Posts tagged “brands”

Brand Equity?

I had to replace one of the toilets in my house recently. On the advice of a friend who’s a builder, I went to Home Depot seeking an American Standard brand toilet.

Replacing a toilet is surprisingly easy. It’s really quite something that the toilet is such a simple device, considering its significance in enabling modern life to be as pleasant as it is.

I had bought all the pieces I needed separately, and by the time I finished my installation, had forgotten that I’d bought a seat that was also made by American Standard.

I experienced a little warm flash of joy when I raised the seat of my new toilet for the first time and saw that the logo on the bottom of the seat matched the logo on the toilet itself.

toilet-seat-branding.jpg

That I would feel spontaneous pleasure at having the brands of components on my toilet match–is it not testament to the primacy of place that branding and labeling have in our culture?

That this positive feeling was caused by something I never could have told you I cared the least bit about–something that seems so silly to me that I’m chuckling inside as I write this–really shows the power of the larger culture to influence emotional responses.

It also illustrates the necessity of being in real places with real people doing real things, if one wants to witness these types of dynamics.

The coda on this little story is an ironic one:

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Does it matter to me that my American Standard toilet was made in Mexico? Not really. I’m just happy that the logos all match.

The World Without Them

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Rob Walker writes about Fiji bottled water claiming to be a green company, without using the word greenwashing anywhere in the piece. Fiji is certainly not alone in trying to brand itself as the opposite of what many believe it really is. Personally, I’ve been appalled at the TV ads for Arrowhead’s Eco-Shape Bottle and Scott’s Water Smart grass seed.

If you’re going to drink bottled water and if you’re going to have a lawn, definitely choose an option that consumes fewer resources, but as a consumer I find it manipulative to position those products as being eco-anything, when the core behavior they are asking us to perform is probably something we should stop doing entirely. As a strategy consultant, they have my sympathy, and my respect for not simply ignoring a big cultural story that challenges their key offering.

Consider this week the news that GM may sell or close the Hummer brand. If they sell it, there will be someone else trying to sell a product that (at least in term of meaning, if not actual impact) tends to be horrifyingly un-green.

Should Arrowhead, Fiji, Scotts, and Hummer simply go away? Obviously the leaders of those businesses have a fiscal responsibility to keep making money, but how much can they redefine or reframe their brands and their offerings?

Brand lifecycles

Rob Walker had another great piece, Can a Dead Brand Live Again? in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine. He profiles River West Brands, a firm that resurrects and reinvigorates inactive brands, similar to The Himmel Group that I mentioned here recently.

Walker also describes

the Licensing International Expo, an annual event at which the owners of cultural properties – TV shows, movies, cartoon characters – meet with makers of things and try to negotiate deals granting them a paid license to use the properties to add meaning and market value to whatever things they make. It is a good place to contemplate the business potential of “the brand” in free-floating form, unmoored to any product or company that may have actually created it. A surprising number of the symbols represented at the expo held last summer in New York were simply brand logos. Spam, for instance, had its own booth. IMC Licensing was there on behalf of its clients Oreo, Altoids, Dole and Oscar Mayer. At one point I encountered a person dressed up as a can of Lysol, which is represented by the Licensing Company.

In 2004 I ran a discussion panel at the Licensing International Expo. You can check out the FreshMeat column where I related my impressions of the event here, and see tons of photos are here.

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The image in the banner above!
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Bridges Over Borders

This one is for Niti – about the “without borders” brand increasing in popularity, at least with a certain flavor of organziation.

There’s Acupuncturists Without Borders, for instance, which is featuring its Katrina recovery efforts on its website with the distinctive tag line, “We Stick Bayou.”

There’s Clowns Without Borders, whose members apparently function as a traveling USO show for children and other audiences in war-torn countries.

There’s Engineers Without Borders, whose website includes a quote from former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn on empowering people and a regular feature on the “Sustainable and Appropriate Solution of the Month.”

There’s Grantmakers Without Borders, which seems to understand that a better world won’t happen without some funding.

