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January 2008 Oil and Gas Magazine

In a hybrid world where a new blog is created every second* and where a business needs email more than they do paper in order to operate, creating a brand has become a complex and multi-layered endeavor. Branding seems to be an "in" word in marketing nowadays, but few people really understand what it entails. Branding seems to be misconceived by some as having a hip name, cool logo, stationery and collateral material, or maybe even a Flash-animated website. Although these items are important to building a brand, they are mere elements that play a moderate role in developing brand equity.

To develop a powerful brand, a company has to create an emotional connection with their customers through experience and perception. Ordinary things such as being cordial when writing an email to clients as you would in a formal letter, or smiling at customers as you give a firm handshake when you greet them are typically overlooked on a marketing plan.

An important part of building a brand consists of setting standards for the type of experiences you want people to have with your company, product and/or service. Here is a list of nine basic principles in Brand Development:

1. Establish your brand promise –
The backbone of any brand is its promise. Why are you in business? What is unique about you that can transcend the rest? What do you stand for? Be concise and precise. Before thinking about marketing plans or communication strategies, define what it is that drives your organization. Your brand promise defines the parameters behind every decision that your company makes.

2. Define your positioning statement (tagline) –
Tell the world what they will experience when they come across your organization and make sure you deliver. A tagline is more than a marketing slogan; it should be a clear pledge about what to expect from you. Remember, if you can’t live up to it, your positioning statement is nothing more than empty words.

3. Secure internal buy-in (internal branding) –
No branding program can be successful if your own people don’t believe in it. Before you can sell your philosophy outside your walls, make sure your employees understand and believe in the company’s stand. An enjoyable work environment is nice, but a culture where people thrive on the company’s core values is much stronger.

4. Be consistent –
From setting up your graphic standards to defining the tone and personality of your communication strategies, the best way to start building a memorable brand is by providing a consistent experience regardless of the medium (print, web, phone call, meeting) in which your brand is experienced.

5. Embrace technology –
Online branding is not just about having a nice website that is SEO-friendly (search engine optimization). It’s about harnessing the opportunities that technology brings to building a brand – from creating an E-commerce portal to sharing your expertise in a blog (with a link to your podcast, of course). Online branding is quickly becoming quintessential to building a successful business.

6. Learn to evolve –
As your business grows and the quantity or caliber of clients get bigger and more sophisticated, your branding should, too. Align and re-align your branding architecture to accurately reflect the evolution of your business. Practices such as performing a yearly evaluation of your brand promise and positioning statement are healthy exercises to determine if you are in need of a brand overhaul.

7. Be dependable –
The most effective practice in brand building is keeping your promises. From meeting project deadlines to returning phone calls on time, reliability is hard to come by. Brands are made up of people; the experiences you have when dealing with the individuals who work at a company play a huge role in your perceptions of that organization. It’s always better to under promise and over deliver, as long as you meet the client's objectives.

8. The audience will determine your brand –
The only way to know your brand is through the eyes of your clients, vendors and peers. Practices such as performing regular client surveys, interviews and/or focus groups are excellent measuring tools to gauge if you’re getting the message across according to your plan.

9. Keep up –
Research your competition and learn their strengths and weaknesses. Secret or mystery shopping is a great tool to get a sense of where you stand compared to everyone else. This practice will allow you to capitalize on the competition’s missed opportunities and understand what it is that sets you apart.

Tex-Jet™: An example of the power of (re)Branding

Josh Clem, one of the owners of Clem Energy Services, came to us in early 2007 with a fairly new product for the oil and gas industry. His challenge: how to let people know about his innovative tool with a limited budget and no marketing materials available at that time. The product had been on the market for less than a year, but it had never been aggressively advertised.

His product is the Tex-Jet™: a unique, artificial two-phase lift system that utilizes gas injection pressure to move oil and gas to the surface with no downhole moving parts. In other words, it is a product that replaces standard pump jacks that is far more cost effective and has low maintenance costs. Sounds great, so what’s the issue? Well, with new products such as this one, a key component to building a brand and marketing around them is clarity. Since there are only a limited number of similar tools in the industry, before we can persuade prospective clients, we had to educate them about the differences between the Tex-Jet™ and the standard pump jacks.

To tell the story to potential customers about the overt benefits of using/switching to Tex-Jet™ and how this can positively affect their bottom line, we developed a simple (but effective) three-step plan to fit their budget.

Step 1. Brand overhaul.
As part of our brand evaluation, one of the objectives was to revamp the identity to effectively communicate and position the Tex-Jet™ as a cost-effective, solid and reliable alternative to standard pump jacks. We started by redesigning their logo and developing a website that included an animated illustration of how the tool works. We also designed a collateral piece with easy-to-read illustrations of their patented process and a comparison of Tex-Jet™ versus standard pump jacks.

Step 2. Maximize every marketing dollar.
Since we were working with a limited budget, we needed to maximize every dollar to generate the maximum amount of reach. Now that we had the basic marketing tools ready (identity, website and collateral), our focus was leveraging the rest of the budget to get the most bang for our buck. A smart public relations campaign was rolled out to create interest and generate brand awareness within the oil and gas industry. Consequently, in a short period of time, the campaign generated interest from editors in the industry and garnered more than $80,000 in published media coverage.

Step 3. Evaluate and adjust.
A part of any successful re-branding or marketing plan is being able to monitor and evaluate results. This gives a company priceless information such as opportunities that were missed or capitalized upon, the effectiveness of the marketing dollars versus sales, etc. Clem currently receives updates on traffic to his new website and sources of sales leads through an online tracking program. As a result of the branding campaign, sales for the Tex-Jet™ product increased more than 250 percent in the first three months.

*According to Technorati 2006 statistics on Blogs (technorati.com)

About the Author: Juan Barrera is the creative director, co-founder and partner of Blue Clover On and Off-line Branding™. His areas of expertise are brand development, conceptualization and execution. Since the inception of Blue Clover, Juan led his creative team to more than 50 awards from institutions such as the Art Director’s Club of Houston, the American Advertising Federation and the International Association of Business Communicators Bronze Quill Awards. He earned a BA in communication and media advertising from the University of Texas at El Paso. Juan can be reached at 210-223-5409 or juan@blueclover.com.

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