Brand Experience, brand values, branding, Photography

The Land Rover brand, why it works and how it’s been so successful

I have been watching in admiration for some time now as to what Land Rover have done with their brands and i’ve come to the conclusion that they have quietly gone away and completed the most successful brand segmentation exercise of our generation. The way their range is segmented ensures that there is almost a product for all of us, whatever our life stage and however strong (or weak) our desire to show our wealth and success. Each of their individual products offers a potentially different brand experience.

So firstly a bit about the history of the company. It’s currently part of the Jaguar Land Rover group, a subsidiary of Tata Motors of India. When this takeover went through, most people would have assumed the brand would struggle. But it hasn’t. It started as a product by Rover in 1948 and only became a stand alone brand in 1978 with the launch of the Range Rover and survived despite numerous changes of ownership of the holding company. Perhaps it’s low point was as part of the terrible British Leyland (who also produced the Marina, Allegro and Princess – All truly awful cars).

So, the current range, works like this

1. Land Rover Defender

Land Rover Defender

  • Who would drive it? – Farmer types, people who work on the land and want genuine off road ability, will drive it with welly boots on and then hose it out, when the smell gets too bad.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – That they work on the land, need tough work tools and don’t care much for comfort or refinement.
  • Celebrity Twin? – Oddly, Singer John Meyer drives one, Top gear’s James May wants to be seen in one and so does Charlie Boorman and Ewan McGregor.
  • They may also buy? – Wales or perhaps A Toyota Hilux, but that’s not very British is it?
  • Brand threats – The surf dudes taking over the brand and making it too cool and trendy.

2. Land Rover Freelander 2

Land Rover Freelander 2

  • Who would drive it? – A light off road user or someone who wants a bit of security for the winter school run at a bit of a bargain price. More of a security seeker than a status seeker.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – They don’t much care, they like what it does and how it makes them feel (secure) more than they care what people think.
  • Celebrity Twin? – There aren’t any. Celebrities don’t drive Freelanders. But i’m happy to be proved wrong if anyone can find any visual evidence to the contrary.
  • They may also buy? – Anything by Kia or Hyundai or maybe Toyota.
  • Brand threats – Apathy. Does anyone care enough about the Freelander to buy it with more heavily warrantied cars available for less money?

3. Land Rover – Range Rover Evoque

Land Rover Range Rover Evoque

First thing to notice here is the switch into the Range Rover model names. It’s a distinct step up-market and the first of the status driven models.

  • Who would drive it? – It’s the new showy iPod generation with money. A ridiculous amount of money for a quite simple (but brilliant looking) car. More female than male.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – That they have arrived. They are the new, new money.
  • Celebrity Twin? – A very clever brand association with Victoria Beckham from the outset positioned it right in the glamorous hot spot.
  • They may also buy? – Mini Convertible, Porsche Cayenne, Audi Q5, BMW X6, Jaguar F Type convertible in white.
  • Brand threats – Overexposure. It’s a very fashionable car and could fall out of fashion as fast as it arrived as soon as the next big celeb is seen in something newer.

4. Land Rover – Discovery 4

Land Rover Discovery 4

Again, it’s not a coincidence that this is a step back out of the range Rover model listing. It’s back to the functionality being foremost and ‘flash’ being the follower attribute.

  • Who would drive it? – Hunting, shooting and fishing brigade, or people who regularly go to Gymkhanas but aren’t so wealthy they could own Belgium if they wanted.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – That they need a serious off road tool but don’t need the new money status to go with it.
  • Celebrity Twin? – Bear Grylls and Billy Piper (not together obviously).
  • They may also buy? – Toyota Landcruiser but they could consider an Audi Q7 or BMW x5 at a push, but both are more statusy than they prefer.
  • Brand threats – Underinvestment. This is a real range staple and should be very profitable but the risk is in not continuing to develop the product and keeping it fresh enough with clever hidden tech that is expected and others are offering.

5. Land Rover – Range Rover Sport

Land Rover - Range Rover Sport

This is easily my least favourite model. It’s quite  divisive product and for me harks back to the ‘Loadsamoney’, Wall Street, lunch is for wimps culture of the power crazy 80’s.

  • Who would drive it? – New money through and through. Scrap dealers (there’s a wrapped pink one at the tip where I live), property developers, online entrepreneurs.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – They’ve made it, they own the road and you don’t/haven’t.
  • Celebrity Twin? – 50 Cent, Rod Stewart(!), Pamela Anderson, Kelly Brook, Stephen Ireland aaaaaaaargh it’s a load of plastic people.
  • They may also buy? – A Lamborghini and have it chromed.
  • Brand threats – Reliability. The people I do know who have had one have all had terrible trouble with them. A new engine costs £10k+ which could economically write cars off even at only 5-6 years old.

6. Land Rover – Range Rover 

Land Rover - Range Rover

Range Rover, the choice of the really wealthy. Few could doubt that this is anything other than one of the finest cars in the world.

