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WINNER:

I’ve written about Netflix before, but it’s high time to do it again. This week the company has posted revenue that almost doubled from a year ago. Not only that but it continues to add subscribers at a rapid rate and now boasts a total of 23.6 million subscribers worldwide.

Netflix continues to do everything right in this wild world of new, Internet-streamed entertainment. It made a deal for the entire Mad Men series and another one for Glee. And it’s developing its own content just like a network by buying the rights to House of Cards, an original series starring Kevin Spacey.

Bottom line, what we are seeing is the continued evolution of a company that wisely knew what its brand was from the start. So much so that it’s transition from a mail order business to a deliverer of Internet content didn’t even require a name change – if anything, its name suggested that the company knew its destiny from the start.

So hats off to Netflix. In a world where many media companies are struggling to make sense of the landscape, this company, which knew its marketing mission cold from the start, continues to flourish.

LOSER:

This week Apple faced some pretty serious questions about whether its iPhone and other popular devices collect and store user’s location information without their knowledge.

The Wall Street Journal has now gone on the record and said that a test it conducted shows that the iPhone does just that. This backs up the conclusion of two researchers last week and casts a serious pall over the Apple brand.

For one, Apple’s success has been based on the best sort of marketing there is: identifying customer need and then consistently satisfying it. One important need is the sense that each device is not only personalized but is working for the user, a customized and dynamic tool.

But the revelation that the device might be serving another agenda without the user even knowing that…well, that runs completely counter to the idea that the customer comes first.

Not only that, but The Wall Street Journal suggests that the iPhone’s location file doesn’t stop working even after the user turns it off. Last year, after a similar uproar, Apple claimed that the information they received from these devices was anonymous, but the problem with brands is that there is only so much good will to go around. After a while, the customer has a right to start doubting what a company says about its products.

For a long time, Apple has been able to roll through problems like the antenna fiasco, Steve Jobs’ email rudeness to a curious customer, etc. It had built serious marketing equity into its products and was at that place coveted by celebrity and corporate brands alike. It could do no wrong.

But folks, that’s changed, and now brand damage is accumulating. What Apple needs to say, and more importantly do, is to reassure its customers that they come first.

I’m not certain that Steve Jobs is the right guy for this. His response to this problem is apparently to completely deny that Apple tracks its consumers. Wow. That doesn’t sound too smart considering that some pretty serious players are claiming that there is no doubt that Apple does.

Bottom line, there has to be complete transparency. If people begin to think that when they are buying an Apple product, they are actually buying something that spies on them, then the response must be to immediately apologize for anything that Apple has done and then absolutely vanquish this notion through an active company campaign to promote its products as “spy free.”

Such an approach could actually end up being a huge benefit for Apple by putting it in the lead again on an issue that is no doubt going to become bigger as more and more consumers become worried about the security of their devices. Apple could find yet another way to differentiate itself from the competition.

If it doesn’t do something like this then the company might actually begin to undermine its product lines by being seen as untrustworthy and ultimately not on the consumers’ side.

And, remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY:
If your brand is doing something wrong, fix it and find a way to make a competitive advantage.

John Tantillo is a marketing and branding expert who has a doctorate in applied research psychology. He is president of the Marketing Department of America and markets his own services as "The Marketing Doctor." He is also the author of People Buy Brands, Not Companies and an AMA member.

The opinions expressed in this post are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Marketing Association.

Posted by Piet at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

WINNER:

230 years after the American revolution and there is still only one royal family that really counts: the British royal family.

With all the hype over the upcoming wedding of the young British prince (despite polls showing that most Americans don’t care), you have to wonder how a family that should be an anachronism in the modern world has managed to keep going strong.

Jerry Seinfeld recently weighed in on the wedding declaring the royal family and the pageantry do nothing but dress up.

Seinfeld is a great comedian, but he’s wrong about the royal family. If this was all about dress up and fantasy then they would have been finished long ago, another footnote in the dustbin of history.

Bottom line, the royal family is a brand that has withstood the test of time because of a basic integrity and identity that people can readily grasp and ultimately respect.

The recent hit movie, The King’s Speech, shows us why. At the center is the struggle of the would-be king to conquer a severe speech impediment in order to speak to his people.

