Blog Brand of the Week: Joystiq

It's hard to find a great blog brand. In the blogosphere, it's trendy to think of some cute, clever names instead of a great brand name. Another thing it's trendy to do is to forget about focus. Broad topics seem to be popular. Great blog brands are focused and have a sharp brand name related to the topic. That's what the Blog Brand of the Week is all about.

This week's Blog Brand of the Week: Joystiq. Part of the Weblogs, Inc, Joystiq has two key attributes of great blog branding: Great name, Great focus. The name Joystiq has seven letters and instead of being called 'Video Games Blog,' or 'GamerBlog,' the founder figured it would be smart to choose a key component of the gaming experience, the joystick. Then, they twisted the end of the word to make it stick out, keeping it to seven letters or less. Just 'Joystick' wouldn't be nearly at compelling or attractive as Joystiq.

Is that all? No. Joystiq foqused. Go to Joystiq and find something (other than paid advertisements) that does not reinforce the video game focus. Gamers go here to find out the latest for one reason: great content on the subject they love.

Keeping the Company and Product Names Separate

Of all the mistakes a business can make, this one will not affect you until it's too late. Your product or service needs a name and that name should be different than the company name. Furthermore, you should not use the company name + product name together. When doing so, it implies that the latter is generic, when in fact you want the brand name of the product to stand out and be distinctive. If a product/service brand is distinctive, it doesn't need the company brand name to support it.

In consumer markets, successful brands often do not need to have the corporate endorsement. Other brands rely on the strength of the company's reputation. Proctor & Gamble does not use its corporate name as leverage to sell Tide, or any of the hundreds of consumer packaged goods it sells successfully. Kellogg's uses a similar model with its brands, except the Kellogg's name is a little more prominent in some cases, such as Kellogg's Frosted Flakes and Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats or Kellogg's Rice Crispies, key brands developed in house over the years. The best brand names that Kellogg's developed itself were Apple Jacks and Pop-Tarts, which have the capability to stand on their own without referencing Kellogg. Acquired brands such as Lender's and Eggo also do not need the Kellogg's name. Beverage manufacturers have learned lessons in bridging companies with products. Coca-Cola did make a collasol branding mistake by reverting its popular '80's diet cola brand Tab to Diet Coke. Al Ries discusses this error in the 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. In the consumer goods market, P&G has one of the best product brand strategy, none of which has to do with advertising. On the flip side, Service Brand International, Inc. manages a portfolio of service-based franchises, including Molly Maid, Mr. Handyman, 1-800-DryClean, Certified Restoration Dry Cleaning Network and Ductz. The individual service brand that I like the most here is Ductz. Certified Resotration Dry Cleaning Network is too long and too generic. Ductz is short and sweet. The Service Brand International strategy, containing a few solid individual brands is likely more lucrative and valuable than if each brand carried the SBI name. If you provide services, divide them down as far as you can and brand everything individually.

B2B's often attempt to leverage the company name as part of its product branding strategy. The reason this concept gets so much traction is that in B2B, the customer places more of an emphasis on the company and the decision to buy is often equally company and product/service dependent. B2B corporate acquisitions often times transition the use of corporate names into the use of product names. Microsoft Windows is an example of company/products kept together. Windows doesn't need the Microsoft name. When IBM acquired Tivoli, Rational and Lotus, each was previously used as a dual corporate-product brand, but came to be a product line brand post-merger. Now, IBM markets the product brands keeping the namesake of the former company as the brand.

Small businesses usually do not consider the difference. In business infancy, the product or service is the basis for the company. There isn't a lot of harm here, but if the entire business is focused on one product and the names are intertwined, it often makes it difficult to launch seperate, distinctive product or service brands. This leads to poor market performance as perception of the company/product/service appears to be diversified, and the jack of all trades brand never wins. When you keep the company and product/service separate, and giv ethe products AND services distinctive brand names, the business adds value. The brand is an investment in the value of the business.

Brand Ingredients - What makes for a meal?

Brands have participated as ingredients for a while. Intel is likely the most famous brand ingredient. Their Intel Inside tag line opened people's eyes to the guts of the PC (and now the Mac). Intel is a great example because as their ingredient strategy has grown with its brand extension strategy. It's no longer Intel Inside. It's Centrino Inside, or Centrino Duo Inside, albeit with the Intel logo prominently displayed above it. The point is that Intel became a sought after ingredient. And maybe more importantly, it drew a line between the computer manufacturer and the chip manufacturer as not competing, but working together. Intel is a great example of an ingredient.

Now let's consider your brand. Part of what makes Intel an easy example is that there isn't local competition in the chip world. For the greater portion of the consumer business, you don't see everyday people savvy enough to buy their own parts for PC assembly... most buy PC's off the shelf. When we look at a local/small business, what has to be considered?

