27 Oct 2014

Would I Lie To You?

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With one child still left in the nest with a chance to go to Oxford, an article in the Telegraph about Oxford interview questions caught my eye. David Leal at Brasenose uses this question for aspiring philosophy students – “Lie, deceive and mislead seem to mean a similar thing but not exactly. Help me sort them out from each other”. Great question. Even if you had a dictionary it wouldn’t help you. What Mr. Leal wants to see is how you tackle the question for which there is no real answer other than “You can’t, without a context”. As a failed Cambridge applicant (Economics) I am tempted to provide an answer that I might have given in the context of a university interview just to show the opportunity they missed. I applied to Selwyn, a college, I was told, was so poor no-one with half a brain could fail to get accepted. My humiliation upon receiving a firm rejection was thus all the worse, slightly eased by discovering that the friend I made in my first week at Bristol had also tried the same strategy and had also been refused by Selwyn. No names, no pack drill, but you know who you are Charlie K (still one of my best friends).

No, I shall attempt to answer the question in the context of marketing. I will seek to prove that only one of them is unacceptable in the promotion of a brand. In the Oxford question, had one said the answer lay in the context, one would have had to go on to show that who was doing the lying, deceiving, misleading, to whom and with what motivation might indicate nuances of meaning. In marketing we can answer that straight away. It is the brand, they might be lying, deceiving or misleading “consumers”  (people) for the purpose of making profits by gaining an unfair advantage over their competitors. I will argue that in which case, there is really only a difference in acceptability.

It’s OK to deceive your “consumer”, brands do it all the time. We spend millions of $ and engage the brightest and most creative minds to deceive people into believing that our brands are better and will improve their lives. It is not just part of what we do, it is what we do. We seek to persuade them that the smallest of performance difference will actually make any difference, that our brand will make you more of a man or woman, a more attractive and confident person, that it will earn you the respect of your peers and the attention of the opposite sex. Oh yes we do.

We mislead people into thinking that our brands are terribly popular among people who, according to our research, our target consumers will find credible and motivating. You don’t think so? So how many Irish people drink Baileys or Magners, how many Aussies drink Fosters? Did Michael Schumacher really help develop that premium petrol, does he deliberately drive out of his way to find the gas station that sells it to put it in his own car? Do all those starlets actually use that shampoo and derive their self-esteem from it? Do they ‘ecky thump. Are our shoes hand crafted in grottos by little elves, is our whisky lovingly scraped from the wings of angels by men in kilts? Or are they, respectively, knocked out in Chinese sweat shops and distilled as a chemical in something the size and appeal of a school science lab?

These days we twitter and post to create ‘a human face for the brand and to engage our consumers’. A slight deception as there rarely is one human guiding the brand, rather a large cumbersome team acting on behalf of shareholders. You are being misled if you believe we really want to engage with ‘you’ because we care about ‘you’. We only care if there are millions of “you” buying our brand. We engage because we have to not because we want to. The old didactic days of marketing were far easier.

Yes we both deceive and mislead people and revel in the focus group findings and Nielsen results that show we have succeeded.

We are magicians, we simply but cleverly misdirect. We use sleight of hand, theatricality, the set-up (is there any difference between planting someone in the audience or paying George Clooney to flog your coffee?).

But we don’t lie and if we do we get caught, which is probably why we don’t lie. You think this is harsh? I imagine if you had been born 100 years ago you would have been convinced Guinness was good for you and Marlboro cigarettes were part of a healthy outdoor lifestyle too. (I still believe both).

I did not get into the easiest college in Cambridge let alone the philosophy department of Oxford. I ended up a murketeer and in the context of murketing, “deceive” and “mislead” mean pretty much the same thing. They are not just acceptable, they are aspirational. A lie is not acceptable and it’s bad for business. That’s the difference.

Or put another way – great advertising is “truth, well told”  not a pack of lies. (Did I pass?)

