Success through Alienation

It sounds risky, yet the number of successful brands that practice at least elements of hostile marketing is astonishing.

• Consider Harley Davidson and its not for everyone noisome bikes and in-your-face attitudes.
• Red Bull is unapologetic about its bad boy ingredients and underground marketing emphasizing extreme sports.

According to Moon, these brands, as well as MINI-Cooper, Marmite, Hollister, Benetton, and many others resemble the Seinfeld “Soup Nazi” in that you are invited to go someplace else if you don’t like the way you’re treated. Today more brands are activating a hostile brand strategy.

• Lululemon is quirky and not afraid to show it. The firm deliberately plans for popular items to run short to ensure customers will buy at full prices. It also encourages store personel to eavesdrop on customers.
• Domino’s Pizza announced via an ad campaign it will say “No!” to customers who want to add or remove toppings from items in it artisan pizza line.

These brands are unashamed of their product shortcomings, often evasive with their distribution and likely to shun welcoming promotions in favor of “messages that are likely to repulse as much as they attract.” In the words of Moon:

“No matter the stratagem, hostile brands erect barriers to consumption, barriers that could in many ways be considered tests of our affiliation.”

Why Anti-Marketing Works

There are at least three different theories for why hostile marketing works.

1. Hostile brands offer a “cult-like” appeal.

According to Douglas Atkin, author of one of my favorite books, The Culting of Brands: When Customers Become True Believers, brands with devoted customer followings that advocate for the brand and self-identify with its values, exhibit many of the dynamics of a cult. Members of a cult derive satisfaction from knowing they are different, that not everyone can or wants to belong. Brands that are not for everyone help users feel separate and different from everyone else. In fact, if a brand appeals to everyone, we may question whether it is a brand at all.

In a post on the company blog in 2009, Lululemon founder, former surfer Dennis “Chip” Wilson, cited the self-help tome The Secret, saying: “The law of attraction is the fundamental law that Lululemon was built on from its 1998 inception.” This prompted Douglas Atkin to comment, “It’s the first time I’ve heard of anyone almost directly using the techniques of cults and applying them to their business.”

2. Hostile brands understand that less is often more.

The trajectory of branding is to offer more, more, more, with the ludicrous result of feature loaded products that offer benefits we don’t want or need nor are we willing to pay for. Hostile brands remove features. At IKEA, delivery is never free and expensive to print assembly instructions are only available online. Yet for those with the ability to haul their own furniture away and print their own instructions, the simplicity of IKEA’s pared down approach has created an army of furniture assembling “believers.”

Another of my favorite business books is Blue Ocean Strategy. The authors argue that many breakthrough businesses succeed by shifting the typical value curve of high price + high level of offering. This is accomplished by identifying what customers are glad and willing to give up in favor of simplicity and low price and over delivering in other areas. Jet Blue is in some regards a hostile brand, taking away many standard amenities but offering unexpected luxury touches, all at a discounted price. In many regards, the Windows Phone brand strategy is likely to be a hostile one. In a category dominated by Google and Apple, Windows Phone is in the unusual position of being an underdog. To get trial, it will have to portray the big boys as overloaded with features that appeal to the masses and position itself as the edgy upstart with just what smarter, hipper users want in a smartphone.

 3. Hostile brands feel more authentic.

Much has been written about the importance of authenticity in the era of social media, especially when marketing to the exquisitely “BS” sensitive Millennial generation. Consumers feel more passionate about brands that do something just because it’s who they are, not because it is good for business. Last year on Earth Day, Whole Foods announced that starting next month, it would only offer sustainable seafood and eliminate “red rated” species known to suffer from overfishing or catching methods that harm other marine life or habitats. While Whole Foods is not really a hostile brand, this could be interpreted as a hostile move by some customers who will be inconvenienced. The move is also controversial with suppliers. Yet the move reinforces the brand’s credibility, as it suggests Whole Foods is unwilling to compromise its principles.

Is Hostile Marketing for You?

