The odd branding of sister cities.

Sister cities
Originally uploaded by amrit1983

I remember growing up and learning about sister cities. Seemed like a cool idea and certainly made a kid in small town Ohio feel more connected to the world at large. But, as I now travel around the world on projects, I question the logic of it all.

Some cities make a lot of sense. San Francisco and Sydney share a temperate climate, water-side views and a general openness toward life. Milwaukee, WI and Galway, Ireland share an appreciation for beer (or at least that’s the way that it seemed when I visited each). New York City is an easy girl and has befriended several sister cities, Tokyo, Beijing, Cairo, Madrid, Santo Domingo, Budapest, Rome, Jerusalem, Greater London, and Johannesburg. Which only makes me wonder what was wrong with the rest of London?

But then of course it starts to break down. Imagine the family reunion between the sister cities of Duluth, Minnesota and Isumi, Japan or Seattle, Washington and Tashkent, Uzbekistan. At some point in time one of those cities is going to realize that they were adopted and they are going to embark on a journey to find their real families.

It seems as though the whole concept of sister cities needs a little strategy help. If they are similar, it creates this great small world feel where you realize that there are people in the world who are like you but aren’t near you. If it is about differences, then it is great for kids who need pen pals, although I’m not sure that concept still exists.

Brand rejuvenation, without even trying

Workers place the final “S” of the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Waveland, Mississippi
Originally uploaded by cabraham

Brand consultants love to present analogues of the hip, cool companies that have transformed their category.  Target, Apple, BMW Mini, Prius, Dyson, Cirque du Soleil. It becomes sort of a circularly successful argument. Consultants want to work on cool brands, they convince their client that they could be a cool brand by pointing at other cool brands that they had worked on.

I remember having some conversations with Wal-Mart a few years ago. It was during the big Target surge and at least half of the room wanted to go into chase mode and start the style revolution from Bentonville. As the heads shook, there was some steep dissent from those who wanted to stick to the guns, noting that they were far more profitable than Target and that they owned a compelling proposition.

Today, it looks like Wal-Mart did the right thing. They stuck with their price centric positioning and only slightly moved toward a benefit orientation from “everyday low prices” to “save money, live better.” Yes, they also put in some wood paneled flooring and such, but as Wal-Mart has proven, if you own low-prices credibly you will always be in consideration. And increasingly in this economy, they are winning share of the wallet because price trumps cool.

No, they aren’t quite as hip and edgy as Target, but they continue to be far more profitable. Had they done what most marketing consultants would have recommended, they would likely be in a poorer situation today. It’s just a nice reminder that at the end of the day branding isn’t about making a brand hip and cool. It is about making it relevant and enduring. Right now Wal-Mart is looking pretty relevant.

Branding: faking it vs. making it

There is a quote that comes to mind that goes something like, “character is who you are when no one is watching.” This seems apt to describe branding at times. There are many brands that put on a good show in communications, packaging, environments only to let consumers down when they least expect it. Some of us have had friends like this in our lives, but how many of those relationships continue to prosper after we’ve been let down?

Brand relationships are about delivering an experience through all of the brand’s touch points. I won’t even go so far as to say that it has to be a consistent experience because I think branding is changing. But it does have to be a unified experience.

I’ve posted the above picture of GHIRADELLI Hot Chocolate as an example of how not to sustain a brand. For those who don’t know, GHIRADELLI is a premium chocolate brand out of San Francisco. As such you would expect brand attributes such as refined, sophisticated, luxurious and crafted to be part of their story. Note, these aren’t differentiated characteristics but rather table-stakes in the premium category.

The external packaging represents these characteristics and helps to validate the price point which you are bound to pay on a supermarket shelf. Once you make the purchase though, you are confronted with a food service, mass market brand on the inside. Why GHIRADELLI decided to pay a design firm for the external packaging and didn’t throw the internal pouch into the brief is beyond me. Did they think that it wasn’t important or that no one would notice?

I would argue that the experience arch for this brand actually peaks when the pouch is torn open and the product is made. By that account the internal packaging is more important to the brand while the external packaging may still be more important to sales. But, to my earlier point, the brand’s character is defined when it doesn’t think anyone is looking. Or perhaps better stated, “a brand’s character is defined when it isn’t selling.”

A branded look at the pirate problem

“The pirates are coming,” we’ve been told by most of the mainstream news media. And while piracy is a growing problem off the coast of Somalia and they are certainly wrecking havoc within the shipping industry, my sense is that most of us don’t really care. Darfur, yes we care, pirates not yet. And the reason why is that they are actually kind of cool aren’t they?

Culturally, we’ve had a love affair with pirates for decades and they permeate our culture from Long John Silver’s and Jack Sparrow to the Discovery Channel and Disney. Pirates are typically made out to be the better men. Craftier, smoother, living out our dream for adventure, pirates have been positioned as heroes of the high sea. They change the tide and the people they take advantage of tend to be bumbling sailors or British colonials, which as Americans, we don’t really mind. They still pillage, sure, but not so much raping anymore, that wouldn’t make it into a Disney movie.

So the question now is what will it take for the media to breakthrough and make us care about piracy. The answer is that it will probably take a repositioning of the pirates overall. Personally, I might take the easy route and just go ahead and start calling them “raiders”. Sure we have Raiders of the Lost Ark but we also have corporate raiders and the Oakland Raiders and few people feel that those two professions are up to any good.

Flick your Bic, and call me

O telefone celular descartável da Bic – BIC PHONE
Originally uploaded by eaymichel

I seem to spend much of my time lately deriding brand extensions. Despite that fact, I do believe in extensions and I do believe that brands can grow in to new markets by leveraging their fundamental brand values and engineering technology.

