I found this article today on nytimes.com, written by Rob Walker, on dead products that have been revitalized by a new company, purely based on the advantage of having existing brand equity.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/magazine/18rebranding-t.html?_r=1&sq=&st=nyt&scp=4&pagewanted=print
An interesting idea, it's almost like retro-entrepreneurship. Instead of creating a new idea, you leverage an existing one that has since died, and reinvent it.
I have mixed thoughts on this.
First, there's a reason why the brand became obsolete in the first place, so you have to take that into consideration (i.e. change of attitudes, better competition, increased cost of raw materials, etc.). Then you have to check to see if the brand has negative associations in terms of esteem and knowledge. Businesses that had lots of investment once don't just end without a good reason.
What you want to find is a brand that can continue to compete as a similar product to its original form, find a way to enhance it or make it "fresh" or "revitalized" while leveraging the same brand attributes for which it still has equity. Like, if you try to make salon selectives a premium brand that communicates "sophisticated" to consumers, it's old brand equity doesn't help you. On the other hand, if you continue to leverage "fun" or "youthful" attributes, and then make the product, with say, new organic ingredients, then you've got something.
I'm guessing there are relatively few of those types of opportunities around.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Essay for WPP Atticus Contest
“As the world wakes up to the perils of excess consumption, is the marketing discipline condemned to be principal villain?”
Unfortunately, whether we marketers actually believe this or not, the marketing discipline cannot be a villain. This is unfortunate because, conversely, marketing could then never really be elevated to being a savior, either—which, to be honest, is something we’d really like to tell our clients.
But it’s just not there. We don’t have it in us. Believe it or not—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—we don’t have the power to be any of these things. You may be shocked to find out that marketing is not destroying the environment, clubbing baby seals, or capable of tilting the economy. Marketing is a supplement. It’s true. We measure consumer perception in order to more aptly inform those same consumers of our clients’ products and services. And that’s all. While marketing can be effecting, it can be rich, it can be potent—it can even keep some businesses in the black (for a time) or prevent others from taking off—it simply is not an entity. Marketing has no self. It cannot exist on its own. Marketing, as we all should well know by now, guides existing mindsets; it does not create them.
So why has the marketing discipline even conceived that we might be condemned? Where did the topic quote even come from? Why does it feel like marketing is so often blamed for issues so far beyond its influence? What exactly is this impulse to vilify marketing, an unmistakable non-entity? It’s somewhat ironic that marketers suffer from less-than-positive consumer perception—aren’t we the ones who claim we’re able to shape those perceptions?
My father would tell you it’s the dinner-time phone calls. When I began working in marketing, he asked, “So are you the people that call me asking questions in the middle of dinner?” Yes, Dad, we are. We are blamed because we’ve taken an interest in your interests. We are hungry for knowledge about…how you feel, how you think, and how you live. Is that so terrible? You’d think that in the age of social networking, where nothing is private, where people voluntarily expose their likes/dislikes, post their proprietary photos, and openly disclose their relationship status in the very public internet domain, it wouldn’t be such a problem to ask a few questions here and there.
But I think it goes deeper than this. I think that people believe that us marketers are deceptive. That we’re tricky, cunning, clever. And in fact, we are. We’ve come to understand what emotions drive consumer behavior, and we’ve even figured out how to stimulate these entrenched emotions for the gains of our clients. It’s really quite impressive. We’ve gone ahead and deciphered how to connect consumers to their desires. What’s so wrong about that? What is the basis of these claims that marketers are (gasp) exploitive?
Let’s consider an example, using an average consumer, say…one Jerry Seinfeld (pre-fame). Jerry bought the Ginsu knife. He explains:
“I watch these infomercials late at night and I start to believe them. I don't know what the hour is, there is an hour that I'm watching, and I start thinking—you know, I don't think I could cut through a shoe with any of my knives. That does look pretty good! …There is nothing about my life that I could tell you that is more embarrassing than the fact that I have actually spoken the words "I would like to order the Ginsu knife". I wish I was making all this up. I actually own the Ginsu knife. I thought: I'm gonna get this knife and cut my shoes up.”
It turns out that the Ginsu knife commercials, along with others produced by the same marketing team, established many stylistic precedents for direct marketing on television—the dramatic product demonstrations, the deal sweeteners, the catch phrases, the direct calls to action (Call Now!)—all of which have been shown to contribute to successful sales. And guess what else? The Ginsu knife is manufactured in Fremont, Ohio. Ohio! It was originally called Eversharp, but sold poorly.
Is this a case of marketers behaving badly? Did we exploit poor Jerry? Savvy marketers decoded the best time, tone, message, and visual expressions to stimulate his knife-buying behavior. And Jerry got what he wanted. He desired—at the time—a knife that could cut through his loafers. Jerry probably did go home and cut into a shoe, just to see if it worked. So why wasn’t he satisfied? Did he not get what he paid for?
I’m guessing that what Jerry doesn’t like is having the sense that he has been manipulated. Even though marketing, in theory, connects consumers to the products they really want, they feel deceived when they aren’t able to arrive at buying conclusions for themselves. So there it is: we lead consumers to their buying conclusions, even though we bear no responsibility as to how those consumers actually end up valuing their purchases.
Does this make us villains?
No. It doesn’t. But you know what? We’ll take it.
That’s right. We’ll take it. Please call us villains. Please tell everyone to keep right on blaming marketers. Really. Give it to us. We are manipulative! We prey on consumers! In fact, we are so shrewd, we know just how to guide you towards what you’ve shown us to be your desired behaviors! We are so sharp, ensorcelled consumers can hardly discern what’s going on!