Hostile marketing is one way to differentiate, and, as we’ve seen, it can do wonders for creating passion. Yet it’s not a strategy for the faint of brand. Telling customers to take a hike just might result in them taking their business elsewhere. Even Moon admits some ambivalence advising brands to “summon resistance” as a way to cultivate friends.

As these brands demonstrate, polarization can be effective when undertaken with a solid understanding of customers, a clear understanding of your brand’s DNA and its defining “edges,” and a tough resolve to remain indifferent to those who may find your brand distasteful.

After all, as the adage goes, it’s better to mean something to somebody than everything to nobody.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carol Phillips, Founder, Brand Amplitude

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

How We Got Here

In the 1990‘s, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Professor, David Aaker (pictured), introduced the concept of brand as an asset to be managed for the benefit of the corporation, thus wresting responsibility for ‘branding’ from ad agencies and putting it in the hands of marketing managers. Since then, many agencies, brand consultants and academics have built on Aaker’s foundation, making their own contributions to the art and science of branding. Years of adaptation, melding and cherry picking have resulted in a world where marketers have no consistent frameworks or proven models from which to work.

Our experience teaching brand strategy to MBA and undergraduate marketing students and working with brand strategy clients tells us the answer is to integrate much of the work that has been done into a coherent framework, grounded in common principles, terms and frameworks. The work begins with understanding the necessity of Value Proposition, Brand Identity and Positioning.

Finding Our Way Back: The Trinity Of Brand Strategy

Some elements of a brand are (or should be) relatively constant while others need to adapt to a dynamic marketplace. As a result, Value Proposition, Brand Identity and Positioning are all essential components of a comprehensive brand platform.

Of the three components, the most constant is the Value Proposition. A Value Proposition articulates what is most enduring about a brand, its enduring benefit across all audiences. The statement speaks to higher-order outcomes and results the brand aspires to deliver in the future. Value Proposition is the brand’s North Star that informs everything from recruiting to the product development roadmap.

Positioning is the most adaptable of the three elements. The concept of ‘Positioning’ is perhaps the best understood element as well, thanks to the popularity of the ‘classic’ format which specifies the target, frame of reference and key benefit. The reason for Positioning’s adaptability lies in frame of reference,’ which defines the alternatives available to customers and the context in which the brand competes.

Competitive context and target audience change, sometimes quickly, as a category matures.  As competitive offerings change and the brand’s offering evolves, positionings must also change.  Additionally, Positioning is always specific to a target audience, and targets change over time. Consequently, Positionings need to evolve to reflect changes in the target audience, the competitive alternatives and the strategic priorities of the brand.

Value Proposition and Positioning alone are inadequate to define a multi-faceted brand with internal and external stakeholders. A powerful Positioning enables  consistent, short-term communications, but is limited to just one or two ideas. Value Proposition, aspirational, does not speak to a higher order purpose or mission or explain how a brand will connect emotionally with the values, culture and needs of its constituencies, both internal and external. The Brand Identity fills in these missing pieces.

Brand Identity is more enduring than Positioning, and more adaptable and multi-faceted than Value Proposition. It articulates how marketers wish customers and others to view the brand in the foreseeable future. Our Brand Identity prism model is based on work by brand strategist and INSEAD professor, Jean-Noel Kapferer. The left side is internally focused, while the right side explains how the brand connects externally, with customers, members, investors and other stakeholders. Each element provides a crucial guide to developing the brand’s message, visual and verbal identity, corporate culture, and more. It also describes the brand’s Noble Purpose, its reason for existence beyond staying in business and paying employees. Purpose is becoming an essential aspect of brand differentiation, and it is not addressed by Positioning or Value Proposition.

Putting It All Together

Together, Value Proposition, Brand Identity and Positioning provide a complete brand platform that can serve as a roadmap for brand development over a 3-5 year time horizon. Each element should be revisited periodically, with Positioning revisited most frequently, at least once a year. Positioning is a tool for helping the brand move toward the desired Brand Identity, and multiple Positionings may be required to achieve the Identity. While the point of Positioning is differentiation, Value Proposition and Brand Identity can also be differentiating.

