Conducting Research

Today's reading was actually very impressive. The topic was the first phase in the brand identity process - conducting research.

The main activities associated with conducting research are:

1. Understanding the business. Requesting baseline information from the client and following up by interviewing key stakeholders.

2. Market research. Gathering, evaluation and interpretation of data affecting customer preferences for products, services and brands. Research includes activities like usability testing, surveys, focus groups, mystery shopping, etc.

3. Marketing audit. Examining the client's communications and marketing tools. This involves getting your hands on all marketing communication and collateral.

4. Competitive audit. Examining the competition's brands, messages and identity.

5. Stakeholder audit. This was an interesting aspect. The stakeholder audit recognizes that the client's brand reaches beyond the client. The brand should reach all stakeholders. As such, a stakeholder audit targets key stakeholders to gain their insight into the brand, their needs, perceptions, etc.

6. Language audit. The book was sort of vague here and dismissed the language audit by saying "every organization aspires to conduct a language audit, but very few accomplish it." My understanding was that the language audit was a method to analyze what was the most desirable content.

7. Producing the audit readout. The audit readout is the formal presentation that helps the client take inventory and helps the agency have a baseline to build from.

One of the things that stuck out to me was the ACLU example cited. As part of conducting research, the ACLU was astonished to find out that over 50 different logos were being used at the national and affiliate level. There was no system in place to account for the use of their brandmarks and these different logos were causing serious brand confusion.

The ACLU example sounds so familiar. From 2001 to November 2004, my firm worked as the sole search engine marketing provider for one of the three approved lead agencies on the University of Phoenix account. We did an awesome job and worked seamlessly with their existing brand and message. However, one of the other lead agencies took a different route. Instead of doing the work in-house, this agency outsourced all of their search engine marketing to multiple rather unscrupulous vendors (quite literally anyone and everyone). As a result, lead quality and more importantly the University of Phoenix brand and the message were often seriously compromised. The University of Phoenix is ultimately responsible for the brand confusion. They entered into relationships with multiple agencies and provided little oversight. The University of Phoenix was only focused on their lead generation and neglected their brand in the process. The sad thing is that they still haven't learned their lesson. Just do a search on Google for "university of phoenix" and tell me what site is the official site. There are no less that 15 to 20 sites that appear official. University of Phoenix doesn't own these sites. Do you think they can control the message on all of these third party sites and third party advertisements? Nope. They didn't back in 2004 and I'm sure they don't today.