The david ID blog

We keep reading that Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is seeking new ways to get his minions back to the basics that made them great entrepreneurs once upon a time–before Starbucks got so big and mainstream, that it became ‘the man.’ It’s not news that Starbucks has had its share of business and brand setbacks in the past few years. And it can no longer be entirely blamed on the bad economy that’s forced the closings of a few stores. Starbucks should have been realizing that a brand essentially built by performance and thus Word of Mouth, not big advertising, would be dismantled by Word of Mouth if they ever started doing things like making Lattes by machine (ohmygawd, like Dunkin Donuts). Which they started doing. Still for $4 bucks a pop.

So now three years after we made a speech at Starbucks world headquarters based on our book Why Johnny Can’t Brand–essentially to tell them “now that you’ve built one of the modern era’s legendary brands, the hard part is staying there. Look to the truly great brands that have lasted for 70 or 80 years– you need to at least understand what they did to stay on top for so long.”

What we wanted to tell them is what Howard Schultz is telling them: You need to get your hungry entrepreneur’s spirit back. You’ve got to think and act like a challenger again– wanting to change the game, make a big difference with the fewest resources, damn the torpedoes. Change the world, change the game.

At David ID we’ve always defined our mission as finding Dominant Identity for Challenger Brands. We’ve always reminded our clients, even the ones that are global corporations–that the greatest, longest lasting brands never stop seeing themselves as challengers do.

We’re glad Mr. Schultz is finally listening.

The cynical old ad agency joke goes– “what’s the difference between sales and marketing people? Marketing people know they’re lying.”

There’s always been a disconnect at best and a battle at worst between sales and marketing in business organizations. And the inevitable result has been silos, frustratration, distrust and at the end of it all–serious loss of effectiveness. Marketers’ brilliant minds create positioning, strategy and value propositions which somehow fail to be transmitted to sales people in the field. Sales people go around spraying and praying, missing Marketing’s vital message.

We’re finding that the simple exercise of crafting your messages into Micro-Scripts using the creativity  to concentrate your entire selling message into a sentence or less that any person can easily repeat–not only forces you to stay focused on a crystal clear strategy, it becomes a magic bridge that keeps marketing and sales connected like never before.

You’ll find it’s automatic, once you start aiming beyond the strategy statement to the Micro-Script that’s going to make it go viral in your marketplace because now anyone can talk about it. When you understand that in any strategy exercise, your real end game is an actual vivid set of words that can verbalize it into a Word of Mouth exchange across the backyard fence; when you realize that if you can’t make it that simple and compelling, then your strategy’s not simple and compelling enough yet–you’ll be developing marketing that infuses the sales force along with your customer base. And just as important, the sales force will be coming back to you with more astute insights for your marketing.

Micro-Scripts are turning out to be a focuser of everything they touch in the communications process. They force your message to get on track and stay there like few other tools we’ve ever found.

Loyalty to brands has been badly eroded by the recession. And some fear that there is no going back.

In category after category, customers have been forced to abandon habitual buying patterns to seek new alternatives. When they did, they discovered that the alternatives were much better than they thought. According to a recent Mckinsey study, 46% of customers who tried a cheaper product said they performed better than expected with a large majority of them saying it was “much better than expected” (see How the recession has changed US consumer behavior).  Empowered by social media tools,  this army of satisfied customers is spreading the word that these cheaper choices are just as good as the better known brands, further accelerating the shift in customer loyalty .

And this decline in brand loyalty is not a new phenomenon. Forrester has been tracking this decline for the past five years. The recession has only acclerated a long-term trend. The vast number of choices available to customers, the ability to learn more about these “untried” brands, thanks to the internet, and a growing rejection of  big global brands that are trying to be all things to all people are coming together to weaken the hold brands have had on customers.

How should brand marketers respond? First, go back to the fundamentals- make sure your brand stands for something clear, important and differentiating. Second, invest to make sure you can deliver your Dominant Selling Idea, better than anyone else. This is how you will create the next wave of loyalty. This is what P&G is doing (see How Proctor and Gamble Plans to Clean Up) and while their brands may take their share of lumps in the recession- they will do just fine in the long run. And third, make sure your Dominant Selling Idea is being translated into meaningful customer experiences, that reinforce the purchase decision.

Customer loyalty is not gone forever. Brands just have to be more focused and deliver better.

I have to admit up front that I’m a big fan of What Matters Most, Seth Godin’s new eBook,

But perhaps not for the reasons one might think.

The eBook is a large compilation of blog postings from all kinds of different people that Seth believes offer fresh, new ideas worth spreading.  Though not all of them, he freely admits, will appeal to everyone. 

