Pulling Away from the Business-to-Businnes Pack

This section is a gem: the Intel “story”, for example, includes visuals from the early unsophisticated Intel campaigns for the 286 and 386 chips; hard to believe it’s the same company that eventually came up with “Intel Inside”. Bob Lamons’ career spans 33 years and he has the closest thing to an impeccable B2B pedigree: he is a highly recognized B2B practitioner; he writes a monthly column for AMA Marketing News; he served for 11 years on the Board of the Business Marketing Association including one year as chair and has received prestigious publishing awards.

He is currently Chief Marketing Officer for Unleaded Communications of Houston, Texas and can be reached at lamons@ulcomm. com. PART ONE – The seven step process for building strong B2B brands: * Chapter 1 – Introduction – in this chapter Bob Lomans summarizes his basic philosophy of B2B branding: “keep it simple”. The author also details the seven steps for B2B brand building and emphasizes the need for B2B marketers to be more attuned to branding.

Effective teamwork – this premise stipulates the seven “team” members that must band together behind the B2B branding strategy: the CEO, CMO, CFO, HR, Sales, Customer Service, Marcom. The author defines quite precisely the role of each of these in formulating brand strategies – it’s a fairly generic portrayal that could easily apply to most B2B or industrial companies. Chapter 3 – Brand architecture – the author provides a “practical” understanding of this concept and stipulates (correctly) that most B2B companies are forced to subscribe to the “masterbrand” concept which emphasizes corporate identity and image; B2B marcom budgets are typically too small to support a range of sub-brands. * Chapter 4 – Audience identification – “I’ve discovered through many years of trying to work with target audience statements that most of them are not worth the paper they are written on”.

This direct quote could be quite discouraging if taken at face value. However the book does stipulate two areas of focus for B2B marketers: obtaining input primarily from employees (to optimize internal integration) and, secondly, from customers. These are important issues but the discussion is a bit superficial on one aspect: how to obtain better “insight” into customer motivations. * Chapters 4 and 5 – Brand Positioning/ Brand Personality – as with B2C marketing, these are the two cornerstones of B2B branding.

But there is some confusion between brand positioning, brandpersonality and brand image – there is some confusion between the latter two and brand image (the cornerstone of business branding) is not discussed in much depth at all. Regardless, these two chapters include some excellent and unique examples of B2B branding. There is a particularly nice discussion of B2B slogans and symbols and their role in business branding – and more excellent examples. Chapters 6 and 7 – Consistent Execution/Brand Equity – the former emphasizes the need for a long-term view of B2B branding: “Branding is a journey not a destination”. Chapter 7 quite rightly states that “branding experts can’t agree on a definition for brand equity” but the range of options for brand equity are explored. This chapter is probably the least focused on the B2B side of branding – but it is a thorough though generic discussion of this issue.

Includes twenty-one B2B cases studies:As one Amazon. com reviewer said: “This is the real meat…I like the down to earth, practical approach”. A good mix of case studies is presented including better known companies (Caterpillar; Dow Corning; SAS Institute) and lower profile but interesting companies (ACME Brick; James Hardie; the New Pig; Clock Spring). Not only is each “brand story” thoroughly researched and presented, there are numerous pictures, visuals and examples accompanying the documented cases.

Compiling this depth of information (and obtaining the required permissions) cost the author by adding an extra year to his publishing deadline: * Each case study includes: a thorough situation analysis; the strategic objectives and related marketing and communication objectives; the execution of the strategy and target audience implications; a description of the outcomes and impact on the brand and the company. * In most cases a re-positioning or re-branding of the company was involved – and the analysis documents a range of approaches: some companies used very creative ways to revitalize the brand and the company.

One of the best examples is Acme Brick a manufacturer of residential and commercial bricks. Besides using traditional industrial advertising venues, Acme spends about half its budget on consumer TV and outdoor boards; they affiliated themselves with a popular Dallas Cowboy team member and his children’s foundation which significantly enhanced their profile in the city; they offered a 100-year product guarantee and featured creative and artistic uses of bricks to create sculptures and attract even more attention. The author also demonstrates how large industrial companies with many products and divisions re-organized and re-branded their entire companies – these provide great examples of B2B brand architecture.

The book also demonstrates how it is possible to add some “pizzazz” to companies trying to market dull and boring companies – such as Clock Spring (a small pipeline repair company) that used a fictitious cartoon character to add personality to their corporate image. In a number of cases, the author clearly has intimate knowledge of the companies profiled and brings a great deal of personal insight into the brand development process – which also serve to demonstrate the author’s strong branding instincts. * The whole package clearly makes up for some of the deficiencies in some of the branding theories detailed in the first part of the book. In summary — this book does a great job of integrating business branding principles with “real” B2B case studies and examples.

One might not agree with the business branding process that Bob Lomans subscribes to but he does a good of supporting his step-by-step regimen for effective branding. These are more errors of “omission” than “commission” – and the basics are there and well documented. The book is an essential read and good preparation for gaining a greater understanding of the dynamics of B2B marketing.