Madonna – Just like a Branded Virgin

For a quarter century, Madonna Louise Ciccone has continued to engage and astonish us, the undisputed master of pushing the envelope and redefining her art. She continues to mesmerize her audiences and keep herself relevant in a world full of young media hunger aspiring music stars. This spring Madonna was again on the cover of Vanity Fair; her 10th appearance since 1986. For a woman turning 50 this year she looks as sexy as ever with a well toned body. Her career has been as much about selling sex and building a global brand as it has been about her artistic talent. Her enduring secret is the ability to continually reinvent herself and create the right amount of media hype to keep her in the limelight and on the music charts. This is a brand that is still evolving and hasn’t reach maturity yet, it is best to keep this one vertical to see what may come next.

Score – 89

Building your brand on sex

It’s a known fact that sex sells. But does it build lasting brands? If you ask Calvin Klein, he would say yes. Over a 2.5* billion dollar business built on provocative and sexual images isn’t bad.

For years, cars, beer, perfume and recently, deodorants have been sold to males through images of scantily-clad, perfectly sculptured woman. Tapping into the basic instincts of man - sex is a universal interest. Watch a beautiful woman walk down a street and you will notice others following her every step. Sexy images drive eye balls (especially men’s who think about sex every 7 seconds!)**.

Clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch markets its sexual brand image to college-age adults but ends-up attracting many younger teens (including my 12 and 16-year-old kids). Not only do they show beautiful youth in their advertising, but they hire the best-looking, young people to model their clothes in the stores. They made sure the brand lives not only in the advertising but in the stores. I wish beer stores respected the brand the same way.

Sex comes with many risks (including rashes and bumps in areas that we don’t want to talk about). Klein doesn’t apologize for pushing the envelope in what is deemed decent and what isn’t. "Sometimes people look at the advertising and resent it or feel threatened by what they see — but in the end, if the sales are good, the images must be OK," Klein said. The fact is CK’s men’s underwear owns the underwear market ever since Mark Wahlberg wore nothing but.

Both Calvin Klein and Abercrombie & Fitch continue to walk the fine line between sexy and soft core porn. Consumer groups have launched boycott campaigns against both companies over the years and have successfully had campaigns removed from public viewing. Just recently, the Virginia Beach police seized photos from an Abercrombie store that were deemed indecent. See story.

The fact is beautiful airbrushed, naked people can help sell products and build a sexually compelling brand. Dove had recently taken a different approach by showcasing their products on naked, everyday, wholesome women, so maybe we’re not as superficial after all. They did get bad press when it was leaked that they digitally enhanced some of the women’s images to make them better looking. OK maybe we are superficial.



Sexy is an easy way to accomplish edginess and draw attention, but does it fulfill your brand promise and is it sustainable? Just make sure you use this power wisely and don’t flaunt it unnecessarily or it could do more damage than good to your brand. Remember; over-promising can only lead to disappointment and negative feelings which aren’t brand builder.

Your audience will always have the final say and they’ll tell you at the till. So provoke, shock and engage, because as long as your audience has given you permission, they’ll eat it up like a Coolwhip® bikini.


*1996 was the only sales figure I could find as the company was private until sold to Phillips Van Heusen Corp. in 2002.
**Kinsey Institute’s disputes this claim; they state that 54% of men think about sex every day or several times a day and 43% a few times per month or a few times per week.

McDonald’s a leader in Americana – the fast food McKing

Like Henry Ford, Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s restaurants, engineered the operational excellence of producing mass quantities of fast food burgers to the world. While I grew up with the classic Big Mac it was still a novelty as there were few outlets in Canada. But all of my children grew-up with a healthy (ok, unhealthy) appetite for Chicken McNuggets. Well the competition have easily imitated (and in some cases better) their operational excellences with faster, more choices and ever changing menus, none has surpassed McDonald’s branding power and advertising prowess ($1.6 billion in 2006). McDonald’s is the master of the McDeals: happy meals, values meals, super sizing, and anything Mc. Ronald McDonald awareness is just as high as Santa Claus among children in North America. Even after the movie “Super Size Me” they remain the world’s largest fast food burger chain with over 31,000 restaurants and 47 million customers daily. In 2007, they posted a record $23 billion in revenues. The average US Micky D’s saw 15% increase in store sales, despite the healthy eating trend (maybe it is only a trend). Like sweet fruity wine, McDonald’s has perfected the right amount of sugar and salt to keep its customer craving their next Mac attack (or heart attack – which ever comes first).

