Chapter 3 - brand HERITAGE FRIENDSHIP

The communications power of the brand is amplified by:

·its history - the defining moments which made it famous, exciting and relevant as a cultural leader

·its consumption meanings at an intimately personal level, eg its values as a friend and character

·its accessibility, ie there's no point being famous or a friend unless you're there when needed "in mind (eg breadth and depth of recall) and in body (eg strength of distribution)".

The brand's power to make relationships can become an in-depth exploration of connections made with any audience - eg refer to the importance we attached in chapter 1 to what the brand's essence was to each of the 3C's of end-consumers, channels (eg retail customers) and company (eg employees).

Consumers admire a brand which feels as if it knows where it is going. And is proud of the leadership standards which it has displayed in the past. Every meaningful brand has a lot of company knowhow built into it as well as an essential platform for being the consumer reference point.

Neglect of a great brand's history of meanings can be very costly to a company. Here are eight reasons why organisation-wide appreciation of this statement matters. We will begin with memories from consumer heartland, and build up to the thesis that branding values are most strongly perpetuated when consumer and company lifestyles are bound up in one enduring relationship.

1) Heritage Beliefs

In many product categories, brand heritage is the most important property of all. For example, the average age of the world's top 30 spirits brands is over 100 years old. And German lagers market themselves as brewed to purity regulations of 1516 which probably sets a record as far as the history of quality control goes. Make your own list of why heritage values have vital meanings to consumers in your markets. Examples may include:

·A family or seasonal habit past through generations

·A heartwarming souvenir of good times

·A well known quantity, eg something which you can give to someone else and know it will be appreciated

·Trust in something which has never disappointed you

·Something which turns you into a connoisseur

...

We will return to some of these reasons later, but for the moment note that you could dig deeper into each of these and develop detailed relationship scripts. For example, is connoisseurship in your brand's script mainly about pride in a personal possession -(eg reminding the consumer of his/her own expertise) or being a social talking point (eg a subject which you can use as a conversation opener)?

Organisational forms and communications media may be changing fast, but basic human motivations do not. Most of branding's most compelling interpersonal keys are there - in the history of branding - for all to see, dig deep into and then contemporise in appropriately analogous settings.

Powerful as heritages are at personal levels, their superpowers are derived from being recognised by society as part of the fabric of life. Some of the biggest institutionalised meanings may not even seem to be brands. But why are diamonds (instead of some other substance) so widely recognised as an essential symbol of marriage? Because De Beers has consistently marketed them that way. Or why is champagne the drink for your biggest celebrations? Because the champagne houses in Reims cooperated to brand this essential meaning as their collective raison d'etre.

In the symbiotic way that mass communications work, branded beings can go wider than their organisational parents. For example, they may come to be leading ambassadors of the countries that founded them. Ask the world's consumers what Americana is and you will see how intimately branded heritages of the likes of Disney, Coca-Cola, Marlboro, Levi's etc reside in the mind maps of humankind around the globe. Or look into the mirror of Ferrari in Table 1.

Table 1 : What sums up Italian culture? "Ferrari - it is all that is beautiful" So goes the consensus reply in Italy. And author Andrew White, in "The Centenary of the Motor Car", is only a shade less passionate "Motoring would not be the same without Ferrari; in the case of motor racing it can be said with certainty that 'Ferrari is a cult; Ferrari is Italy". Ferrari is the ultimate dream car. It has speed, grace, beauty and a roll of honour that runs from here to Le Mans. Ferrari has won 9 driver's world championships, 8 Formula One constructor's world championships and 14 sportscars championships. And certainly Ferrari is symbolic of Italy. Stylish, cool, sophisticated - it couldn't have been built anywhere else. To Italians it is more than that. Through post-war Italy's troubled times, Ferrari was there contributing to the rehabilitation of national pride - gaining respect throughout the world both industrially and in sporting terms. Ferrari's universally known insignia - a prancing horse, the cavallino rampante - is even further seeped in Italian history. Legend has it that this was originally the personal emblem affixed to the fuselage of a fighter plane by a gold medal winning pilot in the first world war. He died, but his parents presented a portrait of the horse to Enzo Ferrari when he won the 1923 Circuito di Ravenna. In turn Ferrari adopted this as his firm's logo, representing it against a yellow background - the symbolic colour of his native city Modena where Ferrari's production facilities remain to this day. brand strategy, 28 October 1994

2) Making Friends

It has been said that most of the globe's city dwellers now see more brandscapes than landscapes. Our living conditions involve brand messages projected all around us - a thousand or more commercial propositions every day if you stopped to count everyone you met, which of course you don't. Instead we screen most brand messages out. We all make personal dichotomies of "in" brands from the strangers outside. Some of our "in" brands we just about tolerate attending to, or may be on the verge of dismissing to out-that-was-in (a third state which marketers would technically be right to classify as different to a brand that has never been "in"). But others among our "in" brands are good friends in various senses of the phrase - sometimes as a virtue of necessity, sometimes as characters we have a real attraction to.

Add to this personal list of examples of sources of brand friendship:

·Familiarity, it's become a routine part of my day - eg does the same brand meet you at every breakfast time? ·Simplicity, it makes choosing easy - eg amongst dozens of purchases for the household I make every week, most are routine or frankly boring. In all honesty, I shop on auto-pilot in many categories. If I'm buying replacement batteries - I just want them to last a long-time, fit the appliance and be safe. The brand which I recognise as communicating simply that is a good sort to know. It saves my time and is hassle free. ·Habit, I have been a customer there for twenty years and I am too lazy to change -eg my bank. ·Best Friend, if you don't think that some brands make deep friendships, you have probably never let your children near Ronald McDonald! ·Image, like the clothes I wear, being seen with this brand is part of my image and the impression I make on my peers, and myself ·Mood changer, when I want a break from writing/reading this book I have been known to reach out for my favourite chocolate bar. ·Fan club, I have bought that brand so often that to tell you the truth when I see it in the news I applaud it - and myself. Rather like you might applaud your football club when it's had a winning day.

From a list like this we can start to make some observations on modus operandi for forming brand relationships based on consumers' viewpoints. It is strange how quickly executives in smart offices can forget some of these most basic points. This applies especially to committees of executives and this is one reason why we are keen that this chapter dramatises the importance of brand history to every teamworker involved in Brand Chartering. Do please expand this partial listing of communications mechanics which brands work with in forming relationships with consumers:

·Many of a brand's befriending devices can appear corny if you are not "into" the particular brand. For example, this can apply to caricature ways of presenting a brand whether in personified form like Ronald or logo form like Nike's swoosh mark. Here are some of the designed-in histories which people who are "into" the brand may be seeing:

·With all-the-family brands, it is highly appropriate to be able to appeal to the youngest member of your audience even if the device is twee to adults. Similarly, with brands intent on being multicultural, naive symbols often work best. For example, if a logo like Lacoste's alligator raises a twinkle of a smile in any culture we would rather own that than something that is more sophisticated.

·Loyal consumers meet their brand hundreds and thousands of times. What really matters to them is the impression the brand confirms, not the first impression it makes on a stranger. For "in" consumers a brand will also be a bundle of connecting memories, many of the more significant ones cannot be experienced unless you have actively participated in Purchasing-Consuming-Witnessing the brand.

Role playing of brand by purchaser as a function of P-C-W meaning
Purchasers' roles Image to wear Self-consolation Gatekeeping Gifting...	Purchasers <-> self self housewifeself	Consumers <-> self self housewife/familyfriend	Witnesses peers nobody family/neighboursfriend's peers

·Brand recall is often crafted to being situational in the sense that brand memories should come flooding back at significant times such as when a purchasing choice is being made or a consuming experience is taking place. We know of many brands whose real power is reserved for these occasions. Consequently, if you ask a consumer about a brand out of context - as much market research is prone to do - you are likely to miss many of the most subtle points of the brand's relationship.

·Consistency is vital to branding relationships of the sorts we have described. Changes to the brand's core communicating devices need to be made in emotionally caring ways. Subtle branded values are most at risk of being murdered by any brand management system where frequent rotations of marketing personnel and brands are made. If a brand has a deeply meaningful relationship with consumers, it would seem to be common sense that a new manager has a lot to learn to get a real feeling for the brand. This is particularly the case if there is an organisational absence of a system like Brand Chartering for effecting the handover of care for a brand.

·There are also some costly side-effects of brand relationships which are worth digesting. Because many of branding's lesser relationships are trading on consumer sufferance due to lack of urgent need to change a habit, we know of many brand decision-making instances where organisations have allowed themselves to be lulled into a false sense of security. Typically branded goodwill can protect an organisation even as it becomes less and less competitive until suddenly the poor value of the offer makes even the most loyal consumer think again. If your business team is not fully aware of empirical brand diffusion patterns of this sort, it comes as quite a shock how consumers are prone to flock together, perhaps because of a price rise that has gone over some common psychological precipice or in the case of a brand leader the loss of its goodwill halo effect - which can explain up to 25% of its business at stroke - once the brand has visibly lost its number one status to a rival contender. An aim of Brand Charterers is to fuse together branding analogies so that unnecessary organisational shocks like these never take place.

·If you want to gain a deeper understanding of the quality of your brand's emotional relationships with consumers, most of the analogues with human relationships are worth exploring. For example, consumers can give revealingly consistent answers to what kind of person a brand would be or what kind of mood they associate with a brand. Similarly, most of the ways that people express themselves are applicable to brands. Valuable brands do have their own tones of voice, style rules, idiosyncrasies and creative ways of coping with conflicting tensions which have over time made their characters pleasingly multidimensional. In a word : mature.

