Branding is competitive. It’s about staking out the right to earn over others. But when that competitive streak becomes obsessive, brands lose objectivity and that can cost them dearly.

Ken Favaro identified the ironies in a piece on strategy’s connection to competition a couple of years ago. First, the upside of competition: the halo effect. When brands build awareness of, and then demand for, what they offer, they also build demand for those around them. Pan Am expanded its own network and in the process grew the airline business generally. Starbucks grew its presence, and in so doing, it expanded the demand for coffee. Tesla and Prius are adding to the momentum for electric vehicles. In each case, the brand has gotten bigger and so has the market, and one could argue that neither was possible without the other. That’s the value creation side of competition, says Favaro. One gains; many gain.

However, those dynamics stop working when brands become so competitive against each other that they lose sight of the customer: “when leaders think of business as a war with their competitors … they inevitably seek to beat their rivals in ways that don’t meaningfully enhance customer-perceived benefits … Such moves rarely grow the total market and almost always produce lower margins and losing products.” Price wars are a classic symptom of such rivalries. Brands literally drive their margins into the ground, and train consumers to bargain-hunt, because they commit to winning at any cost. Literally.

No brand wants to admit they are uncompetitive, or that they are at risk of being so. Maybe that’s why so few brands can look candidly at what is happening in a marketplace and draw the real lessons they need to take to improve. For some, it’s easier to call a war or to cry foul than it is to face a truth.

But the brutal reality is that if your reasons for attacking are defensive, then such calls-to-action are little more than distractions to the real issue: you are not as competitive as you once were or thought you were. Unless you act to correct that, you’re grasping at straws and your competitiveness will only continue to deteriorate. Branding is about learning and being iterative, because expectations change so fast, every innovation mainstreams quickly and markets themselves evolve continually. Brands that don’t learn or evolve continue to justify their right to exist all the way to their demise.

It’s hard not to become introspective. It’s tempting to focus on what you’re doing and to attack the other brands hard. But, if you don’t balance that, with win-win for the customer, you can rapidly come to feel that as a brand you have nothing to learn from your competitors, and that is a mistake. As Favaro points out, “Understanding competitors’ value propositions is one effective way to generate new thinking on how to improve your own value propositions.” In other words, awareness is healthy; obsessiveness is not.

It’s all very well to paint your competitors as the bad guys in your minds, but in today’s market such name-calling is immature. Instead, brands should be taking a more nuanced view of those who are not just competitors, but also colleagues, in the sector.

Four questions I’d be asking:

1. What do we agree on (because it’s good for the whole market, including customers)?
2. What can we grow together here (without of course being anti-competitive)?
3. What can we learn together and apply together (so that we get the benefits of scale)?
4. Where should customers see crucial differences between our brand and others?

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Positioning Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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“How can we bridge the gap between the left and right, to have a wiser, more connected conversation?” asks TED’s curator, Chris Anderson, at left, while speaking with journalist Gretchen Carlson and columnist David Brooks at TED, March 01, 2017, in New York. Photo: Dian Lofton / TED

In conversation with TED curator Chris Anderson at TED HQ in New York on Wednesday, New York Times columnist David Brooks and journalist Gretchen Carlson discussed how and why America has become so polarized — and where we can find common ground.

Set between lively renditions of “America the Beautiful” and “Go Down Moses” performed by the Vy Higginsen Gospel Choir of Harlem, the conversation centered on the political climate that led to Donald Trump’s election. Carlson, a registered Independent who once hosted a show on Fox News, and Brooks, a conservative columnist, shared their insights on the tensions at the heart of American politics today … and why 63 million people voted for Trump.

Trump voters were angry and felt like Washington wasn’t listening to them. A native of Minnesota, Carlson has seen the anger in middle America firsthand, and it started long before 2016. “A huge swath of the population feels like Washington never listens to them,” she says. Brooks also traveled around the country during the elections, through what pundits have called “flyover country” — a term, he says, that he heard nearly every hour during the election cycle. It speaks to an impression of middle Americans as less important than people who live on the coasts, namely California and New York.

For many people in middle America, economic mobility is stunted and jobs have disappeared, Brooks says. “In this country, we only have one success story: you go to college, you get a degree and a white-collar job, and that’s success,” he says. “If you’re not rich or famous, you feel invisible.”

