“Dad, this chicken is good.”
“See? Tweetie should be happy to be on your dish.”
“Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”
That peaceful and heartless story should not be anything but a joke. But there is a lesson hidden in this for marketing, particularly for Brand Marketing.
People give pet a name.
Like any dogs, my dog has a great name, “Mozuku”. “Natto” was the previous one’s name.
Horse, when it is for riding or load-carrying, has its own name, and it’s been that way for long.
On the other hand, people do not usually give names to those animals, livestock for food.
Some special stud bulls have names, but they are marks rather than names. When livestock animals are given names, it is often the case that those who raise them are different from those who process them for meat.
It’s been like that for long, and I heard it is also true outside of Japan.
It is because “Naming brings it to personality”.
Then, you cannot kill it easily, or can hardly eat it. It is the same thing that it is hard to throw away a stuffed toy which you gave a name and spent time with.
“Naming it → Giving it a personality”.
This is, indeed, the fundamental concept of what Brand Marketing is.
(The other day, I ran a work session at livedoor about “Brand Marketing”. Just one scroll down on this blog. There, I did not get into this, so this is about “What is Brand?”, a kind of “Supplemental Lesson” to the workshop.
That reminded me of livedoor’s Sasaki-san’s question when we meet first time, “O.-san, so what is Brand, by the way?” In a sense, this has been my homework left for 6 months.”)
People give a name to their company, product, or service.
A birth of Brand.
Putting a question aside if they are conscious or not, at the very moment, it conceives a personality. At this point, it is still very young, premature, like a baby, though.
Parents have their own hope or wish to it, “I want my kid to be this kind of person”. Sometime, it could be just taking over granddad’s name. Or, it could be given by a fortune teller. Yet, it is another way of putting parents hope/wish into it, and nothing less.
The baby, to begin with, has its own talent or characteristics, role or mission in the world it belongs to, and premise or request of the times.
And, it gets a sign board of parents’ wish, or package design. Flyer or advertising is produced for it. A start of its life as the personality.
Soon or later, the personality would get influenced by communications/interactions with customers as well, and, character, attitude, behavior, value, and philosophy become clearer and clearer.
There is no longer a room for parents to selfishly change its image. They must respect it as one personality, or it can fall out of right path. Only thing that parents or adults around can do is to help its growth.
In the world of marketing, this is called Brand Character, Brand Equity, or Brand Philosophy.
A shampoo called “Pantene”, because it was named after the active of medicine for burnt victims, cannot abandon its role of “cure/improvement”. It does not “fit”, when it says “Don’t get bothered. Be beautiful today, and forget tomorrow.”
On the other hand, a shampoo, with its family crest on her chest, named after the name of the flower of the crest, cannot be persuasive by saying “I can improve hair damage”. It is a destiny to keep manifesting “It is all women’s joy to be beautiful, nothing else.”
Each one’s blood/fate, and character/attitude.
(Excuse me using shampoo story always. I had been in the business way too long.)
NIKE has its given mission, birth, personal history, character, and attitude. Ozeki has its own. Google, too. Toraya as well. TOYOTA has his, Haagen-Dazs has hers, SHARP, KissMint, KOBE City, each has its own. If you discard it, your brand goes to one-coin commodity shop.
It is my definition of Brand Marketing that, at the end of the day, it is about systemic thinking and tools to sell a product/service and get customer to choose it based upon personality of the brand, which marketers define right and help to grow.
Well, to the very big title of the topic, a very light answer, maybe.
This is not it, but this is very fundamental starting point.
“O.”
