Showing posts with label Brand Equity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brand Equity. Show all posts

15.5.09

Orbit Gum – No Matter What


Category: Sustained Success
Brand: Orbit Gum
Client: Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company
Primary Agency: Energy BBDO
Media Agency: MindShare

STRATEGIC CHALLENGE

In 2002, despite having overall leadership of the gum category and a stable of great brands, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company could not claim to have a true power brand; a brand that dominates the category both in terms of sales and relationship with the consumer. Our mission was to create a brand that would set a new standard, as the most meaningful and involving brand in the category.

With brands like the Juicy Fruit and Extra, Wrigley was well seeded in the hearts and minds of the public they hadn't had big innovation in a long time. Orbit, however, was designed in look, feel and taste) to be that breakthrough product that could change the category. To accomplish this, we needed to carve out a new meaningful proposition and fresh, involving communication to convince teenagers and young adults that this gum was unlike anything introduced over the last 100 years.

Orbit needed to be a gum teens and young adults claimed as their own vs. the one their mom always chewed.

From a business standpoint, Wrigley would win as a company if Orbit could assume a leadership position in the category. Currently the leading competitor held the largest share and enjoyed the highest unaided brand awareness in the category due to its long-running campaign. Thus, we needed to makes sure our message was relevant to a large segment of our key competitor's base consumer and over time we needed to secure these chewers while continuously wooing new teens and young adults.

OBJECTIVES

Orbit's communication needed to trump the rest of the gum category in every way. The holistic communication effort we created had to be more break-through, more meaningful to consumers and ultimately more involving than anything in the marketplace. Lastly, Orbit had to grow at the expense of Wrigley's competition.

To be the power brand in the category, we wanted to lead in the following areas, as these measures were and continue to be the key performance metrics we use to gauge success.

Business Metrics

  • Most dramatic, sustained sales and share growth

Communication Metrics

  • Achieve the most breakthrough communication via highest ad awareness in the category

Brand Equity Metrics

  • Establish the brand in popular culture

  • Obtain ownership of “clean mouth” benefit

  • Generate highest association with “cool” and “contemporary”

THE BIG IDEA

“Orbit cleans up even the dirtiest of mouths”

Consumer Insight

A key consumer insight was the genesis for the campaign. The prime prospect, 18–34 year old trend-surfers didn't just want fresh breath, they wanted a clean mouth to help them feel put together, confident and at their best at any time. Key to this is they saw a difference between covering up bad breath and the feeling of having a truly clean mouth. As one person said “you can brush your teeth without taking a shower and still feel ok but the opposite is not true.” We saw “clean” as a compelling yet wholly unique benefit that gave us an advantage since our competition was relying on more typical positioning areas such as breath-freshening, dental and long-lasting.

Brand Defining Idea and Campaign

Based on this insight we created a meaningful Brand Defining Idea (i.e. the core of the brand from which the campaign would be built) of a “Clean Mouth Guarantee.” Thus, we knew that whatever we did it had to reassure consumers that no matter what happened, their mouths would be clean. From there, our campaign was born.

Our Big Idea was to demonstrate this guarantee by showing that even the dirtiest mouths can be cleaned up with Orbit. This approach hit hard on the product benefit but was still broad enough to do the heavy lifting of a product announcement, specifically tout the innovation, showcase the packaging, seed the name and do it all in an engaging manner. Further, it had legs to allow for ongoing product innovation news (the key driver of sales in the gum category). Finally, it simply felt different from the competition and delivered the message in a non-dental, friendly way. This strategy continues to be the foundation in which all Orbit communications emanate.



font>

We brought the idea to life by first exaggerating the problem of a dirty mouth and then finding new and clever ways to clean it up.

The Approach

Prior to the Orbit launch, gum advertising was generally focused on help for the “hookup” or hard-core dental benefits. In general, the communications were void of any memorable personality, style or humor. We saw an opportunity to market Orbit in a quirky, witty manner that would generate powerful consumer involvement and deliver our communications in a unique and stylized feel.

The World of Orbit

Our first step was creating a hyperbolic world, where no matter how dirty people might be or get, Orbit still delivers on its guarantee of a clean mouth. To ensure we stood out, we made the world feel stylish and retro-forward. Additionally we used a sparkling icon named Vanessa, a pseudo scientist/anthropologist who, as the ironic observer of these crazy situations, delivers the pay-off “Dirty Mouth? Clean it up with Orbit – For a Clean Feeling Mouth, No Matter What” while showcasing the product and relevant news. With Vanessa we had an enjoyable thread that allowed us to solve new and different “dirty” situations while providing a consistent voice to the campaign.

