BRAND NAME PRODUCTS How came your brand.pdf

HOW COME YOUR

BRANDISN’T WORKINGHARD ENOUGH

?

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PETER CHEVERTON

HOW COME YOUR

BRANDISN’T WORKINGHARD ENOUGH

?THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO BRAND MANAGEMENT

First published in 2002

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, orcriticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in anyform or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers,or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms andlicences issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside theseterms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned addresses:

Kogan Page Limited Kogan Page US120 Pentonville Road 22 Broad StreetLondon N1 9JN Milford CT 06460UK USA

© Peter Cheverton, 2002

The right of Peter Cheverton to be identified as the author of this work hasbeen asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and PatentsAct 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 0 7494 3728 6

Typeset by Saxon Graphics Ltd, DerbyPrinted and bound by in Great Britain by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

iv

Contents

Series Editor’s foreword ix

Preface xi

Part I Defining the brand – its purpose and its benefits 1

1 Where brands came from… and why that matters 3From birth… to death? 3And into our own era… 6

2 The brand as an emotional charge 9

Types of emotional charge – a model for discussing brands 10Finding your level 17The virtuous circle 23Brand evolution and brand definition 25

3 The brand as a personality 29

Who is your brand? 31

4 The brand as a mark of loyalty 35

Customer expectations and loyalty 36

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5 The brand as evidence of your unique competitive advantage 43

Brands need to be more than ‘surface fluff’ 45

6 The rise and rise of the retail brand 47

The multifaceted brand 50

7 The B2B and service brand – branding is not just for FMCG 55

8 Valuing the brand – not just for the accountants 65

Branding and profitability 68

Part II Brand management – the strategy 71

9 Business strategy – the brand in context 73

Growth, branding and risk management – the brand halo 74Branding and value drivers – defining the brand 78

10 Segmentation – a source of competitive advantage 83

Novel segmentation 87Micro-segmentation – anti-segmentation? 89

11 Brand positioning – securing a place in the customer’s mind 91

The process 93A vital choice – brands and expectations 104Repositioning 105

12 Brand extension – beyond wrinkle cream 111

The product life cycle 111Brand augmentation 112Brand extension 113

vi � Contents

13 Brand architecture – putting it all together 117

The need for a variety of architectures 118Product brands 120Sub-brands and marks 121Validated identity brands 122Corporate brands 123Global or local brands? 128

Part III Brand management – the implementation 133

14 Building positive associations – the moments of truth 135

What’s in a name? 136Logos and slogans 140Packaging – the Cinderella of branding 142Customer relationships 144Inventing new interactions and associations 146

15 Advertising – not the whole story 149

Why advertise? 150The problems with advertising… 153Right media, right execution 156Beyond advertising 159Budgets – does it all come down to money? 159

16 Briefing the agency – making sure it works for you 163

17 The brand health check 167

18 Next steps… 171

Market segmentation 171The Branding Performance Map© 172Training and consultancy 172Further reading 173

Index 175

Contents � vii

viii


ix

Series Editor’s foreword

Of course, you are brilliant, and so will have recognized the point behind thechallenging title of this book. This is an issue of high importance and the title issimply an observation that, behind all that brilliance, there’s something both-ering you, something irritating you, something frustrating you.

The purpose of this ‘If You’re So Brilliant…’ series is to help you deal withthe kinds of frustrations that occur across a range of burning business issues.We have deliberately targeted the things that are causing the greatest anxiety,right now. As the series develops, the focus will remain on issues that are bothtopical and of high priority to both the individual and to their business.

Whether it is a continued inability to ‘get that marketing plan written’, toidentify and select your key accounts, to develop a workable and profitable e-strategy or perhaps even simply to understand your accountant, this series isdesigned to help. The style is deliberately fast and direct, and will not dwelltoo much on theory. Indeed, in such a slim volume it is often necessary toassume certain knowledge and skills beyond the immediate scope of the topic.

So what frustration makes you pick up this particular title? Perhaps you arealready involved in managing your brand (or brands) and are concerned thatthey are not everything you would like them to be, you may want to establisha new brand and are unclear on how to go about it or maybe the real question

you want an answer to is: ‘Is branding worth it for us? After all, we’re not baked

beans…’. Whatever your starting point, it’s bothering you…Branding is one of the most misunderstood of modern business activities.

Too many think a brand is the sum of the effort put into advertising effort. Sowhat if you don’t advertise? No brand? Saddest of all the misunderstandings isthat which dismisses branding as unworkable in anything but a FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) business. This mistakes brands for consumer goods– a big mistake. Perhaps the greatest opportunities for winning competitiveadvantage through branding lie not in FMCG, but in retail, B2B and serviceenvironments.

This book will provide you with an understanding of what brands can do foryour business and how a brand can become one of your most valuable assetswithout having to cost a fortune. It will show you how to position brands, howto make them earn their keep and how to manage them professionally. It aimsto provoke and inspire, but also to remain practical and realistic, helping youput into action your own plans for branding within your business.

If you are resolved to launch, develop or improve a brand, or just to managea brand professionally, this book will help you with that resolve.

Peter Cheverton

Series Editor

x � Series Editor’s foreword

Preface

Getting your brand to work harder, to ensure that it makes its proper mark,isn’t just about money. Indeed, money may be the least of your problems.Getting brands to work on small budgets is more than possible; it is the norm.Hearing a professor of marketing say that branding was a waste of time unlessyou have £10 million to spend was one of the impulses behind the writing ofthis book.

Good branding takes a lot of good thinking. This is not to say that brandsshould be managed by intellectuals, or that we should allow the jargon-spouting folk from ‘the agency’ to take hold of the reins. Brand managementcertainly engages the brain but it doesn’t disengage common sense nor shouldit stop us from using everyday language. The fact that too many books onbranding read like PhD theses on anthropology was another of the impulsesbehind the writing of this rather more practically minded book.

This book is intended for the business manager, the marketer, the brandmanager, and all those involved with building and defining their own brands.So many branding books appear designed for the professional advertisingexecutive and associated media and design folk, that I have deliberatelysteered a course towards the owners of the brand rather than the agencies thatwill support them.

xi

Some people argue that brands are dying, others that they are the corner-stone of our civilization, and yet others see them as a curse of modern life.What we can agree is that brands are changing, as they always have andalways must to survive. In this, brands inhabit a brutally Darwinian world,and the key question for those wishing to survive must be – what is meant by‘the fittest’? In answering this question I have tried to navigate a coursebetween the lovers and the haters of brands, occasionally flirting with eachcamp as seems appropriate.

Above all else, the brand is something to be managed; it must be protected,nurtured, exploited and changed. Few marketers will have the task of creatinga brand from scratch, most will inherit one, for better or worse. Inheriting abrand is like inheriting a grand stately home – a significant luxury, a majorresponsibility, and occasionally an impending liability. Helping you to achievegood brand management is the purpose of this book.

xii � Preface

1

Making you feel good

Part I

Defining the brand – itspurpose and its benefits

A good brand will make you feel good about thechoice you have made, to buy it and to use it. A goodbrand will help you make that choice in the firstplace, and it can do that because it knows how tomake you feel good. The good brand, as illustratedin Figure PI.1 (see page 2), is a virtuous circle ofaction and reaction, give and take.

That it can do all these things shows what acomplex thing a brand is. Much more than a nameand a slogan, and substantially more than an adver-tisement – these things are but window dressingcompared to the heart of a brand. The heart of thebrand is an idea, and ideas can change, and bechanged – that’s how a brand lives, learns and grows.

A name, however great it sounds round theagency boardroom table, backed by a £2 million

advertising campaign, but without the injection ofan idea, is not a brand – it’s a heavily promotedname. This book aims to help you find the ideawithin your brand, its definition, its identity, its soul.

2 � Defining the brand

The virtuous circle of agood brand

Figure PI.1 The virtuous circle of a good brand

the brandlearns

the brandis positioned

the brandpromotes and

nurtures

you feel goodabout the choice

you have just made

the brand knowswhat makes you

feel good

the brand helpsyou to makeyour choice

Go back 200 or 300 years and branding was some-thing you did to a cow. A brand declared rights ofproperty and ownership, and meant, particularly ina remote Scottish glen, ‘keep your hands off ’. It is anice irony that one of the identifying phenomena ofthe modern world should turn the word’s meaningon its head – the 21st-century brand most deter-minedly declares ‘get your hands on!’.

FROM BIRTH… TO DEATH?

What might the history of branding teach us? Thattoday’s brands are quite different in nature andintent from those which first emerged in the 19thcentury is clear, despite the continuity of so many

1

Where brands came from… andwhy that matters

names, from Cadbury to Kodak and Anchor toOmega. Brands, and the ideas behind brands, haveevolved by learning to match the circumstances ofthe times. Managing this evolution is the essenceof good brand management. Managing thechanging purpose of brands is the essence of goodmarketing.

Promises, promises

Born in the 19th century as marks of authenticity in anew world of mass production, brands bowled intothe 20th century like brash teenagers, full of bravadoand promises. As consumers grew more ‘brandliterate’ so the promises had to moderate and bymid-century brands had ‘settled down’ into steadier‘personalities’. Brand managers began to latch on torather more single-minded claims as a means ofgiving direction to their brands.

The USP (unique selling proposition) was born,intended to give brands a very single-mindedcompetitive advantage. Some USPs remain intact tothis day – Volvo still ‘owns’ safety as a proposition inthe car market, so much so that it has to try thatmuch harder whenever it wants any message otherthan safety to be heard.

The brand image – the search for security

By the late 1950s admen like David Ogilvy werelooking to go beyond simple promises; they wantedto build ‘brand image’. If a brand could build abetter image than its competitor’s, then it wouldenjoy a degree of protection. A better product withan inferior image would struggle, and if its imagecould not be improved, it would fail. For some the


From brash promises…

… to the USP

From ‘brand image’…

brand image was already more important than theproduct, a dangerous road to travel, leading tosuspect notions that branding is about maskinginferior products with surface images.

Undoubtedly some brands still fall into this trap,but they are usually short-lived. Leaping ahead 50years, the time taken to ‘out’ a hollow brand hasreduced dramatically – just witness the litter offallen dot.com brands.

The ‘T Plan’

In the 1960s, the J Walter Thompson agency wasworking with its ‘T Plan’, an intellectual concept thatregarded a brand as a synthesis of knowledge, beliefs

and emotional projections. A brand was something thatyou knew about, that you might be able to state factsabout – and facts that you believed to be true – andthat engendered feelings and emotions that wentwell beyond the product or even its USP. Of the threeingredients, the emotional projections were mostimportant.

Volvo might ‘own’ safety as its USP, but theemotional projections were even more important.This was safety with a purpose – the car wouldprotect your family. In the end it is this emotionalprojection, or what we might call the ‘emotional

charge’ of the brand, that gives Volvo its brand imageand its brand value, not a list of cold statistics aboutcrash tests or safety records.

Brands that elicit emotional responses were ableto command premiums for longer. The brand was aroute not only to competitive advantage but also tolong-term security.

Where brands came from � 5

… to the brand’s‘emotional charge’, the keyto its value

AND INTO OUR OWN ERA…

At any one time in the closing decades of the lastcentury pundits were predicting either theimminent death of brands, or their rebirth throughnew business models.

On the side of death

First there was the rise and rise of private labels, theso-called ‘no brands’ that seemed to indicate a newmedical condition among consumers – ‘brand

blindness’. In 1991 advertising spending actually fell inthe United States (a cataclysmic event in an industrythat had grown from $50 billion to $130 billion in theprevious decade), and then came ‘Marlboro Friday’.

On 2 April 1993 Philip Morris slashed the price ofMarlboro cigarettes in a price war with the ‘nobrands’, and brands were declared dead by WallStreet. The share prices of big brand names acrossthe board crashed as investors lost faith in what nowlooked like a dying phenomenon of the 20th century.

The 21st century seemed to promise a collage ofbig value ‘no brands’, sold in personality-freediscount warehouses, and an era of aggressiveadbashing by street protesters, and more peacefullythrough the power of the TV remote control.

On the side of life – new business andbrand models

The old model saw a brand essentially as a productwith a wraparound of emotions and personality. Theessential idea, or the soul of the brand, was slappedon the top. Figure 1.1 illustrates the typical ‘productand surround’ model, with the core being the


The brand is dead…

product expressed at its most basic. Coca-Cola issimply a ‘black sugared drink’ at its core; its publicface is built up like the layers of an onion.

The new model believes that brands canencompass entire lifestyles. The likes of Disney,Nike, The Body Shop, Starbucks and IKEA createemotional charges and experiences that go wellbeyond their products (and incidentally, the spendon advertising by such companies rose in theotherwise bleak advertising days of 1991). Note theretailers in the list; the sellers of ‘no brands’ werebecoming brands in their own right.

Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, sums it up,‘The people who line up for Starbucks aren’t just there for

the coffee.’ It might seem that the old model can stillbe applied to Starbucks – the core is a cup of coffee,the surround is the environment, the othercustomers, the location, etc. But the new breed ofbrand managers have tended to use their thoughtprocess in the other direction – finding products tofit a brand concept, rather than building layers ontop of a product.

Where brands came from � 7

… long live the brand

Figure 1.1 The product and the surround

core

supportpackaging

qualityportfolio

warranty

the brand

the brand

the

bran

d

the

bran

d

the b

rand

the b

rand

availability

Does it make a difference which way round youthink? For sure, and some brands have gone on tobreak the ‘product and the surround’ mould alto-gether, deciding that the manufacture of the productitself becomes less and less relevant. TommyHilfiger makes no products. It is run entirely onlicensing agreements with products made by arange of commissioned suppliers, very often insouth-east Asia.

Such new business and brand models raise manyquestions. Must a brand that tries to embrace acomplete lifestyle be rooted in a business model thatcan itself sit happily within that lifestyle? Can abrand that might ooze with notions of liberation andwell-being be based on exploitation at its source?More than this, can brands be created that exist freeof any reference to the corporate body that createsand manages them? The argument is not sodissimilar (though less extreme perhaps) to the oldone about painters and composers – could you lovea painting or a concerto produced by a murderer? Itdepends on whether we know, and there are manyout there determined that we should.

Nike

In a recent consumer promotion, Nike offered to place a chosenword or phrase next to the ‘swoosh’ logo on the customer’svery own personalized pair of shoes. The promotion became aheated boardroom discussion when one customer asked fortheir word: ‘sweatshop’.


Nike and the sweatshop…

Take a moment to flick through any magazine andtry to find an example of an advert that pleases you,then perhaps one that annoys you, another thatsurprises you, one that might intrigue you, and youmight even find one that persuades you. If youcompared notes with someone else there’s a goodchance you will start a lively debate along the linesof ‘how can you possibly think that… ‘, a debatewhich will highlight much about segmentation andtargeting.

If any of the brands you looked at were ‘big names’,or at least well known to you, then you could probablyexpress quite a lot of things about them – pieces ofknowledge, ideas, thoughts, beliefs, promises, expec-tations and emotions, just from a few secondsglancing at a logo or a brand name. Chances are that

2

The brand as an emotional charge

9

the majority of what you could relate would besubjective rather than objective, you will more likelybe able to discuss the ‘emotional charge’ of the brand,and how it impacts on you, than its specific attributes.Try it with your favourite brand. Write down six or sothings – how many facts, how many emotions?

What such an exercise makes clear is that thebrand image is of course more than a picture or alogo; it is the range of associations triggered in yourmind by that picture or logo, and those associationsmight be called the brand’s ‘emotional charge’.

One of the strengths of a good brand is that it doesall its best work inside your head. The emotionalcharge is a complex of the message sent and theimpact of that message on the beliefs and needs ofthe customer. It manifests itself through the rangeand nature of the interactions the customer has withthe brand.

TYPES OF EMOTIONAL CHARGE – A MODEL FOR DISCUSSING BRANDS

We might define four types of emotional charge,each of them fairly broad, and then describe themain issues raised for the customer by that type ofcharge, and finally look at the role of the brandagainst each. Table 2.1 summarizes this analysis.

Of course, there are crossovers between thelevels, and brands that work on more than just onelevel – that is often their strength. Kellogg’s is aguarantee of authenticity, but at the same timewhile many consumers would fail to tell its corn-flakes from any other in a blind test, they will gaingenuine satisfaction from pouring their favourite


Working inside yourhead…

breakfast cereal from a reassuringly genuineKellogg’s box.

We will consider each of these levels of emotionalcharge, starting at the lowest and rising in intensity,illustrated by examples from FMCG, B2B andservice environments.

The brand as a guarantee of authenticity

Brands may have started life back in the 19thcentury as marks of authenticity but the notion is farfrom a dead one. It only takes an unstable market forthe earliest forces behind branding to resurface.

Borjomi

In the days of the USSR, Borjomi sparkling mineral water wassaid to be the third best-known brand in the Union; the Volgacar and Aeroflot took the top spots. By 1996, after a decade ormore of the kind of free enterprise that saw the rise of piracy andgangsterism, as much as 90 per cent of what went under theBorjomi label was said to be counterfeit. Then came the adver-tising campaign, reminding consumers of the distinctive pack-aging of the real Borjomi (‘beware imitations’), and the notinsignificant financial crisis of 1998 that killed off many of thepoorly financed counterfeiters. By 2000, the claim was that 90

The brand as an emotional charge � 11

Borjomi – taking on thecounterfeiters; a 20th-century success with a19th-century company

Table 2.1 Brands and emotional charge

Emotional Charge The Main Issues The Role of the Brand

social expression personal ego to facilitate conspicuityconformity/nonconformity

satisfaction personal fulfilment to win a premium pricepleasure in use

a promise performance in to influence choicea guarantee use authenticity to make choice easy

(or even unthinking)

per cent of Borjomi sold was genuine. The company’s revi-talized fortunes show that branding as a mark of authenticitycan still work wonders.

Of course, if authenticity was all it was about, whowould ever knowingly buy an imitation Rolex watch?That people do (though few would admit to it) onlyshows that some brands work on much higher levelsof emotional charge and that some people areprepared to lie, even to themselves, to reach thoselevels.

The brand as a promise of performance inuse

If a brand makes a promise of performance then itmust be able to prove it. Often the proof is in thelongevity of the brand, but this can be a problem, asCoca-Cola found when it tried to launch a new


The importance of keepingyour promises

Examples

• FMCG – Kellogg’s and the famous ‘if it doesn’t

say Kellogg’s on the pack, it isn’t Kellogg’s

inside the pack’.• B2B – Hewlett-Packard replacement ink

cartridges – this will work, and it won’t wreck

those expensive printers you’ve just had

installed.• Service – Citizens Advice Bureau – the advice

will be genuine.

formulation. New Coke was a flop for a host ofreasons but one was undoubtedly the fact that manyconsumers felt a promise had been broken.

The higher the price tag or the higher the riskinvolved in the purchase, the more important is thepromise. Some products give long lists of theirfeatures as proof, but good brands can achieve thesame end more effectively. Who is persuaded by, orstill more understands the figures and the jargonthat are so much a feature of advertisements forcomputer hardware? A simple statement that thecomputer has an ‘Intel inside’®, gives far greaterassurance to most of us.

Durex

Condoms may print statistical evidence of their testing proce-dures on the packet, but for most people it is a matter of trustingin a particular brand name. When Durex started to market itsmore exotic range (the pursuit of satisfaction in use, not justperformance), some consumers questioned for a momentwhether the brand still retained its absolute trustworthiness andreliability. It is not always easy for a brand to change anemotional charge that has become firmly attached.

The brand as satisfaction – pleasure orfulfilment in use

One of the best examples of a brand acting as an aidto satisfaction is the label on a bottle of wine. Simplyseeing the bottle, if we recognize the name and thinkwell of it, can convince us that the taste will be, andis, good. Try it for yourself in an open and then ablind test and just see if it isn’t true.

There is plenty of hard evidence that headachesufferers will feel better treated by taking a brand of


Moving up the emotionalcharge – Durex – not yet asocial expression?

analgesic that they have heard of rather than anunknown generic. Placebos masquerading as well-known brands have been shown to be more effectivethan placebos in plain white boxes.

Persil

Can a washing powder be elevated to the level of satisfaction orfulfilment? The folk at Persil believe so and have for many yearspositioned their brand as something more than the route toclean clothes. The inference of the Persil message is that it isthe route to a clean family, so putting the user into the role ofprotector and carer. If this doesn’t quite put washing on a parwith eating chocolate or watching movies, by injecting thatelement of pride into using the brand it certainly raises it abovethat of plain drudgery. Many people will pay a good premium forsuch an elevating thought…


Making washing powdermore than ‘performance’;making it a ‘satisfaction inuse’ – the Persil message

Examples

• FMCG – Fairy Liquid’s famous comparisontests, or the Duracell battery in the Christmastoy that goes on, and on, and on…

• B2B – A brand such as Lycra promises perfor-mance on two levels: as a high performanceraw material for a clothing manufacturer, andas an aid to sales of that clothing through itsstrong consumer franchise.

• Service – Accenture or Pricewaterhouse-Coopers have brands that are able to promiseperformance through the ‘honour role’ of theirclient list.

The brand as a social expression – ego,conformity/nonconformity

Certain brands have always been good for those inpursuit of recognition through their purchasingbehaviour. Driving a new Jaguar, wearing an old


Examples

• FMCG – Dulux paint, not just colour for yourwalls but a means of ‘transforming your

home’, or Titleist golf balls – just having themin your bag makes you feel better about yourgolf.

• B2B – ‘Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’.This famous phrase makes plain thatcommercial buyers buy on more than productperformance – there is also the question of jobsecurity. At the same time, there is thepotential thought that nobody set the worldalight by buying IBM. This illustrates one ofthe problems of a stable image, of anunchanging emotional charge – it puts you upthere to be shot at, to be shown as the oldfuddy-duddy by the new kids on the block.

• Service – INSIGHT Marketing and People. It isnot unusual in the training business to havesomeone ring you and say that they want theirteam to go through one of your coursesbecause 10 years ago they went on it and theystill remember the good time they had, andthe amount they learnt, and the great trainers,and the use it has been since…

Barbour jacket, carrying those green plastic bagsfrom Harrods (even when shopping in Asda), theseare all very characteristic statements of theconspicuous consumer.

Of course, Jaguars are good cars, Barbours goodcoats and Harrods a fine shop, so how much isconspicuity the motivation? Take away the symbolsand the brand names, put a Ford badge on the verysame car, an Asda Mr George label inside the samecoat, and Somerfield on the same bags, and just seehow many buyers would shift their allegiances veryquickly.

Brands that make social expressions relate to thecustomer’s confidence about themselves, but in acomplex way. For some, the designer label is aconfident statement about who they are, while forothers it is a desire to belong to a recognized groupthat is born out of insecurity. Sometimes we like tohave our purchasing decisions ‘approved’, andwhile seeing others wearing the same designer jeansmight upset some, for others it says – ‘whew, I did the

right thing’.The subtext of many car advertisements is more

about reassuring you that you have in fact alreadymade the right decision and it will be respected byyour peers, than it is about trying to influence you tobuy in the first place.

Social expression can be about conformity ornonconformity, and brands can fit either of thesepositions. Drinking Pimm’s on ice in an East Endpub can set you apart from the crowd, whileHofmeister lager will make you one of the lads (forthe reverse scenario imagine carrying a can ofHofmeister around Henley Regatta… ).


Knowing you did the rightthing…

Hofmeister

Hofmeister was launched successfully in the United Kingdom,targeted at young working class males, in London, pretty mucha closed shop where beer is concerned and group conformity isthe key to buying behaviour. Hofmeister used George the bear,a ‘dude’, to gain it street credibility, and of course those thatdon’t see the appeal of George just aren’t in the target segment.

