Feb 24, 2021 | Branding, Marketing
Building a brand that has longevity, one that engages and serves consumers over time, while delivering returns to the owner of the brand is a really, really difficult exercise, one that very few get right. Sadly, when it is done right, over time, the essential elements of the brand become forgotten as new people move in, and too often fail to respect or even understand the foundations, and ego takes over.
They do something different, as that is what they think they must do to make their name, and they completely stuff the brand up.
The secret of a great brand is that there is no secret.
No silver bullet, no checklist for greatness, just time, experimentation, investment, and a mental picture of the perfect outcome, for the customer.
By delivering the customer a perfect experience, the one they were promised, and doing it over and over again, at competitive levels of price and service, and with humility, the owner of the brand benefits.
However, there is a very consistent attribute of those brands that are successful.
Stories.
We humans evolved with stories.
We remember, understand, and relate to them.
The power of the story resides in the emotional engagement it generates, by making it personal.
Many years ago, I was lucky to be around as the Meadow Lea brand evolved. The brand went from an also ran in a highly contested and rapidly growing market, to dominating market leader over the course of several years. Unfortunately, I can claim little part in that evolution greater than an engaged observer, a messenger boy with an occasionally audible opinion.
The Meadow Lea story started in the late 1970’s, yes, some of us were alive then. The regulations that ensured margarine was nasty grey stuff that tasted as nasty as it looked, courtesy of the dairy industry lobby, had been removed. Women were entering the workforce in droves, they were educated, ambitious, and driven, but crippled by the accepted mindset that their role was to stay at home, cook, clean, look after the kids, while hubby earnt the money and was basically absent. Meanwhile they were working as hard as men, or often harder at whatever job they had. The juggling was enormous, as was the strain, and as a result they were sleep deprived and ignored.
Sounds positively medieval, but it was only 45 years ago.
This strong desire to be recognised and valued was recognised in the research we were doing, incremental pieces of the brand jigsaw were being fitted together, the result being the simple recognition that women, who did 99% of the shopping, cleaning, and child rearing, needed to be recognised for the backbreaking effort. They wanted to be congratulated for simply surviving, let alone thriving. So, we said it in the advertising.
‘You ought to be congratulated’.
This simple phrase captured the competing driving forces in women’s lives at the time in a few simple words and jingle, backed up by memorable executions that evolved over the following 5 years.
It was the story women were telling themselves.
Later, the idiots that bought the business for its profitability and market position, killed the golden goose by failing to understand the mosaic which made up the brand. They took the easy way out, redirecting the money that should have been spent on maintaining the brand, ensuring it continued to evolve with those who were making the purchase choice, into the pockets of supermarkets.
Meadow Lea is now nothing more than a few tubs on a supermarket shelf. It has gone full circle, but I cannot help wondering if a revival was possible. We still all need to feel valued, to be congratulated for something, even if it is just surviving the crap that was 2020.
Having a story for your brand is a key part of offering the hook with which a consumer can engage.
Take the ‘about us’ page on almost every website I see. Nobody really cares that your grandfather started the business in 1934, and that your father and uncle followed him, and you are now the boss. This sort of story, which everyone uses on their website, is all about you.
Nobody really cares, except your mother.
You must make the story about them, the customer.
Not easy.
Understanding the ‘stories’ of your key customer and potential customer audiences, means you can shape the way you communicate, the words, tone, and the way you seek to shape their behaviour.
To do all that, you need a detailed understanding of who they are. You need to understand their ‘persona’.
When you seek to alter someone’s behaviour, the easiest way is to ‘piggyback’ the altered behaviour onto the existing beliefs and practises, just altering them slightly, which avoids the perception of risk that comes with any change we humans seek to implement.
When you know them well, when they say ‘this is for me’ to themselves, then your task of getting them to deviate slightly in your favour is easier.
Header cartoon credit: Gapingvoid.com with thanks for another visual representation of the words used in this post.
Feb 19, 2021 | Branding, Marketing
We human beings are hard wired to be social, to belong to a group that reflects in one way or another, the view we have of ourselves.
We belong to a family group, for better or worse, then many ‘satellite’ groups of varying importance to us.
A brand is the flag of a group to which we may belong, aspire to join, have no interest in at all, or indeed, may hold in contempt.
