Tag: Starbucks

The age of the scary brand manager is upon us

Freelance creatives are familiar with the sales/marketing conflict at their client organizations: sales needs to generate business, while marketing needs to generate the maximum number of leads at the lowest possible cost. When good leads can be produced cost effectively, everybody wins. It’s an example of creative tension that produces a positive result.

But now there’s a new force to be reckoned with at many client companies: the brand guardian, who might be a product manager, an in-house creative director or some kind of special off-to-the-side position on the org chart reporting directly to the marketing VP. Unlike the sales and marketing folks, the brand manager is often not required to show measurable results. And their interference can do serious damage to your best work.

Companies have long been aware of the importance of a consistent identity, but social media has caused them to be ultra-vigilant. If you go off-brand in a way that’s tacky or politically incorrect or just counter to what your customers expect, you risk being excoriated like Gap with its new logo and Starbucks with its #RaceTogether campaign. The brand manager would appear to be a sort of flack jacket, taking a daily activist role to keep this embarrassment from happening.

The bad stuff occurs when setting and enforcing brand standards becomes a subjective process. These standards grew out of style guides and copywriting rule books, which were specific enough that they were easy to follow. You knew what colors you could and could not use, and you knew not to sound like J.C. Penney when you were writing for Neiman-Marcus.

But now, weighed down by “voice of the customer” screeds and “personas” for the various pilgrims you meet along the “buyer’s journey”, brand enforcement has gotten much broader and at the same time more arbitrary at many companies. (NOT all and certainly none of my clients—see below!) The only way you know for sure is when your hand is slapped for going off-message. And because they want to avoid this experience, many marketing managers are over cautious and will preemptively kibosh good creative because they think brand won’t like it.

Historically, good lead generation has had little to do with brand. If you want to start a conversation at a party, you don’t begin with your elevator pitch but with a statement you think will be of interest to the other person. If you’re DirectTV, a satellite provider with a huge brand investment, you trick people into opening your envelope by making it look like a personal invitation. Now that AT&T has acquired them, the difference is an AT&T logo on the back of the envelope. Brand can wait. Right now they just want to get leads.

Don’t take this the wrong way. Brand is good. I love brands. One of my favorite clients is an agency that specializes in helping companies define their brands. The damage is done when brand is apparently in conflict with good creative—something that should never happen because brand should not be “this is who we are” but “this is what we can do for you” or “this is how you feel when you use our brand”.

Brand is still about benefits, about you and not about me. But many brand managers don’t trust this. They’ll dial back powerful selling statements in favor of stilted, stuffy language that is somehow “brand-y”. This hurts your chance to win for your client by generating more customers and revenue through powerful copy. Same thing happens with graphics if you are shoehorned into a template that looks great but doesn’t follow principles of good eyeflow and doesn’t allow enough content to deliver a compelling message.

So what can you do? If possible, get an audience with the brand manager as part of your assignment. Ask them to explain why the standards are the way they are. Then, when you present the work, play back those explanations in the same way you quote from the creative brief. This gives the brand manager some skin in the game and may even win them over.

But that’s an ideal situation. At some companies the brand manager may refuse to even talk to you. They may argue there’s no need because the brand standards are already laid out. It’s obvious they’re being defensive—but the very reason you need to talk about standards is to be sure you interpret them correctly.

A brand needs to listen to its customers. It needs to evolve. Marketing is a key part of that conversation. As my sales training client Roy Chitwood says, “nothing happens till somebody sells something”. When a brand manager shuts you out of that conversation, everybody loses.

This post was inspired by conversations at my “Devilish Details” Ignite Session at the 2015 DMA conference, where over 100 creatives shared examples of good ideas gone bad. It has no bearing on any of my own clients, past, present or future.

Starbucks shows how not to go viral with #RaceTogether campaign

Starbucks recently initiated a viral social media campaign that flamed out immediately. Baristas were instructed to write “Race Together” on coffee cups to initiate a dialog about race and inequality with their customers.

An excellent LinkedIn post by UC Berkeley undergraduate Tai Tran describes the problems with this and the subsequent PR clusterf*ck, which in retrospect seems inevitable, along with the lessons to be learned.

First, the message didn’t fit the corporate culture. Starbucks tends to sell its expensive products in upscale neighborhoods to a non-diverse customer base. One critical tweet asked how many people of color work in Starbuck’s corporate office; another noted that all the hands holding cups in a SBUX promo were white.

Then, when outraged customers and employees began tweeting to Starbucks Sr. VP of Global Communications Corey duBrowa’s Twitter account, he responded by blocking them and freezing the account (it has since been reactivated).

An inauthentic campaign>handed down from on high>with backlash met with stonewalling instead of engagement and big time mea culpa=how not to go viral with a corporate social media campaign.

I’m summarizing here because I want you to go read Tai Tran’s full article. He describes himself as “ready to disrupt the tech industry with his infectious passion and energy for marketing!” Somebody, hire this guy.

What Chinese consumers want (and maybe Americans too)

Recently the Wall Street Journal ran a Saturday essay on selling to the new Chinese consumer. It’s adapted from What Chinese Want: Culture, Communism and China’s Modern Consumer by Tom Doctoroff, a book available on amazon.com. What I found interesting was that the three rules cited by Doctoroff could be applied to Americans as well. They don’t necessarily describe our main motivations, but I don’t think it would hurt if your marketing included the same assumptions.

Rule #1 is that a product that is consumed in public commands a premium over one used in private. Example: Chinese will pay a premium for international mobile phones, but prefer cheap domestic brands for their household appliances. Starbucks and Pizza Hut, among others, have well positioned themselves as brands consumed in a highly visible setting.

Rule #2 is that benefits should be external, not internal. To quote the author, “spas and resorts do better when they promise not only relaxation but also recharged batteries. Infant formulas must promote intelligence, not happiness. Kids aren’t taken to Pizza Hut so that they can enjoy pizza; they are rewarded with academic “triumph feasts.” Beauty products must help a woman “move forward.” Even beer must do something. In Western countries, letting the good times roll is enough; in China, pilsner must bring people together, reinforce trust and promote mutual financial gain.”

I love this one and think it should be added to any checklist of product benefits. It’s fine if the product makes you feel good, but doesn’t that make you look better too? If that electronic measuring device helps you do the job faster, doesn’t that make you appear more competent, confident and promotable to your boss? Let’s find ways to add external benefits whenever possible to our selling copy.

Rule #3 is that a product must help the user stand out while supporting their desire to fit in. This is why BMWs and Audis are preferred over Maseratis by those with the means to buy a luxury car. Obviously, Americans have fewer problems with flashy consumerism. And yet. According to Doctoroff, “the American dream—wealth that culminates in freedom—is intoxicating for the Chinese. But whereas Americans dream of “independence,” Chinese crave “control” of their own destiny and command over the vagaries of daily life.”

Doesn’t that sound familiar and appealing? Don’t we as copywriters, in addition to positives, make sure that our copy will include that absolute absence of negatives? Don’t we point out that you’ll be admired for your talent or good taste thanks to our product, and as a result other people will want to be like you? That’s quite different from being a lone wolf who insists on being one of a kind.

Think about selling to the Chinese, and you might find ways to sell more effectively to Americans as well.