Brand Messaging & Communication

So today, we're going to talk about brand messaging and communications. We're not
going to start at the strategic level, but we're going to go a little bit further down
into the implementation and tactical level. And talk again about the way the
consumers perceive your brand messaging and marketing. So, let's first start out
with, what are perceptions?

Perceptions are probably one of the most important aspects of consumer behavior,
and in understanding consumer behavior. What is perception? The perception is the
process of developing an interpretation of a stimulus. Or in other words, deciding
exactly what the stimulus means. This is really, really an important, crucial area in
consumer behavior for two reasons. First, whatever cons, customers perceive, is
what affects their subsequent actions and behavior. And second, and this is what's
interesting,what they perceive is not necessarily what's true.

Why is that? Well, the process of perception is constructive. People construct their
interpretations on the fly. And this process is inherently biased. It contains, it, the
process of perception comes in several different stages. The first two stages are the
stages of attention and exposure. Before you can form any kind of perception, you
need to be exposed to the stimuli. And you need to pay attention to that stimuli. Pay
attention to what's salient to you. And we know that that process is very biased.
You only expose yourself to things.

But there's, sometimes there's accidental exposure. But when you're consciously
exposing yourself to things, many times it's a function of what you believe, what
you're prior beliefs are. Let me give you an example. Say you think that a part of
town is not safe. Well, you won't go to that part of town. You'll stay away from that
part of town. So you won't expose yourself to something you don't think is safe. As a
result, you never have the ability to change your perception, of that area of town
because you don't collect new data. So we know that exposure can be selective.

Similarly, even if you are exposed to something, if you don't pay attention to it,
again it can affect you, your perceptions. And we know that there are 2 kinds of
attention, there's voluntary attention and involuntary attention. So involuntary
attention is something like a big bang, and you pay attention to it regardless of
whether you would have intended to. But for voluntary attention, that again is
selective. So we have the possibility of selective exposure and selective attention.
That means you're not collecting data on things that might be, might be able to
change your perception.
So that's the first stage of bias. The second stage of bias is once you are exposed to
something, and if you pay attention to it, then you have to interpret it. And we
know that you interpret data subject to what you already believe. So for example,
most people know if you watch a presidential debate, it's important to have
representatives who in interpret what happened in the debate from both parties.

Because we know a priori, the interpretations are going to vary based on their prior
beliefs. And, that's the same thing for any kind of consumer behavior. You're
exposed, pay attention to certain stimuli. But you interpret it subject to your prior
expectations. As a result of this, perceptions are frequently biased, and they don't
necessarily represent what's true. So what's the overview of the perceptual process?
You're expo, there are sensory inputs that the marketer puts out. There's, we're
going to talk about it, brand communication, there's advertising, there's packaging.
All sorts of different, sensory inputs. And then you are exposed to them, or you're
not. And sometimes the exposure, as I mentioned, is in a bias, bias way.

And then, even if you are exposed to these inputs, you know, and you're exposed to
thousands of marketing measures, marketing cues every single day. But how many
of them do you pay attention to? So, first, there's the issue of exposure. Then there's
the issue of whether or not you pay attention to it. And finally, there's the issue of
interpretation.

Let me give you an example here. This is a psychological test. It's called a Stroop
Test. And what I want to show you is that your perceptions, and I just explained to
you your perceptions could be biased, but your perceptions affect your subsequent
behavior. Regardless, it's almost an automatic reaction. You have a certain
perception, and then you automatically respond to that. And it's very had to control
that, even if you think, well I understand that my perceptions might be biased, and
therefore I'm going to try to do something to control that, so I don't react
inappropriately. But these perceptions are automatic things, and it's very hard to
block their effect. So let me just give you a little test here. I'm going to show you
several words on the screen, and what I want you to do is tell me the color of the
font.

Okay, so let, there's going to be four words, and I'm going to just put them up on the
screen, and to yourself tell me the color of the font. So, here are the words.Here's
the second one.The third one.And, the fourth one.Now, by the fourth one, you
probably got what was going on. I mean, the first one, maybe you were a little bit
surprised. And you saw that the word was blue, but the color of the font was red, so
the answer was red.
By the fourth one, you understood the pattern, but it was still hard to break it. You
couldn't stop yourself from reading the word, and reading the word affected your
subsequent behavior, it slowed you down.

That's actually the purpose of the Stroop test. It's a stress manipulation, it makes
people feel a little bit uncomfortable because of that dissonance. If I put the words
up where the words match the color of the font, the task is much simpler. So here
are four words where the color matches and you can see, it's much easier, it's much
faster to say the words. This is the same thing in the way marketing I'm going to
show you that color has an effect, the brand name has an effect. And you cannot
block this effect. It affects your subsequent perceptions and subsequent behavior,
and it's an automatic reaction that's difficult to stop.

So let me just give you, here's an example. If I told you this is luscious chocolate,
and I show you a picture of it if the shape of a cow pie, it's very hard to stop that
first initial feeling of, ooh I don't want to eat this, that disgusting feeling. And you
know that it's good chocolate, but the shape has an involuntary effect on you. And
that, that's a very important thing to understand.

So marketers need to understand how these things affect your perceptions and your
subsequent behaviors. Because as I say these are automatic reactions. There are
some visual illusions you may have seen these before. I can show you these two
lines on the screen. I will tell you-you can measure them, they are exactly the same
length. However one looks longer than the other, and you just can't stop that
feeling.

Even though I tell you they're exactly the same length and I can prove it to you, you
still have the perception that the one on top is longer. Here's another example,
here's an example of how your prior expectations influence your perception of the
stimulus. So if I ask you, what is this that I've put on the screen.

You'll answer differently if I show it to you this way versus when I showed it to you
this way. And so that shows you what you perceive that stimulus is, is a function of
your prior expectations.Here's another one that we know, and this one I'm going to
take a little bit closer to marketing. There, there's a perception bias that's called the
proximity bias. And what the proximity bias says, is if things are close to each
other, you assume they're more similar. So if I asked you which lines are similar to
each other, most people will say the two lines that are clustered together are
similar.So that they'll cluster the two lines that are close to each other, rather than
say the two bold lines or the two thin, thin lines. Because you make this inference
of, things that are close to each other must belong together. And you can see this in
the supermarket, in stores.

It, if, say in the salad dressing, salad section, and where there arevegetables
marketers may put, or grocers may put salad dressing near that salad. There's an
implicit assumption that if the product is near another product, they belong
together. So that's a perception. That physical distance affects whether things are
similar or belong together. In the mall, stores that are close together or seem to be
more similar. And there's a lot of use of this particular bias.

Another one is the similarity bias. Things that look alike, people assume to have the
same quality. So this is the the the underlying the theory behind, say, store brands.
If a store brand makes itself look very similar to the national brand, you assume the
quality's the same, even though you haven't tested it, you don't know if that's the
case. You're making an assumption of perceived quality, based on this process of
similarity. And so these perceptual inferences are very, very strong at influencing
your perception of quality, the way you consume the product, the way you
experience the product, the price you're willing to pay, etc.

And it's a very, very important consumer process for marketers to understand. It's
particularly important in branding. So we know that if you take a glass of cola or a
bottle of cola, and you slap on a brand, say the Coca Cola brand, people will have
different perceptions about that product than if the brand wasn't there. With the
Coca Cola brand on it, people will think it tastes better. They're willing to pay a
higher price. They'll make all sorts of other inferences, even if the product's exactly
the same. Once we put a brand on it, it changes the perceptions of the product. And
people think, I'm not subject to that, I know. I can judge certain products by quality.
I'm not influenced by brand names.