I was hoping to find Zoologists Without Borders, but there is no such group – yet. There is, however, down at that end of the alphabet, Veterinarians Without Borders

Clowns…[shudder]

[via Agenda]

More, well, like a friend, a really really good friend

Much of user research hinges on unpacking words that mean one thing to one party and something different to another. Now we bring science into the picture, using MRI.

The research team found that while the same words were being used to describe people and products, different regions of the brain were activated when subjects were talking about one or the other. The fMRI scans detected that there was a greater neural response in the medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain when applying the adjectives to people. But when focusing on brands, like Wal-Mart, Starbucks or Ben & Jerry’s, the left inferior prefrontal cortex was activated, an area of the brain known to be involved in object processing.

In other words, you can call it love, but fundamentally, we process the emotion differently depending on the object.

[via MIT Advertising Blog]

Licensing Show ’05

Amazing that my Licensing Show experience was an entire year ago. Times flies. Read about last year’s experience in a previous FreshMeat and check out this NYT story about this year’s event.

At the Licensing 2005 show, which runs through today at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan, other cartoon and real-life characters are also in search of comebacks, including Richie Rich, Casper the Friendly Ghost and Liberace.

“Nostalgia is a hit,” said Mike Alic, general manager of the show, as he stood under a depiction of Superman stopping an 18-wheeler from falling off a bridge. “The people running the licensing business had these brands in their childhood, and they appreciate the decreased risk of going with already proven track records.”

Necco, one of the country’s oldest candy companies, is pushing its flagship wafers and Clark bar icons to apparel makers. “There’s comfort with the familiar,” said Ross Misher, president of Brand Central LLC, the Los Angeles-based licensing agency representing Necco.

Kellogg is a partner with 20 licensees to produce products including Norman Rockwell-printed ceramic cereal bowls. The company is drawing from its own century-old archive of more than a million pieces of art that includes works by Rockwell, J. C. Leyendecker and Andrew Loomis, and has a domestic deal for a 1960’s style Tony the Tiger bikini that is already a hit in Japan.

The cereal maker has signed off on licensed stationery and puzzles to help it reintroduce the original Snap! Crackle! and Pop! characters from its Rice Krispies brand, as well as Sugar Pops Pete and Smaxey the seal, the long-retired spokescritter for Sugar Smacks. (Now known as Honey Smacks, and touted by Dig’Em frog.)

Throwback marketing is also being used for toys, with the Care Bears, My Little Pony and the Cabbage Patch Kid characters displayed prominently at the show.

Hasbro is heavily promoting Transformers, the toy robots that first hit the big time during the Reagan era. Interest in the brand had been declining until 2002, when the toymaker joined with the Cartoon Network to introduce three new generations of characters. Hasbro is currently working with DreamWorks and Paramount for a Transformers movie, and exploring deals with licensees to support the movie’s release with apparel, video games and even Transformer bandages.

“We’re bringing it back in a way that dads can relive their childhoods with their children,” said Bryony Bouyer, a senior vice president at Hasbro.

In addition to Underdog, Classic Media is promoting Richie Rich, Peter Cottontail and Mr. Peabody, the time-traveling, bespectacled genius dog. Classic has sought deals to get these and other classic animation and children’s programming back into the mainstream, including making Mr. Magoo a co-star with Tiger Woods in an American Express ad, and having Lassie scare off a cougar in a commercial for General Electric.

Classic Media is also promoting Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties, Roger Ramjet and Gerald McBoing Boing , which will have a new series on the Cartoon Network.

“These characters have an emotional tug that sticks around,” said Leslie Levine, Classic’s head of worldwide licensing.

I Love Liberace, a Las Vegas-based company that secured exclusive worldwide licensing rights from Liberace’s estate, has a booth with towels, bags and clothing featuring Liberace kicking like a Rockette. In addition to having trademarked the phrase “Mr. Showmanship,” the company aims to roll out Liberace barbecue sauce, complete with edible glitter.

Much of the old imagery is being revised with the help of new technology.

