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? 

 

What a wonderful world

 

When I was writing my children’s books, there was a lot of blab about world-building. Fantasy author types would wax lyrical about the joys of creating mystical realms - with many of them getting a bigger kick out of this stuff than plot or character. I often found it all a bit much - reminiscent of the Dungeons & Dragons nerds I met at college. 

Nevertheless, I did get on and do it myself. The world of my stories is based on the real world in the late 1950s to mid-60s, then given a blast of kerosene in the form of action-spy-adventure films of the time. Maybe there is already a name for the genre - Jet Punk, or something. My publisher, Kay Green, described it thus:

There is a subtle magic here. The book matches the demands of modern 9-12s fiction and the main character is very much a 21^st century boy but, without interrupting the action, the story speaks eloquently of a long-forgotten beauty – not fantasy, not ancient history, but something you and I had forgotten was magic: a Britain where country roads were bright and welcoming, where cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes – not to mention their pilots – still had an aura of adventure about them. And on top of all that, it’s laugh-aloud funny.

World-building is something that good planners and creatives have always done without thinking about it too much. (Or talking about "world-building”. Which always sounds a touch self-important and pompous to me.) But it seems to be something that’s being rediscovered - many of the trend reports have mentioned “brand lore” and a couple of weeks ago, I read this article from Tom Donohue of BeenThereDoneThat.

Warning: one or two phrases in here did make me squirm, but the point “You build the mythology, they tell the stories” is a good one. I’m not convinced that “we need new frameworks that break the rigidity of the brand key/onion”, though. I think it’s too many frameworks, tick-boxes and processes that have brought us to the sorry state that commercial creativity is in. Frankly, the fewer frameworks, flywheels, models, tools, templates, personas and CDJs I have to deal with, the better. 

To prove I’m not just being a dreadful curmudgeon, here are a few ad-type things I’ve seen recently that do portray a wonderful (and distinctive) world of the brand in question, capturing its soul or spirit (if you like).

Poretti Beer - I haven’t seen such a brilliant and distinctive campaign since many a year. Away with all the stock pictures of inanely-grinning young things! (Who’d probably turn their noses up at a nice beer if it was offered.) “Welcome to the Lake” - yes, please!

Funny that the next one’s alcohol, too. My old friend Jägermeister. 

Swag meets Stag. Like it - and the women’s sneakers are already sold out - I checked.

While we’re in Germany, have a look at Jack Wolfskin’s latest campaign. Which goes to show that you don’t need to invent a fantasy world for your brand - just explore the wild places of our own world ...

... you’ll see trees of green, red roses too ...

And the brands played on

 

ideo.com

It all started at the end of summer. It must have been this story that sowed the seed - the much-shared latter-day Cautionary Tale of Nike. Massimo Giunco posted Nike: An Epic Saga of Value Destruction - I echoed the thoughts of many, muddled in with my own ...

 

Sacrifice human relationships, specialist knowledge, experience, informed judgement and insight - from employees to suppliers to customers to shoppers - on the altar of "data-driven”. This is a sad tale, brilliantly written (“a cannibal ecosytem”, “... less effective but easier to be measured vs. something that was more effective but less easy to be measured ...”). But not without hope that one of the greatest brands of our time can survive this self-inflicted malady

Hot on Nike’s heels, this came along - an article by Anders Indset on the theme of Marketing is dead - long live Marketing! The author starts by reflecting back to the glory days of German ad agencies in the early 2000s (a nice little nostalgia trip for me). And then, how brands faded into the background as years of CpCs, click-marketing, Customer Journeys and search optimisation took over. But, he concludes: The world of platforms and click-optimisation has reached its logical endpoint. When everyone’s on the stage, no-one watches any more.

 

So, what now, in the age of ChatGPT and LLMs? Anders hails a return to the good old marketing of Kotler and Aaker - investing in brands, the 4Ps, good ideas. I’m definitely all for this, and will even forgive Anders his rather bizarre inclusion of the “American” Kevin Roberts and his Lovemarks amongst the marketing and advertising greats.

