Certainly, agencies have much to contribute strategically and tactically. However, the key to engaging in a broad, coordinated brand-building effort that accesses alternative media is to develop and control brand strategy inside the organization.
Clarify Your Brand's Identity
The identity of the brand - the brand concept from the brand owner's perspective - is the foundation of any good brand-building program. Whether pursuing alternative brand-building approaches, accessing multiple media, or both, a company must have a clear brand identity with depth and texture so that those designing and implementing the communications programs do not inadvertently send conflicting or confusing messages to customers. Unfortunately, many companies do not have a single, shared vision of their brand's identity. Instead, the brand is allowed to drift, driven by the often changing tactical communication objectives of product or market managers.
A clear and effective brand identity, one for which there is understanding and buy-in throughout the organization, should be linked to the business's vision and its organizational culture and values. It should provide guidance as to which programs and communication will support and reinforce the brand and which will detract and confuse. Knowing when to say no is critical. A brand identity that is so ambiguous and general that almost any kind of customer communication can be deemed suitable is not helpful.
Each of the six companies we examine subscribes to the idea of a strong, clear brand identity. But the Body Shop and Haagen-Dazs illustrate the concept particularly well.
The Body Shop's core brand identity is in essence its profits-with-a-principle philosophy. The soul of the brand, the philosophy sends a clear message to employees and customers alike. Consider how the company - inspite of the criticisms of its detractors - "walks the walk" in terms of developing programs reflecting the core identity. The company opposes testing on animals, helps third-world economies through its Trade, Not Aid mission, contributes to rain forest preservation efforts, is active in women's issues, and sets an example for recycling. It participates in Save the Whales rallies, advocates for other endangered species (a line of its children's bath products, for example, comes with informative storybooks about various endangered animals), and supports the development of alternative energy sources. One summer, employees and supporters sent 500,000 signatures to the president of Brazil to urge him to stop the burning of trees there.
These efforts are not ancillary to the Body Shop brand; they are the brand. And the vision carries right through the customers' in-store experience. Enter a Body Shop, and you are greeted by a clerk who not only wears a Body Shop T-shirt bearing a social message but also believes in the company's causes, values, and products. Displayed among the store's goods and tester samples are posters and colorful handouts (printed on recycled paper) that provide information about the products, about social causes the company supports, and about how customers can get involved in rallies, social-cause advocacy groups, and the like.
Compare the Body Shop's brand identity with those of its competitors. Most skin care and cosmetic lines are indistinguishable, focusing on similar product attributes and health-and-beauty promises. And their customers are not involved with even their favorite brands - except to make a transaction or to receive a broadcast-style advertising message. Clearly, the Body Shop has transformed the skin care and cosmetics experience into something more than it has ever been.
Now consider Haagen-Dazs. Grand Met launched Haagen-Dazs in Europe in 1989 despite an economic recession, a tired, stagnant category, and established competitors. Unilever, Nestle, Mars, and a great number of small but strong local ice-cream manufacturers-such as Scholler in Germany, Movenpick in Switzerland, and Sagit in Italy - advertised extensively, had high levels of name recognition, and controlled the limited freezer space in European supermarkets. In countries such as the United Kingdom, strong private labels held more than 40% of the take home market.
What’s more, Haagen-Dazs was launched at a price 30% to 40% higher than its closest competitors and many times higher than the lower-priced products. How did it succeed? In part by being clear on what the brand stands for. The Haagen-Dazs brand means premium ice cream: thicker, creamier, and pricier than any other ice cream on the market; a sensual, self-indulgent, pleasurable treat targeted at sophisticated, affluent adult consumers.
The conventional way to introduce a new product such as Haagen-Dazs is to lead with a major advertising effort. But Grand Met chose a different route. To introduce the brand in Europe, it first opened several posh ice-cream parlours in prominent, affluent locations with heavy foot traffic. The café-like stores, deliberately designed to contrast with the more traditional, sterile ice-cream parlours, made a statement about Haagen-Dazs. The company also obtained placement for the ice cream in quality hotels and restaurants but stipulated that the Haagen-Dazs name be featured prominently on menus.