After a 19-year hiatus, Superman is expected to hit movie theaters next year with a healthy helping of computer-generated imagery. And the jingle “Everyone knows it’s Slinky” is now available as a cellphone ring tone.

TV Guide is offering 1960’s-era TV theme songs over cellphones, with wireless trivia games as well.

FreshMeat #22: License To Shill

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FreshMeat #22 from Steve Portigal
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               (__)
               (oo) Fresh
                \\/  Meat

Can’t have any pudding if you don’t read FreshMeat!
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We make no mention of the huge bottle of Yoo-hoo beverage
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Last month I flew to New York to attend the Licensing
International tradeshow
. If SpongeBob is going to end up
on a box of cereal in the next two years, this is where
that deal is likely to go down.

I had been interested in attending this tradeshow simply
because I saw it on a morning news program (Today, Good
Morning America, etc.) a few years back. I don’t think I
even caught the name of the show, I just remember being
awestruck by the visual impact of the show itself. It was
a colorful chaotic jungle of familiar brands promoting
themselves, with guys in KISS costumes and Strawberry
Shortcake outfits wandering around. I decided to someday
attend this magical event. Eventually I figured out what
the show (and the business itself) was called – licensing!
Expecting a new and fascinating facet of culture, product
development, business, and marketing, I arranged to attend
as a speaker, organizing and moderating a panel on
consumer trends
.

With a bit of ethnographic curiosity, I set out to learn
more of what this community/practice/business is all
about. Typically, my work starts with products, with the
cultural aspects moving to encompass issues of brand. I
was prepared for a shift in focus, with this show starting
with the brand, but I was surprised to discover that in
licensing one doesn’t even deal with “brands,” but rather
“properties.” I’m sure some brand theorist could explain
the difference and we’d be enlightened, but let’s just
marvel for a moment at the lingo. I think culturally we’ve
internalized the distance between the marketing word
“brand” and the cowboy word “brand” because it is a bit of
an uncomfortable connection. But now the entities in
question are actual things that can be exchanged (or
licensed) rather than simply labels that are burned into
flesh to signify ownership. Fair enough.

The tradeshow was interesting, to put it mildly.
Immediately you see that everything imaginable is
available for licensing. I thought I was prepared for
this, I mean if one more person tells me that Martha
Stewart and Ralph Lauren are brands, I’m going to shriek.
Okay, got it. But the licensing business takes it further.
Did you know that John Wayne and Andrew Weil (the bearded
purveyor of wellness) are both brands, er, properties? I’m
not talking about a conceptual sense of property-ness, I
mean they are owned, managed, marketed and ready for
licensing. Other brands/people/products that are also
properties include: Andy Warhol, Antiques Roadshow, Buzz
Aldrin, Chicken Soup for the Soul, CSI: Miami, Dairy
Queen, National Enquirer, NYPD, Siegfried and Roy, Bozo
the Clown, Village People, Terminator 2, Rocky, and
Shrek 3 (yeah, 3).

And so the tradeshow is overflowing with displays that
showcase known and unknown properties. In some cases the
company themselves will be in attendance (i.e., Nickelodeon
with SpongeBob) and in other cases there are holding
companies and agents with boring neutral names (i.e.,
Equity Management Inc. or IMC Licensing) some of whom have
an amusing combination of properties making up their palette
(Zippo, Mr. Clean, Crayola, Andrew Weil, and Pennzoil in
one case; Midway Games, Terminator 2, Village People,
Musicland Band and U.S. Secret Service in another) and
others with quite obvious specialties (IMC had a booth
touting Jello-O, Kool-Aid, Planters, Oscar Mayer, Kraft,
Tabasco, Manischewitz and others – although it appears
they also manage other licenses, such as the science-
fiction show “Red Dwarf”). And in other cases there are
up-and-coming (hopefully) properties that most of us
haven’t heard of.

It gets more complicated. For example, American Greetings
(the card company) hired the consumer products division of
Nickelodeon (the TV channel) to handle Holly Hobbie for
them. Nick is part of Viacom, a huge conglomerate, and
they have enough horsepower that they can take on business
handling other properties for other groups. It seems like
there was business going in every direction. Property
owners looking to sign up a licensor, agents repping their
portfolios, licensees with products looking for
distributors, and every possible permutation.

