“I will take a break like never before”  

“What better time for us to be brave than now?” 

“I promise to be better just for you.” 

I like Coca Cola. Consumed in moderation, it’s a relatively benign treat. Years of advertising about how Coke is it, et al, have created a fuzzy association in my mind between Coke and being happy. So when I pour it, I get a teensy subliminal rush of joy. It takes a long time for a brand to build that kind of response, especially a brand that doesn’t really do anything much, functionally. Hats off to the Coca Cola Company for that. It’s an achievement any brand manager would envy. 

So why dissociate the feelgood from the brand, and turn it into some sort of personal self-improvement drive? I feel like I’m being admonished to do better. Maybe it’s meant to inspire. But I don’t look to Coke for inspiration.  

Brand purpose is a useful concept but it can lead to mission creep. These days, it can seem as if fizzy drinks and smoothies aren’t here to be enjoyed. They’re here to transform our lives and improve the world. And, in this case, to propose that we improve ourselves. 

According to the senior vice-president of marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa, they’ve decided that “empathy should be the ‘lighthouse’ guiding Coke’s actions going forward”. Empathy would be understanding that little moments of pleasure mean more than usual in the current climate. And letting us savour them. 

Just like the people claiming to have written a book/ learned a language/ redecorated their house in lockdown one, this latest salvo from Coke is best ignored. Brands should give a benefit, not make demands of its consumers. Alanis Morrisette might have something to say about that. Have a cup of tea and a chocolate digestive instead.  

The truth is that this is an extraordinary brand. Coca Cola has built global recognition, reputation, and positive associations, through consistent upbeat communications through thick and thin. It’s no coincidence that Santa Claus wears Coca Cola red. Somehow this explicit call to action is breaking the spell. Businesses are expected to operate responsibly, but that needn’t extend to sanctimony. Thing is, Coke can cheer me up just by being Coke. Have they forgotten that?  

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Many a brand manager claims that success will come from building a small but immensely loyal following. Marmite embraced the fact that some people can’t stand the stuff with its “Love it or hate it” advertising. But don’t be fooled. This isn’t like picking a president. Even people who love Marmite don’t eat it exclusively in their sandwiches or on their toast. In any category where there is regular repeat purchase, such as grocery products, big brands are bought by more people, more of the time. Small brands don’t have a tiny cadre of devoted followers; they are bought some of the time by some people. The idea that aiming to be perfectly appealing to a small segment is a winning strategy for a grocery brand was debunked by the work of English academic Andrew Ehrenberg and popularised by his Australian protégé Byron Sharp in his book How Brands Grow. Instead, they argue, market penetration is the key to success for fmcg brands.

It is different in categories where you can only use one at a time, and buy infrequently. Few people who have an Apple iphone considers Samsung when it’s time to upgrade, or vice versa. Even where we are not tied in by familiarity with a system, a strongly defined position that some will love and many will reject can still work, especially if it’s at a price premium. Farrow & Ball, the upmarket paint brand, is easy to mock for its quintessential Englishness and its cutsey names. (The title of this piece uses two of the mildest.) But they don’t seem to mind. Enough people are willing to sport out two and a half times the price of a gallon of B&Q white for a can of Farrow & Ball Old White™ – and it’s not even white.

The universal truth, for all categories, is that brands grow in one of three ways. More people buy them, or people buy them more often, or they use more. There is a parallel with voting here: getting the vote out can be a winning strategy. Brands that stimulate purchase, consumption, and ultimately regular repeat purchase, will thrive. Here, lateral-thinking marketers have a huge advantage over the politicos. We can expand the market. We can even compete in different markets – not just new geographies but new sectors. A breakthrough in thinking at the Coca Cola Company was when they stopped thinking about share of the cola market or even the fizzy drinks market and started thinking about share of throat, i.e. all drinks consumption. It’s said of Colman’s mustard powder that all the profit comes from what we throw away. This is not a good place to be. Marmite is trying to stimulate consumption by teaming up with grocery and food delivery companies to be included in their recipes, a tactic used by many a condiment and now being imitated by others.

Bottom line? Don’t start with your product or even your category. Start with users, and think about all the ways your category, product and brand can fit into their lives. From there, you can build great communications campaigns, and you will find opportunities to innovate in product, packaging and distribution, just as Coke did.

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+  Process and service innovation

Enforced change doesn’t have to be for the worse. Some businesses have responded to enforced changes to create new ways to serve customers, which generate efficiencies and keep the show on the road. They’re mostly process-related, and they can be beneficial to customers too. Mostly we don’t bother to consider change unless we have to, but we may well stick with it once tried, as described here.

