A brand element is a logo, slogan, name, or design that’s used to give a brand an identity. Foster Farms uses the image of a rooster as their logo, the slogan “Always Natural. Always Fresh.”, and the word “Farms” in their name to indicate they’re not an industrial “chicken factory”.

If you’re creating a new brand (or trying to revitalize an old one), pick brand elements that consumers can instantly recognize and recall. It’s also a good idea to choose brand elements that are descriptive of the products under that brand. Ask yourself, “If the brand elements are all a consumer knows about my brand, how would they think or feel about the product?” Based solely on the name, a consumer might expect Avon’s Skin So Soft to soften their skin and Heineken’s Dos Equis to be a Mexican-style beer.

There are six core criteria you can use to evaluate potential brand elements:

1. Meaningful – Does the brand element suggest something about the type of person who might purchase the products? Is it suggestive of both the products and the category they belong to? Good examples are Nestle’s Lean Cuisine, FHP’s O’Cedar, and GSK’s Aquafresh. Read more…

A very interesting report was published about two weeks ago by NCH Marketing Services, a Valassis company. It was titled, “2010 Coupon Facts Report”, and the most important insight it offered was that CPG manufacturers offered $485 billion worth of coupons in 2010. That is a 13.9% increase over the previous year and a 47.4% increase over five years ago.

Clearly grocery and cosmetic shopping have become different ballgames ever since the latter part of 2008. Consumers are more strategic in their shopping due to worries about their pocketbooks. But to dig a little deeper past the obvious recession era trends, I thought it would be interesting to pull out a few of the more prominent points brought up in the report:

• Nearly two thirds of all coupons offered in 2010 were for grocery items – up 8% from the prior year.
• The remaining one third were for health and beauty care products.
• The average coupon face value distributed for HBC products was $1.94 – up 6.6 percent from the prior year.
• Consumers now have a week and a half less time to use coupons, compared to the prior year, due to an overall shortening of offer expiration dates in both the grocery and HBC segments. The average expiration is 10.1 weeks. Read more…

Walmart is working to expand its market share in India, and it is doing so aggressively. Since Walmart entered the Indian market, the company partnered with Bharti Enterprises to open six wholesale stores to date, with four locations in the state of Punjab alone. As with any initial infiltration of a market, there are barriers to entry in India’s retail market. But then again, this is Walmart we are talking about.

One such barrier is the fact that India has not fully opened its retail market to foreign companies. Last year, after India’s Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) was non-committal on foreign investments in retail, the DIPP invited opinions from large retailers and small shop owners about foreign direct investment in multi-brand retail. And that discussion still continues. Read more…