Consumer impressions of brands vary from hazy memories to vivid definitions, as illustrated here with our imagined Sally’s Mac and Cheese.
The modern strategic planner needs a robust and relevant tool kit to rise to the level of Super Strategist. That begins with a strong understanding of the importance of brand and the acquisition of the brand asset development skills we’ll discuss in this chapter, so they can protect and nurture brands.
The strategic planners, analysts, and researchers on my team at Hill Holliday are all deeply involved in brand development projects at any given time. This is one of the most important skills a Super Strategist can have. I believe in this so strongly that 3 years ago we launched a brand consultancy called H H BrandAble within my current agency to assist current full-service clients, as well as new project-based clients. I will get into the tools a planner needs to be able to do this kind of work shortly, but let’s start with the definition of “brand,” again from lexico.com:
brand • /brand/
noun
The definition of a brand has not changed much over the years. Nor has the role of a brand in contrast to a mere product: a brand still adds value for the consumer and gives the seller the ability to charge a premium, by creating a perception that the product is of superior quality, is more trustworthy, and has a stronger sense of identity that will rub off onto the consumer, and how others perceive them. And that, in turn, creates brand preference. Which, if the brand delivers consistently, creates loyalty. In essence, a brand is a promise made and kept with a consumer.
For example, most facial moisturizers are made of the same basic ingredients, including glycerin, shea butter, and vitamin E. Written as a list, it is not particularly desirable. But when these ingredients are packaged in a beautiful jar with an appealing brand name and a strong visual identity, and when that package is shown in an advertising campaign that promises youthfulness, vitality, and hope, then it becomes a brand. And consumers will pay much, much more for a brand—especially when it promises something (typically, emotional) they desire and believe they are missing.
Pharmacy stores often place their own-label moisturizers, with absolutely identical ingredients, right next to big brands. They will even add point-of-sale signage, “Compare our ingredients to those found in brand X,” to encourage the consumer to pick the cheaper product. Even though the consumer rationally understands that these products are identical, they are still typically driven to purchase the brand version. This defies logic—it’s the same tub of ingredients for significantly more money—but the brand offers certainty and the perception that perhaps, somehow, it is superior. Plus, the ad campaign really spoke to them—it made them feel something about the brand, something that resonated with their own personal values. Another simple reason for brand choice: many consumers prefer to display the brand name on their bathroom shelf. It says, “I’m not cheap” and “I value myself and I am worth it” more than own-label does (which may be cause to wonder if those who buy own-label have higher self-esteem).
Recent figures show U.S. sales of own-label products are up 15 percent over last year, which may seem like a counter-example. But there is a simple reason for this that actually reinforces the importance of brands: many of the own-label products are maturing and becoming brands themselves, with their own strong identities, brand assets, and even advertising campaigns. For example, the 80-plus-year-old Boots No7 was a cheap and simple pharmacy store beauty line in the UK and is now—post-partial Walgreens takeover—a premium power brand worth $1 billion globally.
In summary, the stronger the brand, the higher the premium, and the higher the price tag. Brands aren’t just “nice to have,” nor are they the stuff of “soft marketing metrics.” Brands make good business sense. Period.
Where it gets tricky is in understanding exactly what your brand means to consumers, and how to influence that. Why? Well, brand has become complex over the last few years. Imagine midtown Manhattan on a Monday morning (prepandemic). Think of the thousands of people who walk past one another every day. Now think about this: each of these people has a totally different impression of any given brand at the same time. Let’s imagine a brand called Sally’s Mac and Cheese, for example. Some people have a very clear picture, a well-defined impression of the brand. For others, the image is hazy, but they have some idea of the brand, or a distant memory of the brand. And for many people, there may be no brand impression at all.
The point is, people will have a multitude of different brand impressions at any given time. This will depend on their birthplace, their home, how often they travel, their demographic profile, the psychographic group they belong to, the channels they watch, the social media they use, which search engines they use, their eating habits... the list goes on and on. Suffice to say, we can no longer assume, as we did decades ago, that everyone a) is given the same brand message at the same time; b) consumes those messages at the same time and in the same way; or c) acts upon their impressions of the brand at the same time, or at all. It is just not possible, unless you are an identical twin who has lived alongside your sibling your entire life, sharing every single experience, each minute of each day, in exactly the same way. It just can’t happen.
Consumer impressions of brands vary from hazy memories to vivid definitions, as illustrated here with our imagined Sally’s Mac and Cheese.
If consumers’ brand impressions are all over the map today, then so is their behavior. So, why do modern brands frequently assume that consumers navigate a category in a straight line? The traditional “purchase funnel” model, as well as the more recent “loyalty loop” or “purchase cycle,” assumes they approach a purchase decision predisposed towards certain brands, then use a linear and logical process of decision-making to filter out individual brands until only one choice remains. This perfect triangle and complete, interruption-free circle are truly and completely out of date. Let’s agree to put them to rest for good.
