Page 8 - Food & Drink Business Nov-Dec 2019

LIVE REPORT
Brand bravery takes the spotlight
Around 120 industry professionals from the food and beverage, brand and marketing, and packaging sectors were in Melbourne to hear how bravery in branding can change businesses for the better. Doris Prodanovic reports.
IT was a full house at Melbourne’s Arts Centre for the annual Food & Drink Business + PKN LIVE breakfast forum, where guests, speakers and an industry panel shared new ideas and insights on what it means to be a brave brand.
In her keynote address, Brand Opus managing director Nikki Moeschinger described brands as “mysterious, intangible and visceral things”, which in their most basic form are a shortcut for consumers.
“A good brand is a feeling, a smile in the mind,” she said.
“A well-managed brand immediately and subconsciously taps into a range of associations within the minds of our target market.
“Brands save us time. We buy the brand our mum used to buy. We buy the brand a friend recommended. Brands guide us when our knowledge is imperfect, or non-existent.”
Long-term brand building in
conjunction with bravely executing short-term activations and brand tactics are vital to the relevance a brand has in the life of the consumers, said Moeschinger.
Brand strategy must always come first to build an effective brand. In order to achieve this,
matter,” said Moeschinger. “Once we have these three
elements in play, after we’ve defined the associations we want to own, when we are distinct and differentiated, then we are ready to go out into the world and be brave.”
Moeschinger highlighted
8 | Food&Drink business | November-December 2019 | www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au
“Three elements... build an effective brand – disruption to get attention; meaning to get significance... and memorability in order to be recalled in the moments that matter.”
brands must be disruptive, meaningful and memorable.
“What we have is three elements working together to build an effective brand – disruption to get attention; meaning to get significance and to get into the head; and memorability in order to be recalled in the moments that
global champagne brand Veuve Clicquot as a brand with strong and distinctive assets that are disruptive within its category.
By contrast, branding in the fragrance sector is not is “a sea of sameness, with very little eachness,” due to its lack of distinctive codes.
The final example from