14 Oct 2014

That Special Ingredient

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Someone gave my wife a 1960 edition of Vogue Magazine (yes you can figure out why but please keep your inferences to yourself) and I could not resist having a quick thumb through purely to check out the Ads. The comparison with today’s Vogue is hilarious – they all feature demure Audrey Hepburn look –alikes. It was interesting if not unexpected to see that only a very few of the brands advertising are even close to famous now. Selfridges had a spread as did dear old Bentalls but most are long gone – any of you ladies wearing Polly Peck tights by any chance, I thought not. But one defunct brand caught my eye in particular. There were two full page ads for Bri-Nylon. I recall in my youth that nylon – bri or otherwise – was heavily promoted and for a while we all aspired to wear this new miracle material, sleep in it and, as Vogue 1960 was featuring, use it for our ball gowns. A few years later it was a by-word for cheap, nasty and smelly. Polyester took over and while seen as the poor mans cotton or wool still finds widespread use but I don’t remember seeing any ads for it anywhere.

Courtaulds were a well known purveyor of materials and there was an ad budget for them as well back in the day.

It got me thinking about the potential for marketing ingredients or components and whether this has any role these days. If people can only ever buy your product as just part of many other peoples’ brands is there any point doing any more than B2B marketing? Is it worth going over the heads of your business customers and talking to end consumers to create some pull, increase your leverage and therefore margins?

Until recently we used to know all about Intel and demand only those computers that had their chips. I don’t hear so much about them now and doubt many people care who makes their micro-chips (do you know who makes the ones in Apple products – thought not). Will we pay a premium for any brand of outdoor wear that uses Gore-tex or just the Northface brand irrespective of what material they use? Who makes the electrical components in your car? Most of you will answer BMW, Ford or whoever has their badge on the car, the rest will simply say they don’t care. Back in the ‘70’s when I used to do a little work on cars I knew all about Lucas, I even knew the relative merits of SU versus Webber carburetors and would pay a premium for Castrol Oil.

Back to the world of tech, are we witnessing the demise of the Microsoft brand? It is still famous but do we care far more for the hardware than the software? Shell and other petrol brands used to advertise heavily and those of us of a certain age can still remember going well on Shell or putting a tiger in our tank with Esso. The Oil brands now market themselves much more on the service station, even the coffee they serve, rather than the petrol you buy. You spent thousands of pounds on your car, one of the biggest capital investments you make, and yet will not drive 100 yards to buy a better petrol.

On the other hand, what is your emotional attachment and loyalty to your washing machine? You cared a bit when you were buying it and were possibly persuaded by the sales person – or on-line reviews – to fork out a bit more for a Miele or Bosch (or anything German rather than Italian or British frankly) but the brands you still care more for are the detergents you use in them.

The question here is what is the chicken and the egg? Did ingredient or component brands lose their points of difference, did we lose our naivety or did they stop investing in marketing (which ain’t just advertising, it is also innovation which delivers meaningful points of difference) just as all the end products upped their investment? The Persil/Ariel versus washing machine example would suggest it is the latter. The white goods industry has always been so f*** up and fragmented and in my experience – somewhat dated I must acknowledge – home of some of the worst managers, and their marketing reflected this. On the other hand P&G and Unilever have ploughed billions into their brands and this money has been invested by some of the very brightest and best managers and marketers.

I once gave a talk on this theme to a group of Shell senior managers. One them, the head of technical development, stood up at the end and said “I don’t think you understand, our petrol is only 3% better and that would never be noticed by anyone”. As a former detergents boy I replied that we would kill for a performance difference as big as that. The trick is to make the difference relevant and important and find ways to explain the benefits and consequences.

“But who on earth would really care?” he came back at me. It is 3 o’clock in the morning and you have to rush your sick child or pregnant wife to hospital in the family car. You have just taken delivery of your highly expensive sports car and are about to fill it up for the first time. An expert explains the savings in service costs and the increased residual value of your car if you protect the engine by using the right fuel.

Marketing starts with differentiation and ends with the investment to make sure the right people know, care and trust. On the way you make sure you create more value than you add cost.

Those are the ingredients for success. If you stop investing in your brand because in truth you have stopped believing in your ability to deliver something different that is worth paying for then you become a commodity.

