Big Booty Branding: If You’ve Got It, Flaunt It
This article gives you the essence of the brand. It’s written for self-storage owners, but these principles apply to everyone. I suggest reading it to the end, even if it’s not in your own storage. It’s informative, a quick read, and quite entertaining if I do say so myself.
Branding is one of those topics so commonly misunderstood as marketing. If you were to ask a customer what the brand of a self-storage facility is, they might answer the “logo”, the “sign” of the facility, or simply the “name” of the self-storage location. These things are aspects of the brand, but they are not the entirety of the brand. If you ask a self-storage owner what their brand is, they might say “marketing,” “my logo,” or “my tagline.” These things are also true, but unfortunately they are still not the entirety of the brand.
The brand in self storage is the collective perception that is held in the minds of tenants or prospective tenants about your self storage facility as a result of your marketing efforts. Simply put, a brand is how cool you are because of all the things you do to be cool.
Everyone wants to be “cool”, right? If “cool” helps you make more money, you can call me Prince! Either the artist formerly known as Prince, or he’s the artist formerly known as Prince. When Prince dies, will people say that the former artist formerly, formerly known as Prince? Is Prince already cool? Who cares anyway? I only brought it up because how many times in your life can you say former artist formerly formerly known as Prince?
Even though you can’t stray further from self-storage than Prince, he’s a great place to start when it comes to branding. He was a pioneer of personal branding. Although Cher, Bono and Charo had already done the “unique name” thing, no one had thought of renaming themselves with a symbol. Although Prince had only moderate success after Purple Rain with his other albums, 25 years after the rise of Purple Rain, his name is still a household word.
Prince’s transformation into a symbol is a brand style; personal brand. There are many different styles of branding: personal, corporate, institutional, employee or internal, city, etc… But each brand, regardless of the style, has to convey the six levels of branding.
Six levels are:
Attributes – What are the attractive qualities of your brand? For example, Uncle Bob’s Self Storage in Houston, TX, touts that they have interior access and climate-controlled units to protect their tenants’ belongings in such a humid environment. These are self storage attributes.
Benefits – How can your product help the customer? It can get cold and wet in Portland, Oregon. That’s why one of my favorite facilities in the country, Pearl Self Storage, offers benefits such as heated storage units and covered loading and unloading for each and every storage unit.
Value – Is this product a bargain? Will your customers save money using it? Storage Plus in New York City knows the value of a dollar. That’s why they offer the first month’s rent free on their storage facility. Many facilities do these things, and given the current state of the economy, more people than ever before are responding to offers that save them money.
Culture: Is your product specific to the town or region? Often a city or state has its own style. Nowhere in the United States is this better identified than in New Orleans. With its Creole and Cajun culture, New Orleans residents are proud to be Louisianans. They love the food and the style, which is why Mudbugs Self Storage is so successful in New Orleans.
Personality: Is your brand fun, serious, youthful, or cool? Alliance Self Storage in San Diego likes to position itself as a genuinely dedicated, endearing group. They talk about the benefits of renting from a family-owned and operated self-storage company. On sites like upickstorage.com they talk about a “friendly and professional staff” that makes you feel like part of the family.
Demographics: who is the audience of the brand? Who will use this product? Is your product a reflection of these people?
Always when it comes to branding, it must be said, a plan must be made. Make your plan before you go out to brand your product. You must know what your brand conveys before you start branding!
I heard a wise man once say, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else.” This is true in the marketing of the brand of it. The fastest way to waste money and lose market share in self-storage is to not have a firm understanding of what you are selling and renting and why.
I named this article “Big Booty Branding” after something I remember seeing on TV a couple of years ago. 15 years ago talk shows were very popular. Not the “informational interviews” or “guest/celebrity” talk shows we have today, but funny voyeur shows that focus on the crazy lives of the craziest among us.
Shows like Jenny Jones, Maury and Montel would parade regular people on stage for all of us to peruse. I think the biggest draw of these shows is that when you watched them, you always felt like maybe your life wasn’t as crazy and dysfunctional as you might have thought before, given this new evidence that was brought to light by, say, Jerry Springer. .
One day, after spending the whole morning researching a cure for cancer, I came home and turned on the television. As I sat flipping through the channels, I came across a makeover show from one of these hosts, I can’t remember which one.
On those makeover shows, in case you’ve never seen one, someone’s “friend” determines that the person needs a makeover because they dress too chubby or too masculine for a woman and need to be groomed.
In this episode, the person whose friend determined they needed a makeover was overweight and dressed too provocatively. His “friend of his” said she looked like a “hussie.” So, before the makeover, the lady was brought out and immediately she began to antagonize the audience. Then her friend addressed her as if this was an extremely serious intervention.
She only had on a pink tank top and very tight dark blue jean shorts. Her body looked like she was trying to escape each and every worn elastic on her clothes. She threw her hands up in the air and gestured with a dismissive flick of her wrists and gave an introductory pirouette to the audience. They gasped.
The funny thing, though, is that girl with the big butt knew exactly what her brand was. She said things like, “yeah, I’m going to the club, I’m out on the dance floor and I shake it” and “men like this big butt, so I show it.”
Now, as a man, I don’t agree with that last one, and at the time I thought I was speaking for my gender as a whole. Although it seems that nowadays I can’t. With the rise in popularity of hip-hop in American music and the expanding waistlines of today’s youth, the big booty has made impressive strides as a brand.
What struck me at the time was the tenacity and boldness of this young woman. She had a plan, she knew her product, and damn if she wasn’t selling it to her “da’ club” audience.
His story is absolutely analogous to our branding efforts in self-storage. First we must know what we are marking. We have to have a plan. We have to include the six levels of the brand, like her.
She had the attributes, she talked about the benefits of her “big butt” and she knew the value, although she and I had different ideas of how valuable her proposal might have been. Her brand culture was clear, her brand was fun and crazy, so she covered her personality. Finally, she exclusively stated that her demographic was the men in “da club”. She had a plan and she executed it to establish the big booty brand of hers. I guess you can’t argue with that.
Obviously, this is a humorous and illustrative way to help you remember to keep an eye out for all six levels of branding in autostorage. You don’t have to have big swag to score, but if your brand is big swag, it helps. The next time you set out to brand your self-storage facility, come up with a plan, remember the six levels of branding, and get your big booty on the dance floor and shake it up; metaphorically speaking, of course.
braud brandon
President of Sales and Marketing
upickstorage.com
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