Don’t be a Pinocchio business

What’s the difference between a brand and a commodity? Commodities have only three things to offer: price, convenience, speed. They have to be cheaper, handier or faster than their competitors, and preferably all three. I don’t have a problem with commodities per se, of course not. Sometimes, with some products and services you really do want the cheapest, or the quickest.

And you can build ‘commodity brands’ of course. Viking office supplies springs to mind: it sells commodities, but it behaves like a brand, by at least trying to offer strong-positive customer service. My gripe is rather with commodity businesses who think that they are brands but who fail to behave like proper ones. Pinnochio was a wooden puppet who thought he was real boy. These are commodities who believe they are brands. Take Ryanair: the classic Pinocchio brand.

Ryanair has a distinctive visual identity, a vocal leader, a particular tone of voice in its advertising and so on. Easy to mistake it for a proper brand. But it isn’t. It’s a commodity, for the simple reason that there is only one reason to fly Ryanair: price. Another (and one of my least favourites) is National Express East Anglia, except in their case it’s not price they trade on but convenience (or rather convenience’s evil-twin… lack of choice).

I emphasise: there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with being a commodity, but don’t mistake it for branding. If your business trades on price (or convenience, or speed) alone, then it’s not a brand, it’s a commodity. Don’t be a Pinocchio business.

Strong and positive are not the same

When we talk about branding we can get mixed up when we forget that ‘strong’ and ‘positive’ are not the same thing. The mistake is easy to make, because it derives from a fundamental truth about branding - to have a brand at all (at least one worthy of the term) you must first have a critical mass of people who share a set of meanings about you.

If that mass is large enough, and vocal enough, and those meanings are defined and consistent enough, then you have a ‘strong’ brand. There is no absolute measure of course because branding is all about relative perceptions. The rub comes though because that ‘strong’ brand might actually be a negative one. The BNP undeniably has a ‘strong’ brand but for the majority of thinking people it’s a ‘strong negative’ brand. Happily.
Now the BNP is an extreme example, but the same principle applies elsewhere. You find strong-negative brands frequently in the celebrity arena: Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell spring to mind (strong brands, but widely disliked).

The mistake which follows on from confusing ‘strong’ and ‘positive’ is the assumption that it is better to be a strong brand than a weak one. A weak brand being one which has not created a coherent set of shared meanings in its audiences’ hearts and minds. However, and this will be good news for some, being a weak-negative brand is much better than being a strong-negative one. From weak-negative (as from weak-positive) you have the opportunity to change behaviour and to shape meaning for your audiences: to move towards strong-positive. From a ‘strong’ brand position this is much harder, because people’s minds, once set, are very, very hard to change. So think hard: is your brand weak-negative or weak-positive, strong-negative or strong-positive? The toughest place of all is strong-negative.

Advising the Dragon

The Brand Strategy Guru has been commissioned by independent TV production company TwoFour Broadcast to act as an expert brand advisor to Duncan Bannatyne, entrepreneur and key personality in BBC's Dragon's Den. My work with Hemsby attracted the makers of Duncan's new show for Virgin 1, which aims to help improve the fortunes of businesses in UK seaside resorts. Filming has already begun and I will soon be seen giving marketing and brand advice to the owners of attractions in Felixstowe, Suffolk.

My Top Ten Branding Tips

1. Remember that your brand is NOT your logo (or your advertising or even your website, no matter how good that might be). Your brand is everything that your customers and potential customers think about you, feel about you, say, read, hear, suspect and wish about you. Brand isn’t about what you look like: it’s about what you mean to people.

2. The most important two things in branding are: BE DIFFERENT and BE INTERESTING. The worst crime is to be the same as others and/or to be dull. That doesn’t mean you have to zany! It means you have to engage people before you can get them to act (i.e. to buy from you).

3. Most purchasing decisions are made with our hearts not our minds: we buy what we want not what we need. In fact even when we think we are buying with our heads we are usually lying to ourselves. Research shows that when we buy a house (the biggest thing most of us will ever buy) we are hugely emotional in our decision. We fall in love with houses. Recognise this and make your customers ‘fall in love’ with your brand.

4. Your greatest brand asset is a great story. Tell people a story. Humans love stories. I don’t mean fibs. I mean authentic, compelling, inspiring stories. A story about your product’s origins, or its ingredients, or its design. Or a story about how you started the business. Story beats data every time.

5. Draw people into engaging with your brand. Don’t just tell them stuff. Ask them what they think and feel. Your Mr Site website is the perfect environment for this. Brands that engage people stand out: because people are looking all the time for things to feel passionate about. People love to join ‘tribes’. Make your tribe irresistible: through making it interesting and fulfilling.

