How to write an Effective Creative Brief

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Advertising is well planned, not some random creative thing that happens.  The value of a creative brief is focus!  Like a good positioning statement, you’re taking everything you know and everything you could possibly say, and starting to make choices on what will give you the greatest return on your media dollars. Unlike other creativity, advertising is “In the Box” creativity.  The best advertising creative people  are problem solvers, not blue sky thinkers.  Therefore, the role of the creative brief is to create the right box, enough room to move, but enough direction that defines the problem.

Advertising is a balance of freedom and control.  But, oddly enough, most Brand Managers allow too much FREEDOM on the strategy but want to exhibit CONTROL on the creative.  It should be the reverse.   Brand Managers should control the strategy not the execution.  Briefs with multiple objectives or many main benefits send the signal to agencies that you aren’t quite sure and want the agency to pick the strategy.  But a long list of mandatories sends the signal that even though we don’t know the strategy, we do think we know what we want the creative to look like.  This is where the marketer should get a bit more comfortable in dealing with ambiguity and allow some creativity to come about.

The agency should write the brief.  I’m not sure why this is so contentious–but it seems that half of brand people still want to write the brief.  Let it go!  You can still write an advertising strategy, but let the Agency Translate it into a brief, in their words and their format.   You can still debate every word for hours or even days to ensure that it aligns to your strategy.   But having them write it, allows the agency to own it and believe in it.  It also allows the account team to communicate with their creative teams–which is the main role of that brief.  Using the agency format makes it simpler for the creative teams.  This is the first step in giving the agency some freedom, while still maintaining control over the strategy.
The smaller the brief, the bigger the idea.  A good brief should be brief.  One page maximum.  I’m still in shock when I see briefs reaching 5 or 6 pages.  That’s not a brief, that’s a long!  Take the pen and start stroking out words, forcing yourself to start making decisions.  Avoid the “just in case” type of thinking.
Good briefs should have:
  • one objective
  • one target tightly defined
  • one main benefit
  • one core reason to believe
The Brand Plan and Advertising Strategy
In the smallest of words, the brand plan should be focused
  • We have some long-term thoughts on where the brand can go (vision) and the special assignment to get us on our way.  (mission)  And help shape the things we want to achieve with our brand (objectives) To get started, the brand has different options (strategies) for how to get there (tactics)
  • We try to find a slice of the population (target) to get them to take an action (expected result) that makes our brand bigger.   We then find out what to say and how to talk to them to trigger that action (main message) We need to re-enforce why we can do it and others can’t (support)
  • We then create the most motivating stimulus (product, ad, promotion) to get them to take action and put it in part of their life where they are most likely to hear it and act on it (the medium)
Within a good brand plan,you should have an advertising strategy that should answer the following six key questions.
  1. Who Do We want to sell to?  (target)
  2. What are we selling?  (benefit)
  3. Why should they believe us?  (RTB)
  4. What Do We want the Advertising to do?  (Strategy)
  5. What do Want people to do?  (Response)
  6. What do we want people to feel?   (Brand Equity)

For those looking for a basic creative brief format, the best I like includes something that outlines a) the long-term consistent brand essence and strategy b) consumer knowledge including target definition and insights and c) the core of the brief, outlining the problem to solve, focusing on stimulus and response.

Most Brand Managers struggle with the target.   I once sat in a room where a brand manager had a target of 18 to 65, current customers, potential customers and employees.  Basically, everyone but prisoners and tourists.   While it’s tempting to sell to everyone, you should focus your resources on those most likely to buy, pays off.  Focus on those who may love you, not everyone who just might tolerate you.  Spreading your limited resources across an entire population is cost prohibitive.  While targeting everyone with a “just in case” attitude might make you feel safe at first, it’s actually less safe because you never get to see the full impact.  You should use consumer insights to bring the target to life.  The dictionary definition of the word Insight is “seeing below the surface”.   Too many people think data, trends and facts are insights.  However, these facts are merely on the surface—so they miss out on the depth. Insights can be sorted into three types: life Insights, brand insights and category insights.   You are really looking for these “aha” moments that brings the focus onto the consumer.
Brand Managers also struggle with the main message.   Sell the Solution, Not Just Your Product.  Keep in mind that “people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole!”   Agencies use so many tricks to get it down to the ONE THING.  And whatever works for them or you, the better.  If it’s a postcard, a bumper sticker, “what would you say to get someone to marry you”….find your own way to think about one thing.  One of my favourites is the “SHOUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN”.  It forces you to want to scream just ONE THING about your brand—keep it simple.  Yelling just one word is so much easier than a 13 word sentence or even worse, a long list of 6 bullet points.  Another good exercise, once you are close on the brief is to challenge yourself to go through the brief one more time, and see if you can take out 5-15 words.  You’ll be surprised how much better it gets.  And lastly, I always have fun throwing three objects at people, starting one at a time and then all 3 at once.  It’s so much easier to catch one than all three.
If you need help with getting to a good creative brief or advertising process, let me know how I can help.   I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with.  My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of writing a creative brief as well as other team learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations

What is a Beloved Brand?

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Being a Beloved Brand gives a brand a tighter connection with their consumer.  That connection becomes a source of power and a source of brand value. 

Beloved = Connection = Power = Profitability

Follow the presentation below:

Executive Summary

  • Everything starts and ends with the consumer in mind.  Consumers move along the “LOVE CURVE” going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It, and then they’ll make it their Brand For Life.  The farther along the curve, the more connected consumers are to the brand.
  • As a brand, you need to know who your consumer is, how they live and what’s important to them. Understand who is not your consumer, realizing you don’t need to be liked by all, but loved by those that really matter.
  • Love the work you do and consumers will love you back.  If you don’t love the work, then how do you expect your consumer to fall in love with your brand? Reject all work that is “just ok”.
  • The Connection and Love  that Consumers have for a Brand becomes a Source of Power for a brand, helping to change the dynamic the brand can have with suppliers, customers, competitors and even with the consumers themselves.
  • The “Love Curve” can be linked to the Brand Funnel which becomes the underlying scoreboard of the brand.  You can use the funnel to map out the buying process for the consumer, identifying both strategy and tactics to move them along the funnel towards being more loved.
  • Used properly, the Power of the Brand can help drive the P&L with four important levers:  driving increased price, lowering costs, increasing share, creating new markets.
  • A powerful connected brand is much more efficient.  And that efficiency can leverage the P&L to invest back in the brand’s connectivity and driveProfitand in turn create Value for the Brand.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Building a Career in Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations

How to Fail as an Assistant Brand Manager

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Every year, CPG companies hire thousands of the best and brightest to become Assistant Brand Managers.  Usually, there are big recruiting events that generate hundreds of resumes or companies use recruiters to send the best resumes they have.  The process for screening can be intense with  5+ interviews, including senior people, sometimes a test or a presentation to a group.   And yet, about 50% of ABMs won’t even make it to Brand Manager within the 2-3 years and out they go.  It’s a tough up or out process.

From my experience of having been in the marketing world for 20 years, here are the top 10 reasons why ABMs fail:

  1. They can’t do the analytical story tell.  They fail to turn monthly share reports into stories that can travel up the organization.  Their deep dive analysis is either too complicated that no one can follow the story or too shallow that they only do the “surface cleaning” type analysis that never really finds the real insight, just what we already know.
  2. They struggle to deal with the ambiguity of marketing.  The ambiguity boxes them in where they can’t think differently about a problem or it causes them personal stress.  They come up with solutions to get out of ambiguity rather than reveling in the ambiguity to find the best solution.  I once asked a candidate “how do you deal with ambiguity”.   Her answer was “I try to organize it because no one likes ambiguity”.   She asked me how I deal with ambiguity and I said “I revel in it.  I love it.  I struggle with it.  And let the ambiguity eat away at me until I find that great answer, not just settling for an answer because it gets me out of the ambiguity faster.”
  3. They are slow at moving projects through.  They struggle to make it happen:  could be that they are indecisive, not productive, disorganized or can’t work through others.  They are frustratingly slow for others.  They keep missing the small milestones causing the team to miss the deadlines.   In some cases, it’s not whether you are slow or fast, but really are you slower than your peers?
  4. They selfishly think about themselves.  This becomes the leadership derailer.  It’s about ego, gossip, over-stepping their role, going above heads politically.  Highly political, but not really politically astute.  Not a team player with peers or cross functional players.  The system has a way of isolating these people.  This raises a red flag for future leadership roles.
  5. They don’t work well through others.   Conflicts, teamwork issues, communication.  The odd thing about an ABM is you must work through a group of subject matter experts (SME’s) who know what they are doing, and you’re relying on these same people to teach you how to be a good ABM.   Your supply manager will teach you about forecasting, packaging approvals and even design tricks.  Your finance manager can teach you about accounting and the key indicators management looks for.  Your promo manager or trade marketers will teach you about customers, sales people etc.   If you don’t use these people to enhance your skill, you’ll eventually crash and burn. The collection of SME’s will likely teach you more about marketing than your boss will.  And if they can’t work with you, they’ll also be the first to destroy your career.
  6. They miss answers by not being flexible.  They fail to find the balance between what the head thinks, what your heart feels or even what the gut tells you.  When an ABM is questioned, a senior manager can tell if they have struggled enough with a problem to get to the rich solution or whether they just did the adequate thinking to get to an “ok” solution.   The style of a good senior manager’s questions is not always information gathering but rather designed to poke holes in the story to see that the deep rich thinking and even the appropriate struggling has gone on.
  7. They fall for tactical programs that are off strategy.  This becomes a tell-tale sign that they won’t make it to Brand Manager, where you will own the strategy.  They deviate from the strategy to choose the coolest tactic that has nothing to do with the goals or strategy.  You become the great executor, but not the thinker needed.  Marketing is a balance of strategy and execution.
  8. They hold back from making contributions to the team strategy.  Just a do-er.  They don’t proactively provide a point of view on strategy.   They don’t show the ownership needed to become a brand manager and people start to wonder if it’s in there or not.
  9. They settle for “good” rather than pushing for “great”.  While  of ABM jobs are executional, if there becomes a pattern where they just take the “ok” ideas, it begins to look as they don’t care enough.  If they aren’t passionate enough to push back, will they be able to do so later in their career.
  10. They are poor communicators, with manager, senior management or partners.  They fail to adequately warn when there’s potential problems.   They leave their manager in the dark.  They confuse partners because they don’t keep them aware of what’s going on.

The big question is what do you do about it.  On day 1, everyone has all ten of these derailers, some that you can easily over-come but others will take the full two to three years to really fix.  What really separates “great” from the “ok” is what you’re willing to do with these.  Those who seek out feedback, welcome it and act on it will be the successful ones.  I hope that your company has a process of giving feedback or that you get lucky to have a manager that cares about your career and is willing to give you the tough feedback.  But if not, seek it.  Be honest with yourself and try to fix one of these per quarter.   And grow into the role of Brand Manager before you get promoted.   

