Leading Brands Are Positioned

-Al Ries

The weather forecast for the old, traditional ways of advertising is gloomy at best. And nowhere was this more clearly demonstrated than in the recent Atlanta study conduced by Daniel Starch & Staff.

According to Starch, about 25% of those noting a television commercial attributed it to the competition. With virtually no exceptions, high scoring commercials were the brand leaders in their category.

The also-rans didn't fare nearly as well. A David Janssen Excedrin commercial was associated with Anacin twice as often as Excedrin. A Pristeen commercial helped F.D.S., the brand leader, more than it did Pristeen.

This shattering turn of events is certainly "positioning" at work in our over-communicated society. It appears that unless an advertisement is based on a unique idea or position, the message is often put in the mental slot reserved for the leader in the product category.

Clutter is surely part of the reason for the rise of "misidentification." But another, even more important factor is that times have changed. Today, you cannot advertise your product in splendid isolation. Unless your advertising positions your product in relationship to its competition, your advertising is doomed to failure.

I wrote this in 1972 with my former partner Jack Trout. What has changed? Only the names.

Covering Up The Fall Of TV Advertising

-Mark Ritson

Last week, Deloitte released a report concluding that 'TV advertising still has the greatest impact on consumers'. This unexpected finding was derived from survey research conducted in July by YouGov on 2100 British consumers - research which, in the opinion of your humble BSI blogger, is absolute and total crap.

Let's start with the method. YouGov asked consumers to think about different forms of advertising they had seen or heard, and indicate which 'impacted' them the most. In my opinion, asking consumers to self-report complicated issues such as the persuasive impact of communications is ridiculously invalid.

It's not that consumers lie when asked a question like this - rather, they simply do not know the answer. Self-reporting data has been proven to be invalid for questions as basic as estimating a consumer's household income. It is therefore unlikely that any of the consumers in the YouGov sample had the faintest clue which advertising medium truly had the most 'impact' on them. They provided an answer, but the answer was bogus.

However, let's assume for a second that consumers can accurately report this information. It's still a flawed piece of research because the costs of the media being compared vary. The last time I looked at a rate card, the price of a 30-second spot was wildly different from that of an outdoor ad. Even if they were the same, the effective frequencies required to reach the 'impact' being reported by consumers would probably differ as well. In the study, TV advertising was reported to have four times the impact of outdoor advertising. What if an out-door ad costs 20% that of a TV ad, and needs only two, rather than three, exposures to deliver its impact? It would work out to be a superior medium even with a lower reported 'impact' score.

Even if we pretend that all media have the same unit cost and require the same number of repetitions to have impact, the research is still flawed, it seems to me. For the past 15 years, no one has cared about comparing one media with another in this binary way; it's called Integrated Marketing Communications because it's intended to be integrated. Comparing apples with oranges is an irrelevant endeavour in the age of the fruit salad.

Only a year ago, that was Deloitte's recommendation to the ad industry. A report suggested it should look at online media 'not as a solitary platform, with a mission to compete with traditional media, but as an element of the media mix within a campaign'.

Why would Deloitte make a 180-degree turn and publish a report only a year later, claiming that TV advertising 'packs the biggest punch'? A more cynical blogger might suggest that, because the report was commissioned for the Edinburgh International Television Festival, Deloitte is happy to conclude this.

Shame on Deloitte's media practice for publishing this report. Shame on YouGov for being clearly out of its depth in the world of advertising research. In my opinion, it ought to stick to political polling, where things are simpler and within its skill-set. Moreover, shame on the TV executives that commissioned this piece of fluff.

There are two reasons why TV advertising is in trouble. The first is that it is a 20th-century medium, rapidly becoming outflanked by more advanced options. The second is that the TV industry is run by the kind of dinosaurs who think these kind of reports are good for business. Put those two bullet points in your next report; they come free of charge.

30 Seconds On Deloitte's 'Television's Got Talent' Study

* The report showed that 64% of the British public believe TV advertising has an impact on them, twice that of news-paper advertising and three times that of magazine, radio and outdoor.

* A whopping 75% of 18- to 24-year-olds reported that TV ads have an impact on them, despite mountains of other evidence that this demographic is not watching as much television as older generations.

* Online media performed particularly poorly in the study. Both online search and display ads were cited as having less than a fifth of the impact of TV advertising, with a mere 12% and 8%, respectively, of the British public naming them as a medium with impact. Despite this, total UK adspend on the internet is set to overtake total TV ad budgets this year for the first time.

* The report was devised and written by Jolyon Baker and Ed Shedd, Deloitte's head of media, for the MediaGuardian International Television Festival. The festival takes place this coming weekend.

Holistic Marketing Explored

-Al Ries

Holism is the concept that the whole has a reality independent and greater than the sum of its parts. Marketing people should pay more attention to this concept.

Take Tiger Woods' endorsement of Buick. On the surface, this might seem like a good idea. A young, charismatic, world-class athlete drives a Buick. How could this not improve the perception of the brand?

But wait. According to Forbes magazine, Tiger Woods made $115 million last year, including $90 million in endorsements. More money than any other athlete in the world. He owns a $20 million, 155-foot yacht. And he drives a Buick? Highly unlikely.

Nor is Tiger Woods' endorsement working in the marketplace. Buick sales in the U.S. have declined every year for five straight years, from 432,017 vehicles in 2002 to 185,791 vehicles in 2007. Last year, even Subaru outsold Buick.

Another point: If Tiger Woods endorses Buick, who is left to endorse Cadillac? God?

It's a stretch, but Tiger in a Cadillac is a plausible endorsement. To quite a few people, the best American cars are on a par with the best European and Asian cars. So if Tiger drives the "best" American car, it would be a Cadillac, of course.

That's holism at work. Look at the big picture, not just the details.

Take Tiger Woods' endorsement of Nike, the No. 1 athletic brand in the world. That also makes sense. But suppose he had endorsed Reebok instead. Would that have worked? Of course not.

And how about the mathematicians and computer scientists who developed the art and science of risk management on Wall Street. They hired Ph.D.s to build sophisticated systems to comb through complicated mortgage portfolios to analyze everything that could possibly go wrong.

Now it looks as if they missed about $700 billion worth of things that could go wrong.

Why didn't they look at the big picture? When you put a person with no down payment (or a low down payment) in a home that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, you are asking for trouble. No computer is as smart as a human being with a holistic point of view.

After World War II, a shortage of cars created a seller's market. Prices skyrocketed. Then things returned to normal, as they usually do, and many people found themselves with vehicles worth less than their car loans. A number of young guys I knew owned cars that were underwater. So they went out and "burned" them before they were repossessed. They deliberately over-revved the engines to destroy them.

I wonder how many houses have recently burned down in mysterious fires.

Everything is interconnected. When you make a change in one area, you also affect many other areas.

Take the 1982 launch of Diet Coke, the "new product of the decade." As successful as Diet Coke is, the company has paid a big price. Regular Coca-Cola sales have declined substantially.

The Coca-Cola Co. considers Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Classic to be two separate brands. But consumers connect the two and not always favorably. For many consumers, regular Coke has "too many calories" and Diet Coke "doesn't taste good."

To solve that problem, Coca-Cola introduced "C2," a cola with half the calories of regular Coke. That might be logical from the company's point of view, but not from the consumer's holistic point of view. If consumers want "taste," they buy Coke. If consumers want "low calories," they buy Diet Coke. If consumers want ....., they buy C2. (Try to figure out what word to put in that last sentence.)

More choice often puts consumers in a bind. They often wind up with a "none of the above" reaction.

Take the launch of Sugar-Free Red Bull. That solved a problem many Red Bull drinkers never knew they had. "Geez! I didn't know that Red Bull was loaded with calories." Take the launch of Red Bull in 12-ounce cans. That put many Red Bull drinkers on the horns of a dilemma. "The 8.3-ounce cans look expensive compared to the 12-ounce cans. On the other hand, I'm used to drinking Red Bull in the smaller cans. Now what?"

Campbell's Soup has introduced chicken noodle soup with "25% less sodium." What does that say about Campbell's regular chicken noodle soup? That it has too much sodium? Then there's Campbell's Healthy Request line of soups. What does that say about Campbell's regular soups? That they're unhealthy? Then there's Campbell's Chunky soups. What does that say about Campbell's regular soups? That they're thin and watery?

Then there's Campbell's Chunky Fully Loaded soups. What does that say about Campbell's regular Chunky soups? That they're not really chunky?

Recently Campbell's has introduced the Select Harvest line of soups. Full-page, full-color newspaper ads compare Progresso ("Made with MSG") with Campbell's Select Harvest ("Made with TLC").

That might impress the few people who buy Progresso soups, but how about the large number of people who buy Campbell's other soup products? If Campbell is making a big deal out of "no MSG" in Select Harvest, then the other Campbell soups must contain MSG. I'm sure that's not what Campbell intended to say.

Every single product introduction has "unintended consequences." While companies have marketing people focused on individual brands like Diet Coke, consumers are holistic. They see the big picture.

Why should the marketing people at Buick care what the marketing people at Cadillac are doing? Because consumers see a hierarchy of brands at General Motors from Saturn at the bottom to Cadillac at the top.

