In 1973 I graduated with a marketing degree, something few had heard of. My father was appalled, as I had set out to get an accounting degree, but had been waylaid by some new age nonsense that would not get me a job.
Several years later, after quenching my wanderlust, I went looking for a job back in Australia. At that time, marketing was becoming important in a couple of areas, the food industry, and FMCG more generally, being the leader.
I was lucky and scored a job in an environment which would give rise to one of the (formerly) great Australian brands; Meadow Lea.
Brands had become important through the 20th century in food, as they were a mark of quality, and reassurance that there were no nasties in there that would terminally stunt your growth. Pretty important in food that you have not grown yourself, and it is where the big brands emerged, creating the cycle of scale.
Large volumes enables capital expenditure, and advertising, which exploded when TV emerged in the 50’s, creating massive consumer brands that dominated the landscape of our lives. The corollary is that there were also many smaller brands, yapping around the edges, stealing a crust here and there, and generally keeping the big blokes honest.
Supermarkets built their scale for the same reasons, delivering price and convenience to consumers, then progressively they set out to capture some of the proprietary margin of the big brands by leveraging their distribution muscle, by launching house brands in the 80’s. The very first one was a ‘No Frills’ margarine, launched by Franklins in Sydney, supplied by what became Meadow Lea Foods.
Then came the marketing ‘Big Bang’, the arrival of the internet.
I remember seeing the first fax around 1983, and thinking ‘this will change the world’ and it did, but not how I expected, and the fax was nothing compared to the disruption 20 years later.
Suddenly there were thousands of ways to communicate, TV remained, and still does remain an important vehicle, but like an aged boxing champion, is unable to deliver the impact of his youth against a horde of more agile, and stronger contenders who learn on the job every day.
The big brand owners, not wanting to miss out on this new wave of communication channels chucked money and their established ways of doing things at them, and wondered why they were being ignored. At the same time, supermarkets doubled down on housebrands, setting out to market their retail brands as someone you could trust to deliver quality and integrity, while consumers recognised that health regulations made putting nasties in food products a thing of the past.
Who needs brands anymore?
Well, the answer to that question is just about anyone who needs to offer a sense of security, certainty of performance, and a guarantee that they will stand behind their products performance, to their customers and potential customers. That means anyone pushing the established boundaries of production, distribution, or technology.
Obviously Google, Facebook, Apple, et al fall into this category, and they have built huge global brands in less than 20 years, but those brands look nothing like those of my early years.
They have been built using new channels, as well as reimagining the old ones and executing at scale in ways unimaginable to incumbents. Apple is now the most successful bricks and mortar retailer in the world, when measured on the retailers own key KPI, margin per square foot of retail space, Amazon Go, and Whole Foods are rethinking FMCG retailing, and their bookstores are popping up in places where Dymocks, Borders, et al closed down a decade ago.
The challenge is that the new marketers emerging now have no idea of how to really build a real brand. FMCG brands are largely irrelevant, so that training ground has gone, the new places to get marketing experience is in tech, and financial services. Tech is building brands despite themselves, simply because they are replacing the old ways with new ones, and financial services, well, look how puny and irrelevant their brands are in the face of profit pressures, and simply nobody will believe them anymore.
Trust is zero.
Brands cost money to build, and take time building them is an investment in the future, and will not pay off until the future arrives. Unless you have the skills now, the future is looking bleak.
Fortunately there are a few old heads around who still remember, and recognise the ‘4 P’s’ still apply, and a few new heads, not seduced by the newest, shiny tech tool that skates across the surface of brand building
Brands are everywhere, without them, chaos will prevail, but to build one today, you need to be smarter than the next bloke, not just be lucky enough to have more resources and distribution scale. Genuine, creative and forward looking marketing is getting another lease of life.
Call me when you need a dose of invaluable experience.
Header cartoon courtesy Tom Fishburn at www.marketoonsist.com
