Industry insiders will struggle to get to a differentiating idea

There are plenty of instances when it is smart to hire consultants with deep knowledge and experience in your category. But defining your Brand’s core strategic premise is not one of those times.  In order to escape the traps, conventions and category benefits, it will be more helpful to bring in brand experts rather than industry experts. This is true not just because an outsider can bring fresh ideas to your category, but because that outsider will help the internal team be more creative by generating surprising, unfamiliar perspectives.

The January 30, 2012 New Yorker has a great article called “Groupthink” that debunks how brainstorming is usually conducted. The article cites research by Charlan Nemeth at UC Berkeley, as it concludes, “Even when alternative views are clearly wrong, being exposed to them still expands our creative potential…After hearing someone shout out an errant answer, we work to understand it, which causes us to reassess our initial assumptions and try out new perspectives.”

I find it surprising how many RFPs require experience in a particular category for brand strategy work. We’ve been at this a while and we’re fortunate to have a bit of experience in many categories. But when I look back at our body of work over the past 12 years, I’m struck by how so many of our best cases were in situations where we were brand new or almost new to a category. We’d never really done high-end fashion before we worked with Gucci, but the brand’s sales and value sky-rocketed after they embraced the strategic direction we helped them develop.

We actually go through a process of cross-pollination whenever we work on a brand strategy assignment. We ask ourselves what we can learn from our experience outside this category to bring fresh perspective? How can we bring smart but outlandish ideas into the room to stimulate the client team?

It is also helpful not to be competing with the clients to be the “expert” on the industry. I remember the Gucci clients really liking the fact that we were clearly not from their world. They could be the experts on fashion and we could be the experts as it relates to the process and ideas for re-defining the brand.

Prior experience in a category can be useful and help on the initial learning curve, but it doesn’t really correlate with a successful process, end-product or results.

Many ad agencies could use this same medicine. Generate ideas from outside the industry — or at least outside the company — to help change the way agencies work. If only there was another agency model…

No wonder we shy away from the unfamiliar

We call this human disposition to respond negatively to truly new and different things The Zajonc Effect. And it is one of the greatest reasons for the stunning lack of differentiation among brands in the same category. Imagine how this human reality impacts market research. Let’s say you have five potential brand positioning strategies. In an effort to make the best decision, you quantitatively test the alternative strategies. People being people, they respond most negatively to the most unfamiliar — and differentiating — concept. They respond best to the strategy they’ve seen before. The one your competitor is using already. That’s the strategy you run with because it “won” in research… and another undifferentiated brand strategy is born. At best, some minor incremental improvement or difference makes its way into the strategy. And nothing in the execution will save an undifferentiated brand strategy from becoming an undifferentiated brand in the end.

Look around at famous marketing failures and they are often the ideas that tested the best. Some of the greatest successes tested terribly because they were different. It is a frustrating  fact of marketing that the key ingredient to long-term brand success is differentiation but people are wired to respond negatively to a truly differentiating idea upon initial exposure. This explains failures like Coca-Cola’s Surge. Millions were spent behind the launch of a brand that looked like and promised exactly the same thing as Mountain Dew. It also explains why Seinfeld, Absolut Vodka and so many huge successes tested poorly. They were really different.

What do you do if you’re in a business culture that requires testing to move forward? Create a moat of quant data to support the new idea but don’t actually test the idea directly in quantitative research.  Show how this new idea addresses quantitatively derived segments’ quantitatively proven needs, but use very sensitive qualitative research to really delve into strategy development and selection.

But even more helpful, tell your boss and your bosses boss about the Zajonc Effect. They don’t know. They are probably operations or finance guys. But the marketer needs to inform and educate within the firm. I’m always amazed how open to change senior people are when confronted with facts. But I’m equally amazed at how many more middle managers and junior folks can hear about the Zajonc Effect and ignore it because, “we have to test things here.” Really? No wonder so many recent studies (Brand Keys, Greenfield/Copernicus to name a couple) are showing that few brands are differentiated. In fact, fewer were differentiated in 2009 than in 2003 according to the Brand Keys study.