 

The next thoughts that flitted into my consciousness were those of Paul Worthington of invencion, on Quantitative Destruction and The Efficiency Delusion. In these articles, he writes of “quantitative myopia” - a dangerous and arrogant myopia that ignores complex reality while focusing intently on a simplistic, quantitatively measureable model, which they believe represents everything that matters.

 

The “they” in all this, the quantitative myopics, are the executives rising to the top of companies. Nike is one example. Starbucks is another losing value in its aim to become a closed-system, “category of one”, where it doesn’t matter if customers have a rotten experience as they have no choice.

 

Meanwhile, all this is exacerbated by marketing budget cuts and “having to do more with less.” Anything to do with the customer - marketing, experience, branding - is now on a very thin shoestring.

 

All of this is opinion, of course. So I’ll bring in some data. I'm not against data. But it doesn’t drive me. Or even inform me - only humans do that. The 2024 McKinsey report on the state of Marketing in Germany is called Back to the Future. What are the big topics close to the hearts of Germany’s marketers in 2024? AI? Marketing ROI? Yes, these are important, but they don’t make the top three most important. And these represent a return to the core competencies of marketing:

1. Creative content - a renaissance of originality

2. Brand-building

3. Authenticity - in word and deed.

 

The evidence reels in thick and fast - the brands are back in town. System1 have recently demonstrated how creative consistency (which doesn’t mean matching luggage, by the way) leads to creative quality, stronger brands and greater profits.

 

Which brings me right up-to-date with Interbrand and The Best Global Brands 2024, celebrating its 25th anniversary. There’s plenty to celebrate, but also a warning or two: performance marketing tactics can drive short-term financial gains, but an increasingly short-term mindset has cost the world’s most valuable brands significantly.

 

Interbrand’s advice is good - look behind the clever-cleverness of this phrase: the fastest-growing companies are not branding their businesses - they’re businessing their brand.

 

So, there we are. Branding being back in business is in the air. I expect the quantitative myopics would explain all this through a mixture of the algorithm, the Extrawurst echo chamber and she-would-say-that-wouldn’t-she. 

 

But I prefer to put it down to synchronicity.

RETROWURST: Top Euro Brands October 2003

 

This month’s Retrowurst, from October 2003, is one of those lazy ones where I didn’t bother writing anything particularly original, but instead chose to rehash a report from someone else. In this case, Interbrand’s Best Global Brands.

Interbrand won’t be revealing their top of the pops until 20th October, so we’ll have to make do with last year’s ranking to see who’s still in and who’s definitely out. 

In 2003, 8 of the Top 10 brands were of US origin, and that’s now 7 out of 10. However, two of the three non-US brands are from Asia-Pacific, with only one European origin brand in the Top 10. Nokia is long gone, so this year it’s Germany which has that honour - with Mercedes at No. 8.

European-origin brands aren’t doing badly as far as the Top 50 goes. In 2003, there were 4 German-origin brands in the Top 50 and 2020, there are 7. The usual suspects from the auto branch, or mobility, or whatever it’s called these days, plus SAP, Allianz and adidas. 

France had 2 brands in the Top 50 in 2003, now there are 5 - from the luxury/fashion/beauty side of things (those old stereotypes live on) - oh, and AXA too. (Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Hermes, L’Oreal)

UK are no longer in the EU or the Top 50 brands, I’m sorry to say.

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

I thought I’d refrain from writing anything about the Oktoberfest this month and turn my attention to something of more general European interest. While looking through Interbrand’s League table of the Top 100 Global Brands for 2003, it struck me that, despite the trend to globalisation, we in ‘Old Europe’ are actually best at doing what might be expected from the old stereotypes. Indeed, glancing at the list reminds one of all those ‘heaven and hell jokes’ which preface every other newspaper article about Europe - ‘heaven is where the police are British, the cooks French, the engineers German, the lovers Italian and the Swiss keep the time. Hell is where the police are German, the cooks British, the engineers French, the lovers Swiss and the Italians keep the time’ - or however the thing goes.

