Australia's new cigarette law bans branded packaging, tests branding principles

Australia has become the first country in the world to ban the branding of cigarette packages. From next July, all packs will look like the one in the picture--they will be a deliberately unappealing olive green color, the brand of the manufacturer will be printed in a tiny, generic font (i.e. no trademarks) and the only images will be graphic health warnings. Thus the Australians are setting up an interesting, real world packaging test. What will happen when the new, generic packaging hits the shelves?

The one thing that the government and the cigarette manufacturers agree on is that the impact will be significant. Given previous bans on advertising, sponsorships and other forms of marketing communication, the pack is the last bastion of branding activity. Health Minister Nicola Roxon says that she believes the new law will give Australia the best chance of having the lowest smoking rate in the world.

Manufacturers, for their part, have threatened legal action on the basis that the new rules restrict their trademark and intellectual property rights. The British American Tobacco Australia (BATA) issued a statement which said: "The result of BATA's legal challenges could force Health Minister Nicola Roxon to pay tobacco companies billions of dollars for the removal of trademarks, brands and pack space."

Assuming these legal challenges fail and the law goes into effect, what will happen? Will demand go down as expected? Not according to the cigarette manufacturers. They are actually predicting that demand will go up because they will be forced to compete on price. David Crow, CEO of BATA, says that's what his company intends to do: "We will obviously focus on pricing given it's the only thing really left to differentiate brands."

So could the unintended consequence of the legislation be that smoking actually increases because the market is flooded with cheap cigarettes? The cigarette manufacturers have an obvious interest in coming up with worst-case scenarios but this one does seem to have some merit.

Will Prius be the aol of green cars, Tesla the Webvan?

As I have crawled along the jammed-up freeway in Marin, watching hybrid after hybrid fly by me in the car pool lane (a privilege that's just ended), I would never have guessed that cars with green technology still only represent 2% of the U.S. market.

It may take a while for the rest of America to reach the level of green car penetration we have in Marin but the growth rate is impressive (twice as fast as conventional cars). J.D. Power estimates that, in the next five years, the number of hybrid and electric car models will increase fivefold, from 31 today to 159 by 2016.

Such a fast-growing category combined, as it is, with fast-changing technology is full of risk and opportunity. As the field gets more crowded, Prius, the category leader, will try and stay ahead of the pack while new players like Tesla look for a way to break in. Here are the risks and challenges for both brands with doomsday benchmarks added for effect.

Smug1 by Gamma Man (Flickr)

Toyota Prius is the undisputed green car leader with more than half of hybrid sales in the U.S. Prius owes its success to great positioning, choosing a technology that was green enough (but still practical) and a design that was distinctive enough to act as a conspicuous badge for its owners (but not as wacky as, say, the earlier models of the Honda Insight). 

As the current #1, Prius has to fend off the competition and it's planning to do that in classic leader fashion by launching new models to broaden its range and cater to different car buyer segments. It's trying to make sure it doesn't get outflanked. Its first new model will be the family-sized Prius V, then a smaller Prius C and sometime after a non-hybrid plug-in Prius. 

Doomsday benchmark: aol

The worst case scenario for Prius is that it becomes a victim of its own success, too strongly associated with hybrid technology (vs. newer, greener alternatives), too associated with a certain type of early-adopting, holier-than-thou consumer and too associated with a particular period in the evolution of the green car market. aol was forever associated with its CDs offering more and more trial hours and, as Bill Visnick, an analyst with Edmunds Auto Observer, has pointed out  Prius has its own association problems: "The fact is that it's very much known as a weeny sort of a car, and sort of a car for people who are driving too slow in the fast lane." 
 

Photo by NRMAdriversseat (Flickr)

Meanwhile, at the other end of the spectrum both in terms of image and sales is Tesla. Tesla has generated tons of publicity even though it has sold hardly any cars (less than 2,000 worldwide). As Fast Company says, Tesla's Roadster: "Changed the mainstream perception of EVs from clunky golf carts to sleek vehicles that can actually be driven on highways." But now the company has swerved in a new direction. The Roadster is being discontinued and Tesla is going to try and sell cars to the masses. These will be manufactured in Toyota's former NUMMI plant, the size of 88 football fields, and producer of 7.7 million vehicles in its 25-year life.

Doomsday benchmark: Webvan

The worst case scenario for Tesla is that it can't make the leap from hype to mass manufacturer in the one fell swoop now needed. That leap proved too much for Webvan, another company that committed millions to infrastructure before its business was established. Transitioning from a niche to mainstream is difficult enough  without adding in a huge plant that needs to be kept running.