And, we know from the experiment after experiment after experiment, that, that's
just not true. People are very much influenced by the brand name that's put on the
product, independently of the product quality. it's the same way in the Stroop test.
You just can't stop it. Once you see that brand name, you have certain perceptions.
You make certain inferences about that brand name. And those perceptions are
translated to the qual, to the product. We know that brand is such a powerful brand
as we mentioned before. it has so much influence. The Coca Cola brand name has
been estimated to be worth 70 billion dollars as an asset. Just putting that brand
name on a product will change, as I said price premiums people are willing to pay,
the quality, etc. When you know that that brand is worth so much, many times
people look for ways to leverage the brand for growth.
So ex, for example, you know Coca-Cola is associated with the cola soft drink. In
1982, Coca-Cola took that brand name and put it on a brand new product at the
time, that no one had tasted before, a diet soft drink. They call it Diet Coke. And
automatically, even though that product was not on the market before, people
assume it has hot better taste, it's a higher quality product. And again they're
willing to pay a higher premium price for that product. This is a brand new product,
but the perceptions of it are so high because of the brand name that's stamped on
the can.

Brand Elements: Choosing a Brand Name

So now that we see how important a brand is at creating perceptions of quality, let's get into some
of the inner workings of a brand and talk about the different elements of the brand. And let's start
with, how do you choose a brand name?

But first let me define what the different elements are. So there's a variety of brand elements that
can be chosen. you can use some, not use others. and they will totally identify or enhance the brand
awareness. And if you choose them right, they can help facilitate the formation of strong, favorable
and unique brand associations. And so the things we'll talk about are the brand name, which is the
first one, the anchor. different brand logos, symbols brand characters, packaging, brand slogans and
brand colors.

When you're looking at all of these brand elements, you gotta ask a couple of questions. First of all,
you have to make sure all the brand elements work together to create a unique identity for the
product and service. So make sure that everything you've chosen is, is of one, one thought, one, one
belief and work together in unison. And the second thing to think about is if people see the brand
elements or whatever you do create for that brand identity independent of the product, what would
people think of just that brand label? And so think about those kinds of things in general as we
discuss some of the more tactical issues of choosing these different brand elements. and when we
consider each of the different ones, and I'll go over all of them in, you know, in various detail.

Not, some of them are more obvious or more, you can figure them out for yourself more easily than
others. But, when you think about all of them, you should think about these criteria for choosing a
good one. The first thing, when you, when you think about choosing different brand elements, you
really want them to be memorable. You want people to be able to recognize it very easily, and you
want them to remember what they've seen. The other thing you want to have happen when you
choose these elements is that they're meaningful. And they can be meaningful in two different ways.
One, in a descriptive way, which is, how do they describe the attributes of the product or the benefit
of the product or the customer segment.

And the other thing that we're looking at is remember these, this brand label is forming a perception.
So you also want these brand elements to work together to persuade the customer of something
usually of something positive.the other thing you're thinking about is the, how they look, you know,
and you want them to be fun, interesting, aesthetic. You want it to be rich visual imagery. And you
also, if you have visual and verbal image, imagery, you have to think about how those two things
work together.

Again, you want a congruent unified vision here. Another thing to think about, and this is
very important, is can you protect your identity? There's two ways to protect it.
One is legally. And so many times, if you have a good brand name, you trademark it and then it's
against the law for people to copy your brand name. But there's other things that are more subtle
and remember I told you about that perception of similarity. People may not be copying exactly what
you do. But they may do something that looks similar and they can kind of steal your identity by just
looking similar. And so you not only want to have legal protection, but you want to try to identify a
brand image and brand elements that work together that are hard to copy. So that you have some
sustainable competitive advantage, in addition to the legal protection that you may have.

When you're thinking about this brand, remember, it's very expensive to create a strong brand name
and it's an extremely valuable asset. And so the other thing you want to think about is how adaptable
is this brand name to go, to stay modern? times change, consumer's taste change, competition
changes, and so you don't want a brand name that is so, is so static that it can't adapt with changing
times, and it's not flexible, and it's not updateable. And along this line, you also want a brand name,
if you can, or a brand image, with all these elements that work together that you can use them to
go on to different products, if you introduce new products. So I mention Coke started out on a
regular a full calorie cola drink, and they stretched that brand name to go to a diet cola drink.
So you want to think of brand images that can go, not just on your initial product, but could perhaps
go on other products in the future as the company grows.

And similarly, you want a product that can go across cultures. Into and that's some, a brand name, I
mean, that can go across cultures. So you don't want something that won't be understood or be
interpreted differently or inappropriately in other cultures. So more and more as brands are
becoming global. Even if you start our very locally. When you choose your brand elements, you
should choose brand elements that can go global, should your business get big enough. And each
element in, in thinking about this brand image, are going to play a different role in creating those
overall perceptions. They all have different strengths and weaknesses.but you really want to think
about how you can use them strategically, to achieve some kind of balance and overall impact.

And again, as I mentioned before, they have to work together to, to form a unique, consistent
image. So let's look at some of the different brand elements and just think about, on the face of it,
what some of the advantage and disadvantages are. We start out, the name is obviously crucial.
It's the anchor and it's very, very important that you can choose a, a, a good brand
name. Sometimes you're, there's legacy brand names and you have a great deal of awareness with
a particular brand name. And maybe it wasn't the best one to choose, but you have to use some of
the other ones to build it up.

Like, for example, the brand name Aflac, or Geico, both of those are brand names that were
acronyms. They actually weren't such great brand names because they don't have the advantage of
a good brand name of being quick, easy to process, easy to remember. And in both of those cases
the marketers us other elements to, to, to help with the brand names. So Aflac came up with the,
with the duck image and Geico came up with the Gecko image. So that you can kind of remember
those brand names better. But if you can choose it in the beginning, it's better to choose one that's
easy to process and recall. Because, the disadvantage of a brand name, is once you bring up that or
develop that brand awareness and people really understand what it is, it's pretty difficult and
expensive to change. It's not impossible. But a lot of the whole brand imagery is really anchored on
the name. So the name, and I'm going to spend some time thinking about that going forward, is
extremely important to think about. Once you have a brand name, then you can start thinking about
logos and symbols, like the Nike Swoosh or McDonald's arches. These are attention getting.
They can be emotional. They can reinforce any of your brand identity.

But again, symbols and logos can get out of date. they, they can be ambiguous. They can be in,
interpreted differently across cultures, so you again, just have to think about how those work. Not all
brands have a character, but a character, if you do have one, can be very quick, very attention
getting. Think about what happens if you see Mickey Mouse on something. I mean that's a world
famous character, recognized everywhere and people understand it's fun, it's kids, it's exciting. and
so characters can work very well, but they can get outdated, or they can be culturally bound, and
certainly not all brands have a character. A slogan and a jingle, if it's done well, gives you a few
more words and can give you music to add to the brand element, so it can be used to convey
meaning. Nike's Just Do It is an extremely strong slogan, that adds to the Nike brand name. but
again, sometimes it's difficult to translate. Sometimes if you do jingles, musical tastes are different,
and not everybody likes it. Some people think mus, some of these jingles are annoying. So, there's
advantages and disadvantages.

Packaging also is extremely advantageous and I'm going to show you some examples of brands that
were built on their package design.and we go back to this notion of perceptions. There's a lot of
research that shows, and I'm going to talk about that, that people form perceptions of the quality of
the product, not by the product itself, but by the package it's in. So this has a very strong effect on
creating perceptions. The difficulty with packaging is many times you don't control how it ultimately
reaches the consumer. So the manufacturer builds a product in a package, but then it's the channel
or the retailer that delivers that package to the consumer. So for example, if you want the package
oriented in a certain way, like front on, it may not appear that way on the shelf.

Or if it's supposed to be refrigerated, it may not be at the right temperature, etcetera. So the problem
with packaging is that, these channel issues. But after all of these elements have advantages and
disadvantages. If you choose them strategically, they can work very well to create a very strong
brand image. Let's look specifically at this notion of brand names. Now, the brand name is extremely
important for many, many audiences. Obviously, and what we've been focusing on here, it matters to
consumers and customers. And, it can, as I mentioned before, seriously affect the likelihood of
purchase. It also affects people who work for you, for employees. So, that you really want to do
branding externally to your market.

But internally to your employee base too. People can be very proud of the company they work for.
and the reputation and brand name of the brand may make it easier or harder to hire people, to
retain people, and may affect their morale and productivity. it also, the brand name, affects growth
opportunities, like I mentioned. If the brand name is not adaptable and not transferable, it may be
difficult for the firm to go into new markets or to go into different products. And so it affects the
growth potential of the firm, and it affects investors.