Now to read how to be a successful ABM, click on:  how-to-be-a-great-assistant-brand-manager-and-of-course-get-promoted-to-brand-manager

Best of luck to you.  I do hope you get promoted to Brand Manager. 

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Building a Career in Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations

Keys to Being a Successful Marketing Director

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Most people are promoted up to Brand Manager because they are really smart and have a knack for getting things done.  From my experience, they get stuck at the Brand Manager level mainly because they are bad at managing people, or can’t get along with the sales force.  Promoting them up to Marketing Director just becomes too risky to the organization–they can’t afford to lose key talent, and they can’t afford to lose touch with the sales team.  And most Marketing Directors fail because they can’t stop acting like a Brand Manager:  too hands on, makes all the decisions, smoothers the team and never lets them have their day in the sun.   One rule is at every level you have to adjust to the new role.  Brand Managers fail when they keep acting like ABMs and Directors fail when they keep acting like Brand Managers.                   

In a classic marketing team, the four key roles are Assistant Brand Manager then Brand Manager then Marketing Director or Group Marketing Director and then VP Marketing.  In simple terms, the Assistant Brand Manager role is about doing, analyzing and sending signals you have leadership skills for the future.   At the Brand Manager level, it becomes about ownership and strategic thinking within your brand plan.  Most Brand Managers are honestly a disaster with their first direct report, and get better around the fifth report.  When you get to the Marketing Director role, it’s becomes more about managing and leading than it does about thinking and doing.  To be great, you need to motivate the greatness from your team and let your best players to do their absolute best. 

The five areas that can turn a pretty good marketing director into a great one are:

  1. Hold your team to a Consistently high standard of work:  Rather than being the leader by example, I’d rather see you establish a standard and hold everyone and yourself to that standard.  .  For a new director, this is one of the harder areas—how to balance the freedom you give with the standard you demand.   The key is to be more process orientation than you might have been when you were Brand Manager.   You need to organize the team and build in processes in a way that produces consistent output, your team hits all deadlines, stays focused and keeps things moving.  But it can also show up in the quality of brand plans, execution and interactions with everyone specifically sales.  Be the control point of the team, and not let slips, errors or delays show beyond the team.  Delegate so you motivate your stars, but never abdicate ownership of how your team shows up.
  2. Consistency in Strategic Thinking:  Usually a marketing director has many brands, and isn’t necessarily writing the actual brand plans.  But, it will be the director that hears from the VP, the sales and the agency what each think they have the solution to the plan.  And yet, your brand manager has thoughts of how to make this brand better.   It’s easy to spin out of control, trying to please everyone–as the director is caught among everyone.  But it is actually the director who has to ground everyone, establish the brand’s direction, back up the choices it’s making and be the consistent voice of reason among the many wanting to influence the brand.  Learn to challenge the strategy–let them write it–but make sure it’s put through the test before it moves beyond your desk.
  3. Consistent People Leadership and Management:   Newly appointed directors have to stop acting like a “Senior Senior Brand Manager” and take on more leadership roles.  You have to let your team breathe and grow.   There are likely future super stars within the ranks.   We know you can write a brand plan, roll out a promotion super fast and make snap decisions on creative.  But can you inspire your team to do the same?  Junior marketers have high ambitions–constantly wanting praise, but equally seeking out advice for how to get better.  Brand Managers are still learning to be brand owners, many times younger than they should be.  It becomes the director’s role to manage the talent–giving equal praise and challenges for how to get better.  A great Marketing Director should be meeting quarterly with each team member one on one to take them through a quarterly performance review.   Waiting for year-end is just not enough.  Be passionate about people’s careers–anything less they’ll see it as merely a duty you are fulfilling.   Find energy in their energy.   These young marketers are hungry for improvement–and if you give them quarterly feedback, they are more able to make the adjustments and grow.  While the number one goal of a director is to make the year, the close #2 goal is to make the great people even better.  Identify the great ones, motivate, challenge and push them.  Also, be the step up when some individuals are not working out.   The marketing team relies on this.
  4. Consistently Showing up to the Sales Team:   While it’s not really acceptable for the ABMs and BMs to struggle with the sales team, it is kind of expected.  But at the director level, they have to be seen as one who is willing to listen.  Great sales people challenge marketers to make sure their account wins.   I’ve seen many sales teams destroy the Marketing Director because they don’t listen, and they stubbornly put forward their plan without sales input.   Great Marketing Directors should informally meet with all key senior sales people on a quarterly basis, to get to know them and let them know you are listening to their problems.  With this forum, you’ll get more of the bubbling up of problems–not just waiting for problems to explode.   If a sales people feel they’ve been heard, they are more apt to follow the directors vision and direction.   Many times, the debate can be healthy and help the sales people frame the story they need to tell with their accounts.  Be the one director that consistently reaches out and listens.  They’ll be in shock, and stand behind your business.
  5. Consistently Deliver:  A great Marketing Director hits the numbers and yet when they don’t hit them, they are the first to own it and put forward a recovery plan before being asked.  They have an entrepreneurial spirit of ownership, rather than just being a corporate pencil pusher.   Proactive communication upwards and with your own team.  Reach out for help across the organization.  Know your business and let everyone know what you know.  Be the leader that makes everything perfectly transparent–everyone will follow you.

When I was an ABM, I had to write the dreaded monthly share and sales report.  Many times, I’d be writing that up to 1am.  At that time, I said I can’t wait till I get promoted so I never have to write this again.  At the Brand Manager level, I edited my ABM’s report.   But when I moved up to Director, I started to feel out of touch so I decided I would write my own monthly report–digging into the sales and share to tell the story.  I kept doing it, even when I moved up to VP, and really feel I benefited from this practice.   No one asked me to do it, but it sure helped me to own the results.  Might feel like a small point, but it wasn’t for me.  To me, it was a competitive advantage.

So what makes a great Marketing Director?  You’ll notice one word that I purposefully put in each of the 5 areas:  Consistent.  That’s a trait I would encourage every director to take:  show up with consistency in standards for your team, strategy, people management, dealings with sales and owning the numbers.  With a bigger group of people, with a broader array of interactions across the organization and with a bigger business line on the P&L, anything less than consistent can really rattle the system.  Your team will dread inconsistency and won’t know which leader will show up.  They’ll mock your mood swings in the cafeteria.  You’ll become famous but for the wrong reasons.  The sales team won’t be able to rely on your word–and to them, that’s everything.   Senior Leaders will struggle with you–won’t want to put you on the big important business because it just feels risky.

So if you can take all your talent, all the experience you’ve gained and find that consistency in approach and leadership, and you’ll be a successful Marketing Director.

To read about what it takes to be a successful Brand Manager read:  583  And to read about being a successful Assistant Brand Manager read:  how-to-be-a-great-assistant-brand-manager-and-of-course-get-promoted-to-brand-manager

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.   I’ve been at every level of marketing from ABM to BM to Director and up to VP.   Now, I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability.   It’s my belief that if we each get better, we all get better.   If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Building a Career in Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations

How to Write an Effective Brand Positioning Statement

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Brand Positioning statements provide the most useful function of taking everything you know about your brand, everything that could be said about the consumer and making choices about what one target that you’ll serve and one brand promise you will stand behind.  

The key is to find a unique selling proposition for your brand.  And yes, it has to be unique, but it may or may not have to be functionally unique.  There is room to be emotionally unique.  Map out everything your consumer wants–all the possible need states.  Then map out all the benefits that you and your competitors can do better than anyone else–both functional and emotional zones.  You want to find that intersecting zone where what you can do best matches up to a need state of the consumer.   Then find a way to serve that need state to the best of your ability and transform it in an even bigger deal than first meets the eye.   Avoid the intersecting zone where your competitor is better than you and please avoid that zone where you and your competition foolishly battle in a area that no one cares about.   The battle ground (?) zone is where both you and your competition can satisfy at an equal rate.  Get creative here, find ways to out-execute or better yet, find some emotional space that changes the game and makes you the clear winner.  But equally, be careful in those space because you could get crushed.

A best in class positioning statement has four key elements:  1) target Market 2) definition of the market you play in 3) brand promise (emotional or rational benefit) and 4) the reason to belive that brand promise.  The more focused your decisions, the more successful you will be: decide on one target, one promise and maybe  one or two reasons to believe that help to directly back up your promise.  But the target can’t be everyone 18-65, and you can’t throw your 8 best features at the wall and hopefully something sticks.  And the reason to believe has to back up your promise, not be a whole new promise.

Everything starts and ends with the customer in mind.  Beloved Brands know who their customer is and who is not.  Spreading your limited resources across an entire population is cost prohibitive–low return on investment and low return on effort.  While targeting everyone “just in case” might safe at first, it’s actually less safe because you never get to see the full impact.  Realizing not everyone can like you is the first step to focusing all your attention on those that can love you.  It becomes all about choices and you will be much more effective at convincing a segment of the population to choose your brand because of the assets and promise that you have that match up perfectly to what they want.

To demonstrate knowledge of that target, defining consumer insights help to crystallize and bring to life the consumer you are targeting. The dictionary definition of the word Insight is “seeing below the surface”.   Too many people think data, trends and facts are insights.  Facts are merely on the surface—so they miss out on the depth–you need to bring those facts to life by going below the surface and transroming the facts into insights.

Insights can be sorted into three types:  1) Life Insights 2) Brand Insights and 3) Specific product or category Insights.  Life Insights are a powerful way to connect with the consumer, where your brand fits into their life, and your relationship becomes much more powerful.   Being able to twist the facts into real meaning about how the consumer feels, lives or behaves.  It speaks to their emotions, their odd behaviours in key circumstances in life.  To get deeper and deeper, keep asking yourself “so what does that mean for the consumer” until you have an “AHA moment”.  Inspire yourself by thinking like Jerry Seinfeld:  how would he see your consumer? 

The next decision is the main benefit you want to focus on.  From there, doing a Customer Value Proposition (CVP) helps to organize your thinking.   Hold a brainstorming session with everyone who works on the brand so you can get all of the consumer insights you have, matched up against the key features the brand offers.  Once you get there, put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and see the brand from their eyes: start asking yourself over and over again “so if I’m the consumer, what do I get from that?”.   For instance, no consumer cares that a golf club gives them 5.7% more torque–that’s what you do.  They do care that their drives go 10 yards farther–that’s what they get. They also care that they’ll feel more confident on the tee–that’s the emotion they feel from your brand. Some CVPs can end up very cluttered, but the more focused you can make it the easier it will be for you to choose which one you will stand behind, and which one benefit you’ll communicate.  That’s right: JUST ONE BENEFIT! 

Agencies use so many tricks to get it down to the ONE THING.  And whatever works for them or you, the better.  If it’s a postcard or a bumper sticker, “what would you say to get someone to marry you”….find your own way to think about one thing.  My favourite seems to be the “SHOUT FROM THE MOUNTAIN”.  It forces you to want to scream just ONE THING about your brand—keep it simple.  You can’t scream a long sentence.  And a third way to look at this is through a simple function, where the probability of success (P) is directly linked to the inverse of the numbers of messages (M) you have in your ad:   P = 1 divided by 1 to the power of M.  My guess is that if you find this last formula motivating, maybe marketing isn’t for you.