What struck me most about this compilation of blog postings had less to do with new ideas (there aren’t that many), and more to do with seeing the reemergence of ageless humanist ideas in fresh new ways.   As Rodin said, “I don’t invent, I rediscover.”

Courage, persistence, honesty.  Who can argue with any of these admirable human qualities?  How about generosity, avoidance of fear, dignity.  Not bad either.  Or maybe it’s time to stop and smell the roses, stay connected, or stay focused on a vision you believe in.    

 All sound familiar?  They’re all in the book.

But here’s the intriguing part.  These human qualities have been absent or scarce from too many of our personal, business and marketing lives for some time. 

 This eBook is a helpful and inspiring reminder that we ought to try and get back on track—that being a better person or businessperson really requires the exact same values and ethics and compassion and truth that we’ve always admired in others.  So what the eBook does, in essence, is reignite a path to a future that’s built on all the things we sort of know we should do each and everyday–but all too often fall short, by reason of nothing more than innate human weakness.  

If we all applied the thinking in this eBook, built it into our personal philosophies and behaviors, oh my, what a better world…

And who can argue with that?

I picked up Chris Anderson’s new book, “Free,” from the library this weekend. 

 The book is mainly about how things “made of ideas” are getting cheaper and cheaper to produce and distribute on-line, and that as Steward Brand famously declares:  “information wants to be free.”

 Because on-line storage, processing and bandwidth have become so inexpensive, companies can now pursue new business models that offer stuff for free.  They can simply make up the lost revenues elsewhere like Amazon does when it offers free shipping if your purchase is over $25 (they know you’re more likely to buy more).  Or when Google gives away its search and email and makes money on its advertising. 

 Anderson believes this is the new order of business—that the downward pressure on digital-related prices will affect most, if not all, on-line businesses.    He likens it to the law of gravity.  You can fight it for a while but eventually you must succumb.

 Like his book, “The Long Tail,” “Free” presents an interesting and provocative premise which forces us to rethink the nature of business on-line in ways no one could have imagined even 10 years ago.  It is especially relevant to struggling media companies, like newspapers, network TV, commercial radio, magazines, publishers and the like, all of whom need to, and, of course, are,  rethinking  their business models.  The idea of giving their intellectual capital away is a hard pill to swallow, but there are many valuable suggestions in the book on how to make it up elsewhere.  

After all, Free doesn’t mean not making money.  Free means making money by giving stuff away.   Of course, promotion companies have practiced this for ages.   But, it’s now, according to Andersen, worthy of a  higher level of business consideration and capable of creating much greater sustained commercial value.   It’s no longer tactical, but strategic.  

In essence, if you build a popular brand, you can extract value…somewhere.  You just have to be a bit more imaginative.  

For interesting and opposing points of view on “Free,” check out Malcolm Gladwell and Seth Godin’s  excellent reviews.  

As a person, it makes sense for Tiger Woods to take time off from golf to mend whatever fences he can with his family.   And we wish him well. 

As a brand icon, though, we would encourage him to get back to the sport as soon as possible. 

 There are two sides to Tiger Woods, “the brand.”  Side A is the golfer—the prodigy, number one in the sport for almost a decade, Mozart with a club and ball, anointed heir to the title “greatest golfer of all time.”  Without this, there is no brand.

 Side B is his clean, wholesome image.  Not only is Tiger an extraordinary golfer, he is (was) a hell of a good guy.  The kind of guy you’d introduce to your sister.  Everybody liked and trusted Tiger.

 The perfect combination:  great golfer, great guy. 

 Unfortunately, it’s unlikely Tiger will ever fully recover Side B of his brand image.  That largely disappeared with the bevy of bimbos he chose to consort with.   Gone forever.   The best he can do now to stem the bleeding and close the open wound is to make a public apology to his wife, family, PGA, sponsors and friends, and to promise to make amends for his transgressions.   Americans’ value vulnerability and appreciate genuine apologists.   

 But few fans will forget.  Not for a long time.

 And that poses a problem for sponsors, who generally don’t like to be associated with adulterers.   Watch as they slowly, one by one, discontinue or “postpone” their associations with Tiger.   

 The best thing Tiger can do for Tiger the brand is to get back into the game.  To reconnect with what made him a great brand to start with.   If he plays well, new sponsors will surely emerge–sponsors who will see value and appeal in the rehabilitated Tiger. 

  In the meantime, he should keep publicly atoning and try not to travel alone.   

More and more, the things we used to pay good money for are being given away for free—paid for by advertising.  Movies, books, newspapers, music, you name it. 

