Branding Strategy Insider

Simplicity Is Power For Brands

The enemy has changed. It’s no longer simply your business competitor. You’re up against a substantially more scientific reality – our inherent lack of ability to multi-task!

We may indeed believe we’ve mastered the skill of multi-tasking, but have we really? Are you able to send a text message while you’re in a meeting, while at the same time engage in the conversation and also take in what’s being said? Your instant response is undoubtedly a resounding ‘Yes’, but in all likelihood the truth is an unfortunate ‘No’.

Let’s try a simple experiment. It will only take a minute. Begin by visiting here. Then, when ready, simultaneously read the following clause while listening to my speech. When you’re done, I’ll get you to answer a few simple questions.

Let’s go…

Home: Advertising's New Frontier

81-year-old Tahakasa Omi, a Japanese grandma of four, had spent her day excitedly anticipating the arrival of a package from Do-Co-Mo. Do-Co-Mo, the largest operator of mobile phones in Japan, if not the world, had spent the last two years developing a concept for people just like Tahakasa Omi. It’s not hard to understand why. Japan has the oldest population in the world – and it’s a market worth an estimated $120 billion. 

Tahakasa Omi’s package didn’t contain a flashy new mobile phone – what arrived was a picture frame. With a simple click on the side, the frame would immediately connect to the nationwide Do-Co-Mo mobile network and in turn connect with Omi’s four kids. The moment one of her children took, say a photograph of a grandchild, they could press their ‘Grandma’ button, and within a few seconds the photo would appear on the frame in her living room. The 1,200km physical barrier separating her and her children, seeming to vanish in an instant. And, by the way, the picture frame was free. 

But this is far from the full story, since there’s more than pictures appearing on the screen. The Do-co-Mo invention is the latest in an ongoing stream of initiatives from mobile operators from Japan – all seeking to explore new advertising channels.

Brand Building Via Mobile Devices

Let me ask you a difficult question: How on earth would you build your brand on a canvas smaller than a matchbox? What if you could use only one color (say black on a green background), you had no scope for graphics, and the consumer was paying for every second it took for you to send him or her a commercial message?

Welcome to the new world of m-branding. Now, more than ever, creativity and discipline are needed for preparing a branding platform. Why? Because everything is telling us that the WAP-enabled (Wireless Application Protocol) cell phone will soon be bigger than the World Wide Web we know today.

"Soon" is three years from now, according to AC Nielsen. Do you believe this? I do. Just think back to 1995 when the World Wide Web was born, and then think about the criticism the Net weathered at that time. Yet look at the Net's onward growth today.

Knowing how fast this next branding revolution could arrive, you'd better be ready and start preparing for wireless branding. Excuse me for comparing this with a cigarette brand, but I can't stop thinking about Silk Cut, an English cigarette brand which, in the '80s, prepared for a government ban on cigarette commercials for all media.

The Brand Building Power Of Personalization

Some time ago, I checked into a hotel in Hong Kong. The receptionist handed me a bunch of business cards. They weren't the hotel's business cards but my own, complete with my phone and fax numbers and contact details while staying at the hotel. It was a gesture that kind of made me feel special.

I know we can all be cynical and see through this ploy, but it works.

Time after time, when evaluating what makes service unique, I conclude it comes down to two simple factors: attention to the individual and a personal twist. Whether we admit it or not, we all love particular attention, to be treated as unique human beings. Especially these days, when corporate inattention so often makes us feel more like statistical details than people with names.

A while back, I wrote a post on how important it is to personalize a brand's dialogue with the customer. One assumption was the more personal we make our brand's voice, the more effective communication becomes. Well, a reader from Holland, Erwin van Lun, contacted me to tell me the assumption has been proven.

Dutch marketing journal Tijdschrift voor Marketing published some hot-off-the-press data showing the personal touch can be even more effective than anticipated.

