Check out the Buzz from Innovation this week, as DeeDee Gordon shares her insights on how to innovate for the future.
How do we innovate for the future? It is a driving question for many businesses, but many of them are looking into too short-term of a future. DeeDee Gordon provided a case study with insights into how to innovate not just for tomorrow, but for the decades to come.
Check out the buzz for Sterling Innovation this week, as DeeDee Gordon shares her insights on how to innovate for the future.
How do we innovate for the future? It is a driving question for many businesses, but many of them are looking into too short-term of a future. DeeDee Gordon provided a case study with insights into how to innovate not just for tomorrow, but for the decades to come.
Back in 2002, when we worked with the Dove brand team to create the Real Beauty strategy, we were thrilled to have found a positioning strategy that was built on a very rich consumer insight, and facilitated Dove’s entry into more beauty-centric categories (e.g. face, hair) in a way that was differentiated and compelling to the target audience.
While the position was “sold in” as a big and powerful idea, we had very little inkling at the time that we had created the kernel of a “mission”.
Driven in large part by a very courageous brand team and a very ambitious content strategy (including use of traditional media), Dove has become what we would call a “mission-based brand,” keeping company with brands like Method and Ben & Jerry’s. Mission-based brands are generally built from the inside out. They decide who they are and what they will be. This is also what makes the Dove case so amazing, as the “inside” of the brand is actually a huge CPG company, unlike most of our other mission-based brand examples.
WOULD PUT VISUAL OF PRINT AD WITH WOMAN WITH FRECKLES
A mission will inspire and attract consumers, or it won’t – but it doesn’t change to meet the whims of the marketplace. The insight that underlies the Real Beauty strategy is based on a woman’s desire to be her most beautiful self – accepting of flaws and all – rather than the perfected ideal of marketplace beauty. If you look around – other beauty brands, magazines, TV shows – you can see that the Dove insight isn’t necessarily indicative of the beauty zeitgeist overall. Especially in 2002, before others hopped on the “I’m beautiful as I am” bandwagon.
WOULD ALSO PUT VISUAL OF “AVERAGE” WOMEN IN THEIR BRAS
As a mission based brand, Dove was selling a transformational idea to the marketplace. Mission-based brands often make a unique and important cultural contribution. Dove’s current “Sketches,” blowing up all over social (and traditional) media, is reigniting the conversation around self-acceptance and self-appreciation that Dove started with their original “Real Beauty” campaign.
Importantly, mission-based based brands aren’t just in it for the good of the world, it’s still about making money and building their brands. They operationalize their mission and harness it as a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Their mission is often their most sustainable competitive advantage.
This idea of sustainability is important. Missions aren’t “this year’s ad campaign.” The deeper your competitive differentiation sits within your business, the more real it is to your audience and the more difficult it is for your competitors to emulate. As a marketing idea that wasn’t really grounded in a product experience, “Real Beauty” could have been copied. But, once it became a mission within Unilever it became harder to emulate. Once it became accepted as a mission by the audience, attacking it became even more difficult.
Missions aren’t for the faint of heart, but we suggest you go through the exercise, even if it’s just academic. If you were to put your brand on a mission, what would that mission be?
Back in 2002, when we worked with the Dove brand team to create the Real Beauty strategy, we were thrilled to have found a positioning strategy that was built on a very rich consumer insight, and facilitated Dove’s entry into more beauty-centric categories (e.g. face, hair) in a way that was differentiated and compelling to the target audience.
While the position was “sold in” as a big and powerful idea, we had very little inkling at the time that we had created the kernel of a “mission”.
Driven in large part by a very courageous brand team and a very ambitious content strategy (including use of traditional media), Dove has become what we would call a “mission-based brand,” keeping company with brands like Method and Ben & Jerry’s. Mission-based brands are generally built from the inside out. They decide who they are and what they will be. This is also what makes the Dove case so amazing, as the “inside” of the brand is actually a huge CPG company, unlike most of our other mission-based brand examples.
A mission will inspire and attract consumers, or it won’t – but it doesn’t change to meet the whims of the marketplace. The insight that underlies the Real Beauty strategy is based on a woman’s desire to be her most beautiful self – accepting of flaws and all – rather than the perfected ideal of marketplace beauty. If you look around – other beauty brands, magazines, TV shows – you can see that the Dove insight isn’t necessarily indicative of the beauty zeitgeist overall. Especially in 2002, before others hopped on the “I’m beautiful as I am” bandwagon.
