Davis ThinkingMany brands still copy the codes of the market, fill the pack with multiple messages and try to appeal to everyone. Then wonder why the pack doesn't stand out. Check out these four brands of face cleanser for example. And if you have time, have a laugh at this piss-take video showing what the iPod pack design would be like if Microsoft did it.
Have you seen Logorama, the movie comprised entirely of animated logos, that just won the Oscar for best animated short film? It's an excellent representation of the technicolor tapestry of branding that our world has become. Whether that's a good or bad thing depends on your point of view. But what would the world be like if there were no more brands to differentiate products, inspire us, or give us a good feeling about a company or product we've never tried before? I'm one who thinks it would be bad for brands to meld together into a homogenized mess, and I see that starting to happen in places. At the rate things are going, someday soon all brands will look like Walmart 's Great Value label. Why is this happening?
Editor’s Note: In his inimitable style, Marty Neumeier, author, lecturer and director of transformation at Liquid Agency, makes complex marketing principles seem logical and easy to understand. Here from his book “Zag: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands,” Neumeier explains why in a world of “look-alike products and me-too services” it is important for brand marketers to zag when everyone else zigs.
We all love to hate the evil empire, but let's be fair. Microsoft has humbled itself dramatically, and the company is sincerely trying to do a good job with Bing. The team at Redmond is getting used to their unexpected position as the underdog and, based on my conversation with Weitz, they're beginning to relish the challenge that comes from playing David to Google's Goliath. My quibble, however -- and it's not an insignificant one -- is that Bing needs to step up its differentiation.
Water is the quintessential commodity. Approximately 326 million trillion gallons of water can be found on earth. (Admittedly, only 3% of this is in the form of freshwater. About 70 percent of our planet is covered in ocean with an average depth of several thousand feet.) And approximately 60% of human bodies are water. Water is largely tasteless, odorless and colorless. Recognizing that water is scarcer in some places, still in much of the world, water is delivered directly to people’s homes at a relatively low cost and is easily available in great quantity. In fact, many people and businesses use massive quantities of water on a regular basis for irrigation, manufacturing and to maintain landscapes. So how then can one differentiate and command a price premium for water? It has already been done many times before. Consider Voss, Pellegrino, Ty Nant, and many other brands of bottled water.
Recently Ad Age published a list of what it considered to be “America’s Hottest Brands.” The list featured 40 brands that are “setting the pace for innovation — and getting results – right now.” Although their selection criteria wasn’t clear and I can’t say I agree with all of the choices, I did find some instructive insights in the write-up.
News that Microsoft is delaying the much-heralded launch of its Bing search engine till at least quarter 1 of next year shows how hard it is for a "follower brand" to take on a strong leader brand, in this case Google. Bing has been available in the UK since June of this year, although it has not had any marketing activity. So far, it has less then 5% market share, compared to 90% for Google (combining the .co.uk and .com sites). My guess is that even with marketing support Bing will struggle to get more than 15-20% market share at most. Why?
At some point in our schooling, we all learned about the ancient Greek marketplace called the "agora." The agora was a place where people gathered to shop, discuss politics and meet friends. Merchants built early commerce around one essential element: human interaction. But gradually, the marketplace changed. Along came the industrial revolution, the creation of mass communications and long-distance travel. We suddenly found ourselves in the 1950s, the true dawn of the consumer society.
Recently several manufacturers have announced that they are initiating an e-commerce business. I’m not sure of the motivations behind these moves but it seems to be a growing trend. Although many manufacturers have been offering direct sales for many years through their own e-commerce sites, it seems we’re seeing a new surge of interest in doing so from players who have historically shunned the idea. And this got me thinking about how a manufacturer could do e-commerce in a way that doesn’t simply cannibalize the sales would be generated by a third party distributor or retailer, but instead would increase the value of the brand which is delivered to the customer. I can think of three ways a manufacturer might do this.
To combat a slow sales forecast, many online retailers will be looking to boost their digital presence this holiday season, per Shop.org's annual eHoliday Study conducted by BIGresearch. A majority (60.3 percent) of retailers have already made enhancements this year to their Facebook pages, as well as Twitter pages (58.7 percent). Another 65.5 percent have incorporated updates to their blogs and RSS feeds.
