Last month, Google added another title to its bulging trophy cabinet after being voted the ‘UK’s top consumer brand’. This follows on from it being hailed as the world’s most powerful brand in April, and sees them leapfrog Microsoft as the ‘brand that people value at work and in their daily lives’. 

Google’s whirlwind love affair with the World shows how the nature of branding is changing in the 21st century, and teaches even the smallest enterprise a few tricks on winning customer loyalty.

What defines a superbrand?

The survey to find the UK’s top superbrand was conducted by the Superbrands Council (a group of marketing, advertising and media experts), who define superbrands as:

‘A superbrand has established the finest reputation in its field. It offers customers significant emotional and tangible advantages over other brands, which (consciously or subconsciously) customers want and recognise. All superbrands must represent quality, reliability and distinction.’

This definition goes a long way towards explaining why Microsoft has been usurped from its throne, and why (as discussed in my previous article) it needs to fear for its future.

Both Microsoft and Google provide products and services people use everyday. But whereas Microsoft’s reputation was won through shear domination, Google won praise because of its popularity and the perception of its superiority.

Why are Google the #1 brand?

Google’s recognition as the UK’s (and World’s) biggest brand is arguably the fastest rise of a brand in history. Barely past its tenth birthday, Google has overtaken seasoned thoroughbreds, such as the BBC, British Airways and Mercedes Benz, as a name synonymous with quality, distinction and a service that’s superior to the rest. 

To be fair, Yahoo and MSN have been fighting an uphill battle ever since their competition’s name became a verb. With around 80% of web users ‘Googling’ to find the answers to their questions, Google is now synonymous with search.

As with any successful marketing strategy, perhaps Google’s dominance is as much to do with the ‘perception’ of product superiority as it is to do with reality. 

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Google started chomping into Yahoo and MSN’s market share. But its expansion into a plethora of high quality, free products (e.g. Google Earth, Maps, Gmail and Googledocs) is arguably the catalyst that generated its huge popularity in such a short space of time. 

Perception can be as important as your product

The best marketing talk in the world isn’t going to turn you into a superbrand if you don’t have the products to back it up with. However, the perception of superiority can be as important as the quality of your wares in making people lust for your label. 

Building the perception of superiority is an increasingly complex puzzle for marketing and advertising agencies. Because people are looking for brands that engage with their interests and passions, rather than merely bombard them with one way advertising messages. 

This changing consumer mindset is being shaped by both an ad averse culture and the fact that people now have control over what content they want to receive.

Google’s rise comes from feeding a modern consumer need

Last May, BT released their 21^st Century Life Index Report, which estimated that most Brits now spend over six hours per week surfing the web. With one in five visiting more than 20 sites a week, the TV is now being left switched off whilst people ‘Facebook’ their friends, shop and feed their thirst for knowledge. 

The spread of broadband and explosion in online content is changing the consumer mindset from that of waiting to be fed to that of feeding itself. Today’s consumer now actively devours content that offers valuable insight and helps them make smarter buying decisions. 

So what does a global superbrand’s success have to do with me?

Google’s rise as the world’s biggest brand occurs not only from providing a better product, but also the perception of being superior to their rivals. Through the provision of additional services it was able to foster a positive association to its brand and encourage people to adopt it as their search engine of choice.

Google’s success demonstrates that you have to look beyond just your core product in raising perceptions on your brand’s value. Whilst you might not have the billions to spend on giving away free internet applications on a global scale, there are many ways in which you can enhance your brand’s image. After sales support, your customer service record and content that offers value to customers can all be utilised to foster positive associations with your logo. 

When you consider that brand perceptions are being formed online more than ever, a good place to start in boosting your profile would be your website. Are you providing merely a branded message in the form of an online brochure? Or are you providing insightful, useful content to customers that enhance the quality, reliability and distinction of your brand?   

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

So was Cuil’s launch the biggest PR disaster of all time? Judging by the barrages of criticism and negative coverage you’d certainly think so. With hindsight, comparing yourself to the world’s most popular search engine before you’ve even gone live probably wasn’t the best idea.

For anybody not in the loop, Cuil is a new search engine created by a team of ex-engineers from Google, Alta Vista, IBM and eBay. This dream team was supposed to deliver a new standard in search, and loosen Google’s tyrannical grip on the search advertising market.

Cuil was launched to the fanfare of indexing three times as many websites as Google, and ten times that of Microsoft. Whilst the tactic of using a bold claim to attract attention certainly won it exposure, it backfired when the product failed to live up to the hype.

Peddling hype will backfire

Rarely does a news story on Cuil pass without a flood of negative feedback pouring into the comments section. People are furious at having their attention diverted on a product launch that’s fallen short of expectation, with many eager to share their own experiences of Cuil’s irrelevant links compared to Google. The pasting of images from one website onto another’s search result also hasn’t gone down well, appearing like yet more cracks in the beleaguered search engine’s algorithm.

