Student Author: Quin Moore ’20
This past week, the MICDS Marketing Club learned the essential strategies of how to lay the foundation of a brand. We learned this from Strategic Marketing Executive, MICDS parent and Mary Institute alumna Ms. Molly Weber ’81. Ms. Weber is a graduate of Princeton University who originally was a pre-med student and eventually transitioned her career into marketing. She’s worked in marketing for 25 years and has launched products across five of the seven continents. Ms. Weber is currently a marketing consultant for companies throughout the country. She taught us many skills about how to position a brand to maximize financial gain.
Ms. Weber walked the Marketing Club through three main strategic steps of the foundational work of branding which included the following:
Discover
- Brand Audit
- Internal Resources
- Primary and secondary resources
Assess
- Market landscape
- Consumer lifestyle
- Trends
- Retail
- Competition
Focus
- Articulate strategic direction
- Brand architecture
- Positioning
- Target consumer
When trying to market a product to a group of people, one needs to make sure the product matches the needs of their target consumer. If the product does not accurately match the target consumer, this can significantly hurt sales. Another key component that companies focus on is trying to make their product unique to stand out amongst the competition. If someone has an idea, but another person has the same idea and is the first to market, it will be very hard to compete with them. This is why companies have to focus on making their product different from similar products on the market so that people will uniquely choose their product. Making each product match a company’s goals and values is also imperative in keeping a company’s reputation afloat and providing consistent branding.
Marketing products to consumers can seem fairly easy, but Ms. Weber showed us how truly difficult it can be and how necessary it is for companies to thoughtfully complete the branding process. We all were very grateful to have Ms. Weber come and teach us about branding, and we hope to learn from her again in the future!