The myth and misuse of “one thing”
Name the one thing that your company does. Think carefully before responding, because you’ll never be able to do anything else under the same brand name.
I think that’s a little extreme, but I was surprised to learn how passionately some people believe it to be true. About a week ago I wrote a short piece in response to Laura Ries’s post about UPS. In her post, Laura invokes a classic Ries line: “once your brand stands for something in the mind, it is impossible to change the brand’s position.” She goes on to use UPS (shipping), Kodak (film), and Blockbuster (video rental stores) as examples of brands that stand for just “one thing,” and therefore failed (or will fail, in the case of UPS) to be perceived as doing anything else well under that brand name. Follow her logic, and it’s why Kodak isn’t a leader in digital photography and Blockbuster’s Netflix-like service never took off.
I disagree.
When Kodak and Blockbuster failed to make those critical business decisions in their respective industries—to make a real commitment to digital and to let go of an outmoded business model—their brands were remarkably strong, and would have allowed them to stretch into new territory quite smoothly. Kodak could have led the way in digital precisely because their brand stood for one thing. But that one thing wasn’t film, it was capturing life in images (who says Kodak moments have to be on film?). And Blockbuster stood for entertainment at home, not video rental stores. That idea allowed their brand to stretch from VHS rentals to DVDs and games. Aren’t each of those “one thing”?
Likewise, I wrote, maybe UPS would be missing the boat by sticking to shipping, and only shipping. Don’t they stand for a bigger idea? Not according to Laura’s post. Several concerned citizens of the blogosphere leapt to Laura’s defense, making two arguments:
1) “We can’t affect what people think of the brand.”
Seems to me there’s a whole industry doing this rather successfully, but let’s leave that aside. The point is that if these companies think of their brands as standing for bigger ideas, they’ll have a greater opportunity to lead the way with innovations. And that will affect how customers think of them.
2) “No brand can successfully stand for more than one thing.”
I agree with this, and even wrote in my first post that “brands need focus—that they should strive to stand for one thing in the minds of customers.” But here’s the real question: what is “one thing”? If a company like Apple becomes known for making computers and software really well, is that one thing? Because they think they stand for a bigger idea, and apparently so does everyone who owns an iPod.
The challenge is determining what that “one thing” is—or what it can be in the minds of customers. My fear is that all too often real situational analysis is replaced with blindly followed axioms—that “immutable laws” will replace an actual understanding of what’s going on. To make matters worse, too many marketers attempt to apply these blanket statements retroactively to prove their point, showing that brands who’ve stuck to one thing have succeeded, while brands that break the rule fail dismally. But of course, advising brands to stick to one thing is useless unless you do the work to figure out what it is. And here’s a hint: it’s not Kodak’s film. It’s not Blockbuster’s video rental stores. It’s not the Macintosh computer or Nike’s running shoes. And it’s not shipping.
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Thanks Paul. Certainly a lot of organizations do make the mistake of overextending their brands, but I see plenty of the opposite problem as well. It seems some companies (including some branding firms, ironically) think that “branding” means coming up with a catchy new name and proprietary symbol for everything they do—every product, every service, and every process.
The mistake in your premise is believing that “capturing life in images” is what Kodak stands for. Ask a thousand people and not one will give you that answer. The Kodak name is just a shortcut for the film category in the same way Xerox will always mean copies, Kleenex will always mean tissues, and Band-Aid will always mean bandages. (And let’s not forget how Jell-O, Formica, Fiberglas, Q-tips, Velcro, and Saran Wrap each stand for their own category.) In the mind of the marketplace, Kodak represents the film category. It will never mean anything else in the mind. Minds don’t change. So I don’t expect to change yours either, Rob.
Great post Rob. And for what it’s worth, it is the nature of the mind to make predictions based upon past experiences. When experiences change, the mind changes as well. That is precisely why Toyota, once viewed as a cheap, low quality, “Made in Japan” product, is now percevied as the quality leader. Keep up the great work!
Changing what Toyota meant took decades of work and a huge investment in upgrading the quality of their products. Not something most brands can/should do.
And behavioral psychology shows us that experience rarely changes minds. People look for evidence that supports their existing beliefs and conveniently ignore evidence that contradicts it. It’s called cognitive dissonance.
(What’s most frustrating about this is that clearly any Rob and Tom can put out their shingle and proclaim themselves a brand guru. But few have done the extensive research required to understand the principles and best practices that make up branding. And this unprofessionalism reflects poorly on everyone.)
“Experience rarely changes minds?” Quite an assertion.
Looks like this is starting to get personal!
Resisting the urge to comment on professional credentials; or on how the lack of barriers to entry into this most noble profession reflect on those who pursue it more rigorously than others…
Looks like this all stems from the fundamental disagreement between those who think minds can change and can even be changed by persuasive organizations, and those who think they can’t.
I’ll ponder that question as I jump on Virgin America’s next flight to Vegas and read today’s WSJonline on my iPhone while looking forward to my stay at the Hard Rock Hotel.
“Experience rarely changes minds?”
I would take credit for that assertion, but The Journal of Psychology has me beat.
Then there’s the research of Harvard psychologist Nalini Ambady as recounted in Harry Beckwith’s excellent marketing book What Clients Love: “We are wrong to say that first impressions merely last. First impressions are eternal. As Malcolm Gladwell observed from Ambady’s research, first impressions become self-fulfilling prophecies. We make immediate judgments about things and then we fit everything we see to conform to that judgment.”
And that’s simply the tip of the “minds don’t change” iceberg. Not that minds actually never change, it’s just that the time and cost to change minds is so incredible, it’s rarely worth it for a brand to even try.
Toyota was smart enough to understand this when they came out with an upscale vehicle. Instead of trying to convince us that Toyota could also mean classy, they created a new brand (Lexus) and made that their upscale vehicle. Smart branding by working with human’s psychological tendencies instead of against them.
Sorry for my delayed response to this one. I’ve just read through both of Dr. Ambady’s papers cited by Malcolm Gladwell in Blink. They’re available here.
I’m always wary of secondary sources for this kind of thing, especially when it’s in a non-technical field like marketing. Somewhere between Dr. Ambady, Malcolm Gladwell, Harry Beckwith, and Scott’s post here, the original findings of these studies have been garbled a bit.
Both papers are about the accuracy of thin slices (meaning first impressions, more or less). I can’t find much of anything in the papers about the durability of first impressions. I’ll let you know if I find anything, though.
Plenty of research has been done on the confirmation bias, which is more relevant to our conversation here, as well as the primacy effect (although, see also its opposite, the recency effect, at the same link).
But I’m confident none of this research suggests that your average “first impression” is immovable. (And the relevancy of Dr. Ambady’s research is dubious to begin with, as it’s done on people, not brands—a significant difference, in my opinion.) To the contrary, all of my experience studying the human mind suggests that it is remarkably malleable. The creation of new connections and associations is, at a basic level, how the brain works!
I’m sure Scott’s right that in many cases it is prohibitively costly to try to change customers’ minds about a brand. But determining whether or not it’s worthwhile to try is the name of the game. Assuming it will be impossible without analyzing the situation may prove the more costly mistake.
More insight into Kodak’s “one thing.”
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Nice rebuttal, and a fun debate for branding wonks. But at the end of the day, I think the more prevalent problem is organizations trying to stretch their brand too far, rather than being too conservative…