WHERE HAVE MY BRANDS GONE?

Brands have been a large part of my life, buying them, creating and building them as a marketeer and as an advertising executive. I spent my time persuading myself that Britain was a brand (it isn’t) and that I was a brand (I am certainly not). The definition has become too self-important. But here I am today in a chilly January mourning the passing of my favourite brands as though they were football stars who’ve hung up their boots.

The  thing about brands is they give you certainty. Wherever you are in the world that favourite brand will look the same, behave the same, taste the same and indeed be the same. Brands are consistent. Brands never let you down. Like Heinz Tomato Ketchup. Many have tried to emulate or even surpass it. All have failed. There is only one Tomato Ketchup

I thought the same was true of wine until there was a scandal around Chateau Giscours (above), one my favourite clarets, in 1995 when they were caught mixing milk, water, acid and cheaper, local red wine into the chateau's second vintage.

The power of the brand historically was demonstrated again by Heinz when they won in what was called the “Baked Bean War” of 1996. A torrent of cheap baked beans hit the selves of supermarkets selling for as little as 5p (or in one bizarre case they reduced the price to - 2p a tin).  Heinz stood firm and their price remained the same as did their brand share. Enough people believed there was no taste like Heinz. Is that true now of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise? Of Cadbury’s Milk Chocolate? Of Heineken? Of Persil?

Does Ford have the brand salience they had when they produced the Ford Cortina or the eccentric Ford Capri which performed like a skittish stallion with a very long neck whose concept of braking was somewhat rudimentary? Is Ford a brand anymore? Is Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroen? Do they mean more than Skoda or Seat?

In the certain world of the past we knew where we stood with the Tories, Socialists, Liberals and the Church of England. But the fact that there is no brand consistency or reliability may not in fact be such a bad thing. It allows us to recalibrate and regard the so-call contemporary super-brands as the transient things they are. Apple, Facebook, Google are like the Detroit brands of the past - flashes-in-the-pan of branding.

But there are brands that sustain and survive the odd misguided leader’s attempts at product sabotage and that’s football clubs. Manchester United have reverted to their brand values after José’s attempt to make them what they were not.

Arsenal, Liverpool and Brighton and Hove Albion are all true to a style of playing and set of values that are consistent.

Brands matter. They are the artefacts which persuade people that they’re better. Only one thing. Today you have to live up to that image rather than just rely on advertising magic.

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.  

HOW MUCH IS IT WORTH?

I keep on meeting ex colleagues and so-called marketing experts who rather like defrocked priests seem to want to confess they’ve lost the faith. They look at me with embarrassment and confusion on their faces and say “it’s all bollocks isn’t it, isn’t it?”

A career in advertising and brand management and they’ve lost their belief, all those years in brand prayer and suddenly they’ve become marketing atheists. But of course it’s always been all right to have doubts especially when the language of marketing has been purloined by non-marketeers and especially the media.
Anyone would be confused to hear people talk about the UKIP brand or brand Russia or the Linda Barker brand – she used to talk about herself as LB  not as a person at all, an image, a brand  – for heaven’s sake – an icon.

This week I happened, in the interests of curiosity rather than penury, to visit Poundland and Lidl. Both are doing brilliantly right now and deservedly. They’re great value and they have brilliantly clear positioning. “We are cheap” they say and they are.

 But in either you learn the value and reason for brands, those products with the swagger of superiority like Innocent or Apple or Dom Perignon. There is, of course, no problem with these stores or Aldi which increasingly cater for the Waitrose shoppers in us when we awaken lean, hungry and overdrawn. Our left brain guides us to smoked salmon, napkins, ketchup and chocolate which is just fine and does the job. Eat it and your self-esteem, health and complexion will not suffer.

But there’s more to life than crisps from Estonia at £1.09 rather than £2.50 from a start up in Stoke Poges where the owner has dreams about potatoes and would kill you if you teased him or her.

Earlier in the week I was in Selfridges trying to get my Mont Blanc pencil mended. To my horror I see it’s more than doubled in price from the ridiculous £130 it cost a few years ago. I’m told it cannot be mended here but has to be sent to Germany where it will be assessed and a quotation phoned to me. This whole diagnosis, estimate and complex restoration process (should I care to comply) will take four weeks.

 This is contemptuous luxury brand marketing at its best. But despite myself I can’t resort to a W.H. Smith pencil or a Bic….despite myself I love my Mont Blanc in the way others love their iPhones.
The real truth about marketing and the creation of brands is they cost more because they are better and, more importantly, although they are not that much better, they have a better story to tell about why, how, where and when they are crafted.

Most marketeers have their focus wrong. They need to worry a lot more about the quality of their product than their marketing.

But they also need to remember that in shops like Lidl, brilliant as they are, there are no stories, there’s just stuff.