Brand friendships are reflections of human nature. People to brand relationships have many similarities to interpersonal ones. For example, you probably have an inner circle of friends with whom you feel familiar. Whilst not always being able to explain what might appear to be logically borderline classifications between inner friends and mere acquaintances, there are usually deeply emotional reasons even if some of these are sourced in the historical serendipity of being in the right place at the right time.

3) Extraordinary Recognition

The making of "in-out" relationships is a primary purpose of branding because of the advantage of being closer to end consumers and their purchasing decisions, but it is certainly not a solitary purpose. Consider this extract form Sal Randazzo's excellent book "Mythmaking on Madison Avenue":

The Green Giant is counted among the so-called Leo Burnett critters that include Tony the Tiger, Charlie the Tuna and Morris the Cat. The Green Giant's humble beginnings were the Minnesota Valley Canning Company, founded in 1903. The company chugged along until the early 1920s when it developed a seed that produced peas that were unusually large and tender. The code name for the new peas was "Green Giant", and in 1926 the image of a Green Giant became the trademark for the company's superior peas.

Then in the early 1930's, a young copyrighter named Leo Burnett entered the picture. Burnett changed the image of the Green Giant and made it more friendly and appealing. He also introduced a new descriptor "jolly".

Through the years both the brand and the company prospered. The Green Giant became one of the most widely recognised trademarks, and in 1950, on the advice of The Leo Burnett Advertising Agency, the Minnesota Valley Canning Company changed its name to the "Green Giant Company". This proved to be a wise decision for many reasons, not the least of which is the fact that, when the company went public in the 1960s, the name carried with it instant recognition and respect.

The Green Giant character works on a number of levels:

It works to engage and entertain the consumer by lending a sense of drama and intrigue to an otherwise unexciting category

Once the consumer is engaged, the Green Giant character communicates important product attributes: quality, freshness, and consistency

The character also works as a mnemonic, an immediately recognisable brand trademark and symbol

As a friend puts it : "I have never bought any canned vegetables in my life. But I still recognise jolly good characters like the Green Giant as standing out above and beyond the duty of branding consumer loyalty. They embed themselves in the human imagination even when you are not a target of the company's current products." And that's a great asset, because brand recognition and reputation also counts with every kind of non-consumer stakeholder including those featured in the above extract (company staff, shareholders and trade).

4) Action Replays

Powerful brands make the most of action replays in many ways. A simple way into this realm is activated by having the equivalent of a brand's photo album at the business team's fingertips for every PR occasion. International brands are getting more and more photo calls as journalists write up their stories. They often appear as the props if not the stars of news features crafted for cosmopolitan audiences. Which comes first in terms of celebrity status : basketball as a famous sport? The world's best basketball player? Or Nike? Any brand which successfully travels across international markets and decades needs newsworthy aspects of its heritage to propagate - its own source of (hi)stories as a leader. And, once you appreciate that lifestyle journalism for cosmopolitan consumption can only instantly refer to the relative rare breed of icons that already have internationally recognised meanings, you may plot the particular advantages of having an internationalised press kit assembled for your brand.

Market histories are dominated by leaders who leave traces of brand memorabilia behind both physically and in the popular imagination. This is evident in museums of technology - from cars to electronic products. And in public retrospective of fashions, as well as more privately treasured possessions. Brand memorabilia also plays a part in themed settings such as those that create the atmosphere of many bars and restaurants.

Increasingly brands - by investing in sports and other forms of dynamic media - circulate through timepaths which work in far more diffuse ways than the specifically scheduled 30-second spot of television's commercial break.

Defining moments in history are now global stages on which branders aim to play their part. The opening of McDonald's in Moscow captured a symbolic moment of a new era in history; so was Coca-Cola's sampling at Checkpoint Charlie as the Berlin Wall fell.

One moment with the historic impact of McDonald's Moscow opening gains goodwill for the branded organisation amongst a wide variety of stakeholders. There are valid grounds for believing that this single corporate act has improved the power of McDonald's in the eyes of all of the following :

·Consumers in Moscow and globally

·Society in Russia and globally

·Staff in Moscow and globally

·Franchise owners - current and prospective

·Journalists in Russia and globally

·Shareholders and city analysts

(See ThinkPiece 1 on Brand Benchmarking of McDonald's)

For all these kinds of stages to be valuable, there must be sufficient visual continuity of the brand for action replays to be recognisable when consumers of today and tomorrow revisit history and history and all the parts the brand has played. It also helps if every product ever associated with a brand looks like a leading representative of its historic time zone. Every long-term brand should consider using design as its first media, and moreover one that it owns.

Brands can also become the heros of global legends. Some of these plays have consciously been scripted to turn the brand into a commercial myth - a classical icon -for their corporate owners. For example, in the ThinkPiece 1 on the Brand Benchmarking of Coca-Cola we relate the legend that Father Christmas is today turned out in smart red and white uniform as a courtesy of Coca-Cola's sponsorship. This gave Santa's image a facelift during the second quarter of this century. (Until this relaunch in Coca-Cola's red and white livery, Father Christmas had fallen on hard times : his appearance had become that of a bedraggled wizard).

Intriguingly there is still a lot to learn as to how some brands capture the global imagination and others do not. Every time you come across a globally famous reputation, it is worth asking yourself : do I really know how it came to be like this? For example : how did Manchester United become so famous around the world whilst some other English football clubs with comparable records have only local pockets of affinity or recognition? Was it that many of Manchester United's successes coincided with the Swinging Sixties to the extent of becoming a symbolic association of the era? Was it to do with the legends associated with Busbee's babes including those of tragic heroism when most of Manchester United's team died in an air crash? Was it that the club has always had an ebullient mix of a strong team plus some especially colourful stars? (The Charltons', Best's , Giggs' and Cantona's of this world). How much of all this did the club promote? Of course, not all of these clues could ever be transferred to any other branding situation, but many of them can.

Do you know whether your brand owns any magic moments in local consumer histories? For example, has it inherited any peculiar founder's rights as a market pioneer? Lux is an example of a brand which not only introduced the world to glamour in a soap bar but was in many developing countries consumers' first affordable access to branded glamour of any kind. So in Lux's world of beauty what kind of brand essence works best for Unilever? A first kind which scripts the brand as being soap and neighbouring categories? Or a second kind which sees the brand's relationships as able to evolve through a broader range of cosmetics provided they are about introducing consumers to life's simple luxuries at affordable prices? As we have previously pointed out, Unilever's historically soap-confining view of Lux may mean that the brand has largely had its day in the USA and Western Europe, but the business opportunity of building the Lux Company out of relationships of the second kind is potentially one of the branding world's most exciting platforms in emerging high-growth economies such as Japan, South East Asia, Eastern Europe and China.

Some companies just do not seem to have realised the magic that can be associated with a brand which happens to have been at the right place at the right time. Take Bass for example. Bass is probably the only brand to have sat for an impressionist painter - and what a painting Renoir's barlady at the Folie Bergeres turns out to be. This would seem to be a great brand "seeding" opportunity. Admittedly, Bass has only truly visioned its business as international in the last decade since its acquisition of the Holiday Inns hotel chain. So let us leave aside any debate as to whether there might previously have been an opportunity to internationalise the Bass brand in a parallel way to that which Guinness has with its globally visible ales. An item for Bass's current agenda is : why not create within Holiday Inns a Renoir (or Folie) Brasserie Format -replete with the kind of French food that is washed down best by ales, using Folie Bergere-style memorabilia with the Renoir print as centre-piece, and offering commemoratively branded lines of Bass? Would a format with unique elements of this sort provide a powerful seeding platform for establishing Bass as a worldwide brewer?

Two questions contribute to a debate of the above proposition:

·Are there historic precedents of brands which have succeeded in trading off a double image crafted for 1) home based and 2) international consumption?

·Is the "seeding" of brand fashions a successful investment strategy?

Going for "Glocal" Organisation

Many brands have used the power that is granted to a globalising business to exchange values between different cultures. For example, in the evolution of Sony, the company took great pride in introducing to Japan interesting Western customs. Whether it was for newsworthy impact associated with Sony's image or sheer exotic delight, Akio Morita's biography clarifies that he wanted Sony's first building in Tokyo to be different from any other and thus chose that the building's plaza would feature a French restaurant - a cuisine that had not previously been available in Japan but which he rightly foresaw as having a lot of fashionable potential.

Inside Japan, Sony consciously developed quite a reputation for being one of the first gateway companies to the rest of the world, just as outside Japan Sony set out to develop a pioneering standard bearer for the quality of Japanese products. As other Japanese corporate brands have become masters of this craft, they have created a visionary terminology - eg being a global citizen or a "glocal" insider - to highlight what cultural values an organisation should nurture in striving to serve the best of both world's : global leadership knowhow and locally sensitive customisation.

Brand Seeding

The strategy of brand seeding focuses on refraining from mass market expense until the essence of a great brand has been planted. Our research suggests that "Brand Seeding" is one of the strategic marketer's best kept secrets, and Brand Benchmarking (ThinkPiece 1) on Haagen-Dazs provides ideas for those who want to develop a global brand without risking the high advertising costs that are classically associated with launching a brand.

