Changing a Brand: Usually a Very Bad Idea

This blog entry is about the foolhardiness of deciding you need to fundamentally change the identity of a strong brand. By "strong" I mean a brand that has managed to stand for something distinctive and unique, even if that "something" may be polarizing or limiting in some way.

The bogus logic behind deciding to change strong brands usually goes something like this.

* "The Brand is strong but we need to broaden it in order to capture new markets/new customers that are not part of the brand's audience today." This is the GREED reason.
* "The Brand has new competitors that are more broadly positioned and those competitors are growing faster than we are. We need to respond." This is the FEAR reason.
* "The Brand is not relevant to enough people today. What was OK once is not OK now." This is the COP OUT reason.

First of all, if you're fortunate enough to be managing a strong brand, give thanks to the Career Gods. Strong brands are rare as diamonds and just as valuable. If you inherent one, your job is to nurture and protect it. Your job is definitely NOT to change it. The change agents will be everywhere. Your job is to fight them off. Why? Because the absolutely hardest thing to do in marketing is to change someone's mind. If I think "X" and you try to convince me of "Y", good luck to you. Maybe a friend or someone I really trust and respect MIGHT be able to get me to change my mind. But doing it with an ad or some other marketing tool? Not a chance.

Let's say the strong brand you're managing has acquired its identity over 20, 30 or maybe even 50 or 100 years. That's a lot of accumulated marketing that you're now going to try to "change." The only way you're going to be successful is if your company is prepared to keep with the "change" program for the next 10 or 20 years.

The most likely outcome in these situations is that you muddle your brand's previously precise and strong identity, begin to confuse and alienate your brand loyalists, waste a lot of money and time, and (more than likely) experience worsening business results followed by unemployment.

There is almost NEVER a good reason to change a strong brand in any fundamental way. The GREED and FEAR reasons are both lazy marketing solutions to the need to introduce a new brand or brands designed to broaden your company's overall business. The COP OUT reason is really just an acknowledgment that your recent marketing of your strong brand has probably sucked.

Here are two examples of brands that have been working hard at changing; Mercedes Benz and Gold's Gym. I content that both are worse off now than before.

Mercedes fell prey to the GREED reason. They extended the brand into lower priced cars to broaden it and increase its overall market share. The result? Lexus has surpassed Mercedes in both perceived and ACTUAL quality.

Gold's Gym fell prey to GREED, FEAR and COP OUT reasons. New competitors had more all-family and female appeal than the hardcore serious fitness image that Gold's Gym owned. Rather than respond with a new brand, they decided to change Gold's, even going so far as considering dropping the "Gym" from its name. The result? An increasingly muddled image and a me-too fitness club experience.

The only success that I can think of is Cadillac. GM had successfully changed the brand's image by making fundamental changes in the Cadillac products, in its target market and in its marketing AND, it has taken years and lots and lots of money. This is the exception that proves the rule.

If you've got the money and the will and the time (and the product news) to be like Cadillac, go for it! If not, resist the urge to change. Make the most of what you've got. If you need more, create and build new brands that get the job done. Don't wreck the good thing that you already have.

Stop Thinking Like an Advertiser and Start Thinking Like a Brand Programmer

The classic ad model is quickly dying.  

Cable TV started to kill it by dramatically increasing our viewing options and making it easy to zap ads and switch channels.  The Internet is finishing off the job because TV is no longer the only place you can use video to communicate about your brand.  Everyone now has the web.  It's easy to use video on your brand's web site.  In fact, you can create whatever web programming you want.  You're not interrupting anything with an ad.  You're now conveying information (or branded infotainment) that people have surfed their way to your web site to find.  You are no longer an advertiser.  You are now a brand programmer.   Big difference!

