Branding Strategy Insider

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

2012-05-15T00:10:00-04:00

Show me the Money! This memorable line from the 1996 movie Jerry Maguire might just as well be coming from today’s CEO’s and CFO’s: a growing and vocal demand for accountability from the Marketing function.

Big Data Coming – For Better or Worse

Everywhere you go these days, you hear about “big data:” the coming golden age where all problems will be solved by crunching massive amounts of data from the web and every other imaginable source. You would think that the CMO’s ability to, indeed, show them the money, would never be better.

But according to a recent IBM study, “From Stretched to Strengthening,” there is still a yawning gulf between the accountability demands of the CFO and their CMO’s ability to answer them–even with big data. IBM interviewed over 1,700 CMO’s, across 19 industries and 64 countries. CMO’s said that the data explosion, far from being a solution, is one of the top four challenges they face. What was once seen as golden opportunity is becoming a huge problem as the data explosion overwhelms Marketing organizations.

Big Data = Better ROI Measurement

But here’s the paradox. In the same study, almost half of the CMO’s believe that they are insufficiently prepared to provide hard return on marketing investment numbers on their key Marketing programs. Let me say that again: CMO’s are being overwhelmed with data, yet can’t adequately measure the ROI for their Marketing programs. How can that be?

Three Forces Transforming Advertising

Let’s take traditional advertising. It’s being transformed by three major forces: fragmentation, digitization, and social media. These forces are driving increases in data that are making it increasingly challenging to understand what works, what doesn’t and how ROI differs across initiatives.

For example, it used to be enough to measure the effectiveness of an ad in copy testing and “know” whether you had effective advertising or not. But in today’s world, the same ad will perform differently when delivered in linear TV vs. On-Line video vs. tablets vs. mobile. And, social media will impact the effectiveness of the ad and vice versa. Not to mention the interactive effects of these platforms or the fact that within a medium, ad performance will differ across TV programs, genres, web sites, time of day, pod position and more.

A Simple Framework for Assessing Advertising Effectiveness

What’s a CMO to do? Simplifying this data explosion into several simple concepts can provide insight and opportunities for CMO’s to not just measure the ROI of their advertising, but to optimize it. Here are three simple concepts to help you assess advertising effectiveness.

Reach – The first job of any advertising campaign is to reach the right audience. How well is your brand doing at this? It’s amazing to me how few CMO’s have any real systems in place to understand how efficiently their advertising is hitting their target—particularly in digital.

It’s now possible to measure reach, frequency and GRP’s against a demographic target on-line just as you would in TV — on a daily basis. Early learnings show that advertisers could be saving 10-20% by simply optimizing reach against their target across sites – e.g. moving money out of weak sites and into strong ones.

Resonance – Having reached the right audience, the next job of advertising is to get noticed. Breaking thru is the most important job of advertising, because if it doesn’t, nothing else matters anyway. But beyond breakthrough, advertising must communicate your brand and change how consumers feel about it. How well is your brand doing this — right now ?

The real news in the resonance space is the measurement all of this in near real time. CMO’s can use these in-flight insights to improve performance in market — and not wait till the next cycle. Optimizing creative unit rotation, media weight, programming, placement and cross-platform exposure are all opportunities in the new world of optimization “on the fly.”

Reaction – Advertising exists to drive behavioral change. Usually this means increasing sales, but it can also mean getting consumers to search for your brand, go to your Facebook fan page, talk positively about your brand, etc. Measuring reaction is key to understanding if your advertising is going the final mile to cause behaviors that result in a positive ROI.

Panels which track (with consumers consent) both TV viewing and Web surfing behavior enable Marketers to measure advertising’s impact on search, etc. Market Mix Modeling and Single Source measurement (measuring what consumers watch & buy at the household level) measure sales lift and ROI by media platform, and help answer the ever present questions of how much to spend and how to allocate across which platforms.

These three concepts — reach, resonance, and reaction, provide CMO’s a simple framework for measuring advertising effectiveness and how they can optimize their advertising and media plans.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Randall Beard

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Brand Marketers Must Create Wow Moments

2012-05-14T00:10:00-04:00

The brain remembers the emotional components of an experience better than any other aspect.

—John Medina

When Steve Jobs passed away on October 5, 2011, the world didn’t just lose one of its great visionaries, but it also lost an astonishing corporate storyteller. His presentations, “Steve-notes” as they were fondly called, had all the elements of a Broadway production, including a cast, drama, heroes, villains, and props. Most brand marketers use presentations to deliver information, often dryly. Steve Jobs gave presentations that informed, educated, and entertained.

The most memorable parts of Jobs’s presentations were what I call wow moments. These wow moments were carefully scripted and exhaustively rehearsed. It took an estimated 450 hours of work and rehearsals to create and deliver the twenty-minute presentation to introduce the Lion operating system in June 2011. Jobs was fanatical about each and every element of the presentation from the lighting to the messages. He knew the content of every slide, every font, and every color that was used on every slide. But nothing was more important in a presentation than the moment when the audience would gasp and say to themselves, I need that!

The Brain Does Not Pay Attention to Boring Things

No matter how sensational you think your product is, nobody is going to care if the message you're using to communicate the product's benefits is dry, confusing, and convoluted. Neuroscientist John Medina taught me that the brain does not pay attention to boring things. It is simply not programmed to grasp abstract concepts.

Instead he recommends creating an emotionally charged event, which is the equivalent of a mental Post-it Note for the brain. Medina says the brain's amygdala is chockful of the neurotransmitter dopamine. So when the brain detects an emotionally charged event (e.g., joy, fear, surprise), the amygdala releases dopamine into the system that greatly aids memory and information processing. Let's recall three of Jobs's emotionally charged events:

1984: The Ad and the Launch

When it came time to launch the Macintosh, the machine that revolutionized personal computers, Jobs wanted a television spot that would put a stamp on people's minds. The ad agency Chiat/Day developed the famous Big-Brother-themed "1984" ad, which ran only once during Super Bowl XVIII. More than 90 million people saw the ad, and it became the most admired television ad for the next two decades. Amazingly, the ad was nearly scrapped. When Jobs previewed the ad for the Apple board in December 1983, they hated it. Apple CEO John Sculley admitted he got cold feet. Jobs eventually won the argument, of course, but the story reminds us that Jobs intuitively understood the power of emotion in building a brand.

The 1984 television ad wasn't the only wow moment Jobs had up his sleeve. In what is still considered one of the most dramatic reveals of any product in history, Jobs introduced the Macintosh with a magician's flourish. On January 24, 1984, the Macintosh became the first computer to introduce itself. After building the audience's anticipation with a deftly crafted speech with IBM playing the narrative's antagonist, Jobs whipped the audience into a frenzy of excitement. He then walked to the center of the stage where the Macintosh had been sitting in a cloth bag on a small table. Jobs pulled out the computer, attached the keyboard and mouse, and put in a floppy disk. The theme from Chariots of Fire began to play, and the words MACINTOSH INSANELY GREAT scrolled on the screen. The graphics were unlike anything anyone had ever seen on a computer. Jobs smiled, turned to the audience, and said, "We've done a lot of talking about Macintosh, but today, for the first time, I'd like to let Macintosh speak for itself." The audience gasped and cheered as they heard the computer say, Hello, I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag. Without the benefit of PowerPoint or Apple Keynote (both of which had yet to be invented), Jobs gave one of the most awe-inspiring product launches in history.

2001: 1,000 Songs in Your Pocket

The iPod began Apple's transformation from a computer company into a brand that would make devices to change the way we live, work, and play. On October 23, 2001, Jobs unveiled the iPod - a music player that came with 5 GB of storage, not a revolutionary advance in technology. But Jobs had a wow moment in his pocket, literally. He said 5 GB of storage was enough to carry 1,000 songs. Oh, and there was one more thing...1,000 songs fit in your pocket. The size of the iPod - along with its ease of use - made it different. "I just happen to have one right here in my pocket," said Jobs as he pulled an iPod from the front pocket of his signature blue Jeans.

Apple Revolutionizes the Phone

On January 9, 2007, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone and gave what I consider his greatest presentation. As he did twenty years earlier in the Macintosh presentation, he began by building the anticipation. "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," he said. He reminded his audience that Apple had introduced the Macintosh, which revolutionized the computer industry, and the iPod that revolutionized the music industry. "Today we're launching three revolutionary products of this class," Jobs added. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough Internet communications device." Jobs slowly repeated each of the devices once, a second time, and a third. Finally he concluded, "Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices. This is one device, and we are calling it, iPhone!"

Steve Jobs knew how to turn a presentation into an awe inspiring and memorable event. He was the consummate salesman, and his techniques work just as well on the sales floor as they did on the presentation stage.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Marketing's New Currency

2012-05-13T00:10:00-04:00

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, neuroscientists at the University of Parma discovered mirror neurons in our premotor cortex that fire when we perform an action and also when we observe others performing the same action. For example, the neurons that fire when we grasp a cup also fire when we see others grasp a cup. By mirroring the activities of others in this way, mirror neurons endow us with a built-in leaning toward empathy, social interaction and altruism.