Or is it Chevrolet at the bottom and not Saturn? Who knows? Apparently the people at General Motors haven't figured this one out yet. No wonder consumers are confused, too.

What happens when a company runs a sale? Far too often, a consumer thinks, "Their regular prices are too high." Run enough sales, and nobody is going to buy at regular prices, a problem currently facing the middle-of-the-market department-store chains.

What happens when a company issues a coupon? Same problem.

Charmin became the leading brand of toilet paper by focusing on "softness." The package said "squeezably soft," and the TV commercials featured Mr. Whipple warning consumers to "Please don't squeeze the Charmin."

So now Charmin comes in an "ultra soft" version. Does that mean regular Charmin is not really soft?

Are we going to see an "ultra safe" vehicle from Volvo? Or a "super ultimate driving machine" from BMW?

Consumers are usually more holistic than company representatives. Look at how Lehman leaders handled the company's recent financial troubles:

September 2007: "Our liquidity position is stronger than ever." -- Christopher O'Mara, chief financial officer, Lehman Brothers.

December 2007: "We have come through the current downturn very well positioned on a competitive basis." -- Erin Callan, the new CFO, Lehman Brothers.

June 2008: "We do not expect to use proceeds of this equity offering to further decrease leverage, but rather to take advantage of future market opportunities. Over all, we stand extremely well capitalized." -- Erin Callan.

September 2008: "We have materially reduced our residential mortgage exposure and marked our remaining holdings to levels that make future write-downs unlikely." -- Ian T. Lowitt, the new CFO, Lehman Brothers.

Sept. 15, 2008: Lehman Brothers declares bankruptcy.

It wasn't what Lehman financial executives said that made a deep impression on investors. Rather it was: Why are they saying this? It's only when a company gets in trouble that it need to reassure investors that it's not in trouble.

Warren Buffett never issued a statement declaring that Berkshire Hathaway was "extremely well capitalized."

Before you say anything in a marketing program, ask yourself, "How are consumers who look at things holistically going to interpret this message?"

The hole in many marketing programs is the lack of holism.

Building Brand Awareness

-Brad Vanauken

Today, another question from the BSI Emailbag. Gard, a marketer from Oslo, Norway asks:

“Brad, I am working (and studying) within the field of marketing and am an avid reader of Branding Strategy Insider. I have not seen you discuss brand awareness. What insight can you share? Can you recommend literature on the topic?”

Gard, thanks for asking. As you point out, it is time that we write something about brand awareness. Awareness is generally viewed to be one of the two most important drivers of strong brands (the other being relevant differentiation). Past research has shown brand awareness to have a high correlation with purchase intent, market share and other important brand equity and business metrics. I have found top-of-mind unaided brand awareness for the product/service category in question to be the awareness measure most correlated with other relevant metrics and behaviors.

If your company has created a superior product offered at a price that delivers an outstanding value and supports the product by unparalleled service, but no one has ever heard of your company or its products, how many of those products are you likely to sell? Zero. That’s why awareness is so important. It is the cornerstone of strong brands.

Research indicates that the primary impact advertising has on brands is to build awareness for those brands.

What, in addition to advertising, can one do to build strong brand awareness? – (a) any form of repeated exposure to the brand and (b) a strong brand identity consistently presented. Any of the following can lead to repeated exposure:

• Extensive distribution
• Publicity and brand-related stories/articles
• Publicity stunts
• Product placement in movies, games, etc.
• Direct marketing
• A strong web (Internet) presence
• Customer referrals
• Word of mouth marketing
• Frequency programs
• Insignia merchandise
• Brand licensing
• Online and other viral marketing techniques
• A strong presence at trade shows and in trade magazines
• Thought leadership in the industry – white papers, speeches, roundtable discussions, user conferences, best practice benchmarking, etc.
• Branding on employee uniforms, sides of vehicles, in front of buildings, etc.
• Brand signature on all email messages
• Programs promoting product trial
• Brand-related contests

A strong identity requires a strong icon, a tagline that reinforces the brand promise, a highly functional identity system and guidelines and a champion (“identity police”) to ensure consistent use. Digital asset management systems are excellent in driving consistent use.

Another area of interest related to brand awareness is the use of MRI and CT Scan technologies to monitor brainwave activities while a subject is exposed to brand advertising. These technologies have been used to determine if information is being encoded or retrieved from memory centers and whether they evoke pleasurable or painful experiences.

I would read the Journal of Brand Management, the Journal of Product & Brand Management, the Journal of Advertising Research and the Journal of Marketing Research to identify areas of interest for academic papers on the subject.

How To Police Your Brand!

-Ed Roach

Your brand is probably your company’s most valuable asset. It is what provides you the opportunity to make money based on strong relationships.

Your brand makes advocates out of customers which means that they in effect become salespeople for you.

Being an advocate for a brand, makes it a pleasure to recommend that company to your network of contacts.

Paying close attention to the environment in which your brand exists will reward you at times when you find your brand in a bad place or subject to sloppy practices.

Because your brand is essentially your reputation, it is therefore, dire that you always defend its integrity. Here are 7 critical areas where you should police your brand:

ONE: Corporate Logo.
Your corporate logo is the face of your brand. It is what the public sees and identifies as your company. Every logo has associated with it a color palette and distinguishing features. Even the space your logo occupies is valuable real estate. Explain the rules for reproducing your corporate logo. Be sure to have an RGB, Hex, Pantone, Process Color, Black & White and Gray Scale version of your logo. DO NOT compromise on your palette/real estate. Once you drop the ball once, your audience will be confused. Consistency is powerful magic.

TWO: Type Style.
Choose fonts that accurately represent the personality of your brand. Use these fonts in everything you do. Apple has gone to the trouble of designing a font expressly for their use. Fonts like other graphic elements set a tone that can be recognizable over time.

THREE: On-Brand Thinking.
This one is over-looked at times. Be sure that your entire staff has a keen understanding of your brand statement or unique positioning strategy. If staff is allowed to define what you do, you stand a good chance of jumping into the sea of sameness along with the competition. On-brand thinking portrays an image of confidence.

FOUR: Internal Communications.
Internal communication is a sub set of on-brand thinking. Keeping your organization current with company news and direction, helps to eliminate communication by rumor. Rumors are often wrong and typically negative. It eats away at your brand from the inside and contributes to the erosion of business.

FIVE: Poor Corporate Behavior.
We only have to cast our eyes upon Wall Street to quickly see how well-established brands are destroyed overnight when greed rules the day. Once your brand has been trashed by your corporate officers, it is often nearly impossible to recover. Brand trust is what makes you money.

SIX: Exit Strategies.
If an individual represents your brand as it’s icon, do you have a plan in place if they should suddenly disappear due to natural or other causes? Mascots or spokes people are a double edged sword for your brand. Done well they can cement a relationship with an audience, but the trick is to make them larger than life - something beyond themselves. Great ones are Colonel Sanders, Ronald McDonald and Dave from Lenox.

SEVEN: Risk Planning.
Utilizing Compliance Branding and having a plan in place help offset an unplanned event that threatens your brand. A case in point: Martha Stewart. How Martha responded to the situation she found her brand in, resulted in a secure brand once the event was over. Determining how the company should react to any negative publicity and who should speak for them is important to weathering a storm.

Policing your brand is an ongoing effort. Your competition is only too happy to see you fall. Unless you take the proper steps to protect it you stand a great risk of not only allowing the competition to define your brand but it puts you in the undesirable position of reacting constantly to events that didn’t have to happen. Ignoring your brand takes money directly out of your pocket. The suspect in this crime is in the mirror.

Brand Building & the Love Strategy

-Al Ries

"Love" has become a key ingredient in many marketing programs. Some recent rallying cries:

• "Get consumers to fall in love with our brand."

• "Reach their hearts as well as their minds."

• "Create intimate, emotional connections. Smother them with attention and affection."

Does "love" work in marketing? Sure. As a matter of fact, falling in love is a good analogy for the branding process.

A young person falls in love and gets married. Now suppose the next year that same person meets someone who is better looking, wealthier and more fun to be with. Bingo, he or she changes spousal brands.

Not likely. The surprising thing is not that half of all marriages end in divorce. The surprising thing is that half of all marriages don't end in divorce. Even Ike and Tina Turner stayed together for almost two decades.

Falling in love with a person is an emotion that has consequences that can last for years. Furthermore, people don't usually fall in love a second time without falling out of love first.

Falling in love with a brand has similar consequences. Just because you run across a "better" brand doesn't necessarily mean you will switch. Pepsi might taste better than Coke, but most Coke drinkers have fallen in love with the brand and won't switch.

All across America people are falling in love with their brands. Tropicana orange juice. Kellogg's corn flakes. Heinz ketchup. Tabasco pepper sauce. Campbell's soup. Tide detergent. Kleenex tissue. Hertz rent-a-cars. Duracell batteries. And a host of other brands.

Look at the history of Volkswagen, the first small car. People literally fell in love with that vehicle. Disney even made several movies about Herbie, the Love Bug.

Then there's McDonald's, the first hamburger chain. "I'm loving it" works for McDonald's, but it would be unlikely to work for Burger King. (Fans at football games might yell out, "We're No. 1!" But I've never heard a crowd cry out, "We're No. 2!")