  • Who would drive it? – Old Money, or the seriously rich. It’s for the landowners of old and the genuine landed gentry.
  • What do they want people to think of them for driving it? – They don’t care, they own everything in the world anyway.
  • Celebrity Twin? – Prince Harry, David, Beckham any Lord who hasn’t lost everything on a game of cards .
  • They may also buy? – Belgium, or a Toyota Landcruiser V8.
  • Brand threats – Jordan and the Hip Hop generation owning them and devaluing the sheer plutocracy of the brand. And again, reliability.

So what would I buy?

A Mercedes.

Read into that what you like.

Brand Experience, brand values, branding

Jamie Oliver in Boots – And then he rolled over

It was a good effort, but for me was doomed from the start. Jamie Oliver in Boots. More about volume than brand alignment.

It’s a bit like Asda selling Bose, Bentley or maybe a premium food range by Heston Blumenthal. The brands just don’t connect and their audiences have almost no overlap, so they are doomed to fail from the start. The danger for the premium brand is that it becomes tarnished by hanging out with the cheaper one.

A while ago I predicted they would need to include it in the Boots meal deal for it to succeed. And then more recently, they blinked and made a mini meal deal with an alignment with Innocent – which was a good thing.

And now they have gone one better (cheaper) again and made a real meal deal with a drink and a snack for the fixed price of £4.95. This is almost as cheap as some of the sandwiches on their own. It may be a last roll (or salad) of the dice, but it does feel like an important price point to have ducked under and for me is now far more likely to succeed. What it will do for the long term brand equity of Jamie Oliver is less sure, but it’s a step downwards that will be very hard to recover from.

Jamies does (cheap) lunch via the meal deal at Boots
Jamies does (cheap) lunch via the meal deal at Boots

Thanks for the picture Leo.

Brand Experience, brand values, branding, Life, Social media

A bit of a problem for the Abercrombie and Fitch brand

When you set out to create a brand you can design in certain criteria. By pricing it high, you exclude certain buying groups, by not even making XL sizes for women, you naturally exclude the larger ladies. They also place ‘beautiful people’ in a state of undress outside their stores as greeters. These decisions form the basis of the whole brand and who you target and appeal to. I am far to old/fat to be in their target audience (but so is their own MD!) and I am now quite proud to say I have never owned any of their products.

Mike Jeffries Abercrombie and Fitch Managing Director
Mike Jeffries Abercrombie and Fitch Managing Director – looking a little like a bad advertisement for facial surgery – and certainly not in his own target audience

But Abercrombie and Fitch have taken this brand separation to a new level by destroying all damaged or returned goods rather than giving them to the homeless, as many other brands do. All very deliberate and all very elitist. the assumption being that seeing homeless people in A&F would embarrass their own beautiful customers.

But here comes the brand backlash. 7.5 million views in less than a month, and growing fast. Watch this space. It may be the next Gerald Ratner moment for the A&F brand.

Best branding books, branding, Photography

Amazon’s dirty tricks – Best Branding Books

Sick Life for Amazon - sit on their arses and watch where their traffic is coming from.
Sick Life for Amazon – sit on their arses and watch where their traffic is coming from.

You may have noticed on this blog that I have a list of the best branding books. It has been built up over the years by reading the books and deciding which ones are the most relevant based on 22 years of running a branding and design agency and being involved with thousands of different businesses.

Well for some time now, if you put the search term ‘best branding books‘ into Google I have been at number One. This is partly I think because it’s a good list and partly because I have been doing some SEO experimentation on this page to see what can be achieved by using social media, page titling and some neat URL rewriting.

What you may not realise is that if anyone buys any of the books from the list, then I get a small commission from Amazon (normally 5% or so). It amounts to a few quid a month, sometime as high as £20, so not big beer, but a great test bed for me and an interesting experiment.

Well Amazon have had enough of that commission and now forced their own list to the top of the search. It’s not very good either. Produced by a man called Nick Wreden from Atlanta, it’s more a list of general business books.

It MAY be a complete coincidence, but it does seem remarkable that as I have been doing more and more work on the page to get it to the top of the search and Amazon notice all the extra traffic from my domain on one specific search term and they want a piece of my rather measly action. Hmmm.

Picture by and © Ruby Lyle. Thanks Duck.

Brand Experience, brand values, branding

Brand experience by Disney

Selena Gomez and Mickey Mouse hugging
Selena Gomez and Mickey Mouse hugging and creating a memorable brand experience

As i’ve said before, brand experience is about caring enough to control the tiniest details of your brand and how it is perceived by your customers.

Well, I heard a Disney detail that I loved recently, which you may not have noticed before and it’s perfect and tiny. If  as an adult or child you hug Mickey Mouse, he will not let the hug go before you do. Think about it. It’s really clever. If a child gets the perception that Mickey needs to move on, they would be devastated. Mickey would then become a character, or worse still, someone doing a job and not their friend. They need Mickey to be seen as a friend for as long as possible and caring about the hug, could be enough to keep it going for longer.

