How To Attack The Leading Brand

-Al Ries

You know the kid’s game. Rock (fist) breaks scissors. Scissors (two fingers) cuts paper. Paper (flat hand) covers rock.

So what’s the best strategy in a game of rock/scissors/paper? The answer is obvious. It all depends on what strategy the other kid uses.

So, too, in marketing. Your best strategy often depends on what strategy your competition is using. This is especially true if you are trying to compete with a No. 1 brand, perhaps the most difficult job in marketing.

Take Pepsi-Cola. How does the brand compete with No. 1 Coca-Cola?

Be the opposite. Coca-Cola is widely perceived to the real thing, the authentic brand, the long-time market leader. So how does Pepsi-Cola become the opposite of the real thing?

‘The imitation cola’ is not going to cut it. Pepsi had to look a little deeper into the situation. Coca-Cola is also perceived to be a brand that has been around for a long time. (Actually 123 years). It’s the cola your parents drank.

So Pepsi-Cola became the cola for the younger crowd. ‘The Pepsi Generation.’

Over the years, The Pepsi Generation is the only advertising strategy that has substantially moved the needle. And aside from a technological breakthrough, the only strategy that is ever likely to move the needle.

Be the opposite is a marketing strategy that can work for any brand in any product category. How did Loew’s, for example, manage to make substantial progress against market leader Home Depot? Home Depot is the leading home improvement warehouse chain. But Home Depot is also a messy place originally designed that way in part to attract men.

So Lowe’s made a special effort to be neat and clean with wide aisles and brighter lighting. A place that was particularly attractive to women and in the process became the fastest-growing home improvement chain.

Wal-Mart is the world’s largest retailer with extremely low prices and a slightly downscale clientele. So Target went slightly upscale with a focus on good design. The theme: ‘Cheap chic.’ Trapped in the mushy middle was Kmart, a company that went bankrupt.

Notice what Kmart tried to do. First they went after Wal-Mart by cutting prices, but that didn’t work. Then they went after Target by doing a deal with Martha Stewart and other designers. Nether strategy was likely to work because the strategies were based on a ‘better than’ approach rather than a ‘be the opposite’ approach.

Dell Computer became the world’s largest seller of personal computers by choosing a distribution channel (direct by phone) that was the opposite of the computer retail stores channel used by its competitors.

Montblanc marketed ‘fat’ pens when its major competitor (Cross) was focused on selling ‘thin’ pens.

Callaway became the leading golf club company by marketing ‘over-size’ clubs when its major competitors were selling regular-size golf clubs. Prince became the leading tennis racquet company by marketing ‘over-size’ racquets when its major competitors were selling regular-size tennis racquets.

And so it goes.

Years ago, we tried to get Burger King to become the opposite of McDonald’s with absolutely no success.

What’s a McDonald’s? It’s a place for the younger crowd, especially kids between the ages of two and six who are attracted to Ronald McDonald, the happy meals and the swings and slides.

‘Grow up to the flame-broiled taste of Burger King’ was the theme we suggested. The idea was to position Burger King as the place for grown-up kids who had outgrown the happy meals and the swings and slides.

As it happened, Burger King followed the Kmart strategy of trying to outdo the competition rather than being the opposite of the competition. Bigger playgrounds and better kids meals were just some of the ‘better than’ strategies employed by Burger King.

Needless to say, the ‘better than’ strategies were mostly failures and a parade of CEOs have come and gone as Burger King tries to find a winning strategy to compete with the Golden Arches.

The numbers tell the story. The average McDonald’s unit in the U.S. did $1,527,300 in sales last year. The average Burger King unit did $1,030,700. (McDonald’s has an overwhelming 48 percent lead.)

If your brand is not the leading brand in your category and if your brand is not the opposite of the leader, then your brand is headed for trouble.

Think Kmart. Think Burger King. Think of the opposite strategy.

5 Retail Marketing Trends for 2010

-Kate Newlin

1) Inconspicuous Consumption

Consumers respond to the social moment by taking consumption into the closet. As when we talk about going to Fred's (in-store restaurant), not Barney's. Or, ask to have new purchases shipped, rather than be seen carrying a branded shopping bag. Or, decide to have shoes repaired and last year's jacket altered. Spending as a covert activity. No bragging rights.

2) The Dyslexic Dilemma

It's a "b." No. It's a "d." Consumers stall in their tracks, trying to figure out what to do, right now. Are we heading out of the woods, or perhaps a bit deeper into it. The moment to watch: What happens when unemployment hits 10 percent at the exact moment the Dow tops 10,000. That deer-in-the-headlights look on the consumers' face: Now or not yet? What is the real barometer of economic health? Dare I buy a peach?

3) Private Labeling

The number one brands thrive, innovating, advertising and product improving. But, the number 2s and 3s stop striving, unable to compete with performance advances or on price. Into the vacuum steps Private Label. No longer just "okay, available and cheap," these grocery aisle invaders are well-branded, feature rich and are oh-so-profitable for the stores. Say goodbye to familiar but moribund household names; say hello to snazzy new entrants that shave quarters off the check-out total without sacrifice. (Store brands in play at Walmart pictured above)

4) Trading Down without Trading Off

Consumers make psychological assessments of where to spend and where to save their personal currency. Are we willing to buy last year's iPod on close-out, rather than the latest and greatest? Where can we make a financial trade down without a steep payment in street cred?

5) Investment Grade Purchases

Consumers opt for quality - the kind that costs a bit more upfront, but is ultimately worth repairing and refurbishing. As in remembering (perhaps for the first time) that what makes Gucci loafers worth it is not the buckle but the workmanship, leather and fit. Watch for articles in the fashion press to educate on what to look for and the importance of a couple of (new) important pieces to renovate last year's look.

The Upgraded Brand Extension Threat

-Al Ries

A recent trend in marketing is the downgrading of established brands by upgraded line extensions.

Take Budweiser Select. According to Anheuser-Busch, "When it comes to brewing beer, the prevailing assumption is that you can't have it both ways. You can either aim for the best possible flavor, forgetting about calories and carbs; OR you can keep the calorie count in check, and sacrifice taste along the way. Budweiser Select is the exception to these brewing rules."

So what does that make Anheuser-Busch's other low-calorie beer? "Bud Light Mediocre?"

Kroger, the country's largest supermarket chain, has opened new superstores in Dayton, Cincinnati and Atlanta, called "Kroger Fresh Fare."

So what does that make regular Kroger stores? "Kroger Stale Fare?"

Well, you might be thinking, nobody pays attention to words like "fresh fare" or "select" anymore. They are just part of our daily routine of pleasant promotional puffery.

It's true. The language of marketing has had the belief squeezed out of it. Years of hyperbole have wiped out the meaning of many of the words used in brand names and advertising.

There are, however, a number of examples of line extensions that could seriously damage the core brands. Take Vitaminwater10, Glacéau's latest extension of its Vitaminwater brand. What do you suppose most consumers think when they see Vitaminwater10, a name that implies the brand has only 10 calories?

"What? Regular Vitaminwater has calories?"

It's water, for goodness sake, and everyone knows that water has no calories. But sure enough, when a consumer looks at the label of a bottle of regular Vitaminwater, he or she finds it has 50 calories per serving. The fitness crowd isn't going to be happy about that, especially when they find out that all the calories come from sugar.

It gets worse. Glacéau also plays the "per serving" game, which can make any product look like a diet product. As it happens, the 10 calories in Vitaminwater10 is per-8-oz. serving, which means that a 20-oz. bottle contains 25 calories.

And a 20-oz. bottle of regular Vitaminwater contains 125 calories. That's going to really upset that fitness crowd.

What's next? Coke12 with only 12 calories per serving? Serving size: one ounce.

It's odd. Consumers seldom read the fine print on product labels unless companies give them a reason to. For years, Miller High Life ran a "Miller Time" campaign to attract the blue-collar crowd who apparently never bothered to read the "The Champagne of Beers" slogan on the High Life label.

Take Clearly Canadian, the first of the New Age non-carbonated beverage craze. Introduced in 1988, sales took off like those of the iPod.

1989: $5.0 million.
1990: $17.0 million.
1991: $61.2 million.
1992: $155.2 million.

With net profits of $14 million in 1992, Clearly Canadian looked like a clear-cut winner.

It never happened. The next year (1993), sales dropped to $90.9 million and the company's profits disappeared. Sales continued to fall every year until they reached rock bottom in 2006 at $7.5 million.

Where is Clearly Canadian today? In deep trouble. In the past eight years on sales of $124.7 million, Clearly Canadian managed to lose $54.7 million.

What happened to Clearly Canadian? Back in 1992, Tom Pirko, president of Bevmark consulting firm, accurately predicted the reason for the product's rise and fall: "Clearly is the first product that works on the basis of mimicry. People buy it as a mineral water and it's a soft drink. Will the consumer continue to believe in the mimicry?"

Not after the consumer read the label. An 11-oz. bottle of Clearly Canadian contained 100 calories. And the word got around. A hundred calories for a clear, non-carbonated beverage?

Whoops. Back to Diet Coke.

Speaking of which, perhaps you have noticed the slow erosion in the per-capita consumption of cola in the U.S.

2004: Down 0.2%
2005: Down 1.5%
2006: Down 2.1%
2007: Down 3.6%
2008: Down 4.1%

Why didn't the launch of Diet Coke stem the decline of the Coca-Cola brand? (If you like cola taste, but not the calories, you had an alternative.)

Two reasons: (1) Regular Coke is perceived as a brand with "too many calories." (2) Diet Coke is perceived as a brand that "doesn't taste as good" as regular Coke.

