The Shetland Brand Project

Lots has been said and written about the Shetland brand. On this part of the website, we explain the work that’s been done on branding in Shetland and the assumptions behind it. You’ll also find it helpful to look at our Frequently Asked Questions, where we explain the background in a lot more detail.

If you already run a successful business, some of what follows will be very familiar, but please bear with us. Some questions come up again and again in relation to the Shetland brand, and we need to set the record straight. On this page, we begin by looking at the meanings of brand and marketing that we use on this website and at the Shetland brand.

The Meanings Of ‘Brand’ And ‘Marketing’

The word ‘brand’ is used around the world in more than one way. Often, we think of a brand as something that we can see – a logo or a badge or a colour scheme, perhaps with some kind of slogan. However, brands go much farther than that.

Where we choose to shop obviously doesn’t depend on whether or not we like a logo, which is really just a signpost. We base our decisions on what a particular name stands for. Depending on what we think is important, we may prefer such things as high quality, value for money, a strongly ethical approach to business, low price, reliability or good after-sales service.

The name of a shop or a car manufacturer or a place is associated in our minds with a bundle of experiences, expectations or associations. Mercedes, BMW and Rolls Royce are all names that people are likely to associate with high quality. On the other hand, some car brands – like the Yugo, which faded away in late 2008 – have a reputation for low cost and doubtful reliability, hence all those jokes about heated rear windows (to keep your hands warm when pushing) or the benefit of filling the fuel tank (it doubles the car’s value).

It’s those experiences, expectations and associations – and indeed the jokes – that add up to a reputation; and that is what any brand is really about.

And marketing? Sometimes, ‘marketing’ is taken to mean ‘selling’ or ‘promoting’. However, when we use the word on this website, we’re thinking about all the activities involved in making a product or service successful in the marketplace. These include market research, market intelligence, product design, branding, promotion, selling and after-sales service. If any of these stages is weak, the product won’t reach its potential, in other words it won’t have been successfully marketed.

Shetland’s Brand

One of the assumptions that’s been made in the past is that Shetland needed to create a brand. In fact, Shetland has a brand and in a sense has always had one. Our islands would have had a reputation of some kind among those who first settled here. More recently, Vikings, Hanseatic traders and growing numbers of tourists would have come to associate certain things with Shetland. With places (unlike completely new products) the task is not so much creating a brand from scratch as managing the one we have.

The Shetland brand has many facets. The name, Shetland, which is our brand, is perhaps most immediately associated with ponies and knitwear; many people will make that link without knowing anything at all about our islands. However, someone whose passion is traditional music, archaeology or natural history may well have a more detailed knowledge and, among those groups, our reputation may be strong.

Clearly, some people will be more interested than others in what we have to offer. One of the tasks in marketing Shetland is to try to reach the people who are most likely to want what we have. In marketing terms, they’re our target market. In order to gain and retain their interest and custom, we need to understand their needs and aspirations and we must make what we offer relevant to them. Having done that, we have to let them know what we’re able to provide.

None of this can happen overnight. Reputations take a while to develop. That said, the name Shetland has been felt by many business people to have positive associations and they have simply borrowed it for application in circumstances where the Shetland content of the product or service is either minimal or non-existent. The knitwear story is familiar: a great deal of knitwear is labeled ‘Shetland’ when it has been nowhere near the islands. Since it’s unlikely to be representative of what we offer, it’s a threat to our reputation. We’ve also seen, recently, how a brand – the Shetland Smokehouse - can be bought and taken out of Shetland, with no guarantee that there will be any Shetland content in the product. One of the best known ranges of leisure boats is called ‘Shetland’ but the boats are built in Suffolk. And one website address that would be very handy in marketing Shetland is www.shetland.com, but it’s used by an estate agency in Chicago.

So, there is work to do; but we must take strength from Shetland’s great resources. We need to tell customers that our produce comes from Shetland. If we’re not identifying our products properly, we’re missing an opportunity; what discriminating customers want – and value – is certainty about the origin, quality and integrity of what they’re buying. If the consumer can be sure that our products come from Shetland, and if they are of high quality, they should attract a better price. By the same token, trying to compete with low-cost producers, on an anonymous basis, is unlikely to be helpful.

Back in 2002, the Council decided to take positive steps towards the better marketing of Shetland. Businesses and organisations across Shetland have also been working hard and there have been some real successes. For more about the story so far, please click here.