 

Before I get onto what I mean, I’ll just preface this by giving a few provisos about the Interbrand Top 100 table- first, it’s about global brands, so to get onto it, your brand must be over $1 billion, it must be global (with at least a third of sales outside your home market and good distribution across all major continents) and you must have publicly available marketing and financial data (which excludes big players like Visa, the BBC and Mars). Secondly, the brands are listed in order of Brand Value- a complex calculation in which Interbrand take a large number of difference forces and influences into account to work out how much a brand is likely to earn in the future, discounted to a present value based on risk. So we are not talking anything simple like sales or awareness here.

 

Some general observations about the Top 100- it is dominated by US origin brands, as one might expect. Eight out of the Top 10 brands are US, covering categories as widespread as soft drinks (Coca Cola), software (Microsoft), entertainment (Disney) and tobacco (Marlboro). The Top 5 brands are all US (Coca Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Intel), with Europe first making an entry at number 6 with Nokia. The Far East, in the form of Japan, makes its first entry at position 11 with Toyota. It’s actually surprising; perhaps, that the top brand from Europe should have the (relatively) obscure homeland (to us Brits) of Finland. In fact, without wanting to sound rather unpatriotic, Great Britain does not figure as prominently in this table as we would perhaps like. Maybe we’re not good at global brands but, as a country that prides itself on the quality of its marketing and advertising, particularly in relation to some of our European neighbours, we don’t seem to cut it in the global arena. The Germans, for example, have four brands in the Top 50, including Mercedes in the Top 10. The French have two brands in the Top 50. The only brand from GB in the Top 50 is HSBC at position 37- successful though HSBC undeniably is; it is hardly top of the wish list for ambitious marketers or advertising agencies hoping to produce stunning creative work.

 

So, onto the stereotypes. I’ll start with the Germans, as this is an Extrawurst. In the Top 100 for Germany are Mercedes, BMW, SAP, VW, Adidas and Nivea- so very heavy on the cars and technology with a bit of sport and wholesome body care in addition. Scandinavia boasts three brands in the Top 100; Nokia, Ikea and Ericsson- to be expected from thinly populated countries with huge pine forests! For France, we have the expected mixture of luxury goods, beauty, food and drink with the Louis Vuitton, L’Oreal, Chanel, Danone, Hermes, Hennessy and Moet & Chandon brands. Italy is fashion, fashion, fashion with Gucci and Prada. With Nescafe, Nestle and Rolex, the Swiss are heavy on chocolate and watches. The Netherlands have a rather mixed bag (but somehow appropriate) of electronics, oil/exploration and beer - Philips, Shell and Heineken are their brands in the Top 100. And, finally, the combination of banking, exploration/oil and journalism topped up with booze (HSBC, BP, Reuters, Shell, Smirnoff and Johnnie Walker) could only be British!

 

What is there to be learned from this? Firstly, I think it says that provenance is important, even in these days of globalisation. One way of looking at it is to use your national stereotype to your advantage in creating your brand- Lufthansa is one of the most preferred airlines in Europe for short-haul due to people’s perceptions of its absolute punctuality and reliability but loses out to the Far Eastern carriers on long haul, where service is a more important deciding factor. Or, alternately, cause disruption by creating a brand that is unexpected, given your national stereotype- who knows - maybe an Italian engineering giant or a Swiss range of ‘love toys’ could top the Top 100 yet!----------------------------------------------------

Of course, the big change is that the tech brands dominating the Top 50 were still in Kindergarten back in 2003. It’ll be interesting to see if and how the big German brands reinvent themselves over the next decade - or whether they’ll be history, like those Scandi mobile phone brands from the early days of the 21st century.

P.S. HSBC did feature in my last post with their advertising, so maybe I was a little hasty dismissing them as unlikely creative fodder - or maybe it’s a sign of the times

Unique vs. Original

 

In the last few years, I've often been involved in those conversations about differentiation and distinctiveness when it comes to brands and advertising. In the early part of my career, differentiation was the thing: setting your brand apart from competition by focussing in on some aspect of the brand - how it's made, a secret ingredient, what it can do for you, and how it can deliver these benefits better than any other brand in the category.