Buying a product with a brand is a signal that we are a part of that group. If it is a brand of yoghurt, it is probably a pretty loose group, the alternatives are almost as good, price and availability on shelf play a significant role in the choice. By contrast, buying an expensive branded handbag, a tailored and branded suit, or an expensive car means a whole lot more. We are saying overtly to others, we are a part of that group, holding the perceived values of the group as being personally important.
For those marketing a brand, the challenge is to find those who may be interested, and then to remove all the friction that may stop them becoming a part of the brand group, assuming they meet the ‘brand qualification’ standards. For example, unless you have a lot of money, you will not be admitted to the Louis Vuitton handbag owners group, or the Rolls Royce owners club.
There are some tried and true ways of engaging ‘brand members’.
For example, describe the members using a noun, rather than a verb. Describing a ‘brand member’ as a ‘user’ is more effective than saying they use the brand. Simple, more personal, and it makes the invitation more compelling.
Encouraging someone to take an action they may not have otherwise taken is also simple. Suggesting that ‘75% of people like you do this,’ dramatically increases the chances that your target will also do the action you require. Being told that number by someone they know, and trust is a powerful catalyst, even when they know that person is just a paid celebrity of some sort.
For the owner of the brand, it enables more specific communication that is likely to resonate with current and potential owners, attracting those who are not currently ‘users’ and cementing the value of being a user to those already in the club. This enables more productive use of marketing funds, and greater margins.
Usually there is a trade-off between volume and margin, very few brands can pull off the double of high volume and high margins. The only one I can think of is Apple with their iPhone, that still has 85% of the profitability of the mobile phone market on the back of their astonishing ability to get people to pay a significant premium for the device.
Building a brand is a tough, long term task, at which few succeed.
Nov 16, 2020 | Branding, Marketing
What is the one word, perhaps two, that best defines and communicates the promise your product delivers.
This is not an easy thing to define, but when you do, it is a powerful ‘moat’ around your brand that insulates you from competitive pressure.
However, like any moat, it needs to be maintained, renewed, modernised, or it will fill with weeds, and be less effective at repelling invaders.
The best array of examples I can think of come from the auto market.
BMW: Performance. Volvo: Safety. Toyota: Reliability. Ferrari: Design. Rolls Royce: Luxury.
There are a few more from other domains that come easily to mind. Apple: Different. Coca Cola: Refreshment, and from my own experience, Ski yogurt: Fruit. Meadow Lea: Congratulations. These two Australian examples are both now eroded to zilch, through 25 years of marketing naivety, neglect, and commercial stupidity. They are a powerful reminder of the need for constant maintenance.
Once you have isolated the word, it can be used to drive all your communication, in all its forms, in all media, down to the way in which the livery on the delivery truck is designed, the way the phone is answered, and the detail at the bottom of an email.
In relation to StrategyAudit, I would like the word to be ‘Wisdom’ but that is probably for others to determine.
Header credit: Once again, I am indebted to Hugh MacLeod at www.gapingvoid.com
Oct 21, 2020 | Branding, Communication
Almost every ‘About us’ dropdown on websites is, as expected, about the owner of the website.
Who started the company, where they went to school, how they came to be in Sydney, Seattle, or Bullamakanka, how great you are, and some soppy stuff about your story. How you pulled yourself out of adversity, and became successful, all meant to build empathy.
Well, mostly it fails badly.
Why?
People are not really interested in your story. They may listen, may even feel for you, but what they are really interested in is what you can do for them, what useful information you can provide, what problem you solve, and the impact of that solution on their lives.
Why else would they be on your website?
When they arrive for a look, you have only a few seconds to engage them, wasting those precious seconds by talking about yourself does not seem to me to be too smart!
So, make your ‘About Us’ page really about them
How you can solve the problem they have, how and why working with you and your product will deliver them success.
Go through the bio’s of employees you may have on the page and do the same thing. What is it that each person brings to the table that solves the problem the potential customer.
Focussing on yourself might create a little empathy, but that is well short of genuine interest and a willingness to give you money to solve a problem they have.
Call me assistance thinking about this stuff.
Sep 30, 2020 | Branding, Marketing
Any marketing activity falls somewhere on a continuum between tactical and strategic.
Most are trying to generate activity and profit today, as well as investing in your brand for the long term.
Getting the balance wrong is delivering your brand to the slaughterhouse.