So just, investors are people too, and they can be very much affected without even realizing it by the
brand name. about using the value of the brand name to infer make inferences about the merits and
strengths of the firm as an investment opportunity. So the brand name matters a lot in lots of
different ways. So, what are the different types of brand names? There's lots of examples, and I'll
just go through this kind of quickly. We can look at this chart here. You know, there's a descriptive
brand name, where it just basically describes the product or service. Lean Cuisine is like that.
It's about non-fattening food. You know exactly what the product is by the brand name. There can be
brand names that are metaphors, that represent some kind of symbolism like Nissan's Infinity.

A lot of the legacy brand names are based on people's names. So Ford or Ralph Lauren, those are
real people. And the brand name was chosen for, because it's based on a particular
person. Sometimes there's brand names where the word means something, but it's not really clear
how it applies to the product. Apple's a great example of, of that kind of. Or Camel, what are those,
those are brand names. You know what the words mean and now, certainly, they're very famous
brand names, so you understand what they are. But they don't really have any direct connection with
the product. Then there can be brand names that are altered. They kind of sound like they're a real
word, but actually they're not, like Lucent or Spotify. You kind of have a sense what those brands
mean, and you think you know what those words are, but they're not real. Or you can have a new
word that's created by blending together two other words. Facebook is a great example of that that,
that's not a real word, but you know what it is, a book of faces. And then, of course, there can be
invented words that are not at all real and you have no idea what it means, and you can't even
guess, like something like Exxon.

Let me give you just three examples of modern brand names that follow all of these things, and you
can see, these brand names were extremely strong choices. and they worked very very well, and
they were all very different. So I'll start with Richard Branson's Virgin. He explains that the origin of
that brand name was when he was 15, he was sitting in a room with other 15 year olds, and they
were trying to think of the name, of a name for a record company. And a couple of the girls said,
well, we're all virgins here. And somehow or another, that name just seemed to spark interest, and
they said, well, if we started a record company, we'd be virgins in that business, so let's use that
name. And apparently that's how that name was chosen. He mentioned that, at the time, it was
considered a pretty risky brand name and it was hard to register for a while. But now, it's become an
extraordinarily strong brand name. And, it, there, it's a funness to it that actually works really well
with a lot of his products and markets.

Priceline's a different type of brand name. That's a brand name that's quite descriptive. you know, if
you know what that business is, you know it's absolutely about establishing a line of prices. It's quite
clear what it means and it has been very useful in that way, in, in a different way than Virgin.
And finally Google, which you know has now become a verb, people Google things, with, it's
interesting that brand name was chosen by mistake. they meant it to be the word Googol, which is
not spelled the way the brand is spelled, and that, that's a very, very large number. It's 1 with 100
zeros after. So this was a mistake, they meant to spell it right and they didn't. Google's a very, very
interesting brand name from a marketing point of view because one of the things that we argue is
extremely important in brand names is consistency.

And Google has met, because it is so well known, and people identify it in just little pieces of the
brand name. They identify the colors, they identify the typeface, that Google plays around, as I've
showed you on this screen, where they'll show you its trademark differently everytime you see it.
Whenever you go to the browser, you'll see a different version of the brand name. That's a sign of an
extraordinarily strong brand name that has very, very high brand awareness, that you can see it
even when it's not exactly the same every single time. But these are all fairly new brand names that
have been very, very successful. When you look at new startups now, a lot of the trend in the new
startups, and there was a recent Wall Street Journal article about this. the new startups are, are
making up brand names, and so a lot of the new businesses come up with brand names that are,
just these invented words like Mibblio or Kaggle or Shodogg or Zaarly. You don't even know how to
pronounce some of these words. Why is that happening? Part of the, part of the reason is, in today's
world, when you have a, a brand new business, you need a, a website right away.

And most of the recognizable URLs have already been taken and so one of the ways to get a URL
that's uniquely identified with your business, is to invent a new word. Then you're going to have to
use the other elements of the brand mix to try to give some kind of identity to this brand name. Let
me talk about an interesting hap, thing that happened with brand names somewhat recently. The
Gap brand name, a few years ago now, I'm not sure exactly when. But Gap wasn't doing very well
with their same store sales, revenues were down, they really needed to do something to turn the
business around. And one of the things they were trying to do to modernize it was to change the
trademark, or change the brand logo. So the original brand logo as shown on the screen is a blue
square with the word Gap in white on that blue square and you can see the new logo that they put
out, is very different. The blue square has shrunk, the typeface has changed it's now on a white
background. And they put that brand name out in, into their social media market, and
instantly got very, very negative reaction to that brand name. The consumers hated it.
Within, that brand name was out there, just tentatively, as a test, for one week.
The reaction was so negative that the company pulled it back and that was the end of that.
So it ended up actually being a, a pretty, it was, you know, they got a lot of publicity at the time.
But it was a pretty inexpensive way. A lot of times, if you try to change your, your brand image, it's
extremely expensive to change it, especially for a retailer. There's signage, there's bags, you know,
the, the packaging. And all sorts of things that would be very, very expensive.

So actually, that this got such a negative reaction, that they found out so quickly, it was, was a
benefit for the company. But because this was somewhat of a famous incident some market
research was done, and some fMRI studies, and neurostudies were done to figure out what was so
bad about that image. Why did people not like it. And there's a couple things that they identified that
when I show you, you can see make sense. One of them is, if you have visual and verbal things in
conflict with each other, people read the visual first.

And so where that blue box is, behind the P, it, you're, it actually kind of blocks out the P, and you
see a hole in the P, and the P is not as strong because you're attracted first to the vision. So that
weakened the whole idea of the brand there. because the P was kind of weakened because of the
visual block on it. The other thing that, that's different between the two logos is that instead of being
all caps, which is in the original one, now this is an initial cap and then smaller letters. And what that
ended up doing was making people think of it as a word, rather than a brand name. And if you think
about it, the word gap, that means a hole, that's, you know, you have, that's not so positive.

So when we're looking at these things in hindsight, you can kind of see why that wasn't a good
choice. And people just didn't have a very strong emotional reaction to it, also. There were negative
emotions to it that were kind of more on a visceral level, and what I'm explaining here is, you know,
more thoughtful.and the last thing I want to mention in thinking about brand names, is a lot of people
now, you've got to think about global business. And a lot of the business, the future business is in
China. And that's tricky to think about how your brand names might translate into Chinese. And
there's a number of issues there. A number of different ways to do it. One way is to keep your brand
name in the English let or, the French letters, or the English letters, or the non-Chinese letters.
some of the luxury brands do that.

So, Chanel, or LV, you know, Louis Vuitton, will do those kinds of things. They keep them in their
native language. But other brands try to change their brand name into Chinese. And this is tricky
because you can do it, Coca-Cola, for example. what does Coca-Cola mean? How do you translate
that? And if you just go and look for the Chinese characters that kind of sound like Coca-Cola, well,
the characters themselves may mean something. So when Coca-Cola first did that and tried to pick
Chinese characters that sounded like Coca-Cola, it had a very bad brand meaning. And they had to
take that one off the market. The one they currently had, have means tasty fun, so it kind of
sounds like Coca-Cola, and it means something that at least makes sense with a drink. Reebok did
the same kind of thing, the Chinese characters that they chose kind of sound like Reebok and it
means, quick steps, which again makes sense.

Colgate did something different. Colgate picked Chinese characters that they thought was
consistent with their brand image, which meant superior cleanliness. And then the Chinese
characters, if you said them, didn't sound very much like the word Colgate. And Cadillac did it the
opposite way. They took Chinese characters that sounded like Cadillac, but they didn't mean
anything in Chinese.

So, when you're translating to a very, very different language, and an important language like China,
because of the size of the market, there are some big issues. And there are a lot of agencies now
that are developing to help you choose a name that will make sense in China.
Brand Elements: Color & Taglines

Now that we discussed brand name, let's think about some of the other elements that can go around
a brand name and I'm going to talk about two that are extremely important. One is choosing a color.

