BrandDigital | BrandSimple: The Blog

From my branding standpoint, the benefits of a merger between two of the big three automakers is potentially huge. While both GM and Chrysler have been hemorrhaging money, the opportunity to pare their respective brand portfolios along with the development costs of vehicles, engines and alternative-fuel technologies might give the merged company real market traction.

My recommendation would be to drastically prune the combined brand portfolio on both sides of the house. Pick no more than 5 brands (Jeep Chevrolet, Dodge, Cadillac and maybe Saturn) and toss the rest including Chrysler, Pontiac and Buick. In other words, get rid of whatever components they don’t need. It hasn’t been easy to watch these iconic brands lose their way, but it’s been easy to see why they have. With fewer brands to focus on the company will have a better chance to compete on the global stage with Toyota, Honda, and BMW.

On top of that, a lean mean auto company might also benefit from a “Made in America” branding spin in the short term. And wouldn’t that be nice? But I believe if these two companies focus on where they went off the track and make some hard choices now it might be possible to put an American car back in a leading-brand driver seat.

The first rule of good marketing is to learn as much about your customers as possible. In my new book, BrandDigital I explain how the advent of digital tools and tactics has made this easier than ever before. Product review sites, social media sites, and blogs are rife with commentary about what people like and don’t like about brands and brand experiences. While this abundance of information might be overwhelming to marketers, I also explain in BrandDigital how smart marketers filter through the online world of words to determine exactly which sites and blogs are most credible and most relevant to their needs and fields of expertise. I recently had the pleasure of being interviewed by Shashank Nigam, editor of the blog “Simpliflying,” a site well-respected by those both in the airline industry and those interested in marketing to travelers. It’s a unique blog, both in its comprehensiveness and its emphasis on airline branding. I invite you to listen to my interview with Shashank- and further invite you to post your comments to Simpliflying.com.

Powerful brands stand for one thing or another, not one thing and another. Consumers make choices based on what they perceive this one thing to be. A strong, focused brand idea helps consumers filter through their options. Pepsi is the cola choice for a new generation. Coke is the traditional cola. Volvo is the car of choice for safety seekers. Porsche is for performance seekers. In the recent 2008 Presidential Imagepower ® Survey released by Landor and research firm Penn, Schoen & Berland, it seems that consumers are beginning to perceive both Obama and McCain as standing for more or less the same thing; change. The lines of distinction between the two presidential candidates are getting blurrier which could pose a problem. The thing is, while McCain has been gradually morphing his message from maverick to change agent, Obama signaled from the get-go that he was the candidate of change. His brand idea has been consistent from day one which, from my vantage point as a branding professional, makes his brand persona a bit more credible. When consumers are given the choice of two brands that make the same promise, they are more apt to go with the one that established the promise first. Once people associate a brand with a specific idea, it’s hard to get them to move away from this association. McCain had a simple, strong maverick of an idea. Trying to marry it with the idea of change is confusing to voters. Powerful brands stand for one thing or another, not one thing and another. As we get closer to the election, my advice is that both candidates stick to the one idea that they want voters to take to the voting booth.

When one brand takes over or merges with another it can often take weeks, if not months, to put the appropriate branding signals into place. But in these fast-changing economic times, Barclays needed to send a quick, powerful branding signal to the market that it was a viable and credible banking institution, replacing the Lehman’s branding overnight.