We don’t always behave well in social settings, but because we are predisposed to social engagement, the rocketing rise of social networks makes sense. If, as some neuroscientists contend, the big ideas that stick are those that match brain structure and function, then social media are here to stay and will prove the naysayers wrong.

The discovery of our innate social faculty adds to our understanding of marketplace transactions. Embedded deep within dollar-and-cents exchanges are social exchanges of interpersonal connections – some good and some bad – that resonate to our very core.

What social networks have done is peel away the part of these exchanges that have always involved relationships. The relationships that matter most are family, and family means kinship. This is the currency of social networks. More and more these days, the currency of kinship must be spent first before any financial value can be realized, and this has big ramifications for growth opportunities in the marketplace ahead. Four warrant special mention.

First, happiness is the new metric of success. Relationships are a primary predictor of life satisfaction, so with the increasing importance of social networks and relationships, happiness will figure more prominently. Though brands like Zappo’s and Coke are touting happiness, it is not something most brands can do. But all brands can audit their consumer touchpoints to ensure that they are not upside down in their kinship accounts. This requires a different view of what relationships are all about.

Second, people relationships are coming to the fore. The heyday of brand relationships, quote/unquote, took off in the mid-1990s with the rise of one-to-one marketing. But in the heat of the moment, brand marketers lost sight of the fact that the idea of brand relationships is nothing but a metaphor about relationships to help marketers think about marketing investments. In reality, consumers don’t have relationships with brands; they have relationships with other people. Brands have utility; people have relationships.

The relationships people have with one another are where social networks add value. Social networks are forums where people can engage with other people. Many marketers shy away from social networks because people don’t talk specifically about their brands or categories. This misses the point. Social networks are a gathering place for relationships and brands should seek to facilitate or enhance those social exchanges. By making relationships among people more interesting and more valuable, brands can strengthen their position and value with consumers.

Third, marketers must persuade conversations not consumers. With social engagement more prevalent and more powerful, every marketing message is now subject to vetting by a crowd. No message finds its way to consumers absent the influence and input of others. It is the conversation that determines the impact of an ad not the way in which an individual encounters an ad in isolation. Traditional marketing and media models that embody an individualized encounter with advertising no longer reflect reality.

The old approach was to maximize share of voice; now it’s share of conversation. It used to be about talking loudly; now it’s about getting other people to do your talking for you.

Finally, the circles of intimacy are narrowing. The biggest trend in social networks is the shrinking of social connections. People only want relationships that matter. That means close relationships. They want kith and kin. As we have described it in Status Update, our Future Perspective white paper on social networks, the first of six pivot points shaping the future of social networks is a choice between Big Net and Tight Knit, and on this dimension small is the big trend.

Brand marketers will find themselves even more on the outside looking in as social networks narrow. But the opportunity is bigger than ever for brands that ensure the currency of kinship is never in short supply.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: J. Walker Smith, Executive Chairman, The Futures Company

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Strategy: Repositioning Commodities

2012-05-11T00:10:00-04:00

Even producers in the commodity world of meats and produce have found ways to reposition themselves and thus create a unique selling proposition. Their successful strategies can be summed up in five ways.

1. Identify. Ordinary bananas became better bananas when a small Chiquita label was added to the fruit. Dole did the same for pineapple with the Dole label, as did the lettuce people by putting each head into a clear Foxy lettuce package. Of course, you then have to communicate why people should look for these labels.

2. Personify. The Green Giant character became the difference in a family of vegetables in many forms. Frank Perdue became the tough man behind the tender chicken.

3. Create a new generic.The cantaloupe people wanted to differentiate a special, big cantaloupe. But rather than call them just plain “big,” they introduced a new category called Crenshaw melons. Tyson wanted to sell miniature chickens, which doesn’t sound very appetizing. So it introduced Cornish game hens.

4. Change the name. Sometimes your original name doesn’t sound like it would be something you would want to put in your mouth. Like a Chinese gooseberry. When the name was changed to kiwi fruit, the world suddenly had a new favorite fruit that it wanted to put in its mouth.

5. Reposition the category. Pork was just pig for many years. All that did was conjure up mental pictures of animals wallowing in the mud. Then the industry jumped on the chicken bandwagon and became “the other white meat.” That was a very good move when red meat became a perceptual problem.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Strategy For Startups

2012-05-10T00:10:00-04:00

A startup business faces many difficult challenges getting off the ground. For many early stage CEO’s assessing their priorities, product development and the seed money to grow are their primary concerns. Few if any are thinking much about brand building–mainly because they believe it to be sophisticated marketing they simply can’t afford.

For startup CEOs, brand building needs to be as important to early success as product development and raising money. You can have the most innovative, groundbreaking product ever conceived, but if you can’t create a strong foundation for communicating that value to the marketplace, chances are the business won’t go far. Developing a strong brand is critical to the early success of startups.

The Ugly Baby Syndrome
Many startups have a difficult and awkward task of communicating the value of their product/service innovations in ways that matter to investors and potential customers. At the beginning (especially when seeking investment capital) founders have a tendency to believe that everyone will “get the big idea” of their next big thing. As a result, they usually message their value badly at the beginning.

Like any newborn, learning to walk the talk requires falling down and getting up again and again. But the break neck pace of the VC deal making machine is not very forgiving to the stumbles of startup founders not able to tell a compelling story of why their innovation matters to anyone beyond their Mother.

The heart and soul of brand building embodies a relevant and differentiated value proposition. Founders must be able to articulate why their baby matters to some people! Remember, at the beginning nobody cares!

What makes your startup good and different?
The marketplace is a slush pile. Every year new businesses, products and services are born into a vast sea of ubiquitous sameness. For startups to have a chance of making it past the infant stage, their value must be well defined.

No one will deny the fact that startup CEOs work long days, weeks and years in their business. Few CEOs will work “on” their business. Brand strategy is the process of working on the business. Having the clarity and the confidence to define value in compelling ways is the first step in building a sustainable brand.

Founders need to take a long, hard introspective look at how they will discover and articulate why their innovation is good and different. In a world of increased commoditization, relevant differentiation is the source code to brand building success.

Good and different means the value the business brings to the world must be highly valued by a well defined target customer and not in abundant supply elsewhere. When you can define what that is for your business, you will enjoy competitive advantage in the industry category in which you are operating and command premium pricing as well.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Brand strategy is not marketing.
One of the big misconceptions startup CEOs have about brand building is that it is a marketing activity. In fact, these are two separate (yet related) activities. Brand strategy is about knowing the DNA of the value offered to the marketplace, marketing is the process of delivering the message through various communication channels.

It makes no sense whatsoever creating grandiose marketing schemes without those plans being anchored and informed by a higher guiding strategy about what the brand will represent in the mind of a target customer. This should be good news to startup CEOs since marketing is an expensive proposition most startups can ill afford.

Brand strategy requires real market insight and creative thinking, while marketing requires cash. Marketing should always follow brand strategy.

Branding begins with a good name.
Over time the startup business will grow up. It will acquire loyal customers, it will have created trusted relationships and enjoy a reputation that will translate into greater financial value. All of this will happen more effectively and efficiently if you start with a good name to build your good reputation on.

Nothing is more valuable to a startup business than a good name. Start by creating one that will serve the growth and expansion of your value over the long haul.

The three components of a strong and enduring startup brand.
There are many definitions about what a brand is. Regardless of how the idea of a brand is defined, a startup brand requires three well-designed components:

Brand Identity:
The essence of what your brand represents to customers. It is “who” the brand is. This is represented by symbols, language, and the culture or heritage of the organization.

Brand Promise:
The benefit your brand brings to customers. This is “what” the brand provides that is highly valued and not in abundant supply. These associations are based in the functional, rational and emotional benefits customers receive from the brand.

Brand Experience:
The tangible experience customers have in their interaction and transaction with the brand. This is “how” the brand delivers on its promise. These associations are based in real life engagement with products, people and places.

One might consider this to be the three legs of the stool in building an enduring brand right from the beginning. All three of these components must be designed. They do not come into form on their own. The process of design is the critical discipline in making all three components come together in harmonious alignment within the mind of the target customer. The awesome thing about design, if applied correctly and consistently, it will enable your startup brand to emulate its values to the marketplace with more credibility and effectiveness.

You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression.
Everyone has heard that statement before. But for startup brands the statement holds even more significance. Whatever startup brands are doing, chances are they’re doing it for the first time. The first presentation to an investor, customer or important employee must be simple, clear and compelling–there are no second chances.

Sponsored By: The Two-Day Brand Positioning Workshop

Private Label Brands: The Future Leaders Of Retail?

2012-05-09T00:10:00-04:00

Consumers are definitely giving retailers permission to grow their private label brands. The real question is will retailers grow private label brand value or simply grow more private labels? In the age of mega-private label brands, this trend is giving national consumer product goods brand managers some added anxiety these days. It also presents some relationship challenges for retailers to grow the value trusted CPG brands bring to their customers.