But things changed, and the internet happened, and a new genus called platform brands grew up, and lots of clever bods did smart analyses, and the point of view now is that brands should be distinctive, that is, to stand out via impactful brand assets.

I've been wondering recently, in a similar fashion, about "uniqueness". It was always my belief that brands should strive for uniqueness in their totality - to be unequalled - the opposite of "generic" or "interchangeable" and to emerge out of that cliched "sea of sameness."

But does uniqueness alone really do anything for a brand? I could create a unique brand but that wouldn't necessarily make it desirable, or relevant. Uniqueness is not necessarily good. It could be quite the opposite.

Uniqueness is like a statement of fact. It doesn't involve human emotion or judgement in a positive or negative way. A landscape or a micro-climate can be described as unique.

Now think about the word "originality". A far richer word, which has associations with the word "origins" and thus, authenticity. It feels fresh, newly-created, pioneering, not imitative, absolute, novel. You know there are stories to be discovered. A past, present and future. You say "Oooooh! That's original", but you'd never say "Ooooooh! That's unique."

We talk about "original thought", "original ideas". The human is entangled in the concept of originality. It's not detached, like "uniqueness."

"Unique" should mean unusual or remarkable, but quite often it doesn't.

I am sure that a unique new brand could easily be generated by a machine these days.

But an original new brand can only be created by humans.   

Give them all a rest

From the days of the much-maligned Brand Onion (which occasionally shape-shifted into a pyramid, or a key, if you were at Unilever), I remember very few specific good examples.

But I can remember the endless debates:

Is X a functional benefit or an emotional benefit?

Does this go in Personality or Values?

What's the difference between an attribute and a benefit?

Is this meant to be how we're seen now, or where we want to be?

Fast forward a decade or two, and enter Kipling's "honest serving men" - or some of them - in a glorious glowing Golden Circle. It was all going to be simple - chuck out those endless debates and start with Why?

I've noticed in the last few years that those "honest serving men" are getting about a bit. Almost every presentation on a process or strategy is peppered with Hows and Whos and Whats.

However, the debates remain:

Do we mean Who or To Whom? (The grammar fanatics love this one!)

Is that the How or the What?

Is When important?

And in this article by Thomas Kolster the author (previously a proponent of Pupose and Why?) suggests that it's now all about the Who a brand can help people to become (so a kind of Who in the future). A brand is a coach, helping people "be more, do more, see more, experience more!". This Who "focuses on the role you can play enabling their beliefs and dreams, whereas Why focuses on your organisation's beliefs and dreams."

The "honest serving men" have done a sneaky pivot from a circle to an arrow (perhaps still golden?). Why has disappeared and taken Where with him:

This all feels suspiciously like a return to "what's in it for me" - or a simple statement of what your brand does for people - benefit, if you like.

Kipling's poem continues - and this is not often quoted -

But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine to five,
For I am busy then ...

I think he had a point, and don't intend to discuss the Whys and Wherefores ;)

We and me

One thing I need to get round to is a revamp of my website, which is hopelessly out-of-date from a technical and user-experience point of view. And the photos probably don't - ahem - reflect how I look these days. I had a look at it recently to see if the content was also in need of a total rejig - and surprised myself.

It still makes sense.

I'm reading Jung again in the form of The Red Book, a generous and apt gift from my college chums, and I'm rediscovering a lot of what must have influenced my worldview as I started my career and has stayed with me ever since.

The idea of the personal and the collective - Jung applied this to the unconscious but it has a universal application:

For every brand, each individual has a different personal experience of that brand. We must try to understand the collective elements of the brand that we have as shared experience in order to develop communications.

And:

There are elements of brands that are personal to each of us in the way that we perceive brands, and there are elements that form the brand's collective unconscious that unite the users of that brand.

I was pleased to see this theme taken up in an IPA essay entitled The Wide and Narrow of It by Omar El-Gammal from Wunderman Thompson. The author stresses that brands are not built through carefully constructed communication plans that we as marketers somehow control but through the we (shared cultural experience) and the me (personal experience). Thinking about the cultural and the individual is a good way of looking at brand growth.