The introduction of the mid-calorie colas, C2 and Pepsi Edge, only added to the confusion. Consumers don't like sacrifice (calories or taste), nor do they like compromise.

And so consumers looked for alternatives. Hence the rise of Clearly Canadian, until it too fell into the calorie trap.

Nor did the 1994 launch of Clearly 2, a version of Clearly Canadian with only two calories, stem the decline of the brand. In my opinion, Clearly 2 probably accelerated the decline because it reinforced the idea that the base brand, Clearly Canadian, has too many calories.

Someday I expect cola to make a comeback, perhaps with stevia as a natural non-calorie sweetener. (Coca-Cola with Truvia and PepsiCo with PureVia are obviously exploring this possibility.)

Another interesting upgrade is Scope Outlast, Procter & Gamble's latest extension of its mouthwash brand. "Breath feels fresh up to 5X longer," says the label.

Great, but at Rite-Aid, Scope Outlast costs 45% more per ounce than regular Scope. So the consumer is stuck with an unpleasant choice: Buy the obsolete product and save money, or buy Scope Outlast and get ripped off. (Reminds me of the pain of flying. Sit in coach and suffer physically or sit in first class and suffer financially.)

Then, too, I wonder how many consumers are going to read the fine print under the slogan, "Breath feels fresh up to 5X longer?" ... "Vs. brushing alone."

What? Any normal consumer would assume "5X longer" means that Scope Outlast outlasts regular Scope up to five times longer.

So, Procter & Gamble, how much longer does my breath feel fresh after using regular Scope vs. brushing alone? 1X? 5X? 10X?

It's almost an article of faith among marketing people that the more varieties the better. That's why there are five varieties of Charmin. Ten varieties of Cheerios. Sixteen varieties of Wheat Thins. Thirty-one varieties of Tide.

Then there's Gatorade Tiger, with three flavors. Gatorade A.M. with two flavors. Gatorade Endurance Formula with three flavors. Gatorade Energy Bar with two flavors. Gatorade Nutrition Shake with three flavors. Gatorade Thirst Quencher with seven flavors. And Gatorade G2 with three flavors. Total: 23 flavors or varieties of Gatorade.

And why would Starbucks introduce its own brand of instant coffee? Even worse, promote a "taste challenge" inside Starbucks stores to see if consumers can tell a cup of brewed coffee from a cup of instant?

"We're convinced a majority of people won't be able to tell the difference," said CEO Howard Schultz. So how does it help Starbucks to switch consumers from Fourbucks to Onebuck?

Years ago, I was an agency account executive working on the launch of the first Peugeot automobile in the U.S. market, the Peugeot 403.

It's the same car Peter Falk drove in the Columbo television series. A dowdy-looking vehicle to be sure, but Road & Track magazine named the Peugeot 403 as one of the "seven best-made cars in the world."

The first year, the car sold quite well and the client was pleased. The next year, we got the word that Peugeot was going to introduce the 404, a better-looking car with a slightly larger engine. Great, I thought, replacing the 403 with the 404 could substantially increase sales.

But we're not going to that, replied the client. We're going to sell both models side-by-side in the showrooms.

I was appalled. And for months I argued with Peugeot's U.S. general manager. The old model, the 403, is going to look outdated next to the 404. And the 404 (which was 15% more expensive) is going to look too expensive next to the 403. I tried to offer options. You can either bring in the 404 and discontinue the 403 or stick with the 403 and don't bring in the 404.

Finally out of sheer frustration, the general manager said to me, "Please, Al, stop it. These decisions are made in Paris."

When the second model hit the showrooms, instead of doubling sales as the client expected, total sales actually declined.

Saturn is a repeat of Peugeot. Initially, the Saturn was available in one model only, the S-series. (You could have it in a two-door, a four-door or a hatchback version.) Four years after its introduction, Saturn hit its high-water mark, selling 286,003 vehicles in 1994.

By 1998, Saturn had a problem. Sales had declined to 231,786, a result that could have been expected since the S-series was getting a little long in the tooth.

Solution: The introduction of a larger, more expensive Saturn, the L-series. Headline of an April 5, 1999 article in Automotive News: "Saturn expects new model to double sales."

The article featured Cynthia Trudell, president of Saturn Corp: "With a new mid-size sedan and wagon, Trudell is betting that she can double Saturn's sales to about 500,000 units within a couple of years."

It never happened. Sales never again topped the 286,003 vehicles Saturn sold in the year 1994. And last year, with five models to sell (Astra, Aura, Sky, Outlook and Vue), Saturn sold just 188,004 vehicles.

Saturn's S-series and L-series were like the Peugeot 403 and 404. The older S-series cars looked "outdated" and the newer and larger L-series cars looked "too expensive."

Marketers should study history. The world's largest-selling vehicles were often a single model with only minor updates on an annual basis -- Ford's Model T, for example, with more than 15 million sold.

Then there's the Volkswagen Beetle, with over 21 million sold. There was no Basic Beetle, Super Beetle, Family Beetle, Turbocharged Beetle, Economy Beetle. There was just one model.

I bought a Beetle in 1965 for $1,645. One price, no options.

No automatic transmission. No power steering. No air conditioning. No radio. No undercoating. No cash back. No financing. No discounts. No driving instructions.

No sales pitch either. I gave the salesman a check and he gave me the key.

In architecture, less is more. In marketing, more is often less.

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #12

-Derrick Daye

12. Luxury sets the price, price does not set luxury

Money does not do a worthy job of categorizing objects or stratifying them unless they have been culturally coded. This ‘anti-law’ means that luxury is what could be called ‘supply-based marketing’. That is why traditional marketing is in a state of confusion here: it is fully ‘demand-based’. In luxury, you first come up with a product, then you see at what price you can sell it; the more it is perceived by the client to be a luxury, the higher the price should be. This is the opposite to what applies in the case of a classic product or trading up, where the marketer tries to find out at what price level there is room for a new product.

There is one key consequence for selling: sales staff in a store help people understand, share the mystery, the spirit of places and objects, and the time invested in each item – which explains the price. Customers will be free to buy later.

To Buy Or Launch A Brand?

-Al Ries

In the last 20 years, Procter & Gamble, the world’s most magnificent marketing machine, has launched many magnificent brands.

They include: Vicks, Oil of Olay, Pantene, Cover Girl, Noxzema, Clarion, Old Spice, Max Factor, Giorgio, Baby Fresh, Tampax, Iams, Spinbrush, Clairol, Wella and Glide.

Wait a minute, you might be thinking. Didn’t P&G buy Glide from W.L. Gore and Wella from that German company?

That’s right. They did. As a matter of fact, Procter & Gamble bought all of these 16 brands and relaunched them as P&G brands.

That’s what most big companies do. Instead of launching their own brands, they buy them from other companies, sometimes for a lot of money. The Wella deal was worth a reported 6.5 billion euros.

I have a lot of respect for the marketing savvy of the people at P&G. In books and articles, I have commented favorably on the strategies developed for many of their brands. The launch of Crest toothpaste and Scope mouthwash in particular.

But in the last few decades, I’ve had this nagging thought in the back of my mind. With all of Procter’s marketing smarts and financial muscle, why don’t they launch their own brands rather than buy them? This is not an indictment of P&G. Most big companies do the same. They buy rather than launch. PepsiCo bought Mountain Dew and Gatorade, for example, instead of launching their own caffeinated citrus and sports drinks.

(Actually PepsiCo did launch a sports drink, All Sport, which went nowhere. So they spent $13 billion to buy the real thing (Gatorade along with its corporate parent Quaker Oats.)

Then there’s Coca-Cola, the Procter & Gamble of soft drinks. But Coke is no better in launching new brands than P&G.

Coca-Cola missed the caffeinated citrus category (pioneered by Mountain Dew), so they tried to get into the game with Mello Yello. That didn’t work, so they tried Surge which didn’t work either.

Coca-Cola missed the spicy cola category (pioneered by Dr Pepper), so they tried to get into the game with Mr. Pibb. That didn’t work either.

Coca-Cola missed the all-natural category (pioneered by Snapple), so they tried to get into the game with Fruitopia. That didn’t work either.

Coca-Cola missed the sports drink category (pioneered by Gatorade), so they tried to get into the game with PowerAde which hangs in there as a weak No.2 brand.

Coca-Cola missed the energy drink category (pioneered by Red Bull), so they tried to get into the game with KMX. That didn’t work.

Why do companies like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola miss the boat when it comes to launching new brands? There are three reasons.

1. An advertising-driven launch.

Most big companies will not launch a new brand without the backing of a substantial advertising budget. Yet a successful new brand is usually built around a new category which can take years to develop.

That’s why many successful new brands start slowly using primarily PR techniques. Starbucks, Gatorade, Google, Red Bull, to name a few. These brands and many others were introduced by entrepreneurs who have the patience to hang in there while the market develops.

Red Bull, for example, took four years to reach $10 million in annual sales and another five years to reach $100 million. Any big company that took a look at Red Bull in its early days would have said, ‘There’s no market there. We can’t afford a big ad budget to launch an energy drink brand.’

By the time the market develops, it’s too late for a me-too brand.

2. A research-driven name.

You can’t create a new category with a line-extension name. Invariably, new categories are dominated by new names created especially for the category. Red Bull, not AriZona Extreme Energy. PowerBar, not Gatorade Energy Bar. Amazon.com, not BarnesandNoble.com. Dell, not IBM personal computers. Nickelodeon, not the Disney Channel.

