'Fifty ways to brand your cheddar', the song Paul Simon never wrote

This  stream of thought was prompted by  recent  articles and exchanges on Twitter about the language, types  and construct of brands ; thinking amongst others here of @clairestrickett , @paulmarkbailey and @bruceclarkprof amongst many others.

As always my focus is b2c packaged groceries , where my personal core experience lies; things may well be very different  elsewhere, and I'd be interested to hear about it.

 The questions it prompted were ones I occasionally mused about  during my time as a brand marketer  when first grappling with  the  challenges of competing with  retailer private label, from way back when this was a new phenomenon  in the UK in the 80's. 

For context  retailers  today  may have up to four tiers of private label  in the same category  from lowest price  hard discounter clone  without retailers logo or identifying marks on the pack through value , standard and premium, all bearing the retailers pack identifying codes and logos. Furthermore retailer private labels are frequently  when aggregated  together the  overall market leaders which makes for a more complex competitor landscape for the  manufacturer brand marketer 

The questions : 

*Do the same rules of branding apply to retailer private label brands as those of manufacture  owned brands?

For example  could I as  a manufacturer brand of cheddar  enter the market for  say deodorants  with the same brand  without losing brand identity in the minds of consumers? I think not, but this 'no borders' approach is one of the basic  operating characteristics  and differentiators ( for marketers  anyway)  of retail private label. Similarly  I  note from my experience in food how rare it is for brands to successfully go cross category within food  without a landscape brand positioning  and benefit which is not anchored in any one  specific category , thinking du darfst from Unilever, weight watchers etc., 

more  outside food  though, thinking Dove, Nivea  and such.

*Do consumers  see differences  between manufacter brand and retailer private label and what are they ?

 I've read plenty of anecdotal  commentary in  qualitative research  mainly  about price/value/quality parity,  freedom from brand tax  and so forth ,but haven't read anything more substantial, particularly  if ( to simplify in the extreme)  manufacturer brands  can maybe  win on psychological  benefits whilst retailer private labels  are more likely  to win on  a rational / transactional  basis.

* Can manufacturer brands own relevant  different  associations in the minds of consumers  as a result ?

 Kellogg's  from memory used to have body copy along  the lines of ' we don't make for anyone else' , but this is functional rational talk.

Conversely , in my own experience some retailer private labels , especially a

in the premium  tier  are seen as doing a better  job than manufacturer brands in some categories  in terms of  functionality, quality, innovation  and prestige. 

There was even  a thing called ' having a Mark's and Spencer dinner party ' where the accent was on the conversation  and all the food was ready made and sold under the retailers  own brand. 

As retailer private label has grown in  presence and market share across all categories  we have seen manufacturer brands going the other way  ,with high profile  multinationals  like Unilever  and Danone seeking to rationalise  their portfolio of brands and categories that were  partly the result of   acquisitions , either by divestment or migration.

So in summary  retailers,  because they control  access to the consumer via ownership of  the  shelves as well as ultimate consumer prices  , have been able to rewrite part of the brand  marketing handbook as regards core competence if nothing else,  and together with  a quality supply chain  have fully segmented and met consumer needs . 

Are we harnessing the benefits of experience ?

 The topic of experience crops up regularly in my social media threads and it's normally divisive.

There are two  main  areas , namely the oft mentioned , reportedly ageist nature of certain industries and disciplines including my own field of brand  marketing;or the value of  formal learning , typically  juxtaposed with  the hidden elephant in the room of experience. I'll  save the latter  topic for another post though and concentrate on the age related angle here if I can just  find my glasses and stay awake.

I have a personal interest in this topic  as my interest in the practice of marketing has outlived my employability (although age may not be the main reason of course); I have also seen  highly motivated and  capable  people consigned to the career scrapheap due effectively to their age, although  this could never be acknowledged overtly  due presumably to legislation. My own  last full time  marketing post was secured at the age of 50 ,and I was told informally  this was an exception or experiment on their part. 

Marketing is  accused of many things,  but not understanding or being representative of an (ageing ) demographic  never mind the economic profile of the consumers it seeks to woo is something that's  easily fixed if there was a will on the part of employers..after all isn't marketing  all about being focused  on meeting  consumer needs?

Experience is of  itself no guarantee of  future economic value to any potential employer, and shouldn't  be given precedence over talent and potential. Equally  there needs to be proper space for younger people to grow their careers without opportunities being blocked by older  incumbents. Perhaps a case for more creative  job sharing ? Other criteria of evaluation eg  performance should of course be applied in the same way to all.  Marketing  for example has quite a different  face now to when I began my working life , so it doesn't follow that my experience will  still be relevant.  Conversely  the essentials of marketing  are as relevant today as they always were , even if they've had a rebrand ...

Others have written eloquently about  how deep knowledge of a business can disappear  with the loss of key personnel  , such as happens all too often after  acquisition ;  it also applies I would argue with retirement of key people. 

Conversely  and speaking   personally  I suddenly found myself with over 30 years of frontline brand marketing experience I  could  neither use to earn a living  ,nor share with others ,hence my  overuse of Twitter  where I regularly enjoy being part  of conversations with others of all backgrounds and ages  including  academics and practitioners. 