Beware the Zajonc Effect.

Does this mean the death of the squeaky toy?

It seems that a lot of the feel-good team spirit that occurs in many organizations around brainstorming is just that. It’s not really as productive as we’ve been led to believe. And a lot of the performance art that is used to make the process fun, silly and good for team spirit may not be the best way to generate new ideas.

What’s the alternative?  Brainstorming that encourages saying anything that comes to mind, but also encourages debate and criticism of the ideas as they are generated. Perhaps surprisingly, brainstorms that allow this kind of debate and criticism are able to produce more ideas.

Having facilitated a few brainstorms, I think that not only is debate okay, but that structuring the brainstorm with models and new theories that may cause some anxiety and disagreement are also highly productive ways to generate ideas. As UC Berkeley’s Dr. Charlan Nemeth is quoted as saying in the New Yorker, “Maybe debate is going to be less pleasant, but it will always be more productive.” Moreover, she says that “authentic dissent can be difficult, but it’s always invigorating. It wakes you right up.”

We like to actively challenge our clients in brainstorms. We don’t even call them brainstorms — they are work sessions. Funny thing is, clients still seem to enjoy the process and the results.

Turn around is fair play too. Sometimes great clients are great at challenging a recommendation. They cause all sorts of consternation at agencies and with consultants, but it sure does wake everyone up. The best clients I’ve seen will relent if the idea really is the best one out there, but it ensures that the options have been explored and that less obvious answers were brought forward. Of course, we try to road-test like this internally, before an idea goes to the client.

The only issue I can see with this new learning is that brainstorms can easily get bogged down. You can spend all the allotted time debating one issue and not move on to other ideas. Of course a “parking lot” can help with this, but I wonder if it’s not another technique that moves us away from needed conflict too soon.

Lots to chew on as we develop our next work session.

The article struck home for us because we try to cultivate a culture of creativity with our strategists at Tait Subler. Her proposition is that the current trend toward group-think (team-orientation) is actually less productive when seeking creative solutions that are effective. She cites study after study that show how individuals who are given undisturbed quiet time to focus are more likely to come up with a big idea than a committee, brainstorm or general group-ish work style. Individuals can benefit from discussions and bouncing ideas off of each other — but the most productive creative thinking occurs alone.

Maybe Howard Roark had it right

Contrast her seemingly irrefutable science with the typical “creative firm” these days.  The workspace is usually communal. Many firms have long benches or desks facing one another with very little private space at all. According to Ms. Cain, the average “office” space has shrunk by more than half since the 1970s, across all kinds of organizations. And creative companies seem to push this even further.

The bigger learning point here is that introverts are often the most creative people and too few ad agencies seem to leave room for that type. When I was working at a top creative ad agency back in the 90s we had a training session meant to tell us what personality type we were. The point of the session was supposed to be that all types were necessary to have high-performance teams. But the company culture and the way the session was run led to a conclusion that only the amiable and expressive types were really valued. One talented account planner I managed broke down in tears upon hearing she was the “wrong” type. She was an introvert. But also not a “team player” in the eyes of that culture and she left the agency not long thereafter.

Finding room for introverts is key to a creative enterprise, both physically and culturally. We believe in this approach whole heartedly and have adapted our space and hiring over the last 12 years to accommodate these people but Ms. Cain’s article and forthcoming book should inspire all of us to think of ways to evolve our process to better accommodate these fonts of creativity.

It’s important to define your voice very carefully before starting a conversation with your consumer today.

There has been a lot of talk about the impact of social media and the online world on brands.  The typical patter goes something like this:

“The conversation is no longer one-way, with marketers sending messages to consumers. Now the consumer owns the brand and can say what he/she wants. Now it’s truly a two-way conversation and that changes everything.”

