Category: brand values

brand values, branding

10 brands that will disappear in 2010

Ten brands that will fail – starting with the dodo

In an article written by 24/7 Wall Street, there is a great article about the ten brands that will disappear in 2010.

Now for UK based businesses, they will not be as familiar with all of the ten brands but the lessons are pretty much the same for any dying brand you can think of the world over.

Adapt or die.

None of these have adapted fast enough, so they’re all dying.

Lets deal with each in turn

1. Newsweek

It’s printed news. The end.

The fact that you are reading this on a blog and I read the original article on another blog just goes to show that we are gathering most of our information online these days. It used to be that the credibility was offline in print, but that just isn’t the case anymore. There’s good stuff in both and crap in both too. The man problem is that advertising has followed the readership and not many of the old media barons have worked out how to monetize the new media platforms, because Google seems to own the space at present.

2. Motorola

I’m surprised it’s lasted this long really. Back in the mid 90’s I had an original Nokia Orange phone (that was in the days when they didn’t even have model numbers) and we needed two more mobiles, so we bought Motorola MR1’s (luggable rather than mobile) as they were half the price.

Big mistake.

Non functioning menus and useless interface. It was so hateful, I smashed it against the wall to give myself an excuse to buy another Nokia.

Any Motorolas I have seen since, seem just as bad.

3. Palm

Not since the Palm pilot and the shortlived ‘Pre’ have they had anything the market wants. When did they last produce anything innovative?

4. Borders

All a bit pointless. They stood for nothing and offered worse pricing than Amazon and less loveliness than Waterstones. They reminded me of how WH Smiths have been for the last ten years and I could never really think of any single occasion when I would need to go and buy from them. So I didn’t. It appears that few others did either.

5. Blockbuster

How have they survived this long against the marching digital army? If I want to watch a film, do I pay the same amount and watch it now on Virgin or Sky or drive down into the town and hire one, only to be bollocked for returning it late?

For a brilliant exchange of letters and emails between David Thorne and Blockbuster, have a read of this. It’s brilliant!

I’m sure we’ve all tried the monthly subscription thing where we can pick films and they send them to us, but it’s not actually that spontaneous is it? On a Monday, you can’t really say whether you’ll feel like a ‘romcom’ or a thriller on Friday night can you? Its a model that suits them and not us, so will never take off really big.

6. Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac

It’s named after a front bottom and a burger. Enough said.

7. Ambac

Never heard of it, sorry to see you go, It’s been a blast.

8. Eastman Kodak

To me, this is going to go down as the biggest brand ever to fail. They let the market swamp them by not seeing the digital revolution. They used to be innovators and now are in danger of being totally unknown by a new generation.

They have tried to move to digital products and even to printer paper, but the market just isn’t convinced.

I will be sad to see this go. But I will make a prediction. It will go bang and then someone will buy the name and after a few years, when they have shaken off the years of debt and structure problems, it will come back with some small innovative products that will take the market by storm. It is just too good a name to allow it to die forever. Give it ten years and it will be a force again.

9. Sun Microsystems

This isn’t one I can talk about with any authority, but for any brand to have the name of a type of computer that was superceded ten years ago seems to be a problem to me. Microsystems were the babies to replace mainframes in the 80’s weren’t they? So what relevance do they have now?

10. E*Trade

Again, I don’t know much about these other than they are some of the eejits who lent money to people who shouldn’t be getting it. Surely if they had no income and no way of repaying a loan, you shouldn’t lend them money?

Maybe this is a bit simplistic of me, but just because it has the word ‘E’ on the front of it, doesn’t make it a good business. They deserver all the failure they’re getting. Bye.

Summary

There’s no really surprises to me here. Bad businesses that haven’t evolved are failing.

I run a small design business and have done for over 18 years. It’s called Purple Circle. What we do know is very different to what we did then, because the market has changed massively. If I was still trying to sell pasted up artwork on bromide and magic marker visuals all round, do you think they’d still be buying?

No me neither.