Contemporary consumer behavior is much more complicated. Modern consumers are exposed to a large volume and variety of media channels and experience a perpetual state of connectedness. We change our minds constantly. A brand can be seen in a favorable light for decades and then disgrace itself, such as when the over 160-years-old Wells Fargo was fined by regulators in 2016 for creating fake customer accounts. This kind of thing can cause a brand to disappear from our decision-making process, even towards the end of the “funnel” or “loop.” Or a new brand launch could pop up in the middle of the decision process, through a favorite celebrity’s Instagram post, for example. For larger purchases like luxury apparel or a vehicle, people may even leave the process for 6 months and come back to it out of the blue. Interruptions happen for any number of reasons: a sudden influx of cash, a new job, a new partner, a desire to change their image.
The old-fashioned “purchase funnel” (top) and “purchase cycle” models of consumer behavior assumed an orderly, linear process that isn’t relevant in today’s chaotic, brand-saturated media landscape.
Many unique events influence a consumer on their way to a purchase. They may well end up in an entirely different mindset from where they started—and that will affect their final choice, often to their own surprise. The process is so far from linear that it is in fact quite messy. The touchpoints for engaging consumers do not run from A to B in a straight line, but are spread erratically all across the customer journey.
To navigate this contemporary version of the purchase funnel, the Super Strategist needs to reimagine how people get exposed to and consume brands at any given point, to understand not only “what makes them tick,” but also how their attitudes and behaviors change continuously, as they move along the path to purchase. Modern strategic planning needs to lead the charge in customer journey mapping. By pulling in all relevant disciplines (often including external agency partners, such as PR or other specialized firms), using proprietary research, and leading journey workshops, planners can recreate that meandering path to better understand the events leading up to the final decision: where the consumer enters, leaves, and reenters the process; how they make decisions, using their heart or head, throughout the process; and, importantly, how they feel about the whole experience, and how they share the outcome. (For more on customer journeys—the most important tool in any account planner’s tool kit—see Chapter 8.)
The modern customer journey is complex, with many brand touchpoints spread haphazardly along the way, creating challenges for strategic planners.
For brand leaders, the advertising agency plays a vital role. Agencies generate the big brand and creative ideas and serve as the aggregators, curators, and stewards of the brand, the consumer, and all the brand experiences that constitute the customer journey—which the agency, with its multichannel approach and consumer expertise, should own. Strategic planners within an agency help CMOs make brand choices based on strategic direction, versus simply on what’s shiny and new.
Sometimes our clients’ understanding of ad agencies and what “advertising” should do for them is as conflicted as our own, and many CMOs are seeing their budgets shrink or be cannibalized by other divisions within their organizations. As they desperately chase consumers to the next digital platform, CMOs are asking themselves if the agency of record (AOR) model (wherein a single agency executes a comprehensive brand approach) is the best way to win customers in today’s frenzied marketplace. Seeking best in class, many clients prefer to work with multiple agencies representing different marketing specialties.
This approach has its merits, but an AOR is best qualified to put the pieces together into one brand story. Why is this still important? Well, if the CMO wants to retain brand integrity, and protect and nurture their brand, then they—and the strategic planners at their agency—need to become the brand’s steward. If the brand is not well defined, brand anarchy is inevitable: each specialist agency partner and every brand stakeholder could redefine the brand in any way they like, based on whatever they believe about the brand at any given moment. This will never be consistent and will create confusion for the consumer—who, remember, seeks consistency in brands.
The brand stewards on the client and agency side have to firmly define the brand purpose, vision, positioning, personality, and brand identity (typically, these take the form of one unified brand house) and filter all brand decisions through this definition. Decisions that include sponsorships, affiliations, partnerships, packaging, new product development (NPD), websites, in-store experiences, uniforms, business cards, annual reports—every single potential experience of the brand, internal and external.
While “best-in-class” specialist agencies can be incredibly valuable to the CMO, they are only involved in part of the brand experience. And while brand consulting firms are well qualified for this kind of work, they are expensive, their timelines are typically longer, and their job is complete when the brand assets have been created, and so they then move on to the next project.
Because the AOR team is constantly involved in the whole brand picture, and because they use the brand assets in the day-to-day work that they do for their clients, I believe they are best positioned to know if these assets are not just solid in principle, but also that they will actually function properly as a guide and inspiration to the development of strategies and then creative ideas and channel plans for their clients.
The visual identity guidelines for Saloniki Greek, a restaurant group in Boston, include a color palette “inspired by hues of Greek life and cuisine.”
Created by Karen Hite of Hill Holliday, 2018.
