Successful brands segment their audience down to individual personas and messages for the persona to make their marketing better match the needs of that group. In short, they get thy audience better than the audience may know themselves.

By segmenting the market, brands can focus their resources more effectively, and with a greater chance of success. How? Segmenting allows brands to determine their prospects:

• Attitudes and perceptions on the category and World as a whole
• Pain points to understand the problem they’re facing and how their solution will solve it
• Motivations to trial and purchase
• Key questions that must be answered before the path to purchase is completed

Along the way, you’ll break the segment down to several personas since one size doesn’t fit all. If you are a first aid product, as an example, you may break your market down to skeptical seniors, caregiver moms and athletic guys. All need a first aid product but each one has different emotional and analytic reasons to buy it.

That is where market segmentation comes in.

Marketing, product and brand managers are continuously being asked to increase their return on investment. With market segmentation, their odds are greatly improved.

“We extended an invitation to Scott to serve as a judge for the 2012 Silver Anvil competition because of his experience and expertise in the field of public relations,” stated James J. Roop, APR, Fellow PRSA, Chair, 2012 PRSA Honors and Chairs Committee. For Carpenter, it marks the seventh consecutive year in which he was selected, in which he is one of 15 people in the country with a similar tenure.

The public relations profession’s most prestigious honor, the Silver Anvil Award acknowledges the very highest level of achievement and is the established icon of the “best of the best” public relations practices. As a judge, Carpenter and his team will evaluate, rank and select a winning entry based on the PR campaign’s excellence in research, planning, execution and evaluation.

As one of 120 counselors – out of 30,000 possible PRSA members – on the panel, Carpenter will participate in the judging March 23 in New York City.

More information on the Silver Anvil Awards can be found at http://www.prsa.org/Awards/SilverAnvil.

1.  Archie Griffin 2012 Celebrity Golf Classic Benefiting the Boys & Girls Clubs of Sarasota.

Held March 5 and 6, the event features two-time Heisman Trophy winner Archie Griffin, Calvin Johnson and Ndamukong Suh of the Detroit Lions and great Ohio State players such as Robert Smith (now with ESPN), Eddie George and Keith Byars.

2. Walk for Rides Benefiting ITNSarasota.

Held March 3rd at Phillippi Estate Park, the event is a friend-raiser to gather support for those who need dignified transportation the most:  senior citizens who no longer driver and the visually impaired.

We are pleased to support both of these events with our time, talent and treasure and hope that our partners, friends and families will join us in these causes.

In my view, different is not better, it’s just different. You wear a blue shirt, I wear a white one. Yes, they’re different but not better. What makes them better is that your shirt is made with burlap and mine is made of silk. In short, it is the quality and value of the product that make it better, not because it is different.

So when you think about your brand, it’s not like the old book said, “Differentiate or Die.” It’s about what can we do to make our brand more valuable and indispensable to the customer. By determining that, your brand will also rise above those who just wish to be different than the others.

And if you have any burlap, please keep it to yourself!

Carpenter will address “Effective marketing strategies that build powerful franchise brands.” The focus of his presentation will be on understanding the franchise value proposition and how to communicate it through media relations, social media, direct marketing and traditional advertising to effectively grow their business.

“In many cases, the national franchise provides each of the local franchisees with the tools they need to grow their business,” states Carpenter. “However, marketing often gets pushed aside because the franchise owners are busy with deliveries, billing and customer service.

“Through a review of the tools the franchise provides, the guerrilla marketing ideas they can implement on their own and an understanding on how to position their brand to stand above the rest, franchisees can take their business and personal brand to higher levels.”

And cPR is happy to report that our strategic counsel has – yet again – achieved measurable results that has made our client partner successful.

Based on cPR’s successful marketing strategy for WoundSeal – a product that stops bleeding instantly – Walgreens has agreed to expand the test market from the State of Florida to Arizona, Texas, New Mexico and Ohio. More than 800 stores will now carry the product.

Consisting of an integrated approach to build credibility, raise awareness and generate trial of a product no one has heard of with a never been heard claim – stops bleeding instantly – cPR was able to generate all of the above to not only build success sales but to set the stage for a possible national launch in 2012.

Visit WoundSeal for more information on this amazing product.

How you ask? Here are the lines from the main chorus, in which we’ve put keywords that are Great Brand worthy in bold:

Bon Jovi Speaks Brands

We Weren’t born to follow
Come on and get up off your knees
When life is a bitter pill to swallow
You gotta hold on to what you believe
Believe that the sun will shine tomorrow
And that saints and sinners bleed
We weren’t born to follow
You gotta stand up for what you believe

Aren’t the keywords from above what make Great Brands… well Great Brands?

You never hear of brands such as GE, Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz or Google following the pack… they’re leading it by holding on to what they believe is their brand’s value in the World and standing up for it at every turn.  What a minute, isn’t that Bon Jovi just said?

If you want to build an iconic great brand — even a small one — start with passion, purpose and focus. Have a belief in your true value and use it as a guide to lead others down the same path. Then work your ass off to stand up for what you believe.

Rock on.

cPR is pleased to introduce the new Happy & Healthy Products website:  www.happyandhealthy.com.

More than just a redo of their old site, the new site captures the brand’s true voice, look/feel and message to position it at a higher level than its competitors. cPR took the brand’s public persona from franchise focused to product focused. Paying special attention to organic/searchable key words, the site’s content is supported in theme by animation, videos, interactive forms and photos.

So it got me thinking… which I know is always scary!  When you think of the word “brand” or “branding”, what do you think of? How do you define a brand? This is an important question because how your customers feel about your brand isn’t a casual question; it’s the crucial question.

It seems like everyone has a different idea of what branding is and what it isn’t. I’m sure you’ve heard this one… “a brand is not a logo, slogan or your overall creative elements “. Or, how about, “a brand is who the CEO is, does and portrays”. What does that even mean?

Most of my favorite definitions of what branding is have one thing in common: simplicity. I’ve found that part of the confusion that small businesses have with marketing in general are the ridiculously complex and confusing terms that are throw around by so-called experts.

My all-time favorite definition of branding is:

A brand is a promise – a value proposition that rises about the competition – that you make with your customer on emotional level to always deliver upon their unmet need that generates like, trust and confidence in your company.

Ok, I’ll admit that I created that definition!

“Branding”, then, can be viewed as all the activities that help you with the know, like and trust of your customers. This is a much broader view than most people have. A lot of people relate branding to “advertising” (i.e. print ads, television and radio spots, billboards, etc). These elements may help you with getting known (although their impact is diminishing), but factors like how easy it is to do business with you, your process, your customer service and marketing materials, and, most importantly, if you exceed expectations and deliver on your promises, make the biggest impact on the like and the trust components of branding.

Here are a few of my other favorite (simple) explanations of branding:

A brand is an expectation of someone or something delivering a certain feeling by way of an experience (I love the fact that this one introduces the fact that the actual “experiences” that prospects or customer have with your brand, product or service are critical to the like and trust components). Experience(s) is becoming the new marketing.

Branding = using marketing to influence peoples’ attitudes towards, and perceptions of, the brand.

Brand = collectively, what people say, feel & think about your product, service or company.

Brands are about feelings, not facts. Buying decisions are made on promises that transcend products, and promises are rooted in human emotions. Quite simply, brands are built on trust. Making and keeping promises builds trust which is among the most basic of human emotions.

Branding is a journey, not a destination.

Branding is a verb, not a noun.

Hopefully this helps you get your arms around what branding is and isn’t and provides a foundation for building or strengthening your brand.