There's no comparison really about the prospects of Prius vs. Tesla--the easy and safe bet is on Prius. It has some real challenges but nothing compared to the level of difficulty of Tesla, where the specter of DeLorean lurks in the perhaps not-too-distant shadows (as others have pointed out).

Brands we're stuck on vs. brands we're stuck with

Photo by Stefan Gara on Flickr

There are some brands we are stuck on, others we're stuck with. Brands we're stuck on are those where we've developed a relationship out of our own free will (Apple, Starbucks, Zappos). Brands we're stuck with are those where we've become enslaved through contracts (phone carriers, cable companies), switching costs (banks, software) or incentives (airlines via their loyalty programs). Consumers may be loyal to both types of brands if loyalty is simply measured in terms of repeat business but their feelings about the two types brands is very different.

For brands we're stuck on, the social media world is their oyster--social media presents an opportunity for them to tap into the wells of existing consumer passion and spread the love around. If you ask passionate consumers for their help, they will give it and become even more engaged as a result.

For brands we're stuck with, social media is a troubling and inhospitable environment. If you hold your consumers captive, you can hardly expect them to be that friendly. Social media gives them an opportunity to vent. The marketing activities of brands we're stuck with should be more about pacification—making sure that the prisoners don’t get so restless that they try and escape. Or wall-building—further strengthening the contracts, switching costs or incentives that keep them under lock and key.

Reference: Post inspired by reading some of the work on branded relationships by Susan Fournier from Boston University

The You Called Brand

In his famous 1997 Fast Company article: The Brand Called You, Tom Peters told us that we all should become brands. "To be in business today, our most important job is to be head marketer for the brand called You," he said.

How about the other way around? From personal branding to branding personified.

I was thinking, for example, that there's a lot of similarity between how we go about getting and keeping a job and how a brand goes about winning and keeping a customer. Let's see:

We start looking for a job by trying to find suitable employers and letting them know we're willing and able to work for them. We use a variety of tactics to do this from reaching out to contacts, to answering ads to blasting out resumes, hoping that one of them will fall on the right desk.

Similarly a brand has to find appropriate customers and make them aware that it can meet their needs. It also uses a variety of tactics from word of mouth, popping up on search results to traditional advertising (the blasting approach).

When we finally get an interview, we need to bring our best game if we're going to get the job. Of course, we must have the right skills and experience. We might be lucky and be the only one with the right qualifications, but there will probably be others who are just as suitable, at least on paper. So, we'll also need to tell a good story about ourselves to stand out from the crowd. We'll need to dress the part--that could mean a suit and tie for some jobs but definitely not for others and finally we must seem like a good fit, difficult to put a finger on exactly what that entails but we know it's important.

Brands have to do pretty much the same things to win over consumers. They probably won't get the job based on functional benefit supremacy alone. They'll need to tell their own compelling stories, present themselves well and make emotional connections with their customers if they are to be selected.

Once we get a job, from then on it's mainly about performance. If we live up to or exceed expectations, we will do well. If we don't, we risk being fired.

Here brands actually have a tougher time than we do. They don't have much job security; they are like contractors continually bidding for projects. If they have a strong track record of performance their customer employers may be loyal to them but, even then, one screw up can be fatal. And there's always the chance that some other brand will come along doing things better, differently and/or less expensively. 

That sounds like more of a dog's life than a human's.

When a brand IS just a logo

So, for all those who you for whom "brand is not a logo" is a mantra, ponder this.  As reported by The Economist, what counts on designer clothing is the label, not the design.

Rob Nelissen and Marijn Meijers of Tilburg University in the Netherlands conducted a series of experiments taking a look at people's reactions to people wearing Lacoste and other designer clothing brands. As they report in a paper in Evolution and Human Behavior:

"Across seven experiments, displays of luxury — manipulated through brand labels on clothes — elicited different kinds of preferential treatment, which even resulted in financial benefits to people who engaged in conspicuous consumption"

In other words, buying expensive designer clothes may be a good investment strategy--the costs of the clothes covered by the benefits received. But the effect only works when the origin of the clothes is obvious (i.e. people can see the label).

Dr Nelissen and Dr Meijers think that people react to the labels as signals of underlying quality and propose that this is an adaptation of what goes on in the animal kingdom all the time--the peacock with the best tail wins. However, as The Economist points out, what works in biology doesn't work so well as a status-assessment mechanism. The label takes on more than its fair share of significance--it's our mental shortcut and proxy not just for the quality of the clothes but also for the character and value of the person wearing them.