With marketing history clearly in favor of new names rather than ‘stretched’ names, why do companies continue to take the line-extension path.

They do research.

When asked which brand name he or she prefers, the average consumer invariably chooses the familiar name.

Toyota Super or Lexus? Invariable the answer is ‘Toyota Super’. ‘Who’s ever heard of a Lexus? (Either Toyota neglected to research the Lexus name or they chose to ignore their own research.)

Mercedes-Benz Ultra or Maybach? Would your average multi-millionaire prefer to drive a car that he or she has never heard of than a Mercedes? Yet in the long run, Mayback is the clearly superior name.

3. A broad distribution plan.

With a substantial advertising launch, a new product needs broad distribution to make the economics work. So companies pressure the distribution with discounts, two-for-ones, free merchandise and sometimes the payment of slotting fees.

The odds are stacked against such a plan. New brands take off slowly and with little selling at point of sale, most new product launches are bound to fail. A recent Nielsen BASES and Ernst & Young study put the failure rate of new U.S. consumer products at 95 percent and new European consumer products at 90 percent.

A better distribution plan is to start ‘narrow,’ often with a single chain. Charles Shaw (Two-Buck Chuck) started with a single chain (Trader Joe’s) in a single state (California) and became the fastest-growing table wine ever.

Newman’s Own salad dressing was launched in a single supermarket (Stew Leonard’s in Norwalk, Connecticut). The store sold 10,000 bottles in the first two weeks.

With narrow distribution, you can often arrange special displays and promotions which increase your brand’s chance for success.

The Brand Launch Myth

-Al Ries

Should a new brand take off rapidly like a rocket ship? Or should a new brand take off slowly like an airplane?

One of the enduring marketing myths is that a new brand that will eventually become a big brand has to take off in a hurry. And that a marketer should devote enormous resources to assure a rocket-ship launch.

Not true.

One of the hottest food categories of this decade is ‘low carb’. From 2002 – 2004 1,558 new low-carb products were introduced. Sales of low-carb products near the height of the craze in 2004 was $30 billion.

And when did the low-carb revolution start? Thirty-four years before the craze with the publication of Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution.

More than three decades had to pass before low-carb became a high-visibility category. Not all categories are alike. Some grow faster than others. High-tech, for example, is one of the fastest growing.

Perhaps no product grew as fast as the personal computer. The first PC was introduced in 1975, the same year Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard to go to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to write a basic software program for the MITS Altair 8800 computer.

Microsoft, the company Gates founded, is today one of most valuable companies in the world, worth $76 billion on the stock market.

Things weren’t always so rosy. On February 3, 1976, Bill Gates wrote an open letter to Altair users complaining about software piracy. Published in the Homebrew Computer Club newsletter, Gates stated, ‘The amount of royalties we have received from sales to hobbyists makes the time spent on Altair BASIC worth less than $2 an hour.’

Most people who found themselves working for less than $2 an hour would have looked for some other line of work. Not Bill Gates. His faith in the future of his software paid off in a big way.

The way to build a new brand is by creating a new category. And creating a new category takes time. It even takes awhile for a new category to be recognized as a new category. One of Bill Gates’ early problems was the perception that computer software wasn’t worth anything. So owners just copied the software needed to operate their computers from friends. (Less than 10 percent of Altair owners bought Microsoft’s software.)

There are two theories for launching a new brand.

Theory A (for airplane) is the airplane launch. Your new brand rolls slowly down the runway for thousands of feet and then after a massive effort your brand slowly lifts off the concrete. After your brand is airborne for awhile, it starts to accelerate into its cruising altitude.

Theory B (for big bang) is the rocket-ship launch. Your new brand takes off like a rocket and then coasts into orbit.

Should you use massive advertising to launch a new brand? Or should you just use PR?

Advertising favors the big bang or rocket-ship launch because ad programs are traditionally launched with a big bang. That’s the only way to create enough attention to get above the noise level.

PR has no choice. It has to use an airplane launch. PR programs are invariably rolled out over an extended period of time. That’s the only way PR can deal with the needs of media focused on scoops and exclusives. (You can’t call up the media and say: ‘Everybody run my story on Monday. I’m launching my new brand with a big bang.’ That’s not the way the media works.)

What about the real world? Do new brands take off like a rocket ship? Or do they take off like an airplane?

Take a typical new brand in the beverage industry. This brand took four years to break $10 million in annual sales and another five years to reach $100 million.

The brand is Red Bull, a brand built primarily by PR and a brand that took off like an airplane, not like a rocket ship. (Today, Red Bull does $1.5 billion in annual worldwide sales.)

Take Microsoft, for example. It might be hard to believe, but the brand took even longer to get off the runway than Red Bull. Microsoft took ten years to exceed $100 million in annual sales.

Take a third example. This retail brand took 14 years to break $100 million in annual sales. Today the brand does $401 billion in annual sales and has become the world’s largest retailer.

The brand, of course, is Wal-Mart, a brand that took off like an airplane, not like a rocket ship.

The turning point for a new brand comes when slow initial sales suddenly accelerate towards the mass market. According to a recent research report, the turning point in America averages six years after launch.

The largest, most powerful brands, the brands that have stood the test of time, are the brands that have taken off slowly like an airplane. The brands that take off rapidly like a rocket ship usually turn out to be fads.

Here today, gone tomorrow. The hula hoop, Bartles & James wine cooler, Cabbage Patch Dolls, Crystal Pepsi and many, many others.

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #11

-Derrick Daye

11. The presumed price should always seem higher than the actual price

It is a telling fact that advertisements for luxury products often show only the product, without any descriptive copy, and certainly no prices. In the luxury world, price is something not to be mentioned. When you are dining in a top-class restaurant, do you select your dishes on the basis of price? Besides, in many such restaurants the guests’ menus do not show prices.

As a general rule, the imagined price should be higher than it really is. It’s the opposite in traditional marketing. Renault announced its Logan model as starting at $8500, but with the full set of options this would bring it up to $11,000. Every seller tries to attract consumers with a low price, a so-called introductory price, then tries to persuade the consumer to go up-range. EasyJet offers the prospect of round-trip tickets from London to Paris at around $45, but the number of seats available at that price are quickly sold.

In luxury, when an imagined price is higher than the actual price, that creates value and this result:

• When someone is wearing a Cartier Pasha watch, everyone around them more or less knows its price, but tends to overestimate it (on account of its aura of luxury). This increases the wearer’s standing.
• When offering someone a luxury gift, the gesture is all the more appreciated for the price being overestimated.
• And lastly, when advertised, the price is that of the top of the range.

Fighter Brand Strategy Considerations

-Mark Ritson

Fighter brands are one of the oldest strategies in branding. In a classic response to low priced rivals an organization launches a cheaper brand to attack the threat head on and protect their premium priced offerings. Unlike flanker brands or traditional brands that are designed with a set of target consumers in mind, fighter brands are specifically created to combat a competitor that is threatening to steal market share away from a company’s main brand. Fighter brands are usually a classic recession strategy. As value competitors gain share and private labels grow stronger - an increasing number of marketers turn to a fighter brand to rescue disappearing sales while maintaining their premium brand's equity.

When a fighter brand strategy works it not only defeats a low priced competitor but also opens up a new market. Intel Celeron is a notable case study of successful fighter brand application. Despite the success of its Pentium chips, Intel faced a major threat during the late Nineties from competitors like AMD’s K6 chips that were cheaper and better placed to serve the emerging low-cost PC market. Intel wanted to protect the brand equity and price premium of its Pentium chips but also wanted to avoid AMD gaining a foothold into the lower end of the market. So it created Celeron as a cheaper, less powerful version of its Pentium chips to serve this market and keep AMD out. Intel’s subsequent 80% share of the global PC market is testament to the potential of a successful fighter brand to help restrict competitors and open up additional segments of the market.

Unfortunately, for every success like Intel Celeron there are many more cases of abject failure. Saturn from GM was meant to attack Japanese imports but ended up losing billions and helping destroy GM. Song from Delta was designed to hit back at low priced carriers like Southwest and JetBlue but lasted three years and cost the airline hundreds of millions of dollars. Funtime film from Kodak was meant to win back share from Fuji but did little to stem the tide. The history of fighter brands is a discouraging roll-call of failed campaigns that inflicted very little damage on targeted competitors and resulted, instead, in significant collateral losses for the company that launched them. My research into fighter brands published in the October edition of Harvard Business Review examines the classic strategic hazards that marketers must negotiate in order to ensure their fighter brand will emerge victorious from its low price battles.

The first tip is to consider whether an additional brand is really what your organization needs? An additional brand means less investment and management attention for your existing portfolio of brands at the very time when you probably should avoid any distractions. Do you really want to spend precious resources on a new low priced fighter brand at a time when perhaps the focus should be on adjusting your existing brands and strategic thinking? Too often companies embark on significant cost cutting and re-pricing strategies for their premium brands after acknowledging that their respective fighter brand strategies had failed. In each instance, however, these crucial strategic transformations are usually delayed by years while the organizations conceived, executed and then retracted their fighter brands. Start your fighter brand campaign by questioning whether you even need one in the first place. Less brands is always more.

If you decide to launch, the next key consideration should be cannibalization. Most fighter brands are created explicitly to win back customers that have switched to a low-priced rival. Unfortunately, once deployed, many have an annoying tendency to also acquire customers from a company’s own premium offering. Too often the break even analysis used to justify the launch of a fighter brand unrealistically favors competitor steal over premium brand cannibalization. The best fighter brand strategies, like P&G’s use of Luvs in the diaper category, not only factor in the degree to which the brand will steal from its sister brand, they also include strategies to minimize the amount of cannibalization incurred. P&G specifically removed innovative features from Luvs and invested heavily in their premium brand Pampers to successfully ensure that the two brands attacked their respective competitors more than they fought with each other.

