Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

As if we needed reminding, Ken Belson of The New York Times brings it up again. In Advertising : Best Cellphone Company? All of Them, to Hear Them Say It, we come face to face with one of the oldest and most often ignored precepts in branding. If cellphone peddlers paid more attention to their customers and prospects and less on what their competitors were doing, they might move more product. At least their stupid TV commercials and look-alike print campaigns might be less annoying. The key to building brands more scientifically is to combine market segmentation with a better understanding of your customers and your brand's existing identity. You'd think these guys would know this. It's never been a big secret. It's been in every textbook, every other issue of Harvard Business Review and a staple of marketing seminars for more years than most of us want to admit we've been alive. Building strong brands isn't getting easier, but it neither is it becoming more mysterious. To give somebody reasons to buy, you have to know what part of your customer's life your product lives in. If you're selling phones, young people know that calls get dropped, the signal isn't always loud and clear and you can't hear pin drop. What they want is a really cool looking (and sounding) handset. Hey, ringtones sell more phones in one week than the clown in the commercial with the phalanx of phoney (pun intended) "network" people ever will. The promotional efforts of Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, et. al. are indiscriminate and indistinguishable. They sound like they're more concerned with each other, not the people to whom they're selling. They focus on aspects of the brand that don't drive customer buying patterns. So, what to do? Focus on your target, not your competitors. See the world through the eyes of your customer, not the competition. Know your brand! What is it about your stuff that most affects buying patterns?