BRAND STORY: 01
The Six-Second Test for Brand Effectiveness
If market researchers invented a Rorschach test for brand potency, it might look like a highway sign. Brand positioning explains why.
Six logos appear in a flash before you must act on your Pavlovian response: Get off the freeway — or not — before the exit zips by.
At 70 mph, a subconscious burst of bias pulls you to one brand over the others. A logo is not a brand, but a logo activates a reservoir of feelings and associations which taken together is a Brand Story®.
Let’s dig into the six brand stories and how each one offers more than a cup of coffee:
Starbucks
In 1982, Howard Schultz made a business trip to Milan, Italy, where he noticed how the local coffee bars served as public spaces— all 200,000 of them. From this experience, Schultz focused the Starbucks concept on comfort, aesthetics, and a place to meet — wholly different from the greasy diner/coffee shop scene in the States. Today, Starbucks is still more about the place than the product — or as one snarky customer pointed out on Twitter:
“Gas station coffee beats Starbucks. The only thing that keeps Starbucks in business is indoor seating and free WiFi.”
That’s because the Starbucks brand position is all about ambiance, which takes us to Dunkin:
Dunkin Donuts
In 2008, Dunkin sponsored a blind taste test against Starbucks. With eyes closed, tasters preferred Dunkin 54% to 39%. As a result, Dunkin shifted its focus from donuts to coffee. Today, the company has taken the next logical next step, dropping “Donuts” from the name altogether.
Brand position: Dunkin is selling taste and convenience.
IHOP
Dunkin may have dropped Donuts, but the International House of Pancakes will have set the precedent. In 1973, the acronym became the brand: IHOP. As a coffee destination, IHOP proudly ignores every coffee trend by listing a total of two brews on its menu: Reg and Decaf. Your waitress is central to the IHOP brand experience, refilling your never-ending cup while she calls you “hun.”
Brand position: IHOP personifies the “comfort” in comfort food.
In 2008, IHOP took their acronym to the next level with a faux name change to “IHOB.” The B for Burger campaign generated 20,000 stories and 36 billion earned media impressions. Burger sales rose (briefly), but as Brand Story people know, you can’t transform IHOP into Five Guys or In-N-Out by swapping a letter.
Biscuitville
This North Carolina chain prepares home-style biscuits, sweet tea, and coffee the way God intended. Biscuitville makes its biscuits in realtime behind a glass partition. Their “biscuit lab” is a fabulous concept — so much so, I wish they would leverage it as the “big idea” for a cool brand. Despite a recent rebrand, their aspirations remain small and un-cool, which is okay with me given my transplanted love of Southern culture. Biscuitville sources its coffee from a family-owned roaster in Concord, NC .
Position: Biscuitville celebrates the South as proof that life doesn’t need to be complicated.
McDonald’s
How do you pair a Big Mac® with a Machiatto? If you’re McDonald’s, nearly everything on the menu is a force fit. I imagine they aimed their marketing analytics ray gun at the fastest-growing restaurant category (coffee) and determined that espresso fits fine with a Happy Meal®. McDonald’s research likely identified two types of coffee drinkers: one in need of cheap coffee and the other looking for a cafe experience. It’s not clear which crowd McCafé is targeting.
Yes, McDonald’s beat the taste of Starbucks in a Consumer Reports test (everybody seems to), but did they expect coffee snobs to savor their Arabica with the aroma of fryer fat? Why not? Everything fits at McDonald’s.
Position: McDonald’s is clean, efficient, and predictable.
Chick-fil-A
This never-on-Sunday chain built a passionate following for its chicken sandwiches — along with a sad reputation for blah coffee. I was part of their coffee-turnaround when we developed Chick-fil-A’s new coffee brand: Thrive Farmer’s. Chick-fil-A now serves great coffee that supports indigenous farmers, but unlike McDonald’s, Chick-fil-A did little to position itself as a coffee destination except change the brew.
Position: Chick-fil-A stands for exemplary customer service and well-earned loyalty.
Every brand (including yours) lives in a sea of brands. The same six-second Rorschach test applies to web sites: With a brief glance, will your visitor understand what you’re selling and why they need it?
Reflect on the brand chart below. Can you sense your feelings associated with each brand — the brand story —for each of the brands.
