All too often, companies (and sometimes agencies), would rather tell you in 1000 words all of the features of a product rather than showing you in a great image (or series of moving images).
This really cool video from BMW does a better job of illustrating the acceleration of the S1000RR than any list of horsepower and tourque could ever accomplish. I am sure that 0 to 100 km/h in 2.9 seconds is really impressive sounding - but to see it in action is what really leaves an impact.
And isn’t that what good branding is about. Telling a story that is relatable, relevant, and emotionally compelling. It’s all about using the consumer insight to craft the story that will illustrate the benefit in a way that makes an emotional connection and changes consumer behavior.
We are pleased to present a new series, Ask Mr. Brandypants, from guest blogger Tom Marcantel. Practical advice on marketing from a guy who knows a thing or two about advertising and selling stuff. Enjoy!
Dear Mr. Brandypants,
I think that I need an ad agency but I’m not sure who to go with. I know that given this economy, we need to be smart with our marketing budget. Is there some criteria that I should use in evaluating a marketing partner?
- Need an Agency Now
Dear Need,
This is a question that Mr. Brandypants often hears. The short answer is, yes, there is a criteria. But you’ll need to create it because your situation will be different from everyone else—including your competition. However, Mr. B would never leave you hanging so here are some guidelines to consider for developing your criterion.
1.Experience in your category does not mean success for you.
Agencies that have “category specialties” often are experts on the operations of a category, but have standardized their practices. Which means they’ll attempt to solve everyone’s marketing problems in the same way. It’s more efficient for them but not necessarily more effective for you. Look for someone who is willing to dig into your business and offer fresh perspectives. The quality of the thinking and the interest shown in your business can trump category experience. That is, if they can show that they know and follow sound marketing practices.
2. Look for someone who listens, but aren’t order-takers.
Mr. B knows it’s a fine line to tread, but there are two considerations to take into account. First, you know your business better than anyone. But the agency should know how to do what they do better than you. It’s a nice balance, right? So if you get the sense that you’re dealing with someone who’s point of view is “whatever you think,” run—don’t walk—away. You’ll be wasting your time and money.
3. Who will run your business?
Here’s a little secret—big agencies take on small accounts to provide cash flow while their higher-profile accounts offer marquee value but smaller margins. If you’re a small account at a big agency, chances are your day-to-day team will be junior staffers. So you want to be a big fish in a small pond. Provided of course that the people in charge of the pond know what they’re doing.
4. Find someone you like.
Everything else being equal, you have to like and respect the people you partner with and vice-versa. If the chemistry isn’t there, things can go south fast.
One suggestion before you commit your entire budget, try a project or two with people you feel good about. It will give you both a chance to see if things are working.
Good luck.
MB
If you have a question, please email Mr. Brandypants c/o tom@marcantelpartners.com
Considering how great the follow up video is, it’s easy to imagine why it took three years.
The new release, This Too Shall Pass, has been viewed over 5 million times on YouTube in just four days.
The band describes their new video:
From the new album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky” available at http://www.okgo.net/store
Directed by James Frost, OK Go and Syyn Labs. Produced by Shirley Moyers. The official video for the recorded version of “This Too Shall Pass” off of the album “Of the Blue Colour of the Sky”. The video was filmed in a two story warehouse, in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, CA. The “machine” was designed and built by the band, along with members of Syyn Labs ( http://syynlabs.com/ ) over the course of several months.
Once you have watched it, you can easily understand why it has gone viral so quickly.
Great content makes people want to talk about it. Makes them want to share it with their friends. Most importantly, great content makes people want to buy some for themselves.
There have been some great taglines in advertising history. Positioning statements that achieved advertising greatness. A few of the more notables include:
7-Up - The uncola
AllState - Are you in good hands?
American Express - Don’t leave home without it.
Apple - Think Different
Bounty - The quicker-picker-upper
Burger King - Have it your way
Dairy Board - Got milk?
DeBeers - A diamond is forever
Disneyland - The happiest place on earth
Fedex - When it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight.
Greyhound - Leave the driving to us.
Las Vegas - What happens here, stays here
M&Ms - Melts in your mouth, not in your hand.
MasterCard - There are so many things that money can’t buy. For everything else there’s MasterCard.
Maxwell House - Good to the last drop.
