On the money!!!

Tom is FAB!

Leveraging equity-prioritizing imp

I have written about strategy extensively in various essays on this and other blogs I contribute. I define strategy as the process of developing and prioritizing options to enable growth towards a broader vision. In my experience the development of options is often the relatively easier step, it is prioritization that most people and organizations bulk at. Ever watch a kid at a dessert table? It is a fascinating visual, he or she will want it all and very often the largest size or the biggest piece of ice cream, cake, milk shake, you name it. Rest assured he or she is not going to finish any more than a small fraction of the entire selection. Organizations act like little kids at times when going after consumers. They want it all, they want their brands to be everything to everybody ending up being nothing to anybody.

Anyway back to brand equity… when prioritizing the attributes that define our brand’s core equity brand stewards often run into a very similar dilemma. Who is she and what is most important to her? How is she satisfying her needs today and why should she choose your brand to meet those needs? Often these criteria are not a simple one plus one equals two but one plus one equals zero or even four, every psychologist has developed his or her own theory to understand her desire to try and enable the one plus one equals at least two if not more.

As a marketer and the research budgets available to large brands these days there is a strong tendency to get carried away, it is really where economists are different from a brand marketer. Keep it simple, ensure every equity attribute needs to simply abide the following –

• Be Different!
• Maintain Relevance to the target.
• Live the brand with the highest Esteem.
• Communicate, Communicate, communicate

This is based on the Y&R DREK (Differentiation, Relevance, Esteem and Knowledge) model in assessing a brands equity value, the intangible asset value to an organization.

Corporate identities from Brand Camp

Always fascinated by Tom Fishburne...

How do we decide?

How do we decide?

A article in the Times and referenced in the Stanford Business School's Knolwedgebase Newsletter on recent work by Baba Shiv, professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on how emotions influence decision-making.

The top line:

- Emotions are key to decision-making
- Commitment to a decision is critical
- Vulcan behaviour can be forced
- Price can influence the emotional experience
- Desperation (fear) is good for getting people to do something and so are Unexpected rewards
- Women make better decisions
- People are optimists
- Hope causes a delay in decision-making

A paper along the same lines (Nonconscious Goals and Consumer Choice by Tanya L. Chartrand, Joel Huber, Baba Shiv, Robin J. Tanner) addressing the value of emotions in making choices is published in this months Journal of Consumer Research.

ANA insights

ANA insights-29
Originally uploaded by ana.insightslides

The visuals are inspiring and insightful! A MUST experience...

Brand user community, ‘A movement’

The other morning while reading WSJ I was reminded of a topic I have been toying with in my mind and there it was. The article in the journal talked about an organization endorsing one of the candidates running for the US Presidential elections, I am not a political junkie but I do have some strong opinions and very defined preferences while I obviously don’t wish to voice on this forum but I would love to play with the idea of organizations and membership to those organizations as a they apply to brands.

Last year I presented someone with a very eclectic and premium watch. I was very proud of myself when I presented it and hoped the master piece will receive some airtime. During a conversation recently I found out that hardly happens for the fear of being damaged, lost or stolen? The idea got me thinking about premium brands the likes that celebrities consume and brand managers love to broadcast in the hope that it will generate fan following and clout for the brand itself. The implicit assumption is consumption of the brand automatically puts you into a community of users that share common values and a club that is limited to the brand users. But what happens if the celebrity is no longer seen consuming the brand or even worse seen consuming a different brand? Does the community still exist, given the flagship has fallen?

I always believed that the brand user community is a movement, one that embodies the brands mission and helps drive the vision and purpose. Every consumer is a latent ambassador that advocates for the brand as an unofficial spokes person. It is paramount as a brand steward to know your segment and target them so the brand resonates, a phenomenon that has a multiplicative effect versus additive; the contrarian view is the wrong target segment dissonates a form of chaos with no direction or growth for the brand. Simply put, it is a self reinforcing spiral, grow the right target community, the brand grows by leaps and bounds!

Confused retail marketing

Ever been to a party where you see people you don’t know but obviously recognize the Armani suit, Versace negligee, Patek Philippe or Cartier watch, Allen Edmonds or Jimmy Choo shoes. None of the stuff still helps you recognize the individual gentleman or lady? That is exactly how I feel when I enter most retail stores these days.

