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Consumers are increasingly sophisticated. In increasing numbers they are rejecting
the artificial lifestyles and aspirations that brands communicate to them.
Keep it real
Consumers have had enough of fantasy marketing. It’s time
to create real brands for real people, argues CIM’s Insights Team.
Brands are a company’s strongest asset. But it is widely acknowledged
that to sustain them in the future, they must be made more relevant to customers.
And it is the responsibility of marketers to ensure that customers identify with
and remain loyal to brands.
Branding was once about trust - providing a product or service
with a seal of quality - buy X-branded shirts because they’re more durable than
competitor Y’s shirts. Nowadays, a seal of quality can usually be taken for granted.
To differentiate themselves, brands attempted an emotional connection with consumers.
The new Volkswagen Beetle, Häagen-Dazs ice cream and Apple are fine examples of
brands that create a resonance with the customer that is not just function-based.
But as brands start to compete for emotional space, this factor
too becomes a standard offering. Brands are left struggling to be seen and heard
once more. Emotional promise by itself isn’t enough. Consumers are seeing through
artificial messages and they know when they’re being sold something that doesn’t
connect with their lives.
Brands must now make sure that consumers stay with them. And
as consumers are deserting brands that seem unrealistic or phoney, so brands that
portray unrealistic, phoney lifestyles need to smarten up and become more real.
Johnnie Moore, a marketing consultant, says “What irritates
me about brands is that there is a gap between the marketer’s idealised fantasy
world and the one the rest of us live in.” The premise on which aspirational advertising
is based “buy this offering and you will become like this” is being disbelieved.
To differentiate brands in the future, companies will need
to do something that isn’t merely focused on quality or emotional connection -
a ‘third way’ for brands. That third way must be to make brands connect more effectively
with real people. Nicholas Ind, author of The Corporate Brand, says, “Brands should
be about real people and real benefits. However, marketing gets in the way of
this. Market research encourages abstract thinking, marketers indulge in wishful
thinking and advertising agencies get carried away with hyperbole.” Ind says that
companies must break down the barriers between the organisation and its customers.
Those barriers include overly aspirational role models and unrealistic ads.
The third way - reality
So how can marketers find this third way? One way to make
brands resonate more is to use real people. Consider Dove. This year the brand
received much publicity when it asked real women to strip down to their underwear
to advertise its Body Firming Wash. Using the strapline “As tested on real curves”,
the poster version proclaims, “After all, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge to
firm the thighs of size 8 supermodels, would it?”
Daryl Fielding, Dove’s Client Services Director, quotes research
indicating that real women are self-conscious about curves and find beauty ads
intimidating. “Most fashion models don’t look like they need firming creams, they
look like they need a good meal” she says. [Source: Shepard]
The women in the Dove campaign are not impossibly beautiful
models. The implicit communication “use this product and you will look like this”
is, as a consequence, more believable.
Dove widely publicised the fact that it was using real people.
It ran features in magazines and media interest was such that there were newspaper
interviews with the women concerned. Sales of Dove products doubled after the
£4 million campaign, according to Unilever. [Source: Shepard]
Kevin Roberts of Saatchi & Saatchi believes future brand
success will be based on turning brands into ‘lovemarks’. A lovemark is a brand
that inspires ‘loyalty beyond reason’. It has an intangible X-factor that people
fall in love with. Can the lovemarks approach lead to increased turnover, market
share or shareholder value? One success story has been the savoury spread Marmite,
since it adopted its ‘love it or hate it’ campaign, a lovemarks-oriented approach.
Sales of Marmite increased 16% in the four weeks after the launch of the campaign.
But brands can’t be all things to all people. For every person
who loves a brand, there will be many who dislike it. Consider McDonald’s - it
was worth $24.7 billion in 2003 [Source: Anon, 2003]. But on the lovemarks website,
there are far more people hatin’ it than lovin’ it.
McDonald’s is also listening to real people who are turning
away from food that is perceived to be unhealthy. “Is lovemarking a breakthrough
to a more democratic, sensitive way of seeing brands, or just a rather grandiose
attempt to make us think brands are wonderful?” questions Johnnie Moore. “I sense
that we are being offered something rather simplistic, whereas our hunger is growing
for organisations with more depth and subtlety.” What real branding tries to do
is a bit different, and hard to do well: to strike a balance between aspiration
– “I want to be part of that club” – and identification – “this is for me, for
my life.”
How can this balance be achieved in practice? For brand consultant
and author David Taylor there are three ways:
- Great consumer insight nuggets into people’s lives: how
they feel, what they do, role of the brand and product
- Clear positioning, and positioning that is consistently
executed
- Fantastic, engaging execution
If brands are to be more real, then they need to resonate
and trigger a connection with people. That may be through love. But it might not
be.
Tim Kitchin writes about a new “human reality”, which demands
that brands become more relevant to people. Brands need to be humanized by having
real people delivering real personal value to other people. [Source: Kitchin]
Gym’ll fix it
The challenge for marketers is to make real branding bigger
than advertising. How can the idea infuse the whole mix? For example, consultant
Tom Peters complains, “I would rather not work out in my bumbling, puffing fashion
in an atmosphere geared towards lithe human machines. Health clubs are not designed
for, or marketed to, people like me. Why not? Don’t they like money?” [Source:
Peters]
Virgin Active Gyms target people who want to get fit at their
own pace. It champions a relaxed, non-judgemental environment where everyone can
feel comfortable, whatever their shape, size or level of fitness. “Far too many
branders see branding as a controlled process where they dictate the public perception,”
says Johnnie Moore. “The real world is not like that - the public are very much
part of the conversation.” Moore points to MovableType (http://www.movabletype.com/)
which makes a popular form of weblog software. “Its community of customers evangelise
the brand and provide most if not all technical support via the user forum. The
founders kicked this off and clearly shape the community, but they don’t control
it.” The human beings have become part of the brand and the brand develops organically.