Another key focus should be consumers. The provenance of a fighter brand is very different from the usual brand launch. It originates with a competitor and the strategic success it has achieved, or threatens to achieve, against your organization. The DNA of a fighter brand is therefore potentially flawed from the very outset because it is derived from company deficiencies and competitor strengths, rather than a specific focus on a particular target segment of consumers. One of the reasons that Qantas succeeded, where so many other airlines failed, when it launched its successful fighter brand JetStar was that it began the planning process with secret focus groups all over Australia. Rather than orient its development around matching the strengths of the competitor it was designed to attack, JetStar was created around the needs of the consumers it would one day serve.

A final crucial question is one of sustainable profits. While a fighter brand is designed to target a rival, it also has to do so profitably. How else can it mount a long term campaign? This was one of the key lessons from GM’s failed experiment with Saturn which successfully stole share back share from Toyota and Honda but did so while losing $3,000 per car. Eventually GM had to make savings and when it did - Saturn lost its edge and the Japanese imports resumed their domination of the US market. A better case study for CMO’s is 3M’s fighter brand version of its Post-It Notes. Highland comes in less formats, with lower grade adhesive and is altogether a more basic product. But lower quality means lower costs and this ensures that despite Highland’s low price it is also a very profitable product for 3M. This, in turn, has ensured its long term fighting effectiveness in the category.

When you first consider a fighter brand strategy its likely your thoughts will immediately dwell on the tempting combination of restricting threats from lower priced competitors while opening up fast growing segments at the lower end of the market. But if you want to get it right you should first consider the concerns I've highlighted in this post. Most fighter brands fail... despite their apparently unbeatable potential.

Global Trademark Strategy Q&A

-Steve Rivkin

How do you overhaul and reorganize more than 3,000 trademark registrations owned by an $11 billion global corporation?

That was the question faced by Ingersoll-Rand several years ago when it sized up its trademark situation.

Ingersoll-Rand, founded in 1905, was long known for its tools and machinery, which carved the faces on Mount Rushmore. The company now is a diversified company that makes refrigeration equipment (under brands ThermoKing, Hussmann); compact vehicles such as small loaders, excavators and golf cars (under brands Bobcat, Club Car); locks and security systems (under brands Schlage, Kryptonite); construction equipment such as pavers, compactors, portable compressors; and industrial equipment such as generators, turbines.

“We were spending millions of dollars on ongoing trademark maintenance,” according to Anand Chaturvedi, a marketing manager in Ingersoll-Rand Construction Technologies, who spearheaded the company-wide overhaul. “It had become a symbol of pride that managers would register a name to immortalize a product feature. Over the years, this diluted the brand equity of strategic brands and led to mass confusion among customers.”

The company took serious note and initiated a major project that involved business leaders across the globe. Mr. Chaturvedi and his cross-functional team led the initiative of developing a new trademark strategy.

We asked Mr. Chaturvedi how he approached this daunting assignment, and what this diversified industrial company was able to accomplish.

Q: What was your overall sense of the situation after you reviewed these 3,000 trademark registrations?

An unchecked proliferation. In the absence of a common understanding of how the process should work, it was left to individual discretion to select and register any name in any market of the world. What an individual could see was only an expense of a thousand dollars in protecting a new name, but when aggregated across the various categories in multiple countries, the enterprise had a significant drain of resources that not only cost us money but also diminished equities of strategic brands.

Q: What kind of approach did you recommend?

Our recommendation was based on a two-pronged approach. Every new naming opportunity was to be reviewed in conjunction with a well-defined business case. We developed a process that objectively analyzed the need for having a new name, its relationship with the parent brand or reason for being a standalone brand while reviewing the commitment for developing it as such.

For all existing trademarks, we initiated an annual review of global trademark registrations. This was an eye-opener because not only we found cases of overprotection where same name was registered multiple times but also instances of under-representation where our strategic trademarks did not have required protection in key global markets.

We also found that a significant number of new registrations eventually expired for lack of non-use. Certainly that money could have been put to a better use.

Q: Were you able to evaluate and classify all the existing trademarks?

Definitely. We developed a decision tree to objectively classify every trademark in one of the three categories – strategic, support and tactical. Strategic trademarks protect our billion dollar brands. Support trademarks represented sub- brands and provided a customer valued differentiation. Every thing else fell into the third bucket – Tactical marks that either had to go or to be maintained under common law protection for a finite time period.

Q: Were certain brands unsupported or under-represented?

Yes, as I mentioned earlier, there were some glaring omissions as well as duplicate registrations.

Q: What were the results in terms of brand equity and maintenance costs?

In terms of maintenance cost alone, our annual expense was in seven figures. After completing the first enterprise wide scan, we found an immediate opportunity to cut it by more than a third. The business leaders were enthused because these resources can now either be saved or be put to better use.

The benefits in preserving our brand integrity were more far reaching, particularly in terms of avoiding brand dilution. Many new product/ service offerings were accompanied by a new name, so in many instances, the promise of core brands might confused by the marketplace. For instance, if the promise of a strategic brand is technological innovation, would you then really need a new sub-brand for the next generation of a product family? In this case, does a new name really provide a competitive differentiation, or just create confusion?

These kinds of questions led to a far more concerted effort of brand analysis and development.

Q: Would this approach work for other multinational companies with a diverse portfolio of brands?

I certainly believe that our experience could be echoed by other large companies. I could summarize our learning this way:

(1) Managing trademarks should not be left only with the legal experts. This issue has far reaching impact on how brands are built and business leaders need to play a more proactive role.

(2) Trademarks are building blocks for brands. They can become valuable intangible assets but only if managed as such. If left unchecked, a free trademark proliferation does enormous harm to brand equities.

(3) I cannot over-emphasize the need for communication. We didn’t stop after writing policy documents but embarked upon a large-scale training program that included “global training of trainers.” Now this training is part of our executive education curriculum.

Anchor Your Brand With Credentials

-Al Ries

Three years after Barilla was introduced into the U.S. market in 1996, the brand became the No. 1 pasta in America.

Not bad, considering the competition: Ronzoni, Mueller’s, Creamette, San Giorgia and American Beauty, among others. The previous market leader (Ronzoni) was owned by Hershey Foods, a formidable marketing machine. Furthermore, Barilla sells for 5 to 10 percent more than the competition.

Traditional wisdom would credit Barilla’s success to its barrage of 30-second television commercials. An American woman makes eye contact with a mysterious Italian stranger who serves her Barilla pasta, all set to vocals by tenor Andrea Bocelli.

Today, Barilla has 17 percent of the dry pasta market, more than twice the market share of the No. 2 brand Ronzoni which has 7 percent.

Most commercials focus on creating a rapport with consumers in order to build loyalty to the product. There’s a certain ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling in your typical TV spot. The objective is to make the consumer fall in love with the brand. The soft-sell is in; the hard-sell is out.

There’s nothing wrong with this approach, provided you add one additional ingredient: credentials. What are Barilla’s credentials? They’re in the commercials and on the package. ‘Italy’s No. 1 pasta.’

Subtract the credentials from the commercials and you have nothing but mush. Beautiful, enchanting, romantic mush.

Most advertising is mush, especially television advertising. Thirty expensive seconds wasted trying to proposition the viewer without providing enough credentials for the brand for the consumer to take the offer seriously.

Advertisers often confuse cause and effect. Sure, every advertiser wants the consumer to fall in love with his or her brand. Sure, every advertiser wants to build brand preference, loyalty and all those other mushy attributes. That’s the effect the advertiser wants to create. But what’s the cause?

Invariably the cause is some variation of the brand’s credentials. ‘It must be good because it’s Italy’s No. 1 pasta.’

Not, ‘it must be good because the company ran a wonderful commercial.’

Behind almost every successful brand is some aspect of credentials. Either the brand was the first brand in the category (Coca-Cola), the first brand in a segment of the category (Mercedes-Benz and expensive cars), the first brand to claim a certain attribute (Volvo and safety), the first brand to be endorsed by an influential third-party (Crest and the American Dental Association), the leading brand in a country identified with the category (Barilla and Italy.)

After brands become established, however, advertisers fall all over themselves dropping their credentials. Big mistake. Credentials are what built the brand. Credentials should always play a role in the advertising and the marketing of the brand.

What built the Federal Express brand? ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.’ Federal Express was the first cargo carrier to focus on overnight service. FedEx means overnight. ‘FedEx this package to L.A.’ means to get this package to Los Angeles by tomorrow morning.

Like many other advertisers, FedEx has dropped its credentials. No mention of overnight service, just a long line of ‘credential-less’ themes like ‘The world on time’ and ‘Relax . . . it’s FedEx.’

What should FedEx advertising say? ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.’ Those are the company’s credentials. Sure, the FedEx has other services, including two and three-day deliveries, but if it does a terrific job on overnight delivery, it must be pretty good at those other services, too.

How soon they forget. James C. Wetherbe wrote a book on Federal Express outlining the company’s 11 management principles. Do you suppose any one of those 11 management principles had anything to do with focusing the company on overnight service? Of course, not.

Stay tuned. ‘Italy’s No. 1 pasta’ is likely to go the way of ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.’

