The Essence Branding: Brand Stories

It started with a rivet. Born in Germany this man migrated to USA, settled in San Francisco and became a trader. Jacob Davis a tailor, started buying cloth from him to stitch pants. One of his customers kept ripping his pockets on his pants & Jacob had a tough time repairing it time & again, till he came upon the idea of putting copper rivets at the stress points on the pocket corner. His “riveted work pants” very quickly became a craze. Worried that someone would steal his idea, he called on his friend, the trader. Together they patented his invention. For twenty years Jacob and his friend Levi were the only company allowed to make riveted work pants. This is how the story of Levis “jeans” started – with a rivet.

In today’s world too, its “riveting” stories that bring success. Every time you look at a Levis jeans you remember the rivet story. Good stories stick on and make the brand name stick on too.

Stories don’t just save lives

There was woman named Scheherazade who was one of the many slaves of the Sultan. The Sultan was known for beheading anyone who displeased him. The intelligent woman found a unique way to save her life… every night she told him a story, but would stop at the most exciting part and make the Sultan wait until the next evening to hear the end. For 1001 nights she did this. It impressed the king so much that he not only granted her life, but also married her.

A great story is what is responsible for the survival of great brands too. We all love stories. We love to listen to them, narrate them & we all love great story tellers. Great stories never die – look at the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Similarly great brands built on great stories live on.

“Intel Inside” is one of the shortest, yet one of the most successful stories ever told. Not many know or understand the benefit of an Intel processor in their computer, yet it’s these two words that make them feel confident that they have made the right choice.

According to some thinkers what really turns a product into a “brand” is intelligent “PR” (Public Relations). You need to let out an interesting story to the media, for people to notice you. Later on, advertising can be used to sustain the brand & survive. One company that used it the best to its advantage was the UK-based “Innocent” brand of smoothies. There was a “story” woven into every ‘P’ of marketing, right from the name – well chosen, to represent that everything in the bottle was “fresh and unadulterated” to the packaging. Short on budget, they launched the drink from a stall put up in a little music festival in London. On top of their stall they put up a sign which read thus: “Do you think we should give up our jobs to make these smoothies?” and put two bins labeled “Yes” & “No”. If you liked the smoothies you had to put the empty bottles in the “Yes” bin. At the end of the weekend the “Yes” bin was full. The two friends resigned from their jobs, and “Innocent” was born. Not just the brand name, even the logo & the packaging was designed in such a manner as to tell the story of their company’s philosophy. Their aim was to design the packaging such that it told a three word story i.e. the contents are “home-made, natural, and posh.” This helped them differentiate from the hundreds of “fresh juice” brands crowding the marketplace. The space behind the logo on the bottle was used to put down a “banana phone” number where you could call and let the company know what you thought about smoothies. You could even mail them. The unique way of telling your story via the packaging caught the fancy of consumers & shook up the beverage market. The company showed it was a good story & not big budgets that was required to win over customers & market share.

Look at great brands, and you are bound to find an interesting story. Coca- Cola, has the story of its secret formula locked up in the headquarters in Atlanta, KFC has stories of its 11 secret spices that make its chicken so “finger lick in’ good”. It’s not because Harley Davidson is the best bike in the world that people are ready to wait for months to get their dream machine, willing to pay a premium for it. When they buy a Harley, they buy a little bit of its heritage, its history too! What’s history but a great story told down the generations, which gives the brands that enigma, that power to stand out.

Stories don’t just build market share

Think of your favourite advertisements & most of them would be those that tell a story, which does not necessarily brag about the products’ attributes. The Zoozoo ads are so watchable not because the characters are so cute, but also because each ad has a short story to tell.

“They laughed when I sat down at the Pram, but when I started to play…” one of the most memorable headlines in advertising, Why? Because it told a story. Stories help build emotional connections with people. For years Coors beer told the world about its “unrelenting commitment to brewing with only Rocky mountain water” through its advertisement. This created a perception in the minds of consumers that the beer must be crisp & great to taste because of the mountain water.

