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Should you save your brand or let it die?

By Mark Di Somma

Is your brand worth saving

Recently Patrick Hanlon wrote an interesting piece on branding a DOA brand. In it, he laid out a well thought-through plan to resurrect a dying marque: rediscover your reason for being; define your zealot consumers; define your brand assets; discover your relevancy all over again. His conclusion: “Even brands that seem out of date, irrelevant, and barely resonant with consumers can be re-imagined, reconceived, and reconstructed using this simple, regimented path.”

Hanlon’s approach for bringing a brand back from near-death seems logical. My question: Should you do it?

Birthing brands doesn’t seem to be an issue. In fact, marketers have no problem introducing new brands to market at a dizzying rate. As Professor Jerry Hausman explains, “The number of new products introduced in any year is astounding. New varieties of consumer goods such as cereal brands are evident, as any shopping trip to a local supermarket or Wal-Mart demonstrates. Potentially even more important are the new products based on technology: more than 55 million cellular telephones are in use in the United States.”

In an article on Digital Darwinism, Brian Solis quotes some fascinating stats: between 1973 and 1983, 35% of companies in the top 20 of the Fortune 1000 corporations were new. That ratio rose to 45 percent between 1983 and 1993 and then 60 percent between 1993 and 2003. Furthermore, over 40% of the companies that were at the top of the Fortune 500 in 2000 were no longer there in 2010.

You can read these observations in two ways: either that established brands are under constant threat from newcomers; or that brands themselves have a defined lifespan, after which most seem destined to fade (at various rates of attrition) and to be replaced. Solis mirrors Hanlon when he says, “What separates brands that falls [sic] to digital evolution from those that excel is the ability to recognize the need for change and the vision to blaze a path toward renewed relevance among a new generation of consumers.”

Again, the implication is that brands must endure and they must fight to endure in the face of ruthless competition. But if marketers are happy to see more and more brands enter a market, why would they be reluctant to kill off those that weren’t performing? And what would happen if more marketers planned brands with a ‘drop dead’ date?

If you take the view that a brand is only as relevant as the number of people who believe in what it stands for and the intensity of that belief, then a brand may well have a natural “Best Before” or even an expiry date. If the numbers of believers fall below a critical mass or if the belief itself fades or is overtaken (and thus becomes less valuable), the writing is on the wall. In Darwinist terms, as the beliefs on which a brand is based change, so does the relevance of the brand itself.

if you were going to strategise a brand that wasn’t intended to last, what differences might that make to the ways such a brand was planned for and resourced? You would, for example, probably base the business case and model for such a brand closer to FMCG, regardless of the sector. Chances are, you’d use more of a portfolio approach so that you had several brands in the market at once, with different expected “best before” dates and perhaps different price points. The timeframes wouldn’t necessarily be seasonal. They might be five years for example – but knowing that would frame innovation plans, distribution arrangements, rates of return and much more.

It’s an approach that’s intriguing, but not without its challenges. For example, promulgating finite term brands might cultivate not only short term thinking but also intense use of resources over that period. This in turn would encourage churn, and could promote irresponsible behaviour environmentally. Secondly, brands sometimes change identities to hide mistakes or bury bad reputations, and a short term brand could be tempted to do this, or be expected to do this, without attempting to do right by consumers. Again, that’s irresponsible. Third problem – how much brand equity would be wasted if you are constantly building, stopping and then rebuilding brands. How does the effort required to do that compare with the energy required to revive a dying brand? I don’t know. Finally, there’s the confusion for consumers to think about when all the brands you know are here today and gone tomorrow.

So the defined-timeframe brand concept has some merits as an alternative to building brands for eternity but would need to be thought through carefully. What I am clearer about is when you should save a brand, and when you might simply let it go.

I would apply Patrick Hanlon’s plan to brands with deep residual loyalty and a powerful and relevant belief system that continued to maintain their margins but that required a surge of energy, new products to make them more exciting, new management to make them more effective and/or new markets to allow them to grow. Worked for J. Crew, Burberry, and Target who kept the spirit of what made them great, and updated it. (It helped of course that all had amazing leadership.)

I would let a brand die that no longer resonated with customers because of the beliefs they associated with it, that seemed to be trading on nostalgia and little else and/or that had a reputation or history that was irretrievable for whatever reason. (Could anyone ever call a consulting company Monday again?) In those situations, I would judge that the energy required to re-imagine was better focused on a new brand rather than reconstruction or revival.

