It’s Not Marketing Lite – Selling Beer the Pabst Way

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A lovely chap called Richard Richardson introduced me to the expression ‘Marketing Judo‘.

A good metaphor for Challenger Brands – using skill, technique and guile to ‘throw’ the big guys.  Richard is a Marketing Judo Seventh-Dan Ninja-Slippers Black-Belt, with the famous Harry Ramsdens marketing coup in his trophy-case. It makes for a good book.

But this isn’t about Fish & Chips. It’s about Beer.

Pabst are little-known in the UK, though somewhere along the path of beer exploration I’ve tried some of their brands – like Colt 45, and Schlitz. And I can kinda picture their neon signs hanging above pool tables in movies, probably in something like ‘Thelma and Louise’.

Pabst really came to my attention a few years ago – reading a case-study of careful brand-handling for their centrepiece brand: PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon). With steeply declining beer sales in the late nineties, Pabst were lucky enough to hire a young marketing guy with loads of GAF. And enough gumption to see that the subversive, sub-culture groups who enjoyed a PBR – like bike couriers and skate-boarders – were rebelling against the Buds and Miller big-guys. So they wouldn’t support sudden marketing enrollment overtures from PBR.

Pabst began a subtler, more patient path to growth – earning the trust and ultimately the overt advocacy of their underground – young – fanbase.

It led them to embrace smart urban marketing like this.

and now… with new (billionaire) owners you might expect the story to round-off with ‘…and then they broke it, with their big ideas and bigger wallets’.

Except they haven’t. With one of their other Pabst brands – Old Milwaukee – they DID run a TV spot, with Hollywood funny-man Will Ferrell, during the Superbowl. They DIDN’T buy a 30-sec national TV showing at $3.5MM, though – that’s what Bud and Miller do.

They bought a slot in a single local TV region in Nebraska, for a couple of grand, and made that clutzy-looking ad with Will. Even the clip is someone’s home-captured vid of it showing on the telly.

Bud and Miller are flat on their backs on the dojo floor, wondering where that came from.

Blue Ribbons and Black Belts all round.

Raising the Wunderbar too high

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How could you possibly conquer a fortress – guarded by Mr Tickle and Yogi Bear?

Müller’s latest campaign is the most stunning recent example of big brand barrier building. A perfect example of the “we must be good, we can afford to do THIS” school of marketing.

For smaller brands, with a challenger mindset, this is good news. Those same walls, built so high, can also create a huge obstacle to genuine engagement. We all might watch, with some awe, at the mighty edifice before us…but we are left feeling like the subjects of a mad king.

The challenger won’t try to storm the barricades – or build their own elaborate castle on a facing hilltop.

Instead, the bold challenger will wander the lanes, performing more humble, sincere displays of street-artistry – up-close and at eye-level. US yoghurt maker Stoneyfield has a sincere, humble, engaging approach  http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/pure-genius/stonyfield-farm-ceo-how-an-organic-yogurt-business-can-scale/3638

Müller used to… Lick the Lid of Life was a charming insight, pitched at our eye-level. They should dismantle the castle-walls – because the awe-struck will soon tire of gazing upward in wünder.







Don’t be Pretty Good.

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We turned up with guitars, voices and a little ukelele for a wonderful Open Mic night in our local – last night. And all I could think about was branding and differentiation.  That’s a lie, actually. Until we’d done our thing, all I could think about was doing our thing and not fluffing it. Once we’d done it, and gotten away with it…then all I could think about was branding.

Because – everyone was Pretty Good. All the other singer/songwriters with a heartfelt lyric and a nifty chord-change were Pretty Good. We were, I humbly offer, Pretty Good. No Duffers.

Except for one duo. Two guys, one guitar, neat V-neck jumpers – looked a bit like PhD students. And then they belted out a single song which segued from a cover of Nirvana into a Cher classic, and a bunch of other unlikely musical bedfellows.

And where the rest of us Pretty Good-ers got a roomful of applauders, these guys got whoops and yells. Not from everyone. Some people don’t like covers. Some people especially don’t like a Kurt-Cobain-grafted-onto-ELO cover.

But those of us who loved their schtick, lifted them way above Pretty Good. We stood up and shouted our appreciation. The clap-ometer bent way over to the position marked ‘eleven’ for these guys.

Don’t be Pretty Good. Everyone is Pretty Good. You don’t need your brand to slip quietly off-stage to polite applause from everyone. You need a small(er) bunch of people to stand up and whoop for you. Let the others sit on their hands – you weren’t meant for them, anyway.

Be Distinct. Oh – and get a good name. I’ve no idea what these guys were called.