People tend to get stuck when trying to figure out the emotional benefits.  I swear every brand out there thinks it is trusted, reliable and yet likeable.  It seems that not only do consumers have a hard time expressing their emotions about a brand, but so do Brand Managers.   Companies like Hotspex have mapped out all the emtional zones for consumers.   Leverage this type of research and build your story around the emotionsl that best fit your consumer needs.  Leveraging hotspex, I’ve mapped out 8 zones that are a cheat sheet fro brand manager.

The eight emotional zones mapped above include
  1. I feel liked
  2. I want to be noticed
  3. I want to be free
  4. I feel optimistic
  5. I seek out knowledge
  6. I want to be in control
  7. I feel I can be myself
  8. I’d like to be comfortable

Within each of the 8 zones, you can find emotional words that closely align to the need state of the consumer and begin building the emotional benefits within your CVP.

Now the toughest part is to narrow down your benefit list to the 1 or 2 best choices.   One consideration is where does your brand stand on the Love Curve.  Consumers move along a curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to a Brand for Life.  As a new brand into the market, you’re unknown and an Infrastructure type positioning where you talk about what you have would help to establish the brand.  As you move towards Liking It, a Process positioning about how you do what you do or a Product and Services positioning would fit.  Moving beyond the Like It stage requires you to exhibit more Personality type positioning of who you are or even taking that further to a Purpose driven positioning of why you do it.  Finally, to move to the My Brand for Life, focusing on the Experience of the brand will help tighten that connection with consumers.   There is no hard and fast rule though–I do believe you have to earn your emotional space with the consumer.  But the spectrum becomes a judgement call on which positioning style you want to choose.  The style can be one of the influencing factors around which benefit you will focus on–the degree of emotion you think you’ve earned with the consumer.

Looking at the example above for Listerine Mouthwash, the target is proactive preventers, who want to do everything for their mouth, and in fact everything for their overall health.  That’s all about a consumer that wants control. The main benefit is confidence, but it has to be rooted in control emotions such as trust and respect.  It needs to earn the trust by demonstrating reliability–having an authority figure like a dentist may help.

The biggest thing you have to do is make tough decisions.  Find the target of those you can get to love you, rather than trying to sell to everyone that might one day like you.   Match up your benefits to the need states of the consumer.  And leverage where you are on the Love Curve to determine how much emotion you are able to build into your Brand Positioning Statement.

Keep it simple, keep it focused and keep it unique.

How to Think Strategically

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If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.  Yogi Bera

After 20 years of managing marketing teams, I’ve seen hundreds if not thousands of marketers–some classically trained CPG and some with just good instincts.  While 100% of them would proclaim of themselves “I’m a strategic thinker”, in reality only about 15-20% were actually strategic.  Yet, even some of the best implementers I know still want to be strategic.  I don’t get it.  Why?  I want someone to just finally say “I’m a really good tactical thinker and not really that good at strategy”.   I have finally started to ask some of my friends who are great implementers:  ”Why do you want to be strategic?”  I finally got an answer that made sense.  “Strategic people get paid more”.

To me, the difference between a strategic thinker and a non-strategic thinker is whether you see questions first or answers first.  Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions.  They map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out.  They reflect and plan before they act.   They are thinkers and planning who can see connections.  Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions.   They get to answers quickly, and will get frustrated in the delays of thinking.   They think doing something is better  than doing nothing at all.   They opt for action over thinking.    They are impulsive and doers who see tasks.  They are frustrated by strategic thinkers.  Aren’t we all.

But to be a great marketer, you must be a bit of a chameleon.  While pure strategy people make great consultants, I wouldn’t want them running my brand.   They’d keep analyzing things to death, without ever taking action.  And while tactical people get stuff done, it might not be the stuff we need done.  I want someone running my brand who is both strategic and non-strategic, almost equally so.  You must be able to talk with both types, at one minute debating investment choices and then be at a voice recording deciding on option A or B.  You need to make tough choices but you also have to inspire all those non-strategic thinkers to be great on your brand instead of being great on someone else’s brand.

So Let’s see if there is a model that can help people be better at strategy.   A simple way is to break it down into the 4 elements of a good strategy: there is usually a good Focus of resources on what has the biggest potential return, an Early Win that allows you to confidently keep going, a Leverage point you can twist and turn and finally a Gateway to something even bigger.  Here’s how the 4 stages of thinking works:

  1. FOCUS all your energy to a particular strategic point or purpose.  Match up your brand assets to pressure points you can break through, maximizing your limited resources—either financial resources or effort.  Make tough choices and opt be loved by the few rather than tolerated by the many.
  2. You want that EARLY WIN, to kick start of some momentum. Early Wins are about slicing off parts of the business or population where you can build further.  Without the early win, you’ll likely seek out some new strategy even a sub-optimal one.   Or someone in management will say “it’s not working”.  You don’t want either of those–so the early win helps keep people moving towards the big win.
  3. LEVERAGE everything to gain positional advantage or power that helps exert even greater pressure and gains the tipping point of the business that helps lead to something bigger.  This is where strategy provides that return–you get more than the effort you’re doing from it.
  4. Seeing beyond the early win, there has to be a GATEWAY point, which is the entrance or a means of access to something even bigger.   It could be getting to the masses, changing opinions or behaviours.  Return on Investment or Effort.

Lots of explanations on strategy use war analogies, so let’s look at D-Day and see how it matches up.  While Germany was fighting a war on two fronts (Russia and Britain), the Allied Forces planned D-Day for 2 years and joined in full force to focus all their attention on one beach, on one day. The surprise attack gave them an early win, and momentum which they could then leverage into a bigger victory then just one beach. Getting on mainland Europe gave the allied forces the gateway they needed to steamroll through on a town by town basis and defeat the Germans.   The allied forces had been on the defensive for years, but landing on D-Day gave them one victory and the tipping point to winning the war.  For those who struggle wtih focus, imagine that if the Allied Forces decided to place one soldier every 15 feet from Denmark all the way around Europe to Greece.   Would it have been successful?   Not a chance.

While war analogies put some heightened sense of intelligence into marketing, let’s look at an example using Avril Lavigne and see if it still works.  If it does, then maybe it’s still a good model.   In 2005, Avril’s career was flat, a normal path for young musicians.  To kick off her album, she did a series of free mall concerts—and was criticized as desperate.  She was desperate and no one really understood the logic.  But think about it:  mall’s are exactly where her target (11-17 female) hangs out, allowing her to focus all her energy on her core target.  She attracted 5k screaming 13 year olds per mall—creating an early win among her most loyal of fans: those who loved and adored her.   She was able to leverage the good will and energy to get these loyal fans to go buy her album in the mall record stores which helped her album debut at #1 on the charts.  And everyone knows the charts are the gateway to the bigger mass audience–more radio play, more itunes downloads and more talk value. The comeback complete. Madonna has done the same strategy, except she seeded her songs into dance clubs for the last 20 years.

Avril Lavigne Wows Thousands At Free Indy Concert

INDIANAPOLIS  — Pop singer Avril Lavigne serenaded more than  2,000 fans during a free concert at a shopping mall.   “You guys are awesome,” the 19-year-old Lavigne told the  enthusiastic crowd Thursday at Glendale Mall.  Some people waited several hours to see the singer perform songs  from her upcoming CD and 2002 hits “Complicated” and “Sk8er  Boi.”   The half-hour acoustic concert was part of a 21-date “Live and  By Surprise Tour” promoting her new CD, “Under My Skin.”   People started lining up at the mall early in the afternoon for a chance to see Avril Lavigne up close and personal.

However, even though all these marketers are saying they are strategic, strategy actually runs counter intuitive to many marketers.  You mean by focusing on something so small, I can get something big.  That makes no sense.  I better keep trying to do everything to everyone.  But that’s exactly how a fulcrum works to give you leverage.   Next time you’re taking off your tire on your car, try getting 6 really strong guys to lift your car or just get a tiny little car jack.  This is the same model for brand strategy.   Focus on your strengths, focus on those consumers who will most love you and focus on the one potential action point you can actually get them to do.

Many marketers always struggle with the idea of focus and always try to do it all.  And for everyone.   They worry they’ll pick a potential target too tight and alienate others, focus on one message and forget to tell all they know and miss a crucial fact or focus too tight on one part of the business and forget the others.  I saw a brief describe their target was “18-65, current customers, potential customers and employees”.  I said “all you’ve eliminated is prisoners and tourists.”  I get it that it can feel scary to focus.  But it should feel even more scary not focusing, just in case you’re wrong.  You always operate with limited resources no matter how big of a brand:  financial, people, partnering, time.  Trying to do everything spreads your limited resources and your message  so that everything you do is “ok” and nothing is “great”.   In a crowded and fast economy, “ok” never breaks through so you’ll never get the early win to gain that tipping point that opens up the gateway.  When you focus, three things happen: 1) you actually become very good at what you do 2) people perceive you to be very good at what you do since that is the only thing you do 3) you can defend the positioning territory

Many times, Marketers fall in love with the best ideas—not always the best strategies.  This is where they tactical and they end up chasing down a path with a hollow gateway.  It’s crucial you always start with the best strategies and then find the best ideas that fit with those strategies, not the other way around. What you need to do is try to map out all the potential wins, try to understand what’s behind that win, and if there is something bigger then go for it, but if there isn’t, then you should reject this path.  There has to be a large gateway behind those cool ideas, so you love what the idea does more so than just loving the idea.

How it matches up to Beloved Brands is where you can narrow down to the action point of where you want to move the consumer.  Assess honestly where you stand on the Brand Love Curve–indifferent, like it, love it or brand for life.  Focus all your energy on moving your brand along the curve.   You can leverage the point on the Love Curve to help you narrow down your focus–it can even help you pick the strategies you should use for each stage.  See below for how it can help you pick a strategy.

If you are at the Indiferent Stage, you should try to move to the Like It stage by getting consumers to be aware of you and become more familiar which means a focus on the head to establish your brand in the mind, whether it is strategic options such as offering a mind share, a mind shift or some type of new news.   As you move to the LIke It stage, you should focus on the feet and push consumers to take action by driving acquisition or penetration, pushing for consolidation and cross sell.  You gotta believe you have the right offering that will help consumers once they use you.  And to reach for the Love It stage, try strategies that focus on the heart, to deepen the relationship, offer new reasons to love or even maintain and re-enforce the love they have for the brand.

With a focus on just one stage of the Love Curve, you can start to see movement down the curve which will be an early win, usually with a sales lift.  From there you’ll begin to leverage the tighter connection with the consumer that can lead to a gateway of bigger wins such as increased sales, higher share and in the end more profitability.

Consumers are the Most Selfish animal on the Planet

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Consumers are the “Most Selfish animals on the Planet” and deservedly so, because they have money and a willingness to buy.  As marketers, we need to  satisfy those selfish needs better than anyone else can.   We need to make them love our brand more than they love any competitors’ brand.  With that tight and deep emotional connection, it will make our brand more powerful and drive value for that brand.

