January 2010
To any business, a great brand is the Holy Grail the distillation of years of creativity, sweat, ambition and investment. Not so much a logo, more a way of life, a way of being, a way of doing business: a great brand conveys everything that in your finest dreams you want your customers to understand about your business and product.John Sandom has spent many years at the top of the brand and advertising business and today, from his spectacular offices in Windsor, deploys the essence of his experience on behalf of some of the world’s greatest brands.
He told Nick Peters how brands must operate in this frenetic digital age and why so many businesses get it so spectacularly wrong.
NP: We all think we know what a brand is. What is your definition?JS: There are many multiple layers of possible answers to that question! But I believe there are two principles that underpin a brand: a set of values that the product or service can live up to and the creation of a name/image that captures those values and allows the products to be remembered and asked for.
NP: That sounds simple!
JS: Yes it does, and of course it isn’t. Defining and capturing those values is a challenge that every business must face and complete. If you transmit a set of values to the market place but the product fails to match them, you have failed. The more complex a business, the more carefully this has to be approached.
NP: But isn’t it still quite simple? I mean who can forget the Cadbury’s Flake TV adverts in the 70’s? Gorgeous bird sticking a Flake in her mouth, some sexy music and wallop, you have a brand sensation!
JS: Campaigns like that were operating in the heyday of the Big Sell. Advertising agencies were getting hooked on the execution of the message, not on the message itself. Everyone engaged in the process was thinking of nothing but selling to the consumer. It was a ‘push’ operation, if you like. Nowadays, brands must be conscious of the fact they are not selling to their customers but making themselves available for purchase. In other words, it’s a ‘pull’ operation.
Back in the day, big brands transmitted a message of corporate arrogance. ‘Persil Washes Whiter!’ Remember that? Maybe it did or didn’t’, it was enough to tell the consumer that it did and have total confidence that they would buy it as a result. That does not work today.
NP: Why not?
JS: The fundamental reason is that consumers are less inclined to trust that big corporate message these days. There is a greater demand for honesty, which is a good thing in my opinion. So today, Persil suggests that there’s nothing wrong with clothes getting dirty, dirt happens, indeed, ‘Dirt is Good’ and that their product is there to make things better afterwards. The power shifts from the corporate to the consumer. ‘We know you’re going to get your clothes dirty, that’s your choice. When you want to make them clean again, we’re here to help’.
NP: More servile?
JS: More cooperative. It is about the brand making itself, its reputation, its values and its competence available to the consumer who now holds the whip hand, instead of being brow-beaten as of old.
NP: I actually don’t feel like we as consumers are in charge. I feel more besieged by brand messages than ever!
JS: Of course. All those digital TV channels, web sites, magazines, newspapers, radio stations… everyone is vying for our attention and it is very noisy. The message that works is the one that tells the truth, no matter how that truth is packages by whatever medium. It’s the one that gets the relationship with the consumer right.
NP: Pardon the potential insult, but it sounds to me like articulating and encapsulating a brand is too important to be left to an agency…
JS: Oh no, you are absolutely right. Brand is something that must be developed and ‘owned’ at the very highest levels, in the boardroom itself. That ownership must then transmit itself throughout the business so that every single person in it ‘lives’ the brand.
Tomato ketchup is a good illustration of the concept. Heinz understood that ketchup has, over the years, suffered from being associated with a particular range of potentially negative products. Heinz asked us to change this perception of being a fast-food, industrially-produced commodity. Thus we came up with ‘Grown, not made’, which is now on every Heinz Ketchup label. Grown, not made, it ticks all the boxes. But it wasn’t enough just to say it. Heinz had to buy into it before the consumer would. So we actually worked inside the company to promote this change in mindset, to articulate a new belief and a new promise to the consumer. We even recommended they hold their sales conference on a farm and not a hotel! The consumer must feel the brand is something they can participate in. Wouldn’t it be fun if consumers started planting tomato seeds and sending us rude and sexy tomatoes!
NP: So if any of this is going wrong, where is it going wrong?
JS: The disconnect, where it exists, is between the message the consumer is receiving and what is happening inside the business that is represented by that message. Businesses who hand their brand over to 3rd parties to develop and transmit are storing up trouble. Think of those businesses that come a cropper because they think having a CSR policy is good PR. It is not good PR unless you actually believe it is the right thing to do. Advertising and PR agencies who hang onto the idea that it’s all in the execution and not in the truth of the message will forever be selling their clients short.
NP: The digital age – viral marketing and all – is quite a challenge.
JS: Yes it is, but again it comes down to ownership of your core message. Much is made of viral marketing, which can be brilliant but can also be hit and miss. Cadbury’s Dairy Milk and the gorilla playing the drums from In the Air Tonight was wonderful – totally random, spread like wildfire on the Web. What happened next? They tried to do it again with the racing airport trucks and it misfired, because the essential randomness of the first ad was completely missing in the second. They tried too hard.
Life is becoming tougher than ever for brands, which is why they have to be worked really hard. Think of how retailing power is becoming concentrated in the big supermarket chains. They are ruthless when it comes to what they put on their shelves. There may be room for just two brands alongside their own in-house products. If you are the second-placed brand, that’s a tough place to be as you’ll be used tactically by the supermarket to drive down prices.
If you’re third, forget it.
To find out more about Sandom's Random beginings go to the full article in Business First Magazine here:
Comments