"Business Class" [img]2012q1/ct_etoefm_etoeflistz_1373_20121[/img] [br] Accordin

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a business class.
Professor:
In your textbook, the author states that "companies sell products but companies market brands." And  Q12
several of you have asked me about that distinction... between selling products and marketing brands.
...I thought we ought to take some time to talk about it in class. So, let me give you an example.
Suppose that we have a company, and the product is chicken~ Then it’s easy to understand that we’re
selling chicken. Maybe we’re even selling a special preparation of chicken—barbecued chicken—and
maybe we include lemonade and a hot roll free with our barbecued chicken. We may even have the
best service. But, we’re still selling chicken, even though it’s a special preparation and even though
we’ve provided an attractive package with free additional products and good service. All of that is still
selling.
    But what’s marketing then? Well, when we market a product, we have to create meaning that
attaches itself to the product... something that makes the product more unique and more desirable
than other similar products. Maybe this chicken was a family recipe that was handed down from Aunt
Ruby. So this isn’t just chicken. It’s Aunt Ruby’s recipe. And eating it is special because she doesn’t give
the recipe to anyone but family, and being in the restaurant is just like being in Aunt Ruby’s kitchen. How
you interpret the experience is just as important as how you view the product. See what I mean?
    Take a look at commercials on television if you really want to understand marketing because these
commercials almost always represent the product as something else—success, sex, youth. All of these
are important to the consumer. So, when a car is marketed, for example, it’s shown in the context of a
successful crowd of people in an upscale neighborhood, or the man who buys the car gets the woman,
or the woman who buys the car is young, beautiful, and desirable while she’s driving it. And marketing
is what attaches that meaning to the product. You may not be able to buy youth, but you can buy
products, and the message is that these products will get you what you really want.
    Okay, so marketing is selling an image or a benefit... something that’s really attractive and larger
than the product itself, and by attaching it to the product, we can give that larger meaning to what we
want to sell. Go back to the car commercial for a minute. We want to sell cars, but we market them by  Q13
selling something bigger first, and by association, we sell the cars.
    This brings us to the term branding. Now branding is similar to marketing because the customer
perceives the product as being valuable~ So then, branding is more about the customer than it is about
the product. It’s the personality of the product that people relate to. Think Allstate Insurance, and you’ll
probably come up with "You’re in good hands," and their competitor, State Farm will remind you, "Like a
good neighbor, State Farm is there." This is an emotional relationship that customers have with the
personality of the product. Rob Frankel is probably one of the most widely respected business consultants
in the area of product branding. In his book, The Revenge of BrandX, he says, "business is about
relationships, not about transactions." That’s not an exact quote but it’s close. And he’s so right on.  
Branding isn’t about the product or even about the customer service. It’s about the customer’s perception of  Q14
the product and the relationship with the personality of the product. And that’s how branding works.
    So it’s not a logo, it’s not a name, although name recognition or the familiarity of a logo is helpful. It’s  Q15
not a commercial or even a string of commercials in a marketing plan. It’s more about loyalty and
confidence and all of the things that make a relationship good. Customers have to do more than recognize the
brand. They have to be motivated to buy it... and... and continue to buy it, over time. In a way, it’s a
telegraphic marketing message that’s easy to understand and speaks to the customer, and it has to be a
consistent message. I mean that to build a brand, and more important, brand loyalty, you have to repeat
that message over and over. Say it loud enough and long enough and it starts to sound right, and even
more important, it starts to echo in your customers’ heads when they think about making a purchase.
    So what’s the result that we’re going for? It’s when the customer will wait until the store gets more
of it instead of buying a different brand, or if the price goes up, the customer will pay extra instead of
buying a cheaper brand. And this is brand loyalty, which is especially important in an industry where  Q16
there isn’t very much difference in the competing products, Laundry detergent...now that’s really a
very similar product across brands... but people tend to buy the same one.
    Okay then. How do we give our products a personality so we can develop a relationship with
customers? Well, Aunt Ruby is someone that we can relate to when we think about chicken. But celebrity  Q17
spokespersons are an even more obvious option. When kids think about Nike shoes, do they want a
relationship with a shoe, with Nike, or with Michael Jordan? It’s pretty obvious that Air Jordan shoes are
all about the basketball player. That’s taking branding to its logical conclusion.