“By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand

People have always ask me “why do we need to bother making sure that the consumer loves the work we do?  Isn’t it more realistic that we just get them to like it?”   My answer is that “if you don’t love the work you do, how do you expect the consumer to love your brand?”   Consumers are incredibly selfish and deservedly so, they are stuck on their current favourites and can’t imagine anything better, they have no time in their lives to hear your sales pitch, yet in contrast they are bored out of their minds, desperately wanting something new in their life.  As marketers, selfishness is a good thing, because it just makes it more obvious the need we are trying to satisfy.  So give them something they’ll love, not just something that they’ll “kinda like”.

When a consumer walks into a mall, the selfishness hits its peak.   They have money and motivation and so many needs they don’t even know where to start, constrained only by how much room they have on their credit card.  They are forced to make choices between needs and between brands that might satisfy those needs.  They put themselves and their needs as their #1 priority.   Until they find exactly what they want, they are blinded by desire, willing to be fussy and demanding.  Satisfying the Consumer Selfishness starts with understanding the needs of your consumers and then matching those needs up to what your brand does best (see below for the zone marked with the green check mark).   Once you find this winning zone, you need to make it seem even bigger.   Most purchase decisions are 50% rational and 50% emotional, yet marketers get stuck by putting only the most boring undisputable facts into their sales pitch.  That won’t be enough to satisfy the most selfish.   Instead, winning brands find a way to dial it up by driving into the deeper emotional need states, so the immediate connection starts off in a deeper zone.

Losing brands try to go head to head where your competitor can satisfy that need better than you can.  (see the zone marked by the red X)  The zone where both your brand and the competitor can satisfy that consumer in an equal zone, you need to find something where you do it better–execution, attention to detail or going the extra mile to satify that selfish consumer.  Here, execution matters more than anything–so you better love the work you do.

Consumers have a love of their favourite things.   Whether it’s their favourite coffee they get on the way to work every day, their favourite running shoes that let them run faster or their favourite restaurant where the waiter knows what they want.  Consumers move along a Love Curve, going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally Brand for Life, where it becomes fully embedded in the heart of the consumer—demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings.  Consumers become outspoken fans of the brand, ready to speak on the virtues or defend it from attack.   All marketers should push their brands along the love curve, leveraging that deeper connection with consumers to become a more powerful brand.

Consumers are busier than ever, making it harder than ever to break through.   Whether it’s working late, trying to balance everything or doing too much, they have so little time.   People are multi-tasking, texting while driving or on the TV while watching TV—which is up 35% this year.  Traditional ways with a 30 second ad and a billboard aren’t having the same effect in today’s world.  The average consumer is exposed to over 6,000 advertising message per day.  The consumers’ brain sorts through the clutter until finds something that might fill their needs.  Imagine your boring logical message, well thought and all, breaking through to that consumer.  Even with the fast paced life, most consumers are bored with life and just want something to entice them.   The simplest way to challenge boredom is to like everything you do unconditionally, but if this bored consumer meets up with a boring brand, it will be rejected very quickly.

Marketers Play It Far Too Safe to Find True Love.   Brand Leaders choose the safety of logic and facts instead of getting too deep or going all emotional with their consumer.  And, most brands end up liked but never end loved.   My Mom Wanted Me to Be an Actuary.  Apparently, an Actuary has one of the longest life expectancies, can make quite a bit of money and they live the ideal work-life balance.  Sounds like the perfect job, but I just couldn’t do it.   What’s lacking in the life of an actuary is the ability to have fun at work or drive all your passion into your work to create something big.   You can make a real difference.   So if you’re not going to be an Actuary…then stop acting like one when you’re the Brand Leader.  We can’t afford to keep doing just the usual, we can’t get stuck in logic and we can’t just satisfy needs.   We need to push to go beyond greatness at every touch point with our selfish and bored consumers.  We need to cultivate a deep emotional relationship with our consumer and we need to entice craving and desire.

Here’s my simple challenge for you:  If you don’t love the work you do, how do you expect the consumer to love your Brand.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability.

Apple is Facing Major Declines…

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Those are fighting words for most Mac, Iphone or Ipad users.  If you are in the Apple tribe, that headline probably gets your blood boiling, ready to call me an idiot and tear into this blog.  But, I don’t really mean it.  I hope that you’re totally upset, so I can prove a point, as to how loyal Apple users are.  So relax and enjoy the article.  It’s all about how great Apple is.  In fact, I’m typing on my Mac as I speak, with my Ipad charging away about a foot away.   I could not live without my Ipad–stylus and all.

A few weeks ago, someone asked for a good marketing book to read.  I said “Have you read the Steve Jobs biography, because that would be a great starting point.”  I do believe that aside from his craziness, Steve Jobs is the best marketer of our generation.  Everything he did was about the consumer, not just in taking their feedback but in guessing what they might want next.    He was committed to the art of marketing, from the design in the product and software right down to some of the best advertising of our generation whether it’s “1984″ or “I’m a Mac”.  He was obsessive in his committment.  He had to love the work or he’d reject it.   His bar was exceptionally high.

For Apple to this point, it has all been about Steve Jobs and thinking differently.  With his own voice, here is what makes Apple great.

Brands travel along the Love Curve, going from Indifferent to Like It, to Love It and finally become a Brand For Life.  When you achieve the ultimate status as a Beloved Brand, demand becomes desire, needs become craving and thinking is replaced by feelings.  And, Apple is the most loved of all Brands.  When you love a brand like Apple, you are loyal, unrelenting and outspoken.  Try saying something negative about Mac to someone in the tribe and watch out.  That’s like knocking their favourite sports team.   To Apple users, it’s very personal: you are possessive of your Apple brands you own.  It’s extremely emotional for you, certainly not rational.

Nothing comes close to what Apple has done over the past 10 years, whether it’s in desktop computers, laptops, mp3 players, smart phones, tablets and even the retail space.  Three times this year, I’ve walked past an Apple store before the mall opens, and there are usually 10-15 people waiting for the doors to open up.  I’m sure every retailer would love that.

Samsung and Microsoft are strong brands, but stuck at the Like It stage.  While consumers gladly buy their products, no one is going to stand up and defend them.  People are indifferent about Brands like Dell and HP who have commoditized laptops, charging a slight premium, but barely.  Even Sony has fallen from grace, recently announcing billions in losses.  If you are born before 1975, and rarely buy electronics, you still think “wow, that’s a great price on a Sony”.   But that group gets smaller every year.  The HTC brand only wins from carrying Android, but no one really cares they have an HTC phone.

Apple has an amazing brand following.  It’s like a tribe of loyalists ready to speak out and defend the brand.   How have they done this?

1.  Products that the consumer doesn’t even know they want yet:  While in the technology field, Apple has never done the better mousetrap.   Apple is all about the consumer.  Apple has an invention mindset.  It’s more than just making money.  They want to make a dent in the universe.  It’s about thinking different and delivering something the consumer could never have imagined.   Apple carefully considers what consumers are looking for.  They are completely meticulous in the planning and design stage.  They keep things plain, simple and so easy-to-use products not only to make the consumers happy, but also make them want to buy more products in the future.  Apple is an idea connected to simplicity, not just a series of products.

“You’ve got to start with the consumer experience & work backwards to the technology.  You can’t start with the technology & try to figure out where you’re going to sell it”

Steve p. Jobs

2.  Are You a Mac?: Let’s face it, Apple is a cool, hip brand. It pushes a strong identification with everything young, up-to-the-minute and smart.  The “I’m a Mac Campaign” was brilliant in not only defining the Mac brand as smooth, confident and cool, but defining the PC brand as old, uptight and awkward.   At the height of this campaign I was in a crowded bar that went immediately silent when one of the “I’m a Mac” TV ads came on.   Also, many of the Apple products have separated themselves from the competitor, whether it’s the white headphones on the iPod, the number of apps for Iphone and Ipad or the cool sleek designs of the Mac.  Not only that, the Apple store is a store just for Apple users.  My mom, who is 77 and a recent ipad user has been to the Apple Store numerous times, taking some of the courses or just asking for help.

For fans of the “I’m a Mac” campaign, here are 15 ads.

3.  An Obsessive Commitment to the Consumer and the Apple Brand.   Stemming from Steve Jobs, the entire company is committed to simplicity in design and functionality.  Whether it’s the rounded edges, colour choices for product or the Glass on the Apple stores, there is a certain obsessive behaviour.  Sometimes you wonder if it’s worth it, but would Apple be Apple if it wasn’t for these obsessions?

Apple leverages this obsession to create consumer loyalty.  Looking at the phone industry loyalty data, Apple has by far the highest loyalty of any brand:  over 90% of their consumers love the Iphone.  Brands like HTC, Blackberry and Sony have scores in mid 60s while Samsung has only 57% prefer the Samsung.  Creating the tribe is great, but Apple delivers satisfaction to their consumers.

To be a Beloved Brand, you must love the work you do.   If you don’t love the work you do, how do you expect your consumer to fall in love with your brand?   Brands that are stuck at the like stage settle for ok.  Beloved Brands like Apple start at great and still push to make it even better.   They are never satisfied.

The more loved the brand, the more valuable the brand.  The tight emotional connection with the consumer becomes a source of power it can leverage whether that’s with consumers themselves to pay more, stay loyal or buy more products.   Plus, that power can be leveraged with retail partners, suppliers or competitors.  

In 1976, early in the life of Apple, Ronald Wayne decided to cash in his 10% of Apple for around $800.  If he held onto it, that 10% would be worth $56 Billion.  Mind you, we have all missed out on quite a few investment windows over the years.  If you had put $100K into Apple in 2003, you would have around $10 Million!!!   You wouldn’t be complaining about the economy, wondering who to vote for in the fall.  But unfortunately, I didn’t know Apple would do so well.  Has the Apple brand peaked?   Hardly: Apple has gained 81% in market cap the past 12 months.   I missed that window as well.   

My hope is that momentum can continue.  Not because I have invested money, but because I’m emotionally invested.  I crave what’s next, even though I can’t even imagine where they will go.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability.

Google just wants to be Loved…but don’t we all?

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Eight years ago Google talked about trying to do business without being evil.  It was refreshing and ground-breaking in a world of excess greed.  If only the Wall Street Bankers had done the same thing, maybe we wouldn’t be in this financial crisis.  Yet, people criticize Google for saying they aren’t evil because of their tough way of doing business.  Yes, Google has a near monopoly, but they have earned that position.  Yes, they are agressive in the market and wield power over the market they compete in.  I’d hate to be one of their competitors–just ask Yahoo and MSN.  But don’t mix evil up with good ole smart capitalism and a high regard for empowering their beloved brand.

Recently the Larry Page, the CEO of Google took it even further towards being a beloved brand.  In an open letter, he stated:

“We have always wanted Google to be a company that is deserving of great love.  We recognise this is an ambitious goal because most large companies are not well-loved, or even seemingly set up with that in mind.”