Trump has celebrity appeal and a simplified message. Carlson, who hosted Trump on her show many times, reminds us that he is a master marketer. He was able to simplify his message down to phrases (“Make America great again”) and even if he eventually can’t achieve the things he says, he gave people something to grasp onto. And don’t underestimate his celebrity, she says: “I think it had a huge impact on Donald Trump becoming president.”

People were also willing ignore character flaws in favor of policy, Brooks adds. “I think he’s a moral freak,” he says of Trump. “He doesn’t know anything about anything, and he’s uncurious about it.” But his fans were “well aware of his failings,” he says, and were willing overlook Trump’s dustups, like the infamous Access Hollywood/Billy Bush tape and the rally where he appeared to mock a disabled reporter.

“A lot of people put on blinders,” Carlson says. “Policies they believe in, and being visible and heard, were more important than how Trump acts as a human.”

How can we have good conversations with people on the other side? “Come to the table being passionate about something,” says Gretchen Carlson at TED Dialogues, March 01, 2017, New York. Photo: Jasmina Tomic / TED

Political correctness has soured conservatives. The conservative media has pounded this issue for the past ten years: Political correctness keeps people from saying what they think, Carlson says. “There’s been a narrowing of what’s permissible to say,” Brooks adds, pointing to his experiences on elite campuses. So it’s refreshing to Trump voters that he says what he thinks, regardless of who he may offend. “There are a lot of people who agree with Steve Bannon but won’t say so publicly,” Carlson says. “Voting for Trump was a way for them to do it silently.”

Trump voters think the mainstream media is biased and not to be trusted. When Trump tweets, he’s reaching the American people without a filter, which is what he believes the media is, says Carlson. In the leadup to the election, there was a groundswell of emotion in thinking the mainstream media is biased. “But there’s a difference between being biased and fake,” she adds. “There are ways to amend bias. Trump is nuclearizing it and saying, ‘Let’s just call all of that fake.’”

“The truth will come out,” Brooks says. Trump says that US manufacturing jobs have been stolen by the Chinese; the truth is that more than 80% of the jobs were replaced with technology, says Brooks. “When he says, ‘I’ll end TPP and the jobs will come back,’ they’re not coming back. We can measure this — either they’ll come back or they won’t come back, despite great marketing.”

With all this in mind, how can people on both sides learn to communicate with people they disagree with?

Be a little more self-suspicious. “You need to come out of the bubble if you’re ever going to have a conversation,” Carlson says. Brooks adds that we need to be wary of censorship and not hearing from people we disagree with, citing and commending the example of the University of Chicago’s rejection of safe spaces on campus. “If you get your feelings hurt, welcome to education,” he says.

Engage with media you usually disagree with. Carlson recommends occasionally watching a news show or reading an article from an outlet you normally wouldn’t. “We have to be accepting of all points of view — that’s how we start to bridge this massive divide.”

Join something. “Be a part of an organization that meets once a month, with people you don’t have much in common with,” Brooks says. He uses the example of pickup trucks — which hold the top three spots for best-selling vehicles in America. “Ask yourself: How many people do I know who own pickup trucks?” If your answer is none, you may want to do something about it.

The amazing Vy Higgensen Gospel Choir of Harlem performs at TED onMarch 01, 2017, in New York. Photo: Dian Lofton / TED

How do you gather the courage to… Make a radical change in your life and start your business Head in a different direction with your existing business What is education-based marketing and how can it help you grow your business? What are the 3 critical mindset elements to be successful…

The idea illustrates visually the intensity of flavors found in the new Bubble Chewing Gum brand. These flavors along with the chewing effect will relief any stress or pressure and transports the person into a relaxed tolerant one immersed only by its unique taste.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Advertising Agency: Nabaroski Ad Store, Cairo, Egypt
Creative Director / Art Direction: Mohamed Nabarawy
Copywriter: Rania Gad

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The story of how the venerable Ford Motor Company managed to recover from the Great Recession of 2008 may be one of the greatest corporate turnarounds in U.S. history.  And it demonstrates how great brands rebound from turbulent times.  Not only did Ford recover, but it ended up thriving and achieving heights once thought impossible for an American carmaker.

A Different Way of Thinking About Brand

Alan Mulally, the former Boeing executive who was recruited by Bill Ford to save the company, has gotten most of the credit for pulling off the unlikely feat.  There is no question that Mulally deserves every accolade he has received.  The automotive industry, if not the whole country, should thank him for leading the restoration of a brand so iconic and a company so instrumental to American pride and competitiveness.

