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Entries categorized as ‘promise’

Why the recession could be good for business

Monday 13 October 2008 · No Comments

Today the UK government has called time on the excesses, self interest and downright bad management of the financial services sector, by taking control of British banks.  Whether it will have the desired effect remains to be seen, but frankly, its about time.  I lost patience with the sector a while back, when a leading FS manager told me that it wasn’t in his interest to “put customers first” and now we are witnessing the product of this mind-set.

I’m not a fan of this government, but it does seem that they’ve got this right and for once I feel the Britain is looking bold and decisive.  UK Gov’s move may not produce a level playing field, but hopefully it will create a more sensible game, however the fall-out is sure to continue with customers far from relaxed about choosing financial patners. And that’s where the potential is.  Ultimately, the banks and financial institutions that are first to persuade consumers and businesses that they can be trusted will triumph.

Trust, is the very basis of any Brandship - the relationships between brands and their stakeholders - so its easy to see that, given the revelations of the last few weeks, the brand equity of banks is as low as a limbo-dancing gnome.  For now they are all tarred with the same brush.  We all know now that for years banks have been tricking us into believing that they were on our side while craftily lining their own pockets with our cash, so for any financial services business to dig themselves out of this one is a big ask.  However, that’s the challenge they all face and its clear that the same old, same old just isn’t going to cut it.  This time they have to be transparent and build brands with real integrity.  Attempting this feat with their existing management in place would be like a paedophile applying for a job as a kids’ swimming instructor, and that’s why the government stepping into the management shoes will, at least, give a few of them a chance.  Now its a case of a massive change management process and that can only be good for business.  Who’ll be first to the tape.

While the banks are working on this one, the rest of the commercial world are considering how they can survive the after shock.  There’s no doubt about it, a lot of businesses are going to tumble in the next few months, but amid the rubble there’s a real opportunity for the bold.

As we’ve seen with banks in the US and UK, there are always bigger vultures to pick over the bones of the those that fail and in this vein a good many short-term wins will be had by organisations with strong and inviting brand communities that can offer shelter to the customers of their deceased competitors.  This will come about in two ways - pro-active, acquisition by competitors and investors of organisations and brands on the verge of a crash and reactive, mopping up by strong brands of the displaced customers of their weaker competitors.

But moreso than in the normal process of acquisition the challenge doesn’t end acquisition.  Its one thing to provide a consumer with temporary shelter, but although the cost of acquisition could be modest compared to the recent past, the real test will be whether these brands can persuade their new customers to make a home with them.  This is where I see the real potential.  I foresee a period of floating customers, like deserted wives, reluctant to commit to long-term relationships and suitor brands falling over themselves to reel them in and turn them into life-partners.  And I predict, honesty will prevail.  If nothing else worthwhile comes of this situation I be live it will convince a few more brands to stop making empty-promises and a shift to genuineness, transparency and a genuine commitment to customer satisfaction.  Another reason why the recession will be good for business.

Because brand communities are a product of their members - significantly their customers - any acquisitive organisations will also have to be wary of the risk of alienating their existing customers as the dynamic of their brand is changed by a large influx of new members, but, if they are sufficiently sorted to have created a strong enough brand community to pull off the acquisition trick in the first place the chances are they’ll have this under control too.

Its common practice in recessionary times for organisations to tighten their belts and sit it out, but the record clearly shows that this is not the path to success and it definitely isn’t the way to go now.  If you want to to make the most of the opportunities that the recession is providing you need to be pro-active, take a close look at your brand and your organisation.  Are you in shape to meet the challenge?  If not get to work.  At the end of this recession the organisations that deserve success will have it and there’ll be some gaps in the line up too.  But then again, I’ve always felt that Darwin nailed it with the process of natural selection.   I think we’ll all be better off for the clear out.

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · CRM · Competitors · Darwin · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · bankers · banks · brand · brand development · brand name · branding · brands · business development · business strategy · change management · community · customer · customer service · customers · internal marketing · management · marketing · natural selection · opportunity · phil darby · promise · recession · strategy · transparency

Are we losing sight of strategy?

Thursday 28 August 2008 · No Comments

I was sifting through my spam filter earlier, trying to decide where to buy the Viagra that will “make her smile tonight” and provide an outing for the “massive tool” that I am assured can be mine without surgery, when I came across a mail from an old colleague that had been misdirected there.