FINDING YOUR LEVEL

It might seem from looking at these examples that abrand would always want to appeal at the highestlevel of emotional charge, but this is not always thewisest ambition. For one thing, sustaining a brandimage at the level of a social expression is anexpensive activity and requires a continuity of credi-bility over a long period. Entry costs are always


George the ‘dude’ –building conformitybehind Hofmeister

Examples

• FMCG – Rolex, Remé Martin, and theexplosion of ‘logo brands’ especially onclothing – there is now even a ‘no logo’brand…

• B2B – Gore-Tex allows the clothing manufac-turer to make its claim of superiority whileenabling the consumer to be identified with‘those in the know’.

• Service – Diners Club is said to say somethingabout the user, and saying that is saying it all.

high, but they rise dramatically as the intensity ofthe emotional charge increases. And then, the higherthe emotional charge, the more precise your posi-tioning, so the more you leave yourself open tochanging times.

Rather than simply aspiring to the highest level, itis more sensible to recognize what level is realisticfor your brand and your resources, and then to excelat that level. Determining what is realistic is noteasy; the factors that contribute to the level ofemotional charge that a brand might reach are manyand complex. There are no real rules, and even ifthere were, we would only find the world awashwith examples of brands that break them. Perhapswe might attempt to boil it down to two, admittedlyrather broad, but hugely important factors. Theemotional charge likely to be achieved by a brand isthe result of: 1) what that brand does to build itsimage – brand activity – and 2) how customersrelate to the brand – customer interaction.

The strongest brands are those that most success-fully pull these two strands together, managing thecustomer’s interactions through the brand’s activity,and all in the direction of the intended image andemotional charge.

Brand activity

Some brands clearly do more about building theirimage than others. This isn’t just a question of money,it is about consistency and good use of the past.


Finding and securing yourbrand’s level:

• brand activity• customer interaction

Fairy Liquid

Fairy Liquid held a children’s competition to celebrate themillennium asking kids to redesign its famous ‘Bizzy’ logo, thebaby with the towelling nappy. Unsurprisingly the winningimages were very space age and appeared on ‘limited edition’bottles. As a means of reinforcing a part of the brand heritageand its emotional charge, at minimal cost, while creating newinterest, this was a branding tour de force.

And then, they changed the bottle. No more summerSaturday squeezy bottle fights on the back lawn, and no moreBlue Peter-inspired pencil holders for father’s day. Is thisthrowing away the heritage, or is it building a new one that ismore in tune with the times? The new bottles are distinctive in asupermarket environment where retailers have done their bestto ape the brand leaders. It feels like a quality product, with acleverly designed grip around the waist – for hands that dodishes and with a nod towards Jean-Paul Gaultier’s famousperfume – and Bizzy is still there…

Of course brands must change, as must products.Nobody would expect a Sony product to be thesame today as it was just two years ago. Is thatproduct renewal or brand renewal? The answer isthat it is both – some brands are about being up todate. Equally, we would all like to think thatCadbury’s chocolate was the same as it was whenwe were kids, and indeed for some of their rangethe product changes themselves may be relativelyminor – some brands are about being as good asthey ever were. But don’t be misled, the Cadbury’sbrand managers have not been sleeping for 30years…

Sponsorship and PR are part of the plan forraising the ‘emotional charge’ of a brand. The linkbetween cigarette brands and sporting events (anhistorical oddity of the 1970s and 1980s) was always


Using the past to build thefuture – Fairy Liquid and‘Bizzy’

a great deal more than an awareness campaign.While few were moved to believe that cigaretteswere actually good for you as a result of theemotional projections, many were ‘relaxed’ in theirhabit by these good associations.

Personalities attached to the brand can do all sortsof things for the emotional charge, whether it’s TinaTurner or Jack Dee. And if the personality can behome-grown, all the better – Victor Kiam didwonders for Remington shavers (so good he boughtthe company), and Virgin was made all the morepowerful as a brand just because Sir RichardBranson kept trying to take a balloon around theworld, and had longish hair…

Of course some brands manage to get along withdoing very little – no linked promotions, no adver-tising, just the continuation of a heritage built up bya previous generation of brand managers. This canbe a very low cost approach to brand management,and why spend money if it isn’t needed? The truth ofthe matter with such brands however is that they areonly as good as their lack of competition allowsthem to be. Enter a competitor, and make it one witha good deal of energy, and old established brandscan disappear fast. Many an FMCG grocery brandback in the 1970s and 1980s gave ample space for thegrowth of the supermarket’s own label.

Customer interaction

Brands can pour millions into urging their customersto interact with them, and get very little return. Itseems that some brands are just better suited tohigher levels of interaction and higher levels ofemotional response than others. The answer doesn’t


Resting on its laurelsmakes a brand only asgood as its competition…

lie in the promotional budget (at least not to startwith) but in the customer’s circumstances as a buyer,and how that conditions their perceptions.

You might love Gucci if you have plenty of moneyand need to show people how successful you are, beindifferent to it if you have just enough money tobuy that sensible pair of shoes you have had youreyes on for some time, or hate it if you have littlemoney and despise conspicuous consumption.

Of course, you may have little money and dreamof the day you could afford Gucci, the interactionbetween income level and brand attitudes is not asimple equation, and therein lies an importantfeature of branding – aspiration.

The purchasing behaviour of consumers cannotbe reduced to an assessment of their wealth. In anycase, wealth is relative. More Jaguar S types are soldto people who can’t really afford the car, but aredetermined to arrange their finances to make surethat they can, just, than to those with more thanadequate funds.

The aspiration factor is of huge significance inbranding. Walk around any rundown district of abig city and see what the kids are wearing. Logosabound. The ‘living large’ philosophy of the hip-hopgeneration, particularly in the United States andoften in poor inner city communities, is expressed bywearing the likes of Tommy Hilfiger clothes orTimberland shoes, clothes that win their wearersstatus through an association with lifestyles well outof their financial league.

A host of factors might determine the nature ofthese interactions and so the potential levelof emotional charge. Figure 2.1 lists just some ofthem.


Knowing the customer’saspirations is far moreimportant to the brandmanager than knowing thebudget

Multiple interactions

The last factor listed in Figure 2.1, the number ofinteractions with the brand, is a factor that has comeincreasingly to the fore with the rise of so calledsuperbrands. These are often found in the world offashion and clothing (Nike, Tommy Hilfiger), and inretailing and entertainment (Gap, Starbucks,Disney, Sky). These brands have something of anadvantage over the likes of Persil or MacLean’swhen it comes to building the emotional charge.The range and complexity of interactions givesthese brands a much greater opportunity to grabour attention and our emotions. Disneyworld hasgot you from check-in to check-out, Starbucksmight keep you for a full hour, some clothes wemight wear all week – but we brush our teeth foronly a few minutes a day…

The role of the brand manager is to be evervigilant for opportunities to increase the level and


Factors that determine thelevel and nature ofcustomer interactions

Figure 2.1 Factors that determine the level and natureof customer interactions

• the price paid;

• the budget available;

• the percentage of your budget involved;

• the frequency of purchase;

• the risks involved in use;

• the consipicuity of the purchase;

• the consumer’s desire to make a statement;

• the consumer’s aspirations;

• the importance of consistency;

• the utility of the product or service;

• the tangibility of performance;

• the number of brands competing for attention;

• the number of interactions with the brand.

complexity of the customer’s interactions. The Persil‘care line’ is an attempt to interact with its customerson a level beyond tipping powder into a machine.Advising people on how to store a treasuredwedding dress (wrap it in brown paper…) has anemotional value well beyond soap powder. Wemight only spend a few minutes each day brushingour teeth, but we can be made to think about them,and what assaults them, all day.

The factors listed in Figure 2.1 don’t work inisolation and nor do they always work in the samedirection. Just because an item is low priced, regu-larly purchased, and has a utilitarian purpose, thatdoesn’t mean that a brand can’t have a high-levelemotional charge. Toilet paper is a case in point.

Andrex

The Andrex brand builds emotional responses that go wellbeyond the everyday utilitarian factors. The Andrex puppiesexude messages of softness, warmth, care and responsi-bility, while at the same time helping to communicatemessages about the length of the roll. It is a subtle blend witha strong appeal. It is also a very neat solution to the problemof ‘taste’ in saying what you need to say about such aproduct.

THE VIRTUOUS CIRCLE

Brand activity builds the nature of the customerinteraction. The two factors become intertwined, thevirtuous circle shown at the start of Part I andrepeated on page 24 as Figure 2.2. The outcome is apowerful brand.


Raising the charge of themost everyday item – theAndrex puppies

The key phrase in this model is ‘the brand learns’.Brand activity is not enough, customer interaction isnot enough. The quest for the holy grail of brandingis about understanding how these two thingsinteract, and learning as you proceed.

Kleenex

Shortly after the First World War, Kimberley Clark launched abrand in the United States called Kleenex. The company had asurplus of cellucotton (used as the filter in gas masks) andbelieved it had found an outlet. The war was over, people wereafter a little gaiety, and sales of makeup boomed. Kleenex waslaunched as the ideal makeup remover, and very good it was,but the brand hardly set the world alight. There was a good dealof brand activity but to no avail, this was a small market andthere were plenty of alternatives.


The virtuous circle of agood brand

the brandlearns

the brandis positioned

the brandpromotes and

nurtures

you feel goodabout the choice

you have just made

the brand knowswhat makes you

feel good

the brand helpsyou to makeyour choice

Figure 2.2 The virtuous circle of a good brand

the

brand

learns

Then the folk at Kleenex started to listen to their customers,and they discovered a whole new set of interactions going onthat were not only unexpected, but in truth filled some ofthem with dismay. People were using Kleenex to blow theirnoses. Fine, there’s a market out there, but how do youpromote such a product? The answer was to let the brandevolve.

Existing customers had certain ‘polite’ expectations of Kleenexand nose blowing messages might cause some disturbance, sothe first step was to target a different audience, and who betterthan children – they of the runny noses.

Parents were encouraged to buy Kleenex for their kids tostop them being antisocial and unhygienic – a tall order, butKleenex it seemed had the answer. In the 1930s Kleenex hit onthe slogan ‘Don’t put a cold in your pocket’ and the adultmarket was hooked. The brand’s positioning was changedfrom a niche market to a mass market, and it did it through aprocess of learning and evolving – a vital quality of anysuccessful brand.

BRAND EVOLUTION AND BRANDDEFINITION

There is another kind of virtuous circle that wemight find helpful in understanding how brandsacquire their emotional charge. Indeed, we can gobeyond the idea of an emotional charge to identifywhat we might call the brand definition. Brand defi-nition is the sum of a number of different over-lapping aspects of the brand, referred to by a varietyof terms. People talk of the idea behind the brand,we have spoken of its emotional charge, others talkof its essence, its soul, or even what we will call inChapter 15, the brand’s DNA.

Brands evolve in response to changing customerexpectations (if they are listening brands), and thoseexpectations are in turn prompted and managed by


Learning from how yourcustomers really use yourproduct – the Kleenexstory

the very process of evolution. Out of this processcomes the brand definition. This is illustrated inFigure 2.3.

If brands are a result of their history, then what is therole of the brand manager? Is evolution to beprodded, accelerated, retarded, or just accepted?

Levi Strauss

In the 1970s Levi Strauss attempted to move into the formalmenswear market with the Levi name sown into off-the-pegsuits – Levi Tailored Classics. The market research warnedthe company against it; ‘people are not ready for such a bigstep – why not try separates first?’, but it went ahead andpaid the price of forcing a brand into territory that was not yetready. People had expectations of the brand, and this movedidn’t fit.

Of course, from time to time ‘acting’ works. Peoplehad no expectations of 3M’s Post-it notes beforethey were launched so it had to be ‘action’. Itworked, but we haven’t space for the list of thefailures from such an approach. From time to time,


Brand definition andbrand evolution

An ‘evolution’ too far –Levi Tailored Classics…

customer

expectations

brand

evolution

the branddefinition

Figure 2.3 Brand definition and brand evolution

the branddefinition

we will hail a revolutionary new concept or a break-through brand – Amazon.com perhaps – as theresult of action rather than reaction.

With a circular process, the brand managers canjump in wherever they choose, acting or reacting.Brands said to be ‘before their time’ are generallybrands that acted rather than reacted, forcing thebrand definition on to the market, rather thanallowing it to evolve with that market. Reactingreduces the risk of failure, but also increases the riskof being overtaken by competitors – a delicatebalance.


28


A useful exercise can be done by asking people tocreate a collage of the pictures and words thatrepresent their idea of the brand in question. Thepurpose is to have people express their perceptionsof that brand without having to use a vocabularyborrowed from the psychoanalyst or anthropologist.Brands can of course be described in such terms, andprobably will be by the advertising agency, but mostcustomers would be unlikely, unable or unwilling todo so, and it is the customers’ perceptions we wantto understand.

Identify a group of six or eight people from yourtarget market – customers and potential customers –and sit them down in front of a pile of newspapersand magazines – everything from Horse and Hound

to Hello!. Arm them with scissors and glue, and ask

3

The brand as a personality

29

each of them to cover an A1-sized sheet of paperwith the words and images they feel are most appro-priate to your brand.

You are not concerned here with their artistic skill,but with the associations your brand conjures intheir mind. Are they good or bad associations, andmore to the point, are they the associations that youintend? Their creations will often surprise you,sometimes disappoint you, and just sometimes theymight depress you.

Let’s say your product is an upmarket non-alco-holic cocktail drink. It can be an unsettling exercisewhen the brand you aim to position as an aspira-tional ‘taste experience’ with connotations of goodhealth is illustrated with pictures of mushy peas orpot-bellied ‘lads’ out on the town. Unsettling, butthis is something you need to know – is the brandcoming across to the customer as you intend?

People may choose to use other brands’ images intheir collage, suggesting parallels in values andbeliefs that may be useful to the brand manager. Ifthe other brands used are close competitors, thenperhaps your own positioning is not yet sufficientlyprecise? If the brands used are far removed fromyour own, then this may simply be an opportunityfor some creative stealing – professionals call itresearch.

Most commonly, pictures of people are used,making strong links between the looks and the char-acter of a brand and the looks and character of aperson. Describing the brand as a personality is ofhuge importance, people can identify with people –they can love them, but they can also hate them…

In developing the essence of your brand, itsappeal and its presence, personality is a valuable


touchstone. You will have a particular personalityin mind, perhaps a real person, and this collageexercise will help to show how close you aregetting.

WHO IS YOUR BRAND?

This brings us to another exercise. Ask a group ofpeople, ideally a focus group of customers andpotential customers, to say ‘who’ your brand wouldbe if it was, say:

• a movie star;

• a comedian;

• a news reader;

• a politician;

• a sports person;

• a writer;

• a TV ‘personality’;

• a game show host.

You might even ask:

• Is it male or female?

• How old are they?

• What are their politics?

• What religion do they follow?

• Are they married with kids, or single?

• How’s their health?

• How do they respond to stress and crisis?

Deciphering the answers to these questions andinterpreting the collage exercise is not an easy task,

The brand as a personality � 31

Identifying the brand’spersonality in the eyes ofthe customer

and will be best done by professionals. Amateurobservers, particularly those closely involved, havea knack of seeing whatever they happen to belooking for.

With the help of a professional market researcher(experienced in brand positioning) to pose the ques-tions and assess the results, exercises like these willhelp you to construct a personality profile of yourbrand. Importantly, this will be a genuine person-ality as perceived by your customers, not a wish listas defined in your marketing plan. Then come thehard questions:

• Is this what you aimed for?

• If not, is it close enough?

• If not, how can we close the gap?

• If not, might the described personality actuallybe preferable? It is after all already established inthe customer’s mind…

Why seeing the brand as a personalityhelps

Seeing the brand as a personality has many advan-tages for the brand manager. Brands seek particularresponses from the customer, and people respond topeople almost better than any other stimulant.Figure 3.1 is a model that sees brands as repre-senting different levels of personal relationships.

And the point of such a model? Well, we can seethat people will expect more from a lover or a lifecompanion than someone they consider just afamiliar face. We can also see that the loyalty theywill give in return will differ hugely. A brand that isconsidered to be a good mate, but no more, can


make some realistic estimates of its value and itsresilience to competition, and it can make plans onhow to become a trusted friend.

The brand as a personality � 33

The brand as a personalrelationship

a familiar face

an acquaintance or ‘mate’

a trusted friend

a lover or ‘soulmate’

a lifetime companion

Figure 3.1 The brand as a personal relationship

34


Brands can build astonishing loyalty, the value ofwhich should not be lightly dismissed. Many busi-nesses without strong brands would love to escapefrom the methods that they have to adopt in searchof such loyalty.

True loyalty does not result from monopoly.Watch how customers will jump ship, almostregardless of the relative merits of the new offer,when a new player enters the field previously heldby a monopoly. British Gas lost many of its indus-trial customers when deregulation came in, andmuch the same happened to British Telecom upagainst a sudden wave of new providers. In time,many of them come back, but only as a result ofsome expensive coaxing, not because of loyalty.

4

The brand as a mark of loyalty

35

True loyalty does not result from bribery. Retailerloyalty cards, credit card membership rewardschemes, air miles, these are all bribery, and whenthe bribe is withdrawn or the novelty wears off, thecustomer looks elsewhere.

True loyalty does not result from discounting.Many studies have shown that when consumers buya discounted product for reasons of price alone, theystill yearn to buy the higher priced, big brand namealternative, but money won out this time – just waituntil they win the lottery…

When looking at the costs of branding, you shouldconsider the costs of winning loyalty through thesekinds of alternatives. What will it cost to keepcompetitors out through the maintenance of aneffective monopoly, to lock customers in throughrebates or rewards, or to keep them throughcontinual price discounting?

True loyalty – what is it, and how far can itgo?

True loyalty results from the quality of the rela-tionship built between the supplier and thecustomer. If this involves direct human contact thenthere are significant opportunities to build loyaltythrough personal behaviour, but in the absence ofthat, the brand is the main and most effective repre-sentation of the relationship.

CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS ANDLOYALTY

We will consider two variables that help todetermine the customer’s expectations and so help


define the level and type of loyalty they may showfor a brand. These are the significance of thepurchase to the customer, and the amount of moneyinvolved.

Significance and brand awareness

The significance of the brand to the customer resultsfrom a number of factors, but perhaps principallythe following two: 1) the more complex the rela-tionship the customer has with the brand, repre-sented by the number and variety of the brandinteractions, the greater the chance of building long-lasting loyalty; 2) the more the brand can identifywith the customer’s pressing issues – getting undertheir skin – the more chance for building long-lasting loyalty. And the significance of ‘significance’to awareness and loyalty? Let’s just compare someitems of equal expense, but with rather differentlevels of significance.

A refrigerator versus a cooker. The fridge is justfor storing things, while the cooker is for creatingthings – brand awareness and the significance ofbranding for cookers is far greater than it is forrefrigerators.

A bed versus a hi-fi. A bed is for sleeping, and iscovered up for most of its life. The hi-fi is for enter-taining, even for performing, and is on show to allthose to be entertained. Bed manufacturers go togreat efforts to brand their products, but I challengeyou to name three bed brands in the space of timeyou can name six brands of hi-fi.

The brand manager wishing to increase brandloyalty will do well to examine the relative signifi-cance of the brand, and the number and nature of the

The brand as a mark of loyalty � 37

The significance ofsignificance to brandloyalty

customer interactions. If they can increase thoseinteractions then they have a good chance ofincreasing the brand’s significance and so thecustomer’s loyalty.

The brands that inspire the most loyalty are thosethat are most significant to the customer as a resultof their high level of involvement and the impact ontheir ‘hot spots’. Motor cars have a lot going forthem in this regard, involving the customer througha long cycle of interactions, from anticipation, toselection, to purchase, to use, and even on tomemory of that use. Reduce the number of interac-tions, reduce the significance to the customer, andloyalty gets harder to win. Some purchases justmake it plain difficult to be loyal.

Relative spend

Having considered the significance of the purchase,let us now link that to a second variable – theamount of money spent on the purchase relative toall other expenditure. These two variables form thetwo axes of a matrix shown in Figure 4.1. I have thensuggested some items that I would put in each boxof the matrix, based on my own perceptions andexpenditure.

You may disagree with my positioning, perhapsfor you baked beans are a vital purchase and gettingthe wrong brand is a minor disaster – perhaps youhave children… and this is the whole point aboutunderstanding consumer expectations, brandingand loyalty. Different groups of consumers havedifferent expectations, and if we wish a brand to berelevant then we have to be targeting the rightgroups; branding and segmentation, as we shall


Aim to maximize thenumber of customerinteractions to increaseyour brand’s significanceand so win greater loyalty

observe time and again, are quite inseparable.Rather than using my examples, position some ofyour own purchases on the matrix and then askyourself some questions:

• Do you go about purchasing these items in thesame way, or differently?

• What do you expect from a product or servicepositioned in each box?

• What ‘value’ are you seeking?

• How loyal would you be to a brand in each box?

The answers will demonstrate how brand valuesmust be positioned dependent on the consumer’sexpectations, and that those expectations depend onhow the consumer positions you in their ‘mentalmap’, as represented by the matrix.

Table 4.1 (page 40) takes the items from the matrixand, based on the value sought by the consumer andtheir likely level of loyalty, adds a comment on the

Loyalty, based on thebrand’s significance andsize of expenditure

seeks: seeks:security assurance and value

gin life insurance

behaves: behaves:actively loyal enquiringly

seeks: seeks:an easy choice savingsbaked beans petrol

behaves: behaves:passively loyal promiscuously

high

low

low high

relative spend

Figure 4.1 Loyalty, based on the brand’s significanceand size of expenditure

sig

nif

ican

ce


possible branding approach. The good brand actsappropriately for the value sought and the likelylevel of loyalty. It doesn’t try to force unreasonableloyalty, it acts according to the type of loyalty it canexpect, including bribery where necessary.

Brands can of course act to increase their signifi-cance by various means, some more long-lastingthan others. For me, Esso and Shell have little todistinguish between them, and attempts to differ-entiate their products through technical claimsleave me cold. But if one brand adds a shop to itsstation, with a cash machine, and clean toilets, thenperhaps it will win my loyalty, until the other brandmatches it…


Expectations, loyalty andbranding

Table 4.1 Expectations, loyalty and branding

Item The Consumer Likely Kind PossibleSeeks of Loyalty Branding

Approach

gin security actively loyal retain loyalty –‘confidence’‘It’s got to beGordon’s’

baked beans an easy choice passively make loyalty loyal easy

‘Beanz MeanzHeinz’

life assurance and enquiringly earn loyalty –insurance value ‘trust’

‘Because life iscomplicatedenough’

petrol savings promiscuously ‘lock in’ TexacoReward Card: ‘It’s a bribe, butit’s a good bribe.’

Adding to the product element of the brand isoften less effective than other actions, and it is alsorelatively easy to copy. The addition of services canhave a greater impact and, for me at least, a longer-lasting loyalty might be built if I were to identify onebrand as more environmentally sensitive, or as amore responsible employer – the link between thebrand image and the reality of the company behindthe brand. But then that’s just me.


42


Marketing – its purposeand practice

The brand helps a business to represent, in a singlefocused definition, what is perhaps the mostimportant purpose of marketing – the pursuit of aunique competitive advantage. A pictorial definitionof the purpose and practice of marketing is shown atFigure 5.1.

5

The brand as evidence of yourunique competitive advantage

market needsour companycapabilities

a matching process

(profitably)

the competitive environment

Figure 5.1 Marketing – its purpose and practice

43

Marketing is a matching process between the capa-bilities of the supplier and the needs of the market orcustomer, in pursuit of a profitable competitiveadvantage. The company’s capabilities are as theyexist today, or how they could be developed. Theneeds of the market may be real or they may belatent – perhaps requiring a little push to bring themto the surface.

The marketer’s task is to find the match betweenthese two pursuits and, most importantly, to do itbetter than the competition, who are chasing downjust the same road. The more unique the match canbe, provided it is a genuine match of real capabil-ities and real needs, the better the chance forcompetitive advantage. It is of little advantage, orprofit, to find a match that your competitors cancopy, and perhaps ultimately achieve at lower coststhan you.

