The brandgym blog

Serious about creativity? Bring it in house

If only I had £1000 for every time a team has said they want to "Do an innocent" with their brand. These teams all wanted to inject a distinctive personality into every bit of their brand mix, from the pack to the website. And they may even have created 1 or 2 nice packs.

But, when you look at the brand a few months later, its back to business as normal. The pack is full of ingredient lists and "Recommended Daily Intake" charts, but that's about it. That dreamed of monthly email to consumers fizzled out after a couple of editions.

So, how do innocent keep it up? How can they do an email to over 100,000 people every week? And write one new pack A DAY? And have a great blog? And do the innocent village fete? And a nice website?

Also, how come everything is so joined up, and full of innocent-ness?

The answer is the in-house creative team of 15+ people, led by creative genius Dan Germain. This was my biggest learning from my trip to meet Dan at Fruit Towers earlier this year. This team play the leading role in the copywriting and art direction of every bit of the whole mix, including web content, advertising, pack design and events.

And they aint stopped yet, as I saw they are recruiting more people to the creative team.

Why is this so powerful?

1. Living and breathing the brand every day: no chain of briefing here from brand team=>planner=>Creative=>planner=>account director=> brand team. The creatives work in Fruit Towers, and soak up the brand from day one.

2. Instant feedback: Want some creative? Go and ask Dan. And he can wander over with an idea later, and talk it through.

3. Consistency: same talent working across different media

4. Keeping the bar high: as the recruitment ad states (itself a proof of the creative team in action!): "You will lie down in front of speeding locomotives in order to protect the company, brand and tone that we have created

Interestingly, two other creative brands I met with this year, Lush and Method, both also have in-house creative teams.

So, if you're serious about creativity, think seriously about an in-house creative team.

New Year's Resolutions from the brandgym

Rather than compete with the mountain of Xmas cards sent out in December, not mainly in email form, we do New Year's postcards. Each one has a "resolution" about how to grow your brand and business in 2008.

Here are a selection of the postcards to look at at. If you like them, there is also a link to download them. And if you'd like a set of 6, then just leave your name and email as a comment.

1. Constantly refresh your brand like Bond

Download brandgym1Bond.pdf

2. Harness the power of people like Pret


Download brandgym2Pret.pdf

3. Give your pack sex appeal like Method


Download brandgym5method.pdf

Happy new year! 

Stop the bull****

Today I stumbled across a post from the end of last year on a "Manifesto for Real Brands". It was a bit of a rant that summarised the beliefs behind WTS? and the campaign for more substance, less spin. With 6 months and another 80 or so posts more of experience, the 8 key points still seem as valid as ever, if not more so. I thought they were worth sharing again, especially as a lot of people have only started reading in the last month or so:

1. Real branding is not a beauty contest, it's about boosting the bottom-line
2. Real brands build on deep, immersive insights
3. Real brands drive the whole business
4. Real brands are authentic, building on a genuine product truth
5. Real brands use emotion ("sizzle") to sell a compelling product story ("sausage")  
6. Real brands avoid "brand ego trips" when extending, by sticking to what made them famous
7. Real brands are a magical mix of smart strategy and excellent execution
8. Real brand leaders inspire their people by saying less and doing more

I've turned the manifesto into a pdf that you can download and share: Download CampaignForRealBrands.pdf

The fight goes on!

Inside innocent: my trip to Fruit Towers

The highlight of my blogging to date is by a country mile the invite from Dan, creative director of innocent, to have a chat about my recent post ("Is innocent losing its way?"). Yesterday morning I headed over to Fruit Towers and had a great time being shown round  by Dan and talking about what innocent are up to. What a thoroughly nice bloke. The trip only served to further intensify my already strong feeling about the brand, both as a consumer and brand bloke.

In the spirit of friendly feedback, I thought I'd start with "Reasons to be cheerful" about innocent that I picked up from my visit.. [Tomorrow, I'll do "Reasons to be careful", as I still think the "This Water" launch throws up some important questions.]

So, here's my go at "bottling" some of the magic....

