Branding Strategy Insider

BP: Beyond Petroleum or Broken Promise?

A brand is a source of a promise to its target audiences. Of greater importance than making the promise is keeping it. BP (Beyond Petroleum) promises energy that “doesn’t damage the environment.”

Indeed, BP does stand for “beyond petroleum,” not because of BP’s promise to produce energy that doesn’t damage the environment, but rather because an environmental and economic disaster of this magnitude can only accelerate the race to cleaner, more renewable alternative energy sources. BP has sounded the clarion to move away from petroleum in the most dramatic way.

This preventable disaster has called into question BP’s sincerity in delivering on its “green” brand promise. Its quickness to pass the buck to Transocean, Halliburton or government regulators only exacerbates the problem.  And its inability to stop the problem quickly demonstrates its unwillingness or inability to adequately plan for or address such disasters.  Finally, its slow, carefully controlled, legally crafted statements and responses to questions only add to the cynicism of the public toward BP.

Sponsorship Should Not Be A Random Act

Somewhere inside the Istanbul headquarters of Turkish Airlines there must be a very large wall. And on that wall are plastered random images of people and organisations that all have two things in common. First, they have absolutely no association with Turkey or its national airline.

Second, they are extremely expensive. I have not seen the wall, but one would imagine an arbitrary assortment of movie stars, supermodels and famous sporting clubs. Written across the top of this wall a large banner probably reads “Turkish Airlines Potential Sponsorship Partners”.

Then, it seems, once a year Turkish Airlines embarks on “marketing planning” by inviting its chairman, Hamdi Topcu, to put on the ceremonial blindfold, stand 20 feet from the wall and throw the all-important Turkish Airlines “Dart of Truth”. The airlines marketing team then rush to the wall to discover who or what they will recruit for the coming year’s sponsorship strategy.

In 2009, the dart landed on movie star Kevin Costner. Despite the fact that Costner had never been to Turkey, ever flown Turkish Airlines, or had ever expressed even the most passing interest in Turkish Airlines - the “Dart of Truth” was infallible. Costner was contacted out of the blue, and paid a small fortune to fly to Istanbul and make a series of TV and print ads in which he was made to “feel like a star” on Turkish Airlines business class service.

Building Brands With The Senses

Most marketing plans appeal to only two senses: sight and hearing. Why so limited? How come almost all marketing and brand building concentrates on two senses when we know appealing to all five is likely to double brand awareness and strengthen the impression a brand leaves on its audience?

Several surveys document our olfactory sense as probably the most impressionable and responsive of the five senses. Smells invoke memories and appeal directly to feelings without first being filtered and analyzed by the brain, which is how the remaining four senses are processed. We all recognize and are emotionally stimulated by, say, the scent of freshly cut grass, brackish sea air, or the perfume of roses. I'm convinced any car lover drinks in the smell of a new car.

Some are getting the hang of sensory appeal. Some supermarkets in Northern Europe are connected to bakeries by hundreds of meters of pipeline. The pipes carry the aroma of fresh bread to the stores' entrances. The strategy works. Passers-by are struck with hunger and drawn inside the shop. A major British bank introduced freshly brewed coffee to its branches with the intention of making customers feel at home. The familiar smell relaxes the bank's customers, not an emotion you'd normally associate with such an establishment.

Can A Premium B2B Brand Introduce A Lesser Brand?

Today, another request from the BSI Email Bag. Deron, a VP of Marketing from Chattanooga, Tennessee asks...

"Brad, good afternoon. I was on Branding Strategy Insider looking for some B2B industrial marketing case studies where companies that had a premium brand introduced a "lesser" brand and were: (1) successful; and (2) unsuccessful.  If you know of any such case studies, I would appreciate that information -- thanks!"

Deron, thanks for writing. While it is generally difficult for a brand to move some of its products or services upscale or downscale successfully without repositioning or detracting from the original brand, most examples of this (successful and not so successful) are in the consumer products realm. I know of no B2B case studies on this topic. Stay tuned to BSI -- perhaps one of the marketers in our audience can help? I also suggest checking with the Harvard Business School Press to see if they have a case study or two on this topic.

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Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Place Branding: A Two Day Master Workshop

The Blake Project delivers brand education workshops around the world. We also work with municipalities in helping them release the full potential of their brands. With these experiences we are pleased to offer an in depth two day workshop on Place Branding with an optional third day consulting intensive.

This workshop is delivered at your organization or venue of choice.

Key stakeholders in the branding decision making process – mayor’s offices, visitors & convention bureaus, economic development councils, business improvement districts, business leaders and others will find this engaging and instrumental in their brand building process.

Day 1

1. I.         Branding introduction
   1. What is branding?
   2. Why is it important?
   3. How does it apply to places?
2. II.         The five drivers of customer brand insistence
   1. Awareness
   2. Relevant differentiation
   3. Value
   4. Accessibility
   5. Emotional connection
   6. How these drivers relate to place brands -- examples

Apple: Brand of Profits

Last week, Apple overtook Microsoft as the world’s most valuable technology company. How has it managed to be so successful? Pundits love to say “innovation”, but if you go beyond the generic answer and break down the specific steps in Apple’s business model, an intriguing picture emerges.

