MARKETERS: You're SOLVING the WRONG problems?

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Stop! You’re solving the wrong problem!

(A bed time tale) At one time you could create new products based on consumer want and need. Brand relevancy was easy. You were one of a kind. Then the pool of easy-to-see wants and needs dried up. Copy-cats tom, dick and harry converged on the same position doing the same thing with their own new products. Categories got crowded. Unable to better differentiate products, marketers resorted to pre-conceived strategies developed on their own. Boiler plate templates like price value propositions or recipe dissemination. Suddenly directly-connected consumers lost contact with original brands and became distant cousins. Heavily segmented price-driven commodity categories ensued due to self-inflicted wounds that sliced and diced categories until consumers strongly sought price-driven quality brands like Kirkland instead. The once powerful ‘brand’ began trading on price. As new generations of management moved in, consumer’s ability to relate weakened. We had so many things no one could put their finger on what they wanted. Purchases were not reasoned; with plenty of free credit people impulse-purchased even high ticket items. Brand equity sank so low it had to climb up a ladder to get to the bottom. As modern CMOs leveraged ever-proliferating media and networking solutions to reach smaller and smaller audiences to deliver watered down strategies generating only awareness and recognition, finding highly differentiated product-based growth solutions to secure sales took a back seat. But, doing the homework to find highly differentiated growth solutions to stir sincere consumer emotions, perceptions and purchase motivations remained easy. As more brands set up tents in categories crowding out older tenants we retained the original ability to find unique product-based selling solutions that create more space in densely populated neighborhoods. The only difference today, as then, is that the best new answers are so obvious they’re not obvious. They’re abstract, and exert a stronger pull on consumer’s hearts and minds than anything you could imagine. Since the dawn of categories, seeing unique business solutions requires Abstract Creativity®.

The Relevance of Brand Relevance

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Why is it that people running brands ranked 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th or 7th in a category can convince themselves that their brand is relevant. The same might also be asked if you were number two - say Anacin versus Tylenol or Advil. The same might be asked if you were a little brand like E.E. Dickenson's Witch Hazel or Gold Bond Powder. Why wouldn't they like to be a billion dollar brand instead of a couple of hundred million.

I never was one who thought much of that Avis, We try Harder shtick to justify being number two. Avis was just less relevant. Same goes for Adidas versus Nike or Maxwell House versus Folgers or Kraft Mayonnaise versus Hellman's/Best Foods, etc. So who wouldn't want to take that also ran brand and turn it into number one? When I used to run sales competitions first place would get a great prize, third place would get the same great prize and second place got a buck. Why? To drive home the point that no one remembers second place. In terms of relevance - that brand and the ones that followed were somehow wrongfully (or fatally) hitting the target between the eyes.

BRAND DOPING ON RISE AS OLYMPICS CONTINUE

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Are you doping brands?
doping refers to the use of performance-enhancers forbidden by organizations that regulate competitions. Doping is mostly done to improve performance.

Increase in marketing performance for several brands triggers probe. Prosecutors widen investigation into use of illicit creative steroids; tampering with established CPG category brand positions.

Cincinnati (AP) Prosecutors investigating C-level brand management practices at Procter & Gamble today confirmed use of performance-enhancing creativity to dope brands. Use of Abstract Dimensioning® (known on the street as AD), and other forms of banned creative stimulants manufactured by Calle & Company under the names Multi-Dimensional Consumer-Creativity® and Culturally Influential Consumer Groups® are all practices forbidden by key trade organizations that regulate competition including the 4 As, Marketing Research Association and the Grocery Marketing Association. Each has denied the practice of brand doping exists despite unusual performance spikes attributed to many once flat-selling brands. Prosecutors said they would expand their search immediately to other high profile incidents in consumer packaged goods, auto, retail, restaurant, financial and pharmaceuticals. Facing stiff penalties for illicit tampering with category positioning and new product innovation, unnamed Procter & Gamble executives with a promise of immunity defended the company’s use of performance growth stimulants (such as BGH – brand growth hormone) citing dramatic increases in brand strength and rejuvenation of older slower moving brands.

In a stinging retort to allegations that his brand and team had been using the illegal creative steroids marketing superstar Lance Brandstrong said yesterday that all accusations are without foundation. "We had permission to bring every performance-enhancing product we could envision to use. We do it by the book. We get everything authorized. We seek only unique selling propositions and have no idea what that guy was talking about when he pitched us on identifying new Special User Effects® as the underpinning to every great breakthrough.” In addition he said, “I have never injected or ingested any consumer information that I didn’t already know and I have never engaged the services of Calle & Company’s Consumer-Creative® Assays® to audit something that I did already know or suspect. I would never do that.”

Prosecutors believe the practice of brand doping providing an unfair marketing advantage over rivals, in markets and with consumers to be widespread - but the practice is hard to pin down because brand people don’t apply the illegal creativity to all of their brands all at the same time. “You have to wait for one brand in one category to unexplainably make a significant leap forward overnight. That’s our first clue” said a high-ranking source wishing to remain anonymous.

