Can the Gap brand be saved?

The all-American brand of the Gap has been under scrutiny over the last several years from Wall Street analysts, branding industry leaders and advertising publications all asking roughly the same question: Can the Gap brand be saved? The topic even came up earlier this year on Gap’s own Facebook discussion board, albeit without much action.

The most recent move by the Gap was to go outside of their agency of record relationship to hire Crispin for their holiday season campaign. A bold move? Yes. The correct move? Well, we’ll have to wait and see. I am fairly certain Crispin will be very creative. However a clever holiday campaign may boost year-end sales, but will it truly save the Gap brand?

No. To truly save their brand, Gap must step outside of their comfort zone and think like a Challenger Brand. (Yes, Gap executives, Brand Spanking® can help even the market leader!) So many other retailers, including those within Gap Inc.’s own brand family, have mimicked them for such a long time, that the consumer can’t distinguish clearly one from the other. And Gap, who was once the market leader, has been standing still while the others have been steadily gaining market share. The Gap brand has become diluted by the same old message that consumers don’t care if they are shopping at Gap, Old Navy, American Eagle or Abercrombie & Fitch. The Gap must break out of the category that they themselves created to take rightful ownership again. They must be bold, and change the rules of the game.

As I sit here nostalgically in my 1988 Gap jean jacket, I am rooting for the Gap brand and begging for them to break the rules and surprise me! Unfortunately, this shift in thinking must come from the top, not from a clever advertising campaign.

Andrea's cogs are turning at 10,000 feet

I might look like I’m not working. But believe me, the cogs are turning furiously. The lungs are working pretty hard too.

Here’s one of the things I’ve come up with so far. The old model of marketing was pretty simple and straightforward: make a product or deliver a service that is predictable, consistent and works as expected, control your costs and sell at a profit. If you attract more customers and sell more stuff, you’ll make more money. But there is something fundamentally flawed with this model given our world today. The basic assumption relies on the principle that stability is the norm - that the “customer” will have the same needs or desires tomorrow as he does today. If that were true, the status quo would indeed be something to protect. And many keep on trying to protect it. No wonder people need the weekends to recharge their batteries. Going to work every day and holding up the dike against a sea of change saps a lot of energy. There’s not much left over to think about a better way to do things.

So at least take the holiday weekend to think about how the world has changed for your customers. Maybe you’ll be able to come up with a better way to help them cope with it.

The first of these two things an agency can learn through primary and secondary research and by firsthand field studies of members of the target audience. The second comes with having worked on branding and marketing campaigns for companies whose products or services are historically commoditized or where the market has been primarily price driven.

But third, and perhaps most important, they need an agency that is not afraid to speak truth to its client; the honest truth about their brand, even if it’s painful to hear. What Challenger Brands need and want most is honesty. Only then can the real work of shaping brands and engaging customers begin.

Challenger Brands have to develop a clear and resonant “voice” and speak with that one voice throughout all communications, internal and external. Good Challenger Brand agencies listen, monitor, help shape and advise until Challenger Brand companies become very, very good at projecting their brands.

Another special service that Challenger Brands need from their agencies is confidence-building support in the face of overriding pressure to conform. Challenger Brands are often pushed to adhere to standard industry practices, compare themselves to the market leader and compete according to unwritten rules that the market leader has established. If the Challenger’s products or services are truly breakthrough innovations, they may even be derided and ridiculed by the market leader whose continued success depends on the status quo.

This is where Challenger Brand agencies really shine. Their task is to reassure Challenger Brands and keep them focused on the prize; whispering affirmations in their ears as bold and provocative branding and marketing strategies are about to be executed.

And this is where true Challenger Brands show their stripes. They work through their fear and follow through.

You’ve no doubt heard about the Golden Age of Advertising. At the risk of being cynical, there is no metal worthless enough to describe what’s happening in this age. I admit it - I watch a lot of television at night, subjecting myself to hours of safely boring commercials that make the shows they interrupt feel like Pulitzer Prize nominees. And thanks to some beautiful media buys and the rotten economy, the same spots run over and over again. And over again. To be fair, production costs are astronomical, and shooting more than one spot a year is no doubt prohibitive. Anyway, even if they had the budget you know they’d do more of the same just to keep it “interesting,” like the unusually unfunny Apple spots with John Hodgman. I especially despise these ads when they’re put on the Internet when all I want is information. I curse the Internet people as well, the greedy punks.

