A couple of deaths recently. This is the first time I’ve written about deaths in my blog but what the heck. I couldn’t pass this up.

The first death is Curtis Alina and he is credited with popularizing Pez candy. The obituaries I saw reminded us that he didn’t invent the candy, that happened in Austria in the 1930’s. Curtis was tasked with marketing it in the U.S. The fact is, the candy is bland and mostly tasteless. It wasn’t until Curtis put cartoon heads on the dispenser that it took off and prospered. The dispensers became much more important than the candy and they are collector’s items to this day.

The second death of note is the creator of Gumby. Someone smarter than me will have to explain what Gumby is. He is made of rubber, has a pointed head and is green. The company calls it a doll but boys don’t play with dolls and it would scare a little girl. But we all had a Gumby figure in our toy box right next to the Slinky and the PlayDoh.

The guy that invented it was Art Clokey and he died recently without ever giving us a good sense of where the idea came from and what we were supposed to do with the thing. That doesn’t take away from the fact that Gumby was a pop cultural phenomenon and a best selling toy for many years.

I tell you about these two deaths because they remind me of an important branding ingredient. We try to find ways for our end users to remember us. We use mnemonic devices, logos, colors, tag lines, advertising to remind consumers of our unique product and their connection to it. We use signs and symbols as shortcuts to brand preference. In certain instances these devices become iconic.

Icons in the past include the Jolly Green Giant, Mr. Clean, the Trix Rabbit, Lee Iacocca, Keebler Elves, the Marlboro Man and Mickey Mouse. We don’t see many of these bigger-than-life characters anymore in modern marketing but they are a reminder not just of things past but of the way our minds can recall features and benefits that transcend a product. These images give us a mental nudge and help us make mental associations with important brand attributes.

Mickey Mouse is a rodent. A filthy, despicable little creature that sends men, women and children scurrying. Mice are carriers of all sorts of diseases and we go to great lengths to rid our homes and property of them. Yet Walt Disney turned this vermin into an icon and a global marketing machine.

If you can turn a rodent into an icon, you certainly ought to be able to come up with some clever way of linking your customer to your company brand attributes and value proposition. As we celebrate Gumby and Pokey, the Pez dispenser and icons everywhere, stop and tip your hat to Art Clokey and Curtis Alina who were master marketers who taught us the power of brand markers and they way they can link us to important product value propositions.

Tags: Branding | Marketing | Gumby | Icons | Pez

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A colleague of mine sent me this photo knowing how much I love to talk about advertising and marketing. A couple of things jumped out at me when I saw this photo.

First, in this clearly working class neighborhood the sign seems oddly out of place. The guy’s yard is the size of a Kleenex tissue and has no room to raise sheep. It would be against the zoning laws to have animals in this neighborhood. I wondered, “Where is he getting the lambs? Where is he raising them? And why?"

The other obvious question is, if everyone in the neighborhood has the same size lots, the same zoning restrictions about farm animals, who is going to buy the lambs. There are very few spinning wheels and even fewer people knitting sweaters in this general area so it’s not about the wool. This simply isn’t lamb chop territory--we are more about our beef and chicken.

So not only do I wonder who would buy a lamb, I wonder why anyone would buy a lamb.

And there you have your marketing tip(s) of the day.

1-Location: Duh! Put your store where people who need it can get there. Someone told me once that McDonalds isn’t in the hamburger business, they are in the real estate business. Wherever there is a good corner or suburban strip mall, McDonalds is right there. McDonalds builds stores wherever there are busy, hungry people.

If you are a web-based business, the same principles apply. Make it accessible, easy and relevant to the lives of the users.

Now there are exceptions to the location rule. I know of a Thai restaurant that isn’t convenient to anything and they pack in the crowds. It’s in a semi-industrial area nowhere near the downtown lunch crowd, but boy, does it have a lunch crowd. Best Gang Dang on the planet. How does this work? See item 3 below.

2-Audience: Know who they are, what their needs are, why they buy your products or services. Know their personal longings and desires so you know if your feature set meshes with their aspirations.

3-Need: For heaven sake make sure you have a product someone needs. I don’t know how many Flobee hair cutting devices they sold but it seems like it didn’t do much to improve on scissors as the best way for a do-it-yourself barber. A few interviews with customers can tell you a lot. If good, in-depth qualitative research with focus groups is not an option, spend whatever time you can with a prospective audience group and find out their needs, not yours. (If you must have Thai Gang Dang, you’ll go almost anywhere to get your fix.)

One final thought: make the sign bigger. If you must be in the suburban lamb business, make the sign big enough to read from the street.

These seem like fairly elemental ingredients in the marketing mix, and if you are a sophisticated marketing manager you probably find this discussion pablum for beginners. You already know and practice all this. Right.

No you don’t. However elementary they are, these are three things worth re-examining in any business, any time. If you’ve done this, do it again and again, every time you roll out a new product.