1. Putting product passion at the heart of the brand
I've posted about the product passion at innocent before, based on seeing a talk by Jamie, the ex-Marketing Director. My visit to Fruit Towers confirmed just how strong the commitment to product is. The first thing you see on entering is a chiller cabinet full of smoothies, and the nice lady on reception invites you to help yourself. And the first thing Dan showed me on our walk-around was the product development "kitchen" in the centre of the building, where they experiment at making new smoothies. As the products contain "nothing but nothing but fruit", anyone can have a bash. Nice, and sort of home-madey. But this is backed up with some serious talent in the product area. This is led by an ex M&S lady who used to work on their juices. And they hire food science graduates  each year.

But what impressed me most is the depth of expertise innocent are developing in fruit. They have a lady who just does berries, for example. She knows about seasonality and how this affects taste. And of course, they are also very into the ethical/sustainable side of things.

It truly is a brand where sausage and sizzle sit together side by side and work together in perfect harmony.

2.Being truly values-led
I was surprised to see a framed set of 5 values on the wall as I walked round. I've always been wary of this, because most companies don't live by their values. But my chat with Dan confirmed what I thought about innocent: it is one of the few examples of a truly values-led business.

What is most interesting about the 5 values in the tension in them. The first 3 are what you might expect from innocent:
- Responsible
- Generous
- Natural

And you certainly see this in everything the brand does. From the way people dress, to the way they behave, through to the products they sell, to sourcing and the innocent foundation. But the last 2 are less obvious:
- Commercial
- Entrepreneurial

Dan talked a lot about looking for people who have an eye for business, and a desire to get on with stuff and make things happen. This allows them to launch new products, open up new markets and move quickly. Also, innocent are clear that they are a profit-making business who need to make a profit, not a charity out to only do good. Indeed, its by running the company efficiently that they can make a bigger impact on the things they care about.

3. Feels like a family, not a company
In addition to product, the other area Dan talked about as being "beefed up" is people. Again, the company has invested in bringing in professional people in this area to get it right. But the key thing I picked up on is hiring people based on their values and attitudes, not just their skills. Dan talked about "the van test", which is thinking whether you'd like to spend a day with a potential new hire crammed in one of the innocent vans.

And of course, Fruit Towers itself is as cool a place as you'd expect with beanbags, picnic benches, table football games, baby photos on the walls and astro-turf on the floor.

Finally, there is a list of benefits/perks as long as your arm. I found this paper on these benefits, that you download here: Download good_practice_innocent.rtf

4. Commitment to creativity
I've lost count of the number of workshops, conferences and meetings where I've talked about the innocent tone of voice, especially in their pack copy. I coined the phrase "packvertising" to  describe how effective packaging like innocent's can be in promoting the brand. However, no brand I have worked with or watched has come close to being as good as innocent at this. How come?

Talking to Dan suggested a few reasons. First, Dan pointed out that other brands have tried to copy innocent's innocent tone of voice, rather than creating their own voice. Second, innocent's level of commitment is strong. Dan leads a team of 12 internal creative people who write all the copy for the packaging, booklets and other materials. Brand teams I have worked with struggled to get one lot of decent copy on their packs that change once a year. Well, Dan and his team change every pack roughly once every 3 months. We work ed out that taking into account all the formats and flavours, he has to do one set of pack copy per day!

And Dan has hired a creative person in each of the new international offices to keep the magic alive but localised as they go into new markets like France, Germany and Denmark.

5. Differentiation = "1000 nice little touches"
We talked about what made innocent different, and how come it had managed to keep a 50%+ share of the UK smoothie market, despite me-too launches from retailers and big hitting brands like Tropicana. And it comes down to 1000's of nice little touches. Other brands can copy one or two of these (e.g. recipes and pack design); but they can't copy all of them. When I asked how innocent manage to get their brand into every little nook and cranny, again Dan suggested that this comes down to people and culture. By hiring the right people, people do the right thing.

Take something as mundane my arrival at Fruit Towers. At the door, you don't buzz to get in. A sign says "Knock and we'll let you in." Never had to knock to get into any company before. Nice. On entering, you have a couple of friendly ladies sit behind what looks like like a kitchen table, and ask you to sign in then help yourself to a smoothie. As you do this, you see a huge board full of untidily pinned up letters and photos from innocent fans. And when you do sign in, you're asked to write not only your name, but your favourite smoothie. Wham bam, thankyou brand. In less than 3 minutes, I get it. And I'm only in reception. Do the same reception test next time you go to your head office.

Just a few of the other 1000 little touches that make innocent so different include the bobble hats that raise money for charity at Xmas, knitted by Supergrans, the innocent pinboard that updates daily and the Fruitstock  event.

