Who are the Brand Leaders?
8th March 2006 by Natasha Nicholson
Take notice of Anders Gronstedt’s post on the Branding Commons. I think it’s worth repeating his last paragraph here.
“Who are today’s brand experience leaders? With the American Customer Satisfaction index stuck at a lower level than in 1994, there hasn’t been much progress. Starbucks comes to mind as a great exception. While all Starbucks stores aren’t identical, there’s the same unmistakable smell, look, feel, and irresistible service from frontline employees who are pampered with good training and completive compensations and health benefit packages. What other examples do you have of consistent brand experiences?”
March 9th, 2006 at 12:16 pm
In Canada, Tim Hortons (sic) is doing a terrific job of branding. They have established themselves as Canada’s coffee shop for the common man (leaving Starbucks to what Homer Simpson once called the latte-sucking popinjays).
The stores (known as Tims or T-Ho) have a consistent look; they advertise heavily and consistently with a family-values theme. They often get free media coverage by supplying coffee to our troops overseas and doing a long-running R-r-r-roll Up The Rim To Win contest.
Many claim the coffee is the best. I think it’s nasty.
The donuts are quite good, if you like deep-fried cake.
Their “Timbits” - called donut holes in other places - are ubiquitous, and a box of them is often is plain view for hours in the average workplace office.
They’re dominant.
March 10th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
I’ve heard of Tim Hortan’s — even here in California. They are looking at expanding to have about 500 Tim Hortons locations in the US sometime in 2007 and have already made some in-roads. The fact that have those yummy donuts will not be a shoe-in though –consider the current state of Krispy Creme. People loved them until they come to their senses.
Anyway, if anyone wants to read more about branding and Tim Horton’s, take a look at this the article Tim Horton’s: Power Play on Branding.com:
http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp?pr_id=253
March 22nd, 2006 at 3:11 pm
The NFL is among the greatest, sustained branding campaigns of all time. Under the leadership of comissioners Pete Rozelle and Paul Tagliabue, the league has managed to convince 30 millionaire, hyper competitive owners that the league is only as strong as the weakest team. From equal distribution of television revenue, regardless of the team’s market size, to the creation of NFL Films to market teams individually and the league as a whole, to centrally driven merchandising programs, the NFL is a model of how to create a broad brand from which individual sub brands can flourish. Of course the Washington Redskins will always be its top shelf standard. Definitely.