Walk into most food and mass merchandise stores and they usually all feel like the same (there are obvious exceptions-Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods, Wal-Mart, Target to name a few). If one suffered from amnesia it would be difficult to know where you are once inside. What makes things worse is the fact that all promote brands that they don’t own, all the merchandising is focused on brands others own the equivalent of showing off the expensive dress/suit, watch/jewelry, shoe, etc. from my example but it does little for the store itself.

Retail is essentially in the service business, build a brand for service and make service your product. What would be ideal is leverage the equity brand manufacturers have built and piggyback an ultra premium service to keep Mom coming back again and again for top quality brands, bring kids for play and education on where stuff comes from, connect with the neighbors and friends shopping at the store, while still feeling at home with the same familiar comfort of the associates and the neighborhood.

The organizational bullwhip

I liked the post and to build on it further some organizations are so strange that they change without any perception or insights and sometimes so fast that they create unexpected and often unplanned resonance.

The obvious risk is complete chaos from two completely independent and unrelated change initiatives.

Jay Galbraith's STAR Model is a great framework when leading change.

The commodity squeeze is a community process but Brand is an individual strategy

With oil prices where there are it is not unusual to see an article on the state of affairs in the news every single day and with oil comes OPEC the cartel of petroleum producing countries. There have been several different cartels that came and went over the years Sugar cartel, Rubber cartel, Steel cartel, Aluminum, Magnesium cartel, Explosive cartel, etc. None of which are in existence any longer?

The basic definition of a commodity is a product without any appreciable difference from supplier to supplier giving the consumer the flexibility of substituting one suppliers product with the other. The classic economics of supply and demand apply to the commodity world too and since supply is no longer controlled by one single producing/supplying party creates an opportunity for suppliers to collude on supply quantities and fix prices to take advantage of the market need. The only way to make more money is to constrict the supply collectively between the producers/suppliers. These collective agreements between the members and the need to forego revenues for members producing/supplying small quantities of product are the primary reason why cartels are not sustainable over long terms.

Brands on the other hand are a property of its owner. Only the owner can choose to restrict or release supply. The economics of supply and demand apply to brands too but the emotional connection creates a demand where a need may be satisfied through alternatives but a want/desire remains. This desire also enables the supplier to charge a price different from a competitive supplier. Each producer/supplier can develop a own strategy independent of the competitor based on the consumer segment and differentiated positioning for the brand. A clear and differentiated positioning that is relevant to the target consumer segment is the difference between independence as a brand and the dependence as a commodity.

The pendulum swing

Products like art follow movements in time. Neoclassical, Classical, Renaissance, Realism, Surrealism, Pointillism, Dada, Cubism, Minimalism, Pop, Modernism, I can go on and on. In a world where products like Google mail is minimalist; Procter & Gamble’s Tide with bleach, Tide with Downy, Tide with Febreze is hybrid; Chevy’s American Revolution and Chrysler’s PT Cruiser designs are classical; Ikea is modern.

What are the points of inflection when products are ready for a change in movement? What is the product innovation swing amplitude and frequency? When is it time to continue to forge new or forge the old back into the future? It is not to say we tread backwards but squeeze a little nostalgia into the equity for innovation sake. Every time I notice the old in the new I am reminded a quote by Sam Levinson – “The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

Is creativity impactfull when unnoticed?

We have all struggled with the age old question "When a tree falls in a lonely forest, and no animal is near by to hear it, does it make a sound? Why?" at one time of the other. No one seems to know the origin of this question; I came to think of it again while reading an article in the WSJ about the Microsoft Vista challenges.

The article talked about how Microsoft needs to focus on communicating the existing features in Windows before developing anything new because current users already have a tough with the built in creativity of the Microsoft wizard programmers. It all starts with Microsoft second guessing the user community by making choices and settings from the simplest to the most complicated. Here is a classic example the Firefox browser takes less than half the amount of time to load than Internet explorer, primarily because Internet explorer had many more add-ins that the browser automatically loads and often the user community does not even need. Alternatively Firefox is minimalist and lets you add what you want when you need it, with less baggage the Firefox browser is quick to load and fast to surf/navigate. Not every user is savvy enough to use Firefox but not stupid enough to need Internet explorer to push creativity behind the curtain.

Microsoft windows is the worlds most popular operating system and is responsible for much of the global productivity improvement since the mid 80’s. Creativity whether innate at Microsoft or inspired by rivals has made computer usage a mass phenomenon. But if the user is unable to experience this creativity and innovation there is no value.

Innovation is the value on creativity and innovation needs marketing!