As a brand strategist, I’m sometimes asked to name a few favorite brands. While companies like Apple and Starbucks seem to show up in every branding presentation and book (not to mention my own blogposts), the truth is that my interest in these brands is more detached and academic than emotional or personal. I am professionally impressed by how often these marketing machines seem to be “right.” But perhaps it’s precisely because I’m so keenly aware of their marketing activities that Apple and Starbucks rarely have the power to move me—to connect with me beyond a clinical curiosity.
One brand that has made me sit up and take notice is REI, the American chain of outdoor and adventure sports equipment retail stores. To my knowledge, the company does not yet do business in China, and my affinity for the brand may partly be a case of “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But REI, seemingly without a massive marketing budget or a paradigm-shifting retail strategy, has built a powerful brand through at least three basics of brand strategy:
About eight months ago I moved to Shanghai. It’s my first time living outside the United States as an adult, and as a consumer it sometimes feels like being reborn. Don’t get me wrong—Shanghai is a modern, diverse city, so it’s not so hard to find familiar Western brands here. But because of the ubiquity and lower cost of local brands (or at least less familiar ones), I’m constantly in the position of making decisions about brands with which I have no history—not the brands I grew up with and saw my parents using as a child—not the ones for which I remember a famous ad campaign from the 80s or can hum a jingle on cue.
(And as a side note, sometimes even the most familiar brands are somehow unfamiliar here.)
Of course it’s impossible to remove all the preconceived notions that influence a purchase decision, but in some ways I feel like a subject in an experiment: How do we form opinions and develop biases about things that are new to us? And it’s not just that they’re unfamiliar…the written language barrier also blocks access to otherwise simply communicated messages. Since moving here I’ve twice bought yogurt thinking it was milk. (Hey, show an American a white-and-blue, one-quart cardboard carton at the supermarket, and it’s milk. Talk about a strong semiotic code. Now I do a shake-test just to be sure.) Sometimes I can’t even read the name of the salty packaged snack I’m buying, much less the ingredients list, nutritional information, or where it’s manufactured, not to mention any romance copy about how crunchy or flavorful it is.
If this was an experiment, what could we learn from it? It’s hard to say how applicable the results would be to any other situation. Most adult consumers are literate. They watch local TV and read local periodicals. The fact is, I’m not even in the target market for the majority of the products I’m buying. Regardless, I do feel I’m learning about my own consumption habits from a new perspective and therefore gaining some insights that could be generalized to other consumers. For example:
Last week Microsoft opened a retail store. Saw this video of what Ed Cotton calls “faked euphoria” as customers are let in to the blue-screen-of-death-colored wonderland.
Of all the differences between an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store, there is one difference that matters most. One that cannot be ignored—that I believe will prevent Microsoft Stores from succeeding.
The critical difference is that we all work at the Microsoft Store already.
In cubicles all over the globe, Microsoft’s customers and potential customers are already experiencing what the brand has to offer (if you have recent statistics on what percentage of office computers are Dells running Windows, please share). Experiences include:
A few months back I wrote a post about a local coffee (?) joint near my house. The problem with DeSpyro Coffee, from my point of view, was that they were claiming expertise in too many categories at once (coffee, burgers, breakfast, mexican food, gelato, subs, and “grill”), which gives the impression that they’re a jack of all trades, master of none. Maybe that’s fine if you’re a diner or a Jewish deli, but for a place with “coffee” in the name, it would be nice if they’d at least mastered a good cup a’ joe.
The other day I noticed that DeSpyro is now Dukes Burgers. I called, and apparently it is just a name change, with little change to the menu or anything else. The lady I spoke with wouldn’t give me a real reason for the name change.
Instead of blue mountains on a cold beer can, why hasn’t anyone come up with a lid or sleeve for a coffee cup that tells you when it’s no longer so hot that it’ll burn your tongue?
You’ve probably heard by now that Starbucks is abandoning its own brand name at an existing Seattle location, replacing it with the descriptive “15th Ave E Coffee & Tea.” This is part of what may become a nationwide “un-branding campaign,” in the words of the Huffington Post’s Marc Gunther. Starbucks made the announcement weeks ago, and so far, consumer reactions are mixed.
The driving forces behind this decision seem clear: declining sales, due in large part to the global recession (trading in expensive espresso for cheap home-brewed coffee is an easy budget cut for most), and growing resentment due to perceived monopolization—”those unique [local coffeehouses]…being beaten out of business by big nasty Starbucks,” as Kit Eaton put it in Fast Company. These two challenges are in no way specific to Starbucks, and are in fact hurdles frequently faced by many successful brands in a range of industries (Microsoft and Google—including their business-to-business efforts—are two easy examples).
You can always count on the checkers at Cold Storage to 3x bag any raw meat and generally use as many plastic bags as possible. #Singapore Saturday 04 February
"P&G perfected the modern art of branding with Crisco" NPR: Who Killed Lard?-More at http://t.co/uY4c7sBP Saturday 04 February
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