The Origin of Brands Blog

By the numbers or by the brands?

By the numbers or by the brands, which is the best way to run a company? By the brands, of course.

The economy is slowing and gas prices are soaring, but consumers are still spending. And luckily for the Gap and other retailers, still wearing clothes. Bad times usually exaggerate the differences between brands: Which brands are doing the right things and which brands are doing the wrong things. Powerful brands survive even the worst of times.

So has the Gap been doing the right things or the wrong things? It’s a mixed bag.

One of America’s premier brands has fallen on hard times. Is the recent news that the Gap Inc’s fourth-quarter net income rose 21% a sign that things are turning around for the retailer? A closer look reveals a sad and resounding “no.”

Back in 1969, The Gap was started by Donald Fisher and his wife. The Fishers opened their first store near what is now San Francisco State University. (The name referred to the generation gap.) The Gap catered to teenagers and sold mainly Levi’s jeans. A classic example of a focused brand (The Gap) using a great name (Levi’s) to lead a movement and in the process create a new category.

What do teenagers want most in life? Not to be like their parents. Parents wear pants and teenagers wear jeans. The store that supplied the uniform of choice (Levi’s jeans and t-shirts) to teenagers throughout the 70’s and 80’s was The Gap.

What happened next? You know what happened next. They expanded.

First, The Gap faced what it saw as a serious problem. Its core customers were growing up and still shopping in the store. Not wanting to lose those valuable customers, The Gap added more active wear and styles suitable for people in their 30s and beyond. At the same time these customers started having children of their own.

As I said, what do teenagers least like to do? Look like their parents. If Mom and Dad are wearing Levi’s and shopping at The Gap, then forget about getting the kids into the store. Both The Gap and Levi Strauss suffered as teens drifted to other brands like American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch which their parents didn’t wear.

Second, The Gap line-extended the brand by opening GapKids, babyGap and GapBody. If shopping where your parents shop wasn’t bad enough, shopping where your baby cousin does is the kiss of death. Sure, some parents like dressing their babies in Gap clothes. But these expansions undermined the meaning of the Gap brand and essentially killed its coolness factor.

While all this crazy expansion and brand dilution was going on, The Gap made two wise decisions when they launched two successful second brands. In 1983, the company bought Banana Republic a chain of jungle-themed stores that sold safari clothing. After the novelty of safari-wear wore off, the company rebranded the stores and focused on more expensive and sophisticated clothes. In 1994, they launched the Old Navy chain to sell less-expensive clothing and regain some credibility with teens.

The current problems at The Gap are due primarily to the watering down of the brand. When a brand tries to appeal to everybody, it suffers. And in a fickle business like fashion, you can easily miscalculate the next trend, which is exactly what happened in the past few years to The Gap.

The company’s latest attempt at a turnaround involves the naming of a new Chairman, Glenn Murphy, who was brought in last July and who previously was CEO of Shoppers Drug Mart in Canada. So what is Murphy’s plan for success? Cutting costs. What?

He hopes to solve the company’s problems by cutting spending, advertising and inventory. The Gap doesn’t have a spending problem, The Gap has a branding problem. And a lack of investment in the brand is just going to exacerbate the problem in the long term. While cutting costs has produced a short term increase in net income, the future looks bleak at The Gap unless it addresses its primarily problem. How to build the brand.

It’s what we saw at Sears-Kmart. Eddie Lampert’s solution to the company’s woes was to cut costs. When you run a company purely by the books instead of by the brand, you usually run it right into the ground. Initially, investors cheered Lampert’s cost cutting. But today the company is in shambles. Once, Sears and Kmart were weak brands. Today, they’re on life support.

Could the same thing happen to The Gap? You bet, if the cost cutting continues and the brands don’t refocus, they face trouble.

Not all The Gap’s spending did a lot of good. The Gap has been a huge devotee of massive advertising, particularity television advertising. An established brand needs to advertise, but unless the message is right, the money is wasted.

What did The Gap spend most of its money on? Celebrities. A wide variety of expensive celebrities. Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker, John Mayer, Audrey Hepburn, Forest Whitaker, Lucy Liu, Chris O’Donnell, you name the celebrity, he or she probably got paid by The Gap at one time or another.

The problem is two-fold. (1) Using too many celebrities diminishes the value of any one celebrity. (2) None of the celebrities had credentials with the brand. Madonna would rather be caught dead than seen wearing something from The Gap. The Material Girl is not going to parade around in the basics.

When your brand stands for “basic clothing for young people,” old celebrities are the last people that should be in your ads. This has been an expensive lesson for the company to learn.

What The Gap should do is to go back to basics. Literally. They need to better define and better focus each of their individual brands.

Successful companies manage the brands, not the numbers.

Being different visually

The ability of a brand to stand out in the marketplace will enhance its chance of standing out in the mind. We live in an over-communicated world where each of us is bombarded with hundreds of branding, advertising and editorial messages daily. If your brand looks like every other brand, it isn’t likely to be noticed.

