The brandgym blog

Unilever ramps up its "BSR" efforts

We're doing quite a bit of work on "Brand Social Responsibility" (BSR), led by our new partner, Anne Charbonneau. BSR takes some of the things that before was done at a corporate level, and enbedding them in product brands. I posted on this earlier, looking at the pioneer of this approach, Ben & Jerry's.

Unilever are one of the most advanced companies in this area. I was lucky enough to work with a team on the role of the Unilever corporate brand a couple of years ago.  One of the key recommendations was to take some of the many good things Unilever was doing in CSR, but most people didn't know about, and integrate these into the product brands. This way, these initiatives had a much better chance of creating real impact.

For some Unilever brands, the BSR effort is linked to product sourcing and ingredients. This is normally a dull and distant subject for brand teams. But with the rise in food scares, and concerns about ethical trading, this is set to become a big thing. Here are a couple of examples:

1. Hellmann's mayo made with only free-range eggs: nice idea, as this sounds more ethical. It also suggests that Hellmann's have taken real care with the product.


2. Lipton Fair-Trade tea: I posted on this here, saluting the brave and bold decision to make the whole of the brand fair trade, rather than just a single "ghetto" version.

Other Unilever brands have more of a social mission, with the most famous example being Dove and their Campaign for Real Beauty.

Few learnings on what I think Unilever are doing well here:
1. Integrate it into the brand: the initiatives above are not stuck on as an extra. They are fully integrated into the brand

2. Make sure your story hangs together: Unilever have years of proven experience in ethical sourcing, though they are not as famous for it as they deserve to be.

3. Recruit people that really care: the whole Dove campaign was initiated and led by Silvia Lagnado, and you only have to meet her once to see and feel her passion for the issues. For BSR to be authentic, you need people who really feel a connection with the issues.

Ethics are the icing, not the cake

A tale of 2 smoothies reminded me of the importance of being clear about the main reason people buy you (the cake), and secondary reasons (the icing. And a cherry if you feel like it).

Smoothie one: we bought on Sunday morning when out for breakfast as a family. It was a fair-trade brand called AJ's, where the ethical stance of the company was the brand idea. I'm interested in Fair Trade products as I am helping one of my food clients look at this question.

Well, we poured out the stuff and shared it around, and... ugh! This stuff tasted like shit. Amazing really, that it is quite hard to make a good fruit juice or smoothie.

Smoothie two: innocent's new Superfood one, with slow release energy (guava and mango). Yummy scrummy. The whole big 1L tetrapack was glugged in a sitting.

Now I do love all the ethical stuff innocent do, it makes me feel all nice and fuzzy inside. Like the bobble hat packs to raise money for old people at Winter [370,000 hats knitted, close to the 400,000 target] And the "Buy one, get one tree" promotion. Isn't that just sheer bloody brilliance? BOGOT instead of BOGOF (Buy one get one free). Here is the virtual forest where you can see the tree that Chloe helped plant in Africa:

But, and its a big BUT, if the main reason I buy them is because I love the taste, especially the Strawberry and Banana one, and now the Superfood one. And taste is also why no matter how worthy and fair it is, I'll not be buying AJ's again. Its got good ethical icing, but the cake's crap.

Same story for Green & Blacks. The brand took off when they promoted it as a gorgeous, premium chocolate with organic credentials as the reason to believe (on the right), not the reason to be (on the left):

Innocent's Big Knit is on...

The latest edition of one of the cleverest and nicest and most authentice promotions ever has kicked off. Its Innocent's "Big Knit":
- They invite people to knit little hats
- These go on top of innocent bottles
- Sainsbury's sell 'em for 50p more than normal
- The 50p goes to Help the Aged to help old folk at Xmas [did you know that 25,000 old people die each year from "cold-related illnesses? 25,00? From being cold?]

What is nice is that a lot of the hats are knitted by old ladies, who get very into the whole thing. Gives them a little project to work on and a sense of doing some good. Here's Dolly with her hats:

In 2006 £115,000 was raised by knitting 230,000 hats. This year the target is £200,000 from 400,000 hats.

I like lots of things about the Big Knit:
- It feels very "innocent"
- It creates good stand-out on shelf
- Every pack is individual
- It creates a huge amount of involvement, rather than the company just giving money

There is a flickr group with photos of the hats here, and a movie that tells the story of the idea here.

And if you want to learn more on innocent, here is a post with "31 things that make them different".

Lessons from the lovely Lush

Had another great blog-enabled meeting yesterday with Denise from Lush, who leads their corporate communications for Europe. What a nice and very smart lady. The insights I got from meeting Denise reinforced what I learnt earlier this year from Tom at Method and Dan at Innocent.

