The brand pecking order

 

Photo by Sid Balachandran on Unsplash

If I worked for a brand, especially a stonking big global brand, I think I’d be a little choosy about whose brand ranking system I chose to hang my hat on. Of course, there are almost as many brand ranking systems as there are brands these days.

In an idle moment, I had a look at the brand hit parade of a couple of the big players in the brand ranking game. The Big Daddy (Interbrand) and relative new kid on the block Kantar (BrandZ). 

Now, both of these have a black box to calculate brand value, but from what I can tell, these are on the same principle - factor in financial value/analysis, plus the brand strength/equity and role/contribution of the brand. And Bob’s your uncle, or something.

The Top 20s look like this:

OK, at the top of the table, we’ve got AMAG, or GAMA - not “MAGA” this year (to the relief of many).

And there are one or two brand positions where the two rankers are more-or-less in agreement - Instagram, Oracle, McDonald’s, YouTube.

But then there are some huge discrepancies. Coca-Cola is No. 7 Interbrand, No. 20 Kantar. For Facebook and Nvidia, the pattern is reversed - (Facebook 19/6, Nvidia 15/5). 

And whole categories - Luxury Brands (Louis Vuitton 12 on Interbrand, 32 on Kantar), consumer electronics (Samsung 5 on Interbrand, 61 on Kantar). 

Finally, look at cars. Toyota is 6 on Interbrand, 84 on Kantar. Mercedes-Benz and BMW are 10 and 14 respectively on Interbrand but don’t even make the Top 100 in Kantar.

Perhaps there are some methodological things I’ve missed, such as eligibility criteria - quite possible.

But I wonder how much is due to the two rankers’ beliefs as to what constitutes a strong brand? Is it coincidence that Interbrand - who’ve been in this game since the last century - have more substantial legacy-type brands in the Top 20? 

Whatever the answer, it just goes to show there are many ways to value a brand.

I wonder if anyone has done a ranking of the brand rankers? 

 

Potemkin Perfection

 

I don’t often read recently-published novels. Probably due to my weird penchant for living in the past, and I often think the old stuff is going to be more enduring. But now and then I have a go at something new, and, in the case of Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, I was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s what I made of this tale of two digital nomads set in the first two decades of the 21st century:

-------------------------------------

This is a brilliantly observed novel, describing in detail the life on- and offline of a young couple, from the early 2000s to 2019. I say “the life” in singular, as Anna and Tom, digital creatives, are written mainly as one entity. The pair are originally from Italy, but find their way to buzzy Berlin at the time of the digital boom and the rise of social media.

Reading the first few pages, you wonder if you’ve stumbled into a talking IKEA catalogue or similar. The style is unemotional, descriptive, rather flat. This is curious initially, but soon mesmerising as you drift into a curated, algorithmically determined world where the public persona rules supreme and reality is “stuffed away into huge, clear storage boxes.”

Of the couple, the author writes: “Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating”. Their Instagram world of curated ephemera includes vintage clothes, cupcakes, crystalline coastlines, airy apartments, flowers and book covers. And “they would find themselves utterly mesmerised by the apartment, kale salad or kitten of someone living two blocks or two continents away. They would get worked up about silly fights between strangers.”

Offline, Anna and Tom live in a similar bubble, together with kindred ex-pat creatives. They frequent trendy clubs, Instagrammable restaurants and edgy art exhibitions. This bubble is like a 21st century global digital version of a Potemkin village - curiously flat and lacking in substance.

Gradually, the pair recognise a lack of purpose or fulfillment and attempt to rectify this via volunteer work in a refugee camp. But their digital creative skills cannot be usefully deployed here.

As the years pass, the couple sense the pain of a generational change and leave Berlin, returning to Southern Europe. Although the ending hints at a new stability, one cannot ignore the date - 2019. My mind continued to tick over when I’d finished the book, wondering what happened to Anna & Tom (and their ilk) in the pandemic.

Insightful, thought-provoking, well-written and translated, “Perfection” evokes the spirit of the early 21st century in Europe (almost) perfectly.

-------------------------------------

And even though I’m a little older than the protagonists, I had several ouch-been-there-done-that-moments.

Needless to say. I read Perfection on my Kindle, as is my wont these days. I still hanker after real books, to be honest, yet this was the perfect book to read on Kindle, which enhances that flat, Potemkin village feeling. 

Just as I’d finished the book, though, I saw a wonderful sight just down the road which could just be the start of the way back to real books. It’s kind of the opposite of a Potemkin village - an inside-out bookshop - Bruchköbel’s very own bricks and mortar brand.

Our relocated local bookshop, the Rathaus Buchhandlung, designed by the Artbau Gruppe. Congratulations to all concerned, and much success with the new shop. 