Looking the same as everybody else might be a good strategy if you are a 13 year-old-girl in middle school, but not if you are a brand looking to succeed in the marketplace.

A visual difference is important for three reasons:
1: Gets your brand noticed in a crowded marketplace.
2: Establishes your unique position.
3: Reminds customers of your brand every time they see your visual difference.

A unique visual difference is usually created by taking the standard look in a category and flipping it on its head.

Take beer, for example. Most beer is consumed in pint glasses, bottles or cans. All manly delivery vehicles. Not Stella Artois. Stella is served in a chalice glass, a delicate glass with a stem.

A Stella Artois glass looks more like a wine or an iced-tea glass than a beer glass. Of course, there are many technical and historic reasons for the glass. The chalice, along with a special Stella pouring ritual, allows the beer to flow, breathe and develop a proper head. According to its website: “Not only does the beer taste great, it also looks wonderful.”

Stella could have said: “Not only does the beer taste great, but it also looks different. And being different is what has built our brand in the mind.”

People see a Stella chalice and say “Wow! What is that you’re drinking?” The glass is not for everybody, of course. Building a powerful brand requires sacrifice. By giving up thebeer-guzzling frat boys and their bars, Stella Artois has been able to focus on the upscale market and force its glass into distribution.

At first, bars didn’t want to deal with the Stella glasses which are delicate, hard to wash and don’t stack like pint glasses. But Stella stuck to its guns and its chalices. And its dedication has paid off. (Nobody said executing a good strategy is easy.)

Many brands were built with a striking visual difference:
- Lime in the top of a Corona bottle.
- Curves of a Coke bottle.
- Grille on a Mercedes.
- Grille on a BMW.
- Wristband of a Rolex.
- Thinness of a Razr.
- Small can of a Red Bull.

Many times a unique visual difference can be created with a color:
- Green jacket at the Master’s golf championship.
- Red hat of a cardinal.
- White ear buds of an iPod.
- Orange handle of a Fiskars scissors.
- Purple Nexium pill.
- Brown UPS truck.
- Red bull’s eye of a Target store.
- Gold jacket at Century 21.

Why has the Toyota Prius outsold the Honda Civic hybrid more than 3-to-1? Because the Prius looks different than any car on the road. (You can’t tell a regular Civic from a hybrid unless you bend down and search for the small wording on the back bumper.)

One automobile expert explained the success of the Prius over the Civic hybrid with the comment: “Consumers don’t want a hybrid. They just want a car that looks like a hybrid.”

Consumers buy hybrids, of course, because they want to do something positive about the environment. But they also want to make sure everybody else on the road knows they are doing something about the environment. The biggest mistake car makers make with hybrid technology is converting existing models into hybrids. They should be thinking new models and new names, if not totally new brands.

A visual difference also helps to establish a strong number-two brand. After Red Bull got going, hundreds of companies including Coca-Cola flooded the market with me-too energy-drink brands. All the me-too brands copied Red Bull and its small 8.3-oz. can. (Small is a good visual symbol for an energy drink because it connotes the stuff is strong. But Red Bull owns the “small can” visual.)

The way to build a strong number-two brand is to be different. That’s exactly what Monster did. It was first to introduce a 16-oz. can and a 16-oz. name.

Today, Monster is the number-two brand in the energy-drink category. After Monster’s success, everybody rushed to market with their own large cans, but it didn’t matter. The spoils go to the first brands in the mind and those brands are Red Bull and Monster.

Being different doesn’t work every time. The laws of marketing are not 100% guaranteed. There are always exceptions.

One exception is the Pontiac Aztek, a car that was certainly different but about as successful as the Edsel. There has to be a strategy behind a difference. Suburban Moms driving SUVs don’t want to be different. Their 13-year-old daughters would die from embarrassment.

On the other hand, young urban car customers love to be different, so the odd-shaped Scion, a youth-focused brand, is doing great.

Being different may seem risky and your distribution channels may scream, but it can be well worthwhile. Being different may kill you in middle school but not in the mind which is where powerful brands are built.

Closing day in Atlanta

Finally the silly slogan for my hometown of Atlanta “Every day is an opening day” has been benched.

Since October 2005 when it was launched, I have been critical of the slogan. Not only is it a generic, meaningless idea, but a better idea is already out there in the hearts of minds of consumers. An idea that is powerful, credible and motivating. Ignoring this idea, which has the potential to become one of the greatest city slogans of all-time, is a marketing crime.

Summarizing the attributes of a city/state/country brand with one word or phrase is extremely difficult. Unlike a toothpaste, soft drink or an automobile, places have an incredible amount of diversity.

Volvo is safe. Coke is the real thing. Crest fights cavities. But what is Atlanta? A southern metropolitan city with a variety of leading industries? Not exactly catchy.

For sure, Atlanta is not where every day is an opening day. One day every spring, the Braves have an opening day. One day every fall, the Falcons have an opening day. And in 2005, the world’s biggest aquarium opened in Atlanta. Aside from that, the “every day” slogan has no connection to our city.

