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Enchanted Liaisons

International powerhouse BAP Development, responsible for the award winning, Los Altos in Casa de Campo, contacted Square One Branding to design the brand launch of their newest undertaking, Los Altos Club. A joint venture between BAP and Preferred Residences, the Asian-rustic inspired resort offers impeccably designed residential style accommodations with five star services, and it promises to raise luxury hospitality expectations in the Dominican Republic and throughout the world.

Square One developed marketing materials that capture the essence and allure of the location while maintaining the focus on the services and amenities offered, targeting both trade and consumer audiences.

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New offering with a brand new image to match

Tom Cabrerizo, former COO of Paramount Companies of Florida, commissions Square One Branding with the branding of his newest venture CFH Group a real estate investment and rental community management group based in Coral Gables, Florida, with over 25 communities under their belt. Boasting their own nursery and construction materials’ depot CFH Group offers unparalleled service and value to their customers.

Among the materials created for CFH Group are a corporate kit for investors and a more unified look for their rental communities.

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Delivering on your promise

Hay House, the reputable publisher in San Diego, California was working on a challenging project with Suze Orman, their client, TD Ameritrade and QVC. They needed someone with the experience and confidence necessary to orchestrate the many facets of production and fulfillment needed for the successful launch of Suze’s latest financial product without skipping a beat.

Suze Orman, worldwide celebrity and trusted financial advisor, together with TD Ameritrade was launching a new product called “Suze Orman’s Save Yourself – Retirement Program” that would be sold on QVC and on the World Wide Web under the Hay House umbrella. Located across many different time zones, everyone on the team was very hands on and had a say on every aspect of the creative and budgetary approval process. Ultimately, and due in part to the magnitude of the project, the pieces had to be produced close to the QVC distribution centers in Pennsylvania for easy access and cost effectiveness.

Few professionals welcome the challenges of innovative, smart print production with Square One’s adrenaline and vision. Never limited by ‘the way it’s always been done,’ our team is invigorated by new opportunities and approaches each project with an open mind for creative solutions. Leveraging experience and profound knowledge of print production with a vast network of vendors worldwide, Square One was not only able to deliver a quality product on time, but deliver on its promise of unsurpassed customer service and dedication.

Do you have a challenging project? Give us a call and allow us to help.

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The birth of something Bleau

A longtime icon of South Florida culture, The Fontainebleau Hotel and Resort and its team of merchandizing specialists recently engaged Square One Branding to develop a line of “logo” items to be sold at the hotel’s stores and gift shops. Starting with kids’ apparel, these items had to convey the fun, yet sophisticated essence of the Fontainebleau. BABY BLEAU was born, a stand-alone brand that follows existing standards and addresses this hotel’s unique “town & beach” attitude. Playful and simple graphics alongside a warm color palette bring an air of sophistication and freshness to the softest cotton garments to be found. Now the little ones are set to frolic in style!

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The world promises to be a better place.

Debbie Ford, New York Times bestselling author and founder of The Ford Institute for Transformational Training, needed to revamp her personal as well as her business websites to leverage the launch of her new movie The Shadow Effect and her seventh book The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse. Her amazing and transformational books, training programs, and products have transformed the lives of people from all corners of the world.

Debbie needed a presence on the web that portrayed how cutting-edge and revolutionary she and her organization truly are and would make them accessible and easy for everyone to find. Enter Square One Branding. A modern, sleek and sophisticated look and feel was developed by Square One’s team to showcase Debbie Ford’s many offerings. A neutral color palette and simple graphics along with state-of-the-art shopping cart technology make the products stand out and have their own voice. Additionally, search engine optimization techniques were used in an effort to raise their rating online.

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Emotional Experience Marketing

In the past few years, we’ve seen a shift in the marketing strategy of many companies. This shift has been towards creating more of an “emotional connection” with their audience. The success of the Emotional Experience Marketing model is indicative of a profound transformation in our market economy. More and more, consumers are no longer buying products, services, lifestyles or information. Instead, they are seeking satisfaction of their emotional desires through the purchase of complete experiences.

Case study: Starbucks.
Starbucks has been very successful in implementing this model, they’ve done away with directly targeting the whole person, but rather their mood. Even though the customer may be the same person demographically, if they are in a different mood they’ll be more inclined to choose a different product. Therefore the target market is essentially the person’s desire or emotional need.

The person uses the coffee product, not as an end in itself, and not as a lifestyle choice “I’m a Starbucks person!”, but as a means of delivering a larger emotional experience (comfort, reward, escape, etc.). The focus is on the experience at the moment of usage. The product is only part of a larger experience. The larger experience may include the store environment, the social occasion, other customers, the time of day and even other products such as books and music.

