website costs

Please explain how you choose the items you buy tj. Clothes for example, how do you choose which shop to buy jeans from… I have this feeling you will just say closeness/cheapest. :$

1. TandemJeremy is not normal. Even if he weren’t influenced by marketing or branding, it wouldn’t make them useless.

2. TandemJeremy can’t admit to being wrong, or it’d change what people think of TandemJeremy. TandemJeremy has to protect his brand image on STW 🙂

Brand awareness is part of marketing a product.. Shirley.

TJ… if you are completely unaffected by brands and branding, not marketing here mind, why do you keep going back to DMs? Or every time you go shopping for new shoes you try on all the other pairs available, and then go back to DMs because they really are the comfiest? Or do you just buy them “because they last well and are conmfy when on my feet for 12 hrs”.

You have built up in your mind a brand image, an idea that DMs are comfy and long lasting, as that is what you said earlier in the thread.

You buy DMs because they are DMs, because the brand says to you that they are long lasting and comfy.

Simples.

Anyway, just curious mind…

:oD

Are we talking about a brand (simply a name), brand image as phil.w described or marketing?

I explained earlier what a brand was but you seem to have ignored it. A brand is not just a name. A name is exactly that a name, it gets used in a logo, maybe you have some company colours, a font, a style to your advertising, sign written vans, a certain piece of hold music, different products for different price points, staff uniforms, i could go on and on – but either you get the point or you never will – this all makes up the brand.

Brand awareness is exactly that – making people aware of you brand and…actually sorry I’m bored with this bye…

Has anyone thought of that Bill Hicks monologue yet?

Those aren’t Web Designers, they’re Web Developers. Big difference.

Oh right ok, I better tell them that then, so’s they can change their job descriptions…

This is beautiful so many folks are so taken in with the business bullcrap that the terminology is getting confused and the argument changing to satisfy a need.

Industries like this love to invent high-faluting sounding terminology and descriptions for things. Bit like ‘horticultural engineer’ instead of ‘gardener’. I mean, ‘graphic design’- it’s just drawing stuff and colouring in! 🙂

Transport Operative- bus/train driver.
Hygiene Management Specialist – cleaner.
Member of Parliament – freeloading scumbayg.
Interior Designer – cushion arranger.
Consumer Experience Facilitator – shop assistant.

Etc.

Is this thread broken?

TJ – you lived in Scotland, not Outer Mongolia. Black DM shoes were very popular when I was at Secondary School. In fact, much more so than the red ones.

So brand awareness is another word for marketing then?

No, marketing is a two way process.

I just realised I confused MF with molgrips again over the Prius

sorry chaps ( just in case the missing posts reappear}

The Labour Party is a ‘Brand’

along with oakleys

C’mon Teej – don’t be daft. They offer a technically superior product to others irrespective of any marketing. It is plain to see as a long term user of the products myself and suffering from rubbish eyes i simply will not buy other sunglasses as nothing else i have tried work as well. You can choose to ignore the marketing (i think this is the point you are making) but they produce an ace product.

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So does TJ believe that everyone else in the whole world is an idiot?

This thread has got no better since I put the girls to bed. Anyway, where were we?

The Labour Party is a ‘Brand’

Russel is a Brand. 😆

phil.w I was accepting your definition as a definition of brand image, but not brand, but I guess you were too busy trying to defend yourself that thinking wasn’t important.

Brand awareness is part of marketing a product.. Shirley

Correct but it is not the same as the brand image or the brand itself.
Brand is just the name.
Brand image is the idea that the marketing bods want us to associate with the product and not the reality, eg if you smoke Marlboro cigarettes you’ll be a fit and healthy cowboy and not a victim of lung cancer, or eating McDonalds will make you slim (as the people in the ads are).
Brand awareness is putting the name of the product in our minds (advertising).
Marketing is identifying the best channels to bring the brand to the attention of customers (TV, Magazines etc.) and how (gimmicks, special offers).
Rebranding is simply trying to introduce your product to a new market(Michael Porter, I think, new products to new markets, existing products to new markets).
It’s just names and titles to make people sound more important than they are and allow people to sell something to people who are too stupid to know any better or think for themselves.
Business is very, very simple which is made complicated by people who have to justify their own existences. This can not be disputed as many of the directors I work with are in complete agreement with me, and has been demonstrated here.
And to that end ‘the Emperor’s New Clothes’ reference is quite apt. 😆

don simon Ba(hons) Business Management and lots of experience. 😈

Ahh yes, brands…

It is with interest I note that TJ has asked about the relative benefits of two clothing brands. Neither brand I have ever heard of incidentally. Of course this will be because those two clothing brands have clearly identified their target markets and they talk to the people their research shows to be their customers. Clearly TJ is a potential customer for the brand and their marketing has made him aware of them.

Now there are obviously many other people who share the same interests as TJ and some of those have been taken in by the brand and the persona it has and actually bought something.

But not TJ, ohh no, he won’t be taken in by evil marketing so instead he asks around and gets opinion on what are the best products and he happens to ask people that believed the marketing hype. Now why shouldn’t he believe them, after all they are peers, they share common interests so the products they chose must be the right ones for TJ.

Of course, these people haven’t extensively tested anything, they just identified with the brand. Of course TJ doesn’t know this, he has assumed they were right because he trusts their judgement, being a like-minded person and all.

So the nett result is the brand won – they sold to one punter who then passively sold their brand message to another.

Aren’t they evil?

Q.E.D.
Please stop confusing brand (name) with brand image! 🙄 Or at least have a bit of continuity.

I am not being mutually exclusive in the choice of the word ‘brand’ it is a collective term to describe activities employed by businesses to make money.

Brand was a word that was used to promote jobs that don’t really exist. Like most business and most jobs in business it’s bullcrap, I’m part of this bullcrap. What I do can be done by anyone with a bit of nouse, but if I give it a fancy name I become specialñ and can charge a premium. The activities employed by businesses to make money is called business and is basically the 4Ps.
Unless you can satisfy the 4Ps, or at least 3, you’re blagging the customer and brand doesn’t fit there, sorry.

Bu66er! Don’t feed the hamsters, feed them to the local reptile house and get some new ones!

Maybe the server would work better if there weren’t so many double posts…. 😉

and and gets opinion on what are the best products and he happens to ask people that believed the marketing hype

An you have a ‘Brand Advocate’ a marketeers dream, the ultimate punter, the very top of the Brand Engagement Pyramid.

What exactly is this engagement of which you speak?

In my experience there are probably three types of people in business.
1. Those who are happy pushing pencils/keys and are happy in their position and get on with it.
2. Those who think they are better than they really are and hide behind jargon, simply because they’re insecure.
3. Those who have the ability and rise to the top, who are generally top people with nothing to prove.

Which one are you? 😉

Not sure who that is directed at nor the point of the question in regard to any relevance to the original post.

So, are there any examples of products that are successful without being subject to the whole marketing/branding thing?

Crikey – that would be very difficult to identify. Perhaps Howies early on? But at the end of the day, they all exist to make money so all spend money developing an identity for their target audience to identify with in one way or another.

I think I might have to respectfully disagree with this;

so all spend money developing an identity for their target audience to identify with in one way or another.

I think many firms/companies/makers of stuff in the past just made things to the best of their ability and priced them accordingly and sold them because they were a good product. It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to ‘market’ your ‘brand’ to your ‘target audience’ rather than just make good stuff.

Hey ho, maybe I’m getting old.

You hit the nail on the head with ‘in the past’.

If a company existed now and just hoped people would buy their great products, they would soon disappear or just exist as a niche business with a small customer base as there will always be another business spending money marketing themselves.

Not sure who that is directed at nor the point of the question in regard to any relevance to the original post.

If that’s at me, it was directed at the general level of jargon being spouted on here. Relevance to OP, very little as the thread has moved from web design to branding to marketing to branding to defending branding and all sorts of crap.
Also, have you considered that the OP was simply a troll?

I think I hit the nail on the head with ‘sad state of affairs’.

It would appear that the number of people involved in the actual production of quality stuff is dwarfed by the number of people we ‘need’ to sell it.

Not really ‘progress’ is it?

Don simon true – this thread has wandered somewhat.

If the OP was a troll it was a good one 🙂

So, are there any examples of products that are successful without being subject to the whole marketing/branding thing?

Without marketing, probably not. Without branding, go figure.
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And yes, I AM AWESOME. The sooner you realise, the better.

Perhaps not, but it is what it is.

One of the better ones. Didnt you realise after he stepped away from the debate???

It’s a sad state of affairs when you have to ‘market’ your ‘brand’ to your ‘target audience’ rather than just make good stuff.

No no no, you have rose tinted specs on there mate. Marketing goes back a looong way. In fact it was even worse 100 years ago then now – people made up all sorts of wild claims to make out that their stuff was the best when it wasn’t.

The real issue is that there often isn’t one best product. How would you advertise say Coke? You either like it or you don’t, right? Or do you? Can you influence people to like your beverage more than another? What about say, orange juice? Surely all orange juice is basically the same.

Supermarkets are a good example. They all sell basically the same stuff the same way. What they have done is position themselves at slightly different parts of society, and they do it via different kinds of marketing and advertising.

Look at the adverts on telly. All adverts are for a very small selection of different types of product. Why would that be?

Perhaps not, but it is what it is.

It’s the modern way of doing business that has brought us to the current crisis as there is more competition, less real innovation and business leaders demand more.
I had an interesting chat with a director at Samsung S.A. last week regarding this, if we finish the chat next week I’ll report my findings, but his point of view was quite interesting and you’ll be surprised to find I didn’t fully agree. 😉

less real innovation

Rubbish!

I do like a well constructed argument, if I had a hat on i’d take it off.