Furthermore, it’s a slogan that could be said of any city with a sports team or a new attraction that recently opened. The mission of a slogan is not just to define your brand, but more importantly to differentiate it from other brands.

One way to test the differentiation factor is to reverse the slogan and pin it on the brand’s major competitor. Does it make sense? Could it define another brand? If not, then the slogan is just plain puffery that is likely to be ignored.

• Scope is the good-tasting mouthwash because Listerine is the bad-tasting mouthwash.

• Target is the place for cheap chic because Wal-Mart is cheap but not fashionable.

• Pepsi is the choice of a new generation because your parents drank Coca-Cola.

Most place slogans would be ridiculous in reverse:

• “Incredible India.” India is incredible because Pakistan is not credible?

• Guatemala: “Soul of the Earth.” Guatemala has a soul because Mexico is soulless?

• Atlanta: “Everyday is an opening day.” Atlanta is open every day because Miami is closed?

Just yesterday New York City unveiled the city’s first global advertising campaign. The theme: “This is New York City.”

What? I’m not kidding the city will spend $30 million on advertising to tell the world “This is New York City.” As opposed to “This is not Boston, unless the Red Socks Win” a long running campaign of its neighboring city to the north.

“This is New York City” is not powerful, memorable or unique. It doesn’t say anything about the city that distinguishes it from any other city. You could easily substitute any city name in the world into the campaign. Paris, London, Rome, San Francisco or even Atlanta.

New York City is the most exciting city in the world. You are at the center of it all when you visit there. Wall Street, Broadway, Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Times Square. It is home of the financial, media, theatrical and fashion centers of the world.

New York needs a verbalization that reinforces that idea in the mind. The reason to visit New York is because it is the Big Apple. The biggest most exciting city in the world.

One of the best city slogans in recent years is the Las Vegas campaign “What happens here stays here.” Brilliant! In reverse, “What happens at home doesn’t stay at home” is equally as true. Las Vegas has an annual budget of $86 million and it is money well spent.

The idea Atlanta should use would be difficult to sell because it has been around for a long time. It isn’t new, original or creative. After paying an advertising agency millions of dollars, city leaders would likely laugh if the agency came back with an old slogan it wanted to refurbish.

Advertising agencies are focused on creativity, the new and different. Creativity might be good for winning a Gold Lion at Cannes, but it is not necessarily the best way to build a brand.

How should Atlanta be positioned? Let’s look at some of the facts.

• According to the Federal Aviation Administration, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport is the nation’s busiest.

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Atlanta had 72,861 private housing starts in 2005, the highest of any metropolitan area in the U.S.

• No American metro area attracts more young professionals. According to Impress Consulting, Atlanta leads the nation in luring high-educated 25 to 34-year-olds.

• According to Nielsen Media Research, Atlanta is the fastest-growing TV market.

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, metro Atlanta added 890,000 residents from April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2007, the largest numerical gain of the nation’s 361 metro areas.

• According to the travel discount site Hotwire.com, Atlanta has the best “travel-value index” of the 50 most-visited places in the U.S.

When we arrived in the city back in 1997, a friend called us and his first words were “Welcome to Hot-lanta.”

In addition to all the great things about the city, it sometimes runs over 100 high-and-sticky degrees in the summertime. And sometimes the traffic is terrible because of the rapid growth the city has experienced. But these negatives are worth having if it means no snow in the winter, lots of high paying jobs and an abundance of recreational activities.

One of the silliest rationales for not using the slogan “Hot-lanta” is that city leaders are afraid to remind people how hot it is. What? It would be like ignoring the rain in Seattle, the fog in San Francisco or the gridlock in New York. The best way to deal with a negative is to turn it into a positive.

• Listerine: The taste you hate twice a day.

• With a name like Smuckers, it has to be good.

• Avis is only #2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us? We try harder.

“Hot-lanta,” is a slogan that deals with the negative and turns it into a positive. It is the hottest growing metro area in the country. Who doesn’t want to live in the hot place, eat at the hot restaurant or work at the hot company? Sure, not everybody likes hot. Some people prefer northern Wisconsin because it’s cold and almost completely devoid of people. (Local joke: Wisconsin has three seasons: July, August and winter.)

Building a brand requires sacrifice. You give up the isolation and the snowmobiling to live in Hot-lanta.

For me and millions of others Hot-lantans, it is worth it.

Does Sex Sell?

From Miller’s catfight to Carl's Jr.'s Hilton wash down to Hardee’s teacher dance to the Folsom Street Fair’s sadomasochistic last supper there is an escalating use of gratuitous sex in advertising.

We have all heard the saying: Sex Sells. But today’s advertisers are using it more often to sell things not even remotely sexual like hamburgers.

So why are more ads pushing the limits of taste and morality? The answer is simple, to get our attention.

There is way too much advertising today. To break through the clutter, advertising agencies use shocking, sexual and outrageous ads to attract attention, generate buzz and create controversy.

Nothing gets attention like controversy. And nothing creates controversy like sex.

But controversy generated by running ads that are over the top with tasteless and nearly pornographic images does not help a brand.