If you want to find the ways that Google has achieved love from their consumers, look in the list of “The Ten Things We Know to be True” that Google created very early on in their life.  Any great brand could learn from that list–and very few brands live by these rules.   In that list, Google proclamed they would “Focus on the user and all else will follow”.  I wish every brand took such a consumer centric view, instead of just a product centric view.  I always think that the consumer is the most selfish animal on the planet, and satisfying that consumer’s selfishness will turn you from just a usual sellling brand to a connected brand that consumers can not live without.  Google also said: It’s best to do one thing really, really well.  So many brands are trying to be all things to all people, that they end up diluting the meaning of their brand and the promise that leads their effort.    A brand is a promise that you must be able to keep.  Trying to do everything will ineviatably mean failure in breaking that promise.  A beloved brand knows who their consumer is, and equally who is not their consumer.  I hope Google stays true to this idea.  Arguably Google has had a few little wiggles from the search focus, and wonder where they go with Google+.   Wiggles are OK, diversions are not.   And the other thing Google said was:  Great just isn’t good enough.  Brand Leaders play it too safe too often and settle for OK.  They don’t take any chances–they focus just on the logic and mind of the consumer.  They fear trying to be emotional, because it feels uncertain.  They end up boring and liked but they never reach the loved stage.   Google on the hand states that Great is the starting point to push yourself beyond:

We see being great at something as a starting point, not an endpoint. We set ourselves goals we know we can’t reach yet, because we know that by stretching to meet them we can get further than we expected. Through innovation and iteration, we aim to take things that work well and improve upon them in unexpected ways.

Ironically, Google has produced one TV ad, and it’s one of the best in the last decade.  It’s very emotion and showcases the power that Google has in our lives.

Instead of criticizing Google for stating that they want to be loved, I’d like to see all Brand Leaders push themselves to be loved.   Everything should start and end with the Consumer in mind.  Beloved Brands intimately know their consumer and become a part of their life.  With most brands, Consumers move along a “LOVE CURVE” going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It, and then they’ll make their Beloved Brand into A Brand For Life.  The Love Consumers have for a Brand becomes a Source of Power, helping to change the dynamic the brand can have with suppliers, customers, competitors and even with the consumers themselves. There’s nothing wrong or evil with using that power to the advantage of the brand.

In fact, you need to find the way to leverage the power of being Beloved.  The “Love Curve” can be linked to the brand funnel which becomes the underlying scoreboard for the brand.  And it helps to provide strategic focused against one key area of the funnel. Used properly, the brand power can drive the P&L with four levers:  increasing price, lowering costs, increasing share, creating new markets.  An efficient brand can leverage the P&L to invest back in the brand’s connectivity and drive profit and create value for the brand.

When it comes to execution, brand leaders play it far too safe.  Too many times, they fail to do work that is good or different.   They stick to the usual and sameness–resulting in boring work that fails to stand out.  The zone you should be pushing for is Good But Different:  It might not always test well, as it is beyond the consumer’s thinking.  Consumers don’t have the imagination to always know what they want.  They know their problems, just not the solutions.  But once consumers start to see how the differences meets their needs, they’ll start to buy.  It might feel like the highest risk but it also is the highest long-term sustainability and potential to be loved.

My challenge to you is to push yourself and your brand to find love by putting all your passion into the brand work you do.  If you don’t love the work you do, how do you expect the consumer to fall in love with your brand?

Branded Content that was Light Years ahead of its Time, with BMW Films.

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As marketers are abuzz with Content Marketing, my challenge is to push yourselves to do great content you love, not just ok content work you like.  While being part of the community and targetting unique users is the right strategy, creating bad content might do more damage than good.   It looks cheap.  When you forget to entertain, when you don’t put in the quality in execution, or where your brand is too obviously jammed into a piece of content that has nothing to do with your brand.  When you don’t astonish and delight the consumer, you fall flat.  So, don’t just do content, do content that you and your consumer will love.

In 2001, BMW launched BMW Films, light years ahead of the industry.  While everyone was still worried about producing 30s and 15s and newspaper ads, most brand leaders were still thinking whether they could afford to put 1% of their budgets into the Internet.  From a brand point of view to that point, BMW had always used traditional media like TV and Print to sell their cars.  But they saw that things were changing, espcially seeing that the role of the internet on the purchase cycle.  Roughly 85% of BMW purchasers used the Internet before purchasing a BMW.  BMW knew that the average work-hard, play-hard customer was 46 years old, with a median income of about $150,000. Two-thirds were male, married, and had no children.  In general, we see that Brands move along the Love Curve, going from Indifferent to Like It and Love It before becoming that Beloved Brand for Life.  Competitively, BMW had a lot of love but it was still battling traditional rival Mercedes who had the most love of all Luxury Car Brands.  Everyone else was compared to Mercedes.  Also, brands like Lexus and Infiniti were gaining some emotional support from consumers and gaining share.   BMW needed something to show consumers what makes a BMW truly a BMW.   They needed to put their stake in the ground to push to be the Most Beloved Luxury Car brand.  They needed something that the consumer would love and in turn love the BMW brand.

The idea of BMW Films was to cast the BMW car as a hero into the starring role of a movie, and in fact many movies.   BMW assembled a cast of A-list directors (Guy Richie, Tony Scott, Ang Lee) and A-list actors (Clive Owen Forest Whittiker, Madonna, Mickey Rourke), and developed scripts within the basic framework of having a central character that helped people through difficult circumstances using deft driving skills—in a BMW. The car became the star. Each director who chose a script was then given complete creative control over content and direction, something they would be hard-pressed to find in Hollywood, and something that BMW ordinarily wouldn’t allow if filming a traditional advertisement.

BMW used traditional media with mock movie trailers on TV and on-line advertising to surround their consumer and drive traffic to the website.  The end results were staggering: the series had been viewed over 100 million times in four years and had changed the way products were advertised.   BMW has had a great decade of sales, recently surpassing both Lexus and Mercedes as the #1 luxury brand.

BMW Films was out there.   It took risks, and was an incredible production.   To me, it’s still the benchmark for Content Marketing.  To me, it’s like Bob Beamon surpassing the long jump record by 2 1/2 feet when everyone else was measuring in inches.  It’s like Babe Ruth hitting 60 home runs when the next guy had 17.  The love for a brand normally comes when we love the work we do on that brand.  The love permeates through our work and onto the consumer.  However, if we don’t love the work, how do we expect our consumers to magically love the output of our work and then love our brand?  Not likely.  My challenge to you:  push yourself to love it, don’t just kinda like it.  Don’t settle.

Since BMW Films, I have seen some great viral work like T-Mobile, incredible integrations which make me stare and say “wow, I wish I did that”.  But in the past 10 years I’m yet to say “Now that’s better than BMW Films”.  

Hey Marketing Community!!!  My challenge to you:  Beat This!!!

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability.

Burger King Gives Up #2 to Wendy’s…and Who Really Cares?

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“Nobody goes there anymore.  It’s too crowded.”

–Yogi Berra

Actually for Burger King, it’s the opposite–there are no crowds.   We have a Burger King and a McDonald’s in my neighbourhood that are right beside each other.  When my kids were little, we used to take them to Burger King, just because it was nice and quiet.  That’s not the kind of benefit that will make you a lot of money:  “Come to Burger King and Avoid the Crazy Crowds”.  

Looking at Burger King’s history, we can see it’s been owned by so many companies from Grand Metropolitan to Pillsbury to Diagio and most recently a couple of Private Equity groups who probably think they can turn it around.  They’ve tried every ad agency from BBDO, JWT, Y&R, McCann Erickson and Crispin Porter.  They’ve tried bigger sizes, Whoppers, chicken fries and even Flame Broiled.  I’ve NEVER seen a live flame in a Burger King but I have seen plenty of microwaves.  The current ad strategy is now “Have It Your Way” which is back to the same tag line it used in 1974…when it was just a mediocre knock-off to McDonald’s.  I guess it’s fitting because it’s still just a mediocre knock-off.

Let’s face it:  People “Love” McDonald’s and only “Like” Burger King.  Would you cross the street in the rain to get a Burger King?  Not likely.  Would you defend Burger King in a heated debate about who has the better fries?  No way–Mcdonald’s fries are to die for.  There’s no emotion with Burger King.  It’s a functional choice, you consider it and enjoy it.  But you don’t crave it.  It’s not personal.   And you’re not outspoken about the brand.  It’s ok.  And yet today marks the day Burger King is no longer the #2 hamburger brand as it has now fallen behind Wendy’s in sales.   And I bet that no one really cares.

Calling Wendy’s #2 is really a bit misleading, because really it’s actually now the #4 fast food brand.  Subway is now the clear #2 fast food brand and Starbucks is #3. Wendy’s and Burger King are like two cars in the slow lane with growth rates dwarfed by the three leaders ahead of them.  In terms of burger excitement, the world is filled with high end local choices and Five Guys has replicated the local choice on a mass scale and is now the Fastest Growing burger joint in North America.

Wendy’s and Burger King appear equally confused.  Wendy’s modest growth has come mainly from innovative and differentiated product, such as the Baconator or the Spicy Chicken or their salad options.  All good.  But since the death of Dave Thomas in 2002, it has no clue how to communicate what the Wendy’s brand is all about.    For the past 10 years, Wendy’s advertising has been confusing, meandering and void of any emotion at all.  They really are just a bunch of product ads, with cool ways of slicing tomatoes and lettuce and lots of people sitting in plastic chairs eating burgers.   Here’s Wendy’s history of campaigns over the past decade!  Can you remember one of them?

  • 2002:  Final Dave Thomas campaign
  • 2003:  Product Related Ads
  • 2004:  ”Mr Wendy” character
  • 2005:  Square Burgers vs Round
  • 2006:  It’s always Great, Even Late  (Open Late)
  • 2007:  That’s Right campaign
  • 2008:  It’s waaaay better than fast food. It’s Wendy’s
  • 2009:  You Know When It’s Real
  • 2010:  Hot and Juicy
  • 2011:  ”Where’s the Beef?”

Wendy’s is stuck in a world of boredom.  As a result:  consumers like the brand, but do not love it.   Wendy’s needs to find a big advertising idea that emotionally connects with consumers and then stand behind that idea for the next 5-10 years.  The challenge I give most brand leaders who are stuck in the world of boredom: “If you don’t love the work you do, then how can you expect your consumer to love your brand”.   

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability.  I’m an adjunct professor at the Cornell-Queen’s Exec MBA.  If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Brand Learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations

How to be a Great Assistant Brand Manager…and of course, get Promoted to Brand Manager

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In my 20 years of CPG marketing, I must have interviewed 1,000 potential Assistant Brand Managers.  I was lucky to have hired some of the best, who have gone on to have very strong marketing careers.  I became notorious for asking for some of the toughest questions, some even bizarre.  I always asked an analytical question to see if they could piece together lots of data and tell a story that made sense.  I’d ask a creative question to see if they had a certain flare and pride in the output.   I’d ask a problem solving question, some very hard, no real right answer, but I wanted to see how they actually think.   And finally, I wanted to know that they had done something at a very high level–it didn’t matter what–but I wanted to know they could make it happen, whatever it was in.  Getting that first ABM job is NOT EASY!   I had many failed interviews over the years that I began to wonder if it would ever happen.  I remember one interview ended after about 8 minutes when she found out I didn’t have any experience.  Thank god, I stuck with it.