According to a report published by consulting firm Deloitte, consumer’s perceptions and attitudes toward private label brands are changing significantly; and offers insight into the notion that spending less for private label brands doesn’t mean consumers are settling for less from private label brands. According to the report only one-third of the respondents endorsed the statement “ I often feel that I am sacrificing when I purchase a store brand instead of a national brand”. This is no surprise when one stops to think that many consumers today believe that store brands and national brands are essentially made of the same ingredients. According to the report, 80 percent believe the statement “most store brands are manufactured by the national brands”.

The report further suggests that the current economic climate has made consumers more discerning about the brands they prefer. 75 percent of respondents agreed “ these economic times have made me more aware of which brands I care about and which ones are less important to me”.

Who’s winning?  Seemingly one could easily conclude that private label brands are beginning to win the battle of the brands through market share gains over the national brands. What’s accelerating this trend is private store brands are beginning to employ more strategic product innovation and the brand management discipline commonly employed by big national CPG brands. Consumers now believe there is little difference in quality or value between the two alternatives. Worse, many consumers believe they’re paying for the “advertising” of the higher priced national brands. Here are some more interesting highlights from the report:

Between 2006 and 2009, private brand market share rose across 74 percent of products in the personal care, household goods and food and beverage categories in the United States.

Private labels represent 20 percent of grocery store and 18 percent of supercenter sales.

Store brand products were 31 percent cheaper across product categories than their national brand counterparts.

Store brands are not just a recession related phenomenon – U.S. store brand sales continue to grow over the long run despite improving economic conditions. The latest data supports this. According to this month’s food and beverage market research report by The NPD Group, private label’s share of household servings was 18 percent in 2000 and reached 27 percent in 2011.

Retailers are now taking product and brand building innovation to heart. What’s driving innovation within private label brand-driven retailers is fairly simple–they can be far more nimble than national CPG brands. Developing a private label brand can be far more efficient and at a much faster pace. Private brands don’t have to make the long-term capital investments in product development, manufacturing and rigorous BASES testing and other quantitative research methods to gain the assurance that their value proposition is relevant and the long-term investment warranted. Private label brands have the real-time retail environment to test brand concepts with far less risk, and they receive immediate feedback because their customer’s are voting with their dollars right in the store!

Walmart’s Great Value brand is a case in point on being nimble and innovative in near real-time. Covering well over 100 product categories, and launched in 2009, the Great Value brand continues to adapt and transform itself much faster than CPG brands of similar scale. The Great Value private label brand was so expansive and compelling at shelf, customers began to believe they were being driven to favor the value brand over national brand alternatives. At the risk of alienating customers and CPG suppliers, Walmart correctly and quickly balanced their “brand block” private label brand presentation in a fashion that did not obscure the shelf presence of national brands–thus the power of a mega-private label brand.

Private label brands will lead the way.  It’s probably safe to conclude the next generation of super successful brands will not come from the name brands, but from more private label brand-focused retailers. Consumers seeking to save some money in tough times may be fueling the current growth in private label brands, however the cat is out of the bag, and progressive retailers will continue to innovate and leverage to the fullest advantage their immediate access to their customers.

Sponsored By: The Two-Day Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Strategy: Set Up A Positive And Attack

2012-05-08T00:10:00-04:00

What you need to build into a brand is a positive. The purpose of hanging a negative on your competitor is to set up that positive idea. Some years ago, Stolichnaya vodka hung “American made” on its U.S. competitors who were “making believe they were Russian.” It was setting up “the Russian vodka” as its positive idea.

Many years ago, BMW introduced its automobile into the U.S. market by repositioning Mercedes as “the ultimate sitting machine.” This was a set up for its long-term position of being “the ultimate driving machine.” Repositioning Mercedes as a living room on wheels did indeed resonate with people, as at the time Mercedes was indeed manufacturing big limo-type cars. The first BMW was the 3 Series, which was a long way from today’s 7 Series, which is also a “sitting machine.” It’s also the main reason that I’m not a fan of these big gadget-loaded BMWs. They are not driving machines; they are high-tech sitting machines. It’s why you don’t see many of them driving around.

A Missed Positive

Some years ago, I was down in Venezuela working with a big ketchup brand called Pampero. By the time we were called in, Del Monte and Heinz had nudged it from its number one position. Pampero was in a decline. What was needed was a differentiating idea beyond its current claims of “redder” or “better.”

Why was Pampero better? What did the company do to its tomatoes? After some prodding, what emerged was the fact that Pampero removed the skin so as to enhance the flavor and color. It was something that its big competitors did not do in their manufacturing process.

Now that’s an interesting idea, as many people are aware that most recipes using whole tomatoes call for removing the skin. Pampero could exploit this “without the skins” perception of quality and taste.

When we told the company that this was the best and only way to rebuild the brand’s perception, Pampero became very upset. It seems that the company was in the midst of changing to a money-saving automated process that didn’t remove the skins (like that used by Del Monte and Heinz). Pampero didn’t want to hear about doing things the old-fashioned way.

Our recommendation was that Pampero stop the modernization plans, as “skins off” was the differentiating idea. Doing things the same way as your bigger competitors is how to get killed in the wars out there. What was called for was a major repositioning effort to hang “skins” on the competition. The positive was skinless tomatoes—a repositioning idea that never saw the light of day.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Are Brand Relationships Like Human Relationships?

2012-05-07T00:10:00-04:00

I am hearing a lot these days about brand relationships being like human relationships. Maybe it is just me, but I don’t feel that my relationship with brands is the same as the one I have with my fellow humans. I might feel genuine affection for one or two brands, but most are simply familiar solutions to a specific need. Here are some of my thoughts on the topic but I would love to hear yours.

Initially, I thought my concern about anthropomorphizing brands was to do with the intermittent nature of our relationship with many brands. In reality, there are few brands that we think about or interact with on a regular basis, the mobile phone being the most frequent for many of us. Most of the time brands are out of sight and out of (conscious) mind. But then a human relationship can range from fleeting to enduring. And once a relationship is established, we often seem to be able to pick it up again where it left off, even if years have intervened.

Then I read this in the Wikipedia entry on Interpersonal Relationships:

Interpersonal relationships usually involve some level of interdependence. People in a relationship tend to influence each other, share their thoughts and feelings, and engage in activities together.

Now this seems to address my concerns more closely. To what degree are we interdependent on the brands we use? Are there any brands that you use for which there really is no acceptable substitute? And just how dependent is that brand on you? Would Apple really miss you if you decided another mobile phone better met your needs or desires than the iPhone?

If brand relationships are like human relationships then they are pretty one-sided. A brand owner might love to have an intimate, one-to-one relationship with every one of their brand users, but that is just not practical right now. Kraft’s Likeapella tribute to the 4,632 fans who liked a post on the brand's fan page on April 24th is a nice idea, but hardly sustainable on a daily basis. And many people would not want that degree of intimacy. Ultimately, we enlist all brands to solve problems for us, but I suspect we are willing to engage with and share thoughts with very few.

I think the essential thing that is worrying me about the anthropomorphizing of brand relationships, is that a brand is not going to do something nice for you just because it likes you. There is no real emotional interdependence. The brand owner wants you to pay to use their brand. And, as of today, they don’t really know who you are as an individual (even if that day is getting closer). So if we must think of brands in human terms, maybe we should think of them in terms of professions: plumber or paramedic, professor or painter, or any one of the myriad services that we conduct for each other.

I know that at least one of my colleagues would suggest that "humanizing" brands gives marketers a useful model for crafting a more meaningful brand, and for communicating what they are trying to do within their own company. That may be true. But I do think that we are deluding ourselves if we think the relationships between people and brands, really is the same as that between people. If it is a relationship, then in most cases it is a very weak and one-sided one.

But what do you think? Do we have relationships with brands? And are they the same as the ones we have with our fellow humans? Please share your thoughts.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Nigel Hollis, Chief Global Analyst Millward Brown

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

David Ogilvy: The Danger Of Discount Pricing

2012-05-04T00:10:00-04:00

David Ogilvy, a legend along-side the likes of Rosser Reeves and Bill Bernbach, has some strong words to say about deals and price. They are certainly worth repeating:

Any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.

The financial rewards do not always come in next quarter’s earnings per share, but come they do. When Philip Morris bought General Foods for five billion dollars, they were buying brands.

There used to be a prosperous brand of coffee called Chase & Sanborn. Then they started dealing. They became addicted to price-offs. Where is Chase & Sanborn today? Dead as a doornail.

The manufacturers who dedicate their advertising to building a favorable image, the most sharply defined personality for their brand, are the ones who will get the largest share of market at the highest profit.

The time has come to sound an alarm! To warn what is going to happen to brands if so much is spent on deals that there is no money left to advertise them.

Deals don’t build the kind of indestructible image which is the only thing that can make your brand part of the fabric of American life.*

*David Ogilvy, “Fiftieth Anniversary Luncheon Speech,” Advertising Research Foundation, New York City, March 18, 1986.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Reviving A Legacy Brand

2012-05-03T00:10:00-04:00

Ovaltine is reintroduced with new advertising but the same old orange jar. Sales of the century-old, malt-extract, milk flavoring powder doubled in the first 100 days. Coca-Cola brings back the 40-year-old Fresca brand of citrus soft drinks with a graphics makeover and new flavor combinations.