Typically, a valuable seeding opportunity may stem from : the reputation of a thriving and fashionable business in some foreign country; high quality products which become talking points when sampled amongst opinion leaders; legends of magic moments associated with the brand; mechanisms for strong PR and visibility. Table 2 adds some lessons from Brand Seeding across national markets. This serves to illustrate how seeding sets about transferring market histories to the cumulative benefit of the brand.

Table 2 : Some lessons from implementing brand seeding across countries Key elements of seeding mix include: premium product and pricing, strong design, PR, word of mouth, visibility in fashionable places Roll out criteria include: Go from one success to another, ie do not necessarily go to the biggest market or channel first Do not use mass marketing techniques until your exclusive image is thoroughly planted, eg mass advertising can kill off a seeding strategy if it is executed before the brand's cachet is firmly in its opinion leaders' minds All opinion-leading audiences - eg journalists, business partners, prestige retailers, consumer opinion leaders - can be seeded in parallel Diffusion (ie transfer) tactics can be aimed within a group, from one group to another, across cities/countries (eg jetsetters-word-of-mouth), across distribution channels Tricky addendum:Some seeded brands form a mixed range of product lines including flagships that are never intended to be profitable because they are made as limited editions or specifically placed in high visibility arena where the distributor charges the brander for the privilege. In this case, the brand team (including marketing and financial personnel in particular) must be absolutely clear as to which product lines are image-making flagships and which are to be best sellers. And corresponding performance criteria and measurements require subtly different monitoring instruments.

Whilst we are advocating orchestration of brand seeding as a conscious option for strategic marketers, it is interesting to note that the origins of many famous brands were seeded in the past by accident as well as design. These include : Coca-Cola (the drink of the smart set in turn-of-the century drug stores- the American equivalent of Parisian cafe society); Dunhill (the leather goods attire of early car drivers); Del Monte (produce originally associated with a famous hotel); many of today's "haute-couture" brands. The marketing analogy with Aladdin is irresistible : marketing geniuses now search for old brands, symbols or commercially magic properties which can play the lead role in fashioning brand new presentations.

In an emerging area of smart multimedia channels, we believe that seeding knowhow will become increasingly important in developing new brands and revitalising old brand essences.

5) The first global language

Global brands aim to pre-empt association with "big idea" identifiers as their own universal property rights. For example, if an international competitor to Marlboro tried to advertise cowboy imagery for its cigarettes, the chance of profiting from this would be remote (because even without any legal redress from Marlboro's owner) the two most likely consumer outcomes would be:

·many would misread such advertising as being for Marlboro

·many others would see no point in choosing an imitator instead of the real thing

A cultural stereotype such as Americana appears can also work to the pooled benefit of a group of brand leaders - Marlboro, Levi's, Disney, Coca-Cola, etc - each with distinctive competitive domains but American theming in common. A symbiosis results. The more famous these brands become, the more they become leading reminders of why the American way of life is appealing to a global public.

We advocate that brand teams need an increasingly high literacy rate in reading branding's glocal (global and local) language. It is not just a case of being able to read what stereotype codes are embedded through the market histories of your brand and those of your traditional competitors. These days it is necessary to have coding antennae attuned to attack scenarios that might come from any kind of territory:

·from ostensibly different products as Virgin airlines invasion of cola and other drinks markets illustrates

·from different geographic territories, eg the globalising brand

·from a different zone of history, the seeded brand. Eg Haagen-Daz's long established heritage in the US has been a pivotal component of its recent global scripting.

Whether national governments like it or not, two trojan horses of our emerging era of global networking are joining to form humankind's first global language : brands (whose unique essences reserve their own memory traces) and computerised icons (which are making human communications more symbolic and less verbal). Both of these systems of thinking work to draw on (and deposit in) a global reservoir of accessible cultural stereotypes and symbolic forms. In multimedia's global highways, these communications phenomena will be an integral part of the way that global society learns, as well as keys to the commercial influence that branded organisations will exert.

6) The time to perfect and the time to market

The brand organisation needs to make these time zones coalesce but pay each the distinctive organisational respect which is its due. Leading brands are unique business systems. Often they represent a long learning curve. Quality product formulas, vibrant staff cultures, efficient supply and delivery systems, knowhow networks and partnerships, overall reputation and track record take years to build. Often, a leading brand emanates from a core format or a winning element which took years to refine. Ask yourself how often the actual development process of a strong brand follows this three stage pattern of evolution:

1) winning element is cultivated as core component of an improved consumer benefit

2) integrated system is refined for commercial viability

3) competitively efficient format is replicated in mass way, and at this stage amplified by mass market branding

Strong brands do sometimes appear to have come from nowhere, but this is often because stage 3 is both the visible and fast moving one. In contrast, the foundation stages are often painstakingly slow to perfect.

How old do you think McDonald's is? The business was actually born in 1937 when two hard working brothers opened a hamburger restaurant in California. Another site was opened in 1939, but after that a total of 17 years was spent on stage 1 by the McDonalds as they perfected how an outlet could serve food fast and economically to a maximum number of customers.

Stage 2 of McDonald's began when Ray Kroc entered the scene in 1954. At the time, he was a fifty-two year old milkshake-mixer salesman who had visited the McDonald's in California to understand how they could possibly need eight of his machines at a single site. Ray was amazed at what he saw - fast food being served through a process of world class efficiency - and being operated only at the two McDonald's sites. Ray watched this spectacle for two days before approaching the brothers with an offer to franchise their concept.

Stage 3 involved a local and a global branding episode. It had taken Ray seven years to licence America's first two hundred McDonald's franchises. But along this learning path, Ray's special genius created the family values of McDonald's that made the restaurant so consistently welcoming across the USA. So if you were a family with children needing personal refuelling on a highway miles from home - you knew that McDonald's would be a safe haven for you. As the pioneer of this meaning for fast food, would-be American franchisees were now lining up to join McDonald's. Mass market advertising budgets rapidly increased both to pre-empt the family image and to transform it into the brand's leadership essence. A core purpose was to ensure that franchisees were proud of both their service role and their contribution to the history of the marketplace.

Brand expansion then progressed to a worldwide race to lead the fast food business with the McDonald's branding franchise across the world. By 1990, the prize for being the fastest on the accelerator to this global market could be recorded in terms of McDonald's daily customer base of 23 million people.

A lesson appears to be that once evolution of a winning business system is fully proven, the painstaking stages of development can turn into a hectic race to global markets. Once you have innovated the world's best business system, the last thing you want is for a competitor to do the replicating. Here is how Hamel & Prahalad describe the evolution of winning businesses from learning curve to lift off:

"Developing new competences and reconnoitring new competitive space can be the work of a decade or more. Yet despite the studied space of competence acquisition and market exploration, the final dash to the finishing line can be an all-out, pell-mell sprint. This is particularly likely when several competitors have been working in parallel to develop needed competences and marketing insights, and simultaneously come to believe, after a round or two of expeditionary marketing, that the market is finally ripe. This last, mad scramble to the finish line is a race to pre-empt competitors in key markets, to capture market leadership in the biggest and fastest growing national marketplaces, and bank the rewards in pioneering.

...

Managers have given much attention to the very important task of reducing product development times. Speedy product development is an important component of the capacity to preempt competitors. Yet the time interval to be minimized is not just "concept to market" but "concept to global market". A product development cycle that is 50 % shorter than a competitor's is of little benefit unless it is coupled with a strong worldwide distribution capability. Although being first to market is important, the real returns go to companies that are first to global markets".

Global races need to be scripted carefully. And branded ones are so visible that the CEO must keep on checking that local scripts are not being misinterpreted. On one occasion, even McDonald's had to take strong corrective action to keep it's image together.

At the beginning of the eighties, the Motherly McDonald's had a fleeting French affair. France's tradition of gourmet food probably did not make it seem likely to be one of the most important lead-countries in the company's European advance. so the business in Paris was licensed to a single franchisee. The McDonald's fast food concept soon proved itself to be just as welcome with busy Parisian families as other Europeans. Unfortunately, McDonald's franchisee, flushed with the success of the business, was equally tempted to choose such prime take-away sights as a shopping arcade dominated by St Lazare's pornographic movie house as he was to select respected boulevards for all the family. McDonald's had to buy back the franchise as a matter of urgency.

Strategic imperatives associated with globalisation imply revolutionary changes to the architecture of brand, strategy , and organisation (Chapters 11,12,13) that companies will need to compete in the future. Your organisation will not be able to compete in a global business world with the kinds of brands that were effective in the local business world.

Gillette provides an early example of a company which has successfully reengineered its branding architecture. The changes which Gillette made to its communications mix are chronicled in Brand Benchmarking (ThinkPiece 1) but for now let us concentrate on Gillette's strategic commitment. What Gillette did was to amalgamate all its historical goodwill which had been fragmented at local (and low value) product levels into a credible corporate architecture where everything connects through to the Essence of Gillette as "the best a man can get". Gillette now and for ever more has a serial global platform for launching all new world class products (stage 2 proven performers) at a global stroke. This ensures that no competitor can be faster than Gillette at Stage 3. Here is Hamel & Prahalad's summary appraisal of the Gillette-Sensor launch:

"After spending more than $100 million over ten years developing its revolutionary Sensor razor, and conducting an initial round of customer research, Gillette launched the product in 19 countries simultaneously. Followers, like Warner-Lambert's Schick division, were quickly buried under Gillette's worldwide promotional avalanche."