So, a brand may not be a logo but a logo sure can be an important repository for a brand.

What can brands learn from Physics?

Following my post: What can brands learn from the Mathematics of Beauty, lets continue our tour of the sciences, watching Dan Cobley from Google describe what physics has taught him about marketing:

1) Newton's Law (Acceleration = Force/Mass): Larger mass requires more force to change its direction.

Marketing learning: The more massive a brand, the more baggage it has, therefore the more force is need to change its positioning. It's an argument that supports the use of product brands in business categories that are always changing (e.g. technology). You want to make sure you don't have all your brand eggs in a obsolete technology basket.

2) Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle: It's impossible to measure exactly the state of a particle because the act of measuring changes it.

Marketing learning: The act of observing consumers changes the way they behave. This is a well-known problem and why focus groups are so problematic. Better to measure what consumers actually do rather than what they say they'll do.

3) Scientific method: You cannot prove a hypothesis. You can only disprove it.

Marketing learning: You can invest in a brand for a long time but all that investment can be undone by one disproving incident. Think BP, Toyoyta, Tiger Woods.

4) Entropy: The Second Law of Thermodynamics: Over time, entropy (system disorder) will always increase

Marketing learning: In this digital world, brand managers have less and less control over "their" brands. Dan argues that this is a good thing, that marketers should embrace this dispersion of brand energy because it ultimately lets you get closer to the consumer and tap into and benefit from their enthusiasm.

Should brands tell the truth?

We can't go through life doubting our abilities at even the most basic tasks. We have to have some confidence in ourselves.

Yet research continues to show that, below a veneer of competence, we are extraordinarily inept. For example, wouldn't you think that most people, asked to choose which of two jams they liked the best would notice if, immediately afterward, they were offered the wrong one when asked to explain their preference? You would. But, in fact, Lars Hall and colleagues found out that only 20% of the people they tested thought they'd been offered the wrong jam, even when the jams in question were as different as Spicy Cinnamon-Apple and a bitter Grapefruit.

This example of choice blindness shows that we're just not very good at using our senses and we're easily confounded. (Puts the famous Folgers instant coffee ad into perspective, doesn't it?).

To compensate for our sensory failings, our brain adopts some interesting strategies:

1) The use of other cues
I previously described an experiment where a group of CalTech researchers showed that people's preference for wine was much more influenced by how expensive they thought it was than what was actually in the bottle. What made the experiment really interesting was that the CalTech scientists had their subjects wired up to an fMRI machine. This showed that wines labeled as high-priced fired up the medial orbitofrontal cortex (responsible for the cognitive processing of decision-making) which then sent out instructions to the rest of the brain telling it that these wines tasted better, overriding any evidence from the taste buds to the contrary. Once our cortex has spoken, that is our reality.

2) What does everyone else think?
Hartbeat has a great article about choice which shows, among other things, the strong influence of society and culture on the decisions we make. We will jump on one bandwagon, then another, sometimes reversing ourselves. Once we were happy with water from taps, then we had to have our water in plastic bottles and now, maybe, we're going back to water from taps. Our perceptions flip-flop in synch with whatever bandwagon we're on. We see what we want to see.

Let's recap. Brain's ability to judge things by our senses? Low. Influence of other cues, culture or society? High.

So, should brands tell the truth? Yes, of course. But what truth? Just the facts, pure and simple? There's a school of thought that, in a world where traditional advertising is losing ground, marketers should go back to basics--just make sure that they make the best product and let the rest take care of itself. But such thinking credits we consumers with abilities to discriminate and form our own independent opinion that the evidence contradicts.

What counts is how people perceive brands and our perceptions can be shaped by many more things than what's in the product. As marketers, it would be a mistake for us to ignore all the other opportunities for influence in a misguided belief that truth can be measured by reality alone.

Photo by Sean Rogers1 on Flickr

Brand loyalty earned or paid for

By most measures, I'm extremely loyal to United Airlines. I fly United most of the time. I'll even pick less convenient schedules, including one-stop over non-stop options. But there's nothing I particularly like about flying United, nothing enjoyable really. To be honest, I would rather Jet Blue or Virgin America--but I never do.

Why the loyalty? Because it's been paid for by Mileage Plus, United's frequent flyer program. Mine is a loveless loyalty created by paid-for attachment to that program. If that program was to go away tomorrow, my loyalty would disappear as well*.