Haagen-Dazs pursued additional approaches to fuel word-of-mouth communications: branded freezers in food retail stores; sponsorship of cultural events; and a relatively low-budget, steamy print-media campaign with the theme The Ultimate Experience in Personal Pleasure. Linking the brand to arts sponsorship was a particularly savvy move. At one event, the Opera Factory’s production of Don Giovanni in London, the ice cream was even incorporated into the show. When the Don called for sorbet, he received a container of Haagen-Dazs. The result? A windfall of free publicity, begun and spread among target consumers.
The company’s co-ordinated brand-building efforts were overwhelmingly successful. Haagen-Dazs brand awareness in the United Kingdom, for example, reached more than 50% within a few months. Whenever a clear and
European sales of the product went from $10 strong brand identity is
million in 1990 to $ 130 million in 1994. Today lacking, a brand is like a
the brand commands one-third of the market ship without a rudder.
for top-of-the-line ice cream even though it continues to charge a hefty premium over copycat brands.
Identity-Building Brand Exposure Creates Visibility
The role of visibility in creating brand equity is often underestimated. Simple recognition can affect perceptions: people tend to like known brands even if they have never used them. Brand visibility can signal leadership, success, quality, substance, and even excitement and energy-all before the product comes into play. However strong brands find ways to achieve visibility by building and supporting the brand identity. Each of the companies we studied understood the importance of creating visibility while enhancing identity.
Hugo Boss, a fine clothier, created its image of exclusivity and high quality in large part through effective use of sponsorship. In the early 1970s, Hugo Boss sponsored Porsche in Formula One races to capitalize on Porsche’s strong exclusive image and international presence. Over the years, the company also has taken on sponsorship of international tennis, golf, and ski competitions. It has funded exhibitions and artists, and it sponsored the popular TV shows -- “Miami Vice” and “L.A. Law,”-- both of which featured Hugo Boss garments.
Interestingly, Hugo Boss did not come into its own in terms of defining and building its brand until the 1980s. Although the company, founded in 1923 in the provincial town of Metzingen, Germany, was always a producer of high-quality clothing, the brand lacked flair. In the early 1970s, when the sons of Hugo Boss’s brother became co-CEOs, annual revenues were only about 4 million deutsche marks. It was then that brand building began in earnest. A clear division of responsibility allowed fast action once a strategy had been determined.
The visibility garnered through Hugo Boss’s sponsorships paid off quickly. Sales revenues topped DM 100 million in 1980 and increased tenfold during the 1980s. Hugo Boss’s garments are sold in 57 countries, and more than half its sales come from outside Germany, with 20% generated outside Europe. In a 1991 study of men’s clothing brands for the German magazine Gehobener Lebensstil, Hugo Boss was the highest ranked for having an aura of exclusivity and for having customers who routinely considered the brand when purchasing clothes.
If Hugo Boss’s visibility campaign can be called inspired, SMH’s efforts to build the Swatch brand are nothing short of brilliant. SMH took Swatch from rooftops to concert halls to ski slopes in a targeted campaign to boost visibility and forge a clear brand image, redefining a product category and reinvigorating the entire Swiss watch industry.
In the years just prior to the 1983 Swatch launch, watches were either low cost time measurement instruments or a high cost combination of heirloom and investment. There was little in between. So SMH set out to define the Swatch core identity as a low-cost watch of excellent Swiss quality (rebuilding the good name of Swiss watch manufacturing) with a stylish, fun, youthful, provocative, and joyful brand personality. The concept of a fashion watch was born.
From the beginning, SMH made sure that Swatch messages were driven by that strong brand identity. For its launch in Germany, the company hung giant 165-meter '‘watches" from city skyscrapers with signs that read, “Swiss, Swatch, DM 60”. In Spain and Japan, SMH used similar publicity stunts. For Swatch, the medium was, in part, the message in that it helped to communicate the brand identity.
