Brand growth requires changing the game not just playing it

Sometimes when I am faced with a problem, I can only see it from one viewpoint. The result is that I get stuck and can’t figure out how to solve the problem.

I was reminded of this the other day when a group of us were discussing how best to grow the financial value of a brand. Because we tend to think about a brand’s status in the context of its product category, we often forget that the biggest opportunity for growth may exist outside the current definition of that category.

In spite of the fact that most of our efforts as marketers and researchers are focused on growing market share, the evidence suggests that fighting for share within an existing product category is likely to be a long hard battle, with little prospect of victory.

In most established product categories in developed economies, brand market shares change very little from one year to the next. Any action is likely to be countered by the competition resulting in a stalemate. It is not that you can afford to ignore the share fight, because if you don’t fight, you risk losing share. But equally, there is a distinct risk that overly aggressive competition will result in unprofitable share fights and price wars.


So what should a brand do to generate growth? In many cases, this requires stepping back from the current situation and looking at it from a different viewpoint. How can you best change the game to your brand’s advantage? This requires finding ways to change the way customers think about the category, not fighting for share within the category.

I think there are three basic ways a brand can change the brand game to its advantage:

Expand the category
Disrupt the category
Exceed the category
Brands expand the category when they find new ways to make their category relevant to consumers. By effectively communicating a new use, the brand will gain a temporary advantage over the competition. The challenge is to ensure that the brand is strongly associated with the new usage before other brands copy it.

Brands disrupt the category status quo when they come up with new, meaningfully different innovation. Real innovation challenges people’s existing perceptions of the category and gives them pause for thought. Often, the innovation is simply adding a new level of benefit, e.g. Colgate Total promised 12 hour fresh breath protection. Adding the anti-bacterial and copolymer required charging more for the new product versus standard Colgate, but many people perceived it was worth paying a premium for the added benefit.

Finally, exceeding the category means meeting the same need but with radically better delivery. When Apple first launched the iPod, it changed the way people thought about personal music players. The iPod met the same need as the Sony Walkman, but did so in a far better way. Similarly, people switched from Blockbuster to Netflix because it was far more convenient to get a DVD through the mail than have to go to the store.

So what do you think? Do these three ways of escaping the share fight make sense to you? Are there other ways a brand might transcend its category? Please share your thoughts.

Is Oreo an Iconic Brand?

I am in the middle of writing a new Point of View about iconic brands (you can find the previous one here). The trouble is that we don’t have a good, data-driven definition of an iconic brand. Last time I settled for the “you know it when you see it” definition, and left it at that. But this time around, I was hoping to be a little more prescriptive.

The trouble with the “you know it when you see it” definition, is that it gets me into all sorts of debates. Is Kodak still iconic, even though the company is bankrupt? Do I really believe Google is iconic, even though its identity is only really a logo? (And a logo that often becomes a Doodle at that.) And is McDonald’s a sort of fading icon, with its heyday in the past? Interesting though these debates are, it would be nice to have some more definitive metrics that we could put around a brand and say, “yes, that one is iconic.”

I had this challenge in mind when I came across this article in The New York Times. It seems that this year, Kraft Foods’ Oreo brand celebrates its centenary. Now there, I thought, is a brand that must be iconic. The dictionary definition of an icon is a person or thing regarded as a representative symbol of a culture or movement; someone or something afforded great admiration or respect. So, what are the key elements that make Oreo iconic?

First off, I would say the brand is instantly recognizable. So recognizable that it can’t be mistaken for anything else, and can even be used as a reference point. I was once directed to look for the “Oreo cows” while driving in Maine. Sure enough, the Belted Galloways made a good navigation aid. 

But there is far more to Oreo’s symbolism than the purely visual. There is a whole set of sensory rituals associated with the brand: twist and lick, dunking in milk and so on. These ensure that most people have a strong and positive affection for the brand based on personal experience. And the rituals are something that is shared. This ad, from the UK, brilliantly highlights the emotional connection that is built around the Oreo experience.

So my second marker for an iconic brand is that the brand’s meaning is shared across a wide audience and embedded in popular culture.

