Marketing Mnemonics

Leave it to a Beaver

The Background:

(The company has reviewed this sight and requested that their actual name not be disclosed. In compliance with the company's request, we have removed all reference to their identity and will refer to them as "The Company".)

The company is a premier developer of software for the woodworking industry. They produced a very powerful line of software that enabled a cabinet shop to do things that included producing architectural submittable drawings, cut planning, bill of material generation, and much more. The company had a strong position in the market. Its founders invented cut planning software. Its woodworking software was integrated with one of the most powerful design oriented software packages made. The company did a superb job in developing software but did little as far as aggressive marketing was concerned.

The company's product line consisted of five basic products. Each product had a fairly generic name. Pattern did little to develop and promote individual high impact brand names. Over the years, other companies with new competitive products entered the market. And, as with many market leaders, the company was put on a defensive position.

The company's initial ads used a floppy disk as the mnemonic. A prospect could see that the company was software oriented from the image. However, the software industry is very dynamic. Floppy disks now indicated old software. Newer software was being shipped on CD-ROM. So, the company changed the mnemonic image to one that resembled a CD. This actually hurt the company because the future was the Internet. CDs also would eventually be a thing of the past. They weren't the thing to base your long term future on.

Discussions with management revealed that the company had attempted to use several advertising agencies to develop a high impact approach. In each and every instance, management rejected the concept and continued on doing the same thing. They did little to reinforce the Pattern name with a suitable image.

The Positioning:

We knew that it would be extremely difficult to reposition a company that already had a perceived image. What was worse, was that management's concept of where they were and where they were going was not in tune with what was really happening. They were having a hard time seeing their company from the outside in.

We believed that best approach would be to develop a positioning image that would reinforce the company first and the products second. The company never seemed to make a strong statement telling what each product did. Also, since the individual product names were very generic, we couldn't promote a generic name. We took the best possible choice. We described the product.

We developed the theme - (product)... software that ...(what it did)

This statement and arrangement allowed us to describe the software module and then tell what it did. It took the focus away from five individual generic product names and allowed us to focus on the company.

The Mnemonic Image:

We knew the image had to be high impact, it had to radiate professionalism, be usable with several different products, and not be offensive. The company had invested a lot of money in a CD/Saw blade image and we had to still carry that mnemonic, but de-emphasize it. We chose a computer terminal to eventually replace the CD image. We added a back view of beaver to the terminal so the beaver looked as if it was reading the screen. This allowed us to insert a variety of images onto the screen which would be characteristic of the software package. We felt that most customers would recognize a beaver and be able to tie it in to woodworking. In effect, we created high tech sophisticated woodworking image.

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Comments from Mark Goff:

We developed three full page sell sheets. We had the intention of running multiple quarter page ads in the same publication instead of one full page advertisement. We never developed the quarter page ad formats. These sell sheets could also be used for a full page ad or posters. They could easily be carried through to several marketing avenues including the Internet.

Not all stories are success stories. In this case, the company's management made the statement that a beaver will never represent their company. They were unable recognize that the marketing mnemonic was the beaver/computer combination. In that mnemonic, the beaver represented their busy woodworking customer. And, the beaver has good qualities. It is industrious, hard working, and one of nature's true architects. Either image by itself means nothing. The company's management told me that they wanted "Stars and Comets". So, these images and brochures were added to the piles of other work that wasn't able to satisfy the company's management.