And color has very, very strong perceptual cues. We'll show you some of those things, but people
associate a lot with different colors. And the other is this notion of choosing a slogan or a tagline,
which can add additional meaning to the brand name. So let's start with color first. There's a few
rules about color that you should think about. First of all, the best use of color if you can possibly get
it, is to own a color. and that's not, very many brands can do it. There aren't that many colors out
there and to really own a color is pretty hard to do. But, when you do it it's extremely powerful.

If you think about Tiffany's, and they own the light blue color box, you know this is a globally known,
this light blue box. This is such an important cue, that the Tiffany empty boxes are sold on Ebay. And
people will purchase those boxes, and then put another product, maybe not a Tiffany piece, in that
product. But, people getting a gift in a Tiffany box, this just shows you how strong the perception
is. We'll think the product in side that box is higher quality. But Tiffany's light blue box is extremely
valuable brand image for their, I mean it's very high quality, and, and, many times with jewelry,
unless your an expert it's kind of hard to necessarily judge quality so people will use this light blue
box as a cue for high quality products. Mary Kay owns the pink color. That's, it's a very feminine
business, cosmetics. Mary Kay gives away pink Cadillacs to their sales people. and she has really
used that bright pink, that to, to symbolize her business, and it's been very strong. color can also be
used within a brand to separate product lines. So, different American Express has different colored
cards. The green card, the black card, the silver card, all these different kinds of cards. and you, you
infer different qualities to the card as a function of its color. And that's used in lots of different
products, as well you have to be careful with color, because color can be experienced differently it
can be experienced differently across different platforms.

So a lot of times if you're going to test a color you want to test it on a computer, on a phone, in real
life, and the colors may vary a little bit. And when you want a color to really be identifiable with a
particular brand, you want to make sure you have that consistent color across.and colors also can
create very strong perceptions. If, if you look at a product line and you see some of the products or
it's gold or silver or black and white, that cues luxury, and you just assume that product's more
expensive than more basic colors like a red and blue. So that those colors can just signal high
quality just because it's gold and silver. Similarly, you see something that's blue or pink, you think
female or male. just by the color, can be the exact same product but the color changes and you think
it's for girls versus boys.

So we know some theory about color. We know that there's two basic axes of color. There's the
arousal axis, you know, how stimulating it is, versus how calming it is. And there's the affect axis,
which means how much people like it or don't like it. The affect axis is extremely important, but it
does vary a little bit by cultures. Some colors are better liked in some cultures than others. But what
I'll show you here is kind of the way the U.S. looks at it, and it may be different in different cultures. It
is true that high arousal colors are like red and orange. those ha-, create much more tension, much
more excitement, and common colors are more blue and green. That's pretty universal. but then
also, if you think about, on that affect, or that liking dimension, the blues and greens tend to be better
liked colors in the U.S. where oranges and yellows are a little bit less liked in the U.S. And this may
be different in other cultures. For example, orange is a very popular color in India. There's other
rules about colors. But there's been a, color's an interesting thing. And, there's been a lot of research
on color. and so there's certain things that we know of that the way people automatically react to
these colors going back to that perception. So, red for example, as I mentioned is an exciting color. It
can, it gets attention. It's part of the reason why fire engines are red. Or sometimes they're
yellow. Both of them are very attention-getting colors.
Red also means love. It means passion. But red also stimulates appetite. And so you'll see a lot of
food logos like McDonald's, Pizza Hut, K, KFC, Windows, Chipotle, Windows, Wendy's,
Chipotle. They all stimulate appetite, and they all have a lot of red in their logo. Blue, on the other
hand, is a calming color and it is not a good color for food, for food. Blue actually is a color that curbs
appetite and some people have said that if you're on a diet and you want to like try not to eat
as much, having blue plates can curb your appetite a little. blue, as I mentioned, is also a color that's
frequently preferred by men. Green is a color that's tranquil. It means health. It can mean money. It
can mean nature. A lot of environmental companies use the green color to give you that green
notion.

But green also means fertility. And if you've seen some of the recent M&M's ads. And you know,
Miss Green, you know? She's a pretty sexy M&M. And that's also that green color. Brown is reliable,
bor-, a little bit boring, practical earth. White is an interesting color, because white can mean purity, it
can mean innocence. people play around with white space. They can, it can be high design, if
there's a lot of white space. the spacious, is, issue. People there's a lot of things that are done with
white, white's a very interesting color.

Black, on the other hand, sometimes is seen as evil, you know, it, it can symbolize in some
cultures death or mourning but, you know, people wear a lot of black because they think it creates
the perception that they're thinner. yellow is a very bright color. It creates a lot of energy. It has been
shown, and this is somewhat interesting, that yellow can sometimes make babies cry. So, it's kind of
maybe not the best color to paint for a newborn's room. Orange is exciting, warm, it, it's, it, an
enthusiastic color. Lavender on the other hand, is calming, more relaxing. Purple is associated with
royalty, with wealth, with wisdom. And pink as I mentioned is more of a girl's co, color. It, it's warm.
It's a calming color. very feminine.

And so one of the things you can look at is look at some of these different colors and see which
companies use these different colors. So you know, the bright yellow color is used on Nike, on Shell
Oil, on Best Buy, on McDonald's, to get, on DHL, to get a lot of attention. The friendly fun orange
color is used on Hooters and Nickelodeon and Firefox. The red colors I already mentioned is used
on a lot of food companies like Kelloggs, Coca Cola. It's also used to get attention. CNN uses it
Netflix has used it. I've showed you before Virgin uses it. Purple is more of a creative color. So, you
see Yahoo using it, Barbie uses it, Hallmark, Taco Bell. Blue is this trust color. So, companies like
Oral B, Walmart, IBM, Pfizer. You don't, American Express, GE, a lot of really solid companies, not a
lot of food companies.

Again, green is more of this natural color, Whole Foods uses it some, Starbucks uses it, some of the
oil companies have used it to show that they have environmental leanings, BP has tried to use it.and
then the grey, black and white colors are more of a balance colors. So you see New York Times is a
black logo. Apple sometimes has a silver apple. Mercedes Benz is a silver kind of color. So those
colors silver, and things like that are more balanced. But if you look at the logos and start thinking
about them. And thinking about how the colors are working, we kind of get a sense of what's going
on here. So let's look now, at symbols.

And symbols as I mentioned, Mickey Mouse is a very famous symbol. Symbols can add a lot of fun,
a lot of attention to a brand. I had some symbols here on the slide. Mr. Clean is a symbol that
communicates certain types of associations. Mr. Clean is a product for cleaning up. And what they
show is a strong muscular man, so it's assuming that you can have a lot of strength in this
product. The next one I showed you here is Wells Fargo. There's a lot of multiple associations
with the Wells Fargo that shows independence, the wild west adventure and so there's other kinds of
things that you can associate with it. Charlie the Tuna is the last one, it invokes positive
feelings, liking Pillsbury's Dough Boy is kind of like that. And so you can just have fun with these
different symbols.
But, the symbols can get out of date and in the last section in this, we'll talk about how you can
reposition and rechange these symbols. Symbols, because they can get dated and they can be very
much tied to a particular era. So you have to be careful with symbols. Slogans can be tailored to
help the positioning strategy, we talked about earlier. So that, you have a brand name and you want
to really communicate that brand mantra. One way you can do it is through your positioning
strategy. And sometimes, if you just have, you know, these brand elements, you may want a slogan
or a tagline that can help remove some of the ambiguity that's associated with the brand or the
symbol. And it's also, the tagline can create its own emotion, like, "reach out and touch someone"
or, you know, can create its own kind of warmth and emotion.and finally, the brand or the tagline can
reinforce the name or the symbol. and can just, because if you have these redundancy in the tagline,
is reinforcing the imagery, or the brand name. You're seeing this multiple times, it makes for a very
strong message.

Some of the basics about taglines, you want them short. It's similar to a brand mantra, they have to
be very short. You really want em differentiated, if they all sound the same they don't do anything,
so you have to make sure it's not the same, or would be confused with the competition. Similarly it
should be unique, it should be easy to say and easy to remember. you don't want it to have any
negative interpretations, so you have to market test it, particularly when you go across cultures.
and again, if you have a really great tagline like "just do it" you want to trademark it so that it's
protected.