Memorex - Is it live or is it Memorex?
Nike - Just do it
Secret - Strong enough for a man but made for a woman
Walmart - Save money. Live better.
These have all worked very effectively to best position the companies.
Toyota however seems to have missed the memo on picking a good tagline. As a company that is testifying before Congress about stuck accelerators, is “Moving Forward” really the best choice?
Unless their goal is to provide the opening monologue for Jay Leno’s new Tonight Show, they should have picked a tag that wouldn’t expose them to so much potential mockery.
This week we are looking at the five best ways to destroy the brand. Yesterday we focused on Discount Sales. When a business discounts prices they position themselves as cheap instead of valuable and it will diminish the brand. The consumer is prevented from making an emotional connection and is forced to think of the relationship from a transactional point of view.
Today, we will look at another great way to destroy the brand, cutting the budget. Often companies look to the marketing budget a place to make a first cut to improve the bottom line. However, this is only a short term fix and unfortunately a very short sighted one. Although, it is a great way to destroy the brand.
Business journals are filled with case studies of companies that have maintained or increased their marketing budget, especially during lean economic times. This has enabled them to maintain and then grow their “share of voice” within the market, which then leads to an increase in market share and top-of-mind brand positioning. When the market improves the company then experiences exponentially better growth.
When everyone is flourishing and spending, it is very hard for your company to break through that clutter and connect your message with consumers. When the competition is quiet, or when you can find a channel where they aren’t dominant, then your message can be heard without their noise interrupting you.
So if you want to destroy your brand, then be sure to cut your budget and spend what’s left in the same channels as your competition. If, however, you would like to grow your brand and improve the bottom line, you should invest in the relationship with your consumers. Invest when the competition isn’t spending. Invest where the competition isn’t spending. Most importantly, invest better than the competition.
You have to change the conversation so you aren’t saying the same thing everyone else is. When you say something better then you can be heard.
Focus your message on your authentic core competency which is relevant and beneficial to your consumer. When you are able to make an emotional connection with them then and only then will they become brand advocates for you.
We often focus on building brands. What organizations should do to ‘get it right’. But this week we will have a five part series on common mistakes that are made which actually destroy the brand.
Part 1 - Discount Sales
Not all advertising spending is beneficial. That probably seems contradictory. You might expect an agency to promote any and all advertising. You would think that we would believe as long as you are spending money on marketing and getting your message ‘out there’ that it will have positive effects.
Not true.
Advertising without a brand message or plan can be very detrimental. Advertising the wrong message can be downright fatal.
The biggest ‘wrong’ message? Quick sales.
All too often, organizations stray away from their brand message. Abandon it in favor of an ‘urgency’ campaign designed to generate cash flow. Sometimes it works. Usually it works too well.
Instead of building a brand and establishing a position in the marketplace that is better than the competition, all of a sudden the target consumer starts to see the product as ‘cheap’. Once that notion has entered the conversation, there is no going back.
In addition to a little bit of short-term cash flow, you now also have a reputation as being cheap. Even companies that have built their brand on being the affordable choice (i.e. Walmart) are spending their efforts building their brand, focusing on their core message and establishing a relationship with their consumer built on benefits (Save Money. Live Better).
Walmart abandoned the focus on cheap and saw their profits rise. Consumers don’t make purchases on rational thought. They make decisions based on emotion. That is why it is so crucial to establish an emotional connection. It is through this connection that you will truly build brand advocates. Don’t be the cheapest. Instead be the one they consider to be the best.
So one of the best ways to destroy your brand - cheapen it in the hearts and minds of your consumers.
Part 2 tomorrow - Budget.
image of Circuit City sales insert via Mad Magazine
Tune in every Monday at 5:20pm to KPEL FM 105.1 on your radio or online at www.kpel1051.com for another installment of Brand Buzz. On this week’s episode of Brand Buzz we will be talking about how important branding is and how companies have used social media to successfully grow their brands.
People and companies are all using social media in one way or another. A few have done so with great success. Today we look at the companies that have been able to post revenue growth for their products.
Examples include; BlendTec, Ford, Zappos, Gary Vee and more.
If you would like additional information, please click here to download the free ebook and learn more about how important branding is to the growth of a company and how social media can be used to your advantage.