As a mission based brand, Dove was selling a transformational idea to the marketplace. Mission-based brands often make a unique and important cultural contribution. Dove’s current “Sketches,” blowing up all over social (and traditional) media, is reigniting the conversation around self-acceptance and self-appreciation that Dove started with their original “Real Beauty” campaign.
Importantly, mission-based based brands aren’t just in it for the good of the world, it’s still about making money and building their brands. They operationalize their mission and harness it as a competitive advantage in the marketplace. Their mission is often their most sustainable competitive advantage.
This idea of sustainability is important. Missions aren’t “this year’s ad campaign.” The deeper your competitive differentiation sits within your business, the more real it is to your audience and the more difficult it is for your competitors to emulate. As a marketing idea that wasn’t really grounded in a product experience, “Real Beauty” could have been copied. But, once it became a mission within Unilever it became harder to emulate. Once it became accepted as a mission by the audience, attacking it became even more difficult.
Missions aren’t for the faint of heart, but we suggest you go through the exercise, even if it’s just academic. If you were to put your brand on a mission, what would that mission be?
In arecent post(that began with our anticipation for the start of Mad Men season 6, which by the way, was as good as we wanted it to be), we talked about the importance of going beyond the “click” (or “Like”) to develop brand stories that create authentic engagement with customers.
There is no longer (if there ever was) a linear path between awareness, acquisition, loyalty, and retention. With our access to information, all of these decisions and actions are happening in real-time, so we need to keep customers (and potential customers) engaged all the time.
The brands that best go “beyond first click” have done more than good social media. They have changed the core of how they approach marketing. They plan and execute a content strategy – thinking like creators, rather than like advertisers. They are creating content that builds a single brand story, across all platforms, in the real and digital worlds, in a way that appears seamless to the consumer.
Those that are braving this new approach have had a lot to overcome. In our last post we noted the organizational challenges. But building a content strategy is also challenging for how marketers think about their business. Advertising goes in campaigns, and there are planning and review and revision and execution times. Content doesn’t – content is 24/7, a relentless beast that needs to be fed consistently.
To feed the beast, marketers have to live with imperfection and uncertainty more than ever before. They need to be making new, relevant and interesting content all the time, every day, related to what their brand stands for, and what their brand is doing. When faced with creating content, we all wonder what to say, and how to make sure what we’re creating is good enough. The real challenge with a content strategy isn’t so much that the beast needs to be fed, it’s more about overcoming the fear of our ability to create, uncertainty about what works, and doubt about whether anyone is listening. The cool part about this new world of content strategy is that we have the opportunity to see over time what people find compelling, what breaks through and what might actually motivate customers to act.
There are FIVE THINGS to think about when cooking up food for the beast:
1.) You are making content so people will not only engage with it but share it, and that means it has to have value for them – so make it FOR them rather than ABOUT you.
A great example is the latest from the Dove Real Beauty campaign:
2.) Variety is more important than consistency – you never know what will get people’s attention.
3.) Some of the most engaging content is not professionally produced – the bar is high for what’s compelling, but lower than you think for how it’s made.
4.) Creating something quickly that reflects/comments/plays off of current events can make your brand relevant, even when a connection isn’t obvious.
5.) And most importantly, don’t try to do everything yourself – the best case scenario is to involve your customers in creating content about your brand, and then finding ways (and confidence) to use what they create.
The book on best practices in content strategy is being written right now by brands that are brave enough to open their minds to what and where great content can come from. One of the best examples of content strategy as marketing strategy is coming from GoPro. Yes, they create cameras – a product that lends itself to storytelling a bit easier to content than foot cream or socks. But they recognize how valuable content is, whether they create it or their customers do. Instead of shying away from that “non-premium user-generated stuff”, they encouraged it. They are engaging their customers to participate in building the story of the brand, which is therefore building their brand authentically based on how customers use their products (rather than a set of proof points and details, like we might see in an ad campaign).
The content beast is here, and here to stay as one of the primary ways to authentically connect with your customers, cut through the noise and go beyond the “click”. It’s up to you to decide if your brand is willing to feed the beast, even if it requires an approach to marketing that is a little scary, and a little uncomfortable. What can you do in 2013 to build the story of your brand through content that will engage your customer, rather than simply trying to persuade them through advertising?
