8 Characteristics of Successful Brands

If you followed Don Draper and the rest of the Mad Men, you might be forgiven for thinking that the inspiration behind a memorable slogan or advertising campaign comes from a bottle of whisky and a packet of cigarettes.

Of course life is never that simple. Take, for example, Apple’s false start with its corporate identity. The company’s first logo, designed in 1976, showed Isaac Newton sitting under a tree with an apple dangling above his head, waiting for gravity to happen. And the strapline that accompanied it was ”Newton… A Mind Forever Voyaging Through Strange Seas of Thought … Alone.” Would they really have become one of the most successful businesses on the planet if Steve Jobs hadn’t decided on a bit of a creative re-think?

If you’re looking for a slogan that people will remember, you might want to keep it short. All the best tag lines or slogans have three words. Apple might not agree, and Budweiser’s “Wassup?” or Clairol’s “Does she… or doesn’t she?” are among a number of exceptions, but there are plenty of examples to make the case. Nike’s “Just Do It”, KFC’s “Finger lickin’ good”, and McDonalds’ “I’m lovin’it” (albeit technically four words) all spring to mind.

But what are the real pointers and pitfalls in finding a company name or a slogan that will work?

Frank Goedertier, a scholar at the Kellogg School of Management, suggests there are eight keys to successful branding:

Memorable. Is your slogan (or other brand element) easy to recognize, and easy to recall? Does it have ‘sticking power’? A striking image or a word carrying some emotion such as courage or bravery might help.

Meaningful. This can be achieved in a descriptive way, such as a clear link with what you do – a product category, the business you are in. Or it can be done in a persuasive way – emphasizing your unique selling proposition, or a key point of difference, such as a special benefit you offer. In either case, credibility is essential, as a slogan must link with customer expectations.

Likeable. Does it look good, and does it sound right? Try using linguistic devices like alliteration (Coca-Cola), unusual or incorrect spelling (Kwik-Fit, Vodafone), abbreviations (7UP), acronyms (Amoco), compounds (Cup-a-Soup), metaphors (Aquafresh), association with a particular quality (Midas), or what branding experts refer to as paranomasia, a play on words (half the restaurants in London).

Transferability. Is the slogan universal enough to cover new categories, new business ventures and international markets? Make sure the words are easily pronounceable in as many countries as possible and look out for possible misinterpretation. Particularly if you’d like to avoid following Pepsi whose ‘Pepsi brings you back to life’ turned into ‘Pepsi brings you ancestors back from the grave’ in Chinese, or Coors whose ‘Turn it loose’ became ‘Suffer from diarrhea’ in Spanish.

Protectability. Think about the aspect of copyrights, and make sure you can legally protect your brand elements internationally. Also, make sure you don’t invest in building up awareness of brand elements that can be easily and legally copied by others. When Molson launched their Ice beer they thought they were onto a winner. Unfortunately for them, however, you can’t copyright the word ‘ice’ and they quickly found themselves facing competition from Miller Ice, and then Bud Ice.

Authenticity. The best slogans reflect the essence of a company, its very soul. And the best way to achieve authenticity is to work from the inside out, by understanding what your people believe the business is about because every single one of them will need to be an ambassador for the brand in the outside world.

Simplicity. In an age of information overload less is most definitely more. Keep it short, keep it simple, keep it clear.

Adaptability. In a rapidly changing world you need to future-proof your brand as much as possible, which means making it as adaptable as possible. Look at how other companies such as Google and MTV play with their logos through the use of different colours and backgrounds to create new messages while retaining the essence of the brand. Brand consistency and brand relevance are not mutually exclusive. With courage and inventiveness they can be made to work hand-in-hand.

And remember this. At the end of the day you need to own the identity or slogan you’ve created, so always make sure you can deliver on the promise you’ve chosen.

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Want Brand Authenticity? Be Authentic.

We don't know the name of the first brand. What we do know is that up a grassy mountainside a few millennia ago, a big Norse farmer was getting a bit annoyed about having his cows stolen. In a fit of Viking desperation, he started to burn his initials into his cows to stop them being nicked. Brandr, the Norse word for fire, became our operative verb. An industry that would dominate marketing was born not from the desire to differentiate or connect with consumers, but from the simple need to mark ownership and origin.

Unfortunately, a great number of British marketers operate under the mistaken impression that brands are built purely around consumers. This is partly true, but brands must also represent their origins. A brand is not a malleable product that can be moved willy-nilly around a perceptual map to follow consumer needs and drive sales. Brands are anchored in provenance, founders and heritage.

