Branding Strategy Insider

Rosser Reeves On The Power Of Focus In Advertising

In 1961 noted advertising executive Rosser Reeves' book Reality in Advertising was published. Forty-nine years later, has his thinking remained relevant? You be the judge...

Chapter 9. The Advertising Burning Glass
A story goes that old Calvin Coolidge, sitting patiently in a stern little New England church, listened attentively to a minister who had preached steadily for two hours. A friend, later, asked him what the sermon was about.

"Sin," said Coolidge.

"What did he say," persisted the friend.

"He was against it," said Coolidge.

The story has a value to advertising men, for it illustrates a reality principle made crystal clear by a study of hundreds of penetration case histories. The principle is this:

The consumer tends to remember just one thing from an advertisement—one strong claim, or one strong concept.

The advertisement may have said five, ten, or fifteen things, but the consumer will tend to pick out just one, or else, in a fumbling, confused way, he tries to fuse them together into a concept of his own.

David Ogilvy's Best Business Advice

When Patricia Sellers, a reporter for Fortune Magazine, asked David Oglivy for advice on building and running a business, the 80 year old advertising legend gave her this timeless advice...

1. Remember that Abraham Lincoln spoke of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. He left out the pursuit of profit.

2. Remember the old Scottish motto: "Be happy while you're living, for you are a long time dead."

3. If you have to reduce your company's payroll, don't fire your people until you have cut your compensation and the compensation of your big-shots.

4. Define your corporate culture and your principles of management in writing. Don't delegate this to a committee. Search all the parks in all your cities. You'll find no statues of committees.

5. Stop cutting the quality of your products in search of bigger margins. The consumer always notices -- and punishes you.

6. Never spend money on advertising which does not sell.

7. Bear in mind that the consumer is not a moron. She is your wife. Do not insult her intelligence.

David Ogilvy

Charleston

November 15, 1991

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop 

Developing Organization Mission, Vision & Values

An increasing number of organizations for whom we are facilitating brand positioning workshops are asking us to facilitate organization mission, vision and values workshops as well. It makes sense, especially for organizations for which the brand exists at the organizational level.  For those organizations, crafting brand strategy is closely aligned with crafting organizational strategy.

It makes sense to craft organization mission, vision and values and brand essence, promise, personality and archetype in concert with one another. Here is an overview of each:

Driving Awareness And Demand For Upstart Brands

We are happy to answer marketing questions of all types here on Branding Strategy Insider. Today, Mike, a Marketer in Princeton, New Jersey writes… 

“Brad and Derrick, my question is this: For a small or upstart brand, that is meaningfully differentiated, to secure distribution in a national mass retailer like Walgreens and CVS, the retailers require the brand to spend on a national media campaign (TV, radio, print) to drive demand for the product and traffic to the store. What advertising strategies and tactics can a brand employ with a budget of $1MM to meaningfully drive awareness and demand in this fragmented media world?” 

Mike, thanks for your question. On that budget, for a nationally distributed consumer product through mass channels, I would consider one of the following:

• Start out on a more limited geographic basis, perhaps as a test market, with one or two national chains and growing in a more controlled way over time.
• Use most or all of the $1 million to create a publicity stunt that has the potential to generate substantial national publicity for an extended period of time.
• Use most or all of the $1 million to create a very unusual or compelling viral game or other entertaining item that is designed to spread rapidly through email and social media.
• If you are required to use paid media, co-market your products with other manufacturers who have substantially larger budgets and with which there is good synergy. In this case, you will have to determine how you will add value to those marketing partners.
• Focus on creating an in-store merchandising approach that enhances the retailer's seasonal aisle with excitement (if your product can be sold as a seasonal product).
• Aggressively seek additional funding for more marketing support.

Stay tuned Mike, BSI readers may have additional thoughts.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop 

Brand Leadership Equals Business Leadership

The successful creation and management of brands will be the hallmark of business leadership in the 21^st century. Does that sound bold? Perhaps, but the world today is far different from what it was only a couple of decades ago and these structural changes have placed brands at the forefront of business success. A review of stocks in the S&P index shows that businesses that own stronger brands perform significantly better than businesses that own weaker brands. 