Since graduating college in 1991, I’ve had the privilege to live and work in two amazing US cities – New York and San Francisco. Both of these cities are great places to live and to visit, but the experience of life there isn’t even close to being representative of the rest of the country - and importantly, of the people you as a marketer want to use your brand.
Let’s start with some facts – which continue to shock and awe many marketers:
-The average household income is $50,054 (SF Gate via US Census Bureau, 2011 data)
-The average family savings account balance is $3,800; 25% of families have no savings at all (statisticbrain.com via IRS and Federal Reserve)
-The median age for marriage is 26.6 among women, 28.6 for men (About.com via US Census Bureau, 2012 data)
-The average age for women to have their first baby is 25.1 (Babycenter.com via CDC, 2008 data)The average household income is $50,054 (SF Gate via US Census Bureau, 2011 data)
-The average household income is $50,054 (SF Gate via US Census Bureau, 2011 data)
-The average family savings account balance is $3,800; 25% of families have no savings at all (statisticbrain.com via IRS and Federal Reserve)
-The median age for marriage is 26.6 among women, 28.6 for men (About.com via US Census Bureau, 2012 data)
-The average age for women to have their first baby is 25.1 (Babycenter.com via CDC, 2008 data)
One of my favorite stories of shock and awe happened when I was an Account Executive at an advertising agency in NYC. The president of my client’s division – company not to be named, but the product was canned pasta – decided that their “new & improved” canned pasta should sell for 50¢ more than the current product, and that we should explore how to talk to consumers about the increase in quality and price. We were in Charlotte, doing research with their target audience – lower-income families. A woman whose profile stated that her family of 5 lived on an income of $15,000-$19,999 looked the moderator squarely in the eye and said (I’m paraphrasing here, as the conversation happened in 1996): “you tell that rich president of your company that while he’s in his big office in the big city, I’m trying to feed my family. And just because your price goes up 50¢ doesn’t mean I get another 50¢ in my grocery budget. It just means I will have to buy less food.”
Shock.
I had a similar experience as a moderator, just a few years ago. I was doing research with people who use pre-paid debit cards, focusing on single mothers who make less than $25,000 per year. We sometimes do a “lottery” where all respondents who get to the facility 10 minutes before group start time have a chance to win another $50 on top of their incentive. As I walked out of the room to get final questions from the backroom, one woman asked “do you know who won the lottery?” and I said I’d find out. When I came back in, I casually mentioned that oh yeah, Jacquie had won the lottery. Jacquie, a single-mom working at Wal-Mart, began to cry – and the other women in the room hugged and congratulated her for the win.
Awe.
And recently, working on a project for a TV network, there was absolute silence in the room when listening to the tape of an ethno where a 42 year-old mom from outside Atlanta talked about being ready for her youngest to go off to college. Shock and Awe – because everyone in the room was either waiting to have kids or had kids in diapers or kindergarten.
These are the moments that can define you as a brand strategist, marketer or researcher. Do you really understand and empathize with your audience – their challenges, joys, stresses? Do you know how they use their money, their time, what they value? Can you have compassion for their difficult realities? It really is so easy to think about the world through a very fortunate (and often hard earned), but less relevant, lens. So, what to do to avoid the troublesome “shock and awe”? A few thoughts:
Be armed with the facts – not big sweeping numbers that belittle reality (e.g. $50,000+), but a real and thoughtful overview of what your consumers’ lives are like
Talk to your consumers – lots of them – in their real life environments, as often as you can
Do research outside your comfort zone – instead of LA and NY, consider Sacramento and Baltimore (and keep in mind, Chicago does not represent the entire middle of the country)
Never ever make a decision based on what you, your family or your friends might like (unless the category/product skews to people of your socio-economic level)
Ensure that the senior decision makers are engaged with #1-4
At the end of the day, for most brands, the “real people” who live outside of the major business centers can make or break your business. Avoid the shock and awe (in your financials) by really getting to know them.
The new season of Mad Men starts soon, where we get to see Don, Peggy and the team once again tell consumers a brand story via advertising (in print, and perhaps even on TV!) that they expect will influence behavior.
But like secretaries and 3 martini lunches, we in brand marketing know that those days are long gone. We want more that just a captive listening audience. We want “engagement.” Any one who has responsibility for growing a brand needs to not just get potential customers to see their messages, but for them to “engage” with their product or brand. And marketers are actively tapping into digital media to make this happen. But we sense that it’s time to reconsider how we think about “engagement”.
