Brand Story

Lessons from The Rural Utah Business Conference

Earlier today I spoke to a small group of rural business owners who were participating in the Rural Utah Business Conference. In many cases, these business owners face an enormous challenge—building a business and communicating a great brand story in a small town (or no town at all). Often they have few local customers, few resources, and a very small support network.

While there, I had the opportunity to see a presentation by Kendall Card from Backcountry.com about how they have used blogs to build traffic to their main site. Kendall is at least partly responsible for the content posted to the various Backcountry.com blogs, including Backcountry and The Goat.

And while I tend to shy away from blogging about blogging, two things Kendall said caught my attention. Backcountry invites its customers to post on company blogs about their outdoor experiences. By opening up the posts (and not just the comments) to their most engaged customers, Backcountry builds a lot of content (including photos and video) and attracts lots of new page views from potential customers. And every post is a micro-brand story featuring gear available from Backcountry.com. It's tough to read this post about a trip to Madagascar without thinking, I could use a set of these and one of these the next time I go trekking off to Ranomafana (or the Uintas or Moab)—better stock up now. Even if readers don't buy immediately, they know exactly where they can get their gear when they need it. It's a great way to share a brand story.

Perhaps most importantly, Backcountry can attribute sales north of six figures  back to links from its blogs (sorry, I don't remember the exact number). That may not be a lot to some, but to many small businesses that's a difference maker.

Hmmm... sharing relevant brand stories and making money at the same time. No wonder Liberty Media was so interested in these guys.

14 Awards for Rozerem While Ogilvy Spins in His Grave

Leslie at AAA Aardvark Marketing Blog points to this announcement that AbelsonTaylor has won 14 awards for their work on Rozerem, including:

"a silver World Wide Web (WWW) Health Award for the Rozerem Web site, and two DTC National Advertising bronze awards for most innovative campaign and best new brand of the year. The agency also won a Pharmaceutical Executive Ad Stars Award for a Rozerem TV ad co-created with Cramer-Krasselt and special recognition for co-developing one of the most "intriguing icons" of 2007—the Rozerem beaver featured in the ad."

AbelsonTaylor's website includes this gem:

"At the 16th annual Med Ad News Manny awards, AbelsonTaylor, won the 2005 award for most creative pharmaceutical ad agency. This marks the 10th year in a row that AbelsonTaylor has been given this accolade, a remarkable achievement sure to solidify our reputation as the most creative agency in the business."

I guess congratulations are in order. At least they're in order if you're content being creative, but not effective, which is all most agencies seem to be shooting for these days. You see, according to Brandweek,

"[Rozerem] is a distant sixth in its category, with a 2.4% share behind two unadvertised generics and the category's titans: Ambien (36.8% for Ambien, 17.5% for Ambien CR) and Lunestra (12.3%), per IMS Health. Worse, Takeda [Rozerem's maker] may have spent more on ads than the drug made back in sales: between January and September 2006, Rozerem earned $48.7 million in estimated wholesale revenue, according to IMS Health (that number does not include prescriptions handled by mail). But the company has spent nearly $100 million on ads, per Nielson Monitor-Plus."

Yes, you read that right, in the first nine months of the product introduction, Rozerem trails two UNADVERTISED generics in sales and has spent $2 in advertising for every $1 they made in sales.

But they've got 14 awards. Let's see, that's just about $7.14 million per award. Nice work.

I've written about Rozerem's problems before, specifically that the advertising ignores the killer brand story: this drug isn't habit forming. But try to get that from the ads. The competitors don't offer this unique benefit, but the ads focus on dreams/sleep which is exactly what all the other drugs in the category offer. The creative is different, but the benefit is exactly the same. So what's the reason to buy?

The whole thing reminds me of this post from David Taylor at Where's the Sausage about David Ogilvy who introduced an award for the ad that did the most to increase sales for the client. It came with a $10,000 prize and this inscription: “If you, my fellow copywriters or art directors, want to win the award, devote your genius to making the cash register ring.”

None of this is to say that creative advertising doesn't work. Clearly it does. But it works best when the people making it don't forget that their first (and possibly only) job is to move product.

And as an agency, isn't that the the very best brand story you could share with your clients?

What You Want Is Coupons, Am I Right?

If advertising were human, would you have a relationship with it (or, um, him)?

Self absorbed, non-communicative...

"You can't tell me you missed the billboard in Time Square. That's like a 200-foot declaration of love."

There's a website too.

Hat tip: John Winsor.

Disruption and Blue Nile

A short follow-up to my last post on Blue Nile...

Another reason I love Blue Nile is their disruptive business model.

When CEO Mark Vadon was looking for an engagement ring, he went to Tiffany's to find what he was looking for. In the store he was largely ignored by the presumably snooty staff who must have thought that the Birkenstock and t-shirt clad guy wasn't a likely buyer. Miffed, Vadon left the store without spending a dime.