Forget the fact that many people are insulted and disgusted by the ads. Because the truth is, the target market of 18 to 24-year-old males usually loves the ads and even talks about and remembers the ads. The problem is most of time they don’t remember the product advertised. It is an overwhelming problem.

Loving the ads and buying the product are two totally different things. For advertising to be effective it has to reinforce a brand’s core value not just get attention.

Take the Hardee’s flat-bun ad.

(Note: In 1997 Hardee’s was bought by CKE Restaurants, the owner of Carl’s Jr. The two chains now share the same logo, the same menu and the same advertising campaign under different names. Hardee’s restaurants are located primarily on the east coast of the U.S. and Carl’s Jr. on the west coast.)

Their latest hamburger ad has a “hot for teacher” girl dancing and grabbing her rear end while the boys go wild and the club music blares. And who could forget the chain’s previous campaign which showed Paris Hilton soaping down a car in a sexy bathing suit while eating a hamburger? I’m not sure which was less believable: Paris washing her own car or Paris eating a 1,000-calorie fast-food hamburger.

The advertisements certainly succeeded in getting the attention of young men, but after seeing the ads it is not burgers they were likely hungry for. The images whet their appetites for something totally different.

Advertising needs not only to grab your attention but also to communicate a message. Too much sex or entertainment or even celebrities can get in the way of delivering the message.

Sometimes sex is an integral part of the product and its message. Products like perfume, condoms or erectile dysfunction drugs, for example. In these cases, sex certainly has a legitimate role to play in the advertising. In fact the latest Viagra ads could use a little more sex and a lot less men singing together a bad Elvis cover.

Controversy is good. Controversy generates PR. And PR builds brands. But the controversy should be in the product, not the advertising. Controversy in the advertising just wins advertising awards and helps to build the agency’s brand. It rarely helps the client’s brand.

Hardee’s actually has a very powerful, controversial brand and message. They launched the Thickburger, a premium, 100% beef burger. Hardee’s owns taste and gluttony in fast-food burgers.

The Monster Thickburger at 1,420 Kcal and 107 grams of fat makes no apologies. While McDonald’s is pushing salads and promoting health, Hardee’s is doing the opposite. Good brand strategy. Lousy diet strategy.

This type of controversy builds the brand and gives them a strong position with young males. Forget the wimpy burgers from the other places, eat our 100% man burger.

“Not a burger for tree huggers” said Hardee’s CEO while interviewed on a recent news program. The Monster Thickburger has gotten monster PR attention.

Sales have risen at Hardee’s but not because of Paris soaping herself up or any of the other racy ads. Sales have risen because the brand has done a good job with the Thickburger.

Just think if they used their ad dollars more effectively and reinforced the Thickburger position instead of just arousing young men.

Miller’s Cat Fight ad was one of the raciest, talked-about commercials ever. It received a lot of praise and attention from young men, who liked the babes but didn’t go for the beer.
What builds a brand is standing for an idea in the mind. A simple, unique perhaps even controversial idea. What makes a powerful ad is reinforcing that idea in the mind.

Does sex sell? You bet, it sells sex. It just doesn’t sell hamburgers.

Rethink your brand Saturn

“Rethink excess, Rethink American.” This is the big idea from Saturn’s new advertising agency Deutsch.

Rethink excess? America is all about excess. From huge gas guzzling SUV’s, trucks and Hummers to huge supersized meals and waistlines, excess seems to be the American motto.

Why should we rethink American anyway? What is the advantage or reason? It is the fundamental question never addressed in the advertising or with the brand.

American autos in general are not known for reliability, styling, safety. Despite lower prices and higher incentives consumers still prefer to buy imported car brands.

It is not that consumers necessarily prefer Japanese, German or Korean cars. It is that consumers prefer brands. And branding is something that American car makers have not been particularly good at recently.

Consumers prefer these car brands because they stand for something in the mind.
Toyota: reliable
Hyundai: stylishly affordable
Lexus: luxury
Volvo: safety
Scion: hip
Mercedes: prestige
BMW: driving

What is a Saturn today? Who knows.

At the beginning things were different.

Saturn was born in 1990 as a different kind of car from a different car company but it turned out to be just like every other car company, selling things to everybody.

It is the fundamental problem in business today. After finding success with a narrow focus, the first thing companies want to do is expand the brand which only serves to undermine the meaning and power of the brand in the mind of the consumer.

Saturn built a powerful brand focused on affordable, small, entry level cars backed by sterling customer service. The Saturn brand successfully distanced itself from the cold corporate image of GM and created a warm customer-centric image of a brand born in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

The one model, no haggle sales approach was killer. And the folksy ads from Pulicis & Hal Riney cemented Saturn as “a different kind of car company” in the mind.

In 1994, just four years after its introduction, Saturn hit its high-water mark, selling 286,003 cars. That year, the average Saturn dealer sold more vehicles than the average of any other brand.

“Saturn spirit” was in full bloom. 1994 was also the year 44,000 owners and families attended a “homecoming” at the Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

So what did Saturn do next? Did it try to expand its market share? Or did it try to expand the Saturn brand into larger and more expensive vehicles?