I was delighted to hear from him after a lengthy silence, but his message was sad.  Basically, the gist is that he has come to the conclusion that despite their constant talk, organisations really don’t want strategy anymore.  In fact, he suggested that if you corner many senior managers in the pub they’ll tell you that in their opinion, strategy just gets in the way of real day-to-day business.  As a consequence my old colleague is now resigned to a daily routine of moving the usual tactical shit back and forth between an ever-decreasing number of parking places.

These days we are all pretty well agreed that the fundamental difference between a successful oragnisation and an unsuccessful one is efficiency.  The thing is that in an effort to increase their efficiency many organisations have thrown the baby out with the bathwater - reducing head-count without establishing a stragic framework or methodology.  For those of us who have undertaken house renovations on any scale this is akin to setting up your Acrow props to keep the ceiling in place, knocking down the supporting wall and then removing the props without first installing the RSJ.  The result is that your days thereafter will be spent addressing the purely tactical issue of preventing parts of your bedroom from moving into your lounge.  Most organisation will find that it is possible for them to reduce their marketing head-count, but only if there is a strategic framework in which the tactical day-to-day can operate.  If not, the tactical will take over and demand ever increasing time and resource.

If, like me, you studied such things when notes were taken with a pen and paper (if not a slate!) you’ll be familiar with the debate over the relationship between transactional and transformational management.  Having decided that the traditional cycle, which alternated between a transactional and transformational business model, produced business modulations with a less that acceptable aggregate performance, we concluded that a business model that included both elements operating simultaneously was the way to go.  The idea was, and is, that the transformational guys (or strategists) focus on devising new products, services, and marketing ideas, which they then hand over to transactors to perpetuate.  Any organisation is only as good as its next big idea and this is the only way an organisation can generate essential innovation whilst still managing the day-to-day.

Without the appropriate strategic support an organisation is driven ever further into the mire of purely tactical marketing.  Its a mire because a purely tactical approach is slow.  You get left behind.  To keep up you have to continually throw in more resource, which is self-defeating, or add pressure to your personnel, which in turn inevitably leads to dissatisfaction, resignations, lack of continuity, skills gaps and, of course, poor performance on every level.

Going back to the “efficiency” thing, successful organisations are those that reach the market objective first.  Imagine two people, one blindfolded, standing at the end of a corridor littered with largish obstacles.  Now, visualise what would happen if you told them both to get to the opposite end of the corridor as quickly as possible.  The result would be a pretty accurate illustration of the difference between an organisation with a strategy and one without - strategy is your long vision.  You can bumble around without it for a while, but you’ll never win against a competitor with a their tactical and strategic (or transactional and transformational) elements working together.  Strategy is what helps you use your resources more efficiently.  It is not a luxury that you can cut back on when cash is short, but the means to make that cash go further.

We are all familiar with the facts that show that organisations that maintain or even increase their marketing efforts through a recession end up on top when the recession lifts, but I wonder if this result is as much a product of the organisations concerned, stopping and thinking about their business in order to make the bold decision to buck the trend, as it is the investment itself.  If you look at the winners in this scenario they tend to be enlightened businesses with a firm grasp of the real issues and a sound strategic habit.

Despite all the lessons of the past, it remains a common recessionary practice to cut back on strategy and focus on the short-term when times get tough.  Now I think about it, I have probably encountered an increasing number of businesses in recent months that appear to be retrenching into the tactical.  I even had the CEO of a major listed company tell me the other day that he was too busy with day-to-day business to find the time to work on strategy, but is my old colleague right?  Are businesses really abandoning the long-vision in favour of the tactical treadmill, or is this just a predictable recessionary blip?  I can’t really believe that the former is so, but what do you think?

Now, where is that Viagra supplier …?

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · brand · brand development · brands · business development · business strategy · efficiency · innovation · management · marketing · promise

Bridging the chasm between your boardroom and the front line

Monday 23 June 2008 · No Comments

I recently spent a few days at home in the UK and discovered UK morning TV. In particular a BBC programme called “Don’t Get Done Get Dom” where a consumer’s champion called Dominic Little (hence the “Dom”) tackles companies on behalf of customers who in one way or another feel they have been let down by them. I don’t know how typical the episodes that I caught were, but there was a very obvious common theme to the main cases.

One company that stands out was called SafeStyle Windows, a replacement window company that dramatically screwed up an installation. Another was a holiday company that had let down a couple who booked an expensive holiday. The common theme with these and others was that the customers (who were all more tenacious to start with than most I’ve come across ) all spent weeks and in some cases months trying to deal with Customer Service representatives to no avail.

