BRAND STORY: 02
Brand Positioning: A Brief History
If you want to become a lawyer, you start with the Magna Carta. As a budding brand guru, it helps to know your Mad Men history.
The AMC television series, “Mad Men,” captured a pivotal period in the advertising business — the Sixties — when creative execs ran the ad industry and the “Pepsi Generation” emerged to steer the culture toward youth-oriented consumerism. It was a time when brand stories first emerged. Instead of an Alka Seltzer puppet singing, “Relief is just a swallow away,” brands began to develop more complex personalities:
- Avis confessed to being a runner-up: “Avis is only number 2. But we try harder.”
- Volkswagen embraced self-deprecation with: “If you run out of gas, it’s easy to push.”
- Levy’s brought cultural diversity into advertising with the iconic Doyle Dane Bernbach campaign for their rye bread: “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s.”
Some brands took the next step and began to push blatantly sexual personas, including the notorious “Fly Me” campaign for National Airlines:
David Ogilvy: The Father of Advertising
These breakthroughs emerged, in part, through the groundbreaking work of David Ogilvy, founder of Ogilvy & Mather — work he began decades earlier. Ogilvy’s unlikely career path hit all the right notes for him to become known as “the Father of Advertising.”
In the 1930s, David Ogilvy started selling stoves door-to-door in England. His boss asked him to write a sales manual, “The Theory and Practice of Selling the AGA Cooker,” in which Ogilvy concluded:
“A successful salesman needs the tenacity of the bulldog and the manners of the spaniel. If you have any charm, ooze it.”
Ogilvy’s selling skills landed him a job at a London ad agency. To this day, Ogilvy’s sales manual stands as a seminal piece on sales theory.
In 1938, Ogilvy persuaded his London boss to send him to America to work with the Gallup research organization. Ogilvy’s door-to-door experience gave him a visceral understanding of what makes customers tick, but his work at Gallup gave him a deeper understanding of consumer behavior in the aggregate.
Counter-Espionage — After Gallup, Ogilvy worked for British Intelligence during World War II where he applied his new behavioral insights into writing compelling wartime propaganda. His new boss, Sir William Stephenson, was the inspiration for the Ian Fleming character, James Bond 007.
Ogilvy & Mather — After the War, Ogilvy moved to the States, where he built his namesake agency on two core principles:
- The function of advertising is to sell, and
- Advertising success derives from customer knowledge.
At a time when advertising was loud, preachy, and prone to simplistic jingles, Ogilvy felt that customers should be approached with intelligence, stating:
“The customer is not a moron; she’s your wife.”
By the 1960s, a creative revolution was sweeping through art, music, film, sexuality, and politics. Ogilvy thrust this cultural shift into the world of advertising. Rather than discussing his theories in stuffy trade publications and industry speeches, Ogilvy published his ideas as provocative full-page consumer ads.
In 1971 he challenged the industry by running a legendary ad in the New York Times, titled: “How to create advertising that sells.” In a dense, full-page didactic, Ogilvy shared his thirty-eight proprietary secrets with the world:
Fifty years later, Ogilvy’s maxims still pass the test of time.
Here are the top five Ogilvy precepts your shoestring startup can draw from:
1. “The most important decision: We have learned that the effect of your advertising on your sales depends more on this decision than on any other: How should you position your product?”
In the full-page ad, Ogilvy raised questions that were both obvious and profound. He explains positioning as a series of pragmatic choices:
“Should you position Schweppes as a soft drink — or as a mixer?
Should you position Dove as a product for dry skin or as a product that gets hands really clean? The results of your advertising depend less on how we write your advertising than on how your product is positioned.”
Thoughts: When you grab a bottle of Schweppes from the grocery shelf for a gin and tonic, there is no calculation to your action. As the leading mixer, Schweppes’ position makes your buying process automatic.
