WHY BRANDING GOT SO CONFUSING

Branding used to be so simple. When Bass created their Red Triangle beer in 1875 (the UK's first registered trademark) they did it so those who couldn’t read would point out the beer they wanted. It was also a mark of reliability. Forget brand values, a brand was basically the same wherever and whenever you bought it.

This matters with food and drink. When it comes to cars it’s a little different with the idea of what we call a Friday car or in Germany a Monday car. Monday why? Because all the car workers are wasted after a weekend’s drinking…boom, boom. I heard that last week from a German Taxi driver in Nuremberg.

Like vicars we marketers can have doubts about our religion. I am struggling to believe in the power of branding as it used to be in the second half of the 20th century when we had Double Diamond, Mother’s Pride, Gold Blend, Silk Cut and Malibu.  

When we had a plethora of ‘brands’ like Screaming Yellow Zonkers, Slime and Sunny Delight (remember that? From sales of £160 million in the UK it disappeared as the beta-carotene colourant in the product was found to turn skin orange if too much SD was drunk). In these good old days when an ad man said “people drink the advertising” Heineken, Carling Black Label in beer and in soft drinks Tango, funnier and more extraordinary advertising kept us glued to our TVs. Brands had become entertainers.

Stable brands like Mars, Heinz, Persil and Coca- Cola carried on plying their remorseless trade but I began to have serious doubts. Like the Reverend Johnson in Blazing Saddles who said in prayer:-  

“O Lord, do we have the strength to carry off this mighty task in one night? Or are we just jerking off?”

There was Coca-Cola’s cynical and disastrous water brand Dasani and the sense that business had gone mad.

In China I drank their now global ‘brand’ Great Wall wine. No two glasses were the same. What the hell was going on in this world of branding?

People called themselves brands. Countries became brands. The ultimate brand of course was Planet Earth. 

I became a deep sceptic about the religion of branding except when someone creates great product, because they want to, and signs it with their own name.

I believe in Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, I believe in Ted Baker, I believe in Dr Oetker the German family food company and I believe in Jimmy’s.

Jimmy’s is an Iced Coffee business in Christchurch, Dorset founded by Jim Cregan 5 years ago because he craved the iced coffee he’d drunk in Australia but couldn’t find here.

Like Patagonia (Yvon Chouinard’s creation) Adidas and Whole Food Market a person had an idea and drove it forwards with purpose and a simplicity of vision.

Great brands are real, living things created around an idea and just a touch of madness.

They are never made by a Marketing Committee.

HASHTAGCONSULTANTSLASHTWITTERSLASHBRAND

I’ve been thinking about three things this week. The legitimacy (or otherwise) of consultants, Twitter and why branding works.

Let’s start with the proposition that we are a parsnip. As such life would be dull. Being an Essential or an Aldi parsnip would be a horrid fate. But imagine you were a Pershore Purple  and better still an Organic Pershore Purple Parsnip (notice the capital letter in “parsnip”) and all would be so much better.

Because language matters,especially when it comes to branding.

But it’s my inability to cope with just 40 characters and the new language of today which is crazy sparse and not easy for someone of my age to ship with. Twitter and I know each other, of course, but we exchange just curt nods

Until this week when the absurd Omnicom/Publicis ad agency merger collapsed in a crash of what I hear is over £60 million of advisor fees.  Here are just three of the tweets I saw:

“Damn. Omnipube was best name ever.” 

“Omnicom rolls over, blinks, stares perplexedly into the sleeping face of Publicis, thinks: My head! Where am I? I remember Champagne...”

“This whole failed Publicis Omnicom merger was like two magnets with the same polarity trying to attract each other.”

And here are those very magnets.

So now I get it. Brevity is the soul of wit and this blog already much too long.

Finally consultants or “people who are unemployed” as my mother used to describe them. I saw this quote from the splendid Erica Jong and felt myself nodding:

 “Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.”

I believe in advice, I believe in asking others for help but the Job Centre for the unemployed is not necessarily the best place to go to find it. So back to branding.

I decided to create my own mega-merger of three consulting companies I set up in my head called McFinsey, Paine and Company and the Hoxton Consulting Group thus, at a stroke, in my lurid imagination creating the biggest consulting group who are proficient in - wait for it - strategy, leadership and change management. That should do it.

As the week rolled on I had two conversations - one about HR. 

“Aren’t we delegating management to this dubious department? You have a tricky people issue…call in HR (not)” and the second was about marketing. Someone said they had a large marketing department and I heard a voice saying:

“Why? Why would you do that - tie up all that fixed and probably mediocre cost when you could go out and shop for talent?”

It was my voice. Me, who’d spent a third of my life in marketing in a big companies. Yet marketing is an expensive investment when the brand (that very Pershore Purple of a thing) should be owned by the CEO and the board. 

Call in consultants with talent but just make sure they have a capital letter and brand name attached. And remember this - consultancy is a “thing” now.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

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.