What's your brand portfolio?

I was reading some comments on the Idea Sandbox blog today that stopped me in my tracks (okay, slight exaggeration). The topic was brands: one person was slamming corporations and brands while shouting about how she was such a fan of Adbusters, itself a brand. Yes, we all love our brands, so, without thinking about it too much, I thought I'd write down five brands that I am somewhat passionate about in the sense that I make a point of using them or would like to use them in future:

1. Gillette Mach III razors.
2. Pioneer CDJ1000 MkIII CD turntable.
3. Volkswagen Golf/Rabbit.
4. Levis 501 jeans.
5. Marlboro Lights (when I used to smoke).

Believe me. There are many more.

Throw out the idea that you're above all this brand stuff and share five that are part of your life.

Bonus Link of the Week: London Business School Podcasts

Activa: End of Summer

Nothing much to write today. Why not listen to a great piece of music from one of my favourite producers, Activa (Rob Stevenson), from the U.K. Enjoy, and I'm curious to know what you think of the track (these tracks have very long intros and outros because they're usually mixed with other tracks during live DJ sets).

Buying In

One of the reasons I write about brands in this blog about innovation is the fact that innovation, or rather the outcomes of innovation, have made the world very complex. Brands act as a counterweight to this complexity. Similarly, globalization -- defined as an increase in trade across selected national and international borders by profit-seeking firms and nations -- has increased a sense of national identity. So, in addition to innovation, expect more on brands and national cultures in this blog.

Every now and again you come across a book that changes the way you think about brands and branding. Buying In, by Rob Walker, is one such book. I just stumbled across this book at my local library and I am so glad that I decided to pick it up and read it. It's a great book and I cannot praise it enough. Here are some of the views presented in the book. The ideas are the author's: I've just written down how I interpreted some of them.

1. Despite the fact that we think we are immune to brands, they are becoming a bigger part of our lives.
2. Rather than defining your brand identity tightly, allow some room for movement: consumers will happily fill the gaps.
3. Rather than making ethics central to your communications, how about making ethics central to the product and the way it is made?
4. If you think you are immune to brands in your life, you don't have a pulse.
5. While some brands are used to display our aspirations publicly, many are used to tell stories to ourselves in private.
6. Brands may be symptomatic of a sense of detachment from family and tribe. People want to belong.




After reading this book, I'm starting to appreciate that brands and their packaging work much like comic books or fairy tales. And we, as consumers, really are all "lovin' it" and "buying in" to it big time.

Packaging Innovation

I've often wondered why toothpaste tubes are the size they are. Why not a a massive toothpaste box in the bathroom that will last you a year? Same with those face wash tubes: why not have your face wash in a box-like dispenser that will save you from making numerous trips to the store ? And, have you ever wondered why cat food tins are so small? Your cat eats the stuff every day, so why not have a big gallon tin of the stuff? The same is true with dental floss: tiny, tiny packaging. Yes, companies are very innovative with packaging these days.

Packaging innovation comes in many sizes

The Daily Mail has an interesting article today on some of the manufacturers' and supermarkets' latest packaging antics.

Eight functions of brands

“Mythological symbols touch and exhilarate centers of life beyond the reach of vocabularies and coercion.”
- Joseph Campbell, Masks of God, Vol. 4
There are a lot of brand gurus out there, but, as in the quote above about symbols, the function of brands is almost impossible to explain fully.

I've been reading a lot about the role of brands lately and have put together this short list of the many functions of brands below. One thing to remember in any discussion on brands is to distinguish between high-involvement and low-involvement products, consumer and business-to-business products, product-heavy and service-heavy products. A weakness in many books about branding is that they tend to look mainly at the well-known brands (celebrity brands) and ignore just about everything else. Another thing to remember is that many of the roles outlined below overlap.


Another day on the farm

So what are some of the functions of brands? These all take the perspective of the consumer:

1. They reconcile our craving for individual identity and the desire to belong to something beyond ourselves.
2. They act as an umbilical chord to something or somebody else.
3. They influence and reflect our quest for meaning.
4. They are dream catalysts (They allow us to tell ourselves lies that we want to believe).
5. They present a world as it ought to be rather than it is. (Deception?)
6. They simplify the buying process and they simplify our world.
7. They broadcast our values and signal group affiliations.
8. They ignite our memories of past experiences, thereby influencing today's choices.

The common theme is the notion of transcendence beyond the material. Plus, as mentioned before, there are multiple functions, many of which are deeply personal (think iPod) and not fully controlled by the firms behind the brand. Anyway, the list reflects some of the thinking about brands from various sources. If you have any comments/ideas, I'd love to hear from you!

Creativity quiz

It's amazing what you come across on the Web. Today I was looking for some ideas on writing multiple-choice questions and discovered that some of the content in the questions was related to the steps in the creativity process.

