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You may not be able to buy happiness, but you can certainly buy refreshment. And that in a nutshell is Coke’s problem in the U.S. Short of a cold slap in the face, there is really nothing more refreshing than an ice cold Coke. Pepsi is refreshing but a bit sweeter so it loses the refresh-off. Orange soda? Ice Tea? Cold bottled water? Not as refreshing. The Pepsi “Refresh” campaign, where the word is mostly used as a synonym “reboot,” shows possibilities but doesn’t yet deliver.
I love the entertainment value of the current Coke TV work out of Wieden+Kennedy. It’s pretty, heartwarming and fun. But it lacks the primary motivation for consumption. Sure refreshment may trickle through the work but it’s secondary. People don’t drink Coke to up their happiness quotient.
The soft drink market is the States is facing lots of issues: Sugar, recession, obesity, competitive specialization, i.e., energy drinks, yet soda consumption is actually outpacing waters and teas for the first time in a while. Overseas Coke is growing by double digits in countries like Russia, India, Egypt, Vietnam, Philippines, Turkey and Brazil. Are they buying Coke to get happy? Roots is a big movement in the U.S. right now. Coca-Cola and the Coke brand need to get back to its roots. Peace!
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Tags: coca cola, coke, pepsi, soda marketing, whats the idea, whatstheidea, wieden + kennedy, wieden+kennedy, you cant buy happiness
Quick, I say “brand strategy,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Okay, let’s try another. “Brand plan.” You say ______? This sort of brand speak is really inside baseball to most businesses. Over the past couple of years I’ve spoken to some really smart people from many different walks of marketing life and they all know the words but, ask them to define or diagram them on paper, they can’t.
Wikipedia “Brand Plan.”
Wikipedia the words “brand plan” and Wiki asks you “Did you mean Brand Play?” The first option under the question is business plan. Wikipedia “Brand Strategy” and it says “You may create the page Brand Strategy.”
Everyone agrees that brands are important…that they have value. Most understand brands need to be managed. What they don’t always get is that brands need to be managed to a tight brand strategy. So they default to managing brands based upon acquisition, sales growth or retention metrics — all of which are measurable. Thanks to the web, we can now even measure clicks and views and engagement and referrals and, and, and. And tie measures to dollar investments. Break out the dashboard and play marketing videogames.
So if brands are important, and we all agree they are, how do we measure the efficacy of the brand strategy? I often use the example that Coke’s brand strategy is refreshment. Today, Wieden + Kennedy and Coke would have you believe it is happiness. Who is right and how to we find out?
Now don’t get me wrong, a powerful brand strategy is only so if it increases sales and margins. Period. But tying sales and revenue increase to a strategy, not a tactic, is what’s what. Peace!
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Tags: brand, brand plan, Brand Strategy, coke, whats the idea, whatstheidea, wieden + kennedy, Wikipedia
Aol. and Yahoo have both finally figured out that good content begets readership, viewership, referral, and participation which begets — the same. These two seminal online brands will be dooking it out for years to come. They both took different paths to get here and both have CEOs with unique perspectives, but the battle should be fun to watch. Coke and Pepsi, AT&T and Verizon fun.
Armstrong vs. Bartz
My bet is on Aol. Tim Armstrong hitched his ride to a rising star (Google) and got that success smell on him — but I think he created some of that smell with his focus and good leadership. Carol Bartz’s career advanced by good blocking and tackling and good business decisions, something Yahoo hadn’t had for a while prior to her arrival. Yahoo made lots of decisions, just not with a solid brand idea driving them. Until proven otherwise, I’ll give Mr. Armstrong the edge and write it off to “derring do.”
Ad dollars are moving online, no doubt, but those in the know will tell you the lion’s share are going to Google thanks to AdWords and their direct-to-consumer, DIY, analytics-powered ad model. As Aol. and Yahoo re-create their online brands and lead the market in the generation of original content (paid and contributed), search will stay a powerful, lucrative utility, but won’t be the best way to find good content. That will be the domain of Aol and, hopefully, Yahoo. Peace!
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Tags: AOL, at&t, Carol Bartz, coke, google, pepsi, Tim Armstrong, Verizon, whatstheidea, yahoo
Love is not a branding idea. Sorry Blackberry. You may be on to something with the notion that “like is mediocre” or “like is watered down love” as a campaign idea, but you’re never going to build up the brand tying it to the word love. So be smart(phone) and shut it down; get out while you can. Beatles song or not.
The strongest brand in the world today, Coke, would never have made it this far had Wieden and Kennedy been at the helm early on making ads about “happiness.” Coke is a mature brand with some unique issues, I understand, and people know it Is a cola and Does refresh (Is-Does), yet as nice as the “happiness” ads are, and they’re good ad-craft, happiness is a second generation benefit. As is “love” for Blackberry. Fah, fah, fah fail.
The smart phone category is getting to be a real mess. Though I applaud Blackberry for its attempt at brand discipline and some good may, indeed, come of it — love ain’t it.
The Motorola “Cliq” has an idea. Or, it is the MotoBlur? Either way their idea is tied to the Does benefit of being “social.” The phone was built to social network (verb). The campaign line “smart gets social” works. If the Moto Cliq can continue to open a gap between itself and competitors in offering the ability to integrate all social networking apps with grace and ease, it will win some serious share. It will have an idea I can love.
