The intricate interplay of extending a brand while enhancing it can be especially potent for firms and advisors. This is particularly true in the current competitive environment and it's going to become increasingly important if the objective is to source and maintain the financial elite. We're going to consider the Forbes brand in this exercise because it's renowned and has meticulously expanded beyond the flagship magazine.
Segmentation
To better understand how to leverage the value of the brand, it's critical to think of the process as an interconnected analytic approach. It often starts with recognizing who best responds to the brand as well as what circumstances result in the greatest positive responses. In effect, we often begin with the development of a segmentation scheme. In considering the Forbes brand, we see that when it comes to various segments, it's seen as a premier source of high-quality business information among its media peers (Figure 2).
Decisions to extend the Forbes brand into other services and products would take this into account. For instance, the ability to leverage the Forbes brand among private business owners and the wealthy within the United States is clearly enormous. The brand is also very viable with these same segments outside the United States. Consequently, there are various ways Forbes can capitalize on its dominant position as an information provider with these segments based on desired goals and available resources.
Along the same lines, financial firms and advisors often talk about the segments they are targeting. What we often see, however, are "wants" as opposed to reality. For instance, more than 85% of financial advisors identify "middle-class millionaires" (with a net worth between $1 million and $10 million) as their "ideal clients" (Figure 3). These advisors see themselves as well-positioned in the minds of middle-class millionaires (i.e., their brand). However, when we dig deeper, we find that for these financial advisors, the middle-class millionaire is much more of a goal-in many cases a stretch-as opposed to a reality.
Understanding where a brand has impact is critical. It's important to realize that, while it's very possible to redirect a brand, it's much easier to leverage or extend an established dominant brand. It's just good business to exploit opportunities and judiciously expand by taking advantage of carefully selected situations.
For advisors in the trenches, this often translates into a career based first on natural markets. Once a base is established, they usually look to ratchet up their practice by working with wealthier clients. The norm is to approach this process haphazardly. One way to expedite this transitional process is to adjust personal brands through incremental steps. Along the same lines, financial institutions need to critically ascertain how they're perceived by the wealthy. This sets the stage for determining how to use brands to cultivate the wealthy. Concurrently, it's crucial to understand-as precisely as possible-how various target segments perceive their brand.
Defining The Brand
Another aspect of the analytic approach is to identify the "what." It's crucial to understand what it is about the brand that various segments positively and negatively perceive. Even when the brand is very well received and is highly influential, it's critical to know the various aspects, features and factors that are generating different reactions. By understanding these "levers," it's possible to use them to intensify the positioning as well as expand the offerings.
Returning to Forbes, using the statistical technique of factor analysis, we find that the wealthy as well as small- and medium-sized business owners are attracted to key qualities of the brand (Figure 4). It's evident that the foundation qualities of the brand strongly connect with these segments.
What's important to recognize is that we're not talking about mission or vision statements or anything of the sort. While such "statements" are very nice, what we're concerned about is the clients' perspective. In contrast to intent, we're focused on current quantifiable perceptions. With great regularity, we empirically find that the views of the financial firms and advisors are not matched by the views of the target segments. What's needed is to determine how the client segments perceive them and then work to modify those perceptions and/or adjust their actions to better work with these perceptions. The alternative is to focus on a different segment.
Getting Results
Forbes is first and foremost a source of insights into the world-especially the business world. However, it's possible to leverage the Forbes brand to be much more and to some extent the company has taken steps-albeit small ones-in that direction. However, there's always the option to do a great deal more. Forbes can readily monetize its brand in a variety of ways.