Acknowledgements
Photo of “Lifesaver” taken by marya, sourced from Flickr

Positive impacts

By Mark Di Somma

Looking for positive impactsBack to the Pavan Sukhdev interview from a few days back – and some other ideas he raised that were interesting.

Corporations, he said, need to evolve their financial standards to keep pace with a changing world. Currently, they define success in terms of profit and loss, which is a 150 year old model. They now need to redesign the corporate performance system to keep pace with the realities of today’s externalities and that, Sukhdev says, means a move from shareholder capitalists to stakeholder capitalists and the commitment not just to manage and measure financial and physical assets for shareholders, but to measure and manage all impacts, including those on public assets. 10 years ago, he says, we simply couldn’t measure this. Now, we can.

He also called for a resource taxation rather than profit taxation and getting the financing balance right so that the world doesn’t have companies that are too big to fail.

One more thing. Accountable advertising. There was a real need, he said, to make advertising more accountable and more responsible because right now innovation is driving need (rather than the other way round, which is how it used to be). Specifically, Sukhdev said that instead of using ads just to sell, brands should be looking to inform through their advertising, and that such an explanation should disclose things about a product such as its lifecycle, the overall impact of its footprint and its provenance in terms of sourcing.

I think if you take his point less literally, the suggestion certainly opens up a powerfully responsible role for broader content creation. It suggests that instead of talking about what they are doing in reports and at a “corporate” level, brands (particularly globally scaled brands) should make available granular disclosure about the impacts that their products generate through their content forums.

All around the world, people are hard at work looking for ways to consume more responsibly. That commitment, as Sukhdev says, starts with changing the information and the emphasis on that information. A few weeks previously, the clever chaps at Futerra highlighted a new way of thinking about impacts that could complement Sukhdev’s call. Net Positive is about companies committing to actions that make a positive difference. They cite BT’s Net Good strategy that aims to save three times as much carbon as their entire business creates.

So, in the spirit of positive suggestions with the potential to be impactful, here are my four starters:

Imagine if organisations were to declare an “environmental dividend” that openly stated what they had saved investors as well as the world through specific actions at a product level. Now imagine if that saving were tax deductible …

Imagine if globally scaled organisations were to introduce “higher cost, lower impact” variants that only changed the end cost for the consumer by a few cents but that, when considered globally, added up to millions of tons of difference in materials saved in manufacturing.

Imagine if organisations were to “profit offset” by declaring what they had done to deliberately restrict supply in order to save resources.

Imagine if we thought of employment as a social responsibility and not just a financial responsibility. Could firms employ more people than they actually need as part of their commitment to communally responsible behaviour?

Yes, all of these ideas break ranks with how we do business now and indeed how we keep being told that business should be done. But isn’t that the point?

Acknowledgements
Photo of Positive Thinker by Leland Francisco, sourced from Flickr

Brand equity and its relationship to a good brand story

By Mark Di Somma

brand equity and brand story

Like most people I’ve probably tended to silo the financial value that brands generate from the story they tell. Purpose, values and story defined a brand in my view; margin and financial worth were the outcomes of a brand well executed. More recently, I’ve been wondering whether in fact these items are not so disparate after all, and whether in fact they should be directly linked: whether the margin that a brand is able to sustainably generate, and thus the value that it achieves, is attributable and proportional to the strength, relevance and longevity of its story.

David Aaker has defined brand equity as the value added to a functional product or service by associating it with the brand name. It is in effect, he says, a set of assets, including brand awareness, loyalty, perceived quality and brand associations, that are attached to a brand name or symbol. Increasingly, I believe, those assets are generated, or at the very least increased, by the stories brands tell and the experiences they deliver.

This article about brand valuation makes a number of points that appear to support my theory: “The world’s most valuable brand, Coca-Cola, is more than 118 years old; and the majority of the world’s most valuable brands have been around for more than 60 years. This compares with an estimated average life span for a corporation of 25 years or so. Many brands have survived a string of different corporate owners.” In the case of Coca Cola specifically, the product itself has not changed (In fact the one time it did change of course it was a disaster). Coke have indeed told a strong and evolving story over time – and on the basis of that, it appears, their stock value and their brand value have continued to climb. Coincidence?

A lot of people talk about the fact that brand value is momentary because it is a financial measure employed mainly on a balance sheet. But brand equity, I would suggest, is also pointillistic – it covers the impact for a brand to generate margin at a particular point in time. And it too is volatile. The brand equity of Nokia is not what it was. Nor is Blackberry. The brand equity of Starbucks dipped and then climbed again. As Carol Phillips at Brand Amplitude rightly identifies “Brand equity resides in the minds of customers”, based as she says on the sum of a customer’s experiences with the brand.