The competitive world we live in now puts increasing pressure on tactical activity, at the expense of strategic. No marketing budget is infinite, therefore choices are made, every day between the tactical and strategic.
As the pressure has increased over the 45 years I have been doing this, I observe the move towards tactical, reflected in almost every product category I can think of. Once you get addicted to the tactical, it is like crack cocaine, very hard to break away.
You learn that throwing money at the problem solves it, for now, so when it comes around again, you repeat the action. It worked last time, and the long term is somebody else’s problem.
As a young marketer in FMCG, the ‘Friday afternoon call’ was a constant threat. A buyer from one of the supermarket gorillas who needed to put some cash into their co-op advertising pool for the week would phone. They would open the conversation by saying the sales manager was out, and he had a problem only I could solve by committing to a promotion of some sort that involved a Co-Op advertising payment. To decline, it was made clear, threatened the distribution of the brand concerned in his chain, and he was sure the Sales manager would not thank me for that. By the way, it was 4.45 pm, and the ‘opportunity’ closed in 5 minutes, so he needed an immediate answer.
The ultimate in tactical activity.
There was not an outcome of any value to the business I worked for from accepting this blackmail, just a downside to be avoided. We might have delivered a few extra pallets of product, but the net price we could invoice was often below anything that was sensible. Also, it consumed resources that had been earmarked for activity that would build brand equity for the long term.
Meadow Lea margarine in the late 70’s had four times the market share of its nearest competitor, in a booming and crowded margarine market. This share was based not just on a very good product, coupled with aggressive and smart sales management, but on consistent, and brilliant brand building activity over a sustained period. A decade later, after the business had been acquired by people who did not understand the dynamics of a brand, Meadow Lea had crawled back to the pack. The total size of the market had also shrunk.
The reason was the move from strategic investment in the brand to tactical activity to keep retail buyers happy.
Digital has injected steroids into this tactical explosion.
Marketers, so called only because that is what is on the door of their office, take the easy way out, and go tactical at the expense of strategic.
Don’t get me wrong, tactical impact is very important, but in isolation from the considerations of the strategic, it is brand suicide. There must be a balance between the activity necessary for today, and the activity now necessary to ensure the long term health of the brand, and in turn, its ability to deliver commercial sustainability.
Want the immediate hit? Spend all your resources on tactical activity.
Want to live a long and profitable life? Make sure you leave some for later.
Jul 1, 2020 | Branding, Marketing
My go to marketing guru, Albert Einstein said: ‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another, and relocated’. This has become known as the first rule of thermodynamics.
Perhaps ‘Value’ has a similar characteristic?
Recently I needed to buy a pair of sunglasses. I wanted polarised ones, that sat on my nose easily, and did not look ‘dorky,’ whatever dorky is. I went to a specialist sunglasses retailer in a shopping centre near where I live. The cheapest that met my very broad specifications was over $150. Too much, so I went into a pharmacy a few doors away that had sunglasses, and bought a perfectly good pair of polarised, non dorky glasses for $30.
My instinctive reaction was that the specialist retailer was a rip off merchant, but on reflection, he was not catering to mean old buggars like me, he was catering to the young hip crowd, who saw value in the brand name, and fancy curving design. There was value for them in the extra $120, the value of being seen in an expensive pair of sunnies, the feeling it gave them of being able to pay that much for something to sit on next week,
The value was not counted in the dollars, it was in another set of forms, ones I did not value in this instance.
There is some sort of scale in our heads that measures ‘value’ to us, which will differ for each individual, and set of circumstances. The scale goes from the pure utility derived from the product, to an entirely emotive response.
The specialist retailer was not selling just sunnies, they were selling a feeling, and a sales experience, the street cred that comes from an expensive brand. The sense of ‘value’, whatever it may be made up of, makes the extra $120 for some, a good investment. That feeling comes from the context of the sale in the specialist retailer, combined with the investment made by the brand owners in building their own ‘brand story’.
In every purchase there is a trade-off between pure utility, and the price paid. The point of intersection is the value a buyer sees in that purchase at that time. A brand is the carrier of that value.
The pharmacist who got my money was just supplying me with the utility of sunnies. I wanted only to keep the glare of the sun out of my eyes, branding added no emotional value at that time, the value to me was entirely in the utility.
