10 Ads that just might make you Cry

5 February 2014

In a world of big data, we tend to forget that Advertising is half art, and half science. While I respect analytics, I also admire instincts. As Brand Leaders, we are after growth and profit for our brands. Yes, advertising should persuade, sell or create an idea in the consumers mind. But for the most Beloved Brands, it also should connect and create a bond with consumers. Because that bond gives the brand power, not just with the very consumers it connects with, but the retailers, suppliers or against the competitors. And from that power, it can drive stronger share, command a price premium or enter new categories, all leading to higher growth and profits. Here are some ads that create a nice bond with their consumers, and each of them tightly connected to what the brand does for the consumer.

Budweiser “Trainer”

The most popular Super Bowl ad this year was the “Puppy” spot, but if you ask me, it pales in comparison to this spot. Nicely told story.

Sick Kids Hospital

One of the best hospitals for children in the world, Sick Kids does a good job in using “quiet” as an attention grabber. I was busy in another room when I first heard this song and it made me go into our TV room to see what the ad was. Sometimes we re-do songs to make them sound exactly the same, but sometimes it can be even more powerful to re-do them in a unique way.

John Lewis “Christmas 2011”

Every Christmas, British retailer John Lewis has been releasing campaigns around Christmas. To me, this one is the best, especially the ending. John Lewis is an employee-owned retailer, with a very unique culture that delivers on the brand. To read more on John Lewis, follow this link: John Lewis story

Google Super Bowl 2010 “Parisian”

If you’re a sucker for a good romantic comedy, this should work on you.The irony of Google, is they have done some of the best Ads this century–most notably the Google Parisian spot, which they aired during the Super Bowl a few years ago. That spot was deeply engaging, showing how much we rely on Google in our lives. I love this spot. There’s quite a few good google ads out there. If you want to see more….ummm….just google them.

Thai Insurance “Deaf Dad”

A very beautifully told story about a teenage daughter who maybe struggles to understand what her dad offers and doesn’t offer. While overly dramatic, it brings a nice sweet twist in the end.

Canadian Tire “Bike Ad”

We can all remember our first bike and how special it is. In Canada, Canadian Tire was that store, prior to Wal-Mart entering the market. Sadly, Canadian Tire can no longer deliver on this promise, because it now resembles Wal-Mart–no longer where you go for your first bike, but rather a place to buy Tide when it’s on sale.

Budweiser 9/11 Tribute (2002)

Even after all these years, this one might bring a tear to your eye. Only a few months after the tragedy of 9/11, as it pre-occupied our minds, this ad takes the American icons of Budweiser and the Clydesdales marching through the streets of America and gives a nice salute to NYC.

Bell “Dieppe”

It’s a bit dated now, but back in the mid 90s we were still excited we could call from anywhere. I’ve been to that beach in Dieppe and it does command such intense feelings. While this is just an ad, I do wish that utilities would try harder to connect with consumers at every stage of the consumer’s buying journey. We see many tributes to the soldiers, but this one unique thanks one who served long ago.

Pfizer

A beautiful little spot that leads you to think the ad is about a juvenile delinquent, when really it’s a good kid doing something nice for his sister.

Google India “Happy Birthday”

Here is a new Google ad where there is no English at all and yet the story is easy to follow. If you want, you can turn on the Closed Captioning by hitting the tiny CC button at the bottom right of the video. I watched it without understanding one word that was spoken and I was able to follow along. And i cried.

Hopefully a few of these spots made you cry. And if you need cheering up now, here’s 5 ads that might give you a bit of a chuckle. 5 Ads that will make you burst out laughing

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That was not the Best Super Bowl…for ads either

3 February 2014

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Well, we know from the start that was not the best game. I would say the half time show was great and hopefully Bruno Mars gained some new fans around the world. But for those of us watching the TV ads, they weren’t that good. There were quite a few mediocre ones, and a few copy cats of their own campaigns but not as good as the prior year ads. I’m a big fan of Advertising, so trust me I wanted to like them more than I did. There just wasn’t an ad that we’ll talk about for five years, not like the Betty White Snickers ad or the Dodge Farmer Ad. If you liked the ads better than I did, feel free to tell me which ones and why.

Here are the best ones:

Coke “America”

I really liked the Coke ad. It’s quiet, but I think it stands out among all the gag style ads where brands appear to be trying too hard. It has sparked some controversy on-line with a few people objecting to “America the Beautiful” being sung in various languages. But Coke is as global of a company as you can find. So this not only speaks to Americans but all those around the world looking at Coke as being that link to America. I’d give this a solid A, mainly because I think it takes guts to do this ad.

Doritos “Finger”

This is a very good ad, fitting with the personality of the brand, and a cute gag that is sure to make us all laugh. It also involves the brand nicely. I’d give it an A-. It’s cute, but we might not remember this one a year from now.

Heinz “Bottle”

It’s great to see Heinz make a move onto the big stage. They’ve struggled the past few decades, once we figured out their taste could be duplicated. But this really ties in perfectly to the heritage of the brand, and even given a new modern twist. It’s cute and let’s give it a nice B+.

Budweiser “Puppy”

This one seems to be winning all the on-line votes for best ad, that might be indicative that there was nothing great. I might be over-thinking this one, but doesn’t it seem a lot like last year’s Budweiser spot where the horse kept running back to the owner. While last year’s brought a tear to my eye, this one just made me smile. I’m going a solid B.

Here’s last year’s Budweiser ad. Don’t you think it’s similar, and better. Still makes me cry.

Budweiser “Home Coming”

This was pretty good, just not amazing. I’m not sure it tugged at the heart enough. Feels like we’ve seen others over the years that were better. I’d give it a solid B.

The rest of the ads were C’s and D’s, maybe a few F’s. Here’s to a better game for next year, and better ads. I realize we aren’t going to get Dodge “Farmer”. To me, this is one of our best ads of the century so far. Here’s what an A+ looks like.

Here’s to next year’s game. May it bring better football and better ads.

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RETURN ON LOVE (R.O.L.): A new way to look at the power of Brands

29 January 2014

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I know in this world of big data, everyone wants an exact measurement of everything you do. It’s all about immediate Return on Investment (R.O.I.) and that does make sense given the economy. If you can’t measure it, then don’t do it.

But I want everyone to have just a little bit of faith. Keep in mind, marketing is still half art and half science. You have to have some instincts in your decision-making but also creativity to ensure you stand out and connect. There’s a reason Apple made their desktops look like furniture, Starbucks started doing red cups at Christmas and Nike makes TV ads that give us goose bumps, not because of the immediate ROI it produces, but rather the love it creates between the consumer and the brand. They were in fact, investing in the Return on Love (R.O.L.), knowing all that love would be the fuel to driving power and profit in the long run.

R.O.L. leads to more R.O.I.

The big idea behind RETURN ON LOVE is that the work you do on the brand is first and foremost focused on creating a strong bond between your consumer and your brand. Once you have that bond, you can use it as a source of power versus all the stake holders of the brand. If we think back to porter’s model, the brand’s bond gives you added power over customers, suppliers, competitors and even the very consumers you have the bond with. Beyond Porter’s forces, the brand would also generate added power with the media, key opinion leaders and employees. Once you have power, you can drive growth and profit, using that power to drive up price, drive down costs, gain market share and enter new categories.

Look at the brands mentioned above: Apple, Nike and Starbucks. They are some of the most beloved brands with a very strong, emotional and loyal bond with their consumers. And each has used that strong bond to wield power in the market. Starbucks took their loyal morning coffee drinkers into the lunch-hour. Nike has been able to use emotional to gain share and tame dominant Adidas brand. And Apple has used power to drive price, share gains, new categories and even cost management. These brands then used this power to drive profit, Apple is the best example, where sales have gone up 10-fold and at the same time, margins went from 10% to 40%.

If your finance person asks “so what is the ROI on this”, I’m not recommending you say “we are focused on ROL buddy, not ROI” but what you should say is “we are investing in building a bond with our consumer that will give us more power that we can then wield much greater profit for our brand”

Love = Connectivity = Power = Profit

5 Ways Brands can CONNECT with consumers

I keep hearing brand experts debate that it’s not the advertising, it’s the product, or the new one is it’s the company culture–people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Debate all you want, to get to a Beloved Brand, you need all 5 of the following ways to be working very hard to CONNECT with customers

The brand’s promise sets up the positioning, as you focus on a key target with one main benefit you offer. Brands need to be either better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. “Me-too” brands have a short window before being squeezed out. How relevant, simple and compelling the brand positioning is impacts the potential love for the brand. Apple goes above just their product with a promise of simplicity that allows everyone to experience the future through technology.
The most beloved brands create an experience that over-delivers the promise. How your culture and organization are set up can make or break that experience. Hiring the best people, creating service values that employees can deliver against and having processes that eliminate service leakage. The culture attacks the brand’s weaknesses and fixes them before the competition can attack. With a Beloved Brand, the culture and brand become one. I love the Starbucks experience that has been created with coffee as the base, but they have gone so deeper to enable magical moments for their consumer.
Brands also make focused strategic choices that start with identifying where the brand is on the Brand Love Curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved status. Marketing is not just activity, but rather focused activity–a focused target, a focused message, focused strategic choices, focused activities always with an ROI mindset. Where you are on the curve might help you make strategic and tactical choices such as media, innovation and service levels. Find those who are most motivated to buy what you do best. I love how Volvo is so singularly focused on the safety message since 1954. Yes they have leather seats and a great radio, but the message is always safety first.
The most beloved brands have a freshness of innovation, staying one-step ahead of the consumers. The idea of the brand helps acting as an internal beacon to help frame the R&D. Every new product has to back that idea. At Apple, every new product must deliver simplicity and at Volvo, the innovation must deliver the safety promise.
Beloved brands can tell the brand story through great advertising in paid media, through earned media either in the mainstream press or through social media. Beloved Brands use each of these media choices to connect with consumers and have a bit of magic to their work. John Lewis out of the UK, is an employee-owned store growing double digits right through the recession because of their commitment behind amazing story telling around the simple message of the gift of giving.

12 ways to turn the CONNECTION into generating POWER for your Brand

A brands connection between consumer is a power. And that power translated itself into 12 forces of a power that a Beloved Brand wields, (show below).

A Beloved Brand with a loyal group of followers has so much more power–starting with a power over the very consumers that love them. These consumers feel more than they think–they are e-rational responding to emotional cues in the brand. They’ll pay a premium, line up in the rain for new products and follow the brand to new categories. Look at the power Starbucks has with their base of consumers, making their Starbucks moment one of their favorite rituals of the day and how consumers have now added sandwiches and wraps to those rituals. All day long, Starbucks has a line up of people ready for one of their favorite moments of their day.

Using Porter’s 5 forces, we can see that the love also gives Beloved Brands power over channels, substitutes, new entrants, or suppliers. People rather switch stores than switch brands. Apple has even created their own stores, which generate the highest sales per square foot of any retailer. These brand fans are outspoken against competitors and suppliers will do what it takes to be part of the brand. In Apple’s case, Intel has given them the lead on new chip technology.

Beloved Brands have a power over employees that want to be part of the brand and the culture of the organization that all these brand fans are proud to project. People at Starbucks love working there and wear that green apron with a sense of pride. Brand fans know the culture on day 1 and do what it takes to preserve it.

Beloved Brands have a power over the media whether that’s paid, earned, social or search media. Apple generates over a billion dollars of free media via the mainstream media and social media. Competitors complain about Apple getting a positive media bias–they are right, they do. Even for paid media,beloved brands get better placement, cheaper rates and they’ll be the first call for an Integration or big event such as the Super Bowl or the Olympics. Nike did such a great job with social media during the London Olympics that people thought they were the main shoe sponsor–when it was Adidas.