Sponsorship, too, was carefully planned to bolster the brand’s image among concentrated groups of potential target customers. In Breckenridge, Colorado, for example, Swatch backed skiing’s Freestyle World Cup. In New York City, the company organised the Swatch World Break-Dancing Championship. In London, it sponsored Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World show- and in Paris, a street-painting contest. The company also backed the traveling Museum of Unnatural History, supported the work of avant-garde musicians through the Swatch Impact tour, and sponsored the pop art exhibition L’heure est a l’art in Brussels. Swatch quickly became part of the worldwide pop-culture movement.
The company also began linking new watch collections to carefully selected events. Although some collections have involved real product innovations, most are fashion driven, in keeping with the brand’s concept. Hence the company has sometimes tied introductions to such milestones as Halley’s Comet, perestroika, the opening of Eastern Europe, and the 1992 United Nations Earth Summit in Brazil.
SMH’s brand-building efforts (which also include a highly successful customer-membership club) have generated tremendous brand awareness. Some of the company’s limited-edition watches have even become collector’s items, drawing exhorbitant prices at Christie’s and Sotheby’s art-auction houses. In April 1992, sales reached 100 million, making Swatch the best selling watch in history.
Keep in mind that sheer visibility should not be the ultimate goal in a serious brand building effort: any campaign to increase visibility must have as its beacon the brand’s identity. Without exception, the visibility enhancing efforts of the companies we studied have been and continue to be consistent and supportive of their brand identities.
In contrast, the visibility efforts of the Italian clothing group Benetton illustrate the danger of activities that send the wrong message and do not express the brand identity. Founded in the 1960s, Benetton began with a coherent identity that conveyed youth, cultural diversity, racial harmony, and world peace; and it stayed directed for a long time. Then came the 1984 United Colors of Benetton campaign, which made use of print media, a Formula One sponsorship, and intensive in-store communication, including the distribution of one million copies of the customer magazine Colors through more than 7,000 stores worldwide.
Initially, the campaign was a great success. Sales of Benetton products grew rapidly. Over the years, however, Benetton’s art director, the highly creative and talented photographer and artist Olivieri Toscani, developed his own style of advertising independent of the Benetton brand identity. He produced images for Benetton’s communications campaigns that included a dying AIDS patient, a nun kissing a handsome priest, and a baby’s bottom stamped “HIV Positive“. Although very successful at creating publicity and visibility, Toscani’s work appeared inconsistent with Benetton’s established brand identity, and instead of building the brand and increasing sales, it alienated the target market and Benetton retailers.
The result was flat sales and a damaged brand. In Germany, Benetton’s second-largest market independent market research by Gruner & Jahr in 1992 and 1995 showed that, partly because of the controversial print media campaign, awareness of Benetton had significantly increased relative to competing brands had decreased. Also in 1995, several of the 600 German retailers that used to carry the Benetton line banded together in a boycott. The group attributed much of its 1994 sales drop to the campaign. Germany’s highest court eventually ruled against the controversial ads.
Involve the Customer in Brand-Building Experiences
Providing extensive information, especially using media advertising, cannot duplicate the impact of customers’ personal experience with a brand. Consider the sampling program of Haagen-Dazs, the participation at Swatch events, the vicarious participation at Hugo Boss events, and the involvement of the Body Shop’s customers in social activism. These experiences create a relationship that goes beyond the loyalty generated by any objective assessment of a brand’s value. Cadbury’s theme park in Bournville, England, and Nestle’s Casa Buitoni Club campaign are further illustrations.
Cadbury has taken what was once a simple chocolate-factory tour and turned it into a theme-park journey through the history of chocolate and the history of Cadbury---complete with a museum, a restaurant, a partial tour of the packaging plant, and a “chocolate event” store. Visitors who are greeted and entertained by actors portraying King Charles II, learn about the origin of cocoa and chocolate, the life of the Mayan and Aztec Indians, how chocolate reached Europe, and how John Cadbury’s empire began and grew.
Cadbury, a Quaker, began making chocolate nearly two centuries ago. Because of its Quaker heritage, his company pursued progressive ways of treating
employees, and it became a model for social
Cadbury World vividly responsibility in the workplace. For many
links the taste experience years, the Cadbury factory attracted visitors
to the brand history interested in seeing not only how chocolate
was made but also how to establish progressive labor relations.
