Brand Story - Stella Artois

Every brand tells a story .. some just tell it better than others. One of our primary ways of making sense of the world and our place in it is through story telling. The same is true for brands. Brand stories give meaning to what a company is and what it does. They're strategic, they build on themselves chapter by chapter over time, and they grow as they respond to changing markets and changing customers.

I feel that one of the best brands at advertising its story honestly and simply is Stella Artois. Everything they do in advertising helps the brand grow while reaching back to the brand's rich history. Check out a recent commercial on YouTube: Live the Life Legere. Every little detail about this commercial works to build the brand: the music, the actors, the sense of humour, the location, the light approach. In my opinion, it's a brand story done well.

Positioning les brands

Brand Positioning is how a product appears in relation to other products in the market.

Here are the 5 main factors that go into defining a brand position as defined by Susan Gunelius, President and CEO of Keysplash Creative.

 

1. Brand Attributes

What the brand delivers through features and benefits to consumers.

2. Consumer Expectations

What consumers expect to receive from the brand.

3.  Competitor attributes

What the other brands in the market offer through features and benefits to consumers.

4.  Price

An easily quantifiable factor – Your prices vs. your competitors’ prices.

5.  Consumer perceptions

The perceived quality and value  of your brand in consumer’s minds (i.e., does your brand offer the cheap solution, the good value for the money solution, the high-end, high-price tag solution, etc.?).

 

Brands can be positioned against competing brands on a perceptual map.  The maps I’ve seen and used in class usually have four sections on the x/y axis.  You place a dot where you think that brand fits in relation to Price (high vs. low) and Quality (high vs. low).  They’re effective as a starting point for visually positioning your brand against others, but they leave out some important variables like social or environmental forays.  Or how family friendly they are.  Or if they’re bad-ass.  Any of the more detailed perceptual maps get immediately confusing to me, though.  I’d much prefer to position my brand with a good old fashioned sentence or two.

Creating Brand Personality

Whether a brand is a product or a company, the company has to decide what personality traits the brand is to have. There are various ways of creating brand personality. One way is to match the brand personality as closely as possible to that of the consumers or to a personality that they like. The process will be

1.define the target audience

2.find out what they need, want and like

3.build a consumer personality profile

4.create the product personality to match that profile

This type of approach is favored by companies such as Levi Strauss, who research their target audience fastidiously. For Levis the result is a master-brand personality that is:

-original

-masculine

-sexy

-youthful

-rebellious

-individual

-free

-American

A related product brand personality (for a specific customer group) such as Levi's 501 jeans is:

-romantic

-sexually attractive

-rebellious

-physical prowess

-resourceful

-independent

-likes being admired

Both profiles appeal mostly to the emotional side of people's minds - to their feelings and sensory function. This profiling approach aims to reinforce the self-concept of the consumers and their aspirations. The approach is ideal for brands that adopt a market-niche strategy, and can be extremely successful if a market segment has a high degree of global homogeneity, as is the case with Levis.

The importance of Brand Architecture

Brand architecture serves as a navigation tool for customers.  It helps minimize customer confusion by laying out the product structure in a way that makes it easy for customers to find what they are looking for and to understand what the company has to offer.

 

An example: 

In 2001, AT&T’s “Managed Services” division was facing a trend in downward sales.  It had over 12,000 offerings, the majority of which were sold to customers under the “Managed Services” brand.  They quickly noticed two major problems:

1)    customers and sales force were confused by the vastness of the offering

2)    customers saw AT&T as a product company rather than a company capable of providing value-added services as the “Managed Services” name implied.

 

AT&T had to figure out what their target customers wanted from a telecommunication solutions provider.  They found two distinct customer segments, each with fundamentally different needs and ways of thinking about telecom solutions.

1)    “Product Buyers” look for specific product sets and sophisticated components and thus require a wide variety of distinct products

2)    “Solutions buyers” are less expert and seek holistic business solutions that are all-inclusive and off-the-shelf.

 

With this insight, AT&T developed a dual brand architecture model that presented the same products in two different ways (enabling each segment to find what they were looking for).  This new structure allowed “Product Buyers” to navigate offerings by product category and type, while “Solutions Buyers” could choose between different groupings of offers that met their overall needs.  As a result, customers could more easily speak about and explain what AT&T could offer.

 

AT&T also renamed the division “AT&T Enterprise” in order to reflect the broader focus.

Extending your Brand

Near the beginning of the semester, our class learned about Brand extensions. The most important thing about brand extensions (and surely the only way companies can make money out of them) is if they’re relevant to the brand. The company might make money on the initial product sell, but it could be destructive over time. Stock prices might not go down right away, but over time a brand will likely lose equity (or value) if associated with products or services that don’t make sense for that brand.

Here are some of the worst brand extensions of 2008 (as noted by Brandweek’s editor-in-chief, Todd Wasserman).

- Burger King Underwear
- Rolling Stones Ice Wine
- Sleeping Beauty pens for $1,200
- Playboy Energy Drink
- Kellogg’s Hip Hop Street Wear
- Another one he mentioned from before 2008 was Cheetos Lip Balm.