Beloved Brands have a power over key influencers whether it’s doctors recommending Lipitor, restaurant critics giving a positive review for the most beloved restaurant in town or Best Buy sales people selling a Samsung TV. They each become fans of the brand and build emotion into their recommendation. They become more outspoken in their views of the brand. And finally beloved the Beloved Brand makes its way into conversation at the lunch table or on someone’s Facebook page. The brand fans are everywhere, ready to pounce, ready to defend and ready to say “hey, you should buy the iPhone”. The conversation comes with influence as crowds follow crowds. This conversation has a second power, which creates a badge value. People know it will generate a conversation and are so proud to show it off. After all, they are in the club. All twelve of these forces combine to generate further power for the brand.

The next time you’re meeting your brand leader, ask them how they are turning all the work marketing is doing into generating power for the brand? They’ll likely be stumped, but without this power, there is no real reason to have a brand. The love you generate between customer and brand should start to replicate the power of a monopoly. Who would you rather invest in right now, Apple or your local utility?

8 Ways to turn CONNECTION and POWER into more PROFITS for your brand

With all the love and power the Beloved Brand has generated for itself, now is the time to translate that into growth, profit and value. The Beloved Brand has an Inelastic Price. The loyal brand fans pay a 20-30% price premium and the weakened channels cave to give deeper margins. We will see how inelastic Apple’s price points are with the new iPad Mini. Consumers are willing to trade up to the best model. The more engaged employees begin to generate an even better brand experience. For instance at Starbucks, employees know the names of their most loyal of customers. Blind taste tests show consumers prefer the cheaper McDonald’s coffee but still pay 4x as much for a Starbucks. So is it still coffee you’re buying?

A well-run Beloved Brand can use their efficiency to lower their cost structure. Not only can they use their growth to drive economies of scale, but suppliers will cut their cost just to be on the roster of a Beloved Brand. They will benefit from the free media through earned, social and search media. They may even find government offer subsidies to be in the community or partners willing to lower their costs to be part of the brand. For instance, a real estate owner would likely give lower costs and better locations to McDonald’s than an indifferent brand. Apple get a billion dollars worth of free media, with launches covered on CNN for 2 weeks prior the launch and carried live like it’s a news event.

Beloved Brands have momentum they can turn into share gains. Crowds draw crowds which spreads the base of the loyal consumers. Putting the Disney name on a movie generates a crowd at the door on day 1. Competitors can’t compete–lower margins means less investment back into the brand. It’s hard for them to fight the Beloved Brand on the emotional basis leaving them to a niche that’s currently unfulfilled. Walk past an Apple store 15 minutes before it’s open and you’ll see a crowd waiting to get in–even when there are no new products.

Beloved Brands can enter into new categories knowing their loyal consumers will follow because they buy into the Idea of the Brand. The idea is no longer tied to the product or service but rather how it makes you feel about yourself. Nike is all about winning, whether that’s in running shoes, athletic gear or even golf equipment. When Starbucks went for pastries and sandwiches the consumer quickly followed.

The Return on Love (R.O.L.) The new measure that turns connectivity into money

To read more about how the love for a brand creates more power and profits:

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Miley Cyrus six months later: If you’re over 22 you’re not the target

26 January 2014

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It’s now been six months since Miley created a storm of controversy at the MTV Awards. While I didn’t see it live, everyone on my Facebook had an opinion of it all day the next day. The only issue is nearly everyone on my Facebook is over 40. Then you watch the news cycle and see all the news stations all day trashing Miley and talking about how inappropriate it was. But everyone on these news stations was also over 40.

The issue is that if you’re over 40, you’re not in the target market.

So then I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she thought of the whole “Miley thing”. She said “she’s just trying to show that she’s a grown up and make a living”.

My daughter is in the target market. And she gets what Miley was trying to do. And she was willing to defend her.

A beloved brand knows who is in their target, and who is not in their target. I hear so many non-beloved brands say “we can’t alienate…” But before you say alienate next time, keep in mind that target and alienate are pretty much synonymous.

Miley is very Strategic

Beloved Brands find a way to separate themselves. With traditional brands, you have to be better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. With music, there’s so much talent out there, so really those who make it are “different”. And Miley has a very good voice but she’s smart enough to know that’s not enough. She gets that: ‘Every time I do anything, I want to remember, this is what separates me from everybody else.’

While all the controversy was going on, Miley called the MTV Award performance a “strategic mess”. I know it caused this storm of outrage but that’s not really the first time in music history.

When Elvis first performed on Ed Sullivan, they would not show him below the waist because of his gyrating hips. The Beatles long hair caused a stir, Rolling Stones getting arrested in Toronto, Madonna singing about being a virgin in a wedding dress or kissing Britney Spears on stage. Pick your age and you likely think the one prior to your generation was “kind of silly” and the one after was “completely offensive”.

So let’s look at this strategically.

There are Four Principles of Good Strategy: 1) Focus 2) Early Win 3) Leverage point and 4) Gateway to something bigger.

FOCUS all your energy to a particular strategic point or purpose. Match up your brand assets to pressure points you can break through, maximizing your limited resources—either financial resources or effort. Focus on one target. Focus on one message. And focus on very few strategies and tactics. Less is more.
You want that EARLY WIN, to kick-start of some momentum. Early Wins are about slicing off parts of the business or population where you can build further. This proves to everyone the brand can win—momentum, energy, following.
LEVERAGE everything to gain positional advantage or power that helps exert even greater pressure and gains the tipping point of the business that helps lead to something bigger. Crowds follow crowds.
See beyond the early win, there has to be a GATEWAY point, the entrance or a means of access to something even bigger. It could be getting to the masses, changing opinions or behaviours. Return on Investment or Effort.

Here’s how Miley did in terms of strategy:

Focus: Miley’s target audience is the Hannah Montana audience, who were 10-15 when she was on that show and are now 15-20. She focused on the biggest teen show, the MTV Awards, well-known for crazy antics and perfectly timed to spur on her album sales, of which the first single had already hit #2. You can do anything on the MTV Awards because only the kids are watching anyway. She knew exactly what she was doing.
Early Win: In the music industry, it’s fairly obvious that no news is bad news. Miley thought this out and was even quoted as saying “make the talk about it for 2 weeks rather than 2 seconds”. While others did outrageous things that night. Sadly, Miley wasn’t the craziest performance that night. Poor Lady Gaga came up in a g-string and yet, no one talked about her at all. For 48-hours, it was hard to see the win and even I was wondering if she could manage the storm. People were worried she had lost it. But, after the 40 year olds were done complaining about her, the 15 year olds came to her defence on twitter, where none of the 40-year olds could see. In each subsequent interview, she came across as intelligent and….strategic. She did a great job on Saturday Night Live, making fun of herself and even saying “I’m not going to do Hannah Montana, but I can give you an update. She was murdered.” All part of the transformation away from child star into a 20-something singer.
Leverage: She was able to leverage the energy to get these loyal fans to go buy her music. She kept the controversy going with the launch of the “Wrecking Ball” video where she was buck naked. Within 24 hours, the video was downloaded 19 million times and the song quickly shot to #1.
Gateway: Everyone knows the music charts are the gateway to the bigger mass audience–more radio play, more iTunes downloads and more talk value. And Bigger concert sales. Miley’s album sales were through the roof and she was named MTV Artist of the Year for 2013. She was also named #1 Sexiest Woman by Maxim Magazine. The re-invention of her new image complete. Oddly enough, Miley finished #3 in the voting for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. Odd because there is no more mainstream publication than Time.

Does this seem like an insane person out of control, or someone who knows exactly what she was doing?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE2L9QYrJH8

Miley is a very smart strategic “grown up”

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Why CMO’s are demanding more Creativity

22 January 2014

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CMO’s realize that it’s harder and harder to get a real competitive point of difference. More and more, creativity in execution can help separate a brand. But the issue is that brand management teams have gotten so conservative, the CMO feels stuck when they ask for more creativity and the team doesn’t respond. You have to create a culture of creativity where people feel safe to raise ideas.

A Team’s culture can suck the creativity right out of Everyone

When we first walk through the doors into the marketing world, we are so gung-ho with an infinite number of ideas, that are all over the place. These junior marketers just ooze with passion. That’s why we hired them. So we chain them to the desk and say “no”, “can’t” and “that will never happen” to about 90% of their ideas. And we suck the life out of them, tell them that they are getting much more “strategic” and then promote them to Brand Manager. At Brand Manager, we instil the fear of god into them that if they mess up anything they’ll be held accountable. Accountable means don’t try anything stupid. And we tell them to “stay on strategy” which is code for “play it safe”. It’s all about ownership. By the time we promote them to Director, they know what to do, and what NOT to do. This is code for BORING and the USUAL.

And the CMO takes the reigns, looks at all their first share book, the numbers look flat. They look at their competitors taking risks, especially compared to their own team’s work. So they figure out quickly, that making dramatic changes to the product will take time and investment. More advertising costs money. So the simplest answer is to stand in front of the group and say “WE NEED MORE CREATIVITY”

Here’s the problem: Teams get so stuck Following the Usual

But the problem is the team has been set up to reject creativity in favor of the safe and trusted options. The classic launch formula: do the basic product concept testing, hope for a moderate pass. Then meet with sales and explain how this is almost identical to the launch we did last year, and builds on the same thing we just saw our competitor do. Re-enforce that the buyer hinted that if we did this, we’d get on the shelves pretty easily. Go to your ad agency, with a long list of mandatories and an equally long list of benefits they can put in the ad. Tell the agency you’re excited. They’ll tell you they’re excited as well. Ask for lots of options, as a pre-caution because time is tight and we’re not sure what we want. Just hope the agency clearly understood the 7-page brief. Test all the ads, even a few different endings, and then let the research decide who wins. That way, no one can blame you. Do up a safe media plan with mostly TV, some small but safe irrelevant secondary media choice. Throw in a web site to explain the 19 reasons why we launched. Maybe even a game on the website. Ah, we have our launch.

Given the current economy, shouldn’t we be taking more risks to stand out rather than playing it safe right down the middle of the road?

This type of launch though is almost a guaranteed formula for success, because it follows last year’s launch to a tee and will be done hundreds of brands this year. You convince yourself, you had to play it safe because sales are down, margins are tight and you will do something riskier next year once this launch is done. What looks like a guaranteed success will likely get off to a pretty good start and then flat-line until it will be discontinued three brand managers from now. You’ll never be fired because you never did anything wrong. But you’ll just be part of the team that’s frustrated by the status quo of the team’s performance. And you’ll all under “why is this happening”

At some point, to break through in a cluttered market, you’ve got to do something different to stand out: now, more than ever. It might feel like a risky move, but it’s almost riskier not to take that chance.

Push the team to Find your love in the art of being different

Push yourself to be different. The most Beloved Brands are different, better or cheaper. Or not around for very long. Here’s a very simple model for creativity, there are four choices:

Good But Not Different (the launch outlined above)

These do very well in tests mainly because consumers have seen it before and check the right boxes in research. In market, it gets off to a pretty good start—since it still seems so familiar. However, once challenged in the market by a competitor, it falters because people start to realize it is no different at all. So they go back to their usual brand and your launch starts to go flat. This option offers limited potential.

Not Good and Not Different:

These are the safest of safe. Go back into the R&D lab and pick the best one you have–even if it’s not very good. The tallest of midgets. They do pretty well in test because of the familiarity. In market, it gets off to a pretty good start, because it looks the same as what’s already in the market. But pretty soon, consumers realize that it’s the same but even worse, so it fails dramatically. What appears safe is actually highly risky. You should have followed your instincts and not launched. This option is a boring failure.

Different but Not that Good

Sometimes we get focused on the product first: it offers superior technology, but not really meeting an unmet need. So we launch what is different for the sake of being different. It does poorly in testing. Everyone along the way wonders why we are launching. But in the end, consumers don’t really care about your point of difference. And it fails. The better mousetrap that no one cares about.

Good But Different:

These don’t always test well: consumers don’t really know what to make of it. Even after launched, it takes time to gain momentum, having to explain the story with potential investment and effort to really make the difference come to life. But once consumers start to see the differences and how it meets their needs, they equate different with “good”. It begins to gain share and generates profits for the brand. This option offers long-term sustainability.

