Branding

Today's teens have been inundated from their earliest recollections with advertising, be it on TV, online, in their favorite video games and movies, and the list goes on. To effectively sell to this generation of consumers, Under Armour studies what makes it tick. What are teens thinking about? How do they behave? What motivates them to purchase?

Some niches are tough. But during a recession, the overcrowded home decoration space is brutal. Forget waiting for end-of-season sales; companies are discounting new merchandise. It’s at times like these that your investment in brand differentiation pays off ... if you did it correctly.

As a career business journalist, my first job out of college was back in the early '80s as an assistant editor with Catalog Showroom Business. This business magazine went belly-up by the late '80s. So, too, did much of the catalog showroom industry over the next decade or so. Oddly enough, all these years later, I see some common bonds between that business and the tri-channel retailing business of today, which I'll get to in a moment.

Magazine Space Ads Grab New Names for Paul Fredrick; GreatSkin's Unique Affiliate Program Delivers Prospects; Zappos Turns to Magalogs for Leads.

Having come a long way from its modest beginning as a chain of floral shops in metropolitan New York, 1-800-Flowers.com usually has set trends, not followed them.

Can you maintain your brand’s “look and feel” on an outbound phone call? Does your fulfillment packaging reinforce your company’s “one thing”? Is your brand clearly understood in your print catalog, but misinterpreted in your e-mail campaigns?

This year's economic retreat actually stands to help Gaiam, a product and information services company with a heavy emphasis on sustainability, position itself for greater growth in the near future.

One morning a few months ago, I experienced a true moment. I realized that, after spending the majority of my 25-plus-year career covering the catalog business, that business can no longer be treated as such. Today, it's really about selling and serving any way the consumer wants you to.

Have you ever walked into a store and felt like you’d stepped into that company’s catalog? Or visited a familiar company’s Web site and intuitively known where to find what you need because the site’s organized just like its store across town? Regardless of channel, your experience is the same: You experience that brand.

In this age of economic uncertainty, it’s imperative that your brand stands for something and resonates in the hearts of customers and prospects. Most marketers are under the misconception that a great brand is only about the logo, tagline, color palette and looking the same across all channels. While those are important tactical procedures, they’re not enough to create brand advocacy or insistence. You need a “sticky” brand. In a session I co-presented at the DMA08 annual conference in Las Vegas last week, with Keith Eldred, project manager at New Pig Corp., a B-to-B cataloger of industrial safety products, we examined how to build