BrandSimple | BrandDigital: The Blog

Landor’s third annual list of the top ten Breakaway Brands was released in the November 2nd issue of Fortune magazine. The ranking is based on a comprehensive survey that measures brand momentum over a three year period in terms of financial gain and brand strength – how it’s appraised by consumers. As I looked over the newest top ten brands two things immediately came to mind. First, the brands on the list represented a broad spectrum of categories. TJMaxx to iPod, Stonyfield to Gatorade’s Propel, Costco to Barnes & Noble, with a few relative old-timers thrown in for very good measure. Second, the brands on the list all delivered especially well on the fifth in my top ten list of what it takes to be a strong brand. (You can see the other nine in my book, BrandSimple.) And that is, making sure that your brand strategy – what your brand represents to consumers – is in absolute alignment with your business strategy, or what you deliver. In other words, can you validate the brand experience?

While this has always been essential to brand success, it’s never been more important than in today’s totally transparent, digitally-enabled consumer environment. If you don’t keep your promise in today’s marketplace, you’ll get found out and taken down in an instant, whether by blog, text or brand-damning digital video. Should you have any doubt at all, take a look at the video of the sleeping Comcast repairman on YouTube, complete with background music by the EELS. Each of the companies on the top ten list of Breakaway Brands have the entire organization focused on delivering the brand experience just as consumers expect it to be delivered. The brand strategy is inseparable from the business strategy and it shows both in Wall Street satisfaction and customer satisfaction.

One of the points I make at the end of my book, BrandSimple, was something I lifted from Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, who commented “Only the paranoid survive.” His quote referred to those charged with managing Intel. My reference applied to anyone charged with managing a brand. While many factors drive brand success, one of the most critical is the ability to stay relevantly differentiated in your category. To do so takes a bit of paranoia.

I thought about this the other day as I read that Kodak would be dropping its sponsorship of the Olympic Games effective at the end of next year’s summer events in Beijing. A sponsorship that began over 100 years ago with an ad printed in the program for the 1896 Olympic Games in Athens. I thought about it even more as I walked by a local photo processing store on my way to work where a “Going out of Business” sign hung in the window. This store was one of the many in its franchise, all going out of business forever. I think the changes in the photography industry should be a good wake-up call to any brand not paranoid enough to worry about staying relevantly ahead of its category curve.

Shutterbugs used to have one or two relationships with photography brands – cameras and film. There wasn’t too much competition for brand managers to worry about, especially those vying for the amateur market. Kodak was comfortably in a leadership position, doing the sorts of things that leadership brands should do, like sponsoring Olympic Games. The Kodak brand was ubiquitous. Then, in the blink of a shutter, it wasn’t. The problem is that it wasn’t paranoid, or at least didn’t become paranoid enough fast enough to transform its core business in an industry as hyper fast as technology. Today there are dozens of brands competing for attention in this category. Photographers have lots of options in brand relationships, beginning with digital cameras and going on and on and on to camera phones, digital printing a la HP and Canon, online posting brands like Flickr and Snapfish, plus a good number of products from a small brand called Apple. In a market with so many consumer choices and so much change, brand survival isn’t good enough. With a nod to Andy Grove I’d say only the paranoid succeed.

This week, the World Economic Forum is hosting its Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland, where the leaders of the world’s most important companies, countries and media get together to discuss world issues.

One item on the agenda caught my eye, a session entitled, “Brands: Today’s Gods?” In my opinion, that’s a misnomer. Consumers today don’t worship brands any more than they did 40 years ago. As long as there have been brands consumers have used them as navigational tools, not totems. Consumers need brands to help them determine which direction to take with their purchase decisions. The best brands know that in order to be of any use as navigational tools they must sharply define and clearly communicate what they stand for and why it’s relevant. This is how brands are supposed to work. It’s how capitalistic societies work. We’re not going to stop the train.

What we’re seeing today is the result of a world gone exponentially branded. Brand choices have proliferated at an incredible rate, along with branding channels. Branding doesn’t stop when you turn off the television. It’s everywhere. This means brand organizations have had to become more sophisticated in their branding to be of any navigational value to consumers. They’ve had to find ways to make maneuvering through brand choices simpler. Now, there is no question that as consumers we’ve always had an insatiable desire to define our identities with brands; younger consumers, especially so. This, too, was as true 40 years ago as it is now. The huge difference now, of course, is the sheer number of brands and branding messages to which our youngest consumers are exposed. Given this, to mitigate any concern relative to the branded world in which we live, it’s essential to teach kids how to see brands as the navigational tools they are – and should be - and, more important, how to use them to make the right brand choices.

Brands are not today’s Gods. They are and always have been navigational tools by which we determine which way we go in our buying and social behavior. Brands are supposed to provide good direction. It’s our responsibility to determine whether or not we follow.

I heard the AMA’s MPlanet event in Florida was great last week. Although I was not there, MarketingShift has done a nice job of recapping it all; see the coverage here.