Let’s take the iPhone, and follow the stream of money from its origin of an initial consumer purchase all the way to the ocean that represents Apple’s incredible profits.

Our journey begins with a consumer who heads into O2, Vodafone or another network provider to purchase a new iPhone 3GS. If Apple was any normal company it would now expect to give away up to 15% of its revenues in margin for the retailer. But Apple’s brand strength combined with the latent threat of its own retail stores means it usually sells its products to retailers for virtually the same price as they will charge their consumers. That’s right - zero profit for the retailer. Apple can do this because it is a destination brand that every retailer wants and one that often confers lucrative peripheral sales.

Of Global Branding and Strategic Intent

Today, another request from the BSI Email Bag. Paskaline, a marketer from Windhoek, Namibia asks…

"Please help me with this question. If we were to look at a global brand like Coca-Cola, what would its strategic intent be and how would it be manifested in its output and communication?"

Paskaline, thanks for your question. Assuming an organization is functional and not dysfunctional, its outward behaviors should shed some light on its strategic intent. Watch what it has done historically. Read its annual reports. Read its press releases. Read its "About Us" section on its website. Note any statements or signals about changes in direction. Other than intended changes in direction, its past behaviors should be good predictors of future behaviors and indications of its strategic intent. Another way to ascertain the strategic intent is to ask someone from the the company's strategy & planning department about the company's strategic intent. Maybe that person or a more senior officer, such as the company's president or CEO, is speaking at a conference. Ask that person in that forum what his or her company's strategic intent is. Regarding Coca-Cola, "pervasive penetration" is very important. It wants to be "within an arm's reach of each person's desire" -- on a global scale.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

The Overlooked Power of Category Names

High-fructose corn syrup is getting a bad name. Hunt's ketchup is the latest product to replace corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar.

Gatorade, Wheat Thins, Ocean Spray cranberry juice and all the baked goods at Starbucks are now made with regular sugar. In New York State, a bill to ban the sale of food containing high-fructose corn syrup was introduced this year.

One analyst estimates that U.S sales of high-fructose corn syrup were down 9% in 2009 compared with 2007. A further fall is expected this year.

This decline has taken place in spite of a two-year $30 million "Sweet Surprise" advertising campaign sponsored by the Corn Refiners Association. The campaign highlights what the association says are vague and unsubstantiated opinions.

Most experts agree. "Leading scientists," reported The New York Times, "say that the product, made when various chemicals convert corn starch into syrup, is not any worse than sugar. Both sweeteners are made up of roughly equal amounts of glucose and fructose, they say."

Ironically, what happens in a modern corn-refining plant is exactly what happens in your mouth, where an enzyme breaks up starch into sucrose, glucose and fructose.

Positioning A Place Brand

As anyone involved with branding municipalities knows, there are three primary audiences for municipalities – residents, businesses and tourists. (There are other audiences as well, but for the sake of simplicity, I will focus on these audiences.)

Residents are most concerned with good job opportunities, low crime, good medical care, affordable housing, scenic beauty, attractive neighborhoods, friendly people, good school systems, etc. Businesses are interested in prevailing wages, labor force quality, housing and quality of life, labor market rigidities, proximity to suppliers and final markets, energy and resource costs, real estate costs, innovation capacity, etc. And tourists are interested in reasonable travel distance and costs, a variety of interesting things to see and do, aesthetically pleasing environment, restaurants, shopping, etc. Throw in meeting and event planners, and the list includes air transportation access, distance and costs, hotel rooms and ground transportation costs, space requirements, contiguous venues, safety of the area, tours and other activities, etc.

Given the variety of needs and considerations by different municipality audiences, the question I most often am asked by stakeholders interested in municipality branding is, “Can one brand position work for a municipality or do we need a separate brand position for each audience?” The answer is “yes.” Yes, one overarching brand position can work but it must be designed to work with more specific brand messages for each audience.

Brand Design: A Penis For London's Olympic Games?

They’ve done it again! Three years after the 2012 logo united England in disappointment, Locog – the organisers of the London Olympics – delivered another body blow for British design.

Wenlock, the mascot for the Olympic Games, was unveiled alongside Mandeville, the Para-Olympic mascot. With the usual Locog flair for impending disaster, the superficial elements were all stage-managed perfectly: a London schoolyard filled with happy, multicultural children playing harmoniously together against the backdrop of a graffiti rainbow. Suddenly, horrifically, they were joined by a man dressed as a large, white phallus who proceeded to frolic with the children in a quite alarming manner.

It was an indelible image. As a voiceover explained that the figure with the helmet-like head, single eye and dual appendages around his base was Wenlock, I was struck with a single, horrifying realisation: yes, but he looks like a penis.