And customers can and do change their minds about what a brand is worth – to them. When they do so, that change in attitude can also have a detrimental effect on their loyalty, perceived quality and brand associations.

If there is a direct relationship between brand equity and story, how might it work? Story is critical to keeping brands exciting, and a sense of currency stimulates and sustains ongoing interest which is reflected in a brand’s ability to charge what it charges and to earn what it earns. If the story a brand tells starts to fade, it soon starts to lose its attraction. As that happens, its inherent likeability falls and consumers are drawn to other options. As consumers fall away, the brand loses market share, the ability to command higher margins and, ultimately, financial value.

So here’s my hypothesis. Exciting brands generate affinity. That affinity converts to brand equity. And that of course makes excitement itself valuable. It also makes sense that those brands that continue to be exciting will develop increasing affinity, and thus brand equity, over time. Brands with sustained brand equity reflect that in their brand value. (The “over time” element is critical because it enables brand owners to see sustained gains rather than just momentary surges as fads.) Equally, if excitement can rise, it can also fall, making it inherently volatile.

That leads to new questions. What story will you need to tell not just to stand out from your competitors but to generate the levels of excitement needed to make the money you want to make? And how will you judge your story to be a success?

Perhaps this changes the role of the brand strategist: from one of defining a position to one of defining and developing a storyline capable of generating (valuable) excitement over time. Perhaps it also changes the role of communications companies – from being in the business of generating ideas to being in the business of revealing more aspects of an exciting story. And perhaps it changes the role of the marketing manager from one of driving the brand to one of controlling the excitement that a brand generates in the market in order to make the returns it needs to make (too little excitement, and a brand is underwhelming; too much and it can burn out or expend unnecessary resource for the value it is generating).

As I said earlier, story isn’t the only criteria for success. But if a brand has a competitive  product and they are delivering a competitive experience, they should be able to judge, and even test, the power of their story against how their equity is trending, and what it means for the margin the brand commands, relative to competitors. (That said, of course, a great story won’t save an inferior product or justify an uncompetitive experience.)

How hard is your story working to generate you value? How do you know?

Acknowledgement
Photo of “Brands 2” taken by Emily Berezin, sourced from Flickr

Finding a better good: the leap to true responsibility

By Mark Di Somma

puma brand signage

At a recent presentation, I introduced the concept of the “goodness movement”. I defined this as a global wish for social wellness that is driving corporate social responsibility today: a recognition by brands that those that are seen to do good perform better; and a response to a wish by consumers to make a difference. Buyers want to tell themselves they are doing the right thing, and as part of that, they want affirmation on the part of the brands they buy from that good is being done.

That’s never been easier. Purchases are increasingly tied to beneficial actions that, if I can refer back to my direct marketing agency days for a moment, amount to a “social premium”. The new coupon is social. Once consumers clipped physically to get money off. Increasingly, when they buy the brand, a good action is now included. Pampers, for example, have teamed up with UNICEF in a programme that sees one dose of the tetanus vaccine donated for every pack of product bought.

Brands are increasingly presenting consumers with what I termed in the presentation a “million little actions” in the form of these social premiums. And those actions range from giving to doing to supporting.

Fairtrade is a powerful example of this “social premium” at work. The company has grown to being the most recognised and best understood ethical brand in the developed world because they have understood the power of consumers feeling that they are making a difference for others. Fairtrade works so powerfully as a “social premium” brand because it has such a very simple message: look for this label, buy the product and someone gets paid fairly. The brand has succeeded for four key reasons. It found that the market was willing to pay a premium for social justice. It recognised that it had something that corporates wanted: a name for enhanced reputation. It understood that in a world of brands, you had to be a brand in your own right to thrive. And it delivered a simple value equation to consumers who now know what they have to do, and the difference it makes. Goodness couldn’t be easier.

Just as brands reflect who people are, so, increasingly, do the social actions they choose to take or be associated with. People buy cage free and free range because they want to see change in the world but also because it’s available and it reinforces what they want to be seen to believe. No-one wants to be seen as cruel or as condoning cruelty. The critical success factor here is amplification: giving people small tangible actions they can take that will, collectively, generate big inspiring benefits that they want to be associated with.

What the goodness movement looks to bridge of course is the increasingly important link for consumers between what a company offers (product) and how a company behaves (reputation). There is an increasing expectation on the part of consumers that good brands are sold by good companies. And good companies are judged by how much they impart, and more particularly are seen to impart, goodness.