Score - 92

Technorati Profile

Air Canada – The airline that everyone one loves to hate

Air Canada, the airline that grew from the terrior of the Canadian Federal Government. I believe Air Canada’s brand promise is “we aren’t happy until you’re not happy." The sad part is they successfully fulfill their promise on a regular bases. You definitely get the impression that they are driven by the bottom-line and customer satisfaction doesn’t enter into the decision making process unless they can save money. Everyone has a horror story and the airline is a continual butt of many jokes. That being said, I am sure there are many good stories that never get heard. The good thing is their planes stay in the air when they should and you do get to your destination safely. I would classify this brand as having some sharp undertones that aren’t pleasant to the palate but is tolerable understanding that the alternative choices are few.

Score - 68

My Personal Branding Update – Month One

One month and counting – that’s how long I have been consciously building my personal brand online.

I have googled the world to glean from the experts and to learn the ins and outs of constructing an online presence that projects my brand promise. Like other bloggers I am here to share my views and experiences.

If you are just starting or want to learn more about personal branding view this slideshow by Trisha Okubo. She really hits the nail on the head.

View Upload your own

Back to me
I don’t really know what success looks like but to date I am tracking a handful of unique visitors to my site. I guess this would include you since you are reading this blog. Thanks for your support.

My google search on my name pulled ten pages, of which, seven are about me. A lot of these entries existed before from my job as communications manager for Bayer CropScience Inc., Canada.

Here is what I have been doing for the past 20 days:
- Launched this blog with little fanfare
- Started developing my LinkedIn contact list from 10 to 36 and growing
- Published two articles on EzineArticles.com http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Derrick_Rozdeba (84 page views and 2 url clicks to my blog)
- Started adding links to my site
- Did the ping thing with search engines to help drive traffic to my site

What I have learnt so far?
There is lots of content out there -- some great, some good and a lot of junk. I am still not getting picked up by google in the google alerts (under “branding”) and I don’t know why. I am also finding that I have more stories in my head than time to write them. My down time is now spent writing or thinking of new branding topics for this blog. Stay tune for more. I would appreciate any comments or suggests. Cheers!

IKEA - the brand that's in the box

When you hear “furniture in a box” who do you immediately think of? IKEA has perfected the flat-pack furniture where customers hull their boxes home then spend countless hours assembling the furniture from a universal pictogram. So do they always add additional screws and bolts or did I miss something? Since cost is the driving force behind the fashionable Swedish furniture maker I don’t think they give anything away. Today they have over 278 stores in 36 countries and still promote their brand on their Swedishness including severing Swedish meatballs in their cafeteria. This brand is simple and clean on the palette. It is also a participator brand, meaning you can’t be passive. This strengthens the connection of inexpensive. The unique flavor of this brand is its Swedishness, a modern European flare but not pretentious or threatening. More like a new neighbor who is still out of sorts from their original home. The outstanding question is “Are they connecting to the young people today?" I know where my first new furniture came from but most of the young people are still living at the parents home!

Score - 93

Branding to a Caveman

It's important to understand how the brain works if you want to build a lasting brand. Al Ries and Jack Trout wrote a number of books on this topic in the '90s. The 22 Immutable laws of Marketing and Positioning: The battle for your mind are my two favorite. Their major point: be first in the customer's mind -- first in the market or category and first in positioning into customer's mind. Why? Because most people won't remember the second as easily. There are a number of explains to support this theory. If you look at Coca-Cola ($28.9 billion of sales) and Pepsi ($39.5 billion of sales) today they are both successful in the same category and Coca-Cola is the "real thing" (first in the minds of consumers) but Pepsi had successfully position itself as the youthful coke as the "new generation" to carve a new category.

The human brain is an incredible machine. A new book, Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by New York University psychologist Gary Marcus tackles the idea that we have two thinking systems inside our skulls. He argues that human evolution has created two distinct ways of thinking - an ancestral system that is instinctual and reflexive, and a more modern, deliberative one that involves reasoning. He explains that humans developed "contextual memory", which means we pull things from our memory by using context or clues that hint at what we are looking for, therefore we are better at the quick retrieval of general information rather than specific details.
Examples of this are seen in branding everyday, where we take complex products and simplify them down to one meaning full word. i.e., Vehicle Safety = Volvo, Fights Cavities = Crest, Just do it = Nike, It tastes awful = Buckley's, King of beers = Budweiser

So what does this mean when building brands? That you should keep it simple - stupid proof! Synthesizing its position down to a single thought or word has a better chance of survival.
Another insight Marcus reveals is that most pleasures are attributed from the ancestral, reflexive system. This would explain why we are always distracted and are attracted to anecdotal and emotional hearsay that affect the way we see the world, filter information and make irrational decisions.