If you do not have your own access to an appropriately global banner reputation, a franchise model of global branding may be attractive. In the race to global markets, you will need partners to locally replicate your brand's indomitable spirit in the eyes of consumers everywhere. You need to write-up the system developments of stage 1 and 2 together with a branding kit that your local partners/customers round the globe find a joy to use. The fact that a franchisee is an external partner makes for good discipline. You are likely to specify the strategic controls which must operate glocally with more depth of care than you would in dealing with a local office of your own company. Examination of the franchiser's craft can provide excellent insights for the disciplines which need to be practised by any business team which finds itself involved in their organisation's stage 3 race to global market.

7) Lifestyles for Lifetimes

Hamel & Prahalad also shed more light on how purposeful corporate branding seeks to leverage the most important consumer connections between the history and the future of the business.

"The goal of the corporate umbrella brand is simple : to help customers transfer the goodwill that has been built up through positive experience with one of the company's products to other products it offers or intends to offer. Besides having a Canon copier at home, one of us also possesses two Canon 35mm cameras, a Canon 8mm camcorder, a small Canon electronic typewriter, and a Canon fax machine. There was never a decision to be a Canon home, it just worked out that way. Whenever confronted with Canon as a choice in a purchasing decision, one instinctively reflected back on the reliability, performance and value of other Canon products. Imputed with those virtues, each additional Canon purchase looked not only like a "safe" buy, but a "smart" buy. As the pace of life has continued to accelerate, and as the complexity of what people buy has accelerated exponentially, banner brands like Canon and Sony have become mnemonics, standing for quality and value, in the minds of harried, confused consumers.

8) Ritual values for revitalising consistent obsessions

Change is constant. Competitive businesses will always look for new ways to gain advantage, whereas the most basic human meanings of product categories seldom change. Take chocolate for example. Should children ever be denied access to the joy of chocolate? Should adults ever be denied access to the mood changing influence that life's least costly indulgence can offer? Of course not if you are to be a leading chocolate manufacturer who stands up for the democratic meanings of chocolate. Consequently, value for money will always be the leading success factor in the industry and its not surprising that many of the world's leading chocolate companies - Mars Hershey's and Cadbury's - have cultures that are puritanical about value for money. Note how even as distributing supermarkets have insisted on multipacks, the chocolate manufacturers were inventing bite size and pick and mix formats so that in the most hyper of supermarkets, chocolates may be picked up as branded morsels (at the lowest ticket price of any unit sold in the store).

We asked a marketing director who had two careers in marketing - the first in chocolate, the second in spirits (eg whisky) about the biggest similarities and differences in branding winners in these marketplaces:

·Biggest similarity : the data trends you need to look at to judge how strong your brand equity is

·Biggest difference : while you always need to be obsessed with a product category's critical success factors, you need to be prepared for how the focus of consistent obsessions will vary as you go from one product category to another.

For example, to succeed in chocolate bars we needed to offer unbeatable value and quality : to square the value circle we wanted to have scale to be the low cost producer in any bar we marketed and to offer the consumer the best value for money. In the case of the Mars bar it was important to offer more appetite satisfaction per penny than any other bar. Similarly, the quality obsession with the Mars bar was to look perfect and have a consistent texture - so much so that there was even a Mars bar brand manager's tooth test : bite into it and your teeth should meet exactly at the centre of the bar. Contrast that with marketing whisky brands where you are often concerned with appealing to connoisseur and fashion values. There are places where you would not want your whisky to be available and you are certainly not obsessed with the Mars bar obsession of finding every different campaign theme possible to renew the emphasis on value for money such as "the biggest Mars bar ever offered".

Rituals turn abstract customer service virtues into reasons for the staff to be proud of the brand they serve. McDonald's organises crew competitions across its franchises and the prizes for those attaining the highest customer satisfaction ratings are management training courses at Hamburger University. In another example of virtuous spiralling between customer path and staff delivery, the British Airways advertising campaigns (of the late 1980s and early 1990s) featuring the "World's Favourite Airline" and "Smiles as BA's corporate body language" justified their high advertising spends to a large part because of their motivating effects on staff culture. We would suggest this indirect effect on consumer sales was their most important purpose. It is notable that consumers appreciate the amount of organisational effort that goes into making a smile campaign work amongst every member as staff almost as much as they see through the company that advertises such a message without training staff to live up to it.

It is not only service companies that benefit from ritual celebrations. The leader's knack revolves round an insatiable appetite for searching for strong methods of bringing the whole organisation closer to customers and then taking pride to keep on improving. In particular, celebrating a valid claim to be the world's number one in something is so powerful for employees as well as consumers. The world's best is worth going an extra mile for : whether the mile is the extra effort that employees put in as part of the winning company or the distance a consumer is prepared to travel to find the best. The world's best instills pride whether you serve it as an employee or wear it as a consumer.

In a technological world, it is tempting to think of core competences in abstract terms. But in fact the continuous cultivation of almost all core competences depend on people teams building skills through intense dedication and concentrating for long periods of time on routine or systematic elements of work. Any way that branding can be deployed to transform routine into ritual is well worth considering.

Corporate values also act as signals of strategic focus and become associated with a company's right to lead. Opinion-leading audiences are impressed by an organisation like Procter & Gamble, whose purpose is guided by the mission statement of only entering markets where the firm can develop and sustain a quality difference against all competitors. See how many additions you can make to this list of the kinds of impressions that are made by such a consistent declaration in a quality improvement culture:

·P&G's selection of markets on quality criteria becomes textbook wisdom amongst commentators ranging from business journalists to academic scribes

·P&G's quality reputation amongst business students gives the firm a lead in recruiting the best

·P&G's new products tend to be given more serious attention by the trade (including the biggest supermarket multiples) than many of P&G's competitors

·P&G's employees are empowered to stand up for quality on an everyday decision basis within the firm

We would give particular emphasis to three reasons why a brand's values have a vital influence on the consistency of leadership within an organisation:

·Provided the brand values are aligned to critical success factors, they anchor the focus of the brand on the fundamental determinants of quality and value that are most relevant to consumers

·They reinforce the employees' sense of mission and pride in fulfilment; and when allied to rituals they go beyond the routine to the nobler kind of craft associated with dedicated customer service

·They empower - ie they provide an employee with the best defence against transient

decisions being made somewhere up the hierarchy - in P&G there is a communally felt right of appeal as : "is this a Procter kind of way of behaving?"

Summary

We have explored eight intriguing nuances of brand heritage and friendship:

Primarily form the consumer viewpoint

1) Heritage Beliefs

2) Making Friends

Multi-audience perspectives

3) Extraordinary Recognition

4) Action Replays

5) The first global language

Primarily from the company (employee) viewpoint

6) The time to perfect and the time to market

Primarily in relation to the service/leadership guarantees between consumer and company

7) Lifestyles for Lifetimes

8) Ritual values for consistent obsessions

In the process, we have noted that various models of global branding rely on editing the future of a brand's history in strategically astute ways. The following models and processes of organising round global brands have been introduced:

·"Glocal" brand process

·Brand Seeding

·Brand Franchising

·Brand Reengineering

·Banner/Corporate Branding

Chapter 4 - brand FUTURE NEWS

Robert Woodruff was Coca-Cola's great brand leader for much of the twentieth century. He had a special way with slogans. He focused the company's investment philosophy by declaring that managers must always ensure that Coca-Cola was "within arm's reach of desire". He foresaw this as a vital core competence in serving the impulsive, ie personally urgent, consumer need of refreshment that soft drinks cater to.

For Woodruff, advertising tag lines and slogans were more than mere consumer messages. They were deployed to turn his business visions for Coca-Cola into perceptions which became realities. Long before Coca-Cola was a truly international brand, Woodruff organised pride in the slogan that Coca-Cola was "the most friendly drink in the world". But the way Woodruff worked things, even greater leadership acts were to become embodied in an apparently more humble slogan "the pause that refreshes".

This advertising slogan was first used in the 1920s to put the brand into the diary of every American worker - whereas Europeans might have tea or coffee breaks, Woodruff institutionalised the idea that American workers should have Coca-Cola breaks. This national interpretation of Coca-Cola's meaning became so common that, just as Americans were preparing to enter World War 2, Woodruff lobbied the US War Office until the generals were persuaded that the essential meaning of Coca-Cola's slogan was a vital answer to "the extreme fatigues of battle". Coca-Cola thereby became the GIs mascot with the US War Office subsidising investments in Coca-Cola's manufacturing and distribution facilities to ensure the mission that wherever American GIs went, Coca-Cola would be there for them.

There is no strategic substitute for empowerment at the centre of brand control of people who:

·are passionate about product, and the service dimensions it can represent now, or for the future

·understand the concept of market exploration of global and local consumer needs

(Eg explore the subtlety of notions such as : people do not buy products, they buy solutions to a problem however fleetingly conceived. By moving into this realm of the imagination, it quickly becomes evident that buying decisions are triggered by global and local cultural interpretations which a brand must tenderly respect. And yet it must take the symbolic lead not the cultural lag)

·know how to interconnect the essence of the brand's past history of friendship with the future focus of products and services which the branded company foresees. This is the way to ensure that core products perpetuate a brand's marketing pathway. And through this process the company earns the right to keep on focusing its core competences so as to keep turning the perception of brand leadership into objective reality. Leadership is concerned with always being the reference point against which every would-be competitor gets judged.