The Citroen C5 work is a case in point. A blond male whizzes around Germany in his car to the strains of Wagner. A German-accented voiceover describes the car as 'unmistakably German' before revealing it is a Citroen made in France. It's a smashing ad that agency Euro RSCG should take pride in. But it is entirely inappropriate for the brand, and Citroen should hang its head in shame.

This ad will drive awareness in the short term, but over the long term it will damage the brand associations of Citroen and leave it in no man's land. If consumers want German-made, there are several exceptional, authentically German brands. It is a message lost on Citroen's UK marketers - the way to build brand is to focus on Citroen, not your competitors.

An equally worrying picture is emerging at Diageo. Its leading gin brand, Gordon's, has responded to losses to stores' own-label products by spending the past year hitching its brand to celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. The campaign shows a close-up of the chef's face next to the gin, accompanied by a bold statement in true Ramsay style. The inference is that this is his gin and comes with all the personality one expects from such a provenance.

Except, of course, it isn't Ramsay's gin at all. It's Alexander Gordon's gin, and was invented 200 years before Ramsay was born. There is enormous brand equity here. Gordon's has survived and prospered because it has something that makes it special. Diageo's challenge is to find out what this something is, define it and offer a contemporary execution of it. Don't just give up on a quarter of a millennium of heritage and hire a chef who is simultaneously endorsing about 400 other products, has nothing to do with your gin and will soon dim in the public consciousness.

Again, no shame should be attached to its agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, for creating these ads. It is an ad agency and, while most agencies will tell you that they are in the business of brands, they are, of course, in the completely different business of advertising. Ramsay will generate short-term awareness and arrest the brand's losses, but over the long term Diageo is eroding one of its most valuable brands with an inappropriate, short-term fix that will cause long-term damage to its brand equity.

Consumer-insight companies say consumers have started seeking 'authenticity'. That's rubbish. They always wanted it. Most consumers are a lot smarter and more genuine than the marketers who target them. They want brands burned with the mark of their founders, not artificially engineered by agencies. They want to know who made this brand, where and why. It's time for marketers to get back to the authentic meaning of brand.

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Celebrity Endorsement Fails!

Good old celebrity endorsement, one of the riskiest marketing strategies around. An entire brand’s reputation placed in the hands of an individual who (often) doesn’t care about the product or service he or she is endorsing.

When it works well, it’s off the scale. When it goes bad, the brand-building process goes in to reverse.

To celebrate the achievements of (the alleged drug cheat) Lance Armstrong, here’s a few celeb endorsement fails to brighten up your day - or give you nightmares if you’re deploying an endorsement strategy.

1) Kate Moss, H&M, Chanel and Burberry, 2005

Kate Moss was axed from various fashion lines after the Daily Mirror printed photos of the supermodel snorting cocaine in 2005. It was reported that the then 31 year old model had even done lines during the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund in Barcelona in 2002.

H&M cancelled ads and Chanel and Burberry also severed their ties with Moss after the tabloid ran photos of her snorting cocaine.

Moss didn’t suffer any long-term commercial damage. Quite the opposite in fact - she doubled her income over the next five years.

2) John Terry and Umbro, 2012

Umbro ended its long-running relationship with John Terry in Feb 2012. The sportswear brand announced its decision not to renew its deal with the former England captain following allegations he racially abused Anton Ferdinand during a match against Queens Park Rangers. It was not the first time the football player’s future with Umbro had come under scrutiny. In 2010 it was revealed that he had a four month affair with his then team-mate Wayne Bridge’s then-girlfriend Vanessa Perroncel, prompting speculation about his tie-up with the brand. Terry has been the face of Umbro since 2002 in a deal reportedly worth £4m, however on-going off-the-field transgressions meant the company felt the time was right to distance itself from the defender.

3) Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey for Cadbury's Snowflake, 2000

Brit TV presenter Anthea Turner was left reeling from a storm of negative publicity following her marriage to Grant Bovey in 2000. The fallout began when photographs of her wedding reception, published in the magazine OK! in an exclusive deal worth £450,000, showed the couple (apparently) using their wedding to publicise a new Cadbury chocolate bar, Snowflake.

OK! issued the photo to the media with the caption “Anthea Turner and Grant Bovey: exclusive OK! wedding photograph, enjoying Cadbury’s new Snowflake.

