Branding Agencies on Solid Ground … or Are They?

Written By Ted Grigg

I recently sent a note to the President of one of my favorite advertising agencies. I congratulated him for his fabulous white paper expounding the positioning and branding services offered by his team.

It was clear, interesting, compelling and hopefully all of his clients and prospects will take the time to read it.

Even the agency’s process for helping clients with identifying their positioning strengths deserves commendation.

Many clients do not understand the fine line between positioning and the brand. Understanding this will save many from unsuccessful marketing programs.

But I did ask him these questions.

The white paper talks about the aim of branding. It says that the branding goal is to build awareness of the client's product

allowing consumers to differentiate the client's products from the other options out there. Did he think that branding and awareness building were actually strategies for improving the client's bottom line? In other words, isn't the aim for all of this deep thinking to find a way to help the client make more money now and over the long term?

If that is so, how are branders evaluating the strategy as it applies to the goal? How do they quantify the financial contributions of positioning and subsequent branding activity?

The direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations and general advertising strategies are converging with the impact of multi-channel marketing. And great brands definitely improve the response rates of direct response programs. But how do we go about assigning credit for these various activities?

I would like to ask you, the readers of this blog, to give me your answers to the same questions. I will then compose an article for a national magazine within our industry and quote your name if the idea originates from you (with your permission, of course).

Ted Grigg
What Ted does best is increase response by beating controls, applying multiple channels to target markets, profiling customer databases and generally improving sales results using deep direct marketing principles. Regard Ted as your personal “think-tank” for your direct marketing planning and strategy development. After analyzing several hundred million dollars of direct response testing in all channels, he brings with him the knowledge accumulated from seeing what tends to work and what does not. Having worked on both the agency and client side of direct marketing, Ted understands the unique challenges faced by agencies and their clients. Agencies need to sell themselves and deliver sales results. And clients not only require results, but need ideas they can implement while focusing on tracking response using a relational database. If Ted brings nothing else to the table, by profiling customer databases and creating response propensity models, he quickly becomes the clients’ expert on their own customers. His formal training includes a BA from Abilene Christian University and two years of graduate work at Texas Tech University. For a national direct-to-consumer insurance company, Ted developed a revolutionary direct mail format that beat most standing direct mail controls for this company. He also generated more profitable business for this firm by expanding compiled list circulation of less than 10% to more than 30% of total direct mail circulation within a year. (Insurance business generated by direct mail demonstrated higher persistency than customers coming from other media such as print and DRTV.) Ted’s plan and implementation of Medicare lead generation campaigns for over 60 regional and national HMO/PPO organizations combined multiple channels that surpassed some sales projections by as much as 60%. Additional industry experience over the last 30 years includes B2B or B2C for finance, securities, home security, healthcare, insurance, manufacturing, government, technology, nonprofit, retail, transportation, communications, and multiple categories in the services industry. As the founder of Wyse Direct (a division for Wyse Advertising in Cleveland, OH), he successfully launched and branded a new technology product for Seiko-Mead by supporting a nationwide sales team with a predictable flow of qualified sales leads. While a VP of new business development for the Grizzard Agency, Ted acted as the direct marketing strategist who refocused the agency’s culture to attract new commercial and fundraising accounts. At the time, Grizzard was essentially a direct mail fund raising production operation. His leadership and team building effectiveness prepared Grizzard for the eventual Omnicom acquisition and Grizzard’s successful integration into Omnicom’s large group of advertising agencies. An independent DM consultant, Ted continues to write numerous articles and conduct webinars on direct marketing techniques. He also wrote The HMO/PPO Marketing Plan — A Step-by-Step Guide publishing it through Executive Enterprises in New York City. During his youth, Ted was raised in Lille, France with his missionary family attending French schools becoming fluent in reading and writing French. Away from the job, Ted is a computer geek, blogger and science fiction buff!
http://www.dmcgresults.com
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