The dust from Wall Street’s implosion will not be settling any time soon. But being the realist I am (I didn’t say optimist) I know that the air will clear at some point and, that when it does, any brand formerly known as a Wall Street brand is going to have to take serious action with regard to its identity. Being the realistic branding professional I am I know that the solution to a Wall Street-related brand identity crisis is not a matter of geographic relocation, funding a popular charity, image spinning, or a change of signage. The root of this branding crisis goes far, far below the surface. In fact, it’s nothing less than a crisis of confidence and trust. And when consumers lose confidence in a brand, when they stop trusting it, there is no amount of cosmetic change that will help them regain their trust. The solution to this type of rebranding effort involves nothing less than how the brand behaves which means an inside-out, bottom-up-top-down response.
For any brand in this situation, I recommend a short-term plan and a longer term plan, the short-term plan being similar to what happens when a brand is directly responsible for a highly unfortunate event. In this case, the brand in question immediately pulls its marketing from all media channels. It focuses on the daily operation of its business. It doesn’t worry about its image but, rather, about the well-being of those lives it has affected.
Longer term there are a few key steps I would recommend for any brand that doesn’t want the negative associations of Wall Street tarnishing its name as it moves forward. First, I would think about how to best address public concerns about your brand’s role, perceived or real, in the imbroglio. Your job is to rebuild trust. To do so, you must establish what you want your brand to stand for in the minds of consumers and ensure that everyone in your organization understands what this is and their role in bringing it to life. In this transparent digital world, where everyone can see everything, where nothing is immune from a character impugning YouTube video, you cannot promise and spin. You must promise and act – across the board – in ways that authentically and without question support your position. More than this, your brand voice, a literal and figurative component of being the brand you say you are, must also be devoid of spin and slickness. Your messages must be jargon-free, simple and understandable. To paraphrase Warren Buffet, these days you can be damn sure consumers won’t invest in anything they can’t understand.
Just as it’s time to go back to Finance 101, it’s time to go back to Branding 101. Be clear about you want your brand to represent and represent it simply, clearly and honestly. To succeed for the long term, I advise that you look at the long term. To do this, invest time and thought in what it will realistically and tangibly take to rebuild consumers’ confidence in your brand’s role in their financial future.

The first Google phone which hits the market next week is actually the sum of three parts: Google software, HTC hardware and, for now, T-Mobile’s network. Trying to grasp this concept is a bit less difficult than trying to grasp what a commodity derivative is, but that still doesn’t convince me that Google’s foray into the mobile phone business is a great way to leverage its powerful brand name. In fact, I think the super-brand might be stretching the limits of what made it a super brand to begin with; a simple promise to be the best source of information on the planet. Can the brand that built its credibility on being a content provider of mind-blowing proportion also be perceived as a credible purveyor of hardware? Should the brand that’s gained undying loyalty and admiration from answer seekers everywhere try to cross the line and compete in Sony’s, Motorola’s, Panasonic’s, or even Apple’s technology space? These questions are actually similar to those addressed by Disney’s Robert Iger during a conference at which he spoke about the company’s short-lived efforts in the phone business. Consumers just couldn’t connect the magical idea of Mickey Mouse and Sleeping Beauty with telephones.

The Google brand is associated with content, not stuff. And the odd thing is that any Google phone applications that have to do with content, like music or photos or video-downloading, aren’t as fluid and intuitive to use as other mobile choices, most importantly, its assumptive major competitor, the iPhone. Just as I wouldn’t think about buying a plasma TV from NBC, or a bunch of movies from Panasonic, the jury’s out on whether Google would be top of mind when it came to buying a new mobile phone service. Don’t get me wrong. I love the Google brand. But my love is associated with being able to get answers to questions in a New York second, with being able to see my house from outer space, with being able to compare and contrast content from advertisers and information sources in the blink of an eye. The Google brand is hardwired into people’s minds as a content brand. In its attempt to move into the hardware universe, I hope it doesn’t get its brand equity wires crossed.

Saw this the other night in Times Square.  Not good for the Microsoft or Planter brands.

The Muppets are coming (back). The Muppets are coming (back). Disney, the company that bought the franchise in 2004, is in full-court press mode to rejuvenate this rascally brand of entertainment. While I’m interested to see how Kermit, Miss Piggy, and the Swedish chef will re-enter our lives, I’m equally interested to see how the company plans to incorporate the multitude of new branding channels into its re-launch strategy, specifically all the new digital channels that have arisen since the first generation of Muppet aficionados tuned in over 30 years ago (a non-digital generation, by the way). Disney being Disney, the company is well aware of what it means to keep a brand’s promise alive, no matter how the marketplace changes. And, Disney being Disney, it appreciates the fact that consumer feedback is the first and best way to ensure that the brand lives up to, if not exceeds, this promise to consumers. Technology savvy as it is, the company is well aware that digital tools and tactics are incredibly effective and efficient vehicles for listening to consumers and giving them what they want in a brand experience.