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #10

-Derrick Daye

10. Communicate to those whom you are not targeting

Luxury has two value facets – luxury for oneself and luxury for others. To sustain the latter facet it is essential that there should be many more people that are familiar with the brand than those who could possibly afford to buy it for themselves. In traditional marketing, the keyword is efficiency, but over and above efficiency there has to be a return on investment. In advertising for example, the media plan must concentrate on the target consumers and nothing but the target consumers – every person reached beyond the target is a waste of investment money.

In luxury, if somebody is looking at somebody else and fails to recognize the brand, part of its value is lost. It is essential to spread brand awareness beyond the target group.

(Madonna and her Louis Vuitton bag pictured above)

Brand Personality Inspiration

-Martin Lindstorm

My dad always said, if you want to get ahead of the leader, don’t follow his tracks in the snow. If I owned my own jewelry store, this would be the mantra for everything I did. And my store would be truly different.
I think the greatest challenge we all face is avoiding the well-worn track. So, how do we avoid falling into step with everyone else? The trick is to find inspiration, not from your competitors, but from brands outside your own category of business.

Let’s imagine that Apple went into the jewelry business. Now let’s imagine how the Apple jewelry store might look. We all know Apple – a fundamental indicator in itself of the brand’s leadership. The Apple personality is well etched into our collective understanding of the brand. We could, therefore, imagine that the Apple jewelry store would proclaim itself in the street environment as a jewel itself. The façade would be sleek; the staff would be casually elegant, dressed in black shirts adorned with incisive, white-printed apothegms across their backs. The jewelry displays would be elegant – simple of line and perhaps using white as a theme. And the jewelry pieces would feature as the stars of a coordinated and well-design show. Each piece – and perhaps there’d be a select few on display, ensuring that the story behind each work had the space and time to express itself – would be a paragon of design. You’d be able to see them up close, examine their well-crafted detail and even touch them to fully appreciate their seamless craftsmanship. They’d be Apple pieces, sharing design characteristics that underline the Apple brand’s inherent mission, personality and values. They’d be individual expressions of each artist’s creativity yet united in their evocation of the Apple brand signature. In brilliant paradox, their individuality would reinforce a recognizable and unifying brand, leaving no doubt about the brand behind the products.

Let’s step back onto the street, out of that imaginary Apple jewelry store, and consider jewelry brand distinction in general. There’s a row of jewelry stores in this shopping district. Lined up side-by-side, they offer easy comparison. Or do they? They’re all the same. Where’s the distinction between them? If I were to take a photo of each jewelry store, I’d use the images to build a matrix to map brand difference – and lack of it.

The matrix is built around the four sides of a square. The vertical left-hand side accommodates all my pictures of stores that are almost uniform with each other. The opposite side of the square is where I put my photos of stores that are unique in some way. Along the top of the matrix are photos of stores that offer an experience – they’re more than retail outlets or places to display jewels. Finally, along the bottom of the square, are all the other stores. These are the bland environments – neither expressing difference, experience, or an environment of any distinction.

Guess where most of the stores would be on the matrix? Would I be wrong in assuming they’d mainly be in the bottom left, where the uniform and bland stores overlap. Many of the remainder would be in the middle of the matrix, mapping their identities as stores which are essentially trend followers that provide a pleasant environment but one which is advised merely by function and habit, not brand expression. There’s a pretty big gap at the top right where we would map unique, experiential stores – if we had a picture of one.

Guess what - that’s where I would aim to have a picture of my jewelry store.

My customers would be willing live billboards for my jewelry products. Just as the white earphones have become a distinctive icon for the Apple brand, the proud wearers of my store’s products would be sporting distinctive pieces that could have come from one place only.

So, how do you identify the right source of inspiration to start building your distinctive brand experience?

First, you need to carefully consider the values you want your jewelry store to convey. Should it be cool, courageous, harmonious, sensitive, humorous, inspiring? Did you notice the values I listed? We’re not talking about reliability or quality. These are values which consumers take for granted in a brand that has the temerity to offer itself for sale. Brand values are personality attributes that set a brand apart from others. Think of brands as people. Values describe the personality of your brand, just as people represent values through their unique personalities. Think Oprah, and you’d possibly identify values such as compassion and care. Think Steve Jobs and you might associate visionary qualities with the man. The same is the case with powerful brands. Your brand’s personality is ultimately what distinguishes it. And the personality is built on well-defined and consistently expressed values.

Your brands values should not only underline a distinctive personality. They allow you to tell your customers a great story. Like people, brands exist within a personal history. They exist in a community context. Tell the story of your brand through its expression and the relationship it builds with customers.
Now you’re ready to identify the source of your inspiration. Consider brands, beyond your sector, which embody values to place them in the top right-hand corner of the matrix. Brands that are unique and which offer an experience in our encounters with them.

Perhaps you might think of Red Bull. There’s a brand which might qualify as inspiration for a jewelry store because of its unique distribution strategy. I’m sure you’re aware that custom-built Red Bull fridges reside in surf wear stores as much as in convenience stores, because the surf wear stores are where their core customer group shop.

On the same theme, Quicksilver, the surf wear clothing brand, has developed stores that are experiential, evoking a sense of the beach, of fun and youth. Gather a group of brands which reflect aspects of your store’s personality and values and examine how they can inspire concepts and directions for your store.

Your next step is to consider your story. Branding isn’t all about design. It’s about creating a powerful story. The story, the values, the personality all contribute to advising the design. The design expresses these characteristics to achieve a holistic and integrated, confident and distinctive brand expression. The fact is, you’re selling a story first, jewelry as an inevitable consequence. The jewelry pieces are symbols for the brand experience. My jewelry store would be an epicenter of storytelling.

Every jewelry piece in my store would have a unique story to tell. Each piece would express a unique origin, a unique jeweler behind its creation, unique gems or craftsmanship. No piece would leave my store without being accompanied by a booklet exploring the story behind the piece. My staff should be carefully trained in conveying each and every story. And my website would extend the experience. On- and offline, my jewelry store would function as theater. The set would be accompanied by a unique signature sound – music for the store and website. A signature scent would pervade the store and would be infused into all my exquisite packaging materials. Customers would take home the story, the piece and the sensory experience.

In my book, Buyology, I explore why more than 70% of us touch wood for luck. It’s true! More than 40% of us avoid walking under ladders and opening umbrellas inside, for fear of invoking bad luck. Countless rituals like these are engraved into our social consciousnesses. Individually and collectively we practice ritual daily. Weddings, engagements, birthdays – they’re all rituals. And our addiction to them translates into a powerful branding tool. So, on top of the story, the environment and the sensory experience of my store, I’d invent rituals for everything: the way staff greet and attend to customers, the way the piece’s stories are told, the way in which purchases are wrapped and presented to customers. Every consumer touchpoint offers an opportunity for brand expression.

Buying jewelry should give customers a memorable experience. It should be an experience that’s so distinctive that they can’t help but talk about it. Breathless stories of the beautiful jewelry store experience would spread by word-of-mouth to friends and family. This is the marketing strategy to aim for. Classic advertising rarely works, and it comes at an outrageous cost. I’d make my store do the talking and let my customers be the pilgrims who spread the word to the world.

10 Branding and Marketing Trends for 2010

-Derrick Daye

Niels Bohr once noted that "prediction is very difficult, especially about the future," but then he didn't have access to predictive loyalty metrics. Happily, we do. And, as they measure the direction and velocity of consumer values 12 to 18 months in advance of the marketplace and consumer articulations of category needs and expectations, they identify future trends with uncanny accuracy.

Having examined these measures, we offer 10 trends for marketers for 2010 that will have direct consequences to the success - or failure – of next year's branding and marketing efforts.

1) Value is the new black

Consumer spending, even on sale items, will continue to be replaced by a reason-to-buy at all. This spells trouble for brands with no authentic meaning, whether high-end or low.

2) Brands increasingly a surrogate for "value"

What makes goods and services valuable will increasingly be what's wrapped up in the brand and what it stands for. Why J Crew instead of The Gap? J Crew stands for a new era in careful chic --being smart and stylish. The first family's support of the brand doesn't hurt either.

3) Brand differentiation is Brand Value

The unique meaning of a brand will increase in importance as generic features continue to plague the brand landscape. Awareness as a meaningful market force has long been obsolete, and differentiation will be critical for success --meaning sales and profitability.

4) "Because I Said So" is so over

Brand values can be established as a brand identity, but they must believably exist in the mind of the consumer. A brand can't just say it stands for something and make it so. The consumer will decide, making it more important than ever for a brand to have measures of authenticity that will aid in brand differentiation and consumer engagement.

5) Consumer expectations are growing

Brands are barely keeping up with consumer expectations now. Every day consumers adopt and devour the latest technologies and innovations, and hunger for more. Smarter marketers will identify and capitalize on unmet expectations. Those brands that understand where the strongest expectations exist will be the brands that survive - and prosper.

6) Old tricks don't work/won't work anymore

In case your brand didn't get the memo here it is -consumers are on to brands trying to play their emotions for profit. In the wake of the financial debacle of this past year, people are more aware then ever of the hollowness of bank ads that claim "we're all in this together" when those same banks have rescinded their credit and turned their retirement plan into case studies. The same is true for insincere celebrity pairings: think Seinfeld & Microsoft or Tiger Woods & Buick. Celebrity values and brand values need to be in concert, like Tiger Woods & Accenture. That's authenticity.

7) They won't need to know you to love you

As the buying space becomes even more online-driven and international (and uncontrolled by brands and corporations), front-end awareness will become less important. A brand with the right street cred can go viral in days, with awareness following, not leading, the conversation. After all, everybody knows GM, but nobody's buying their cars.

