Confluence

Vinjamuri's People

If, like me, you’re a fan of good business writing and you’re interested in entrepreneurial brands, I can recommend a book that you will almost certainly like.

In Accidental Branding: How Ordinary People Build Extraordinary Brands, David Vinjamuri profiles eight entrepreneurs—some you may have heard of, others not. The business owners that Vinjamuri covers all share one dominant attribute: a passion for the quality and customer ‘fit’ of their products.

Most worked for years to refine their small business brands before they hit it big or, in the case of J. Peterman, hit it big, lost it big, and then slowly rebuilt it. It’s refreshing, by the way, to meet seasoned entrepreneurs in their seventies and eighties, like Peterman, Gert Boyle (Columbia Sportswear), and Roxanne Quimby (Burt’s Bees). No sleek airbrushed cover-girl CEOs a la Fast Company magazine here.

Happily for the book, Vinjamuri doesn’t just sit back and analyze the elements that make for business and branding success. He injects himself, and his voice, into the narratives, recounting his visits to the subjects and allowing them, at critical moments, to tell parts of their creation tales in their own voices. Throughout he exhibits the born writer’s eye for revealing detail. We experience not just how these not-so-ordinary entrepreneurs think, but how and where they live and work.

Ultimately, Accidental Branding is all about story elements, both in the brands themselves and in Vinjamuri’s approach to his topic. Every brand needs a story, and Vinjamuri gives us some superb examples to ponder and retell.

Six keys to value branding

Brand practice is an evolving discipline, and many of its dominant approaches today diverge significantly from those of traditional branding, which had more to do with features and metrics than the intrinsic value (and values) of a company or institution.

Here are six of the guiding principles behind the increasingly prevalent approach of value branding.

1. Compelling brands are anchored in living brand communities.

Call them stakeholders, brand evangelists, or whatever, but opt-in communities of real people inspire a value brand’s power and reach. These folks feel proud to incorporate the brand’s attitude into their own public identities. Consider Apple Computer (a no-brainer) but also NASCAR, which in itself has become a magnet for scores of consumer brands [Coke, KFC, Lowe’s, Sprint Nextel, Office Depot, Harlequin Publishing(!), Best Western, and Nationwide Insurance, among others], all determined to thrive in its social orbit.

2. Value brand communities co-create brand value (and the brand experience).

The ad hoc social networks formed by NASCAR enthusiasts are  powerful forces for brand contagion. Fueled by collective energies like these, successful value brands seem to take on lives of their own, beyond the control of their corporate birth parents. Disney--considered in the full range of its offerings, from theme parks to Hannah Montana--is a telling case in point. So are Girl Scout Cookies, a co-created brand phenomenon that we’ve discussed here before (“You can’t hide from this Cookie Monster”).

[For insights from the business theorist who defined the concept of value co-creation, check out C.K. Prahalad.]

3. Themes and narratives, not “messages”, spur the growth of value brand communities.

Political strategists may soil themselves when their candidates wander “off message”, but this manipulative approach has no place in value branding. By framing themes (often expansive big-idea extensions of the brand’s values), organizations invite their brand communities to move in imaginative and/or inspiring directions beyond the strictly practical scope of the brand’s offerings. Take Nike, with its seemingly ageless Just Do It theme. Johnson & Johnson’s Campaign for Nursing’s Future is another great example. A related technique incorporates concrete narrative energy through case studies and user-submitted stories.

4. The authenticity of the brand experience is a key driver, with reasoned, logical persuasion playing a supporting role.

Small- to mid-sized organizations often limit their reach by striding down the left-brain path, i.e., by framing rigid value propositions that embody only the practical advantages of their offerings. This tack may seem to them to work well enough, but it ignores the communal dimension, meaning their stakeholders’ collective inclination to respond to imaginative appeals and concrete cases of real people in action. Narrative engagement is one approach that can help here. See Hitachi’s brilliantly evocative video True Stories (now happily supported by a full-scale print media campaign), Cadillac’s celebrity recollections, and Canadian Club’s nostalgic and funny re-branding campaign.