At the same time, brands wishing to highlight their goodness find themselves under significant scrutiny from the likes of Oxfam with its Behind the Brands campaign that increasingly function as social proof for goodness assertions.

I predict that we will see more of this. And such tension between what brands say, what consumers believe and others’ assessment of the actions being taken are positive in the sense that, slowly, responsibility is becoming a mainstream conversation and a tangible commercial factor.

Recently, I listened to a Kim Hill interview with Pavan Sukhdev, founder and CEO of GIST Advisory, on Radio New Zealand. What an amazingly interesting man. In the interview, Sukhdev discussed in detail the need for companies to step up and fully audit and declare their externalities (by which he means the full cost of what they do) as Puma has been doing since 2011. I want to come back to some of the things he discussed in a later post, but, here, let me just touch on one idea he discussed that is highly pertinent to the goodness movement.

While greenwash is a deception he says, it is also a transition. Instead of simply hunting out and dismissing greenwash, analysts, the media, investors and consumers need to read and analyse what companies are saying they are doing and then hold them accountable to that data. In other words, they need to pursue the investigation. Part of not taking things at face value is pressing companies to declare the real value and the real impact using their own statements as the basis for searching questions.

And while greenwash is a bad side-effect of the goodness movement, Sukhdev believes, it is actually a stage in the social evolution of a company. First there is denial that they are doing anything wrong, then reluctant acceptance, and then greenwash. At least, the spin raises consumer expectations and indeed government expectations about the company’s commitments. What the world must now do, he says, is use the disclosure to prompt real actions. Some declaration, even spun declaration, is better than none.

At the moment, as I have said previously, most responsibility statements tend to amount to a catalogue of good works intended to protect corporate reputation. Looking ahead though, and taking on board Sukhdev’s points, a number of storylines have the potential to interweave to form a much more accountable and transparent model. Perhaps this is the future direction of how we truly monitor good actions. Those storylines might be developed by the companies themselves, they may be done or verified in co-operation with third parties such as NGOs or they could even be crowdsourced through a range of sources including academic channels. I’m not pretending for one moment any of these options will be easy – and I’m not qualified to speak about the legal ramifications – but such an approach might include:

•  More comprehensive disclosure of the impacts of product manufacture and of the predicted longevity of  products themselves
•  How companies are trading off negative impacts they have identified in the manufacturing and sourcing processes (so that there is rectification in the same space as the damage that is being done)
•  What companies are doing by way of responsibility initiatives – e.g. social premiums
•  What they are offering consumers the opportunity to do by way of concrete actions and the true effects of those actions in terms of generating meaningful difference
•  How all of that compares with the total externality cost of the business and the strategic plans that brands have to close that gap over a set period of years

Acknowledgements
Photo of “PUMA Glow Logo 2013” taken by FuFu Wolf, sourced from Flickr

Brand extension: when is it an extension of perceived risk?

By Mark Di Somma

brand extension - when is too far

We tend to judge the likelihood of whether a brand extension will work on the compatibility that consumers will feel between the brand they know and the extension they are being asked to accept. As Brad VanAuken has observed, “Any brand extension into a new product category must reinforce one of those primary associations without creating new negative, conflicting or confusing associations for the brand. If this rule is followed, the brand extension will actually reinforce what the brand stands for.” In fact, providing that association is strong, Nigel Hollis says, “the fit between the brand and the category does not need to be based on a direct application of the brand’s functional credentials”.

The need for structure

Now, in a new study discussed here, Wharton marketing professor Keisha Cutright and co-authors James R. Bettman and Gavan J. Fitzimons of Duke University, contend that, alongside the quality of the product, the way it is marketed and the fit with the current identity, consumer psychology also has a role to play in whether a brand extension flies or flops. Specifically, the team identifies people’s feelings of control.

If people are in a situation or a position where they feel less in control than normal, they may be less inclined to stray from the tried and true. According to Professor Cutright, when people experience a lack of control in some aspect of their life, they yearn for greater structure. For this reason, they may see a brand extension as a step too far.

Control is subjective

Communication, the marketers found, was critical to consumers retaining that precious  sense of being in control. Cutright and her colleagues also identified that certain demographics, such as older consumers and people on low incomes, feel less in control and, one would assume, are therefore less likely to ‘experiment’ with an extended brand offering. That same sense of lack of control applies to people who have experienced uncertainty, and a corresponding lack of structure, through a natural disaster for example, and even for employees who, faced with uncertainty over their jobs, may hesitate to push the boundaries by suggesting brand extension opportunities.