As a brand programmer you're free from all those constraints that "advertisers" face.  The big one being the limitation to thirty seconds (or sixty if you've got the big bucks).   Hey, it's your web site.  Those videos can be any length you want.  But long videos cost too much money to produce I hear someone saying.  Not necessarily.  You can spend a fortune or you can spend almost nothing.  That's a marketing decision based on what you think your brand requires.  The most popular viral videos from the web are home-made and that's a big part of their charm.  They are not slick and they are not overly produced and people can't get enough of them.  They're real and that makes them believable and (potentially) persuasive.

Research  techniques that play a large role in shaping TV ads at many companies are not relevant for web-based video.   The research tools that have been used for years to measure and evaluate TV ads don't apply to web-based brand video.  All those research-driven "do's and don'ts" can be tossed right out the window, too.  How liberating for brand communicators!  And how scary.  No rules.  No road maps.  A blank palette where brilliant creativity can flourish and where lame creativity has no excuse to exist.  

But this new world requires a new mindset among marketers and "advertisers."  An ad created for traditional TV is not likely to work on the web.  New thinking and new approaches are required.   Similarly, if you've never been a TV-driven marketing company, you now need to move into the world of video production and become a brand programmer for your web site.   There are many small B2C and many B2B companies that have NEVER considered video as a brand communication tool.  Today, this is just silliness.  If you've got a web site, you've got a platform to use brand video as a marketing tool.   

The Secret Weapon of All Smart Marketing Companies - Their People

How many times have you personally been snagged by some marketing campaign or another only to walk away without buying anything because when you actually came into personal contact with the company, you were turned off or disappointed by the experience?

You call a phone number and get one of those maddeningly impersonal phone trees that make all of us want to hang up.  You walk into a store and the sales people either ignore you, act like they're angry about something or they know nothing about what you're interested in.  You send an email and no one responds or the response is not helpful.

Earlier in my career when I was in the agency business, we did a research project for a client that was desperately seeking some way to differentiate themselves from bigger competitors with stronger national customer service reputations.  We uncovered a gem for them.  The single best thing they could do to stand out, according to their prospects, was to eliminate their automated phone answering system and move to live operators.  The client choose not to listen to the research.  Why?

Because the phone system, despite it being the most intense customer contact tool they had, was not considered "marketing."  The phone system and everything to do with it was part of "operations."  It was cheaper NOT to have live operators.  It was also insane marketing.

The best ads, web sites, promotions, direct marketing and PR can all be undone by one knucklehead on the phone or in the store.  Conversely, mediocre traditional marketing can be overcome with great personal service.  Word-of-mouth is the best advertising.  And the best way to generate it is with incredible personal one-to-one service.  

The smartest marketers realize that and they make sure that the marketing team is either in charge of or deeply involved with all decisions related to any type of customer contact.  It's marketing insanity to consider your customer contact people and systems "operations."  Your people can and should be the most important marketing tool your company has.  If you're not thinking this way, it's time to start.

All your customer contact people should be Brand Ambassadors, capable of preaching the marketing gospel of your brand to anyone they come into contact with.  It's not that hard.  It only takes the right kind of recruiting (are you listening HR?) and the right kind of ongoing training, reward and retention system.  For models, look at companies like Southwest Airlines, Starbucks, and Nordstrom's.

Is it smarter to spend more of your budget on more marketing stuff?  Or is it smarter to spend more of your budget training (and then retaining) your customer contact people to be the best brand ambassadors they can be?  

 

Olympic TV Ads: The Gold Medals and the Insanity Awards

If you're like me, you've been spending quite a bit of time watching the Beijing Olympics, from the incredible opening ceremony to Michael Phelps amazing eight gold medals to Dana Torres (at 41) competing with swimmers half her age to the Dream Team to the Chinese gymnasts (some of those girls were definitely under age!) to the lightening fast Usain Bolt from Jamaica.  All this Olympic wonderfulness is brought to us courtesy of those wealthy companies with enough money to run their TV ads during the games.  And since my last blog was about the importance of brilliance if you're going to invest in TV ads, I thought it might be fun to take a few minutes to assess some of those ads we've all been watching during the games.