Our experience with these models has proven them to be relevant to B2C, B2B and non-profit organizations. We have applied them successfully to clients ranging from grocery products to high tech services. When combined with clear business objectives, a careful brand audit, and a profound understanding of the target, these tools provide a powerful guide for brand development.

Learn More

To learn more about the tools and frameworks discussed, check out these resources

• Let’sPut An End to Brand Babble: A Glossary of Key Branding Terms (article)
• Jean-Noel Kapferer, The New Strategic Brand Management, 2012 (book)
• Brand Positioning Category on Branding Strategy Insider
• Brand Strategy Category on Branding Strategy Insider

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carol Phillips and Judy Hopelain of Brand Amplitude

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Our favorite model for identifying brand strengths and weaknesses – the 3-Circle Model – is stunningly simple, too. It involves just three overlapping circles representing the brand, customers and competitors. Mapping the intersections of customer desires, brand capabilities and competitive strengths allows strategists to classify and prioritize different types of ‘value’.

Why It Works
 

The 3-Circle analysis is powerful in three ways:

1. Broader Look At Potential Differentiators
A typical brand analysis appropriately focuses most attention on points of difference as potential sources of competitive advantage. In addition to identifying points of difference, a 3-Circle Analysis highlights potentially leverageable points of parity as well as unaddressed customer needs. If these are important to customers and if no one else is talking about them, or if your brand can talk about or deliver them uniquely, they may be more relevant and potentially more differentiating than so-called ‘points of difference.’ Countless brands have achieved success by focusing on category benefits (Raid Kills Bugs Dead, Lysol Kills 99.9% of germs, Foster Farms chickens California-grown) or creating a point of difference that lies outside of the product (Keebler Cookies are the only ones made by elves in a hollow tree, a gecko assures Geico customers they will save money).

2. Keeps Customer Needs In Focus
The 3-Circle Model also provides a “final resting place” (pun intended) for a brand’s areas of ‘non-value’ –features that may be differentiating or important to keeping up with competitors but that are simply unimportant to customers. The average supermarket now carries over 38,000 items, many of which are minor flavor or size variations. In the technology category, the features arms race continues unabated. According to Harvard professor, Youngme Moon, “There comes a point beyond which we are hard to impress…beyond which additional improvement ceases to add value.” At that point, it’s time to take a closer look at what customers truly value.

3. Forces Clear Thinking About Competitive Differences
Finally, the 3-Circle Model ensures a close look at potential points of vulnerability. The competitive landscape is dynamic, meaning today’s advantage can be leapfrogged at any moment. Competitive intelligence is not the same as competitive insight. Brands need to keep a keen eye on competitors’ points of difference as well as their own, lest they find themselves in the position of Kodak or Blockbuster, outflanked by companies with a better sense of what customers truly want.

Putting The Model To The Test



Marketing Professor Joe Urbany and former Professor James H. Davis, both of University of Notre Dame Mendoza School of Business, developed the 3-Circle Model. It has been the foundation of the Mendoza MBA marketing curriculum for over 10 years. The resulting map looks simple, but it incorporates hours of digging, discussion and debate.

To learn more about the 3-Circle Analysis and how it can be applied to brands, check out these resources:

Grow by Focusing on What Matters: Strategy in 3-Circles by Joel E. Urbany and James H. Davis

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carol Phillips and Judy Hopelain of Brand Amplitude

Email us for more about how The Blake Project’s brand audit can benefit your organization.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

The Challenge Of Naming

The naming challenge is compounded in a business environment, where anointing a company with a name is likely to be just the first of many labeling decisions. Products, business units, specific services, marketing programs, features, line extensions, apps, web sites and more all need monikers. Each decision has implications for future decisions, so it’s important to have a plan or ‘rules’ to guide your choices and avoid confusing customers.

Although critically important to brand health and company value, it can be difficult to create the rules for naming brand entities, and for specifying the relationships among them. Here is a partial list of the kinds of challenges faced:

• When is it desirable to extend an existing brand and when is a new brand required?
• How should a new brand be linked to the parent? Should the relationship be explicit or kept in the shadows?
• Which is better, a descriptive name or a fanciful name?
• When should a name be retired?
• When should a feature be branded?
• Should different brands from the same company have different web sites?

