The Origin of Brands Blog

LinkedIn: Dull by Design

The way to build a powerful brand is not by emulating the leader and trying to be better. History proves time and again that the best strategy for going against the leader is to do the opposite.

 

Since the rise of MySpace we have seen hundreds of copycat social networking sites popup. They all target the same juicy younger demographic. A better idea is do the opposite. If MySpace is for younger, cool kids; make your brand for older, geeky adults. That is exactly what LinkedIn did.

 

But first let’s look back to see how the social network category started. MySpace got into the mind first by focusing on music. MySpace was the perfect place for independent artists to share music and for fans to congregate. It has been reported that 8 million artists have been discovered by MySpace. Young people with endless hours to waste decorating their MySpace pages made the site the place for online socializing.

 

The initial focus on music was the difference between MySpace and a host of other brands like Friendster, Multiply and others that were also vying to be the first social-networking site in the mind. Music gave people a reason to choose MySpace over the others.

 

At the beginning of any new category there are usually many players. It is like conception. After sex, you have millions of sperm racing to get to that egg to fertilize it. Some are too early, some are bad swimmers, some get lost, and some are lazy. Only one lucky and smart sperm makes it and bam the race is over. The winner is chosen; fertilization is complete. No more winners.

 

The same thing happens in branding. The sex is the exciting new technology, idea or service. The sperm are the initial companies that want to build a brand. The egg is the consumer’s mind. Conception occurs when one company comes up with the right strategy and the right name at the right time.

 

Eight years ago, Creative Technology was the first to launch a hard-drive MP3 player, the Creative Nomad Jukebox. Creative got onto the market first but never go into the mind. Today, of course, Creative is nowhere and Apple’s iPod dominates the market and is seen as the originator of the category.

 

Why did iPod win? iPod won because it had the better name and a focused product line and strategy. Creative made everything: flash-memory MP3 players, hard-drive MP3 players, speakers and a whole host of other electronic products. Apple’s iPod focused on the hard-drive MP3 player and hammered home the idea that it held over 1,000 songs. The iPod got into the mind first and the rest is history.

 

History is actually filled of stories like this. To succeed, brands don’t need to be in the marketplace first; they need to get in the mind first.

• Yuengling was the first beer on the marketplace, but Budweiser was first in the mind.
• Duryea was the first automobile on the road, but Ford was the first car in the mind.
• MITS Altair 8800 was the first microcomputer, but Apple was the first microcomputer in the mind.

In social networking, MySpace was first in the mind and like first-born children has been wildly successful. A recent study showed that first-born children are smarter than their siblings and more likely to become CEOs. But like in any family, there is always room for a few more kids.

 

The second-born brand in the mind was Facebook which was not simply a copycat of MySpace. Facebook narrowed its focus to a small and exclusive market: college students. In fact, if you weren’t a college student you weren’t allowed to be a Facebook member.

 

Good things happen when you narrow the focus. For one thing, a narrow focus gives you an opportunity to use a unique and distinctive name. Facebook is the word used to describe the handout given to most college freshman when they arrive at orientation.

 

New students are given a book filled with all the photos, names, hometowns and majors of the entering class. The analogy was the perfect way to describe the site and what it was meant for. Plus Facebook’s clean and simple design distinguished it from the cluttered look of MySpace. The opposite of any strategy usually works quite well.

 

Today, of course, Facebook is open to everybody. But not starting that way was a wise move. It is like exclusive distribution which is also very effective in establishing a brand. (Exclusive distribution gives a retailer a reason to stock and promote a brand.)

 

Now we have the third child, LinkedIn, who is growing up fast as younger siblings always seem to do. But LinkedIn is not your teenager’s social networking site. It is just the opposite. It is intentionally dull and boring with no video and just a few photos.

 

In terms of a brand with profit potential, I think LinkedIn has the best chance for success. It may not be sexy but it serves a function and appeals to a broad and distinctive market with deep pockets and who are not fickle in changing brands like teens.

 

LinkedIn is the first professional social networking site for businesspeople. The private company just raised an additional $53 million in capital which currently values the company at $1 billion. More valuable than MySpace which News Corporation paid $580 in 2005 but less than the $15 billion value assigned to Facebook last year.

 

More important than its current valuation is the fact that the LinkedIn brand is solid because it was built on solid branding principles. LinkedIn did the opposite. It’s a social network for the serious, professional white-collar worker who wants to get ahead by staying in touch. Getting a job usually comes down to who you know not always what you know.

 

In terms of size, both MySpace and Facebook are huge. Each has 115 million users worldwide, while LinkedIn has only 23 million. But in the end, LinkedIn could represent a much larger and far more lucrative market than the pimple-popping teens at MySpace and Facebook. These two sites attract younger people who have little money and move on to the next big thing much more quickly than us older folks.

 

There’s a big reason why everyone over 30 should be on LinkedIn instead of MySpace or Facebook. Using Facebook at work is likely to get you fired. Using LinkedIn could land you in the corner office. It’s the revenge of the nerds at its finest.

 

 

Join my LinkedIn network today!

 

Great Product, Lousy Brand

 

 

Just because you have a great idea and make a great product (or deliver a great service) doesn’t mean you will build a powerful brand and enjoy great success. This sad truth sometimes becomes personal when a product I love makes egregious branding errors. In fact, it really makes my blood boil.

 

I am an avid walker. I love walking in New York City going up the avenues and through the park. I love walking in Paris to the Eiffel Tower and through the Tullieries. I love hiking in the mountains of Austria and around the volcanoes in Maui.

 

I am also into fitness and new exercise trends and gadgets. I have all sorts of wobble boards, weighted balls, body bars, ankle weights, abdominal wheels and yoga mats. I also have an elliptical machine, Rollerblades,  an inversion table and now MBT shoes.

 

I love my MBT shoes, but their branding stinks.

 

The point of a brand name is to get into the mind of the consumer. The better your name, the easier it is to get into the mind. Think BlackBerry.

