Is A Brand Sorcerer Driving Your Business?

The CEO of any enterprise will no doubt ask themselves the question “who am I delegating responsibility for my organisation’s marketing to?” Like kings and leaders through the ages they are sometimes drawn to mystics who profess powers of understanding and influence. There is a type of marketing professional that might be described as The Sorcerer’s Saussurer’s Apprentice.

Their platform of managerial knowledge and experience is the study of signs and their meaning.  Semiotics.  This field of knowledge is interested in ‘The Sign’ and ‘The Signifier’.  The Symbol and its Meaning.  It is grounded in philosophy’s Linguistic Turn, and the evolution of post modern thinking about the nature of world and how we understand it. Rich territory for a Brand expert. After all that’s what Brand means isn’t it? A sign.

Knowledge from the arcane world of Semiology underpins communications studies and in its turn (sic) this knowledge underpins marketing communications management.  For people unfamiliar in its workings, semiotics is a beguiling subject that offers an explanation of how and why people respond to communciation. It is a short step from explanation to normative prescription.  From this is what seems to be happening to this it what you should do.

The Saussurer’s Apprentice knowing there is a difference between Brand Sign and Brand Meaning offers the magic of being able to change the meaning of any sign.  S/he will Re-present re-position the image and language associated with your brand. With special incantations (more commonly known as straplines) and mystical symbology (more commonly known as a brand identity) the Saussuer’s Apprentice will give reassurance where there is fear and uncertainty and after all we all know that fear sells.

I fear my competitors. I fear my loss of revenue. I fear my inability to compete.  Miller Heimann call this ‘being in trouble’, and being in trouble is a mind set that is open to a sales pitch. The charlatan smells trouble. S/he recognises and seeks out the ignorance of others because s/he can be sure that there will be no critical thinking and probing of  ideas.  S/he is skilled at seeking out the fears of the powerful because they need new ways to control an uncertain destiny.

“Once upon a time in the Land of  Aitchtoo-Oh the ruler was becoming worried, he wanted an heir to the throne but no one wanted to marry his daughter the princess. She was known throughout the world as the Ugly Princess.  In the eyes of the King his daughter was a symbol of  beauty, the prettiest and most attractive person in the world. This is not what his subjects thought,  and there wasn’t a Prince in the world who could bring themselves to ask the King for her hand in marriage. An uncomfortable reality was beginning to dawn on the king. His daughter was nothing like the beauty he believed her to be.

One day the King heard of a Sorcerer who was travelling the land. He came to to King and told him that he was wise in the ways of the mind and that he had a magic spell that would make his daughter irresistable to anyone who saw her.  “I will pay you handsomly” said the King. The Sorcerer cast his spell. The Kings daughter became known as the Princess of Magical Dihydrogen Monoxide Land. “We need to get rid of any association with Aitchtoo-Oh” he explained. “A fresh start requries a fresh name, something that conjures up mystery, a sense of the unknown. A new name a new beginning.” The sign had been re-signified. Anyone who saw her would fall instantly in love with her beauty and charm. The problem was solved. A Prince from the faraway kingdom of Adland married her and they were all about to live happily ever after (as people always do in Adland) when the spell wore off. The Prince saw that he had married the ugliest princess in the world and was very upset.  The Sorcerer hadn’t told the King the spell wouldn’t last. Furious at being made to look a fool the king sent his soldiers looking for the Sorcerer and they never found him. He had simply disappeared in a puff of hot air.”

The Challenge Of Creating Compelling and Competitive Value Propositions

What comes first the chicken or the egg? What comes first the communications campaign or designing and delivering an appealling value offer that matches or exceeds the expectations of customers not what we ‘think’ they want.

A Marketing Communications strategy is not a Marketing Strategy. Crafting a Competitive Strategy a.k.a Marketing Strategy is fundamental to the success of any enterprise. It is, at its heart a strategic management process concerned with creating and delivering products and services that people want to use and buy.

As we know there are various levels of understanding about what the term ‘marketing’  means. A significant number of people exclusively and erroneously equate ‘marketing’ with advertising and promotions. A significant number of people understand otherwise. It’s purpose is to deliver competitive advantage.