Years ago, it dawned on me that people don’t buy products; they buy brands.
As a smart shopper who compares features and specs, I rebelled at the notion. What does it even mean to not buy products? But even if your big splurge is a Famous Amos cookie in the mall, you are responding to a brand position.
Moutarde gets fussy
Remember when you abandoned the boring yellow commodity from your hot dog youth in favor of Grey Poupon? They reinvented mustard in the TV spots by serving it to a fussy aristocrat. Grey Poupon removed the yellow turmeric (healthful!), added a splash of white wine, and poured it into an iconic glass jar. Voila, moutarde suddenly commanded a brand position at twice the price!
Everything is a commodity
This is a depressing thought if you are starting a business, but it’s unlikely your great idea is unique. With commodity products (breakfast cereal, gasoline, cleaning products, fast food, etc.), the brand story establishes the difference — not what’s in the box. In most cases, the brand is the difference. In other words, we’re all six years old and prefer our 99-cent commodity burger with a clown.
Brands ‘R’ Us
Upscale mustard, craft beers, sensual shampoos — we feel good by the brands we keep, even if they are commodity products. Consider yogurt — a new idea back in Mesopotamia, 5000 BC
When I was in college, we made our yogurt like the Mesopotamians: Heat some milk, whisk in some yogurt, and let it sit. The live-cultured probiotics that foodies crave today came basic with the homemade stuff, but without a brand position.
Cottage cheese gets a facelift
With yogurt spawning endless varieties (there are now more than 300 different types of yogurt at the average grocery store), cottage cheese wasn’t getting the love. A cheeky BuzzFeed article expressed this sentiment. Titled, “Cottage Cheese Is Fucking Disgusting” the article blurted:
“Cottage cheese is not good. It looks like white diarrhea and tastes like absolutely nothing. Please eat some yogurt instead. No more of this cheese pretending to be cheese. Banish it forever.”
As a cottage cheese lover, I took offense, but it’s true — the brand experience for cottage cheese remained untouched for decades.
Enter two entrepreneurs looking for a niche: Jesse Merrill and Anders Eisner (son of Disney CEO, Michael Eisner). They realized that cottage cheese was the last product in the store to forgo a trendy brand position. Even salt comes in a pink hue from the Himalayas. Merrill and Eisner roamed the aisles looking for an un-gentrified grocery niche:
“We decided we wanted to be the Greek yogurt of cottage cheese,” says Merrill.”
The result: Good Culture Organic Cottage Cheese with pineapple, strawberry chia, blueberry acai, mango, and Kalamata olive flavors. Like with Grey Poupon, Good Culture effectively doubled the price of conventional cottage cheese. And just like that, cottage cheese was feeling the love.
Engaging customer desire
In 1991, advertising legend, Patrick Scullin conceived the “Swedish Bikini Team” to sell an admittingly bland lager, Old Milwaukee Beer.
“It was fully intended to be satire,” Scullin confessed, “a tongue-in-cheek send-up of typical beer commercials.” Despite feminists protesting Old Milwaukee’s over-the-top sexual objectification, according to Adweek, the campaign “helped make Old Milwaukee great again.”
Whatever you think of bikinis selling beer, Scullin ignited the propulsive force behind all selling: Desire. Desire doesn’t require bikinis, but the bikini team planted a deep association in your lizard brain: beaches, blonds, bikinis, and beer — Old Milwaukee beer.
Even probate lawyers engage desire.
Consider these three actual headlines for probate lawyers and the deep feelings they elicit during a sensitive time:
- “In difficult times, work with someone you trust.” “Don’t face probate alone.”
- “You can’t pick your family, but you can pick your attorneys.”
- “Prevent the death of a loved one from becoming the death of a family.”
You versus your competitors
To make a sale, a customer must desire your product or service. That’s obvious, but the customer must also desire your product over a competitive product — a challenge if your competitor has more money than your shoestring brand. And the greatest challenge? Since most products and services are commodities, features and benefits won’t win the day. All that’s left is brand.
In the beer market, mass-market lagers like Old Milwaukee represent the ultimate commodity — undifferentiated by taste, price, fizz, or color. Cultivating brand loyalty for commodity products is difficult, but also crucial.