All true. But many reactionaries take this to mean that the brand strategy needs to be more fluid and less defined because of this new reality. Here, we disagree. Just because a brand is now in a conversation and cannot control both sides of the dialogue, does not mean that it need not know it’s own voice as well. On the contrary, we find that is more important than ever to deeply understand your Brand Theme and the implications for your voice in these conversations.

Just because you are in a conversation, it doesn’t mean that you can abdicate defining your own voice. Brands have always lived in the minds of consumers and employees. Now they can tell you exactly what they think at any point in time. And that is incredibly valuable. But, at the end of the day, it’s also important to focus on what you want people to believe about your brand’s reputation at the end of the day and to define your voice in the conversation on that basis.

To do this, we feel that marketers need to work ever harder to understand their brands in a holistic, anthropomorphic way. We eschew “brand personality” as it’s usually schizophrenic list of traits delivered by a committee. Defining the voice of the brand requires a more internally consistent understanding of the brand. For this, we believe archetypes are more useful. They present a consistent notion around who you are and make it clearer how to respond in a conversation.

There are classic lists of archetypes (the Hero, the Magician, the Lover, etc.) that have been referenced in books like The Hero and The Outlaw but we find that there are other useful archetypes that can be created as original thoughts to drive the brand. The “MOA” or Man of Action archetype that we created for Lee Jeans and Buddy Lee years ago is an example of a clear archetype that was brought to life for the clients and various creative teams by showing a reel of Harrison Ford movie characters over the years. Sometimes, archetypes exist in popular culture that are useful. Is this brand more John Wayne or Cary Grant? More Marilyn Monroe or Katherine Hepburn?

Overall, the new world order is not an excuse to make brands more fuzzy from a strategic perspective, but rather a call to arms to ensure your brand is truly and fully defined in a deeper, more nuanced way than ever before.

Could more brands side with a contentious cause that reflects their targets’ interests?

There is an awful lot of talk about loyalty out there today. Unfortunately, it seems that much of it is around transactional loyalty rather than real brand loyalty. While the new tools available through social media, etc. are great ways to involve consumers in a brand, it seems that it’s mostly working on a pretty superficial level. Could that change?

We know trust and loyalty are really linked and that trust is a continuum that is deepest and most powerful when someone feels an organization or person is really on their side. They share values. They are working toward the same goals. They have a common sense of purpose.

What’s this got to do with the current “class warfare” apparently underway in America?  It seems that many people on either end of the political spectrum are feeling like they aren’t represented properly in the political landscape. Super PACs and lobbyists empower the very few to move the country in the direction they want.

The political process has been commercialized already. What if a brand was to choose sides and actively work for the benefit of a swath of society? Perhaps spending money on Super PACs and lobbyists to serve the cause of their target group and not just their own, more narrowly defined self-benefit? Procter & Gamble describes the market as an hour glass now. All the income statistics show a growing chasm between demographic groups. There are a number of brands out there have very well defined targets on one side or the other of the political and demographic spectrums. It seems that some companies and brands could select a particular group and give voice to their issues, needs, values and priorities.

People talk about how powerful brand Obama was in 2008. Why can’t a brand representing a company or an organization or product/service do this in the name of driving long-lasting loyalty and transcending their category. It would be differentiating. It would be original.

I’m going to talk about smart targeting as way to differentiate brands in an upcoming blog, and this is really just a specific way of doing just that. This specific approach is not right for every brand or for multi-brand companies targeting across a diverse spectrum of consumers. But some brands are probably aligned with a political stance already, without even knowing it. Did anyone notice how powerful social media and the web were in shifting The Komen Foundation’s stance on Planned Parenthood funding? Makes you wonder if a brand can really be neutral anymore. Is it possible that The Komen Foundation

is highly dependent on people with a similar POV on certain aspects of women’s health and they didn’t really know it?

Is it crazy to think that a luxury brand could defend the 1%? Is it ridiculous to think that the Dollar Store might fight alongside the Occupy movement or fight for “the little guy?”

