Confluence

This Bud's for all of us

Like many folks, the impending acquisition of Anheuser-Busch by Belgian-Brazilian multinational InBev has given me pause. Not so much, however, for its potential threat to American jobs, but primarily because the Bud brand, and its advertising, has been so much a part of our popular culture. I worry just a little that InBev, historically so cautious in spending to promote its products, will cut back on Budweiser’s advertising budget. And that could be a loss, my friends, depending on how severely it deprives us of something that’s both frivolous and uniquely admirable.

Call me a pop-culture yahoo or pop-culture egghead if you want (both apply), but I admire the Budweiser brand’s distinctive imprint on Americana, particularly on the entertainment side of professional sports in the last few decades. Sure we can imagine the Super Bowl without those ubiquitous Budweiser spots, but I’m already missing them because---I guess--I expect the worst.

Bud and its ad agencies have given us more than our share of playful and iconic brand emblems, from Clydesdales and Dalmatians to goofy frogs to the “whassup” clan. I’m not a sports junkie by any means, and even less of a beer drinker, but I’m hoping--with a fervor that honestly surprises me--that InBev will honor the Budweiser brand outreach tradition.

For some brands, it's about trusting the tale, not the teller

If you’re interested in how certain brands take on personalities of their own beyond their framers’ intent--or in the self-conscious denial of any intent at all--a recently published book deserves your attention. Buying In: the Secret Dialogue between What We Buy and Who We Are, by Rob Walker, examines how certain brands come to embody what we say to ourselves about ourselves, but with no apparent acknowledgement of a surrounding brand community of any sort. In other words, individuals embrace many of these brands with no conscious pretension to belonging, seemingly because the brand has individual meaning for them alone. Or so they think.

 All this may seem to run counter to the proposition that brand contagion is fueled by social networks. But the examples Walker cites don’t diverge all that much from this model. And while he’s a little snarky about notions like co-creation, that turns out to be pretty much the phenomenon he’s examining. Many of his keystone cases--Converse sneakers, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and Timberland boots among hip-hop devotees—are brands that have prospered through diffusion force fields that are, at least initially, invisible to the “commercial persuaders” behind the brand.

And all of them, paradoxically, seem to emerge from a distinctive peer-to-peer energy that is militantly brand-averse, a kind of anti-matter in the branding universe detectable only through its effects. Clearly we’re not in the realm of mass market brands here. Still, Walker’s take on brand contagion--not to mention his vivid coverage of the individual entrepreneurs and early adopters behind the brands—make this a most valuable read for anyone, and especially for “commercial persuaders.”

Battle of the brands, cable news style

Watch a little election analysis and you’ve likely noticed how the vocabulary of branding has infiltrated the commentary of the talking head crowd. For the CNN and MSNBC commentariat in particular, the word “brand” has become a formula and a fashion. It’s the “Republican brand” this and the “Obama brand” that, et cetera and so on.

It’s not that they’re getting the underlying mechanism of brand equity wrong. Quite the contrary. The major parties and candidates do anchor distinctive constellations of values, perceived strengths, and associations that attract communities of loyalists and spread their influence by word of mouth.

But for those of us who deal in these social and business phenomena regularly, this is old news. Even so, I think there’s a lesson here. The vigor with which the on-camera experts (and party surrogates) have flocked to these terms of art as if they were remarkably fresh and insightful bears out how memes (even concepts that are pretty standard in other communities) can spread with eureka! enthusiasm among cohesive social networks.

 Make no mistake: for all its internal differences in political stance and affiliation, the fraternity-sorority of talking heads is a full-fledged social network. Not an entirely closed one of course, but one with enough commonality of focus, go-to sources of information, and ritualized habits of inter-communication to qualify as soc-nets as surely as the more self-consciously fervent communities of Harley owners, Sam Adams drinkers, and PETA members.

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.

We never tire of kidvertising

I discussed the potential brand resonance of pre-school graduation ceremonies in a May 23 post. Working all this through started me thinking about the comic potential we find in situations where kids are portrayed as miniature adults, complete with adult attitudinal baggage and pretensions. Filmmakers have mined this vein for years, and well before the spate of age-reversal comedies of the last few decades.   