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Divinely Inspired. Strategically Branded.

The Beads of Life team wanted a strong, yet playful design for their newly launched line of beautifully handcrafted bracelets inspired by a Christian message. The collateral and package designs needed to connect the audience with the message that inspired each piece and convey a feeling of quality and craftsmanship. Using the designer’s signature fuchsia, a well branded look and feel was developed that delivered the experience with a high level of impact and sophistication.

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Emotions Rule!

A strong emotional connection between your target market and your brand can increase sales volumes, increase customer loyalty and lead to higher profits.

Emotional connection is a powerful way to link the heart of your target market with the soul of your brand. This connection is the degree to which your customers care about your brand beyond its rational attributes. It is more psychological than logical and more unconscious than conscious. Above all, emotional connection can make a big impact on your business.

Brands that evoke a stronger emotional response than comparable goods are able to sell in greater volumes, create rabid customer loyalty and charge more than their competitors. Customers were willing to trade up to such products across many business categories, from coffee, beer and dog food to household appliances or professional services.

According to market researchers brands are now being forced into two distinct categories: (a) low-priced commodities or (b) brands you will pay more for because you care about them. Brands in the middle of the road will get run over, either by the low-price leaders or by the brands people love.

All Buyers Are Affected by Their Emotions. Few Buyers Are Aware of It.
Many businesses operate on the assumption that their customers make decisions consciously and
rationally. Even in technical categories (or in business-to-business), this assumption is largely false.

No human being is immune to the influence of their unconscious emotions. The rule of thumb among cognitive scientists is that 95 percent of all human behavior is unconscious. Emotional connection is even more critical if your target market is female. Women already control or influence over 80 percent of the purchases in the United States, a total of around $3.5 trillion every year. They base their decisions primarily on emotional characteristics such as relationships and on what your product will do for them personally. They don’t like reading lists of numbers, specs and statistics. (Then again, who has time?)

Emotional connection is easy to overlook because customers are often unaware of their deepest motivations, especially when those motives are not socially approved. Such motives can include greed, ambition, status-seeking, fear, anger, love, lust, disgust and pride, to name a few. What people can consciously articulate has only about a one in ten chance of being truly accurate.

Categories and Brands Differ in Their Emotional Opportunities.
Not every brand can be Nike or Harley or Madonna. Not every brand can have enthusiasts tattooing the company logo into their forehead. In categories like car repair or hemorrhoid medication, customers basically want the whole subject to go away.

In categories like candy and soft drinks, the driving emotion is really just a mood or whim. But even the most humble product or the most fleeting mood can have the right emotional connection. And every appropriate emotional connection can be maximized.

Two strategic questions any business should ask are:

(a) which emotion can we own? and
(b) how much emotional intensity does our category and brand merit?

Both answers are defined and limited by your target market. But within those limits, you can tailor almost every business decision you make to maximize the appropriate emotional connection.

Product design, price, distribution, packaging, promotions, media spending, co-branding, marketing communications, and staff recruitment and training can all be tweaked to get your customers to care more. The goal is to use all the touch points of your business to create a consistent emotional effect in your customers that will allow you to build brand trust and loyalty.

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Brand Rejuvenation – A case study of Sony

After a long time, a brand other than Apple is creating a global buzz about the impending launch of one its product. Sony with the launch of PlayStation 3 seems to have stuck a chord with consumers once again after a long hiatus. It was high time that one of the world’s iconic brands started reclaiming its rightful position as the leader of the consumer electronics market. Even though PlayStation 3 seems to have brought back some energy and zest for the brand, it is an irony that the life of such a strong global brand has come to depend on a single product. As one of the pre-eminent global consumer electronics brand which has enjoyed unparallel brand equity and loyalty, Sony is surprisingly a classic case study for what a brand should not do to erode its own brand standing in the market place.Over the last couple of years, Sony has been gradually but surely slipping from its ivory tower and failing to keep up with many of its followers turned competitors such as Samsung, LG and others. What did Sony do wrong? How could such an iconic brand get into trouble? This article examines the brand lifecycle of Sony and more specifically address the issue of how Sony can rejuvenate itself and remerge as the global power brand and a force to reckon with.