All this from a 45 minute trip. And I could go on, but its time to wake the girls up for breakfast and a nice big carton of innocent smoothie!

Thanks Dan for the visit. And thanks to everyone at innocent for being so brilliant and inspiring me and so many other people.

Tomorrow, a few "reasons to be careful", in order to keep the magic alive....

London 2012 LOGO: like your dad disco dancing

Oh dear.

Never have I seen such a shit-storm blow up in such a short space of time.

The new "brand" for the 2012 Olympics was revealed with a fanfare yesterday in London by Lord Coe and greeted with an overwhelming outpouring of public scorn.  It quickly got the nickname of "the pink swastika".

A poll by the BBC News website asked readers to give it a gold, silver or bronze medal, or a wooden spoon if they really didn't like it. A whopping 83% gave it the wooden spoon ...
... and in just 24 36 hours an online petition to change the logo gathered 13 862  44 586 signatures!

There are at least 3 valuable lessons from this debacle.

First, it is a mind-bogglingly bad example of mistaking a logo for a brand.
No wonder "branding" gets such a bad reputation, and is so mis-understood, when you have leaders saying things like this classic from Lord Coe in an interview with BBC Five Live:

"It's not a logo, it's a brand that will take us forward for the next five years."

Of course its a bloody logo. Nothing more, nothing less. Lord Coe has unfortunately swallowed whole the  flawed terminology used by design, sorry branding, agency Wolf Ollins. They use the term "brand" to describe the logos they design.

If you can use the concept of "brand" to describe the Olympic games, then its to do with creating a memorable and distinctive visitor and athlete experience. This includes things like the design of the stadiums, the transport systems, the opening and closing ceremonies, the hospitality etc. etc. It should be about a brand-led business, or in this case experience, not about the brand as an image wrapper.

Second, the risk of trying to appeal directly to the "yoof" market.
Check out this load of brand bollocks from the official press release. Hugo Gaines, the over-intellectual and image-obsessed marketing director in the upcoming WTS? book, would have been proud to be produced this load of nonsense:

"The new emblem is dynamic, modern and flexible reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos but respond to a dynamic brand that works with new technology and across traditional and new media networks."

The clue to where its all gone so horribly wrong is in that bit about "reflecting a brand savvy world where people, especially young people, no longer relate to static logos". It feels like one of those cringe-inducingly embarrassing attempts to "target" directly the youth market. Of course, by trying so hard and being so overt in attempting to create youth appeal the whole thing back-fires, as illustrated by one of the 2967 comments on the BBC 606 blog:

"RIDICULOUS!! It makes me feel depressed and ashamed! I'm 17 and this is certainly not 'cool'!! It's impossible for this logo to be any worse. Please London Olympic Committee----it's not too late to change it! The deformed swastika has to go!"

Or even better, this one nails it on the head:

"Absolutely pathetic - it is like your Dad trying to be cool and ending up just making you (or in this case the entire globe) cringe."

Just like your dad disco dancing in an attempt to be cool, and of course, failing. In fact, perhaps the inspiration behind the logo is that most famous disco-dancing dick-head himself (from the BBC's alternative logo site)...

I've posted about the problem of trying too hard to be cool before, using the launch of mineral water Drench as an example, and then following up with other examples.

Third, the power of "Citizen Marketers".

In the new world of blogging and other online "social media", people power is threat, but also an opportunity (Ben & Jackie at Church of the Consumer are the real experts on this). Tony Blair actually got it right when he said: When people see the new brand, we want them to be inspired to make a positive change in their life." What he didn't expect was that the positive change people would be inspired to make was to campaign for the logo to be changed!

As mentioned earlier, in 24 hours over 18 000 people have signed a poll to change the logo. Almost 3000 have added comments to the BBC blog. And the BCC has set up a site where you can see alternatives proposed by the general public.

Its a shame that the 2012 committee didn't think to harness all this energy and enthusiasm in a positive way BEFORE the logo was revealed. They could have proposed some alternatives and had a public vote using an online poll.

It will be interesting to see if Coe and Co. stick with the "pink swastika"... or if people power wins the day....

Branding for Board-level brand virgins - PART 2

This is the second post on the subject of helping the board get what branding is really all about. In the last post we looked at cut-through and customer focus. This time we'll cover consistency and commitment from the top.

