Brand Story

Does WalMart Need a Better Image?

Or maybe the question should be, should a leopard change its spots?

According to a couple of news stories earlier this week (here and here), WalMart's former advertising agency GSD&M prepared a report that argues for a more upscale image for the decidedly downscale retailer. And WalMart is playing down the importance of the report.

You can read the 55 page report here.

According to the news stories, the report argues for repositioning the brand along the lines of smart shopping and better living (and thus, away from "low prices—always"). Why? Because while WalMart is the smart place to shop for brand-name consumables like toothpaste, it is not seen as a smart choice for purchases like electronics, apparel, and home decor (they call these priority departments). "Its reputation for discounts... 'works against [them]' as it tries to move upscale." 

But can WalMart grow into these new areas without impacting it's existing story? Is changing WalMart's positioning and brand story to accommodate the new priorities worth the risk?

In fact, the news reports are badly misreading the report. The economic, psychographic, and competitive information in the report indicates that WalMart should stick to it's low-price story. One survey quoted in the report notes that saving money is the #1 driver of shopping and that 87% of female shoppers agree that getting the best price is the most important thing to them when shopping. What percentage of WalMart's 138 million weekly customers are begging for better service in Home Apparel or higher end brands in the electronics department? My guess, it's very low. Instead of changing its position, the recommendations are for helping consumers understand how the low price story also means a better quality of life.

So the report argues for helping customers understand that smart shopping can also mean saving time, energy, or stress. It can mean spending dollars at a company that gives back to the community. These are areas that WalMart can improve.

So why the bad reading of the report? Perhaps it has something to do with the source: WakeUpWalMart.com, a union-backed group that is critical of WalMart (and clearly has an agenda for releasing the report). Maybe the reporters should have spent a little more time reading what the report actually says. In reality, it's a fascinating look into the day-to-day challenges of appealing to WalMart's customers.

Don't get me wrong. WalMart has some massive challenges. But being the low-price leader barely makes the list. In fact, one could argue that low prices are the only reason WalMart is what it is today.

John has a discussion going on about this at Brand Autopsy.

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.

Thinking About Brand Voice

I've been thinking a lot about brand voice lately. How companies talk to their customers. What brands sound like. How they read.

I'm not just talking about how a brand sounds to the ear, though that is important for products that communicate with broadcast media: think Tom Bodette and Motel6 or Hal Riney (who voiced Reagan's famous Bear Ad) and Bartles & James.

There are lots of examples of companies that consistently use identity design to reinforce their brands, but far fewer brands seem to give as much thought to the voice of their communications. Mini does it exceptionally well, across all mediums. The Economist and Apple too. Harley Davidson does a pretty good job (there are exceptions). Saturn used to have unique voice—before it was assimilated.

But what's the brand voice of Marriott? Cascade? Pepsi? Dell? Citi? Buick? Is there anything unique about the way Kroger, Budget, Hershey's, or Delta speak to their customers? None of these are bad, but none of them speak in a special way to their customers.

Try googling "Brand Standards." There are dozens of examples of identity guidelines showing how to use official logos, fonts, and colors. But very little attention is paid to brand voice—the words, phrases, and characteristics that set a brand apart take a back seat to the more "important" visual aspects of the brand.

Why is this? I have a theory. As we grow up and attend school, most of us "learn" that we are not good artists—that is, we can't draw much beyond doodles. Bureaucrats think of art classes as luxuries, and cut funding because they are not as important as the standard reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Writing on the other hand is more universal. Very few people learn they can't write in the same way they learn they can't draw. Regardless of whether you are good at it, writing is required for most classes from math to English, debate to biology. So most of us grow up thinking we write relatively well (even though we probably don't). Certainly well enough to communicate.

So we don't trust ourselves with the design of marketing and other important business materials. We hire professionals for that. And we create brand standards to help us when the designer isn't there. But we do trust ourselves to write effectively enough to get our point across, even though we don't have the training to create a brand voice. So we create copy. Lots of it. Most of it bad.

Even many copywriters don't think about copy the way designers think about design—tweaking a few words here, cutting a phrase there, rewriting a paragraph over and over until it sounds just right. And that's too bad, because when done right, the brand voice is the most difficult part of branding to copy. You can't fake it.

Have you seen a brand standard recently that includes direction on the brand voice? How well is it followed? Does your business use a unique voice to tell your brand story? Let me know in the comments.

Read a little more about brand voice here.
More thoughts (video) about the failure of our schools to teach creativity by Sir Ken Robinson, here. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to watch this very funny, very insightful video.

Brands that Leave A Bad Taste in Your Mouth

I've written about Buckley's Cough Syrup before. For the past 15 years, it's a brand that has built itself on its horrible taste. The idea is, if it tastes this bad, it has to work. And it's a great story.