5.  Value brands build communities through word-of-mouth (WOM) transmission.

Two words: Starbucks and Oprah. The Starbucks phenomenon has largely spread through WOM boosted by the ubiquity of Starbucks outlets. Oprah’s mindshare empire has sprung from the same communal co-creative impulse, though seeded arguably by her daytime TV exposure. Viral video, if originated within a brand community, can be another vector of brand contagion.

6. If a corporate brand is the yin, its corresponding Talent Brand is the yang.

I want to address this widely under-appreciated point in my next post, but for now let’s leave it at this: an enterprise today rises and falls on the strengths and enthusiasms of its workforce. Calling this approach “employer branding” misses the point by minimizing the marketplace value of an organization’s human capital resource, which should be a fully-engaged brand community in all the respects we’ve enumerated above.

Disruptive advertising can mean quick, if expensive, consumer mindshare

Some brands aim to build communities through aggressive non-sequiturs--by working off an image, association, or icon that carries no value content other than the intent to disrupt our conventional expectations. This can be spectacularly effective, fixing the brand in memory with compelling vitality and a dose of wry, self-aware humor.

The Geico gecko, of course, is today’s leading exemplar of a disruptive icon that has already entered the pop-cultural mainstream. AFLAC’s duck is another surrealist party-crasher with no apparent connection to the sponsor’s offering. Rewind into mid-century brand mascot practice and you’ll find this disruptive approach’s more literal ancestors—among them Smokey the Bear, the Jolly Green Giant, and Charley the Tuna, all of which, however, bore some declared connection, if only in "toon" logic, to the sponsor’s selling proposition. Gecko and duck are postmodern, tongue-in-cheek expressions of this inherently silly lineage.

And similar disruptive impulses are showing up in other guises that don’t follow the goofy brand mascot archetype. Take the incessant barrage from the folks that bring us the Head-On family of topical analgesics. The spots, which have been running for a year or more, have apparently boosted sales by triggering product familiarity through annoyance.

Is the path these companies take any way to build a resonant and trusted brand? They overturn our late 20^th century certainty that a commercial should entertain…or at least engage us in a palatable and informative way. Like Letterman and Colbert, they’re ironic in intent and effect, and they never let the mask slip.

In yet another manifestation of this disruptive, convention-exploding approach, Old Mutual, an old line British financial services company, has been tweaking us with otherwise true-to-life TV vignettes where characters invoke the name of the company as an all-purpose descriptor for widely varying motivations, states-of-mind, and reactions to events. For the petulant ‘tweens, street musicians, upscale shoppers, commuters, and museum goers depicted in the spots, “Old Mutual” is the catch-all adjective that describes it all. You can watch the spots here.

All these examples aim to build brand recognition and word-of-mouth contagion. And of course they connect only remotely to the underlying value that their respective brands represent. Even so, their strong dose of disruptive “attitude” is proving to be a quick, if media-expensive, shortcut to consumer familiarity and share-of-mind.

Three steps that will make your Value Brand come alive

If there’s a fundamental principle governing how our consulting team works with client-partners, it’s this: all organizations that operate in the public eye have brands, whether they have intentionally shaped them or not.

More than just a logo and slogan, your brand has taken shape organically from your product and/or service track record, from your activities and business practices, and from the impressions your stakeholders take away from their interactions with you and your team. Physical “artifacts” that represent your value (like your Web presence and print publications) are important contributors, but not the sole source of your perceived value.

Stated simply, your brand is embodied in the respect and admiration you inspire in the communities you serve. That’s a bit more than saying it’s governed by the quality of your products and/or services, and intentionally so. To assume that your present "image" stems only from intellectual constructs and practical product value is to miss the big picture. Because your brand is rooted in your organization’s real-world relationships of value, there are impressions, intuitions, and felt associations caught up there as well. To neglect these right-brain factors—or to dismiss their high value in refining a resonant and authentic brand—is to take your intellectual value proposition only part of the way to its real potential.

We’ve come up with three guiding principles for brand outreach that can help any organization leverage the Value Platform behind its current brand,and engage/deepen its brand communities effectively.