If you can't have a magazine e-reader that mimics print, you might as well have a print edition that mimics digital. Or tries to, anyhow. This seems to be the driving notion behind the December issue of Esquire, in which about half a dozen pages are enhanced with augmented reality features; hold them up to a Webcam, and the images on the screen come to life. Hold the cover up to a Webcam, and cover subject Robert Downey Jr. steps off the page in 3-D, offering a primer on Esquire's augmented reality issue while the cover copy flies off the cover behind him. Tilt the magazine and the on-screen animation moves in sync. The effect is triggered by a box, displayed prominently (and a bit jarringly) between Downey's legs on the cover that allows the computer to interact and communicate with the printed page. The effect, needless to say, is pretty cool if not a bit over-the-top.
Niels Bohr once noted that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," but then he didn't have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy. Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success - or failure – of next year's branding and marketing efforts.
The natural sweetener stevia has increased in popularity in proportion to concerns over the safety of sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose - not to mention the increasing demand for natural, organic food. Though the FDA initially objected to natural stevia, its December 2008 promotion of the rebiana extract of stevia used in Cargill's Truvia (developed with Coca-Cola) and PepsiCo's PureVia into the "Generally Recognized as Safe" category opened the floodgates to smaller manufacturers. It's also led to trademark wars that amount to internecine genericide.
The roles that brands play in people’s lives are not static but evolving. While brand names once were used to differentiate basic commodity products and provide a promise of consistent formulation and quality, now they confer a whole range of other benefits, including status, emotional well-being, and a sense of belonging. The importance of these different benefits and emotional rewards varies according to a number of factors, including the cultural norms of different countries and the development of specific categories. In order to survive in today’s crowded and complicated markets, brand owners and marketers need to stay abreast of these changing needs and expectations. But those that want their brands to do more than survive—those that want their brands to succeed and thrive in the future—need to stay one step ahead. They need to anticipate the next set of needs that brands will satisfy for their consumers.
Now that fall fashion marketing is here and the industry is working on what’s next, what should fashion brands do differently to make up for a terrible fiscal 2009? Everyone’s a brand strategist these days, including people in the fashion industry whose core business is to produce fashion shows, generate publicity and create ad campaigns. In which case you’d expect fashion brands to be more distinct from each other, wouldn’t you? Considering fashion is all about change, the fashion-marketing model is really old fashioned. It took a recession for people to accept that the selling cycle doesn’t work, and although advertising isn’t as effective as it used to be, brands still invest heavily in formulaic print ads, along with the same old sponsorships, trunk shows, pop-up shops, collaborations and now blogs, videos and social networking.
When it comes to yogurt I have no brand allegiance. Whatever brand happens to cross my line of vision that does not look like it will taste like creamy acid, I will grab. Granted, I don’t eat much yogurt, so I have no problem in brand continuity. Same thing with milk, whatever the house brand is at the grocery store near my home at the moment is the one I buy. For a while, in the halcyon economic times of 2007, we bought organic milk. Prior to writing this post, if you had asked me what brand of organic milk I bought I would not have been able to tell you. It was only as I was going through Stonyfield Farm’s web site that I realized the $5 gallon of milk I had been buying was Stonyfield Farms. This is not a knock on this particular brand but perhaps just my perception of the dairy category: A blurry landscape of cows, prairies and fruit drawings. Most likely, I’m not the target audience. Having said all this, Stonyfield Farm stands out from the crowd as a cow- and earth-conscious company since its modest beginning in 1979 as The Rural Education Center until 1983 when they began (pun alert!) milking their expertise and killer yogurt recipe as a consumer product. Today it is one of the most successful organic dairy product lines in the market, and it recently launched a new identity and packaging designed by Webb Scarlett deVlam.
Simply Better is the title of the marketing book that won the 2005 Berry-AMA Book Prize. Customers rarely buy a product or service because it offers something unique, say authors Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan. Consumers want products that are simply better in terms of quality, reliability and value. Not true. Too many companies focus on trying to make better products when the real advantage is making different products. The current videogame dogfight between Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo illustrates this point.
Brand value is all about distinction and scarcity. The brand appeals, in a particular way, to a particular group of people. And that's why those people will: 1. Pay a premium for it (which results in increased margins); 2. Go out of their way for it (which results in increased margins; and/or 3. Talk about it and show it off to their family and friends (which results in increased margins).
