Building Brand Locations
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Volume 5 Number 4
Building Brand Locations Tjaco Walvis Stardust New Ventures, the Netherlands
‘This is the tale that I pray the divine Muse to unfold to us. Begin it, goddess, at whatever point you will.’ Homer, The Odyssey
Corporate Reputation Review, Vol. 5, No. 4, 2003, pp. 358–366 # Henry Stewart Publications, 1363–3589
Page 358
Modern Marketing is seeing the proliferation of a new communication platform: brand locations. Brand locations are places where the target audience of a company or nation is attracted to and presented a ‘life’ experience of aspects of the firm’s or country’s image, philosophy, and products. Entertainment companies have been building such places for decades. Walt Disney’s creation of Disneyland marked the birth of the medium as such. Since then, ‘theme parks’ have become part of the childhood of generations. What is new, however, is that non-entertainment companies like Renault, Volkswagen, and Heineken have developed permanent themed locations. Some are not yet charging for entrance. Nevertheless, the ambition, professionalism, and number of these places is growing. In the coming years, more top managers will consider building a brand location for their firm. They will learn about their huge potential for corporate marketing or witness competitors boosting their reputations by building one. Only then will many discover that creating a good brand location is also very difficult and often costly and that they can fail miserably. The question is, of course, how to prevent that. This paper serves as an introduction to the subject and seeks to answer such questions as, What are brand locations? What are the secrets of their success? And how can one be built effectively?
A NEW MEDIUM FOR ‘LIFE’ COMMUNICATION Brand locations are communication platforms, where the messenger speaks to a target audience by means of a ‘life’ encounter. Those in the target audience are treated as visitors or guests at a corporate location. This location is designed to present visitors with an experience that is so rich in information it cannot be pushed through broadband media. The crucial implication here is that just setting up some TV screens is not enough. Visitors could watch a corporate video at their home VCR, or download it from the Internet, and would probably not bother to do that. A brand location must be differentiated: it is a medium for life encounters. It must engage all the senses, to present the brains of visitors with more thrilling stimuli than is possible through conventional media. Brand locations are about physically ‘being there.’ Benefits of Brand Locations For a company, a good brand location creatively solves a common marketing problem: getting attention and breaking the ‘indifference barrier’. Classical advertising pushes a message through the media to an audience. Brand locations pull an audience via the media to a message (eg, via free publicity). The audience reached, the people actually visiting the brand location, is therefore interested in what the messenger has to say. Moreover, wel
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