Sunday, February 24, 2008

Managing The Nuances Of The Brand!

Accountants need to be added to the brand teams…but not to manage the budgets.

Many of the accountants that I know are very detail-oriented. They know the numbers, the columns and the calculations inside and out. Details are something they manage well.

Here is what lead me to this conclusion over this past weekend…

Starbucks is a great brand. While Wall Street is challenging their stock value, many, many people still sip their $4 Venti Lattes every day while connecting with friends and family.

And spending $4 for a cup of coffee is now a standard norm.

Here in the ATL, I pay about the same price for an extra large Latte if I am at Caribou or a local coffee house like Java Jive.

But a good number of my friends and I are miffed that Starbucks charges a sales tax on the newspapers…the same newspapers we can buy elsewhere tax-free.

Yesterday morning, my 50-cents Atlanta Journal Constitution cost me 54-cents. They tell us its an operational issue. The cash registers are programmed to tax.

Isn’t it interesting how a few pennies can tarnish the millions of value built in a brand?

Then there is the Publix supermarket chain.

Publix does some really great ads. Thanksgiving ads with dancing Pilgrim salt and pepper shakers and Christmas ads with hometown kids baking cookies from scratch.

Don’t quote me, but from what I hear, Publix spends close to a $100 million annually on advertising.

Yesterday I did my grocery shopping at the Publix in my neighborhood. There was a shelf promotional display featuring three six-packs of one of the energy water brands for $10.

When I got to the register, the promotional offer didn’t ring up and when I noted it to the cashier, she told me that I would have to go and get proof that there was a promotion. She didn't believe me.

I asked the store manager to come over and handle it. He then told me that I was only partly right and that the promotion was only good for one of the flavors. Unless I got all of the one flavor, he wouldn't even think of giving me any discount.

Okay. Each of the four different shelf promos did note a flavor, but each one noted a different flavor.

Then yesterday afternoon I went to the Lowe’s store around the corner from where I live in intown Atlanta.

While there's also a Home Depot nearby, I like the Lowe’s better because they at least have real people at the registers versus just the automated self-checkout registers at the Home Depot.

I went to purchase a lamp for my screened-in porch.

At the check-out counter, I noticed that the box the lamp was packaged in was marked on and the top was taped shut. The cashier looked at it and told me that the product was okay and not to worry.

When I got home and took the lamp out of the box, it was broken and I had to take it back and get another one. The whole purchase process took up two hours of my valuable weekend time.

The cashier didn’t even see why this was a problem.

I think that Lowe’s is still going after Home Depot competitively and not Big Lots...but then you never know.

All three of these brands…Starbucks, Publix and Lowe’s…spend a lot of marketing and advertising dollars.

You know that "good ole-boy" marketing model…build it and yell loud enough and those customers will come.

Unfortunately, that model overlooks the fact that the real challenge today is all about managing the nuances of the brand…and even pennies count!

In the CNN Obama-Hillary debate, I was more fascinated by the non-verbals than the verbals.

Obama understands managing the nuances of his brand.

When Hillary spoke, Obama looked down at his notes. When Obama spoke, Hillary not only looked at Obama, but reacted with facial expressions.

After the debate, Obama’s scores went up in the polls; Hillary’s went down.

Non-verbals can actually reinforce and communicate thoughts and attitudes just as much as verbals!

At BrandVenture, we drive home the marketing of the brand experience and not simply the physical product or service. Each touch-point of the brand experience plays just as critical of a role in the customer sale as the headline of the ad.

I remember when Arm & Hammer re-purposed their brand and moved it from just a baking product to a home cleaning product too.

Maybe we need to re-purpose the bean-counters and move them into chief brand experience engineers!

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