Karl Greenberg at Media Post’s Marketing
Daily summarizes a talk Allen Adamson did at ANA. Below you will find excerpts
from that talk below (to read the whole article click
here).
Two things come up for me, one is this is so full of
marketing jargon. Marketing savvy C-level executives will likely get this but
even some of those might have to read this a couple of times. It isn’t that
hard to understand but as I have been saying in previous
posts, can’t we translate this into simpler terms?
Let’s take these statements:
"Segway's a good product, but not a strong brand for
that reason”
“Best brands are blessed with both relevance and
differentiation”
They make sense once you think about it, and in fact are
VERY important statements. But I think they can be discussed in more
straightforward way. This is the old argument of marketing needing marketing
for itself.
What they mean with those statements is; deliver a great
product that solves a clear problem. If one of those two things is not
happening, you have a BIG marketing challenge on your hands.
The article is right on the money on a number of fronts.
· Don’t go big just because it is easy, like
buying a big campaign because marketing is now the final solution to solve the
bottom line problem. (Have you ever noticed how marketing is the first thing to
cut then the last thing used to save the company?)
· Boil the value you are offering down to 2 – 3
simple words. This is good for customers but even better for employees who also
represent your brand on a daily basis.
· Plan ahead and decide where you want to be (check
back here tomorrow–Thursday– for a post describing a exercise right from my book how to do
this)
· In order to do any of the above you must KNOW
YOUR CUSTOMER and how your product will serve them.
Adamson
At ANA: Best Brands Blessed With Relevance, Differentiation
by Karl Greenberg, Wednesday, Apr 25, 2007 5:00
AM ET
ALLEN
ADAMSON, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF the New York
office of brand development consultancy Landor Associates, used the Segway
personal transportation machine as an example of a brand that failed because it
has a high degree of differentiation but very little relevance.
"Segway's
a good product, but not a strong brand for that reason," he said.
The
message was part of a conversation in the packed Manhattan Grand Hyatt
convention hall on the benefits of simplicity in building a brand and why
companies like Apple and Google or Timberland, for that matter, succeed by
simplifying consumer choices and the brand's own proposition. "If the
brand doesn't make it easy, it won't work."
Speaking
at yesterday's Association of National Advertisers Conference, Adamson argued
that a brand can be successful if that formula is reversed, but the best brands
are blessed with both relevance and differentiation.
"The
most common pattern we see is companies who have strong awareness, nonetheless
continuously worried about awareness, who do things like get stadium-naming
rights. They focus on that because it's easy to do," he said.
"Dealing with the issue of differentiation and how to deliver it is
complex and hard to execute."
The
problem, he said, is that few companies are able to boil down their brand and
what makes it different to a few simple words. "We'll sit down with a CEO
and ask what the company does that's different, and we may get something like
'innovation.' That's a popular word these days. When we speak to the executive
board of that company and ask them what innovation means, we'll get twelve
different answers."
He
said developing the brand's identity in simple terms and then creating a symbol
and/or a compelling phrase defining it is critical not just for consumers but
for employees, too--because it is clear and unambiguous, and therefore a kind
of "veni, vidi, vici" for company workers, particularly those who
deal with consumers.
"Once
you get to where your story is, you need then to get it simple, if you can't
get it down to simple idea it won't stick," he said. "If you have a brand
promise, and you have dozens or hundreds who are supposed to be delivering that
promise, you will never succeed ... if there's no clear, simple sense of what
the customer journey is."
Examples
of successful brand ideas: BP's "Beyond Petroleum" mantra; H.R.
Block's "Friendly enabler" positioning. "You need to deliver
that promise along consumer touchpoints, but the most successful brands choose
their touch points carefully," he said. "Figure out where you want to
win, and make sure you do that."
He
said a simple and clear brand premise--one that argues that a brand is
different from its competitors--starts with something that isn't fulfilled by
what's out there already. "I always think that Jerry Seinfeld would be
great at branding because he always asks the question, 'Do you ever wonder
why?' You have to get to the 'ever wonder why' phrase," he said.
As
an example, he illustrated how Timberland's rise from no-name boot brand to
fashion accessory and one of the best-known work boot brands came from an
observation by CEO Jeff Swartz.
"He
bought a shoe company in Maine, was doing pretty well--some years were good,
some bad, but he couldn't grow the business. One day he got out of a car,
stepped in a puddle and said, "Why can't I do a waterproof shoe?' The
company designed it, came up with the name Timberland."
Adamson
also gave a nod to Bose headphones, Baby Einstein and FedEx (with its brand
premise of absolute certainty) as companies that are successfully tapping a
core consumer insight. And Mazda.
Karl
Greenberg can be reached at karl@mediapost.com
Read
the rest of the article
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