Gold Medal Winners

1. Audi:  They illustrate their "Progress is Beautiful" theme in a visually compelling way by transfixing us on a living room as it evolves and changes and grows more beautiful over the years.  The final touch that makes the ad brilliant is the pan to the driveway where a Mercedes "progresses" into a new Audi A4.  
2. Nationwide:  Their "Accident Forgiveness" message is cleverly reinforced by showing an older couple who are on the wrong end of a parking lot mishap being VERY unforgiving to the poor young guy who accidentally and gently side-swipes their old car.  The old lady beats the snot out of the guy with her purse while her husband eggs her on.  "Hit him in the head, Rose."  Too funny.  However, I have to give Nationwide serious style point deductions for over-running this one spot.  Way too much of a good thing.  Especially considering the core idea of this ad lends itself to so many other situations.
3. Budweiser:  They've been running lots of different spots but only one really stands out.  The Dalmation training the rejected Clydesdale so he can earn a spot on the team next year.  The Rocky theme music is used perfectly and the payoff is great.  Fantastically clever way to put their tried and true brand icons to work and generate a major warm & fuzzy feeling for the brand.  

Silver Medal Winners

1. Target:  Catchy spot with two college roommates decorating their dorm room with stuff bought at Target.  Cool music and both girls dance great.  Impossible to not watch.  Fun and the back-to-school timing of the Olympics is perfect for the message.
2. VISA:  Their understated but very elegant "Go World" spots do a great job of capturing the emotional specialness that is the Olympics.  They also have done a number of spots timed exactly to the events of that Olympic day.  The timeliness makes the spots all the more compelling.
3. Chevy/GM:  Like Bud, they've been running lots of ads and most are very mediocre and easily forgettable.   However, one truly stands out.  It's called "Progress" and it illustrates the evolution of a gas station (and the Chevy cars and trucks that use it) in a pristine mountain setting.  The spot ends where it starts - with no gas station and just the pristine setting.  The reason?  Chevy is developing a car for the future called the Volt that won't need gas.  More ads like this and GM might not be in such trouble.
4. GE:  I found three of their ads memorable and compelling.  The first was the "eco-imagination" ad that focused on GE's jet engines using amazing imagery of island birds, with the cute trick of having them lined up runway style waiting for a parade of baby sea turtles to cross on their way to the ocean.  The next two both had to do with GE's healthcare products.  One was a wonderful little love story between a young handsome Chinese street vendor and the pretty intern.  The second was another nice story featuring an Indian doctor delivering care to a remote village thanks to GE products.

The Insanity Award Winners (So Bad That Someone Needs to Lose Their Job)

1. Lenovo:  A series of spots that are utterly unrelated to their product.  The one that is the most interesting to watch features hundreds of sumo wrestlers coming together in the street, assuming the shape of a plane, picking up speed as they march down the street and then taking off.  Every time I see it, I'm thinking "what airline is this for" and then there's some inane Lenovo message at the end that I still haven't heard or understood.
2. Subway:  A promotion spot for their Scrabble game that shows people getting so excited that they spill their soft drinks on everyone else at the restaurant.  Yeah.  Right.  How dumb is this?  Nothing fun about this.  Just stupid.  

The Mediocrity Awards

There are lots of other Olympic advertisers who are spending seriously big bucks to get noticed and who are running ads that are plain vanilla - not awful but definitely not brilliant.  Just so middle of the road that it's sad.  It's a shame that all these smart companies couldn't do better. Here's my list:  McDonald's, J&J, AT&T, Nissan, Samsung, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, VW, ExxonMobil, Home Depot, United and Hilton.  

Brilliant athletic performance like we get to see during the Olympics ought to be supported by brilliant advertising performance, too. 

Brilliance: The Only TV Advertising Strategy That Makes Sense

I've been in the advertising and marketing communications profession my entire adult life, so I should be more attuned than your average joe to the ads that are running on TV these days.  So how come I have such a hard time remembering even one or two TV ads (any ads!) that I saw on the tube last night?  I'm not alone in this.  I often ask people two questions to see how much impact the latest crop of TV spots are having on them:  1)  did you watch any TV last night? and 2) if so, can you recall any of the ads (just one) that you saw?  Most people CAN'T RECALL EVEN ONE AD!!  Yikes.  