Coincidentally I was having the same kind of experience with the Auto and Cycle store chain Halfords who might be the market leader in the UK by a long way, but still (or maybe because of that fact) run their show like amateur hour. My issue with them concerned a product listed on their web site that involved a product description, price and photograph that appeared to refer to three different products. I e-mailed Halfords customer service who redefined themselves as “customer abusers” by sending me an auto response that undertook to reply within SEVEN DAYS!!! In the even they exceeded that deadline by a further day by which time I’d bought the product elsewhere anyway. Well Mr Halfords, them’s the breaks!

In fact, I am sure that the folks sitting around the boardroom tables at Halfords, SafeStyle Windows and the holiday company (whose name escapes me) would be horrified if they realised how their Brand Promise was being massacred by front-line troops, but I’m equally prepared to accept that these same front-line troops are sure that they are doing what is expected of them. I realise that the picture is skewed by the directors, who I know are out there, of organisations who are happy to abuse customers as they hide behind their customer services people, but who are all sweetness and light and conciliatory once someone like Dominic Little gets past the razor-wire. However, assuming that the majority of managers are smart enough to realise that the trick to growing a business is to always delight your customers, the clear issue here is the gulf between the boardroom and the front line.

This is what internal marketing is all about, of course, but its a subject that I know most organisations fail to understand and vastly underestimate the importance of. It takes a special effort and a shift in attitude of senior managers to set up an internal marketing programme from scratch, but there’s no avoiding it if you want to stay in business these days. I often hear from directors that such an initiative would be too disruptive for their organisation and its true it can be if the concept is as alien to you as it is to some of the businesses I come across. That’s why I developed Brand Discovery, a programme of internal marketing that takes logical steps to ensure that all stakeholders are signed up and fully committed to playing their role in the delivery of the Brand Promise. What’s different about Brand Discovery is that it is an ongoing programme that becomes part of an organisation’s DNA and brings about change more by osmosis than revolution. There’s no longer a need to put the brakes on a business in order to change direction. Sure the benefits of Brand Discovery take time to filter through to your bottom line, but its not that long and I would argue that taking a more radical approach slows the momentum of a business short-term and therefore would never challenge the overall commercial benefit of Brand Discovery.

Whichever approach you take, if you are not already focussing on bridging that chasm between your boardroom and your front line with internal marketing you need to get moving. Unless, of course you want your ten minutes of fame on Don’t Get Done Get Dom!

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · National Branding · The Full Effect Company · below-the-line · brand development · brands · business development · customer · customer service · customers · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · promise

Specialised Specialized customer service

Thursday 5 June 2008 · No Comments

If ever I thought that I was wasting my time banging on about the the essential role of internal marketing in great customer service, I could count on a bike business to restore my faith. Yet again, a bike company (Specialized to be precise) has demonstrated how the kind of stakeholder commitment that can only be the result of great internal marketing, delivers customer service that fortunes are built on!

If you have been reading my blog for a while you’ll know that I have reported a few times on the great customer service I have received from bike businesses like RockShox (Now part of Sram), WTB and Bradburn. What is it about these businesses that make their customer service so much better than most other businesses I encounter?

OK, so I probably have more contact with bike companies than a lot of people because I ride a lot, have bikes and break components from time to time (although I am usually pretty good with my stuff), but biking isn’t my life and there are a whole lot of other businesses that supply me with products and services that relate to other things that I do, so its not that my experience is narrow.

It’s not that they are particularly small businesses either. Specialized is a major global concern so they face the same internal communications issues as any other global and they are not alone among bike businesses in this - biking is big business! So it can’t be that they are compact enough for the brand message to be easily communicated to the people on the front line. It has to be something to do with the potency of the message itself, the passion and commitment that it raises in stakeholders and/or the way it is communicated.

I guess there are few people working in bike businesses who aren’t themselves bikers, so maybe they are just more committed to the ideals of the business. Bikers are a community and within that big community there are very powerful individual brands, each representing a community of its own (those I have mentioned included). A Specialized bike is probably something rather too commonplace for a Yeti rider for example, while if you are a Specialised convert you’ll appreciate their build-quality, innovation and engineering and maybe view Trek as cheap and mass-produced - that’s “positioning” at work. (Sorry but I’m not privy to the Brand Models so I’m not sure which boxes they are each trying to tick, but then again, if they were all perfect I would know wouldn’t I!).

