"Brands listen more than they talk"

Ran across a white paper that Visa's new CMO Antonio Lucio created while he was head of PepsiCo's insights and innovation group, view it here:
http://nevereatalone.typepad.com/blog/files/antoniolucio_thusspaketheconsumer.pdf

In the paper Antonio discusses the role of brand and insights within marketing, and he makes some good points that I'd like to repeat below. For me, the central themes ring true --- the importance of appreciating emotion, insight, and complexity.

Marketers must learn to manage complexity...
...on behalf of their customers, by becoming trusted filtering resources:

Consumers are looking for "...brands and services that can edit and interpret the overwhelming amount of information into a format which can be digested and absolved according to consumers' points of view and/or biases..."

...and within their own organizations, by balancing facts with "emotional motivations":

We need to avoid "analysis-paralysis" and spend more time with the consumer face-to-face. "In this new world, we need to commit to transcend the obvious numbers and words, understand consumers' total brand experience, and dig much deeper into emotional territory."

"Lighthouse Brands" need to be developed - "brands that not only deeply understand consumers' lives but have a true differentiated and non-apologetic point of view on life."

The four key elements to a "lighthouse brand", the result of something he calls "seduction marketing" are:

• "aspirational ego-centrism" - life as consumers would like it to be
• about building emotion vs. reason
• a thorough understanding of the consumer's total brand experience
• intrusive and seductive exhibitionism

The marketing function needs to be brand-centric vs. activity-centric

"...brands have become more complex concepts to understand and to manage....that provide consumers safe grounding and the reassurance of known experiences. The challenge for the Marketer is therefore exponential, as successful mega brands need to be tightly orchestrated to maintain their core essence while building new benefits that will end up reinforcing at the same time as expanding and rejuvenating the Brand."

Consumer insight is the key

"Insight has to firmly guide and audit all decisions on brand and customers.... If we are changing structures and streamlining processes, the one thing that needs to be elevated above all is the voice of the customer."

Words from Kimberly Clark CMO

More wisdom from marketing leaders, via the Advertising Report. Anthony Palmer, Kimberly Clark's recently appointed CMO (a new role for this CPG company), is charged with aligning the organization's brands, integrating the Internet as a channel, and addressing the threat of private label goods. He shared some insights here (some of which I reference below): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118713327561397831.html.

The role of the CMO is to "...inspire the organization to take calculated risks" and "...have a view about what your brand stands for".

On branding:

• "...a brand is a promise and the product is a delivery of that promise"
• "I believe brands are more salient today to consumers than they ever have been -- they
  are a simplifying mechanism in a world where there are many more options."
• "focus all of your spending on the pinhead of the brand idea and break down
  the barriers to participating in the brand."

I found his articulation of "the brand" very insightful. As a senior marketer you must have a consistent view of your brand, be able to articulate it, and then convey how your product/service is essentially a manifestation of that brand. If you can do this convincingly you can simplify the decision-making process for your customer.

Creating Ads vs. Products

Second post related to WSJ's weekly column in the Advertising section of Marketplace "Questions For...". This week's expert is Jonah Disend, CEO of Redscout, recently acquired by http://www.mdccorp.com/ (topic of a recent news story and an interesting topic for another day).

Link to article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118472713268269964-search.html?KEYWORDS=jonah+disend&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month.

If you think about the role of Product Development and design today, it's easy to see how run away hits are becoming more prevalent (e.g. iPhone, Heineken Light) at least in part as a result of the way they are packaged and tied to the overall brand.


Some worthwhile observations he made (in bold below) that I'd like to discuss below:

The difference between the "advertising" mindset and the ideal "product development" mindset, which is --- Advertising: "How do I add brand value through communications so that I make them want it?" vs. Prod Dev: "How do I add value to the thing itself in order to drive desire?"

He then cites examples where marketing mindsets often prevent people from really identifying the true customer insights that create value --- "identifying a new behavior that is begging for a new service offering". Marketers get so busy promoting the product itself, they often fail to recognize the fundamental needs that are being addressed and/or underserved. In our defense, few truly are empowered enough with the responsibilities they've earned to undertake a meaningful review of this kind - CPG brand management being a notable exception.

Losing sight of the original goal - getting so attached to a particular idea that the actual reason for the idea is forgotten. Although he mentions this in the context of product development, I've seen this happen on multiple occasions within marketing/advertising. A particular execution is so "clever" that although it misses the fundamental consumer insight, it is adopted because it is seen as distinctive. Message: Keep "first things first", i.e. the fundamental goal --- and don't get too attached to the execution.

The source of good ideas: "We believe that a good new product idea or brand comes from a combination of a consumer insight, a marketplace opportunity and is attached to a cultural thread or trend which helps to give the idea currency".

Some very good insights that are important for any marketer to keep in mind.

Reviving Brands

There are several companies built specifically on purchasing aging brands and then revitalizing them based on cultivating a deeper understanding of customer insight, building and altering messages based on existing branding, or product extensions.

I'll post more on those specific companies later, several of which are private equity backed, but first a set of recent insights from a consumer-packaged goods (CPG) vet that is involved in a more recent, advertising specific organization, Innovative Brands, LLC.

View the article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118411294435462711-search.html?KEYWORDS=joe+jacober&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month.

One takeaway is that regardless of the expertise companies have, even the most innovative companies often fail to get a solid read on their customers true needs and wants. As Jacober states, "The biggest [marketing] misstep is when they try to interject their own opinions into what consumers want. If you don't truly understand how consumers receive your brand, or if you try to make it be something it's not, that's a huge misstep."

Established brands either know their market, and nurture it, or ultimately take great pains to re-establish an identity that will attract a different subset of customers. Both require investments that often go unrecognized by less sophisticated financiers.

Advertorials

In today's WSJ, there was a "special advertising" section on "High Performance" (A8), that I found intriguing for a number of reasons. Since it is basically an advertisement, I wasn't able to locate it online, but here's an example of another one like it here: http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/accenture_demo4.html.

Two things immediately came to mind:
1) I'm a big fan of good content - content in marketing to a specific target segment really is KING, and the article I read today I wanted to present to discuss here because it was an excellent overview of the role that analytics plays in effective marketing today. If I find that article I will post at a later date.
2) The role of the "advertorial". This one is for Accenture, and it serves many purposes. It provides a meaningful overview of a specific topic; it strengthens the brand association with Accenture's core message on "high performance"; it provides a forum where the company introduces it's own subject matter experts; it furthers the company's perception as a thought leader.

Do the marketing items you produce meet these goals for your organization? What I thought was interesting is also what the article does not do. It does not provide an 800 number or tracking mechanism so that specific individuals can be reached. Given Accenture's saavy, my assumption is that this was on purpose, although I think that a tracking component would definitely be worthwhile.

We've implemented tactics like these in the past with limited success; I think that the implementation of this approach presented here is one is successful, it helps to cement and reinforce the brand promise, it just may leave a little to be desired in terms of measurable return.

At the end of the day, that encapsulates a lot of the essential problems that marketing faces --- meaningful communications that clearly have value, but value that is hard to measure nonetheless.