While the amount of advertising in traditional media has gone down in the past couple years, it’s still amazing to see so many ads that appear regularly that don’t seem to have any reason for being other than to fulfill a long-term media contract.
Some of the circulars that run every week—and sometimes twice a week—have about as much subpoena for the customer to read and then shop as the legal notices that still appear in the classified section. The customers have to be bored and I suspect that the advertising staffs at many retailers are bored as well.

This is especially true for the ROP ads that continue to be placed by major department store chains. The ads fill space, but certainly don’t provide any reason to chose one store over another. The item selection isn’t much more interesting and the prices are ho-hum. So why do they run these ads anyway? Sometimes I wonder if anybody at corporate is paying attention!

Case in point is the now famous ad that Macy’s ran in the Miami market the day after the sixth game of the NBA championship series between the Heat and the Dallas Mavericks. The ad congratulated the Miami Heat on their championship and featured team products on sale to celebrate. Only problem was that Dallas won not only that game but the championship. Even if the Heat had won that Sunday’s game, they would still have had to play one more game to decide the championship. Knowing the power of the press, I became skeptical that maybe that was the plan all along and that the media event that ensued might have been exactly what Macy’s wanted. I never checked to see if they ran one in Dallas/Ft. Worth as well. Overall though, it’s just another case of advertising that does nothing to enhance the brand and build a relationship with the customer.

Many of the ads that appear every week—week after week—seem to have as much marketing thought behind them as the signage on some of the windows of the stores. Knowing the cost of these ads, can you image what could be done if they created messages that inspired the customers to like the store and differentiate it from their competitors. Retailers complain about the economy and tight budgets, but then there are wasted media dollars that do nothing but satisfy a contract or fill an already boring ad calendar.

It’s time to start watching our ads and making sure that there is a reason for being in every message. And that reason can’t just be to clear out sports memorabilia for a team that was as inspired as the advertising for the store.

COMING SOON: Robyn Winters and I have just completed a book on branding with a revolutionary point of view. Brain Branding, Activate the Brain—Stimulate Your Brand is in its final edit and will be available on Amazon and your Kindle very soon. Watch this blog for a special introductory offer!!

Standing at the highest point in San Francisco, one can’t help breaking into a chorus of “I left my heart in San Francisco”. I’ve been there many times throughout the years and still get a thrill every time I visit whether on business or for pleasure. I’ve often said that I’d rather go back to the “city by the Bay” 10 more times than take one trip to a third world country. San Francisco is more than a city. It’s a brand. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a special feeling or relationship with the city. Thinking about it, shouldn’t a store or product have the same time of feeling toward its brand as well. Without a relationship, I always say, there is no brand. This is what the Heart of the Brand is all about. So much of today’s marketing is focused solely on the Truth of the Brand (i.e. the facts, just the facts) that the customer fails to have any feelings (good or bad) about that brand and sees it as just another storefront or product on the shelf.

The other night I decided to watch one of the top rated TV shows and take note of the commercials that ran both on the network as well as the local breaks. During that one-hour program, there were, by my count, 12 commercials and not one of them gave any reason beyond price/promotional deal or product facts for the viewer to consider purchasing the advertised product. So, where’s the branding? It seems like most advertisers have abandoned trying to build an emotional relationship with the customer and give him/her a distinguishable value that would convince them to buy.

There are exceptions and it’s no surprise that the companies that have a message targeted at the heart of the customer are the one’s who continue to grow their market share.

Publix food stores are a great example. First, the company runs really great stores that are clean, efficient, and staffed by generally friendly, helpful people. But when it comes to advertising, the company goes beyond its ongoing BOGO offers to remain price competitive by running commercials and offering mailings that remind us that having dinners and lunches with our families are important. Over Easter, while most food stores hawk their discounts on the Easter hams, Publix ran (for the second year at least) a 60 second spot that celebrates a family dinner and a special relationship between a brother and sister that tugs at your heart and builds a relationship with the brand at the same time.
The company does this all year by tying in important family gatherings with the benefits of shopping at a store that’s part of the family for years.

Crate & Barrel has grown over the years by providing a great shopping environment, with neat and exciting merchandise that translates to the home experience as well. It has assumed the role, over the years, as the contemporary customer’s lifestyle guide and makes one feel at home whenever he/she comes into the store. Their advertising has always been as cool as the stores making the merchandise come alive and relevant to the lifestyle of their customers. While their prices are competitive with all the mass merchants, the company realizes that it’s an emotional choice to shop there and it’s all part of being a welcome guest in our homes.