I don't  buy into the stereotype of all older people  as necessarily more resistant to change or technically more challenged than today's digital natives , but there will of course  be some. If nothing else experience has honed my own ability to smell BS early on though.

Given the likely  continuing increases in retirement age more and more people will have to find ways to stay gainfully employed beyond their  current  employment sell by date.

The challenge then is to find ways to gainfully  and creatively harness the experience that the older person has  and wants to offer:  I'm not  personally looking  for full time employment  in marketing , or indeed elsewhere, but the odd advisory role in a  project however  might be of interest.  I've noted before an excellent ,historic scheme with a former employer of bringing  back experienced people on a ( paid) project basis where specific skills or experience were lacking  , and it self evidently  could have  potential benefits for all .

So  back to the beginning  , are we harnessing the potential of  all the accumulated experience out there ? You tell me..

Private Label is not the friend you think you need

 

This will be unpopular and comes without evidence ,but with plenty of experience.

With retailer private label in grocery on a long term upward trend and dependant on country,category and retailer market profiles ,reaching national  market shares of  50% is not uncommon. Against this backdrop  it is easy to see the manufacture of private label as a smart business  move. My experience in Multinationals over 30 years suggests the complete reverse. 

Suggested benefits  : 

Improves customer relations and this enhanced  relationship helps our brand as well

Consumers know , like and trust  private label  and they also  have a strong purchase price  and value advantage over most brand leaders.

If we don't someone else will/ we're locked out of eg 50%of the market, a non brand retailer.

Helps overhead/capacity management. 

Considerations against:

I never experienced private label being profitable,  even  at Gross Profit level. 

Does not improve account profitability or payment times.

Customers request open book costing  and proprietary recipes at sharply reduced prices.

Difficult to protect proprietary  recipe or technical secrets .

Contracts are under regular review,  yearly at least in my experience, so prices cannot easily be raised. Contract volumes are often divided between several  suppliers.

Requires a dedicated business  team of sales ,marketing ,product development  ,supply chain  people. Regulatory burden on factories is higher than internal only. 

Volumes can be very high, and managing capacity peaks and troughs,especially if you lose the contract. beware large  write offs on eg new designs,inventory .

Rarely delivers brand benefit  as retailers also have separate teams.

Reduces internal focus on building our brands.

Literalism schism

Consumers don't care about your brand  or your new clever creative idea for the new ad. 

Consumers and   bosses  often  take new ideas ,especially advertising  ,literally in my experience  .

This makes  bold creative leaps much  harder  to bring to market, and partly explains  why so many  vanilla ideas /ads provoke only indifference, thereby generating  limited returns...  and increasing the chances of stand out work cleaning up .

The marketing and creative team is  far more vested in and exposed to their work than anyone else who may come across it will likely ever be,literally. Literalism schism..

Harming customers is a business model

I spent years believing and defending the notion that having a business model which sought to damage the health of its customers would be bad for that business ,never mind morally reprehensible.There are obvious exceptions of course , like drugs cartels.

 I worked in packaged foodstuffs almost all of my career , long a target of negative sentiment, sadly sometimes deserved. 

If we just look at the business world and leave the politics aside, which is not as straightforward as it might apppear there are a few notable examples in fields I know nothing about which do suggest that insufficiently regulated businesses are as dangerous as unaccountable governments when it comes to the health of nations.

 Currently the public debate in the UK centres around the windfall profits of energy producers combined with limited government response pushing significant numbers of UK households into potential energy poverty in the coming months as consumer prices reach record and unaffordable levels. 

The opiod crisis in the USA has been rumbling on a few years now.

Raw sewage in UK waters thanks to privatized utilities and rolling back of legal safeguards.

The dangers of social media platforms when it comes to protecting the mental health of in particular the young, vulnerable and impressionable.

The dangers of online platforms facilitating the spread of falsehoods be they political , medical or economic.

The legalization of adverts for online gambling and alcohol.

The role and responsibilities of food and drink companies in trying to help prevent the spread of obesity and related health issues such as type 2 diabetes .

The decades long fight by the tobacco industry to disassociate smoking from the incidence of various cancers.

All the above pose potential if not real risk of harm to customers. 

These examples suggest to me at least that some businesses do not have the health and wellbeing of customers at the top of their priorities, just limitless profits.

It starts at the top ,sadly, with governments choosing to subject in particular more disadvantaged citizens to life threatening hardships directly through economic ,medical and social policies.

Maybe harming your customers is a business model after all.  Maybe I need to revisit  my views on purpose...

Research opportunity cost

Image source: Quintin Gellar on Pexels.com


Department of inconvenient questions*: The opportunity cost of research.

In the brave new world of simultaneously unlimited and often unbelieveable customer information I am reminded of a topic which proved to be a recurring pain point throughout my career in marketing...the opportunity cost of research.

So just how much of a security blanket is research and how much does one need before feeling the chances of success are confirmed ?

Can we afford the investment required to do the required research properly, or can we really afford to not do the research?