3 Oct 2014

Legally High

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Like many others I suspect, the news that a company in Washington State, USA is launching a range of soft drinks infused with marijuana caught my attention (big time).  http://bit.ly/1nyuFOd

The cheekily named “Mirth Provisions” is, equally cheekily, calling their new drinks “Legal”. There are 3 flavours, Cherry, Pomegranate and Lemon plus Lemon Ginger, which can apparently only be drunk while listening to the Grateful Dead (I made that last bit up, the bit about Grateful Dead not the bit about the Lemon Ginger version which is, they claim, quite a bit stronger).

I’ve been to Washington State but the once, to Seattle, home of Starbucks. I think I may be going back and I don’t plan on drinking coffee. This is the biggest news in the drinks industry since they lifted prohibition. How long will it be before you can pick up a 6 pack at Tesco’s and lose an entire weekend? Soon I hope because Seattle is a bloody long way.

I just love this news because it shows the power of a real product benefit and encourages us all to dare to dream the impossible.

I recall a few years back, in 2002, asking one of the brand managers at Miller Beer what he thought the game changers might be in the future. (I should explain that  Miller was built on introducing Lite (sic) beer which was the first decent product based innovation in beer for generations. It was pushed through to the market by people from the new owners Phillip Morris – it worked in fags, why not beer they figured).

He couldn’t see one coming. “What about when they legalise cannabis”, I asked. He was both shocked and incredulous. But I was the Global Marketing Director so he couldn’t tell me I was being both inappropriate and daft although it was clear from his reaction he thought I was both. My intention was to shake up his thinking so I had some fun with him. “Why not?”, I pressed on. “You do know it’s an accident of history that alcohol and caffeine are legal while cannabis is not. LSD was legal until late into the 1960’s. So why shouldn’t a relatively harmless drug like marijuana be made legal at some point? And if it was how would that affect our industry?” He wasn’t having it. “I don’t know about the rest of the world but it just ain’t going to happen here in the Sates”.

Well it is happening, buddy, and it’s brilliant and it will change things forever. All booze is based on ethanol – forget all the hype and bullshit, ethanol produces just one kind of legal high. Marijuana produces an altogether different high – that is progress in my book. Maybe some marketers like the kind of marketing you have to do when the truth is there’s bugger all difference between your product and any other. Personally I like the kind of marketing you can do when you have something new and different, and yes, for some people on some occasions, much, much, better. Imagine the fun we can have transforming a whole bunch of categories in food and drink. That line was, by the way, very deliberate. We can consume our new products and let our imagination run wild and we will laugh out loud while we are doing it because some suckers are actually paying us to do this!

And of course we will dream of other previously unimaginable product breakthroughs. Cars that run on water, phones that tell you what shape you’re in, clothes with smart fabrics that adapt to the environment, insurance that rewards you for being a good driver based on your actual driving data – hang on a minute, I think all those things are available now. Well, shit, we can imagine a whole bunch more.

Back to the soft drinks with dope, who do you think will be first to get this into their cola, Coke or Pepsi? Here is what I think – I think it will be Coca Cola because they’re big and awesome. And then, with a fabulous sense of irony, Pepsi will launch a cola with cocaine extract called Pepsi coke. And they will resurrect one of the best slogans in advertising history….

Lipsmackin’ thirst quenchin’ acetastin’ motivatin’ good buzzin’ cooltalkin’ highwalkin’ fastlivin’ evergivin’ coolfizzin’…Pepsi coke!

Because it just works doesn’t it? It was a line ahead of its time. I wonder what they were on when they wrote it?

9 Sep 2014

Big Bang Marketing

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Grabber of a headline but probably not what you think. I was running a strategy session in New York last week and I came up with a new opener that worked well in terms of raising the energy level and shaking up the thinking. I got the idea from listening to a programme on Radio 4 the night before while I was fighting to try to get back to sleep. It featured a panel of scientists, including the rockstar physicist Brian Cox, talking about what came before the Big Bang.

This is a subject I had looked at before when I was researching a book I was writing called “God’s Marketing Brief” (it’s on Amazon but I really don’t recommend it unless you too are struggling to sleep at night). Despite the fact that I flunked out of Physics aged 15 years I am actually quite fascinated by the Big Bang. The two sides of physics, the General Theory of Relativity (gravity, light, time etc, the big stuff) and Quantum Physics (atoms, protons, quarks etc, the really small stuff) can explain everything from just after the Big Bang, which was roughly 13.7 billion years ago. When I say just after the Big Bang I mean 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000001 of second after, or 10 to the power of -37 of a second. Now that is not long is it?