These types of decisions become more complex as the brand portfolio grows. That’s why it’s important to have a plan for efficiently presenting your brand.

Brand Architecture: The Face Of Your Brand

The purpose of brand architecture is to establishing the ‘rules’ that ensure brand names fit together in one coherent offering. A well-constructed brand architecture helps a company optimize its marketing efficiency and performance.

Everyone has heard of the ‘branded house’ and ‘house of brands’ strategies. In practice, these are just two of many possible models. Most brands use a hybrid approach. Some companies get in trouble by trying to support too many brands, logos, and features. Conversely, some companies suffer from the opposite problem, by offering too few brands; when one brand must bear all the burden, meaning can become diluted and growth is limited.

Here are three questions to help determine whether you have optimized your brand architecture:

• Is there enough ‘daylight’ between your portfolio brands? Does each stand for something unique?
• Is the role of each brand in the portfolio and its relationship to the other brands clear?
• Is it clear which brands are ‘strategic,’ and therefore worthy of investment, and which are lower priority?

If the answer to any question is ‘no,’ it may be time to take a closer look at your brand architecture.

Issues In Brand Architecture

Every company should revisit its brand architecture periodically to prune the dead branches and ensure the remaining ones still bear relevant fruit. More commonly, brand architecture explorations are triggered by a business event or marketing need. Here are some of the most common situations that call for a closer examination of architecture.

1. New! Improved! (New Product Or Line Extension)

Even Apple has to think carefully when naming its new products and models to avoid proliferation, yet maximize the opportunity of each technological innovation. Rather than continue naming its products using the Apple IIe convention, Apple opted for MacIntosh and MacBook. More recently, its iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad introductions have followed a different convention altogether to create distance from its computer business. This turned out to be exactly the right approach as these innovative devices have eclipsed the core computer brand in size and profitability.

2. The Spandex Rule Of Branding. (Diluted Meaning Due To Brand Stretch)

Scott Bedbury famously coined the “Spandex Rule of Branding” which specifies that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Branding experts from David Aaker to Al Reis have repeatedly warned of the dangers of over stretching brand meaning and dilution of equity, yet line extensions continue to dominate new product introductions according to IRISymphony. Special K is a brand that seems to be in danger of too much stretch, as it now appears on everything from cereal bars and salty snacks to protein shakes and water.

3. Just Gotta Be Me! (Reach New markets)

Sometimes it’s best to create distance between the company name and the product name, especially when trying to reach new customers with new products or benefits. Disney needed Touchstone and Miramax to maximize its potential with older movie audiences who weren’t interested in its G-rated, family fare.

4. Lake Woebegone (Too Many Brands)

Some companies suffer from too much brand proliferation, and lack of ‘daylight’ between brands.  The hotel industry seems to be especially awash in brands, with new brands and subbrands popping up all the time to address ever shrinking slivers of the traveling population. When budgets are under pressure (and when aren’t they?), marketing support gets spread ever more thinly when ‘all the children are above average’ in importance.

5. New Management. (Acquisition Or Merger)

When two entities combine, it often creates redundancies, and one (or both) names need to be dropped Sprint dropped Nextel from its name in 2007, a few years after the acquisition in order to bring greater focus to its new “Sprint Ahead” campaign. In 2005, AT&T decided to sell wireless only under its own name, dropping the more popular Cingular name. In other cases, such as the Whirlpool-Maytag merger, the strength of the acquired names makes it desirable to maintain more brands to address discrete audiences and maximize retail floor space and market coverage.

6. Tell Me Again What You Do? (Name Misalignment)

When a name signals the wrong message to customers, it’s time to take action. Last week, Sara Lee Corporation split into two companies. The food business was renamed Hillshire Brands and the coffee business was spun off. Likewise, last month Kraft split its snacks division into a new entity, Mondelez, to compete more effectively with snack food giant, Frito-Lay.