 

 

 

GAF: giving-a-f**k-ness

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Polly Courtney decided to give a f**k. Too late, Polly.

Polly is an author. So, she is almost indistinguishable from her product. She is her brand. And she felt her publisher misrepresented her book, with the cover-design. It looks like this.

It looks like Chicklit. And that isn’t how Polly sees her book. So she fired her publisher.

Polly started out self-publishing. But then – presumably because the offer looked as attractive as a soaking-wet Mr D’Arcy – she sold rights to market and distribute her books to Harper Collins. Specifically to Avon – an imprint of Harper.

Avon looks like this (but not the one representing Polly – see comment for amend), or at least their website does. Why was Polly surprised when she saw the book cover Avon applied to her book?

 

When building your brand, when you don’t necessarily have loads of money, you have to use the resources which tend to be less limited. Smarts. Energy. Attention to Detail. Quirks.

Crudely, I call this “Giving-a-f**k-ness.” Let’s abbreviate to GAF so I don’t have to keep doing the expletive-deleted thing.

Quirks – sometimes the little touches we add, which to some might seem unnecessary, show GAF. And GAF is hugely appealing.

Brand Builders need huge GAF. And GAF should be high at every stage of a brand’s growth journey. It rarely is of course. It tends to diminish over time – and is replaced with money. GAF is inversely proportionate to money. [Steve Jobs - RIP - is the obvious exception].

GAF is one of the things a Challenger has, which an Incumbent often lacks.

When we build a brand, it all matters. The name, the packaging, the shops where you are sold.

A good name costs the same as a rubbish name. Pretty much. Choose one that shows you GAF.

And if your thing goes in a box, or a bag, a tube, or a website, then make that packaging the best damn piece of stuff you can. Because you have to package it anyway, and because – most of the time – great examples costs the same as crap ones. Unless yours is foil-blocked and dusted with Swarovski crystals, there’s not a lot of difference in the unit cost. So use your GAF.

And the distribution matters. This is like the second level of ‘packaging’, like the big wrapper around your product. When we’re building, this shop-shaped wrapper matters. It says something about our brand.

Polly got the ‘wrappers’ wrong. Her protest was about the publisher’s choice of book cover. But she must have chosen the other ‘wrapper’, the publisher. She must have looked at its website. Looked at her stable-mates. And decided it didn’t matter.

It all matters.

GAF.

p.s. Here is a great book cover. The book, of course, is great too.

Senses Working Undertime

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Brands – how do you feel today? And while we’re at it, how do you smell? Sound?

The emotional family – those descendants of our proto-emotions: PLEASURE and PAIN – all come with a sensory span we can use to spark a connection with our brand. I believe we are increasingly overlooking this in the rush to digitise our content.

Someone asked (on twitter, natch) whether greetings cards are a thing of the past. And my first response (some context: I’m 43 tomorrow) was – No. I’ve just opened a few old-school birthday cards, that were posted in envelopes, handwritten cards I can still stand upright on the shelf beside the telly.

I tore them open, held them in my hand, as the lovely senders did before sealing them and sending.

I’m not a sentimentalist – I’ve got a Kindle, me…and friends know me as the founder member of iDENT (“I Distrust Elitist National Trust”), but I do realise that we flesh-and-blood-and-firing-neurons consumers need more than images and words to get us wired.

Working with a client who has a die-stamping press and makes beautiful stationery, I’ve been reminded of the limitations of digital (or of my creativity?) in building engagement with such a purely sensory product. http://www.leemingbrothers.co.uk/whatwedo.html

The relative ease of digital communications is in danger of whisking us past these considerations into an impulsive “MAKE ME A PICTURE. MAKE IT MOVE. CAN IT TALK? DANCE? OK – WE’RE DONE.” routine.

Next time you think about your ‘engagement strategy’ – run through the five senses. When you’re considering the strands to your next integrated marketing campaign, ask yourself how many of these receptors you’re engaging.

And check out Martin Lindstrom http://www.brandsense.com/  - and feel / smell / taste the love.

brand stance and the ‘humble’ entrepreneur

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Think ‘entrepreneur’ and what do we picture? An unstoppable force for change, an ambitious-at-all-costs money-making machine? Or an optimistic try-er with the determination to ride the speed-bumps and the grace to doff their cap to good fortune when it benefits them?

In a week where we’ve seen the possible collapse of Rupert Murdoch’s empire, there have been some interesting reflections and synopses of how-he-got-there. Like this analysis by Will Hutton http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/12/bskyb-bid-rupert-murdoch

Is there a link between the hubristic, risk-the-company, bet-the-pot, style of business…and the brands they create, and the culture which develops inside the organisation? The kind of culture which allegedly gives rise to illegal practices. The Enron-ification.

