself is split into two: a product brand and an organizational brand. The product brand remains as it was, a premium brand delivering a certain image and associated benefits.

The endorser strategy provides an excellent chance to minimize damage and reduce the threat of cannibalization to the parent brand. Keep in mind that all three brands need to be managed actively.

Examples:

Sabre B to C (John Deere)

  • John Deere’s foray into value lawn tractors provides a good illustration of an endorser relationship. John Deere was well known for making a lawn tractor that sold for approximately $2,000 through full-service specialty dealers.
  • Although the manufacturer was still able to command that price in the specialty market, volume retailers such as Sears and Home Depot had begun to serve a growing portion (around 30%) of that market, selling products at half John Deere’s prices.
  • So the company introduced an endorsed sub-brand for the value retailers: a low-cost tractor, Sabre from John Deere, that featured an inexpensive design and a different color and feel that John Deere’s other products

Medalist B to B (Hobart)

  • The Hobart Company, which makes an industrial-grade mixer for use in bakeries and restaurants.
  • Managers decided to create an inexpensive mixer for us in commercial and industrial kitchens to compete with offshore entries without damaging its flagship “gold standard” Hobart mixer line.
  • In 1996 the company introduced Medalist from the Hobart Company. Medalist mixers were lighter than Hobart mixers.
  • In addition, they were made with less costly materials and construction processes; and they had a color and logo distinct from those of the flagship Hobart.
  • In this example, The Hobart Company, has become an organizational brand that endorses the sub-brand, Medalist. Medalist itself is a new product brand. Thus the parent brand, Hobart, is separated from the sub-brand, Medalist, by the organizational brand, The Hobart Company.

Kompani Group’s Approach on Data-Driven Branding

Launching a pure Fighter Brand, 1/4

Last Updated on December 8, 2020 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

We are losing market share to our new competition. What can we do to reverse the trend?

China City Lights
Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash

This is the first of 4 posts about how to combat manufactures and distributors of inferior products that are being reverse engineered and produced in China and sold at much lower prices to your existing clients.

You are losing market share fast, and it is time to do something about it.

The economic strains are causing your end-users to trade down, resulting in that the mid-tier and premium brands are losing share to low-price rivals.

You face a classic strategic conundrum:

  • Do you tackle the threat head-on by reducing prices, knowing that will destroy profits in the short term and brand equity in the long term?
  • Or do you hold the line, hope for better times to return, and in the meantime lose customers who might never come back?

Given how unpalatable both of those alternatives are, you now must make a decision of how to combat manufacturers and distributors of lower priced and inferior products, to avoid losing additional market share and eroding margins.

There are four ways to battle your competition.

  1. Launching a true fighter brand
  2. Launching an endorsed sub-brand
  3. Launching a co-driver sub-brand or
  4. Launching a driver sub-brand

Definition of a fighter brand

A fighter brand is designed to combat, and ideally eliminate, low-price competitors while protecting an organization’s premium-price offerings. A fighter brand, however, is not easy to introduce. First creating a new brand-building awareness, establishing perceptions of identity and quality, developing distributions channels is expensive, often prohibitively so.

Business Buildings
Photo by Gonz DDL on Unsplash
  • Concerns about launching fighter brands
    • Will it cannibalize our premium offering?
    • Will it fail to bury the competition?
    • Will it lose money?
    • Will it miss the mark with end-users?
    • Will it consume too much management attention?
  • Other strategic questions to consider before launching at fighter brand
    • Determine whether another brand is truly necessary
    • Run the numbers, including what it will cost to build and sustain a new brand
    • Listen to your clients and customers, early and often
    • Reinvest in your core business and consistently calibrate between the two brands.
    • Is the market you are entering still growing

Examples of fighter brands

Saturn – B to C (General Motors) 1982

  • To combat the growing threat from fuel-efficient and affordable cars being launched into America from Japan, GM decided to launch of an “a different kind of car company” dubbed Saturn.
  • Despite the fact that Saturn won accolades for being one of the strongest brands in the U.S, Saturn proved to be a financial disaster with losses in excess of 10 billion dollars. With no budgetary discipline and so much focus on differentiating Saturn from the other GM brands, completely defeated the purpose of launching the brand in the first place.