And as I mentioned, an emotion if you can evoke an emotion with your tagline, that will make it much
stronger. So what are the different types of taglines? Well there's Imperative. Just Do It, Think,
Invent! You know, those kinds of things, so they're telling you what to do. There's Descriptive, which
adds more information. Moving at the Speed of Business, bullish on America, You're in Good Hands.
They can be Superlative. The Ultimate Driving Machine. There's no Better Way to Fly. Those kinds
of things. Or they can be Provocative and kind of clever. Got Milk? was one of those and
clever. Another clever one is what VW (Volkswagen) have done with their slogan.
Drivers Wanted.

Brand Elements: Packaging

Okay, so let's talk about packaging. Packaging, as I said, has very strong effects on perceptions.
And it's very a very interesting category. So let's, let's kind of look at packaging.we started learning a
lot about packaging here in the U.S. in the 1930s, and what happened in the 1930s was that the, the
grocery store was moving from the person behind the counter where you would go to a grocer
or you'd go to a butcher or bakery and you talk to somebody behind the counter. And they were
moving to self service supermarkets. So that the consumers were going to go up and down the
aisles of the supermarket by themselves and pick out products without any help.

When this started happening it was very clear that the packaging the product was in was going to
matter a lot. And so the question was, how will people use packaging cues to choose what they're
going to choose in a supermarket. And so one of the early famous experiments was done with
detergent. And they put the same detergent in two different boxes, because what we were testing
here was the differences in the packaging. And in one package, they had a design that had
ciricles, and in the other package they had a design that had triangles. And they wanted to see
which one people would choose. And it turned out it was very reliable. People preferred the, the
detergent that was in the box with circles. So then they let people take both of these detergents
home. now remember the detergent in both boxes was the same. What was different was the
package. And so the consumers took both, both packages home. They much preferred the package
with the circles on it. And they use the detergent from both boxes and then were asked, which
detergent did you like better?
And this is what was really surprising. Not only did they like the package better with the circle, but
they believed that the detergent in the box with the circles worked better. That was astonishing at the
time, people couldn't believe it because it was exactly the same detergent. So they redid the study a
few times with larger sample sizes and consistently got the same result. That was the beginning of
understanding that the package Absolutely in, influences the perception of the product. And now
today if you look at Tide, for example, still has those circles on its product. even when it goes in
different col, countries, things will change in the package, but you will still see those circles which we
know were really preferred by consumers for choosing detergent. And they're in that bright yellow
that, that really pops out at you.

So, packaging is in, is very i-, interesting, because it can influence at the point of purchase, it helps
you choose what you're going to choose. But as these ex-, experiments showed you, it continues to
have an influence at the point of consumption. So it not only gives you a reason to choose when
you're purchasing. But it also influences your perception of the product experience itself. and there
are multiple objectives in a package. You can identify the product, you can present some kind of
information the package can be used to protect the product, it can be used to store the product. It
can aid in consumption, it gives you more information on how to use the product appropriately.
So the package not only using perceptual cues, the packaging not only uses a lot of color. but the
packaging is also pretty informative. I've talked a lot about color before. and so you have to know
that packaging aesthetics are and the function are very, very critical. The colors are used to
help grab consumers' attention in, in a sea of competing messages. And it also though has to be
used so that you want to buy the product again and again. So you want to choose, the, the variations
of colors and designs so that they'll make for an impact impactful package. but you have to, as I
mentioned earlier, know your distribution channels. Because, you don't necessarily control the way
the package is ultimately distributed and there are certain, you might do some really cool things
with your package and then the retailer doesn't necessarily abide by the way what those, that
packages exhibited and that's just the reality and you have to think it through that when you're doing
it.

Let me go over some iconic packages and how they've really changed customer perceptions and
really helped build market share. I've talked about color, and color is extremely important, so let me
say that colors on packaging can really do these same kinds of things. But I'm not going to be
redundant and mention color again, so let me focus now on shape. So one of the new products that
came out, Calvin Klein came out - a number of years ago, tens of years, decades ago I think
actually, with one of the first products that came out with a fragrance that was designed for both men
and women. It was unusual in that case. And a lot of the ads showed very designy ads, and they
showed models that The gender was kind of ambiguous. And so it, it was a very interesting
campaign and they really wanted the product to be seen as edgy. And so if you look at this package
of the CK Cologne that they came out with, you can see that edginess in the package. The shape of
the cologne was in the shape of a flask. Which is an interesting thing for a cologne. You know, it's
not usually the shape of a, of a product you think for a cologne. And you can also see that they used
a symmetry in their logo, which again, really gave this notion of edginess.

And a lot of times when people choose fragrance, this is one thing we know for sure, they, they're
not really experts at choosing different scents. And so the packaging and the brand name is
very influential in what people choose as the fragrance they like. another famous, famous, famous
shape of a bra, a bottle was Absolut. This was one of, this campaign I don't think is being used
anymore, but it's one of, it was used for about ten years, it's one of the most famous print campaigns
around. And the whole print campaign was predicated on the shape of the bottle. So vodka, a lot of
times people have difficulty telling different vodkas er, apart. That's not to say they're not
different. But some people have difficulty at times. Especially after the tenth drink. and so the bottle
really, really is important. The brand name and the bottle, establishing brand loyalty. The Absolut
bottle was interesting because most of spirit bottles have a longer neck because bartenders are
people use a product. They, they hold the neck to pour. So actually this wasn't as easy a pro,
a, a, a bottle to use, but it's because it was so distinct that the shape of the bottle was so
important. And they really, really focused on the shape of the bottle in the ads. The ads went through
different stages, some of, some of the ads just showed the bottle, some of the ads showed other
things in that shape, like I remember a famous one where they had an LA ad. And they had the
swimming pool in the shape of the Absolut bottle. and they did a lot of, they used celebrities,
they used artists, they did a lot of creative things, but it was always around the shape of the
bottle. Another iconic shaped bottle is Coca-Cola. So Coca-Cola, as I mentioned, is a very very very
strong brand name. But part of that brand imagery comes not only in their logo, in their red color, in
their famous polar bear ads and other types of ads they have.

But, also in the shape of their six and a half ounce bottle. That was their first product and a very
distinctive shape that people could tell it was a Coca-Cola from all the other soft drinks out
there. When the bottle went from glass to plastic, originally, when Coca-Cola came out with their
plastic bottle, they lost their unique shape, and that was a decided disadvantage. And so they
managed to figure out how to recreate their iconic glass shape in plastic. And I remember I was a
marketing professor when they did this, and they sent out to marketing professors, you know, an
empty bottle, or empty plastic bottle of Coca Cola in their iconic shape because they were so happy
that they had managed to reproduce this in this new medium. Because they understood how
important that was. And another very famous bottle of course is the Heinz ketchup bottle. I've been
told this is in the Smithsonian, I'm not sure that's true, but it could be, because it's a museum
piece. People recognize the quality of the ketchup because of the shape of the bottle. And this,
again, kind of like the Absolut bottle, is pretty interesting, because that shape in that glass bottle
makes it difficult to get the ketchup out of. So it's not even a product that helps the product and use
the product. It actually gets in the way of using the product, and yet still it really really define the
quality of that ketchup, by the shape of the bottle. So, shape is extremely important at, at causing at
creating brand imagery and brand identity. And, shape also can be in and of itself an excuse for a
new product. One of the most successful new products in the soft drink industry was the refrigerator
pack. They did some market research and they found out that if the cans of soda were in the back of
the refrigerator, people did not consume it as much. So if they wanted people to consume the
product, they needed some mechanism to bring the cans to the front of the consumer the
refrigerator, so people could drink it. and that these pack, refrigerated packages were designed that
way.

And that package design single-handedly increased market share for the companies that started
doing it. It was a very successful new product introduction. And it didn't have anything to do with the
actual product, but just the packaging. And similarly, Hunt's came out with a, a package for getting
ketchup out that's easier. and so you turn the product upside down. It's easy to get the, the ketchup
out. And again, that was a successful packaging innovation.