Looking beyond brand extensions

While the authors of the study have focused on brand extensions, I wonder whether their findings are also applicable to decisions over brand loyalty and indeed brand development. If people are reluctant to extend a brand because of a lack of control, it stands to reason, does it not, that they would be reluctant to also step away from the brand they know, or to make changes to that brand? The need for structure in other words may restrict consumers’ and employees’ sense of adventure but it would, on the face of it, also lock in loyalty through a wish to keep things as normal as possible.

What this research suggests to me is the need for incumbent brands to appeal to people’s wish for stability in times they judge to be uncertain. In other words, if the findings are right, brand extensions and brand developments should be positioned as ‘more of the same’, in spirit anyway. Equally, brands needing to shake consumers out of a sense of complacency could use the sentiment in reverse – to induce people to experience the brand they may feel they  know only too well in ways that are refreshingly unfamiliar. Brand with a twist.

The irony of fit

This points to an intriguing irony: that at one level brands must “fit” with our sense of normality, and indeed contribute to it to succeed, yet at the same time they must compete to be distinctive from competitors and to be seen as more than a commodity. That means they must walk a line between what people feel must remain and what they are interested in seeing change – and that the barometer for which part of that equation to emphasise over the other may come down at some level to the extent to which consumers feel stimulated or threatened by what’s going on around them.

A broader sense of association

Professor Cutright and her team have introduced a valuable new element to the consideration set around brand extension decisions. The research serves to underline what Brad VanAuken and Nigel Hollis have said: that extensions live and die on their associations – but those associations may be even wider, and more influential, than had been previously realised in that they can incorporate potentially a range of environmental, economic and psychological factors that have far more to do with the ‘risk’ profile of the decision.

This to me is the central issue for any brand looking at substantive change. How far and in what directions can marketers push the trust generated in a brand before the brand simply goes too far?

Three simple customer-focused questions then emerge that are probably applicable to a range of brand decisions.

1. “In what ways, in my current circumstances, does this brand give me comfort?”

2. “What do I stand to lose here if the brand changes or the circumstances in which I interact with the brand change?”

3. And “Is that feeling of potential loss greater or lesser than the rewards of pushing beyond what I feel I know?”

Acknowledgements
Photo of “Leap of faith”, taken by Jrwooley6, sourced from Flickr

What makes a brand worth sharing?

By Mark Di Somma

Everybody wants their brand to be talked about – and most of us have used social media to spread the word. But what would happen if you reversed the process?

What makes a brand worth sharing?

I’m fairly certain it was Grenville Main, a master of the memorable phrase, who once referred to Twitter as the “talkback radio of the internet”. I recalled the comment when an article arrived in my inbox referencing research done by MIT into why some tweets do the rounds, and others don’t (thanks Blackland PR). Perhaps by studying what people are most inclined to chatter about, it’s possible to engineer a brand that is simpatico with our very human need to share – or at least to draw some conclusions about what might lift a brand’s social attraction.

The nine key factors that, according to the research, decide a tweet’s success are:

  • Brevity – no surprises, given that 140 characters amounts to communications’ fast food. Made to snack quickly and often.
  • Attention grabbing – the communication itself talks to something the reader is already interested in
  • Inviting opinion – the best messages encourage interactivity. That makes them ‘socially useful’
  • Humanity – messages that feel personal and that share experiences and reflections are shared by people who feel the same way or have experienced the same or similar feelings.
  • Positivity – everyone loves good news
  • Useful – people want to pass on information that helps others for all sorts of reasons – not the least of which is that it raises the estimation of them with their peer group
  • Saving money – people want to see others benefit.
  • Relevance – references to what’s happening “today” have an immediacy and a currency that suits this tweet today, gone tomorrow medium
  • Narrative – we all love stories for their truths, their drama and their ending.

It’s interesting isn’t it to compare what people want to talk about and what companies want to talk about. You look at the list above and much of what emanates from the corporate world lacks the simplicity, humanity and optimism that is clearly so valued here.

The Blackland guys are absolutely right when they conclude that, “The results … show that the most successful communications are those that help people personally or socially.” So how should we conclude that brands need to communicate overall if they are to succeed socially? Here’s how I see it:

  • A socialising brand expresses an attitude that its customers hold (or will hold) dear;
  • It brings a refreshing point of view around what’s happening and the issues of today that people want to share with others;
  • It reaches those viewpoints by drawing on experience and experiences in its conversations;
  • It is optimistic;
  • It feels current – in and of the moment; and
  • It speaks in, or references, stories.

