Branding Strategy Insider

Why a Branding Strategy Blog?

At The Blake Project our sole focus is helping organizations create brands that build and sustain trust. Branding Strategy Insider is an extension of our efforts to help marketing oriented leaders and professionals build strong brands.

CMO Leadership and Corporate Growth

 
The CMO’s job is simple—to drive growth, right? As Lou Gerstner ex-IBM and American Express CEO once put it: the role of Marketing is to build the brand and deliver a great customer experience. But is it really that simple?

At the recent CMO Club Summit in San Francisco, I was part of a panel discussion with Joe Ennen, SVP Consumer Brands at Safeway and Scott Thurm, Management Bureau Chief of The Wall Street Journal, titled "CMO's as Leaders of the Corporate Growth Agenda.” Scott led off the discussion by reframing the topic, asking, “What are the barriers to CMO’s leading the corporate growth agenda?”

Barriers to CMO’s Leading the Corporate Growth Agenda

1. CEO/CMO Alignment - The best CMO is a CEO who believes in Marketing. The CMO's ability to lead the corporate growth agenda starts with alignment with and support from the CEO. Not all business models and CMO’s are created equal. The role of Marketing in an organization can vary widely. And the CMO role can range from a narrow Marcom role all the way to something like a Chief Growth Officer. The CEO and CMO must be aligned on the role of Marketing in the organization for the CMO to effectively lead the growth agenda.

2.     Growth Means More Than Marketing - The CMO has to think more broadly than Marketing. What are all of the potential growth drivers - Marketing or otherwise ? Companies such as Zappos.com have actually gone so far as to define a non-Marketing function like customer service as Marketing. A critical part of the CMO's job is to understand the business model and all potential drivers-whether inside Marketing or not. This is becoming even more important as digital and social media blur the lines between Marketing, Public Affairs and Customer Service.

Brand Focus Leads to Power and Profits

Building a brand and building a profitable brand are two different things. 

Take Sony, for example. If you did a survey, you would probably find that Sony is the world’s most admired electronics brand. Way ahead of whoever might be in second place.

Terrific for owners of Sony products. But how about the owners of Sony stock? Does the company make any money? The sad fact is no. Net profits after taxes of Sony Corporation are small. Very small. 

In the last ten years, Sony Corporation had revenues of $519.2 billion. But net profits after taxes were only $4.0 billion. That’s 8/10th of one percent of sales. It’s hard paying off your bank loans, not to mention paying dividends to investors, with that kind of return. 

Of course, this is Japan, so who pays off its bank loans anyway? In 1999, the Bank of Japan cut its benchmark short-term rate effectively to zero. 

Like most Japanese companies, Sony is heavily line extended. Sony puts its brand name on television sets, videocassette recorders, digital cameras, personal computers, cellphones, semiconductors, camcorders, DVD players, MP3 players, stereos, broadcast video equipment, batteries and a host of other products. 

Yet Sony’s most profitable product is the PlayStation video game, a brand which makes only marginal use of the Sony name. (As powerful as the Sony brand might be, PlayStation is even a better brand name because it stands for something in the prospect’s mind.) 

The Cadillac of Brand Naming

 

It’s the Cadillac of crossovers,” said the ads from Cadillac as it introduced its SRX vehicle for 2010. 

No longer is Cadillac merely a century-old brand name. Over time, it’s also become a rhetorical device. Consider these other “Cadillacs”:

“The Cadillac of cologne” (“with aromas of ebony, cloves and incense, introducing a feeling of unlimited freedom,” produced under license from General Motors, by Beauty Contact, a company based in Dubai).

“The Cadillac of all trim saws” (Hillquist).

“The Cadillac of the sand-pile set” (Huffy children’s bicycle).

“The Cadillac of phonographs” (Rock-Ola).

“The Cadillac of dog foods” (Cadillac brand dog food).

“The Cadillac of minivans” (how a rental-car attendant described the Oldsmobile Silhouette to John Travolta’s character in the movie Get Shorty).

“Cadillac health care plans” (heard numerous times on Capitol Hill to describe high-end insurance policies).

Blame it all on the copywriter for a 1959 advertisement for the luxury auto brand. He described Cadillac as “the world’s best synonym for quality.” 

Neuro-Marketing's Limits and Advertising Creativity

 
As a cognitive anthropologist, who some 20 years ago traded backpack and quinine for Dramamine and a Hartmann three-suitor, I consult with marketers to assess the base beliefs and longings of various publics. 

My method is to talk to people as people, not consumers. In that way, I learn about how they transform the world into their world. The twists of paradox, compartmentalization and irony are always exquisitely on display. 