In the March 9, 1998 issue of Automotive News, Charles Child, news editor, said: “GM has to bit the bullet and let Saturn spread its wings. That is, give Saturn a full line of cars and light trucks as soon as practical.” (They should have cut Saturn’s wings!)

In its high-water year, Saturn had 16 percent of the “small” or compact car category and was number two behind the Ford Escort.

Sixteen percent is not exactly the lion’s share of a category. Instead of spending millions of dollars developing a larger Saturn and a sport-utility vehicle, I would have spent the money improving the basic S series model in order to capture some of the 84 percent of the small car market that Saturn didn’t own. So much for my advice.

It took Saturn 11 years to introduce a redesign of the S series. In those same 11 years, Honda introduced three generations of its Civic compact. In 1994, the S series Saturn outsold the Civic by 7 percent. In 2004, the Civic outsold the S series replacement (the Ion) by 197 percent.

In 2002, Saturn tapped Goodby, Silverstein for some new advertising. Sales continued falling to 212,017 in 2004, its worst performance since 1992.

Despite the poor sales results, Goodby’s work won lots of advertising awards and accolades and did plenty to reaffirm the shop as one of America’s premiere creative agencies. But it did nothing for the Saturn brand.

Creative just to be creative. Goodby’s sheet metal spot showed people exhibiting driving behavior without the cars was one of the worst car ads ever. A car ad that doesn’t show the car! Tagline: People first. What does Chevrolet put cows first?

Saturn doesn’t have a product problem,
Saturn doesn’t have an advertising problem,
Saturn has a ginormous branding problem.
What is a Saturn? What does it look like? Who is it for? Who knows.

Saturn once stood for being “different” but by expanding its lineup into larger and more expensive cars along with the invasion of other more focused entry level car brands like Scion, Hyundai and Kia has left Saturn in the mushy middle.

When you expand your brand you risk losing your core position and that is exactly what has happened at Saturn. Today’s kids don’t see Saturn as cool or different.

General Motors hired Robert Lutz to put pizzazz into the design and function of GM cars. And he has. There’s nothing wrong with the cars. It’s the branding that’s all wrong.

When GM had half of the U.S. automobile market, it also had a finely tuned branding strategy. Chevrolet was their entry level car. And then you moved up the ladder to Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick and Cadillac.

Except for Cadillac, today’s GM branding ladder goes nowhere. Moving from Saturn to Chevrolet to Pontiac to Buick is essentially a sideways move. The four brands are all competing with the same portfolio of cars.

What is GM’s entry level car? Saturn or Chevrolet? The answer is both. Not a good strategy.

Al was invited to visit Buick where he was taken through the design studio. “What are they doing over there?” he asked.

“They’re designing our entry-level Buick,” someone said.

“Your entry-level Buick,” Al replied, “is Chevrolet.”

What’s wrong with Saturn? It is the same thing that is wrong with General Motors. It’s not an advertising problem. In the past 10 years, GM has spent $30 billion on advertising. It’s a branding problem.

The sad part is that Saturn started with a fresh slate in 1990 and built a powerful brand. Had GM not killed Saturn with expansion, it could have continued that success to today and beyond. Fixing Saturn now will be tough.

Hellmann's Gets Real

What do you do when the world seems obsessed with dieting, fat and calories? When every product is promoting it is low-fat, fat-free, low-carb, high fiber or zero calorie? When everybody is on a diet, gobbling up calorie reduced manufacture foods yet still hungry, miserable and (at least in the U.S.) fat?

It is the dilemma facing most food and beverage brands today. Some products have the luxury of being all-around healthy award winners like water.

But most foods always have a downside. Too much fat, sugar, carbs, cholesterol, chemicals or calories. Or they taste terrible like brussel sprouts.

Most foods also usually have something good about them too. But then there are some foods that are simply viewed as the all-around food enemy.

So what do you do when you are selling the enemy? A high calorie, high cholesterol, high fat, diet sabotager.

Most companies would just promote the diet and light versions of the product. Then try not to make consumers feel too guilty when they continue to buy the regular stuff since it tastes much better. Not a good strategy.

Hellmann’s Mayonnaise was getting crushed by Kraft’s Miracle Whip which has half the fat of mayonnaise. Hellmann’s fought back with light and other versions. But as soon as you put diet, light or reduced on the label, instantly the product tastes bad in the mind.

The beauty of Miracle Whip is that the brand itself represents the low-fat idea. Like Snackwell’s did in cookies. Good strategy.

But Hellmann’s has recently struck back by taking a word that has been on the label for years and turning it into a powerful strategy. REAL.

Hellmann’s Real Mayonnaise.

Nothing beats the real thing. Real is such a powerful idea, especially when it has an authentic connection to a brand like it does with Hellmann’s and Coca-Cola. Not using it is a first-degree branding crime.

I was impressed and delighted when I saw the new ad campaign and marketing program from Hellmann’s which reinforces the “Real” idea.

Hellmann's Real Mayonnaise. Real. Simple. Made with eggs, oil and vinegar.

