The Media Orchard blog has an interesting post about brands and branding.  They take on Jeff Bezo’s comment that “a brand for a company is like a reputation for a person.”  And rightly so.  As the Baradels’ team at the Orchard point out, branding is a little more complex than that.

Instead, they say, branding is much more:

Branding is all about personification — giving human traits to things that aren’t human … Branding communicates the continuity of a company’s business model — to shareholders, to customers, to employees. It says, “This is the kind of person we are — if we were actually a person.”

But here’s the hard truth to the matter:

Corporations are not human. And that’s a good thing, because if they were human, they would be sociopaths. This isn’t a cheap shot. A sociopath is a person who is interested only in their personal needs and desires. By definition, corporations are designed expressly to serve the interests of their shareholders — and only those interests.

Now, these are important facts to bring up when discussing brands and branding, but they only tell part of the story.

Branding is not all about personification.  Brands are representative, that’s all.  They are emotional shorthand for a relationship an individual has created between a thing (a product, a person, a company, etc.) and the values, ideas, emotions and knowledge associated with that thing.

Personification, the process of creating a “human quality” for a brand, is one way of establishing that relationship – but it’s not the only way.  There’s nothing wrong with that approach, it just may not be the most direct route to establishing brand equity because its path may be impeded by secondary concerns or prejudices.

The second part of the first observation offered – that branding communicates continuity – just scratches the surface.  Continuity is communicated through practiced consistency.  What really needs to be communicated are the values associated with the brand.  And those need to be congruent with the brand’s proposed position to the market.  Failure to continuously make your case through all lines of available communication upsets your brand’s continuity and tears away at your brand’s equity in the mind of the audience.

Good branding work builds continuity and brand value.  But failure to do that work will still result in a brand impression.

The wrong kind of impression.

You see, branding happens whether we want it to or not.  It’s part of how we, as humans, learn, understand and organize information.  Failing to understand how it all works – or, worse yet, dismissing it as “warm and fuzzy” marketing of little to no value – exposes your venture unnecessarily.

Finally, I can’t point out how important it is for people (professional communicators, clients and consumers/customers) to realize the relevance of the last point made in the Media Orchard post.  Corporations might be “good citizens” – but they are amoral.  They don’t care.  They can’t.  They’re not human.

That is why branding, as a discipline, can never take a day off.  Professional communicators, business owners, managers and employees have to work every day to infuse some element of humanity into the operation of the amoral enterprise they operate.  That’s okay.  If it’s done right, organizational might can multiply the effect of the individuals involved.

But to ever think you’ve “finished” establishing a brand is perilous.

Great post.  Got me thinking on a cold Monday morning.  Thanks to Scott and Cathy and the rest of the folks at Media Orchard.

There’s a tug-of-war going on between traditional marketers and those who consider themselves on the vanguard of the social web. This post by Mitch Joel, about the end of THE BIG IDEA, is indicative of this battle.

Some consider it “old school” to pitch THE BIG IDEA to a client when, in the age of the Internet, the individual is the thing and success is only, really attainable through the successful implementation of a succession of smaller, more highly targeted and customer-reponsive ideas. Big ideas are a thing of the past and should be relegated to Mad Men (or Bewitched, I suppose). It’s all about the small ideas that can make a difference.

On the PR side we see the same thing happening. Big media, newswires, mass audiences are breaking down (either as part of their own strategy or by circumstance) into smaller, more focused publications, distribution channels that often bypass reporters and editors and go straight to the people who have the need to know. It’s the triumph of small over big.

Or so it might seem.

I tend to disagree with this way of looking at the evolution of our industry, though. I see the BIG versus small thing as more of a ying-yang relationship than a winner-take-all contest.

I mean, let’s be real here. From the very beginning, big ideas have helped shape the direction and small ideas have brought us there. If Vince Lombardi’s big idea was to win at football, it was his emphasis on blocking and tackling that got him there. (Okay, no more sports analogies in this post, promise.)

BIG IDEAS and small ones can have great value to a brand. They can also distract and get in the way. Those problems arise not because they’re BIG or small ideas but because their bad ones. Off strategy. Ego-stroking. Wasteful. Inconsiderate. Incomprehensible.

Got it?

Here’s how I usually work our ideas with our clients: We start by clearly understanding who we are and what the brand really stands for and where you plan to go with it. This “values” review helps us create a context for every idea that we’ll discuss and evaluate. And a strategic vision of the brand’s future is just as impotant for setting your messaging and direction. BIG IDEAS that don’t fit in the context end up in the same trash heap as the little ideas that don’ continue to reinforce the values we’ve identified (and vice versa).

Personally, I’m a BIG IDEA kind of person. I like them because they help me come up with tons of little ideas with a sharp focus. And for those of you who’ve worked with me before, you know that I’ve been known to fill an etire conference room with little ideas overnight thanks to a couple pots of coffee and a well-crafted, BIG IDEA.

(Did I mention that I love to brainstorm?)

Don’t count out the BIG IDEA when, in fact, it’s often the over-arching direction provided by a BIG IDEA that creates the environment (and inspiration) to come up with some really great small ideas.

Now, get out there and start brainstorming (not blamestorming).

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Anheuser-Busch InBev NV is trying to reverse a slide in market share for Bud Light by ginning up another 15 ads for the brand. All this in response to the first drop in market share for Bud’s younger sibling in over 25 years.

The ads are set to break when the NFL football season kicks off.  The ads will continue to make people laugh, concentrating on bringing back the humor associated with the brand over the past generation.  What does this mean for the often-lame “Drinkability” campaign?  According to the article, it sounds like DDB is planning on sticking with the theme but will freshen things up a bit.