8) It's not just buzz

Conversation and community is all; ebay thrives based on consumer feedback. If consumers trust the community, they will extend trust to the brand. Not just word of mouth, but the right word of mouth within the community. This means the coming of a new era of customer care.

9) They're talking to each other before talking to the brand

Social Networking and exchange of information outside of the brand space will increase. Look for more websites using Facebook Connect to share information with the friends from those sites. More companies will become members of Linkedin. Twitter users will spend more money on the Internet than those who don't tweet.

10) Engagement is not a fad; It's the way today's consumers do business

Marketers will come to accept that there are four engagement methods including Platform (TV; online), Context (Program; webpage), Message (Ad or Communication), and Experience (Store/Event). But there is only one objective for the future: Brand Engagement. Marketers will continue to realize that attaining real brand engagement is impossible using out-dated attitudinal models.

Accommodating these trends will require a paradigm change on the parts of some companies. But whether a brand does something about it or not, the future is where it's going to spend the rest of its life. How long that life lasts is up to the brand, determined by how it responds to today's reality.

Darwin's Theories And Marketing

-Al Ries

Why did Delta, Northwest, US Airways and United Airlines go bankrupt? Why were C2 and Pepsi Edge such notable failures? One answer might be "divergence." Over time, every category breaks up into multiple categories, creating chaos for companies that try to keep their brands in the mainstream of the market.Charles Darwin

Divergence is the least understood, most powerful force in the universe. In his book The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin called divergence the driving force that creates a new species.

In our book The Origin of Brands, we use Darwin's concept to describe the process that takes place to create a new category. What starts off as a single category (the mainframe computer, for example) winds up as multiple categories -- mainframes, mid-range, desktops, laptops, handhelds, servers, etc.

Each of these developing categories represents an opportunity to build a new brand. Digital, Compaq, Dell and Palm, for example.

There are two forces at work in nature, according to Darwin. One is a gradual change from an ancestral to a current condition. (A process biologists call "anagenesis.")
Divergence

The other is divergence, a splitting of the ancestral tree to create new branches. (Biologists call this "cladogenesis.")

Anagenesis produces strawberries the size of plums. It just won't turn a strawberry into a plum. It takes cladogenesis or divergence to do that.

Darwin called the first force "natural selection," or the survival of the fittest. The competition between individuals improves the species.

Two hundred years ago, the average American adult male was 5 feet 7 inches tall. Today the average American adult male is 5 feet 9 inches tall. That's evolution at work.

The second force of nature is the principle of "divergence." Random changes or mutations create an incipient new species and then the competition between species drives them apart.

First portable computer

The first portable computer, introduced in 1982 by Compaq Computer, weighed 18 pounds. Essentially a slimmed-down desktop with a handle, the product was called a "luggable" computer by many users.

Compare today's desktop with today's portable computer (now called a laptop.) On my desk is a Dell computer (29 pounds), a Sony monitor (17 pounds) and a Microsoft keyboard and mouse (3.5 pounds). Total weight: 49.5 pounds.

On the road, however, I carry a Toshiba Portege, which weighs just 4.5 pounds. No longer can you put a handle on a desktop computer and call it a "portable." The portable or laptop computer has diverged from the desktop computer. The process never stops. Today the laptop category is in the process of dividing into full-featured machines that weigh 6 pounds to 8 pounds and ultralight machines that weigh 3 pounds to 4 pounds.

If you're in the laptop computer business, your instincts might lead you in the opposite direction. If you think of "the" customer as a single identity, you might try to satisfy the customer's every wish.

Compromise brands

As a result, you might decide that your laptop computer needs to be a compromise. As full featured as possible and as light as possible. In other words, you would put your product right in the middle of the market where there is no market.

In Darwin's words, "nature favors the extremes." The "sweet spot" of a market is an illusion that soon gives way to multiple sweet spots. So which spot do you want your brand to occupy?

Darwin writes about a human example of the pressure that nature exerts on species to diverge. "As with mariners shipwrecked near a coast, it would have been better for the good swimmers if they had been able to swim still further, whereas it would have been better for the bad swimmers if they had not been able to swim at all and had stuck to the wreck."

If sailors were a species, given enough time and enough shipwrecks, there would eventually be two species of sailors: swimmers and non-swimmers. Again, the mushy middle is the place to avoid.

Wal-Mart vs. Saks

Look at department stores. Wal-Mart and Target do well at the low end and Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom do well at the high end. It's Sears and JC Penney that are caught in the mushy middle.

In groceries, Wal-Mart has become the leading chain at the low end while Whole Foods is rolling along at the high end. It's the supermarket chains in the middle that are having problems. Kroger, the largest pure grocery chain, lost $21 million last year while Whole Foods made $115 million.

In air travel, no-frills airlines like Southwest, Airtran and JetBlue are flying high along with NetJets and the corporate jet market at the high end. It's the traditional airlines like American, United and Delta that are suffering in the mushy middle.

Coke's C2 disaster

In carbonated beverages, Coca-Cola (150 calories) and Diet Coke (0 calories) are big successes while its half-and-half brand, C2 (75 calories), has gone nowhere. If you want your company to live a long and happy life, it's not enough to "evolve" your brands to keep up with competition. You also need to look for opportunities to launch new brands to take advantage of diverging categories.

Toyota responded to the pressure to diverge by introducing Lexus, a high-end brand which has become the biggest-selling luxury car in America.

In the world of business, you need to practice divergence as well as evolution.

Brand Positioning For A Better Night's Sleep

-Al Ries

A Hilton senior vice president for brand management and marketing was recently asked by a reporter, ‘So what is a Hilton?’

‘People can’t necessarily articulate it,’ conceded the senior vice president for brand management and marketing. The brand is defined, he suggested, “if we collectively give people an experience that says, yes, I’m proud of what it says about me to stay here, it makes me feel good; I’m in charge of my stay.’

‘I’m proud of what it says about me to stay here?’ That’s a Hilton? That’s what differentiates a Hilton from a Hyatt, a Marriott, an Omni, a Radisson, a Ramada, a Sheraton, a Westin or a Wyndham?

Mind you, this is the response from a senior vice president for brand management and marketing of an organization that is spending $45 million a year on advertising.

What is the role and function of marketing anyway? To collectively give people an experience that makes them proud of what it says about them? I thought that was the role and function of the hotel itself.

Sure, you want your product to give people a good experience. Without that, most marketing programs are certain to fail. But beyond a good experience is the need to position the brand in the mind of the prospect.

What’s a Hilton? Or as a matter of fact, what’s your brand? If you can’t answer that question about your own brand in two or three words, your brand is in trouble.

Marketing seems to be going backwards. The objective of a marketing program used to be to make the brand famous. And years ago when there were fewer brands and less advertising volume that strategy worked very well. Consumers tended to prefer the ‘well-known’ brand in every category to the lesser-known brands.

Kleenex in tissue. Heinz in ketchup. Campbell’s in soup. Morton’s in salt.

But today, with an avalanche of advertising, there are many well-known brands in every category. Take toothpaste, for example. Colgate, Crest, Aquafresh, Arm & Hammer, Mentadent, Sensodyne, Rembrandt, Close Up, Ultra Brite and Pepsodent. Each of these brands is well-known. Then which brand do you buy?

The brand that owns a ‘position’ in the mind. Aquafresh for ‘fresh breath.’

Arm & Hammer for ‘baking soda.’ Mentadent for ‘baking soda/peroxide.’ Sensodyne for ‘sensitive teeth.’ Rembrandt for ‘high-end’ toothpaste. Close Up, a second choice for ‘fresh breath.’ Ultra Brite for ‘whiter teeth.’ And Pepsodent for the older crowd who remember when it was one of the best-selling toothpaste brands.

What about the two leading brands, Colgate and Crest? Not only are Colgate and Crest well-known, but the brands are perceived as the two ‘leaders’ in the toothpaste category. The same phenomenon happens in many other categories.

Leadership alone is the best position you can own in the mind. When you are perceived to be the leader, consumers believe you have the better product or service. Because everybody knows ‘the better product wins in the marketplace.’ Not true, but that’s the perception.

Brands go through a life cycle. Unless your brand is the first brand in a new category, you can’t introduce a new brand by claiming leadership. Conrad Hilton opened his first hotel in Texas in 1919. A decade later, he had eight hotels, all in Texas.

By the 1960s, Hilton was the best-known name in the hotel business. Now was the perfect time to answer the most important question in marketing, ‘What’s a Hilton?’

Here it is 40 years later and the senior vice president for brand management and marketing still can’t give a decent answer to that fundamental question.

Powerful, long-lasting brands are built by owning a word in the mind.

What’s a Volvo? A safe car.

What’s a BMW? A car that’s fun to drive.

What’s a Barilla? Italy’s No. 1 pasta.

Of course, there are many brands that own words in the mind without necessarily using those words in their advertising.

What’s a Rolex? An expensive watch.

What’s a Starbucks? An expensive cup of coffee. (Also known as Fourbucks.)

What’s a Red Bull? An energy drink.

It’s astounding, however, how many marketing executives can’t quite grasp the power of this simple branding strategy: own a word in the mind. Maybe it’s too simple a concept to justify the elevated salaries that many CMOs aspire to.

What’s a Wal-Mart? A few years ago the CEO of Wal-Mart’s advertising agency was asked, ‘What would you say is Wal-Mart’s USP?’

Without hesitation, he replied: ‘Value, loyalty, and quality.’

When he heard that response, Rosser Reeves probably turned over in his grave. ‘Value, loyalty and quality’ are hardly unique, as in unique selling proposition. Those are words you might find hand-lettered over a mom-and-pop retail store in any small town in America.

