Branding Is Important to Your Survival - Smart Marketing Move

This week’s Smart Marketing Move goes to The National Breast Cancer Foundation.

Their branding efforts have spread like wild fire and they should get some credit. What do you think of when you hear breast cancer awareness? PINK. They have done a fantastic job at making a color theirs. This is what branding is all about.

Their biggest step was the pink ribbon campaign. Here’s the background:
Ribbons have been used to express solidarity on the part of the wearer with the identified cause since the early to late 20th Century. Pink Ribbons (and the color pink) are used to express support for women (and men) who are diagnosed with Breast Cancer.
In the fall of 1991, the Susan G. Komen Foundation handed out pink ribbons to participants in its New York City race for breast cancer survivors.[1]

The next year, Alexandra Penney, who was the editor-in-chief of Self,[2] a woman health magazine, was working on the second annual National Breast Cancer Awareness Month issue. Evelyn Lauder, who was the senior corporate vice president at Estée Lauder, was invited to be the guest editor of the NBCAM issue edition in 1992. Penney and Lauder came up with the idea to create a ribbon and to enlist the cosmetics giant to distribute it in stores in New York City. Evelyn Lauder then promised to spread the ribbons throughout the entire country, but a color for the ribbon was not yet decided upon.

Charlotte Hayley, who battled breast cancer, produced peach color ribbons. She sold them with a card saying, "The National Cancer Institute annual budget is 1.8 billion US Dollars, and only 5 percent goes for cancer prevention. Help us wake up our legislators and America by wearing this ribbon".[3] Her message spread fast. This made Penny and Evelyn Lauder interested in Hayley's concept. They offered to adapt Hayley's idea by working with her. But Hayley rejected the offer, saying that they were too commercial.
After discussing opportunities with Lauder, Hayley and their lawyers, they came up with a "new" color. The new color of the ribbon was pink and became an international symbol for breast cancer awareness.


Lesson Learned: Even though this example is on a large scale, branding is an important step you must not miss in your business. This includes your logo, business cards, website, letterhead, t-shirts, etc etc etc. Remember, a strong brand influences the buying decision and shapes the ownership experience.

Where is experience and common sense?

Both, common sense and experience, are increasingly missing from the staffs of corporate marketing departments and their agencies. "Good judgment comes from experience, experience comes from bad judgment."

A fact of life is that it takes time (years) to develop experience and the resource network (rolodex) so important to success. Another fact or impacting the thinking behind marketing activities is the increasingly lack of common sense. What is common sense?

"Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are
and doing things as they ought to be done."
- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Both these factors are important ingredients in building a strong foundation that will benefit those efforts directed to generating sales, acquiring and keeping customers and enhancing profitability.

Maturity's Role in Marketing Staff

What role does maturity play in the effectiveness of an agency or corporate marketing staff?

Experience is the basis for making good judgments but experience is learned from making bad judgments. Youth lacks experience because it lacks the time needed to hone one's expertise, build a network of beneficial resources and have an encyclopedia of actual experience to tap into. So why do you think so many marketing staffs of corporations and their agencies are so light on mature, seasoned staff? Is it strictly based on that young people are less expensive to hire and maintain? Does that inexperience have a cost to these companies and if so what and where?

Would a Smart Move be that all would be better off to have available an "Experience Advisory Board" to help those seeking guidance, with the positioning that those taking such action are showing their maturity in caring that the client (and/or the firm) benefit from the best thinking.

What are your thoughts?