It will be up to you to figure out how to separate good from bad. One caution is letting market research over-ride your own instincts. As Steve Jobs said: “it’s hard for consumers to tell you what they want when they’ve never seen anything remotely like it. Yet now that people see it, they say OH MY GOD THAT’S GREAT”

We always tracked many numbers (awareness, brand link, persuasion etc), but the one I always wanted to know was “made the brand seem different”. Whether it is new products, a new advertising campaign or media options push yourself to do something that stands out. Don’t just settle for ok. Always push for great. If you don’t love the work, how do you expect your consumer to love your brand? The opposite of different, is indifferent and who wants to be indifferent.

In case you need any added incentive: Albino fruit flies mate at twice the rate of normal fruit flies. Just because they are different! And the place where most ground hogs are run over is right in the middle of the road.

Push the team to Find Difference through Brainstorming

The trick to a good brainstorm is very simple: Diverge, Converge, Diverge Converge.

Diverge #1: Quantity over Quality

Divide the room up into groups of 5 people. I prefer to assign one leader who will be writing the ideas, pushing the group for more, throwing in some ideas of their own. A great way for the leader is to say “here’s a crazy idea, who can build on this or make it better”. But if you catch the leader stalling, debating the ideas, then you should push that leader. At this stage you are pushing for quantity not quality. If you have multiple groups in the room, do a rotation where the leader stays put and the group changes. I like having stations, where each station has a unique problem to solve.

Converge #1: Focus on picking the best Strategic Ideas

There’s a few ways you can do this.

You can use voting dots where each person gets 5 or 10 dots and they can use them any way they want. For random executional ideas, this is a great simple way.
If there is agreed upon criteria, you can do some type of scoring against each criteria. High, medium, low.
If you are brainstorming product concepts or positioning statements, you might want to hold them up to the lens of how unique they are.
For things like naming, positioning or promotions, the leader can look at all the ideas and begin grouping them into themes. They might start to discuss which themes seem to fit or are working the best, and use those themes for a second diverge.
For Tactics to an annual plan, you can use a very simple grid of Big vs Small and Easy vs Difficult. In this case, you want to find ways to land in THE BIG EASY. The reason you want easy is to ensure it has a good return on effort, believing effort and investment have a direct link.

Diverge #2: Make the Ideas even better, richer.

The second diverge is where the magic actually happens. You’ve got the group in a good zone. They have seen which ideas are meeting the criteria. Take the list from Converge #1 and push it one more time. Make it competitive among the groups, with a $25 prize, so that people will push even harder.

If you narrowed it to themes, then take each theme and push for more and better ideas under each of the themes
If you looked at concepts or tactics, then take the best 8-10 ideas and have groups work on them and flush them out fully with a written concept, and come back and present them to the group.
If using the grid above, then take the ideas in the big/difficult and brainstorm ways to make it easier. And if it’s small and easy, brainstorm ways to make it bigger.

Converge #2: Decision Time

Once you’ve done the second diverge, you’ll be starting to see the ideas getting better and more focused. Now comes decision time. You can narrow down to a list of ideas to take forward into testing or discussion with senior management. You can take them forward to cost out. You can prioritize them based on a 12 or 24 month calendar. You can vote using some of the techniques above using voting dots. Or you can assign a panel of those who will vote. But you want to walk away from the meeting with a decision.

Let Brainstorming bring an energy and passion into your work.

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Brand Co-Creation: Brands and Consumers get equal say in developing a Brand

19 January 2014

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There’s a lot of talk about co-creation, where both the brand and the consumer have a voice in the brand’s positioning and even the marketing. There are those that think co-creation is a strategy and those that who treat it like a tactic. And others that say it’s a great process to go through. Get a bunch of consumers to help you. But co-creation is just a new reality that brands have to work with.

CONSUMERS HAVE A VOICE IN YOUR BRAND WHETHER YOU ASK THEM OR NOT. FACE THE REALITY. THE ONLY QUESTION IS ARE YOU LISTENING TO THAT VOICE?

The simplest of co-creation has always existed in marketing. Brands tell the consumer something, who can then decide whether to believe it or not. The simple model of stimulus (brand message) and response (consumer perception or action). I’ve always said there is “truth in advertising, because all un-true messages are eventually rejected by the consumers”. Yes, it used to be possible to get by with a “lie”, but it eventually catches up to you, once consumers experienced the brand. Even in the old days, there was word of mouth, but it was just really slow.

As a consumer, search and social media have certainly changed the way we make purchases has changed. Before going to a movie, I check IMBD to see how it scores or even read a few reviews. I might even go on Facebook and ask “who has seen the Wolf of Wall Street?” or read someone’s tweet about how much they enjoyed the movie. While the movie might still use traditional advertising, my on-line sources bring more influence to my decision. Before going booking a hotel, I read the reviews on Trip Advisor. When I want an accountant, I post on-line “who knows an accountant?”. Quite frankly, these days I’m not sure I make a purchase without doing some homework. With instant access to a laptop or mobile, it’s easier to look stuff up then put down my visa card.

Managing the Buying Cycle

It’s important that brands understand where they are before deciding what type of media they should use. I use a simple model called the Brand Love Curve, where brands go from Indifferent to Like It to Love It to a Beloved Brand for life. At the indifferent stage, the brand is a commodity or treated like one. It will do. As it moves to Like It, it becomes functional, and at the Love It stage, consumers crave it. At the Beloved Stage, it becomes a ritual, a lifestyle and a badge that consumers will argue for. The challenge is to take the ideas of this simple love curve to your media planning. For instance, you can’t really take a commodity-like product and say “Like Us on Facebook”. But you can take that commodity and start to create an idea around your brand that is big enough to love, and try to push it along the Love Curve.

Looking at the Buying system, consumers generally go from Aware to Consider to Search to Buy, then they become satisfied, loyal and an outspoken fan. Yes, at each stage consumers can influence other consumers, but the best co-creation will come from the left side of the buying system where consumers start to become proactive. For Indifferent brands you should be trying to get noticed at the awareness and consideration stage, using search engine optimization to positively move consumers towards purchase. But saying “Like Us on Facebook” might be the dumbest thing you could do, because you have never ever given the consumer a reason to Like You!!! The left hand side of the buying system takes full advantage of the new social media tools, to continue to separate your brand from the competition. If we start to think about it, this grid shows the more emotionally driven brands that push the love factor can begin having a huge competitive advantage as the most loyal consumers start selling the brand. Back to the movie option, if I start noticing that more and more of my friends are saying positive things about a movie, that movie is going get a momentum that helps it to win at the box office, compared to the one no one is talking about. The TV advertising for the movie is having a diminishing impact compared to the influence of consumers.

But as the media mix has dramatically changed over the last decade, Brand Leaders have to recognize the change in the marketing model. For generations, they talked AT the consumer, but now they have to talk WITH the consumer. In the old school marketing, Brand Leaders were trained to try to INTERRUPT the consumer in a busy part of their day and then YELL at them over and over again. It was all about AWARENESS-PURCHASE-LOYALTY where Awareness leads to conversion to Purchase which then the brand experience leads to Loyalty. The new school of marketing is all about LOYALTY-AWARENESS-PURCHASE where the most loyal users will be the ones driving Awareness and the influence of the conversion to purchase. It’s no longer about yelling at strangers on TV. Instead, you have to engage your most loyal consumers, and they become the medium for reaching new users as they WHISPER advice to their friends.

So What’s Co-Creation Mean for Brand Leaders

My hope is that it makes you think differently about how you are running your business. Here’s a few questions to be asking.

Who are the most motivated consumers? When picking a target market, I now ask “who is the most likely to already be motivated by what we have to sell?” That’s different from “who do we want to sell to?” Realizing it’s easier to sell to someone who might already have a need. If I’m selling mortgages, the simplest target audience is those who want to buy a house, not some traditionally defined target of upwardly mobile 25-35 year olds who are newly married with a baby. Go to where people are shopping for the damn house stupid!!! You can now find these people easily. The difference is that your early sales will come from those who are already potentially enthusiastically engaged in the brand, the hope being that all that enthusiasm spills over to their group of friends and followers.
How do you create a tipping point? Using Malcolm Gladwell’s thought process, instead of just thinking of a target market, maybe you should be thinking about who are the connectors, mavens and salesmen that will help fuel your brand through the Brand Love Curve. The Connectors are the hub of a given network who know a diverse number of people and are highly socially engaged. Mavens are those in the group we view as the smart knowledgeable one we might turn to when we are stuck or seek out a little expertise on a given subject. These could be bloggers (Mommy groups) that consumers turn to for information. The Salesman is the influencer in the group, the one who will convince you to finally “just go for it”.
How do you ensure you’re perfecting the Brand Experience, realizing that it matters more than ever? It’s not a coincidence that winning brands like Starbucks, Apple and the NFL are winning in today’s market. They’ve almost perfected the experience they deliver. You can’t get by faking it with good advertising that isn’t backed up by a brilliant experience. Yes, you can get some early trial, but a quick fizzle once people experience your brand. Consumers who have a disastrous brand experience, get mad and seek vindication through social networking. A friend of mine had a bad experience with his phone company and he created a Facebook group called “Canadians against Rogers” that now has 15,000 likes. https://www.facebook.com/CanadiansAgainstRogers
How do you Create Conversations? While brands are used to one-way monologues, it’s time to shift towards a two-way dialog, where you answer your consumers. McDonald’s has done a great job in getting consumers to ask them questions which they answer with full transparency. They’ve taken that transparency to every part of how they’re doing business going as far as putting the calories on their menu board.

A challenge to your mindset: Do you represent your brand to the consumer or do you represent your consumer to the brand?

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Here are resolutions for 2014 that will Challenge you to be a better Brand Leader

6 January 2014

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Happy New Year!!!

I’m getting older! Yikes. A friend of mine who had been retired once said to me “time flies so fast that breakfast seems to come every five minutes”. I’m starting to understand that. So here we are with another year ahead of us. As we approach the new year, it’s a great time to come back fresh from the break and challenge yourself to get better. In the words of T.S. Eliot: “For last year’s words belong to last year’s language and next year’s words await another voice”. Here are 10 potential challenging resolutions for you, with the idea that you might pick one of these to focus on for the year.

#1: Take a Walk in Your Consumers Shoes. See the brand as they do.

It’s not just about doing research and finding consumer insights. It’s about experiencing the brand as your consumer does. Bringing the consumer into everything you do tightening the connection. Consumers do not care what you do, until you care about what they want. In 2014, be the spokesperson who represents the consumer to your team and watch the work get better. When doing TV ads or digital ads, realize that the consumer now sees 5,000+ brand messages per day: Would this capture their attention, would they get it and would they do anything with it? Read the following article that puts the consumer front and center in what we do: Everything Starts and Ends with the Consumer

#2: Ask Bigger Questions, Get Bigger Answers.

As a senior Brand Leader, it is easy to get so wrapped up in the details of the execution that you’re making the non-strategic decisions on behalf of the team. You have just really become the “senior” Senior Brand Manager that really annoys your team. Instead of providing the team with a vision, challenging on strategy or teaching the team, you’re telling them to make the flash bigger and change the sell sheet to purple. Instead of telling people what to do, why not challenge yourself to sit back slightly and ask the really tough challenging questions. You’ll know you’ve asked a really tough question when you don’t even know the answer. To figure out the best questions, read: Ask Bigger Questions, Get Bigger Answers

#3: Create More Love for your Brand and you’ll drive More Power and Profits for your Brand.

Brand Leaders are too logical for their own good. So much so that it’s holding their brand back from being great. To create more love for your brand, there are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Once you have the connection with your consumers, use that power with retailers, media, competitors and even the very consumers that love you. With added power, you’ll be able to drive bigger profits, with inelastic price, more efficiency in costs and consumers will follow your brand with every new product launch or category you enter. Realize the magic formula and find more growth for your brand in 2014: Love = Power = Growth = Profit. To read more about this, follow this link: Brand Love = Power = Profit

#4: Focusing makes your Brand Bigger. Lack of focus makes it Smaller.

