We seem to be inundated, from time to time, with marketing fads. These are usually fragments of some concept that, in other contexts, worked fine. But then marketers, seeking new holy grails to enliven the dull palates of accountants, lawyers, and other professionals we serve, take these little segments and grow them to fit preconceived notions.

Like candles burned at both ends on dark nights, they seem to light the sky. But then they burn out, leaving us once again in darkness. And while we earnestly pursue these fads, the effective practice of marketing – the real hard work – gets shunted aside.

Corporate image, popular a few years ago as the panacea to distinguish your firm from the other firm, flamed out when it was realized that new logos aren’t new service. Not that a good graphics program isn’t a great thing to have – it just doesn’t sell anything. Especially when your competitors get their own graphics programs – and everybody’s got a beauty treatment. Imagine hiring a lawyer or an accountant because you like the firm’s logo? But that’s what the graphics designers were selling, and that’s what a lot of professionals bought.

Niche marketing started as a rational view that if you have enough clients in one industry to understand that industry well, you could merchandise that expertise – and then turned into an irrational fad. It lost its glitter when it, too, didn’t fulfill much of its promise, as touted by the niche marketing materials merchants. The basic concept is still sound, but only if you don’t lose sight of a lot of other marketing factors. One more panacea shot to hell.

Coaching is becoming ubiquitous. I don’t know what it means – unless it’s a fancy way to say consulting. Now there’s even something called a Certified Professional and Personal Coach, the source of which is at least dubious, and which seems to lean more heavily on the inspirational than on operational skills. More of that elsewhere.

Now the word is branding. Very hot. Articles. Seminars. Branding merchants. And soon, another round of broken hearts and unfilled promises. Lots of gold going for the cloth, but the emperor is still naked.

Yes, branding is for real – sometimes – but not as it’s being touted, and not as its being sold to unsuspecting professionals, and not as its being used by the beclouded and otherwise duped. Despite what the branding merchants are selling, it isn’t name identification, and it isn’t reputation, and it isn’t positioning – all of which are valid and necessary elements of a successful marketing program.

A short background.

Many years ago, in the early days of marketing for generic products, marketers discovered a keen reluctance by consumers to give up the more expensive products with names they knew and were used to -- names they recognized and could relate to a quality that they perceived in the product. The perception was that the familiar names – brands -- were better and therefore worth more, even though the perception wasn't necessarily true. It was only when house names of generic products were marketed as brand names on their own, with full promotional efforts, that consumers began to accept them.

In fact, there may be no real distinction between the different brands of the same product. But if the customer perceives a difference in his or her own mind then the concept of branding really works.

What, exactly, is a brand? In product marketing, the textbook definition (depending upon what textbook you read) is that it's a consumer's perception of a product or company or institution that sees that product, etc. in a way that's distinctive, unique, and offers more to the consumer than do other brands of the same product. Truth told, it's really an attitude built on a perception. It's not the product or company itself. The product is sold by the company. The brand of that product is bought by the consumer, predicated upon the consumer's perception that the brand he or she buys of a product differs sufficiently from another brand of the same product to warrant choosing one particular brand over another. And, by the way, warrants paying the price for it.

In brand marketing, the marketing effort is dedicated to imbuing a product – and ultimately, its producer -- with those distinctions, real or imagined, that give the brand substance, validity, and acceptance.

Ken Roman, in his book How To Advertise, describes Unilever by noting that..."Unilever is in the business of marketing brands, not products. What is the difference? A product is merely a category -- a whole class of goods, e.g.cars, cameras, detergents, toothpaste, margarine. Unilever, therefore, often markets several brands in one category."

Where marketers gather to ruminate, the discussion about the meaning of branding takes on the texture of discussions on how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. But this is clear...

• The value of the brand exists not in the product or company, but in the customer's mind. This value is measured beyond the usefulness of the product (or service) to include perceptions of "quality", consistency, reliability, and simply getting one's money's worth. It would be easy to dismiss the concept of a brand as an intangible, except that tangibility is irrelevant. To the customer with a specific brand of choice, the brand is very tangible.

• There's a difference between reputation -- even a favorable one, with great name recognition -- and a brand. The reputation may serve as a backdrop for receptivity for other marketing efforts, but other marketing efforts there must be. Reputation and name recognition are not the same as the array of perceptions and emotional attachments that consumers have for a brand. Subtle distinctions, perhaps, but very real ones. Everybody, including those who don’t hire accounting firms, knew Price Waterhouse by name, because they did the highly visible Academy Awards for years. But without a great deal of marketing activity that seems almost irrelevant to the name recognition, Price Waterhouse might not have gotten another client.

• Branding for a professional service may very well be different from branding for a product. Which is not to say that there isn't some viability in branding for a professional service. But different it is, and therefore harder to do. Ultimately, (and except for very large or specialized firms), people don't usually buy a firm -- they buy an individual service or an individual accountant or lawyer or consultant whom they believe has the specific expertise to address their needs or problems.

Joseph Vales, a leading and thoughtful marketer with Price Waterhouse (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers), enhances the definition. "A brand," he says, "is more distinctive than a product. It is, first of all, a name -- a means of identification. Second, it is a set of added values, values that offer both functional and psychological benefits to the consumer, such as performance in use, price, packaging, color, taste, smell, shape and form, associations, and the perceptions formed by advertising."