So why have all these businesses assumed they could do the same?

brand values, branding

Why does it cost more to repair things than to replace them?

I am open about the fact that I am a bit of a geeky bloke. I like to repair things. Actually I Like to take things apart and see how they work and as I have got older I have become (slightly) better at getting them back together and working again.

So if something breaks, I always start from the position of seeing if I can repair it. We all know this is a more environmental route don’t we?

But when my almost new Morphy Richards slow cooker crockpot broke (because you can’t use it on the hob to get it going – doh!!), I thought it would be a simple case of buying a new crockpot and that would be that.

So I stumbled around the Morphy Richards site and spares are listed as accessories there. It’s a ceramic pot. They break. Surely they should describe it as a replacement? I did eventually find one at £15.86 with the benefit of free delivery.

Buying spares and accessories from Morphy Richards

Spares 2 Go had one at the bargain price of £42.63

Buying one from Spares 2 Go will cost you twice as much as a new unit

And Buy Spares had one at the rather more attractive price of £15.99, but by the time you added £4.98 shipping, this came to a less attractive £21.97

Getting closer. This part only costs a bit more than a whole new unit

And then we come to Amazon. A new one, from stock with free delivery for £19.99.

Amazon come in with a bargain price of £19.99

How do they do it?

For an extra £4.13 over the cost of the cheapest delivered replacement spare part, I get the whole of the rest of the unit in a shiny box with a new warranty all delivered to home within 3 days. So where is my incentive to repair?

I don’t want to turn this into a rant, but for any brand owner, it has to be a better long term proposition to make us stay with them by incentivising a repair.

I could just have easily gone away and bought another brand and all of the retailers have some stupidly priced products in the run up to the winter months.

If the price of the biggest and most breakable part was around half of the lowest price you could by the whole unit from scratch, there would be no debate, you’d get on and stick with it. But when it is virtually the same price, however well intentioned your repair/environmental principles, you’d be silly not to take a new one.

brand values, branding

Technorati must be using Microsoft technology on T-Mobile Sidekick Phones

I’ve just come back to the Technorati website to have a look at what’s hot in the world of blogging, to a bold and fresh new look.

Oooh look, a bold fresh look for Technorati
Oooh look, a bold fresh look for Technorati

Great I think, It must have needed freshening up, or maybe it was just some spare time work for the development team, or maybe it is marketeers tinkering with something that works, or whatever.

But it doesn’t work anymore. That’s a problem for any blogger anywhere who uses their service.

There are streams of complaints from disgruntled users, many of which are technically based but all of which add up to a branding disaster for Technorati.

Oooh look a bold new look for Technorati that their customers seem to simply hate!
Oooh look a bold new look for Technorati that their customers seem to simply hate!

If you’re going to upset an audience, then perhaps the blogging community is the most vocal, the most connected and the most keen to share their thoughts with a connected world.

Following on from my thoughts about Pentax and T-Mobile Sidekick, they need to act fast to get the functionality back or watch their fans/customers leave in droves.

brand values, branding

How to undermine your brand in one easy lesson

Branding is about trust isn’t it?

The constant reassurance that for the cusomer, their choice of brand makes them feel good all about their purchase decision all the time. It’s a partnership that each party benefits from. Out of this, trust grows and a for the brand owner, a long term relationship hopefully ensues.

If you lose your customers trust, then you lose them. Maybe not immediately, but you certainly undermine their love for you. Big style.

So that’s why T-Mobile losing ALL of the data for their Sidekick customers is such a disaster for their brand.

The Sidekick phone, great for the youth market, but perhaps a total disaster for T-Mobile
The Sidekick phone, great for the youth market, but perhaps a total disaster for T-Mobile

Sidekicks are a much sought after range of phones, that are more akin to mini computers with their keyboard and high end functionality. They are available in the UK, but only hacked ones that have been bought in on the grey market. To me, they are a strong a compeitior for the youth market than the iPhone as they deliver what youth want, ot what fat business people like myself want. In effect, if I like it, they’ve failed.