I still see Brand Leaders struggling to focus. They want as broad of a selling target they can find so they can speak to everyone, yet in reality they speak with no one. They want so many messages, mainly because they don’t know what the consumer wants, so they just say everything they can think of. And they choose every media option because they don’t even know where they are, so they try to be everywhere. When you don’t make a choice, you don’t make a decision. Great marketers make choices–they use the word “or” instead of “and”. They apply their limited resources against the biggest potential win–with a focused target, focused message and focused medium to shout it in. They look bigger than they are to those who are the most motivated to already buy. To challenge yourself to focus, read: Brand Focus Makes You Bigger

#5: At every turn, ask yourself “DO I LOVE IT?” Reject all work that is “just ok” because OK is the enemy of Great.

Moving your brand from indifferent to Like It is relatively easy: good product, smart investment and doing the basics right. But moving from “Like It” to “Love It” can be a herculean task. If you want your consumer to love your brand, you have to love the work you do. Look at the love Apple projects to its consumers through the magic of design, branding and marketing. Never let something out that’s “just ok”. If you’re indifferent, then you’re brand will be as well. Challenge yourself in 2014 to lead yourself with passion equal to logic and find a way to love the work you do. Read the following article at: Reject OK because OK is the Enemy of Greatness

#6: Find Your Point of Difference by Being Different.

Brand Leaders always try to find that nugget as their point of difference. They get so logical and then try to make it a big deal in the consumers mind, even though many times the consumer does not care. And yet, these same Brand Leaders play it so safe that their work looks and feels just like everyone else. In 2014, push yourself to be different in your execution. If the consumer sees 5,000 brand messages a day, they’ll only be attracted to something they’ve never seen before. All the ‘me-too’ messages will be lost in a sea of sameness. Whether it is new products, a new advertising campaign or media options push yourself to do something that stands out. Don’t just settle for ok. Always push for great. If you don’t love the work, how do you expect your consumer to love your brand? The opposite of different, is indifferent and who wants to be indifferent. Read the following link: The Art of Being Different

#7: Care More about the Careers of Your People

The best way to connect with your team is to care about their careers. If you are authentic i how you approach their development, they’ll do listen to your advice, follow your lead and give more effort than ever. If they feel they are getting the training and development needed, they’ll likely stay longer with your company. If they have added skills and motivation, their performance will be even better and if the work gets better, then the results will be better. For you the equation is simple: The better the people, the better the work and in turn the better the results. To read more on how to help with their careers, read the following link: Managing Your Marketing Career (Free Download)

#8: Create a Culture around your Brand—Brand should be everyone’s job, not just marketing.

There are hundreds and sometimes thousands of people impacted by the vision, mission and values you set out for the brand. While most people will think the Brand Manager leads the brand, it’s the collective wisdom of all those who touch it. From Sales People negotiating on the brands behalf to HR people who pick the right people to various Agencies, right down to the Editor who works just one day on your brand. Motivate them, embrace them, challenge them, lead them, follow them and reward them. Great people make great work and great work leads to great brands. In 2014, challenge yourself to realize that you need more than just you living the brand, you need everyone living and breathing it. The best case study on how to drive the brand right into the culture is Ritz Carlton: Ritz Carlton

#9 : Be a Better Client and Get Better Work

I get asked a lot: “So what is it that makes someone good at advertising?”. I always think people are looking for some type of magical answer, but the answer I give is always very simple yet if you think about it very complex: “They can consistently get good advertising on the air and keep bad advertising off the air”. It all starts with being a better client thought. As David Ogilvy said “Clients get the work they deserve”. If you are your agency’s best client, you are much more likely to get the best of their work. To get better, read an article on the Worst Type of Clients

#10: Be a Better Brand Leader.

Be more Consumer focused and live as though Everything Starts and Ends With the Consumer in Mind. That’s why you got into this business isn’t it? Follow Your Instincts and use the gut feel of Marketing. If you have more fun, so to will the consumer. Revel in Ambiguity and be more patient with Ideas. It’s ok not to know for a little bit because that’s when the best answers come to the surface. Actively Listen and use more questions than answers. Focus on the People and the Results will come. Here is an article for you: Eight Brand Leader Behaviors

I really hope you try one of these out in 2014. And I hope you see the difference.

Here’s to a Great Year in 2014!

Do you want to be an amazing Brand Leader? We can help you.

ABOUT BELOVED BRANDS INC.: At Beloved Brands, we are only focused on making brands better and making brand leaders better.Our motivation is that we love knowing we were part of helping someone to unleash their full potential. We promise to challenge you to Think Different. We believe the thinking that got you here, will not get you where you want to go. Our President and Chief Marketing Officer, Graham Robertson is a brand leader at heart, who loves everything about brands. He comes with 20 years of experience at companies such as Johnson and Johnson, Pfizer Consumer, General Mills and Coke, where he was always able to find and drive growth. Graham has won numerous new product and advertising awards. Graham brings his experience to your table, strong on leadership and facilitation at very high levels and training of Brand Leaders around the world. To reach out directly, email me at graham.robertson@beloved-brands.com or follow on Twitter @grayrobertson1

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So…what is a Brand?

5 January 2014

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Sometimes when I introduce myself, I’ll say: “Hi, I’m a Brand Strategy Consultant, the three most mis-understood words in business”. I think I need a new introduction, but save that for another story. The problem about the word “BRAND” is a lot of really smart people still see brand as a name, a logo, an identity and possibly a slogan. I am writing this to stretch your minds a little, to start to see brand as an idea that can help make your business bigger.

There’s a lot of debate in this industry on what makes a great brand.

On the one hand, there are those in the industry who want to believe that brand is all about the product or service. Brand to them is very simple, 100% rational and there is almost a ‘what you see is what you get’ view of brand. The product is the brand. Even with a brand like Apple, they’ll say it’s because Apple has “great products”.
The other side believes that brand is all about equity and success comes strictly from an emotional connection, no matter how exciting or boring the category. They tend to think that great communication can over come any product deficiencies.

This division shows up in various places, including how companies organize their people and resources. There’s too many companies set up with “product departments” and “brand departments”. I also hear the term “brand tax” where the product budgets pay percent of their marketing spend towards the brand. And finally, I’ll hear “no that’s not our decision, that’s BRAND’s decision”. And in walks the ad agency and the client might say “this is an equity spot, but we want to put a 5-second tag of the new flavour at the end”.

A brand is not just a logo. I think it’s important for Brand Leaders to know what a brand is so that they don’t do what The Gap did 3 years ago when their brand was in trouble. With The Gap in trouble for over a decade, instead of looking at what was wrong with the brand (dull clothing, internal culture, connecting to the target, and stretching the brand too thinly to baby gap and maternity gap) the management team did what too many leaders do–they changed the logo. The new logo, heavily criticized, only lasted one week before they went back.

So what is a Brand?

A Brand is a unique idea, perceived in the minds and hearts of the consumer, consistently delivered by the experience, creating a bond, power and profit, beyond what the product itself could achieve.

Let’s break that definition down.

Part 1: “unique idea”

Brands are based on a unique idea, promise or reputation. Yes, most brands start as a product or service, but the best brands find an idea to make the brand even bigger than the original product. The idea is big enough for consumers to love, and the brand’s idea becomes a DNA or Brand Essence that you’ll see and feel in every part of the brand. These days as things are so competitive, and consumers have so much access to information, I do think brands need to find a uniqueness, because there really are only four options for brands: 1) better 2) different 3) cheaper or 4) not around for very long. Push yourself to find your brand’s unique point of difference and create a big idea that you can use to manage every part of your brand.

The big idea for the Apple brand is that it takes out the complexity and makes it so simple that everyone can be part of the future. Everything from there falls under that big idea–the promise, strategy, story, freshness and the experience.

Part 2: “perceived in the minds and hearts of the consumer”

The image of the brand is no longer owned by the brand, if it ever was owned. At best, we can send out brand messages but the consumer still gets to decide whether or not those messages fit with their perception of the brand. I always say “there is truth in advertising, because all un-true messages are rejected by the consumer”. Too many Brand Leaders go rational, but the reality is that brands are 50% rational and 50% emotional. With social media, the consumer has even more ownership over the brand’s image as their own messaging now carries more weight than your basic TV ad. This is called co-creation, where both you as the brand leader and the consumer own the brand messaging together. I believe Brand Managers should make the choice to represent their consumer back to the brand, rather than representing the brand out to the consumer. You should act as the consumer advocate, telling your brand what your consumer wants.

Part 3: “consistently delivered by the brand’s experience”

A brand really is stamp to ensure consistency. Before Kellogg’s decided to brand their own corn flakes back in 1906, consumers would go into town and scoop out corn flakes out of a bin, with a random experience because who knows which farmer made them that day. But now with Kellogg’s the consumer could expect the same experience in every bowl. Fast forward today, as the landscape is even more competitive and the brand experience is everything. Look at the amazing brands in the market place, like Starbucks, NFL, Disney and Apple and you’ll see each brand backs up their brand promise by constantly over-delivering upon the expectations. As brands hit the loved stage, making sure you nail the experience helps re-enforce loyalty and builds brand rituals into the lives of consumers.

Part 4: “creating a bond, power and profit, beyond what the product itself could achieve”

The most beloved brands are based on an idea that is worth loving. It is the idea that connects the Brand with consumers. And under the Brand Idea are 5 sources of connectivity that help connect the brand with consumers and drive Brand Love, including the brand promise, the strategic choices you make, the brand’s ability to tell their story, the freshness of the product or service and the overall experience and impressions it leaves with you. Everyone wants to debate what makes a great brand–whether it’s the product, the advertising, the experience or through consumers. It is not just one or the other–it’s the collective connection of all these things that make a brand beloved.

Generating Love for the Brand

The brand’s promise sets up the positioning, as you focus on a key target with one main benefit you offer. Brands need to be either better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. “Me-too” brands have a short window before being squeezed out. How relevant, simple and compelling the brand positioning is impacts the potential love for the brand.
The most beloved brands create an experience that over-delivers the promise. How your culture and organization are set up can make or break that experience. Hiring the best people, creating service values that employees can deliver against and having processes that eliminate service leakage. The culture attacks the brand’s weaknesses and fixes them before the competition can attack. With a Beloved Brand, the culture and brand become one.
Brands also make focused strategic choices that start with identifying where the brand is on the Brand Love Curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved status. Marketing is not just activity, but rather focused activity–based on strategy with an ROI mindset. Where you are on the curve might help you make strategic and tactical choices such as media, innovation and service levels.
The most beloved brands have a freshness of innovation, staying one-step ahead of the consumers. The idea of the brand helps acting as an internal beacon to help frame the R&D. Every new product has to back that idea. At Apple, every new product must deliver simplicity and at Volvo, it must focus on safety. .
Beloved brands can tell the brand story through great advertising in paid media, through earned media either in the mainstream press or through social media. Beloved Brands use each of these media choices to connect with consumers and have a bit of magic to their work.

Love = Power = Profit. Once you align all 5 of the connections, you’ll create a strong bond with your consumers. That bond becomes a source of power for your brand, whether that power is with the very consumers who love your brand, versus retailers, suppliers, competitors, influencers, employees or even versus the media. Once you’re able to generate power for your brand, you can then turn that into profit, whether driving price, cost control, market share or increasing the market size.

The more love you can create for your brand, the more power and profits you can generate. This idea of brand love has to translate down into every detail of how you run your business. The challenging message for Brand Leaders is that if you don’t love the work you do how do you expect the consumer to love your brand. OK is always the enemy of greatness holding you back from achieving your full potential.

A Beloved Brand is an idea worth loving

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Is your Brand Team good enough to achieve your 2014 goals?

1 January 2014

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As you move up, you start to realize that you can’t do everything, and you’re really only as good as your team. The thing I’ve always said is that better people create better work and that means better results. The question you should be asking is are they good enough? Maybe it’s time to invest in making your people better, so that you can be freed up for more leadership, higher level strategic thinking and focusing on driving the vision of the team, rather than caught in the weeds of re-writing copy on a coupon.

Here are 5 key questions to be asking:

Do your Brand Leaders think strategically?
Are your Brand Leaders going deep enough on their analysis?
Can your Brand Leaders write a plan and communicate it throughout the company?
Are your Brand Leaders a good judge advertising and communication?
Are your Brand Leaders good at staying focused?