The ads will refine the company’s “Drinkability” campaign — which sought to persuade drinkers that Bud Light is neither too heavy nor too light in taste — that began last year and has struggled to gain traction.

Some creative executives at Omnicom Group‘s DDB Worldwide, an ad agency working on Bud Light, struggled with the “Drinkability” strategy while creating this year’s Super Bowl commercials, finding it difficult to fit in the “Drinkability” message without sacrificing humor, according to a person familiar with the matter.

So, don’t plan on the return of Spuds McKenzie – but for those of you who are jonesing for some classic Bud Light moments, check out this link.

In fact, the top ten list showed the depth and influence of US brands in Asia by occupying five of the spots on the list.

The top ten brands for 2008 include:

• Sony
• Canon
• Nike
• Google
• Hewelett-Packard
• Coca Cola
• Adidas
• Samsung
• 7-Eleven
• Yahoo!

The Battle of the Brands.

In “battle mode” a site visitor is asked to pick the stronger brand from a choice of two.  Over a million battles later, we have some interesting rankings of brand strength.  Keep in mind, these are random pairings, there is no giant bracket set up in some guy’s basement and, to my knowledge, ESPN has not yet licensed this product like the World Series of Poker – so with that said, here’s your top 25 brands (check out Pixar’s ranking ahead of Apple … Wally beats iPod): 

1.   Google has 436 wins out of 519 (84.01%)
2.   Adidas has 438 wins out of 527 (83.11%)
3.   Pixar has 293 wins out of 356 (82.3%)
4.   Apple has 435 wins out of 536 (81.16%)
5.   Lego has 456 wins out of 569 (80.14%)
6.   Nike has 461 wins out of 579 (79.62%)
7.   Haagen Dazs has 134 wins out of 169 (79.29%)
8.   Ferrari has 440 wins out of 555 (79.28%)
9.   BMW has 459 wins out of 582 (78.87%)
10. YouTube has 448 wins out of 568 (78.87%)
11. National Geographic has 406 wins out of 517 (78.53%)
12. Coca-Cola has 466 wins out of 595 (78.32%)
13. M&Ms has 446 wins out of 571 (78.11%)
14. Canon has 401 wins out of 515 (77.86%)
15. Heineken has 399 wins out of 513 (77.78%)
16. Mercedes has 421 wins out of 543 (77.53%)
17. Volkswagen has 437 wins out of 564 (77.48%)
18. Amazon has 428 wins out of 553 (77.4%)
19. HBO has 413 wins out of 536 (77.05%)
20. Target has 404 wins out of 525 (76.95%)
21. Wii has 419 wins out of 548 (76.46%)
22. Levis has 414 wins out of 542 (76.38%)
23. Guinness has 415 wins out of 544 (76.29%)
24. Lamborghini has 420 wins out of 553 (75.95%)
25. eBay has 365 wins out of 482 (75.73%)

And at the bottom of the list?  Looks like LA Weight Loss Centers is this year’s Detroit Lions of brands winning a mere 13.73% of its battles.  Oh wait, that’s better than the Lions, isn’t it? 

Here are your bottom 10:

758.  Interstate Batteries has 43 wins out of 192 (22.4%)
759.  US Cellular has 111 wins out of 503 (22.07%)
760.  SonicWALL has 101 wins out of 459 (22%)
761.  Gemmy has 109 wins out of 519 (21%)
762.  Depend has 73 wins out of 350 (20.86%)
763.  Medieval Times has 97 wins out of 484 (20.04%)
764.  The Carlyle Group has 93 wins out of 480 (19.38%)
765.  ReadWriteWeb has 86 wins out of 452 (19.03%)
766.  O Charleys has 85 wins out of 465 (18.28%)
767.  LA Weight Loss Centers has 64 wins out of 466 (13.73%)

This is fun.  Visit the site and give it a try.  Every vote – er, battle – counts.

Fight on.

Sequels, like all brand extensions, are desirable because they are “safer” than developing an idea from scratch.  If successful, a “defining” brand becomes synonomis with the product it represents.  This is part of the cognitive process for humans and it’s part of the reason why drastic logo changes for established brands can cause such angst among consumers (re: Pepsi).

When it comes to brand extensions, there is a problem with taking the safe route.  You see, safe is a relative term.  What might be safe for the extension might end up doing some real damage to the originating brand if the new product bites.

Some brand extensions work great.  Just like some sequels.  But other brand extensions go horribly wrong.  Some of the examples Laura points out in her post include:

Kodak is not in trouble because people don’t love the Kodak brand anymore. Kodak is in trouble because people don’t use conventional film cameras anymore. Moving Kodak to the digital category makes no sense at all.

 

V8 owns “vegetable juice” in the mind. Over the last 75 years they have been telling us to have a V8 in order to meet our daily vegetable requirements. But now V8 isn’t just a juice; it is also a soup!

 

Kraft owns “mac & cheese” in the mind. And while you can argue that line extensions like Kraft microwaveable mac & cheese might be a good idea. But expanding into cheese crackers is crazy!

 

TagHeuer owns the high-end sports watch category. But with sales flat and consumers using cellphones instead of watches to define status they are fighting back.  

I highly recommend reading her entire post, here.

So, what about you?  Can you think of any other brand extensions that have made little to no sense?  Let us know.

Check these out:

Evolution of automobile brands
Evolution of tech brands

Let me know if you find any more studies like this!