But the story of Ford’s recovery from its near-death experience is more than a lesson in leadership by one person.  The truth is, the turnaround at Ford required wholesale changes in culture, strategy, operations, and execution, and involved a series of decisions that company executives made as a team.  It was a transformation that, at its core, involved a different way of thinking about the company and its brand.

Ford’s turnaround makes for the ultimate case study of how great brands rebound.  Great brands including Nike, Apple, and IBM have achieved their leadership positions by integrating their brand platform into every aspect of their business.  Their brand aspirations and core brand foundations have undergirded their strategies, fueled their operations, and informed their tactics.  This “brand-as-business” approach is the same methodology that great brands including Ford have used to survive some of the most destructive threats in business.

One Ford

Mulally introduced, and his team eventually embraced and executed on, the notion of “One Ford,” a single vision for the organization and its mission.   In short, “One Ford” was about unifying the people, plans, operations, and products of Ford to restore the brand to automotive leadership.  It involved putting the purpose, spirit, and values of the Ford brand at the center of the organization and executing with relentless commitment and laser-like focus on whatever it took to make Ford great again.

Mulally was inspired by a 1925 advertisement for Ford he found in the corporate archives.  Entitled “Opening the Highways to All Mankind,” the Saturday Evening Post ad depicted a Norman Rockwellian scene of a young family atop a grassy hill overlooking a road filled with automobiles, the shadows of a Ford factory in the distance.  It encapsulated the simple, yet utterly compelling, vision with which Henry Ford began Ford Motor Company:  “I will build a car for the great multitude…it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one — and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God’s great open spaces.”

Credit: Ford Media

Mulally understood that, at its core, Ford stood for cars with value for the masses; the company just needed to once again deliver on that brand promise.  Every decision he and his team made from then on was put through that brand filter.  Mulally once explained the decision to sell the company’s luxury brands, including Aston Martin, Land Rover, Jaguar, and Volvo, saying, “It was a question of ‘What did Ford stand for?’ What do people think when they see Ford’s blue oval? Do they think of us as a house of brands, or do they understand that they are going to get a complete family of best-in-class vehicles that are also affordable?”

The Core Brand Values and Brand Essence of Ford

Ford’s successful recovery was actually a return to the company’s founding values and the core essence of the Ford brand.  Mulally and his team recognized that the company had deviated far from what was most valuable and different about Ford, and they set a new commitment to that core.  Using the original Ford brand vision as its guide, company leaders developed and then executed with steadfast perseverance a plan that turned in quarter-after-quarter of profits at a time when almost every other organization was still reeling from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.  That original brand vision then laid the foundation for continued profitable growth.

Imagine how the history books would differ had the Ford Motor Company never lost its commitment to the core of its brand.  Henry Ford certainly had laid the foundation for a brand-driven approach with his vision for the way Ford would change the way his organization worked, the way the business would succeed, and the way people would live.  But over time, those values got lost in the internal push for growth and the external pressure from competition.  Of course, the company could not have avoided the disruptive forces of the Great Recession, but if it had kept Henry Ford’s brand vision as its central organizing and operating idea, recovery might have been easier, faster, or both.

Great Brands Rebound with Brand As Business

When an organization has suffered a blow or experienced a major setback, the “brand as business” approach provides the power, clarity, and focus it needs to recover.  Turnaround leaders use their brand as the engine, fuel, and compass to right the ship.  But great brands don’t wait until they’re under duress to adopt the brand-as-business management approach.  Great brands live out brand as business to sail ahead when business is thriving, to buttress their efforts when under duress, and to bounce back after suffering a setback.

related:

Inspired to Fail

Brands To Watch in 2017

Onward by Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz

The post how great brands rebound: ford’s remarkable turnaround was driven by the brand as business management approach appeared first on Denise Lee Yohn.

As Simon Sinek has observed, people intuitively deal with what they know before they deal with the things they don’t know or feel less comfortable dealing with. The easiest question, and the place most people start is “what?” They deal first with the symptoms they can see and quantify. And often they address them with a “how” that is equally familiar – the methodology they always use.

But while a particular problem may have set off the trip-wire, in reality that problem is probably a symptom of what’s really happened rather than the real cause.

It’s the prompt.

And just having a way to address that problem does not guarantee any quality of answer. It simply provides a process for everyone to map to.