If you can tell an interesting story in 60 seconds you can build a great brand. FedEx, made a whole new business model on the basis of a simple story line “wherever your destination, in the United States, your parcel would reach by 10 am the next day”. People loved it & even used it in a movie. As Julia Roberts jumps onto a FedEx truck to escape from her marriage in the movie “The Runaway Bride”, a spectator remarks, “Where’s she going?” His friend answers “Wherever it is, she will reach by 10 AM.” Great stories live on. The Aesop’s fables were written in 300 B.C. and we still read them & enjoy them today. There are some stories that are always a hit. The “rags-toriches” stories, the “underdog” stories and the “Cinderella” stories always work. Look at Hollywood or Bollywood to see how year after year, such stories are churned out and continue to keep the cash registers jingling.

Bedtime stories to Brand stories

As children, we found bedtime stories irresistible. As adult consumers, it’s ‘Brand’ stories that intrigue us. Barack Obama, built his ‘brand’ on an interesting story of “Change”. America’s first black President – it was a story every kid liked and wanted to turn to reality. Princess Diana was an interesting story of a simple girl turning into the “People’s Princess”. It is claimed that Oprah Winfrey cooked-up stories of her povertystricken childhood because they worked. Everyone loves the rags-to-riches story… Shahrukh is one of them.

In the 1890s, William Foster added spikes to the soles of his shoes to help athletes run faster. Soon the best athletes were wearing them. The runners featured in the film Chariots of Fire, wore them. Which brand? If you guessed “Nike”, I just proved my point! The brand was not Nike, it was Reebok. Nike came a full 70 years later. Phil Knight understood the power of a story & never failed to talk about one, be it the fact that Nike was named after the Greek Goddess of victory (Reebok too was named after an ancient God) or how he added a special waffle e pattern to help athletes run faster. Reebok never used stories to build on its heritage. Nike did. A good brand comes not just with good quality but good stories too. Similarly a good ad is no more about telling your USP (Unique Selling Proposition), but your “unique story proposition”.

Be it a family, a society, a country, everyone needs a good story teller to guide, & motivate others & make the world a happy place. Stories stimulate imaginations, changes or help build perceptions. They touch our deepest human emotions. Winston Churchill used his story of “Hope”. Hitler was one of the greatest story teller too!

Stories build leaders & brands. Remember, the charm of Camp Fire Nights were stories. So as you build your brand ask yourself “What’s my story”.

Learn From Others Mistakes!

For today’s marketers, new brand failures imply burning shame. But many in the past have learnt lessons and succeeded after the great tumble; the failures were worth it!

A whole generation of thoroughbreds has been evangelised to practice perfection. Getting it right, every time, has become a religion. Amelioration is the word for the present. It’s really not an age for failures – not for men, not for companies, and worse, not even for the most generic of brands. For marketers, failure of a brand means nothing less than blasphemy! But do such outcomes call for unforgivable sentences for the makers of brands? Granted, no brand failure is praiseworthy, but lessons on “how to succeed” that can be learnt from most brand failure tales are worth a read.