While we like to portray ourselves as highly evolved logical, reasonable bioforms, we are still tied to our basic instincts. Tapping into this insight, brands must have an infinity to the non rational side of the brain. This would explain a number of successful products who have built their brands on emotion and why the best products don't necessarily win.

As David Ogilvy's quote "The customer isn't a moron, it's your mother," should be rewritten to finish, "it's a caveperson."

Google - Top Global Brand

Google was recently rated as the top global brand by BRANDZ™ (a rating system developed by market research and consultancy Millward Brown.). I am not so sure it is top of my brand cellar. I use it because it’s just there and seems to be the best search engine tool. But it has no memorable experience with my palette. I don’t have any affinity to the brand nor do I know or feel much attachment to it. It’s a tool that gets me somewhere, if there was a better tool out there I would quickly move on with out any guilt. I have no ill-feelings towards the Google brand I don’t have any fond memories or lasting impression – more like water than wine. This brand has the risk of become relevant in the future if they don’t make a solid and meaningful connect to their consumer. Do you remember Netscape? I guess it’s irrelevant.

Score - 84

How important is the trademark® name and logo™ design?

No one and no brand can live with out a name. The musician Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) tried for five years and failed. The pop star dropped his name and requested to be referred to as the icon oat left, a symbol he devised, for which there is no pronunciation. What was wrong with “Prince”? I could understand it if he was called “Sue”. Left with no pronunciation the media called him "The Artist formerly known as Prince," which was eventually shortened to the acronym "TAFKAP." In the end TAFKAP went back to his original name Prince.

The first most important element to a brand is the name and/or logo design. You must have the word mark and/or design mark trademarked and legally protected both locally and internationally. This is the first priority. If you can’t protect it move on and find something you can. Investing millions of dollars on building a brand on a trade name or mark doesn’t make sense if someone else can use it.

There have been many trademark disputes of misuse. Toy maker Mattel Inc. is always going to court to protect its clean-cut Barbie doll brand against misuse. Most recently they took legal actions against a pornographic website.

During World War I, the American government seized Bayer's trademark rights and sold them off to Sterling Drug. In 1995 it took $1 billion dollars for Bayer AG to acquire the Bayer Aspirin line and the rights to the Bayer brand name and trademark in North America (Sterling Winthrop) from SmithKline Beecham. Today, it is one of the top recognizable pharmaceutical brands in North America and in the world.

Not only do we compartmentalize information in our brains by words (i.e., trademark names) we also associate strongly with images (i.e., design marks). Sometime the design mark is a visual interpretation of the brand name like the pecten in Shell Oil or the M (golden arches) in MacDonald’s, or the apple in Apple. Over time a brand name is loaded with the brand experience and the design mark (a simple visual element) can be interchangeable with the trademark name.

The Nike swoosh is a wonderful example of transferring the Nike brand experience to an elegant design mark. Remember the PGA Masters game in 2005 when Tiger was at the 16th hole with a chip onto the green. The ball reached the cup as if in slow motion then for an endless period of time it sits on the lip of the hole. The Nike logo in full view, as the ball finally drops into the hole. The crowd goes wild and again a winner is confirmed. You couldn’t buy this type of advertising in a million years.



Links
USA basic facts on registering a trademark http://www.uspto.gov/go/tac/doc/basic/
Canadian basic facts on registering a trademark http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/sc_mrksv/cipo/tm/tm_gd_main-e.html

Disney and Apple Pie

How can’t you love to savor this distinct brand? We all grew up to the Wonderful World of Disney every Sunday evening (now I am showing my age). Traditionally crafted, it’s an apple pie image of America. Always delivering a happy ending. How can a brand with the goal to make you happy not succeed? I guess when it fails to make you happy. Since 1923 this brand has turn out many fabulous vintages and memories from all of its entertainment vehicles. Most brands are lucky to share a few moments of time with their customers; but in this case, the relationship goes deep and rich to the core values of the customer. This is truly a memorable brand that has a long and lingering finish…one you just don’t want to end.