But it’s hard to see the dealflow – mostly you just see
people in suits and costumes, and a countless number of
booths. Check out my photos from the show (including scans
of some of the artifacts I picked up) here.
I spent several hours walking the floors with my
colleagues, looking at as much as we could, until we
reached total property burnout. Although this was an
industry show, the tactic was to seduce us as consumers. I
posed for pictures with SpongeBob and Patrick, and Mr.
Peanut, and the Care Bears, and more. I sampled the Krispy
Kremes covered in candy fish-shaped sprinkles (for some
to-be-released film). I grabbed free manga, stickers,
postcards, and peered at the current Lassie. After all
that, here are some of my observations.

It seems that many previously dormant properties are back!
Or at least, that’s a common phrase. Holly Hobbie is back!
Trollz are back! Although, in fact, Trollz are an update
of Troll dolls (small toys with long stiff brightly
colored hair), so strictly speaking they may not really be
back. Fido Dido (mostly known for 7-Up ads in the 90s)
appears to be back, and so are Davey and Goliath, those
earnest clay purveyors of biblical insight.

One surprising pattern was a variety of properties or
artifacts that showed a large number of different
feelings, moods, or attitudes. Sesame Street had a single-
sheet magnet featuring 12 different Muppets with
associated moods – Oscar as “crabby”, Elmo as “ticklish”,
Cookie Monster as “hungry”, Guy Smiley as “smiley”, etc.
and a separate magnet, reading “I’m feeling” that can be
used as a frame to be placed on top of the characters to
display your mood to the world. This was very similar to
the “feelings poster” sometimes used in therapy.

Anther example was Mood Frog who appears without labels,
but has a range of facial expressions suggesting anger,
boredom, nausea, confusion, etc. The Fear’s are, as you
might imagine, afraid of very specific things: dirt,
germs, cooking, flat hair, and veggies. Another line of
products featured a grid of baby faces with a variety of
moods: cranky, quiet, sleepy, happy, poopy, and so on. One
property featured cartoon girls with different attitudes
(I don’t have the specifics, but something like “The Shy
Thinker” “The Clever Go-getter” etc.) that presumably
tapped into something that the target audience could
identify with. I guess “The Breakfast Club” (a film that
segmented high school kinds into tidy parcels like The
Jock, The Nerd, The Criminal, The Princess, and The
Basketcase) lives on in one form or another.

Choosing a mood is already a mode in current products and
features, especially online. For example, Moods on
LiveJournal.com (a blogging site popular with the younger
crowd) offers the following default set of choices
(inviting you to add more as needed): accomplished,
aggravated, amused, angry, annoyed, anxious, apathetic,
artistic, awake, bitchy, blah, blank, bored, bouncy, busy,
calm, cheerful, chipper, cold, complacent, confused,
contemplative, content, cranky, crappy, crazy, creative,
crushed, curious, cynical, depressed, determined, devious,
dirty, disappointed, discontent, distressed, ditzy, dorky,
drained, drunk, ecstatic, embarrassed, energetic, enraged,
enthralled, envious, excited, exhausted,
flirty, frustrated, full, geeky, giddy, giggly, gloomy,
good, grateful, groggy, grumpy, guilty, happy, high,
hopeful, horny, hot, hungry, hyper, impressed,
indescribable, indifferent, infuriated, intimidated,
irate, irritated, jealous, jubilant, lazy, lethargic,
listless, lonely, loved, melancholy, mellow, mischievous,
moody, morose, naughty, nauseated, nerdy, nervous,
nostalgic, numb, okay, optimistic, peaceful, pensive,
pessimistic, pissed off, pleased, predatory, productive,
quixotic, recumbent, refreshed, rejected, rejuvenated,
relaxed, relieved, restless, rushed, sad, satisfied,
scared, shocked, sick, silly, sleepy, sore, stressed,
surprised, sympathetic, thankful, thirsty, thoughtful,
tired, touched, uncomfortable, weird, working, and
worried.