But even after gruelling interviews, only about 50% of Assistant Brand Managers get promoted to Brand Manager.  So what separates the ok ABM from the great ABM that gets promoted?  There are two factors that I have seen in a consistent manner:  #1:  They get what they need and #2:  What they need is the right thing to do.   Very simply put, great ABMs get both.   The rest either fail on #1 or #2.    

Keep in mind there are some core marketing values you want to adopt over the years as an ABM that will serve you well in your career.

  • Hit the Deadlines:  Don’t Look Out of Control.  We have enough to do, that things will just stockpile on each other.  Missing deadlines makes you look sloppy.
  • Know Your Business:  Don’t Get Caught Off-Guard. Make sure you are asking the questions and carrying forward the knowledge.
  • Open Communication:  No Surprises. Make sure you keep your team informed  and involved.   Don’t hide information, present it upwards with an action plan of what to do with it.
  • Control Our Destiny:  We run the brands, they do not run us.  When we don’t know something, speak in an “asking way”, but when we know, speak in a “telling way”.  While it’s crucial that we seek to understand, it’s equally important that we know our role as leaders is to give direction or push towards the end path.
  • Let’s Celebrate Our Wins:  Love What You Do.  These are tough jobs.  It has to be the passion for what we do that keeps us going. Passion that separates great from “ok”.
  • Everything Can use Process:  It should enable us, not hinder us.  A good process can force your thinking towards a solution.  If it restricts your thinking, it’s not a good process.  But if it means, you free up your time for strategic thinking, instead of format thinking, we’ll move much faster.
  • Continuous Ideas:  We Implement 1 in 100 ideas we have. There is a need for more ideas so the ideas we implement are the best we have.  Never be afraid of an idea, but always be willing to say “what a crap idea”.
  • Regular Feedback for Growth:  That’s the only way we get better. You should always take feedback, good or bad, as a lesson for you.  Not a personal attack or setback.  Seek it, embrace it and build on it for your future.

The Five Factors that Separate Ok ABMs from the Great ABMs are:

  1. A great ABM is able to tell stories, where others just see data:  There is tons of data all over—share results, tracking, test scores, etc.  One of the most critical skill an ABM can work on is developing stories with the data.  It’s one thing to have the data point, but another to have thought it through and know what it means, and what action you will take on this data. When you come across data, the best thing you can do is look for patterns or data breaks, try to twist the data in different ways to see if you keep getting the same story, ask questions to find back up, start putting together stories and challenge the stories.  Never give a data point without a story or action. You risk letting someone else take your data and run with it.  Never fear bad data, as long as you have an action plan.   Never twist the data to tell a story, because if it’s challenged, the whole story crumbles with it.  This skill is one that you carry with you as you move upwards in marketing.  In fact, the more practice you have, the faster you’ll become.
  2. A great ABM takes action and moves before being asked:  Most of the projects are already set for an ABM, so many times, it’s comfortable to wait, ask the right questions and proceed.  That’s good for learning, but a bit too cautious.  Some of the best ideas come with a fresh set of eyes.  We need a continual influx of new ideas and even new ways of seeing things.  You need to push your ideas into the system. While it’s still key to communicate to the right stakeholders, you should be pushing your ideas into the system, which almost creates new projects.  Don’t get into the mode of waiting or figuring that’s not within your job scope.
  3. A great ABM can get what they want:  It’s obvious that project management is a big part of being an ABM.  But, instead of just functionally managing the steps of the project, you need to make it happen, faster, bigger and better.  In terms of speed, you need to understand what are the important milestones that need to be hit.  Always think in terms of key bottle necks.  Bottle necks are simply the task that has the longest completion time, which then impacts the entire project.  If you let this slip, the entire project slips.  This has to be managed in detail, but also many times with an inflexible fist to getting it done.  Bigger means you want to do more then is required.  Make the work zing, find the wow factor, and make it have a bigger impact then was  expected.  Better means you have to take the same people and get them to give their best ideas or their best effort or their best work. Guaranteed you will meet many points of resistance.  Every project will.  Solving these and still getting the most you can, is the separation of good from great.
  4. A great ABM puts their strategic thoughts forward.  All great ideas must flow upwards.  Most people tend to think they are “strategic”…and they tell me that all the time.  After all these years, I’m still not even sure what that means.  But I do know there is a big difference between thinking strategically, and contributing strategically. You need to be in the frame to challenge thinking, whether it comes from your agency, cross functional peers or me.  It’s important that you speak up and represent your thinking.  Standing up for your thoughts shows that you are in the game, that you are thinking, and that you believe in your strategic thoughts.  If you don’t stand up for your thoughts, then it doesn’t really matter does it? Also, it’s so easy to get lost in the daily executions, but you have to be constantly thinking.  Keeping things aligned to the strategic is just as important as being strategic.
  5. A great ABM is accountable in the ownership of their work:  Accountability is the stepping stone to ownership.  And ownership is what being a Brand Manager is all about.  You cannot let things slip or miss.  Many times, the devil is in the details.  You have to stay on top of the timelines and lead those on your project teams.  If you have to step in, and work hand in hand with an expert then jump in.  You have to be action oriented, and solution focused.  You can never allow your team to get stuck.  They will be looking to you for the ingenuity to help solve the problem.  Maintain the composure, ask questions and learn to revel in the ambiguity. You have to be the hub of communication to all team members, and to key stakeholders, including upwards.

If you can do those better than your peers, then you’ll get promoted.  Conversely, if you’re missing any one of these, you might not get there.  I hope your boss gives you a quarterly review because I believe ABMs can grow so fast that you need those regular check-ins.   If you just get an annual review, you won’t go as fast.  Ask for feedback, cherish it, and use the next 90 days to build on a strength or eliminate a gap.

One thing to keep in mind is the Idiot Curve.  The basic rule is: You get dumber before you get smarter.     When you first land the ABM job, there’s just so much to learn, it’s like drinking from a fire hose. I find it takes 3 months to get back to being just as smart as you were on the first day.  It’s over-whelming at first, and yet you see all these other ABMs doing it so that’s even more intimidating.  But the idiot curve is inevitable.   It just shows up differently for each person.  No matter how hard you fight it, you have to ride the curve.  (But, please fight through the curve, you have to for your survival)  The idiot curve.  normally lasts up to 3 months, and then things just start to click.   And you’ll experience it in a new and exciting way you can’t even predict.  

If you want to know how to be a Great Brand Manager, read my blog from two months ago at the following link:  Beloved Brands Story on How to Be a Successful Brand Manager

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I do executive training of executives and brand managers, helping on strategy, brand planning, advertising and profitability. If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Building a Career in Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Slide Share Learning Presentations 

Love Affair with Chocolate Bars

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It is easy to connect chocolate with Love.  Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, the same chemical that is released in the brain when we fall in love. Eating chocolate can give some people a natural “high” which is often related to the feeling of being in love.   Some of the world’s chocolate bar brands are the Most Beloved and Powerful Brands in the world.  Consumers are passionate about their choices, mainly because Chocolate bars usually serve an extremely personal purpose: it could be a pick-me-up in the afternoon, a celebration for when something good happens or a recovery when something bad happens.  It’s our own personal escape–a guilty pleasure.  It also helps us connect us back with our youth and give us those childhood feeligs of joy.

The premise of the Brand Love Curve is that consumers usually start off at the Indifferent stage, move to Like It then Love It and then consumers will make it their Brand for Life. But do you remember when you tried a Snickers or Reese Peanut Butter Cups for the first time?  You likely can’t remember, because the choices were almost chosen for you–from one of the major brands at the end of the check out counter.  It was likely outside of your control–strictly an emotional decision or as Hotspex says an E-rational decision.  In fact, when you were 4, you likely had a major temper tantrum at the check out counter just to get that chocolate bar.   You likely fell in love with your brand before you could even think. Hearing “NO” from your parents made you want it even more.   I know my weakness was that Orange Aero bar….or was it the Big Turk…..or the Caramilk bar.  There aren’t really any bad options in my mind.

An odd fact is that consumers have been making the same choices for about 50 years now.   The top 10 chocalate bars today are the same top 10 chocolate bars in the 1950s, just the order is different.   If you look at the top brands (see below) you’ll see that almost all of them were launched in the 1920s and 1930s.   The only “new” chocolate bar to breakthrough is Twix, which was launched 45 years ago, and still yet to really crack the big time.

There have been many attempts to crack the top 10 but all massive failures.  The factors inhibiting new brands from suceeding:  a) distribution is so tightly controlled by the powerful companies like Nestle, Hershey and Cadbury that  it’s almost impossible to break through and displace the older brands b) the amount of advertising dollars spent on key brands is prohibitive of other brands being able to afford it c) you make your choices at such a young age that you choose one of the big brands near the check out stand.

There have been many great ads over the year.  The most consistent has to be Kit Kat, which started using the tag line of “Have a Break…have a Kit Kat” back in 1957.  Now, that’s a big idea!   It’s been used ever since across all geographies–here’s one from the UK. 

The last two Super Bowls have produced two of the Best Chocolate Bar ads.  The Betty White Snickers bar was a huge hit, not only during the Super Bowl, but such viral support it spun her into the SNL host later that spring.

This year, the M&M’s Naked Guy, not really a big idea but a cute execution.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I’ve done executive training of marketing executives and managers as well as taught marketing at Major Universities including York University, Queen’s University and Cornell University.  If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Beloved Brands Learning Sessions

Linsanity becomes an overnight Beloved Brand

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Jeremy Lin has become an overnight sensation.  Here’s a guy who didn’t get any scholarships, went undrafted and has been cut by two NBA teams already.  His rookie NBA season, he averaged 2.6 points per game and barely got any playing time.  Just two months ago, he was cut by Golden State, one of the worst teams in the league.    He went to Harvard of all places and even in the Ivy League, he only averaged 12 points a game.    This guy has literally come from out of no where.   Even he knows that.  He was sleeping on his brothers couch just a month ago.  On top of all this, Jeremy Lin is the first American born Chinese player to break through in the NBA, which strengthens his fan based around the world.  In just seventeen days, he’s gone from a nobody to an instant global sensation, who might one day command a brand value of over $100 Million.

As I’ve laid out the Brand Love Curve, people ask me “Can a brand go straight to LOVE IT?”   My answer is “NO”, but some brands can go along the curve at warped-speed.   A few examples: the first time I had a White Chocolate Magnum Bar in the 1990s, I made it all the way to the Love It stage on the second bite.  When Kevin Spacey as “Keyser Söze” started limping away at the end of The Usual Suspects, I instantly knew it would be my one of my brands for life.  Lin has gone to Beloved Status that fast.