 

The point of a category name is to define the niche your brand occupies in the mind. Ideally you want to be first in a new category. This will give you credibility, authenticity and instant leadership. Think Red Bull and energy drink. If you aren’t first, then you want to be the opposite of the competition. Think Monster, the 16-oz energy drink and the No.2 brand.

 

The point of a tagline (or positioning statement) is to give consumers a verbal message to share with one another. The test of a good tagline goes like this: If somebody asks you why you bought the brand will the tagline explain it? Does it use words consumers would use? Does it even make any sense?

 

Why did you buy Barilla pasta? Because it is “Italy’s #1 pasta.”

 

Why did you buy a Toyota? Because they are “moving forward?”

 

While I can see the Barilla conversation happening. I could never see the Toyota one happening. Don’t Toyotas go in reverse anymore?

 

MBT fails on all three counts.

 

 

The name: MBT.

 

Launching a brand with meaningless initials is the kiss of death. While companies like IBM and GE might be known by their initials, they actually stand for International Business Machines and General Electric. They can get away with the shorthand because they are leaders and have been around forever, IBM has been around for 84 years and GE 116 years. When you are that old and that established, you can use initials. Note: neither company ever changed their name to the initials.

 

Nobody knows what MBT stands for. When nobody knows your name, you can’t use initials. It just makes a bad name worse. Initials are much more difficult to remember than a name and initials communicate nothing about your brand.

 

What MBT stands for is Masai Barefoot Technology. Of course the full name is no good either. I doubt any tribe in Kenya would be running around in $250 shoes. And the shoes are so big and so klutzy-looking that calling them “barefoot technology” is non-sensical even if it is true. The research might say they re-create the positive effects of walking barefoot, but they don’t give that impression at first glance. And perception is everything.

 

Furthermore, they don’t even own mbt.com! The brand’s website is swissmasaius.com. If you have a bad name, at least you should own the bad name website.

 

What MBT needs is a name like Crocs. Simple, different, memorable and a name alludes to the product. If Crocs were called PSTs (Plastic Shoe Technology), they would never have become the billion-dollar brand they are today.

 

 

The category: What is the category? Nobody knows.

 

MBT calls itself “physiological footwear.” Huh? What is that? Nobody is going to use that as a category name. What kind of physiological footwear do you wear? I don’t think so.

A category name should contain simple words and be easy to understand. And don’t trademark it. If you want to get big, you need your category to get big. And for your category to get big, you need competition.  As long as you are the leading brand, having a flock of followers behind you is a good thing.

 

What are some good category names: energy drink, sports drink, energy bar, expensive coffee, wireless email, safe car, packaged salad, performance underwear, natural cosmetics, organic groceries. Of course, the brands that dominates these categories are the brands that introduced the category (Red Bull, Gatorade, PowerBar, Starbucks, BlackBerry, Volvo, Fresh Express, Under Armour, The Body Shop and Whole Foods.)

 

In this emerging shoe category there are several brands and several words floating around to describe them. There is no consistency and no one idea to describe the category that makes sense to consumers. This is going to be devastating to MBT. Some call them “rolly shoes.” I call them “rockers.” Others call them wobbly or balance shoes. The names are all over the place.

 

Another company makes a flip-flop version called FitFlop which it says has “patent-pending micro-wobbleboard technology.” Walking with wobble boards on my feet doesn’t seem like a safe idea. Nor a good branding idea.

 

All this chaos undermines the potential of the category because nobody understands it or knows what to call it. While MBT has avid fans like me, they don’t have a clear message for the general public or the media to spread the word.

 

In addition to the confusion over the category name, there is confusion over the benefit of the shoes. MBT’s benefits range from the ridiculous “cellulite removal” to the relatively tame “improved posture.”

 

A brand should have one clear benefit. The benefit like the category name should be simple, specific, understandable and believable. For MBT is could be: “Makes every walk a workout.” Or “Get 30% more workout in every step.” The more crazy the benefit the less believable it is.

 

For Amazon.com the benefit was “30% off all books.” For iPod the benefit was “1,000 songs.” For Papa John’s Pizza the benefit is “better ingredients, better pizza.”

 

 

The tagline: First problem, MBT has two. Second problem, neither is any good.

 

Brands should have one tagline and use it everywhere: websites, advertising, letterheads, business cards etc. Having a brand tagline “physiological footwear” and an advertising tagline “the anti-shoe” makes no sense. Two taglines are not better than one.

 

Obviously the agency for MBT took one look at the current brand tagline and said we can’t use that!

 

 

So they came up with “The anti-shoe.” The anti-shoe? MBTs are the biggest, ugliest shoes ever made! How can they ever be known as the anti-shoe? Answer: they can’t.

 

But they can be known as the ultimate workout shoe. Every step, every day is a workout.

 

The thing I like most about MBT shoes is that they are so different looking. Every single time I wear them people notice these shoes and stop me to comment on MBTs. They are like the lime in the top of the Corona bottle. You can’t miss the difference.

 

Geox is a fantastic shoe brand known as “breathable shoes,” but the difference is unnoticeable. Unless you look at the bottom of somebody’s feet, there is no way to see the holes that allow the shoes to breathe.

 

When people see MBTs, they can’t help but to ask: What are they? What do they do? Do they work? Where did I get them? When this happens it pains me because the brand is missing a big opportunity. My answers to these questions are weak because the brand is weak. The terrible name, a shaky position and unnamed category leave me with a difficult story to tell about them. Without word of mouth no brand can thrive.

 

If you are single, you might get a pair of MBT shoes. For some reason guys at the gym see these shoes as the perfect excuse to come and talk to me. One guy said “At first I thought you had the funny shoes because one leg was shorter than the other.” Guess he thought that was a funny line.

 

MBT has got to be careful because FitFlop is moving in. They have a memorable and descriptive name along with a cleaver tagline "It's the flip-flop with the gym built in."

