Branding Strategy Insider

PETA Must Adjust Brand Strategy to Make Fur Fly

What a difference a decade plus four makes. Back in 1994 Naomi, Claudia, Kate and Elle were at the height of their supermodel powers, naked as the day they were born and united in preferring to be that way than wear fur.

Sales of fur had been flat for years and many furriers had closed their doors in despair.

Fashion is, unfortunately, all about change, and today, supermodels are actively clothed in, and sponsored by, the very material they once denounced.

Vogue is filled with the latest celebrities modelling the hottest labels, featuring the finest furs. Designer brands such as Prada, Dolce & Gabbana and Alexander McQueen have all recently featured fur in their run-way collections. Now, high-street fashion brands such as J.Crew are following suit.

More worryingly, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) is beginning to lose its strong influence over the fashion world. Today, its message is sponsored not by Paris or Nicole, but decidedly B-list celebrities such as Heather Mills McCartney and ageing rock band Motley Crue.

Its tactics are growing increasingly predictable and, therefore, ineffective. Creaming Anna Wintour, the fur-loving editor of Vogue, with a tofu pie may have made the headlines, but it was hardly likely to influence her editorial stance.

One Minute Distinct, The Next Generic

I spent last weekend visiting friends in Holland and headed home on Sunday evening from Schiphol Airport. ING has heavily branded itself throughout and the connecting 'jetbridge' that links the departure terminal to the aircraft was one long ad for the firm. 'Let's talk about your future' exclaimed the ads, as I headed for the plane.

I boarded my British Airways flight and dropped gratefully into my seat. Within seconds I was offered a drink and a steaming towel. Having foregone lunch to make the plane, I delved into my bag to find the sandwich I had hurriedly purchased in the airport. It was from a Dutch company called Sanday's Bakeries and the packaging was strangely familiar. In a tight, clean typeface it proclaimed 'All handmade naturally' and continued with the confirmation that each sandwich was 'made in our own kitchen, every day, fresh'. It ended with the handwritten signature of Sanday's boss.

The use of packaging to make clear statements of intent, the emphasis on quality and the handwritten signature of the chief executive are all hallmarks of Pret A Manger. When Pret entered the snack business 20 years ago, the standard approach to packaging was mass-produced and generic - just like the food. Pret's distinctive packaging was an effective way to signal its differentiation and communicate its brand equity. What was all this doing on a very average Dutch sandwich?

The answer is as old as marketing itself. Occasionally a great marketer consults a brand's positioning and then breaks the rules of standard marketing practice. They invent a new way of doing things. In Pret's case, its resolute focus on its core brand values of quality, freshness and being handmade led it to a very different kind of packaging. But last year's brand-specific innovation is this year's industry standard. Pret's success has meant many of its radical approaches have been copied by rivals and gradually subsumed into the standard way most sandwich chains do business. Where once there was brand-based differentiation, now there is just generic parity.

Opinionated Branding Proves Powerful

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield were long-time friends and hippies when they established Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. True to the hippie-dom of which they were a part back in 1978, their brand continues to be driven by a well-informed social and ecological conscience. Some months ago, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream released its anti-nuclear ice cream. A fun novelty for some; a responsible message of the most serious type for others. The ice cream sold out in days. Visit Ben and Jerry's website and you’ll discover another expression of this corporate responsibility in action. “Help Lick Global Warming With Ben & Jerry’s New Flavour” is the invitation issued alongside the flavor sensation known as Fossil Fuel. The “sweet cream ice cream with a yummy chocolate fudge swirl and handfuls of chocolate cookie pieces” even comes complete “with four species of chocolatey dinosaurs to unearth”. Buying the flavor supports Ben & Jerry’s global ‘Lick Global Warming’ campaign which raises awareness and money for climate change research.

The Ben & Jerry brand is based on the founders’ opinions about business, society, the environment, and the way in which all three benefit each other. And, even though the brand has changed hands and is under the directorship of Unilever, Ben and Jerry’s forthrightness and its social mission remain driving forces.