There are various posts and comments on this blog which give a flavour of the ways in which the term ‘marketing’ is understood and how it should be deployed. Alexander Repiev (on this blog) uses the metaphor of the Augean Stables to discuss the amount of ‘marketing manure’ that has built over the years in the marketing profession. Regretably even some seasoned marketeers sincerely believe that the role of marketing is primarily one of marketing communications and thereby reinforce the misconception. This is sometimes given extra gravitas and importance by describing it as Branding. Jean Noel Kapferer amongst others explain Strategic Brand Management otherwise. Much to the chagrin of many marketing professionals they are sometimes ‘cast’ in that role by people who think the marketing job is to merely sell what the enterprise has on its shelves, or hopefully transform worn out products with a new wrapper.  This is invariably a forlorn hope. President Obama described activity such as this in more candid terms recently.

One of the snake pits of the ‘marketing is communications’ approach is that it invariably puts the cart before the horse. It predisposes management to hyperbole and self agrandisement. It fools people into believing that if you say it loud and often enough it is the truth.  Experience has taught many businesses the hard way that if you approach competitive strategy from that perspective its has its costs. A more effective approach in this sequence.  (see Kotler et al):

1. Define the value based on deep customer insight to create key benefit segments. Not all customers are alike. Don’t rely on guess work, high hopes, conventional wisdom, personal assumption or preference. What if Bill Oddie look alikes  and wellingtons symbolise a  significant high value customer segment? Do you disparage them because they don’t fit with a personal idea of the ‘ideal customer’?  Clearly and objectively gather evidence to answer the questions ‘why should anyone  buy from us?’, ‘what benefits do they tell us they are seeking?’, ‘what differences make a difference to our target customers?’

2. Produce and deliver the value. Not all customers are alike. Do the good stuff that transforms customer experience of products and services. Segment the offers. Provide the value that people seek not what you think the value should be.  Create a solid evidence based platform from which to shout from.

3. Finally communicate the value. Not all customers are alike. Talk about proven benefits in terms that are meaningful to the customer not in language that we ‘think’ is meaningful or could be meaningful if only the right meaning is used. The meaning of communication is the way it is received. Different segments want to hear different things said in different ways about the benefits they seek.

Communications preferences in a commercial context should never be judged by whether someone likes or dislikes them on entirely subjective grounds. Talking about strapline preferences ‘as if’ they are merely the stuff of subjective opinion tivialises their true purpose. It’s not about whether somebody ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ a strapline its about whether the strapline is effective in purpose.   Marketing Communications has a purpose. It also goes much further than ‘salience’ or capturing peoples attention through shock or controversy.  I prefer to judge a communciations campaign on the commercial effectiveness of its  social influence.

Marketing Communciations is what it ‘is’ and Social Influence is what it ‘does’.  Any communcications endevour can therefore be measured in terms of how effectively it changes attitudes and consequently behaviours. There is however no guarantee that a change of attitude will translate into a change of behaviour (see criticisms of the Hovland Yale model and AIDA).   It can’t ever be described as money well spent simply because the advertising ‘stands out’, or the thing advertised has become more ‘top of the mind’, it can’t ever be decribed as good value for money just because people have worked hard on it and created alot of ‘stuff’ that people can use.  However commendable the effort, this misses the point.

It should also be remembered that changing a behaviour can change an attitude without the expense of marketing communications collateral. A positive experience is often more powerful than any ‘top down’ marketing communications claims.

If you communicate what you believe to be the value before you’ve provided it, you preach before you practice, you have no evidence that you have matched customer expectations. It is nothing more than a well intentioned aspiration. Actions speak louder than words.

There is a crucial philosophical and theoretical point here and as Kurt Lewin said “there’s nothing so practical as a good theory”. Our theoretical understanding of marketing determines how we do it in practice.

So let’s imagine we are deeply involved and experienced in a particular business sector. This business is facing some competitive challenges. We know that our competition has increased over the years  and there are more appealling choices for our once loyal customers. We also know that the experience we have delivered has been below par in some instances. We also know we have good things to sell too and we can’t rely on other people to do this for us. We know that if we stand idly by then our business is likely to dissapear. What do we do about that?

A good place to start is point 1 above. It seems self evident that we should provide ‘quality’ but and here’s the rub… What does ‘quality’ really mean? Whose ‘quality’ are we talking about? We can only establish the ‘quality’ that should be delivered by understanding the needs and expectations of the diversity of customer segments. What does ‘quality’ mean to them? What are the critical choice factors that customers, present, lapsed and new say they want. Do we have evidence directly from them.  Is there any correlation between what we think is of value and what they think is of value? Getting this right is marketing.

