Yeah, yeah, but what does this mean for our BRAND?!

A Brief History of  ”Climate Change”

First, a little background. When scientists started to conclude that human activity was impacting climate, they called it “inadvertent climate modification” (sexy, right?) because they didn’t know how things would be affected. In the mid 70′s, that was shortened to Climate Change, and the concept of ‘Global Warming’ was coined to refer specifically to “the average global surface temperature increase from human emissions of greenhouse gases.” Later, scientists introduced the term “Global Change” as an omnibus term that includes factors not related to climate.

That’s the jargon in the scientific community. In the real world, we’re hearing Climate Change more often than Global Warming, but laypersons often use the two interchangeably. By using either of these terms as their rallying cry, people trying to draw attention to the issue are making a big branding mistake.

Global Warming? What Global Warming?

Newark Airport, December 2010

You see – here’s the thing about global warming and climate change (other than fact that it was a cold, snowy winter for many people last year): they’re big, they’re complicated, they’re hard to observe, they seem to be happening somewhere other than here and they’re measured in decades if not centuries.

In their book Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reference a study in which participants asked to donate to a charitable cause were twice as likely to give if the appeal focused on a single child rather than on the entire problem (a phenomenon called The Mother Theresa effect). The terms Climate Change and Global Warming may capture the scope of the problem, but they aren’t as effective calls to action as a more specific term or phrase might be.

Don’t Bury the Lead

The same book cites another instructive anecdote, which we’ll quote from this website:

“The first day of class, Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment: to write the lead to a newspaper story.

The teacher reeled off the facts:”Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.

Ephron and most of the other students produced leads that reordered the facts and condensed them into a single sentence: “Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills faculty Thursday in Sacramento…blah, blah, blah.

The teacher collected the leads and scanned them rapidly. Then he laid them aside and paused for a moment.Finally, he said, “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’”

Ah.

He translated the dry facts into a relevant concept for readers — the essence of the story they would truly care about.

Putting aside for a moment the debate over what’s causing it and how quickly it may or may not be happening, Climate Change and Global Warming are the dry facts (no pun intended). But are they the relevant concept that audiences will truly care about, or is there an opportunity to strike a more visceral cord?

Bringing it Back to Brands: Think Smaller, Think More Specific

Brands have had to deal with issues just like these for decades. Every business leader worth her or his salt knows that you can’t be all things to all people. In order to build a strong brand, you have to define the right audience for your products and services and then use your brand to communicate a value proposition that is compelling, credible and differentiated. Think of your brand as “the lead”  for your organization’s or businesses’s story. It doesn’t say everything, but it says the most important thing.

BMW positions its brand on performance	Volvo built its brand on safety

BMW and Volvo provide great examples of good branding at work. They each chose a very specific value proposition on which to build their brands. It doesn’t mean that BMW never talks about safety, that Volvo never mentions performance, or that they both didn’t talk about price, comfort, options, fuel efficiency or all of the other things that people care about when it comes to choosing a car. But it does mean that they chose a lead, and they didn’t bury it. Nearly all of their communications start with or strongly link back to that core brand value proposition.

What’s a Brand (or Climate) Warrior to Do?

It’s not an easy choice for a business or organization to make.

For the committed advocate who is equally worried about weather patterns, biodiversity, natural resources and more, even Climate Change and Global Warming may not be expansive enough to capture the issue. But if that advocate’s goal is to convince and even recruit fence-sitters and skeptics, it’s time to think smaller and more relevant, not bigger and less concrete.

If we were in charge of drawing attention to the climate issue, we’d focus on air quality and pollution. 250 million of the 311 million people living in the United States live in cities, where smog, smokestacks, smelly exhaust and asthma detract from personal quality of life on a daily basis. Convincing people that clean air is better than dirty air doesn’t take a whole lot of confusing scientific backup. Air quality and pollution don’t capture the totality of the problem, but they just might strike the chord that makes people care enough to demand action from those in charge, or even take action themselves.

Businesses have to make the same difficult choices in order to build strong brands. You have to think hard about the aspect of your business, your products and your services that most effectively connects with your target.