Can everything old be new again?

As the publisher of BrandlandUSA, Garland Pollard is an expert on America’s legacy brands. A native of Virginia Beach, VA, he is active in historic building preservation efforts – and in a sense, his study of the value and tradition of “old brands” serves that same purpose for marketers and brand-builders.

We asked him about the lore of old brand names – and what they mean for today’s marketers.

Q: What are some notable brand names that are coming back to life?

Recently I’ve written about Hyatt bringing back its storied Hyatt House name, as a re-branding of its Hyatt Summerfield Suites extended stay properties. A Hyatt House was the place to stay in the 1970s – a smart, slick, modern hotel.

And it appears Nissan is driving the Datsun name out of the brand graveyard. Datsun will reappear in emerging markets such as Indonesia, India and Russia as an entry-level economy brand. It’s another example of how companies can re-use their brand names a few decades down the line.

Q: The brokerage firm name E. F. Hutton was well-known 25 years ago with their slogan “When E. F. Hutton talks, people listen.” Now the name is being revived for a boutique financial advisory firm. Your thoughts?

It's a brilliant idea. It has incredible name recognition for people who are over 50, which is a target audience. Best yet, it really became a consumer brand because of all the network TV advertising. And Wall Street has such a bad reputation we need some "old school" folks who can bring credibility to it.

Looks like it was started by someone within the family, which makes it totally credible. Bringing notables from the past to any future launch event is also a good tactic because of the institutional knowledge in those folks.

Q: Are there lessons here about the future of brand names?

Brands let us travel back and forth in time; you are in a sort of heaven, where time is present, past and future at the same moment. When you step into Saks Fifth Avenue’s main store, you go into the 1930s, but you are also very much in 2012, and are also in part of something that has a future. It’s alive. Great brands move to a classic point, where the company knows how to keep them relevant without ruining the original appeal.

Q: But isn’t a “dead brand” evidence that the marketplace has simply moved on, and left that brand behind?

No. Certainly some brands are useless, but the failure is almost always one of management, not the brand itself. A great current example is Instagram; they are worth $1 billion, and Kodak is broke. The idea was the “snapshot” and Instagram is really just selling the new version of the same idea of the Kodak snapshot. Companies use the killing off of the brand to cover up their failure; it’s the “brand’s” fault, not the management. Most brand names are good enough to adapt to the times.

Q: So you’re arguing that a brand is more than its physical presence. True?

It’s sort of a collective idea plus a collection of physical items, a collection of stories and myths and a group of people who like it. The problem is when the companies begin to believe that the brand is theirs. They never just belong to a company. Of course, legally they belong to the company, but the minute the company starts believing that it can dictate everything about the brand is the minute they forget their customers.

Q: What are some examples of other brands that have come back to life?

Here are just a few: Mini Cooper, the Beetle, every revived Broadway show, Lilly Pulitzer, College of William & Mary. Hawaii 5-O is back. Jeep is bringing back the Wagoneer, that stately wood-paneled chariot of the Reagan era, to overseas markets.

Q: The president of J. B. Williams Company once said of his dated Brylcreem, AquaVelva and Lectric Shave brands, “There’s a franchise there that even neglect couldn’t destroy.” Does that mean there are opportunities for entrepreneurs in bringing back old brands?

Lots. It’s not just about trying to snag great some goodwill. It’s about looking at what the market needs, and satisfying it. But the hardest part is that even if you get the rights to the brand, you still have to figure out how to recreate it. And with that, you are bound by another story, another entrepreneur’s struggle from a long time ago.

Q: Is there a marketplace for people to buy and sell old brands?

This has been slow to develop, as companies still do not really understand the value in old brands. There is plenty of licensing, which even has its own trade shows, but even that market didn’t develop until Disney and the invention of motion pictures. There are of course business brokers, who can sell businesses and goodwill. And then there is private capital, which seems to me more interested, of late, in sucking cash out of companies.

I am more interested in some sort of neutral ground, where other executives can begin to see what other companies need, and how they might find new uses for these assets, perhaps in shedding old brands as ventures into new spin-off companies. The key to success is unbiased research and history; if you don’t know the history of why the company declined, you can’t revive the brand. You have to understand the brand, and that takes insight, not just trolling the Trademark Office for expired brand names.

Q: Finally, a personal question. You worked years ago at Colonial Williamsburg. Did that spark your interest in long-ago products and brands?

I worked there in college at William & Mary, and my great-grandfather was mayor during its restoration. In Virginia, the story of what happened in Williamsburg was a story of hope in the middle of the Great Depression. There was this dead town, where all the buildings were run down. But with Rockefeller money and a lot of inspiration, it literally came back to life.

Today, we think of it as a museum, but what was the most fascinating about it was that the Rev. W.A.R. Goodwin and John D. Rockefeller Jr. decided that the town’s business and industry needed to be re-created, too. So anything they found became a potential for reproductions or inspiration for interpretive items that were based on old items. In addition, they began to unearth bits of pottery and get companies like Wedgwood to recreate the patterns. The stores were also re-opened, so suddenly Josiah Chowning’s Tavern was real again after 200 years, serving up beer.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Steve Rivkin

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Strategy: Repositioning A Competitor

2012-05-02T00:10:00-04:00

There are times, though rare, that a repositioning the competition strategy is not to hang a negative on them, but simply to put your lead competitor in its place—or, shall I say, in second place? This was the case in a project we did for the producers of Spanish olive oil.

Few people know that Spain is truly the dominant producer of olive oil. It generally produces more than half the world’s olive oil. Italy, the number two producer, has only half Spain’s production. In fact, Spain outproduces all other countries combined.

But there is a big problem: while Spain is the dominant leader in olive oil production, many people perceive Italy as the king. Because of that, Spain makes most of the oil, while Italian companies make most of the money with their olive oil brands. How do they do it? They buy their olive oil from Spain, put it in their cans and bottles, and ship it off as Italian olive oil. What should Spain do? That was a question we were asked by the Spanish producers. Our answer came in three steps.

Step 1 was to clearly reposition Spain as “the world’s number one producer of olive oil.” This little-known fact had to be put into the minds of the customers and prospects for olive oil. Spain’s production credentials were an important part of the message. Outproducing all competitors combined is a great story. But Italy was already in people’s minds, so a way had to be found to reposition it as a producer that used Spanish olive oil.

Step 2 dramatized this message by borrowing a historical fact. We suggested that Spain produce advertising that stated the following:

Two thousand years ago the Romans were our best customers. Today, they still are.

The point this message makes is that the Italians have always recognized good olive oil when they tasted it. Since Italy is known for its cooking, this is a very mea ingful idea. But there was one other problem.

Step 3 was that of identification. If people were to look for Spanish olive oil, how were they to find it? So we developed a symbol or seal that enabled customers to identify oil from Spain. It was a simple seal that said, “100% olive oil from Spain.” This seal was to be put on every can and bottle of pure Spanish olive oil.

This turned out to be the Avis number two program in reverse, as we repositioned Italy where it belonged: in second place.

Excerpted from my book REPOSITIONING: Marketing In An Era of Competition, Change, And Crisis -- Jack Trout with Steve Rivkin (c) 2010 by McGraw-Hill

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Low Price Strategy: High Risk For Brands

2012-05-01T00:10:00-04:00

Price is often the enemy of brand differentiation. By definition, being different should be worth something. It’s the reason that supports the case for paying a little more for a product or service, or at least the same amount.

But when price becomes the focus of a message or a company’s marketing activities, you are beginning to undermine your chances to be perceived as being unique. What you’re doing is making price the main consideration in picking you over your competition. That’s not a healthy way to go.

Few companies find happiness with this approach, for the simple reason that every one of your competitors has access to a pencil. And with it, each of them can mark down its prices any time it wants to. And there goes your advantage.

As Harvard’s Michael Porter says, cutting prices is usually insanity if the competition can go as low as you can.

The Case Of Cheaper Carrots
To support Porter’s premise, we point you to a start-up company that came up with a unique packaging system for baby carrots. It was one that produced a decided price advantage over the two big suppliers that were already in the business.

To get on the supermarket shelves, the company entered the market not with better carrots but with a better price, repositioning its two big competitors as being expensive. Instantly the two big suppliers matched the upstart’s price. This forced the new company to go lower, and the new price once again was matched by the established brands.

When a board member asked the management of this start-up to predict what would happen, the management predicted that the two big companies would not continue to reduce their prices because doing so was “irrational.” They were losing money because of their older packaging technology.

The board member called us about this prediction. We advised him that the companies’ action was perfectly rational. Why would the two companies that dominated the market make it easy for a new company with a manufacturing price advantage to get into the market? They were quite happy with things the way they were.

At the next board meeting, the management of the start-up company was encouraged to sell its new manufacturing system to one of the established brands. Which it did for a nice profit.

