Jan 6, 2010 | Branding, Marketing
Ironic isn’t it, Tiger Woods has had his squeeky clean image trashed, and in the process has dropped hundreds of millions in endorsements, but his profile has never been higher. Gossip columns, serious discussion in the business pages, piles of stuff on the net from academic analysis to jokes (some pretty funny), surely there are those out there whose products do not depend on the endorsement of the moral right.
The bloke might have his brains wired to the wrong spot, but he is a seriously great athlete, a cross-racial/cultural icon, and he commands attention, what do you want in a spokesman?.
If I was trying to build a brand of mens grooming product, a mid price muscle car, rugged menswear, and several others, I would be getting out my cheque-book while the price was down, and the exposure was up, (‘scuse the pun)
The communication options to be leveraged are terrific, advertising is almost sure to go viral, and I can almost see it, although it may not do a lot for Tiger’s stated aspiration of saving his marriage, although the chances of that would have to be pretty thin, and I suspect of value only to the spin doctors.
Dec 3, 2009 | Branding, Marketing
Building a brand is about the consistency of action thought, and expression over a long period of time, and only the CEO can ensure that this happens.
The CEO must be the chief brand manager, as the brand is the business, it is not the packaging, or advertising, it is everything that a consumer sees, feels and consumes.
This also opens the question to boards, “Do you have the right CEO”?
Nov 18, 2009 | Branding, Change, Marketing
Market research now has a pretty sophisticated set of tools, all sorts of ways to tell you what to do, to provide a crutch for decision making, to take away the responsibility for making a courageous decision.
However, it boils down to the option of qualitative, collecting behavioral patterns, and quantitative collecting numbers.
Many years ago, as the one responsible for the marketing of Ski yogurt in Australia, I struggled with the reality that we were number two in the Australian market, just ahead of a swag of alternatives and the leader had nearly three times our share. Whatever we did, however much we spent, the number did not change much. One day, in a supermarket talking to a young Mum buying yogurt in a 1kg container, I noticed she had to use both hands to pick up the round container of Ski, complicated by the fact that her youngster was insisting on being carried. The solution was blindingly obvious, use a rectangular container, she could pick it up with one hand, and the side benefit was that it now fitted in the door of a domestic fridge, and gave retailers better shelf space efficiency.
The result of the launch of the new rctangular pack was a huge increase in Ski’s market share, and an appetite for innovation that enabled several other ideas to hit the market, resulting in leadership in a relatively short time.
The lesson is that the quantitative data did not tell us this stuff, it told us consumers, both the ones who preferred Ski, and those whose loyalty was to Yoplait, the market leader, were happy with the product, loved the taste, consistency, packaging, and so on, but the approval of the product just did not translate into sales beyond a modest market share. However, the behavioral insight coming from just watching how the product was handled, qualitative data, gave us the insight, it answered a question we had not thought to ask, and with which the consumer had no experience, as all tubs to that point were round, and nobody had suggested any alternative.
Nov 12, 2009 | Branding, Management, Marketing
It is easy to create something, post it on u-tube and sit back and hope it goes “viral” giving you a turbo charged marketing program for not much money.
This rarely happens, as the punters know an ad when they see one.
The real challenge is to first identify those who love your product, and have the propensity to shout about your services, and set about delighting them, then they may send your message viral, but even if they just talk about it over the back fence to their neighbor, they will be your marketing department. Word of mouth, around forever, is really just person to person viral marketing, and we always knew it worked, it is just that now we have person to potentially millions, and we think it should scale up arithmetically, but it doesn’t.
There is not much use telling those who do not care, or who do not care enough to do anything positive, or are satisfied where they are, so focus your attention and passion on the few who will make the difference.
Nov 11, 2009 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
November 10 was the 40th birthday of “Sesame Street” perhaps the most influential television program ever produced, and it still brings adults a laugh, amongst the serious messages to kids.
I noticed early in the day that Google had Big Bird on their masthead, but did not know why, then about lunchtime, the Cookie Monster appeared, then later, the whole gang, by which time, I had realised the significance. This brought a smile, but more important, engaged me, a 58 year old bloke, with their brand in a way I would not have thought possible.
Search engines are now pretty much all the same, they all do a good job of finding stuff, but only Google has become a verb! This is because they have done a superb job of engaging their consumers around the world in a range of ways, and have innovated relentlessly to ensure they remain the first point of call on the net for most.
The determination creativity, and discipline of this effort is exemplified by the attention to detail that must have gone into someone dreaming up the idea of changing of the masthead three times during the day. It is easy to do, very hard to think of, but hugely engaging to anyone who opened Google on the 10th, probably half the connected world.
Nov 9, 2009 | Branding, Innovation, Marketing
Every brand to be successful has two dimensions.
- Generic attributes, those things it must do well to survive in its category. A car must have 4 wheels, be reliable, and not leak in the rain, a watch must tell the time, accurately.
- Differentiators, those characteristics that distinguish the product from all others, the thing a group of customers values, that creates loyalty & preference. These can be physical, and emotional, and most successful brands combine both.
A Rolls Royce is not a Hyundi, yet they are both cars, they both provide reliable transport, and have 4 wheels, but the differentiators, for which some are prepared to pay enormous amounts are what makes the brand. A swatch is not a Rollex, but they are both watches, just different types of watch that appeal to different people for different reasons.
A brand is not a brand without the distinctive characteristics, it does not matter how much advertising is spent, without the differentiators, it is just like all the others.
