Best DC-made advertisement - 2010 award

DC advertising firms are showing they can compete with the big guys in New York.  On March 17th, the Advertising Club of Metropolitan Washington presented its 2010 ADDY® Awards, recognizing advertising creative excellence.  The evening’s top award, Best of Show, went to SmithGifford for “Sandals,” a TV spot done for Identity Guard.  



I think this is a well-produced advertisement, with an extremely engaging storyline.  The choice of Nigeria as the location triggers memories of many scam emails (and in fact there is a thriving internet fraud industry in Nigeria).  The music and characterizations (not to mention ominous shadows) lead you to believe that there is a devious identity theft happening to the woman who ordered her shoes on the internet.  But, at the end, we are led to believe that our concerns were unfounded: they were only processing her shoe order after all.  The promise to the consumer is clear: "There are bad guys out there who want to steal your identity. But, with our service, you can trust the internet again."

Two Major Brands in the News Today

A quick stroll through today's Wall Street Journal reveals two major brands that are under particular scrutiny. (I'm ignoring political and national brands, even though we certainly COULD talk about how the healthcare bill has affected Obama's brand). 

Google - Sergey Brin, the co-founder of the internet giant, said recently about Google's pullback of its Chinese search site: "I think at some point it is appropriate to stand up for your principles, and if more companies, governments, organizations, individuals did that, I do think the world would be a better place."

Is this great corporate branding, or what?  Google is well known for it's Microsoft-bashing motto "Don't be evil".  And his recent actions, refusing to cooperate with China's censorship demands, does support that brand message.  Google's about-face on growth in China, after six years of accepting China's demands, is a bit confusing to some business people in Silicon Valley, but I commend Brin for staying "on brand", even if he will lose revenue to competitors who are more willing to change their search filters to suit the whims of the communist regime. 

Starbucks - The publicly-traded company announced yesterday that it will pay a dividend to stockholders at the end of this fiscal year, for the first time since the IPO 18 years ago.  This comes amidst a two-year slump in sales at the ubiquitous coffee chain.  Although you could argue that this is purely a financial decision that has nothing to do with Starbuck's brand, it has everything to do with the brand's perception and maintaining confidence in Starbuck's continuing domination.  If you haven't been reading the news, some of Starbucks' recent activities include: store closures, putting its coffee in Burger King, selling instant coffee, and engaging in a battle of principle with gun-owners.  Sounds a bit "all over the place" to me, without a clear direction.  So perhaps paying dividends is a way of telling consumer "We know what we're doing, and we're going to be around for a long time." 

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz also put another brand image feather in his cap during the investor meeting, when he quoted a conversation he had with a major investor.  The investor was concerned with the cost-ineffectiveness of paying health benefits for part-time baristas.  Schultz announced to the crowd at the meeting that he flatly refused to take away any benefits from those employees, suggesting the investor choose another target for his investment.  Hearing this, the audience went wild with applause.  Way to go, Schultz.  He's been talking for years about how to make Starbucks back into the "gathering place" he originally intended, as opposed to a commodity place to buy pricey take-out coffee drinks.  And this type of public support for the common employee could help boost morale and improve the quality of service that customers receive.  Next time you pick up a latte, let me know if the person behind the counter seems a little more happy doing his or her job.  And if that changes your perception of the Starbucks brand.

Good vs. Bad Brand

In brand management interviews, one typical question is “What is an example of a good brand?” This query also comes in other flavors, such as “What is a brand you can’t live without?” or “What’s your favorite brand?” All of these questions are really testing your ability to talk coherently about a brand, its value proposition, and how well it’s supported through marketing and product development. Although there is no right or wrong answer, whatever you do, don’t use Coke, Pepsi, Nike, or Apple as your example, unless you are striving to be forgettable.

Here’s one current example of a “good” brand that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about recently: Oral-B (a Proctor & Gamble brand). When I thought this morning of a product I couldn’t live without, my Oral-B CrossAction manual toothbrush came to mind. But just liking a product doesn’t make the brand great. Here’s what Oral-B seems to be doing very well:

PRODUCT INNOVATION – This is the area where P&G spends more money than any competitor. They study their target segments of the population, perform extensive market research, and engineer new products with precise detail. If you examine a CrossAction toothbrush, you see that it is truly different from any other toothbrush, in terms of the angles of the bristles and the varied bristle types. And it really does seem to remove more plaque from the teeth than a traditional toothbrush. Oh, and did I mention that it has a special texture on the back of the toothbrush head for scraping your tongue? Genius!