Today more than ever, the soul of most world class brands resides in an organisation's service motivations and its core competences. It's worth repeating here one paragraph from an early review of the BBC for Business video "Branding - the Marketing Advantage". It encapsulates 90 minutes of footage of how marketing practitioners in the 1990s justify their right to brand:

"Both product quality and creative communications are important, but they are only temporary manifestations of branding. The really vital brand is one whose organising culture loves its end-consumers so much that all employees run and win marketing's equivalent of an Olympic marathon, only to pick themselves up as they cross the winning line in eager preparation for the next marathon. All this because of sheer pride not only in serving goods but what's really best for consumers - the leader who delights all customers by consistently setting new world records on quality and value".

Brand Charterers - and all great instinctive teamworkers on branding processes - see a duty to make the future happen in their brands' presence by asking such questions as:

·What sorts of products/services will our brand have or need to represent to be valued as a leader in a few year's time?

·What do we need to "do now" to accelerate the future?

·Who will we really be competing against and who do we want as partners to make the most of our added value chain?

·What fundamental discontinuities and changes will we need to leverage?

·How does all of this translate into the messages we need to communicate now?

In best practice form, the process of branding is an organisational instrument for "editing the future" from a true perspective of leadership. It creates and communicates an organisation-wide will to sustain a focused combination of core competences in order to deliver unique value. Try out a simple brainstorming exercise. What are the essential qualities of brand leadership which can unite all of a brand's audiences (beginning with the 3 C's : consumers, company employees, customers (in-between employees and end-consumers)? Simple things like:

·Focused direction of a leader - a brand organisation proud of where it has come from and where it is going to, but not arrogant in exaggerating its worth

·A company with an indomitable spirit in pursuit of achieving world records (quality/value)

·An identity which is unforgettable and easy to relate to

·A totality which feels worthy of trust

Add to this a second exercise. Imagine that you are a journalist interviewing a company's people in an attempt to evaluate its claims to be a world class brand. What organisational body language tells you whether brand leadership is real? Examples:

·real "buzz" and pride amongst employees

·consistently aligned motivation/vision is expressed by everyone you talk to

·evidence that customer service trend measurements are as much apart of the operating culture as financial performance measures

...

Built-in to the framework of Brand Chartering is a "living script" philosophy. By this we mean that persistent cross-checking of leadership purpose is a key organisational process for adding value. Two of the most important dimensions of brand leadership editing involve:

·organisation-wide viewpoints

·envisioning a spectrum of future time horizons - the "then" and the "now"

Later chapters, eg chapter 8, make a particular point of cross-checking views of a brand held by people in a company's different departments and regional offices. We place particular emphasis on this because in our interviews with Japanese business people the most common advantage cited for companies of Japanese origin revolves round that of "internal marketing communications". We use this phrase instead of the simpler one of "consensus" because we now have a lot of evidence that scripting a brand organisation's "internal marketing communications" can be an even more complex challenge than that of its "external marketing communications". This is especially the case in companies which wish to take advantage of change. As we will see in Chapters 11 to 14, once companies rid themselves of the inertias of classic brand management systems, the growth opportunities of brand leadership are exciting to behold. This helps to explains why strong organisational leaders are those who instil a joy of change culture.

In order to ensure that Brand Charters possess actionable clarity regarding future time horizons, we take every opportunity to ask questions like:

·Where does this brand as leader need to be in 5 years time? And to achieve this what must you do now?

·Where does this brand as leader need to be in 3 years time? And to achieve this what must you do now?

We deliberately repeat these questions for different future time horizons to understand extent of brand vision, consensus on brand vision, the urgency and depth of practical details that must be prioritised for the "then" and "now" of brand leadership to intersect.

At the same time, other "do now" questions can be asked : eg to lead with this brand's essence in five years time, what sorts of potential partners should start to be sought now? It is important to clarify action-plans not just within the company but also in terms of networking. An increasing number of corporate processes, eg research and development, cannot be performed to world class standards by one company on its own. In other words, it is vital that an organisation foresees clear boundaries between what its core competences are not, as well as what they are. Meanwhile, proper leadership of the brand's added value chain may require "networking in" some skills that the company does not own, as well as leveraging those which it is excellent at.

In cross-checking the Charter as a living script, we will see that "do nows" may be prompted for specific depth at every "branding junction", ie through the particular focus which each chapter of this book provides. For practice - and because this is the first time that we have introduced the future dynamic fully - let's quickly revisit earlier chapters from a future-orientated perspective.

Chapter 1 - Brand Essence : because essence should be the core connecting message, it is vital to drive out any uncertainties people may have about future changes to a brand's essence. For example, if the view of brand essence for leadership in five years time is thought to be very different from today's brand essence:

1) verbalise the essence of today and the future

2) check to see whether a different verbalisation could connect the two

3) if real differences persist, recognise that this is a branding discontinuity which must be addressed as a strategic priority. An organisational consensus must be achieved on the real causes of this discontinuity, and then plans must be rehearsed as to what will be the best means to break the discontinuity to consumers in the most coherent way. In principle, you must find a communications mechanism which enables consumers to: ·interpret what they used to value in the old essence through the new essence

·feel that the leadership move you have made is in a direction they support

Discussing how competitive and environmental change drivers will create leadership challenges for you to overcome is also an essential part of editing a brand's living script.

Iterative interpreting of a brand's essential future Looking forward and you actually do need to go out to the future and have a look at a few alternative futures and work backwards and see your current brand, what it stands for, what it means, how that stacks up against alternative futures - if you can do that then you actually have a chance of managing the brand successfully to get the future you want. Chris Mole in the BBC for Business video "Branding - the Marketing Advantage"

Chapter 2 - Brand Identity : identity's multifaceted nature makes it one of the most dynamic mechanisms of the brand. Consequently, identifiers are usually the ally of brand news, and from time to time new identifiers may be invested in to be the messengers to the consumer of a changing aspect of the brand. However, there is a lot of execution leverage to be won or lost by timing how you phase identifiers in and out so as to help the consumer interpret brand news in the most pleasingly consistent manner.

Chapter 3 - Brand Heritage/Friendship : the following example indicates why this branding junction should constantly be cross-edited to create future values (in spite of what may at first reading seem to be a conflict of temporal terminology).

Crafting the multi-faceted personality of Levi's Until quite recently, a view prevailed that brand campaigns achieved the most impact by being one dimensional. At the extreme the brand was still conceptualised as a product that was best supported by a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). This did have the virtue of management simplicity, but truly powerful brand organisations now direct personalities with more intriguing breadth and depth. Whilst Levi's has always thought of its friendship with consumers in more broadly empathic terms than purists of the USP school, it is only as the great Levis 501 campaigns have blossomed since the late 1980s that the brand has fully visualised the multifaceted personality it wants to be. Looked at from the consumer viewpoint, Levi's is now offering an a la carte menu of feelings which you may select to wear or to keep in your wardrobe. As the figure below shows, Levi's now has seven dominant character traits. No advertisement can meaningfully portray all of these. So in keeping the Levi's personality fresh and appealing as a youth brand, Levi's marketers and advertising agency Bartle, Bogle, Hegarty keep on choosing a "do now" selection of traits to be embedded in the next commercial in the epic Levi's 501 Serial.

Figure 1 : Levi's Personality traits (rows) triggered by commercials in the campaign series (columns)
	Launderette	Fridge	Parting	Beach	Pawnbroker	Pool Hall	Swimmer	Procession	Creek
Romance			l	l	l
SexualAttraction	l	l	l				l	l	l
PhysicalProwess	l								l
Resource-fulness	l				l	l		l
Rebellion						l	l
Independ-ence				l	l				l
BeingAdmired	l	l	l		l	l

Summary

Be passionate about creating news in the image and product/service reality of the brand. Use this to focus marketing of your added value pathway.

Know that true brand leaders are never afraid to accelerate change. This is the spirit needed to outrun every competitor.

Ask everyone who serves the brand to envision the "then and now" of where you want to be. Create an organisation that foresees competitive and partnership scenarios and takes advantage of changing conventional rules. In the midst of this, keep the faith with the brand's essential meaning:

·as a communicator both internally and externally

·as a creative fountain of knowhow

Turn the process of branding into an organisational instrument for editing the future. Encourage communal curiosity with "do now questions" - eg Do we agree where we want the brand to be in 3 years' time ? How do you interpret what you need to "do now" for us all to achieve this?

Develop a living script which can be acted on as a user-friendly road map highlighting topline news. Go for a one-page script not a bureaucratic tome.