Then "love" must be a powerful marketing strategy, right?

Not really. What differentiates the winners and losers in most categories is purely a question of who was first in the mind. Kleenex, the first pocket tissue, was launched in 1924 and has been the leading pocket-tissue brand ever since.

Isn't that what happens when you fall in love with a person? If you are truly in love with that person, then you can meet a million other people who may be superior in one way or another, but still you won't switch. Loving a person blocks your interest in finding another person to love.

Loving a brand blocks your interest in exploring other brands in the same category. This is an enormous advantage for the "first brand into the mind." Gatorade in sports drinks. Red Bull in energy drinks. The iPod user isn't actively looking for another MP3-player brand to fall in love with. Ditto the BlackBerry user. The Nintendo DS user. The Amazon user. The Twitter user. The Google user.

Of course, there is a way to compete with powerful brands such as Google. Consider Baidu and Yandex. Baidu has 70% of the Chinese search market; Google has 26%. Yandex has 56% of the Russian search market; Google has 23%. Baidu was first in China. Yandex was first in Russia. What's love got to do with it?

(Before I get too many comments, I should mention that Google wasn't first in search. AltaVista was, but it threw away its leadership by turning its site into a portal. GoTo.com was second, but it shut down its destination site and decided to focus on a syndication service it called Overture.)

Without some help from a leader brand that does something stupid, it's exceptionally difficult for a No. 2 brand to overtake a leader. You can't fall in love with the No. 2 brand in the category until you first fall out of love with the No. 1 brand. That's why No. 2 brands should not promote "love" or other emotional attributes.

A No. 2 brand has two choices: Be the opposite of the leader or launch a marketing campaign to undermine the leading brand. Years ago, we called the latter strategy "repositioning the competition."

It's what Tylenol did to Bayer aspirin. "For the millions of people who should not take aspirin ..." was the headline of one of Tylenol's ads. And the copy went on to say that aspirin can cause stomach bleeding. Today, Tylenol is the No. 1 selling over-the-counter brand in American drugstores.

Too many marketing managers believe their categories are "level" playing fields. May the better product win. Or the better advertising. Or the better internet strategy. Unfortunately that seldom happens. The game is fixed, and the leader starts with a huge advantage.

Take Google, which many people believe to be the country's most innovative company (and it probably is). Over the years, Google has used its innovative people and innovative strategies to launch a host of new products. Lively was a virtual world that was Google's answer to Second Life. Jaiku was a microblogging service similar to Twitter. Lively was folded, and Jaiku was turned over to its users as an open-source project. Then there was Google Print Ads and Google Audio Ads, both scrapped.

I think you'll find that Second Life users and Twitter users are in love with their brands. A better, more innovative approach is highly unlikely to loosen the grip those brands have with their audiences.

People follow a similar pattern. When you are in love with a person, you don't continually compare that person with other people you meet. The same holds true for brands.

Most marketing messages are misdirected. If you're not the leader, then almost everything you say about yourself is totally ignored. The consumer thinks, hey, I'm already in love with a brand, and it's not yours.

Leaders make similar mistakes. They often think a marketing war is an advertising war. The brand that has the best advertising wins. So every year, the advertising agency gets busy dreaming up its latest extravaganza.

"Open happiness" is Coca-Cola's latest extravaganza. But why do people drink Coke instead of Pepsi? It's certainly not because Coke makes them happier than Pepsi. People have fallen in love with Coke because it's the authentic cola. It was first. It's the original. It's the real thing.

Brands that are first in the mind can often effectively reinforce their leadership by using ideas and concepts that relate to their authenticity.

• Hellmann's real mayonnaise.

• Movado: The museum watch.

• Mikimoto: Originator of cultured pearls.

• Oscar Mayer: America's favorite bacon.

• Johnson & Johnson dental floss: The one dentists use most.

• Newcastle Brown Ale: The one and only. (Can you name another brown ale?)

What's love got to do with it? Plenty. But you need to figure out how to create that love. And the best way to do that is to get into the consumer's mind first.

Indirect Influencers and Purchase Decisions

-Derrick daye

A company has multiple constituencies when it offers the same product to different market segments. Why is this an important discipline in Marketing? Often times, your direct buyer is not the most important influencer. Children, doctors, relatives and social referential leaders often assume major positions in the purchasing decision.

As a result, it is important to understand these indirect customers and influencers and integrate this understanding into marketing strategy. Multiple Constituency Marketing applies to a wide number of industries including the Pharmaceutical, Hospitality, Consumer Goods, Toys and Entertainment sectors.

Multiple constituencies = Actual buyer + Influencers (doctors, accrediting agencies, children, relatives, referential leaders in society)

One example of Multiple Constituency Marketing is in the Pharmaceutical sector. Take for example Viagra as a drug. Pharmaceutical firms target not only the doctor who is the gate-keeper in the prescription purchasing decision. Pfizer targets customers directly to inquire from their doctors about getting the drug, appealing to their psychological needs of potency and "scoring" (indicated by its communications). Beyond this, it also targets wives via television communications, appealing to their needs of intimacy. It also appeals to referential leaders like Bob Dole.

Companies that manufacture foods also consider how to appeal to not only the adult that will purchase the product, but also the children and significant other that heavily influence purchasing.

A firm that has multiple constituencies should constantly make sure they are catering to every segment’s:

* Needs
* Wants
* Demands
* Trends
* Opportunities
* Drawbacks
* Loyalty Market Research for Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Key success factors:

* Adjust product offerings
* Develop relationships with influencers and buyers at all areas of buying process
* Ensuring all levels of the organization stay close to the influencers & customers
* Strategy appeals to all segments involved
* Multiple forms of communication to reach out to segments

Building a Brand vs. Building a Business

-Al Ries

Are you building a business? Or are you building a brand? Silly questions, you might be thinking. Naturally, you are trying to do both.

But that might be a mistake.

What's good for the business is not necessarily good for the brand. And vice versa.

What's a brand anyway? It's a word that stands for something in the mind of prospects. That definition, by the way, is at odds with conventional thinking.

Most managers equate a brand with its celebrity index. The more famous the brand, the more powerful it is. "Making our brand name well-known" seems to be the conventional approach to brand building.

Chevrolet is one of the world's best-known automobile brands, but how valuable is the Chevrolet brand? Not very.

Chevrolet doesn't make Interbrand's list of the 100 most-valuable global brands. Chevrolet, like many other exceptionally well-known names, isn't worth much because it doesn't stand for anything.

It's not just Chevrolet. The U.S. automobile industry markets 14 vehicle brands: Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, GMC, Hummer, Jeep, Lincoln, Mercury, Pontiac, Saab and Saturn.

I would guess that every one of these brands (with the exception of GMC) is exceptionally well-known with a recognition score in excess of 90%.

Except for a house, an automobile is the most expensive product a person might buy in his or her lifetime. In addition, an automobile has enormous street visibility. These factors combine to give automotive brands a huge advantage in the battle for the consumer's mind.

It's not surprising that 11 automobile brands made Interbrand's most valuable list. But just one of those 11 brands was an American brand. (Ford at No. 49.) The other 10 were European and Asian brands. Why? The European and Asian brands stood for something.

• Toyota (No. 6): Reliable
• Mercedes-Benz (No. 11): Prestige
• BMW (No. 13): Driving
• Honda (No. 20): Reliable (second to Toyota)
• Volkswagen (No. 53): Practical
• Audi (No. 67): Advanced technologies
• Hyundai (No. 72): Cheap
• Porsche (No. 75): Sports cars
• Lexus (No. 90): Luxury
• Ferrari (No. 93): Expensive sports cars

Keep in mind, these are global brands. Volkswagen is not doing particularly well in the U.S. market, but it's No. 1 in Germany. Also, Audi suffers in the U.S. market because of its unfortunate name, but that's not a disadvantage in many countries where English is not the spoken language.

How do you build a brand? Almost every successful brand in the world started as a narrowly focused brand that stood for a single idea. Then the business builders took over. First objective: Expand the business.

Dell Computer started as a narrowly focused business-to-business company selling personal computers direct. Dell got off the ground by owning the word "direct."

Michael Dell wrote a book that outlined his company's rise from obscurity to fame. The title? "Direct From Dell."

In the first quarter of 2001, Dell became the world leader in personal computers. (And not just in sales, but in profits, too. In the 1990s, for example, Dell had the best stock market performance in Standard & Poor's index of 500 leading American companies.)

What did Dell do next? It forgot about building the brand and started building the business. First Dell moved into consumer personal computers, undermining its position as the "business" PC specialist. ("Dude, you're getting a Dell.")

Then Dell moved into consumer electronics, undermining its position as the "personal-computer" specialist.

Then Dell moved into retail distribution, undermining its "direct" distribution position.

In 2003, Dell Computer Corp. dropped "computer" from its name and became Dell Inc. (That's always a bad sign.)

Did all these business-building moves work? Sure. Sales steadily increased from $31.9 billion in 2000 to $61.1 billion in 2007.