Brand Elements: Persuasion

So we talked about budget brand images, and we talked about creating brand perceptions, and how
these brand elements work together. But another part of this brand identity is to persuade
consumers. So let's focus now on this process of persuasion, or changing people's attitudes. And
the dominant model that's used in this, in this way of thinking, or the dominant theory, is called the
Elaboration Likelihood Model. And so we'll talk a little bit about that. And then let me focus in on the
use of celebrity spokespeople. Because they're used frequently to help persuade consumers to have
positive beliefs towards a brand.
So let's start off with persuasion. What is persuasion? It's an active attempt to change belief and
attitude. So marketers are trying to persuade you to feel favorably towards their brands and their
products.

The caveat here is that it's difficult, and why is it difficult? It's difficult for the reasons that I've
mentioned all along. People are ex-, expose themselves, pay attention to and interpret data
consistent with what they already believe. And because they're not scientific about it, and evenly
sampling and exposing themselves to all sorts of different things and paying attention to things that
both support their prior belief and refute their prior belief, because they're very biased in the way
they take in that stimuli, it's hard to persuade them to think differently. That's not to say it's not
possible, but it is difficult.

So the dominant model in thinking about what's the best way to persuade consumers is the
Elaboration Likelihood Model. And this model posits that there's two different ways, or two different
routes, to persuasion. There's the systematic, or central, route and there's the superficial or
peripheral processing route.

The central root say that if people are motivated and they're highly involved, and they have the
opportunity and the ability to process marketing messages, then the way to persuade them is
through central cues in messages. In other words, cognitive cues. Things that people have to think
about. Try to make a strong argument. In order to make a strong argument, people have to be
paying attention, they have to be motivated, and they have to have the ability to process this
information. That's one way. Many times, and this is true a lot with marketing decisions, people just
aren't motivated to think that much. And they, maybe they just don't want to think that much. Or
maybe they're, just don't have the ability, they're too tired or whatever. In that case, central
processing or central route to persuasion will not work. Then you will have to use the superficial way,
which is to use these peripheral cues and so when your opportunity, motivation and ability to
elaborate, to cognitively process is low, then the way to persuade people is use, is through these
peripheral cues. Which are more automatic reactions, people just make decisions based on these
cues. And, it's not because they thought it out carefully.

So, what, what we're saying here is that the consumer is exposed to marketing cues. Now, the first
thing is, you ask the question, is the consumer motivated to elaborate? Are they going to to pay
attention and think about your, your message? If the answer is no, they're not, then that's low
involvement. And then don't give a message they have to think about, use peripheral cues. On the
other hand, if there's high involvement, and they are motivated to elaborate, then the next question
you have to ask is, do they have the ability to elaborate, though, that's a message something that
they can figure out if they think about. And, if the answer to that is yes. Then you're going to use
central route. If the answer is no, you have to go back to the peripheral route. Okay.

So to get to central routing, the central route where its systematic argument people have to be
motivated, and they have to have the ability. If either one of them isn't true, you gotta go to
peripheral cues. So, what are peripheral cues? Peripheral cues are cues that people use, in a, it's
called heuristic way. That means a shortcut way. They don't really think through it, they just kind of
say, well if this is true then that must be true. So, for example. Classical conditioning. Classical
conditioning says that you persuade people just by putting things together all the time. So the
famous example is Pavlov's dog. The dog was conditioned to salivate whenever they heard a bell
ring and the way it was done is the bell rang before they gave dog food and then every time the dog
got dog food they salivated.

After a while because of classical conditioning, just the ringing of the bell caused the dog to salivate.
So in the same way in marketing, if things are always together. You always have Coke with
hamburgers or Coke with McDonald's. After a while you don't even think about it, and you just say,
well, I'm having a Big Mac, let me have a Coke. That, that's a kind of notion of classical
conditioning. It's not well thought out. It's just, I'm persuaded to have a Coke because I always have
had one. Reciprocity says that you gave me something, I owe you. Now, that may make sense, it
may not, but you're doing it just because, I owe you.

So a lot of times, direct marketers will do things like, put a little gift in a charity appeal. We'll give you
stamps, or sometimes they give you a dollar. And the idea is, sometimes, I gave you sometime, now
you give it back to me. It's not a cognitive argument, it's a peripheral cue. Consistency's another
peripheral cue. Why do you like the toothpaste you use? A lot of times the reason that you like
the toothpaste you use, is because that's the one you always use. That's the one your mother gave
you.

It's not like you did this systematic product comparison, and you decided, this is your favorite
toothpaste. You use it just because you always liked it. That's consistency as the peripheral cue.
Social proof says well I like this because everybody else likes it. So, New York Times lately has had
the most emailed articles, people read them, why do you read them? Well, everybody else emailed
them, they must be good. Or my husband chooses restaurants by the one that has the longest
lines. If everybody's waiting on line for this restaurant, that must be good. That's a social proof, a
peripheral cue.

Liking says if you like me, then you like my ideas. This is very important, and we'll see later for
celebrity spokespeople, if you like the celebrity spokesperson, then you're going to like what they
like. Not necessarily a rational process but it, it makes sense in some, in some ways. Authority says
just because I say so, you should do it. That's another peripheral cue. So, because somebody in
authority says you should do something, you should do it. It's not because you thought it out. It,
because it meets your preferences. Just because someone told you to do it. And the last peripheral
cue that I'll just mention today is this peripheral cue of scarcity. Because there aren't very many of
them, it must be good. So some marketers use this idea of scarcity to create product quality. A
modern one that's been using that is Lululemon. And Lululemon purposely does not have, you know,
they go to stock outs easily. If you don't get there quickly, it'll, it'll run out. The design you might
want. And people in, in, infer from that that it's high value, high quality product. So all of these are
scarce, are peripheral cues. Not well thought out central processing arguments, but cues that people
use to persuade themselves of one thing or another.

So now let's think about celebrity endorsements in terms of these two roles of, of persuasion. So in
one way, you can use a celebrity in a central processing way. And in that way the idea's going to be
the, the celebrity is an expert. And the reason that the celebrity endorsement matters is because that
person's an expert and therefore there's information in that endorsement. Celebrity as a peripheral
cue is going to be, because the celebrity's attractive, or because I like the celebrity, then I want to
use the products that they use. So celebrities can be used in both ways. Either in a central, or in a
peripheral way. When you're thinking about different celebrities to use to help endorse
your products, there's certain things you want to think about. First of all, who's the target
segment, and does that target segment like that celebrity. So that's going to be an important
thing. Then you want to think about what's the brand message?

And does the message of the brand, the brand mantra, fit the, the brand message of the celebrity?
As, then another thing you want to think about is how attractive is the celebrity? Is this a popular, a,
a, a positive celebrity? Because you don't want to take a celebrity that nobody likes, obviously. Other
considerations are how, how costly it is. Celebrities can be very expensive. Is it worth it? Some of
them are, are cheaper. Maybe that's a better, value for your money. And nowadays very, very
important is the social network. So some of the celebrities that are chosen for endorsement is
because they have a very, very strong social network and they have a lot of followers, and so the
clout scores and those kinds of different scores are indicating the social connectiveness of these
different celebrities, and all of those go into the decision of which celebrity to choose. There's
another thing that's out there to rate these different celebrities. It's called a Q-rating. And, the Q-
rating says, how appealing is the celebrity among those who do not know him. It's the ratio of
popularity and familiarity.

And, it's conducted by a particular company called Marketing Evaluations. And, you can get Q-
ratings for different celebrities to help you judge which is a good celebrity and which is a celebrity
that maybe isn't as strong and maybe you don't want to pay as much money for or something like
that. So what's the I think you're probably starting to get the idea of how these celebrities
work. formally we think of it as the notion of transfer of meaning.

And that's the model that's used to indicate the effectiveness of celebrities. So, the idea is that
celebrities have very charged, powerful meanings. And what you want to do is transfer the meaning
of that celebrity to your product. So, advertising firms, marketing firms, branding firms try to choose a
celebrity that best represents the, the appropriate symbolic properties of the product. So that that
meaning from that celebrity will then transfer to the meaning of the product. And celebrities are quite
powerful.