  

AWARENESS – The brand maintains great awareness. I imagine that if I performed an unaided survey asking “What is are some brands of toothbrush?”, Oral-B would be at the top of your list. That’s not just a fluke—it takes a lot of money and effort to gain that position.

FOLLOWS THE HUMAN LIFECYCLE – Oral-B can follow you throughout your life. There are products specifically tailored to babies, toddlers, youth, teenagers, and so on. They also make electric toothbrushes for the lazier stages of life.

MARKETING SUPPORT – TV commercials (especially outside the USA) and magazine ads are abundant. Oral-B and the good folks at P&G know that consumers need regular reminders of their brand in order to make them feel more comfortable when they spend $4+ on a toothbrush, so the messages will reach you frequently.



CHANNEL DEVELOPMENT – Why is it that your free toothbrush at the dentist’s office is always an Oral-B? It’s because the brand managers have developed those distribution channels very well over time. The company spends time with dentists, finding out what’s important to them, as well as building relationships with national organizations.

TRADE PROMOTIONS & COUPONS – The company uses frequent promotions, plus occasional BOGOs (buy-one-get-one-free deals) to maintain premium shelf space in retail stores. Because their product quality is so high, it’s almost impossible to go back to a straight-bristle brush after using a CrossAction, so the promo accomplishes its goal of winning a new loyal customer.

Even if you don’t share my delight in diagonal bristles, it’s hard not be impressed with Oral-B’s ability to brush away the competition and earn a mint in profits.  Do you have an example of a brand you couldn't live without?

What have you "herd" about brands?

What does the word “brand” mean, anyway? I’m sure almost anyone could detail a list of brand names, but most of us have a harder time defining exactly what a brand is. Is it the company name, such as Hershey’s, Campbell’s, or Kraft? Is it the logo, like McDonald’s golden arches or the Nike swoosh? According to BrandChannel’s glossary of brand-related terms, a brand is “a mixture of attributes, tangible and intangible, symbolised in a trademark, which, if managed properly, creates value and influence.”


Sounds ambiguous, doesn’t it? That’s one of the inherent struggles in defining the word “brand”: there are so many intangible elements. The Interbrand definition doesn’t even account for the fact that individual musicians, directors, and actors can reasonably be said to have their own “brands”, even without an official trademark or logo. Clearly, a brand can be conceptual as well as physical.

An exploration of etymology might clarify the origin of the word. (I promised in my first post that this would not be an academic blog, so you may take comfort in the fact that I did not verify any of the so-called facts you are about to read). Imagine for a moment that you are a cattle rancher in 1880, raising livestock in the American Midwest. Your 500 head of cattle range freely in the same unfenced grasslands that your neighbor’s cattle graze in. Since you couldn’t possibly identify each cow by appearance, you need some way to mark—or brand—the cattle as your own. So you forge a unique design out of iron, heat it up in a fire, and burn the image into the hide of your animal. Cattle identification problem solved.

What those cattle ranchers probably didn’t consider at first were the marketing implications of branding their cattle. Beef quality is not universal, and certain livestock ranchers provide better steaks and rib-eyes to the market than others. Over time, the livestock wholesalers in Chicago would come to associate a branded image with a standard quality of meat. Therefore, even though a railway car might be filled with cows of the same size and appearance, cattle with this brand:

Could fetch a higher price than cattle with this brand:

And the price premium would be determined without actually testing the beef's marbling or flavor.

Which leads me to a question for you, dear reader: why do you buy Morton brand iodized salt, instead of the unbranded generic at the grocery store? Do you, like I do, rush down the baking aisle, look for a dark purple container with the image of a girl with a yellow umbrella, and throw it into the cart without thinking? Without even knowing it, you probably have years of built-up experiences with that brand. For a fun experiment, the next time you’re at a store, try to buy the generic version of a product you regularly buy from an established brand. You’ll likely feel some inner resistance to the unbranded option. Congratulations: you are now experiencing “brand equity”.  Welcome to the herd.

Let's get something straight:

I’m not a seasoned industry expert on brands or brand management. So this blog is not going to be the source of revealed secrets like Coke’s formula or the Colonel’s fried chicken recipe. I’m also not a historian, so this won’t be a thorough curatorial review of brands through the ages. This is going to be an online place for brand enthusiasts (mostly me) to discuss the brands they love and what makes them great. And if you have knowledge, sentiment, or criticism to share, please comment on the posts or volunteer to be a guest author. Let the branding begin!