The collective, cultural, call it what you will would always be my starting point to understand the essence of a brand. I believe that humanity has more in common than that dividing us and it's here that I'd start to find how my brand can be relevant to a broad section of the human world yet still maintain its own individuality and uniqueness.

The European Brand Contest

If the man (or woman) from Mars turned up on this planet and looked at a table of worldwide brand value rankings, they'd be forgiven for thinking that the USA was the only country that knew and understood how to build a valuable brand, with perhaps a little competition from that young upstart, China.

Take the BrandZ ranking table, for example. 13 out of the Top 15 brands have their origin in the USA, with numbers 7 & 8 pushing in from China to create at least a little break in the domination.

But then, at position 16, comes SAP, making this the most valuable brand from Europe.

Here are Europe's Top 10 valuable brands:

1. SAP  (Germany) Technology +4%
2. Louis Vuitton (France) Luxury +15%
3. Deutsche Telekom (Germany) Telecom Providers +7%
4. Chanel (France) Luxury NEW
5. Hermes (France) Luxury +10%
6. L'Oreal (France) Personal Care +9%
7. Vodafone (GB) Telecom Providers -8%
8. Gucci (Italy) Luxury +13%
9. Mercedes Benz (Germany) Cars -9%
10. BMW (Germany) Cars -9%

Germany leads Europe in the world of branding, with a mix of cars, technology and telecom. For the moment, anyway. But just look at the growth rates of those French luxury and personal care brands.

Maybe there is something German brands can learn from the French. Those brands prove that you don't have to be a young US or Chinese tech-y brand to enjoy double digit growth.

 

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!

Recycled paradigms

Vancouver is one of my favourite cities, and this week it has been playing host to Sustainable Brands 18 "Redesigning the Good Life", where the good and great in branding and marketing get together to talk about how brands can help make the world a better place. Vancouver seems an apt choice for the host city, as it aims to be the greenest city in the world by 2020.

One of the speakers at the event was Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at P&G. In this interview for Sustainable Brands, he talks about what needs to be changed in the world of branding. No huge surprises, but it's a useful summary of the way that branding has evolved over the last decade or two:

*Lead disruption rather than trying to follow
*Focus on growing the market, not just gaining share
*'Built-in' doing good rather than 'bolted-on'
*Big is beautiful when it's good
*Sustainable is mainstream, not niche

So there we are. It seems that one place to start with being a sustainable brand is to recycle your old marketing paradigms and models - and possibly re-purpose them as frameworks ;)

Change happens. Get over it.

One of the core questions for marketing people has always been centred around how to adapt and transform in an ever-changing world. There's an interesting and useful analysis here by two authors from the agency Flamingo, who have examined change in a wide variety of fields, and constructed a simple model showing four strategic directions a brand could choose - Guide, Translate, Create and Pivot - along with good examples of brands who have used those different strategies.

I like this analysis, although it does tiptoe into an area that seems to be, in my mind, rather over-played currently: that of the VUCA world "out there."

There can be few readers who haven't heard about VUCA from some source or another, but in case you haven't, the acronym stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous.

This acronym didn't come from some marketing consultant, but from the U.S. Military, in the context of Afghanistan and Iraq in the 1990s.

Is this really how we want to see the world we're operating in? Are our brands weapons in some kind of war?

I don't think so.

What if we thought of it this way:

For 'Volatile', read 'Spontaneous'

For 'Uncertain', read 'Surprising'

For 'Complex', read 'Diverse'

And for 'Ambiguous', read 'Enigmatic'

Because it's not us against them, there is no world "out there", "external" and "internal". We are all part of the world.

It's the role of brands not to provide stability in the sense of stasis and resistance to change, but rather to provide a clear purpose and direction as part of a wonderful, multi-facetted, animated, rich and mysterious world.

Baaaaad Brand!

Well, at least one that seems somewhat uncompromising. Stroh rum, known as The Spirit of Austria, is a brand that turns all the current 21st century must-dos of branding on their heads.