While Dell sales went up, the Dell brand went down. Dell, formerly the world leader in personal computers, is now second to Hewlett-Packard. (In 2007, HP had 18.2% of the market and Dell had 14.3%.)

Dell's net profit margin, a good indicator of a brand's value, also went down. From 6.8% in 2000 to 4.8% in 2007.

Where Dell went wrong, in my opinion, was that it forgot what built the brand and instead focused its efforts on building its business. Yet that's not the conventional wisdom.

"Where Dell Went Wrong" was the title of a Feb. 19, 2007, article in BusinessWeek. "In a too-common mistake, it clung narrowly to its founding strategy instead of developing future sources of growth."

Scott Thurm, writing in The Wall Street Journal, said essentially the same thing: "Dell couldn't diversify its business, making it vulnerable once Hewlett-Packard matched its expertise."

That's the way it is in corporate America today. Everybody is looking for ways to build their businesses by expanding into other categories. Their real strategies should be to build their brands by dominating their categories. And often the best way to do that is by contracting their brands so they stand for something.

What's the most reliable measure of the power of a brand? It's not making the Interbrand list. The most reliable measure is market share. Powerful brands dominate their markets.

In the U.S., Tabasco has 90% of the hot-pepper-sauce market. Campbell's has 82% of the canned-soup market. TurboTax has 79% of the income-tax software market. Starbucks has 73% of the high-end coffeehouse market. The iPod has 70% of the MP3-player market. Taco Bell has 70% of the Mexican fast-food market. Google has 68% of the search market.

When your brand dominates a market, it is in an exceptionally strong position. In a mature market, a dominant brand is highly unlikely to ever lose its position. (Think Kleenex, Gatorade, McDonald's, Budweiser and many other dominant brands.)

Even more important, dominant brands usually generate exceptionally high profit margins. Compare Intel, the dominant microprocessor brand, with Advanced Micro Devices, the No. 2 brand.

In the last 10 years, Intel has had sales of $319.6 billion and net profits of $62.2 billion. Intel's net profit margin was an astounding 19.5%.

In the last 10 years, Advanced Micro Devices had sales of $42.7 billion and net profits of ... well, they didn't make any money. They lost $4.1 billion.

You see the same relationships on Interbrand's list of the 100 most-valuable global brands. No.1 brands are worth far more than No.2 brands.

• Coca-Cola is worth $66.7 billion. Pepsi-Cola, $13.2 billion.
• Nokia is worth $35.9 billion. Motorola, $3.7 billion.
• Nike is worth $12.7 billion. Adidas, $5.1 billion.

The personal computer was the most important new product of the 20th century and it's likely to remain that way for decades to come. Someday some brand will be the Coca-Cola or Nokia or Nike of personal computers with a market share of 40% or so. That company is unlikely to be either Hewlett-Packard or Dell.

You can't dominate a category if you expand your brand into many other categories. (That's why IBM is no longer the dominant PC brand.)

You can only dominate a category by keeping your brand focused.

Building a business or building a brand? That's the most important question in marketing.

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #2

-Derrick Daye

2. Does your product have enough flaws?

This is a provocative statement. For most people, luxury is the last word in hand-crafted or craftsman-built products. It is true that in surveys into the perception of luxury, consumers from all over the world were interviewed and the consensus was that ‘product excellence’ is the primary prerequisite of luxury. It would suffice to imagine a bisecting line between two axes – price and functional quality: at the very top right would be luxury. Now, in our view, nothing could be further from reality.

The aim of an upper-premium brand is to deliver a perfect product, to relentlessly pursue perfection. But it would take a touch of madness for it to be counted a luxury. Functionally, a Seiko watch is superior to many luxury watches – it is more accurate (because it’s a quartz watch) and shows the time directly and in a perfectly legible manner (because it is displayed on a digital face). If you were to buy some of the famous brands of a luxury watch, you would probably be warned that it loses two minutes every year. The flaw is not only known, it is assumed – one could say that that is both its charm and its guarantee of authenticity. It is the specific and singular nature of their movement that is responsible for that. For luxury watchmakers like adding complications, indeed seek them out in their endless quest of art for art’s sake. This is the ‘madness’ touch that goes beyond perfection and makes people collect them.

Let us look at some of the watches that Hermès has to offer, where the time is indicated by just four figures: 12, 3, 6 and 9. So you have to guess the time – as if knowing the time accurately was somehow unimportant, even pleasure-killing and dehumanizing. They are certainly far removed from those state-of-the-art precision chronograph watches, for luxury brands are not interested in being the leader in utilitarian or functional comparisons – primarily they are hedonistic and symbolic.

In the world of luxury, the models and the products must have character or personality. In the world of automobiles, a Ferrari is anything but a perfect car if you like easy, smooth and silent driving; that is why people would do anything to own one. Every model forces its owner to accept its flaws.

Of course, if a luxury product is not a flawless product, the reverse is not true: adding flaws does not turn a regular product into to a luxury product

Brand Failure From The Vine

-Mark Ritson

n 1996 the Australian government's wine authority set an ambitious 30-year sales target. Imagine its delight when that goal was reached a full two decades ahead of schedule. Between 1996 and 2007 Australian wine forced its way into markets in a way rarely witnessed in any export industry. Nowhere was this more evident than in the UK, the biggest single market for Australian wine.

However, trouble is now brewing. Australian wine production is three times the level of 15 years ago, but global demand for it is tanking. In the UK, it dropped by 18% last year, in the US by 26%. According to Aussie wine critic Jeremy Oliver: 'The industry is in crisis - anything less than that is avoiding reality. It is interesting that nobody really saw this coming.'

Not quite true, Mr Oliver. Your humble BSI blogger predicted these problems in an article I wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald in 2007. In it I stated that Australian winemakers were 'on the verge of an almighty strategic blunder'. Next year is shaping up to be disastrous for Australian wine and it's not too soon to learn some lessons.

First, don't rely exclusively on sales data to plan your strategy. Booming sales of huge fruity Shirazs and oaky Chardonnays were the prime drivers of Australian success. Many wineries looked at the figures, extrapolated their growth and made more of the same.

Unfortunately, sales data is a poor predictor of future consumer tastes. There is no replacement for recurrent qualitative and quantitative research, and without these insights, Australian winemakers have found themselves producing wine that many consumers simply do not want.

Second, you can make sales from commodity wines for a while but not forever. While it has continued to generate enormous profits, the average price of a litre of Aussie wine has quietly plummeted from AU$4.36 (£2.18) in 1999, to AU$3.53 (£1.76) in 2008 and it continues to fall.

With irrigation costs and the Australian dollar rising in value, this commodification of wine spells disaster for winemakers who have continued to increase production at the expense of targeting smaller, more lucrative market segments, building more distinct wine brands and charging a premium for it.
'We have had massive success with an approach of good wine and good price,' Tim Kirk, head of the Canberra-based Clonakilla winery, notes ruefully. 'However, in some respects that's been the seeds of our undoing.'

Third, don't get arrogant. Success has blinded Australian winemakers to the threat of South American rivals. Many producers still speak disparagingly of the quality of Chilean wines, despite the fact that these are now equally good, less expensive and usually made from more appealing varietals.

Lastly, beware an over-dependence on big retail. While it is impossible to be successful without selling through Tesco and Sainsbury's, you'd better have alternative premium channels at your disposal too. The fact that 85% of Australian wine sales in the UK are accounted for by supermarkets tells you all you need to know about the kind of margins and promotional tactics that Aussie winemakers have had to endure. It also helps to explain why prices are dropping so quickly.

As my Aussie wife likes to remind me, the better the party, the worse the hangover. Well, it's 7am and Australian wine is about to wake up after the mother of all booze-ups. It's going to take more than a couple of aspirin and a fried breakfast to get her back on her feet again.

30 Seconds On...The Downfall of the Australian Wine Industry

* 'We've seen growers who didn't bother picking their grapes this year,' says wine industry critic Stuart Gregor.

* 'The Australian wine industry... is suddenly in what looks like a perilous position,' according to wine writer Jancis Robinson. 'Like so many wine producers outside Europe, it has concentrated its efforts on the big retailers in the UK and has failed to build a solid distribution network for its better wines.'

* 'There is a perception that the American market for Australian wine is in serious jeopardy,' says Jay Miller, Australian wine reviewer for influential newsletter The Wine Advocate.

* The price collapse has forced Foster's, Australia's biggest winemaker, which owns Lindemans and Penfolds, to sell 31 vineyards across the country. Constellation Wines Australia, the second-biggest player, placed 26 properties on the market last August.

* One of Australia's big wine retailers, Dan Murphy's, is selling cleanskins for about £1 a bottle - cheaper than most bottled waters.

Variable Pricing and Brand Destruction

-Al Ries

A former New York Times editor recently wrote a full-page article for Forbes magazine advocating “variable pricing” for art museums.

“Art institution directors should start thinking like airline yield managers,” was the subhead of the article.

That’s strange. You might think the yield-management gurus would have the airlines rolling in dough. But that hasn’t happened.

Take the five largest U.S. airlines. United went bankrupt. Delta went bankrupt. Northwest went bankrupt. US Airways went bankrupt. And American Airlines is losing money. In the last 10 years, American has had revenues of $199.8 billion and managed to lose $6.7 billion. Not exactly an industry to emulate.

