Aaker on Brands

How to Get the Credit You Deserve for Your Brand's Social Good

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Most corporate brands (and most brands in general) would like be perceived as socially concerned in thought and action. A good percentage of those brands have walked the walk: They have made a difference perhaps by protecting the environment, helping the disadvantaged or changing eating habits. They deserve to be recognized for their values and efforts. Very few, however, are. Efforts to communicate in advertising or in the press are usually ineffectual. Why does the brand get so little credit for meaningful programs? It is in part because there are so many brands that talk about such values, that none have credibility. This is due in part to the fact that the stories they tell aren’t compelling.

But a few firms break through and do get credit from doing good. The 11th annual brand equity study of some 1,000 brands in Japan has a CSR (corporate social responsibility) scale that provides some

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Yearning for Yesteryear: What the 2012 Superbowl Commercials Desperately Needed

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I was underwhelmed by the 2012 Super bowl ads at almost every level. One exception was the Clint Eastwood’s Chrysler ad — “It’s halftime in America.” The ad talks about the hurting and how many pulled together to find the way back. It had powerful emotion, a distinctive Clint Eastwood voiceover and wonderful visuals that captured the feeling of real people successfully working their way out of tough times. Supporting the “imported from Detroit” message of Chrysler, it provided self-expressive benefits to owners and future buyers of the four Chrysler brands.

It reminded me of the most honest, effective and satisfying ads in my memory: The classic Hal Riney ads for the Saturn launch that appeared two decades ago. Saturn, as its tagline “a different kind of company, a different kind of car” suggested, was an American car that could compete in quality and value with the imports. Created by GM to provide a low-end option that could win against the imports, Saturn was…

Planned Parenthood's Unplanned Branding Bonanza

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The fact that the beloved charity that owns the pink ribbon decided to pull its financial support of Planned Parenthood (a decision that was reversed three days later) in the end will help the Planned Parenthood brand even more than it damages the brand of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a nonprofit to which some 200 organizations like Ford, Major League Baseball, and BofA connect.

Here are the four key ways Planned Parenthood benefits:

Positive PR. The decision provided enormous publicity about Planned Parenthood and provided visibility of key statistics, like that it provides 165,000 breast cancer screens and 6,500 mammograms to low-income women who lack access to care, and the fact that only 3% of the budget is allocated to abortion services. This information got widespread exposure and, more important, an attentive, receptive, and enormous audience.

Improved image. The decision puts Planned Parenthood…

The Five Biggest Challenges Facing Marketing, and How to Face Them

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The marketing field is faced with several challenges that for many firms will require transformation in capability and charge. Among them are the following five.

1. Marketing needs to lead in substantial or transformational innovation that will result in new offerings that define new categories or subcategories. Marketing focused on “my brand is better than your brand” strategies supported by incremental innovation and conventional programs rarely create sales growth because markets have a lot of inertia. The only way to grow is through big idea innovation that will create enhancements or augmentations of the offering that will be regarded by customers as “must haves.”

2. Marketing needs to be strategic rather than tactical and needs to earn an influential place at the executive table. Marketing should own three key drivers of strategy: customer insights

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What Readers Should Know While Reading Jim Stengel’s “Grow”

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

GROW: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Greatest Companies by Jim Stengel, the former CMO of P&G who has made several notable contributions advancing the field of brand management, is an important brand book and a good read. Its central and provocative thesis is that growth brands tend to have a higher purpose, termed by Stengel as a “brand ideal.” A brand ideal has a shared goal of improving people’s lives and comes in five types. It elicits joy, enables connections, inspires exploration, evokes pride and/or impacts society.

A brand ideal is often based on a brand’s heritage and can be pivotal in driving both culture and strategy. The elaboration of this idea in dozens of case studies such as Method, Pizza Hut, Crisco, Discovery Channel, Jack Daniels, Pampers, Innocent, Zappos and more is very instructive. It often provides a fascinating look at…

Culture Matters: Lessons from the Haas School of Business at UC-Berkeley

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

The Berkeley-Haas school has codified a well-defined culture into a set of core brand values: namely, “question the status quo (innovate and champion bold ideas),” “students always (never feel you have learned all you need),” “beyond yourself (consider larger interests than short-term profits, go beyond personal ambition), and “confidence without attitude (without arrogance employ analysis, trust and collaboration).” The values are oriented toward the reduction of overconfidence and self-focus, which are perceived to be excessively present among the business graduates and leaders of the leading business schools.

These values are highly differentiated, have substance, are true to the heritage and are consistent with the perceptions of the school. Most remarkably, they are not simply communication tools but drive operations from the curriculum, research priorities to staff programs and faculty hiring. The curriculum, for example, has been extensively revamped in order…

Great CEOs are Born, not Made

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Bob Lutz in his recent book Car Guys vs. Bean Counters makes the point that GM was doing fine until in the mid 1970s the MBA-trained finance guys took control of product development from the "car guys," who were engineers and designers. The result, he says, was inferior cars and a decline in the firm. He believes that CEOs and the top management should not be bean counters but rather should be a "product guys."

The poster child for his view was Roger Smith who was an MBA-trained accounting and finance specialist. During his ten year tenure as GE's CEO during the 80s, Smith made breathtaking strategic and operating blunders. He invested in robotics that did not work, created a disastrous reorganization that resulted in cars so similar they were a joke (remember the Cadillac Cimarron?), mismanaged some ill-conceived acquisitions, built up enormous debt, and on and…

Why I Bought a No-Name Computer From a Components Firm

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

I was told by the computer doctor that my wife's desktop computer had all but died at the hands of a virus and, in addition, it had been obsolete for years. A new replacement was needed. My mind immediately went to a two-brand consideration class — Dell (most of my computers had been Dell) and HP (I have HP printers and have always like the "HP Way"). But minutes later, I decided to buy an ASUS computer even though I had never heard of it. Why? Three factors were convincing.

1. The recommendation. The computer doctor said that he had just bought and installed for another client an ASUS computer and liked the price, specs, and firm and the fact that it was available at a local electronics store that stood behind its product with service and assistance.

2. The story. He told me that ASUS has been the motherboard supplier for most of the leading computer brands. This was critical because performance and reliability is much more important to me than price.

3.…

My Top 6 Aaker on Brands Blog Posts

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

After some 14 months of blogging about branding, I have over 60 postings. Looking over that list, I picked out three that had the most impact in terms of interest, comments, and readership and three that described a topic that had a big influence on me.

Impact on the audience

The post “Secrets of Social Media Revealed 50 Years Ago,” also published in HBR, coincidentally got a lot of attention on Twitter. It describes Ernest Dichter’s classic study of WofM brand communication, which revealed four motivations to talk about brands and two motivations to listen - findings that are relevant to social media today.

The post “Brand…

Strategy Lessons from Little Red Riding Hood

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Stephan Sondheim, the brilliant writer of many great musicals including “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” has some lines in his work, “Into the Woods” that caught my eye. Little Red Riding Hood is going down a straight path to visit her grandmother, a path she has walked many times before. However, a giant has altered the landscape, and she becomes lost. One of her companions suggests that they find another way, but she asserts that “my mother warned me to never stray from the path.” The companion replies, “The path has strayed from you.”

Most organizations have found success with “stick-to-your-knitting” strategies in which a single minded focus on a business strategy results in staple or increasing sales and profits. The team does not allow resources to be diverted from the job of always maintaining the offering and operation at a high level and engaging in incremental innovation to stay ahead of competitors.

The problem is that the path…