 

BILLY and the circular book club

 

Pre-owned is growing like nobody’s business. Second-hand clothing, for example, was worth $141 bn in 2021 and will likely reach $230 bn this year, with an estimate of hitting $350 bn by 2028. 

IKEA, whose 20th century war-cry in the UK was “Chuck out your Chintz” is now a paragon of sustainable thinking and doing - and strives to be a circular company by 2030. Joining the IKEA Buy-Back Service is a peer-to-peer marketplace, IKEA Preowned. It’s starting off in Madrid, but aims to roll out globally in the next few months. This is a good example of how AI is helping make good ideas a reality. 

And what better way to celebrate your new-old BILLY bookcase than to fill it with a few new-old books? But don’t sleepwalk your automatic pilot to Amazon. There’s a new way now which benefits both indie bookshops and authors. It’s called Bookloop and it has been set up by Bookshop.org partnering with the Society of Authors and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. This means that a % of royalties will go to authors - something that Amazon wouldn’t dream of doing.

All aboard the literary carousel and off we go!

I wonder if you’ll find this one there?

Seek - and WHAT will you find?

 

Something has flickered at the edge of my attention for the last few weeks when I’ve been on Amazon. Up to today, my brain had noted “oh, there’s what looks like an AI summary of reviews” and I hadn’t bothered to read further.

But today I had a look. The feature is headed “customers say” and is “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.” I started with a music stand I’d bought a couple of years back for £14.99. Here’s what the AI rehashed from thousands of reviews:

Customers say

Customers appreciate the value, ease of folding, and ease of assembly of the product. They mention it works well, is easy to put up, and adjust for all heights. Customers also like its lightweight design. However, some customers have mixed opinions on its sturdiness.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

My pernickety side would probably take issue with some of this, but it’s useful enough for a relatively low-price, functional purchase.

But how would the AI fare with something more literary? Amazon did start out in books after all, whatever their plans for world domination.

I took a book I read last year which, to fit the topic, features a robot as the main protagonist: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro:

Customers say

Customers find the prose wonderful, flawless, and incredibly readable. They also find the story interesting and engaging. Opinions are mixed on the character development, with some finding them well-drawn and unforgettable, while others say they're thin and not satisfactorily described. Reviews are mixed also on the boring plot. Occupants have mixed feelings about the emotional content, with those who find it sad and heartbreaking, while those who say it's unconvincing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews 

Who are those “occupants”? Something to do with inter-planetary craft? This bland and badly-composed summary would hardly help me in deciding this was a book I’d love - or hate.

For contrast, my review of the novel is here. I even get an IKEA reference in!

Now, I know Amazon will be working to iron out bugs, and I may well eat my words when I look back in a couple of years to re-read this. But, to me, it’s yet more evidence of the tendency to lump ratings and reviews together, to go for the lowest common denominator, to smoothify and blandify everything, to dock the long tail and snip off all that’s individual, quirky, odd-but-fascinating, the bits that don’t fit ...

And this is what’s happening in the area of Search. I listened in to a Gartner seminar yesterday on the Future of Search. After some initial and well-publicised hiccoughs, Google now provide AI overviews, (along with a resource carousel of links) to typical search queries. The feature is available in the US and some other markets. The example shown by Gartner was a simple “electric vs gas dryer”:

   

Helpful enough, I guess - and Gartner gave plenty of marketing tips to make sure your brand ends up in the overview or the carousel. 

The functional advantages of electric and gas dryers are one thing, though. Whether to read Klara and the Sun or Brave New World next is quite another - as is any question or decision that involves human intellect, taste, culture, emotion, past experience, hopes, dreams and anything else full of nuance and impossible to measure. 

I’m all for AI providing information that could be helpful when choosing what to buy.  I look forward to Google (and others) rolling out this kind of overview as an option. But, in the race to be first, I hope they don’t cut down the inspire and discover side of search in favour of definitive answers. 

Cory Doctorow’s vision of the AI Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, and the metaphor of feeding cows a slurry made from the diseased brains of other cows is grim, but not entirely implausible. 

Hell’s bells!

 

I’ve been harping on about Purpose for nearly as long as this old blog has been going. There’s this post, and this one here, then this one about all those Whys and Hows and Whats and their chums, or this about the lack of humility demonstrated by brands (or their managers), and musing on whether brands can save the world. Or not. 

Or you can do a search, or press “purpose” on the RHS, and you’ll undoubtably find many more.

Author Nick Asbury has been way smarter about his thoughts on Purpose, formulated them all into a coherent story, and published a book which was officially launched last night.

Here’s a review I did earlier.

----------------------------------

“Your business is none of my politics”

This book is the story of how the idea of a mandatory “higher social purpose beyond profit” gripped the corporate world, especially those involved in brand marketing and advertising. And the result: how purpose leads to bad marketing - and a worse world.