Are they disciplined and fundamentally sound? Can everyone on your team effectively write a brand plan, positioning concepts, a creative brief, make marketing investment decisions and judge creative work to ensure it delivers the strategy? The great myth of marketing is that it is 100% learned on the job. It should be a balance of coaching from a well-trained leader, teaching in a class room setting and learning on the job. More and more, we are seeing marketing teams thrust new marketers into their roles without any training. In fact, their bosses and even their bosses haven’t really received any training. So who is really teaching you, on the job, if the person with you isn’t well-trained?

Q1: Do your Brand Leaders think strategically?

Strategic thinking is not just whether you are smart or not. You can be brilliant and not strategic at all. Strategic Thinkers see “what if” questions before they see solutions. They map out a range of decision trees that intersect and connect by imagining how events will play out. They reflect and plan before they act. They are thinkers and planners who can see connections. On the other hand, Non Strategic Thinkers see answers before questions. They opt for action over thinking, believing that doing something is better than doing nothing. They are impulsive and doers who see tasks. With the explosion of marketing media, we are seeing too many of the new Brand Leaders becoming action-oriented do-ers and not strategic thinkers. They don’t connect their actions to maximizing the results on the brand. They do cool stuff they like not strategic things that help grow the business and add profit to the Brand. I see too many of today’s Brand Leaders focused on activity, rather than strategy.

When you are strategic , you will focus all of your resources and energy against the pressure points that drive the greatest return on investment and effort. There are Four Principles of Good Strategy: 1) Focus 2) Early Win 3) Leverage point and 4) Gateway to something bigger.

FOCUS: all your energy to a particular strategic point or purpose. Match up your brand assets to pressure points you can break through, maximizing your limited resources—either financial resources or effort. Focus on one target. Focus on one message. And focus on very few strategies and tactics. Less is more.
You want that EARLY WIN, to kick-start of some momentum. Early Wins are about slicing off parts of the business or population where you can build further. This proves to everyone the brand can win—momentum, energy, following.
LEVERAGE everything to gain positional advantage or power that helps exert even greater pressure and gains the tipping point of the business that helps lead to something bigger. Crowds follow crowds.
See beyond the early win, there has to be a GATEWAY point, the entrance or a means of access to something even bigger. It could be getting to the masses, changing opinions or behaviours. Return on Investment or Effort.

To me, with the modern-day Brand Leader, the area where they struggle the is the “FOCUS” part. Every brand is constrained by resources—dollars, people and time. Focus makes you matter most to those who care. Focusing your limited resources on those consumers with the highest propensity to buy what you are selling will deliver the greatest movement towards sales and the highest return on investment for those resources. In a competitive category, no one brand can do it all. Focus makes you decide whether to be better, different or cheaper. Giving the consumer too many messages about your brand will confuse them as to what makes your brand unique. Trying to be everything is the recipe for being nothing. Trying to do everything spreads your resources and your message so that everything you do is “ok” and nothing is “great”. With a long to-do list, you’ll never do a great job at anything. And in a crowded and fast economy, “ok” never breaks through so you’ll never get the early win to gain that tipping point that opens up the gateway to even bigger success.

Have your Brand Leaders been taught how to think strategically? I actually don’t know many Brand Leaders that really have been taught. Yet, we tell Senior Brand Managers, you’re not getting promoted because you’re not strategic enough. If we taught them how to be strategic, we might find a better pool of talent within your team. The following training module shows Brand Leaders how to think strategically, and how to think in terms of consumer strategy, competitive strategy or visionary strategy. Consumer Focused Strategic Thinking starts with the consumer, maps out the need states and best matches your brand to delivering a unique selling proposition that helps connect with consumers, drives added power for the brand which can translate into growth and profitability. Competitive Focused Strategies have 4 types of Marketing Warfare Strategies 1) Offensive 2) Defensive 3) Flanking and 4) Guerilla. Focus and speed are crucial to any warfare. Being organized and aligned internally is crucial to winning. Visionary Strategy starts with the purpose driven vision (the Why) and layers in the strategy (the how) and execution (the what) deliver that vision.

Q2. Are your Brand Leaders going Deep Enough on Analysis?

I hate when brand leaders do that “surface cleaning” type analysis. I call it surface cleaning when you find out that someone is coming to your house in 5 minutes so you just take everything that’s on a counter and put it in a drawer really quickly. I can tell very quickly when someone doesn’t dig deep on analysis.

The best way go deep on your analysis, ask “so what does that mean” at least five times and watch the information gets richer and deeper.

Looking at the Gray’s Cookie example above, intuitively, it makes sense that going after Health Food Stores could be one option put on the table. But to say you need to be better, without digging in remains an unsubstantiated opinion. As you dig deeper, you see that going after Health Food stores, who are highly independent is labor intensive and the payback is just not there. Yes, you’re way under-developed. But it’s more expensive than other options. When you bring the option of going after mass into the mix, which is head office driven, you start to see a higher return on the investment. This is just a fictional example, but look how the thinking gets richer at each stage. Force yourself to keep asking “so what does this mean” or “why” pushing the analysis harder and harder.

Thinking Time Questions that will Help you Go Deeper. The first analysis is “What do we know?” with 5 key questions to help you sort through your analysis:

What do we know? This should be fact based and you know it for sure.
What do we assume? Your educated/knowledge based conclusion that helps us bridge between fact, and speculation.
What we think? Based on facts, and assumptions, you should be able to say what we think will happen.
What do we need to find out? There may be unknowns still.
What are we going to do? It’s the action that comes out of this thinking.

It forces you to start grouping your learning, forces you to start drawing conclusions and it enables your reader to separate fact (the back ground information) from opinion (where you are trying to take them)

The second type of analysis is “Where are we?” with 5 key questions to help you sort through your analysis:

Where are we?
Why are we here?
Where could we be?
How can we get there?
What do we need to do to get there?

These questions help frame your thinking as you go into a Brand Plan. The first question helps the analysis, the second with the key issues, the third frames the vision and objectives, the fourth gets into strategy and tactics and the fifth gets into the execution. My challenge to you: update it every 3-6 months, or every time you do something major. You’ll be surprised that doing something can actually impact “where are we?” on the analysis.

Q3. Can your Brand Leaders write an effective Brand Plan?

A well-written Brand Plan helps to align an organization around the direction, the choices and the tactics that need implementing for a brand to achieve their goals. The Brand Plan unites functions such as marketing, sales, product development outlining what each group needs to do for the brand to be successful, while setting goals that operations and finance need to support. The Brand Plan gains approval from senior management around spending options, strategic choices and sets forth the tactics that will be implemented. It holds senior management accountable to the plan. The Brand Plan helps frame the execution for internal stakeholders and for the various agencies who will implement programs within the plan. Execution is an expression of the strategy, and the plan must hold agencies accountable to delivering work that is on strategy. And lastly, the Brand Plan helps the Brand Manager who wrote it, stay focused to deliver what they said they would. It helps them to refer back to the strategy and the intention to ensure the Brand Manager “stays on strategy” the entire year. For more on how to write a plan, follow this link: How to Write a Brand Plan

Can your Brand Leaders write a winning Brand Positioning Statement? Brand Positioning Statements provide the most useful function of taking everything you know about your brand, everything that could be said about the consumer and making choices to pick one target that you’ll serve and one brand promise you will stand behind. While we think this brand positioning statement sets up the creative brief, it should really set up everything the brand does–equally important for internal as everyone should follow to what the positioning statement says. A best in class positioning statement has four key elements:

Target Market (a)
Definition of the market you play in (b)
Brand Promise (emotional or rational benefit) (c)
The Reason to Believe (RTB) the brand promise (d)

The more focused your decisions, the more successful you will be: decide on one target, one promise and maybe one or two reasons to believe that help to directly back up your promise. But the target shouldn’t be everyone 18-65, and don’t throw your eight best features at the wall and hopefully something sticks. And the reason to believe has to back up your promise, not be a whole new promise. To see more on how to write an effective Brand Positioning Statement, follow this link: How to Write a Positioning Statement

Can your Brand Leaders write a Creative Brief? The best Advertising is well planned, not some random creative thing that happens. The value of a creative brief is focus! Like a good positioning statement, you’re taking everything you know and everything you could possibly say, and starting to make choices on what will give you the greatest return on your media dollars. If you’re not making choices then you’re not making decisions. Unlike other creativity, advertising is “In the Box” creativity. The best advertising creative people are problem solvers, not blue sky thinkers. Therefore, the role of the creative brief is to create the right box, enough room to move, but enough direction that defines the problem. The smaller the brief, the bigger the idea. A good brief should be brief. One page maximum. I’m still in shock when I see briefs reaching 5 or 6 pages. That’s not a brief, that’s a long! Take the pen and start stroking out words, forcing yourself to start making decisions. Avoid the “just in case” type of thinking. For more on How to Write a Brief, follow this link: How to Write a Brief

Q4. Can your Brand Leaders judge communications?

Making great advertising is very hard. Good marketers make it look simple, but they have good solid training and likely some good solid experience. As Brand Leaders sit in the room, looking at new advertising ideas, most are ill-prepared as to how to judge what makes good advertising and what makes bad. It’s a myth that great marketing is learned strictly “on the job”. I also say “you are likely to screw up your first five ads”. And if you do one a year, that’s 5 years of advertising. So, how well prepared are you? An ill prepared Brand Leader will more than likely deliver a poor ad. There are fundamentals to help ensure that your instincts are the right instincts. How many hours of training have you had on giving direction to a creative team? How many times did you role-play giving feedback to the agency? How good was the coaching you received on your feedback? Not only do you need the fundamentals through solid training, but you likely need someone coaching you through a role-playing exercise. Too many Brand Leaders sit there confused, brief in hand, but not sure whether they like it or not sure whether any of the scripts will do much for them. The four questions you should be asking:

Will this ad attract Attention? (A)
Does this ad showcase the Brand? (B)
Are we Communicating our main benefit? (C)
Will this ad stick in the minds of consumers? (S)

Using something like the ABC’s makes it easy for Brand Leaders to stay strategic and be able to judge the work effectively. Here’s a write-up on How to help Brand Leaders judge communications Effectively: The ABC’s of Effective Communication

Q5. Are your Brand Leaders good at staying focused?

So many Brand Leaders try to do too much. When you do too much, you just spread your resources thin across too many activities. You end up never being able to execute anything to the high quality, you never find out if the program could really achieve what you want to achieve. I use a very simple grid to focus all the activities. Get everyone to brainstorm all the ideas on post it notes. Then using the grid below, get them to sort the ideas based on how big the idea is, and how easy it is to execute. I push for the top 5 ideas that are in the BIG/EASY zone.

If there’s a big idea that’s difficult, then spend the time brainstorming how to make it easier.
If there are small ideas that are easy, then brainstorm how to make the idea even bigger.

There are four areas you need to focus:

Pick a focused Target Market: While it’s tempting to sell to everyone. Focus your resources on those most likely to buy. Realizing not everyone can like you is the first step to focus on those that can love you.
Pick a focused Brand Positioning: Start with the target market you just picked, and assess their need states to see where you can best match up. Beloved Brands are either better, different or cheaper. Or they are not around for much longer.
Pick a Focused Strategy: Brands need to understand where they sit before picking strategies. Evaluate the health of your brand using the Brand Funnel to understand where you are strong and should keep pushing or where you have a weakness (a Leak) that you need to close.
Focused Activities: While everyone talks ROI, I talk ROE as well. Return on Effort forces you to prioritize all your activities.

Stay aligned to your plan, and don’t be tempted away from your focus. When you focus, five things happen.

Better ROI: With all the resources against one strategy, one target, one message, you’ll be find out if the strategy you’ve chose is able to actually move consumers drive sales or other key performance indicators.
Better ROE: Make the most out of your people resources.
Strong Reputation: When you only do one thing, you naturally start to become associated with that one thing—externally and even internally. And, eventually you become very good at that one thing.
More Competitive: As your reputation grows, you begin to own that on thing and your are able to better defend the positioning territory
Bigger and Better P&L: As the focused effort drives results, it opens up the P&L with higher sales and profits. And that means more resources will be put to the effort to drive even higher growth.