In the last couple of posts, I introduced the concept of brand value (see here and here), which says that value is the difference between the revenue earned from your sources of differentiation vs. their costs. United and the other major airline carriers build value through their awards programs but it costs them a lot of money. Airline frequent flyer reward liability is estimated in the billions of dollars.

It could be that our flying experience would be a lot better if airlines had never come up with loyalty programs. Perhaps they would have used all of those billions of dollars to try to earn our loyalty in other ways. But, at this point, the airlines are just as trapped as we are. They can't abandon their programs. That would be suicide. But, given the awards program expense and effectiveness, airlines can neither afford nor justify the cost of significantly improving our experience either.

This gives smaller carriers or new carriers an opportunity. Without the same level of commitment to frequent flyer programs of their own, they can use the money not spent to try and build brand attachment in other ways. That won't change the flying habits of the hard core, award addicted travelers like me but they can target people for whom there's still hope.

Meanwhile, I'll be heading back to the United terminal next Monday buying my sandwich beforehand so I don't have to resort to buying one of those dreaded snackboxes in flight. Wish me luck!

* Actually my loyalty wouldn't disappear completely because there's a second reason I fly United--that's the Premium Executive status I've earned as a frequent traveler. Status means better service, access to upgrades, better seats (no 'back of the bus' seating for me) and, the all-important, early-seating-so-you-get-onboard-before-the-overhead-bins-are-full privilege. This range of benefits would mean I'd still fly United vs. any of the other major carriers even without frequent flyer points. On the other hand, I'd be much more likely to switch between airlines and try the new carriers out to see if the experience was really all that much better.

Photo: In-Flight Drink Cart by davitydave (Flickr)

Branding essentialism: Looking for cues

In matters of taste, most people, most of the time don't know what to think unless someone or something tells them.

In 19th century Paris, the official arbiters of taste in art were the Salon jurors; the people who decided what would and would not be displayed in the yearly Salons. The artists that made it into the Salon got the glory, prestige and, most importantly, the commissions from the well-to-do. Back in the 1860s, the jury liked big portraits of grand subject matter — history, mythology and the classics, like this Birth of Venus painting by Alexandre Cabanel.

That left the early impressionists out in the cold. Their paintings were considered by the jury to be unfinished, uncouth and undesirable. They were certainly dramatically different from the accepted style as shown in the excellent Birth of Impression exhibition at the de Young Museum which includes works by impressionists and artists who painted in the style the Salon preferred. Some of the impressionists (particularly Manet) kept trying to get into the Salon but others (Rodin, Monet..) gave up and set up a rival exhibition of their work. Many art critics continued to find their work "despicable" but a few critics and art dealers liked what they saw and the tide started to turn. These days you could buy quite a few Cabanels for one Renoir.

Let's move from high art to wine appreciation. In How we Decide, Jonah Lehrer describes a Cal-Tech experiment where 25 people sampled what were described as five Cabernet Sauvignons. They were distinguished solely by their retail price (from $5 (my end of the spectrum) to $90). In fact there were just three different wines and the same wine would appear in the test with two different price points. Not surprisingly, the people preferred the wines labeled more expensive whether or not the wine was really the more expensive one.

But this was a Cal-Tech experiment so it had an interesting wrinkle--all the tastings were sipped inside an fMRI machine. The fMRI showed that there was a specific region of the brain that responded to the price. The high-priced wines got the medial orbitofrontal cortex all fired up and it sent out instructions to the rest of the brain telling it that these wines tasted better, overriding any evidence from the taste buds to the contrary.

As one of the comments to Jonah's post points out, there are people out there who really know their wine. These experts can tell you everything about a wine just by tasting it, sometimes down to which side of the hill, in which vineyard it comes from. They don't need price as a cue. Or even the label. The rest of us may think we know something about wine but we really don't know that much and our medial orbitofrontal cortex rules. That's not a criticism of the rest of us. We don't have the time or money to be expert in everything--using cues like price or, in the case of art, critical opinion makes sense.

Feel like we're drifting closer to a point about branding? Here it is. Most of our customers are not experts either so we've got to go out there and support that medial orbitofrontal cortex. We've already seen that price works (and P.S., it works both ways--if you're constantly price discounting, that's a cue that your product is no better than the cheap version). What else? Talking about a product's essences is one approach--Coors brewed with 100% Rocky Mountain water or Evian water sourced from the Alps. In other categories, things like the Hemi engine for Dodge. What you come up with doesn't have to necessarily be that impactful on actual taste or performance--it just needs to fire up that cortex of ours.