LESSON #1: Don’t kill an established brand simply to introduce a new one; brands take years to build and are invaluable.
The most classic example when it comes to failure of a brand is the case of the New Coke in 1985, which is quoted by some as the biggest brand collapse of all times. 100 years after Coke was launched, things had changed; competition had. There was Pepsi-Cola willing to fight Coke. By the time Roberto Goizueta became the CEO in 1981, Coke’s numero uno status had started appearing vulnerable. Coke was fast slipping and the prime reason was Pepsi- Cola. Pepsi had already proven to the world in the 1970s with its Pepsi Challenge, how blindfolded drinkers preferred the sweeter Pepsi-cola over Coke. It was only Coke’s superior distribution network that was keeping it ahead (for instance, there were still more Coke vending machines in US than Pepsi-Cola’s). Goizueta deciphered the problem to be the ‘product’ itself. He assumed that Coke would lose out to Pepsi soon because of its taste. That was 1984. A year later, the Atlanta-based giant decided to give to the world the ‘New Coke’, which was sweeter and closer to Pepsi- Cola in taste. Coca-cola conducted 200,000 taste tests in the pilot testing stage. The results made Goizueta smile. The research had proven how the New Coke was preferred over Pepsi-cola. Goizueta, drunk on the forecasted success of the New Coke, even decided to halt the production of the old Coke. Following the April 23, 1985, launch, a large percentage of Coke-drinkers in US decided to boycott the new product. A few days later, when the production of the old Coke was halted, this further angered the masses – a double blow! New Coke didn’t sell, and Goizueta was forced to get the old version back. “We have heard you,” confessed Goizueta on July 11, 1985. Even Donald Keough, the-then COO of Coca- Cola, publicly said, “All the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to the original Coca-Cola felt by so many people.”

So, what was wrong with the New Coke? To begin with, the 101 year-old ‘Old’ Coke defined American glory and the passion for it was what had kept the brand on its wheels despite its taste being inferior to its rival’s. Coca Cola’s top brass forgot in one instant that it takes eons to build a brand; and dramatic one-trick-ponies, like the New Coke, stood no chance in front of the Old Coke due to this outstanding brand value. Coca Cola in reality should have concentrated on the original brand’s perception and simply delivered what the consumers needed without trying to over-innovate. They should have not looked around for problems with the product when it didn’t have any – having an inferior taste is not an issue, having an inferior perception is; as Jack Trout, author of Differentiate or Die, writes, “Marketing is a battle of perceptions, not products.” Any attempt to foolhardily copy rivals is wrong. With New Coke, the company was simply trying to clone Pepsi-Cola. But what Goizueta got right is that he showed fearlessness when it came to reverting to the classic Coke. That helped establish a “New” bond between the brand and its consumers. Today, Coca-cola is the most valued brand on the planet, valued at $64.9 billion by Interbrand (as of 2009).

LESSON #2: Don’t over-innovate and provide to consumers features they do not desire.
The legendary Ford Motors also went through an expensive embarrassment, known to be the most hyped-up failure in the auto industry till date. ‘There has never been a car like the Edsel’ is what Ford promised through its ads. The publicity began an year before the Edsel was launched (in September 1957). To increase crowd curiousness, even dealers were strictly warned to keep the cars “under covers” till the time they were given the permission. Expectations were high. The pre-publicity initially showed promise and people rushed into Ford’s showrooms on the date of launch to catch a glimpse of the new model from Ford, which was supposed to be revolutionary – the footfalls touched 3 million in US, in just the first seven days post-launch! The model was supposedly an example of innovation in the car industry. It had a number of new features which were the first in the industry – a rather “different” front-end grille, self-adjusting brakes, an electronic hood release and an extremely advanced and powerful engine for a mid-segment car. It was meant to be a treat for auto-lovers.

The market however didn’t want the “new” features. The car disappointed the potential buyers, who in turn disappointed Ford. Edsel sold just 64,000 vehicles within a year of its launch, which spelled a big failure for the brand (as opposed to a sales target of 200,000 units). Henry Ford II tried harder, made more changes, innovated the model further and launched two new versions of the Edsel in 1959 and 1960. Result: sales fell further (the Edsel 1959 version sold 44,891 units, while the 1960 model sold a shameful 2,846 units). The Edsel had to be relegated to the grave. The last advertisement of the model was seen in November 1959, post which, Edsel was scrapped.