 

MBT shoes are a great product but a lousy brand. Such a shame.

Now playing: Blockbuster Bombs Big

Once upon a time Blockbuster Video was the quintessential success story. A company and a brand that was admired, feared and emulated. With its great name and focused strategy Blockbuster quickly swept the nation via growth and acquisitions to become American’s place to rent movies.

This fairly tale doesn’t end well. Today, Blockbuster is in shambles. Bad decisions, bad strategies and bad management have left the giant gasping for air. Where did it all go wrong? Let’s take a look and find out.

In the beginning things were great.

Great branding and rapid expansion made Blockbuster the world’s largest video rental chain with more than 7,800 stores in more than 20 countries (about 60% of which are in the US). Each year Blockbuster rents more than 1 billion movies and games. Impressive to say the least.

The brains behind Blockbuster was David Cook. In 1985, he created the brand known as Blockbuster by combining a flashy look, a great name and a computerized rental system. Entrepreneur Wayne Huizenga was the money behind Blockbuster.

In 1987, Huizenga took over Blockbuster and injected $18 million into the company. He set out to become the first national brand in the emerging video rental category and the category leader in the mind. In just three years, Blockbuster went from 130 stores to 1,500 stores. In addition, Blockbuster went global. With the purchase of Cityvision, Blockbuster became the largest video renter in the UK in 1992.

The beginning of the end.

Success can sometimes lead to arrogance. And arrogance in this case meant believing you can sell anything, putting your name on everything and being oblivious to the future. Several bad moves sealed Blockbuster's fate.

Bad move #1: Don’t line-extend into businesses you have no business being in.
Blockbuster Music

Feeling quite full of itself Blockbuster launched Blockbuster Music in 1992 by purchasing of the Sound Warehouse and Music Plus chains.

First of all, Blockbuster means movies not music. Second of all, Blockbuster means rentals not sales. Third of all, talk about getting into the wrong business at the wrong time. Retail music chains are a thing of the past. iTunes, Amazon and Wal-Mart are putting them all out of business.

Bad move #2: Be wary of huge corporations taking over your brand.
Viacom takes over Blockbuster and renames the division Blockbuster Entertainment Group.

Big companies have a lot of advantages including lots of money and distribution might. But unfortunately they usually have no marketing sense. Viacom looked at Blockbuster as an opportunity to expand the business into other “entertainment” areas. Bad move.

Corporate ownership isn’t always bad, but when it undermines your marketing strategy and your brand’s authenticity, it can be deadly. For example, Quaker Oats almost killed Snapple. But PepsiCo has done very well with Gatorade.

Bad move #3: Expanding into everything is a killer.
Blockbuster promotes itself as a “Neighborhood Entertainment Center”

Blockbuster greatly expanded the offerings in its stores to make itself a so-called entertainment center. They started selling videotapes (instead of renting them), selling books, CDs, gift items and music.

Consumers don’t use words like “entertainment center.” They rent movies and buy music and watch movies. Blockbuster had a strong and formidable brand in the movie-rental business. Blockbuster’s expansion into other types of entertainment undermines that. They should be saying “Don’t read or listen to music alone, watch a movie with your honey or family tonight.” And they should also be saying “it’s silly to buy a movie you only watch once.”

An attempt to regain its footing

Just when you might have thought all was lost at Blockbuster, the company did make one heroic comeback attempt. In 1997, Blockbuster refocused on movies and returned to its rental roots.

In one of the most brilliant business moves ever, they negotiated with the movie studios and forced them into a revenue-sharing agreement that replaced the standard practice of buying rental copies for as much as $120 each. This move allowed Blockbuster to stock all the latest movies in depth. It also lowered their costs, giving Blockbuster a huge competitive advantage.

Bad move #4: Giving up the future to be greedy in the present.
The DVD takes over and Blockbuster misses the boat.

One thing is for certain, the future will be different than the past, especially when it comes to electronics. In music, there was vinyl, then 8-tracks, then tapes, then CDs and now MP3s. In video, there was Betamax, then VHS and now DVD. Tomorrow it will probably be BluRay and in another ten years something else. Nothing lasts forever.

Blockbuster had a lock on the VHS rental market. With its revenue-sharing agreement, the movie studios received 40% of rental revenues. The formula was such a big success that everybody was happy. A rental window ensured a period of time where a movie was only available for rent before it was available for purchase. And the purchase price was high enough to promote Blockbuster’s highly profitable rental system.

But 1998 was the dawn of the DVD age. And a new technology meant a new agreement between Blockbuster and the studios. The facts are hard to find, but from press reports you can surmise that Blockbuster got greedy and wanted to keep more revenue for itself. Reportedly saying things like “The studios can’t live without a video rental business – we (Blockbuster) are your profit.”

Since rentals represented a $10 billion business for the studios, it was an important market, but today the VHS business is practically $0. Without a new agreement and system for DVDs, the future would be tough for Blockbuster. Too bad they didn’t know back then what they know now.

Warner & Sony which had sunk millions into DVDs didn’t want them to be the new laserdisc but the next VHS. So without a deal with Blockbuster, they moved to plan B. They basically knocked out the rental window and priced DVDs low enough so that they could be sold in competition with rentals. With Blockbuster’s outrageous late fee system, paying $20 to buy a movie could be a lot cheaper than renting it and bringing it back a few days late.

Bad move #5: Getting stuck in the mushy middle
Today Blockbuster is stuck in the mushy middle between Wal-Mart and Netflix.

Turns out people love to buy cheap DVDs. I have a whole closet of DVDs, most of which I haven’t even watched yet and probably never will. I see the case and say, “Gee always wanted to see that movie!” I buy it and then never have the time or patience to watch it. Then there is my closet full of kids’ DVDs. Those are the ones that get watched so many times that the DVDs wear out and I have to buy replacement ones. (All I can say is thank you to Volvo for selling cars with DVD players. Anything to keep two little boys quiet in the car is worth the price.)