Invest in Your People: Better Brand Leaders leads to better work and that leads to better Results

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How to lead a motivating Year End Review for Brand Leaders

20 December 2013

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The better the people, the better the work and in the end the better the results.

As we come up on the year-end, it’s that time of year when we nervously sit down with our bosses and find out how the year went. For most of us, it’s one of the most dreaded parts of the job, for both those delivering and receiving the news. But helping to grow our people is one of the most essential parts of the Leader. No matter how good your strategy or product is, without the greatness of your people you’ll never achieve the results you want. We all have gaps and we should all be working on closing those gaps. Performance Feedback is an essential role in the growth of our people. But without pointing those gaps out and coming up with a plan, then the person will never really improve.

A challenge to you: if there are any surprises during the meeting, then you as a leader are not doing your job. As the VP of Marketing at Johnson and Johnson, I had one-on-one quarterly performance check ins with all my direct reports. And when I realized that my directs weren’t following my lead, I made the Quarterly Review process mandatory for everyone on the marketing team. It’s my belief that marketers can grow faster than we think–but they can only grow with timely feedback. Those quarterly meetings were honest and informal discussions–which made the year-end review very easy. I also emailed out the written review document 48 hours ahead of time, giving people the chance to digest all the thoughts and to come prepared ready to discuss each point.

As a Marketing Leadership Team, we spent our greatest efforts around managing the people. We talked people performance in every one of our weekly meetings. The directors were encouraged to bring up people examples of those who were shining and those who were struggling. If one of the other leaders were not familiar with those that were shining, we’d set up a process or special project where they could become more aware. We ranked everyone on the team once a year plus a mid-year check in on the rankings. You have to be diligent in managing your team.

Skills, Behaviours and Experiences

Marketing Skills: Brand Leaders should be measured on the Core Marketing Skills. Below, I’ve outlined a Checklist of 30 Core Skills for a Brand Leader that can be used to highlight potential gaps that some of our Brand Leaders may have. These 30 core skills fall under the areas of:

Analytics
Brand Planning
Briefs
Advertising
New Products & Claims
Go-To-Market
Leadership
Management

You can use this checklist in a few different ways: 1) to see if someone is meeting the needs of the current job–it could be used to set someone up for a performance improvement plan or as a motivation to push themselves 2) for someone who is close to ready for promotion, but you want to close on a few specific areas before the promotion or 3) for your personal assessment to see what you want to work on.

The rating should compare against their peers. It helps to highlight skill gaps where people should focus their attention. Any scores in the 1 or 2 are concerning and need an action plan. The gap could arise because it’s outside of their natural skills or it could just be because it’s been outside of their experience they’ve had. It’s tough to be good at advertising until you’ve worked on a brand with advertising.

Leadership Skills: Below, I’ve outlined a Checklist of 12 Leader Behaviours of Brand Leaders that can be used to highlight potential gaps that some of our Brand Leaders may have. These 12 leader behaviours fall under the areas of:

Accountability to Results
People Leadership
Strategic Thinker
Broad Influence
Authentic Style

In the Leader Behaviour space, we all have blind sides that we just can’t see. This is where the 360 degree feedback can help people to see how they are showing up. I know that as a Director, I was a Driver-Driver that caused me to have behaviour gaps around Influence and Style. I had the attitude of “it’s my way or the highway” and I wasn’t getting what I needed from the strategy and accountability I was hoping for. Once I was able to identify it and work on it, I was able to see a big improvement in my performance and the results started to pay off as well. Without closing that gap when I was a director, I would not have been promoted and would have honestly been unable to lead the entire marketing team.

Experience: Many of our gaps as Brand Leaders comes from not having the experience. When managing others, expect quite a few mistakes in the first few and you might not get fully there until your 5th direct report. When sitting in the hot seat of advertising, you’ll start to realize just how complex it can be–you’ve got to stay on brief, keep the creative team motivated, make judgement calls at every stage of the process and keep your own management on side. And at every level, you’ll start to notice that the pressure gets higher–whether it’s push for results, the ambiguity or meeting deadlines through your team. Each of these takes experience.

With your best people, make sure you identify the experience gaps they have and be fair to them with the next assignment. It’s far too easy to keep relying on a person’s strengths but it’s more important that you round out that person’s experience. If they advance too far without covering off those gaps, they may find themselves struggling later in the job. I’ve known newly promoted directors who had very little advertising experience coming up that all of a sudden found themselves on a desk with lots of advertising. Their team even had more experience than they did. Regular people reviews can really help identify the experience gaps that people might have.

Do you want to be an amazing Brand Leader? We can help you.

Read more on how to utilize our Brand Leadership Learning Center where you will receive training in all aspects of marketing whether that’s strategic thinking, brand plans, creative briefs, brand positioning, analytical skills or how to judge advertising. We do training on all skill levels of marketing, and we provide coaching for leaders wanting to improve. We can customize a program that is right for you or your team. We can work in person, over the phone or through Skype. Ask us how we can help you.

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New holiday ad from Apple will bring a sweet tear to your eye

18 December 2013

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There have been some great Christmas ads over the years and this latest from Apple is a very nice spot. I love this ad. Not just for the emotion it conveys but for the use of the brand as the hero in the ad. The iPhone does create a little bit of magic. Last year, I created my own photo book using the Apple’s on-line service. It turned all the photos I take into a beautiful album. If you are looking for a Christmas gift for a loved one, I would recommend you give it a shot. It’s very easy. If I can do it, so can you . Here’s the link: Printing a Photo Book

In this 90 second TV ad, it shows a typical teenager hanging onto this iPhone constantly, and then from there, the magic happens.

Enjoy.

If you like this story…

Last month I posted a Google Ad that makes everyone cry. It’s from India and does such a good job incorporating Google as an enabler. Click here: New Google Ad Will Make You Cry

John Lewis to me is the King of all Christmas Ads. Here’s story I did last month on the 2013 ad, but showing all the Christmas Ads that they’ve done. My favourite of the ads is the 2011 version. Click here: New John Lewis Christmas Ad

You might also enjoy reading about brands that are using consumer insight as the basis of their advertising. So many Brand Leaders think your job is to represent the brand to the consumer. What if you were to represent the consumer to the brand? Would your work look different? Click on this story to read more: 5 Great Ads Based on a Unique Consumer Insight

And if you want to know how to write a better creative brief, here’s a simple step by step process to help you. Click on this story to read more: How to write an Effective Creative Brief

Do you want to be an amazing Brand Leader? We can help you.

Ask Beloved Brands to help train you on Advertising that will help you to be a better brand leader.

10 Things Brand Leaders should do this week before the Holiday Break

17 December 2013

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I know this week comes fast and it can go just as fast. I know real work happens, but not that much. My hope is that you got everything last week because you’re going to notice your boss or subject matter experts bolting for the doors, faster than you think.

I always enjoyed this week. Here are the 10 things you can do to put the week to good use.

Get all your finances in order. Most marketers are bad at managing the books. Use this week to do billing, expenses, accruals and budgeting for the year-end as well as for Q1 of next year. The more you do this week, the less you’ll need to do the week you get back. Take advantage of being close to the finance folks, just in case they need help with added spending at the last-minute.
Do a thank you lunch with your agency key contact person or even the creative team on your brand. The agency party is done, maybe the last shoot happened last week. Now is not a bad time to get out and just thank your agency for all the work and talk about what you want to do next on the brand.
Come up with a list of new years resolutions you want to do for next year. Try to frame it around developing one new skill, enhancing a leadership behaviour or gaining a new experience. Take a somewhat selfish approach to this resolution, thinking about your longer term career.
Set personal development goals outside of your company’s highly constrained year end review. It depends on how good your review was. But many organizations have goals that focus just on the results and not enough on your development.
Put your feet up for half a day and go through 5 very important strategic questions on your brand. 1) Where are you? 2) How did you get here? 3) Where could you be? 4) How can we get there? 5) Are we getting there? When I was a brand leader, I would go through these same questions every six months to keep us on track. I’d put 2-3 points for each question, and ensuring that it told the complete story on the brand. It’s a great tool to keep pushing beyond where you are now.
Wander around and thank everyone who works on your business. Use this as a chance to connect by talking about what they are doing over the break. (not about what you are doing) You might be surprised to learn something you never knew: where is home, how many kids, names, ages, etc. As a leader, get a little bit personal.
Create a twitter account and see what your consumers are doing. Not enough Brand Leaders actually have an active Twitter account. I think you have to force yourself to start tweeting. Take a walk in the shoes of your consumers. Go visit some of your favorite brands and see what they are doing so well, or not. Interact with a brand or two and see if you get a response. Twice now, McDonald’s has replied immediately saying someone would follow-up. That was amazing. But both times, no one followed up. That was bad.
Order a marketing book on-line to read up on over the break. Most Brand Leaders get so busy, they don’t keep up with the trends in the market place.
Have at least one heart-to-heart talk this week, whether that’s with a peer, your boss, your agency person or someone who calls you boss. What a great week to have one of those 2-3 hour talks. If you are lucky, you might hear some feedback on you. Say thank you.
Clean up your office and your email. Block off an afternoon. Clear out emails, sort other emails into folders you never got around to doing. Throw out some files, clearing out some space for next year. If you’re disorganized, use this time to get yourself a system.

Happy Holidays from Beloved Brands. We’ve enjoyed having you read our work. Enjoy the break.

Do you want to be an amazing Brand Leader? We can help you.

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The love and tradition behind the Starbucks Red Cups

15 December 2013

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If you have been into a Starbucks the last few weeks, you’ll certainly feel the magic of the holiday season. Every Starbucks feels well-decorated but never over stated. You can smell peppermint and ginger as soon as you walk in. If you want to add some flavor to your regular Latte, you can go for a Caramel Brûlé, Eggnog or Peppermint. And if you want to try one of the Christmas deserts, there’s Gingerbread loafs, Frosted Snowman cookies or the Cranberry Bliss Bar. Better yet, have you had one of those incredible Peppermint Brownie Cake Pops?

And of course, there is the Starbucks Red Cup.

As the red cups arrived at Starbucks as early as November 1st, you could see the Facebook posts and my 15 year-old daughter was “SO EXCITED” (her words) But it is such a great understated brand cue for Starbucks to link into the holiday season. They are in year 10 of the cups, and it’s become something we now connect with the modern day world of Christmas.

When you look on-line, you’ll see how big these little red cups are. There is a website dedicated to the countdown. And of course there are tons of tweets about the Red Cups, every time a consumer has one for the first time, signalling their excitement to all their network. That’s tons of free media.

Starbucks is a Beloved Brand

In the consumer’s mind, brands sit on a Brand Love Curve, with brands going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand for Life. At the Beloved stage, demand becomes desire, needs become cravings, thinking is replaced with feelings. Consumers become outspoken fans. It’s this connection that helps drive power for your brand: power versus competitors, versus customers, versus suppliers and even versus the same consumers you’re connected with. The farther along the curve, the more power for the brand. It’s important that you understand where your brand sits on the Love Curve and begin figuring out how to move it along towards becoming a Beloved Brand.

When you reach the Beloved stage like Starbucks, it becomes all about the experience and the magical moments you can create. While you can continue to attack yourself before others can attack you, it’s also about maintaining the love by creating a bit of magic to surprise and delight your most loyal consumers. For a brand that taps into routine, having a regular set of drinks and desserts around Christmas gives the consumers some festive favorites to liven up the routine a little bit. Being a life ritual each and every day gets even bigger when you become a tradition each Christmas.

From a pure business point of view, Christmas starts November 1st all the way to December 31st, which means that one-sixth of the year, you are in red cups. After 10 years of red cups, Starbucks fully understands how the simple gesture connects with consumers and how it links Starbucks to one of those holiday traditions.

