Dynamic Branding: Understanding Marketing
Learn to Dynamically Brand Your Company for Growth and Success
Jun 19, 2009
It might be obvious to suggest that almost every company starts with the aspirations of being the next Microsoft of their industry. Although that might be the intent, the structure of their brand marketing suggests otherwise. By building a marketing plan rigidly set in the stone of a five year business plan, companies fail to address the biggest marketing question: Is the marketing brand big enough to survive growth?
Many companies plan in excitement for the day when they will add products or services to their offerings as customers beat down the door in anticipation for their next release; however, every successfully branded company has one important brand marketing strategy in commonEach of the large players in every industry uses the concept of dynamic branding to build their brand, maintain recognition in their market, and increase sales in new markets.
Perhaps the most misunderstood concept in branding, dynamic branding builds a secondary structure to address niche markets with specific products aimed at certain market segmentations and demographics. In fact, by incorporating layers of secondary branding under the top level dynamic brand, companies are able to gain customer loyalty and test new products without jeopardizing the brand structure.
Even though many companies resist the idea of dynamic branding as costly and confusing, the reality of the rise of dynamic branding is reflected in the good, the bad, and the ugly of marketing history represented in these three dynamic branding case studies:
Dynamic Branding Improves Audience Recognition
Dynamic branding is a staple of recognition in the food and beverage industry. In the late 1980s, Coca-Cola did the unthinkable by rebranding their top level dynamic brand as “New Coke: The Choice of a New Generation.” The crash of this iconic brand was heard around the world as Coca-Cola quickly rescinded the New Coke branding and curbed the loss the market share with “Coca-Cola Classic.”
In the years since, Coca-Cola, like many others in the food and beverage industry, simply added different labels to their dynamic brand to appease different market segmentations with secondary brands such as Coke Zero, Dasani, Sprite, and Minute Maid. Each one carries the Coca-Cola branding as the dynamic brand, but retains their branding at the secondary level to allow brand recognition within their own market segmentation.
Dynamic Branding Tests Market Segmentation
Dynamic branding allows for the addition of new product and services as the market presents. Insurance companies like Allstate have leveraged their dynamic brand power since 1900; however, there are services and products available now with Allstate because of the strength of their dynamic brand structure.
Through the evolution of car and motorcycles to the revolution of the need to offer insurance to protect home owners and individuals against identity theft, Allstate has been in a constant state of growth under the umbrella of their dynamic branding for almost a century. With the vision of understanding the need to offer insurance for (fill in the blank), Allstate is one of the few brick-and-mortar insurance companies challenging the online insurance companies for market share by leveraging customer brand recognition.
Dynamic Branding Allows for Market Growth
Dynamic branding leaves room for flexibility of innovation to seize unexpected markets. Perhaps the most recognizable case of successful dynamic branding is reflected in the rise and rule of Amazon.com. Starting as a simple online site to buy books, Amazon quickly grew into a site that sold every media including DVDs, ebooks, CDs, and movies.
To concentrate on each individual marketing niche, Amazon started to absorb all of the features of popular marketing segments such as auctions, an outlet for self-publication, and the direct sale of a range of discount store products. In short, Amazon became the Wal-Mart of the online world all with one dynamic brand that could adjust to accept the branding of others.
In reality, dynamic branding does take some forethought about the business structure and marketing foundation. Although the complexity of dynamic branding might seem overwhelming to any company, the basic concepts are vital to giving a brand the breadth and depth it needs to grow as the company starts to succeed.
Dynamic branding gives companies a marketing path to use a high level brand to build customer loyalty between products, reach out to niche markets with specialty products, and flex without breaking to examine the viability of a new market.
 |