Do you know the story of Abraham Wald? His reasoning shows why what you think you see can be so misleading. The mathematician was called in to determine how to make bombers safer during the Second World War. Everyone agreed they needed more armor. But where? Armor is heavy. If you put it everywhere, the bombers would never get off the ground. The answer seemed obvious. Put the armor where the planes were being shot the most. So Wald went to work and sketched all the places where bombers returning from their runs were most shot up.

But then, in his analysis of the situation, Wald turned everything on its head. The areas of most apparent damage were not the problem, he concluded, because they appeared on planes that made it back. The real areas of vulnerability on a bomber were those areas that weren’t marked – because planes shot there were the ones that never made it home.

Wald’s wonderful insight was to resist the temptation to ask, “what am I looking at?” and to ask instead “why can I see this?” Which leads us to this timely marketing point; when grappling with marketing issues don’t veer towards what you understand. What you need to do is set a course for what truly isn’t making sense.

Overcoming brand challenges is hard as is navigating change, but it’s certainly easier with the help of others. In early May, 50 marketers will converge at marketing’s only problem solving event to take on the obstacles of now and prepare for what’s next.

The Blake Project and Branding Strategy Insider have designed a uniquely powerful experience for brand leadership in the age of disruption. We call it The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World.

It’s unlike any other branding or marketing conference you’ve attended before:

• Everyone in the room is an expert and gains from the sum of the expertise in the room.
• Our competitive learning format is fun, energized and impactful.
• The walls are down, there are no podiums or stages, there is no hierarchy – your uniform is jeans.
• The focus is on learning outcomes, not ticket sales.
• Small is powerful, with only 50 marketers participating in hands on learning.
• As in your marketplace, some will win, some will lose, all will learn.

No Attendees. Only Participants.
The best pathway for learning is through participation, not observation. The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World will challenge your thinking about brands and brand management. To do that, we’ll put you on a team of 10 and offer you opportunities to compete and learn alongside other marketers in a unique environment. The challenges you’ll tackle are based on and influenced by the actual issues that you and other participants are facing.

In May of 2017, our 5th event, we are focused on: Disruptive Marketing Trends, Building Emotional Connections, Encoding Brands In The Mind, Brand Storytelling, Brand Leadership, Digital Strategy, Customer Experience, B2B Brand Strategy and more.

It all takes place at The London Hotel in West Hollywood, California May 1 – 3, 2017.

Our schedule…

Monday, May 1st – Kickoff Mixer: 7- 9pm at The London Hotel Rooftop Pool

Tuesday, May 2nd – Day 1: 8am – 5pm, at The London Hotel / 6:30pm – ? Team building event and dinner

Wednesday, May 3rd – Day 2: 8am – 5pm, at The London Hotel

Who Should Participate?
We have reserved these two days (and a kickoff mixer on the evening of the 1st) for 50 senior B2C and B2B marketers who see professional growth as a mandate for success and who seek a learning experience superior to last century’s format of marketing conferences:

-Marketing oriented leaders
-Marketing professionals (brand managers, product managers, directors, vice presidents, CMO’s, brand strategists etc.)
-Advertising agency professionals (account executives, planners, creatives, agency heads)
-Marketers facing brand strategy issues
-Marketers seeking a competitive advantage
-Professionals in charge of brand building, brand management, human resources
-Professional brand consultants, digital consultants and researchers
-Marketers who prefer participation over observation
-Marketers who don’t believe that last century’s format of marketing conferences advances them as leaders.

Every year a wide range of marketing oriented leaders and professionals from around the world join us representing startups, emerging, regional, national and global brands. Past participants include AAA, Bayer, Bloomberg, Humana, Land O’ Lakes, Liberty Mutual, Pilot/Flying J, RJ Reynolds, TD Ameritrade, GlaxoSmithKlein, Wounded Warrior Project, Monsanto, Ogilvy, Kawasaki, GE and many more.

Only 50 marketers can participate. To secure a spot for you or your group at The Un-Conference: 360 Degrees of Brand Strategy for a Changing World call me directly in Los Angeles at 813-842-2260. Or simply email me.

Special pricing for MENG / Marketing Executives Group and American Marketing Association Members.

I do hope you can join us.