Why do otherwise intelligent people borrow ideas and concepts from failing industries and think they will succeed in a different setting?

The unfortunate answer to that question is that in today’s world, ideas and concepts don’t seem to matter. What matters is “execution.”

If you can execute well, goes the thinking, you are going to win. Which in itself is true. What is not true is that execution is unrelated to the power of the ideas and concepts driving the business.

Variable pricing is one of those ideas. No matter how well you execute a variable pricing strategy, you wind up undermining the brand.

Airline customers used to be brand loyal. When I worked at General Electric in Schenectady, New York, I always called American Airlines first. If they didn’t have a flight to where I wanted to go and at roughly the time I wanted to leave, I would ask the American representative to suggest another airline.

Variable pricing has destroyed the bond between airline and customer. Almost nobody books a flight without first asking, “What would that cost?”

Yesterday’s brand loyal customer is today’s price-comparison shopper.

Except for Southwest Airlines, of course. While the airline does use yield management strategies, it also puts a cap on its fares so they are never out of line.

According to a recent survey of the American Customer Satisfaction Index, Southwest came on top of the airline category for the 16th year in a row with a score of 81 out of 100, its highest ever, compared to a score of 64 for the airline business in general.

The major airlines should hold their heads in shame. It’s like Walmart coming out first in customer satisfaction ahead of Nordstrom and Neiman Marcus.

High prices by themselves are not the problem. Often you need a high price to define your brand. Without its high price, Rolex would be just another watch brand. And Porsche would be just another sports car brand.

It’s the variable pricing that causes the problems. You can see a mini version of this effect in the cola aisles of many supermarkets. In our local supermarket, for example, you normally see both Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola priced at $4.69 for a 12 pack. But often one or the other brand is on sale for $3.00 for the 12-can package.

With this much disparity in price, many consumers automatically buy the one that’s on sale. In other words, the brands don’t matter anymore. What matters is the price.

You can also see the effect in cola market shares. Normally a No.1 brand has twice the market share of a No.2 brand. But Coca-Cola’s lead in the U.S. market is much less. On an index basis, Coca-Cola is 100; Pepsi-Cola is 65. (And Pepsi would have an even greater market share if it could do something about Coke’s enormous lead in sales to restaurants and fast-food chains.)

Years ago the Coca-Cola Company began testing a vending machine that could automatically raise prices for its drinks in hot weather. Consumer reaction was immediate and caustic. One beverage executive said, “What’s next? A machine that X-rays people’s pockets to find out how much change they have and raises the price accordingly?”

Brands have a function to perform and one of the most important functions they perform is communicating the brand’s price level and its equivalent quality level.

Consumers equate quality with price. The higher the price, the higher the quality. Not that consumers always want to buy the highest-quality products. Often they would rather save money and buy something less than the best.

These decisions usually depend on the category. Some categories are more important to a consumer; some categories less important. Some consumers buy expensive watches and cheap toilet paper. Or vice versa.

There’s nothing wrong with being a high-end brand. There’s nothing wrong with being a low-end brand. There’s something wrong when you try to be both.

Take Lenovo, for example. What’s a Lenovo? Is it a high-end computer or a low-end computer. Actually it’s that and a mid-price computer, too.

Lenovo has three lines of laptops, for example. The ThinkPad line is at the high end. The “value line” is at the low end and the IdeaPad line is somewhere in between. Prices in America range from $349 to $1,999. Lenovo like many companies around the world is trying to increase sales by appealing to everybody. That seldom works.

Lenovo is suffering. After eight years of profitable sales, the company lost $226 million in its last fiscal year. Out went Lenovo’s American chief executive to be replaced by his Chinese predecessor.

That sort of strategy is one of the reasons the U.S. automobile industry is in trouble. Trying to cover a wide swath of the market with a single brand name.

Years ago, I remember a Dodge executive bragging about the fact that the Dodge brand covered “85 percent of the market.”

Is that good? It doesn’t seem to be since Dodge is currently in the dumpster along with the rest of the Chrysler brands.

Brand Naming Analysis

-Brad VanAuken

Naming may be one of the most difficult tasks in branding. From my perspective, it is about as difficult as successfully positioning a brand in an overcrowded market or developing the brand architecture for a brand that has grown through multiple mergers and acquisitions over the years.

Why is naming so difficult? Read on.

• Everyone seems to have an opinion on the name and many people are likely to be strongly attached to their opinions on this
• It has become very difficult to find an available .com or .org URL for any given name
• Names need to work with taglines, which adds another layer of complexity
• Related to this, it generally seems redundant if the name and the tagline include one or more of the same words
• Parent brand names should be developed with sub-brand, endorsed brand and product/service names in mind
• Different words mean different things to different people
• If the brand is global, one must consider the meaning of the name in every language and culture in which it will be used (For instance, Nova (no va) means “it doesn’t go” in Spanish)
• Sometimes a name’s acronym spells out something undesirable (For instance, Aspiring Minority Business Leaders and Entrepreneurs = AMBLE)
• Sometimes the words in a name result in an unintended phrase when strung together in a URL (For instance, AIDS Care becomes www.aidscare.com)
• In many industries, the most meaningful or powerful words and phrases are already used in competitors’ names (such as “senior” or “living” for eldercare communities)

• This is an area for which “less is more,” however it is very difficult to communicate complex or nuanced concepts in a compelling way in an economy of words
• Sometimes a name that is highly appealing to the primary target audience may be unappealing to secondary and tertiary target audiences (For instance, Jewish Recreation Center may have high appeal to Jewish people, but is likely to be far less appealing to people of other religious traditions)
• Names have to pass trademark searches

Often, we will generate well over 200 names in several rounds of iteration until we arrive at a name that could actually work.

So what helps an organization develop an effective name?

• Agree and stick to the process that will be used to generate and choose the name
• Achieve decision maker consensus on the naming evaluation criteria at the beginning of the naming project
• Develop the brand positioning and at least the first draft of the brand architecture before you commence the naming project
• Involve both client and marketing agency people in the naming ideation sessions
• Buy URLs on the spot as strong naming options are generated
• To minimize legal expenses and wasted time, conduct simple trademark searches on the naming finalists before a full search is conducted for the chosen name
• Choose the most brand identity savvy and persuasive person to present recommendations to the key decision makers
• Have the key decision makers evaluate each name against appropriate evaluation criteria – we do this through an online survey of top naming options
• Remind people of and align naming decision making to the brand strategy throughout the process

I wish you great success with your naming project.

University rebranding

-Chris Brown

read with interest about University of Waterloo's Rebrandingefforts and logo challenges. This Facebook page offers insights to the administrations views as well as links to the group of students and alumni opposing the new University of Waterloo logo.

One challenge that Higher Ed has with branding is that need to keep as many stakeholders as happy as possible. Administration, Alumni, Faculty, Students, Employees and the surrounding Community, just to name just a few!

Re-branding efforts can get watered down by a committee and the best intentions move into compromise.

What university has been successful in their rebranding efforts?

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #1

-Derrick Daye

Forget about ‘positioning’, luxury is not comparative

In consumer marketing, at the heart of every brand strategy you will find the concept of positioning, of the ‘unique selling proposition’ (USP), and ‘unique and convincing competitive advantage’ (UCCA). Every classic brand has to specify its positioning, and then convey it through its products, its services, its price, its distribution and its communication. Positioning is the difference that creates the preference for a given brand over the one that it has decided to target as a source of new business and whose clients it is going to try to win over. In the war that brought it into conflict with Pepsi Cola in the United States, Coca-Cola was ‘The real thing’ (its essential distinguishing feature), whereas Pepsi-Cola, introduced in the 1930s, plugged its image as a young people’s drink (‘The choice of the new generation’), thereby succeeding in boxing Coca-Cola into an image as a product that only parents drank. As we see, the classic brand always seeks to define itself by a key facet, depending on the market context, the main competitor, and the expectations of the target consumers it is aiming to reach.

Nothing is more foreign to this approach than luxury. When it comes to luxury, being unique is what counts, not any comparison with a competitor. Luxury is the expression of a taste, of a creative identity, of the intrinsic passion of a creator; luxury makes the bald statement ‘this is what I am’, not ‘that depends’ – which is what positioning implies. What made the Christian Lacroix brand is its image of bright sunshine, full of this designer’s bright, vivid colours, suffused with the culture of the Mediterranean; it certainly is not concerned with its positioning with respect to this or that established designer.

It is identity that gives a brand that particularly powerful feeling of uniqueness, a timelessness, and the necessary authenticity that helps give an impression of permanence. Chanel has an identity, but not a positioning. Identity is not divisible, it is not negotiable – it simply is.

Luxury is ‘superlative’ and not ‘comparative’. It prefers to be faithful to an identity rather than be always worrying about where it stands in relation to a competitor. What luxury is afraid of is copying, whereas mass-produced brands fear ‘undifferentiation’, trivialization.

How Do I Get My Marketing Clients To Focus?