Consider Coors Beer
In the 1970s, Coors was a regional beer limited to eleven Western states. Since the beer was unpasteurized, contained no preservatives, and had to be kept cold, distant shipping wasn’t a possibility. For people outside those eleven states (I lived in Illinois), the beer’s cult status prompted long-distance beer runs and even bootlegging.
The 1977 hit film, Smokey and the Bandit celebrated a bootleg shipment of Coors from Texas to Georgia. Even Paul Newman’s contract stipulated Coors on ice to be available on all his movie sets. In 1970s California, this cult following gave Coors an astonishing 43 percent of the market. By comparison today, Anheuser-Busch Inbev commands 40 percent of the global market — but divvied among 500+ brands!
Coors understood that the mystique, not its light taste, fueled the desire for its beer, so the company fueled that desire by keeping a tight rein on distribution.
Eventually, the Federal Trade Commission found Coors to be guilty of restraint of trade, a beer case that went to the Supreme Court — no Kavanaugh jokes, please.
Successful brands tell compelling stories (until they don’t) — In 2005, Coors merged into a multinational entity and lost whatever shred remained of its origin story.
Compare the Coors story to Samuel Adams…
As the first major independent craft beer in the United States, I interviewed founder Jim Koch early in his career after he quit his job at Boston Consulting Group to turn his grandfather’s beer recipe into a business. Koch went from bar to bar, offering samples from his consultant briefcase while his former secretary, Rhonda Kallman, placed Samuel Adams cards on the tables. Koch and Kallman risked it all to launch today’s craft beer revolution — an achievement today’s beer snobs often overlook.
The Samuel Adams brand story still gets mileage from Koch’s entrepreneurial vision 35 years ago. The company’s “Brewing the American Dream” program mentors young entrepreneurs and celebrates the brand’s origin story.
Like Samuel Adams, most successful brands grow from their founders’ personal stories:
Patagonia
In the 1960s, Founder and outdoor climbing enthusiast, Yvon Chouinard, championed environmentally-friendly methods of climbing which also pioneered a new breed of outdoor wear. Today, Patagonia supports grassroots activists working to find solutions to the environmental crisis.
TOMS
In 2006, Blake Mycoskie was traveling in Argentina, playing polo and drinking wine, when he met a woman who was collecting shoes for the poor. She made such a strong impression that Mycoskie launched Toms Shoes, a company with a unique business model:
One for One®: The company matches every pair of shoes customers purchase with a new pair for a child in need.
The company has given out more than 50 million pairs of shoes this way. Fueling Blake’s philanthropy is a brand story that builds affinity with customers who share his values. Toms Shoes has become TOMS®. Enshrined on Blake’s memoir, and on a wall of the company headquarters, is his brand motto: Start Something That Matters.
Bombas
Following a similar path as TOMS, in 2013, Randy Goldberg and David Heath saw a Facebook post that mentioned the need for socks at homeless shelters. They solicited $145,000 through the crowd-source site Indiegogo. Next, they raised $1 million in angel investment, and a year later, they appeared on Shark Tank.
Their brand concept, One Pair Purchased = One Pair Donated, was built from their story. Bombas, derived from the Latin word for bumblebee, boasts $50 million in annual sales and gives customers a reason to believe, having donated more than 20 million items.
Kane11
Since we’re talking about socks, Pete Hunsinger sought to capitalize on the stylish-socks-for-men craze with a completely different brand concept:
“You’ll never go back to multi-size socks again.”
Hunsinger and his partner asked hundreds of men, “What size do you wear?” If they knew at all, most men agreed their socks didn’t fit well, so Hunsinger created a precise-size system from 7 to 17 displaying the sock size as a big woven brand statement.
My cheap multi-size Adidas socks fit me fine (fit 6–12!), so Kane11 isn’t solving my top-of-mind problem. But, Kane11 shows how to create a new category that “solves” a problem and commands that brand position.
Spanx
Possibly, the most celebrated startup tale belongs to a one-time fax machine salesperson, Sara Blakely, who wanted a smooth, sleek look in her white pants. “I cut the feet out of a pair of pantyhose and substituted them for my underwear,” she recounted. “The moment I saw how good my butt looked, I was like, ‘Thank you, God, this is my opportunity!’”