There have some been some fMRI studies that show that when you show an image of just a normal
person, certain areas of the brain light up. But if you show an image of a celebrity, different areas of
the brain light up. So there's an automatic or visceral reaction to celebrities. They just get more
attention. and they can be very, very effective at creating an brand image and, at differentiating a
brand. If a celebrity's associated with one brand, and not another, that can be a very effective
differentiation.

And going back to this elaboration likelihood model, when you think of the celebrity as working in a
central processing way we talk about that as having a credible source. And so in that way, the
celebrity is an effective spokesperson, because of their expertise and their trustworthiness. So one
of the very effective, at the time, spokespeople for Nike was Tiger Woods. Now, obviously, there's
been some controversy around Tiger Woods in more recent time. But when Tiger Woods was the
first spokesperson for Nike Golf he worked in two ways.

His, he was very credible as an endorser for golf products because he was such a successful golfer
and obviously you think there's some expertise in him, in his golfing ability and he knows what he's
talking about with regard to product. That's a central processing kind of use of Tiger Woods and
that's source credibility, he's a credible source. The other way of thinking about Tiger Woods is he's
also an attractive source, people liked him at the time, they were very familiar with him. And anything
he did, people would like. So he was used as a spokesperson not only for golfing and for Nike, but
he's also used for other products which were not necessarily based on his expertise, but just based
on his attractiveness. And when he got into some scandal and some issues where his attractiveness
was not as strong, some of those endorsements were dropped because he was no longer an
attractive source. The ones that tended to stay with Tiger were based more on his credibility, as a
source. And you can see when you think about these different methods of persuasion why some
companies might keep him and some companies might not want to keep him. and the ways the
celebrities and models are used in these advertisements and endorsements is they can say there's
an explicit mode. They can say, I endorse this product. I believe in this product. There's an implicit
mode that says, well I use this product. if there's an imperative mode that says, well you should use
this product. and then there just can be these co-present that, that, that celebrities around this
product. So a lot of product placement. A lot of fashion companies give their celebrities their clothes
to wear so the celebrity's just wearing their clothes, and that is a kind of endorsement as well.
Repositioning a Brand

So, we've talked about lots of things with regard to brands. We've talked about the initial positioning
of a brand. We've talked about how to create brand elements that go together to create a brand
image. And one of the things I've been emphasizing throughout the whole sessions, is that a brand
has to be updated. A brand has to stay modern. A brand has to adapt. And so a very iimportant part
of branding, is to think about how to reposition a brand. You have an initial start, but maybe the
times have changed. Maybe the customer base has changed. And, you have to think about how can
you keep this brand fresh. How do you reposition a br, a brand. So, we're gona talk about that
now. And it's this notion that the brand equity must be actively managed over time. If you wait until a
brand is out-of-date, it's much harder than to re-position the brand. So ideally, the best way to keep a
brand fresh is to constantly think about it. Might tweak it here and there. Think about it all the time so
that it stays fresh. That would be the best way. Brand meanings must be reinforced. but sometimes
they need to be adjusted just a little bit.

A new sources, new, new ways of identifying the equity should be identified. Why does this
happen? Well, I can think of at least five reasons and there's probably more reasons than that, but
let's go over some of these. One reason for a brand repositioning is that the initial positioning that
you came up with wasn't right. it was poorly conceived. so, and you might know this because you
thought this was really cool and customers were going to be interested. But, actually you didn't see
the interest you anticipated. Or the sales are just not what you thought and one of the reasons is, is
the brand is poorly conceived. That being the case, you gotta re-position the brand.

Another reason is, maybe you have a perfect positioning, for a particular target audience, but that
audience is hard to reach, isn't profitable. It was a really good idea for a really good customer
segment, but it wasn't a good business opportunity. And so therefore you may need to re-position
the brand. Another reason may be because it just gets out of date. As I mentioned over and over,
one of the things about being a marketing professor is that things change. You gotta constantly
change, you gotta keep up with things. and so your old marketing approach might become
obsolete. Then you have to change it. The other thing could be, it might just lose its edge. It made
sense at one point, it's just kind of old and now people want to do something new, and it isn't really
that it was wrong or that things, that people's taste change so much, it's just that it seems old and
tired.

And so you need to do something to make it fresh. and another idea, it's along those same line as
tired. So one is more that it becomes old fashion and the other it just becomes old hat. but those are
similar ideas, it just gets old, it's, it's there was nothing wrong with it but you really want it to be
new. And by the way, one of the really big things that happens is, people go out and make
purchases sometimes because they have needs and sometimes they make a new purchase. Just
because they want something different, something new. And if the brand seems same old, same old,
that's not enough of a reason to go out and make a new purchase. So these are some of the
reasons that are needed for a brand change. There are others.

When you think about re-positioning a brand, the biggest thing you have to think about is
consistency, consistency, consistency. So, except for that one example where I told you
about Google, where they go out of their way to do things that are a little bit different each time, most
brands when they do this re-position, they do this re-position, they have to have a position that's
consistent with the old position. Or, at least close enough to the old positioning so that consumers
believe it. If it's really radically different. People won't make the connection necessarily. there's some
examples where that can work, but most of the time, the best way to re-position a brand is to do
something that's consistent with the brand DNA.
And so let's think about, there's some, some psychological theory that can go back behind this, so I
can show you why this happens, why consistency is generally so important. And this is some very
old research that was done on understanding why people smoke. and it had to do with people's
attitudes towards smoking. So this is some, a psychological theory here. So let's assume, I'm me,
I'm myself. And let's say I smoke. And let's say that I know that smoking causes cancer, cancer
causes death. And I don't want to die.

Now, if that's the case, how do I justify that I smoke? Because there's this inconsistency. I'm me, I, I
like myself, I don't want to die. I think smoking causes cancer. something doesn't work. And so what,
what psychologists found out that was people rationalized. Or they do something to one of the links
of this chain so that it is consistent. And that's the way they can justify their behavior because people
like to be consistent with themselves. So what are the ways different people kind of rationalize to
allow themselves to smoke? Well, one resolution is you'd say. Okay, I smoke.

I don't want to die of cancer. I don't believe the data. And so this is the kind of thing where I say you
have this buyer selective interpretation. I was mentioning presidential campaigns. You, there's
experiments that shows, you show the same data to smokers and non-smokers. And they will
interpret it differently. So people frequently interpret the message or the data, consistent with what
they already believe. This is a theme that I have mentioned all along. So this is a, a pretty well-
known, way to rationalize behavior. Another way to do it, is to say, no no, I believe the data, it's
pretty conclusive. Smoking causes cancer. I really don't want to die from cancer. So, what you do is
kind of lie to yourself. And you say, you know, I don't really smoke.

I only smoke when I drink, I only smoke on vacation. And, so it doesn't really count. And, therefore I
have no inconsistency. People do this with diets all the time. They make all sorts of rules. When I'm
on vacation. Food isn't fattening. If it's a little bit burnt, I can eat as much as I want. You know,
there's all sorts of rules that people make. That's that resolution where you kind of figure out a way
that you can feel good about yourself. The third resolution to this particular one says, okay, I know I
smoke. I know it causes cancer. But, you know what? I'm going to die anyway. And it may not be
that I die from this. All of these are consistent and that is a very important concept for marketers. So
if you're putting out a message, when you're trying to reposition your brand, that isn't consistent,
consumers will reject it and will look for ways to rationalize the message so it makes sense to them.
It's a consistency theory. There is a drive to maintain consistency within your thinking systems.and
what you do is if it's not consistent, you change whichever one is weakest so that it is consistent.
So what's the famous example? It's with Oldsmobile.

Oldsmobile was known as a car that was associated with Dad, with my father. Okay, now one thing
that's probably obvious but let me just say it here. Cars are for young people. Cars are powerful,
performance. People like young people cars, energy cars. They don't like old people cars, okay?
So the notion that Oldsmobile was associated with my father was a turnoff to younger
people. Oldsmobile understood that. That was obvious. And so what they tried to do was, they came
out with a new ad, new excitement, new car to say, no, no we're not a fuddy duddy car. We're an
exciting car. This is a car for young people. What happened here?