Choose Reality Over Perfection In Brand Building

Is perfect branding really the best way of building brands? Up until recently this might have been true. Asking Martha Stewart fans they would have agreed with me. Year after year the ever-perfect Martha was dishing up one perfect decoration advice after another. And yes they were really perfect – but repeating this session decade after decade made one mistake look so much more dramatic than if the brand Martha would have conducted mistakes, purposely or not, through the years just like us “ordinary” human beings. 

And this brings me to the point. I’m a big believer in the fact that the ultimate brand is like a real person. Needless to say no brand hardly reaches a stage where people perceive it as being a real person, but the fact is, that the more human components we associate a brand with, typically the stronger the brand is.

The times where I’ve been most amazed about a brand have often been where it did something human. Where the service was extraordinarily good – and had a “real” human touch. The cases where the emails I received as a reply on my question sent either in anger or just in curiosity – reflected that a real person, of real human blood – actually were answering my email. But not only that – that the writing – reflected that this person had the authority to be a true individual, either in the tone-of-voice, the writing style…you name it. You see as customers we expect a brand to deliver on expectations. It’s a minimum standard to expect a brand to answer back, often within 24 hours. But if the reply is everything but standard, if it had that special “glimpse in the eye” it added extra brand equity to my brand – perhaps making it my favourite brand.

But making this possible requires a human behaviour.

The Brand Strategy Of Over Delivery

For most manufacturers this initially would sound like a nightmare – but is it? 

Recently I checked into The Peninsula Hotel in Chicago. Knowing the brand your expectations are by default tuned to the highest level – still I’ve time after time managed to be surprised. When I wished to access music in my room, I was told that the CD library didn’t exist in this particular hotel. The apologetic concierge however asked me out of curiosity which CD’s I was looking for. Listing all my favorite artists I hang up wondering the reason for this curiosity. 20 minutes later the bell rang on my door. The same person as I’ve been speaking with over the phone handed over a bag with three CD’s purchased by the hotel, all my favorites – and given as a gift to me. 

I bet you’ll never forget this story – neither do I. But the case is that the extra $20 the hotel decided to spend on my account makes me spread the story – just like now. Would you still claim this wasn’t worth the investment … hardly! 

The story is very much in line with another experience taking place in a Louis Vuitton store, the maker of luxury leather goods, which explicitly does not offer a lifetime warranty on its products. In fact, the company's documentation states a charge will be applied for repairs. The salesperson to whom you return your faulty product further reiterates this when you take it in for repair. But when you come back to collect your item, you'll almost never pay for the service. The salesperson assures you this was done especially for you. 

Brand Marketing's New Reality

If for one reason or another, you’d slept through the past five years, only to find yourself suddenly awake in August 2010, you’d quickly realize the world of advertising and marketing has fundamentally changed in three major ways. First, subconscious or subliminal communication (and research) has become part of the vocabulary of most marketers.

Second, power has shifted from brand owners to consumers - even the most powerful brands know that successful campaigns have to systematically engage consumers, who will in turn use their mighty word of mouth to spread the messages opposed to relying on big media budgets do the work.

Third, 2010 is shaping up to be dominated by guilt. Guilt for spending money in the midst of a debilitating global recession, guilt for polluting the world, and finally, parental guilt, as kids increasingly engage in their own online world, far removed from traditional values that were previously the exclusive domain of the family.

So what does this mean for a marketer in 2010? Don’t fall into the trap of believing that conventional research will do the trick. More than 80% of all the decisions we make every day are decided upon in our non-conscious part of the brain. Now if we can trust these numbers, and every study indicates that we can, then 2010 will be the year where marketers will be forced to investigate alternative research methodologies that tap into the subconscious processes involved in decision making.

Consumers Desire Authenticity In Advertising

We’ve seen it and heard it a thousand times – the flawless model posing in an ad for facial-blemish cream... an extremely powerful cleaner that removes every trace of dirt in one effortless wipe... the picture-perfect baby modelling the 100% waterproof diaper. In these scenarios, there’s not even a hint of a single red spot, a stubborn stain, or a bedraggled mother. This is the story of the past 50 years of commercials, and they all have one thing in common – they all feature perfect brands in perfect environments. En masse, we all must believe what we see, or do we?

