One of the funniest parts of Talledega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby is Ricky Bobby making commercials for random products; many have nothing to do with him. It was funny because it was absolutely ridiculous. While it made sense once you've watched the entire film (he has no aligned branding guide, he just endorses anything that pays him), it's not a realistic strategy for any real product or overall brand. Instead, here are 3 tips to help you brand your product.
The Big 3: Know Your Audience, Goals, and Limits of Your Brand
Before you position your product in the market, you should know:
- Your audience
- What you want your product to accomplish
- Where you're not willing to go (e.g. your brand in conservative and you don't to explore outside of those limits).
This requires many brainstorming sessions, questions, and ideas from different people in your team. Compiling all this information will help you get a clearer and much more focused idea of your brand strategy.
Draft a Print Advertisement
I believe one of the best methods to approach the beginning stages of branding a product is outlined in Brand It Yourself: The Fast, Focused Way to Marketplace Magic by Lynn Altman. It requires the project manager to draft an old school print ad. Why? Well Lynn puts it this way:
"...not only did the print ad discipline force us to approach ideas single-mindedly, it also became a disciplined method for filtering out the most complex and harder-to-convey ideas."
As she further explains, it forces "ideas to be communicated quickly and concisely." In your initial meetings, you will get a variety ideas from photos, names, taglines, headlines, and call to action. You'll need to narrow all of those down to the most realistic options.
Develop at Least 10 Realistic Options
Now that you've narrowed your entire creative bank of ideas, its time to develop those Top 10. How do they provide a solution and do they adhere to the data you've collected in the Big 3? No, then move on to the next one.
So there you go, those are my 3 tips to help improve your product brand strategy.