I wanted to share one of my favorite examples of disruptive advertising that work off this premise. It’s an e-Trade spot from this year’s Super Bowl; so you may know it already.

If you're interested, I comment on disruptive advertising in a bit more detail in Disruptive advertising can mean quick, if expensive, consumer mindshare, a post from January 15, 2008.

Caps, gowns, and the space-time continuum

In a Facebook update the other day, a friend writes that he …

    …is going to a cap and gown graduation today ... for my preschooler.

Contemplating the scene my friend conjures may set you to grumbling about gimmicky consumerism or the competitive excesses of private day care facilities. Or maybe you view these too-cute tot ceremonials as charming, amusing, bemusing, harmless, or all of the above.

Whatever your viewpoint, these occasions make solid business sense from a branding perspective. Playfully or not, they infuse the parent/customer experience with fresh emotional content. You might say that they lightheartedly reframe a day-to-day utilitarian service in a big-idea context--the continuum of a family’s daily life and the milestones that await it.  

Okay, I know. I’m overplaying the value branding elements in these Little Rascals moments. But consider how they serve as unpretentious public occasions for parents to celebrate (yes, you can celebrate with tongue in cheek) their shared roles as co-creators of this particular brand experience. In any other industry, any other context, this business outcome would rank as admirable and desirable, a gestural win for the brand. And don’t minimize the Big Bang effect of these events purely as photo ops, spawning viral enthusiasm in the networks of family and friends that spark off from the events themselves for who knows how far in both distance and time.  

Am I, like some of the parents who attend them, taking these occasions too seriously? Maybe so. Still, I think it’s important to note that a pre-school’s dress-up graduation doesn’t have to take itself entirely seriously to serve its brand well.

We can learn a lot from this case, even though the social and emotional energy created in these seemingly trivial rituals is far too expansive to be contained for very long by the tiny-tot brands that set it in motion. 

Why ‘employer branding’ falls short

If you’ve been reading my commentary, you know that I stand for branding that authentically maps the cultures of organizations to their engagement strategies. This applies in both marketplace and human capital arenas, and it’s a key reason why we summarize our work in the latter realm as talent branding. We focus first on the native culture of a workforce as its most authentic and compelling basis for attracting and cultivating talent. Call it an inside-out approach.

Is it also important to discover how potential recruits and other stakeholders view a company from the outside in? Of course it is, but in our view refining a talent brand has to start with discovering the authentic points of value that inspire members of the existing workforce, the factors that keep them on the job, whatever their tenure and degree of experience.

This underscores what we see as a game-changing flaw in ‘employer branding’ formulas that home in on direct recruiting as the primary expression of the brand. An exclusive preoccupation with reaching out to recruits here can unfairly skew what should be a thorough and empathetic discovery initiative in all segments of the culture.

Talent brands should be inclusive of all workplace values through all stages of the employee life cycle. They should certainly inspire creative recruiting, but still supply the theme and creative energy for all human capital initiatives, from retention to staff development to inclusive leadership and so on.

This focus on culture as brand driver is not a perspective unique to Brand Vistas. Several commentators and consultants, notably Nicolas Ind and Mary Jo Hatch, have embraced this view for years, and made it the touchstone for a wider-gauge emphasis on corporate branding. It’s interesting that most of their case work is European.

Are practitioners of ‘employer branding’ in this country too enamored of the market-centered metrics of packaged goods branding to see the strategic role that human capital branding can play in the cultural health and talent environment of an organization?  

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.

WEB 2.0: a new paradigm for branding and engagement--but look before you take the plunge

If, like many regular readers of this web log, you’re a decision-maker in a services company, national association, or government agency, up to now you have probably relied on tried-and-true channels for engaging stakeholders and inspiring your internal teams. For the most part this means print, events, fundamental web approaches, and maybe a few video and Flash! experiments. But a handful of potentially game-changing tools are emerging from Web 2.0 practices. Think seriously about integrating them judiciously into your communication programs as these approaches mature.