Enjoy living the script as a teamworking community which knows why and how it is dedicated to leading its sphere of business to win for the consumer

Chapter 6 : brand MASTERBRIEFING

Today, any brand process must govern holistically over a selection of media options which is fragmenting and multiplying in an alarming manner (as table 1 shows). Two opening reasons why masterbriefing of a brand process should be important to you involve the obvious and the not-so-obvious:

·with availability of a lot of different media the brand's total impact must-needs to be integrated

·media are not created equal - ie they are capable of making different sorts of contribution to the brand

Table 1 - a neverending choice of media ·advertising spots (television, video, poster, press, radio) appearing in regional, national or international forms ·sponsorship of program material (ranging from "this program is brought to you by..." to advertorials, ie media forms in which the distinction between program content and commercial message is blurred) ·sponsorship of events (eg from global sports to local community festivals) ·celebrity endorsements ·taking a public stand on an issue (eg The Body Shop gained continental fame by being one of the first brands to petition against an EC directive. This related to cosmetics and "animal testing") ·PR ·word-of-mouth ·cosmopolitan visibility, eg through franchised outlets in all the world's most fashionable shopping arcades to being displayed at airports' duty free shops a channel which in itself stimulates jetsetters-word-of-mouth ·own news stages (from owning the media like Disney to creating a media event like Beaujolais' global birthday party) ·being an integral part of world news (eg McDonald's Moscow opening) ·co-branding, ie where two brands share a promotional platform ·corporate identity and brand signage ·your people as media who serve the brand's lifestyle or represent its competence leadership ·packaging design ·sampling (ranging from through letter box, to in somebody else's store, to in your own boutique (eg Haagen-Daz's ice cream parlours) to high traffic locations (eg your capital city's largest railway station) to high visibility places (from first class air cabins to spectators at Prince Charles' last polo match) ·point of sales material ·points of service contact (eg in most banks the most common point of contact has evolved away from the service counter inside the bank to the automated 24-hour cash dispenser outside the bank and will evolve in a future cashless society to ordering from "smart-coded voice-activated in-home banking-menus") ·fashionable product placement eg in films and film stars' wardrobes ·promotional competitions ·a leaflet inside the product packaging ·consumer feedback mechanisms such as free telephone hotlines for dialogue about the brand ·collectors' schemes, loyalty clubs ·one to one direct/database marketing (postal media, computer media, and one day computerised multimedia)etc

It is no easy matter choosing between media forms of such abundance, as the practitioner comments in Table 2 illustrate.

Table 2 : Media and Practice - Extracts from the video "Branding - the Marketing Advantage", from BBC for Business I am constantly bombarded with offers to advertise here, support this, sponsor that. The key focus has to be to know your consumer and how to get at them, but then to say what are the opportunities. Sometimes the new opportunities can be useful because they allow you to get at a discreet segment of that market, more efficiently or more cost-effectively - particularly if it's new and it's keen to get new advertisers on board. (Chris Hobbs, 3M) I guess traditionally it has been very easy for marketers to communicate with their consumers because they've had a series of tools - broadcast television, PR, press etc and those have had extraordinary reach against a broad mass of consumers. The problem is that nowadays consumer groups - and the media they use - are segmenting. It's necessary to talk to them in different ways. (Claire Watson, Haagen-Dazs) A key problem is developing a totally integrated communications mix because different creative suppliers provide these services and historically people have been given briefs at different moments of time and these have not really connected together. It's as if the brand has evolved without a master briefing and you end up with components of the brand in conflict with each other which consumers can see even if their brand marketers can't. (Chris Macrae) As a customer you receive quite a bit of direct mail from us and if you lay out all the pieces of communication across the table, we actually did this exercise, and if you looked at each one, you would say "All these communications look like they come from 20 different companies". And they did. And we were losing impact with the customer...So we said right, we must address this. We've come up with some guidelines and rules for developing a consistent tone of voice and a consistent looking feel for our brand, so now going forward any type of communication we send you looks as if it is coming from American Express. (Russ Shaw, American Express)Most brands including product brands are now more or less service brands and they really have to be delivered, irritatingly, by things that walk around on two legs. It's a human thing, and you know humans have to be motivated in order to keep on performing at a high level. (Chris Mole, Coopers & Lybrand)

As well as the issue of proliferating media, there are other questions like:

- how the costs of playing the game are changing?

- what performance measurements are used to judge the success or failure of particular media investments?

Many people know that the most powerful branding media work on medium term consumer loyalty; many organisations prioritise short-term performance measures which can lead to brand spends that actually demote the brand's command of loyalty. In 1986, David Ogilvy said this. He was referring to a blight in American brand management, but how much of it is even more critically today in markets near you.

"Advertising is going through a bad period. Commercial clutter is worse than ever. The cost of media has ballooned. The cost of commercial production is scandalous. The problem of client conflicts is driving agencies round the bend. Worst of all, the trend to cut advertising budgets in favour of below-the-line deals is out of control. Do you realise what is going on? Manufacturers of package goods are now spending twice as much on below-the-line deals as on advertising. To put it another way, they are sending twice as much on price-cutting as on building brands. Manufacturers are buying volume by price discounting, instead of earning it the old-fashioned way using advertising to build strong brand franchises. Manufacturers are in fact trading consumers to buy on price instead of brand"

So, as well as day to day selection criteria, marketers need to have their own guiding principles on efficient use of media. You increasingly need to get your principles "signed off" by the corporate hierarchy just to steer a consistent course through the high pressure environment and politics of day to day management. Examples:

·The media we choose must add to each other both as an integrated representation of the brand to the consumer and as a leadership mission for employees

·Media effectiveness is not a static thing. The practitioner who takes a pioneer's advantage of a strong new media often gains disproportionately. Then crowds of followers make the novelty of the media or its increasing cost less effective. Often, the pioneer can continue to win from this situation provided privileged terms of access (or even ownership) of the media were negotiated from inception. Medium-term entrepreneurialism in building media does need to be rewarded.

·Strong use of some media involves a greater learning curve than others. "Glocal" marketing organisations pride themselves in transferring media learning experiences. Think of a media as simple as the free-phone consumer feedback loop for a brand's users. This offers the consumer a forum for making suggestions/complaints and receiving advice. The company which has a system for transferring learning experiences across its brands and across different countries can use this media very powerfully. The company which leaves every brand manager to reinvent use of the free-phone is most likely to conclude that this media is ineffective whereas the reality is one of organisational ineffectiveness. Take this a stage further by thinking about the potential connections between free-phone media and interfacing media such as computer administered database clubs. This illustrates why many Charterers believe that integration will be a hallmark of brand organisations of the future with particular regard to:

- investment in overlapping media

- the ways in which people who serve the brand will need to teamwork.

·Media need to be played in different ways for enveloping consumers at different stages of brand experience, eg trial (first ever purchase) versus loyal user rapport

·Good marketing never overlooks the potential of almost-free media before being dazzled by more sexy (and costly) platforms. (This admonition is issued by a CEO of one of the world's foremost branded companies. This is good enough reason for us to illustrate it with a detailed example before we turn to challenges involving more sizable media investments).

Table 3 : Master execution of the humble product leaflet. Inside every pack of King Oscar "Brisling" sardines, you, as consumer, will likely find a leaflet appealing for your loyalty with text like this: Dear Customer: The word "Brisling" is emphasised on the label of the product you have purchased. There are strong reasons for setting "Brisling" apart from other sardines. Facts you should know ·No specific fish is called sardine. The word "sardine" finds its origin from the Mediterranean Isle of Sardinia. There small fish were caught and canned for more than a century. It is only after the small fish are put in a can, packed in oil and hermetically sealed that the fish can take the name : SARDINE. This means that there are a large number of species of fish from many countries offered as sardines. ·However, there are no small fish for packing sardines like Norwegian Brisling. ·Brisling are a member of the Herring family and are caught primarily in the cold, unpolluted ocean waters of the Norwegian Fjords. ·Brisling are caught for packing when they are two years old. this is when the species has reached its mature size and the fat content is exactly right. The Norwegian Government has appointed Federal inspectors who determine when the fish quality reaches its peak. ·Most species used for packing sardines from countries other than Norway are caught before they reach mature sizes (usually 6 to 12 months old). ·Because Brisling are caught when they are older than other sardines, they have time to accumulate fat which is low in "Bad" cholesterol and very high in Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is considered of value in the prevention of heart attacks. ·Once the Brisling are caught, they are kept alive in a purse net for 3 days. During this period, the Brisling digest and naturally rid themselves of stomach contents. This self-cleansing process (Thronging) ensures that there are no "sediments" present in Norwegian sardine products. No other sardine packers use this process. ·Brisling, upon arrival at the cannery, are smoked in large ovens using oak wood. The natural flavour of the smoked Brisling creates a unique taste unlike that of any other sardine product. Sardines from countries other than Norway are either chemically "smoked" or not smoked at all. ·Brisling sardines, packed in Olive Oil, matures in the can just like good wine does in the bottle. This has to do with oil penetrating the flesh of the fish and blending with the fish oil. The Brisling in oil, that has been stored in your cabinet for more than 2 years, may be called vintage. Our many thanks to you for purchasing King Oscar Brisling Sardines. We, at King Oscar, will continue to keep up our high standards and hope for your continuous support, also, please tell a friend. Sincerely,KING OSCAR, INC.

All media are not created equal

This is a very important paragraph (so please consider reading it twice). Media are not created equal - they do different kinds of jobs well. Consequently, if a media becomes less economic - eg as has happened with exorbitant increases in the cost of television advertising over the last 20 years - you cannot just transfer out of it to any other media. Any potential substitute media needs detailed examination to ascertain whether it is capable of doing the same job. More precisely, to be a proper substitute a new media must be capable of making the same distinctive contribution to the integrated collection of media which the brand uses as the media it is due to replace.