Sincerely,

Derrick Daye for The Un-Conference, Branding Strategy Insider and The Blake Project

When you’re feeling strong it’s hard to hold it in just ask Steph Curry as he wiggles it in the latest Muscle Milk commercial created by Mekanism. The ad also features a remake of the song “Wiggle It” by 2 In A Room.

CREATIVE CREDITS:
Advertising Agency: Mekanism, USA
Founder / Executive Creative Director: Tommy Means
Director of Creative: Tom Lyons
Associate Creative Director: Joe Beutel
Art Director: Sean Grimes
Managing Director: Michael Zlatoper
Director of Brand Management: Anna Boyarsky
Brand Director: Luke Welch
Brand Manager: Sarah Holden
Head of Planning, West: Jeremy Daly
Head of Production: Kati Haberstock
Director of Production Operations: Frank Lewis
Senior Producer: Jess Murray
Producer: Megan Ubovich
Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Dave Laden
Director of Photography: Jamie Ramsay
Executive Producer: Caleb Dewart
Line Producer: Ahnee Boyce
Editorial: No6
Editor: Lucas Spaulding
Asst Editor: Brian Meagher
Producer: Yole Barra
Finish / Color / Graphics: The Mill
Creative Director: Jay Bandlish
Head of 2D: Randy McEntee
Color: Greg Reese
Executive Producer: Krystina Wilson
Music: Travis & Maude
Creative Director: David Wittman

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By Gary Larkin In the first month of the new Administration, companies are facing a risk they didn’t expect: being the subject of one of President Trump’s tweets. While Trump is not the first Commander-in-Chief to use social media to reach constituents, the President is most definitely the first to make many CEOs and boards […]

Ultimately, all memories include some combination of sensory elements, contextual details, cognitive processes involved when that memory was formed, abstract concepts, and meaning. To make the search for memories easier in the mind, appealing to emotion ensures retrieval because of an additional marker in memory. When we look at the combination of these elements, they provide the formula for memorable brand storytelling. To create the greatest impact in your brand story remember these ten keys:

1. Memorable brand stories contain the following components: perceptive (sensory impressions in context and action across a timeline), cognitive (facts, abstract concepts, and meaning), and an effective (emotion).

2. Something is concrete if we can perceive it with our senses. 
If we can’t perceive it with our senses, we are talking about
 an idea or a concept, which is abstract. Balance both in your communication and, to avoid habituation, break the pattern an audience learns to expect.

3. While abstract and concrete are opposites, generic and specific are subsets of each other, with generic being a large group and specific representing an individual item within that group. Zoom in on specific details based on your audience’s level of expertise (advanced audiences can handle abstracts better).

4. Text and graphics have the potential to be equals in memory. Make pictures easy to label and text easy to picture.

5. Pair abstract words with concrete pictures to ensure that your audience extracts a uniform meaning from your message.

6. Use visual metaphors to explain abstract concepts. Steer away from clichéd metaphors by either giving an old metaphor a fresh meaning or using unexpected metaphors.

7. Wrap abstract words in concrete contexts. Repeat information in the same context for verbatim memory. Vary the context for gist memory.

8. Appeal to the senses to activate multiple parts of the brain and create more memory traces. The more personal experiences you share, the more opportunities to include sensory details.

9. Avoid clichéd images. Instead, use vivid images to evoke tension, mystery, wabi-sabi, or nostalgia.

10. Use strong emotions by showing an audience how to:

• Move toward rewards: pleasure, happiness, elation, ecstasy, 
love, sexual arousal, trust, empathy, beauty.
• Move away from rewards: frustration, indignation, disbelief, sadness, anger, rage.
• Move toward punishments: apprehension, disgust, aversion, fear, terror, unfairness, inequity, uncertainty, social exclusion.
• Move away from punishments: relief, liberation.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Carmen Simon, PhD, co-founder of Rexi Media and the author of Impossible to Ignore: Creating Memorable Content to Influence Decisions. Shared with the permission of McGraw-Hill Professional.

Build A More Valuable Future For Your Brand. Join us in Hollywood, California for Brand Leadership in the Age of Disruption, our 5th annual competitive-learning event designed around brand strategy.

The Blake Project Can Help: The Strategic Brand Storytelling Workshop

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

During this session, Steven Wales, Chief Revenue Officer – Decideware, drew from the most recent news and his own experience working with some of the largest advertisers in the world, to share three practical steps that advertisers can take to gain control of their production spend. The result? An opportunity for advertisers to gain the much needed “transparency” that everyone is seeking.