So, a bike manufacturer, because its stakeholders mostly comprise bikers, is working with pretty fertile ground. There’s also already a propensity for bikers to sign up to brand communities, but you still have to have a peg to hang your hat on - that big idea - and the internal marketing communications, so the fact that they are doing so well with their customer service means that these guys clearly know their stuff. (Although I do think that the press advertising that’s part of most bike companies’ external marketing generally sucks. But that’s another post).

There is room for improvement though. For example, one of the biggest challenges for any manufacturer is to get their Brand Promise represented consistently at the point of sale and Specialized, like all businesses struggle there sometimes. I have come across many instances where a manufacturer’s Brand Promise isn’t evident at the local bike shop, the UK’s most dominant wholesaler/distributor for instance, appears to be universally despised by retailers, which can’t be good for anyone’s business, but Specialised do better than most with their customer service even at the sharp end of their sales chain and this has to be down to sound internal marketing. So, if anybody at Specialised is listening, I’d be interested to hear what you do and even more interested to help you reign in those local bike shop owners and staff a bit tighter.

Oh, and thanks to Duncan Cruxton at Specialized for sorting my cycle computer problem!

Categories: Brand Discovery · Brand Model · Brand promise · CRM · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Retail · The Full Effect Company · brand development · brands · communications · community · customer · customer service · customers · internal marketing · management · marketing · phil darby · promise · retailer

So, what makes you so different?

Friday 29 February 2008 · No Comments

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Strong personalities appeal to me and I don’t think I’m alone in that. In fact I was reading research last week that suggested that most of us find people with strong characters more attractive than people who were just “nice”. Of course, it’s great, if you can be both - “nice” and “interesting” - but if its an either/or give me “interesting” every time. It adds up to some difficult relationships, but hey! … it makes life colourful and most importantly for us marketers - its engaging!.

This factor influences us in more ways than we might at first appreciate. For instance, it influences the brands that we buy. Think about it. Its how Apple (full of character) scored over Big Blue (full of … boringness?) or how Mark Ecko, the T-shirt guy made his rhinoceros the thing to have on your chest or back pocket (who saw that Air Force One stunt? - Wild!). Talking of aircraft, I don’t know anybody who would consider Ryan Air’s Michael O’Leary to be Mr Nice Guy, but he has become one of those people you love to hate and his airline is a runaway success. Conversely, you don’t see any cool people wearing T-shirts with “Boots the chemist” printed on them because Boots are boring!

This is not some kind of new radical thinking of course. Adam Morgan explained how it works in his book Eating The Big Fish(still one of my favourites) way back in 1998. Its “lighthouse branding” and its the basis of challenger brand marketing. If you are a market leader you might think you can afford to be boring (that’s why so many market leaders are) and of course, once you are there, in the top slot its easy to fall into the trap of believing you don’t have to put yourself out too much thinking of new stuff to make yourself interesting, but while you are kicking back, give a thought to some of the big organisations who had their business snuck away from them while they were resting on their laurels. I can think of a few who are heading that way now.

I’m no advocate of superficial branding, but it’s certainly true that if you want to be successful you have to be the best at what you do and if you can’t be the best being different will certainly buy you the first rung on the ladder. One of the nine elements (the nine P’s) in the brand models we create in my Brand Discovery workshops defines the brand’s “Point of difference”. It still surprises me how few of the delegates to my workshops really appreciate what “different” really means. Rarely is anybody extreme enough at the first pass around the table and its clear that most organisations delude themselves by believing that their very ordinary traits make them distinctive. I usually find that the best way to identify a potential point of difference is to ask customers. For instance, some years ago I worked on this with a mobile phone company whose subscribers told us that they were sick of the complicated tariffs that mobile operators offered. They felt that they were making them confusing on purpose to disguise high costs. We replied with a real point of difference - one tariff for all, wrapped up in a “champions of the people” brand character, and it worked.

Most places that you see a real success story you will find a distinctive brand character - Starbucks, Harley Davidson, Virgin - and they’ll almost always be a response to a consumer need. Modern media makes it simple to gather consumer feedback at pretty much every point of contact so there’s no excuse for not knowing what your customers want, think or believe is interesting and as I always say - every communication in any communication strategy should be two-way. I find there are people who don’t think that’s possible, but you can usually get feedback if you really want it with a little applied ingenuity.