Phase I – Literal dirt

The initial campaign featured a lab where test subjects were continually bathed in dirt but found chewing Orbit kept their mouths delightfully clean. From here, the brand continued to use hyperbolic literal dirt scenarios to communicate our message, from equestrians who fall in the mud to man-eating plants that attack individuals.

Phase II – Figurative dirt

Prompted by consumer learning that the idea of “dirty” extended to dirty language, we expanded the definition of a dirty mouth from the literal to the figurative and began cleaning up stereotypical “dirty mouths”. For example, in “Affair” an illicit romance is uncovered and dirty words are “cleaned-up” using silly, non-sensical language.

Phase III – Cleaning up pop-culture

Given our trend-surfer target is highly tapped into whatever is happening in the here and now, in 2006, we embarked on a crusade to “clean up pop-culture.” It was opportunistic way to broaden our mass appeal and there was (and is) no shortage of material. We focused on celebrities known for being dirty – starting with Snoop Dog (in our communications, his dirty mouth was sending him to hell, luckily Orbit is there to save him) and moving on to Steve-0 and Chris Pontius of “Jackass” and “Wildboys” fame (their dirtiest stunts are no match for Orbit). In a highly integrated effort, we demonstrated that even the dirtiest of mouths could be cleaned up with Orbit.

Communications Involvement Strategy

While the Orbit campaign has always utilized layered communications, television has been the key delivery vehicle because it is the target's dominant medium, it allows us to communicate our stylish point of difference and it provides a highly visible forum for our “dirty mouth” demonstrations. However, as we've moved to creating true communication platforms (e.g., clean-up pop culture) digital has become a key element in delivering that experience. Additionally, print has also had a significant role in communicating flavor introductions/messaging while expanding our reach. In 2006, we extended the Snoop Dog TV Spot and the idea that Orbit cleans up the dirtiest mouths online with a microsite that allowed consumers to interact with the brand and share an Orbit “clean it up” message from Snoop with others.

As we continued our quest to clean up pop culture in 2007, we charted new territory by tapping into the ultimate icon of pop culture with teens and young adults-MTV. Due to the hip imagery of the brand and strong connection teens and young adults have with Orbit, MTV allowed Orbit to infiltrate one of their most coveted properties, the MTV Movie Awards. MTV and Orbit created an entirely new award category of the “Dirtiest Mouth Moment from a Movie.” Within the show, Vanessa (Orbit's brand icon) presented the award and Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes, “Jay” and “Silent Bob” of Clerks fame, took the honors. Consumers helped decide the winner by voting on a microsite at www.orbit.mtv.com.


Communications Touch Points

Additional Marketing Components:

Increased distribution due to sales has been an on-going success factor for Wrigley.

Reach: National

Total Media Expenditure:

Initial Year
$10–20MM

Year # 2
$10–20MM

Year # 3
10–20MM

Year # 5
$10–20MM

Current Year
$20–40MM

RESULTS

Business Metrics

Year on year sales have been the fasted growing and most sustained within the category, with the brand growing 400% since launch and overtaking the leading competitor's share by 2 to 1.


Orbit Share vs. Leading Competitor

Communication Metrics

  • Orbit has built the highest level of unaided advertising awareness in the category, with an average of about 22% in 2007 (Brand Monitor Tracking, 2007 Results).

  • The brand has excellent traction with its core target and has achieved the highest level of effective awareness to-date of any gum campaign. 94% of adult chewers 18–34 who recognized the advertising correctly identified it as Orbit advertising (Communicus Campaign Tracking, 2007 Results).

Brand Equity Metrics

  • Orbit owns the “just brushed clean feeling” benefit, with the highest association in the category at 33% among 12–24 year olds (2006 Brand Fitness Study).

  • Orbit has the highest association in the category with “cool to be seen with” among 12–24 year olds, at 35%, almost triple the association as our key competition (2006 Brand Fitness Study).

  • The creative has seeped into popular culture with the TV spot “The Affair” generating over 2 million hits on You Tube, while multiple consumer generated versions have also been uploaded.

Anything Else Going on that might have Helped Drive Results?

Through the five years, the brand had to overcome numerous category threats, including copycat flavor and packaging innovation as well as copycat brands, most notably Stride. None of it had much effect as Orbit sales have continued to increase with little loss of base, while new innovation/flavors have continually brought new consumers to the franchise.