There's cognitive dissonance here. The problem is, the association with dad and Oldsmobile was
extremely strong. The association that my dad is not exciting was extremely strong. So the weak link
here was that Oldsmobile cannot be an exciting car. And that was a very strong inconsistency they
couldn't fight. it was so strongly-associated with my father and fathers are so not exciting that people
just, not, believe, did not believe the new ad. It was obviously hurt even more by the ad. The slogan
at the time was, This is not your father's Oldsmobile. And anybody knows, as soon as I say, this is
not my father's Oldsmobile, what you're doing is reinforcing that it's exactly my father's
Oldsmobile. So this is known as one of, not a good campaign. Most marketers will say, you just
didn't get this right.
And you know, there was another problem here. Think about the brand name. It is literally called an
old mobile. That is, all of this is not good, and it was such a hard thing to change and to reposition
that they actually took the car off the market, which was kind of astonishing, because Oldsmobile
had very, very high brand awareness. But they just could not get themselves out of this cognitive
inconsistency. So this is a very important thing. A better way to do it is to not wait until it's so hard to
change that it's impossible and you have to take the product off the market. A better way to do it is to
gradually change these associations in small ways so that people can still maintain that brand
familiarity and believe the re-positioning. so you can do it, and I mentioned this earlier.

You can do it by kind of, updating the symbols. Or, maybe you can start to change the brand
name. And I can show you how to can show, change the brand name slowly to to, to reflect the
evolving identity. Or you can use different slogans. So all of these elements that we talked about
before, can be subtly tweaked. In order to reposition the brand as a, as you need to, to keep it
modern, and you can also do it if you're going to use the brand to stretch the brand to go into new
products and so you might want to broaden the brand meaning so then it's more flexible and
adaptable to go in the new product.

There are two ways to do this. One of the ways is called the Just Noticeable difference. And what
this says is that you make these little tweaks, very subtle, from point to point to point, so they're
barely noticed. You know, you do this, say, every year. If you look over 20 years, the difference from
the first one to the last one is very very hard. And so there's a lot of packaging examples which we
can show you. Where just with tiny little tweaks each time, you still believe it's the same product. But
if you look from one, one version to a version, 65 years later, you'll see a radical difference, and the
brand stays modern. Many consumer packaged goods do this kind of just noticable difference
positioning. Another way to do it is what's called the butterfly effect.

And what this says, is that, I'm going to move from one to another, in a big jump. You are going to
notice that it's different. It's not a just noticable difference. It's a bigger difference. And the reason I'm
going to do this is to keep it modern and new. Because, for some categories, like cosmetics, like
clothing, and this is the notion of clothing The idea of keeping it modern and keeping it fresh is part
of the reason to buy. And in that case, I don't need the change from one to another to just be subtle.
I can make it. So that it is kind of a little bit exciting, and more modern. But, it doesn't necessarily
need to but I, it's, it's more modern, but it still stays within believability. And, and that's called the
butterfly effect. So it's not so extreme. That I don't think it's the same thing. but it is noticeable. And,
so these are two different ones and we can show you a number of different examples on those two
different ones.

Okay. And, then I can show you some examples of evolving trademarks. here's the Jolly Green
Giant, that was kind of out of date, heAnd, they made a new Jolly Green Giant that was fitter more
athletic. Taller, stood up straighter. and looked more like a modern I guess, giant. then there was
please don't squeeze the Charmin. And, they updated that packaging. Updated that spokesperson to
look more modern. These are subtle changes. There was another change, Charlie the Tuna.
I mentioned him earlier, very fun, animated character, kind of got a little outta date. And they made
him more modern and changed the colors a little bit, changed the perspective of him, and just kind of
made him a hipper guy. More recently, there was a transformation on the, the, hamburger chain,
Wendy's. And again, I, I know a little bit more about the market research, so I went into this. There
was a lot of changes here. One of the changes here is they got out their slogan. Their slogan that
used to be part of the sign was Old Fashioned Hamburgers. Wendy's menu is gotta be broader
now. They do more than just hamburgers, so one of the things they pulled out was that slogan.
They changed their typeface. They went from an old fashioned typeface to a more modern typeface.
They did find when they did the market research that the character, this Wendy character, which was
Dave Thomas's the founder of Wendy's, it was his daughter at the time. People identified with that
Wendy character and they liked that Wendy character.
So, they kept the character. But they made her, you can see she used to be in a little circle and she
used to be contained in the circle. Now she's kind of bouncing out of the circle, and so all of that
made the logo seem more modern and more expansive. You know, lots of things are possible that
you can get in a Wendy's now. And with these subtle changes, it's still very much identified as a
Wendy's. you can keep the brand, you can keep the brand modern, but connected enough so that it
doesn't, people still know it's Wendy's and it's not a surprise.

There are other kinds of ways that people have named that's actually to change the brand name,
so Boston Chicken was the original name of the of the chain of restaurants that provides dinner
food. Obviously, Boston Chicken suggested they're just selling chicken. and so they, and they sell
way more than chicken, and so they changed their name to Boston Market and in that case, what
they're doing is trying to broaden the flexibility of the brand. Weather Channel found out that they
were going to make a lot of their revenues not off TV anymore but off Apps and different kinds of
ways of saying weather.

So, they change their name from the Weather Channel to Weather Companies. And, Starbucks very
famously changed their name from Starbucks coffee to just their image. They just have the image of
the mermaid now. They not only got rid of coffee, but they kind of got rid of Starbucks. But, people
still know that it is Starbucks by that image. So what's the best way to do it? The best, one of, a
brand that's really done a very good job of keeping themselves modern is BMW. BMW could have
been in the same situation as Oldsmobile because it was a product that your father drove. it, it, BMW
was a lot of associations. It was a certain type of car. It was a German car. It was an expensive car
and it was a car driven by the baby boomers. At one time, all of this was good. In fact, BMW's were
called Beemers. You know, they were thought of as driven by the baby boomers. But, these things
get old. It could have been that the car was seen, the car design was seen as not practical. Being a
lot of money was seen as wasteful. the baby boomers got old and they are stuffy.

And German could be seen as staunchy. So, although these associations started out as positive, if
they're not carefully cultivated, they could turn negative. How did BMW cultivate it? They did it
though a lot of sponserships. They not only were very careful with their advertising, they, their, they
mean performance, which is something that can stay modern. But they also changed their design of
the cars. They, they had BMW sunglasses. They sponsored high performance bikes. They
sponsored golf tournaments. They associated their brand name with young, and powerful, and good
imagery. And so their associations never did turn negative, and they stayed a very positive
association. Budweiser Beer has done that also. this could be your father's beer. He drank, your
father drank Bud just as much as you do. But, Bud stayed very young with their sponsoship, with
their advertising, with their clever advertising. That, with all of those kinds of things, their slogans
etcetera. And, that's a way to do it by constantly positioning your product. Subtly, sometimes just
noticeable difference, sometimes a little bit bigger difference, like a butterfly effect, but always within
the brand DNA so that people believed the changes.

So, major points here. Consistency over time is very valuable in building strong brands. You do, it's
kind of, you know, a fine line. You do need to keep your brand modern. But, if you do something that
threatens the consistency chain that I was talking about, people won't believe it. So, it's got to be
something that is consistent, with the brand DNA, but is constantly moving it forward. When you
think about all the brand elements, you want them all to work in harmony to communicate brand
identity. And, it's important. To to change when it's necessary but be careful because if you do
things that are too big a change or the customers won't accept, it just won't work.

If you really want to do a good job in keeping your brand modern, you really have to understand the
brand mantra, the brand DNA, the brand positioning, your target segment. These are the things
we've talked about in the beginning. You have to understand what the points of parity are, what the
reference frame is. You have to really understand what the point of differentiation is, what is strong
about your brand, what is positive about your brand, and what is unique. And you have to be
consistent with that kind of brand image as you make these adjustments.