It’s a view, a perspective, backed up with substance, not an academic paper or text book (thank goodness). A lot of the argument resonated with me personally. Although I don’t agree with every word (which would be weird), this book has been an immense help to me in working out why I’ve felt some unease in my work as a freelance brand consultant over the last few years.

I guess everyone who works in brands or marketing has taken their own byway to Nick’s “Road to Hell”. Setting up as a freelancer in 2003, I was interested in how to reconcile integrity and responsibility with business. CSR was the buzzword of the time. Two ex-colleagues of mine from Saatchis, Giles Gibbons & Steve Hilton, had recently set up a consultancy called Good Business and written a book with the same title, described as a “radical manifesto for capitalism.”

To cut a long story short, I supported the concept of corporate (maybe not brand) purpose for many years, until I noticed that it had been hijacked and metamorphised into something else. In the book, this politicising of brands is covered in detail. I still remember the days when I worked for major brands who prided themselves on being “for everyone” and made a point of actively discouraging communication that could be perceived as political.

“The Road to Hell” is free of finger-pointing, preaching and ranting. It’s written with intelligence, charm, humour - and, most importantly, hope. There is redemption - it’s up to us to follow the pointers and find it. And not be too proud to retrace our footsteps.

I don’t buy business books often these days. So many of those lurking in airport bookshops tend to go stale very quickly. But “The Road to Hell” is one that will stand up to re-reading in years to come.

----------------------------------

As an interesting aside, that’s the version posted on Goodreads.

I tried with my friends at Amazon.

They told me to go to “H-word place” with my disgusting review.

No comment. 

Gone are the days when they lauded me as a Top1000 reviewer, but today they only really rate ratings.

Everything, everywhere, all at once

 

According to Interbrand, Amazon is the world’s third biggest and most valuable brand. Next year, the company will clock up 30 years in business. I’ve watched it grow from an “internet bookstore” (how quaint) through a destroyer of the small and local to a paragon of customer-centric brand virtue (according to Interbrand). And back and forth again. Amazon nows occupies a position of what I’d call uneasy ubiquity.

My own relationship with Amazon illustrates this perfectly. I resist Amazon as default, in the same way that I avoid booking.com. And yet - I’m trapped with my Kindle. And sometimes, Amazon is the only practical option. 

This is what Amazon have understood. And it’s what they understand by customer-centric (rather than people-centric). When people are in customer mode, when there’s something they really, really, want, and they want it quickly and cheaply, reliably delivered, noble principles go out of the window. Amazon understand the power of “make it easy, make it convenient.”

So, when you already offer “everything”, where can you go from there to make things even easier? You try at “everywhere”. So people don’t even have to leave their favourite social media app, let alone their armchair for (almost) instant gratification. Amazon have partnered with Meta, as well as Pinterest and Snapchat to link your account and shipping address for a check-out without checking-out of the app. 

I won’t be joining in, as I’m old and contrary. But I doubt that’s of much concern to Amazon. They are probably more perturbed that, at this stage at least, TikTok aren’t playing ball, either.

Sharemongering

 

During the 20-teens, pre-Covid, I got terribly excited about “The Sharing Economy”. My trusty trend-forecaster newsletter contacts did, too - forever sending little examples of apps for sharing anything from leftover food to power tools to skills. My response was always the same - wow! Great idea! Must try it out. Then I’d look at the app, or the website and remember that I live in Bruchköbel, a German town in rural Hessen with 20,000 inhabitants who are unlikely to be early adopters of such gizmos. Why not? Well, I’ll come to that, but the clue is in the photos above.

There’s an article about the death of the Sharing Economy in Fast Company. Or at least what we all got excited about ten or fifteen years back. The article goes through the history of the idea - how tech put us on the path away from ownership and towards collective peer-to-peer good. Looking back, some of the orignal Sharing Economy players are still going strong - from Airbnb to Uber. And I think the food sharing app OLIO is doing OK, too, having gone into toys, toiletries, tupperware and stuff. Ditto, Peerby - although the nearest neighbourhood I could find is in Holland.

But generally, the article concludes that the sharing power drills with neighbours concept hasn’t really taken off. While people like the idea in theory (and of course, it ticks a few virtue-signalling boxes), in the end they can’t be a**ed because for a few quid more you could get the thing delivered from Amazon. Many of the original Sharing Economy players that have survived have - rather like ebay - started off peer-to-peer then ended up becoming more and more dominated by companies and corporates rather than private individuals.