In this article by Endgadget, they go into more detail, but its no surprise to a committed Mac user like myself, to discover that the issue is a back end server problem supplied by Microsoft.

At the same time, this article by PC World also shows that us Mac geeks are becoming a bit rarer (and a bit richer)

It seems that 36% of Mac owning families earn over $100k but that figure is only 21% for PC only families. So apple have bagged the top end of the market, which is a good place to be for any brand. They must not take too many risks in a chase for growing market share by stripping the great things out to deliver a cheaper product to the wider mass market – or they really will do damage.

Mind you, if the next upgrade they supply is as disastrous for my own mac as the move to OS10.6 Snow Donkey (or whatever its called), which I have now had to downgrade again – because it wouldn’t run so many programmes and I had the small problem of not being able to print – then I may even think about a switch to PC’s.

Actually I won’t, that was a lie. I’m allowing them a few mistakes because I love them. Will T Mobiles Sidekicks customers be quite so generous?

brand values, branding

Brave, very brave – Dixons gets honest

The new and rather honest ads by Dixons
The new and rather honest ads by Dixons

This is some very brave advertising by Dixons and you can see the copywriter has had great fun in constructing it. Its beautifully written, there’s no doubt about that, but is it good for the long term health of the Dixons brand?

For me, ever since Dixons profits showed that they made more money selling warranties that we didn’t need than they did from the products themselves, they showed their true colours as sales charlatans. Their brad values were short term opportunistic profits. They became the brand that people loved to hate. John Lewis, with their sensible people offering sensible prices in sensible locations became the choice of sensible people and they filed that void left behind by the Dixons customers who deserted them. They became a better than viable alternative.

But just recently, I’ve started falling out of love with John Lewis. I don’t believe their people are that nice. I don’t actually believe they are never knowingly undersold as I can always find cheaper (they don’t want or allow you to compare their prices with online prices you see!) and I began to doubt the value of their brand promise when I (over)heard people being knocked back when they were trying to return things a few days out of warranty.

So after I’ve walked through the hallowed halls of John Lewis, played with their docking stations, left funny messages on the screens of their laptops, logged them into things they shouldn’t be and and had their sensible staff come along and offer to help me, will I go to Dixons last?

No. Actually I won’t. I’ll go home and buy it online from Amazon, or another online retailer where I know where I stand, I know where and when it will be delivered and where I know that, at the moment at least, I’m a valued customer.

Good try Dixons, but I still think you’re too shady to get my custom in the near future. Keep this up though and I’ll certainly come back into store to look.

Updated

Another brilliant written and crafted ad from Dixons. I’m starting to think they actually deserve some success in what they are doing as they have captured most of our thoughts and more importantly, our actions, pretty damn well.

Another brave ad from Dixons capturing the spirit of what we're actually doing!
brand values, branding

The future of branding is unbranded – ask Starbucks

CJ as a young corporate customer on his laptop in Starbucks
CJ as a young corporate customer on his laptop in Starbucks

In an article I wrote recently about place branding, I proposed that the future of branding is unbranded. You can read that here.

What I was arguing against was homogenisation. Standardisation being used as a byword for branding, that decreases rather than increases consumer choice.

And it would appear that Starbucks, in the US at least would agree with this sentiment. In a great article by Tim Haywards in the UK’s Guardian newspaper he savages them for drifting from Happy hippiedom to the same tired old corporate suit as everyone else on the homogenised high street.

For any brand to be able to survive, it has to evolve or it will die. Like dinosaurs did when they failed to build protection against meteorite strikes. Today’s meteorite strikes are coming from the upstart brands and from locally differentiated, welcoming outlets.

In Seattle, there is already a company calling themselves Seattle’s Best and who’s to say it isn’t? (my cup I had in a plane on the way to Seattle was absolutely horrid – see here) But that doesn’t mean its the most loved, by any stretch of the imagination.