The ads and PR efforts talk about the power of “real food.” Why eat a manufactured glob of chemicals when you can enjoy real food? It is a hard question not to answer on the side of real. Calories are important but so is quality and purity.

There is always opportunity at the extremes. While there is a strong trend toward dieting there is also a trend towards whole foods. Hey there is a store called Whole Foods which says no to stocking any products containing artificial sweeteners. Its mission: To offer the highest quality, least processed most flavorful and naturally preserved foods. Because food in its purest state — unadulterated by artificial additives, sweeteners, colorings and preservatives — is the best tasting and most nutritious food available.

Whatever your brand is, you have to deal with it. Pretending it isn’t high fat isn’t going to change what’s in the package. And promoting your “light” version just reinforces in the mind of consumers how “fattening” the regular version must be.

Like food, a brand is best when it is real, simple and focused. If opportunity strikes in another direction, companies should launch a new brand.

Bud Light and Diet Coke would each have been better off as new brands instead of extensions. But leaders can get away with such mistakes. And the success of the diet versions comes at a high cost to the regular varieties both in sales and strategy.

The strategy of the regular brand is sabotaged by the existence of the diet extension bearing the same name. What Budweiser needs to say is "Why drink watered down sissy beer when you can have the King of Beers?" What Coca-Cola needs to say is "Nothing beats the Real Thing."

All brands need to be real. If not, they are weak, meaningless and tasteless.

Tiger is the man, but still gets canned

Tiger Woods is the man. As an athlete, a role-model and an endorser, nobody can come close to his perfection. Tiger is young, articulate, attractive, charismatic, clean-cut, family-oriented, scandal-free and, don’t let me forget, he wins a lot of golf tournaments.

Tiger is the first athlete in history to bank $100 million in a year, a feat which earned him the #2 spot on the Forbes Celebrity 100 list last year. Right behind Oprah and just ahead of Madonna. Tiger was the only athlete who made the top ten.

So why did Buick and now American Express slice their endorsement deals with the star? Just because he is the man doesn’t mean that Tiger makes sense or is worth the price of endorsement for every brand.

Tiger and Buick

Endorsing the Buick brand makes no sense at all for Tiger. There was just no believability that Tiger was dying to drive a Buick. And without believability a celebrity endorsement is worthless.

The personalities of Buick and Tiger went together like oil and water. Buick is an older person’s car (Tiger is less than half the age of the average Buick buyer.) Tiger is young, very cool and at the top of his game.

And here is the killer. Sticking Tiger on Buick for the past 10 years has done absolutely nothing for the brand. Year to date sales at Buick dropped 28%, making it the weakest of GM’s original 5 brands. (Tiger will now promote OnStar for GM.)

Sure, without Tiger, Buick could have been doing worse but at least GM would have had $40 million plus in the bank.

Tiger and American Express

In terms of believability, the opposite is true of Tiger’s endorsement deal with American Express. There is extreme credibility that a man like Tiger Woods is a card-carrying American Express customer.

Anyone can easily imagine Tiger charging up exotic vacations, pricy jewelry, fancy meals and designer duds with a black AmEx card. What they can’t see is Tiger going to the grocery store and getting milk, Wonder bread and baby formula then swiping an American Express card.

American Express has not used Tiger to reinforce the brand’s dominance as the top high-end credit-card brand in the world. What they have been doing is trying to move the brand downscale to the mass market.

Tiger is at the top, you can’t move him down. He’s not like everybody else. There is no believability in making Tiger an average guy. Yet here is what an American Express vice president said about the company’s decision to cut Tiger Woods: the company was looking “to build a broader base of consumer experiences.”

In other words, we got the rich people, now we want to go after everyone else. Problem is Visa already has everybody else. By moving the brand downscale, American Express risks losing its bread and butter.

Tiger is taken

Tiger’s dance card is full. Nike has bought all the dances. Tiger has been with Nike since 1996, the year he went pro. The $600 million Nike Golf brand has been built on the shoulders of Tiger. The two are synonymous. It wouldn’t be Sunday at the Masters without Tiger wearing a Nike red shirt and a Nike swoosh hat.

It goes even further than that. Tiger always wears Nike, even when pitching products from other sponsors including American Express, Accenture and Buick. This is unheard of in celebrity endorsements but works in this case because it is so naturally to see Tiger in Nike. Other companies put up with it since they all want Tiger.

Nike has built its brand on celebrity endorsements both big and small. The essence of the brand is its association with top athletes.

Michael Jordan is the father all of endorsers, but it was his deal and his relationship with Nike that made him one of the greatest endorsers of all time. On the other hand, his work with Rayovac batteries, Ballpark franks or Hanes underwear was more embarrassing than effective.

Now that Michael Vick has gone to the dogs, Nike will be looking to Tiger even more.

Celebrity endorsements: good or bad?

It all depends. The right celebrity, at the right time, for the right brand at the right price is fantastic. But using a celebrity who has no believability with your brand is money down the drain.