I still get those newsletters, though - and here’s a recent-ish sharing economy thing that’s trying to make fashion more sustainable with its “community of expert seamstresses” - Sojo. And looking at the website, I was reminded the following:

    - someone in the Bruchköbel Facebook Forum offering a box of limes and lemons to whoever was        first to come and collect

    - a hand-written sign on a garden gate to say that they had fresh eggs to give away today

    - walking past the two local tailors/seamstresses that are practically next door to each other (and I am sure there are one or two others in the town)

And I wonder - who needs the diversion, the middleman, the app? Both from a point of view of fiddliness and inconvenience, but also something more fundamental when it comes to “local” and “community.” I’ve had hotel owners requesting me to please, please book direct rather than through one of the big booking websites. It’s to do with money, of course, but also maintaining individuality and integrity.

I can understand the reluctance of many small local businesses to get caught up on these global platforms - in the same way that I won’t be touting my wares on Fiverr.  

 

Ve have ways of making your talk work

 

It’s awfully easy to get carried away with AI and machine learning and become convinced that us human-beings might as well give up and crawl back into the primordial soup. Especially if most of those breathless trend and future reports can be believed.

But every so often, in the real world, there’s an amusing reminder that the machines aren’t quite there, yet.

A couple I know (German) have an Alexa device. They’ve had this thing for a few years and it’s always been a source of immense frustration that it just doesn’t understand me. Or rather, my voice. The thing is, these friends have a different taste in music to mine, but every time they (kindly) offer me the possibility of choosing something, Alexa goes on strike.

But no more.

Last night, I discovered the secret.

Just for a laugh, I tried pronouncing the song titles and names of groups in a dreadful cod German accent, worthy of a 1950s British war film.

Was it my threatening tone, or simply what she was used to? Whatever, Alexa obliged, no problem.

From Vigvem Bem to Vair doo yo go to my lofley to Zree leetle birds to Shildren of ze revolusion, all my orders were understood and played by Alexa.

 Result.

Just have to remember now to ham it up next time I’m on the phone to the bank.

RETROWURST: Tchibo January 2005

 

What tickles me about some of the Retrowurst articles that I unearth is the sheer sense of glee I evidently had in writing them. Take the following article, written in January 2005, when I was clearly in thrall to Tchibo, if not completely enchanted by the brand. “Starbucks meets Innovations!” - not my words, but that obviously captured my imagination regarding this strangely German institution. No wonder, perhaps - Tchibo at this stage was Germany’s third largest “internet retailer” (how quaint) after Amazon and Ebay. Why, I even believed that Tchibo were aiming at offering mass market trips to the moon.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To start the new year, I thought I’d write a piece on a familiar face on German high streets for 50 years, which has recently also found its feet in the UK (if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor); Tchibo.

 

In a retail climate which seems beset by losses, redundancies or desperate attempts at ‘pile it high, sell it cheap and scream about it’, Tchibo is one of the few retailers that are actually doing reasonably well here, along with Aldi and Ikea. This does seem to have something to do with having a good concept and sticking to it but Tchibo’s concept does really seem quite weird at first glance. I saw it described as ‘Starbucks meets Innovations’ on a UK website and I think it really is an example of a concept that has evolved through mutation and adaptation to be successful. That is, it is a concept that would have been strangled at birth had anyone had the audacity to come up with such an idea in the post-war 1949 German version of a brainstorming.

 

Tchibo is currently a concern with 10,000 employees and 54,000 purchase outlets in Germany. As a retailer, it has 99% awareness in Germany. Tchibo sells not only coffee but also household goods, flowers, mobile phone services, insurance and holidays. You can buy goods and services from Tchibo via their shops, from store-in-store in the supermarket or bakery, via the magazine or mail order or over the internet. Their ambition is to offer the first mass market trips to the moon.

 

However, none of this happened overnight and one can quite understand the initial wariness of the Dutch, Brits or Poles when confronted with the full-blown Tchibo concept 2005. Tchibo had very a simple and one-dimensional concept at its birth- the company was established by Max Herz and Carl Tchilling-Hiryan in 1949 as a mail-order coffee company. The name Tchibo actually comes from a mix of the name Tchilling with the word for ‘bean’ in German, Bohnen.

 

The first Tchibo shop opened in Germany in 1955; what was unusual was that people could actually try the coffee before buying. Moving this to its next logical step, Tchibo set up mini-stores in bakeshops in 1963, where people could eat a roll or cake and enjoy a cup of coffee at the same time, not forgetting to buy a pack to take home with them. In the next decade, in 1972, the third ‘prong’ of Tchibo’s concept was introduced; the launch of weekly-changing consumer goods under the TCM brand name. The first goods offered were not a million miles away from coffee, being mainly kitchenware. However, Tchibo gradually branched out into other areas such as home textiles and fashions. By 1996 the mail-order arm was established and Tchibo made its first offers in the holidays and tourism category. In 1997 Tchibo went online and is now Germany’s third largest Internet retailer behind Ebay and Amazon. The late 90s and early 2000s saw Tchibo continuing its international expansion with the first shop opening in the UK in 2000.