• What keeps them up at night?
• What is your competition offering them?
• What is it that only you can do for them?

If you can find the idea at the intersection of the answers to these three questions, then you’ll have found your lead. If you communicate it effectively and consistently, it will tell your stakeholders not just what you do, but whey they should care. And that’s what great brands and worthy causes are built on.

If ever there was a food in need of a brand makeover, the noble pizza would be up high on the list.  Beloved by young, old and underutilized interventional cardiologists alike, the 3 billion pizzas served up in the US each year amount to 46 slices for each of the 94% of all Americans who admit to eating pizza. Although popular, the delicious cheesy dish isn’t always known for a positive brand image . . . or heart-healthy content.  Indeed, the perennially popular pepperoni will exact its revenge: three slices from a 12-inch Papa John’s Thin Crust Pepperoni Pizza will fill your belly and arteries with 800 calories, 48 grams of total fat and a whopping 1,860 mg of sodium (the recommended dose of sodium for an entire day tops out at 2,400 miligrams). Add to the mix well-publicized brand fails of employee mishaps (remember the Dominos case in 2009 with this revolting employee video) and you have a branding challenge only the siren song of fat, sugar and refined flour can overcome.

Enter Naked Pizza, one of the most-expertly executed branded pizza-makers to hit cities such as San Diego, Miami, Boston, Cincinnati, Louisville, and soon The Big Apple where it will compete with the estimated 9,000 other pizza purveyors in NY.  Originated in New Orleans in 2006 “in a 500-square-foot building that took in six feet of water after Hurricane Katrina,” Naked Pizza has injected the pizza franchising world with stunning, clean and fresh design in their logo, brochures and website to remind even the most jaded consumer of the multiple Meat Lovers that pizza can be fresh and healthy.  Hence, the word “naked,” with nothing to hide (the playful double entendre of course adds to the brand’s insouciant pluck — the company was originally named the more prosaic “World’s Healthiest Pizza“).  Even the napkins tell it like it is, which in light of our BrandCultureTalk “no bull” promise, we rather like.

In keeping with the brand’s commitment to transparency, Naked Pizza also proudly hosts the LivNaked Blog, which boasts “What we’re about.” Sprinkle in a healthy dose of (and deft touch with) social media, and consumers can interact with the brand through a behind-the-scenes peak into the employees (literally on a Flickr stream), understand what goes into making their pizza and where the ingredients come from, and how they can continue to develop their relationship with the brand across social media channels.  [We're hardly the first to note the company's social media prowess. Other leading outlets like The New York Times and even irascible billionaire Mark Cuban have voted with their prominent posts and wallet, respectively ]. The Naked Pizza brochure breaks down their pizza-making process with raw questions such as “Ten grains in the crust? Really?” and “What’s prebiotic agave fiber? Will I wake up with a Bengal tiger in my bed the next morning?” and “What’s with all the social media?”  This is certainly the patois of a brand that’s proud of its healthy-earthy credentials, but doesn’t take itself too seriously — all delivering a consistent, proprietary and fresh brand experience.

Diners experience the high-tech, transparent vibe inside the store as well, transforming what really is a cramped facility footprint (800 – 1200 square feet with 70% – 80% of a typical Naked Pizza outlet’s business being delivery) into a highly engaging, interactive brand experience including giant QR codes in the store front and iPads adorn the counters with neon green walls — taken right from their logo palette.

What’s the verdict?  We think there are some smart folks (and brand-builders) running Naked Pizza who have reimagined a global treat into a new, healthier incarnation. But don’t trust us, trust the numbers.  Social analytic firm DigitalCoCo just ranked Naked Pizza among the top five most influential casual brand concepts.  That’s some boffo brand-building that builds the bottom line.  Bravo.

We recently saw these nicely designed pieces on climate change and it got us to thinking – will 2011 be the year it’s finally possible to look ‘green’ without using green?

For a decade, the relative newness of the concept of ‘green’ has limited us to a fairly narrow range of color (green, obviously, and it’s okay to use some blue to help it pop); imagery (pastoral landscapes and herbivores are best); and fonts (absolutely, positively no serifs ever) that had to communicate our clients’ environmental credentials instantly and overtly.