The Sun described it as “the most sickening wedding photo ever” while Turner, Bovey, Cadbury’s and OK! all denied that the chocolate was part of a sponsorship deal. Pictures of their wedding and their subsequent honeymoon were in the magazine for the next two weeks.

Turner and Bovey insist that someone had stuck the chocolate bar in her hand and snapped a picture before she knew what was happening.

4) Rihanna and Nivea, 2012

Stefan Heidenreich, the in-coming boss of skincare company Nivea, publicly blasted his marketing minions for recruiting Rihanna as the cosmetics firm's face for the company's 100th anniversary ads. He felt the singer was too raunchy for the family firm.

"I do not understand how to bring the core brand of Nivea in conjunction with Rihanna," he said. "Nivea is a company which stands for trust, family and reliability."

The R&B beauty took time out of celebrating Carnival in Barbados to let fans and Twitter followers know she had seen the CEO's comments. She posted a photo of Heidenreich on the microblogging site with the note: "No caption necessary."

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Why are Brands Simplifying their Logos?

Since 2010, the concept of ‘less is more’ has been embraced by many brand-builders when considering the development of their visual identity. And now, two more high profile names can be added to the list - both Microsoft and eBay have recently announced changes to their visual identity.

But why are brands simplifying their logos? Let’s take a brief look at the changes proposed by these two megabrands.

Microsoft: Unified Branding

In August, Microsoft announced its intention to refresh its somewhat dated visual identity to accompany the much anticipated launch of the Windows 8 operating system. The iconic window waves have been dropped in favour of a straighter outline while the new design incorporates lighter colours (curiously similar to eBay below). The square boxes echo the overall design of the Windows 8 user interface, giving Microsoft more freedom to incorporate it into the design of sub-brands (like the new Office 2013).

While the simplified logo has been criticised by some for lacking dynamism and being too generic, it appears to me to be designed to help Microsoft establish and maintain more consistency in their identity across products and brands.

eBay: the clean, contemporary marketplace

Also announcing a change in September was eBay, the consumer-to-consumer retail facilitator. It’s refreshing its logo by ditching the floating letters that overlapped to signify a sense of community for a simpler, more traditional font to create a cleaner typeface while retaining its familiar colour pallete. After 17 years, eBay says it wants to offer “a cleaner, more contemporary and consistent experience”.

I don’t think this is the whole story though. A 'new eBay' is surely on the way - expect to see some major changes/new features to the site soon. Presumably they'll be making eBay more like a store front rather than an auction site (most of its sales these days are through the ‘Buy it Now’ button). A high profile ad campaign will keep us informed, no doubt.

Key Takeaways

For organisations, simplifying their visual identity can support either unification or diversification efforts. It can also herald a change in strategy or simply be a mechanism for freshening up the constellation of values that surround the brand name. A simplified logo also allows greater versatility in application, especially important today with disruptive technologies putting the communication environment in a constant state of flux (now its mobile’s turn). However, brands that take this route are usually those which already enjoy high levels of brand awareness. The rules are different for new brands though, they often have to take a more literal approach to visual identity development because they lack familiarity and urgently need to build relevance among their target audience.

In the modern world, I think a strong overall design concept which is applied consistently matters much more than the logo itself (look at Google - they change their logo every day and it works for them!). But logo’s still matter, since they frame the way the broader visual identity is created. I'm just wondering who'll be next on the path to simplicity?

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Avis Abandons Trying Harder

After 50 years of ‘We try harder’ Avis has announced that it will replace its slogan with a new one – ‘It’s your space’. When it was introduced ‘We try harder’ was applauded as a brilliant counterpoint to Hertz’s number 1 position in the car rental industry. It was a strong brand promise that played off the belief that the number 2 brand would work harder on behalf of customers.

Since then, the landscape in the industry has changed, becoming significantly more crowded and much more challenging. Having used many of the car rental brands myself, I can confirm that Enterprise has consistently shown that it tries harder in the area of customer service. Perhaps, that’s why Avis is walking away from its much-lauded slogan.

While I understand that ‘It’s your space’ is customer focused, it’s not a promise and I’m unconvinced that it differentiates the brand. I’m sure a significant number of research hours have been put into the development of the new strapline (at least I hope it has). But I just don’t get it. As a frequent business traveller, I don’t find the new line compelling.

I’ll withhold judgment until I’ve seen the ATL campaign, but for now at least, all I can say is, “yikes – brave, foolhardy or both”. I’d be quite interested to know if there’s been a change in marketing leadership at Avis recently. I truly hope it’s not another example of a new marketing director coming in and trying to make their mark. Its got a slight whiff of that already.