Consistency over time
Take a brand and get the last 10-15 year's communication and brand logos. Chances are, it will look like a drunken sailor zig zagging his way across the sea. Chop, change, chop, change...often prompted by the arrival of a new marketing director.

Contrast this with one of the most consistent brands of all time, Absolut. Next time the agency says "the campaign is worn out", perhaps remind them that Absolut and TBWA have done, wait for it, 1400 executions.

Consistency over the mix
This one is about getting the whole of the mix aligned and coherent. Requires the company to run things top-down with the brand leading, rather than bottom-up where every bit of the business does their own thing. Easy to say. Hard to do.

I love this example of Porsche transforming their showrooms from shoddy garages to palaces of desire.



Commitment from the top
And we finish back where we started, with the board of directors and the CEO. And if they don't live walk the brand talk and align their own behaviour, you of course ain't got a hope in hell of being brand-led.

The challenges for leaders are visualised below: starting by fixing the product and service so people are proud of it. I posted on how this is a key driver of commitment. Then, hiring the right people and changing measurement so that on-brand actions get rewarded. And then, communicating not through what they say, but what they DO.

There you have it. Basic stuff, but may be of help if you have to try and explain to a branding virgin what its all about. Little summary below.

Branding for Board-level brand virgins

On one of our big projects in financial services we were struggling to get board level approval to some of the brand strategy work. On discussing this with the project team the scary conclusion was...that this was because they didn't know what the hell we were talking about when we said "brand". If they got it all, they thought we were talking about a new logo. I know.  Amazing. But true.

So, I pulled together a short presentation on what it means to be brand-led, drawing on some of the posts from WTS? over the last 6 months. Far from exhaustive and apologies but I ended up with one of those bloody acronym type things: the "5 C's". The overview and the first 2 C's on cut-through and customer focus are here. The final 3 C's follow in the next post.

Overall: branding is about changing your business, not just your logo
First thing to clarify off the bat. Summed up with the contrasting examples of 2 banks: Abbey, who have changed logos 4 times in about as many years; and 1st Direct who created the first telephone bank and have continued to invest in service and innovation (e.g. texts to your phone to warn you if you're going to go over-drawn.)

Customer-focus
I know, I know this is soooo basic. But go out of the FMCG world into financial services, IT and telecoms and you'll be amazed how many companies are coming out of the cave and squinting in the light of branding. Many of these businesses are still technology-led, and just embedding the principles of customer insight is a big step.

Tesco are a good example of being obsessed with customer understanding to drive wave after wave of innovation. They use a mix of in-store assignments for senior managers, qualitative research and mining of their monster Clubcard data-base.

Cut-through
Again, pretty damn obvious (spot a theme here...). But it is shocking in how many markets brands morph into a big blob by adopting the same "codes" (visual imagery, language, symbols etc.). Its cheeky, but I can't resist showing the example of two brands who should know better: brand identity agencies Landor and Interbrand:

The red used is a bit different, but isn't that exactly the same typeface?!

Being brave to break some of the market codes allows you to get a much better bang for your branding buck. You're probably fed up with hearing about the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. Then there's my other fave the Geek Squad. A more modest example is UK cat food brand Felix. Using a cheeky cartoon character on the pack and in communication helped them differentiate vs. dominant market leader Whiskas, who used perfect, preened real-life cats and a heavy-sell message of "9 out of 10 owners said their cats preferred it". Felix achieved 2-3 times more growth per GRP of media investment, and was able to grow share from 6% to 26% and eventually take market leadership from Whiskas.

The last 3 c's in the next post.

Branding lessons from private equity

Private Equity (PE) firms are getting plenty of bad press at the moment, being slagged off for being short term, ruthless, asset-strippers intent on sacking everyone who moves. Brings to mind memories of Gordon "greed is good" Gekko from the classic movie Wall Street.

However, this is far from the full picture, as pointed out to me last week on vacation by a partner from one of the biggest PE companies, Texas Pacific (they're bidding at the moment for Al Italia and Iberia). Sure, there's a need for cutting out costs, but this alone would not create any where near enough value for the PE firm to sell the business on at a profit. After all, how could they sell on at a premium an asset-stripped business with poor growth prospects?

No, dig deeper, and you find that these PE companies are actually very growth oriented, and that there are a lot of branding lessons to learn from them, as a recent article in Marketing/Brand Republic pointed out. Indeed, an FT article shows that the the biggest 30 PE deals done in 2003/04 created an extra 36 000 jobs, a 25% increase.

