All posts filed under: Leadership

Absolute quality loses to perceived quality

By Mark Di Somma

This post by James D. Roumeliotis and Violetta Ihalainen of Whitefield Consulting, absolutely challenges my worldview as an unabashed meritocrat, but includes some fascinating points – particularly that absolute (objective) quality is far less important for consumers in their decisions about brands than perceived quality. As the authors explain, “perceived quality” is your customers’ view of the quality of a product or service both in terms of what they expect and also in comparison with how they perceive the quality of competing offerings. That means “perceived quality is defined as a measure of belief”. So – if consumers believe you are the best, then you are. Regardless of the measures you may put in place. Regardless of what the critics might say. Or the awards you may have received. For those of us who believe in the power of intangibles, this makes complete sense on reflection but it also contrasts with how we probably believe quality should work – or tell ourselves it does work. “Why can’t they see that our goods are better?” is …

Energy versus focus

By Mark Di Somma

Brands require huge levels of energy. They need to be promoted, they need to be maintained, they need to be serviced … just to keep them going. And that can lead some to believe that that is all they need. Surely, if you invest enough energy in this brand, it will succeed. You see this in those interesting exchanges which begin, “We’re going to spend this … and we want to achieve this”. I would argue that the emphasis needs to be reversed, “To achieve this, we’re going to have to spend this …”. There are some important distinctions in the order of these statements. The first emphasises the spend (energy) and ties it, hopefully, to an outcome. The second statement begins with the outcome and attributes a required level of energy to achieve it. A lot of marketers put their hope in the first approach. Egged on by the planners, they spend up and then wait for the tide to come in. It’s a little like saying that you’ll put a certain motor in …

The power of patterns

By Mark Di Somma

I have little doubt that news of a study by Facebook and Università degli Studi di Milano showing that Facebook has reduced the degrees of separation from six to four will inspire many to post advice on how and why to push everything Facebook’s way. According to the study, “99.6% of all pairs of users are connected by paths with 5 degrees (6 hops), 92% are connected by only four degrees (5 hops),” and the average “distance” between users is getting smaller over time. But I agree with Marc Schiller of Bond Strategy and Influence who pointed out in a recent interview posted on the AdWeek site that the key customer insights in a dynamic marketing environment come with brands adapting to movements in behaviours not shifts in technology. What really matters here is not that Facebook has reduced the separation between people, it’s that people have continued to employ Facebook to reduce the separation between each other. If you just focus on the how and not the why, there’s a very real risk of …

Two leaders kissing. A killer app or a sex tape?

By Mark Di Somma

I always grin when people do that whole “any publicity is good publicity” thing. Because it’s simply not true. That observation it seems to me is predicated on a belief that awareness is the doyen of marketing, whereas I would argue that, in most cases, perception overwrites straight recall in terms of bankability. The temptation, if you follow the former line of thinking, is to assume that successful marketing is just about gaining attention. It’s an attitude that the advertising industry and the online world has done much to encourage. Gain attention and the business will follow. But a sex tape will get you plenty of eyeballs. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have the foundations of a durable commercial model. Notoriety does work if your brand is built on a ‘bad boy’ reputation. As I’ve noted before, if you’re Gordon Ramsay, for example, or the Sex Pistols, then outrageous behaviours are both scandalous and intriguing. In these circumstances, people love to be shocked. Antics are in fact part of what people expect and buy …

Cancelling the brand: what has Qantas really grounded?

By Mark Di Somma

The ramifications for the brand after Qantas’ decision to ground its entire fleet over the weekend are obvious. It’s a move that has no doubt put tens of thousands of people in a very bad mood and set the scenes in my view for an ongoing internal war that may well prove unrecoverable. In brand terms, Qantas has done something equally damaging. In looking to force a regulatory decision, it has handed its competitors the perfect bridge: actions that discredit trust; and a prompted opportunity for customers to try out the opposition. One of the most powerful incentives for change is doubt – that nagging, unrelenting feeling that somehow a brand is not what it used to be, or even worse that it cannot be taken at its word. The other incentive is access to another channel that is viable, credible and that offers an opportunity to vent emotion. Both incentives exist here. Meaning people now not only have a reason to walk, they have lots of gates to walk to. Domestically and internationally, competing …

Does efficiency jeopardise brand?