-Brad VanAuken

Today we’re taking another question from the BSI Emailbag. Laura, a marketing executive from Atlanta, Georgia asks…

“Brad, I find some clients don't want to hear me when I advise them to focus. To find a relevant message to a specific target group and FOCUS. They seem to insist, "but why would we narrow when we might miss an opportunity? All of our competitors will be there if we aren't."

Of course they don't have the budget to be everywhere, so instead we end up with a broad message to a broad audience and hoping that our bulleted copy points then attract the right person to do the right thing. HELP. I have tried to convince them this is a waste and to own a smaller group is a better strategy when funds are limited. But I don't seem to be getting through. Any case studies, charts or graphs you can share? I already forwarded one of you recent posts about narrowing....

And if they just refuse to listen, how do you keep working with them knowing you are not being as successful and wasting money? I'm paralyzed and principled. HELP.”

Laura, thanks for asking. In pouring through years of advertising research summaries to write my book, Brand Aid, I discovered that while talking about more benefits increases the appeal of a given brand, once more than two benefits are communicated, people begin to lose the ability to associate the brand with any specific benefit. That is, nothing in particular is linked with the brand in their minds. So, I am a strong advocate of focusing on one or two unique and compelling benefits -- period. The trick is to find the ones that lead to relevant differentiation and brand insistence. Regarding target markets, branding has always been about focus. The most successful brands pick a market segment or two that is/are appealing for any combination of the following reasons -- the market is large, it is growing rapidly, it is highly profitable, the brand has or can obtain a large share of that market, it is difficult for other brands to enter the market, it is easy for brands to exit the market, their brand is uniquely qualified to meet that market's needs, their brand's promise is highly compelling to that market. There will always be sales spillover from the target market to other markets, but a brand should never try to be "all things to all people."

The most successful brands generally focus on a given market and try to meet more and more of that market's needs, often through additional products and services. This leads to customer intimacy, emotional connection and loyalty. Regarding media, it is always more cost effective to be as focused as possible in media buys. Find vehicles that are very efficient at reaching your primary targets. And focus on frequency with those markets (versus a broader reach). This is how strong brands are built. Become known for something important to a very loyal set of highly targeted customers instead of trying to be different things to a wide variety of customers to whom the brand means little.

The danger always lies at the point at which a brand has grown all that its management believes it can among its core markets. At this point, brands often branch out to embrace new benefits and target new types of customers with different values and product purchase and usage behaviors. Watch out. Make sure you are not confusing or diluting what the brand stands for when you do this.

Regarding working with clients that just don't "get it," I always speak the truth with them. And, I try to be compelling in how I convey that truth. That is what they are paying me to do as a consultant. However, because of ignorance or ego or some other dysfunction, sometimes they ignore me. On rare occasions I have walked away from clients with whom I believe I cannot work effectively with. I've known marketing consultants and agencies that have done the same.

Focus is a good cause Laura. Best of luck with your clients.

Nation Branding

-Khalid Hasan

Nation branding is all about positioning a particular country/nation in the minds of people. Those people are consumers, potential tourists, and, most importantly, potential investors. They are all actively participating in the country's growth process. An effective nation branding campaign accelerates the country's economic growth; and the citizens feel dignified. It must be remembered that there are around 195 nations in the world; all are aggressively competing for the attention of investors, tourists, and citizens. Therefore, a well-planned nation branding campaign is crucial.

Nation branding is a field of theory and practice which aims to measure, build, and manage the reputation of countries (closely related to place branding). An increasing importance of the symbolic value of products have led countries to emphasise their distinctive characteristics. The branding and image of a nation-state "and the successful transference of this image to its exports is just as important as what they actually produce and sell."

Nation branding appears to be practiced by many developed states, where it is often officially referred to as public diplomacy), There is an increasing interest in the concept from developing states on the grounds that an enhanced image might create more favourable conditions for foreign direct investment, tourism, trade, and even political relations with other states.

Large countries like China and Russia have also taken measures for building a "new image." The concept of nation-building has become an integral part of public diplomacy. Therefore, any efforts by the government to support the nation branding mechanism -- either directly or indirectly -- becomes public diplomacy.

Nation Branding
Many countries are coming up with crispy, smart, and intelligent slogans and symbols to re-brand their countries, fitting the current business need, some of the popular slogans are: "Malaysia: Truly Asia," "Dubai: The Jewel in the Desert," "Uniquely Singapore," "Incredible India," "Amazing Thailand," "Sri Lanka: The Pearl of the Indian Ocean. Let us look at a few examples of nation branding around the world:

Kenya: The Kenyan government has taken a plan to revive its nation branding project. It started the project by creating the Brand Kenya Board "to enhance Kenyan national image and identity, the focal points for harnessing our energy, warmth and entrepreneurial spirit." The Brand Kenya Board's mandate includes creating an integrated national brand and identity, instilling pride in every Kenyan, and restoring international confidence in the country among the investors, visitors, tourists, and development partners.

India: With a view to be one of the global leaders by 2025, the Indian government has given top priority to branding India. This campaign, created in 2002, has approached increasing tourism and revenue. "Brand India" is fast becoming a mantra that is claimed as the benchmark for development in India. The politicians, economists, bureaucrats, policy-makers, industrialists, and even the media are jumping on to the bandwagon, with "Brand India" becoming the ethos of the upwardly mobile middle class.

To promote the young, vibrant, and dynamic India on the global stage, the Indian government has roped in popular actor Aamir Khan as its new brand icon (ambassador) to be the pilot of the campaign across the world. Incredible India focuses primarily on its rich and vibrant heritage and culture.

Colombia: Globally, Colombia is infamous for drug trafficking, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, extortions, and corruption. Recently, the government has started thinking about changing its image and, thereby, attracting tourists and foreign investors. This is considered as one of the major factors in its economic development plans.

Initiatives are being taken for changing its image from a "cocaine-based economy" to "Branding Colombia." The first part of the "Branding Colombia" series refers to using flowers to change people's perceptions.

On the Colombian Pride Day, November 17, last year, Colombian-Americans handed out over 100,000 Colombian roses to very grateful and yet, indeed, surprised New Yorkers. The act appears to have been a great success: not only was the target audience fully reached, but it also made national news in the United States. Therefore, millions of Americans were reached with a simple message: "Flowers make you smile, flowers brighten your day, and flowers come from Colombia." The program proved to be a great success, and got huge media coverage from the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and most of the network affiliates and international press.

Brand Bangladesh
Bangladesh has always held great promise. It enjoyed widespread international public support during the war of liberation, not only because its stuggle was idenifiable, but also due to the fact that it aimed to establish a socio-economic equilibrium and an equitable society where each citizen would have the opportunity to flourish.

Post-1971 has not been so easy, despite numerous achievements, the country has been negatively labeled by a group of people with their own motivations. They ignore the commitment and the resilience of Bangladeshis who are often faced with political and climatic trauma.

Another interesting problem the nation faces is that when it is compared to other countries it is invariably compared to nations with drug, mafia, and terrorist problems. While it is true that Bangladesh a huge population, with high unemployment rates, and increasing price inflation, often comparing it to failed or a semi-failed states does not do it justice.

Currently, the government and brand strategists are working towards developing a nation branding campaign, which should help improve its image to the rest of the world

Bangladesh was branded differently (positively and negatively) at different times. In 1971, the war of liberation put Bangladesh in a strong position. But three years later in 1974, the severe famine dragged the country to a weaker position. This was further aggravated when the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1975) and President Ziaur Rahman (1981) were assassinated.

The weak status continued till the nineties. Then even Transparency International started ranking us as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. However, the nation's image started improving post-2000 as did its performance indicators.

The major indicators for socio-economic growth include: improvement in health status, increasing literacy, progress in gender balance, enhancement of employment opportunities, building transport and communications facilities, huge increases in media reach amongst rural and urban people, booming ITC businesses, a rise in remittance and agricultural, industrial, and ready-made garments (RMG) booms.

In 2006, our global image increased exponentially with Prof. Yunus and Grameen Bank winning the Nobel Peace Prize. That put Bangladesh in a strong position, globally and we cannot let that slip. Therefore, it has become imperative to develop a nation branding campaign to keep us in the global limelight for the right reasons.

While branding Bangladesh, the brand strategists must consider two key basic objectives:

First, it is crucial to instill pride in Bangladeshis and to persuade our people to be positive and feel dignified about themselves and for their country. The success of the nation branding program strongly depends on their active participation, ownership, and support. They should be proud of their country, culture, and heritage.

The prime task is to brand Bangladesh among the Bangladeshis first; and this is the toughest job for brand strategists. This process should start from the school level, ensuring it is covered in syllabuses and curriculums across the nation. The future generation should feel honoured and dignified to be a citizen of a great country.

Second, the brand strategist should concentrate on branding the country externally and their success is linked with the first objective, i.e. how well external and internal images are tied together. The citizens of Bangladesh should be the ambassadors of this country and they will relay the country's image to the rest of the world. Therefore, a more positive attitude and role from them will greatly carry the country's attractive features to the rest of the world. At the end of the day, a good campaign helps attract FDI and will have direct impact on our GDP.