The brand manager’s task is to help develop thismatch and represent its uniqueness through theuniqueness of the brand. Brands will live andprosper so long as they continue to express a uniquematch between real needs and real capabilities. Asneeds change, as they almost always do, so must thesupplier’s capabilities, and so must the brand. Thebrand must evolve if it is to continue evidencing thisunique match. Brands wither and die when eitherthey fail to evolve, or when the capabilities behindthem fail to keep pace with the changing needs ofthe market.

Dyson

Hoover owned the vacuum cleaner market in the UnitedKingdom for most of the last century, it even ‘owned the word’


Top brands represent aunique match betweenneeds and capabilities, butto stay at the top, thatmatch must evolve asneeds change

for vacuuming. It lost this unquestioned ownership to Dysonbecause its brand definition rested on its laurels. It failed tospot a potential update in the matching process even when itwas placed under its nose. Dyson had observed a latentcustomer desire for better suction and less messy disposal andoffered Hoover his ‘cyclone system’ invention. It was turneddown because its bagless solution threatened Hoover’slucrative market for replacement bags. Now it is the Dysonbrand that owns the best and most unique match betweencapabilities and need.

BRANDS NEED TO BE MORE THAN‘SURFACE FLUFF’

‘Brands define who you are.’ If this is true, then eitherbrands have become a dangerously overblowndevice for social control, or customers havesuccumbed to some wretched wasting disease thataffects their sense of identity. Fortunately, it isn’t.

Sure, people buy brands that they like, brandsthat make them feel good, and brands that tuneinto what they want out of life – but they don’tbecome the sum of their purchases. If they do, thenthey should seek counselling. People’s needs andaspirations define what brands are, not the otherway round, and any brand manager beguiled bythe ‘brands maketh man’ mantra, or the cry of ‘we’re

all just dream merchants’ will more than likely gettheir brands into an arrogant and pretentiousmess.

Aspirations are important in branding, andnobody wants to see dowdy presentation or unin-spiring advertising copy, but the dream merchantapproach too often tries to manufacture somethingout of nothing. ‘All mouth and no trousers’ is not a badcomment on a brand that attempts to exist only on

The brand as evidence of competitive advantage � 45

The brand coup of the1990s

People define brands, notthe other way around

its image. The success of a brand lies in the way thatit builds a powerful image around a genuine andconvincing offer. In the long run, no offer means nobrand.


The fact that retailers sell other people’s brands hastended to obscure the fact that they are themselvessome of the most potent brands ever created.

The private label slur

The brand managers of the big FMCG ‘productbrands’ used to be very superior in their attitude toretailers, for decades regarding them simply as theirchannel to market. When the retailers had thetemerity to launch products under their own names,these efforts were dismissed as ‘no brands’.

Certainly the early days of the own label weresomewhat hit and miss. Quality was hugelyvariable, particularly as suppliers were changed at arate that made any kind of consistency almostimpossible. But soon, retailers were reducing the

6

The rise and rise of the retail brand

47

choice on shelf to the brand leader and their ownlabel alternative. For suppliers, being the brandleader became all that mattered, and making ownlabels could only be a distraction, or a bolt hole forthe now displaced number two and three brands.The result of such analysis could only be conflictbetween supplier and customer.

Proprietary brands versus the retailer’sbrand

Own label was becoming a potent force, and yet stillit was belittled. When the number two brands wereforced out of the game by the retailers’ two brandpolicy, and the likes of Crosse & Blackwell withdrewentirely from tinned vegetables, it was reckoned tobe a defeat at the hands of Heinz, the brand leader –but wasn’t it really a defeat at the hands of theretailers’ own growing brands?

With the retailers’ own labels being the proprietarybrands’ biggest competition, a new dilemma arose –their biggest customers were also their biggestcompetitors. It was a dilemma that occupied a goodportion of the brand manager’s thinking time. Tomake these products would be a sign of defeat, theyargued, and feeling better for that decision closed theireyes once again to what was going on before them.

Quality and consistency of own labels improved,the imitation of branded packaging design becamerife and throughout the 1990s many brandedsuppliers were speaking with their lawyers almostas frequently as with their customers.

The proprietary brands labour under many disad-vantages to the retailers’ own labels. In most cases,


A brand war that pittedsuppliers againstcustomers

they are no longer allowed to place their own pointof sale materials in store. The result is that the ownlabel, designed for the environment it will be sold in,often looks more at home than the brand leader.

The retailer will often place its own product in theprime location, with the brand leader on a lower orhigher shelf, explaining to its brand leader suppliersthat if there is such a clear consumer demand fortheir products then those consumers will surelymake the effort to search them out.

While the stature of proprietary brands can bediminished by the retailers’ activities, they can alsolose out at the other end of the competitive struggle– the retail brand can be more cavalier with cost-cutting measures than they. If Andrex shrinks thesize of its toilet roll to boost its margins then thewhole country will notice, and protests will be heardin a thousand bus queues – it sometimes even makesprime time television. If the retailer does the samewith its own label, then that’s only to be expected ofan own label, isn’t it? A proprietary brand still has tobehave as if it’s better quality than the own label,even if it isn’t – and that costs.

Squeezed at both ends, branded suppliers in the1990s were at last persuaded to dance to theretailer’s tune. Category management became thegreat cry, and brands were told that they mustwork within the retailer’s chosen environment, andto do so meant working alongside the own label,not against it. This allowed the own label to moveaway from its image as the cheaper, but lowerquality, alternative, and begin its development asan alternative choice on grounds of its own inno-vation and value.

The rise and rise of the retail brand � 49

Category management, orhow the retailer won thewar of the brands

Branded sausages

There was a famous study done in the 1980s that demonstratedhow when the proportion of branded sausages in the freezercabinet was reduced to a certain level, total sausage saleswould start to fall. The brands, it was shown, provided thenecessary innovation to keep the category healthy. Look todayin the freezer cabinet and chances are that the exciting thingshappening with sausages are happening inside an own labelwrapper. (The Porkinson banger and the Wall’s ‘Instants’sausage are noble exceptions, but often hidden from view indeference to the retailer’s own Lincolnshire herb, organic hand-reared low fat chipolatas… )

At last the branded suppliers began to realize thatwhat they were witnessing was the growth of a newkind of brand, not a ‘me too, lukewarm imitation, no

brand’, but a complex and increasingly innovativemultifaceted brand – a retail brand.

THE MULTIFACETED BRAND

Now it is clear that the products sold under the ownlabel represent just a part of what has become aremarkably multifaceted brand. The retailer hassome huge advantages when it comes to branding,compared to even the biggest FMCG suppliers withthe biggest budgets. If the emotional charge andpower of a brand is the result of its interactions withits customers, then we can see how Sainsbury’s orAsda might be able to outbrand a packet of corn-flakes, they have so much more to play with. Let’s goshopping – there is the free car park, the architectureof the store, the music, the staff, the restaurant, the


The battle of the bangers…another win for the retailbrand

The strength of the retailbrand lies in its ability tocreate customerinteractions well beyondthe products on sale

offers and the savings, and more than groceries, thecar insurance, holidays and financial investments.Some retailers turn their stores into shows – the‘retail theatre’ of The Disney Store, with its greetersand its sing-along video wall.

Of course, we might not even have ventured outof the house, but shopped from home by theInternet, logging on to a retailer’s site where theability to build its own multifaceted but coherentbrand offer at the expense of the necessarily frag-mented proprietary brands is even greater.

Getting the upper hand…

Time was when retailers knew about handling stockand building displays, and brands knew aboutcustomers. The retailers eagerly accepted the marketresearch carried out by the brands, and their offerwas effectively decided for them. All that haschanged, largely as a result of the EPOS datagathered by barcode scanners and embellished bythe further information from loyalty cards. Retailershave a knowledge of consumers that is second tonone, and they use it to position and target theirspectacularly multifaceted brand offers.

The consumer’s champion?

Tesco has fought a high profile campaign against anumber of brands, most notably Levi Strauss, inaiming to offer branded goods at discount prices. Ithas labelled its campaign ‘rip-off Britain’, arguingthat the big brands are using restrictive practices tokeep their products at premium prices. Levi hasresponded by arguing that the environment in


The retail brand’s multipleinteractions have allowedit to ‘learn’ at a faster pacethan most product brands

which you purchase the jeans – ‘the last nine yards of

cable’ is its phrase – is an important part of theproduct and its image and should not be left in thehands of the discounting supermarket. One has tosuspect both sides’ motives; we are looking neitherat the consumer’s champion nor at the upholder ofsacred brand values; rather this is a fight for thedominance of product or retail brands. At present,some aspects of the law stand behind the productbrand, but much of the press is increasingly alignedbehind the retailer. Of course, this particular battlehas only just begun.

The death of proprietary brands?

Does the rise and rise of the retail brand imply thedecline and fall of the proprietary brand? Probablynot, provided that the suppliers recognize the chal-lenge and evolve their brands accordingly. Itshouldn’t be supposed that the retailers have it alltheir own way. Their customers have certain expec-tations of what they will find in store, particularlywith regard to certain brand names – theirfavourites, the big names, the recently promoted –and if they are disappointed, then they may justchange the store they shop in. In this regard, a super-market with no Coca-Cola is rather like a pub withno beer.

Consumer brands still have a power overretailers, but only if they continue to behave asconsumer brands – understanding the needs of theirtarget customers, coming up with the goods, andinvesting in communicating that achievement.

There are signs that many are not sure of how toproceed along this path, as if stunned by the changes


Brands have no rights,least of all a right tosurvive – that depends ontheir ability to understandtheir customers better thananyone else

they have witnessed. When Tesco decided that itwould sell its hugely valuable EPOS data to itssuppliers, many of those suppliers were at a loss asto what to do with it. Having once been theconsumer expert, building successful brands basedon a genuine match between their capabilities asmanufacturers and the consumer’s needs asuncovered by their research, it is as if a decade ofcategory management has left them witless.Category management has sometimes been used asa weapon to weaken the franchise held by consumerbrands, and too many branded suppliers have beenseduced into believing that a successful brand is justthe outcome of a big promotional budget. At leastretailers know better.


54


Too many companies in B2B or service industriesdismiss branding as a viable option. Here are justsome of the stated reasons, with some countercomments to each:

• ‘Brands are just names, logos or slogans, and such things

are irrelevant to our customer’s choice of a supplier.’A good brand is much more than a name, logo orslogan, but even so, don’t underestimate thehuman element in your customers’ decision-making process. They respond to good qualitypromotion like anyone else, and don’t besurprised if your anonymity and timidity leavesthem agog with indifference.

• ‘Brands are for products, and while we do have

different products it is really the company that they

are buying.’

7

The B2B and service brand –branding is not just for FMCG

55

Chapter 13 will discuss the idea of the corporatebrand, very often a good model for the B2Bmarket where common values support each andall of its product offers.

• ‘Brands are only needed when there is no tangible

difference. The point about our business is that we

have a real point of difference... ‘Brands that depend solely on an image arevulnerable, and short-lived when somethingtangibly better comes along. If you really do havea point of competitive advantage then you havethe basis for a strong brand. So you’re great, buthow many times can you tell the customer howgreat you are? Most probably, you haven’t done soin years, just hoping that they remember. A brandcan help you express that real point of differenceevery time the customer interacts with it.

• ‘B2B decisions are tangible and based on logic, there is

no room for emotion in our business, our customers

work on facts and experience... ‘If this really is so, then make your brand defi-nition tangible and logical but, as before, don’tunderestimate the humanity of yourcustomers... Trust is an emotion, confidence is anemotion, and both are usually key to a successfulB2B or service brand. A good brand can expressits trustworthiness through its consistency andlevel-headed approach. When promoting theB2B brand, don’t make the mistake of trying toreplicate the necessary and valuable emotionalexcitement of the FMCG world with unnec-essary and devaluing hype.

• ‘FMCG brands only have to convince an individual,

we have to convince the whole company. Sometimes


the decision-making unit extends from the boardroom

to the postroom, this calls for creative selling by a

team of people with initiative, not branding.’Even more need then for a set of values that willdetermine your whole approach. Each contactmust be tailored but ultimately there must beconsistency in the message. If each individual inyour team represents the essence of your propo-sition then this gives huge strength to the rela-tionship. It also gives you a brand definition.

• ‘Consumer brands are about quick sales based on

impulse decisions. We might wait a year or more for a

decision.’Consumers might dwell on their choice of hi-fi ormotor car for years, and the suppliers of suchgoods recognize the huge value of a strongbrand that can hold the potential customer’sattention for these lengths of time.

• ‘Listening to the “dream merchant” and the “brands

define who you are” brigade makes me want to laugh,

or be sick. They have obviously never met the buyers

we have to deal with.’Try to put them out of your mind; they don’trepresent the vast majority of brand activities.Don’t even think of working with a brandingconsultant, advertising agency or other profes-sional that talks in these terms. Moreover, regardthe presence of professional and testing buyersas something that will help keep your branddefinition genuine and robust.

• ‘Our customers make it very clear that price is all that

matters.’Are you sure that you are not the victim of aprofessional buyer’s little piece of theatre? Who

The B2B and service brand � 57

else have you spoken to in the customer, and dothey all say the same? Perhaps some care moreabout costs than price? If it really is just aboutprice, how about developing a ‘never knowinglyundersold’ brand definition?

• ‘You need millions before a brand means anything –

just look at the cost of advertising, or even good

quality brochures, and in any case we have no budget

for that sort of thing.’Chances are that you are already investingheavily in the things that will be most importantto your B2B or service brand’s definition – yourpeople, your technology, your processes. A B2Bbrand operating in a market where all the majorcustomers are known can easily dispense withthe multi-million pound promotional budget.

Remembering that brand strength and brand loyaltyresult from the level of interactivity between brandand customer, many a B2B or service brand shouldhave a fabulous opportunity to build a strong andvaluable brand. That they so often miss this oppor-tunity is down either to their denial of branding, orironically, an excess of ‘surface fluff’ branding – thefailure to follow through the claims of the brand intothe substance of the product.

A financial services provider has a huge oppor-tunity for multiple contacts and complex customerassociations, but having first ignored brands as irrel-evant, some now have turned to branding by logoand slogan. Unfortunately the use of engaging asso-ciations, whether it be with black horses or the spon-sorship of Frasier on Channel 4, all too often comes tonothing in the reality of the experience. Queuingthrough your lunch break doesn’t gel with images of


The opportunity for B2Band service businesses tobuild strong brands isenormous – but not bymimicking the worst ofFMCG practice

freedom, nor does having your branch closed andbeing forced through a call centre that is always‘experiencing particularly high call levels’. And acollapsing pension fund isn’t funny. If a JDWetherspoon pub or club advertised great nightsout for young adults only to provide bingo,dominoes and the occasional beetle drive, the effectwould not be dissimilar.

The brand as evidence of appropriateperformance

While each of the definitions of a brand so fardiscussed can be applied to a service or B2B brand,perhaps we also need a definition that focuses on thecustomer’s expectations of performance and theappropriateness of the supplier’s response to thoseexpectations.

Figure 7.1 lists some of the most typical require-ments from B2B and service suppliers, and so someof the most typical bases on which to build a branddefinition. To some degree these bases increase in


B2B brand performanceexpectations and risingbrand significance

– a market builder

– a business improver

– tuned into the business environment

– a solution provider

– a performance enhancer

– a life saver

– steady as a rock

– easy to do business with

– cost reducer

– price buster

incr

easing

bra

nd s

igni

fican

ce

Figure 7.1 B2B brand performance expectations andrising brand significance

significance (rather like the emotional charge model)and so we might expect higher levels of loyalty atthe upper end.

Some important riders should be attached to thislist:

1. It is indicative only of typical expectations, not acomplete list.

2. Rarely does a customer expect all of this, and stillless would they get it, but nor are they mutuallyexclusive requirements. A brand may form itsdefinition around an almost endless variety ofmixes and matches.

3. As ever in marketing, brands must target marketsegments comprising customers with similarrequirements and attitudes. Choosing the defi-nition depends of course on the dominant expec-tations of the target segment.

4. Expectations change as markets change.

Price busters and cost reducers

New entrants to a market have often donned theprice buster mantle, or its more sophisticated eldersibling, the cost reducer. It is also an approachtaken by brands trying to shake up a long-established market with incumbent brands dozingquietly.

Companies offering business training through theInternet have tended to lead with claims of costreduction, a brand definition that they can oftensubstantiate with some ease. Moving up to the level ofperformance enhancer or business improver (brandplatforms occupied by many of their more traditionalcompetitors) will present a much harder challenge if itis to be substantiated with any conviction.


It is often easiest to makean initial impact at thebottom

Easy to do business with

American Express takes all the effort out ofcorporate business travel. The Amex ‘in-plant’ is acommon feature of many a large business, taking onall the tasks short of making the trips themselves.This ‘easy to do business with’ brand now has totake on the challenge of those managers who thinkthe Internet makes it easier for them to do it them-selves. The fact that Amex might be better tunedinto the business environment may just give it theedge.

This example demonstrates two important prin-ciples of this model of the brand as evidence ofappropriate performance. Firstly that meeting morethan one expectation can often make for a strongerbrand, provided you don’t get greedy and try toclaim too much. Secondly, like the emotional chargemodel, greater brand strength with its attendantenhanced loyalty tends to result from meeting thehigher level expectations.

Steady as a rock

The Tetra Brik is a good example of a brand that is‘steady as a rock’. Its numerous users, often creatingnew markets made possible by the packaging tech-nology, depend on the absolute reliability of thebrand. And if things do go wrong, then they dependon the ability of the brand to put them right. TetraBrik has much at stake if its product fails thecustomer, and the customer knows that, and so astrong bond of common interest is forged betweensupplier, customer and consumer.


In changing times, havingmore than oneperformance expectationcan aid the brand’sevolution

Life savers

DHL works hard to define its brand around relia-bility and speed. Driven by the business world’sneed to do things fast, and globally, DHL representsa ‘life saver’ brand. Just hearing the letters DHLbrings a sigh of relief – not a bad emotional responseto associate with your brand. And then along comese-mail. Now there is less need for such heroics –huge documents can be sent in seconds with no needfor planes, boats and trains. The DHL brand mustchange into something more than a specialist emer-gency service. Perhaps a provider of wider businesssolutions that recognize the changing demands oftruly global businesses?

Tuned-in performance enhancers,solution providers, business improversand market builders

If a consumer brand must tune into social and lifevalues, so a B2B brand must tune into thecommercial environment of the time. The Intelbrand captured the loyalty of PC manufacturers fora variety of reasons, not least because the brand wasboth a performance enhancer through the ever-increasing speed of its ever-diminishing chips, and amarket builder through its consumer franchise.Times change and the PC builders are becomingmore interested in cost reduction in a maturing, notto say saturated market. Should Intel take its branddown a price buster road, perhaps with its highvolume Celeron microprocessor line, or does it stickto its market builder definition by encouraging thedevelopment of software applications that will


demand its high-speed capabilities? The launch ofthe Pentium III Xeon microprocessor, specificallydesigned to improve the performance of large Websites and e-business applications fits the latterdirection. Which would you choose?

The B2B brand with the consumerfranchise – a class act

There is a class of B2B brand that manages to operateat a number of the higher levels of customer expec-tation, while also matching the expectations of theircustomers’ customers. This is the brand with its ownconsumer franchise, like Lycra and Teflon fromDuPont, or Nutrasweet from Monsanto, or Gore-Texor the Intel Pentium III.

Such brands clearly enhance their customers’performance; they help to improve their businessperformance, but most importantly they also help tobuild the market for those customers. The bigbrands in the sports clothing market have much tothank Lycra for, just as the big PC brands owe a debtto the ‘Intel inside’.

These brands have a triple value – for the owner,for the B2B customer, and for the consumer. Thevalue does not come cheaply, the creation of aconsumer franchise takes heavy investment incommunication strategies, like the famousNutrasweet gumball campaign where millions ofgumballs were mailed to consumers to demonstratethe effectiveness and natural taste of the product.Such brands have to manage two sets of customers –the end consumer and the manufacturer that usestheir product.


64


It is clear that brands are hugely valuable propertiesthat will have received significant investment overtime. Not so very long ago brand managers mayhave been inclined to talk of the ‘inestimable value’of their brand. Of course, they meant this in praise ofits undeniable, but immeasurable value, but nolonger should they take such a trusting andaccepting view.

In 1985 Reckitt & Colman bought Airwick fromCiba-Geigy with a good chunk of the payment beingfor ‘goodwill’, the accountant’s term for the value ofsuch apparently indefinable things as Airwick’scustomers, and its brand. In fact, ‘goodwill’ makesthese items quite definable, placing an actual marketvalue on them. The normal accounting practicewould have been for Reckitt & Colman to pay the

8

Valuing the brand – not just for theaccountants

65

money but see no increase in the net assets shown onthe balance sheet. Not a new problem, but Reckitt &Colman had a new solution – it decided to capitalizethe value of the brand.

In 1987, Grand Met bought Heublein, owners ofthe Smirnoff brand. Grand Met announced that itwould include £588 million on its balance sheet foracquired brands.

These two moves were unusual, but not revolu-tionary, Reckitt & Colman and Grand Met were onlyvaluing acquired brands as part of the complexity ofacquisitions and valuations. The real revolutioncame in 1988 when Philip Morris paid $12.9 billionfor the Kraft food company, a sum that was fourtimes the book value of the tangible assets in thebusiness. What Philip Morris was really paying forwere the intangible assets of the brands.

In the same year, RHM decided to value all itsbrands, not just newly acquired ones, and aftermuch debate in learned journals many more havefollowed its example. Brand managers now have anadditional responsibility. As well as building thevalue of the brand in the customer’s eyes they nowmust also please the accountants. The problem hasbecome how to value the brand and as yet there is noone agreed method.

The task was relatively easy when a company wasbuying a brand as part of an acquisition – what itpaid was what it thought it was worth, the marketdecided. But what if you already owned it? Threemethods stand out from the crowd:

• The Existing Use method. This attempts tovalue the brand based on the price premium itreceives over its generic competition, plus a


calculation for the level of recognition the brandhas in the market and the esteem in whichcustomers hold the brand.

• The Earnings Multiple system. This calculatessomething called brand earnings, largely basedon the cash flow provided by the brand, andmultiplies that by a figure based on brandstrength. Brand strength is a combination offactors including market share, global presence,investment, and any brand protection measurestaken.

• The Interbrand system (as developed by thefirm of that name). Recent profitability is multi-plied by a number between 1 and 20 that repre-sents a balance of seven important aspects of thebrand:

– its leadership position;

– its likely longevity;

– the stability of the market in which it operates;

– its globality;

– its future trend;

– the level of marketing support;

– its legal protection.

Each of these allows a good deal of room forsubjective analysis, but as the practice becomes morecommon so do the standards used for this kind ofanalysis.

Implications for brand management

The ‘how to’ of brand valuation need not detain uslonger, but what about the impact of brand valuationson the role of the brand manager? Brand valuation is

Valuing the brand � 67

a discipline that forces the brand manager to focus onsome rather important issues:

• What actually represents strength and value inour business – is it the brands?

• What is the relative importance of our brandscompared to, let’s say, our physical assets?

• If a brand has a value, then it can be sold. Whatwill be best for the business, selling a brand orcontinuing to invest in it?

• Valuing brands helps puts a price on licensingand royalties.

• The value of a brand is not based solely ontoday’s receipts but, as for any investment, alsoon tomorrow’s potential. The practice of valuingbrands forces the business to regard thosebrands as investments over time, making quiteclear the brand manager’s responsibility to buildand sustain that investment, consistently.(Remember this argument the next time the bossasks for a cut in the advertising budget!)

• Is the practice of branding more profitable thansimply selling products and services?

BRANDING AND PROFITABILITY

The last of these issues deserves some moreattention, simply because it turns out to be goodnews in the main. Strong brands tend to be moreprofitable than weak ones.

