Facebook – the big brand arena

“Overwhelming majority of big US brands are on Facebook

by Dan Leahul, Brand Republic 10-Aug-09, 09:15“

Having worked for many major US brands, I find this article fascinating. For me,  Facebook is a powerful tool for brands and as the above article states many major brands are having incredible success – but it can also be a dangerous pool to swim in as brands equally expose themselves to attack. To really engage with a brand’s audience via social media means relinquishing a great deal of control – not something that comes naturally to many established US brands, in my experience.

Key to success through social media is to understand that it is not about communication… it is about conversations. It is as important (if not more so) to listen as well as talk. If customers, employees or others are saying bad things about your brand, listen, be honest, and if there is some foundation… take action. If you are conducting your business in an honest and ethical manner there there should be minimal scope for brand damage – the good should outweigh the bad.

That so many major US brands should have been prepared to relinquish a good measure of control is a pointer for us all. I find that it is often lesser brands who are more paranoid about what they see as the anarchic nature of social internet. Paradoxically, it is also for these brands that it presents some of the most cost effective opportunities.

Ultimately, it is about brand confidence: if you believe in your brand get out their and talk about it. Engage in those conversations… and above all listen! At the very least it will save you a shedload of money on focus groups.

Listen to the brand

I do a lot ot work with companies introducing their brands and products into international markets. Their are a lot of potential problems, but today most marketers are aware of the obvious ones and check, for example, that their brand name does not mean something risible or obscene in the language of their target markets, or that the colours and images will not cause offence. But we should also consider the auditory communication of the brand – does it depend upon colloquial pronunciation for example?

My parents were brought up in the pre-commercial television days. In many cases, particularly for brands and products of foreign origin, they had never heard the names pronounced. Products produced by Nestlé for example, they called ‘Nestles’.  They came from a generation with little exposure to foreign languages and in what seemed like a closed market it made little difference.

The world has moved on now and few English people will have problems with Peugeot or Stella Artois. But as much as anything this is because these are well established brands for whom broadcast advertising means we are familiar with hearing the names pronounced. For lesser brands we may still struggle with difficult names. So, when we are looking to take brands into international markets it is worth thinking about whether the brand name depends upon what may be irregular pronunciations from the English. The English ‘ough’s are obvious enough, but also look out for the final modifier ‘e’ – the one that changes the vowel sound from ‘can’ to ‘cane’ for example. In most European languages it does not modify the vowel, and is often pronounced at the end of a word.

Acronyms also fall foul of pronunciation: If your company is known as, say, HBW in England, in French it is pronounced ‘ahsh,bay,doobleuh-vay’; in German, ‘hah,bay’vay’. Having worked for many years in advertising where we love acronyms, I quickly learned the problems when announcing myself to clients’ receptionists in France and Germany.

These may seem like niceties, but for small to medium companies who are now exposing themselves to global markets without the budgets to indulge in broadcast media a moment’s thought may ease market acceptance. Would you feel comfortable asking for a product that you were unsure how to pronounce?

Santander rebrand – a case for brand evaluation?

So, megabank Santander is to rebrand its UK subsidiaries, gobbling up such old high street names as Abbey, Alliance and Leicester and Bradford and Bingley. Gut instinct says it must make all kinds of sense. The sub-brands no longer have he profile they once did, nor I would guess, attract the same loyalty they once did as mutuals. Santander is not a completely alien name in the UK, and the economies of scale and reach the bank can achieve in mounting global campaigns and butressing the status of the main brand seems eminently sound.

I just find myself wondering whether the great and good at Santander also just worked on that simple, empirical logic?  Or did they do a brand evaluation and really but some figures against the value of their brands. I say this out of my experience of major financial institutions.  Where their whole ethos is built upon numbers, values and calculations, strategic brand decisions are curiously more often made without such rigorous calculations of brand values.  Looking at the £12m they say the exercise will cost, I am sure they know exactly what savings they will make in stationery and marketing communications… but have they really worked out the value of those brands? When such decisions are made the oligarchic structure of the bank tends to kick in and corporate egos take over.

