How Volvo leveraged its brand to drive automotive sales

Reptilian Marketing and the logic of emotion

Real women now eat steak, (real men still eat quiche)

Positioning in 2004: 
Jack Trout on Strategy

Branding 
& Positioning 101

Audi is doing it right

On Valentine’s Day, 
you need Lovemarks

IIf you love your career, if you love learning, if you want to know how to turn on your customers’ or clients’ emotional "hot buttons," buy yourself a copy of Lovemarks: the future beyond brands, by Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi. Published in 2004, it is one of the most important marketing and branding books published in recent years.

"Human beings are powered by emotion, not by reason. Emotion and reason are intertwined, but when they are in conflict, emotion wins every time," says Roberts.

"The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions. Without the fleeting and intense stimulus of emotion, rational thought winds down and disintegrates," says neurologist Donald Calne, who Roberts quotes in the book.

What’s the secret to long-term success and unwavering customer loyalty? John Lennon had it right: "All you need is love." Find out how to get customers to love you.

Chapters Indigo: Click here
Amazon: Click here

The Swedish car maker that staked its claim to fame on safety since 1927 was the lunchtime topic of discussion at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Mississauga, Ontario, while guests chowed down on USDA prime beef steaks on Thursday, February 3.

Paul Cummings, president and CEO of Volvo Canada, (above) spoke about how Volvo successfully extended its brand and drove sales way up in Canada since the late 1990s. Sales were up again 1.8 percent in January 2005, over the same month last year.

How did Volvo achieve this? Through their simple and effective 3-prong strategy which included:

"Volvo always stood for safety in the minds of prospects and customers," said Cummings. "But our challenge was to make safety more dynamic and exciting." Lighter and stronger steel made it possible for Volvo to start pulling away from its "boxy" look, the purpose of which was to provide a large and strong passenger cabin that would absorb the force of a car crash while keeping the passengers inside safe.

At the same time, Volvo listened to consumers who demanded more aerodynamic and sexier auto body designs. And, Volvo paid attention to detail. While it may seem innocuous, because we all seem to travel with a variety of beverages, Volvo ensured that more than 250 different types of cups would fit in its cup holders.

Because of both increased government regulation and consumer interest in fewer exhaust emissions, Volvo is working to ensure that its vehicles have the lowest emissions possible. "Every Volvo is a green Volvo," said Cummings.

Our most talked about story from December 2004 
Reptilian Marketing and the 
logic of emotion.

Here’s an interview with French branding and marketing guru Clotaire Rapaille. A psychiatrist by training, Rapaille has been working with Fortune 500 companies for the past 30 years. His clients include Nestle, P&G, Hummer, and Chrysler; his work on the PT Cruiser is particularly interesting.

He is best known for his "Reptilian marketing" or the logic of emotion: an argument for marketers to pay attention to the visceral reaction of customers rather than heed the content of over-analyzed market research.

The interview is pretty much a straight transcript of an episode of "The Persuaders" which aired on PBS on December 15, 2003, but was posted to the PBS website on November 9, 2004. It is long (6,000 words), so get your favourite libation and settle in to a good read:

Read the story here.

"The secret of my success? Go Big! You can always go back," said Lana Duke at the podium after a petit filet steak dinner at the Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in Mississauga, just outside Toronto. How to Build a Brand from Scratch was the theme of Lana’s after dinner speech. And who better to deliver a keynote speech on branding that the number one USDA Prime Beef Queen herself?

Marketing and advertising legend Lana Duke, of Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse fame, was in Toronto on Thursday, November 4 to address a combined session of more than 100 women belonging to the Organization of Women in Trade (OWIT), Canadian Association of Women Executives and Entrepreneurs (CAWEE) and Women in Food Industry Management (WIFM). I enjoyed my steak, but can’t share that delicious taste with you. But I can share Lana’s ideas, information, and tips.

In terms of demographics of steak-eaters, 45% are now women and 55% are men, Lana reported. This is a huge change from 40 years ago when 5% were women and 95% were men. The chain now has 90 restaurants, annual sales of US$400 million, is the number one steak house brand in the world, and has been showered with all kinds of awards. Fine wine sales are up; sales of Scotch and Bourbon are down.

"The road to success is always under construction," continued Lana. Here are her 10 tips for how to build a brand:

1. Have a vision of where you want to be in five, ten or twenty years. If you don’t have a vision, if you don’t have a map, how will you know when you get there?
2. Focus on the most important thing about your brand. With Ruth’s Chris, it was steak. What is it with your brand? What makes it different, special, unique, better? Don’t get lost in the details and clutter. K.I.S.S.—Keep it Simple, Stupid.
3. Give your brand a unique personality, like our prime steak, broiled at 1800 degrees and served sizzling.
4. Know your customer, but be flexible in a changing world.
5. Give it real value. People intuitively understand value for the money, and if you don’t have that, you’ve got a problem.
6. Keep asking questions and keep changing.
7. Create your unique brand profile from the Five Ps of the marketing mix: Product, Price, People, Place and Promotion.
8. Invest in the best—don’t cut corners especially in the areas where corners count.
9. Market the heck out of it.
10. Work your tail off.