Research by PIMS (Profit Impact of MarketStrategies) shows that in the UK food market the No1 food brand in any particular sector has an average


The interest shown by theaccountants shouldencourage the brandmanager to evaluate the‘value’ of the brand usingthe broadest possiblecontext

profit margin of 18 per cent while the No 2 brand hasan average of only 4 per cent. Remember that theseare averages – many No 2 brands run at a loss. Notsurprisingly, a good number of these No 2 brandshave withdrawn from the game.

These figures suggest that in the food business atleast, it is not branding per se that is profitable, butsuccessful branding, and in this market that meansbeing the brand leader. In other markets, there is stillroom for a multiplicity of brands, but being thebiggest often helps.

Table 8.1 shows the average return on investment(ROI) assessed across 3,000 diverse UK businesseslooking at how they stood based on market share(brand strength) and quality.

These figures alone are by no means conclusivebut they suggest some truths that other pieces ofevidence would give backing to – investing inbrands to gain market share is as rewarding asinvesting in the product to improve quality, and if agood quality product also has a good brandstanding, then it will be even more likely to returngood profits. Strong brands tend to return goodprofits for a variety of reasons:

• Top brands command premium prices.

• Winning new customers is easier and so lesscostly.

Valuing the brand � 69

Table 8.1 PIMS research on brands and ROI

Low Medium HighQuality Quality Quality

high market share 21.00 25.00 38.00medium market share 14.00 20.00 27.00low market share 7.00 13.00 20.00

• Good brands win customer loyalty, and loyalcustomers will cost less to retain and service.

• A strong brand gives negotiating power to thesupplier.

• High market share gives you presence in themarket, and that brings knowledge, and thatallows vision, and that facilitates an ability tochange (but only if you choose to learn).

• A good brand evidences a unique matchbetween company capabilities and market needs– a good brand is therefore an expression ofcompetitive advantage.


71

Business strategy mustcome before brand strategy

Part II

Brand management – thestrategy

Brands don’t come first. If they do, then you havethe prospect of muddle at best, with incoherenceand chaos the more likely result. If we remember thelevel of investment put into brands, then imaginethe waste that can result from asking them to workin a business structure or culture that doesn’t suit.Sometimes a successful brand in the wrong placecan be as damaging as a flop; it can work as a braketo the business progressing in its chosen direction.Business strategy must come first, and brands mustfit within that context. For the world’s leadingbrands, brand management takes place in theboardroom.

Part II takes us through a process for the devel-opment and positioning of brands within thecontext of your business strategy. Not entirely

chronological; a lot must go on at once, and ofcourse, if your brands exist already, you may need todo some backtracking.

The process, illustrated in Figure PII.1, sees acontinual narrowing of the brand’s focus, funnellingdown from the broad positioning based on thebusiness strategy to the specific positioning basedon benefits that establish a definition of value. Thispositioning is ‘experienced’ by the customerthrough a number of ‘brand interactions’.

72 � Brand management – the strategy

The brand positioningprocess

Figure PII.1 The brand positioning process

thevalue

context

business strategysegmentationcapabilitiesbrand architecture

brandinteractions

broad

positioning

specific

positioning

total

customer

experience

Some brands fit… somedon’t

In theory, defining the business strategy shouldcome first, followed by the creation of the brandsand the brand architecture to support that strategy.In reality companies often have an existing portfolioof brands and find themselves scouting around forthings to do with them. They are the ‘proud’ ownersof excellent brands, but ones that can’t be made towork within their strategy.

Strategies for razor blades and pens

Gillette has long prospered with razors and blades, applying‘high-tech’ innovations to global brands, but a business modelthat works for these brands has not worked so well with Parker,Papermate or Waterman, famous and worthy brands of pensthat might prosper more in other hands…

9

Business strategy – the brand incontext

73

The understanding of business strategy, and so thedemands placed on the brand manager, might besimplified into the answers to two questions: 1) howdo we intend to grow, and what level of risk mightthat involve and 2) what values will drive ourbusiness? By answering these questions, andseeking to match the brand strategy to the businessstrategy, the brand manager will have arrived atwhat we will call the broad positioning of the brand.This will be our starting point for brand positioningin Chapter 11.

GROWTH, BRANDING AND RISKMANAGEMENT – THE BRAND

HALO

Business growth is a risky thing, particularly if thatgrowth takes you off your home turf. If your growthactivities simply involve doing more of what youalready do (market penetration), then the risk is muchless than launching new products, entering newmarkets or diversifying. These levels of risk are illus-trated in Figure 9.1, the Ansoff Matrix. Thepercentage figures indicate the comparative like-lihood of success for each strategy.

Risk is necessary in business, but managed risk isusually best, and brands provide an excellent meansof managing the risks involved in growth strategiesbeyond market penetration. A successful brand canact like a protective halo to be put around the morerisky of your growth activities. It can also lead youinto foolish and lazy actions – relying on the halo

effect can work for good or ill.


The brand halo can reducethe risks of growth, but besure you know what youaim to grow – the brand, orthe business?

New product development

The hugely successful launch of the Mars ice creambar created an entirely new market worth millions,but that success was due to the healthy existence andprotective halo of the original Mars Bar brand.Would the launch of a Tunnock’s ice cream bar(Tunnock’s is a thoroughly splendid but rather lowprofile chocolate wafer biscuit) have made as big asplash?

Each time Kellogg’s launches a new breakfastcereal, it rides in on the back of its Kellogg’s name,acting as a ‘validated identity brand’ (see Chapter13) and providing a protective halo. The new trialrate by consumers is guaranteed to be higherbecause of the Kellogg’s name, and the chance ofgetting it on to the supermarket shelf is increased(though never assured).

While FMCG and retail may provide the highprofile examples, it is perhaps in the B2B and

Business strategy � 75

Understanding risk: theAnsoff Matrix

products

penetration new product

development

market

extensiondiversification

exist

new

exist new

65%

45% 15%

30%

mark

ets

Figure 9.1 Understanding risk: the Ansoff Matrix

industrial branding area that the halo effect can beof greatest value. Launching new products is hardwork if it relies principally on a physical sales effortrather than a high profile media campaign. Gettingthe customer to give you the time to present yourideas is not easy, even if they are a regular contact –today’s emergencies tend to squeeze out discus-sions on tomorrow’s opportunities. A strong branddoesn’t guarantee a hearing, but it makes it morelikely, and broadens the base of those who mightwant to hear. So often in B2B relationships it is thebreadth of contacts that is vital to success and thebrand halo can help you to extend your reach.

Diversifying for growth

Virgin

Almost every step along Virgin’s growth path has been diversifi-cation – from record label to airline, to hotelier, to cola producer,to financial services provider, to train company, and so it goeson. Virgin is very clear what it must do to reduce the enormousrisks inherent in these ventures. It conducts more marketresearch than most businesses would think necessary, it makesuse of expert partners, in particular its suppliers, and it makesfull use of the Virgin brand halo. Its ability to transfer the valuesbehind the brand name to each of its diversified ventures is arole model for any company seeking to use a corporate brand tosupport and manage the risk of an ambitious growth strategy(see Chapter 13).

Diversifying to escape decline

A rather more challenging use of a brand is seenwhen a business chooses to diversify in order toescape decline.


Rather than makingAnsoff’s predictions seemvery pessimistic, Virgin’ssuccess demonstrates thevalue of the brand halo

Marlboro

Philip Morris, owner of the Marlboro brand, envisages a slowdecline of that brand as a result of increasing restrictions ontobacco advertising. This is not a situation that it is about totake lying down, not least because the brand is one of its mostimportant assets, valued at $23 billion. Plans under consider-ation include diversification into hotels and leisure, under theMarlboro brand. It hopes that the halo effect will ease its pathinto this highly competitive market. But there are some mightybig challenges. Can the Marlboro brand values be translated toa hotel? Presumably guests will still be urged not to smoke inbed? Might it be that this particular brand halo will prove to bean obstacle rather than an assistance? Some argue that a betteruse of its assets would be to milk Marlboro as it declines andinvest the funds in growth strategies for other establishedbrands in the portfolio, such as Kraft or Miller.

Entering new markets

This is fertile ground for horror stories, particularlywhere brand managers have an over-inflatedconception of the power of their brand halo, or are justplain lazy.

Ben and Jerry’s

Ben and Jerry’s ice cream was a phenomenal success in theUnited States with its quirky mix of showmanship, fun, localreferencing, entrepreneurial spirit and social conscience, aformula and definition that meant very little when the brand waslaunched in the United Kingdom. Not only did UK consumerscare little for the plight of Vermont dairy farmers (the brand’ssupport of this beleaguered group in the United States won it awarm following), but few of them got the jokes behind ice creamnames such as Cherry Garcia.


Brand halos work only ifbrand names can betransferred – a challengingtime for Marlboro

Supposed brand halos canlead to laziness – the UKlaunch of a USphenomenon, Ben andJerry’s

Imagining that you have a protective brand halo wheneither nobody has heard of you, or is confused by yourbrand definition, or has a different conception of whatit stands for, can be an arresting experience.

BRANDING AND VALUE DRIVERS –DEFINING THE BRAND

A value driver is a set of ideas or principles,embedded in the company’s culture, which allowsall members of the business to identify what theircontribution is to overall success. It is what makesthe business tick, or better, what makes it hum.

Michael Treacy and Fred Weirsema, in their bookThe Discipline Of Market Leaders, identified threevalue drivers that provide an excellent model foridentifying and implementing a business strategy:

• operational excellence;

• product leadership;

• customer intimacy.

All three may be present in any successful business,but for a really successful business, one or other ofthese drivers will stand out, distinguishing thebusiness for its staff and its customers, and distin-guishing it from its competitors.

The brand managers may choose to represent totheir customers, through the brand, the key driver intheir business. The advantage of this is the ability tocommunicate the brand’s role as representing theunique match between customers’ needs andsuppliers’ capabilities. Confusion of drivers can leadto confusion of brand definition.


Operational excellence is about doing what youdo, well. The cogs of your processes are well oiled.Such ‘excellence’ can bring significant competitiveadvantage, in a market where reliability and consis-tency is important, or prices are competitive.

IKEA

IKEA is driven by operational excellence, achieving huge effi-ciencies through its logistics chain, from manufacturer to store,and its in-store ‘self-selection, self-collection’ formula. TheIKEA brand makes a virtue of these internal processes, shoutingout the excellent value it can provide for its customers (justwitness how many first-time house buyers on a shoestringbudget kit out their home at IKEA).

A service provider driven by operational excellencewould perhaps have a no frills brand that spoke oflow costs resulting from the experience andeconomy of the supplier. EasyJet communicates itskey driver through the brand in this way.

Product leadership is about producing the best,or the market dominant products. Businesses withhigh rates of innovation and patent application oftenhave this value at their heart. It is hard to imagine asuccessful pharmaceuticals company that is notdriven by this value. It must always be at the leadingedge, pushing at the boundaries and, most impor-tantly, be seen to be doing so. The brand definition ofsuch businesses will be appropriately innovativeand entrepreneurial.


Making a brand definitionout of your ownoperational processes

Microsoft

The pace of innovation achieved by Microsoft is amazing, thedownside being that you can sometimes feel out of date assoon as you carry its latest product out of the store (which putsme way out of date: rephrase that last comment – as youdownload their latest product… ). The Microsoft brand repre-sents innovation and state of the art, and is perhaps happy thatit also represents a small element of risk. Brands that push atthe boundaries will occasionally make mistakes, it’s almostexpected by the customer. When there are doubts (and muchpublicity) about a new version of Windows, sales just keep onrising. It would seem that a lot of us want to be part of thatleading edge, bugs and all.

Customer intimacy is the desire and the ability toidentify with specific customer needs, and to matchproducts and services accordingly. What distin-guishes the customer-intimate business is its stateddetermination to develop close customer relation-ships, and to act on the resultant knowledge at alllevels of its operation. It will probably have a widemenu of products and services, and the ability tomix and match these to suit individual customerrequirements – or perhaps it will go further than thisand offer a totally bespoke service.

Many B2B and service brands will aim to put thisvalue at the heart of their brand definition. Theupside is that it enables them to project an image ofpersonalized service. A potential downside could bethat an apparent claim to be able to do anything isnon-credible. This requires careful brandmanagement. The customer-intimate driver shouldnot lead you down an unfocused road. Rather, thinkof it as intimacy within clearly defined boundaries,boundaries set as a result of your business strategy


Making a brand definitionout of your own NPDstrategies

and your approach to market segmentation (seeChapter 10).

Quest International

Quest International supplies fragrances to the perfume industry.Each of its customers’ products is unique, and the fragrance isequally unique – there are no off-the-shelf solutions in thisbusiness. The perfumer’s art is as much one of black magic aschemistry and this makes for very demanding, and often seem-ingly eccentric customers. Quest must be able to identify withthis, but more than that, ensure that its own people can work onthis basis. Customer intimacy is essential for success, resultingin an absolute identification with the customer’s needs, and theability to focus the whole organization on meeting them. Thebrand represents that ability.


Making a brand definitionout of your own people’sknowledge and experience

82


A brand helps you to target your audience. Alearning brand gets to know its customers, andgoes out looking for them. Segmentation is theprocess of identifying those target audiences andunderstanding them in such depth that the offer,through the brand, can be tailored with bothprecision and sufficient uniqueness to win compet-itive advantage.

Other books deal with the mechanics of segmen-tation (see page 171). Here we will focus on theimportance of segmentation to the development of awinning brand strategy and, in particular, the needto practice segmentation with a level of sophisti-cation greater than the norm.

10

Segmentation – a source ofcompetitive advantage

83

Definitions and purpose – avoiding the‘me too’ scenario

A segment is a group of people with similar needs,perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, concerningyour offer and offers like yours. In theory theprocess of segmentation could break these groupsdown into micro-segments, or even down to uniqueindividuals. How far you need to go depends on thenature of your market, and your intentions andability to vary your offer.

For most consumer goods, the segments come intens if not hundreds of thousands of consumers. Fora B2B supplier the entire customer base may onlynumber 100 and segments comprising single figuresmay be appropriate.

Whatever the scale, the intention remains thesame: to develop an offer that meets the needs ofthe segment as uniquely as possible. One of theproblems for the brand manager is that if your basisof segmentation is the same as your competitors, inother words you are all targeting the same peoplewith the same needs, then the opportunities foruniqueness are somewhat limited. The brand namemay be the only point of difference. While this is ofcourse a key purpose of the brand – to find differen-tiation in crowded markets – it might be better tofind a more novel way of segmenting the market inthe first place. Very often it will require only a smallshift in your view to find potential competitiveadvantage staring you in the face.


If everyone were tosegment the market thesame way, where would bethe competitive advantagein that?

Choices

The thing about segmentation is that there arealways choices, and it is important to try to find achoice not already taken by a competitor.

Kellogg’s and Weetabix

In the breakfast cereal market Kellogg’s has chosen to placeindividual brands in all of the available segments, from health tofun, diet control to energy, traditional to novelty. Its promotionalspend is consequently huge (£55 million in the United Kingdom)but it occupies 8 out of the top 10 positions for breakfast cerealbrands sold in the United Kingdom.

Weetabix makes another choice: to focus on fewer segmentsthrough far fewer brands. Weetabix is number two in the UnitedKingdom’s top 10 selling breakfast cereal brands with a promo-tional spend of £15 million focused on a product oncedescribed as ‘a dour, sugarless flaked wheat block that lookslike it was designed by the Soviet Cereal secretariat in 1951’. Infact, Weetabix is the SAS of the breakfast cereal marketcompared to the Kellogg’s Red Army.

The brand as focus for the marketing mix

Having identified the segment, and understood itsdynamics, the marketer will need to construct anoffer based on the four Ps – product, price,promotion and place. The brand is the focus thatputs this ‘marketing mix’ to work. Not only do thefour Ps interact with each other, they must balancewith each other for a successful mix. New brandlaunches are particularly prone to misfits in themix.

Segmentation � 85

Segmentation as a weaponin the UK breakfast wars…

Babycham

When Babycham was first launched, the product, promotionand place were well thought out, but the price was too low. Thiswas a drink (‘fake’ champagne) that men bought for their girl-friends to impress them (remember this was the 1960s!). But atsuch a low price who was going to be impressed? The productwas re-launched at a suitably ego-enhancing price and remainsone of the brand icons of a now very different world.

Different mix, different brand?

Since a segment is a group with unique needs it isquite possible that different segments will requiresufficiently different market mixes to warrantdifferent brands.

ICI Dulux

In the market for decorative paint used by professionaltradesmen, ICI Dulux found itself targeting two key, but quite


What price Babycham?

Table 10.1 Segmentation and branding in theprofessional paint market

Base Major Small DecoratorContractor Firm

size of firm 200+ 1–5size of purchase industrial scale, domestic scale,

larger pack size smaller pack sizespecification professional from client, usually

a homeownerdistribution channel direct from supplier builders or

decorators’ merchantpurchasing function professional buyer owner/manager

direct to supplier through merchantlead influence on price and cost client specificationpurchase decision analysis and brand loyaltyBrand Glidden Dulux Trade

different segments – the small firms of decorators and the majorcontractor firms. Table 10.1 shows some of the bases on whichthe segments were compared, and found to be so different as torequire two separate brands, Dulux Trade and Glidden.

When it looked at buying behaviour in particular it found thatthe brand loyalty of self-employed professional decoratorsand the influence of their clients (brand aware houseowners)made the use of the Dulux brand a must. The buyer for themajor contractor demanded cost reductions that would havecompromised the main brand had it attempted to work in bothsegments A new brand was the perfect solution, and onealready existed in the ICI world group – Glidden is the main ICIpaint brand in the United States.

NOVEL SEGMENTATION

There may be some fairly obvious ways to segment amarket but the problem with these ‘easy options’ isthat your competitors are probably seeing things justthe same, and where’s the competitive advantage inthat? The pursuit of novel ways to segment will oftenunearth new understanding of the dynamics of themarketplace and gain you significant competitiveadvantage.

Branding in a mature ‘no brand’ market

Segmentation of the fertilizer market

A fertilizer manufacturer found its product to be in slow declinein a mature market. It decided to segment as a means offinding new offers, testing first the more obvious ‘cuts’; croptype, geography, seasonality, all used by its competitors todifferent degrees. Finally it hit on a simple truth – wheat didn’tbuy fertilizer, and nor did East Anglia, it was farmers every time!Farmers came from different backgrounds, with widelydiffering attitudes, aspirations and buying behaviours. Once

Segmentation � 87

Matching brands tosegments

New life for fertilizer –revived fortunes throughnovel segmentation

the manufacturer started to explore these factors it began tounderstand (almost for the first time) what really made peoplebuy their product. The final segmentation was based on atti-tudes and needs, the traditional family farmer for instancehaving a rather different outlook to the graduate of an agricul-tural college managing a large estate.

Division of the market into six segments allowed the businessto focus on six different marketing mixes, each manifested in acarefully honed brand proposition. It was able to add morerelevant value, remove irrelevant activities or costs, achievegreater brand loyalty, better prices, increased share, andimproved profitability. All of this in a market that was seen ashugely mature and no place for branding…

Escaping from the A1, B2 syndrome

In consumer markets the slicing of segments by A1,B2-style socio-economic demographics has beenworked to death – the methodology of the newmillennium is ‘psychographics’.

Dulux and the DIY market

Having discussed the Dulux brand in the professional market,let’s turn to the DIY market where the brand has proved to beone of the most enduring, largely through its ability to evolve.The process of evolution has been managed to a great extentthrough a continual updating of the basis of segmentation.

In the 1960s the boom in DIY was based on a raft of new easierto use products – the era of Formica and Fablon. Dulux adopted asegmentation based on application needs, and developed sub-brands accordingly, such as Dulux Weathershield for outside walls.

Into the 1970s and attitudes were changing. DIY was anestablished norm and consumers were seeking more. Theydidn’t just want to protect their homes, they wanted totransform them. Dulux became an aspirational brand and newsegmentation was required. Terms such as planners andappliers evolved, and soon became segments, each needingtheir own marketing mix and brand treatment.


How psychographicskeeps Dulux ahead of thefield

The more demanding 1980s and 1990s saw consumersseeking increasing personalization of their homes. The ‘nesting’culture (an updated form of the Englishman’s home being hiscastle, where a desire for personal and private spaces stronglyinfluences attitudes and behaviours) called for another look atsegmentation – planners were not just planners any more.Figure 10.1 gives a diagrammatic description of a newapproach to segmentation using psychographic terminology.

Different slices of this spectrum can be targeted by sub-brands– ‘Dulux Satinwood’ for the finish fanatic, ‘Dulux KidsZone’ forthe adventurous ‘colour crazies’.

MICRO-SEGMENTATION –ANTI-SEGMENTATION?

The revolution in IT has meant that, in theory,brands should be able to target segments as small asan individual. In practice, where does this leavebrands? Will they become so personalized that youmake it up yourself? Will brands become very muchmore targeted, or will they expand to widerumbrellas representing ‘lifestyles’ within whichpersonalized choices are made? In practice, the mass

Segmentation � 89

colour crazy

conservative would be adventurous

adventurous

colour/finish

finish fanaticcompromiser

price extremist

brand loyalist

Figure 10.1 Psychographic segmentation fordecorative paint

market brands must still target mass markets, butthey can always make it seem that they are beingmore attentive to the individual…

A Barclays poster campaign introduces ‘the Sarahloan’, and ‘the Nigel loan’, suggesting that it is ableto cater for segments as small as an individual. Whatit means is there will be a menu of choices, but it isan advance on the old days of one size fits all.

The Mercedes ‘whoever you are’ campaignappears to target every segment and every person-ality. Using some well-worn stereotypes it wouldseem that anyone can find their ideal car fromwithin a Mercedes range that has grown onlymarginally. Rather than an exercise in micro-segmentation, this is more a case of a traditionalmass market segmentation research study beingshouted out loud from the page and the screen.

HSBC’s ‘different people, one bank’ campaignsuggests either an abandonment of segmentation –one size fits all – or, like Barclays, a claim that the bankis so flexible that it can cater for any and all varieties.In truth, few brands have managed to move fromtraditional segmentation models, despite theoverload (or perhaps because of the overload) ofinformation available through electronic transactions,largely because they are still the products of businessmodels based on mass production and uniformity.The opportunity for the genuinely tailored brand isstill there to be seized, but only by someone who canescape the traditional business models of the 20thcentury. This is, perhaps, the realm of the Internetbrand, but as yet we are more conscious of the failuresthan the successes. Too many Internet brands havebeen based on business models of no real substance –still a recipe for brand failure.


Announcing yoursegmentation strategy tothe world – an appeal tothe marketing savvygeneration or a passing fadof the advertising world?

Brand positioning is more than just stating yourcase. Plenty of people can come up with a branddefinition and place it on the market, but then plentyof brands wither and die. Successful long-termbrands must be able to find, or create, a relevantspace in the target customer’s mind, and cementtheir brand’s definition and values there. Then, asminds change, so must the brands.

The process of brand positioning is intended toidentify and target those spaces in the customer’smind. The process of cementing your brand’s defi-nition there will be dealt with in Part III. Positioningisn’t easy, there are all sorts of wrong positioningsawaiting you:

• Underpositioning, where you stand for nothingin particular, occupying no space in the

11

Brand positioning – securing aplace in the customer’s mind

91

customer’s mind, and giving them no reason tobuy, or even care.

• Overpositioning, where you are so narrowlyspecific that once the handful of target customershas bought, you’re done.

• Confused positioning, where you’re just tryingto be too many things at once and contradictionsand conflicts abound. (Does the hugelysuccessful KitKat break the rules of positioning –is it a biscuit, a sweet, a snack, a treat... ?)

• Irrelevant positioning – so your brand will helpremove the stains inside my radiators withoutme having to close them down... who cares?

• Doubtful positioning, making claims thatnobody believes and only the most gullible willbecome your customers – not a good recipe forbuilding sales by word of mouth...