+  Brand-building

Cutting marketing communications is a common response to recession, but there’s robust evidence that brands that maintain their visibility through advertising reap long term benefits that last way beyond the recession period. This is a good time to revisit your brand proposition and ensure it’s relevant and focused. Then communicate that with confidence. Not sure what to say in these troubled times? Have a look here

+  Stimulating consumption with product and usage ideas

Big data has transformed our ability to see changing trends. It used to be a long slow and esoteric process. Now, businesses like Black Swan crunch all sorts of data sets in real time to give businesses early warning of changes in demand, new tastes and emerging preferences. Spotting behaviour change can be very simple. If you know Google searches for cocktail shakers are up, then promoting cocktail recipes and launching new flavours, as Gordon’s did, isn’t such a shot in the dark.

Remember the home-baking frenzy early in lockdown? Marketers at Baileys picked up online chatter about making “luxurious desserts” and started sending out recipe ideas involving – of course – Baileys. They followed through by making sure it was easy to shop the recipes at food retailers’ online stores. UK sales of Baileys are reportedly up this year. There’s more on the Baileys story here.

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1. There’s no need to obsess about a name

Was there ever a more mundane brand name than Quality Street? It’s not even original – it was copied from a J.M. Barrie play that was big at the time, now long forgotten. All the rich associations and warm feelings now conjured up by those two words are nothing to do with a clever name or even with persuasive advertising. A name can be a shortcut to meaning but it won’t compensate for lack of meaning. Our brand associations build over time, so a name may be a signal but it’s no substitute for substance in the product. Of course, a name can be actively unhelpful – the Nova car seemingly wasn’t that appealing to the world’s 400 million Spanish speakers. But once you have established a name, even an indifferent one, you change it at your peril, because sometimes it doesn’t go too well.

2. Packaging can be as important as product

Packaging can be part of the product. The first breakthrough of the Mackintosh family business was a product innovation, when Violet Mackintosh mixed brittle butterscotch with runny caramel to make a new kind of toffee. She and her husband John did well. By the time their son Harold took over in the 1930s, Mackintoshes was an international toffee and chocolate business. At that time, chocolates came in expensive boxes, with prices to match. Harold had the idea of wrapping individual sweets in coloured paper instead of laying them out in a fancy tray. Cheaper packaging made chocolates affordable to many more people, creating a virtuous circle of production and distribution efficiency. He even invented a paper twist wrapping machine to automate the process.

3. Consumers make the brand

Now you know that the exciting burst of colour which promises so much as the lid comes off came from a cost reduction effort, not some marketing brainstorm. The enjoyable, noisy rituals of rummaging through the tin and unwrapping the little beauties have grown over time to be part of the pleasure, but these too came about largely by chance. Family battles over favourites, whether empty wrappers go back in the tin (NO!) and when to pass the tin – consumers, not marketing people, have made those connections with Quality Street.

4. Nostalgia doesn’t have to stymie innovation

I’d be shocked if they took away the toffee penny, and I don’t even like it. It feels like the heart of Quality Street. But there has been plenty of innovation over the years. Inspired by consumer language, the Big Purple One and the Green Triangle now exist as giant individual sweets and a chocolate bar. Other flavours have been swapped in and out, sometimes to the dismay of consumers. At one stage people complained there were too many toffees, then complained again when one of them was replaced with something different. Look how the brand team responded: they listened and put it back. (This is also a reminder that listening to customers is not the same as taking instruction from them.) As of 2018 you can buy a personalised selection with your name on the tin. Other packaging changes have been driven by cost or sustainability, such as separating the sweet wrappers into foil and paper for easier recycling.

Quality Street is such an institution that changes in the mix can provoke outrage, and polls have been conducted to determine which are the best. We don’t all have the luxury of a brand built on a lifetime of quiet reliability with some serendipitous decisions thrown in. But we can all make sure we know what people feel about the product and the brand, how they use it, what it means to them, how it fits into their lives. That understanding can unlock great potential.

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First, the one that worked. In November 2019 Coldplay launched their new album, Everyday Life, by announcing the track listing in the classified ads section of local newspapers. They chose papers that band members had some connection with. The press ad was nothing more than a simple track listing: not a genuine classified, then, but part of a media stunt which also involved letters to selected fans to ensure it was picked up. It was duly reported and much discussed in national media. Great result. Full marks to Coldplay for an endearing use of old media, which was amply rewarded in new and old media coverage.

