Time to turn my attention to brands once again, after all the chaos and confusion that Trump’s tariffs have caused from the start of this year. I must say, though, that if companies have to raise prices of their goods in the US and elsewhere, it ought to be because of a superior dimension to their product or brand, not because of tariffs.
For years, the received wisdom in advertising and marketing circles has been that brands take a long time to build and even longer to sustain and maintain their leadership in the market. No argument with this, whatsoever. Brands do take years to build and this, if there is enough investment in the product’s advertising and marketing efforts over a sustained period of time. The logic behind this thinking has always been that brands take shape in consumers’ minds, and therefore take time to generate awareness and interest, create preference, repeat purchases, affinity and strong identification in consumers’ hearts and minds, etc. This is also true, but only to the extent that advertisers and marketers are the people who decide how consumers must think of their brands. Therefore, it is the marketing team and the advertising agency who help shape the brand in a certain way in consumers’ minds, and consumers only respond to whatever stimuli we put out there, starting with the product itself.
This leads me to believe that it is possible to hardwire the brand into the product right from the product development stage itself. After all, marketing teams at companies do think of product ideas after enough consideration about consumer need gaps, price points, competition and eventually the product/brand positioning is the strategy that is followed. Yet, not all companies focus on hardwiring the brand into the product from its concept stage.
Perhaps at this stage I should clarify what I mean by hardwiring the brand into the product. I am referring to a process whereby the company’s ethos and brand values as well as strengths and expertise or competitive advantage get etched into each and every product, to the extent that the differentiation is deep and not merely on the surface.
It is obvious that the main advantage of hardwiring a brand into a product is the depth and quality of differentiation that can be achieved. The differentiation so achieved is also likely to be more enduring as it is not easy to emulate or replicate and it would be a while before competition can catch up by doing more of the same. In fact, hardwiring a brand into the product can provide the company with a significant headstart and can be such an effective weapon against competition that they would be forced to take a different tack and hardwire their own brand differently.
There is another important reason why it makes sense to hardwire a brand into the product. It can be an effective way to link the company with its products. If companies did this right from the start, it would provide each brand of theirs with a strong corporate brand dimension that is accretive over time. The product-corporate connection is deepened as well and this helps increase the differentiation.
At this stage, it might help for me to provide a few examples of brands/companies that hardwire brand into product well, and these are few. Apple, Nike, IBM, Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola, because it has such a vast portfolio of drinks brands under its belt now, might be in danger of losing that brand hardwiring and the distinctiveness that comes with it. The company must be conscious of the dangers and ought to take necessary steps to prevent them. Nike, with all its troubles recently, is also in serious danger of losing its uniqueness and competitive advantage if it doesn’t focus on its core strengths and innovation, as I have written before on my blog.
As an aside, I must mention that while browsing stock image site, Unsplash, I saw plenty of Nike shoes images this time, when last time there was only a store display image that I have used previously. However, I thought none of the product images do justice to the Nike brand and I hope the company isn’t using such product shots in their advertising. Since Nike makes specialized shoes for different sports and fitness training regimens, I was wondering if the “science of shoe soles” isn’t their main strength. And from this thought, the idea of replaceable outer soles struck me as a possible innovation by Nike on my morning walk, one day. I know it sounds like a crazy idea, and the company shouldn’t attempt it unless they are absolutely certain that certain sports or fitness shoes can share the same upper, while the soles can be changed by just sliding one sole off, and the other sole on. Shoe soles and the soul of sport also have plenty of possibility in communication.
There are other advantages of hardwiring a brand into product right from the product concept stage. It forces marketers and their advertising agencies to think of both the product brand as well as the corporate brand. While the product brand would emerge from the product’s attributes and benefits, the corporate brand is all about corporate brand strategy and how the company differentiates the way it does business. In fact, corporate brand strategy ought to be the starting point and once in place, it ought to guide the product portfolio, the individual brand strategies, etc. Because the corporate brand strategy would be based on a set of distinctive corporate values, vision and mission of the company, product brands too must reflect the most important of these right from the product development stage itself.
