Helping good people build great brands.
At conferences and speaking events, one of the questions I’ve received most often – for 20 years now – is this:
Does branding matter in B2B?
The answer is an emphatic “YES.”
To fully answer the question, though, we need to first review what branding is and isn’t.
Continue reading “B2B Branding – It Matters, and Here Are 5 Reasons Why”
(Reading Time: 7 minutes)Who won Super Bowl LI? Besides the Patriots, that is.
For starters, Fox did pretty well. Days before the game, a Fox exec crowed, “We are going to finish with the highest revenue day in Fox history.”
When you sell dozens of Super Bowl ads for $10 million per minute, there’s probably a pretty good pizza party in the break room.
So advertisers must have done well too, right? Not so fast.
Communicus, a research firm, has conducted several studies of the effectiveness of Super Bowl ads. Their findings? Only about one advertiser in five actually builds its brand.
There’s a danger: Those of us without super-sized marketing budgets might be blinded by the hype. We might be inclined to believe that things like “likeability scores” matter. They don’t. Continue reading “The Super Bowl Ads: 9 Inexpensive Lessons for the Rest of Us”
(Reading Time: 5 minutes)About five million dollars. That’s the cost for one of this year’s 30-second Super Bowl ads.
For most of us who lead challenger brands, that kind of outlay simply isn’t in the realm of possibility. As underdogs, we’re used to doing more with less.
The Super Bowl – and, in particular, the hype surrounding its ads – is perhaps the greatest example in business of flawed thinking on a grand scale. Though attention is heightened during the big game, viewers are primarily looking to be entertained. (This is how we get a Bud Light ad with “caucus” jokes. Oof, you are so ribald!)
Of course, ads that entertain don’t necessarily sell. And challenger brands know that it’s all about selling.
So let’s talk about what the rest of us can learn from this year’s Super Bowl ads. Continue reading “Super Bowl 50: 7 Lessons for Challenger Brands”
(Reading Time: 2 minutes)Back in 1997, I accepted a position as a Group Brand Manager for a Fortune 200 company that shall remain nameless.
My start date coincided with the annual marketing planning process. Here’s the arc of a conversation I had with a well-meaning co-worker (WMCW) during my third week: Continue reading “What You Encourage”
(Reading Time: 3 minutes)We’ve all seen them: The pipe dreams that are presented as “strategic plans.” Plans that seem to have no tether to reality. Plans that nobody believes in (but that somehow get approved).
There are many reasons such unrealistic plans survive. The organization may encourage activity, not results. Leadership may not be grounded in the planning process, and are thus unable to guide it. Politics may replace objectivity. And so on.
No matter the roots of the issue, I’ve found that one question is particularly useful in making a huge leap toward strategy that truly works.
That question is four short words: Continue reading “The Most Important Strategic Question You Can Ask”
(Reading Time: 3 minutes)It was the greatest upset in Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) history.
Rousey entered Saturday night’s fight as the bantamweight champion. She was undefeated – 12-0 with 9 arm-bar submissions. Her prior three fights had lasted 34, 14 and 16 seconds. (Those aren’t typos.)
By the end of the night, the belt belonged to Holm, about a 10-to-1 underdog before the fight began. Holm knocked out Rousey less than a minute into the second round with a vicious kick to the head. But Rousey was losing the fight badly before that.
What can challenger brands learn from this shocking upset? Continue reading “What Challenger Brands Can Learn From Ronda Rousey’s Stunning Loss”
(Reading Time: 4 minutes)There’s a curious tendency these days to bemoan the “disloyalty” of consumers. But is consumer loyalty really in decline?
Some like to point to studies like Deloitte’s annual “American Pantry” study, which this year reported Continue reading “What You Need to Know About Superior Consumer Loyalty”
Is strategy dead? Some are reporting that it has, in fact, ceased to be.
One of the more prominent claimants is Kevin Roberts, Executive Chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi. (You may know him as the “Lovemarks” guy.) Mr. Roberts had this to say at the Institute of Directors’ Annual Convention in 2012:
Continue reading “Is Strategy Dead?”
(Reading Time: 4 minutes)Most brands are challenger brands. Probably yours.
It’s not just a matter of share. If you have fewer resources than your competitors, you’re a challenger brand. You might have a smaller budget. Lower awareness. A short-handed sales team. Or all of these, plus a few things I haven’t listed, you lucky devil.
I’ve been fortunate to work on challenger brands for my entire career, in both brand management and consulting. I say “fortunate” because victory is sweeter when you come from behind, or when you achieve more with less.
Around 20 years ago, I was the brand manager of Airheads candy. At the time, our two largest competitors, Skittles and Starburst, outspent us by about 20 to 1. Despite this, we tripled our sales in less than five years. And we launched what became the fastest-selling non-chocolate single in the country. (The Airheads 6-bar package can still be found near cash registers today.)
The lesson I learned early: Continue reading “Two Rules for Winning for Challenger Brands”
(Reading Time: 4 minutes)Budweiser debuted one of this year’s most-discussed Super Bowl ads. Called “Brewed the Hard Way,” it’s still running. I saw it twice on CBS yesterday.
In this spot, Bud declares, in screen-filling block text, that it’s “proudly a macro beer.”
“It’s not brewed to be fussed over,” the text announces, as a bearded, bespectacled hipster inhales deeply from a tulip glass filled with a stout-like brew. “It’s brewed for a crisp smooth finish.”
“It’s brewed for drinking, not dissecting,” it continues. We see more hipsters, this time sampling a beer flight.
“Let them sip their pumpkin peach ale,” it proclaims. “We’ll be brewing us some golden suds.”
Why the broadside against craft brews and those who drink them? Continue reading “Dove, Bud and the Quest for Real Brand Values”