From its beginnings in 1832, back in the imperial days, Stroh has made a virtue of being inauthentic. So inauthentic that it's authentic, in fact. Austria is land-locked and didn't have many colonies so it was unlikely that anyone would be able to bring enough sugar cane back from the Caribbean for an authentic rum. So the strong spiced rum was concocted from sugar beet, plus aromas and colours.

It's available in 5 different strengths: 38, 40, 54, 60 and 80 and, yes, those are the ° proof. The two highest are described as "overproof" which is about as blunt as "overweight."

Devoid of stories about crafting and palm trees and pirates, the pack design is also uncompromising. In fact, it could be mistaken for something you'd put in your car engine, rather than your mouth. The whole thing is redolent of last century ski holidays, tin signs, dark wooden huts, smoky bars, paper bags from picture postcard newsagents, the whiff of Jagertee.

The only time Stroh gets slightly less disreputable is when it's used as an ingredient in cakes and desserts. But those aren't terribly good for your waistline.

Please keep the branding consultants away!

From Brand Image to Brand = Image

I've got to the stage in my career where I expect there are far more planners who have come after me than have come before me. But one planner who came before me and is still active thinking, writing, strategising and planning is Paul Feldwick. Paul was one of the early BMP Planners in the 1970s and worked for BMP/DDB right up until 2005. I can thoroughly recommend his books and articles to young and not-so-young planners: they are classics. I still refer to What is Brand Equity Anyway? and much enjoyed Paul's most recent book, The Anatomy of Humbug. Most refreshing and intelligent after all those 25 Secrets Of Highly Successful Halfwits And How You Can Join Them business books.

On Paul's website are links to more articles, including one originally published in Admap March 2014, entitled, simply Brand = Image.  This is a provocative title, as 'Brand Image' has become a dirty word - or phrase - for those of us in the industry. Why have something as ethereal as an image when you can have an Experience or a Platform?

Anyway, the article starts with the creation of what was to become the Nike logo, which earned its creator all of $35 initially. The point is made that maybe it's neither necessary nor desirable to start building a brand from a 'brand essence' definition in words. Many brands start with a visual image, which becomes imbued with meaning via the stakeholders of that brand.

Why does this work? Let me drag out my ancient copy of Man and his Symbols (see illustration above.) In this, Carl Jung states:

What we call a symbol is a term, name or even a picture that may be familiar in daily life, yet that possesses specific connotations in addition to its conventional and obvious meaning. It implies something vague, unknown or hidden from us.

Many brand symbols or logos seem to arise by chance - Paul Feldwick cites the Dulux Dog and the Andrex Puppy - rather than via a conscious process. Chance, yes, but intuition and serendipity also play a role. I have written about a couple of my favourite brand symbols here and here.

Paul talks about the strength of images: they are polyvalent, meaning they carry a multitude of meaning.

I wonder, especially in this global world, whether brands would do better to find a 'one symbol equity' rather than a 'one word equity.'

Holy Logo!

Reader's Digest have recently published the third annual Trusted Brands Survey. The main survey is carried out in the US, where 5,500 people were asked which brands in 40 product categories they trust the most, and would recommend to family and friends. The study backs up, with numbers, a lot of stuff that marketers know intuitively - for example, that people are prepared to pay more for brands they trust.

From the results, Reader's Digest have created the Trusted League, giving the brands superhero names and personas. So McDonald's becomes 'The Satisfryer', or Dove 'The Beholder', and then there's 'Swoosh', representing Southwest, above.

It's a lot of fun and probably a nice pat on the back for the people working on these brands, but without being a total dreary killjoy, I'll add a note of caution: don't take this too seriously when you're creating your advertising. It could land you into a spot of hot water or holy hubris.

There's also a German version, with fewer product categories and no superheroes, although there are plenty of the usual suspects: Nivea, Milka, Haribo, Allianz, Persil.

I was a little surprised, however to see C&A on the list, as well as Deutsche Telekom and - wait for it - VW.

Maybe it goes to show that goodwill built up can go a long way when you do tell one or two porky pies.

The Age of Paradox?