But when everyone is racing to out-green each other, slapping a photo of a duck on your packaging may no longer be enough to stand out. (Though it looks like 556,240 purchasers of Dawn dish soaps cared enough to read the find print and see that the promised donation was not automatic – it had to be activated online.)

And as awareness of climate change becomes nearly universal (82% awareness in the US according to 2009 data), will a more nuanced evaluation of environmental communications and efforts follow suit?

ENFO, the organization whose pamphlets we call out above, appears to be thinking about these issues in their print pieces, but remains mired in 2006 online:

*For the record, the firm that designed the print pieces above tells us that they had nothing to do with this website, and we believe them

As claims of being green become increasingly commoditized and visually indistinct, it’s up to marketers and agencies to  find new, more creative and more substantive ways of communicating environmental responsibility efforts, and explaining why they  matter.

It’s a challenge we look forward to helping our clients solve this year.

The FMCG giant has traditionally advertised Dawn, the #1 dish detergent in the country, around differentiated, value-added features: Direct Foam, Direct Foam with Bleach Alternative, Red Apple Scent with Vinegar Alternative, yada, yada, yada, see the full Dawn range of products here.

A recent BrandCulture purchase (pictured below) reveals a decidedly different approach.

In case the fine print under the attention-grabbing 40% MORE isn’t clear, see a close-up below.

Here’s the kicker – this was a 28 fl oz bottle!

You know what we call this? Effective point-of-sale promotion. The claim to be delivering more product in your large bottle than your competitor does in a small bottle doesn’t pass the straight face test, but how many shoppers actually put it to that test? Very, very few, we’ll wager. The effect is that this bottle appears to be a better value.

We’ve also read that the brand’s managers are now trying to combat Ajax’s more rapid growth with a new digital campaign that takes square aim at the lower-priced alternative (though Google’s algorithms must have determined we don’t influence household purchases enough to merit a viewing).

If what your customers want is value, then that’s what you’ve got to sell to them, even if your competitor is lower-priced. As we’ve said before, and as Dawn’s masters appears to believe, good branding and marketing don’t mean differentiating at all costs. Unless you’re selling pizza.

P.S. Animal-loving Dawn die-hards take note: you have to activate an online code in order to get Dawn to actually make good on the 1 bottle = $1 to wildlife promise. When it comes to misleading size comparisons we believe that all’s fair in love and retail. But when it comes to ducklings? Well, Dawn is straining the boundaries of good ethics here.

At BrandCulture Company, we have been seeing and are helping clients take advantage of a desire among consumers to shift their purchasing decisions back to smaller, local businesses. During the 80’s and 90’s, the Coca-Cola Company grew immense global market share with its “Think Global, Act Local” philosophy, but found that it became increasingly disconnected from its local bottling partners and customers.  In the beginning of the last decade, Coca-Cola began to evolve its go-to-market strategy with a “Think Local, Act Local” philosophy.  Coca-Cola continues today with its local community through its “Live Positively” campaign and Virtual Community Center .

Today, ‘buy local’ campaigns have emerged in cities ranging from Santa Clarita, California to Boston, Massachusetts – localized efforts to tap into consumers’ sense of place and home.

The “Move Your Money” campaign, while emanating from a populist dissatisfaction with mega-banks’ influence, also taps into this sense of local community.  Interestingly, among “Move Your Money” targets is Bank of America, a company that has attempted its own localized community focus, with community message boards and support of community arts.

But walk into a Bank of America branch and finding a banker that can actually do something for you is another story.  Instead of a real community focus, Bank of America’s sophisticated technology infrastructure supports a network of faceless banking professionals interacting with customers, cutting off their credit while charging extraordinary services fees. Its no wonder the Bank of America Community Message Board in this blogger’s local branch is nearly empty.

“Move Your Money,” we will follow with interest your effort to use consumer choice to spark a redistribution of power from big banks to community institutions. But let’s not forget that while local presence is important, what matters to consumers above all else is that the products, businesses and financial institutions that they choose deliver what they promise.