Lessons Learned from Week 2 of Brand Management

(Sorry, fell behind on class notes blogging. Trying to catch up now!)

(Reading notes above, class notes from guest speaker from Budweiser marketing below)

The Global Brand CEO

• Focus on global brands
  
• Market is globalizing
  
• World is really flat
  
• Connected customer
  
• Globally converging consumer needs
  
• Cost of differentiation has exploded
• Story of Johnnie Walker campaign

What keeps global marketers awake at night

• Consumers are taking control
  
• Brand consistency across markets
  
• Story of Dove / real women beauty campaign

What global brands do best

• Universal Consumer Truth
  
• Global “end/inherent values” all consumers respond to
  
• Johnnie Walker: universal appeal of progress
  
• Using a common language
  
• Purposeful positioning: brand stands for something, a belief, pursues strategy that leverages brand’s reach and impact
• Understand difference you’re going to make in customer’s life
• Top: purpose: The brand's contribution to the world
• Proof: Hard evidence to substantiate the brand promise
  
• Discriminator: The unique differentiator versus competitors
  
• Personality: The brand defined in terms of human characteristics
  
• Benefit: The functional and emotional benefits the brand offers
  
• Insight: The universal truth, the human need and the friction the brand is built on
  
• Target: Demographic and psychographic description of the target consumer
  
• Market: The market the brand competes in
  
• Total brand experience
  

Drivers of global marketing effectiveness

• Connect: foster interdependency in organization
  
• Inspire: ignite organization
  
• Focus: align priorities and targets
  
• Organize: clarify roles and responsibilities
  
• Build: develop and leverage marketing capability
  

Grow

• Brand ideals drive the performance of the highest growth businesses.
  
• The brand ideals of the highest growth businesses center in one of five areas, or fields, of fundamental human values.
  
• Eliciting Joy: Activating experiences of happiness, wonder, and limitless possibility.
  
• Enabling Connection: Enhancing the ability of people to connect with one another and the world in meaningful ways.
  
• Inspiring Exploration: Helping people explore new horizons and new experiences.
  
• Evoking Pride: Giving people increased confidence, strength, security, and vitality.
  
• Impacting Society: Affecting society broadly.
• The highest growth businesses are run by business artists, leaders whose primary medium is brand ideals.
  
• Business artists excel in similar practices that constitute an operating system for generating and sustaining high growth
  

Ideal tree framework

• Trunk: competition
  
• Points of difference
  
• Points of parity
  
• 5 branches
  
• Discover an ideal in one of 5 fields of human values
  
• Build your culture around your ideal
  
• Communicate your ideal to engage employees and customers
  
• Deliver a near-ideal customer experience
  
• Evaluate your progress and people against your ideal
• Story of Method
• Mantra: keep it weird
• Male founders had to clean up room and wanted non-toxic cleaning products that had a great user experience; didn’t find any
  
• Ideal: be a catalyst in a happy, healthy home revolution that improves human health
  
• Impacting society
  
• Convinced famous bottle designer to do design on rev share basis
  
• Did some initial testing with stores in their area
  
• Cold-called Target buyer
  
• Phone call from mom whose son drank bottle; told her it’s safe and to relax
  
• Ops trucks using biodiesel fuel and telling marketing story on the side
  
• Building culture around its ideal
  
• Hiring critical
  
• Someone designated as hiring manager
• Assembles cross-functional interview team of 7-10
• 1-3 invited back for another interview
• Have to do homework assignment to address a current business challenge, strategic and tactical; must also answer how they will keep Method weird
  
• Fast prototyping of candidate, design thinking
  
• Open floor plan, writing on walls
  
• Communicating Method Ideal
  
• Viral videos
  
• No traditional advertising
  
• 4 pillars
  
• Surface design
  
• Premium fragrance
  
• Efficacy
  
• Sustainability
  
• In-store marketing and word of mouth
• Deliver a near-ideal experience
• Design thinking, attractive design like Apple’s
  
• Evaluate progress and people against Ideal
  
• 4 metrics
  
• Style
  
• Substance
  
• Advocacy
  
• Gross margin
  
• Weekly product council meeting
  
• 1-page monthly scorecard and longer quarterly scorecard
  

Class

• Hard to have a common culture w/o common framework
  
• Beliefs from organizational history
  
• Go back to start and look at writings of founders
  
• Values help a brand choose what to do
  
• Zappos culture video
  
• J&J Credo (order of priority): doctors, employees, community, shareholders
  
• Explaining complex products: start w/ high ideal, then get into how do it through product
  

Budweiser

• “Driven by image”
  
• Dream: to be the best beer company in a better world
  
• “Best” through KPIs
  
• “Better” came from needing to hold on to something from growth
  
• Dream-People-Culture platform
  
• Never complacent with results
  
• Love competition
  
• Hire people smarter than you
  
• 200 brands through M&A
  
• 14 billion dollar brands in 1 category (beer)
  
• 80% of profit from 20 brands; give these most focus, and those outperform market
  
• Consumer empathy
  
• People as people, not people as beer bottles
  
• Power of personal relationships, physical, 1 to 1
  
• Video: history of beer and connecting people
  
• Beer = original social network
  
• Physical + digital social network of today
  
• 2 pyramids: consumer attitude (how much you love me) + consumer behavior (how much you drank me)
  
• 24 modules measured yearly of brand performance
• Bud is 2nd largest brand for ABI (after Bud Light)
• American icon
  
• 20+ years of Bud share and volume decline
  
• Global icon under pressure, can’t do global strategy w/o fixing US
  
• Root cause analysis
  
• Lack of perceived presence, less relevant
  
• Average age going up
  
• Consumer base perceived low class
  
• Bad drinking experience
  
• Used consumer collages
• Good images of American icons, military, rebels, American cars
  
• Global Budweiser dream: 1st and only true global beer brand
  
• 5 critical segments (types of drinkers and occasions)
  
• 3 perspectives: way they see themselves, the way others see them, the way they want others to see them
  
• Roper values / global map: pleasure, people, tradition, tradition axes
  
• VBB: values-based positioning model
  
• Consumer benefits
  
• Functional: flavorful, balanced, reminds of first sip
  
• Emotional: promise of great camaraderie
  
• Reasons to believe: care and quality, ingredients, crafted since 1876
  
• Brand personality: inspirational, heroic
  
• Brand essence: brand ideal celebration and optimism in a bottle
  
• Brand ideal: exists to inspire people to champion opportunity and achieve their dreams
  
• Consumer values: authenticity, freedom
  
• Demand segment: loyalists, experimenters
  
• One compelling, unifying creative idea
  
• "Celebrate anticipation"
  
• One global look and feel
  
• Reality TV
  
• Can redesign
  
• Packaging redesign
  
• Baseball
  
• Nascar
  
• American flag on can