Prince Edward Sells Death Benefits of Duke’s Award

One of the pillars of the Marketing Concept is the idea of selling the benefits of your product or service. Benefits relate to the value that the purchaser or user gets from using what is offered.

The recent observation by HRH Prince Edward that there might some allure in the risk of death from participating in the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme is a fascinating case study for several reasons.

The first has to be the lesson it gives to us all about the speed and reach of the digitally connected world. The reputation of any brand can be affected in an instant. Brand identities that have been meticulously crafted over years can be undermined in the time it takes to say something careless.

The second lesson is that there is always a difference between what is said and what it means. As Bandler and Grinder have noted “The meaning of communication is the way it is received”. Whilst the Prince thought he might have been conveying a dark sense of humour his remarks were unlikely to have been heard as ‘funny’ by relatives of Duke of Edinburgh Award participants who had died whilst they were taking part on the scheme.

The third lesson is never confuse an ‘advantage’ with a ‘benefit’. Product and Service advantages are what the seller assumes are appealling dimensions of what is offered. The Prince seems to have ‘fast forwarded’ from a hunch that the demanding and thrilling aspects of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award means that risk of death is a good thing. Oops.

Clearly what has happened is an unfortunate turn of phrase. I’m not sure that Death could ever be construed as a ‘benefit’ when selling products unless you are an arms dealer. I think the Prince is quite right to highlight the appeal of thrill-seeking, and that the DOEA organisers are right to emphasise that the award is about developing individuals as safely as possible. The prospect of challenge and risk must figure as one of the key psychographic choice factors of the target segment who are likely to join the scheme.

There are clearly personal experiential and transformative benefits associated with the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and these should be emphasised. The transformative and beneficial effects of Death is perhaps a more challenging ‘sell’.

Find out more at Duke of Edinburgh Award

Will Technology Convergence Change The Way We Think About Marketing?

I subscribe to a great blog called Serious Games and this latest post highlights the rate of technology convergence and its impact on the increased use of Social Media and the decrease of traditional Media.

I can see that if your world is marketing communciations then technology is having a big impact on the places where advertising is placed and brands are positioned.

The change of channels might have changed but has technology driven any degree of fundamental change in marketing thinking? I find it hard to see how this can be the case.

Surely the technology can only manifest what the practioner’s philosophy decrees. So a micro economic Kotlerian position will see the technology as a means to facilitate needs based exchange, standing in Nordic School position will see technology as a means to enhance relationships, look at the world through Vargo and Lusch’s Service Dominant logic and the technology is their to underpin community building and co-creation of products and services.

Didn’t all of these things exist before digital techologies? The marcomms tactician used to be skilled in media planning and production that utilised 20th century technologies, all that has changed is the hardware and software. Nothing has necessarily changed for Marketing as a philosophy or a strategic endevour. Or has it?

Convergence is certainly interesting from a consumer demand perpsective. Do people like you and I prefer Convergent or Dedicated Products Han, Weong and Seok have found that Products with a high degree of technological Convergence are preferred.

Convergence is also interesting from a managerial perspective. The people using these converged products will be using them to engage with Brands. Schau, Muñiz Jr., & Arnould have written a fascinating article in this month’s Journal of Marketing titled How Brand Community Practice Create Value.In a broad piece of qualitative research that looked at brand communities as diverse as Apple Newton, Garmin GPS, and the Xena Warrior Princess TV Show they have identified 12 value creating practices that included ‘grooming’ where communities share how to care for your product, ‘justifying’ that creates social proof about why the brand is a good buy, ‘badging’ where models and versions of products are built up like an ancestry.

The killer observations for me by the authors are their identification of 4 strategic themes that need blending for effective community value creation, and significantly digital technologies are at the heart:

Social Networking that facilitates stuff such as welcoming, and governing.

Impression Management that facilitates justifying and evagenlising.

Community Engagement that facilitates knowledge sharing.

Brand Use that facilitates tips and tricks.

I like their ideas because they view the thing systemically. Each theme is interconnected and interdependent. It is also clear that digital technology means that creating communities and keeping them alive is much easier these days than in the past. So maybe technology is changing the way we think about Marketing afterall, not necessarily introducing anything new but foregrounding something that might have been easier to ignore in the past? If you can get your hands on a copy of these articles I recommend you do so.