I had a client who is seasoned, bright and informed. They thought there was a real need for their product, new in their line, and they confused their passion and enthusiasm for reality in the marketplace. They confused their needs for real customer needs. A million dollars later they are starting to think there might not be as much demand for their product as they guessed. Please notice the word guess because that’s pretty much what they did.

Unless you have the odd million here and there to toss away, you may want to think about this basic advice from a marketing 101 primer a bit more. Or you might end up selling lambs in suburbia. Baaaad idea.

Tags: Audience | Advertising | Branding

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 This is a blog centered around billion-dollar brands. I love to talk about what the big boys do and try to suggest ways that all of us can imitate the brilliant strategies they employ.

Accordingly, check out this new ad campaign for BMW:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mAJCQIHYLQ#watch-main-area

First thought is this: Are they crazy? For the last 25 years or so they’ve employed a brand strategy called “snob appeal”. This means that a very small segment of the total automobile universe can afford to drive a BMW, but those who can see themselves above the crowd. They see themselves as snobs and are unapologetic about it. They want a car that is better than those driven by the masses. They see themselves as worth the price. They see their car as a badge of honor, a statement that they’ve arrived, and a measure of their self-image.

A few other luxury auto brands employ the same tactic. I’ve never forgotten a magazine ad done by Porsche years ago. It has a slightly blurred shot of a 911 screaming down the highway with this headline: “Fire the chauffeur.”  Three words summarized an attitude. If you’re rich, elite, successful and reward yourself with a premiere automobile, it’s a Porsche.

Mercedes, Lexus, Jaguar and others tap the same vein.

But BMW has done it consistently, better than most, and reminded us about the quality of the car by claiming that they are “The Ultimate Driving Machine.” (Quick disclaimer: I am not currently a BMW owner but I have been in the past and it is a terrific car. I’m currently in the more recession friendly Honda Accord.)

The Ultimate Driving Machine. It’s a powerful line and everything they’ve done the last couple of decades has linked us to this promise. They are great marketers and they have a killer brand value proposition.

Now, January of 2010, you see a complete new approach. In the ad I’ve linked you to here they even say it’s not about the car, it’s about the joy you feel when you drive it. There is much less emphasis on the machine and more focus on the people who drive them. We see the passion that a BMW owner has for a car.

Is this change of direction smart or perilous? Let’s see what the next 12 months brings. Maybe sales go up. Maybe consumers respond to the new mood of the brand and embrace it. Perhaps BMW goes in this direction for the next 25 years and we all begin to think about buying one of their cars because we admire the joy that BMW drivers feel.

It’s a gusty move to drop “The Ultimate Driving Machine” as a brand signal and I’m not sure if it’s a good move. We’ll see.

But, a great big nugget of brand learning has popped out and it’s worth sharing with you. Actually there are two big nuggets.

First, BMW is trying very hard to connect with their customers. I think they want to sell more cars to more people and they have to get off of their snobby pedestal just a bit and appeal to a wider range of buyers. This is smart marketing. It’s a change in positioning and an evolution of their brand voice.

But here’s the important point I’d like to make from the department of "your strategy is showing." BMW has written and is using a line that is the most compelling definition of branding ever written. I’ve tried for 15 years to write this line. I damn them and praise them. It summarizes their new campaign and they overtly use it in their sales copy.

It’s the new voice of the BMW brand, but it is a killer definition of branding. Make a sign and hang it up in your office for everyone to see.

“What you make people feel is just as important as what you make.”

If you make products or if you provide a service; if you develop software or have an ecommerce site; if you are a consumer company or a business-to-business play; if you are small or large, you will come close to having a brand strategy if you rip off this concept from BMW. What you make is important. Differentiating your product or service from the competition is vital. Dramatizing your message and making it memorable is vital.

But don’t start believing that your feature set alone makes you some kind of ultimate driving machine. Don’t forget your customer. Don’t forget your customer experience. And never, ever forget that the customer experience; how your customers feel about you is as important as what they think…..wait, there I go again. I can never get that line right.

 Damn BMW.

Tags: Branding | Customer Experience | BMW | Brand Strategy

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A couple of thoughts:

First, the preposterous film by Michael Moore where he blasts capitalism. I haven’t seen the film and don’t intend to. Interesting that he used a capitalist system to raise money to get an anti-capitalism film made. Moore is a boor and the ultimate hypocrite.

Second thought. On November 9 of 2009 there was an enormous big anniversary celebration of the end of the Berlin Wall in 1989. I followed the ceremonies carefully.

What do these two things have in common?

I visited Berlin in the Spring of 1990, just a few months after the official start of the reunification of Germany. It was an exciting time to be there and I took a few swings of a sledge hammer and helped knock down the wall. This photo shows an actual piece that I broke off. It’s displayed in my office on a piece of re-bar that I also ripped off. It’s the proudest piece of my rock collection.

We entered East Berlin that same day through the historic Checkpoint Charlie and I bought a hat right off the head of an East German border crossing guard. I helped restore capitalism in the former Communist state. Here’s a picture of me in the hat, which I still have in my possession.

