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Branding

Brand Strategy: Monster Energy Drink

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“Unleash the Beast.” If I asked whose slogan you thought that was, I am sure many would say Monster energy right off the bat. Why is this? What makes it stand out? This particular energy drink is unlike any other. It has a following of people who love it. Read below to learn how this drink found its followers through its unique brand strategy.

What is a brand strategy?

According to AYTM.com, “A brand strategy is a long-term plan for the development of a successful brand to achieve specific goals.” 

This means that a well-defined and executed brand strategy should affect all aspects of a business. It should directly connect to consumer needs, emotions, and competitive environments. It also involves how consumers perceive a brand. A brand should strive to create a base of consumers that, in turn, will support the brand in their own lives.

Monster’s Brand Strategy

Monster’s brand strategy focuses on teens and youths as its main market. Monster reaches out to and has directed most of its marketing to its core market of males ages 18 to 32.  With such a young core consumer base, Monster energy drink marketing focuses on youth themes and strategies such as extreme sporting events and lifestyles like skateboarding, motocross, and surfing.

The most current trend in energy drinks marketing is from its users. The internet has played a huge part in the strategy as Monster has become the “gamer drink.” Their dangerous image, dark packaging, and oversized cans have created a strong persona in the growing energy drink market. With its unusual packaging, Monster creates an immediate synergy between its consumers and the company.

No Brand Media

How does a brand grow without spending a dime on advertising? By converting their target market into fans who influence and recruit their friends! Monster’s success lies in its ability to get the right people who bring the right energy. This isn’t the brand that will be presenting flowers and sugar anytime soon. By creating an ecosystem where their product is the center of all movement, Monster has sent the idea of “if you like it, great! If not, maybe your friend will let them try it.”  

The Monster ecosystem is based on motorsports, action sports, e-gaming, and punk rock scenes. This market is similar to Red Bull’s market, but Monster brings a more aggressive, rebellious, and edgy personality to life. By being the angsty teen of the energy drink world, there is something “cool” about drinking one. In turn, this makes the client feel like they are choosing to be edgy. By allowing their fans to create the advertising, Monster’s image is what their community makes it.  Monster can stand on its own because the consumers believe in the product.

Learn More About Trends and Internet Content

At Web Content Development, we know that creating a brand strategy can seem like a heavy task, especially if you are beginning. Our passion is helping you understand and connect with the community you fit best. Give us a call today at (800) 316-9664 to set up an appointment and learn how you can become a staple in your community.

Kim Kardashian: What is Her Best Selling Brand & Why

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Kim Kardashian is a woman with many talents. She’s not only a model, TV star, and spokeswoman, but she’s also a very successful entrepreneur. Through her lucrative engagements, she’s managed to become one of the highest-earning celebrities alive today.

How Much Is Kim Kardashian Worth?

Some people have wondered, “How much is Kim Kardashian worth?” According to some estimates, she’s worth $900 million. She earns about $50 to 80 million per year from her various endeavors and her growing empire. When you figure in her husband Kanye West’s net worth, the Kardashians are said to be worth about $4.1 billion.

What Is Kim Kardashian’s Best Selling Brand?

The KKW Beauty Line is Kim Kardashian’s best-selling brand, generating more than $100 million in gross revenue yearly. In June 2020, the Kardashians sold a 20% stake in this beauty line for $200 million. This means that the company as a whole is valued at $1 billion, which increased her net worth to about $900 million. 

Why Does Kim Kardashian’s Brand Sell So Well?

There are four main reasons that Kim Kardashian is doing well when it comes to marketing her brand.

Turning Bad Situations into Opportunities

First, she’s able to turn anything negative that happens to her into an opportunity. Before the show “Keeping Up With the Kardashians,” she had a bit of a PR mess. Instead of letting it get her down, she saw it as an opportunity. Kim used the buzz surrounding her personal controversy to launch her reality show, which was the beginning of her fame.

What this teaches us is that a crisis shouldn’t be the downfall of a brand. Instead, it can be a chance to grow. We should never let negative situations drive people’s perceptions. By turning a negative into a positive, Kim Kardashian was able to shed favorable light and grow her brand.

Kim’s Strong Commitment With Her Social Media Fan Base

Second, Kim Kardashian engages on social media where she has millions of followers. However, numbers don’t matter as much as the way she uses these platforms. She regularly engages with her followers, giving them insight into her world, which makes people feel connected to her.

