Remember the clich of the chairmanss wifes favourite magazine. In the bad old days
of media planning the gut feel of the chairman was the final arbiter of the schedule. And
more often than not that would come down to whatever his wife read or watched irrespective
of the exact target market or essentially the man with the cheque books gut feel and
prejudice.
Weve notionally come a long way since then with increasingly sophisticated (and expensive) research and analysis tools that help us to more accurately define and more effectively reach our audience. Well now Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point) has just published a new book which examines the idea of gut feel and weighs it up against other, slower and more conscious forms of decision making and restores it to credibility so long as its based on experience rather than prejudice.
Essentially he asks the question appropriately enough as youre reading his book when he asks it can you judge a book by its cover. In many cases he says yes you can and proceeds over 250 or so pages to explain why and how.
His very entertaining and sometimes disturbing analogies which range from gamblers, to flavours of jam, from war games to real life and death decisions on the streets of New York construct a case that if you think too much you can thwart an often correct instinct. But his stories also contain lots of warnings about knowing when to trust and how to train your instincts. The trick is knowing when the chairmans gut feel is right.
Instant judgement or thin slicing as I now know to call it - can usefully be applied to the day to day tasks of marketing and communications planning. He shows how it is key to the art of packaging; he deconstructs how and when research is useful and necessary and yet also shows how easily it can be misinterpreted using the famous example of Pepsi winning the taste challenge but losing the Coke wars.
Apparently its your adaptive unconscious that makes gut feel decisions for you. This is all well and good if your adaptive unconscious is in the best of moods, but not so great if it is swayed by prejudice, contempt or generally a bad day. So theres a very interesting digression and warning about the Warren Harding error. This tall handsome and distinguished looking president was supposedly elected on looks alone and was the worst US president ever (makes you wonder doesnt it ?). People are blinded by looks beauty, race and indeed height. Interestingly for me (at 5 ft 2 ins) it appears that one inch in height is worth on average 789 dollars per annum in salary surely that means someone owes me a considerable amount of back pay!
Malcolm Gladwell is reputed to be a great after dinner speaker and its easy to see why. The books chock full of fascinating detail, relationship guidance and games you play with the author. Hes light on conclusions, big on caveats. He tells you that our unconscious is really good at zeroing in on what matters to the point where thin slicing often delivers a better answer than more deliberate and exhaustive ways of thinking ; but leaves it up to you to apply this to your own work.
Anyone whos virtually dropped off during a 4 hour research debrief will clearly take great pleasure in his conclusions; but he makes strong points about fairness being crucial. So this is no real suggestion that we abandon thinking entirely for instinct but that we should consider and feel comfortable cutting through over elaborate processes to use our instincts, provided they are rooted in extensive experience and training, true open-mindedness and respect for our consumers.
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This rather complicated but thoughtful book has rather radical suggestions
to make about the brand management process. Holt suggests that conventional
brand management has nothing to do with the development of iconic brands and
that they are created largely by accident or due to the gut feel of advertising agencies.
Perhaps unsurprisingly for a book hailed by that doyen of ad agencies John Hegarty as one of the most insightful pieces of thinking on the modern world of marketing it is extremely ad-centric with perhaps one very interesting exception.
Holt argues that iconic brands have nothing to do with brand pyramids or onions. He describes a world which has, as far back as memory, been dominated by cultural icons :- from ancient gods and goddesses to Nelson Mandela, Madonna, Woody Allen and John Wayne. Those cultural icons once religious are now a central economic activity. Through the course of the book he picks out some acknowledged brand icons including VW, Budweiser and Harley Davidson, and explains how they have followed a set of tacit principles entirely different from those found in conventional branding frameworks.
Holt says an iconic brand must address acute contradictions in society. It will perform an identity myth to address the anxieties these contradictions create. Consumers will then buy into the brand in order to join in a ritual easing of those anxieties. He almost exclusively sees the behaviour of such brands in the execution of a few great ads, although in the case of Harley Davidson he acknowledges the role of other communications devices, which leads the reader to conclusions that are - for me - a more 21st century reality , than relying on some epic advertising (which he tells us you cant expect to get out of any logical existing process anyway). His goal is to get readers to see brands as historical entities whose meaning and value depends on how the brands myth addresses a particular tension in society. He certainly succeeds in delivering a different way of thinking about products and brands and his research which is based on US case studies is impressive. Its a really stimulating book to read, and does make you wonder if theres a very different way to consider a brand strategy if your goal is iconic status rather than just to shift product today. He also gets you thinking about the lessons that people currently take out of admired brands and makes you cautious of trying to imitate a course that is now redundant because of the way times have changed. And can any product deliver an iconic brand ? Is it as easy for toothpaste as it is for cars?
This book advocates chucking out some of the shibboleths of marketing practice. A shift is required for an iconic brand to succeed from persuasion to myth making; from abstract associations to specific cultural expression; from consistency to historical fit. (I think that depends on what you mean by consistency: the brand must reinterpret themselves according to contemporary context but not abandon what they stand for at heart). Such brands must compete in myth markets not in product markets : A TV is not competing with other TVs but with other icons to perform myths that resolve cultural contradictions.