2.5.09

Vertical vs. Horizontal growth

Horizontal growth
Horizontal growth is, in effect, buying companies or vendors in your specific market. Company A competes with Company B and in an effort to expand their business, Company A acquires Company B.
Now looking at this purely on the level of buying competitors, you could say that buying your competitor out can be perceived as being scared of competition, not being a good enough company to just drive your competition out of business, so on and so forth.
However, horizontal expansion via mergers and acquisitions have a much deeper root than simply being all about acquiring customers or customer bases.
What happens with well thought out mergers and/or acquisitions is a reduce in average cost. If two companies supply the same or similar products, have the same target audience, the same distribution channels and similar approaches to business, then he average costs of doing business reduces. As the assets are merged, and the companies become one you see a very obvious decrease in advertising costs, also. It can make sense to purchase a competing company, but only if it is well thought out and not just about bragging rights and customer numbers.
Another example of horizontal expansion for a company would be buying one of your suppliers or service providers. Let’s take an advertising agency as a short and sweet example:
If Company A uses Agency B for advertising materials and product development, then Company A can drastically reduce, in the long term, their costs of doing business by purchasing the advertising company. This model is often seen in the corporate world. Instead of paying inflated fees and being tied to contracts, you can now own the very agency that you used to hire. An advantage of this would be if the company is in stealth ownership (opens up a whole new line of possibilities). Perception is only one part of the selling game, granted, but it is a vital part. Maybe Company A didn’t want to reduce their costs - maybe they wanted to keep their costs at the same level but increase their exposure. More bang for the buck, so to speak.
There are many examples of horizontal expansion and it depends on your line of business for determining how horizontal expansion could work for you. The fact is though that buying a competing company does not always have to be about proving who the big dog in the yard is. It can be about smart business models and thinking on your feet.

Vertical growth
Contrary to the concept of horizontal growth, vertical growth is achieved without acquisitions or mergers.
This concept is one that many say will benefit your company the most, as opposed to growth through mergers.
A company that starts from scratch and slowly but surely builds upward by maintaining their market and. or client base would be a prime example of vertical growth. The downside of vertical growth is that it inevitably takes much longer to grow to a medium/large size than, let’s say, a company that has achieved horizontal growth.
A major benefit, though, of vertical growth is the steadiness of your brand. Mergers can lead to dilution of a brand but with vertical growth your brand depends solely on one company. A rise or fall in sales and/or brand awareness is easier to track; it can nly have come from one place and can only be solved by one company.
In the end it is up to the company management as to whether they want to grow horizontally or vertically. Both have their advantages and their pitfalls.
At the end of the day, growth is growth. If your company is growing then you are successful in at least one of the two concepts outlined in this two part post.

30.4.09

2009 BrandZ™ Top 100 Ranking

New York, New York, 29th April 2009 — the fourth annual BrandZ™ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands ranking published today by Millward Brown Optimor reveals that brands sustain their value, despite the tough economic environment.

7.4.09

Six Ways to Build Your Brand Through Customer Service

by Anand Subramaniam

When it comes to brand building, customer service is often the last and most-ignored piece of the puzzle. This is a big mistake--and big missed opportunity.
Aligning customer service and your brand is an essential but under-used way to attract and retain customers, differentiate the business, and boost brand loyalty. Done right, it can create a truly sustainable competitive advantage.
Here are six ways we've seen to use customer service to reinforce brand identity. These methods can be used to align customer service with established brands or to build a brand through customer service.
1. Establish and execute to a brand-aligned customer service intent
Successful companies formulate a
strategic intent and execute to that intent for market success; savvy organizations map that strategic intent to a brand intent. While businesses often capture brand intent in their advertising, they ignore it in delivering customer service, whether it is through their websites, contact centers, stores, or branches. This could result in damage to the brand. It is therefore important for C-level executives to launch a brand-aligned customer service initiative to make sure it is implemented across customer-facing and back-office operations.

2. Design brand-aligned processes
Customer service processes often involve multiple steps, tasks, people, and organizations. For instance, contact center customer service includes call routing, interactions, resolution, and fulfillment, and could also include proactive outbound communications, based on pre-determined business rules. High-touch brands should design processes that emphasize human-assisted customer service over self-service, whether it is in a brick-and-mortar environment or in a contact center setting (e.g., phone and web chat). It is also important to ensure that promised service levels are met through robust customer service process management tools. Non-intrusive brands should refrain from aggressive in-person or live chat customer service.
3. Provide brand-aligned human-assisted service
Human-assisted service is here to stay- complex customer service requests and certain transactions require human involvement. Moreover, some customer segments prefer the human touch. As such, it is important for companies to hire and retain brand-aligned people for customer service. HR organizations could match the personality of the brand to the desired personality of frontline reps to ensure brand-aligned agent recruitment and retention.
The knowledge and conversational styles of "role model" (i.e., the most brand-aligned) call center agents can be captured in customer service management systems in the form of knowledge base content and interactive guidance to agents at the point of customer interaction, and even in customer self-service systems. Forward-looking retail and financial services companies are extending such systems to brick-and-mortar stores and branches to improve the effectiveness and brand alignment of in-person customer service