And then after all of this come the risks, the pain andthe expense of repositioning. Sometimes there is ahappy ending…

The Marlboro image

Marlboro, one of the earliest filter tip cigarettes, was originallypositioned to appeal to women, and failing to make greatheadway there it tried to target men where its filter tip wasconsidered positively ‘sissy’... Marlboro adopted a cowboy asan image and repositioned the brand as the ‘he-man’s smoke’.The rest we know.

Boldly going…

Usually, a brand must try to avoid a ‘middle of theroad’ positioning, but taking any kind of extreme


Marlboro – not always the‘he-man’

stance inevitably means that some will disapprove.The Benetton campaign of the 1990s is an example ofsuch positioning, but many have ‘learnt’ from thesuccess of that brand. A sense of disapproval hasnow become an important facet of some brands;creating as it does an ‘in crowd’ feel for those who do

approve. Nowhere is this seen more than whenestablishing a new brand. Häagen Dazs waslaunched against a backdrop of ice cream being forkids, and wanted to escape these kind of associa-tions. The brand was shown with adult interactions,sometimes with provocative images that could onlybring disapproval from some, but helped establish aloyalty from those specifically targeted. (Getting themarket segmentation right is essential for such astrategy.)

Some brands even manage to play cleverly ontheir realization that not everyone likes them.Marmite sought to position its unique taste by recog-nizing that some folk just can’t stand the stuff – ‘IHate’ Marmite posters ran alongside the ‘My Mate’posters in its advertising campaign.

THE PROCESS

The following process, adapted from Philip Kotler,aims to help you avoid these expensive mistakes. Itis a broad process allowing plenty of scope for varia-tions on a theme:

1. Establish the broad positioning, as it forms fromyour business strategy.

2. For each target market or segment, develop thespecific positioning, probably based on a clearly

Brand positioning � 93

Recognizing that noteveryone loves you is acritical part ofpositioning…

defined list of benefits, both tangible and intan-gible (don’t forget the emotional charge!).

3. Identify the value context of the brand.4. Develop the intended total customer experience.

Figure 11.1 illustrates the process as a series of refine-ments that enable the brand to target the finalcustomer with great precision. First comes afunnelling activity, moving from broad positioning

(step 1) to specific positioning based on benefits (step 2).Then this specific positioning is placed in a

particular value context (step 3) – what is thecustomer getting, and for how much? The valuecontext is represented by the portion of the ovalthrough which the brand’s specific positioningpasses – in this case, we might read this as ‘getting

more for the same’. ‘Getting more for more’ wouldperhaps be the top slice (see step 3 on page 101). Themanifestation of all this is seen in the range of inter-actions the customer has with the brand, the wholeforming what we have called the total customer expe-

rience (step 4).


The brand positioningprocess

thevalue

context

business strategysegmentationcapabilitiesbrand architecture

brandinteractions

broad

positioning

specific

positioning

total

customer

experience

Figure 11.1 The brand positioning process

Crudely speaking, the more of these plannedinteractions that hit their target, and stick, thegreater the customer’s experience and so thestronger and more meaningful the brand. Ifthe brand manager is working with the idea of‘shooting’ these interactions at the customer, thenthis might indicate that the brand has a high need topush its attentions on to the customer, typicalperhaps of a brand with a relatively low emotionalcharge. A brand with a higher emotional chargemight expect the customer to engage more volun-tarily, and the resultant interactions might be moreakin to an envelopment of the customer rather than anassault on their person.

1. Broad positioning

Your business strategy (Chapter 9) will havegenerated a broad positioning based on threefactors:

• your growth strategy and the demands thatplaces on your brands;

• your value drivers;

• the brand architecture best suited to achieveyour business strategy (see Chapter 13).

2. Specific positioning

Good segmentation (see Chapter 10) will give you adeep understanding of your customer’s needs, atti-tudes and behaviours. Matching these with yourown capabilities (see Chapter 5) will help you selectthe specific benefits that make up your offer. Thiswill be your specific positioning – the value given tothe customer, the representation of your leading


‘Assaulting’ or‘enveloping’ the customer?A sign of the brand’smaturity and emotionalcharge

capabilities, and your basis for competitiveadvantage.

To some degree the number of benefits identifiedwill depend on the number of segments that thebrand is targeting. In general, the greater thenumber of benefits argued the more diffusedthe brand definition becomes. While this mightallow the brand to work across many segments itwill also tend to leave it open to competition thatmight take a more single-minded approach.

Aquafresh

Some brands focus on just one benefit, so maximizing theirimpact and their credibility. Others manage a range of benefits.The Aquafresh brand of toothpaste selects three – protection,whiteness and fresh breath. The red white and blue bands in thetoothpaste help it to communicate these benefits even at thepoint of use – a valuable customer interaction.

Potential sources for specific positioningEach of the definitions of a brand discussed in Part Ican provide the basis for a specific brand positioning:

• the emotional charge of the brand, whether thatrests in authenticity, performance, satisfaction inuse or social expression;

• the personality of the brand, whether it is male orfemale, young or old, cool or dynamic, hip orhop;

• the level of loyalty to be expected, whether it willbe promiscuous, passive or passionate;

• the unique match forged between the companycapabilities and the needs of the customer – a


Colour-coded benefits

particularly fruitful area for the B2B and servicebrand, and closely related to the last of thesesources;

• the evidence of appropriate performance – matching

the value drivers.

Value drivers – in the eye of the beholderIn a B2B or service industry it may be useful to lookagain at a model already used in establishing thebrand’s broad positioning – Treacy and Weirsema’svalue drivers. This time it will be viewed from thecustomer’s perspective – what is their leading driverand so what type of brand response is required? Ineffect, we are using this model to find a match betweenthe supplier’s strategy and the customer’s strategy.

If the customer is driven by operational excellence

then issues such as consistency and reliability, costreduction, process re-engineering and the like willcome to the fore. If they are driven by product lead-

ership then they might be looking for innovation, theability to help with and speed new product devel-opment, and an entrepreneurial attitude to risk. Thecustomers led by intimacy with their own customersmay seek suppliers that will help them achieve theflexibility required of such an approach.

It will be seen that the lead drivers of supplier andcustomer do not have to be the same; indeed acustomer driven by operational excellence might bebest served working with a supplier driven byproduct leadership, if that product leadership was inareas that would help increase the customer’s ownefficiencies. Similarly, a customer driven by productleadership might seek out a supplier with an abun-dance of customer intimacy in order to gain thenecessary responsiveness and flexibility.


Matching the customer’svalue drivers – a fertilesource of positioning ideasfor the B2B brand

Narrowing the benefits field…As the specific positioning emerges from thesesources it can be fine-tuned by looking for particularbenefits in the following sources:

• Particular attributes – specific claims about thebrand, such as the Australian fruit juice Berrithat makes much of the fact that it is ‘100%

Australian owned’. This might also include claimsto a particular heritage – the oldest brand, themost traditional brand, the brand still using theoriginal methods (an approach beloved of maltwhiskies).

Of course, such attributes are essentiallyfeatures of the product and as such could bethought of as rather weak, but features can beturned into benefits provided they can be linkedto a distinct customer need – does the maltwhisky drinker feel better for thinking his dramis ‘traditional’ rather than modern?

• Specific user benefits – the safety of a Volvo, theease of a Flymo, the versatility of a Black &Decker Workmate.

• Focus on specific users – the AppleMac forgraphic designers, Peoplesoft for HR managers,the Xai brand of football boots – it makes noother sports footwear, so marking itself out as aspecialist, not a fashion icon (though of course ithopes to become just that among footballers).

• Benefits of heritage – the Hovis brand reassuresus with ‘it’s as good for you today as it’s always

been’.

• Reference to the competition – Avis ‘tries harder’,Duracell ‘lasts longer’, the Pepsi taste challenge.


• Status in the category – Kodak is film, Xerox iscopiers, or the AA as the ‘fourth emergency service’.An interesting twist on this is the ‘No FT, no

comment’ campaign, a clear statement of the news-paper’s status in the category, but also a cleverreference to a common feeling of guilt among itstarget audience – another kind of emotional charge.

Perceptual mapping – occupying a space in thecustomer’s mindA valuable tool in identifying the brand’s specificpositioning is the perceptual map. An example isshown at Figure 11.2.

Such maps seek to position the brand by usingtwo (or more) factors considered to be important inthe purchasing process. As the tool’s name suggests,it is the customer’s real perceptions that count, notyour own beliefs or assertions. Using this tool callsfor a high degree of honesty and detachment on thebrand manager’s part. The tool can be used in anumber of ways.


A simple perceptual mapfor brands of motor car

Mercedes

Porsche

Jaguar

VW

BMW

performance

pri

ce

Rover

Ford

Lada

Figure 11.2 A perceptual map for brands of motor car

Firstly, through research, to understand wheretarget customers place your proposition in their mind,and relative to other offers, and to compare that withyour intended proposition and positioning.

A second use might be to plot the competitionagainst various mixes of factors and to look for any‘gaps’ in the map. Such gaps may be opportunitiesfor you to establish a unique position. BMW wasarguably the first manufacturer to position a middleprice, mid-sized, high-performance car, exploiting agap that had stood open between the likes of Ford onthe one hand and Porsche or Ferrari on the other.Ford’s attempts to compete in earnest in this newlyidentified segment had to wait for its purchase of theJaguar brand.

A third, and perhaps most significant use in termsof specific positioning, is to assess the wide varietyof factors that impact on the purchase decision andto see which particular combinations will allow yourbrand the most competitive advantage, while beingof genuine importance to the customer. If thesefactors can be effectively communicated to thecustomer (in essence telling them what they really

want), then the brand’s positioning on this basis willhave a high chance of succeeding. Such an approachdoes however require great subtlety. Customers,and particularly professional buyers, have an ever-increasing ability to see where the ‘what you really

need’ message is a put-up job to shout your brand’sbenefits to your own best advantage. The critical testof any such positioning is that the factors chosen areof genuine importance to the customer. If they don’tcare about price then bragging about your supremevalue for money is of little help, indeed, more likelyto be a turn off.


Taking the customer’sview…

Hunting for gaps…

Finding competitiveadvantage…

3. The value context

Step 2 will have helped us to identify the specificbenefits that the brand must provide and commu-nicate. Step 3 will put those benefits into a context ofvalue – what are you getting for what you aregiving? Here are the main options:

• Getting more for more – the ‘reassuringly

expensive’ Stella Artois, or premium-pricedHäagen Dazs or Starbucks.

• Getting more for the same – the Lexus. ‘Perhaps

for the first time in history that trading a $72,000 car

for a $36,000 car could be considered trading up’runs one of its ads.

• Getting more for less – the so-called category

killer retail brands such as Toys ‘R’ Us andWal*Mart, where their scale and buying powerpromises bigger ranges, greater choice andlower prices.

• Getting the same for less – Tesco with its highprofile ‘rip-off Britain’ campaign to sell Levi jeansat non-rip-off prices.

• Getting less for much less – ‘stripped down’brands such as EasyJet, the Formule 1 hotelchain, or Aldi. These examples show that thegiving part of the equation is not always money– it might be the sacrifice of amenities, anacceptance of risk, or a ‘managed level ofdiscomfort’.

The options that do not appear here, ‘getting thesame for more’ and especially ‘getting less for more’,are two value contexts taken up by fast decliningbrands!


4. The total customer experience

A key purpose of brand positioning is to ensure thatthe right interactions take place with the rightcustomers. The sum of these interactions makes upwhat we will call the total customer experience. Themore impactful and satisfying the brand managercan make this experience, the more valuable thebrand. At this point we are moving into the territoryof Part III, cementing the brand definition into thecustomer’s mind. The brand manager shouldexamine every possible interaction, mapping themout on what we might call the customer’s activitycycle. Figure 11.3 shows an example for an airlineflight.

The cycle starts with the realization of a need,moves through the assessment of options, thedecision to purchase, on to use, and then post-usesatisfaction, disposal and the need to repurchase.Then ask the questions: 1) does the brand make apositive impact at every step and 2) could it makemore positive impacts, and where?

Virgin Atlantic

The Virgin Atlantic brand is particularly skilled at makingpositive impacts at points in the cycle as yet still unthought ofby others. Take two examples.

We all hate those early morning flights that demand check-ins at unearthly hours and so make us get up at even moreunearthly hours of the night. Virgin Atlantic now offers the facilityto check in the evening before, and then turn up for the flight ata more civilized hour – a positive impact on a previously unat-tended part of the activity cycle, and an addition to the brand’sunique definition and positioning.

Or, imagine you are on holiday in Florida. You’ve had a greattime with the family in the parks, until the last day, which is


How Virgin Atlantic aimsto make a positiveimpact…


Customer Activity Problems Positive Impact

route enquiry confusing alternatives corporate client serviceno personal incentive ‘Air Miles’ packages

ticket purchase frustrating admin electronic commercereceive tickets worry of not receiving no ticket – electronic

ticketingdrive to airport time, getting lost… limo door to doorpark in long stay time and hassle no need given the aboveshuttle bus to time and more hassle no need given the aboveterminalcheck in and queue, debates over completed in limoluggage cabin baggage…security time fast trackpassport time fast trackwaiting time deliver direct to

lack of business business lounge, withfacilities IT and secretarial

servicesboarding a rush for locker space larger lockers,safety procedures fine, but you didn’t listen wardrobes

– heard it all before… cartoon video,personalized briefings?

take off long waits on the fast track arrangementtarmac with air traffic control?

watch a movie, great, but caught a cold new air-conditioningplay games from the guy next to youread, talk, work couldn’t because of design seating so that

noisy neighbours it can be ‘closed’ offfrom neighbours

meals and drinks OK, but the choice and offer a buffet rather thantiming is so limiting a served meal

sleep couldn’t because the put flat beds in businessseat was too small class

meals and drinks you usually have an have a buffet optionearlier breakfast

landing never ending circling fast track arrangementand circling… with air traffic control?

disembark a tedious wait – so psychology…close but yet so far…

passport and big delays fast track arrangementimmigration schedule to arrive at

less busy timesluggage worry of non-arrival on arrival limo service

handles collectioncustoms time check on departure,

not arrival?into the terminal tired, can’t send your arrival lounges with

e-mails showers, businessservices

Figure 11.3 The customer’s activity cycle

spent getting to the airport and hanging around with tearful andfrustrated kids who just want to see Mickey one more time. Sohow about letting you check your luggage in at one of the parks,so that you can spend your last day on holiday rather than intransit? The Virgin Atlantic brand keeps itself ahead of the packthrough such innovations, developed as a result of its under-standing of and concern for the total customer experience. Ithas successfully created a brand that takes it well beyond themundane business of just flying aircraft.

Now, post September 11th 2001, perhaps all this changesand these kind of interactions are either not possible or notdesirable. Perhaps new interactions that stress and ensuresecurity will become the mark of the leading airline brands –times change, but brands can react positively as well as defen-sively to these changes.

A VITAL CHOICE – BRANDS ANDEXPECTATIONS

Do you position the brand to meet existing customerexpectations, or to change those expectations?History shows the former to have more chance ofsuccess, but the latter can be the path to spectacularriches if it succeeds, and the path to disaster if it fails.Brands that have tried to change the rules and failedare rarely remembered – the Sinclair C5 is anexception simply because of its unusually highprofile audacity and its incredible ineptitude.

Some brands genuinely change the market –Microsoft, Sony Walkman, Wal*Mart andAmazon.com are well-known examples and there aremany more less well known. They change the marketbecause they have the audacity to meet needs that havenot yet been expressed. Identifying these ‘latent needs’is a skill and a science and an art wrapped into one.

Success depends ultimately on the strength ofyour proposition. The Sinclair C5’s proposition was


Virgin Atlanticunderstands how itscustomers use its product

inherently weak; the Sony Walkman’s was verypowerful, if undreamt of by most of its futurecustomers. The key to reducing the awesome risks insuch a pursuit is market research and market testing,and the humility to listen to feedback and learn. Weare back to our model of the learning brand intro-duced at the start of Part I.

REPOSITIONING

Brands die (if you let them)

The 1950s was a boom period for concentrated fruitsquash drinks and Treetops was a leading brandwith an eye-catching bottle design that still served itwell into the design-conscious 1960s. The branddefinition was about economy and thrift, and veryappropriate for the time.

Today most of us will happily pay more for a 250ml bottle of flavoured mineral water than for a litreof squash that might make 20 pints. We will evenpay a huge premium to have that same squash(though not Treetops) in a small cardboard box,ready diluted. The values of social expression andconvenience have grown more significant in thismarket; some brands managed the transition, whilesome did not.

In some ways those brands with the strongest andmost recognizable positioning have the hardest taskof changing to move with the times. It is a feature ofanachronisms that they were once absolutely spoton…

Some brands become liabilities and should bekilled, or sold. Others may still provide a nice


income stream as they are progressively run tograss. Then there are those brands with enoughlong-term value to make it worth the risk of reposi-tioning. The risk is twofold – if you fail then not onlyis the investment lost, but now try going back towhere you came from. The truth of the matter is thatrepositioning is probably harder than the initialpositioning – there is the question of existing percep-tions and beliefs. Rather than providing a goodfoundation on which to build, the existing brandheritage is often an obstacle to change.

Leaving home

It’s the same with people. Imagine that someonewants to change their personality. They mightchange their clothes, their hairstyle, their accent,their behaviour, but the problem is that their familyand friends still remember who they were before allthis confusing messing about. If a person reallywants to change their personality then the answer isusually to leave home. Repositioning a brand ofteninvolves much the same process.

Lucozade

Time was when Lucozade was what your mother bought for youwhen you were ill. Generations have grown up identifying thebrand with illness and recuperation. It was a clear positioningbut once it was well established the potential for growth wasrather limited. SmithKline Beecham, the brand’s owner,conducted a brilliant campaign over a number of years to repo-sition the product as a high energy ‘sports drink’. SB had iden-tified the potential in this segment and it had a product withmany of the necessary attributes. High-profile product endorse-ments from the likes of Daley Thompson were used to great


From bedside to trackside

effect alongside new packaging designs and new target retailoutlets. Lucozade is still a favourite choice for those over-coming illness, but it now also occupies a position well awayfrom the invalid’s bedside table. The brand managed to selectthe appropriate parts of its existing definition and personality toact as a protective halo on its journey to its new home.

Changing the mood

Not all repositioning has to be this dramatic.Leaving home is an extreme step with extreme risks.Sometimes repositioning can be effected throughchanges of mood.

Predictor

Predictor, a self-use pregnancy testing kit, found that itspersonality was not entirely suited to its growth aspirations. Theproduct was well thought of, reliable and responsible, but itsuffered from some negative associated images – unpleasantsurprises, let-downs, unwanted pregnancies. It was too often aproduct that you bought when trouble was looming. While thatmight have been a base on which to position the brand – apromise of performance in use – it wasn’t where Predictorwanted to be. It wanted the brand to have a more upbeatemotional charge, and so a more prominent place in thecustomer’s mind: personal fulfilment. A combination of a pack-aging redesign and an advertising campaign demonstrating thejoy, private and public, of discovering your dreams come truehelped to put the brand on to this new level.

Irn Bru

Irn Bru, a brand of fizzy drink with an almost fanatical followingin Scotland, had for many years made much of its rather


How Predictor changed themood…

minimal iron content – ‘made in Scotland from girders’.Appealing to an increasingly ageing audience, Figure 11.4 illus-trates the extraordinary change of mood developed, with greatsuccess, in order to build sales among the new generation of‘fizzy drinkers’.

The Irn Bru case again illustrates the high-risk tendency ofsome brands to appeal to ‘the in crowd’ and in so doing risk thedisapproval of those beyond the target audience – goodsegmentation is vital for such a strategy.

Changing with the times

Repositioning along with the changing times is thelowest-risk strategy, but calls for a surprising flexi-bility of mind. Its main obstacle is all those who cryout ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’, the death knell ofmany a brand.


Changing the mood… andthe audience

Figure 11.4 Changing the mood

Boots

Boots the Chemist has been more than just a chemist for sometime, and after many years of moving towards a kind of varietystore, we can now see Boots repositioning into the servicesector with in-store opticians, dentists and chiropodists. In partthis is a continuation of the shift from chemist to ‘pamperparlour’, but it also sees Boots taking on (from the beleagueredNHS) a new role in auxiliary health care. This new positioning isone that its existing brand strengths, based on responsibility,trust and confidence, makes particularly attractive.

Repositioning from behind

When a company is aware of a poor image for itsproduct it will need to do more than just tell peoplehow great it is. Humour is a favourite tack and therehave been many adverts that appear to knock theadvertiser as a means of changing people’s percep-tions. A recent TV ad for a Skoda car has a car parkattendant apologizing to a worried car owner (aSkoda owner) for the vandalism done to his car –some little devil has stuck a Skoda badge on thefront. Humour, recognition of the current percep-tions, and a clever point about how things havechanged, yet some (not you of course) are stillbehind the times.


Taking a leading role inchanging times…

110


THE PRODUCT LIFE CYCLE

Products and brands are like living things; they areborn, they grow, they mature, and if nothing is doneto prevent it they grow old, decline and die. Figure12.1 illustrates a typical product life cycle (PLC), butthe brand manager should not be resigned to theinevitable fate that it suggests.

That a brand reaches maturity is often the result ofits own success breeding a series of ‘me too’ productsthat flood the market, spoiling the game foreveryone. Of course, being first in has some advan-tages when it comes to customer awareness andloyalty, and if the brand can continue to distinguishitself from its ‘Johnny-come-lately’ imitators then itcan fend off the effects of maturity for longer.

12

Brand extension – beyond wrinklecream

111

Using the brand as a kind of anti-ageing cream canbe effective, for a while, but in time the ageingprocess proves too much to resist. At this point, thebrand’s owners start to withdraw investment andthe writing is on the wall.

BRAND AUGMENTATION

Brand managers should be looking much furtherahead than this. Even while the brand is growing,they should be laying plans for how they will give ita new lease of life. New packaging, new advertise-ments, new promotions, new associations, these arejust some of the things that can be done to augment

the brand. Designed to give the brand a ‘kick’, to setit on a new growth path away from the threat ofmaturity, the classic scenario is the ‘new improved

formulation’ whether it be soap powder or a motorcar.

Cars are managed through this process to anincreasingly preordained plan. The launch model is


Low-risk new leases of life

The product life cycle

time

intr

od

uctio

n

gro

wth

matu

rity

satu

ration

declin

e

sales

(£)

Figure 12.1 The product life cycle

quite basic – its novelty being enough to ensuresuccess. As time goes by a stream of extras areapplied, things once optional become standard. Asure sign of a car approaching the end of its life cycleis when it carries every conceivable extra as thestandard offer.

In the grand scheme of things, brand augmen-tation is a relatively low cost activity with attractivereturns, but it can only be carried on for so long.Time comes when more radical changes arerequired.

BRAND EXTENSION

Perhaps the time comes when maturity is inevitablewhatever new augmentations are attempted. Thebrand managers still want to extract the most valuefrom their assets but cannot see much more to behad in the existing market. Here their minds mayturn to brand extension.

As many as two out of three new productlaunches are examples of brand extension. This iswhere an existing brand is used to support thelaunch of a new product. The reasons are clear – newproduct launches are very risky, most fail, and usingthe ‘halo’ of an existing brand (see Chapter 9) canhelp to reduce that risk. If the market is also new,then the risk is even greater and the halo effect yetmore important. The problem is that if a brandextension fails, the backlash will be felt by theoriginal brand.

Brand extension comes in different forms. Thesimplest is the launch of the existing product in anew format. Soap powder takes on a liquid form

Brand extension � 113

under the same brand name or Mars Bars areshrunk into bite-size pieces and launched as MarsLittle Ones. Some would argue that this was reallystill brand augmentation, with the brand chasingmuch the same market with much the sameproduct – or does the Mars Little Ones propositiontarget a new buyer in a new circumstance? This ismore than playing with words – augmentation isrelatively safe territory, dealing with what youknow already, genuine extension enters the higherrisk zone.