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Tags: blackberry, cliq, coca cola, coke, love, motoblur, motorola, smart phone, the beatles, whatstheidea. whats the idea, wieden and kennedy
When I say I like Good and Plenty, it really means I like licorice. When I say I like Budweiser, it means I like beer. Granted there are lots of flavors of licorice and beer but the point is one doesn’t have an innate, built-in need for brands. (I said innate.) If I like Maytag, it means I like clean clothes. The iPhone? Staying in touch…with everything.
Some of us in marketing forget this, spending too much time on a distended version of the brand story. (“We must break though the clutter!”) But it is a product we are selling, not the story.
The way out this trap is by focusing on a product’s Is-Does: what a brand Is and what a brand Does. I came upon this notion when reading some branding literature while at McCann-Erickson. Eric Einhorn created a document exploring what a brand is and what it means. I rolled the “means” over on its side to make it more concrete.
For me the pursuit of the Is-Does became particularly necessary when planning in the tech sector where chief technologists have a hard time explaining their products in less than 50 words. Was Apple’s iPhone really a phone? For most marketers and planners, the heavy lifting is in the Does, but even here one can go off track. Does Coke really provide happiness (today’s strategy) or Does it provide refreshment ( real strategy). Find the right Is-Does and you tell better stories, create more loyalty, and sell more shtuff. Peace!
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Tags: apple, coke, eric einhorn, good and plenty, iphone, Is-Does, mccann erickson
Rant time. My bad, it’s Friday. Pepsi’s sales, it was reported yesterday, were weaker-than-expected caused by lower soft drink sales in North America. Interestingly, Pepsi Cola just finished a big brand redesign which was well received by the design, advertising and brand planning communities; the latter community acknowledging the work at the recent Jay Chiat Awards in NYC. I am a dissenter when it comes to this new Pepsi strategy, which revolves around the idea “Refresh.” Pepsi’s strategy celebrates refresh more for the computer definition than the thirst-quenching definiton. Hello? Is anyone paying attention? Refreshment is Coke’s strategy.
Anyway, both Coke and Pepsi — but Coke in particular — need to focus advertising not on culture but on the ability for colas to truly quench a thirst. Nothing in the world can quench a thirst like a Coke. It creates a jolt, a satisfying, smile-provoking recoil for the thirsty drinker. Here’s a test strategic account planners: get out of the building and walk a trail in the hot sun for 8 hours. Have someone meet you at the trail’s end with a Coke in one hand a Gatorade in the other. See which your arm reaches for. (Only physicists will grab a Gatorade.)
Colas are under fire from waters, energy drinks and teas. They need to fight back. And fight back with all the syrupy, coca-ey, carbonation demonstrations at their disposal. Cola growth in the third world is strong because those consumers know that Coke and Pepsi refresh like nothing else. In the US we’ve lost sight of that. Come on people, stop over-thinking this stuff. Cultural refresh indeed! Peace.
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Tags: coca cola, coke, cola marketing, gatorade, jay chiat awards, pepsi, pepsi cola, weiden and kennedy, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Trust, Authenticity and Transparency are the three "pop marketing" words of the day. ROI was last year. Trust, Authenticity and Transparency can be found on every marketing blog and in every social media webinar worth their free price of admission.
Sound like I have a bug up my arse? You bet.
Here’s the problem with brands today: They don’t mean anything. Most brands are not imbued with an idea, but with many ideas. They are defined by campaigns, not a brand strategy. We, as consumer, are therefore so confused we default to the “is” of the Is/Does. Levy’s is jeans. Coke is cola. And with so many people managing these brand across so many silos we don’t know what the brands “do.” We can’t land on a brand value, because it is ever-changing.
That’s why everyone is talking about Trust, Authenticity and Transparency. Everyone is confused. And with social media added to the brand management fray, there’s even more confusion. Return On Strategy (ROS) is the most important brand metric there is. Not the ROI which measures tactics. Too much ROI leads to the need for? That’s right. Trust, Authenticity and Transparency. Peace!
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Tags: authenticity, coke, Is-Does, levy’s, marketing blog, pop marketing, roi, ros, transparency, trust., whats the idea, whatstheidea
If ever a brand owned an idea it was Coca Cola. McCann-Erickson got it. Early Coke brand managers got it. The people definitely got it. The idea was “refreshment.” Coke ads made you feel in your bones the total and utter refreshment from its unique, thirst-quenching taste.
(Not a big Coke drinker, I once came off the Appalachian Trail parched, craving a Coke. I found one and it was other-worldly.)
Pepsi which has always had smart marketers on its team realizes “refreshment” is Coke’s provenance and has for the most part stayed away. But today Pepsi is jumping on the word in its new “refresh everything” campaign tied to change in America. As it is with much of Pepsi’s work, this is a borrowed interest approach (not based on an inherent product quality) so it won’t be that effective. And the consumer generated content side of the program is a bit weak. But Pepsi will spend so it may muddle the “refreshment” waters.
Coke needs to defend its refreshment position and it needs to do it now. Get back to what refresh meant.
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Tags: Advertising, coke, consumer generated content, mccann erickson, pepsi, refreshment, whatstheidea, “whats the idea”
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