4. Provide brand-aligned self-service
Self-service provides a great opportunity to further build the brand. For example, sophisticated guided-help knowledge base systems and online chatbots modeled after the company's multimedia advertising spokespersons can orchestrate brand-aligned self-service interactions with customers. A hypothetical example would be chatbots modeled after the gecko or the "cavemen" for GEICO and William Shatner for priceline.com. In fact, a leading financial services company in Japan has used a chatbot, modeled after an actor featured in its television commercials.

5. Use brand-aligned metrics
A critical misstep in customer service management is the misalignment of brand strategy and service metrics. For instance, force-fitting Wal-Mart metrics to a Nordstrom brand intent is not a good strategy. High-touch brands should not emphasize throughput metrics such as average call handle times.

6. Brand-align all touchpoints
Most businesses still have interaction, data, and knowledge silos in phone call centers, online service centers, and self-service systems, where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Of late, many companies have started unifying customer interactions and knowledge bases into common platforms as the first step to unify customer experience across channels and service agents.

However, most companies have yet to brand-align customer service across communication channels. A unified platform approach to cross-channel customer service and brand alignment can help them get there quickly, and their customers won't have to face Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as they go from one communication channel to another, or from one agent to another

27.3.09

Brahma Lager :::Celebrating 120 years

BRAND:Brahma Lager
BRAND OWNER :Ambev
DATE :Sep 2008 - Apr 2008

Brahma has always been a part of the every-day life of Brazilians. In order to emphasize that fact, it came up with the “Brahmeiro” (Brahma fan) concept, as homage to all hard-working and brave Brazilians. The campaign’s highlight was a jingle sung by Zeca Pagodinho, one of the greatest samba singer/composers in Brazil.











Brahma also wanted to celebrate its 120th anniversary, starting off with a film announcing the celebration and urging all Brahmeiros to join in. The commercial was filmed at two Brazilian soccer stadiums, the Olimpico and the Beira Rio. Other campaign actions included the creation of a 3-D human bottle on the brand’s official site, www.brahma.com, made up of more than 120,000 images submitted by brand fans.

Fans could upload their own image and it would be used to form the image of a huge beer bottle. Brahma also introduced a collection of mini cans carrying historic labels, for example the first every label used in 1888. This was supported by a second TV spot, looking at the label through the ages until the present day.

The mini cams became a hit on online bidding site Mercado Livre. Furthermore the catchy jingle created by Brahma and its agency became a hit.


25.3.09

Four Best-Practices for Renovating Your Brand—Before It's Too Late

Published on March 24, 2009

Stories of marketing heroes who transform poorly performing brands never fail to enthrall us: the transformation of Dove into an empowering brand; the shift to healthier eating for McDonald's; the rebound of Hewlett Packard in the PC market.

Those are among some recent successes. But they elicit the question: Why do brand leaders wait until their brands are at the breaking point, and at risk of joining such brands as Radio Shack, 7Up, or the GAP... for which renovation may be too late?

Unheralded marketing heroes renovate their brands while they are strong and growing. They spot changing market dynamics and address them as opportunities before they have time to develop into threats. Their reward is faster profitable growth without the negative headlines.
Here are four best-practices in brand renovation identified in our work with businesses across a range of markets.


1. Develop a holistic understanding of the brand
A holistic, customer-driven understanding of the current brand and a vision of the brand's future are crucial to proactive renovators. Typically, a holistic view includes an understanding of the brand's heritage, personality, iconography, functional benefits, emotional benefits, and perceived value in the minds of customers, influencers, and intermediaries.

The key is to understand how each of these groups views the brand in the context of their daily lives and compared with the other things that are on their minds. This view enables proactive renovators to see opportunities to credibly extend the brand and avoid the trap of defining the brand by what the company knows how to make or offer, instead of what customers want to buy.

Crayola has managed to stay relevant despite the digital and graphics technologies that might have threatened its brand's very essence. Its understanding of the brand goes beyond the functional benefits of washable markers or erasable pencils. Crayola's brand leaders understood that colorful fun and creativity best defined its role in the lives of teachers, parents, and children; accordingly, it evolved from an art-products company to a visual-expression company. It moved from being a partner with retailers to a partner with educators, parents, and children.

