Turning products into brands

The difference between brands and products could be the difference between success and failure in an increasingly competitive media landscape.

The four dimensions of a media brand

To dig deeper into this whole issue, Wessenden has developed a structured approach to four key branding factors that loom large in the mind of the end-user and which we tease out of them through qualitative interviews. None of this is rocket science. Yet it is a more structured way to approach an old issue, whilst using more digital research tools.

In most media companies, there is a massive pool of hard, transactional data generated by day-to-day processes and user behaviours. There is often too much of this: most of it is interesting, but only a small part is important and actionable. In addition, only a more qualitative research approach can dig beneath what users are doing in to why they are.

The four dimensions in our model are:

• Functionality. What is the title for — its purpose? What does it do for the reader? Is it useful? Is it relevant? How easy is it to use and navigate on every platform? Do factors such as price and frequency affect its usage? Is Title A really that different from Title B in head-to-head comparisons?
• Awareness. Just how aware is the target audience of the product? And why are they aware, with factors such as a social presence, paid ads, general visibility (eg. retail, live events, etc). Or has it simply been around for a long time, which can have real pros and cons in terms of the perceived personality.
• Personality. What mental images of the product do users have? In a pilot project in the consumer motoring market, we asked consumers (1) to visual what make of car each title conjured up in their minds and (2) what it would be like going on a reader trip to the Motor Show. This brought vividly to life issues such as editorial tone, the production values of physical products and value-for-money.
• Values. Beyond the core image and personality, is there implicit authority and trustworthiness baked into the content? How do these factors actually manifest themselves in practical usage?

Put all these four dimensions together, with scores against each factor, and one really starts to dig into how the content works across all the platforms used. And what could be tweaked and improved.

The pilot also covered issues such as:

• Which platforms suit certain types of content better than others.
• What value users put on brand extensions.
• How aware were the consumers of the price they were actually paying.

So what?

Knowing how your content actually works and whether it dovetails together to form a real brand is a publishing fundamental and is not just an academic debate. Yet not enough companies actually track all this in a structured, consistent and regular way. The tangible benefits are:

• Being able to control the position of the overall brand in a competitive and rapidly changing marketplace. That involves insight into how to price it and how to stretch it into other activities and extensions. It could also lead into new product development and the launch of niche satellite services and products.
• Seeing the impact on other areas of the operation such as customer service, the value of the ads being served, brand extensions, etc.
• Guiding more strategic assessments as to the value of the title (for M&A purposes), decisions as to whether to launch or acquire when developing market position or entering new sectors and new geographic territories in international growth.

Highly rated media brands

Wessenden’s recent mediashapers survey showed which media brands are highly rated by people working inside our business:

• In ‘news’, they include: The Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, The Atlantic and The Guardian.
• In ‘consumer’: Good Housekeeping, Good Food, Radio Times, WIRED, Time Out, New Scientist, People.
• In ‘B2B’, the brands are more tightly defined and vertical, but include Edie, Estates Gazette, With Intelligence, MergerMarket, Zero Hedge.
• In the broader entertainment & media market: YouTube, TikTok, Spotify, Netflix, BBC, Disney, Goalhanger’s ‘The Rest is’ series.
• And then beyond, in the bigger world: a long list including Apple, Amazon, Nectar, UBER.

Most of these names are also very active in brand extensions and the development of diversified revenue streams around their core offerings.

The renaming of Dotdash Meredith as People Inc shows the value of a brand at a company level. The name was originally a placeholder, created after the $2.7bn merger of Dotdash (IAC) and Meredith Corporation in 2021. Yet the company has realised that the name lacked emotional resonance and clarity, among both its advertisers and consumers. People is the company’s flagship brand, widely recognised and trusted across the USA and shows the company’s renewed focus on human-centred content: “real people making real content... not AI, not synthetic, not mashed-up. Just passionate people creating trusted media”. That is what being a brand really means.

This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.