By 2003, the studios were taking in three times as much money from DVDs as they were from VHS videos. DVD was the new king and Wal-Mart was the new queen beating out Blockbuster to become the new, single, largest source of revenue for the studios. Making things even worse for Blockbuster is the fact that mass retailers of all types began selling newly-released DVDs below wholesale costs to draw in customers with the hope of selling higher profit TVs and other electronics.

Add to all this, the arrival of Netflix. Like Amazon, Netflix used the internet to offer access to a wealth of titles (100,000 plus) which it delivers and you return via the old-fashioned postal service. A slow process indeed, but with no late fees, no due dates, no postage fees, endless variety and a personal movie queue, it is a system that is a killer. With its most popular plan, Netflix charges a monthly fee which gets you three DVDs at a time with no monthly limit. Simple, clever and cool.

Blockbuster is in the mushy middle. With cheap DVDs selling like hot cakes at Wal-Mart and easy rentals mailing out like crazy at Netflix, Blockbuster has nothing left to sell but its locations. Locations that are costing them an arm and a leg in leases.

Bad move #5: Merging with a loser
Blockbuster trying to take over Circuit City is insane.

Two losers don’t make a winner. Just look at the mess a combination of Sears and Kmart has created. A merger with Circuit City would result in two brands in two different businesses with two sets of problems to deal with.

The last thing Blockbuster needs is more real estate. And the last thing Blockbuster needs is Circuit City, a miserable brand getting clobbered by Best Buy.

In this epic movie, I’m afraid there is no happy ending. If only Blockbuster could go back and rewrite history, maybe things would have been different. But life is not like a movie. Once the scene is shot, there are no retakes.

Hand me a napkin, what a naming mess.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is the world’s most-popular chicken restaurant chain. But while Colonel Sanders’ secret recipe for fried chicken may be finger lickin’ good, the brand strategy has been finger pointingly bad.

In the beginning, things were great. The Kentucky Fried Chicken brand was born in the 1950’s. Colonel Sanders himself created his secret “original recipe” for chicken which he cooked in a pressure fryer to deliver his chicken faster and fresher than the competition. And the Colonel himself travelled from town to town cooking chicken for restaurant owners and signing up franchisees. By 1960, Kentucky Fried Chicken had more than 600 franchised outlets in the United States, Canada and England.

Keys to early success:

1. Be first in a new category.

Pressure-cooked fried chicken with secret spices.

2. Dominate the category.

Kentucky Fried Chicken quickly expanded the business becoming a national then an international chain. The rapid expansion blocked the competition and allowed them to own “fried chicken” in the mind globally.

3. Create a brand personality: Colonel Sanders.

Sure you can succeed by just being first (like Pizza Hunt in pizza.) But you can become so much more powerful if you use a strong spokesperson to lock your brand into the mind. Dave Thomas and Wendy’s. Papa John and Papa John’s Pizza. Michael Dell and Dell Computer. Howard Schultz and Starbucks.
How well known is Colonel Sanders? Well in 1976, an independent survey ranked the Colonel as the second most-recognizable celebrity in the world. Not bad for an old guy from Kentucky selling pressure-fried chicken in a funny suit.

Every brand needs a story. Every brand needs a spokesperson. And Kentucky Fried Chicken has both a wonderful story and a spokesperson. And even though the Colonel had sadly passed on, it doesn’t matter. His image and legend lives on today. It’s just as relevant and integral in selling his namesake chicken as it ever was.

The wave starts to crest.

The mistake most managers make is thinking the good times will last forever. They don’t. You ride a wonderful wave of brand success which eventually either crashes you into the rocks or slowly rolls you into the shore.

Kentucky Fried Chicken is still the biggest and most well-known chicken brand in the world. But it faces a serious problem. A problem management has incorrectly dealt with time and time again over the last 20 years.

The problem: fried food is unhealthy. And people are looking to eat healthier.

So what has Kentucky Fried Chicken been doing? You know what they have been doing, they have been trying to run away from “fried” the only idea they own in the mind, as well as copy every hot new chicken trend.

1. Running from Fried.

In 1991, Kentucky Fried Chicken changed its name and signage to KFC. As if using only initials removes fried from the name. It doesn’t. People may use the abbreviation to refer to the restaurant, but the abbreviation is just short hand for Kentucky Fried Chicken. The focus is still on fried albeit it with a weaker name. Initials are never more powerful than a strong brand name. Changing from a strong brand name to initials doesn’t make sense.

2. Chasing competition.

Boston Chicken was a big success, so KFC launched Colonel’s Rotisserie Gold and Tender Roast chicken.

White Castle was a big success, so KFC launched the Chicken Little sandwich.

McDonald’s was a big success with McNuggets, so KFC launched Kentucky Nuggets.

Were any of these successful line extensions for KFC? No. All have since been discontinued.

What is next?

Today, KFC is going back to basics and expanding all at the same time. And all slapped together in a new name.

First the good news. In 2007 company leaders realized their mistake and wisely went back to the original name and signage of Kentucky Fried Chicken. (Unfortunately most international locations remain KFC.)
Now the bad news. With “fried” still a worry, company leaders are adding “grilled” to the name. As if Kentucky Fried Chicken could become healthy like in some bad reality makeover show.

The new name expected to roll out nationally in 2009 is: Kentucky Fried & Grilled Chicken.

They will have the good, the bad and the ugly all together in one name and one giant mess.

What should they do?

The reality is that people are still eating fried foods and fried chicken. Not too many people are going for the carrot sticks over the fries. The future may belong to healthier alternatives. But the now belongs mostly to tasty higher fat and calorie eats.

I think there is a compromise right in front of Kentucky Fried & Grilled Chicken’s eyes. A way to keep the bad and include the good without resorting to a long and difficult name.

Why not just call it Kentucky Chicken? That name would work globally and solidify Kentucky Chicken as the dominate chicken brand for today and allow them to transition to healthier fare for the future.