Crayola recognized the danger of being perceived as traditional and has continuously updated the look and the feel of the brand in a way that stays true to its roots but is fun and creative.
Finally, its leaders have used their understanding to guide them in developing programs for the Internet, a children's magazine, interactive toys, and advanced color technologies, breaking the constraints of selling only what can be made in a crayon and marker factory.
2. Look for segment swings
By the time most brand managers spot important trends, they are already threats. That's not surprising, since it's difficult to identify the early impact of trends among the general population of brand users.

Proactive renovators spot trends early by tracking segments of the population where the impact of change is more apparent, segmenting customers in different ways to fit their businesses.
Among the common segmentation principles:

  • First, they ask questions about lifestyles and general attitudes in order to gain a broader context for the role of their products and categories.
  • Second, they are particularly sensitive to trends with the potential to cross segments—from urban to suburban shoppers, or from youth into mainstream culture, for example.
  • Third, they proactively test alternative ways to connect their brands to important trends in order to identify opportunities to play a greater role in the lives of their customers
Kohler is one company that is famously attuned to emerging changes in segments of the population, turning them into big business opportunities. In the process, it has been transformed into the US leader in bath and kitchen design solutions.

More than 30 years ago, Kohler spotted an emerging willingness of urban customers to spend more for high-end home designs. Herb Kohler began to advertise the Bold Look of Kohler with a differentiating focus on design that rode the wave of home investment and kitchen renovations throughout the '80s and '90s. In the early '90s, it spotted another emerging trend: the bathroom as a refuge and oasis in large suburban households. It took advantage with a line of whirlpools, Jacuzzis, and tubs, extending its reach into showers and bathroom accessories.

Most recently, Kohler has increased its emphasis on green technologies with toilets, showers, and control systems aimed at a broad audience.
3. Distinguish the underlying issues
Not every brand issue is a competitive one, but we frequently encounter brand leaders so focused on gaining advantage against a narrow set of competitors that they fail to address indirect competition or tackle customers who are questioning whether it's worthwhile to buy the category at all.

Proactive renovators are much more likely to distinguish among different types of threats and respond accordingly. Brand guru (and Prophet vice-chairman) David Aaker groups these threats as commoditization, brand lethargy, and changing customer dynamics:

  • Declining brand differentiation underlies commoditization, which is characterized by increasing price competition, entry of low-cost competitors, and narrower margins.
  • Brand lethargy is often a problem for category leaders who fall into the trap of repeating past success factors rather than updating the brand and keeping it fresh and alive.
  • Brand relevance underlies customer dynamics issues. Changing technologies, lifestyle patterns, or attitudes typically cause a brand or a category to become less relevant to peoples' lives.
For decades, Coach focused on differentiating itself by handcrafting extremely durable and practical items with classic American designs in American factories. Between 2000 and 2007, it was able to accelerate brand growth from $500 million to $2.5 billion by creatively tackling leather goods' loss of relevance and lack of energy.
The company shed its handcrafted, American-made points of differentiation to leverage its core essence of classic, premium American design within the world of women's fashion accessories. It became more relevant and energetic by introducing color and fresh materials to its designs, transforming its assortment to provide a wide range of accessories and reinventing the Coach shopping experience.
Coach is the ultimate example of a proactive renovator that transformed itself into a category leader.

4. Apply the right strategies
Too many marketers think every brand issue can be solved with a new advertising and promotion campaign.

Of course, brand communication is an important component to building differentiation, energizing a brand, or building relevance. But, proactive renovators ensure that brand communications reflect fundamentally different strategies to cope with differentiation, brand energy, or relevance. One size will not fit all:
  • Successful differentiation in commoditized categories almost always requires finding ways to provide more emotional reasons to prefer the brand. Emotional leverage enhances consumer credibility and trust in innovations that drive big margin gains and allows the brand to eke out small, but often crucial, margin advantages in older products. Emotional bonds provide a platform to charge more despite the competition. Staples's focus on ease (think "Easy Button") and expertise in small-business and home-office efficiency differentiates it from other superstores and lends permission to provide such value-added services as office delivery and computer repair to enhance loyalty and margins.
  • Reinvigorating brand energy typically requires revamping the brand's imagery. A brand image in keeping with its promise makes it more noticeable, easier to understand, and more desirable. Marketers often think that refreshing the logo and trademark imagery is sufficient; that's rarely the case. User, usage, product, and associative imagery all must be explored to truly reinvigorate a brand. Sprite is one brand that regained energy by changing its user imagery to focus on young iconoclasts and its associative imagery to focus on the NBA.
  • Relevance issues demand a re-examination of the customer experience. When consumers change the ways they shop, live, or use technology, the experience must adapt. Sometimes the adaptations include new offerings such as the salads and wraps that McDonald's has added to its menu to appeal to health-conscious women. Some adaptations encompass a comprehensive redesign of the entire experience, like Coach's store and product redesign to meet women's fashion accessory buying expectations.
* * *
These four best-practices expose one central truth: Customers must drive brand decisions.
To succeed, brand leaders must understand the brand through customers' eyes, track how different customer segments are changing, identify the different issues customers have in their lives, and link the brand to customer needs.