With hindsight, Cuil should have been launched with ‘Beta’ pasted all over it in big, bold letters. Then it would have had a get out clause for early hiccups, and an excuse for why it went down repeatedly on launch day.

More importantly, the Cuil team should have stayed clear of using bold claims to push their product, particularly to an internet audience who aren’t just sceptical but furious if someone tries to peddle them hype.

Why Microsoft’s future is at risk

Cuil’s attempt to break into the lucrative search market occurs on the backdrop of Google’s online dominance posing a risk to Microsoft’s long-term future. Because Microsoft’s reign as the king of office software is under threat now that online applications are on the verge of competing directly with those on your desktop.

Along with email, word processing and data storage, PC applications are starting to emigrate online, offering remote access to documents and software from any internet connection.

Google has been investing heavily in creating online applications for the last few years, with Gmail, Google Docs and Google Earth now used by millions all over the world. There can be little doubt that Google has ambitions of usurping Microsoft as the software King, and adding it to their existing title as conqueror of the search market.

Microsoft aren’t just buying Yahoo for their search traffic

Microsoft’s protracted takeover of Yahoo is as much about buying an online presence as it is about gaining its search traffic. Whilst Yahoo’s 3.45% share of the UK search market pales into insignificance compared to Google’s 87%, Yahoo remains a popular portal because of its news, finance and other services, which provide the online consumer experience Microsoft craves.

Last month, Microsoft was given another poke in the eye on the urgent need to change their business model when Google replaced them as the UK’s # 1 brand (showing just how much searching on the internet has become a part of people’s everyday lives).

So will buying Yahoo give Microsoft the muscle needed to challenge Google’s online dominance? Time will tell. But becoming a popular brand is about providing services and products that people value. It’s not something you can buy or gain with barrages of publicity, but has to be earned. Just ask Cuil.

[Here’s an insightful BBC news clip discussing in more detail the pros and cons of Microsoft buying Yahoo]

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

So you’ve just built a spanking new website with your company brochure recreated in pixel form. Now you’ve just got to wait for visitors to arrive before the sales start rolling in, right? Wrong. Selling your products and services online presents unique hurdles compared to the bricks and mortar world. Your website has to be able to build trust and confidence with visitors before they’re going to buy.

Make your website ‘sticky’

People search the web for information. Not advertising. And using the marketing language and sales spiel from your corporate brochure isn’t going to cut it online. Web users have the attention spans of goldfish, and will swim away in fright at the first sign of a sales message. 

The average website visitor will leave within the first minute. They might have a browse around if you’ve got an attractive landing page. But they’ll quickly leave and look elsewhere if they can’t find the answers they’re looking for. 

So for your website to be an effective sales generating machine it has to be ‘sticky’ and keep hold of visitors for as long as possible. Because the longer they’re in your store the more time you’ve got to prove why you’re the answer to their problem.

Provide ‘social proof’

The best way to engage attention is with content of value, rather than marketing messages. Before a visitor is going to place an order or pick up the phone you have to be able to answer any questions blocking a sale and earn their trust. You can achieve this through your content.

Providing case studies, customer reviews and testimonials will help to demonstrate the ‘social proof’ of your product or service. The social proof is the real world evidence that your product does what it says on the tin. 

People are increasingly sceptical of marketing, but they do listen to each other. So make sure you’re providing plenty of content from third parties to give concrete to the claims on your landing page.

Build rapport with valuable content

The old adage ‘people like to do business with those they like and trust’ has never been truer than online. Until we’ve developed virtual salesmen to talk to prospects one-to-one, you can use your content to build rapport with prospects. A popular vehicle for doing this is to use a blog, which is in essence a content management system with added bells.

Rather than posting rants on who never gets the tea, provide useful articles commenting on industry news, offering advice on how to use your product or giving examples of how you’ve solved a customer’s problem. 

If you’re providing information of value then prospects will either subscribe to your blog or keep returning for updates. Few people are ready to buy the first time they visit your site. 

However, if you’re providing ongoing content of value then you can build trust and confidence in your expertise over time. And with the right strategy in place you can even try and position yourself as a knowledge leader in your industry.

Google loves regularly updated websites

If it’s regularly updated, Google and other search engines will love your blog as much as your readers. The search engines rate sites based on the frequency with which they’re updated and the links pointing to them from other sites. 

If you’re content offers value, rather than shallow sales messages, then other websites will naturally link to you over time and boost your natural search engine ranking. 

Valuable content is a competitive advantage

With broadband now in most UK homes and businesses, an effective sales generating website has never been more crucial. 