1. Broaden the frame. Portray your offering as an ideal that’s much bigger than its purely practical, utilitarian value to customers. Nike provides a great example of this bigger idea approach; you can view the company’s most recent TV spot here [Download itsnotabouttheshoes.mov ]. Note the uncredited MJ voice-over.

2. Appeal to the imagination. When you highlight your value, appeal to right-brain triggers in the brand communities you address—not just their practical and logical left-brain mental faculties. This doesn’t mean you should go after tear-jerk or flag-waving responses, but you will want to inspire the imaginations of your stakeholders. Examples: TV spots from two familiar insurance companies. I’m embedding one (Liberty Mutual) and linking the other set (Nationwide) at the end of this post.

3. Anchor a community. Position your organization as the center of a vibrant community of stakeholders that interact with you to co-create the value and values that empower your brand. We’ll be discussing this element in the weeks and months to come. For a good example of how a company personifies this attribute, consider Justin Long’s MAC-guy in Apple’s “MAC vs PC” campaign. Starbucks, especially in its untroubled heyday, is a pure example of a co-created brand community.

LIBERTY MUTUAL: “Responsibility” [below]. Note also how this spot broadens the frame with a bigger idea emphasis.

   ...and here's the link to Nationwide's "Life comes at you fast" series. (The earlier Kevin Federline spot is here.))

A skin flick from Vaseline

I still see Dow Chemical’s inspiring The Human Element spot from time to time on commercial TV. You may recall that we discussed this piece several months ago (“Branding the human factor,” June 7, 2007), pointing to this gorgeously produced commercial as an example of branding a bigger idea. As we’ve said before, this big picture approach means elevating the value proposition well above the utilitarian benefits offered by a company’s offerings (and even, as in the Dow case, applying a little misdirection with regard to corporate shortcomings).

Now Vaseline has jumped into this value branding game with an evocative and beautifully produced spot called A Sea of Skin. It’s an encomium to the familiar human organ that has been the company’s specialty since its origins in the 19^th century. Watch it here.

Sea of Skin’s stylistic parallels to the Dow piece (still available on You Tube) are legion, from its art for art’s sake flavor to its final-frame reveal of the sponsoring brand. What’s more, if you adjust for documentary ambitions and longer format requirements, both of these big picture videos are not unlike Hitachi’s customer showcase pieces (“Big-idea brands bank on the right brain's response,” Confluence, September 14, 2007).

For some of you all this may seem like little more than a new wrinkle on what we used to call “image advertising”. But that doesn’t do these brand innovations justice. As before, they certainly do intend to enrich the viewer’s respect and admiration for the brand, but the emergence of digital video and Internet communication have changed the game significantly. On the other hand, let’s not just say they’re “viral”, and then close the case.

They’re fundamentally different from user-originated virals like the Diet Coke-Mentos and Tay Sonday’s stuff. Even so, engaging You Tube pieces like these have surely opened the way for professionally-produced virals by altering customary TV-viewer mindsets and expectations in online communities.

But I think we’re seeing a new engagement medium develop here. It may not go far, but it’s vastly different in spirit, tone, and production values from user-produced virals, and it’s fascinating to track as it evolves. Most importantly, there are lessons to be learned here for any organization interested in exploring value branding.

Big-idea brands bank on the right brain's response

We often toss around catchphrases like “brand a bigger idea” in this space. This convenient formula simply means connecting the perceived value of your offerings to more evocative and inspirational themes than their direct or utilitarian advantages would immediately suggest.

A few examples: the feel-good associations of Girl Scout cookies (and their let’s-do-a-show-in-the-barn approaches to sales and delivery), De Beers’ 60-year-old “A diamond is forever” campaign, and Lockheed-Martin’s gently nationalistic brand personality (“We never forget who we’re working for”).

But whatever the thematic territory that “big-idea” brands like these stake out, they invariably work on our right-brain triggers, invoking emotion, nostalgia, or inspiration, often with only enough left-brain logic to lubricate the story engine behind the brand.