Feel free to contact us if you have questions for the show. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to receive the Razor Branding Blog either via email or reader to receive daily updates and information regarding branding.
This year’s Super Bowl is, and will be, the most memorable of them all in my mind. For the first time, I actually wanted a second tier of commercial breaks between the game and the regular commercials. It was hard to walk away from the TV with the New Orleans Saints climbing to victory and the most anticipated spots of the year being aired, but I survived.
Among the many great spots, and the few not so great spots this year, one of the most clever is that of the Dodge Charger. While directly targeting men, Chrysler did a great job of speaking to a large range of men by covering a wide variety of their thoughts pertaining to compromises in relationships with women, from putting the toilet seat down to watching vampire shows together.
As the list of what these men will do grows, you can’t help but wait to hear what they are leading up to. Then, finally, after the quiet build-up, you see powerful clips of the Dodge Charger racing down the road while the announcer’s voice over says that because he does these things, “I will drive the car I want to drive.”
Instead of just showing clips of the car with energetic music as several car commercials do, Chrysler connects with its target audience by saying out loud what most of them will not say. They are building their brand by connecting emotionally with their target consumer.
For years leading up to the Super Bowl, I anticipated the commercials more than the actual game (until this Saintly year, of course). For me, the game was merely the vehicle chosen to showcase those advertisers brave enough to not only spend the millions to air their spots but those that were confident enough in their creative abilities to try and command the attention of the 100 million viewers that anxiously awaited those “soon-to-be the most talked about TV moments of the year” spots. That patiently waited to be humored, shocked, surprised, dazzled, heart-tugged, challenged and perhaps even charmed.
For me, the “charming” commercial came wrapped up in a cute little game of Punch Dub - a modern-day version of “slug bug” that encourages passengers to seek out Volkswagen Beetles on the road, in parking lots, in movies (you get my point) just so they can punch whoever happens to be close by. Now just hear me out. Before you get all purist on me saying that this game was created for the Bug, with only the Bug in mind and should apply only if you see a Bug, let’s talk about why I connected to the spot.
As consumers, we constantly evolve and hats off to Volkswagen for choosing to take that leap and expand with us. They have braved their way into our homes not by pushing features and benefits of their growing fleet, but by connecting to us through an already established kinship, brought to life by people, places and situations that we can all relate to - a pained woman in labor, a bus driver and passenger, 2 cops sitting in their car, friends on a morning walk, a boy and his grandpa, Amish men in a horse-drawn carriage and even sight-impaired Stevie Wonder - pointing out to us all that our connection to Volkswagen is far stronger than we were probably even aware of.
I grew up wanting nothing more than a convertible Beetle - grew into buying a more grown up Passat and as my life evolves and expands, my eyes set sight upon a more practical and roomier Tuareg. Thanks, VW, for noticing.
Oh, but there was one tiny flaw in their new tagline. Don’t you think Das Auto should really be Dat Auto?
The music, a slight re-write/mix (courtesy of Wil-I-Am) of The Who’s classic “My Generation”, shares the attention equally with the commanding images flashing on screen. Some of the images are solemn, others borderline trivial or pop-culture-esque. ALL are “Where were you when…?” moments - from the 1st Moon Landing to MTV’s Moon Man.
Here’s what happened in my head in about 3.7 seconds after the spot ended:
I found my head wandering away from the pressure of the Saints first Super Bowl, to the events I had just seen - remember where I was when I heard, or saw them first. Who I called first. What I felt. When I revisited those feelings…
Then, I remembered those times when I was away from a television or computer when something was happening that I wanted to see in real time - A true history-in-the-making moment - something to connect to. Then I got annoyed that I can’t see every bit of history as it is happening.
Then I remembered I have an iPhone and realized I probably can see whatever, whenever I want. Then I remembered that the commercial I had just seen was for Flo TV - so I decided to look it up on aforementioned apparatus.
Hmmm…nice job, Flo TV - maker of portable and vehicle-mounted TVs, and service of live TV to select mobile phones. You made me “need” you in less than a minute. (And I’m certainly worth the millions you paid for that airtime.)
Focusing on a bunch of events that everyone connects to, to make them think about what they don’t want to miss - smart strategy.
If you’re the guy or gal left who missed the game (How dare you?) or who hasn’t caught up by watching the spots online by now - check it out here.
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