And lest you think that this seems a little cynical and we should be spending our time creating "real" differences, let me remind you of something. One our cortex has spoken, that is our reality. For those people stuck in the fMRI machine drinking their wine, the ones with the high price tag really did taste better whether it was the expensive wine or the cheap one. Still don't agree? Do a blind taste test with Corona in it. Then you'll know what I mean.

Painting: The Birth of Venus by Alexandre Cabanel (1863)

The Essentials of Branding: FREE! download

McGraw Hill's Big Book of Marketing is, they say: "The most comprehensive book of its kind... the definitive resource for marketing your business in the twenty-first century."

Each of its 24 chapters covers practical advice about a part of the marketing process--everything from pricing, distribution, advertising to sales management and warehousing. Chapter 4 of the book is all about branding and that's the one that's available for free download on landor.com. Landor contributed most of the content for this chapter. Some of the chapter sections are:

1. The difference between a brand and branding: As Walter Landor himself said: "Products are made in the factory, but brands are created in the mind." If a brand resides in the mind, then branding is about influencing people's impressions through word and deed.

2. Starting a branding project: If you start out with the right reason, the right commitment, the right business strategy and the right (customer) focus, you'll be starting out on the right foot.

3. The brand strategy: Defining the brand idea, the brand architecture and the brand personality as well as producing the creative brief.

Also covered: Creating and delivering the brand experience, managing a brand and measuring the performance of a brand.

Download available: The essentials of branding from The Big Book of Marketing, McGraw-Hill, edited by Anthony G. Bennett

Prius solar panels: A cool idea not quite baked

Photo: Toyota.com PR

I can imagine excited conversations over the last few months in the halls of the Toyota organization about how much they should or should not say about the solar panels available on the 2010 Prius. Such great potential for headline generation and such a fantastic proof point for the car on the one hand, so far from being fully realized on the other.

If indeed such conversations took place, voices of moderation have won out. As you can see in the official press release, talk about the new moonroof solar panels is relegated to low key inclusion on a list of features. (Even with this soft-pedaling, several stories about the new Prius (like this one) focused on this angle showing its potential news value.)

The problem for Toyota is that it hasn't fully solved the technical challenges that would make this more than a symbolic effort. According to this post, the original intention was to use the panels to charge the battery of the vehicle but this idea was scrapped for now because R&D has not been able to work out how to protect the battery from repeated charging. Instead, the solar panels are only being used to keep the car at ambient temperature while it's not occupied. It's something, but it's not enough of a thing to make a big deal about.

So, kudos to Toyota for resisting the temptation to hype this feature. No doubt the R&D team will figure out the technical challenges and then there'll be another opportunity to make hay when the sun shines.

And the secret of a successful brand is...

Photo of the Basilique Saint-Denis: stevecadman (Flickr CC)

Gesamtkunstwerk. You're welcome.

While on a search for something else entirely, I came across this speech given by Giep Franzen from way back in 2001 to promote his then new book: Strategic Management of Brands.

Gesamtkunstwerk was coined by Richard Wagner who was trying to break away from the Italian opera model of the time where music was given the priority and the drama was entirely subordinated. He saw Gesamtkunstwerk as: "an interconnected whole, subject to a dominating fundamental principle or truth, and strived towards an absolute oneness of action and thought." The best of the best from a Gesamtkunstwerk perspective, Franzen says are the Gothic cathedrals inspired by the Basilique Saint-Denis in Paris.

Franzen translates Gesamtkunstwerk into nine elements that can translate to branding success. The five I found the most interesting:

1. A utopia: a common idea, a philosophical or even a metaphysical ideal from which an attempt is made to (re)create material reality. An abstract central idea, a mental construct. In terms of brands, we could talk of a brand vision, a set of core values and a brand personality.

2. A peddler: a spiritual father (or mother!) that puts the utopia into words, and is its personal embodiment. This is also someone that takes it further than an abstract idea, but who sees the (re)shaping of reality into this idea as his primary mission. When it comes to brands, we call such a person a ‘brand steward’.

3. Totalitarianism: the subordination to the utopia of the artists who form the group. They recognise and accept the ideal, and are willing to submit themselves to its realisation. The resistance against it, as is the case with free artists and applied arts such as those in the communications industry, form the greatest obstacle to giving shape to Gesamtkunstwerken.

4. Interdisciplinary: the co-creating professionals coordinate their contribution in such a way that the mental construct is expressed in all the material aspects of the work. The ‘doubling effect’ is to be avoided, and the disciplines are to be made as complementary as possible.