Next up the ladder of extension is the launch ofwhat we might call companion products under thesame name. Gillette razor blades will add Gilletterazors, and then Gillette shaving foam. Once eachbrand extension is successfully established theprocess of brand augmentation will recommence,adding Gillette shaving gel to the shaving foamrange, and so on.

The highest-risk brand extension is when thebrand leaves its own territory. Virgin, as we haveseen, is adept at this, reducing the risk through useof the brand halo effect, and ensuring that it trans-lates the existing brand values to the new market.Caterpillar has had success with its rugged outdoorclothing line, as has JCB, which has also moved intochildren’s toys – with mini yellow diggers in abun-dance. These are extensions that ‘make sense’, whichis to say that the target customer can see the rele-vance and accept the translated brand values. ForJCB, durability, functionality, and a rugged outdoorquality were all values and images that could betransferred to a range of clothing. Some extensionsmake less sense.


From companionproducts…

… to companion values

Cosmopolitan took its brand into yoghurts andflavoured mineral waters, Philip Morris considerstaking the Marlboro brand into hotels. Some brandextensions come naturally; some are forced forreasons of growth targets – dangerous ground forthe brand manager.

Looking ahead to an idea to be discussed furtherin Chapter 14, we might think of the brand’s defi-nition as its DNA, its unique signature. Brandextension, or ‘brand stretching’ as it is sometimescalled, stretches the DNA. Do we reach a pointwhere one stretch too many weakens the genes andwe start breeding half-wits and chinless wonders?

Brand extension � 115

116


Almost anything can be branded: products, services,people, places, even ideas. If everything can bebranded, and most companies have more than oneproduct or activity, how are we to avoid an over-whelming and ultimately damaging cacophony ofbrands just within the same business, let alone thesame market? There is a need for some order andmethod, and this is where brand architecture comesin.

Brands are used in an amazing variety of configu-rations. KitKat is a brand, but so too is Nestlé, itsowner, and so we have Nestlé KitKat. Does thatcombination of brand names strengthen or diminishKitKat as a brand? Nestlé clearly believes the former,but what of Nestlé Sarsons or Nestlé Crosse &Blackwell – two brands put up for sale by the foodgiant in 2002?

13

Brand architecture – putting it alltogether

117

Unilever has over 1,500 different brands in usearound the world, most of which we would notidentify with the parent company, while almosteverything that Microsoft, Virgin, Mitsubishi,Yamaha or Shell do, and it’s a great variety, goesunder the same corporate name.

THE NEED FOR A VARIETY OFARCHITECTURES

Brand architecture is the study of these differentconfigurations, but before we describe some of theprinciple ‘designs’ we should ask why there is aneed for these different approaches. Such an under-standing will help us to avoid the jerry-built resultsof poor architectural design. Brands can bestrengthened or weakened as a result of their placein the grand design.

Let’s take as our starting point a company with anumber of existing brands and some potential newones in the pipeline. They face the question: shouldthese brands be developed as independent entities,or might they benefit from being built into a moreuniform architecture?

The matrix shown in Figure 13.1 (developed froma concept introduced by Professor Peter Doyle toconsider the desirability of building corporatebrands) will help us to answer this question. Thevertical axis asks whether the various marketstargeted by these brands are broadly similar to eachother or display significant differences. The key tosameness or difference is usually to be found in thebehaviours and attitudes of the target customers.The horizontal axis asks whether the values


expressed by each brand proposition (the branddefinition) and expected by the customer arebroadly similar to each other or whether theydisplay significant differences.

The more alike the different markets that aretargeted, and the more similar the brand values, thenthe more scope there is for a corporate brand with allits benefits of efficiency and economies of scale.Where there is no similarity between markets and thebrand values are quite distinct for each proposition,then the greater the need for unique product brands.There are two other options shown in this matrix, tobe discussed in full below: what we will call the vali-

dated identity brand, and the sub-brand or mark.

Brand architecture � 119

brand definitions

similar different

targ

et

ma

rke

tssim

ilar

diffe

rent

mark orsub-brand

Dulux WeathershieldDulux Kids ZoneRover 25, 45, 75

productbrand

Persil, Cif, Radion

corporatebrand

Microsoft, SkyShell

validatedidentitybrand

Kellogg’s FrostiesKellogg’s Bran Flakes

Figure 13.1 Brand architecture

With acknowledgements to Professor Peter Doyle

And why does this matter? Think of the brand as apersonality. Would you expect one individual to beequally convincing in front of audiences withwidely differing expectations? Can the samecomedian, with the same act, get the same laughsfrom a working man’s club in Wigan and a vicaragegarden party in Esher? You wouldn’t think ofbooking the same turn for both occasions, so why dowe sometimes expect as much from our brands?How would you feel about receiving as a gift a nicebox of Boeing chocolates? Not too bad? So how aboutflying to Australia on a Cadbury 747?

Sometimes imposing a corporate brand or a vali-dated identity brand could seriously limit thepotential of a product brand, or a new productlaunch.

Ford, Toyota and Honda

Ford struggled for years to move into the higher priced luxuryend of the car market and in the end found it easier to buyJaguar in order to achieve its ends. Rebadgeing the Jaguar asa Ford would have been a disaster. The high emotional charge

of car brands makes it a particularly interesting case in thisdebate. Toyota chose to launch its new quality car under theLexus brand, Honda chose to create the Acura brand,because the target markets were sufficiently different from itscurrent ones and its planned brand definitions were also verydifferent.

PRODUCT BRANDS

Let’s start with the simplest architecture – a productbrand. We have three unique and independentproducts, and each has a unique and independent


The Ford Jaguar?

The Toyota Lexus?

brand name – Persil, Cif, Radion. A company mayoperate several brands; these are just three ofUnilever’s 1,500 plus world-wide, but it still regardsand manages each one as a separate entity with itsown unique name. The reason behind such apparentinefficiency is simple – each brand targets a uniquecustomer group, and each brand has a unique defi-nition. This is so fundamental to the strength of abrand, its evidencing of a unique match betweencapabilities and customer needs, that any pursuer ofbusiness efficiency through brand consolidationshould be very cautious before they act to destroyvalue built over many years.

Whitbread

Walk round a large market town and you might find as many aseight restaurants owned by the same parent, Whitbread. Therestaurants go under different product brands – Pizza Hut,Pizzaland, Dome, TGI Friday’s, Costa Coffee, Jim Thompson’sSpice Island Trading, Beefeater, Brewer’s Fayre – and most oftheir clientele would not know the link. Why should they? Whatadvantage would Whitbread gain from that? The people in eachrestaurant are quite different, a credit to Whitbread’s ability tolink segmentation with branding. There would only be room forone Whitbread branded restaurant in the town (and it wouldthen probably be mistaken for a pub by those of us over 30).

SUB-BRANDS AND MARKS

Where a supplier has different products placed indifferent and distinct markets, but wishes to sharesome common values across them, or to transfer thevalues from an existing product to a new one, thenthe use of a sub-brand architecture can work well.


Targeting the widestpossible market

This is quite typical in the car market where theessential values that define the brand are appre-ciated by all its customers, but some of them want asmall car, others a medium car, and others a luxurymodel – hence the Rover 25, the Rover 45, and theRover 75 – different marks of the same brand.

VALIDATED IDENTITY BRANDS

Some product brands choose to make more of theirparent company’s name – Kellogg’s Frosties,Kellogg’s Bran Flakes, Kellogg’s Rice Krispies andso on. Different from pure product brands, these aresometimes called family brands, umbrella brands orvalidated identity brands, and this last name suggeststhe purpose. Individual product brands can be givengreater authority by making it clear whose stablethey come from. Kellogg’s provides a protectiveumbrella to product brands that might not stand upso well on their own – would Pop Tarts have beenlaunched as successfully without such a validatedidentity? And how about cornflakes? Such acommon name or simple descriptor of a product ishard to register as a brand in the legal sense, but byputting it under a validated identity ‘umbrella’Kellogg’s Corn Flakes becomes a brand that standsout from its paler imitators.

An important point here is that the validatedidentity approach can work well when all of theproducts under the umbrella are in the same orsimilar markets – in this case breakfast cereals. Butwhat if we go beyond that? How would we feelabout Kellogg’s bathroom scourer? It can be done ofcourse, but we are moving into a different kind of


brand architecture here, to be discussed below –corporate branding.

When does a product brand become a validatedidentity brand? The dividing line is not clear, but itmight be said that if the company name is bigger orbetter known, or carries more value than the productbrand name, then that’s a validated identity brand.Persil is not such a brand. Lever’s name may appearon the box, but it is not Lever’s Persil, it’s just Persil.The question for the brand manager is – will attachingthe company name enhance or reduce the brand?

Nestlé

When Nestlé purchased Rowntrees and in so doing acquiredthe KitKat brand, it quickly put its own name in place ofRowntrees’. Many accused it of throwing away value built overdecades, but Nestlé simply believed that KitKat had sufficientvalue that was separate from its old parent, and that Nestléprovided just as good a validation as Rowntrees, as well asoffering savings through uniformity and efficiency. Many mightstill beg to differ.

CORPORATE BRANDS

One of the most contentious issues in branding overrecent years has been the value, or otherwise, of thecorporate brand. There are four broad arguments:

1. That this is simply an exercise in corporateegotism that has little value for the brand or forthe customer.

2. That huge cost savings can be had throughcorporate branding (but beware of handing themanagement of your brands over to the


KitKat – who do you thinkof first?

accountants).3. That this is a matter of culture, and some believe

that culture can be changed.4. That some very positive synergies are to be had

when uniform corporate values can be appliedacross a range of different products, businessesand markets.

It’s just a Japanese thing…

Turning to culture, we can see that the Japanese havelong accepted the benefits of corporate brands. Youcan buy a Yamaha branded motorbike, hi-fi, piano,yacht or electronic organ, without being undulyconfused. This is not just a Japanese phenomenon. InIndia the TATA brand encompasses almost everybusiness activity from banking to motor cars andFMCG to industrial chemicals. Such brands breakthe architectural ‘rules’ shown in Figure 13.1, butthey succeed for reasons well understood in Japan,and slowly being realized elsewhere.

Back in Japan, Mitsubishi uses as one of itscorporate slogans, ‘From noodles to atomic power’, astatement that calls on a very Japanese perception ofthe role and status of business in society. Would theBritish be as happy trusting atomic power to Heinz,makers of spaghetti hoops?

A much quoted study carried out by the HenleyCentre in the 1990s showed that in the UnitedKingdom many consumer brands are trusted morethan the police or the royal family. This and othersimilar studies also showed that we trust consumerbrands more than their corporate owners. Amongthose brands winning high levels of trust werePepsi, Mars and St Michael (product brands), while


‘From noodles to atomicpower’

among the less trusted were Shell, Microsoft and Sky(corporate brands).

It would seem that, in the United Kingdom atleast, a product brand, particularly one with a clearpersonality and compelling emotional charge, canbe loved and cherished, while we remain wary ofbig business. Of course, it depends on the particularbig business as to whether a corporate brand is goodor bad for sales.

Shell’s tussles with environmental groups onissues to do with exploration and drilling can havean impact on how we see its products at the pump.Sky’s arguments with the Manchester Unitedsupporters’ club can have an impact on its imagequite out of proportion to the scale of the particulardispute. Companies that appear to the media, or tothe government, to be growing too powerful, suchas Microsoft, can have consequent problems withtheir brand image in the eyes of the consumer.

But if the big business in question establishes a‘good’ reputation then it can of course transfer thatto a good brand image. What we are saying here isthat a big business can become a brand, and expresscertain values through that brand. Virgin is a case inpoint, with values that express a championing of thecustomer, breaking with convention, and soundinga challenge to existing norms and authorities.

The lesson taught by those that succeed in thepursuit of a corporate brand is that such a brand cansometimes play on a higher level of awareness andimpact than the product brand. A product brandmust identify and match the needs, attitudes andaspirations of a targeted market segment – it isnecessarily concerned with the small picture. Thecorporate brand’s definition requires a big picture


Corporate bonds can raisethe stakes…

approach, building values that match the political,social and economic mood of the time. So long as bigbusiness is venerated in Japan, corporate brandssuch as Mitsubishi and Yamaha will thrive, buteconomic failure, the end of the ‘job for life’ culture,and a few too many corporate scandals could lead toa rethink.

Virgin as an attribute brand

Sir Richard Branson calls Virgin an ‘attribute brand’, arguingthat it has a value of its own quite independent from the specificproduct to which it might be attached. The brand is a repu-tation, and in this regard Virgin follows the Japanese practice.Branson has indeed attacked what he calls the ‘stilted Anglo-

Saxon view of consumers’ that insists a brand must relatedirectly to a product. Much of Virgin’s success as a corporatebrand has been to do with its ability to portray the Virginbusiness as a role model of good and modern businesspractice.

Positive synergies – the real purpose…

There are generally two types of synergies to be hadfrom corporate branding – economic synergies andbrand value synergies. That economies of scale andcertain efficiencies of operation can be had from acorporate brand when working in diverse marketsshould never make this the prime mover forcorporate branding. These are benefits that resultfrom the architecture, but the reason the archi-tecture works (if it does) is to be found in thecorporate brand’s ability to transfer uniform andconsistent brand values across those differentmarkets.


… and the risks

The ultimate attributebrand?

Virgin

Virgin’s corporate brand values are around challenging thestatus quo as the consumer’s champion. It loves to take on the‘establishment’ in whatever market it places itself, and thisvalue is personified in Sir Richard Branson, entrepreneur,adventurer, and friend of the consumer. There is always a newtwist to any Virgin venture, a twist that makes use of thosecorporate values. It didn’t just sell PEPs (personal equity plans),it took out the middleman. It doesn’t just fly aircraft, it gets youto the airport on a Harley Davidson limo-bike (and there’s noreason why brands shouldn’t borrow from others to help buildtheir own definition). Hotels with ‘standby’ tariffs, mobilephones with attitude, and bridal shops for brides (not just thebride’s mother), these are all applications of the corporatebrand values – championing the customer in style. The successof the Virgin corporate brand depends on the continuing rele-vance of those values. It is notable that Sir Richard Branson hasmade it clear that he wishes Virgin to be the most respectedbrand, not necessarily the biggest, and in corporate brandingreputation is all.

Now comes a choice. Should the business seek tobuild a corporate brand definition that is of a suffi-ciently high level to be applied to almost any marketcircumstances, or does it only operate in marketswhere the corporate brand definition will makesense? Could Boeing chocolates and the Cadbury’s747 be made to work? Yes of course, given time,much effort, and a radical rethink of the essentialbrand values involved – but there might still be littlepoint… with branding, synergies are not perhapsalways a goal worth the chase.

Some downsides of the corporate brand

‘If it don’t fit, don’t force it’ is good advice in thismatter. There are other risks. Does putting all your


Virgin’s corporate brandvalues…

eggs in one basket overstretch the credibility of thatbasket? Sir Richard Branson for one thinks that itdoesn’t have to: ‘Each time Virgin entered a new

business all the conventional pundits whined that we

were stretching our brand too far. Rather than worrying

too much about brands being stretched too far, people will

have to stretch their imaginations further.’

Of course, the imagination is a powerful thing, andhow might it work if when you are sat stranded some-where between London and Manchester, on a Virgin

train, and your mind turns to that flight you havebooked to Johannesburg, next week, on a Virgin plane…

If a company like Nestlé were to have all itsproducts under the one name, what would be theimpact on the supermarket shelf? It could end uplooking rather like one of those ‘despised’ privatelabels… Or if it was hit by a food scare on one of itsproducts, how might that impact on all its otherproducts?

GLOBAL OR LOCAL BRANDS?

Another choice to be made with your brand archi-tecture is the decision to be global or local. TheodoreLevitt set the scene for the global brand back in 1983when he asserted that: ‘The world’s needs and desires

have been irrevocably homogenized.’ It was doubtfulthat they had in all but a few markets, but thisbecame the mantra of brand managers seeking aglobal pitch.

The eighteenth ‘immutable law’ of branding,according to Al Ries, is that all brands should beglobal brands, and he cites Heineken as an example


of a brand that knows no borders. Good example,and if you can do it then the benefits are enormous,but where does that leave segmentation and posi-tioning? In very few markets do we find that ‘the

world’ is a useful segment. Would you sell vodka inFrance in the same way you would sell it in Poland?In truth, Heineken do not make that attempt – thebrand name may be global, but the brand definitionhas some very local treatments.

ICI

In 1999 ICI Paints sold its Autocolor brand to long-time rivalPPG. Autocolor was the paint brand for the car refinish market,the ‘you bend ’em we mend ’em’ business as insiders called it.Some observers were surprised, the business was a successand a technical jewel in the ICI crown, but as a global brand itwas a non-starter. John McAdam, executive VP for coatings atICI, was clear about the sale: ‘Technical markets are global... if

you are not in the top three – forget it.’Things are different in the decorative paint market. Back in the

1980s when ICI bought in quick succession a number of leadingbrand names around the world – including Valentine in Franceand Glidden in the United States – the plan was set for a processof ‘Duluxization’ – the creation of a truly global brand. No more,as John McAdam points out, ‘Decorative markets are different

from technical ones because you can be No 1 in the United

Kingdom and be nowhere in Italy.’ Instead, the policy is to uselocal brands where they have strengths and resonances and tobuild a global portfolio of strong brands that includes Dulux,Glidden, Valentine, Cuprinol, Hammerite, Polyfilla and Polycell.John McAdam concedes, ‘We thought we could apply a UK

solution to the United States, without doing regional research.’

Making global brands work

We find some of the same elements as in the debateover corporate or product brands; the economies of


Some paint markets areglobal…

… some are local

scale that global brands can bring (though neverforget the staggering costs of their upkeep) versusthe need to recognize local differences. Globalbrands can stand local variation of course –Kentucky Fried Chicken is essentially the samebrand in Japan as in the United States, but withoutthe coleslaw – the Japanese don’t go for coleslaw,and the KFC management call that a no-brainer.Global brands with local customization can turnover time into quite distinct brands, withoutassiduous management. It is a difficult line for thebrand manager to follow – they must be evervigilant for variations that might actually change thebrand’s personality and values, while not becomingseen as the ‘Gestapo’ of the business. Remember thatbrands must evolve and that a ‘thought police’approach can only bring stagnation.

Care is required at both ends of the spectrum.Perhaps the greatest care should be taken to avoidcorporate egos getting into the brand’s driving seat.Brands, global or otherwise, may be managed by theboardroom, but they should be driven by themarket. National and cultural differences are stillhuge despite the ever-shrinking world, and there isstill positive advantage in tailoring a brand to find aunique match with a local need. It’s called finding acompetitive edge.

We have come through many manifestations ofhow to deal with the apparently shrinking world.First came the rather brutal ‘one size fits all’approach, particularly from the United States withall the concomitant charges of US imperialism. Thenwe had the softening ‘think global act local’ approach.Glocal, with its underlying desire to demonstratethat ‘we’re all the same really… ’ brought some uncom-


fortable stereotyping, and then came the ratherephemeral idea that we are one ‘global village’ – lessa statement of the brotherhood of man and more aclumsy attempt to find workable global segments.Now it would seem that we are back to ‘think local,

act local’, at least that is the view of Douglas Daft,CEO of Coca-Cola, the world’s most truly globalbrand.

Daft quite rightly dismisses the idea of there beinga market segment called ‘the world’: ‘We were looking

at similarities, not differences, and we didn’t stand for

anything in particular for the individual.’It will be interesting to see just how far Coca-Cola

allows the development of local brand definitions togo and how keen the local management is to take upits new freedoms.


132


Part III

Brand management – theimplementation

While brand positioning was about finding orcreating a relevant space in the customer’s mind,implementing the brand is about cementing thebrand definition into that space. At this point, wecould easily expand to five more books of this sizewith guidance on the naming, packaging and adver-tising of your brand, not to mention the building ofpositive associations and the development of addi-tional interactions with customers. Limited space is,however, a virtue on this occasion. Most of theseactivities are jobs for the experts. What seemed agreat name ‘down the pub’ can fast lose its magicwhen seen emblazoned on the product (witnessthose truly cringe-worthy company names paintedon the back doors of countless vans driven byplumbers, electricians, builders et al – how about

‘Ubends “R’us’?). Likewise, advertising is anexpensive game and enthusiastic amateurs canmake some very costly mistakes. Advertisementswritten by brand managers or, worse, the CEO, canbe spotted a mile away.

This is not a book for professional copywriters,packaging designers or other media experts. It is aguide for those who own and manage brands andwho need to know what all those experts will begetting up to on their behalf. Only then will they beable to manage them effectively. This then is theapproach taken in Part III, everything you need toknow, but not so much that you might considerdoing it yourself!

134 � Brand management – the implementation

It is the brand manager’s responsibility to ensurethat every brand interaction with the customerbuilds and enhances the brand’s definition. Thisincludes the choice of the name, the logo, the pack-aging design, the sales approach, the managementof customer relationships, the advertising, theappearance at the point of sale, the characteristics ofthe product or service in use, after-sales supportand, not to be forgotten, the handling of complaints.Each one of these ‘steps along the way’ is an oppor-tunity for a positive customer interaction, and eachone is what we might call a moment of truth for thebrand.

Chapter 15 will focus on advertising’s moments oftruth, while here we will focus on some of the ingre-dients that can help build positive associations and

14

Building positive associations – themoments of truth

cement the brand’s definition into the customer’smind:

• the name;

• logos and slogans;

• packaging;

• customer relationships;

• inventing new interactions and associations.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

A new brand can have a name specially designed tosuit its definition; an old brand is stuck with what ithas inherited. How much does this matter, andshould a brand ever consider changing its name?Plenty of product brands carry their founder’s orinventor’s name, though we have long sincestopped making associations with any real person,and are often surprised that there was indeed a MrFirestone or a Mr Goodyear.

Almost any name can grow to represent the branddefinition, provided it has time. Of course, a goodword with positive associations can also becomeassociated with a poor brand definition – Lada isRussian for ‘beloved’.

‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any

other name would smell as sweet.’ Al Ries argues thatShakespeare, at least when it comes to brand names,was wrong, ‘which is why the single most important

decision in the marketing of perfume is the name’.Choosing a word or name that sounds like or

might even be confused with another attention-grabbing word is another approach – ‘fcuk’ beingperhaps the most controversial of recent times – it’s


Yes, there really was a MrFirestone and a MrGoodyear

just an acronym they say, for French ConnectionUK.

Acronyms can of course become brand names,and it is often a surprise when we learn theiroriginal meaning. 3M says innovation andinvention, hardly words that the Minnesota Miningand Manufacturing Company would bring tomind. Who would be enthused by the products ofthe Bayerische Motoren Werke? BMW to you andme.

Certain letters appear more commonly in brandnames than in normal everyday use, the letters x, kand o being the most notable. Dulux, Kodak, Knorr,IKEA, Exxon, Xerox and Oxo are just some of manythat attract our attention through their unusualappearance. Kodak was coined by George Eastmanin 1888, being ‘short, vigorous, incapable of being

misspelled… and in order to satisfy trademark laws it

must mean nothing’. Not a bad formula. We mightextend Eastman’s formula a little, to say that a brandname should meet at least the majority of thefollowing criteria:

• Short and vigorous. They don’t come muchshorter or more vigorous than Oxo, or the newfootball boot brand from Umbro – Xai.

• Incapable of being misspelt or mispronounced.Though Knorr and Nestlé have successfullyignored this criteria for decades.