Ok a quick example of what I think this means.
Budweiser:- the brands US climb to iconic status was made possible by Reagan who revived the idea of the American Man of Action reflected in the creative This Buds for You which paraded a collage of can-do blue collar workers. This was a resolution to the increasing tension between the post war apparent decline of US military might and the reluctance of working class American to give up on those ideas. Reagan gave America back the idea of John Wayne and Bud capitalised with the iconic King of Beers. But by the late 1980s times had changed and during the early 1990s recession and job losses Buds working men symbolism had lost meaning. Not until the strategy of identifying with the new ideals of manhood described as slacker culture was expressed in the Lizards and Whassup creative, did Bud return to iconic status. Holt successfully explains that iconic advertising is not about being trendy but about finding the tensions in society and resolving them.
Its well worth reading this book which challenges many conventions about current brand management. It fits well with the our other book club choices advocating gut instinct and braver behaviour over traditional marketing methods. Much food for thought lies within its pages and there are some lessons to be learnt from Holts interpretations although youll almost certainly find you dont agree with everything and not everything will be possible on the coal face of day to day brand management. Obviously not every brand can be iconic. But for those brands who can be, for those in communications and brand management that wish their brands had the glamour of an Apple or Nike, this book provides a clearer understanding of the challenges that such an ambition provokes.
Back to topDo Read if you Are interested in cultural change and integrated approaches to brand communications; work in the marketing business; feel stuck in a rut and need inspiration.
Dont read if you Are looking for a seafaring adventure yarn; are looking for buried treasure.
In 1999, the former advertising planning director Adam Morgan, brought out Eat the Big Fish.
In it, he laid out a detailed road map for Challenger Brands: brands wanting to take on the
leaders by replacing big budgets with big ideas and ingenuity.
The clarity of his thinking and his knack for catchy terminology (Lighthouse Identity is now an often-repeated marketing term) ensured that the book became an influential marketing text and that his consultancy went on to work with a host of diverse companies and brands.
The Pirate Inside builds and expands on the Challenger philosophy, going back a stage to look closely at the cultural roots of organisations that successfully foster Challenger brands. The basic question he poses to marketers is Do you want to be a pirate, or do you want to be in the navy?.
After Pirates of the Caribbean this should be a no-brainer
Pirates are bold, independent and visionaries who invent their own codes of behaviour and seem to have a very good time. The Navy people are timid reactionaries, hiding their lack of bravery behind convention. For example, here are the six Excuses for being in the Navy:
Im sure that we have all caught ourselves thinking, or heard others saying, some of the above in the past and in cold print, they dont look pretty (But isnt a very piratical word either.), however dont consign yourself to the navy just yet, because Adam Morgan has heard plenty of such excuses in the time between his two books and isnt impressed by any of them.
This book tackles each excuse in turn, detailing the kinds of behaviours that individuals and teams must adopt in order to successfully jump ship (sorry, couldnt help myself). Like, ETBF, his greatest skill here is the way he collects and codifies insights, steering a course away (now I really am sorry) from becoming a process-heavy plod by vigorously refraining the original Pirate metaphor and by using loads of quotations and examples from the real world.
The book stresses how easy it is to adopt the clothes of a Pirate from acquiring a veneer of distinctiveness through advertising, but how few grasp that the real energy comes from attitudinal and cultural change from within an organisation and a brand. One of the most vivid examples of establishing identity at a very deep level comes from Scott Lutz the brand leader for 8th Continent (a brand of Soy milk within General Mills). His starting point was Binding his brand team together by the collective wearing of dog tags on a leather thong.
After a while (due to the darkening of the leather from body oils) it was easy to see who was hardcore about what we were doing on The Continent and who wasnt
This may seem extreme. Indeed, I am wry and cynical should be the seventh excuse for being in the Navy. It does, however, underline Morgans point about how a strong, coherent and motivating vision for the team is needed before you start moving on to consider consumers. This makes Pirate Inside much more challenging to adopt as a philosophy, because it insists on permanent, structural change (forging an identity rather than conjuring an image).
It is a call to arms for marketers to start leading their brands and companies by getting out from under the shadow of what he calls Behemoth Inc. My favourite real world example of this comes from Hovis, showing a brand manager challenging the business preconception that the category was all about price and going on to think in a truly integrated way about communications (the packaging is the breakthrough communication vehicle). Final score: Pirates 32% growth Navy 0.
Before it all seems too far from personal experience its worth pointing out that the book is structured around a progression of practical strategies for developing ideas (Pushing), defining brands (Wrapping) using the metaphor of countries (their cultures, customs, citizens) and building teams. There is even a whole section for Pirates who want to work and survive within the Navy as a sub-culture. As he observes, with enough Pirates inside, a big Navy company has the potential to turn in to a BSC (Big Smart Company).
I think that the fact that some of the case studies are pretty familiar (some are well-worn) shows that the vision as set out in this book still presents a very high bar for many businesses to jump. On the other hand, who doesnt yearn for the life of a Pirate, even if it comes attached with some risks?
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