6. Be careful to distinguish between strength and positivity. If people already love your product or service then you have a positive brand: but is it strong enough (do enough people know about it)? If not, put your efforts into spreading the word. But if loads of people know about you but they don’t seem to love you (you get lots of complaints for example) then you might have a strong brand but a negative one. So stop concentrating on marketing for a while and focus on service and quality instead.

7. Think about what you’re called. Is it distinctive enough? Does it start to tell the story in itself? Does it have any emotional punch? In my arena Brand Strategy Guru is both descriptive (it explains what I do) and punchy (Guru is a pretty self-assured word after all). It’s really worked for me. Does your brand name make an impact?

8. Think about a ‘positioning line’, sometimes called a strapline. You can make a non-informative name work if you use a line underneath it which helps to tell the story. And it doesn’t have to be dull. Think of Orange. The future’s bright isn’t about boring mobile phones. It’s about optimism, and what could be more attractive than that?

9. Make sure everyone on your team lives the brand in everything they do. It’s a cliché but nonetheless true that you only get one chance to make a first impression. Check how your phones are answered. Check how you deal with complaints. It’s all branding.

10. Finally, use all the senses. People fall into the trap of thinking that branding is all visual. But why not make your business sound better, smell better, taste better, feel better? And don’t forget all the other senses that humans respond to: a sense of history, a sense of anticipation, a sense of relief, a sense of excitement, a sense of wellbeing. What senses can you use to bring your brand to life?

Computing wars - Microsoft v Google

Microsoft has regained its position as the UK’s leading brand, taking first place in this year’s Superbrands survey. The computing giant lost its league standing to arch rival Google in the brands poll last year, slipping to No 2, but is now is back on top with Google sliding to third place. These two big brands continue to battle for dominance of the global computer market but Microsoft’s recent launch of its new search engine called Bing to challenge Google’s search supremacy could help explain the turnaround. Microsoft's expected merger with competitor Yahoo announced this week could also help to reinforce the company's strong position going forward.

Brandinavia

The Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland may form a small geographical area, but this Nordic region is a powerhouse when it comes to brands - home to big names such as Volvo, Ikea, Lego and Nokia. The Scandinavians have excelled at creating good products that people want to buy - with a focus on simple elegant design, and affordable functionality. So what may explain this Scandinavian success? Well, these socialist democracies support citizens from cradle to grave so with their people well taken care of, they can focus on fostering business growth. However, the authors of The Viking Manifesto: The Scandinavian Approach to Business think Scandinavia’s brand power can also be explained by the region’s Viking roots and that inherited mentality. The modern Viking now invades foreign territories with innovative ideas and new approaches to marketing, advertising and culture!

Which car is the star?

With the automobile industry in the doldrums, it looks like American car manufacturers will continue to struggle against Japanese brands who retain their reputation for reliability, according to a recent report on Bloomberg.com. Big US names like Ford, GM and Chrysler are now paying the price of investing in trucks and sport-utility vehicles - for which the market has now fallen away - instead of small, efficient cars, while Toyota and Honda kept improving on quality, durability and fuel efficiency. The American brands’ vehicle technology has quickly caught up but it looks like it will take much longer to win back consumer’s hearts.

Re-branding Russia

Russian newspapers report that President Medvedev has created a new commission in the Kremlin to overhaul Russia’s image on the world stage. One paper claimed the main task of this new body is to correct the image mistakes committed over the last year since Medvedev became president - Russia’s brief war in Georgia last year and recent gas conflict with the Ukraine having garnered much negative press abroad. The new commission will play a pro-active role in Russian decision-making processes but will also anticipate and prepare to manage negative stories about the country. It shows how nations are increasingly conscious of how critical their image and reputation are to a country’s prospects in today’s world, especially on economy and foreign affairs.

Superbrands for 2009

Here is the recently released list of Top Ten brands from this year's Superbrands survey:

1. Microsoft
2. Rolex
3. Google
4. British Airways
5. BBC
6. Mercedes-Benz
7. Coca-Cola
8. Lego
9. Apple
10. Encyclopaedia Britannica

In the annual poll, commissioned by the Centre for Brand Analysis, new entries to the Top Ten include Lego and Cola-Cola, both re-entering after a one-year absence and this year's surprise entry - Encyclopaedia Britannica - which soared from 29th place to 10th

The results also give an indication of the winners and losers of the current recession and those brands doing particularly well are supermarkets and fast food chains, which show the strongest year-on-year improvements in the survey. They include McDonald's, which rises 227 places, Burger King, up 189, KFC rises 164 places and Domino's Pizza moves up the table by 144 places. The highest new entry into this year's list was donut chain Krispy Kreme.
www.superbrands.com

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