Everyone was happy, but another low-price strategy bit the dust.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

The Power Of Brands Lies In Shared Values

2012-04-30T00:10:00-04:00

Brands, just like people, have values - bedrock principals they stand for and hold near and dear to the heart. These principals form the reason brands exist. Brand values influence two important business assets - relationships and reputation. Relationships are built on trust and reputation is built on delivering on your promise.

In our over-crowded, me-too marketplace, points of difference that are function and feature based are no longer sustainable. Consumers today are tuning out marketing and tuning in to those brands that represent shared values. Forward thinking marketers recognize their brand building initiatives must focus on relationships and reputation.

Nothing else really matters.

Connections begin with respect and empathy
Brands aren’t human, they have no consciousness, brands are not things, nor do they do anything. Brands are nothing more than a shared idea of value– mirrors of our interactions and transactions with each other. Of course, it’s fashionable and fun to talk about brand in the parlance of our industry, brand managers and brand consultants love jargon and thinking models that they can write on a white board.

At the end of the day, we’re still talking about an idea of value in the mind. And one idea human beings value is connection to other humans and being part of the tribe. When people share values they’re more likely to hang with their like-minded mates. And so it is with brands. The power of brands lies in shared connections based in shared values.

Shared values form the basis for all relationships
Wherever we go in business and in life, we bring are own values along as well. When others share our values, this becomes a powerful and attractive force to bind us closer together. Shared values form the very basis for every relationship.

Enlightened brand owners realize in our time-compressed days, most of us have little time for things (and people) that don’t really matter to us. For brands to matter, the customer must believe the brand is bringing something more valuable to them than the cash exchanged. In effect brands have to provide more “use value” than they ask in cash value.

It is the shared experience of value that binds customers to the brand and the organization behind it. When brands deliver at this level, they lead markets and shift the culture. The result is massive financial gain for the brand owner.

Building a values-based brand
No longer can brands be differentiated on features, benefits or price. There’s just too much stuff out there these days. Customers have so much choice everything is white noise.

Leading brands are always differentiated by their shared values. If the values your brand represents are not aligned to the values of your customer, no amount of marketing will change their mind. And never try amending brand values to line up with the customers.

That’s a recipe for disaster.

Trust is the foundation of a value-based brand. As in all relationships, trust is what holds things together and defines the quality of brand reputation. You’re the real deal or not–it’s just that simple. Here’s a list of things brand owners of values-based brands always do to build trusted relationships with customers:

- value their purpose more than their profits

- eliminate a sales first culture

- focus on the things money can’t buy

- live their convictions rather than conform to markets

- listen more and market less

- elevate the quality of life for the tribe

It’s as simple – and as difficult – as doing the right thing
Values-based brands are always “doing the right thing.” It’s a simple principle, but one that foils many brand owners because many don’t take the time to know what the right thing is. It’s inevitable that every brand will face some form of change, controversy, and crisis. And it’s in these challenging times, that a brand’s actions broadcast its values. In a marketplace hyper-focused on the next best thing, values-based brands are disciplined focused, consistent, and credible.

The objective of values-based brand management is to do the right thing without agonizing over the specific issues. When brand owners know what values for which their brands stand, one can see choices more clearly, make decisions more easily, and serve the tribe with more humility.

Sponsored By: The Two-Day Brand Positioning Workshop

Consumer Behavior: Spenders By Nature

2012-04-27T00:10:00-04:00

Consumers want to believe again. So help them.

People are tired of doing without. The term being bandied about right now by market observers is “frugality fatigue,” meaning the pent-up desire among hard-pressed, anxious consumers to pick up their buying. Obviously, some consumers remain too distressed for their spending to rebound. But most people feel hopeful about renewing their engagement with shopping.

Lots of signs point in this direction. Discretionary purchasing is up. Name brands and non-discounted fashions are doing better. High-end personal care products are growing. People are planning to dine out more, and when they do they are going to higher-priced restaurants, ordering appetizers again and spending more than they budgeted. More people are planning to spend their tax refunds instead of using them to pay off debts.

As we’ve counseled all along, there is no “new normal of frugality” setting in as the recession recedes. Instead, as the economy is showing signs of strength, so is consumer spending.

This is to be expected. Americans are spenders not savers. It’s a myth that we’re thrifty; we’re not. We spend, and have always spent. We are unique in this way. This is not true in other developed markets. Brits and Europeans are savers not spenders. Sheldon Garon’s recent economic history, Beyond Our Means, shows that this difference is rooted in distinctive 19^th century social contexts of moral suasion and political and charitable institutions.

People can’t spend if they don’t have cash or credit, which is where many consumers still find themselves nowadays. But in America, once people feel flush again, they spend. As Garon makes clear, this is cultural.

Not only is the idea of a ‘new normal of frugality’ off-base empirically and culturally, the traditional spending gusto of American consumers helps explain why the U.S. has long been a good market for innovation. There have always been consumers eager for new stuff to buy.

The relative priority among Americans for spending over saving demonstrates that demographics are not always destiny. Europeans are older and thus should be spenders, not the savers that they are, whereas Americans are younger and thus supposed to save not spend. Culture is a powerful dynamic that even trumps incentives and nudges. Europeans save despite strong government safety nets. Americans spend despite weaker safety nets.

Recent improvements in American household finances are putting culture back into play. Floyd Norris, the chief financial correspondent for The New York Times, pointed out in a recent news analysis that much of the reason March 2012 retail sales exceeded expectations was that consumer debt is now at levels not seen since the mid-1990s by one measure and since the mid-1980s by another. Of course, as Norris noted, there is more deleveraging to go and debt levels have fallen not because consumers paid them off but because financial institutions have written them off, much of it home foreclosures. Yet however this has happened, the result is that consumers have pocket money to spend again.

The personal savings rate spiked during the depths of the recession but it has subsequently declined to levels typical of the early 2000s. No upsurge in saving is imminent.

It is important for brand marketers to get this right. If the presumption is that a new normal of frugality has set in, then marketers will miss the opportunity to build their own momentum to recovery. Glass-half-empty rhetoric will continue to color the tonality of marketing messages when consumers are ready, instead, to hear something that speaks to them in the language of a glass half-full.

The worry is that the strong start to 2012 will be unable to sustain itself, just as happened in 2010 and 2011. But most economic observers are cautiously optimistic that another midyear swoon is not in the offing, even with all of the uncertainty being stirred up by the Eurozone. No history-making natural disaster has struck this year. Inventories remain lean. Consumers and business leaders are feeling more confident. China’s slowing growth will have an effect, but it is likely to be modest.

The Citigroup Surprise Index adds further assurance about the state of the economy in 2012. This index compares economic data against consensus expectations about the economy, and over time this measure of investor expectations has closely tracked the stock and bond markets. While this index has turned down in recent weeks, it is tracking well above 2011, indicative of a more robust economy in 2012 that is unlikely to repeat the midyear swoon of the year before.

Nothing is certain in today’s volatile marketplace, but consumers are turning back to the marketplace as at least some of the instability and hardship has begun to improve. Brand marketers must not let this opportunity slip by. The bottom line is simple: Consumers want to believe again. So help them.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: J. Walker Smith, Executive Chairman, The Futures Company

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

4 Do's And 1 Don't For Smarter Brand Naming

2012-04-26T00:10:00-04:00

1. Do go for quantity. Nine of any ten names generated (by any method or means) fail to get through an availability screening. And this is not a new problem. When the Coca-Cola Company introduced its first diet drink way back in 1963, an IBM Model 1401 computer was programmed to disgorge every four-letter combination containing a vowel. Out came 250,000 combinations. Then 600 names were examined as possibilities. But only 24, a mere four percent, had no conflict with existing trademarks. One of them, Tabb, was shortened to Tab.

2. Do look within. Sometimes good naming is more common sense than courage. Anheuser-Busch decided to spin off as an independent company the large commercial baking company (Campbell Taggart Inc.) it had acquired. Seeking a more expressive name, management selected one of their regional bread brands, redesigned it, and elevated it to the corporate name: Earthgrains Company.

3. Do remember that less is usually more. Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda was a curious and cumbersome name. Seven-Up was better. Dr. Richardson's Croup and Pneumonia CureSalve was going nowhere until it became Vicks VapoRub.

4. Do embrace emotion. Reason alone does not a great name make. Sears could have named its car battery "Reliable." (Practical, logical and very ho-hum). Now consider the actual choice, the evocative and emotionally-charged DieHard. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter acknowledged this right-brain aspect of brand naming when he wrote, "The protection of trademarks is the law's recognition of the psychological function of symbols. If it is true that we live by symbols, it is no less true that we purchase goods by them."