The first thing to remember is that a celebrity is never a replacement for an idea. People might talk about the celebrity but that rarely translates into much for the brand unless there is such a strong tie like the one Tiger has with Nike.

What makes a brand successful is owning a word in the mind. Paying Tiger Woods or anyone else millions of dollars is not a replacement for that.

The second thing to remember is celebrity endorsements only work when the consumer has a credible belief that the celebrity would be interested in buying and using the product or service despite being paid to do so. If not, your money is wasted. Something Buick recently realized.

What is truly amazing and important about today’s news that American Express dumped Tiger is that even the best athlete and endorser in the world can’t score for any brand. And despite all the data, Tiger is likely to pick up plenty more endorsements deals in the years to come. Maybe Hanes underwear or Rayovac batteries?

Celebrity Endorsements

Celebrity endorsements remain a popular tool for marketers. But too many times brands use the wrong celebrities.

Tiger Woods endorsing the Buick brand makes no sense at all. There is just no believability that Tiger is dying to drive a Buick. And without believability a celebrity endorsement is worthless. The $40 million General Motors reportedly paid Tiger for his 5-year contract ending in 2009 is not money well spent.

The Buick/Woods example is the extreme of what not to do when choosing a celebrity. There was no believability; Tiger is overused and Tiger is too expensive.

The brand personalities of Buick and Tiger go together like oil and water. Buick is an older person’s car (Tiger is less than half the age of the average buyer.) Tiger is very young, very cool and at the top of his game. You imagine him driving a Bentley, a Mercedes or a Lexus.

Never in a million years would anyone imagine Tiger saying to his hot Swedish-model-wife “Hey Honey, let’s go get a Buick!” It was even worse when General Motors signed Tiger back in 1999. Then he was a cool, single guy in his 20’s. No guy ever got a date by driving around in a Buick.

If anything, it would have been a better idea for G.M. sign up Tiger’s dad, Earl Woods, as the celebrity endorser for Buick. At least he would be more of a believable Buick buyer but unfortunately it is too late for that since he sadly passed away last year.

There are times when a celebrity endorsement makes sense and can be tremendously helpful. Think Michael Jordan and Nike or Gatorade. Or Kristie Alley and Jenny Craig.

Here are the answers to some common questions to help you to decide if a celebrity is right for your brand.

How can a celebrity endorsement help my brand?

Having a celebrity endorse your brand can be helpful for a well-known brand in need of maintaining attention for its brand and category. Celebrities are most helpful because they can star in advertising campaigns and participate in company events. Consumers might be more apt to watch your ad if it has a celebrity. Employees might feel proud of having the celebrity endorsing their company. Customers might be more apt to participate in events when a celebrity involved.

A celebrity is not a replacement for an idea. A brand without a focus will never find the correct celebrity to match the brand.

Using a celebrity is also not a replacement for brand PR. Too many companies use a celebrity in an attempt to establish credibility with consumers. But the only thing that builds a brand in the mind of the consumer is PR and word-of-mouth generated by an idea. The PR attention generated by a celebrity does not build your brand.

People might talk about the celebrity but that rarely translates into much for the brand. The bottom line is that the only thing that makes a brand successful is owning a word in the mind. Paying Tiger Woods millions of dollars is no replacement for that.

When do celebrity endorsements work?

Celebrity endorsements only work when the consumer has a credible belief that the celebrity would be interested in buying and using your product or service despite being paid to do so. If not, your money is wasted on the endorsement. You can have any actor deliver your sales pitch. The celebrity might even be a distraction from your message.

Celebrity endorsements work best when you can line up a celebrity with as much exclusivity as possible. Athletes in their prime usually have endorsements with so many different brands that each has limited influence. Look at the cars of NASCAR drivers. Unless your name fills the whole car, forget it. All the little names get lost and ignored.

Celebrity endorsements work best when the celebrity is believable. Seems obvious, but many celebrities have the reputation for saying anything for a buck. This is compounded by having multiple contracts that are short-term and change frequently.

Celebrity endorsements work best if the celebrity is not too famous. Celebrities that are too famous and too much in the public eye are not as effective. They tend to overshadow the brands in the advertising. And consumers are fatigued of seeing the celebrities’s face all over the place.

Celebrity endorsements work best if you think long-term. Having a new celebrity ever few years doesn’t make sense. Consistency is key. Some brands associated with youth and fashion will have a higher turnover rate. But most brands should think about a partnership of five years or more.

Are celebrity endorsements worth the money?

A big, established, dominate brand has the money and weight to make a celebrity endorsement work. It’s usually a brand that consumers are familiar with and the exorbitant costs can be worthwhile in defending the brand’s position in the mind and keeping the category relevant and interesting.

Celebrity endorsements are usually not a wise choice for new brands with limited budgets. Better to use PR and a company leader as a spokesperson to build the brand first.

What if the celebrity gets in trouble?

The recent PR disasters with Martha Stewart, Kobe Bryant, Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton and others makes many companies extremely nervous about signing up a celebrity.