The company does not tell the customer what the brand stands for. The nature of
the medium means online brands can use people to help create the brand’s values.
For example:
- Friendsreunited.co.uk - excited users tell their friends
= free marketing
- Confetti.com: real-life stories of brides-to-be that encourage
people to return to the site
- Amazon: user profiles, reviews and lists encourage consumers
to return
These brands are managed by marketers, but real people have
input which leads to the brand’s success. Amazon, for instance, has dealt with
the problem of seeming to be faceless by personalising its service. When you buy
a particular product, lists of similar recommendations from real customers appear
in a side-bar. Amazon also runs a rating system. Customers write reviews and say
exactly what they like about a product, good or bad, and award it a number of
stars out of five. This interaction between the company and the consumer will
become more important as the relationships are enabled by interactive technologies.
The BBC brand, for instance, has been taken in a new direction by digital-enabled
devices. No longer is the consumer a passive viewer, told what to watch by the
lofty, anonymous provider. Now it is a case of pressing the red button and making
your choice in your own time.
Back to reality
Brands must be more real if they are to connect with customers.
But we know that brands exist to add value to something that, without the branding,
would not carry that value. How do we reconcile this? It’s acknowledged that companies
need to change the way people think about brands in order for them to grow in
the future. Opinions differ only on the methods that should be used to precipitate
that change.
The important thing is to increase consumers’ connection to
brands so that brands have more meaning for real people. Unlike the lovemarks
approach, if brands are real and use real people in the communication of the brand,
real people will engage with them and they will be authentic.
David Lewis, author of The Soul of the New Consumer, argues
that we are moving from a time of hype, which customers hate, to a time of buzz,
which customers like. This is because buzz makes brands seem part of life, rather
than a way of selling you something at a premium. Lewis points out that buzz is
likely to be seen as truthful, as opposed to hype which is perceived as devious.
Real branding takes brands back to where they began by emphasising
the trust element of a brand. And it’s for marketers to decide how real branding
can be used to differentiate brands that are currently competing for the same
emotional space. It’s only another stage in the fight for attention.
But marketers who want to gain an edge can use this idea to
leverage truly powerful brands - brands that deliver on their promise, have a
true connection with customers, and deliver added value to shareholders.
Case study: Kellogg’s
A shift in the way Kellogg’s markets its breakfast cereal
Special K is indicative of the move away from aspirational, unrealistic branding.
For decades, Special K has been identified with a thin woman in a red swimsuit,
who would transform into the red ‘K’ logo. The brand was inextricably linked to
this image, one might have thought; any company would have to be convinced of
a major need for change to dispense with such a closely woven brand identity.
But recent advertising for Special K shows what is perceived to be an ordinary
person - plainly lit, no make-up - weighing herself on scales and standing on
one leg to try to be lighter. Her ordinariness is emphasised by one of the tricks
she uses to be lighter - she takes her glasses off - the red swimsuit icon would
never have worn glasses.
The ‘K’ logo has been replaced by an emphasis on the benefits
the product brings to real people. While there is no suggestion that the new Special
K woman is a ‘real person’ (eg not an actress), Kellogg’s has decided that perceived
realness is desirable and the aim is attainable.
Consumers still buy the product because they think, rightly
or wrongly, that it will help them lose weight. But this subtext is now associated
more convincingly in the consumer’s mind than the message communicated by the
swimsuit model. With that campaign, there was a believability gap between the
potential consumer and the model. In its new advertising, Kellogg’s has distanced
the brand from all the connotations of the red ‘K’.
Kellogg’s is positioning the brand for a new kind of consumer
- one who identifies with real behaviour.
Real branding examples
Governments, countries and other entities seeking to brand
themselves are also doing away with the all-gloss, all-spin approach to branding.
Government organisation Sport England, for example, has decided not to use a celebrity
or a sporting hero to act as the figurehead for its anti-obesity campaign. Instead,
according to PR Week, it is looking for an ‘everyday family’ to spearhead media
campaigns and to be featured in promotional material. Meanwhile, ‘Connie’, the
irritatingly artificial ‘cyber-character’ used by AOL as the figurehead to their
brand since the mid-1990s, has been ditched in favour of advertising which will
“illustrate the lives of normal, everyday people using the internet”.
Other examples include Vonage, a broadband phone company in
the US, which has just launched in Europe. It currently has an effective internet
ad campaign using black-and-white photography of ‘real’ people of all ages and
ethnicities. The photos are generally close-ups and communicate friendliness and
approachability, while the design of the ad evokes ‘edgy and cool’.
Volvo recently unveiled the sporty YCC (your concept car)
designed by women for women. “If you meet women’s expectations, you exceed those
for men” explains Hans-Olov Olsson, President and Chief Executive of Volvo. The
car features detachable machine-washable seat pads, lots more storage, paint that
repels dirt and assisted parallel parking. However, with its good-looking exterior,
useful interior solutions, and good performance, it is a car that will also appeal
to men. The car is not available to buy, but Volvo will incorporate the best elements
into future models.
The YCC has been developed with real people in mind, to provide
real solutions for real problems [Sources: Rechtin].
For more information on the latest insights agenda, visit
www.shapetheagenda.com
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