That day, as we walked along the wall, the Western side was lined with colorful shops and a vibrant market economy. The West Germans were prosperous, happy and successful. As we crossed into the East we saw gray, dilapidated buildings, poverty and scenes that made us feel like we had left the world of color TV and gone into some surreal black and white world. Very grim and stark differences were glaring just blocks apart. A wall apart.

I salute our capitalistic world. I salute the creativity and innovation that allows people like me to take new products to market and play a role in helping to make entrepreneurs filthy rich. Our culture got a little greedy and we had an economic breakdown but all in all we are just fine. And we’ll continue to be fine. We have no wall. We are prosperous, colorful, and the “Michael Moores” of the world have proven once again to be anachronistic and foolish.

This is a blog about marketing and branding so I’ll stop here and won’t wade into any more politics. Economics are too painful. Here’s to capitalism and democracy!

Tags: Democracy | Capitalism | Berlin Wall

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I stopped to take this picture recently. I assure you it’s not staged although it could appear as a joke. It’s a real sign, along a real road on the way home from my office:

What you are looking at is a very old elm tree that rotted away and posed a threat to this humble house. They cut it down, I’m guessing, before they had a strategy for removing the sizable trunk from the yard.

The owner had a marketing moment. Rather than try to deal with the problem he simply re-framed the problem. It’s no longer a big, old, nuisance tree stump, it’s free firewood. Sure you have to come and cut it up yourself but it is free.

And it’s a great lesson in marketing. It’s called positioning.

I remember when the debates about abortion started raging in the 70’s. For a long time it was a hush-hush topic. It simply wasn’t discussed in the open and it certainly wasn’t anything they wanted to touch in the halls of Congress. Way too polarizing.

But as women’s rights advocates pushed the issue we began to talk about it, then to address the issue, then to change the laws. Eventually the Supreme Court took up Roe vs. Wade and ruled that a woman had the right to choose.

The entire issue changed when the pro-abortion forces re-framed the discussion. They had been branded as “baby killers”. As long as the debate was centered on the rights of the unborn, and on the issue of when life began, the abortionists lost. When they decided to re-frame the issue they drew on one of the most cherished of American freedoms: the right to choose.

Instead of pro-abortion they became pro-choice advocates. It’s hard to argue with “freedom to choose”. The other side countered with a “pro-life” approach but by then the debate was framed, owned and managed by the “pro-choice” lobby. And it has never changed.

Now that’s a controversial issue and not necessarily a branding matter. But it makes a good point about positioning. Everything you do with your brand has to do with the way you frame the issues.

Dove soap, for many years has been all about the ingredients in the soap. They always advertised “one quarter moisturizing cream”. Women believed that is was a better soap.

But with the advent of Oil of Olay and dozens of other mass-market skin treatments, that little bit of “cream” in Dove became irrelevant. Everyone has healthy ingredients now and Dove had to change. “Quality ingredients” is now an issue of “table stakes”. You better have healthy ingredients.

Dove needed to re-frame the argument and take back the dialogue. And take back market share. They did it beautifully.

They dropped the high-priced, overly beautiful, flawless-skinned and otherwise perfect airbrushed super models and put a mix of “real women” in their ads. Tall, short, chunky, black, white, old and young, lumpy, bumpy and loafy, plump and not so plump, they are a group of women who are each beautiful in their own way. Dove soap is now about beautifying the body you were given. They’re telling their audience, “Don’t try to measure up to some unattainable standard. Be you. Dove helps you be beautiful in your own way.”

In the age of personal empowerment, this is a powerful re-branding. They didn’t reformulate the soap, they just re-framed the dialogue that women are having about soap. And about the way Madison Avenue views women.

Some years ago Snapple did the same thing. They started out as a small, healthy juice company long before it was cool to be healthy. When sales didn’t meet expectations they repositioned. They placed themselves in the soft drink category. Yes, this dinky little New England juice company took on the behemoth soft drink companies and made a huge, meteor-hitting-the-earth-and-knocking-it-out-of-orbit kid of impact on an industry.

While Snapple had only about 10% fruit juice, in the world of sugary soft drinks, they became “the healthy soft drink”. Coke and Pepsi don’t have any fruit juice in them so 10% juice is a huge differentiator. The colas are still basically just brown sugar water.

Snapple didn’t change a drop of the drink; they just changed the way you thought about them vs. the competition.

Re-framing. Re-positioning. Claiming ownership and leadership of the dialogue. That’s what great marketers do.

Subway Sandwiches did it when they became the fresh, healthy fast food. No one had ever done healthy fast food and now the rest of the world is trying to catch up. I guarantee that when you think of eating fresh fast food you think of Subway. They grabbed the position, hammered us mercilessly with Jared, and forced everyone else to talk about what we eat on the terms they set. Brilliant.

So, back to free firewood. Put this picture up on the wall in your office and see if you can outdo this guy. He didn’t know he was a marketing genius when he put out this sign he taught us all a lesson in problem solving and branding. It looks like an old, dead tree to some, to others it a toasty, warm winter evening in front of the fireplace.

Tags: Branding | positioning | Subway | Dove | Snapple

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