The Intrinsic Value of a Brand

What's in a brand? We hear the term tossed around cavalierly in business conversation all the time. It's become one of the many misunderstood, overused and therefore diluted terms in the marketplace.

Among the many wrenching stories about our economy over the past several months has been the corporate shattering of General Motors. The venerable GM has suffered tremendous public humiliation during the recent economic crisis and now stands at a crossroad. It has made some tough choices and has many more to make before the ultimate fate of the former giant is known.

One such decision is the choice to eliminate the Pontiac brand effective with the 2009 model year. Not that this is the first time. You might recall that Oldsmobile was the first of the GM brands to be shuttered in the new century in an effort to focus its resources on its more popular brands. And admittedly, at the time, GM was weighted down in the midsection with little differentiation between the Olds and Pontiac brands.

But I've been struggling with the decision to throw Pontiac under the bankruptcy bus. Does this really make sense? Pontiac was the "we build excitement" brand: youthful and muscular. The Grand Prix, GrandAm, Firebird/TransAm, cars run as much on adrenalin as petroleum. I couldn't — and still can't — for the life of me figure out why GM would choose to kill the "excitement" while keeping the Buick nameplate alive.

In my personal experience, developed throughout decades of absorbing advertising slogans and just looking around, it's clear to me that Pontiac really does reflect a more youthful, vigorous aura ... while Buicks appear to be the cars of old age (and company cars). Yes, I know this is a gross generalization based on my "gut." but seriously: when was the last time a 20-something or 30-something told their buddies excitedly about their new Buick? Perhaps somewhere amidst the intricate number crunching at GM this choice makes sense, but it sure doesn't to me. (Transparency disclosure: I have owned a few Pontiacs — in fact, my very first car was a GTO; and my parents have driven Buicks since they reached their late 60s.)

Does this matter? Should the suits at General motors care about the gut feeling of an ordinary consumer, albeit one who happens to know a thing or two about brands? Apparently not, since a thoughtfully analytical eMail sent to senior officials when the decision was merely in the rumor stage received a "how nice of you to share your irrelevant opinion" reply.

But here's the thing: Whatever definitions are used in B-schools and marketing classes, a brand is what consumers think it is. The new Buick promotions say "Everything you thought about Buick just went BOOM. Take a look at me now." Clever, in a way — a blatant pander to the baby boomer generation they apparently hope to seduce. This approach clearly indicates that they know that they're selling the brand from a position of weakness, and it's a position they put themselves right into. Why? Again, maybe there's a secret in the numbers that we mere mortals don't understand. Or maybe there's a ghost in the Buick attic that must be ameliorated.

Of course, we also need to keep in mind that this is one of the arrogant American behemoths that ignored the writing on the wall when Japanese manufacturers came ashore in the 70s with their compact, economical, high-quality vehicles. So it would not be surprising for this to be yet another enormous, stinking error.

It's far more difficult to try to change public perception about brands than to leverage those perceptions to your advantage. What GM is doing is simply counterintuitive. And I don't think it's going to fly. I'll be watching to see what happens. And since we Americans now own a stake in the company, I'm sure I'm not the only one.

How do you see it? Am I blinded by my own myopic view? Share your thoguhts with me below —

As always, thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic

The Future of Marketing

I recently read an online article, The Future of Marketing by Gareth Kay, at TalentZoo that I simply have to share ... because while the propositions made by the author are dramatic (within the marketing microcosm, that is), I sincerely hope he's right. You can read the piece yourself here.

Kay begins by referencing the vast amount of discussion we hear about new technologies for communication:

Pick up any of the trade papers or read any of the marketing blogs recently and you’re likely to notice Amara’s law at work: “We invariably overestimate the short-term impact of new technologies while underestimating their long-term effects.”

... and then observes, "but there is precious little conversation about the impact technology is having long-term on culture, and how this might challenge some of the assumptions we have built marketing programs on for the last few decades." He then notes four interesting signs of where be believes marketing may be headed:

1. Brands will be built on cultural and social missions, not commercial propositions
Marketing historically has been obsessed with the concept of positioning — how you are different to your competitors in your category. Increasingly, great brands are realizing that people don’t see categories and don’t obsess about them. What actually matters is having a point of view on the world, a cultural mission to ask people to rally around. You can begin to see this come to life in marketing ideas like Dove’s ‘Campaign For Real Beauty’ and, more importantly, embedded into the very DNA of businesses. Howies, a UK clothing brand is a great example. As its founder Dave Hieatt said, “We’re not trying to sell things. We are trying to make people think about stuff.” That belief (make people think about the world around them) is self-evident in everything from the materials they use to their design to their catalogues to store design.

2. Marketing will be about what you do, not what you say
Marketing has for far too long been built on the notion of saying things at people, rather than doing things for or with people. Great marketing will increasingly be about what you do, not what you say. And that means that rather than being a silo within a business, marketing needs to be an ethos pervasive throughout an organization. Great marketing ideas today and in the future are as likely to be ideas that ‘live’ in operations (think Zappos unannounced upgrade to overnight shipping or Amazon’s one-click shopping), retail design (handheld registers in Apple stores to cut down queues and increase staff/customer interaction) or HR (the Zappos culture book).

3. Lots of little ideas, not one big idea
The future of marketing lies in breaking the tyranny of the big idea for two reasons.

First, while marketing (and brands) exist for a commercial purpose, they live in a cultural space. And culture is far richer, deeper, complex and nuanced than 99.9 percent of marketing. Marketing will be more culturally interesting if it is made up of lots of coherent ideas than repeating consistently one idea.

Second, given our inability to predict the future (despite the fortunes spent on research) it makes much more sense to start lots of fires to see what takes hold and place lots of small bets, rather than putting everything on black 35. We need to think about investing lots of small bets, learning from them and then scaling up behind the ideas that seem to be working. (It’s worth noting that this has been made practical by the fact that the internet is reducing the cost of failure to almost zero).

4. People first
Marketing in the future will be about putting people first. This may sound ridiculously obvious, but too often marketing is about convincing people how great you are rather than working out what people are interested in and how you might be able to help or add value.

A great example of this was the Tate Tracks campaign created by Fallon London for the Tate Modern gallery. They needed to increase the number of under-25s visiting the gallery and quickly realized that the conventions of gallery marketing — show the art on display — was unlikely to change behavior. So instead they thought about what this audience were passionate about — music — and created a campaign around art inspiring new, exclusive music.

If I had to sum it up I think the future lies in realizing that creating cultural value will create commercial value. Whatever the future may bring, it’s certainly an exciting time to be in the industry.

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Those of you who know me or have followed my posts will quickly recognize why I am so enamored of Kay's Four Predictions. These are precisely the kinds of ideas I have been promoting in this blog and, in fact, in my conversations and other writing. Marketing — and communications in general (whether internal or external) simply MUST become more about "the other" than about ourselves. We must acknowledge our place as small atoms in the tremendous cultural entity and contribute to the environment in which we live rather than merely attempting to suck energy from it.

And now, an apology balanced by some good news:
My dedicated readers may have noted a recent absence of new posts from the Communication Heretic. A family emergency took me away from my desk for several weeks, but I promise to be back more frequently in the coming months. And thanks to those of you who inquired about my absence. I appreciate your loyalty and concern! Until next time —

Thanks for participating.

Jan Thomas
The Communication Heretic