These ideas hold true for the condensed epitaphs of Twitter but they equally frame how brands should be strategising their advertising, their content marketing and perhaps even their PR. Increasingly brands need to express more than just an idea. They must actually contribute to, in reality or by projection, a wider life philosophy. And for that reason alone, every brand must be social now – in the wider interpretation of that word. It’s not about what you tweet or advertise or discuss. It’s about what you signal. The ability, not just the willingness, to share isn’t even about informing consumers anymore. It’s about reminding people that your brand is relevant and interesting.

Content is the new refresh key.

Acknowledgements
Photo of “Red refresh” taken by Christopher (Mr Thomas), sourced from Flickr

Getting the brand promise right

By Mark Di Somma

Brand promises

A brand promise is the commitment to deliver made between that brand and its audience. It’s made, of course, in order to encourage that audience to buy. Ultimately of course a promise lives or dies on whether it is believed and delivered on – no surprises there – but the promise is shaped by a range of factors: the nature of the offering; the capabilities and capacity of the brand; the rival promises of competitors.

What’s often overlooked is that the character of the promise itself changes depending on the sector. Let me give an extreme example: a retail-style promise made by a professional services firm would fail. Imagine if a patent attorney promised her customers that they would “love how our intellectual property advice makes you feel”. Sure, it’s hardly a distinctive promise anyway, but clients would be laughing all the way to the door. (Equally, a professional services firm’s approach applied to selling domestic vacuum cleaners would be awkward to say the least.)

That’s because the style and nature of the promise and the commitment itself needs to align directly with the priorities of, and influences on, the decision maker. And that to my mind is where too many brand promises go wrong. They overlook how different the decision making processes are. Each process, and the factors that drive it, should decide the premise of the promise.

Business to consumer promises are most effective when they focus on excitement. Though the excitement factor itself may differ, retail brands and luxury marques generally make promises intended to make the pulses of buyers quicken – be that because buyers believe they’re getting a bargain, or they love the way something sounds or looks. The promises of retail brands, for the most part, need a high level of “feel-good” to be effective. Brands from Coke to Rolex understand this only too well. Very, very different promises – but the goal sentiment is to raise interest.

A brand making a business-to-business promise must focus on the key priority for that audience which is maximised value. Often the promise that best addresses that need is one focused on minimising risk. Again, the promise aligns with the decision process. While for consumers, the decision driver is often one of spontaneity and thrill, for a business audience, the key drivers in evaluating a promise are around fulfilling business needs and representing an acceptable risk to the business model. Reputations, personal and corporate, are at stake along with dollars. For that reason, the B2B promise needs to revolve around reassurance – the work will be delivered and the results will have both a positive bottom line impact and also help boost reputation.

The case for getting the brand promise for a B2B brand right is quantified in this article by Agnes Claye, Blair Crawford, Sascha Lehman and Thomas Meyer of McKinsey: “B-to-B companies with brands that are perceived as strong generate a higher EBIT margin than others. In 2012, strong brands outperformed weak brands by 20 percent, up from 13 percent in 2011. Decision makers are willing to pay a premium for strong brands because established brands make their lives easier.” The authors go on to point out that B2B brands often misunderstand their own value proposition. “Our research shows that while B-to-B suppliers focus their messages on corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and global reach, their customers care most about their honesty, responsibility across the supply chain, and level of specialized expertise.” In other words, B2B marketers often try to use the “feel-good” approach of business-to-consumer, only to find that, for example, while non-adherence to corporate social responsibility and sustainability can be reasons not to buy, promotion of those initiatives in the business to business space is often not the basis for a competitive promise in itself. Increasingly, those deliverables are expected.

Even within business to business, brand promises vary in their emphasis depending on the audience. In a business to trade environment, for example, where a brand is making a promise to another company in the supply chain or making an ingredient brand offering, the brand promise required is likely to focus on reliability and/or added value contribution. Gore-Tex for example successfully markets the levels of waterproofing in its fabrics to outdoor clothing manufacturers. In so doing, they look to position themselves as a valued contributor to the making of the final product. (Interestingly, ingredient brands can also make an end consumer promise to encourage buyer interest and demand in what the end product is made of or with.)

And if the intended audience is government, then the most effective brand promise is likely to revolve around predictability – adherence to commitments, process, policies, deadlines, relationships, budgets. Consider McKinsey & Company’s own promise in this space: “We help national, regional, and local government institutions improve their efficiency and effectiveness, enabling them to better fulfil their mission to the public.” It’s hardly the energised vow of a beer maker or an automaker – but it works in the corridors of power if you have a brand with the reputation of McKinsey (it probably wouldn’t work as effectively for a brand with less kudos – but that’s a different discussion).