Jetstar – (Quantas) 2004

  • To combat low-fare entrant Virgin Blue, Quantas decided to launch their own low-fare airline in 2003.
  • Since Quantas only had one single brand, it did not want to create a new brand unless it had to.
  • Exhaustive strategic sessions confirmed, however, that the Quantas brand was simply not in a position to combat Virgin Blue’s explosive growth. A fighter brand was the only option.
  • Quantas’ detailed projections showed that by offering no frills, its new airline could achieve a 20% cost advantage over its rival; thus allowing it to undercut Virgin Blue’s prices while sustaining a profit.
  • Quantum spent considerable time on focus groups across Australia and listening to their customers to validate the planned initiatives.
  • In 2004 Jetstar was launched with 14 planes flying to 14 destinations. The speed at which Jetstar attacked took Virgin Blue by surprise and knocked it off balance.
  • Jetstar took over the tourist routes that Quantas had lost money on. Because Jetstar proved profitable on those routes, it cannibalized only revenues, not profits.
  • Thanks to Jetstar, Quantas was able to refocus on its more profitable business routes and increase the frequency of its flights on those legs.
  • The subsequent boost in profits, along with Jetstar’s growing contribution, were reinvested in overhauls of Quantas’s business lounges and business class cabins – strengthening the Quantas brand and the distinction between it and Jetstar.
  • Jetstar has stopped the growth of Virgin Blue, and Quantas is now using the brand to fight other competitors in Asia and New Zealand.

Ambra – B to professional (IBM) 1992

  • To combat the growing threat from direct marketers of personal computers like Dell and Gateway and other IBM models.
  • The Ambra was sourced in Asia and marketed between 1992 and 1994 by mail order in Europe and the United States.
  • Due to lack of brand equity and distribution barriers the Ambra was cancelled 2 years after its birth.

Kompani Group’s Approach on Data-Driven Branding

Activeserve’s new business model takes off and the new web site is now live

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

Their Business is Your Business

iStock_000005523049SmallActiveServe is the ideal provider of business continuity solutions for South Florida businesses employing 3 to 100 business system users. Their expertise allows them to deliver superior insight, support, and service on nearly every type of technology system including communications, IT infrastructure, application hosting, and a wide variety of other answers for your business continuity needs.

In addition to the services themselves, ActiveServe also offers the unbeatable advantage of direct contact with their experts for design, decision, and implementation. In fact, they make a point of working hand in hand with business owners and/or IT managers to develop a custom business continuity blueprint… and they always make sure that technology never complicates the business side of things, and vice versa. That understanding, coupled with their specialized approach to business continuity is enough to make ActiveServe unique in the marketplace, but they can also be proud to be the first and only provider that offers a business continuity certifications program for small businesses in South Florida.

The Room101 Conspiracy Has Landed

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

Christian Eiroa of Camacho Cigars, open boxes of the new Room101 cigars minutes after they land at Camacho’s Miami warehouse. Room101 Cigars will be available at select retailers nationwide on 10/1/09. For more information about Room101, please visit: http://www.room101cigars.com

Camacho Cigars partnered with Kompani Group in releasing the newly created Room 101 Cigars website on October 1st. Stay tuned.

The disconnect between social media and traditional advertising.

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

Just read a great article by Jason Falls from Social Media Explorer observing the facts between one way and two way communication in the advertising world of today. This is what Web 2.0. Its not about the design and its not specifically about having something viral. It’s about facilitating the communication of that viral element in a campaign. Listening to what your consumers are saying and responding to them. Advertising agencies don’t get it. They want and continue to shout instead of listening. How did successful businesses of the past promote and conduct themselves before the internet infiltrated our lives? They listened, and reacted to their consumers needs and desires. Before it was a handful, now its thousands at a time. Social media know how to leverage those thousands of users, get them talking to you, get them communicating with each other, and over time build a strong relationship with your company. Maybe we should call it the rebirth of branding.

Check out the rest of the article here. Great read.

Imagine walking into a gunfight without your gun!