Walgreen’s recently announced that it was installing charging stations for electric cars in 150 of its Chicagoland stores. This is just one more step in the company’s commitment to providing the convenience that today’s drugstore customer expects when they visit the stores as many as 3-4 times per week. Whether it’s in-store medical clinics (that I have found to be really are professional and caring ) or pharmacy systems that really make filling and re-filling prescriptions almost effortless. To have a pharmacist call you personally to offer to go over all of your medications and give you an assessment and summary has nothing to do with $4 generics, but it has everything to do with keeping you healthy and keeping you as a loyal customer in the future. The stores are as promotional as ever, but when it comes down to it they know that their customers are need driven and they have to meet those needs consistently to reach the heart of the loyal shopper.

Home Depot has gotten back on the track that made it so successful over the years by providing helpful customer service in every aisle. On a recent trip to “just pick up a couple of things”, I was approached by a smiling, friendly orange-aproned associate making sure that I found what I needed and offering to help with any questions that I might have (and who doesn’t have questions when you’re at Home Depot? The company’s support of the Olympic athletes over the year is more than just a good marketing handle, it’s representative of the heart of this brand as a good neighbor and good citizen. The recent rash of tornadoes and floods have moved the local stores to action as the caring company to help you through really tough times.

Chrysler just announced a quarterly profit for the first time in over five years and I don’t think it’s because of their new relationship with Fiat or divorce from Daimler Benz. Besides appealing to its employees and U.S. customers as a Detroit-based company with great American standards, Chrysler has improved its messages in the media with a straightforward approach that gets to the heart of the customer a lot more effectively than another Toyotathon or factory rebate/$100 off factory invoice promotion. The company shed itself of many underperforming brands and dealerships and refined it’s assortment and the stores where they are sold to make it a pleasant experience to buy one of their cars.

McDonald’s is part of most of America’s dining experience every day. However, the recent performance in sales, I believe, is a result of tailoring its menu and service to today’s customer and making it fun to eat there again. From it’s competitive coffee shop offerings to tasty new entrée’s, they have gone beyond fast food to broaden their appeal to various day-parts and lifestyles. However, they continue to go after the heart of their consumers with their ongoing Ronal McDonald Charities and supporting community activities that make them a good neighbor as well.

Kohl’s is as aggressive as anyone with its promotional program that hits the customer 2-3 times a week. While I question sometimes whether this is overkill, their performance seems to justify the reliance on strong promotions. However, when you look at the power of their word-of-mouth advertising, you have to give credit to all of their other activities that go right to the heart of the customers. Kohl’s support of children’s hospital fund raisers and health education has endeared them to young parents who just happen to be their target customers as well. The company has expanded aggressively over the years but it has also made itself a good neighbor on a local basis and it’s paying off at the registers.

There are many examples and it makes you wonder why more advertisers don’t take note and start giving their customers a reason to like them rather than just be aware of the next sale event. Going after the heart of the customer just makes good business sense and is essential for a strong brand position.

COMING SOON. A new way to improve your branding can be found in a new book that I have co-authored with fellow NSA member and communications expert, Robyn Winters. The book is at our publisher and will soon be available on Amazon, Kindle and through our website. In the book we take a look at the four buying styles that all of us use to decide on what brands to shop, buy, and use. Then, we use these styles to help you implement a four-step process to develop a more effective brand. We think it’s a revolutionary way of thinking when it comes to branding and believe you’ll find it helpful in stimulating your brand’s market share.
More information will be coming soon and watch for a special offer to our friends and blog readers.

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Best Buy has long been one of my favorites as a retailer who has done an excellent job of developing its brand and growing its market share in the competitive electronics market. It has maintained its #1 share of the category and has out –performed the other electronics merchandisers consistently. I’ve commented on how Costco, Sam’s, and Walmart have really made an impact on the category but it wasn’t until I read an article recently by John Kelly in the Wall Street Journal about how Amazon was really becoming a factor in the category to the point that Best Buy had better watch its back as the company continues to grow.

As its shares have tumbled, Best Buy should note how Amazon has expanded its brand to compete favorably with big box retailers. Certainly, Amazon is a brand synonymous with online book sales. It’s Kindle e-book reader has set the standard for digital reading and now it has taken that lead to expand its sales in electronics and non-media to $18 Billion last year (up 66%). While the brick and mortar retailers continue to fight the price wars and promotions, Amazon has become the resource for information that over 88% of shoppers in this category seek online before they go to the store.