Kim Kardashian’s social media marketing strategy teaches the importance of connecting to our audience and give them an inside look into our brand. We should show them our personality by being open and engaging. Such kinship will increase the likelihood that people will buy your brand.

Knowing Her Audience

Third, Kim Kardashian knows her audience and goes out of her way to appeal to their mindset. She has created a diverse portfolio of products that are centered around her core themes of luxury, beauty, and glam. Kim has developed two successful mobile apps to appeal to different segments of her audience: Kim Kardashian Hollywood and Kim Kardashian West. She shows us that the key to appealing to our audience lies in truly understanding them. We need to know their needs and interests before we can properly position our brand in front of them.

Diversity in Her Branding and Products

Fourth and finally, Kim has diversified, which shows how important it is not to rest on the success of a single product. Use it to launch other related products for your brand. Doing so will allow you to grow your brand and make a name for it. Of course, this will take a lot of hard work. But if you aim to have people like you, it’s possible to create an uber-successful brand that people find themselves identifying with.

When you’re ready to take your marketing to the next level, contact Web Content Development for the help you need.

Three Reasons Abu Dhabi Is on the Map Because of Their Digital Strategy

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Abu Dhabi has rapidly become a must-visit tourist destination for travelers from across the globe. Its success and fame as a destination can be attributed to a digital marketing strategy that focuses mainly on social media. Let’s have a look at three reasons that Abu Dhabi is on the map and thriving:

Togetherness

Abu Dhabi’s Department of Culture and Tourism (DCT) has twenty-five or more people managing its social media presence. This produces challenges, but it also has major advantages. One challenge is that it is difficult to coordinate posts across many platforms. With so many contributors, it is hard to have a clear voice that reaches the correct audiences.

In spite of the challenges, the real benefit here is that the DCT team is able to target many niche audiences and point each post with precision. This coherence and communicative strategy allows for the content to reach exactly the people it intends to. It has inherent checks and balances as well as opportunities for new growth and development.

Social Listening

Abu Dhabi’s DCT also uses social listening in its digital marketing strategy. Social listening is performed by software programs and involves the tracking or following of conversations and posts made about Abu Dhabi. Basically, the DCT sees and follows any chatter on social media that mentions Abu Dhabi. 

By doing this, the DCT can determine what kind of content it is that people are looking for when they are curious about Abu Dhabi. This is a very effective form of target marketing that reveals not only the different audiences that the DCT should target but the type of content that each niche wants to see.

Analytics and Flexibility

One of the biggest factors that contribute to the DCT’s success is their proficiency in collecting and analyzing the data concerning social media posts about Abu Dhabi. They carefully utilize the data surrounding negative conversations about Abu Dhabi to make it a better destination.

This uncovers another strength that the DCT has: the ability to remain flexible and relevant. It is crucial in business to maintain the ability to adapt to change and reconsider any aspects of your strategy that are not working. There will even be times that older strategies that had worked in the past will lose their relevance and need to be replaced.

The Power of Social Media

It is no secret that social media is taking over the internet. There are so many different platforms, with millions of people on each one. Each platform has its own built-in marketplace. Even more important is that most people carry social media right in their pockets. The smartphone has been a turbo-booster for online businesses since it makes access so much easier.

Another social media powerhouse is the UFC. A great example of the power of networking is when Abu Dhabi hosted the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2019. That fight brought Abu Dhabi a lot of attention, especially on social media.

Give Your Business a Kick Start

If you really want to use social media to your advantage like Abu Dhabi’s DCT has, you will need to learn everything that there is to know about a digital strategy. You can also outsource this work to someone who knows the ins and outs of digital marketing.  If you want to take your business to the next level, click here to learn more.

The Kylie Jenner Brand Strategy

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In 2019, Forbes Magazines named Kylie Jenner as the youngest self-made billionaire. That same year, her company, Kylie Cosmetics, was valued at $900 million. 

It is easy to assume that Jenner’s success is the result of the privilege of having a name under a celebrity family. However, while growing up in the spotlight may have helped, we must acknowledge that celebrity status does not guarantee success in any other business or career path. In fact, the Kardashian-Jenner family has had a couple of failures as business entrepreneurs. For example, in 2014, Kylie Jenner published a sci-fi book that didn’t sell as many copies as expected. 