“When the cups turns red at Starbucks, that’s one of the first cues that the holidays are upon us. The emotional connection that our store partners (employees) have when they open that first box of the red cups and start using them that first day, and the emotional connection they see from their customers, that’s what we strive for. They see that surprise and excitement: ‘Oh, the red cups are at Starbucks!”

– Terry Davenport, Senior Vice President, Global Brand

On top of that Starbucks now has captured the entire calendar with specials around Valentines, St Patty’s day, Easter, Summer Drinks and Halloween (personally, I love the pumpkin stuff).

To stay in the holiday spirit, you can read up on how John Lewis has been using Christmas ads for the past 5 years to really connect with the consumer. Click on this to get to the article: John Lewis Christmas ads

Hope you are ready for the Holidays and that your brand results have been strong this year

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Captivating Ad about Working Women rivals Dove’s “Real Beauty”

12 December 2013

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A new ad from the Pantene in the Philippines is making its way around social media, with a message that compliments and even rivals the powerful messages of Dove’s “Real Beauty”. The ad takes on the stereotyping labels that women face in the work place.

I’ve been a huge fan of the Dove campaign, about “real beauty” because they have created a huge idea that is worth loving. The creativity of the work breaks through the clutter with insights that make women stop and say “that is exactly how I feel”. I’m always trying to push Brand Leaders to go more emotional and push for a big huge idea their brand can stand behind. It’s always too easy for the Brand Leader to stay 100% logical, to put in claims and side-by-side demos and playing it safe. But in the words of Marianne Williamson: “Your playing small does not serve the world.”

This new Pantene spot has entered into the same space, but more focused on the work place and the image women need to fight. It’s less about “inner” beauty and more about the “outer” stereotypes.

As a husband to a very successful career woman, I love this. And as the father of a 15 year-old daughter, this has hope that women continue to break through against the stereotypes put on them.

“Be Strong and Shine”

If you like this story…

And if you want to know how to write a better creative brief, here’s a simple step by step process to help you. Click on this story to read more: How to write an Effective Creative Brief

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The most Beloved Ads of 2013, with story-telling dominating the list.

4 December 2013

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As I watched all the great ads this year, I kept getting goose bumps and a few tears….not as many laughs as other years. The biggest trend I see is the power of story telling with long ads that have the potential to be shared with friends through social media vehicles like Facebook and Twitter. Even on this Beloved Brands blog, the google ad from India, has been viewed by 250,000 people and counting.

I know Brand Leaders are still stuck on the 30 second ad, showing it with a frequency that drives consideration and purchase intention of your brand. For many brands, that still is the primary method. Let these story telling ads challenge your thinking though, and maybe inspire you to dip your toe into this area, or if the thought takes you further, jump into the deep end. You don’t have to be Nike or Apple to tell stories. You can see a brand like Dodge, likely considered by many as a mid-of-the-road brand and they’ve made the idea of farmers to be inspiration and a celebrated part of America.

Here are the most Beloved Ads for 2013

Dodge “God Made a Farmer”

Paul Henry’s voice is chilling. The photography is brilliant. It’s beautiful. This is a Super Bowl ad, that doesn’t look like a Super Bowl ad. The use of quiet is a great device to arrest your audience, especially when things are loud. The specific call out of farmers is a focus I love, with no worry it will alienate the non-farmers. This spot just screams “America”. In my view, this is one of the best ads of the century so far.

Google India “Re Union”

This powerful ad has gone viral making people around the world cry, whether on a subway, at work or at your home computer. A very simple story of a lost friendship. Google has done an amazing job with advertising like the Parisian spot a few years ago. The power for Google is showing how much we rely on Google for everyday things in life.

Dove “Drafting Board”

Dove’s real beauty campaign has taken the simple bar of soap and created a brand that stands up for Women. This powerful video (more than an ad) tells the story of how women see their flaws more than others do. It’s a great inspiring and challenging message.

Budweiser “Baby Clydesdale”

One more Super Bowl ad for you, and another very powerful yet simple story of raising a horse. The horse running back to his trainer brings a sweet tear to your eye.

Sick Kids Hospital “You Got It”

I’m from Toronto, and while the current news is dominated by Mayor Rob Ford, I want to remind you that Toronto is also home to Sick Kids Hospital, one of the world’s best children’s hospitals in the world. Like the Dodge ad, this ad uses a quiet arresting song to capture attention. I was in the kitchen when this ad first came on and the song brought me to the TV.

Volvo Trucks

A very simple stunt, beautifully shot and aligned to what the brand stands for: safety. This captured tons of news attention and passing through social media.

John Lewis “Bear and the Hare”

Year after year, UK retailer John Lewis has created amazing Christmas ads. This cute story will capture the imagination of children and the retailer has linked in the “Bear and the Hare” story by selling the books in store and creating an on-line tool to send Christmas cards to your friends.

K Mart “Ship My Pants”

I put this in with mixed reasons. It’s a fantastic ad, highly creative and I know it is universally well-loved. But it’s for the wrong retailer against a bad strategy. I’m a bit tired of people saying “that ad will make me shop at K Mart”. No it won’t. Because when you get there, you’ll find a store not delivering the expected experience and bad quality pants that you won’t want shipped. On top of that, it’s now 2013 and on-line shipping is pretty common among all retailers so there’s no real point of difference here. If this was 1997 for L.L. Bean, maybe the ad would work. But it’s cute and people like cute. So enjoy.

Bud Light “Ramsay”

I’m a passionate football fan, and these ads are so insightful to the football fan. The idea that we would put up with something we hate, like Ramsay” just to make sure we win is a great ad. Bud Light has done quite a few of these ads to keep them fresh. These are quiet little ads, likely won’t win any awards, might not sell that much more beer, but it’s a great tool to keep Bud Light as a part of the game.

True Move “Giving”

This ad from Thailand has gone viral around the world. Another great story that makes people share.

Apple “Camera”

Interestingly enough, while Samsung and every other smart phone company were yelling, Apple was whispering. This very quiet ad, might have flown under the radar, but it’s just a perfect demonstration of how we FEEL about our phone. And how it is now such a part of our lives.

If you think we missed one or a few of your favourites from this year, post them below.

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Are retailers messing up “Black Friday”?

27 November 2013

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For the past 20 years, it has been a tradition for families to plan out their fridays by hitting the malls, the day after thanksgiving. For us too lazy to get up at 5am, it’s been fun to watch on TV to see doors opening with screaming people trampling each other trying to get to those door crasher specials.

It’s a huge day of travel, this year threatened by snow storms, it’s a huge day for turkeys, football and cookies. But, most of all, Thanksgiving itself is a sacred time for families.

So this year, major retailers including Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Sears will be opening on Thanksgiving Day. This won’t mean a jump in revenues it just means revenues will be brought forward one day. Yes, retailers have this belief that it’s a constant dog-fight for sales, and if one my competitor gets a leg-up, that means a loss to me.

Retailers are facing such pressure during these economic times so I’m somewhat sympathetic. Margins are shrinking and many retailers basically make or break their year during Thanksgiving and New Years. So I can understand the temptation.

Before we get into the ethical part of opening, let’s look logically at the 8 ways a brand can make more profit: 1) increasing prices 2) getting consumers to trade up 3) lowering your cost of goods 4) lowering your marketing costs 5) stealing other users 6) getting users to use more 7) entering new categories and 8) getting new users. I realize it’s all about stealing other users. But if both competitors blink and open at 8pm on Thanksgiving, no one really wins over the consumer. The only thing I see her is a slight increase in the costs of increased wages and store opening costs. Net net, no one really wins.

So at the year end, no retailer will really be saying “we had a great year because we opened on Thanksgiving Day”.

But come on guys, while your press releases are saying you’re really just “catering to consumer demand”, I don’t buy it. I’d rather see all Americans sitting around the dinner table and watching football with family and friends.

If families are your main target market, you should be making a big deal out of the fact that you are closed so that all employees can spend time with their families. That’s a great way to establish love for your brand. My Hope is the Retailers Announcer Early that they will be closed on Thanksgiving 2014

To all our American Friends, I want to wish you and your families a Happy Thanksgiving

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Have your say: Is this Holiday ad cute or offensive?

25 November 2013

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Most ads at Christmas are warm, loving story-telling moments that tug at your heart-strings. And along comes this ad from Joe Boxer and K-Mart which at first blush appears to be relatively cute and harmless. It’s not that offensive, until of course, you link it to the sacred time of year: Christmas.

It sure stands out, and it has tremendous sharing capabilities with over 12 Million views on-line already. But to show how polarizing this ad is, the Ad tracking shows it scores extremely high on attention, but very low on relevance. It scored extremely high in the “dislike” category, however at the same time it scored very high on “likeable”.

This appears part of K-Mart’s shock value advertising they are using this year, following up on “Ship My Pants” ad below.

Brands really only have four choices: better, different, cheaper or not around for very long. Both of these ads are cute ads, but neither really says why you would ever choose K-Mart. I’m sure the ad industry likes them. But you can get free shipping of lousy pants at many stores these days. And Joe Boxer has pretty good distribution across most chains.

So aside from the shock value of these ads, is there really anything sustaining for K-Mart? In Canada, there was a store called Zellers that used the same shock value style ads. They just went bankrupt.

I’d mark this down as to a bad and confused creative brief, with a client more intent on seeing advertising as fun than effective.

Have your say: Will the new K-Mart ad drive more sales or not?

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If you’re in the holiday spirit, you might like to see how John Lewis of the UK has handled their Christmas ads the past 5 years. They likely even jump out more than this K-Mart ad, while tugging traditionally at your heart strings. New John Lewis Christmas ad

And if you want to know how to write a better creative brief, here’s a simple step by step process to help you. Click on this story to read more: How to write an Effective Creative Brief

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How generating more Love for your brand will make You More Money

19 November 2013

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Love = Power = Profit

This message is for the Brand Leaders who many times stick to the straight rational management of a brand. I grew up in the CPG Brand Management world. And today I’m about to tell you a message that you likely hear all the time from your agency: you should be more emotional with your brand! I preface it by saying I’m one of you (client), not one of them (agency). It’s very common among clients to think that way because we get frustrated that the agency doesn’t deliver what we want. From my experience, many Brand Leaders still say: “Give me a very straight forward ad that delivers the message we know will work”. When an agency starts to push for us to be more emotional, we immediately think they are just trying to win an award.

I guess I wished I listened to my agency. But I just wish the agency went a layer deeper and connected going emotional with making more money and then they would have gotten my attention more. Hey Agencies: Try telling your client this next time: We should be more emotional because then you’ll make more money. If you could generate more love for your brand, that would give you more power in the market and that power would help you to drive more profits.

Here’s the theory part on how the more love you create, the more power you command and the more money you make. Brands sit somewhere on the hypothetical Brand Love curve, going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and finally becoming a Beloved Brand. Brands can connect with the consumer through 5 sources: how strong is the promise, how good is their story, how focused is their strategy, how do they keep the brand fresh through innovation and how do they turn all this into an experience beyond the product. It is the Brand’s connectivity and love that generates power for your brand–a power with the very consumers who love it, versus the channels who carry it, the competitors who fight you, possible new entrants trying to de-throne you, influencers who recommend you, suppliers, the employees and the media. Having power enables your brand to generate higher profits in 8 ways, through price points, trading up/down, product costs, marketing costs, stealing other users, getting users to use more, entering new categories or creating new ways to use for the brand.

