[MUSIC] Hi. Welcome back. In the last lecture, we discussed the concept of branding and why you need a brand. The focus of this module is to learn what are the to develop your brand? Let me begin by saying that if you're going to invest money in this brand, you might as well spend the time developing by using a thorough methodology. I have seen people come up with brands overnight. Only to realize that it's either not sufficient to engage the customer or not differentiated versus competitor or not credible or even worse not even aligned with our business strategy. There are many ways for developing brands. I will show you one which has worked with for me throughout my career. However I am warning you, it takes time to develop because you need to do some homework. I like to think of this methodology as a puzzle with at least five pieces. At the center of the puzzle is the Business Strategy. I don't want to spend a lot of time talking about it. However before you begin you should have a clear understanding of your long term goals. Where will you compete, and how will you compete in the marketplace? Your brand has to be in sync with it. Imagine that you come with a line of ready to eat package meals, and you brand it with Colgate. There is definitely a disconnect between selling more meals and your brand. Your ultimate job is to bring to life the business strategy. Thus, we need to capture the implications that it has in developing your brand strategy. The second piece of our puzzle is understanding your existing brand image. If you're developing a new brand, you don't need to consider this point. However, if you're developing a brand for the product which you launch only with a logo or a new brand altogether, you do need to think about it. The goal of this part of the analysis is to identify what are the existing perceptions that your target customers have about your brand. This can be done via listening to social media postings or surveys, or focus groups. Whichever method of consumer method of consumer research you have available. You need to know this, because you will need to either build on this perceptions or chain them altogether. In any case, it is a starting point. I had a client that thought that, the fact that their sales people were perceived as nice to deal with, was a positive image for their brand. As it turned out, it was quite the opposite, because customers wanted to deal with the brand that was efficient, professional people instead of nice sales people. In addition, you should also consider including the perceptions of the people within your organization. The best way to engage them is to invite them to participate in providing their opinions. You will be surprised what you can learn from them. The third piece of the puzzle is to identify the market trends that can have an impact on customers and the brand. For example, if we were to develop a brand for a lemonade business, we need to consider the trends related to the current perception of lemons in our health or trends in people drinking natural juices versus other types of drinks. Also, we might look up growing preference for fresh made versus ready to drink beverages or greatly demand for exotic flavors and variety. Another possible analysis is to look at sales volumes into different drinks sub categories to learn which ones are growing or declining. All of these methods might be useful in determining how do we frame the market for a brand. We might also look at trends in retailing. Are people expected to spend more time in the street? Et cetera, et cetera. As with these first two pieces of the puzzle, we can draw conclusions from this trends that will have an impact on how do we define our future brand. The fourth piece of our puzzle is customer analysis. The goal of this is to determine which benefits we can offer that motivates customers to buy and use our brand. Qualitative research is generally best to uncover these benefits. Their real insights will come from probing those areas that are not obvious to the customer, but that are influential in the brand choice and the user experience. After we have uncovered them, it is crucial to determine their relative important for the customer. And if they can be clustered into different segments. This can be done by identify major categories or dimensions of motivations that summarize how customers organize information and develop their attitudes towards brand in a specific product category. For me, what has worked in every case is to identify their unmet needs, those that are not met by existing brands in the market. I suggest that you use the five whys techniques. Ask why multiple times in an iterative process for getting to the root cause of a perceived need of the target customer. By asking why and answering at least five times, most people will be able to dig down and clearly articulate their core issue. For example, let's say that you are a potential customer and I will use this technique to uncover your needs. My product is a PC notebook. I could begin by asking you, why would you use notebooks? Imagine that your answer is that it is convenient for you to be able to take everything from home to work, instead of relying on the cloud. I ask you, why do you need to have the same information both at home and at work? And you answer that most of the times, you need to take home some of the work. And some of the times, you need to sort out personal stuff during office hours. I ask you again. Why is that? Your answer is that you are responsible for paying bills at home. And you're overloaded with work and thus many times finish late at night. I ask you again, why? Your answer is that the division of chores that you agreed with your significant other. And you don't have the proper size team to fulfill the responsibilities of your position. Finally ask her why, and you answer that you are aware of the issue but you want to prove to the management that you can succeed under any circumstances. So you can get that promotion next year. We can go on. But an unmet need is already beginning to surface. You need help to succeeding your job quickly so you have more time for yourself. Imagine the possibilities that can come out of this. For example, our PC Notebook brand, we provide you with a solution that will improve your productivity to succeed faster and enjoy more. In summary, customer analysis requires developing a deep dive understanding of our target segments, their attitudes, their motivations, their behaviors, and their path to making a purchase. Now, let's talk about the last piece of the puzzle, the competitive analysis. That is the subject of our next lecture. See you there. [MUSIC]