With any brand the product is critical, but so is the tribe in which consuming it puts you. You have to feel good about it. You have to bask in its reflected glorious ‘brandness’ and you have to want to tell your cool friends about it.

I think this is a great move for Starbucks.

I hope they have the nerve to debrand their estate, to give their customers the chance to fall in love with them all over again.

I hope they have the nerve to allow their local people to interpret their offer locally and create cool places for their customers to hang out. If that means they want to appeal to corporate wannabe’s then that’s fine, but design your offer accordingly. If that means they want their hippies back, then that’s just as fine – again, design accordingly.

The future of branding maybe isn’t unbranded, but it has to listen to its customers needs and be flexible as hell in delivering what they want or it will go the way of the dinosaurs.

Thanks to Jayne Wilson for the use of the picture of CJ on a Laptop in Starbucks. You can see more of her fine work here.

brand values, branding

The death of the Spanish brand

Spain has always been one of those places that people loved to hate. Torremolinos and Benidorm have been the butt of jokes, sitcoms and the building of concrete jungles since the early 1960’s when widespread air travel bought the sun, sea, sand and Sangria within reach of the masses.

The best ever Icon that completely represents all of Spain's brand values
The best ever Icon that completely represents all of Spain's brand values

But when Spain started using the Joan Miró ‘logo’ to represent the Spanish brand, the whole offer started to make more sense. It had in effect, displayed its brand values in one beautifully simple representation to show that it was all about fun, easy living and a lovely relaxed style. For me, it is one of the most beautifully timeless ‘icons’ I have ever seen.

But then it all started to go wrong when they started trying to sneak in a few extra brand values, namely profit and perhaps even profiteering.

One of the attractions for us Brits of a Spanish holiday was always that it was incredibly cheap when we got there. Cheap beer, freshly cooked fish on the beach and change out of £20 for a family of four. The introduction of the Euro saw the first real move away from this with money pouring in from the rest of the Euro Zone and a move towards comparative wealth in the most popular destinations.

But then it all went wrong.

People rushed to buy the cheap apartments, being promised and initially seeing, spectacular growth in value, fuelled by the cheap flights of the low cost carriers. But as we’ve all worked out, there’s no such thing as a free flight and there’s certainly no such thing as a free lunch.

Sun, Sea, Sand and a pretty poor branded investment with a superb view over the motorway
Sun, Sea, Sand and a pretty poor branded investment with a superb view over the motorway

Profiteering was rife. Land that was being bought for comparative buttons, was being converted to thousands upon thousands of Penthouse apartments, and in an exact mirror of the buy-to-let crash in the UK, there soon became a HUGE oversupply and the market tanked.

Where I was staying above La Cala, which was a lovely development, there were only one in eight apartments occupied. Around us in other developments, the figures looked much worse, with one opposite only having three occupiers in over 100 apartments – and that is in the height of their summer season. I personally know three people who are trying to sell (absolutely lovely) places in that region alone and all are now offering them at 40+% less than they were a year ago, with not even a sniff of a viewing, let alone any buyers.

The taxi drivers are reporting a 25% drop in traffic and the one I spoke to said he could not afford to have another summer like it. He had moved from selling timeshare, but he acknowledged, that dreadful mistakes had been made in the property market. Even the taxi market is massively oversupplied with over 400 taxis waiting at Malaga airport on one of the days I was there, for far too few fares.

The restaurants reacted by putting their prices UP, so that a meal for four is a struggle for less than 100 Euro. They too are reporting huge falls in numbers – which is hardly surprising either. The visitors seem to have reacted by staying away and buying from the supermarkets, which still offer remarkable value.

So Spain has completely trashed its brand values. It has stamped all over them and probably ruined them forever. Unless they can rebuild their business case with far fewer visitors and go back to their original values, their situation will get worse and worse and worse – and they already have 25% unemployment in some areas.

Spain is a lesson for any brand owner. Know your brand values, keep them steady and keep looking after your customers. Give them reasons to fall in love with you over and over again and never, ever put profit before quality.

