The Brand Success Code is the key to success
The success of brands today depends on five factors. This has been confirmed by rheingold studies over the past 20 years. The starting point for successful brand management is the question of the strategic relevance of a brand. Brands can only be stringently managed and evaluated if one knows the market laws that are relevant to them. Since every market is unique, no universally valid brand management models are helpful.
Strategically important is the specific knowledge of the particular rules of the game, the unique customs and traditions that exist in the respective market: What moves and motivates consumers in my market? What forces influence their consumer behavior? And which factors, including psychological ones, determine their purchasing decisions? The answers are illustrated in a strategic functional model of the specific market. This creates a unique strategic basis that shows the relevant levers and influencing factors that marketing has in a market. The strategic function model enables a precise description of the function of a brand and a diagnosis of its strengths and weaknesses.
Sparkling wine brands as mood changers
A sparkling wine brand such as Freixenet, for example, is subject to the market laws of changing moods. Sparkling wine brands are supposed to create a kind of high spirits. However, this can have very different orientations. Brands like Fürst von Metternich or Henkell Trocken are supposed to fix a high mood. Festive or crowning moments - the wedding, the birthday or the anniversary - are to be captured, stopped and cast in amber, as it were. This high mood, however, requires the sparkling wine to be very sophisticated and distinguished. The sparkling wine should not break any chains, but put on the label. But the sparkling wine also has another, frothy and disinhibiting side.
Unleashed cork popping
The popping of the corks is also a signal that our urges and desires can be unleashed for once. This tingling release side of sparkling wine is now being taken up by the Freixenet brand. It promises not the preservation of the beautiful moment, but the gliding over into a freer and more sensual mood. Freixenet's brand-specific formula for success is the "release of cultivated sensuality." This also defines the three key moments of success for the brand: it acts as a transitional aid and leads us out of the resinousness of everyday life. It makes us more sensual and acts as a social lubricant that can transfer into forms of flirting and erotic approach.
However, it is and always remains cultivated and stylish. Freixenet does not allow vulgarity or coarseness as downsides of alcoholic unleashing. The brand-specific success formula is the second success factor of a brand. This formula is not to be confused with the claim or slogan. Rather, it condenses the deep dimensions and the secret message of a brand, which is decoded with the help of rheingoldInterviews®.
The harmonious overall picture
The third success factor is the coherence of a brand. Since brands can be understood as personalities, it is 'essential' that they convey a coherent overall image in all their manifestations and their expressions of life: What the advertising promises, the package must deliver and the product must deliver. The credibility of a brand depends crucially on whether it succeeds in conveying an organic overall composition across all its touchpoints - from the appearance on Facebook to the call center.
This does not mean perfection in all components, but a harmonious fit in the whole. In the case of Freixenet, coherence is ensured when the brand fulfills a triad across its life's expressions, which is already echoed in the name: Free X Nice.
Mysterious magic with swinging X
The liberating effect of the brand must always be sensually experienced in the music, atmosphere, and tonality of Freixenet. Galloping horses, racy guitar sounds or the opening rose are important release signals of Freixenet. But the brand must also always appear nice and sophisticated. Therefore, a certain formal rigor in the advertising composition is just as important as the high-quality bottle design. Between these poles, however, the brand should always unfold a mysterious magic that is conveyed by the sweeping X. The change of mood with Freixenet should remain in a tingling limbo. Freixenet should never become so unambiguous that one's own partner, on seeing the Freixenet bottle brought along, has the feeling of having to perform erotically in the evening.
Courage from a champagne mood
Through its strategically relevant formula for success and through its coherence, a brand also succeeds in establishing a unique positioning and unique selling proposition in the market. Freixenet's area of expertise not only sets it apart from the high-mood brands already described, such as Henkell Trocken or Fürst von Metternich, but also from breakthrough brands like Mumm or Deinhard. These brands promise to break through one's action jam out of a sparkling wine mood and show grit or courage in the truest sense of the word. The legendary ecstatic drumming Deinhard woman in a purple dress eruptively calling for the Deinhard epitomizes this cork popping moment that sparkling wine can also evoke.
Goal-oriented navigation of the brand
Strategic brand management therefore needs maps of the market that are true to scale for target-oriented navigation. Maps that not only show the psychological USP of one's own brand, but also the positions and points of attack of competitors.
But these maps of the market should also show the development paths and potential of a brand. Because the fifth success factor is the career of the brand. Unlike personalities, brands are not static, but continue to develop. They give birth to children, so-called line extenders, or conquer entirely new markets with their formula for success.
Brand Success Code as a principle of success
Successful future management of a brand naturally depends on knowing its Brand Success Code. A brand can then capitalize on its success principle even in completely new markets. For the Freixenet brand, stylish flowers or gift services, romantic trips for couples, or a racy lingerie collection could be options worth examining for expanding its passionate, elegant transitional aid.
Spatial digitization is changing the world, people and marketing. It has far-reaching consequences for markets, for consumer behavior, customers' media use, their purchasing decisions and habits. The reality of our lives is becoming more fluid. Structures and boundaries are becoming blurred, everyday life, professional life and relationships are becoming more flexible, media use is becoming fragmented and business is becoming globalized.