Japanese electronics giant Hitachi has given us a fascinating case study in big-idea branding, posting a handful of long-form, beautifully produced video pieces on its web site. Each is several minutes long, and each gracefully highlights the inspiring results that Hitachi’s work has brought about in select stakeholder communities.

This is value branding at its best. And it’s also an expensive leap of faith into media delivery on the Web. I encourage you to stream the example I’ve embedded below. It’s well worth your time, not to mention a little thinking about what it sets out to do and how well it succeeds in getting there.

It’s an open question whether these high-concept mini-documentaries, online since late 2006, will realize a return that justifies Hitachi’s investment. I’m guessing that, like high-end image campaigns everywhere, it has triggered an ongoing right brain-left brain schism among internal factions at Hitachi.

Personality Branding: communities thrive around celebrity “values”

[1 of 2]

We’ve recently discussed how larger-than-life types, like the Miss America of bygone years, can become highly charged brand anchors. Personality branding is a more familiar variation on this pattern. Here an individual celebrity, either spontaneously or through a sponsor’s paid endorsement strategy, becomes the focal point of a brand community.

[For the moment, let’s defer discussing what Tom Peters termed “the Brand Called You”, AKA personal branding, that teeming sub-category of the self-help publishing industry.]

Personality (or celebrity) branding operates across a far-flung landscape. Although for simplicity’s sake we omit it from our Confluence schematic at Brand Vistas’ web site, a dose of celebrity branding can add social network momentum to the brand, provided the celebrity convincingly shares the values and aspirations of the brand community.

On the commercial side, think Nike and Michael Jordan, or even Halle Berry and Revlon, where the personal beauty Ms. Berry represents are certainly common aspirations in the social networks Revlon is addressing.

[Go here for a visual overview of Revlon’s recent use of celebrity branding in its print ads. And as long as we’re veering so dangerously into the didactic realm here, compare and contrast the Dove Real Beauty campaign we’ve discussed previously in this web log.]

Even business-to-business branding can benefit from celebrity endorsements, as this Tiger Woods ad indicates.

Note also how consulting firm Accenture, the sponsor, establishes a credible bridge between the values that Tiger’s brand community would endorse and the values that Accenture is promoting as hallmarks of its paid services in the business community.

 As we all know, the value linkage between celebrity endorser and sponsor is not always so seamless. If you’re interested in our quick overview of the celebrity branding landscape today, read the continuation post, which follows immediately.

Celebrities can anchor brand communities

[2 of 2]

Celebrity branding spans a diverse spectrum. Here are a few of the most common types of celebrity brands you’ll encounter.

+ A company signs a celebrity to endorse its products or services. The risk here: the celebrity will cease to embody the values behind the brand. Recent cases: Lindsay Lohan ( Proactiv), Michael Vick (Nike and Reebok).

+ A celebrity becomes a vibrant brand anchor independently of a commercial sponsor, generally through the social networks their personality and perceived values attract. Oprah is probably the best example of this; she re-invests the community energy she inspires in her brand platform (primarily her network show and magazine), and not in more overtly recognizable commercial offerings. Her charitable efforts are seen as authentic expressions of the Oprah brand.

+ Other celebrities, like George Foreman, channel their social capital into wholly commercial endeavors organized and run by other companies but functioning publicly under their names.

+ Certain public figures attempt to build profitable retail empires through a house of brands approach. Most strident among these: Donald Trump, who has unleashed a torrent of lifestyle brands in the presumption that buyers will flock to furnishings, menswear, and vodka, among other commodities, that are marketed under his name.

+ Charitable causes, or the public-interest interest units of trade associations, enlist sympathetic celebrities to lend their prestige and social network support to the cause or the pro-bono activities of the sponsor. Examples: the seemingly ageless Got milk? campaign, or Montel Williams’ work for the Partnership for Prescription Assistance.

+ Many celebrities are sincerely engaged in charitable work, and the community support they inspire creates “cause” brands that they effectively own. Lance Armstrong’s LiveStrong Foundation is a prominent example today. St. Jude’s Childrens’ Research Hospital, founded by 50s-era actor-comedian Danny Thomas and carried forward by his daughter Marlo, is another long-standing exemplar.