Take for example the most watched videos on YouTube. Most are by amateurs whose work looks amateurish. We watch reality shows on television, and despite all predictions that they’re on their way out, they keep inventing ever-new situations.

Some months ago a major European cosmetic brand was forced to cut costs. They were not alone, but the only way they could do this was by reducing the length of their TV commercials. They aimed to cut their regular 90-second spots down to 30 seconds. The big dilemma they faced was which scenes should be cut out? Instead of taking the conventional route – opinions and guesswork – they used a neuro-scientific tool based on EEGs whereby brainwaves of consumers were measured and evaluated. By scientifically analysing the commercials they were able to assess which scenes were the most emotionally engaging.

Building Brands With Sound

Have you ever been in a café when suddenly, over in the corner, a baby starts giggling? If you have, you might have noticed that every woman, regardless of age, looked up, momentarily distracted from her coffee, magazine or conversation. It’s as if women are hard-wired to tune into this sound. Check out YouTube and you’ll notice that among the most-watched videos on the site, is one of a baby giggling. More than 107 million people have downloaded it.

There can be no doubt – sound is immensely powerful. And yet 83 per cent of all the advertising we’re exposed to on a daily basis (bearing in mind that the average person will see two million TV commercials in a single lifetime) focuses, almost exclusively, on the sense of sight. That leaves just 17 per cent for the remaining four senses. Consider to what extent we rely on sound. It confirms almost all our digital and electronic connections. We rely on it to dial or text on our cell phones. Interestingly, the revenue from the slot machines in Las Vegas fell by 24 per cent when the whirring and tinkling sounds was removed. Furthermore, experiments conducted in restaurants show that when music slower than the rhythm of a heartbeat is played, we eat slower and we eat more!

Can sound make us buy more, want more, dream more and eat more? Any 50-year-old American can sing a whole range of television jingles from the 1970s – they are all well stored in the recesses of our brain. Yet if you were to ask the same of the generation who have recently come of age, you will find them stumped. Have the magical tunes disappeared, or has the advertising world lost sight of the fact that people do indeed have speakers at home?

I decided to put these questions to the test.

Building Brands With The Guilt Strategy

 
Forget about depression, fear, angst, anxiety or night sweats. Guilt, that most puritanical of all our human emotions, has resurfaced to become a 21st century emotional social and consumer pandemic. Parents who in lieu of spending time with their adolescent children leave them with a rented DVD or on Facebook; shoppers who care about buying organic, but who can’t afford the higher prices, and then feel immoral afterwards; consumers who splurge on wine or truffle oil, then a day later feel gross and wasteful for spending so much money during a recession; the list goes on. 

Today’s shrewdest marketers have recognized that old-fashioned Pilgrim-era guilt is (with the right twist) one of the secret keys to unlocking a consumer’s Buyology.

Consider a 40-something woman named Louise. For weeks she’s been strolling past a bright yellow jacket hanging in the window of her favorite upscale clothing store. The jacket may be calling out her name, but the price tag isn’t. Ever since the start of the recession, many retailers have reluctantly ignored the truism that if they discount merchandise, it can take up to seven years for prices to return to what consumers perceive as “normal.” But this store doesn’t offer discounts.

One day Louise comes in with an inspired new tack. She’ll haggle. She’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse. She spears a male salesclerk, clears her throat, goes red. Will the store agree to take 15 percent off the listed price? In return Louise gets only the blankest of stares. Still that much closer to buying the coveted coat, Louise’s guilt suddenly kicks in – “My husband will kill me,” and “My friends will think I’m an idiot if I didn’t buy this coat on sale, especially at a time when every store in the world is discounting,” and “Isn’t this a bit extravagant, particularly when my neighbors are having trouble paying their mortgage?” One by one thoughts like these flit through her head, yet are balanced out by her own brain’s dopamine arguing for the renewed confidence she’ll feel wearing the coat at work or at next week’s holiday party.

End of story?