People are fallible. Even Ms. Perfect (aka Martha Stewart) can suffer a fall from grace. But having a singular person as the spokesperson for your brand, whether it is a CEO like Steve Jobs or a celebrity like Tiger Woods, is extremely beneficial and so important in a brand’s success that is worth the risk. And if the worst happens, just be consoled that strong brands tend to survive regardless.

Some of the worst celebrity endorsement choices: (Please post a comment with some of your favorites, too)

Michael Jordan and Rayovac rechargeable batteries.
I think he can afford to buy the real ones and throw them away. Don’t you?

Michael Jordan and Hanes underwear.
Boxers or briefs? Neither. I am guessing Jordan would go commando rather than wear such stodgy drawers.

Paris Hilton and Carl’s Jr.
Stuffing her face with fast-food burgers, I don’t think so. The only thing this heiress indulgences in is champagne, clothes and cosmetics.

Fidelity and Paul McCartney.
When you have billions, who needs to worry about retirement planning?

Jessica Simpson and Pizza Hut.
The overexposed Simpson is definitely cheesy but popping cheesy bites from Pizza Hut is far from believable

Weber images

Even if you never heard the name, you'll know the grill when you see it:

 

Here is the orginal George developed in Mount Prospect, Illinois:

And here is the gas grill the company unfortunately put the Weber name on:

Well-done Weber, almost.

Happy Memorial Day everybody! Last weekend was the official kick-off of the U.S. grilling season. And my husband, like most men I suspect, spent much of the weekend sweating over a hot grill.

Weber did a good job building its brand with word-of-mouth and maintaining it with effective advertising that reinforces its credibility. I just wish they could take the gas out of the brand. It would make the strategy even more powerful.

Brands are built by establishing yourself as the first in each new category. Trying to cover all the new emerging categories with one brand name will weaken your brand in the mind of the consumer as new brands are launched by specialists.

Keep Weber as a “charcoal” brand, period. And launch the gas grills with a new brand name. Maybe even a new name for the portable gas grills. As we say in the Origin of Brands, over time every category will divide and become multiple categories.

So what should Weber have done?

Having an enemy is the most overlooked, underestimated element in developing a branding strategy. If you can’t think of the enemy of your brand, then your brand strategy is flawed.

But because of Bud Light they can’t say that. All Budweiser had to do was give Bud Light its own brand name. There is nothing wrong with competing against yourself. Think Toyota and Lexus.

The same it true for Budweiser. The enemy of Budweiser is Bud Light, and the best strategy for Bud is to say: “Hey guys, be a man, don’t drink that wimpy watered-down girly stuff. You need to be downing the king of beers.”

The missing element of strategy is the enemy. The natural enemy of Weber is the gas grill. But that can’t happen if Weber also makes several lines of gas grills under the Weber name.

I love the Weber television ads showing real people enthusiastically grilling, supported by a terrific interactive website with tips, classes, recipes, etc.

When you talk to men, they are either gas grillers, charcoal grillers or smokers. There is very little middle ground or love loss between them. They are three very different methods of accomplishing the very same thing. The strength of a brand relates to the authenticity and power of the individual grilling method.

After you build a leading iconic brand, the last thing you want to do is undermine it with a line extension that goes against the core belief of the brand.

But is this the right brand strategy? Could there have been another way? Does it leave the brilliance of the latest campaign with a loophole? No. Yes. Yes.

By the early 1980’s gas grilling was becoming popular. So Weber introduced a line of grills called the Weber Genesis.  And most recently portable grilling has become popular so Weber introduced a line called the Weber Q. In the absence of strong competition these two lines have also become popular. Weber is a private company so there is no published data on sales or profits.

Today, Weber is synonymous with grilling and the original kettle grill has become a symbol of Americana right up there with Coca-Cola and apple pie.

You build brands by being first. Weber was the first covered-kettle grill. It launched a new way to grill with its innovative design and got into the mind of the consumer by word of mouth.

But it was not a sure-fired or instant success. George’s grill didn’t look like any other grill that had ever been made and at the price of $50 it cost way more than the typical $7 open grill. But big brands are not built by being like everybody else.

At the Weber Brothers Metal Works where he was employed, Stephen ingeniously cut a metal buoy in half and fashioned a dome shaped grill with a rounded lid. The original Weber kettle grill was born.

Stephen’s story is so typical of how great brands are built. After he became frustrated with the uneven and uncontrollable flame of open brazier grilling, George Stephen set out to build a better grill that would protect his precious steaks from the wind and possible downpours.

Weber-Stephens is the leading manufacturer of charcoal and gas grills. In 1952, founder George Stephen Sr. designed the original Weber kettle with a lid that allows grilling in all kinds of weather.

So it was no surprise that I noticed Weber grills new advertising campaign called Weber Nation. A wonderful, eye-catching campaign centered on a website

www.webernation.com for real people who love their Weber grills.

In backyards across America men were grilling up hunks of beef, chicken, shrimp, tofu (I’m a vegetarian) and vegetables for hungry family and friends. Like most men, my husband loves to grill and prides himself with his grilling skills. I am thankful for that since it gives me the night off from cooking everything but the side dish.