5. Don't be overly obvious. Sterling is a lovely word, especially in the United Kingdom where it defines the basic British monetary unit and has come to mean "of the highest quality." But it is so obvious a choice that more than 700 U.K. companies have the word "Sterling" in their name.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Steve Rivkin

Sponsored By: Brand Aid

Customer Based Brand Positioning

2012-04-25T00:10:00-04:00

The competition-based perspective of brand positioning emphasizes distinguishing a brand from competing brands on benefits important to customers. By contrast, the customer-based perspective focuses on how consumption of the brand and the category is relevant to customers' lives. Adopting a customer-based approach requires uncovering the abstract meanings associated with consumption of a particular brand or the general category. We refer to these as brand essence and category essence, respectively.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider By: John Wiley & Sons, excerpted from Kellogg on Marketing, 2nd Edition by Alice M. Tybout (editor), Bobby J. Calder (editor), Phillip Kotler (foreword by) (c) 2010 by The Kellogg School of Marketing.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Aligning Brand Personality And Brand Values

2012-04-24T00:10:00-04:00

Today on Branding Strategy Insider, another question from the BSI Emailbag. Fauziah, a senior brand marketer in Kuala Lumpur, Malysia asks:

“We are in the process of developing the corporate brand and parallel to that is the development of the employer brand. A list of the brand personality and the brand values have been developed separately for the corporate brand and the employer brand. My question: Is it appropriate for the brand personality (corporate and employer brand) to be the same and/or similar to the brand values.”

Thank you for asking this question, Fauziah. Yes, there should be a correspondence between the core values of the organization (or the corporate culture) and the personality of the corporate brand. That is, the core values of the organization should reinforce (or at least not be in conflict with) the intended brand personality. For instance, it is very difficult for a brand to be perceived as compassionate if the corporate culture is ruthless. And if "responsiveness" is an intended brand personality attribute, it would be advantageous for "responsiveness" to be a core value of the organization. And how can a brand be perceived to be innovative unless it is the result of an innovative organization? It would be much more difficult for Southwest Airlines to be a fun airline to fly if it didn't hire employees who are fun and who are encouraged to have fun in what they do. So yes, by all means make sure your employer brand aligns with your corporate brand on values and personality attributes.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

U.S. Political Party Brand Analysis Proves Revealing

2012-04-23T00:10:00-04:00

Given that we are in a U.S. presidential election year, we thought it would be interesting to explore the Democratic and Republican parties as brands. In particular, we wanted to understand how different types of people perceived the Democratic and Republican parties differently. We fielded our survey here on Branding Strategy Insider and elesewhere online using social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) between October 15, 2011 and April 1, 2012. 324 people started the survey and, of that number, 253 people (78.1%) completed the survey. The respondents were diverse across age, gender, household income, state of residence and political and religious affinities.

So, what did we find? First, perceptions of the Democratic and Republican parties were quite different from one another, in many ways almost opposite. And, regardless of background, most people had fairly similar perceptions of the two parties. The primary perceptions of the Democratic Party are diverse, compassionate, giving, determined and kind. The primary perceptions of the Republican Party are business friendly, determined, driven, entrepreneurial and decisive. The biggest differences between the two parties were on these attributes: business friendly (Republican) and diverse, compassionate and giving (Democratic). At an overview level, Democrats are perceived to be diverse, compassionate and giving but not very decisive, effective, entrepreneurial or business friendly. Republicans, on the other hand, are perceived to be business friendly, determined, driven and entrepreneurial but not very kind, giving, trustworthy, compassionate, collaborative, easy to work with, easygoing, selfless or diverse.

We asked people with which political party or philosophy they most identify. We did not ask with which party they are registered. This yielded interesting results. More people identified themselves as Conservative than those who identified themselves as Republican. And Independent was the second most frequent identity after Democratic. But many people also identified themselves as Libertarian, Liberal, Fiscal Conservative, Progressive, Progressive Libertarian, Tea Party and several other categories.

We also asked people to indicate to what extent they agreed with different statements. We took those statements from the political platforms of parties as diverse as the Tea Party and the Green Party. The highest rated statements/beliefs were generally universally popular across party lines. They are (in decreasing order of popularity):

In personal freedoms as long as those freedoms do not harm others
We must aggressively pursue alternative energy sources to reduce our reliance on foreign oil
America will only remain strong as long as it has a strong middle class
Politicians are corrupted by large corporations and other special interests
Education is the most important driver of our country’s long-term success

The lowest rated statements/beliefs are:

Most people on welfare are lazy and do not want to work
Income taxes should be substantially reduced or eliminated
Most people are selfish and don't care that much about others outside of their friends and family
The USA was founded on Christian values

Most people take a dim view of politicians. All of these personal beliefs scored high:

Politicians are corrupted by large corporations and other special interests
Most politicians are self serving
Most politicians lie

The greatest variation in response occurred for the following personal beliefs:

The USA was founded on Christian values
The federal government is spending too much on social programs
Market driven decisions are more beneficial than government driven decisions
Income taxes should be substantially reduced or eliminated
The primary role of the federal government is security and defense

So, what are the implications of the study?

All political parties would do well to talk about personal freedoms, although they may be defined in different ways by different people (freedom to practice one’s own religion, right to bear arms, control over one’s body, etc.). The statement included “as long as those freedoms do not harm others.” Different people will have differing perceptions of what harms others (radical, fundamentalist religions, concealed weapons, abortion, etc.)
Pursuing alternative energy sources is almost universally embraced. All parties would do well to embrace this, although it might mean clean renewable energy to some and increased fossil fuel extraction in the U.S. for others. An objective long-term national energy policy independent of special interests would be welcomed.
People generally believe a strong middle class is necessary for a strong America. Being a champion of the middle class is a winning strategy.
The Democratic Party would do well to be more business friendly. The Republican Party would do well to be more compassionate. The Republican Party would also do well to embrace additional diversity.
The Republican Party will struggle with different factions with different agendas. Social and fiscal conservatives are quite different in their beliefs and priorities.
Political parties will struggle as long as people do not trust politicians to represent them (versus special interests).
Despite party polarization, there are a significant number of people that do not fit the belief profile of either major party, such as the group of people who are fiscally moderate to conservative and socially moderate to liberal. New labels are emerging to describe this variation in beliefs.
The most substantive issues seem to be the following:
- Which is better at meeting the needs of the average U.S. citizen, markets or government? Or put another way, what is the optimal balance between the two?
- What should be decided and managed at a federal versus local level? For instance, education is generally perceived to be important to our country’s long-term success, but at what level of government would it be most effectively managed?
- What is the right balance of spending on social programs versus security/defense? This was the single biggest difference between Liberals and Conservatives. Liberals believe social programs require more emphasis and defense programs less emphasis while Conservatives believe just the opposite. Progressive Libertarians are the ones who hold the strongest belief that we are spending too much on security and defense.
- Finally, Conservatives and Progressives have hugely opposing views on whether the USA was founded on Christian values.

To view the detailed charts in a PowerPoint presentation, contact us.

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

It’s Time To Redefine Market Research

2012-04-22T00:10:00-04:00

In fields as diverse as medicine, physics, and archaeology, researchers are gods. From their tireless curiosity and investigation stem breakthrough cures and innovations, and answers to ‘big’ questions like where we come from and the possibilities of where we can go.

Yet in the context of brands and marketing, this idolatry is decaying. Market researchers are increasingly viewed as backwards-looking, closed-minded number crunchers. The heroes of business are those who dismiss data and the consumer, and instead rely on their instincts to create the future. Market research is, in short, the antithesis of innovation.

But it need not be so. Even as budgets are shrinking, market research remains a multi-billion industry, and corporations big and small continue to rely on data-driven insights to control risk and make decisions. What is required, then, is a fundamental shift in how we define and execute market research.

Steve Jobs is the poster child of research-less progress. What many don’t realize, however, is that for all of his talk about ‘skating to where the puck is going’ and ‘consumers not knowing what they want’, Jobs was a researcher – an excellent one, in fact. But like everything he created, his research was baffling in its simplicity. The Apple iPod, for example, was a product of research, rooted in two observations Jobs made about the world around him:

Everybody on this planet expresses themselves through music
None of the available portable music players are good enough

That’s it. No million-dollar, 500-page data dumps. No concept testing. No consumer permission metrics. Just a spirit of inquiry and empathy that compelled Jobs to perpetually ask: “How can I make people’s lives better?”

Market researchers must embody this same spirit and constantly strive for a deep understanding of people’s lives, pain points, and unmet needs. Like Jobs, they must also understand when it’s time to step back, stop asking consumers questions, and let engineers, designers, and marketers take hold of the insights and innovate in a constraint-free environment. Clients, meanwhile, must un-train themselves from the ‘more is better’ mindset and instead value research based on the extent to which it acts as a focused yet unrestrictive stimulus for the strategists, creatives, and creators who are responsible for bringing it to life.

Market research must also evolve by going beyond brands and product categories to glean insights from culture and society at large. So often are researchers caught up in the category context and competitive landscape that they forget about the fundamental human needs, fears, and values that brands are uniquely positioned to address. Iconic brands like Coca-Cola and Harley Davidson have long understood this, creating brand platforms around concepts like unity, optimism, and rebellion that stemmed from a keen understanding of the cultural tensions that defined a particular generation. Most recently, Old Spice has shown us how unearthing a cultural reality – the fear of emasculation during a time of high unemployment and economic uncertainty – can revitalize a brand that is falling into irrelevance.

Finally, market research must learn to occasionally abandon the ‘market’ in its name and look within organizations to uncover insights. From a company’s founding principles and beliefs to the values and motivations of its current employees, internal insights can serve as powerful reminders of a brand’s reason for being and spark new ways of thinking about the true value it adds to the world.