As others have said over the years by way of a paraphrase: 'consumers neither say,believe or act the way they say they do in a research environment' ...so why do we bother ?

Over the years working for various blue chip packaged goods companies across several cultures and continents it has in my experience been consistently harder to justify expenditure on market research internally than even media, despite the fact that no one would argue with the far greater cost of failure to both brand equity and business reputation of subsequent ,poor investment of much larger sums of money.

Equally perverse I have often been unable to afford the fees that classic research engenders, something which is felt hardest on the smaller,often exciting new brands struggling with little or no budget within a bigger brand portfolio.

Today's marketers have greater access to consumer and customer information than at any time ( whether willingly provided or not and whether of real or questionable value) thanks to the changes in access,interractivity ,direct contact and touchpoint measurability. Another major challenge businesses and marketers in particular face relates to the increasingly dynamic competitive environment with the pressure on speed to market and iterative development( fastest launch, improve on the go and fail fast), something not recommended in food in my opinion.... a further source of pressure on marketing teams is to demonstrate measurable returns on every penny spent in the form of short term results , thanks in part to the latest fashion for so called zero based budgetting, as if marketers never ever had to demonstrate ROI before....really? And please, don't get me started on how procurement are marketers Best Friend Forever.......

So a bit like the ad industry , marketers now have both the means and encouragement to bring some of their market research closer if not actually in house, to 'disrupt ' or 'disintermediate ' the research industry. My historic experiences have lead me to believe that there is a case for some shake up here, by which I mean something more fundamental than a race to the bottom for the cheapest research fees, matched only by ever poorer quality of research.

Good research information provides invaluable ,impartial guidance and feedback to brand stakeholders at every stage of business , and can also reduce the risks of consequential ,costly failures. A big part of what makes it invaluable is the calibre of human expertise within the agencies and in house to sort the gold from the stones, knowing where to look,what to look for and what to to toss back into the water.

As to the habit in some teams of using research as a blanket, my advice would be don't; use it as your honest broker or conscience so that it informs rather than governs your actions.A big part of brand authenticity comes from the authenticity of the people behind it.


All of the above leads me to the conclusion that the imperative of competitive advantage through better serving consumer needs is unchanged, still relies on a better understanding of unmet needs and beliefs, same as it always has...it's just become simultaneously easier and yet more complicated to find the gold amongst the fools gold.

*100% untainted by evidence

Finger in the frame and branding

Image source :pexels.com/ pixabay


First off apologies for the' Dad Rock 'reference to one of my very favourite bands of the 80's and 90's, Del Amitri. All will become clear if you read on....hopefully.

The title of this piece about branding makes and discusses an obscure connection between the effectiveness /desirability of the brand being ever present in say a piece of audio visual content eg a TV spot , by name checking ( but not word for word ) a typically bitter sweet song of theirs about a love affair that the singer hopes will linger on as a guilty secret ;and to the fact that someone always got their finger in the frame when they were taking a photo....

Over the years I have debated , argued and fallen out and in with ad agencies in Europe, Asia and beyond on the core issue of creating compelling creative work which is also strongly branded and ideally uniquely attributable to the brand making the ad..it is possible.

I have on occasion been challenged by frustrated account teams ' whether I just wanted to see the brand logo in every frame ?' ( finger in the frame reference...) rather than having a piece of great mini cinema with a logo hung like a soiled nappy on to the final frames ...special shout out for great debates on this topic over many years and brands to BMP /DDB London over time ( Sarah Carter , Vicki Holgate, Adrian Langford and especially Julian Calderara in this regards...) .

For the record I believe all branding and no creative story makes no sense at all.

There are brands today still happily embracing both ends of the now you see the brand now you don't spectrum , including as examples currently in the UK the Oral B brand which does manage in some TV copy at least to have a logo in EVERY SINGLE ' frame ,and the new rebrand for Waitrose and John lewis and partners , which saves all brand references for the final few seconds ...my favourite ' where's the brand?' category in the UK remains price comparison sites.

I have lost count of the number of times I have failed to 'get ' the latest and greatest eg fashionable in the bubble piece of work in recent times; I began to genuinely lose the plot about the time the Cadbury's drumming Gorilla campaign surfaced. Many Marketers loved it , many consumers talked about a gorilla drumming in a tv ad, but for me the branding was subliminal at best.

There is little doubt in my mind that 'boring& branded' is the least desirable outcome for both the brand , the bottom line and ,most importantly the consumer , as it is instantly forgettable and therefore needs higher spend to generate inferior impact and engagement.

Equally ,in my experience it is unrealistic to expect consumers to unpick some of the more entertaining constructs for branded advertising which demand both involvement and creativity far beyond the general level of ad appreciation I have witnessed across thirty years and two continents , which is almost always pretty literal.......and I do mean literal.

I wrote before about how in my mind finding brand and product truths and building creative around them is an effective bridge for ads to be both entertaining whilst building brand linkage and equity.

PS : message to the band..new songs please, and Manchester gig in July 18 too freakin loud and distorted

Pps: If any business would like my Brandbuilder(the clue is in the name)" fingers in the frame " get a bloody move on , it's almost closing time...