WHY GREAT BRANDS SURVIVE

In a week where the poor self-righteous Co-op has wobbled in woe as allegations and revelations have poured out I was thinking about brands like theirs.

Everything and everyone tried to become a quasi-brand a while back. “Brand-me” was being promoted by recruitment agencies. Politicians and political parties used brand consultants. Countries were called brands. Yet it all smelt a bit phoney. Most of these entities had profile (or not), reputation (or not) and advertising or some sort of marketing positioning – key word that - “positioning”.

But the acid test of what happens to a product or service is when it hits the rocks does it sink like a stone or does it somehow scramble to safety, battered, wet and still functioning? If it’s the latter then it’s a real and worthwhile brand.

Do you remember John West’s horrors? Well it survived those and thrives today.

Mercedes triumphantly weathered their new A4 dramatically failing the Moose Test and turning over.
And Nestlé, after some scares on infant healthcare, has probably the most assiduously prepared baby food brand in world now.

Brands like Coke are primarily valued for their relationship with their customers. Their value is in brand assets not in in tangible assets like factories.

In crisis – the launch of New Coke in 1985 when the consumers rebelled against this innovation - Coca-Cola responded by listening to their consumer again and changing back to Classic Coke.
Their brand has thrived but others suffer as their owners dither and try to control the uncontrollable flow of news.
BP received astoundingly poor advice in its media handling of the Deep Water Horizon oil spill and is lastingly damaged.
Whilst Carnival’s Costa cruise ships seem to have survived the Costa Concordia debacle the hole below their reputational waterline will probably do for them.

But back to the poor, legs-crossed-in-embarrassment Co-op. A bankrupt bank, a laughing- stock company and in denial too as, they try to manage the news. Staff, I believe, have been advised to turn round newspapers they sell which have nasty headlines. Its very worthiness as a brand and its ethical stance exposes a vast weakness – the brand has had little humility and no sense of humour. I doubt if they’d have found Peter Brookes’ cartoon of a Co-op Funeral Parlour with a notice in the window “No Flowers” in the slightest funny. Nor would the other good line about “Chrystal Methodism” have raised a smile.

How brands behave in a crisis defines them. Because the real truth is that memories out there are short. Recall of Flowers will have withered soon enough but what will remain is an overall impression of the Co-op brand.

It’s a fabulous opportunity for them to say sorry and whilst everyone’s focused on them say what they stand for.

The alternative to being up front and cheerful is oblivion.  

BRAND CRAZY TIMES

I blame the accountants.

When they discovered that brands were worth lots of money we were all told to join the brand game. If it earns money it’s a brand now. And brands are valuable. Madonna is a brand but so is John Humphrys – the Today programme inquisitor. Be a brand.

Put it this way, as the CEO of Nestle did when asked what would the consequences of each of the following occurred. Imagine the following horrors:

• Your top team assassinated
• Your key manufacturing plants blown up
• Your top brands confiscated

He was remarkably sanguine about the first two – a bit of time, a lot of money but back to normal soon because no-one and nothing is indispensable apart from brands…. If the brands go we are in big trouble….it will take vast cost and risk in trying to recreate them.

Brands are hard to create, expensive to develop and hard to control…like works of art or orchids or Pit Bull Terriers.

Brands used to be staid and safe. Benton and Bowles (imagine what Messrs Benton and Bowles were like) were said to have been the architect of the three ‘b”s – “big, bland and boring” or if you add the eponymous founders the “five b’s”.

And this was especially so in the field of professional services where the names of the founders were used to define the business – thus J Walter Thompson or Doyle Dane Bernbach were all we needed to know. But now we live in different times.

Here are just a few names flying around in the marketing game right now. Marketing men have stopped behaving like bankers (and the mind still boggles as to what Saatchi & Saatchi would have done to Midland Bank if their attempt to buy it in the 1980s had come off – maybe the face of the high street bank would have changed forever.)

Some names, names just within the professional advisor sector: Mother, Strawberry Frog, Adam & Eve, Karmarama, Elvis, The Red Brick Road, Pretzel, Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, 3 Monkeys ….

And why not…why not find a name that grabs the imagination and tells a story?

These are brands now not just firms of advisors.

And as such you could argue life is more colourful.

The days of egocentricity have been surplanted by a desire to make your company name sing and I think I prefer it.