Unlike iconic brands of days gone by, the Oreo brand is still a vital one. It is alive and kicking, doing things that make sure it is still salient and accessible. As John Ghingo, senior director for global biscuits at Kraft Foods, states in The New York Times article: 

What we have really set out to do is something authentic for the brand, true to its roots, that is fresh for today...We want to acknowledge what Oreo has been over the past 100 years and recognize what it means in today’s world.

And that speaks to the fact that for an iconic brand to remain relevant, it must somehow remain true to its origins. But it cannot do that at the expense of its contemporary relevance. It needs to balance the two.

So what do you think? Are the elements of instant recognition and shared understanding the ingredients of an iconic brand? Are there more? Is Oreo truly iconic? And what other brands would you nominate to that status?

Please share your thoughts.

http://www.millwardbrown.com/Global/Blog/Post/2012-03-07/Is-Oreo-an-iconic-brand.aspx?eid=MBBlog

Peeling the three layers of the brand onion - Nigel Hollis, Milward Brown

In recent posts I have been exploring the importance of brand meaning. My basic premise is that the brands which people find to be different in a good way are the ones they will be willing to pay a price premium for. But as I have explored this topic, I have come to realize that there are some very distinct layers of meaning (how a brand is perceived) and marketers need to work differently to motivate people within each level.

Let me quickly outline the three main layers of brand meaning that I believe are important, starting with the outside of the “brand onion” and working in. Each layer permeates the ones inside it and can influence or be influenced by the others. 

Cultural meaning

This is the broad context in which consumers come to appreciate what a brand stands for and respond to it. Anexample would be brands like Molson beer in Canada, which in the past has sought to leverage the local culture of Canadian pride to its own advantage.

Brands also seek to leverage popular culture by teaming up with celebrities. And some brands are so strong that they are not just influenced by popular culture but they also play a part in influencing it. Brands like Google and Facebook have shaped the world in which we now live and earned unique status in the minds of many as a result. 

Community meaning

While this might seem like a more granular version of cultural meaning, I feel that it is worth considering community as a separate layer. Community does not just denote a local community. In my mind, it refers to any group of associated people: colleagues, people who support the same club or pursue the same hobbies and interests. 

Other people might refer to these groups as tribes, but that implies a strong degree of allegiance and, as we know, people can simply be influenced by those around them. All these different communities have the power to expose us to new brands and influence our perceptions of them. Once again, a few strong brands actually have the power to attract a community around the brand itself such as Harley Davidson, Apple and Patagonia.

Individual meaning

As discussed in this post, individual meaning is probably far more motivating than the collective meaning. This is the domain where small differences can have big consequences. A brand simply needs to be different enough for someone to choose it and pay a premium. The source of that meaningful difference may be so unique or trivial that it is not readily appreciated, even by the person buying the brand (which, as I noted previously, has some important implications for research).

As an aside, I do wonder whether corporate culture adds another level of meaning that needs to be taken into account, but perhaps that is more an influence than an outcome?  

So, why worry about these layers of meaning? I think there is a real need for marketers to distinguish between cultural and community meaning, i.e. shared meaning that is relatively stable, and individual meaning, which while more powerful, is probably less stable. For example:

I used to love the Omo detergent brand because it seemed to have values I share, but then it let me down and ruined my best shirt.

I believe marketers need to influence the cultural and community shared meaning to provide a stable context for people’s personal brand meaning. But this is not to say they should ignore individual meaning since it is open to suggestion. To be successful, marketers must also frame the user experience to good advantage, i.e. “this really gets my whites white” (even if the difference is imperceptible, advertising helps steer people's perceptions of the end result).

So what do you think of these different layers of meaning? Do you think marketers need to think more about how best to layer meaning onto brands at each level? Please share your thoughts.


http://www.millwardbrown.com/Global/Blog/Post/2012-02-20/Peeling-the-three-layers-of-the-brand-onion.aspx?eid=MBBlog

Goodbye purchase funnel, hello loyalty loop?

McKinsey & Co want us to think of the consumer purchase journey more as an iterative loop than a simplistic purchase funnel.

The idea that the purchase decision journey is not linear has been around for years. I wrote about it in The Global Brand in 2008, referencing Prophet’s Brand Touchpoint Wheel from earlier that decade (click here for a 2003 reference).

