Branding is at the heart of everything we do at The Value Engineers, so we’ve long been collectors of definitions of brands.

One of the classic definitions, often referred to, is from Kotler:
“A name, term, symbol or design, or a combination of them which is intended to signify the goods or services of one seller or group of sellers and to differentiate them from those of competitors” 
 
I’ve also had a go at putting together my top five one-line definitions of a brand. 

A brand is…
…a unit of social currency
…one of the biggest value generators in the modern business world
…more than promise, it’s a responsibility
…a portal to a world
…a zip file of meaning
 
Can you do any better?

You know that thrill when a long lost friend (or even better, a long lost love) comes back into your life ? Well, it can be just a little like that with brands.

Brands play a very important role in our lives in so many ways. It may be sad but I can remember the very first can of  Pepsi Cola I ever drank. It was in Sutton Park in 1968 and it cost me my bus fare home – but it was worth it. The marketing flotsam and jetsam of my childhood and youth shows that brand equity is not wishful thinking. Did you too enjoy the playful innocence of licking a Walls Funny Face or Zoom? Can you still remember that it’s amazin what raisins can do? If so, you can understand why for me some brands seem to defy classic product lifecycle theory and like the phoenix fly again; and why thirty years since its first Sunday outing, Arctic Roll is making it onto my table again! An icy blast from the branding past.

With the phenomenal growth of the market research industry, researchers and recruiters have been worrying for several years about the growth of the ‘professional respondent’ and the apparently increasing difficulty in finding fresh consumers who are willing to take part in research studies.

The current economic crisis may just have a positive effect on this issue – as more people lose their jobs, or simply become more financially insecure, the attraction of participating in market research may bring many new respondents into the pool, people who previously may have declared themselves too busy or simply unwilling to take part. Indeed, attendance at our recent groups has been significantly better than usual, and it is rare now to have ‘no-shows’.

However, whilst this can undoubtedly be highly beneficial for recruiters, researcher (and ultimately research results for clients), it will bring its own set of challenges. For example: how do you engage respondents who have previously been disengaged from the process? How do you overcome their cynicism if they have agreed to take part out of financial necessity rather than out of any kind of desire to assist the process?

I think there are several things that we should do at this stage to ensure that we get the best out of this ‘fresh blood’:
1. Encourage our recruiters now more than ever to search out ‘virgin’ respondents
2. Ensure that screeners are applied rigorously to weed out the disinterested and the freeloaders
3. Become ever more creative in ensuring that our research methodologies truly engage the imagination of respondents
4. Ensure that research approaches, where possible, allow respondents to feel that they are part of an important process with real benefits for people like them, not an exercise in hoop-jumping
5. Treat respondents as equals in the process – avoid ‘lab-rat’ testing methods and bring them into the marketing process as much as possible

Who knows, they might just surprise you and we might all get some fresh insights to drive the next phase of business growth.

Welcome to our new revived, refreshed and revitalised website.

This is a showcase for our expanded offer, encompassing Branding, Strategy, Innovation and Insight, as well as our newest practice areas of Closeness and Capabilities. Our new blog is the place to catch up on all our new developments, and dip into our Engineers’ latest thinking on brands and marketing.

Thank you for taking the time to visit us. We do hope you find our new site helpful, informative, visually attractive, but most importantly, thought-provoking!

It’s nice to be appreciated, and we’re particularly pleased when others recommend our thinking.

One of our Senior Consultants, Kamil Michlewski, has recently had his academic work referred to on the website of Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management.

If you’d like to read more about the ‘Culture of Design’ click here: http://design.case.edu/what/