Brand and focus

One of the highly discussed topics in branding is the relevance of maintaining consistency for brands in the current market place which is characterized by diverse cultures, increasingly empowered consumers and ever changing trends and consumer preferences. Consistency is often mistaken by brands for complacency or static existence. Consistency in the branding lexicon refers to the ability of the brand to convey to the consumers in a single voice across all customer touch points, the fundamental building blocks of any brand namely the brand identity, brand image, brand personality, brand essence, key performance indicators such as quality, features, price points and such. But such a consistency should not come at the cost of the brand refusing to constantly adapt to the dynamic market structure. Obviously carrying out these two seemingly contradictory things becomes highly challenging. Such a complex maneuver proves even more difficult for an established brand such as Sony, as it will have entrenched brand structure, and brand management practices. Even though there are many specific reasons for Sony’s slide from the top, at a corporate level, Sony’s inability to manage consistency while constantly changing appears to be at the root of Sony’s decline.

Sony’s iconic ascent and recent descent – An analysis

An analysis of Sony’s ascent to global prominence and the reasons for its slide from the pinnacle during the last couple of years brings to fore some pressing reasons. Three major factors contributed to Sony’s ascent to global supremacy in the consumer electronics sector and they are:

1. Innovation: Innovation, to a great extent, defined the brand character of Sony. Sony grew to global prominence due to its ability to constantly create products even before other companies could conceptualize them. Further, Sony had the ability to sense the hidden consumer demand and create entire product categories through its innovative products. When Walkman was introduced into the market, there was no existing market for portable music. But Sony’s innovative product brought about an entire generation of products and created a new category altogether. Such an innovative culture differentiated Sony from the other consumer electronics brands for a very long time.
2. Visionary leadership: Sony is a classic case to prove the strategic importance of a visionary leader in carrying a brand to dizzying heights. Sony’s management team along with the CEO was responsible to create an environment that nurtured experimentation, and innovation. Further, Sony was one of the early Asian brands to recognize the importance of branding, which was again supported and lead by the management team.
3. Pioneer advantage: Given the innovative edge, Sony emerged as the pioneer in almost every sector that it was operating in. Being the first mover or in many cases, the inventor of the category, Sony had a great leeway in defining the rules of the game as it were. It set the expectations for the other companies that entered the category. Also, the brand image was enhanced every time a competitor imitated Sony as it became an indirect way to accept Sony’s leadership position. Being the pioneer also offered Sony an opportunity to make more mistakes, test new ideas, and experiment with innovative concepts.

As can be seen, each of these three factors lead into each other thereby creating a virtuous circle. The combination of these factor pushed Sony into the exclusive club of iconic brands. But over the last decade, Sony seems to have lost the magic formula. It has been gradually sliding down from its high seat. Many reasons have contributed to Sony’s decline:

1. Unrelated diversification: An important and unique factor that has distinguished several Asian businesses from other Western business is the extent of diversification. Controlled and managed largely by business families, companies blow up into conglomerates that does business in very diverse and unrelated industries. Many Asian companies such as Samsung and LG that have become global forces to reckon with also started as bloated conglomerates. But these companies seem to have learnt the importance of focusing on core competence. As such, Samsung trimmed down its organization, came out of unrelated industries and channeled its resources around one or two dominant businesses. But Sony still seems to have stuck up in multiple businesses. This sort of unrelated diversification not only drains the brand’s resources to a great extent but also diverts the brand focus from the core of the brand.
2. Innovation dearth: Case of Apples’ iPod explains this point very well. Walkman made Sony the undisputed leader in portable music player category. As is the usual case, success breeds corporate complacency. As such, Sony did not follow up with any outstanding and innovative product line to sustain the initial success. Apple came out with iPod that appealed to the younger generation worldwide and also established its standard iTunes from where consumers could download songs for a nominal payment. This not only established Apple as the undisputed leader in mobile music market but also helped Apple to establish the industry standard. This dented Sony’s brand reputation. Sony has suffered similar challenges from many brands such as Samsung, Nokia, LG and others in different product categories. Sony’s lack of consumer oriented innovation has contributed greatly to its decline in recent years.
3. Lack of brand evolution: Sony’s past surely contributes an enormous amount of heritage, history and achievements into the brand identity. But for a brand to be successful in the current ultra competitive globalized market place, it has to make itself very relevant to the current customer segments. Harping back on past laurels and expecting the customers to still support the brand due to its past glory will be a grave mistake as has turned out in Sony’s case. Sony has not been very successful in evolving as the brand for the new masses of the twenty first century. Apple, Samsung and a few others have hijacked that from Sony. As such, the brand has not been in with the times as it were and that has contributed to its slide from the top.

