See Christmas Ads. Buy Christmas Ornaments. May the Force Be with You.

Doing some mild holiday shopping, I note that the Hallmark Star Wars Christmas Ornament Collection for 2011 includes a Darth Vader in Lego version. The mind boggles, for $39.95 especially. Checking online, there’s a more…festive… R2 set: the black and bronze bodied R2-Q5 and red-trimmed R2-A3 from the original trilogy of films, first offered at the 2011 New York Comic Con – the pair’s available for $119.95 via the web.

LA-based writer Kristie Bertucci has a post on the GadgetReview blog wherein she reveals her top 16 Star Wars Christmas ornaments. From 1997 to the present, here they are to liven up your 2011 Yuletide trees. (Not ours, sorry: I was never quite this much of a fanboy.) According to Hallmark itself, though:

Since 1996, both Hallmark and Star Wars collectors anxiously await the release of the new Star Wars Hallmark ornaments. Always some of the most anticipated ornaments released annually…

The company’s advertising continues to be as heart-grabbing as ever – see one spot running now on YouTube. Evocative stuff given our troops are finally coming home, home from Iraq. My favorite isn’t on Bertucci’s list. Hallmark had a rather early 1998 Boba Fett ornament – see upper left. In the words of Stan Hope, “For bounty hunting the Xmas bounty…” Now $25-$40 on eBay.

That was then, this is now: the 8.5” Boba Fett with Carbonite Christmas Statue from Kurt S Adler. C’mon: the gift-wrapped Han Solo carbonite panel. The thermal detonator with the red bow. The candy cane!

Just six shopping days left. Seriously, how does this not say the Spirit of Christmas to you?

Boston Delight #2: Now Visiting the Home of the Bean and the Cod – and Staples.

Howdy from Boston. Spending too much time in one part of the country sometime makes me forget great brands in other parts of the country – it’s more true now as Signalwrite Marketing than when I was the creative director of a nationally oriented B2B agency. Arriving in Boston, though, it is hard to ignore Staples.

Staples is the world's largest office products company and the mid-1980s were a key growth era. I remember its more-or-less original slogan, “Yeah, we've got that.”

This slogan was retired in 2003 when Staples hired Martin|Williams in Minneapolis to create a new brand. The old slogan was replaced with “That was easy.” Expanding on that theme, 2005 ads featured a large red push-button marked “easy.” In 2006, Staples' new ad agency, McCann Erickson (creative), and MediaCom (media-buying) won a gold Effie for the effectiveness of their "Easy Button" campaign, which has sold 1.5 million prop Easy buttons.

It’s a brand strategy – reduced in the best possible sense to three words and a visual – that lives long and prospers. In fact, as recently as last week Peter Cohan was blogging on InvestorPlace.com that Staples is a considerably better investment than poor-performing Office Depot.

The Easy Button is one of the great distillations of a wonderful brand solution. Glad I’m in Beantown to be able to blog about it.

To Fight the Brand Bandits – in the Front Lines and Online – Become a Whistle-Blower.

“Chinese officials have found five fake Apple stores in the southwestern city of Kunming,” reads one article lead, in stately fashion. (Reuters has done a spectacular job of documenting the brand theft in photos like the one above.)

Isn’t it shocking. The Chinese caught stealing brands. Again. In case you missed the last time I blogged about this (“Ripped Off” here), let me remind you that there is little respect for the sanctity of brands in “Land of the Big Exports.”

There’s also little enforcement inside the country. And apparently little punishment to “evil-doers” in this connection. Not terribly surprising when news covers human tragedies on a Somalia or even Norway scale.

Still, maybe you care enough to ask yourself, “What can I do to help stop brand theft? How can I help preserve the value of a brand that I love – or at least respect?”

Well, you could start by reading the “Brand Counterfeiting” blog post by Lee Grayson. Make a new career of it by attending the next Anti-Counterfeiting & Brand ProtectionTM conference – that would be in NYC at the end of September.

Or you can simply out brand thieves by taking it to the Internet, whether you see something major like a Chinese retailer skanking the Starbucks brand or a neighborhood video dealer with a hand-painted Mickey Mouse. Drop a dime (email a photo of the offending store or label) to the legal department of the brand owning company. Do your duty as an advertising person, as a brand marketing, as a corporate communicator. Blow a whistle.

Each of the US brand names in this post is protected by one or more trademarks. All rights reserved. “Land of the Big Exports” is a favored nickname invented by Mshimwoman on Yahoo.com – other options include “The Middle Kingdom” and “Sleeping Dragon.”

Spring Break in New Jersey #3: Start Industrial Advertising History at 16 Spruce Street.

While visiting this part of the country, it's easy to see plenty about Broadway and the arts. Even immigrant history is a hot ticket – one insider's tip is the Tenement Museum in Orchard Street, NYC.

Across the river in New Jersey, though, there's B2B adventure if you're open to it.