Table 4 : Advertising and the power of fame All major advertising media are still - in the original sense - broadcast media. Like the sowers of seeds, they cast their messages very broadly indeed - and the advertiser is left hoping that enough of them fall in the right place to make the whole thing pay for itself. But that is about to change. Within a startlingly short period of time, consumers - real people - will be able to demand and receive any medium, any part of any medium, any brochure, any advertisement that they choose - and it could be an advertisement designed for an audience of one. I believe it to be true that Sheba is one of the successful pioneers of relationship marketing : one-to-one marketing; direct marketing. I believe it to be true that, if my cat is on Sheba's database, on his birthday my cat will get a birthday card. And should I, as the owner, tell Sheba that my cat has unfortunately expired, I will get a small book from Sheba helping me to live with cat grief. And I find it very easy to believe that this form of marketing may be extremely cost-efficient and successful - and many of the new technologies that are speeding our way will help speed the development of relationship marketing. But what about brands? Just about the only thing brands have in common is a kind of fame. If the phrase global brand means anything, it's not that everyone in the world consumes it - or even that everyone in the world could consume it. It's just that everyone in the world has heard about it. Fame lends a curious value to things - and to people. Famous things can be shared, referred to, laughed about. Famous things are, literally, a talking point. We talk about the weather because we know about it, it affects us all, it is a shared experience. Remember the way that Sheba does it - and then think about the way Richard Branson has done it. Not a lot of sophisticated targeting there, it seems to me - but a tremendous amount of sophistication nonetheless, because he's realised (in both senses of that word) the value to Virgin of simple fame. Some from advertising, some from sponsorship, some from stunts and public relations: but a fame so precise and yet so general that it can now add value to music and air travel and vodka and even cola. There's private marketing communication, already important and likely to get more so. And there's public marketing communication, already important and certain to remain so. Public communication through the advertising of a big idea maintains the relevance of brands over very long periods of time. It's big and bold and confident and public: look at BMW, look at British Airways. It creates and maintains the brand warmth we (marketers) consciously borrow every time we launch a brand extension. It delivers now... and next year... and in 10 year's time. It reaches people who will never fly British Airways and people who will never buy a BMW - but whose knowledge and views and opinions are still of immeasurable value, not least to that minority that does fly and does buy.Extracted, and partially edited from a speech by Jeremy Bullmore (November 1994 : speech at the IPA President's Breakfast, Savoy Hotel, London)

What are Direct Marketing's typical capabilities in the middle of the 1990s? Unlike, the broadcasting capabilities of advertising, the forte of Direct Marketing is narrowcasted targeting. It is often an excellent secondary media on occasions such as:

·administering some of the benefits of loyalty clubs aimed at rewarding/understanding the needs of the brand's heavy users

·cultivating opinion leaders during the seeding phase of building a new brand's cachet

·developing niche positions for sub-brands

Direct marketing by mail is unlikely to be capable of being a lead media for most major brands for two reasons which can be fraught with practical misunderstandings:

·First - if a brand, as leading business process, is to have one essential hallmark above all then we would suggest that this is connecting things up rather than targeting. Imagine the consumer viewpoint of a brand which is led by direct marketing :

·I, the consumer, have no idea what brand image my peers will confer on me for using this brand because the "privacy" of direct marketing media means that I do not know what, if any, messages have influenced other people's awareness of the brand.

·And if the brand is a service: I, the consumer, cannot gently nudge the brand's staff towards living up to the culture which eg the brand's advertising has publicly promoted as being it's own essential values

·Moreover, I, the consumer, am not receiving eg advertising's public vote of confidence for my smart choice of brand. ( We late 20th century consumers all subconsciously underestimate how deeply gratifying it can be to see on network television an advertisement for a brand which we have just used in the last few days)

·And so on

·Second - there is a world of difference between a brand which goes public with a smart relationship "democratically guaranteed" to everyone - eg all audiences of the brand : consumers, channels, staff, critics, nations - and one whose relationships are based on billions of individual transactions communicated in private.

·Generally, a direct-marketed brand's private "guarantee" is always going to be worth less to me as a consumer than a company which publicly put its reputation on the line.

·Personally, I, as a 1990s consumer, already feel transactioned to death by direct marketing offers through my letter box. I get up to twenty of them to every one piece of real mail. Am I alone in finding these to be so much more laborious for the individual to compare - let alone dispose of - than mass marketed offers? And knowing what short-term selling pressures can do to managers of mass-communicated brands, I wonder how many more selling pressures will in the future be fed down to me, the consumer, by direct-market branders as computing power makes their offers technically clever with the targeting of special offers.

Today brand marketing seems to be driving across one organisational crossroad after another with yellow lights flashing, and where no tried and trusted route map exists. In the old days of local (not "glocal") competition and sequential (not parallel) change factors, there were safe branding directions to follow and profit from. Even if this was how most 20th century brands worked, those who do not recognise that we are now reaching a fundamental discontinuity in best practices of marketing are at risk of deluding themselves and the organisations they serve.

The risk that companies must now urgently guard against is that of brand marketing becoming the most appallingly disintegrated of business processes. Electing to make direct marketing your brand's main media could be a bridge too far from broadcasting your brand's essential messages to its consumers, or a leap too fast in the evolutionary form of the mid 1990s brand organisation. But as every year changes, marketers must rehearse their own positions on what branding jobs direct marketing can and cannot do because the advice of top level management consultants is that the variety of these media is only just beginning to blossom technologically -just think what multimedia highways may do - and the economies of using these technologies are set to improve dramatically.

Unfortunately, the point that different media do different things well, is often obscured by an industry obsession for converting the reach of one media to another through such simplified measures as gross rating points which attempt to convey how large your audience may have been. It sometimes seems that while the majority who add value in a marketing company know that media buying can never be a precise science, financial or other nerves at the centre of control demand a numerical bottom-line anyway. There is an increasing danger of establishing measures which get out of touch with meaningful human thought processes. Numerical blindness can create ignorance even at such simple levels of media comparability as :

·How attentive were your audience?

·How long did they have to think on your message before another media or programme zaps their minds?

If you as a marketer award yourself the same rating points for putting a piece of junk mail through the door which an adult opens and immediately bins, as beaming a commercial which excites all family members in one communal showing, then your brand's economics is likely to lose its way, and what starts as a careless symptom of this sort can very quickly become a terminal form of illness however famous the brand.

Executional differences also give a lot to play for. Even within an ostensibly simple media as that of sampling through the door, the executional effectiveness between presenting the brand as you normally package it to some messy image-lacking sachet can be of the order of 300% or more. We have seen repeated evidence of this kind from simulated test marketing experiments.

Because aggregate and blunt measures of media performance are a widespread distraction to thoughtfully integrated communications, Brand Charterers often find it worthwhile to convene a workshop which goes back to first principles by debating the "controversy" of :

1) How are media equal or different?

2) "For what" are media equal or different?

3) Whose job is it to integrate the different media used by a brand organisation?

1) How are media equal or different?

To debate this issue, Brand Chartering workshops often begin with two questions:

·What kind of broadcasting jobs need to be done to keep a brand vital - in Ogilvy's famous words "part of the fabric of life" ?

·Which media (marketing mix components) take lead and supporting roles in getting these jobs done?

Assuming that we are considering brands that are intended to have at least a medium-term future, you might like to edit this shortlist of essential jobs involved in broadcasting a brand franchise:

·Keep the brand in the news

·Consistently add real value (by increasing perceived competitive quality)

·Sell more

·Bond smart "2-way" relationships (eg market researcher Max Blackston suggests an appropriate way to probe the depth of a brand relationship with the consumer is discovered by asking not only how she perceives the brand but also what she thinks the brands thinks of her)

Let's consider "brand in the news" - part of the job description for a brand's promotional media first coined by advertising agency man James Webb Young four decades ago, an era when agency and client had more confidence in continuity and integration of creative thinking. Table 5 lists some of the interpersonal newslines that James valued in assessing the strength of an execution and a media employed by a brand. (Recollecting times when a brand seems to have had a "buzz" of its own, please add to this list other manifestations of "brand in the news" which come to mind.)

Table 5 : Some debatable answers on how "being in the news" works for a mass market brand •Convey a popular image of the brand (ie one that a consumer expects everyone to see in the brand) •Make a declaration in public, eg a guarantee which the brand will live up to •Applaud loyal consumers (most consumers like to see their brand in the news, and -apparently- winning against competitive brands) •Make news items that are reported by journalists •Make a brand into a celebrity whose consumption transfers some of its celebrity status •Capture and symbolise a mood of the times •Establish the brand as a reference point, against which other brands are compared by critics and public •Make brand a topic of social conversation •Make brand famous and endorsed by opinion leaders•Motivating employees

Continue the debate with:-

Which components of the marketing mix can play a lead role in endeavours aimed at newsworthy branding?

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Table 6 - some debatable answers on which media can play a lead role in making the essence of a brand "newsworthy" In this table, <reference is to Benchmarking of named brands in ThinkPiece 1>·Advertising can. <Gillette, British Airways for transnational broadcasting; Benetton or Haagen-Dazs for transnational "word-of-mouth">·Packaging and design can. <Nestle> ·Developing your own retail or display channel can. <Body Shop> ·PR and world-staging can. <McDonald's, Weight Watchers>·"Brand Seeding" can. <Haagen-Dazs> ·Price-cutting cannot. ·Promotional competitions cannot (unless they are intimately linked to the brand's essence) ·Direct marketing through mail shots cannot? And so on.

Next : if you wish to explore the "how" dynamics of brand communications further : construct a matrix analysis by:

·putting other short-listed branding jobs to be done across the page

·putting types of media mix down the page

·ticking off which types of media playing leading roles for which jobs

For example, before Haagen-Dazs mass markets in any new country, it dedicates its branding communications to establishing a super-premium fashion platform. The columns in the table below show the kinds of jobs to be done if a Haute Couture -"seeding" platform is to be secured. Many of these have been crafted into the introduction of Haagen-Dazs to new countries with considerable flair. By working back from a choice of key jobs to be done, a masterbriefing plan for seeding a brand amongst opinion a minimum critical mass of opinion leaders takes shape.

