BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog

How does one make sense of the turbulence on Wall Street? Even the financial experts are having a hard time clarifying the situation. While there are hardly simple answers, my belief is that our presidential candidates missed an incredible opportunity during last week’s debate to express with any clarity their respective positions on the turmoil. Neither Obama nor McCain conveyed a distinct and focused point of view on the issue. Rather they they each played both sides, no make that as many sides of the situation as there were sides. Neither took advantage of this public forum to strengthen his respective brand persona. Lest you think otherwise, these candidates are brands. And from my public forum as a branding professional I can tell you this was infuriating. Great brands are built on simple, clear ideas. If consumers don’t understand what a brand stands for, they’ll opt for one whose promise they do understand and make their choice known at the point of purchase, in this case the voting booth. Although there are certainly no simple answers to our Wall Street meltdown, both candidates had the chance to take a clear-cut position in line with the brand position that each initially established for himself and his party. I can tell you that this was not helpful, to either their campaigns or for the millions of undecided voters who are looking for guidance.

One of the essential rules of successful brand building is to establish something you want to represent in the minds of consumers and stick with it. Don’t slip or slide or muddy the waters. Every branding action should be carefully aligned to reinforce the brand position originally created. The objective is to ensure that consumers permanently think precisely what you want them to think about your brand, especially when they come to the point of purchase. There are a number of well-known case histories of brands that lost out at point of purchase when they lost sight of their core brand promise. Burger King slipped and slid for a few years until it came back to letting hungry people “have it their way.” Coca-Cola was the “real thing” until it changed its original formula and wasn’t’. The iconic brand made a quick course correction and righted its place in the shopping aisles. Sears, long associated with great value on home goods, spent the better part of a decade wandering off-brand as it dabbled in real estate, insurance and financial services. It has since returned to its initial brand idea and its ledger sheets show the wisdom of the decision.

As Senators McCain and Obama prepare for the home stretch, they must do everything possible to stick to the brand position that initially resonated with their party platforms and take every opportunity to convey this position, no matter the specific issue at hand. As voters near the point of purchase they must be able to go to the polls with a solidly-entrenched idea of what each candidate stands for. Each candidate has about 40 days to pay heed to his original brand message and execute against it, relentlessly. As in all things brand, if consumers are confused about what a brand stands for, they’ll opt for the brand whose promise they understand.

The many delightful features of Apple’s iPhone 3G cellphones can be experienced with the touch of a finger. Unfortunately, the lack of delight resulting from dropped calls on the AT&T cellular network, Apple’s sole partner, has many users pointing fingers, instead. Is it AT&T’s fault that IPhone users are having so much trouble staying connected, or is the Infineon chip inside the iPhone to blame for the spotty service? From a pure branding perspective it doesn’t matter. Both companies are at risk. While the stakes may be higher for AT&T, a brand trying to regain its superiority after years of slipping, sliding and actually disappearing, Apple’s shine could be tarnished, as well. When push comes to shove (and in this category there’s a lot of shoving), consumers will go for the brand, or combo of brands, that deliver the best experience. My experience tells me that until both companies sort this thing out, they each carry brand liability, no matter which one is actually at fault. My experience also tells me that any brand thinking of partnering with another had better undertake ample due diligence or, at the very least, make plans for a quick exit strategy should things not work out as planned. Apple made a branding error by giving users of its iPhone only a single network option. At this point, it can’t very well pull a ripcord and bail out leaving its customers stranded. Whatever the source of the problem, it had better get it fixed fast before its brand gets bruised more severely and its usually forgiving customers lose patience. For AT&T, a brand for whom competition is tough and customer loyalty tougher to hold onto, there is almost no room for forgiveness at all. If it doesn’t get on the case post haste, it will miss the chance it has to revitalize its once iconic name. Not a delightful prospect, at all.

Among the topics I write about in BrandDigital is the role social networking sites play in the brand-building process. While some marketers believe that to succeed in the digital economy a brand must have some presence on sites like MySpace, Facebook, or LinkedIn, most others agree with my premise that a brand should carefully consider the value of where it chooses to hang out, not to mention its acceptance by this like-minded group. As Kevin Lane Keller, a professor of marketing at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business aptly put it, “You don’t want your brand to come across as a professor crashing the frat party.” His point, obviously, is that as much as you think your brand might fit seamlessly into a particular social network crowd, it’s crucial to remember that you’re still “the brand,” and they’re the consumers.

The value of this point was driven home a week or so ago at the Fortune Brainstorm: Tech conference which I had the opportunity to attend. Among the folks participating in a discussion chaired by the magazine’s technology editor David Kirkpatrick, was Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, who talked about this well-populated social network’s position on “brands as friends.” Akin to what I write about in my book, Sandberg suggested that the key to successful branding on a social networking site is the ability to determine what type of people are spending time on the site, to listen to what they’re talking about to each other, what interests they share, and then determine whether your brand can offer anything of relevance to the virtual conversation. Your branding objective should be to demonstrate to participants on the site that your brand has a good reason for being there; that engaging in the branding will be worth their while and worth sharing with their friends, word of mouth being a key dynamic in the social networking scene.

Sandberg gave a great example of a brand that heeded this online social branding principle. Mazda, recognizing that one of the target audiences it wanted to befriend was hanging out on Facebook, decided to launch a branding initiative which involved helping it plan for the design of its 2018 MAZDA3. The company’s relevant contribution clearly got people to pay attention. Not only did Facebook members submit designs, hundreds of them voted on the design features they’d be interested in, something that will help enable Mazda to meet consumer needs more relevantly than its competitors. Mazda didn’t simply repurpose an existing ad or video for its Facebook presence, it developed a branding strategy specifically for a particular social networking scene, taking into account both the “friends” and the business objective it wanted to meet. Any brand can learn from Mazda’s experience that to win friends and influence people on a social network site, it must identify who’s at the party, know what these folks are interested in and make sure it has something of relevance to add to the conversation.