In 2004, when Rachelle Gabardine wrote about industrial-era Paterson, she managed to sound disapproving, as New York Times writers often do when portraying America's Machine Age. At least she was descriptive:

In Paterson's Great Falls Historic District, the top of No. 16 Spruce Street has white letters, 2 to 3 feet high, march 170 feet across, announcing the Paterson Silk Machinery Exchange. The building, which is now transitional housing, was a 19th-century factory that was home to the exchange from 1928 to 1956, and earlier housed the Rogers Locomotive Works. The exchange reconditioned machines key to the city's textile industry, which at its height comprised 800 silk operations...

In fact, from an industrial perspective, Paterson's got a bad reputation – strikes and factory closures and company failures make for grim reading. Still, for business-to-business marketers and advertising pros, there's formative stuff. Samuel Colt's Paterson experience, where he first invented and produced revolving pistols, rifles and shotguns...plus the early advertising that went with it – that's here in Paterson.

Rogers locomotives, among other Paterson-built steam engines, wandered in and out of American history (the Transcontinental railroad, the Panama Canal).

How about the birth of Big Pharma – especially in OTC? Here's Unguentine ointment (remember that one?) and Fungacetin (really) and Phor-A-Sole and – wait for it – Suavinol! It's a brander's heaven or hell.

Wright built aircraft engines here, including the one that powered “The Spirit of St Louis.” Wright's marketing and sales helped build America's reputation as the world's preeminent industrial power.

Paterson has big, dark spaces. Another Times writer described the city in 2002:

...this bleak but battling community, hard by the Passaic River, that was forged by the Industrial Age, ruined by its demise and is still reeling from a century of labor strife, racial tensions, high crime rates and joblessness...

It has plenty of creativity in its bloodstream too. Welcome to Paterson – home of the Silk Machinery Exchange and other links to the history of Industrial Advertising.

From Bland to Brand! Eight New Branding Rules to Rock Your 2011.

With the new year kicking off so much consumer and business branding/re-branding activity, now’s the time to look at some new rules – all focused on a single thought:

Be bold – it makes selling stuff easier.

That’s not just my opinion: some ideas* here are based on a four-year-old blog post I’ve been saving. When you read ‘em, though, remember what Hector Barbossa (Disney pirate captain and MTV “Best Villain”) said as regards the Code of the Order of the Brethren? It’s “more what you’d call guidelines than actual rules.”

1] Stand-tall branding sells better. So make a stand. A brand with no P-O-V has no point. Whether you hate Fox News or love it, you do know where it stands on the issues. Ben & Jerry’s is more than just ice cream; it’s a company (even though owned by giant Unilever) that stands for a cause. Younger consumers – even IT pros and refinery managers – have grown up in a consumer world. I think they want their brands to stand up and be counted.

2] Feed the leaders. Consumers are more selective, more experimental, more interactive…and they lead from the front. They have strong opinions on brands, and a lot of brands are getting consumers involved. Even with engineers: check out the Emerson Process Management blog for superior customer-generated involvement. Adopt the leaders as your brand stakeholders.

3] Customization is today’s thriller. Customize whenever you can, whether it’s for iPod tunes or oilfield control systems. Consumer-wise, the power of the Internet has all kinds of customers wanting something all their own. Customers say, ‘I need just what fits my life.’ The best examples are Apple’s iPhone app store or Starbucks.

4] Deliver clarity directly. Quicker information, literally. Tell customers (or website visitors) as concisely as possible what you are selling. Anything that simplifies understanding for customers is a big thumbs-up. Strong brands recognize you have to be concise about what you’re selling at the point of contact; even complicated Athens Group is pretty direct, for example.

5] “Brand” is the promise of an experience. It’s a simple mandate: find the best way to give consumers a brand experience. Manage the whole experience. Consumer brands like Coca-Cola and Coach have done it. Forget the transaction, even forget about the logo or the tagline; deliver an experience and sales will follow. Can big industrial brands say the same? Compare Apple and Schlumberger websites.

6] Innovation is still a boardroom favorite. Brands are inspired by Apple more than anyone else. They continue to transform the computer business, the music business and the telephone business. Smart branders watch them like hawks. Procter & Gamble, 3M and GE drive this too – they have made innovation the core of their corporate strategies as well as their brand.

7] Do be responsive. Are you getting bad comments about your most recent brand change? Boo-hoo. We live in a world where everyone not only has an opinion; each one feels free to express it online. Participate with your brand’s stakeholders, let them vent. Take it like Starbucks recently – in good spirit. (and see Rule 1.)

8] Know what’s happening to your brand. Our instant-on culture isn’t forgiving. More people know instantly when a brand makes a mistake or if a website isn’t good enough. Negative PR will stick no matter what you do to correct it. Brands like Nike and Walmart still suffer (somewhat) from negative PR about alleged abuse of workers outside the US; BP is still hammered by Macondo. Use marketing research to find out where you’re vulnerable. Be open about fixes.

Bottom line (IMHO) – being bold is good. When it comes to branding, though, be smart-bold. Try to avoid the stupids in 2011. Now feel free to share your own “rules of branding” with the rest of us, eh? And that’s your pieces of eight for today.

*Based in part on “New Rules of Branding” by Derek Day, Branding Strategy Insider. Day deserves all the credit for the good ideas; the bad ones are probably mine. Or you could read the McKinsey version. “Hector Barossa” is © The Walt Disney Company. All rights reserved.

