What’s your brand essence?
Understanding your brand essence is vital for your business - it’s the sweet spot where what customers value and how they see you as distinct intersect. It’s why your customers buy from you and what drives your profit and other business goals.
In the travel sector brands can be slippery things to define as they have so many facets, but establishing a distinct position that customers value sets you apart from your competitors and means you compete less.
This paper is primarily aimed at small to medium-sized tour operators aiming to make early steps into defining or better understanding and refining their brand essence. You may be reticent about taking those steps: are there more important things to be focussing on, is it marketing hocus pocus, how do you go about it, is it genuinely useful, and is it ridiculously expensive?
Here we set out an approach you can take to define your brand essence: the considerations, what insights you’ll get and how to integrate them into your business for real benefit.
About the authors
Steve Mills, Director of Decision House, is a market insight professional who works with travel and tourism brands, conducting quantitative and qualitative research among customers or potential markets, generating insights which help organisations deliver better experiences for their customers or help them to grow their market share. He has worked on behalf of many tour operators in recent years, including Saga Holidays, Audley Travel, Ramblers Walking Holidays and Holiday Architects.
Jim Millward, Director of Spruce, previously headed up the marketing team at Audley Travel and now advises ambitious smaller travel businesses on growth strategies. He’s a strong advocate of using customer insight to drive growth, and also a pragmatist with an understanding of the skills and resources available to smaller organisations. Past and current clients include ski, safari, DMC, tailormade FIT and DMC businesses.
What is brand essence?
A brand is essentially how you are perceived by your customers and potential customers. Strong brands are associated positively with the sector they operate in. Hand in hand with this they also have a distinctive facet which sets them apart from the competition in that market. The essence of a brand is not simply how your customers perceive you or even how you and your staff perceive you as an organisation. A brand’s essence is the characteristic that your customers - and perhaps your staff - both value most in their experience with you and see as distinct (or ideally, unique) from competing brands. So Saga Holidays has traded on being the tour operator for the over 50s (or formerly the 60s), and an understanding of what their needs and wants are. This distinctive position has been nuanced in different ways as the business and market has evolved.
A distinctive position doesn’t operate in a vacuum, however, it needs supporting and evidencing. In the world of tour operating this can be a complex thing and certainly more complex than branding baked beans. More on this later.
The competition
Chances are that unless you’re in a very niche (and small) market that you’ve got competitors. Understanding your competitors’ brand is as important as understanding your own, it allows you to carve out and hone that distinctive facet of your business that defines your brand. (It also helps you get a grip on all the other factors - service, product, price etc.)
In the real world brands may not be quite as distinct as their owners hope. In the UK adventure market the likes of Explore, Exodus and Intrepid, from the outside, all appear quite similar to the point where they all have similar names. They’re all very strong brands, but potentially lack a distinctive voice that sets them apart from each other. We say ‘potentially’, because we have no insight* into what differentiates one from another, and that insight is invaluable if you’re in one of those businesses wanting to gain market share, or a challenger business looking to break into, and potentially disrupt, that market. And that’s the crux of this paper.
* As a caveat we're sure Explore, Exodus and Intrepid do have deep insights into their brands.
Why is it important and worthwhile?
Strong brands are by their nature more profitable, whether you measure profit in pounds, the planet or people:
Customers will choose your business over another, and will pay more for it.
You potentially need to spend less on recruiting new customers and sales leads should convert more easily.
They’re more likely to repeat purchase (a higher lifetime value) and become advocates, or even evangelists, for your business.
Strong brands equate to high brand equity, the value of your brand. (Brand equity and its measuring is a rabbit hole we’ll save for another paper.)
Should you do your own in-house research or get external help?
The first thing to say is that one doesn’t preclude the other. Start with a review of what you already know - you're probably already gathering feedback from your customers in the form of post-booking and post-travel questionnaires, review platforms and social media. Sifting through these will definitely give you some insight into your business. What published information is out there already about the perception of your and other competing brands in the market and what is valued?
Talk to your customer-facing staff. They speak with your customers daily and can act as your ‘voice of the customer’. What do they feel customers value most? What are the triggers that convert leads to bookings? How do they see your organisation as different to the competition?
Only then do you need to talk directly to customers and/or the wider market to fill the remaining insight gaps or to test whether your staff think differently to your customers and the wider market. You may choose to attempt this yourself, but how do you approach this? Who should you speak to? Do you do a big survey or do we talk to a few of them in depth? How do you speak to competitors’ customers?
And perhaps the most important pitfall of running research internally, how do you avoid confirmation bias – hearing only what you already believe to be true prior to the research, whether you intend to or not?
An insight professional will have skills and experience that you’re unlikely to find inhouse. They’ll design research tailored to your business objectives, ask the right questions in the right way and deliver insights which are truly independent and free of that dreaded confirmation bias
Where do you start?
The first thing is to write a short brief (one page A4 maximum). The key questions that you want the project to answer are going to be one or both of:
Do you have a distinct and valued position?
What factors define your X brand and where do you sit in relation to your competitors?
The first requires qualitative research, in depth conversations with your customers and potential customers about what they value from brands in the sector and how they perceive you versus your competitors. The latter requires larger scale quantitative research among representative samples of the target market, the main outputs from which will be brand maps such as the Moonplot map below which show your brand’s position and how distinct it is from other brands in the market. Is your brand’s position in an area which is highly valued by the market?
From this point on we’ll assume that you’re going to look for external help in answering the above.
The main body of the brief is to provide context:
The market sector you operate in and broadly where you fit into it.