In the late 1960s, however, the company ended its regular tours because of concerns about costs and hygiene. It wasn’t until the mid-1980s that the Cadbury board of directors began to think about how a new kind of tour might strengthen the Cadbury brand.
The idea took off. The company invested £5.8 million to build Cadbury World, which opened its doors on August 14, 1990. For visitors, the Cadbury brand became something more than the product. True, the theme park offers hundreds of opportunities to sample the company’s extensive line of chocolate products. But, more important, Cadbury World vividly links the taste experience to the brand’s history.
Every year for the last three years, more than 450,000 people have visited the park, creating an operational profit. Cadbury has gained additional brand building through press coverage and word of mouth. Outside interests such as regional tourist boards, hotel chains, and the British Railways Board also have publicised the park to promote their own advantage. Undoubtedly, Cadbury World’s success contributed to the 1996 naming of Cadbury as the most admired company in the United Kingdom. Although most companies would not consider building a theme park around their product, they can certainly learn something from Cadbury World---namely, that an entertaining, heritage-linked experience can be a cornerstone of brand building.
Nestle-owned Buitoni, a 169 year old Italian pasta company and brand, had a different but equally creative approach. Already available in the United Kingdom for 30 years, Buitoni was acquired by Nestle of Vevey, Switzerland, in 1988. In the early 1990s, only 100 million pounds of pasta were sold in the United Kingdom---a per capita consumption one-fourth the size of that in the United States. Buitoni, with a leading share of 18% faced two challenges. First, private labels, which held a total of 60% of the market, were a growing threat. Second, consumers did not seem to have a wide variety of pasta recipes in their repertoires. Buitoni perceived a need to expand consumers’ use of the product, but in a way that benefited its own brand and not its competitors’ brands.
Nestle had successfully employed strategic business units to manage its worldwide corporate brands, including Buitoni, Maggi, Perrier, and seven others. Each business unit would create a global brand-identity plan. A country brand manager under a general country manager would develop and implement the brand plan for his or her territory, with the approval of the business unit. It was the United Kingdom’s Buitoni brand manager---with support from the global brand manager---who in 1991 originally proposed a way to build a base of loyal Buitoni customers: the Casa Buitoni Club.
Nestle’s strategy was that Buitoni would become a helpful authority on Italian food – a brand and company to which consumers could turn for advice on the many varieties of pasta and their preparation. The company already had established a modern research facility in Sansepolcro, Tuscany –--- in the original Buitoni family villa----and a staff of chefs set out to experiment with new recipes and develop a wide array of new products.
The first stage of the Buitoni marketing effort,which took place in 1992
and 1993, was designed to strengthen brand awareness and create a core database of consumers interested in getting involved in Italian cooking. Buitoni gave free recipe booklets to anyone who responded to its offers, which were made in the press and through teletext or direct-response television. Other brand support in that initial stage included in-store sampling, sponsorship, a road show with many sampling activities, and public relations connected to the most popular running event in the United Kingdom, a half marathon. Total spending was £1.5 million in 1992 and £2.5 million in 1993. As much as 60% of the 1993 budget went into non-media forms of communications, as opposed to 40% in 1992. The integrated Communication campaign (with the tag line Share the Italian Love of Food) resulted in a database of more than 200,000 consumers.
Then, in November 1993, the households in the database were invited to join the Casa Buitoni Club. Those responding received an Italian-lifestyle information packet and a full-color quarterly newsletter (with articles about Tuscany and other parts of Italy), pasta recipes, and discount vouchers. Membership benefits also included a toll-free number for anyone wanting cooking advice or suggestions. In addition, there were sweepstakes (with the prize of a visit to the original Casa Buitoni villa in Tuscany), gourmet-cooking weekends, the opportunity to sample new products, merchandise offered against proof of purchase, and suggestions on planning pasta feasts.
Since the club's inception, membership has grown steadily through word of mouth and marketing efforts in alternative low-cost channels, such as public relations events, promotions, and invitations on packages of Buitoni pasta. The use of Buitoni products and customers' loyalty have increased as well. The toll-free line builds relationships between the brand and club members and provides valuable customer feedback to the company. The Buitoni program in the United Kingdom has influenced the marketing of Buitoni in other countries (for example, Japan) and the strategies of other Nestle brands (for example, Maggi).