Darden in BrandWeek: “No discounting.” But if the menu’s big bucks...

It is the convergence of events that’s arresting, rather than the events themselves. As with the feature article by Elaine Wong in BrandWeek yesterday, combined with today’s arrival of The Capital Grille promotion from American Express that you see above.

BrandWeek is interviewing Drew Madsen, Darden Restaurants’ president and COO; the piece is titled “Why ‘Deep Discounting’ Is Not Always the Winning Recipe.” In the second paragraph, Darden goes on at length:

We’re also seeing a [bit] more pressure on our higher price, higher check [restaurant dining] concepts, so brands like The Capital Grille—a fine dining steakhouse that’s priced at $90 or so a person—have seen a bigger impact than Olive Garden, which is [around] $15 a person, and we’re seeing a little bit of a decline in the overall check…a big part of the check erosion is due to all of the deep discounting that’s going on with competitors trying to get more people [eating at restaurants]. That discounting is essentially sacrificed per person per check. That’s not the case at Darden.

There you go: No deep discounting at Darden Restaurants. It’s holding the line, maintaining “the integrity of our brands and the strength of our business model long-term.” Unless the menu’s so expensive that half a C-note doesn't count as...deep.

This is a company with great brands, but Darden [NYSE: DRI] is only performing “fair” in the current economy. The company’s seen negative EPS growth this past year; it’s just reported a decline in same-store sales in five brands in the quarter that ended August 30, 2009.

Maybe there was a timing gap between the actual interview and its publication. Maybe it’s just an oversight; or the difficulty of knowing about single little promotion. I really did have to laugh, though, since the AMEX $50-off postcard arrived in the mail just 15 minutes after I read what Madsen had to say.

Give the interview a look. Madsen talks a good brand-value game. But he concludes his interview this way: Everyone can talk about having value and do what’s right or wrong when times are growing, but when things are tough, that’s when your values are put to the test.

I won’t be testing The Capital Grille’s values even with my “$50 gift certificate” promo – the menu’s still too pricey. Barbara has coupons for Red Lobster instead.

Yamato Transport One More Exercise in Japanese Branding Power.

Can a giant corporate brand deliver real warmth and charm?

Where do the great brands come from? Lots of iconic brands and their logos arrive from countries outside the US. Although there’s a strong slant to European firms, Japan’s brands are easily as strong or stronger in most market segments and ought to be highlighted more frequently. (I bet they’re even better known on the West Coast.)

Depending on your age, marital/family situation or even industry, you probably recognize the Toyota brand logo by now, if not exactly how it came to be. Honda. Shiseido. Sony and Nintendo are just as well known. On the other hand, you may not immediately identify Sanrio though everybody knows its corporate symbol, Hello Kitty® - now 35 years old.

Another cat-using approach is even more evocative and extremely effective: The mother cat carrying its kitten carefully between its teeth. This is the very familiar logo of Yamato Transport, visible on thousands of trucks all over Japan. It was introduced in 1957. It turns its back on the circles-and-squares school of logo design and graphically symbolizes the careful and efficient handling of goods.

It works as hard in B2B branding as it does B2C branding. And I ought to note than you need to be a frequenter of docks and commercial office parks to see it in this country; in the US, Yamato is focused on international freight shipping and does not compete directly against FedEx or UPS.

Like any great logo, it has a great story. “Yamato” itself was the name of ancient Japan and it founded private parcel delivery there 90 years ago…a long-lasting brand in the Japanese market. Looking at sites online, you can see that the delivery trucks are everywhere.

The mama-cat logo, though, only dates back to 1957. It’s a vivid example of the Japanese ability to see things – read brands – from angles that don’t quite match the sometimes gray-suited reputation of large Japanese corporations. On that note, comparing the Yamato brand to Nippon Express is worth doing.

The black cat trademark is immediately recognizable and people love it: There is no cultural baggage about black-cat-bad-luck in Japan. In Miyazaki’s animated film “Kiki’s Delivery Services,” about a young witch who leaves home to become a delivery girl, her familiar is a black cat. The original story was written in 1985 – I wonder if the cat – Jiji – came from Yamato Transport?

Corporate brands sometimes have difficulty expressing humanity, presuming they even want to do so. With “Black Cat Yamato,” this outfit started out there, achieving brand power over time.

Spanish Brandorama is How a Wine Giant Goes to Market.

You won’t find an aficionado’s discussion of Peñasol sangria on any wine blog – no devotional dissection of taste and alcoholic content. This stuff’s $5 a screw-top bottle at HEB.

Or, if you purchase the same wine from Whole Foods instead (where’s it’s one of the chain’s “365” products), you can enjoy this toothsome description:

Bursting with the sun drenched flavors of a hot Spanish summer, this Sangria is a refreshing blend of red wine, citrus fruit flavors, and a special spice extract. Add sliced peaches, apples, oranges, or other fruits for a delicious aperitif or try it with grilled meat. Serve well chilled. Sangria makes every day a special occasion.

It’s the same sweetened red wine as HEB’s and today’s lesson, about multi-branding – or versioning, as the Spanish wine-maker Félix Solís prefers it. Robin Goldstein, a great foodie blogger, covered “the biggest wine producer you’ve never heard of” back in May.