More importantly, he had just identified a part of the market that diamond retailers were ignoring—regular guys who don't understand diamonds, but need rings. They have money to spend, but need to be walked through the process, instead of being sneered at. Predictably the people with a vested interest in the status quo have fought Vadon from the beginning, refusing to do business with his suppliers and encouraging his competition to sell at a loss to hurt Blue Nile's profitability. You can read the whole story here. It's a classic tale of disruption.

Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen defines disruptive innovations:

"A disruptive innovation is a new product or service or a new business model that doesn't attack the core market by bringing a better product to established users in direct competition with the leaders in an industry, but rather it comes into the low end of the market, either through a business model that can compete at much lower costs, can compete profitably at lower costs, or it brings to the market a product or service that is so much more convenient and simple to use and affordable, that a whole new population of people who previously couldn't afford or didn't have the skill to own and use a product can now own one."

Blue Nile clearly fits the definition. Business 2.0 listed a bunch of future disruptors here (sadly they left out this one, but then they can't write about us all the time). I love this quote from Erick Schonfeld, the author of the Business 2.0 article:

"The most disruptive businesses, though, don't replace existing products. They compete against non-consumption by opening up new markets that were never before possible. Think of the airplane, the cell phone, or the Internet. Sure, some industries might get trampled by these new technologies—but only if those industries are not giving consumers what they really want. If you think about it, disruption is just another name for the age-old economic concept of creative destruction."

If you've got the bug to learn more, Christensen's books on disruption, The Innovator's Dilemma, The Innovator's Solution, and Seeing What's Next are great resources on the power of disruption. This short article is a pretty good preview of the thinking outlined in the books. Still more good stuff can be found here.

The Blue Nile Philosophy—Just Be 10% Better

I have been a fan of Blue Nile ever since I received a booklet from them six or seven years ago. The booklet, really a direct mail piece, explained how to do different “guy” things like carve a turkey, mix a gimlet, and get a good table at a restaurant. It was well written and well illustrated. Sprinkled in with these other tid bits was advice about how to buy a diamond ring. It was brilliant. Probably the most engaging mailer I’ve ever received. One of my coworkers at the time must have agreed because it disappeared from my office a few weeks later.

Shifting gears (sort of)…

A recent (very short) article in Fortune magazine profiled Mark Vadon, the founder and CEO of Blue Nile and asked him about his management style. Mark notes:

“I’m obsessed with Starbucks. I was talking to one of its executives and asked him why they have grown so much when other people have tried and haven’t. And he said, ‘Well, there are 1000 little things that impact the customer where we’re 10% better than anybody else.’ I think that’s exactly what we’re trying to do: stay focused on all the tiny little details that matter to our customers.”

Is Blue Nile 100% better than Tiffany's or Zales? Probably not. But by being a little more accessible, providing more information than their competitors (they do a great job educating customers on their site), and offering service that's a little better, they have created a very successful company and brand. By focusing on getting the small things right, the company grows.

Side Note: Blue Nile has a very common brand story—Mark was frustrated by his experience buying a diamond at a retail store and thought, "there has got to be a better way." Today there is.   

Unfortunately you can't find the Blue Nile story on their site (missed opportunity), but you can read more about the Blue Nile brand story here.

Sharing A Brand Story—How Stacy's Pita Chips Did It

Over the past few years, Word of Mouth or buzz marketing has had it's share of promoters and detractors. The rise of WOM marketing has prompted the creation of buzz agencies, a professional trade organization, conferences, books (here, here, and here too), and much more.

So if you're looking for advice on how to get people talking about your brand story, there are plenty of resources.

Or you can do what Stacy's Pita Chips (part of Frito Lay) did, and just send a product sample to everyone in the United States. At least, that's what they wanted to do. But mailing chips to nearly 300 million people, well that's a little much for even this spunky little division of the snack company to bite off.

So instead, they mailed a sample pack to everyone in the country named Stacy. 133,000 people, most of whom hadn't heard of the product before. The package included the Stacy brand story and on the back of the enclosed card, said:

"We hope you enjoyed getting your free box of Stacy's Pita Chips as much as we enjoyed sending them to you. If you did, why not share the joy by sending a FREE gift box to a friend? Since we've already sent them to every Stacy, you're free to send them to Bill or Mary or Cheryl or John—or whoever you think would enjoy Stacy's chips the most."

So has it worked? It looks like it. Here are a few Stacys who are now spreading the word: here, here, here, here, and here. Think how many people have mentioned this to friends and coworkers. And how many Stacys have tried, liked, and now regularly buy Stacy's chips.

That's not all that Stacy's does to promote great customer experiences/brand stories that are easy for customers to share with others. Check out what Art Steiber at The Diff has to say about Stacy's when he wrote to complain about a half-empty bag of chips. Not content to leave him with a negative impression, they went well beyond and sent him a case of pita chips.

This is a brand I like, and I've yet to taste the chips.