Country branding strategy vs. advertising: People often get confused between country branding strategy and advertising. Ads are part of a country's branding strategy, yet often simple tourism advertisements are confused as a country's branding strategy. They may be part of a larger country branding strategy, but those ads in themselves do not represent the complete country branding strategy, because that focuses on its macro perspectives.

Traditional branding concept: Unfortunately, when there is a discussion about nation branding, many bureaucrats and policy-makers refer to traditional advertising, lobbying with overseas investors, and beautifying the cities with billboards sporting idealistic slogans.

The campaign with idealistic slogans usually mention the following: "People are friendly," "A country with a positive business climate," "Natural scenic beauty," and many more. Are there any countries where these slogans can't be used? What is the distinctive attraction for foreigners to come to Bangladesh? The logical question is: what should be presented in the nation-branding campaign?

Market research for a better campaign: We need to conduct research among the people of Bangladesh, covering different segments, to understand their views and expectations. This will help in understanding the pulse of the nation and giving ownership to everyone, thus, satisfying different target audiences, different needs, and different institutions. The research should be conducted both internally (to understand the country's socio-economic situation) and externally (global research among the investors and tourists). The findings will help develop a strategic plan on the nation-branding campaign.

Post-launch monitor and impact evaluation: The impact of the campaign may be evaluated through different research techniques, including post-launch monitoring and surveys. The research will indicate the level of acceptance of the campaign, changing attitude towards the positive image and anchoring foreigners' confidence in Bangladesh.

Branding Strategy
The National Brand Index (NBI) score is made up of six categories: People, Governance, Exports, Tourism, Culture and Heritage, Investment and Immigration. These six categories are distinctive and vary in different countries and nations. Our brand strategists must consider these six categories and highlight success points in each category for changing attitudes and perceptions internally and building a positive image to the rest of the world. They should focus on the changing attitudes towards themselves and their country. Strategists must, however, focus on the positive achievements and attractive aspects for tourists and foreign investors.
Brand strategists may consider focusing on the following aspects:

Food culture: While branding, we can focus on our food culture. Cuisine can be a powerful agent for reshaping public perception. We should be strategic in using a network of restaurants and hotels and, thereby, promote tourism.

Culture and heritage: We should also highlight our culture and heritage, Ekushe February has got worldwide recognition as the International Mother Language day. Days such as that and Pahela Baishakh could showcase our rich and varied culture and heritage.

People: The people in Bangladesh are hard-working, resilient, and religiously moderate. There is no racial discrimination among them. Above all, traditionally they are very cordial and have got a great sense of hospitality.

Tourism: Bangladesh has some interesting and attractive tourism spots which could entice many people from around the world. Cox's Bazaar beach is one of those, it is best known as the longest unbroken beach in the world. We have other attractions like the Sunderbans (the largest mangrove forest in the world), and a few historical and archeological heritage sites. These can and should easily attract tourists if branded properly.

RMG and other exports: Be it Wal Mart, or Zellers, or any other retailer, the Made in Bangladesh tag has become ubiquitous abroad. Our RMGs are of high quality and in many ways are the silent ambassadors of our country. Despite the global economic recession, earnings from RMG sub-sectors are continuously increasing. In 2008-09 the sector was worth over $9 billion; moreover, nearly 2 million workers are employed in the garments industries, and most of them are females. As a result, women from poor backgrounds are being empowered.

Literacy: The educational standards at all levels are gradually improving and primary school enrollment at an all time high. The literacy rate has trebled in the last three decades. All aspects which need to be highlighted.

Health: Undoubtedly, Bangladesh has made tremendous progress in the health sector. During the last five years the health infrastructure has been strengthened. Health indicators of socio-economic development show that there is a steep decline in our child mortality and birth rate. A revolution has also taken place with birth control in Bangladesh and it is now cited as an international success story. Child immunisation and vaccination is another matter of great pride for Bangladesh.

Remittances: Bangladeshi citizens should feel proud of their overseas earners, working in different countries and sending billions in remittances. Despite the global economic recession, remittances have continued to grow and have played an important role in reducing the poverty rates in rural areas. It is quite important to note that the flow of remittances is around six times higher than it was a decade ago. During the fiscal year 1998-99, it was $1.7 billion while it increased to $9.7 billion during 2008-09. It is expected that it will exceed $10.5 billion by the end of the current fiscal year.

Conclusion
While developing the branding campaign for Bangladesh, we must not forget that nation branding is more than brand advertising or promotion. Nation branding focuses on the nation as a whole -- its heritage and culture, products and exports, investment, climate, tourism, and people. The campaign must address people both at home and abroad.

The present government announced a "Charter for Change," while the opposition party has also promised a positive change. It is extremely important to develop a bold and strict roadmap to uphold the country's overall image, which is essential for Bangladesh to be accepted by the world community.

The government should come up with an aggressive but distinct nation branding campaign immediately, it is essential for our progress. Countries like India, Thailand, China, Malaysia, etc started similar branding journeys more than a decade ago and should not lag too far behind. We need a forceful branding campaign for our country so that we can emerge as an Asian Tiger by 2021; which will also mark the 50th year of our independence.

The Advertising Genius of Bill Bernbach

-Al Ries

“Nobody’s Perfect” is the title of Doris Willens’ new book on Bill Bernbach and the golden age of advertising.

And just to make sure you get the point of the title, the book explores every imperfection she could find in the career of perhaps the most famous person in the history of advertising.

Fair enough. Nobody’s perfect. But I think she failed to stress the essence of Bernbach’s genius which, in my opinion, was his incredible ability to recognize a good idea.

(Willens’ book was particularly interesting since I knew many of the people she writes about. Our agency at the time shared the Uniroyal account with Doyle Dane Bernbach, although we had by far the smaller share.)

In spite of Doris Willens' many negative comments about Bill Bernbach, I think he was a true advertising genius.

One example from Willens’ book: “From Helmut Krone’s wastepaper basket, Bernbach fished wads of crumpled papers and beamed upon spreading open a sheet with the words, “We’re only Number Two. So we try harder.”

(That was the genesis of the Avis campaign, No. 10 on Ad Age’s list of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th century.)

Another example: Future Hall of Fame art director Bill Taubin and copywriter David Reider discovered that Israeli airline El Al made all its flights at night. So they took the idea, “The only fly-by-night airline,” to Bill Bernbach for his approval.

“Are you kidding?” End of meeting.

In the course of developing a campaign, advertising people usually dream up lots of ideas, some good and some bad.

But no one had the ability to sort the good from the bad like Bernbach. It's a trait that's extremely rare.

How rare? You only have to watch a dozen television commercials or leaf through a dozen magazine ads to figure that one out.

Most advertising is mediocre at best. And yet every advertisement was approved by someone at some company somewhere in the world. Why didn’t the people who approved these mediocre advertisements demand to see “something better?”

The truth is, they thought the ads were good. Actually it’s worse. Based on my personal experience in working with advertising people, I believe that most of them thought their advertisements were “great.”

The advertising industry worships the creative process. At Cannes and at countless other places, the industry lavishes praise on its creative folks. The people who think up these wonderful ads.

But it’s a rare individual who is good at recognizing the power of an idea once it is created.

You lose your objectivity once you create an idea, especially an idea in which you have invested a lot of emotional energy. Every creative person needs a Bill Bernbach. A sounding board to bounce ideas off of.

In my opinion, there are far more people who are good at coming up with great advertising ideas than there are people who are good at recognizing great ideas created by others.

In the history of the advertising industry, there were far more David Oglivys, Hal Rineys and Shirley Polykoffs than there were Bill Bernbachs. Far more.

Why is it so difficult to judge the potential effectiveness of a proposed advertisement? I believe most people tend to make their judgments against a background of “accepted standards,” or conventional wisdom.

Take Doyle Dane Bernbach’s Volkswagen campaign which was launched in 1959 with the famous “Think small” advertisement. (According to Advertising Age, the No. 1 campaign of the 20th century.)

If there was one ad that marked the start of the golden era of advertising, “Think small” was the one.

But how did the decade of the Sixties differ from the decade of the Fifties? I recently analyzed 146 automobile advertisements from the 1950s and compared them with the Volkswagen ad.

Almost all of the 1950s auto ads (137 advertisements, or 94 percent) showed people in the ads. How else was a creative director going to demonstrate the pleasure that car buyers might feel about their new acquisitions?

Almost all of them (135 advertisements, or 92 percent) used artwork, not photography. How else was a creative director going to make the cars look long and low and beautiful?

Most of them (102 or 70 percent) used multiple illustrations. Some single-page advertisements had as many as eight separate illustrations. How else was a creative director going to communicate all of the car’s exciting features except by using a number of different illustrations?

Almost all the ads were in color with hand-lettered headlines, big illustrations and large logotypes. How else was a creative director going to communicate the excitement of buying a new car?

Some typical automobile headlines from the 1950s:

Buick: “You can make your ‘someday’ come true now.”

Cadillac: “Maybe this will be the year.”

Oldsmobile: “You’ve got to drive it to believe it!”

Chevrolet: “Filled with grace and great new things.”

Now compare these ads with “Think small.” The Volkswagen ad was in black and white with a small illustration, lots of white space and a headline totally lacking in news value. Everybody knew that Beetles were small cars.