7. One Brand To Rule Them All. (Distinguish Masterbrand From Product Brands)

Complications arise when the corporate name and the product name are one in the same. Last month, Kellogg’s embarked on a major portfolio overhaul, in an effort to create distance between its corporate brand, cereal brands, and other food businesses. The effort resulted in incorporating the “masterbrand” into all Kellogg’s marketing campaigns, consolidating 42 company websites around the world to one, and a new tagline, “Let’s Make Today Great.”

8. Your Father’s Oldsmobile. (Lost Relevance)

Products have lifecycles and some brands deserve to die. Retiring a brand can be an emotional decision, but it is sometimes necessary to free up resources for new, more promising brands.

9. Upstart Kids And Sibling Rivalry. (Subbrands Challenging Other Brands For Position)

Too much success can present problems, too. We recently had a client that was in danger of becoming known by the fundraising program it had launched to address a specific audience. The program had a catchier name and more momentum behind it than the name of the organization itself. This prompted soul-searching to determine whether or not to change the name of the organization before it became completely irrelevant or back away from the wildly successful program.

10. Brand Energy Vampires (Too Many Branded Features)

Feature-rich brands often suffer from having to maintain more brand names than they can afford.  If you’ve ever seen an ad or logo that included a company name, brand name, subbrand or partner name and a flavor all jammed into one, you know what I mean. Less truly is more, and not every feature deserves its own “TM” unless you have the next Heavenly Bed or Ford Sync.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carol Phillips, Founder, Brand Amplitude

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Architecture Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

Yet we wonder if consumers are listening? Do they even care about our carefully crafted ‘points of difference’ and ‘reasons to believe’?  Harvard professor, Youngme Moon, observes in her book “Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd”, that corporations have become experts at augmentation and replication, but aren’t that good at creating meaningful differences. She provocatively writes:

If aliens were to visit a grocery store or a drugstore in this country they would have to conclude that we are a people hooked on the pleasures of picking needles out of haystacks.

The Case of Diamond Shreddies

In 2006, a clever Canadian campaign for “New Diamond Shreddies” turned the mirror back on marketers’ often inane attempts at creating differences. The joke is that the only difference is that the shape is no longer a square, it is a ‘diamond’, (“kind of like the difference between a 6 and a 9”), and therefore tastes better. The satire is carried off brilliantly with focus group testimonials and commercials touting the advantages of a diamond shape over a square.

Urban legend says this campaign was created by an intern at Ogilvy. If that is true, it’s a case of the newbie pointing out the emperor’s lack of clothes. How many of us are guilty of seizing upon some meaningless, but exclusive product point of difference as the supposed basis of brand preference?

My job as a qualitative researcher requires that I spend a lot of time talking to consumers about what really matters to them when making purchase decisions. What I’ve learned is that there are many types of relevance, but they rarely have to do with product attributes or even benefits.

The Many ‘Flavors’ of Relevance

1. Brand Relevance

In his latest book, Brand Relevance, brand strategist David Aaker writes:

The classic brand preference model is an increasingly difficult path to success in today’s dynamic market because customer are not inclined or motivated to change brand loyalties. Brands are perceived to be similar at least with respect to the delivery of functional benefits, and often these perceptions are accurate. Why rethink a product and brand decision that has worked when alternatives are similar? Why go to the trouble to even locate alternatives? Seeking alternatives is a mental and behavior effort with little perceived payoff. Further people prefer the familiar, whether in regard to a route to work, music, people, nonsense words, or brands.

Of course, if you are the incumbent brand, this is good news. But for brands trying to disrupt entrenched beliefs and behaviors, inertia presents a major challenge.  According to Aaker, the answer is not introducing yet another marginal difference but creating whole new categories or subcategories that redefine the market in such a way as to make competitors irrelevant or less relevant, and to cause consumers to rethink their decisions. Aaker points to beer and computers as examples of places where subcategory dynamics have driven brand growth.