Anyway, Turkey for me next year. If that’s not a Spain waiting to happen, I don’t know where is!

Brand Experience, brand values, branding

Buildabrand – Automatically generated branding?

I noticed a huge number of Retweets in one of my followed areas about a new beta experiment called Buildabrand.

Buildabrand - automatically generated branding?
Buildabrand – automatically generated branding?

According to their own blurb, it’s ‘an online branding system that allows entrepreneurs, businesses and individuals to create, manage and apply instant and personalised branding to their business.’

Wow, that sounds clever. Maybe even too good to be true.

You tell it what your name and values are and then it automatically generates a brand for you.

So, referring back to my previous post about what branding was and what branding is, it clearly isn’t a system to build a brand, it’s a system to sell you merchandise with logos on it.

Ever the cynic about systems like this, I have registered to se whether it will generate a new brand for me or for Purple Circle, so I’ll let you know if I get ‘accepted’ into their beta programme.

It seems like it could be a progression from the plethora of $50 logo sites out there, but it certainly won’t generate you a brand or anything close to a brand using their automatically, powered ‘algorithms’. (A pseudonym for seeing which logo they have in stock which seems the least wrong when compared to your values)

Years ago, I was on a TV programme called Love at first sight, which was quite like a low rent Blind Date. The idea was that you said some comical things about yourself and then Cupid, the Love Computer matched you to one of the three lovely ladies in front of you. What actually happened was that you wrote down on a piece of card which one irritated you the least and if they picked you too, you won a prize.

I suspect that the Buildabrand algorithm uses similar technology.

Building a brand is far more than throwing a logo at a set of values. It’s about living them in everything you do and the logo showing people they have arrived at the branded experience.

UPDATED

I added a link to this piece on Twitter and it obviously got picked up by the people at Buildabrand, who posted the following reply.

Buildabrand - reply via Tweetdeck
Buildabrand – reply via Tweetdeck

I think they do have a point in that they are lowering the barrier to entry for start-ups in that they may be able to produce decent logo design on the cheap. What they will not be able to do however is build a brand. They can possibly do one tiny element of what constitutes a brand.

My issue with this as a service is that they are claiming they can sell you something worth many thousands of £££’a for a few pence. Anyone who thinks they can shortcut their way to a brand is deluded.

Branding takes time effort and consistency, not throwing a few values into a computer and seeing what pops out.

UPDATED AGAIN

I have to give great credit to the people at Buildabrand in that they have clarified their position a little further in what is quite a brave piece directly responding to some of the criticisms that myself and others have levelled at them. You can read that here.

What they are now saying is that they are not trying to replicate what true branding agencies provide, but offering a low cost solution to those who need a quick and dirty logo for a project they are looking at but can’t afford to do properly. They say they have a bank of 1800 logo ‘solutions’ built up ready for the onslaught. Maybe I’m being unkind in saying that sounds remarkably like an adaptation of clipart (which is exactly what the likes of $50 logo do), but only time will tell.

I’ve applied for the beta, so lets see if I can get onto their scheme (now extended to 200 freebies from the original 50) and then set them a worthy challenge. I’ll let you be the judges, by sharing the results here – when and if I get selected. They are now following me on Twitter, so it will be a test for them to decide whether they want me as a customer.

brand values, branding

WordPress is a brand that lives what it promises

Earlier today, I was helping a friend get a blog site set up, and as I have done before with my colleagues Mich and Abi, recommended that she do it using WordPress. I was telling her about how easy and foolproof it was to use and in the very best spirit of pride coming before a fall, I fell over. Big style.

I registered her blog, in her name, on my account.

That should be simple to move, surely all you need to do is delete it and then set it up in her name from scratch?

But you can’t. You have to contact customer services and I was dreading this. They were bound to be some faceless corporate who ignored my pleas for logic and common sense, who undid all my faith in their brand.

But no, just like all of their other brand behaviours, they were incredibly simple to use.

At 10.49 am I filled in the form, making it clear I was a bit embarrassed that you can see here. Even this is more nicely worded than almost any customer service contact form you have ever seen.