Contrast this with Jeff Bezos of Amazon. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_17/b4081064880218.htm His His ‘willingness to fail’, his ‘frugality drives innovation’ mantras keep Jeff humble and must, I believe, make Amazon a very different place to work than News International. A better place.

‘Good’ (i.e. strong) Brands have higher purpose. It’s what keeps you straight. Keeps you humble. It’s what we describe as your brand STANCE. In some part, it’s what John Kay called ‘Obliquity.’ http://www.amazon.co.uk/Obliquity-goals-best-achieved-indirectly/dp/1846682886 The pursuit of something ‘bigger’, something authentic, that you can believe-in. Not, bluntly, the pursuit of shareholder value. Not directly.

It’s this level of humility which keeps the business improving. Trying new things. It’s not meekness. No-one would accuse Jeff Bezos, or Richard Branson, of meekness. But they both have a ‘bigger’ purpose – and that will keep them straight…and allow us and them to still smile when they, inevitably, get it wrong.

News of the Whirled: turbulence and brand-survival

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“Events, Events, Events” – Lenin warned Trotsky. I suspect Rupert Murdoch doesn’t read much communist revolutionary theory, but these words might be ringing in his ears, without realising their attribution.

The creation, building (and downfall) of business is more greatly linked to ‘events’ than most leaders’ and entrepreneurs’ humility permits them to acknowledge.

Our evolutionary business biosphere constantly reminds us of the fragility of success. Most of the ‘winners’ we can think of, stand on the fallen remains of the ‘almosts’ and ‘nearlys’.

It was Xerox who, in it’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), developed the fax machine, the laser printer, the ethernet and the personal computer. But they didn’t get to ‘own’ personal computing. Nor did Sir Clive Sinclair with the ZX Spectrum. It was IBM who created the obvious antecedent to today’s PCs. And IBM quit the fight in 2005.

Other lost-giants of the business world, with great-timing, roared like T-Rexs, for a while. Now all-but extinct, companied like Singer and Polaroid had the equivalent of today’s Killer-Apps.

Then their world…whirled. Their features and benefits, those beloved USPs, became defunct.

And the ‘events’ (times three) which saw them off? The same three spheres we use to construct a brand in the first-place: changes in their Competition, their Consumer, their Capabilities.

So, does brand-thinking help us to evolve, successfully? Sure it does.

We no-longer ask about ‘features and benefits’ when building a brand. Of course, it is often something quite tangible which gains us entry to a market. But unless we take the time to get deeper, we’re not going to survive.

Brand-thinking is to look for the ‘Enduring Emotional WANT’. Strong brands, built to withstand the inevitable ‘events’ find this, and shape their DNA to suit.

As the old wisdom goes, Black & Decker don’t make drills. They don’t even make 10mm titanium drill-bits. They make holes. Except that still doesn’t go far enough. They make the holes in our walls that allow us to safely hang the shelves, so we can securely rest our family-photo there. That’s closer to an ‘enduring emotional WANT’.

As Don Draper dimmed the lights to show us (and the execs from Kodak-Eastman) in one of the most beautiful episodes of ‘Mad Men’ –  that rotating device for showing slides on the wall isn’t the ‘Wheel’. It’s called the ‘Carousel.’ It takes us whirling into our reminiscences and nostalgia.

Sounds deep? Sounds lofty, maybe? Sounds ambitious?  So it should. It’s the brand-promises, built on this depth of thinking, this height of ‘higher purpose’ – which will endure.

Higher Purposes bring responsibility. Responsibility brings Values to the surface. Values are the things help us to decide right and wrong. We usually know we’re paying attention to our Values when they cost us something.

Brand-thinking helps us to codify these Enduring Wants, our Higher Purpose, our Values. And how we are going to behave, to keep all of this as a Promise.

If Mr Murdoch wants longevity, he wants to worry less about his nepotist succession planning, and more about keeping a promise at an enduring, emotional level.

He wants some Brand-Thinking. I think it might be too late, though.

Sit on your brand-hands

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David Mitchell – the Peep Show star, satirist, and Observer columnist made a neat point about branding in this recent piece  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jul/03/kate-wills-wimbledon-david-mitchell

Now, David Mitchell isn’t actually a big fan of branding, certainly not logos, and who couldn’t agree with him about the “nascarization” of sports sponsorship (where shirts, cars, rackets, golf bags are crammed with sponsors’ logos like a heaped plate at an all-you-can-eat buffet.)  David doesn’t call it ‘nascarization’, probably because it’s a horrible word from the world of branding, but I’m happy to offer it to him for free.