What is never questioned is why on earth would this man work so hard to fix his stammer? After all, even back then a British monarch didn’t really have genuine power.

Bottom line, the crown was and is all about service and duty. That is the brand and in a world where self-dealing and “what’s in it for me” is the general rule, this brand stands out as a kind of counter-example.

What has made the royal family such a force is its basic consistency. Sure there have been scandals and missteps but what the royal family has done is stayed true to its core characteristics – like any great brand. And like any great brand, when it has changed and adapted, it has done so carefully rather than recklessly, letting go of some of the royal conventions (i.e. not marrying commoners) but holding onto others.

The result: it’s 2011 and we’re still talking about them. That is an achievement that is a lot more than play acting.

LOSER:

Research in Motion has entered the crowded tablet market with The Blackberry PlayBook.

Reviews haven’t been all that bad.

According to the techies, the PlayBook has some real strengths. For example, unlike the iPad it can play Flash video and apparently its word processor is better. One review even called its display “bright, crisp” and “gorgeous.”

Fact is, Apple’s iPad will be hard to beat no matter what, but no brand ever succeeds by delivering products that don’t meet customer needs.

What RIM has done is a classic branding mistake. It’s seen a very lucrative but crowded market and jumped in before figuring out what it can offer that the market leader doesn’t.

Sure some of PlayBook’s features might beat the iPad, but there are two big problems. There is virtually no legal content to play on the PlayBook and that means that “gorgeous” display isn’t much good right now for most users. But, more importantly, PlayBook doesn’t beat iPad on price.

Turn the clock back 25 years and we had Apple getting blown out of the water by lesser technology at a much cheaper price point. That finished Apple then because customers were willing to get less value as long as they could pay a lot less money.

RIM and other competitors need to remember this: If they want to dislodge Apple or even take a moderate slice out of the big tablet pie, they will need to launch with a comparable product at much lower cost – even if it means losing money at first.

And, remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

TODAY'S TANTILLO TAKEAWAY:
The biggest stumbling block for a brand is inconsistency.

John Tantillo is a marketing and branding expert who has a doctorate in applied research psychology. He is president of the Marketing Department of America and markets his own services as "The Marketing Doctor." He is also the author of People Buy Brands, Not Companies and an AMA member.

The opinions expressed in this post are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Marketing Association.

Posted by Piet at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seattle-based Starbucks created some noise in the branding world when it announced it would change its iconic logo in early 2011. Now that the logo is here, how big of an impact will it have on the brand overall? The jury is still out, it seems, but this logo refresh might turn out to be a costly marketing move that doesn’t generate the desired—or any—impact, experts say. Starbucks’ new logo, which appears on cups and in the company’s advertising but not yet on most store signage, no longer sports the green “Starbucks Coffee” ring and instead shows only the image of the Starbucks mermaid or “siren.” According to research from CoreBrand, a New York-based branding consultancy, Starbucks’ brand favorability is on the decline and therefore the new logo is an unnecessary distraction for the company.Favorability among U.S. business decision-makers grew from 2000 to 2007 but has declined since then. “When your favorability is in decline, dropping the name from the logo is not a good idea. It’s probably not going to make much of a dent in their overall brand, but the trend is saying that they’re not as good as they used to be in terms of their brand building,” says James Gregory, CEO of CoreBrand. Other experts disagree. When the logo was announced, Andy Payne, global executive creative director at New York-based branding consultancy Interbrand, told Marketing News Exclusives: “Starbucks [knows] where the heart of the brand equity expression lies. It’s not in the word ‘Starbucks’; it’s in the individuality of the siren. The symbol [still] evokes the name in your mind.” Whether it positively or negatively impacts the Starbucks brand, the logo redesign is a questionable allocation of precious marketing dollars, according to Gregory. Starbucks should focus more on its new product launches, such as its instant Via coffee and new pastry line, rather than on the logo redesign, which he calls “a useless change that’s going to be very expensive.” For more on the marketing strategy behind packaging changes, check out “Packaging: Thinking Outside of the Box” in the March 30 issue of Marketing News, available at MarketingPower.com/marketingnews.