Try out the question and see if you get it right.

The passage illustrates a particular phase of the
creative process. Which one is it?

1. preparation
2. incubation
3. orientation
4. illumination
5. verification

"The story is told of the famous German Organic Chemist
Auguste Kékulé who was struggling with the problem of how
the six carbon atoms of benzene were linked together. He was
getting nowhere with the problem, and one day fell asleep in
front of the fireplace while he was pondering on it. He
dreamt of molecules twisting and turning around like snakes.
Suddenly, one of the snakes swallowed its own tail and
rolled around like a hoop. Kékulé woke up with a start, and
realized that his problem could be solved if the six carbon
atoms of benzene were attached to each other to form a ring.
Further work showed that this was entirely correct."

If you are not sure, you should get it after reading this passage. You can confirm the answer by going to the original page here.

"The creative process is believed to take place in five
stages, in the following order: ORIENTATION, when the
problem must be identified and defined, PREPARATION, when
all the possible information about the problem is
collected, INCUBATION, when there is a period where no
solution seems in sight and the person is often busy with
other tasks, ILLUMINATION, when the person experiences
a general idea of how to arrive at a solution to the
problem, and finally VERIFICATION, when the person
determines whether the solution is the right one for the
problem."

Convergence versus divergence

There is a bit of a discussion over at the Origins of Brands Blog, operated by Laura Ries, on whether the iPhone is a success (just because it's an Apple product?) or a bit of a failure due to the fact that it has too many functions rammed into its small case.

The discussion also brings in the notions of convergence and divergence. I'm a big fan of the Ries' books and support their view that both brands and products diverge -- as nature intended. Sure, you may see counter examples, but I'd still place my money on divergent products and brands over convergent ones. I'd also guess that the profit margins in convergent products are razor thin compared with more specialized, divergent products.

I can give you some examples of convergent products. Ask yourself if you have bought any of these lately:

1. Shampoo and conditioner in one bottle.
2. A television and DVD combined.
3. Salt and pepper combined in one shaker.
4. A washing machine and tumble dryer combined.
5. Toothpaste and mouthwash combined.
6. A record or CD turntable combined with an amplifier.
7. A coffee grinder and coffee maker.
8. A supersonic wrist watch and radio.

No. We just don't operate like that. I don't even surf the Web like that: I go here. Then I go there. Then I visit here. Yahoo is a classic example of a failing convergence brand/product. Yahoo tried to offer Web hosting services only to be booted out by Godaddy. Google is making the same mistake. Google this, Google that: brand stretching gone mad.

Yum have many brands. They know that divergence is the way. Similarly, how can Clorox slap its brand on salad dressing? No, it uses a new brand name, Hidden Valley. It also keeps Burt's Bees separate from its Clorox brand.


One of Starbuck's local competitors in Taiwan

The funny thing is, some of the critics of Laura Ries' stance against convergence products are, at the same time, against Starbucks selling smoothies.

PS. For an interesting view on the future of Apple, read or listen to Clayton Christensen any time he discusses proprietary versus modular architectures.

Stealing apples and IP theft

When I was a kid, I used to go out with my friends and steal apples from gardens. We did this not because the apples around my home town in Scotland were particularly delicious. They were sour, hard and barely edible. We stole the apples because we enjoyed doing something that we weren't supposed to do. Technically, I guess, we were stealing, but there was an unarticulated consensus that pinching a few apples from gardens was no big deal. Culturally, it was acceptable.

We stole the apples. Nobody really cared (including the owners of the apples) and we had a bit of a laugh doing something that was "against the law."

I am the law
The same attitude to downloading and sharing music exists in many cultures around the world, both at the national and sub-cultural levels. This is why it is so hard to get international copyright laws enforced at street level -- there's no buy-in from those individuals given the job of catching people. Sure, you'll read about cases where people have been caught, but this is just carnival.

One of the most despised workers in the UK is the traffic warden. He tries to enforce a law, punishment for parking on double yellow lines, that is seen as an OK thing to do.

Walk down the streets of New York and you'll see counterfeit purses being sold on the streets. Nobody is losing much sleep over the fact that LVMH shareholders are -- possibly -- missing out on a sale. No, the sale of the original wouldn't have occurred anyway, and the girl still has her eye on the authentic item.

And should anybody be stressing out that a child is being treated with a generic/unofficial drug at a discount to the branded original when the alternative was no treatment?

Firms often forget that the more you try to legislate against a certain behavior accepted as no big deal within a given culture, the less likely it will work. It may actually force people to find more creative ways to skirt the law because, just like stealing apples, there's a certain adrenalin rush from doing something that the law says you can't do.

Check out a very interesting article in the Guardian by Cory Doctory about a recent deal between the record industry and Internet Service Providers (ISPs).