We all know why this is happening.  Viewing options have exploded.  Zapping commercials is easier than ever.  And, let's be honest, the ads are usually either not personally relevant (so why pay attention?) or they are just plain uninteresting, boring or too obtuse to make their point in a memorable way.  

If you're an advertiser spending the big bucks on a national TV schedule, this means you have three choices:  1) spend your marketing money some other way, 2) pony up enough bucks so that your media frequency is high enough that you can pound your mediocre TV ads into our brains (who other than the Pharma companies have this kind of money today?) or 3) put on your big boy pants and demand that your marketing and advertising team create nothing short of BRILLIANT TV ads before you commit to a TV-driven national media plan.

Brilliant TV ads are uncommon for a reason.  Even the best and brightest advertising pros in the world typically only have a FEW examples of true brilliance in their portfolios.  Why is that?  Brilliant TV ads require insightful innovative strategies (rare) executed by creative people who are capable of developing BIG IDEAS (even rarer), a client who is capable of recognizing a potentially brilliant idea and has the guts to go for it without researching it to death and watering it down (rarer still), AND exceptional production (casting, direction, editing, etc)  to bring it to life (also rare).  The odds are not good.  99% of the time, all of this doesn't happen and we get what we have today:  communication mediocrity that is wasting a huge amount of money.

So, is it marketing insanity to shot for TV brilliance?  Maybe.  But when it does happen, you will have created something with magical marketing power.  Brilliant TV ads not only work now, they work FOREVER.  People remember brilliance for the rest of their lives.  What kind of marketing ROI is that?  Off the charts!

If you're going to do TV,  in today's media world you've got to go for BRILLIANCE unless you're Pharma rich and can afford to pound it out.  Be aware of what it takes and how hard it is to achieve.  Hire the best.  Listen to what they say.  Hold them accountable.  And set the bar high. Let them know only BRILLIANCE will make you happy.  

All Those Unmanaged Web Sites Out There

Is there anyone in business today who disagrees that having a vibrant appealing web site is now an absolute "Must Have"?

It's the first place a potential prospect or employee or strategic business partner goes to learn about a company.  It's the first place they go to evaluate you versus your competition. Remember that old saying "You only have one chance to make a good first impression"?  Well, today, that first impression is made by your web site.  In fact, today, I'd argue that it's your web presence OVERALL and not just your web site that is making that critical first impression. Your company is being googled and whatever shows up on that first page of a google search represents your company in today's digital interconnected universe.

When is the last time you googled your own company or brand?  Try it.  Be a secret shopper for an afternoon and pretend you know next to nothing about your company and/or brand.  Google it.  Do you like what you see?    Do you see things that you'd like to change and improve?  Is your SEM and SEO what it should be?

Now, here's the $64,000 question....do you have anyone in your organization whose primary job is to manage the internet presence of your company and/or brand?  If not, WHY NOY? How easy is it for you to make changes to your web site and actively manage your web presence?   Companies and their senior executives generally get all hot and bothered about building or rebuilding a web site and then they check it off the "to do list" and move on to the next project. That's insanity.  Whenever I revisit a web site and see that it is exactly the way it was the last time I looked, I conclude two things:  1)no one is paying attention and 2) this company doesn't get it.  They are not a sophisticated marketing communicator and probably not a very well run business.  In some cases these are probably erroneous perceptions, but perception is reality.  The point is that if you, as a senior marketing or corporate executive, are ignoring your web presence or attending to it only periodically, you are ignoring a critically vital aspect of your company.

Your web presence is NOT a project or a part-time job.  It is a strategically vital dynamic communication platform that is probably more important than every other communication tool in your marketing arsenal.  It merits full time attention .  It is never "DONE".  It is a work in progress that should be evaluated, measured and managed every single day.  