12.3.09

Brand management: then and now









Quarter 1, January 2009

Tim Ambler


London Business School




Marketing has become far more professional in the 50 years since the Marketing Society was founded. This article takes a look at that development in order to speculate about where marketing will be in decades to come. These thoughts have been influenced immensely by discussions with some of the brightest young marketers of today.1
As the word 'marketing' means different things to different people, we will focus on brand management. How was it in the 1960s, how has it changed and how is brand management today? What can we expect, or perhaps hope for, in the future?
'Brand' is now a word in common currency. In this sense, marketing is a two-stage process: creating demand (brand equity) and then converting that demand into positive cash flow (selling). In both stages, marketers manage their brands to obtain satisfactory short-term profitability while at the same time building their brands for the long term. The conflict between these two objectives, with the accent usually on the first, provides much of the difficulty.
THEN
Procter & Gamble is usually credited with inventing brand managers, starting with Camay soap in the 1930s. By the late 1950s the advertising for 'fabulous pink Camay' had moved beyond cliché to being a joke. Its appearance in a cinema provoked roars of laughter and cartons being thrown at the screen. Media selection was not well connected with the target audience. Those were the days!
Cinema commercials can still provoke that reaction but not when the campaigns are products of professional brand management. The 1960s had very few of those. Marketing plans, where they existed at all, were written by the ad agencies – often UK branches of US agencies who were more advanced in such matters.
Typical of most consumer marketing companies in those days was my company, International Distillers and Vintners which created its first UK marketing department in the mid-1960s. An international marketing team for J&B Rare scotch whisky already existed: one man and his secretary. Croft Original sherry was inspired by the ad agency Mather & Crowther, using the already very successful (in the US) J&B Rare as a model. J&B was a scotch for people who thought whisky was smart but didn't much like the taste. It was based on J&B's previous international spirits success: Very Special Old Pale cognac. Croft Original was also pale in colour because sherry (then the main wine and spirit category) consumers thought fino, i.e. pale sherry, was smart but found it too dry in taste. So Croft looks like a fino but is sweet to the palate. Repeating the J&B formula may not have been deliberate but it worked. The new marketing team launched Croft by sending a case to every trade customer who ordered enough Smirnoff. Not a great launch plan but it secured distribution.
However, rather more professional brand management was becoming widespread in fmcg companies selling largely through supermarkets, which were rapidly gaining strength at the expense of traditional outlets, thanks to the abolition of retail price maintenance.
Kotler's Marketing Management was already the dominant textbook and the 4 Ps provided the structure for marketing plans. Nielsen was the main supplier of market research and was primarily used to ginger up the sales force. Every two months Nielsen would present distribution figures including facings and out of stocks, down to quite detailed sales areas. High- and low-performing sales managers were complimented and castigated respectively, whether they deserved it or not. Research was used intermittently for consumer usage and attitudes, primarily for advertising purposes. TV campaigns were researched in cinemas by testing brand preference before and after seeing a batch of commercials that included the brands being researched. Knobs on the arms of our seats were turned this way or that to indicate pleasure or interest in whatever was on the screen at the time.
It all seems fairly simplistic as one looks back but it did not seem so at the time. Only one TV channel carried advertising. Two main suppliers dominated posters and a few chains took care of cinema. Diversity lay in the press. The full service ad agencies provided figures on cost per thousand, reach and frequency. PR completed the marcoms portfolio. Specialist marketing consultants were rare as few had enough experience to sell.
Brand managers then had arguably more control over the 4 Ps, certainly marketing communications, promotions, price and, thanks to Nielsen, distribution. On the other hand, brand managers barely existed beyond fmcg and drinks companies.
Before moving on, we should note the birth of account planning in the 1960s, created in slightly different ways by Stanley Pollitt at BMP and Stephen King at JWT. This rigorous approach to using consumer market research for ad campaign development, good as it was and is, had very little attention in its early days.
FOUR BIG CHANGES SINCE THEN
The first big change followed the recognition that marketing was essentially a competitive game. Market share replaced sales as the key measure of success. The Market Science Institute in the US, founded back in 1961, claimed that market dominance was the driver of profits. Grow market share, it was thought, and profits would then increase too. We now know that is not the case; growing market share can decrease profits if it depends on excessive price cutting or promotions. We now know that increasing the perceived quality of the brand, or brand equity, drives both share and profitability. In other words, share and profits may correlate but only because both are driven by the same thing.
The second big change was the computer. The first stage was the shift, with the IBM 360 in the 1960s, from batch processing of operational data for distribution and accounting purposes to the production of marketing information. This arrived as piles of printouts. Brand managers did not care very much for all this paper but they stacked it high to impress senior managers. It was used symbolically to show that brand people had tabs on the market even when the pile was as virginal as when it left the print room.
