PJA Blog: The Complex Brand

Now that we are ‘officially’ in a recession, the realization of which typically means that we are in the middle of or on our way out of one, we’re seeing a curious trend here at the agency. Companies that we’ve never talked to, companies we haven’t heard from in years, and companies we’ve never heard of, period – are asking us to help them choose a position. It might be a new position or it might be an updated position to suit these less-forgiving times.

In some cases these companies have their business strategy set but no story with aspiration or vision that sits above the strategy and unites every business unit. As a result they can’t get the right valuation from analysts or they’re stuck in the wrong competitive set. In other cases the company has chosen a position and is interested in a gut-check, hiring us on a consultative basis first. (These ‘trial-size’ contracts are a classic sign of an economic downturn.)

In other situations the company’s markets are consolidating by the minute, driven by the entrance of a behemoth competitor (on Mondays and Wednesdays insert “Google,” on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays insert “Microsoft”) and they need an irrefutable statement of why choosing best-of-breed still matters over giving in to the inevitable one-stop shop.

In still others, the company is growing too quickly to come up with a new position that works for the next stage of growth, realizing that if they don’t, they’ll put the brakes on that growth because they just don’t pass the smell test of the CXO customer versus the regional VP they’ve sold to successfully in the past. (more…)

If you saw Jim Stengel, CMO of P&G, interviewed in the most recent Fortune, you probably paused as I did when I saw him get emotional about commodities. Here’s some of what he said:

“I hate it when someone says they’re in a commodity category. We don’t accept that there are any commodity categories. We are growing Charmin and Bounty very well, and if there is any category that people could say is a commodity, it’s paper towels and tissues. We have developed tremendous equities, tremendous loyalties from our consumers. So, no, I think that is a cop-out. That is bad marketing and an excuse. We are not in any commodity categories.”

How often over the course of a month does a BtoB marketer hear a client or prospect whine that they’re in a commodity category? No doubt pretty often. How often do they respond as Stengel does? Based on what you see when you flip through most magazines, a lot less frequently. If there is inspirational equity in a product or service – and you could argue that anything possesses it if paper towels do – it rarely makes it to the surface or is even pursued.

Look at the target customer. How well do you know them? What’s the inspiration? What’s the aspiration? A freelance team I know once went through a supermarket and chose the most commodity product they could find, bouillon cubes, and designed a campaign around them for their book. As I remember, it focused on the entire experience of opening the cube: where you likely were, what you were likely thinking, and how relaxing it was to be cooking from scratch rather than sitting in traffic. It worked for me. And there’s no barrier that exists just because we’re in BtoB to say we can’t be inspiring and compelling, either.

It’s working for Jim Stengel with a $6.7 billion ad budget, so it should be workable at our slightly lower budgets, too.

The case study of marketing the Bahamas, a 600-mile-long string of 700 islands, offers several valuable lessons in marketing a network of businesses under one brand. This case study is also a chapter in Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage, by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn of star marketers Fallon Worldwide.

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