If your company is not paying enough attention to its web presence, shame on you.  Start!  It's marketing insanity not to.

How's Your Company's Marketing IQ?

The economy really sucks.  Stock prices are way down.  Fuel prices are way up.  And this guy Obama looks like he's going to be our next President.  CEOs are scared.  Their personal portfolios are suffering.  The Board is antsy.  Revenues and profits are down. What's a CEO to do?  Why, fire people, of course, and cut costs like crazy.  Here's a typical CEO thought bubble "The future be damned.  I've got to save myself NOW."  Here's a novel idea that rarely seems to occur to our titans of industry:  cut costs somewhere OTHER THAN marketing.  Rather than marketing being the first department to take the hit, the sagest executives should view marketing as the last place they want to cut.  

Too many supposedly savvy CEOs fall prey to the same disease when times are tough.  It's called Slashitis.  Its symptoms are a panicky need to slice costs right NOW in order to preserve:  1) company EBITDA and 2) the CEO's own personal continued employment (hate to see those big paychecks stop showing up in the bank account).  In many companies, a good dose of cost-cutting is often good medicine.  It's easier for an organization to get fat and complacent when things are going well.  Tough times force companies to take a hard look at their cost structure and make "adjustments" that are often overdue.  It's business Darwinism - mutate or become extinct.  It's survival of the fittest.  

But too often, the marketing department and its budgets are wrongly targeted for the most drastic cuts.  Generally, a cutback in marketing doesn't hurt you today or even tomorrow. Just like it takes time for marketing to work.  It takes time for the lack of marketing to hurt.  If your company has a well-managed marketing department, your marketing investment (notice the word investment) should be laying the foundation for future success and prosperity. Marketing's mission is to build brand preference, create a predisposition to buy and generate prospects for the sales team.  All are absolutely core tasks in any well run company.  Under what economic conditions (short of imminent collapse of the entire enterprise) does it ever make sense to NOT be doing these things?

If marketing is viewed as only a cost (not an investment) then it is far easier and far more justifiable to cut its budgets and its people.  Marketing should never be just a cost.  If it's viewed that way, it's for two reasons.  Either the CMO has done a poor job of developing marketing metrics that document the effectiveness of the company's marketing programs OR the CEO is simply out-to-lunch when it comes to understanding how imperative marketing is to a healthy well-run business.

This later statement may seem extreme, but I have seen many companies where the CEO is literally clueless about marketing.  You've seen these companies, too.  Here are seven deadly signs of a company (and a CEO) with low Marketing IQ.  

1. A history of non-marketing executives in the CMO job.  If the CMO role is routinely being filled by a sales exec or an operations exec or (heaven help it) a finance exec, you know this is likely to be a company with low Marketing IQ.
   
2. A history of no one at all in the CMO role.  Duh.
   
3. A lack of even the most basic marketing metrics.  What are they measuring?  If they're not measuring it, you know no one is really managing it.  Another sure sign of low Marketing IQ.
   
4. A marketing staff that has no idea how to set objectives, develop plans and measure progress.  If everyone is focussed on a marketing task or two, but no one can define overall objectives or show you an overall plan, this is another sign of low Marketing IQ.
   
5. A total DIY marketing mentality.  If everything has always been done "in house" you better look out.  Another sign of low Marketing IQ.
   
6. No customer or product research.  This is like trying to drive a car blindfolded.  No information is another sign of low Marketing IQ.
   
7. Dull middle-of-the-road boring totally forgettable marketing communication materials.  "Safe" is the riskiest marketing approach of all.  If the company is not doing anything that stands out, it's another sure sign of low Marketing IQ.

I hope your company is different and shows none of these signs.  I hope you've got a marketing savvy CEO with a high Marketing IQ who's hired a strong CMO.  I hope that this rotten economy is not causing your company to abandon marketing in the interest of short term profit.  If not, my advice is to polish up that resume because you're on a losing team.