What’s a Wal-Mart? On the outside of every Wal-Mart store are the words, ‘We sell for less.’ In every Wal-Mart advertisement are the words, ‘Always the lowest price. Always.’

What word does Wal-Mart own in the mind? It’s not value, loyalty and quality. It’s ‘cheap.’ Not a bad word to own either. It has made Wal-Mart the world’s largest retailer.

Does ‘cheap’ appeal to everybody? No, that’s why you know ‘cheap’ is a good word to own. Any combination of words that appeals to everybody will never work in marketing. Value, loyalty and quality? Who could ask for anything more? That’s why those words will never work.

Look at Hilton sibling, Hilton Garden Inn. What’s a Hilton Garden Inn? According to the chain’s advertising slogan, it’s ‘Everything. Right where you need it.’

When you claim ‘everything,’ you end up with nothing.

On the other hand, an ‘everything’ claim does sound exciting. Having run an advertising agency, I know that exciting ideas are a lot easier to sell than simple, positioning ideas.

In 1983, we were working for Holiday Inns, when our client decided to get into the all-suite hotel business. The brand name they chose: Embassy Suites.

At the time, there were only two significant players in the all-suite category. Granada Royale with 20 locations, primarily in the Western states and Guest Quarters with 8 locations, primarily in the East.

We were asked to make a presentation. We made two points.

1. The leading all-suite chain will be the first brand in the mind. Move rapidly to dominate the category. To jump-start the Embassy Suites brand, buy the largest chain in the category, Granada Royale. Which they did.

2. Hotel suites have the perception of being expensive and before the launch of all-suite hotels, they were. Embassy Suites, on the other hand, would be reasonable, no more expensive than an ordinary hotel room. Furthermore, the primary benefit of a suite is to have one room for sleeping and one room for working.

Hence our proposed positioning slogan: ‘Embassy Suites: Two rooms for the price of one.’

Which they didn’t do. Our slogan was too simple and not at all creative. Instead they hired the advertising agency that proposed using Garfield, the cat. ‘You don’t have to be a fat cat to enjoy The Suite Life.’

Embassy Suites became a very successful brand, thanks primarily to its early lead in the all-suite category. But it missed an opportunity to reposition traditional single-room hotels with a powerful positioning strategy, ‘Two rooms for the price of one,’ which I believe would still be an effective slogan today. (Many more people stay in traditional single-room hotels than stay in all-suite hotels.)

And today, of course, Garfield has checked out of Embassy Suites and has long since lost his connection with the brand.

I learned a lesson. Maybe you can do both. Maybe you can take a simple positioning idea and ‘package’ it to make it more exciting, like putting bacon around a filet.

When you study some outstanding positioning slogans, you can see how effective the packaging can become.

BMW got a lot of favorable publicity for their legendary 2002 model which combined the practicality of a family sedan with the drivability of a sports cars. They could have positioned the brand as a good ‘driving’ car, but they didn’t. Instead they wrapped bacon around the ‘driving’ idea with the slogan, ‘The ultimate driving machine.’

When Federal Express decided to focus on their overnight business, they could have said, ‘The overnight delivery company,’ but they didn’t. Instead they wrapped bacon around the ‘overnight’ idea with the slogan: ‘When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.’

De Beers could have said ‘The hardest substance on earth,’ but they didn’t. Instead they wrapped bacon around the ‘hardest substance’ idea with the slogan: ‘A diamond is forever.’

(Notice the double-entendre, always a good idea in a slogan. If a diamond lasts forever, so will a marriage solemnized with diamond engagement and wedding rings.)

You can go in the other direction, too. One of the most memorable slogans in advertising history is ‘Ace is the place with the helpful hardware man.’

To solve the gender problem and to simplify the message, the slogan recently became ‘Ace: The helpful place,’ which destroys the poetry, the elegance and the memorability of the original.

De Beers did the same. ‘A diamond is forever’ has become ‘Forever, now,’ which not only pulverizes the poetry but also sets up a conundrum. How can forever also be now?

What about Embassy Suites? After thinking about it for the last 26 years, how about ‘Embassy Suites: One room for you, one room for your cat?’

Brand Naming Humans Proves Promotional

-Steve Rivkin

The Globe and Mail newspaper in Toronto called it “a marketing stunt that takes branding to a new extreme.” What’s the news? Humans have now been branded.

Four Canadian citizens legally changed their surname from “Dunlop” to “Dunlop-Tire.” Each wacky Mr. or Ms. Dunlop-Tire pocketed $6,250 – their share of the $25,000 in prize money offered by Goodyear Canada Inc., which markets the Dunlop tire brand in Canada.

For the company, this brash stunt generated more publicity than half a dozen ad campaigns, and cost a relative pittance. When the company announced the contest, the story was picked up by international media and became part of a bit on Conan O’Brien’s late night TV show.

Sure, marketers have slapped their names on everything from coffee mugs to sports stadiums. But human beings?

Jason Dunlop-Tire of Winnipeg doesn’t seem to mind being a walking advertisement. Do people laugh at his name? “I don’t care,” replies the 24-year-old. “I have the money and they don’t.”

Traci Dunlop-Tire, who lives in Calgary, said changing her name wasn’t a big deal. As a Dunlop, she was already, shall we say, tired of tire jokes. “I did it for the money,” she said, “but for the amount of laughter I’ve gotten, it’s been well worth it.”

Goodyear has plans to get maximum mileage from its four new members of the family. The company has the right to feature them in advertising and other promotions. Even so, the new big wheels are free to change their name back to plain old Dunlop at any time, with no penalty.

We sense a dangerous trend here. Is the world ready for Suzie Starbucks-Coffee? Kenneth Kraft-Macaroni? Michael Dell-Computer?

The Anti-laws of Luxury Marketing #9

-Derrick Daye

9. The role of advertising is not to sell

Look at Tag Heuer's advertising. One side features the endorsing celebrity, the other the model of watch. No commentary, no description of the watch, no sales pitch – just the cryptic line: ‘What are you made of?’

Nothing is more alien to traditional marketing than this declaration; in traditional marketing the first step is to discover a sales proposal, to have a unique selling proposition – the text is there to make the sales pitch. In luxury, the dream comes first. The explanations of the salesmen are simply post-rationalizations. If you go to a Tag Heuer shop you are handed a thick brochure the size of a book, which says everything there is to say about the Tag Heuer brand, its origins, its finely tuned processes, respectful of a unique design, etc. Then it goes on to describe the various models, one by one…

If you go to a Porsche dealer they will talk to you about racetracks, about road-holding, about everything that feeds the myth of the hero, after which they will tell you about reliability, etc – by way of post-rationalization. American society being what it is essentially compels people to justify spending dollars by adducing qualities that can be presented publicly by the owner of a luxury item, even if it is the dream that is the major selling point. The purchaser of an impressionist masterpiece could say that it’s a good investment.

Interviewed about his role, the head of BMW in the USA replied that with its customers trading up, and the collective aspiration of the younger drivers, BMW’s sales target for the following year had already been 90 percent met virtually automatically. Did that mean that he would have nothing to do then? His reply was simple, direct, and highly illuminating: ‘My job is to make sure that the 18-year-olds in this country decide that, as soon as they have the money, they will be buying a BMW. I have to see to it that when they go to bed at night they are dreaming of BMW.’

Of course, advertising as such is not the lever for the BMW dream, merely its ally. Advertising feeds on a sustained myth, mystery, magic, racing, highly people-centered but private shows, product placement, and art – as mentioned above, an extremely important element for any luxury brand.

In 2004 BMW asked several great Hollywood directors to each make a film about BMW, not a commercial for screening on different television channels, but a real film lasting several minutes, for which they were given completely free rein. These films were to be broadcast exclusively on the internet. They were an instant hit – these so-called viral films did the rounds of everyone who dreamed about, loved or was interested in BMW. What is more, all this heightened the buzz, gave the brand a fresh and modern look, something that even the most classic brand needs to have.

The dream must always be recreated and sustained, for reality kills the dream. Every time a flesh-and-blood human being buys a luxury product they destroy a little bit of the equity, they increase the product’s visibility – and contribute to its vulgarization by putting it in the public eye. The opposite applies when marketing everyday goods: there is an advantage for the market leader, for the dominant market share, and therefore for maximum visibility – it becomes a reassuring purchase.

Saturn’s Marketing Lesson Is One To Remember

-Al Ries

Fundamentally, there are two ways to increase sales: (1) Expand the brand, or (2) Expand the brand’s market share.

Most companies focus on the first way, expanding the brand. While this might seem to work in the short term, expanding the brand will eventually weaken the brand and leave it in worse shape than before the process began.

While it’s more difficult to expand a brand’s market share, this is the better way to go. The larger the market share, the more powerful a brand becomes. When a brand reaches 50 percent or more market share, it becomes so dominant that it is almost impossible for a competitor to overtake.

Consider Microsoft Windows, with a worldwide share of the personal computer operating system market of 94 percent. How is the No. 2 brand, Apple’s Macintosh, going to compete with Windows?

By building a better operating system? Macintosh already has the better operating system. Here’s what the country’s foremost technology expert (Walter S. Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal) has to say: ‘Macs have better hardware, a better operating system and better bundled software than Windows PCs.’

Even with better hardware, a better operating system and better-bundled software, Mac has only 3.4 percent of the market.

How would you compete with Heinz ketchup? By making a better-tasting ketchup?

How would you compete with Tabasco pepper sauce? By making a better-tasting pepper sauce?