Unlike that awful Vasoline extension, I do like the new move by BIC to enter into the reusable mobile phone market. The phones don’t pack much of a punch in terms of apps but they do what phones used to do…allow you to talk. Seems great for International business, low-income consumers and folks in the developing world. It also fits into BIC’s primary brand equities of being disposable and easy to use.

As important, is how the extension integrates into their business objectives of pushing fuel cell batteries. More here courtesy of BusinessWeek.

Can you have a brand resurgence while a business is in decline?

theapocalypse

Originally uploaded by distillerymedia

I bemoaned the passing of Polaroid’s Instant Film a few months back which will cease making it’s namesake product shortly.  I was further saddened when, at a party I hosted a few weeks ago, I pulled out my camera to realize that some of my film had started to turn bad. I felt like it was the end of an era.

The economic model never really made sense (over a buck a photo) in the digital age and of course they were an environmental disaster…but so much fun. And the people having their picture taken always seem to have more fun.

SwissMiss cheered me up today by posting POLADROID. A free app that lets you recreate your favorite images as if they were taken on the spur of the moment, with money to burn and free of life’s cares. Personally, I think all photos should look like that.

As for Polaroid, I hope someone can buy the license and figure out how to bring prices down while keeping the technology around so the brand may continue in its current form.

When Brands Attack – Modern Marketing Trends

Aggressive.

Originally uploaded by
Porcelaingirl° {enthusiastic foolish}

The economy is in the crapper, pocketbooks are tight, there are way too many brands in the world all competing for less money. The old terms like share-of-wallet only worked when the wallets were open and there was money in them ready to be sent out in the world to satiate our needs, wants and desires…if only temporarily.

As outlays shrink, brands HAVE to get more aggressive with their marketing to even maintain share. For that to happen, it helps if brands have been thinking about this all along.

In comfortable times, brands should still be managing their equities, building their customer base, creating loyalty and solidifying differentiation. This is all what really defines something as a brand. But as a great Warren Buffet quote goes, it is “in the times of low tide that you find out who has been swimming naked.” (Or something to that effect.)

The brands that are successfully playing offense are doing so on product differentiation. To simply scream louder and behave as a schoolyard bully will not win you points in this market. Playing the trump card that you have been holding will.

Apple is aggressively going after Microsoft by not just using product differentiation but now using Microsoft’s own advertising against them. Clever, witty, truthful and Apple has built up the equity and credibility over the last few years to play some hardball.

Progresso is going on the offense against Campbell’s with full page ads noting that they have no MSG, whereas Campbell’s does. Taking one product advantage, leveraging it and making it matter. This is how brands play offense. Campbell’s retort that Progresso tastes watery by comparison is subjective and sounds less authentic. Ironically, General Mills owned Progresso likely only removed MSG from their soups after previously being attached by Campbell’s sub-brand.

Dunkin Donuts is going after Starbucks with a taste test campaign touting its better tasting coffee. In this case the claim works better since the perception is that Dunkin Donuts is also cheaper. Whereby cheaper and better tasting always sounds better. Dunkin is also still perceived as an underdog which generally get more traction out of aggressive marketing.

Bottom line: when times are tough and money is tight you have to have clear product differentiation supported by a strong brand. Consumers aren’t going to take a lot of risks with their limited resources and therefore want to be more confident and have a clearer rationale for purchase.

More Authentic Commentary

Vintage Motel Sign

Originally uploaded by photo316

Steve Portigal has some photos over on his blog from Celebration, FL, the Disney founded community that appears to try to bring back the closeted perfect veneer of the 1950s for the modern world.

Coudal also has a nice link to the Draplin Project which echos what many of us have found to be true when driving America’s lost highways. “What happened to great American roadside signage?” And appropriately making the point that new doesn’t always mean better.

explicative-laced video here:

The Reason Segmentation Is Dead

As brand strategists, we’ve been looking at the slow death of traditional segmentation analysis for a while now and talking clients through other ways to group their audiences. This video shows you why the hassle:

Steve points us to another fun article from The New Yorker. My favorite quote: “In sharp contrast to last year’s similar polling question, conducted by the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles for Indiana State University, only seventy-five per cent of respondents this year thought “with certainty” that they were being interviewed.”

Free Advice: Repositioning Obama

Hope – Obama (Shepard Fairey poster)

Originally uploaded by Steve Rhodes

I’m starting up a new section of the blog here called Free Advice in which I will give advice to brands who haven’t asked for it. First up, Mr. Barack Obama.

It should be noted that I love what you are doing to date. Strong consistent positioning around HOPE supported by “Yes we can” making it feel achievable and believable. Short, simple, to the point and looks great on posters and t-shirts.

But it’s time to realize that these themes aren’t yours alone. We’ve wanted to BELIEVE and HOPE, since well before Bill Clinton came from a little place called Hope, ARK. We’ve also wanted to CHANGE Washington ever since Washington needed changing, which was pretty early on. You embody these themes making them ring out as resonate and true and yet they aren’t absolute positionings. They remain relative to the other candidates faced in the primary. In order to win the general election I think we are going to need a bit more information and you are going to need a positioning to coalesce that around.

Recommendation:
Keep HOPE as a messaging pillar but adjust your overall positioning to “Leadership for a Changing World.” You support this by continuing to create a leadership agenda, domestically and reasserting America’s leadership in the broader world.

It also continues to create a distinction between yourself and Mr. McCain while subtly reminding folks that he continues to mention countries that have been non-existent for a decade, can’t use a computer and wants to pursue many of the same strategies that got us to where we are.