What separates the success of Kylie Jenner cosmetics from other business failures in her family is the brand strategy.

We will cover the brand strategy used in Kylie cosmetics and how to apply it to any business.

Building a Fan and Client Base

Forbes Magazine stated, “Kylie Jenner built a $900 million fortune in less than three years”. While Jenner did achieve to earn that money in 3 years, the process to do it may have taken longer. 

Let’s take a look at Kylie Jenner’s trajectory to create a fan base:

Modeling Career (2012-present)

Jenner’s modeling career began in 2012 with the clothing company PacSun — which also lead to a collaboration with the brand to create the clothing line ‘Kendall and Kylie’. This was the beginning of the Jenner sisters to target a fan base.

Social media Presence (2011-present)

Kylie’s contract doesn’t state the number of appearances she is obligated to do on ‘Keeping Up with the Kardashians’.

 Her fan base was mostly born out of her interaction with people through social media channels, such as Vine, Snapchat, Instagram, and Tumblr. 

Through social media, she showed that she was just another teenage girl with a perky personality who also happened to have celebrity status. Kylie became an idol to many normal teenagers.

Sharing Mindful and Personal Content

Through social media, Kylie shared her genuine interest in beauty and makeup. This would later be crucial to develop her makeup brand.

In 2015, Kylie created a YouTube Channel which focused on doing Makeup tutorials on herself: a series of tutorials on how to look like Kylie Jenner by Kylie Jenner.

Creating a Product with a Purpose

Kylie has been quite open about her insecurities on the size of her lips and how it lead her to get temporary lip fillers. 

We can assume that Kylie Lip Kits — the first product created under Kylie Cosmetics — was made to help women fulfill their insecurities and enhance their natural beauty. 

The targeted audience flooded to buy her new lip kits. Kylie using her own products makes them more personal.

On a final note, Kylie Jenner is the face of the brand — not the lipsticks, not the cosmetics. Her brand is successful because it is personal.  She created the brand with a personal purpose.  She is open about insecurities which make her relatable to others. Her products may feel like a recommendation from a “friend” rather than from a salesperson.

The truth is, any brand can be as influential as Kylie Cosmetics. You don’t need the celebrity factor for your business to succeed. At Web Content Development, we are providing free consultation for any business looking to expand their client base. Reach out to us! We are here to help.

Brandless: Why They Didn’t Make it, and What We Can Learn From This?

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The initial idea sounded good. Skip the branding and the inherent costs involved, and offer DTC products at a flat-rate. Brandless, launched in 2017, promised to ‘shake-up’ the packaged goods industry by skipping the expenses of brand-marketing. The company offered essentials like groceries and home goods. Each product was priced at a flat rate of three dollars. That was pretty cool. But, unexpectedly, Brandless went belly-up on February 10, 2020.

Why did Brandless ‘Tank’?

While each component of the business model might have seemed healthy at first glance, Brandless fell victim to a common problem that new businesses face. The components of their business model could stand alone, just not together. At the end of the day, marketing is the keystone of cohesion. 

The first of a few mistakes that the hopeful company made was its brand strategy. Simply put; they spread themselves too thin. They wanted to offer everyday consumer goods at a low price. However, they also tried to market them as ‘wholesome’ or ‘good for you’ etc. Throw in the fact that they had such a low price-point and their marketing strategy was inherently ‘anemic’ in the way of advertising and packaging. Therefore, the company was doomed for eventual demise. 

But What is so Bad About Cheap Products That are Good for You?

Yes, from the standpoint of a consumer, it does seem quite appealing. The problem is that the competition is steep on all fronts. Think about it. The market for groceries and consumer goods offered by Brandless is already flooded. On one hand, you have big chain stores like Walmart. They offer similar products for cheap. Also, companies such as Amazon that offer consumer goods at a low price with the convenience of being able to order products online. DTC products at low prices have become available everywhere. 

The competition is enormous. On the other hand, there are plenty of companies out there that offer organic foods and luxury home goods that are quite expensive. However, they are purported to be of high quality and ‘different’ from the rest. Again, the competition is steep. Without a strong marketing strategy and a streamlined mission statement, Brandless became ‘lost in the wash’.

Shouldn’t the Flat-Cost Strategy Work, Though?