Similarly, IM (instant messenger) and web forums both
offer a huge set of smileys (or emoticons) as this
screenshot from the IM program Trillian suggests:

The thrust of this multiple-mood approach seems to be two-
fold: first, just like a line of toothpaste with multiple
flavors and features, we can find the one that suits us
best, and second, the display of so many different
feelings at once appeals to a certain vain sense of our
own emotional complexity.

Elsewhere at the show, girls with attitude were prominent.
This movement got a lot of press earlier this year when
David & Goliath (not the churchgoing boy and dog, but a
clothing company) caused controversy with a clothing
displaying slogans such as “Boys are Stupid – Throw
Rocks At Them” (read more here)

We saw attitude (the very cute Dog of Glee encouraging
you to “have a nice day buttface”) and mean girls galore.
“Angry Little Asian Girl” and “Emily the Strange” were two of
my favorites (probably because I had the opportunity to talk with the
artists and creators of the property, get a sense of who
they were and what their characters were about for them).

A lot of characters involved cats. Some were swanky
princess type cats, skinny, with a Parisian posture,
perhaps with a tiara. Some were emotional (“Sad Kitty
speaks for everyone who has ever experienced heartbreak,
disappointment, and the general hardships of life. Sad
Kitty cries the tears of all mankind!”) while some
companies offered a huge range of cat properties to suit a
variety of moods and attitudes (The Grinning Cat, Blue
Mood Cats, Tribal Cat, Three Hip Kittens, Flower Cat, Rain
Poodle, Art Cat, The Guitar Cat, Tropical Kitty, Dead
Kitty, and Lucky Cat all come from a San Francisco company
called Tokyo Bay).

The aesthetic of Japanese anime is a powerful influence,
with many different animated characters that typically
have flared legs, short bodies, big heads, big eyes, and
sometimes rather adult physical development. Homies and
Mijos come from da ‘hood. Previously infantile Troll dolls
are now sexed-up Trollz. Petz includes Catz and Dogz. And
there’s something called “Rock Hard Fairies” which claims
that “Fairies Just Got Cool!!”

Another tactic was to anthropomorphize whatever hadn’t
previously been given the breath of life (or big cartoony
eyes). We saw an elevator car and Doggy Poo, to name but
two.

And finally, some properties were cool and funny simply
because they were foreign and literally didn’t quite
translate. A whole segment of the floor was operated by
the Korean Culture and Content Agency featuring Big Ear
Rabbit (“The Fundamental Concepts is the adventurous
travel by the boys with complex in their individual
surrounding with Big Ear Rabbit, Roy who is centered with
them and the boys are finding out their good point rather
than their own demerit. This is the story telling method
to be estimated by the boys themselves in the process of
hearing the story clearly, but is different from the
direct story telling method that the esteemed fathers told
their children the instructions.”), Ayap (“Dews in the
cave gathered into the magic bead for a thousand years,
and he was born there…He is good and pure. When he drinks
dews collected in the magic bead, his power rises a lot so
that he can help other people who are at a crisis. He
likes diverse kinds of sports. His is a sport-mania.”) and
JaJa (“She is the girl who always goes on a diet. We’re
trying to develop ‘A diet characters’ mainly for the ages
between 17 to 30, young females who strongly want to be
healthy and beauty. Providing a pleasant infotainment
contents throughout funny diet stories.”).

It’s not clear what lessons there are to be learned here –
no matter how many interesting, creative, and resonant
properties I encountered, I left the tradeshow muttering
about “too much crap.” It was overwhelming. Perhaps the
lessons could be found by looking at patterns over time:
what properties survive, what clever licensing deals get
struck (will there be John Wayne pet food? Or Homies
tampons?), and how do the established brands like Sesame
Street and SpongeBob evolve over time to stay current. In
order to assess those types of things, I may have to go
back next year!

My photos (including scans of handouts) from the Licensing
show are here.

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