Okay, just for the record let's state the obvious:
- Yes, having a strong brand is very valuable.
- Yes, the highest goal of advertising is to create a strong brand.
- No, for the most part consumers are not in love with brands
- No, consumers do not want want to have a conversation with your brand, or an "authentic relationship" with it, or co-create with it, or engage with it, or dance with it, or take a shower with it.
As I've said about a million times (and Prof. Byron Sharp has said much more articulately in his book, How Brands Grow) most of what we call "brand loyalty" is simply habit, convenience, mild satisfaction or easy availability.
I promise you, if Pepsi would disappear tomorrow, most Pepsi "loyalists" would switch over to Coke with very little psychological damage.
Nike devotees would throw on a pair of Adidas without having to enter rehab.
McDonald's faithfuls would cheerfully eat a Whopper without the need for counseling.
In fact, according to Havas Media, “in Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared.” And, to be perfectly honest here, I would not care if Havas Media disappeared.
Which brings us to a lovely bit of new age marketing baloney published on the Entrepreneur website recently called "How to Get Customers Raving About Your Brand"
Apparently, in the never-never-land of brand babble, the way you get customers "raving" about you is through transparency, or to quote the article, "transparency is the new black." Somebody please shoot me.
You see, consumers are now so enchanted by their love of brands that they are studying brands to see which ones are most transparent.
This makes it a little difficult to explain the world's most successful company -- Apple -- which, with the possible exception of North Korea, is the most secretive enterprise in the history of mankind.
Apparently, opaque is the new transparent.
The meatball who wrote this thing thinks Starbuck's is successful because of its transparency. On the other hand, I have a feeling it might have something to do with having a store on every corner, making the stores clean and comfortable, and serving a good cup of coffee.
In fact, I did a little survey at my Starbuck's this morning. I went around and asked everybody why they were there. Transparency came up exactly... hang on, let me check my notes... oh, here it is -- no times.
But this is the new ideological world of marketing. Marketing is no longer about meeting the practical needs of customers. It's about high-minded principles of transparency and co-creating and conversations and...
Well, I'm afraid I have a very old guy opinion. You want customers raving about your brand? Sell them a good fucking product.
24 comments:
Good product you say. If brands really wanted to be customer centric that is what they would focus on - making stuff better. And being proud of it.
'Marketing is no longer about the practical needs of the consumer'.
Saying this flippantly after citing 'How Brands Grow' is interesting because one of the core principles of the book is that marketing is not about the practical needs of the consumer...
(That is not to say that it should be about transparency etc)
Also, I believe customer service is woefully undervalued. Fuck the childish Facebook app and answer the bloody phones
As long as good product takes second place to profit maximization, brand babble will continue to be offered as an alternative. It's cheaper, after all, than actually giving a damn about what you're selling.
So when is that highly successful brand Coca Cola going to divulge its secret recipe, then?
Corporate Social Responsibility is a subject on which more BS is published than any other ....with the exception of Brand Marketing. At the intersection of the two you will find a synergetic interaction of BS so intense it can actually kill you.
Truth, you speak.
as soon as Apple will dismiss all its patents and allow everyone to use them for free.
That's true. Most of the time the success of a campaign lies in the quality and cost of the product instead of the bullshit around it. We're unfortunately, most of the time, in the situation where we are not tasked to change the product. It'd be a great day in advertising history if a brand manager said to us, "Here is the brief, the new product isn't in mass production yet so you can change it to suit your insights".
Starbucks always seems to be trotted out as a beacon of success, particularly by brand experts who have 'drunk the kool aid' of modern marketing jargon. And (as the Entrepreneur blogger has done), they seem to think it's enough to say, 'Just look at Starbucks, man. Just look at how successful they are! They're so transparent, they are so good at tapping into our emotions, etc etc.' Without explaining what they actually mean or backing up claims with evidence.
Don't get me wrong, Starbucks is clearly a successful brand all over the world, but it has also had some failures. And the reasons for its failures give us a clearer picture of why it's succeeded (and from where I sit it doesn't seem to be because of its 'transparency'!)
In Australia (where I'm from) Starbucks opened 84 stores, starting around 2000, but about five years ago closed 60 of them and sold the remainder to a local company. Why? This article gives a good overview (http://munchies.vice.com/articles/this-is-why-australians-hate-starbucks) but the upshot is that Australia already had a well established espresso based coffee and cafe culture (thanks to high post-WWII Italian migration) and the Starbucks offering (both its product and the environment) simply weren't good enough to compete.
Now if we follow the logic of the author of the Entrepreneur blog, Starbucks 'transparency' (whatever that is) and their ability to tap into consumer emotions means that Starbucks should have succeeded in Australia despite there being plenty of 'better' coffee and cafes readily available.
Just shows what utter nonsense this stuff is....
Sung to the tune of "There's no business like show business..." - will this be the next TAC song?
In the future, successful brands will be translucent. And cars will run on Starbuck's Pike Place dark roast.
Starbucks popped up as No. 8 on the UK's "Most Unloved" brands list recently http://www.isobel.com/brand-love/
Bob, I think you'll love this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHbKgA9mENw
apparently all you need is to wiggle your fingers.
How would one explain McDonalds and Taco Bell? Both off convenience. Both offer the same crappy quality of food. Yet McDonald's is sinking like the Titanic while Taco Bell grows.
Must be in need of a bit more 'transparency'...
Apparently neither a record shop (Branson) or a computer (Jobs) are 'products'. Even more ludicrous is the idea that Jobs started with an 'idea' that consumers wanted to be 'bespoke, mobile, free and have access to total choice' and that became 'itunes and the ipod'...about 25 yrs after Apple started - with a desktop computer. It's great to be able to retrospectively manipulate history to support unsubstantiated theories....but I suppose he needs something other than just the finger wiggling.
Transparency, obviously!
Quite right. "Your call is important to us."
Clearly not, if you don't answer the bloody phone ...
..or to whom you are selling it.
..or engagement or relationship building or...
...because Taco Bell has/had a chihuahua, and chihuahuas appeal to millennials and millennials are cool and hip and the greatest thing since sliced taco shells...
The things that scares me most about the time we're at in the land of advertising is that total and utter crap like the Entrepreneur piece is somehow published.
What's even worse is that worse still it's somehow shared 4,000 times.
We've a generation of marketing people brought up on a diet of mistruths, zero facts and no empathy or wisdom.
Is it any wonder that SXSW is so unbearable, it's all these idiots thinking they know something about the world.
It's terrifying.
Meanwhile I wish the world wouldn't congratulate Apple so much on making great products and instead wonder why my Fios menu system is a joke, why my microwave has 56 buttons and why my thermostat takes 105 key presses to program it. I do think for SOME brands in SOME markets just making a decent product is all that is needed. Not ads.
Now we know why the once great Saatchi & Saatchi is in the shape it's in today.
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