When IBM had lost its way near the turn of the century, it was this kind of internal exploration that helped the company completely redefine its business. Researching its heritage and codifying its employees’ values and beliefs led to the realization that no matter what IBM was producing over the course of its 100-year history, there was a common thread that ran through its DNA: the hunger to build a smarter planet. Today, IBM’s ‘product’ is virtually uncategorizable, and it is among the most valuable brands and businesses in the world.

There is no better time for the market research community to begin this journey of redefinition and revitalization. The young talent that once flocked to Wall Street still yearn for the fast-paced thrill of the business world but demand higher meaning in their work. By imbuing itself with human empathy, cultural and societal awareness, and organizational introspection, the industry will have no problem attracting this new generation of whole-brained thinkers.

But first, it must conduct some research of its own and acknowledge the one insight that underlies any meaningful innovation: the current state of affairs just isn’t going to cut it.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider By: Eric Tsytsylin, Senior Consultant, Millward Brown Optimor

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding And The Increasing Power Of Apps

2012-04-20T00:10:00-04:00

As far into the future as it’s possible to see, branding is all about apps.

So if that’s true – and more anon – then what is a brand? A brand is a value proposition. It is what people expect to get when they buy a product or a service. It is not the payoff per se but the promise of a certain benefit, whether tangible or intangible, material or experiential, pocketbook-friendly or premium-priced, immediate or forthcoming, fleeting or enduring – and a benefit that people expect to be worth the price.

A brand and branding are not the same. Branding is the strategy marketers use to build a brand. Branding sets expectations about the value proposition that is a brand. Apps can be brands, but most brands are not apps, and never will be. Not so for branding, however.

The strategic trajectory of branding since WW2 begins with information as the overarching focus during a period of mushrooming consumption when space-age innovations were flooding the marketplace with fantastical new things for consumers to master. Not that branding of this period wholly subordinated amusement to facts and figures, but entertainment surged to prominence in branding once prosperity soared, unleashing leisurely indulgences. Entertainment reached its acme in the form of experiential marketing, although at the same time, mounting clutter gave rise to early stirrings of marketing resistance. Engagement became the new emphasis in branding as brand marketers sought to bring smarter, savvier, choosier shoppers into the fold through individualized customization and consumer control. But with the rise of social technologies, brands have lost priority with consumers. What people want are social relationships not brand relationships – people-to-people interactions not brands-to-consumers engagement. This is where apps come into play.

An app is a software tool that does something useful. Apps have been around as long as computing, but with the advent of touch-screen smartphones, icon-triggered apps have exploded on the scene as enhanced, innovative ways for conveniently and quickly performing a myriad of tasks. For brand marketers, an app is a tool that doubles as a communications vehicle.

The time has long since passed when consumers would patiently, even if reluctantly, give their time and attention to marketing. Nowadays, many consumers actively resist engaging with marketers and those that do, do so with many more distractions and competing priorities. For consumers, the best thing about new technologies is not the ability to connect with brands, but the ability to connect with other people, thus leaving less time and interest than ever, if any at all, for branding.

To stay relevant to consumers, a brand must not only be worth the price, its branding must be worth the time. In a mature marketplace of advertising clutter and savvy consumers, marketers must do more than just say something interesting; they must deliver a message that does something useful. To put it bluntly, be an app or be gone.

As a way of approaching branding, apps are powerful. Apps are flexible, able to deliver broadcast content to many consumers or customized content to individuals. Apps can be entertainment like games or information like searchable databases. Apps can be on-demand or can send out real-time updates. Apps can be used to curate, create or aggregate. Apps are utterly engaging when used, as well as highly informative when needed and very entertaining when desired. In other words, apps offer marketers a diversity of ways to do something useful for consumers, and in that manner, favorably position a brand. In a word, the emerging imperative of branding is utility.

Brand marketers have begun using apps to position a brand’s value proposition to consumers. For example, AT&T, Reebok and Intel now offer playlist apps through Spotify that curate songs in keeping with a brand’s category identify, such as cell phone coverage, exercise or tech savvy. Montblanc and Cartier have apps to communicate new product updates along with other news and graphics, thus offering a more timely, multifunctional handheld digital catalog that might one day provide customized notifications to fit individual preferences or to mirror past buying patterns.

Branding as an app is more than the same old marketing repackaged as the latest fad. The very essence of branding is transformed. Managing branding as an app means that marketers must deliver value twice, both with the brand and with the branding. Traditionally, branding is the promise of brand value, not a source of value. But with consumers demanding something useful from branding in exchange for their time and attention, branding itself must be valuable above and beyond its brand message. Branding must have its own value, separate from the brand it is promoting.

Thus, for example, Reebok must deliver a good playlist as well as good shoes, and the good playlist must come first. If the playlist is bad, then the shoes, no matter how good, won’t get a chance with consumers. The delivery of value now starts with branding. Branding has become indispensable as gateway value without which brand value never comes into play.

The requirement of value in branding means that multiple currencies now drive transactional exchanges in the consumer marketplace. Money is the critical currency, of course, but, increasingly, consumers won’t spend money unless other currencies are spent first.

Marketers worry a lot these days about all that they give away for free, but such worries presume that the only currency that matters is money. What marketers make available at no financial cost to consumers is actually bought and sold in a different currency. If a brand can’t persuade consumers to spend social currency sharing it or talking about it, or if a brand can’t get consumers to spend time with it as, say, an app, then money is less likely to change hands.

The other thing to bear in mind about the evolutionary arc of branding is that from information to entertainment to engagement to utility, nothing has been given up. The progression of branding is cumulative. What has come later has added to not displaced what came before. Consequently, branding is more complicated than ever.

Usefulness cuts through complexity. Hence, the opportunity going forward is for branding not the brand alone to be the value underpinning competitive advantage. Information or entertainment or engagement can carve out competitive advantage as long as it has utility. Brand leaders in the future won’t necessarily be the best performing brands but the brands with the most useful branding. Simply put, the future is one of branding as app.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: J. Walker Smith, Executive Chairman, The Futures Company

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Positioning Statement Analysis

2012-04-19T00:10:00-04:00

Judging the adequacy of a brand positioning statement is necessarily a subjective exercise. However, common problems can be avoided if your brand positioning statement passes the following tests:

Is the statement as compelling if you substitute a competitors' brand for your brand? Leading brands may succeed in adopting positions that might also be credibly claimed by followers, but the resources of the leader allow it to sustain the position. Follower brands should reconsider the competitive set or the claimed point of difference if the claim is not unique to the brand.
Does reading the statement provide a clear understanding of who should buy the brand, when that person is likely to buy it, and what would motivate purchase? If not, the aspect of the statement that is vague should be made more specific.
Is it clear why the target customer should consider the brand to be a compelling way to achieve some important goal? If not, the linkage between the brand's point of difference and the target's goals requires modification.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Extension: Friend And Foe Of Strong Brands

2012-04-18T00:10:00-04:00

Brand extension is the way to get the best financial return out of a strong brand. By extending a known and much loved brand into new countries and categories, the brand owner reduces risk and maximizes the return on their investment. But extension is not without risks of its own. These days I can’t help wondering if many brands are extended too far, too fast.

Extension into new product categories poses an interesting challenge for a strong brand. There needs to be a good fit between what the brand stands for and what people look for from the new product category. But the fit between the brand and the category does not need to be based on a direct application of the brand’s functional credentials. The fit can be more conceptual. Sometimes this makes for giant leaps into categories not remotely connected to the brand’s origins.

A recent example that comes to mind is the Dirty Jobs heavy duty cleaning products spawned by the “Dirty Jobs" show on the Discovery Channel cable network. In each program, the show’s host, Mike Rowe, explores a dirty job, and attempts to complete the same task as the people whose job it really is. The fit between the well-known TV show and a line of cleaning products makes good sense. After all, Mike doesn’t just get dirty he has to clean up somehow.

A similar “leap of faith” extension would be Wolverine World Wide’s Cat Footwear, the global footwear licensee of Caterpillar® Inc. There is no real functional connection between giant, yellow, earthmoving equipment and footwear, but the connection is there. From durability to traction the benefits of machines and boots have a lot in common. The conceptual linkage has allowed a small collection of work boots to grow into a wide range of casual footwear selling in more than 150 countries worldwide.

And, perhaps not surprisingly, I note that Mike Rowe has also got in on the Cat act. On the Cat Web site is a page dedicated to Mike Rowe Works, which announces that if Mike ever writes a book on lessons learned from people with dirty jobs, chapter one will be “Don’t skimp on your boots.”

The fit between these brands seems to make good sense to me, but all too often I can’t help wondering if some brands do not extend too far, too fast. Take for example, Ugg Boots. For a while these fur lined boots from Australia seemed to be the “must have” women’s accessory, but now you can buy pretty much anything from sandals to men’s shoes. Many of the new items seem light years removed from the brand’s origins as a boot made with sheepskin. Nor do they have any apparent connection with surfing – the boots were often worn by surfers to keep their feet warm – and yet it was this sport that helped propel the brand to international fame.