Science can also explain quite a lot about where the universe is now and where it is going. The most important thing it supports is that the universe continues to expand, and going back to the Big Bang it was not actually a very loud noise, it was in fact the moment when the universe started to expand. It did so very rapidly at first, explosively fast, so I suppose that is kind of like a ‘bang’.

Bear with me here – I am going to talk about marketing soon. One thing about which scientists speculate but cannot prove is that there may very well have been a series of “Big Bangs” in those very first milliseconds, which could mean, theoretically, that the ‘Big Bangs’ gave rise to an infinite number of parallel universes.

Hang on in there – one last point to make. For reasons that would take too long to explain (alright, I admit it, for reasons I don’t entirely understand) the scientists cannot reconcile the General Theory of Relativity (big stuff) and Quantum Physics (small stuff). They explain the big stuff and the small stuff but they don’t explain each other. That is where String Theory comes in, or as it is sometimes called ‘The Theory of Everything’ (I am not making this up – check it out on Wiki). String Theory poses that little tiny atoms, the really, really small stuff, are not little dots but are long stringy things. But even more curiously, String Theory suggests that there must be at least 10 dimensions – another 6 plus dimensions beyond the 4 we know about (3D plus time).

Relax, we are done with the physics. In fact to lighten the air you might recall that Sheldon in “The Big Bang Theory” is studying String Theory – quite brilliant and quite mad.

So, I explain all this to my folk in the strategy session and invite them to see if it gives them any insights on what we are about to do – which is to develop a new strategy for a recently acquired business.

Well, let me help you, as I helped them.

1. It is worth looking back in time if it helps explain the future but beyond a certain point, the Big Bang, who cares?
2. If scientists can figure all this out surely we can come up with a solution to our little challenge.
3. There probably are a series of parallel universes and there is definitely more than one strategy – so let’s develop a few and choose the best, the one that creates our universe the way we want it.
4. We live in a universe that is always expanding – change is not our enemy it is our friend.
5. We are dealing with two theories of business that cannot be reconciled – finance and marketing. Or rather they can be reconciled but only if you bring in some new dimensions.

I must say it went on to be a very successful workshop although a lot of the credit for that must go to the caliber of people in it and not the facilitator. We did come up with new dimensions and several new strategic options.
If you are interested in knowing the new dimension to our thinking that made the most impact it was the concept of Triple Bottom Line. I’ll leave you to look into that.

But I think I’m on to something with Big Bang Marketing.

4 Dec 2013

The Big Brand Bang

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It took CERN 10 years and several billion euros to build the Hadron Collider with the purpose of recreating the Big Bang, the birth of the Universe. They claim to be getting very close although in fact they may never actually get there, just close enough to be able to understand the absolute fundamentals of particle physics and the creation of life as we know it, Jim.

As a brand marketer would you not want to witness the birth of a brand? Not the launch of a brand, but the birth of a brand in someone’s mind, the very moment when all the attributes, associations and artefacts of the brand collide to form one coherent whole. Nike, Google, Coke all exist now, part of the Universe, and we can only speculate and guesstimate precisely how the particles all came together. To know for sure you have to see (feel might be a better word) the actual physics of how it happens. Does this possibility not excite you, give you a hadron (sic) so to speak – sorry, I just couldn’t resist. Well you can. I know this because I recently did. And you don’t need a multi-billion euro collider.

Enter, as a consumer, a new market – go buy something in a category you have never worked in nor ever previously taken much interest but which suddenly matters to you. I will share my recent experience of doing just this and you will get the idea.