• Unique to the brand. The search for a uniquename can be long and frustrating – it’s amazingwhat has already been dreamed up…

• Consistent with the desired brand definition.Old names will have already grown into thisposition, new ones must be chosen with care –

Building positive associations � 137

Some ‘rules’ for brandnames…

Häagen Dazs is a pure invention, but has all theright Scandinavian connotations to be intriguingand suggests some expertise in things icy…

• Must sit within the existing brand architecture.‘Sane’ might be a great name for a new hotelchain that specializes in stress-reducing thera-peutic stays, but perhaps not so good if it isincluded as a sub-brand under the Holiday Innumbrella…

• Capable of international usage without causing

embarrassment or cultural offence. Ignoredsuccessfully by the likes of fcuk, and ignored toits cost by Chrysler when launching the Novamotor car in Mexico (‘no va’ means ‘doesn’t go’).

• Capable of grabbing attention. fcuk certainlykeeps this rule at least.

• Capable of being protected. Not a commonword or simple descriptor – a word that meansnothing will fit the bill nicely, but might end upmeaning just that – nothing.

• Liked by the target audience… Research andmore research… and don’t rely on one drunkensession of the marketing team.

Here is some provocative advice from Lexicon, abrand development company:

1. ‘Are we comfortable with the name? Then it’s OKbut not great’ – a great brand name shouldprovoke.

2. ‘Does the name break any rules? If not, try again’– a great brand name needs to do better than justfit in.

3. ‘Can we use the name to make a promise or tell astory?’ – this is a ‘must have’.


… to be broken whenevernecessary

Is ‘owning the word’ good for a brand?

Some regard it as a strength of a brand name that itbecomes the generic for a product or service – toHoover the carpet, to Sellotape a package, and then toFedEx it to Sydney. But how often have youhoovered the carpet with a Dyson, sellotaped withScotch Tape, or FedEx-ed that package by DHL?How often have you ordered a Coke in a café andbeen served an anonymous cola without comment?

Awareness through use of your brand name asthe generic is a great thing, but we have seen thatbranding is about more than simple awareness, it isabout associations. If customers will happily asso-ciate other people’s products with your brandname, then where does this leave your own branddefinition?

Becoming the generic is good, provided that youreally do own the word, and continue to retain thatownership. That takes massive and continuousinvestment, continued vigilance, continuingevolution, and a refusal to rest on your laurels. Agreat and glorious heritage is not enough.

There are other ways of owning the word. Lotusowns spreadsheet, Iomega owns stuff, and perhapsFedEx owns overnight. Good positive associations all.

Changing the name

Great outrage, letters to The Times, and much freepublicity attends the change of a well-known brandname. Remember when Marathon became Snickersand Opal Fruits became Starbursts? It was like a partof your childhood was being stolen.

The cost can be huge – when AndersonConsulting was forced to change to Accenture the


total bill was reputed to be well over £100 million –so why do it if not forced? The pursuit of globalconsistency is the reason behind Snickers andStarbursts and, managed well, the change can causeless disruption to sales or loyalty than the letters ofoutrage might have suggested.

Timing can be everything in such matters.Unilever resisted for years switching the name Jif,used in the United Kingdom, to Cif, the name usedacross all of continental Europe. Cif was thought tosound too much like the slang for a particular type ofvenereal disease. The rise of Aids has taken theattention off such ‘second grade ailments’ and Cif isnow thought thoroughly safe and respectable.

Other reasons can involve needing to change aname that has just grown out of date, or is toorestrictive in its scope. The Post Office has becomeConsignia, a name that it believes reflects its interna-tional standing. The change might confuse and evenupset many of its UK-based customers, but overseasit can be seen why ‘the Post Office’ is not the mosthelpful of names.

Perhaps in the end it is just a way to give aflagging brand a new lease of life through all theattention the change brings – ‘the artist formerly

known as Prince’ comes to mind.

LOGOS AND SLOGANS

Logos

Figure 14.1 is perhaps all that needs to be said aboutthe importance of a good and consistently usedlogo.


The logo is the fast means to recognition, elicitingsubconscious responses that can often tip thebalance of the sale. B2B brands should never under-estimate the power of a logo in this regard – formany years, the best-selling fertilizer in the agricul-tural market was ICI’s ‘blue bag’. The ICI roundeland the familiar blue bag was all the farmer neededto see to convince him of the product’s quality – thelogo represented the firm’s reputation and becameone of the most familiar sites in barns across theUnited Kingdom. And of course, once your logo isrecognized, resist the temptation to change it everyyear.

Slogans

Slogans can be dangerous things; they have a habit ofbackfiring when times change. British Rail’s ‘This is

the age of the train’ was coined on a wave of enthu-siasm for public transport that soon dissolved andthe slogan looked less and less convincing with everypassing year. ‘Let’s make things better’, a slogan fromPhilips, the Dutch electronics firm, was a sitting duckfor any headline writer each time the company had aproduct flop or a serious customer complaint.

In trying to expand customer perceptions beyondthe obvious, the Post Office adopted the slogan


Figure 14.1 The importance of the logo

‘Delivering value’, but too many found it an easypotshot, saying that they would prefer it if the PostOffice just managed to deliver letters.

Sometimes slogans can be too clever. ‘Guinnless

isn’t good for you’ back in 1984 perhaps called for toomany second takes. Think of slogans as short-termtactics, not fundamentals of the brand definition.

PACKAGING – THE CINDERELLA OFBRANDING

The packaging industry has been under muchpressure in recent years, with buyers more inter-ested in reducing costs than in adding value. Thetragedy of this is that packaging, used well, provideshuge scope for building brand definition throughcustomer interaction.

KitKat

Even KitKat has succumbed to the cost and efficiencyargument in preference to enhancing the brand’s interactionswith its customers. The new flow wrap packaging will certainlyreduce costs but dropping the tin foil wrapper means the loss ofa significant part of the consumer experience. A small butimportant interaction with the consumer has been removed,and what is still a therapeutic break-time treat has edged just alittle closer to being a chocolate wafer biscuit.

Packaging exists for many reasons – to ship, toprotect, to preserve, to identify, to help in use, tostore and to dispose. We should also add to this list,to help build the brand:


Will we miss the silverlining?

• Consider a paint brand with a brand definitionof ‘colour and transformation’. Wouldn’t it begreat if the paint cans were transparent so thatcustomers could see the real colour and not just atiny colour chip?

• Limmits, the range of slimming biscuits, come inslim shapes with silky black wrappers, ‘just as I

would like to be’ say many of its consumers, ‘slim

and sexy’.

• Consider a fine malt whisky that has built abrand definition through images of peat bogsand faithful retainers. It has worked hard todistinguish itself from those ordinary blendedwhiskies, and yet there it sits on the off-licenceshelf, just another bottle of brown spirit. Enterthe cardboard tube – a small step for packaging,but a giant leap for the sales of high qualitywhisky, particularly if purchased as a gift…

• Consider a brand of photographic film thatcentres its brand definition on perfect colourrepresentation. How will it look if the boxes linedup on the shelf vary in hue from dark to light?

• The Angostura Bitters bottle positively screamsits unique individuality – the label is way toolarge, the text on it far too small, but it is instantlyrecognizable and it works.

• The toilet duck was a brilliant example of abrand capturing a unique identity, both visuallythrough the distinctive shape of the bottle, butalso emotionally through our belief that now wereally can reach those germs that have been stub-bornly evading us.

• If your business is in the supply of bulk materialsto industrial customers, how could new pack-


aging help identify your brand as the easiest tohandle, to store, to maintain or to renew?

• Even in disposing of the product the packagingcan give the brand one last customer interaction.The Evian brand has made good use of plasticbottles that can be crushed down to a quarter oftheir original size after use. A brand that stressesthe purity and ecological soundness of itsproduct has successfully added another positiveassociation to its image – the reduction of landfillon disposal.

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS

Managing the human moments of truth

Every human point of contact must also aim to buildpositive associations.

SAS

Jan Carlzon, when CEO of SAS, described these human pointsof contact as the brand’s ‘moments of truth’ and he went on toquantify them. SAS looked after 5 million passengers a year,and each passenger would probably meet five members of SASstaff. That meant that there would be 25 million SAS brandmoments of truth, 25 million opportunities to build and enhancethe brand, but also 25 million opportunities to let the branddown. Sales and customer service training became high prior-ities to support the SAS brand definition.


The 25 million SAS‘moments of truth’

NCR

Back in the 19th century when NCR was just building upmomentum for its new-fangled cash registers, a key element ofthe brand was the sales presentation. So important that adetailed guide on how to behave was issued to all sales repre-sentatives, including such gems as, ‘don’t point your finger or

pencil at the prospect, don’t sit awkwardly in your chair, don’t

slap him on the knee, and don’t tell funny stories’. For a retail,service or B2B brand, the sales force can often be the make orbreak of the brand’s identity and definition.

The complaint is a gift…

Learning brands must learn from the complaintsthey receive. More than this, how those complaintsare handled is of huge importance to the mainte-nance of the brand’s definition.

TV watchdog programmes will go to great lengthsto chastise a famous brand that has let the customerdown. The brand manager who vacillates withweasel words is on a hiding to nothing. The brandmanager who responds with bucket loads ofapologies and enough free product to last thecustomer a lifetime gets away with it, but is thecustomer satisfied, and what of the millions ofothers watching at home, with no free products?

In too many cases, the brand manager takes theeasy route of a voucher or a free sample. I know ofseveral big brands that if you simply send them aletter saying that you bought the product in one of the

big retailers, and you are not happy, you will get abundle of vouchers by return.

Brand managers should ensure that they moveinto overdrive to investigate a problem. And whenthey discover the causes – report them to the


People – the ultimatemoment of truth at thepoint of sale

customer, put right the problem, and give evidenceof a better level of reliability in the future.

INVENTING NEW INTERACTIONS ANDASSOCIATIONS

Borders and Barnes & Noble, two US booksellers,pioneered the invention of several new interactionswith their customers – armchairs, in-store coffeeshops, meeting spaces for societies, barber shopchoirs… Who could name a bookstore brand beforeall that?

A good source of positive associations is to befound in other people’s brands. Little Chef featuresBird’s custard on its menu, McDonald’s builds itsbrand through the use of the likes of Cadbury’s andNestlé in its product lines, and of course thearrangement is mutual. Heineken has often asso-ciated itself with other brands’ imagery – including ahealed up cut in a piece of silk and famously theDulux dog seen painting a wall – all part of the‘reaches the parts that other beers cannot reach’ campaign.

A brand can benefit by building on the stories thatsometimes attach themselves. Ford has not sufferedfrom the ‘any colour so long as its black’ tale, Benand Jerry is the subject of countless urban myths (inthe United States at least) of what it does with itsprofits and what causes it supports, and The BodyShop benefited hugely from the high profile themedia gave to its founder and campaigner for allsorts, Anita Roddick. A charismatic boss can be agreat asset to a brand or a business– even the ICI‘brand’ became ‘exciting’ under the leadership ofJohn Harvey-Jones.


Every new interaction orassociation, provided itworks, builds awareness,loyalty and profits. Planthem well

Cadbury World

Cadbury World is one of the few tourist attraction ‘theme parks’run by a brand that is not primarily in the entertainmentbusiness. Many say it has no business to be doing this, not leastsome within the company who could point out that it has lostmoney for more years than it has turned a profit. Of course, it isthere for reasons other than profit – its financial target is in factto break even. Cadbury World helps cement the brand’s defi-nition – quality and fun. It doesn’t exploit the brand, it helps tobuild the brand, and the vast majority of its millions of visitorswill have had their perception of the brand enhanced by thiswonderfully creative and wholly positive interaction.

B2B brands can perhaps benefit the most fromextending their customer interactions beyond theconfines of their products. Selling services and solu-tions rather than products is a common strategy, butit is not always easy to get the due reward. Using abrand to identify the package of services and solu-tions as a distinct entity, separate from thecompetitor’s ‘product’, can help enormously.

Finally, a brand can always use a little help fromassociations with liked and respected personalities,provided of course that they are the right people forthe brand. You own a brand of jeans aimed at ‘cool’teenagers, how pleased would you be that the PrimeMinister took to wearing them? What goes for ‘cool’is endlessly surprising and the oddest folk canbecome icons of teenage cool, so who knows…

The Internet interaction…

Of course, the Internet has provided a whole newmedium for interaction with many consumer brandsoperating Web sites that offer product information,deals, and very often advice that helps position the


Cadbury World – not thebusiness of a chocolatemaker, but very much thatof a brand

brand on a much wider footing. The Pampers Website has become a popular source of advice on allaspects of mothering, so taking the brand definitionfar beyond a simple supplier of nappies.

The interaction is two-way, providing informationto the brand owners on how to steer their brandpositioning in the future. The consumer is given anew channel of enquiry in this exchange, and withequal access to competitors’ sites there is an increasein the transparency of the brand for the consumer.Choice is made easier, comparisons are made easierand, in some cases, genuine enquiry into valuereceived can be made. In this way, the Internetpromises to keep brands on their toes as much as itgives them a new medium of interaction.

There is a dilemma here for the typical FMCGbranded product. Consumers tend to buy baskets ofgroceries, not individual products, so won’t thebrand’s Web site inevitably lose out to the retailers?The offer of advice through the Web site is oneresponse, but perhaps there are more cunning onesin store. Where would you expect to find infor-mation on Jaffa Cakes? In the McVities’ site, or on akids’ site? Put yourself in the shoes of theconsumer…

Swatch

Swatch is keen to make a radically new but hugely relevantassociation between its brand and the notion of time. Universalor Internet Time, ‘launched’ in 1998, divides the day into 1,000beats, and time zones are gone. Should it catch on, who knowswhat we might be saying in years to come, ‘Swatch Time’ inplace of Greenwich Mean, even ‘log in with me at 8 o’Swatch’ –a powerful association indeed.


Swatch and the ultimateassociation?

It will be clear by now that branding is not just anexercise in advertising. If it becomes so, then it runsthe risk of being seen as an expensive, untrust-worthy and ultimately ephemeral activity.Advertising is important, but it is far from the wholestory.

Having no budget for advertising does not meanthat you cannot have a brand. There can be a virtuein small budgets; they demand hard thinking andsubtlety where huge budgets can lead to lazinessand bludgeoning. Indeed, having a small budget cansometimes be worse than none at all. A few tens ofthousands wasted on a tacky (and all too obviouslyhome-made) advert can do more to harm a brandthan almost any other activity short of making a badproduct. This is particularly true of B2B brands.

15

Advertising – not the whole story

149

If a brand is no more than its advertising, if it lackssubstance in the final assessment, then it runs a bigrisk of being ‘found out’. Sunny Delight was a big hitin the 1990s when Procter & Gamble launched thisorange juice lookalike, but with almost no real juice.It certainly made lots of money for P&G but is nowheaded into decline as consumers start to ‘getsmart’. The kind of brand advertising that lasts isoften the kind that has solid connections to thereality of the product – ‘Have a break, have a KitKat’celebrates both the break-time use and the ‘snapa-bility’ of the thing.

WHY ADVERTISE?

There is a difference between advertising and brandadvertising. The former may be simply to getattention, to boost sales, to inform about an offer orany one of countless other goals. Brand advertisingis intended to build and communicate the brand’sdefinition. If both can be achieved at the same timethen all well and good, but don’t assume that simplymentioning your brand name a lot will build theimage that you desire. The promotional philosophythat if you throw enough mud at the wall some of itis bound to stick has no place in the process ofbuilding your brand.

Advertising is part of the mix alongside theproduct, the service, the packaging, the point of saleand the price – and all of this must support thebrand’s positioning. There are many reasons thatadvertising tends to get an inflated level of attention,not least because we all think we are experts, and weall have an opinion. At its worst this leads to the


Advertising and brandadvertising… there is adifference

horrors of the home-made ad. There are also somemore justifiable reasons:

• It costs a lot of money.

• Done badly the whole proposition can collapse.

• Done well, advertising can represent that wholemix.

Brand advertising should concern itself withcommunicating the essence of the brand, what wehave been calling the brand definition. Most adver-tising media are not particularly good at communi-cating complex messages or detail on productcharacteristics and benefits, they work best withwhat are called ‘single-minded propositions’.

The single-minded proposition

Identify the single most motivating and differenti-ating thing that you can say about your brand. Thiswill be your single-minded proposition. This is thepoint at which advertisers and brand managerscome together – the single-minded proposition is ofcourse the articulation through a particular media ofthe brand definition. If it isn’t, then you are introuble – either your agency isn’t listening, or yourbrand definition is incommunicable, or you areusing the wrong medium.

Perhaps there is much that can be said about yourbrand, its definition is more complex than a simpleUSP (see Chapter 1), but take care not to try too muchthrough any one advertisement. Over the course of apromotional campaign it may be possible to build upa series of individual single-minded propositions,but each specific activity within the campaign shouldperhaps aim to tackle just one or two at a time.

Advertising � 151

Kyocera

Kyocera, the office equipment manufacturer, recently ran aseries of press adverts for its Ecosys brand of printers, with astrong central theme and a series of individual messages – oneper advert. The campaign was designed to establish a clear linkbetween Kyocera’s unique capabilities (based on its tech-nology) and a single-minded identification of the customer’sneeds – business efficiency and environmental concern. Eachadvert identified a different aspect of the technology, but used aconsistent tag line throughout ‘Because business demands effi-

ciency and the earth needs attention’.

Communicating the brand’s uniquesignature – brand DNA

Single-minded propositions are a good start, butthey still might not represent the essence of thebrand. They might actually represent short-termtactics, like a 10 per cent discount at B&Q on BankHoliday Monday, or a last chance to buy an AbbeyNational ISA before the end of the tax year. Usefulmessages, but hardly building a unique brand defi-nition. We are perhaps still in the realms of adver-tising rather than brand advertising.

Brand advertising must communicate the branddefinition and it is useful here to consider ananalogy introduced by Iain Ellwood: the brand defi-nition as DNA. Like DNA, the brand definition is aunique signature that runs through every manifes-tation of that brand – its name, its design, itssubstance, its advertising – every interaction withthe customer. A brand of mineral water that haspurity as its brand definition, or DNA signature,must ensure for instance that its bottles are clean on


A unique proposition fromKyocera

the outside as well as the inside. However great thead, it won’t sell dirty bottles. Ellwood advises thatthis DNA signature must be ‘as concentrated, succinct

and powerful as possible so that it can survive intact as it

is communicated across media types’.Two brands in competition may each have unique

propositions, and the eventual winner may not bethe one with the ‘best’ proposition, nor even the bestshort-term, single-minded propositions, but the onebest able to communicate its proposition asexpressed in its DNA. This is the value of goodbrand advertising.

Magicote

Magicote paint launched the first widely available non-dripgloss on the UK paint market and fast adopted a good single-minded proposition, ‘ease of use’. It was a good proposition, fora while, but had two fatal flaws. First, it was a proposition thatallowed others to catch up as they developed their own easier-to-use paints. Secondly, it failed to move with the times as easeof use became taken for granted and trickier and more funda-mental problems were being unearthed, like, ‘will those twocolours match or should we just stick to magnolia?’ In the battleof the paint brands it was Dulux that emerged triumphant, notbecause of the Old English sheepdog, but because of a morepowerful brand definition, a stronger DNA. The Dulux DNA wasless tangible, but far more beguiling – it was about giving peoplethe confidence to transform their homes.

THE PROBLEMS WITH ADVERTISING…

There are several ‘problems’ with using advertisingto build the brand definition. Often these apparent‘problems’ are in fact hugely helpful, serving to test

Advertising � 153

Dulux won the battle withMagicote not because of ashaggy dog, but because ofstronger DNA

your assumptions about what your brand is andwhere it is headed:

• Advertisements must reflect the mood of the

times and that mood can change fast. Ads can bechanged in weeks or even days, but can the brandsthat they promote change as quickly, and stillretain credibility? There is often a tension betweenthe creative team at the advertising agency whowant to make their work as up to the minute aspossible, and the brand manager who must judgewhether the latest developments in advertisingtechnique or the latest ‘in’ terminology or symbolsof street culture will actually be good for thebrand’s definition. The problem is a good one,continually testing the brand to check that it isrelevant to its customers in substance and in spirit.

• Once started, you can never stop, and the road

ahead keeps on growing longer.

Club biscuits

The Club brand once ‘owned’ the UK market for the break-timechocolate biscuit until it chose one year to pull back on adver-tising and regard the money saved as extra profit. It was after allthe brand leader, what harm could one year do? It was its badluck (or was it brand myopia?) that this decision correspondedwith a massive campaign behind the Penguin brand with DerekNimmo’s famous stuttering tag line. Penguin never looked backand Club never regained its position.

Branding is a long-term investment and thepromotional plan for a brand must be a long-term activity. Consistency of spend is every-thing, hard as that might be for chief financialofficers to understand.


Why Club lost out toPenguin

• The same old adverts can wear thin after a

while. Consumers ‘are like roaches – you spray

them and spray them and they get immune after a

while’. David Lubars, a remarkably candidadvertising executive in the Omnicom group,quoted by Naomi Klein in No Logo, expresses atruth that demonstrates the weakness of adver-tising compared to the substance of the productor the service. We get tired of adverts, orimmune to their hold over us, however goodthey might be, but we don’t get tired of a goodproduct. It’s another of those good problems,alerting us to the fact that while adverts andother promotional techniques must be recreatedalmost continually, genuine propositionsthrough the product and the service can bemaintained for much longer. Putting effort intomaintaining and enhancing those propositionswill be worth every penny.

• The ‘production’ can overpower the message.‘Advertising at its best achieves all its commercial

objectives, but also enters the popular culture’ saysRupert Howell, Chairman of HCCL. This is anoble notion, but I suspect most clients wouldprefer that it was the brand that entered thepopular culture, not the ad.

• Advertising is seen by many as intrusive. Theargument is often put that advertising providesus with choice, or is it more the perception thatwe are making informed choices? Knowing anad tells us that we know something about thebrand and the product. This is powerful stuff,but must be handled with care if we are to avoidthe excesses of ‘brand advertising fluff’.

Advertising � 155

• Audiences are becoming more ‘literate’ – they

see the tricks of the trade – and in many cases

more cynical. Some brands have responded tothis by lampooning themselves and theiradverts. Often the adverts so produced acquirecult status (McDonald’s use of the Pearl & Deanformat being a case in point) but it is far fromclear if they actually build the brand’s ownstatus.

The cynical audience is sometimes handled bypresenting a cynical message, or a cynical person-ality. Egg financial services, targeted at a youngerand more cynical audience, chose to play on this byusing Zoë Ball to present a cynical assessment of itsapproach, suggesting as she did that at least thoseEgg folk are like me, and so, like you. A complex butno less powerful emotional charge.

RIGHT MEDIA, RIGHT EXECUTION

The media

If the purpose of the advertisement is to build thebrand’s image then it is not only the content that isimportant, but also the medium and the execution.As content, both of the following are fine: ‘Avonlea

free range eggs – on sale here, £2 a dozen’; ‘Amy

Johnson’s flying lessons – £150 an hour’. But onlyone of them is going to work chalked on a black-board by the side of the road.

Each medium, from TV to press, from the Internetto trade shows, has its own strengths and weak-nesses as a means of building the brand. TV is goodfor mass awareness and communicating emotional


Amy Johnson’s flyinglessons

values, but poor on detail. The Internet has prettymuch the reverse qualities. The right choice of mediashould not be a question of budget. Better not toadvertise at all than to choose a cheaper but inappro-priate medium. Nor do you have to go for the mostexpensive media, as the section on budgets (below)will show.

Placing an ad in a national newspaper is effec-tively associating your brand with the newspaper’sbrand, and all that it represents. Here’s a funexercise: try to find the same advert for something inthe Sun and the Guardian…

EasyJet makes very effective use of ‘buy now’ adsfor its low-cost European air fares. The placement ina daily paper gives the ad an immediacy and a senseof urgency, and at least in EasyJet’s early days the‘association’ with the big name papers wasimportant in helping to build credibility for a newbusiness taking on the big boys.