BrandChannel just published an article about Buckley's (and Listerine mouthwash) that is worth passing on. Check it out here.

The strategy is dead on. Not only does it take a negative product trait and give it a positive spin, but it targets a specific audience: people who want to get better at any cost. You either love Buckley's or you hate it. There's not a lot of middle ground. And that's a good place for a brand to live.

From the article: "It's a medical product, and medicine isn't supposed to taste like an orange drink. It's supposed to taste bad to kill the nasty virus in the back of your throat."

Read the whole thing.

Rozerem—A Case Study in What Not to Do with Your BrandStory?

Years ago, Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a little book called Positioning, about choosing one brand attribute and "owning" it. Great idea. Lots of successful brands have used the practice to build brand equity—Kodak and memories. Nordstrom and service. Volvo and safety. Rozerem and beavers playing jump rope with Abraham Lincoln in some guy's kitchen.

Okay, this last one isn't exactly a shining example of great positioning.

A few months ago I noticed a very weird ad featuring Abraham Lincoln and a beaver sitting at a kitchen table with a chess board. In the background is an obviously tired guy sitting on his bed. The headline: "your dreams miss you" in small type. In even smaller type, the payoff: "when you can't sleep, you can't dream." Other ads show them jumping rope and sitting on a teeter-totter.

The copy introduces a new kind of sleep aid. Apparently it's the first ever proven in clinical studies to have no potential for abuse or dependence. (Talk about burying the lede.) And that's it. No explanation of Lincoln, the beaver, or the chess set.  I don't get it.

Now before anyone comments that the ad obviously worked, because I remembered it, you should know that I read ads for a living. Heck, I read my junk mail. I saw the ad, but didn't bother to read the copy for weeks until after I saw the television version. It took the extra dialog between the man, Abe and the beaver to let me in on the gimmick. Apparently this is all a dream. There's a bus board too. And a podcast. How did I miss those?

There are so many things wrong with these ads, it's hard to know where to begin. Does anyone you know dream about Lincoln, rodents, or chess? What's the deal with the astronaut? Is this a common dream I've been missing out on? Choosing a metaphor that nobody understands is a bad idea. Frankly, if this is how my dreams will go with Rozerem, I'll take insomnia.

Thanks to DVR, I rarely take the time to watch ads any more. It was a fluke I saw this one. Does Takeda Pharmaceuticals really want to bet the ad budget that I'll see both the print and television ads to get what's going on? Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. How many people have skipped over the ad (or the bus board), thinking WTF?

And what about the killer point of difference? Unlike Ambien and Lunestra, Rozerem isn't habit forming. And it works. That's your brand story. But you have to look pretty hard to find this benefit. In fact, it's hard to find any benefits at all. Instead we've got honest Abe and a beaver. Not only do I not get a reason to buy, I don't even get a reason to investigate.

I'm the first to admit, you can tell a very compelling brand story with advertising. But if you choose to do this with your brand, don't make your advertising the story. There's a difference. Your story is bigger than the ad. It has to last longer than the latest campaign.

What will people remember after Honest Abe and the beaver are retired? My guess is, not much. And that should cause a few people in Rozerem's marketing department to lose a lot of sleep.

Others disagree. But even they didn't get the spot when they first saw it. More here, here, and here.

WOM and Brand Stories

John Moore over at Brand Autopsy has joined an interesting conversation about Jack Trout's recent article in Forbes which discusses the value of Word of Mouth as a marketing tool. Jack takes a decidedly old-school approach and gets taken to task for it by John, George Silverman, Olivier Blanchard, and others. I won't deconstruct the article, others have done that already. But I do think that Jack's column represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the way brand stories are created and shared.

Jack is a big believer in Macro-stories. These are the stories brand managers tell about their brands. They use company controlled marketing tactics like advertising, corporate websites, catalogs, direct mail, and so on to tell the story. Macro-stories are vital to communicating brand positioning and brand values to a huge number of potential and current customers. These are the stories a company can (to some extent) control. They are generally expensive to produce and distribute. And they are often ignored or distrusted by jaded consumers.

Where Jack misses the boat is Micro-stories. These are the stories consumers tell about the brands they love and hate. These are stories that are influenced by Macro-stories, but also include other elements like experience and satisfaction. They are created on an individual basis, one by one. These are stories that companies can only influence, not control.

Take the restaurant chain, Olive Garden, for example. Their brand story (reflected in their television advertising) is one about (large, loving) families gathering for great food, great conversation, and the kind of hospitality you would have received from your Italian grandmother. The company controls the advertising, from where it is placed, to how it is filmed, from the food that is shared, to the attractive people shown eating it. This is the Macro-story.