 

Perhaps the biggest clue to Tchibo’s success is to look at its customers. With a consistent promise of change, ‘Jede Woche eine neue Welt’ or ‘A new experience every week’, Tchibo taps into and reconciles one of the biggest paradoxes in our lives- the need for stability and consistency and the need for change and newness. The result of this strategy means that many customers simply become Tchibo junkies. Tchibo is like a drug, complete with withdrawal symptoms if one ‘misses’ what’s on this week. According to the market research company Icon, 42% of Tchibo’s customers are ‘Tchibo lovers’ or the extreme loyal. Even Ikea with its cult following and over 30 years in Germany can only boast 23% of its customers being ‘Ikea lovers’, according to Icon. On a consumer forum recently, a 23-year-old woman and self-confessed Tchibo-junkie admitted to being so impressed with an ‘Italian eating’ week at Tchibo that she immediately wanted to buy the full range of products on offer. Finding this a bit embarrassing, she bought half of the items at one Tchibo shop in the morning and the remaining half in another branch that afternoon!

 

What factors have made Tchibo so successful, apart from the consistent inconsistency (!) of its product range? First and foremost, Tchibo is part of German history which imbues the brand with trustworthiness, loyalty and a feeling that ‘you can’t go wrong’. This history is reinforced by the logo and colour scheme of a steaming coffee bean in gold and dark blue which acts as a positive emotional anchor, literally sending a warming glow straight to many (23m households) German’s hearts. For many Germans, Tchibo’s advertising campaign from the 60s and 70s, featuring the same actor throughout on a quest for quality coffee on behalf of the people remains fresh in their minds.

 

Tchibo also has a role in making life easy for people. Arranging the consumer goods by themes rather than categories and offering only one choice per item (or, in the case of clothing, only one colour and a limited range of sizes) takes much of the time and uncertainty out of shopping. One assumes that Tchibo has done the work and research to select the best asparagus steamer; if camel is not my colour then I need look no further at the cashmere sweater on offer- take it or leave it; everything is simple. Another element to take it or leave it is ‘take it now’ as it is almost guaranteed not to be there next time I look; with the weekly turnover of offers and a new theme each week, Tchibo thrives on impulse purchase. Tchibo also has a pretty good knack of choosing themes and items that hit the tastes of the early majority. Tchibo send their scouts to ‘where it’s at’ - Tokyo for electronics, Milan for fashions or Canada for skiwear to check the pulse of the market. They are generally very good at gauging what’s about to be hot for the middle-market; some classic successes in Germany are the asparagus steamer, which appears every two years and one-offs like the ‘Jan-Ulrich bike’; a specialist bicycle for only €399 which led to mass-hysteria in the Tchibo stores. Of course there are flops too; in Autumn 2003, Tchibo tried to sell 1000 special-edition Fiat Stilos but this went down like a cup of cold coffee. A flop on a similar scale was a planned ‘Concert Event of the year- The three Divas’, featuring Whitney Houston, Natalie Cole and Dionne Warwick. Instead of the 200000 planned, the audience was a mere 45000.

 

The factor that perhaps best encapsulates Tchibo’s success is another paradox. Despite their size (and it is well-known that they now hold a majority stake in Beiersdorf and have their eyes set on ownership, although this is played down in public), Tchibo still gives the German public the impression of a small, local concern. This impression is partly derived from the ubiquity on the one hand but small size on the other of their outlets and from the limited at any point in time but rapidly changing product range. Tchibo are well-aware that others are hot on their heels with their own version of some of these success elements; Aldi for one have started ‘theming’ their weekly offers, be it ‘riding’ or ‘back to school’ and Aldi products are even more reasonably priced than Tchibo, although there is never a cup of coffee thrown in!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eighteen years later, Tchibo still operate on the “simultaneous need for consistency and novelty” principle, but in my eyes they need to dial up the “novelty” part of that. Too many others have latched onto the same formula. While I guess they haven’t actually drowned in the great digital transformation wave, I do feel Tchibo is stagnating, stuck in the doldrums, which is apparent from the sales figures which have declined since the glory days of the early 2000s. 

Every week, with reliable tedium, there’s a “new” world of loungewear, or yogawear, or mindfulness wear, all in drab shades of dirty rose, dull green and faded apricot. Even the promise of a loungesuit with cashmere for €208.95 isn’t tempting. 

Come on, Tchibo - where are those dreams of the moon? Or are you just past it.

Joy (and thoughtful dads) to the world

 

When I wrote this piece a couple of years back, we sort-of thought we’d soon see the back of Corona. Little did we think that over the next 18 months we’d be hit with a war on the doorstep and heating bills going through the roof (especially if said roof isn’t insulated).