Background on your business including product range, pricing, where you sell and how you promote your business.
An overview of your customers, particularly geo-demographics and attitudes (but beware confirmation bias).
A brief synopsis of your main competitors, and where they fit into the market.
There are also a few things to avoid, both in the written brief and when you’re speaking to the insight agency.
The number one thing is bias. What you don’t want to do is transfer your bias to the researcher. You want the results of the insight to reflect the views of your customers and potential customers. So avoid any statements that say we think this or that.
Don’t dictate the research methods, let the agency decide on the best approach for the situation and budget. A good agency or consultant will simply ask you what your organisation’s challenge(s) is and design a research solution to address that challenge and your budget. Therefore, keep your brief simple and try not to prescribe what you think you need. You know your organisation and they know the sector and how to design, manage and report insight projects.
Once you’ve appointed someone be ready to handover any existing information you have such as past surveys (although avoid including anything that may create bias).
What to expect from an Insight Agency
Insight agencies range from those that will ‘do as they are told’ – collect data, tabulate it and give it to you – to those who are full service, understand your organisational challenges, design suitable solutions and deliver insights which address those challenges. Unless you have an internal specialist insight function, our advice would be to opt for the full service option. The other option is usually a false economy.
We would also advise opting for an agency or consultant with a specialism in the travel and tourism arena. They will better understand your business issues, be able to advise on a solution based on previous experience and deliver insights set in the context of the travel sector, again drawing upon past experiences.
These specialists need not necessarily be part of a large insight agency. There are many independent insight consultants out there, many of whom have honed their skills in large agencies, who may be more cost effective and higher quality options.
For larger agencies, you can view the Market Research Society website at www.mrs.org.uk and search for travel / tourism agencies.
For independent insight consultants, you can visit the Independent Consultants Group website at www.theicg.co.uk and again search for travel / tourism specialists.
Case study
Steve at Decision House has recently completed a project on behalf of tailor-made operator, Holiday Architects, helping them to identify their brand essence for the first time. Emerging insights are now helping Holiday Architects shape their marketing campaigns with Jim, refine their product and service offering and train new staff.
In-depth interviews were conducted with recent customers of Holiday Architects, including bookers yet to travel, those who had used the brand once and loyal repeat bookers. In this way we could confidently isolate the elements of the brand essence that were generated along the customer journey - from the website content, through contact with destination experts and finally to the trip experience itself and subsequent follow up contact. At each stage, what did they value most and, of these, how different were Holiday Architects from other brands that they have used or considered?
At the same time, we conducted a focus group with staff, both in their capacity as a ‘voice of the customer’ and to understand the essence of working as a member of staff at Holiday Architects.
Insights demonstrated a very clear brand essence for Holiday Architects within the tailor-made travel arena and encouragingly, a strong correlation between what both staff and customers thought was valued and unique. A future stage is potentially ongoing monitoring of brand positioning in the market by conducting quantitative research among the target market and mapping perceptions of Holiday Architects against its principal competitors. Is Holiday Architects maintaining this distinct positioning?
What to do with the results?
Finally, and this is the most challenging area, try to turn the insights from the research into a set of actions that you will take as an organisation. What is our brand essence and what actions do we need to take across our organisation to make sure that this essence flows through everything that we do? Here we set out the key considerations and actions to take, depending on the conclusions of the insight.
‘We have a distinct position that customers value’
The results reflect on the whole business, not just the marketing team, so make sure they’re shared and all teams are fully involved.
Remember that brand essence doesn’t exist in a vacuum, other facets of your brand are important too and should be part of your plans. Thinking of it as a ‘mixing desk’ you’ll want to turn some messages and some down. See the brand pyramid below.
Consider how your brand essence is currently communicated and if and how you want to change that. Remember the brand essence is the customer’s response to your distinct facet so it’s their perceived value not necessarily what you do. Changing your strapline may not be the solution, and certainly isn’t the only solution.
Evidence the benefit, the most obvious way is through customer reviews but it may be through staff interviews, survey results, ratings, and awards.
Define your brand: say what you stand for, what your values are and what’s your personality. Do this in your customers eyes. This is your hymn sheet that you want everyone singing from. It’s also the mother ship for planning in sales and product teams as well as marketing.
Consider how the brand essence and other key parts of your brand are communicated and delivered through the customer journey. You may need to use the ‘mixing desk’ through the journey, turning some facets up, and others down.
Incorporate all the actions you’re going to take across your teams into their plans and review them monthly, quarterly and annually.
‘We don’t have a distinct and valued position’
All is not lost, you’re not alone, but you may suffer in the areas of price sensitivity and customer loyalty, as well as being more vulnerable to challenger brands.
It’s not classic brand theory, but in the travel sector we’d argue that the next best thing to a distinctive position is a combination of high quality factors. In fact, being a great all-rounder in your sector could be near distinctive. This will depend on the degree of competition.
Did the insight reveal any distinctive and valued positions that are currently unoccupied or under occupied? These could present an opportunity to manoeuvre your business into this space.
A change in direction for any business is a big thing and not without risk, so testing your revised position is worthwhile and there are various insight techniques to help with this.
Using a (simple) brand pyramid
Creating a simple brand pyramid is a useful way of visualising your brand and provides context for all the facets of your business. It may be the one of the outputs of the insight work or you can create it afterwards.
Next steps
If you’d like an informal discussion about understanding, defining and leveraging your brand essence, Steve and Jim can be contacted via their respective websites, which also detail more about their work.