5. Continuity: Gesamtkunstwerk is not approached as a project that is subject to a system of planning and execution, but as a permanent design and consummation of the work of art in time, based on the starting points of the ideal. With brands, this leads to the need to work from a sense of historical awareness.

What if we did away with the brand model?

In the 11.01 edition of Marketing News, Kevin O'Donnell laments what he perceives to be a branding backlash. "Was there ever a concept that was so misunderstood?" he asks. He challenges those that would criticize brand by saying: "Rail all you want. But brand is a fact of life."

That sounds like a challenge. What if brand was not a fact of life? What if we were all to collectively agree not to use the words: "brand" and "branding" ever again? We could do all the same things we've always done (or failed to do), just not use the words. How bad would that be?

Let's start with the activity of branding. What would our options be? Perhaps we could fold all "branding" activities under the general title of marketing using sub-categories like positioning, design and innovation where necessary. Maybe we'd have a new activity called experience delivery or experience management to make sure that what sometimes used to be called the brand promise gets translated into appropriate action.

How about brand itself? It seems like no-one can agree on a definition anyway so anything we come up with here might be an improvement. It should have something to do with consumer perception, something to do with expectations and ideally connect with the names and logos that represent this thing that shall no longer be named. Any ideas?

The point is that brand is a construct, a model that serves or ought to serve a purpose. Brands don't exist in the real world and it's not absolutely mandatory that we keep using the model. If the model doesn't work, we should replace it. If we brand practitioners can't agree on a basic definition and confuse ourselves and our clients maybe we need a new approach.

My vote though is to keep it. I don't want to change my business card and the name of my blog for one thing. But apart from that, we know (with empirical certainty(1)) that brand strength is closely tied to consumer ratings of relevance and differentiation. This gives us a way to measure success and a way to figure out what we should be doing.

So let's keep brand alive for now. But let's keep tabs on the situation. If it looks like we are all collectively wasting too much time arguing about definitions and not using this model to deliver effective business activity perhaps we will have to pull the plug. Or do you have a different perspective?

Notes:
1) How do we know that relevance and differentiation are the critical measures? We have great data from BrandAsset Valuator® (BAV) to support this. BAV is a global database of consumer perceptions about brands. It has plotted data against revenue growth, margin, NOPAT and economic value added (EVA) over a ten year period. Its consistent results show that:
a) Differentiation is the margin driver - brands that grow differentiation have about a 50% higher operating margin on average than those which allow differentiation to decline.
b) Relevance is the key to market penetration. Those brands that grow both their Differentiation and Relevance report the greatest increase in operating earnings.The relationships between these measures reveal the true picture of a brand's health: its intrinsic value, its capacity to carry a premium price and its ability to fend off competitors.

2) For a comprehensive visual map of brand and its relationship to experience, logos, take a look at this chart from Dubberly Design Office. It even includes a bit of semiotics for those with that inclination.

The U.S. Attorney's Office knows the value of a logo

After a three-year undercover operation, law enforcement officers arrested more than 60 members of the Mongols Motorcycle Club yesterday. Although the club claims to be social in nature, prosecutors say it is, in fact, a criminal gang involved in murder, torture and drug trafficking.

The U.S. Attorney's office wants to do more than put club members in jail. It's trying to put the club out of business entirely by stripping the gang of its name and right to wear its signature patch. The Mongols trademarked their name so now United States Attorney Thomas P. O’Brien alleges that it's subject to forfeiture based on crimininal activity.

"If the court grants our request for this order, then if any law enforcement officer sees a Mongol wearing his patch, he will be authorized to stop that gang member and literally take the jacket right off his back,” he says in a press release.

There is no doubt that the patch has huge significance for club members. According to this NPR report, the Mongols and the Hells Angels were at war for 17 years over the right to wear the patch.

Whether the attack on the trademark will or should work is a different question. Some experts in intellectual property law think that it's an over-reach. "It's cute and clever, but it's also a bit troubling," says Yoav M. Griver, a lawyer with Zeichner Ellman & Krause in New York talking to Portfolio.com.

"What if the government had decided that, because of the Watergate scandal, nobody could use the word Republican again?" Or a logo from any company that gets caught in criminal wrongdoing for that matter.