So whilst your competitors struggle with their static online brochures, turn your web presence into a channel for engaging prospects with valuable content, and convert more browsers into buyers.  

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BDA (Buckingham Design Associates) - real people giving real opinions, and a complete lack of agency waffle. BDA deliver an exciting blend of design and creative marketing for the Oxford, Milton Keynes, Northampton and London region.

With eyeballs and attention focused on the web, rarely a day passes without someone heralding the death of print. It’s just the fashionable thing to say.

In a recent interview, it was Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s turn to hammer a nail into print’s coffin. He gave paper and ink a life expectancy of ten years before it gets binned forever, envisioning a world where all content is consumed on a Windows run machine. Whilst his prediction is music to the ears of Microsoft shareholders, we can’t see print fading away anytime soon.

It’s easy to jump on the ‘print is dead’ bandwagon based on the falling readership of newspapers and magazines. But in reality, print is merely evolving to accommodate digital and the changes in how content is consumed.

Whilst the mass market, one size fits all style of print publishing is slowly being ushered aside, new models are emerging that keep print firmly centre stage.

The debate is about change, not conflict

Readership of print has fallen dramatically in recent years, with ad revenues haemorrhaging as people switch to digital. Readers can now find breaking stories and articles of interest in a few mouse clicks. A daily newspaper or monthly magazine simply can’t compete with the immediacy of surfing the web.

However, people still like the physicality of browsing a printed publication. So there’s still a future for print if it can differentiate itself as a provider of comment, discussion and in depth analysis. If publishers want their print titles to stay profitable, they have to give readers something they can’t easily find online.

Printed newspapers and magazines need to evolve into a different type of beast altogether, one that can live in harmony, rather than conflict, with digital. Otherwise it risks becoming too costly for its masters to keep alive, and dying out altogether.

People still prefer print

When it comes to the marketing arena, if managed properly, print can continue to perform a starring role. The fact is that people still like to receive something they can touch and read at their leisure. A Pitney Bowes study found that 73% prefer to receive product announcements and offers in the mail, rather than read them on a monitor.

So with print still popular with prospects, the future lies in learning how to make best use of each medium. Every touch point needs to be integrated to deliver consistent branding, a unified message and a clearly directed sales path.

Print provides the ignition

Considering that people prefer to receive messages in print, well targeted direct mail can provide the ignition to an integrated campaign. Print’s role is to hook prospects and capture their interest before reeling them in to your branded website.

You can then use online tools to develop your message, such as video, background articles and interactive features. Once you’ve proven your credibility and won their email address, you can deliver further targeted messages and push them all the way to the end of the sales funnel.

From our Siemens campaign we experienced first hand how effective integrated campaigns can be, when both print and digital are working together to deliver a unified message.

Print’s survival depends on one factor

Whether print, in all its forms, is able to remain profitable and effective will rely on its ability to deliver the content people want in a way that’s relevant and useful.

The growth of digital is changing when people consume content, as well as how. Consumers are now in control of what messages they want to receive and when. As a result, websites are sprouting all over the web to discuss all manner of topics and to share information.

Markets are fragmenting into niches, in which people only want to receive messages that are relevant and match their interests. And that’s why the survival of print will be decided by a single factor: what people want.

I had this sent to me and I had to put this ‘Red Bull Flugtag Flight Lab’ up on the site and share it with you. What a great bit of Flash this is!

Having just returned from the Autosport press day at the NEC, it is clear to see that the Kumho Tyres Stand is going to take the show by storm.

With stunning graphics and audio, real rally cars and of course the Kumho girls the stand is not only very good looking but interactive to boot.

The girls are signing and distributing posters designed and produced by us with over two thirds distributed the first day alone.

Performance car, 4×4 and road car tyre range brochures combine with posters, coasters, tyre gauges, pens and a competition to win Manchester United tickets, make for some great collateral and merchandise on the stand.

The construction of the actual shell is of the highest standard and features 2 elevated meeting rooms to create a real sense of presence. The graphics, for which we are responsible make the whole stand, collateral and merchandise come together.

Having walked round the show, which in all honesty was more like a hike in the yorkshire mores, Kumho’s  stand is certainly up there as one of the best.

Have a look at the pictures of the stand

Well we’ve managed to do it, bda’s new website is now live, yet still not complete and likely to always be a work in progress. But, then that is a good summary of most of today’s sites.

I hope you like what we have put together. We feel it gives you a better view of us, our work, our personalities and our inspiration.

We’ve been making lots of changes at bda to improve every facet of the business both internally and externally, we hope you like what we’ve done.

Have a look at our portfolio, our news, blogs, moodboard, profiles and do let us know what you think, and make sure you keep coming back!

Will write again soon!