Here is some of the wisdom that Jack shared with participants:

What is positioning?
It’s how you differentiate your product in the mind of the prospect. Not your perception or your organization’s perception—the prospect’s perception.

What is positioning for?
Positioning is the long-term survival strategy of an organization. If you don’t have the right strategy, you’ll flounder and eventually turn belly up.

1. Perception (their’s, not your’s)
2. Being different
3. Competition
4. Specialization
5. Simplicity
6. Leadership
7. Reality

1. The mind is a limited container.
2. The mind creates "product ladders" for each category (cars, toothpaste, accounting services, hamburgers, etc.) There is always a top rung and a bottom rung in each category.
3. The mind can only remember seven items in a high interest category. Most people remember only two or three items in a category.
4. On the product ladder, Positions One and Position Two typically account for more than 60 per cent of the sales in that category. In other words, Positions Three, Four and Subsequent are not profitable.
5. The mind hates complexity. To the mind, complexity equals confusion. People don’t have time to figure out confusion.
6. The best way to enter the mind is to OVER-SIMPLIFY the message.
7. The most powerful positioning is to reduce your message to one simple and easily understood word.
8. Minds are insecure. Most people buy what others buy: this is the "herd mentality."
9. Minds don’t change—easily.

When you get your one simple idea, put it everywhere: brochures, presentations, advertising, public relations, letterhead, etc.

For a copy of Jack Trout’s slides: www.marketingpower.com/troutslides

Jack Trout’s website: www.troutandpartners.com

Jack’s new "25 years in the making" book: Jack Trout on Strategy, March 2004.

Tuesday, July 6, 2004

From time to time, clients, prospects and colleagues and I discuss branding and positioning. What is it? What is just a tagline, as opposed to real positioning? How do you position a service? How do you position a product? How do you re-position the competition when the position you want is already occupied by someone else?

How do you position a municipality? First, a municipality is an artificially-imposed geographic area. In Canada and especially in the greater Toronto area, many municipalities are comprised of a diverse mix of established residents, new immigrants, old money, new money, historical communities, newly-sprouted strip malls, established businesses and business upstarts.

Branding and positioning are a science, albeit an inexact one. In branding and positioning a municipality, here are some things to consider:

• Positioning is not what you do to the municipality, it’s what you do to the mind of prospects, both business and residents.
• You also need to know the positioning of your competition. "Me too" positioning is ineffective.
• Positioning doesn’t create something new and different; it manipulates what is already in the minds of prospects. Positioning re-ties connections that already exist.
• In its essence, positioning is a process of reduction, of discarding. You must throw away everything else except the one message that has the best chance of getting through.
• In positioning, you ignore the sending end. Instead, you focus on the receiving end.
• There is a good measure of "perception is reality" in positioning.
• In positioning, oversimplification is the key. Less is more. What one message, above all others, do you want your prospects to remember?
• The one over-arching message becomes your "brand."

The original 1981 edition

One of the first books I read about positioning was by Al Ries and Jack Trout called Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind (1981). It is still a book I go back to again and again. It was re-issued for its 20th anniversary—something not many business books can boast since most end up in the discount bin mere months after they were considered "hot."

Friday, April 30, 2004

Carmaker Audi launched its new branding campaign "Never follow" last year and has now added meat to its branding bones. "Rules for people who never follow the rules" is the headline for a new 8-page special section appearing in upscale North American magazines. I got my copy in Bon Appetit.

Floor it to: www.neverfollow.com

Audi has selected four spokespeople, people who have always marched to the tune of their own drummers, in the fields of music (music legend David Bowie), literature (Iranian author Azar Nafisi); sport (14-year-old soccer prodigy Freddy Adu) [note that hockey, baseball and American football don’t have the same international reach as soccer], and film (actor William H. Macy).

The idea is that Audi’s target audience will connect with at least one, and perhaps more, of these personalities and compel you to visit the website.

While endorsements from musicians, sports figures and movie stars are not new, an endorsement from writer Azar Nafisi is a breath of fresh air. Her Reading Lolita in Tehran (December 2003 and now in its 15^th printing) about the freedoms that literature can bring must have ruffled the turban of more than one Mullah in Iran. More importantly, Nafisi is openly opposed to using religion (Islam) as an ideology. A gutsy move by Audi, given recent terrorist attacks.

1. Promote the brand first, your logo second. The website is called "never follow" and it is not part of the Audi website. (There is a link, however.) Clearly, the "sell cars" portion is miniscule. In fact, the Audi logo only appears twice in the entire 8-page section.
2. Show, don’t tell. The whole feel of "never follow" is edgy: the photography, the copy, the tie-ins with concerts, book tours, children’s literary (Freddy Adu) and a film festival.
3. Value for the visitor. The writing for "never follow" consists of interviews with all four of these personalities that actually provides useful content and insight. No "key messages" or fluffy advertising copy.
4. Compelling interactive component. Audi’s on-line contest has a twist. In an era of downloadable music versus music rights—not to mention musician’s egos—the on-line contest breaks the rules, too. You can match-up any track from Bowie’s new Reality album with any other Bowie album. Send in your entry and the top three will be posted on neverfollow.com Someone will win an Audi TT coupe….

The biggest downfall of this website: you can’t print out the interviews. Why not?