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Context is important. Your products/brands relate to one another and fit under a definition that must be consistent with current business perceptions, reputation and purpose. Making sure that strategic thinking accounts for long-term product and business intentions—and is effectively communicated—helps avoid unnecessarily hitting a wrong chord. 

Further Thoughts:

Are you a side dish? What happens when it becomes obvious that the product you’re selling is not perceived by your prospect as meeting a core business need? Don’t sell your product to them. That’s right. People prioritize their business challenges and products, services and categories associated with them in their minds. Center-of-the-plate issues keep your audience up at night. In human resources, it’s healthcare costs. In trucking, it may be driver retention. If your offering is not perceived as an answer to a core issue, you’re selling the side dish. Unfortunately, the harder you push a side dish product directly to an audience whose mind is focused elsewhere, the less likely they’ll listen. Not that the product or service isn’t significant or remarkably unique; it just requires a different communication strategy. Here’s a handful: Find common ground—associate your product with the context of a larger issue. Talk trends. Find a channel partner. Piggyback. Bundle. Sign a distribution agreement. Do an end around—find something else to sell. Become a solutions provider. Find the person with the pain, give them the tools necessary to elevate your perception internally. Bottom line, know where your brand and product fit in your audience’s mind and if it’s not “perceptually” of central importance, then take other approaches to get there.

Emerging with the right brand strategy. Aligning corporate and product strategies is no easy matter. It means matching company purpose and passion with the company’s economic engine and its ability to deliver products that are capable of gobbling market share. When that product is the second or third market entrant for a company, it can be troublesome. Typically, emerging companies choose to strongly promote their product brand right out of the gate, often with the kind of success that leaves the corporate brand in the dust. What to do? Here’s a broad, simplistic view of brand strategy directions companies can take: Get monolithic. A monolithic or master brand strategy places its marketing firepower on building a single “master brand.” Normally this means the corporate brand gets the emphasis with product brands treated as generic extensions. Think BMW. Leverage through endorsement. An endorsed brand strategy, which can take many forms, dictates that you leverage your corporate and product brands. Isolate your brands. A product brand strategy promotes individual product brand(s) and leaves the corporate brand out of the promotional equation. There’s no right or wrong answer. Inevitably, important brand strategy decisions made early help improve the long-term viability of your products and your business.

How is the new what. “We’re in the ____________________ business.” If you filled the blank with something like “information technology” or “manufacturing medical devices,” you may well need to push your definition closer to these: “enabling access to the new frontier” and “growing medical practices.” The world has become so cluttered, competitive and commoditized, it may be necessary to elevate the business definition. Consider elevating the what to the how. What? The “what” you do is defined by customer benefit (resolving complex problems to enable progress). The “how” is what may have formerly defined the “what” (landscape architecture and consulting). Self identifying with a standard, non-differentiated category is becoming nonproductive. Elevate. If it causes you to add a few customer care nuances, deliver all-new products, divest in non-core offerings or remodel your organization— fantastic—but please ask the question.