It is therefore the strategic planner at the AOR who will often partner with clients (especially those who do not have the budgets or appetite for brand consulting firms) to define and secure the different assets of the brand. These, ideally, become solidified through the production of a brand book that features visual identity guidelines and the brand house (see the next chapter). Consumers today are confused and overwhelmed by too much choice. They rely on brands to help them make decisions, and to do that they need a consistent brand experience. The brand book becomes the blueprint that all partners and stakeholders adhere to. But before you can create that plan for the future, you need to know where you are right now.
You may recall my earlier reference to the basic elements of the planning cycle (see page 9), as identified by Stephen King of JWT. The key questions are:
These questions are still meaningful today. The brand family is a great tool to help the strategic planner answer the first three. I believe that brands fall into four general groups: Alpha, Youth, Old Dog, and Newborn.
These are the established leaders and power players in their category. Alpha brands are typically the first brand consumers, if asked, will recall unaided and with incredibly positive brand sentiment. A decade and more ago, Alpha brands were fast-food brands or consumer goods, such as McDonald’s, Nike, Coke, and Tide. Today’s Alpha brands include e-commerce and technology brands, such as Amazon, Apple, and Google.
For Alpha brands to hold their brand dominance and leadership, they have to:
Examples of where some of today’s most famous brands fall in the brand family chart. Solid arrows indicate possible transitions, desirable or not. Dashed arrows indicate unlikely transitions unless radical action is taken.
If Alpha brands do not do these things, they may lose their leadership status or, much worse, slip into the Old Dog category. Think of a traditional car brand like Cadillac, which has struggled to stay relevant to younger consumers, who now associate the brand with their grandparents’ pursuit of the American Dream.
These are fledgling brands, 20 years old or younger, typically challengers that broke into a category with an unconventional and better consumer offering (think Airbnb and JetBlue). Often, these brands build a business and a brand at the same time, but on occasion, they build the business and forgo the brand. In that case, by the time they are in their late childhood/early teen years, and investors are demanding new growth, a brand needs to be quickly established, then they invite agencies to pitch. Youth brands will typically stay in a very strong position if they:
If Youth brands do these things, they will either retain their current position or grow to become Alpha brands. An example of this would be Airbnb, which tapped into two cultural shifts: the first being the slow breakdown of community, and the subsequent need for people to feel a sense of belonging elsewhere; the second being the consumers’ desire to enjoy a fully immersive cultural experience when traveling, rather than staying in a generic hotel. If brands do not work to retain relevance, there’s a danger of slipping directly into Old Dog oblivion. Think Blockbuster, which ignored the shift to streaming video and swiftly collapsed.
Alpha brands that fail to continually invest in maintaining brand relevancy will turn into Old Dogs. Think Reader’s Digest, once the best-selling magazine in the U.S., now associated with medical waiting rooms. It is very hard to teach an Old Dog new tricks and revitalize the brand, but it is possible, if the brand team:
If there is a type of brand that needs to take risks, this is it. Better to be remembered as the CMO who tried radical new things and succeeded or even failed, than the CMO who killed a decades-old brand on their watch, by doing nothing of any significance.
For a superb (but rare) example of how to beautifully resurrect an Old Dog, check out the Tango Orange campaign created by my last UK agency, London’s Howell Henry Chaldecott Lury (HHCL). Sales were so poor the brand was close to being taken off grocery shelves. As legend has it, the client came to the agency with £1 million and essentially gave the team strategic and creative license. The agency and client brand teams developed a now-famous TV campaign, targeting British teens, that was the antithesis of American soda commercials of the time (think big hair and big music). The first ad featured a round orange-painted man who slapped the sides of a blue-collar Englishman’s head when he sipped a can of Tango Orange, and ended with the tagline, “You’ll know when you’ve been Tango’d.” Despite the tiny spend, the campaign gained so much attention that it propelled the brand from near death to the number three slot, right behind Coke and Pepsi, in 1 year. It also won numerous awards and helped HHCL be named “Agency of the Decade” by Campaign magazine in 1990.
A brave client and a brave agency did something that was almost impossible—but it required a radical new way of thinking and an unbelievably bold, groundbreaking, and risky campaign idea.
As the name implies, these brands are completely new, with no consumer awareness or consideration. But they can easily move straight to Old Dog status. Consider Vonage or Garmin GPS, which both hit the scene with a flurry of attention, but failed to jump ahead of the curve and evolve their technology to match fast-changing consumer needs. In order for Newborns to move into Youth brand status, they need to:
Using the brand family tool, client and agency teams can plot a brand’s current status through sales data and consumer research, though most will have a good sense of where their brand sits, and then identify what needs to be done to help it survive and/or thrive. From there, a strategic plan can be developed, and one of the primary tools to help a brand create a vision for reinvention, or even survival, is the brand house.