For years, advocates of branding have battled the Empiricists, the group that insists that unless they can explain something, it doesn't exist.
I can discuss the The Empiricists with affection. I was one until the mid-1980s. Brands could not matter, I thought, because they are too intangible, amorphous, and illogical.
Then came a series of conversion events.
The first was the Pepsi Challenge. These commercials demonstrated that people preferred Pepsi to Coke -- by a significant margin. The problem for Pepsi, however, was that this preference did not matter. People still bought Coke.
Then Coke decided that Pepsi was right: Pepsi did taste better. What if we make Coke taste better? Wouldn't we increase our market share?
The result, of course, was a fiasco: New Coke. Taste testers loved it. But in real life, people did not just prefer Old Coke. They demanded it.
The story doesn't end there. Recently, Read Montague, the Director of the Human Neuroimaging Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, decided to repeat the Pepsi Challenge -- with a twist.
Montague performed the challenge while scanning the brain activity of the tasters. Once again, more tasters preferred Pepsi. Their ventral putamens, one of the brain's reward centers, especially loved Pepsi; they responded five times stronger than the ventral putamens of Coke lovers.
Then Montague added another twist.
He told the subjects which brands they were tasting. Now, the subjects overwhelmingly preferred Coke. And their brains acted differently, too. Their medial prefrontal cortexes, the portion of our brains strongly involved in our sense of self, fired at intense rates. Coke, it appears, strongly links to our sense of self. Not Coke the taste, but Coke the very idea: Coke the brand.
This discovery did not surprise people who had been involved in the testing of hair restoration products. In controlled tests, 40 percent of Group A reported that Extra Strength Rogaine had produced "significant hair gain" for them. Group B had even better luck; 60 percent reported hair gain. But Group A had not been given a hair restoration product. They were a control group! They 'd been handed a vial of oil and water. Yet they saw hair! The brand name attached to their vial convinced them that it would grow hair, and so it did -- even though it didn't.
Even before the Pepsi Challenge, there was an earlier commercial that should have quieted the Empiricists. Those classic spots for Folgers freeze-dried coffee took television viewers to famous American restaurants, where an on-screen announcer said that we were in the famous San Francisco restaurant the Blue Fox, and that the diners had just finished their coffee.
"And what they don't know," the announcer told us, "is that the coffee they've been drinking. . .is Folgers Crystals." The announcer then asked the diner what she thought of her coffee.
"Fabulous," she said, as did the men and women in other famous restaurants across the country. Freeze-dried coffee is fabulous? Not now, not then, not ever..
But the coffee tasted fabulous, of course, because it was from the Blue Fox. The Blue Fox must serve great coffee. And so it was -- even though it wasn't.
Even the Empiricists must realize this now: Brands do not just attract people. They change how they think -- and feel.
How is your brand doing?
Excerpts from Harry and Christine Clifford Beckwith's new book, You: A Field Guide to Selling Yourself (Warner Books September 2006).
The Lighter Side
- Welcome to new client H&R Block, giving Beckwith Partners a near-clean sweep of the world's ten largest tax and CPA companies and firms.
- Kudos to Harry Beckwith IV on his wonderful work and long prayed-for graduation from college, and a terrific job offer in the Silicon Valley.
- Similar congrats to Will Beckwith, who appears headed to Mecca -- the nonpareil golf courses at Bandon Dunes, Oregon -- for work beginning this fall.
- Look for our new website, too, with sincere thanks to Single Throw of New Jersey for their expert work.
- You, Inc: The Art of Selling Yourself will appear on March 1, 2007.
Find out how to get a newsletter for your own company.
The city of Rochester, Minnesota recently joined the unusual number of cities that have discovered branding.
Unfortunately, they discovered it without understanding it, as has happened to every city but two. (More on that in a moment.)
On June 20 they announced their new campaign, which is -- we kid you not:
Rah Rah Rochester: More Than You Know.
Where to begin? First, the role of marketing communications is not to invite prospects to figure out what makes you special. This common marketing failure is most obvious in one of the world's most common and ineffectual theme lines: "Come discover the (Brand X) difference." These appalling slogans suggest that the marketers studied the product, couldn't identify its point of difference, and insisted that we come take a look and see if we can.
"More than we know?" Well of course Rochester, Minnesota is more than we know! Every person, place or thing is. If someone knows anything about Rochester, it's that it's the home of the Mayo Clinic, not among the world's more compelling tourist attractions. We also probably can figure out that Rochester, like the rest of the state, is cold. Perhaps this new slogan is suggesting that it's more cold than we know. Or maybe more doctors live there than we thought.
What are they saying?
Hard to say, but what they are revealing is that they suffer an enormous insecurity complex. They really don't think there is much there. If they did, after all, they'd tell us. But hey, come anyway! We're not really proud of our city but it's -- well, it's not as bad as you thought.
And Rah Rah Rochester? The agency said they wanted to come up with something sassy. Sassy, however, only works if it's up-to-date. "Rah Rah" sits right across the aisle from "23 Skidoo" and "Sis Boom Bah," corsets and marching bands. Come to Rochester and see our spittoons!
New York once got it right: they gave us "I Love New York, "which worked in multiple ways. More recently, Las Vegas got it right with "What happens here, stays here" -- a trait which has earned that city the lifelong gratitude of several million men who arrive in Las Vegas and are suddenly seized with an immense yearning for the company of hookers. But beyond this tale of those two cities, the landscape of destination branding looks bleak.
How bleak is it? Someone recently compiled a list of the best city slogans. The number-one slogan for any Midwest City -- and again we are kidding you not -- was this:
Where the eagle soars and the carp drops!
Like some of you, I wondered if a typesetter had accidentally transposed the a and r in carp. That slogan seemed to make more sense, and certainly would get more attention. Then I wondered…if that was number one, what did number ten sound like?
Let's not think about it.
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Harry Beckwith is the best-selling author of Selling
the Invisible, which has been named one of the top
ten business books of all time, with over 675,000
copies sold in 14 translations. He is also author of
The Invisible Touch and What Clients Love, which
have sold over 275,000 copies in 13 translations. He has been a keynote speaker for 14 Fortune 200 annual sales meetings and the National Speakers' Association convention, and has |
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made presentations in Europe, South America and Asia. He is
cited regularly in national media including CNN,
The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Entrepreneur,
Crain's New York Business and numerous
American, European and Asian newspapers. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Stanford University, Harry resides in Minneapolis with his wife Christine Clifford Beckwith. He is the father of six children. |
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