Richard Branson painted “No Way BA” on his entire fleet of aircraft when he characteristically made a clear display of animosity towards his formidable adversary, British Airways. This was Branson’s answer to British Airways subterfuge, BA having been caught making free with a Virgin database by mailing false messages to Virgin customers to secure their business.

Strategic Pricing's 3 Keys

A survey from the Chartered Institute of Marketing suggests British marketers are lost when it comes to setting prices for their products.

According to the report, the most extensively used technique for pricing was 'face-to-face research'.

A report from consultants McKinsey observed that many firms set prices based solely on anecdotal evidence.

You will struggle to find a marketing textbook that defines the 'face-to-face' approach or explains the role of anecdotal evidence in marketing decisions because, of course, both are hallmarks of marketing managers who don't have the faintest idea.

Times are changing, however. The introduction of the euro, in particular, has ensured that most European marketing managers have been faced with a huge number of simultaneous price changes and very few 'anecdotal' guidelines to help structure their thinking.

There are three key constructs to consider when setting a price. The first task for any pricing decision is to determine the value of the offering to the customer. Inevitably, any market research into this area will reveal that different customers can derive very different utility from the same product or service and thus a hallmark of a good pricing strategy is that it is usually combined with the parsimonious segmentation of the market.

Listen to Consumers, Not Marketing Gurus

A variety of newspapers and trade magazines run a piece themed 'Campaign of the Week'.

The format is probably familiar to you. A senior marketer names their favourite advertising campaign of the moment and explains why it works as a piece of marketing communications.

For example, I recently read a marketing director extol the virtues of the latest campaign for Levi's. She was taken with the "incredibly haunting quality of the ad, noted that it "held my attention for the whole minute and concluded that the campaign would "engage people with the brand on an altogether different level than in previous campaigns".

A marketer in another article found the ads for X-Box "clearly adult in tone and "deeply disturbing".

The problem with these reviews is that they display a fundamental ignorance of the prime directive of marketing. The first stage in becoming a good marketer is to appreciate the difference between being a producer of products and a consumer of products. As a marketer your job is centered on connecting the latter to the former.

When marketers forget this essential dichotomy and start reviewing ads, products and prices as if they were consumers, they become marketing gurus, and there is no place for gurus in marketing. It is simply impossible to step into the shoes of a consumer for a few moments to review the quality of a marketing output.

Brand Resurrection - Never Out Of Reach

For lessons in branding there are few richer case studies than Laura Ashley. In the 50s Laura Ashley began silk-screening her own designs onto scarves and napkins. Drawing her inspiration from Victorian images, her work was unusual and sold well at John Lewis and Heal's. She quickly became associated with floral designs, a country idyll and a brand new vision of the past.

Like most founders of great brands, Ashley was a unique woman whose vision encompassed creativity and business.

In the 60s production was moved to Wales, Ashley's birthplace, and diversified into furnishings and Victorian dresses. In 1969 the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid opened across Britain; co-star Katharine Ross, in her vintage dresses, started a fashion sensation that Ashley's designs spoke directly to. Five hundred stores, from Paris to New York, now offered the world a new fashion brand.

Ashley died in 1985, but the success of the brand continued. Laura Ashley was floated on the stock market that year, turnover reached £300m and production was expanded.

The death of a founder is a big challenge for any brand, as they are usually the physical representation of it, the creative spirit behind product development and the protector of the brand equity.

The key lessons for marketers are that they need to be aware of the effect this can have and must understand that a negative impact on brand strategy rarely has an immediate effect on the bottom line. When brands stray from their equity the effects on turnover and profitability are usually delayed, but always imminent.

Identity Before Strategy: Doom for Rebrands

Rebranding efforts are tricky things. Once in a very blue moon they can prove to be the turnaround that the management team was hoping for.