At the time the ad ran, Volkswagen had been in the American market for nine years, had sold more than 350,000 vehicles and had generated a lot of favorable publicity.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the difference between the 1950s automobile ads and the 1960s Volkwagen ads. It’s the difference between complexity and simplicity. Between artificiality and realism.

But why didn’t the creative directors of the 1950s value simplicity and realism? Because it’s exceptionally hard to go against accepted wisdom. That wasn’t the way advertising was done in the decade of the Fifties. Especially automobile advertising.

People don’t want to be different. They want to be better. Clients want advertising à la mode. And most creative directors want the same thing. They want advertising “in the fashion” of the times, only better.

That’s why it’s hard to recognize a great advertising idea. It doesn’t look right because it goes against accepted wisdom.

I remember a new business presentation we made to a large account a number of years ago. The company’s CEO dismissed us by saying: “Your ads have big pictures and this is the era of long copy.”

Bernbach never believed in à la mode advertising. His creative philosophy was outlined in a guide he once wrote:

“Merely to let your imagination run riot, to dream unrelated dreams, to indulge in graphic acrobatics and verbal gymnastics is not being creative. The creative person has harnessed his imagination. He has disciplined it so that every thought, every idea, every line he draws, every light and shadow in every photograph he takes, makes more vivid, more believable, more persuasive the original theme or product advantage he has decided he must convey.”

Now I wonder what he might have said about the Press Grand Prix winner at Cannes this year, a Wrangler advertisement with an illustration of a woman lying in a pool of water pretending to be a crocodile and the headline: “We are animals.”

“Are you kidding?”

The Marketing and Branding of Nations

-Ruth Stanat

Just as a product with brand vitality will better compete and succeed, so too will a nation with a strong brand. Perceptions about an entire nation will be vast. In evaluating stakeholders' perceptions of a country, marketers should look for and evaluate the following characteristics when surveying stakeholders impacting the perceptions of a country:

Strongly Branded Nations generally:

* Deliver the benefits and promises that stakeholders desire and hold credible
* Stay relevant—functional attributes coupled with “intangibles” (described below)
* Provide value for the resources required to invest / visit in that country
* Have a salient market position in the minds of stakeholders
* Make very clear promises that are kept over time
* Have unique brand equity involving strong thoughts and feelings
* Are dependable and deliver consistently against expectations
* Have loyal stakeholders
* Have favorite perceptions about the country that match the nation’s communications
* Have an ability to be identified under different conditions
* Are less vulnerable to competitive neighboring markets
* Command Larger Margins; Price Premiums; Less vulnerability to price sensitivity
* Engage in better trade cooperation
* Leverage vast opportunities from capital and labor endowments

Poorly Branded Nations generally:

* Make vague promises that change over time
* Have very low general equity and low emotional commitment
* Have “spotty” reputations, create doubt
* Have little loyalty, rely on pricing and promotional incentives

Short-Term Gains and Brand Damage

-Al Ries

Marketing is a long-term proposition. A company can get in trouble if it changes its marketing strategy to cope with a short-term problem.

Years ago, Packard was the premier luxury car, not Cadillac. The 1915 introduction of the Twin-Six Packard, one of the first 12-cylinder automobiles, created a crescendo of favorable publicity. In its time, Packard was known as "the American Rolls-Royce."

For many years, Packard outsold Cadillac by a wide margin. From 1925 to 1934, for example, Packard sold 243,748 cars versus just 134,341 for Cadillac.

Of course, 1934 was near the bottom of the depression. Even though Packard outsold Cadillac that year, the company was concerned because its 1934 sales (6,552) were only a fraction of the 44,634 cars Packard sold in the boom year of 1929.

What should Packard do? Hey, things are bad. We need to come out with a cheaper version of our product. (How often have you heard that said in the boardroom?)

So in 1935 Packard introduced the 120 (pictured above), its first middle-market vehicle. Sales took off. That year Packard sold 37,653 cars, more than five times as many vehicles as it sold the year before. Obviously the new strategy was working.

And it continued to work for more than a decade. From 1935 to 1941, Packard sold three times as many cars as Cadillac, 456,503 versus 135,628.

But the brand was getting tarnished. More and more car buyers perceived Packard to be just another mid-priced vehicle and Cadillac to be the only luxury car. In 1941, for example, the cheapest Cadillac sold for $1,445. The cheapest Packard was just $927. (You can't build a premium perception on a middle-of-the-road price.)

As soon as the economy improved after World War II, Packard started to fade. By 1950, Cadillac was way ahead of Packard. By 1957, Packard was gone and Cadillac was king of the luxury-car market.

Some companies today are making the same mistake as Packard. They are ignoring their long-term positions in order to fix a short-term problem. Marketing people, in particular, are being asked to prepare programs to deal with the recession. Far too often, the marketing strategy gets pushed aside as the company goes for a short-term sales boost.

You might have thought that Cadillac would have learned a lesson from its marketing victory over Packard, but apparently not.

Over the years, Cadillac has cheapened its brand with low-priced models like the Cimarron and the Catera. And according to trade reports, Cadillac is currently working on a line of inexpensive 4-cylinders cars. ("I'm not quite sure what it is," reported a senior editor of Automotive News, "but it certainly isn't a Cadillac.")

Today, Cadillac has lost much of its luxury-class luster. Last year, for example, Cadillac was far behind the three leading luxury-car brands.

Lexus: 260,087
BMW: 249,113
Mercedes-Benz: 225,009
Cadillac: 161,159

Now what do you suppose Cadillac is going to do about its fourth place position? Of course, keep expanding the line. "I compete today in about 65% to 68% of the market," said Mark McNabb, VP of Cadillac-Hummer-Saab sales. "Obviously we would like to compete in a greater portion of the marketplace."

Last year, Cadillac-Hummer-Saab had 1.6% of the total automobile market, or 2.4% of the market they claim to compete in. Those are signs of awfully weak brands.

A strong brand will compete in a narrow segment of the market and then dominate that narrow segment. Competing in 10% of the market with a 50% share is a typical example.

Cadillac, like the rest of General Motors' brands, is going in the wrong direction. Cadillac is very likely to follow in the footsteps of Packard.

The most valuable thing a company owns is its position in the consumer's mind. When you tamper with this position, you are asking for trouble. Yet many companies spend much of their time doing just that. Tampering with the brand's position. Walmart's move into fashion, for example, was a total failure. Actually, Walmart was lucky its fashion foray didn't work. That would have hurt its low-cost reputation.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. made this mistake. Sears was the Walmart of the '50s and '60s and the largest retailer in the country until the early 1980s. Then the company drifted upwards into the mushy middle. Sears wasn't cheap and it wasn't chic. (Today, Walmart is more than seven times the size of Sears. Furthermore Walmart's net profit margin last year was twice as much as Sears: 3.4% vs. 1.6%.)

It can take awhile to damage a strong brand. American Express is the dominant high-end charge-card brand. In 1987, it introduced the Optima card, its first credit-card product. In 1999, it launched a massive marketing campaign behind its "Blue" card, another credit-card product.

Recently The Wall Street Journal reported, "As defaults rise, bruised AmEx returns to its roots."

"American Express Co., after outclassing its rivals for the past 50 years," reported The Journal, "is looking uncomfortably like just another credit-card company."

In January of this year, its defaults on its securitized loans rose to 8.3%. That's one reason American Express is now offering some Blue and Optima cardholders a $300 gift card if they pay off their balances and cancel their accounts.

Why turn American Express into "just another credit-card company"? (That's exactly what Packard did. Turn a high-end brand into "just another car company.") What American Express did makes no sense to me. Its upscale reputation not only is a powerful attraction for consumers, but it also allows AmEx to charge merchants more than Visa or MasterCard does for handling its charges.

Starbucks is making the same mistake. What is instant coffee going to do for Starbucks except to cheapen the brand?

Think about it this way. Why is Starbucks slowing down? Because consumers are switching from fresh-brewed to instant coffee? I think not. Starbucks is slowing down, in my opinion, because the economy is bad. If the company hangs in there, without damaging the brand, sales are likely to rebound quickly after the economy turns around.

In spite of what you might have read in the papers, Starbucks is not doing that badly. Last year, sales were actually up 10.3% over the previous year. What's down is Starbucks' net profit margin which dropped from 7.1% to 3%.

What would I do if I were running Starbucks? I would focus on the core problem. It doesn't take a genius to know why consumers are lining up at Dunkin' Donuts instead of Starbucks, or "Fourbucks" as it is commonly known. Consumers need a reason to go back to Starbucks. If I were running Starbucks, I would slightly reduce prices across the board. Maybe 10% or 15%. But I would still keep them significantly higher than McDonald's or Dunkin' Donuts. The lower prices would give consumers an excuse to go back to Starbucks.

Wouldn't this hurt the brand? Not necessarily. As long as Starbucks is more expensive than the alternatives, the brand will still be perceived as upscale.

In the long run, the only thing that counts is the perception of the brand in the consumer's mind. That's what marketing people should focus on. Not current sales which for luxury brands are certain to be hurt by the economy.

Save the brand and when the economy improves, so will the brand's sales.

Damage the brand in order to reap additional sales in the short term and you'll wind up like Packard.