There is brand-building power in getting the customer involved in a larger experience when using a product. Two other examples that illustrate that power are Adidas and Virgin. Adidas has developed what it calls urban culture programs, which include participatory events across Europe such as a streetball challenge, a streetball festival, and a track-and-field clinic. These popular events include not only athletics but also fashion shows, music (including a hip-hop band), and other entertainment. Spending significantly on this sort of brand building, Adidas has also obtained collaborators: major sports leagues; other marketers targeting the same youth segments as Adidas; sport celebrities; and, most important, media services, which cover events and hence provide free publicity. Partly because of its urban culture programs, Adidas has reversed (without media advertising) decline in sales that started in the early 1980s. It has turned in two-digit growth figures and market share gains in the last several years - in the face of major media expenditures by Nike and Reebok. Indicators of brand perception show considerable improvements, especially among younger consumers.
Virgin's approach involved participating in CompuServe's U.K. Shopping Centre, a virtual mall. Subscribers who visit Virgin's Go Megastore can learn about and purchase CDs, videos, and computer games while having an involving and entertaining experience. The feel and experience of visiting the virtual store, coupled with the fact that Virgin was one of the first British retailers to use this medium, helps to reinforce the Virgin brand's associations of being innovative, pioneering, energetic, entertaining, and obsessed with providing value to customers.
Making It Happen
Interestingly, several of the companies we have discussed did not deliberately seek to pursue alternative brand-building methods instead of mass-media advertising. Instead, they were blessed, one might say, with liabilities that encouraged them to be creative. For example, even if Anita Roddick had been a proponent of traditional media advertising, the Body Shop simply lacked funds. Hugo Boss, lacking exclusivity, an international presence, and design credibility, knew that a mass-media campaign wouldn't change that. Nor would it convince the fashion world that a small company, with distribution in only a narrow segment of the German market, was a reason to think that "Germany" suddenly spelled style. Haagen-Dazs lacked access to the freezers of powerful retailers because Grand Met's food interests in Europe were relatively small. Traditional brand building would not have gotten freezers with the Haagen-Dazs logo into prime retail chains. And Swatch, at its launch, did not have the cost structure to mount a significant campaign against its Japanese competitors.
Although not everyone is blessed with such liabilities, the lessons these companies learned are valuable and transferable. Developing a set of alternative approaches to branding building isn't easy, particularly for companies that have long relied on media buys as the cornerstone of their brand-building efforts. But with dedication and commitment from senior managers, alternatives can be worth the time and investment.
We recommend that managers study the brand building methods of companies outside their industry and outside their country. Creative approaches used by companies in other fields or other markets may suggest effective brand-building techniques that also provide differentiation from competitors.
In-house capability in the lead media is important for real and sustainable competitive advantage. If the lead media implementation is outsourced, it easity can be copied. When it is actively managed internally, as was the case with the Buitoni direct-marketing effort, the Cadbury theme park, the Hugo Boss event-sponsorship program, the Swatch events, the Body Shop's activism, and the Haagen-Dazs sampling effort, then the resulting effectiveness and efficiency of the program can represent significant barriers to competitors.
One person or team inside the organization should have the responsibility for the brand. The charge is to create a strong, clear, rich identity and to make sure that the implementation groups, whether inside or outside the company, understand that identity. When alternatives to mass-media advertising are driving the brand-building process or playing a substantial role, it is particularly important to have a brand champion with the ability, authority, and incentive to ensure that the brand identity is being delivered consistently across multiple media.
We suggest pilot tests to learn firsthand what works and what does not and to gain confidence in programs that are novel and seem risky. The Swatch and Haagen-Dazs programs both benefited from pilot testing.
Finally, managers should monitor the results of the effort. A single and continuous measure of brand equity helps companies understand clearly the contribution of alternative-communication vehicles in building brands. And careful monitoring can reveal how to expand those vehicles to serve the company best.
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(Source : Harvard Business Review on Brand Management, Harvard Business School Press, 1999 ).