The precise placement of advertisements in thechosen medium is also vital. Many brands that makeuse of the press will insist that their adverts are notplaced next to stories of a ‘depressing nature’. Stillthere are disasters in this regard, like the advert forslimming products that ran adjacent to a breakingstory on a new and particularly dreadful famine inEast Africa. Advertising on US TV news channelsalmost ceased in the days following the New YorkWorld Trade Center disaster.

The execution

It cannot be said too many times – this is a job for theprofessionals. Consider the necessary conditions forany effective communication:

Advertising � 157

EasyJet, the national pressand credibility

• It must reach the target audience. How aboutthe award-winning TV commercial for theultimate in business class airline seats that is putout at 3 pm on a weekday?

• It must penetrate their attention, through a

combination of timeliness, relevance and

simplicity. The TV remote control has consignedmany TV ads to the ‘mute’ dustbin. Ads nowhave to be better made and more interesting thanTV programmes (perhaps not so hard in thesedays of dumbing down, reality television, andfly-on-the-wall docu-soaps). The ‘what on earthis this an advert for’ technique is one angle, therunning story is another – witness the GoldBlend saga of next door neighbours or the‘Nicole? Papa?’ marathon for the Renault Clio.

• It must communicate the intended message. Ionce saw a press advert for cigars showing adinner-jacketed man sat opposite an admiringcompanion, the source of her admiration clearlybeing the cigar on which he puffed. The tag lineinsinuated that your choice of cigar was one ofthe ways that you demonstrated your concernfor your loved ones. Unfortunately thisparticular advert carried the government healthwarning noting that passive smoking can causecancer – so much for love and attention.

• It must bond the message to the brand name.‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’.


BEYOND ADVERTISING

Telling people stuff is not enough – you want toknow what they think about what you tell them, andyou want to be able to influence their subsequentactions. Advertising can be a rather one-wayactivity; something the brand does to the customerrather than a genuine interaction.

In this sense, the B2B and service brand has some-thing of an advantage over the FMCG brand as itfinds itself interacting on a personal level with itscustomers. An advantage, that is, if the value ofthese interactions is recognized – the automatedCRM (customer relationship management) or callcentre approach to customer relations has a longway to go before it can compare with the direct 1:1contact, and at its present level of sophistication canbe positively damaging to a brand’s image. I haveceased doing business with a famous brand (it shallremain nameless) that manages to send me abirthday card every year (the result I believe of amassive investment in a CRM system) but cannotanswer its phones and, when it does, cannot proceedwithout some poor soul having to navigate methrough endless screens of questions.

BUDGETS – DOES IT ALL COMEDOWN TO MONEY?

How much to spend – the toughest question of themall? On the one hand, we recall Henry Ford’scomment on advertising expenditure, that half ofthe money is wasted. Unfortunately you can never

Advertising � 159

Turning your advertisinginto an interaction – adiscussion, even – takesmore than technology

be certain which half. On the other hand, we seebrand plans strangled at birth by parsimoniouspromotional budgets.

People have tried various methods to fix on theright amount – a percentage of sales revenue, apercentage of profit, some benchmark based oncompetitors’ spend, last year’s plus or minus apercentage dreamt up by the finance department.All are used frequently, but none of them areremotely satisfactory. There is only one basis onwhich to determine the budget – how much isrequired to achieve the goals for the brand? If themoney is not available, then revise your plans for thebrand. None of this says that you shouldn’t seekcreative ways to stretch a budget.

Stretching a small budget

A small DIY brand with a budget too small for the hoped for TVcampaign launched a new product through poster sites, andmoreover, they booked only a third of the sites recommendedto them by the agency. The product was a fairly complex woodtreatment – not an impulse buy, and one where reputation anddependability would be important. Posters were placed on themain routes to major DIY stores such that the consumer wouldsee them just before arriving at the store. In store, theconsumer was faced with a bewildering choice of options, butthe last thought sown in their mind outside the store was animage of this manufacturer’s product, and the associationhelped build a sense of credibility and trust for the brand andits new product.


Small budgets plus smartthinking can equal bigimpact

Kodak

Kodak once ran a one-page ad in a leading photographymagazine that consisted simply of a plain yellow page with thetext – ‘Our real advert is on page 5, 12, 28 and 37’. On each ofthese pages would be a beautiful photograph as part of anarticle with the reference to the film used, Kodak of course. Thiswas a clever way to maximize impact on a slim budget withalmost no production costs – usually a high part of the spend fora brand like Kodak that must always ‘look its best’.

Getting your money’s worth – tracking

If you do aim to spend millions on high-profileadvertising, and also aim to prove Henry Fordwrong, then you must know what this spend isdoing for your brand. It is vital to track the effec-tiveness of what will almost certainly be yourbiggest brand expenditure. Tracking goes beyondthe impact on sales, and in any case there are oftentoo many competing variables to be confident ofpinning growth on a promotional campaign. For a£5 million TV campaign, it will be worth spendingthe additional £80,000 to measure the campaign’simpact on customer perceptions and attitudes. Atypical tracking study would look at levels ofawareness (often called the cut through of themedium), what perceptions are formed of the brandor product, what promises are seen to be made, whatlevel of belief or confidence exists that they will beupheld, and what disposition does the audiencehave to make a purchase? Only with such infor-mation can you go to your chief financial officerwith hand on heart and say that the investment inyour brand really was worth making.

Advertising � 161

Using someone else’sbudget – the Kodak ploy…

A recent trend in working with agencies is to payby results. While this can work just fine for an advertintended to boost sales by the end of the quarter, willthis trend threaten the longer-term development ofbrand definitions? If short-term measures overridethe long term then the answer must be yes, short-term promotional techniques will come to the fore.The brand owners must take care to choose the rightmeasures of performance for their brand buildingaspirations. The practice of ad tracking as describedhere can be one of the more helpful measures in thisregard.


The huge number of agencies available to help withevery conceivable aspect of branding and promotioncan be rather overwhelming. To add to the problem,too many large agencies behave as if they are from asuperior species to mere business folk. Don’t ignorethe smaller agencies, it is here that the real gold dustcan often be found. Get them on their way up…

Prepare the brief

The agency will need to know as much about thefollowing as you can tell it (and if it says it doesn’t,then perhaps it is not the agency for you):

• the market, dynamics and trends;

• the main competitors;

• your business strategy;

16

Briefing the agency – making sureit works for you

163

• your method of market segmentation, and thetarget segments;

• your brand positioning strategy;

• your current brand definition;

• your future planned brand definition;

• your promotional plan and desired outcomes forthe brand;

• your single-minded proposition (unless you areengaging its help to determine one for you);

• supporting evidence for this proposition;

• the preferred media;

• any restrictions on your ability to promote –financial, legal, moral and so on;

• timings and budgets.

Agencies that show too much concern with the lastof these points before understanding your purposeand objectives may be helping you with yourselection process more than they think.

Once the brief is complete, select the agencies youwish to have a response from. Don’t go for too many.First, the briefing process is time-consuming. Second,receiving the agency proposals will be even moretime-consuming. Third, it is unfair on an agency toask it to put in a significant amount of work if it is oneof a large number under consideration.

Getting to the shortlist of agencies to brief will be acombination of references from colleagues, perhapsruling out those used by the competition, and anassessment of their track record of success in similarareas. This last is not a question of ‘advertisingawards’ and the like, rather it is an assessment ofhow successful the clients of the agency have been.


Some ‘rules’ on briefing the agency

1. Take the time to give a full briefing.2. Give the agency a written copy of the brief.3. Be very clear on objectives, timings and budgets.4. Agencies should welcome your creative

thoughts, but try to leave the final creativeprocess to the experts.

5. Ask for the agency’s questions.6. Encourage a critical assessment from the agency.7. Give the agency as much information as possible

on your selection process – timing, criteria,competitors, etc. Help it to do a good job; this isnot an obstacle course you are setting it.

8. By when do you want its response, and in whatformat?

9. Be very clear on how you wish it to respond; is itjust ideas, or do you want a full campaignproposal?

Some ‘rules’ on receiving an agency proposal

1. Allow it the time it requires.2. Start by restating the objectives of the activity, or

ask the agency to do so.3. Use those objectives as your test – try not to be

swayed by the flood of exciting creative ideas –the important question is: will the ideas achieveyour objective?

4. Demand full costings of any proposals.

One last thing, don’t forget that the agency works foryou.

Briefing the agency � 165

166


What are the components of the ideal brand? Canthere be such a thing? ‘Brand leadership’ was longthe goal of brand managers, defined mostcommonly as having the biggest market share. Sothe ideal brand was the biggest brand. Statisticswere quoted showing that in the grocery marketonly the largest brand made money, while third andfourth brands were fast disappearing, replaced byown labels. The syndrome has not spread, asthreatened, to all markets. Now, the obsession withsize has in more recent years started to evolve intoan obsession with reputation.

Even those still concerned with size have movedon from simple comparisons of sales versus theirnearest competitors. Rather than share of sales, theywill measure ‘share of voice’ – the proportion of the

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The brand health check

167

total communication in the sector that their brandaccounts for, or ‘share of mind’ – the level of recog-nition their brand achieves in the customer’s mind.

A drinks brand might even talk of ‘share of throat’,a recognition that its non-alcoholic fizzy concoctionis in competition not just with other fizzy concoc-tions but with beer, wine, tea, coffee, milk, and evenwith water.

Looking beyond size, Sir Richard Branson hassaid that he wishes Virgin to be the most respected,not the biggest brand. Perhaps one mark of a brandleader is not its percentage of sales, or even share ofvoice, mind or stomach, but that everyone elsewants to copy it.

It will be quite clear by now that attempting todefine the ideal brand is an impossible task inanything but the most general sense. Circumstancesmake the individual brand what it must be, and thebrand helps create the circumstances. A healthybrand is an easier test, hence the self-assessmenthealth check that follows, shown in Table 17.1.

An additional means of assessing your currentlevel of performance, and your progress towardsbranding excellence through enhanced brandmanagement, is the Branding Performance Map.®This tool is available from INSIGHT Marketing andPeople, details can be found in Next Steps…


The brand health check � 169

Table 17.1 The brand health check

Health Criteria Healthy Could Be UnhealthyThe healthy brand: Improved

is based on a proposition of genuine substance andvalue to the target customer

communicates a clear and powerful brand definition

communicates a clear ‘emotional charge’

communicates an attractive and relevant personality

wins, builds and retains customer loyalty

is well known by the target customer

is held in high esteem by the target customer

communicates and evidences a unique match betweenthe company’s capabilities and the customer’s needs

is a source of competitive advantage

is an investment of increasing value that others willwant to own

maintains its relevance over time by evolving inresponse to changing customer expectations andperceptions

increases the profitability of the business

is consistent with the business strategy

makes sense within the business’s brand architecture

provides a protective ‘halo’ for growth strategies

provides a barrier to entry for new entrants orsubstitutes

is uniquely positioned in the market and creates arelevant space in the customer’s mind

communicates and demonstrates a clear sense of value

interacts consistently with the customer on as manyfronts and on as many occasions as possible

cements the brand definition into the customer’s mindthrough interactions and positive associations

is managed and supported consistently over time

has values that can be applied consistently andsuccessfully to all parts of the marketing mix andthrough all promotional media

makes people want to get their hands on it

170


The purpose of this short section is to help youconsider what activities might be ahead of you asyou develop your thoughts on brand managementwithin your own company.

MARKET SEGMENTATION

A very short chapter attempted to deal with an issueof supreme importance to marketers and brandmanagers alike. The book, Key Marketing Skills: A

complete action kit of strategies, tools and techniques for

marketing success, by Peter Cheverton, published byKogan Page, 2000, will provide you with more prac-tical guidance on this key topic.

18

Next steps…

171

THE BRANDING PERFORMANCE MAP©

The Branding Performance Map© is a rigorous diag-nostic tool (software supported) that will help you toevaluate your current level of branding excellence,and to monitor improvements as you work throughyour plans for improved brand management. Aswell as a monitor of progress it will also highlightwhere your problems lie, giving you a chance to dosomething about them before they become insur-mountable. Details of this tool can be obtained fromINSIGHT, as shown below.

TRAINING AND CONSULTANCY

INSIGHT Marketing and People is able to provideboth training and consultancy on helping you tocreate, launch, position or develop your brand. Itspecializes in ‘in-company’ work, but also runs aone-day Branding Masterclass. Details of this eventcan be obtained by contacting INSIGHT:

INSIGHT Marketing and People LtdPO Box 997Wexham RoadSlough SL2 5JJUKTel: +44 (0) 1753 877750Fax: +44 (0) 1753 877342E-mail: [email protected]@insight-mp.comWeb site: www.insight-mp.com

172 � How come your brand isn’t working hard enough?

FURTHER READING

Cheverton, P (2000) Key Marketing Skills: A complete actionkit of strategies, tools and techniques for marketing success,Kogan Page, London

Ellwood, I (2000) Branding, Kogan Page, LondonHaig, M (2002) If You’re so Brilliant… How Come You Don’t

Have an E-strategy? The Essential Guide to doing businessonline, Kogan Page, London

McDonald, M (2002) If You’re So Brilliant… How Come YouDon’t Have a Winning Marketing Plan?, Kogan Page,London

Next steps � 173

174


3M 26, 137

Accenture 139–40acronyms 137Acura 120advertising 149–63

problems with 153–56reasons for 150–53single minded propositions 151–52

advertising agencies 162briefing 163–65

Airwick 65Aldi 101Amazon.com 104American Express 61Anderson Consulting 139Andrex 23, 49Angostura Bitters 143Ansoff matrix 74–75Apple Mac 98appropriate performance 59–63Aquafresh 96

Asda 16, 50aspiration factor 21aspirations 45authenticity 10, 11–12Avis 98

B2B 12, 14, 15, 17, 75, 76, 80, 84, 97, 141, 147,159

B2B brands 55–63with consumer franchise 63and trust 56

B&Q 152Babycham 86Barbour 16Barclays 90Barnes & Noble 146Beefeater 121Ben and Jerry’s 77, 146benefits 98–99

of heritage 98Benetton 93Berri 98

Index

175

Black and Decker 98BMW 100, 137Body Shop 7, 146Boots 109Borders 146Borjomi 11–12brand

as an emotional charge 9–27as a mark of loyalty 35–41origin of word 3–4as a personality 29–33

collage exercise 29–30brand activity 18–20, 23brand advertising 149–162brand architecture 95, 117–31brand augmentation 112–13brand awareness and significance 37–38‘brand blindness’ 6brand definition 25–27, 135–36

as DNA 25, 115, 152–53brand evolution 25–27brand extension 111–15, 113–15brand halo 74–78brand health check 167–70brand history 3–5brand image 4–5‘brand leadership’ 167brand learning 24brand logos 140–141brand loyalty 35–42brand management 71–72, 133–34brand managers, and valuation of bands

67–68brand names 2–3, 136–40

changing 139–40criteria for 137–38generic 139

brand personality 29–34brand positioning 91–109

broad positioning 74, 93, 94, 95confused positioning 92doubtful positioning 92irrelevant positioning 92overpositioning 92process 72, 93–104underpositioning 91–92

brand renewal 19brand slogans 141–42branding

in a ‘no brand’ market 87–88and profitability 68–70

Branding Performance Map© 172Branson, Sir Richard 20, 128, 168Brewer’s Fayre 121bribery 36briefing an agency 163–165British Gas 35British Rail 141British Telecom 35broad positioning 74, 93, 94, 95budgets 159–62business growth 74business strategy 73–81

Cadbury World 147Cadbury’s 4, 19, 120, 127, 146category killer retail brands 101category management 49–50, 53Caterpillar 114Celeron 62Cheverton, Peter 171choices 85Ciba-Geigy 65Cif 121, 140cigarette brands and sport 19–20Citizens Advice Bureau 12Club biscuits 154Coca-Cola 7, 12–13, 52, 131, 139, 141competitive advantage 43–46, 56, 83–90complaints 145–46conformity/nonconformity 15–17Consignia 140conspicuous consumption 15–16consultancy 172consumer brands 57corporate brands 119, 123–28

downsides 127–28and Japan 124–26positive synergies 126–27

Cosmopolitan 115cost reducers 60costs 36

176 � Index

CRM (customer relationship management)159

Crosse & Blackwell 48, 117–18Cuprinol 129customer expectations 59–60, 104–05

and loyalty 36–41customer interaction 20–23, 144–46

factors determining 22customer intimacy 80–81, 97customer relationships 144–46customer’s activity cycle 102, 103cynical approach 156

Daft, Douglas 131defining the brand 1–2, 78–81DHL 62, 139Diner’s Club 17The Discipline of Market Leaders 78discounting 36Disney 7, 51Disneyworld 22diversification 76–77DIY market, and Dulux 88–89Doyle, Professor Peter 118–19dream merchant approach 45, 57Dulux 15, 86–87, 153

and the DIY market 88–89DuPont 63

Duracell 14, 98Durex 13Dyson 44–45, 139

Earnings Multiple system 67‘easy to do business with’ 61EasyJet 79, 101, 157Egg financial services 156ego 15–17Ellwood, Iain 152emotional charge 5, 9–27, 94, 96, 156

of car brands 120level 17–23types of 10–17

enhanced brand management 170envelopment 95EPOS data 51, 53Esso 40

Evian 144Existing Use method 66–67Exxon 137

Fairy Liquid 14, 19family brands 122fcuk 136, 138FedEx 139fertilizer market, segmentation 87–88financial services 58–59Flymo 98FMCG 12, 14, 17, 56, 75, 124, 148, 159focus on specific users 98Ford 16, 100, 120Formule 1 101French Connection UK 136, 138FT 99

Gap 22Gillette 73, 114Glidden 86–87, 129global brands 128–30Gold Blend 158Gore-Tex 17, 63Grand Met 66growth strategy 95Gucci 21Guinness 142

Häagen Dazs 93, 101, 138halo effect 74, 75–76, 113, 114Hammerite 129Harvey Jones, Sir John 146HCCL 155Heineken 128, 129, 146Heinz 48, 124, 158Henley Centre 124Heublein 66Hewlett-Packard 12Hofmeister 16–17Honda 120Hoover 44–45, 139Hovis 98Howell, Rupert 155HSBC 90

Index � 177

IBM 15ICI 86–87, 129, 141, 146ideas 1, 4IKEA 7, 79, 137image 56INSIGHT Marketing and People 15, 170

contact details 172Intel 13, 62–63interbrand system 67Internet 51, 60, 89–90, 147–48, 157Iomega 139Irn Bru 107–08

J Walter Thompson agency 5Jaffa Cakes 148Jaguar 16, 21, 100, 120Japan, and corporate brands 124–26JCB 114JD Wetherspoon 59

Kellogg’s 10–11, 12, 75, 85, 122Kentucky Fried Chicken 130Key Marketing Skills 171Kiam, Victor 20KitKat 117, 123, 142, 150Kleenex 24–25Klein, Naomi 155Knorr 137Kodak 4, 99, 137, 161Kotler, Philip 93Kraft 66, 77Kyocera 152

Lada 136learning 24learning brands 145level of emotional charge 17–23Levi Strauss 26, 101

and Tesco 51–52Lexicon 138Lexus 101, 120‘life savers’ 62lifestyles 7, 21, 89Limmits 143Little Chef 146local brands 130–31

logo brands 17logos 140–41Lotus 139loyalty 61, 96

brand as a mark of 35–41and customer expectations 36–41

Lubars, David 155Lucozade 106–07Lycra 14, 63

Macleans 22McDonald’s 146, 156McVities 148Magicote 153Marathon 139–140market penetration 74market segmentation 83–90, 96, 171marketing, purpose and practice 43–44marketing mix 85–86marks and sub-brands 120, 121–22Marlboro 6, 77, 92, 115

image 92Marmite 93Mars Bar 75, 114, 125media 156–58Mercedes 90micro-segmentation 89–90Microsoft 80, 104, 118, 125Miller 77Mitsubishi 118, 124, 126Monsanto 63multifaceted brand 50–53multiple interactions 22–23

NCR 145Nestlé 117–118, 123, 128, 137, 146new interactions and associations 146–48new markets 77new product development 75–76newspapers 157Nike 8, 22No Logo 155Nova 138novel segmentation 87–89Nutrasweet 63

178 � Index

Ogilvy, David 4Omnicom Group 155Opal Fruits 139–140operational excellence 79, 97other people’s, brands 146overpositioning 92own label products 47–50, 167Oxo 137

packaging 142–44Pampers 148Papermate 73Parker 73particular attributes 98Pearl and Dean 156Penguin 154Pentium 63Peoplesoft 98Pepsi 98perceptual mapping 99–100performance 59–63Persil 14, 121, 123

care line 22–23personalities, and brands 20personality, of the brand 29–33, 96Philip Morris 6, 66, 77, 115Phillips 141Pimms 16PIMS (Profit Impact of Market Strategies) 68Pizza Hut 121Pizzaland 121Polycell 129Polyfilla 129Porkinson 50Pop Tarts 122positive associations 135–48, 146posters 160Post-it notes 26Post Office 140, 141–142PPG 129Predictor 107PricewaterhouseCoopers 14price busters 60prices 57–58private labels 6, 47–48Procter & Gamble 150

product brands 119, 120–21, 125product leadership 79–80, 97product life cycle 111–12product renewal 19product and surround model 7–8profitability, and branding 68–70promise of performance 12–13proprietary brands 52–53

versus retail brands 48–50‘psychographics’ 88–89purchasing behaviour 21

Quest International 81

RAC 99Radion 121Reckitt & Colman 65–66reference to the competition 98relative spend 38–41reliability 62Remé Martin 17Remington 20repositioning 105–09retail brands 47–53

versus proprietary brands 48–50return on investment (ROI) 69RHM 66Ries, Al 128, 136‘rip-off Britain’ campaign 51risk 74, 75Roddick, Anita 146Rolex 12, 17Rowntrees 123

Sainsbury’s 50St Michael 125Sarson’s 117SAS 144satisfaction 13–15sausages, branded 50Schultz, Howard 7segment, definition 84segmentation 83–90, 96, 171

in the fertilizer market 87–88Sellotape 139service 97

Index � 179

service brands 55–63, 80service environment 12, 14, 15, 17Shell 40, 118, 125short-term tactics 152Shultz, Howard 7significance 40

and brand awareness 37–38Sinclair C5 104single minded propositions 151–52Skoda 109Sky 22, 125slogans 141–42Smirnoff 66SmithKline Beecham 106Snickers 139–40social expression 15–17Sony 19, 104–05

Walkman 104specific positioning 93–94, 95–96

potential sources 96–97specific user benefits 98sponsorship 19–20Starbucks 7, 22, 101Starburst 139–40status in the category 99Stella Artois 101sub-brands and marks 120, 121–22Sunny Delight 150‘surface fluff’ branding 58Swatch 148

‘T Plan’ 5TATA 124Teflon 63Tesco 101

and Levi Strauss 51–52Tetra Brik 61Titleist 15Titleist 15toilet duck 143Tommy Hilfiger 8, 21, 22total customer experience 94–95, 102–04Toyota 120

Toys ‘R’ Us 101tracking 161–62training 172Treacy, Michael and Fred Weirsema 78–81,

97Treetops 105trust 56

and B2B brands 56tuned-in performance enhancers 62–63Tunnocks 75TV advertising 158

umbrella brands 122underpositioning 91–92Unilever 118, 121, 140unique competitive advantage 43–46unique match 96–97USP (unique selling point) 4–5, 151

validated identity brands 120, 122–23valuation of bands 65–70

and brand managers 67–68value context 94, 101value drivers 78–81, 95, 97Virgin 20, 76, 102–104, 114, 118, 125, 128,

168as an attribute brand 126corporate brand values 127

Virgin Atlantic 102, 104virtuous circle 1–2, 23–25Volvo 4, 5, 98

Walls 50Wal*Mart 101, 104Waterman 73Weetabix 85Weirsema, Fred 78–81, 97Whitbread 121

Xai 98, 137Xerox 99, 137

Yamaha 118, 124, 126

180 � Index

BRAND NAME PRODUCTS How came your brand.pdf

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