Browsing through the shelves of a local bookstore back home in Belgrade, I noticed one of those dramatic, attention grabbing titles: Branding only works on cattle, by Jonathan Salem Baskin. Despite the fact that for some reason I usually avoid buying books with funny covers, I didn’t think twice before putting this one in the cart.
The tone and the content of the book made me think about a very interesting meeting that I had earlier that week, when I talked about the branding hype with one of the bigest and most influential advertising practictioners that I know.
So, what is this whole branding hype all about anyway?
In order to give you a slight idea what the whole thing is about, let’s first try to define what branding actually means for most of the people, and even more importantly for most of the people involved with marketing.
While some people consider branding to be nothing more than a nice logo/mascot stamped all over every single thing that you can possibly think of, and others think of it as paranormal psihological process of brainwashing the general public, the truth is that most of them find branding to be something that fits between two of those. And honestly speaking, it’s not their fault to think about it in such a fundamentaly wrong way.
Following the discovery of radio and television, these technological miracles of one-way mass communication proved to be great platforms for selling almost anything (with a nice label), from cars to toothpastes. Widespread use of mass media made a revolution, as selling products or services to a trusting audience with limited or no access to information became as easy as fishing in a fish pond. Most of the people believed just about anything they were told, especially if they were told the same thing several times. People got classified under a new category that completely followed this approach. They became consumers, and the name perfectly reflected the idea of their one and only role: consume, consume, consume.
The traditional branding approach (the branding hype) was born, as the ad people talked about branding but actually delivered great marketing that sold stuff to “consumers”. Behind the sales volumes, there was nothing more than a great promotional use of mass media within the marketing mix, backed up with limited competition through improved POS visibility and/or exclusivity agreements. Take Coke as an example, and ask yourself a question: How much did “branding” budgets directly contribute to sales, compared to great marketing strategy, loads of merchandising, tools of “limited choice” approach and outstanding distribution applied by the company? Here are couple of examples: When you go to McDonalds, can you buy Pepsi? Can you usually order Coke and Pepsi at the same restaurant? During a typical visit to the supermarket, can you avoid seeing Coke unintentionaly? Other than Coke and Pepsi, do you know of any similar drink that is available worldwide? The most common answer to all of these questions is NO, and I think that you get the whole picture.
Intentionally or not, most of the terms stopped being called by their real names. People became consumers, promotion became marketing, logos became brands, and all of it together started to be called branding. Today it is even possible to see “Brand marketplaces”, online one-stop destinations that sell pre-made logos, domains and websites to just about anyone. The tagline they use is fundamentaly wrong, despite all the creativity that can be seen there. Pre-made graphic design in different forms simply can’t be considered as a brand, as it takes more than three clicks of a mouse and a handfull of dollars to create one.
As brands are not magical combinations of logos, mascots, slogans, websites, brochures, packages, promoters, etc – branding itself is completely different from the traditional definition that caused the whole hype in the first place. Brand is behaviour, not something before, after or apart of it, and certainly not a logo combined with a label having a catchy phrase on it.
For a brand to mean something, it has to do something.
As doing is the new thinking, branding should be taken out from the realm of thoughts into the world of actions. It is not about what we say or how we wrap up our products, it is about what we actually do. The whole business is a brand.
Branding is a process of building up values from the inside.
It doesn’t work the other way around – imposing values from the outside simply doesn’t work. In the end, people buy stuff because of their own needs, not yours. Behind every single purchase, there is a set of unique events and mini-decisions that is absolutely impossible to be generalized. Although the original driver for a purchase might be the same (basic needs, particular desires, luxury, etc), the path of thoughts that leads us to go for a certain brand is quite unique for everyone. Additionaly, as mentioned earlier – the decision what product to buy is very often not the result of something that most people consider to be traditional branding, but rather the result of outstanding marketing strategy. Putting the brand over real benefits and branding over sales, is the wrong way to go.
