Rainmaking Secrets

Advertising legend, David Ogilvy loved to remind his fans that “any damn fool can put on a deal, but it takes a genius, faith and perseverance to create a brand.”

Ogilvy, like most advertising creatives have overcomplicated branding.

A brand is nothing more and nothing less than a promise to create unfailing value.

Philip Kotler was spot on when he wrote, “the brand amounts to a contract with the customer regarding how the brand will perform.”

The brand may be underpinned by a great product or service, but a brand is largely built by employees who deliver engaging experiences.

Engagement is all about getting and holding attention. Too much marketing is focused on getting attention. Holding customer attention is the hard part. Creating a compelling customer experience that holds and retains customers is what marketing is all about.

The Brand Test
Every time a customer encounters your brand at home or out on the street, they test your brand by asking, “Does the brand experience match the brand promise?”

If the answer is more often no, than yes, your brand equity is eroding.

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Oren Harari, the New York Times best-selling author of The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell, has authored a highly readable sequel, Break from the Pack: How to compete in a copy-cat economy.

Harari uses the EMBER model to test important marketing decisions.

1. (E) Does it make us extraordinary?
2. (M) Does it matter to customers?
3. (B) Does is break new ground?
4. (E) Does it encourage evolvement?
5. (R) Is it real?

The EMBER questions provide insightful and useful answers. Use it. And read Harari’s book.

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Every industry I work with is relentlessly under attack from commoditizers.

When Bronco Wine Company, now the fourth largest wine producer in the U.S. produced an under $2 bottle of wine, industry insiders treated the offering with contempt.

The quality had to be CRAP, and I don’t mean CReative Accounting Practice.

Critics and fans have named the product “Two-Buck Chuck.” So imagine the surprise, at the 2004 Eastern Wine Competition, Bronco’s 202 Shiraz won the coveted double gold medal from a field of 2,300 entries.

It will be interesting to watch the reaction to the high-end $3.99 Merlots and Chardonnays, nick-named “Four-Buck Fred.”

You may hate the Two-Buck Chucks of this world, but unless you come with a superior value proposition that sets you apart your business is history.

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What is a brand?

Since businesses are in the promise keeping business, your brand is the promise you make to your customers.

So imagine the shock when it was revealed that the venerable BBC got caught lying to its Blue Peter audience of children.

The Blue Peter staff ignored the results of an online poll to name a new kitten. They rejected the winning name the kids chose of “Cookie” and called it “Socks” instead.

When customers found out the BBC had lied to its Blue Peter audience, they began to question the very integrity of the BBC.

The BBC has been one of the world’s most credible sources of trustworthy news. Think back to World War II when it transmitted news into Nazi dominated Europe.

How the mighty have stumbled.

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Assumptions are the mother of all stuff ups.

All companies continue to pay for making the wrong assumptions about customers.

Proctor and Gamble (P&G), one of the world’s largest and most profitable consumer companies, recently launched its highly successful Swiffer Wet Mop in Italy.

P&G researched the Italian market. Italians spend an average of 21 hours a week on household chores. Americans spend just four hours on similar chores. Italians wash their kitchen floors and bathroom four times a week or more, compared to American’s who wash their floor just once a week.

So how come the Swiffer flopped? P&G sold Swiffer as a labor saving convenience which turned out to be a big turnoff for Italians.

Italian women prefer products that are tough cleaners, not timesavers.

Italian women didn’t believe the Swiffer was tough enough for mopping, so they used the Swiffer for polishing, rather than mopping.

P&G learned from their mistake. They launched the Swiffer Duster which did a light job well with timesaving convenience. Sales took off. Italy is now the biggest European market for Swiffer.

This story taken from Robert H. Bloom’s book The Inside Advantage underscores two vitally important lessons about customers.

“First and most obvious, what works in one market or with one customer does not work with others. One size does not fit all…Second and even more important, it’s not enough to define your customer as a market statistic.”

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With every product, service and company calling itself a brand we regularly need to remind ourselves what a brand is.

My favorite definition is one coined by Patrick Hanlon, the author of Primal Branding. He argues that;

“Brands are belief systems all belief systems have seven pieces of code that work together to make them believable. The more pieces, the more believable the belief system becomes.”

The seven pieces of code are:

1. The Creation Story. All belief systems have a story.
2. The Creed. The set of core principles.
3. The Icons. The symbols such as the Nike Swoosh.
4. The Rituals. The key ritualistic behaviors that set us apart.
5. The Pagans. The non-believers. The heathens and idolaters.
6. The Sacred Words. All belief systems have a set of specialized words which must be learned.
7. The Leader. The visionary, catalyst, risk taker who founded or defined the brand.

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In the June 2007 HBR, Gail McGovern and Youngme Moon ask why companies bind customers with contracts, bleed them with fees and battle them with fine print?

Their answer is simple.

Confused customers make bad decisions and lock themselves into dumb deals.

The banking, health care and mobile phone industries are full of examples where customers lock themselves into long-term deals that make them angry and frustrated.

Beware!

Competitors who come up with customer friendly alternatives are making a killing.

Virgin Mobile USA has enticed millions of angry mobile phone customers away from incumbent carriers.

ING Direct, has quickly become the fourth largest bank by offering accounts without fees, without tiered interest rates and no minimums.

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It’s easy to forget that not so long ago, Al Gore was the “butt of all jokes.” Then he dusted off an old PowerPoint slide show and became an ecological superstar.

Fast Company reports that as late as May 2004, few people paid much attention to Al’s reworked 1989 slide show on global warming.

Timing is everything.

Now, aged 59, he is an Academy Award winner, a best selling author and a front runner for the Nobel Prize. At this years Grammy Awards, Gore was a bigger, more anticipated star than the rock stars on show.

Gore now commands a $175,000 speaking fee for delivering his PowerPoint’s. When I was looking for a title for my book Power Points! How to design and deliver presentations that sizzle and sell, I originally wanted to subtitle it, Speak Like Churchill, Present like Spielberg.

Perhaps a more relevant subtitle would have been Speak like Churchill, Present like Al Gore.

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“Those who continue to live by the sword will get killed by a guy with a gun,” says William Watkins, chief executive of Seagate.

Watkins manages a $11.4 billion disk-drive industry which is commoditizing at breakneck speeds. Seagate has no choice. It has to change or face oblivion. Just recently Seagate lost Apple’s iPod business to flash competitors in 2006.

Watkins can see the writing on the wall. Consumers don’t give a damn where their storage comes from - flash or a disk drive.

Seagate is now producing new look backup drives packaged in sleek aluminum cases called Free Agents. These spunky new Free Agent drives come with up to 750 gigabytes– big enough to store 200 movies.

Will Seagate transform itself into a content solution company?

Will Seagate’s die-hard scientists and suits be prepared to make a seismic shift in their thinking?

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I keep dipping into Clancy and Krieg’s, Your Gut is Still Not Smarter Than Your Head, and found this gem of a fact.

Three years ago, Clancy and Krieg’s firm, Copernicus Marketing Consulting, hired Dr. David Lloyd, a content analyst to examine 400 different prime-time television commercials.

Lloyd’s remarkable finding;

“Only 7 percent of the commercials communicate a clear and compelling selling message.”

No wonder so few consumers when asked, could say much about the two leading brands in the 50 largest product categories that Copernicus Marketing Consulting surveyed.

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