So, how has Amazon built their business beyond the original core strength as a bookseller? It all has to do with branding. Sure, Amazon has been a pioneer in online marketing but it’s what they’ve done for their customers and prospects that have established a brand that is consumer friendly and builds loyalty not simply by making it easy to find what you want, but by understanding their customers, recognizing their shopping preferences and rewarding them for their loyalty by making it easier to buy and offering targeted suggestions to build the incremental sales at the same time. The company has build its brand on a solid platform and has translated its reputation and trust to other categories from toys to flat-screens to fashion pumps. Using its ability to recommend items based on what you purchased as well as what you only considered makes this a highly personal brand that has built a relationship with its customers every time they click on the website.

Compare any page and any category on Amazon with a page in the sale circulars for Best Buy, Kohls, or Macy’s and you see a consistency of message and quality that is only surpassed by the consistency of the purchase transaction. It’s this kind of quality that builds relationships and enhances a brand that endures with its customers.

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So, another Super Bowl has come and gone and I lament the fact that if not for an official’s error, my Buccaneers would have gone to the playoffs instead of the Packers. But that’s Monday Morning stuff. Of course, there’s been more conversation afterward about the commercials again this year and I have to agree that at $3 Million a spot, there should be some buzz afterward. I’m just not sure that the buzz is among the targeted customers as much as the media who cover them. Certainly in this venue, these message must pop and generate a lot of interest. But so do your commercials that run the other 364 days of the year. There were some really creative spots (yes, I thought the VW/Darth Vader spot was one of the cutest ever.) but I have to keep asking the same question for the past XLV years:
“Where is the brand message? Does this motivate me to consider buying this product?)

I use Go Daddy for my web URL’s and have been pleased. Their terrible commercials have nothing to do with my choice nor keeping them as my provider. As a matter of fact, I’m not sure what Go Daddy is saying in their sexist, stupid spots. The Dorito’s spots are great, but do they really convince you that they taste good enough to lick someone’s pants or fingers? Audi must have spent as much as Avatar’s full production cost to contrive a luxury jail spot that wouldn’t convince me to buy an Audi no matter how good they are.

I could go on, but let’s take a look at the Chrysler spot which salutes my home town of Detroit. I thought this not only gave an honest, sincere tribute to Chrysler’s and its workers home. The branding behind this, I thought, was a particularly sound strategy as the company has re-emerged from its financial and sale woes. A company with roots in a city that’s tough, that works hard, that has pride, and has a long heritage in automotive, is about to introduce a new model line that reflects today’s automotive needs and desires. I think this is a sincere effort (even if their agency is not in Portland, Oregon) to get back to the relationship an auto has with its owner. At 120 seconds, the spot really got into the spirit of Detroit and the company and even Eminem seemed sincere. Whether they get their media dollars’ worth will remain to be seen as the new models roll out, but it’s an excellent branding message that many of the other spots failed to even come close to replicating.

It’s interesting that Ad Age’s survey of the best Super Bowl spots of all time had some really great spots and I found that almost all of them had a great branding strategy behind the outstanding creative message. Mean Joe Green’s Coke spot could run today (probably with Packer linebacker, Clay Matthews) and still have the same strong message that was right on about Coke’s being the “real thing”. It was a sincere, well-placed message that said more about the great taste of Coke than the Pepsi Max spots did this year.

Even the NFL’s own spots generated a great brand message that not only promoted the sport and its players and fans, but also it helped offset yet another wasted halftime debacle. Why Bridgestone tires would think that the Black Eyed Peas, Usher and Smash would motivate “younger customers” to consider their tires over the others on the market is beyond me. Let’s get back to great brands with breakthrough creative that wins over the minds and the hearts of the customers.

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Another season of holiday sales and advertising is so quickly coming to an end. It’s often said that this is the most important sales season of the year, and yet so much of the marketing efforts are so predictable–so redundant. Let’s look at some of this year’s efforts …what works and what doesn’t.

BLACK FRIDAY: I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of this sales event that makes more media noise than profits (as in the black). I think that most retailers have just shifted the sales revenues to earlier day parts so that now Black Friday has almost become Black Thursday Night and Friday Dawn. Then again, I started thinking about the successful post-Thanksgiving events of years gone by and remembered that the excitement was all part of the experience of shopping for Christmas presents and being caught up in the stores “dressed in holiday style”. To some extent, Black Friday has recaptured that excitement for many shoppers. Part of the new holiday tradition is to get to the store at the crack of dawn, or earlier (sometimes with the whole family) and take advantage of the super saver items. If more stores put as much effort and budget behind the rest of the holiday season—not to mention the rest of the year—there would be a lot more customers and a lot more revenue.