Nieman Marcus placed her first order and today, Sara is a billionaire. The original snipped pantyhose is enshrined at company headquarters — a celebration of the power of Sara’s brand story.
Jacob the Pressure Washer
Now, for some startup nitty-gritty. Each of these big, successful brands have compelling origin stories, but what about your startup? You may want to walk dogs, tutor high school students, or offer Brazilian waxes and feel you don’t need a brand story. Sorry, you do. Here’s proof:
When my son, Jacob, was in high school, he needed money, so I suggested pressure washing. We found a used Honda pressure washer on Craigslist, printed some cards, then launched a profoundly simple marketing plan by way of a compelling “brand story” on the Decatur Metro community blog:
Sounds straightforward, but after we posted to Decatur Metro, our community blog, a rush of dads responded with an immediately felt connection. They remembered the sinking teen feeling when their first four-wheel junker needed an infusion of cash.
Jacob’s brand story illustrates a principle:
A story is the smallest unit of emotional transformation.
Whether it’s a novel, a sit-com, or a joke, all stories work the same way. At it’s most basic, a story has a:
- Set-up
- Complications, and a
- Resolution. Just like a Seinfeld episode!
Brand stories emotionally transform prospects to become customers. That’s because Brand Stories are Real Stories (story examples below):
In my article,“Position Your Brand in Seven Easy Steps,” you will learn how to build a Brand Positioning Statement. You will also discover how a brand position works like a story:
- Set-up: Identify Your Target Customer,
- Complications: What is their Problem or Need?
- Resolution: Your Unique Solution, and
- Proof that it Works: Bombas donated 23 million pairs of socks!
Every brand offers a solution to a problem
Six drivers tool down the highway; each seeks a unique solution for their coffee need:
What is a brand position?
When you respond to a highway sign or any brand proposition, you are seeking a solution to a problem:
I need coffee now.
Pretty simple.
Each of these brands may be high or low in terms of price, quality, and experience compared to the other brands. In this way, the brand holds a position in the marketplace — and a position in the customer’s mind.
What’s your preference? Toyota Avalon or Lexus ES 350?
The Toyota and Lexus share the same chassis, engine, drivetrain, and suspension. Except for the badge, they are practically the same car. Their brand positions, though, are miles apart. In some configurations, the Toyota is more luxurious than the Lexus (who knew?), but for the status-seeker, the extra $4,000 for the Lexus badge buys a lot of self-esteem.
Remember peak GM? For Baby Boomers, the brand differentiation between Chevy, Olds, Buick, and Pontiac boiled down to: “Our family always drove a ____.”
iPod versus Zen — Consider the original Apple iPod versus the Creative Zen mp3 player. In 2005, the Zen Touch offered twice the storage, a more durable case, and dramatically more battery life for less money than an iPod. But, in the minds of consumers, it was a “faux-Pod.” It could not unseat Apple’s commanding position in the hearts of consumers.
Consumers coveted the Apple brand for its cool factor, quality, ergonomics, and integration with the Apple ecosystem.
For the Zen to compete, it needed to carve out its own compelling argument. Here’s an idea:
“Dude! If you had purchased a Zen, there would be money left over for actual music!”
Let’s turn that Zen argument into a brand position:
“For digital music lovers with a limited budget, only the Creative Zen gives you a full-featured player and a music library for the price of an empty iPod.”
With this brand position, the Zen wouldn’t try to compete on features, specs, quality, or cool factor. Unfortunately, the Zen tried to compete on features and failed.
Here’s my mock ad that states the obvious: An mp3 player without music is useless.
When you think about a brand, it’s a safe bet that its position is the first thought or feeling that comes into your mind. Most products are commodities, so this top-of-mind feeling results from the creative investment into the brand. As the brand strategist for your startup, your job is to identify your brand position and plant it like a seed so it will always sprout top-of-mind.
The Zen Touch illustrates a common positioning challenge:
If the Zen Touch was your product, what would be your preferred position:
- Superior features,
- Better price,
- Save your money for music, or
- Like the Un-Cola of mp3 — the un-Pod alternative?
Alas. You can’t be all things to all people. Your brand position needs to be unique and boldly expressed as a big idea — like this gasoline offer you can’t resist as you cruise toward the Mojave desert.