Last Updated on December 8, 2020 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

I just attended a great business mixer by the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce. The mixer was held at the Miami Herald and hosted by the newspaper’s Miami Beach sales rep, Ted Hay. I have been an active net-worker for sometime and have learned to be humbly aggressive in meeting people at these gatherings. There is always an opportunity to sell yourself or your business, but it’s sometimes easier at a business networking event (for some people; others are think of networkers as a great place for free food). It all comes down to:

  • Are you mentally prepared to give and receive business
  • Will you present yourself effectively
  • Will you make a personal connection that is deeper than just your pitch.

It seems that I am always confronted by:

  • People that hide in a corner sipping on their coffee or eating a bagel not interacting with anyone.
  • The initial handshake and conversation, which turns to the exchange of business cards and your counterpart gives you one of the following:
    • “I don’t have one”
    • “I ran out” (which could be a good thing, if you have met every single person at the event, and the last handshake is for a tardy walk in)

You should always have a business card and you always need to have a backup stack ready (stick some in your socks). Some day there will be a universal way that cell phones can pass or bumptechnologies.com contact information from one person to the other, but until then, nothing says what you do and how to get a hold of you better than your business card.

Now if you don’t have a business card or just rely on inputting the persons’ info on your phone or contacting them; you are at a disadvantage. There is a game to the business card shuffle. Here is my shuffle:

  • Meet someone and exchange cards.
  • If I am interested in the person’s business, then when I get back to my office I send a “How’ya doin” email.
  • Save their contact info
  • And wait to get a response or follow up with a phone call in about a week.
  • Those cards of people that didn’t make an impression on me, they go into a stack.
  • That stack grows, gets repositioned on my desk a 100 times, gets stored, gets put together into a house for my Munny).
  • All with the goal of eventually inputting them all into my contacts.

At the end of the day, it might be months before I see the business cards for that cutting edge caterer or that dentist who uses sedation to drill into your teeth. But I will see their cards again. The second time, I might have a need for that caterer and then get my teeth worked on after I eat that molecular gastronomic dessert.

A business card is a fundamental tool in getting you out there and to be remembered by your newest best friends. Creating a card that is professionally designed, may get peoples attention. A business card is the 21st. century Colt 45, imagine going to a saloon in the 19th. century Dodge city without your gun.

During the mixer, the only card that really stood out was one from a soon to be opened hotel.

The business card was a plastic room key(not a good thing if your sweetheart checks your pockets, but it would definitely stir up a conversation).

Obviously the cost of creating a card like this is more than the average business person has to spend, but there are hundreds of other creative ideas that can make your prospects take notice.

At the end of the day, you want to promote your business. You want your business to always be in mind. Sometimes it all starts with a handshake, your 1-minute pitch, and your business card. What does having or not having a business card say about you?

Seacapital Group – sustainable resources, cultivated opportunity

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

Kompani Group has added SeaCapital group to its roster of clients. SeaCapital is the first private equity firm dedicated solely to investments across the sustainable seafood value chain. Their mission is to advance sustainable and safe seafood resources by investing in companies and technologies that promote innovation and responsible development.

SeaCapital’s focus is to invest in growth-oriented companies across the seafood value chain in partnership with exceptional management teams. SeaCapital focuses on organizations with considerable growth prospects, and works closely with management to create and execute an expansion plans that encompass organic growth and strategic acquisitions.

Their principals collectively have more than 100 years of seafood and finance industry experience including a distinguished track record of working with management teams to build companies into larger and more deeply integrated organizations. The investments will be made solely in the sustainable seafood value chain where their significant experience in operations, strategy, and corporate finance will add significant shareholder value. Since 2003, the Seacapital team has completed eleven strategic acquisitions and divestitures with an aggregate value of more than $120 million.

Louis Moinet and Primetime Race Group

Last Updated on April 5, 2019 by Jan Havmoeller Leave a Comment

For the 2009 American Le Mans Series, Louis Moinet became the official timepiece for the racing team Primetime Race Group’s #11 Dodge Viper. The racing team entered its second full season in the American Le Mans Series with owner and driver Joel Feinberg and his teammate Chris Hall at the wheel. The car it the only Dodge Viper Competition Coupe in the Grand Touring (GT2) class of the competition. Visit www.primetimeracegroup.comfor additional schedule on upcoming races. Louis Moinet timepieces have been worn by distinctive figures the likes of Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon and King George IV. The company limts its production to only a thousand watches every year, ensuring its exclusivity.

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