It’s not a better product or service that makes a brand powerful. It’s the brand’s market share. Brands like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Rolex and many other brands are powerful because they dominate their market segments.

Does McDonald’s make a better hamburger than Burger King? Does Starbucks make better coffee than Seattle’s Best Coffee or Caribou Coffee? Does Rolex make a better watch than dozens of other luxury watch brands?

Perhaps. Perhaps not. But a tangible difference in product quality is rarely a factor in the continuing success of a leading brand. Over time, most brands in a category tend to be quite similar. The consumer, however, notices a difference created by the brand name itself.

Perception dictates reality. Starbucks coffee tastes better because the consumer thinks it tastes better.

The larger the market share, the more dominant the brand, the greater effect the brand has on the consumer’s perception of reality. All candy bars are pretty much alike, because no one brand dominates the category. All ketchup is not alike, however, because Heinz dominates the ketchup category.

Every one percent increase in a brand’s market share does two things, both favorable. One, it increases the power of the brand in the mind of the consumer and two, it decreases the power of competitive brands.

The ultimate goal of a marketing campaign should be to dominate the brand’s category so the brand itself becomes a generic name for the category. Kleenex. WD-40. Jell-O.

Which brings up the sad saga of Saturn.

Here is a brand introduced by GM less than 20 years ago in a highly competitive category. (The late GM Chairman Roger Smith is shown with a 1990 Saturn above) In 1994, just four years after its introduction, Saturn hit its high-water mark, selling 286,003 cars. That year, the average Saturn dealer sold more vehicles than the average of any other brand. Here are the numbers.

Saturn . . . . 960

Toyota . . . . 841

Ford . . . . . . 746

Honda . . . . 677

Nissan . . . . 661

Chevrolet . . 553

That was the year the Saturn spirit was in full bloom. That was the year 44,000 owners and families attended a ‘homecoming’ at the Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

So what did Saturn do next? Did it try to expand its market share? Or did it try to expand the Saturn brand into larger and more expensive vehicles?

What would you have done next? What did every automotive expert tell Saturn it should do next?

You’re right. Expand the brand.

A typical quote from that year: ‘Many analysts feel that Saturn will eventually need a bigger model to retain customers as they older and more affluent’, reported The Wall Street Journal in its June 17, 1994 issue.

In the February 9, 1998 issue of Automotive News, Ron Zarella, then vice president of GM’s North American sales, service and marketing, was quoted as saying, We’re doing everything we can to get them a wider product range.

In the March 9, 1998 issue of Automotive News, Charles Child, news editor, said: GM has to bit the bullet and let Saturn spread its wings. That is, give Saturn a full line of cars and light trucks as soon as practical.

In January 1999, Cynthia Trudell took over as head of Saturn and as you might expect, one of the first things she said was that Saturn is definitely looking for ways to expand the portfolio. (Ms. Trudell was the first woman to head a car division at any domestic or foreign auto maker.)

Two years later, Ms. Trudell was gone and Annette Clayton took over. The strategy didn’t change, however. My focus for the immediate future, said Ms. Clayton, is to prepare us for the SUV launch and to position us to grow the portfolio.

The larger Saturn (the L series) was introduced in 1999. The sport-utility vehicle (the Vue) in 2002 and a replacement for the original Saturn (the Ion), also in 2002.

When Bob Lutz arrived at GM as vice chairman responsible for product development, he sounded the same tune. In the December 13, 2004 issue of Fortune, he was quoted as saying: We’re investing in Saturn’s future because the inherent health of the brand is quite good. It just needs a bigger, more exciting product portfolio.

Nothing helped. Saturn sales fluctuated over the years, but never reached the high-water mark of 1994. Then in 2004, in spite of the fact that Saturn dealers had three models to sell, as opposed to the original one, sales were only 212,017 units, down 26 percent from 1994. Average sales per dealer were only 483 units, half the level of a decade earlier.

Instead of expanding the brand, what should Saturn have done? I would have tried to expand the brand’s market share.

In its high-water year, Saturn had 16 percent of the small or compact car category. Out of 23 models of small cars, Saturn was second only to Ford Escort. Here are the numbers.

Ford Escort . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 percent

Saturn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 percent

Honda Civic . . . . . . . . . . . .15 percent

Toyota Corolla . . . . . . . . . .12 percent

Chevrolet Cavalier . . . . . . 11 percent

Chevrolet/Geo Prizm . . . . .7 percent

All others . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15 percent

Sixteen percent is not exactly the lion’s share of a category. Instead of spending millions of dollars developing a larger Saturn and a sport-utility vehicle, I would have spent the money improving the basic S series model in order to capture some of the 84 percent of the small car market that Saturn didn’t own.

It took Saturn 11 years to introduce a redesign of the S series. In those same 11 years, Honda introduced three generations of its Civic compact.

In 1994, the S series Saturn outsold the Civic by 7 percent.

In 2004, the Civic outsold the S series replacement (the Ion) by 197 percent.

Fundamentally, there are two ways to increase sales: (1) Expand the brand, or (2) Expand the brand’s market share.

Overwhelming, marketing managers believe in the expand-the-brand philosophy. Will blog posts like this one change many minds? Probably not.

When you believe in something, you seldom change your mind. When you believe in something, what you generally do when faced with facts that seem to contradict your beliefs is to fault the execution, not the strategy.

Conventional wisdom dies hard. You can defend any strategy by pointing out flaws in its execution.

Saturn didn’t move fast enough to expand the brand, goes the thinking of the conventional-wisdom crowd.

Brand Perceptions, Slogans and the Mind

-Al Ries

Any successful brand is successful by standing for something in the mind. Changing what you stand for is almost impossible unless you don’t stand for anything at all. In other words, a brand that is nowhere in the mind is a brand that can be changed. A brand that stands for something in the mind is a brand that is forever locked into its position.

In the cemetery of failed launches are thousands of products like Xerox computers, IBM copiers, Tanqueray vodka, Listerine toothpaste, Coca-Cola clothes, etc. These products didn’t fail in the marketplace, they failed in the mind. They tried to stand for something that didn’t fit the prospects perceptions about the brands.

Mind first, market second. You can’t short-circuit the process by taking a good product to market to demonstrate its superior performance and then, in the process, changing perceptions in the mind.

I have been in more meetings than I can count where a CEO or a CMO has said, 'Here is our product which out-performs our competition. Now it’s your job to communicate that superiority to prospects.'

Forget reality. Forget product superiority. Marketing is a game of perceptions. The perception is the reality. Start with the mind of the prospect and figure out a way to deal with those perceptions, even if those perceptions are negative.
• Avis is No. 2 in rent-a-cars. So why go with us? We try harder.
• The taste you hate, twice a day. Listerine.
• With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.

Many marketing people don’t have the courage to deal with negative perceptions.

That’s understandable. But what’s not understandable are the number of marketing people willing to walk away from positive perceptions.

Take Pepsi-Cola, for example. What comes to mind when you think of Pepsi? Back in 1963, the brand launched an advertising program that has to be the ultimate cola campaign.

The Pepsi Generation.

This idea took advantage of a key psychological principle. The younger generation looks for ways to rebel against the older generation. Since the older generation was drinking Coca-Cola, it was easy to convince the younger generation that they should be drinking Pepsi.

How long did the Pepsi Generation slogan last? Just four years. For the next 16 years, Pepsi experimented with a number of different slogans.

1967: Taste that beats the others cold. Pepsi pours it on.
1969: You’ve got a lot to live. Pepsi’s got a lot to give.
1973: Join the Pepsi people feelin free.
1976: Have a Pepsi day.
1979: Catch that Pepsi spirit.
1981: Pepsi’s got your taste for life.
1983: Pepsi now!

Sixteen years wasted until, in 1984, Pepsi went right back to what made the brand a strong No. 2 to Coca-Cola.

Pepsi. The choice of a new generation.

Nothing is as vulnerable as a powerful advertising slogan. Year after year, creative hot shots take a crack at it, figuring that if they can topple the king, their reputations are made for life.

Finally by 1992, they did it. At the Super Bowl that year, Pepsi-Cola introduced a new advertising slogan with three 60-second commercials.

The new slogan: Gotta have it.

The TV commercials were loaded with celebrities including such old-timers as Yogi Berra, Regis Philbin and George Plimpton. At first, I was upset that all these old folks started drinking it, says one hip-looking teenager in one of the spots, and then I said, Hey, they’re people, too.

One of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make is appealing to everybody. If you appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody.

In one of the commercials, a little girl notes, If the taste of Pepsi is so big, then everybody’s gotta have it.

Appealing to everybody didn’t work for Pepsi-Cola. ‘Gotta have it’ lasted about as long as a heroin hit. By the next year, it was back to the younger generation. Be young, have fun, drink Pepsi. As the years rolled on, Pepsi kept on -- changing its slogan.

1995: Nothing else is a Pepsi.
1997: Generation Next. (Close, but no cigar.)
1999: The joy of cola.
2002: The joy of Pepsi.
2004: Pepsi. It’s the cola.
2007: More Happy
2008: Something for Everyone

Tell the truth. Do you remember any of these Pepsi-Cola advertising slogans? Isn’t the only idea connected with the brand its appeal to the younger generation? Isn’t the Pepsi Generation the one slogan that most people remember? I think so.

In his book, Adcult USA, James Twitchell tells a story about Rosser Reeves. An executive of Minute Maid once complained about Reeves refusal to fiddle with the advertising, saying ‘You have 47 people working on my brand, and you haven’t changed the campaign in 12 years. What are they doing?’

Reeves replied: ‘They’re keeping your people from changing your ad.’