Of course, you still have to deliver your promise and in part that’s about maintaining your point of difference, but that’s the another chapter in my Full Effect Marketing story.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · advertising · brand · brands · consulting · ideas · innovation · marketing · phil darby · promise

What the bloody hell’s happening at Tourism Australia?

Thursday 7 February 2008 · 2 Comments

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I just received my daily digest from B&T, the advertising trade organ of Australia and I see that the Aussie Tourist Board business is up for grabs again.  Initially I thought it was just a case of a government department, bureaucracy and a fixed-term contract up for renewal, but reading down the text its clear that all is not well.

I have to say, I have no data on this client or the campaign.  The last time that I worked on Aussie Tourism business was too long ago for my insights to be relevant, but I liked this campaign when it broke.  In fact, I was beginning to think that the Aussie Tourism Johnnies (or Waynes) had a real winner on their hands.  However, the figures show that while tourism to Australia is up slightly overall, from the UK and Japan it is actually down.  Nevertheless, this is a very simplistic measurement and too many questions remain unanswered for it to be conclusive evidence that the campaign failed.

The reason that I liked the campaign is that it was consistent with my perceptions of the brand - irreverent, laid back.  The fact that the commercials were briefly banned in the UK and Australia (for using the phrase “bloody hell”) only served to endorse that.  I actually suspected that the ban was a set-up anyway.  So the campaign was controversial, which to my mind is good especially when the objections were seen to be raised by a bunch of sad puritans objecting to the language - more of it I say!  The Australian government of the time endorsed it too, but I guess they had to as they were indirectly responsible. 

Sadly the new Premier has seen fit to add his pearls of wisdom on the matter.  It seems that he objects to the negativity of the strap-line “So where the bloody hell are you?” which makes me feel that somehow he has missed the point.  His suggestion was “Thanks for visiting, see you next time” - yes, clearly an differentiator there!

If the campaign was approved and run then I guess it must have been considered to have answered the brief, which immediately places the brief (or whoever wrote it) in the hot seat.  I often discover that problems like this arise from poor briefing and usually that is a symptom of the commissioning organisation not having a brand model.  However, as I have said, the campaign seemed pretty well on the button as far as my perceptions of Brand Australia is concerned.  I may not be typical of the Aussie target market though and the thing is, if the campaign was representative of the brand and it didn’t appeal to the kind of people who are most likely to travel to Aus then the problem is much deeper that the advertising.

S0, is there a robust enough Brand Model in place?  Is there a clear and efficient process for transferring that model to the brief?  Is the Aussie “promise” accurately represented by the campaign?

If the answer to the last of these questions is “yes” then its clearly a case of having to change the reality of the brand, which will take a long time and a lot of internal marketing.  Before the baby and bathwater scenario comes into play though, it may be that the strategic elements of the campaign were right, but either the tactical messages were off target or that the media was wrong.

I’d be fascinated if somebody could fill in a few of the blanks for me, so if you know anybody who is involved in this debacle, feel free to pass on a link to this blog and hopefully they’ll post a comment.  Meanwhile, the biggest fear that I have is that someone is going to try to make Aussie Tourism’s external communications convey a promise that the brand isn’t able to deliver - and we all know where that ends up  - or that a lack of commitment to being “remarkable” ends up with the brand being undersold by communications that could be about anywhere.  Looking a little deeper into the current result and making tactical rather than strategic changes might be all that it needs.  Although, I have a feeling there’s more politics to this than might be healthy.

Anyway, I’m hooked and looking forward to the next installment.

Categories: Australia · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · Tourism · advertising · brand · brands · internal marketing · marketing · phil darby · promise · strategy

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi - fraud or a real Brand Guru?

Wednesday 6 February 2008 · No Comments

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

I’ve never been one for activities that involved so much sitting still, but there’s no doubt there are people around who believe that transcendental meditation is where its at.  However, with the death of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who I guess has been its greatest promoter, we are back to the old debate of whether he was a money-grabbing fraud or the genuine article.

There is definitely a rich vein of “hard line realists” whose scepticism is fueled by their secret resentment of anybody who could build such a viable business, and apparently achieve total fulfillment, simply by sitting and talking (over simplification, but you get my idea), while they are killing themselves for the same result.  So, I’m immediately dismissive of these sceptics.

I’ve also yet to come across anybody who has met the Maharishi or participated in any of his ashrams and now falls into the sceptic camp.  Given the circles that I tend to find myself in (mainly hard-line realists) the fact that I have come across more people who are enthusiastic about the man than who are critical I guess points to a strong vote in his favour.

