November 9, 2011
Was it any surprise that Wendy’s brought back one the most successful brand statements in commercial history? Perhaps for some it’s a cheap ploy at resurrecting a once giant burger brand that’s been left on the grill for too long or for others a lip-smacking promise of a burger that has more between the bun than the competition. Another take, as Ad Week observed, is the appropriateness of the message at a time of rising obesity and a call for lower calorie food options. We can take from this example that as in any brand positioning strategy, there are any number of approaches with as many interpretations, after all we each hold our own unique set of values and cannot assume one brand image fits all. What we do know is that organizations who invest in understanding the customer through consumer or B2B research are far more likely to succeed than those that fly by on gut feel. Insights are the foundation of any objective business decision and the cornerstone of a sound brand strategy. Many brands fail because they neglect to plan both strategically and tactically. This was well expressed in FastCompany’s article on knowing the difference between strategy and tactics where they observed that strategic brand planning is about establishing a long-term plan with bigger and broader objectives and the brand tactics are the actions intended to forward the brand’s strategic objectives. I’ve told clients there’s no point in being the fastest draw in the west if you always forget to load your gun.
Here are the top 10 considerations an organization can use when launching a new brand or engaging in a rebranding initiative:
1. Put the right person in charge of the process
2. Do not be nostalgic, let go of the past
3. Avoid the Gut Feel – hire a professional brand firm
4. Be objective not subjective – measure against the Brand Strategy
5. Use research to guide strategy – listen to each audience group
6. Let committees have a say not a vote
7. You are never too small to rebrand, every category needs a brand leader
8. The logo is the Visual Identity, not the entire Brand Identity
9. Know the brand’s unique point of difference – avoid being all things to all people
10. Don’t mimic the competition – it’s easy to cheat, it’s more rewarding to win
September 29, 2011
In an effort to garner attention for the Matrix brand, Toyota and their ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi L.A. let loose a viral campaign that was intended to target an already ad adverse demographic. In March 2008, an unsuspecting L.A. resident, Amber Duick, received an email from a complete stranger named Sebastian Bowler who seemed to know her. The email read “Amber mate! Coming 2 Los Angeles Gonna lay low at your place for a bit. Till it all blows over. Bringing Trigger.” At first Amber might have assumed this was junk mail and ignored it, however as a single women living in L.A. she may have become increasingly concerned when she received a second email that included her home address with a photo of the alleged Sebastian.
What Amber didn’t know was that she was the target of a prank viral advertising campaign. Perhaps this is where marketing crosses that fine line between targeted and invasive. Traditional targeted campaigns could leverage consumer insights and psychographic data to speak one-to-one with a consumer. Today, agencies and large consumer brands are struggling to gain the attention of people who simply avoid advertisements. In fact Toyota’s own research proved that males under 35 do not respond to advertising and are contemptuous of brands that try to mask the ordinary with a youthful edge.
As the campaign went on, Amber was subjected to further emails from her virtual stalker with links to his MySpace page that described him as a 25-year-old soccer hooligan from England who enjoyed drinking to excess. After several weeks Amber received her final email that informed her it was all in jest and she was simply a target (victim) of a virtual punking campaign by Toyota.
If you thought Toyota had problems with their brakes a few years ago, they now have bigger issues as the campaign came crashing down when this week a California court approved her $10-million (U.S.) legal proceedings against Toyota and Saatchi & Saatchi L.A., for intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligence, false advertising and other acts.
The internet is a great mass medium, but it shouldn’t be used to misrepresent brands or invade unsuspecting consumers with misleading messages. Let this be a lesson for clients and agencies looking to experiment with online marketing, think it through before starting the online engine.
July 11, 2011
I was reminded this weekend of how powerful visual context is in influencing our emotions and behaviour. If you’re looking for visual overload try any amusement park, wow, they have it figured out. We decided to take the family to Canada’s Wonderland for a fun – visually stimulating day.
Having two young boys, it was interesting to observe their immediate response to the visual stimulation that was of the greatest emotional appeal. While I gravitated towards the big Starbucks logo, they had found the Race Zone and Haunted House within seconds. Both of their amusements were high on the emotive scale, while mine was high on the ‘sit back and relax’ scale.
Perhaps most interesting was how an immediate response to visual context follows the proven patterns of primitive thinking (the reptilian brain), where deeper insights such as height restrictions, price verse value and mapping move us up to the new brain for a more logical thought process. It is completely irrational to be afraid of rollercoasters that turn you upside down at the speed of sound or drop you from 1000 feet in the air. Irrational because everyone survives, no one gets hurt and the big machines don’t fall apart. However our primitive brain senses danger, moves to emotional fear and creates a barrier to logical thinking.