I have what is known in South Africa as a ‘Bakkie’ (pronounced ‘buckie’) – the Americans would call it a truck, Europeans a SUV. It’s a Double Cab, 4 x4 Toyota Hilux, the top selling car in South Africa for very good reasons. It is not bad on the road, sits 5 fairly comfortably, goes up the side of mountains and is built like a very robust lavatory. In the rare cases it breaks down or runs into something harder than itself you can repair or replace any part of it in any remote part of Africa. Mine has now done 40k, barely run-in, and needed new tires. So what brand of new tires should I buy? Not a category I have ever worked in professionally and frankly not very high interest for me – until now. The choice of tire is now crucially important to me, I cannot hide behind what the manufacturer supplied the car with, I have to make a choice. That choice has a functional dimension, I must choose the right tires for the driving I do (70% on-road, 30% off-road). I won’t buy the cheapest as that is a false saving, I must buy the best value. But my choice has a badge dimension as well. If I rock up to my mate’s farm in the Karoo (very beautiful and middle of bloody nowhere) with the wrong brand of tires I will be derided as a wimpy towny (accurate but hurtful nonetheless). I have done well to buy a Toyota Hilux, a car that commands ultimate respect among the people who make full and daily use of a ‘Bakkie’. My choice of replacement tires has the potential to deepen that respect to the level where he might even let me take a turn doing the brai (Bar-B-Q).

I am standing in Tiger Wheel & Tyre, the biggest and most highly advertised of all the many purveyors of tires – guess why – and the very lovely Lizette is explaining my options and the various deals available. I am in luck as there seems to be a ‘deal’ on all the ‘top brands’. I have no idea whether these deals do or do not in fact reflect any true saving, but there is a lot of point of sale assuring me they do plus the gift of a free Bosch power tool should I buy a full set of 4 (as I intend to do). I don’t think the Bosch power tool would persuade me to buy tires if they didn’t need changing nor, I think, to buy a brand that was not my first choice but it would tip a lot of people into changing all 4, the sensible but not essential thing to do (they wear and drive much better if they are all new but you can sometimes get away with replacing just one pair). Anyway, this is not about understanding the real time effect of promotions, this is about the very moment when a brand arrives in you head, not as disassociated scraps and particles but as a coherent whole. Lizette is now asking me what brand I would like.

I can see the various brands of new tires on display. I recognize some names – Continental, Michelin. There is one Japanese make I’ve never heard of but, hey, it’s Japanese as is my cherished Toyota Bakkie.

“What about the BF Goodrich All Terrain?” I enquire tentatively. “A very good choice” Lizette replies without hesitation. Would she have said that about any of the big name brands? I don’t think so. She seems very capable, has already advised not to spend the extra money on the more expensive fully off-road tires so I trust her, and there is something about the smile she gives me. It’s a knowing smile. Choosing BF Goodrich, it seems, has impressed her.

Let’s examine the particles that existed in my mind. I had heard of BF Goodrich and had noticed them on the kind of SUV’s that mean business – the ones with extra jerry cans, winches, snorkel exhausts etc. The reason you notice BF Goodrich is because the branding is very prominent, a big chunky white logo, and the tread is also very distinctive. A few years back I had briefly flirted with the idea of buying a Land Rover Defender to which the previous owner had fitted BF Goodrich. This was talked up by the dealer as a selling feature – “The previous owner loved this car and really looked after it, look, he even fitted Goodrich”. In other words the previous owner had paid extra to have the new car, not just any car but a Defender, upgraded with more expensive tires.

I am not 100% sure but have a feeling that BF Goodrich are American. The yanks know nothing about cars but when it comes to trucks and the tires that go with them they do have a certain reputation.

And then there was the price – the BF Goodrich were quite expensive, not unaffordably so but noticeably so.

“I’ll take the BF Goodrich”. “Would you like the white lettering on the inside or outside” Lizette enquired, apparently it makes no difference which way round the tire is fitted. Guess which I chose.

Distinctiveness, (relevant) opinion-leader endorsement, country of origin, price, coherence (tread, logo, name, function and badge), multiple points where the brand has touched me and a degree of familiarity, a sense that you are not the only one, that maybe the brand is becoming more popular.  The Big Brand Bang.

As I pulled into the car park of my local just as a car-mad mate was also arriving, the new tires (on my 3 year old car) were instantly noticed. “Decent set of boots, China” he said appreciatively.

I can now tell you with total conviction that if you have a choice in tire for your SUV there is only one brand to buy – BF Goodrich. A brand is born  – in my mind.

PS It turns out that BF Goodrich are now owned by Michelin –would that have made any difference? Who knows. Big Bang Brand Architecture – but that’s another story…….