MACY’S: I have to hand it to the bastion of department store retailing.. From the parade to the multi-media assault every day leading up to Christmas, They really put out an effort to create the glory days of 34th Street. However, they—and Dillard’s, Sears, and the other traditional department stores—just seem to put as much on sale in as many one-day sales events as possible. There just doesn’t seem to be anything exciting to make all of the customers want to go into the store for the experience. The watch catalogue was well done, but boring. The fragrance catalogue was a cacophony of scents that make you want to peel each and every one of the scratch and sniffs just for exercise. But do they make you want to go there instead of Target, Kohl’s , Walmart or any of the specialty chains? I think not. Let’s get back to making the brand an exciting place to go and the gifts with your logo a symbol of something special and not just a one-day sale.

HYUNDAI: I think this is one of the great brand development strategies over the past several years and certainly has made this car one of the new powerhouse brands in the industry. However, this year’s holiday efforts (and a Hyundai would be a nice stocking stuffer) were really quite silly. A bunch of weirdo-looking singers and musicians singing poorly with brief shots of the cars didn’t live up to the new styling and certainly doesn’t compete with the great effort put forth by Lexus this year.

HALLMARK AND FOLGERS: These two brands with everyday products continue to do a great job at Christmas to bring back the traditions and feelings that make the holidays so great. Hallmark’s commercials outshone the 200 holiday movies that were featured on their cable network, and Folger’s spots are so good you can almost smell those mountain-grown beans brewing. Great spots. Well-placed.

KOHL’S AND JCPENNEY: Help save the forests! With all the circulars that fill the paper and mailboxes, it appears to me that these two must have printing subsidiaries that make more profit than the stores. They seem so redundant and I wish they would take some of the dollars spent in print and do something exciting in broadcast. Great stores, but please how about some brand statements to fight the discounters.

GAITHER HOMECOMING: I had the pleasure to attend the final Gaither Homecoming Christmas concert in Jacksonville, FL, last week. It was a moving, exciting experience even if you don’t like gospel music. However, what is most impressive is how Bill Gaither and his family and organization have built a brand that is so consistent and so on target in television, dvds, cds, magazines, books, programming, gifts, concerts, and events. The Gaithers have become a resounding success as a brand and yet have maintained a sincerity and down-home personality that keeps their brand in the hearts of thousands of loyal followers (and customers).

OFFICE MAX: OK, my family “elfed” ourselves again this year and shared it with our friends and families. I can’t help it, it’s so funny! This office supply store, however, knows that it takes more than good prices on laptops and thumb drives to win over customers in this competitive category.

These are just a few of many brands to look at. Overall, I think many retailers and other consumer brands have left the creativity at home when it comes to the holidays. And while retail sales have increased versus last year’s poor showing, there is so much more that could be done with some breakthrough thinking and creative execution to make this the season for branding as well as giving.

Merry Christmas!!
Ken

There’s been a lot of criticism in the trade press about the new theme line introduced this past week for Chevrolet. “Chevy Runs Deep” is the signature that the car company has put on a series of nostalgic spots which stress that Chevy is a brand that we grew up with and that has been part of the American scene for as long as most can remember. The spots are well produced and, for us baby boomers, the memories are as vivid as Don McLean’s “Bye Bye Miss American Pie” verses.

Once again, the marketing experts have forgotten what the brand is all about and are focusing their attention on the theme line, tagline, or slogan for the product and not the essence of why people buy it in the first place.

According to Jeff Goodby from the company’s ad agency (in Advertising Age), “It’s not fair to judge a tagline out of context.” I would go further and say that it’s not fair to judge a brand by its tagline—in or out—of context. I believe the Chevrolet branding has been one of the best in the auto industry for the past few years with or without great taglines we’re used to, such as “An American Revolution” or “Like a Rock”. The car/brand is part of the American scene and they have appealed to basic American values ever since it was part of “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet” decades ago.

The fact is, the brand has several really good, quality models now that continue to sell quite well (not like they used to when Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda weren’t as strong). Despite the economy, it has many loyal customers (and non-owers as well!) who have a clear understanding of the Chevy brand and its history. The concept of building a brand based on its American roots is not new and, quite frankly, today has a lot more resonance than others (“Droid Does” comes to mind).

The campaign is more that just a look back. I believe it stresses loyalty, quality, and uniqueness in a very engaging manner. However, I also believe the key to Chevy’s future success is that its brand strategy “runs deep” as it continually improves its models, quality and can maintain a positive positioning in the face of overwhelming competition from abroad (even if they are made in Tennessee or Ohio). Chevy has staked its claim on the values that many of its target customers (middle of the road Americans) feel are important when making a significant purchase.

I think if they stick with this understanding of their brand and let the critics keep on writing without a knee-jerk change in strategy, the brand will truly run deep in hearts of the market. Now, if they can only get their dealers to understand and live up to it as well!