Hand me a napkin, this is one mess that can easily be cleaned up.

Laura's Best Baby Brands

Babies bring joy to our lives and many new brands into our homes. I've had a lot of experience with baby brands in the last six years. As a Mom and a marketer it has been fun to evaluate them on both levels. I have watched the rise of lots of exciting new brands first hand. Here are my picks of the best brands.

You will notice that all the best new brands have several similar elements in common:

1. First in a new category.
2. Great name.
3. Tons of PR.

Boppy
$35.00 at Babies R Us

The most popular shower gift in America, Boppy is the must-have tool for all new Moms. The breast is best, say most Doctors, and Boppy makes it possible. I had one in every room I fed my baby. So I never had to reach too far when I heard a scream.

Designed with ergonomics in mind, Boppy provides support to reduce strain on your arms, shoulders and neck. It also can be used for propping a baby and allowing for tummy time. But its main focus is helping Mom’s feed their babies comfortably.

Dr. Brown’s
3 pack is $14.00 at Wal-Mart

For working Moms that breastfeed, a good pump and good bottles are a must. So I lugged my Medela “pump in style” breast pump all over the world from South Africa to India. But Medela doesn’t make my list because while it is a perfect pump it is a terrible brand. The name alone gives it little chance for success. I still can never remember it or how to say it.

While Medela did a lousy job of branding, the opposite is true of Dr. Brown’s. Dr. Brown’s initially focused on helping babies with colic. The bottle’s patented design helps with reduce air in-take a main cause of colic. Of course, what parent even wants to take a chance with colic. Like many parents, I used these just in case. And once you and your baby get attached to a bottle you seldom change.

Dr. Brown’s started as a narrowly focused specialty product but is now mainstream, not because the product expanded but because the consumer upgraded.

Dr. Brown’s is great example of using personalization in a name, like Papa John’s Pizza or Dell Computer. The name really gives credibility with this product, reinforcing the advantage of having the bottle designed by a doctor. (A kindly grey haired Dr. Brown comes to mind immediately.)

Bugaboo
$899 at BabyStyle

Best known for tulips Holland is also the home of great design. Bugaboo innovative strollers from the Netherlands are both functional as well as beautiful. Many times a hot brand will upgrade the whole category.

What Dyson did for vacuum cleaners, Bugaboo has done for strollers. While every other manufacturer was trying to make a stroller/car-seat combination, Bugaboo made a streamlined stroller with a look that appealed to parents not kids.

Seeing a Bugaboo for the first time certainly makes a lasting impression. When I first got mine, people would stop me all the time.

Robeez
$33.00 at Zappos

While most baby shoes are cute tiny versions of adult/kid shoes, Robeez are different. Robeez are designed especially for babies and toddlers. Barefoot is best for growing feet (according to most doctors and podiatrists) but babies’ feet also need protection and warmth. Robeez have thin soles, stay in place, are flexible and lightweight. As a result they are durable, breathable, skid-resistant and safe. Robeez is the doctor-recommended perfect first shoe. And with all the unbelievably cute designs, you hope your baby stays little just a little bit longer so you can buy more.

Bumbo
$40.00 at Babies R Us

A huge problem is that babies can’t sit up. Having to lie on your back or stomach all day is tough. New parents don’t realize how long it takes (at least 8 months) before a baby has the muscle strength to sit up. Bumbo offers a revolutionary seat that enables babies to sit upright all by themselves as soon as they can support their own head (around 6-8 weeks.) Bumbo is a brand are built by taking branding risks (not safety risks) and doing what nobody else has done or even thought of before.

Webkinz
$8-$15 at Amazon

Webkinz are not the same as your older sister’s Beanie Babies or your mother’s Cabbage Patch Dolls. Webkinz aren’t just a copy of the last toy craze they are something totally new and different.

The key to success is being first in a new category. Webkinz are the first stuffed animal that also lives in an exclusive virtual world. After ripping the code off the leg that allows online access for the pet on Webkinz.com kids basically throw the animal in the corner hardly to be played with again.

While many adults have checked out Second Life, millions of kids have stampeded to Webkinz World.

Crocs
$31.00 at Zappos

Looks aren’t everything. These funky-looking plastic shoes sure don’t look pretty, but wearing them is comfortable and contagious. When seeing a pair of Crocs for the first time, you think what are THOSE on your feet? The shock factor has greatly contributed to the Crocs craze. They are perfect shoes for kids since they are cheap, easy to wear and practical. Plus you can customize and decorate your Crocs to your heart’s content with Jibbitz (a nice second brand from Crocs). And at $2.50 a Jibbitz, that is money in the bank for Crocs.

Monkey Joe’s
Around $8 to play, Nationwide in the U.S.

In the 80’s every kid wanted to go to the fair to jump on the Moonwalk. In the 90’s every kid wanted to have an inflatable slide on their lawn for their birthday party. Now every kid wants to play every day at a Monkey Joe’s and have their birthday party there too.

Monkey Joe’s is the first chain (in the mind) of indoor inflatable playgrounds. Many companies have gotten into this emerging market, but Monkey Joe’s is the best because it has the best brand. Jump Zone? Way too generic. Too many companies that launch brands in new categories opt for a descriptive words when the best strategy is a new word (Bugaboo) or words used out of context (Monkey Joe’s).

As my kids move into school there are so many new brands to discover. We are all looking forward to the adverture of it.

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.

Micro-Hoo!?

Micro-Hoo! Is bigger really better? It all depends.

Microsoft aims to get bigger with its unsolicited $44.6 billion takeover offer for Yahoo. Facing its own troubles, Yahoo seems to be considering the offer but hopes to up the price from the current $31 a share to something closer to $40 a share.

Will a combined Microsoft-Yahoo work? Unlikely.

And here is why:

1. Two brands. Two cultures.

Microsoft and Yahoo don’t share the same sense of style. Steve Ballmer of Microsoft and Jerry Yang of Yahoo would make awkward dinner companions, let alone business partners. For a merger or takeover to work, the companies and brands should be as similar as possible. If not, expect a mass exodus of talent from the cooler firm.

Buying YouTube worked for Google because the two brands shared a similar love of white space and embodied a similar culture of renegade youth.

2. Two losers don’t make a winner.

Putting Sears and Kmart together didn’t help either company. Because the best strategy for Kmart has little to do with the best strategy for Sears. The combination of the two companies just made things more difficult, more complicated and more expensive to manage.

Putting Microsoft and Yahoo together is likely to face similar issues. For instance, what will all the products be called? Who will sell what? How will they manage the overlap?

Microsoft tends to put its name on everything: MSN, MSNBC, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Live. The only stand outs are X-Box and Hotmail, both of which have done well in spite of operating without the Microsoft name.

What is a “Microsoft” anyway? Bill Gates would probably say something like the “future of computing.” But customers don’t think in such general terms like “quality” or “state of the art.” Consumers think in specifics. Toyota is “reliable.” Nokia is “cellphones.” The iPod is “portable music.” Starbucks is “expensive” coffee.

In the mind, Microsoft is PC operating systems and personal computer software. Microsoft Windows is the operating system running 90% of the world’s personal computers, an impressive and powerful position. One that the company seems to take for granted.

A company that owns a dominant share of a market should think about launching second and third brands. Like Toyota did with Lexus and Scion. Like Gillette did with Mach3 and Fusion.

Instead of giving the consumer a choice of operating systems, Microsoft introduced a one-size-fits-all behemoth. The latest edition of this philosophy is Vista, an overblown, overly complex, mind-boggling system that is getting some pretty bad reviews. I’m currently running Vista, so I know the pain.

3. Chasing the future by expansion.

Google took over the search-engine category through focus and simplicity. Chasing the future by expanding your brand to include every new technology rarely works.

Google didn’t beat Yahoo by launching a website with more services and features than Yahoo. Google beat Yahoo by narrowing the focus to search only. (Today, of course,
Google is going in the opposite direction. A bad move.)

Microsoft and Yahoo probably wish they could turn back the clock to simplify and strengthen their strategies. But that rarely works. It’s like pulling out your prom dress to wear to your next corporate function.

4. Not a cool place to work.

Acquiring new young talent is always a problem for an old-guard company like Microsoft. Young people are not just looking for money. They also are looking for the hot brand to work for. Where you work has a big impact on your life, your ego, even your future mate with more people finding love in the workplace.

Companies with a strong, narrowly-defined brand are better able to manage corporate cultures and attract the right talent. Southwest has been around for over 30 years but they remain a cool place to work because they have stayed focused.

A combined Microsoft-Yahoo is going to have problems starting with the fact that Micro-Hoo is not going to be a cool place to work.

Micro-Hoo? Both companies would be better off going it alone. Valentine’s Day is about finding love and a long lasting partnership. Micro-Hoo is unlikely to find either and much more likely to be the next Bennifer.

The Sad Saga of Sears

With the Kmart marriage going bad, employees jumping ship and a patriarch who doesn’t appear to know what he is doing, Sears is falling apart. Sears’ shares, which reached a high of $195.18 in April, fell to $98.49 on Monday as news broke that Aylwin Lewis, its president and chief executive, would step down.

With 3,800 Sears and Kmart stores, the company is still the fourth largest retailer in the U.S., but its future looks gloomy with many analysts suggesting they sell off the remaining assets for scrap.

How did it all go wrong? It is not such a mystery. A quick look at history explains the downfall of this American icon.

During the last century, Sears, Roebuck and Co. was the gold standard in the industry. Sears was the biggest, most profitable retailer in America. Hard to believe now, especially if you were born after 1985, but it is true. Sears was the “it” company of its day. The public, investors and Wall Street thought it could do no wrong.

The beginning of the end usually starts with that kind of thinking. When you think you can do anything with your brand, it all starts to fall apart.

Sears began as a mail-order catalog business back in the late 1800’s targeting primarily farmers. In 1925, the first retail store was opened and success came quickly. In particular, the Sears store-branded merchandise was a hit. After WW II things really took off. Sales hit $1 billion dollars in 1945 and doubled just a year later.

As the early explosive growth of a category slows (and it always does), a company usually tries expansion to compensate. This is the fatal flaw.

As sales of its core durable goods started to fall off, Sears started stocking more clothing to compensate. And so began the beginning of the end.

In the 1980s with sales continuing to slide, Sears sought expansion through diversification. Sears bought real estate company Coldwell Banker and stock brokerage firm Dean Witter Reynolds. Sears also launched the Discover credit card.

The purchases culminated in the now infamous “stocks to socks strategy.” Brilliant! You can buy your socks, your stocks, your real estate, your daughter’s prom dress all at Sears. Did it work? Of course not.

Expansion might help in the short term, but in the long term expansion a company unfocused. And an unfocused company stuck in the mushy middle of its category is ripe picking for competition. As an industry matures, competitors come in and steal market share from above you as well as below you. This is exactly what happened to Sears.

While Sears stayed in the middle of the department-store market, the department-store industry was diverging into two separate industries, one at the low end and one at the high end.

At the low end, Wal-Mart and Target have become big money-makers. Target has almost twice the revenues of Sears and Wal-Mart has more than 10 times the revenues. In 2006, Sears did $30.0 billion in sales while Target did $59.5 billion and Wal-Mart did an incredible $348.7 billion.

At the high end, retailers like Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue are doing well as are a host of high-end boutiques.

What should Sears have done? Management-school logic would suggest that Sears, Roebuck and Co. should have either moved upscale or downscale in the department-store industry. But that’s not sound marketing logic.

Marketing logic states that once you have a strong position in the mind, you can’t change it. Therefore, the marketing answer to every problem is always the same.

Focus.