Jeremy Lin’s first big game was only 17 nights ago and yet he’s all over the news.   Eighteen days ago, no one really knew him.   In fact his own facebook status in early January was ”Everytime i try to get into Madison Square Garden, the security guards ask me if im a trainer LOL”.   His story has grown in legendary fashion, winning 7 games in a row, hitting last second shots, beating Kobe Bryant.   All this is the basketball side.

As a brand, Jeremy Lin has gone along the Brand Love Curve at warp-speed, potentially even faster than Justin Bieber.   But for Lin, it’s been the Perfect Storm of Events.

  1. He’s just an Average Joe: He went undrafted, cut by two teams, no job, sleeping on his brothers couch. Great Story. It all adds up–he’s one of us.  We love those stories, where the guy just shows up to try out and makes the team.  Before the Lakers game, Kobe was laughing about the prospect of guarding him.   After he scored 38 points, Kobe was marvelling at his ability.  They make movies wtih scripts like that.
  2. He’s another Tebow:  He thanks Jesus when he win.   He’s nice and humble.  He’s also a highly flawed player who like Tebow, wins in the end.  And like Tebow, he wins in dramatic fashion.  We just rode the Tebow Story–and we’re clearly not done with it.   Most of us want more Tebow.   We want heroes and we want them to be good guys.    http://beloved-brands.com/2012/01/15/527/ 
  3. New York is the Centre of the Universe:  If this was Oklahoma or Portland, it might not be so crazy, but it’s New York, the home to the most powerful media and advertising in the world.   He’s already made the cover of Time Magazine and now back-to-back covers on Sports Illustrated.  Ratings for Knick games are through the roof–the highest since Michael Jordan.  His #17 jersey is selling like crazy.  Social Media has gone crazy behind Lin.  Did the New York Media help add fuel to the fire?  Likely.
  4. It’s a Global Story:  Lin, while born in America is the first American born Chinese player in the NBA.   His games are being watched Live in China.   And he’s an instant national hero in a country of One Billion people.  And as we know, the economy in China is strong–giving them the real purchasing power to get behind Lin.

As with any Beloved Brand, the more loved the brand the more valuable that brand will be.    A month ago Lin was making league minimum.  Now, he could be worth somewhere between $15 Million and $150 Million, depending on how long this status can last for him.   A few numbers that help tell the story.

  • Since Feb. 4th MSG’s stock price has increased 6%, adding $139 million to the company’s market value. During the same period the S&P 500 has gone up less than 1%.  With increased TV ratings, higher ticket prices and the #1 selling jersey, with continued success, the Knicks have to re-sign him.  That means, Lin’s next contract could see a salary of $10 Million per year.
  • Yoa Ming, the only other notable Chinese player in the NBA, made up $80 million in endorsement deals in China.  China has gotten behind Lin in a dramatic fashion.  With a soaring economy and One Billion consumers, that could be a huge payday for Lin.   Especially for American brands wanting to break through in China.   With all this hype and Chinese pride, Lin could generate $80-100 Million in China.
  • There are already rumours going on that he has signed on with Nike, that he will be the new face of NBA’13 and his agent is quoted as saying that he has already turned down Millions.  Even in America, Lin could easily turn this into another $25 Million in US Endorsements.  

If things go right, and assuming Lin continues to play reasonably well, add it all up and Jeremy Lin could easily turn his Beloved Brand Status into $100-150 Million per year.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I’ve done executive training of marketing executives and managers as well as taught marketing at Major Universities including York University, Queen’s University and Cornell University.  If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Beloved Brands Learning Sessions

Is Chrysler on the right Path to Becoming a Beloved Brand?

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As we hit the US Presidential election cycle, there will be lots of talk about the Bail Outs.   Was it a good idea?   Did it work?  Who was for it?   Who was against it?

Case in point: After receiving $12 Billion in loans, Chrysler has seen three straight years of significant growth since the loans in 08 and 09.   They saw growth rates of 17% in 2010 and 26% in 2011.   And Chrysler is  off to a great start in 2012, growing by 44% and gaining over 2.5 share points in the month of January.   Chrysler is now in a fairly profitable position and has paid back most of the loans, even despite adding a complaint about the high interest rate.   It appears the bail out worked, and it kept and created a few jobs–at least for now.  Right after the bail out, Chrysler is once again in European hands, this time Fiat of Italy owns the majority compared to Mercedes of Germany.   So is Chrysler still American?

It seems that Chrysler has had bouts of desperation and recovery for my entire life.  I remember the Chrysler New Yorker of the 1970s–big huge gas guzzler cars, not an ideal fit as gas prices went through the roof.  Chrysler collapsed in 1980, only to be recovered by the Lee Iacoca legendary story which gave birth to the Yuppy word of a generation: the Mini Van.

With the current recovery, just how is Chrysler doing it?   Smoke and Mirrors and Patriotism?   Or has the product quality really improved?   Do they have a product offering as unique as the Mini Van?  Not really.  Especially if you read the reviews.  Can Chrysler survive with a mediocre product?

Consumers Report said:  ”It’s clear that Chrysler is on the right path, but they still have a long way to go.”  Testers were unimpressed with the Chrysler 200, Dodge Avenger, Jeep Compass, adding that they scored at or near the bottom of their respective categories.  I know that when I buy a new car, the search component is high, spending months looking and reading.   Cars are a big investment and I don’t want to be saddled with a car that is “only ok”.  Bad reviews scare me.  The last few cars I’ve bought,  I’m sorry to say that the American cars are aren’t standing up to the Japanese cars.  Even when I look up the basic car features (mileage, horsepower, features) the American cars come up short.    Yes, I have that embedded perception problem, mainly because I’ve driven in a Chevrolet Chevette and a Ford Tempo.  It’s going to be really hard to get those out of my mind.

Chrysler needs to find some way to create an emotional bond with their consumers.   It has to be more than just a recovery and American patriotism.  For decades, consumers have been Indifferent about Chrysler.   Their cars do the basics and nothing really else.  Nothing to get excited about.  On the other hand,Lincoln made an unexpected comeback to get to the Like It stage, even more unexpected it was female buyers that drove it.  And yet, brands like Lexus and Toyota are clearly at the Love It stage.  Toyota consumers are outspoken about their brand, and return the dealer every 4-5 years to buy another Toyota.   Toyota survived what was an attack on it’s safety record, since putting it in their rear view mirror.

The recent Chrysler advertising has been strong with back-to-back SuperBowl ads that stood out.  In 2011 it was home-grown Detroit icon Eminem and this year it was Clint Eastwood.  Two minute ads at half time must have cost them $25 Million just for the media alone. The campaign tag line “Imported from Detroit” is cute, but really is just a new twist on “Made In America” or the “Buy America” calls for patriotitic purchases.  Maybe the only people buying the Chryslers are the people who were in favour of the bail out, which is some type of circular patriotism logic.

Maybe Chrysler isn’t selling cars, but selling hope for America.  But to survive the long term, they need to stand for something more, and build unique quality products that deliver.

So is the sales blip just a blip?   Or just a delay to the inevitable?

So the question remains:  Do you think the bail out helped Chrysler get on the path to becoming a beloved brand?   

The 2011 Chrysler ad seemed to hit the chords even stronger.   Home town icon Eminem is more authentic than California Clint and the ads were selling Detroit, not America.

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I’ve done executive training of marketing executives and managers as well as taught marketing at Major Universities including York University, Queen’s University and Cornell University.  If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Beloved Brands Learning Sessions

Finding Your Love in the Art of Being Different.

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I found this year’s Super Bowl ads were “pretty good”.   The VW fat dog was cute, the Chrysler ad well executed but something we see on CNN all the time.   I felt I had seen the Doritos gag a million times.   Nothing was different.

Given the current economy, shouldn’t we be taking more risks to stand out rather than playing it safe right down the middle of the road?   Let’s hope someone has the strength to do something different.

The classic launch formula: do the basic product concept testing, hope for a moderate pass.   Then meet with sales and explain how this is almost identical to the launch we did last year, and builds on the same thing we just saw our competitor do.  Re-enforce that the buyer hinted that if we did this, we’d get on the shelves pretty easily.  Go to your ad agency, with a long list of mandatories and an equally long list of benefits they can put in the ad.   Tell the agency you’re excited.   They’ll tell you they’re excited as well.  Ask for lots of options, as a pre-caution because time is tight and we’re not sure what we want.  Just hope the agency clearly understood the 7-page brief.  Test all the ads, even a few different endings, and then let the research decide who wins.  That way, no one can blame you.  Do up a safe media plan with mostly TV, some small but safe irrelevant secondary media choice.  Throw in a web site to explain the 19 reasons why we launched.   Maybe even a game on the website.

Ah, we have our launch. 

This is a guaranteed formula for success, because it follows last year’s launch to a tee and will be done hundreds of brands this year.   Convince yourself, you had to play it safe because sales are down, margins are tight and you will do something riskier next year once this launch is done.   What looks like a guaranteed success will likely get off to a pretty good start and then flat-line until it’s discontinued three brand managers from now.

At some point, to break through in a cluttered market, you’ve got to do something different to stand out:  now, more than ever.   It might feel like a risky move, but it’s almost riskier not to take that chance.

There are four types of launches:

  1. Good But Not Different (our launch above):  These do very well in tests mainly because consumers have seen it before and check the right boxes in research.   In market, it gets off to a pretty good start—since it still seems so familiar.   However, once challenged in the market by a competitor, it falters because people start to realize it is no different at all.  So they go back to their usual brand and your launch starts to go flat.  This option offers limited potential.
  2. Good But Different:  These don’t always test well:  consumers don’t really know what to make of it.   Even after launched, it takes time to gain momentum, having to explain the story with potential investment and effort to really make the difference come to life.  But once consumers start to see the differences and how it meets their needs, they equate different with “good”.   It begins to gain share and generates profits for the brand.   This option offers long-term sustainability.
  3. Not Good And Not Different.  These are the safest of safe.  Go back into the R&D lab and pick the best one you have–even if it’s not very good.   The tallest of midgets.  They do pretty well in test because of the familiarity.   In market, it gets off to a pretty good start, because it looks the same as what’s already in the market.  But pretty soon, consumers realize that it’s the same but even worse, so it fails dramatically.   What appears safe is actually highly risky.  You should have followed your instincts and not launched.  This option is a boring failure.
  4. Different but Not That Good.  Sometimes we get focused on the product first:  it offers superior technology, but not really meeting an unmet need.  So we launch what is different for the sake of being different.  It does poorly in testing.  Everyone along the way wonders why we are launching.   But in the end, consumers don’t really care about your point of difference.  And it fails.  The better mousetrap that no one cares about.

It will be up to you to figure out how to separate good from bad.   One caution is letting market research over-ride your own instincts.  As Steve Jobs said:  ”it’s hard for consumers to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it.   Yet now that people see it, they say OH MY GOD THAT’S GREAT”

We always tracked many numbers (awareness, brand link, persuasion etc), but the one I always wanted to know was “made the brand seem different”.  Whether it is new products, a new advertising campaign or media options push yourself to do something that stands out.   Don’t just settle for ok.  Always push for great.  If you don’t love the work, how do you expect your consumer to love your brand?  The opposite of different, is indifferent and who wants to be indifferent.      