By the mid-1980s, brand management had spread across the business community, apart from business to business and financial services. Computer terminals provided information in a more friendly fashion. But terminals meant that marketers were less likely to leave their offices.
By the mid-1990s, terminals had been replaced by PCs, then laptops, then notebooks and then the BlackBerry. At the same time, more research agencies and in-house IT departments were each offering more information on a wider variety of topics. Available information expanded exponentially.
More recently, the digital age has given us the web, emails, Excel spreadsheets for forecasting and the dreaded PowerPoint, all on memory sticks the size of condom packets. Data protection has become more important than conception. At least brand managers no longer have to carry around piles of paper, guard books (the repositories for ad campaigns) and boxes of slides.
The third big change has been complexity. Whereas the brand manager of the 1960s had to deal with about six or eight suppliers (not that ad agencies wish to be seen as suppliers), today's brand manager has to manage both creative and media agencies, other marcoms and promotions specialists, as well as a myriad of consultants and research companies. A large company may have 30 marketing services' suppliers and, of course, media have proliferated. Trade marketing and customer relationships have developed their own teams and management, often as part of sales or operations rather than marketing in the departmental sense.
No doubt there have been other big changes too, but I will mention just one more, namely accountability. Attention has shifted from sales to the bottom line. Marketers are now expected to justify their expenditures in terms of the payback. That has brought a demand for estimating customer lifetime values and customer equity. Some firms now believe they can manage customers to maximise profit. This is a complete negation of marketing: we should empathise with customers to maximise their satisfaction and only profit as a consequence of that. You could say Tesco is managed by its customers but the reality is that it is a partnership for mutual benefit.
BRAND MANAGEMENT TODAY
Marketing today is certainly more diverse – multi-sectoral, with many more opportunities, and possibly more competitive. I am often told that 'price is more important now' but that is unlikely to be true. Price always was important. Now that people have more choices, higher wealth in real terms and less time for price comparison, price is probably less important, despite price comparison websites. Talking with top young marketers today, none of them mentioned price as an issue until prompted. Penny pinching by retailers remains an issue.
The strengths of brand management today, at least in the opinion of the brand managers themselves, very much revolve around being able not just to cope with the complexity of modern marketing, but to turn that to their advantage. They are very conscious of how they can add value. As one of the respondents, Suzi Williams, observed, 'brands are no longer inert things to be controlled. They are like adolescents and we can only facilitate their development' and 'emotion leads to action where logic leads only to conclusions'.
To handle so much complexity, the numbers employed in the marketing departments of large companies have multiplied, thereby contradicting the regular headlines about cutbacks. Outsourcing is both a solution and a problem. It may be genuinely cheaper to put the work out and the agency may have better and more relevant expertise, but it is yet another agency to manage, who have different goals and may not have to implement their recommendations.
Another consequence is the universal view that brand managers do not get out enough to meet customers and share the consumer experience. No quantity of market research reports will substitute for feeling the market as it is. Some companies ensured brand managers had field force experience first and spent at least one day a week in the field. Some still do. In practice, 15% field time is quite good but the consensus was that it should, and will, grow in the future. That depends, though, on cracking the 'meetings culture' of some large firms.
There is no doubt that marketers today see themselves as tougher and more commercial. The accountability trend mentioned above is part of that, but so is marketing's coordinating role. One of the respondents for this article, Ben Crawley, said 'brand management is a great grounding in so many business issues and for networking too'. That is encouraging. Marketing has long been seen as the colouring-in department where artistic young people do their creative thing before moving to bigger marketing budgets in other companies. Judging by my respondents, that is less true. Yes, marketing is a plum job so a better marketing job will beat another role and yet more marketers now see themselves as budding general managers. They also recognise more need to increase the time and money devoted to marketing internally.
On the negative side, modern brand management has seen over-extension that has 'taken brands too far', as Liesa Johnston put it. The shortest distance between two profit forecasts is a line extension. It is a quick fix that demands no brand investment and brings instant distribution. But it can, as Baileys Irish Cream has shown, damage parent brand equity and reduce profits after the initial surge.
If true, the call for integration is encouraging because marketers should engage with their colleagues and be seen as key to achieving the firm's goals, not just marketing goals. Marketing is not just a luxury for when finances permit. MBAs today, without prior marketing experience, find it almost impossible to get marketing jobs, but that will change if brand management is going to become as commercial as my respondents claim. Marketers need general business skills and generalists need marketing skills.
There are so many facets of modern brand management that a full account would be too long and this selection is inevitably subjective. But we need to conclude with what seems to be the dominant paradigm today. As noted above, accountability is good to the extent that it keeps marketing feet on the commercial floor but bad if it:




