Branding is essential

“You can’t stand out if you’re trying to blend in.” That’s the message Sally Hogshead drives home in the updated edition of “Fascinate,” her how-to handbook for making any brand impossible to resist.

“In any crowded marketplace, you have to make a choice,” she wrote. “Either have the biggest marketing budget … or be the most fascinating. Otherwise, your messages will be ignored and forgotten.”

Her research shows that a product or service can charge up to 400 percent more, without changing the product, by identifying how to fascinate buyers. She goes on to demonstrate how anyone can make anything fascinating. Her book gives the tools to prove it.

In her original version published in 2010, Hogshead explained how our brains become captivated by certain people and ideas. She shared the seven ways in which brands fascinate people, or as she puts it, “the why, but not the how.”

- Advertisement -

The new version of her book includes more than 60 percent of new content. Most exciting is the introduction of her Brand Fascination Profile, a process that enables you to measure the advantages of your own service or product.

Another new feature is TurboBranding, a step-by-step process that shows you how to create branding messages in about an hour.

Sound like useful information? You can’t begin to imagine how many ways you can apply this advice. After all, as Hogshead wrote, “Corporations don’t create brands. People do.”

What attracts people to certain branding messages and not others? “Every day, in every relationship, you’re ‘marketing’ your ideas to be heard,” Hogshead said. “You want clients to hire you, or customers to recommend you. … Your influence will be measured by your ability to fascinate.”

You will know that your brand is fascinating if you are provoking strong and emotional reactions, creating advocates and inciting conversation, or forcing your competitors to realign.

The examples and stories that Hogshead shares offer convincing evidence. One describes how women who were given the choice between sunglasses with a designer logo and plain sunglasses were willing to pay more for the logo, although the functionality of the product was the same. The experiment showed that they weren’t concerned about buying something that was better, but something that was different.

“That’s the heart of differentiation,” she wrote. “It’s tough to be better. But far easier to be different.”

Fascination goes beyond rational thinking, she said, “transforming customers into fanatics and your brand’s products into must-have purchases.”

But what if your marketing budget is limited? “The goal here is not to spend more money on marketing. It’s actually to spend less money by marketing more effectively,” Hogshead advised.

“Spend less, but see better results. Outthink instead of outspend. If you don’t have the biggest budget, then be the most fascinating.”

The real meat of this book comes in Part II, “The Seven Fascination Advantages: How to Make Your Brand Impossible to Resist.” Here, Hogshead describes the creativity of innovation, the emotion of passion, the confidence built by power, the new standards set by prestige, the stability of trust, mystique’s language of listening and the rules of alert.

She next moves into tactics, a practical system to customize your message. The seven advantages are coupled with specific tactics to position your message more effectively.

The closing section sends you on your way with a five-step action plan. The “Fascinate System” is not a “substitute for a full-service agency,” she said. But “it condenses the time-honored marketing process into a streamlined and straightforward process for identifying your brand’s message and key competitive advantage.” n

Mackay’s Moral: Big-time branding doesn’t require a big-time budget, just a commitment to fascinate.

Harvey Mackay is the author of the New York Times best-seller “Swim With the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.” He can be reached through his website, www.harveymackay.com.

No posts to display