Business leadership and brand leadership have become inextricably linked.

According to Millward Brown Optimor’s analysis, in 1980 virtually the entire value of an average S&P 500 company was comprised of tangible assets (chairs, factories, inventory, etetera). In 2010, tangible assets account for only 30 to 40 percent of a company’s value. The rest is intangible value, and about half of that intangible portion, close to 30 percent of total business value, is attributed to brands. Therefore it is not a stretch to say that for many companies, brand is their single biggest asset. What has led to this change in what matters to business success?

Why is brand driving business leadership – the Post-Information Era

The technological advances of the 20^th century generated more prosperity than ever existed before. Consumers in developed markets came to have almost limitless choices in almost every category. What is more, as companies innovated into new spaces, there are now many new categories to choose from.

Abundance and prosperity have allowed companies to redefine what consumers “need.” Yet wealth hasn’t necessarily made us much happier. As Daniel Pink writes in A Whole New Mind, “The paradox of prosperity is that while living standards have risen steadily decade after decade, personal, family and life satisfaction haven’t budged. That’s why more people – liberated by prosperity but not fulfilled by it – are resolving the paradox by searching for meaning.” This quest for meaning has huge implications for brands. As people find their basic consumption needs satisfied, brands are uniquely positioned to help add a higher order of meaning and fulfillment to purchase decisions, and consumers’ lives. 

Infusing Trends Into Your Brand

 
Brands are built on cultural DNA and therefore, must evolve with the times and shifting consumer desires. To successfully navigate such turbulent waters, we recommend for marketers to steward brands through a "trend process", recognizing that the brand essence resides in quintessential equities - visual, sensorial, experiential and personality - that create truly emotional bonds with consumers. 

For over more than a decade, we have refined a "Brand Effervescent Trend Forecasting Process" that funnels macro trends into a brand essence.

Each higher trend level feeds the one below in a 10-step brand development process.

Applying Trends to Brands

While every project presents its own challenges, this process can help marketers apply the right trend to a brand's living space.

1. Trend Signals 
Seek visionaries; stay future focused. Big discoveries can come from the fringe, unfamiliar territory that can even elicit a touch of fear.

Killing A Sacred Cash Cow Brand To Thrive

New and fresh ideas usually come from an awareness of new opportunities in the marketplace. It can be challenging for iconic brands to take advantage of new opportunity and remain relevant to people. Iconic brands tend to lose their relevance long before the cash they generate begins to dry up. Once they lose their luster, iconic cash cow brands are nearly impossible to change.

Consider the fate of these iconic brands that held on to their heritage at the expense of innovating a bigger future:

Sears: once the dominant leader in the mail order business, now an “also-ran” against big box retailers. Their relevance lost by disruptive technologies. The very principles of “mail order” that made Sears a great iconic brand, were reinvented by Amazon. The rest is history.

Newsweek: Once the biggest news magazine by circulation in America. Now diminished by lost circulation and advertising revenue, it has finally been sold to a digitally savvy Internet competitor.

Chevorlet: No brand was more iconic and embedded into the fabric of 20th century American culture. The problem is we are now in the 21st century and the game has changed. Chevy’s current advertising mantra “runs deep” is a gallant attempt to reinvent itself by looking to the past. Good luck with that one. Most people seem to be paying more attention to forward-thinking Hyundai these days.

Xerox: It invented laser printing but held tightly to its dominant document company positioning while HP exploited the technology and became the industry leader.

Kodak: It invented digital photography, but cemented itself into its dying film business.

The most successful companies are the ones who have no problem killing their cash cow brands.

How Do You Maintain Brand Consistency?

Branding Strategy Insider helps marketing oriented leaders and professionals build strong brands. To that end, we are happy to answer marketing questions of all types. Today, Tim, a Reporter for Inc. Magazine in New York City asks… 

1) What are some companies that differentiate their brands well, and how do they do it? 