This is true in advertising. Sex and fear both work equally well when applied within the correct context. Fashion items sell on sex appeal as does beer, whereas sports and movies like Jaws sells on fear. Look at the negative economic impact Jaws had on the Californian coast when the movie was first released. People were terrified that they would be attacked by sharks. Yes, sharks do inhabit Californian waters but you are far more likely to be killed in a car accident driving to California than being attacked by a shark. A purely irrational fear.
So, I propose the next time you’re at Disney and feel fear or are afraid to go on the Body Drop Bungee Ride check what is causing the fear and decide if it is irrational or logical and then go for it! Let me know how it went, I’ll be in the Starbucks.
May 18, 2011
‘We all march to the same beat’, define your brand promise and build an organizational culture that is meticulously measured against this promise. So why do so many companies get it wrong and very few get it right? As I observe this divide, I see a common misstep in the marching orders that come from leadership. The new brand becomes a façade. It is expected to magically create opportunity and do the heavy lifting needed to build a solid foundation for the brand.
However, those that get it right are, as Duane Knapp put it in his book “The Brand Mindset”, truly genuine brands. Here’s a perfect example we can all learn from. On a recent trip with my family I was to return the rental car with a full tank of gas. My mistake, I filled up too far from the National depot leaving the tank short. The attendant looked at my busy family, noticed the angst in my eyes and said “the tank isn’t quite full but we have you covered Mr. Brown”. Give that guy a gold star and a promotion to the brand desk! Did National just move me from ‘buy-on price’ to ‘buy National’, you bet they did.
Perhaps that’s the salient point in all of this; organizations that put self-interest and transactional mindsets ahead of their brand promise are willing to forgo long-term customer loyalty in exchange for short-term, short-sighted, customer abandonment. Clearly it’s not how well your brand looks, it’s how well they perform that matters – and that can only come with a commitment to practice and investment in your genuine brand promise.
February 15, 2011
Being our eBusiness Manager means that it’s my job to stay on top of technology trends and find ways to tackle our client’s marketing needs with unique solutions. When I was first introduced to QR (Quick Response) codes years ago, I felt a sense of déjà vu. It brought me back to the late 90s when I was developing eBanking solutions for cell phone users. I was an analyst then and thought “neat idea, but not the right time”. At that time of course, a BlackBerry was a text-based pager and Nokia users sported a 1-inch by 1-inch screen that made mobile eBanking painful at best.
Like eBanking, QR Codes when first introduced in the marketing world were ahead of their time. Although the QR code has been around since 1994, its use was primarily to scan large amounts of data for inventory management systems. QR codes, like their barcode predecessors, are images with encoded data but these little marvels of black and white squares have the ability to store 350-times the amount of data as UPCs. With this kind of capacity, marketers realized they could encode entire messages and URLs and then embed these in their marketing collateral. There were two problems with this approach: 1) the average person didn’t have a scanner to decode these images, and 2) when asked what these QR codes were, most people didn’t know what to do with them.
Today, smartphone sales outpace PCs and with these new smartphones come the required technology – a camera and scanning software – to turn any phone into a QR Code reader. Savvy marketers are leveraging these QR codes to drive their off-line marketing to the web to create an integrated marketing solution. Passersby are now invited to connect directly to product info, testimonials, and richer content – all via the click of their smartphone camera. People are starting to become more familiar with the QR Code
An additional benefit is that QR Codes are static and once they’re created, they can’t be altered. What can be altered however is their destination – which means that users who return to your site can be presented with different content (consider a restaurant QR code that links to the Lunch vs. Dinner menu depending on time of day) which helps cut down on printing or reprint costs. As marketers, we’re also interested in the tracking and measurement. These codes provide us with a better understanding of which campaigns are working and where best to invest future marketing resources.
And while the analyst in me still thinks we’re still a few years away from widespread mobile banking, the eBusiness guy thinks we’re about to see a surge of QR Codes in our day-to-day lives.
January 17, 2011
Many have commented on the Starbucks brand refresh, not to be mistaken for a new brand design, more a simplification of the iconic Siren logo that has become synonymous with gourmet coffee the world over. Having worked on hundreds of brand identity designs in my career I can say from experience, trying to rationalize the intrinsic ethos of a graphic mark that represents a multi-million dollar corporation would challenge even the most seasoned creative director. So at first, l was less than impressed with Starbucks’ in-house creative team and their understated rationale – bringing the Siren out of the ring and making her the star. However we don’t have to look far to see how de-cluttering a brand can simplify neuro responses, just look at the brand equity in such simple icons as Apple or Nike. In fact the more I consider the implied brand risk the more I can appreciate why CEO Howard Schultz has spoken out about being a coffee company that will have other products with the Starbucks name but may be void of coffee. Something is brewing over at Starbucks and it sniffs of brand extension beyond the white cup. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see clothing, sporting equipment or perhaps luxury resorts – don’t laugh, just look at the CuisinArt Resort. For now, free the Siren, let her swim in unchartered waters and we’ll see where she comes ashore, perhaps it will be utopia!