Félix Solís Avantis is humongous! Almost 53 million gallons of wine flows out of one industrial-size operation – but you can read all this on Goldstein’s Blind Taste blog. What’s important is how the giant wine-maker goes to market. From one facility and 10 wines, the company produces around 400 different brands and sells them in various parts of the world (the corner of Gessner and Kempwood, Houston, being one).

Goldstein points out: “Versioning” a product – varying it slightly and selling it under different brand names – is a well-known technique in marketing courses at business schools; among other things, it’s often a way of getting around laws that ban price discrimination.
No price discrimination here. In a market the size of America, there are so many price-points that Félix Solís Avantis can slot a wine into every category on the wine value chain and let a wide variety of customers sort out which brands thrive. When a company has so much “product” available, it’s a self-seeking, self-branding approach: What kind of wine do you want?

“Versioning” is at work in the retail gasoline market, but not where we can see it very well. For every branded gallon at Chevron, there’s a dozen or a hundred at non-chain stations…like HEB, as a matter of fact. (One bottle, Peñasol sangria = two-or-so gallons of gas).

Interbrand maintains, “Name changes of products and services are rare.” I don’t think this division of Omnicom had Félix Solís Avantis in mind when it wrote the White Paper.

Sunday Best

Forty-year-old Southeast Asia joke: You know you’ve been stationed in the Philippines too long when you save your best flip-flops to wear on Sunday.

In today’s advertising supplements (the “season’s hottest”):

Reef Krystal
BCBGirls French
Volatile Mimi
Reef Butter
Reef Jet Setter

Kenneth Cole Golden Glam
Volatile Ariel
Tredz Chelsea
Nike Celso
Cobian Zuma

Gotchas
Tredz Snake Print
Sperry Santa Cruz
Tredz Siesta II
Tredz Baja

North Face Base Camp
Teva Bowen Coastal
Camden Nubucks
Teva Mush
UGG Fluffies

Reef Little Ahi
Chaco Flip
North Face Slippy
Sanuk Who’s Afraid
Reef Sweet Pea

Reef Philthy Grom
Havaianas Camuflada
Mossimo Gemma
Chaco Hipthong ($75)
PechePlatinum Crocodile ($400)

We were such trend-setters, back when we’d drop a five-centavo coin (.05₱) on the floor of the jitney and then get down on our hands and knees searching for it. See also jandals.

Recessionista Cabernet

Right here in this post, I’m going to wrap the flagging economy around my cheap-assed habits. Friends and acquaintances like John Reeves and Amy Puchot have been chiding my taste for inexpensive wines for years.

Possibly they have used the term, cheap plonk. The tonier sort would refer to Rumpole’s Chateau Thames Embankment, from the eponymous BBC television series. I prefer you consider it a quest.

That’s it – a quest. Not for the Holy Grail but what might be sipped out of it. I seek nothing less than a great wine for as little lolly as possible. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Especially in these parlous times.

Now it just so happens that Burton Tansky is the president and CEO of Neiman Marcus. This knowledgeable expert was quoted in a recent AP article, saying: “The fashionista is now a recessionista.” (If you’re going to cite a retail source, you can hardly do better than that.) That same article mentions a number of well- or very-well-off people who are…downsizing…their displays of wealth.

Of course that’s not Richard – not wealthy, me. Hardly. I simply feel that drinkable wines don’t have to cost an arm and a leg (like, say, a gallon of gas). Believe me, I’ve done that and been there. Spent the bucks. Traveled to wine tastings in Minneapolis, Chicago, Houston, Austin, Dallas. Had the cellar though that was back in Minnesota days when our house actually had a cellar. No more, no more.

Today I can truthfully announce I have not only achieved Tansky’s “recessionista” label. I have found the wine. For $6.50 you can buy a bottle of 2007 Estación Cabernet Sauvignon, from the Colchagua Valley of Chile, at Phoenicia on Westheimer. It is good, good wine – deeply luscious, deeply red and – at 14.3% alcohol – potent enough to make you feel quite excellent after a couple of glasses. $6.50 not including tax.

Along with this high-octane grape juice comes a fine website. You might enjoy visiting it because few of us really keep our eyes on what’s happening Web-wise in the Mercosur, of which Chile is an associate member. (Though in fact, the website is so polished – especially the English version – I wonder where it was created and programmed.) Nevertheless, Vina y Bodega Estampa SA spins a fine yarn.

The Estación brand identity is based Colchagua Station on the Ferrocarril de Palmilla train route, which was built in several segments over more than 50 years. It seems that the 1890 estación (¿Spanish for “station,” si?) borders the vineyards, although it looks abandoned in the website photo.

Every great brand benefits from a great story and Chilean wines have had a strong, inexpensive US market presence for years. Maybe it’s no big surprise that this Recessionista Cab has come along just in time for our slump.

Ripped Off

Last week, Hannah Wood wrote about Bucksstar for Mirror.co.uk; in just days, the story has gone from blogland to National Public Radio:

China has confirmed itself as the “king of counterfeiters” with the building of a new shopping centre dedicated to fake brands. Some of the brand impostors at the mall in Nanjing, east of Shanghai, include a McDonalds look-a-like burger bar called McDnoald’s, a Starbucks-style coffee shop called Bucksstar Coffee, and a wannabe Pizza Hut called Pizza Huh. City bosses are under pressure to ban the soon-to-be opened mall after pictures of the fake stores were leaked, causing uproar amongst angry consumers who feared they'd be ripped off.

