ISSUES OF IMPORTANCE TO TECHNOENTREPRENEURS : IPR , Valuation , Brand Building , Team Building

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The Second APEC Incubator Forum,Taipei, August 31
2004
BRANDING FOR THE HIGH-TECH START-UPS
Prof. Hong Kim President,AABI Dean,GSV Hoseo
University
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What is a brand ?

• A name associated with one or more items in the
  product line, used to identify the source or
  character of the item.
• Brand is essentially a sellers promise to
  consistently deliver a specific set of features,
  benefits and services to the buyers.
• Brands are not just names attached on the
  products by the marketing department - nor it is
  an advertising campaign or slogan.

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What is a brand ?

• It carries the value the product has for its
  customers.
• It may be more true for High-Tech Products than
  it is for a FMCG product. IBM, Microsoft, Intel,
  hp
• High-tech brands, emphasise at Corporate level

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BRANDING

• Brands are treated as strategic assets by many
  firms.
• Technology based companies have been slow to
  catch on the benefits of branding and ignored
  investment in branding.
• As a result, there are few powerful technology
  brands, and yet they are in desperate need of
  branding as a major tool in order to
  differentiate themselves from all their
  competitors.

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BRANDING IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR HI-TECH COMPANIES

• Accelerating and turbulent nature of
  technological change.
• The whole basis of branding is consistency.
• Anything physical can be copied with amazing
  speed.

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BRANDING IS MORE IMPORTANT FOR HI-TECH COMPANIES

• Cautious nature of consumer decision-making
  makes it more difficult to persuade them to buy
  technology products - without support of a strong
  brand name.
• With large number of software companies starting
  up each month and over 10 million web-sites out
  there in cyberspace, branding is an essential
  pre-requisite for market entry.

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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS

• Brands and brand images are relevant only when
  purchase decisions are irrational or
  emotional - but not for markets of highly
  sophisticated and experienced customers, where
  purchase decisions are based on benchmarking
  studies and objective performance data.

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SOME MISCONCEPTIONS

• Branding is done by Marketing dept and it means
  advertising, trade shows sales brochures.The
  results are hard to measure. - The promise of
  value must be reflected in every aspect of the
  complete product offering.
• Technology products are bought based on
  Price-Performance ratio. - other factors may
  highly influence.

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How do you build the brand ?

• The idea of developing and maintaining a strong
  brand needs conceiving of a promise of value for
  customers and then ensuring that the promise is
  kept through the way the product is developed,
  produced, sold, serviced and advertised.
• Developing a branded product requires huge
  long-term investment on advertisement, promotion,
  packaging and servicing.

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How do you build the brand ?

• Changing the managerial attitude from a product-
  centric to a promise centric business model.
• Ensure the promise of value is understood and
  fulfilled by the complex networks of value
  -adding partners Consultants, System
  Integrators, S/W vendors, resellers etc

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How High-Tech Brands Build Equity
Managers need to answer the following questions
in order to build a strong high-tech brand.

What is the essential nature and character of the
brand
What does Value mean for the typical loyal
customer ?
What psychological rewards or emotional benefits
do customers receive by using this brands
products? How does the customer feel?
What benefits to the customer or solutions result
from the brands features ?
What are the tangible, Verifiable , objective ,
measureable characteristics of products,
services, ingredients, or components that carry
this brand name
What are the tangible, Verifiable , objective ,
measurable characteristics of products, services,
ingredients, or components that carry this brand
name ?
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Connecting task focusThe customer perspective

HOW
WHAT
WHO
Immediate response Propaganda New
news Remind Modify attitudes Reinforce
attitudes Longer broader response
Penetration
New/potential client companies partners Unaware N
on-users Lapsed users Infrequent
users Loyalists Existing consumers
Awareness Trial Re-consideration Greater
usage Re-enforce behavior Frequency
Courtesy of Underground the Creative Laundry
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The plan

• Focus on whats different, unique
• Create messages which remind everyone about
  whats different
• Use graphic and texts in a compelling manner
• Use your brand key messages at every
  opportunity be consistent
• Remember that some audiences have never seen your
  messages before

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Gosh, weve got enough to do
Draft 3-5 yr strategy Analyze trends, growth,
research, sector trends
Augment brand, deploy collateral, segment
collateral
Establish the brand Create the proposition
(Regional,national,international)
Develop sector champion stance, key
messaging (Across organisation, incubator
key stakeholders)
Cultivate leverage relationships (External
Internal)
Assess resources (research, budget) Create
benchmarks
Month1
Month2
Month3
Month4
Month5
Month6
Month12 Beyond
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Be a better storyteller
Fact 1 Fact 2 Fact 3 Conclusion
Intro Fact 1 Fact 2 Conclusion
Typical copy structure
Use Inverted Pyramid Technique
Courtesy of The Hoffman Agency
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Take-always

• Always write a brief focus, review
• Dare to think different the risk can be
• worth it
• Be open-minded
• Always have a well-crafted proposition
• Understand the difference between
• sales marketing

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CO-BRANDING

• Different companies appearing together in the
  same campaign or specific communication. Purpose
  is to achieve cost saving.
• Can gain access to the customer base of the
  co-branding partner(s) and build value added
  packages for consumers. Airline Hotel
• Examine whether association with brands make a
  good brand fit.
• Stay true to the brand personality and values .
  Choose the partners sharing some of those values
  and target similar customer segment.

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THANK YOU !