How much of the Katie-brand
should CBS 'save as'?
While all my blogs will relate to brands in the news, this first one is about a brand literally in the news. Katie Couric (Yes, people can definitely be brands, Madonna, J Lo, Martha, the Donald, A-Rod, and Oprah all being good examples. We have very specific feelings about these individuals as brands, and their existence as brands creates lots of profit for lots of people.) Before I get to Katie, let me give you the BrandSimple context for what I’m about to talk about.Quick starting point. A brand is something that exists in your mind. It’s an image or a feeling. In the book, I liken it to a sort of mental computer desktop file folder. Branding, as I said, is the process of creating the things that get us to feel one way or another about a brand. The stuff inside the mental desktop file folders. Branding is not just marketing — far from it. It’s any interaction or experience we have with a brand, from customer service, to product design, to the functionality of its Web site, to the Web sites on which it posts advertising. When a brand is based on a simple idea, its branding is far more effective and efficient because the people responsible for the branding can better understand what it means to create brand-appropriate expressions. Their branding efforts become intuitive, authentic to the brand and, as a result, brilliant.
This being said, once a mental brand file is created and certain feelings about a brand have been “saved as,” it’s pretty hard to delete them. This is generally a good thing because it’s what makes for brand loyalty. What happens, however, when, for any number of solid business reasons, a brand organization decides it wants to re-evaluate the brand images embedded in our mental file folders? What if it believes there may be good rationale for getting people to think differently about its brand. How does it decide what brand images to “delete?” At the same time, how does it ensure it doesn’t delete the wrong stuff? The stuff that created positive equity?
The simple answer is you do what’s necessary, research-wise, to get inside those mental file folders. You do a brand audit to determine exactly what people have in there. If you’re an astute sort of brand organization, I’d say you should already know what’s in there, but suffice it say, it doesn’t hurt to confirm it. Let me get back to Katie Couric and I’ll explain.
For all intents and purposes, Katie has long been known as one of the pillars of the Today show on NBC. While she has serious reporting credentials, her role on the Today show spanned the spectrum from no-nonsense interviewing of hard news headline-makers, to commenting on the lighter side of life. Whatever her subject matter, the most powerful branding expression of the Katie brand was Katie, herself. She was never just a reader of the news — never a just the facts ma’am. Quite the opposite, she expressed a genuine interest in what her stories were about and became interesting to us because she came across as a person, not a personality. She was tenacious and sassy, at times even saucy. She was credible because she was always informed and very insightful, yet always approachable. She was the kind of person anyone could feel comfortable sitting next to at a dinner party without feeling intimidated. She was warm, and inclusive of her viewers.
While we may not always have agreed with her, we enjoyed watching and listening to Katie because she gave her topics dimension. She injected life into them. What she said, and the way she said it, was real, not rehearsed. It was Katie talking, albeit mediated by the accepted practices of her profession. If I had to put into words the simple idea behind the Katie Couric brand, I’d say “smart and sassy, but approachable girl-next-door.” (The kind of neighbor who shares the sad facts about her husband’s death from colon cancer and for whom you feel genuine loss.)
From the tough stories to light-hearted ones, Katie was consistent in behavior morning after morning, which is why the brand images we have of her in our mental file folders are so embedded. Needless to say NBC and Katie Couric were brilliant at branding. The things she and NBC unequivocally wanted us to “save as” have been duly saved, and they know it. (Look at the ad revenue they enjoyed.) Now we need to see whether CBS knows it.
For those of you who may have been out to sea for the last few months, Katie is making a switch to CBS to become the anchor of its evening news program. (This is newsworthy in all sorts of ways, which I won’t go into here.) Now when it comes to the three major news network brands, CBS is, perhaps, the one with the greatest degree of gravitas. Think Edward R. Murrow. Think 60 Minutes. Think Walter Cronkite who, despite his avuncular nature, packed a lot of authority. And depending on your mood, think Dan Rather. All are forceful, somber, hardball brands, each in its own right.
Can the brand currently known as the “smart and sassy, but approachable girl-next-door” be perceived as credible as a CBS news brand, specifically in the traditional role of anchor? CBS is betting a bank load of money it can be. The obvious questions are, will Katie-as-brand play with the current CBS news audience, can it revitalize and increase the network’s share of news viewers, and can her appeal to women create an entirely new news-watching audience? From my BrandSimple perspective, what, if anything should CBS “save as” in our current Katie Couric mental brand file folders, what should it delete, and what new branding expressions might it need to create to win its bet?
For starters, with all the money at stake, with all the astute minds at CBS, I can only assume CBS did do a thorough brand audit and, so doing, is fully aware of what’s inside our mental file folders. (I also have to assume it’s why it brought Katie on board.) What I hope they discovered is this: The Katie Couric brand makes things interesting, from hard news to soft news, because she’s interesting. Let’s not delete any of the things that highlight the humanity she has always put into her stories. Let’s allow her be herself, within the parameters of the news genre, of course. This is the essence of her success as a brand. It’s what makes her credible. The Katie Couric brand was a success for NBC because it leveraged her strength — her ability to come over a TV screen and into our homes as a real person.
This fact is huge when it comes to news reporting, especially given the fact that she can be insightful without being intimidating. We all know Katie Couric is not in the category of a CNN Christiane Annanpour, never will be and shouldn’t be. It’s not in her character. Not only would it be inauthentic for her to try and become so, but disingenuous. In any case, CBS wasn’t looking for that variety of brand as its anchor. (Quick sidebar: Katie said in a recent interview that she wouldn’t go to Iraq at the present time to do news reports because as a single mother of two children she can’t put her children in a vulnerable situation. This is a human being talking. While there was some negative fallout as a result of her comments, most feedback was extremely praiseworthy and respectful — an indication of her authenticity as a brand.)
Okay, okay. In all fairness, after a thorough brand image inventory, is there anything I think Katie and CBS should consider deleting in our mental file folders to succeed as a serious news source? I wouldn’t be honest if I didn’t say, “yes.” I suggest they delete any images or behaviors that smack of the glib or sarcastic, as well as anything having to do with fashionista Katie. While these images may reflect the real Katie, too (come on, anyone as smart and informed as she is can’t help but be sarcastic), these traits might better be reserved for less public venues. Be as savvy as you want, Ms. Couric, but save the glimpses of the Jimmy Choo’s for after the 6:30-7:00 PM time slot.
At NBC, Katie was generally allowed to be Katie. CBS should continue to let her be Katie. My belief is that for the Katie Couric brand to become equally, if not more, successful for the CBS brand, it must continue to leverage her strength as a smart and sassy, but approachable girl-next-door. While certain brand images are, indeed, worthy of deletion, far more are worthy of “saving as.” If Katie loses her naturalness and genuine affability, she’d be giving up some of the attributes that made her a powerful brand to begin with. She’ll lose a good number of her constituents and CBS will lose a very large and expensive bet.
Bottom line for those re-evaluating their brand’s image; take a careful inventory of what’s inside the consumer’s mental brand file folder. Consider, first, what made the brand a success to begin with and what positive equity is worth “saving as.” It’s only after this audit that you should think about what to delete and replace with new brand images as a means of achieving your brand goal. Sometimes, it’s simply a matter of looking at what’s inside our heads from a different, relevant perspective.