As popular as the story’s been, I haven’t seen anyone comment on the unfortunate first sentence. China doesn’t have to confirm its inability or unwillingness to clamp down on brand counterfeiters. Knocking off national and international brands has been going on for decades in China. Some days, brand thievery seems like the national business model.

It’s not always easy to find photographs: Google “Fake Brands in China” for yourself and you’ll see links…but not so many photographs of offending rip-offs like Mak Dak.

If the Nanjing shopping center is doing this as a parody or homage, then the owners will be paying royalties to Starbucks, Pizza Hut and McDonald’s for the privilege.

Don’t hold your breath.

BTW, each of the US brand names in this post is protected by one or more trademarks. All rights reserved.

Changing Brands

Did I jump ship – or was I pushed? Have I fallen out of love or just found a new object of my affections? Well, you decide, because I did change the brand of car I drive.
I wrote somewhere that I’d call myself “middle-aged” if I planned to live to 120. So it’s utterly wrong to inform you I’m having a mid-life crisis. A couple of photos tell the tale. Okay. So the top photo shows you where I’ve been.
The photo just above portrays where I am now. Heck of a change, isn’t it? This is a 2009 Scion xB in Black Sand Pearl. While I’m typing this, I’m on the Scion website, listening to a remix of Acid Life…not something I expected myself. Still, music (Scion CD Sampler Vol. 22, however techno-funky) makes it a bit easier to tell you why I changed to this oddball, toaster-shaped Toyota sub-brand from a Cadillac.

Reason 1: A change of environmental footprint. I was lucky to be getting 18 mpg in the city with the 2003 Caddy. At a minimum, without mods, the Scion is scoring about 25 in the urb. Even though I’ve purchased the Scion new (and there’s sort of a carbon penalty for that), I feel like I’m not going through as much gasoline with the Scion.

Reason 2: Economic reality. I hope the purchase and operating costs of the Scion will undercut the DeVille – though that’s yet to be seen. It’s early days yet. Still, it’s pretty important given what the country is going through right now.

Reason 3: Life-cycle reliability. The Caddy got old; the older it is, the more expensive it is to maintain. It’s kinda like me (no harm, no foul) so it’s not really the Cadillac’s fault. Still, the Toyotas have quite the rep. Barbara’s Prius continues to hum along getting 45 mpg on the highway with nary a mechanical hiccup. So we became a “Twoyota family” last week when I drove the xB into the garage…and the Scion’s control suite is virtually the same as the Prius. I don’t want to downplay the familiarity factor.

Reason 4: Time for a change. I spotted some fantastic custom Scions at the State Fair of Texas – this visual feast planted the idea in my head. The opportunity, at my age, to get involved with a much younger brand (and the Scion is targeted at a demographic at least one generation younger than me, maybe two) has a lot to do with my purchase decision.

Writing on BrandChannel.com back in May, Nichiketa Choudhary pointed out:

Consumer-brand relationships are less about love and more about friendship. Just like our friends, brands shape our experiences. They show up at work, at home, and everywhere in between. Brand thought leaders often use the language of love to describe the consumer-brand relationship; they compare the relationship to marriage, dating, an infatuation, and even a fling. Brands aspire to build a strong love with their customers. However, love can be very volatile and requires a great deal of commitment. Oftentimes, neither the brand nor the customer have this kind of commitment.

I have spent more than a decade as a Cadillac owner. The brand’s Penalty of Leadership ran strong in my family in the first place – and the mark has been my constant status symbol. To paraphrase the old saying, “I wasn’t born into a Caddy – I achieved it.” The DeVilles are superb road cars, plush as down comforters. Service at the local dealership has been attentive and familiar – I made some friends there.

The Cadillac Motor Car Company (General Motors) never betrayed me. If anything, the mark’s designs have become leading-edge all over again. Still, it turned time to question my commitment.

The Scion xB is younger, edgier – and more economical. Maybe I’m fooling myself. But really, it’s time to make new friends. I’m going to a Scion Fright Night at Don McGill Toyota Friday evening. Take along some trick-or-treat candy for the kids. See how the Houston Scikotics have customized their rides and maybe pick up some ideas of my own.

Events overtook the brand of car I drive. So I changed to deal with it. So far, the new badge feels just fine.

Telling “How”

Clients have wanted to tell a variety of stories recently. I’ve had the chance to help them identify those stories, trying to come up with new ways to tell their stakeholders about various facets of each brand.
We learn by example. Click on www.lockheedmartin.com/how and you can find out how one major corporation is doing it…online, with video, with TV commercials. (Not each one is equally successful: The “Environment” commercial doesn’t measure up to the company’s far more interesting story; its print advertising is consistent but not as compelling.) Every element of Lockheed Martin’s “How” campaign is structured around 12 words.

Between the idea and the achievement, there is one important word: How.

One of the site’s newest videos explains the development of the F-117A Nighthawk, the world’s first operational stealth fighter….again, based on the word “How.”

I know not every company has Lockheed Martin’s wealth of stories, especially about things that go bang. I also know Lockheed Martin has been in the news lately in a not-so-great way. Still, weapons systems are hardly the only arena in which Lockheed Martin is involved and branding efforts are even more critical when other, more positive stories need to be told.

For a large company like Lockheed Martin, it doesn’t matter whether the focus is on it first-class environmental efforts or US military airpower research. What’s key – from a marketing perspective – is consistency of brand messaging and story-telling style.

It is observable that the company has kept to an unswerving brand story. (And the stock price is up about 20% in the past year, too.)

So: How do you marshal your own brand stories? How do you commit to presenting them in a variety of ways? How do you keep the pressure on your own organization to help you deliver the many facets of your own corporate narrative?

Lockheed Martin notes: It is the how that makes all the difference.

Nighthawk photograph © 2008, Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Deconstruction – Good

Deconstruction is not automatically bad (he said, continuing the thought experiment from yesterday’s post).

When should you deconstruct? How about when the brand (or the entire system) has become so unbelievably complex that it’s way past time the brand returned to its basics.

You know what I’m talking about. Think about the brand-name string that sounds like a trunk falling down the stairs. Car-makers are notorious for this; e.g., the Audi A6 Avant Quattro SE Sport 2.5 Tdi.

Talk a walk down the grocery aisles and take a look at the brand extensions…messages growing ever more crowded. Drug stores exhibit the same aggressive shouting matches among shelves full of products. Then, consider that I couldn’t create a better post than Creativity magazine (May 2008, Page 32) has already been written about Help Remedies:

Help Remedies, a refreshingly pared down new line of acetaminophen pills and adhesive bandages, provides a lesson for even the most established marketers: Reimagine what you’re selling, not just how you’re selling it.

A former brand development strategist from London, Richard Fine, came to the US from London and brought a hell of a headache with him. According to Creativity, he was:

…scared off by the chaotic, screaming products….He envisioned a softer, calm-looking option sans abrasive color schemes and shocking copy.

His vision, with help from packaging and graphic design firms (ChappsMalina and Little Fury, respectively), resulted in a new brand by deconstructing old-fashioned ones. The result is simplicity itself, and help I have a headacheTM is one of the brand’s products.

In fact, the entire company – and you can browse the website to your heart’s content – is constructed with this simplicity in mind. Another product: help I’ve cut myselfTM contains two sizes of bandages (and advanced eye relief) for the weary shopper who may have just suffered an injury.

I’d certainly highlight the new brand’s Web 2.0 features, like the simple approach to the Help company blog and the online store.

What Creativity called reimaging I would call deconstruction. True, in the case of Help Remedies, Fine and his colleagues have deconstructed an entire category (over- the-counter healthcare products). When your brand is heavy-laden, when it’s dragging its entire history of massive product/service slates and M&As through the first decade of the 21st Century, this is a good time to return to basics.

Deconstruct what the brand is all about and reimagine it in a simpler, more meaningful form.

Can you do that for your stakeholders? Would you make their lives and their connections to your brand cleaner and more direct? Among the benefits could be a clear, clean view of your business model as well as your brand – supposing, of course, that your company’s business model needs…help.

Deconstruction – Bad

Join me in a weekend thought experiment. Here’s a fairly notorious Nike outdoor board. Note the slogan, lower right: JUST DO IT – now 20 years old. Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy is widely credited with creating this famous theme line, which Advertising Age chose as one of the 20th century’s Top Five ad slogans.

Next, let’s presume that your team is assigned to construct a new Nike corporate brochure. In a creative session, one of the top designers says something like: Why don’t we do a separate two-page spread for each of the words? We could explain each word and detail what it really means. We’d carefully explain ‘JUST,’ then on the next spread we’d say what ‘DO’ really means. And we’d finished up with ‘IT’ as the final piece – then, when you see all three spreads, you’d actually see JUST DO IT.

Would you say – Yes! That’s a great idea. Or would you gently suggest that perhaps this process would destroy the intrinsic integrity of one of the Nike brand’s most critical components?

Deconstructing a slogan or a brand statement that has this much accrued meaning would, IMHO, be quite a Bad Thing. You’d spoil the mystique that the slogan has gained over the years, you’d take away all of the visualized meanings that Nike and its agencies have put into building a crucial brand element. In fact, one of the beauties of a slogan such as this is that it is never deconstructed.

Really, the designer’s suggestion is one legitimate approach to creating new concepts. I propose it’s just not a good idea in the case of a strong brand line that resonates deeply with stakeholders.

Deconstruction – as a tool for literary analysis – has caused much more harm than good since the concept was invented by Jacques Derrida back in the early ‘60s. It has destroyed professors’ careers and been the “philosophy of the moment” on far too many college campuses.

In marketing, I urge caution when you try to extend explanations of your brand elements in public media.

Treat your theme line as a unity, whether you’ve got a 20-year-old stunner like JUST DO IT or a more recent slogan such as KEEP ON TURNING (shown here and my thanks again to Wood Group for maintaining its currency). By deconstructing such a strap line, you could confuse rather than enlighten. When you’ve built a slogan that “works,” let your stakeholders envision what it means for themselves. Let them help you create your brand image and meaning – it’s part of the marketing conversation. No deconstructing here, please.

Above: 2006 Nike outdoor ad featuring England player Wayne Rooney. Everything related to Nike, the “swoosh” and the slogan belongum Nike – no poaching.

Boom Brands

I just got back from the Permian Basin and the joint is jumpin’. Barbara and I traveled up to Denver on US 87 through Amarillo and back to Houston through eastern New Mexico to Fort Stockton, then I-10 homeward. I don’t think we drove from one horizon to another without seeing at least one workover under way, sometimes more. Probably isn’t a single truck-mounted rig or vac truck west of the Mississippi that’s available for new work.

At yesterday’s close, oil is $127 a barrel and gas is $11.70/MMBtu. Activity is up everywhere, from the Permian Basin of west Texas to the Barnett Shale of north central Texas and eastern New Mexico as well as in the dusty Panhandle and the Anadarko Basin of western Oklahoma. With so much money on the table, you’re looking at recompletions, infill drilling, installation of secondary recovery projects – and everything else that’ll squeeze more oil and gas out of existing reservoirs.

For energy-related brand-watchers, it’s a boom time. It’s no surprise to see the “bigs” like Schlumberger, Halliburton and Baker Hughes.

But, e.g., I ran into a long-time colleague at OTC: Donna Smith is now Director of Communications for Stallion® Oilfield Services. Having thereby raised my consciousness – and thanks to her efforts for the company – I must have spotted every orange-and-black Stallion logo-ed vehicle and field office from Centerville (outbound) to Ozona (inbound). Key® Energy Services is out there in strength. There are hundreds more contractors and subs out in the field right now and you can play a sort of drive-by brand bingo on the roads out west.

Reading the papers, you’ll recognize that everyone is unhappy with the cost of oil or – more critically – the price of a gallon of gas at the corner station. I’d ask you, as marketers, to think about our “situation” from several, quite different angles.

First, the economic impact of oil and gas prices is creating opportunities for companies (and their employees) nationwide. That’s an economic good…as well as a particularly fine time for strongly branded firms with long-established customer relationships.

Second, this in an excellent period in which you should be building on and communicating the positives of your energy business brand. Let your stakeholders know if you are, in fact, doing well – and why. You’ll be creating a foundation of good brand impressions for the down cycle if and when it comes.

Third – and this is a personal note – maybe once time soon some oil company executive will stand up and ask Dianne Feinstein, “Just what, Senator, is your problem with the concept of profit?”

That’s enough for one weekend. All the best for a great June!

Any omissions or errors are my own. Photo © Jim Parkin Dreamstime.com

Inconvenient Brand

I swear: Driving past the highway off-ramp in lower Colorado at about 75 mph, the green sign said “Loaf ’N Lug.” I even pointed Barbara’s eyes to the exit, saying there was a convenience store called “Loaf ’N Lug.” (It’s the curse of speed, I tell you.)

I thought to myself, well, there are some pretty funny C-store names out in the world…I can see a billboard or TV commercial suggesting that customers “loaf on in and lug some stuff out.” Sort of a country-cousin approach to branding.

Come to find out the name of the outfit is Loaf ’N Jug. It’s a division of Kroger, headquartered in Pueblo, CO, that operates about 175 of them – mainly in Colorado and Wyoming, with a few other stores in North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Nebraska, Oklahoma and New Mexico. (Kroger owns or operates half-dozen different C-store operations, from Tom Thumbs to Kwik Shops, in 16 states. It purchased the Loaf ’N Jug chain in 1986.)

Opinion of one: Kroger doesn’t seem to have done much with the brand except keep the stores up to date. Checking out the website, one among many different Kroger C-store operations, shows a bland face to stakeholders. Google “Loaf ’N Jug advertising” and you’ll read old news about the chain’s support of March of Dimes events – worthy promotions, but not a strong regional brand-builder.

It hasn’t nearly the attention-generating horsepower of, say, Susser Holdings’ Stripes® chain, which I wrote about here. As a convenience store brand, Loaf ’N Jug is not very convenient.

Since I haven’t talked to anyone at Loaf ’N Jug – and the Kroger acquisition is more than 20 years in the past – I can’t help but wonder where the chain got its brand name originally. Rather, I do know; but how odd to find such a classical reference in the highly rural Intermountain West.

If the brand comes from anywhere other than The Rubaiyat, by Omar Khayyam, I would be flabbergasted. I wonder just how many customers, loafing into these C-stores and lugging out some diet pop and Doritos®, recall the Persian poet and his well-known lines:

A book of poems, beneath a spreading bough.
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine,
And thou beside me, singing in the wilderness.

We always forget the last line: And wilderness is Paradise enow.

Somewhere back at the beginning of Loaf ’N Jug, I’d like to think that the chain’s founders imagined they were bringing some extras into Colorado to make the wilderness a bit more of a paradise…even if they decided to skip the poems.

More INEXS™

Additional new INEXS collateral – thanks to Prism Design for the extra photos. (Terry, you look marvelous. Really.)

Rebranding INEXS™

Human beings power a better brand story. For INEXS, the geological and geophysical (G&G) consulting company, we’ve used its human focus to re-define its brand. Created a new logo and brand graphics. Spread the word about its new, copyrighted slogan: “Human-Powered Geoscience.” And begun to reinforce emotional attachments among customers and prospects.

This post won’t be the first or last time you hear that a good brand is built on a good story, or rebuilt on a new one.

INEXS used to be an acronym for Interactive Exploration Solutions. Now it stands alone…we joke about it’s being “the other rock group,” an internalized sense of humor that matches the company’s human-ness.

We’ve been working the past few months to re-invent the INEXS brand and its marketing because the company President/CEO has strongly felt the need to refine the focus of his G&G consulting company; to differentiate it from the competition; to make it more distinctive in a very noisy marketplace.

To create the new INEXS brand story, we started by examining the company’s stakeholders* and how INEXS interacts with them.

Revealed: Since the early 1980s, plenty of major oilfield companies have made their fortunes creating, packaging and selling increasingly more sophisticated G&G software (i.e., technologies) to help oil & gas companies find more hydrocarbons. Conclusion: There is intense competition for the “technology mind-space” in G&G consulting.

INEXS has to be “other,” to position itself against the technological emphasis of its competitors by its personability and its human imagery.

It’s not technology that finds oil and gas reserves. It’s human beings. That’s the distinctive new brand story. For almost 20 years, INEXS has emphasized the long-term relationships they have with their customers. INEXS people connect their customers to successful prospects.

For INEXS, the value of every project to every client has to be obvious. When INEXS people help customers find one more drilling opportunity that leads to a profitable discovery, they fulfill the INEXS part of the relationship.

INEXS is not only about the project or the assignment – a decisive brand benefit. It's about the asset team members and managers the company works with every day. They trust INEXS to deliver success.

We re-constructed an INEXS brand story on the new theme: “Human-Powered Geoscience.” No other company in the G&G consulting arena emphasizes the human part of the exploration equation so thoroughly.

New communications, like the revamped INEXS website, will continue that emphasis…creating visual messages that are clear and concise.

The team that’s making this story come to life for INEXS includes Prism Design for the new logo and brand graphics. Naumann Blanchard LLC is handling public relations. Zephyr Salvo is the web enabler. And me? I’m the strategist and stakeholders’ storyteller.

I’m grateful to everyone at INEXS for allowing me to help develop this superb, tightly focused rebranding effort. They’re ensuring that the story and the brand meet their customers’ expectations.

*The Stakeholder Rule says a company’s position ought to take hold – and take place – in the minds of all its stakeholders. “Stakeholder Rule” © Richard Laurence Baron. All rights reserved.

Refocusing CLARION®

Some of us talked about green chemistry at lunch last week. It’s a new way of looking at chemicals, not banning them one at a time but using them more smartly in the first place: Eliminate waste, use renewable or environmentally benign materials and avoid relying on toxic reagents and solvents when designing chemical products.

Now, thanks to CITGO, there’s a spiffy example of repurposing an existing brand to answer the dictates (real or envisioned) of green chemistry. Like many vertically integrated oil companies, CITGO has produced a wide variety of industrial and commercial lubricants for many years. Many of these were purposely formulated years ago to meet the rigorous demands of, say, the food processing business, or pharmaceutical manufacturing. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) established standards for cleanliness and purity of these “white oils.”

CITGO had branded many of these lubes with the name Clarion, a word derived from Latin meaning “clear,” some years back.

Today, CLARION is the newly established brand identity for an entire line of specially formulated white oils – you’ll find them on this new website, just launched last month. Credits for this rebranding effort start with the CITGO Lubricants Division itself, which recognized that there are more brand marketing opportunities (and channels) available than there used to be.

BVK in Milwaukee, CITGO’s advertising agency, created the new CLARION logo (“it looks pure and simple”) and is working on the look of the new line’s sales literature.

CITGO marketing personnel have been responsible for getting the new website up and running. And Richard Laurence Baron (c’est moi!) created the strategically oriented copy platform for these materials, starting with “The Earth deserves a new standard in lubricants.”

None of this would work if CITGO didn’t have the R&D and product history to back up the new line. Company chemists and blenders created oils and greases that help reduce ecological impacts, from pure “water white” oils for food manufacturing to environmentally tuned lubes for marine operations – without sacrificing on-the-job performance.

No product line (especially one from CITGO, for political reasons) will survive contact with the marketplace without being able to deliver on its promises.

But if CLARION White Oils take off, look at the corporate benefits: CITGO has a real, proven, environmental product/program initiative to add to its overall social responsibility story. It’s an honest story. And by assembling all the green chemistry products under a single brand name, it offers the potential of a concentrated revenue stream, instead of fragmented earnings from an SKU here and an SKU there.

Thank you, Jennifer Stanley and Yvonne Hale, Roger Tucker, Dave Kunkel, Karl Schmidt and Mark Betner for involving me in the start-up. CLARION will be supplementing the new website with print advertising, literature, product PR and marketer presentations.

This is how you refocus an existing brand. Can the company build a new market for it? Stay tuned; maybe we’ll find out together.