You may want to take some of the PE companies' medicine yourself before you have it forced down your throat by them after they've bought you:

Lesson 1: the power of FOCUS
Focus of money and people is a huge growth driver. The PE firms are expert at finding companies that are languishing unloved inside big groups. For example, Texas Pacific bought Burger King from Diageo, a drinks company for whom the burger business was an unwanted step-child they acquired then they married Grand Met. With renewed vigour and attention, the business was turned around as Euromonitor commented:

"Following troubled years under ownership of Diageo Plc, Burger King was restructured. In the past two years, it turned around declining sales. Same-store sale have grown for fifteen consecutive months in the US. The chain has blazed a trail to open outlets in new international markets, develop new products, and design new restaurant layouts."

Notice how the new management didn't use rocket science to grow, but rather excellent execution of the basics: new stores, closing under-performing outlets, developing new products and fixing the in-store environment.

Lesson 2: Speed
Linked to lesson 1 is the agility of the management put in place by the PE firms. Rather than having to cut through the jungle of bureaucracy in many big companies, marketing teams answer to a handful of owners. And they get quick feedback and decisions.

Interestingly, M&C Saatchi have been smart enough to set up a special agency to deal with PE firms called "Accelerator". This enabled them to create a new campaign for MFI in weeks rather than month's for the brand's new owners, Merchant Equity.

Lesson 3: "follow the money"
Most of the problems in a business come from not following this mantra. Dwarf line extensions, pointless meetings, ego-tripping ad campaigns... they can all be traced back to a lack of business-savvy, bottom-line focus.

PE firms don't make this mistake as they care about one thing: growth. They won't buy that old chestnut: "this won't grow the business, but its good for the brand". And rightly so. The idea of separating brand building and business building is, pardon my Franglais, beaucoup de bollocks. The best way to build a brand is to innovate in a way that grows the business...this creates more users, more occasions and more word-of-mouth. I expect to see more, not less, innovation from frozen food brand Bird's Eye under its new PE owners.

Lesson 4: what gets measured, gets done
Boy do the PE firms get this right. They are ruthless in getting rid of management that doesn't deliver. But reward those talented and dedicated enough to grow the business. To quote an ex-PE manager from the Marketing article:

"Marketing directors have little or nothing to fear from PR firms where they can create value; in fact, quite the reverse is true because they should be even better compensated for creating the value".

Opinions? Are PE Gordon Gekko types, or are they good for brands? Other lessons from them?

Virgin Media: Image wrapper or brand-led business?

Last week saw the high-profile launch of Virgin Media, following the merger of NTL/Telewest and Virgin Mobile. The "quad-play company will offer cable TV, broadband internet, fixed phone and mobile.

It will be interesting to see if this is a Virgin "hit", like Virgin Atlantic, where the brand is driven through the whole business. Or will it be one of the many "flops", like Virgin Jeans and Vodka, where the Virgin name is used as an "image wrapper" to cover up a medicore or crappy product? After all, cable TV company NTL had a woeful reputatation for customer service, becoming known as "NTHell". The BBC consumer affairs programme Watchdog did a fearture on the company's customer service after getting a whopping 1700 complaints.

 

Well, there are some encouraging signs that this will work. First, this is a service business, where Virgin performs well and has a lot of know-how. At the time of the take-over last April Virgin management promised "significant participation from the Virgin Group and Virgin Management to secure Virgin culture and ideals throughout the organisation to improveme customer care". The second positive sign is the time taken before re-branding the business: almost a year. Rather than rushing into a name change to cash in on the strength of the Virgin brand, time has been taken to get the business sorted.

More next week on Virgin's mixed record on brand extension, and why its one of the most mis-understood and mis-used example of brand stretching ever.

New year, new baby

No, I've not become the father of a 4th girl, I'm talking about the publication of book numero trois, Brand Vision, which is out now.

The book shows how "Strategy Tourism" (you can probaly guess what that is) causes many visioning projects to be overly intelectual, theoretical exercises and then proposes a more practical, business-led approach. Its got loads of examples and case studies, on everything from Bertolli to James Bond, Absolut vodka to Porsche.

Over the next few weeks I'll give a taster of some of the chapters to tempt the few of you who have not already read your pre-ordered copy from cover to cover.