There was another great detail I heard too, which was that if someone shouted ‘Andy’s coming’ near any of the Toy Story Characters they would throw themselves on the ground and play dead. This would have been massively open to abuse but perfect. Sadly it’s been debunked as a myth.

branding

Meeting Marty Neumeier – Part Two

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my opportunity to meet Marty Neumeier, well last week, I did as a guest of my friends at Liquid Agency at the Design Council and he was everything he promised and more. I had a good chat with him and he was friendly, insightful and passionate about what he does, which is create differentiated brands.

Alfredo Muccino, Johnny Lyle and Marty Neumeier
Alfredo Muccino, myself and Marty Neumeier at the event at the Design Council

As you can see, he signed my copy of his new book ‘Meta Skills‘, which I will read and review, but also shared that he thought that his previous book ‘The Designful Company‘ was in his opinion, his best. I have to confess I hadn’t read that, so as you can see, I now have a copy of that too and will read it in due course (as soon as I finish Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell). What was interesting was that he said The Designful Company had been his worst seller because it was targeted so tightly at CEO’s and what they could to in order to transform their companies. There’s a lesson in this in thinking about the audience you address when you are planning your brand.

The books by Marty Neumeier
The books signed by Marty Neumeier – now i just need to read them!
branding

Great brands still focus on quality

Mephisto refurbishment from footwear4you.co.uk
Mephisto refurbishment from footwear4you.co.uk

Back in September 2010 I was predicting that with the recession being in full grip, it would change the way we behave. I believed that We would make do and mend more. Buy fewer better things and repair them. I got a few of my other predictions quite wrong in that I said we would get bored of electronics and that hasn’t happened.

But at almost exactly that time, I splashed out an a very expensive but massively comfortable pair of Mephisto shoes. (it is a sign of age I guess). And after nearly 2.5 years of wearing them to death and walking well over 2,500 miles in them they began to look a little tired.

But you know a brand is solid and their product is of exceptionally high quality when they are confident enough to completely refurbish them for about half the price of a new pair. New sole, all new stitching, new insoles, new laces. The lot.

Anyway, I got them back this week. Geoff at Footwear4you.co.uk rang me to tell me they were ready and in his lovely understated way told me he thought i’d be pleased with the results.

Well, they are perfect. I swear you wouldn’t be able to tell they weren’t brand new.

Mephisto isn’t a brand I knew before I bought them and they do look a bit like lecturers shoes, but any brand that has this much faith in its quality has to be good.

There are still an enormous amount of good businesses going to the wall by chasing prices to the bottom. This is a sure fire road to failure. Quality lasts and quality brands last too.

Right, I’m off for a walk.

branding

Meeting Marty Neumeier

Meeting Marty Neumeir at the design council

 

I’ve learnt a lot from Marty Neumeier over the years and next Wednesday at 18.00 at the Design Council in London, I am going down to London to meet him and I have to confess, i’m a little nervous. Two of his books, The Brand Gap and Zag are at joint number two in my list of branding books you have to read. As books go, neither say that much more than the rather excellent Purple Cow by Seth Godin, but what they do achieve is to completely raise the bar in how text books look and read. Both read like poetry and just flow, because they have been distilled down to just the points you need to understand with none of the silly language that the design industry occasionally hides behind.

So there’s still a chance to join me there if you’d like by emailing kat.barrows@liquidagency.com and booking a FREE place. Photos and thoughts next week.

brand values, branding

London Underground – Evidence of a brand emerging

Excuse the roughness of this video, but listen to the sentiment. The conductor/announcer could easily be a dry old chap with no joy in his heart and no understanding about how he can influence the start of people’s day. But listen to this man Carl Downer in action.

What he says is “This train is for all the Brixton crew. Service update, everything irie, everyting cris. Chill out, kick back, no need let anybody cramp your style” And then just before the train leaves he announces “Rastaman driver, take these beautiful people to their destination.”

This is the same announcer, during the Olympics.

And even better, the industry are promoting him too and he’s up for an outstanding customer service award. Good luck Carl.

branding

I wrote this a few years ago and still rather like it!

Johnny Lyle's avatarJohnny Lyle's new brand thinking

One of the things that has always amazed me when working with brilliant designers is where they get their ideas from. How do they rock up every day and create brilliant work that meets and exceeds the brief we set before them?

So I asked some of those in our team, and the answer seems to be everywhere and anywhere. Which is obvious I guess, but it is the main reason that we only look at designers who have a life outside of work and have done (and continue to do) interesting things when they are not at work.

If you stare at a computer all day, great ideas won’t come rolling out, but safe ones will. Ones that you are pretty sure will be good enough to get through, not those that are brilliant enough to really stand out.

So I started thinking about how we know whether it…

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