This document discusses the importance of branding for industrial companies. It makes three key points: 1) Developing an effective brand requires understanding customer issues, gathering market data, and using insights to strategically position, promote, and develop the brand over time. Internal beliefs must be based on market facts. 2) A brand represents the entire customer experience with a business and must be consistently defined, not just through logos or slogans. Strong branding starts with defining the brand's positioning and guiding strategic actions. 3) Properly stewarding a brand requires ongoing commitment beyond initial branding projects. Brands are built on relevance, differentiation, esteem, and knowledge over the long term through consistent behavior and focus on

1. Marketing to Engineers
Industrial Branding:
The Lost Art in the Industrial Marketplace
Rich Thompson, Vice President of Marketing, ITW Welding North America

2. “The business of marketing and brand
management is terribly unforgiving: of
carelessness, incapacity, neglect, or
ignorance”
Find yourself in a position of handling
your brands with care, fully
funded, stewarding your brand each
day, and mindful of what your value
chain says about your brand.”

3. • Developing/creating brands lie in
– Understanding underlying issues
– Gathering data
– Developing workable insights from that data
to determine future direction on how to
meaningfully and profitably
present, message, promote and develop that
brand.
• Market-based facts vs. internal beliefs.

4. A definition of “Brand”
“A brand is a set of differentiating promises
that link a product to its customers.
The brand assures the customer of
consistent quality plus a superior value
(both functional and emotional)
for which the customer is
willing to give loyalty to and pay a price that
brings a reasonable return to the brand, business and
shareholders.”

5. Its Only One Portion
• …of an overall Strategic Marketing
Initiative to define a business to an
external and internal customer base.
• Brand is far more than a logo/look.
• Taglines are not positioning statements.
• It is a how you move forward and structure
your actions for you customers.
• Its how you behave
• It is pervasive and persuasive.

6. The GAP
• What your customers and future
customers believe/perceive about your
brand(s)…
• …And where you would like that
perception to actually be.

7. Reality Check
• The “fun” part is contained in the creative
solutions and outputs (i.e. logo development
and design, rollout, ad
programs, taglines, etc.)
• The HARD part is defining gap, measuring
your audience through research, developing
a fact-based, workable, lasting direction to
present your brand and message.
• It is HARD…but critical.

8. Brand
• Brand is the entire experience people
have with your
business/products/services…this is both
internal and external.
• This relates to your culture.
• Good, lasting, sustainable branding starts
with DEFINITION.

9. Reality Check
• You get one shot at this to do it right
• It is NOT a six to twelve week project that just
produces a “brand program”: some nice logos with
some quick and dirty surveys and then work with
printers, sign companies, etc.
• Some companies have gone that route and aren’t
happy with where they are...and how much they
paid to get there for what they ended up with.
• This sits at the core essence of who you want to say
you are for a long, consistent, and sustained period
of time.

10. The Issue of Brands
• Brands are built and are either made or
destroyed on four dimensions
– Relevance
– Differentiation
– Esteem
– Knowledge
IT IS FOUNDATIONAL

11. What A Brand is NOT
• A Slogan
• A Symbol
• An Ad
• A Spokesperson
• A Package
• A Logo
• A Project Name
• A Shape
• A Sound
• A Positioning
• A Jingle
• A Product
• A Liability (if it
is, you are in
trouble!)

12. How do brands help us?
• Key ingredient of intangible value
• Prime driver of profitable loyalty
• Pricing power
• Creates communities
• Extendibility/Elasticity
• Key in creating profitable -- successful --
portfolio

13. Critical Levels of Brand
Association
Beliefs
&
Values
Benefits
Attributes
Beliefs & Values
(Heart)
The functionality
provided to
customers
(Head)
Features or
Processes that
must be
provided
Most
meaningful and
most difficult to
imitate but
hardest to
deliver.
Easiest to
deliver, but
least
meaningful and
most easily
imitated & least
interesting

14. Five
Principles of
Brand
Positioning
Fit
Leverage strengths
of your current
offerings & desires
Sustainability
What you have to own for 3 –
5 Years
Value
The perceived
benefits that
customers value
Credibility
Who are you and is it credible?
Uniqueness
Go where
competitors are not

15. “Stewardship and Discipline”
Essential to a brands success

16. “Brands always lose their way
when they lose their WHY”
The What and the How-the focus of
product driven companies-only bring
you Relevance, Knowledge and
sometimes Esteem…they do not grow
a set of Differentiated Promises