Polarities, opposites, tensions, contrasts, paradoxes - whatever you call them, it's my belief that these are the key to a strong brand. I have blogged about how being able to synthesise apparent contractions in human needs and desires (the need for individuality and to belong to something bigger, the need to be effective without causing harm, the need for the familiar and the new and surprising) is vital to being a successful brand - here, here, here, here and here (!)

Nice to know I'm not the only one harping on about this. The 5th Trend Report of IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) is entitled The Uncompromising Customer: Addressing the Paradoxes of the Age of I.

The main theme of the report is, especially in this day and age, people don't want either/or - they want the best of both worlds: 'the best trade-off is no trade-off.'

I'm not sure whether this is particular to the age we live in: I can remember endless arguments about Health vs. Taste/Indulgence and Effectiveness vs. Care from my advertising days in the last century. But the authors of the report describe 'The Age of I' as reflecting one huge human paradox - the desire for inclusion in a meaningful group while protecting and expressing one's individuality.

Within this mega-paradox, the authors have defined 4 sort-of-mega paradoxes:

1. The Paradox of Separate but Connected: The new definition of connection
2. The Paradox of Abundant Rarity: The changing definition of luxury
3. The Paradox of Seeking a Better Me and a Better We: Responsible Individualism
4. The Paradox of Do It Myself and Do It For Me in My Way: Rethinking Consumer Control.

These are not a bad place to start in terms of positioning your brand. Think about which tensions or paradoxes exist within human needs, wants and desires associated with your product, service, market or territory. And what is the unique energy within your brand that you can use to resolve that paradox?

That's all folks!

Oh, sorry. Wrong cartoon.

Brand Boycott

With Black Friday and its antidote, Buy Nothing Day (which has been going since 1992), I thought I'd have a look at boycotting brands.

Despite the blah-blah about empowered consumers or prosumers or whatever they're called this week, people have been boycotting brands, companies and organisations for as long as Captain Charles Boycott (that's him above) gave his name to this particular form of protest. This was back in the 1880s, Boycott was a land agent and it all happened during the Irish 'Land War.' Captain Boycott was the subject or victim of boycotting, by the way.

Historical examples include the boycotting of Nestle over their unscrupulous marketing of infant formula in the 1970s, and also from that era, the boycotting of Barclays over their South African apartheid connections. No student worth their salt would have been seen dead banking at Barclays in the late 70s and early 80s. I blogged about these 'bad brands' here.

I suppose it is inevitable that someone would compile a helpful list of all the pies that Donald Trump has his fingers in (I hope that metaphor doesn't cause too many distressing images) and here it is: #GrabYourWallet: A Boycott List Of CompaniesThat Do Business With And/Or Back The Trump Family.

The spreadsheet also provides Trump-free alternatives to amazon, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Zappos and the rest. Full marks to the hashtag in terms of creativity, but none to the spreadsheet. Still, it's the thought that counts.

Boycotting brands is one way of expressing your distaste and making a protest. I read another article this week that shows that brands can also be used to spite your partner when relations aren't tip-top and rosy. I suppose it's similar to turning on your other half's least favourite music at top volume if you want to annoy them.

I'm sure there are a few US couples who agree about everything except politics. And, for every potential boycotter, there's probably a Trump supporter examining that spreadsheet in glee to see how they can further rub the nose of their better half in his victory.

New brands on the block

Interbrand are well-known for their Best Global Brands annual report, which is something of a marketeer's bible, chronicling the good and great of the branding world. Now there's something new from Interbrand, which takes a look at the new kids on the brand block, the movers and shakers, maybe the star global brand of the future.

Interbrand Breakthrough Brands is like one of those '30 under 30' or 'faces to watch' lists that you get in the marketing press. Rather than a ranking or rating, it's more of a hand-picked selection of emerging brand-led organisations, all of whom are 10 years old or under.

200 brands were nominated by a group of 'key influencers', chosen by Interbrand people, and their partners in this exercise from Facebook, NYSE and Ready Set Rocket. These were whittled down to a list of 60 featured in the report, using criteria such as Change, Growth and Buzz. All those represented could be described as 'the start-ups, upstarts, challengers, problem-solvers, innovators and category creators.'