The month before, Glenlivet’s whisky pods attracted ridicule. They were in fact a limited edition product for London Cocktail Week but that didn’t stop a tirade of negativity on Twitter. Was that fair? It’s safe to assume these aren’t aimed at a demographic whose first thought on seeing them is, Will these shift stains in a low temperature wash? Nor, indeed, at Glenlivet’s own core market. It could be a cunning way to bring whisky to the Jägerbomb generation, or just a fun way to smuggle more whisky into cocktails. The social media frenzy reminded us all that Glenlivet is there, but it felt badly out of tune with the world of single malt whisky, which is all firesides and Scottish peat bogs.

Now in their 20^th year, Coldplay are music industry veterans, focused on those who already love them. In using old media in a novel way they did something fresh but not shocking. Their stunt felt authentic, which will endear them even more to current fans and may attract new ones.

Glenlivet’s move is a stranger one. The pod concept feels entirely out of character. A weird new product is more problematic than an oddball media move, even if both are transient, because product format is much more central to the brand than marketing communications. So what’s the value of producing a novel format for a promotional event? It has to be good to be worth the risk of alienating the core customer base. Perhaps, like the concept cars at motor shows that are part of the development process, there is more to come from Glenlivet. But I think it more likely this is a quirky idea someone dreamed up in the moment for a bit of fun at London Cocktail Week.

One of the biggest decisions brands must make is whether to focus on retaining current customers, perhaps increasing their consumption, or on attracting new customers, to widen and future-proof the franchise. Neither is inherently better, but it’s much easier to do one well. To those people who shout triumphantly, why not both? I say, that’s not as smart as you think it is. The infamous New Coke fiasco was the result of efforts to attract Pepsi drinkers without considering how their most committed customers would feel about the change.

A brief flare-up on Twitter is soon forgotten. It’s not a worry for a brand that’s been around for almost 200 years, as Glenlivet has. But there’s a wider picture to consider. Time and investment in one thing is time and investment that could have gone elsewhere. And everything you do can have unintended consequences, which aren’t always apparent. I wrote about that here. Unless you believe all publicity is good publicity, the people around Glenlivet could perhaps have spent their time and energy better.

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I think it’s an entirely rational move. Trying to create a winner is difficult so it makes sense to imitate success. All brands start small, usually with somebody’s simple idea or personal conviction, or by chance. The marketplace is a real-time test market in which some thrive. Big brands are the ones left standing. It’s not that they all did something amazing, it’s just that not everyone can achieve critical mass. Those that do have a huge advantage that tends to compound.

It’s tempting to study the winners for lessons in success. But how can you tell which factors were causal? Walkers is number one in crisps mainly because just as PepsiCo was deciding to enter the UK market, the Golden Wonder factory burned down. PepsiCo bought Walkers instead and used their distribution reach to get it into shops all over the UK, making it the first national snack brand. A stroke of luck or genius with the Gary Lineker advertising certainly helped. Golden Wonder struggled on for some years but couldn’t achieve the scale to compete, and eventually went bust under the weight of its pension commitments.

Logically, then, the only option is to copy the successful brands in full. But why would anyone choose a copy when there’s already a familiar brand out there? Hence the trial and error approach (euphemistically called “test and learn” by Coke and others) that looks for something that meets a proven need but is distinctive enough to have a place in people’s repertoires and on retailers’ shelves. With that in mind, here are a few tips for product innovation:

Do: keep your eyes and ears open. Listening to your own customers and other people’s is essential for a realistic view of your market. There may be ways you can improve on current offerings, whether from your own company or competitors. A better version of your own product may be the most valuable innovation.

Do: Spot up-and-coming brands and products. Watch how your core market is fragmenting, and provide range extensions or new brands to cover the emerging new sectors. Big companies will nearly always win out over small ones if the product is comparable. If they don’t, they may be able to acquire the upstart.

Do: keep it simple. Decoding cryptic brand hierarchies or ambiguous product messages is of limited interest to most people.

Don’t: be too proud to imitate a successful product. A structural advantage, like distribution scale or manufacturing efficiencies, can be enough to win out.

Don’t: pretend it’s different if it isn’t. If there is really no reason why your version will succeed, why are you investing in it?

Don’t: be afraid to fail. Trying new things can’t always work out. The old adage, fail fast, still applies.

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Did these brands do well, by generating a ton of media coverage and awareness they didn’t pay for? Or did they do badly, by upsetting people and making themselves unpopular? Let’s evaluate what they are accused of, and whether it’s good or bad for business.