For example, in my newest book BrandDigital, I write about an application on Disney.com on which moms – or as Disney appropriately says, “people who serve the mom role in the family” – can log in and talk to each other about the experience of taking families to Disney theme parks. As part of this online initiative, a rotating panel of moms offers up practical advice on everything from planning a Disney vacation to dining, shopping, and navigating the lines at the most popular events and rides. The home page features a changing list of the five most frequently asked questions. Moms engage with Disney and, more important, they engage with each other sharing advice and insight only those who have been-there-done-that would know. Disney understands that word-of-mom is the most trusted form of word-of-mouth and, like all smart brands it uses digital technology to monitor the user experience and to act on what it hears to make this experience more enjoyable.

I’m not quite sure what Disney has in mind for its Muppet comeback strategy, but I can almost guarantee that digital will play a major part, not just for getting the right message to the right audience via the right digital applications, but to formally track what’s being said and experienced as a result. Whether you see Miss Piggy posters on the walls of social media pages, see Kermit crooning on YouTube, or be able to search for Swedish meatball recipes on Google, Disney will figure out how to get the message out and keep close tabs on what we think of its efforts. Given that the generation they’re hoping to reach uses digital technology as its primary mode of communication, I’m sure the brand will hear how it’s doing in a cyber-second.

Book Review

Harry Potter:The Story of a Global Phenomenon
By Susan Gunelius

This celebratory literary scene was simultaneously taking place outside hundreds of bookstore locations across the United States, preceded, no doubt, by similar activities in time-zones around the world. That Harry Potter author, J. K. Rowling, is an almost unprecedented publishing success has been well documented in book reviews and front-page articles from coast to coast and country to country. That she and her books, films, video games, and merchandising endeavors are also part and parcel of a global branding success story has now been delightfully documented by Susan Gunelius in her new book, Harry Potter: The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon.

The series of seven Harry Potter books have sold over 400 million copies worldwide, has been translated into 64 languages, and the five Harry Potter films have grossed over $4 billion at the box office. All in all, the Harry Potter brand is worth over $4 billion. While many believe this incredible success may, indeed, be Hogwarts magic, Gunelius explains in enjoyable, straightforward manner that it’s actually the result of a concise business strategy and a carefully planned and executed branding strategy. From Harry’s remarkable beginnings, conjured up on a train ride Rowling took from Manchester to London, to the current blockbuster state of the Harry Potter brand, Gunelius deftly takes the reader through the business story using the principles of great brand-building as a template. Dissecting the tale from this perspective is an interesting challenge, and one that Gunelius tackles with ease and the appropriate level of detail to bring the phenomenon to life. Without being pedantic in any way, she takes the reader through the brand’s creation, how the buzz began, how it was managed through branding tactics both traditional and digital, and how it is carefully monitored. She also employs the use of mini-case studies, histories of other cultural phenomena including Star Trek, Playboy, Tom Clancy, Ian Fleming, and Oprah Winfrey, to further illustrate her points.

Why did Harry Potter become so successful? Why did my friend and her husband witness the pre-midnight madness to buy the latest tale of Harry, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger and the evil Lord Voldemort? In The Story of a Global Business Phenomenon, Susan Gunelius tells us about everything we need to know from the price wars, to the merchandising, the word-of-mouth to the social networking. And she does it in way that makes it clear that the compelling story of Harry Potter’s life and times was just part of an equally compelling branding story.

On the eve of the most-watched VP debate in modern history I wrote that in order for both candidates to win hearts and influence the people they wanted to influence, they’d have to be true to their respective brand personas: Joe Biden, the knowledgeable voice of experience and Sarah Palin, the folksy, straight-talking hockey mom. From my branding perspective I believe they both succeeded in upholding the brand characteristics with which they are associated in the minds of the voters. While both strayed off-brand for a few moments here and there, Biden, a little too quick with dry facts and figures, Palin, a little too quick with overly-rehearsed talking points, each reinforced what they stand for as the brand-idates they are. What’s next? Let’s see how their running mates meet their established brand positions tomorrow night.