In the early days of digital marketing, it was all about the click, and businesses were grown from tracking that all-powerful click. Even more recently, marketers are defining engagement as the number of “Likes” a brand can get on Facebook. But really, it’s still just a click, and like many clicks, there is no “there” there after the Like. Do I know any more about a brand when I click or Like? Am I more likely to buy or use that brand? Do I care more about that brand than I did before? The answer to these questions is an unenthusiastic maybe.
Just like many of us need more than one coffee date to bond with another person, we need more than one click or Like to commit to a brand. As marketers, we need to tell (and build) a brand story over time.
Of course one way to have these ongoing interactions is through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest, all of which bring customers and brands closer. But smart marketers have always known that commitment is a journey, not a click. I think the marketing community at large is just starting to come around to the idea that we simply can’t think about marketing as digital and traditional, because that first response (the impression, the click, or the Like) isn’t enough – we need to look beyond that response. It’s about creating content that builds a brand’s story across all platforms, in the real world and the digital world.
This of course is a blinding glimpse of the obvious – but is surprisingly difficult to execute in the real world. Why? Because doing it involves marketers across all different functions who just aren’t used to playing well with each other. Building a compelling and cohesive cross-platform content strategy is organizationally challenged – different platforms, different lead times, different agencies, different approval processes. It’s hard but it’s critical to get right. And it means marketers can’t think in media or platform silos (TV, radio, banner, video, ….) but have to think of how to create engagement across platforms – exactly how their customers interact with the world.
One example we most admire right now comes from an unlikely source – packaged goods. We recently spoke with the brand manager of Reynolds (yup, the aluminum foil) in a marketer discussion and were impressed by how fully he has embraced the potential of engagement. He’s not thinking about how to explain why one food-wrapping foil is better than another – instead, he is working to tell his brand story through the food that Reynolds wraps, and the role it plays in sharing meals, family time, great events, and fun. Reynolds is telling the story of their brand in a way that their customers will want to follow over time. They are creating real engagement – with a product that is anything but what we’d traditionally think of as engaging.
The brands that don’t get it will still talk at us, and do it in a disjointed way. One group will talk to the brand agency about the big TV idea, another will plan the digital campaign, another will do something in “social media”, and the PR team might even get in on the action. They are creating a lot of impressions (and even those clicks), but not engagement. What can you do in 2013 to plan and activate a cross-platform approach that will truly create engagement?
The first use of “lipstick on a pig” was in 1985 when the The Washington Postquoted a San Francisco radio host remarking “that would be like putting lipstick on a pig” in reference to plans to refurbish Candlestick Park (rather than constructing a new stadium for the San Francisco Giants). In more recent days, it’s an often used line among US politicians (in fact Dick Cheney called it “his favorite line” in a speech made in Colorado). Regardless of the situation, per Urban Dictionary, it refers to trying to make something or someone look appealing or attractive when it quite clearly will not.
Is perhaps a fresh coat of paint the new lipstick?
I’m talking about the “new American”, American Airline’s rebranding effort in the wake of the USAir merger. Per American’s site, “we’ve changed our look on the outside to reflect the progress we’ve made on the inside, revealing our new logo and the refreshed exterior of our planes.” The problem is, they’ve revealed the “new American” with a coat of paint (and a new website), without having done anything to remedy the product and service problems of the “old American.” Yes, I know it’ll take time, but they boast about all of their new planes, and I have yet to see one. And while their website says their flight attendants will have new uniforms, it says nothing about providing a better service experience. In fact, flying from San Francisco to New York last week, my experience of the “new American” consisted of a laughably old plane, torn seat pockets and cranky, disinterested flight attendants. Nothing “new” here.
While I could muse for a while about the deplorable state of air travel in the US, that’s not what this is really about. It’s about misuse of brand strategy as “lipstick” or a “coat of paint” – assuming that if you say you are great, people will believe you. Brand strategy is meant to direct what you do (and what you don’t do) and how you do it. A brand is most powerful (and credible) when it is baked into all touchpoints – when it’s real and tangible for your audience. And it’s just so much more powerful when your strategy is the “response” you get from your customers after exposing them to the strategy in action rather than something you tell them in words or visuals.
And since we were on the subject earlier… Go Giants!