Maybe the connection to celebrities that boosted the brand’s visibility in the early 2000s will be enough to sustain the brand’s standing, but I doubt it. While I may be proved wrong (since fashion is not my forte), Ugg seems destined to go from iconic to diluted in the space of a decade.

So what are your thoughts on brand extension? Do you have any great examples to share? And which brands do you believe have been extended too far? Please share your thoughts.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Nigel Hollis, Chief Global Analyst Millward Brown

Sponsored by: The Brand Licensing Workshop

Brand Positioning Statement Example: Zipcar

2012-04-17T00:10:00-04:00

When Zipcar was introduced to the market, a competition-based perspective was adopted. The positioning emphasized the superiority of the service in relation to the competitive alternative of owning one's own car. This approach is captured in the following positioning statement:

To urban-dwelling, educated techno-savvy consumers [target], when you use Zipcar car-sharing service instead of owning a car [competitive frame], you save money while reducing your carbon footprint [points of difference].

Once Zipcar was established as an alternative to owning a car, greater emphasis could be given to how Zipcar helped the targeted customer achieve his or her goals. This might have been done by laddering up from the points of difference to a brand essence of being a "responsible choice" for transportation and linking to the target's goal of demonstrating a commitment to protecting the environment. This more customer-based approach is illustrated below:

To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers who worry about the environment that future generations will inherit [target and insight], when you use Zipcar car-sharing service you make a responsible choice [brand essence] and demonstrate your commitment to protecting the environment [target's goal].

The positioning of a new brand often evolves from a competition-based approach to one that places greater emphasis on customers' goals as knowledge of the brand increases. Once a brand is well-established, a single statement, such as the one below, may serve to capture elements of both competition-focused and customer-focused positioning:

To urban-dwelling, educated, techno-savvy consumers who worry about the environment that future generations will inherit [target and insight], Zipcar is the car-sharing service [competitive frame] that lets you save money and reduce your carbon footprint [points of difference], making you feel you've made a smart, responsible choice that demonstrates your commitment to protecting the environment [target's goal].

The job of positioning a brand is never done. As new competitors enter the market, a brand's positioning must be modified. The entry of other car-sharing services, such as Connect by Hertz, force Zipcar to explain why targeted customers should prefer it to services that offer similar attributes. A focus on brand essence may be helpful in this regard. Zipcar may do well to target younger consumers, emphasizing its pioneering role in the car-sharing category and positioning the brand as one that demonstrates a commitment to protecting the environment. By contrast, Connect may concentrate on serving Hertz' existing customer base (older business travelers) on a new occasion (short-term city rentals) and leverage its number-one status and reputation of quality service.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

When The Value Of Marketing Is Questioned

2012-04-16T00:10:00-04:00

Today on Branding Strategy Insider, another question from the BSI Emailbag. Rachael, a brand marketer in Dallas, Texas asks:

“The 130-employee B2B company I work for recently created virtual "think-tank centers" (four to date) that serve different industry sectors. Each carries its own identity under the parent umbrella, and I've ensured that the parent-child relationship of the brands is cohesive. Here's the issue: I am the only marketing manager on staff; I have no support team; and my annual marketing budget is small (<150k). With such limited resources, I simply cannot do any of the brands justice.

I have approached the executive team several times over the last year to make the case for added headcount and budget, and have gotten nowhere. Beyond that, I have asked them to prioritize; something they've been unable/unwilling to do. The company has an Old Boys Club mentality and an overall lack of appreciation for marketing and branding. Advice?”

Rachael, thank you for asking this question. I am certain there are many others who are dealing with similar issues in their organizations. In fact, I have consulted for many technology-related firms run by scientists and engineers. Certainly most of my college classmates at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute were future scientists and engineers. I have found that many scientists, engineers and finance and operations professionals view marketing as a soft skill that lacks the rigor of other disciplines and that it deserves less attention and investment. In fact, when I was the marketing vice president at Element K, our finance vice president told me to my face (shortly after my arrival there from Hallmark) that he thought marketing was "overhead" that should be managed to reduce costs because it "added no value."

Strong brands have a huge impact on the success of organizations. While researching the benefits of building strong brands for my book Brand Aid I compiled the list below. It is based on empirical studies from a variety of sources.

Benefits of Building Strong Brands

1. Increased revenues and market share

2. Decreased price sensitivity

3. Increased customer loyalty

4. Additional leverage with vendors and retailers (for manufacturers)

5. Increased profitability

6. Increased stock price, shareholder value and sale value

7. Increased clarity of vision

8. Increased ability to mobilize an organization's people and focus its activities

9. Increased ability to expand into new product and service categories

10. Increased ability to attract and retain high quality employees

I encourage you to share this list with them as well as these four posts.

However, here is my advice to you. Offer to achieve very specific goals (increased lead generation, increased market share, increased customer loyalty, etc.) in return for funding specific marketing activities. That is, pitch your needs in terms of investment, "If you give me this, I will achieve this on behalf of the brand or company." This makes marketing seem less soft and less like a cost center with no measurable return. If this does not work for you, involve the people who are making the marketing investment decisions to a much greater degree in what you are considering doing so that they can begin to see at a more detailed level what you intend to do, how you intend to do it, what it could achieve on behalf of the organization and what it would cost. Their active involvement in your activities will help them better understand how you and marketing are adding value to the organization. It also increases their personal investment in what you are proposing. Asking for their help and insight also plays to their egos and to their perceptions of themselves as helpful managers and mentors. Lastly, an outside party can be a valuable ally in penetrating and transforming the Old Boys Club. We touched on that here.

Let us know how it turns out Rachael.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Positioning Statement Mandates

2012-04-15T00:10:00-04:00

The specific format used when writing a brand positioning statement may vary from company to company. However, in one way or another, a brand positioning statement should answer the following four questions.

1. Who is the target for brand use?

Brand positioning begins with a clear understanding of the targeted customers. It is useful to describe these customers in terms of their current usage patterns, demographic characteristics, and general goals. Insight into the target's goals is especially important because purchase decisions are rarely motivated by a desire for a brand per se. Rather, there is a belief that having the brand will facilitate achieving some more fundamental goal that is important to the target.

2. Why should the brand be considered (i.e., to what category does the brand belong and what goal does it allow the target to achieve)?

As noted earlier, this question is often answered by invoking membership in a particular category. Such an approach is particularly appropriate when launching a new product, because it links the new product to familiar products and thereby facilitates understanding. As customers' knowledge of the brand grows, the competitive frame may evolve to span several product categories and be defined by usage occasions or users. For example, Ariel, a nonalcoholic wine, might define its competitive set in terms of products that are consumed when both sociability and clear thinking are requisite. Competition might include bottled water and soft drinks, as well as other nonalcoholic wines. Similarly, Waterman pens might be positioned as heirlooms that can be passed on to the next generation, thereby competing with antique furniture and jewelry.

3. Why should the brand be chosen over other alternatives in the competitive set?

A brand must offer a compelling point of difference in relation to other options in the marketplace. Moreover, the firm must make the claimed point of difference believable to the consumer. The simplest approach is to promote a unique product attribute. Thus, Visa may claim that it is the most widely accepted card and reference the number of places that it is accepted around the world as support for that claim.

When the point of difference is more abstract or image-based, support for the claim may reside in more general associations to the company that have been developed over time. Thus, Chanel No. 5 perfume may claim to be the quintessential elegant, French perfume and support this claim by noting the long association between Chanel and haute couture.

Typically, brands focus on a single point of difference, though this point of difference may be an abstraction based on multiple features of the product. For example, BIC might claim that its disposable razors offer greater convenience than other disposable razors. The brand's broad distribution, in-store placement near checkout counters, and low price might all be used to support this claim.

It is important that the point of difference be specific and meaningful. Claims such as "highest quality" or "best value" are vague. What defines high quality or value for one target may mean only moderate quality or value to another. Quality or value should be defined in terms that are meaningful to the target.

When a brand's benefits are at parity with those of the competition, the point of difference might be the depth of insight into consumers' goals in using the product. Consumers often make the inference that if a brand presents an intimate understanding of consumers' goals in using the product, it must also offer a superior way to achieve those goals.

4. How will choosing the brand help the target members accomplish their goal(s)?

The final element of a positioning statement links the brand's point of difference to the target's goal(s), drawing on an understanding of brand essence and category essence. Visa is accepted at more places than any other credit card. This means that Visa customers can shop and travel with the confidence that their card will be accepted. The low price and convenient availability of BIC disposable razors may enable busy people to focus on matters that mean more to them than their razor.

It is important to recognize that the elements of a positioning statement are interrelated. A particular feature or benefit may distinguish the brand when considered against one set of competitors but not another. Further, a point of difference may help accomplish the goals of one target but not another target. Thus, each target requires a distinct positioning; if the same category membership and point of difference are relevant to two targets, these targets should be combined. Moreover, because both competitors and the goals of targeted customers evolve over time, a brand's positioning requires periodic review and updating.

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop