Karl Speak, president and founder of Beyond Marketing Thought, a Minnesota-based brand consulting firm, concurs. "Successful brands understand what their brand does and how it makes a difference in someone's life. For Joe Sixpack, going to a NASCAR race, watching (talk show host) Jerry Springer, might be making that person happier than anything else in their life, and what's wrong with that?"

Not everyone will be your brand evangelist though. Successful brands define their target market and don’t worry about alienating folks outside of that market. Many businesses fail because they try to capture everybody and every market. WWE succeeds because it realizes it can’t be all things to all people, and it doesn’t pretend to try.

Once a target market is identified, the key is to focus on reaching those markets and try not to worry about who you might be missing. “You can expand your target market, but you must be [able] to deal with it. The more important aspect is to focus on improving service to your primary customer base. In the long run that is what will make a company successful,” notes TMI’s Barlow.

Part of satisfying that target is to be true to your brand.

“An authentic brand is a rare thing,” explains Jan Zlotnick, principal with The Zlotnick Group, a New York-based advertising and brand strategy company. “Every person has a small selection of brands in their own universe that register with them. All brands in my brand universe evolve around me as a planet earth with a few moons that are pulled within my orbit. When these brands fall from ringing true they fall out of that orbit.

“Keeping a brand within the orbit of consumers involves establishing and maintaining a constant connection with the customer, constant communications and an offering of solutions. The main thing is to establish a simple motivating truth and to know how that truth resonates with a customer. This truth must always ring true to your brand.”

Authenticity for any brand is about being distinct and completely true to a defined purpose or intent. If customers identify with a brand’s simple motivating truth, that brand rings true to its public. In the case of wrestling, this might be entertainment provided by what may appear to be ridiculous human cartoon characters. This form of entertainment could provide its audience with a release of inhibition that is lacking elsewhere in their lives.

“As a company you have to decide what and who you want to be -- who your markets are. Proactively listen to these customers and have both a short and a long-term vision of the value of your brand. You must constantly work to leverage the attributes of your brand to the fullest. Companies must remember that while there is a lot of equity in a brand, each and every day it will evolve. For us, if a time comes where we feel that a brand is not in touch with the customer, we will change the brand,” notes WWE’s Castronunovo.

After establishing what your message is and who you are targeting, the brand owner should use all communication -- from napkins and uniforms to signage and employee conduct -- to reinforce that connection. Successful brands are always serving, learning and caring about their customers; these companies realize that their business and their brands will die if they take their customers for granted or confuse them with conflicting messages.

What’s more, trash brands have an added advantage over more mainstream brands. They can exploit their ability to appeal to the “inner beast” of consumers. “Businesses learned long ago that success is definitely possible by selling to people’s more base instincts -- sex, blood and violence -- although this is not right for every business,” says Dion Algieri, founding partner of Great Jakes, Inc., a New York-based marketing and brand strategy company. “Regardless of the kind of product or service, the trick is to find a way to use these base instincts to appeal to a higher order instinct such as wealth or status. For example, a more sophisticated brand may sell status, and status is an incremental step of presenting wealth and sex.”

The owners of these brands may be delivering lowbrow entertainment to the unwashed masses but they are as sophisticated in their branding techniques as Tiffany or BMW.    

[31-Mar-2003]