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Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant - always yours

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318 BRAND RELEVANCE<br />

<strong>Brand</strong>ed Social Programs. <strong>Brand</strong>ed social programs can pay<br />

off by helping establish a customer relationship based on trust<br />

and respect. However, they can also provide energy by generating<br />

interest, and even passion, tangible results, and opportunities for<br />

customer involvement. Consider the energy created by the Avon<br />

Breast Cancer Crusade. Its signature Avon Walk for Breast Cancer<br />

has raised over $ 650 million for the fight against breast cancer and<br />

involved not only participants but also family members and sponsors.<br />

That interest and that energy could never have been created<br />

by Avon products, however new and different they might appear<br />

to be. And the Walk is branded as Avon complete with a logo.<br />

Creating branded social programs can be effectively costless<br />

in that existing philanthropy dollars that are being spent without<br />

focus or impact can be diverted into branded social programs.<br />

However, such programs are also extremely hard to generate: there<br />

are firms that would like to create Avon Walk – type programs but<br />

simply can ’ t come up with any. Kellie McElhaney, the director of<br />

the Center for Responsible Business at the Haas School at U.C.<br />

Berkeley, has suggested several guiding principles for creating a<br />

successful program. 14<br />

Leverage Organizational Assets and Values. The firm should<br />

aspire to add value to the program rather than just investing money.<br />

It should leverage its values, assets, and competencies. To do so the<br />

firm should address very basic questions as to who they are, their<br />

strengths and weaknesses, and what they want to stand for.<br />

Be Authentic. There should be a logical fi t with the program.<br />

Avon ’ s program hits on a key concern of its target market<br />

and refl ects a relationship with its customers that goes beyond<br />

product. The same can be said for Crest ’ s Healthy Smiles (low -<br />

cost dental care for poor children), Home Depot ’ s relationship<br />

with Habitat for Humanity, and Dove ’ s Real Women. In contrast,<br />

many fi rms have laudable charitable initiatives that lack<br />

a logical link to their business and brands and that affects both

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