The branding hype
Browsing through the shelves of a local bookstore back home in Belgrade, I noticed one of those dramatic, attention grabbing titles: Branding only works on cattle, by Jonathan Salem Baskin. Despite the fact that for some reason I usually avoid buying books with funny covers, I didn’t think twice before putting this one in the cart.
The tone and the content of the book made me think about a very interesting meeting that I had earlier that week, when I talked about the branding hype with one of the bigest and most influential advertising practictioners that I know.
So, what is this whole branding hype all about anyway?
In order to give you a slight idea what the whole thing is about, let’s first try to define what branding actually means for most of the people, and even more importantly for most of the people involved with marketing.
While some people consider branding to be nothing more than a nice logo/mascot stamped all over every single thing that you can possibly think of, and others think of it as paranormal psihological process of brainwashing the general public, the truth is that most of them find branding to be something that fits between two of those. And honestly speaking, it’s not their fault to think about it in such a fundamentaly wrong way.
Following the discovery of radio and television, these technological miracles of one-way mass communication proved to be great platforms for selling almost anything (with a nice label), from cars to toothpastes. Widespread use of mass media made a revolution, as selling products or services to a trusting audience with limited or no access to information became as easy as fishing in a fish pond. Most of the people believed just about anything they were told, especially if they were told the same thing several times. People got classified under a new category that completely followed this approach. They became consumers, and the name perfectly reflected the idea of their one and only role: consume, consume, consume.
The traditional branding approach (the branding hype) was born, as the ad people talked about branding but actually delivered great marketing that sold stuff to “consumers”. Behind the sales volumes, there was nothing more than a great promotional use of mass media within the marketing mix, backed up with limited competition through improved POS visibility and/or exclusivity agreements. Take Coke as an example, and ask yourself a question: How much did “branding” budgets directly contribute to sales, compared to great marketing strategy, loads of merchandising, tools of “limited choice” approach and outstanding distribution applied by the company? Here are couple of examples: When you go to McDonalds, can you buy Pepsi? Can you usually order Coke and Pepsi at the same restaurant? During a typical visit to the supermarket, can you avoid seeing Coke unintentionaly? Other than Coke and Pepsi, do you know of any similar drink that is available worldwide? The most common answer to all of these questions is NO, and I think that you get the whole picture.
Intentionally or not, most of the terms stopped being called by their real names. People became consumers, promotion became marketing, logos became brands, and all of it together started to be called branding. Today it is even possible to see “Brand marketplaces”, online one-stop destinations that sell pre-made logos, domains and websites to just about anyone. The tagline they use is fundamentaly wrong, despite all the creativity that can be seen there. Pre-made graphic design in different forms simply can’t be considered as a brand, as it takes more than three clicks of a mouse and a handfull of dollars to create one.
As brands are not magical combinations of logos, mascots, slogans, websites, brochures, packages, promoters, etc – branding itself is completely different from the traditional definition that caused the whole hype in the first place. Brand is behaviour, not something before, after or apart of it, and certainly not a logo combined with a label having a catchy phrase on it.
As doing is the new thinking, branding should be taken out from the realm of thoughts into the world of actions. It is not about what we say or how we wrap up our products, it is about what we actually do. The whole business is a brand.
Branding is a process of building up values from the inside.
It doesn’t work the other way around – imposing values from the outside simply doesn’t work. In the end, people buy stuff because of their own needs, not yours. Behind every single purchase, there is a set of unique events and mini-decisions that is absolutely impossible to be generalized. Although the original driver for a purchase might be the same (basic needs, particular desires, luxury, etc), the path of thoughts that leads us to go for a certain brand is quite unique for everyone. Additionaly, as mentioned earlier – the decision what product to buy is very often not the result of something that most people consider to be traditional branding, but rather the result of outstanding marketing strategy. Putting the brand over real benefits and branding over sales, is the wrong way to go.