Score - 95

Why am I building a personal brand?

The purpose of this blog is two-fold.

It’s about building my personal brand and about building brands in general. Everything in life, be it, corporate or personal is about building a brand (you could easily interchange the word “reputation” in place of “brand”). Everything we do in communications contains components of branding.

I have over 25 years of experiences in building brands. I know there are millions of pages written on this topic already but like a human being a brand is complex. I am hoping my diverse background will add another unique viewpoint and insights that may help others with their branding opportunities. As human being we have a built-in DNA that gives us a starting point for projecting our brand. In a company you have the opportunity to shape many aspects of the brand and how the company is portrayed.

You will also notice a wine theme happening. Wine is also another passion of mine. Making great wine is as complex as building great brands. There is as much science as there is art in building both (and sometimes luck doesn’t hurt).

In starting my journey I searched the internet to learn from others on how to begin building an online personal brand. I have found two wonderful bloggers who have build unique online brands that I am using as my guides. Thank you guys for your support. There is no shortage of resources on the topic of personal branding should you contemplate building a personal brand.

As I begin to write this for all to see (assume someone will read it). I ask the question: should you consciously build a personal brand and what is the risk if you do or don’t? It is true that we are all brands - distinct personality but most of us go through life unaware of what their brand essence. Nor do we consciously accentuate our positive traits to further build our brand. Or do we?

I must say that I am rather skeptical about the community/network rage (i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, Zoominfo, Naymz, MySpace). Do I need more communications? Do I need to be a part of an online community? I don’t know. So I am going to go head first into this to “learn by doing” (the 4-H motto).

But before I begin I must reconfirm what a brand is.

The brand definition

Here are some that I have learnt over the years:

The advertising guru of the 80’s David Ogilvy describes a brand as “the intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised.”

It’s a set of expectations based on past experiences. A brand is a promise that products, services and employees must live up to.

A brand is not an advertising campaign, a symbol or a logo.

A brand is a trusted, reliable old friend that you enjoy being associated with. It’s a positive relationship.

Brand architecture

As I recognize my brand and move it forward in a conscious manner I must be cognizant of the key components for a successful brand, which are:

Unique & memorable
Relevant & meaningful
Recognizable & clear
Consistent & actionable
Likeable

The brand audit

The first thing I did was step back and look at my brand. What was my promise? How am I perceived? These questions must be answered to understand my brand.

Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have research to fall back on to help answer these questions as I wasn’t sure I could objectively answer them myself. I mean really, who can objectively look into the mirror and analysis themselves?

Last year, I had a 360 degree assessment of my leadership skills. A 360 degree assessment is a survey conducted against your peers, boss, suppliers and direct reports. They have to rate you on a number of leadership skill areas and have the opportunity to provide both positive and negative feedback. From this I was able to pull out some key personality traits.

My brand audit begins with the traditional SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis.

Strengths	Weaknesses
Upbeat, positive and professional Excellent communicator Sensitive & respectful Good attitude & sense of humor Well organized Good at reading people A leader who can build great team spirit Excellent strategic thinker	Need to share more Seek out other opinions & viewpoints Solicit more feedback Doesn't always express his views Share his viewpoints more often
Threats	Opportunities
Keeping up with new technologies & new business models Time management Spread himself too thin to make a difference	Seek out more areas to influence Can make a positive contribution with his unique viewpoint

With this as the foundation, I now have to focus on the essence of my brand.

So what is my brand promise? What am I going to be first in to capture a place in my consumer’s mind?

As a connoisseur of fine brands, I will take my brand appreciation and insights and like a Sommeliers I will be eager to impart my knowledge and opinion in savoring the many brands that identify our lives. Brands define us and in return we define brands.

Starbuck...more than just coffee

Starbucks - the designer coffee. Also known as the coffee with an attitude. You can go to almost any major city around the world and get you grande, dry non-fat, extra hot, latte with sleeve prepared by a Barista.(check the latte lingo for more). Starbucks brand magic is the full sensory indulgency. It’s the ambience, the professional staff, the smells, the sounds (including its unique lingo) and finally the unique burnt taste, consistently executed every time, everywhere. Loyal customers proudly and daily carry their Starbuck status symbol in a form of a cup every where they go.

There are many lingering layers to Starbucks from its history, ethics and lasting aromas – a connoisseur’s delight!

Score - 97