Today there are a host of trends that can provide the impetus for new categories and subcategories. They include the green movement, the emergence of new knowledge centers, ethnic flavors, new design aesthetics, a desire for greater control over one’s time and personal health.

Key Takeaway: What are the trends that can be leveraged to help your brand define a new category or subcategory?

1. Category Relevance

Not surprisely, most consumers don’t really care if a product has 6 types of vegetables rather than just two or works 21% better rather than 35%, or even if it works better at all. What they often want to know is why they should purchase the product in the first place, not which brand to brand. Many brand strategies assume the ‘frame of reference’ is other directly competitive brands within a category or subcategory. In fact, fact the customer perceived competitive set is often much broader. When making purchase decisions, many customers are asking should I buy juice or a soft drink? A vacation or an appliance? Should I buy a new car/computer/cell phone at all or just keep mine going another year?  An evening at a Casino competes with many other entertainment alternatives.

Establishing category relevance requires understanding the decision context and reframing the decision alternatives. Decision context includes things like where am I? What is the intended occasion of use? How rich am I feeling today? What is happening in the economy?

Homemade Pizza, which is part of the fast growing ‘take and bake’ pizza restaurant segment, is an example of a brand that has created category relevance. Rather than position itself relative to other takeout pizza’s, Homemade Pizza, explains why it is a better alternative to a home cooked meal.

We’re in the business of helping hungry people prepare fresh, easy and delicious dinners at home. We always have been. We seem to have this nagging urge to bring everyone together for good food at the best place in town: home.

Likewise, V8 is seen unique among juices because it can replace a serving of vegetables –it’s a ‘salad in a glass’ that satisfies hunger, not just thirst.

Key Takeaway: Does your Brand have an opportunity to position itself relative to a bigger ‘indirect’ competitor?

1. Cultural Relevance

Millward Brown concedes that “being ‘different’ is not necessarily all about functional product benefits. Even the most generic products can make themselves different through creatively connecting with consumers.” Increasingly that connection comes through a shared sense of cultural relevance, the intangible sense that a brand is ‘hot’ or especially in tune with the prevailing cultural ideology. Let’s face it, some brands are cooler than others, and not just because they happen to be featured on the cool shows or celebrity endorsement. These brands — Starbucks, Nike, Patagonia, Vitamin Water and Innocent (U.K.), to name a few — are cultural innovators that resonate with what consumers care about today – community, sustainability, healthy living.

In his book, “Cultural Strategy”, Oxford professor, Doug Holt also takes issue with what Aaker called the ‘functional benefits trap” and advocates a theory of cultural relevance. He explains that the traditional approach to differentiation is based on the notion that brands succeed by ‘colonizing’ cognitive territory in consumers’ minds (i.e ‘positioning’). The problem with this approach is that finding and staking a claim to a gap not exploited by other brands is exceedingly difficult to do even when a brand has a functional advantage. It is even harder to sustain over time, as any truly improved performance is likely to be “summarily copied by competitors”, initiating the slugfest Youngme Moon described above. He even dismisses the idea that a brand can ‘ladder up’ and own a more emotional benefit as just another version of mindshare marketing.

Holt analyzed more than two dozen brands that differentiated based on cultural innovation to explain why these brands succeeded. The conclusion is that hot brands are the first to express a new ideology or to express and existing one in a way that shakes up the conventions of the category and prod consumers to seek out new alternatives. It’s about catching the cultural way, specific to a historical moment and particular group of people. Far from being a haphazard or serendipitous event, cultural innovation can be strategically planned and implemented. What I like best about this approach to differentiation is that is additive – even brands with better mousetraps can take advantage of cultural innovation to establish enduring differentiation. Would Nike be as powerful as it is today if it had simply rested on better performance? Or Ben and Jerry’s on funky flavors and a regional heritage?

Brands that become part of the cultural conversation are by definition ‘different’ and offer something more than what is inherent in the product or service.

Key Takeaway: What ideologies in the culture are speaking in a meaningful way to your customers and can be harnessed to distinguish your brand?

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carol Phillips, Founder, Brand Amplitude

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers