BRAND THEORY REVISITED
2.4 The Brand Innovation Imperative
experiments in the 1960s, to demonstrate the powerful effect that external social forces have on human behaviour:
The subjects believed they were part of an experiment supposedly dealing with the relationship between punishment and learning. An experimenter – who used no coercive powers beyond a stern aura of mechanical and vacant-eyed efficiency – instructed participants to shock a learner by pressing a lever on a machine each time the learner made a mistake on a word-matching task. Each subsequent error led to an increase in the intensity of the shock in 15-volt increments, from 15 to 450 volts. In actuality, the shock box was a well-crafted prop and the learner an actor who did not actually get shocked. The result:
A majority of the subjects continued to obey to the end – believing they were delivering 450 volt shocks – simply because the experimenter commanded them to.6
The experiments were about obedience, but this seemed to derive from a general drive to fit in. I think of it as a bit like going abroad. When you arrive in a foreign culture, the aliveness to every nuance has to do with trying to figure out how things are done around here. You may for instance look to other diners to figure out what to order, how to eat it (with fingers?
Individually? Or sharing across the table . . . ?). This could be called the culture instinct. We seem as a species to be fascinated by how things are done these days/in these parts. It is actually hard to see how a shared culture could work if that were not the case, if individual patterns of thought, feeling, behaviour and artefact were not massively attuned to shared patterns.
When the cultural ideas change within a community, there are some who adopt the new ideas enthusiastically, while others will hang back, resist the change, want to stick with more traditional ideas. All sorts of factors deter- mine who might fall into which group, for instance:
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Age: the older you are, the harder it is to adopt new ideas.•
Personality: some people like change, risk, adventure, rebellion more than others.•
Vested interests: those with least to lose and most to gain often favour new ideas.T H E B R A N D I N N O V AT I O N I M P E R AT I V E 45
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Generational: a new generation will often use new ideas to define its identity.•
Cultural: some regional cultures seem to welcome change more than others.The reaction in the UK to the euro – a fear of loss of identity and tradi- tional meaning – is an example of this conservatism. Something like that has been happening with this New Marketing idea itself. Some of us have leapt on it, along with all the new media and new channels open to mar- keting. Others have clung to the “brand image” paradigm, dominated by the advertising idea and the identity design.
There is another factor, which also explains why culture constantly evolves – it is in the nature of ideas and experience. A cultural idea is a combination of other pre-existing ideas. It makes a new connection in our mind. The experience of having an idea, or recognising the link that has been made in someone else’s idea, is one of being energised. It is as if – in Freud’s old model of cathexis, derived from electrostatics – energy that was bound up has been released. But over time the experience of repeated expo- sure to that idea is that it becomes less energising. A joke is not as funny on the second or third telling. A dangerous stunt loses its thrill when we have seen it before.
If you look into the history of great brands (rather than their current advertising), you often find big cultural ideas that propelled them onto a bigger stage.
One example is the Guinness Book of Records. The book was the result of an unresolved argument between the then Guinness managing director and his hunting partners over the fastest species of game bird. The annual books are actually just a selection from the much larger database of “official”
records held by Guinness. A typical example of a Guinness World Record is the one set in June 2005 for the most Hula-Hoops to be spun by one indi- vidual simultaneously (which now stands at 100!). Record breaking has inspired decades of public enthusiasm, although this has occasionally had to be curbed, for instance in the case of records related to eating excessive (dangerous) amounts. The Guinness World Records also spawned TV shows and other cultural ideas. The British athlete twins (the McWhirter
brothers) who ran this project and presented the TV programmes became household names in their own right. And the record attempts – successful or otherwise – made great television, full of drama and suspense. What people seem to love is that it documents a less official or elitist culture, with entries for things like the man with the biggest feet (size 29.5, apparently).
This idea is a surprising connection that (like Beck’s and art) transcends what is generally a lowbrow category. Because of this idea, Guinness has had the scope to position itself as intelligent, different to other beers, and to be more extreme in its advertising ideas too. 1980s campaigns like Pure Genius relied on this groundwork.
New Marketing implies a constant commitment to this sort of brand innovation: the launching of new cultural ideas, which connect up with the existing “molecule” but add fresh interest, twists and connections.
Two current Guinness initiatives are importing the liquid from Ireland (rather than brewing in the UK) and a return to the use of the Toucan – a remake (like a new release of an old movie) within its advertising.
That’s why I use the term brand innovation for this book: it is about con- stantly coming up with new ideas, to keep the brand fresh, relevant and dynamic.
It will be fairly obvious if you have a need for brand innovation: if you need to launch a brand, revive it, reposition it, update it, attract a new audience, justify your monopoly (e.g. a nationalised company) or simply keep it alive and vibrant. This only excludes coasting along as a “classic” and being under no pressure to grow or improve. Brands do go through phases like this, just as animals can enjoy a golden age when they are at the top of the evolu- tionary pile, with little need to adapt further. Two caveats:
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First, you would still need to be ready for changes in the context, when a classic brand can become a dinosaur (as Levi’s has over the last eight years) and act fast to set the brand on a new course.•
Secondly, there are very few classics indeed that take up this anchor position as a fixed point of cultural reference, something an individual will want to keep (like a favourite toy that follows a child through their development) while everything around them changes.T H E B R A N D I N N O V AT I O N I M P E R AT I V E 47
I would guess there are usually fewer than 20 “anchor” brands for any one person. Few people in workshops – where I get people to reflect on own their personal list – have ever named more than ten. These brands are likely to have a long and significant place in that person’s life history, to have been passed on by a parent or to be associated with a significant event or transition, or to be a very stable habit. If they disappeared that person would be very upset. If they were not available at a store, the person would go to another store. If a competitor exists it might well be despised or ignored.
Far too many marketing people confuse brand share with brand loyalty. And far too many assume they are managing an enduring classic when actually they are presiding over an accident waiting to happen. This is a mistake that is all too easily exposed when somebody else does the brand innovation your category had been crying out for and leaves you for dust.
PG Tips thought of itself as an unassailable brand leader in the UK tea market, until in 1989 its rival Tetley launched a simple innovation – the round tea bag – which increased its brand share by 30% and took over market leader position. When in doubt, it is safer to innovate than wait for someone else to do it first!
To recap on some of the key points in this section on culture and innovation: