Mythology - The Meaning Behind the Marketing

Starbucks Fights Back

Starbucks is placing full page ads in major newspapers trying to reclaim its legacy of setting the bar for the best-tasting coffee. Starbucks of course built their wildly successful business through 1990's - 2000's based on creating brand value around bringing great coffee to America and the world, as well as creating a hip, smart vibe in their stores.

Lately, Starbucks has been under attack on both fronts. McDonald's McCafe launched a blisteringly dead-onanti-Starbucks positioning ad that made fun of the snootiness factor. Stores such as Dunkin' Donuts launched "taste test" style ads to deconstruct the myth of Starbucks' coffee superiority (can you imagine how insulted Starbucks brass must have been..."Seriously? Dunkin' Donuts?").

In the latest Starbucks print ad that I saw this morning, they attempted to take back the great coffee position. It will be interestingto see if the marketplace buys into the pitch or if their position has been too damaged by the competition. Personally, I believe it's the combination of emotional and functional factors that Starbucks lost in the past 4-5 years that has hurt them the most. Over-expansion, sometimes into very non-Starbucky places such as interstate highway rest stops, diluted the "specialness" of visiting a Starbucks store.

What Does Zappos.com Sell, Really?

Zappos.com of course is the legendary online retailer. It's probably most famous for selling shoes and its rabid commitment to customer service. It has since gone on to sell many items, such as clothing, accessories, and bags.

Zappos.com's legend grew during a time when buying online was still quite a hassle. Who hasn't felt a twinge of uncertainty over buying something (especially clothing) online knowing that if you didn't like what you thought you bought, the hassle of returning it was far greater than stopping by a local store (a fact that many bricks and mortar retailers have leveraged in their ecommerce strategies).

You know the rest: How Zappos.com inserted a postage paid return envelope and a package in your shipment in case you didn't like it. How they encouraged people to buy it, try it and return it. How their customer service reps are encouraged not to follow call scripts, and how they have no time limits on their customer interactions. How they train their call center reps for weeks before turning them loose to spread Zappos.com joy. How they advertise free ground shipping, but most orders get shipped overnight...further surprising their customers with unexpected value.

So what is Zappos.com selling, really? What is their value proposition? It's customer joy, of course. They are selling a surprising, "wow" kind of emotional jolt. Let's be honest, it feels good to be treated extraordinarily. It's awesome to get someone on the other end of the phone who wants to help you, no matter how long it takes.

Some may counsel Zappos.com to stay focused, to stay in their retail niche. But customer joy is a powerful, extensible kind of value proposition. You can think of many industry niche scenarios where Zappos.com core value could improve things dramatically.

They are already monetizing their unique expertise and passion for customer joy by inviting other companies in to receive training on their model (is Zappos.com the next Disney Institute in this regard?). Their CEO has said, perhaps in jest - perhaps not, that he wouldn't rule out a Zappos.com airline someday.

Hmmm...An airline that brings customer joy. Sign me up.

Is Your Brand an Icon?

Our consulting practice, Mythology, is based on the idea that marketing is in a sense "belief management." How you and  your organization interact and shape the values associated with your brand in collaboration with the marketplace - how you shape beliefs in an authentic way that lead to positive responses - is what marketing is all about.

The book How Brands Become Icons: The Principle of Cultural Branding by Douglass B. Holt reveals how brands emerge as various "authors" tell stories that involve the brand. Those authors could be customers, critics, culture industries (media), or other companies.

Brands are created when markers of the product are filled with customer experiences. The logo, packaging or design become the material markers that are filled with a history. This creates brand meaning that consumers use to associate with the specific brand. Without this history of customer experiences, the brand is empty and does not exist.

Brands that embody the the ideals that consumers admire become cultural iconic brands, brands that help the consumer to express who they are and who they want to be.

The leaders in this iconic horse race are well known in American consumer history and popular culture: Coca Cola, Budweiser, Nike, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson. Customers value these brands' stories largely for their identity value. Such iconic brands act as a vessel of self-expression and the brands are imbued with stories that consumers find valuable in constructing their identities.

The success of a brand is not built so much on advertising and traditional marketing capabilities anymore. Their power rests in large part on the brand myth that consumers can identify with. In order to satisfy the need to be a part of that myth, consumers will drink, eat and wear the brand.

Don't think that this brand mythology doesn't play into business-to-business scenarios as well. In past generations, an IT executive wanted to identify with the power of success of IBM; in more recent generations, many wanted to identify with the spunky independence and flexibility of the open source Linux movement.

With different generations come different myths that are appealing. How well a company is able to reposition and connect with more relevant myths can determine their long-term success - something IBM has actually done quite well by becoming an early supporter of open source technology.

Sweet SUCCESs: Are Your Messages 'Made to Stick'?

One of my favorite practical books of the last few years is Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It takes up where the insanely popular Tipping Point left off by providing a clearer template for how to construct messages in a way that they would "stick", or have more viral pass-along potential.

The authors' formula is SUCCESs:

• Simplicity - Finding the core of the idea
• Unexpectedness - Combining surprise with interest
• Concreteness - Bringing it alive by engaging the five senses ("memory Velcro")
• Credibility - Tapping the power of authority - or anti-authority - to build belief
• Emotional - Priming people to care
• Stories - Generating involvement that leads to action 

Essentially, the more a message - including an advertisement or other commercial message - incorporates these stickiness factors, the more likely it will be remembered and even passed around to others in the Internet-connected world.

Advertisers have been fighting hard to cut through the clutter with unexpected - even shocking - imagery. A handy shortcut often involves the use of innuendo or overtly sexual images.

However, often these efforts are disconnected to the value proposition of the product. Which of us haven't seen a memorable commercial, but completely forgot what it was even advertising?

I thought it would be fun to review some recent commercials as I watch TV in my hotel room and see how many are "SUCCESsfully Stick" using the Heath brothers' formula:

• Castrol: Think With Your Dipstick - OK, a dipstick-wielding Scottishman who sneaks up on consumers about to make a bad motor oil decision and whacks them on the back of the leg got my attention. It's disturbingly humorous, I guess...And of course it has the "think with your dipstick" innuendo. But I didn't get the sense that Castrol's unique selling proposition came through and was almost overpowered by the abusive Scott. Why is Castrol EDGE better again? I'll remember the ad though, and may look behind me when I purchase motor oil again.
• Energytomorrow.com - An effort by the oil and gas industry to generate support for drilling. I think this one fails the sticky test. No stories that generated emotion or involvement. Nothing unexpected, just a nice lady telling me why it's important for America to be independent and how many jobs her employers provide. Nice info, but very forgettable. Certainly not powerful enough to take back the conversation from "green" advocates.
• Wal-Mart: Better Homes and Gardens Collection - Devoid of any stickiness. It's like Pam anti-stick spray was used on this commercial.

After actively paying attention to maybe 12-15 commercials this morning, it's quite amazing that the vast majority of commercials don't pay one whit of attention to the Heath Brother's elements of stickiness.

How about you? How does your messaging stand up to SUCCESs? It takes some practice. I'm going to go throw some honey on the mythologymarketing.com web site right now...

Mapping Marketing to Purchase Funnel Decisions

IDG Communications released a report recently demonstrating how the web site content provided by technology marketers is not relevant to the needs of their customers 50% of the time. The online research conducted last October captured feedback from 400 technologists and business buyers on what they prefer as they move from general education to business case development to final decisions in purchasing products and services.

In other words, as prospects moved through the purchase funnel, they did not find the relevant content they needed to make a decision. (This problem is addressed by  Mythology's first pillar of Empowered Marketing: Understanding.)

On average, the report found that six decision-makers from IT, business units and finance were involved in a typical IT product/service purchase. Note how influential each source of information was in their decision-making:

In addition to finding relevant educational and transactional content on a vendor's web site, the decision-makers reported that peer dialogue and independent authority dialogue were major influencers. Are you building this into your marketing engagement plans to assist prospects in making informed, credible decisions?

Tactics such as featuring a blog with guest posts from actual customers, or video clips featuring industry experts speaking about your products are very powerful influencers and are a welcome part of the decision process with customers.

The survey respondents reported that they could find relevant content on IT vendor sites only 42% of the time. The lack of relevant content reduced a vendor's chance of a sale by 45%! In light of this lack of information, decisions often go to the vendor who answered their questions and connected them with peer and expert content.

Your web site is your conversation hub, and a rigorous content management approach is critical to using the web to help move customers down the purchase funnel from Awareness to Purchase...and hopefully over time, Advocacy.

A Reminder from the Past on Relationships and Relevancy

A friend of mine, Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus of CIO Magazine, sent me this vintage reminder from McGraw Hill in 1958 of the challenges that marketing must overcome in order to drive sales:

How We Decide: Emotion-Driven Decisions

Ever wonder how a Republican and a Democrat can look at the same set of facts and come up with radically different interpretations? The new book How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer is the latest validation on what great marketers know: it's emotion - not a logical analysis of facts and figures - that primarily drives decision making.

Actually, it's a complex mix of emotions, bias, facts, societal validation and other factors, but emotional reactions generated through those filters seem to be the most influential factor in making decisions, including what we decide to buy.

However, the development of the right emotional connection with customers is one of the most neglected areas of the marketing discipline. Consumer packaged goods companies, particularly those targeting women (see almost any Johnson & Johnson ad targeting moms), are among the best. But many other companies, especially those in "business-to-business" categories such as IT and professional services, seem to think they are above all that emotional nonsense and stick to the facts. Surely a senior buyer in a large company sets emotion aside and makes the most logical buying decision based on the evidence, right?

They are sorely mistaken. Even the most seemingly rational category of decisions are often dominated or at least significantly influenced by emotions and their deeper manifestation, relationships. This is especially true as individuals get more hurried in their decision-making; we all tend to default to emotional comfort levels to make faster decisions.

That's why you're seeing more B2B firms developing their emotional connection, such as the longtime association Accenture has developed with Tiger Woods to tap into the aspirational emotions of executives:

Matching the right emotion with the right customer and decision-making situation is the trick. What emotional role does your product or service fulfill for the customer? And how can you deliver that connection in your marketing?

We have a neat map of how brands attach to various emotional triggers. If you're interested, drop us a line at [email protected] and we'd be happy to send it to you as a PDF file.

For now, think about your own marketing materials and messages. Does it look or sound like a list of feature/functions? Or is there an emotional hook that will attach you to the minds of priority customer segments you're seeking?

Commodity + Experience = Emotionally Bonded Customer

A teddy bear is a teddy bear. Unless it's a teddy bear you made with your own hands with your friends and family celebrating the experience with you. Then, a teddy bear is a powerful memory, a trusted lifelong friend.

That's the formula for Build-a-Bear Workshop, the chain of mall-based retail stores founded by Maxine Clark that began to sweep across the country in the late Nineties. In just 10 years, 300 stores were opened worldwide. If you have a kid, particularly a daughter, and live anywhere near a major mall you've been there.

Not only that, you've been there over and over. The emotional connection that a little girl can have with a stuff animal that she created can be scary, at least for your pocketbook. But it shows the difference between a product (a teddy bear) and an experience (a teddy bear that you made to your liking in a magical environment).

Now there is a version for boys called Ridemakerz where tween boys trick out their own personal toy cars. Brilliant.

The commodity+experience strategy is effective in many industry scenarios. We're even seeing it in men's haircuts (how can the local barbershop or Regis compete for male haircuts vs. Sport Clips?).

Think about your industry. What about the product or service could be turned into a pleasant, powerful or memorable experience? And how could that affect your market share and profitability?

Plucking the Right Decision-Making Chords in Your Industry

The human mind is an interesting thing. Sometimes rational, often irrational, it's been said it's the most complex thing on earth.

Marketers have classically been trained with an assumption that consumers are rational. Most business undergrads and MBA students are well prepared to draw diagrams on feature/functionality-based value propositions and how one brand compares to another. Our "SWOT" analyses (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) are analyzed to the nth degree on logical points.

Yet so many products and companies fail.

One of the reasons, I believe, is that most marketers fail to understand the full scope of decision-making criteria in their industry and regional scenarios. Just what drivers exactly do customers use in their busy, noisy lives to make decisions in a given time, place and set of circumstances?

Best-selling books such as Blue Ocean Strategy use a "Strategy Canvas" to help marketers assess where open space ("blue ocean") exists in the competitive landscape based on a deep understanding of customer decision-drivers. For example, in the airline industry, you could choose an airline based on a number of factors: price, loyalty program, travel amenities (meals, seating space, etc.), convenience of the departure time, etc.

A company like Southwest Airlines emphasizes some of these criteria over others, such as price and frequent departures, while a United traditionally emphasizes a different set of decision-factors.

However, the weakness of even this well-known model are that the selection of decision-criteria tend to be primarily functional and logical. Few, if any, models emphasize what is becoming to be the key driver in buying decisions - emotions.

Researchers such as Dr. Robert Passikoff, who runs the marketing research firm and consultancy called BrandKeys, provides an example of how of the four main decision-making criteria for fragrances, three of them are emotional. A competitor who enters the fragrance industry primarily on functional benefits is headed for disaster.

While this might seem obvious in a consumer category like fragrances, it's surprisingly true for business-to-business categories. If your firm does not fully understand the foundational decision-making criteria for your market space, including the emotional drivers, you could be in for a difficult challenge to grow market share and become a dominant player.

Name Brands Beginning to Knock Off Store Brands?

I've noticed lately that some major national consumer brands such as Sierra Mist and Tropicana have switched their packaging lately. However, instead of setting them apart as premium "name" brands, they seem to be mimicking the store brands that have eaten up so much of their market share.

What do you think?

• Old Sierra Mist
• New Sierra Mist

• Old Tropicana
• New Tropicana

Several others seem to have noticed this direction. We'll see how the wisdom of this strategy plays out.

It's common knowledge that store brands have eaten up market share at rapid rates, putting name brands in a tough position. We blogged earlier about how name brands have to make a commitment to differentiation in order to compete and maintain their premium price levels.

However, are these major "brands" testing how a "ceding strategy" might stem their losses, or just simply trying to simplify their design?