I don’t normally get that excited about Christmas ads any more, but this year I have to admit that I was intrigued to see how the agencies captured the mood and dreams - or not. In my 2020 post, I hoped for a return to joy (or even better, glee, mirth, merriment and frivolous frolics as joy always seems a bit sanitised and churchy). And, lo and behold, “joy” plays a leading role in the ads from retailers Boots, Tesco and Amazon. 

Amazon’s theme of a dad going to great lengths to make his daughter’s Christmas special is also taken up by John Lewis - with a heartwarming twist. Could this mean ordinary, middle-aged men are no longer persona non grata in the ad world (unless they’re portraying a toxic sexist or a bumbling fool)? I do hope so!

Meanwhile, back in Germany, things are more serious. Discounter Penny’s powerful film Der Riss, which portrays the divisions in society and the need to talk our differences through, human to human, is the talk of the ad world and media here.

It’s a brilliantly-made film, no doubt about that. But is it right for Penny, and Christmas? I’ll stick my head above the parapet and say no. People do not need reminding of hate and misery, especially not this year. Despite the hopeful ending, the dramatic film ensures that it’s the negative images and feelings they evoke that stay with the viewer. Last year’s film Der Wunsch, about a mother and son, and how Covid has messed up young people’s lives was gentler, the focus on the two characters and their relationship, not “society out there”. I find it the better film for the client and context - and ultimately closer to real life.

Another big German advertiser, Deutsche Telekom, has also taken up encouraging us to talk, and ask each other how we are. Here’s Teacher, which has shades of It’s a Wonderful Life for me. 

And that’s one of my all-time favourite Christmas movies. 

A brand with a view

 I've always been a little queasy about the idea of brand loyalty, for reasons outlined in this post from 2013. Relationships, loyalty, Lovemarks - the whole tra-la-la. Interesting enough as an analogy, maybe, to kick off thinking, but in the end, brands ain't people. You don't get much back for your investment of faithfulness and duty.

Amazon demonstrate this again and again, despite all their claims to be the most customer-centric company in the solar system, or whatever it is. I've been writing book reviews for at least a decade and a half, and once reached the dizzy heights of being a Top 1000 reviewer, which I mistakenly took for recognition from my book-loving chums at Amazon. This year I was brought down to earth. My reviews, in English, of English language books, are no longer accepted by the UK or US sites. 

Why? It's transactional - and illogical. I spend buckets of money (yes, I know, I'm not proud) for Kindle books, but this all goes over the German site. So I can only post my reviews there. OK, not the end of the world, in the great scheme of things, but it makes me feel a touch miffed. 

Still, despite evidence to the contrary, the brand-as-human business isn't going away. In the last couple of years, it's taken on another form, which is possibly more alarming than all the brand-as-best-friend, brand-as-enabling-partner tosh.

Call it brand activism, purpose campaigning, venturing into the social and cultural space (why is everything a space these days?), taking a stance, having a point of view - brands are turning up the righteousness level on the virtual latter-day sandwich board of what should surely be re-named "political media".

This is bad enough, and of course you can ignore most of this guff, but the alternative is presented as "staying silent" or "bland corporate statements" - an implication of "if you're not with us, you're against us."

Well, I'd say this isn't the alternative. For me the alternative is to put the creative and media money and effort into creating distinctive, entertaining, useful or informative communications that sell the brand and grow the business.

Brand values are one thing, although whether these are distinctive is up for debate. Who doesn't want to have integrity and honesty? But a point of view? A human being has a point of view. A brand is not a human being, despite all the useful analogies. And as for the people who work for that brand - well, they are likely as not going to have different points of view. And this is a good thing. 

Insisting on a party line for a brand is absurd - and will only serve to make the world a dull place indeed.

Book binding

The notion of the customer relationship seems to be going out of fashion a little, perhaps muted by the increasing volume of "consumers don't want to have a relationship with your brand"-type clickbait headlines in marketing articles. Or maybe due to the obsessional focus on "the customer experience". But long-term experience, relationship, call it what you will is what this post is about.

Amazon is one of those brands that made a huge difference to my life. I often wonder whether it's the brand itself or the generic service of an online bookstore, but if so, Amazon was certainly the right brand in the right place for me in the late 1990s. No longer did I have to trek into Frankfurt to buy books in English. And in the early 2000s, as my son was young, Amazon was a godsend, both for the latest children's books and for tracking down old favourites from my childhood to read to him.

I started reviewing relatively late into my Amazon relationship - I've tracked down my first review, which was in May 2006. In the following 14 years, I've contributed over 300 reviews, mostly books, with the occasional CD or DVD thrown in. My reviews were always intended more for my own reference, but I was flattered when others commented on them or found them helpful. I had a brief season of fame as a Top 1000 reviewer, and was amassing 30, 40, 50, 60 helpful votes on each review on a regular basis. I felt valued, not just in terms of my custom, but also for my contribution and opinions.

It all started to go sour about six or seven years ago. Ratings, and putting a work of literature on the same level as a piece of cable or a packet of paper napkins, fake reviews, world domination, dubious business practices ... Amazon seemed far removed from the benevolent bookseller of the early days.

I carried on posting reviews, but with less enthusiasm. My Top 1000 crown had slipped, maybe because I wasn't reviewing the popular books, and maybe because I was only reviewing books, and not pieces of cable or packets of paper napkins. I started hearing reports about reviews being deleted if Amazon's algorithms detected a relationship (ha!) between the reviewer and the author.

Since October 2019, Amazon have made it official: ratings are what counts, reviews are by-the-by. And the star rating a book, or any other product, displays is not the simple average of all the ratings. Oh, no. That would be much too clear. Here's their explanation:

Amazon calculates a product’s star ratings based on a machine learned model instead of a raw data average. The model takes into account factors including the age of a rating, whether the ratings are from verified purchasers, and factors that establish reviewer trustworthiness.

Given that Amazon's ethos is about shiny new things, I seriously doubt that ratings are like wine: the age factor is, in all likelihood, a negative one. So the rating accompanying my well-thought out review in 2008 will be factored down compared to a bot giving a one-tap rating yesterday.

And most recently, I haven't even been able to post reviews on Amazon.co.uk at all, where they'd be most relevant, as I review English-language books. I can still post on Amazon.de as I spend more than I'd like to on books for my Kindle - but who is going to read my reviews there? Here's another example of Amazon making me feel like a valued customer, in their explanation as to why "this account has not met the minimum eligibility requirements to write a review":

To contribute to Community Features (for example, Customer Reviews, Customer Answers), you must have spent at least £40 on Amazon.co.uk using a valid payment card in the past 12 months. Promotional discounts don't qualify towards the £40 minimum. You do not need to meet this requirement to post Customer Questions, create or modify Profile pages, Lists, or Registries, or to read content posted by other customers.

It's not one of the world's (or even my) most pressing problems, but it does make me nostalgic for what seemed in retrospect, like a Brave New World in the mid 2000s, where anything was possible.

I'm stuck with Amazon, mainly through my Kindle. I could give up on the reviews, and go back to just doing them for myself, or on a blog, or on GoodReads. I could try and extricate myself, buy a new e-reader and start again. But it's all too much of a faff. Amazon have got me where they want me - just another customer, bound-up and too apathetic to make a fuss. 

And that's what they mean by customer-centricity.

Immersed, wrapped or trapped?

The latest theme or buzzword from Interbrand to characterise their Best Global Brands is "Iconic Moves." It's nothing to do with John Travolta, though, rather that brands today are operating in a world where "people are moving faster than businesses". I agree with some of Interbrand's issues with Brand Positioning as an idea. It does imply a couple of things that don't work so well in today's world of brands - the concept of well-defined categories as well as the notion of static rigidity. However, I wouldn't go as far as to say that "positioning is dead" - rather that brands should take the metaphor of the mobile searchlight these days instead of the lighthouse.

The king of Iconic Moves, for Interbrand is Amazon. Over the years, these include the 2005 launch of Amazon Prime, the 2007 launch of Kindle, the 2014 launch of Echo (Alexa) and the 2017 acquisition of Whole Foods.

But: I wonder - why is Interbrand celebrating this stuff? Presumably because Amazon is No. 3 brand on their list, with a gob-smacking growth of +24%,  and they feel duty-bound to. But outside the impressive statistics and Iconic Moves, there are other stories.

People feeling they've been tricked or trapped into signing up for Amazon Prime.
Amazon taking a 60%+ cut, putting many small players out of business.
What used to be a super opportunity to review books turning into a annoying ratings system.
And that's before you've gone behind the scenes.

And on a personal note, I complained to amazon when a number of tacky-looking soft-porn books appeared under one of my children's books as "sponsored products related to this item." I asked for an explanation in what way these tawdry titles could be "related to" a book targeted at 9 - 12s. I have heard nothing in reply.

Why is Amazon continually held up as a paragon of branding? What Amazon is about is immersing customers in a complete shopping/lifestyle/search/payment ecosystem. There are now over 100m Amazon Prime subscribers in the US alone.

Amazon want to "be the world's most customer-centric company: to build a place where people can come to find and discover anything they want to buy online."

"Customer-centric" sounds all well and good, but there's a huge difference between that and "people-centric". It's not just semantics. Amazon couldn't give two hoots about its business customers, or its staff. In Amazon's case, "customer-centric" is looking more and more like the customer trapped in the middle of the ecosystem, with no choice, helpless and unable to get out, while the vultures (or eagles) feed.