8 branding quotes from 7 top entrepreneurs

One of the best things about Christopher Rosica's book: The Authentic Brand is that he was able to line up such an impressive list of entrepreneurs to participate. His conversations with 12 entrepreneurs cover not just their thoughts about branding but also their ideas about leadership, recruiting, cause marketing, the value of meetings and mission statements, exit strategies and marriage. Here's a sample of quotes from the book:

Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm: "Superior quality is a prerequisite to entering the game. By definition, an entrepreneur is undercapitalized relative to the status quo. Therefore, if you enter a product that is either at parity with the leaders, or not as good, you won't even get to the starting line."

Jerry Baldwin, Starbucks/Peet's Coffee: "Show (don't tell) your customers that you have good quality by actually delivering fresh coffee and tea. Intelligent people are active recipients of information, and prefer to reach conclusions by themselves."

Ben Cohen, Ben & Jerry's Homemade: "The key to growing a business is that you need to be meeting some segment of the consumer's needs. If you've got a small business and a product or service that is not popular, you simply have to change your product or service to be more popular."

Gary Hirshberg, Stonyfield Farm: "My counsel to entrepreneurs is to 'own' a region, 'own' a market, 'own' a segment. Create something you can defend. Don't get hung up on the idea that you have to go national."

Andy Spade, Kate Spade: "We started out more as a product-based business, which was the simple handbag and our retail store, and we've evolved into a lifestyle business that has a whole world around it."

David Oreck, Oreck Corporation: "There was a young guy who was the head of a magazine and who asked me, 'What does it take for me to be successful here?' I told him, 'Well, first you've got to get divorced.'"

Wally Amos, Famous Amos: "Making mistakes doesn't mean that what you did was a failure, or the wrong take. It was just a 'mis-take.' You need to go back and do another take. In each take there is a lesson."

Jerry Greenfield, Ben & Jerry Homemade: "It really helps if you are doing something you love instead of something you are just spending a bunch of money on. You can become very discouraged if you're not involved in something genuine, something that you believe in, and are committed to."

The book is similar to David Vinjamuri's Accidental Branding which I mentioned in an earlier post. (One entrepreneur (Roxanne Quimby of Burt's Bees) is featured in both.) David's book is more focused on the question of how entrepreneurs succeed against great odds. Christopher's book spends more time on leadership qualities and beliefs reflecting his cause marketing PR background.

But both books reach the same conclusion--If you're an entrepreneur and intend to build a business that's going to survive and then thrive in a tough competitive environment, you need passion and determination and the ability to find a place in the market where your product stands out from everything else.

Join 'em, fight 'em, or move away from 'em: Three approaches to beating low-price competitors at their own game

That's the snappy title of an article now published on Landor.com. (My suggestion: "Ugh, low prices are killing me. What the hell should I do?"was rejected by our editors. Can't think why.)

Anyway, the article lays out different options for companies that are being challenged, in these days of economic downturn, by low-priced competitors. It was inspired by a question that came from one of our clients about how it should manage a request from one of its markets to launch a fighter brand to protect its business against a new and aggressive low-priced entrant.

Enjoy.

UK supermarkets: A trip down memory lane

It's 20 years since I lived in the UK so my memories of growing up here (I'm visiting at the moment) are largely uncorrupted by the intervening years. I visited the local Sainsburys yesterday and the food products and brands that caught my eye were all the ones that are still around, still resonated with me but which have never made it to the U.S. (in any significant way).

The top 10 rated in terms of resonation power:
1. Anchor Butter
2. Ribena
3. Heinz Baked Beans
4. Robinsons Barley Water
5. Bisto (gravy)
6. Lyle's Golden Syrup
7. Walker's Crisps
8. McVities Digestives (and the Jaffa Cakes too)
9. Bird's (custard)
10. Cadbury's Fingers (and chocolate)

Looking at the list I can see a) what a healthy diet I had and b) that the nostalgia factor is driven by specific branded products (rather than the brand per se).

A dishonorable mention to: Shredded Wheat. As I saw that product on the shelf, the words of one of the ads I most hated growing up came floating back to me: "There are two men in my life--to one I'm a mother, the other I'm a wife--something something something Shredded Wheat." The boycott continues. (Luckily I don't like the product that much anyway).

Split personality?

One thing that we people are pretty good at is adjusting how we act and talk depending on who we are talking to. We generally "don't talk to our mothers like that," even when that's exactly how we might talk when we're out with friends later.

With a bit of practice and inclination, it's effortless to change persona from work to home to friends etc. We don't think of ourselves as being disingenuous when we switch from one mode to the next - more like respectful.