By-passing Langauage- Straight to the Brain  

Recently, a client asked me to work with a company that is using brain wave activity, or measures of blood flow in the brain, to assess central nervous system response to certain advertisements and products. The idea being to bypass consumers' language and rational thought in the name of metrics, and its lookalike, objectivity. 

What I discovered was that no matter how good the scientists were at designing stimuli and reading fMRI results, the very best they could do for our client was to warn them what to eliminate from their ads. The advice garnered from peering under the consumer's skull could only suggest what NOT to do. Unfortunately, the data from their procedure could not help us to determine what TO DO to enhance an advertisement's effectiveness. 

Fix the Product, Then the Perception

 

Business is off 40%. You lost $9 million  last year, compared with a $7 million profit the year before. Average age of your customers is up to 73, from 68 a decade ago. 

It was definitely time for a makeover at Elderhostel Inc., the venerable travel and educational organization for older adults. Among its needs:

     - Greater recognition from active baby boomers who are financially secure, have time on their hands and are curious about places they’ve never seen.

     - No more minimum age restrictions.

     - New programs and tours with wider appeal.

     - And, oh yes, a new name.

Elderhostel got its start 30 years ago, offering adults 60 and older noncredit classes and inexpensive housing on college campuses. Its cofounder allegedly asked, “If there are youth hostels, then why aren’t there elder hostels?” 

But soon thereafter, people started asking for better accommodations. No more sharing a bathroom down the hall. No more backpacks. Admits one executive, “The name wasn’t even descriptive back then.” 

Forgiveness and the Tiger Woods Brand

Tiger Woods as super-athlete cum Human Brand, resonates with values that sports fans and non-sports fans adore: skill, planning prowess, the ability to get of out of sand traps with a single stroke. PR traps, too. These values –beyond his ability to win and his status as the first billion-dollar athlete in the history of the world – create a loyalty bond that’s second to none. And when you engender loyalty like that, people are six times more likely to give the brand (in this case The Human Brand, Woods) the benefit of the doubt.

Yesterday, Nike, Woods’ largest sponsor announced that its advertising plans involving him would not be altered by Mr. Woods’ “transgressions.” In a statement, Nike said, “ Tiger and his family have Nike’s full support. We respect Tiger’s request for privacy and our thoughts are with Tiger and his family at this time.” 

“Sponsor expedience,” you say? That’s as well may be. But had the company an iota of evidence that the “transgression” was appreciably affecting company image and sales, they’d dump him as fast as a golfer scraps a driver with a cracked shaft! 

Loyalty isn’t capricious. It’s palpable, especially as it regards sales and situations where the brand requires the benefit of the doubt. It’s far more emotional than rational, which is why virtually 100% of people asked if Tiger’s behavior was acceptable, would tell you “no,” and why that same 100% are willing to forgive his indiscretions. Which is why his biggest sponsors – along with his fans – have reaffirmed their support for him. 

Here’s a marketing truth: Loyalty is always accompanied by positive consumer behavior and sales, and consumers willing to buy more, recommend more, rebuff competitive offers, and even invest in publicly traded companies. And sometimes it comes with a metaphorical ‘Get Out of Jail Card.” 

But here’s another marketing truth: engendering that level of loyalty doesn’t happen by chance.

Courtesy: Robert Passikoff, Brand Keys 
 
Sponsored By: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Brand Naming: Get it Right or Get Forgotten

 
On my first real job (at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y.) I noticed a consistent advertiser in the electrical publications with an unusual name.

A company selling wire and cable was called "Crapo." Presumably pronounced Cray-po and not Crap-o.

That's terrible, I thought. Oh no, my more experienced colleagues said, one of the first things you need to learn in this business is that names don't matter. What matters is the quality of the product.

That's been a common refrain in my years of marketing work. Whenever I objected to a brand name, I would hear the same thing: Names don't matter.

For example, a recent column about DDB's new Budweiser campaign on AdAge.com drew 26 comments. Mostly negative. Commentators were critical of the music, the superficiality of the idea, the absence of storytelling and the lack of authenticity, among other things.

Nobody bothered to mention the one thing that seems to be driving Budweiser into the ground.

Bud Light.

How can anyone position a brand called "Budweiser" when the entire industry is moving to light beer? Especially when the brand itself has validated the concept by introducing a light version of its regular beer.

Then there's the fact that the Budweiser regular brand has lost volume every year in a row for the last 20 years.

If you're going to re-position the Budweiser brand, you're going to have to figure out how to get Joe Six-Pack to drink regular beer instead of light beer.

But then, names don't matter to most marketing people. What matters to most marketing people is the casting, the story line, the emotional involvement, the big idea.