Companies under investigation in the widespread brand doping and market position corruption scheme include Kraft Foods, Nestle, ConAgra, Unilever, Colgate-Palmolive, Campbell Soup, Gerber Baby Foods, Pepperidge Farm, Entenmann’s Bakery, Brown-Forman, Miller Brewing, Ferrera USA, The Coca-Cola Company, Frito-Lay, Pepsi, Mead-Johnson. Janssen Pharmaceutica, Johnson & Johnson, McNeil, Schering-Plough, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, The Mennen Company, Chesebrough-Ponds, Clairol, L’Oreal, Noxell, General Foods, Lehn & Fink, The Drackett Company and more. And aggressive young prosecutors looking to make a name for themselves want to land indictments against other companies soon. A Federal Trade Commission spokesman said the agency is investigating the use of banned Abstract Dimensioning® and other forms of breakthrough creativity marketed by Calle & Company. (OK, I admit it. I've been doping brands with enhanced creativity for years. Like Nixon, I just got caught.)

To report suspected brand doping:
Brand Doping Hotline
714 244 9511
Category prosecutors are standing by to take your call.

WHY BRANDS NO LONGER SWAY US

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So if a brand is something that a rancher puts on his cattle so that other ranchers or rustlers don't steal them why do CPG companies brand their products? So competitors or brand rustlers won't steal them. Yet in many ways products (cattle) in most categories (pastures) are the same - commodities - and like cattle heavily price driven categories at that, ground roast coffees, disposable diapers, edible oils, etc.) So if the rancher (cattle owner) wants to sell more of his cattle (brand) at auction (chain grocery and drug stores for example) what must he or she do? Make a better product? A steer is a steer. Meat on the hoof is meat on the hoof. And a better product would screw up the margins. I believe that legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden had it right when he said, "It's what you learn after you know it all that counts." These ranchers (marketers) have been raising cattle (brands) the same way year after year. The feed (gathered and measured data) comes from the same vendors year after year. It seems to me that the only thing that would make a difference would be to create new knowledge - knowledge that has never previously existed to be gathered and measured. After all, most gathered and measured (cattle/brand feed) data comes from consumer survey panelists who answer questions for points and prizes - they don't even get cash anymore. And if it's done online, you can't even look the panelist in the eye to see if he or she is telling the truth (suspect data). That feed could be anything! I believe creating new knowledge, that which is yet to exist to gather and measure would sire an uber brand. (It made Folgers worth $1.6 billion when auctioned to a brand rancher in Orrville, Ohio. Then everyone else could once again rush to converge on the same position (pasture) saying the same things about themselves (branding) their own way. The symbol (brand) might look different, but the meat inside is pretty much the same (commoditization). To continue doing things the same way would be illogical because no matter how much you study the past (entrenched or shifting consumer habits and practices or beliefs) it will never give you everything you need for the present. Does anyone actually believe that closing a thousand stores, recipe dissemination, a few novelty fro-you drinks and user generated input from MyStarbucksIdea.Com is going to turn Starbucks around? No. It's just trimming the fat to get ready for an auction where Starbucks is the cattle and rancher Schultz can cash out. “A leader is one who sees more than others see, who sees farther than others see, and who sees before others do.” That way the auctioneer (Costco) can't tell the rancher (P&G) how to breed the cattle (Tide). It's called differentiation, which today, can only come from new knowledge. Jeez, I think I've been hanging around CPG companies too long. Starting to sound cynical.

The War on Advertising

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Let us not forget that sales, advertising and generating awareness and recognition do not go hand in hand. And, what marketers once accomplished with brain, they now accomplish with brawn. Consumers surf ads because most are either too contrived, or too obvious. A juvenile focus on product features and benefits serve best to keep those earning their first career's worth of experience from making mistakes that will cost bosses their jobs. It also retards the true creativity that makes the whole of a brand greater than the sum of its parts. For example, Chunky Soup wasn't a stew, it was a soup you ate with a fork - thus building an equity Campbell's could manage through the years.

Back in the day, advertising sold stuff. Today, advertising is created to generate awareness and recognition - representing a different goal than "selling." There is nothing wrong with generating awareness and recognition via advertising as long as you realize it sets the bar lower than if the goal was to sell stuff. You must also realize that generating awareness and recognition is agency-speak for, "if you throw enough stuff against the glass some of it might stick." Does this distress some of you to hear this? Do you want to disagree? It should and you will. Remember, I was there at the dividing line. I can pinpoint the date time and location where and when new agency pitches stopped using the word "sales," replacing that word with the lesser goal of just generating "awareness" and "recognition." I had been in over 600 new business pitches prior to that date, and over 900 since - that's over 1500 new business pitches - and the real number is probably higher. Generating awareness and recognition is a far easier target to hit full of lesser promise that gives an agency and client now uncertain of the target to do and say whatever they wish. So in the end advertising chronicals such as Ad Age, AdWeek, BrandWeek and all the rest wonder why consumer packaged goods have become commodities, why retailers (think about that term re TAILERS) now wag the (manufacturer) dog, why agencies are paid less, why agency compensation declines, why agencies must merge to keep their heads above water.... The only cure is to put the promise of sell back into the strategy. To stop trying to be all things to all people and just be who you are. Ask yourself, "what is your product's reason-for-being?" Is your answer the same as everyone elses? Ask yourself, "why is your product focusing on features and benefits, the lowest cost-of-entry common denominators in any category - rather than a higher and more compelling Special User Effect whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts? That is what advertising used to do.