Wordpress customer contact form - showing my grovelling plea for help
WordPress customer contact form – showing my grovelling plea for help

13 minutes later, the very clever Hanni, replied back, having already sorted it, using the exact language you will find almost anywhere else throughout the WordPress site.

The helpful reply from the very clever Hanni at WordPress
The helpful reply from the very clever Hanni at WordPress

Any brand that can be this consistent in delivering its brand values, deserves huge success. I’m not just a fan any more, I’m a raving fan.

Thanks Hanni.

UPDATED

Many online brands are absolutely awful when it comes to working offline, but just to continue this story one stage further, WordPress have again proved they are the most human of online businesses. As is my usual trick, I let Hanni know that I had blogged about her and I even got a lovely reply. I am now a raving fan with bells and whistles on.

I've made Hanni's from WordPress's day
I’ve made Hanni’s from WordPress’s day
brand values, branding

Slow Cow v. Red Bull – a brand perspective

Lino Fleury Troublemaker in chief at Slow Cow
Lino Fleury Troublemaker in chief at Slow Cow - The anti energy drink

There’s a battle going on about the branding of livestock based named drinks and its all been started by a Canadian man called Lino Fleury – a name for someone whose going to be different if ever there was one.

It’s all to do with who owns what ‘properties’ or ‘brand values’ in an energy drink.

On the one hand Lino’s new baby ‘Slow Cow’ is an anti energy drink. A concoction he has created that according to his story contains L-Theanine, an amino acid found in tea plants that’s meant to help you achieve a relaxed, focused state of mind. He’s even got some friendly doctor to say it is probably natures best kept secret. But I don’t actually believe that and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either – surely nature’s best kept secret wouldn’t have been found yet?

Slow Cow Ad - Everything that Red Bull isn't
Slow Cow Ad - Everything that Red Bull isn't

For some reason, the people at Red Bull are none too impressed and have sent our hero Lino a notice to cease and desist. Even though for me, the brand values are at the opposite end of the spectrum.

But I absolutely believe they haven’t got a leg to stand on as the entire basis of the branding is completely different. They haven’t got a wing or a prayer of succeeding in front of any competent judge.

The brand basis of red Bull is to help you achieve more, to push yourself beyond normal limits. Their sponsorship of the Air Race series, F1 cars and any seemingly mad adventurous activity has to confirm this. For me, its entire reason for being is to convey energetic enthusiasm.

Red Bull Air Race - Its energy all the way
Red Bull Air Race - Its energy all the way

Their active ingredient of Taurine is widely copied in every generic ‘energy’ drink in any supermarket. Tesco settled out of court with Red Bull in 2007 for an undisclosed sum for apparently being too close in design with their Tesco Kick energy drink – but that’s more likely to be because they sell red Bull and didn’t want to lose the contract.

Aldi sell a six pack of Red Thunder (for £1.49!) which comes in identical sized and coloured cans to those of Red Bull, but as they don’t sell the branded product, they are unlikely to decease or delist!

Slow Cow, at the total opposite end of the scale, is all about taking time out, about slowing down and maybe even taking yourself a little less seriously. It’s about marking a time to begin relaxing rather than to begin being a bit excitable. Who would try and look ‘cooler’ by drinking a drink called, Fat Sloth, Ugly Dog, or spunky Monkey – let alone Slow Cow?

I would also counter the argument even more strongly that the packs look similar. They don’t. One is cream and the other is red, blue and silver. If you confused the two of them side by side, you would be stupid or lying under oath. The only similarity I can see is that they sit on the same beverage shelf and they are in the same sized can.

Beans come in the same sized can as peaches and are also sold in supermarkets, but you would hopefully think it was yourself at fault if you accidentally had them on toast, not the people who put them in the can in the first place.

This is bad PR by Red Bull and very clever PR by Lino Fleury. The two products are literally chalk and cheese and any talk about them being in the same trading space is utter, utter nonsense.