I have no axe to grind on the spiritual aspects of this debate - whatever floats your boat and  I think if someone can make a bucketful of money with a flawed proposition, then its fine by me, although in my experience its a business approach that isn’t sustainable.  What I like about this whole transcendental meditation thing though, is that it represents a really neat brand model. 

The way I see it is that the brand community that the Mahareshi created ticked all the boxes.  It was/is remarkable in the true sense of the word and completely fulfilled all the requisites of a lighthouse brand, which indeed it was, compared to its competitive brands/communities/beliefs in the sixties. 

His target market has always been vividly defined and the brand promise has evolved, but has remained uncompromising throughout.  As a result he achieved either complete buy-in or outright rejection, which, in a world where wishy-washiness just doesn’t cut it any more is exactly how every brand should be.  Because of this his community was extremely evangelistic and he is unlikely to have had hostages, as many brands do.  The evidence suggests that while on first glance you might view the dialogue within this community as rather one-way, in fact, given that the product was teaching, the community members (disciples) were extremely influential in its development and evolution.

The truly great thing about the promise though is that it was relevant, realistic and achievable and as far as I can see from the customer feedback he’s getting in the obituaries and threads today he delivered.  So, while I may not have been at the front of the queue to get into an ashram he would definitely get my vote for the “Brand Guru Hall of Fame”.

Categories: Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · The Full Effect Company · brand · brands · guru · maharishi · mahesh · marketing · phil darby · promise · religion · social groups · yogi

Hilary or Barack - a dilemma of brands

Thursday 10 January 2008 · 4 Comments

Before I start, I have to thank Michelle Miller who promises me that her new book “The Soccer Mom Myth” due out in March, (make mental note to add to my Amazon “aShop”) will bring all this into focus, for prompting me to have my say before she has the last word! 

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I’ve never really understood the US voting process and occasionally when I take time to study it and finally think I have it sussed, immediately something comes out of left field just to prove to me that I don’t. 

One of the things that threw me a loop recently was the suggestion that part of the process, when there’s a close result, involves a bunch of people getting together (over cocktails I guess) to decide that if the voters knew a few things that the politicians knew, but were keeping secret, they would have voted differently, throwing the result out of the window and just deciding the winner themselves.  So I must have bad information there because were it true it would make Zimabwe a great democracy!

However, one thing I do know for sure is that the current Clinton, Obama tussle is a brilliant illustration of consumer dilemma and the role of brand.

Politicians are brands of course, have no doubt about it and like any other brand they have an inherent promise.  In fact, in the case of politicians the promise is rather more up-front that with most other brands, which really just serves to emphasise the importance of what is the challenge for most brands - delivering the promise.  I always emphasise to my clients that the key to business success is to make a brand promise that apart from being relevant to your market is also realistic.  In other words, something that you might actually be able to achieve.  I guess that doesn’t influence politicians that much, but, I’m sure we’d all agree, it should.

In the case of the Hilary and Barack show, both are making big promises, which, to most people are attractive.  The difference, as Hilary was at pains, between sobs, to point out the other day is that one of them (and it wasn’t her) didn’t have the experience to deliver.  The other side to this particular coin however is that while Obama doesn’t have a record of delivery failure, Hilary is part of an establishment (I’m not talking parties here just politics) that has delivered successive disappointments, without flinching and without apology for as long as I can remember.

In a land that probably needs change more than most, Hilary’s strength is that she has the experience and ring-craft that, if we believe her when she says that the rest of the stuff that has prevented her cohorts from delivering in the past isn’t going to deflect her, means she might just pull it off.  Barack’s is the fact that he hasn’t - which means he’s as likely to succeed as he is to fail.

If the two were two tins of beans standing on a supermarket shelf - a new unknown brand and an old, but not particularly notable one - which would you choose, the familiar one that you knew was average, or the unknown one that just might be the best you’ve ever tasted?  Personally I’d go for the new one, but I’m not sure the American electorate, when the chips are down, is really up for a leap of fate.  The problem with that conclusion is that it means its all down to the packaging designers!  I guess there’s no change there either then!

Categories: American · Barack · Clinton · Democracy · Full Effect · Full Efffect Marketing · Obama · Senate · The Full Effect Company · US · Voting · brand · brands · change · consulting · hilary · marketing · phil darby · promise