Ironically, the Schweppes brand got its start in 1783 as a soft drink — the original soft drink. Ogilvy understood that Schweppes would get lost in the back of the pack— after Coke, Pepsi, Seven-Up, RC, and Orange Crush — if he positioned it as a soft drink. By positioning Schweppes as a mixer, Schweppes became the category leader. Today, Schweppes holds a top-of-mind position instead of being lost in a sea of soft drinks.
In 1972, legendary ad men, Jack Trout and Al Ries drove this point home, announcing: “The Positioning Era Cometh.” They demonstrated the folly of RCA and GE attempting to compete head-on against IBM, the computing category leader:
“[RCA and GE] have no hope to make progress head-on against the position that IBM has established… While it’s possible to compete successfully with a market leader, the rules of positioning say it can’t be done ‘head-on.’”
Trout explained that psychologists determined that the human mind cannot juggle more than seven units at a time. This applies to high-interest categories like auto brands or soft drinks. “The eighth company in a given field is out of luck. For low-interest product [categories], the average consumer can usually name no more than one or two brands.”
Five days after Ogilvy’s ad appeared, a second Madison Avenue agency, Rosenfeld, Sirowitz & Lawson, published its guiding principles. Number one, you guessed it: “
Accurate positioning is the most important step in effective selling.”
Brand positioning carves a top-of-mind category in which you can lead — for example Sony mini TVs. The purpose of this book is to teach you how to apply the groundbreaking work of these celebrated branding gurus to your shoestring start-up.
Back to Ogilvy:
2. “Large promise. The second most important decision is this: What should you promise the customer? A promise is not a claim, or a theme, or a slogan. It is a benefit for the consumer.”
It pays to promise a benefit that is unique and competitive. And the product must deliver the benefit you promise. Most advertising promises nothing. It is doomed to fail in the marketplace.
“Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement” — Samuel Johnson [1759].
Thoughts: Your promise forms the core of your brand positioning statement. In a nutshell, unless your product or service fulfills a need or solves a customer problem, you don’t have a viable business.
Example: Kane 11 targets men who feel ill-fit in their multi-size socks. Yes, it fills a niche.
Unfortunately, most startups believe the Field of Dreams trope: “If you build it, [customers] will come.”
The painful truth: Don’t expect customers to come knocking just because you built a better mousetrap. In most big businesses, the Product Development folks (who design mousetraps) and the Marketing people (who build brands) work in separate silos. Both overlook the fundamental purpose of being in business: To help the customer solve a problem.
Solving a problem is the easy part. Ogilvy describes the harder part when he added, “You must promise a benefit which is unique and competitive.”
The kicker word is “unique.” Since most businesses offer commodity products and services, being unique is the challenge:
Ogilvy continues:
3. “Brand Image: Every advertisement should contribute to the complex symbol, which is the brand image. Ninety-five percent of all advertising is created ad hoc. Most products lack any consistent image from one year to another.
The manufacturer, who dedicates his advertising to building the most sharply-defined personality for his brand, gets the largest share of the market.”
Thoughts: Ogilvy reminds us that customers respond to the brand image — what I call Brand Story®. These are the feelings, perceptions, and experiences associated with the brand. As a brand strategist, I’m also the “brand police,” scrutinizing the ad hoc materials that emerge willy-nilly from various people and departments. I can tell if the marketing is “on-brand” (what Ogilvy calls a sharply defined personality) and not willy-nilly by testing it against the 4Cs — Clarity, Consistency, Character, and Customer:
More from Ogilvy:
4. “Big ideas: Unless your advertising is built on a BIG IDEA, it will pass like a ship in the night. It takes a BIG IDEA to jolt the consumer out of his indifference — to make him notice your advertising, remember it, and take action.
Big ideas are usually simple ideas. Said Charles Kettering, the great General Motors inventor: “This problem, when solved, will be simple.”
BIG SIMPLE IDEAS are not easy to come by. They require genius — and midnight oil.
A truly big one can be continued for 20 years — like our Eyepatch for Hathaway shirts.”
Thoughts: I know, you just wanted to start a little dog-walking business called Power Walk, and now Ogilvy is demanding a Big Idea! Actually, he wants you to establish a Brand Concept — same as a Big Idea.