 + Even governments and NGOs have learned how to trade on the power of celebrity brands. Consider the UN and Angelina Jolie, and the State Department’s recent elevation of baseball ironman Cal Ripken, Jr., to roving ambassador.

Selected links…
Lohan-Proactiv (video)
Got Milk? (backstory)
Montel Williams (announcement)
LiveStrong (web)
LiveStrong Challenge (video)
St. Jude’s Childrens’ Research Hospital (web)
Angelina Jolie (UN web)
Cal Ripken (Voice of America announcement)

Branding the human factor

The Dow Chemical Company has been running a new brand campaign for a little over a year now. It highlights the “human element” in our world, a punning allusion to the firm’s core expertise in applied chemistry, coupled with its declared commitment to the human spirit that animates our planet. The company is dedicated, says Chairman/CEO Andrew Liveris on the Dow web, “[to] solving the world's most pressing problems with a spirit of fearless accountability, not just for our own footprint on the planet, but the collective footprint we make as part of the human family.”

You’ll find the keystone TV ad in the Dow campaign on YouTube. It’s beautifully shot, edited, and written. In a word, the spot embodies all the advice we at Brand Vistas give our clients, and especially the tenet to brand a ‘bigger’ idea than your offering’s baseline utilitarian value to its stakeholders. In other words, frame your work to inspire your stakeholders with a collective ideal or uplifting focal point, even if you're exclusively B2B.

But global B2B giant Dow has baggage. And wafting through all the online ooohs and ahs about  the TV spot’s artistry is a persistent counterpoint of shrill outrage for Dow’s past abuses of people and the environment and, as some asserted, its sheer hubris in trying to reposition itself as if its past never happened. Go here for a taste of the backlash.

The lesson: your brand has to be anchored in authentic, felt values to take root. Just asserting your bona fides and adding a music track doesn’t infuse them with brand magic.

For an illuminating example that sounds similar human interest themes, check out Cisco’s “Human Network” campaign. Once you’re on the microsite, select Multimedia in the horizontal menu and play any or all of the items under the Video category. They’re great spots that highlight uplifting and appropriately scaled connections between individuals in a global society. Cisco, provider of networking hardware, is certainly branding a bigger idea here, and the company wears this revitalized brand with true distinction. Cisco has consistently demonstrated its good will and admirable corporate citizenship since its founding in 1984.

A brilliantly executed notion from an admirable company.

“3 tonnes of meatballs”

SKF’s branding campaign caught my attention with its engaging print ads that are currently running in the business magazines. The company, a Sweden-based industrial manufacturer, is trumpeting “The Power of Knowledge Engineering”, a direct invocation of the high value of know-how in business. I think it’s noteworthy because SKF is hardcore B2B in its operations, offering bearings, seals, “mechatronics”, lubrication systems, and a raft of other arcane services.

Check out the SKF web for an impressive (though not all that interactive) rich-media site that attempts to reach beyond industrial brand communities to engage the interest of informed publics. Its sections on SKF’s international Gothia Cup, a grassroots soccer competition, and its maritime history features contain very polished and compelling video and multimedia info-graphics throughout.

Still, I have a beef.

If you go to the section of the SKF web that covers Knowledge Engineering, you'll find seven areas of innovation and expertise highlighted. As in the print ad series, each area is fronted by a competent-looking individual whom we’re meant to take as an SKF knowledge star. But nowhere in the web feature (or in the print ads, for that matter) do we find these folks identified and linked to actual jobs at SKF. Could they be models? If so, it strikes me as a breach of authenticity and a bad-faith lapse into yesterday’s manipulative, make-believe branding practices.

In fact, the only team members introduced by name at SKF.com—and this in the excellent Gothia Cup video, from which I’ve borrowed the title of this post—are CEO Tom Johnstone and Sofia Bengtsson, who is identified as Project Leader for Gothia Cup partnerships. I figure Mr. Johnstone, an earnest-appearing Scotsman, is the real deal…and, idealist that I am, I’d like to think that the eloquent Ms. Bengtsson is more than a hired spokesmodel.