By Mark Di Somma

In the hunt for more streamlined businesses that are less resource intensive, how real is the risk that brands are actually putting people off dealing with them? When does an efficient process become so rationalised that it loses its humanity and therefore its appeal? On the face of it, brand and efficiency have similar objectives. They’re both about creating financial headroom – but of course they approach that goal from opposite directions. Efficiency is so often about what can be subtracted. Brand is all about what can be added, at least perceptually, that people will pay more for. The problem occurs when the experience is over-compromised in the interests of saving money: when the seats become too cramped; the aisles too narrow; the servings too small; the service too automated … Because it’s at that point, that delight leaves the building, and customers start looking elsewhere because they feel you’re being mean-spirited. There are, as I see it, two ways to address this: 1. Set very clear customer expectations. If you’re running a high volume, …

Turning your brand into the authority

By Mark Di Somma

In this article in Business Week, Howard Schultz talks about how the mighty Starbucks brand lost its way – mistaking aroma rather than coffee for the core of its business and embraking on a strategy that saw it shift seriously off-course. The problem, as Schultz explains, is that by the time the company realised that they had diluted their brand position, breakfast sandwiches had become 3 percent of the company’s total revenue. Getting back on track was a big call. He did it anyway. We talk a lot these days about thought leadership – but really, I see that as a component of a bigger objective: market authority. You may or may not want to be the biggest in a sector, but the article says there are three actions that you need to take if you have lost your mojo and, like Starbucks, are looking to re-establish brand authority. I actually picked up five: The first decision is obvious – decide what you want to be the authority in as a brand, and keep the …

Brands only work locally

By Mark Di Somma

Really enjoyed this piece by Pankaj Ghemawat on the myths surrounding global brands. His point that only 16% of the top 10,000 brands on the Milward Brown database are recognised in more than one country, and only 3% are recognised in more than seven is a reminder that the world is not as open as many of us would like to think. Indeed Professor Ghemawat points to what happened to Coke as a sure sign that Ted Levitt’s principle of increasingly homogenous markets was incorrect. After steadily pursuing a process centred on standardisation throughout the 1990s, Coke has since shifted almost 180 degrees. Today, the company offers a diversified product set, market-specific price points, localised production and distribution and clear distinctons between the approach it takes in the States and internationally. And those same principles of distinction and specification that now influence a mass market brand like Coke are extending to other brands looking to build share in markets away from home. Ghemawat’s advice? Focus on the cultural, administrative, geographic and economic differences between markets …

What’s a brand strategist?

By Mark Di Somma

There are two answers. You can be exactly what the words describe. The person who decides what the branding is, what it represents, how it will work and how it will be communicated. It’s a key part of planning effective and inspiring communications. Or you can develop strategies for brands. You can be a person who works to make brands more valuable, distinctive, profitable and utterly aligned with the culture, the systems, and the distribution channels that must deliver what has been promised. That’s much more about the business. It focuses on making sure companies are utterly competitive through their brands. Each description involves very different interests, priorities, conversations … even clients. Just like in any role, a simple change in the words doesn’t just alter the meaning. It can actually shift the mandate. What do you do?

Finding an obsession

By Mark Di Somma

When you apply the concept of provenance to brands, it becomes a concept centred on systematically and competitively ‘localising’ what you’re about rather than diversifying to try and meet the generalised needs of the wider world. So it’s about having a narrowcast brand: one focused to the point of obsession on a specific area of passion. Provenance is also about those other valuable ideas that the word in its original meaning conjures: focus; love; purity of thinking; authenticity; deep knowledge. That obsession can then be marbled through every aspect of the brand: language; environment; innovation; strategy … People may worry that such devotion to a single idea will stifle adaptability, but my experience is that brands that see the world through the lens of an idea they subscribe to passionately are also able to find latitude and opportunity within that idea whilst growing a strong and devoted following. Far from being restrictive, being obsessive provides a framework for creative approaches. The way I see it, brands increasingly have three powerful emotive strategies going forward: they …