If you don't know Lush, they sell "Fresh, Handmade Cosmetics" in their own amazing stores. They are REALLY ethical and environmentally responsible, whist also being super indulgent and pleasurable. What Tom from Method calls "sex and substance"! The handmade feel of the products is also reflected in the store design and communication.

So, what did I learn from Lush?

1. Yup, you guessed it. Build on a brilliant product
Bit of a theme here. Lush products are so differentiated that they have been able to build a big and growing business (£75 million turnover in 2004, +43% vs. 2003) with 370 stores without any advertising. Here are just a few of the things that make the product so special:
- Not tested on animals, at all: none of that sneaky "we don't test our products on animals (but we use ingredients tested on animals)"
- Handmade: so they feel sort of rough and individual and imperfect. And you even have a photo of the person who made it on the pack or in-store display
- Fresh: no chemical preservatives
- Distinctive naming/design: Such as the "Haagenbath", described as "a refreshing minty, pink, slow-fizzing, creamy bath bomb with grated chocolate bath melt for extra skin softening"
- 75% of the products are "naked", with no packaging

2. And a unique in-store experience
Here's a vivid description from a case study done by Rotterdam Business School about the shop, that look more like a deli than a cosmetics store:

"Your senses literally wake up in a fraction of a second; the colours of the forms of soap or of the bath ballistics make the effect of a rainbow in the room. The shop has also a nice and cosy atmosphere, with the lighting creating a warm environment, the walls painted with warm colours, the furniture made of natural wood and the use of natural stone for the floor and for some displays.

You simply look, touch, smell and try whatever attracts your attention and at the end of the process you pick up the products you like, go to the counter and pay. A self-service system is in place with banners describing the products and at the end of it a nice and friendly cashier looking forward to attending to you with a sincere smile."

3. Have a Brand CEO who leads by example
The founder, Mark Constantine, is still leading the Lush business he started in 1994. According to Denise, he and the other four key leaders, including Mark's wife Mo, are still very much hands on in running the company, and leading by example. They are the living, breathing manifestation of the brand. And they protect and propagate the company's values.

4. Bring creativity inside
Here we go again... same as with Method and Innocent, the creative genius is inside the business, with a small team led out of Poole in Dorset where the HQ is. This way, the creative team live and breathe the brand so they really, really "get it". Compare this with the normal creative process inside BigBrand PLC that leads to breakdowns in the creative process:

Brand manager writes brief=>Shows to boss, who re-writes it=>Brief account director/planner=> briefs creative team, but best one is busy and can't do it=> re-brief other creative team etc.

5. Hire on values, not skills
Many people don't have university degrees, and those that do didn't often study something relevant to their job. But what they do all share is a passionate belief in what the company stands for: making beautiful, natural products. Saw this at innocent as well.

6. Have such a great product that your customers become fans
Lush, like innocent for a long time, don't need advertising because their products are so cool. The products generate high loyalty and lots of word-of-mouth. One sign of how passionate the customers are is the number of people who actually participate in the Lush forums.. the US one has 801 104 articles from 22 000 users!

7. Brand engagement comes from an engaging brand
In a recent post, Brand Engagement is Dead, I wrote about how employee engagement comes above all from making products people are proud of. And Lush is living proof of that. Denise described how loyal people are to Lush, as they love the products and what the company is trying to do.One example of this in action is store staff agreeing to go to work naked apart from a Lush apron as part of a campaign called "packaging is rubbish", promoting the "naked"  products  Lush sells. Can't quite imagine that at your local WalMart or Tesco!

8. Break out of the boxes to bring to life your vision
Lush is another example of a brand making good use of a brand manifesto (tips on writing one here), a much more effective way of creating a brand vision with heart and soul than relying on a box-filled brand onion/pyramid/key:

- We believe in making effective products out of fresh fruit and vegetables, the
finest essential oils and safe synthetics, without animal ingredients, and in
writing the quantitative ingredient list on the outside.
- We believe in buying only from companies that test for safety without the
involvement of animals and in testing our products on humans.
- We believe in making our own fresh products by hand, printing our own labels
and making our own fragrances.
- We believe in long candlelit baths, massage and filling the house with
perfume.
- We believe that our products should be good value, that we should make a
profit and that the customer is always right.
- We believe that words like “fresh” and “organic” have honest meaning beyond
marketing.

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....

Lipton to make only "green" tea

The Lipton tea brand's link up with the Rainforest Alliance recently made headline news. The Rainforest Alliance will check that parent company Unilever is buying tea from plantations that use sustainable farming and ethical labour practices.