Here's an example of a modern day small business example of great ingredient branding: Rochester, NY's Dibella's Subs using Red Osier roast beef in their roast beef subs. Consumers in western NY know the Red Osier as a restaurant that serves high quality prime rib. It's a little off the beaten path, so most people don't get there on a regular basis. However, a couple years back, the Red Osier started moving into the concessions business, setting up kiosks at sports stadiums or airports. Red Osier = great beef. So now the thousands of customers who order subs from Dibella's every week know that the main ingredient of the hot roast beef sub is that of one of the most respected local food names. What are Dibella's options? Well, they could just buy generic roast beef. People would still but their roast beef subs. But they wouldn't buy as many. Or as often. Or with passion. The Red Osier gets people hungry, and now Dibella's gives them a convenient way to get an ingredient with a great reputation.

What ingredients can often let brands do successfully is attack new opportunities without diluting the value of their brand and enhance the value of what they offer by substituting a brand when a generic might otherwise be expected. Slice your business up into as many segments as possible. What could you offer as an ingredient to other providers? Then think about your own business and adjacent opportunities that you might not be able to reach without specific expertise. Find a partner who does that and get them on your team. It can expand your opportunities for revenue and keep customers for looking elsewhere for products or services you do not provide.

Brand Extensions - Disney & ESPN Mobile Phones

Just how do you extend the brand? This is always a tough call. Let's look at Disney (DIS) and ESPN (part of Disney family via ABC).

Disney has introduced Disney Mobile. No debate here, this is what safety moms have been waiting for. The problem with the brand extension is that the value delivered in the service doesn't match the Disney name. Kids who are hard-core Disney fans are not to the age where parents need to have total control over the phone, let alone the kids even having regular phone conversations. Then, you have the tweens and teens. Aren't they already on IM 24/7? The key parent-friendly feature here is with GPS, so that kids can be tracked when they are out on their own. If I am a kid I would not be caught dead with the Disney phone and I would not want mom to know where I was. This feature will be much better put to use when kids who are on family plans through Cingular, Verizon (VZ) or Sprint/Nextel offer a similar program that lets parents use GPS to find their kids. And there we have the great compromise: kid has age/socially acceptable phone and mom/dad knows where kid is. How does this all relate to Disney: brand loser. Disney is not delivering and worthwhile content and they have a problem with the kids accepting the phone. Don't get me wrong, some kids would and that's fine. But how does ANY of this actually help Disney? At best I see this as an ad campaign that promotes disney wanting kids to be safe. They should have created a sepearate brand for the phone instead of Disney Mobile. Disney Mobile is pure lazy. Dizmo would have been better than Disney Mobile. It's all about getting over the social and for a kid on the phone, nothing matters more. Kudos to Disney for taking a chance.

Now for ESPN. ESPN loves its name. It puts it name on everything. ESPN The Magazine. ESPN2. ESPN News. The ESPN Zone. To a degree it is fine, as long as it stays within the bounds of extending ESPN's core value: getting sports into every ounce of your life. ESPN The Magazine is the only one that isn't worhty of the ESPN headliner. They should have named it something else. It's not up to the minute, so it isn't consistent with everything else ESPN promotes. Anyways, ESPN Mobile fits the bill. Every sports fan has been stranded to some degree without being able to access sports info they needed to have. And die hard sports fans NEED their info. The concept of the insane amount of sports data being pumped over that network is mind blowing. What is also mind blowing is that for what it is, its restrictive. Today, I don't see the ESPN phone in a family plan or the Mobile ESPN service being offered through standard phone outlets. If Dad or Junior could get a Samsung on Verizon's network featuring Mobile ESPN? Done and done. And with the move to converged handsets, I see the market for Mobile ESPN as single guys with 40 hour-per-week blue collar jobs who like to watch football at the bar. If that's the segment they are targeting, good for them. Love the concept, just wish it fit my profile a little better. The middle class loves the family plans because they don't have to spend twice as much to get the core function of a phone: the phone.

Disney should have co-marketed the features with the majors and ESPN should have figured out a way to effectively license the model. Maybe all of that is in the works.

Lesson to everyone: Disney got excited because of growth in the mobile phone market. Disney looked for major differentiation. Disney did not properly brand the concepts. Disney did not choose the best sales execution strategy (technically not branding but who cares). Disney will be under intense pressure to shut down the businesses within a year or change the model. If something is popular and your brand can add value to a concept, don't get carried away and let your brand be the concept because like Disney, the excitement will cloud the fact that the strategy is wrong. Disney's name is cuddly and safe. Disney is not a phone. ESPN is sports. Mobile ESPN shouldn't isolate a person from their family more than sports already do. ESPN would have won big if they found a way to make sports fit into the family.

For the small service business: stay focused on what makes your name valuable. If you absolutely need to get into a new business opportunity. Sleep on it. If you still must get in, you need a new name for that new business!!!! Nothing dilutes a brand like the jack of all trades. I know a guy who as a plumber and started his own business doing bathroom re-modeling. He does great at both. What does he do with the customers he helped with plumbing over the years? Sends them to someone else that he trusts. Why? Don't they have money too? Yes, but it's not bathroom re-modeling and therefore is not what he does. Obviously there is some plumbing involved in the business which puts his skills to work, but the brand intact.