June 2009 

Our three Smarter Ways of Working Book Club reviews this quarter offer new thoughts on branding, insight into the digital world, and a new version of an old favourite.

Our Book Club Choice is "Branding Only Works On Cattle", in which author Jonathan Salem Baskin challenges some of our most treasured beliefs with statements like “Nobody has a relationship with a brand.” The book is a useful reminder that too much advertising aims to be entertaining and then just hopes for the best.

In “What Would Google Do”, Jeff Jarvis discusses how to use the internet to grow a business by being transparent and searchable, by trusting your users and joining conversations with them.

Our third book is an old friend, Adam Morgan’s Eating the Big Fish, which has just re-appeared in a new, updated edition. The original – clearly written, relevant and refreshing - has been a MediaCom favourite for years, and we welcome this new version. If you’ve not come across it before, the subtitle - How Challenger Brands Can Compete Against Brand Leaders - sums it up nicely.

What Would Google Do?

Jeff Jarvis

Once you get past a slightly irritating amount of self publicity by the author, What Would Google Do reveals itself as an interesting read, containing a lot of useful information on how a number of Internet companies have managed to be so successful.

Don’t be misled by the title: this book is about the internet – not google. It shows us how we can use the internet to grow a business… by being transparent and searchable, by trusting our users and joining conversations with them, to focus on who we are and what we offer and to move fast and react to the changes in the world around us and to not be too greedy.

The author then goes on to show how these principles can be used in specific industry areas – In one example he suggests that a restaurant should show each customer how many times a person has ordered a specific dish from a menu – he goes on to say that this could prompt people to buy that specific dish “as it must be good because so many people have ordered it” and he suggests this may prompt the chef to remove any dishes which are receiving low orders from the menu. Interesting – although you would imagine that this second part is happening any way in most well run restaurants.

The book is full of sound principles but don’t let yourself get too carried away y the cover reviews which refer to the author as a “visionary”; there is no real ground breaking information here.

In summary, if you’re interesting in reading a book which tells you about how Internet companies started and managed to be successful this book will give you a good introduction but if you’re looking for a book which is going to fundamentally change your business ideas – I’m not sure this is the one.

Branding only works on Cattle

Jonathan Salem Baskin

Branding only works on Cattle challenges one of the biggest axioms of the marketing industry because it questions whether brand building is the best approach for advertisers.

At MediaCom we like to throw challenges at all kinds of accepted truths, and we like this book because it insists on putting the very idea of a brand up against very aggressive scrutiny.

And of course the author – Jonathan Salem Baskin – who runs a global brand consultancy, doesn’t really mean brands are meaningless. What he’s asking us to do is to question what brands are for. And if they are just fluffy, meaningless feel good propositions then he says we should get rid of them. Brand advertising that doesn’t include behavioural change by the consumer is not worth the investment – arguably never, and definitely not at times like these.

Baskin’s argument is that branding is based on out of date notions about influencing a consumer’s unconscious thinking. And clearly in the Age of Dialogue – the current age of communications – we know that, more than ever before, consumers are having millions of conversations about products and indeed brands, and that those conversations are influencing purchase behaviour, in many cases more than conventional brand advertising can.

Baskin begins by asserting that for every case history that talks about the success of branding, there are many more where the real results are down to much more prosaic transformational steps like product performance, taste or distribution deals.

He also worries that brand proponents view consumers in terms of their emotional states, whilst the rest of the company see behaviour. Branding mustn’t just be about what people think about you, but what you do, and how the consumer acts as a result. Therefore the distribution strategy must be a part of the brand behaviour as must pricing, crm, telephone menus, packaging and of course everything you do both on and offline. In fact any and all operational functions are a part of the brand, and if they are not part of the marketing departments thinking then the brand doesn’t really exist.

The arguments in the book are refreshing even if you don’t agree with all of them, because they make you think - and in some cases overturn some marketing precepts that in your heart of heart you know don’t make sense. Does branding really enforce loyalty for example ? Or is it the product experience? I know which is more important to me when I shop for groceries… any kind of warm advertising would not compensate for a bad experience in store.

There’s a lot of advice about an integrated approach to branding.

Baskin recommends four new habits

1. Ride behaviours - go along with the flow of what the consumer
   already likes to do - rather than try and revolutionise them

2. Show, don’t tell – make it real

3. Prompt behaviours not just ideas

4. Talk to everyone you can with the brand’s communications and
   invite them to be involved in modifying and improving the
   meaning of the brand, so don’t optimise the target audience so
   much that you only speak to your current biggest fans, as they
   won’t help you grow your franchise.

5. Baskin concludes “Nobody has a relationship with a brand….
   People are too busy, distracted, critical and empowered to
   be easily or continually convinced by the declarations that
   constituted the Golden Age of Branding”.

Baskin’s book is a bracing reminder that too much advertising on our TV screens or in our magazines contents itself with being entertaining and hoping for the best. Great brand communications create behavioural change in the consumer. Advertising can no longer afford to sit in any kind of silo, but must involve all parts of the organisation and be integrated with all communications. You may disagree with some of the content of this book, but it’s a great stimulating read.

Eating The Big Fish

Adam Morgan

We at MediaCom have loved the work of Adam Morgan, author of Eat Big Fish and general marketing visionary since the publication of the first version of this title in 1999. This revised version is an update of the challenger brand philosophy, strategy and behaviour that was so compellingly extolled in the first edition. In many respects this book mirrors its older sibling: in structure, style and content. It is an excellent introduction to marketing principles that we should all be familiar with,, for those who didn’t read the previous edition; or a timely and inspiring reminder of some excellent principles and case histories for those that have been working with the ideas already.

The key reason for anyone to read this book is that it gives the reader an excellent process and alternative lens for attacking marketing problems from root cause to solution.

So what can we learn from Eating The Big Fish Mark 2?

First of all we get a picture of the marketing world in which we live today, depicted by Morgan as a harsh environment for any brand wishing to engage indifferent and ultra busy people (not consumers a non existent phenomenon according to Morgan) and in particular any brand caught between the dominant market leader and small niche offerings.

Morgan’s contention is that #2 and #3 brands that succeed in increasing share and driving profitability should learn from those in similar positions that have adopted Challenger Strategies. In essence these are convention breaking business, marketing and communication strategies that were developed by subverting an aspect of conventional category wisdom. These are brands with chutzpah at their heart such as Virgin, Apple and Dove.

In order to help us to emulate these visionaries Morgan maps out eight ‘Challenger Credos’ for us and very kindly supplies us with plans for brainstorm and workshop days that eat Big Fish use to help instil challenger behaviour into brands. So the meat of the book takes us on a journey that starts by provoking us to take an ‘intelligently naïve’ look at our brand and business to root out unhelpful conventions.

The Morgan way then explains how we should identify a brand out rather than consumer in ‘Lighthouse Identity’ built upon rocks of truth and how this will then enable us to ‘Thought Leading’ point of view on the world. In effect this means demonstrating our superior vision by taking convention head on and breaking it. This convention breaking approach should be implemented rapidly via ‘Symbols of re evaluation’ that will accelerate people’s understanding of this new identity. These are dramatic communications deeds that will create hyper large representations of our challenger positioning.

The remaining chapters concentrate in transforming this strategy into actions that will make the challenger’s limited marketing budget punch way above its weight. So we learn to ‘Sacrifice’ the things we do that don’t really add value and to ‘Over Commit’ to the very few activities that do make most material difference (think 80:20 rule).

Lastly we learn to subsume our communications strategy to these principles and ultimately to set about building a culture that worships ideas and their ability to transform business.