Don’t get me wrong, I think the McKinsey decision journey is an improvement on the purchase funnel. As I wrote in The Global Brand:

A good discipline for developing a customer-centric view is to lay out the different contact points that consumers have with your brand, starting from their first contacts, when they may not even be considering a purchase in the category, through the purchase process and the experience of the brand in use.

I like the fact that the McKinsey model includes a separate track for the post-purchase experience and a loyalty loop. It reminds us that the job of marketing is to help retain existing brand buyers not just acquire new ones.

But perhaps McKinsey and I need to let go of the idea of a decision journey and start thinking about a cloud. As Sue Elms comments in this POV, the world is becoming far more complex than a mere loop. It might be better to think of our potential and current customers existing in a cloud of turbulent and sometimes conflicting influences.

Sue proposes that instead of targeting people at specific points on the path to purchase – be it funnel or loop – we need to plan for “meaningful coincidences.” The objective of each coincidence is to help create a center of gravity around a brand based on people’s impressions accumulated over time.

In future, Sue suggests the challenge will be to ensure that any combination of communications will be effective, because we cannot guarantee that people will encounter them in the “right” order. Sue states:

Though their specific tasks may differ, each impression must stay true to the core idea of the brand, and must be designed to prime and recruit other impressions in the Cloud. It will be vital to find something that works through every connection. Iconography, symbolism, idiom, and implicit communication will become far more important to support the delivery of powerful and synergistic brand impressions.

So maybe the McKinsey decision journey is still too simplistic. It fails to capture the random, fluid nature of people’s interaction with brand touch points, be they paid, owned or earned. And in spite of the fact that marketing communications are becoming ever more fragmented – digital as well as traditional – the authors still assume that marketers will be able to target people at specific points in the purchase process. It is an increasingly false assumption, but a very cozy and reassuring one. I guess the problem is that we all like simplicity, irrespective of the complexities of the world we live in. That’s why the purchase funnel has lasted so long.

So what do you think? Are we dealing with a funnel, a loop or a cloud? Are most comms plans delusional? Please share your thoughts.

All moments of truth build a brand

You will probably have heard of the first and second moments of truth as publicized by Procter & Gamble (P&G), but how about the zero moment of truth? According to Google, the zero moment of truth inserts itself between the priming moments of traditional media, and the decision making moments at the point of purchase. The zero moment of truth is the result of online searching and sharing conducted when someone is actively engaged with shopping the category.

To be honest, my initial reaction to the concept of the zero moment of truth was: Well, duh!

If marketers have not woken up to the fact that shoppers now actively search for information and advice prior to making a purchase, then they must have been asleep for the last decade. But Google proposes that on average, the zero moment is the most relevant of all the moments. Is that really true?

I think the answer depends on the brand and category. For a higher interest or risk category, like cars, banks and hotels, then I have little doubt that the zero moment of truth is a pivotal point in the purchase process, helping to consolidate initial impressions of a brand gained elsewhere. But does that model apply to a TV program, a soft drink or breakfast cereal? Most people don’t bother to research purchases like these, they just try them.

More importantly, while simple and nicely presented, the Google video views the world from the point of view of a first purchase, and seems to ignore the interaction between the priming, seeking and confirming moments. We know from integrating tracking and search data that highly visible broadcast advertising dramatically improves search results for the advertised brand. And no amount of seeking is going to undo the effect of a disappointing second moment of truth. Bad experiences undermine every other moment of truth.

Gordon Pincott, Chairman Global Solutions at Millward Brown, proposes that individual brand relationships do not evolve slowly, but are the result of snapshot shifts in response to specific brand encounters. Any encounter with a brand could be make or break, be it first, zero or second. This makes far more sense to me than a linear model of decision making, and fits far better with the complexity of today’s markets and media (see Sue Elms’ POV, "Integrated Planning: Standing Out in The Cloud," for another take on this issue).

In the context of a non-linear world, the art of marketing is to ensure that all moments of truth deliver a coherent and positive impression of the brand. You cannot guarantee which brand encounter will prove to be a moment of truth. All you can do is try to ensure as many people as possible are positively predisposed to buy the brand, and then find the proof they need to confirm that feeling when it comes to making a decision to purchase.

So what do you think of the zero moment of truth? Please share your thoughts.

Google's Zero Moment of Truth