For the product, it might be said that establishing a brand is the ultimate aim of marketing. When all of the devises of marketing -- including strategy, advertising and other marketing tools, and distribution -- add up to win the customer's heart and mind, then share of market increases, sales increase, and the marketing manager gets a raise from a grateful company. People go out and ask for the product by brand name, and will accept no substitute.

But wait a minute. A major factor in successful branding for products is consistency. You can choose one brand of toothpaste over another because you know that the next tube of that brand you buy will be the same as the first one you bought. Can you say that about a service? Is the next tax return you do for a client going to be the same as the last one? Is the last deal you structured for a client going to be the same as the next one? Of course not. And in many cases, the specific service is performed only once for each client, unlike the tube of toothpaste, which is bought over and over again. The question, then, is will the service be performed for one client in the same way as it was performed for another? In view of these differences between a product and a service, how, then, can you have a brand name for an accounting or law or consulting firm?

If IBM or Xerox can build brand strength that carries forward to all of the IBM or Xerox products, why can't an accounting or law firm do the same?

In fact, it can, but only if some clear distinctions are made -- and acted upon. Some factors...

• In professional services, an entire firm is rarely capable of becoming a brand name, in which all of its services, without distinction, are accepted and preferred on the strength of the firm name alone. Name recognition helps, but only to serve as a backdrop. Name recognition is not the same as a favorable attitude. You can remember a firm's name unfavorably, and not want to do business with it. Or you can remember a firm name, and have no impression of the company itself

• A firm's specific services, on the other hand, can be developed as a brand, but only if certain steps are taken. And those basic steps may just be a starter.

• The specific service must have a name that distinguishes it. Price Waterhouse's Change Integration, for example. It defines PW's specific approach to company reengineering. The emphasis is on approach -- on process. This is an important distinction in branding for a professional service.

• The service must be positioned specifically to meet the needs of its market, as defined by the market – not the firm selling to the market.

• There must be a sense of consistency in performance of the service -- a track record, a methodology, an implied or real manual of performance that suggests that, like the tube of toothpaste, the next time you hire the firm to do that job it will perform for you in the same satisfying and successful way as it did for someone else the last time it performed the service.

• The brand can be established only with the full force of marketing. That means clearly defining the service, advertising, public relations, direct mail -- the full marketing arsenal.

• And the marketing activity must be as consistent as the service. Nothing is as fragile as a brand value, and if it's not constantly sustained and polished, it quickly tarnishes, diminishes, and dies.

• It seems quite possible that a service for a firm that becomes a brand may well share an aura with other of that same firm's services -- but not without strength in those other services. Look at Arthur Andersen Consulting, which is probably the first real brand in professional services marketing. Certainly, they enhance perception of Arthur Andersen, the somewhat separate CPA firm. But the CPA firm helps by having a reputation for being superior in everything that it does, too. Which, ironically, may be an exception to the statement that firms don't become brands. But name three others.

• Still, Arthur Andersen's ability to develop Andersen Consulting's name as a brand doesn't insulate it from marketing attacks on specific services offered, with a brand's marketing force, by other firms. In fact, the firm's brand may make Andersen Consulting vulnerable to marketing attacks from the branded specific services of other consulting or accounting firms. Here, the success in marketing is derived not from the firm's overall reputation, but from any firm's ability to project a specific service and its ability to provide a solution to specific problems. John may have a reputation for being a great carpenter, but he loses business to Harry, who is known (or perceived) to be a great window installer.

• Of all the things a brand is, what it isn't is a reputation, a niche, or a position. And if you try to build a marketing program without understanding the distinction and the realities of the differences, you might just as well burn your money. At least you'll enjoy the light of the flame.

On the face of it, it would seem that the concept of branding may be useful for only the largest firms. Quite possibly, if for no other reason than the cost of promoting a service for brand identification. But the beauty of marketing, and the joy of it, is in finding ways to imaginatively transcend the obstacles.

The smallest accounting firm in town, for example, could conceivably develop a brand identification for, say, it's succession planning concepts. A small law firm could do the same for, say, its method of real estate closing.

In fact, it could well be argued that branding has long existed in the professional services by the tax clinics (H&R Block, for example) and legal clinics. In both cases, however, it would seem that the menu of services that each offers is so consistent that they pass into the definition of commodities, and therefore, products.

Two questions remain.

• Is branding necessary for successful marketing?

• Is branding valuable to a professional service?

No, branding is not necessary for successful marketing -- except where a competitive service is being marketed as a brand, such as the Arthur Andersen situation. Then for competitive reasons, there is no option but to try to do the same.

And yes, it can be valuable, if the effort is made to develop -- and sustain -- a true brand.

The very real results of successful branding, in a professional service, come at the invitation to bid. There is strong evidence that a firm looking for a particular legal, accounting, or consulting service will ask for proposals from only the top two or three firms known to specialize in those services. Other firms may be invited to submit proposals, although they may be just window dressing to assure other executives in the company that the choice was made from among many firms, but only the firms perceived to be the best at the particular service needed will make that final cut. The invited firms that make the final cut may be assumed to be those who have successfully built a brand concept for their services. Or at least a reputation for a specific service or capability.

Is that reputation the same thing as a brand? Not quite. It’s just easier to call it a brand, and fool yourself into thinking that it really is more than just reputation. But then, if you can afford self-deception, it doesn’t matter what you call it.

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