No – it isn’t this, or indeed David’s reaction to Roger Federer’s ‘F’ logo, which I find interesting.

It’s his observation of the pressure to conform, to second-guess, to play to the masses,  that last week led a faltering Duke and Duchess of Cambridge to join-in with a Mexican Wave at Wimbledon.

“There was nothing distinctive about the Cambridges’ Mexican waving. It was just blandly normal…if they seem too normal, more of us will question all the free stuff they get. They need to maintain a distancing glamour; without seeming stuck-up…”

Most of all – it’s not the conformity, per se, but -

“With the royal waving too, I think it’s self-consciousness that makes me squirm. You can sense their doubt, the slight panic: “How will this look? How will it look if we don’t?”"

Compare this with the confident old MCC buffers, Mexican-wave-refuseniks to a man, sitting resolutely in their chairs as the ‘wave’ passes the clubhouse at Lords cricket ground, who “are unafraid to assert their difference, as are the people who boo them.”

They remind us, those old boys in the clubhouse with their steadfast adherence to pomposity and Panama hats, that – when it comes to brands – our job is to remove choice. To be unafraid of some ‘boos’, confident that others are cheering all the harder.

When we develop a brand’s position, identify it’s difference, assemble it’s identity-wardrobe and lexicon, it isn’t out of some avant-garde artistic determination to be different, for different’s sake.

It is to make a distinct connection, to own unique ‘territory’. But it is also to build that internal self-confidence of the brand, so that the “ooh, how is this going to look?” knee-knocking panic doesn’t come-up. Because, as we know from all other walks of life, nothing attracts like self-confidence. And because -

a. you’re leading, not following (it is your own unique territory, after all)

b. you know you don’t have to (never will) please everybody. That you’re ‘more right’ for some by being ‘not right’ for others.

So next time, when they’re all waving, sit on your brand-hands.

 

 

How do I like my KitKat? Strong & D.A.R.K.

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Another day, another “our brand is strong” claimant. Yesterday, the boss of Thornton’s sought to reassure: the closure of 180 stores was a strategic development, part of a three-year plan, their brand was ‘strong’.

Of course, this could be right. This could be the beginning of a period of focus, on their Differentiation. Because that’s the essential foundation of brand strength.

When we talk about brands – what is ‘strong’?

Let’s start with the balance sheet: and calculate this in sterling, dollars, euros or yen. You get to see your ‘strength’ when someone buys your company. Or you try to raise capital.

For now, I’m going to stick with confectionery. (My sweet obsession is already out-there).

As Evan Davis showed, in this week’s wonderful Made In Britain programme, in 1988 Nestle bought Rowntree’s at £2.5Bn.

That was two and a half-times its pre-bid price, and at more than eight times its net asset value (the tangible stuff – factorys, plant & eqpt etc).

So we’re left with the Rowntree’s brands, KitKat in particular – valued at £2Bn.

Worth it? Nestle think so. They have been able to grow profitable revenues – largely through global distribution (deepening, not broadening, the KitKat brand) – to easily justify the valuation.

So, how do you get strong?

You build it. And like building anything – there’s a sequence. Steps to follow.

And the first steps?

Differentiation. Differentiation. Differentiation.

Young & Rubicam set this out a long time ago. Two Dimensions – Brand Strength, and Brand Stature. I like to re-label the components as D.A.R.K. As in DARK arts.

Brand Strength is made up of D – for Differentiation (owning a distinct Position), and A – for Accuracy (relevance to a clearly understood / targeted market).

Brand Stature is R – for Renown, and K – for Knowledge.

To build a brand – you grow Brand Strength, and then Brand Stature. Secure your Position, and then make it famous.

Misunderstanding this leads to so many of the frustrations I encounter with brand-building brandowners: like -

“we spent a fortune on PR (to get our name out there) and what?…nothing.”

All you’ve probably done, I say, is jump straight to ‘Renown’, and gotten people to ask “I’ve heard of your thing, but what’s special about it? For me?”

Or, you’ve successfully created a ‘category want’ by getting Accuracy ahead of Differentiation – and prompted the response “I need your thing, but not necessarily YOUR thing.” Like – “I now feel I want a disposable pen, just not necessarily a Bic.” You’ve created a commodity response, or you’ve helped to create a category for your competitors, without claiming your spot within it.

The tough news: you have to keep working on your Differentiation, as you bring in Accuracy. And then you have to maintain your Differentiation and Accuracy, as you develop Renown. Then add Knowledge.

The good news: do this right, and you get a £2bn ‘break’ like KitKat did.