Knob Creek bourbon has announced that it may run out of stock yet this summer, and that thirsty customers will have to wait until the next batch arrives on store shelves in November. I think this is brilliant, old-school marketing. One of the most important brand attributes of successful products and services is success; consumers want to know that other consumers want stuff, and sales is a qualifier that goes far beyond conversation as proof of that interest.
In the U.S., the average tenure for a CMO is roughly 23 months. In the U.K., it is even shorter. Al Ries states over at AdAge that of all the firms in the Fortune 1000, only 7% of the most highly paid executives have marketing in their job title, and only 15% of those same firms even have a senior level marketing position, such as CMO.
When it comes building a strong brand that matters to consumers, differentiation is a key in separating your offerings from competitors. But what if you don’t have any competitors? Does brand differentiation matter then?
I've got to know Andy Knowles of design agency JKR quite well through workshop we've run together on renovating the core. I've seen his presentation on the power of design 5-6 times, and yet I still love watching him passionately promote the power of what he calls "brand charisma." This is all about identifying, and then amplifying, your brand's visual essence. JKR are putting their money where their mouth is with a super press advertising campaign.
While the mind may still be a mystery, we know one thing about it that is for certain—it’s under attack. Most Western societies have become totally ‘‘overcommunicated.’’ The explosion of media forms, and the ensuing increase in the volume of communications, has dramatically affected the way people either take in or ignore the information offered to them.
For most of us, the shape of a 2-liter bottle is something we take for granted. For Hendrik Steckhan, head of carbonated soft-drink brands for Coca-Cola North America, the shape is a problem. Coca-Cola should not be in the same 2-liter bottle as every other brand, he said. “When you think about this, it just doesn’t make sense,” Steckhan said. Faced with a nagging decline in North American sales, Atlanta-based Coke and its bottlers are turning to packaging as a key way to set their products apart and try to generate fresh appeal.
The basic concept of some products predicts failure. Not because they don’t work, but because they don’t make sense. Consider Mennen’s vitamin E deodorant. That’s right, you sprayed a vitamin under your arm. It doesn’t make sense unless you want the healthiest, best-fed armpits in the nation. It quickly failed.
Starbucks Corp. is making changes to the way it grinds and brews coffee as it tries to win back customers amid economic weakness and increased competition. Instead of grinding coffee only in the morning, baristas will grind beans each time a new pot is brewed. Timers will buzz to signal when it's time to make a new batch, according to internal Starbucks documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The changes are part of the Seattle-based company's effort to reinvigorate the "Starbucks experience" in the face of competition from less-expensive rivals such as McDonald's Corp. and 7-Eleven Inc. With Starbucks' changes, customers will be able to hear the whir of grinders and smell the aroma of fresh coffee all day.
It's marketing's time at Walmart. It's easy to become complacent when you are a $401 billion company whose shareholder meeting gets teen idol Miley Cyrus out of bed before 8 a.m. to perform for more than 15,000 employees as a warm-up act for American Idol Kris Allen. But Walmart executives know that if the recession abates, they will face a challenge holding onto shoppers who've been introduced, or reintroduced, to the retailer as they've traded down to save money.
What if something you thought you knew to be true, turned out to be exactly the opposite? What if an approach you imagined was working for you was actually working against you?
Differentiation, of course, exists, but does so on the basis of a product or service actually owning values — real or perceived, rational or emotional — and occupying a real place in the consumers’ minds — beyond the consumers just being aware of them. And the degree to which they possess these values and have meaning in the consumers’ minds (beyond primacy of product) determines whether they have differentiated themselves. But fewer and fewer products and services are able to demonstrate any degree of actual differentiation.
Sturdy old Sears might seem a bit tone deaf when it comes to fashion, but when it comes to recession, it's speaking a language consumers understand.
On its face, the rationale behind value-based advertising seems to make sense. It's a recession, and consumers are watching what they spend. But assuming everyone really is only out for the best deal during this recession, at what point does it all become one big blur? That is, if everything is a value, then what's the value of being a value?
You have this choice to make in everything you do, from your career to the words you use in a sales letter. The point: choose. Are you doing this to fit in or stand out?
K. C. Estenson, the new general manager of CNN.com, has a thought or two about most news sites on the Web: they’re predictable and homogeneous. Seen one, seen ’em all. Even his own site, he says, could use more of a “unique signature.”
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