The idea was not all that bad. The problem was consistency. Sure, there were people that tried it out, but the problem had everything to do with consistency. While three dollars is not a lot of money for some of the kitchen wares, three dollars is quite a lot for a run-of-the-mill toothbrush, etc.  In order for this aspect of Brandless’s strategy to have worked, the simpler items would need to be of consistent and outstanding quality. Their quality just didn’t cut the mustard.

The Nail in the Brandless Coffin

At the end of the day, the glue that holds a good brand strategy together is marketing. Often, consumers believe what they are told about what they are buying. The trick is, you have got to tell them. Marketing does not have to be expensive to be effective. Of course, if the brand itself doesn’t have a clear direction or definitive focus, how can you be certain that the consumer will? 

What Can We Learn?

The moral of the story is that every company, like it or not, has a brand. Even DTC products need methodical marketing with a clear strategy. A quality product or a low price will do no good if the consumer is not aware of it. It is also crucial that the consumer knows why he or she should buy the product. In today’s world, every market has become saturated. The key is making your brand and your product known, despite all of the chatter. Click here to learn more about smart marketing strategies and branding.

What Impact Will Coronavirus Have on the Corona Brand?

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Have you ever considered how current and national events relate to a brand strategy? As the coronavirus sweeps the globe, products still practically fly off of the shelves. As a matter of fact, products like toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and disinfectant cannot be kept in stock. This is no surprise. The fear and perceived need to stock up on necessities become inevitable with an ensuing pandemic. However, this begs the question: “What about the sales of other non-necessities?”.

Though it may seem counter-intuitive, sales of other items will, for the most part, remain unaffected. The possible exception to this might be the businesses that deal with activities and travel. As is the nature of such a pandemic, the coronavirus has increased the risks involved with travel and interactions with large groups of people. 

Brands’ slogans, logos, and names are powerful symbols in today’s society. It is hard not to associate everyday words, shapes, and colors with popular brands on the market. The image of an apple with a bite taken out of it, for instance, will most likely evoke thoughts of cell phones, laptops, and watches. The phrase “Have it your way.”, on the other hand, might bring to mind a burger and fries. These associations can be powerful tools in brand marketing strategies and are just a few brand strategy examples. Many of these strategies are meticulously planned and fostered to bring specific attention to a brand.

Is Negative Attention Bad or a Brand Strategy?

A common misconception is that negativity will hurt a brand. This is not necessarily true. When it comes to brands and brand marketing strategy, the quality of attention that a brand receives is not as important as the quantity. The more attention a particular brand or product receives, the better. The power of repetition is immense, as is the power of suggestion. The goal of many marketing strategies is to simply ‘plant’ associations into the consumers’ minds that are strong enough to ensure a product or brand is the first thing that comes to mind with the intended prompt.

Sometimes, a company will ‘get lucky’ (or perhaps unlucky) with certain current events or connotations. As long as the ‘unlucky’ connotations do not directly impact or correlate with the integrity of the brand or the image of the brand, unlucky connotations can still give a brand an advantage.

What Does Beer Have to Do With It?

By this point, you are probably already considering the effects of the coronavirus on Corona beer. Corona beer has, in fact, not been negatively affected by the stigma of the coronavirus. Thus far, the coronavirus has only put the Corona brand at the forefront of consumers’ minds. Even simply contemplating the question “Has the coronavirus affected the sales of Corona beer?” ensures that when the subject of beer is brought up, Corona is the first brand to come to mind. 

Repetition is a brands’ best friend. 

Another avenue of indirect attention that the brand Corona is currently benefiting from is happening online. It is no secret that search engines and websites keep track of the frequent use of words. This is to keep tabs on market trends and to ‘tailor’ advertisements to fit users and their demographics etc. Keywords and keyword research play a huge role in marketing in the online realm. The more a word is searched by a user, the more related advertisements a user will see.

It is easy to see how this relates to Corona beer and the online attention that the coronavirus is getting. Therefore, it should be no secret that the Corona brand is receiving and benefitting from all of the hype about our recent pandemic. It would also be no surprise if the brand even used the hype in upcoming marketing strategies. 

Click here to learn more about brand strategy and how to increase the attention that your brand or business is getting. Sometimes, it only takes a few strategic nudges in the right direction to bring your product the attention it deserves!

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