How to create a fashion out of my product
How to become newsworthy·High visibility ·Free publicity ·International·Journalist's favourite	How to be seen as desirable·Opinion leaders ·Success to success ·Showcase distribution ·Premium prices ·Hard to get?·Sexy?	How to get other people to create the identity for you·Legends ·Endorsements ·Visible consumption ·Unique point of sales ·Jetsetters' word of mouth ·Great photographic images ·Great logo	How to get people to try it·Sampling ·New distributor ·Line targeting urgent/impulsive need ·Gifting vehicles	How to move from country of strength·Borrow national identity ·"Seed" local desire for world's favourite ·Offer exclusive premieres to partners·Create jetsetting media/stages	How to spread the gospel of the world's number 1·Be the ambassador of the product category ·Offer sneak previews to VIP audiences ·Lead on quality/service commitments - globally & locally·Heroise products' unique positive qualities

In chapter 3, we saw that the combination of media used in the seeding of a new brand is very different from that for a classic brand launch relying on a heavy burst of television advertising. Interestingly, most successful "seeders" confirm that if mass advertising is employed too early - before the cachet has been cultivated amongst a minimum critical mass of opinion leaders - the brand's opportunity to win a haute couture image is likely to be lost for ever.

By now, we hope you have a picture of why the "how are media equal or different" debate is both thought-provoking and valuable.

2) "For what" are media equal or different?

All good marketing decisions are context specific. Checkout typical "for what" questions which you can then fine-tune and extend to your own business environments:

a) For what product categories?

The simplest point is sometimes the easiest to overlook. It is very unlikely that the most successful media combination for a brilliant clothing catalogue will also be the best integrated media model for a fast moving consumer good (fmcg) at low unit price such as a Mars bar. (For an example of what can happen when an fmcg company is instantly converted from an advertising-led to a direct-marketing led model, see the case study on Heinz UK in Chapter 11.)

b) For what countries?

If your brand is to compete in international markets, then another "obvious" point is that there are very different media economies and impacts across countries. A masterbriefing should have a primary model of how integrated media work for the brand but this must also be thoughtfully edited by country. For example what different point of sales support will your brand organisation need:

·in a country like the UK where grocery channels are dominated by a handful of supermarket retail chains who have their own selective agendas about which outsider brands to stock in addition to their own labels

·in much of South East Asia where retailers are often happy to stock precisely one facing of every available branded line

If necessary, various primary models of working an international brand will need to be kept up and running with an aim to converge them as countries marketing environments converge. Of course the most powerful brands tend to be those who dare to seize the initiative with a primary model which innovates a new broadcasting form. As of 1995, Gillette's integrated communications still provides an outstanding example of satellite television led promotion. The format of these advertisements is unlikely to win prizes for creative brilliance and it is conceivable that cosmopolitan consumer boredom would set in if too many other companies clone Gillette's satellite modus operandi. But we should note that Gillette is currently exploiting the benefits of having innovated a cost-effective communications package and moreover that much of satellite television staple programming eg sports, pop cultures - and corresponding audiences - suit the products represented by the domain of the Gillette brand. (see xxx brand benchmarking Gillette)

c) For what goals? And how do these vary by levels and leagues of branding?

Management goals and communications practices must vary by levels and leagues of branding which are classified in detail in Chapter 11. The communications mix for a short-term faddish product is likely to be very different from a banner or corporate brand which strategically connects up a substantial number of products and a significant proportion of corporate goodwill.

d) For what operating dimensions of an integrated branding model?

When a business team adopts an integrated view of the brand process as being all those vital relationships which develop through organisation of a complete business system and service mission, it is appropriate to try to clarify operating dimensions of the communications process. We believe that business teams should brainstorm their own customised terms of reference. As an example, one classification suggested by McKinsey's includes four principal elements:

·The breadth of communications from approaches that are mainly mass media to those that are propagated by one to one means such as direct mail

·The loyalty of the required relationship which could range form monogamous to polygamous.

·The basis for trust, varying from simple faith in a tried or true product to clear logic as to why the selling proposition works.

·The complexity of the value chain in which a product or service could be fully integrated, or, alternatively, completely unbundled.

e) For what competence building skills?

It is also valid to argue that some of your brands must be used as testbeds for your company's people to be sure of being suitably far advanced down specific learning curves associated with major new media. As with any competence building investment, we advise that business teams exercise caution as to whether a competence which may faddishly be labelled as a direct lane on a future highway is what it claims, or merely a diversion. For example, it is not evident to us that the skills of excellence involved in postal direct mailing will have much in common with skills of excellence in those not so far off days when most households no longer own a television but a computerised interface to a multimedia highways none of whose facets resembles the passive (ie non-audience interactive) programming of old. Moreover, the technology and information for multimedia leadership is far more likely to be resourced by partnerships of companies than by every company inventing its own database of consumer addresses.

3) Whose job is it to integrate the different media used by a brand organisation?

The organisational challenges of (re)creating environments in which integrated brand marketing flourishes should not be underestimated. Political inertias will surround brands as sources of power within the organisation unless corporate leaders insist on a different kind of managerial dynamic.

Table 7 : In the place of 8 branding fiefdoms, First Choice is born In the summer of 1994, there was notable applause in The UK's business press for Francis Baron of travel business First Choice (né Owners Abroad). His stewardship was regarded as remarkable because of dramatic gains made in the direction of integrated branding. His company's had come to the brink of a marketing crisis - eight brands were too many for an industry leader - it meant that his company's advertising pot was split into half-million pound dollops whereas the leading competitors were Thomson's(£7.5m) and Airtours'(£4.1m). In a frenetic 12 week integration program : Francis appointed different agencies - eg advertising, corporate identity, and consumer PR - and got them working together. Says one of the agency heads: "Francis exhibited unusual skill giving each agency clear responsibilities and strict deadlines - there wasn't time for the political manoeuvring that you sometimes get in these circumstances". Says Francis: "I had made it clear at all agency pitches that their managing director had to be account director...Part of their job was to go back to their agencies and rally the ranks if some of their ideas weren't chosen".

Key organisational questions to ask when evaluating whether a brand's communications are fully integrated include:

·Is there a masterbrief from which all creative agencies are currently working?

·Does the brand team have a share in Brand Chartering, or something similar, so that medium-term goals of the brand as business process are agreed and verifiable by all? ·What safeguards are built-in so that tensions between a brand's short-term performance and medium-term development are properly balanced?

·Who is accountable for the whole brand process? Does (s)he have the continuous power to deal at least as an equal with the politics governing the company's processes and manifest in its functional hierarchy? If the company is international, does the company's global/local marketing theory work in practice?

·How do media and service commitments interact in a brand organisation?

For some special insights regarding the latter question, we have collated some of the experiences which Sim Kay Wee of Singapore Airlines has illuminated during interviews for the BBC for Business video.

Table 8 : Some Components of Brand Service Organisation of Singapore Airlines The Singapore Girl has been the theme of the company's advertising for more than 20 years. She's "our icon". She portrays the kind of image we want, and the quality of service that we give. And we are very proud of her. The most important thing about training is that you don't just focus on technical training, but the softer aspects too. For example you can train a stewardess to pour a cup of coffee for a passenger. The technical aspects of that are to make sure it doesn't spill, the cup is in the right position and all that. But we add to that soft training which is about attitude - a warmth, a friendliness, the anticipation behind pouring that cup of coffee.,, In addition, you've got to recognise your staff. Every year our managing director gives out awards for staff who go out of their way to serve passengers and make sure that passengers are delighted. It's no good just being good at training your staff or just giving good in flight service, all these things must happen simultaneously. It is doing things in a coordinated whole, so the value to a customer is compounded and he gets an entire package. We participate in a lot of frequent flyer programmes like with British Airways and Swiss Air etc, but that is really buying loyalty. You buy the loyalty by giving travel mileages for passengers. We also think it's important to have the loyalty of the passenger so that he appreciates what you do for him. That's why we have our PPS - Priority Passenger Service - scheme. We collect data on these passengers, so for example, we know not that he is a whisky drinker, but which is his brand and we make sure he gets it in his hand before he even asks for it. The ideal point is reached when the passenger's hobbies or needs are satisfied. For example if you have a passenger that likes gardening he will get his favourite gardening magazine that he normally reads so that he will not miss out on an issue while he travels. And I think the ultimate will be reached when on his next visit to Singapore you get the Director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens which is world famous to bring him around personally to the Orchid enclosure for example, so I think this is what we are talking about when we say exclusive service.

Summary

The next few years will present fundamental discontinuities in the opportunities and risks of media economies the like of which brands have not experienced since the beginning of our televisual era of broadcasting. For example, in multimedia for channels and media will soon begin to overlap in ways that we today can only begin to imagine.

Winning brand organisations will:

·flexibly develop combinatorially suitable patterns of media for specific brand processes

·ensure that they have developed a masterbriefing capability which is up-to-date and tailored to the essence and level of a specific brand's role within the organisation

Masterbriefing frameworks should also be used to facilitate brand learning across an organisation's market-facing business teams - both globally and locally.

The communications and service integrity of brand leadership should be one and the same process.

Integrated marketing of customer relationships is the future name of the branding game, but do not promote a media's creative supplier to your brand's lead role just because this slogan is banded around. Require that the supplier justifies how the quality of their communications/creativity will support integrated brand organisation both in its internal and external manifestations.

As a first approach towards these ends, we have suggested a framework for exploring "how" and "for what" jobs specific medias may be deemed equal or different.

For an agenda of a Masterbriefing workshop, please refer to ThinkPiece 2.