So, to the 60. Goodness me, this made me feel old. There are brands featured that were founded in 2014. That was yesterday, wasn't it? Of the 60, I'd heard of a handful, maybe 6 or so.

But I was pleased to see there was one brand I've blogged about. And another that I use every day - DuckDuck Go.

It will be fascinating to see how these breakthrough brands fare. Because I know that being on one of those 'faces to watch' lists can kick-start your career to even greater things.

Or it can be the kiss of death.

Winning brands

Around this time of year, awards ceremonies are all over the place - you can't move for red carpet. Or something. I'm always interested in the brand world equivalent, and a few weeks ago here in Germany the 13th year of Best Brands winners were announced at a big gala do hosted by various media companies, advertising and market research agencies as well as the association for German brands.

Although not exclusively focussed on German brands across the various award categories, I was expecting a good show from what I think of as classic German brands - Nivea, maybe BMW, maybe Becks.

The winners are chosen based on two broad criteria - marketplace (financial) success and 'share of soul' - popularity and emotional connection to the general public. As GfK are involved in the whole thing, the methodology for selecting the winners is pretty thorough.

No real surprise, then, in the winner for Best Product Brand 2016 - this was Nivea, which also won in 2013 and 2014, and came second this year. The words 'from strength to strength' come to mind.

Perhaps a bit more surprising was the winner for Best Growth Brand 2016 which was WMF. Jolly well done to them, and this shows that you don't have to be a techy, appy, 21st century new kid on the block to show phenomenal growth. WMF was founded in 1853. While there is probably a limit to how many cutlery sets anyone actually needs in a lifetime, I have noticed that WMF have been very active in joint promotions with supermarkets and simply present as a great brand name.

In other awards, the category-specific award for e-commerce was won by amazon (no comment) and the Best European Corporate Brand 2016 was won by Porsche.

That other well-known German brand, VW, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Halfway to the future

I love looking at my collection of business books from yesteryear, especially those that have the word 'future' in the title. One such is The Future of Brands, edited by Rita Clifton and Esther Maughan, which was published in 2000 to celebrate Interbrand's 25th anniversary. It's a book that was maybe ahead of its time, as it was a collaborative, co-operative effort. Rather than the Interbrand staff pontificating about their view, the editors questioned 25 different people on their 'vision of brands in 25 years' time.'

The 25 people represented some major brands of the time, including Starbucks, BMW, P&G, Samsung, The Body Shop and Reebok. In addition, other personalities a little further away from marketing and branding were included, such as Spike Lee, Paul Smith and one Sepp Blatter.

How well has it held up? This book was conceived and written in the last century, pre 9-11, pre Web 2.0 and in the days when the Interbrand Brand Value Table was topped by Coca Cola, Microsoft, IBM, GE and Ford. Google and amazon were nowhere to be seen and Facebook hadn't been invented.

The answer is, unsurprisingly well. The brands people felt would remain classics and be successful in the future - meaning in 2025 - included Coca Cola, Disney, Ben & Jerry's, BMW, CNN and Adidas. OK, there was rather a lot of mention of Gillette, Yahoo! and Kodak, too - with maybe the strangest anomaly for a 21st century reader being the 15-year-old surfer raving about the brand Kodak - but by and large, over halfway to the future, those predictions are holding up.

What was maybe more difficult was to predict which successful brands of the late 20th century would not fare so well. The obvious answer of Marlboro has been proved right, but it was interesting to see several commentators wondering how McDonalds, Microsoft or Aldi/Lidl might fare. Looking at McDonalds' latest business results, it looks as if they certainly aren't going to go out without a fight. And those German discounters are definitely going from strength to strength.

Ten observations on Brand Futures are listed at the end of the book:

A brand with no clear vision has no clear future
Values-led marketing will create stronger brand relationships
Brand relationships are created for people, by people
The next journey for many companies is inside
It will be increasingly important to understand what makes a brand valuable
Stakeholder brands for a stakeholder society
Individual brands for an individual society 
Simplicity, simplicity
If you don't plan the future you want, you get the one that shows up
Brands have the power to change people's lives - and to change the world

Have these passed the test of time?

10/10.