That said, my gut feeling is it is the right thing to do for an international brand… but moving from an endorsed identity to a monlithic one is a brave step and not without its hazards.  In today’s climate, especially for financial institutions, putting all your eggs in one brand basket may be a risky endeavour.

Strong brands buck the trends in recession

Okay, what all of us involved in branding have been telling clients for years is true. Brands add value despite despite slowdown (BBC News, 29 April 2009).

Every year Millward Brown Optimor publish their Brandz Top 100 survey which compares the balance sheets of leading brands with public sentiment about those brands.

“In the current environment, where the value of many businesses has fallen, brand has become even more important because it can help to sustain companies in tough times,” says Millward Brown Optimor’s chief Joanna Seddon.

It’s paradoxical that for many companies when times are getting tough, they tend to cut expenditure in just those areas that can give value to and sustain brands, supporting the sentiment that the public feel about them.  There is the natural response to cut anything which s not going to show positively on the balance sheet. But perhaps CEO’s should also look at the ‘brand balance sheet’.  That is brand leadership… look after your brand and in hard times your brand will look after you.

Happy New Year

Okay, I’m back after a long Christmas break and time to see how brands have fared over the last couple of weeks.  Been a pretty bloody time for retail brands, and I’m still fascinated by the goodwill people feel about the Woolworth brand.  Politically, some nations don’t seem to be doing their brands a great deal of good, but one of the most amazing national brand exercises seems to still be punching way above its weight… Cuba. The Castros have done the most amazing job over the last half century… an iconic leader, much emulated… fame by association with the most powerful nation in the world.  And a profile higher than many greater nations can command.

Taking care of the brand assets

I am often at pains to underline that most of what we confuse as ‘the brand’ are actually to do with brand communications, they are the signifiers, and it is what the brand is and does that really matters. Ownership of the brand is with the public at large. But one area that those charged with brand stewardship can and should take charge of is that of the brand assets. Brand assets are as valuable, sometimes more valuable, than those buildings and machines that appear on the balance sheet.

I break brand assets down into four main categories, broad and by no means exhaustive:

Tangible

• Premises, location, iconic buildings, historic offices
• Flagship products
• Everyday products
• Vehicles etc.

Intangible

• Intrinsic history, brand narratives
• Reputation
• Social actions
• National reputation
• Brand Loyalty

Created

• Marcoms assets – The Michelin Man, the Dulux dog, Ronald McDonald etc; iconic advertising
• Brand identitiy, logos, colour schemes, corporate signatures
• Intellectual properties

Human

• High profile people in the organisation – past and current
• Owners/founders – King Gillette, Richard Branson, Victor Kyham etc.
• Marcoms personalities
• Staff
• Customers

All of these assets require care and careful stewardship. You would not allow your premises to become dilapidated, nor machinery to seize or fail through lack of maintenance – yet those are replaceable unlike many brand assets.

The brand values transfered by nationality, and vice versa.

All brands take values from their sector and their nationality, for better or for worse. German cars, Australian wines, English suits, American music etc. The value transference is subtle and changing: think how low Japanese brands were regarded in the decades just after the war, where now, ‘Japanese’ is a signifier for quality and innovation in such areas as cameras and consumer electronics.

It is all to easy too consider this brand transference as a hierachy, as in the diagram below:

The organisation draws value from the reputation of its sector, which in turn embodies values of its nation in that sector.

I would suggest the model more complex, more like that shown below:

For example, you could say that Mercedes have a reputation for quality because they are German cars. But equally, the sector has a reputation for quality because of the values brands like Mercedes bring to it. This impacts upon the national values which in turn are transferred to brands within the sector. Unlike the previous model that is very ‘top-down’ , this model takes into account bottom-up interactions too.