The best guidance for developing an effective promise? For me, it comes straight from one of The Godfather movies: make them a promise they cannot refuse.

Acknowledgements
Photo of “Promise?”, taken by Carmella Fernando, sourced from Flickr

Could the future of brand rivalry lie in being asymmetrical?

By Mark Di Somma

Asymmetrical brand strategyThree seemingly unrelated articles got me thinking today about the future of brand competitiveness in a world where the competitors are increasingly globally scaled.

Conventional knowledge suggests that brands square off in the arena of public awareness. Each party assembles its awareness and loyalty generators and then launches a charm offensive to consumers offering them multiple reasons and multiple channels to choose them over others. In the fight between big and big, that’s a relatively straightforward competition. But how do you take on the biggest brands in the world if you are a much smaller marketing force or if you’re looking for an alternative strategy?

Perhaps you do so by not taking them on directly. And perhaps you don’t take them on alone. The thought for this came from an article by Stan McChrystal (thanks Alex) on the lessons he learnt in Iraq: that a massive and powerful adversary can be seriously affected by a much, much smaller force that leverages its network and moves quickly to find points of vulnerability. The relevance of McChrystal’s point, that it takes a network to defeat a network, for business today is captured neatly in this thought. “Our organization was designed for a problem that no longer existed; we had brought an industrial age force to an information-age conflict … I believe this same challenge confronts organizations in every sector of the modern environment.”

Now combine that idea of competing via a wired network with this one from an article on the branding of global dissent: that a brand centred on principle will act as a powerful cohesion point for diverse people. As the article points out, people will address issues together, under a banner, that they would not address individually. From the article: “[Gene] Sharp … in 1973 outlined “198 Methods of Nonviolent Action” in the first of many of his works that provide a road map for orchestrating protest movements around the world … Sharp’s list defines how to create a unique and recognizable identity for a movement. It recommends establishing “symbolic colors,” slogans, caricatures, sounds and symbols in service of the greater cause” Brand, by any other name.

How do these ideas come together? They suggest that a powerful brand strategy may lie in applying the same principles to the way a brand competes. That, instead of going head to head, companies could employ an asymmetrical brand strategy; one that coalesces people into a network centred around a “protest”-based principle (using social media for example) and then uses that principle as a guerrilla tactic to compete with rivals at points where they are most vulnerable.

What would happen if brands were able to rally their customers in the same way as protest organisers have done in Istanbul? And what if, instead of protesting, they were able to make their presence felt through surges of purchases?

The key differences here to traditional strategies lie in the use of principle as the core underlying value proposition, in the rapid assembly (and disassembly) of competitive offers and in the thought that competition for the larger brand may not lie in one recognisable rival but in a network of challengers who nip at them from various points, sometimes independently, sometimes simultaneously.

In the same way, challenger brands could come together to out-innovate their behemoth rivals, disrupt a sector, force change by adjusting consumer expectations and then … leave.

Such a concept now seems increasingly possible, given, as Don Peppers points out, that:

  1. There is an increasing “inventory” of previous innovations that can now be combined,
  2. There are a growing number of creative minds that can be deployed,
  3. People can now interact at greater speed and with increased efficiency, and
  4. Higher levels of trust exist between people who share.

While the future for large brands increasingly lies in presence, the wider competitive future for some brands in some markets may lie in the application of a combination of principles and pace – essentially treating the scaled players as a constant backdrop against which they rally and then retreat (as reaction builds).

Perhaps brands have more to learn about competing for loyalty and attention from unorthodox organisations than they realise.

Acknowledgements

Photo of “Crowd 2” taken by Karen_O’D, sourced from Flickr

What makes a great brand story?

By Mark Di Somma

Storytelling is of course very much an idea whose time has come. And brands are increasingly using story formats to express themselves and to explain their place in the market and the world. But, if I may reference Sheryl Sandberg, what gives a story “lean-in” value?

What makes a great brand story

In this 2012 TED talk, filmmaker Andrew Stanton explains that we humans love stories because of their affirmative value. We need that affirmation, says Stanton, and stories provide that connection. Stories, he says, work across time and allow us to find similarities with others. In his presentation, Stanton draws our attention to six great guidelines:

• Make me care
• Make me a promise right from the start
• Give people enough to put the rest of the story together
• Stories should be inevitable but not predictable
• Stories must mix anticipation with uncertainty
• As a storyteller, your main responsibility is to invoke wonder

They’re great rules. But what do they mean in terms of how we craft the story of a brand? What are the guidelines strategists and brand owners should be using to tell a commercial story? Here’s my list. It’s longer, and it intersects with Stanton’s list in several places. Of course a great brand story may not have all 10 components – but it has enough of them, in a configuration specific to the brand, to give a buyer the reason to believe that they’re looking for.