What is smart, and brave, about this move in trying to give the whole brand stronger ethical credentials by being values-led": integrating the ethical principles into the way of doing business. This feels much more powerful than the more commonly used, quicker fix of launching an "ethical version". This is the approach used by Nescafe with their "Partner's Blend" extension, and Kenco with their "Sustainable Development" version.

Re-launching the whole Lipton brand with the Rainforest Alliance has several advantages over doing an ethical extension:
- It avoids the risk of a green extension raising questions about the rest of the brand... if Nescafe have a single ethical product, doesn't this imply that the rest is unethical?!
- A Lipton brand re-launch will strengthen the core business and avoid adding complexity through the addition of another extension
- As the re-launch will be on the whole brand, and not just a new extension, there should be more marketing funds available to communicate the news to consumers and retailers
- If Lipton can make this move it has a chance to "own the high-ground" in tea by combining quality, value and ethical credentials. This is hard for competitive brands to copy as it requires changes to the whole business system, not just the launch of a me-too green extension.

Red's not dead baby, its a $500 million brand

There has been a lot of slagging of (product) Red's first year's results: $25 million raised after many high profile campaigns by Motorolla, Amex, Gap and others. This is the brand launched by Bono where brands selling Red products donate a part of the profit to the Global Fund to fight AIDs. Jon at Living Brands went as far as posting about red being "killed by cynicism and scepticism". Grant says "The take-away for RED, take it down and start again.  This campaign is truly cooked."

Well hang on just a minute...to mis-quote Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction, "red's not dead baby". (I do have a vested interest here, as I gave it my vote as hottest brand of 2006.) What the critics miss, as co-founder Bobby Shriver points out, is that Red is not a charity. Its a product range which creates revenue for brand partners, and charity.

Here's a different way of looking at it. A $500 million brand who gives 5% of sales to charity. That sounds much better. And would probably get less slagging off.

How did I get this figure? Well, I admit its very back-of-the-envelope. If you use Gap as an example, they donate 1/2 the profit from the Red stuff they sell. From my days on marketing Hanes t-shirts and male undies, I think the profit margin was 20%. Which means the Gap donation is, say, 10% of the revenue they make. But retail sales would be roughly double their revenue when you add in trade mark-up...so that's 5% of consumer sales. Motorolla donate 5% of their Red customers' bills.

If we go with the 5%, this would mean retail sales of Red products of $500million.

So. What do you think. Expensive flop? Or worthy brand with a social mission?

Ben & Jerry's: leading with values, and making money too

Many brands have hit the headlines recently for campaigning on social issues. Examples include Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty, the product Red brand raising money for AIDS in Africa and the many retailers (Tesco, Walmart et al) trying to jump on the "Green is good" bandwagon.

But seeing an advert for the Fairtrade vanilla ice cream from Ben & Jerry's reminded me just how far ahead they are in this area (you can visit the site and see photo albums like the ones of the right showing their work in India and Paraguay). They might not get as much press coverage as some of these other brands who are the new kids on the block, but they've been at it for 20 years and are much more advanced in their approach.

The key thing they Ben & Jerry's do differently is to have a 3-part mission that integrates social, profit and product  dimensions. So, social and environmental campaigning is not a bolt-on attempt at "green-washing" consumers. Its not about donating a % of profit to charity (though they do this as well). No, the social mission is woven into the very fabric of their business, as captured in the sub-title of the founders' book, Double Dip: "Lead with your values and make money too".

One story I heard when I toured their factory in Vermont a few years ago illustrates the challenges of this approach. The brownies in their ice cream were made by kids working for a a charity in the Bronx. Great for the social mission: sell more ice cream and more money goes to helping keep these kids off the street. However, when the first lot of brownies arrived at the factory, they were frozen together in a huge lump. Not so great for the product and profit missions. It took real work to get the supplier to fix this issue and get the quality right.

Integrating a social dimension into your business is much harder than just sponsoring a charity. But its also harder to copy and so more differentiating. For example, it took Chiquita bananas many years to get 100% of its product certified by The Rainforest Alliance, but this has given them a real point of difference versus own-label.

A neat summary of what Ben & Jerry's do is "Fast Moving Sustainable Goods", or FMSG for short, a term coined by Innocent Smoothies (thanks to Russel for this).

5-minute workout: if our thinking about having a social mission for your brand, how could you integrate this into the way you run your business rather than just bolting it on? For example, how could you re-work your sourcing so it makes a positive contribution to society?