So what were the mistakes? With the new model, Ford offered too much to buyers, which automatically resulted in Edsel’s price tag shooting northwards – unreasonable for the sceptic buyers. There was inadequate market research conducted and Ford failed to understand what the customers really desired. Surprisingly, the company spent millions of dollars on collecting possible names for the new car before coming up with a ghastly pale one like Edsel (which was the name of Henry Ford II’s father!). Secondly, the company created a hype around an ‘untested’ product. Gayle Warnock, PR Director for the Edsel launch, said thus in a confession much later: “I learned that a company should never allow its spokespersons to build up enthusiasm for an unseen, unproven product.” Edsel also fell fl at on the “Style” differentiation front, and ignored visual appeal completely – a huge mistake, especially when we talk about cars. However, Ford learnt its lesson soon and made no mistake with the Mustang, which became one of the legendary trademarks of Ford. It was launched in 1964, and sold 500,000 units in just the fi rst year of its rollout. A better name, less experimentation with innovation, better looking (rather simple looking), and most importantly, it was affordable for the technology and style it offered.

LESSON #3: Providing the best quality product in the industry will get you nowhere, unless you remember Kotler’s basic ‘P’remises and accept that the ‘product’ makes up only one of the Ps in the marketing mix!
For this, a brilliant failure has been in the consumer electronics domain. In 1975, Sony developed a home video recording equipment for consumers, which ran on Betamax technology. It sold 30,000 units in US in the first year. Over the next two years, five companies, which were Sony’s rivals, released the Video Home System (VHS, initially patented by JVC). The sound and video quality of the VHS launched were inferior to that of the Betamax, but the convenience of use and wide availability made it a more attractive buy for the consumers. By 1987, VHS had captured 95% share of the US market. Sony finally withdrew the Betamax and announced plans to get into the VHS market in January 1988. The mistake that Sony made was that not only did it refuse to associate with any other electronic major (while JVC shared its VHS technology with others), it also refused to look beyond its product quality. Kotler didn’t make his millions for nothing. He proved long back that the product only accounts for that much. There are many more Ps that play significantly greater roles, if not more, than the quality of the product.

LESSON #4: Diversify yes, but with some transferred competencies; doing otherwise would be a sure shot failure.
McDonald’s learnt a lesson with the failure of its Arch Deluxe burger (which it marketed as the ‘Burger with the Grown-up Taste’) in 2001. The core concept was to bring-in “sophistication” into the brand, so that it could provide a burger which was not linked to kids. Even the ads showed children ignoring the product. Did McDonald’s succeed? Surely not. The exercise was one of the biggest disaster launches of Mc- Donald’s. And clearly because the global giant forgot to transfer competent strengths in their attempts to diversify. A saying goes that you can sell new products to your old target group, you can sell old products to your new target groups, but you simply cannot sell new products to new target groups that easily. McDonald’s forgot that its brand offerings stood for “simplicity and convenience” and not “sophistication”, and especially when for ages they had developed their competence in understanding the buying behaviour of kids. As I mentioned, diversification is great, provided there is some sense to it – in other words, a leveraged competence.

All the above examples were failures, but surely, lessons learnt. It doesn’t matter if any of your brands have failed. It’s not some hazard that has struck an adventure-seeking corporation for the first time. Your shareholders and employees know that there is as much chance for your new product to fail, as there is for a snowfall on a cold Christmas night in the Alps. Remember, Thomas Edison conducted over 10,000 experiments before he managed to invent the light bulb, which brought him much fame and wealth. It was also his first success, which ultimately led to what we know as the fourth-most valued brand on Earth today - GE (valued at $47.8 billion in 2009 as per Interbrand). Experiment. Fail. Learn. Experiment again. Don’t repeat your failure. Succeed! It’s that simple with a brand.

