Marketing and Branding Are More About Being Than Doing

I just was working with a manufacturing company that announced to me before we began that they were a manufacturing company that knew nothing about marketing or branding. What we discovered over the course of a few days is that they were not far off from becoming a true marketing company with a great brand--one they could live rather than talk about, which makes it all the more powerful.

This is a company with great products. But, they looked at their products as what they were selling. We refocused their thinking on the customer and what benefits they were getting from those products. In other words, we turned this from product push to customer pull; from a bunch of product features to targeted customer benefits. We focused on all the touch points that customers meet the company, including the plants, trade shows, customer service, etc. All of these needed to be handled consistently. What they found was that they had work to do, but that it was not as massive as they had feared. We worked on positioning statements for both the various businesses and the company as a whole. We worked on attributes and associations that the company would want to be known for vs what it currently is known for. All of a sudden, all of these production-oriented managers started to think about the customer and other stakeholders and how they could get employees engaged in living their desired brand. They got excited; they got energized; they got committed.

The CEO and top management met with the group and committed to them that they would focus on building a solid brand for the company which they discovered could be a differentiator in the market. They went from thinking of themselves as a commodity maker, playing price games with their customers to understanding value and what value can do to drive down concerns about price.

I had promised this group that they would leave the two days with enough knowledge of marketing and branding to "be dangerous". They are very dangerous right now. I'm excited for them. If they continue with this their competitors better watch out.