 Even Ryan Air, it was recently reported, is giving away free airfare.  That’s right.  No Cost tickets.   All you have to do is accept being bombarded with ads on your food trays, coffee cups, throw-up bags, in-flight entertainment, all the while sampling free products throughout the flight.

 We can imagine the pilot announcing: “And now it’s time for flight 55’s Tostito Corn Chip Emergency Landing Report. Tostito–taste that can’t be beato! Okay everybody: BRACE FOR IMPACTTTTT!

 Getting into the spirit of things, we at David ID are now considering offering free branding services.  In return, we’ll simply ask our clients to opt into various commercial messages from our sponsors though out the course of our engagement.  For example:

 1.  Our PowerPoint presentations will have 30 second commercial breaks from our sponsors. We won’t have too many in the beginning slides though, so clients have time to get hooked.

 2. We’ll start wearing suits so our sponsors’ logos can be sewn onto the lapels.

 3.  All of our emails will have product placements seamlessly integrated into the contents of the note.  “Hi Tom. You made a great point about fees in the proposal. But first, let me tell you a little about Kraft Macaroni and Cheese…

4.  You must agree to opt into receiving all of our sponsors’ promotional emails.  No more than ten per day. 

 5.  You must follow all our sponsors on Twitter and every 6 minutes, agree to “Tell them what you are doing?” 

 We’re looking for a charter client.  Anyone interested?

By applying numerology, Sanjay B. Jamaani is helping individuals, companies and movies change their names to help them become more successful. 

 Mr. Jamaani, Vikas Bajaj writes in the New York Times on 12/5/09, has found a contemporary application of the ancient, mystical and esoteric field of numerology, which examines the relationship between numbers and physical objects or living things.    

 He applies numerology to generating names—names that will provide greater competitive advantage and pave the way to enhanced levels of success. 

 For example, “actors have added or dropped letters from their names—the actor Ajay Devgan recently became Ajay Devgn.  Filmakers have deliberately misspelled the titles of their movies—‘Singh is Kinng’ was a recent hit. 

 Much of this is reminiscent of the “positive thinking” movement here in the US many years ago, most famously promoted by Norman Vincent Peale in his famous book  The Power of Positive Thinking, the essence of which is  how to affect positive change in your life.

 Like the promise of “positive thinking,” numerology, too, has its critics and is hard to substantiate.  

 Naming is science and art.  We always advise our clients that, among other things, they should love the name of their company, product or service.  They should feel it in their heart as well as their head.  If numerology, in part, can help achieve this, then more power to it.  

Earlier this year we presented a webinar on value propositions and  in many of the questions and  commentary that followed,  the brand  positioning and the value proposition were treated as though they were interchangable or were completly unrelated elements. So, I thought it might be valuable to discuss this further.

Brand positioning and value propositions share many similar characteristics, like differentiation, simplicity, relevance and importance.  They are part of a continuum but serve different purposes. The positioning is the core from which everything else emanates. When done right, it helps guide a host of activites from marketing communication to new product development for a long time.  It is the single-minded idea that a brand must continually strive to achieve and perfect. Value propositions are much more focused on the immediate transaction opportunity- they clearly state the value a customer can expect to get today, they can be changed as circumstances evolve, they can be created for  specific segments of the market, and they often include specific financial benefits, such as savings, ROI, faster results, etc. 

The brand positioning should inspire and guide the value propositions. Ideally, the value proposition would make the positioning more specific and tangable for a clearly defined group of customers. In our engagements we take participants through a series of exercises designed to connect the brand positioning to well defined market opportunities through clear, well supported  statements of value.

On the phone with a client recently, we were discussing his desire to introduce more environmentally friendly fibers into his company’s line of clothing. 

 He was planning to introduce bamboo.   He claimed it was “eco-friendly,” “biodegradable,” and “silky smooth,” feeling like a luxury fabric.   He’d considered other alternatives, like soybeans, corn sugars, seaweed and recycled plastic, but decided on bamboo for a number of good business reasons. 

From a marketing standpoint, he especially like the sound of bamboo, it being a natural plant, and maybe even a little exotic.

 The next day I came across an article in the Wall Street Journal that raises questions about the “eco-friendly” and “sustainable” qualities of bamboo. 

 Turns out, according to the FTC, the manufacturing process to convert bamboo into a textile fiber involves toxic solvents that are released into the atmosphere, and that there is nothing “natural,” bio-degradable,” or “anti-microbial” about it. 

 Furthermore, bamboo, as a fabric, has a tendency to be “unstable,” stretching out of shape, shrinking, and losing color. 

 From a branding standpoint, bamboo isn’t looking to be such a good ingredient story, at least until the issues with it can be fixed.