  • undermines the immeasurable long term in favour of the quantifiable short-term. In past years, short-term goals were set low enough to expect some spare cash flow once they were achieved; that could then be hidden in the following year's expenditure to protect the longer term, e.g. the ad budget; getting that past your accountants and auditors is just as feasible today; it is naïve to report a higher bottom line than it needs to be

  • locks marketing into the perception that it is a cost to be cut like any other

  • involves too much time forecasting, planning, and reporting – leave all that to the accountants

  • is built on false performance measurement models like ROI or purely short-term financial figures with no recognition of the marketing asset, namely brand equity; regrettably, that is the general picture today

  • requires simply too many metrics or KPIs – just as brand managers have to cope with complexity by increasing focus, so marketers need to agree with senior colleagues what are the metrics that matter and not be distracted by those that do not; the tool that addresses that is the 'dashboard'; none of my respondents mentioned such a thing but I am confident it is on its way.


BRAND MANAGEMENT IN THE DECADES TO COME
Clearly the web will play a growing part but it is fanciful to suggest that it will enable brand managers to have meaningful one-to-one consumer dialogue. Consumers will communicate more with each other. Smart brand managers will monitor those exchanges and learn from them but they will rarely intervene. As the poet said 'the great advantage of keeping your mouth shut is that you cannot put your foot in it'.
On the other hand, brand managers will find ways for consumers to reach them when they really have to. Today's blank wall of call centres, ex-directory HQs and FAQs is immensely frustrating for consumers with genuine issues to resolve. Brand managers cannot be swamped by such matters but systems must be found for direct communication when necessary. Expert systems should be able to deal with most contacts but highlight those that need the brand manager's personal attention.
This may be optimistic but I believe a common business language shared by marketers and non-marketers alike will emerge. The idea that figures with pound signs in front of them matter and the rest do not, is so silly that it cannot prevail for long. At the same time, brand managers should respect continuity and stop chasing the fashionable metric or business process of the month.
Peppers and Rogers' Return on Customer and Reichheld's Net Promoter Score are two recent examples. To put it politely, both are flawed. Yet marketers leap to adopt them. Maybe the Marketing Society or the Marketing Science Institute in the US will set up panels of experts to review these things, rather as NICE does for drugs, before brand managers begin to use them. No CEO would then accept unapproved metrics.
This shared language will be part of non-marketer executives becoming far more savvy about what marketing can and should do for their businesses. They will recognise that marketing is the sourcing and harvesting of cash flow. Accountants will be measuring brand equity as part of their own routines using research shared with brand managers. HR people will be agreeing internal marketing plans with their marketing colleagues to ensure employees live their brands and marketing gets the value from their consumer experiences.
As noted above, expert systems and 'in-sourcing', eg metrics and forecasting to finance, will relieve brand managers of having to slog through the data overload and complexity. They will allow focus on essentials, thereby allowing marketers to get out more, although that may be more hope than expectation.
Neuroscience is not a practical brand management tool today but it surely will be within the next 50 years. No major new marcoms campaign or promotion or repackaging will be accepted before the neuroscientists have had their say. Modern-day pre-testing will be a thing of the past. The neuroscientists will get it wrong but not as often as pre-testers do.
It was good to see that one of the respondents for this article studied neuro-psychology at university. While marketers will always, and should, come from a variety of disciplines, this one is likely to grow in importance.
A visible symbol of both these trends will be widespread use of dashboards with which to drive the business. These are already becoming commonplace in large US companies, and are such an obvious requirement as to be a near certainty.
Imagine driving a car without a settled arrangement of instrumentation. And the dashboard will itself enhance the integration of marketing metrics with corporate goals.
Notes
1. Nathan Ansell, Benjamin Crawley, Jennifer Gershon, Liesa Johnston, Richard Lawrence, Lindsay Nuttall and Suzi Williams.

7 Skills for a Post-Pandemic Marketer

The impact of Covid-19 has had a significant impact across the board with the marketing and advertising industry in 2020, but there is hope...