What’s your opinion?

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A Slick Image

So, BP is rumoured to have turned to Goldman Sachs and the private equity firm Blackstone Corp for advice. I’ve had no personal experience, but I’d wager my mortgage that the services of the likes of Goldmans and Blackstone don’t come cheap. So rather than squander its increasingly scarce shareholder funds, I’ve got some tips for BP’s boss on crisis management, gleaned from some of the America’s top chief executives and PR gurus, which are offered freely in a spirit of public service:

1) Don’t get a life. Tony Hayward, BP’s chief exec, has probably figured this out for himself judging by the universal hostility to his comment that “I’d like my life back”. When you are responsible for the firm that has caused America’s worst environmental disaster, your life is no longer your own, and wishing it were otherwise will only antagonise the public further. So what if the comment was an attempt to empathise with others whose lives have been disrupted by the oil spill; when you are the most hated man in America, no one wants your empathy.

2) Don’t joke. Here’s some advice Goldman Sachs could give you, but probably wouldn’t. When Lloyd Blankfein, the investment bank’s chief executive, said he was “doing God’s work”, it was said tongue-in-cheek, not, as it would have been easy to conclude from the press reports, as a serious theological observation. In a crisis, chances are that CEO humour will get lost on the way to the front page. But the bottom line, Mr Hayward: whatever else you do, resist the urge to quip “oil’s well that ends well.

3) Fly commercial; better still, walk…no, crawl. When the bosses of the small carmakers formerly known as the Big Three went to Congress to ask for taxpayer dollars to bail out their failing firms, they each flew in their private corporate jets, thereby confirming the public’s worst suspicions about their incompetence and lack of comprehension of the austerity being suffered by their customers. In a similar spirit, when Mr Hayward goes to testify before Congress on June 17th he should ideally arrive on foot—or failing that, in an energy-efficient Prius rather than a gas-guzzling SUV.

4) Don’t make big profits—or if you do, give them away rather than pay large bonuses to yourself and your staff. It was the profits that Goldman Sachs announced in early 2009, and the huge bonuses it paid out, that helped earn the investment bank the nickname “vampire squid” and made Mr Blankfein a hate figure. If only Goldman Sachs had made losses instead of profits, Mr Blankfein would have been pitied and then ignored, like Citigroup’s boss, Vikram Pandit. If Goldman had at least given away most of the profits, he might have been forgiven his joke. At the very least, he could have forsworn his bonus. If he had done so, he might have got lucky like Howard Schultz, the boss of Starbucks, who waived his bonus—only for his board to insist on paying him one anyway.

5) Become Warren Buffett. Only the Sage of Omaha could be cheered for calling derivatives “financial weapons of mass destruction” despite issuing some of the most exotic derivatives ever created and then campaigning to exempt them from the new regulatory regime being introduced by Congress. Only Mr Buffett could get away with defending Moody’s against congressional accusations over the rating agencies’ complicity in the financial crisis, when he had been a big shareholder in Moody’s at  the time, and retain his reputation as a straight-shooter. No doubt BP will have to change its name as part of its post-spill damage-limitation rebranding, but maybe Mr Hayward should change his name too.

6) Quit while you are ahead. We have no reason to think that Tesco will soon be plunged into a crisis, but if it is, the plaudits heaped on Terry Leahy, its chief executive, on June 8th, when he announced his impending retirement, will provide further evidence of the wisdom of getting out before disaster strikes. Imagine how much better Mr Blankfein’s public image would be if he had retired at the end of 2008. How Mr Hayward must wish that he had retired on March 17th, one month before the oil spill, rather than merely selling one-third of his BP shares - worth around $1.2m then, but about half as much now.

7) Pray that a worse disaster strikes someone else.“Every day, Lloyd Blankfein must get down on his knees and thank God for the BP oil spill,” says one noted PR expert privately. (Maybe the spill is proof that Mr Blankfein is doing God’s work after all, then?) Being America’s most-hated boss seems to be a temporary position, the crown passing to a new troubled head each time a fresh disaster strikes. As Fake Lucas Van Praag tweeted the other day, “Even though Goldman maybe had non-consensual relations with the economy, it's not as bad as despoiling an entire coastline, right?” If it suddenly turns out that iPads are rotting their users’ brains, we will know whose prayers have been answered.

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