Big Changes At Hotels.com

This week we interviewed Vic Walia, senior director for global brand advertising at hotels.com.  The mega brand is making some major branding changes to enhance their brand and expand their reach. Check out this marketing blog exclusive interview:

1. What's the primary motivation for the new Hotels.com logo? We wanted to unify the brand globally and show our customers whether booking from or traveling to the US, London or Tokyo, it’s the same travel experience with hotels.com. We also wanted to convey our expertise and longstanding leadership in the market. 

2. In conjunction with the logo update you're also changing your tagline. Can you provide some insight into the update? Finding travelers the perfect place is really the core of what we’ve done for 20 years so we wanted to remind customers that we’re about hotels, and only hotels. We sell over 30 million room nights every year with up to 100,000 deals so we know our customers count on us to find the perfect room, which is why our new tagline resonated so well with our loyal customers on Facebook.

3. How has the Hotels.com brand evolved in the last year and where do you see it going in the future? The brand continues to focus on its core business, hotels. The travel market and ecommerce market is a dynamic one and constantly changes and Hotels.com will adjust accordingly, as it always has.

4. In your release you mentioned additional changes in the next couple of quarters. Can give our readers some insight into additional brand related changes you'll be making? In addition to the logo change globally, we will be integrating a new look and feel among all of our sites globally to help unify the brands. We have also began using our new font style within all of our creative from TV advertising, sale messaging and emails. New sub-logos have also been released in the new style for the loyalty program, Welcome Rewards and for Deal of the Day to name just a few. We are updating our Photography our Site Copy and overall page designs in order to give users a better, more informed experience as they navigate the site.

5. How will you measure the reaction and feedback to your new branding (logo, tagline, etc.)?The feedback will be measured most clearly by business results. Plus, we have already tested the new logo, tagline and creative with research to ensure that it appeals to our current customer base as well as any new potential customers. 

Special thanks to Vic Walia for sharing his rebranding secrets with us.  He is a Brand Marketing Director with over 13+ years of experience managing several billion dollar consumer brands in the Food, FMCG, Travel/Leisure and E-commerce categories.

Betting Big on Celebrity Endorsements

Why do Marketers go for Celebrity endorsements? The reasons could be many; the highest recall among consumers, immediate positive impact on sales, new brand launches and re-introductions etc.

As a few experts put it, the reason could also be one of pure pressure from the top management to deliver on the brand and see immediate results. The pressure is definitely not unreasonable, as in today’s competitive scenario, the number of touch points that a consumer is exposed to, is showing a manifold increase. Hence, after years of meticulous R&D on a particular product, there is a rush on the Marketing side of the new brand.

The valid question that needs to be raised is the rationale or science behind each celebrity endorsement, from the marketer’s angle. From the celebrity’s angle, the rationale is purely one of personal choice or value of contract.

Breaking the clutter within multiple touch points, warrants the Marketer to come up with innovative attributes that will latch onto the consumer’s mind. Unfortunately, this is definitely not possible each and every time, with multiple people handling multiple brands in an organization. FMCG biggies in India have all implemented excellent clutter-breaking media from time to time. But everyone’s had their share of naïve moments.

The prospect of bringing some sense of sanity and consistency into marketing leads to celebrity endorsements. Statistics on the latest survey show that only around 30% of the consumers would consider the purchase of a brand based on a popular face. A higher percentage would associate themselves to a brand, if the celebrity is actually linked to the brand message in some way or the other.

Many pundits are now arguing about the ‘Tiger Woods’ phenomenon, ‘putting all your eggs in one basket’. Whether the associated brands have been affected or not, is debatable. Only Gatorade, would have suffered an immediate impact, due the withdrawal of an entire range of ‘Tiger’ branded drinks.

In India too, many brands solely run on the back of successful celebrities, the flip side would be a ‘Tiger’, but the positives weigh much more than the intangible probability of the brand getting hammered. Especially in light of Brand Managers changing almost every 2 years.

The only simple mantra, can be to stick to one’s ‘Brand message’ atleast for established brands, irrespective of the celebrity or non-celebrity route, Airtel is a good case in point. For new brands like Max, Karbon & MicroMax (IPL), ‘celebrity’ power could be the only way forward in a highly competitive category like Mobiles.

 This post is a consequence of the Brand Equity article on Celebrity endorsements.

Flanker Brands

A flanker brand is a Line extension by the company. HUL having different varieties of washing powder detergent, e.g. Surf Excel for the Premium segment, RIN for the middle segment and Wheel for the lower segment.
P&G having Ariel for the premium segment and Tide for the middle segment.

A flanker brand is a new brand introduced into the market by a company that already has an established brand in the same product category. The new brand is designed to compete in the category without damaging the existing item’s market share by targeting a different group of consumers. This strategy, also called fighter branding or multibranding, is used to achieve a larger total market share than one product could garner alone. Companies with multiple brands in a single product category generally have the following types of products in their portfolios:

• A premium brand that offers high quality at a higher price.
• One or more “value” brands offering a slightly lower quality or a different set of benefits for a lower price.

Why is flanker branding important?

