Brand Busters: 7 Common Mistakes that Marketers Make. Lessons from the World of Technical and Scientific Products

Citation

Glynn, M. (2009), "Brand Busters: 7 Common Mistakes that Marketers Make. Lessons from the World of Technical and Scientific Products", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. 18 No. 1, pp. 77-78. https://doi.org/10.1108/10610420910933399

In the preface to this book, Chris Wirthwein states that he imagines the reader of this book would be a marketing director or communications manager in a technical or scientific products corporation. However, the impression given by the “Brand Busters” is that this book is primarily about branding in general. This impression is further reinforced with the front illustration, which shows a motorcycle being driven along the road towards a pothole, (which presumably contains one of the seven “brand busters”), not a scientific or technical product. Although examples of technical and scientific products permeate the text, as the author points out, the lessons that it contains are nonetheless very applicable to all marketers of goods and services.

In the Introduction, the author carefully defines what he means by technical and scientific products, which are those that have science and technology as an important part of the marketing mix. This definition excludes products that may be scientific in their engineering but do not communicate those properties in their marketing message. The book title Brand Buster is catchy and has much more impact than a title like “Brand Mistakes” for instance. However, the focus of the book is on marketing mistakes rather than brand mistakes. The seven brand busters are: focusing on customer needs instead of wants, falling in love with your product, believing marketing is either a science or an art, trying to please all customers, not realizing that customers forget about your product, unnecessary price cutting, and selling your product on an economic basis to customers.

The first brand buster emphasizes the importance of the customer and that marketers should address benefits that customers “want” rather than features that customers “need”. The lesson in this chapter is that value for a technical or scientific product is created in the mind of the customer. A very good business‐to‐business example is provided of a pest control product. What was important in this example was the value this product gave farmers in terms of crop yield.

From my own experience, the second brand buster of falling in love with your product would seem to be a very common scenario in many firms. To succeed in the corporate world a high level of personal job commitment is required, including the products and services under the marketer's responsibility. Marketers should remain open‐minded, given their corporate responsibilities and loyalties, and avoid being myopic about their firm's product or service features.

This discussion leads on to the third brand buster about taking either a scientific approach towards marketing or conversely ignoring scientific marketing altogether and treating marketing as an art. The author does not recommend either extreme and discusses marketing research and advertising testing as examples of the scientific approach. Marketers should carefully weigh the costs and the benefits of marketing research before spending marketing funds unnecessarily. The value of informal market research techniques is emphasize, particularly the use of in‐depth interviews rather than focus groups. In terms of advertising copy, the emphasis in the book is on print advertising for technical and scientific products. The author does recommend testing alternative advertising copy before committing to a single creative strategy. These lessons are good advice as marketers often adopt an advertising campaign based solely on the recommendations of the advertising agency, often with little supporting research. Thus, the overall recommendation is to research alternative executions with potential customers using informal marketing research.

The fourth brand buster “Trying to please everyone” is a short chapter but one that contains an important lesson for marketers. Many technical and scientific products often consist of many features and benefits. Should all these features and benefits be emphasized, thus appealing to many different segments at once, or should one particular feature be highlighted appealing to a single market segment? The author's advice is to take the latter approach and be selective, not emphasizing all of a good's or service's potential features and benefits.

The fifth brand buster, “forgetting that people forget,” is related to many of the previous brand busters. Marketers forget that their product and service is not always “top of mind” in the daily lives of their customers. Marketers should remember that brand awareness decays and that ongoing marketing communication is necessary to maintain strong awareness levels. This lesson is very relevant, especially as marketing budgets are under pressure within firms. The next brand buster concerns pricing. The author does reiterate the conventional wisdom that discounting can harm the brand. However, he also offers some solutions to the problem of maintaining price competitiveness.

The last brand buster cautions the reader not to just rely on corporate measures, such as return on investment, to evaluate marketing success. Such measures are not customer focused. The underlying message is that marketers rely on selling their products to people and a customer focus is ultimately important in successful marketing.

This book is aimed at the busy marketers who seek solutions to common marketing problems. The text is presented in a very readable format with interesting cases and solutions relevant to most marketers. There are useful references provided for each chapter as well as a comprehensive index. One area of the marketing mix that is overlooked is dealing with distributors and resellers of technical and scientific products. While end‐customers are important, to reach these customers requires the marketer to deal with the often powerful members of the supply chain such as retailers. The marketing problems discussed in this book are real, and the author offers very practical examples and solutions. The book is perhaps less relevant to practicing brand managers as the content is not brand specific but more applicable to marketers in general, including business‐to‐business and industrial marketers.