In case you need any added incentive:  Albino fruit flies mate at twice the rate of normal fruit flies.   Just because they are different!   And the place where most ground hogs are run over is right in the middle of the road.  

About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I’ve done executive training of marketing executives and managers as well as taught marketing at Major Universities including York University, Queen’s University and Cornell University.  If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Beloved Brands Learning Sessions

How to Be a Successful Brand Manager

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After 20 years of CPG marketing, I have hired so many potentially great marketers–who were eager for success, brilliant, hard working and dedicated.   But in reality, about 50% of Assistant Brand Managers get promoted to Brand Manager and less than 20% of Brand Managers make it to the Director level.

What separates the good from the great?   There are two factors that I have seen in a consistent manner:  #1:  They get what they need.   #2:  What they need is the right thing to do.   Very simply put, great marketers get both.   The rest either fail on #1 or #2.  To get what you want, keep things simple and move fast to take the positional advantage.   What separates many Brand Managers is the inability to actually rely on their instincts, instead of just the textbook answer.   You get so busy, so deadline focused, so scared to make a mistake that you forget to think in a confused state of ambiguity.   It’s not easy to sit there without the answer, but sometimes if you just wait a bit longer and keep pushing for an even better answer, it will come to you.  Revel in ambiguity.   

One thing to keep in mind is the Idiot Curve.  At every new job, including Brand Manager, I find it takes 3 months to get back to being just as smart as you were on the first day.  The basic rule is: You get dumber before you get smarter.     We’ve promoted some great ABMs and watch them struggle and wonder if we made a mistake.  But the idiot curve is inevitable.   It just shows up differently for each person.  No matter how hard you fight it, you have to ride the curve.  (But, please fight through the curve, you have to for your survival)  The biggest gap is that you forget to use your instincts.  You spend so much of your time trying to absorb all that is coming at you, that you reach for the basic process instead of your brains.   You might be working on a project for weeks before you think to even look at the budget.   You work on a promotion for Wal-Mart and then think “oh ya, I should talk to the Wal-Mart sales manager and see what he thinks”.  Or you say something in a meeting you think you’re supposed to say, but it doesn’t even resemble anything that you think, feel or believe in.  That’s the idiot curve.  And it will last 3 months.   And you’ll experience it in a new and exciting way you can’t even predict.  Feel free to let me know which way so I can add it to the list.  (I won’t reveal names)

The Five Factors that Separate Good from Great are:

  1. A great BM takes ownership of the brand.  I’ve seen many BMs struggle with the transition from being a helper to being the owner.  As you move into the job, you have to get away from the idea of having someone hand you a project list.
     Not only do you have to make the project list, you have to come  up with the strategies from which the projects fall out of.  A good owner talks in ideas in a telling sense, rather than an asking sense.  It’s great to be asking questions as feelers, but realize that most are going to be looking to you for the answers.  They’ll be recommending and you’ll be deciding.  When managing upwards be careful of asking questions—try to stick to solutions.  “I think we should build a big bridge” instead of “any ideas for how we can get over the water”.  You just gave up your ownership.  I’d rather have you tell me what you want to do, and we debate from there, rather than you ask me what we should do.  I’ll be better able to judge your logic, your passion and your vision.  You run the brand, don’t let it run you.  
  2. A great BM provides the vision & strategies to match up to.  Vision is sometimes a hard thing to articulate. It’s sometimes easy to see times when there is a lack of vision.  You have to let everyone know where you want to go.  The strategy that matches becomes the road map for how to get there.  As the brand owner, you become the steward of the vision and strategy.  Everything that is off strategy has to be rejected and your role is to find ways to steer them back on track.  It’s easy to get side-tracked by exciting programs or cool ideas, but if they are off-strategy then you’ve got to park that excitement.  The expression of the strategy through ideas is a key skill–just as important as the strategy itself.  Learn to talk in strategic stories that can frame your direction.  Learn to think in terms of pillars—which forces your hand around 3 different areas to help achieve your strategy.  Having pillars constantly grounds you back in your strategy, and is an easy way for communicating with the various functions—the people you’re dealing with may only have 1 strategic pillar that matters to them personally, but seeing the other parts makes them feel as though their work is worth it.
  3. A great BM spends the effort to make their ABM as good as can be.  If you make your ABM better, then it reflects back on you.  Too many brand managers struggle to shift from “do-er” to “coach”.  They think they can do it faster than their ABM, so they may as well do it and they do.  The ABM really hates this.  But, they think their ABM will learn the hard way, just like they did.  They struggle to share the spot light, so it becomes hard to showcase the ABM.  They are too busy trying to prove themselves.  Keep in mind that the work of your ABM reflects 100% of who you are.  This challenge forces your hand on helping to develop your ABM.  Sometimes it can feel more motivating to just talk the positive stuff.  But if the ABM job is a learning position, then you have to provide areas for improvement.  Intuitively, you’d think the BM/ABM relationship would be constant “negative feedback”, but I see too many BMs afraid of going “negative”.  You need the balance.   My question is, that if you were coaching a gymnast and their “toes weren’t straight, wouldn’t they want to know?”  Then why are you not working on a relationship where you can get to that point.  Share with them better ways for doing things—which you have learned.  Spend some time teaching from your experience.
  4. A great BM gets what they need.   The organization is filled with groups, layers, external agencies, with everyone carrying a different set of goals and motivations.  Working the system entails taking what you have learned about ownership one step further.  You understand the organizational components, and then you go get what you need.  Again communication becomes key—you can’t let missed communications cause angst or concerns.  Also, its crucial that you get the best from everyone.  I have found it useful upfront to ask everyone for their best work.  It’s a strange step, but I have found it useful.   But you have to promise them you’ll support their best work. If you really have someone that’s good, you know they’ll respond to this.  The good news is that only 0.1% of people ask them, so it’s not like they’ve heard it that many times.  And let them know if they are or aren’t there yet.
  5. A Great BM Can Handle Pressure.   Ambiguity is one of the hardest.  This is where patience and composure come into play as you sort through the issues.  The consequences of not remaining composed is likely a bad decision.   If the Results don’t come in, it can be frustrating.  Reach for your logic as you re-group.  Force yourself to course correct, rather than continuing to repeat and repeat and repeat.  Relationships.  Be pro-active in making the first move.  Try to figure out what motivates as well as what annoys them.   Most times, the common ground is not that far away.  Time Pressure.  It’s similar to the ambiguity.  Be organized, disciplined and work the system so it doesn’t get in your way.   Be calm, so you continue to make the right decisions.

Love the Magic of Marketing–let it breathe and let it come to life.

Don’t just do the job, do it with all your passion.   Love it please so we can love the work that comes from your passion.   Or else just become an actuary and let someone else take your spot please.

To read the related story on how to be a succesful Assistant Brand Manager click on this:  Beloved Brands Story on Being a Succesful Assistant Brand Manager
Presentation can be seen at:  Beloved Brands Careers   About Graham Robertson:  I’m a marketer at heart, who loves everything about brands. I love great TV ads, I love going into grocery stores on holidays and I love seeing marketers do things I wish I came up with. I’m always eager to talk with marketers about what they want to do.   My background includes CPG marketing at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke.  I’ve done executive training of marketing executives and managers as well as taught marketing at Major Universities. If you have interest for your team, email me and we can customize a program to your needs.  For Powerpoint versions of Building a Career in Beloved Brands as well as other team learning presentations, visit Beloved Brands Learning Sessions

Ikea: “Long Live the Home” is Easy to Love

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I’ve always loved Ikea.   As a kid, I’d pour through their catalogues reconfiguring my room in my mind.  Most recently, I took my 13-year-old girl to Ikea and she must have said about 38 times “I’m serious Dad, I want that.”   I can sympathize.

Ikea is fully committed to creating magic for their consumers, whether it is in product designs or in their advertising.    Whether it was the Ikea Lamp Ad (“Many of you feel bad for this lamp.  That is because you’re crazy…”) or the Subway ad where they took a plain and boring subway car and turned it into a lively home you could live in.   Ikea was in the same class as Volkswagen where they’d surprise and delight you on a regular basis.   However, over the last few years, the ads seemed to be missing the magic—I was trying to understand the symbolic nature of the ads, but it wasn’t really connecting with me.  The risk of talking to yourself is you don’t connect and you lose your beloved status.   Ask the Gap.

But this year, Ikea has begun to make their advertising comeback, thanks to the powers of Leo Burnett who can turn brand purpose into brand magic.   And while Ikea always had great ads, it was always hard to piece these ads together until “Long Live the Home” came along this year to establish a Big Idea in the marketplace.   The work is truly beautiful.

One of the hardest things to do is come up with a Big Idea for a Brand, especially in the case of a Branded House.   For a case like Ikea, the idea needs to be big enough to establish the brand idea, yet still sell kitchen cabinets, chairs and closets.   Internal conflict gets in the way of creating a Big Idea and standing behind it:  a) how much brand vs product b) how much equity vs selling c) who makes the ad and finally d) who pays for it internally—brand or product marketing?    You really need to commit to making it happen, and gain the full support across the organization—usually starting from the Top.   Big Ideas like “Think Different”, “Just Do It” and “I’m Loving It” are some of the best examples of Idea lines that connect the brand with consumers and even transform their way right into the culture of everything they do.  That’s where Ikea needs to go next.

There are many brand and business benefits to a Big Idea.   Big ideas should have a 5-10 year life, giving brands a consistent idea to connect behind.   It makes it easier to come back to the brief each year.  Also, there becomes a tone, a character and sometimes a series of devices that help frame the Idea that makes it easier to control how the brand shows up, over time, across various mediums and across the various business units.

Ikea follows the best in class use of the Big Idea, with a 60 second anthem style Ad to establish the Big Idea in the consumers mind, and then separate product ads across various mediums and built into the website, in-store and catalogue.   The TV ads are beautifully shot and connect on a deeply emotinal level, the print ads of high quality and connect.  I really like the unique product Ads they’ve done wheter it is TV ads that sell kitchens or print ideas that sell closets, while staying within the Big Idea.

However, I didn’t notice the idea making its way when I looked at the store level.  I’d love to see “Long Live the Home” be built right into the Ikea culture, brought down to the store level and even begin to influence their customer service.   The big idea becomes more than a tag line, but rather a promise the brand stands behind at every stage of the brand. Without the full comittment to brand all the way through the Love Curve, the magic of the great advertising and cool product designs sets up a High Promise that Ikea struggles to deliver at the experience stage and leaves consumers yearning for more.

That commitment to brand at every touch point has helped propel the Apple brand to the next stratosphere of Beloved Brand.  Ikea, you’ve done such a fantastic job with the advertising, my only ask is that you keep going to make it part of the brand. 

As a bonus for fans of past Ikea Advertising, here is Lamp and the Subway Spots.