If you consider the few brands/companies I mentioned above as being good examples of hardwiring brands into products/services, each of them is led by a single compelling brand/corporate mission. For Apple, it would have to be continuously improving the consumer interface with technology, especially the visual interface. Nike has always been intent on encouraging us to be better than ourselves in fitness/sports. IBM is focused on providing services that help build a smarter – more connected – planet. And Coca-Cola has always been about the pleasure of shared refreshment. In all these cases, the meshing of individual product and corporate brand is so complete that we would be hardpressed to separate the strands of product features from the corporate ones. It is what I call the etching of corporate brand ethos and values into every product.
Hardwiring the brand into the product can be achieved in various ways, and usually a combination of many approaches might be desirable. We start with corporate brand strategy, of course, and a clearly differentiated one. Individual brand strategy differentiating the product can be layered onto the corporate brand values and mission. If the product concept or design can reflect this brand differentiation, even better. I think I remember reading somewhere long ago that at Apple, the design department under Jonathan Ive was considered the marketing department, and he and Steve Jobs got along famously which helped because I think Jobs was a great marketing mind as well. If product design is intrinsic to your company’s differentiated brand strategy, you’re better off putting it at the heart of your company’s marketing function.
This would be most important in product categories such as consumer electronics, cars, jewellery and watches, fine writing instruments, sports shoes and fashion, but it can easily extend to services such as hotels and airlines.
Hardwiring a brand into a product from its conception requires strategic discipline as well as imagination. Because as I said earlier in this article, consumers may not always know what’s better for them until it actually arrives; marketers do know and operate from a position of relative strength, so they need to use their knowledge and skills responsibly and wisely. And although rare, I think it is time for marketers to involve their advertising agencies even more in brand development, right from the product development stage. The imaginative and creative expressions that hardwiring a brand can take, along with strategic purpose, are all areas where advertising agencies can contribute and make a big difference to the way brands are built. Including building intellectual property and brand assets for marketers.
In my blog posts that many of you might have read, I have shared my thoughts on strategy and communication ideas that have endeavoured to create this hardwired differentiation for brands. In my brand strategy and thoughts on the JLR corporate brand as well as the separate brands, Jaguar and Land Rover, I have attempted to position JLR as makers of British luxury sports classics, and let the brand values flow into Jaguar as well as Land Rover, keeping in mind the competitive framework as well as the implications of technological changes for all of them. I have also worked on the vertical integration of the JLR brand into Tata Motors, the parent company.
On Samsung Galaxy, my thought process was guided by the need to differentiate from Apple as well as the Chinese brands of smartphones, and to set it in a clear product/technology strength that Samsung has – chips technology. My brand strategy for Samsung also recommends that they extend the Samsung Galaxy brand to include TVs, including Smart TVs.
I have touched upon the importance and centrality of design in hardwiring brands in my brand strategy and thoughts on Tanishq jewellery as well as Air Vistara. In both these brands, there is also a clear attempt to internationalise the brands even as their soul remains Indian. I was on a similar thought process track for Titan watches, which I lost to termites at my aged parents’ place in Goa and I haven’t yet recreated this from memory and shared them on my blog.
In my brand strategy and ideas for Chivas Regal as well as The Glenlivet, you will find a clear attempt to strengthen these Scotch Whisky brands even more through differentiation, as well as to connect them better with their new parent company, Pernod Ricard. And on Pernod Ricard corporate brand itself, I have recommended that they build their business through making better consumers of wines and spirits worldwide, while keeping to their core values of creating conviviality.
I think back to my old days at Ogilvy Delhi, when even as a writer, I worked with tools like the OMI Blueprint for strategy that Mr SR Ayer drilled into our heads. Then, in later years, Geert Hofstede’s diagram and tool was introduced to help us arrive at the core values of brands and what they represent to consumers. This was supposed to be based on a brand audit that needed to be conducted with actual consumers of the brand.
I think the time for a new tool or understanding of how a brand can be hardwired into products is here. Not based on what consumers think or tell us, but what a company aspires to do with its brand right from the start. What consumers think and feel about the product and brand will be known to us anyway, and there is always consumer or market research to tell us that.
So, yes, brands take many years to build and grow. But if we began thinking of them at the corporate level and while developing products, we might have a better chance of making them more differentiated and helping consumers make more clearly preferred choices. It might also help companies and their brands grow together in a more cohesive and integrated manner.
Peripatetic Perch 