Brand Rejuvenation – Guidelines

From the discussion so far, it is clear that Sony has not been very prudent in managing its brand and its components very well over the last few years. But even then, Sony still continues to be one of the most valuable brands in the world. What should Sony do to regain its lost brand supremacy? It seems ironic that for a solution Sony may want to look at a brand that prides itself on structuring its brand plan based on Sony’s – Samsung Electronics. Samsung Electronics has been hugely successful in creating a brand from scratch and making the brand one of the top consumer electronics brand in the world. If Sony has to regain its lost brand supremacy, then it may want to follow some of the fundamental steps discussed below:

1. Regain focus: Effects of unrelated diversification has been very pronounced for many family owned Asian conglomerates. Operating in a number of unrelated businesses is often justified on the logic of scale and scope economies. But from a brand perspective, such diversification will be more detrimental than helpful. Sony, like Samsung, should conduct a due diligence to evaluate the financial and brand worth of its different business units. Before the unrelated business units erode the equity of the core Sony brand, it would benefit Sony to come out of such businesses. Regaining focus and investing in nurturing and enhancing its core competence will be the first necessary step towards regaining brand leadership.
2. Elevate marketing/branding to the boardroom: Sony should revamp its departments that have a direct impact on creating strong customer perception for the brand – R&D, design, and marketing. For innovation to make any brand sense, it has to reflect consumer preferences. Innovation has to lead to products and services that would enhance the relationship between the brand and the consumer. For this to happen, R&D, design and marketing have to become more customer-centric. In other words, Sony needs to elevate the marketing function to the boardroom and enable marketing to take a lead of the business and the strategy. Marketing and branding can no longer be relegated to a tactical level handled by marketing managers who hardly have an appreciation of the larger picture.
3. Brand oriented leadership: Over the last couple of years, many brands have emerged from Asia that provide tough competition to Sony. Further, with the resurgence of many American brands, the market place has become extremely competitive. In such a scenario, Sony’s path back to brand supremacy can happen only if it is guided by a brand oriented leadership. The CEO and the top management team at Sony should evaluate the meaning and identity of the Sony brand to its customers in these changing times and enable the brand team to innovate and lead the industries in which Sony operates in.
4. Design, features and the cool factor: Given the aggressive strategies of Apple, Nokia, Samsung and others along with their superiority in design, customer oriented features and the loyal following of “cool” customers, it becomes very important for Sony to regain the cool factor and beef up its designs and features. Relevance to current customers and the ability to morph into a brand that can reflect customer needs prove very crucial for Sony as it charts its path back to the top position.

Conclusion

The brief market euphoria that would follow the launch of PlayStation 3 should not be confused with long term brand success or the return of Sony as it were. Even though this latest product will allow Sony a much need breather, it should just be a starting point for Sony’s resurgence. Sony, by methodically evaluating its brand culture and following the steps described above, could surely rejuvenate itself in the long run.

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Iconic Brands

All companies aspire to build brands that eventually get etched in the culture of the society and become cultural icons. But very few companies are able to achieve this iconic status. Contrary to popular perception, iconicity does not happen by chance, but rather has to be carefully planned and executed. A look at some of the most iconic brands in history such as Coca-Cola, Harley Davidson, Giorgio Armani, Apple, Amanresorts and Singapore Airlines reveals some very common characteristics. All these brands fulfilled three important requirements of being an iconic brand:

Create an identity myth: For any brand to attain iconic status, it has to create an identity myth. Every society invariably goes through phases of prosperity and crisis. Brands that resonate and shows directions to the masses through the brand stories and brand activities gets etched into the culture. These brands, by creating an identity for themselves, provide identity to the whole society.

Involve multiple story tellers: Dissemination of brand information through the many participants of the society is critical for an iconic brand. The four major authors of these brand stories are: companies, the culture industries, intermediaries and customers. Each of these authors facilitates the brand to blend into the fabric of the society. By associating the brand and its identity with the prevalent events in the society, these authors create an iconic stature for the brands.

Weave powerful brand stories: Great brands always have resonating stories that touch the lives of consumers. These stories could be of the brand’s unique history (Shanghai), myth (Jim Thompson), culture (Harley Davidson), fashion icon (Giorgio Armani), struggle (Li Ning), and underlying philosophy (Singapore Airlines). These brand stories offers consumers a good reason to elevate the brand beyond their mere utilitarian role in the market.

One of the important results of developing an iconic brand is the growth of brand communities. Brand communities are largely imagined communities that represent a form of human association situated within a consumption context. Brand communities are collections of active loyalists, users of a brand who are committed, conscientious and almost passionate. There is an intrinsic connection between members and the collective sense of difference from others not in the community. Members of the brand community practice rituals and traditions that perpetuate the community’s shared history.

Brand communities are liberated from geography, commercial in nature, possess communal self awareness and are committed that facilitates the brand to attain long term acceptability in the society and ensures that the brand attains iconic state.

By being an important resource for consumers, brand communities provide wider social benefits to consumers through interaction and provide social structure to the relationship between marketer and consumer.

About the author:

Martin Roll – Business & brand strategist