Yeah, there are exceptions, there always are, but the industries with all the marketing bucks are obviously out to hurt me. You know who you are, cars, phones and fast food! If that weren’t enough, there’s always Billy Mays yelling at me about something, even though I know I’m not the target. But I have feelings.

Even Super Bowl commercials have been mostly disappointing. If it weren’t for Budweiser and E-trade, I’d have to watch the game (not really a fan). But come on advertisers, you need to loosen up and at least do something great for this event. It’s the damn Super Bowl!

You know what I yearn for? A campaign like MasterCard’s “Priceless.” Besides being strategically brilliant, it’s always engaging, even when they’re doing promotions. The sheer emotion of it marches on through the years, whether it’s humor or something that gets you in the heart, or in the intellect. Obviously, that’s why it marches on through the years. Bless you, BBDO. Also thanks for the M&M stuff. I always smile.

Okay, I’m done. I’m a child of Doyle Dane Bernbach where I was a copy trainee/ mail room boy, and we were doing Volkswagen (without even showing the logo), Polaroid Camera live on the Tonight Show, Barney’s, and other products that dominated the Clios. Oh, and these ads did one other little thing … created brands that sold like crazy!

Well, it’s time for my nap. I’m turning on the old flat screen.

OK, so Bayer is a huge company with roughly 75,000 employees and many, many important products that probably make our lives better. In fact, its tagline is “Science for a Better Life.” What could be clearer than that?

But, please Bayer marketing people, I beg you to have some consideration for the sensibilities of an innocent, unsuspecting TV watcher (me). I was watching one evening when I started paying attention to a particularly disturbing commercial that showed a vast lawn with a cross-section of the ground beneath teeming with squirmy grubs.

(View the commercial at http://www.bayeradvanced.com/advertising/ Click on ‘Season Long Grub Control’ under TV Commercials in the right-hand column)

It kind of made me sick and I was thinking, “Does one need to be so graphic to sell lawn care pesticides?” But then, as if the visuals weren’t enough, the branding message penetrated my throbbing brain and I realized that the same company who was serving up these writhing insects, ( in high def, no less) was the very same Bayer that made the miracle drug, Aspirin. OMG! I put their stuff in my mouth!

Well, OK. The logical branding consultant in me understands quite well that Bayer Healthcare and Bayer “Other Stuff” are really not the same company. One is a healthcare powerhouse and the other…well, let’s just say, their chemists are focused elsewhere. But nobody watching television is thinking that hard, nor are they making excuses for poorly conceived brand extensions.

My advice? Bayer Advanced, get another name and don’t make the Bayer Aspirin brand manager hold you responsible for otherwise inexplicable tanking sales figures next quarter.

Since all cellular phone services are fundamentally the same, why would a group of people with similar demographic and psychographic profiles favor one over the others? Here’s another example of brand preference. Cellular companies, are you paying attention?

In a 2008 National Report, The Media Audit published a cellular phone study that reveals the demographic profile and media habits among customers of the major carriers are distinct and may warrant different media tactics to attract new customers (http://www.themediaaudit.com ). The study analyzes four of the major carriers - Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, and T-Mobile, as well as 15 additional national and regional cell carriers.

The study found that users of Sprint Nextel wireless are:

• Most likely to be heavy users of radio - 22.7% spend three or more hours listening per day
• More likely to be employed in a blue collar occupation (nearly one in five) or as a business owner/partner or corporate officer - 36% more likely than other cell carrier customers

The same study reveals that users of T-Mobile are:

• Most likely to be heavy Internet users - 43.6% spend three or more hours per day online (22% higher than the national average)
• Younger - 43.7% are between the ages of 18 and 34, and 64.5% are between the ages of 18 and 44.
• More ethnic - 37% more likely to be Hispanic and 35% more likely to be African American compared to the general population.

As for Verizon and AT&T, those users are:

• Among the most affluent - 28.2% of Verizon customers have household incomes over $100,000 while 27.4% of AT&T customers earn the same
• Most likely to be heavy newspaper readers - customers of both carriers are more likely to spend an hour or more per day reading a newspaper

Based on this study, how would you expect each company to shape its messages and what advertising channels do you think they should use? Hmmmm?