Greggs is the easy one. A novel and harmless product which fits easily into their product portfolio was criticised by a controversial media figure with 6.5 million followers on Twitter. This new product is a bit surprising for a traditional bakery chain, so it may prompt some people who don’t shop there to think maybe there’s more to Gregg’s than they thought. People who like Greggs but dislike vegan options can ignore the offending item. Everyone now knows it’s there. Goal!

Gillette is more problematic because it appears to be having a go at its own customers. That’s if you, a man, are offended by the suggestion you shouldn’t shout at people. It seems many were. One could argue this entirely vindicates Gillette’s decision, proof that the message is needed. The issue here is, I suspect, that people are split on whether it’s Gillette’s place to be the messenger. Having a social purpose is fashionable for brands. At best it wins them support, at worst it attracts cynicism. If Gillette stick with it, in time it will seem a lot less controversial. If they drop it, we’ll forget pretty fast. Either way it’s not going to make that much difference to how many razor blades they sell.

Revolut probably thought they were just having a little fun, while showing how a tech business can do clever things with its data. Is anyone single really harmed or even offended? There is a problem, though, and it’s nothing to do with how you spend Valentine’s Day. Good marketers try hard to understand the needs, preferences and behaviours of their customers, in order to develop better products and services, and to communicate more effectively. Mostly customers are happy with this. We want relevant stuff, which requires some analysis and sorting. But this is too visible. If they can analyse this data, what else are they doing with it? Spying on my habits? Telling other people? Financial services is one of those sectors, along with healthcare and media, that people are particularly sensitive about. Revolut should have thought of that. This advertisement offers nothing useful to anyone, so the intrusion is hard to justify. In fact it’s not even aimed at current customers. It’s to recruit new ones. No matter whether this data is real or made up. They are having a laugh at their own customers’ expense, for their own benefit. Own goal.

Footnote: Remember the row about the Beach Body Ready ad on the Tube? Can you name the brand? While the original ad was banned from the London Underground in 2015 after hundreds of complaints, it was mimicked by a plus size clothing brand only last year. A form of success, perhaps.

More on brands doing “purpose”: a perspective on that Nike advert, and on the notorious Pepsi Kendall Jenner spot

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The first question to answer is: Is it right for a shaving brand to take a stand on how men behave?

Second: If they do, how should the brand act on that belief?

Third: is a two-minute film the right way to tell the world what they think?

Quick answers: 1. Yes?2. Not like this?3. No.

Brand purpose is fashionable but that doesn?t make it wrong. Gillette has always been about helping men feel good about themselves ? not through advocating self-improvement, as many women?s beauty brands do, but through doing the basics well. Dove is perhaps the closest thing to a brand that tries to do the same for women, though it still assumes women must aspire to beauty, and merely broadens the parameters of that beauty to include older and chubbier women. Gillette is now stepping up a gear, daring to express an opinion in the #metoo world. That is admirable. It?s hardly a radical opinion, but it?s still a radical move. Men aren?t accustomed to pressure from brand advertising to improve themselves. And this goes much further. Even if you don?t take it as personal criticism, no one enjoys an attack on their tribe.

If Gillette now subscribes to a different view of manhood, one which rejects narrow interpretations of masculinity as a precursor for being a man, what should they do about it? They should act on it. Supporting the right charities, which they say they?re doing, is a start, though $1m a year for three years is not much of a commitment. It should go far beyond charitable donations. It?s about reviewing their own behaviour, considering the implications in everything they do as a business. At the very least, Gillette people need to walk the walk, get involved with those causes, make a difference. If they are doing this, they?ve not told us. There are other short-term actions they could take. Real principles are the ones that cost you. Equalising prices for male and female grooming might show they mean it.

Instead they?ve made a long advertisement telling men how to be nice men not nasty men, and by implication telling women Gillette is nice and on their side. Advertising is the lazy way out. Effective communication starts with the audience ? what do they think and feel now, what outcome do you want, how will you achieve that? Communication that starts with what you want to say, then says it, risks landing badly, as this has done. It?s striking how decent men feel got at by this film, even though they agree with its substance. Gillette hasn?t earned the right to lecture men. I don?t buy the argument that women do the grocery shopping therefore the ad is aimed at them. Alienating your user isn?t smart even if someone else does the shopping.

I hope the backlash won?t deter the Gillette team from pressing on and making meaningful changes to back up the virtue-signalling. Encouraging men to show their softer side is hardly a bold move. Helping to tackle male violence, which affects both men and women, would be more useful. Part of the problem is that businesses, and the marketers in them, are impatient. They want to show something is happening, but changing society takes a long time. Hence the instant gratification of making an advert. If they mean it, this cannot be a one-off.