The Micro-story may or may not reflect this experience played out on TV. If a customer has to wait to be seated, is served cold food, receives poor service, or has mistakes made on his bill, her Micro-story isn't likely to share many characteristics of the Macro-story. On the other hand, if this customer's experience is similar (within reason) to the brand story told on the advertisements, her Micro-story will reflect the brand values the company wants to communicate. When she shares her experience, she won't be talking about the handsome Italian family from the television ads, she'll talk about her experience at the restaurant.

In other words, once a brand is experienced, the experience, not the advertising or positioning, is the biggest part of the brand story for that consumer. If the experience is compelling, she will share her Micro-story with others at work, at church, at the club, on her blog, and so on. It used to be enough to share the Macro-story and hope for the best, but times have changed.

The biggest difference, of course, is that consumers have so many more ways to share their Micro-stories now that they did just a few years ago. And, thanks to brand experiences disconnected from Macro-stories, more and more consumers no longer believe the brand stories companies "sell" them with traditional advertising. Jack (and hundreds others like him) may always favor the tactics they can control. But their clients will suffer as the power of Micro-stories grows.

That's why word of mouth matters.

Making Commodities Out of Brands

Beau Fraser of The Gate was kind enough to point me to a couple of thought pieces on his website. One in particular, Watch Out, Here Comes Brand Commoditization argues that brands are starting to look and sound a lot like each other. Why?

"Legions of account planners have dug into user psychology and have found big emotional issues to attach to their brands. Unfortunately, they've all found, at the bottom of those deep wells, the same big issues. Room, at first, for a few brands to claim their own emotional space. But the demands for growth, and the hunger to feed the bottom line rather than invest, have not abated. And so marketers have again found the same easy recourse: copy each other. Now instead of blending features, we have products that blend emotions... It's no wonder that ad recall scores are off, direct response rates are declining and web banner click-through rates are dropping like stones. If we all use the same big cartoon emotions we can't help but all feel the same. Why should consumers pay attention if there is no difference? So here we are, an industry whose best tool is now its undoing. We have product commoditization and brand commoditization."

Interesting idea. How many brands can you think of that stand for the same things? Too many—beer, restaurants, airlines, I could go on. How many brands own a truly unique brand story? Some. But not most.

I don't know if Beau and the others at The Gate have the answers. But they are asking a few of the right questions. Read the thought pieces for yourself here, click on USA, then Gateism 7.

SuperBowl Ads: The BrandStory Round-Up

Maybe it's time to stop thinking about the SuperBowl as a showcase for great advertising. This year's line-up was notable for being rather lame. Though the ads were better than the channel-change inducing halftime show. (Note to AdRants, Bob Garfield was right.)

This year featured the usual line-up of B-List celebrities, silly jokes, over-the-top performances, mildly offensive spots, and a few ideas that were better left out of the show all together (the Emerald Nuts ad was just plain stupid). Having said that, there were a few ads that worked, though they probably won't be remembered long after next week.

The DisneyWorld spots (featured before and after the game) were right on strategy. Showing football players practicing how they would say "I'm going to DisneyWorld" after winning the game. Mildly amusing, they effectively tied Disney's brand story of dreams and magic to the "reward" of winning the big game.

The best spot of the night was Budweiser's Clydesdale ad featuring the young Clydesdale trying out the harness and wagon. It was emotionally appealing and continued a long-running storyline.

Also decent was the Mobile ESPN spot, showing a sports fan surrounded by sports while he watches ESPN on his mobile phone (though this was reminiscent of XM radio's launch ads). The spot showed a clear product benefit in an amusing way.

Honorable mention to CareerBuilder for demonstrating a need that their product solves. I have a few former co-workers who are rushing to post their resumes even as we speak. A second honorable mention to American Home Health for their ad showing there's a safer way to kill bacteria and avoid getting sick than wearing a haz-mat suit. Not great, but at least it's about the product.

Overall, the creatives who came up with the rest of the SuperBowl ads proved the point made by Rosser Reeves when he defined the problem with modern advertising:

"1.) Advertising (not the product) must compete with a tremendous number of other advertising messages.
2.) Therefore, the advertisement (not the product) must get attention.
3.) Therefore, a given advertisement (not the product) must be different.

Such reasoning bypasses the product and, when it does, it bypasses the advertising function. It is a classical example of confusing the means with the ends, for if a product is worth paying money for, it is worth paying attention to."

SuperBowl Ads are generally produced as entertainment, so I have my doubts about whether or not they actually sell the products they feature. One thing can be said for them: they sure beat watching a bunch of 60-year-olds skip around on stage during the half-time show.

You can read other SuperBowl Ad round ups here and here.

Learning—Part of Work

I thought I was done posting for the night... then I stumbled across this article (may require registration) about Pixar University and how the company is using ongoing learning to foster a unique environment in Hollywood. Not only that, but it results in a better product. From the article:

"The skills we develop are skills we need everywhere in the organization," Mr. Nelson said. "Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."