Nothing much to say here. No great lesson. Just funny ads that I remember 9 years later. I guess that’s something.

Two young women were invited to the press conference to demonstrate the website for the media on the library’s computers. Both of the women are mothers who are among the primary audience for the site: caregivers who are concerned for the safety of their young children and who need access to resources about protecting their children against possible sexual and physical child abuse.

They told KDKA 1020AM radio that they felt that the website made it easy for them to approach the difficult topic of child abuse in a non-threatening and confidential way so that they could answer some of their questions and concerns in the privacy of their own homes. They commented that the site could also help give a person the courage to actually call A Child’s Place at Mercy so that the first steps to getting help for their child could begin.

Dr. Mary Carrasco and Senator Wayne Fontana at the press conference

Our Creative Director Travis Norris and I were there to make sure everything went well and to answer any questions that might come up. Our clients, Dr. Mary Carrasco, Dr. Susan Nathan and Joan Mills from A Child’s Place at Mercy were also present and answered questions as well.

With handshakes from the Senator and hugs from the Child’s Place ladies, Travis and I walked out into a beautiful sunny afternoon and hopped on the ‘T’ for the ten-minute ride back into town, feeling pretty good.

During the presidential campaign, I watched, actually marveled, at masterful messaging of candidate Obama. Despite my support of another candidate, I couldn’t help but be drawn into the brilliance of the campaign staff, who so deftly applied the Eight Credos of Successful Challenger Brands. I found myself scouring the web to read everything I possibly could to gain that one insight that I could apply to my own little niche — higher ed marketing, specifically business schools.

Now I watch/read the news and I wonder ‘what happened?’ I am now scouring the web for everything I can find so I don’t make the same mistake.

Specifically I am talking about all of the chatter about the President’s economic recovery plan and the “lack of a message.” Nearly every story on the recovery plan includes references to its “lack of message” or “muddled message” or “the president has failed to tell the story to make the recovery plan work in the minds of the American people.”

The unfortunate “tarring and feathering” (yes, I am in Williamsburg!) of Timothy Geithner, blaming him for the “lack of a plan” is not really his fault at all. I have a number of experts around me at the business school and many of them say that Geithner’s details make a lot of sense, that he may even be doing the right thing. But even they say that the problem isn’t the details, it’s that they haven’t come up with a way to communicate those details in a meaningful way!

Score another one for marketing or messaging or perception management. Whatever word or phrase you want to use, it’s obvious. The message DOES matter because it gets people in the right frame of mind to actually pay attention. The flood of details doesn’t give anyone any meaning, it just scares them. And it’s scaring them away and they’re tuning out. And they are left with a sense that this guy doesn’t know what he’s doing. We hear, “Geithner doesn’t give us the feeling that he’s in charge… he doesn’t inspire confidence.”

I don’t intend to blame anyone here or second-guess the President’s handlers (although I guess I am). I am not sure who is to blame, but you would think that the President knows better. Sending in the details guy is not the way to win the hearts and minds. He needed to send someone in with a big idea, one so big that it could mean something to a lot of people or people could project their meaning onto it. Didn’t that work for him before? Our Challenger Brand stopped thinking like one!

You don’t feel details and you don’t inspire with them, especially when the details are kind of boring or don’t sound very appealing or include words like ’sacrifice’ or ‘catastrophe’. And you certainly won’t get people’s attention with them, either. You inspire with a big idea that stops them dead in their tracks. You get them to feel by telling a story that raises the hair on the backs of their necks. And that gets followed with “tell me more…”. Nobody is asking for more. They are asking for a way for them to make sense.

I’m not saying the details don’t matter. They certainly do. But they won’t matter to people not paying attention.

Facella, who currently runs a highly successful consulting company, was personally mentored by the founder, Ray Kroc, and by subsequent CEOs. He has many interesting anecdotes but the crux of the matter for aspiring Challenger Brands who might have “world domination” as their ultimate goal will be his Seven Drivers of Success:

1. Honesty, integrity, and transparency

2. Relationships, trust and mutual respect

3. High standards and a never-be-satisfied culture

4. Values-driven lead­ers who lead by example

5. Courage and risk taking

6. Consistent messag­ing and open com­munications

7. Frequent recogni­tion and rewards

If you’re asking yourself right now, “Hmm…do I do that?”… you have potential!