April 21, 2010
In a move that seemed to surprise no-one except Lakeport workers, Labatt has announced that it is closing the Lakeport Brewery in Hamilton. Shaking up the market and selling beer for closer to what it should cost made Lakeport a great story. Like Napster, Lakeport offered an alternative at a cheaper price. And like Napster, it was only a matter of time before the big money saw the threat and took control back. Considering the due diligence that Labatt would no doubt have undertaken, this plant was likely slated to close about 9 minutes after the acquisition was finalized. So now we’ll have to wait and see if it is the end of buck-a-beer or an opening for another upstart. It might be nice to see more micro-brewery action in Canada. All we can do is crack open a cold one and watch the show.
January 11, 2010
As social media grows not only in popularity but as a genuinely effective marketing method and arena, there are 3 distinct ways in which it has improved how brands are being marketed and communicated.
The Lost Art of Listening
Social Media’s lasting legacy on brands/companies/organizations might be that it finally forced them to listen instead of just selling. A lot of this might have to do with the fact that most social media forums are not their arena to preach about their brands. In actuality, conversations are taking place and they’ve realized that they have to monitor and participate before they try to market and sell.
A Voluntary Think Tank
If a brand approaches it right, throughout the online world, there exists an active think tank that is expressing their thoughts and desires, and whose opinions could provide dividends if properly harnessed. How much were companies paying for focus groups, where most people joined just to receive free giveaways or cash?
Real Time Research
Before we execute any tactic a solid foundation of research must be in place, and social media provides a constant stream of real time research. Of course, many argue that we can’t properly measure sentiment as it is subjective, but social media still provides a window for us to see how our brands and reputation are discussed in public forums.
December 2, 2009
It’s a marketing director’s dream: imagine having access to everything you wanted to know (but were afraid to ask) about splitting atoms or deep frying Mars bars. Last night while Larry King was desperately trying to cover the Tiger Woods ‘cheater or cheated’ story and the Salahi’s White House party crashing exposé, 20 million people had already scanned You Tube for the latest videos – not to mention being exposed to over a dozen ads per view. Sorry Larry, but when the average consumer wants their daily dose of sublime content they’re not going to sit in front of their oversized, over financed flat screen TV’s – a marketing director’s nightmare. No, they’re going to their preferred social media network and pushing out links and feeds to their personal network – a marketing director’s dream. When I dream about creating our client’s perfect brand promotion or B2B product launch I dream about a connected hub of like minded people who feel empowered to share what they have just experienced with their peers or colleagues (it’s perfectly natural, we all dream about work). Image your two minute commercial, infomercial or product demo being broadcast for free, advertising impressions are systematically tracked and you only pay if a prospective buyer clicks on your ad. Now integrate that same video (commercial) post with a social media campaign that goes viral within 48 hours of launch. Time to stop dreaming, from ball bearing maintenance video’s like Sima-Tool’s to full consumer promotions from Mountain Dew, social media campaigns are changing how marketers reach their audience. I recommend you wake up to one of the most persuasive mediums available today. Good night John Boy!
November 17, 2009
Came across an interesting news item the other day. Seems Canada Goose, makers of clothing designed for the world’s most inhospitably cold environments, will be teaming up with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment. Soon, season ticket holders at the ACC will be able to store their coats at the Canada Goose coat check. Now the ACC is fairly inhospitable to the Leafs and Raptors, but it’s not that cold, just quiet lately. And you can look for your favourite Raptors basketball star sporting a specially designed Canada Goose coat, no doubt with pockets for the diamond encrusted cell-phone and keys to the Escalade. Well, I say, it’s about time. The oft-overlooked high-arctic scientists will now be rocking the same threads as the downtown T.O. set. Maybe add a little bling of their own and they’ll be beating them away with a stick at last call on an Alert Saturday night. But, to scientists everywhere, take advantage quickly. Once the urban crowd catches on to the Goose vibe, it’s gonna flame out before you know it. In a year, maybe two, you’ll be picking up your C-G at the local Costco, next to the $35 Polo shirts and bulk meat. Cheaper, yes but cool?