When faced with a broadening of its category, Sears should have narrowed its focus and become a specialist. Instead of shifting to the softer side of Sears, the retailer should have further embraced its harder side.

The harder side is where Sears was the strongest and had the most credibility anyway. Sears was once America’s leading seller of major appliances with 41 percent of the market. That share is steadily eroding as Lowe’s, Home Depot and Best Buy take appliance business away from Sears.

The mistakes of Sears have been compounding for decades. The company kept expanding into softer goods when they should have been focusing on harder goods.

Instead of advancing into its weakness (clothing and soft goods) by buying Lands End for $1.9 billion, Sears should have been retreating to its strength in hard goods and bought Black & Decker.

And let’s not forget, Sears has some of the strongest hard-good brands in the industry like Kenmore, Craftsman and DieHard. These brands could have crowned Sears as the hard goods king and blocked much of the progress Home Depot has been able to make.

But I think the final straw for Sears was Eddie Lampert’s unwise take-over. High-flying hedge-fund legend, Eddie Lampert acquired Kmart in 2003 and Sears in 2005. Combining the two struggling retailers was suppose to deliver synergy but instead brought misery.

Combining two losers doesn’t make a winner. It just doubles your problems. Sears and its owner Eddie Lampert whose fund holds 48% of the company are in deep trouble.

Eddie Lampert, a man who was once called the Warren Buffet of his generation, may have ruled out that comparison for good.

Lampert’s rise and current fall are emblematic of the recent trend of having money managers buy and run companies. The implication is that great value can be created by simply managing assets better. But nothing could be further from the truth. Managing assets usually translates into going over expenses and looking for ways to cut costs. And while saving money and cutting waste are good, those steps alone don’t make a company powerful.

What makes a company powerful? Size, strength, stock price? None of these.

What makes a company powerful is owning powerful brands. Powerful brands are brands that are singular, dominant and in growing categories.

Today, neither Sears nor Kmart are powerful brands. Bad news for Lampert and his legacy.

Warren Buffet is famous for buying the right brands on their way up. Lampert will unfortunately be known for buying the wrong brands on their way down.

Not your father's Xerox

After a brand overhaul that was two years in the making, Xerox unveiled a new look last week. Xerox worked with Interbrand to modernize its brand to reflect its expansion beyond copiers. In other words to show that “Xerox is not your father’s Xerox anymore.”

Xerox built one of the most powerful and most recognizable brand names in the world. Let’s take a look at the early history of the company to see how being first and two wise name changes were integral to its success.

1906: Haloid incorporates to make and sell photographic paper.

1935: Haloid buys the license for electrophotography (and renames it xerography from the ancient Greek words for “dry” and “writing”)

1949: Haloid commercializes xerography with the Model A copier.

1956: Xerographic products represent 40% of sales.

1958: Changes company name to Haloid Xerox.

1959: Introduces the first simplified office copier, taking the world by storm.

1961: Drops Haloid from the name.

1962 – and beyond: The Xerox brand name becomes synonymous with making copies and dominates the fast growing category.

There are not many companies listed both on the New York Stock Exchange as well as in the Webster’s dictionary. Xerox is not just a company but a verb meaning to make a copy even if it happens on a Canon machine. It is a virtue of the power of the name, being first in the mind and owning the category.

When the copy machine was the centerpiece of every office, owning “copier” in the mind brought Xerox great wealth and fame. But today much has changed. Today, the copier category is no longer on the rise but in decline in both size and more importantly importance.

It is a similar situation to the one facing Kodak. Kodak was once one of the most powerful brands in the world but not anymore. Not because Kodak did anything wrong but because the category that it owned (conventional photography) is fading away. When your category dies do does your brand. There is nothing you can do about it. The best you can do is ride it out and launch new brands for the future.

This is not something Xerox is doing. While they have been successful in finding new business by expanding into printers and scanners as well as document management software and consulting services. The company is not being helped by clinging to the Xerox name. The Xerox name hurts more than helps the company in the new areas it enters.

Why? Credibility. When a brand is so well-known and so closely associated with one category, so much so that it is the generic word for that category, you can’t change its meaning in the mind. Using lowercase letters and a big red ball is going to change nothing. The first thing that comes to mind when you hear or see “Xerox” is “Copier.”

Xerox has tried for years to move beyond copiers without much luck. As far back at the 1960s, cash from copiers has fuelled some crazy acquisition sprees in an attempt to expand the company beyond copiers.

In the 1960s Xerox bought three publishing companies and a computer unit. In the 1970s, Xerox bought printer, plotter and disk drive businesses as well as Western Union. In the 1980s, Xerox bought scanning, faxing, desktop publishing companies as well as insurance and investment banking firms. Nearly all have been sold. By the late 90s, the company was in serious trouble and had to lay off 14,000 people over two years.

Will a new logo fix Xerox? No.
Will a new logo change the brand in the mind? No.
Will a new logo give them more credibility? No.
Will a new logo grant them permission to expand? No.

So what should Xerox do? The same thing Xerox should have been doing back in the 1960s, launching new brands instead of trying to expand the meaning of the Xerox brand which time and time again has proven to be very difficult, very expensive, and not very profitable.

If you don’t have a strong and credible brand in a category you are forced to sell on price. And when you sell on price you don’t make much profit. Keeping the Xerox name on copiers makes sense; Xerox gets a premium for its copier brand. But the company should use a new name on everything else. It is going to be hard to do today, it should have been done years ago. But companies at their peak rarely want to plan for retirement.

The headline of a famous advertisement for Xerox computers proudly stated “This Xerox machine can’t make a copy.” The text went on to explain how things have changed, “so if a machine with our brand name on it doesn’t deliver copies to you, don’t get upset. Maybe it’s just not supposed to.”

Things have changed. Yet Xerox still doesn’t understand why it can’t sell machines that don’t make copies.

Need a boost this holiday season?