The market is bifurcating in so many categories. The middle is dangerous ground. So, why not go all-in and be the brand that advances the cause of particular group. That group could be a niche for some brands and it could be vast for others. It should fit with the product/service you actually sell.  But as goes your consumer, so goes the brand. Aren’t you all-in already?

Just a thought. What do you think?

Two problems with this last part. First, the moms in the volume target may not actually aspire to be harried moms. In fact, they may want to feel like they are in command of their lives or that they’ve got more on their minds than breakfast cereal. The communication is usually far more successful showing the aspirational self than the reality. We call this more aspirational group the Brand Target. They are particularly important for badge brands where the user imagery for the brand is especially important.

Take Harley Davidson. The volume seems to come mostly from middle aged upscale professionals. You’ve seen them riding their shiny Harley’s on perfect summer days. They are living out a fantasy of rebellion on Sunday before heading back to their jobs as dentists on Monday. That’s the volume target. But if Harley started featuring this group of dentists in their advertising they would be finished. That’s because the “real biker” with the leather, beard, tattoos and genuine tough-guy demeanor is the Brand Target. This real rebel biker is the guy the volume target wants to be. Even if that real biker isn’t really responsible for most of the volume, that’s who needs to be in the ads.

So problem one with a fixation on the volume target is that people don’t necessarily want to be reminded of who they are — they want to become something better through your brand. That something or someone better is the Brand Target. The second problem with a communication focus on the volume target is that it’s hard to differentiate based on that kind of user imagery. The reason volume targets represent so much volume is that they are common. Common is not good for differentiation.

But a Brand Target can be quirky or eccentric. Special and rare. I’ve posted before about the value of archetypes in defining user imagery (How To Differentiate a Brand I). However, a brand becomes particularly unique if it can understand the person its volume target hopes to become. Then find the person who has become that kind of human. That’s the Brand Target and it can be a very interesting, textured person — even for a mass brand. The Brand Target is a particularly powerful concept for really mass brands. We found that Best Buy struggle mightily with this concept but it was quite easy to find the person their volume targets wanted to become.

Think about your brand target. It’s an opportunity to really differentiate.

Brands struggle to avoid category platitudes.

Don’t settle for a category benefit when you define your brand strategy. One of the biggest problems we see when a team tries to craft a new brand strategy is that they focus on highly important issues in the category — but those issues are simply category table stakes. Category benefits or category table stakes are the attributes or benefits that a brand needs to offer just to be in the business at all. They can also be important benefits that every brand in the category speaks to already. Category benefits may be important but they don’t differentiate your brand. They just put you in the game.

We like to use the example of snowboards. We had the opportunity  a while back to advise a large player in the category about how to better position their brand. The first thing we noticed was that every brand in the category had done research or intuited that the ultimate moment in snowboarding is the adrenaline rush when you catch some air. As a consequence, every single brand had ads running that featured snowboarders flying through the air. There is no doubt that this adrenaline rush moment is important in the category, but if your brand is all about that moment, it is still not differentiated. We pushed them on what their point of view was on that category benefit. How do they see it differently? How do they deliver it differently or better? Or, is there another equally important snowboarding moment that hasn’t become table stakes yet — a moment we could own?

We often see internal client teams become particularly smitten with category benefits when trying to define a positioning for their brands. A rental car operator that offers “safe, new cars” is probably speaking to a category benefit. Who doesn’t have safe, new cars among the big players? A financial services company that offers “trustworthy, informed advice” is also simply touting a category benefit. Is there a financial services company that touts its “lying, cheating advisers?”

Here’s a good test. If you have a brand position you think is good, ask yourself if there is a valid opposing position in the market.  If there isn’t, then you probably just have a category benefit and not a differentiating idea. Using the example of BMW in the previous post, you could say that there is a valid opposing point of view from a “performance sedan.” It could be “supreme luxury.” It could be “precision engineering.”