And does this have anything to do with branding, I was wondering? Companies can struggle with how to modulate their branding efforts to different customers or between customers and other stakeholders, like investors or employees. How much licence does a company have to be one thing to one group and a different thing to someone else? Where's the line between respect and dishonesty?

Whatever the answer to that, I think that the opportunity to be different things to different people is narrower these days than it used to be. A customer or an employee may also also be an investor. Investors see ads that are not supposed to be for them. And the Internet allows everyone to see everything anyway.

We all just can't keep our different worlds so separate anymore. These days it's more like that time when you brought your friends home from school and then had to choose between acting cool for them or behaving nice to your mom. Or running into a work colleague when you're being a complete slob on the weekend. Or what happens at Xmas parties. Or on Facebook.

The very definition of branding

I recently came across a comprehensive, beautifully designed and, I think, accurate brand concept map, designed by Hugh Dubberly. It shows, better than most other brand models, the interaction between brand managers who create the brand promise and build the products that deliver brand experiences and individuals who develop brand-building perceptions based on those experiences.

It's reality. But complicated. I think that, in well-intentioned efforts to simplify or perhaps a failure to understand the complete picture, many brand definitions focus on just one piece of this overall map and use it as a proxy for everything else: “Brand is a promise," “Brand is experience.” Partial truths at best or, if "Brand is a name, logo etc," completely wrong.

But just because it's difficult to come up with a simple definition doesn't mean that branding is unimportant. Ignoring branding altogether (and being dismissive of it as a practice) which appears to be the approach of some new marketing pioneers doesn’t seem right. A couple of examples below.

Links:
1) Creativity Today Review: Where Chris Wilson and I discussed (in the comments) why Ramon Vullings, co-author of this book, did not directly answer either of the questions posed to him about branding.
2) What about branding? Part of my interview with Seth Godin about his new book, Meatball Sundae.

Branding straw men

I get back from a hard day's branding work, have some dinner, play with the kids, put them to bed and then sit down in front of my computer to see what's new on the blog front. And there I find branding assaulted from all sides. Well, two sides:

"As I've said on other occasions, branding is something you do to cows. It makes sense if you're a rancher, since cows do tend to look alike. It's also useful to lots of businessmen, and they brand things like detergents or shoes for almost the same reason as ranchers. Branding is what you do when there's nothing original about your product."

That was Roy Disney at a shareholder's meeting in 2004, quoted yesterday by Derrick Daye as a "great moment in branding." It doesn't seem that great on the face of it. Then, there was this:

"Brand management was top down, internally focused, political and money based. It involved an MBA managing the brand, the ads, the shelf space, etc. The MBA argued with product development and manufacturing to get decent stuff, and with the CFO to get more cash to spend on ads.

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them."

That was Seth Godin yesterday. Nice.

I think what we have going on here is some straw man arguments. That means defining branding as something that it's not and then dumping on it. Earlier in the same speech from Roy Disney, he said:

"I believe our mission has always been to be bringers of joy, to be affirmers of the good in each of us, to be -- in subtle ways -- teachers. To speak, as Walt once put it, "not to children but to the child in each of us."

But he didn't count that as branding. In a previous discussion between Seth and I about branding, Seth said:

"Yes, I agree that the way you act and the types of interactions you create are up to you, and you can choose to highlight the ones that fit together and
tell a story. So yes, if you want to call that branding, it's essential."

Well, Seth, yes I do. So, for the record, and for all brand managers out there, whether they have an MBA or not, here's my take on branding.

Branding is about finding something relevant and differentiated* to say about your brand to someone, or better, some enormous number of people. Great if you can find a sustainable competitive advantage based on your product but that's not the only way to differentiate. Other options that can work: Brand experience, market leadership, service, attitude...

Marketing is about telling people about your relevance and differentiation. Within the world of marketing, word of mouth/permission marketing is one tactic out of a range of other options that also includes traditional media (TV, print). Marketers must stay on top of new marketing programs to constantly try and assess what's going to work the best and the most efficiently for what they are trying to say. But they don't have to jump on any particular bandwagon before it makes sense for them to do so.

*Why relevance and differentiation? It makes intuitive sense that these things matter but there's also statistical support. Y&R has a global database of consumer perceptions of brands that now includes over 19,000 brands and over 350,000 consumers. It has shown that relevance and differentiation drive brand strength and that brand strength, in return, promotes strong earnings.

Links:
1) Great moments in branding: Roy Disney's Speech: Derrick Daye
2) Tribe management: Seth Godin
3) Earlier discussion between Seth and I on branding
4) Brand Asset Valuator: Y&R