If you created a hierarchy of your message, from the core brand concept to the nuts-and-bolts copy, five levels would emerge, each with a different purpose:
Five Levels of Brand Messaging:
1. Brand Concept
Every effective brand is built around a central idea: The Brand Concept.
In just a few words, a Brand Concept defines: “How we can help you and why we are different.”
David Ogilvy talked about the Big Idea — similar to a Brand Concept. More than big, the Brand Concept is the core idea of the brand position. Here are two examples:
In the 1970s, Southwest Airlines brought a new concept to the market: no-frills air travel. This innovative, but simple concept grew a tiny airline with three planes in three Texas cities into the nation’s leading domestic airline in market-share (a virtual tie with American).
Southwest promoted its no-frills concept by serving 106 million packs of peanuts per year to passengers, a brand ritual abandoned in 2018 due to allergy concerns.
Peanuts were out, but Southwest stood by its big idea, as they stated in the peanut obituary: “Peanuts will forever be part of Southwest’s history and DNA.”
The Brand Daddy of Big Ideas is Dollar Shave Club. Launched in 2012 with a low-rent YouTube video that went viral (production cost $4500), founder Michael Dubin promised that his blades were “F**king Great” (currently at 27 million views). The brand name spells out Dubin’s no-nonsense Brand Concept: Subscription blades for just one dollar per month.
With Dubin’s experience in improv, his in-your-face acting got your attention, but it was his disruptive business model that captivated investors. Four years later, Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for $1 billion, one of the most successful exits ever for a VC-backed digital brand.
Direct-to-consumer brands are typically built around a single product and a Big Idea. Here are 10 successful direct-to-consumer brands and their unique differentiating brand concepts — boiling the business down to a compelling idea.
2. The Tag Line
The tag line states your brand position with a concise, lyrical punch:
Casper Mattress:
“The Best Bed for Better Sleep.”
Stitch Fix:
“Your partner in personal style.”
Let’s discuss that Stitch Fix tag line. They send you a selection of new clothes, and you keep what you like and send back the rest without paying for shipping. Nice.
And the tag line: “Your partner in personal style.” ??
Does that capture the concept? I prefer:
“Your personalized boutique in a box.”
But, they didn’t ask me.
And that takes us to the longest-running, most successful tag line of all time — from DeBeers — credited with inventing the modern engagement ring:
“A Diamond is Forever”
As part of this series, you can read in-depth on the remaining 5 Levels of messaging:
Let’s finish Ogilvy:
5. “A first-class ticket. It pays to give most products an image of quality — a first-class ticket… If your advertising looks ugly, consumers will conclude that your product is shoddy, and they will be less likely to buy it.
Thoughts: My yoga teacher friend, Mandy Roberts, transformed a failing yoga business into Atlanta’s leading yoga studio, in part, by pushing its brand aesthetic. Every piece of messaging — even the directional signs — carries the spirit of her brand. Mandy even brings a professional photographer to every yoga retreat to capture her brand story.
Design adds value to a brand — tangible financial value — because customers desire products that project sophistication, wholesomeness, durability, or innovation.
The High Line in New York City shows how design creates value.
In 1980, a rusting elevated railway spur in the run-down Chelsea meatpacking district was abandoned from lack of use. A group of adjacent property owners sought to demolish the 1.5-mile eyesore.
Some residents felt otherwise. They advocated preserving the derelict structure. Where others saw rusted steel, the visionary neighbors saw open space. They garnered support from the city, business moguls, leading architects, ecologists, and designers.
Forty years later, the elevated park stands as an icon of landscape architecture surrounded by sophisticated apartments now fetching into the millions, plus hotels, restaurants, and public art. In 2015, the Whitney Museum built a new home designed by Renzo Piano with its front door on the High Line. The flocking crowds are a testament to Ogilvy’s “first class ticket” and proof of the maxim: design creates value.
Next Brand Story Article:
03 | Connecting to Your Target Customer
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