Posted by Christine Birkner at 4:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

WINNER:

Folks, Elizabeth Taylor hadn’t made a successful movie in decades at the time of her death, but she still died a movie star. Talk about a brand!

This is hard to believe in the age of tweet-or-disappear celebrity. But Taylor had the kind of celebrity that is hard to find these days.

Taylor’s celebrity was aspirational celebrity. Many people looked up to her-–not because they thought they could ever be like her and certainly not because they wanted her to be like them. They wanted Taylor to be different and living a life more glamorous and remote than the one they were living.

Because of this, Elizabeth Taylor was also a leader and able to throw her support behind causes-–like AIDs—in a way that most celebrities today can only envy. Her brand had genuine power. She was also unafraid of challenging her fans and setting an example for them.

Bottom line, today’s movie stars have become their fans. They don’t seek to stand apart or be leaders. For this reason, most of them are pretty forgettable.

Instead, what we get are feeble, superficial celebrity branding techniques-–little more than short-term band-aids and definitely not strategies. Things like Lindsay Lohan recently deciding to go only by her first name so as to distance herself from her father and her past.

My guess is that at some point people are going to become tired of stars trying so hard to be on their level. The celebrity who knows how to harness that shift away from the common touch by becoming a leader, well, that’s really going to be someone to remember.

LOSER:

If you haven’t heard of the author Amanda Hocking, you’re probably not her Target Market. Nevertheless, the most successful self-published author in the world is worth talking about because she offers an excellent example of a brand misunderstanding its strength.

I’ve written about the huge changes sweeping publishing in recent years. One of the biggest is the changing role of the commercial publisher. In the past, the commercial publisher was the only sure way for an author to distribute his or her books to a mass audience. But the rise of the Internet and cheap, print-on-demand technologies have changed all that. Now, an author with a powerful online presence and a strong following can produce work both in e-book form and in print and sell it directly to the consumer.

For Amanda Hocking this has meant publishing nine books over the last year and selling millions of copies at a few dollars a copy (far below the cover price of any commercially published book). The lower price point doesn’t matter, though, because she takes 70% of each sale as opposed to a much, much smaller percentage if she were doing this commercially.

So why did this writer decide to go the traditional route last week? She says it’s because she wants to concentrate on being a “writer.”

Folks, this is a case of a brand badly misjudging its strength. Hocking has become so successful because of two things: 1) an incredibly low price point, and 2) she is an excellent self-promoter who knows how to use social media and the Internet expertly to tap into the current rage for vampire fiction (the general opinion is that she is a pretty poor writer).

By shifting to the traditional publishing framework, she will be torpedoing both of those brand strengths.

First, price point. The retail price for commercial books is $25 hardcover and maybe half that for e-books-–definitely not $1 to $3 which is what she’s been charging. This is going to have an effect on the Hocking phenomenon. People who won’t think twice about plunking down a buck to get the latest installment in her series will think much differently if the cost is 13 or 25 times that.

This is analogous to the TV phenomena. When people see actors at home on TV, they are less likely to pay to see them at the movies. Simply put, readers not used to paying regular prices for her books will not. Period. End of story.

Second, her gift is running her own brand. This gift is going to be eclipsed by the slow, corporate shuffle of commercial publishing, which is still antiquated and unresponsive to the needs of today’s marketplace. Proof of this is obvious in some of the details of Hocking’s deal. On her own, Hocking was able to get nine books to her customers in the space of one year. Under the new arrangement, her first book won’t be published until 2012. Talk about lag time.

Bottom line, Hocking should reconsider the arrangement. It might seem like the logical next step for a writer is to get the support of a major publisher, but in her case, it goes against everything that has gotten her to this point. She needs to remember the axiom: To thy own brand be true.

Let’s face it, Hocking’s decision also violates the golden rule of marketing: First do no harm. When things are working as well as they have for her brand, the last thing you want to do is change things radically.

And, remember, it's always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.

John Tantillo, an AMA member, is a marketing and branding expert and president of the Marketing Department of America. He also is the author of People Buy Brands, Not Companies.

The opinions expressed in this post are the views of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the American Marketing Association.

Posted by Elisabeth at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)