Sports brand Puma, luxury brand Gucci and the gurus at Apple all provide notable examples of great brand revitalizations during the 90’s.

The strategic lessons from these turnarounds do not emanate from what these brands did, but rather what they did not do.

First, they did not change their names or logos.
Second, they did not announce that they were about to save, reposition or do anything particularly radical to their brand.
Third, they were patient; each brand took a decade or more to turn around.
Fourth, they did it in-house without depending on identity consultants to assist them.
Fifth, they did not recruit senior thinkers from established consumer marketing companies to replicate branding strategies from fast moving consumer goods (FMCG); they did it their own, brand-specific, way.
Sixth, any changes in ad strategies and spend came years after the initial turnaround had begun.

A great brand strategy does not start with name changes, new logos, multi-million dollar ad campaigns or bold predictions from chief executives.

Sensible Brand Research Has Only One Formula

I recently completed consulting work for two US companies. The first, which we will call Midwest Stores, is a big grocery store chain. A year ago it repositioned its retail brand based on the findings of a conjoint study.

Conjoint research is very revealing. It allows a company to find out what consumers most want from its operation. In this case, Midwest asked 2000 customers to rate the importance of price, products and service.

While all were important, Midwest's discerning customer base actually valued product range above price and service.

Midwest repositioned accordingly, with the slogan 'Every brand under the sun', and increased prices slightly to offset increased distribution and marketing costs. However, sales have shown no discernible increase.

The second company, which we will call Baxters Yoghurt, also had problems with sales. Baxters is a mid-sized dairy, which has lost more than 20% market share in the past three years and was unsure what to do about it.

Its ad agency conducted focus groups with existing customers, which revealed a growing sense of dissatisfaction. Everything from flavours, quality and product sizes to its latest ads were cited as reasons for unhappiness.

Baxters marketing director was unsure what strategic decisions to take to restore the brand's health. There were so many issues and, worse, the managing director was openly dismissive of the 'fuzzy' focus group results.

Both companies were struggling because their market research was deficient, but ironically each held the solution to the other's dilemma. Midwest is a classic example of a company that solely uses quantitative data.

Word of Mouth: Marketing's Essence

The concept of word of mouth (WOM) has been generally ignored by practitioners and academics alike. While its power has been acknowledged for more than 50 years, marketers regarded WOM as a happy accident and an occasional fortuitous addition to their campaigns. But times are changing and a slew of recent marketing success stories suggest that WOM may prove to be the making or breaking of many brands in the years to come.

Advertising has traditionally been the closest marketers have come to WOM. Teaser campaigns attempted to stimulate it, while classic executions for products like WeightWatchers have tried to simulate WOM on the screen.

Research suggests, however, that advertising's brush may be too broad to create successful WOM impact. According to Renee Dye from consulting firm McKinsey & Co, 67% of consumer sales are influenced by WOM. However, she points out that to truly harness the power of WOM marketers must reach a vanguard of consumers who inhabit the first fringe of the adoption curve.

Marketers must stop thinking of their communication efforts as a single transaction (ad impacts market) and attempt instead to create waves of communication that spread from a small number of lead users through consumer-to-consumer interaction.

The process is tricky, but agencies are springing up to help clients.

Price: Friend and Foe of Brands

People buy a brand because it stands for something. People buy commodities because they are the cheapest alternative available. It is worth pointing out that brands are not created that way, they all begin life as commodities.

Once upon a time Microsoft was just software, Nike was just running shoes and BMW was just a car manufacturer from Bavaria.

The challenge for any marketer is to expedite a transformation and take a commodity, like water, and turn it into a brand, like Evian. This process is called 'brand building' and involves associating a product with values and meanings that the target audience aspire to.

Advertising, sponsorships, endorsement, packaging and a thousand other techniques can be used to link product to meaning and thereby transform a commodity into a brand. Eventually the brand is built and consumers no longer consider it a commodity and are prepared to pay much more for it as a result.

Many marketers do not appreciate that this process can also be reversed.