The only one I can kind of get on side with is the Playboy Energy Drink. Though it does seem a little too specific in focus (guys wanting energy for sex, or maybe out partying with the opposite sex), it still lines up a little bit with the Playboy ideology.

Todd also mentioned – for contrast – a brand extension that made a lot of sense. V8 Gourmet Soup recently hit the markets and is selling very well. I have to confess: I would never drink their juice (outside of a Caesar situation), but I would definitely try their soup because I assume it’s healthy and delicious. I make that assumption largely from what I’ve learned about their brand. That’s pretty good brand equity.

What makes us loyal to brands?

Brand loyalty is a consumer’s preference to buy a particular brand in a product category.  It happens when consumers perceive that the brand offers the right product features, image, or level of quality at the right price. This becomes the foundation for a new buying habit. Basically, consumers will make a trial purchase of the brand and, after satisfaction, will form habits and keep purchasing the same brand because the product is safe and familiar.  Brand loyalists are committed to a brand, willing to pay a higher price for a brand over other brands, and recommend a brand to others.

Consumers must like the product in order to develop loyalty to it.  In order to convert occasional purchasers into brand loyalists, habits have to be reinforced. Consumers must be reminded of the value of their purchase and encouraged to continue purchasing the product in the future.

To encourage repeat purchases, advertising before and after the sale is important. In addition to creating awareness and promoting initial purchases, advertising shapes and reinforces consumer attitudes so these attitudes mature into beliefs, which need to be reinforced until they develop into loyalty. For example, I read once that the most avid readers of a travel ad are those who just returned from the destination. Ads reinforce a traveler’s perception and behaviour. It’s easier to reinforce behaviours than to change them, and the sale is just the beginning of an opportunity to create brand loyalty.

A few things that can be done to foster brand loyalty:

Have an unbeatable product - if you want to keep customers, make sure they can get what they want from your product.

Give customers an incentive to repeat-purchase – a chance to win a prize, in-pack discount coupon, etc.

Stand behind your product - if customers don’t trust the product, they won’t purchase it again.

Know your top buyers and treat them best of all -  I think of the 80/20 rule we learned in school: 80% of sales will come from the top 20% of customers.

Make it easier to buy your brand than competing brands - Customers appreciate convenience more than ever.

Have kick-ass customer service! - serve the customer and they will repeat-purchase again and again.  I read a book – A New Brand World – where the author, Scott Bedbury, talks about being the Brand Manager for Starbucks coffee.  Now that is a company that is all about customer service; they have quite an extensive employee training program to make sure all employees are doing their best to provide the best product and the best customer service at all times (because they know that great customer service leads to brand loyalty!).

Brand Characters

Brand characters have been used many times by many companies. The goal of these characters is to give consumers a recognizable icon they can associate with a specific brand. Usually, these characters have distinct qualities that the advertising company wants people to associate with the brand.

A few you might remember:

1) Tucan Sam (Fruit Loops).

Sam is an exotic bird (like how Fruit Loops is an exotic cereal falling just outside standard cereal guidelines). Sam asks us to "follow his nose" (which is huge) and it will lead us to Fruit Loops cereal. This illustrates the specific fruity smell people have come to associate with the cereal. He's adventurous and confident, and he's always up for fun. These are qualities the cereal company wants consumers to associate with the Fruit Loops brand.

2) The Geico Gecko (Geico Insurance)

Here is a small gecko touting insurance. At first, the animal choice doesn't make a lot of sense when representing Geico's brand of insurance. Upon closer inspection, however, we find that the gecko is well-mannered, thoughtful, a little timid yet reasonable, and he even has an English/Australian accent. These characteristics epitomize Geico's approach to insurance and targets the type of consumer looking for insurance. These consumers want insurance, but they don't want someone pushy or overbearing to sell it to them. They want to buy from someone who has a quiet confidence, someone who knows what they're talking about. They don't want to buy insurance from someone who jumps on ideas; instead, they want to meet with someone who's thoughtful and reasonable .. someone who won't take advantage of them. This brand character is especially good because the gecko is very recognizable (no other company uses it) and the name gecko is very close to the company name (Geico).

3)Snuggles the Bear (Snuggles fabric softener)

This is one of the most successful brand characters in my opinion. Not only does Snuggles epitomize softness (a benefit of the product), but it also carries subtle messages about how the product is used. A cute voice with laughter brings a tone of family (kids) to the laundry process. The bear even represents stuffed toys everywhere that get thrown in the wash because they've been lugged around everywhere by their adoring owners (kids). Snuggles is very effective because it carries a feeling with it that parents doing laundry want to associate with their values.

Some brand characters take on the qualities of the brand while others focus more on the connection between the brand and the target demographic. Some symbolize the creator of the brand (Orville Redenbacker). Some brand characters fall in between which seems to hinder the goals they're trying to achieve. Because of a lack of focus, the character sends out mixed messages about what the product or brand should be trying to convey. Some brand characters are very effective if they simply demonstrate an alignment of values or core beliefs that the brand also embodies (like Michael Jordan and Nike).