Brands Strategy

This research theme explores the potential of a brands strategy to achieve scale and impact for microentrepreneurs. A brands strategy is a program intervention that creates and fosters the use of a brand name to increase market awareness of a set of products and/or services, and leads to increased sales for entrepreneurs who operate under the brand. Microenterprise development organizations that foster brands, have worked to build the capacity of entrepreneurs to produce for the commercial marketplace, found or created venues to increase sales, and sometimes, attempted to manage transactions themselves.

Progress Note

FIELD’s case study of a brands strategy employed on behalf of both producer and retailer entrepreneurs, Using a Brands Strategy for Scaling Business Development Services, explores Southeastern Ohio ACEnet and its experience with three brands in the food and arts sectors.

Resources

Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet)
With a long history of engaging in brands’ strategies, ACEnet offers a wealth of resources including:

• A short video, in which ACEnet’s Leslie Schaller describes efforts to organize entrepreneurial networks along all nodes of the food value chain.
• A PDF of the value chain map featured in the video, which allows for close examination.
• A list of Food We Love participants with website links.
• Details on the 30 Mile Meal month, developed in partnership with the Athens County Visitors’ Bureau (http://www.athensohio.com/30mile/503)
• Building Sustainability by Increasing Earned Revenue (2008). The third FIELD forum in FIELD's sustainability series explores how ACEnet is using earned income as a strategy to achieve greater sustainability. This forum describes how, the organization added earned-income streams - including regional brands and consulting services - in an effort to achieve more stable and sustainable sources of revenue.

Access to Markets Publications, http://fieldus.org/Publications/index.html#ATMFinal

• Connectors and Conduits: Reaching Competitive Markets from the Ground Up (2002) This report presents findings from the multi-year Access to Markets demonstration project, which explored innovative ways for microenterprise programs to help entrepreneurs place their products in more lucrative markets. The authors look across programs and highlight for readers the innovations adopted, the implementation challenges that emerged and the lessons learned.
• Making the Connecton: People, Incorporated of Southwest Virginia/Appalmade (2001) This Access to Markets Case Study explores the three marketing strategies used by Appalmade to promote products created by home-based crafters in the Appalachian region: a retail store, wholesale sales and church-based sales.
• Making the Connection: Neighborhood Development Center (2001) This Access to Markets Case Study, documents the lessons learned by the marketing team at NDC as it explored three distinct strategies to help low-income entrepreneurs reach new markets: market-based clusters, one-on-one marketing consulting and promotion of a retail business incubator.
• Making the Connection: Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet) (2000) This case study featuring innovative marketing approaches emerging from the Access to Markets (ATM) national demonstration. This publication takes an in-depth look at how ACEnet is helping low-income entrepreneurs link their products to the rapidly growing specialty and natural food sectors.

Regional Flavor Initiatives

Regional Flavor is a strategy that centers on a region’s places, heritage, recreational resources, food, culture, lodging, goods and services, and is designed to create a distinctive and attractive sense of the region, contribute to increased sales on behalf of participating entrepreneurs and generate greater overall economic activity.

• ACEnet’s report, Entrepreneurship with a Regional Flavor, documents the concept of Regional Flavor and describes ACEnet’s role in developing Regional Flavor projects in Appalachian Ohio
• The Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO), with funding from the Kellogg Foundation, sponsored learning clusters focused on food, sustainable tourism, and artisans. A second phase included an initiative focused on regional flavor, intended to deepen the understanding of strategy and practice for rural economic development networks. Two publications emerged from this work:
  • Regional Flavor: Marketing Rural America’s Unique Assets Small Towns,
  • Big steps: Microenterprise in Rural America.

Additional policy materials as well as practical guides for implementing a regional flavor strategy can be found on AEO’s website.

In addition to ACEnet, the original Regional Flavor Cluster Members:

• Arkansas Delta
• GROW Nebraska
• Concord Grape Belt
• White Earth Land Recovery Project & Native Harvest
• Adams State College Colorado Community Partnerships


• Regional Flavor Strategies is composed of designers and implementers of the original regional strategy framework and networks that continue to work on regional flavor strategies; framing, testing and evaluating its potential to transform rural regional economies. Information on Regional Flavor Strategies and the original regional flavor networks is available on the site.

Microenterprise Development Organizations employing a Brand Strategy

• Mountain Biz Works, Mountain Made store
• WREN, Local Works
• WWBIC, Coffee with a Conscience

Webinars

Brands Strategies for Microenterprise Development
This webinar features Southeastern Ohio’s Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet) and its experience creating three brands in the food and arts sectors. ACENet’s Director of Programming, Leslie Schaller, explores the potential of a brands strategy to achieve scale and impact for microentrepreneurs. Download MP3 version or Powerpoint or Webinar Recording.