Amazon can go on making Iconic Moves because the customer sure as heck can't.

Time Lapse Tech Disruption

This wonderful little film that has been doing the rounds is one of the best demonstrations of the pace of change that I've seen.

I've blogged here and here about this subject, comparing the top brands from one decade to the next, but seeing 18 years in just over a minute before your very eyes really brings it to life.

Maybe the most extraordinary thing is that it's only really the last 10 years that have been so completely crazy - up to 2009 or so, things are relatively stable, until Google and Apple, followed by Amazon and Facebook push their way up.

At this rate, I wouldn't even like to guess at what will happen by 2020, let alone 2029!

Her Royal Brandness

There's a rather good series of articles running at Marketing Week to celebrate the publication's 40th anniversary. I remember Marketing Week if not 40 years ago, then - ahem - certainly 30 years ago. Of the "trade publications" we received, it was my second favourite after Campaign, and certainly infinitely more readable than The Grocer, which seemed to smell vaguely of brown paper.

The articles are written by industry luminaries, and I was pleased to see my old boss from my Saatchi days elevated to branding royalty with this excellent article . Rita Clifton reflects on brands and branding over the last few decades and concludes that for success, strong brands must remain the anchor point, organising principle, heart, call it what you will, of a business.

One thing that hasn't changed in my decades of marketing and advertising is the continual dichotomy: (long-term) building the brand and (short-term) sales - today characterised as "taps, clicks and bricks." I expect our arguments in the last century weren't helped by so much mumbo-jumbo surrounding the idea of a brand. The whole idea seemed vague and airy-fairy, with the continual reference to 'brand image', as well as the contrived and frankly up-their-owm-backside ways that various practitioners conjured-up an enigmatic 'brand essence.'

Images and essences aside, it's interesting that today's most powerful brands are what we used to call single-shot or mono-brands in terms of brand architecture. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple, Instagram, Pinterest and Co. don't lurk in the depths of mysterious 'brand temples' - more mumbo-jumbo - these are completely clear and upfront in their presentation.

One more reflection on the article: back in the last century, brands were dominated by what we used to call FMCG - Fast Moving Consumer Goods. Groceries in plain language.

It's ironic that the biggest changes that have impacted on branding in the last couple of decades are to do with speed and scale.

When those 20th century marketeers talked about Fast-Moving, they didn't know the half of it!

The Curator's Egg

Photo: Tyler Orehek

Today's post leads on from my last one, as well as picking up a theme a looked at over 5 years ago: curators and curation. 

Since I wrote about Brand Curators (which on balance, I still think is a good idea), the use of the word and its variants - curated, curate as verb - has exploded. it's almost as omnipresent as the dreaded "journey" - in fact, "curated journeys" abound.

Curation is a good and necessary thing in the present day, with digital overload, and it does suggest a degree of discernment, skill and knowledge. But have a look at a typical brand activity - I've picked Amazon - which involves "curation."

Amazon Prime's Book Box Service is one of those ideas that it feels a little churlish to criticise. I do take the points about encouraging children to read and love books and all the rest.

But. The books are described as "hand-picked" as well as "curated". Does that mean a human being is doing the choosing? But how much is that human being aided and abetted by algorithms? And does this kind of "curation" involve an aspect of "nanny knows best"? The word "curate" does come from curare - "to care." 

Where does curation stop and censorship (of a gentle sort) begin?

Is it the curators who have their knives at the ready to dock the long tail?  

Is the Long Tail being docked?

Twelve years ago, a book came out which celebrated the almost unlimited choice enabled by the internet: The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson. Four years ago, I questioned the notion of choice: were we maybe living more in an age of pseudo choice, where increasingly, the internannies Google, Facebook and YouTube were knowing better what we were looking for: Did you mean ...?

I'm still irritated by Did you mean .....? as in most cases, no, I didn't. If I looked up something obscure that 99.9% of people would never search for, the chances are I did it on purpose. But in the four years since I wrote that post, the internannies have become increasingly sneaky, manipulating what we might or might not like to see behind the screens.

And, reading this excellent article from Contagious, about Voice. It's estimated that, by 2022 55% of US homes (48% of UK) will have a Smart Speaker in their home. And within two years, 30% of web-browsing will be done by voice.

Of course screens won't disappear, in the same way that bricks and mortar shops won't disappear, or TV advertising, but imagine this: if you search for an item on amazon via your device, you'll probably look through a largish number of the options presented. You can process visual information pretty rapidly.

But if you ask Alexa, how many options are you likely to want to listen to? Not many. Processing of auditory information takes far longer.

Whether you dock a dog's tail is a matter of choice and fashion, but I can't say I particularly like it.