The essay is taken from A. Sandeep's Blog

Insights Into Bloggers

With blogs becoming an increasingly popular way for Internet users to get information, it is interesting to see where this content is coming from and who’s writing it. SYSOMOS has recently released the findings of an interesting study about the blogosphere using data gathered through their social media monitoring and analytics platform. They analyzed more than 100 million blog posts that provided information about their age, gender and location information. Here are some interesting findings:

Age – Not surprisingly, the most active bloggers are younger people who have grown up during the blogging “revolution”, which started about seven years ago. Bloggers in the 21-to-35 year-old demographic group account for 53.3% of the total blogging population. This group is followed by the generation just behind them – people 20-years-old or under are 20.2% of the blogging landscape. This group is closely followed by 36-to-50 year-olds (19.4%) , while bloggers who are 51-years-old and older only account for 7.1%.

Gender – The difference between genders in the blogosphere is balanced with women making up 50.9% and males 49.1% of bloggers. This suggests the Internet is a gender neutral environment.

Location – It should not be much of a surprise that the most bloggers (29.2%) are located in the U.S. In fact, there are more than four times as many bloggers in the U.S. as there are in the second most populated country within the blogosphere – the U.K., which is home to 6.75% of bloggers. Japan accounts for the third-most bloggers (4.9%), followed by Brazil (4.2%), Canada (3.9%), Germany (3.3%), Italy (3.2%), Spain (3.1%), France (2.9%) and Russia (2.3%). India is contributes just 2.14% of the bloggers.

What do you think of these findings? Any surprises?

Women Addicted To Facebook??

The following is not my article but found it interesting. So here it goes! A must read for all the guys here it goes..

Young women are becoming more and more dependent on social media and checking on their social networks, according to a new study released earlier today by Oxygen Media and Lightspeed Research. In fact, as many as one-third of women aged 18-34 check Facebook when they first wake up, even before they get to the bathroom.

The study sampled the habits of 1,605 adults using social media between May and June of this year in an attempt to break down their social media habits. While some of the results are in line with previous studies we’ve read, others simply shocked us (e.g. 42% of young women think posting photos of themselves “visibly intoxicated” is okay).

Here’s a short rundown of how young women are utilizing Facebook and social media in general:

Are Young Women Addicted to Facebook?

While the study covers all of social media, it’s clear that women in the 18-34 range are focused on their Facebook accounts. More than half of young women (57%) say they talk to people online more than face-to-face. A full 39% of them proclaim themselves Facebook addicts, while 34% of young women make Facebook the first thing they do when they wake up, even before brushing their teeth or going to the bathroom.

Here are some other interesting stats regarding young women and Facebook:

• 21% of women age 18-34 check Facebook in the middle of the night
• 63% use Facebook as a networking tool
• 42% think it’s okay to post photos of themselves intoxicated
• 79% are fine with kissing in photos
• 58% use Facebook to keep tabs on “frenemies”
• 50% are fine with being Facebook friends with complete strangers

What conclusions can we draw from this data? It’s not just that young women are using Facebook religiously: it’s that they’re very open with what they post and who they accept as friends. Combined, it can lead to a privacy mess.

Social Media’s role in Dating

We already knew that Facebook has radically changed dating, and Oxygen Media’s stats only back up that assertion. 50% of women believe that it’s just fine to date people they’ve met on Facebook, compared to 65% of men. 6% of women use it to “hook up” (20% of men do the same).

It gets murkier for relationships. 49% of women believe it’s fine to keep tabs on a boyfriend by having access to his accounts (42% of men think the same way). 9% of women have broken up their relationships via Facebook, as compared to a full 24% of men.

Luckily, most women don’t believe that breaking up via Facebook is okay: 91% to be exact. I don’t want to meet the 9% who think it’s just fine.

Women and Privacy

The Oxygen Media/Lightspeed Research survey is filled with a lot of other interesting data points, but it all circles back to the privacy issue. 54% of 18-24 year old women do not trust Facebook with their private information, and 89% agree that “you should never put anything on Facebook that you don’t want your parents to see.” That seems contradictory to the 42% that think it’s fine to post pictures of themselves drunk.

Our habits are changing due to social media technology, particularly Facebook. It’s not just a connection tool for many women, but a research tool, a dating network, and a way to keep tabs on both boyfriends and enemies.