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Marketers seem to forget that most people think more about whether to pay for one hour or two in the car park, where there’s 50p at stake, than on the purpose or identity of the many brands they pick up in the weekly supermarket sweep. On the contrary, the role of brands is to simplify decision-making, reduce deliberation, and save time. Remove a familiar indicator at your peril. I recall a coffee brand which changed its pack design from an undistinguished one to a rich, story-telling one which was totally aligned with the brand values and purpose. Sales collapsed. The people who used to buy it couldn’t see the familiar pack on the shelf. To other people, it was just one more unknown brand among many.

So is changing a name worth the risk? It’s an endearing human trait that we tend to overestimate the upside of change, and underestimate the risks. Will Heinz Salad Cream reassert its dominance in the condiments aisle now that people are prompted by the name to deploy it on bread? Maybe. Or do Heinz, as comedian David Mitchell says, “stand on the brink of an epic cock-up: customers looking for Salad Cream suddenly won’t be able to find it and there is currently no one in the world, wandering around any supermarket anywhere, looking for a substance called Sandwich Cream. ‘Disappointed with your current sandwich-moistening agent? Why not try something you’ve never heard of from Heinz?'”

In the business to business world, changing logos or visual identity doesn’t matter too much, and can be a useful signifier of desired change for people inside the business. Short-term pain can lead to longer-term gain, if it’s part of a programme of change. Names, on the other hand, do matter. Not because they explain the business, but because it’s the familiar handle by which we know who we’re dealing with. Which is the definition of a name, is it not? It’s that simple. I was sorry to hear that the quirky independent market research agency Brainjuicer, which had a reputation for original thinking, delivering insight with energy and playfulness – and didn’t their name suit them – has changed its name. It’s now known as System something, presumably to reflect its intellectual underpinning, which is about System one and System two thinking in the human brain, as explained in Daniel Kahneman’s hit book, Thinking Fast and Slow. It’s odd that a business based on emotional, intuitive decision-making (system one) has made this change in pursuit of something rational. That it’s about them, rather than about what they do for clients, only makes it worse.

Marketing is darn simple if you start with the customer, think what matters to them, create value for them, and make it easy for them to obtain. Changing names, identities and pack designs throw obstacles in their way. The potential long-term gain better be worth the short-term risk of getting lost or forgotten. Changing the handle may seem quick and easy but it’s the substance that matters, so make sure the product or service offering is right before you worry about what it’s called.

A final thought. Fetishising names, believing they can signify the entire proposition, can leave people with egg on their faces, as illustrated here. A related blog post about job titles is here.

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Coca Cola is another global brand that’s traditionally been loved for its upbeat American values. So it feels like something has gone a bit wrong when you see new flavours with names like Feisty Cherry, whatever that is, advertised with the strapline, “For the early adopter”.

These are examples of what I call “self-conscious marketing”. Instead of offering to meet a need, the brand invites us to observe its marketing idea. It’s like when an actor turns to the audience and speaks directly to them. It grabs your attention, but it also breaks the spell. Dilly Dilly promises nothing other than harmless fun, and wants us all to join in. It’s reported that millions of Americans have done so. Coca Cola’s invitation to be an early adopter suggests these new flavours are far from mainstream and only a progressive few will try them. Hardly encouraging, unless being first really matters to you.

Self-conscious marketing is a useful test to check whether the brand idea has drifted too far from the product it represents. Occasionally that can make sense: familiar brands with a long history may need to do something radical in order to generate reappraisal. Those are the brands with the sort of budget that makes it possible. Sheer repetition can make something seem like a good idea. But it’s risky because it makes the advertising campaign more important than the brand proposition. Skincare brand Dove just about held it together with its Campaign for Real Beauty. For Bud Light and Coca Cola, the connection is less clear.

Businesses with smaller budgets and simpler ideas shouldn’t be rattled by these off-the-wall campaigns. Marketing isn’t complicated. Advertising, the voice of marketing, doesn’t have to be so darn twisted. For most businesses, and brands, it’s enough to be clear what benefit is on offer, who will value that, and why. This means starting not with some crazy advertising idea or an ambitious brand purpose but with the customer. Emotional benefits, like Coke’s “you’re an early adopter” are not usually a good substitute for a clear, relevant functional benefit. That’s especially true for less well-known brands and categories. Customer understanding, leading to a clear proposition, which is delivered by the product experience, is a more lasting route to success than zany advertising.

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