We’re happy to announce that our design for Häagen-Dazs Limited Edition Ice Cream was recently featured in the Brand Packaging Design Gallery!
Nestlé Dreyers challenged sterling to redesign the Häagen-Dazs brand portfolio to be more relevant to todays consumer, while maintaining its aspirational and super-premium equity for any, discerning ice cream fan. See how we rose to the design challenge Here.
Click Here to see all the great designs featured in the gallery.
Wow! It’s as if the air suddenly got cleaner as the huge cloud of election messaging disappeared, literally overnight. And for the first time in weeks, it felt that the moment was right to reflect on what we had all just experienced.
Now, do not expect a politically based reflection – that would be wholly inappropriate from a green card-holding Brit and there have been hundreds of those anyway!! Rather, I want to share my thoughts from a brand perspective on lessons learned from the election. In the process of decision-making, it is inevitable that I end up favoring one brand over the other…but this is based on brand reasons, not political reasons.
Generally I always try to avoid evaluating people as brands as it feels somewhat hokey and over simplistic, but I have to make an exception for Obama and Romney. Over the past 6 months, they have become mega-brands in their own right and not just they but their brand plans, strategies and programs have been laid out for each of us to experience and evaluate.
So here, in my opinion, are the seven major branding lessons learned from the election campaign:
1. Getting the targeting strategy correct is fundamental to successful brand building
In this regard, the Obama camp nailed it. They appeared to have defined exactly who they wanted to appeal to and had done their homework in slicing and dicing the demographic dynamics of the nation. The Romney brand seemed to be tied to historical targeting and look to have paid the price.
2. No amount of marketing money spent can compensate for a poorly positioned brand
And no-one can dispute the ridiculous amount of money spent by these two brands. The fact is that the Obama brand was more consistent and flip-flopped less than the Romney brand but both of these brands should be ashamed at the wastage factor, given the dollars involved.
3. Brands must always display a united front with a single and distinctive brand voice
And even with this in place, building enduring brand equity is a hazardous business. In the election campaign, the Romney brand suffered because it was consistently derailed by colleagues within the brand team making controversial statements on complex philosophical issues – the result was increased brand blur and confusion within the audience. On this point the Obama brand was more clear and consistent and made less mistakes.
4. To be successful, brands need a clear and inspiring vision together with a roadmap for the future
And conversely, brands that dwell on the past often end up…in the past. Consumers respect brands that share their purpose and tell them where they are going and not just where they’ve been. Sadly, both election brands lacked clarity of vision and focused conversation disproportionately in the past. Mistake, big time, for both brands.
5.Brand leaders instinctively think multi-platform and deploy all the tools in their communication toolbox
Now this could be a case of perception rather than reality but it just seemed to me that the Obama brand was smarter, quicker and more effective in integrating their media and messaging plans. The resulting impression was of a modern ‘social’ brand communicating in a thoroughly modern ‘social’ way. I have met no-one who has echoed these sentiments for the Romney brand.
6. Negative energy is probably the least effective messaging platform on which to build a brand
In any political campaign of this magnitude, one has to expect a degree of negativity but this was extreme and it was often personal. Consumers understand competitive advantage and why one brand can benefit directly at another brands expense. But both brands suffered because they failed to ring-fence the negative energy component and it was allowed to run riot – shame on them both.
7.Brands need to display humanity in order to build a meaningful relationship with their audience
And it took the wives and families of both brands to deliver on this important dimension. The kind of gladiatorial behavior shown, for example, by both the Obama and Romney brands in the second presidential debate created a chasm for some that was never repaired and for others, it took Michelle and Ann to step in and deliver the compassion needed in order to bridge that gap.
In summary, I also have absolutely no doubt that future campaigns need more hands-on professional brand help – not just on the activation side where many agencies are involved but more on the strategic branding side where both brands were often exposed. It is true that brand Romney appeared to need more help but I can assure you that brand Obama would also have benefited from some serious professional branding assistance.
So onwards and upwards to 2016 – I just wonder how much will really change!!
This week Debbie welcomes Sterling Brand’s President of Strategy, Austin McGhie as he talks about the importance of positioning your brand and his new book: Brand is a Four Letter Word.
Tune in to the podcast at 3pm this Friday on Design Observer!
Our people Simon Williams, Austin McGhie, Debbie Millman and DeeDee Gordon are the inspiration and energy behind Sterling Brands’ success. Learn more about our team now. Read more