1. Social Media. Our current take on these tools may sound dated and ill-informed to many of today’s confirmed blog-trekkies. But the fact is, few mid-market enterprises—not to mention institutional players—have put web logs, social networking sites, and Wikis to widespread strategic use for branding and engagement. Eloquent champions of social media like Geoff Livingston are certainly rallying the troops, but so far MySpace and FaceBook, the dominant “mass-market” social network sites, have yet to frame a persuasive business case as outreach and marketing channels. While user privacy concerns are presently checkmating these big sites’ exploration on this score, smaller niche soc-net destinations like Ski Space and Infield Parking (NASCAR) are refining promising new approaches to brand building (both for themselves and for paying advertisers/sponsors).

2. Virtual Worlds. Immersive 3D environments, while not yet a breakout phenomenon in the online mainstream, offer significant ROI potential for brand strategists. Second Life is the best known of these “metaverse” environments, but others, like Disney’s pay-to-belong kid site Club Penguin--which, by the way, attracts seven times the traffic of Second Life--and pre-teen mecca There.com are courting affinity participants. Here’s There.com’s three-minute promotional animation; watch it here for five seconds and you’ll have no doubt about the site’s demographic-of-choice.

[In a future post, I’ll discuss several of the corporate and government(!!) education-and-inspiration venues that are cropping up on Second Life and other virtual worlds. Practitioners of value branding, like our Brand Vistas team, find this trend particularly exciting.]

3. Narrative branding. Many organizations today are linking their value propositions to stories that their team members recount about their work…as well as to recollections submitted voluntarily by customers and stakeholders (“Tell us your story.”) The flexibility of the Web makes this eminently possible for textual contributions (for starters), and now TV campaigns are adopting this approach as well. Check out Giant Food and Home Depot for examples.

4. “Amateur” video. This trend has sprung from the success of YouTube, and fueled many a recent consumer campaign, including efforts from Dove, Crowne Plaza hotels, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Dunkin’ Donuts. Look for this phenomenon to grow impressively in volume (if not in quality of submissions) in the months to come. Here's the winner in KFC's recent "Show Us Your Hot Wings" contest.

TWO INNOVATIONS AROUND THE NEXT BEND : market engagement through mobile phones…and “circular entertainment”, i.e., the serial enhancement/modification (“mash-ups”) of rich media and digital video as it passes from user to user.

A chicken dance in the end zone? Not likely, but we’re still hoping.

KFC has a product launch/Super Bowl tie-in that at first blush seems like the obnoxious antithesis of the Value Platform approach we promote at Brand Vistas. KFC has challenged any Giant or Patriot who scores a touchdown to perform a three-second “chicken dance” in the end zone. The incentive: a $260,000 payout to the charity of the dancer’s choice.

 

[Go here to see the Colonel himself bust a move as he demonstrates the dance’s proper execution, complete with campy polka-esque musical accompaniment.]

 

This is textbook guerrilla marketing, and you can be sure that the NFL--widely reported to be less than pleased with KFC’s challenge (not to mention the trend it portends)—is twisting arms behind the scenes and threatening BIG financial penalties if any player yields to temptation.

 

But KFC’s gambit has people talking. More importantly, it’s set the Web—not to mention the TV and sports-talk radio airwaves--humming. After all, the payoff does go to charity…so what’s the harm?, sez your average fan. There may be some in-stadium grumbling when somebody scores and doesn’t dance, which is the likely outcome, and indeed one that serves KFC’s engagement objective just as well. And if any daring player does look like he’s about to break out in poultry-inspired celebration, will Fox cut away, as I’m certain the NFL is demanding?

 

So, are we scandalized? No way, because dignity and decorum often have nothing to do with value branding. The NFL’s brand communities, and the social networks that fuel them, are loving this. NFL scoring celebrations occupy a realm where all dignity has long ago fallen away, and the disruptive thrust of KFC’s promotion will add a positive charge to the brands of both KFC and the NFL, whatever happens this Sunday.