Your customers have no incentive to choose your business unless you spell it out. Here are some examples:
Panera Bread has long pushed its “100% clean ingredients” brand position (no artificial preservatives, sweeteners, flavors, and no colors from artificial sources). It’s a clever bit of positioning because to the uninformed, 100% clean implies that Panera’s menu is organic (free from pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, GMOs, etc.) — which it is not. Despite this fuzzy distinction, Panera has successfully associated its brand with wholesomeness, hence its tag line:
Food as it should be™.
Jimmy John’s built its sandwich brand on “Freaky Fast” delivery with an implied promise that Jimmy will deliver your sub in under 20 minutes during non-peak hours. It worked. The young designers in our agency clicked their lunch orders at noon and scarfed bicycle-delivered sandwiches 20 minutes later. Jimmy John’s wasn’t about Boar’s Head meat, wasabi mayo, or artisan bread — just fast-delivery. So why is Jimmy John’s moving its brand position to “Freaky Fresh?” Do they expect to knock Panera from its commanding position for wholesomeness?
Volvo is another distinctive brand that evolved from a commanding brand position. In our workshops, we would take an instant poll:
“When you think of Volvo, what is the first word that comes to mind?”
Invariably, people would respond, “Safety.” Volvo’s association with safety was so deep and long-standing that the brand has long been synonymous with crash-test dummies and soccer moms transporting their kids to activities.
Volvo’s brand position began to change after the company sold the division to Ford in 1999. In 2010, Volvo was sold again, this time to the Chinese company, Geely. For a while, if you went to the Volvo home page, you couldn’t find the word, “safety” — not even in small print. After the 2008 recession, Volvo moved up-market (aspiring to be a Swedish BMW?)
Or perhaps Volvo realized that middle-class soccer moms couldn’t justify hauling kids with cleats in a $50,000 SUV. Today, the brand is evolving again as it moves toward an all-electric brand position.
Shoes.com demonstrated how a compelling brand position will ultimately make or break a company. This dot-com company launched in 1996 during the great Internet “land rush” — a time when companies were launching ill-fated brands like Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, and Kozmo.com.
Enter Zappos
Three years later, in 1999, a competitor entered the e-shoes market: ShoeSite.com. Almost immediately, the new company changed its name to Zappos after “zapatos,” the Spanish word for “shoes.” Zappos was snappier than Shoes.com, but that’s not why Shoes.com went bankrupt in 2017, while Zappos was raking in over $1 billion in revenue.
The Zappos magic began in 2001 when Tony Hsieh came on board. He realized that Zappos wasn’t selling shoes; it was selling a brand experience: Powered by Service.™
Hsieh explained:
“The number one driver of our growth at Zappos has been repeat customers and word of mouth. Our philosophy has been to take most of the money we would have spent on paid advertising and invest it into customer service and the customer experience instead, letting our customers do the marketing for us through word of mouth.”
Customer service is the brand. On one level, perks like free delivery and free returns built the foundation for Zappos’ legendary customer service. If you don’t like the shoes, you can box them up and send them back for no charge. Zappos might even ship them to you overnight if you have an important job interview. But that’s not their secret sauce.
The core of the Zappos brand is the emotional connection its people make with their customers. Their reps radiate high energy and personality.
How do you find folks to evangelize a brand?
After a week of training, Zappos makes “The Offer.” The infamous pitch goes like this: “If you quit today, we will pay you for the time you’ve worked, plus a $1,000 bonus.”
That’s right, a bribe to quit!
By weeding out folks who don’t share the excitement and commitment (for what’s frankly a phone job in a cubicle), Zappos maintains its high-energy culture. In this way, Zappos follows the first rule of brand positioning:
Align your brand to the needs of your target customer.
The Zappos customer is not “someone who needs shoes,” but “someone who wants a fantastic customer experience.” In this way, Zappos is not an online shoe store, but rather, a customer service platform that happens to sell shoes.
Could you work in a gung-ho workplace like Zappos with its silly stunts and whoop-it-up culture? Maybe not?
What about your business?
Do you have the chutzpah to become the ambassador for your brand? Can you embody your brand so that people take notice? What if you’re a quiet type who wants the quality of your work to do the talking? In that case, “quiet-type” is your brand. Own it, live it, and identify the customer who is looking for you.
