Create focused expectations of brands with ads
Published on 09/29/2003 under Branding
I’ve been thinking about brand personalities lately, especially ones for b-to-b companies. And while I know a lot more goes into building a brand than trade media advertising, you can’t deny the opportunity we have to create focused expectations for our brands with each and every ad we create and place. Unfortunately, not too many b-to-b companies have picked up on this yet.
With most b-to-b advertisers, creative responsibility is pushed as far down in the company as possible, and marketing and sales managers enjoy dabbling in this process. It’s like an exciting new hobby, except they get paid to do it. The result is that advertising for Division A rarely conveys the same look and feel as ads for Division B or C. Because of this, customers fail to receive a focused impression of the company’s image. That’s a serious mistake.
A few months ago I wrote about Peoria, Ill.-based Caterpillar and its “One Voice” program (July 7, 2003, “Caterpillar learns to speak with ‘One Voice,’ ” page 10). The program is something the company’s marketers live and breathe. You won’t find any dainty Caterpillar ads because daintiness doesn’t fit the Caterpillar voice. You won’t find any funny ones either, nor will you see eye-popping computer effects.
It’s not that Caterpillar doesn’t have a sense of humor or that their graphic designers don’t like special computer effects, but that they make conscious decisions not to use these techniques because they feel building a consistent personality for their brand is more important. Each ad reminds customers and prospective customers what they can expect from Caterpillar: strong, reliable products backed by serious, competent people.
Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM used to stand for business machines--boxes with complex computer stuff inside. But just about the time that personal computers started looking pretty much alike to computer buyers, IBM changed its image to that of a company that could help us do more with our boxes—like hook them up in huge networks, integrate enterprise software solutions and mine data for better decision-making. Our expectations of IBM have changed as a result.
I’m old enough to remember drilling for oil with truck-mounted drilling rigs that were essentially designed for shallow-depth water wells. You can’t do that anymore. Now you go down more than a mile just to get to the ocean floor and you drill several more miles before you reach pay dirt, assuming your geophysical information is correct.
That’s why Schlumberger, a leader in seismic and geophysical data services based in Houston, makes each and every one of its ads in oil-industry publications convey a serious, technologically advanced image. Its body copy is full of high-tech phrases like “microresistivity imaging” and “deep-water cementing for zonal isolation.” Layouts are always similar with the Schlumberger logo in white on a reflex blue background (which gives magazine production managers the heebie-jeebies, I’m told).
Schlumberger’s customers risk hundreds of millions of dollars on these subsea projects and the asset managers they’re trying to reach are not likely to settle for second-best. So in their world, either you look like the one-and-only right choice, or you’re no choice at all.
Having a deadly serious brand personality isn’t always the way to go, of course. New Pig Corp. based in Tipton, PA has built a $100 million business in spill-containment products by taking just the opposite approach. When you call the toll-free number (800-HOT-HOGS) and get ready to select something from their “Pigalog” of more than 5,000 leak and spill control products, you’re probably already smiling. New Pig has happily built a loyal, predictable customer base that shares a messy, disgusting problem: industrial seepage. And they’re smiling all the way to the bank.
So you see there are many ways to skin this cat, and there’s not any one right way to do it. But it’s not as easy as it sounds. People always seem to want the brand image to be more like a mission statement: We’re the No. 1, world’s best, highest quality, most responsive, most technically advanced company in the universe. And oh yeah, we’re humble, too.
That’s why having an outsider help you wade through the process can be extremely helpful. And even then it’s not a guaranteed deal.
I was reading a book recently by branding expert James R. Gregory, titled Leveraging The Corporate Brand, and in the back he includes a case history about an industrial pipe company called Hancor Inc. I’ve read enough of Gregory’s work to know he’s a legitimate expert in this field; you might say he’s a pioneer since his first book on corporate image was published in 1991. But his Hancor case study really disappointed me, partially because he built it up by going on and on about how they “did it right” and that it was “truly a textbook case.” Unfortunately, after describing in agonizing detail the process they went through interviewing employees, customers and distributors, the story abruptly stopped when they designed a new logo and introduced a new tagline: “Technology. Innovation. Solutions.”
I always thought technology and innovation were close to the same thing. And remember, we’re talking about storm sewer pipe, so how high-tech can it be, anyway? Still, I’m trying to form an expectation of this company in my mind based on the new brand image program, and nothing much is popping up on the screen. So I went to the Hancor Web site, and to its credit, seven years later Hancor is still using “Technology. Innovation. Solutions.” But when you get past the snappy little flash intro, you land on a menu page that is organized according to its five major product lines and from that point on it’s pretty much a features-and-benefits product story. Talk about wasted opportunity. If anything, this is a textbook case of a company that brought in a branding expert and then proceeded to do what they were comfortable doing in the first place.
If you’re going to spend the time and money to develop a brand image program, make sure you consider the personality aspects of it. Because your brand personality tells people what they can expect from you, and there’s going to come a day when that will be very important.