Please tell our clients this. Tell them just how influential we really are. Go ahead. Who seems more powerful to you: Aladdin or Jafar? Rocky or Apollo? Luke or Darth? The more consumers think we’re villains, the more fodder we have to justify our strength—our worth—to our clients. Cast us as thy villains. We’ll perform the role with great aptitude, guile, and finesse.
In the era of excess consumption, if someone has to be the villain, it might as well be marketing—but in fairness, we’re getting way more credit that we deserve. And when minimalism is in vogue, and the critics complain about the sheer starkness of it all, you can blame us for that, too. Go ahead, condemn us. Repudiate us. Or am I just being a little bit manipulative here? Are you feeling exploited?
Unfortunately, whether we marketers actually believe this or not, the marketing discipline cannot be a villain. This is unfortunate because, conversely, marketing could then never really be elevated to being a savior, either—which, to be honest, is something we’d really like to tell our clients.
But it’s just not there. We don’t have it in us. Believe it or not—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—we don’t have the power to be any of these things. You may be shocked to find out that marketing is not destroying the environment, clubbing baby seals, or capable of tilting the economy. Marketing is a supplement. It’s true. We measure consumer perception in order to more aptly inform those same consumers of our clients’ products and services. And that’s all. While marketing can be effecting, it can be rich, it can be potent—it can even keep some businesses in the black (for a time) or prevent others from taking off—it simply is not an entity. Marketing has no self. It cannot exist on its own. Marketing, as we all should well know by now, guides existing mindsets; it does not create them.
So why has the marketing discipline even conceived that we might be condemned? Where did the topic quote even come from? Why does it feel like marketing is so often blamed for issues so far beyond its influence? What exactly is this impulse to vilify marketing, an unmistakable non-entity? It’s somewhat ironic that marketers suffer from less-than-positive consumer perception—aren’t we the ones who claim we’re able to shape those perceptions?
My father would tell you it’s the dinner-time phone calls. When I began working in marketing, he asked, “So are you the people that call me asking questions in the middle of dinner?” Yes, Dad, we are. We are blamed because we’ve taken an interest in your interests. We are hungry for knowledge about…how you feel, how you think, and how you live. Is that so terrible? You’d think that in the age of social networking, where nothing is private, where people voluntarily expose their likes/dislikes, post their proprietary photos, and openly disclose their relationship status in the very public internet domain, it wouldn’t be such a problem to ask a few questions here and there.
But I think it goes deeper than this. I think that people believe that us marketers are deceptive. That we’re tricky, cunning, clever. And in fact, we are. We’ve come to understand what emotions drive consumer behavior, and we’ve even figured out how to stimulate these entrenched emotions for the gains of our clients. It’s really quite impressive. We’ve gone ahead and deciphered how to connect consumers to their desires. What’s so wrong about that? What is the basis of these claims that marketers are (gasp) exploitive?
Let’s consider an example, using an average consumer, say…one Jerry Seinfeld (pre-fame). Jerry bought the Ginsu knife. He explains:
“I watch these infomercials late at night and I start to believe them. I don't know what the hour is, there is an hour that I'm watching, and I start thinking—you know, I don't think I could cut through a shoe with any of my knives. That does look pretty good! …There is nothing about my life that I could tell you that is more embarrassing than the fact that I have actually spoken the words "I would like to order the Ginsu knife". I wish I was making all this up. I actually own the Ginsu knife. I thought: I'm gonna get this knife and cut my shoes up.”
It turns out that the Ginsu knife commercials, along with others produced by the same marketing team, established many stylistic precedents for direct marketing on television—the dramatic product demonstrations, the deal sweeteners, the catch phrases, the direct calls to action (Call Now!)—all of which have been shown to contribute to successful sales. And guess what else? The Ginsu knife is manufactured in Fremont, Ohio. Ohio! It was originally called Eversharp, but sold poorly.
Is this a case of marketers behaving badly? Did we exploit poor Jerry? Savvy marketers decoded the best time, tone, message, and visual expressions to stimulate his knife-buying behavior. And Jerry got what he wanted. He desired—at the time—a knife that could cut through his loafers. Jerry probably did go home and cut into a shoe, just to see if it worked. So why wasn’t he satisfied? Did he not get what he paid for?
I’m guessing that what Jerry doesn’t like is having the sense that he has been manipulated. Even though marketing, in theory, connects consumers to the products they really want, they feel deceived when they aren’t able to arrive at buying conclusions for themselves. So there it is: we lead consumers to their buying conclusions, even though we bear no responsibility as to how those consumers actually end up valuing their purchases.
Does this make us villains?
No. It doesn’t. But you know what? We’ll take it.
That’s right. We’ll take it. Please call us villains. Please tell everyone to keep right on blaming marketers. Really. Give it to us. We are manipulative! We prey on consumers! In fact, we are so shrewd, we know just how to guide you towards what you’ve shown us to be your desired behaviors! We are so sharp, ensorcelled consumers can hardly discern what’s going on!
Please tell our clients this. Tell them just how influential we really are. Go ahead. Who seems more powerful to you: Aladdin or Jafar? Rocky or Apollo? Luke or Darth? The more consumers think we’re villains, the more fodder we have to justify our strength—our worth—to our clients. Cast us as thy villains. We’ll perform the role with great aptitude, guile, and finesse.
In the era of excess consumption, if someone has to be the villain, it might as well be marketing—but in fairness, we’re getting way more credit that we deserve. And when minimalism is in vogue, and the critics complain about the sheer starkness of it all, you can blame us for that, too. Go ahead, condemn us. Repudiate us. Or am I just being a little bit manipulative here? Are you feeling exploited?
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