The truck category is full of category benefits right now. Every truck is “tough, rugged and durable.” Important attributes in a truck — but only category table stakes. There is no “frilly, fragile truck” brand. The US trucks always have a dose of cliche masculinity and toughness. It’s obviously important, but it’s not a differentiator. The Nissan Frontier ads right now look a lot like the Toyota Tacoma ads from recent years. Yes, the Japanese trucks need to address a perceived short-coming here, but they also need to differentiate.

Selecting the type of brand imagery driving your brand should be done consciously.

The first step in defining a differentiated Brand Theme or positioning for a brand should be determining the type of brand imagery you want to use in your positioning. We have built on the work of Wendy Gordon to create different classes of brand imagery. A given Brand Theme will generally be built around one or two types of brand imagery.  And we often find that all the brands in a category are using the same type of brand imagery to position their brands. That’s an opportunity to differentiate. Selecting a different class of brand imagery will allow you to stand apart. Therefore, thinking about the kind of brand imagery you want to use in a careful, systematic way can change the vocabulary in your category and fundamentally differentiate your brand.

Let’s look at the different classes of brand imagery:

- Product Imagery (What functional product performance characteristics do we want to associate with this brand? Volvo used this for years to become known as “safe.”)

- User Imagery (What kind of person do we want to associate with this brand? Louis Vuitton uses globally recognizable, established/accomplished agents of change like Gorbachev and Keith Richards to signify the type of person or “badge” they want associated with their brand.)

- Occasion Imagery (What kind of occasion do we want to associate with this brand? Corona has become synonymous with relaxing in the U.S. and Kit Kat is the snack for a break in a hectic day.)

- Archetype Imagery (What kind of personality traits do we want to associate with this brand? Bud Light has a certain frat-boy sense of humor that fits well with its target group. It could be seen as the “Jester” archetype. We try to align a brand with particular, focused archetype rather than list a lot of personality terms that are often schizophrenic and useless when executing.)

- Proximity Imagery (How do we remind consumers of the great times and relationship they have with this brand? Brands like Coke and McDonald’s can reference birthday parties and first dates as ways to remind people how the brand is part of their personal history.)

- Values Imagery (What does this brand believe in? What is it’s philosophy for living? When Nike says “Just Do It” they are espousing a way of living your life. It demonstrates the values they hold dear.)

It is very common for a category to become fixated on one of these forms of brand imagery, with all the brands in the category using slightly different shades of that same type of imagery. For instance, the beer category was for years built on Archetype Imagery and User Imagery. To stand out in this context, Corona decided to consciously avoid showing a type of person as their drinker. The commercials showed the backs of people on the beach, enjoying a laid back relaxing moment. They used Occasion Imagery to differentiate themselves. In effect, they were changing the vocabulary of the category and it worked to drive share gains for years.

In research, it’s easy to use projective techniques to understand how consumers view the brand imagery for each brand. Then we have them imagine the “ideal brand” in the category. Often the “ideal” is described using imagery that is not used very much in the category. This is a huge opportunity. We saw this in the blue jeans category when working on Lee Jeans. At that time the category was all about Product Imagery — how you would look in the jeans — and User Imagery — who wears the brand. We saw that the “ideal brand” would provide confidence that actually changes behavior. It would allow (young men in this case) to escape being a poser and act on their beliefs and values. This ideal brand was more about Archetype Imagery (a man of action) and Values Imagery (doing the right thing rather than conforming). We re-positioned Lee using a Brand Theme that played to the imagery of the ideal brand. The results were spectacular with younger male share going from 2% to over 20% in stores where Lee Jeans were sold.

Differentiation is hard. Most studies show that brands are failing on this front. But it’s all that stands between a brand and a commodity. By looking for different types of imagery as your lever, you can move into fresh, original space that is highly relevant to the consumer. You can fundamentally change the vocabulary and the conversation in your brand’s favor.