Despite my attempts to deny it, the holidays are upon us. Christmas is 19 days away. The sad truth is that the true meaning of Christmas has given way to extreme consumerism. Santa may just as well be saying “buy, buy, buy” instead of “ho, ho, ho.”

But my cynicism of Christmas has softened with the arrival of my children. Seeing their little eyes light up with the wonder of Santa and the excitement of seeing far away relatives has allowed me to view the holidays with the purity that only young children experience.

Children don’t feel the stresses of the holidays with all the shopping, debt, bloat and overwhelming chores, they simply enjoy the goodness of it all. And the one thing that is most important about any holiday is that it brings people together. Families, friends and co-workers make the time to get together and to celebrate.

Getting together usually involves eating. And eating usually involves sitting. And sitting usually involves, if you are too old for a highchair and too little to reach the table, a booster seat.

Children between the ages of 2 and 5 are a difficult breed. They are stuck in the mushy middle between being a baby and being a kid. They want to do everything themselves. They repeatedly say no, even if they mean yes. They constantly imitate parents and older siblings. They simply long to be just like everybody else. And while they might refuse to give up on their diapers, binkies or bottles they desperately want cellphones, car keys, and chairs just like you and me.

Most successful entrepreneurs are pissed off people that get motivated. They become pissed when they recognize the inherent flaw of a conventional solution and are motivated enough to do something about it. A combination that has brought many great brands to the masses.

A pissed off entrepreneur had brought to market a brand that I would like to spotlight today. The story of Amir Levin and Kaboost shows how a new brand benefited from doing the opposite, having the right name and being first in a new category.

Amir Levin is only 33 years old and doesn’t even have any kids of his own, but he could spot an opportunity when he saw one. While at a family gathering, Amir was frustrated by seeing his little cousins refusing to sit in booster chairs. They didn’t want to be different and would prefer to suffer by sitting on their knees than be in a baby chair. Instead of thinking, tough luck kids, he did something about it and Kaboost was born.

Booster seats all follow a simple formula, design something to put on the chair to boost the child. When I was little they used phone books, but since then thousands of booster chair ideas have been brought to market. But no one ever thought about turning the whole idea on its head. Until Amir.

Doing the opposite it a powerful strategy for many reasons. It creates a new category, differentiates you from competition and gives you PR potential. When you do the opposite it is instantly newsworthy.

So what did Amir do? Instead of just boosting the child like every other chair, Amir boosted the chair. Brilliant! Now kids can really sit just like everybody else. And they don’t feel like they are in the baby seat anymore.

Many a good idea has died right there. A better idea does not ensure success. Without a proper branding strategy good ideas wither, die or are stolen. Bad names, horrible packaging, lousy publicity, dysfunctional distribution can all bring a new brand down. And new brands are much more vulnerable to branding mistakes than established brands. So entrepreneurs have to pay special attention to adhering to the laws of branding.

Here are some of the basics principles Kaboost followed:

1. The strategy: Do the opposite.

Kaboost is not a better booster seat. Kaboost is the opposite of a conventional booster seat. Conventional boosters only boost the child. Kaboost boosts the chair and the child. The benefit is that the child can sit at the table just like everybody else. A big deal for little ones.

2. The name: Kaboost.

The name is where many new brands make their biggest branding mistake. Giving your brand a generic, descriptive name might help explain who you are in the short term but it lays a weak foundation in the mind for the long term. Generic names leave you much more vulnerable to established companies stealing your idea and preempting your position in the mind with their might.

For an entrepreneur with limited funds the most ideal brand name is one that is suggestive of the category. This way you get to have some of your cake and eat it too. You hint at what you are but have a unique brand name.

Kaboost is a name that does just that. A generic name could have killed it. And a far out name would have met with more resistance and been more difficult to establish in the mind.

3. The verbalization of the message: Your child can sit like you.

New brands don’t take off without word of mouth. And word of mouth is depended upon your message being easily verbalized, remembered and passed along. Again many new brands fall down on this point. They might have a great idea and the right brand name but they cannot put into words why they are so great. Or they give too many reasons for why they are so great, also a pitfall.

To succeed a brand needs one simple idea verbalized in a memorable way. Dyson, the first vacuum cleaner that doesn’t lose suction, is a brilliant verbalization and created a powerful new brand in the mind.

TiVo has been tripped up by not having a good verbalization of its brand. TiVo has never clearly verbalized its position. And while they have avid fans (myself included,) they have not made the huge inroads in market share many expected. I believe the lack of a verbalization is one reason why. TiVo also made a huge mistake running too much advertising too soon. Of course, blowing investment capital upfront on advertising was the downfall of many dot.com brand busts as well.

4. The package as a marketing tool.

Don’t overlook the ability of the package to build your brand in the mind. The package should be treated with great importance in the brand building process. The package is the front line of your marketing campaign, it is your last chance to seal the deal. PR gets them to notice your brand and the box gets them to buy your brand.

That said the box design should be simple and focused. The name and position should be prominently displayed. Dyson was one of the first brands to really use the box as a marketing tool. Typically vacuums came in generic brown boxes. Dyson used every side to sell the story of the brand.

The Kaboost box is fantastic, you can see that plainly.

5. The PR.

Kaboost is a newsworthy brand. In order to be newsworthy you have to be different. Being the first chair booster is much more effective for getting PR than introducing a better booster. And PR is the way you build brands. There are also several different PR angles to the Kaboost story. Amir has been on The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch to discuss how young entrepreneurs turn ideas into companies. Kaboost has been featured in the New York Times as a new and noteworthy product. One news outlet called booster seats so passé, now that Kaboost has arrived.

For anyone who is now sold on the product, Kaboost is now available at Babies R Us

Thanks to Kaboost, my little one will be sitting at our table this holiday season just like me, his Dad and his big brother. Kaboost has granted my terrible two at least one minor victory in his war of independence. And any day there is a battle Mom can avoid is a good day for all of us on the home front.