1. The story has to come from a credible source – buyers need to know the storyteller can be trusted. Your story needs to be consistent with the receiver’s understanding of you because the person telling the story is in a position of trust. They have control of the narrative. To me, this is the make or break of storytelling. If we don’t believe the storyteller, we’ll never believe the story. SouthWest Air have been telling a wacky story about loving to fly for decades. They absolutely walk the talk.

2. The story itself has to be believable – it must fit with, and expand on, what people already believe about your brand and about the human condition. The story must stem from a fundamental truth. It must ring a bell in the universe. Hallmark tells a story of caring and interaction that defies the digital age. It works because the story is true for all of us, and yet different for each of us.

3. It has to be recognisable – the story must be easily identified. The story must be overt enough for everyone to see its influence, yet flexible enough to show its face in different ways. There must be consistency in the narrative and in the basis of the narrative, because that’s what anchors the brand. That’s what makes it tangible in the mind of the buyer. Look at Red Bull. Excitement is woven into every aspect of their narrative.

4. It has to be distinctive – there would be no point in telling someone else’s story or indeed mimicking their story. Your story can’t just be the same as what everyone else offers. So many brands simply try and rearrange the deck chairs. Jeans companies all tell stories about ruggedness and the outdoors. Energy drinks all talk about energy.

5. It has to be imaginative – it must paint pictures in the mind of the recipient of a time that is even better than now. It should be ambitious and bold, striking, even provocative. It should portray your brand as a pioneer and as a brand that is creatively examining tomorrow. Dove’s story of a more natural world, where you should be proud to be as you are, defied editorial convention and in so doing struck a real chord with many women.

6. It has to be specific – it can’t appeal to just anyone. Stories aren’t aimed at everyone because they don’t respond well to being diluted. Your brand’s story should talk to the people you target (and aspire to target) in language and with a vision that fits with their schemas and worldview. Virgin’s story of the underdog is carefully weighted in every market they enter to tell a challenger story. It appeals to those who see themselves as independent thinkers capable of finding what’s best for them. A Virgin story is inevitable whenever the brand enters a market – but the story itself, and the telling of that story, can vary greatly.

7. It has to be consistent – your consumers need to recognise you in the story. If they read a story that carries nothing of the current ‘you’ in it, it will read like a pipe dream. If it reads too much like the business you are, then it suggests business as usual. Your brand story should project to the future but it should do so through the lens of your present reputation and equity. Look at how Disney have evolved their business and yet their story of magic has stayed remarkably steadfast. Theirs truly is a story of wonder.

8. It has to be actionable – Your story needs to make it clear what you expect to see happen. It must show how customers participate. Purchase is how buyers care. Loyalty is the affirmation that people have connected with the brand and all it stands for. Ironically, powerful stories are often not explicit in how they are to be actioned. Instead, they paint the dots and leave it to people to connect them as they wish.

9. It has to be achievable – Your story must be realistic; it can’t just build castles in the air. It needs to stretch the boundaries but it must still feel attainable, or people inside simply won’t be prepared to invest the effort to make it happen. This article by Mark Wilson on the Fast Company site recently details how Cadillac has fought its way back to record sales from the inside-out.

10. It has to be desirable – The psychological carrot must be big enough that reaching for what the story points to must be more compelling than not attempting it. Stories must lead us somewhere – and as Stanton says, that somewhere needs to be somewhere wonderful. The anticipation and the uncertainty of that needs to be wired in. Apple, especially under Steve Jobs, were masters at this. Everyone waited for “just one more thing”. The whole story though must be exciting enough that people want to talk about it with each other. Sharers must also able to justify the story to those around them. Without that, the mandate to act is so much harder to achieve. Sharing a story adds to its credibility and fuels critical mass.

Which brand stories speak most to you? And why?

Acknowledgments
Photo of “User stories in Oxford” taken by Jacopo Romei (Jakuza), sourced from Flickr

The honey-trap brand strategy

My favourite brand strategy

By Mark Di Somma

My favourite brand strategy is one that takes a brand where the competitor can’t go or wouldn’t go. Even better, the strategy is a honey-trap. It may look inviting from the outside but if a competitor did dare to venture there, doing so would be to their competitive disadvantage. Read More