Flanker branding is important because it allows a company to attract new customers from various market segments. The main brand of a company’s portfolio should target the market segment containing the most consumers. Another brand can then be positioned to convert users from other market segments by using a different set of benefits or product characteristics. For example, Proctor and Gamble’s (P&G) (worldwide) Tide is an extremely successful laundry detergent. In order to appeal to consumers who desired a lower-cost detergent, P&G introduced Cheer, which is a slightly lower quality product offered at a value price. While Tide’s sales dropped slightly with the introduction of the new brand, the combined sales of Cheer and Tide were higher than Tide’s original sales alone, allowing P&G to gain a greater market share. A company’s brands should attract customers from competing brands and not each other.

There are a number of advantages to developing a flanker brand:

• Gain more shelf space for the company, which increases retailer dependence on the company’s brands.
• Capture “brand switchers” by offering several brands.
• Develop excitement within the company by monitoring sales figures of the different brands.
• Protect the company – giving a product its own unique name means it will not be readily associated with the existing brand. This reduces risk to the existing brand and/or company if the product fails.
• Companies with a high-quality existing product can introduce lower-quality brands without diluting their high-quality brand names.
  

Developing flanker brands does present challenges. Introducing a new brand is quite costly. Creating another independent brand requires name research and substantial advertising expenditures to create name recognition and preference for the new brand.

Will Flanker Branding Work for You?

Flanker branding is not for everyone. There are a number of questions that must be answered in order to make the best decision for your situation. The most basic questions include:

• Can my existing brand be changed enough that a new brand will have unique qualities that will appeal to a separate group of consumers?
• Are these new qualities believable?
• How will the new brand impact my existing brand(s)?
• How will the new brand impact competitors’ brands?
• Will the cost of product development and promotion be covered by the sales of the new brand?

Market a Non-Profit Organization

Every NGO no matter how noble the cause, will need to sell itself, through various channels. Many NGO's shy away from the word Marketing, since it has words profit and corporate strongly associated with it.

But an NGO also needs to be equally effective, awareness needs to be prevalent about it's initiatives, cause and purpose. The NGO needs funds to survive, and popularity can certainly help.

So here are my Seven Steps for Building a Strong Non-Profit Brand. (They are really the same as building a strong for-profit brand since the goal is the same -- to own a position in the mind.)

1. The name.

This is the first and most important decision any non-profit has to make. Too many charities have generic names that are descriptive of what they do, but lack the ability to distinguish them from similar organizations in the mind.

2. The spokesperson.

Ideally the founder is the best person to take on this role. He or she has a powerful connection to the brand and can sell the story to the media, donors, volunteers and supporters.

3. The position.

the only way to get your brand into the mind is with a narrow focus.

4. The enemy.

Every strong brand needs an enemy. This is something non-profits by nature tend to avoid discussing. But strong brands are built by figuring out who the enemy is, what the enemy stands for and then building a brand that stands for the opposite.

5. PR, PR, PR.

6. A signature event.

All charities, schools, clubs and teams have endless fundraisers.

7. Color and logo.

Any brand can benefit from the use of a strong singular color they can own in the mind. Pink and Breast Cancer is the best example of this. You see pink and you know what it means. The American Heart Association uses red.

THE BRAND EXPERIENCE & SUSTENANCE MODEL

This model has been built to better understand the various parameters that are involved in the road to the creation of brand sustenance. Every parameter is influenced by the consumers and their experience acts as the bridge between building a brand from inception to its sustenance through brand loyalty.

The variables influence each of the parameters and determine the success and future of the brand. The major drivers of the model; Brand Experience and Brand Ambassador are determined by brand usage, indirect experience, brand performance; and Viral Marketing, B2B-B2C-C2C, Relationships respectively. Relationships for instance are the collaborations and partnerships that firms have with their clients and other complementary businesses.

Brand Identity = Brand Image?

Let us first define both.

Brand Identity: How the company wants the consumer to perceive their product or their brand.

Brand Image : The perception of the company's product or brand by the consumer.

Every year, fmcg companies rethink their mission statement. They position their products to attain a certain type of perception association.

Brand Identities are created for the following situations:
New Product Launches
Product/Brand extensions
New logos
Initiatives with respect to a brand
In order to change brand perception

Creating a brand identity is more than finding out what customers say they want. It must also reflect the soul and vision of the brand, what it hopes to achieve.
Brand Image Trap
An insidious problem caused by the brand image trap is that it lets the customer dictate what you are.

Brand Position Trap
"A brand position is the part of the brand identity and value proposition that is to be actively communicated to the target audience and that demonstrates an advantage over competing brands." The brand position trap occurs when the search for a brand identity becomes a search for a brand position, stimulated by a practical need to provide objectives to those developing the communication programs. The goal then becomes an advertising tag line rather than a brand identity.

External Perspective Trap
The external perspective trap occurs when firms fail to realize the role that a brand identity can play in helping an organization understand its basic values and purpose. Because an effective identity is based in part on a disciplined effort to specify the strengths, values, and vision of the brand, it can provide a vehicle to communicate internally what the brand is about. It is hard to expect employees to make a vision happen if they do not understand and buy into that vision.

Product-Attribute fixation Trap
The most common trap of all is the product-attribute fixation trap, in which the strategic and tactical management of the brand is focused solely on product attributes.

Conclusion
The traps in order to be avoided need great determination by Managers to stick to their execution of the Brand Identity so that they can equate it to the Brand Image that will develop over time about the brand in mention.