Brands and Branding – Make your intangibles work for you It can, and indeed should, take years to build a successful brand. It’s not simply a case of having a logo or slogan; you must deliver your promises effectively in order to build a good brand image. Annabel Pritchard of the Chartered Institute of Marketing says: “A brand is the promise of what your company can offer.” This goes for the service industry too, as Andy Rayner of Tenon explains: services should reflect the ‘character’ of the company. Establish your strategy first, then your brand should reflect it. The Daily Telegraph 1st March, 2005 Direct Marketing - Going direct is good A study by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) has found that consumers are “happy to receive direct marketing”. The survey was the UK’s biggest into the sector, with 700 people being polled. Around half of them had responded to direct marketing and 35% “valued personal contact from companies”. James Kelly of the DMA said: “It is vital that the industry uses this to build on the positives and address areas which provoked a negative response” Precision Marketing, 25th February 2005. Invest in search market – or lose potential customers mSearch undertook a study of leading UK businesses to find that three-quarters of companies listed on the FTSE 100 index, do not appear in Google’s top 30 search listings for search on their core products and services. mSearch suggests companies should be easy to find when people go on-line to search or they may be “wasting their marketing budgets and failing shareholders”. The Guardian, 28th February 2005 For more marketing news re-visit our news page on a regular basis. Useful marketing industry links: Chartered Institute of Marketing – www.cim.co.uk The Direct Marketing Association – www.the-dma.org Marketing Week – www.mad.co.uk