There are 5 Ways to Generate more Love for your Brand

The brand’s promise sets up the positioning, as you focus on a key target with one main benefit you offer. Brands need to be either better, different or cheaper. Or else not around for very long. “Me-too” brands have a short window before being squeezed out. How relevant, simple and compelling the brand positioning is impacts the potential love for the brand. Apple goes above just their product with a promise of simplicity that allows everyone to experience the future through technology.
The most beloved brands create an experience that over-delivers the promise. How your culture and organization are set up can make or break that experience. Hiring the best people, creating service values that employees can deliver against and having processes that eliminate service leakage. The culture attacks the brand’s weaknesses and fixes them before the competition can attack. With a Beloved Brand, the culture and brand become one. I love the Starbucks experience that has been created with coffee as the base, but they have gone so deeper to enable magical moments for their consumer.
Brands also make focused strategic choices that start with identifying where the brand is on the Brand Love Curve going from Indifferent to Like It to Love It and all the way to Beloved status. Marketing is not just activity, but rather focused activity–a focused target, a focused message, focused strategic choices, focused activities always with an ROI mindset. Where you are on the curve might help you make strategic and tactical choices such as media, innovation and service levels. Find those who are most motivated to buy what you do best. I love how Volvo is so singularly focused on the safety message since 1954. Yes they have leather seats and a great radio, but the message is always safety first.
The most beloved brands have a freshness of innovation, staying one-step ahead of the consumers. The idea of the brand helps acting as an internal beacon to help frame the R&D. Every new product has to back that idea. At Apple, every new product must deliver simplicity and at Volvo, the innovation must deliver the safety promise.
Beloved brands can tell the brand story through great advertising in paid media, through earned media either in the mainstream press or through social media. Beloved Brands use each of these media choices to connect with consumers and have a bit of magic to their work. John Lewis out of the UK, is an employee-owned store growing double digits right through the recession because of their commitment behind amazing story telling around the simple message of the gift of giving.

There are 12 ways to turn the Love to Generate Power for your Brand

A brands connection between consumer is a power. And that power translated itself into 12 forces of a power that a Beloved Brand wields, (show below).

How to use the Love and Power to generate more Profits for your brand

Beloved = Power = Growth = Profit

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New Google Ad will make you cry, without understanding a word that is said

15 November 2013

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I remember this old P&G advertising guy who always said “you know you have a good spot if you can turn the sound off and still get the ad”. Try that one time and see if it works because it’s very hard.

The ad is beautifully shot, and feels more like a mini-movie than a TV ad. Well, it is 3 minutes and 32 seconds. They stay authentic to the culture, with great visuals, music and language. The story is simple–about two friends who have not seen other since their childhoods.

The ad shows how much we rely on Google for looking up, finding, tracking or just checking any little thing that makes our lives just a little bit easier. It captures our attention, getting millions of likes already as it’s being passed around social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. it involves the brand throughout without too much branding. The tears generated at the end makes you want to pass it on, so they can experience what you just did. Well done.

The irony of Google, is they have done some of the best Ads this century–most notably the Google Parisian spot, which they aired during the Super Bowl a few years ago. That spot was deeply engaging, showing how much we rely on Google in our lives. I love this spot.

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And if you want to know how to write a better creative brief, here’s a simple step by step process to help you. Click on this story to read more: How to write an Effective Creative Brief

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How to find amazing Consumer Insights to help your brand

12 November 2013

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Great Brand Leaders start with the consumer first, while OK Brand Leaders tend to start with their product. They can both go on a similar journey of strategy, tactics and execution, but what comes out at the end will be remarkably different. Look at Apple who starts with the consumer and connects emotionally compared to Samsung who starts with the technology and connects rationally.

I always like to ask Brand Leaders: “Do you represent your brand to your consumer or do you represent your consumer to the brand?” Yes, I get stunned looks of confusion when I ask that. But it’s an important question as to your mindset of how you do your job. My challenge to you is to start thinking like your consumer and be their representative to your brand. You’ll notice the work gets better, you’ll see clearer paths to growth and you’ll start to create a brand that the consumer loves rather than just likes. When this happens, sales go up and the P&L spits out higher profitability. Because the more loved the brand, the more powerful position it occupies and the more profit it can generate from that source of power.

Take a Walk In The Shoes of Your Consumer. With most of us, when we first fell in love with marketing, there were two key elements that got our juices going: strategic thinking and consumer behavior. Marketing brings these two elements together in a very challenging way. You should be thinking about your consumer every day, all day. Yes, you need to hit your sales and share goals. But your consumers are your only source of revenue and you have to know them intimately. Solving a consumer challenge feels like the biggest Rubik’s Cube we can find. The reason I mention this is if you want to connect with your team and motivate them, then start talking about the consumer and you’ll see their engagement go up. This is what they love. Be curious about your consumer, constantly watching changes in the marketplace.

Consumers are selfish, and rightfully so, because they have money. Consumers won’t part with their money until they get something in a fair trade. They might buy your product one time because of what you do. But they’ll buy it all the time if they get something from it. Put yourself in the consumers shoes for a minute and ask two questions: 1. “So what do i get?” helps uncover the rational benefit and what part of their life you will solve. 2. “So how does it make me feel” uncovers the emotional benefit and figures out how you’ll be part of their life. For rational benefits, you’ll become liked and can become part of their routines. But for emotional benefits, you’ll become loved and a ritual in their life. They’ll pay a premium price for it, defend you at all costs and love you for life.

Brands have really four choices: better, different, cheaper or not around for very long. Marketers tend to get so fixated on being better that they take some small feature and try to make a huge deal out of it. But they tend to leave out he option of DIFFERENT. Within a sea of brands yelling features at the consumer, one of the best things you could do to stand out as DIFFERENT, is to get on the side of your consumer. Next time you’re writing a brief and you come to the desired response, please don’t put: “I want to buy that product”. What you should be striving for is “That brand gets me” or “This brand is for me”.

The only way to really “get” and connect with the consumer is to uncover amazing consumer insights.

What is an insight?

Whenever I give a talk on insights I use the following stats and ask is this an insight: In North America, people brush their teeth an average of 1.6 times per day, yet in Brazil people brush their teeth up to 4-6 times a day. Almost without fail, someone in the audience will think it’s an insight. And we know this because we see it show up on briefs or in decks that sell in a product.

It’s a fact, not an insight. What are we missing? Well it’s just a data point and we don’t really understand much else. Maybe people in Brazil eat spicier foods, engage in closer conversation, have problems with lack of fluoride, or maybe the people of Brazil have an increased vanity and this is just one more example. We don’t really know, until we go below the surface of the facts and uncover meaningful insights.

My definition of Insight is Quite Different. Insight is not something that consumers never knew before. That would be knowledge or news, but not insight. It’s not data or fact about your brand that you want to tell. Real insight goes a layer or two deeper to help with the cause and effect. Oddly enough, Insight is something that everyone already knows. Here is my definition: Insight comes to life when it’s told in such a captivating way that makes consumers stop and say “hmm, I thought I was the only who felt like that”.

That’s why we laugh hysterically when we see insight projected with humor, why we get goose bumps when insight is projected with inspiration and why we cry when the insight comes alive through real-life drama. Insights help tell the story, paint the picture or inspire the creative juices. Insights need to be interesting or intriguing. My challenge is to think beyond specific category insights and think about Life Insights or even Societal Trends that could impact changing behaviour.

Jerry Seinfeld is the god of insights, whether it’s his TV show or his stand up routine. There is zero shock value to Seinfeld and he never tells us anything new. In fact, everything he says is exactly what our inner self is thinking. He just serves it up in a creative manner to make us laugh. I saw Seinfeld do a 90 minute stand up routine and I giggled the entire time because I could everything that he said already part of my life.

Mining for Insights

The dictionary definition of the word Insight is “seeing below the surface”. To get deeper, keep asking yourself “so what does that mean for the consumer” until you have an “AHA moment”. What are the beliefs, attitudes or behaviors that help explain how they think, feel or act in relationship to your brand or category.

Strategic Planners at Ad Agencies have a certain talent for uncovering insights. As margins are squeezed, too many agencies are reducing the role of planners. As a client, that’s a big mistake. I have always loved having a great planner on my brands.

What I normally do is bring together a collection of people who best know the brand, the business and of course the consumer. And we brainstorm to get a collection of insights. Insights can be mined from many sources.

Find insights by bringing intuition to important data points by asking: “so what does this mean” or “how do we think this happened?”.
Insights can come from up-close observations of the consumer, in qualitative focus groups or in observing the purchase behavior in action. Listen to what they say and how they say it. Capture insightful quotes that summarize a big idea, as inspiration.
Insights can come from mapping out a day in the life of the consumer to understand what’s going on in their brains. In healthcare, we found Sunday’s nights was the best time to consider a jolt to improving your healthcare, not Thursday.
Insights can come from looking at consumer problems in life, by creating talking about “who is the consumers enemy?” Picking the enemy gives your brand focus and another way of bringing insight into your brand positioning.
If you track Voice of the Customer (VOC), you can find some very interesting raw data from the consumer. You can potentially mine Facebook or Twitter comments from consumers.

Framing the Insights

It’s important to decide when and how you will use Insights. I normally will build 2-3 insights into a creative brief to give it some flavour. I’ll lead off a Brand Concept with an enemy style consumer insight. It’s a great way to connect with consumers and set up the potential problem they are facing.

When it comes to writing consumer insights, I force everyone to start off start off each statement with the word “I” that forces us to get in the shoes of consumers and then put the insight in quote signs that forces us to use their voice.

Here are Examples of how that can work for you:

For a Bank: “I am so busy driving my kids around, I can never get to the bank during banking hours. I wish there was a bank that worked around my life, rather than me working around the banks’ life”.
Quit Smoking: “I know I should quit. I’ve tried to quit so many times, it’s ridiculous., I’m not myself, I’m grouchy, irritable and I feel out of control. Quitting Smoking Sucks.”

Your Brand will be more engaged and powerful when you take the stance that everything starts and ends with the Consumer in Mind

To read about how to Create Beloved Brands, read this:

Here’s a story I wrote last year that ties in closely by challenging Brand Leaders, click on this link Everything Starts and Ends with the Consumer in Mind

Budweiser “Trainer”

Sick Kids Hospital

John Lewis “Christmas 2011”

Google Super Bowl 2010 “Parisian”

Thai Insurance “Deaf Dad”

Canadian Tire “Bike Ad”

Budweiser 9/11 Tribute (2002)

Bell “Dieppe”

Pfizer

Google India “Happy Birthday”

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Coke “America”

Doritos “Finger”

Heinz “Bottle”

Budweiser “Puppy”

Budweiser “Home Coming”

Here’s to next year’s game. May it bring better football and better ads.

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R.O.L. leads to more R.O.I.

Love = Connectivity = Power = Profit

5 Ways Brands can CONNECT with consumers

12 ways to turn the CONNECTION into generating POWER for your Brand

8 Ways to turn CONNECTION and POWER into more PROFITS for your brand

The Return on Love (R.O.L.) The new measure that turns connectivity into money

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Miley is very Strategic

Miley is a very smart strategic “grown up”

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A Team’s culture can suck the creativity right out of Everyone

Here’s the problem: Teams get so stuck Following the Usual

Push the team to Find your love in the art of being different

Push the team to Find Difference through Brainstorming

Let Brainstorming bring an energy and passion into your work.

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Managing the Buying Cycle

So What’s Co-Creation Mean for Brand Leaders

A challenge to your mindset: Do you represent your brand to the consumer or do you represent your consumer to the brand?

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Happy New Year!!!

#1: Take a Walk in Your Consumers Shoes. See the brand as they do.

#2: Ask Bigger Questions, Get Bigger Answers.

#3: Create More Love for your Brand and you’ll drive More Power and Profits for your Brand.

#4: Focusing makes your Brand Bigger. Lack of focus makes it Smaller.

#5: At every turn, ask yourself “DO I LOVE IT?” Reject all work that is “just ok” because OK is the enemy of Great.

#6: Find Your Point of Difference by Being Different.

#7: Care More about the Careers of Your People

#8: Create a Culture around your Brand—Brand should be everyone’s job, not just marketing.

#9 : Be a Better Client and Get Better Work

#10: Be a Better Brand Leader.

Here’s to a Great Year in 2014!

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So what is a Brand?

A Beloved Brand is an idea worth loving

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Here are 5 key questions to be asking:

Q1: Do your Brand Leaders think strategically?

Q2. Are your Brand Leaders going Deep Enough on Analysis?

Q3. Can your Brand Leaders write an effective Brand Plan?

Q4. Can your Brand Leaders judge communications?

Q5. Are your Brand Leaders good at staying focused?

Invest in Your People: Better Brand Leaders leads to better work and that leads to better Results

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