The first brand that comes to mind is Apple. The following differentiate Apple:

• A history of innovation (iPod, iPhone, iPad, etc.)
• Intuitively simple user interfaces
• A very consistent "look and feel" -- Apple icon, styling, etc.
• A well-known co-founder and CEO in Steve Jobs
• The very viable alternative brand to Microsoft-based PCs, with a very loyal and outspoken customer base

2) What are a few tactics you would suggest for successfully maintaing brand consistency? 

• First and foremost, the brand's promise should be clear, compelling, unique and believable and it should be delivered at each point of customer contact. This is a conscious and deliberate effort on the organization's part.
• A well thought through brand identity system that is distinctive yet flexible, one that anticipates a variety of future uses
• Strickly enforced brand identity standards, perhaps through a digital asset management system
• A brand identity manager who oversees a brand identity council
• Very strick brand lisensing requirements, including requiring a strict fit with the brand promise, identity and quality standards
• I would also craft a specific brand personality, brand archetype and brand voice and visual style that can be applied to the brand as appropriate in its presentation

3) Lots of companies seem to have a bunch of products competing with themselves (toothpaste or shampoo, for example). Is there any thinking in the brand management world about when having a glut of products under the same brand is a good or bad thing? 

Brand Consulting With Competing Clients

We are happy to answer marketing questions of all types here on Branding Strategy Insider. Today, Sohan, a Marketer in New Delhi, India asks… 

"Hi Brad and Derrick,

I am a Branding enthusiast and have been following your blog for quite some time. I really appreciate the quality of the information you are sharing.

I have a question regarding brand consulting. As a consultant how can one deal with multiple clients belonging to the same category or worse, the same market segment? Does working with a client and giving a market-winning-strategy reduce the possibility of suggestible ideas for other clients in the same category in the future?"

Thank you for this question, Sohan. To avoid conflict of interest, we always work with only one competitor in a given category for a year's period of time. We also sign and honor non-disclosure agreements. Having said that, I have found that each organization has unique strengths and weaknesses within its product/service category. For example, I have worked with several wealth management firms and none of them have ended up with brand positions that are even close to similar. The same is true for the 100+ brands I have worked with and their respective business categories. There are numerous brand positions in a given category and even within a given segment of a category.

I have never encountered a situation in which I felt as though I could not position yet another brand in a category because I had positioned a previous brand in a similar way in that same category. To me, this is one of the things that makes brand positioning so much fun. With so many possible points of difference, including functional, emotional, experiential and self-expressive benefits and numerous shared values, the positioning possibilities are numerous.

Have a question related to branding? Just Ask…

Sponsored by: The Brand Positioning Workshop 

Brand Loyalty Rewards For The Ultra-Luxury Shopper

When it comes to luxury store retailing, properly rewarding a customer who spends $200,000 a year could be as easy as a walk in the park, or Park Avenue. But recognizing those dedicated shoppers who spend upwards of $1 million a year takes more than diamond points – this kind of shopper requires sincere eloquence. 

It’s a high-class, and at times bewitching, problem. 

After all, identifying these shoppers is not difficult. Luxury comes with an implied level of unparalleled customer service, so the top-tier shopper often develops an intimate relationship with her sales associate. That associate in turn becomes a de-facto ambassador, loyalty mechanism and extension of the retail brand. 

The trick then is combining that on-the-ground intelligence with shopper data to identify a loyalty reward the luxury consumer finds of real value. These are shoppers who can literally afford anything they want, remember – there is no question of need. Rather, it comes down to delivering a one-of-a-kind service or experience that falls squarely within their values. 

This is not exactly a revelation – wealthy shoppers have long equated luxury with their life experience. But in the past couple of years, the top-tier consumer has been changing how she shops, opting for private services rather than buying on the sales floor, and having items shipped home instead of advertising her splurge on the street. This indicates that even the exceptionally affluent are sensitive to flaunting their wealth when so many others are suffering economic hardships.

Understanding these philosophical shifts is critical.