Trying to describe a that isn't there - a book about branding by Buddy.

1. Trying to describe
a thing that isn’t there.

2. Sometimes everything
(or almost everything)
you need is there.
And yet,
something is missing...

3. “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell
as sweet.”

4. Not to be insulting
to Shakespeare, but
in marketing terms,
he couldn’t be more
wrong.

5. All “Roses” do not smell as sweet.

6. Some roses cost more than others;
some are more sought after,
some are more friendly,
some are more romantic,
some are available at the
supermarket checkout.

7. All “Roses”
are not
considered
equal.

8. A better “smell” is attributed
to roses with certain names,
to those that have succeeded in planting themselves in people’s hearts and minds.

9. In most ways
that count, a company’s
brand is its “name”.

10. A company’s “name” in this sense is not the
literal word or words that the company goes by,
but the collected thoughts, impressions, and
opinions that people have of the company and
its products and services.

11. Good brands
smell good;
bad brands
not so much.

12. So there’s
a lot in
a name.
Sorry Mr. Shakespeare.

13. So how
important is your business’s “name”?

14. Case One:
The day the Marlboro Man fell off his horse.
Marlboro Friday: When Phillip Morris decided to cut the prices of its very successful cigarettes in order to compete with generic brands on Friday, April 2, 1993, the market and investors interpreted the move as a failure in the company’s marketing strategy – and of branding in general. The message was that Philip Morris could no longer justify its higher price tag and now had to compete on a price only basis.

15. As a result, Philip Morris’s stock fell 26%, losing about $10 billion off its market cap in a single day. The share value of other branded consumer product companies,
including Coca-Cola and RJR Nabisco, fell as well.
At the time, some experts viewed these events as
signifying “the death of a brand” and the advent of a “value-minded” consumer generation. Consumers who would pay more attention to the real value of products and not to the brand.

16. This view soon proved to be way off the mark, with the
rest of the decade’s economy being dominated by brands and driven by high-budget marketing campaigns.
In retrospect, Marlboro Friday actually marked the
beginning of a shift from straight advertising to branding.
Those companies that opted for price cuts over
marketing, and began behaving like commodity product providers, lost big.
The wiser companies (and now most successful ones) realized that their brands were actually a huge part of what they were selling in the first place.

17. And today, global markets are dominated by high-profile name-brand products, from Starbucks to Nike to Apple to
Mercedes, with the world’s most revered (and profitable)
companies basing their success on the basis of their “names”.
Decade after decade, well branded companies edge out
cheaper (sometimes even better) products at every turn.

18. So, what’s in
a name?
Expectations,
value, and profit.

19. Case Two:
“Project Kansas” (or a dog barking at its own reflection).
In 1985, Coca Cola, which had consistently been the world’s top ranked brand since Interbrand started
compiling the list, got a tad greedy. The company was
concerned that it was losing domestic market share to arch rival Pepsi and so decided to change the recipe of its classic cola - the extremely profitable product they had been making for over a century - to a new one. All their taste tests, surveys, and focus groups had shown that
consumers favored a more citrusy taste than the classic
coke offered. In fact, the new sweeter mixture
overwhelmingly beat both regular Coke and Pepsi.
And so New Coke was born.

20. The company’s stock went up on the announcement
and market research showed 80% of the American public was aware of the change within days. A resounding success!
Or?
Well, not so much…
Coca-Cola received over 400,000 calls and letters
complaining about the change; their hotline received 1,500 complaints a day. The company hired a psychiatrist to listen in on calls and reported that people sounded as if they were discussing the death of a family member.

21. Ads for New Coke were booed heavily when they
appeared on the scoreboard at the Houston Astrodome.
Fidel Castro, a longtime Coke drinker, called New Coke
a sign of American capitalist decadence.
The company’s distribution partners and bottlers found it difficult to promote and sell a drink that had long been marketed as “The Real Thing”, a constant and
unchanging product, now that it had been changed.

22. The consumer reaction and market backlash was so great that Coca-Cola executives announced the return of the original formula on July 10, less than three months after New Coke’s introduction.

23. National television broadcasts were interrupted to share the news with viewers. A U.S. Senator, on the floor of the Senate, called the reintroduction “a meaningful moment in U.S. history”.
The company hotline received 31,600 calls in the two days after the announcement. Phone calls and letters to the company were as joyful and thankful as they had been angry and depressed. “You would have thought we’d cured cancer”, said one executive.

24. The simple fact is that all
the time and money and skill poured into consumer research on the new Coca-Cola could not measure or reveal the deep and abiding emotional attachment to original Coca-Cola felt by
so many people.

25. So, what’s in
a name?
Loyalty,
relationships,
and sales.

26. Case Three:
I don’t know much about Art, but I know what I like.
Banksy, the famous street artist whose pieces regularly sell for anything from $40,000 to more than $1,000,000, set up an anonymous street stall in New York with his
artworks for sale for 60 dollars each. A $60 investment could easily have resulted in a $40,000 profit, a 67,000% return on your investment. The result?

27. He sold barely anything during the day, bringing in a measly $420. The difference? Perhaps the fact that the stall was not branded, and only sold products based on their naked, intrinsic value.

28. Another example can be found with Joshua Bell, one of the world’s most acclaimed violinists. Mr. Bell conducted a daring experiment in which he sat anonymously on a folding chair in a metro station in Washington, DC, like any other street musician, playing for tips. He played a Bach piece on a Stradivarius, providing passersby with what may well be the ultimate music-for-the-money
experience. He delivered his product raw, unbranded,
naked, and free.

29. And it failed miserably. Mr. Bell made a lousy $32 for his 45-minute performance. Both “products” were
world-class, but without their “brand”, did not capture nearly as much attention or money as they should.

30. So, what’s in
a name?
The power to
prompt irrational
decisions in a
supposedly free
and rational
world.

31. So, what’s in a name?
Increased customer
loyalty, decreased
sensitivity to pricing and other economic trends, and new customer
acquisition.

32. So, what’s in
a name?
People acting with
their hearts as well
as minds.
Feeling, not just
thinking.

33. So what goes into
the making of a good “name”?
And why is it so hard
to achieve?

34. What allows one
company to take
triple the price for
the same product
as a competitor?

35. Why is one
rose worth
so much
more than
another?

36. What’s
in a name?

37. Sometimes all the
ingredients are present….
But there’s still something missing.

38. Because eggs, milk, and flour
are not a cake.

39. So what’s in
your company’s
name?

40. You have a good company.
It has good products, a good reputation, and a
decent customer base.

41. Your company
does a good job at marketing and
communicating its products, at engaging customers, capturing feedback, listening…

42. It is a very good company.

43. But it could be better.

44. INGREDIENTS
are NOT
a CAKE.

45. We look forward to meeting you.